Creating Purpose: Barbell Logic owner pens book on pursuing a value-driven life

With over 15 years of experience as an entrepreneur in the fitness industry, including nearly a decade as owner and CEO of his online-based business, Barbell Logic Inc., Matt Reynolds knows his way around a gym. However, he took on a new challenge this year to become a first-time author.

His debut book, “Undoing Urgency,” stems from a desire to help people pursue a value-driven life by decluttering to-do lists, while boosting productivity in and out of the workplace. Reynolds said writing the nearly 230-page book set to be published Dec. 10 by Forbes Books, the book publishing arm of Forbes Media, stemmed from a desire to codify his thoughts about the need to take greater control of time and stop drowning in urgency.

“Business ownership has taught me a lot, not just in business but in life. I’ve probably learned more from my mistakes than my successes,” he said, noting the content that became the book was “taking up bandwidth” in his head.

“I was sort of preaching to myself what I needed to do,” he said. “I can get caught up in urgency and being overwhelmed and kind of drown in urgency and lose my focus on the important things that matter in life.”

Reynolds said Barbell Logic, which provides strength, nutrition and fitness coaching, completed a $4 million capital raise goal in April. That included an initial $2.3 million Series A funding round that closed last year, according to past Springfield Business Journal reporting. Reynolds said the company’s valuation after the capital raise is roughly $40 million.

Like last year’s capital funding, he said angel investors were the focus for the remaining $1.7 million. The one exception was from an investment round by the Missouri Technology Corp. Reynolds declined to disclose the total.

A January news release noted Barbell Logic was among seven companies that MTC approved for equity-based investments totaling $2.2 million. Jenni Rabenau, marketing and communications strategist with MTC, said the organization doesn’t disclose the individual amounts awarded to companies for its investment program. MTC Executive Director Jack Scatizzi didn’t respond to a request for comment about Barbell Logic by press time.

Reynolds previously told SBJ the main use of the funds is for investing more in TurnKey Coach, its proprietary software platform, through marketing, advertising and social media.

Pulling weeds
Where years ago, Reynolds said people would respond “good” when asked how things were going, the much more common response now is “busy.”

“How do we pull the weeds on the urgent things that are not important so that we can focus on the things that are most important and almost never urgent?” he said, noting he drew inspiration from “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey. “Things like family and fitness and health and faith. That’s even me being a CEO of the company and working on the business and not in the business, not drowning in the urgency of the day-to-day tasks. And so that’s really where the concept of the book came from.”

The book hopefully will help not just business owners but anyone who struggles to manage their time wisely, Reynolds said, noting he still occasionally falls into that category.

“These are the time-wasters; this is binge-watching Netflix or playing video games or just doomscrolling social media or whatever,” he said. “And those things should be eliminated, purged from your life, especially if you’re trying to focus on the things that are important and that matter.”

In the early days of Barbell Logic, the team consisted of Reynolds and 40 contractor coaches, who depended on the business to bring in clients, process payments and distribute commissions. He did the payroll himself, and it became more of a frustrating task as the company grew. Reynolds said he eventually pulled the weed that had become too time consuming and hired an outside company to handle payroll.

“Many of the things that are urgent and important, which is where most business owners get caught up in, that’s where I can get caught up in. It’s the everyday tasks that you have to do at the business,” he said, noting some should be eliminated or delegated. “It’s the deadlines, it’s the emails, it’s the Basecamp project notifications, it’s the phone calls, it’s the podcasts.”

Doing so requires people to identify the weeds of urgent things in their lives, he said.

“You have to look at all your tasks and you have to say, what are the things that are really urgent but are not really important? And I just need to pull these weeds,” Reynolds said. “I either need to pull them and literally throw them away, or I need to pull them and give them to somebody else.”

Hard things
Barbell Logic, which has 22 full-time employees and around 60 contract workers, was founded in 2016 as Starting Strength Online Coaching. The home-based venture has 300 additional coaches that license the company’s TurnKey Coach software and are self-employed workers. While Reynolds declined to disclose current revenue, the company was on pace late last year to reach near $3.7 million as it added business-to-business and government sectors, according to past reporting.

Prior to Barbell Logic, he formerly owned Strong Gym LLC in Springfield – now named Royal Barbell – with business partners Paden Stringer and William McNeely from 2008-2015. Reynolds shared in the book that while he was a successful business owner, an educator who had completed a master’s degree and well liked, he was a mess inside during a few of those years.

“There was infidelity in my marriage on my part, and a lot of failures. I think when you write a book that you’re trying to teach people wisdom, then it is better accepted when they see you as actually human,” Reynolds said, noting he and his wife were able to save the marriage.

Inspiration came from “The Hard Thing About Hard Things,” which Reynolds said is not only his favorite business book but is the most cathartic one he’s ever read. In it, author Ben Horowitz offers practical advice on managing difficult situations in business, including laying off employees, handling investor relationships and making tough decisions.

“It’s actually the process of the failing and the success and all of it together that’s in the humanity to me that makes the process beautiful and also something that I can relate to,” he said.

“It’s very easy in a book to paint the same sort of picture that people paint in social media where they pretend they live this perfect life and there is no downfall,” Reynolds said. “Without the downfalls and without the stresses and the falling flat on your face and all of those things, then I don’t think we can enjoy the good as much. The good is better because of the times that were bad. And so, I told both in the book.”

While a second book isn’t on the horizon yet, Reynolds said Barbell Logic is growing. The company was given a renewal in August to a $1.25 million federal contract it was awarded in early 2023 to work with the U.S. Air Force. The program uses TurnKey Coach and private online strength and health coaching to help improve physical fitness assessment scores of airmen and reduce nonbattle injuries. The initial contract was to train roughly 500 through the project, which lasted around 18 months.

Both contracts were earned through the Small Business Innovation Research program, for which the U.S. Small Business Administration serves as the coordinating agency, according to past reporting.