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Founder's Story
From Strength to Scale: How Ryan Matt Reynolds Built a Fitness Empire to Millions | S2 Ep. 79
00:23:29
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- [00:01]
Host 1
Got something on your mind you need to talk about? Forget texting.
- [00:04]
Ryan Matt Reynolds
Just call up a friend so you can hear a voice.
- [00:07]
Host 1
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- [01:20]
Host 2
Hey everyone. Welcome back to Founders Story. Today we have Ryan Matt Reynolds, which by the way, I like how there's a Ryan Reynolds and a Matt Reynolds. So you have to go by Ryan Matt Reynolds. Yeah, but you should be the only one. I think in my book today you are the only and the most important Ryan Matt Reynolds. So you have an incredible book that was published by Forbes Publishing, Undoing Urgency, which is, you said the the best selling pre sale of any book they've had. We're going to dive into that. You also have one of the largest fitness online coaching communities and I can't wait to dive into how you even got into this. So let's start with your story, Ryan Matt Reynolds. What was the spark that got you into entrepreneurship?
- [02:09]
Ryan Matt Reynolds
Thanks man. Thanks for having me. The simple answer to that is that I was a very competitive athlete, but I wasn't that great in high school. And so I always tell people I was painfully average in high school as an athlete and wasn't really good enough to play anything. In college I probably could have maybe, but I was still super competitive and I needed an outlet for that. And so in the late 90s I discovered the sports of powerlifting and strongman. Did well at both of those. Actually became a professional in both powerlifting and strongman. Toured on the World's Strongest man circuit just like you see on on TV from from 2006 to 2010. So strongman, I did powerlifting first, strongman second. And in that process I was, I was completing my Master's to be a high school principal. I in education, I did all those sorts of things but opened a gym in 2008 really just so I had a place to train with, with other strongmen and powerlifters. And you know, we were having a, another baby and my wife needed to park in the garage. And so the two car garage was not a great place for a home gym. And back in those days there weren't all those. Every gym didn't have that kind of equipment. And so opened in 2008 it was called Strong Gym. That gym grew to be the largest privately owned strength gym in the country. And I'm in Springfield, Missouri in the Ozarks and sold it in 2015. Left teaching, left education in 2012, sold the gym in 15 and turned my attention to full time online coaching. And so really that the piece there that really was the instigator was I saw while the business, the gym was successful, I saw a lot of challenges in the in person online coaching or the in person training model or the personal training model in that I was, I was really in bondage to a schedule and a location at the gym. But not just me, my clients were as well. So you know, I had to be there at 5am, Monday, Wednesday, Friday morning, every morning or 4am or whatever it was. And so for me I was, I was constantly tied to this schedule and location and I couldn't leave, I couldn't take a vacation. If I took a vacation, I didn't get paid. If I had clients that, you know, really, really wanted to be part of this community and they went on vacation or they traveled for business, they wouldn't train or they would pay for sessions that they, that they didn't use. And so they were also really in bondage to the schedule and location. And it's, it's prohibitively expensive personal training is prohibitively expensive for, for excellent trainers or excellent coaches. And so when I transitioned in the online coaching space, I thought there has to be a better way to do this. But the online coaching fitness world and for a lot of your listeners, they'll probably immediately think of this sort of thing, it's still, I feel like extremely skewed. And one of the things we're trying to do is redefine what that looks like. And so for most people when they think online fitness coaching, they think I'm going to buy a program for 50 bucks or 100 bucks from an influencer, from an Instagram model, from a whatever. And so they get a cookie cutter template which I would argue is not really coaching. It's. And I also would argue there's nothing wrong with it. It's just, you know, if you're, if you don't have a lot of money and you just want to buy a program, that's fine. The problem is the program is not specific to you. It doesn't take into account that you could get sick or you could go on vacation or you travel on business or whatever. The thing is. And so I wanted to do online coaching in a way that was highly professional and personal to our clients. And so what I started to do, even in those early days of 16, January 16th or so, I had my clients, I would program for them personally and then they would video themselves lifting, upload those videos of all their exercises and within 24 hours I would fully break down those videos via integrated screen recorder and feedback loop. And so over the process at the time we were one of the largest client or the largest client of the biggest third party programming online coaching software in the world. We developed our own software probably five years ago now and transitioned everyone over. That's called Turnkey Coach Covid hit closed every gym in the world. That helped us tremendously. But then we also realized that we were sitting on the best proprietary software for online fitness coaching and strength and conditioning coaching and nutrition really that was on the market. And so we started to license that software out to the industry, to other