CrossFit Affiliates: How to Save the Movement

CrossFit’s future depends on its affiliates—but right now, they’re struggling. The public message is that the brand is thriving, but behind the scenes, thousands of gym owners are fighting to stay afloat.

In today’s special episode, Chris Cooper explains why CrossFit affiliates are closing at an alarming rate and outlines what must change if CrossFit LLC wants to save them.

For years, CrossFit HQ said that great coaching would lead to strong businesses. But as Coop shares, great coaching is not enough: Affiliate owners need the tools and strategies to build financially sustainable gyms.

Coop outlines a plan to rebuild the affiliate program, starting with business education, real mentorship and leadership that prioritizes sustainable gym success over short-term revenue grabs.

If CrossFit is going to survive long term, the affiliate model has to change—tune in to hear Coop’s full plan.
 
If you missed the first two episodes in this special series, check them out via the links below.

Links

How to Save CrossFit

Q&A With Coop

Gym Owners United

Book a Call  

1:48 - Clarify the mission

2:53 - Rebuild CrossFit media

5:53 - Prequalify “mentors” on the platform

7:44 - Track & publish affiliate metrics

9:50 - CrossFit business course?

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

In the beginning, the formula for growth for CrossFit was somebody would find the main site, fall in love with the method, get certified, open an affiliate. But by 2013, that model had flipped. Now it was find an affiliate. Fall in love with the method, get certified, open your own affiliate. All revenue used to start with the main site. Now it starts with the affiliate. All certifications come from the affiliates and all new affiliates come from existing affiliates. The affiliates of CrossFit have all the power in the company, but they're decreasing in number. I'm Chris Cooper. This is Run a Profitable Gym. Today, I'm gonna tell you how to save the CrossFit affiliates, because if you save the affiliates, they will save CrossFit. Now I say the CrossFit affiliates are closing at an alarming rate. The public story is that the brand is thriving, but behind the scenes, thousands of gym owners are struggling to stay open. Not because they're bad coaches, but because they don't know how to run a business. And for years, CrossFit HQ has believed that great coaching alone would make the affiliates successful. But the truth is that great coaching is not enough. A gym owner must be great at business too . The problem is that CrossFit never taught any of us how to run a business. Now, I broke that whole timeline down of CrossFit and the the business coaching relationship in a video called How to Save CrossFit. So I'm not gonna do it again here, but the risk is that we lose critical mass, where the marketing that's put out by each of these individual affiliates isn't enough to replace the gyms that are de affiliating. So if affiliates are the cornerstone or the foundation on which everything else is built, the games, the certifications, the movement, how do we improve the affiliates? Well, we start by clarifying the mission. That's the first step. Are we still selling constantly varied functional movement at high intensity anymore? Or is that what everybody's selling? And is that just a tool to deliver the real mission, which is to improve fitness in our communities across broad time and modal domains, if you will, or to increase health span and lifespan? If the latter , which means you know the mission is to improve fitness in our communities, then the definition of fitness should be evolving to reflect that, and that will evolve the methodology too, just as a matter of course, because obviously to evolve the methodology means that we need somebody with a scientific approach to weigh the benefits of the new science biomarkers. Zone two, nobody was talking about this in 2001. Which of these ones have merit and which are really just fads? Now, this can't be done by committee. You know, I , I worked for crossfit.com, I watched the programming for the main site get done by committee once, and I think you can guess how that went. The next step after you refin the mission and and find somebody to evolve the science is to rebuild CrossFit Media. This is absolutely critical, and if, if nothing else from this list gets done, CrossFit Media has to come back. Most of the value of affiliation was the media that was produced by HQ because storytelling is more important than anything else. The first thing Greg Glassman ever said to me in person at a CrossFit media meeting was that CrossFit is a media company, not a fitness company, a media company. And that's because storytelling is more important than anything else. Then if the mission is to improve fitness across broad time and modal domains in our communities, then the games has to change. This is the biggest story that CrossFit tells is the game story. Now, I'll go into that on a separate podcast, but I think it's more important to give people the biggest fittest day of their lives than it is to find the two fittest people on earth. The next step is to teach gym owners how to run a business. Now, in truth, I would do what Two Brain is already doing. I would start collecting data from partners like Wafi and Push Press and Kilo publish that data every year to every affiliate. And you