What Is MetFix? Emily Kaplan on Her New Project With Greg Glassman

Greg Glassman’s new venture, MetFix, has generated monster buzz across the fitness industry, and current and former CrossFit affiliate owners are particularly interested.

So what exactly is MetFix, and how does it compare to Glassman's other major creation, CrossFit?

In this episode of “Run a Profitable Gym,” Two-Brain Business founder Chris Cooper sits down with Glassman’s partner in MetFix, Emily Kaplan, to find out.

Emily provides the project's background and lays out MetFix's focus on combatting chronic disease through diet and exercise.

She explains why the program is designed to complement CrossFit rather than compete with it and offers her perspective on the broader health and fitness landscape.

Chris and Emily also discuss how MetFix approaches coaching and education, and they dig into its affiliate model, which many gym owners want to know more about.

If you are curious about MetFix, tune in to hear insights directly from one of its founders. 

To learn more, visit the MetFix site via the link below. 

Links

MetFix

Gym Owners United

Book a Call  

00:52 - What is MetFix?

17:04 - MetFix certification & affiliates

26:08 - Adherence to nutrition plans

36:47 - Goal of the affiliate program

56:54 - Support for MetFix affiliates

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

What is Met Fixx? Greg Glassman's new initiative has a lot of people asking questions and they're interested but they're not sure how it's different from CrossFit. Greg's partner in Met Fixx is Emily Kaplan and Emily's joining me today on Run a Profitable Gym because we want to talk about what is Met Fixx. And instead of just responding with what I've heard or what other people have heard, or from other met Fixx affiliates, I thought I'd just go straight to the source. We'll be talking about this interview and met Fixx and answering questions about it later@gymownersunited.com. You can join that group. It's free . There's 10,000 other G owners in there and we have really great meaningful conversations about this stuff all the time in a private supportive atmosphere. Emily, welcome to run a profitable gym . So awesome to have you.

Speaker 2: 0:49

Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Speaker 1: 0:51

Yeah, this is gonna be awesome. So let's start with what is Met Fixx there? There are definitely listeners out there who are very aware of what the brand is and and very interested and fired up for this already, but for the rest of them , you know, can you just describe it for me?

Speaker 2: 1:07

Yeah, I mean I think it's really two things. I think it's a community of people who are really like-minded in the sense of that what the education piece is that we'll be offering, which is really this understanding that through diet and exercise you can both prevent and reverse chronic disease. So I think, you know, Greg likes to say we will be the hub of people who get that and wanna deploy that message through diet and exercise protocols.

Speaker 1: 1:30

Okay. So, so obviously Greg is Greg Glassman. I think most listeners to this podcast would understand who Greg is. Why don't you tell us a little bit about who you are, Emily, and what your background is and um, what's your role in Netflix ?

