Building Gyms That Last - Craig Patterson

If you don't understand the math and the economics, first, how can you win the game? And nobody's explaining that to them. You know what I mean? Like, oh, just open up an affiliate gym, and you know, you get 200 members, you're gonna kill it. You get 300 members, you're gonna kill it. Well, no, you can have 300 members and be going like sit sitting still, it's not going bankrupt.

Hey Fitness fans, welcome back to the Future of Fitness Podcast and Interview Series. This is your host, Eric Malzone, and this is episode number 104. I talked to Craig Patty Patterson. Uh, this is his second time on the show, and uh, he's the first second-time guest uh on the show, and we're gonna have a few more in 2019. Um the best performers and people who have a lot to offer. So a little bit more background on Craig. Um, you can check out his previous episode uh on the future of fitness for kind of a starter. Um, but Craig is the founder of the Mad Lab group. Uh he is the LCD founder of CrossFit Vancouver, one of the very first CrossFit affiliates in the world. Um he worked directly with Craig Glassman, who is the uh the founder of CrossFit, and he has a lot of history um tied into how CrossFit evolved and what it was back then and what it is now. And the Mad Lab group is a uh consulting group for CrossFit affiliate owners and also other gym owners, um other business owners uh within the industry, and now they're branching out as well. And he talks about how to really build a business that will last. And I love that. You know, I believe his gym has been around for 16, 17 years, something like that, a very long time. And he admits, you know, that's what we talked about. It's like, hey, great businesses aren't built overnight, no matter what someone on social media is telling you. Uh, it's not built in 90 days, it's not built in a year, it's not built in two years, uh, probably about six or seven to build a truly sustainable business that is bulletproof. And that's the thing that he gets into here is how to really bulletproof a business. Um, I personally really like Craig. I caught up with Craig when I was traveling, um, met with him in Vancouver, had some great conversations, a lot of laughs, and uh, I think he's great for the industry. Um he's extremely authentic. I will give him that. He doesn't hold anything back, doesn't pull any punches, and exactly the type of guy, uh type of person I like having on the show. So without further ado, let's get into it. Um now, before we do that, actually, take it back. I'm gonna talk about the finished accelerator. You know why? Because Craig's in it. Craig's awesome. His whole team's in it. Uh, the whole team from Mad Lab is in there networking, um, growing, um, making friends and collaborating on all kinds of things. And if you want to learn more about that group, uh, it is www.fit-accelerator.com. So www. Do I even need to say www? fit dash accelerator.com. I don't think we have to say that anymore. We don't have to say www, right? Do I sound old and archaic when I do that? Anyway, fit dash accelerator.com. There's an application that you can fill out. Uh, you'll be hearing from me within 24 hours, unless it's a weekend and I'm skiing, then you may have to give me a little bit more time. So without further ado, number 104, Craig Patty Patterson, CEO of the Mad Lab group. Enjoy the show. It's a doozy. Craig Patty Patterson from the MATLAB group. Welcome back, Patty. It's uh always a pleasure to have you on the show. Always a pleasure just to chat with you. Um, you're certainly not a boring guy. Um, you certainly don't lack opinions, and uh it always makes for a good show. So welcome back, man. Thanks, Eric.

Good to be back, man. I I we've talked a lot offline and you're traveling, you're sort of living the life I was living before I had a kid. Yeah. I don't know. Eric's like been you name a couple of the places you've been in the last year.

Yeah, well, as of this the date of this recording, which is uh October 10th, 2018, I'm on I'm on Pender Island, um, which uh most people don't know where it is. And I actually kind of plan on keeping it that way. Um I don't want too many people knowing where Pender Island is, uh kind of like all the places I go, but I came after that, or before that, I was in Lake Tahoe, California. Uh I was up near Banff uh for about a month in British Columbia, uh Whitefish, Montana, um, Bend, Oregon, uh Vancouver Island and Victoria. Yeah, it's been a cool, it's been 14 months of just uh yeah, it's it's been that's what happens when you get when you sell your gym and you can move on yourself successfully.

So yeah, my gym, I mean my gym started running itself, you know, pretty good around 2008 or nine, where I could take those three-week vacations. But leaving to do the whole full vagabond, me and my wife thought we were gonna do that two years ago. We put my 11-month-old boy in a 40-foot RV, dragging a civic behind. And dude, it was tough. It was tough for the baby. And I thought I was semi-retired, but it turns out I wasn't. I had to still have a lot of stuff to figure out, not necessarily with the gym. They tried the owners tried to slap a 70% rent increase on me while I was on the road, which we already had 12,000 a month.

70? You say 7-0?

7-0. That's the state of Vancouver. 70% rent increase. And they held Dyke hard. I had to put the lawyers on them, and they, you know, they had my handshake deal with the sun, and then the the owners came in three months before we had the like the due date, the day of the due date. Yeah. That was uncomfortable. That's six months. We're there staying without a contract and all this stuff, right? So anyway, I got I got what I needed. But uh yeah, anyway, having a baby and having a job in an RV, I don't do not recommend. This is I'm curious, is actually haven't I asked you this before? Who are you traveling with? Is it you and your wife?

My wife, my wife, uh, my wife and my dog. That's it. We don't we don't have uh we don't have any kids, so it does make it a bit easier on that end. Uh and that's it.

Airbnbs or staying in our BBROs, or yeah, that's the way I should put it.

Yeah, I got it down. I got it down to a system now. Um so for people listening, you know, it's if if you're going to look spend a place somewhere, if you want to spend like a month, I start with Airbnb, um, just to get an idea of general rates and and what the areas are that are popular. Then I go to Craigslist, VRBO, uh, home away, and I do all those. And then I post on Craigslist um saying that I'm coming to town, and then uh which usually works, actually works pretty well uh because you get those unlisted ones. And then we also look at vacation rental companies um in the local area. And if you ought to tell them, you know, hey, I I want to spend this much and I have a dog and all these things, you used to be surprised at some of the ways that uh you can find some really, really good deals. And um yeah, it's it's cool, man. And uh, you know, I I talk to a lot of gym owners. I I mean, not just within the CrossFit community. And uh you've done a great job of getting out and talking to a lot of people in the industry. Yeah, I talked to a lot of people, a lot of people. And you know, I I find that uh sometimes gym owners are like reluctant entrepreneurs and business people. They they didn't, you know, they they start. This is actually I I'm almost certain of this because I talked to so many of us, you know, a lot of people are great coaches, great trainers, and they assume the next logical step for them in the progression of their career is to own a gym, right? And then you talk to a lot of these people and uh man, they're not sleeping well. Um, you know, they feel that maybe they made a mistake. Some of them persevere, you know, they get good consultants, right? They get good mentors and they and they go through. But even like some of the stuff uh I know you said in the past is like gym and ain't easy, right? Um, which I think is pretty, pretty, but it's so necessary to our our communities and to our culture and and really the health of our countries. I mean, you're in Canada, I'm I'm an American citizen, as of the point of this recording, at least. And uh, you know, it's it's so important. And I think um I guess you know what the kind of the thought I'm getting to here is that um for for people like you who work with a lot of gym owners, right? It's not you could probably get into another business somewhere and and life would be a lot easier, but you stick with it, right? And I wonder what that mentality is. You know, a lot of people I stuck with it probably a year longer than I wanted to just because I felt this commitment to the business, to the community.

