In 2007, Business News Network managing editor Marty Cej asked CrossFit founder and CEO Greg Glassman about the greatest challenge to CrossFit. Back then, Coach Glassman said “growth,” and the problem is the same in 2012.
“The greatest challenge is to stay true to our charter and to keep doing what we’ve been doing and not be distracted by the innumerable shiny objects on the roadside,” Coach Glassman says in this interview shot during the 2012 Reebok CrossFit Games.
The shiny objects are indeed many, and some of them might even turn out to be profitable in the short term, but they would require breaking trust with the more than 4,000 worldwide affiliates, so they remain by the roadside.
CrossFit Inc. is about something more than money to Coach Glassman. It’s about making a difference in the world with friends—and you can’t put a price on that.
That’s why CrossFit is building schools in Kenya.
“We’re going to do it because we can. We’re going to do it because it needs to be done. We’re going to do it because we’re the kind of people who do things like that. And that’s the branding message: CrossFit makes people better,” Coach Glassman explains.
CrossFit is no longer just about fitness; it’s about making the world better. And that’s slightly changed the answer to the oft-asked question “What is CrossFit?”
“I do recognize a refocusing of who and what we are. And the impact that affiliates have on their clients in the gyms is exactly who we are, and the branding effort is going to be the continued presentation to the broader world of just how wonderful the affiliates are,” Coach Glassman says.
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Additional reading: Live and Learn by Mike Warkentin, published June 28, 2012.