Blog Archive

We have moved our community page over – Please check out our new website at madlab.ca

Despite our ups and downs, trials and errors, my mission will always be what it was from the moment I opened the doors to the first CrossFit affiliate in Canada 10 years ago: To help my coaches and all of our students live great lives.

This means that at 40, you’re the star of your Friday night hockey league. At 60, you don’t think twice about going on an 4-hour hike with your grandchildren. At 75, you’re still participating in the Sun Run. And at 90, you’re still living independently, doing housework and going for walks along the seawall. Training with us means staying out of the old-age home.

One of the reasons we’re able to do this is because we provide opportunity for our coaches. A happy business and happy coaches means happy clients and community. As an owner, I believe if you’re not making $150,000 a year and your coaches aren’t earning close to $75,000 you might as well go get a job that supports your family.

The other reason we’ve been able to do what we have is because of the rich, supportive community all you students have helped build—a great community to raise a family. Judging by all the babies and pregnant women roaming our facility these days, let’s hope we can pass the life lessons we’ve learned together, and the love for fitness, to our children. We would be absolutely nothing without the support of our students. Thank you.

Through the MadLab Group, we want to pass what we know about business and fitness to other gyms around the world: To help them create professional coaches, who have what our coaches have.

The other function of the Madlab group is to provide Madlab School and its clients (You) with an ever-improving user experience. We are developing a new website that is scheduled to go live this week. We are working on a Madlab School communication app that will keep you better connected with your coach and each other. The list goes on and on, but the idea is that with hundreds (maybe thousands) of gyms in our membership we can build tools that other gyms simply cannot afford.

It has been a long road, but I’m so proud of what we have built.

I’m currently in the process of selling shares of MadLab School of Fitness to some of our family: TBear, Sheppy, Andy, Dash and Eunice. With ownership comes a new sense of commitment that you as the end user needs and although we have always functioned as a profit sharing facility Our School will soon be a true co-op.

I am not going anywhere. I will retain a portion of the company and remain a consultant to MadLab School of Fitness as our current coaches take on ownership and management duties.  Besides I can’t go anywhere, one of the reasons why I opened a gym was because I wanted a community to raise my children in. I need this community more than ever as I am set to become a Dad.

Finally, MadLab School of Fitness in Vancouver (MadLab’s Head Lab) has also become the accreditation body for all MadLab Group facilities (1, 2, 3 seals – Like the Michelin 3 star rating system) as well as coaches, of which there are currently 500 registered in the Professional Coach Diploma Program who will be coming to Vancouver to learn from us and write their graduation exams. You will start to see all kinds of strange creatures from around the globe wandering around with weird accents and clothing choices in the coming year. Stop them and say “Hi, I’m Clyde, they call me that because I am such a curious and playful animal…..look at my really long arms!!. Do you have a Madlab nick name yet”

This will become the next chapter of our story. I can’t wait.

Patty.

Warm Up: Coach Choice

Include Wrist Mobility

Strength/Skill:

A) Handstand Hold: Fingertips to Wall – Gather 4 Minutes

Get finger as close to the wall as possible.
Maintain PPT (Posterior Pelvic Tilt)

B1) 4×2 Overhead Squat

Do your best to not fail here.
Do not attempt more than 4 lifts above 90% of your 3RM

B2) 4×5/5 Side Over Arch

Ideally straight arm.
Focus on big stretch and contraction of the obliques>
Arch!

Conditioning:

30 Russian Swings 2p/1.5p
15 Burpees
24 Russian Swings
12 Burpees
18 Russian Swings
9 Burpees

Optional Finisher: 10 Minute OTM: 1 Rope Climb

With a business license in hand, I was able to breathe again without thinking I might take a heart attack at any minute.

Somewhere along the way during my fight with the City, I was walking to Lisa Blewett’s house for a “get together” of some sort, when on the street a half block away from the front door I saw this girl with weird teeth and a world class strut coming at me. She was staring right at me and as I tried to give way she moved over to my side of the sidewalk essentially blocking me. I looked at her as if to say “what the fuck”? Nothing, no back down what so ever. Then I recognized her. It turns out Lisa showed me her photo on her phone a few weeks before. (“Lisa, I basically saved your whole life, got you off the bottle, rescued you from fatness and you met your husband at our school…What have you ever done for me? I know you have some hot, cool friends I have seen them, you never bring em around”) after the badgering she produced her phone and as I scrolled I settled on the girl now staring at me.

“I know you.” she says.   “Fuck a bad facebook hookup” I say to myself. “No you don’t.” I say to her as I try to deek around her”. “Yes you do” the weird girl decides to press her case.   “No you don’t.” I counter with disgust in my voice. Now angry, she says Louder than before “Yes you do, you used to go to the Regal Beagle”. With a high nose I retort, “I don’t go to that place, it’s a pick up joint”.   “Well you did, you came in with Curt Hillier after Friday night hockey.”

Fuck me, Curt is my financial planner and I did used to go there with him after Friday hockey.   “That was 3 years ago” I say dumbfounded.

“See, told you.” she offers proudly as she walks off.

The rest of the story is legend and might get released in the e-book if the censors allow it, but in short Audrey is the coolest girl in the world and I still have never beat her in a bet. I lost $123 on our second date. I told her I loved her within one week and proposed within six months.

The proposal was straight from a fairytale. We were in LA sleeping in my high school friend’s (Squid) spare bedroom after the CrossFit Games in 2011, and a particularly stressful meeting with Glassman. I woke up at 4 am and had to pee. As I was coming back from the bathroom, I had a thought. “You really needed her in that meeting, if she wasn’t there it really could have went all wrong, you have never met another girl like her and it will never get better for you than her.   I rolled her over and woke her up and proposed on the spot. “Yes. Will you marry me?” was her response. Then we went back to sleep.

Things were going well back in Vancouver at this point, too. T-Bear, Sheppy, and Andy’s businesses were rolling. All three of them were making professional wages, between $75,000 and $105,000 a year.

And our formal Apprentice Coach Diploma program was up and running. Eunice was our first coach to graduate through the entire apprentice program—Junior Apprentice, Senior Apprentice, Associate Coach—and she was now a self-sufficient coach. Off the tit. (Editor’s note: My graduation gift was a pair of kegel balls).

Bumpy, Billdo, Lumber and Lunger were rounding into excellent coaches and although long winded and selling flowers on the side, Chesty was working his way through the ranks at a decent clip. Charlie even had apprentices!! The all looks team staring Opie and Guido.   We also had a great crew of “Utility Infielders” led by Kermit, CJ (more on him in CH 9), Dan the Afghan, and Reto “Ginger Crotch” Corfu. Kermit was and continues to be the best money I spend every month, however the boys needed some work. Dan was loyal, strong and generous, but clearly a close talker and weird as a 16^th century dinner gown. On our first surf trip together Crotch told me a new law of the universe he had discovered, “Patterson, you can’t fall in love after the age of 26.”

A few struggles aside the community was flourishing. New people were coming through the doors all the time, and with classes getting busier and busier, it was great to be able to have an apprentice coach help out in each class. The vibe was great.

At this point, with Eunice in place as an associate coach and a handful of young apprentices coming through, I was able to reduce my hours on the floor to just a couple hours a week. We were sailing with a good strong wind at our back. The storm was over.

Until the world intervened again.

This time, it was Reebok who came on board. Greg had decided to shift the focus of CrossFit into the direction of the CrossFit Games, and now Reebok had become the main sponsor. There were rumours about Reebok opening 300 CrossFit gyms around the world.

If they plopped one of these things in Vancouver—with their unlimited marketing budget and Reebok brand—we were all screwed. Reebok knew how to sell shoes; they had no idea how to run a gym. But it wouldn’t matter. They could do it all wrong and there would be a few hundred more fools lined up at the door wanting to buy in.   As long as they were selling shoes and clothing in the process who cared?

