It's Two-Brain Radio. Every week we'll deliver top-shelf tactics to help you improve your fitness business and move you closer to wealth. And now here's your host, the most interesting man in fitness, Chris Cooper.
Chris:My guest today is Dave Tate, and Dave is a former world-class powerlifter, he is the owner of elitefts.com, he is arguably the guy who brought the Westside method to the broader audience, not just powerlifters. Dave was a writer for T Nation; he still produces content on a daily basis including training logs, blog posts on powerlifting and business. He does a lot of video and like a lot of top performers in any industry, he's also very generous with his time. Dave and I have interacted in the past through things like the Supertraining Group 15 years ago, hosted by Mel Siff. We met at an APF event many, many years ago when I was helping a buddy get ready to compete. This show is about ideas, though, and Dave has a lot of really big ones. We're talking about the fitness industry and Dave and I both been around for a long time. He has seen things kind of from the front and he's going to share a lot of what he's learned with us today. This is not an episode about specific tactics that are going to grow your gym. This is about specific things that are going to change your place in the industry, change your outlook on business and possibly change the industry itself. I'm not going to prolong this point. It's a fantastic episode and I've probably never written more show notes than I did for this one. So sit down and get a comfortable seat, three or four cups of coffee and let's dig in. Dave Tate, welcome to Two-Brain Radio.
Dave:Thank you.
Chris:So, the first thing that I ever read, I think that you had written, was"The Periodization Bible Part 1" and"2." But even before that, you and I were both involved in an online coaches group called the Supertraining list and it was moderated by Mel Siff. You remember that, right?
Dave:Yeah. I can't believe that you actually remember that because that was actually an awesome source of information. It was a long time ago. It was a really cool group, man. I still to this day have some of the emails that Mel used to put out there and some of the other coaches used to put out there because a lot of the—I mean there was a lot of bullshit that went back and forth, a lot of dialogue, but a lot of the stuff that they would put out there was like excerpts from books they were working on or articles they were writing and it was just gold, you know, I have three or four notebooks just full of discussions that were from there.
Chris:So what led you there in the first place, Dave? I mean, you were pretty active on there. Not as active as some guys, but—
Dave:Aw man, I'm going to have to think. It was probably, to be honest, it was probably porn. Because back then nobody had access—I'm being serious, man, nobody had access to good porn, you know, so I think it was like all miscellaneous dot—you know, there were all these different groups and you know, I'm sure somebody I was training with, because that's where all this smart crap always comes from. It's never me, by the way, it's always somebody that gives it to me. They would tell me about this group and then you know, you'd get emailed all these porno pictures and it wasn't videos at the time cause you know the bandwidth and so forth, but it was pictures. And then when I was on the site that you would search for these groups or wherever they were signed up, I just started typing in powerlifting, bodybuilding, strength coaching and there's like allweights.net, that was another one. And then there was the Supertraining group. And so I joined, like everybody, I joined like 10 of them and then you realize,"Oh man, I can't handle this," because there was a lot of emails and then it got filtered down and the only one I really stayed on was the Supertraining one. And then from that I kind of started to build a relationship with Mel Siff to where we are emailing and talking offline quite frequently. So it was great from that standpoint because I was at the time just putting together the Westside seminar and trying to make sure that when I got out and started speaking that I wasn't making myself look like an idiot, because a lot of this stuff has been, you know, I was training with Louie so I'm not saying I didn't trust Louie or I don't trust Louie, I just wanted to be 100% certain that what I would say was proper, you know. I didn't want to get up there and say this is the Conjugate method. What is the concurrent method, you know, and that was the one that confused a lot of people. So I wanted to, you know, what the hell is it? Which one is it? Because what I'm reading is it's the concurrent method, you know, and Conjugate kind of means something a little bit different but still kind of fits with the Westside stuff. So Mel was helping me out a lot in that regard. And then helping educate me a little bit on areas where I was a little deficient in. Strength deficit was one, the other one was the aerobic capacity and the role that that plays in a strength athlete. I learned a lot through him, you know, was able to blend that and be able to put together a better presentation. The funny thing about that list, the thing that still resonates with me today is Paul Chek called me a dump truck man. And it was something about, somebody asked the question—because there were still beginners on there too. And at that time, I'm not going to say I was advanced in any way. I was an advanced lifter, you know. But as far as an educator or coach, I wasn't really advanced at that point. I was kind of like on my way. And somebody asked about how they should—today it would be known as brace themselves, you know, for a squat. And I said,"Well you need to pull all the air into your diaphragm, tighten up the entire area, you know, so it feels like your spine is actually being crushed in with the obliques and the abdominals and the lower back. And then once it feels like that, you know, just flex into your belt as hard as you can." And Paul kind of ringed in and said that that's not true, that it may make you stronger in the short term, but it's like a dump truck. You know, you're going to be able to haul more weight, but you may have a fuse and the truck that's not really working correctly, but you don't know it's not working correctly until it actually breaks down. And I just couldn't get over the dump truck thing. I'm like,"A dump truck? A dump truck is like a fucking trash truck, man, it hauls around trash, I don't haul around trash. I fucking haul around iron." And so we were kind of going back and forth and it wasn't really heated, you know, it was just sharing different opinions. And from the scientific and anatomy standpoint, I was a little out of my league. I was six years out of college and it was kind of get my dick handed to me a little bit. An, so all I could keep falling back on was, you know, the stupid meathead shit that people still do today and younger educators still do, you know, it's like, well, what do you squat? Well, it really doesn't fucking matter in this conversation. You know, so I was falling back on the same stuff that if you went to the APF Senior Nationals and asked everybody there how many of these guys suck their stomach in when their squatting, nobody does. You know, I know all these eight, 900-pound squatters and nobody does. And so I kind of emailed Mel offline and said dude I need some help, I'm getting my ass fucking handed to me. And he made some kind of post which pulled a lot of the science and spoke about what was exactly happening with what lifters, namely powerlifters, were doing and why it was effective and why the other way would not be the most effective way. And then it just kind of, you know—it's like the news after like 24 hours, you're into a whole new news cycle. Something else is already kind of spinning around. But the interesting thing with that was years later, Paul and I were both speaking, I think it was 2005 Swiss Symposium and they were having a Q and A with, I think it was five or six of us that were up on stage. And he ends up sitting kind of next to me and I'm thinking,"Aw man, no, not the dump-truck guy." And, you know, he reaches over, he kind of taps on my leg and real calmly says,"How you doing?" I'm like,"Good..." And so we made small talk the best that you can make small talk when you're doing a Q and A, you know, because you don't want to really overspeak anybody else that's out there. So afterwards, you know, we talked a little bit and discussed, actually brought that back up, you know, and either I brought it up, I'm not too sure who brought it up. But you know, he explained in more detail, you know, what he was really talking about. And even at that time, I believe, I had just left personal training. And so I had eight or 10 years under my belt of personal training and everything that he was saying was just dead on, it was exactly right, and I was able to explain, you know, here's what a lifter has to do, you know? And so we basically agreed on 90 to 95% of what each other was saying. It's like the disagreement was early on, just like 5%. So I learned a real valuable lesson that day is that, you know, the Internet, obviously, you can take things out of context, you know, and that can kind of then reflect on that person. But what I learned is, you know, a lot of the debating and lot of stuff that you see outline with people that have been around for a long time, most of them typically agree on 90 to 95% of everything that they're saying and that 5% that they disagree on, that's typically dealing with just the general specific populations that they excel in. And so when you're online, everybody, the perception seems to be different. Like all these guys only agree on 5%, but they disagree on 95% and it's totally wrong.
