134: Building the Brand: Part 8: For the Committed

In this episode, I share my return to the CEO role in early 2024 and our subsequent moves to refocus and rebuild the brand. I discuss the challenges faced, including the decision to let go of certain staff and product lines, and the importance of maintaining a winning culture. This chapter captures our move back to Texas, the building of a new HQ, and the successful launch of new products, all leading up to the present day in August 2025. CHAPTERS: 00:00 Introduction 01:04 The Return to Leadership 04:50 Chapter Eight: Moving Back to Texas 07:47 Office Reorganization and Fresh Start 15:55 Lessons from Endurance Training 20:20 Pruning for Growth: Necessary Endings 36:32 Key Initiatives for 2024 41:03 Expanding Internationally: UK and iHerb 43:18 Back in Texas: Business and Personal Life 45:48 A Life-Changing Accident 51:21 Building a Winning Culture 58:39 Leading with Heart and Mind 01:03:56 Defining the Vision: Core Values, Purpose, and Goals 01:06:41 Summer of 2025: Achievements and Reflections 01:14:38 Conclusion: Gratitude and Future Outlook ORDER MY BOOK HERE: https://www.amazon.com/Go-One-More-Intentional-Life-Changing/dp/1637746210 FOLLOW: Become a BPN member FOR FREE - Unlock 20% off FOR LIFE https://bpn.team/member IG: instagram.com/nickbarefitness/ YT: youtube.com/@nickbarefitness

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Nick Bare?

  Previously on Building the Brand. At times of chaos, we have to put things back into order. And in this chapter of my life, there was a lot of chaos. And I realized it was my responsibility, it was my doing, to put things back into order. It's never too late to pivot, adjust, adapt, and turn chaos back into order. But in January of 2023, I stepped down from the CEO role. Why? Well, to be honest, I lost confidence in myself. We built the brand in drops, daily deposits, day after day after day for 11 years. And we almost lost the entire brand in 2023 in buckets within months of losing focus. I remember texting my brother, Preston.

• 0:45Nick Bare?

  Hey, man, we're taking this thing back. We're fixing this. And I had this awakening, this epiphany of how do we get to this point where I'm not the CEO anymore? I'm not leading the business. I'm not in Texas. I'm not with a team. We're distracted, we're unfocused. There's nothing else I can do right now other than just start to fix it. So I flew back to Texas, announced I was coming back as CEO and moving back to Texas. Within that next couple of weeks, I was back in the CEO role. Our house was up for sale. We were closing down our Nashville office. Vision is everything. When it comes to brand building, culture, leadership, you will get nowhere without it. You have to realize that your gut and your intuition deserves more credit than you may believe.

• 1:29Nick Bare?

  And have the belief that you can do the thing. Because belief comes before ability. That entire year and a half was the greatest learning lesson that I needed to experience in my 35 almost years of life so far.

• 1:50Nick Bare?

  Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the podcast. This is part of our multi-part series of Building the Brand. This is Chapter Eight.

• 2:05Nick Bare?

  Now, the last episode being chapter seven, there was a lot in chapter seven of our Building the Brand series. This was a hard chapter, but also a very necessary chapter. I learned a lot during chapter seven of Building the Brand, as I've shared in the episode. Again, if you are just coming across this episode for your first time over the last year plus, I have been breaking down in chapter segments, chapter one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, now eight.

• 2:52Nick Bare?

  The story of VPN, from the beginning of starting the business out of my college apartment in Western Pennsylvania, bootstrapping the brand with a $20,000 loan from the Military Associated Bank, USAA, up until today.

• 3:13Nick Bare?

  And I share stories and lessons and the experiences,

• 3:19Nick Bare?

  the hard, the easy, the wins, the losses, all of it.

• 3:25Nick Bare?

