Becoming a Gym Owner

Eric Karls • November 13, 2024

No Plan, No Problem

A gym with a lot of kettlebells on the floor

Becoming a CrossFit gym owner started with a tall, skinny, insecure kid that picked up a Muscle and Fitness magazine in sixth grade. I didn’t know what I was looking at, but I knew it was what I wanted. I got my first set of Sear’s plastic coated concrete weights and never looked back, I was hooked! Bench and Bi’s, Back and Tri’s became my new religion.

 

Throughout high school and college I was always envious of everyone who always seemed to know what they wanted to do with their lives, the future doctors, layers, and accountants of the world. The ones who school seemed easy for and who had a path laid out for them. I all I knew was, I loved sports, wasn’t the best at school, and the only dream job I ever thought of was owning a gym. Gym ownership would always remain just a dream. The cost of treadmills, ellipticals, and pully machines was way beyond what one individual could afford. That was the world of the Globo gyms and individuals didn’t play there.

 

With no direction or sense of options, I continued my football career in college and maintained my academic excellence as a solid “C” student. At the end of my sophomore year, my counselor insisted I declare an intent of study and asked what I enjoyed doing. I replied “working out” and from there I officially become a Kinesiology major. At the time, I didn’t even know what the word Kinesiology meant, but neither did anyone else, so it made me feel special/unique when people asked what I was studying in school. They assumed it was something in the medical field and that my “C” average was probably someone where closer to the “C+” “B-“ range.

 

After 6 years and 3 universities, I did it! I received my bachelor’s degree and was off to start my career in the world of Kinesiology!!! Now all I had to do was go home and wait for them to send the letter informing me where I needed to show up for work! After a period not hearing anything and sharing my situation of waiting on my letter, I was informed there would be no letter. I had been misled by my own assumptions. No letter comes, no one tells you where to show up, and I would have to seek employment on my own. This couldn’t be correct, I had graduated college, I did what I was supposed to do. As confusing and obviously wrong as this seemed to me, I looked into what I was qualified to do. I could go to graduate school, which wasn’t an option because I had sworn I was done with school, or I could become a personal trainer. No degree required here, but I would have to go get a separate certification stating I knew what I was doing. That four year degree wasn’t enough, I needed more initials after my name. ACSM or ACE were required to show someone how to do a lat pull down to explain what a “super set’ was.

 

As you can probably guess, the decision was easy, I chose to go to grad school. I would go to get a Master’s in Education. I was going to be a Physical Education/Health teacher. Grad school was easy to get into, I only had to retake about half of my undergraduate courses at a local community college. Those “C’s” that I had originally showed up to class and blown farts to receive weren’t going to cut it. I eventually got into grad. school and took night classes while working full-time during the day. After 9 years of school and 2 degrees, I was ready to teach the future leaders of tomorrow the finer elements of the volleyball serve, the origin story of the family that created pickleball, and sex education. I was a teacher!!!

 

I loved teaching and found my niche with high school  freshman. I loved that they seemed more confused than I was and I would help them in any way I could. I also coached football and volunteered my time as the off-season strength and conditioning coach. Can you believe they paid me for this?!?! They did! $28,000 a year, and then next year I would make $28,250, and the next $28,500. I could tell you how much I was going to make 10, 15, 20 years from then. Wait! WTF?!?! It didn’t matter what I did, how hard I worked, I would get paid the same or less than someone who showed up, rolled a ball out, and just made sure no kids died. As much as I loved teaching, I HATED the pay and the scale that went along with it. Summers off were nice. 😊

 

Things were going great! I out kicked my coverage and had a smoking hot wife, we had our first of later to be 3 daughter, and I landed my dream job at Lane Tech High School in Chicago, IL. My wife was killing it in real estate, so my shitty pay wasn’t a big deal…until it was. 2008 hit and everything changed. The housing market came to a halt overnight and the difficulty of living off of a teacher’s salary became apparent very quickly. We lasted about a year until the economic reality of living in a major city with now two small children, forced a move we had been thinking about for quite some time. We packed our bags and moved to Lexington, KY, the hometown of my wife.

