Members sold their stuff to save their gym- 11 years of CrossFit 184

We're flipping the mic and going deep into the origin story of CrossFit 184. In this raw, unedited interview, owner Zev shares the journey from a 23-year-old college wrestler with a business plan and determination to building a thriving gym with nearly 250 members.

We talk about the original "dungeon" of a building, the early believers club that funded the gym before it even opened, and the member who showed up in her scrubs and ended up changing everything by investing in the dream. We get honest about the hardest season — the move to a new space, a brutal permitting process with the city, and the breaking point that led to a major shift in how the business (and the man behind it) operated.

We also revisit the community rallying through COVID, the birth of "Murph Around Town," the systems and team-building that turned a stagnant gym into a sustainable one, and what it all means heading into the next decade.

This one's got laughs, a few tears, and a whole lot of heart. Grab your headphones and come celebrate 11 years with us.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

All right, welcome back to the CrossFit 184 podcast. We are celebrating 11 years of being open, being an affiliate, and we want to run it back. I want to hear what it was like at the very beginning. We're going to look at some of the struggles, some of the celebrations that we've had as a community, and where we're going for the next decade.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Sweet. So this is going to be from what I understand is inter an interview style.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

So interview style, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

All unedited interview. Ask me anything. Yes format.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

Yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

Here we go.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Um, so I want to start all the way back at the beginning, um, which seems like a long time ago, but not. You opened up the gym at the ripe age of 24.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

23.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

23. 23 years uh old. And let's paint the picture. Some people who are gonna listen to this were right alongside you in the journey, and some people have no idea like how it started. So let's bring it back. Where did you first find CrossFit?

SPEAKER_01 1:03

I first found CrossFit through my personal trainer, Steve Petroff, who owned one of the original gyms here in Marysville, and he since went to South Carolina, North Carolina. Uh, he was my personal trainer when I started in seventh grade all the way through high school in my freshman year of college. I was uh I went to him to train for wrestling. So I was big into wrestling. Wrestling was my entire life, and he was my trainer. He did all my workouts, and we did CrossFit-ish stuff from the very beginning. And the crossing wasn't really around then, but we were doing high-intensity training, we were doing lots of circuit training, mixing in cardio and gymnastics into our workouts as well. So I trusted everything he he told me to do. And one year when I came home from for Christmas break from college, I went to Fit to work out, and Steve's like starting this little cult in the back of Fit. And I said, Hey man, what's going on back there? He said, Oh, that's that's CrossFit. You should try it out when you're here for for uh winter break. So I started doing that with him instead of just like the traditional weightlifting and training, and then fell in love with.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

What year was that?

SPEAKER_01 2:04

Oh boy, freshman year is probably 2011.

SPEAKER_00 2:09

2011, all right.

SPEAKER_01 2:10

That's when I officially that's when I really started doing CrossFit.

SPEAKER_00 2:14

Great. So you started CrossFit and you then headed off, or you were already in college. Yep, I was just um and how many years had you been in school? So it was just your freshman year?

SPEAKER_01 2:26

Just my freshman, just my freshman year, the first winter break I came back. So when I was introduced.

SPEAKER_00 2:30

So you go back to college, obviously, for your second year, and did you continue CrossFit or so?

SPEAKER_01 2:36

At that point, after I left winter break, went back to school for wrestling. I just started doing the wrestling workouts, and then I found CrossFit.com and started doing the CrossFit workouts in like the Globo Gym setting. So just the old school people like at the 24-7 gym, YMCA, or or the College Rec Center. You I was a guy doing like thrusters and kipping pull-ups on like the cable machine. Like, what are you doing? I I was that guy for a few years until I started coaching into a into a CrossFit gym.

SPEAKER_00 3:05

Yeah. So when did you first start coaching then?

SPEAKER_01 3:08

Man, I should have looked over some notes. I but I believe it was 2013. So Route 33 CrossFit. I helped open that gym up. I was the head coach for a year and a half or so before uh before I decided I wanted to do my own thing. Um so I started coaching CrossFit in 2013. Okay. Um, and that was really the summer, summer breaks in between school. And uh, so I'd come home from from college, coach at a CrossFit gym all summer long. And then when I went back to school, I started uh I got hooked up with CrossFit Remix, and I was coaching at remix for three or four years through college.

