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Mondays with Matt
Why Core Values Matter: Decision-Making, Growth, & Company Culture
00:58:12
Core values serve as guiding principles that help individuals and organizations make decisions aligned with their highest ideals. They are incredibly important, and should not be posted on the wall and forgotten, but known by all and followed by all. Core values must be reflected in the company culture, hiring process, and leadership.
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- [00:02]
A
You're listening to the build you'd business podcast powered by Turnkey Coach where we help business owners find freedom over fear. I'm Matt Reynolds and I'm his brother, Chris Reynolds.
- [00:12]
B
Join us as we help build your business and move from fear to freedom together. You're listening to the build your business podcast where we help you take fear and change it into freedom. And I'm here with my brother, Chris Reynolds, co host. I'm Matt Reynolds. Welcome to the show, sir.
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A
Hello. Hello.
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B
Glad you're here. We're going to dive in today on core values because they're extremely important to us. And I never really worked in the corporate world where you climb the ladder at some major multi billion dollar company, but I've got a lot of my executives have and they often talk about core values being this thing that is sort of put on a poster and hung on the wall and no one really knows what they are or cares what they are and it doesn't really drive their decisions. And so this will be a common theme, I think, in this podcast, not just this episode, but the podcast as a whole, that much of what we do when we talk about core values or the game plan, goals, actions and metrics, or business plans, or they are first and foremost for you, the founder. Yep. They're not for other people. They're not necessarily. It doesn't mean that you can't take them public. We'll talk about some of ours today. That's fine. They're not for going to a bank or for necessarily taking it first and foremost to investors or anything. This is the concept that helps keep you grounded in what makes you you both personally and professionally, what makes your business what you want it to be. And so core values for us are incredibly important. My, my entire team knows what our core values are in the business. They've remained the same throughout the, you know, the almost 10 years of business at Barbelogic. And so I just want to open it up like this and then we'll have some back and forth is that when I think of core values, they are, they really define the highest ideals for yourself and act as guidelines for, for your goals, actions and other major decisions that you have to make, whether that's again, personally in your own life or professionally. And so if we're honest with ourselves throughout the entire process of setting core values, which is what we're going to talk about today, how to identify your core values, how they should lead your decision making, things like that, if we're honest with ourselves through that process, we can come up with a set of principles that will really guide all of our high level decisions. Throw a quick plug in there for undoing urgency. So my book is currently on sale on Amazon. The Kindle Edition is $1.99, so you can get it for two bucks even if you've bought that hard copy. It's nice having the Kindle copy and then working through the audiobook right now. So that should be out soon. But that Kindle edition is two bucks. And so I have a chapter, an entire chapter devoted to core values in the book. I believe it's chapter five, if I remember correctly. And so we'll dive into that just a little bit. But the way I start that chapter on core values is talking about, you know, in ancient times, everyone will understand this story and can kind of probably picture movies or something that they've seen. In ancient times. And an individual was designated as the standard bearer for a unit going into battle. Right. So it's the guy that carries the flag or the insignia or the symbol or whatever it was for, for the unit. And in the chaos of battle, as you can imagine, much more chaotic in ancient times than it probably is now, that standard was the organizing force helping soldiers stay together. And for commanders to be able to move their armies in the direction they wanted to go by directing the standard bearer on the field. So as you got sort of maybe turned around or surrounded by the enemy, you could always do a quick scan of the skyline and find where that flag that's, that's flying high and go, oh, I'm supposed to be there. This is where I'm supposed to go. And so it was this organizing force for the army to make sure that they were doing the thing they're supposed to do. And so you can probably see the relevance here is that core values for us are just our standard bearer for our lives and our business. They force us to define what the standards are for our lives and our businesses. And so I'll start there. Love to get some ideas from you, some thoughts there. But really it's that, it's that before we can come up with game plans and goals and actions and metrics and get into the tactics, we have to really understand what's important to us. And core values is that standard. We have to know what the standard is.
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A
Yeah, I feel like there's also this aspect that is what, you know, what are the things that you. What are the things that you value that other people don't? Right. Like, I think that's an interesting Little, little piece. And especially as you get outside, you start getting outside of the, the piece where, you know, you're defining sort of the ideal self that you're, that you're thinking about. But getting towards the point where as a founder of a company, your values are the values of the, of the company.
- [05:30]
B
They are. Right.
- [05:31]
A
Like, that's just what it is. And so one of the things that becomes really interesting as you start discovering this for yourself is think about places where you think something should be a certain way, or you think people should approach problems a certain way, or you think that people are behaving oddly. Like, you're like, why do they do this? I don't understand what's motivating them. The reality is, most of the time, that is a difference in core values. Yeah, it is. Their human core values are different than your human core values. And the lack of alignment creates, creates tension, actually, and creates a lot of problems, which is one of the reasons why, as you discover your own core values and you get to the point where you're able to publish those out to the team more broadly and work with the team to determine, you know, what is the company core value set of your own, you know, from your own personal values and then maybe from the core values of your main team, you know, how does that, you know, what does that turn into? And so it's an interesting factor, and I'll tell a story a little bit later about where this became really, really critical in my last business, where we really started run into problems where me and my co founder were on the same page, but there were a whole series of employees that were not. And we discovered that, you know, the, the crux there was the, was the.
- [06:44]
B
Core value difference or sometimes the board of directors or investors as the business gets bigger and bigger. And so, sure, that's why it's so important, I think, to lay down these core values and have a really good handle on them early in the business rather than late in the business. Late is often too late. And if you're, you know, if you're listening to this and you've, you've owned business for five or 10 or 15 years, I would say you should absolutely still do these exercises and come up with core values. But it's much easier to shape the business and the course of the business in the early years than it is in the later years.
- [07:17]
A
Yeah, but part of that is just like if you can make it part of your hiring process, part of the early conversations that you have with people, then it will repel the people you don't want, and it will bring in the people you do. Not because they're bad people, not because they're good people.