  So if you're just coming across this episode, it being chapter eight, I highly recommend go back and listen to all of the episodes from chapter one up until this one, and it really lays out the whole story and journey of building this organization, Bear Performance Nutrition, over now the last 13 years. August, actually, is when I started the business, August 2012, so we just celebrated 13 years officially. 13 years. That's wild.

• 4:08Nick Bare?

  I mean, still just thinking of that, like building something, being committed and dedicated to something for 13 years, and seeing the fruits of the labor, the time, the energy, the resources, the investment, and then the compounding.

• 4:32Nick Bare?

  Growth in return of that has been so rewarding. It has changed my life. It has changed many other lives as well. And I'm extremely grateful for the opportunity in guidance. And your guys' support along the way. Now, this next chapter.

• 4:53Nick Bare?

  Chapter eight. It starts with the move back to Texas.

• 4:59Nick Bare?

  After nine months of living in Tennessee. So we got back to Texas officially, May of 2024. I moved back into the CEO role in January of 2024. So from January to May. We spent trying to sell our house. Find a new place to live in Texas, getting everything wrapped up. That we had in Tennessee in terms of. The office space for the lease that we signed. The new life that we started there, just like.

• 5:31Nick Bare?

  You know, the, the, the ramp off of a big. Cross-country move like that with a family, with a team, with an office space. And I was working remotely as the CEO from January till May until we moved back. So that's where this chapter begins. Moving back to Texas, May of 2024. And it ends today. At the time of recording, August of 2025, in our new HQ.

• 6:03Nick Bare?

  Now.

• 6:05Nick Bare?

  This is the first chapter of this Building the Brand series. That brings me and us to present day.

• 6:13Nick Bare?

  This series is not over after this episode. But we won't see. An installment of the Building the Brand series potentially for. Years to come. We have to wait until. There's more experiences and lessons learned. And stories, which takes time.

• 6:35Nick Bare?

  But Chapter 8 brings us to today. August 2025 in our new HQ in Round Rock, Texas. The lessons learned in this chapter. The concepts are few, but the methods are many.

• 6:56Nick Bare?

  Prune the roses and prune them consistently. Minimize your key initiatives. If you can understand someone's incentives, you can predict their behaviors. Lead with the heart and the mind. And never choose growth over durability.

• 7:21Nick Bare?

  Now, like I said, this chapter starts with a move back to Texas. May of 2024.

• 7:30Nick Bare?

  And we picked up right where we left off. What do I mean by that? We picked up right where we left off. To be honest, it felt like the previous 12 to 16 months.

• 7:44Nick Bare?

  Were a dream.

• 7:47Nick Bare?

  As soon as we got back.

• 7:51Nick Bare?

  I made the decision to move some offices around. Rearrange office spaces. For a fresh start type feel.

• 8:04Nick Bare?

  When I got back, I had some apologizing to do to the team. And I took full responsibility and I still take full responsibility that as the founder and leader of the organization of the company.

• 8:19Nick Bare?

  I made some decisions. That were driven by emotion.

• 8:27Nick Bare?

  Were driven by potentially immaturity. Lack of experience.

• 8:36Nick Bare?

  I made decisions because I didn't know how to manage and handle the next chapter, especially with a growing family,

• 8:45Nick Bare?

  because I lost that confidence.

• 8:48Nick Bare?

  And I took and still take full responsibility for things that happened in the company then, people that were hurt, decisions that were made.

• 8:59Nick Bare?

  And that's why when I came back, I wanted it to feel like a fresh start. So we moved offices around. We moved the leadership team to a whole other building because at the time, we weren't in our new HQ.

• 9:16Nick Bare?

  We were operating out of three different buildings and then we had a fourth building that was overflow inventory.

• 9:24Nick Bare?

  So our, our leadership team was in one building along with warehouse space in our gym, in our podcast studio. And then there was another building that was just our brand team. And there was also another building that was our operations team, more warehouse, customer service and fulfillment.

• 9:51Nick Bare?

  And now we're all under one roof.

• 9:54Nick Bare?

