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Mondays with Matt is a weekly short-form podcast from Barbell Logic founder Matt Reynolds, delivering practical lessons on strength training, coaching, and business you can apply immediately. Each episode blends real stories, clear takeaways, and simple actions you can take this week to move forward with confidence.
New episodes every Monday.
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Matt describes how to build trust in your business value equation. This is a crucial aspect of running a successful business with clients who actually enjoy your product or service.
Andrew Jackson gave a talk on this, which you can watch here and learn more about here.
This podcast is brought to you by TurnKey Coach. Enhance your coaching effectiveness and efficiency with TurnKey Coach. You can learn more by going HERE.
Check out the Barbell Logic podcast landing page.
What is Trust and How Do You Increase It?
Trust, in the business value equation, is the difference between the client's perceived value and the price. Increasing this difference - increasing trust - leads to happy customers who do not want to leave. This lays the foundation for creating a successful business.
How do you build trust as a coach (or really in any business)? Matt discusses three components.
Below, we define these and discuss how to boost each one, which ultimately grows trust.
How to Build Trust
Matt discusses useful short definitions of each of these that help you remember the difference.
Your ability is your expertise, your skill, your knowledge. People hire you in part because of this. You have the expertise, which they lack, to solve their problem.
Of course, a friend or acquaintance may have recommended you. Your expertise played into this recommendation, but your integrity and benevolence did as well.
Integrity should increase over time. Do you do what you say you will. Do you show up on time.
You will make mistakes, so you must constantly build up your integrity account. A mistake is a withdrawal, so be intentional about building up this integrity after a mistake.
Lastly, benevolence is that you care. As someone's coach, you should care more about your clients' training besides themselves.
Benevolence also should increase over time.
Your clients' perceptions of these is what matters. You might think you're a highly-skilled coach which high integrity and benevolence. If your clients think otherwise, you might want to reevaluate what you're doing.
PS - Coach Smarter, Earn More: https://bit.ly/3X4ixOX Matt's Links Website: https://ryanmattreynolds.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reynoldsstrong/?hl=en Chris's Links: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrismreynolds/
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Matt describes your business value equation, its components, and how you can improve your business value equation. This is an important concept for understanding your business conceptually and keeping the big picture in mind.
This podcast is brought to you by TurnKey Coach. Enhance your coaching effectiveness and efficiency with TurnKey Coach. You can learn more by going HERE.
Check out the Barbell Logic podcast landing page.
What is the Business Value Equation?
Imagine 3 drinking straws that meet at the top. They're fanned out so one goes left in the bottom, one down in the middle, and the third to the right. Let's look at these straws just as you would a graph, with things on the left having less and things on the right more. The one on the left is the cost of running your business. The one in the middle is the price to the customer. The difference is profit. If the price is below the cost, then you're losing money. Importantly, however, the one on the right is the perceived value of your service or product by the customer. While it seems obvious, your customers must perceive that you're they're receiving more value than the cost they're being charged. Improve Your Business Value Equation Remember that coaching is a luxury good. While we all know it can transform lives and greatly improve quality of life, it is not absolutely necessary like food. Because of this, you and your business must provide value to your customers (and work to increase that value). There are 3 ways to provide value:
Setting prices is challenging and important, and Matt will discuss that in a future episode. That being said, what you want to do is fans these straws out more by moving cost to the left and perceived value to the right. Lower your costs (time & money) by improving efficiency. Improve the value of your service - get better, add something to the service that does not cost much, get a better idea of what your customers want. Hopefully this helped you learn how to improve your business value equation. Matt will go more in depth on each part of this in future podcasts. You can purchase Rebel Allocator here.
PS - Coach Smarter, Earn More: https://bit.ly/3X4ixOX Matt's Links Website: https://ryanmattreynolds.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reynoldsstrong/?hl=en Chris's Links: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrismreynolds/
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Matt explains, in detail, how to start your own business. Seriously, you can be a business owner today following these steps.
This podcast is brought to you by TurnKey Coach. Enhance your coaching effectiveness and efficiency with TurnKey Coach. You can learn more by going HERE.
