Webinar

How to Host Your Best CrossFit Intramural Open

Originally Aired

January 29, 2026

Who you'll hear from

Craig Howard

Owner

Diablo CrossFit

Zach Forrest

PushStart host

PushPress

Watch the replay

Key Takeaways

Drive Awareness & Hype When and how to talk about the event to create buy-in from your members
Nail Maximum Participation Ideas for incentivizing the behaviors you want from your community.
Good Old-Fashioned Fun Creative ways to make sure the event delivers on what it's supposed to — a fun way to bring your community together.

Full Transcript

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining, and welcome to another Push Start webinar. I'm super… personally, I'm super stoked for today's topic. If you're a CrossFit affiliate owner, the intramural open, or the annual open, is one of those things that can either be an absolute

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: grand slam for your community, or it could be a kind of chaotic missed opportunity.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: And it really comes down to, in my opinion, it really comes down to the leadership at your gym and what they do to organize and build hype and talk about the Open. So today, I have the legendary Craig Howard, owner of Diablo CrossFit. You are… you are legend status, sir.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Thank you for joining us today.

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Craig Howard: Yeah.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: I know we chatted earlier this week about stuff that we're going to be discussing today, and during that chat, we had… you had some phenomenal insights and tactics on what it actually takes to host a rock-solid event. I know, even after having run

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: at least a handful. I mean, I started doing the Open at the gym when they started, I think, in 2010 was the first year, and I remember earlier this week, you said a few things that was like.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: huh, I never thought of it that way, and that was… that was great. So I'm looking forward to sharing that expertise today with everybody.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: So, let's jump… actually, logistics, real quick.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Before we jump in, I want to let everyone know that we have our other legend, Greg. So we have Craig and Greg. He's from PushPress, and he's going to be in chat today. Last time we ran a webinar, it got a little chaotic with the amount of engagement that was going on in chat, so he is here to make sure that

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: everyone can drop questions into chat, or preferably the Q&A, and we won't miss them. So, Greg, I know I already spoke to you about this, but I'll pause every now and then, and if you… if you get a question in chat that you feel is really

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: relevant, feel free to interrupt myself or Craig, and just be like, hey, I got something, and we'll bring it up right then and there.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Alright.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: You guys ready to get going?

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Craig Howard: Yeah.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Before I actually pull up my slide, Craig, we spoke about something. I know we're talking about 3 main things when it comes to the intramural Open.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: the marketing, the building the hype, building the awareness, and then we want to talk about how to incentivize the behaviors that we want, how to drive participation. We also want to talk about,

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: how to make it fun, uniquely fun, so that only CrossFit affiliates can do this kind of event, right? But we had a chat earlier this week where we discussed

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Kind of in the marketing hype side, but…

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: how the owner or how the leadership at a given gym needs to frame the perspective of the open in order for it to be successful. And we actually had, quite a few questions come in from registrations and attendees about this specific topic, like.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: What was, what was one of them?

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: How do we keep members engaged who think they aren't ready or intimidated by the Open, or how to get members to participate when the hype of doing the Open has waned after years of doing it? We… we had some people that were kind of, like, on the fence about, like, why should we do it?

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: And now, this is not an official CrossFit HQ call, right? But from a gym owner's perspective.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: What do you think is most important that other affiliate owners know, or coaches know, about running the affiliate in the global landscape? I'd love to hear your take on this, Craig.

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Craig Howard: Yeah, and it's something that has been particularly relevant this year, primarily because open registrations last year were significantly down from the year before, and there's quite a number of

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Craig Howard: social media influencers and media people that discuss it and use the number of participants in the open as a kind of an interest gauge in CrossFit, and a measurement gauge for the health of CrossFit overall, globally.

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Craig Howard: And that, the decline in participation for a number of different factors that happened last year. But that decline in participation led a lot of people to believe CrossFit was dying, CrossFit's not popular anymore, there's other…

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Craig Howard: competition events that are coming up, like HIROX, for example, that are usurping CrossFit's presence in the space.

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Craig Howard: And for, me, that got me, essentially interested in really trying to drive, participation in the open, to help with not only my business, but the overall health of CrossFit.

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Craig Howard: what I, realized, looking back at the performance over 16 years of

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Craig Howard: Diablo and my member participation in the Open is the years that we really nailed participation, and we had an active… active events throughout it, were… resulted in

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Craig Howard: You know, this could be causation, could be correlation, but it resulted in our best years financially, that we've had at the same time.

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Craig Howard: And as I kind of dug a little deeper into it, I realized that what we do in the open, the creation of the events around it, whether it was 5 weeks or 3 weeks, depending upon the length of the open, the Friday Night Lights, the other events that we did around it, the theme-building stuff.

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Craig Howard: All of those things were, engagement opportunities for me as an owner and my coaches with the community that carried over for a long period of time.

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Craig Howard: throughout the rest of the year. It results in media content being produced out of my gym, people sharing pictures, and on social media, their experiences.

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Craig Howard: People recruiting their friends to participate and be a part of it. And again, the net effect was an opportunity… it was building my business and growing my business, building my membership base.

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Craig Howard: And it was, so when I talk… when I talk to owners now about the open and why we do need to do the open, it's a… it's healthy for your business, but it's also, even better, it's a give back to CrossFit. We're at… CrossFit's almost 70,000 registrations this year. It's more than double what we did last year.

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Craig Howard: And I think everybody would agree that the energy and enthusiasm around CrossFit and the Open this year is much higher than it's been. You can feel the energy. And you can even… there was a town hall recently with management, and some people said… one of the…

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Craig Howard: J.D. Koontz, who runs Affiliates, said a number of people said to him, it really feels like the management team at CrossFit is much more positive and excited about where things are going.

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Craig Howard: And so that's the… that's… that's the give back. And when I tell my members, hey, join up for the Open, be a part of the Open, it's your give back to CrossFit, this methodology that has probably changed your life for the positive.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Absolutely. It's a way to do that.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Absolutely, and yeah, I… you were talking about as the benefit to the business, as a benefit to the methodology, and that… that all makes sense, and…

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: But when you're talking about it as benefit to the business, and it creates more opportunities for you to create connections and build the relationship with your members. Greg, I know we spoke about this at our keynote. Do you remember the specific stat

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: where, our data team dug it up. If you have a member that goes through… that participates in all 3 weeks of the open, they were more than… it was, like, 78% or 82%

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: More likely to still be a member one year later.

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Greg Buck: That sounds… that's roughly correct, yes.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: I think it was around 80%, and I wish I… I don't know why I didn't have that stat pulled up for this webinar, but I do, as Craig was saying, that popped in my head, and that alone should be a motivator for gym owners and coaches.