Chris:That's amazing insight, David. And also, I think people might have misperceptions about you, just because of your background with powerlifting, you know? So I was lucky enough to actually meet you at an APF event and you probably don't remember this, but I was in a ballroom and outside in the hallway was the warm-up area and they had a couple of monos out there and guys were warming up. And I wasn't competing, I was just helping guys load plates basically. And you kind of walk through, you had a booth set up and bumped into one of our guys and said,"Oh, I'm sorry, excuse me." And then you just kind of kept going on your way.And I'm thinking,"Hey, there's Dave Tate. Why is he so polite and nice?" Why is that Dave?
Dave:That's just who I am. I guess I can't really answer that because it's just who I am, you know—I guess, OK, you're asking two different questions here. Why is the perception different online, I guess would be the real question there, is what gives people that that other impression? And I think this goes back to something that I was told right out of high school and it was a CEO of, I can't remember the company now, but it was like a distribution company out of Findlay, Ohio. And he really wanted to speak to me and I didn't know why until afterwards, but he was like a drinking buddy with my dad, you know. So I went out and spoke to him and he was a former football player. I think he played a little in the NFL but not enough to really be known as anybody. And the one thing that he wanted to tell me was, cause I was big out of high school, so I graduated weighing 250 with a 700-pound squat, 500 bench and a 650 deadlift. And what he wanted me to know before I went on to the real world, you know, and colleges is that my presence and the way I looked was always going to demand attention and that attention that it's gonna demand may not always be the best impression, you know, because of the size you're going to be stereotyped as a meathead and you know, and so forth. And the most important thing is to understand that that's the impression. So whatever is the first thing that comes out of your mouth is either going to validate that impression or invalidate that impression. So from an early age I kind of learned that just the way I look, you know, breeds intimidation for a lot of people. And so the way that I would then have to speak and write would have to be, you know, who I really was, so as to not validate the impression that was put out there in the first place.
Chris:Do you find that's true with a lot of top performers in business and in sport, that maybe they're nicer than you expect because they really don't have anything left to prove?
Dave:I don't know, because sometimes that's really not the case. You know, I think it comes down to not them so much as the people who are going to approach them and what their preconceived stereotypes or notions are going to be. You know? So if you think somebody is a dick and then they do something, simply just say,"excuse me" and walk by, you're like,"Oh my God, I can't believe he did that." You know? So just a normal behavior for a normal person then becomes magnified. Now I'm not saying that that you should create this big, giant false impression that you're a dick just to make things look magnified because that's really not what's happening because what's really happening is you look like a dick on a macro level but on a micro level, the people that know you realize that you're really not. So the key, you know, from the person who's doing the projecting is to try to get those two to blend, you know, to become the same, so nobody is really shocked or surprised one way or another. But at the same time, people shouldn't feel like they're afraid to approach somebody just because of who they are. Because this is a really small industry. You know, in powerlifting, it becomes even smaller, and when I say industry, I'm speaking the strength, fitness industry. I mean it's a multibillion dollar industry, yes, but at the end of the day, when you're dealing with people who have influence, it's still as a small industry. And these people that have influence, for the most part they're not going out Christmas shopping and people are like,"Oh my God, can I get your autograph?" It's just not happening, it's not happening with the best personal trainer in the world, the best gym owner in the world. You know, it's just not happening. So when somebody comes up and asks them a question, more than likely they're way more than happy to answer because it makes them feel important, you know, like what they've done and what they've accomplished actually had enough value that somebody would want to take the time to actually ask what they think about something.
Chris:Yeah. I was listening to Henry Rollins, from Rollins Band, obviously, a couple of months ago, and he said he had this rule that he never said no. You know, you could have said no to a lot of different opportunities. You could have said no to this interview. Do you consciously follow that rule?
Dave:No, I don't. And when I read that I'm like,"Oh my God, are you kidding me?" Just because there's so many—I read the same interview. I had to read it a few times because it wasn't actually, I don't think it was one that he—I think it was a Big Think, it was a video, I believe,'cause he was talking about working at like a galley or something like that. And I was trying to put myself in his position because, in this industry, you know, you can say yes to some things. With any decision you make when you look back on your life, you know, if it's big or small, younNever know which ones are going to really define your future for the rest of your life, you know. So I usually put a little bit more thought in some of the bigger decisions, you know. Like podcasts and stuff like that, that's just more along the lines of do I have the time to be able to do this? You know, and if I do, then yes, if I don't, well then, no. Do you want to do X certification, you know, for X company? That takes a lot of thought. So, I probably said no to a lot more things that I've actually said yes to. And that is because of the aim of the company, you know, is to live, learn, pass on, and it's a value-based company. So if it doesn't kind of fit the aim and it doesn't fit with the value structure that the company's built on, I'm not going to do it because it's not fair to, you know, the company, it's not fair to those who represent the company and it's not fair to myself, you know, and it's not fair to the future of the company either.
Chris:So talking about the values that company's built on. Maybe let's walk through the history of Elite FTS a little bit more. Were you still at Westside when Elite started?
Dave:Yes. It started—I mean if you want to go way back in the history, I left Toledo to come to Columbus for two reasons. I mean, there was really one reason, but I throw the other one in there because it was a factor. You know, my wife's family was from here and we were engaged at the time. So, you know, I had actually at the time I kind of had three choices of where I was going to go, I was either going to go to Detroit because I was making money working in strip clubs as a bouncer and I did that for a lot of years. So I really honest to God thought this was gonna be the rest of my life. And then the money, the personal-training really wasn't a profession. And I found out real quick, you know, after the first internship, I did not want to be a strength coach. And so a lot of the things that, you know, I was going to school for, or graduated for, were kind of being eliminated, and so it was either going to be Detroit or I was going to go to Cleveland and train at[unintelligible] because I knew a lot of the guys there at the time. And they—I was powerlifting since I was 13 years old by a lot of these Ohio power lifters, which were just awesome at the time. And world record breakers, you know, very well known and they were coming out of Columbus, Cincinnati; you had Pacifico out of Cincinnati, you had Louie' guys out of Columbus, then you had John Black's guys out of Cleveland. And then there was Louie and Westside and I decided to go with Westside because my wife's parents were here. I mean that was, that was definitely a factor.
:But Louie was the one that took the time to help me the most when I was a kid. And it would just be, you know, all the other guys, I would walk up and ask questions and they would always answer and kind of help, you know, Louie was the one that always come over and say, how you doing? How's your training going? A 13-year-old kid, you know, 14-year-old pen. And so that seemed to be why I came. Now when I came here, you know, the reality check, you know, just, most of my life up to that point was tips, you know, pole dancers was how I made my living, you know. So it was pretty much it was cash most of the time and I get a check every two weeks. So that was kind of insignificant compared to what I was making, you know, from a cash standpoint. And then working in other bars while I was in college was pretty much the same thing. It was just cash or you know, an insignificant amount of money, but most of the money was oh, you're counting on cash. So I come to Columbus, I can't find a job. And a funny story with that is I signed up for a temp service and I remember the first night I had to put these stickers on these fucking light bulbs. And there was a lot of light bulbs, man. I mean, it was like eight hours of putting stickers on light bulbs and I didn't even make a dent, and so then I called the[agency],"This job sucks, you know, can you give me something else?" Then the next one was like that drop ceiling shit they put in there and you know, the tiles or whatever it is and you got that yellow crap on one side. So I did that and then that next night was just itching like a motherfucker. I'm like I need something else. Then they said, do you want to go into house and nursery? My intelligence at the time like yeah man, a nursery. That's cool. I'm thinking I'm going to go there and unload diapers off the truck. It was unloading trees off of a fucking truck, but it was eight hours of the hardest fucking work I ever did in my life. And then at the end of the day the guy give me 35 bucks and I'm like, this is bullshit and after the first week I think I got the check in the mail and it was like$200. I was making that a night, fucking$200, then there's like this FICA thing on there for taxes or—is that what it is? FICA?