professional coaches. So we started as a business to consumer model, ended up growing to about 60 or 70 coaches that way. Thousand plus clients, probably a couple thousand clients, actually probably 2,000 clients. And then started licensing out the software to professionals and then started to also land government contracts about a year and a half ago. We're now providing strength conditioning coaching and nutrition to the Air Force. You think about those guys, they're, they're very itinerary, they're, you know, they're in Ogden, Utah Hill Air Force Base and then they're in San Diego for a year and then they're at Germany, in Germany for a year or two. Then they're Afghanistan for two years. And so they need to be able to get preferred professional coaching that way. And so we've been able to do that and grow to a mid 8 figure business over the past several years. Completely bootstrapped up until a few years ago and then, and then landed, ended up closing our series A in April of this year at, at a mid eight figure valuation. And it's been amazing, man. We just, you know, got a great staff, great coaches, great investors. Great board of directors. And so I think we're really trying to be on the cutting edge of online coaching and fitness, not just from a perspective of really investing in first and foremost the relationship and trust between coaching client, which I think that the AI world cannot replace. While at the same time we very much spent an enormous amount of time and effort and money investing in AI to automate the things that human doesn't have to do to still provide excellent service. So our goal is to continue to provide better and better service every day for our clients. But where that primary piece is focused is in the trust and relationship that you build with your clients and between client and coach. So it's been outstanding. It's been a great run.
- [08:04]
Host 2
Yeah, it's amazing. It sounds like you found a problem that you had, you personally solved that problem, then you realize other people have the same problem and then you fill their need. I think a lot of times as entrepreneurs we maybe solve a problem that other people don't really have. But you not only found a need for yourself, other people, then agencies, B2C, B2B now government. I mean these are, these are big transitions. We had another guest on named Vern Harnish and he talks about the transition from 1 million in revenue, 5 million, 10, 20, 50. And the things that go into place as your revenue continues to increase. What are some of the things that you had to change, whether it's maybe change within yourself or within your organization as you grew through these large revenue milestones.
- [08:53]
Ryan Matt Reynolds
Yeah, so, you know, I think the first is you, you already kind of touched on was we realized that as a B2C company, we were going to be successful, but we were never going to be a $100 million, $200 million company. B2C only that was going to be very difficult to do because of our focus on highly professional coaches. There's going to be a bottleneck there. So when we moved to the B2B model that, that helped accelerate that process. We recognized again when Covid shut all the gyms down, we recognize that there's all these great professional coaches and clients who needed this software. This software allows coaches. On average, our coaches made 45 or $50 an hour when we had the, we were a third party software user and now our coaches average about $200 per hour. And that's across the board. Well, that's unheard of in the, in the fitness industry. And so we're able to do that. And that continued to help us find product, market, fit and then of course military, same Thing with the military, it's really about scalability. I mean you've got hundreds of thousands of American military servicemen and women. And so how can you provide the best service possible to the most amount of people possible at a cost the government wants to pay? And so those were three big things that we focused on from the growth side, I think on the other side, equally as important you've probably had founders talk about this is like we really got lean. And so we hired a. So when we, when we raised our series A, the most important hired we hire we made was a VP of finance or what would be, what is going to be a future CFO position. And we literally went through every expense of the entire year and decided figured out like where can we trim the fat? And so how do you. It's really a combination of both cutting costs and being really lean, running as lean as you can without without a loss of service or without, you know, you don't want to slow the business down and at the same time while ramping up growth. And so we didn't cut cost in places like marketing and advertising. And how do we reach more people and how do we get into the ears of more customers, whether that's the B2C client or the B2B coach or even building proposals out for the military. So we wanted to be able to do that. But there are other places that we just looked and go and said hey, these are. And it could literally be as simple like you'd be amazed when we went to certain we spent a ton of money on, on kind of software and hosting and all those sort of things. When you go to those companies, you pay for a year up front or three years up front, you get a 20% discount. You say, well I'm going to use them anyway, so why wouldn't I do that? So, you know, we ended up cutting about in the first maybe month of working with our future CFO, we cut about $600,000 off the expense line. And when you combo that with the growth piece, you just gain profit. And so you know, it was, it drove the gross margins to be stronger, the EBITDA to be stronger, the net profitability, the cash reserves, all those things that really extends your Runway