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Craig Howard: Here's something… again, I have these, kind of, these moments of… they said, these epiphanies from time to time. I'd start to think, because we…

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: My goal was, with my members, I built it up ahead of time. I wanted to really hit the leaderboard. This was, like, literally hitting the first movement in a workout as hard as possible so you can win the first movement. In the past, I looked at all the past moments. We never… no one ever focuses on that affiliate participation leaderboard, or where you stand, so I'm like, oh, I'm gonna hit that first day hard. I wanted to be number one in the world.

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Craig Howard: Some frickin' huge affiliate in Portugal, though, decided that they wanted to hit 200. We hit 100, we ended up at second. That's CrossFit Portugal Black. Amazing gym, by the way, speaking of gym envy. But…

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Craig Howard: What was cool about that was that energy and that excitement really just, like, immediately the next day, more people… we ended up with 150 people signed up.

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Craig Howard: As a result of just kind of creating some excitement around that first day. And then people started reaching out to me, affiliates started reaching out to me, and the energy level just, it took off.

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Craig Howard: And just from really kind of putting my foot on the gas on the first day.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Yeah. And what I thought about, here's something to think about, too. This is the epiphany I had.

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Craig Howard: walking my dogs early in the morning. I started thinking about those 150 people that signed up, and I thought, you know what? Those 150 people are gonna be with me, guaranteed, at least through the first day of the Open.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Oh, shit.

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Craig Howard: on my membership breaks all the way through the open. And it's like, now I'm at 200, and I'm like, oh yes, I got 200 people that I know are gonna keep paying their memberships for… Absolutely.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Absolutely, yeah.

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Craig Howard: I love your Gregg statistics, that's even better. Shit, if I can get them all the way through, 70% stay on more than a year to.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: It was something… it was more than… That's huge! I remember that. It was… it was an astounding percentage, but as soon as I heard it, I was like, you know what, it makes sense. So let's talk about that, actually, Craig. I would love to talk about your…

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: you know, that win the first movement. I want to know about the tactics, the strategies that you, deployed or utilized to get those first 150 people. I want to pop up this…

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: this right here, so now you guys should be seeing… oh, no, I don't want… I don't want me to be on the screen. Let's just do, let's do that. But hopefully, viewers can still see, Craig, myself, and Greg. And,

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: So, we're gonna be talking about these 3 things, obviously.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Where is my… where are my notes?

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Of course it's not gonna pop up, but marketing to drive awareness and hype is basically, hey, how are you talking? Who are you talking to? And what is the message? What is the call to action that you are putting out so that,

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: You know, the most amount of your members can…

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: know about the Open, the event, and what it's supposed to do, and why they're supposed to sign up. So, then we want to talk about how to design and implement incentives so it drives behaviors that you want over the course of 3 weeks. Namely, a high amount of participation and camaraderie-building activities. Maybe you need judges.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: So, maybe we incentivize… we build incentivize… Incentivize… I can't say the word. We incentivize signing up to judge. There we go. And then finally, we're going to talk about some ways to make the event uniquely fun for your gym.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: your community is, probably unique. Most communities are CrossFit affiliates, and you, as the owner, or as the coaching staff, probably have some insight as to what makes your people tick, and what's going to drive them to create some core memories around this event.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: So, let's see… we got… I'm so bad at sharing. So, let's go back to what you did, Craig, for awareness and for marketing. What was the message, what was the call to action that you put out that got so much participation and sign-ups?

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Craig Howard: Yep, so, it started, really early when they… this, you know, they announced the open dates pretty early, and then gave us a firm date for registrations back in December. The registrations were going to begin… begin January 14th. So early on, I put it, you know, I do a weekly email to my… to my members, and I put it in the email that, you know, I want to… I want Diablo to have

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Craig Howard: its biggest open ever. We had our biggest open ever, two years before. Last year was close, but I told them this year, you know, I want to go for it. Now, it's… I'm…

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Craig Howard: it's somewhat loaded, because I know it's our 20th anniversary as an affiliate, and so I really wanted to make an impression to CrossFit itself that, look, even a 20-year affiliate that's been around a long time can stand out amongst

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Craig Howard: its peers. And so… so that was the… that was the message. Look, I want to have the biggest open ever. That's all I said. And then I shared it with my coaches, was the next thing.

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Craig Howard: We do a weekly coaches meeting. I told my coaches, hey, listen, I want you guys

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Craig Howard: To help support this, talk about it in a class. That's… and that really is where the… kind of the rubber meets the road, if you will, is the member… my… my coaches' connections with our members. They have better connections with my members than I do. I have some that, you know, they're as good, but they… but they're the ones that are seeing them every day, so it was up to them to do it.

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Craig Howard: The other thing I did, CrossFit,

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Craig Howard: We have a, we have a holiday party in, December. It was, the first weekend in December, or second weekend in December, I'm sorry. And they, and CrossFit had just announced the codes, the free codes for, giveaway, for

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Craig Howard: signing up for the Open, so they give you… you can buy them for 20 bucks each, and you get a code, and you can give that code to someone to use to sign up for the Open for free. At our holiday party, I bought 10 of those codes.

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Craig Howard: So, 200 bucks, and I put them on a card that I taped to the bottom of the chairs at the holiday party, and then I had people reach under to look, and the 10 people pulled up their code, and it was free, a free open registration.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Oh, that's.

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Craig Howard: So, what was cool about it, too, is, like, winning something is exciting. They're literally almost winning anything, you know, people were gonna get excited, so we brought them up, took a picture, and I told them all, listen, you gotta sign up on the first day. That code works, but it'll only work on the first day.

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Craig Howard: And what was neat about that, shortly after that, I said, I talked to one of my members that's a real estate agent, said, hey, look, you know, any sponsorship opportunities for Friday and Alias, anything like that? And I said, you know what? I got a sponsorship opportunity.

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Craig Howard: Because I wanted all my coaches to sign up for the open, and look, 20 bucks sometimes is tough for people, or they're not sure. The coaches, you know, sometimes they've done all the opens, and they're, you know, they're tired. And I said, buy, 23 codes.

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Craig Howard: Which was gonna live for, what, 460 bucks?

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Craig Howard: And, we'll let them know, we'll put it on your business card when I gave it to all of my employees at Diablo.

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Craig Howard: So all my employees got a free registration.

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Craig Howard: from Rod, who's a member here, a passionate member, and he's a real estate agent, and it was just… it's a… it was a great referral effort. He was pumped. He's like, that's an awesome idea. So he's able to tell everyone, all my coaches went to him and said, thank you, and they all signed up for the Open. So that was just the start of it.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: I just had an idea, like, so there are some people that are still trying to build participation in OPE, and your idea of buying the codes and then putting them underneath the chairs just gave me… I don't know why, but musical med ball popped into my head.

