Chris Cooper (00:01):
Jason Khalipa is a microgym legend. He first rose up in popularity through CrossFit after winning the 2008 CrossFit Games and was featured in the subsequent documentary called “Every Second Counts.”
That’s where I became a fan, and I wrote my first blog post about Jason around 2009. It was called “You Owe Jason Khalipa 20 Bucks.” And I was talking about the value of having inspirational role models within the CrossFit community At the time, Jason was definitely one of the first, but over time he evolved to become a role model as a business leader, too. He opened up multiple locations. He started his online programming company, and he expanded into corporate offices, delivering his methodology called NCFIT inside those big corporations. And he expanded worldwide with that. When things happened a couple of years ago and we went into lockdowns, Jason’s business changed, and so did his perspective. And so today we’re gonna talk about what’s changed. We’re also gonna talk about what he’s gonna be speaking about at Summit 2023 in Chicago, June 3 and 4: business virtuosity—what that means and how he’s gonna deliver that. He’s also speaking on the Coaches Stage. And so he’s gonna be talking about what he’s gonna be teaching your coaches about better delivery, what he’s gonna share with you to help make your coaches better overall, and just how to grow your business through virtuosity. So, Jason, welcome!
Jason Khalipa (01:26):
Ah, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. It’s great connecting again.
Chris Cooper (01:29):
I’m thrilled, man. So what I’d love to do is start with you painting a picture of where you were in 2020 compared to where you are now. And then let’s talk about like the evolution of NCFIT, and maybe we can share a couple of lessons, and then we’ll talk about Summit and all that other stuff, too.
Jason Khalipa (01:48):
Yeah, lots of lessons. You know, I think any entrepreneur, any business owner who says, like, “There’s been no lessons learned,” I mean, they’re not taking enough risk or doing something ‘cause I have plenty of them to talk about. So, yeah, I mean, in 2020, you know, our business, so our business was—I started the company in 2008. It was originally called CrossFit Santa Clara. We then started to open up multiple locations. We’re like, “Hey, we should have one brand to really get behind. It’s kind of tough to have, you know, CrossFit, Santa Clara, CrossFit Mountain View, CrossFit “this.” So then we rebranded to NorCal CrossFit, and we went with that brand for a long time. Then over time we realized, “Hey, we want to be more in control of our future and our destiny and our brand.” And it wasn’t that we weren’t pro CrossFit. We just wanted to have a brand that could stand on its own and not be NorCal CrossFit. And we were also offering a variety from programs, and not just CrossFit at the time. So we rebranded in 2016 from NorCal CrossFit to NCFIT, which represents NorCal and then obviously “fit.” And we did that for a while. And at the time we had corporate-wellness locations, which we still do today. We have brick and mortar and we have a digital arm of the business. So that kind of built up our business in 2020, which was corporate wellness locations that we have, particularly with Western Digital as a big client. We’ve had other clients, GoPro, Twitter, tons of ’em. But in 2020 we had Western Digital, and we also had Lucasfilm, which is, like, you know, Lucasfilm. And those were our big, big major corporate-wellness clients. Then at the time we had six brick-and-mortar locations that we owned and operated.
Jason Khalipa (03:25):
And then we also had our digital arm of the business, which we have two verticals of that. One is the B2B, which is called the NCFIT Collective—shout out to the NCFIT Collective team. I honestly think we’re doing it the best in the business. So if you haven’t checked that out, you should check that out. And then the other was the end user app. So that was building up our business in 2020. Obviously COVID hit, and especially because many of our brick-and-mortar locations were here in the Bay Area in California, we got hit hard, and we are just now coming out the opposite side of that where, you know, working with our landlords and whatnot. But we consolidated down our brick and mortar. So essentially where we’re at today is we still have the corporate-wellness sites. We still service those. We still have the Collective. Again, shoutouts to the team. We have the end user app, but we’ve consolidated down our owned and operated brick and mortar to two flagship sites. And then we have licensed locations. We have nine of those, which, that’s an evolving process as well. But right now our core focus is make our two locations here, Campbell and Mountain View, the absolute best. Like when we talk about virtuosity, which I know we’re gonna talk about, I want people to walk in here and be like, “Holy smokes! What these guys are doing is tip of the spear.” And then we’ll start to build back out the brick and mortar. So basically we consolidated down to then build back out.
