S05E170 Embrace the Challenge: Community & Mentorship - CrossFit Affiliate Summit Northeast 2024

What if stepping out of your comfort zone could revolutionize the way you run your gym? Join us as we unpack our experience at the CrossFit Northeast Affiliate Summit, where we discovered the power of collaboration and community within the CrossFit world. Embracing the spirit of shared learning, we explore the ripple effect such events can have on enhancing gym operations, member retention, and the overall CrossFit experience.

The weekend kicked off with an invigorating workout alongside CrossFit's top leaders, including CEO Don Faul and VP of Global Affiliates Jay DeCoons. Their participation not only showcased authentic leadership but also reinforced the vital role of community in CrossFit. We recount the memorable Friday night workout led by Denise Thomas, which broke the ice and built camaraderie among attendees. These shared moments highlighted the importance of engagement and the sense of belonging that underpins the CrossFit ethos.

Our reflections go beyond just workouts, delving into the profound impact of mentorship and coaching. We share personal stories, like Denise Thomas's journey influenced by inspirational mentors, emphasizing how encouragement and authenticity can lead to lasting change. By fostering open communication and sharing knowledge with fellow affiliate owners, we advocate for a stronger, more united CrossFit community. This episode is a call to action for gym owners to prioritize growth, strategic decisions, and genuine care to maximize gym value and impact, ultimately enriching the lives of athletes and owners alike.

@crossfitbison @crossfittraining @crossfit @crossfitgames #crossfit #sports #exercise #health #movement #crossfitcoach #agoq #clean #fitness #ItAllStartsHere #CrossFitOpen #CrossFit #CrossFitCommunity @CrossFitAffiliates #supportyourlocalbox #crossfitaffiliate #personalizedfitness

S05E170 Embrace the Challenge: Community & Mentorship - CrossFit Affiliate Summit Northeast 2024

TRANSCRIPT

Speaker Names

David SyvertsenHost

00:05

Hey everybody, Welcome to the Herd Fit Podcast with Dr Sam Rhee and myself, Coach David Syvertson. This podcast is aimed at helping anyone and everyone looking to enhance their healthy lifestyle through fitness, nutrition and, most importantly, mindset. All right, welcome back to the Herd Fit Podcast. I am Coach David Syverson. I'm here with my co-host, Dr and Coach Sam Marie, and today's episode we are going to review the CrossFit Northeast Affiliate Summit that went down a few weeks ago, Sam myself and Adam Hawkinson.

00:37

We sat through the seminar on a Saturday, which went from about 8 am to approximately 5 pm, if I remember correctly. It was a long day of sitting and listening and trying to think and reflect, and we want to reflect on what it was like, maybe review it pros and cons, good and bad but also maybe open the door to a lot of affiliate owners that have maybe never been to one of these before and encourage them to at some point point. You need to get to this because you know we've kind of beat to our own drum over the past 10 to 11 years uh, good and bad ways and we have not always really seeked a lot of help or advice. We always listen when it's there, but this is something that we have never done before. We've never taken an entire weekend, and, other than our CrossFit certifications and a few classes that I've taken over the years, we've never really gone to something where it's like, all right, hey, let's have a rah-rah moment with a bunch of affiliate owners and compare ideas and listen and learn and try to kind of map out some help for the next five to 10 years. So I kind of want to give some guidance on why I think this is important for all affiliate owners to do at some point.

01:47

Is it an every year thing? I don't know. Maybe we'll get that answer during this episode, but I do think at some point you need to get to one of these. I think there's a lot of value in that. Sam, we're a few weeks into this and after the summit, we're about half a year into being co-owners of Bison Almost not quite. We're about a half a year into to being co-owners of bison almost not quite. Where did you see the value in this before we kind of break this down?

Sam RheeCo-host

02:11

section by section. I think you're right. Crossfit, for the first big part of their existence, never really wanted, or their goal wasn't, to bring us all together to do these things. It was more more like fly, be free, do your own thing, grow whatever way you want. There wasn't a whole lot of direction, and I think this is a reflection of the new direction of CrossFit HQ in terms of what their goals are and how they want to help affiliates.

02:38

As a minority owner of a gym, and having now attended the first one, I thought you know, in summary, there was a lot of value to it. It's one of those things where, if you've been an affiliate owner for a long time, I could see you saying wait, we're doing just fine. We figured out how to do this over the past 10 years. Why do I want someone to tell me what I already know? Or you might be a little afraid and say I don't really want to be forced to change things. I think what I do works, so why would I want to listen to somebody? And if they make sense, I don't want to hear that yeah, right, absolutely, I just like doing what I do. But I would say, even if you feel reluctant. There is value, I think, for anyone who is an affiliate owner to attend anyone who's an affiliate owner to attend.

David SyvertsenHost

03:23

Here's an example that I'm going to tie to athletes, because a lot of you guys that listen to this don't own an affiliate, have no desire to own an affiliate or even coach at one. You just want to do CrossFit. I'm going to relate this to the CrossFitter and this is something that I've been wanting to do for a few years. At some point I promise I'm going to do this and it's going to be kind of like a weekend. You want to call it a seminar or maybe an all day thing on a Saturday here at Bison, once the schedule frees up a little bit. Which we're working on is open the door to really teach, kind of like your own. I don't want to call it a level one. It's not a level one or any sort of competition to that, but really we have a lot of people here at Bison that want to learn more about gymnastics, lifting, mixed modal conditioning, endurance, nutrition, lifestyle habits, and you can only teach so much at the whiteboard. Not everyone listens to a podcast and we're kind of like all over the place with what topics we want to talk about. I want to dedicate an entire weekend to having people register for something here at Bison and we'll find a kind of catchy name and give description of what we're going to do over the weekend, but really teach them more about CrossFit so they can get more out of themselves from a CrossFit lifestyle perspective Working out lifestyle, everything that goes into it. If we did that here at Bison, you would have some people in that same camp Like, hey, dave, I've been doing this eight years, like I know enough, and I kind of don't want to hear what you have to say about how, what I can do or what I should do to get more out of this. And I want you to put yourself in that perspective of that's where a lot of affiliate owners are, that we've been doing this a long time. I generally don't need a lot of guidance from above and for the first five to six years I never even got an email from CrossFit about anything other than you owe us money this year. Why, all of a sudden, do I think you're going to? Why should I believe in you that you're going to make an actual, tangible difference for me?

