The Core Values: Insight Into Barbell Logic Online Coaching’s Culture

By: Matt Reynolds, B.S., M.Ed, CSCS
Owner, Barbell Logic Online Coaching

Our mission is to improve people’s quality of life through online strength and nutrition coaching, to educate and support the finest coaches on the planet, and to provide unsurpassed customer service.

Barbell Logic Online Coaching: Our Core Values

Photo: Heather Cherie

At Barbell Logic Online Coaching, our mission is to improve people’s quality of life through online strength and nutrition coaching, to educate and support the finest coaches on the planet, and to provide unsurpassed customer service. This is the defining standard we’ve set that directs all our activities.

There is no question, our goal is lofty. Being the best at anything means you have to make yourself constantly better, you pursue your goal with single-minded focus, and you hone your focus with the core beliefs that make you the best version of yourself. To meet our goal, we at Barbell Logic have cultivated a set of core values, tenets that create a company-wide culture that helps define us in the industry.

Our challenge has been to create a culture that reflects our personal values and simultaneously respects the different backgrounds, lifestyles, and beliefs of each person who makes this whole thing tick. We are in the business of helping you become stronger. And that is an inherently valuable pursuit no matter who you are. Strength training is about taking control and personal responsibility and making yourself better. Every one of our coaches has gone through the refining process of getting strong. It’s the process that brings us together, and it is the defining characteristic of each of our core values.

I wrote the first version of these core values in 2011 with Andy Frisella. At the time, Andy was an important business mentor of mine, and he really impressed upon me the importance of intentional company culture and core values. I’m forever grateful for the lessons Andy taught me nearly a decade ago. Six years later, when I started BLOC, my core values hadn’t changed. So, I updated them for BLOC and they have been the compass of our company culture since its beginning. In reading them, you’ll notice a strong focus on personal responsibility, taking initiative, and choosing what is right.

These core values are the highest standards of ourselves. Because we believe that if we set the bar high enough, if we are never satisfied with our efforts, we will be always improving. So we work toward practical efficiency and lofty idealism. That is what we ask of ourselves—not perfection, but the constant pursuit of excellence.

Core Values:

Photo: Heather Cherie

We Believe in Who We Are.

We believe in who we are, and we are committed to the pursuit of being the best online coaching provider and strength content producer in the world. We see the big picture, where we are all going and exactly what needs to be done to get there. We believe in the company ideals, including these Core Values, and we live by them both inside and outside of the business. We have no need to speak negatively of our competitors. The belief in our own excellence means that negative speak about other companies is both unnecessary and against our core values.

We Choose What is Right, Over Everything Else.

We choose what is right for the team, our clients, and the company as a whole. Our actions are driven by the importance of “we” not by “I.” Not only that, but we choose “rightly” even when it has nothing to do with the company because we understand that meditating on a challenge and then choosing what’s right builds virtue in us. Choosing what is right means putting the company’s interests, these core values, and our mission above personal preference. In turn, we, as a company, will choose what is right for those to whom we owe a responsibility, our clients and our coaches.

We Strive to Be the Best.

We will strive to be the best we can possibly be at whatever task we pursue. This includes providing unparalleled coaching, customer service, and content for our clients and followers. We know that achieving perfection is impossible, but it’s also the standard that we will always strive to reach, whether in the strength industry or outside of it, as a company or as individuals.

We WOW with Outstanding Service.

Customer service is upholding our promises and exceeding our clients’ expectations. We believe that customer service requires more than striving to be the best coaches on the planet. It means we never settle for meeting our standards, but try to exceed them, every time and with every client. “Customer service” isn’t just something we say, it’s something reflected in our everyday actions.

We Accept Personal Responsibility.

We always accept full responsibility for our actions and performance. Personal responsibility is at the heart of barbell training and at the heart of this company. We own every responsibility and see it through to its completion, never shifting the blame, always taking it fully upon ourselves to make it right. If we are confronted with criticism or correction, we take it as part of a refining process for us – learning a lesson in every confrontation, attack, or awkward conversation. These are the things that make us better.

Photo: Heather Cherie

We Invest in Bettering Ourselves.

We are always learning and striving to better. We are in a never-ending pursuit of knowledge and wisdom, and we focus on things that bring us value over things that rob us of value. We believe in taking the time to learn things on our own, to better ourselves personally, and to improve our performance. We know that learning is essential to growing and that our personal growth and performance have a direct impact on the company’s growth and performance. We are eager to push beyond our own limitations, no matter how uncomfortable it makes us.

We Take Initiative.

We are proactive about fixing problems. We do not wait to be told to do something. Rather, we take initiative. We are internally motivated and look to constantly push ourselves forward and do what needs to be done to succeed. We don’t sit and wait for someone to tell us the next step to take. We anticipate the path, contributing accordingly without needing to be carried. Our work ethic is unmatched: We know how to focus and get things done without getting distracted because we know that improving BLOC any-way-we-can benefits all.

We Build Our Community by Building Relationships.

We work constantly to build the BLOC community, inviting people to participate in this refining process of simple, hard, and effective training. We create an encouraging atmosphere while pushing our clients to succeed in ways that build them up, treating programming and online coaching as one aspect of a positive relationship with clients, and building a community, because inclusiveness and success breed confidence, trust, and respect. It is the relationships with our clients, built on the highest quality coaching service, that set us apart from every other online coaching platform.

Successful businesses and successful people thrive on positive relationships built on real and often transparent daily interactions. We consistently make efforts to build strong relationships with everyone we encounter.

We are enthusiastic about being a part of the team, carrying that passion through to all levels of our performance, both in the online community and in our dealings with others. We believe that our enthusiasm is contagious; we are enthusiastic and excited to help our clients, our team, and the company.

We Are Professional.

We act in a manner that represents BLOC well. We are role models as coaches and lifters, so we prioritize our health and strength. We are punctual and always respond to client needs in a timely manner. We are always respectful and never react emotionally or compulsively, acting instead with patience, logic, and wisdom. We are disciplined in our life both inside and outside the gym; self-motivated to stay on task and get the job done; and focused on the company and its progress, from the big picture all the way down to the minute details of every task we take on. We are strong enough to hold ourselves accountable, and we can be relied on to consistently get the job done above the expectation set for us.

These core values are the first thing any BLOC Coach reads when he or she joins our family, because coaching at BLOC isn’t a job: It’s a lifestyle where we get to help make our clients stronger and change their lives for the better every single day.