Well, I look at it, Eric, our society is still getting less fit. Obesity is ramping up, type two diabetes is still ramping up, and it's needed. What we what we have is needed. How we're delivering it. I firmly believe how we're delivering it is the problem. And I'll just I'll bring up a couple of examples. Like um, we worked with a guy named Ryan Fernz. He's uh PhD in um physiotherapy, he's got a clinic in Wheeling, West Virginia. Also, it turns out he's the Senate majority leader in West Virginia, and uh he has talks to Donald Trump directly, whether that's good or bad, or whatever his opinions on that. But if you had the ear of the president, uh, and this is what he's all about is corporate wellness, uh, diabetes, and obesity. He's been doing some landmark studies down there, and nobody told me about this guy. This is how fucked up our sales department was at one point, but nobody told me about this guy. He'd been he tried it with a bunch of standard affiliate gyms with the standard affiliate model, and they failed, right? Someone somehow got a hold of him and said, You got to check out MATLAB and coach for life and professional coaching. What you need for these studies is professional coaching and one-on-one relationships, uh, at least at the start of the relationship. So he went and he just became like a mad lab maniac and he studied for three or four months, never even contacted me or any of that kind of stuff, which was interesting. And then he transformed his gym into a MADLA model, and he's got four full-time coaches, and then it turns out he's GM is a girl that trained at our gym and was like an apprentice in our system for two years. So this thing's like, okay. So he's had amazing results, and he credits it because he had professional coaches that are totally dialed into the health uh of the client. That's what they're paid for. They're not paid for the hour by a class or a group on ramp or you know, dealing with people that have been tricked on Facebook to come in for something, you know, it's a professional relationship. And he's since signed uh like this guy has got some really good connections in the in the industry from uh you know healthcare to the insurance companies to corporations and you know, uh, and he signed an exclusive. Anybody that has anything to do with any of these programs have to use a mad lab uh model uh with the MADLA coach for life, which is that's what gives me hope. And I think that's where we need to go is our industry. Instead of trying to, you know, a couple of things. I mean, you can see everybody fighting over the small pool pool of fish, which is those people that want to get fit. You know what I mean? Those people are kind of fitness fanatics, and everything's geared at kind of them. And then there's the trickery of getting someone to join your free thing and all this kind of stuff where I just think we could be a lot more honest and forthright, and uh what we're really trying to do. Um, and if I look at what hasn't worked, but if I look at it for 15 years, Eric, and I know you were a gym owner and I know you ran those challenges, uh, it's the group on ramp, I feel is the is the bane of existence for the real, you know, you talk about the owner burnout, and uh, you know, that's real. I mean, almost I'm gonna start a PTSD company for uh for small gym owners, right? And it's because as soon as you do that group on ramp, you bring in four or five people at a time. What's uh so much is lost right there, right? That one-on-one conversation to get to their pain. Why are you really here? Well, you know, I've got this or that or whatever, or you know, no one's gonna tell you they got genital herpes in a group setting of five people, you know what I mean? So there's so much lost there, and that that conversation alone, like the assessment and the getting to the pain and the why and setting up a program for that person, um so much is lost there. But I can tell you is that's gonna churn 70% of the people in a year on average. Better coaching and better systems can make it better, worse coaching, worse systems can make it worse. And people want to doubt that information. But I looked at 1,600 gyms with um Zen Planner um over two years, and you know, it was really simple. You know, we they would take 10 gyms and I would say, okay, look look in their website, look at their fundamentals program, right? And find 10 a lights, you know, so 10 that were like a three-day on-rant, 10 that were straight into class, 10 that were like a 12-day on-ramp, and 10 that were doing one-on-one training, right? And we had no idea the coaches or the price or any of that stuff even. Just we just took one variable, right, which is coach to student ratio. And you can see a graph, it just went like this, where one-on-one, you know, at the end of the year, it churned somewhere between 10 and 30 percent. You know what I mean? If they got more than if they got more than three, if it was four on one, dude, that thing was always over 70 percent. Every single gym that was doing a group on ramp, four people to one coach, over 70% were gone, right? Then we looked at more gyms and more gyms, and we started like putting them together until we got all 1600 categorized as one thing or another, right? And it just showed it showed that graph all the time. Turn rates exploded almost logarithmically, um, with coach to student ratio. So if that's if that's true, people don't want to believe it's true. I mean, I've seen that in 11 cigar gyms forever. And we can take a gym that's doing a group on ramp and giving them one-on-one, and they they're like, yep, see it right away. You know what I mean? They don't even have to be very good at it and very experienced at it. But what that does, we call that the client development process. And if you're doing the one-on-one at the start, you know, we we like to do a one-on-one assessment, or sorry, a one-on-one first day where you don't even move. There's a three-day assessment, and then there's probably another 15 or 18 personal training sessions for the average person before they would go near a group class. Now, the group class is a great thing, right? Yeah, it's got camaraderie, you're not stuck in a one-on-one relationship, it's it's more cost effective. And what we find is the average client value insurance rates plummet with with um with having with adding group class. You know what I mean? Like it actually people don't most people don't last that long with a personal trainer one-on-one. Like after six or nine months of that, that can get kind of stale, kind of boring, yeah, kind of weird. And the coach doesn't love it because they're they can't scale themselves at all, right?

Right.