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Craig Howard: When you said that.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: musical chairs. What if you bought, you know.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: 10, 15 codes, and you program a workout with medicine balls. I was thinking of my own gym. The medicine balls are up on a rack, and the

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: are all facing out, so before the class starts, the coach would take the codes and they would tape them to the back of, like, 3 or 4 med balls, right? And they say, hey guys.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: 3 of the midballs on that rack have a free open code.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: When I say 3, 2, 1, go, run over and get a med ball, and if you get the med ball with the code, you have to go, you have to use it and sign up for the open. Or, if you've already signed up, give it to someone else. I don't know, I was just thinking of, how can we turn that into a membership

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: thing, or a thing for our members, like, right now, if we're not doing a holiday party. And that was… see, this is the stuff that you talk about that makes me get ideas of how to implement, and I kind of wish our gym was open right now so I could do that. I don't even know if we'll be open for the gym, for the open, though. That's awesome. Let me go back to that screen share, because

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: So…

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Craig Howard: Someone posted the link. Greg, well done, Greg.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Oh, thank you, Greg, I appreciate that. So, the message was, hey, I want this to be our biggest open ever. And in order to do that, and the call to action was, I need you to sign up on day one.

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Craig Howard: Yes.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Like, we need to hit the ground running. Okay, so that was the message. And the thing is, like, if it becomes priority for the gym owner, because, Craig, you're the leader of your tribe, and if it's the priority for you and your coaching staff, like, your generals, your managers, they support you, then that's gonna trickle down to the membership. If it's important to the owner, it's important to the coaches. If it's important to the coaches, it'll be important to the members. I love that.

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Craig Howard: Yeah.

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Craig Howard: That's a trump card, right? That's a trump card we don't pull that often, and you know, you talked about in the beginning is some of the things that surprised us. I'll be honest with you, Zach, is it surprised me the influence that I had upon my community to do it, and my coaches. Like, I literally just asked for their help.

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Craig Howard: And all too often, we don't want to ask them for help. It's, again, it's the trump card. We want to only pull out, you know, when we can… when we absolutely need it. And I pulled it, and it was… the response has been… has been amazing.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Well, there you go. I mean, I agree, you have to reserve it for when you need it, and once a year for the open, and maybe one or two other times during the year, that call-out, that's probably the limit that you get. I think it would depend on the community, actually, and where the owner is embedded. But, so, how did you communicate

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: like, what channels… how… what were the tactics you did to disseminate this information, this message, to your members? I mean, you got a ton of members, so you can't just stand in front of the whiteboard for one class, right? How'd you do it?

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Craig Howard: So, two ways. One, you know, I did the kind of global announcement on our weekly email. We get pretty good penetration for their weekly email, but the most significant way to do it was putting it on the main whiteboard in the gym, the main whiteboard where people put their scores. I, you know, we took the time to do a big, huge graphic, and we put up… and someone told me.

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Craig Howard: One of my employees told you, you should put the first day goal and the total goal. And that's what I did, big, bold letters, you know, 100 the first day, 300 overall.

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Craig Howard: And, and, you know, register for the Open. The best part was, again, coaches, your coaches are your best source of ideas and influence, by the way. Absolutely. My coach is meeting, one of my coaches, you know, I'm 63, so, you know, I'm a little behind on technology and stuff like that. When my coaches said, you know.

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Craig Howard: He goes, if you just put up a QR code, people will sign up for the open. They need a QR code.

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Craig Howard: I'm like, oh, shit, a QR code? How do I do that?

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: I was the same way this morning.

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Craig Howard: You can Google it, you can Google it, you can go to ChatGPT, or even better, you can go, CrossFit, you can go on the tools kit, and you can go into Canva.

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Craig Howard: And you can create it, and there's a number of posters that already have it on it, the QR code. But it's the easiest thing in the world. And I just printed it out on an 8.5x11 sheet of paper, filling the whole paper with it, and I put it up next to the… to the sign-in.

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Craig Howard: On our board. So big, you know, just using the… the dry erase markers, big, huge sign, hey, here's our goals. And then as… and as we reached 100, it crossed it off, and then, you know, some… you know, one of my… my manager here said, well, we need to have a 200 goal, make it for February 1st. Boom, we hit that, too.

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Craig Howard: And so we put.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Wow.

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Craig Howard: Add that up as part of it.

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Craig Howard: And now we have a running total on the whiteboard with the QR code.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: I love this, because this actually will probably lead beautifully into the next part, which is the incentivizing behavior, or how to drive behavior, but…

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: So, you did it very simply. You… the first thing you did was put out the message and the call to action in your weekly newsletter to your membership, right? Yeah. And how do you do that? Is that, like, MailChimp, or is that an email blog? How do you.

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Craig Howard: Yeah, that's good. So I use, I use MailChimp for my… I take all the names, and I update the list from my push-press download. I do a push-press download, and just upload a… download a CSV file, and then you upload it back to MailChimp, and it updates any new members, which is cool.

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Craig Howard: So that's… I use MailChimp, and I… and I literally… what's great about MailChimp, too, by the way, you create your format for your email, and then every week, I go in, and it takes me about 2 hours a week.

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Craig Howard: But I go in and I just do… you can replicate the campaign, so you… so every week you replicate it, but then I just change the content, but the format's all laid out, so it makes it really easy to fill in. And then throughout the week.

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Craig Howard: is, you know, you do things, you read things, I'll save it on my phone, I'll screenshot it, save it on my phone, and I just go back through my screenshots, and I look, oh, okay, that's right, I want to put, you know, that content there, I want to put that content there.

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Craig Howard: And it gives you the opportunity… and members like reading it. They know what they're gonna get every week, and…

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: It's curated, and it's a.

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Craig Howard: Yeah.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: By their, by their tribe leader. Yeah, absolutely, I would totally do that.

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Craig Howard: The other thing I did, too, Zach, that was kind of, like, it was on the… that I think was a big motivator, and people… people had commented about, I got your text, is I use push-press text feature. I didn't even use it, it's not through Grow, I just… you pull up a list of your members, you just do the member search, and then it says, send a… or, you know, send a communication, and it allows you to either send an email…

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Craig Howard: methods.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: education through.

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Craig Howard: Yeah, the mass communication.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Oh, okay, cool.