Here is Matt's presentation on how to officially start a business.
Check out the Barbell Logic podcast landing page.
How to Start A Business
This applies to starting a business in the United States. If you're in another country, the specific details differ. That being said, find out what those simple steps are, and go crush them.
There are 3 steps to start a business in the United States.
File an Articles of Organization in You State
Do this online, not on paper, to avoid delays.
To begin, Google search "Articles of Organization + [your state]." When sorting through the results, make sure it's the Secretary of State official government website (e.g. .sos.mo.gov).
You may need to Register as an Agent with your State (free). Do a quick business name search (in State) for conflicting names. You likely should also search the US Trademark Office.
"Register a Business" or file "Articles or Organization for a Limited Liability Company."
You just completed Step 1.
Get an Employer Identification Number (EIN)
This is essentially a Social Security Number for your business.
Go to this website. Click on "Apply Online Now" and answer the questions.
It's easy, free, and fast. Don't overthink or stress out about the questions - just answer them to the best of your abilities.
Step 2 is done (that was fast)!
Open a Business Bank Account
Pretty much all you need to complete this step are documents from the first 2 steps.
Gather your Articles of Organization, EIN, personal identification, and maybe an Operating Agreement.
You should only need an operating agreement if you have a partner. That being said, you can use this template. An operating agreement answers simple questions about ownership percentages, initial personal investment, etc. Again - don't overthink it. Answer to the best of your abilities.
Matt recommends setting this business account up with a local bank. Why!? Because to a local bank, you can be an actual person whom they've met. This may help, if you need to acquire a loan or some other issue arises.
Okay, you've completed step 3. You're a business owner.
Using Your Business Bank Account
Once you have the account open, deposit all coaching revenue into this account.
All business and business-related expenses should be spent from the business bank account (tax free - these expenses come right off your income so that you don't pay taxes on that income).
Below are some business expenses:
Additionally, if you have a home gym and/or home office that square footage is tax deductible each year for things like utilities and renovations.
PS - Coach Smarter, Earn More: https://bit.ly/3X4ixOX Matt's Links Website: https://ryanmattreynolds.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reynoldsstrong/?hl=en Chris's Links: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrismreynolds/
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Be a person of action. Act now, begin that idea today, so that your big idea doesn't stay stuck in your head - this is the key to success.
Matt Reynolds kicks off the first Coaching Success podcast. This podcast will primarily address topics relating to things that lead to you being a successful coach, businessperson, and person.
This podcast is brought to you by TurnKey Coach. Enhance your coaching effectiveness and efficiency with TurnKey Coach. You can learn more by going HERE.
Check out the Barbell Logic podcast landing page.
Be a Person of Action
Many, if not most people, have ideas for businesses they want to start, books they want to write, fitness habits they want to begin, and more. Too many - likely most - of these remain stuck in people's heads because they never take the first step.
Don't be one of those people. Be a person of action. Act now. Take the first step. Do something concrete that progresses you toward your goal being made a reality.
The biggest hurdle to your goal is the first hurdle. That is why you need to start now, and if not now, today. Seriously, stop reading or listening, think about your goal, and take that first action today.
Standard Operating Procedures
One thing that empowers success and limits wasted time is writing standard operating procedures. Writing a standard operating procedure might be your first step.
Matt, in his efforts to expand his gym, wrote a standard operating procedure for how to clean the gym. He had to first, of course, understand what was needed to clean the gym. This SOP, however, empowered him to hire someone to clean the gym, enabling Matt to focus on more important aspects of the business. Be a person of action - get this done today.
You could write an SOP for nightly chores for your kids. Write an SOP for your morning routine. Write an SOP for packing your gym bag. This saves time and mental effort, allowing you to focus time and energy on more important things.
Coaching Success
Writing SOPs and actually taking those first steps liberates you. You've been stuck in inaction and dreaming, and nothing has gotten done. Move toward that goal you've been wanting to accomplish. Write the SOP that frees up your time so you can begin that important project.
