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.