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Craig Howard: Every time I clicked on the whole thing, and I don't like to do the mass text, because, you know, we all get bombarded by text messages, so I don't want to be that guy. But again, it's like, you choose it when you can do it, and I did it on the morning of the day registration opened. I said, today's the day, register for the open.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Oh, that's smart, because it's… today's the day. It's urgent, it's immediate, it's gonna… it's gonna prompt them to do… to do the thing. So, okay, so you put in your weekly email, newsletter, you did the mass communication on the day of, and then the other thing was you made it a big announcement on the main whiteboard

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: and you gamified it. You put up a QR code. This leads into our next… our next slide. You made it easy for them, and you also gamified it, which I didn't actually…

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: put up here. But you made it easy for them in the sense that you… all they had to do was scan the QR code, and it laid it out in front of them, but gamifying it by putting up the numbers, hey, this is where we're at, this is our goal, this is where we're at, they can see tangible

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: progress towards that goal by signing up. That's… that's super powerful. Be like, if you just update that at the end of every day, and a new total goes up on the board, your members are gonna love seeing that progress. That's like a PR board, almost. Almost the same impact, right?

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Craig Howard: Right.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: fundraising bar. Yeah, it's the same thing.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: So, awesome, you made it super easy, you made it part of the gym's overall goal. Not necessarily your goal, but the community's goal to get signups. What about…

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: What about…

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: incentives for actually participating, or doing your workouts, or showing up? Like, what… what did you do… how did you design the reward system?

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Craig Howard: Yeah, so… so… a few years back, about 6 or 7 years ago, we'd started doing intramural opens, and we were a little late to the game on intramural opens.

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Craig Howard: And so we started doing those, and after the first year of doing it, we realized that when you do a Friday Night Lights or a Saturday Fun Day.

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Craig Howard: our Sunday Fun Day, and… I forget what we called our Saturday morning one, we had a catchy name for that. But when we did it, one of the challenges we had of doing that was getting judges to… to…

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Craig Howard: To judge, right? One, getting certified judges.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Yep. So we, in our intramural Open scoring.

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Craig Howard: And we created different categories, and the two things we did want to do with the categories is, one, kind of

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Craig Howard: de-emphasize the importance of being the best athlete in a gym. Not that it's not important, and we want people, certainly, to have the fitness goals, but we just didn't want to make that the priority. This is more of a community event. This is the CrossFit Open, not the CrossFit Games Open for us.

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Craig Howard: And so, we, we made it… we made the top performance goals for open.

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Craig Howard: 10 to, you know, first place down to 10th place, and then we would give points. So, first place got 10 points, 2nd place got, you know, 9, all the way down to, you know, 10th place. And so we…

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Craig Howard: So if you performed well, you'd get one of those points for your teams. And then we did the same thing, and so then we said, okay, let's do the same thing for scaled and foundations. And that's fun, because those two can go ahead, and we had some foundations winners that, you know, that ended up winning and taking first place in their division. So men and women, open scores, scaled…

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Craig Howard: foundations,

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Craig Howard: top 10, and then we did, Masters, top 5 of each, Masters, and then we cut our Masters off at age 50 and above, and then the best one.

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Craig Howard: was top judges.

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Craig Howard: So, if you judge…

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: So, top judges, like, most no reps?

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Craig Howard: No, most… Most number of people judged.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Oh!

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Craig Howard: And here's what's cool. So the data for that, so people go, well, how do you get the data for that? Well, there's a couple different ways you can get the data. If you really want to get into it, one, you know, you do the score sheets, you make everybody turn in score sheets, and then someone manually goes through and counts the, you know, who does the judging. But what's great about it is, as everybody registers their score on the…

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Craig Howard: open website, they track the judge.

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Craig Howard: And so when you… so if you go to your… if you go to your gym, page, and you pull up your gym leaderboard, there's the ability to download a CSV file.

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Craig Howard: In that CSV file is the, of course, the athlete's name, the workout results, and then is also the judge's name.

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Craig Howard: And so that made it really easy to do the scoring for judges. Now, what happened is the result of doing that.

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Craig Howard: is that when we would go in on Friday Night Lights, we'd put all the heats up on a whiteboard, and the people would come in, and, you know, and they'd put their name next to a heat, for the athlete. And then we had, adjacent to that, we had the list, the name of the place for the judge's name. We, in these last two, three years, the judges' lists fill up before the athlete's lists do. And that's because…

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: So you can only get so many points from doing the workout, but you can.

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Craig Howard: That's right.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: If you jump.

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Craig Howard: Yes.

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Craig Howard: What that turned into, Zach, was…

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Craig Howard: So we do a draft for our intramural Open. And, you know, at first I thought, drafts, that's just… that's just corny. I don't think anybody's gonna want to do a draft. The draft is so much fun. So the captains, we'll have two captains, usually a coach and a member, for each team, and they get together, and then they, you know, I tell them, I give them the list of people that signed up for the Open, then I give them… and then I give them a list of people that aren't signed up for the Open.

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Craig Howard: And they're allowed to pick as they go around, and we basically do, you know, first round, second round, third round, and then, as they go through, people pick, and usually the first people to go are the best athletes in the gym, the top two athletes in the gym.

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Craig Howard: And then inevitably, in the second round or third round, all of a sudden, someone makes this hairball pick, you know, and it turns out it's probably the best judge in the gym.

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Craig Howard: That not only is probably, you know, maybe a scaled athlete that not only does well scaled, but also, you know, judges a hell of a lot, and it's probably the biggest pointer from past intramural Opens. And the reactions from the other teams is just… it's hilarious.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: total sense, though, because that's the intelligent coach who's not going for the athletes that are doing the best score, but the ones that are going to earn the team the most points.

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Craig Howard: Yes.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: You have… you have placed the value of this event not on athletic performance, but on.

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Craig Howard: Participation.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: And camaraderie, and building the community event up itself.

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Craig Howard: Yes.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Genius.

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Craig Howard: Well, one of the biggest… one of the biggest challenges with getting people to sign up for the Open is the anxiety and fear of performance, and I get that, and even our top athletes get that, especially top athletes that are no longer competing.

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Craig Howard: They feel like there's an expectation that they have to do spectacularly well. And so they have said, you know, I just, I don't know if I'm gonna do the Open this year, I'm just… I'm not as good a shape as I used to be.

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Craig Howard: And what we do with the Intramural Open.

