How “Safe Fail” Training Helped CFAH Owners Stay Strong During COVID-19 Closures
In this Back of the Napkin Friday Fail, Jeff Arce and Web Eby, owners of CrossFit Arlington Heights, compare a “safe fail” in strength training to the obstacles faced by small business owners. Plus, they describe how gym members rallied on behalf of the entire training community during the state-mandated COVID-19 closure that hit just a few months after they assumed gym ownership. Read the blog post.
Dusty Weis:
Greetings, innovators, and welcome to Back of the Napkin, where we explore big journeys in the world of small business with the personalities who make it happen. And welcome back to another one of these bonus segments that we like to call Friday Fails. I'm Dusty Weis.
Karen Stoychoff:
And I'm Karen Stoychoff. Dusty, in strength training, one of the first lessons you coach is how to fail safely with any equipment, and especially a barbell. Strength training is all about the body's ability to adapt to challenge and recover. And the same really can be said of owning a small business, which is why I appreciate the small business owners who share the obstacles they navigate sometimes well, and sometimes, well, not so much.
Dusty:
Yeah, because when it comes to failing safely, Karen, I would say that the safest way to learn those lessons is to learn them by watching someone else make the mistake, which is really why we launched this segment of the podcast.
Karen:
Right. And I thought Jeff and Web, owners of CrossFit Arlington Heights in suburban Chicago had an interesting fail to share.
Dusty:
That they did. But before we get to Jeff and Web's Friday Fail, let's take a moment to get reacquainted with them in a little thing that we like to call the fast five. These are five quick questions to learn more about our small business owner guests.
Karen:
You know, Dusty in CrossFit vernacular, the fast five is like one round for time. So, Jeff and Web 3 – 2 – 1 Go!
Dusty:
All right guys, if you could fill an Olympic sized swimming pool with your favorite food, which one would it be?
Web Eby:
Chicago style hot dogs.
Jeff Arce:
Beef brisket.
Karen:
What is your favorite lift?
Jeff:
Web:
The Snatch.
Dusty:
What brings you inspiration?
Jeff:
My kids.
Web:
The people here (CrossFit Arlington Heights).
Dusty:
What about the best aspect of helping people achieve their health and fitness goals?
Jeff:
The smile on their face when they've hit a new lift or done something exceptional.
Karen:
And what advice would you offer someone who wants to start a training program?
Web:
Get in.
Jeff:
Yeah.
Web:
Try it.
Jeff:
Don't wait. Just do it.
Dusty:
Awesome. Well, those are great tips right off the bat there. And we're talking with Jeff Arce and Web Eby owners of CrossFit, Arlington Heights in suburban Chicago. And you gents were about six months into your ownership transition and things were chugging along great. You post a consecutive record breaking months, buoyed up. You purchased a significant amount of expensive equipment. And then like so many small business owners in early 2020, boom. COVID. What was your reaction, Jeff?
Jeff:
I mean, I remember like it was yesterday, it was kind of devastation. It was, are we going to be able to survive this? We were chugging along and making some good money and things were moving in the right direction, and I remember sitting down with Nina, my wife and saying, "I don't know how we're going to be able to navigate this." And we worked through it. So it was a good learning lesson.
Dusty:
So, Jeff after you talked about it with your wife, I imagine that you guys, Jeff and Web, had to have a little bit of heart to heart as well to just figure out how to move forward. How did that conversation go Web and what did you guys settle on as far as your strategy to not necessarily keep your doors open, you had to close your doors, but to keep the revenue coming in,
Web:
Jeff texted me. I was on paternity leave because we had had baby the week before. And it was wham bam here it is. And Jeff sends a text and said, "Can you come in on a Sunday morning, about 7 a.m.?" I said, "Yep." So we came in, we sat at the table out here. It was a quick conversation of here's this, here's what I'm hearing, here's what's happening. I said, "Jeff, you know what? This is important. Let's do this if this is what it means." So we made the decision to, as of prior, at the last class of that Sunday morning, we were going to close up shop. We printed off two pieces of paper, stuck them to the doors and said, "Until further notice, here's the plan. Please find more information." We sent out a mass email to all of our folks. We got a lot of, "We understand. We get it."
Web:
We went and put everything on hold on the backside. And then we reconvened and said, "Okay, how do we keep them involved?" So from that point on, we set up a large spreadsheet. Each coach took a day and we started coaching from our houses, our garages, our backyards, our basements, our parks. We came up with a plan, how to keep folks engaged. About a week and a half into that. We had a meeting, virtual, at that point, we just said, "Folks, here's what we're doing with our coaches." We then came up with a plan of attack to use equipment. So folks could come in. This is all within the first week where we were just finding out what shut down was. Some places stayed open some places didn't. There was no mandatory shutdowns at this point. This was he and I deciding we need to do what's best for our folks.
Web:
Let's cut this now. We read a cool article by another gym owner, a very successful gym owner, who said, "You trust your folks inside your gym, trust them outside." So we had a day when folks could come in and check out equipment. We allowed them to take a kettlebell or a dumbbell, a band, things that they might need. And then around those pieces of equipment that we had already designated as usable, we created programming for three months essentially. Each coach came up with a day. Each coach came up with a warmup, a workout and put it on. We did Zoom. We did Facebook live. We did prior recordings, things like that. He would come here because he needed to get out of the house. I was able to do it at home in between diaper changings, and I would do it outside. We would do things around the house, around the basements parks, like I said, but we try to keep our folks as engaged as possible. And that was huge. That was a huge success for us.