05:16

Because CrossFit brings us up during the seminar, leaving your family on a Saturday from seven to five to do more CrossFit stuff. It's a little challenging, like I had a little bit of a guilty feeling there, like leaving Brock, like where are you going? Why are you not here? You're always here on Saturdays, that kind of thing, and they bring that up and that's a sacrifice that a lot of people have to make in any job. You know there's give and take there. But if you're a CrossFit athlete out there and someone gave you an opportunity to come really learn more about the whole operation and what we can do to help you out at an even deeper level, would you come A and B? Would you come in with an open mind, sam? Did you go to that with a truly open mind about what we can get better and what we can get from CrossFit to make bison better?

Sam RheeCo-host

05:59

Yes, and I came from a perspective not just as an owner or someone who has a stake in an affiliate, but as someone as an athlete, and when I heard these people talk about what other affiliates are doing, I was like that's what I think this podcast has value. If you're not an owner and you're just an athlete and you hear what we might talk about in this podcast, you might be like, yeah, why isn't our affiliate doing these things? Because that's what I thought I said for a lot of the things. I said maybe we won't do all of these things, but we should at least explore doing some of these things because I think there's a lot of value for athletes.

David SyvertsenHost

06:32

Yeah, that was my goal going in is what can we do new at CrossFit Bison both now and in the future, and what can we fix that we currently do at Bison from a very macro perspective, not just the business side, but the athlete experience side, and that's been. We did a podcast, we did a coaches meeting on this years ago I think that was pre-COVID, if I remember correctly on how to make someone's experience here day-to-day better, and you can find little subtle hints and advice about that. Can find little subtle hints and advice about that. But you could also find out a lot of stuff that other gyms do on the back end to make the operation cleaner, smoother and more profitable at the end of the day, because at the end of the day, it is a business and and mouths do need to be fed. We do need to make money. We need to make more money uh, not to get rich, but we need to supply more, more money for other things, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right, you need to go in with these things with an open mind.

07:26

So I want to kind of start off with how our weekend started off. We were very fortunate to have CEO Don Fall and Jada Koons, who is the director of Global Affiliates, something like that President of Global Affiliates. He's basically in charge of the affiliates worldwide and these guys came and worked out with us on a 7 am. I got to coach the class. The class was full, with a couple of people on the wait list, and we had a really fun workout today. How important to you, sam, and how cool is it you were in that class as well to have them here with us throwing down like the rest of our members no-transcript.

Sam RheeCo-host

08:30

They do everything that they can, and I mean even Jada Kuhn. He has a pretty bad slap tear in his shoulder, yep, and he was still scaling. He did what he could. He chased intensity, yep, and I think that that's important to see.

David SyvertsenHost

08:45

Yeah, I don't think it's a prerequisite. We've talked about this before with coaches. Like you don't need to be a certain caliber athlete, but I will. You need to look like your workout right. Like you need to again eat the. You need to eat what you cook. You need to go out there and we don't care about rx. I think, um, yeah, jay scaled the workout, don't care.

09:02

Um, we had a lot of athletes in our gym beat them in the workout, don't care, you know that they pursued intensity, they were with the group, they gave a bunch of high fives and what I really respected about both of them after is they hung out for a while and talked to a lot of our members and it wasn't like the best athletes in the best athletes in the room. It wasn't the people that have been crossfitting the longest. Some of of these guys, like they don't really take in any CrossFit news. They don't even know who they are in some cases, like I have to introduce them, it's not like it's a celebrity walking in and they were just a very normal person to everyone else in the class and I really did appreciate the time that they took to have simple conversations with the everyday member, because I think that's really important and again been doing this a long time. I had never seen that before these guys came here and I think that's something that leadership and CrossFit should always pay attention to is that you get out there as much as you can and drop into the affiliates and just meet and talk with people. So we got to hang out with them for a little bit.

09:57

We saw them again at the summit, but the Friday night, sam, you didn't get to go. You had a work situation come up, yeah, and this was a really cool kind of like icebreaker. Didn't feel like it was mandatory, but Adam and I we went to the Friday night workout and it was literally show up at Waldwick, hang out for a half hour, say some highs, catch up with a few people that I've seen over the years. And then we all gathered up at the whiteboard and I got gotta say there were probably 60 people, 50 to 60 people there and we did a team of four or team of five workout and this is actually this is going to air tomorrow. So this is actually this Friday's workout, that Bison's doing the fight gone bad style workout, and that was the workout that we did and I'm going to give a couple feedback on it, but Denise Thomas, who's one of the best CrossFit coaches in the world she led the whole clash. The whole operation did a really great job.

10:49

But that was fun because we knew the next day we're going to be sitting on a chair and listening to people talk for hours and we're people that need to be active, and I think it was a really cool way to break the ice, go out there and work out. And I just want to give a little bit of kind of feedback on what that night was like and why I think it's important that if you do ever attend one of these, you're going to have the option to go Friday and Saturday or just Saturday. I would do what you can to get there Friday, just because it makes you feel a little bit more comfortable and it kind of wakes up. It kind of like gets the cross at rah-rah going, which is really important when you go to these things.

Sam RheeCo-host

11:24

Yeah, I wish I could have attended Denise Thomas. She actually did a mini thing also Saturday demoed the overhead squat. The video is online. She has this. Not only is she so energetic, but she also has that great British accent. I know that adds to it.

David SyvertsenHost

11:37

You could listen to her all day. Yeah, she's almost perfect, but she's an Eagles fan so that kind of took a little bit of a bite out of the apple. But other than that she was awesome. And that was the day before the Eagles showed up to MetLife Stadium and beat the Giants behind the Saquon Barkley the former Giant which kind of stung a little bit and I know she was probably in the stands cheering that on. But here's the thing you had 60 people and they have all these boxes and med balls out. They did a great job explaining the scaling options.