Also, consider what events fill your time. If you spend most of your time with unimportant, nonurgent tasks, you need to stop. Family is important, not urgent. Television is neither important nor urgent. Stopping your kid from running out into the busy street is important and urgent. Another work email is likely urgent, not important.
PS - Coach Smarter, Earn More: https://bit.ly/3X4ixOX Matt's Links Website: https://ryanmattreynolds.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reynoldsstrong/?hl=en Chris's Links: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrismreynolds/
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
What is marketing and why does it matter? If you feel you can provide a valuable service or product to others, how do you not only get that message out but demonstrate to your potential audience & customers that what you are selling is right for them? Josh Veach, CIO at Barbell Logic, joins Niki & Matt, to discuss marketing.
Josh also runs a non-profit--Go Shout Love--that designs and sells t-shirts, with the funds going to help families pay medical bills for their children with rare diseases. You can follow Go Shout Love on Instagram here.
Matt and Josh met not through lifting or some business convention, but rather through being neighbors and sheltering from tornadoes.
Josh's house did not have a basement but Matt's did, so Matt offered his basement in case of a tornado (and Josh and his family took him up on the offer).
The friendship first entered the business realm when Matt needed to build a website for his gym, Strong Gym. Josh had begun to do pro bono work and eventually created a company of his own that worked on marketing and website development.
Since then, Josh has become a full time employee at Barbell Logic, a member of the leadership team, and a crucial member of the team.
Now, back to marketing.
Most people focus on themselves and their business and forget to think about their audience and clientele, what value they are looking for, and what drives their decisions.
If you're a coach or business owner, you (hopefully) believe in the product or service you're offering and understand the value you provide your clients. Or, if you don't have any clients yet, you at least have some idea of how you can impact and improve the lives of your future clients. But simply sharing your story is not enough.
Josh's advice comes down to three big things:
Additionally, and just as important, you cannot lie about your service or product. Word of mouth is still the best way to grow, and if you lie or overpromise about your product or service, the word of mouth will be negative.
Lastly, you have to build your brand through repetition.
What beer do you think of when you think of the coldest beer? What beer do you think about when you think about getting away to a beach? Is this a result of some inherent property of that beer, or that those companies have made decisions about what their product provides and have consistently messaged that over years and decades. You are positioning yourself and your brand in your audience and clients' minds.
One example of this is having a consistent color scheme and font in your marketing and design work. It's a small point, but it helps maintain one consistent voice and builds the repetition and consistency you want.
This actually decreases in difficulty as you grow. Though you as a coach don't have a marketing department planning and preparing your messaging, you are also one person. How do you maintain a consistent voice in a larger company? It's hard.
Lastly, what's a CIO? The title means Chief Information Officer. Josh helps with website development and design, marketing and sales. He ensures that Barbell Logic maintains that one consistent voice throughout its webpage, social media, content, services, and advertisements.
Understanding marketing can really help you in multiple areas of your life, beyond your business. The underlying principles are about clear communication and working to understand what the person you're communicating with wants.
PS - Coach Smarter, Earn More: https://bit.ly/3X4ixOX Matt's Links Website: https://ryanmattreynolds.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reynoldsstrong/?hl=en Chris's Links: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrismreynolds/
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Scott & Matt share some of their productivity tips: what to do, what to not do, and what equipment or apps help them.
When it comes to equipment and apps, both of them find having one huge monitor, 2 monitors, or 3 monitors helps, as one monitor simply adds time to tasks on the computer.
Scott has also found value in having a scanner to digitize documents. He puts these on Evernote and finds this saves time, helps keep these organized, and saves space.
Both Scott and Matt value a quality backpack and headphones, which can help prevent noises distracting you when you work.
Much of productivity is organizing tasks and ensuring dedicated blocks to get both urgent and important tasks done. Preventing distractions--including notifications, family interruptions, and your phone going off is critical. Matt follows the Pomodoro technique, which recommends blocks of completely undistracted time to knock out tasks on your tasks list. The general recommendation is 25 minutes, as it's long enough you can complete plenty of tasks but short enough that you can fit a few into your day and it doesn't become too inconvenient for others around you.