Chris Cooper (04:43):
You know, I heard that quite a bit after the lockdowns ended in places like Canada and California—that, you know, the business trimmed right down to its most essential components, and they’re rebuilding from there. But better. What are some of the lessons that you learned that are gonna allow you to do that better?
Jason Khalipa (05:00):
Well, I think, you know, for a while we might have been, I wouldn’t call it like “fat and happy.” That’s probably not the right term, but that’s the closest I could get to it, right, is that, you know, generating revenue. You’re, you know, we had one of our locations in particular, I mean, you’re talking like a six-figure revenue monthly drop to zero for 13 months. And it requires you to really say to yourself, “Okay, you know, what is essential? What are we doing? Where’s the path?” And so I think what happened before that is because we were generating revenue in so many different ways, we had some locations that were performing really well. We had others that were performing okay, maybe some not even performing well at all. Through COVID, it allowed us to basically say, “Hey, we don’t have the luxury anymore of having this one location not perform as well. We need to consolidate down.” And so it was that. And then, you know, I also think what it did for us is that it solidified to our team that we looked out for them. You know, I feel like we handled it the most professional best way possible. Obviously it wasn’t perfect, but I feel like we earned the trust of our team because they saw the way we acted through adversity, that we tried to take care of them. And it allowed us to streamline our business to say, “Hey, this is what we stand for. This is where we’re going.” And I think for those reasons, if I had to say, COVID was kinda like a zero-sum game for us. I think on the one hand, we grew culturally. We grew. We set the tone for the next decade plus. So that’s a really good thing. On the other hand, we lost substantial revenue, and we had to overcome major financial hurdles. So I’d say there’s wins on both sides or losses on both sides, if you wanna think about it that way.
Chris Cooper (06:44):
What are some of the lessons you’re gonna carry forward? So you mentioned now you’ve been able to express your mission and vision and your care for your staff better. How will you continue to do that now? The pressure’s off a little bit.
Jason Khalipa (06:57):
Well, I think, you know, again, if I’m looking at it through the Bay Area lens, we were able to take, you know, five locations and consolidate coaches down to two. So we’re giving more trajectory for people who wanna make this more of a career for themselves. And I also think that we were able to refine our digital product more. We invested heavily into our apps, and I think that that’s gonna be scalable revenue for the future, whether it’s for the gym owner or for the end user athlete. So I think what we did is we consolidated things down that were taking up 80% of our stress but generating 20% of our revenue. And now we’re focusing on things that could generate 80% of our revenue with 20% of the stress by using scalable revenue models such as digital products. So those are things from a business perspective we’re doing, which could then put more money in our coaches pockets, which, you know, for me, when I started the gym, I’ve always been about this, and I’m always going to be about this. I wanna make a lot of money, and I want our coaches to make a lot of money, and I want our members to receive a premium service. And then I want to go out and I wanna go do philanthropic efforts. It’s like a really core culture to me is I wanna make so we could then eventually give. And we, you and I, have talked about this, and by streamlining the business and by looking for opportunities for our team, we can now make more to give more, which is really important to me. So that’s I think the biggest lesson we learned through COVID.
Chris Cooper (08:19):
Oh, that’s really impressive, man. So you also mentioned, you know, you were sitting fat and happy, kind of, you trim things down. And this is really a great segue into virtuosity. So can you maybe just tell our audience what virtuosity means to you and how that applies to business? Because I think they probably understand it for movement.
