Undoing Urgency and Appreciating the Journey with CEO and Author Matt Reynolds

Hey guys Ryan offered here host of right about now What to tell you about another show on our network the radcast network harder than life with Kelly Segal Kelly's a personal friend, but let me tell you even if he wasn't I'd be listening to his show This is about self-improvement. This is about telling you life stories and practices and principles that were good for business Good for life and just good for your overall well-being Kelly energy is through the roof The dude can bench press like a thousand pounds and look you'll want to bench press a thousand pounds after you listen to this show All the motivation and insights that you want about getting ahead in life working out Lots of tips and tricks that you don't hear anyone else and he's got an amazing platform Hard than life the book the story He is Kelly Segal and it is on the radcast network check it out today I love being surrounded with great people and our personalities are different, right? So where one is strong others are weak or vice versa and so we have a great culture and again I think the business is very culture driven and kind of core values base those core values always stem from the founder They always do This is right about now with Ryan offered a radcast network production We are the number one business show on the planet with over one million downloads a month Taking the BS out of business for over six years and over 400 episodes You ready to start snapping next and cash and checks? Well, it starts right about now Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to right about now We make a say we're always getting right we're always talking about what's now I don't know if there's much more now Then the business of coaching and fitness and everything that's been happening with all the online space That's what pumped literally to have Matt Reynolds on he's the founder of CEO of Barbell Logic What's up, Matt? Hey, man. Thanks for having me on the show. Hey, did you come straight from the gym? You got me got one in the building. Yeah, well, I did my I did gym home then here Okay, you know, that's exactly I felt like if I'm gonna have the you know the founder and CEO of Barbell Logic I needed to get you know pumped up on some low. That's right. I get I see it beyond my my energy drinks I had energy drink on the way here. So no, thanks for having me. It's a big honor. Yeah, I'm excited and hey man You're breaking in the new studio dude. Yeah, I tell me that you said we're breaking the seal. I didn't so Excited for that. So I don't know. Does that mean we're gonna pee in the corner We don't you not to leave your mark. We don't have to leave the seal Exactly. That's great. The studio set up great looks good in here. Yeah, man Flew in and you know got a lot of business going on a lot of exciting things and I know we're gonna get into it You got a book coming out. We're gonna talk about all that. But let's at least we'll set the table That with who is Matt Reynolds and then let's get into some meaty stuff with what's happening in kind of in your space. Yeah, sure So man, I love sports. I'm a super competitive guy. I was Not a very good athlete. I was a painfully average athlete. I would say in high school played everything loved it and competitive to a fault And when I got into college, I wouldn't get enough to play college sports and so I needed that outlet and I discovered this sport of power lifting Which is just where you squat bench and deadlift and eat a lot of pizza and drink beer and put on a bunch of weight and I thought this sounds great Let's do this. Let's get strong. Yeah, and so yeah, late 90s early 2000s did that and did did well and up totaling elite and four different weight classes in power lifting Which is kind of the top level in power lifting in 2005 Transition to strong man and one of my pro card in in strong man in 2006 And competed on the World Strongest Man's Secret from 06 to 10 Was never good enough to be in the World Strongest Man You got to be kind of top three 12 was the highest I ever got In 2008, I opened my first business is called strong gym and it was a kind of a black iron barbell-based gym But in a really nice setting Excellent customer service. We try to take the best of both worlds of what we saw in boutique gyms Which had great customer service, but the training was usually terrible and and hardcore powerlifting gyms Or what was just starting as CrossFit gyms Which maybe the training was great, but they were often in like these dank dirty, you know industrial buildings What is it about that? It's always in the worst location Well, because they need a bunch of square footage and square footages is expensive Yeah, and so and so we started small and then we grew and we grew and we grew and so we moved four or five times We eventually ended up in a 15,000 square foot Building downtown in the gentrified area of Springfield, Missouri where I'm from in the Ozarks and And I at the time I was I had gone to school to be a teacher I was a teacher and it had finished my master's to be a high school principal By the time I finished that I realized I probably wasn't going to stay in the public school system And the gym had blown up and so in 2012 I left teaching and ran the gym full-time sold it at the end of 2015 and and transitioned into the online coaching sphere and There were a couple reasons for that and we can talk about this one I mean I really kind of got pushed out of my own gym by one of my partners Which was tough and I've had several times in my life that were there were difficult But I look back now and say like this one of the gracings ever happened to me And because we would never have been able to build what we built here But the other thing I saw in the in-person kind of antiquated personal training world Was that it was very inflexible for both the client and the coach I had developed a name for myself as a coach and obviously had some street cred as the as a professional strongman and and that kind of stuff And but it's prohibitively expensive number one in-person training It's you're locked into a schedule you're locked into a location You know the the coach maybe you're charging 50 bucks an hour a hundred dollars an hour But when you really do the math about the commute and the put on the purple polo with the name tag this is trainer And the the hours at the gym where there isn't a client And then you do the math you like I'm making 17 bucks an hour or whatever And so I thought there has to be a better way and on top of that I'm in Springfield, Missouri. How big is my client pool And for the clients how big is their coach pool expert coach? I mean expert coaches are hard to find and so I thought surely there is a way to combine the The kind of issues or the challenges within person coaching and take that into the online sphere Online coaching at the time was sell me a program for 50 bucks And I would argue that's not coaching that's programming and with the oncoming slot of AI that's That market is about to be commoditized and killed If all you do is sell programs because AI can already do that as well as we can do that So if you don't invest in the relationships so for us from the very beginning I started doing online coaching My focus was I wanted to actually coach so my clients would video all their lifts every single day They would upload them to at the time in the olden days to YouTube I would break those down via type feedback and send them back within 24 hours Over that time since 2016 we've now grown to a multi-multimate deep in the eight-figure business 