How Cryptid CrossFit Turned 14 Check-Ins a Month Into a Retention Engine

Cryptid CrossFit opened in Kalamazoo, Michigan in 2022 and burned through two gym management platforms before its first birthday. Outages kept members from seeing their workouts, and owner Chris McDermott went looking for something that would hold. Since moving to PushPress, he has built a Committed Club that 50 to 60 percent of his members hit every single month, cancelled two other software subscriptions, and handed his team a to-do list that runs itself.

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Introduction

Helping People Find Their Inner Beast

The name is not an accident. “A cryptid is a mystical or magical beast, so we help people find their inner beast throughout our community,” McDermott says. “We help people discover their undiscovered potential.”

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From day one, McDermott built the gym around consistency rather than competition. He had worked at a gym years earlier that ran a Committed Club, and he wanted the same thing at Cryptid. “That was something that was really important to me,” he says.

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What he did not have was software that could keep up.

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The Problem

Two Platforms, One Year, Too Many Outages

Cryptid started on Zen Planner, moved to Wodify, and then moved again, all within the gym’s first year of business.

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“We kept having outages,” McDermott says. “Members were upset they couldn’t see their data or workouts. After doing that more than once or twice, we went on a discovery and then we settled on PushPress.”

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Every migration cost him time he did not have as a first-year owner. “Switching systems within your first year is always stressful,” he says.

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He was also paying for tools that should have been part of the platform: a separate system for texting members, and another one acting as his gym CRM. A retention program built on top of that stack would have meant counting check-ins by hand.

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What Cryptid needed was:

• Reliable: Members had to be able to see their workouts and their progress, every day.
• Consolidated: One platform instead of three subscriptions.
• Priced for a new gym: Something that met the business where it actually was.

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The Solution

A Platform With a Roadmap

Two things made PushPress the third and final switch. The tiered plans fit a gym still finding its feet, and the product direction lined up with where McDermott wanted to take the business.

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“We went with PushPress because they offered a little bit of everything,” he says. “We saw the roadmap, we were aligned to that, and they offered us a solution to our problem.”

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Building the Committed Club Around Check-In Data

With attendance tracking he could trust, McDermott launched his Committed Club. Members started at a minimum of 10 check-ins per month. The bar has since been raised to 14.

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The reward is small and deliberately scarce: a custom pin, new every month, never repeated. Miss your 14 visits and that pin is gone for good. McDermott calls it a “really good incentive,” and it has turned attendance into something members actually chase.

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Catching Members Before They Drift

The check-in data in PushPress Core does double duty. It scores the Committed Club, and it shows McDermott who is falling off.

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“With recurring Committed Club members, once we’re mid-month, if they haven’t hit a certain number of attendances yet, I’ll reach out to them to see what we can do to help them hit their fourteen check-ins,” he says.

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Usually a text is enough. The member gets back in, the streak survives, and the churn risk goes with it.

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A To-Do List for the Team, a Dashboard for the Owner

Cancelling the texting tool and the standalone CRM did more than save money. It gave the team one place to work from.

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“For our team, I’d probably say it’s the inbox for PushPress Grow,” McDermott says. “It just gives us a to-do list of who we need to contact and keeps us on track with reaching out to folks.”

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For himself, it is the dashboard. “It just gives me a quick glance on things,” he says.

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Using the AI Assistant to Move Faster on Metrics

A retention program only works if someone is watching the numbers. McDermott uses the AI Assistant in PushPress Core to get through his metrics quickly and figure out where to point the business next.

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“The AI assistant in PushPress has helped me do my metrics faster, so I understand what I need to work on and where I need to focus the business so I don’t lose track of things,” he says.

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He is precise about the role it plays. “It’s not like it’s creating something for me,” he says. “It’s helping me be the best version of me, but faster and better.” His whole team uses it, not just the owner.

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Result

50 to 60 Percent of Members Hit the Goal Every Month

Month after month, between half and 60 percent of Cryptid CrossFit’s membership earns Committed Club status by checking in at least 14 times.

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“When someone hits the Committed Club, there’s little risk of them quitting the next month,” McDermott says.

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The platform data backs him up. PushPress members who check in at least 12 times a month have roughly a two percent chance of churning the following month. At one check-in a month, that jumps to 20 percent. And across PushPress gyms, 87 percent of Committed Club participants are still active 90 days later, compared to 58 percent of non-participants at the same gyms.

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Three Subscriptions Down to One

Consolidating onto PushPress let McDermott cancel both his texting platform and his separate CRM, saving money and cutting the number of places his team has to look.

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“PushPress simplifies it all and makes it easier to run the business,” he says.

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Leads That Move Themselves

The automated workflows in PushPress Grow handle the front end of the funnel. “Grow takes them from a lead to booking an appointment to coming into the gym for a no sweat intro,” McDermott says. “Having that communication to turn them from a lead into a member is near seamless.”

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Conclusion

Find the Tools That Fit How You Already Work

McDermott is direct about what PushPress has meant to Cryptid CrossFit. “I truly believe they make a difference in how we run our business,” he says. “When we talk to someone from the PushPress team, we always get heartfelt customer support. I would recommend PushPress for a few reasons. The first being it’s a one-stop shop, and the second is that the people at PushPress care. You can tell they care. A lot.”

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His advice to other owners is less about software than about fit.

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“Be uniquely yourself, and then find the tools that complement how you do your thing best,” he says. “Whatever software or tools you invest in, make sure it allows you to keep your bucket full, not stress you out. Running a small business is hard enough, and finding anything that’s going to add to that stress, no bueno. So find something that’s going to make the job easier for you so you can focus on what you love doing most.”

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Ready to turn consistency into retention like Cryptid CrossFit? See what PushPress can do for your gym. Book a Demo Today.