out to really infinite if you're, if you're net profitable. And so that was really the goal. So I think in the beginning it was just like, look, we're growing fast and we have to make sure we supply all the needs we can for a fast growing company. And as we grew and hit those Each of those strata that you talked about, the kind of 1 million and 3 million and 5 million and 10 million, you realize you've got to make some major changes. And so that was who we were. And, and I think we've been able to do that and maintain our core values for the company the entire time. So where our core values are super important to us, who we are as a business, and, and really having a reputation for being the top or one of the top service companies in the industry, I think was important not to lose. And so it's. We don't make choices that just affect the, positively affect the bottom line of the business. They have to be in line with our core values. And for us, we often even ask ourselves, not every, certainly not every decision you make, but for us, we constantly ask, like, is this right? Like, I think even morally right. And the answer is, like, if the answer is we're not certain that this is the right choice, like it's correct, not it's best for the bottom dollar of the company, not it's best for me, but is it best for people? Is it correct? We don't make that decision. And that's allowed us to continue to treat people well, not just our clients, but our staff. Our churn rate is under 2% per month in the fitness industry with no contracts. That's unheard of. And so we've got enterprise software sort of churn. And it's just because we treat people well, we have no turnover for our, for our staff. Our staff don't leave. Why? Because we treat them really well. Because we actually care. And so I think that that sort of care or benevolence piece, the perception of, again, of building relationship and trust not just with your clients, but even with your staff, if that's not authentic, you can fake it for a little while, right? You can be like, you can pretend to be nice and care, but the reality is eventually your true colors are going to show. But if you really care, you actually care, you're going to make decisions, one or two a month, every month, that's not best for the bottom line of the business, but is best for the people of the business. And as you do that, we found that we make those decisions correctly, even if it affects us negatively from a cash flow perspective, it tends to in the end grow the company and, and really and certainly galvanized the company.
- [13:48]
Host 2
So I'm curious on how the experience was when you got funding, because you weren't like a startup that started the year before, right? You bootstrapped you had success. And I'm guessing the funding you saw is a way to grow and scale your company further than the success you already had. Because I think, you know, many times people are like ideation phase and in order for them to create their idea, to even get started, they need money. Then there's people like you and like me who I'm, I'm more of a proponent and experience with bootstrapping and creating and then maybe seeing how we can grow in skill. But what, what were some changes that you had to personally make in terms of like within yourself when you said, okay, I've, you know, been a hundred percent in control of this, I don't really have other people to answer to. Now I'm going to raise money, which I know has its own complexities within itself.
- [14:41]
Ryan Matt Reynolds
Yeah, it's a, that's a great question. Actually. I've done a ton of podcasts. Nobody's asked me that question. But I, I think for me, the, the, the sales pitch quote unquote was that it was exactly what you're talking about. We had already built a very successful B2C business and that flagship business was extremely healthy and profitable. And so we were kind of raising money as though we were a startup. And though we, as we were bootstrapped for moving into the B2B and government sectors with the B2C sector being really safe and profitable. So if you're an investor and you're like, well, I'm investing in an idea for somebody, but I don't know that that's going to come to fruition. And the chances are it won't. To invest in us was saying, look, we've got a business that's doing, you know, five, six, seven million dollars a year in B2C business. That is the flagship product that's helped pay for the build out of the rest of this model. We're just trying to scale as quickly as we can and find product market fit in the B2B and military sectors. And so I sold it as, look, it's a, it's a risk reduction for you as an investor. You can, you can reduce your risk because you already got a company that's nine years old, they've got a ton of traction, they're not going to go bankrupt. It's not just an idea. The software is already built in, works, and now we're just taking it for the B2C sector into the B2B. And so that's really what we did. And it went very, very well. We were able to raise all with, with angel investors. Didn't have to. Had a lot of money that wanted to be thrown at us in VC and private equity. And we were able to say no for this round and certainly that would be something that we'll explore for future rounds of Series B and whatnot ahead. But we were able to do that. And really. And so what that allowed me to do is it. It allowed me to maintain control of the company. So even in raising a pretty large Series A, I still own 60 plus percent of the company, 65% of the company, you know, still have really control of the board, three of the five seats. And so. And I think that comes from bootstrapping and years of you can't do that when you sell an idea, when you sell an idea, you're going to sell 50% plus of the company away on day one. So that really helped.
