I may not be the best at balancing a checkbook. Creating some sort of air-tight business plan is for someone else, not me. No, my talent is people and the last I checked, businesses are managed, supported, and owned by….people.
I say taking time to know one another better, even walking in someone else’s shoes, are vital steps towards freedom. Freedom to do what we love. Freedom to help others. Freedom to do business!
Before I show you my cards and tell you exactly why I think drop-in fees are nickel and dime attempts by bored affiliates, let me explain the exact kind of affiliate I am speaking about. After all, affiliates are not created equally. Affiliates exist all over the world with very different demographics.
The affiliates that I am addressing are what I would call “long-term” affiliates. They make up the majority of the affiliate population worldwide. They have a devout base of long-term members that more than support their needs. Well, at least pay to keep the doors open anyway.
The other guys, the “short-term” affiliates are those folks who opened their box doors in vacation hot spots. Where tourists and out of towners are prevalent. A place where everyday local box members are called “townees”, but a fraction of the box population utilizing the short-term affiliates services. Speaking to these “tourisfits”, that are well populated with the vacation crowd: by all means charge the appropriate drop-in fee. For the rest of us, the majority, stop charging drop-in fees all together.
The box model was designed as an affiliation. It is not a franchise for a specific reason. For freedom. The freedom to become successful and the freedom to fail. Some of us love this, and some of us need to be reminded of this little gem more often. The powers that be were never meant to hold hands, they were meant to get out of the way and let their kids grow up. And, oh, how we have grown.
Being an affiliation means we give up certain contingencies in exchange for more freedom. Manuals, business models, centralized leadership and conformity, thankfully, are but a dream had before the world of box programs dropped into our rebellious orbit. But affiliation does not equal discord, and consistency can be met within the walls of boxes everywhere.
A drop-in fee is that $10, $20, or even $30 charge some boxes’ use when an out of town member shows up to workout. Smells like a big box. And read that again, I said “a drop-in fee, is a fee that a box gym charges another member”. Sounds like giving your cousin a bill after you had Thanksgiving at your house.
Maybe you’re that “business box member”, if there is such a thing. Maybe you saw the beauty of the program for the dollar signs it can create, and maybe you jumped on board. But maybe you’re more like me and you are interested in building a little more along the way than your bank account. Maybe you’re interested in building up a worldwide affiliation that sounds an awful like a revolution. Maybe you’re interested in helping more than just yourself. It’s doubtful that we will accomplish that sort of unified front under the rule of the drop-in fee, an action carried over from the not-so-golden days of polo-shirts and pec-decks.
I should qualify this by saying, I doubt there is a box letting some kid off the street stroll in and do “Fran” with a class full of paying athletes. Not only is that reckless, it’s disrespectful to the veterans. That’s an easy one, and that’s not what we are talking about. We are talking about a member from another box goer who shows up at your doorstep on vacation and just wants to come in out of the cold to get WOD warm. You can either charge him some nominal fee, or you can welcome him as any community would and say, “What’s mine is yours.” After all, he is already supporting a box somewhere right? By supporting one, is he not supporting all?
But maybe that’s the real question. Do you really believe in this whole community thing?
If so, you would do what was designed for the greater good, not just your good. I know ya gotta eat, but in the long run it is always better to feed all than some.
In my box world, the world I want to share with everyone else, drop-in fees are like double jeopardy: paying for the same thing twice. And if double jeopardy is outlawed in the Constitution, then drop-in fees should be outlawed at boxes.
Feel free to post your comments below. We would love to hear your opinions.
– Josh Bunch | Practice CF
Your reading the bio of someone that values change. Someone that understands that today, he is an unforgiving zealot, and tomorrow he will be a demanding hypocrite. Josh Bunch understands that to grow, means to say, “I was wrong”, more than you say, “I know”. Josh Bunch values the fact that to become more, everything must change and we can never be addicted to “our” way, we need search for “the” way. Like Emerson said, “consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Oh, and jb is a professional writer, long time CrossFit affiliate owner, and 12 year exercise educator, with a background in nutrition.