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B
Right.
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A
Like, this has nothing to do with that. It has to do with people that can align to those values becomes really, really important.
- [07:40]
B
We've talked about this some, and we'll talk about it more in future episodes. On hiring is that you often, especially in the beginning, and really some of this continues throughout the life of the business. You often hire on personality, you hire on culture fit, you hire on core value fit. And those things matter as much as the skill set of the person. And so I can hire somebody who's got a tremendous skill set in whatever it is the position I'm hiring for. But if they aren't a good culture fit, if they're not a good team fit, if they don't have the same core values as you and the rest of the team, then that often works itself through the business like a cancer. And so we're trying to align on core values. And again, there's sort of two ways to look at this. One is, and we'll talk about both your core values specifically for you personally. And I think even as a business owner, you should start with what are your personal core values? Because just like you said, the core values of the founder are the core values of the business. And over time, if those aren't set, then you will find yourself doing things that are not in agreement or congruence with your own core values. And so these are super important to identify.
- [08:49]
A
Yeah, I think there's a personal growth story here as well, which is just as you discover what those things are, you will have a hard time not seeing it all over the place. Like, you'll start being like, oh, like I'm realizing that I value this thing. And as I talk to other people, you'll have conversations. I have these all the time where I'll talk to people and I'll say, I had the weirdest interaction with this employee the other day. You know, they did this. And I was like, what could be possibly motivating this person? This doesn't even make any sense. And as I'm talking to the person, they're like, what are you talking about? What they did made perfect sense. And you're like, oh, you don't share these values either. You're talking to a random friend. And they're like, well, here's what they're thinking. They're thinking, blah, blah. And I'm like, yeah, I don't care about that at all. I don't value that thing in the least. And that's something that clearly they value a lot. It will explain more than you think. It will explain about other people's behavior and also about your own drive towards whatever. The thing is that you're, you know, going after one of those aspects to discovering your own values is find those little annoyances, what are they? And you figure out that that is a common separator between people's values. You know, I'll, I'll use a very simple example right now that like in all of our, our businesses, my expectation is incredibly quick turnaround on responses when we're communicating. So in, like we use Slack in, in all of our, our companies and inside of Slack, if I ask somebody a question, I expect a fairly fast answer. Right? That fast answer can be, I'm currently, you know, running a kid to school or something and I had to pull over on the side of the road and sorry, I'll get back with you later. Like, I don't need you to answer the. I don't need you to do the thing right now. I need some kind of acknowledgment that, that you did it. Yep. Not everybody shares that value. That that's an important thing. Like, oh, no, no, personal time is important. And I'm like, no, it's not. So it's a very, very different set of things important.
- [10:48]
B
But it's one of those things too, where yes, if there are good reasons for why you can't actually solve the problem. Right. Then I just want, I'm the same way. I want to be just quickly acknowledged. I want to know that you heard me and that either you're going to respond to that right away or that you're letting me know I heard you and I hear that this is important to you and I will. I'm doing this right now and this is, you know, very important. And so I'll get to it very shortly. You'll have my answer by 3pm today or whatever. The thing is, that's fine for me as well. And so.
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A
But it gets you at a core value, right? Because the core value is there is some high amount of value placed on communication and communication skills. Like that's you start getting to the heart of why it bothers you that other people don't do this thing.
- [11:33]
B
Yeah, absolutely. So when I started to look at and the way I've kind of laid this out in the book, my own personal core values, this has obviously been a process that I've had to learn over the course of 17 years of business ownership. And so I started doing this when I owned Strong Gym. But this really came to fruition at the beginning of what is now barbell logic. And so one of the things I did I find extremely helpful, extremely helpful tactic is I just spent a few days, maybe even up to a couple weeks making a list of valued or respected attributes that I wanted to have that or that I did have. And so, and this is another part where being very self aware, so you know, if you want to be somebody that's very early to bed, early to rise, and yet you just hate waking up in the morning and your brain doesn't work, then that's probably, that might be something that you wish you could do, right? But it's probably not going to end up being a core value. And so what I did was I just listed in no particular order the things that I respected and valued. And often those will come from, you'll see something or somebody that you like or they do something that's very respected or valued. And these are attributes, these are not just personality traits, but they are, they're actual things. And I'll give you some examples here in a minute. But they often come as well, just like you mentioned, from the opposite of the thing that you hate. So for me, a big one that we'll dive into here in a minute is personal responsibility. Well, I can't stand victimhood mentality. And so often I might see someone who takes personal responsibility and that's very respectable to me. But more often than not I see people who play the victim and I go, I don't want to be that. So whatever the opposite of that is is an attribute that I want to help define as part of my core values. And so the attributes are really the prerequisite or the prequel to the core values. And so I lay these out in the book in on pages 95 and 96 and I'll just give you a few examples. I won't read every one of these. And again, the other important part of this is to understand, and I say this multiple times in the book, is that my attributes and my core values don't need to be your attributes and your core values. These are examples, for example, purposes only. As a matter of fact, it wouldn't work well if you read this and you said, oh yeah, all of Matt's core values and all of Matt's attributes are my attributes as well. We're not trying to create clones of me or you or Elon. Musk or anyone else or tons of things that Elon does that I can't do or that you can't do. And there's things, there are people that I see that I very much respect, that I can't be that person because I'm not that person. Right. And so, for example, like, you know, I'm a religious guy and that my, my faith is a big attribute for me and it's, you know, not as, not as much for you and not for lots of people and that's okay, but that's important to me. And so my family's really important. If you're not married and don't have kids, you know, for me, an attribute of somebody who deeply loves my wife and children is extremely important to me. If you don't have a wife and children, then that's probably not going to be as important to you. Now you might want a wife and children, you might want a spouse. Obviously not everybody listening to this is a male. An excellent leader is an attribute to personal responsibility. Someone who constantly invested in bettering myself. That insatiable pursuit of knowledge. Somebody who's focused on the importance of health, strength and longevity is important. It's part of. It's my job, it's what I do. But it's also like I want to be remembered as the jacked wise grandpa. Right? I always want to strive to be the best at what I do. That good enough is never the standard. It's always to be the absolute best at whatever it is that I choose to do. I want to be somebody who is. This is definitely a something that's an attribute for me that is not going to be an attribute to many. I want to be somebody who's transparent and vulnerable and not