One day, a Reebok rep came to Vancouver to talk to us. I got pretty agitated with her, explaining to her that I would raise all hell if Reebok opened a gym down the street. Why the hell was a shoe manufacturer wanting to get in to a grass roots gym business anyway? Just sell your shoes to us and our clients…..done.

Their plan was to pluck coaches from other gyms to open new Reebok gyms. The idea was to give the coach who would open a Reebok gym a low-interest or interest-free loan. She even suggested a coach like Eunice might want to open her own Reebok affiliate with Reebok’s help.

I called Eunice into the office.

“Eunice, how much money did you take home last month?”

“$8,000,” Eunice replied.

The Reebok reps eyes bugged out in surprise.

“How many hours a week did you work?”

“About 25,” Eunice replied.

The Reebok rep started to see where this was going.

“Would you want to take on a loan and the workload of running a gym by yourself, Eunice?

She laughed at the thought. “Not a chance.”

I looked at this woman and said point blank, “So let me get this straight, your plan is to come into this market, basically use my branding, steal my best people and you have no idea how to run a gym and then I promote your shoes to my members?”

The Reebok rep was freaked out pretty hard. Clearly we had something in Vancouver she hadn’t seen before as she traveled around visiting other established CrossFit gyms.

At other gyms, the situation was, and still is, always the same: Coaches barely make enough money to survive, so coach retention is generally poor (a negative for the clients and the business). Often times, coaches get lured in by the apparent prestige of owning their own gym, so they leave and start their own affiliate down the street. They aren’t making money anyway, so they might as well own their own gym, is their thinking. Other times, coaches lose faith in ever making a living coaching, so they leave the fitness industry all together.

Back to 2012: The Reebok rep became so visibly upset she drove her car into our loading bay as she was leaving. Four guys had to lift her car out and send her on her way. She was fired shortly after and I was on a plane to Boston the meet the Reebok guys.

After that meeting I knew I needed to move forward with my consulting business, which had been put on hold because of all my troubles with the City, and get a group of likeminded affiliate owners together to figure out Best Practices.

I knew we had a long road ahead of us: Ideas are cheap. Execution is expensive.

MadLab Group was officially incorporated in February of 2012 and its first hire was a scrappy little Kiwi who called me the C-Word the first day we met. Dashie, like most of us was done with the real world. She hated her job and didn’t much care for her boss either, (She loves her current Boss so much) so I said “Come help me, I have a job for ya, ya little scrapper!!” She quickly became know as “Dashie the rat catcher” and is now the GM of the school, but back in those days we were trying to figure out what to do with MadLab Group and she was my XO. She was Denzel Washington to my Gene Hackman.

We started recording the data we were collecting from mentoring other gym owners. I discovered exactly how much each affiliate was making, how much their coaches were making, how many hours they were working, how good their client and coach retention was, what their fundamentals program was like, what their coach compensation and coach development programs were like, and on and on. Their numbers were pretty desperate.

And more than anything, it became pretty clear to me that most affiliates relied heavily on bringing in new members, which was becoming increasingly more difficult as the market was becoming more saturated.

I originally started hosting weekend seminars in 2006—an executive business mentorship program—which attracted affiliate owners from all over North America and Europe. I dusted that program off and sent it over the boards for another shift.

While useful, we realized after the first year that you can only do so much in a weekend. What we needed was follow-up with our members and support systems. We needed an implementation process.

This was the start of what has become the MadLab Group today. Our members have access to an online school full of business and coach development resources, software systems to keep track of business data and billing, a workout tracker to monitor students’ performances, and a step-by-step implementation process with support staff.

In the early days it was rough and totally unscalable. It was basically me and Dashie, a 2 day course, email, and a few power points and word docs. I was on the phone or travelling to the alpha gyms to sort shit out all the time.   It evolved into a dropbox with word documents and power points. Today it’s a polished 2^nd generation online school with more than 100 different modules and written exams.

Once again, we made a ton of mistakes along the way. For those of you who were around for the ill-fated Pocket Coach (Dashie loved debugging that baby), you know what I’m talking about.

But with the help of many supporting characters—Dashie (XO), Big Red Asshole (COO), Dave Picardy (VP Sales), JJ (Manager of Professional Development Program) and GG (Implementation Manager)—we eventually got our ducks in a row. (More on each of them and “The Dood” in The MLG e-book version.)

In terms of discovering best practices, and the business model we teach today, we started out with an Alpha Team, which included seven gyms that had all been open for a minimum of 5 years and were currently flat on growth. We implemented our system best we could with what we had at the time. Each gym messed up something, but as a whole, their numbers instantly improved.

We did this again with a Beta group of 25 gyms, and then with a Gamma group. With each group, we learned something new. As a result of this, and our improved tools and implementation process, each group saw more and faster improvement than the previous.

Our newest baby is our Professional Coach Diploma Program headed by SFU kinesiology professor Tony Leyland. Tony has been a great friend and supporter since his first work out (painfully grotesque Grace with 115lbs) with me at 29 east 2^nd. He is the man as well as a pretty good skier, runner, tennis player, and amateur drinker. Without him we would just be a group of gym monkeys trying to sound smart. Thanks Prof!!

The numbers we looked at were revenue, profit, $/ coach hour, and coach pay as well as retention and life-time value of a client. The results have been dramatic as documented by Kapil Khimidas, MBA Harvard University (see attached study) who looked at how our gyms were performing. Kapil was studying in Boston when CF Boston went through the MadLab transformation. He loved it so much he reached out and offered to take an in-depth look at the numbers.

What he found…… increases in Revenue ($13k – $20k) profit ($1,700-$3,700) and coach pay ($2,250 – $4,000)

The keys continue to be 1) a sound fundamentals program, 2) coach for life 3) a good coach development program and 4) the right coach compensation model.

Today, I see others out there trying to sell consulting services and business services to gyms, but the moment I dig into what they’re doing, it’s instantly clear that they don’t have any of these things. They have never had a successful gym, have never had coaches make a professional wage because they are following the group X business model. They’re polishing up a bad business model and trying to sell it. It’s like polishing a turd. It will never shine.

Today, we have almost 150 members who have implemented our business model. We have done all of this without any marketing or advertising of any kind. We have attracted more and more gyms through word-of-mouth based solely on the results we are achieving.   You might not know it yet, but you are part of a great world wide community. If you are ever travelling, you should stop by one of our member gyms (map and links coming) and tell them you are with MadLab School and see what happens next. From what I have been told, it’s a little like travelling in the underground tourism community in Cuba. You are treated to an authentic experience and get the royal treatment.

Mad Lab metrics PDF

Warm Up: Coach Choice

Barbell Flow

1×20 Alternating Elbow Reach
1×10 Slow Tall Cleans
1×10 Slow Hang Cleans
1×10 Tall Cleans
1×10 Hang Cleans

Strength/Skill:

A1) 4×3 Power Clean from Blocks

Pair up with individuals of similar ability. Use stations that align “above knee” position.
Emphasis is on acceleration.

A2) 4×30-60 second Ring Flexed Arm Hang

Elevated Row (Feet on box)
Ground Row (As horizontal as possible)

Conditioning:

60 Calorie Row

5 Rounds:

10 Goblet Step Ups 55/35
20 Bent Hollow Rocks

Thank you to all of you who came out and celebrated our 10-year anniversary at the beach on Saturday! One of the most memorable community events we’ve had in a while!

Definitely going to become an annual event. We’ll be posting photo albums shortly, but here’s a sneak peak… Enjoy!

Monday Lesson Plan

Warm Up: Coach Choice

Include Power Box Jumps

Strength/Skill:

8R Barbell Hip Thrust

Stick with sets of 8 throughout until heaviest set is achieved.
Use blocks at 9-11″. See what your glutes are made of!
Increase weight on barbell as long as the gluteal contraction is maintained.
Posteriorly tilt the pelvis at the top of the movement. Ribcage down, crotch to face.