Jason Khalipa (08:38):
Yes. I mean, first off, I wanna acknowledge the fact that this is a working topic for me. This is something I’m really excited about. But it is a working topic. There’s a few working topics for me that I’ve been thinking about a lot in the fitness industry and how can we really make an impact on gym owners? One of ’em is this idea of demystifying that money is a bad thing to talk about. Another thing is this idea of virtuosity as a business leader, virtuosity as a business owner. And the reason why that’s so close to my heart is because for so many years I taught seminars for CrossFit. I traveled the world, and we talked about doing the common uncommonly well. The idea of virtuosity was just the cornerstone of what we were trying to get across because it wasn’t good enough just to do a squat. I wanna be able to do that squat with incredible mechanics, then consistency, and then finally start loading that with some type of intensity. And when you think about that as a business owner, you know, what are we doing in our business? Are we really chasing virtuosity or are we just chasing mediocrity? If you really think about it, right, if you’re a business owner and you’re chasing virtuosity, how many times have you walked into a restaurant or a business? I mean, at least for me, I know I’m entrepreneurial in this way. I’m sure you are, too. I respect the attention and detail. I love going into a Ritz Carlton hotel and just looking for the details that they’re doing that other people aren’t doing. For example, I love going into a restaurant and saying, “Wow, their attention and detail is on point”—the color tones, the way they deliver the napkin, whatever it might be. I’m obsessed with looking at how these businesses are doing the common serving food uncommonly well, and that’s ultimately what we’re trying to do at our gyms is provide a premium product. You know, I walked into the gym this morning and I’m watching just people getting after it, but they’re doing it with the eye of a phenomenal coach in a facility that I think is world class. Can we improve? Yes. But the idea of virtuosity is I wanna walk in and be inspired by what we’re delivering and never settle. That’s the key concept there: always trying to improve that service for our members.
Chris Cooper (10:45):
I really like it, Jay. And I’m glad you brought this up—like, it’s okay to make money. Because when you and I were starting in CrossFit, you know, we would find the CrossFit message boards, for example, and if you said the word “money” or “profit,” a lot of the times you would be condemned for it, right?
Jason Khalipa (11:01):
Yeah, yeah.
Chris Cooper (11:04):
And how do you see the culture changing, especially in CrossFit, but just in the microgym community as a whole?
Jason Khalipa (11:09):
Well, I think the micro gym community, first off, I think what you’re seeing here is, I mean, if you wanna go way back, the conventional gym model, which I came up in—I started working the front desk when I was 15 at a conventional gym, and I learned a lot through that business. Then you had this, you know, for lack of a better term, call it “collegiate weight room.” So you had the conventional gym model and a collegiate weight room, and there really wasn’t anything in between, to be honest. Like, you had some group training of yoga and whatnot, but there really wasn’t anything from a functional training perspective. Greg came in. I think he really revolutionized the space as far as I’m concerned. He introduced the clock, he introduced the coach, he introduced these small microgym or boutique fitness centers. What happened is, I think CrossFit started to grow, and it was the antithesis of the conventional engine. It was complete opposite. It was low complexity, low cost, low coaching compared to high complexity, high cost, high coaching. Theoretically, what happened, though, is I think there was a gap in the market that was created. And I think Orangetheory, F45, Barry’s Bootcamp identified that gap. And they then service that market. And so what I think you’re seeing is that the overall ecosystem of boutique fitness is now evolving. And when people go into a boutique center, their expectation is also higher. It is no longer the grungy warehouse. I think that is the expectation for everybody. I think that if you’ve gone into an F45, Orangetheory, et cetera, you want to try CrossFit, your expectation is professionalism. Your expectation is cleanliness.
Jason Khalipa (12:38):
And I think that those things are also associated with money. So the idea is, over time, as the industry’s evolved, I feel like some owners have not evolved with it in thinking about it through the lens of generating more revenue to put more money in their coach’s pocket so they could have better coaches to provide a better product on the floor, which is a cyclical cycle. And we need to get outta this idea that a gym owner who’s looking for profits is a bad person. Without profits, you can’t give. Without profits, you cannot be sustainable. I can’t tell you how many gym owners I’ve talked to and their average take-home income is $2,000 a month. If that’s your take home, what does the retirement strategy look like? What can you actually provide for your coaches? And what type of service ultimately are you providing to your members? And how many lives are you really impacting? You know, not to go off on a tangent here, Chris, but just real quick: I remember years ago, this was like back in ’09. I opened up our second location. I’ll never forget this guy. This guy comes up to me, and I don’t know if I was at the CrossFit Games or where I was at, and he’s like, “Hey, you know you’re selling out.” And I got like offended. I got really upset ‘cause I’m like, “Who’s selling out?” I was like, “We have two locations servicing 600 members. You have one location servicing 50. I’m impacting 600 lives and 10 coaches’ lives. You’re impacting 50 people’s lives.” But it was, again, this antithesis of the conventional gym, where that model was looked at as, like, always about the money. And we were trying to be the opposite, but it doesn’t mean you can’t be about the money when also you’re trying to be about impacting the member’s life. And I think that’s where things got convoluted, you know, was kinda like the legacy of it. And I think it’s evolved, but I think we gotta do a better job of talking about it more and more and more like this.