100 employees and Have our own app or own software integrated screen recorder all that kind of stuff And so so really we've been able to just transition and and we were talking a little bit about really kind of redesigning The category of online coaching. We're trying to reset people's mind what online coaching is. It's not hiring an Instagram influencer who likes to take pictures of their butt or their abs and post my Instagram and sell you a 50 dollar Template Because the types of people that can can pay for this that one they usually don't work and to even if you have a single personal training or high level or it's expensive When you just get a program that type of person travels for business they travel invocation What when they leave if you're an in-person coach you don't get paid? You know if they travel or they go on vacation. They don't train with really High-quality professional online coaching you get all of the best of the in-person High like high-touch white glove service But you get it from anywhere in the world any time on your own schedule with the equipment you have whether that's your home gym Which we love big box gyms hotel gyms resort gyms you can do it and even body weight stuff We do and so that was really the transition for us And so I've gone from athlete to coach to business owner now to business owners To really CEO and they have a you know full-sea sweet and a board of directors and all that kind of stuff And so that's really as my as that's I still love to train. I still love to coach But man, I love via CEO. Yeah, I mean, I do it's a blast sweet, man I've got my I'm loaded here with questions. I Let's stick because we're just there the coaching in the aspect of this the online. Is it live? It's not life. So it's not live. Yeah great question. So it's asynchronous And I think this is actually a major issue too that you see with something some of the major Companies that are out there that you know sell Bikes or you know a big screen on a TV or something and they they connect you to a coach who's doing this live Well, I'm in Missouri. I don't want to coach somebody in Singapore live That's that's in the middle of the night and the other problem is it doesn't get out of that Locking you into a schedule if it's live like you've got to connect with your coach at the same time So asynchronously you get your personalized programming So the first thing you do is when you sign up for coaching you fill out a pretty intense questionnaire about you and your goals and your injuries and all that sort of equipment You've got and then we spend an inordinate amount of time making sure you're connected with the right coach for you Somebody that you want to go have a beer with or a coffee with you be friends with even if they weren't your coach That person then does an intro zoom call with you that expert coach and you guys may be on the opposite side of the world And then you'll start to receive personalized programming from them on your app when we call it turnkey coach So directly on the app you perform the workouts you video yourself lifting you upload those videos super fast And then within 24 hours We have an integrated screen recorder where your coach will fully break down your technique So you'll watch yourself squat or deadlift or whatever you'll hear your coach your coach's voiceover and often see them picture in picture And and so it that asynchronous piece again, it's all about freedom So it's freedom for the client it costs about if it were live It would cost the same thing as in person coaching So the cost for the client is like a third of what personal training costs But a coach can break down probably 20 to 25 clients per hour as opposed to one client per hour So the dollar per hour for the coach is 200 300 400 plus dollars per hour, which is unheard of in the personal training industry And so it's it's that it's really giving both the client and the coach freedom For both ends of the spectrum So is it the ideal customer You know you've got in a barbell logic your mind gets in this strength place. Sure. I mean are your clientele lifters Mainly, I mean is it yeah, probably not the way your audience would be thinking about they're not 25 year old guys Yeah, our average are so we're about 60% male 40% female our average age is 45 to 47 So they're they're middle-aged we've I mean we've got clients in their 60s 70s 80s. We barbell logic Which is our B to C company where we specifically interact our coaches who work for us interact with our clients That is that skews a little older a little higher socio economic status, which is a great again They don't get tired of strength training or doing it and while it definitely is a strength training first Sort of business we do conditioning and nutrition and all the things And but they don't get tired after two years and go do Crossfit or hot yoga or what and there's nothing wrong with many of those things It's just that I don't want to churn and so our churn is insane. I mean our churn this last quarter is 1.4% That's no contracts. I mean so wow So that that B to C company really became that what is now we look at the alpha tester For the B to B company when covid hit the shut every gym down We started to see like look there's all these great coaches out there. They don't have any opportunity to interact with their clients We should take the software that we've developed white label it and be able to license that out to the B to B So that same question that you just asked me for us It's that middle-aged male business executive soccer mom like that's our average client at barbe logic But our coaches that utilize turkey coach. I mean they've got high school athletes, you know, they've got And we we have coaches that focus on you know females that do postpartum moms I've got a surgeon that all he does is coach people over 50 usually who have artificial hips or knees I mean we've got the perfect coach for you And if barbe logic doesn't have that there's a turkey coach that does and so So that's how we've kind of transitioned from B to C to B to B and so we kind of look at that B to C now Is the alpha tester for the B to B product? It's got to be a fairly serious Person that's into it because I don't know about you like when I go to the gym and I see people with personal trainers live It you might as well call them personal counselors. That's right because it's their time like I've been here for 45 minutes. I've got a major intense workout I think they've moved all two stations. That's right and I'm not even judging. It's just more an observation I'm like, I think this is a counselor. Yeah, no for sure. I mean you end up playing kind of a part psychiatrist obviously Totally unlicensed and I but you know But you see these people three four hours a week and so sure enough they open up and start telling stories and and so And on and honestly, it's the worst part of the job And so now here's the thing because what we've done in the online sphere is we focus on absolutely personalized programming Technique breakdown, but we also spent a lot of time trying to build a relationship with the client But because of the asynchronous piece of this That's on our time. So if I were coaching you I would senior your personalized programming. I would coach on your technique And then I generally know what's going on in your life I'll ask you a couple questions about how's life going and then you'll respond back to me the next day when you do your workout But we don't end up with a 40-minute conversation where I'm like oh my gosh that took we'd literally just talked about what's going on at the business for 