Speaker 2: 1:43

Sure. So I've sort of oscillated between journalism. So I was an investigative reporter. I've written for newspapers, magazines, I had columns. I was a producer at 2020 in primetime covering health, mostly murder. But I did some complex health pieces for them. And then I've launched and run startup companies. So a lot of people think that's sort of a weird, like how does that work? And I think people who have really been in the trenches of investigative reporting and entrepreneurship, there's a ton of crossover, right? You have to be like sort of gritty. You have to know what your marketplace is. You have to get in and get information with not very many resources usually <laugh> and like put it all together in a way that you're explaining something of public interest and you're delivering it in a way that the , the market or the audience can, you know, understand it and hopefully have it be useful to them in some capacity that it allows the business to make money or for the story to have an impact. And so I've sort of done those two things for the last, I don't know I wanna date myself, but a couple decades. And so Greg and I got to know each other because of this sort of mutual interest in chronic disease and corruption in health. So I'd been looking at, you know, sort of problems in nutrition from a both like political standpoint and also just sort of physiologically like why, why are we getting fatter if what this recommendation is is right? And so I went back and really retrace the dietary guidelines and was actually, I think the last person I've been told and the last person to have interviewed Mark Hegsted , who was the architect of the food pyramid. Wow . He was on oxygen in a nursing home and I kind of like tracked him down. It was a very powerful interview, which I think we'll probably use for something with metrics 'cause I've never run it. It was sort of an independent project because my husband was getting a master's in exercise physiology at UNLV and I was covering business and growth and development and he was like, you know, if you really want a good investigative story, like you should look at these dietary guidelines. And this is like, what, 2005? So a long time ago and he knew Gary TAs who hadn't ridden good calories, bad calories yet, but was working on it. And so I went and interviewed him and I always joke, Gary's always like, oh my God, you're gonna bring up my cats like every time you mentioned me. But it was a really funny interview. Gary's in his apartment in New York. I mean he hadn't even moved to California yet and he's got like cats crawling all over him and he sort of seems like this crazy guy who's like debunking everything that everybody assumes is right. You know? So I've been looking at a lot of that stuff. And then I was working on a story about cancer as a metabolic disease and Tom Siegfried who sort of, you know, has been leading that charge with his nuclear transfer experiments. And I don't know how much you looked into any of that, but he's at Boston College. So I went and interviewed him and you know, we were mostly talking about, you know, cell biology and like, is it in the nucleus? Is it in the mitochondria? Like how have we gotten this wrong? This would really upend all of our kind of primary foundational understanding of cancer. And he, I said to you him like, what's gonna take, you know, what's gonna solve for this? Like, how much money do you need? Or, you know, this seems like really some of his experiments are so beautifully simple and compelling that I couldn't believe that it hadn't gotten caught on in some way. You know, I mean, he's sort of under the radar teaching undergraduate students while running this really cool like renegade lab that's having profound impacts on cancer research. And he said to me, you know, what's interesting is that like it's not, I don't think it's gonna be money driven . I think it's gonna be community driven , which is why I'm super excited that this guy Greg Glassman gave me some money because I think he's now awake to it and he has this massive community of people. And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. And I, you know, did CrossFit and I was like, well that Greg Glassman, the CrossFit dude, like what does he have? What, what, why is he interested in cancer? You know, I hadn't made the connection at all that Greg was really trying to look hard at how CrossFit could solve for these problems. And so I sent an email to like info or press@crossfit.com and like 30 seconds later got a response from Greg saying, here's my cell phone number, please call me. I'd love to talk to you about Tom's work. So, you know, it's funny, I have that call recorded 'cause it was an interview and it's like us just comparing notes like, oh, do you know this? Have you looked at this study? What do you think of this? Did you know that these people funded that? And so it was super fun and he just happened to be coming to Boston a few weeks later, so he was like, I'd love to meet you. We're gonna go visit all these hospitals and talk to them about how they have it wrong. And I was like, oh , I'd love to come do that. And so we really developed a friendship, I would say, over this common interest that we'd been looking at, you know, very similarly and, and also very differently. I mean, I think from his perspective, he sued the CDC, he was taking on the NSCA, I didn't really know anything about his work in that capacity, you know, even as a CrossFitter I had no idea that he was doing that. You know, sort of really like, sort of justice warrior type stuff. And so then, you know, just the sort of trajectory of things, like, I think when he was canceled, I was working on a big story about the NSCA case. Oh wow . And he called , he called me. And I mean, that's a , an unbelievable case and an unbelievable story of scientific mis, you know, misconduct and corruption and fraud and all the, you know, these elements. And Greg was, I would say, unlike anybody else I've ever covered in the sense that he was willing to not take a payout in order for the world to know what they had done to CrossFit affiliates and how the reputation had been ruined. I mean that's really, it's, it , it's not just rare. Like I've covered a lot of court cases. I , it's nearly impossible for somebody to be offered a huge chunk of money and be told like, you know what? Like all these legal troubles will go away. You can walk away with all this money, you know, which he could have redistributed however he wanted or whatever. And he was like, absolutely not. The currency of victory is light . I want the world to know how you turned this affiliate health center concept into something that you claimed caused injuries when it was doing the opposite. And um , you know, that was like one of the first things the new owners did was to settle that case and agree to never speak of it. So I was in the midst of covering all of that, whatever. And then he, you know, was called a racist. And I was like, what? And I had also spent time at his house in Santa Cruz at this point with some people from Compton who were trying to roll out free boxes in Compton because Greg had recognized that they had the highest diabetes rates in the country and that Coke and Pepsi were driving around handing out free soda. And that he really believed he would have more of an impact with a free CrossFit box in Compton on the diabetes rates than any other government or other intervention. He was super stoked about that. And was, you know, meeting with church leader, he'd sort of figured out that if he could get people from the church community, like ministers or pastors to send people to the CrossFit box that he wanted to build, that the whole community would start buying into it. So he'd really, he'd been working on it for a long time. It was, I don't know if he ever really made any of that public, but I was like, this guy's not racist, right? Like, this doesn't really make any sense. Like, I mean, I had known him, well, not wasn't part of the like inner circle or you know, any of that, but I just sort of was like, this, something's off here, right? Mm-hmm <affirmative> . And so he had called me and was sort of asking for advice and I was kind of conflicted. I mean, he was my friend, but I was also working on the story about him. So I said to my editor, you know, why don't I write a story about how he's not a racist and that actually he's done all this stuff for marginalized communities that , but he's never had a publicist, right? Like he's never, he, he's never gonna stand up at a podium and say like, Hey look, I built all these schools in Africa and I'm working on this thing in Compton . Like Greg will never do that. Right? Right. And she said to me, you know , you could write that story and it would be interesting, but then you won't get, we can't run your NSCA case 'cause it'll look like you have an agenda. Right. And I was like, and with the NSCA case, she was like, and I think you need to put something in there about how people are accusing him of racism. And I was just like, oh my. And there was so much happening in the journalism world that was far from how it had been when I got into it. I had been sort of feeling like, this isn't really the same. We're not really telling truth to power. Nobody really wants to take any risks. The budgets are so tight. I mean, there was a lot of stuff that was just felt , uh, even as a freelancer, like massive shifts were happening. And then I think when he was accused of toxic workplace and sexual harassment and his, the PR firm that he hired told him to basically just go out there and say like, I'm really sorry, you know, whatever. And I said to him, you know, if somebody accused me of killing my children, and I just said like, guys, I'm really sorry if I heard anybody's feelings. Like I'm not actually doing, I'm not answering the question. I'm not satiating anything. And so I really tried to advise him on, but I was like, I'm not a publicist . Like I have no idea, you know, this isn't my wheelhouse, but I know that like as a journalist or a researcher, you only know what's in front of you. Right? And so if you're not giving any explanation of what you meant by fluid 19, or frankly the quote that was accompanying that tweet, which was really looking at quarantine as a tool of segregation, saying like, this is what you guys have just done with your modeling, which I don't know if you wanna get into all of this, but it's fascinating that nobody bothered to put that in Google and realize that like this was a peer reviewed, you know , medical journal article talking about quarantine as a tool of racism. That's what he was coming attention to, right? And that was completely missed. But at that point I sort of felt like a , an obligation morally to both help him. And also I felt like all these reporters are getting this wrong and the media is like tanking in terms of credibility. There's all these other , and , and I think the fourth estate is incredibly important to our democracy and our Republican. So I was sort of like, are they, like, is nobody explaining this stuff to them? So I decided that I would sort of resign from journalism at that point and really jump in and help him manage that crisis after it had really gone off the rails. And I think that really sort of fortified our friendship in a way because I was like, you know, you, you're gonna need to give me everything. Like, I'm not gonna go out on a limb or anything until I have access. And to his credit, he did, he gave me access to his email, to his credit cards, to anything I asked for. And I mean, I think that's a testament to the fact that he was pretty sure that, you know, he was on the right side of things and so he didn't feel like he had anything to hide. And then, you know, I think we really had this privileged opportunity of him not working and being free from this sort of day-to-day stress and burden of running this, you know, multinational big corporation. And he was able to really spend a lot of time focusing in on what we both had realized was like, this isn't just about money, right? It's not just about corruption. Like there has to have been some break, some opportunity was created whereby the corruption could come in and succeed. And so we spent a couple of years really just reading philosophy and philosophy of science and like trying to figure out like where did these things, where did the split happen? And so that's sort of where Broken science came from as a, you know, sort of the parent company to met Fix is this notion of like, this is actually, science is broken. And until people start to realize that what we call probability, it's in probability theory, it's predictive value, which is really a Bayesian kind of concept that like you're gonna take prior information and you're gonna put it into formula essentially, or even just critical thinking in general. And you're gonna come out with a better outcome that you're gonna be able to predict. It's never gonna be absolutely right or absolutely certain, but the goal is to sort of take all of the information you have, way different things, and then come to a conclusion. And that that when Carl Popper denies induction as sort of the break in , in the historical timeline where we start to see things going in what we call a IV path. And that's really where you get into like ones and zeros. Yes. No, this sort of binary way. And in medicine it's really where you get into these statistical tools driving research. So you're, you're able to use math, which does have proofs and does have certainty to try to make claims about something that really doesn't, that should be explained on a spectrum, right? So like, do mammograms help prevent breast cancer deaths? Well all cause mortality would say no, they don't, right? They're actually like a huge predictor, I mean a horrible predictor. But like the mainstream says yes. How do we have that? Like how does that happen? It's this sort of undercurrent of statistical manipulation and using P values , which, you know, Greg and I will drone on and on about nobody wants to talk about. But it's really fascinating that we have the statistical test you have to have in order to get published. Pretty much. I mean there's a couple exceptions, but pretty much in any major medical journal that tells you nothing about whether your research can be validated or replicated or the things you really wanna know, right? Yeah . So I think, you know, to connect all the dots, med Fix is really, I mean, Greg says this more eloquently than I will , but he feels really strongly that it's the continuation of the work that he started with CrossFit Health and when he took over the website in, you know, January 1st, 2018, he kind of command , he says he commandeered the website and got rid of all the game stuff and then really returned to this notion of CrossFit is the cure to the world's most vaccine problem. And I think he feels like that's been lost and that there's a lot of affiliates who know that to be true in practice. So, you know, we have a medical society, I've been going around doing this talk around the country to medical groups and , and members of our medical society have hosted us. And um, one of the things I say to them repeatedly is like, you guys have clinical significance. You, you prescribe something, you see if it works or not, like trust that that's been robbed from you. And we've been told to sort of defer to this higher power, which is these peer reviewed high impact journals. But if you're doing something and you're not seeing it's having a positive impact in your clinic or your practice or your hospital, like we as patients are trusting you to know that this is efficacious. And I would say it's the same thing, right? Like we know that Met Fix is efficacious in that the diet and the exercise work, people can get off of their, you know, diabetes medication, they can reverse diabetes. And diabetes is, you know, sort of, I, this is probably not nice to say, it's sort of like a gateway drug to all the other chronic diseases. So we talk about like, you know, cardiac disease being the number one, you know, killer in America. Well what, what's the biggest risk factor for cardiac disease? It's type two diabetes. Sure . So it's like these things are all very connected. And I think , you know, what has happened is that broken science has figured out when this happened and how it's a philosophical divide and break. The medical society is charged up to, basically it's about 50% patients, 50% doctors right now to get good information to build these hubs of people who want to have better treatment. And doctors that wanna do it different than, you know, the standard hospital medical facilities incentivizing them and working around. And Medix is really like the foot soldiers. Like they're on the ground doing the work every day that frankly, doctors even in the best case scenario, do not have time to do so. Like they can say, go lose 20 pounds and then they'll see you in a year. Right? Your MedX coaches seeing you three, five times a week. They can really implement those changes. And so, you know, there's sort of like a hierarchy or a, you know, vertical integration you could say in the way that these different , um, initiatives work together, but the flow is the same and the current is all the same, which is predictive value. We know when you eat this way and you move this way, you are more likely to be healthy for longer when you don't, we know you're more likely to be sick earlier. So there's a choice people can make.