  But I decided to move some offices around. So the leadership team moved into a new office space. The brand team moved into an office space.

• 10:02Nick Bare?

  Came in, added some new murals, built out the spaces, added plant walls, pergolas.

• 10:13Nick Bare?

  Me personally,

• 10:17Nick Bare?

  I love building out new spaces.

• 10:22Nick Bare?

  And I love building out spaces because

• 10:26Nick Bare?

  there's an energy that comes from the environment.

• 10:30Nick Bare?

  Now, not everyone is, is fueled in this way. I know some people who can work in a very sterile office space and working environment every day for their entire life and it doesn't bother them. But for me, I am not that way. I can't work in a room with no windows, with no texture, with no color, with no music, with, with no just like

• 10:57Nick Bare?

  vibrant energy.

• 11:02Nick Bare?

  And if you see our new and current HQ that we're in right now, I mean, there's textures everywhere. There's shipload walls and reclaimed wood and murals and art and

• 11:15Nick Bare?

  different color painted or plastered walls and just energy. Like there's depth, there's texture, there's color, there's sound, there's smell. All of these things, in my opinion, add to the environment and the energy and the culture and the feel of a place. It feels alive. You know, I go into a restaurant, for example. Much of my experience in a restaurant is driven by the atmosphere, the environment, the energy there. It's not just the food.

• 11:56Nick Bare?

  If I go into a restaurant and it has a very sterile environment, the food is going to taste very different to me. As opposed to going somewhere that has good music and energy and live plants and textures and art and all of these things. It adds to the senses of the entire experience. So for me, that's one of the reasons I love building out our office space in a warehouse and gym and just our facility overall. So I came back, I made some changes to our office spaces.

• 12:34Nick Bare?

  That fresh start feel.

• 12:37Nick Bare?

  And one of the reasons that I say we picked up or I picked up right where we left off is I moved into my old office that I was in from 2020 to 2023.

• 12:49Nick Bare?

  This office for me was where I got some of the most important work done that I contributed to building BPN. Spent a lot of time in that office and this office

• 13:06Nick Bare?

  I then passed down to, at the time, our brand director was Alex Rodriguez. Not the baseball player, uh, different Alex Rodriguez.

• 13:18Nick Bare?

  Which is funny because sometime this one time I was telling somebody that uh our brand director was Alex Rodriguez and they thought that Alex Rodriguez, the baseball player worked for BPN, different Alex.

• 13:32Nick Bare?

  And after I moved out of that office into my new office before we moved to Nashville, Alex took over this office.

• 13:39Nick Bare?

  And then when I moved back in or came back, I moved the leadership team into this space and I took that office space back.

• 13:47Nick Bare?

  And I walked in, I remember that I walked in and I closed the door and on the back of that door, I wrote all over it from 2020 to 2023 in Sharpie marker, different sayings, our goals, mottos, things that were just top of mind. I mean, some of those things that I wrote in that door between 2020 and 2023 ended up being chapters in my book titled Go On More that I launched in June of 2025.

• 14:22Nick Bare?

  Like on that door, it said doubt is only dangerous when you start doubting yourself. And that was a meaningful chapter and section of my book.

• 14:34Nick Bare?

  And that was a significant phrase and motto that changed my life. Doubt is only dangerous when you start doubting yourself.

• 14:47Nick Bare?

  So after getting settled into my old now new office and everyone was in their new working spaces and we had murals back on the walls and we had texture added and we brought some life back to the space.

• 15:03Nick Bare?

  It felt like the previous 12 to 16 months were a dream.

• 15:10Nick Bare?

  I vividly remember sitting at my desk, feeling like it was 2022 again.

• 15:18Nick Bare?

  Thinking, what just happened over the last nearly year and a half?

• 15:27Nick Bare?

  I stepped down from the CEO role. I moved my family and a small creative team to Nashville. We moved back from Nashville to Austin, Texas. And I'm back in my old office space in the CEO role.

• 15:42Nick Bare?

