← Mondays with Matt
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- [00:04]
A
You're listening to Monday's. I'm Matt Reynolds, the founder and CEO of Barbelogic and Turnkey Coach. Each week I share lessons from decades of lifting, coaching and business to help you get stronger, coach better, and take action. Let's dive in. What's up, everybody? Welcome to Mondays with Matt. I am your host, Matt Reynolds. I'm here with my trusty sidekick, Dan. What's up, Dan? How's it going?
- [00:41]
B
Hey. Not much. Sounds like we were talking earlier. You've had a rough, rough Monday.
- [00:45]
A
No, it's been fine. It's just. It is, it's not, it's not, not super rough. But down at the cabin, so you guys can see. If you haven't seen this before, I'm down at my cabin, got down here, Starlink was out, which is a problem because there's no cell phone service. And so I drove about, I don't know, 45, 50 minutes one way to, to our office and stole the Starlink down there and brought it back and, and set up stuff here and had a bunch of phone calls today. And so we're going to dive right in and talk about coaching over the next several weeks. And so I was in Virginia last week. Didn't do, didn't do Mondays with Matt. I was actually kind of sick. And then I've got, man, I've got Dan. I've got bad allergies. Like, the allergies are killing me. And I thought if I got to Virginia, maybe get better. It did not get better. My eyes are all itchy and gunky and I'm, I'm sneezing and is what it is. So it's that type of year, that time of year. But Virginia went well. I got to speak at the, the National H2F Army Fitness Symposium Conference and it went very well and had a blast while I was there and glad to be back. So we're going to talk about reliability a little bit as a coach. Here's the deal. Coaching, to be an expert coach takes just like anything else to be, to be a master. Anything takes years and years and years. Right? But one of the advantages you have, and I would even say this goes beyond coaching and even into other, other industries, is that if you are reliable, that is the thing that one can't be trained, right. Two, it's where you can beat your competitors at. It comes back to what Andrew Jackson talks about all the time in his trust equation. This concept of like, do you have the ability that has to be trained? That takes time. Do you have the integrity to will you do the thing you say you're going to do? That does not take time. That is something that you can do from day one. And, and then do you actually care? Are you benevolent? And so one of the things that we've really built barbell logic on is, is service first. Do we have amazing coaches? Of course we have amazing coaches and I think we have the best coaches in the world. But one of the reasons those coaches are the best coaches in the world is because they actually care about their clients. They serve them well, they're extremely reliable. You know, things that we have held on to for, for 10 years now, for more than 10 years now, is, is 24 hour feedback. Our, our clients, they submit their videos or their workouts within 24 hours. Those things are broken down. I, I had a new client come in over the last couple days. I did a call with him here at the cabin. How and I messaged him and said, hey, can I call you over like FaceTime audio? So I actually have WI Fi and could do it over over that once I got the Super Starlink set up. And those are the things that I think keep people coming back. And so one of the things you can look at from a metric standpoint, if you're a coach one and your churn is relatively high. Churn is what percentage of your clients leave every month? If it's over 5% and by the way, 5% is great in the fitness industry, but it's not great for us. We, we have like a red flag at 4%. If we had a 4% month, we're like all hands on deck. What's going on? Like service is suffering because we know that the ability of our coaches are great. The question is, how is the service of our coaches? How is the reliability of our coaches? And so if you are consistently reliable and it's the same thing, it literally could be going to a drive through at a fast food restaurant or, or, you know, I've got a H Vac guy coming out here this week to work on, on H Vac. I don't know if he's the best H Vac guy in the world. What I know is that when he says he's going to show up, he shows up on time every time, no matter what. And so as a coach, those are the things that we're looking to do and those are the things that stick with the clients. The clients often don't remember what an amazing coach you were. And by the way, they're not even going to know for months down the road, it's not until four months, five months, six months, a year down the road they're hitting all time pr. So like, oh, the coach is really great. Like my coach actually understands what I need, how hard to push me, those sort of things. And those things absolutely matter. But the things that matter in the beginning, especially in those first few months, is do you actually care? Are you responding at the same time every single day? Are you giving that 24 hour feedback? Are you not just kind of phoning it in and just doing just technique feedback? That's the other thing clients are paying for technique feedback. But what they