Chris Cooper (14:18):
I think another way that it has evolved is that most of the people who didn’t care about the money are gone now. And I don’t mean to make a joke about it, but unfortunately, that’s what happened. So if business virtuosity starts with the owner making money, what are some other elements in the business that would lend itself to business virtuosity? What else?
Jason Khalipa (14:41):
Yeah, I think business virtuosity can be summarized as doing the common uncommonly well, so if you think about owning a gym as the common, which I know it’s not common, but it is common, let’s just say. You’re fired up on CrossFit, you’re fired up on fitness, you wanna own a gym—that’s common. Then now “how do I take that and level it up? How do I identify what type of front-desk procedures do I have? What type of coaching curriculum do I have to attain, retain and develop coaches?” Right? Those are some other things I wanna talk about to your team. We have a full system. You’ve seen part of it that I’ve sent over to you, but from the moment someone walks in the door to the moment they leave, how do you provide them a premium service that’s virtuosity for 60 minutes?
Jason Khalipa (15:18):
And that goes with the front desk. That goes with answering your phones, answering emails, front desk, coaching product. And then once they leave, how’s that follow-up process going? And those are the things that you could do as a gym owner to take you from good to great. And what I’ve noticed over the years, and especially for our business, is we’re not reinventing the wheel. We’re not doing anything crazy. The way I’ve seen our business now rebuild coming outta COVID was just doing these common things that many gym owners are doing but trying to do them better. So an example would be when someone inquires for a membership—what does that process look like? We’re revamping ours right now to continuously evolve so that that experience goes from someone being like “oh, that was fine” to “wow, that was a premium experience.” And those are the little details you could go through that’ll have someone drive an extra three minutes to get to you, pass by another gym maybe to get to you, or to maybe retain that person for a longer period of time. So that’s what I mean when I think about virtuosity, and that’s what I wanna talk about to gym owners is that I think a lot of people wanna discuss paid ads. They wanna talk about the sexy stuff, right? It’s the not-sexy stuff that I believe is gonna help your retention and ultimately have more member referrals and get you to the place you want to be. It’s the attention and detail that I think is gonna get us there.
Chris Cooper (16:36):
That’s awesome, man. I’m really pumped up. So Jason’s gonna be talking about this at the Two-Brain Summit, but he is also gonna be going on the Coaches Stage delivering his message to the coaches, too. So, Jay, what are you gonna be telling them?
Jason Khalipa (16:48):
Well, so the Coaches Stage is something I’m really personally passionate about. You know, I’m not just an entrepreneur business owner. I’ve also been a coach for many, many years. I coached all of our classes for a long time, and I still coach regularly today. You know, when the schedule allows, I love coaching. I think the art of coaching is a gift. It’s the best time of my day. That being said, at NCFIT, you know, I’m really proud of our team and what we’ve been able to develop, and that’s taken a lot of time. And so one of the things I wanna talk about at the Two-Brain Summit is this idea of taking our coaches from wherever they’re at today—from good to great. And that ultimately I think is gonna be the tool and the resource that’s gonna help your business grow. So we’re gonna go over things like coaching scorecards. How do we evaluate our coaches? You know, if a coach isn’t scored, just like in a workout, if you don’t evaluate your time, how can you ever know if you’re getting any better? Now, you might feel better if you might think you’re better, but it’s also really nice and reinvigorating to see them on a coaching scorecard where your mentor, your leader, evaluated you to see that growth. So those are things we’re gonna talk about: coaching scorecards, the intangibles here at NCIT. Like I sent you the NCFIT 10. Like what are we looking for out of a class, right? Smiles and high fives, good atmosphere. We’re gonna lay out all those things. And also a self-evaluation form. You know, how do these people feel like they’re doing? And then how can we then check that on a quarterly basis? So my goal for Two-Brain at the summit is to really provide tangible, actual resources for gym owners to help take their coaches from a six to a nine, from a seven to a 10, from a good to a great, because that’s ultimately how the entire industry rises up. You know, what’s not good for anybody in the boutique space is having them go to a gym, any gym, and have an [expletive] experience. If they go into that gym and they have a life-changing experience, they’re probably gonna retain for longer. So if we as an industry can raise the bar, that’s something I’m really passionate about.