So we kind of find that sweet spot uh where the average client value stays high, the churn rate stays low, and um then the you then the question becomes something very different. Like, what are you teaching people, right? What do the coaches need to learn? And uh use this analogy I told you before. Like if you're in an engineering field and you know you're a field engineer, you you know, you probably go learn about fracking, and then maybe you get very good at fracking. But after that, you need to learn how to make relationships with all the different sub trades and the and the drilling engineers, and it's more about the relationships and communication, right? You're not gonna go study fracking to the tiniest fucking molecule where it doesn't that doesn't make any difference anymore. Where in our industry, we're learning the technical over and over and over, and there's a new guru coming every couple of years of how to do this better and all that better, and it adds up to nothing. It adds up to it, makes no difference because they're bringing people in in a group on ramp. You know what I mean? Like it just you're already hooked. So, what is it you should be working on? Well, personal development, you know, I'm huge into that, and I know that's something you're you've been striving for in your life. Um communications and enrollment, like that communications piece, really, really learn to communicate. That's the biggest issue in our in our industry, is the coaches, right? First of all, they're not paid the right way, they're not paid on client retention and and average client value. You know what I mean? Are they paying you a bunch of money and are they sticking around? They got to be paid on that, not dollar by the hour. It just doesn't work. I'm on a monologue right now. Give me a couple more seconds here, Eric. Go for it, keep going, man. Keep going. But you know, if they learn sales training and enrollment and communication and personal development, account management, yeah, like that's what the coaches should be really learning on learning. You know, I mean, they need to get technically better all the time. They need to learn how to deliver their product, but if they can't sell anybody on the possibility of transformation of their lives from being obese or having type two diabetes or being out of shape, or they can't play over their children, or whatever it is that client has the pain in, if they can't address that, and they can't, you know, for lack of a better word, convince that person that that's this change is possible right away. You got nothing. You know what I mean? They're just gonna drop off. Um, and so now you're working on professionalizing the coach instead of how do I get one more new lead into a system that's gonna turn 70 to 80 percent anyway. And I mean, and that we've known this for 15 years. Uh, our ability to teach people how to do that is what we continue to improve upon. Like I have absolutely no question that that that's the economics uh of the gym, and it's all about the client development process being honed to perfection, the coach development process. You know, we've you know, we got accredited, we got registered in 2009 and accredited in 2015 to train coaches that go through this whole program, right? And then there's lastly, there's an owner development program that needs to happen, like leadership training, sales and communication training, account training, team building training. Like these are the things that we really need as owners. Yeah, is how do I get people on board, you know, the right people on the bus, the right positions, what they should be doing, what they should be focusing on, and my ability to communicate that to them all the time and have a long-term plan for a game that we can win 20 years from now. That's that's what we're up to. Instead of, hey, I can get you 50 leads tomorrow, you know what I mean? You're gonna find yourself in worse shape six months from now. Right. And then uh, you know, you've seen a lot of that. What what are your thoughts when I when I say such dastardly things?

Yeah, I I I it all makes sense, you know. And um, I think if if we can um, you know, kind of go back is when you say the traditional affiliate model, I want to define that for our listeners is you know, we're talking about CrossFit affiliates for the most part, but what is that, you know, what does that traditional affiliate model look like to you? Like when you when you talk about it.

Well, it's funny, it it it it is uh the traditional affiliate model, but it's also what's been sort of in the fitness industry since aerobics came around, right? So aerobics came around, they realized holy shit, you know, it used to be you go train with a guru for three months, six months, three years, whatever, and you learned yoga. And then someone got wise and said, okay, we can bring yoga to the masses, and they put them in a group class, right? Now I looked at the yoga numbers, they're they're actually clearer and they've been around longer, and their numbers are pretty much the same. 70% are gone in nine months is their stand. And that's how the whole operation works. And if you ever go sign up to a yoga studio, I have with two of them, and it pretty much pretty much works that way. Everybody, you know, if the vast majority of them are gone in nine months. I never had anybody call, I never showed up after a while. No one ever called me, no one ever followed up. I never had a coach, I was a number in there, and um, you know, so that you know, the the traditional model around the fitness is uh used to be even in CrossFit, used to be well, that was what the biz was telling everybody. Put them straight into a group class. You know what I mean? Like, holy mackerel, dude. You're gonna take someone who's like my age, 47 years old, who's got like neck injuries and knee injuries and ankle injuries, broken up from sports, and throw me into Helen on my first day or something. I mean, it was just absurd that anybody would tell you that. You know what I mean? It was absolutely absurd, you know, and then it became like the three-day one, and then you see people on the weekend, and it's like, oh, we'll come in and you learn all the movements in a weekend. Um, and then the standard one kind of became like 12 sessions for like 300 bucks, and then the group on one was like 20 bucks for eight sessions, and it was like yeah, none of all of it set your business up for failure. You you really had no chance to uh keep the clients around and have them pay an average client value that was then going to support your coaches sticking around and having a great life, right? Yeah, standard now is is still around the group on ramp and uh it's slowly changing. I think we've had an impact. I mean, obviously, mad lab gyms, you know, there's a few hundred of us that are doing it, you know, one-on-one. But I think there's probably triple that out there that have been listening to us and they're doing one-on-one, but they're doing like three sessions or five. And you know, I asked my if you ask yourself, why are people doing it? Why are people still doing it that way? And why are they doing three one-on-ones instead of like 20? Yeah. If I asked you why are people doing like the cheap Coupe on ramp, or even the semi-expensive one versus like what the answer is like they don't know how to sell anything, or they're too insecure, or someone down the road is selling it for a third of that, or you know, the CrossFit market has become commoditized and erased to the bottom, and they don't think they can sell in that, which is actually false. It's unbelievable how people can still sell value with that name on their door. I mean, having our own brand and having your own message of value, that takes time and that's awesome. But it's amazing, you're I mean, I would have thought possible, but we can still teach people to go, you know, sell a three-day assessment for 250 bucks and then sell 10 PTs for another 800 or whatever, depending on the market. And they usually, with a little bit of sales training and some scripts and some best practices around it, they can usually figure that out in a few weeks. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's kind of amazing. Yeah. I thought that would just be impossible. But anyway, I know this whole thing is this whole uh how crosswit's evolved over 15 years is it's not shocking. At one time I thought, man, when is how can they keep on behaving like this and get rewarded? You know, it kind of it kind of made me think that there was no God or something.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's it's uh higher power or something yeah it's it's coming back.

I mean everything's coming back and you know I I have an interesting vantage point uh because I do talk to people all over the the industry. CrossFit's still my true love right yeah the fitness met the fitness methodology changes forever. I mean that's still there's still something in there that I love that I love forever. The thing is everything's changing so fast and you see um you know things come into market like you know obviously health clubs you know the traditional health club they're they're changing very fast they're adopting a lot of new type types of technology um they're still burning out the you know the personal trainer at you know $8 an hour um and you know that turn rate's really high for for the PTs in those models but then you start to see things popping up you know like ClassPass um you know the commodities of it all and even there's one um talking to a gentleman who does Air Gym where um it's kind of like an Airbnb but it's for people who um you know have you know garage gyms so people can find people in their neighborhood and they just rent space from from a garage gym. So you're seeing technology kind of like come in and and really change the landscape in a in a I would say a glaciator a glacier way, but it's actually much faster. It's just coming in really hard. So I think where you guys are in a great position is that no matter what, no matter what happens with tech or the you know making you know the commoditization of fitness is that high-end service is always going to be valued.