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Craig Howard: and the events surrounding the Intramural Open is really make it about a community event, and basically help take away that anxiety, some of that anxiety, and make it more about bringing the community together to celebrate the methodology and CrossFit and our awesome community that we have here.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Yep, absolutely. I mean…

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: I'm never gonna probably perform in the Open as well as I have in the past, and it's going to decline. I can relate to that exactly as you stated it, but I would definitely participate in the Open if the emphasis was less on

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: performance, and more on, hey, we're just making this annual event about fun, and learning each other, and getting together, and kind of making it an ex… the workout is the excuse, right? I think that's one of the things that you said in our discussion

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: earlier, and I put that on the next slide,

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: our work… the workout, the test, is the excuse to be there. And now, you were already talking about things that you did for the incentives,

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: that seemed very fun. Like, the draft.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Like, the way that you talked about your draft made it sound like… like, do you guys do that in the open, or is that with the trainers behind closed doors?

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Craig Howard: We… we have done it live, where we… where we Zoomed it. We did… it's usually… it's in the evening, and, you know, there's… there… there might be a beer or two had, and and it's a lot of fun. And so you can share it. You always have to be really careful about… about what you say. And the… the banter.

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Craig Howard: is outrageous that… that takes place. It is… it's… it is, for me, and for our coaches, and for the members that are participating, it's one of the funnest parts of the Open. Here's the other thing, and I see it up there.

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Craig Howard: Theme weeks.

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Craig Howard: Oh, yeah. We also choose… again, another way to make it fun is we have themes each week, and then the team that demonstrates the, you know, the most…

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Craig Howard: support for the theme of that week, that is, the s'more, most of the week, we give it kind of the spirit of the open each week. We give them… we give them, the team, 10 points for really representing that theme.

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Craig Howard: And we're toying around with different themes. CrossFit Milpitas, which is, you know, a few miles, Austin Bazerbing, he's a red shirt, runs it. They've got over 100 people signed up for the Open. They're doing, intramural Open, and it's, Harry Potter theme, and each of the teams is one of the schools

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Craig Howard: Of Harry Potter.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Oh, like, like Gryffindor or Huffle.

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Craig Howard: Gravadoria, yes. Yeah, okay.

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Craig Howard: So… so they're… that's gonna be their whole thing.

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Craig Howard: In the past, we've done… we do… our weekly themes are, like, tie-dye, 70s, ski resort, sports teams. This year, we're toying around with, generational music themes, so…

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Craig Howard: rap, rap, rap, rock, yeah, rap, rock and roll, and EDM.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: I like that.

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Craig Howard: So each week of the Open, you have a… you have a theme, which then the teams have to kind of plan for and operate, and what happens with that is that the… the… the team…

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Craig Howard: managers, or the team coaches, typically set up Facebook groups or WhatsApp groups on their own. This is… and plan and plot for each week.

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Craig Howard: And to earn those points, there's a couple of people that we're not even allowing to be on the same team again, because they're so good at it. Setting up tables as they come in, they come in and they fight over for table space that's closest to the floor, where the action is taking place, where they can put all their food and drinks for their team members.

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Craig Howard: Yeah. And, like, elaborate setups that just fold your full menu of food, and it's, it turns into this huge competition for which team can do the most for its… its team members. It's a… it's…

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: You could do both.

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Craig Howard: Pretty crazy.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: off and the open at the same time. Be like, hey, we're getting points for the best chili.

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Craig Howard: Oh, they will, they will do it. Yup.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Brandon and Chad said they're doing game show themes this year. I like that, like.

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Craig Howard: Oh. Jeopardy or something like that? That's a great idea. That's a great idea.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: I know one year,

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: someone said that they tried to do, like, there's all types of, you know, pop culture references, like Game of Thrones houses or something like that.

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Craig Howard: I have eaten.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: We're doing.

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Craig Howard: Yeah.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Like, Harry Potter stuff. So that's kind of cool. Let me, let me toss up that,

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: let me toss up the, the slides again real quick. So, themed weeks, that makes total sense.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: What about things that… do you guys do specific stuff for social media?

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Craig Howard: Thank you.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Do you celebrate them on social media or something like that?

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Craig Howard: Yeah, we do. So one thing we… I make sure of, and this is… this is… I think this is important, and it's one of the… I was thinking about the reasons why we… there's so many small things that we forget about as to why the importance… why the open is so important for gyms.

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Craig Howard: One of them is media content. That media con- content you get in the open is unique, and it will last you many years.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: The rest of the same year.

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Craig Howard: Right. Just as an example, like, you know, I was searching recently for pictures of fist bumps, right? And so… that come from Diablo. All I have to do is go to… I make albums every week of the open pictures that we take, and I put them on a Google album.

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Craig Howard: And then I share it with the community, but in there is, like, probably every, like, every single week, there's probably, like, 10 to 15 fist bumps, and that's usually from the judge fist-bumping the athlete who's laying on the floor, or just finished, and there's that, you know, and they're doing the final score, and so my photographers just happened to catch it.

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Craig Howard: That's just small stuff, but people working out.

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Craig Howard: Where you have other people standing behind them, cheering them on, that's powerful media content.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Super powerful.

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Craig Howard: And it's… and all I had to do, all I have to do is… so we have a nice camera here at the gym, is I… I offer one of my members, you know, I pay them 100 bucks to… to be there and take pictures. And then I… and your other members will… they're gonna take pictures themselves with their phones.

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Craig Howard: And, and share that content on social media, and then you just ask them to make sure to tag Diablo, tag Diablo, and then I just kind of re-share it in stories, and you're just loaded with story content. But the best is the content that you grab, and you put it in an album, you keep it, and you can use it throughout the year for everything, for your website, for your social media, for anything. It's… that's pretty cool.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: I will say this, one of the most I, I… potent?

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: impactful things that we did one of the years, it was the most recent year, when we had, when we ran an intramural open, was we also did teams in the draft, right?

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: And we… every week, the team had to designate one person to be the official photographer for the people on their team. So at any point in time, we had 4…

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: 3 or 4 teams, I can't remember, but at any point in time, we had 3 or 4 people that were dedicated that week at the event, that Friday Night Lights.

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Craig Howard: That's a great idea.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: people on… taking pictures of people on their team, and they would create shared albums, and they would tag people, and it was… we had more social media content go out in those three to four weeks surrounding the Open than almost the rest of the year combined. It was crazy.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: crazy. I think the previous years.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: We had just hired someone to come in each Friday night, like, it's like a professional photographer, and what we realized was we didn't get enough, because only one person can…

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: get so much. We didn't get enough of different people. So yeah, and I was very, very, also very, very picky. I don't want sloppy movement going up. I don't want sloppy movement happening anyway, but I was very, very picky about what pictures we were putting up for the Open. People leave it all out there.

