S02E42 The Origin of CrossFit Bison Part 4

In the final chapter of the history of CrossFit Bison - now that they had an established and financially successful gym, why did they decide to up and move again? And then not even a year after moving, how did the pandemic affect their lives and business? The saga of life and hard business lessons finishes for the two former energy futures traders who decided to open up an CrossFit gym in North Jersey. One of the largest gyms participating in the CrossFit Open in the world, CrossFit Bison @crossfitbison continues to celebrate its 8th anniversary with a look back at how it came to be.

Along with special guest, David's business partner and fellow coach @christafaro, we discuss how CrossFit Bison grew from a dream into reality, including all the ups and downs along the way and the perseverance that it took to finally will CrossFit Bison into existence. Whether you want to learn more about CrossFit Bison, how to start an affiliate, or how to make your own affiliate better, we dig into the details.

You can find more information at our website, HerdFitUSA.com. Like and subscribe wherever you watch or listen to our podcast!

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S02E42 THE ORIGIN OF CF BISON PT 4

[00:00:00] David Syvertsen: Alright. So this is going to be the final episode of the Christ cross at bison history slash you know, how to grow gym, how to improve a gym. And I think one of the biggest move that we ever made other than deciding to actually open up the gym was to move it. There's like a certain emotional attachment to 59 Greenwood unit six.

That's where we were for five years. About a year before the lease was up, someone approached us that owned the building where we are currently right now and said Hey, if you guys are ever looking for another space, I think I might have something for you. Drove down there. I saw it. It was. Did not look anything like it did right now, but I did see once you have been in enough, CrossFits, a general layout, well, enough to be like this'll work and some of it's ceiling height, some of it's with Lang doors bathrooms, like there's a lot of things that you have to look into.

But we knew it was going to work as long as we could go through that zoning process smoothly. Prior to man, I don't want to get my dates wrong here, but I'm pretty sure we agreed to come over here at some point fall of 2018. That's when we were like, all I actually remember I was in, I was in New Hampshire.

It was summer of 2018 August. I remember texting Caleb and the woods of New Hampshire and I kept on losing. About Hey, w we agreed to this or not. And so we basically had a solid 6, 7, 8 months to do it. And we knew that the process would be a little smoother with zoning because we had been through it.

We had eight months, we were operating our jams, so we weren't desperate. And so we started moving forward with it. Chris, what were your thoughts when we first started to talk.

[00:01:35] Chris Tafaro: Well, we came over, we saw what it was. It was a mess in there, there was a truck, it was a, it was a furniture store.

They were building furniture. We knew it'd be a huge project. It was going to be a huge project, but, and we were comfortable where we were. Yes. And it was like, we could just take the easy road and stick around and renew the lease for another five years. Or, if we really are.

Gonna run this, like for the long haul we're in this. Yup. Then we need a bigger space. And because it was crowded, it was getting

[00:02:05] David Syvertsen: crowded. The reason we needed a bigger space for basically the morning classes, we're getting 25 people per yep. And I, to this day, don't know how we did that. I mean, we're very spoiled here.

So I think we kind of lose track, but you literally had probably a six by six foot square to work out in. And you would, you could be 60 feet away from your. Yep. On any

[00:02:26] Sam Rhee: given day, you are dropping barbells right next

[00:02:28] David Syvertsen: to people doing burpees inches away inches. Yeah. So we just knew like, all right, we're either capped out here and this is how much money we're going to make.

And honestly, we were, that was when we started to be comfortable with how much money we were making. Not, not enough.

[00:02:44] Chris Tafaro: That was our best year at that time. That was a really good

[00:02:48] David Syvertsen: year for us because our rent was a lot lower there than it is here, obviously. More speed. I remember thinking like, all right, we finally make it.

But now we're at this decision point where we're about to Jack the, the expenses up by over a hundred percent.

[00:02:59] Chris Tafaro: And then right. As soon as we finally got to a point where we were both with good with the money and members, we took on a new project, right? Yeah. Yeah. It takes, it takes a very long time to, to build businesses like this.

So we took on the project of doing it and it was not, it. It was still painful. Yeah, we still had to come up with, the, the drawings, the architect drives the city plan, all the inspections to fire

[00:03:23] David Syvertsen: it's like PTSD all over again. It was, it was all

[00:03:27] Chris Tafaro: over again. I mean, a little less stressful, a little bit because.

We were already in business making money. But our five-year lease was up. So we had another small window when they could get this tenant out and we can move in. And then would our, what our guy, let us go our landlord at the time. Could we go month to month or do we have to sign a year or whatever?

He was always very fair to us, but he was not a person out. Like you couldn't talk to him. He was by the book. Yeah. So he would have been like, sorry, we can't go month to month. It's one year, at least is only, or whatever it was in his whatever, whatever they ran their, their rules by, like he would have, he would have he did let us go month, month to month and we did run over.

It was always. We opened a couple months after we thought we opened. And finally, April. Yeah, it was after the open. We were looking at a February and I CA I remember saying let's, let's, let's, let's not shoot for that. Yeah. Let's push back another month.

[00:04:22] David Syvertsen: This is where our personalities are good for each other.