Untouchable it's untouchable you know I mean no one can come in and figure out my I have no competition in my market. You know since I you know got my own brand my own message of value and figure out how to have our website and marketing and Facebook on on top of my guys to bring their own referrals if the system does that in town the only thing I worry about Eric is rent. You know what I mean? Because Vancouver's out of control. And I make sure my guys are well taken care of and they're happy and you know my GM has she's done a great job. And all I do is about a month in a month maybe it's a few hours a month and you know then there's time I hang out with my coaches there because we're best friends. But that's it. And I have no competition I've nobody can come in and do anything with us at all. They can never compete unless they wanted to do the hard yards the hard work that I've already done. Right. That's the thing that nobody like I shouldn't say nobody but the people I want to reach are the people that are willing to be honest and work hard. You know I can I can craft a really good plan for you that at the end of this you got something that not nobody can take it away from you. There's no new technology there's no new marketing company there's no new bullshit that can come and scrape it away from you because everybody wants the magic bullet and they're always going out to find the magic bullet. Where you know if you're an independent business owner let's be honest with you how you can't com meet compete on the commodity side whatsoever. Like all it takes is one globo gym to come in and offer those classes and pay a bunch of kids nothing and you're that's it you can't compete. Right? And uh you know Orange Siri and all those things all those things are designed for a return on investment five to seven years for the investor and they're gonna pump and dump and get out of it and set five to seven years and and those things will go on forever you can't compete there either because they're so highly funded and the people at the top are going to make all the money and the people in the middle and at the bottom they get wiped out of these things every time if you're on the you're trying to compete with them on the bottom you know I don't know if that makes sense or not to the average fantastic yeah you can't compete there. The only place you can compete and Greg always said this and this was always the idea across it is you're gonna have an independent gym that nobody can compete with. Well if you're doing group on ramps anybody can compete with you. Anybody can do that. So you put yourself in a market position that you're a commodity and it's gonna churn and that's the game. Like if you want to play that game then yeah people can say yeah it sort of works but you're dude you're the you're all you're gonna be putting all your resources and all your energy into churn finding new clients and finding new coaches and that's the game all the time. Yeah right and uh that that's not much fun. Yeah for me like lose every client I lost when I was training people fucking suck. Every coach I lost was like a dude that was like a three month some of them I still haven't gotten over it's like six years later. Yeah you know what I mean and I'm like I I run into the person and we have to have a chat about it and there's still some unfinished communication there. But I mean I had one I had fired one guy in 15 years and I had one guy leave in a bad way and we were best friends and I think there's still a miscommunication but that that's the hurt that I got but if you're churning and burning all the time maybe people are just stronger than me or their hearts are more scarred over than mine or something about I mean that game Eric you know you played that game like how tough is that game it's it's it's hard.

I mean every uh you know you put a tough face but every time a client left especially you know there's a period when you know in in my personal life things got really hard and then uh at the same point um you know someone opened a gym you know within quarter mile of me and started offering my clients you know two for one deals and people who literally were at my birthday dinner a week before left the gym. Yeah and and that hurt so bad. And I was like God and but every you know even before that that was like a I felt like a huge chunk of my heart was just taken away you know and uh all I wanted to do is get out of my gym and just not be there anymore. And that's a problem, right? But I think um you know it's still before that every person who left, you know, a little bit of you goes with them. A tiny little fragment of you goes with them over time. And um so it is it's it's especially if you care so much. You know, I mean you if you're an ordinary you have to care because it's your livelihood, right? It's it's where it's how you pay your mortgage, it's it's all these things. But you really do, you know, in a community oriented gym which you know CrossFit affiliates are probably the most you know that's probably the singular characteristic that people know about it. You know like Ken um Ken Andruco, you know, up in in in uh Calgary, you know, with his gym CrossFit Reebok Ramsey you know I talk to him all the time and he's he has you know beer Wednesdays right where they come in and you know you have someone bringing a specialty beer on Wednesday evenings for his clients. He cooks uh pancake breakfast on Thursday mornings and you know it's like this it it this powerful community but the downside of that is that when people leave it hurts right you're like oh man I gave so much to you but then you're then you're reminded of the starch reality be like this is a business.

Yeah uh I mean yeah we do four community events a year those those days of doing those events and that for us we kind of realized that they just weren't they really weren't the they weren't worth it when we had the coach relationships yeah the coaches do that in their own special ways all the time so sure I mean if I could say that the difference of someone leaving our school of fitness versus a regular gym or when we actually did group on ramps is they'll they'll quit you on a text message or they just won't show up and cancel their membership. We we never have that that never happens. Interesting it's like a death in the family. If you sit down with someone for two months and did one-on-one training they told you everything about their life and what's going on in it and all their pains, scares and fears you cannot leave that relationship with a text. You'd have to just be a dirt bag and if you did that if someone did that to any one of us they'd be like holy fuck I've completely misjudged little Susie here. And then you get a hold of them and say man are you okay? Is there something really bad going on in your life that you would do this to to this relationship and that that'd be the only time like every anybody ever left me we sat down and had a copy about it minimum and I'd be like okay how did I fail you and you know the first 50 of those over you know a period of time I learned I learned a lot. I learned a lot about what I'd done wrong and then after a while you realize it's not necessarily me it's the person's life and and then they are not capable of really going into that kind of change as I expect like yeah there's there's things that are you know you're talking about addictions now and you're talking about mental illness almost and you're talking about like uh things around bulimia and shit that I'm not trained to you know to that we're getting that close to anorexia and I don't I'm not trying you know what I mean that's beyond my training that's why you get that's where I would lose someone and say okay yeah you're better off I'll get a hold of someone that can really work with us on you and we're coming up against something that I'm not trained to do. Yeah and that's what the relationship looks like. Whereas you know if they came in tricked on the Facebook god right away that first interaction if they've got like you know bait switched or something that was totally above board that'll stick in that brain man. I mean that'll that's just a ticking time bomb waiting to go off yeah uh to leave you because it's dishonesty to start with you know what I mean like uh so anyway that's it that's that's where I mean and people can play that game that's fine we're just looking for the next level in this whole thing we're looking for where people can really make a difference in life and make a difference in the type two diabetes and make a difference in corporate wellness and and uh you know obesity and take the average person and make their life better you know what I mean like that's really where we're at um we have programs for elite athletes where they're gonna pay more you know what I mean if going to the CrossFit games like yeah you're gonna pay fucking five times what everybody else and you're gonna stay out of the way and you're gonna be cool with everybody else if I hear you want you know having your nose in the air that you're superior you're gone from here and you're gonna have to apologize to everybody here for doing you know all you know all those kinds of things you learn along the way you know and I see the forums and everybody's struggling with the open gym and they're struggling with you know bring a friend day and they're struggling with referral programs and they're they're struggling with all these things that don't work that we've known forever like the little thing and their competition program oh I you know I lost my coach and my 10 competition team and they went over their own gym I mean yeah that's still going on you know what I mean it's like those kind of heartaches are totally unnecessary today like it's completely unnecessary we can guide people around all those but I mean the hard yards are actually training yourself to be a professional and training your people to be professionals. Yeah and you know the word professional is tossed around a lot but if I had to define my guys I never worry about them showing up I never have to schedule them I never uh I don't even know when they're on vacation don't even need to tell me you know what I mean like uh the money comes in and um everything all the billing's done I never have an emotional problem I never have to go deal with uh a cleanup there nothing it's all it's all completely taken care of and each one of my coaches his own individual business unit working in a co-op with the others and the the only scraps we have are every now and then some lead comes in through some way and it's missed and it's like shit I went to high school with that guy's sister dude and you find out five sessions in that someone else is training them because they hadn't asked all the questions or an apprentice who wasn't properly trained and in the in the asking of the questions to find out how this person came in the who I mean that's really the only and that happens about once every six months to a year where it's like you know yeah people are up in arms and uh other than that you know it's it's it's a great business. As a gym owner I couldn't think of an I I just wouldn't play any other game and and I don't think there's any better gym on the planet than our school here you know and I'll put up the numbers against it. Our our ability to teach everybody else in the Madlock group just gets better. You know so that's you know if I look at this whole thing it's just I know when you got into the business and you've done the scraper the the the challenges there for a while and you're left pretty much done from the whole thing. Like that it's too bad. You know what I mean like there's and there's so many of the gym owners that they'll they'll rather fold than actually come and say okay hey what are you doing over there?