Chris:Yep.
Dave:Whatever it is. I'm like what the fuck is this? It was like a hundred and some bucks, it was the first time I ever really saw a check. And I'm like this sucks. And so I kept—to make[unintelligible] and I did end up working at a fitness club and I was offered a job as a fitness instructor. And the story behind that was I did research on the club beforehand and I knew that personal training was starting to become a little bit bigger. It was starting to become a profession. Not anywhere near what it is today, but it was kind of on its way and this club was a high- end country club type thing without the golf course. So it was restaurant, dining and fitness, and it was in downtown Columbus. So with a little research I found the average income per member was about$240,000 a year. And then they had, you know, 5,000 people that were coming through the training club every month or whatever it was, and they did$3,500 on personal training over the year prior. So when I was made the offer to be a fitness instructor for$11 an hour, I countered and told them I wanted minimum wage and that over the period of the next six months, if I was able to bring in$50,000 in personal-training revenue, then they would get—and they had a percentage of the personal training, which was like 50%— where if I was able to bring in$50,000 of personal-training revenue over the first six months, they would take my personal-training revenue to 70% which I knew leaves the club with about 10% of their own. But I was seeing it as a service, because they're very service oriented, that I would be providing to their members to keep them staying members because we're there and making the money was on the reoccurring fees of being a member because there was also the dining and the food, they're making money and the average member's monthly payment was between a thousand and$5,000, it just depended how often they ate, what they picked. So personal training was insignificant. So what I did know that 70% was really, really pushing the boundaries in a big way. I mean today I don't think anybody's going to get that if they go anywhere, it's just not going to happen. It's just not feasible to the business owner to give out that much. And then over a period, if it goes to 100,000 in the period of a year, it might've been 125, then they would keep me at the same percent, but then they would make me, you know, personal training, the development of personal training, whatever title they wanted to give me. But I would be in charge of the personal-training program, would be able to hire trainers underneath me and that I would get 10% of what every trainer underneath me brought in and then they could determine whatever that trainer would get as far as percent-wise on their end, management would do that. They had no problem signing off on it because it was so far out of their ballpark. They're like, you're kidding me. You know, 50,000 and we only did 3,500. But you know, what I knew was—and I grew up in a—my parents owned an appliance business. It was a high-end appliance business. So sales and quality products. Interesting what I do now. But I knew that the issue here wasn't, you know, people can only object because of price, time commitment, money. I'm sorry—price, time, commitment, spouse. Those are your four biggest, you know, the reasons why somebody can't buy something, especially if it's a service. And it's personal training. I knew it's not money. More than likely they're just not being asked. So I kind of banked on that and then spent the first six months and hit the 50,000 and hit like 180,000 for the first year. Then we capped after two or three years we capped off at about 200,000, 225,000, and five years later, I started to realize every morning I'm getting up, I got clients at 6 o'clock in the morning and then I would train them until about 8:30, leave, go to Westside and train at Westside until roughly about 11:30, get back for the 12:30 appointment and then stay at the club until nine. And this is what I was doing six days a week, every day of the week. And there was—I could not make any more money. Everything was, capped, there was just no room. And I wasn't smart enough to think of this whole semiprivate thing, which is going on now, but I can almost guarantee if I did—because my clients wouldn't have fell fo it; I would not have known how to sell that very well because they saw me as a servant. You know, that's kind of how personal training was back then anyhow is, you know,"Hey come meet my trainer," it was kind of like"Come meet the cleaning lady," you know, and you just kind of deal with it, you know, cause it's your profession. And you know, I really didn't care because my first priority was what I was doing at Westside. All this other shit was just helping me to be able to train at Weststide and do what I wanted to do through the sport. But I didn't take that opportunity and not use it, you know, so through there I able to obtain my ACSM certification, the NFCA CSCS event, the continuing education and everything that had to go along with that. And from that—I know it's a very long answer, but it's all going to kind of come together here in a minute—from that and having to go to conferences about personal trainers were speaking at and then going to conferences that strength coaches were speaking at and then conferences that was more rehab, at the time it was post-rehab because, I mean, I couldn't go to a physical therapy conference and we weren't licensed to be able to do any kind of preventative or post-rehab stuff, so there was like a post rehab center sector. So I'm learning from all these different people and I'm building these networks because I needed to know how to train my clients more effectively because they were really fucking out of shape. I wasn't used to that. You know, I grew up in, were gyms where 135 was on the bar at all times. You know, I still remember to this day, the first guy I ever trained in that gym, I walked over and I[unintelligible] and I threw a plate on each side. As soon as he took it out, I'm like, oh fuck he ain't going to do this. You know, so I pulled it back in and I put the dime on each side; the fucker could barely do it for three and it looked like horseshit. It was like"Oh my God, what are we going to do?" It's like OK, let's just go over to the machines and I went home that night, told my wife this dude couldn't even bench 135. And so my whole mindset had to shift, you know, and how can I use, you know what I know from powerlifting to be able to help these people but at the same time they need to be able to get out of cars. I always use the example of if their car was a Mercedes or something, you know, lower-to-the-ground car and then somebody dropped them off and they were on the curb side of the car, how are they gonna get out? You know, cause your ass is right by your foot. And so to me that was one of the goals that I had is they need to be able to get out of the car no matter where they park. If they gotta twist because the door can't open real far and that kind of stuff. And I wasn't going to find that through a fuckin' powerlifter. Because powerlifters, we just open a door and roll out, you know, then crawl and put your hand on a tire and kind of pull yourself up like you use a power rack to pull up from a floor press. But anyhow, I'm going to all these different things and then I'm at Westside, which is bringing in a whole different breed of coaches and then learning from the Louie a whole style of training that I was completely unaware of, and studying the shit out of training through college. So what I found was each one of these subgroups didn't like the others, for whatever reason, you know, strength coaches didn't like powerlifters because all they can do is squat, bench and deadlift and they all wear gear and take drugs. Powerlifters didn't like strength coaches because they were all weak and they can't squat for shit. Nobody likes personal trainers, you know, because they don't have to work with real athletes and the personal trainers didn't like the strength coaches because, well, they don't know how to work on the individual. They only know how to work on groups and you're not going to actually help anybody unless you can work with them at the individual level. Physical therapists pretty much hated all of them and liked all of them because they were sending them all their business. It didn't feel that they were doing things to keep the muscle in balance. So I'm kind of learning from all these—I'm putting these pieces together and saying, you know what, nobody in any of these categories has all the answers. But if you pick and choose, you can put something really cool together for yourself to really help avoid a lot of problems. You know? And that's when the concept of Elite FTS kinda came together is if I could have—and at the time I was selling like shit that the club couldn't get, you know, physio balls were one, you know, things that I was having my clients use that they could use at home. So I was kind of selling them some stuff here and there. Some expressed interest in creatine and stuff like that. So I set up an account to be able to help them with that. And the income from all that was basically nothing. I mean it was minor, but it was a little bit, and so this concept of putting these professionals together under one banner where people could answer or ask questions and then get answers but not really be told what to do. We're not giving you the training program, we're going to give you the information that you need to help develop your own training philosophy. And the site started as a Q&A, and before the site started I was answering questions on deepsquatter.com which kind of showed me that there was a lot of misunderstanding as far as the Westside trainging, and then the more that I dug online, there's really misunderstandings on a lot of different things. So when we launched in 2000 with just the Q&A, people, you know, a lot of our answers were like, you know, you just need to get this. You got to get the super training book or you gotta get this or you gotta get weight releasers or then they're like, well we just want to buy it from you. I'm like all right, I guess I got to figure this out. So that's kind of how that all came about. So it came about from the answering the questions like and put together the professionals that could answer those questions but have it be semi-like-minded. I don't like the term like-minded because like-minded just tells me you're going to get the same answer from everybody. Semi-like-minded means that those people who are part of that team or part of that group will have different answers and will actually challenge each other a little bit. And then somewhere in the middle is going to be the best answer for everybody.