don't understand often is that they're, they're paying for a relationship, right? And as AI comes in and, and it can do more and more of the administrative tasks of the programming and even one of these days it's going to be able to do the technique breakdown. The thing it can't do is the human connection. So the reliability of the human connection is the thing that's the most important thing we can do as coaches, as a client. If you're listening to this, if you're watching it, if you're listening on YouTube, you know this. If you've had a coach who is super reliable, you feel, you feel a sort of a loyalty to them. You don't want to leave. And it's often not because of their expertise in coaching. And certainly that may have something to do with it, but it's often because you've built a relationship with them over time. Right? I've said for years, you take a guy like Brett McKay who I've coached for, I don't know, 11 or 12 years now, that guy doesn't need me as a coach. He doesn't need me to break down his videos. His, you know, his form is perfect. But why does he stay? He stays because we have a relationship. He stays because he has accountability to me. He stays because when he hits record on his phone, he knows that I'm still going to break it down and I still care about what he's doing. By the way, that guy is like super jacked in. He's lean, he's like, he's right at 10% body fat. He's trying to get into the single digit body fat. He's never done that before. Super strong, super lean and, and doing awesome. And so, and, and I care about those things. I care about my clients as much as I care about my own training progress. And so that can't be really, that can't be learned, that can't be trained, that must be done. Like are you somebody who actually cares about people? And so as a coach, if that's not you. There were, there were times when I first started the business I can remember that I had this list of great coaches and they were just, they were great at technique. I started with the ones that were the best coaches that I knew and I can remember taking two or three of them and saying I just don't think they have the right personality for this job. They, they, it's not that they didn't care, it's. They just didn't have a, they didn't have a great sense of connection with their clients. And so while they could absolutely fix their squat or fix their lift or fix their programming to be able to connect long term, that's what keeps our clients coming back month after month and year after year. That's what we'll do the same for you as a coach. And so one of the things I love about, about Turnkey Coach, about, about our software, about our platform is that it takes a lot of those administrative tasks off of the table for you. It helps you, give you, it gives you like the best tools you could possibly imagine to do those things so that you can spend the majority of your time really caring and interacting and building relationship with your clients. And that's what this reliability piece is all about. That is the great separator, right. For most of us when we think of online coaching or the online coaching industry, we've even started to call it coaching online because everybody is doing that and it's got a little less of a sort of a dirty word mentality. It doesn't put something in the, in the back of your mind that's negative. When I think about that, that category, that industry I often think about, people are just like printing out programs like Google Sheets or, or even if it's on a software platform, it's just like it's programs and it's not, it's not really about the relationship building or the caring or the reliability or the 24 hour feedback or any of those sort of things. The feedback that when I, when I do feedback with clients, when not just me but for all of our coaches, I think at, at block of course I'm breaking down technique and of course I'm talking about the programming and where the programming is going to go. But then I'm almost always talking about something about life, right? Like it's the weekend or it's like it's, it's it's Sunday. It's like Happy Lord's Day. How's your daughter's softball tournament? You know, how's you got a trip coming up in two weeks. You know, what do we need to do to prepare for that? Like those sorts of things. That's, that's the outside, the scope of what they even consider their pain for. But it's often the reason they stay because they know that you care enough that you remember that the vacation's coming up in two weeks, that, that the kiddos baseball tournament is coming up this weekend, that, that you know, they're celebrating a birthday this weekend, that they've got a big day at church. Like whatever those things are to touch on those points, that's where the human connection is. And that's the thing that AI can't do. Even if AI at some point knows, all right, this person goes to church, like, hope you have a great day at church. Like it's just a robot, right? It's just, it's just a computer. And so reliability is key. And, and it's the problem with the, the struggle often with reliability. And it's the same again if you go to a restaurant and the restaurant, let's say it's a sit down restaurant and you have incredible service, you have an incredible waiter or waitress, you