Running a CrossFit gym would be a lot easier if the world would stop changing for five minutes. Unfortunately, that does not seem to be happening.

  • Advertising costs change.
  • Member expectations change.
  • New competitors open.
  • Coaches leave.
  • Rent goes up.
  • Software changes.
  • AI changes how people search for businesses.
  • Consumer spending shifts.
  • A marketing channel that worked six months ago suddenly stops producing leads.

Then, while you are trying to figure all of that out, a rower breaks, two members freeze their memberships, your best coach needs Friday off, and somebody wants to know why the 5:30 class disappeared from the schedule. Welcome to gym ownership. There is always another decision waiting.

The challenge is no longer simply making good decisions when conditions are predictable. It is learning how to make good decisions when you do not know what the next six months will look like.

In a recent Enoch Marketing discussion, Collin Charles explored this idea through Cheryl Strauss Einhorn's Harvard Business Review article, In Uncertain Times, Ask These Questions Before You Make a Decision. The article is built around an uncomfortable reality:

Uncertainty may not be something businesses simply have to survive until everything becomes normal again. Uncertainty may be normal.

For CrossFit affiliate owners, that changes the question. Instead of asking:

"When will things settle down?"

It may be more useful to ask:

"How do I build a gym that can make good decisions even when things do not settle down?"

That is a very different approach to leadership. And it starts with four questions.

The CrossFit Gym Owner's New Reality: Permanent Uncertainty

Gym owners are used to solving problems. That comes with the territory. But there is a difference between experiencing an occasional disruption and running a business in an environment where something always seems to be changing. That is what Collin describes as permanent uncertainty.

Einhorn's original framework deals with what management researchers sometimes describe as a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environment. The point is not that disaster is constantly around the corner. The point is that leaders frequently have to make decisions without having all the information they would like. That should sound familiar to almost every affiliate owner.

  • Should you raise membership prices?
  • Should you hire another full-time coach?
  • Should you increase your marketing budget?
  • Should you move to a larger facility?
  • Should you add Hyrox-style programming?
  • Should you introduce personal training?
  • Should you cut an underperforming class time?
  • Should you hire a general manager?
  • Should you invest in new equipment?
  • Should you expand?
  • Should you wait?

None of these decisions comes with a guaranteed answer. And waiting until you have perfect information usually means waiting forever. The goal, then, is not certainty.

The goal is to develop a better process for making decisions without certainty.

Why Pressure Makes Gym Owners Short-Sighted

One of the most useful ideas in Collin's discussion is what happens to our thinking when resources become scarce. When money gets tight, leads slow down, or membership declines, the timeline in your head often gets shorter. You stop thinking about where the gym will be in three years. You start thinking about Friday. You start asking:

  • How do I make payroll?
  • How do I replace these five cancellations?
  • What promotion can I run this week?
  • What expense can I cut immediately?

Sometimes that urgency is necessary. If you have a real cash flow problem, pretending everything is fine because you have a beautiful five-year plan will not save the business. But short-term thinking becomes dangerous when temporary pressure causes permanent decisions. A gym might slash its marketing budget because one month was weak. Then lead flow becomes even worse.

An owner might discount memberships because sales are slow. Then existing members begin questioning why new customers are paying less. A gym might eliminate a coach to save money. Then the owner's workload increases so much that sales, marketing, and member retention suffer. The immediate problem gets solved. A larger problem quietly takes its place.

This is why strong CrossFit gym decision-making requires the ability to look beyond today's pressure without ignoring it. You need enough urgency to respond. But enough perspective not to panic.

Question 1: Will This Decision Still Make Sense a Year From Now?

The first question in the framework is beautifully simple:

Will the decision I am making today still make sense one year from now?

Not forever. Not 20 years from now. Just one year. That timeline is useful because it forces you out of both extremes. You are no longer making decisions based only on today's problem. But you also do not need to predict what the fitness industry will look like in 2040.

Imagine you are thinking about cutting your marketing budget because September was slow. Ask:

Will completely stopping marketing still look like the right decision next September? Maybe. But probably not. Perhaps the better decision is changing the channel, adjusting the offer, improving follow-up, or cutting the campaigns that are not producing measurable results. Now imagine you are considering hiring a full-time general manager. The additional payroll looks intimidating today.

But if that person eventually removes 25 hours of administrative work from your week, improves lead follow-up, protects member retention, and lets you spend more time working on growth, how will that decision look a year from now? That changes the calculation.

Reverse Engineer the Gym You Want Next Year

Here is a useful exercise. Imagine it is exactly one year from today. What do you want your affiliate to look like? Maybe you want:

  • 40 more active members
  • Better retention
  • Less dependence on you
  • A stronger coaching staff
  • More personal training revenue
  • A healthier cash reserve
  • Better lead follow-up
  • More consistent marketing
  • Fewer failed payments
  • A stronger local reputation

Now work backward. What decisions need to happen today for that version of the gym to exist? This is one of the easiest ways to separate meaningful decisions from distractions. Because not everything demanding your attention deserves your attention.