Chris:I remember, you know, the earliest version of that site, there were a lot of training logs on there too. Right?
Dave:Mm-hm.
Chris:So what made you take the jump from there into like more mainstream publication? You know, T Nation and the Periodization Bible. That was a real watershed moment for a lot of personal trainers, I think. You know, how did you get there?
Dave:They sent me an email. And I had the articles I was posting on our site and then there were the training logs and the Q&A's. And I think TC Luoma, he sent me an email, he wanted me to write, and I wasn't familiar with him at all. And to be honest, my biggest fear was, you know, my writing skills were not good, and my grammar and spelling, fucking horrendous. And I'm like ah, fuck, you know, I'd like to be able to do this. But I didn't know how the whole thing worked, you know, I didn't know that they would edit the stuff and all that. And I told him I can't. And when he asked why we started talking back and forth it was just dude, my writing is terrible. And so he basically told me, I don't give a fuck. You can write it on a napkin and I'll make it an article. And I said, well, it still needs to be, I still need to see what's actually going out. You know, it has to be, you know, what my thoughts are. But so it was, I would write it and then he would, you know, spell check, grammar check it and send it back and I would look at it and put it out. But it was just them contacting me. It was great for me because I didn't have an editor, you know, I couldn't afford one, you know, I didn't have—and actually posting articles on our site was a bitch. I mean it was easy to do the Q&A because it was all, there was back-end programming to be able to do that to flush the answers out. The training logs are easy to flush the answers out, too, you know, shit like Wordpress didn't exist back then. So to post an article it was going to be all html, it was just this huge pain in the ass. Well fuck, this way, they were posting it and then I would just put a link to it. It was like, this is awesome. Now I can put out, you know, better content and have it go through them and then still share it to the readers that are coming to the site. And so that's kind of how that happened. So you know, from there it was just a matter of, it was just write about a lot of these things. All these questions I've been answering, kind of answer them all in a format that's in an article. So it's easier to digest for everybody to find instead of having to read a hundred articles at a time.
Chris:So obviously, you know, you really started to ramp up content production around that time and most of your content was about powerlifting and then you wrote"Under the Bar," which was about Dave Tate and powerlifting and business. So what made you want to write that? I mean, was writing sort of becoming natural to you by then?
Dave:No, it was, you know, part of the aim, you know, to live, learn and pass on extends further than just being—passing on strength training and information. You know, one of the biggest goals that I had from the very beginning was to be able to empower other lifters so they can see that they have all the skills to really be how they wanted to define successful in anything that they want. They know the discipline, they know consistency, they know, you know, focusing on a target and working towards that target, they know there's going to be adversity working towards that target. They know you've got to work around or through those adversities to get to that target. All these things they're doing in the gym when they're training for weeks every day, you know, and it was kind of frustrating to see, you know, that a lot of the higher-ups in the sport, you know, were not happy or not successful because they are working in jobs that they just absolutely hated, you know? But it was just what they did to pay the bills and to get by. So that was kind of part of the whole concept to begin with. And I wasn't really comfortable writing about a lot of these things. I felt like the success that I had merited the ability to speak about it. And that's not financial success because I don't think there is such a thing as financial success. Success as one person defines it is completely different than somebody else's and they should define it based upon how somebody else does. So it took a while to be able to do that. And then once that time came, it was more of, OK, I want to do this book and I want to tie in all these training stories to be able to show exactly that this is the same value or principle that is used in business. And to kind of tie that together a little bit, so when people would read it, they'd be like,"Oh, you know, maybe I can do that," instead of thinking, Oh, that's beyond me. I'm just a meathead." And so that's kinda where the book came up. The other part of the book was I wanted to be able to—I had two babies at the time, you know, two little kids. I wanted to be able to leave something for them in case, you know, I croaked, that they would have to kind of remember, you know, who their dad was and what I stood for and what my values were.
Chris:Wow. There's a lot of gym owners listening to this right now, David, and following your example, they know that they should be creating content. You have said in the past that it doesn't come naturally to you or it didn't at first. You know, what should they do to really get started on that?
Dave:Well, the first thing is, you know, if they're a gym owner, they need to make sure that they're focusing on things that are going to be able to service the gym members or to be able to bring in gym members because you know, they can write the best content in the world and post it online, but if that isn't getting people tp come through the door or isn't validating that their worth of the current members that are coming through the door, well then maybe their time needs to be spent on something else. Everything needs to be tracked. Every indicator needs to be strategically tracked in one form or another. And where I've seen some people make mistakes is they'll throw out—start writing a ton of content and then realize that—you know, it could be for a bigger publication like Elite FTS or some of the others that are out there, and it's not really doing anything, it's not really bringing people to the door. In that regard, they've got to step back and think. Look, you're being published by, you know these outlets that reject, you know, 70, 80% of all material that comes in. So just that it got through is something that you know should be promoted to your members that it was done and it needs to be promoted not in an egotistical way, but promoted like you know, congratulations to if it's a staff member for being published in, because that's just going to validate that they know their shit, which helps promote your brand. The content that most of the gym owners of private training facilities should really be concerned about is, you know, do they have a mailing list for their own members? That's where they should be producing content. You know, being able to email it out to them and then asking them to share that with other people and that type of stuff. Because your number one source of—as a gym owner, your number one source of memberships are referrals, everybody knows that. But nobody has referral programs that they're actually tracking and trying to quantify. So if they're going to use the content, they need to use the content to kind of drive those referrals. That's the best way to do it. If you write something that's really good and you put it out to your mailing list and you only have a hundred clients, but that one client sends it to their friend and now all of a sudden their friend knows who you are. That's step one. You know, they do it a couple more times that friend's going to start coming in. So yeah, content is very important. It's extremely important. But it can't consume, as a gym owner or a training facility owner, it can't consume your whole entire day. It's just part of your strategic plan. And it will take you much further than fucking posting on Facebook on there.
Chris:Right. So, you know, just in the same way that I thought opening a CrossFit gym in 2008 was basically going to let me be a powerlifter cause it would buy me a Texas Power Bar. A lot of coaches are getting into this now because they just want to train and they think that if I open a gym, I can just stay in the gym. Have you ever thought about opening a gym, Dave?