In that I'm like aggressive unrealistically sometimes. With a, with a lot of things, but my own personal goals, like I still think I'm going to make the games up there. Well, when you coach go on broken on everything, it's fine. But the, the, the, I am unrealistic it could say like I'm too much of a dreamer or something like that, whatever.

Chris is more like this, this might not what happen.

[00:04:45] Chris Tafaro: I was thinking like, let's not like it could very easily be another month or two.

[00:04:50] David Syvertsen: I remember that's okay. And so we knew in the fall that we were doing this, but we weren't telling anyone and I, and we were both like, all yeah.

Let's just not tell any of the members. And I got drunk at the holiday party. And as I'm saying, thank you to the members of the reason. So by the way, we're moving gems and like Chris and Dallas from just oh man,

[00:05:11] Chris Tafaro: I forgot about that.

[00:05:13] David Syvertsen: And

[00:05:13] Sam Rhee: that might've been the most intoxicated. I think I've seen you in a long time.

[00:05:16] David Syvertsen: So I had discussion with Ashley the other day. I haven't been that I haven't been, I don't think I've actually been drunk, drunk in probably since that time, the fall of 2018 fall.

[00:05:26] Chris Tafaro: Okay. That was, yeah, that was one of the Carla left early that night.

[00:05:32] David Syvertsen: Maybe we'll have a podcast episode on some holiday parties, funny stories that could take an hour or so.

So that's where, like I kinda lose control a little bit is not alcohol, but just, I I'm a dreamer. I'd like to be optimistic and always be glass half full. Sometimes it helps me, sometimes it doesn't. But I remember telling people that we were doing this before. We really knew if this was going to work. If we had to go through all this town stuff and we would look like idiots, if this didn't work out because of.

Yeah. And I told the world, right? So, I, and we had so much stuff that had to be done. Chris, Chris is saying all the zoning, but we had to build bathrooms. We put that

[00:06:08] Chris Tafaro: Florida the floor and everything was like, it was The walls were knocked down

[00:06:12] David Syvertsen: right here. Yeah. We knew we could handle the stuff of putting the gym together, but we did have to do a Bob Bob's like he was a godsend for us.

This would not have happened without Bob and Bob. We built all the walls and bison for like the wall balls that like those those walls only went halfway at the door, soft white,

[00:06:30] Chris Tafaro: like the canvas thing for the top hats.

[00:06:34] David Syvertsen: The entire gem did not have walls, basically for wobbles and handsome pushups.

So we had to build all those and then paint them. And so we had to do all this while we were running old bison during the cross it open are this like these three, four weeks coming up or the busiest weeks of our ear in relation to bison. And w this is what we have. Chris has mentioned this before. Like we had to make the decision.

At some point, we could stay the same sign, another five release, the old space, stay comfortable. And maybe the quality of the product wouldn't be that high, but we'd be making decent. And we'd be happy that we be comfortable, but we tell people all the time here, like if you're chasing after comfort, you're losing.

And there's a line that you don't want to go over. Yes. But we felt that this was a move that this would make us very uncomfortable. Both short-term building the space out. But also long-term but the financials, like we literally, I think the, the expenses increased by over a hundred percent across the board.

Yep. And and, but, so you only make a move there if you feel like you're going to perform like grow, grow. Yes. And so Chris keep going.

[00:07:35] Chris Tafaro: Yeah, I mean like finance, we, we, we took that, we took it, we opened up a credit line and everything for that, because I mean, I was like, I don't want it to get like the floor alone.

We want to have. A real nice looking jam. If we're going to do it, we're gonna do it, right? Like that floor, this seamless floor, that that floor alone costs $30,000.

[00:07:53] David Syvertsen: Yeah. I

[00:07:53] Sam Rhee: love it. Because how many gaps would form at the old gym things you don't even realize?

[00:07:59] Chris Tafaro: We laid that old floor out.

We mean, we were like, we are not doing that again. Like every one of those pallets was 105 pounds. Our thumbs, like our grip. Yeah. You were dead. And it would just be too much and you want it to look good. Yeah. And so, I mean, even it wouldn't have been that much cheaper probably, but you know, you could trust

[00:08:17] Sam Rhee: the and I mean, the good thing is, is the Zumos are the ones who own this place.

And they were very solid people to trust in terms of

[00:08:25] David Syvertsen: working with them. That's one advantage. Like being from this town, like I graduated with one of the pseudomonas, like my brother was a year above. Like we knew the family forever. Yeah. And that's where being from this area and opening up business in this area, it's helped us, both of us in a lot of different ways.

Yeah.

[00:08:41] Chris Tafaro: The trust, the landlord too. We trust them that they know what we're, they know our products. All the boys worked out there and, they knew what we were looking for. There's not going to be any loopholes in the, in the contract that they're going to not going to kick us

[00:08:53] David Syvertsen: out.

Chris doesn't need to show to a meeting with the landlord with a phone recording in his pocket. I mean, we

[00:08:58] Chris Tafaro: didn't trust the old guys so badly that one time I went to go talk to him, I forget what the actual, what it was about, but I put on the audio recording

[00:09:08] David Syvertsen: and I had my phone, like a

[00:09:09] Chris Tafaro: wire. I was wired.