 

She could do real estate anywhere, and I could get a teaching job. The lower cost of living and a new start would help us get back on track. At that time teaching jobs weren’t as available as I had hoped and not knowing anyone didn’t help. I ended up taking a job in construction management, something I was loosely qualified for through working in the trades all throughout high school and college. The pay was good, but I hated it. I moved 400 miles to a place where I knew no one, left my family, and gave up a job I loved. It wasn’t the best, but it was what we had to do.

 

As a small consolation for making the move, my wife pushed me to rent a small warehouse space and open a gym. Around the time of the move in 2009 and before, I had been following the underground fitness movement of Gym Jones, RKC, and CrossFit. It had taken my training out of the Globo gym and into my garage. This training that started in Chicago by myself, in my garage, evolved into high school kids filling our back alley after school to come get destroyed with kettlebells, homemade sandbags, and oversized tires that we flipped. No one ever flips tires anymore, but we actually used to do it!

 

Now in Lexington, I rented about 200 square feet of warehouse storage space from my boss, built a rig out of plumber’s pipe, and set up my kettlebells, sandbags, and tires. A small group of people joined me for brutal workouts in a building with no A/C in the summer, no heat in the winter, and a bathroom that looked like a murder scene. I never though I knew what I wanted to do, but 20 years after reading that first Muscle and Fitness magazine, I was a gym owner, it was a shitty gym, but a gym none the less. I actually didn’t own anything, I had a space where I worked out, had crazy people that joined me and would throw a few bucks my way every month. It covered rent and allowed us to buy a new kettlebell every once in a while. It was AWESOME!!!

 

In 2012 I was approached by a group that were opening a CrossFit gym. My kids went to pre-school with the kids of one in the group and they had heard about my warehouse gym. They had a lot of passion for this new thing CrossFit, but only 1 coach among the 7. They asked if I was interested in joining them as a coach. I agreed on the spot, and a month later, my wife and I both took the CrossFit Level 1 course.

 

Joe DeGain was our Flow Master and at the time I didn’t know what it was, but I knew I wanted to be exactly like him and the other Seminar Staff Coaches. I feel in love with CrossFit!!! It was new, non-mainstream, hard as hell, and it incorporated my love of teaching, sport, and fitness. It was everything I was looking for!!! Mix in a group of new friends to do it with and the entrepreneurial aspect of being rewarded for the work you put in, there could be nothing better!

 

Since opening my first CrossFit gym in 2012 with a group of 8, I’ve either owned, coached at, or been kicked out of almost every CrossFit gym in Central Kentucky. I am now 4 years into my first solo venture and I am the proud owner of CrossFit Conductor! The workouts still scare the shit out of my, being an entrepreneur is the hardest thing I have ever done, and I love it! I am in awe of all the people that show up day after day and trust me and our coaches to take them on this fitness journey. I am excited about where myself, my gym, our community, and CrossFit has and is evolving into. 

 

I never thought my journey had a purpose, I thought I was behind everyone else my age with their careers. I now know to trust the process and to understand it has just taken longer to prepare me for the journey God has planned for me. I have the HARDEST and BEST job in the world. Like the new black belt, I have put in years of work and preparation to be ready to start this journey. LFG!!!