Conditioning:

18 Minute AMRAP:

270m Opera Run
10 Elevated Push Ups
5 Front Squat 135/95

Remember there are NO classes at the school today.

There is a workout at the beach at 10am and then we will be there for the day. We to hope to see many of your faces

After a week of anesthetizing myself in Mexico with the PUP, postponing the inevitable, I came back to Vancouver with the worst hangover of my life, with my legal bill ticking upwards in the background, and another relationship coming apart—the stuffing of my life busting out at every seam.

It was under this climate that we started our long, arduous battle with the City of Vancouver. I figured it would be a long drawn out ground war, but I had no idea we’d be in for 2 years of constant grinding stress.

I read and researched the City’s zoning laws like a man possessed and then reproached.

“No, you’re a fitness facility. You’re done,” they kept telling me. Apparently Gold’s gym and other huge organizations had invested heavily in trying to open in the area, but even with their massive resources, they weren’t able to get in. And here we were, little CrossFit Vancouver, sitting on prime real estate trying to figure out a way in where others more powerful than us had failed. Part of me thought we were totally fucked.

But something kept telling me to keep fighting. I knew we weren’t like Gold’s or other Globo gyms. And we simply couldn’t afford to move again. Period. But to stay where we were we needed to be registered as a recording studio, or maybe a dance studio. Or, I discovered, we could be a vocational school.

“Hmmm, Vocational School.” We had been teaching people from all over the world for years on what we had found already. Upon further inspection, I discovered more than 100 people who had informally studied with us at one point, who would give me a letter of recommendation. In the end, I received 128 written letters from the RCMP, the Department of National Defense, former apprentices, respected business owners, CrossFit HQ, the PCTIA, Labour Canada, and tons of coaches and business owners from all over the world.

Before all of that, we had to go through three levels of government approval. The first step to becoming a formal school was getting Industry Canada to recognize our version of a “Fitness Coach”. That took a while and used up some energy, but it was reasonable and understandable.

Next, we had to go through the PCTIA approval process (Private Career Training Institutions Agency of British Columbia —the governing body for vocational schools). This was a daunting task. We were already a learning facility, but our systems and procedures were informal and home-made. To get PCTIA approval, we’d have to take a giant empty binder of the PCTIA’s procedures and processes, and fill it with legitimate curricula, business systems, coach development procedures, performance reviews, written exams, on-floor evaluations, policies, student handbooks, the list went on and on.

To do this — to build our formal program — I looked back to all the people we had worked with over the course of the last few years, the people we had consulted to around North America, and the coaches we had mentored in-house. Each of our full-time coaches brought something different to our facility. Each of them became a piece of the puzzle in creating our official Apprentice Coach Diploma Program.

First, there was T-Bear —Salesman of the year.

Before T-Bear came into the fitness industry, he had had a ton of sales training during his days at Johnson Controls (Fortune 100 out of Milwaukee), as well as an engineering degree. Today, he is still the top grossing coach out of 500 coaches in the MadLab Group, and a minor cult celebrity (but still a mystery to most).

Editor’s note: Communicating with T-Bear is like communicating with a dolphin. You have to listen for his clicks and whistles to figure out what he’s trying to say. Half the time I wonder if his clients even know what they just purchased when they start personal training with him (I once heard him trying to sell five years up front). But he’s a master at sales. And he’s a master at getting people fit. He cares about his clients. He keeps them for years. And they love him for it.

T-Bear was the first coach to ever be put on the MadLab coach compensation program. At the time, he earned 70 percent of the revenue he generated. We later learned 70 percent was way too much, and now coaches work their way up to make 50 percent as associate coaches, and 60 percent when they buy into the business.

In fact, many of the critical steps in the way we raise clients today came from T-Bear’s evolution. From figuring out how to best intake a new client, to graduating clients to group classes, to generating referrals, to account management, T-Bear was always the guinea pig, always taking risks to figure out what worked best. When it came to the first day, T-Bear was our first coach to really master the art of earning a new client.

“If I do a great first day with a new prospect, I know I have a client for at least three years,” T-Bear often says.

Sales aside, T-Bear has always been an innovative, creative coach. He has a passion for human movement, and knows how to get his clients fitness results. And personally, T-Bear taught me the importance of mentorship —another backbone of our school today. In short, you have to choose apprentice coaches that you like.

T-Bear and I lived together as he was going through the system. Eventually, he moved from the dog bed to the ranch, and we would sit around at night figuring out how we could fuck people up — and where the line was between helping people and hurting people. We also started the first YouTube CrossFit channel together, where we’d release weekly videos that monopolized the CrossFit video community in those early CrossFit days. (Our Youtube channel got expropriated years later and we lost all those old videos, or so we thought at the time. Turns out, our Buddy BK kept a secret hard drive. We will be rereleasing all those old classic videos under the MadLab brand shortly. Thankfully, we own that trademark and no one can take them away from us again).

Then, there was Sheppy.

Sheppy is emotional, compassionate and brimming with “One Love.” (Personal development testing pegs Sheppy as a ‘high blue,’ meaning he’s all heart, all love and all emotion).

When he showed up, he was super good looking, fit, charming, well-spoken, and educated. He arrived every day, worked his bag off and brought just a ton of great energy. I have never been much of a weed guy, but turns out, back in those days, Sheppy liked to smoke a fatty before he worked out, and he killed it. I thought, “Wow that must be the key. I’m going to smoke some weed and smash workouts up in here.” One day, T and I hot-boxed T-Bear’s Mustang (‘69 convertible he rebuilt with his Grandfather – a classic) and decided to give it a shot. I immediately lost the plot. I had no idea what movement I should be on, lost the count every four seconds and felt like I was roller-skating on a skiff in an open ocean. Afterwards, I thought to myself “How in the fuck does Sheppy do it? This guy is a heavy dude.”

We were all getting along like gangbusters when Sheppy brought his super hot girlfriend in for me to train. The drama began.

My first major interaction with him outside the gym was in 2006. I had been training his girlfriend for some time and she was awesome. I usually got close with most of my clients. I have crossed a few lines; I am no angel and have paid the consequences, but I respected the hell out of Sheppy and shagging his girlfriend was a line I was never going to cross.

But, he didn’t know that.

So one Thursday night, we all got invited to the house of this dashingly handsome character we would later come to know as Rob ‘Erkel’ Dunn (still a great supporter of our community today. Congrats on the wife BTW. Miracles do happen, bro). It started getting boozy, smokey, and somewhat psychedelic — quickly. Eventually, we headed to the Red Room to watch some DJ unknown to me, and made a pit stop at a pub before the show.

Soon, Sheppy’s girlfriend (extremely intoxicated and lovey-dovey) and I got locked into an intense conversation, when out of the corner of my eye I noticed this girl sitting down talking to Sheppy. She was right in his face, but I could hear every word she said.

“He’s banging her for sure. For sure, he’s banging her.”

I then saw Sheppy turn to look at his girlfriend and I, and I saw something overcome his entire being. A feeling came over me, one I have never felt before or since, but in hindsight I’d describe it like this: You are a rat, you have been put in a cage, and staring you down just out of striking range is a massive python (Punjab Heffner is a wrestler).

I decided to tackle the snake head-on before this got out of hand. I approached Sheppy and told the girl he was chatting with to mind her own business. Sheppy said he wanted to believe me and hummed and hawed, semi-accepting my words. Time went on, Sheppy was still fuming and the shark-like girl still circled looking to create drama. I headed across the street; this situation was a fiery cauldron begging to boil over and I wanted out. Sheppy’s girlfriend, oblivious to everything that was going on, jumped up, ran across the street and grabbed my hand to skip across the street with me. I was defenceless and position-less—the python was out of the cage and bearing down on me.