I put in my breast pocket and like a button down and I went into. Just in case I had to hold him to something, if we were on the Supreme court, one of our very important matter warehouse issue. And also now the architect, we had the first one, luckily we met the pages throughout this and Brittany paid the, the, the word for this building.

Yeah. But the first guy. I wrote that if I would not, I would fully expect this guy. If he saw me and Dave to run away and hop over a fence. Okay. If he saw us, we were so angry with him. We w we would have we, we showed up at his office, like he was nervous about at certain point.

[00:09:55] David Syvertsen: Yeah. They are back in those earliest days when we're being tossed around by every moving piece possible.

That was preventing it from opening. This is where I understand when you get desperate, you start doing some weird things

[00:10:06] Chris Tafaro: and like the drought, like we finally, like, where are the drawings? They should be ready. Dave, you drove to Trenton in a snow storm because we were waiting for them to FedEx, some drawing.

Well, we could save a day or whatever. If we went, she went to Trenton to pick them up just so we could get him like one day or,

[00:10:25] David Syvertsen: and I went in that office. Nobody goes in there you're not like you ever send things to government and it takes forever. Yeah. I can see why now, because I literally walked into, I don't even know why they let me in, but I had to show all this ID.

I had to write these forms and I walk into the office and it was definitely the kind of office that nobody goes in. Stacks and stacks of paper and boxes and these little cubicles with people not working. And they're just there, like when I said I'm here for the plans for this building in this town, you guys are sending them tomorrow.

They're like, what are you doing here? I don't think anyone's ever done that. They're like, okay, I guess we can go get them out of the mail room. And we brought them up a day earlier.

[00:11:03] Chris Tafaro: I'm like, well, how can we get, how can we get these drawings quicker? We could go to Trenton up. What's the address?

That's fine. We will. I, I had conversations when I was still, we were still working at the trading floor that were with the. That I called when we opened, I called the back office guys, the tech guys, I still knew them. They pulled some tapes for me and mailed me a memory stick with recorded phone conversations, with the in case again, that we had to go to the Supreme court or whatever, but they mailed it to me.

Like those guys actually. Well, the tapes for me and mailed them, FedEx them to me in on a memory state. But yeah, we were so like cover, we, we, we really were just like paranoid with all that stuff. Yeah.

[00:11:46] David Syvertsen: So it was not paranoia, but I would say probably the biggest fight Chris and I ever got in was paranoid.

So basically just imagine like how busy we are doing the open, also building a new gym. So and whenever you're not working girl over here building up the new gym. And we a. At the, what was this? It was in April. Oh, no. Sorry. It was in March. So it's like at the tail end of the open, always an emotional time for everybody.

We, we are days away from opening up the gym and we ran into a lot of roadblocks in the last month because. We didn't do things right way in terms of building the bathroom. It was my fault. I screwed something up bad communication, and we almost got the roadblock of you can't open until this gets inspected and it won't get inspected for a couple more weeks.

And, it ended up working out, but we had other fire things to jump through, but we had one more like final, big work weekend to do. And we're like, Hey everyone clear schedules Friday, Saturday, Sunday, like we got we're opening this thing next week. And we found out just, I think the day or two before that, that we, we had to be out of the old bias and like literally everything had to be out walls had to be painted white.

And I'm like in two days to two days, I

[00:13:00] Chris Tafaro: think, yeah, we

[00:13:01] David Syvertsen: had two days to do it. And again, it's probably poor communication on our part and like how we were going to go about this. And the other option was to pay for another month of rent. I think it was

[00:13:10] Chris Tafaro: like a half a mile. He was going to give us a half month.

So we'd have to be paid like a thousand

[00:13:14] David Syvertsen: dollars, 2000 bucks. And so we, we, I remember walking in the gym, talking to Chris and Chris was like, no, no, no, we have to get it out. I'm like, how are we going to do that this weekend? And build out the noodles? Like maybe we'll just ask her help. I'm like, whew, like who the answer is going to help us out.

He goes, I'll take care of it. Like yelling at each other on the phone. I'm watching. The old running path at green, at bison screaming into the phone, like I've never done. I don't think I've ever done that, but I was just so frustrated at the past few months and the bathroom talk and like the town telling me I did something wrong, SoCal yelling at me for something right.

Like painting,

[00:13:50] Chris Tafaro: We would come

[00:13:50] David Syvertsen: over here and fucking paint and. This is where the bison community really, I think this is probably the most humbling thing that's ever been done for us in a matter of two days, Chris has a couple of shit. I'll take this project.

[00:14:02] Chris Tafaro: Like you take the stop yelling at me.

I put on visa bison on the Facebook group and I'm like dead T first one I'm in, I'll help you Friday, Saturday. Sunday, we, we got every single floor mat back out of that place. The rig Ashley's Ashley's dad came down and he was, he was helping us get the bolts out of the ground and everything.

We got every format of the place in, out the back door. Again, my thumbs were, were dying. Painted a set killed me to paint over the mural. Yeah. Painted over the mural, being tired. Every wall we had the scaffolding, I had Deb T and everyone else that helped. We have video of a painting, painting the over the, the signatures, the names in the room, like Elena's on Kayla, jeez.