Dave:No. What I have is part of our company, you know, we sell the equipment, so I have—I don't know, let's just say offhand right now, a 6,000-square-foot facility that we run seminars and so forth. I wouldn't want to open this up and have it be a gym. It's not because I don't think it would be profitable, it's not because I don't think it would be a great thing to do. It's just because, you know, I'm in Internet retail and that's what my business is. You know, my business is trying to educate the masses, you know, educating and outfitting the strongest athletes in the world or athletes in general. That's what I do. You know, that's my business. My business is not, you know, personal training and it's not being a gym owner. So it would take away from the time that I need to do the most important things. And I don't want to worry about, you know, if I have a manager that's out here, the toilets are not working, anybody that owns a gym, there's a million things that go wrong all the time. I mean, there's always something and I don't need those always somethings when I already have a company that has a whole bunch of always somethings, you know, so it's just doubling it and it's not working towards the vision of what the company is. Nt when I can use the facility that we have for seminars and training videos and those kinds of things that I'm using it for, the vision that I have. But no, I've never considered wanting to be a gym owner, so I can put that out there. But we have outfitted enough gyms that I can kind of tell who's going to be successful and who's not really fast. And there has been many people that I've spoken to that wanted to open a gym that when we were done speaking, I know there is no way they are ready and they're going to fall on their ass. And I'm not trying to challenge them. I'm not trying to create a mindset where like fuck him I'm going to do it anyhow. They're just not ready man. They think it's something way more than what it really is. They don't understand the total reality of all of it because they are typically a lifter and think that they're going to have all this time to lift and you know, never take into consideration that—a lot of them usually before they open a gym were a trainer someplace else. And the analogy I like to put out there is you know, how many times—how great were your training sessions after you spent eight hours on the floor training clients? You know, usually it's not that great, and in most cases, a lot of times they went someplace else to be able to do those training sessions. Well imagine if you had to do it in the same place. You know, so you've got eight hours on the floor, then you're going to train. Or you know, I'll just train during lunch. So you get all your clients knocked out then at lunch time, then something happens with the receptionist and she's got to leave and you're stuck. You know. So the whole training aspect when you have your own gym, unless you're willing to hire more people than what most can afford, you're going to get stuck missing more workouts and you think, or having to put'em in at times when are not optimal, especially if you're trying to train with a group of people. Unless you shut the gym down, you know, the gym's gonna close every night between five and seven. You know, it's just stupid. But I know some people that have done that, you know, so they could be able to get their training in. So I'm not saying that you can't train, you know, you most definitely can. I mean any job's going to come with this, you know, stresses and you know, the ability to train. But you know, being a gym owner or actually any business owner as far as I'm concerned, what I've learned over the time is, you know, training partners become very difficult because your time on when you can train may change, you know, by the hour every single day. It's really, really hard to be able to lock down a time and say this is going to be when I can train. And then you can try to put it on your calendar first, but there's going to be other things that are going to be higher priority or should be if you're running a business that might get that pushed back a little bit. So the way that I've gotten around it is I put my main training sessions on the weekend when we're not open, and that way nothing can really fuck with it. And then during the week I do all the accessory type stuff and it doesn't matter when I can do that.
Chris:So you know, a lot of these CrossFit gyms, I mean we have an entrepreneurial opportunity for the first time, you know, most of the people owning these gyms are first-time gym owners. What should they know coming into the game? You know, what's one thing you wish you could tell all of them?
Dave:You're going to work way more hours than you ever thought you would and you're going to get paid way less than you ever have in your life. So once you start calculating it out what you make per hour, it's minuscule. So you have to be in it for the love of it. And I always like to say passion trumps everything. And this is kind of one of those cases where passion trumps everything. But you know, education is still needed. You can be passionate about training and that's great. You know, that's going to get you in there and you'll work hard and all that other kind of stuff. But that passion, as soon as you become an entrepreneur and as soon as you open that gym that passion needs to become being a business owner, not being a trainer. And if that doesn't happen and that passion isn't there, you're going to be fucked because you're not going to be willing to dig in when things get tough and you're not going to be willing to do the extra work, and when I say extra work, it's not—and this kind of all ties in together. When you're training to try to get stronger, you're going to get to a certain point where you realize it doesn't matter how fucking hard I work, I gotta get smarter. You know, I got to get better. You know, businesses the same way. It doesn't matter how fucking hard you work. You could go in your gym and scrub your floors all fucking day till you're sweating and your hands are bleeding from the mop, and it doesn't fucking matter if that's all you do every single day. Now there's no doubt you're working hard, you're working your ass off, but you're not doing things that are productive and making the business better. Not saying you need to have dirty floors, but you get the point. I mean you have to become smarter and if you're really passionate about building that business and if you want to reframe it and say that you're helping other people, if you're really passionate about helping your gym members and helping people obtain better fitness in the facility, well then they need to get more passionate about getting more people in there because that's what makes you successful.
Chris:Who for you is a model of business success in our industry?
Dave:I don't have one. I've tried to kind of always avoid that because I don't use that as my marker. You know, what I use as my marker are the values that were established when I founded the company. And the way to do that and a quick way to kind of—I'm going to go through this really, really quick, but you know, people have to really think about it and actually do it to understand how this really works, is if you sit down and write down the top 10 or 15 people that have had the greatest influence on your life or the greatest positive influence on your life, and you just write their names down. And I ask people to do this freehand, don't type it, freehand triggers more thought in your brain. So it will bring back more memories. But you write those down, and if you can't think of people, think of television characters, comic book characters, movie characters, any fiction, nonfictional character, it doesn't matter. Write down at least 15 people and then write a statement, you know, one or two sentences of why, what did they say? What did they do? What do they stand for? And once you have that list—and if you can't create that list, and through the mentorship programs that I do, I've had a few people that have not been able to create a list of 15 people that positively influenced their life. If you can't create that list, then write down 15 people you can't fucking stand through throughout your life that have negatively influenced your life, and then why. So now you got one or the other as far as lists or if you want, you can do both. Now when you do that, read through and think, and if you can't come up with what values are, just Google search human values. And then you'll get a list of a hundred values and look and see what values keep popping up. You know, some people, it could be trust. Some people it could be, you know, this guy was always on time, you know, so promptness. Some people it could be this guy always looked good, you know, he always—so it could be perception, appearance, and whatever these are, you're going to see that they're going to really resonate and over 15 people, you're going to see a few that are going to—like four of those people are going to all share the same value. And if it's negative, it's just going to be the violation of the value. Like you hate this person because you know, they rip you off, which means they're dishonest, which means you value honesty. So once you have those all down, those are the values that created you. So they're specific to you. And those are the things that if somebody violates it or you violate it yourself, which happens, we all make mistakes, keep you up at night. And if you think of those things that have kept you up at night, usually it's a violation of one of those values. So once you have those all established, then you have the words and now you just have to change the meaning of what it stands for, from singular to plural because it's not about you when you're in business, it's about the business. So you have to go from me, I call it you have to go from me to we, and then you write a defining statement for what each one of those mean and that's what determines what your company is going to—that's the rules of your company. What your primary aim is or your mission statement. That's like the goal of company. So if you know the goal and then you know the rules you're going to play by, you don't need other people to work up to or other role models because you already know the game and you already know how you're going to play it. You just need to do it and execute it. Now that's not saying I'm not looking at other people, you know for ideas, and Richard Branson and Tony Robbins, Michael Gerber and all these people I've pulled great ideas from. But not their philosophy because the philosophy is already determined based upon my own values and then as long as I'm bringing people into the company and they kind of share those values. I have a blueprint. It's just sticking to it and making sure that if you know something's violating those values they're gone. You know, they're no longer associated. You make them free to the market and you go that route, then you don't need it. But there is, from the business educational standpoint, the one thing I like to put out there is all the books that you'll read that you can pick up, you know, on Amazon or Barnes and Noble or any of those spaces, they're good. I mean, they're going to give you ideas, but typically they're also written by people who have consulting services or other books, you know, that's their source of revenue. It's like the guy that writes the ebook on how to make$1 million writing ebooks on how to make a million dollars. So, I mean, the stories are nice, you know. And sometimes some of the stories might ignite an idea, you know, which is nice. But if you go back and you start buying textbooks, university textbooks, you know, 200, 300 level textbooks, and you start studying those, then you're going to learn the basics and the fundamentals and the principles of doing business. As a trainer, we all have basics, fundamentals and principles and those are, you know, how to manipulate sets and reps and tempo and you know, training density and in some cases workload and all that. I mean, those are the definitions. Those are, you know, what defines what a training program is. If you don't know what defines what a successful businesses is because you haven't taken the time to learn the basic fundamentals of things like, you know, what are the components of a profit and loss statement, what are the components of a balance sheet, what are marketing fundamentals, you know, if you're not taking the time to learn all those basics, then that's kind of like going in the gym and not knowing the difference between a set and a rep or a barbell and a dumbbell.