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Craig Howard: Yeah, they do.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: collective with the, the pics that you put up for social media, but we were creating highlight reels, we were celebrating, like, hey, it's on social media, we were putting up, like, hey, it's these people's first time in the Open. We would list out names, if they PR'd during the Open, or if they got, like, their first pull-up or something like that. All that stuff was…

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: that makes it fun, and makes… builds a… builds a sense of, not purpose, but accomplishment that your members… I think you use the term core memories, right, Craig? Like, it's creating the core memory and then capturing it so they can relive it later.

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Craig Howard: Yeah, and they… and they associate that core memory with CrossFit and with you and your gym.

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Craig Howard: Yeah. That's incredible. I've never… I've never heard anybody say, I regret doing the open. And there is a… there's a tremendous amount of anxiety, and it said, you know, the whole concept of doing something hard, you know, when you do that hard thing afterwards is when you feel that, you know, you get the dopamine rush, and, you know, you realize, oh, man, this is amazing.

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Craig Howard: But to get people over that first hurdle of anxiety to do it, you know, that's the benefit of the intramural opens, that's the benefit of the theme nights, that's the benefit of all that. Then they come in, they're going to go hard.

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Craig Howard: And now it's burned in them. And even better, and this is one of the reasons why I say it's worth paying the 20 bucks, it's memorialized forever. You know, I can go back, you know, an open workout will show up from time to time in our programming, and I'll go back and look, you know, how did I do on that, you know, 14.1?

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Craig Howard: You know, go back and look at that score. It's… it's there forever. You know, CrossFit's gonna be more likely to keep that score on their… on their website than any of us would, you know, keep in a journal somewhere. And that's kind of a cool thing.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: That is true. And so, all this, as an owner, I would ask anybody listening, when you're thinking about making it fun, your job is not to make the workouts fun. The workouts…

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Craig Howard: That's right.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: not be fun. Like, they're not supposed to be fun. But you have to think of this from the viewpoint, the perspective that the workout, the test, the open, is the excuse for your members to show up and do the other things that you have

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: coordinated, whether that's the food, whether that's the games and the prizes from participation, whether that's, craig, you were talking about a bowling night before?

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Craig Howard: Oh, yes, yeah. So, that was something I stole from,

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Craig Howard: from Nicole Christensen at CrossFit Roots, and she has some… if you go to, I think… I think she has it right on our website, you can get in and get access to some of the

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Craig Howard: the intramural open stuff that she's done, but she had the idea of bringing the teams together outside of the open events, outside of the gym, to create scoring opportunities. And so, one of the things she did that I copied was doing a bowling night.

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Craig Howard: And so, we did a… I think it was, like, a Thursday evening, we took down,

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Craig Howard: three lanes, three lanes of a bowling alley, reserved them, and then we brought it, and we told the teams, hey, bring your, you know, your teammates, whoever wants to bowl, and they bowl as a team. And, we took the top, you know, top, like, five scores from, from each team.

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Craig Howard: And gave the team, 10 points for, you know, winning the bowling competition. And that was a blast.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Regularly learn and play new sports.

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Craig Howard: Hey!

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: They get more points.

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Craig Howard: Nicole Christensen does… does, she did one last year. I think she's done it two years in a row, where she does a…

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Craig Howard: fashion show competition, where they have… dressed in her logo gear, CrossFit Roots, you know, whatever modifications they want to make, and they literally parade… members of the teams parade down a runway wearing their CrossFit Roots outfits that they've, created. That's cool, that's a good way to

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Craig Howard: sell extra retail, too. Yeah, she said that was a blast. There's a number of things you can do with those that are after hours or at a different night of the week that really are a lot of fun. It's a great way to bring the community together again, earn points for something different than just doing the open workout.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Cool. So, make it fun. It sounds so simple, but there are specific things that you guys can organize and coordinate to… to drive that experience for your members. I'm going to…

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: share this next part, and I wanted to see if I could do it live, but apparently, I can't. So maybe portion of the screen share… like, if I move it like this…

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Cool. Does it… Are you guys able to see Craig's top 3 priorities?

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Is that what it's showing you guys?

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Craig Howard: Yeah, it is, I see it.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Okay, cool. So, Craig, I want to challenge you. If you were to rapid-fire, give us the…

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: top 3 things you could tell an affiliate owner to do in order to make your open a success. I'm putting you on the spot, I know I didn't prep you for this.

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Craig Howard: No, that's right.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Three things that you would do, or that you would tell another affiliate owner.

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Craig Howard: One, ask your community for help to make the Open successful.

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Craig Howard: And this is something… this is something I would say, something, you know, in the past that,

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Craig Howard: That I probably didn't do enough of.

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Craig Howard: And your community includes your coaches and your members.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Alright, I love that.

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Craig Howard: That's a difference maker. They will have… I mean, just as we've done on this call, we're talking, and I'm getting ideas from you about, you know, the stuff you've done, and I'm taking down notes here on stuff I can do for…

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Craig Howard: For the open, you'll get ideas, you'll get… you'll get people that want to volunteer, you'll get people… that's… that's, like, number one. Start there, and it'll instantly motivate you.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Yep, I agree.

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Craig Howard: it.

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Craig Howard: Yeah, and then the second thing is, is… Make this… Your… community event…

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Craig Howard: Your best community event of the year.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: So, do you mean by, like.

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Craig Howard: So we, we, we, we do…

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: into it.

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Craig Howard: Yeah, time and attention. So, you know, we all have, you know, we all do MRF, and MRF is a big deal.

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Craig Howard: We do, we do, you know, at the end of the year, we do a charity event for, surrounding Grace. It used to be Barbells for Boobs, we call it Amazing Grace now, and then there's the, you know, there's a couple of the Hero Wads, and there's the Chad 1000, but I think the one that should get your most attention

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Craig Howard: Is the… is the CrossFit Open, because it's 3 weeks…

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Craig Howard: And it will engage you and your community. It's a way for you… yes, it's a way for you to bring yourself, force you to bring yourself closer to community for a 3-week period of time. 3 out of 52 weeks, and it'll carry over for the rest of the year. So you treat it like…

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Craig Howard: This is a big deal for you and your community.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Yep. So, if you prioritize it, everybody else will prioritize it.

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Craig Howard: That's right.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Yep, I like that. What's the third thing?

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Craig Howard: I think the third thing is, to make it fun for you, personally, and everybody else.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: That's… so that is… making it fun is, without a doubt, a priority of just running any event.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: But if it's fun for you, too… Oh, make it fun for the owner, yeah.

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Craig Howard: Yeah, it's just… it's just… it's easier to do. You make it fun for yourself and for your community.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: I think…

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: One of the fun things we did last year, too, by the way, I'll sneak this one in, too, is we… and it turned out to be great, I'm looking… I'm so looking forward to doing this one.