Shoulders with a roller, bodie or Savannah was rolling out like a little bit of a rolling. Yeah. Everyone had paper. I went, I bought like a million rollers and paint brushes, and people were fixing holes in the wall. Everybody chipped in, like everybody chipped in and the place on Monday morning, I went over there with the landlord.

Well, I also said I'm like, I confirmed with him. I said, if we're out by Monday, we don't have to pay the two weeks. Or the, and he's yeah, but I was in there the other day. You're screwed. Okay. Whatever Monday morning he walks in and the guy actually, he kind of let it get a smile on his face and he goes, CrossFit, this is what you guys do.

And I'm like, yep. I'm like, we got it done. I told you. Amazing. Yeah, I'm amazed. I'm amazed. Good job. And that was it. And he didn't, we didn't have to pay never heard from him again. Never heard from him again. Yeah. Yeah. W it was there wasn't one thing in there, but it looked better than when we, yeah,

[00:15:57] David Syvertsen: it was, it was amazing what the people did for us, because we weren't, it wouldn't have impossible to do that even, probably in a whole week without with the, if it was just us, and it's, it's cool.

Even to Ashley and my mother-in-law the a and step-mom, they helped build out this new space too. And it goes to show like how much this is, why I don't like it when people will shout out to us like, oh, you guys have built this, you guys have done it from the scar. We have gotten so much help from so many people and I never want that to get neglected.

Like I'd rather never anyone ever say that again and just say wow, like this group of people has done so much for you guys. You try to give back as much as you can, but I remember even just like dating back to, Ashley's early days of, of sheep. She coached here for. Months without ever being paid in addition to her full-time job.

Like even to this day, I see some of these guys that come in and coach at night after being at work for 8, 9, 10 hours. It's a huge thing. But I remember Ash was just like such a big part of the gym early on because she was the, the girl, the owner, the first girl to be here and then to see her father helping us out build the, there was these things we couldn't get out of the ground.

It was the we, we bolt the rig into the ground. Yeah, and it sticks up like six inches and you can't, they're too strong to cut out. Like with the stuff we have, like we're sitting here trying to tear it out and they don't budge. And he comes out with this song out of nowhere. And it's just like those. I remember those moments as watching him.

It wasn't even a thought for him. You just drove up here for 45 minutes. Had this saw that I'm probably not even allowed to touch and the thing's gone like that. And he does it with every single bolt that was still in the ground. And I remember thinking like that, it brought me back to those early days of 2014.

Remember our parents came and help set up the gym and clean, clean the gym. That one time my dad's done a lot of painting at this gym at the old gym. It's it's so awesome to see family, but also the bison family do that for you because you never know. This, this place is not exists with that kind of help.

It just doesn't. It's just too much work for two, three people.

[00:17:54] Chris Tafaro: Oh yeah. That weekend was so crazy. I actually have video too, of the girls were taking some of the mats out. They were putting them into cars. Cause people took some of the floormates and like Liz, Liz Liz's coaching. Like the last class that night, there was only two people in it, but the gym was half there's only a few rubber pallets left on the floor and everyone else was moving stuff out.

I also remember on that Sunday. I was, I was pit, we had to finish up over there, but that was the opening day of here. And people were doing open gym. I think it was the first time we had people in here.

[00:18:23] David Syvertsen: Yeah. Open gym slash come see it. Yeah. And I

[00:18:25] Chris Tafaro: had I was driving Dallas truck around with shit in the back, like trying to do, and I'm like, I want him to be at the fucking gym, but that was just a VA man.

That was a really stressful time. Yeah. It was not a smooth transition,

[00:18:36] David Syvertsen: right? Yeah. But it worked, I think the one thing you have to be, if you're ever going to be a business owner or try to take on something like this, you have to be good at solving. Yeah. Like you just have to know that like we're like, we already know there's going to be more problems that come up in the next, like maybe this week, the open next with the opener, big picture stuff.

And then that obviously I actually think all these things that we went through helps us through the pandemic. I

[00:18:56] Sam Rhee: was about to say, so you move, you double your expenses and you have a full-time coach had a full-time coach and right after that

[00:19:04] David Syvertsen: COVID hits and you're like, wonderful. How did that go? Yeah. I mean, that, that could be a whole nother episode, but.

Ko. COVID I remember shutting the door to the gym. And I think I made a corny Instagram posts about it, but like I was shutting the door and I said we'll be back stronger than ever. And I honestly believed that I really did. Now. I also thought the pandemic would last two weeks.

[00:19:30] Chris Tafaro: That was a huge help.

[00:19:32] David Syvertsen: Like how long were you guys?

[00:19:33] Sam Rhee: How long were you guys open

[00:19:34] David Syvertsen: before you had to close in the new space? It was 13 months. No less than 12 months. It was 11 months. Wow. Yeah, we started in April and we got close. So that that time period was. It just tested us in different ways. But again, we had so much support.

Like I got so many messages when we got shut down. So the, Hey, like I'm never canceled my membership no matter what were you

[00:19:56] Sam Rhee: guys ever scared, this wasn't going to happen or something bad was going to happen in terms of the actual gym existing.