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Risky Business

By Eric Karls • February 1, 2026
Risky Business I read an interesting article from USA Today Weight-loss drugs draw thousands of lawsuits alleging serious harm But let’s first talk about CrossFit. Every time CrossFit comes up, someone eventually says: “Isn’t CrossFit dangerous?” “I heard people get hurt.” “My physical therapist says CrossFit keeps them in business.” “My cousin’s friend has a neighbor and their co-worker blew out his shoulder doing CrossFit.” At the exact same time these conversations are happening, millions of people are jumping on weight-loss drugs and medical interventions with very little discussion about risk. But now, lawsuits are popping up and the headlines are changing. Let me be 100% Clear, I DON’T CARE WHAT YOU CHOOSE! If you decide to take a weight-loss drug, that’s your call. If your doctor prescribes it and you feel good about it, go for it. Just like it’s your call if you want to do CrossFit, run, lift heavy, do Pilates, yoga, bootcamp, or never exercise at all. I don’t care about the choice. What I care about is people making choices without actually understanding what they’re signing up for. CrossFit Has Always Been Honest Here’s what people get wrong about CrossFit. We’ve never said it’s risk-free. We talk about intensity. We talk about load. We talk about mechanics. We talk about scaling. We talk about recovery. We talk about coaching. We don’t pretend that pushing your body to produce adaptation comes with zero downside. “In the pursuit of mitigating cardiovascular disease, you run the risk or orthopedic calamity.” ~Greg Glassman, Founder of CrossFit Simply put, pursuing fitness, of any kind, comes with risk. Ironically, Nobody Warns You About the Couch You know what almost never gets labeled as risky? • Losing muscle every decade after 30 • Weak bones • Chronic back pain • Metabolic disease • Eating like a 10 year old • Medications piling up year after year • Feeling tired, stiff, and fragile at 50 That stuff doesn’t happen overnight, so no one panics about it. It’s quiet, slow, and gets normalized. But it’s not safe. Sitting on the couch for years is a risk. Driving a car is a risk. Crossing the street is a risk. Drinking alcohol is a risk. CrossFit just happens to make the trade-off obvious. The Weight-Loss Drug Conversation Proves the Point T he issue with the recent weight-loss drug lawsuits isn’t “meds are evil.” The issue is this, a lot of people didn’t fully understand the potential downsides until after they experienced them. That’s the same mistake people make when they talk about CrossFit. They hear a headline or a story, but they don’t ask better questions. Good CrossFit Is Not Reckless or Random At CrossFit Conductor, we don’t throw people into the deep end and hope for the best. We coach movement. We scale workouts. We adjust volume. We meet people where they are. We play the long game. We use CrossFit to improve Fitness and MetFix to address Nutrition, and when the two are combined, we produce Health. Fitness = How much work you can do. Health = Fitness over the years of your life. Our goal isn’t to make workouts “safe” by making them meaningless. Our goal is to make them effective without being stupid. There’s a difference. You Don’t Get To Avoid Risk, But You Do Get To Choose It The truth most people don’t want to hear: You don’t get to opt out of risk. Y ou only get to choose which one you’re willing to live with. The risk of lifting weights and learning to move well. Or the risk of never building strength, eating like shit, and paying for it later. The risk of EFFORT or the risk of DECLINE. Final Thought I’m not here to scare you into CrossFit. I’m not here to shame anyone for taking a drug. I’m not here to tell you there’s one perfect path. I am here to tell you this. I f you’re going to do something with your health, anything, you owe it to yourself to understand the risks, the benefits, and the long-term consequences. CrossFit doesn’t hide that conversation. We lead with it. And I’ll take honest risk over comfortable denial every time. In Strength, Eric Karls, M.Ed. CrossFit Conductor Chief Awesomeness Engineer CrossFit Level 3 Certified Trainer (859) 494-9119
Football Game

"You Can't Slip"