WWIII breaks out:

The shark girl screams. Sheppy freaks out. And a full scrum starts.

I try to explain to Sheppy, but there is no chance. He smashes the window with his hand in lieu of my face and is bleeding everywhere. But the snake is not satiated with a glass rat; he still craves flesh and blood.

Luckily, Erkel grabs Sheppy and pushes him into the Red Room. Meanwhile I am outside with Sheppy’s girlfriend, still oblivious, and now sick. Her friends dusted her off and eventually she went back into the bar. Some time later, we see her making out with T-Bear’s girlfriend at the time. (At least this took the heat off me. I’m thinking “This has got to help my argument.”) Meanwhile, Sheppy is fuming in the far corner of the bar with a broken hand and doesn’t know it yet.

I decide there’s no win here. It’s time to write the night off. I go home.

After a couple of days of reflection, Sheppy’s girlfriend calls me up, beside herself. Sheppy doesn’t believe her that nothing’s going on.

“Listen Chris, it’s a figment of your imagination and that bitch girl put it there.”

Sheppy agreed to meet up and talk it out. We headed to Starbucks on 3rd and Burrard. Man to man. We sat down and started talking. Soon, we discovered we had both done the Landmark Training, which helped us find common ground and communicate properly.

It was amazing actually; after an hour, I loved this guy. His heart was open, raw and pouring out blood, but he could still talk rationally and share his love and pain openly. I had to have this guy. So I offered him an opportunity to become a coach right there and then.

Crazy shit, right? Life is a trip, Cabrone.
What I learned from that first dramatic encounter with Sheppy was that you can always communicate with him. It might take a while to get there, but you can always get there. Sheppy might be a dangerous Python, as well as whiny and bitchy, but that’s what it means to be Sheppy. He cares more than anyone. And he cares about his clients. Nobody socializes with their clients as much as Sheppy does. He’s a part of their lives and one of my best friends. Sheppy is the foundation of one of the most important features of our school: Coach for Life. We love ya Sheppy!! Go give him a hug when you see him. He likes that stuff.

At about the same time Sheppy was coming through the ranks, so was Andy ‘Nutts” Nuttall.

Andy Nutts was a workhorse. He’d be the first one to arrive in the morning, on his bike in the rain, and the last guy there at night. We’d talk about putting up chalkboards one day, and he’d have them built the next morning. Andy got shit done.

When Andy first came in as a client, he was working as a painter for $10 an hour. I charged him $65 for personal training, and he was the first client to agree to do 20 one-on-one sessions. He needed that many. He had a bad back —“crooked as a politician.” I knew I had to straighten his back out. I didn’t have many tools in my arsenal, so I made him deadlift everyday. He basically paid me $65 an hour to deadlift. But he got stronger and soon had a 400 lb. deadlift. By the time he led men in battle in Afghanistan three years later, he was known as the fittest man in the military.

When Andy first started coaching, his first client was slightly crazy, with an even more eccentric friend who was trying to get into the hot stone massage business. I told him, “Andy, she doesn’t have any money but you need to learn how to train people. Just take the hot stone massages for a trade.”

He comes back after the second massage, his face so puffed up he looks like the Michelin Man.

“Fuck this, Patterson. I can’t take any more of those stone massages. I’m 27 years old. I’m trying to get in the military. I don’t need luxury. I need hardship. No more massages, Patterson.”

So I paid Andy out of pocket and I took the massages. You couldn’t stop that woman. I remember coming off the table, and almost cutting my finger off with a jig saw (CFP and BK were cutting out a sign) for not being able to see through my eyes after a three hour and 15 minute massage.

A bit after Andy Nutts, Andy Sack came along. Nutts and Sack—good one, right? Nutts’ idea.

He was a great athlete and an incredible technician. His attention to detail was unmatched. Even today, the young apprentices coming through know this and look up to Andy.

Where Andy struggled was with being social and communicating with people. I constantly badgered him to be more social and approachable. I was always trying to throw girls at him, too. Many have tried, few have succeeded: Lars and Jesse picked up this torch years later to possible greater success? Either way, I pushed him so much he hated me at one point.

In 2009, during the height of his hatred, we had a bit of a rift in the community, so I went on a date night with The Urban Monk out to Hy’s Steakhouse to make sure we weren’t going to lose him.

He ordered the cheese toast and a bone-in rib eye steak and I put him on the baby scotch program. Three hours and $300 later, we had an agreement. I told him we’d make sure we’d be able to help him make enough money to live. I needed him, our community needed him. I ignored the hatred for the time being.

Today, Andy is the heart behind our continued education credits. He’s the most certified man around, but he also knows that practical application is important. He’s the most innovative coach when it comes to applying and turning his academic knowledge into creative cues that make sense for the client. He is ‘The Man’. Even the competition crazy youngins look to him for answers.

And finally, there was Charlie. When God was handing out the chits, Charlie lined up in the “cool line” twice. (And by the time he got to the math line, the shop was closed up). I grew up with CFP and started babysitting him when he was about 7. The shift finally ended last October. I loved every minute of it.

To us, Charlie brought the ability to be present with every single client. He was patient beyond belief and one of the best listeners you’ll ever meet. His clients loved him, and for a couple years there, his 8 pm class took on a life of its own — the “8 pm Love Class” was legendary, entirely built on loyalty to Charlie.

Charlie also helped us understand the importance of practical application and hands-on learning. He learned how to coach by osmosis. He was never going to sit down and study a textbook – that wasn’t Charlie. I’m not even sure he can read? But he allowed us to grow our practical side of the program. (Today, all apprentices start out by shadowing senior coaches for six months before they start working with their own clients).

Charlie also helped us understand the importance of having management and client tools that are simple and easy to use (thanks to the time six months went by and Charlie didn’t notice that a dozen of his clients hadn’t been billed).

So here I was in 2009 with an eviction notice casting a raincloud on my life, reliving all of the important moments that had turned us into a teaching facility, trying to figure out how to turn us into an official school.

I knew I needed to raise one more coach properly. I needed to put someone through a slightly more formal program that followed a systematic plan based on all the lessons learned from my previous coaches. I needed to document the process and create a program that could be replicated for future apprentice coaches to follow.

There needed to be mentorship, and I would need to spend a lot of time with this person, the way I did with TBear, so I had to find someone I could hang out with. I knew this person was going to have to learn how to be a great salesman. This person was going to have to be able to get involved in his clients lives and bring classes to life the way Sheppy does. This person was going to have to be committed to the cause — a work-horse — like Andy Nutts. This person was going to have to be a great athlete with a technical knowledge of the movements like Andy Sack. This person would have to possess Charlie Palmer-like patience when it came to building a client base, and above all possess the loyalty of a Kermit or CJ or Lumber of Afghan, and the scent of a Ginger Crotch (More on them and on other MLS legends in chapter 9). This would require a willingness to shadow and learn on the floor for months as a true student before getting paid a cent. And finally, this person would need a bit of Patterson: Cock, balls and recklessness.

I needed to find the Jackie Robinson of MadLab (although we weren’t breaking any colour barriers, there were massive challenges to converting gym rats into professors). This apprentice needed heart, grit, determination, innovation, intelligence, and athleticism.

Where the fuck was I going to find this person?

Then that October, I saw her. A picture of swaggering Cock and Balls. A tranny in LuLu’s.

She was on the rowing machine. A tall, athletic creature; she was amazing. I had never seen anything like her. Julius Pepper with better boobs.

There were some rough edges, however. She was rowing so hard, a cheese farm had built up around the corners of her mouth, and as we started talking I noticed a greyish smudging on her teeth giving the impression of rural hygiene.

“I have no idea what I’m doing with my life. I have a couple useless degrees. I’m not sure if I want to cling onto the rowing dream to please my mother or move on with my life,” she told me. She was so blunt, so raw, so real, so hot…

I was in love. (The teeth and corner cheese were issues we might be able to work with).