Chris Cooper (18:44):
You showed me a lot of the resources that you’re gonna be sharing at Summit, especially with the coaches, too. Like, so you’ve got the NCFIT 10—what were the other ones, Jay? These were incredible. I mean, you know, there was like an evaluation form, a self-evaluation form, great tool for coaches.
Jason Khalipa (19:01):
So this is, we call this our NCFIT Coach Field Guide. So at our gyms, the way our business works is that we have coaches that coach, and then in addition to coaching, they also support our digital resources, such as with our session plans and the programming. So we have a full team. And so the way that we’ve been able to create more of a career trajectory is by having them coach you 20 hours a week but then also support on our digital side. And the reason why I like that is that when you look at our programming and our plans, they’re written by coaches who are coaching, and it’s an entire team that reviews this process. Now we have handbooks and all kinds of stuff that are a little bit cumbersome. This one is a consolidated-down version of that. So the NCFIT Coach Field Guide is what we call it. Essentially it’s a consolidated version. We start off with the NCFIT experience, which is five key things, right? We’re gonna start off with smiles and fives—the greetings. So that’s our way of telling our coaches, “Hey, from the moment someone walks in, how are they being greeted?” Then we go to always engaging during class—coaches are always engaged, and we talk about that. That’s Number 2. Number 3, loud and fun, right? Music can move and inspire. We talk about that. Then 4: End on a high note. Coaches can make a great experience even better with a quick and powerful closing. Actually, sorry, that’s where we left off for those. Then we have the NCFIT 10, which is like our kinda mission statement for our coaches. Then we go into our scorecard. Then we have our coaching takeaway form, and then we have our self-evaluation form. Those are gonna be some of the ones I’m gonna talk about at length at the summit.
Chris Cooper (20:40):
Incredible man. I’m so fired up. And one of the reasons that I’m bringing my staff is ‘cause you’re gonna be there. Can we talk programming for a minute?
Jason Khalipa (20:52):
We could talk programming for hours! Yeah, I mean if you wanna see underneath the hood, man, I’ll give you the lowdown.
Chris Cooper (20:58):
Well, one of the, one of the coolest things you shared with me so far in 2023 was your prospectus, and I forget what you called it, but going through your programming kind of like vision. It, it felt like, “Wow, this is what CrossFit used to feel like to me.”
Jason Khalipa (21:15):
Yeah, thanks. I mean, we’ve gone through a lot of evolution from a programming perspective. So just to kinda lay some framework, yeah. In 2008, right, we followed Crossfit.com. We found that it wasn’t the best fit for our gym given the equipment constraints and this idea of three on, one-off rest. That was weird. We used to, anyways, looking back on it, it was not the best model. So from there we created our own model. We had our own, you know, CrossFit track. Then what we realized is that people wanted different levels of complexity. So we ended up rolling out, years ago, you and I talked about this in Canada, where we had a 60-minute class. We had a 30-minute class. We called it CrossFit, and we called it QuickFit. This is a long time ago. 30 minutes was—the idea was with less time, you offer less complexity, but you get in a good sweat and you move on. That was actually really popular. Then we realized, man, you know, you had 60 minutes, you had 30 minutes. We need something at 45 minutes to kind of hit the gap. And with more time, it allows for more complexity. And in theory I think it was good. But then over time we ended up just solidifying on two programs, and it just became confusing for our members. Cause maybe some days they can only come in at 6 a.m. but other days they come in at 7—they might be doing similar workouts because it was two programming tracks. So starting in January of this year, we went back to one programming track with a performance version and a fitness version. But they’re two completely different journeys for that athlete. And I think that’s the difference that we’re taking on. It’s not an RX and scaled. It’s a different journey, meaning we’ll adjust rep schemes.