12:06

I had a little bit of PTSD from my early days at CrossFit where they said, all right, guys find five people in the room to team up with, and that stuff it always, it always it doesn't. I want to say irk me because it's not that serious, but it always like, oh my gosh, someone's going to be left out. And like Hawk and I stayed together. We just grabbed the three people that year. So I'm like, hey, you guys want to team up and I think one of them was a husband wife and one of them was another guy from South Brooklyn awesome guy. You know we had fun on the workout. We worked well together.

12:32

But those are the kind of situations where it's like, like you know, and it took an extra five, ten minutes, like I think it could have been a cool thing to do, to kind of because you didn't have you need to have RX and Scaled on the same team, it didn't matter, because every station had its own options that it would be fun to kind of like maybe separate people by what state they live in or you know what months of the year they're born, and say all the Decembers over there. Because I do always feel uncomfortable, like if we ever did a partner workout here at Bison. I can't bring myself to do it, to say, hey, guys, go find your own partner, because I hate that feeling of someone's going to be left out at some point.

Sam RheeCo-host

13:06

They do that every meeting, like the CrossFit Health Summit. They just said go find your own partner. And for someone like me who has a lot of social anxiety and you always worry about someone being left out or not knowing Like you're right. But you know that's CrossFit. Yeah, they're uncompromising.

David SyvertsenHost

13:22

Well, that's the word I always felt that that word always comes into my mind when I hear about Denise Thomas or Boz Talk or Awesome Alio. They are like, hey, this is what we do, we do not waver, and we're going to kind of bring that up later in the episode. So that was a fun way to kind of break the ice. I think there was a little happy hour before and after. We were not able to attend those. We go home, do our thing, come back in the morning. And really it started off with opening remarks from danielle williams, who's the northeast affiliate rep. She did a great job planning the event overall and just kind of make that. There's a lot of logistics and that things that need to go right for that to go well and it was the smoothest butter the whole weekend. So she she knocked it out of the park there.

14:04

But Jada Coons and Don Fall, they were up there. They were talking for a while I would say close to an hour between the two of them. Did you have any? Do you have anything? Here we go three, four weeks ago. Do you have any like standout remarks that either one of them talked about in regards to, because they even let us ask some questions as well, so that's included in this question. Was there anything that you really came to mind about, like, okay, crossfit, this is where we stand right now leadership, where we're headed, what they're working on, what their mind is on Because we got to talk to him separately as well Is there anything that really stood out in your mind that's like okay, this is the direction we're heading in? Stood out in your mind that's like okay, this is the direction we're heading in?

Sam RheeCo-host

14:52

I was surprised how much they felt oriented towards affiliate success. So if you just look at YouTube or social media or what people are saying out there, you would think that CrossFit was foundering. It was going down a deep dark hole. That Private equity, yeah, and the games and all of the the tragedy surrounding that would have just brought CrossFit to its knees. None of that is in concert with what I saw, which was their attitude was let's make sure our affiliates are doing well, and that's where everything that they talked about, everything that their attitude to me was, was how are we helping our affiliates? And I thought that that was a very healthy, appropriate attitude. I never thought anything about how are they making money, what their finances are, what their. They were very honest about a lot of stuff, but they weren't sitting there to me and maybe I just couldn't see it thinking about what their ROI is or how their exit strategy is going to be or what their PE overlords were going to do. I didn't get a sense of that.

David SyvertsenHost

15:59

Yeah, and I think the sense I did get is that they have a pretty strong pulse on what affiliates are stressed out about. I do think they do a good job of listening to affiliates and taking that information and kind of putting it into their own algorithm of like all right, how, what needs to be done. They do take in a lot and one competitor to CrossFit that is just getting off the ground now is now that Greg Glassman's non-compete up is up. Is MedFix right? And they did not bring it up. I don't think anyone even asked. I was actually surprised no one asked about it.

16:39

But the one thing I liked about Don Fall is it circles back to CrossFit really can be a catalyst for helping morph the future of our health, of our country, of our kids, in the right direction.

16:54

Because he went over, he spit out a lot of statistics about obesity rates and heart disease and where our health as a country is rapidly heading right now and where our health as a country is rapidly heading right now and whenever I hear stuff like that, it does kind of like humble me to the point where it is a little less about thrusters and pull-ups and a little bit more about getting people moving and exercising and even the mental health component of connecting people in human relationships, and I like how they have the pulse on that and one of the things that we talk about all the time is that it's an aging demographic CrossFitters.

17:28

They don't get a lot of young people getting into it and they're trying to find ways to communicate, share, find out what makes a 20 to 25 year old tick, because a lot of us that started at that age group were no longer that age and they were not being necessarily replaced or added onto with that age group, generally speaking, as much as we were. And I liked the fact that the entire time I was kind of nodding my head that he was talking about things that we've talked about as affiliate owners and that means a lot to us. That and they're people that have a true pulse on the affiliates and they really want. They know that the affiliates need to be successful for them to, even if they are profit-driven. If the affiliates start to flounder or they start disappearing to Metfix or something like that, they're in big trouble.

Sam RheeCo-host

18:13

Yeah, I agree, and I was really interested to hear that they are trying to unlock that younger demographic. Try to understand them better. That's a concern that we have talked about and I think you're right. They are truly interested in trying to figure out how to make affiliates healthier in terms of overall growth.