40 minutes And you know they didn't even get a workout in is there any one to one like like True calls or anything like that that happens Yes, so I get the sessions. Yeah, yeah, so the intro call always is okay All of our nutrition coaches do at least a monthly call with our clients live because it's nutrition If you think you need a lot of psychology for lifting nutrition's a whole nother deal. Yeah So yeah, we do we do those calls I lift a chip to my face. That's right So yeah, we do that for sure And we think that's valuable And then you know, we don't force the coaches to do that A lot of times the coaches want to do that and have a quick call Maybe it's a 20-minute zoom call or even just an audio call with their clients Just to connect and again continue to kind of build that relationship and trust and so again We've we've been able to take nine years of business and really distill it down and kind of see what the clients are looking for And when we do that what we've been able to do with the software is we started to be able to trim the fat and say like what are the things Those extra button clicks the extra hand movements the all of that stuff that the clients the clients paying for interaction With their coach and so for us the technology turkey coach really is A thing that should fade into the background to just be the bridge between the client and the coach To help facilitate that relationship and so I was thinking about this the other day. I was I was on a business Seven of the last nine weeks. I've been on business trips. So a couple weeks ago. I was in Columbus I was eating at this restaurant. It's really nice restaurant my executive assistant It was the best service I've ever had in my life now. Here's the thing You don't go to restaurants for the wait staff You go to restaurants for the food and for the atmosphere and for the people that you're going with in the conversation But if the wait staff does their job right They have a tremendous impact on the meal right 100% and the best wait staff are very unobtrusive They explain especially if it's kind of a fancy place they explain the dish but quickly and let you know what you're going to eat And they would do think like you get up and go the bathroom you come back and your napkin would be replaced and fully folded up and on a new Or you would look and go how did my water get filled? I don't even know how it got filled That's what we're trying to do with the technology is so that it's so frictionless There the UI is so clean and the user experience is so good That the technology fades into the background just becomes the bridge to help the client develop a relationship with the coach and vice versa Which is really what both are there to do And so that's why we call it turnkey coach. We had all the stuff in the background. That's the B2B business is what's the if you can share Like the revenue split versus yeah, you know the B2B side versus the B2C Yeah, so we're really close at this point. So B2C we're about a third at this point B2B we're about a third and then we started landing government contracts last year and we're about a third government contracts as well Which is probably more on the B2B But it's I'm gonna say is it for your coaches working with government? It's actually both so sorry interestingly enough So we have a third product that we call the barbell academy. So one of the things if we need expert coaches To coach more people we've got to be able to make expert coaches and so we've got a very Intense and excellent academy. It's not a major moneymaker for us It does several hundred thousand dollars a year in which is fine But what it really does is it avoids the bottleneck of expert coaches I don't want to run out of supply and have all this demand and have to turn money away, right? And so we've got that when we go to the government We use all three so we take the officers and we train the officers at barbell logic online coaching We train the trainers on the academy and then we license out TKC the software to the government So we actually utilize all three of those typically in the in a government contract. Nice. It's pretty smart Yeah, so we're so we're pretty well Revenue streams are pretty well, you know, one third one third one third all under the same company And really it's all the same business. It's just Three different revenue streams. Is it all trained like is the software is very spiss because there's coaches in a lot of things Yeah, is it Have you thought about is it all yeah, it's on the road map. Yeah, so I think the first place will go is Is physical therapy? Yeah, so we have a ton of physical therapists We have physical therapists on staff as coaches who this would be perfect for and so obviously This doesn't work for chiropractors because the chiropractors got to put their hands on your back and you know like that doesn't work But for anybody we've got tactical instructors that want to use it, you know things like that like any anybody that Could do coaching via as say a zoom call Or walk through or again think about concierge medicine things like that. This would work for what we want to do And what we've focused on is really crushing product market fit in the fitness industry first Getting it all right They can show we clean up all those little bumps and making sure it really truly is frictionless And then start to because it's white labeled it could be white labeled to physical therapy or anything Business coaching marketing coaching You know any of that. Yeah, it's interesting and Talked with Matt Reynolds founder and CEO of barbell logic Matt like I don't know what you said you love being a CEO You know like we have a lot of people that are budding founders. Yeah founder, you know like what's it like transitioning from Me doing it to managing You know like from me to have the white collar. Yeah, it's a point Yeah, I mean, it's been you know, it's I think I've heard you say the same thing. It's certainly it's not an overnight thing I mean, I've owned business for 17 years and You know, it's it's just a process and and I think for me I'm just wired to have an insatiable pursuit of knowledge Which I don't think guarantees. I mean, I think there are people out there that are really really smart But haven't figured out how to apply that in the trenches And so for me, I'm just constantly learning And I'm trying to take that learning and that that knowledge and turn into wisdom And figure out how to distill that down to wisdom and then take that wisdom and actually apply it in the trenches And so for me I'm laser focused on whatever I'm doing when I was competing in strong man That was what I was doing. It was strong man. I mean, I would even say in my younger days to the detriment of my family My I've been married. I'm actually going to be married 24 years here in just another couple weeks Mary, my high school sweetheart, you know two wonderful daughters 19 and 13 and and so I think I've been so laser focused at times and I think a lot of guys I'm going to paint with a broad brush But I found very few men who are able to balance this well. They either tend to skew On the lazy side or they skew towards the workaholic side. Well, I'm definitely the latter And so and so then when I started to run the gym. I was all in on the gym I don't know how to have this idea of let's just have a mom and pop gym It's just generally profitable makes me a hundred thousand dollars a year or whatever I'm just like let's grow it to the biggest gym in the whole world You know that it grew to the biggest barbell Gym in the world and then we then sell it in 2015 and let's go and