You know yeah and that's you know I mean the the pain of being a gym owner uh with the wrong systems it's it's it's a desperate thing because you just can't see your way out of it I don't think like can you speak to that at all or you know I feel like I've yeah you know I um when I when I uh sold the gym um you know it was still it was at a high point so you know I I went through and I I hit up the six week challenges um you know what happened my my particular story is I expanded right I'm like okay now I gotta I gotta fill some I gotta put some heads in beds right and uh you know you you want to believe that it can be as easy as as you know a six week challenge six week challenges can be very useful I do believe that if if the tactic is used within the right strategy um at times um it'd be fine if they came in one on one but as soon as they come in with the group it's there's the tragic situation waiting to happen. Yeah well I think if you have one off programs you know like I was looking to build a uh you know a program of of my my legends class of people 50 plus and you know it works really well for that because I could tell you that not a whole lot of people came in through through the challenge but it was it enabled us to get it started. Like I had nobody you know I had a three o'clock class time that I wanted to almost do a personal training there.

So you're getting people on yeah it looks certain yeah that's why it works.

Yeah it worked well because it came in in small numbers right um but I was very you know with I I was doing it for eight eight almost nine years and you know I half of my membership had would been with me for over three years. So um you know it's kind of like every once in a while if I strayed off a little wrong a lot of my members would be like dude Eric what the fuck are you doing? Like you know I'm like oh okay that was a good litmus all right come back Eric because you you know at that time it was like well I'll try something see if it works and if it doesn't work then you know I'll suffer the consequence learn and move on that's just that was the nature of the beast because everyone's still learning it's so young. You know everyone's making mistakes and my you know I always tell people one of my superpowers is I can just make mistakes faster than most people and uh therefore learn from it. So I had a really solid a really solid base uh you know of of people within my gym you know of 100 to 125 members and then it was always that incremental piece that I wanted to get to and uh you know when you when you over when I overused you know specific tactics it it hurt but it never got to a critical point. I was always able to recover you know and and learn and and move on um you know due to probably just you know the resiliency of my core my core members um because they never wanted anything to change you know they were still they still thought of it as that 800 square foot space down the funk zone of Santa Barbara um that was you know dirty there was like you know you had to watch out for hyperdermic needles as you're running the 400 there was an occasional meth fire um you know people came that right you know that that feeling and they still had it in their hearts so that was that was something that I had the benefit of um so I never got to that critical point. And you know I one of the questions I always I I have that keeps coming to mind as you're talking is um how many members do you tell a gym that they actually need? If they do it the method that you're saying, right? They built up they do the hard work right over time how many members do they actually need to run a you know have a good lifestyle and run a successful gym and and have you know all of their coaches be be fed well like how what what's that target number or do you have one in in mind?

No I mean we don't first of all we tell people don't ever judge memberships. I've seen gyms with 900 members in it 500 members 700 members that are not profitable and that are tire fires waiting to happen. Right. What I say is a professional coach can train comfortably 50 to 60 people at and you know by then they're in a hybrid membership where they see their coach once a week all the way down to once a month. So if we standardize everybody we say okay you got three years to build up to 60 people and we're gonna do that through a lot of personal training and you know so the number is 60 people and they see their coach once a month it's a $300 a month membership some markets it's way more you go to Sydney that's like $500 a month right yeah um you're in if your summers in uh you know Florida or something like that maybe that number's $249 a month. You know what I mean? So by standardized it let's say it's $300 a month right times $60 the gross revenue that's $18,000. Right there one coach with 60 people is more than I would say 80% of the cross affiliates are there today one coach. Yeah train that coach to be a professional just to look after 60 people with a high end service average client value 300 churn rate let's say it's 20% most of my guys at that stage would be 10%. So they need to find six new people a year on the low end on the high end is one new person a month to kind of replace their churn that can happen completely naturally and normally and for most of my guys that's how it works. Here's the number 60 people 300 a month that's 1800 and you know they're gonna get somewhere's around 43 44% for taxes you know so I'll go 0.44 you know I think there's some uh there's probably some variable costs are coming off of there that's 7,920 I'm gonna say 7500 right before they and my guys are are um you know they're independent contractors they set their own schedules they they basically run their own show now um and in some some states it would be employees and you have to figure that all out but there's basically $7500 going into a pot that goes to that coach right yeah if you got to play employee tax or if you got to pay them as an employee and all that stuff that it changes the number somewhat but it changes the benefit as well. And for that they're working seven group classes a week and 10 hours uh or to 12 hours a week in personal training just to take care of those hybrids. You know what I mean you're that is a good life. Yeah it is you get there like I got I got five guys that are there right now and I got a part-time girl Emily that you know she probably does half of that with half of that effort you know yeah that that's sustainable and then they get four weeks of semi-paid vacation and they get holidays off they get a 401k program anything over 20 EBITDA I get back the bonus right and that's their their you know like Tom in $2400 last year towards his 401k you guys would call it you know and then that's that creates that long-term stability whereas if you just say how many members you got without qualifying it you're probably in trouble you know what I mean like you you want to have average of six numbers that I really worry about number one average client value sorry number one is churn what is your churn rate every year and that starts off I got a hundred clients now how many of those a hundred are left a year from now industry average is 70% churn 30% retention that's what we're dealing with and that's why we have all this turnover and all these fads have to come and go and all these new gurus have to come and go and it's because of that that's the reality that is reality right yeah um so you know if you're gonna average client value so they're paying you quite a bit of money and they're not leaving probably good the coaches can now have a wage where they can stay in the industry for 20 or 30 years raise a family own a home take vacation have a fucking normal life you know what I mean like the coaches in our industry fuck dude does that look good how many people are sticking around in their 40s and 50s and have a good life nobody yeah it doesn't exist. I got three guys in their 40s that have been doing it for 12 13 years that make that 80 grand a year. Yeah you know some years it might be 60 or 70 some years it's 100 depending on where they're at like T-Bear took seven weeks of vacation this year. He went to fucking New Zealand he went to Italy you know that's my oldest coach you know he got married you know that's he's been there 13 years and that's that's what a good normal I guess a normal decent life should look like and that doesn't I just don't see it anywhere in industry.