Speaker 1: 17:04

So you referred to meth fixx coaches. Are you certifying coaches to deliver the meth fixx ? Yes. Okay. Yeah . And there's also an affiliate program, is that right? Is that the gym that houses the coaches?

Speaker 2: 17:18

Yes. And I mean, the coaches will be beyond the affiliate, I would imagine. Like a lot of our doctors wanna take the, the cert .

Speaker 1: 17:26

Oh , okay. Yeah. We'll come back to that too because , um, you know, what you explained to me the other day is that it's, it's a complimentary program for CrossFit affiliates or for non-affiliates too. So it's not like a competitive affiliation for CrossFit or something like that. Yeah,

Speaker 2: 17:41

Yeah , certainly. I mean, I think, like I was talking to some , we, I just paid for somebody to take their L one. I think that there's like a lot of people who wanna like stir this up in a much bigger way than at least like Greg or I feel it really needs to be, like, if somebody told me like, Hey Emma , I love working out. I really wanna be a trainer. I would say Go take your all one . I wouldn't say take the class, like this is a much higher level, like we get into like cell biology and really the course is looking at how the body processes energy. So how is the food that you eat converted to energy or stored as fat? And when you move, how do you burn energy and what are those a TP cycles and how is fat oxidation super important for athletes and for health? And how do those two things work together? It's a much deeper class. I mean, I think it's the kind of class everybody, every senior in high school should take because it really explains to you the fun , the basic functions of your body. I mean, you know, health is really hormonally driven and insulin is the dominant hormone driving health. Most people don't have any idea what insulin does right. Or how it reacts. So I think there's a huge need. I mean, I would love to roll this out in schools. I think that's like definitely not off the docket for where this education is applicable.

Speaker 1: 18:54

Very cool. So I've got a lot of questions from our audience here, and I think I've kind of arranged them in a bit of an arc, but we can go off topic at any time. So the first came from a CrossFit affiliate in Atlanta, and he said the big question for me is, who is this for? Uh, in the end, the trainer, the coach needs to impact society, but how do they do that? How do they create a message about Met Fix ? Who are they trying to reach in their local community?

Speaker 2: 19:21

You know, I mean, I think the , the most straightforward answer is it's for any coach that really wants to have a high impact, right? So if if somebody's teaching a class of 50 people, this will be hard. It's probably not for them, right ? If somebody is running a gym where they want to, you know, they do whiteboard talks and they wanna explain things, or they're having trouble getting people to adhere to a low carb diet, this is for them it's backup, right? It's, it's gonna be regular. I mean, for the affiliates, they're gonna get regular continuing education. Right now, we , I mean we have these webinars that they can attend or they can view in their resource library that are also for the medical society. And I mean, like we've had Tom Siegfried talk, we've had Zoe Comb talk, we have Iver Cummings this afternoon. Like these are world experts. Gary Tabbs did one, like mm-hmm <affirmative> . So there , you know , you can get in there, you can ask questions, but it's also for me. So I also owned three gyms. And one of the things that I, at my gyms were all women and they were mostly middle aged women who had about 20 pounds to lose. Some of them hadn't worked out for a long time. And one of the things that I realized was, you know, sort of, and this is the journalist combined with the, you know, startup brain was that there was so much that women didn't know about their own health, right? So like, you could talk about, like, women would be like, oh, I'm dizzy today. I'm like, not sure I should work out . And I'd be like, have you had a DEXA scan? And because, you know, vertigo and dizziness is often one of the early indications that you have osteoporosis. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . So there were all people were like, what? I didn't know that. And so I developed a curriculum that was basically a 12 month plan every month we focused on a different topic of health that was reinforced with a low carb diet and, you know, high intensity functional exercise, which is essentially what we were doing. We did not have barbells, women were really scared of CrossFit. But I would send people, when they had sort of gotten to a point where I felt like they wanted to be challenged more, I'd send them to CrossFit New England for like , I was sort of feed her program very cool <laugh> feed her program. Um , but you know, what was interesting was like that taught me like there's so much that we can do to validate the work that's happening in the gym through research and by connecting this to a , a deeper understanding of like medical health. And I think that's a lot of what Met is already doing. And will, you know, as we continue to grow, like staff up more around, because I think it does two things. I think it makes the , the customer base very loyal to you. They come to think of you as an expert, which really goes back to Greg's original mission of professionalizing the personal trainer. I mean, we see the , we see our coaches as healthcare providers there are far more teaching you how to, you know, like watching as you do a squat . Like that's not, they're , they're talking about the whole thing all the time because they know you're not gonna get, you're not gonna reverse chronic disease through exercise. It's just not gonna happen. Right. You need the diet piece. And it's hard to get people to adhere to that, especially when you're recommending something they've been told their whole life, don't eat fat. So you have to have the education and the, the backbone and the confidence in that education, I think in order to both deliver it and hold them accountable for it. So, you know, just again, like in my experience, I feel like once women understand that like when your insulin is high, lipolysis shuts off. So it's sort of like a, a door, right? And if the door to insulin is high, you can't access your fat stores. So every meal you eat that's got carbs in it that's spiking your insulin is literally storing the fat and you can't access that fat, so you're gonna be hungry again. Mm-hmm . We have this thing that I, you know, like to say whenever I get the opportunity, which is like , it's absolutely heartbreaking the way that we treat obese people where we say like, oh, she could afford to skip a meal. That person is internally starving. They are hungry all the time because they can't access any of the fat on their body as energy. It's interesting. So once people learn that, and I mean, in my experience, like once I educated clients on that at the very , it doesn't mean that they're gonna be like carnivore tomorrow, but it means like when they go and they decide am I gonna eat eggs or am I gonna have a bagel? They're educated on what is this doing to my body? Is it moving me towards my goal or not? And like, that's, for me, that's the whole thing. If you don't know, I mean, again, like knowing everything I know about how the body processes, food is energy, and also how the government has, you know, sort of been captured in this regard. It's also heartbreaking because you see the people who have, you know, 80% of the country has chronic disease now they're all doing, they were told to do, right? So when people are like, you're telling us to take out a whole food group, like you think we shouldn't eat carbs? Like, that's ridiculous. You know what? We did that with fat. We told people don't eat fat and they took it all out of their diet. It's not that people aren't compliant, I think it's that they're confused. And I think, you know, it can't just be like, oh, I know this works. And I mean, honestly, like I've worked out in a lot of CrossFit boxes, a lot of them are selling stuff that are like sugar slurpee, whatever, after your workout. You can't, you can't do that.

Speaker 1: 24:15

Yeah, I get that.