then online was the same thing and so We went through a major expansion of the online business It took me about a year to figure out the systems and standard operating procedures In the online sphere in 2016 all through 2016 in December of 16. I hired 35 coaches and didn't have clients to give them Wow and so scared me to death and But we had we had built this big kind of Grand opening launch even though I had run this as a one-man show for the first year And we did 47,000 dollars on the first day It opened up and I can remember you had stripe on my phone and it just starts going ding Ding ding ding ding ding ding and did I start crying like a baby? Because I left I'd left education. I had Had my masters to be a president. I mean I left all this for this world You know, of course to my parents weren't happy about it Like just you know do the safe job parents or boomers. That's what they'd say And all of a sudden my parents love what I do I guess yeah, and so it his podcast my wife hated it. Yeah, right That's right. That's right. Yeah, that's been to the right until it bought her car And then you're like yes, it's not that bad is it so Yeah, I mean it man. It's been really fun So I think what you do in the beginning when you're a one-man show you're a one-man show and then Then I was the owner and the CEO and the CEO and the CXO and the CXO you do everything You do every job except I also have these coaches so I've now hired out some technicians And as time goes on you start to hire more and more really wonderful employees Who do a much better job at their job than you could ever and in the beginning They don't right they do it at 80% and you've got to be okay with that not be a micromanager and have good systems in place and Hand them that system and say this is your system now you own it You're gonna find inefficiencies in this system that I wrote because I'm not as good at this job as you will be You might not be as good as me today, but your potential is far better than me So my my CEO he comes from lean manufacturing. I mean this is a fitness company, right? My CXO she is incredible with people my my CMO is I don't know what I'm doing I mean, that's your world right and like you know how complicated that is so they are so much better at their job than I am And so I just I love being surrounded with great people and our personalities are different right? So where one is strong others are weak or vice versa and so we have a great culture and again I think the business is very culture driven and so we and kind of core values base We those core values always stem from the founder. They always do and those core values have derived they flow down And they build out what our kind of core tenants are for the company and our primary goals every year and the actions To support those goals and the milestones or metrics or what most people call KPIs, but I hate corporate speech And so we do that so we have goals actions metrics and execution of that which we call the game plan Which is a little bit cheesy, but it's a lot better than okay ours and KPIs You know, it's like we're not going to talk that way. Yeah, and then we're still a fitness company And so I've really enjoyed becoming a CEO and being able to do that and I really am of Get to act as a true CEO at this point. I get to I get to have you know my my C suite report up to me They've got great teams underneath them We meet on a kind of rotating schedule throughout the month And we're not stuck doing meetings all days and TPS reports and all the crap that you see from office face You know If you've done corporate America, you know what that is and so we've been able to avoid that And then the other part of it is man my whole business is online We don't have an HQ. I don't have anybody might like we're everywhere But we've always been everywhere So whatever everyone was dealing with in 2020 We had started doing in early 2016 So we had a four-year head start on everybody really built a moat for us And on top of that because we focused on the relationship and not just the programming Kind of give us a double moat And so we have we own the category. I mean we cut we designed the category of professional online coach Online coaching is not professional. It's Instagram models. Yeah, it's bro science It's you know, it's that and it's like and there are you'll you'll see in-person coaches or in-person trainers They're very professional and then something happens online and the the world's standard is not there yet And so for us it's about raising that standard of what you should expect is a client and as a coach In the in the professional online coaching world and so we don't tell you how to teach a squat We don't teach I mean we teach our clients how to squat But if you're a coach for us, we don't tell you how to program or any of those things But we say hey, we got a system that you want to make four hundred bucks an hour and this is not like a Mary K pyramid scheme I mean, it's not like only the it's enough It's this is the middle of the bell curve is making two three hundred bucks an hour like that's that's the deal And then like yeah, all right, so So we get in coach we want there's great I want to come back to the Instagram coach debacle, but Staking with the business model a little bit Client and let's talk B to C for a second sure some kind of fascinated like It really interests me Because like I said to you like I see a lot of people that want this in-person trainer because they just really want a counselor Right and your models built differently What's the client acquisition like like process for you guys? Yeah, like how do you get Keep your you know, you're on you know platform your company Trainers busy and do you how do you help maybe Other people that buy the platform should coach them on client acquisition? Yeah great great question So the two answers that question at at the B to C level for us We're a service business that makes an insane amount of high quality content And the content is always free so we have we have one of the top podcasts in strength and have since 2017 And put them out every week and again, you know, this is a consistency game I mean we just we churn them out all the time and they're good. They're excellent Our YouTube videos we you can search how to anything in it in the gym and our videos are gonna pop up at the top And so we've get and we've got our long-form videos or like seven or eight minutes long teaching how to squat or deadlift But we also have what we call gym shorts as you see I like shorts shorts shorts shorts for digits You're not watching the video. I'm gonna to plug for the YouTube channels right You know, Matt's got on the shortest pair of shorts. I've seen in a while and I mean nice khakis. Yeah, they're nice trophies or or what is that what they're called silkies Whatever the you know, I'm not like staring a short short. Yeah. Yeah, yeah Yeah, big fan big fan of khaki short khaki shorts No, we so we have a series called gym shorts and it's how-to videos and they're all under 60 seconds So they're all shorts And so that for us and also my editor-in-chief man's an attorney Like he's incredible. He's the best copy editor of it. He's helped me write the manuscript for the Forbes book I mean, so so we've got all yours can you know have have a way with words you know He is a word Smith and he's worked for with me and for me for 12 or 13 years So he knows me knows my voice. He knows my he's not right. He's not ghost writing the book I'm just a better speaker than I am a writer and so we work through the outline together I record the stories and the personal