David SyvertsenHost

18:34

Yeah, Now let's spend a little bit more time talking about Denise Thomas, who shared a really funny story about coach Ramston who, as she, started talking about this thing and we're like, oh my gosh, because Ramston loves her, we have, we have a coach's last name is Ramston here and he loves Denise Thomas, um, just as a coach. Again, I think it's the accent, the unwavering personality, how well spoken she is, she's definitely smart, she's an athlete, um, and she starts telling the story. I don't want to spoil it because you know she'll probably use that story again, but the character's name was ramsden and after I got over the fact that it wasn't coach adam that he was talking, that she was talking about, I really was into this story because I believe in its purpose so much, and I think crossfit coaches need to kind of keep a better track of this, both here at Bison but out there in the wilderness. Right, the little things that you say and do and the little things that you don't say and don't do will undoubtedly carry on with people for the rest of their lives. Now, that doesn't mean every little thing you do is going to have that kind of impact, but there's going to be things, moments, where what you say and how you act in certain moments, people will remember it forever and it can go positive and negative. In this situation it was a positive story that inspired this woman to a point where she's talking about it 30, 40 years later I don't know how she's, I'm going to guess about 30 years later and it really kind of put her onto this current career path that she's still on and she's a huge impact person. And this is what I always say about impact impact is not just changing someone, it's changing someone to the point where they go change others. So this random coach Ramsden from Europe his words to Denise Thomas 30 years ago is affecting lives all over the world right now because of this woman and what she's doing.

20:34

And I think every coach should always have that front and center. And that's a pressure point that I think some people simply cannot fathom or even handle. And sometimes that should determine point that I think some people simply cannot fathom or even handle. And sometimes that should determine whether or not you can coach. Because I always tell coaches it's like Don Mattingly telling Derek Jeter when he was a rookie back in 1995, he goes, act like every little kid on that field, is watching every single little thing you do. That's why you never walk from drill to drill, you always jog and the second you take your foot off the gas. Just assume everyone in the world's going to know. And that's a lot of pressure, but it's something that can lead to greatness. Did you get a similar vibe from that or did you take something different from it?

Sam RheeCo-host

21:13

Yeah, I feel like mentors are so impactful in terms of what they can do at a young age, at an age as an adult. My mentors and the people that impact me, both in big and little ways. I think about every single day. Everything I do, there's someone that probably affected me in some way about it. Like every movement I do, when I do certain movements at CrossFit, I think about the person who brought me through that movements at CrossFit. I think about the person who brought me through that and so, no matter what, there's always going to be people that we affect, hopefully in a positive way, and I think CrossFit is uniquely suited as coaches, as fellow athletes, where we're pursuing intensity, we're really trying to do our best. Those are really good situations in which you could make a huge difference in somebody's life.

David SyvertsenHost

22:06

Yeah, when you really do express and show that you believe in someone. I think the carryover to that goes a little bit deeper than maybe even you and I realize. But you have to be real about it. We just got done working with Julia and Kelly wait, no, julia and Kayla on working on the ring muscle-ups and they're close, they're going to get it soon. And I'm always like this with any sort of muscle-up, like high skill or the weight of a barbell that someone's trying to hit, I will be very honest and say like, hey, you're there physically, you just don't know how to do it yet. The skills aren't there. But if you're not there physically yet, if you can't do a strict pull-up yet, I'm not going to tell you hey, you can do it.

22:49

But I do think there's a value and a purpose behind the delivering of a message, like we have an athlete that wants to make the game someday All right, masters and Open Division, whatever Okay.

23:03

Okay, you don't have to lie to them and say, hey, you might do it this year, but you also want to be the person that says I believe in your purpose and the process and you are taking this on and someday you will get there and but if you go up to someone say, hey, it's too hard, now you got, you got to be a full-time athlete.

23:15

Now, like you're never going to get there, you're not fast enough, you're not strong enough, you're not big enough, you're not skilled enough, you're not big enough, you're not skilled enough, that's something not only could you kind of diminish their hope in themselves in CrossFit, but that will carry over into other areas of your life. But you have to find this line of not being unrealistic with them. I want to beat Jeff Adler next year. I will say that probably won't happen this year. But if you want me to help you and pursue that the Masters games are down the road We'll believe in the process. I believe in you taking on the process. I can't guarantee the result. I think that's something that a coach can really take on is like, hey, I believe in you, I'm going to show you how to get there, and that kind of thing can carry over to a lot of other areas of your life.

Sam RheeCo-host

24:01

If I said that to you, you should also refer me to a psych specialist, because clearly I am very delusional and I have other issues that you need to address.

David SyvertsenHost

24:09

Well, we've had it happen before, right, we've had someone not even do CrossFit before and say I want to win the CrossFit Games. I'm like in your head, you're like you don't even know what the games are. You don't understand it, but that's okay In some situations. It's not your job as a coach, as a parent, as a mentor, as a friend to tell someone you can't do that. It's too hard.

Sam RheeCo-host

24:32

Right yeah, just let reality smack them in the face first.

David SyvertsenHost

24:37

Honestly, that's part of what I like about CrossFit. We actually have an episode coming up next week about confidence and there is such a thing as overconfidence. Life will take care of that person. It's not always our job. I think the job of a coach, of a mentor, is to show like, hey, I believe in you taking on the process, and then eventually you will find out yourself that that process is a lot longer and harder than you thought. You'll make that decision of whether or not you want to pursue it. I don't believe it's that person's job to say, hey, you can't get there, it's too hard for you. Let that situation take care of itself.

25:10

Austin Maliello came up. Austin's been a games athlete. I remember when I started getting into the sport he was always a guy that I always looked up to because he was an elite-level coach and an elite-level athlete and I've always said I think you can do both. He owned multiple affiliates. I don't I actually think he still does own one, one nation. I think I'm not positive, Don't quote me on that, but the premise of his message was something that we've got.

25:35

We've dove into a little bit more over the recent few years than we did over the first five years and that's really conversing with other affiliate owners and really kind of getting a hold of each other and helping each other out and listening to each other. Daniel Williams touched on this as well. How much do you think affiliate owners should really kind of dive into each other's businesses, minds and emotions, even in some ways to build up their own business? Do you think that's something? If someone said they opened up an affiliate, how much should they converse with other affiliates, even local ones, competitors? How important is that and be real about that.

Sam RheeCo-host

26:19

It's more of a resource than you might expect.

26:21

I think some of the most impactful stuff that I've heard you talk about is when you sat on that call with a bunch of other affiliates, listened to what other affiliates had to say, listening to affiliates in this summit, you participated on one of the panels with other affiliate owners and I think that was particularly impactful and I saw other affiliate owners at this summit talking with each other.