Question 2: What Will This Decision Teach People About Our Leadership?

The second question goes deeper:

If people looked back at this decision a year from now as an example of our leadership, what would it teach them?

This is not primarily a financial question. It is a character question. Every significant decision teaches your coaches and members something about how you operate. Imagine a coach makes a mistake. Do you embarrass them in front of the team? Ignore it? Immediately fire them? Or have a direct conversation, understand what happened, correct the behavior, and create clearer expectations?

Whatever you choose teaches your staff something. Imagine the gym has a difficult month financially. Do you panic and change everything? Do you hide the problem? Do you communicate clearly with leadership, analyze the numbers, and make deliberate adjustments? That teaches something too. Members are watching as well.

They may not see your spreadsheets or management meetings, but they experience the results of your decisions. They notice when standards disappear. They notice when good coaches are burned out. They notice when every month brings another desperate promotion. They notice when the culture changes. And they notice when leadership remains consistent.

Your Decisions Become Your Gym's Culture

Gym culture is often discussed as though it is created by slogans. It is not.

Culture is created by repeated behavior.

You can put COMMUNITY in six-foot letters on the wall. But if nobody contacts a longtime member who suddenly disappears, the wall does not matter. You can tell employees that you trust them. But if every tiny decision requires owner approval, they know you do not actually trust them. You can say coaching quality matters.

But if poor coaching is tolerated indefinitely because replacing someone would be inconvenient, the real value is convenience. Your decisions teach people what your gym actually stands for. That makes this second question particularly powerful for CrossFit gym owners:

If someone used this decision to explain what kind of gym we are, would I be proud of the lesson?

Question 3: What If This Isn't the Storm? What If It's the Climate?

This may be the most uncomfortable question in the framework. What if the difficult conditions you are waiting to end are not temporary? Business owners naturally tell themselves:

  • Things will calm down.
  • Leads will go back to normal.
  • Advertising will become easier.
  • People will start spending again.
  • The algorithm will stabilize.
  • Hiring will get easier.
  • Competition will slow down.

Maybe. But what if it does not? Collin puts it simply in the video:

What if this isn't the storm? What if it's the climate?

That question forces you to stop building your business around the assumption that yesterday is coming back.

Stop Waiting for Gym Marketing to Become Easy Again

Consider lead generation. There was a time when a gym could run relatively basic Facebook ads, offer a challenge, collect leads, and generate a predictable stream of prospects. Competition increased. Advertising became more sophisticated. Consumers became familiar with the same offers. Attention fragmented across more platforms. Search behavior changed. Prospects became more selective. Now AI is changing discovery again.

You could spend the next several years waiting for gym marketing to become simple again. Or you can assume this is the environment. If this is the climate, the question changes from:

"When will ads start working like they used to?"

to:

"How do we build a marketing system that works in this environment?"

That might mean diversifying lead sources.

  • Improving your website.
  • Creating better local SEO.
  • Building referral systems.
  • Publishing useful content.
  • Tracking leads more carefully.
  • Improving sales follow-up.
  • Strengthening member retention.
  • Using tools such as Gym Recon to identify opportunities across leads, members, revenue, and follow-up instead of relying on one source of growth.

The point is not that one particular strategy is automatically correct. The point is that waiting for the old environment to return is also a strategy. And sometimes it is the worst one available.

What Would Your Gym Look Like If This Were Normal?

Take whatever business problem is worrying you most right now. Then ask:

What would I do differently if I knew this condition would continue for the next five years?

  • If qualified coaches remain difficult to find, would you create a stronger internal coach-development program?
  • If customer acquisition remains expensive, would you invest more heavily in retention and referrals?
  • If consumers become more price-sensitive, would you improve your ability to communicate the value of coaching rather than relying on discounts?
  • If members expect more personalized communication, would you create systems to identify who needs attention?
  • If owners continue becoming overwhelmed by administrative work, would you finally document processes and delegate?

When you stop assuming a problem is temporary, you often begin designing better systems.

Question 4: What Is the Cost of Waiting?

CrossFit teaches people to move. Three, two, one, go. Business sometimes requires the opposite. The final question is:

What is the cost of waiting?

Notice that the question is not:

"Should I wait?"

Sometimes you absolutely should. The question forces you to understand what waiting costs before you decide. Suppose you are considering changing your gym's pricing. Acting immediately has risks. But waiting also has a cost. Maybe every month you delay means your margins continue shrinking. Now consider hiring another coach. Hiring too quickly can be expensive.

Waiting might mean your current coaches become exhausted. Both have costs. Or imagine a member has suddenly stopped attending. You could wait another month before reaching out. What does waiting cost? Possibly nothing. Possibly the membership. The important idea is this:

Doing nothing is still a decision.

And doing nothing still has consequences.

Not Every Gym Problem Is an Emergency

There is another side to this question. Gym ownership can make everything feel urgent. A member sends an unhappy email. Urgent. An employee suggests a schedule change. Urgent. A competitor announces a promotion. Urgent. A lead complains about pricing. Urgent. Instagram engagement drops. Urgent. But most business decisions are not emergencies.