Jason Khalipa (22:41):
Like, we’re basically looking at it like if they’re new or if they’ve been here a long time—or maybe even sometimes if you’re not feeling it. I’ll give you a good example: Fran, you know. Fran, 21-15-9, we programmed it here not that long ago on a day like that, which is pretty rare for us to program Fran because the stimulus it provides We have a nice, extended warmup. We try and get in a lot of bulk work. We definitely want people to sweat and feel like they accomplished something throughout that day. We’re not into the one RMs or things like that—just a single modality today. So they come in. You look at the workout. Performance would’ve been 21-15-9 Fran, right? Plus some other stuff. Fitness was a seven-minute AMRAP of 21-15-9 at like a 45-pound barbell and jumping pullups—or et cetera. Honestly, for me, I would’ve chosen Fitness for that day if I had done it on that day, which I didn’t do it. But if I had, I would’ve performed Fitness. Not because I couldn’t do Performance but because I wasn’t in the right headspace to try and get a PR on Fran. So when we look at these two journeys, they’re just based on “how does an athlete feel for that day? What are they looking to get out of it?” And if there is a higher complexity movement, we want them to feel inspired to get there but not feel like there isn’t a workout for them. So those are some of the things we’re doing. We’re doing RPE. We’re doing a lot of new things in 2023 that have been really successful for us.
Chris Cooper (24:01):
My head coach, who’s been a coach with me for a dozen years now, said she’s so excited going through the NCFIT programming that she can’t wait to work out, which is, you know, really exciting for somebody that’s been an expert for that long. And so I do wanna talk about when clients move back and forth between them. One thing that we’ve always struggled at in our gym is some days you do want to go lighter. And there’s other reasons why you might not wanna go full out. I can remember Greg Amundson telling me years ago that when he knew Fran was gonna be at the gym the next day, he wouldn’t sleep all night. He’d be so stressed.
Jason Khalipa (24:37):
That’s right. Just anxious, right?
Chris Cooper (24:39):
Yeah. I’m sure it must be like that for you. Like you, your best Fran must be low twos, and the pressure, right, to beat that all the time must just be … .
Jason Khalipa (24:48):
Yeah, I just wouldn’t even do it. Yeah, I’ve probably done Fran a hundred times. I just wouldn’t do it. And so we want—what’s really important for our programming, I think this is really important for any gym owner to think about what they’re programming is we are not trying to send necessarily, we’re not necessarily focused on sending athletes to the CrossFit Games. We want people to come into the gym and have a hell of a time. We want them to have fun. We want them to get in a good workout. We want them to learn something new. That’s really important to us because we are running a for-profit business. And what’s important there is consistency. It’s also important for results for our members, right? So we wanna provide them a resource when they look at the workout and they’re like “dude, you know what? I could do that” instead of looking at the workout and be like “I can’t do that. I can’t do that, I can’t do that. I’m not coming in today.” So instead, by having this Performance and Fitness track and promoting it to our members in terms of, like, it’s a lot better or worse, it’s just different journeys. And I think that’s been really helpful for us. So three things we’re doing as a team here at CFIT, we are assigning a type of workout to each workout. So we have effort, grind, heavy. There’s different criteria that we assign. So five different criteria. Then we assign an RPE—rate of perceived exertion. And the reason why we do that is take, for example, for today, right? So the workout for today is a 10-minute AMRAP of deadlifts and up-down box jump-overs for Performance. For Fitness, it is reduced loading and a different type of up down movement.
Jason Khalipa (26:20):
But the idea is that RPE 8. So what we’re trying to get accomplished as an athlete comes in, coaches, “Hey, guys. Welcome to the gym today. We have a great workout. We have an effort-style workout.” So they know it’s gonna be in that 12-minute range, give or take. It’s gonna be like a harder effort. We have an RPE 8, meaning on a scale of 1 to 10, we wanted to go at about an 8. So now the athlete’s saying to themselves, “Okay, so we we’re about this time domain. We’re about this effort,” and now you have these two different journeys you could pick to make sure you’re hitting that stimulus. And so what we’re trying to do is create a quicker conversation between the athlete and the coach to have them get the best workout for them for that day. And tomorrow the RPE might be 7. The next day, the RPE might be 9, but we’re trying to have our athletes base it on how they feel for that day and the effort level they’re gonna put into it. Instead of going off one-rep maxes or percentages. We don’t do that anymore.