SPEAKER_00 3:44

Nice. So your first few years of um coaching um and at remix, just because I know you spent probably the most time up there coaching. What did your coaching look like when you were up there?

SPEAKER_01 3:55

So when I first started coaching CrossFit, I did a hundred percent of the on-ramp, onboarding coaching, which uh in my opinion, it teaches you how to be a great coach because you can't really hide behind a group class structure. You're you're working one-on-one or one on like three people, and these three people are brand new to CrossFit and not necessarily the best movers and don't really have the coordination. So learning how to cue and correct and coach these people in a small group setting, and you can't just like move on to someone else really helped develop me as a coach.

SPEAKER_00 4:30

Nice. Um, and while you were coaching um and alongside wrestling, you really fell in love with CrossFit. You wanted to compete, correct?

SPEAKER_01 4:42

Yeah, yeah. So I I started doing uh competitive CrossFit in probably 2014 or so. I know the the summer that Route 33 opened, I was coaching there. I got introduced to the CrossFit Open and I started training competitively. I started working out at Friendship, uh Friendship Fitness for a while. I went through uh to Scott Panchak's gym for a little bit and really deep went deep on CrossFit as a competitive sport.

SPEAKER_00 5:06

Well, along the same lines or around the same time, you were still wrestling in college. Um so paint a little bit of that picture. You were wrestling and you had to stay in college for an extra year due to some injuries. What were you doing during that time? Or what did that look like?

SPEAKER_01 5:24

Yeah, so I I really started to use CrossFit to supplement my training for wrestling and uh had the opportunity to be uh the the captain of my team all through college at Lake Erie. Um my first year in college was the first year they had a wrestling program. I was very close with my coach. My coach knew that I was deep into CrossFit and I was coaching CrossFit on the side, so he kind of gave me some reins to make some workouts and write some programming and some strength training for our entire team.

SPEAKER_00 5:50

That's really cool. That's awesome. Um, so when did the the dream first become alive? So um you're gonna be.

SPEAKER_01 5:57

When did I want to open a gym?

SPEAKER_00 5:59

Yeah, I know you wanted to open a gym. When did it turn to CrossFit?

SPEAKER_01 6:03

So, really, when I started with a personal trainer in junior high when I was in seventh or eighth grade, I really fell in love with health and fitness and working out. You know, I would I'd work long 12-hour days irrigation with my dad, and then we would go covered in mud and dirt to the gym, change into our workout clothes and work out. So I really fell in love with health and fitness from a really young age, and I really knew that's what I wanted to do long term. Um, I thought I wanted to be a personal trainer just like Steve was, because I really had a great relationship with him. He was a great personal trainer, and that's what I wanted to do. And as I got older and older, I got introduced to CrossFit and I realized like CrossFit gives you an opportunity to open a gym with a lot less like overhead and investment, like low barrier of entry. Right was one aspect that drew me into CrossFit, and then also like I loved working out next to a whole array of people, so it was really cool at Remix. Like, I was a college D2 wrestler, and I was working out next to 50-year-old men and women, and 16-year-old teenagers, and a whole slew of people on all walks of life, and I really had great community and camaraderie with those people, and that's what drew me into Crossfield even more.

SPEAKER_00 7:18

Nice. So you decided, hey, I'm gonna do this thing on my own and um take it, take it for the long run. Um, how was it telling the first group of people who did you first tell? Like, hey, I'm actually gonna go through with this. I want to open a gym in Marysville and I need help.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

Yeah, yeah. So when I uh when I helped start 33, Route 33 crossing, I was a head coach for a little while. I was like very clear up front, I said, hey, at some point I want to open my own gym. I knew that was in my mind. I was very open about it to everybody around me. I just did not know what that looked like, where that would be, how long it would take me to get there, and what that path would really, where that path would really take me. Um, and then as I get closer and closer to finishing school, I start to realize, oh crap, I need a job. I need a job. So I was uh I was studying business and marketing and psychology in school. Um, my fifth year of school, I got into some MBA classes and I was able to use those masters of business classes to develop a hardcore, full, thought-out business plan and a marketing plan and a marketing strategy, and just build a whole portfolio with my professor at school at Lake Erie College. And that's when it started to become a little bit more real because I could see the numbers, I could see a path to get there, I knew what I needed to invest, I need I knew how many coaches I needed uh to help me coach, I knew how many clients I need to make revenue, make profit, and all that.

