“I shoot down ‘good ideas’ for a living.”
CrossFit founder and CEO Greg Glassman is constantly bombarded with new ideas for how the company should be run. They’re all similar, and not one of them has appealed to Coach Glassman. CrossFit seems to be doing just fine without outside “help.”
The company is debt-free and doesn’t need money, which is a concept foreign to most would-be investors.
Still, Anthos Capital wants to buy half of CrossFit Inc. for $20 million.
“No one spends $20 million for fun. These are money guys. They’ve got to get rid of me. I stand between them and the affiliates,” Coach Glassman explains.
If the CrossFit business model doesn’t make sense to outsiders, that’s fine with Coach Glassman. He knows the model works, and he doesn’t care what it looks like to MBAs.
“It’s hard to believe that’s all we want just to make the world a better place.”
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Additional reading: Professional Training by Greg Glassman, published Jan. 1, 2006.