Andrew Jackson is the Chief Operating Officer for Barbell Logic Online Coaching and a staff strength and nutrition coach. He has a diverse professional and athletic background with experience integrating strength training into a balanced work, family, and competitive life. He coaches clients from all walks of life and has personally competed in weightlifting, powerlifting, and Strengthlifting.

Andrew grew up playing multiple sports, culminating in three varsity letters as the stroke seat of the Oregon State Men’s Rowing Team, a top ten crew in the country. He also earned Pac-10 First-Team All-Conference and All-Academic honors in 2001. Andrew holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering and a master’s degree in Engineering Management. He served in the US Navy for six years as a Surface Warfare Officer specializing in nuclear power operations. After his military service, Andrew worked as an operations leader and executive in the aerospace and electronics manufacturing industry for ten years.

While his accomplishments are impressive, he has some regrets in hindsight. Andrew chose computer engineering in part because the field was estimated to have the highest starting salary when he was applying to schools. This singular focus on earning potential left him pretty burned out by his senior year. None of his job prospects excited him, so he joined a nuclear engineering program with the US Navy instead.

This six-year journey taught him a lot about leadership. He wanted to learn more about business, so he found a mentor in the manufacturing industry while completing his master’s degree remotely. Most of his time in this industry was spent making supply chains and manufacturing processes as efficient as possible.

Again, Andrew found himself hitting a wall professionally. To move up in the corporate world, you must be willing to do increasingly more things that others don’t want to do: more hours, more travel, more networking. This was starting to wear on him. In contrast, strength coaching—something he had started pursuing in his free time—was exciting and rewarding to him.

Although he found a lot of personal value in coaching, he simply did not have time in his schedule to pursue it as much as he would have liked to. This was when he started thinking about remote coaching online, so a coach could reach more clients on a more convenient schedule. Matt Reynolds asked Andrew to join him in his new online coaching business shortly after this, in November 2016.

By 2018, Andrew was reaching his limit, trying to juggle his corporate job, home life, coaching, and training. He knew this wasn’t sustainable for much longer, so he had a choice to make. He chose to take the plunge (and a pay cut) and pursue coaching full-time.

Since then, there has been a lot of hard work. Andrew applied his wide set of skills to the business of coaching and helped develop a world-class online business with the team at Barbell Logic. In the process, he had a major role in developing the proprietary software platform Barbell Logic uses to serve its clients, which became TurnKey Coach.

There were opportunities in his corporate career to help people, but not like the ones he has found now. Coaching has allowed Andrew to have a meaningful impact on people’s lives and work with other professionals who love what they do. Most people work in jobs because they feel they have to. Andrew is grateful to be able to work in a career that is rewarding for him and help others discover how they can do the same.