SPEAKER_00 8:43

All the details.

SPEAKER_01 8:44

Right.

SPEAKER_00 8:45

Um, so what did the last couple months of college look like for you?

SPEAKER_01 8:50

Man, a lot of things I shouldn't have been doing. And so I went to school for um uh marketing and business, but really I went to school to wrestle. And uh wrestling was why I was at school and I loved it. And after my I finished my fourth year of uh of school, I had a I had a back injury from wrestling. Um the very beginning of the season, I I hurt my back at the gym, actually right before practice. I ended up having three epidural shots in my spine, um, which kept me off the mat for over a year. So there was a period of time I I went into my senior year wrestling, like pretty confident, pretty excited, pretty ready for the season. And I was expecting big things on the mat on the mat that year. And then the first few weeks of season that happens, and I'm in the hospital, I'm taken off the mat, not able to work out, not able to wrestle. And at that point, I went into pretty deep depression because I had my whole identity wrapped up in this working out and this wrestling and this competing and this uh this achievement, and I wasn't able to do a single thing.

SPEAKER_00 9:49

Yeah, that's that's really hard.

SPEAKER_01 9:51

So so then I I decided like I'm gonna take a red shirt year, you know, and uh and come back for a fifth season. Right. Um, so I came back for my fifth year of college. At that point, I'd finished up pretty much all my undergrad classes, so I took the bare minimum classes that I needed to to take to be eligible to wrestle. So it was uh it was a lot of fun. I had a lot of free time, I worked out a lot, I wrestled a lot. Fast forward to the first uh first month of wrestling for my fifth year, and I have a a knee injury or a staph infection of my knee. So I go to practice, and if you've ever seen a bursa sack busting your knee, and it fills up with fluid, and it's it's pretty common in any combat sport or even like volleyball stuff. And so that happened to my knee. It was super hot, super red to the touch, super sore, and it was getting worse and worse. And maybe on a Wednesday night, I went to the trainer's room and I showed them my knee and they felt it and they told me what it was, and it was full of fluid. This was a Wednesday. They say our school doctor will be back on Monday. Come back on Monday and we'll drain it, we'll get it cleaned up and we'll be good to go. It's usually no big deal. So that night it got hotter, it got redder, it got bigger, and it got extremely painful to the point where I wasn't even able to walk because my knee was so swollen and uncomfortable. Tried laying in bed and it was just throbbing with pain. So I decided to go to urgent care. So I went to urgent care up at up at school up in Cleveland, and they drain my knee there. I think it's just there's gonna drain, it's gonna be good to go. Back on the mat in the next couple of days. So they drain my knee, and then the next morning I get a call and say, Hey, this is uh Cleveland Clinic. We pulled samples of your knee last night, and you have to go to emergency surgery today because you have staph infection in your knee.

SPEAKER_00 11:37

Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_01 11:38

So I didn't really realize like how serious that was. So I called my parents who were a few hours away, and like they kind of told me how big of a deal it was. And I drove myself to to Cleveland, which was uh about 30, 35 minutes from school at that point, checked myself into the emergency room and had surgery later that day. Um, so they removed the whole bursa sac from my from my knee. By the time they did the surgery on my leg, um the veins above my knee and below my knee were starting to turn red from the staff infection starting to spread. Wow. And I was in a a brace from like my mid thigh all the way down to my shin. So remind you, this was my fifth year of school, went back just purely to wrestle. I didn't wrestle for like a whole year leading up to this point. Get into the season, very confident, bigger, stronger, more mature in wrestling, and then that happened and kind of kept me off of mat for another six months.

SPEAKER_00 12:29

Wow. Yeah. Um, so we made it through the season though, and you had a great run. Um, but then you you realized graduation's coming up. So what was it like uh building out the space? Because it wasn't like, oh, boop, there's our CrossFit gym.