have incredible food, and so you come back a few weeks later if the service isn't up to the same par or same standard that it was, that will often leave a worse taste in your mouth, but literally and figuratively than it would have the first time if the service wasn't quite up to par. And so the reliability comes down to consistency. Scott and I talked about this for years for, for those of you who are training, hopefully everybody's watching this is training that the things that are the most important as a client are consistency and technique. And consistency is beyond technique. It's way more important than technique and technique is way more important than programming. So it's that consistency every single time. As a coach, it's very similar. That reliability, it's not being reliable today and tomorrow, it's being reliable consistently all the time. And so that, that trust equation that Andrew talks about, that integrity piece, that benevolence piece, it takes a long time to build, but it can be eroded very quickly if you, if you just forget a thing and you're, you're cashing out some social capital, there's that stuff that trust can be eroded very, very quick, very fast. And so that's why reliability and the consistency of reliability is so important as a coach. So reliability, I think, is the most important thing that you can do as a coach, especially if you're a young and up and coming coach. If you're a relatively, if you don't have a ton of experience as a coach, that reliability is the thing that will separate you from everyone else. As you continue to build your skill set as a coach in the technique, in the programming and whatnot, what you can do is right away you can serve your clients better than anybody else, separate yourself in the field and make sure you keep your clients long term. So again, 5% is probably, again, that's just a kind of a blanket number. But if that churn is under 5%, if it's, if it's two, if it's three, if it's three and a half, that's a pretty good spot to be. That's, that's pretty, that's fantastic. If it goes 5, 6, 7, 10. And in our early days, we were around 5 and we really focused on how do we reduce that churn, how do we make sure that we're providing as much service as possible to our clients. Those are the things you can do to keep your clients long term. And so rather than having to spend all of your efforts trying to sign up new clients because you're losing old clients, you're losing current clients, you keep the current clients. The signing up of new clients is just, is just more money on the table. It's more people that you get to care for. It's more people that you get to change your life in a, and in a positive direction. And that's a big piece of it. So reliability is king. You don't have to learn that. You don't have to take 10 years to be able to serve your clients well. You can do it from day one and you should. And we've taken a lot of pride there at Barbalogic. So there you go, reliability as a coach. Dan, what do we have for questions for this week?
- [12:15]
B
We have someone who thinks it's 2017, so someone's going through the old podcast episodes because he says, hi, Matt and Scott. I've struggled with feeling lightheaded near the end of my squat deadlift sets since I started lifting last year. Your Val Salva video, which is on our main YouTube channel, helped. But my rep, 6, 6 to 8. Lightheadedness hits hard. Boyd passing out. He has to pause between reps and take super long breaths. Squats. It happens during the set on deadlifts after the set. He weighs 1, 155 pounds. Lift Drake 5 for sets of 6 to 8. Yeah, and then what? And basically he, he ended it. Is it unavoidable or is there anything he can do to fix it?
- [12:59]
A
Yeah, no, that's a good question. And, and by the way, we'll take your questions on anything. Doesn't have to be about coaching or reliability of coaching, anything in the, in the strength training world, nutrition business, whatever. Happy to drop those in. Just drop those in the comment box and we'll, we'll get to those. So, yeah, so the lightheadedness is kind of an interesting thing. And I think, I think there, it's multifaceted. So number one, when you perform a Val Salva, you want to make sure the Val Salva is being performed. That tightness is below the glottis. It's down. It's here and below. Right. When there's tightness in your face, when you're holding your air in your face and your face gets all red and you feel that blood pressure kind of swell and swoon in the middle of, of the work set, that's. That's a problem. We want a relaxed face. We don't want to hold all that pressure in our face and our cheeks and our mouth. We want it to be below the throat. And so that's number one. Do the best you can to make sure that's the case. Number two, I have clients all the time that in the middle of a long set, especially something like a deadlift set or a heavy squat set, I like my clients to take one breath between reps, right? They do a rep, they stand up, they go down, breathe out on the deadlift, breathe in, squeeze up, go down. When you don't do that often, people think, like, if I take two breaths or three breaths or five breaths, I'll recover a little bit and get into a better spot. That's actually wrong. You actually become hypoxic. You. You're