know, I do this because HQ said that they wouldn't. And every year we produce this guide. Here it is, you know, it's state of the gym industry. I proposed this to CrossFit HQ staff back in 2018. They said , great idea, we're never gonna do it. So every year I spend about a quarter million dollars collecting this data and shipping it to affiliates for free. If you want it, just go to two brand business.com/data and you can have it for free. This is because it's just something that I thought CrossFit HQ should have been doing, and now I get to do it not just for CrossFit affiliates, but for the whole industry. Once you're publishing that data, then you need to start a real educational series for affiliates. Start by teaching them how to read a profit and loss statement or even a balance sheet. Then teach them how to build an on-ramp, how to sell an on-ramp, and how to build a great income with 150 members. You don't have to force a particular model on anyone, but people need to understand that there are people doing a great living with groups of four to six small group training, with semi-private, with personal training, with big groups. Also, like the CrossFit method is flexible across all these different models, but you have to understand your numbers. If you're gonna make any of them work, none of them work. If you don't understand the numbers, then you need to teach gym owners how to build and run four marketing funnels, how to retain their clients better and how to pay themselves and their staff. Every new affiliate should know how to read a profit and loss statement before they open. They should understand a RM average revenue per member and LEG length of engagement, which are the two most critical numbers in gym profitability. They should be able to price their services correctly instead of relying on the failed big gym model of if you build it , they will come or just copying what that person down the road is doing. In subtracting $5 a level two coaching credentials should not be a requirement for affiliates. A business education should be , uh, pre-qualify. Any mentors who give advice on the CrossFit platform right now, CrossFit chooses its business mentors based on how long they've been in a owned a gym, not how successful that gym has been. Many of the mentors they put on stage never ran profitable gyms. Many survived by working as a CrossFit seminar staff, not by running their gym. Others run gyms that are for sale or failing or on their third owners. This has to stop. If somebody is gonna mentor other affiliates, they must prove their success with data and not just their own success, but their ability to take that model and apply it successfully to others. You know, Greg Glassman once said to me, it is very hard to be a good brick layer , but is it an order of magnitude harder to be somebody who teaches brick layers to be good? And it's another order of magnitude higher to be somebody who teaches the teacher of brick layers to be good. In other words, it is extremely hard to be able to teach people to use a model that works. Having a model that works is a good first step, but being able to translate that to other peoples is a hundred times harder. But that's the bar. Now, the time to figure this out with mentorship, it's gone. That was five years ago. It's too late. We need people with proven models and systems to teach affiliates how to run a business. And this is true for CrossFit meetups, round tables, online seminars, anywhere that affiliates can be led astray by opinions or salesmen . Though John Birch created the problem back in oh six, it still carries on today. Attend any affiliate zoom call with a guest speaker and count the number of times somebody raises their hand and says, where's your proof? Where's your data? It never happens. We all just trust that anybody that HQ puts in front of us to give business advice is telling the truth. They've been vetted, somebody's checked they haven't. Fourth track and check and publish affiliate business metrics. CrossFit HQ should collect real data from affiliates, not just coaching credentials. And this means like, were you profitable? What was your revenue? What was your member retention like? They don't have to share this private information with other gyms, but they should share it as a robust form just like we do every single year with the state of the industry guide. That way you know that you're making decisions based on numbers instead of just listening to the loudest voices in the room. You need to teach this to all new affiliates. You need to provide a mentorship option for all new and existing affiliates, because coaches should have coaches. We all believe in coaching or we wouldn't be selling it, provide the course as part of affiliation and make the mentorship optional for a fee. But you know, shouldn't HQ be doing this for affiliates? Doing the marketing? No, you know, setting the prices, writing the playbooks, no, I'll use the marketing as an example. Last year, CrossFit started doing some Facebook ads in , in kind of the big metro centers for affiliates. And some of the affiliates have said like, oh, I've gotten one to three leads from this . That's cool, but it's actually a Trojan horse. What's happening is that all of those leads in, you know, wherever you are, New York, they're not going to your gym, they're going to crossfit.com. That means that crossfit.com captures