  It felt like it was a dream.

• 15:48Nick Bare?

  As if it almost was. We picked up right where we left off.

• 15:55Nick Bare?

  Yeah, there's a lot of parallels between life as a whole.

• 16:02Nick Bare?

  But in this case, specifically building a business and endurance training. And I can't tell you how many times I've said that. Because it's so true. It's very applicable. Here's what I mean by that. I said that one of the lessons I learned was that the concepts are few, but the methods are many.

• 16:24Nick Bare?

  One of the things I've learned after working with many coaches over the years for different fitness goals, whether that's marathons, ultras, triathlons, bodybuilding competitions, high rocks, all of those things. And looking over many different training programs and plans.

• 16:43Nick Bare?

  I've learned and realized that most protocols are similar, but have some nuance.

• 16:50Nick Bare?

  And that there's a few concepts that work. In all things fitness, there are a few concepts that work. But the methods to achieve those concepts may vary dramatically in many different forms. The concepts are few, the methods are many.

• 17:13Nick Bare?

  In endurance training,

• 17:16Nick Bare?

  we know that in order to build fitness, in order to build endurance,

• 17:22Nick Bare?

  you need consistency,

• 17:25Nick Bare?

  you need progressive overload, we need to increase training volume over time slowly.

• 17:35Nick Bare?

  We might have to incorporate some sort of speed work in there. That could be tempo runs. That could be critical velocity, training on the track. We have our long runs that we do once a week. There's a fueling strategy, there's a recovery plan. These are all, are all concepts that are part of the protocol to build endurance fitness.

• 18:01Nick Bare?

  Now we can go a layer deeper and we can get more specific, you can, you can layer on more specificity based off of the training program or the coach. The methods may change significantly to achieve those concepts. The concepts are few, the methods are many in regards to endurance training. The same thing applies to life, the same thing applies to building a business or building a brand. There's a few concepts that work that are tried and true.

• 18:38Nick Bare?

  And those fundamental principles

• 18:42Nick Bare?

  are applied to leading people, building teams, scaling the size of the business, increasing revenue, maximizing profits, go-to-market strategy for, for new product development.

• 19:01Nick Bare?

  The concepts are few, the methods are many.

• 19:07Nick Bare?

  And that's one of the

• 19:11Nick Bare?

  the realizations that reinstilled confidence in me as the CEO and founder of a BPN.

• 19:20Nick Bare?

  After talking to many founders and executives,

• 19:24Nick Bare?

  one of the things that I learned and realized is that no one has the answers. We're all just figuring it out as we go. As we go, we're all just figuring it out.

• 19:38Nick Bare?

  And there's a few things that work.

• 19:43Nick Bare?

  Like I said, tried and true, but there's many ways to achieve those concepts. And when I realized that,

• 19:51Nick Bare?

  I recognized that I have all the tools and skills and resources that I personally need. That's where that confidence was reinjected

• 20:03Nick Bare?

  to build and scale this business and to lead this team and to be the founder and CEO that I want and need to be for this next chapter. Now it's just experimenting and testing these different methods that are applied to the few concepts.

• 20:20Nick Bare?

  One of the books that I read when I was living in Nashville

• 20:26Nick Bare?

  was called Necessary Endings by Dr. Henry Cloud,

• 20:32Nick Bare?

  which was a book that came to my life at the right time, the right moment, and it just made so much sense. And since then, I've read a bunch of Dr. Henry Cloud's books and I highly recommend them, but especially Necessary Endings. I've shared this book with so many people and most people that I've shared it with have fallen in love with it.

• 20:58Nick Bare?

  And what I want to talk about in regards to that book is the lesson that I learned, prune the roses and prune them consistently.

• 21:11Nick Bare?

  There are benefits of pruning roses, but also unfortunately, there are realities,

• 21:22Nick Bare?

  unfortunate realities of pruning the roses as well.

• 21:28Nick Bare?