Scott has some tips as well.
Ensure you don't put projects on your task list. If you find that something stays on your task list, there's a couple ways to deal with it. If it takes less than 3 minutes to do, just do it immediately, as it takes 3 minutes to put it off. If it's really a project, break up the projects into tasks and put those tasks onto the list. Finally, if the tasks are important but not urgent, create a Sunday Maybe list where you can put important tasks that are not urgent so you can both organize them, put a place for them, but not feel guilty because they've stayed on your to do list for weeks or months.
One other note is to consider the trade off with time and money. There may be things that take up huge amounts of time and that you don't enjoy. If you can afford to spend the money and feel the trade off is worth it, have someone else do it for you (trade the money for the additional time and fill that time with important things, which--important--may end up making you more money).
PS - Coach Smarter, Earn More: https://bit.ly/3X4ixOX Matt's Links Website: https://ryanmattreynolds.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reynoldsstrong/?hl=en Chris's Links: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrismreynolds/
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Time is your most valuable resource, and you don't know how much of it you have on this earth. Because of this, protecting time, being efficient, and knowing when to trade money for time is important. Its importance heightens if you find yourself in a situation where you make enough money that you can make more money on your work than completing a menial task, such as mowing the lawn or cleaning the house. You might actually make more money paying someone else to do this.
This isn't the case for everyone, and there are times in people's lives where they simply have to lower expenses and be thrifty.
If you find yourself in a situation where the more you work the more money you make, then you need to think about finding time blocks where you don't work and being efficient with your work.
If you find yourself with a fixed amount of time at work (eg a 40 or 60 hour work week) then you need to figure out how to leverage the time you have outside of work for both enjoyment and to complete the other tasks in your life.
Regardless of your situation, it helps to consider the money-time tradeoff and how some investments of money can lead to more money in the future (and, of course, how some investments of time can lead to money in the future). Thinking this way can help clarify what you should do yourself or hire out and help block off time for leisure and family and enjoyment.
PS - Coach Smarter, Earn More: https://bit.ly/3X4ixOX Matt's Links Website: https://ryanmattreynolds.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reynoldsstrong/?hl=en Chris's Links: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrismreynolds/
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Setting goals, meeting & surpassing goals, assessing progress: these are clearly important to all organizations and people. But, let's be honest, some of these terms-OKRs, KPIs, etc.--are a bit corporatey. There's a bit of a jargony, gobbly gook element that turns people off to what is essentially goal-setting, breaking up the goal to specific actions, and measuring progress. Enter the GAMeplan. Barbell Logic has taken the principles of the OKR & KPI and turned it into something that's easily understood: the GAMeplan. G is for Goals, which replaces objectives. A is actions, which replaces Key Results. M is metrics, which replaces KPIs. Finally, you have 3 terms that are easily understandable without needing to understand business jargon and it creates another word - GAMeplan - which is understood and relevant to setting goals. What's your GAMeplan for losing weight or increasing your squat? Barbell Logic sets yearly, quarterly, and monthly GAMeplans. They fall under tenets, which are essentially core values, and each person establishes a GAMeplan. This allows each employee to not only see her or his role in the company but to help form that role and have a voice in setting goals and how to measure it. This leads to what in the military is called battle rhythm: what is the organization doing daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually? How are decisions at the top getting communicated down to the lowest employees? How is information coming up and being communicated to the CEO? Which reports are due, who is writing them, and when are they do? How much time do they take to read? How much time do they take to write? How often does the organization have meetings? Who attends them? What is the purpose of the meetings? These questions have to be asked and answered if business will spend time efficiently and improve their effectiveness. Barbell Logic has developed and implemented a monthly battle rhythm that involves decisions being made, communicated down, subordinates and supervisors meeting with each other, and then a process of reporting goals up. It ultimately creates both a top down and bottom up process that is continual and allows for conversation and improvement.