Speaker 2: 24:16

And it's confusing to people and it undermines your message. And frankly, if someone's in ketosis and they, and they're in a flow and they're accessing all the fat on their body, and then they have one of those, it's gonna be another week before they get back into it. If they're metabolically damaged, you are setting them way back. But if you don't have the education, you can't be blatant . Nobody know . You don't know any better. I think that we really have a stake in the ground about that. And I think, you know, we have this call with all of our, or a lot of our affiliates on Monday, and Greg was sort of saying like, it's scary. It's scary to take on sugar, it's scary to take on pharma. It's scary to say like, you guys, you don't need this. But like, we're not scared to do it because we know that we have the evidence behind us. And I think that's, that's one of the differentiating factors. Like I don't think that we're in competition with CrossFit. I think we're here to help kind of. Right? I mean, I think CrossFit is limited because of their ownership in the risks that they're willing to take. We're not Right. True . And so it can be a complimentary thing. And I think that , you know, just to sort of clear up some of that confusion too, I would say, I don't wanna say a hundred percent, but I think 99% of our first 100 met Fixx affiliates are all either CrossFit affiliates currently or were Right. So there's no, you know, I don't like, for us internally, there's no, no conflict.

Speaker 1: 25:31

Right. Okay. I just wanna ask one question about nutrition coaching before we, I really wanna talk about the CrossFit affiliation stuff too. I think, you know, Greg's genius has always been the ability to make the complicated very simple and actionable. And I can remember actually Greg Ahmanson telling me this story about he was doing, trying to learn the zone diet back in 2002 or 2003. And Greg, how much protein do I actually eat? And Greg had him bring in a Tupperware and he just like drew a line with a black tip, you know, marker, eat this much, Greg. And, you know, that's, that's really, I think his genius, the challenge is gonna be or has been so far that at least according to our data, that retention for nutrition coaching clients is seldom very good. It's, you know, usually about three months you can keep somebody's attention working 'em through a nutrition plan. And while some gyms do well with nutrition, it's a very tough slog. It , I mean, it's hard to get people to workout , but it's way easier to get somebody to do a workout than to stick to the nutrition program. So how does Met Fixx address that problem?

Speaker 2: 26:37

Well, I guess I want clarification a little bit on like, is that problem a financial thing? Like you're charging for a nutrition class and, and or a nutrition consultation and then people drop off after three months or people are dropping off their diet after three months?

Speaker 1: 26:48

Yeah, that's, that's a really great question, Emily. So it's, it , it's yes to both. It's basically what affiliate , what gym owners were saying is when we teach this as part of the workout, nobody listens because they're not invested. So they don't make changes. They're like, okay, how many thrusters do I do today when we charge extra for it? Their compliance is better, their adherence is actually better, but not for long. And so after three months, maybe it is a financial issue, they're no longer paying for it or whatever, but they tend to drop off and it , you know, there's some novelty mixed in there, all that stuff. So I guess kind of like what is the recipe for, for getting people to stick with a nutrition plan or to build a habit that lasts?

Speaker 2: 27:33

I mean, like, so from my perspective, I'm like really focused on the, the health outcomes. Yeah. So I, I think I need to like couch this answer in that regard , which is that like, hopefully you get somebody who, you know, starts doing the diet, starts seeing the results, and they can't shut up about it. You know, and they like are telling all their friends that like they can eat fat again. And this is so cool. And like French cooking, it actually turns out to be really delicious. Right? Like new things . I, you know, from that perspective, one of the struggles I had was I had people who lost weight and would come to me and be like, I, like, I need, I'm so bored. Like, I'm not interested with food anymore. Like I don't, I'm not even hungry. Oh, good one . And you'd have to say like, that's okay. Find a new hobby. Right? It's, it's because you have enough energy, your body is burning the fat on your body, so you are , you really aren't hungry and you've probably been living for the last 10, 15, 20 years in a condition of starvation. So you need to completely switch your mindset that like, you don't need to eat all the time. You probably don't need three meals a day. Right. I mean, I usually eat like one big meal a day. Hmm . Fine. You know, and I think it's interesting because I think we have, you know, there's environmental things at play, right? There's a social component to like, when you eat and how you eat. I mean, anybody who's done any kind of like extended fast knows how like upsetting it is to everybody. Like, you may be fine, okay ? Everybody around you is like, Emily, come on. Like, we're supposed to go to dinner, you're gonna sit at dinner and not eat anything. And I'm like, I'm fine. I'm not hungry. Yeah. But it's, it's bothersome. So like, there's a lot of stuff like that that I think is actually really fun for coaches to kind of coach people through some of that. And it definitely connects you to your client. So, I mean, I would say like in an ideal world at a Netflix box, when you do your onboarding, right, you're teaching them the movement patterns. You're also teaching them this nutrition piece mm-hmm <affirmative> . And then if they need help, like, like they need some level of accountability that you're not providing to them, then you offer, you know, one-on-one nutrition kind of thing where we, we weigh you, we, you know, probably hopefully are doing some body fat, blood pressure is a big one I would love. And you know, this is something that we're gonna highly recommend , um, and that we did, which was like, you know, getting blood tests is super easy now. It's so easy and you pain your finger and like, I mean, my husband and I have had like competitions like who can get into deeper ketosis and it gets like pretty wild. So I think like you can make these things challenges just the same way you would with workouts. They're all, it's measurable goals and there's lots of different measurements that you can target. So like, there's challenges that can happen in the gym. I mean, I think there's a lot of fun ways to bring people into this. I also quite frankly think that like, some of the education will be around, I mean like, and this is a lot of what we're already doing through broken science around the corruption piece, because I think we all have an inherent sense of justice, right? Like right and wrong really sticks with people. And when people know, they start to understand how they have been lied to and who's benefited from that. They wake up and they think like, I'm not gonna be a fool anymore. Right? Like the , the , these foods, like the number one food we consume in this country is sugar cereal. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . That's, I mean, we're, a lot of us are in an echo chamber. We don't know anybody who eats cereal. Those are the people that we can target and we can help and have in very short order, profound impact on. Now does that translate into huge financial success? I think it, I I don't think there's any shortage <laugh> , if we have 80% of the country Yeah. Suffering from a chronic disease, like this is a market, massive market and it comes with the benefit of actually saving lives and having a sense of purpose, which a lot of other markets do not have. Right. So I think, you know, as far as getting people to adhere to the diet, I, I think , I believe strongly and have had some personal success with, once you explain the mechanisms of action and you explain like registered dieticians aren't taught this, but senior biology classes in high AP biology is, so, like I say, our , the metrics curriculum is gonna be hugely controversial because it's not what registered dieticians are taught because they are legally obligated to push the dietary guidelines. But it , there is no controversy in the science behind what we're teaching you about how the body processes food as energy that is very well founded . So I don't know if that answers your question entirely. I think of like, in terms of making money, I just, I guess I would think like you get enough people in the program getting success, they go out and, you know, they've lost a hundred pounds. Like everyone's gonna say, how did you do that? Yeah . That becomes an incredible generator. I mean, I didn't have any problem with people referring people. We actually did this kind of fun thing where we, we did photo shoots. So at the beginning you'd take a before picture and then like after you'd met some goal, you'd , we'd have a makeup artist and a hair. I mean, it was all women too. So it was like kind of easier to do this stuff, come in and do like a bit , you know, a professional photographer come in and do photo shoots and those photos we could use in local marketing. So it wasn't like you saw somebody who you didn't know, it's like, oh, here's the head of the PTA and she's lost 50 pounds and like , this is where she did it. You know? So it was very localized. But I think like, you know, transformation, everybody, everybody's looking for it. Nobody believes it. If you can make it authentic and you can explain why it works, and it means actually, to be honest, like the same thing we would call people who had left. So, you know, people would be like, I don't need, it was expensive. It was, you know, four women at a time. Um, so like small group training. And so people would leave and they'd say like, oh, I can go to Lifetime . Like I can do this on my own now I don't need to be here. And we would like follow up with them after they had left, like three months after they left, six months after they left. And usually the follow up call was made by the trainer or the manager who knew them really well and was like, Hey, I'm like, just wanna make sure like, you're still doing great. And nine outta 10 times the person was like, I'm not, I've totally fallen off. I need to come back. So the accountability is a huge piece of this. And I think like that's where you have a touch point with your client where you're driving real impact . They're gonna , they're gonna experience that differently than they have with other, you know, diet, exercise things. I think,