Chris:So your model would really be kind of the average of the 10 people you respect most contrasted against, you know, the 10 people you respect least, then?
Dave:That's going to determine the values because just because you don't—on your list, maybe one person that you because he just happened to say the right thing to you at the right time. And then that changed the, I can't say the word very well, but trajectory of your life from then. So for example, I barely graduated high school. I had to go to a small business school. I went to a small business school that really wasn't that hard. So after I went through there, I went to Bowling Green State University and I flunked out my first semester. And then I came back and all through grade school I was label, you know—now there's a million different labels but back then it was just LD, which was learning disabled. So you kind of buy into that you know. You find your ways around it, you find excuses and everybody around you is helping to make excuses. Well, you know, he's slow. It takes him more time or he can't do this or he can't do that. He's not good with this, he's not good with that. And so after I flunked out, I came back and when I was in Bowling Green and I found this really cool place called the library, which I never had seen one before because I never stepped foot in one. And when I was there I found the NCSA journal, I found the Soviet Sport Review, International Journal of Sport Nutrition, and a couple others that were popular at the time and was just photocopying the shit out of everything, I got four, five huge notebooks, just full of stuff from that as well. So this coach stops me in the parking lot because I flunked out, I had to go back home, and he asked me how school was going. So I just started telling him about, you know, Spassov and this Bulgarian periodization and how they worked up to these singles and then they dropped down and do 70% of three then they work up to a single again and dropped down and do 80% for two. And I just keep going on like, you know, this is just this one model, this is a Bulgarian stuff and there's people who are actually adjusting the linear puritization where it's undulating, you know, it's got like waves, and to me it was fucking awesome because all I knew at the time where like the leader principles and then you know, basic linear periodization, which is what I was using. So he lets me go on for about 15 minutes and he stops. He says, I asked younhow school was going. And I told him I flunked out. It's just not for me. My thing is the gym and you know, I need to be in the gym and I need to be learning at the gym. And he flat out told me that I wasn't stupid and that people can say whatever they want to say. You know, they can say I have ADD or LD or whatever it is. But I'm definitely not stupid. I'm definitely not ignorant. I just sat there for 20 minutes and told him more about training than he had learned in 30 years of training himself. He just told me I was fucking lazy and I wasn't willing to do the work, that if it was going to take me twice as much as somebody else than you fucking take twice as much as somebody else. But when I wrestled I had no problem staying one hour after everybody else and get there a half hour before, so what's the difference? And I left and drove around for about 45 minutes and I changed everything. So that one statement changed the trajectory of my entire life from there. So to be able to sit there and say, you know, do I respect him? Yes, no, maybe. I mean he really never was my coach. He worked as a coach, like half of a wrestling season. I never took one of his classes. We worked out a couple times, you know, for all I know he could have been, you know, the worst person in the world. So for that three minutes or 15 minutes and that one statement, he changed everything. So it's not looking back to find the people you respect. It's looking back to find the people that said or did something that changed the trajectory of your life. And then what value was he showing me and what value did he drive in my skull that changed my life? I got to work hard. I have to work harder than everybody else if I'm going to get an A. And not just from the statement of, you know, you have to work hard. Everybody works hard. No, I seriously have to work harder because things come to me slower. I have to understand that. I have to realize that. And so that carries through on any project that we're doing that we go into it or someone says"Oh this is going to take four months," Immediately I think,"OK, this is gonna be six months." You know, I'm factoring that in there.
Chris:Right. So what does your day look like, then, Dave? I mean if you have to work harder than everybody else, what time you getting up in the morning and what time you get into the office?
Dave:Well, because I'm a mashed-up powerlifter, getting up in the morning isn't the most pleasant fucking experience in the world. So I used to get up a lot earlier than I get up now. But I get up around seven, and then before I even eat, shower or do anything it's pretty much, I just basically get up out of bed, but then move over into a recliner and then pop open the laptop and just start clearing the spam and answering the emails that came in over the night, you know, so I try to clear my inbox, so that's usually about an hour. And then I'll read for another hour, which could be the textbooks I was talking about, cause I can generally absorb things a little bit better in the morning. So then I'll plan on getting into the office sometime between 10 and 10:30. The time that I'm in the office, which will be 10:30 until 2:30 I do what I define as administrative work. Keep in mind, I have, you know, a staff of people underneath me I have somebody that runs the office. So when I say administrative work, what I'm really doing is just kind of like eavesdropping and listening to see what everybody else is doing. I'm trying to get a pulse of what's going on in the office. You know, is there drama, is there gossip, you know, are things stressful. They can be stressful, that's fine, but you know, when you start to have drama, gossip, that's when I've learned—the more gossip, the more drama the more further away somebody is getting from the aim of the company. And I've also found a correlation between office gossip and drama and online sales. And I can't explain to you why, but it happens and it's always happened and I don't know, like I said, I don't know why and I don't know if it's unique just to us, but it is most definitely a variable. So if I'm picking up on that kind of stuff, then I'll speak with my office manager to let her know there may be some areas of concern. I don't address the areas of concern because that's for my office managers to do. So during that time I might be answering emails, I might be writing a blog. I call it kind of like brainless activities, The podcast type things, you know, that kind of stuff, kind of all fit in that time. My kids get home from school around three. So I'm home when they get home and then I help them with their homework for an hour, an hour and a half, and at that time, say six, I'll come back and train. That will be from six until eight, 8:30, go back, spend some time with my wife watching TV until about 10, and then at 10 I will work from 10 until two. And that's usually the strategic work of the business. The stuff I'm really paid to do, you know, where's the business going to be in a year? Are we on par, you know, looking at the different indicators of the business and all that needs to happen in a quiet focused environment, which is best done for me late at night. That used to be done really early in the morning, but I can't do it anymore and just my body's too fucked up. Then I'll go to bed. And that's typically how a day goes.
Chris:And you were talking earlier about the mentoring that you do. Who are you mentoring and how do people find you and what happens?