SPEAKER_01 12:46

Yeah, right. So that that last few months of school, really the last semester of school. Um, so I had built out my whole business plan and I went to uh Richwood Bank and I secured a small business loan. And uh we always laugh looking back because I went in, I presented the whole business plan and I asked for $53,000 for a business loan. And the the bank kind of laughed and said, 53. Like why why 53? Why not 50 or 55 or 60? Like no one comes in and asks for exactly what I want. It's I said it's because I did the math and I did the work. I know exactly how much I need, and I'm not gonna ask for any more than that because this is what I need to start the business.

SPEAKER_00 13:23

Right.

SPEAKER_01 13:24

So I secured that that that small business loan to help me get started, and then we had tons of people working on the space. So I get a phone call from my dad when I'm up at school, and it goes something like, Hey, I found it, I found the space, it's a perfect spot for your gym. And I'm like really hyped up and excited. And yeah, I drive home shortly after that to check it out, and I go into a dungeon. A dungeon. It was dim and dark and grimy and greasy, and like the lights are flickering, looks like a haunted movie. I'm like, this is perfect. This is awesome. That's it. We've made it just just yeah, typical dad and I. Um, so we get the building, we lease it out, and uh, he starts working out right away. Him, my mom, my grandparents, my cousins, my friends, so many people in that building just transforming it into a gym and uh as many weekends as I could. I was driving three hours back from school on the weekends to build out the space. I mean, we literally built the walls of this place, replaced all the lights, the gas line, and driving back to school and back and forth.

SPEAKER_00 14:22

Nice. Um, so you graduate, you come home. Um, do you what do you remember about opening day? Do you remember anything? Like, do you remember how you felt waking up? Um, how the day went?

SPEAKER_01 14:33

Yeah, so our first class, I believe our first class started at 5 15 in the morning. I think I woke up about 3 a.m. to make sure I was ready. Um, so I I had to drive to our our family car dealership before, print out a bunch of waivers because I didn't have all that ready. The night before I had to drive into Columbus, get the computer all set up. So like we were working on things all the way up literally to the last hour before we open. And I do remember like the night before we opened, I was standing at the same exact spot I had stood at maybe six months before, looking down at this grimy, dingy, dirty dungeon. And now I'm standing at that same spot next to my parents looking down to a fully outfitted gym and space. And that moment was just really surreal and like made me proud, of course, made me uh grateful for all the help I had along the way and made me excited.

SPEAKER_00 15:23

Yeah. Um, so we get started the whole month of June was free. Um, and then you started memberships really in July. And meh.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

Yeah, yes, no, like uh so I had eight members in December, so like six months before we opened. So we did something cool called the Early Believers Club, and every now and then I would drive home from school, I would I would be marketing this place online and I would get people to buy in before we open the doors. And those are really our early believers and really gave us some funding and stuff to get the gym moving early, early on.

SPEAKER_00 15:56

Right. Okay. Um, shout out to you guys, the early believers. Um but along the way, um, you're moving along, it's going really well. Um it was I joined a couple weeks into June, and um what just like an awesome community right off the bat. Yeah, um, it was. And someone specifically uh stepped forward and really believed in you and said they wanted to invest. What was what was that like?

SPEAKER_01 16:25

Yeah, Jeannie. So Jeannie, many people know know Jeannie. So this short, timid, shy Asian lady comes into the gym, still wearing her scrubs from work, and like you never know anything about a person, right, by how they look or how they speak and until you really get to know them. And you know, at first glance, when when this lady comes into the gym, some coaches or some owners are thinking man, she's never gonna make it, you know, she's she's not gonna fit our community, like what's she doing here, and like kind of blow them off or put them in the corner, put them up to the side and and ignore them. But um, but I was grateful to learn so much from Ben and Gina and just the the upbringing of coaches around me through the last years of like treat everybody like they're the gold star member. That's what I did. So take great care of everybody that walks through your doors. So I brought Jeannie in. She didn't want to touch a barbell at all, so she lifted like a PVC pipe, that kind of thing. And of course, you know Jeannie, and she's like PR and deadlifts like 200 pounds and doing crazy lifts now. Oh, yeah. She's uh she's an amazing lady, she's an angel sent from God. She helped us out with this whole process. And uh she comes up to me maybe maybe a year or six months into her being a member. She said, Hey man, I really like I really like helping people. She helps uh cancer patients, so she has a heart for helping people. Uh I have money I want to invest, I don't want to invest it into the spot stock market. I want to do something that makes a difference, and I see you making a difference in people's lives every single day. I want to invest and help you out. And at that at that point, like it it makes you step back a little bit because I I wasn't really seeking that really from anywhere. I had no like desires or plans to like move into a bigger space or go bigger at all. You know, my original vision was just to have a small garage gym and work out by myself and coach and like that'd be it.

