Drew Nadeau

It's a cut throat world, bummer.

Jesse R james

No...they'd lose the Crossfit branding.

If your entire business hinges on being called Crossfit XYZ, then that looks like a much bigger issue to worry about right now.

No part of helping people acheive health and fitness requires you to be a Crossfit Affiliate or stay one. I do believe it confirs certain benefits to those who do license the name, but those benefits shouldn't make or break a facility.

If all these potential doomsday scenarios do play out and the brand is "destroyed", I'd think you'd want to be able to be profitable with or without Crossfit's name.

Joey Powell

Naivety is not an issue.

WFS: https://www.facebook.com/notes/josep...36751696368212

Drew Nadeau

link doesn't work

Coach

Friends,

The existential threat to affiliates resides in the $20,000,000 desire to control them. Bryan Kelly made the Anthos intent painfully clear to a room full of CF Staff Tuesday May 10, 2011, from 6:30-7:00 pm in the Tony Gwynn suite at the Omni Hotel in San Diego, California. Jeff and Miki Martin, Dave Castro, Brian Mulvaney, Karianne Dickson, Dale Saran, Tony Blauer, and I were present. There, Bryan Kelly explained in clear and concise terms that we were leaving billions of dollars on the table with our current affiliate relationship. We all remember lines like, "Every time I go into GNC, you are losing money". The talk, and several of us have heard it several times and on two coasts, revolved around "money left on the table". We are well acquainted with the Anthos plan and Bryan Kelly's intent. We've been preparing for this for almost a year.

Make no mistake about it, Anthos wants an equity share of CF in order to gain control of the affiliates. I stand squarely in the way. From the start, our promise to the affiliates has been to minimize rent extraction while providing the best education, protection, and brand development possible. Bryan Kelly sees 4,000 independently owned and operated gyms as 4,000 potential points of sale. The Anthos approach is short-term, rapacious, dishonest, entirely destructive of our culture, and toxic to the affiliates.

Anthos will NOT end up with an equity share in CrossFit. They're holding a losing hand and will eventually come to terms with that fact. I'm honored to fight this fight and consider the opportunity and responsibility to lead the affiliates as the most significant facet of my life. None of it is for sale - at any price. I don't care what this costs or how long it takes, we will keep our affiliates free.

Drew Nadeau

Glad to hear that!

Steve Rakow

Thank you, Coach, for sounding off.

Derrick Spitzer

Thank you Coach for your commitment to the cause!

Brendan McNamar

Thanks for speaking up Coach your affiliates would like to here from you more often.

Don't forget we do Hero W.O.D.s to honor those who have made the ultimate sacrifice to protect our way of life. Part of our way of life is personal property rights:

"Thus, the three basic elements of private property are (1) exclusivity of rights to choose the use of a resource, (2) exclusivity of rights to the services of a resource, and (3) rights to exchange the resource at mutually agreeable terms." The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics.

#3 is what we are talking about here. We don't want her to sell to Anthos then we need to find "mutually agreeable terms" with her. We may need to pay up because protecting our affiliate system is more important to us then maximizing our return on investment. Simply put her share may be worth more to us then it is to Anthos. In that case we need to put our money behind our beliefs. This is where we separate the talkers from the believers. When the check books come out. If you truly believe then you will be willing to pay up. I am.

I sure as hell don't want someone telling me what to do with my gym and who I can or can not sell it to. I would imagine she feels the same way. I would imagine we all feel the same way.

If someone tried to intentionally drive down the value of my gym I would see them in court. We wouldn't want this to end up in court because then a judge will decide the issue and we lose our ability to influence the outcome.

Now I must go mop my gym and clean the bathroom to get ready for the up coming week. If I remember correctly Coach told us clean bathrooms are important.

Katherine Derbyshire

Yes, it would be desirable for the contract to be written in that way.

But I would bet that more often than not, the contract is extremely vague if it even exists. Especially when the ownership group is a married couple who, at the time the business was founded, expected that they would continue to be equal partners indefinitely.

Many many small businesses have effectively no plans in place for the withdrawal of one of the owners (whether through death, divorce, or just plain wanting to do something else).

Katherine