[00:20:02] Chris Tafaro: I mean, I know I was never like ready to wrap it up or throw part of the part or a helpful thing was not knowing it was going to be so long.

Like you did think. And next month we should be open that, as

[00:20:13] David Syvertsen: far as new, brought us back to 2014, next month, it's going to be open. It's gonna be, it's gonna happen. It's gonna happen. Yeah.

[00:20:19] Chris Tafaro: I mean it's yeah. I mean, like there's, it's, it's very, it's, it's a stressful thing. A lot of, a lot of moving parts involved, like Mike's job, like your, your whole family.

It was, it, it could have been a lot worse though. I mean, I don't think we ever, we definitely had arguments and things like that, but we never were like, Shut it down. We're not, we're not we're, we're not, we're not, we're fucked. We never did. Luckily we had so many people keep their memberships going.

There's a lot of people who didn't to, but like in a totally understandable, I mean, it's a lot of money,

[00:20:51] David Syvertsen: but you never looked at, at anything in the pandemic as personal, unless someone else made it personal. It was always like, if you got a cancel dude, No trust me, I get it where, and one thing we never had to do was turn off any payments, any coaches even the part-timers like it would just, we kept it going.

And there was opportunities to raise money for the gym and we decided to give it to somebody else down in Tennessee that we didn't even know that they had their gym ravaged by a tornado. And. I think that's like the whole pay it forward ideas. Like when you really feel like you need help, I think you should just go try to help other people.

And then I think what you need eventually comes your way. Like I live like by that, by that all the time. And I think that's what bison did for us is, they, they showed us a lot of support. We did everything we could with zoom. We did everything we could with the outdoor parking lots. We've worked out in mass for nine months, at home workouts

[00:21:39] Chris Tafaro: program for, for

[00:21:40] David Syvertsen: everyone and yeah, exactly.

The ad, all the at-home stuff. And you creating that leaderboard at night, you're probably like, oh, I'll do this for a couple of weeks. Eight weeks later, it's still doing it. But that was that was when I feel like we went from all right. We're at a really good gym to a great. I really think there was during the pandemic, and how people, how we handled the mass situation, the political divide that's in our country, but also even in some cases in our gym, all this stuff.

I think the biggest thing that we do is Chris and I never really take a side on that kind of stuff. Is we just, we, we talk to each other about all the time. Like we would never put out what our conversations are between ourselves on that stuff, but. It's important that we, that we don't take sides.

And I think that can rub some people the wrong way, but we do that on purpose because you're here for everybody. I'm not here for two people, not here for town. I'm here for the whole whole day. I have to say, as owners,

[00:22:32] Sam Rhee: you, I don't think there could be much else that you guys would encounter that, that experience hasn't given you.

Every possible

[00:22:42] David Syvertsen: tool

[00:22:43] Sam Rhee: challenge, challenge, like you guys are probably, I think most CrossFit owners who had to deal with it are some of the most experienced resilient business owners out there. Because if you are a gym owner during that time and you survived and you got through it and you got, you got S U R S U state successful.

Yeah. I mean, you could, you could do anything probably.

[00:23:03] Chris Tafaro: Yeah. There's not going to be a lot, hopefully nothing ever like that happens again. I mean, I stayed busy with the. The PPP loans and all that stuff, like all that paperwork they gave me something to do. Yeah, I mean, and that helped all that stuff, for sure.

Yeah.

[00:23:19] David Syvertsen: No, that's a huge reason why we're we're in a decent spot right now is going through all like the PPP stuff. And without that, I mean, that's, we're not, we're not a million dollar business, you know, w we actually got valued this past summer and it was less than we thought we were just for the simple reason that.

This business style where it's prescription based membership base where people could drop tomorrow and all of a sudden you're nothing, it's not a huge, valuable, big time. Like we're not going to, sell it. Yeah. We're never going to sell this business for 10. You know, Look up like right off into the sunset, never gonna happen.

[00:23:50] Chris Tafaro: But he's in the a lot is in the staff,

[00:23:52] David Syvertsen: and the ownership and the ownership being involved. We got, I've gotten asked by this from other gyms is how involved should the owners be? And I said, you should be there. And it, it, that, that's what makes the business valuable. That's where it makes sense.

And I know gyms that I've had owners in Florida that, that own a gym, New Jersey, it doesn't work out. Yeah. It, it just, it just doesn't work out that way. So that can kind of like leeway, like where we think Bisons headed for the future, whereas cross it headed for the future. And, as confident as we may seem in the product, like it's still a day-to-day grind week to week.

That. Oh, it does. It does. Cause some sleep loss, it causes stress because again, it's a membership, it's a business that could, disappear for a lot of different reasons in, in a week or two, it's funny

[00:24:34] Sam Rhee: because the past couple months we've gotten through. The whole variant situation and things took a big dip and then they came back up again.

And there are still some changes that in terms of lanes and all sorts of things that are sort of a result of all that. But I have to say, when I look at say this past week, for example, classes are bigger than they've ever been. More people are showing up At every probably time of the day than they ever have, there are more members that are joining than they ever have.

And then also, returning members coming back as

[00:25:06] David Syvertsen: well, more people signed up for the open.