Everybody wants to argue and fight with me that the problem isn't the group on ramp and it isn't uh the marketing to get them in the group on ramp but but they have no results to show anybody's having a good life in that yeah marketing companies having a fucking good life in that right yeah so if if some if someone is um they adopt you know your model uh and they put you know good consistent hard work at it yeah how many years does it take to get to that success point of you know let's say having three successful coaches um and and having that model what what's what's a realistic time frame for for that well if you're to get to where uh my place would be at I would say 10 years is probably a realistic one to get to get a real good gym you know what I mean five years you could do some really interesting things I think um to think you're gonna get there in six months and nine months and you know I'm gonna you know I'm gonna spend 10,000 a month in Facebook ads and then three years from now my gym's gonna be worth this those prognosis no it's not that's just not it like that's just not how a good business really works.

You know it's gonna take time. And I like to give I like to say to people okay we're gonna set up your you know three month one year three years that like when we're right when we meet with them the first time we sit down and consult them that's what we're gonna set up three months one year and three years with an eye to 20 right this is where you want to be 10 years from now 20 years from now so you're bullet you're fucking bulletproof bro you know what I mean like it doesn't matter what happens in the market or what changes or what goes on these are the issues you're gonna have to deal with and this is what we're gonna focus on. And then you're untouchable right I mean that's a business you can win and it's not easy and we've had lots of people not be able to do it and and And uh I would take partial responsibility for that because we didn't have professional sales training at one point, we didn't have professional leadership training. We probably didn't know how all the numbers work and what you know they got to go to this step and that step and that step. And there's a lot of good people that uh summers along the line fell off the train. Because and most of them, if I look at the vast majority of them, they didn't stick to the long-term plan. We probably didn't tell them the long-term plan, they didn't have a long-term plan. And they made one crucial mistake, which was usually, I need a few clients, I'm gonna try a challenge. You know, that started about three years ago. And, you know, especially the absentee owner who couldn't, he's a quarter armchair quarterback, you know what I mean? He's not even in the city. What can he do to affect it? You know, he's gonna do things that, you know, let's put this challenge in. As soon as you do that, really bad things happen to your gym. And there was a lot of good people that did that and didn't quite realize it. And I probably couldn't explain it as as well as I could now. We didn't have lead gym, we didn't have marketing stuff. Like we've been evolving a lot too, Eric. Uh, just I'm just 100% convinced on what the economics of the gym are, and the game that you can win and the game you gotta play to stay in this industry for I mean, I'm here 15 years, and uh, I think I have the best gym on the planet. Um, I'm willing to put that number out there to anybody, you know, by the six measurements. Um, but it's uh it's all it's no magic pill. It's a long, hard, slow um thing, but it's rewarding because you do change people's lives. And then you can affect the diabetes and the corporate wellness, and you know, you can get to all those places that I think our society really needs, right?

Yeah. Well, it it's uh what you're saying, 10 years. That's a tough pill to swallow nowadays. You know, people want everything really fast. And uh, I think that's something that, and I I say that because I have to look at myself sometimes. When I sold my gym, you know, I I had talked to James Fitzgerald, who mentored me for, you know, a long period of time in business and fitness. And um, he's like, all right, Eric, it took you eight years, you know, eight or nine years to get a successful gym built up. Now you're starting off on this new venture in the online space, you know, of of you know, consulting and and podcasting. He's like, it's gonna be another eight or nine years. And uh I heard him say it, but I didn't listen to him, right?

So I was like, What are you doing for eight or nine years? Like, what should I really be doing?

You know, yeah, and I was like, okay. And then, you know, I keep falling back on that, but I think it's a tough pill, you know, because there's so many easy, it's just like it's just like what people promise people in fitness, like, hey, in the six weeks, you'll be fine. You know, you'll your life will be transformed, you won't need to do anything anymore. Um, but that's that's a hard slog. And it's just those first those first one to two years, man, it's it's so hard to get those clients in the door and and make the rent. And uh, you know, you have to pray you have enough runway financially, or you know, it's just um yeah, I guess that's any business though, right? It could be a could be a fucking bakery, right?

Yeah, I mean it it's that is business. And what I can say to people is we can get if you can figure out, we can teach you, you can figure out how to sell a high-end service right from the start. You don't have those struggles as much. You don't take need to take as big a risk. You don't have to go build a 10,000 square foot gym and fill it full of uh quarter of a million dollars of equipment. I mean, dude, I literally started off in parks and in community centers, and then I got kicked out of everything. And I was in a personal training studio, and Greg Glassman was my mentor on how to become a good personal trainer. And you know, I got from zero to eight thousand dollars a month in six or seven months, and I paid uh, you know, fifteen hundred dollars to that gym. I got my start. There's your first 35 clients, there's 8,000, you know, and that those things they stay with you, and then you take them to a you know, a 2,000 square foot spot, and you you build your own membership up to 60 people, you got 18,000 in revenue, you should be able to do that in under two years. Yeah, and you're training someone else to do the exact same thing, you know, and then before long, you know, you're at 40,000 and you got two or three coaches, and you know, and you're just slowly building upon excellence and excellence and best practices and what works. And um, you can do it without a huge amount of risk. The other way is a huge amount of risk. You know what I mean? You get this big thing and you're trying to fill it full of people, and uh that's a you know, that's a scary place, right?