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Craig Howard: We did our own… we mimicked the open announcements with our own community, and we broadcast it. We used to… we broadcast it live, and did… and invited our members to be the open announcement people on Thursday night. So CrossFit does it at 12 noon, Pacific time.

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Craig Howard: 3 p.m. Eastern Time, so we would do it at, like, 6 o'clock at night with our… with our two members, and that was a blast.

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Craig Howard: It was a blast for us, and to watch our members go head-to-head in an open competition is kind of an open announcement, mimicking the open announcements.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: We've done that in the past, and we got a lot of draw,

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: For specific events like that, and we would match people up. We wouldn't match, like, competitive athletes up.

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Craig Howard: Oh.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: like, we would match up, like, the gym bros that we… everyone knew that they had a rivalry. Like, the two people in the noon class that always give banter back and forth. Okay, cool.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: 15.1 head-to-head, right? Or, like, we did, like, you know, 6 a.m. versus 6 p.m, and we did, like, hey, 6 a.m. class, give us your… give us two guys, two girls, and 6 p.m. class, and we did stuff like that. We even… I don't know if I'd recommend this, we also did spouses. That got really, not bad, but…

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Craig Howard: We did, we did one of those, we did a spouse one last year, it was a blast.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Some people really liked it, and I'm not sure… I'm pretty sure all those people are still together, so…

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Craig Howard: It's really hilarious how the community rallies around the wife.

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Craig Howard: Oh, yeah.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Oh yeah, always, always.

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Craig Howard: Yup.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Craig, this has been awesome. So, to recap, before we get into, the Q&A, I can't stress enough that your emphasis on

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: the stance as an owner has more of an impact on the success of the Open than anything else, it seems. And when I say the owner, I guess what I really mean is whoever the leader of your tribe or your community is, because I know there are some owners that, you know, they do a lot from behind the scenes, and there's a head coach, or there's an affiliate manager, or something else.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: That, someone else that is… is the face of the business, and… and…

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Would you agree that it's probably…

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Paramount to the success of the event for that person to take almost personal ownership of it in order for it to be successful?

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Craig Howard: Yes, 100%. I just… I just coached… I just coached a class this morning before I came on here, and I walked into class, and they all looked at me like, oh, here it comes, and I go, hey.

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Craig Howard: Have you heard? The Open's coming, you know? And as the vested person in this, you know, in the gym, I can say those things, and they put up with it, they love it, and they believe it. They're like, okay, we know Craig wants us to sign up for the Open.

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Craig Howard: When you're… when you're fully vested, you're fully in, they'll get behind you, and they'll put up with all your crap, too, to continually trying to get them to sign up for it.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Of course, you can get away with a lot more than… than…

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Craig Howard: Oh, yeah.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: the other… well, I bet you the coaching staff could get away with a good amount of stuff. So, okay, so we have… have personal buy-in. Make sure that you guys have thought about all the channels that you're going to communicate the message to, and get your coaches on board. So…

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: use social media, but that's not gonna be as direct or as communicative as, the mass text or an email, personalized email. Use something either, like.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: course messaging platform or MailChimp, but also in-house. You're gonna need some signage, and Craig, I like how you put it up on the main whiteboard, and you left people, everybody that basically walked in the gym was… they're not gonna miss that.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Then, design, participation and judging, and the competitive aspect, or the workouts. Design an incentive system, a point system that makes people feel like it's not just about doing really, really well

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: in the workout, or in the test. Give points for judging, give points for being photographers, give points for bringing food, give points for showing up with team spirit. Break them up into teams, have a draft. That's… that should lead you into

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: finding ways to make it super fun. And fun is anything but the workout. I know, like, you could do a round robin of music, like, hey, have each team has a different playlist every, heat, or something like that.

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Craig Howard: Yeah, I like that one, too.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: like that. Obviously, the themed weeks, the points being earned outside of the gym, at, like a bowling night or something like that. There are so many different ways, but as the owner or as the head coach, you guys know what makes your members tick, you know what's going to resonate with fun for your members, and lay into that.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Remember, the goal is not to place high on the leaderboard, the goal is to get

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: as many people bought in to what you're doing as possible, and to enjoy the experience. So, greg.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: You got any Q… you got any questions that are popping up?

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Greg Buck: Yeah, I got a couple here for you. So, one from Shannon. They're a little confused on how you're…

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Greg Buck: Structuring your team. So could you go into a little bit about how you structure your teams, and kind of what the points are going towards them to win, in a sense? Because in their mindset, the open is obviously an individual competition, so how are you guys structuring those teams, and then is that to…

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Greg Buck: give them a prize at the end? Is it more just for props, etc. Kind of talk through how you guys do that at your gyms.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Go for it, Craig.

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Craig Howard: So…

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Craig Howard: when we say teams, a team is essentially just a group of people, that, you know, we put together on a spreadsheet. At the, each week, we reward them, we reward

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Craig Howard: they're members of their team based upon the things that we want to incentivize. One is, and this is actually… this is a good question. One is,

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Craig Howard: signing up, or, I'm sorry, submitting your score to the CrossFit Games website.

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Craig Howard: So they sign… they register for the Open. In order to be on a team, you have to register for the Open, so that, instantly, you show up on the CrossFit page, so you know who's on your… who's in your gym. And then that person goes on to a team that is selected by the team captain.

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Craig Howard: Some people do a draft, you can just assign them as they come in, however you want to do it randomly, but the drafts are fun.

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Craig Howard: As, that… so we reward them. We get… every week, they reg… that they submit their score, we give them a point.

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Craig Howard: If they come… they come to Friday Night Lights. If they attend Friday Night Lights, we see that information in push press, because we schedule it like a class, and we also give them a point for showing up for Friday Night Lights. So then, what that does is the team captain will say, you need to be there at Friday Night Lights. If you're going to do the workout, you need to do the workout at Friday Night Lights, because you're going to get a point for the team.

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Craig Howard: And then we will also, then we… then we… this is when the variable points come in. We'll give variable points

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Craig Howard: you know, 10 down to 1 for, performance scores, so how they did versus everybody else in the gym. And then, for judging, so the number to… that we give, for the top 10 judges, we give 10 down to 1 points.

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Craig Howard: And then anything else that you want to put in there as well, as a point to…

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Craig Howard: based upon what you want to do to incentivize behavior. We also add in there PR. If someone gets a PR, we give them a point, and the PR is usually determined ahead of time.

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Craig Howard: So… First pull-up. First bar muscle up, first ring muscle-up.