Dusty:
Not only just letting people take your equipment to their own houses, which is certainly a leap of faith in and of itself but expecting people to continue to pay a membership fee for a gym that they couldn't go into. Jeff, when we talked last, you mentioned how important the community that you had built at your gym was, but would this have been possible without having that sense of community?
Jeff:
No, no. Our community, our members are fantastic, and they saw that we were putting out content for them and doing all of these things to try to go above and beyond to keep them (A) engaged, but also together we were doing on top of the workouts, on top of the programming we were putting together, we were also doing weekly, get together’s on Zoom, where people would have a cocktail and sit around their computer. Because we all were doing that. Right. And just talk and hang out. And sometimes you'd have eight or nine people sometimes you'd have 30 people. So we were doing things as often as we could to keep everybody together while we were so apart. So we wouldn't be sitting here having this conversation without all of those people who supported us during that three and a half, four months of rocky roads.
Karen:
Web, no one could have imagined the pandemic and the pandemic turned out to be a worst-case scenario for many small business owners. You were six months in when the pandemic shut your doors, yet you managed to continue to support your community, engage your community, and ultimately thrive as a business when many others didn't. What did you learn from this period?
Web:
We knew how essentially how tight our community was and how much we needed to be around each other and how much interaction was important to us, but also staying healthy and keeping yourself at a working ability. Folks were at home. Folks were not traveling as much, not out and being as active because we didn't know what was happening. So to make the decision to get back to business and how to open business, we said it early on that we played it slow. It was important to understand that everyone is different. Everyone has different feelings. Everyone has a different opinion about getting back in here or getting back to the gyms. So we are respectful of all of our individuals and playing it safe as possible and understanding that our community is going to grow by taking it slowly, by getting back to everyone being comfortable. And we've done that. So to understand that everyone's different obviously, but also to understand that everyone has a different comfort level. And so to be respectful of that was absolutely important to do.
Jeff:
I would say that with everything that we endured, walking away from all of it that we can endure just about anything and we could overcome just about anything. The biggest aspect of it was, it's okay to ask for help. It's okay to be vulnerable as a business owner. It is okay to be a human being. I think too many times business owners sit there and de-humanize their role in what the business is regardless of what it is. And at the end of the day, we're all people and we're supposed to look out for one another. And so if you show that human side of things, people will respond. If you mess up, they may not respond well, but they'll understand as long as you're willing to be human with them. So that's what I walked away with from that.
Karen:
So, Jeff you mentioned the humanity of being a business owner and you deal with humans in very vulnerable situations as a coach in your facility. It's difficult sometimes for people because not every training session qualifies as a personal best. So how did the two of you deal with members who don't see immediate progress and determine that lack of immediate progress is failing?
Jeff:
That's the challenge every single day of being a coach in general. You got to explain to people the process and if you're not transparent with what that process is, ultimately you're looking for short-term gains or you're looking for short-term success. And what we sell in here is the journey. And hopefully that people will go on the journey with us. And we don't promise a lot. What we do is I almost like to think that we under promise and over deliver. And if you sit there and say to somebody, "You'll have abs in six months", you're lying because you have zero control of what they're doing outside of the gym. You only see them an hour a day, but what you can do is you can have influence on those other aspects of their life. And if you show them the plan, if you give them the guide, if you give them the tools, if they execute those things, then abs in six months are possible, but you don't promise that.
Jeff:
What you do promise is if you come in and you listen and you try your best to do the things that we're laying out for you, you will find success in these areas, athletically speaking. And so that's kind of the message that we leave our coaches with. That is the message we leave our members with. And that's the message that we kind of live ourselves. We struggle with things ourselves as athletes. At the end of the day, Web and I own the gym, but we're still competitive out in that floor. We still want to go in and get sweaty and dirty and a workout. We love joining classes. I mean, I work out a lot more by myself now or with one of the other coaches, and it is the feeling of being in a class and being a part of the community and getting that push is second to none. And so if you can take advantage of that, you should, regardless of where you are as an athlete.
Dusty:
Well, that's great advice. And I certainly liked the way that it translates well into the world of business also, because I know that when I started my small business, I was not in great shape, entrepreneurially speaking, but I just wanted to make sure that I showed up every day that I got some money coming in. I knew I wasn't going to be taking a limo anytime soon, but just wanted to put in the work and make it happen. And two years later, I'm still going at it too. So our hats are off to you guys for the lessons that you've imparted here and the success that you had, but Jeff Arce and Web Eby from CrossFit, Arlington Heights in suburban Chicago. Thank you for sharing today with us your Friday fail.
Karen:
Make sure you're subscribed in your favorite podcast app. And we'd appreciate it if you dropped us a five star rating.
Dusty:
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Karen:
Thanks to the head of SurePayroll marketing, Jenna Shklyar and our production partners PodCamp Media.
Dusty:
Where we provide branded podcast production services for businesses. Our editor and producer is Larry Kilgore the third. So, thanks for tuning in to Back of the Napkin, I'm Dusty Weis.
Karen:
And I'm Karen Stoychoff.