Speaker 1: 33:30

I'm glad that you highlighted doing this in small group training. Um, this is one of the biggest, you know, things that get me accused of heresy in the CrossFit community is, what do you mean CrossFit is big group classes? And when I explain that's not what Greg did, people doubt it, but one of the smartest things Greg ever said to me, or one of the things that I repeat most often is explain it to the smart kids and they'll explain it to everybody else. And I think as more metrics affiliates come on board , you'll see more storytelling that sticks with, you know, average people too. Maybe just along those lines, sorry,

Speaker 2: 34:04

First , sorry to interrupt you. The first 100, I mean, like, part of the reason we picked them is because they're mostly all 10, 15 year affiliates. I mean, they are bringing a lot of experience to the table and I think they're a great sounding board, not just for each other, but as we open this up. So, you know, we opened up last week and basically said anybody can now apply. And the applications involved. I mean, again, this is like not for people who don't wanna be part of something bigger. And so there's five essay questions. There's a video submission, which we'll then use for marketing for them and for us. But what's interesting is that I also am really excited about how the first 100 are so service driven and that's why we picked them. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . They want to share what they know, right? So like they wanna talk about how they're working with people in recovery or they're working with people in prison or they're, you know, working with elderly populations or adaptive athletes. I mean like that , that those cohorts were ident I identified those about a year ago as like, these are our really important people to support and I want them to be like captains where they then go out and they teach other people. So our back end of our website is really, well, I mean our tech team is amazing and they have spent a lot of time and effort building da what we call the dashboard, which has your video that you submitted when you applied that any other affiliate owner can watch. Oh , cool . And then they contact you and they can say like, Hey, I understand you do business coaching. I think I need some help. It's an internal referral thing, but we've also really optimized the SEO so that it'll drive traffic to their affiliate on the outside. So it ha it serves these like, sort of twofold purposes, but like we have forums. I mean, on this call we had with Greg, people were bringing up that they, some people have one person was talking about building a kitchen in their box. Very cool. And two other people were like, oh, we've just done that. And I'm like, great, we'll form a forum that's people who have kitchens or want kitchens, right? Yeah . And then it's like just best practices like right there, you know, in real time on any subject that you want that you think would be helpful. And we don't have to be involved. We don't know as much as somebody who's run a box for 15 years. Sure . Let them teach, right?

Speaker 1: 36:08

Yeah. Okay. Well , um, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna segue our conversation into kind of the affiliate model because most of the listeners to this podcast are gym owners and that's what they're most curious about. But first of all, I want to , I just wanna address something and that's, that's Greg's involvement. So when I published an article last week called How to Save CrossFit, a lot of kind of tangential questions came up and one of them was What's Met Now, if I were a good journalist, I would've called you and said, what's Matt F ? But instead I repeated what I had been told by people who are close to Greg and that's that he's hands off that he is arms length and all that stuff. So I'm just, you know, maybe you can set the record straight on that. Like how involved is Greg in Matt Fix and Yeah, let's start there. Let's start there.

Speaker 2: 36:52

Well, so I mean, I think there's a couple of things. One is I, the questions like that make me uncomfortable because I don't know how to quantify them, right? So I don't like what is the expectation? Um, so I just, I'll give you some facts, right? So like, Greg owns Met Fixx , Greg is funding Met Fixx , right? Like Greg is met, Fixx is part of Broken Science. Greg speaks at Met Fixx events. Greg just had a call exclusively for our first 100 affiliates where he spoke for an hour and a half about how excited he is for this project. I think, you know, as it turned day-to-day operations, Greg is not super involved. I mean, like, we have a team of people who are working around the clock to build these tools and these systems and Greg knows that's going on, but he's not really weighing in on like what the dashboard should look like or, you know , any of that. I mean, I wanna be totally honest 'cause I don't know if people think it's like, you know , Greg's sitting at a computer somewhere. And I mean, the same thing goes for like, I don't think Greg is interested in talking about bur Bures and Thrusters anymore. Like, I don't know that he has for 15 plus years, right? Um , I think he's super like motivated and interested in what Sugar does and how sugar is a toxin. And I think he feels strongly that like he made nutrition the base of the pyramid, but then didn't really give it enough attention. And it became all about movement. And that he, you know, when he took over the website and with CrossFit Health, it was supposed to be a sort of return to that mission. And he has this sort of great analogy he said on the call, which was, you know, when you're watching a movie with friends and everybody's hungry, so like you get up, you take a break, you have a burger or pizza or whatnot , pizza, something to eat or something to drink, and you go and you sit back down again and people are like, oh, we should start the movie from the beginning. He's like, no, we're not starting the movie from the beginning. Like, we're gonna start from where we left off. Got it. And he feels really strongly that CrossFit Health was really gaining momentum and like, you know, a lot of people were coming to those events and I think he felt like it was really in service of the, what , the work that the affiliates were doing to have all these doctors hubbing with each other and being able to refer patients to boxes. And I think that didn't get complete. Like, you know , that that's not solved. That's, that's still an area of both opportunity and need. And so I think that's sort of where he sees this emphasis fitting into the larger picture. And then, you know, I mean, I don't know what if there's, but I also, you know, the , the other caveat I like to give is that like, I think, you know, there are people who are pretty invested in CrossFit still that may not get met Fixx entirely. And so they may, Greg may not talk to them about Met Fixx. Hmm . And that may be a point of, I don't, I mean, I don't know what he says when he's not with me, right? So like, I don't wanna make any claims about any of that, but I just think like there is this tension and I think we've tried hard to alleviate it in the sense of like, we're not, you know, we still think the L one is great, we're not doing an L one, right? This is , this is different. It should be of service to the affiliates, but it's, it's not the same. And so, but I think, you know, with the CrossFit for sale and all these other, like, I think there's just a lot of str tension in the ecosystem. And so, you know, I don't, I like, you know, I think when people say like, oh, Greg should come back and buy CrossFit, like they're missing the point, right . Of what he wants to be doing now. And I think that , you know, the, the philosophy stuff has been intellectually incredibly stimulating to him. And I don't think he wants to leave that. I mean, he's not leaving that to go do Mat Fixx . I think he's gonna , you know, sort of be involved in all things as he needs to be and as he's interested. And I think that can ebb and flow. I don't think, you know , frankly, I don't think he, I don't think the affiliates need him to do any one thing. I think he is the voice, he is the leader. I think he's obviously proven that he's like very brave and strong and has their best interest in mind. I don't think that there's any question that that's still there. I mean, I think the affiliate, the decision to have affiliates largely came from the pressure of the affiliate community begging him to do something. Right. You know? So I don't think he's shying away from that in any way. But I also think, you know, that like, I'm involved, I'm different, right? I'm not the same as it was at CrossFit. I have equity in this. I think like that, you know, he didn't give other people equity other than his ex-wife. So I think like we're more partners than he had before. And that may be upsetting to some people. Right. Or, or different or something. It's, you know , I can't always tell you why people don't like me or <laugh> , but I'm sure they have <laugh> anyway . So , you know , I , but I think like, it's exciting . I think we're really excited about it. And I think it's, you know , again, I was, I've been a senior advisor to Bobby Kennedy and it's interesting to see, and Jay Bot is somebody who's become a good friend who has come to a lot of our broken science Netflix events. You know, they're both in a position to help us really push met Fixx out at the right time and a on a larger scale. And I think there's a lot of pieces of the puzzle that are coming together that wouldn't have come together in 2020, you know, when he left. And, and I think he's really revived and refreshed and it excited about figuring out some of these other things and wanting to communicate those on a larger level. And I mean, even frankly, like he's homeschooling his kids and I think there's a lot of stuff we've talked about where, you know, I , I didn't know this until probably the last year, but like when he was, when he had his gym, he figured out that there were a lot of kids that could get scholarships if they could get their grades up, but they weren't the best athletes. Right. But that they were good enough that they probably could get a , a free ride or some money if they could do better on the SATs. So he started a coaching program for math and SAT prep in the box or in his gym. And it , you know what, I don't think that that like, I could totally see us doing something like that. Right. You know ? And so I think there's a lot of, there's a lot of things that he's honed in on in the last few years that will be very different than what was happening at CrossFit, you know, through the 20 years that he was running it. But I think if you look at the last few years that he was there, you're gonna get a better idea of what we're, where we're jumping off from. You know? So that's why I love that movie analogy. 'cause I think it really does like, sort of give you a sense of where are we going?