anecdotes and most of the manuscript And then he cleans it up and makes it look beautiful and send it back and then we add it back and forth So we have great written content free ebooks tons of videos tons of podcasts all that kind of stuff That's all free and that's how we get people on top of the funnel and we just did several TV shows So TV shows for national level TV shows big ones that people will see Um, and so just did those and so for us it's really about if we can get people into the top of the funnel Then we can drive them down the funnel and convert pretty well And a lot of that is is a testament to my CMO who was my CIO So CMO CIO using using a great CRM and driving people down the funnel We do a great job and it's so it's because that content has established us as experts in the marketplace And so some percentage of those clients some percentage of those consumers of the content Become paying clients for us. So that's really what customer acquisition costs looks like it's really about content production for us And then of course, you know, we Occasionally do paid ads and play around with that some for sure We're not experts in that field But I think for us it's it's about putting out excellent content for free. Yeah is All under barbell logic like the brand name Yeah, barbell logic for sure. I mean certainly we have a lot of internal content we put out for turnkey coach So far turnkey coach License ease We train them up. So that's kind of second part of that answer is that we teach them how to Run this system of online coaching. We teach them how to coach We run them through the academy. We teach them make sure they know really what they're doing to do it well And to be efficient and be effective and all of those things that you need to be to be a great coach And what you would want out of a great coach like you don't want to you're a busy guy You don't if you've got a job to do you want to get it done in the most efficient way So simple hard effective man. That's the deal. It doesn't need to be complex It doesn't need it doesn't it's economy over excess like all that kind of stuff Those are the kind of things that we're teaching so we don't just teach the licensees in the b2b industry The the kind of how to coach we also teach in them teach them how to business While at the same time offering a software that's called turnkey coach So the idea is by the way we we do want you to know how to do this But we do all the backend work we do all the customer service of credit card balances We're going to deal with that like you get to do it. You do best, which is coach And the client gets interact with you You don't have to but we also walked him through the business model and why it works this way and how to how to Effectively get more clients how to do like on a low that's kind of I was gonna say if our real logic is kind of feeding your coaches All that content. Yeah, what feeds the the train you know the turnkey coach. Yes So we we coach them and train them on the marketing side one of the things that we've done So we've got really two Kind of types of coaches that license out our software you have the up and coming coach Who doesn't really have clients and we're teaching them how to go get clients how to market themselves how to put out content And then we also have our enterprise clients which we've brought over from other software platforms because we're just so much better And so you know you treat them a little different because There are times when you sell one client and you get one coach you get 6500 clients and then there are other times you sell one coach and they start with zero or one and you're like Let's put a demo client in for you and teach you how to do this thing And so that changes a little bit too. And so yeah, certainly the ones that have the big names already They're using it, but it doesn't feel like turnkey coach. It feels like You know x brand whatever their brand is so it's because it's white label. Yeah, so it's their colors their branding all that stuff So it feels like their app. It doesn't feel like barbell logic's app or turnkey coach app And then for the up and coming coaches like that's that's where our academy director really holds their hand and teaches them how to do this system You've got a lot of guys that coming in their accountants or they can they hate their job We're like don't quit your counting job yet. Let's just you got you got 18 months of working two shifts right now Shift one is the counting job pay the bills at home Shift two is the online coaching job Don't spend one dollar of that put that in because if you're making 80 grand as the accountant And you slowly build up the online coaching business to 60 or 70 or 80 thousand dollars like now you're making 160 And now you've got a quit one and cut it cut your income and half don't right so just Let's learn how to do this and then the day will come when you'll make enough income from the second job from the one You love to leave the first one and that's that's the go point and then it puts us where the rubber meets the road It puts some pressure on you like okay now if the other one doesn't work We start when we lose the house. Yeah, yeah, we all know that one. Yeah, I was just got balls to do it For sure, but I'll say this You know, I hear you speaking and talking about this There's one key word here that keeps on in a mind and you said it would you know about the differentiation of the category is professional Yeah, everything sounds professional. It just sounds like a pro, you know like you're becoming Whether you're training other coaches whether the coaches on your platform your team It just sounds like a professional organization. Yeah, well, thank you. Yeah, that means it come through well When I think of personal trainer the average personal trainer. I do not think professional. No, I don't either right It's that I hate that and I have friends in the business that are and treat it that professional for sure If we're talking about as a whole And that's the category design piece right we are trying to change Not just what we do to own the category right we talked you've talked about this before like it's it's 70% of category design It's 30% of branding right because if we own the category then the brand is gonna do just fine So what does it mean to own the category? Well for me it means that the world recognizes the standard of this category And right now the world still thinks that online coaching is I'm gonna buy a $50 program like that's not online coaching That's you're just getting duped right like that's we're not doing that And so and really that's like you're selling content if you're selling attempt You're selling a cookie cutter template But then what happens when the person gets sick what happens when their kid threw up all night long last two nights And they can't work out like well, they have a template So now they're behind so now what do I do or what if they go on vacation for a week and they can't train And they come back and they can't hit the weights or supposed to it because they haven't trained for a week Well, that's why templates don't work and so that's why for us that That professional personalized online coaching is key and it's about changing the perception of the world out there And probably first with fitness professionals And then let that filter down to the client to the B2C side. Yeah is This base is crowded, you know the online coaching And it's you guys have carved out this niche and you know the pro yeah I always wonder I get asked like some of these genies are they going back in the ball You know like we're