- [16:37]
Host 2
Yeah, that's a good call out. I have a friend going through that right now. So I've never raised money but I've always wanted to and I've invested in things that they all failed. So I never like learning about the beginning phases. I'm curious though, from your perspective of challenges. So I feel like entrepreneurship is a roller coaster. There's ups and downs and maybe public facing. We always make it seem like there's a lot of ups more than the downs. Right. We don't want to be negative per se, but what is like a challenging moment in your life or maybe a down moment that you had that you were able to overcome and how did you.
- [17:16]
Ryan Matt Reynolds
We got sued in Federal Court in 2019. That was, I mean that's, that is a man killer. You know, it's getting sued in federal court for trademark infringement and I'm not allowed to talk about the outcome of that, but we were pleased with how it came out. It was just, you know, I say that, but it's like any lawsuit is just awful and you spend a ton of money in legal fees and whether you win or lose, you lose. I mean that's the reality of the situation. And so I think there were a lot of times that that lawsuit threatened the very existence of the company. And for me though, it was just, I think it really helped again out once we got through it. It was, it was over a year long process. I think it helped galvanize the company because at no point was I did, I think to myself, we're going to shut down now. If we had got our butts kicked in the thing, we would have shut down because it would have it would have, we would have had to go bankrupt or start over again, but that was just never an option for me. We were going to fight the thing and we were going to do everything we could. And so that was extremely galvanized and lawsuits are terrifying. And now that once you've gone through one, they're far less scary. So, you know, again, As a mid-8 figure business, I hope, knock on wood, I hope we're never in one again. But we probably will be. But now I know what to expect. And so I think things like that, and like you talked about raising money or like those sorts of things are starting a board of directors and, and running that, running it. Well, like those are things that you can't read about or buy that experience. You just have to have it and you have to work through it. And so those, those items, those, those things that are involuntary, heart, Involuntary hardship. Um, one of the reasons we do what we do in the strength training world is we practice voluntary hardship. We do stuff that's really, really hard that we choose voluntarily. Nobody's going to make you put a bar on your back and squat and do this sort of thing that is just like when you choose fitness or you choose this lifestyle, it better prepares you for when an involuntary hardship comes. So when the lawsuit comes or somebody gets cancer or somebody dies, you lose your job or you get divorced, like, you're better apt to handle it because you've exposed yourself to voluntary hardship all those years. And so that's why we do this strength training thing. That's why it still comes back. In spite of it being a big business, it still comes back to these foundational roles that we choose hard every single day. And I think it's really imperative and so, so that when the lawsuit comes and you don't choose the lawsuit, you go, look, I've, I've been exposed to hard for a long time. Like, I know what this is. This is really difficult.
- [19:30]
D
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- [23:11]
Ryan Matt Reynolds
I'm not going to fold up and, you know, cry and shut the doors. And so we didn't, and we came through it and, and you know, we're, we're probably five times the size business that we were back then, so we came through.
- [23:22]
Host 2
Thank you for sharing that. I know it's, it's always tough to share vulnerable things, but I think people really learn from the trials and tribulations of other people. So. And I know as your business grows, I don't think there's any eight or nine plus figure company that doesn't have to go through a lawsuit. Like you said, at some point as they continue to scale. I'm curious about the book though. Sure. If I'm looking at this book and I'm about to dive in, what are some things I can expect from reading?
