From Strength to Scale: How Ryan Matt Reynolds Built a Fitness Empire to Millions | S2 Ep. 79

0:05Hey, everyone, welcome back to Founder Story. Today we have Ryan Matt Reynolds, which by the way, I like how there's Ryan Reynolds and Matt Reynolds. so you have to go by Ryan Matt Reynolds. 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 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.

0:45So let's start with your story. Ryan Matt Reynolds, what was the spark that got you into entrepreneurship? 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 TV from 2006 to 2010.

1:30So strongman, I did powerlifting first, strongman second. And in that process, I was completing my master's to be a high school principal 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 other strongmen and powerlifters. And we were having 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.

2:06I'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 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 really in bondage to a schedule and a location at the gym. But not just me, my clients were as well. So you had to be there at 5 a.m. Monday, Wednesday, Friday morning, every morning or 4 a.m.

2:45or whatever it was. And so for me, 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 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 didn't use. And so they were also really in bondage to the schedule and location. And it's prohibitively expensive. Personal training is prohibitively expensive 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.

3:22But 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 is redefine what that looks like. And so for most people, when they think online fitness coaching, they think, oh, I'm going to buy a program for 50 bucks or 100 bucks from an influencer, from Instagram model, from a whatever. And so they get 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.

3:58The problem is the program is not specific to you. it doesn't take into account that you can get sick or you can 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 16 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.

4:32And so over the process, at the time, we were one of the largest client or the largest client of the third 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.

5:06So 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 2000 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 very itinerant. They're in Ogden, Utah, Hill Air Force Base, and then they're in San Diego for a year. Then they're in Germany for a year or two. Then they're in Afghanistan for two years.

5:39And so they need to be able to get professional coaching that way. And so we've been able to do that and grow to a mid eight 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 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 and client, which I think that the AI world cannot replace.

6:22while 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 a 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. 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.

6:58And 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 big transitions. We had another guest on named Vern Harnish, and he talks about the transition from$1 million in revenue,$5 million,$10 million,$20 million,$50 million, 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?

7:37Yeah. So, you know, I think the first is 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 or$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 helped accelerate that process. We recognized, again, when COVID shut all the gyms down, we recognized 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 were a third-party software user.

8:16And now our coaches average about$200 per hour, and that's across the board. Well, that's unheard of in the fitness industry. And so we were 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.

8:51And so when we raised our Series A, the most important hire we made was a VP of finance or what is going to be a future CFO position. And we literally went through every expense of the entire year and decided, figured out, where can we trim the fat? And so how do you, it's really a combination of both cutting costs and being really lean or 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 costs in places like marketing and advertising. And how do we reach more people?

9:28And how do we get into the ears of, of more customers, whether that's the, the B2C client or the B2B coach, um, 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 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 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 percent discount. You say, well, I'm going to use them anyway. So why wouldn't I do that?

9:58So, you know, we ended up cutting about in the first maybe month of working with our future CFO. So we cut about$600 ,000 off the expense line. And when you combo that with the growth piece, you just gain profit. And so 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 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.

10:30And as we grew and hit those each of those strata that you talked about, the kind of one million and three million and five 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 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.

11:04They 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.

11:39That'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 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.

12:11But 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 cashflow perspective, it tends to, in the end, grow the company and really and certainly galvanize the company. 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 bootstrap, you had success. And I'm guessing the funding you saw as a way to grow and scale your company further than the success you already had?

12:51Because I think 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 more of a proponent and experience with bootstrapping and creating and then maybe seeing how we can grow in skill. But what were some changes that you had to personally make in terms of like within yourself when you said, okay, I've been 100 % 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. Yeah, that's a great question.

13:28Actually, I've done a ton of podcasts. Nobody's asked me that question. But I think for me, 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, 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.

14:05And 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 and works and now we're just taking it from 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.

14:50And 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 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.

15:20So that really helped. 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 have 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?

16:00We got sued in federal court in 2019. I mean, 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's 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.

16:32Once 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 that 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 eight 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.

17:04And 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 involuntary hardship comes.

17:45So 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, um, 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, but when you realize you need to hire, it's usually already too late.

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19:40And so we didn't, and we came through it and, and, um, you know, we're, we're probably five times the size business that we were back then. So we came through. 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. If I'm looking at this book and I'm about to dive in, what are some things I can expect from reading?

20:17Yeah. 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 recognize 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.

21:06And 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 put those you do the 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 in your schedule open up to focus on the most important things, which are never urgent.

21:50So 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.

22:30And it's been extremely helpful to me because 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.

23:05Well, 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 a part of Forbes Publishing, congratulations. I mean, that's huge. Fastest, pre-sell. 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.

23:40How can they do so? Yeah, absolutely. The personal website is RyanMattReynolds.com. So use it RyanMattReynolds.com. If you want to find out about the business, BarbellLogic.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 YouTube, on podcast. We've got a ton of great written articles and e-books. 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.

24:14If you want to contact me and get ahold of me or find out about the book, RyanMattReynolds.com is a great place to go. 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 Founder Story. Thank you so much for having me on the show. Appreciate it.