26:49

It's not easy in most situations, but I think in certain situations like this or on a Zoom call or other ways, you can lower that bar of fear or competitiveness and actually find out that we have a lot of similar issues than like other affiliates, like how do we get to a hundred members? How do we get to 150? How do we get to 300? How do we get to 500? You know what happens with you know in this situation and there were so many different things just listening, and I think that Austin Maliolo has his pulse on getting affiliates to communicate with each other and I think that I was surprised, because you always think you're just a solo ship out there doing your own thing, that no, we're actually a fleet of ships that we don't even know are all sort of swimming in the same direction even know, are all sort of swimming in the same direction.

David SyvertsenHost

27:44

I will say this I have never, ever, talked to another affiliate and not gotten something out of it that would help Bison out. Ever and it's 11 years now, almost that every single conversation I have about the business, whether it's culture, whether it's bookkeeping, whether it's programming, I've always gotten something out of it that could help our gym out. That to me in and of itself is don't ever neglect a conversation with another affiliate owner unless you logistically cannot do it, schedule wise, like, if there's ever an opportunity to listen to someone, do it here's. Here's the where I come up with and I'm going to admit this that an internal struggle point, especially with a local affiliate, right, someone that's down the road, and I've never said no to anyone that's ever asked for help ever. But I will also say I don't always go out of my way to help, like I'm not thinking about the gym down the street to help them out, but if they ask we do it always because they help. I've gotten a lot of help.

28:39

Cost of Waldwick comes to mind. They helped us out huge during the announcement, like they came through. They were one of the MVPs of that weekend and they hosted this summit. Yeah, they hosted this summit, crossfit Waldwick, yep Now, and we have a great relationship with them and our relationship got better because of that situation. The open, like it just almost kind of opened the doors Like hey, stop being stubborn. But as a business owner, that is for profit, right, we're trying to make money, we're trying to enhance our product, we're trying to get our hands on people to work with them. Do you think it's immature to hold back on giving certain piece of advice to other gyms simply because they are a local competitor?

Sam RheeCo-host

29:23

you know it's funny. We talked to Tim and he when he first started he asked people about like other affiliates, about like what do you do with this, how'd you do this? And they were like dude, you got to figure it out. He, he had other affiliates do exactly the same thing where they negged him.

David SyvertsenHost

29:40

Yeah, and like you would hate to give an affiliate a great idea. They take it and run with it and then do a better job than you with that idea.

Sam RheeCo-host

29:47

That's right, and now they start getting into the business and I can't tell an affiliate owner. You know how to run their business with that. That's your choice. It's the person that you're interacting with. But I will say in most businesses that I mean well, I mean I'm in medicine, which is a little bit different, but I've never seen anyone sit there almost never, let me just phrase it where another person provider asked like how do you handle this situation? How do you handle this? Or they didn't actively withhold information about it, right, right.

David SyvertsenHost

30:24

I think that that's bad karma just in general, and I do think when your back is up against the wall, you usually resort to your own values and morals, and not all but most affiliate owners are there to help other people. At the end of the day, you almost can't even help yourself. Someone asks for help like you got to do it, you just like you feel that pull, and I've matured on this mindset over the years that you should be less worried about your personal numbers at your gym and more so like hey, as affiliate owners that are local to each other, we all do have a certain level of responsibility to enhance the CrossFit name. Whether it's your CrossFit affiliate or mine. We still are under the CrossFit umbrella and we need to make everyone better. So if you feel like you can help another affiliate with a simple concept, hey, we don't. We do partner workouts on Saturdays. You know like, all of a sudden, three other gyms do CrossFit partners on workouts on Saturdays. They stole our idea. Does it matter If it made their gym better and made the CrossFit experience better? That's part of the loyalty to CrossFit that you need to show. So that's where I kind of where my mindset has shifted towards. It's no longer about CrossFit Bison and CrossFit Waldwick, it's CrossFit that you're trying to help out and you know what. It's still kind of like the doggy dog. If someone likes that gym better because of the facilities, the coaching, the programming, then guess what? Make your product better. And if you can't, then you actually don't always deserve it. You don't deserve the members that you have. Necessarily, if you start doing a bad job or lessen your product, they are more than willing and more than able and they're allowed, justified in going to another gym.

32:00

We talked to another gym a couple of weeks ago and we just talked about how we write names on a whiteboard still, and I got a text from the coach a couple days ago. I said hey, rolled out the whiteboard, wrote down everyone's score, oh really. And it was like a big awesome kind of thing and it kind of lit a flame. And we're one of I still I don't you drop into gyms more than I do. I. We're one of I still I don't you drop into gyms more than I do. I almost never see scores on the whiteboard ever, true, and it's all like on a computer or lock yourself, that kind of stuff. Yep, and I explain to this gym why I think it's important the connection. You're telling people that I see you, I'm writing your name down. It's another touch point right, we're big on touch points Get to everyone at some point and it connects the coach and athlete.

32:44

That's something that if I was an immature gym owner, I would say I'm not gonna. I don't want their gym to be better because I I want us to be the only ones to do it. That's a that's a very selfish take that again that you can call it bad karma or you're just making crossfit lesser product than what it is true. All right, so that was a good talk from austin, a guy that I really look up to. Um, I don't want to spend too much time. Cassandra sorry, I forget her last name from CrossFit Legal. When that one started I was like all right, what's this going to be about? You know IP theft. I thought she had a really good presentation. A she was a great speaker and she was like fun. So I just thought like she took a somewhat boring product and made it fun. Your wife is a lawyer, so I feel like you are a little bit more well-versed with a lot of law stuff. I know you're not a lawyer, sam. I hate lawyers in general.

Sam RheeCo-host

33:27

but, okay, keep going. Not your wife. No, no, no, no as a profession.

David SyvertsenHost

33:32

Just like you speak the language more than a common person like myself, just because of life experience, how important is that part of that weekend the summit, the legal stuff of really knowing what is trademarked, what's not, what you should look for, what you can't do yourself. How important is that for people that are really trying to grow a professional business?