  Now, Dr. Henry Cloud uses analogy in his book, Necessary Endings.

• 21:35Nick Bare?

  That makes a lot of sense for some of the things I had to do when I came back as a CEO into the business. The way it's explained, think of a rose bush. With a rose bush, every year you have to prune it.

• 21:51Nick Bare?

  So you come in with clippers and you cut away some of the dead stems and thorns. And even some of the roses that aren't flourishing and growing, they may be too small or they may be dying themselves. So you come in and you prune this bush, you cut away. And when you cut all these dead pieces away, the rose bush looks extremely bare and empty. It might look even dead, but you do this so that the healthy roses, the ones that have potential can grow and flourish.

• 22:33Nick Bare?

  And then you give it a few weeks or months and that rose bush is once again full and beautiful and thriving again. Because you came in and you removed unnecessary parts of the bush that were holding it back and allow it to grow.

• 22:55Nick Bare?

  There's a lot of benefits to pruning a rose bush, but also when it comes to a business, pruning. You know, when you come into a business, you're working on your business, you have to prune consistently. You can't do it one time and forget about it. If you pruned a rose bush one time and never did it again, it would flourish after pruning it. But then shortly after that, it would start growing stems and thorns, and it would have dead roses on it and just unnecessary pieces of that bush that would once again hurt it. It'd be negative consequences to that bush.

• 23:39Nick Bare?

  Same thing goes for your life. Same thing goes for a business. You have to prune, and you have to prune consistently. And there's benefits to pruning. When it comes to business, you can get rid of unnecessary systems. You can get rid of unnecessary or

• 24:03Nick Bare?

  lower-producing products. You can reduce overhead. You can reduce initiatives that shouldn't be initiative, so on and so forth. You can do so much more when you're working on and doing less. You can do more with less, and you become not only more effective, but also more efficient.

• 24:28Nick Bare?

  Pruning facilitates growth and allows the opportunities

• 24:33Nick Bare?

  of value to flourish because they get more attention, they get more resources, they get more time. As a business, when you are focused on less, those things that you are focused on, if they have the attention, if they have the time, if they have the resources, they will explode, or they have the opportunity to explode because you can dedicate more time, resources, and attention to them.

• 25:05Nick Bare?

  The example of this is that we pruned our product line to give more attention to products that were performing better or best. So some of the products we have discontinued in the last year, Endo Pump, which I know a lot of people are upset about, InFocus, Strong Food, and the Field Bar. We have discontinued these products for various reasons. Some of them just weren't very strong performers. And naturally, for a product you have developed, you invested time and energy and money into, you don't want to discontinue a product because you've invested

• 25:48Nick Bare?

  X amount of time. But if it's not working, it's not performing, it's not leading, any time, money, or energy you spend on those products takes away from other better performing products. That's some of the reasons we discontinued InFocus, Strong Food, and the Field Bar. They just weren't our best performers, and we were finding that we were spending time, energy, and resources, money on these products, and it was taking away from other better performing products. Endo Pump is a kind of a different situation. And I explained this in the podcast,

• 26:29Nick Bare?

  but we decided that we wanted to hyper-focus on endurance within VPN. Endo Pump is a product that we launched in 2016, maybe, and it's a bodybuilding pump-enhancing supplement. And it didn't necessarily fit with the vision of VPN moving to the future. And even though that product performed very well, and we sold a lot of it, there was a misalignment between that product, the perception of that product, and what it created for the vision I and we had for the company moving to the future.

• 27:12Nick Bare?

  That's pruning.

• 27:15Nick Bare?

  You know, we pruned the product line so that other products could flourish and that our vision maintained clear internally and externally. But there's also unfortunate realities of pruning as well.

• 27:34Nick Bare?

  And I was hesitant to share this, I'll be honest. But I'm going to because it was, for me at least, a significant part of this chapter. One of the hardest things you have to do as a founder, as a CEO, as a boss, as a manager, someone who leads people, is letting people go.

