Chuck Bennington has an impressive story that takes him from DUI's, substance abuse and hitting rock bottom - to finding salvation within fitness - and now is one of the key figureheads for The Gymnastics Course that has historically been one of CrossFit HQ's premiere training arms.

While I typically can't stand Kool-Aid drinkers of any variety, Chuck is a guy that I could get stuck in a car ride with for hours and be grateful.

His perspective on CrossFit's current conundrum, the microgym industry and life in general is practical and refreshing.

Check him out at @chuckbennington and https://www.thegymnasticscourse.com/ 

Hear me out...

This has been one of my main mantras for years now....

You can't control your community.  You can only control your culture.

So many microgym brands want to jerk themselves off about how amazing their community is...and I'm not doubting their claim.  But when they realize that community and culture are two different things and that community is actually the item you want to spend the least amount of effort on (as it should just be a direct consequence of your culture that requires little to no work)...that's when the light bulb starts clicking and your brand's culture can really start doing it's magic.

It's been 10 days since I dropped a podcast and a lot of shit has gone down since then.  Time to catch up.

Joe Tebaldi and I kick off another episode by addressing the current CrossFit HQ meltdown that has transpired over the past few weeks and then we get deep into Joe's effort at creating a startup incubator for online fitness companies. 

Check out all the awesome shit that Joe and his companies are doing within the microgym community:

www.flexx.co

@studiobyflexx

www.joetebaldi.com

@joetebaldi

So we are deep within the COVID pandemic and gyms are starting to come back online...but what does that messaging look like?  

Boris and I jam on a plethora of topics that are all very relevant for any microgym that is close to opening or early on in their re-opening as it relates to brand storytelling. 

If you think Boris sounds like a smart motherfucker and you'd like to talk to him about re-designing your brand assets?  Check out Metcon Creative.

If you're one of the many CrossFit affiliates that are considering re-branding in light of the recent CFHQ shitstorm, I have a few things you should consider...

So the big news...in addition to COVID, space shuttles, George Floyd, riots, etc - the PR meltdown that occurred with the CEO of CrossFit, Greg Glassman.

Here are my initial thoughts.  

Jason Fernandez is the owner of CrossFit Rife, a senior member of CFHQ seminar staff and the co-host of The Best Hour of Their Day Podcast....he's also a dude a respect tremendously.

Mainly, because we don't always agree on every topic, but we are both able to hold our position and respect our counterparts opinion and engage in some seriously valuable conversation.

While Jason and myself are fucking tired of talking about COVID, our conversation hangs around the topic and some of the areas that we don't see getting enough discussion from microgym owners as it relates to growing their business during a pandemic. 

Make sure to check out Jason's podcast and vlog series!

Many of you are still under a state mandated phased plan where you are having to operate outdoors to scale your service offering, myself included.

So for now, let's talk a bit about how I'm thinking about conducting these outdoor workout sessions.