losing oxygen and you're burning through your creatine stores. And so it doesn't get easier taking more breaths. It actually gets harder. You think it gets easier, but it doesn't get easier. It's not enough time to actually rest and recover at all. And instead, all you're doing is losing more air. So that's, that's another big piece of this. And then the other thing is, I would just make sure that you're. That you've got your safety set correctly. So if you get in a spot where you get dizzy, I haven't had this happen very much. I've seen it on the deadlift. At the end of the deadlift, I see it more often on the press. Right. And what will tend to happen is if you're holding that air in your face, you get a ton of blood pressure in your head above the throat, like, you know, say on a. On a deadlift. And then you set the thing down and all that blood rushes out of your head, and you go from very high blood pressure to very low blood pressure. And that's what causes this, like, really, you know, almost like vertigo, like this, this super woozy feeling in the midst of lifting. And so it still comes back to don't hold the pressure in your face. And then just make sure you've set up proper safety techniques. And that we also have on YouTube that you can check out to make sure that you're. You're safe. One of the things it's interesting about, about human instinct is I've seen people pass out numerous times on a press, at the top of a press. I've never seen anybody drop the weight on their face, on their head. There's something about our instinct that gets you out of the way in the midst of falling down. And so I really like the safeties being relatively high. I like pressing off the safeties. I'd rather press off the safeties than off the J Hooks, so I can have the safeties just below where my pressing point is, stand up off the safeties, press. If I get woozy, boom, it just comes back down to the safety. It doesn't have to fall all the way to the floor, which is a long way to fall. Right. A deadlift's not a big deal on the weight. You'll start to see people. We've seen this now in. In powerlifting meets, where people will actually spot the deadlift. I'm not crazy about it. I think if you do this correctly, you'd be fine. I understand why people do it. You don't want somebody to fall backwards and hit their head and somebody sue the. The, you know, the. The event coordinator or the gym. And so I understand why they do that. But ultimately, if you can learn how to hold that Valsalva below the throat face, learn how to work that cadence and that rhythm. Take your one breath, do the rep. Set it down. Breathe out, breathe in. Squeeze up. Go get through the set. That entire heavy set of five should take about 30, 35 seconds. Not a minute, minute and a half. So that's a big, big piece. So that's A great question. Next, sir.
- [16:54]
B
Okay, how did reliability manifest in a gym setting? So when you own strong gym, what are some of the things you were doing to be consistent for your clients versus Barbel Logic? Yeah, coaching online setting.
- [17:06]
A
Yeah, it's a, it's a, that's another great question. I think it's actually a lot harder in person than online. So in person for anybody, any employee in any industry, one of the things that is very much valued and I think is, is sort of a lost art is just, is just being reliable in showing up. Just be there. Just don't call in sick, don't call in, don't, you know, like again, it was one of those things. It's not a pat on my back, it's just this was not an easy day to set up for Mondays with Matt with my cell phone as my camera. I don't have my good microphone. I've got, you know, Starlink was out, but like, okay, we gotta do it, what are we gonna do? So you do the thing. Well, in, in an online coaching setting I can be, it can be 4 o' clock in the morning, I can look like a slouch, I can be drinking my coffee and all I have to do is sort of get myself up and ready for that minute to two minute breakdown and it's fine. But in the gym you've got to show up every day, all the time, be on, look the part, you know, wear the polo, be the cheerleader, be happy, be excited regardless of what's going on in your life. And let's be honest, there are days that like everything in your life is just going to crap. And the last thing you want to do is be at the gym. But those clients are paying you to be there to help change their lives, to help get them closer to their goal. And so certainly that reliability, it becomes you have to be on much longer in person than you do in, in an online setting. So in an online setting, in turnkey Coach, we have the opportunity to have the picture in picture. There are times when I'll use that. You look the part, you've got it, you know, you can look, look at your clients, you can talk to them, you can look at the camera and they can see your face and you know, you can, you can move your arm around, say like bend over more on the squat, things like that. But there's days where like I'm doing this at 3:30 or 4:00 clock in the morning and I'm, you know, I'm bags under my eyes, I'M drinking coffee and my voice is what matters. Like, hey, man, so great. Like, oh man, this is great. You, you hit PRs. I'm, I'm trying to come back to those sorts of things. So that's much