Eunice became my last great project (nicknamed Eunice for the old-woman conservativeness she expressed when she first moved here. I now call her Rose, as she can be short-sighted and a little greedy, just like Rose from the Titanic, who clung onto the life raft and left her lover Jack to freeze to death: Short-sighted and a little greedy.).

Editor’s Note: I might as well step in and tell this part of the story since it’s about me.

I was lost and confused, and I was totally oblivious to the pending doom that was going on at CrossFit Vancouver, when I arrived in 2009 (although I sensed Patty was stressed).

One of the first times we went out for breakfast, I decided to see what I could drum up about Andy Sack. Like many women before and after me, I was drawn to Andy.

“Do you think Andy is happy? I asked Patty, bright-eyed and bushy tailed, excited about my new crush. Patty, who was looking off into the distance as he pushed his hash browns around his plate, was clearly distracted—borderline consumed—by some other stress. He looked my way, dazed, tired before mustering a response: “Is anyone really happy?” he asked in a hopeless rhetoric.

When Patty took me on, I had no idea he was planning on using me as a test case to prove his business worked. I had no idea his business was even threatened. There was just something about him that drew me in.

Sidenote: Just to answer the question many people wonder, we’ve never so much as kissed (with tongue, at least. We came close on opening ceremonies night at the Olympics), although I used to prance around in his living room in my bra and underwear and sleepover in the same bed on occasion. I found out later he had to go to counselling because of it. “No, don’t do it,” Mahara, Patty’s “rebirther” warned him, right before we sat down at Deacon’s Corner for breakfast one morning and spit shook on refraining from going down that path with each other. (When Patty finally met Audrey a couple years later, nobody breathed a bigger sigh of relief than my mother).

Patty and I did become incredibly close, though. It was a true mentorship. He passed on the wisdom about fitness, business and life he had learned from Glassman, and I believed every word he said.

“Eunice, don’t worry. You’ll be off the tit soon. Tell your mom you’ll be making $3,000 a month before Christmas.”

“Eunice, $5,000 before the summer.”

“You’ll be off your mother’s tit soon.”

Not realizing I was a guinea pig and he was just throwing numbers out there to motivate me—and so I could tell my mom I was getting closer to being financially independent—I chose to believe in him. To believe in the system. Ignorance is bliss: I took his words as fact, as opposed to motivation, and made it happen.

Although the system was still rag-tag back then, the path to becoming a coach was paving itself in front of me: I shadowed classes and learned how to coach technically. I took my Level 1 certification. I studied and wrote five written exams. I got to know my clients, and when I could afford it, I started taking clients for lunch or drinks to show my appreciation. I listened to Patty’s sales advice. I figured out how to bring people in on my own. I hosted community events (some worked out well like The Valentine’s Day Dating Game. Others, like the clothing swap, were epic failures) and ran specialty programs, such as rowing seminars.

While the system was still a little fuzzy back then —I got a raise from Patty one time for flexing my hamstrings for an Asian girl he was into during his ill-fated “Pilipino Fever” phase.

But the big graduation milestones were in place: I graduated from Junior to Senior B apprentice once I brought three clients in to the gym, from Senior B to Senior A once I had 10 clients, and from Senior A to Associate coach once I had 25 clients and 50 percent referrals.
The system, loose as it was back then, always made a ton of sense to me. You take care of your clients and the business (and free market) takes care of you. In January 2011, I Graduated to Associate Coach and finally got off of Angela’s tit.

Ok, back to Patty’s story.

I spent countless thousands of dollars getting our school registered, getting our processes in order and gathering those 120 testimonial letters.

Overall, it took us a while—8 gruelling months—to get our ducks in a row, but everyone stepped up and made it happen. My girlfriend at the time was a school teacher, and even though our relationship was in tatters, she did a tremendous amount of work helping us gain accreditation. She threw in work stoppages and work to rule actions, and a big screen TV and a trip to Vegas in the fall of 2009 later, the PCTIA accepted us as a member. This was about the time Eunice stumbled into the facility.

While the federal and provincial governments recognized us as a school, the fight wasn’t over. We still had to convince the City. We still didn’t have our business license to operate legally and were in all kinds of legal action from it. The legal and consulting bill was mounting.

In the following months, we came close—or I thought we came close—a couple times. I was so desperate for my business license drama to be over I kept calling pre-emptive celebrations. One night cost me $1,000 in booze at the Cascade room when I jumped the gun and celebrated winning the war with a group of my top coaches. (Editor’s note: The bartender said it was the biggest tip he’d ever received from one person. Two staff came in for a first day shortly after). During another night of early celebrations, we accidentally hard-boiled $150 in prime New York strips while holding booze laden handstand push-up competitions in the living room.

After each celebration, I woke up the next morning to a new cease and desist order on our door. (Andy would arrive at the school early and take them down before anyone could freak out).

One day, when it was obvious to all that I was struggling, T-Bear approached. Waiting for the inevitable clicks and whistles and dreading the effort to have to translate into human – out came English.

“Hey, if I have to go back and work for some fucking idiot in some office and wear a suit again. You’ve totally fucked me, Patterson.”

Once a week, Kermit would approach from an obtuse angle. ”Where’s it at now, Craig? You ok?”

Her voice quieted my anxiety.

Often I found myself in the deepest moments of despair—the guilt of not doing this by the book from the beginning ate me alive—working on the solution and living with an overwhelming sense of doom, was my consistent daily struggle. On weeknights, I’d have a triple scotch just to not think for a few moments. Two of those and I actually felt normal. This became my daily routine for two years.

While contemplating the risks of having a heart attack waiting for my business license, I hired a well-recommended 85-year-old consultant named Merwin Chercover. He refused to have me as a client until he believed our case was legit. Once he believed we were a school, he took me on as probably his last major client in what he said was one of his longest, most gruelling cases in a very long career.

When the day finally came (involved parties refused to hear our case, so we went over their heads) to meet with the City—I sat down with my 85-year-old consultant and three hefty binders at my side.

My man was a buzz saw when we met with a host of City managers in a three-hour meeting to determine our fate. Merwin was foaming at the mouth when he finally stood up and shouted.

“This is a school. I put my reputation on it. I’ve been here working with you guys for 40 years. My reputation is 100 percent. I wouldn’t have backed these guys if I didn’t think this was a school. This is a school,” he said, foam flying.

On the way out I looked at this little waddling old fart and I welled up. Eventually, through glistening eyes I offered, “Fuck me, Merwin, I didn’t know you were a pit bull?” He stopped, removed his bifocals and looked into my eyes. I immediately recognized my error. “Didn’t you know?” he asked with a dead straight expression. Thanks Merwin, you are a dude!

Finally, on D-Day, 2011, it arrived—the most important document I’ve ever achieved and for a moment I felt joy.

We blew up the business license, and it still hangs on our wall today.

In hindsight, I now acknowledge my part in the whole debacle and pledge to never cut corners again, but at the end of the day the trouble the City was a blessing. At first, I really resented them. I was full of fear and hatred. But it turned out to be a massive silver lining on a dense rain cloud. It nearly killed me, and it endangered the livelihood of close friends who entrusted me with their future, but it was necessary.

We became, and still are, the only registered vocational School of Fitness in the country—the only facility of its kind that can give diplomas in “functional fitness”—and became the backbone of the MadLab Group.

Somehow the world seems to take care of us.

Our community was now safe—our facility, our coaches, our clients were thriving again.

We were all good.

Until a new disaster arrived. It had its own LOGO.

Friday

Warm Up: Coach Choice

Include Side Plank Twists

Strength/Skill:

A) 12 Minutes to find Heavy Deadlift Double

B) 6 Minute OTM: 3 Hang Cleans @ 50-70% of part A

Conditioning:

OTM as far as possible

5 Thrusters 75/55
6 Pull Ups
7 Burpees

You may take one break; use it wisely.