- [23:51]
Ryan Matt Reynolds
Yeah. So the book is called Undoing Urgency and again, it was published by Forbes. Very proud of it. And the quick synopsis is that if you asked my dad or your parents or people of that generation 20 years ago, how's it going like we do, they would say, good. And now if you ask somebody, how's it going? They say busy. Everybody's busy and everybody's drowning in urgency. And so as a CEO of this company, I've recognized that I can drown in urgency very easily. I can fill up my entire calendar, my entire schedule. So the book is really about pulling the weeds and deprioritizing the things that are urgent but less important, using some of that Eisenhower matrix sort of focus and some of that stuff where it's like, look, if it's not urgent, not important, if it's urgent and not important, those sort of things, we're going to pull those weeds so that we can focus on the stuff that really matters. And so for me, in my life, much of my day is focused around urgent and important things. As a CEO, I have to do those very efficiently, very effectively. Notifications off. We do things called Pomodoros, if you've heard of those before. It's like 25 minute quick work sessions with absolutely no distractions whatsoever. You don't get coffee, you don't go to the bathroom, you just work on the task at hand. And you, you put those, you do those 25 minutes on, maybe five minutes off, and go right back into another 25 minute session. And what that does, when you pull the weeds on the non important things and you work efficiently on the urgent and important things, it allows your calendar to really and your schedule open up to focus on the most important things which are never urgent. So you think about like family time. Like my family time is the most important thing I can do, but it's never urgent. Or my own fitness or spiritual disciplines or being the CEO of the company and doing the CEO stuff that I need to do, working on my business, not in my business, not drowning in the business all the time. And so the book is really applicable not just to executives and founders, but certainly to anybody who just feels like the calendar and the schedule is just so busy that they can't seem to get out of this drowning in urgency. And so it teaches you. So it starts at kind of the big picture and core values and gets right into the trenches of exactly how we do that in the business on a day to day and in my life on a day to day basis. And it's been extremely helpful to me because I think again, when you write about, I didn't write about this because I'm great at it. I write about it because I suck at it. And so as I've had to learn over the years and learn how to, it is very easy. Even the last couple of days have just been, you know, 10 hours straight with meetings. And then it's like, all right, I work another two, three, four hours. So I've worked 14 hours and I go, did I accomplish anything or did I just do a bunch of meetings and zoom calls? This book helps you feel like you've actually accomplished something by focusing on the stuff that matters and pulling the weeds on the stuff that's urgent and less important.
- [26:39]
Host 2
Well, I love that we all need it. It doesn't like you said, it doesn't matter if you are a stay at home mom, if you are a corporate executive, if you're a business owner. We are all super busy and many times I feel like I don't know if I accomplished anything that day. So I can't wait to read the book. The fact that you're part of Forbes publishing, Congratulations. I mean that's huge. Fastest resell. I mean this book is going to be great. I can't wait to read the entire thing. But I'm super excited to have you today. So if people want to get in touch with you, maybe they want to buy the book. How can they do so?
- [27:15]
Ryan Matt Reynolds
Yeah, absolutely. The personal website is Ryan mattreynolds.com so easy. Ryan mattreynolds.com if you want to find out about the about the business, barbell logic.com or turnkey coach if you're a fitness professional, we put out a ton of great content for free. We're a service business so the content's free. So search for Barbell logic on on YouTube, on podcast, on We've got a ton of great written articles and ebooks I've got My editor in chief is fantastic as a writer, helped write the manuscript for the book with me and so Barbell Logic is a great place. You can learn anything you want to know about strength and conditioning and weightlifting and nutrition under Barbell Logic. If you want to contact me or get a hold of me or find out about the book, Ryan mattreynolds.com is a great place to go.
- [27:52]
Host 2
Barbell Logic Undoing Urgency Ryan Matt Reynolds the best name of anyone we've had on the show, so thank you for that as well. But I'm super excited to continue seeing what you know when you get to series B, C, D, Z, whatever you know, however much bigger the company gets and the more things that you do, I'm just inspired to follow along. So thank you so much for joining us on FounderStory.
- [28:17]
Ryan Matt Reynolds
Thank you so much for having me on the show. Appreciate it.
- [28:24]
Host 1
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