Sam RheeCo-host

33:54

It was important. There are two things that I took away from that. First of all, even CrossFit HQ's lawyer is like totally jacked as a CrossFit yeah, and her guns look better than my gun and I was like, if their lawyer looks like that, she clearly is doing a good job in general. And then the second thing was the message she basically had was, if you see anything that looks like they're stealing from CrossFit in any way, just let CrossFit HQ know. They got all these people handling that stuff. It was interesting to hear what was trademarked and what was not trademarked, and it sort of made sense Like Grace and Fran are not trademarked, right, but if you say CrossFit-like or anything similar to it and there's a lot of social media stuff out there now there's a lot of trademarks out there that you can find online.

David SyvertsenHost

34:41

I think it was like in the dozens and dozens. Oh my God, there's a lot of things that other gyms can't use, that you really can protect yourself if you want to spend some time there.

Sam RheeCo-host

34:48

Yes, and the thing is is I didn't realize hashtags like hashtag CrossFit can't use that if you're not a CrossFit affiliate, and so if you see someone out there that's using it like a personal trainer who's out there doing their own thing and they're hashtagging all this stuff, just send a quick note to CrossFit and they will handle it.

David SyvertsenHost

35:09

So you know how I'm on big like a reps per minute guy right In our workouts, like tomorrow's bison wad, the workout that well, even the one that you just did too, the Thursday's workout but tomorrow's workout is 12.3. It's AMRAP 18, 15 box jumps, 12 push press, nine toes to bar, and 12.3. It's am rap 18, 15 box jumps, 12 push press, nine toes to bar. And I'm gonna have some numbers on the whiteboard tomorrow. Hey, if you want to get this many rounds, how many reps you need to do. Basically another way to say like, hey, just pace this right. Like, don't do 38 reps in your first minute. You're never gonna hold on to that. She gave the number of I don't do you call them lawsuits or yeah that they they were a part of it was in the thousands and I was like holy cow, that's like four per day, like I'm like in my seat doing the math per day on how many things they're doing, they're busy, they're very busy and they will respond. One thing that makes me nervous about lawyers or CrossFit in general is like, hey, I'm going to send the email. No one's going to look at it.

35:59

Protect us, because, especially now, I think the biggest threat to current paying CrossFit affiliates are the people that dropped their affiliation in the past 12 months because it went up to $4,500 instead of $3,000, but they still want to run their gym as normal and they're going to continue to call it.

36:18

They might not call it CrossFit XYZ, but they'll hashtag CrossFit they'll. They're going to probably use some trademarks, whether they know it or not. Some of them won't even know I did not know hashtag CrossFit was allowed to be trademarked and it is. So that's something that you can do If you want to set yourself apart as a paying CrossFit affiliate and that is part of what you're paying for, by the way, so you're not tattletailing anyone. This is your brand that you need to protect. Like if I saw someone selling CrossFit bison streets down the street, like, yeah, you're going to get in trouble. Like, that's ours, we deserve a cut of that. So that's something that I think a lot of affiliates should kind of put a little bit more attention on to protect yourself and the other CrossFit affiliates around you that there are certain things that are trademarked that other gyms cannot use.

Sam RheeCo-host

37:03

One of the other things that they have talked about was how CrossFit HQ is working on search engine optimization. So it used to be when you typed in CrossFit in your area, the first bunch of listings were not even CrossFit gyms. There were other gyms that were like high intensity type gyms, bootcampy type gyms that were stealing CrossFit's search engine optimization to pull themselves up. And CrossFit has been working that. If you type in CrossFit and you are looking for a gym, crossfit gyms are the ones that come up first. So there's all sorts of crazy stuff that I didn't even realize until I attended how, behind the scene where affiliates get their leads, when people search for stuff, what comes up. Those are the kind of things that they are working on that we can't work on as affiliates. That's really expensive and hard stuff to work on that they're doing.

David SyvertsenHost

37:54

Yeah. So just to sum that up, you get a lot of affiliates saying what do we get out of paying all this money every single year? That in and of itself is enough to me. You have a legal team really going to bat for you and looking for ways to protect your brand. Best hour of the day Jay Fern Really good presenter. You can tell this guy does this for a living. Great podcast, by the way. For gym owners out there, best hour of their day.

38:20

Something just came up on my feed the other day. They were talking about the class experience and I was nodding my head to the. I don't agree with everything that they put out there, but they were talking recently about your business is good classes and that if the second you take your foot off that pedal, you are going to go backwards. And that's something that we're talking about right now and we're going to be talking about down the road for a long time is you have to make the classes as good as you can make them, and everything else is important, but that's the priority number A. Priority number one. He talked about increasing the value of a gym and gym owners. If you haven't been to these things or you don't really look at it from this lens. I relate to you, okay, because I'm just like hey, I love CrossFit, I want to make it as good as possible, change people's lives, blah, blah, blah.

39:04

He asked a question to start off his presentation. He goes how many of you are thinking about selling your gym? I'm like I didn't raise my hand. I have zero thought of selling my gym. He goes okay, what about in five, ten years? I'm like still didn't put my hand up. And he goes so all of you guys that are not putting your hand up, like, what's the end game here? Are you going to own this till the day you die? And even then, what happens after you die? And I was like good point, and you know you have a family at some point. You do Anytime you own a business.

39:36

And this is where there's a disconnect in my opinion tell me if I'm wrong between Hiller Savan and private equity owning the gym, between Hiller Savan and private equity owning the gym. They all look down on people that are trying to increase the value to make a profit off of. Yes, in normal private equity cases, people wanna buy a gym and then the five to 10 years they wanna sell it and make money. That's the only thing they care about. Okay, you can say that's wrong or right. Hey, they're not really trying. They're not true crosstruthers and they're not lifers. They're not here for the right reasons.

40:05

At the end of the day, at some point you are going to realize that you do have to make money off this and you are going to try to sell it. And every action you do in your gym needs to enhance the value of it so that, for one of the reasons being not all, you are going to sell this someday and you want that number to be as high as possible, point blank. I've always said, and took some pride in the fact, that I don't do this to make a lot of money, but I want to make more money, absolutely. Am I a bad person for that? If I want to sell my gym in 10, 15, 20 years, I want every penny I can get. I want every penny I can get.