their lead information, is able to retarget them with more marketing. You don't collect that lead. It goes through main site to get to you. That means you can't retarget those people with marketing. You can't add them to your email list until later. HQ owns the lead, not the affiliate. And you know what happens if you de affiliate? Well , that that lead gets cut off. It's way better for affiliates to learn how to market themselves, do the marketing, grow the entire movement, and that actually benefits HQ and to set up this Trojan horse system of we're gonna do your ads and have people actually become reliant on it. HQ's job is not direct marketing like Facebook ads. HQ's job is brand marketing, telling stories, not direct marketing. That's up to the affiliates now, CrossFit is reportedly building a level one course for business and it could be helpful or it could further the problems that we already have. See, private equity purchases a company that seems to be set up and running smoothly but hasn't capitalized on all of its opportunities for revenue yet, private equity is resistant to changing a working model. They wanna , they don't wanna buy something that they can figure out like an entrepreneur, right? For good reason. Their MO is always just to capture more money from everyone in the ecosystem to charge more for affiliation, to sell more sponsorships, to capture more of the revenue, buy selling products directly themselves instead of partnering with the established experts. But similarly, choosing one of the long-term CrossFit elites like the Inner Circle to institute Real reform in the affiliate model will probably have the same effect. Fewer and fewer of the affiliate managers actually own gyms. Now their income comes from hq, and so their incentive is to resist change, to keep saying the same things that aren't working over and over, not to upset the Apple cart. So change will likely have to come from outside. When I was asked in 2018, what's the best thing we can do for affiliates by then? CCOO , Bruce Edwards and the then CEO, Jeff Kane, I responded with the same list that I just shared with you. One of the people at the breakfast table said, Hey, that sounds great, but we're never gonna do it. And at the time I was despondent. But in 2025 after seeing CrossFit's growth stall and then go backward, I'm actually glad to have a position outside that inner circle because it means that I can work for affiliates without being influenced by the motives of private equity. Now, it's probably worth mentioning that two Brain Business does a lot of this stuff that I've mentioned for free already, so it's not hard to find speakers or tools or resources to share with affiliates every month. Instead of doing meaningless round tables or putting people on stage who can't even prove their idea works. And if you're an affiliate, you don't have to wait for CrossFit to change this stuff. You just go to gym owners united.com and we'll give you all this stuff for free. If you want coaching and mentorship to help you apply it faster, smoother, that's what Two Brain Business is, a mentorship program. But in short, I try to provide all the stuff that HQ should be making available. The tools and knowledge are free through gym owners united.com. The step-by-step courses are available through our mentorship program, and of course, we sell mentorship with a real investment so that people will do the work. Just like buying coaching at your gym, it's no coincidence that like CrossFit in Two Brain business, the knowledge is free and the coaching is magical. The CrossFit brand is built on affiliates, not the other way around. Many people believe the CrossFit games are the primary driver of CrossFit's growth. That is false. The real marketing engine has always been affiliates themselves. Each affiliate is a self-funded marketing machine, bringing in members, spreading the brand, and growing the movement. When an affiliate closes, CrossFit loses its biggest marketing tool. A good affiliate isn't just one with great coaching that's necessary, but insufficient. A good affiliate is one that's financially sustainable. Affiliates don't close because the coaches lose their passion or get bored or decide this just isn't for me, or they don't have enough certifications. Affiliates close because they run out of money, period. The owner might not admit that. They might say that they were drawn to a passionate career in real estate, or they were called to something else, but they close because they run out of money. The problems that close affiliates are solvable problems, but they have to have money to solve. Failing affiliates don't produce coaches for the certifications. Failing affiliates don't produce registrations for the CrossFit open failing affiliates don't produce customers for fit aid or those cool t-shirt companies. Failing affiliates don't pay their a affiliation fees. Either they de affiliate or sometimes they go outta business. Look, the solution to saving affiliates starts with the affiliates. If you save the affiliates, you save CrossFit. To do that, we need to change the affiliate program, give them help from real experts with real data instead of regurgitating the same old myths from 2006, louder and faster. The affiliates are not the fruit of the CrossFit tree. They are the roots. I'm Chris Cooper. This has Run a Profitable Gym, and I hope this helps you run yours.