Saturday

SEEYOU AT THE BEACH FOR A FUN BEACH WORKOUT! 10am Start

Taking a short one-night break from Patty’s story to remind you all to come – and bring your kids – this Saturday to our 10-year anniversary celebration at Spanish Banks. We’ll be near Trimble as a cross street. Look for the black Madlab banner and a large group of athletic-looking humans. Check out our FACEBOOK event page, for a map of where we’ll be, as well as our Plan B in case our first spot is taken.

Classes will be cancelled on Saturday in lieu of a workout on the beach at 10 am run by Eunice and Tom. Later in the afternoon, we’ll be BBQ-ing burgers etc… We’ll also brings some large coolers for drinks.

The schedule for the day (but feel free to join us at any point):

10.00am: Workout Hosted by Eunice and Tom

11.00am: Chill on the beach

12.00pm: Waterballoon Toss – Hosted by Shep (BBQ will start up around this time)

1.00pm: Three Legged Race – Hosted by Patty

3.00pm: Tug O War Competition – Hosted by Andy and Tbear

Note – We will also have HooverBall set up and that will be ongoing. Feel free to bring Botchi, Frisbees, or any other cool games you have! Cam Mather – we expect you to bring Spike Ball.

See you all on Saturday!

Thursday Lesson Plan

Warm Up: Coach Choice

Include Table Rocks + Tempo Floor Press

Strength/Skill:

6×3 Bench Press

Conditioning:

16 Minute OTM:

Elite:
1st. 3 Muscle Ups
2nd. 5 Handstand Push Ups
3rd. 10 Alternating Pistols
4th. 10 Straddle Ups

Intermediate:
1st. 3 Strict Pull Ups
2nd. 5 Handstand Negatives
3rd. 10 Skater Squats
4th. 10 V Ups

Novice:
1st. 3 Elevated Ring Rows
2nd. 5 Push Ups
3rd. 10 Bulgarian Split Squats
4th. 10 Tuck Ups

By 2008, we had our ducks in a row. We had a solid intake process — 12-15 personal training sessions — we understood the importance of developing coaches properly, and our coach compensation model was flourishing.

I was having the most fun I’ve ever had in my life. I felt like I had a human garden. Each day, I showed up and watered my garden of coaches and clients, and watched them steadily grow healthier all the time.

At the same time, CrossFit as a worldwide community had gone from five affiliates to a few hundred by 2008. By 2009, we hit 1,000.

One day, I got a call from Glassman. “Patty I need you to get in there and make sure these clowns don’t ruin all the hard work!!”

Apparently Andy Petranek, the owner of CrossFit Los Angelos, and his business partner at the time, were starting a business consulting group. Their idea was to come in and show other business owners how to best run their affiliate. Apparently Andy’s guy had worked in the martial arts world and had the solution as to how to run a CrossFit facility.

Greg and I had been semi-secretly working together on the business model (now known as the “Madlab” business model) since day 1. By 2006, he shut down his gym and was focusing on CrossFit as a Media company. Greg recognized early on that the “Boot Camp” business model was not going to work for something as complex as CrossFit. In fact, Greg himself started CrossFit as a personal training culture, not a group exercise one.

So Andy created the “Mastermind Group,” made up of myself and 10 to 15 other “top” affiliate owners in the world, including Petranek, Jeremy Theil, Skip Chase, Matt Hunt (Hard Exercise Works) and current MadLab Group members Eric Leclair and Dave Picardy.

The idea was to talk as a group once a month, and to reveal our numbers with each other. But as our meetings unfolded, it became obvious that many business owners didn’t want to reveal their financials and dropped out of the group quickly. After a few months, our group dwindled to just five or six people.

When numbers were revealed, nobody’s numbers came even close to ours. Petranek was showing some growth in LA, but he was miles behind us. When we got to talking I realized no one had a functional fundamentals program, there was no coach development, and every other gym owner was paying their coaches by the hour or per class. CrossFit had been turned into Group Exercise.

And although what we were doing was far from perfect, it was clear right away that what we had in Vancouver was head-and-shoulders above what every other affiliate owner in the world was up to — by at least a two-to-one ratio on every metric we measured.

We were grossing $50,000 to $60,000 a month, while most were scraping by earning just $5,000 in gross revenue. The top earners I came across were hitting $15,000 to $20,000, still nowhere near what we were doing. It was clear to me that the “growth” these gyms were having was due to a “global” phenomenon and it showed in their astronomical churn rates. There were so many new people coming in the door in LA in 2009 that how many went out the back end – a focus on retention – was not a concern.

And what was even more telling than gross revenue was how our coaches were doing. Our top coaches were taking home $5,000 to $6,000 a month. Nobody else was even in the ball park. Hardly anyone was turning a profit. The situation was dire. Millions of people headed for thousands of gyms with the wrong business model in place.

Andy and I became good friends during this time and I developed a lot of respect for him (he and his Gym legacy at CFLA are now a part of the MadLab Group – more later), but he and his partner were still determined to go to market with their consulting business, (called “The biz”) which made no sense to me.

It was too early to go to market with their stuff, and my data absolutely crushed theirs. Ironically, there are now a plethora of “new wave” business consultants today touting their ability to improve gyms’ businesses with the same broken model that developed from this “Mastermind” group.

I knew at the time “Group Exercise” and paying coaches by the hour wasn’t the way to run a world-class fitness facility. I knew our personal training model was better, however; the gold rush was on for a business consulting.

That same year — 2008 — Glassman set up a showdown of the 3 potential business consultants at the Filfest in Las Vegas: Andy and his guy, Matt Hunt, and myself. I spoke about what we were doing and our results. It was obvious to all those struggling affiliate owners in attendance that they needed a business model.

Glassman said it was clear to everyone in that room that what we were doing at CFV made the most sense. Greg and Lauren had asked me before to be “The business guy” for CFHQ, but I had to decline. My community and my guys needed me.

When CrossFit HQ put the video up on their website a year later — in December 2008 – I was flooded with calls calls from business owners asking for help.

The story was always the same: Most gyms had no coach development, no coach compensation model and weren’t intaking new clients properly.

Meanwhile, back on the home front, we had moved locations again in the spring of 2009, to our current location on 1980 Clark Drive. It was only two blocks from “The Barn,” so one day we turned our group classes into moving day. We made teams and our community helped us move to our new home. It took us 23 and a half minutes to move our entire gym. Our community was solid.

Our new facility was the facility we been waiting for: Lots of parking and square footage, giant bay doors, high ceilings, natural light, quiet streets to run on. And we could make as much noise as we needed to. We had nailed it. Finally.

As for the consulting end of things, I spent hours upon hours on the phone trying to explain to gym owners how to execute our model. It was exhausting, and after a few months my girlfriend at the time said, “Dude, you spend all day saying the exact same thing. Why don’t you just tape yourself and hold it up to the phone?” It was weird. Our model is so simple and elegant I couldn’t understand why they couldn’t just figure it out with the one-page description (and graphic) of the solution I gave them.

It was obvious they needed more, obvious I needed some infrastructure before I would be ready to sell our business model to hundreds of affiliates around the world.

The truth is, it has taken 4 years, an Alpha, Beta, and Gamma test with more than 150 gyms, three generations of software, $250,000 in hard costs, and a team of a dozen people to figure out how to properly train gym owners and coaches on our system.

I was about to take it all on back in 2008, but then the world intervened.

A new crisis had emerged on the home front.

It happened unexpectedly one day as I checked my voicemail. It was an inspector from the City of Vancouver telling me we had to shut down.

“Enjoy your trip to Mexico. We’ll deal with this when you’re back, but you’re done. Evicted,” the building inspector said.

With a cease and desist notice on my door, I had a panic attack.