[00:25:08] Sam Rhee: The more we have the most people ever sign up for the open up 2019,

[00:25:12] David Syvertsen: which is what fifth in the world, world fourth in

[00:25:15] Sam Rhee: the world, like 40, more than we had last year. Yeah.

[00:25:17] David Syvertsen: That's crazy. Yeah. Yeah.

We're like,

[00:25:22] Sam Rhee: where do you think, where do you go from here? I don't know. You're reaching capacity in the morning. I'll tell you that right now. What are

[00:25:27] David Syvertsen: you guys going to do? I know that this, our lease is up in two years, and we don't want to leave here. We we've said that to each other. We said, that's the landlords, but you also need to keep in mind that, at some point we might need more space.

Is there a cap we've talked about this? Is there a cap to how many members you can have. And then does that fulfill all of our financial needs, wants desires, goals, all that. Yeah. Chris, what do you think?

[00:25:49] Chris Tafaro: That's, I mean, that's, I mean, that, that type of what, what are our options? I think that we both have, I think that we both finance, like financially, I think that we can live in this space for, for, for the long haul.

We're we're not, we're not fancy people. It's not, we don't. And I, I th I think it's a, it'll be a very good living for sure. For two, for two families, the hard part is opening. You can't open another gym, right? You can make this bigger, better. You could, there could be things we can do.

We can maybe take out some of these walls. There's a chance that the people that work for Zuma are not going to be here. We'll have a little more space, right? You know that we can't open a new place because we have to, then we have to find that whole staffing in. It doesn't work. Like I'm not gonna be able to be there.

And here Dave is not gonna be able to be at both places at once. You have to kind of ride with this. And I think that we know what, like the upside is of, of this, of this space. And I think that we're cool with it. And if you have. At some point in the future, like if, if you have to get another, I don't know, get another job or.

Make, make this like a secondary income and do something like that. That's an option. I still don't think so. Like I had, but you know, I budgeted everything from day one for the first five years. And I really do think that there is enough that we can have enough people in here to make this just always be the way it is.

Yeah.

[00:27:12] David Syvertsen: And that's one of the biggest responsibilities that we feel now. And it's a privilege as much as its responsibility is like, the business is supplying for other people too. Like we have two full-time coaches and Liz and Mike. Yeah, no, like Mike's got two kids and Liz has a mortgage to pay. Like we want to continue to build them up.

This isn't just about oh man, I hope I make more money. Like it's never, oh, no.

[00:27:34] Chris Tafaro: We're responsible for a lot of, a lot of families now, too.

[00:27:37] David Syvertsen: And so you have to think about that before you start making this master plan to go move down the street again, to find a 15,000 square foot space.

I think the question is where do we see ourselves in 10 to 15 years or five, maybe five to 10 bison wise. I think that always comes first because that is, that's the foundation of, of where I am like in my career. And Chris you need to. How does bison have the ability to get better potential to get bigger?

It does it because I I'm walking around this area. There's so many people that still don't know about us. They just don't. And there's some people that know about us, but don't know about us. I just had two people go through beginners and I had a third one come in to see the gym Friday night. And my selling point is no longer.

Th the workout program. It's the people like I pointed out to that there's a woman that is very insecure about coming in. She wants to give it a shot, but she's worried that she's going to be judged. And I cut her off on us. Like you're never going to find a better group of people to work out with.

I promise, like I looked at her straight in the eye and said, you'll never find it. And I was like, you'll get more support here than you've ever gotten ever in a workout place. And she, like now she's coming Wednesday night, seven 15, and like these little things, like that's what people want.

So yes, there's these hardcore workout, people that want to try cross it, but there's also people that want human connection. And I feel like we haven't touched in on that, that often that hard. So yeah, there's, there's a huge market for growth, but then you have to ask yourself just like we did at the old school.

Let's make sure the quality of the product is still high, so we can't like I could probably get 40 people in the class next week. Go send some like free class, like free week, come in and try the gym for free. While all of my members are paying full freight. You can come in for free, like F that, if you want to come in, you try the gym out.

That's awesome. But I don't want 40 people in these classes because it's going to lessen the quality. So it's like what we've always done. Try to make the quality of the product better. And some of it is programming based. Some of it is the equipment that we have, or don't have some of it is how we lay out our gym.

Like we could fit more people in the gym, but you have to be careful with not co not necessarily COVID, but just safety equipment, logistics, coach qualitive, coach, you coach big class in the morning, Sam. It's not

[00:29:47] Chris Tafaro: easy there. Some Hoboken gyms that have half the spaces us and they, they have the same cap.

Yeah. We

[00:29:54] David Syvertsen: could pack them in. Yeah. But we don't, but we don't want to we want to do this thing responsibly. And I think that's where we're always going to trend towards. Yes, we have a lot of I feel we have influx of, people in their twenties and young thirties that are joining the gym now that maybe that's, that's the next group of people that come in, what we hate to see though.

It's tough as a tough pill to swallow. Is, there, there is some turnover with people that have been here for a long time, for a variety of reasons. Like I do, I truly miss some of the people that we had five, six years ago. And some of it's, kid based logistic base injury based just got burnt out.