Dave:I have a—it's a service that will come up on the website right now, it's not up because we're coming into the holiday season. When I have the time I'll throw it up, I've done this a few different ways and it really depends upon who's gonna come and why they're going to come, but it's very individualized. So the time's either going to be all day Friday, all day Saturday and half a day Sunday or other times it's been all three days. Sometimes it's just two days. It really depends, and the only thing that I make certain is it's just typically always a business owner or somebody that owns a facility. I don't really do training. People would come in just to learn training. I don't do that because we have seminars for that and you know, I may—John Meadows and I were kind of talking about doing something bodybuilding, powerliftinglifting-oriented in the future, but that's really not what this is. It doesn't matter how many people come, what matters though is they have to be from the same organization. There can only be one profit and loss statement. That's how I define it and whoever is the person that owns that profit and loss statement has to be comfortable with whoever comes knowing what's on that profit and loss statement with the exception of their income, which really isn't on the profit and loss statements. You find that more in a balance sheet. So I don't want two companies here at the same time because if we're working on, you know working through the value system that I just talked about working through a strategic objective which is kind of like a five-year plan, and all these things are personal, you know, they're specific brand-oriented. When you're dealing with you know, going over expenses and expense correlations, those are kind of specific too, and a lot of it's privileged and confidential or it should be and it shouldn't be shared with other business owners. So that's why I don't like the whole idea of like a mastermind type thing. That's great. If you want to go down there and talk about things that might work, but you know, I can throw out a lot of ideas that might work, but if the fucker can't pay for it, it doesn't matter, then you've got to come up with something that's more bootstraps, you know, from a marketing standpoint. So you've kind of got to know, you know what that is, or they could just simply not have any records at all. They're just using a shoe box, which is there's the first problem. But then walking them through what they should look for if they are there to look into investing into a program to make sure they don't invest into something too big. But usually half of the time then will be spent going over all that stuff. And then pretty much everybody to date has wanted to train. So we'll train. And then they usually want to learn some type of training stuff, which I kind of let them define. So it's kind of all mapped out after they sign up. And the prices is ranged based upon the years. It's five grand is what it was last time. And that's if it's just the one person, that's what it is. If they bring five of their staff, it's still the same.
Chris:But it's one on one with you for a couple of days. Two, three days.
Dave:Yes. And I can say with almost certainty, I've always been able to find a way to save them far more than five grand just on stupid shit that they're doing that they're already paying money for that they shouldn't be.
Chris:Yeah. But even more than that, I mean, I'm around a lot of other business mentors and just what you've talked about in defining your values, I've never heard anybody go to that level before. I think it's obviously worth it just for that. And you said that's coming up on your site soon, right?
Dave:It should come up after the first of the year and then I'll try to do maybe one a month if I can. It's not like a big revenue stream for me, it's more just to help people that need the help. But, you know, the whole pack on the value thing is you know, people—and I weed this out too, you know, when they sign up. If somebody seems to just be in it just for money. Like they think they're going to get in, they're going to develop—and some people can do this, they're gonna get in, they're gonna develop a business, they're gonna grow their facility and then they want to sell it after five years and get out. I can't help them with that. You know, I don't know how to dynamically grow a company. That was never my goal or intention. I don't know that. We've been a business for 18 years and I haven't really had to rebrand. I haven't had to change the vision. I haven't had to change our values. You know, obviously you have to change as the environment changes and you know, as the landscape changes. But a lot of other companies in the industry have to completely change everything to be able to last for 18 years. Well, you wouldn't have to do that if you stopped chasing trends and started developing brands. And that's what a lot of people do is they start chasing trends. Well trends are called trends for a reason, because they will eventually die. And when they die, you're dead. Depending upon how long the trend can last. Some can last more than your lifetime, you know, then you're fine. But when you develop the brand, then you don't have those concerns. And if that brand is developed based upon values, you're never going to—I'm not going to say you're never going to have problems, you're going to have problems. You're gonna have a hell of a lot of problems. You know that. Anybody that's in business needs to understand, take whatever you problems you think that you're going to have and multiply by a hundred. And that's just part of it. There's more adversity than there is prosperity.
Chris:But if you have a strong brand..
Dave:Yeah, if you have a strong brand, then you're looking at longevity. As long as you're not stupid.
Chris:OK. So, just to give you a final three-minute question here, Dave, what's a mistake you see gym owners making right now with their brand and, you know, I'm not sure if this is just specific to CrossFit gym owners, but maybe just kind of across the board, what are they screwing up?
Dave:Everybody says they're different, but you give me 20 different gyms, be it a sport training center or a CrossFit, I can't tell you how they're different. So there's where they're screwing up, you know, and they're trying to say—I heard this said one time before that people— I spit my drink out laughing—that they love powerlifting because it's so diverse. You know, the people are so diverse and I fucking spit my drink out. They're so diverse that all of them have fucking bald heads. Goatees. Pretty much all 20 pounds overweight, all a little bloated, except for the lighter guys. Where's the fucking diversity there? You know, so they'll say, you know gym owners, well we're totally different than the other guy down the street. Now of course if it's a sport training center and they're comparing themselves to a CrossFit then yeah, they're totally different. So CrossFit puts down a track, you know, and starts teaching running mechanics to kids then how are they different? What are they doing branding wise to really show that they're different than their competitors? And that's a hard question to answer. If you have a business, how are you different? But it needs to be asked continuously, and it needs to be answered not from your perspective, but from the person who doesn't know any different, who's trying to decide between two places. They need to know how is it different. And if you've had people that have trained in both places, what would they say is different? You know, that that's the biggest mistake with the branding. You can talk about, you know, with CrossFit you got the CrossFit brand, but typically you still have—and it has to be part of the name, but there's still another part in the name, which is whatever your individual name is. You can kind of say it's a dual brand or it's co-branded or whatever it is. In some cases, if people are doing a phenomenal job with the branding they can actually drop CrossFit and still continue to prosper. If they're doing a shitty job with the branding and they drop the CrossFit, they're fucked. You know, cause they're relying on the CrossFit part of the brand. Now some, you know, may need to keep both and I'm not saying drop one or drop the other. I'm not saying that at all. I'm just using an example of branding experience and what it should be, especially the local level.
Chris:That's, that's great. I'm just reading"Zero to One" again by Peter Thiel and he's talking about, you know, the value of a monopoly and creating monopoly through differentiation. You know, when I look at Elite FTS, it seems like it's a monopoly to me because I don't really look at anybody else. But to you, I'm sure there are other people who consider themselves competitors of Elite FTS, right?
Dave:Oh, God yes. I mean, we've got competitors that are doing fucking 15 thousand times the sales that we are, but I don't look at my competitors from a standpoint of market share. You know, I probably should, but I really don't. You know, I look at it from the standpoint of—because you can't control what other people do. So I can't control what my competitors are going to do. The only way you could potentially do that to file lawsuits left and right, and that still isn't going to control what they're going to do, it's just gonna cost you both a bunch of fucking money. It's kind of stupid. You can only control what you can do. And so that's kind of where the focus is. But yeah, everybody has competitors. We have competitors that have a huge market share compared to what we have. But you know, I can sit there and worry about it or I can just keep sticking to the vision that we've had and keep building and keep moving forward the same way that we've been moving forward for the past 18 years and they're going to do what they're going to do. We're going to do what we're going to do. And you know, hopefully there's enough differentiation or whatever you want to say that everybody thrives, where people and the space that I'm in when you start to deal with—there's two spaces really. There's the educational space and there's the internet retail. There are some people that are still confused that think that, you know, we are our own articles and we don't sell products. And there's some people that, a lot of people actually, more than the latter, that think we sell products and don't have content. That's kind of been the case since we launched the store 17, 18 years ago. Where there's issues is when you get a company that will launch and then you look at them, and then you look at one of the other companies that are well known in the industry and you're like, this dude is doing exactly the same thing. Like, verbatim. When they're doing the same thing and they're trying to copy the same thing, you know, as far as the structure, and sometimes they even do it as far as, you know, the layout of the website and all the other kind of stuff, those never really bother me. Actually they don't bother any of the leaders that are in the industry because when somebody is copying you verbatim, they're going to fail because they don't have their own identity. They don't have their own brand. You know, they don't have their own value structure. They don't have their own mission. They're just copying yours. So when they copy yours, they might initially take a little bit of your business away from you, but all they're really doing is reinforcing that you're better cause they keep copying all your shit so they're actually marketing for you in the long term.