• 28:00Nick Bare?

  That is, that is hard. And it doesn't get easier. It's really hard decisions. But it's sometimes the hard decisions that are the right decisions for both the company and the individual.

• 28:20Nick Bare?

  When I came back, moved into the CEO role, we and I had to let go a significant amount of people

• 28:31Nick Bare?

  the 18 months following my return after reassuming the CEO role again. For a few different reasons.

• 28:41Nick Bare?

  Again, prune and prune consistently. There are benefits, but there are also unfortunate realities. And this is some of those unfortunate realities.

• 28:53Nick Bare?

  We had to let go people for a few reasons. One of those reasons is that we didn't need the roles any longer. As we improved our focus and reduced our initiatives, some of the roles that we hired for previously, we just didn't need anymore.

• 29:17Nick Bare?

  Some of those roles weren't aligned with the key initiatives, the new key initiatives that we laid out and selected.

• 29:25Nick Bare?

  For some people, they just weren't culture fits any longer for the organization.

• 29:33Nick Bare?

  They didn't believe in what we were building. They didn't contribute to the mission and the energy and the culture and what we were all about.

• 29:45Nick Bare?

  And in some cases, the company outgrew the individual's ability, which those are some of the hardest unfortunate realities of pruning. You know, when someone has been with the business for a long time and it's been extremely loyal and dedicated and committed.

• 30:05Nick Bare?

  And when the business outgrows their skills and ability, those, in my opinion, are the hardest decisions to make. The ones that you really don't have to, or you don't want to, but you have to.

• 30:24Nick Bare?

  And one of the things that we learned, or at least I learned in EOS. So we implemented EOS, which is the Entrepreneurial Operating System, a few years ago. We don't today still fully adopt all the principles of EOS, but we, we still hold on to certain parts of it.

• 30:49Nick Bare?

  EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System. If you're curious, there's two books to read. One is Traction. The other one is Rocket Fuel by Gina Wickman. It explains this entrepreneurial operating system that you can implement into your business that I believe is extremely beneficial. And like I said, we used to have it fully implemented and now we just keep bits and pieces within that we have found worked for us. But one of the things that we learned in EOS is right person, right seat.

• 31:23Nick Bare?

  So when you build out your business organizational structure, you don't build it out based off the people you have on the team. You build it out based off what roles you need for your goals, for your mission, for your vision, to execute all of those things to get to where you want to be. What are the rules? What does that organizational structure look like? And then you look at your team and you say, do I have the right person in the right seat? Are there seats that need to be filled? Do we need to go higher? Do we have the right seat, but the wrong person? And if we have the right seat, but the wrong person, do we have someone on the team already that can fill that seat?

• 32:09Nick Bare?

  That there can be a match?

• 32:13Nick Bare?

  But unfortunately, even if you have the right person, but that seat doesn't exist any longer, or a seat doesn't exist for them.

• 32:23Nick Bare?

  What I learned in EOS, which is hard, but it's true.

• 32:29Nick Bare?

  You cannot create a seat for somebody.

• 32:35Nick Bare?

  It doesn't help either the organization or them. And I had to learn this the hard way. One of the mistakes I made over my career of building a business is even when I recognize that an individual who was a great person, hard worker, contributed. If they were in a role and that role wasn't needed for the next chapter, I would create a role for them to keep them around.

• 33:07Nick Bare?

  And sometimes by doing this, they're being underutilized. They're not growing personally or professionally. They're not being challenged. You're just keeping them around because you love them and you care for them. And they match the core values and they believe in the mission. But just creating a role for them to keep them around doesn't help them grow.

• 33:36Nick Bare?

  And it's holding them back. And as hard as some of these conversations can be and were over these last 18 months of unfortunately having to let a significant amount of people go.

• 33:52Nick Bare?

  I believe it is best for both parties. And it is a disservice to an individual

• 34:02Nick Bare?

  to put them in a position where they can't grow personally and professionally.

