How to Succeed as a CrossFit Affiliate

Jeremy Thiel from CrossFit Central in Austin, Texas, says the key to thriving is to understand what an affiliate is and is not, then pursue excellence in every way.

Your affiliate is your business. It is not a cookie-cutter replica of someone else’s gym. No one is telling you how to operate, how to program and how to look. That’s both a huge opportunity and a huge burden. Your success is up to you.

This kind of challenge fires me up. I decide how well I do. I’m ambitious, and the freedom that CrossFit HQ gives all of us puts no limit on how well I can do. The relationship between HQ and the affiliates is not a hierarchical structure like you might see in other businesses. We are free to communicate across the lines to anyone who will freely and openly communicate with us.

CrossFit HQ doesn’t tell me how to run my business, and to that I say, “Hell, yes!” I have the opportunity to do what I love in a free and open market. If you’re an affiliate asking for regulation, get over it. Go sign up for a franchise where you will experience both the hierarchy and the heavy tax burden of monthly franchise fees. That’s not what the CrossFit affiliate program is about.

Our customers determine our success. Not other affiliates, and certainly not HQ. I have no fear about what any other current or future affiliate does because they can’t affect the two things that make our business strong: the relationships my trainers and I have with our clients and the results our athletes get from training with us.