well removed from covid and all that stuff sure but it feels like The adoption from the adoption curve of this thing. We're still going we're still like we're going up to the top of the Yeah, right near it, you know, it feels that way to me because You know, I think in a way the we're getting older boomers like The aging of america. Yep, but you're also but that demographic is also getting more comfortable online. Yep And so you've got a couple of these things going and I think the adoption rate is going to continue as the experiences get better for sure It feels that way. All right. I would assume being in the business. You're high on that that industry as a whole Yeah, of course. I mean and the thing that I I don't want As AI comes on we've we've leveraged AI since the day it came out we can start to use it because to to automate and delegate and cut trim The fat so places that we can get that great. We love AI But AI can't replace the relationship right relationship is the key So if you've spent the last 10 or 20 years of your life as a coach selling programs your dead Like you're not literally dead, but your business is dead right because it's getting replaced And so for us like we're going to leverage the AI everywhere we can and that's not going anywhere now Do I think there's a day when AI will be able to actually replace the technique coaching portion of what we do? I do yeah, do not I don't want to be the the steel industry of the 70s It's like it's going to come back and ain't coming back yeah like when it goes it goes Yeah, but what cannot be replaced are coming back And so but what cannot be replaced and what will never be replaced is relationship now are you going to have certain people that develop Not real relationships with some AI something like sure, but that's not the demographic that we're after right We're talking about people who are choosing voluntary hardship and that often requires a coach to lead you To do and so we can automate everything we can that will drive the price down for the client We can continue to make it more efficient for the coach that drives their dollar per hour up And so you get a massive value proposition on both ends of the spectrum, which is rare And it's you know, Charlie Munger would love it if you were still here. So that rest is so I know Hey, you brought up a voluntary hardship. It's interesting the fitness business kind of goes right at it I've always seen the parallels of working out and Life and business like you know just choosing to go to the gym To go work out it any level is choosing something that's not easy It's and choosing something that no one else will make you do exactly you have to do it for yourself I mean you can't no one is going to like lift you up and I mean unless you're unless you're in the Marines or something And then you know you have to play your plane division one football And then your strength coach or your football coach is going to make you do it But nobody's going to make you put a heavy bar on your back and squat and it sucks, dude That sucks is there a fact? So you're right and I'm not a coach that that You know makes fun of people if you if you've been sedentary watching Netflix all day And or for years and your first thing you do is walk around the neighborhood with your husband or wife like Get it awesome. Like that's a great first step I think we can do even better, but like I'm never gonna make fun of that person If you don't know what you're doing and you go to a A big purple big bucks gym and you and you do basic machine work and you don't actually lift the barbells like okay Like you know a lot of that's ignorance and that's why we put out the content right But ultimately when you really dig deep and you do hard things and for us strength We've seen strength is the foundation of all human movement It's way we interact with the world It's not to be all indol it's not the most important thing in the world It's not the only voluntary hardship thing in the world right there's a lot of things are voluntarily hard But squatting deadlifting lifting basic barbells like that's that's voluntarily hard for everyone And I believe that we're refined By voluntary hardship every single time and I don't think that's the same With involuntary hardship, but we know this right because guys go to prison and they don't usually get out better Right or or you know, and sometimes you'll see those stories of sometimes people get cancer and They either die or they get cancer and it like just make some jaded the rest of their life But we've also seen the stories of people getting cancer beating it and they're Much more mentally tough right and so involuntary hardship is not guaranteed to refine voluntary hardship is We all know we're going to experience involuntary hardship in our life It's going to kick us on the nuts at some point right like somebody's going to get sick Somebody's going to die. There's going to be a tragedy Somebody's going to get divorced like whatever and the more you expose yourself to hard things The better prepared you are when life forces you to be exposed to a hard thing And that's why we push voluntary hardship That's why we do hard things is why we don't send our clients into the gym To just screw around on the you know on the weight stack machines and just and there's nothing wrong We still do some of that But it's secondary. Yeah, and so the hard stuff comes first. Well We've been conditioned You know and you and I talked about this is a pretty episode a little bit but Everything in life is becoming more convenient. Yep, you know, I am the Amazon effect in a way You know, you can have everything that immediately everything's the touch of a button. Yeah, insta card insta air It's insta everything and so and it's great that we've had these techniques I love it and I use it all the time in our kids Yeah, like my you know have had things and they're at their fingertips that we didn't have and I'm grateful for that But in a way though it doesn't prepare us for The involuntary shit that happens for sure and It most certainly doesn't really condition us to want to choose That's right discomfort. That's right. And you know, I don't sit here on some perch and go I choose discomfort all the time. I like to be uncomfortable But I also but I do sit on here and force myself to work out and like well also having a show that we have I since Issue with the nation in what we're building without Having to go through some of the struggle. Yeah, and it just feels like we're not preparing the younger generations for the realities of life and business and everything else right because you can't Escape that right? Yeah, so you can't it's gonna get you. Yeah, it's some point. That's right And so if you've Conditioned everyone to convenience and getting what you want when you want it right which are great things you're not It pushes them that much further from choosing discomfort. That's exactly right And so this is I would make an argument and say I don't think there's ever been a time in history Where it's more important to do things like go to the gym I mean look most of our grandpas and great grandpas There were farmers and they were mechanics and they were blue collar guys and they worked hard all day And that callous tans and all that and like that's not the average guide now, right? And or the average lady. I mean my wife. She's here. She's beautiful. It's feminine as it gets She's super strong. I mean, she's gotten super stressed. She's deadlifted over four hundred pounds I mean, she's strong and in her mid 40s and so but and you know she models it for our girls I think