afraid of the hard conversations, not afraid to emote when necessary and also when authentic and can effectively communicate. It comes back to the communication for you. For me, that's effectively communicating both love and admonition, but with logic and empathy. I don't let feelings drive my actions. And yet that doesn't mean that emotions are inherently wrong to me, right? So someone who served others gladly. I'm a service oriented guy. Someone who is going to choose right over everything else even when it goes against my own self interest or my own financial interest. These things are important to me and someone who takes initiative. Initiative is a huge piece of our core value system in our business. I, I don't want people to sit around and wait to be told what to do. I want them to take initiative and be ambitious in that way. And then the other piece of this, and this is really specific, I think, to the fitness industry because it's so rare, is I want to be somebody who's known as being very professional and classy and buttoned up, and not just me personally, but my business as well. And so the other piece of this, and I'll turn it over to you as I listed out those attributes, and again, I did those in no particular order, and I just used my phone notepad because my phone is always with me. So as I saw something or watched something or was out and about driving, I could just grab my phone and make a little bullet point of these attributes that matter. You talked about looking for these core values. And these attributes that are really specific to you means they're also, they're unique to you. But that also allows. It will start to show you places where there are unique problems that you can solve. Because these attributes and core values are unique to you and unique to your business, then the thing that you're going to do is uniquely difficult because you're solving a problem that not many other people understand how to solve or why they need to solve it. Now, if you have a completely out there core value that's like no one agrees with, then that often will be a challenge or a hurdle for you and your business because no one else is going to see things your way. And so you do need to do things that are focused in a way that will bring about solutions for people who are struggling with problems. But before you ever get there, you've got to start with those attributes. So I don't know if you have some that you want to share. They're important to you or just any, any comments there on kind of listing attributes that put us in a position to then start to look at, okay, what are the attributes? And then hone those into core values.
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A
Yeah, definitely. I mean, I, I think obviously you and I share many of these, which is, you know, the reason that. Well, first of all, we're brothers as part of it, probably.
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Yeah.
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But I think there's another aspect of it that we, we've been doing business for a long time. And so I think part of what happens, the longer you do business, the more aware you are of the things that are valuable to. In. In that pursuit. Right. And so definitely personal responsibility is a big one for me too. I think I see it a little bit differently, maybe slightly differently. Not so much about victimhood, which I also don't like, but I think for me, it's more a Question of how frequently I see people when I ask them why something happened. Like, let's go back and look at that. You know, we both agree that something happened that was not ideal, right? Sure. The outcome was not ideal. So let's go back and look at why that was. And, you know, maybe I'm just like, tell me what you think, why that was the case. And it's crazy to me how frequently it's. Everything was outside of their control.
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B
Everything.
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A
It's amazing, really. Everything.
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B
I had nothing to do with this.
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Like, well, you know, this didn't happen, and this didn't happen, and, you know, mistakes were made. It's like, nope.
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B
Yeah.
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Nope.
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Correct.
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A
Right. All those things were true. And that was the deck. You were. You were. If they were true.
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B
Right, right.
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A
Then that was the. The. The hand you were dealt.
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B
Yep.
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A
I'm not interested in the hand you were dealt. Like, that's. That's what it is. I'm interested in the cards you played. Why'd you play them?
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B
Right. In spite of the hand that you were.
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A
Nobody controls the hand.
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B
Why did you play these cards?
- [19:34]
A
That's right. So that's. That's personal responsibility. And then I think, you know, we've talked a lot about these two. I kind of combine them in many ways. But I think drive and agency are both huge deals to me. They're huge. Like, sure. I want to know that you are the kind of person who, come hell or high water, you are going to get the thing done, like, whatever it is. And, you know, we've talked on a previous podcast about there's this great way of seeing of thinking about who the highest agency person in your life is, and that's like, who can get you out of a prison with a single phone call or. But I think there's also this idea of just, you know, who are the people that when you say this is a thing that needs to get done, that you are confident that it is going to get done.
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B
Sure.
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A
There's a lot of importance that gets. That gets brought up in that particular one, because many, many things will fall under that umbrella. That. That agency umbrella. Drive is almost independent of it in many ways, which is just, do you want a future that is different than this, than the present? Right. I know a lot of people are just like, oh, this is what it is.
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B
Well, I think drive, when I. Yeah, I love the term drive, and I probably would have used it had I thought of it in the book. I mean, to me, drive is the combination of initiative and ambition.
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A
Yeah, yeah.
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B
You're both ambitious and initiative and agency is obviously very closely related as well. Most people will say they're ambitious, most people will say they want a future that is different than the current present state. But most people won't do the work that needs to be done to get there. Or at best they will do the work. They're a, you know, for lack of a better term, they're a grunt, like a, you know, a low level private in the army who will absolutely do. It's the Forrest Gump type character who absolutely do everything they're told to do, but they don't have the wherewithal to take the initiative to do what they're supposed to do before they're told to do the thing. And so that to me the combination of that is drive.
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A
Yeah. And actually there's, there's one other little concept I think that's in both of those two, is included in both drive and agency. And I think that's that internal locus of control concept which is, do you believe that you are capable of affecting your world?
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B
Yep.
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A
I'm not sure that this is learned. Actually. I'm not, I am unsure whether or not people can move from an external locus of control to an internal locus of control, which is to say people who believe that the world is sort of going to go the way that it's going to go no matter what, and they kind of, kind of can't affect it. You need to be the kind of person who looks at the world you're currently in versus the world that you're, you're going to, that you want it to become. And inherently you believe I can affect that change. I can affect that change. Right. That's a huge deal.