Sometimes the smartest thing an owner can do is wait 24 hours. Look at the numbers. Talk to the relevant people. Sleep. Then decide. CrossFit trains intensity incredibly well. Business requires intensity too. But leadership also requires restraint. Not every problem needs to become today's workout.

A Practical Four-Question Framework for CrossFit Gym Owners

The next time your gym faces an important decision, write these four questions down before committing.

1. Will this still make sense a year from now?

Look beyond the immediate discomfort. Does the decision move you toward the gym you are trying to build?

2. If this becomes an example of our leadership, what will it teach?

Think about the behavior you are modeling for coaches, staff, and members. Does the decision reflect the kind of organization you claim to be?

3. What if this is the climate rather than the storm?

Stop assuming the environment will automatically return to normal. Would your strategy still work if current conditions continued?

4. What is the cost of waiting?

Calculate both sides. What could happen if you act now? What could happen if you do nothing? Einhorn's original framework presents these questions as tools for revealing assumptions and helping leaders focus on what they can actually control. They do not magically give you the right answer. They give you a better way to think about the answer.

And that matters.

Use the Framework on Real CrossFit Gym Decisions

Here is what it could look like in practice.

"Should I raise my membership rates?"

  • One year: Will the new rate create a healthier business without destroying the value proposition?
  • Leadership: Does the way you communicate the increase reflect transparency and respect for members?
  • Climate: If operating costs remain high, can the gym survive indefinitely at today's pricing?
  • Waiting: How much margin disappears every month you postpone the decision?

"Should I hire a general manager?"

  • One year: Could this person create enough capacity to make the business stronger?
  • Leadership: Are you developing people and trusting them with responsibility?
  • Climate: If your workload remains this high indefinitely, is the current model sustainable?
  • Waiting: What opportunities are being missed because you are buried in operations?

"Should I cut an underperforming class?"

  • One year: Does the schedule become more sustainable?
  • Leadership: Are you making the decision from evidence or inconvenience?
  • Climate: If attendance remains at the current level, does keeping the class make sense?
  • Waiting: What does another six months of staffing an almost-empty class cost?

"Should I spend more on marketing?"

  • One year: Are you building a reliable acquisition system or simply buying short-term attention?
  • Leadership: Are your marketing decisions disciplined and measurable?
  • Climate: If acquiring new members continues to require active marketing, are you prepared for that reality?
  • Waiting: How many potential memberships disappear while you delay fixing your lead flow?

Now the decision becomes more structured. That does not guarantee certainty. It gives you something more useful:

clarity.

Do Not Fight the Last War

One of Collin's strongest observations in the video is that leaders are often prepared to fight the previous battle. We solve tomorrow using strategies that succeeded yesterday. Gym owners can fall into this trap easily.

  • "This promotion worked in 2022."
  • "We've always sold memberships this way."
  • "Facebook ads used to crush it."
  • "We've always had that class."
  • "Members never cared about that before."
  • "We've always done our onboarding this way."

History matters. Experience matters. But experience becomes dangerous when it turns into an assumption that the future must behave like the past. The CrossFit methodology itself should make us comfortable with this concept. Training creates adaptation. Yesterday's stimulus eventually stops producing tomorrow's progress. Businesses adapt too.

The systems that helped your gym reach 100 members may not be the systems needed to reach 200. The owner who successfully did everything alone at 50 members may become the biggest constraint at 150. The marketing strategy that worked when there were two gyms in town may not work when there are 12 fitness options fighting for attention.

You cannot control whether the environment changes.

You can control whether you change with it.

Calm Is a Competitive Advantage

There is a final idea from Collin's discussion that deserves more attention. Good decisions require the ability to think calmly enough to imagine that you will actually live with their consequences. That sounds obvious. Yet pressure compresses time. When things are going badly, next week feels like the entire future.

When things are going extremely well, owners can become overconfident and make commitments as if growth will continue forever. Both can lead to poor decisions. Strong gym leadership lives somewhere in the middle. Do not panic because one month was bad. Do not assume you are invincible because one month was incredible. Look at the trend. Look at your members.

Look at your finances. Look at the market. Ask better questions. Then make the decision.

You Don't Need Certainty to Lead Well

There will probably never be a perfect time to run a gym. There will always be another competitor. Another economic shift. Another platform. Another piece of technology. Another expense. Another trend. Another crisis. Another opportunity. Waiting for uncertainty to disappear before making decisions means giving uncertainty control over the business.

The better goal is to build a gym capable of operating inside it. That means making decisions that still look intelligent tomorrow, not merely decisions that relieve pressure today. It means understanding that your staff and members learn about your values by watching what you actually do.

It means asking whether the problem you are waiting to disappear might require a permanent adaptation instead. And it means remembering that waiting has a price too. The strongest CrossFit gym owners will not be the ones who perfectly predict what happens next. Nobody can.

They will be the ones who build businesses capable of responding when reality refuses to follow the plan. Because uncertainty does not eliminate the need for leadership.

It is precisely when the outcome is uncertain that leadership matters most.