Speaker 1: 42:54

That's great. What is your goal with the affiliate program over the next decade, let's say? I mean, is there a number that you want to hit? Is it, yeah, maybe. Maybe you wanna expand on that?

Speaker 2: 43:06

Yeah, so I mean, again, I think this is sort of like, this is more about trying to help people who are in the trenches doing the work feel supported and empowered and invigorated. So I mean like, again, like with my gyms, like I realized it was serving a purpose to give them this health curriculum, the members. But it actually served a huge purpose with the coaches because some of them were excellent, but they were kind of bored, right? Like they've been doing the same thing and you stimulate them. And we would have like a monthly meeting where I'd go through research or you know, like what the topic was and they would get super excited. Then they're talking about it on the floor. Then there's this new energy brought in that's all based on education and common interest and the goals for the members that I think Met Fixx can do. And so, you know, I wanted, we had over three thou , uh, we like very quietly announced, met Fixx at my house and we had over 3000 affiliates, you know, fill out this intent form. Yeah. Which was great . I mean, I did not expect that at all. I thought there would be interest . I mean like we knew that like a lot of people had been asking him to do this, but when , you know , the rubber hits the road, are you really gonna do it? Like, what does that look like? And so I had been pretty adamant that I thought a hundred was like what we needed to start with because like, we don't have , like, we have to build the systems . We have to know, you know, that we're offering a product that's worth more than we're charging. Like there's a lot of litmus tests that I have, you know, that are, I've learned from Greg mentoring me over the last five years are his ideas that I really feel charged to implement as the sort of CEO of this, you know, of all of broken science. But obviously we're focusing on Netflix right now. Yeah. And so, you know, there were a lot of big hitters in this , in the health space who I know who were like, it, open the floodgates. Like, just let everybody in. And Greg was like, why are we doing this 100? Like, why don't we open it up? And I'm like, because maybe I'm not confident enough . Like I wanna make sure that we're really ready. And I, you know, was a business reporter. I've launched startups. I feel like growth is often what kills the business. People grow way before they're ready to Yeah . So I was sort of holding the reins back on everybody and then last week we were, you know, we're ready, we're so ready. And so I think it was good timing, but it also was something that we'd been planning. I mean, like, we didn't just do that impulsively. And I think now it's really interesting to see, like we have, we we'll easily get to a thousand affiliates in a couple of months if we can get through all these applications. I'm

Speaker 1: 45:24

Sure.

Speaker 2: 45:25

Do I wanna grow beyond that? Sure. If we can meet the demand. But it's really this, like if we aren't giving the education that they need to deploy the messaging properly, the whole thing like falls apart, right? So I'm not, there's no like 10 Xing, it's almost the opposite <laugh> , you know what I mean?

Speaker 1: 45:45

One 10 vaccine . Yeah.

Speaker 2: 45:47

I would like to go slow and make sure that like, you know, we're delivering what we said we were gonna deliver really well, and that people understand it and then they find a value to it. I think that's, that's the point. The point is, you know, I joke with Dale all the time, like the point saving lives, like, is this thing going to help save lives or not?

Speaker 1: 46:03

Right? Well, I , we are gonna come back to what an affiliate looks like, but a lot of the questions that I got, I think came from CrossFit affiliates, and it maybe that was just due to the timing of CrossFit, putting a for sale sign on the lawn and then, you know, the next day or within 48 hours. I know as a previous applicant, I got an email saying, okay, now we're gonna open up affiliation again. So the big question that I got over and over was, can you be an affiliate in Met Fixx and CrossFit at the same time?

Speaker 2: 46:31

Yeah, absolutely. And so, I mean, I again, just to sort of reiterate that point, I think almost all of our first 100 are CrossFit affiliates, or they were, and they disaffiliated after Greg left.

Speaker 1: 46:44

But it's not an either or.

Speaker 2: 46:46

No, not at all. I mean, I think they should be complimentary. Yeah . I think the problem will , you know, just logically will be, we're $2,000, they're 4,500 plus a $1,000 affiliation fee. So all in, they're , you know, twice, three times what we are. And it may be that people don't feel they can do both. Uh , not saying pick us, but it may just be that it's too much. And so they decide not to be a Met Fixx affiliate, but to send their coaches to met Fixx training. Right. I mean, I don't know how that works. I think in time that'll sort of sort itself out, I think, you know, there's, there's probably all kinds of ways for people to figure that out. I mean, I think $2,000 is what, like 160 something dollars a month. It's not like it's that much more for people. But I also know like, that's new member a month. Like that's not like necessarily something that's revenue you wanna give up if you don't know that it's really gonna drive, you know, both impact and sales for you moving forward. I think in time the Netfix brand will become strong enough that it will help incentivize people that it's worth the affiliation fee. But you know, I right now, like it's not a household name at all the way CrossFit is. And so I think you gotta be realistic about that too. Like just if I was advising somebody, I would say, you know, it's important to be both. And like, you know, I I , and at the same time, like we definitely have gyms that are just, that were CrossFit boxes that de affiliated because they didn't feel like they were getting that brand, you know, that they weren't getting the traffic driven to them that they used to, and that their members had been there for 10 years and they didn't really feel like they needed , you know, it wasn't, they weren't getting, I mean , I think a lot of the tools, I don't follow this super closely, but what I've heard is that a lot of the tools that CrossFit provides are really geared towards new owners. And so the older affiliates don't feel the sense of like, there's not, like some, there's a price increase, but there's no value added for us that we need. And so, I mean, even, you know, a couple of boxes that are, I'm in Boston and the Boston area that I never thought would de affiliate, and they're not reaff , you know, they're not affiliating with us. It's not a e either or, but they've de affiliated because they don't, you know, they're not happy for whatever reason. So

Speaker 1: 48:51

Yeah , Ben Bergeron was very public with his de affiliation. Right. And, and I know several others around you too. So this, this question was I thought, really great and we're gonna , we're gonna talk about the value of Met affiliation here, but before we get there, I, I love this question and he said, do you feel that that an affiliate model is the best way to change health and fitness worldwide since there's no guarantee in what the affiliates are putting out as a product to their members. So in other words, there's no kind of forced consistency or, or baseline level. What will be different about Met Fixx that will make people gravitate to it over other models? Or , or how will the Mefi affiliate model work better than the CrossFit affiliate model did for supporting its owners?