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B
I think it can be learned. And the reason I would say this is because I'm certain that I've seen it happen the other way around. I'm certain that I've seen people who thought that they could make a change. They're young and ambitious and over time they sort of get black pilled to a point that they think like, I can't change anything and the world's going to hell in a handbasket. And, and this is where you have to be really careful with things like, like, like X or, or Twitter or TikTok. I mean social media is so prevalent here that, that it can really beat you down. And if you're somebody that, that is constantly filling your mind with this sort of thing so that it just sort of takes the wind out of your sails, you've got to get out of that. I mean, that's. Those are those unproductive, non urgent, non important things that are just gonna completely change your worldview to the negative. And so, you know, for me, and this is often. I've talked about this before, about, you know, even with. I very much have faith in my religion, but I am actually somebody that would rather be wrong and believe what I believe than the other way around. You're different there. Like, you know, so. And for most things, I just want to know the truth. But there are certain things that give me a positive or an optimistic spin on the world, and I don't want that to change even if it's incorrect. I mean, even if, even if in the end my entire life just gets completely destroyed and flushed down the toilet and things go bad in my family, I would much rather not believe that that's going to happen and believe optimistically that I actually have some control over those things than the other way around. Because what I end up seeing is so many people that have this massive pessimistic outlook on life. They actually live a life that is painful and pessimistic and they're. They're so melancholy and they often deal with depression. And ultimately, when you look back at their life, their life is just like everybody else's. It actually didn't. In that way. It didn't end in tragedy. The tragedy was the 50 years you spent being uber pessimistic about Absolutely.
- [24:18]
A
The case, man. That's definitely a big value that I've got as well, is just this idea around optimism. It is another one that we've talked about. Like, I know pessimists struggle to be different. To whatever degree you can do this, right, maybe you can change this 10 to 15% in your own life. Maybe you can't change it 50% or 100% or something, but to whatever degree you can change it, you should. Optimism is one of these things that I think we've said before. There's a very common quote, it goes around Twitter all the time, which is that pessimists sound smart and optimists make money, right? And it's true. At the end of the day, don't fill your head with that stuff. The last one that I'll put on there for just my own core values is just this echoes yours around learning. And it's just I want everybody to be a learning machine. And I sort of expect that people are and am a bit put off when I find out that they're not.
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B
But.
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A
But there's but you know, it is not even the bulk of the population. It is not more than 50% of the, of the population. That is that, yeah, way, way, way, way, way less the number of people that when I say, hey, isn't this exciting? I'm going to teach you how. X, Y, Z, whatever the thing is, in my, you know, in my world, that's usually technology. I'll be like, you know, you, you get to learn this cool new thing that they act like they just got assigned a job. And I'm like, whoa, like, we are two different people. Like, I just offered you, you know, 25 years of knowledge compressed into an hour on the, on a call with me. And you're like, why did you just give me an extra task? Like, whoa, that is a value shifting situation. Right. That's a great example of a place where you will probably never get along with that person, at least in that particular context, because you just, you just value something that they don't value. They don't value learning. You do value learning, right?
- [26:08]
B
Yep, absolutely. When you end up with this list of attributes, and again, I think if you're intentional about kind of constantly thinking about these things that matter to you, this might only take two, three days. This might take again a week or two, but you'll end up with this list of like, okay, this is a pretty solid list. It probably won't be 50 things long. It's probably going to be 10 or 15 or 20 things long. And then you can start to take these attributes. And again, as you originally write these attributes, they're in no particular order. You're just writing them as they come up in your, in your brain. But then you can start to recognize patterns of these attributes and you can start to put these attributes in blocks in things that are connected. And so again, I've got, you know, for me, I had an attribute that I listed as some of my attributes were never settling for good enough. Financial responsibility over delivering on promises and being intentional. All of those attributes add up to one big core value, which I call personal responsibility, as we mentioned. And so when I look at my entire list of attributes, of all of the things that I wrote down when I did this exercise, I was really able to come up with three primary core values for my life. And three is not a magic number. It could be three, it could be two, it could be five. I think you've gotta be really careful. If it's like 8 or 10, it's probably too many, and you could probably condense a little more and so for me, and this is on page 97 of the book, I'm actually gonna read just a short section of it. So I really have three primary types of core values. My first one is internal core values. And the book says this. I wanna be remembered as a man who never settled when it came to my faith and health, personal responsibility or the pursuit of knowledge. I wanna be considered worthy of the love and respect of my family, worthy of the role of a church leader, and worthy of being remembered as the jacked wise grandpa comes back. This idea of legacy is a big piece of core value. Again, how do you want to be remembered after you're gone? Is a big piece of this. So internal core values is my first one. Second one is relational core values. For me, I want those that knew me best to remember me as a sacrificially loving husband, father and leader. Not just in my words, but in my consistent actions. I hope they think of me as someone who led from the front, unafraid to jump into the trenches and get my hands dirty, as well as someone who is truly myself, transparent, vulnerable and unafraid of difficult but important conversations. So I have these internal core values. I have relational core values. And then again, because I am a service driven guy and this is where you and I, I mean you're service too, but you're much more geared towards the, the tech side of things and I'm much more geared. I can't go into a restaurant or a hotel or, or any sort of service business and not immediately recognize where the business is doing well and, and where it's fallen flat on its face. And so those service driven core values for me is that I want even those who do not know me well. So even those of you who are listening to this podcast, we're not necessarily in a super circle of friendship to consider me a person who served others gladly and who always tried to choose the right thing, even if it went against my own self interests. I want my service to benefit and grow through personal initiative and leading with an example of the highest professionalism, even to the point of raising and redefining the accepted standard of professionalism and service in the fitness industry specifically. And that's because I think the fitness industry really struggles with professionalism. And so those are really my three primary personal core values. That's how I've taken a list of 10, 15, 20 attributes and turn those into core values that can then drive my decision making and my goals in each year to come or season that I'm in any particular Time in my life.