Don't like it anymore, to be honest with you and that's fine. And it's tough to not have that same people, but it's our job to kind of keep the culture going, keep the ship going. And if you're in your end, if you're out, you're out, I think, I think.

[00:30:38] Sam Rhee: Really defined by sin compared to some of the other places in the things that I've heard, especially on other podcasts are one.

You truly believe in.

[00:30:48] David Syvertsen: The

[00:30:48] Sam Rhee: pro the programming fits everyone. So I remember a while ago you guys were kicking around, do we do specialized classes? Do we do a boot camp for people who just want cardio good point? And I see a lot of CrossFit places who offer a burn and move class or this class or that class, and I remember telling you at the time, if you truly believe in that product, then do it.

If you don't believe in it, don't do it. I have always stuck to what you truly believe in. If you truly believe CrossFit is for everyone that you can use it and get better at it, then why do you need a, bootcamp, class? Why do you need this?

[00:31:22] David Syvertsen: And I remember you saying that really influenced me a lot.

I remember Deb, you said the same exact thing. We were like, I think she overheard Chris and I talking about a bootcamp. Yeah. And oh, maybe we'll try to 8 45 and we'll move the nine 30 to 9 45. And Deb's you guys are across the gym. Yeah. That's all she said.

[00:31:39] Chris Tafaro: That is our bread and butter.

It's from CrossFit memberships, CrossFit classes. And and no, Me and Dave saw like in crossword Hoboken, when we first started, it was the Y the workout of the day. And everybody did the workout of the day, like the, the, the advanced people, the new people. And that was what we loved about it.

We would see these like beasts in there. And we wanted. You want to get good. Then when there's like specialty classes starting, like everyone that was kind of like on the better side or the good people, they would go in the back room and they would do their own workouts. And then the workouts, the workout of the day was like all new newer people.

They didn't get the same experience that we did because we were working out with the coaches and the owners and all the other, like competitive. We, there was a couple of people who went to the regionals there. We were working out in classes with them. We wanted bison to be like that we didn't, we don't want, we didn't want to have open gym every day where it's like someone could decide to do open gym instead of.

We want them to do the workouts and, and, we program hard enough for advanced athletes and you can scale it, good enough for, for newer people. That's a great point. Yeah. So everybody's doing that same workout and we, we keep that old school whiteboard. Cause if you do beyond the whiteboard or anything, where you enter your scores, only the people who think they do good, that they are going to put their score.

I hate that you're getting out of five people a day, putting stuff in and we like that. We have it on this employer. Now, nobody even uses it. The whiteboard. You can't hide from that as much as that can be detrimental also. It's very, very. It, it it's raw. It's raw. And it's just this is, this is my bed.

This is what you did. It was real like, this is what I did and yeah, I wish it was better, but like everyone can see it. I worked better atmosphere. I

[00:33:14] Sam Rhee: agree with you a thousand percent, Dave, you've always said, we've talked about competitors classes or a separate class, and you guys have made it very good egalitarian for everyone.

Yep. That also makes it hard when you also talk about why some people haven't come back. And that's always fascinated me because I always wondered why do some people stay with it for eight, nine years? Why do some people leave after a while? Even though they're perfectly fine people.

Yeah. And, and I really believe after sort of talking to people and thinking about it is that. CrossFit isn't for everybody. I mean, everyone should try it, like you said, but it is not necessarily for everyone. And if you had a level of performance that you felt like you achieved before. At bison or somewhere else.

And then you come here and you're like, oh, but I'm now not going to be that good person or you're like Chris everyone's scores on the whiteboard and maybe you used to be hanging with some of the better athletes here at bison. And now you're going to come back and you're going to put up these awful scores.

And who knows, if you're going to get back to where you thought you should be, it's an ego thing and it's a self-esteem thing. And the problem is, is that for all that. We have to get past that. If you really believe this is about your fitness and this is about how formats and yeah. Screw your ego.

This is going to make you better. Maybe you can't do everything. Maybe you can perform the way you did, but you still know that you have to show up and do something. And if you want to go to a Globo gym and do that, that's, that's fine. I don't have a problem with that. And we just know, we, we just saw someone on Instagram who couldn't hack it here.

Honestly. I believe it. He couldn't. Because of his ego because of what he thought he was, what he could do. And he felt better for himself for going to a global gym. And God bless, listen, at least he's working out and doing something, but if you really want to. Be better in the long term. You're not going to be able to sustain that forever.

I, I don't believe, I think you're going to need a community. You're going to need people who are like-minded, you're going to need challenges. You can't think of stuff you can't do that by yourself. You're going to, you're going to need the only way you're going to be. Fitnessing. Well, unless you are.

An amazing person for 20 years, right? It's a situation

[00:35:30] David Syvertsen: like this. I agree. I agree. Completely. So let, let's cap this off with, let's all give an answer on this. What can a gym or a future gym owner learned from bison failure or success, but just try to give me one thought there's probably 10 you can give.

And so what, what can someone learn from whether it's success, failure, whatever experience. And then what are you most proud of? I'll go. Cause I'm not even a part of the, you are, but I will say this. And what are you most

[00:35:57] Sam Rhee: proud of watching you too? Over the past? What is it? Eight, eight years now.

