CrossFit Petram can be found at the heart of Middletown, Delaware. Located “right on Main Street,” this community-centered gym makes it a priority “to provide safe and sustainable training in a friendly and welcoming environment … all while making it the best hour of your day!” Chris Townsend, the owner of CrossFit Petram, shares some of what he’s learned in his experience as a CrossFit affiliate owner.
How has your affiliate dealt with the pandemic? Do you have any tips for other affiliate owners?
Looking back at the last year or so I think we’ve really done a good job in two areas:
- Focusing on what we can control.
As difficult as it has been to limit class sizes, close the gym for two months, require masks at all times, etc., I think we have done a great job focusing on what was within our control and delivering positive messaging. We focused on following local rules and regulations to keep our members safe. We emphasized transparency and consistent, clear communication to members. We redesigned the entire gym and reconfigured our rig so that we could spread athletes out as much as possible. We enhanced our cleaning protocols. By not complaining or focusing on all of the negatives, I think we got buy-in early on from our community that we were going to stay positive, focus on the good and get through this thing stronger together. We took the gym closure as an opportunity to have one of our awesome members create a new “Stronger Together” barbell mural inside the gym. Even if members didn’t agree with restrictions or rules we found that they were sympathetic to helping us stay open and in compliance.
- Providing excellence in customer service.
It is easy to overlook what your members are dealing with in this pandemic (working from home, home-schooling, loss of jobs, anxiety, you name it) and only worry about the gym’s finances, especially as membership holds and cancellations start to trickle in. We made the really tough decision early on to not charge our members while the gym was forced closed. We wanted to do right by them in the short term in hopes that we could build loyalty to CrossFit Petram over the long term. At the end of the day we considered ourselves lucky that our closure only lasted two months. Since reopening we’ve tried to focus our efforts even more on giving our members the best hour of their day. We’ve added class times, specialty offerings, new retail items, open gym memberships, etc., all in the spirit of adding value.
If you had an extra $1,000 each month in your budget, what would you use it for? If you had to reduce your expenses by $1,000 each month, what would you cut?
If we had an extra $1,000 each month I think we would reinvest in our coaching staff in the form of additional CrossFit certifications and training. We have an amazing team here at CrossFit Petram and I’d love to give back to our coaches via additional training opportunities and professional development. I know that our gym wouldn’t be where it is today without their dedication. I am just super grateful for our team. They are certainly deserving.
Cutting $1,000 each month wouldn’t be fun … we would have to take a hard look at expenses and trim as much as possible from different reserves we have set up for long-term replacement of equipment and upgrades to the facility.
Tell us about one of your proudest moments as an affiliate owner.
My proudest moment has to be when I was recognized as “Volunteer of the Year” by The Weekly Fight in 2019. We have the pleasure of hosting a free workout for veterans, first responders and their families called “The Weekly Fight” at our gym every Saturday morning at 9 a.m. The Weekly Fight is a local veteran-owned and operated nonprofit focused on turning post-traumatic stress into post-traumatic growth. In 2019 the CrossFit Petram team organized and pulled off an amazing competition to raise funds for The Weekly Fight. We were able to raise over $8,000 for The Weekly Fight scholarship fund, which supports families of veterans who are experiencing or have succumbed to post-traumatic stress. I am still super proud of the quality of the event our team pulled off and humbled by the recognition.
Describe an important inflection point in the growth of your affiliate. When did you feel like you had a good grasp of the business and know you could make a career of it?
I’m certainly not the type to get complacent. I hope that I never really feel confident enough to say that I’ve got a good grasp on the business. Our members enjoy the fact that we are constantly moving equipment around and tweaking our layout to improve. It’s become a little bit of a fun joke at the gym. Just when you think you know where the dumbbells are, they’ve been moved to the other side of the gym. It keeps everyone on their toes. In all seriousness though, it highlights the fact that we view our management efforts similarly to how we view our fitness journey: continuously striving to be better, 1% better each day, and over the long haul it adds up to success.
In terms of an inflection point, I think that happened before I became an affiliate owner — actually way before I even considered becoming an affiliate owner. It took a few years of doing CrossFit as an athlete (a mediocre one) and lots of drop-ins across the country to really appreciate what made a “good” CrossFit gym “good.” Eight years ago I would have started this reply with great programming. Yes, programming is important, but it isn’t as important as good coaches, and it isn’t as important as how you treat people. This is a customer service business after all. We know CrossFit works; the methodology is tried and true. We see it inside our gym month after month as dedicated members hit new PRs and achieve new skills. So my inflection point was when I realized that it wasn’t all about programming. After that realization I had enough courage to go in with some awesome people to start our own CrossFit gym in 2017. The goal of that gym was to build a thriving community with great coaching and a place that our members looked forward to going to get their butt kicked everyday. A place where they can get fit, have fun and see their friends. I am very proud to say that vision very much resembles what CrossFit Petram is today.
Tell us about an important learning experience.
I think one major realization came after we burned ourselves out trying to market CrossFit to every human looking for fitness. You name it, we tried it. We had 30-minute offerings, we did the 6-week challenges, we built all the landing pages. We tried lots of ways to attract folks looking for a transformation. I appreciate that there are benefits to all of these programs, but we have found that by focusing on our core offering and simply “doing CrossFit better,” we are growing more organically. We’ve focused on delivering more to our members, and we’ve seen a return on that investment.
What excites you about CrossFit’s future?
The pandemic has been a tough reminder that nothing should be taken for granted. I am hopeful for a revitalized prioritization of health and wellness. On top of that, I think people have a ton of pent-up demand to get out of their house and be social again. What better place to check both of those boxes off than your local CrossFit gym? I’m really looking forward to the day we can have a full gym, work out without masks, and high-five each other after a tough WOD. I miss seeing those smiles full of satisfaction that athletes share when the workout is done.
From a CFHQ standpoint, I am really excited about the new regional affiliate representatives and the opportunity to network with other affiliate owners. I’m also excited to see additional resources coming out of CFHQ to help affiliates thrive as discussed on Eric Roza’s last town hall.
How do you plan to adapt your business to thrive in an evolving fitness landscape?
During the pandemic we’ve really leaned on networking to help us navigate new challenges. We’re a proud member of the NCFIT Collective, which has been a tremendous asset. We also looked outside the CrossFit world and networked with local small business owners to keep learning and gathering insights from different perspectives. Having trusted advisors and the opportunity to talk with other small business owners has been invaluable. I’d say find a coach or a mentor that you trust or find your affiliate representative and start having conversations. In terms of figuring out the evolving fitness landscape, we plan on leveraging our most valuable asset, which is our customer. We consistently ask for feedback, sometimes informally and other times in surveys. We make ourselves available and try to be transparent with our members. So our strategy is listening to our customers and taking their feedback and making the best decisions we can to keep our gym successful.
Note: Some responses edited for clarity or length.
Q&A With Chris Townsend of CrossFit Petram