SPEAKER_00 18:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:18

But it was really cool that somebody saw the work that I was putting in, saw the community that we've built, saw the people in the space and wanted to do something about it.

SPEAKER_00 18:27

Yeah, that's incredible. And what did the next steps look like? So at some point you had to either commit or say, you know, no, thank you. Like, so what was what was the deciding factor that you're like, yeah, maybe maybe this is a thing. I mean you can do it.

SPEAKER_01 18:42

Jeannie pretty much forced me to commit. Like seemed like every other week or every other class she was coming in, she's like, Hey Zev, like I saw this building. What do you think about this? Hey, what do you think about this? Hey, you need more room, you need more space. And yeah, at that point, like we had a a few coaches I was working long hours, long days, long weeks. I'm just like, Will you just leave me alone for a little bit? But eventually, uh treading.

SPEAKER_00 19:02

I'm treading water.

SPEAKER_01 19:03

We went, yeah, we went and started uh looking at a couple buildings, and then we start to realize how how full our classes are are, and then started thinking about the possibility of owning a space and instead of leasing a space, and it started to make a lot more sense.

SPEAKER_00 19:15

Yeah. Well, um, so obviously at some point you walked into this building that we're in now. What was your first thought of it? Also a dungeon at some points, uh a big dungeon.

SPEAKER_01 19:27

Yeah, I I thought it was perfect. It was awesome. I mean, my my dad found this place just randomly. Um, it wasn't poster listed for sale or for lease anywhere. He was just driving through town and glanced over here and saw Kwanzite building and the grain bin and said, Hey, what's that? And we have some friends that are real estate agents and reach out to Wimmers, and Wimmers got a hold of the owner and said, Yeah, actually, like it's gonna be for sale, and we jumped on it right away.

SPEAKER_00 19:50

Wow. Um, so as we made the transition over, that's uh kind of where we hit, um, or what I picture is kind of hitting the first block in the business. So we made the commitment, uh, got the building, secured it, um, but it started a spiral of a couple hard years. Um and um I don't know if I want to jump right to like what was the biggest moment um of like where you thought, man, what did we get ourselves into? Sort of thing. Um when you first went to the city. I mean, obviously there's a whole bunch of different things you do. What was like the very first list that you got before you could open the door? Paint that picture. What what did it look like?

SPEAKER_01 20:43

There's probably a hundred things on that list. So in my mind, like we get the building in a couple months, we can move in and start classes, right?

SPEAKER_02 20:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:50

Obviously, that's not how it works with the city and county and and permits. And I was a little naive and ignorant to that fact that like you have to go through a whole process to get this ready. And this place was like a warehouse before. In my mind, it was gonna be almost like a warehouse gym when we used it. But we had to rerun a lot of electric. We had there was no gas, no heat in the building. We had to run gas lines, install heat, install electric. We had to build the walls, we had to insulate the whole thing, we had to insulate the ceiling, we had to pave the entire parking lot and build ADA restrooms, and just the list goes on and on. We have to plant three trees, you have to have so much grass area, it can't be this color, it has to be this color. Every single thing that you do at the building or in the property has to go bus before the design review board. We had people come in speaking against us at the design review board, and it was just everything at once.

SPEAKER_00 21:39

Long process. So and at the same time, um, it wasn't like the gym closed and you're at the reset where there's there's no responsibilities. You know, you're running classes, you're still running the business, um, you're paying for your lease over there, the mortgage over here. Um, and it added up.

SPEAKER_02 21:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:57

Um and if I and if I think back, I really think. One of the big hitters was paving the parking lot. That was kind of one of the really unexpected expenses that you were hit with, and there was no like mercy of doing it pieces at a time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:15

We went through everything we can to phase in the parking lot and just do a little bit at a time. And it they just had no give because you know, like they're trying to follow the guidelines and follow the rules and go by the book and not not uh help us out at all. There's because there's people going to the county speaking against us and pushing back. And like when you have that in the county, like you have to do things by the book.

