2025 In Review and a Look Forward to 2026
Thank You for Being Part of Empower’s 2025
Thank you for the positive energy you brought to Empower throughout the 2025 year. It has been a busy and productive one for our team. As some of you know, 2024 saw a marked decrease in profits despite record membership numbers. To address this concerning trend, in January, we formalized the roles of our management team under Auto (GM), Savitar (Head Coach), and Salsa (Marketing Manager/Customer Success Manager).
With their combined expertise, they were able to nudge Empower’s operations in the right direction, restoring programs to profitability and bringing earnings more in line with the actual cost of doing business, including fair compensation to coaches.
Celebrating Community Events and Rebuilding Our Coaching Team
Along the way, they managed to deliver a great 2025 CrossFit Open/Intramural Team event, the Annual Awards Gala, HeroWOD Big Cat and the upcoming HeroWOD Spice as well as the 12-Days of X-mas. All this while working diligently to rebuild our coaching team. There were several misses and valuable lessons learned but in the end our team has been thrilled to add MK, Salsa, Titan, Ace and Avesta to our coaching roster.
Investing Back Into the Facility
Meanwhile, we’ve continued to make facility improvements. Most recently, we restored the lifting platform, which was showing a lot of wear and tear, added a new Airdyne, rolled out tatame mats, heavy bags, drop boxes and a few new toys which will make their debut soon.
Unforeseen expenses included the installation of a new music system, a more affordable way of complying with the oppressively priced government levy on public music usage and changing circumstances in our neighbourhood have required us, for the safety of members and coaches, to invest in the installation of security cameras.
What We’re Building Toward in 2026
As of today, our management team has delivered on 11 out of 12 of the goals we set for them this time last year and is already working on goals for 2026. Priorities in the New Year include replacing our worn out plyoboxes with new foam boxes as well as resin step up boxes, continuing our coach development, adding several new programs and shooting a mini documentary featuring an Empower member who is training to set a world record in 2026! We also have a couple of new member initiatives to be unveiled in 2026. Stay tuned!
Looking ahead to the New Year, our management team will continue to make the tweaks necessary to keep Empower profitable in order that we can continue to serve you. Unfortunately, that does entail adjustments to membership rates in order to reflect changing costs of doing business. We realize how much that hurts. In December 2024, our CrossFit affiliate dues (the fees we pay to license the CrossFit brand name) increased by more than 250%. This month, CrossFit HQ increased fees by another 220% and rumours are that the prospective new ownership will look to increase those by another 250% if/when they take control of the company early next year. It is a sting that we are all feeling. This is on top of increasing commercial lease and increasing operating costs for everything from cleaners to payment processors.
What This Means for Empower Members
Rest assured that we do not have such egregious rate changes in mind for Empower members. Effective January 1st, 2026, you will see a rate increase of 5-10% depending on the type of membership you currently hold. As always, if you find yourself in a financial position that this rate increase creates an undue burden, please do not hesitate to reach out to me directly (Corey(at)Empowereverybody.com) and we can discuss options that support both you and Empower.
Growing Stronger Together in 2026
We are very excited about everything planned for our community in 2026 and look forward to celebrating another fantastic year with you. Happy holidays, and prepare to bring your A-game in January, as now, with a proven management team in place with 12-months experience and a fantastic team of coaches, we are looking to take the Empower community to the next level. Just wait to see what we are creating!