Speaker 2: 49:35

Yeah, and I mean, again, I think like, you know, my sort of strategic communications brain kicks in here a little, and I think you kind of have to do a decision tree type, right? So it's like, rather than saying like, what are we doing that's better than like, what are the alternatives, right? So like, look at a franchise model, right? Like you're gonna spend $8,000 a month on marketing and whatever, you're gonna spend a hundred plus thousand to even open the door. You are beholden to their, you know, branding, their messaging, their everything. Like, we're not gonna do that. So I think, you know, I could destroy a franchise concepts with the affiliate model. Comparing it to CrossFit is a little different because I, again, like I don't see them as a competition. I think what Greg created, I mean, I think the , the price point for CrossFit is too high. That's my sense. I think the Garage gym model is one of the most brilliant business models that Yeah . Ever came about. And that has not gotten, Greg has not gotten credit for. I mean, I think imagine any other business where you have next to no overhead, you are the full-time employee. The the proof of concept is like, if you get enough people to come that you can't fit them all there, then you get to go and decide how many, like how many are on your wait list . Now I can go run a space that satisfies that. I mean, it's very hard to think of any other startup model that allows you to really pressure test all of the risk factors before committing to any c you know, sort of like thing where you're gonna be locked into a lease or employees. Yeah , I mean, so I, I think the affiliate model is something obviously that's very important to Greg and I have been blown away. The more he's explained to me, like why he came up with it and how he thought about, you know, the person who takes the L one is the person who gets the affiliate agreement so that you don't have the risk of investors coming in and kicking out the person who's running the classes. I mean, he really was incredibly thoughtful in ways that I don't think that , you know, most people know about why he wanted that model and it was to protect the trainer 'cause that was who he was. And he saw, you know , all the ways that he'd been taken advantage of or that it hadn't worked out for him and he designed it to insulate the trainer and protect them from those risks in the marketplace. So I don't know that we improve on that. I think like we just sort of try to replicate it as best we can and like why people will come. I mean, I think what people will come hopefully because the metrics affiliates are getting great results and building something really special that frankly healthcare can't do. You know, I mean, like you , you go to the doctor and they're matchmaking your symptom to your, to a prescription. They can write you in the 12 minutes and 32 seconds they're spending with you a year. That is like, there's no competition for what you get when you go into a Netflix box and they're spending time with you and they're checking in on you and they're making sure you're moving properly and they're asking you what you're eating and explaining to you, you know , why that's so essential. And honestly, I think like the , those stories like, you know, bring me to tears, like the pe people getting off of medication that they thought they had, like a death sentence is really pretty overwhelming. So I think that , that that's not our power, that's the power the coaches are bringing to this. And I don't think we should take credit for that. I think that's the work happening in the box. It's so magical. And our job is to support them, right? So making sure they have the education they need, they have the voice they need, they have the leadership they need now. And that said, we're doing a lot of tech stuff on the other side. Like we have SEO and all this stuff to make sure that they're prioritized. So, you know, the webpage that we're building that have these videos that you submit when you apply, we have an editor who's amazing, and she basically takes them and turns them into trailers. Those are all gonna be pushed out locally, like, you know, for local marketing purposes. And likewise with , you know, with press. Like it's easy for me to give people PR advice. We're gonna have ways to sort of help you understand how to connect with local reporters, how to tell transformation stories. I don't think we need to be doing that. I think we need to help people know that the affiliates are doing that. That's

Speaker 1: 53:41

A great answer, Emily. Thank you. I think that those of us who were affiliates back, you know, 2008 and earlier, heard a lot of that message. You start in your garage when people are doing burpees on the sidewalk, then you rent a space, but you get a very different message. If you go to the crossfit.com site right now, the message you're gonna hear or see is it costs $160,000 to open an affiliate. You need to sign this long-term , you know, lease and you need this much space. It's just, my issue is that it's just not the reality. You know, I don't think Greg gets enough credit for launching or creating 30,000 entrepreneurs.

Speaker 2: 54:19

No, I don't either. And in the world of like private equity buying up Main Street, like we would, our economy would benefit from more locally owned businesses.

Speaker 1: 54:29

Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 54:30

But serving a lot of purposes, like I definitely, I have a talk that somebody asked me if I'd work on this talk based on something that I had said to them about how I really think health and freedom are very connected. And I think like if you think about like modern slavery and shackles, it's really this insulin resistance problem that we can treat if you know where it's coming from. But we're not. And so like, if you're in a hospital bed, like it doesn't, freedom of speech, doesn't matter, freedom of assembly doesn't matter. All that matters is that you're not healthy. And so I might be doing this talk in Harlem at the Apollo, which would be like so fun and exciting, and I'm like really looking forward to that if it comes together this summer. But the idea was to talk to the African American community about this. And I think, you know, part of that is this affiliate model, but like, you can do this in your neighborhood or next to nothing, right? Like, you don't even need equipment,

Speaker 1: 55:20

Right ?

Speaker 2: 55:21

You can get people moving and frankly, like people who are type two diabetic and obese and have multiple comorbidities, they don't really need equipment. Right? It's, it's, that's a barrier to entry. I mean, this is, I have a problem with a lot of the, like, whether it's like wearable tech or supplements, the average person is eating sugar cereal as their main thing. Like they don't need new sneakers, right? They don't need a wearable, they need to like get up and move.

Speaker 1: 55:46

Yeah. Right. Very true. Yeah. Like

Speaker 2: 55:48

If you get to the point where you're like, you know, really interested in longevity and you're trying to like tinker and move these like teeny tiny little thresholds, great, go for it. If you don't have a lot of money and you're really sick, guess what? You don't need any of that. And people are confusing you by making you think that it's, it's something you gotta go buy, which is like, I mean, in my experience in owning my gym, it would be a distraction. Somebody would be like, oh, you know, like , I didn't do this because I forgot my watch and it wasn't gonna count. And I'm like, you know, really?

Speaker 1: 56:19

Uh , I think it's one way that people hide too , right? I , I can't start working out because I don't have the right clothes, I don't look the right way, et cetera. And that's one thing that we really have to guard against. And I, I think, you know, unfortunately, CrossFit Media was doing a great job of explaining what forging elite fitness meant that anybody could create elite fitness. And in their absence it became elite. People do CrossFit thanks to the games messaging. But I , I wanna , I wanna read this question to you verbatim, Emily, because I got enough pitchforks thrown at me. So I'm, I'm just gonna say like, this is a direct quote. So CrossFit is a phenomenal methodology for helping people increase the quality and quantity of their lives. But the biggest negative to CrossFit Inc. Is their lack of support in helping affiliates run their business and marketing what CrossFit is to the public? How will Met Fixx be different?

Speaker 2: 57:12

So I wish we could call this person, because obviously now I have some questions for them about like, at what stage of CrossFit, like ever CrossFit's never done that.

Speaker 1: 57:20

This is a very long-term affiliate. I mean, I can link you up with him . I know him. He's, he's written a book about fitness that he published last year. Wicked Wicked smart guy. He retired from his career very successful and opened up a CrossFit gym out of passion. And so, you know, one thing that he might be commenting on is something that Tyson Roy said to me years ago, and that is, we make all this media for CrossFit affiliates to use. Why don't they just copy what we're doing and make their own media? And I said, well, that's never occurred to me. I'm on the media team and an affiliate. You know, there's like a , a link missing there. And I think maybe you already addressed that a little bit by you telling people how to do pr, how to write a press release, how to tell stories.