easier for a two minute breakdown than is for an hour long session. You know, maybe, maybe no time off. Maybe 10 minutes off before the next client comes in. And here we go, we're going to go again. And so this is the thing that I love about online coaching, about hybrid coaching, about I don't want to have to coach in person 40 hours a week. It's very hard to be on that long. As I've gotten older, everybody, everybody kind of knows this about me is I'm a, I'm a, I'm generally an extrovert. But as I've gotten older, I'm much less extroverted than I used to be. It still appears that I'm extroverted. I can still kind of hold the room and tell stories and tell jokes and laugh and ha ha. When it is over, I am drained. And I didn't used to be that way When I was younger. When that was over, I was sort of invigorated. I was like, let's go, let's go do more fun stuff. And that's not who I am anymore. And so, and so it's much harder in person to be on all the time. So this past week when I was in Virginia, I was speaking to the army, it was just like, you're on, right? And, and for me, I mean, I had like the, you know, the nice clothes, the blazer, all this stuff, you know, clothes that I don't typically wear. And so I'm not super comfortable in what I'm wearing. And it's, you're just on all the time. And then I couldn't wait to get back to the hotel room and just, you know, take the blazer off and, and put on some sweatpants and a T shirt and chill out a little bit. And so that's, that's the hardest part about the in person side, about being reliable. But I still think number one is be there every time. When you say you're going to be there, be early. You know, on time is late. Be early, be the cheerleader, be excited regardless of what's going on in your life and beyond for that entire hour or however long that client is paying for for that session. That's really important in person. It's much harder to do in person. I do think it's great training to do it in person and learn in person and then be able to take it online because it's much easier to be on online than it is to be on in person for long periods of time.
- [20:51]
B
So if you're trying to grow your coaching business so you're, you know, eth revisited, you're deciding, I'm not just going to be the technician, I'm going to be the manager and the owner. I'm going to work on the business, not in the business. How are some ways that you can apply this reliability to yourself now you're not just being for your clients. But I want to. I. Okay, I'm gonna make a business plan. I'm gonna use your game plan again. You're undoing urgency book. And I'm going to start being reliable as the owner of my own coaching business.
- [21:23]
A
Yeah, I, I had this conversation with Andrew the other day because Andrew is, is. He's so good at what he does and, but he is just so deep and like in love with building out turnkey coach, working with AI agents, things like that. And there's. In everybody's life, there are things that you don't always want to do. Right. I still absolutely love to coach, but do I want to online coach every single day, all that, like on the weekends? Like, not really. Right. And so, and so for me, it's about doing the things or scheduling the things, making the blocks, those, those pomodoro type sessions, doing the things that I, what I do is, is I love working as a CEO of the business. I'm working on the business and not just in the business, but what I'll often force myself to do is pomodoro the work in the business first and then reward myself with the CEO work after. And so I told Andrew, same thing like, don't, don't put your online coaching at the end of the. Working with AI agents and building out turnkey coach and putting out features and releases and things like that. Do the stuff that you're like, let's get that over with so that the rest of the day is free to do the stuff that I really love to do. That's, that's the goal. And you know, from an E Myth perspective, so much of E Myth is learning how to write systems and standard operating procedures. And listen, unless you're a sociopath, nobody wants to do that. Like, nobody wants to write systems. But you just set the block and you're reliable and you do the thing just like you do it in any of these other situations that we're talking about. So you still have to do the thing that you don't always want to do but that you know you need to do. And so you schedule the block, you put it on the calendar, you say this is when I'm going to do it. And I often do that for first and reward myself with the work that I really want to do after that stuff is done. So I, I, it's, it's frustrating for me at the end of the night, you know, family watches a movie and I go, man, I still got a program for clients for tomorrow. Make sure everybody's got their programming in that, that, that's a fail on my part. I should have gotten that stuff in earlier. And so, so for me it's getting those things done, doing the emails, checking the base camp notifications, writing the systems and standard operating procedures, that kind of stuff, working through the spreadsheet stuff that I may not really want to do. I force myself to do them and do them efficiently first so that then I can spend the rest of the day doing the stuff that I really enjoy.