- [29:52]
A
There's a couple things come out of that that I think are really important. First of all, what you just did there by doing some broad level categorization is compression, right? It's compress. You're compressing a longer list of things, which is going to be important if you actually sit down and do the exercise, because you're going to come up with a lot of stuff. There's going to be a lot of things that come out of that. If you don't do this. If you don't do this compression step where you get it down to. I like three. I think three.
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B
Three. Somewhere in that ballpark.
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A
Somewhere in that ballpark is good. If you don't do that, you walk away and remember none of it.
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B
Correct.
- [30:23]
A
This is important for lots of things. I'm not going to get off on every single thing that this is important for, but I just want to. To put a little, little flag in the ground around this idea that when there is a very long list of anything, okay. Or a long, you know, brain dump of something or whatever it is, the compression of that thing makes it memorable. The compression of that thing also makes it possible to communicate it. I could probably come up with a better word for that.
- [30:49]
B
Sure. But you can say it in an elevator pitch instead of needing an hour to walk through the thing.
- [30:53]
A
Exactly.
- [30:54]
B
You can.
- [30:54]
A
You, you know, when you're telling somebody some of your core values, you can say, here's three things, right? But it's not, here's 25 things. And this is just a really important point in general, and it's really, really useful in business. At some point, we'll have. We should have a conversation around. And I'm saying this so that I remember. I sometimes listen to our podcast after, after it comes out, and I want to remember that this is a good topic to talk about, just communication in general. Like, there are some really good practical tips around communication in business, and one of the most important ones that I see missed all the time is how tightly you compress things. Remove, remove, remove, remove, remove. You just. People are busy, so it's a. It's a good thing to do. So this is useful for you, for your mind to think about what are my values? What are my core values? It's also good because you can communicate them. The other thing that sort of spins out of this that I'm thinking about is just that there are a couple stretches I feel like people could make here that would be a mistake. And I just want to mention them. I'm kind of curious if you think the same thing.
- [31:50]
B
Sure.
- [31:51]
A
It's going to be very easy for you to write down aspirational core values. You mentioned this earlier and I think it's right. I just want to push on it a little bit. Aspirational core values. I deeply value getting up early in the morning and doing. Getting all the work done or whatever. And you're the kind of person that gets up at the 10am every morning like it's not going to work. And so there's an aspect of this that I also want you to think about, which is it's. It's fine for there to be an ideal you, but you also want to have an honest you.
- [32:21]
B
Yep.
- [32:22]
A
And there's a lot around the honest you that can actually be huge and awesome as well. Like it's okay to like if your world is a world where you can get up at 10am but you're up until 2am and those are productive hours.
- [32:35]
B
Yep.
- [32:35]
A
Not completely wasted hours, which is. Sorry. What I typically see. Yeah. Then that's okay. You need to own ultimately who you are and turn that into something of value. One aspect of this that I've heard before, which I think is really useful, is to say this. Like if you've heard the Maslow quote, which is to the man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
- [32:55]
B
Sure.
- [32:55]
A
And a lot of people take that quote as to say that you should go get more tools. Right. If you only have a hammer, you know, go get a screwdriver. There's another school of thought there. And David Perel talks about this on his podcast, which is really, really good. And he says, I don't think so. I think that instead you should go find all the nails. And I love it. I love it.
- [33:20]
B
You can't change your personality if your core values and even the attributes you list are completely in opposite to your personality. The personality isn't going to change. And so the idea there is, you are born with. And it's always some combination of nature and nurture in your formative years with a toolbox that has a certain number of tools and your tools are different than everybody else's tools, your job is to use those tools in the best way possible, in the most efficient way possible. You know, you be the best damn hammer there is. If you've got a hammer, Right? Yeah. If you got a screwdriver, you use that and maybe you've got both, but you're not going to have every tool in the toolbox. And this is, this comes back to this concept of, you know, I can't be Elon Musk or I can't be Charlie Munger, or I can't. I don't have the same tools that they have.
- [34:09]
A
Right.
- [34:10]
B
So what I do is I have to recognize what are the tools that I do have and how do I use those to the best of my ability and in order to live a life that is symbiotic and in congruence with my core values, as well as pass those down to my. To my team, to my business. And so I love that idea as well.
- [34:28]
A
Well, a spot on. I mean, that's. That I think those things are critical. And you. It's interesting that in what you just said, you can hear some of the other values in them. Like when we said, like, it drives us crazy when people say, well, this thing didn't happen or it didn't happen the way that I wanted it to because of everything else in the world that I. That I'm not in control of.
- [34:49]
B
Sure.
- [34:50]
A
In many ways, this idea that you are not in control of the hand you were dealt, you're not in control of the tools you were given when you were born, but you are absolutely in control of how you use that thing.
- [35:04]
B
That's right.
- [35:05]
A
How many nails you find, how many nails you swing at, I think that's a big deal.
- [35:10]
B
Yep.
- [35:10]
A
And at the end of the day, what we're really saying is, you know, look, you might have got a bum hand. A lot of people do.
- [35:18]
B
Right? Less tools.
- [35:19]
A
Less tools, you know, just like, less stuff. But it is not lost on me that the best founder stories on the planet, and almost all of them, come from people who are dealt a bum hand.
- [35:34]
B
Sure.
- [35:35]
A
Because at the end of the day, there's a lot of scrambling that has to happen there in order to fight for, you know, some level or position that you're trying to get to in the world. And so don't let the bum hand be a problem. I think it's a really critical piece of the puzzle.
- [35:49]
B
I think people often think that they would like to be given all the, like, the best hand. No, but the reality is, is that it's the voluntary hardship that we have to overcome in the lack of tools that we have or the lack of skills that we have, or maybe it's, you know, whatever those things are that are the detriment to your hand that you're dealt, that you have to learn how to overcome, that really makes you resilient and makes you a winner at life. When you've been handed Everything.