Then, I got on the phone with Luca Citton, (aka ‘Matlock’) my lawyer, and cried my eyes out. Following his, I drank 9 double scotches on a first class flight to Mexico, and continued to drink and surf and cry the entire time I was there.

The reason for the eviction notice: Bylaws leftover from the 1950s designed to protect the jobs of textile workers disallowed gyms in that zoning area of the City.

Our space was a sweatshop before we took over. It had the most intense electrical system in what is now our lounge area. 42 microwaves were stacked on top of each other – a rubic’s cube of mayhem. When the lunch fog horn went off, exactly 42 workers in face masks trundled upstairs and warmed their lunches. 20 minutes later, the horn went off again and another 42 hit the microwaves. Four groups in total.

The space was awesome, but I learned a great lesson and I should have been more responsible. What pained me so much was it wasn’t just my own livelihood at stake this time. I was worried about my family, my coaches — T-Bear, Sheppy, Andy Sac, Charlie. I couldn’t bear the thought of our community being torn apart. Eviction meant bankruptcy. We’d be done.

I wasn’t sure how to fix this one.

Unable to find an easy solution, we had to turn our monkey gym / pseudo lab / consulting business into a provincially registered school.

In order to pull this off, I became a 14-hour-a-day workaholic, and would turn to the bottle at night. Sleepless nights and plenty of scotch got me through the next two years and three months.

– Patty

Warm Up: Coach Choice

Barbell Flow

1×20 Alternating Elbow Reach
1×10 Slow Tall Cleans
1×10 Slow Hang Cleans
1×10 Tall Cleans
1×10 Hang Cleans

Strength/Skill:

4×3 Power Clean from Blocks

Pair up with individuals of similar ability. Use stations that align “above knee” position.
Emphasis is on acceleration.

Conditioning:

Grace

30 Ground to Overhead 135/95

7 Minute Cap.

*2 Heats with a Cheerleader.

Another influential creature – The Pup (and his beautiful wife Mamacita)

On November 1st, 2005, we moved to our second location on East 2nd Avenue, just a few blocks away from our first facility.

The location was a lot better than the first one as we now knew how to design, set up and build a world-class gym. By we, I mean The Pup. The Pup has single-handedly built (by hand) every custom piece of equipment we own. Those awesome pull-up bars hanging from the ceiling – The Pup. (The CFHQ training crew see a ton of gym set-ups, and whenever one of their coaches come to visit, they tell us ours is by far the best).

Our new facility was definitely a step-up, but this was still East Van five years before the Olympics: It wasn’t uncommon to find human feces at our doorstep. One day, The Pup was speeding around the corner of his first lap of Helen and stepped in a gigantic log of hobo shit. He took one look at the bottom of his shoe, and as the smell hit his closest nostril, all hesitation evaporated. The shoes went straight into the dumpster, and he continued on in his little white socks.

To this day, The Pup epitomizes how we want each of you to behave in our school. He is the heart and soul of our membership – the Jonny Toews of MLS. Follow this guy’s lead and you will be fitter than you ever imagined and still be stoked to come to the school 10 years from now.

At this point, I had recognized the value of personal training. My personal training business had earned me $5,000 a month on my own, and the moment we changed to a group class ‘Mossecock’ model at the Terminal location, we nearly got destroyed.

We had 80 members doing group classes and were making less money than when I had had just 30 personal training clients. I knew the answer was that I couldn’t continue to run my business like a spin class or yoga studio, and I intended to abandon that immediately.

It was like a fleeing ratship. My partners left the business, the girls we had hired to coach group exercise moved on, and ironically the only people who were still around were my loyal personal training clients.

I consolidated classes, kept one in the morning, one in the evening, and went back to personal training.

In October of that year, T-Bear left his career in engineering, and just showed up at my one bedroom apartment with his BMW X5 towing a u-haul trailer. “Where the fuck you going, Bear?” I asked. “Moving in with you, Patterson” he replied.

So we moved a bunch of stuff around and made a little dog bed for the Bear under my desk.

Here I was, 33 years old, broke as fuck, with a refugue posted up in my living room. “T, why is there a roll of toilet paper by my computer?”

Shit looked grim, but we had tons of energy and a system that was starting to work.

We still didn’t have a sign on our door, and no one had ever heard of CrossFit. But we were picking up clients and growing.

We got the Bear into shape, too (after he rehabbed from a broken back), and by February 2006, he started coaching with me at our East 2nd location.

Within one year, I paid off my $73,000 debt and added another $50k in cash surplus, but more importantly, we were having the time of our lives and getting a shit ton of people fit. Our community started to thrive.

I soon took on two new coaches — Sheppy and Andy Nutts — who I put through our unofficial coaching apprenticeship program. They started by shadowing me and then eventually started working with their own clients.

By April, 2007, we had somewhat standardized what worked and what didn’t work. Things started to roll. Life was good. The next few years were the happiest time of my life.

Our success came largely because our new standard became 10 to 12 personal training sessions before group classes. As a business, we were bringing in $50,000 of revenue a month, and I was contributing $20,000 of it with my own clients.

We were achieving these numbers without any advertising or marketing. In fact, it turned out our website was broken. As people contacted our us online, their inquiries were sucked into an abyss somewhere on the internet, never making their way to our inbox. We realized this in mid-2007 when we discovered 400, mostly outdated e-mails, from people inquiring about joining.

The one problem we were having was location. Again.

At first, our East 2nd location seemed like a great facility. We could run on the streets, had good natural light, lots of parking, ok bathrooms.

But we had one massive problem: Our neighbours were in the recording business. They’d be recording a commercial and someone would drop a weight and they would go ballistic. Someone would run into the facility and scream that we’d fucked up their recording and there would be hell to pay. Then they’d have to re-record. Luckily, I was training the owner of the recording studio’s wife, Carlotta. She had a lot of pull over there. We managed to negotiate times where we could drop weights and times we needed to be quiet, but it wasn’t ideal. Eventually, we had to move. We were growing too fast.

Back to business model rule six from chapter 4:Location! To add to this point, make sure you get to know everything about your facility before you sign a lease. Moving is expensive. We moved three times in five years. It took us four facilities before we figured this out and finally got it right.

Part of getting it right requires the following facility dealbreakers: High ceilings, bay doors, plenty of free parking, adequate square footage to accommodate future growth, nice bathrooms with showers, natural light, the ability to drop weights and the ability to run on the street. A couple other nice luxuries to have: A lounge for socializing, and space to accommodate rehabilitation.

In 2007, we hadn’t figured this out yet.

By now it should be clear to everyone I’m not a geniuus, but as my good friend Dan “The Dood” MacDougald says in his southern accent, “It’s not about how many mistakes you make. It’s about how you learn from them.”

Then I made another huge mistake. Falsely driven by the concept that the free market takes care of everything and is a perfect system, I decided to open the floodgates to anyone who wanted to coach. We (CFHQ’s first cert in Canada) certified 10 new coaches and gave them the keys. They started earning 70 percent of the revenue they generated, while the gym kept 30 percent. Problem was we weren’t training them properly. There was no mentorship. And it became pretty clear in a hurry that a two-day course didn’t mean they were qualified to coach.

Business lesson number eight: Take on one apprentice at a time.

You actually have to spend time with your apprentices as their mentor. We’ve learned it takes two to three years to properly develop a coach. You have to put all your energy into this person and get them to a place of self-sufficiency. At that point, you can take on a second coach. One person can’t take on five apprentice coaches at once, unless that’s all he’s going. But if you’re running a business and coaching clients yourself, one at a time is plenty.

The 70-30 system put me back on the path to bankruptcy. Business lesson nine: (Factoring in rent and other fixed and unexpected costs,) payroll can never exceed 50 percent of revenue. Or you will go bankrupt.