voluntary hardship is great for everybody I want to be clear not to like skew it so masculine and again We've got a ton of amazing female coaches and lifters But the reality is is that most of us sit at a computer all day I sit at a computer all day. I run a CEO of a tech company sitting at a computer all day I'm there a lot. So I have to choose volume because I'm not out in the fields Because I'm not cutting hay and bail and hay because I pay people to mow my lawn You know, I mean like I literally don't do any of that stuff Then like the thing I have to choose it's physically hard and I look I was saying I get up early every morning I work my butt off. I'm like I'm a hard worker But I still think we have to get into that realm of physical voluntary hardship to drive that thing that's going to expose us to so you know I know there's been a lot of stuff lately like on cold plunges and stuff like I've got a cold plunge I love it I do I think it actually does anything. I don't know. I don't care. It makes me feel good Here's the thing. You know what it actually does. It's voluntary hardship. It is I get in it the first time I get in it. I'm like I'm out in 10 seconds And then you keep going and you and then you ramp up the temperature a little bit you're like 39 is crazy. Let's go 49 instead and then you get in it for 30 seconds And then the next day you get in it for a minute And then you you know, I keep hitting the apple watch and then I'm like okay A minute and a half and then you get to the point where you can go three minutes and then you start dropping the temperature down Well, that it's because you're being exposed to hard things and so your body gets used to getting exposed to the hard thing And becomes adapted to the hard thing so you can handle more heart That's what we do voluntary hardship. Yeah, and fitness is it. I mean like I've you know even my Can be a little off like do things, but if I'm not in the gym five or six days a week or a gym like object Yeah, it might be my yard doing push-ups for some of my treadmill, but I don't know and I don't want to do it. No, not really but I but it makes me feel good Yeah, I'm always happy that I did it after I did it. Yeah, I always feel better afterwards Dude, I never want to train but I train and then I'm like I'm really glad I trained Yeah, I don't want to sit and I don't want to get in the cold punch I don't want to get in the sauna. I don't want to do any of that stuff You know, I don't want to break down videos sometimes as a coach I still love to coach, but I get up every morning For in the morning, I'm like you know what'd be more fun is like turn on Netflix right now that you just do the thing and so That's what it's about. It is So push the hardship, baby. That's right, but I will say this Urgencies an interesting word for me. Yeah, yeah, and uh We've a touch of nerve. It touched and you know like It's really strange like we just talked about this. We've got these convenience and we're comfortable. We do all that But it does seem like everything's urgent. Yeah, you know because I think we're in a hurry to get to the Non-discumper or the happiness or whatever. So it's like rush there. We're rushing for I'm urgently. I got to look You know the addiction of the phone like everything urgent tasks. Yeah, you know I know you're writing a book. Yeah, it comes out. You might be reading completely I'm about 80 85% down done with the book. That's actually what I'm hearing Meet with Forbes and Charleston. They're publishing the books. Yeah, I'm excited talk about it. Talk about urgency Yes, so the the book is called undoing urgency. It's about reclaiming your time for the things that matter most You know, we we all have I mean time. We've kind of alluded to this already like time is extremely finite Um, I talked about Munger, you know Ask Warren Buffett Warren Buffett when the richest man in the world asking right now how much of his wealth he would give away If he could go back to be in 30 All of it y'all every bit of it all of it So the problem is is that we're all drowning in urgency so when when someone came up and asked your dad 20 years ago like how's it going our dads would say good But now when we say how's it going we say busy Every time every because we're drowning in urgency and what happens is the urgent pushes out the important stuff And so What the book is really about is identifying what is really important you what your core values are I mean for me it's it's faith and it's family and it's my community and it's my fitness my health Those are really the four big things right and certainly my businesses and which is my part of my community So close to those guys But if we get draft if we drown in the urgent We never get to the important and here's the thing the most important stuff like family is never urgent And so the urgent pushes out the important and so what you have to do is you have to figure out how to the things that are not urgent and not important You got to just purge them from your life man This is the this is the doom scrolling and the and the binge-watching Netflix and the porn and the what it like that's that's got to get that you got to get rid of it And then you take the stuff that's that's urgent and not important and you got to delegate or automate it And then you got to take the stuff that's urgent and important and you better figure out how to do it really efficiently So that you can focus on the stuff that's the most important thing because ultimately what we're trying to do I look forward at like the legacy that I want to leave the jacked wise old grandpa and surrounded by my great grandkids You know, and I want to work towards that goal What I don't want to do is is think back and think like I wasted my kids childhood and then my grand my grandbabies I didn't get to enjoy which I don't have any yet and don't want any any time soon But you know, I did that because I was so focused on the urgent That I lost side of the important and so that's really what the book is about and it's really a game plan It's a road map on how to get there and how we do that in in fitness business and life And we've got you know, it starts 30,000 foot view and core values and works all the way down into the trenches And gives lots of examples of exactly how we actually do that In our life and life of the business and so on and so forth. So You know here and you say that it maybe think of something. I think urgency favors the unfocused sure And I think that's I was distilling what you're saying and I'm like You know everything's urgent if you're not focused and if you're not organized. Okay, you're not. It's chaos. It is It's doratist, but it's also but we're in this world The badge of honor I'm right I'm busy man rising grind busy, you know like it's a badge Yeah, and I'm guilty as shit of it like I sure I like I'll say that and like I almost cringe when I say oh you have to I'm busy and I am yep, but You know, I'm gonna change that I'm gonna start saying I'm I'm happy yourself. I don't know How do you know I'm happy? Well, I think this is part of it too and and I said one of the one of the conversations We had pre-show is about do I love my life not not that I live a perfect life I've gone I've made all sorts of mistakes over the years But the reality is is that you start to realize is that the work Is the goal? It's not it's not the outcome Like I'm I'm building this business to sell the business. That's been the goal. Like we're gonna sell the business in several years Right. Yeah, and does happiness come then Happiness comes now Right. Yeah, so that's the goal So the goal the work if