WordPress Performance And The Business of Newsletters With Remkus de Vries

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Remkus de Vries, a WordPress performance specialist and strongman athlete, combines technical know-how with a holistic outlook on life and health in this episode of LMScast.

He talks about his curatorial WordPress weekly, Within WP, and his work on performance tools like as Scanfully. Remkus highlights the need to be genuine online in order to encourage feedback and personal development, in addition to fostering connection in a remote work environment that is frequently isolated.

He emphasizes the psychological and physical advantages of strength training and points out that long-lasting habits are formed by constant discipline rather than incentive. He suggests that those who are new to fitness endure whatever discomfort they may experience at first and concentrate on long-term outcomes rather than immediate gratification.

At almost 52, he is still dedicated to strength and health as a means of securing longevity and quality of life, serving as a potent reminder that making an investment in one’s own well-being also entails making an investment in the well-being of people we care about.

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Episode Transcript

Chris Badgett: You’ve come to the right place if you’re looking to create, launch, and scale a high value online training program. I’m your guide, Chris Badget. I’m the co-founder of LifterLMS, the most powerful learning management system for WordPress. State of the end, I’ve got something special for you. Enjoy the show.

Hello, and welcome back to another episode of LMS Cast. I’m joined by a special guest and friend I’ve known around the internet for a long time. I don’t know how long, maybe eight years, something like that. I remember I first shook Rimkus Dev RISE’s hand in, st. Louis, that’s when I first met you in person, I think.

Remkus Devries: Yeah. I could be wrong, 

Chris Badgett: Yeah. But Rimkus is a WordPress performance expert. He is working on some training, a course about that. He also has a tool to help with that called Scan Fully. So go check out scan fully.com. Also, MKU has one of the few news letters that I moved to my primary inbox.

It’s called Within WordPress within wp.com. If you want to keep tabs on what’s going on in WordPress, it’s a great newsletter. We’re gonna get into all that. But first, welcome to show mku. And I pronounce it wrong, it’s D freeze, so it’s you could feel free to correct me if I mess up again, but welcome to the show.

Remkus Devries: Thank you, man. Happy to be here. Yeah. I think the first time is probably more than a decade ago. 

Chris Badgett: Okay. 

Remkus Devries: For 2025. And in 2015 I was aware of you already. I know that for a fact. 

Chris Badgett: One of the things about that I remember at that word camp, I took my brother with me and it was the first time that I noticed, like when I first started going to some events.

I didn’t really know a lot of people, and then all of a sudden I started realizing that creating content, social media, getting out there there’s people watching and listening, and you it’s just a pro tip to get out from behind the computer, get out in the world, share yourself publicly.

But maybe let’s start there. You share your personal life. For example, rems, and correct me if I’m using the wrong term here. I know it’s not bodybuilding. He’s a strong man. Yep. So one of the things I like about REMS is, you can check out social media, you’ll find stuff about performance and WordPress, but you’ll also see him lifting and throwing and carrying heavy things.

So you put your whole self out there. Tell us about your approach to like just being you on the internet. 

Remkus Devries: So I try not to overshare. Let’s start there. But I don’t know, it’s I think there’s I think there’s value for me as well as for whoever tunes, tunes into me. Understanding what the sort of mindset is behind a few of my choices, the things that I do.

Strongman lifting is one of them. But also performance, right? So there’s, for me, it’s not necessarily that I am like thinking about what am I going to share and what’s my story going to be and how am my angles and all that sort of stuff. But I also have realized that if you share, people will listen and people will re will respond and.

Since we are sitting in our offices online Sure. But, very isolated. It’s just my home office now again, my, my, my wife is sitting in front of me for most of the time. Not that alone, but you don’t have any colleagues around you, right? If you want to have some sort of connection and.

I appreciate connections. Then you have to show that you are there, that you’re available, that you have ideas and thoughts, and the more you share, the more feedback you get. And ultimately that leads to growth. And I like growth. I think I. Personal growth, whether that’s done on the professional side of things or the strength side of things, or the mental side of things, all of these things.

I put an effort in. I think they’re important and thus being online for me is a, is essentially a method, a way to do that. 

Chris Badgett: Yeah. Yeah. And since we’re talking about the strength stuff I’m similar in a way that, I do a lot of hiking and running and getting out in nature and it keeps me sane.

And when I see somebody else like you who’s like outside throwing really heavy things over these high bars, I know it helps keep you sane. But tell us about mental health and just the value of exercise and getting outdoors and how you balance life. 

Remkus Devries: The, there, there’s a saying where where the outcome is the more healthy you are in your body, the more healthy you are in your mind.

I think it’s, I think in Latin we say men in corporate Asana, something like that. But the, it’s a symbiotic thing. So the more you are in fact living in your body, less in your mind, the more benefit you’ll see in your mind and vice versa. So it doesn’t matter where you start really. ’cause if you start educating yourself on exercise, you’ll realize that is the one thing to do for longevity, for a better life, for quality, for better sleep, for all of these things.

I discovered this decades ago ’cause I can say that I’m past 50. One of the things I realized that I like going beyond limits that I see or feel and lifting heavy weights. Or carrying heavy weights or doing anything heavy for me is one of those things that absolutely forces me out of my mind.

’cause I can’t be thinking about how many plate. If you want me to see me at my dumbest, like my absolute dumbest, come join me in my strongman gym. I can’t even count what plates I should put on. That’s. It’s just too heavy. So I’ll be slow in 1, 2, 3, 4 times 25 kilos is what now? That’s 200. The bar is 200, so that’s two 20.

Okay, so then I need two more. Like I can’t do that fast. Like I need to do one or the other. The more I started doing that, the better I started feeling. So I was like, this is pretty straightforward, so why don’t I invest in this? And as it so happens, I am genetically predisposed to be stupid strong.

They turned out to be very heavy at the, in the end. 

Chris Badgett: What how many days do you. Workout or get exercise. For me, it’s every day. I’m, it’s all varied. Some days of strength running fast, slow hills flat, but for me, I to do it every 

Remkus Devries: day, yeah, I’ll walk every day. But working out, I have a minimum of three days a week.

But ideally I’m four, maybe five if it depends on the whole bunch of things. I have a home gym, so I have always room to do something. There’s a gym at two kilometers, which is what,