SPEAKER_00 22:34

Yeah. Um, and I but I also think this is a great time to remind people like although we're a CrossFit gym, there's no like outside support. Like you're a true, we are a true small business. Like um, and so adding those different expenses on becomes a heavy load. Um, but out of really some tough times, um, we saw like the community really rally for the first time. Um so I want to speak on and just run through some of the really exciting things that we saw our community do.

SPEAKER_01 23:08

Yeah, like I'll I'll tell you at that at that point it was probably the one of the lowest times of my life. Like you mentioned, we're paying for all the lease and expenses at the old gym and the new mortgage and stuff at the new place, all the utilities at the new space. I was also living on my own for the first time around that time as well, and like not tons of revenue coming in. Like we had a good membership base, but you're not just breaking in tons of money for all that. And I started to see like membership start to plateau and then decline. And you know, there's there was a course of over a year, probably, that there's one person, maybe two people at 5 a.m. or 6 15 over and over, and then it starts to wear you down as an owner, you know. And I remember like my dad calling me into my office watching just say, Hey man, like what's going on? Like, you can I can see you everybody can see like you're you're drained and you're out there and you're you're breaking down, like what's happening. And I just remember crying in front of my dad in my office and just hitting a breaking point. Like, I believed that was it. Like we're gonna fail, like we can we're not gonna make it with the money's gone. Like, that's it, that's over. You know, and he kind of picked me up, helped me get back on my feet. And you know, the whole this goes into a little bit of my of my testimony as well. Like when you came home, we've been dating for a little while at that time, and I was putting up a big front to everybody inside the gym the best I could, that everything was great, and I was happy and I was enthusiastic and I was excited about the building, but behind closed doors, I was just broken and depressed and sad and angry. And that night after dinner, when you're at the house, like you saw me like laying face down on the floor crying, and you asked me what's wrong, and I just like spilled it all to you, and you left and said, I just want you to be happy. I remember at that point I gave my life and my business to Christ, and I believe at that point I also started caring more and more about the people inside the gym than I did about myself or the business or making it to the next stage.

SPEAKER_00 25:02

Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, maybe that's also what really sparked people rallying around you, you know.

SPEAKER_01 25:11

In my mind, that that's the entire transition and transformation of of 184. It's a night and day difference of what the business and the community and the culture was like, and it's also a 180-degree change of who I was into.

SPEAKER_00 25:24

Into what was to come.

SPEAKER_01 25:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:27

Um yeah, I it yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:33

Speaking of the thing, there's no there's no cry there's no crying on the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 25:36

I was like, oh my god. You know, and like to regain myself. Uh no, it was this tough times, and that's like part of the part of the growth, and just like always what you think back to of looking at Murph running by itself or these bigger events that we've done, or classes that are just flowing so well, and coaches just thriving, you just it's hard to not think back to like wow, this is such beauty that came out of a really dark spot.

SPEAKER_01 26:11

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I I will say too, like, uh, we're followers of Christ, and you know, we're not a faith-based business, and we're not pushing religion on anybody. And I I said to myself and I shared with other people, I am going to use my business in my life to serve God. And if it closes down, I will do that some other way. And when people come through the doors, it's it's not that you're met and hit in the face with with Christianity or following God or religion or faith, but you know, as a father of Christ, I am called to love and care for people, all kinds of people. And that just so happens to be a great attitude and a great posture as a CrossFit coach and a business owner.

SPEAKER_00 26:49

Yeah, absolutely. Um, so getting kind of back on track here. Um, like I said, I want to focus in on how the community really rallied around the business. So um things I remembered were shirts coming out saying all four CrossFit 184. Um, there were there was a golf scramble, there was a large garage sale. Um, I think there was a benefit concert in the parking lot, right? Um you know, this is all things that people saw a need for. Yeah. And they said, I'm bought in. I want to be a part of this and I want to see it flourish.