PS - Coach Smarter, Earn More: https://bit.ly/3X4ixOX Matt's Links Website: https://ryanmattreynolds.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reynoldsstrong/?hl=en Chris's Links: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrismreynolds/
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
How do we set goals? How do we break those goals up to SPECIFIC, MEASURABLE, TIMEBOUND, smaller actions? How do we assess whether we've met our goals and, if we fail to meet them, if we moved in the right direction and made progress? Enter the OKR. Objectives & Key Results (OKR) is a process for setting goals & breaking those goals up. An objective is just another word for a goal. Key Results are actions to move toward the goal. Key Results need to be timebound, and whether they were completed or not MUST be a yes or no answer. To add to this process, organizations need a way to assess progress. Enter KPIs, or Key Performance Indicators. The feed into key results and objectives and provide information as to whether we are moving toward our key results and--more importantly--objectives. This system comes from Andy Grove and Measure What Matters. His clarity and effectiveness at management ended up creating this system. Coming from this system is the importance of how managers, leaders, and CEOs refine, revise, or replace existing routines and habits. While efficiency at tasks is important, we're ultimately getting better or getting worse. Objectives, then, need to be achieved with action--with change--not goals that would be achieved by continuing to do the same things the same way. Another key aspect of OKRs is the timeframe. It must not be too long nor too short. A week, for example, is not enough time to make large changes and too often to make these large evaluations of processes and routines. 5 years or 10 years, however, is so long that it deflates any sense of urgency and too many unknowns exist: there will be unforeseen opportunities that not only do you not foresee but you cannot foresee. Crucially, saying yes to certain objectives means saying NO to others. Not everything can be a priority, and too many objectives decreases the chance of getting any of them done. Difficult decisions must be made regarding what is essential versus important versus nice-to-have. Fewer objectives also helps employees know what the objectives are: employees should be able to cite key objectives. Key results need to be specific not only regarding what will occur but by whom - an individual needs to have his or her name next to the key result. This provides ownership. Another note on setting objectives is that aggressiveness--audacity--should not be discouraged. If an employee establishes audacious goals but works hard to meet them and fails while advancing the company and providing value to the company, ultimately it's a win. It's a balancing act setting objectives and key results. Too many people set objectives that are too easy. A smaller group goes the other direction and sets unrealistic goals. Ultimately, managers and subordinates need to discuss objectives and refine them over time. Good employees and organizations will fail to meet objectives sometimes. Another element of OKRs is specificity. Wishy-washy thinking and inability to prioritize will prevent progress and limit the organizations effectiveness. Ultimately, it's all about output: what have you accomplished? Business and hard work are great, but if you have nothing to show for it then processes and time management need to be evaluated. Finally, this applies to all organizations and individuals: government and military organizations, couples and families, individuals and employees can go through this process and better direct themselves to pursuing and achieving the things they want to accomplish.
PS - Coach Smarter, Earn More: https://bit.ly/3X4ixOX Matt's Links Website: https://ryanmattreynolds.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reynoldsstrong/?hl=en Chris's Links: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrismreynolds/
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chris & Matt Reynolds like to wake up early and GET AFTER IT. If you don't, that's okay, but you might try before you write this off and it's super important to have a consistent sleep schedule regardless of when you go to bed and wake up.
You can't make up for lack of sleep on the weekend, and your body will learn and adjust to a regular sleep schedule and be better off for it, as opposed to inconsistency.
If you want to try this, give it a try for 3 weeks. If after 3 weeks you hate waking up early and going to bed early, that's okay: you're probably an evening person. You might then want to work on being more consistent with your sleep and how you still make time for leisure and family.
One benefit that early sleep and wake provides is that many people have social activities in the evening. If you're an evening worker, you'll have to compete with these and find ways to work around these. It also can give a natural break to work and family life, and you can complete your work for the day (barring a true emergency) and then give your full attention to your family when they arrive.
PS - Coach Smarter, Earn More: https://bit.ly/3X4ixOX Matt's Links Website: https://ryanmattreynolds.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reynoldsstrong/?hl=en Chris's Links: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrismreynolds/
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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