Chapter 3 and 4

Chapter 3: Honing My Craft

Hallie Sanderson (now Palmer) – A client before we even had a facility

After getting kicked out of community centres and gyms for making too much noise and sweating too much — a rite of passage for CrossFit coaches at the time — I finally found someone — Jason Chamney at Fitness Science (thanks Jason) — in Vancouver, who would take me on. In November, 2004, I started my personal training business at Fitness Science on Terminal Street in East Vancouver.

Jason charged me $5 a head to train a client at his facility — a great deal. My rate at the time was $5 an hour for personal training, so it seemed like a win. I was really more interested in honing my trade at the time — in figuring out what works and what doesn’t. And I figured my clients couldn’t ask for much when they were only paying $5.

Glassman had been very clear to me that I shouldn’t raise my rates until the quality of my coaching went up. When quality goes up, demand will go up. This has become business model rule five: Learn how to be good first. Don’t go charging $80 an hour if you don’t know what you’re doing.

When I got more confident, I raised my rates to $10 and half my clients quit. But the best ones stuck around, and by March I was charging $50 an hour, and still only paying the facility $5 a head. Later that spring, I started grossing $5,000 a month, working 20 to 25 hours a week. At that point, I decided to combine some of my clients into small groups of 3 to 5 people. But I never let anyone join a group until they had been through personal training with me first.

One of my first $5 an hour clients was Hallie Sanderson, who still trains with us today. I saw her from across the room on a bike trying to lose weight for a work diet challenge she was determined to win. It was clear she didn’t have a clue what she was doing.

I walked up to this awkwardly hot girl on the bike and asked, “Want to try something?”

I taught her how to do a thruster and an assisted pull-up and gave her a long version of Navy Seal that involved three rows at decreasing distances — 1000m, 500m, 250m.

After that, I didn’t see her for a week.

Then one day she comes back, tells me it was the hardest thing she’s ever done, that she couldn’t walk for a week, and that also she seemed scared to be alone with me. I assumed this meant the sexual tension was too intense for her. So she brought along three of her friends, too: “Big Sloppy,” “Skinny Derek” and her boyfriend at the time, “Big Daddy.”

Business was going well, but it was becoming obvious that I couldn’t stay where I was. I needed my own space. I knew I was offending other personal trainers who worked there, because all their clients started to get more interested in doing the type of training I was hosting.

It was time.

Chapter 4: First Affiliate in Canada

The first CrossFit affiliate in Canada was a 900 square foot space, located at 333 Terminal in East Vancouver. We opened on May 1st, 2005.

From the instant I opened the doors, I pretty much did everything wrong. I had the wrong facility, the wrong business partners, the wrong employees and the wrong business model.

Business model rule six is: Location, location, location. Moving is expensive, and you want to avoid it as much as possible. Do your homework and find a space that’s going to work for a while. You need adequate parking and square footage, natural light, high ceilings, the ability to drop weights and run on the street, and nice shower facilities.

Our space was a terrible one for fitness: Parking was impossible, and the slab was so thin you couldn’t drop weights without them resounding through the whole building. On top of this, we were located right by one of the busiest, downtrodden sky train stations in the city. When we weren’t body checking junkies just to get through the door, we were battling smoking ESL students. But we couldn’t tell them to stop, or train them to stop throwing cigarette butts on our doorstep, because they couldn’t understand a word we said.

The other problem was my two business partners. Great guys. We’re still friends today, but they wanted different things than I did. They wanted to be hands-off owners. Their plan was to hire pretty girls to run the classes: Bikram’s yoga meets CrossFit.

Business model rule seven: Partnership Agreement. If you can do it alone, it’s better than being in a bad relationship or partnership agreement. Even worse than one business partner is a bad threesome. Be careful who you go into business with, and more importantly, pay close attention to what each person wants from the business.

And if this weren’t enough, we hired unqualified coaches and paid them by the hour — doomed to fail. We abandoned personal training and thew everyone into group classes. We were full-on following the group exercise, bootcamp models, which the MadLab Group now refers to as ‘Moosecock’ model. We were going bankrupt quickly.

Interestingly enough, 10 years later, today most CrossFit gyms are run this way: No personal training. Just group exercise ‘Moosecock,’ and they’re wondering why they’re not making any money. You can be the best technical coach in the world, but with this business model you’re going to go bankrupt. You have no chance of making money.

Just nine months after I opened my first location, I was $73,000 in the hole, staring into the chasm of bankruptcy once again, fearing the disappointment from my mother and father and having to go back to Gaspe and live in the basement.

– Patty

Monday Lesson Plan

Warm Up: Coach Choice

Include Wrist Mobility

Strength/Skill:

A) Handstand Hold: Fingertips to Wall – Gather 4 Minutes

Get finger as close to the wall as possible.
Maintain PPT (Posterior Pelvic Tilt)

B1) 4×2 Overhead Squat

Do your best to not fail here.
Do not attempt more than 4 lifts above 90% of your 3RM

B2) 4×5/5 Side Over Arch

Ideally straight arm.
Focus on big stretch and contraction of the obliques>
Arch!

Conditioning:

12 Minute AMRAP:

15 Ball Slams
270m Opera Run

Unoptional Finisher: 3 Big Sets of Pull Ups (Strict if you’re cool)