- [36:14]
A
Yeah.
- [36:15]
B
One of the great struggles, I think, of those few families that have generational wealth and trust fund kids and they're able to just give them anything they want. And why, often by the third generation, that third generation has wasted all of the money in the trust fund and all of the things that grandpa worked for to build up this massive amount of wealth goes away. And maybe at best, you don't waste all the money, but you're never really refined as a human being and learn how to overcome adversity because you never had adversity growing up because you were given everything that you wanted. So I don't want everything that I wanted. I mean, you know, like, you and I have talked about this before. I'm very grateful that we were raised well below the poverty line. We certainly were dealt a really good hand with. You know, we had a mom and dad that loved us and loved each other and had a great upbringing. And you and I were close, and we learned how to be very creative in the toys that we played with and playing sports and things, because we just didn't have all those things. But I wouldn't give that up for the world because it made me learn how to be creative and resilient and very intentional about what I had to work with. And so that certainly carries out through your adult life.
- [37:27]
A
It ultimately comes out with the way you raise your kids. Do you want. When you do well, when you're the breakout generations or whatever within your family, do you struggle with this situation where, like, what about my kids? I'm now parenting in a world I don't understand because I didn't, you know, didn't come up this way. I like the adversity that I came up in. I think it's important. I also feel like I have a lot. It is a lot easier for me to connect with people across a very broad range of. Of types of people, areas of life, working classes and all those kinds of things? Like, it's just normal for me. We grew up in a world where, you know, dad's a construction person or whatever. And so, like, when I'm talking to people in all different walks of life, I just feel like I'm talking to my people.
- [38:12]
B
Sure.
- [38:13]
A
It's just a. My people are just a really broad group of people, and it feels like very normal to me. That's not the way it is for everyone.
- [38:19]
B
And so, no, most never get out. I think most either stay in whatever socioeconomic class or working class that they're in, and maybe that's low but it also may be high.
- [38:29]
A
It may be high.
- [38:31]
B
They can't relate to the everyman, whatever that middle of the bell curve is. And so, yeah, very important. Okay, so one quick aside that I want to walk through is that if you're listening to this, and this is another thing that I had to come to terms with is that I hope if you're listening to this podcast, you are someone who is in a never ending pursuit of knowledge, that you try to think about the deep things in life and the things that really matter. And so I'm going to be under the assumption that you are thinking this direction anyway, or you probably wouldn't be listening to this podcast. But if, as we talk through these things, you're still struggling with what are my personal core values or what are the attributes that I really value and respect? One of the things that you can do. And we did this in the business and in early 2017, so we were sponsoring a big powerlifting meet out in Portland and we rented this big airbnb house that all the leadership team stayed in. And we were kind of trying to redefine who we were. We'd gone through some branding changes and whatnot. And so really to try to hone in on who we were as a business. And so there's a great exercise that you can do if the previous exercises we've just given you of just trying to be mindful about the things that matter and making a list on your phone or wherever, if that's not really working or you're not seeing a lot of patterns that you can hone into core values. The thing that we did as a business, we didn't have a lot of time. We were just there for a few days, but everybody was in the same house together. And so this is what we did. We took several hundred sticky notes, like actual post it notes, and we took maybe 20 minutes or so. And we had every single person, we all sat in the living room. Nobody talked. It was kind of quiet, pomodoro type times. And we wrote down every important task that we did in the business, either that you did personally or that you knew that we were doing. These were all just tasks. These were. But the key there was that they needed to be important tasks or what you would interpret as important tasks. And then we would take those sticky notes and we stick them on the wall. And so we had taken down, there were some mirrors and artwork and stuff in the living room. There's this big massive open living room, kitchen, dining room area. And at the end of that 20 minutes, I mean, there were probably eight or nine of us there. It was just covered in sticky notes, sticky notes everywhere. And so now we have a, essentially after 20 minutes, 30 minutes, every important task that we did on a daily, weekly, monthly basis in the business. And then we were able to start taking those tasks and we were able to start putting them into blocks that were similar. And so you started to see patterns forming of this is who we are and this is what we do at Barbell Logic. Not just who we want to be, but actually what we're doing right now, today. And can we use the tasks that we've started with. Knowing that everyone already knew my core values, and some of these major core values for me had been passed down to the business. We wanted to, to get down to a base level of really tenants for our company. And so as we did that, we came up with four primary tenants. And those four primary tenants were serve or service, grow, teach and steward. So to serve our clients and staff well, to grow our company, to teach our community, and to steward our resources well. And so those four tenets then became really the foundational piece of what then drove our core values, which then drove our goals, actions and metrics for the next year. And so as we turn those, those four major tenets into core values, after utilizing this exercise, of all the post it notes, we came up with three primary core values for the business. And you'll see that they're very connected to my own. And so Barbell Logic's core values are growth. And it says, as individuals and a company, we believe in growth through setting goals, tracking progress, and demonstrating success. Two, connection coaching is a window into people's lives. We value authentic interactions and real relationships with everyone who trusts us enough to open it. And three, consistency. Trust and consistency are the heart of our professionalism. Every interaction is an opportunity to build trust and we hold ourselves accountable to the expectations we set. Once we were able to get through this exercise and come up with growth, connection and consistency as our core values, we were then able to look at, okay, let's look at the next year or next six months, next several quarters, and what are the goals that we really need to put in place to help drive these, making sure that these stay the foundation of who we are at all times. So again, we go back to that original story, so that when business or life is wildly chaotic in the midst of the battlefield, and I realize we're not really in battle, but you know, for the sake of the metaphor, we can always turn our Eyes to the standard bearer and know what the standard is. And we can come together as a team or as a family or as an individual and know where we're supposed to be. Because we've already defined. This is what's important to me. And in those times, like in. That's easy to do in easy times, it's in the midst of the chaos when the bombs are going off and there's fire everywhere and the. And the air is full of smoke and it's actually very hard to see. Getting your eyes back to the standard and being who you said you were going to be and who you want to be is extremely important. That's why we do this for ourselves first and not for the investors and not for the board and not for a bank and not to get a loan. And none of those things. It helps define who we are to ourselves so that we understand. Exactly. So that when we have to make that hard decision, we can weigh that hard decision against. Is this really who we say we are? Is this in line with our core values? And that's why we do what we do. So you've got two different options there. Both for some of you, this will come easy, and for those that, it comes a little more difficult. This post it note, and I literally would do post it notes. I mean, I literally would go back old school, go into your dining room or somewhere where there's big wall space, and just write down every task you do, put it on the wall, and then start to look at, find the patterns that. That emerge, and you can really hone in down to those three. And for us in the business, we went tenants first, like major tenants, and then derive core values from them. You might be able to go right from attributes to core values, but then you've got this spot where you say, okay, I know who I am, I know who I'm trying to be, I know where I'm going, and I know where the standard is.