Well, you know, you you think about if you someone has a 10-year plan, well, number one, some of the most successful people I've ever talked to plan in 10-year increments, right? Like those those are the people who are truly winning. But I find that even if I if I have a 10-year plan, even if I have a three-year plan, I sleep better at night. You know, maybe the finances aren't aren't in order, maybe the bank account's not reflecting what the success will look like yet. But having that, I think is is really versus the other case, it's like, okay, I just lost 10 members. I don't know what the fuck I'm gonna do now. Uh I'm gonna wake up and try to figure it out, right? Which is the latter is what most most most facility owners, it doesn't matter if it's CrossFit, if it's a PT studio, if it's uh you know, you name all the different kinds, a strong first, you know, whatever, whatever it is, it it's that uh lack of a of a long-term vision that I think ultimately um really r release releases stress and allows you to do your best work. Let's put it that way. Totally.

I mean, if I think, you know, we have a course called MATLAB 101, which you know, it's 97 bucks. I used to charge a thousand dollars for this thing, and it kind of shows the it shows the economics, it teaches people this is this is what you're getting into if you're opening up a gym. Yeah, or if you already own one, this is the truth, these are the economics, these are the facts, you can't get around them. So you gotta play with inside. If you don't understand the math and the economics, first, how can you win the game? And and nobody's explaining that to them, you know what I mean? Like, oh, just open up an affiliate gym, and you know, you get 200 members, you're gonna kill it. You get 300 members, you're gonna kill it. Well, no, you can have 300 members and be going like sit sitting still if not going bankrupt, right? And uh that's that's the you know, that's the that is the reality of it. Um, you know, I every time you I hear people say that about you know the scary place, I've been in that scary place a few times in my life, and it's it's not much fun. I mean, uh, if I look at Mad Lab Group, this is for five or six years now, and um we didn't know how to bring in clients or retain them or anything virtually, and I went through all the same mistakes and tried to scale it, and no humans are gonna talk to you, and you know, we're gonna get a thousand gyms and and just the whole thing just runs itself without a human. That didn't work. Yeah, you know what I mean. We had to really get humans in place and train them up and have them be the coach and the one-on-one guide for the gym owner, and then now we've had to do it for the coaches too. We thought they could auto-coach it, or you know, it's all bullshit. You don't have a human that's actually figured out how to make $100,000 a year as a coach. Um, it's if you're not talking to that guy, it's gonna be a lot harder for you. You know what I mean? Like all my guys had me to talk to, and then they had themselves to talk to, and then you know, now we got this network of three, four hundred coaches, and and we for a long time we tried to do it with you know just software and just courses, you know, and a lot of guys don't learn that way anyway. So, you know, I relearned all the same principles that worked in the gym, just works in us in life. It works in like Mad Lab group. We've had to go back to the drawing board five times, and and and it just keeps on leading us back to our eight laws of gym, and it's the same thing. Like, you know, you need you need one-on-one training and mentorship, and then you can get into a group and get all this kind of stuff.

Yeah. Well, you're you're building you're building businesses, you know. That's the thing, it's a business. And uh, you know, there's I always use this analogy because one of my I I was a swimmer growing up. Um and I had this coach who stuck said this one thing to me that just stuck in my mind so strongly. And it was, you know, Eric, there's there's there's great swimmers, and then there's there's great athletes who swim, right? And I think when you look at like gym owners, there's people who are just really good, maybe like they wouldn't be good at any other business outside of of fitness, right? And then there's just really good business owners who happen to be doing fitness and gym ownership, and that's that's what what you guys are building is better athletes, better business people overall. Because you said, you know, what you've done with your gym when you start MATLAB group, uh, you had to go through all the same struggles. That shit doesn't change. Any business you start, you're gonna figure things out. There's you know, maybe it's a franchise. If you buy a franchise, there's a set model to it, but it yeah, I don't know, that's not very alluring to me. Um, so I see that's you know, that's it might be.

If I do something again, I don't think I want to figure it out from scratch like the last. An engineering building I put engineering business that figured out from scratch. And that was like it took literally took every minute of my life four years. Sure. And then the gym took me about you know seven, eight, nine years to figure that out, took every minute of my life. Yeah. And then this one, MadLab Group's taking every minute of my life. Uh, it's only now I got I think I got the right people and the right systems and the right processes in place that I can finally breathe. And I got a two and a half-year-old son that I kind of want to be with a little more, and my wife, you know what I mean? Like, I don't think I don't know if I could start another one from scratch here. I think if I needed really needed a job or you know, some people need something to do. I I think I can just go surf and golf and be fine. But uh the franchise actually doesn't sound so bad.

Yeah, it doesn't, right? I always think about that too. Uh my thoughts.

How far your thing you're developing goes, but uh it looks like you're doing great over there.

Yeah, yeah, we're doing right. So well the one last because I wanted to cover this topic um before we let you go here. Is there uh, you know, the announcement with with Classman, right? And then the changing of the games and the the um, you know, his his refocusing on the affiliates and having 150,000 affiliates globally, I think was the quote that he wants. Give us give us some of your take on what's going on with with you know the top brass of CrossFit HQ and and uh what people need to know.

Well, I mean I think I told you this earlier, we just did the prep for this. It was like I've I've people so many people have asked me that question that I've I've come up with a positive answer. Took me a few months to to kind of craft it. So let me give that. So, you know, I think it's a positive thing that they're trying to go into the into the health and wellness and fitness, and that's where you know that's where I was trained. I mean, Greg was my mentor, that's what I was doing. And what I what I was told back then was that we have to professionalize the coach, and the mission was to professionalize the coach, and and uh we knew we needed a business model around it, and you know, they kind of charged off into all these areas, it was beyond their control. Yeah, and if you know Greg, you know it's it's pretty impulsive and it's right by the seat of the pants, and we'll see where this thing goes. And um, you know, every we've known for a long time that games are not good for your business. They're not if you're focusing on something that's go as hard as you can and go as crazy as you can for a short period of time, people burn out of that and they leave your business. It's not, I mean, we've known that for a long time. Um, so if they're focusing more towards health and wellness, and they can bring leads into your gym that are quality leads for people looking for your gym to help with diabetes and obesity and all these things, that is inherently a good thing. That's that's my that is my official answer. Now behind the scenes, how they got there, right? Is you know, they basically anybody who gave them feedback on that should be the direction and not the games, and you know, you're you're basically thrown out of the out of the community. Um, so you know, all the people that were closest to them that were giving them that feedback got basically got shot in the face and thrown into a fucking dumpster, you know, and I was one of those people. Um, so you know, is it too late? Will 150,000 affiliates help me? How does that help me if my brand is you know my brand is whatever? Let's say it's fucking my brand is Jim and Juice, right? Yeah, okay, we're gonna open up 10 right around you. How how does that help me? Can anybody explain how that helped me? Like that was the place where it got out of the barn to begin with. Like in 2000, like when I started, I had a 25-mile radius. In 2006, I got taken away. And I was explaining, like, you know, to a certain extent, the awareness helped. Yeah, and that, you know, oh, I got someone who came from Colorado, and they I was just in Colorado, I live in Vancouver, and you know, it was CrossFit there, and they told me to come here, and that that was that was cool, right? Um, but then when you know, three people opened up within you know spitting distance, and one was running a group on for $19.95 for eight sessions with the same brand as me, where I'm 10 sessions for $750. My message of value is we're a coaching service. There is come on in, it's an open gym. You can't protect your brand, you can't, you know, all that stuff. So that's kind of the reality on the ground is you know, if he wants to come up and say, Yeah, we're gonna have 16,000 of them, I'd be like, How and why? Yeah, yeah, you know, how does that help anybody who's in the network now?