Chris Cooper (27:09):
I love it, man. That so great. So I didn’t think I was gonna get more fired up when I was recording the intro. I was like, “I’m so excited to have Jason at summit,” but now I’m like twice as excited.
Jason Khalipa (27:20):
Oh. Three times!
Chris Cooper (27:23):
Yeah. We’re gonna have a hell of a time. I love it. And Jason, you’re also gonna lead some workouts in the morning at summit. This is the first year that we’ve done big, group, collective warmups or workouts. So I’m super fired up about that. I think we’re gonna have a hell of a time with that, too. And so my final note, man, this is probably the most important thing, is congratulations to you and your family on your daughter’s victory.
Jason Khalipa (27:46):
Oh yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, Ava cancer-free. So that’s a very, very big deal. We’ll be in Europe this summer celebrating that. You know, and for any gym owner out there, there’s a few things—I wanna finish on the adversity piece because you brought it up. But just real quick on the workout, my goal at the summit is to really put my money where my mouth is. And if I’m gonna talk about virtuosity, if I’m gonna talk about the art of coaching, I want to go ahead and coach a class for you. And I want to show you, in my opinion, the level of care that we wanna take for each and every class. And so instead of just talking about it, I want to take you through it. And yeah, it’s gonna be a big class and yeah, it’s gonna be where I have to work with different things. It’s not gonna be perfect, right? It’s not in my own gym with my own members. I don’t know anyone, but that’s the reality of the situation. And so I think it’s really important that for coaches and owners who are going there, I would love to see you there at 6 a.m., and I hope that class fills up and we add a 5-a.m., and I hope that class fills up and we would add a 4 a.m. because I wanna be able to get as in front of as many people as possible to share the passion that I have for coaching. Because I want the entire industry to raise the bar. So hope to see you there. Now, real quick on the adversity piece: As a gym owner, you know something I get asked a lot is “how do you get your family interested in fitness?” And I think that if anybody around you knows you, they probably know you’re interested in fitness. And so if you try and go too hard with your family or friends, oftentimes you end up pushing them away when they’re ready. Typically, they’ll come to you is what I’ve found. If I push too much, it’s just gonna take another six months before they’re ready to come to me—that’s been my experience. But I think what’s interesting is if someone isn’t motivated by six-pack abs or better blood work or, you know, whatever. Those are all things that people, I think, know are associated with fitness. But the one thing I would add, if you’re ever talking to somebody, is this idea of microdoses of adversity that you’re intentionally putting yourself into. So when you walk into the gym, I’m actually improving my health and wellness through blood markers and the way I look in a bathing suit, but I’m also improving myself in between the ears, and I’m having microdose of adversity, whether it’s getting ready for a Fran workout or going for my best effort on a workout.
Jason Khalipa (30:00):
Those things are challenging, and I need to learn to overcome them through positive self-talk, through whatever I do in the gym. The beauty part is they translate really well into real life. And so just as a gym owner, as a coach listening, I think that’s something we don’t spend enough time thinking about. And we don’t need to preach about this hard, but that’s the best gift that the CrossFit Games or CrossFit has ever given me, is the ability to learn, look at it as a microdose of adversity and then how I’ve learned to overcome that. So when the real life did throw me a curve ball, I was better prepared to mentally handle it. And those are some of the things I think we could provide our clients. So we don’t really think about as much, and I just wanted to, you know, make sure I acknowledge that here.
Chris Cooper (30:41):
Wow, that’s amazing. So, Jason, thank you so much, man. I can’t wait to see you June 3 and 4 in Chicago. Everybody come out to the Two-Brain Summit, meet Jason in person. I mean, he’s gonna be around all day speaking, leading workouts and talking about NCFIT. Man, thank you so much.
Jason Khalipa (30:58):
Yeah, thank you.
Chris Cooper (30:59):
Jason will be at the Two Brain Summit this year in 2023. I hope you can make it. If you want ticket info, just go to Gymownersunited.com, join our free Facebook group, and we’re constantly posting stuff in there, including how to get summit tickets for you and your team for slightly less before a certain deadline. Gymownersunited.com. You’ll love the discussion in there. There’s 7,000 other gym owners in there, including me and my mentoring team, where we’re always just offering some guidance, some tips and some advice. We’ll see you there!