- [45:16]
A
Yeah. I think specifically where I find these particularly valuable is when there are, I don't know, dangerous type opportunities. That kind of opportunity. You look at that, you're like E. It's probably a bit of a moral quandary whether you should do X or Y. That's when this stuff really becomes good. Because you can look at it and go, I'll use one of Buffett's examples for this. There's this idea that, you know, you spend your entire life building up your name, and it takes a very, very long time to do that.
- [45:48]
B
Sure.
- [45:48]
A
And it takes less than five minutes to lose it.
- [45:51]
B
That's right.
- [45:51]
A
It's a really important aspect of, you know, leaning on these core values in times that are hard. But I think specifically in times that are, you know, where you're in some perilous ground, like you could make a choice, it might benefit you, but if it doesn't, like it's gonna. It's gonna hurt really bad, or it's.
- [46:13]
B
Just not who you are.
- [46:14]
A
Or it's not who you are.
- [46:15]
B
We could make this decision today, and it absolutely would improve the finances of the business, at least in the short term. Right. It would make us money. And ultimately businesses have to make money. But I'm not going to do it in a way that is against our core values. And that's not to say that every opportunity that we've had is an actual immoral choice. It's not. Certainly there are opportunities to do immoral things in business, but often these things are not necessarily moral or immoral. They're amoral, but they're just not who we are.
- [46:44]
A
Yeah.
- [46:45]
B
And so I've had to have lots of hard conversations with people, whether they're employees in the business leadership or often, you know, maybe it's investors, maybe it's other people that I respect in business, and they say, why don't you do that? Why don't you do this thing? And you say, because it's not who we are.
- [46:59]
A
Yeah, we don't do that stuff at our core value.
- [47:01]
B
It's not who we are. Not because it's wrong, not because there's anything wrong with it or immoral about it. It's just not who we are.
- [47:07]
A
Yeah.
- [47:08]
B
Our eyes are on the flag, on the standard, and that helps define what we're going to do and where we're going to put our efforts over the next year or season. Yeah.
- [47:17]
A
And you can even say, like, even beyond some of this morally treacherous ground kind of concepts and that type of thing, you can even say that, like, the biggest things you're going to pursue around the, you know, big company goals, like, let's say, you know, your top couple things you're going to do in a year, you'll have people that'll come up sometimes and say, like, why don't we do this thing, you know, this other thing. And that's a great opportunity for you to be like, yeah, because it doesn't really align with where we're playing, where we're going, you know, it's very useful for that.
- [47:45]
B
Yeah. Or it's just not a priority right now. And Again, a big piece of the book is about deprioritizing. There are 25 good things that actually are in alignment with our core values that we could be doing right now. Only we can't do 25 things because you end up being a jack of all trades, master of none. And so we have to then identify what are the things that we can do, the two or three or four things we can do this year that will move the needle the most in moving us towards, in the direction of the company, of the people that we want to be based on our core values. So this is really the final step. Once you have derived or identified your core values, again, 3, 4, or whatever those are, then the next step is to prioritize those core values. Now, this is really important. All the core values need to be super important in your life. And so it's hard to prioritize core values. And so when I say prioritize them, what I mean is it's not that this one is more important than this one. It's that in the next season of life year, often it's a calendar year for a business, whatever. Where are the places, what are the core values and the primary goals that you can focus on that will move the needle the most or that you can improve the most in being that company or that person that is in alignment with those core values. Often you will have, if you've got three or four core values, you might have, say, two of the four that you're doing very well on and that you're just, you know, you're firing on all cylinders, you're never going to be satisfied. There's always things that can be improved on, and then maybe there's one or two that you're like, we're sort of deficient in this right now, and it is who we are and is who we want to be, but we have to do it better. And so that's where the prioritization, the prioritization comes. Not in a lifetime of this core value is number one, this one's number two, but in a season, a year, whatever of a few quarters of, we are going to focus on this one right now or these two right now, because we can't really put all of our eggs in all of the baskets of all of the core values. We can't. You can't focus on every big rock at the same time, or you get none of them accomplished. And so once you identified what the core values are, you prioritize them and where are the places you can make the difference. And then that drives building out your game plan of goals, actions and metrics, and specifically the goals which then are supported by the core values.
- [50:10]
A
That's right. Call out to our dad, our late father. It was common for me to get overcommitted and I had to. I was. They finally let me play football this one particular year. Matt never got to play football.
- [50:23]
B
I was very upset about it because I begged to play football every year and then never. They never let me play. And then they finally let you play?