40:44

So, gym owners, do you think about that? With every decision you make when it comes to the business, the lease you sign, the equipment you're buying, how much you're paying people a higher payroll can diminish the value of a business, but I want to pay people. These are things that, as Jay Fern's up there and going through all these different elements, it makes you get humbled right away and it makes you reflect like, am I doing this correctly and you're somewhat new to the game, but you're not new to the game of owning a business. Did that make you even think about your business, your plastic surgery practice, at all?

Sam RheeCo-host

41:24

Yeah, yes and no, because obviously I'm in a different, the product is different and how I approach the business is different. But I will say this if you're listening to the podcast and you're like, I'm an athlete, I don't care about my affiliate's value and I don't really think my affiliate owner caring about the increase of value in his gym or her gym helps me. Well, let's think about it this way. First of all, like you said, the number one message the entire summit was the best gyms have the best product, and that product are your classes, it's your coaching, it's what you're delivering to your athletes, and I think every athlete out there agrees. They go to their gym and the biggest thing to them is what experience they are having in terms of that product, their class, their coaching, what they're getting the best value.

42:28

Gyms are the ones that have the best product and are executing on that in the best way, in the biggest way, and so you want to be at a gym that has increased value. You want to be at a gym that is continuing to kill it on the revenue side, because that just means that whatever they're doing is good. You don't have a crap gym out there if you're not doing a good job, especially a CrossFit gym. We're not sitting there selling salty snacks and other crap. We're here to help people get fitter on every level, not just the workouts, but with every other aspect of their lives as well. And so for us, as an athlete, you should think, yes, it makes sense that an affiliate owner wants to increase their value.

43:08

And what Fern said in the best hour of their day and I also talked to him privately about a bunch of things because I was like what do we do about this, what do you think about this Made so much sense. You want your gym to be strong on every level. Yeah, to be strong on every level. Every aspect of their facilities, operation, how they execute in terms of what they do in the back office, in the front office, how they spend their money, what their finances are, all of those things need to be done well, then you get the best product you can.

David SyvertsenHost

43:38

Yeah, and again I thank you for bringing up the athlete side of it, because I know most of our listeners are not on the ownership side.

43:45

But I do want to turn it on them a little bit and say, as an athlete, you are a customer and you do have a right to voice your opinion on anything. I want to hear people's opinions good, bad, ugly, everything. I want to hear it all all the time and that there is sometimes a question or a disconnect. I actually have a meeting with one of the people that we met about what are you charging? What are your rates? What should they be? Do you have an equation that actually comes up with a number, or are you just picking something out of thin air, which essentially is kind of what we've done over the years? This year we got a little bit more scientific about it when we raised rates in January and I think if you're an athlete or a customer or a member at a gym whatever you want to call yourself and you see things start to inch up money-wise, you might initially view it as taking more of my money. I don't know if I could afford this. I don't know if I want to pay this right. You have every right to say that, but you also have to look at it from the lens just like owners need to look at it from the lens of the athlete member the member needs to look at it from the lens of the business owner slash person that is trying to increase value in the gym. So example let's say your gym raises rates in January by 20 bucks a month. Is there increased value from that, right? Or is there a reason behind it? Because, at the end of the day, it is a business. Just like a lot of you guys that have your own jobs, you have to find a way to create more revenue at some point. If your costs are going up, right? That's something that a member always needs to have a perspective on in relation to the value of a gym Is am I really getting more out of this or am I understanding the actual rate of what I pay per month? Owners, are you actually looking at this from? Hey, I'm trying to put more money in my pocket only, or I'm trying to cover my own increasing expenses. I'm trying to hire another full-time coach. I'm trying to put more money in my staff's pocket. Those are all things that you have to look at it from the lens. It's not just can I pay my rent this month and get some new equipment. It's about increasing the long-term value of that business and how healthy your books are when you do try to sell that product. So that was a really good presentation.

46:01

The last two one of them, zach Forrest from PushPress and Nicola Coyne from HSN Nutrition, healthy Steps Nutrition Practices Basically they help gyms kind of come up with their own nutrition programs. I'm working with Kayla to maybe look into this kind of stuff. Zach Forrest from PushPress we are considering changing our back end to away from what we currently use to push press. We still have to meet with them. Those were a little bit more.

46:30

It might have been because it was the end of the day and we're all kind of tired and getting heavy-eyed at this point. But where did you see value in those guys going up? Because they obviously have a relationship with CrossFit and they got to present their platform and they did a great job and their platforms are outstanding. They're not just friends with these people and they got to kind of put their stuff out there. They have real numbers behind them that say, wow, we're really a beneficial product to the CrossFit community. When those guys came up towards the end, where did your mind start to shift in terms of right? How does Bison relate to PushPress and potentially, hsn start to shift in terms of right? How does Bison relate to PushPress and, potentially, hsn?

Sam RheeCo-host

47:06

A lot of this stuff is stuff that I don't know if I really want to put out there on a podcast.

47:11

Okay that's fine, because it's owner issue. Stuff Like these are weighty issues. Yeah, and I don't you don't have to. No, I mean, well, I will to the extent that I feel comfortable, but there are Get the PG versions.

47:21

But I will say this there's no aspect of what Fern, zach Forrest from PushPress or O'Coin said that did not make me think we have to do different things at Bison, or at least consider doing different things. Yeah, right, what Jay Fern's sort of push was was how do we make our practices more robust? Right, how are we looking at the data in terms of our members, like retention rate, all of that? And those are not things like from a business standpoint, just from a member experience standpoint. Are we really touching base with our members in a way that's connecting, in a way that's not about revenue, it's about caring about our members, which does actually turn into better revenue when you actually care more about your members, yeah, if you have genuine care. Right, with Zach Forrest and Push Press, some of it was and this is a debate that I know we're going to have as owners is that we and everyone has this as a business like, you have a backend, you have a system that you use right. We use Zen Planner and I would love to hear from our athletes about how they feel about it, and I want to continue to hear from them and I have been asking and moving platforms to a different backend, because that's how our athletes interact Right With the app. They sign up for classes, they pay like that's how we get our data and there's a lot of sense that push press makes in terms of switching to their platform, but there's also a bunch of pain in the ass type things that you have to do in order to switch. But these are questions that we as owners need to discuss and look at.