Not only that, but handing coaches 70 percent too early led to arrogance and feelings of entitlement. Coaches need to earn their way up the ladder. Business lesson number ten: Don’t give away too much too soon. Treat your coaches like business owners, and make them earn their way to success. See Shakesphere’s “King Lear”.

We abandoned the 70-30 for a more moderate 60-40 system. Today, coaches start out by making 20 percent as apprentice coaches and work their way up the ranks until they eventually earn 50 percent of the revenue they generate.

We have found this system of earning your way through the ranks creates understanding and appreciation: Our coaches are independent contractors who truly understand what it’s like to build a business from the ground up.

At this same time in 2007, I found myself on the fast track to burnout. I was working 45 hours on the floor coaching. Business model rule eleven: Coaches should coach between 20 and 30 hours a week. Coaching quality goes down after four or five hours a day. You should also create morning and evening coaching teams, so nobody has to coach at 6 am and then again at 8 pm.

While we’re on the subject of mistakes and lessons, another mistake I’ve seen many owners make is they stop coaching too soon. Once the gym consistently reaches $50,000 to $60,000 in revenue a month, pays the owner $5000 a month, and the business can earn 15-20% profit, then the owner can stop coaching and focus on coach and business development. These are the principles for long-term success.

Once one of our MadLab Group member gyms achieves those numbers, they become a Two-Seal Facility. At this point — $50,000 revenue, $5,000 salary and 15% profit — it makes sense for the owner to get off the floor and focus on other aspects of the business. Dave Picardy (Now VP sales of Madlab Group) of Northshore CrossFit in Boston tried to do otherwise. He came off the floor too early, and it was devastating for his business. He went back on the floor building his clients and coaches. He now has one of the best coaching teams in the world.

As we figured all of these lessons out, we built a crazy great team of coaches, loaded with character. We had a shepherd, a little green frog, an urban monk, a coach everyone simply called “NUTTS”, a ruffled grouse, and Captain “Happy” in the crows nest pointing the way. The Wildebeest turned the tiller to our next location, “The Barn.”

Tuesday Lesson Plan

Warm Up: Coach Choice

Include Power Box Jumps

Strength/Skill:

8R Barbell Hip Thrust

Stick with sets of 8 throughout until heaviest set is achieved.

Use blocks at 9-11″. See what your glutes are made of!

Increase weight on barbell as long as the gluteal contraction is maintained.
Posteriorly tilt the pelvis at the top of the movement. Ribcage down, crotch to face.

Conditioning:

4 Rounds:

50 sec Thrusters 75/55
10 sec Transition
50 sec Push Ups
10 sec Transition
60 sec Bent Hollow Hold
60 sec. Rest

20 Points for 60s Bent Hollow Hold
0 Points for anything under 60s.

Chapter 3: Honing My Craft

Hallie Sanderson (now Palmer) – A client before we even had a facility

After getting kicked out of community centres and gyms for making too much noise and sweating too much — a rite of passage for CrossFit coaches at the time — I finally found someone — Jason Chamney at Fitness Science (thanks Jason) — in Vancouver, who would take me on. In November, 2004, I started my personal training business at Fitness Science on Terminal Street in East Vancouver.

Jason charged me $5 a head to train a client at his facility — a great deal. My rate at the time was $5 an hour for personal training, so it seemed like a win. I was really more interested in honing my trade at the time — in figuring out what works and what doesn’t. And I figured my clients couldn’t ask for much when they were only paying $5.

Glassman had been very clear to me that I shouldn’t raise my rates until the quality of my coaching went up. When quality goes up, demand will go up. This has become business model rule five: Learn how to be good first. Don’t go charging $80 an hour if you don’t know what you’re doing.

When I got more confident, I raised my rates to $10 and half my clients quit. But the best ones stuck around, and by March I was charging $50 an hour, and still only paying the facility $5 a head. Later that spring, I started grossing $5,000 a month, working 20 to 25 hours a week. At that point, I decided to combine some of my clients into small groups of 3 to 5 people. But I never let anyone join a group until they had been through personal training with me first.

One of my first $5 an hour clients was Hallie Sanderson, who still trains with us today. I saw her from across the room on a bike trying to lose weight for a work diet challenge she was determined to win. It was clear she didn’t have a clue what she was doing.

I walked up to this awkwardly hot girl on the bike and asked, “Want to try something?”

I taught her how to do a thruster and an assisted pull-up and gave her a long version of Navy Seal that involved three rows at decreasing distances — 1000m, 500m, 250m.

After that, I didn’t see her for a week.

Then one day she comes back, tells me it was the hardest thing she’s ever done, that she couldn’t walk for a week, and that also she seemed scared to be alone with me. I assumed this meant the sexual tension was too intense for her. So she brought along three of her friends, too: “Big Sloppy,” “Skinny Derek” and her boyfriend at the time, “Big Daddy.”

Business was going well, but it was becoming obvious that I couldn’t stay where I was. I needed my own space. I knew I was offending other personal trainers who worked there, because all their clients started to get more interested in doing the type of training I was hosting.

It was time.

Chapter 4: First Affiliate in Canada

The first CrossFit affiliate in Canada was a 900 square foot space, located at 333 Terminal in East Vancouver. We opened on May 1st, 2005.

From the instant I opened the doors, I pretty much did everything wrong. I had the wrong facility, the wrong business partners, the wrong employees and the wrong business model.

Business model rule six is: Location, location, location. Moving is expensive, and you want to avoid it as much as possible. Do your homework and find a space that’s going to work for a while. You need adequate parking and square footage, natural light, high ceilings, the ability to drop weights and run on the street, and nice shower facilities.

Our space was a terrible one for fitness: Parking was impossible, and the slab was so thin you couldn’t drop weights without them resounding through the whole building. On top of this, we were located right by one of the busiest, downtrodden sky train stations in the city. When we weren’t body checking junkies just to get through the door, we were battling smoking ESL students. But we couldn’t tell them to stop, or train them to stop throwing cigarette butts on our doorstep, because they couldn’t understand a word we said.

The other problem was my two business partners. Great guys. We’re still friends today, but they wanted different things than I did. They wanted to be hands-off owners. Their plan was to hire pretty girls to run the classes: Bikram’s yoga meets CrossFit.

Business model rule seven: Partnership Agreement. If you can do it alone, it’s better than being in a bad relationship or partnership agreement. Even worse than one business partner is a bad threesome. Be careful who you go into business with, and more importantly, pay close attention to what each person wants from the business.

And if this weren’t enough, we hired unqualified coaches and paid them by the hour — doomed to fail. We abandoned personal training and thew everyone into group classes. We were full-on following the group exercise, bootcamp models, which the MadLab Group now refers to as ‘Moosecock’ model. We were going bankrupt quickly.

Interestingly enough, 10 years later, today most CrossFit gyms are run this way: No personal training. Just group exercise ‘Moosecock,’ and they’re wondering why they’re not making any money. You can be the best technical coach in the world, but with this business model you’re going to go bankrupt. You have no chance of making money.

Just nine months after I opened my first location, I was $73,000 in the hole, staring into the chasm of bankruptcy once again, fearing the disappointment from my mother and father and having to go back to Gaspe and live in the basement.

– Patty

Monday Lesson Plan

Warm Up: Coach Choice

Include Wrist Mobility

Strength/Skill:

A) Handstand Hold: Fingertips to Wall – Gather 4 Minutes

Get finger as close to the wall as possible.
Maintain PPT (Posterior Pelvic Tilt)

B1) 4×2 Overhead Squat

Do your best to not fail here.
Do not attempt more than 4 lifts above 90% of your 3RM

B2) 4×5/5 Side Over Arch

Ideally straight arm.
Focus on big stretch and contraction of the obliques>
Arch!

Conditioning:

12 Minute AMRAP:

15 Ball Slams
270m Opera Run

Unoptional Finisher: 3 Big Sets of Pull Ups (Strict if you’re cool)