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It had been a long day at CrossFit HQ. I was tired after nearly eight hours of talking about business. But this question really perked me up: “Why can’t you just give us a playbook that tells us exactly what to do?” It was a surprising question because of who was in the room. We’d been asked to visit HQ and give a one-day business seminar for gym owners around Santa Cruz. But high-ranking seminar staff—including Nicole Carroll—were also in the audience. So I wasn’t expecting a question about a franchisee model. I answered that CrossFit is a licensee model that combines the opportunities and challenges of a free market. Anyone can start a CrossFit gym. That’s an amazing opportunity to leverage the world’s largest fitness brand for almost zero dollars. The flip side is that it’s impossible to provide testing, research, data or proven methods for that price. At $3,000 per affiliate per year, there’s simply no budget to test best practices or even to regularly survey owners in a meaningful way to figure out what’s working. Total freedom means total freedom: no guardrails, no guidance. Just an amazing opportunity to help people. But the question actually meant something different: “Why don’t you (Two-Brain Business) sell a playbook?”   We’d Rather Teach Than Tell   The person who asked the question knew that we have the playbook. We have a profitable model for running a box. If we wanted to, we could just sell that playbook, say “do it exactly like this,” tell people which clothes to wear and which ads to run, and then hold them to that standard. That would effectively make us a franchisor. We could easily charge $150,000 per year per franchise because we can provide more than any microgym franchise out there. Who else gives their clients 1:1 mentorship? No one. Who else teaches them how to hire and train staff, how to build ...