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Craig Howard: If you don't… if you don't do that, then everybody's gonna have a PR on something. Well, the last time I did this workout, I PR'd you, I beat my old score.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: That's true.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Yeah, Shannon, just so, it's a little bit more,

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: clear on the team aspect. One of the ways… one of the more common ways that Craig was talking about with the draft is, let's say you have a membership base of 200 people, and those are the people that are doing the open. Each coach… and you have 4 coaches that are going to be the head of each team. Well, they need 50 people on each team, so what they'll do is they'll each get a copy of the full membership list, and they'll just go round robin, they'll draw straws for the

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: order, let's say, and they'll just be like, cool, I'll go down the list, and I'll pick this person, and then the next coach picks their person, the next coach picks their person, literally like a draft, until all people have been divvied up to a team. And then…

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: you do the open workouts on a given day or throughout the week, and for every behavior, each person can earn a point that contributes to their team's overall score. So what CrossFit affiliate owners have done is they've taken the individual workouts that are done by the open.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: And they've turned it into a team participation, and community event, or a community building event through

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: you know, a draft and other means outside of the workout. And Craig, did you just link… oh, you put that to hosts and panelists, make sure you put that to everyone, Craig.

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Craig Howard: LinkedIn.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: his Google Docs that, will also go out in the follow-up email. So if you're listening to this right now, you're gonna get a follow-up email that has the slideshow.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: and the deck, and a link to Craig's Google Docs. Craig, make sure you go in there and put them as view-only, so people have to download and… or copy them. Otherwise, I don't want to

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: I don't want them messing with your… with your, with your files. But we do have time for… let's do one more question. Greg, can I take the one from Lauren? Was that good?

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Think? Yeah.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Lauren asked, Craig, she was looking around your, Instagram, and she loved the I Am In The Open Because series that you created. Can you.

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Craig Howard: Yes.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: It's more about how you collected member stories and shared them.

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Craig Howard: Yeah, so that was, that was last year we did that, and we'll do that, as we get closer to the… the date of the open. So what we did is we created a little whiteboard, and it said, I am in the open because… and I put it in the front of the gym, I actually put it up on a…

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Craig Howard: on a, I just had, you know, made a little wall mount for it. And then what I asked my coaches to do would… would be have someone take it off the wall and hold it.

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Craig Howard: And then…

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Craig Howard: they would take a picture of them. I'm in the open because. And you could shoot a little video if you want. I just had them take a picture, and then what I would do is, you know, highlight the reasons why they were in the open. I'd have them tell the coach what it was. So I made… it was really…

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Craig Howard: easy to do, you just have that sign, you keep that sign up in the front of your gym, and then you tell your coaches, get one or two members to take a picture holding that sign, and give you a reason why they're doing the open, one sentence.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Yeah, I love it.

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Craig Howard: Really cool.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: It's, it's like…

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Craig Howard: And then you post on your social media.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Yeah. Simple, potent, to the point, boom, posted.

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Craig Howard: Yeah. Right.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: I feel like everybody could do that with… especially with their… their raving fan members, the people that they know are bought in.

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Craig Howard: Oh, yeah.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: This goes back to what we discussed before we started the entire thing. Matt asked.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: In addition to personal buy-in from coaches, owners, and leaders, are there any other ways… and the only reason I'm bringing this up is because I've had so many people ask this question, are there any other ways to sway negative opinions of the Open from members who, quote-unquote, don't care about the Open, or quote-unquote, don't want to pay $20 to HQ?

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Craig Howard: I… and I… and I said, sure, if… and every single one of my members has gotten, some benefits from CrossFit, either relationships they've made in the gym that'll last them the rest of their life, or improvements to their health.

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Craig Howard: that will affect them as long as they continue CrossFit, or they've learned to move better, that definitely will help them the rest of their life. But they've… they've influenced… they've been influenced or changed

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Craig Howard: As a result of doing CrossFit. And this, in my mind, is a give back to CrossFit to help keep it going. You know, what's interesting is.

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Craig Howard: you know, I look on the leaderboard, and I see the people around me, you know, I'm 63 years old, and I see the guys that are around me every year, and some of those guys are, you know, different parts of the world, and, you know, in some, you know, Asia, or in…

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Craig Howard: Europe, and it's really fascinating, and I'll go to the Open the next year, and I'll be like, oh, I remember that dude. And that guy was in… is in somewhere in, you know, in Europe, you know, and it, you know, doesn't know me from anything, but I've… but I've got this little internal battle in my head where I'm competing with that individual. Or… and… and what he's done, what that individual's done, is motivated me, and inspired me.

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Craig Howard: And the same thing, I know that people will look at my scores, and they want to beat my scores, or they're, you know, or, you know, they want to hang with me, they want to make sure they're in my neighborhood, and we all have those people. You go to the leaderboard, it's there, you see those people.

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Craig Howard: That's a really cool reason to be reopen.

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Craig Howard: I remember that. You have the opportunity to inspire and motivate others to do the same thing, which means they're changing lives, and then think about the people that they impact. It literally echoes, it's the butterfly effect, and that's worth 20 bucks.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Absolutely, that's the thing, that's worth 20 bucks. I like to go back to what you said at the beginning, where we're supporting CrossFit, and as a company, by doing the open, that money ensures that next year's event is going to be bigger.

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Craig Howard: Yes.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: and that the message of CrossFit continues to be spread, and it's not like this is going to line the pockets. It keeps… I love Greg's point in chat, it keeps them accountable, absolutely. People are more…

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: more, apt to follow through on things when they're financially accountable, absolutely. But I want to make sure that HQ has no reason to not make next year's event

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Bigger and better.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Right? And because I know that when the open is bigger and better, as an owner, I can leverage that, and I can make it better for my members. And the better that the open is.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: every year, the better, like you said, anecdotally, you see it, your business is better as a result. And that right there, it may not resonate with everyone, but I think if, again, you're convicted as the owner or as the coach, that might be enough to make someone go like, okay, I'll do it.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Now,

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: This was great, Craig. I really appreciate it. Like I said, I'm gonna send out the link to everyone that has your Google, your intramural open docs, which is, I think it's, like, 3 or 4 years worth of, like, spreadsheets and templates and stuff that they can work with. It's awesome. They're also gonna get a copy of the deck, which is just questions and notes to prompt people as they go through the process of trying to design their own open.

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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Craig, thank you for being on this call. This is great. I really, really appreciate everything that you've shared with us. It's been phenomenal. Do you have anything that you'd like to, like, you'd like to say in closing?

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Craig Howard: Yeah, make sure you register for the Open, get all your members to register for the Open. It's gonna be an awesome year. The CrossFit's at $70,000, oh, they're almost double what they did last year, and it's an epic, awesome… an epic Open leads to awesome things for the rest of us, so thank you.

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