Crossfit Creates Jobs
This week is Global Entrepreneurship Week. It is a time to celebrate the innovators and job creators who, simply put, make our lives better. They bring ideas to life, they create jobs, and they persevere.
Greg Glassman is a true entrepreneur. He is the CEO and founder of Crossfit, a rapidly growing fitness program (of which I am a huge fan). This week I heard him speak at a conference about the development of his business.
If I could recite his whole speech for you I would, but here is my takeaway: Glassman uses freedom to grow the Crossfit movement. Standardization works for some businesses, such as McDonalds, but Glassman realized that Crossfit would touch more lives if he allowed affiliates to use his fitness program and run their businesses how they chose.
None of the Crossfit methods are protected, and affiliates only pay to use the Crossfit name. There are no requirements to use a certain brand of equipment, to operate specific hours, or to run the gyms in any specific way.
Because of this, Glassman has enabled thousands of Crossfit gyms to open in the past few years. Glassman gives all of his affiliates an equal opportunity to survive and thrive on their own. This is important. Entrepreneurs like Greg Glassman create jobs, not the government.
Missouri, please learn from Glassman’s success. Show-Me Institute analysts have written about the importance of treating businesses fairly and allowing them to grow or fail on their own. Business growth means more job creation, less unemployment, and happier Missourians. Entrepreneurial growth such as Glassman’s means all the above plus more individual and economic freedom for all. Isn’t this what all of us want?





Excellent, especially the last paragraph. What most small and mid-sized businesses want is opportunity to develop their own business, to create jobs, to build, to grow. What they don’t want is to be bullied by government bureaucrats or the courts, to be put out of business by the big guys with power, or to be attacked through the courts with false allegations. They want equal opportunity, not government-sponsored and paid competition.
The purpose of government and the civil courts should be to protect individual and economic freedom for all, guaranteeing that businesses and individuals are treated fairly and without prejudice or partiality, not just those money, power and/or influence and a personal agenda. Today’s systems lean toward the power and influence, toward cronyism rather than fact, hurting job creation and economic growth.
Comment by susan — November 17, 2012 @ 3:24 p.m.