Speaker 2: 58:02

Yeah, and I mean, again, I think like in some ways I'm a purist in the sense that like, this isn't, I'm like, you know, this probably isn't gonna, people aren't gonna love this answer. But I think like there, there is a bastardization of the affiliate model, or of what Greg designed, which was to take somebody who is a personal trainer, give them a profession where they're respected in their community, where they're able to drive health outcomes in a very significant way and make a living mm-hmm <affirmative> . So they're making enough money that they can, you know, buy a house, maybe send their kids to college, maybe not anymore, but maybe, right? But they're, they're self-sufficient. That is different than somebody who is an entrepreneur and wants to own 20 boxes and is, you know, they , they start one because they're really looking to get rich. Right. Or like, make a lot of money. And so I don't think this is a way to get rich. Like I don't think you go into the buying, you know, or starting a gym. Like that's, I wouldn't recommend that I'd tell you to like, go work somewhere else mm-hmm <affirmative> . Right ? If money is your goal, I think how I see us supporting the affiliates is really through the piece of education. I don't think we're gonna go around and do business coaching. I think there are people like you who do that, right? I think our wheelhouse is in this piece of like getting the right information to people so that they can make changes in their lives. I'm happy to have conversations about like, how do you turn that into a piece of marketing, like the postcard idea, right? Or other things. But I, I think honestly, that will come from the community. I think like even just the conversations that are, you know, gonna be facilitated through the forums with affiliate owners. I would imagine somebody will post something like, Hey guys, I got a great ROI on this postcard idea. You , you know, this is the kind of thing anybody could try and replicate. I mean, like Dale King's whole model is like, how does anybody take his model in the small town strong and help reverse the opioid epidemic? He's not charging for that. Like, I think, you know, that's like, that's free advice. He wants the world to have. I think we have, especially in this first 100, an incredible cohort of people who have been successful gym owners 10, 15 years, right? The , you probably know this better than I do, but isn't the g the average gym open for like two years and six months or something? Like, it's a very short lifespan.

Speaker 1: 1:00:12

Yeah, it's, it's almost exactly three years, because most gyms sign a three year lease when they open instead of starting in the garage now. But yeah, it's a very short lifespan. Um, and I, I actually believe Dale King's gonna be in Men's Health or, or one of those in the next

Speaker 2: 1:00:25

Yeah, that came out.

Speaker 1: 1:00:27

Okay. So it's out now,

Speaker 2: 1:00:28

But now , but I mean, I like, you know, I think we're, we'll do PR and like certainly I have, you know , I'm supposed to be in DC in a month or so meeting with Bobby and Jay and , and there's a lot of interesting stuff that I have in the back of my mind about government involvement. There's actually quite a lot of money for gym owners through chronic disease treatment programs , through addiction treatment programs that I don't think anybody's ever told CrossFit owners or any , anybody . I mean, this would be good for CrossFit too, right? Like sure. So I think, you know, we are not gonna do, we're not gonna like take our foot off the pedal of trying to figure out how to support affiliates and help them be financially successful. But I don't think we're in the game of giving business advice. I think, you know what I mean? Like, these are different things for me. I think we're gonna give you the curriculum to have like a world class health program run out of your gym, which may also be run out of, I mean, we have three or four doctors who are met affiliates who are opening boxes in their healthcare facilities or have,

Speaker 1: 1:01:25

Yeah, very cool . Um,

Speaker 2: 1:01:27

So I don't, I think this extends beyond the gym, but I think being tied to it should over time , my goal is that it builds enough credibility through the doctors, through the government programs, through all these other things that if you're a standalone Netflix box, people are like, okay, that's where you go to get healthy.

Speaker 1: 1:01:44

Very interesting. Okay, so Emily , I think that's , that's a great place for us to leave it today. Where should people go if they wanna apply to be AFIX affiliate or just, you know, read more about it.

Speaker 2: 1:01:55

So you can go to broken science.org and right there on the homepage is a , a link to the application and a link to a page. I think it's maybe just like Broken Science slash Met is like the information page, but it's like, it's all right there. I mean, we have tons of stuff too. We have like a type two diabetes class that's gonna be online that anybody who has people in their boxes who are diabetic or pre-diabetic, like that's gonna give you all the back or the history, the, the way the metabolism works, what you can do about it. Like, you know, clinical trials where people have been successful using like carb restriction to reverse chronic disease that you can share with people so that, you know, it's not just you saying it , it's backed up by, we see we hate research and then we use research when it's helpful <laugh> . And we have a math class that's coming out that actually is like, you know, I mean I , I think it's the kind of math, it's probability theory, but it's the kind of stuff that like, I think is really interesting to anybody who's trying to make business decisions. It's , uh, like, you know, a lot of probability theory is risk reward. There's a lot of critical thinking that I think people are just not putting forward in our, you know, sort of zeitgeist that I think that math class will help with. I would also just say that the medical society is a great entry point, so it's a great entry point, I would say for two reasons. You get access to a lot of the resources that the affiliates will, you know, so like these webinars or that they're different forums, but you know, some of that. And it also is a community of people. And so like, I think one of the things that will happen in time is as Met Fixx grows and coaches have clients who have really specific questions or they're like, oh wow, I'd really love to learn more about cancer as metabolic disease. Which is something that coaches can talk about and touch on, but they're not gonna be experts on those specifics. Those members or coaches can join the medical society and then they get direct access to those events, to those readings, to all of that, which should really like bolster. And I think we should do something where like if a coach or an affiliate refers people to the classes or the metrics thing , like maybe they get some incentive for doing that so that it really builds the larger community. So I mean, again, to like go back to this idea of like, how involved is Greg, it's like, see all these things are connected. So when people are like, oh, he is distancing himself from Met , I mean, the first thing I did was send him your post and be like, what is going,

Speaker 1: 1:04:13

What's this right? <laugh> .

Speaker 2: 1:04:15

But it's also like, I don't know how he could divorce himself from one and not all , you know what I like, it's, yeah . But I , we probably haven't done a good enough job of , uh, sort of communicating that connective tissue and how they all work together. So I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to explain it really. Yeah ,

Speaker 1: 1:04:33

Yeah . Happy to. Thanks so much for coming on. We'll do this again and , um, you know, we're happy to help spread the word. If you're out there and you're thinking about, you know, do I affiliate with netfix ? Do I apply, I think you should just go to the site and start there. Maybe go to one of the meetups, you know, and just have conversations with other Met Fixx affiliates. I think this is a decision that's completely independent of your CrossFit affiliation, whether you affiliate, de affiliate, re affiliate with CrossFit, it's worth looking at at Met Fixx and saying like, is is this the next step for me? So thanks Emily . And

Speaker 2: 1:05:08

You're applying, right? We're gonna have you in the trenches

Speaker 1: 1:05:11

Yeah, for I , Hey, I've applied.

Speaker 2: 1:05:13

Awesome.

Speaker 1: 1:05:14

Great . Yeah, I don't know . I don't, I'm

Speaker 2: 1:05:16

Gonna say like , how are you giving business advice? I'm gonna say we're sending everybody to Chris. Oh ,

Speaker 1: 1:05:20

Thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah . And , um, we'll do this again.

Speaker 2: 1:05:24

Great. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1: 1:05:25

Take care. Bye-Bye .