Saturday 120128

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CrossFit Pasadena (CA)

I firmly believe that managing and operating your business with the highest level of professionalism from day one creates the fundamental base needed to create an atmosphere that allows for a wonderful community to grow and flourish. My community is amazing. That said, I am not perfect and neither is my business. I have learned these important lessons about how to successfully create a community and run a business from making mistakes . . . LOTS OF MISTAKES. Take what you will from this and discard what you do not agree with.

Be the First in Your Area. 3 years ago this was easy to accomplish. I worked at a CrossFit Gym in Monrovia (10 miles east of Pasadena), no gyms North or South and the nearest gym West was in Burbank (11.5 miles west of Pasadena). When I opened my affiliate, I chose Pasadena because I wanted to be the first in the area to open up. I wanted everyone in Pasadena to know about CrossFit and know about it because they walked through my doors. With the incredible number of affiliates today and so many in the process of setting up, it is becoming more difficult to be the first. Being the First Established CrossFit Affiliate in your city is a powerful advertising tool that no one can take away from you. It is worth being a bit more patient when choosing a location.

Get Help: No one is perfect and although you may have spent countless hours running all the diagnostics with the vision of your affiliate, an outside perspective is priceless. Start by friending a veteran affiliate owner, local or distant. Looking into consultants who work in branding and helping businesses start up is a great tool as well. 1 Year into starting my affiliate, I finally checked my ego at the door and asked for help. I found the most successful, well-established affiliate in CA and hired a consultant to show me how they did it. Since then, my business has doubled in size and quadrupled in gross. The first lesson is admitting that you do not have all the ideas or all the answers. If you're like me, the second lesson is realizing you should have listened to your wife all along.

Find Friends and Keep Those Friends Close: One of the best things that has ever happened to me as a business owner is that I have two amazing friends who also own local affiliates. We get together bi-monthly for lunch and have an amazing time. Having like-minded people who go through the same stresses and challenges is amazing therapy. Most of the time we brainstorm ideas on things we can do at our affiliates but we also listen to each other's stresses and share our experiences to benefit the group. I am blessed that the three of us have affiliates and businesses that are in different phases of maturity and that we are always there for each other; even late night phone calls in hard times. Strength comes in numbers and support. We work together and we laugh with a force! These friends dramatically increase the quality of my life by giving me a chance to step out for a short while to decompress. Leading a community and running a business is very consuming and it becomes very easy to put your own needs on the sideline when times get even busier than they already are. It is extremely important to schedule in your own down time, even as small as a lunch with friends. It will ultimately prevent you from burning yourself out and keep you in a position to give more energy to your members.

Compete on Quality ONLY: Your price reflects so much about how you value your product. Make sure your price fits your target audience and matches the quality of what you are offering them when they walk in for their first consultation. Constantly work on how you show the value of your program to potential members. People who will continue to argue prices with you do not see the value in your program. Bend for no one . . . it will give you future ability to be charitable when the times and opportunities are right.

Have a Process for New Members: Whether you call it: "Elements" "On Ramp" or "Prep Course," it is important that you have one. Besides the obvious safety factors that are taken care of during this process, having a program that educates and prepares your newest members creates unity through empathy and support. Sure, when your box just opens, you are leading classes with 1 or 2 members in them and it is possible to cover the information they need in order to understand your training and safely begin to gain proficiency in the movements, but without a scheduled process you will not be able to manage that new business traffic in the event of a wave of sign-ups.

It is also important that you customize this process so that it reflects how you train. There are some amazing programs already available out there that you can use to prep new members for classes, but remember they were designed by someone who most likely created that program for the trend of incoming clients at their business.

Almost every concept I have used that came from another source (Our Introduction Workouts (Both 1-on-1 and group), Prep Course, and our Training Program) has been adjusted to fit the way we train at our gym. These methods we use may not work for other affiliates local or distant. They are a guideline for how we train our athletes.

Having someone cover a programmed, progressive list of material creates a bond between the new member and the community. There are no egos at my gym for two reasons: 1) Our training humbles you on a daily basis. 2) Everyone knows how it feels to transition from rowing to squats and they understand how it feels to lack the flexibility needed to perform an Overhead Squat with anything more than a PVC. They all remember their first time doing burpees. There are always bodies in our gym, and when they are hanging out and an Intro or Prep Course session is happening, there is always cheering once the workout starts. There are many reasons for this, but most of all it comes from the people knowing what it feels like to go through that process. It creates community.

Nothing is possible without solid training. The increasing number of Affiliates opening up has created a sense of urgency with getting started. You could open up the biggest, most equipped, and most pimped out facility in the state, but it won't matter if you can't teach some one how to take care of themselves. Teaching them what you do for yourself is not enough. As the leader of your community, it is your responsibility to always be digging deeper for more information on how you train your members. Do the research. In-depth understanding of the genres of exercise you train with will only benefit your members and your business. Get with an experienced coach in each of the categories of training CrossFit uses and learn what they know. Find a strength and conditioning coach who has worked with champions and find out what he/she does to get them there. Never be satisfied with how you program or what you think you know about programming.

You Can't Please Everyone. Not everyone will fit in at your gym. Not everyone will want to commit to a contract at your gym, or will be satisfied with the conditions of your facility or the people in it. You make 99% of the procedures and rules at your gym for 1% of the community. In the end, you have the processes set in motion so that you will end up with the community you are aiming to create. Those who join, but disagree with your process, your training, and the way you run your gym will eventually get so frustrated that they will leave your gym on their own terms. As the owner of your gym you have the right to refuse business to anyone. You opened your affiliate to help others, not to be a slave to them.

Oh yeah . . . Listen to your wife!