Right, right. Yeah, I mean, I had uh, you know, in Santa Barbara, I had four affiliates in a square mile, roughly. Yeah, that wasn't wasn't benefiting anyone really. Um, and if you want, I think they're what 13,000 globally, something like that, and they want a 10 exit.

Um yeah, I don't I mean, he has his own reasons for saying that. Yeah, I'm sure. Right, of course. You know, I don't I don't necessarily understand anymore, but I understand the man and why he would say things like that. Yeah, where he juiced up around it again, and you know that the idea of like, you know, they laid off like however many people they laid off, it was the reposition. Let's think about what that, you know. Yeah, that's the reality there, right? Yeah, uh, you know, you got guys that you know kiss CrossFit's ass all the time. They're like, Oh, I've never been so proud of them before. Yeah, yeah. You know, you're the last guy hanging on to that bus. Uh, and that's the only reason why you're in business because you're hanging on to the back of that bus. But uh good luck, right? Yeah, yeah. I'm still an affiliate. I love the fitness, I love that it changes the whole world. Yeah, uh the model, the their model of how they make money is based on more affiliates and more level ones and all that stuff. And I think that's played out. They've made their millions and millions and millions, and where it goes from here, you know, they really do need to bring in qualified leads into the gyms and help the gyms out. They can figure that out. Yeah, awesome. Like, I'm still an affiliate. I pay my affiliate fees because people still wander in looking for CrossFit, and then I you know, show them what we're up to, and they go like, Oh, yeah, that makes sense. Or they're Googling CrossFit and they find our you know, our site, and it's like we're gonna do professional coaching and you're gonna do 20 sessions and it's cost this much, and they go, Yeah, that's a great message of value. I want that one. You know what I mean? So, I mean, we don't play the commodity game, we don't play the low cost, we don't play the group on ramps and challenges, we don't play any of that. And uh, you know, if they can help us uh break into that world, then then fine. It'll be a it'll be a show me, you know what I mean? Yeah, like I've already, dude, I was a CrossFit diehard, I was the diehard of all diehards, and I spread that message everywhere. Yeah. And uh until I wasn't allowed to anymore. I was basically told you're not allowed to anymore.

So yeah. Well, it's interesting to me, and the way I see it too is that um, you know, I think CrossFit that the the quality within the CrossFit community is really starting to rise and transcend through the fitness industry too. You know, like your model, um, you know, a lot of the people who have you know successful models of of gym owners, it's it's transcending across, you know, an outside.

I think it's more the the technical parts of the like there's our there's there's what we're doing as the model, and it's that's infiltrating like Pilates and yoga and that kind of thing. And then there's the gurus who are you know fitness and movement gurus. Um that you know, they try and get everybody's trying to get out of this uh Sarah FRSS pool. You know what I mean? It's like yeah, you know, people are trying to get out of this out into the mainstream thing because you know it's it it's repeating itself over and over and over, and and the iterations are getting worse. Like people say the cream will rise to the top. Yeah, it rises to the top, and then they leave. Is uh is really what happens, you know what I mean? Like where do you stay? If you rise to the top inside of that, where do you where do you go?

Yeah, right?

You become a you know, you you have to you you have to say all the right words and and and give messages that simply don't help people. Yeah, yeah.

Well, uh this is fun, as always. It was great discussion. I think uh, you know, it was a little um heavy on CrossFit, but I I do believe that uh there's a lot to learn within the fitness community from everything that CrossFit does. You know, it's yeah, it's still a great starting place, right? It shook the industry. Yeah, you know, it really did. And I was you know, I'm so happy that I got to be in there in the early, the early times and and see the evolution of it and seeing now um how it's it's going. I'm I'm extremely positive with with the way it's going and the affiliates that I I get to talk to and what they're doing for the local community, they're becoming business people.

And uh I see that too. We've got lots of new people that come in from the affiliate world and and you know they're they're their heads are off about it. Yeah, they know it's not working, they know it is working, they've you know, they've done some research, and you know, they're not just uh goose stepping to uh to the in the wrong place. And you know, you talk about the games, like uh you know, there was a time that everybody was opening up and they're gonna be the one who wins the gym that wins the CrossFit games is the one the one that's gonna you know take all the business, right? It's absurd. It works the other way, you know. Yeah, that made no sense looking back. And there's still there's still gyms doing that, even after CrossFit's come out and said, Hey, the games are not that good for us, let's go over here. There's still gyms that go, I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna send everybody to the games. I mean, that's a 0.000, whatever percentage, even make it to regionals, and now that's not you know, that there were so many gyms. If I say one thing positive with coming out and saying that, there were so many gyms that played that game to the destruction, right? For them to come out and say, hey, you know, that's not really shouldn't be the focus, we should be over here. That's a great thing. I think that was, you know, if I had to, you know, summarize one great thing, but it's great for them to say that because that is the truth. Yeah. Um, the people that were saying it five years ago uh didn't get treated so great, uh, having said it. Um, but you know, they they learned the hard way, and maybe that's maybe that is uh the libertarian way or the uh the way of the the world, right? You just yeah, nothing but results, you know.

Yeah, things will things will figure it out, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Awesome. Well, well, Patty, thanks for coming on again, man. It's always a pleasure. And uh I have a feeling we'll probably do this again another six to nine. Sounds good.

I really like what you're up to there, Eric. And uh I'm excited to join your network and uh and meet some other like I know you got some other really cool people in this industry, so yeah, I'm looking out for them. Um, yeah, and your guy in Calgary, love to meet him. Yeah, yeah, I'll introduce you guys right after. Awesome. Awesome, man. Awesome. All right, man. Thanks, Pat. Talk too, brother. Thank you.

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