- [23:36]
B
Got a question about coffee audience. I know that you enjoy, enjoy coffee. Coffee is a nice way to stay reliable. So what are you doing for coffee these days? What are you buying? How are you preparing it? All that kind of stuff.
- [23:50]
A
Yeah, I have no, I have no relationship with this company but there's a company that I've been using called Coffeeville Coffee. C O F F E Y V I L L E There's actually a town, I think it's in Kansas, Coffeyville, Kansas. And what a great name for a town where you make coffee. And so they're local roasters, they do a great job. I'm a big fan of, of kind of Ethiopian style, kind of heavier fermented type coffee and you know, either use the espresso machine and make espresso or Americano or I've been using the Chemex a lot lately for pourovers which I also enjoy. Yeah, I love coffee and I, I don't drink, you know, I don't drink a ton of it. I, I probably average two cups a day, two cups in the morning and then sometimes in the afternoon if I need another little shot of caffeine I'll do it but that's, that's kind of my go to and so Coffeeville look em up again I don't have any relationship with them that know there's no affiliate code or anything like that. But they're a great group of people and, and I've Met the owner and they're great. So that's who I'm using.
- [24:55]
B
Awesome. Well, that was actually the last question. We. I guess, yeah, we can. I don't know, do you have anything else to kind of wrap it up and then.
- [25:05]
A
No. I mean, I think again, reli. Reliability, I think a lot of times is just they. It comes down to that there. When you're hyper motivated, it's easy to be reliable. And regardless of what that is in your life, whether it's coaching or training or what, there is a time when the motivation isn't going to be there. But you still have to choose to be reliable. You still have to choose to do the thing. And maybe that's just going to your. Maybe you're an H VAC person or a plumber or whatever. The thing is, whatever that job is that you have to do, that's the thing that you are reliable in doing. And one of the things that we've learned, my wife and I have prided ourselves in, like at our church, is that we know that we are reliable when we say we're going to be at a thing. We said we're going to bring food, we're whatever. The thing is they can count on us that we can do that. Right. And that's not. Again, patting ourselves on the back.
- [25:53]
B
Just.
- [25:53]
A
That's the type of person I want to be. That's the way I want to model it for my kids. That's how I want to model things for my. For my employees, for my staff. And that's who I want to be as a coach for my clients. It's that reliability is a big piece. And so I know we've got a promotion for the, for the, for the book, the. What is it called? The Getting Started Coaching. The Coaching Kickstarter book. There we go.
- [26:16]
B
Yeah. Coaching Kickstarter.
- [26:18]
A
Yep. Go ahead.
- [26:22]
B
Yeah. So I'll read this real fast. This is for those of you who want to get started coaching. You think? I'd love to coach. Not sure where to start. Not sure what to do first. That's why we made this ebook. So it's free, practical, helps you get started today, tells you exactly what to do and just share your email. Get in your inbox. $0. Simple, actionable. And it's built from what actually worked for us at Barbell Logic. So you can grab it@barbelllogic.com mackickstarter that's barbelogic.com Matt. Kickstarter. Again, free resource for those of you who are thinking about coaching and just not sure what to do first. So that's a great resource for you.
- [27:06]
A
It's an excellent book. I've looked through it many times. Our team, our content team, has done such a great job putting out content again for us. You know, we're not a content company that makes money off content. That's not the goal. The goal is to ride content, to teach our community, whether that's our clients or our coaches, whoever that is. And so that Kickstarter book is coaching. Kickstarter book is excellent. If you're wanting to get started, there's nothing to lose. There's no hard sell. It's just a free ebook and it will get you launched in your. In your coaching career. So it's a great place to go. So awesome. It sounds like that is another. That's a wrap. Another Mondays with Matt again, I'm Matt. Thanks, Dan, for being on the call, especially while I'm here at the cabinet. I don't have multiple, multiple monitors to look at. So I. So I was like, dan, you got to be on this and shoot me all these questions while I'm on. Thank you guys for joining me. Welcome to the cabin. Hope you enjoyed this episode and we'll see you guys next Monday.
- [27:59]
B
See ya,
- [28:14]
A
Sam. La.