- [50:29]
A
Yeah. You begged them, the coach beg them. And so they finally put me on this. On this football team. And I. I liked playing it. Apparently I was decent at it, but I was way over committed and I had never played football either. So this is like my sophomore year in high school. And I didn't really know, like, all the things. It was. It was a big, big curve for me. And so I was talking to my dad about it because I was like, I don't know what to do. Like, I. I have no time. I'm having a hard time even getting my homework done. I was. I was that and 40 other things in high school. And dad told me then, and I remember this lesson to this day. I remember the way he sounded. I remember where he was sitting. He said, chris, in life there are always going to be more good things that you can do, and you shouldn't actually do them because you only have time for the best things. That's it. And you can take that same lesson said by Warren Buffett where he says, you should go through and make a list of all the things that you want to do with your life, all the ways you want to do it, and prioritize that list. What's the number one thing? Number two thing? And then all you have to do to be successful at life is just go take whatever is under number three and erase it. Erase it all.
- [51:32]
B
That's right.
- [51:33]
A
Like, you can never do those things.
- [51:34]
B
Yeah.
- [51:35]
A
There is a more profound lesson there that most people that have just heard us talk about this will never get. But I want to be, like, really clear about it. There are a lot of things that you probably want to do with your life or things that you value, things that you enjoy. For most people, maybe it's just things you enjoy that you really don't have time to do. Like, you just don't. None of them are bad things. That's it. None of them are bad things. Like, well, maybe there are some bad things that are in there that you shouldn't be Doing.
- [52:04]
B
Sure.
- [52:04]
A
But for the most part, the ones that are the struggle are the ones that are good in some context, but for you, and at least right now, are not things that you can possibly do. And so keep that in mind as you think about these. Like, you've got to keep your focus on a very, very small number of things.
- [52:19]
B
Yeah, we've had to have a lot, and we've gotten pretty good at it, but we've had to have a lot of sort of hard conversations with, you know, with employees or leader. I wouldn't say leadership, because I think most of the leadership team is really on the same page with this. If you always have employees or people that are associated with your business or investors or board or whatever, that if they were the CEO, if they were the founder, they would choose some different things that they would focus on.
- [52:45]
A
Yeah.
- [52:45]
B
And we have to have these hard conversations that say, like, hey, I think what you're saying is a good thing and it's not a bad thing, but we just don't have the bandwidth to do that right now. And it's because we have these other things that we believe are more important and are going to improve the business and move us in the direction we want to go, move the needle more than this thing would. And sometimes they disagree with you, and sometimes they accept that, say, well, thank you for giving it thought. The other thing is that it's not that everything that's below number three will never get done, because sometimes the thing that's fourth or fifth or seventh in another couple years may be number one, maybe number two, but for all intents and purposes in your brain, those things have to basically get dropped off the list. Now, maybe you put a pin in it to say, hey, every year we're going to sort of revisit, and we're about to do this and have our mission control meetings. We're flying out to Washington, and we'll meet as a mission control team here in two weeks, and we're going to set the game plan. And now, the nice thing about this is, as we meet, we don't have to reset the core values.
- [53:46]
A
Right.
- [53:46]
B
We don't have to reset the tenants. Those things stay the same. And so now what we look at is we say, okay, where are the things that we can focus on in 2025 in alignment with our core values and our tenants that will improve the business as much as possible in 2025, where do we need to put our efforts? And as soon as you do that, because your effort has to be budgeted your time, your. Your work, as well as your money and your finances, they must be budgeted. If you do this, there's an opportunity cost or something else you cannot do. And so we have to not just identify the things that we are going to do. We have to decide on the things we have to pull the weeds on and not do.
- [54:23]
A
That's right.
- [54:24]
B
It all comes back to your core values. So to wrap it up in quick review, in order to identify your core values and to come up with your core values, which are very important, before you get into the actual tactical aspect of the game plan, you first take a few days and you write down all your valued or respected attributes. Right? Just take it in no particular order. Second, once you've done that, you will categorize those attributes into a handful or less of primary core values. Again, three is probably perfect, but somewhere in that ballpark. And take the time to really define each one and what it means to you. So you'll notice that when I talked about internal core values, my relational core values, and my service core values, I didn't just say those three words. I actually then had a couple sentences that defined what those were so that I had a very clear definition of my core values. And then finally, once you have those core values, you'll prioritize those core values for the season. So you should focus on, like, where should your focus be if you really want to move the ball down the field to make progress in a specific core value or two, and that'll give you the starting point for your goals in the game plan for this upcoming year or season.
- [55:35]
A
That's it.
- [55:36]
B
There you go. It's why core values matter. You should constantly come back to them. As a founder, you should speak about them all the time. Repetition is huge, especially with a team. There are still people on your team who actually won't share every personal core value that you have. That's okay, right? You're still hiring for Cultural Fit. You're also hiring people that are good where you're not. But your job as a leader is to make sure you get everyone on board at the business on the business's core values and the business's core values. Everyone is going to understand and is an extension of you, the founder's core values. And so your job is to get people on board even if their personal core values don't align perfectly with yours. And they won't. Nobody's will. But we have to be great leaders in helping get people on board and bought into the core values of the business. That's why that matters. And then we can start to dive into the goals, actions and metrics. So there you have it. It's another episode of the Build your business podcast with Matt and Chris Reynolds. If you haven't given us a review, we would love a review, honest review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, we continue to climb the charts. We're in the top 50 now. I think 45 somewhere in there. Each week we seem to jump another 10 plus. And so those reviews are super helpful to us to again, would love a five star review, but really just want an honest review of the podcast and give us good feedback. We read through those and certainly take those to heart. If you have somebody that could benefit from the podcast, friend, family member, business coworker, whatever, mentor, someone that you're mentoring, please share the podcast with them. If you really love it or love a specific episode, please share that on social media and link back to the episode. That would be super helpful to us to be able to get the word out to as many people as we can. Again, a big core value I know for both of us is to is to improve the quality of life of as many people as possible. And so we hope we're doing that here on the Build you'd Business podcast for those of you who are especially young and early and new in business to help remove that anxiety and give you freedom and ownership and really a joy in what you do as a business owner. So thanks for listening and we'll see you guys next Friday.