[00:36:01] David Syvertsen: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:36:03] Sam Rhee: Is one. Complimentary people can be super successful. You guys are not the same people. You're very different people. And you made it work. It doesn't have to be pretty. It doesn't have to be a storybook.

[00:36:16] David Syvertsen: It's like a marriage,

my marriage apart. What are you talking about?

[00:36:23] Sam Rhee: And the other thing is, is that you, the second thing is you, you guys truly care about people and if you care about people, it good things happen. And three, neither of you guys have egos where you guys had to be the biggest dog in the room or the most successful person in the room.

I've seen both of you guys work in the S in the service of others, and I've seen other CrossFit, gym owners and other places and other businesses where they had to be the person. And I've never ever seen that with you too. And I think I attribute a lot of your success

[00:36:59] David Syvertsen: for that. Cool. Thanks Sam, Chris, where he got.

[00:37:03] Chris Tafaro: I think like w whether you're going to open a gym or whatever, whatever you are going to do, especially if it's like a second career or whatever, you have to make sure you're in it for the right reason. For me, the right reason was I want to help people, and I also really trust the product and I love it.

I love it. All right. I don't wear CrossFit shirts around that. I don't follow. I don't you CrossFit. I truly love CrossFit. You may not know that though. I have some other interests too, but I really believe in that product and I really want to help others. And that's what about if your goal is just making money, then do something else, do something less personal, right?

This is personal, right? You are a lot of roles here. If you don't like people, this is not for you. You are going to be a shrink. You're going to be a leader, a follower, every, every single thing you can think of a business owner, finances, like all kinds of stuff, it's a whole mix of everything.

So be prepared for that. That, that is my best advice for you. And if you can find a partner. I it, that that works great. I remember my first day of business school, the teacher said, partnerships do not work. Yeah. I told you that said let's not be one of those

[00:38:13] David Syvertsen: systems. The statistics. Yeah. I did a research on that last year for a speaking thing I did with George's company and I was blown away by the numbers that I think it was 80% of small businesses.

Don't make it five years and 50% don't make it. So it's pretty cool partnership partnerships. Yeah. And what are you most proud of? Don't be humble. Don't be humble. Just say it.

[00:38:36] Chris Tafaro: Well, if you're working careers 40 years, maybe, you work from your 25 to 60 to 65, right? 10 years. I've been we've, I've been my own boss for 10, for a quarter of my working life.

A lot of people want to do that. They just don't know how to get there. You got to kind of take a leap, but I'm pretty proud of that. And the way it looking it, that might be 50%, soon. So, I think I'm proud of that, cool.

[00:39:04] David Syvertsen: I like that. That's cool. Yeah. My, my advice for an owner would just be to understand like the spectrum of the, the positive and negatives that occur from a gym that exists for a year as opposed to eight.

Like I always kind of reminded myself that you do want your gym to grow. Like we needed it to, we wouldn't not have existed if we didn't grow from 30 members. But when you have 30 members and 10% of the. Cause stress for you. That's only three people. All right. If you get up to 300 members, 10% is now 30 people that cause you stress.

And if you're not careful, if you're not like in tune with that, it can really send you down a dark alley. And it's hard to get out of that. I'm on the positive side. If you have three members in your gym or three people in the gym that are great influences, they help build your brand. They help build the brand.

I shouldn't say not your brand. That's three people, but if it's, a gym, this big or 300 people, like that's 30 people right there that are in your corner that are really fighting for the brand of the business. I think your job on that is to stay the. On all situations, whether it's big or small.

And I think that's one thing that we've done pretty well. There's not much that has changed about us every now and then I got a comment that I've changed a little bit, but I think that's just like my coaching style has changed or, but are things that logistically have to change. But I think your job as someone that is in charge of the gym, In charge of his staff.

Is that just be as straight as possible? If there's one thing I ever want to hear anyone ever say about me is that just, you're just reliable that you're just always there, whether you're in a good place or a bad place, because I've been a good places and bad places. So you guys have too. And I think that's like the one thing that's really hard to do, but that would be my biggest advice is to always put, focus on that.

And the one thing I'm proud of the most is the amount of people that have been helped, not just from. Like the fitness side of it, but the amount of businesses in this gym that have been helped by bison, right? We have a lot of business owners that come to our gym that now have business from this place.

We have a lot of people that have friends from this place. We had know people that met each other here that are in each other's weddings. And that's what I'm most proud of is that bison has created a huge part of, of, of so many different people's lives that have impacted an impact to me. The direct person that you're trying to help its impact as you help someone.

And then they go help others. And I think, our staff we've done that. We've helped that person on the staff, become more confident and a better coach. And all the sudden now they're taking off, right? Like they don't even need us for anything anymore. And that's what I'm most proud of that the amount of change that this has occurred in people's lives, their businesses, in that case, their income, but also just like their overall self-worth, that's what almost.

Yeah.

[00:41:33] Chris Tafaro: That's that's a good point. Cool. Yeah.

[00:41:36] David Syvertsen: All right. So I think that'll wrap it up guys. Thank you. And hopefully you guys have a stronger understanding of where Bisons come from, where we're headed, why we do what we do, and we'll see you soon.