SPEAKER_01 27:26

That's so I mean people uh people can get frustrated or annoyed with with CrossFit gym specifically saying our community is different or our culture, like what's different about CrossFit is the community. And I would say the same thing, like our community is unmatched, and when somebody says, Well, that's that's what everybody says of it, yeah, we'll come look at this. You know, like when when we're backs against the wall, we had members doing selling their stuff, literally selling their stuff. They're like, Here, take my things and sell it so that we could get into the new building, yeah. You know, and at that point, you just you realize like working out for an hour a day is such a small, small part of what we do at 184 and who we are. You know, it it's like the friendships and the relationships and the lifestyle change and the commitment to one another and the care for one another that makes the difference.

SPEAKER_00 28:16

Yeah, no, I agree, and that's why I really wanted to hone in on it because that's what also got us to occupancy day here at the news space. Um, do you remember what that vacation or vacation? I think I just validation. Do you remember what that workout was like or what it was?

SPEAKER_01 28:34

I do. Man, it's a hero workout. Is it hero workout Morrison 5043 2010? Yep. Wall balls, box jumps, kelbell swings, we had no rig at the time. There was no rig against the walls, there's turf down the center, down the either side. It's probably freezing cold in there. But we thought it was awesome. It was exciting. You know, when to get occupancy was such a long process. I remember at one point, like I needed to I needed to meet with the city engineer or the county engineer or some person to help me like get clear and get approval. And I couldn't get a hold of him through email or text message or phone call because I was just trying to have a conversation with the guy. And I remember for a week straight, I took my computer, my bag, and I went to the county office and I asked to speak to so-and-so, and they say, Oh yeah, he's out right now, or he's in a meeting right now. And so I just sat there in in a chair. I just worked there for hours on end until this guy came into the building. And then I stood up and grabbed him real quick.

SPEAKER_00 29:32

No, there you go. They all work and work and grab. Um, so after occupancy day, um, I remember really just like a bunch of year, good years going by. Like we were we were there, we were doing the thing, it felt like it was going really well. Um, until that day in March in 2020. Does everybody COVID?

SPEAKER_01 29:54

You know, when we gotta play pickleball all day.

SPEAKER_00 29:56

Yeah, okay. Um no, but this was another time that I really saw the community rally together, right? And and everybody has their own story with COVID, but first again, small businesses, it was a very tough time. Like, what are you gonna do? You know, your back's against the wall again. Um, we obviously had I specifically remember, I think I was gonna coach that night. You know, classes had ran all day, and then you're told, like, hey, you're gonna go home. We had members coming to the gym, picking up, you know, a kettlebell, a dumbbell, or a plate. We're like, see in a couple weeks, like we'll give you guys some uh workouts and we'll we'll still do this thing a little bit, but it had to change. Yeah, right. Uh it became longer and longer, and you know, we were hitting Zoom classes from our teeny tiny garage.

SPEAKER_01 30:47

Shout out to Anita. That's when Anita joined.

SPEAKER_00 30:49

Yeah, oh, really? Nice.

SPEAKER_01 30:52

Um, oh, because she's our neighbor, or she was no, she joined her daughter, so Anita's daughter, Carrie, was uh a member of member of ours, and she's like, Hey, I gotta get on my Zoom class, do CrossFit. And he said, Oh, I guess I'll do it too. And like she she started doing the Zoom classes with us and joined as a CrossFit member in the middle of COVID.

SPEAKER_00 31:08

I love that. Um, but yeah, so Zoom classes, demo videos were done in our living room, like with our dog. Um, but the R e the super special moment. Um, or moments I felt were, you know, as it continues on, other people are starting to feel the financial stress. Um and as it changed from March to April, April to May, we pushed out Stay for May. Um, do you remember this?

SPEAKER_01 31:38

I feel like I'm yeah, like people uh people change their profile picture on Facebook and use hashtags.

SPEAKER_00 31:44

Stay for May. And um, you know, members were reaching out offering to pay for other people's memberships so that they could stay a part of it as they were hitting financial um financial stresses themselves. Um and as people stayed for May, you know, Murph comes around. Um, and I just remember people's faces when they showed up to Murph.

SPEAKER_02 32:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:08

Um, you know, we weren't really allowed to be out at the time, so we're like, okay, another pivot time. This is it. And we created the Murph around town.

SPEAKER_02 32:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:19

Uh you and I, and maybe a couple other coaches, you know, we went to Eldier Park, set up rings all around the fence where the basketball court is and tennis courts, and that was the starting spot. Came out with the running route and stations around town where you'd hit your.