We ahve been blessed with a business mentor who is one of our clients. Great guy, sold his internet based business for $83 Million at the age of 28…very successful and the first to admit he has nothing but opinion with regards to each new project. He left Nicki and I with a doosey the other day: What got you where you are will NOT get you where you are going. learn, grow, adapt and shoot for humility and joy in what you are doing. CF is so full of talent, I really hope they get a handle on the arrogance…it will be their undoing otherwise.

I’ve recently had a discouraging interaction with Dave and some other Crossfit leadership. I gotta get to work, and maybe I’ll write more later, but the gist of this is it seems the Crossfit people actually believe that their expertise in fitness has some sort of larger import. They’ve taken some success in FITNESS PROGRAMMING into areas where they have ZERO expertise. Sure, Crossfit’s an effective protocol, but developing it doesn’t make you good at anything else! Not at planning events, not at measuring performance, not at understanding specialization, nor nutrition, nor recovery, nor injury prevention, not accounting, not photography, not flying airplanes.

It seems a lot of the Crossfit leadership have become reactionary know-it-alls who are turning lots and lots of people off. I know I’ve been turned off.

Expertise is a funny thing. Most experts readily acknowledge their weaknesses outside of the subject matter and they are ENERGETIC in pursuit of learning to reduce their weaknesses. The Crossfit folks seems to be creating their own form of expertise, where core knowledge in one specific thing suddenly gives license to a whole host of others.

In my interactions with them, some of the Crossfit people, Dave included, came off as officious and narrow-minded. I can’t put it better or more politely than that, and I won’t try.

Robb, I’m sorry for your experience. I certainly know where it’s come from, and for the Crossfit leadership it’s not a good omen.

This isn’t about Paleo or Zone, it really isn’t; though thats the face being presented.

This is about Greg Glassman, its like we want to blame the organization (HQ) not the man but this is what its about.

When I came to CrossFit I invested $40,000.00 to get my gym up and to pour my heart into it. I have wanted this most of my life and CrossFit was a vehicle. I bought into a brand but never really became a Koolaid drinker. This very quickly set me apart. I have t-shirts in the name of my gym, business cards, signs, a several thousand dollar website, I have invested my time and life and created a following, not of CrossFit but at my gym.
I expressed, much like Rob did, my disatisfaction, except about the brand and what followed was a verbal ass reaming from a man I respected.

The man behind the curtain has his faults as we all do but what people see on the surface and what lies beneath are simply two different people. This is simply what people are pointing out. What they thought they believed and what is….simply aren’t matching up.

This situation was a catalyst for me…I chose to no longer affiliate with nor spread the name of CrossFit. Before anyone especially the Koolaid drinkers jump in my ass about what CrossFit has done for me, well it was nothing, their brand name here means nothing, most have never heard of it, I put a ton of money into it, I wake up everyday and go sale it on the street, I advertise, I bust my ass, I have never got visits from the affiliate directors or asked how my business is going and yet HQ’s business spreads and grows. How many affiliates are millionaires? Out of 1500 or so how many, how about the Glassmans? So, in essence I own nothing. I am not sorry if this pisses people off but the over the rainbow crap has finally filled my cup.

CrossFit didn’t change your life, your coach did, or if you found workouts online thank the man that put it on there, but the lifting that you are doing is age old and the concepts age old, not a new novel or new idea just newly packaged.

What am I giving up by giving up the name is the money I invested, the time I put in, basically I have to start over but as scary as that seems to me, I won’t spend another day if can help it pushing the name that benefits the man.

Now that Lisbeth has closed the comments on the Affiliate blog, I just want you to know that my response to her “haha we don’t moderate” nonsense was that evidently, since my copy-paste of your reply taken from your blog went through no questions asked while your own post was blocked for several hours, it is not the CONTENT of your post that got caught in the filter, but your NAME (or email address, IP, website). Same for Greg Everett.

Congratulations, you and Greg are officially personae non gratae on the CF Affiliate blog. I don’t know if you should be sad or proud.

Best of luck,

Third party observer