49:09

When I was listening to him, there were a couple of things that stood out. One is how much of a fad fitness is. You've always said fitness is a fad, and he pulled up a bunch of numbers and he talked about how CrossFit might be bucking that trend a little bit, and then he also talked about what successful gyms be bucking that trend a little bit, yeah, and then he also talked about what successful gyms do, and there are a lot of things that we don't do, but there are a lot of things that we hit the mark on. Yeah, we make the open a big deal and to me when he said gyms who make the open a big deal do well or better than other gyms, I was like it resonated.

49:46

So this guy actually was speaking truth in terms of what the things we're not doing and then a bunch of the things that we are doing. So I love that. But whether or not the push press interface and the app and all that is better, there are a lot of things that would be better just from my interactions with it. But then I really need to see what the athletes using it, how much better it is for them. Yeah, that's a big part of it.

David SyvertsenHost

50:15

It's not just what you want, it's what your customers want. And you know we haven't had huge problems and I wouldn't air them out here on this podcast with Zen Planner, like obviously they've been okay enough, okay enough. Yeah, we've been with them for for a decade plus. But you know, innovation one thing I like about PushPress in relation to others, they are stocked with affiliate owners, like they really are making a product that is anecdotal, like we wish we had this, we wish we had this, let's make, make. And they're constantly tweaking their system and updating things. I mean, even zach forrest, who presented, he was actually honest about a couple downfalls of of push press and what they're trying to work on to make it better.

50:55

I, I of that belief in life in general. You should always be looking to make things better. It's never like we made it. We're good, let's just keep engine running, keep putting a new battery in every now and then. These guys are trying to level up every single time and I like that about them and to kind of build off and also close this episode out.

Sam RheeCo-host

51:13

There's one other thing I want to say about Nicole Alcorn.

David SyvertsenHost

51:15

Yeah, well, I was going to still talk about Nicole Alcorn. All these things push press best hour of their day, hsn. It's about you checking yourself and saying is there something we could be doing better? And this is the main reason why I think all affiliate owners need to go to these at some point Every year. I don't know, but you have to find ways and people that are doing better than you and find out what they're doing. And I relate that to a CrossFit athlete.

51:48

If you want to get to a certain level or look a certain way or a certain weight, at some point you're going to have to find out what those other people do. We investigate that all the time. You want to be a certain level of wealth in life. You have to find out how people make money right. You want to be a certain level of discipline. You have to find out how other people stay disciplined and kind of stay away from all the noise. You have to find out, and I think these are really important reasons why to go to something like this. Nicole O'Koin.

Sam RheeCo-host

52:13

So I think the biggest takeaway from her was nutrition has to be a huge centerpiece of any CrossFit affiliate if you want to do better for your athletes.

52:26

Piece of any CrossFit affiliate if you want to do better for your athletes.

52:28

And that's really funny because I never really thought about that in terms of affiliates and CrossFit For the past 10 years.

52:33

I always thought we were fitness, we're about working out, getting people in the gym, pursuing intensity, getting fit here, and then the more I've gotten into this and she kind of catalyzed it I said you know what we're doing our athletes a disservice if we're not making us not just fitness but nutrition and with nutrition means lifestyle and everything else that comes with it right, sleep, stress and all that.

52:58

But her point was it has to be a centerpiece, it has to be one of the biggest drivers at your gym and to me, whether you work with her or by yourself or in any other capacity if you are and my experience as an athlete is none of it worked until I got my nutrition part of things better and I think every athlete who's out there who's halfway serious about getting healthy, improving their fitness, they all needed to lock down their nutrition in a certain way and we see that all the time with our athletes, the ones who are aspiring to do better in their lives, and that was kind of a wake up. Now, exactly how you execute on that and what you do, that's going to be a point that we would obviously discuss. But if you don't see us in the next year like making that a centerpiece of what our affiliate is, we probably haven't done a good enough job.

David SyvertsenHost

53:54

Yeah, yeah, and that's a good way to wrap it up, in that you know, a lot of this can be overwhelming, and I did feel a little overwhelmed when we got home because I was like almost excited, like let's do this. I did feel a little overwhelmed when we got home because I was like almost excited, like let's do this, let's do this, let's do this, and, like Daniel Williams, like hold on.

54:06

Go fix your website, like we're working on that right now. Get the low hanging fruit. Yeah, you know, come up with a calendar, which I'm working on right now. I's going to be a lesser product, like you have to kind of find those low hanging fruit, find that base pyramid and then build up from there, and that's something that this this weekend can open the door to.

54:40

What your process would look like is, if you really want to make the entire operation better on every level quality, quantity, everything there has to be a step-by-step process, just like someone coming to you and say, hey, I want to get the best shape of my life, you're not going to have them go do RX workouts. Step one it's going to be learn how to air squat, get consistent with the PVC pipe, learn how to scale the workouts, learn about what stimulus means and then learn about pacing, learn about mobility. Okay, now we start upping the workouts a little bit. It's the same kind of thing that I think CrossFitters should relate to CrossFit owners. You've done this before as an athlete. You should know what that process is like. There's no reason to think that you couldn't take that on as a business owner.

Sam RheeCo-host

55:25

If you're an athlete and your affiliate owner is not wrestling with these very questions on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, as you said, multi-year basis like these are multi-year approaches then they're not sort of doing the best that they could for you? Yes, and CrossFit Bison.

David SyvertsenHost

55:43

I promise I lose sleep every single night. Not kidding about stuff like this, because it's you know. The second you feel like you're in a good spot, you're comfortable, things start to fall off the wayside. You have to always, always, stay humble and look for reasons why you're not doing well enough and try to fix them as best you can. All right. Thank why you're not doing well enough and try to fix them as best you can. All right. Thank you, guys. We will see you next week. Thank you everybody for taking the time out of your day to listen to the Herd Fit Podcast. Be on the lookout for next week's episode.