By Eric Karls • March 12, 2025
“You Can’t Slip” The other team has the ball, 3rd down and 5 yards to go. We’re playing our biggest crosstown rival who we haven’t beaten in years. It’s a close game and this is a big possession in the momentum of the game. Sweep right and I’m the outside linebacker to that side. I shed my blocker, set the edge so the running back can’t get outside me. As he nears me, the rest of the defense forces him out to where I’m waiting, he makes a cut, and as I go to make the tackle, I slip on the rain soaked field. I’m only able to try and make an arm tackle, which against the best running back in the state, wasn’t enough. 6 yards, 1st down! Myself and the rest of the defense had set up perfectly to stop this play. We just didn’t finish, I didn’t finish, I slipped. The resulting 1st down play ended near our sideline. I got up off the ground to my coach right in my face, “YOU HAVE TO MAKE THAT TACKLE!!!” “I slipped” “YOU CAN’T SLIP!!!” In that moment, my 17 year old brain’s immediate thought was, “fuck you! I slipped, that’s not my fault.” We went on to lose that game by a more than we would have liked. That play was a big momentum shift, but again, I slipped, that wasn’t my fault, or at least that’s what I thought at the time. In my opinion, football is the ultimate team sport. Though my years of playing didn’t do my body any favors, the lesson it’s taught me were invaluable. The biggest being, “YOU CAN’T SLIP!” I don’t recall how long it took me to realize what my coach meant at the time or even if it’s actually what he meant, but it has gone to guide almost every aspect of my life from that moment on. It was a critical moment. Did I want to make the play? Yes. Did I want to slip? No. Was slipping my fault? No, the field was wet. Was slipping my fault? No, the running back made an amazing cut. Was slipping my fault? The defense did their job and force him out, the field was wet, the running back made a move, I wasn’t in the right position, I slipped. Was slipping my fault? YES. In the moment, I blamed factors outside of my control, but the BIGGEST factor, the one in my control, my position, was what lead to me not making the play. Had I positioned myself better, there would have been no room to make that cut, the running back would have either been funneled back to my awaiting teammates, right into my tackle, or out of bounds. By my position being off by just a small fraction, there was just enough room to make a cut, and I slipped. What went from “FUCK YOU! It wasn’t my fault” turned into “if I’m in the right position, I make the play.” Was slipping my fault? YES! Yes it was, I wasn’t in the correct position. I now apply that mentality to every aspect of my life. Am I in the correct position to make the play? Am I in the correct position for: My Marriage. My Children. My Family. My Career. My Health. My God. Every aspect of my life depends on whether or not I’m putting myself in the correct position to make the play. That’s life. You can’t control outside factors, but you can control how you position yourself to handle them. If you don’t like where you’re at, change your position. You must put yourself in the positions that will make you successful. “YOU CAN’T SLIP!”
A gallon of water with a red cap has a date stamp on it

08-25-20

By Eric Karls • January 3, 2025
8-25-20 1 part alcohol, 3 parts water. The disinfecting spray bottles we use at the gym were low the other day and I filled them. While doing so, I noticed the date on the old milk jug I use to mix the solution, 08-25-20, and then one-by-one I fill the tiny spray bottles. For the past 4 years, I’ve mixed this same solution, filled the same bottles, and then repeated about every 2 weeks. I’ve mopped the floors hundreds of times, vacuumed just as many. I’ve made sure the frig is stocked with drinks, kept the bathrooms cleans, restocked toilet paper and taken the towels home to wash. I’ve cleaned the windows, wiped off the mirrors, restocked the cleaning supplies, repaired holes in the wall, wiped down dirty equipment, and dusted the rowers and bikes. I’ve repaired countless broken items, ordered new ones, refilled chalked buckets, and ordered shirts and protein. I’ve removed old ceiling insultation, installed, moved, and reinstalled Big Ass Fans, I’ve laid 6000 sq. ft. of rubber flooring, I’ve replaced a garage door spring, I’ve installed a gas force heater, torn down walls, built a locker room, torn down a locker room, painted walls, refinished floors, and unclogged toilets. I’ve taken out countless bags of garbage, cleaned parking lots, hung TVs, and mounted pictures. I’ve erected rigs, installed pull up bars, hung ropes and rings, and then moved them all hundreds of times. I’ve left my house at 5am and returned at 7pm. I’ve had countless sleepless nights, anxiety over bills, and worried about everything. I’ve also gotten to meet new people and make new friends. Friends of every size, shape, color, believe, and background. I’ve gotten support and encouragement through tough workouts. I’ve gotten to laugh till it hurts, gotten my heart filled, and been made to feel special. I’ve gotten support of my wife and family and been helped with every task written above. I’ve been surrounded by unbelievable coaches and witnessed unbelievable athletes. I’ve been told I’m doing a great job, to keep going, and that everything will be OK. I’ve seen people lose weight, gain muscle, become more confident, and do things they never thought they could. I’ve celebrated victories, learned lessons, and become stronger physically and mentally. I’ve seen people give for no reason, love big, and show up when they didn’t want to. This gym continues to give more than its asks for and I feel like the luckiest person alive!
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