you do the work right and you focus on the important You get it all yeah So we'll put Matt it's like You know, I hear it. I hate these clichés saying sometimes, but I'm gonna use one like the journey is everything right But it is it is it's like and I and I get this from younger people that follow me and you know Like what's it take to get to be successful like? Because they all think of it as a destination. Yeah Like when I got a million dollars in my bank account right where I can buy anything I want I've reached success or whatever that is And don't you write don't you wrong me? It's nice to have financial comfort sure, but It's not Like the destination. No, it's you're happiness Comes from doing what you love to do. That's right. That isn't always easy. That's right And you take satisfaction from the journey and the process of treating there. It's exactly right It's the happiness the joy. I want to use joy is good word happiness. Yeah, right? Joy is in the process not in the outcome And so that's what that's what we do and you've got to enjoy the process if you're drowning in urgency you can't That's the goal enjoy the enjoy the process. It took me a long time to like I heard that 15 You know, like you hear it bro. I have this mastered now I just I still like I'm preaching to the choir right in this but dude I'm like literally it took me a long time like I didn't you can't Quite I don't know if it's maturity, you know That's guys mature later than girls. I don't know. I've churred been almost like 37 I mean purity till 17 for real Yeah, that's all it was it was a rough But I don't know that guy, you know, like I'm gonna say like, you know, what did you grow up? I was probably 36 Yeah, I don't know like an immaturity of understanding certain concepts in life because I was kind of always on that Never ending hamster wheel. Yeah, you know chasing things the thing. Yeah. Oh, and I'm gonna. Oh, I'm gonna get there I'm urgently gonna get there. Yeah, and then like then you go You don't get there. No, you gotta enjoy it and be focused on what matters and what matters to you and I don't know and that can be different from person in person so what matters to me and what are the most important things to me May not be for you. That doesn't the book. It was still incredibly applicable It's the book actually walks you through how to identify what your core values are and how to work towards those goals like Yes, I'll give my examples and then I'm really clear about You're not trying to be me. You're trying to be you and so yeah, enjoy the process man. Not the outcome. That's the deal So we're not looking for destinations, but What what will make you happy 10 years from now? You know what what will you be doing if I if I could live the life I choose yeah 10 years ago Changing it from happy because like because look if 10 years from now my wife gets cancer I'm not I'm not gonna be happy, but can I still find joy like I think I can you know Knock on wood like I don't you know, and so Man, I hope to have been able to I've gone through all of these things in business. I've now raised capital I've been in hard lawsuits. I've started a board I know how to run a board of directors up in CEO all that kind of stuff The only thing I really haven't done big thing in business is be acquired in cell I would like to be able to do that at some point and then I would like to take That and give back to young entrepreneurs that are learning how to do this I wish someone would have taken me along and I definitely am if you listen this like I definitely have mentors And even my younger brother has been more successful than me earlier than me So my younger brother is a bit of a mentor, but I would love to do that and give back like I can tell you this I'm not gonna start another. I'm not gonna be a CEO or an operator or another business Because I've been able to say like okay. I did it. I succeeded or failed And I learned lessons from it and now I want to teach others there. I mean, that's that's where it would be and a 10 years Hopefully I'm surrounded by three or four grandbabies And you know what Sunday lunches and Thanksgiving and Christmas and that that's the goal Yeah, girl dad right girl that yeah, but and they know four boys So it's like I don't even know where that world's like I wish we had had more But we did ingrained in our two daughters like you got to give me like six to eight grandbabies at least So we need lots of that's a grandbabies But yeah, man, that's what 10 years looks like for me. I think in a man Honestly, it's it's I hope I get to look back over the next 10 years from now look back and said I really enjoyed the 10 years leading up Right, it's not about There is this idea my head of who I want to be one I'm 85 But it's not about being who you want to be when you're 85. It's what you do the 60 years before that It's the consistency every day of doing the thing of pouring into your kids and your family and your community and your business I'm like giving them that wisdom and giving yourself that wisdom and learning those lessons and you know changing and and correcting Course like I hope I do that and do that well and so I wrote the book really for me first because I need it And I've struggled with it. I've learned from those lessons And I think you know my staff would tell you that I've come a long way there And so these are lessons to be learned there for for everybody When's the book come out? It should be between yeah, I think it's even in Christmas holidays this year So a lot of that is how you know how backed up the printer is So the book's basically done. So what's it ships off to printer? It's like does it take them a month to get it printed and or four months to get printed So you'll have that on all your sites undo for sure urgency. Yes, sir Matt, where can everybody keep up with you? Yeah, barbell logic everything else to get going on. Thanks man Yeah, it's if you want to start the process of voluntary hardship barbell logic is a great place to start So we're barbell logic barbellogit.com online On all the social media platforms my personal websites Ryan Matt Reynolds calm. I go by Matt There is another Ryan Reynolds. I don't know if you ever heard him. He's got pretty good SEO Yeah, and Matt Reynolds is a good choice Is an infielder for the Cincinnati Reds and we're pretty much tied But I don't want to fight with that guy So Forbes is like it's got to be Ryan Marathon So Ryan Matt Reynolds calm personal site or if you're a coach or listener or you're interested in that turnkey.coach you can go any of those places and of course they are all You know, they link back to each other and stuff and so yeah, man We love and I always tell people I'm not trying to make a hard sell Watch the content listen to content learn some stuff and do that for a while And then if you want a coach and you get stuck like we're a great place to go We appreciate you coming in. Thanks, man. It's been a huge honor. Yeah coming in really appreciate it Hey guys, you know to find us Ryan is right.com. We'll have links to everything here We'll go back and add the link to his book once it's available online We'll also drop some highlight clips later in the year from this episode. So where you can get that's book He's a real motivator. I like him. He's here. He's barbell logic. You know to find me at Ryan offer on all the platforms See you next time on right about now This has been right about now with Ryan Alfred a radcast network production Visit Ryan is right.com for full audio and video versions of the show order one choir about sponsorship opportunities Thanks for listening