Chris:I think that's great advice. That actually hits home with me a lot. So Dave, I'm going to leave it there because I've already imposed on your time for 90 minutes and I really appreciate the help that you've given. But I'd love to continue the conversation another time too.
Dave:Anytime.
Chris:Thanks a lot. man.
Announcer:It's time for Critical Questions. Got a question for Chris? Email chris@twobrainbusiness.com. Here's our most critical question this week.
Chris:Critical Questions this week comes from my friend Jay Williams and if you missed that podcast episode, go back in the archives and listen to it. Jay is one of the co-owners of CrossFit Thames, one of the biggest boxes in Europe, and also the owner of CrossFit Hale out in California, which is growing way faster than Thames ever did and providing him just as much income as Thames ever did too with a much smaller client base. So Jay's question to me was sent over email, and we were talking about some other stuff and he threw this at me. If your life depended on it and you had to grow Catalyst by 30% in the next six months, what step would you take? And of course he's talking about net revenues and to clarify further, he says basically what would you focus on for fast growth given that you already have an established and well-run gym. So for me, raising my net revenues by 30% is going to be a lot harder than for a lot of other gyms because we focus on a small client base. We slow down the intake process to make sure that we get the people that we want. You know, I often say that I would rather have four people come in the door this month and keep all of them than bring 10 people in the door and keep four. So raising my net revenue by 30% would be a really hard task. So I would be looking at complimentary revenue streams instead of adding, you know, 30% more CrossFitters, which would be doing a massive disservice to the athletes that we already have. I'd be looking at things like tutoring, which has a really high overlap with fitness. You know, parents coming into work out, kid need some tutoring help, there it is and it's available to you. I go to tutoring because Greg Glassman said in his 2013 speech in Montana that the next field for CrossFit to take over is education, not really health care. If I had to raise my personal net revenues by 30%, I would probably acquire another gym. So I'd look for a personal trainer who's well established and either set them up or I would look for a small, maybe a CrossFit knock-off gym in my city, of which there are a few, acquire them and teach them how to build their business really quickly. The go-to, you know, if somebody's life depended on it, would be a 30% wage, sorry, a 30% hike in membership. So I would actually charge our members more using the stratified model. My base CrossFit rates are important, but really they are only 50% of the picture. So I talk a lot about this and average revenue per member articles on 321goproject.com. But if I boosted our CrossFit membership rates by 30%, I think I could probably do it without losing too many people. The people who come to our gym are not really price sensitive, but more important that they realize the value of our service goes way beyond just the workouts. And so if I had to, if somebody's life was on the line, that's where I would start is a boost of 30%. And I'm sure that our current members would probably be OK with that. You know, given that I had to do it. But the real answer that would apply probably best for most of you guys is I would start by splitting down what my net revenue goal would be. So if my net revenue goal is to grow 30% over the next year, I would start by just focusing on growing 5% per month for six months. Or if we look at that as in a compounded way, meaning that I'm not getting 5% in January and then losing it and trying to generate a new 5% in February, if we look at this compounded, I'd really be looking at maybe about 3% per month. That's really two sports teams. For us, this time a year, we're training a lot of skiers and so we'd sign them up for an eight-week program that would be worth, you know, 3,500 to$4,000. And if I did two of those, that would give me a net increase of about 15 to 20% right there. So I could do that. I would also be looking hard at the outliers, so corporate groups. At this point right now, incremental gain is not going to boost my net revenue 30%. So again, it's not a matter of how am I going to get 30% more clients because that, while it might boost my gross, is also going to add a lot more costs. We run pretty lean and tight. So adding 30% more clients is going to mean running more groups. It's going to mean more coaches and that's a big ramp-up process. So to get 30% net that way I'd really have to increase my gross by about 50% and that's a really tall order. So I'd be looking at a small group personal training. I'd be looking at sports teams. I'd be looking at corporate groups. Really at this point, I would have to go after the outliers. I'd have to go after, you know, the hail mary's. But I would just go after a lot of them. You know, I'd be going after corporate groups every month, just like we teach in 3, 2, 1, Go Project Academy. And I'd be going after far more sports teams than we currently do, which is actually a much easier proposition than a lot of box owners think. The key is not to say I sell CrossFit, CrossFit will make you a better baseball player. The key is to say, I sell the type of strength and conditioning that's going to improve your baseball game or you know, help you work better as a team. The word CrossFit is going to be your tool. It's probably not your best marketing pitch because if you have a board, let's say of 12 people, and one person on that board has this negative idea about CrossFit, then you've lost your selling tool and it's actually turned around on you. So it's become a negative. We know that CrossFit's the best thing that these people can do. They might not understand that yet. And frankly, if they don't understand it with perfect black and white clarity, if they're not already sold, in other words, that's going to be a negative for you. Every time you have to explain a concept in your sales pitch, it's just like explaining a joke. It's not funny. It's not effective. So luckily for us, you know, these teams understand now the value of strength, conditioning, use that word. OK, how would I do this? Well, we've just opened up a new facility. I can accommodate a lot more sports teams there. Ignite is also growing by leaps and bounds and I'd be focusing my energy there, but I understand it's not for everybody to do. Growing my net might mean opening a second location. It probably wouldn't because if I had to do this really fast, gain 30% net in a year, I would be looking to squeak out revenue from every square inch of the facility that I currently had. I would find a trainer who'd be willing to coach at nine or 10 at night or four or 5:00 a.m., especially weekends would be wide open for possibility. I'd be adding open gym time between my classes just to get a tiny bit more revenue right there. And then CrossFit kids, you know, is a super popular program for us, too.
:So I'm a firm believer in Dunbar's number. You know, I think that with 200 athletes who are high-ARM clients, I'm not going to boost my net revenue by 30% just by adding more clients. That would not be my focal point. My focal point would be overlapping services like tutoring. My focal point would be overlapping services like sports team conditioning, which is not an overlapping service really as much as it is just a niche, a different way to present what I know. And I'd also be looking for opportunities between classes. I'd be, if I was most gyms, I'd be boosting personal training at my gym. That is a huge percentage of our gross and net revenues, too.
Chris:So I hope that helps give you some ideas leading into 2016. I really think it is possible for most gyms to boost their net by 30% and I guess the last piece that I missed there was most gyms should be looking to cut costs. Their overhead is way too high. And so when we're talking to a lot of these gyms, the reason that they can't make a high net is because they're so focused on gross. I can't tell you how many times, dozens, I've gotten on the phone with somebody for a free call and they've said, you know, I have 90 athletes, I'm not taking a check. I just need 20 more. And the problem here is not the math, it's the paradigm that more athletes equals more revenue. If you have over 50 people who are willing to work out and do exactly what you tell them to do and you're not taking a paycheck, you need to examine your model before you do anything else. Something is flawed and just adding more stress in the form of more members on top of that model is not going to solve it. Plus, if you're counting just on getting more members to boost your net revenue by 30% it means you're probably going to be spending a lot of time marketing instead of coaching. You probably hate marketing. You probably love coaching and that's why you got into this business, and that is going to be painful for you. You're probably not going to be good at it. So hopefully this helps a few people out. This show is really about ideas, and so I just gave you the same ideas that I gave to my buddy Jay, and we will see you next week with another huge episode. We'll be talking with a mystery guest from CrossFit HQ. This guy is a really big wheel, kind of in the behind-the-scenes circles and you're going to get a lot of knowledge, a lot of insight into the direction of HQ. You're going to get a lot of ideas from this episode. If you thought Dave Tate was great, stay in your seats until next week. Thanks again.