• 34:07Nick Bare?

  Now, one of the reasons we, we and I had to let a significant amount of people go over the last 18 months. The main reason was because the business moved into a new category of growth in size and scale. And what the company needed and needs for this next chapter is experience, is skill, is a more specific area of expertise.

• 34:40Nick Bare?

  And, and that's where I found is one of the more and most

• 34:45Nick Bare?

  and has been one of the most challenging parts of, of building a company from the ground up, bootstrapping. You know, when you first get started, you need generalists.

• 34:58Nick Bare?

  You just need people who, who believe in what you're doing and want to be a part of. And you're not making much money, so you can't pay much. And they don't have to have experience, but they just have to believe. And that works for a while.

• 35:13Nick Bare?

  And eventually you start scaling and growing. You get to a point where you're making more money, you're generating, generating more revenue and profits. And you can reinvest back in the company. And one of the best places to reinvest back into a company is the people. So you start hiring people with more experience and skill and specific training and experience to contribute to where you're trying to get to.

• 35:41Nick Bare?

  And then there's another phase after that, where you realize you need more specific skill.

• 35:49Nick Bare?

  You need specialists. And the generalists might not be best suited for the next chapter.

• 35:59Nick Bare?

  Those are hard conversations to have, some of the hardest.

• 36:04Nick Bare?

  But I believe

• 36:08Nick Bare?

  any good leader will make those decisions for the individual, for the team, and for the organization as a whole. But that was one of the realities of these last 18 months, the realities of pruning, as Dr. Henry Cloud explains in his book Necessary Endings. So when I got back, I sat down with Josh Hawley, our CFO and COO, and we laid out our key initiatives for 2024. And we had four of them. The first was get the brand back on track and have continuity with performance marketing.

• 36:54Nick Bare?

  So at the time, the brand was unfocused. The brand was still strong, but it needed to be refocused, realigned. And the focus that we provided was three things. Performance endurance, go one more, and for the committed.

• 37:18Nick Bare?

  That is what people should feel when they think of, and view, and watch, and purchase from, and support BPN. Bear Performance Nutrition is performance endurance. It is go one more, and is for the committed.

• 37:36Nick Bare?

  And at the time, our performance marketing strategy looked very different from our organic social strategy.

• 37:44Nick Bare?

  So our brand, organic social, video, photo, look, feel, DNA, it had alignment. But our performance marketing strategy took a different approach. And we were testing all these different types of UGC or user-generated content trends. What some of these agencies that we were working with at the time were telling us were best practices for performance marketing. And we went with the approach, brand back on track, continuity with performance marketing, our performance marketing, our ads, if you will, that we run on social, YouTube,

• 38:29Nick Bare?

  connected TV, Google, wherever we're running performance marketing, it should look and feel just like our organic social does.

• 38:39Nick Bare?

  That was one of our key initiatives. Second was build a winning culture, which I'll get into. Third, finalize our current and long-term office solutions. Because at the time, early 2024, we were operating out of those four buildings. And we knew that our lease was coming to an end. We were also outgrowing that current space and we needed a long-term office solution, which now has landed us in our 76,000 square foot facility, all under one roof. And our fourth key initiative was an initial launch into the UK.

• 39:20Nick Bare?

  We know and we knew that we had a huge international audience and that we weren't serving them to the best of our ability. We have a long-term approach to international distribution. And we initially wanted to pursue the UK. We have a huge audience in the UK.

• 39:43Nick Bare?

  And there's a, there's a few different ways to approach international distribution. You can bring on a partner, you can work with different wholesalers. But what's interesting about dietary supplements, nutritional supplements, is that every country in different territories have their own guidelines and regulations based off of the way that you can use copy on packages, claims, different ingredients, different dosages of ingredients. Supplement fax panels and nutrition fax panels look different by country and region and territory.

• 40:22Nick Bare?

  And we knew that the UK was going to be a big strategy and meaningful opportunity for us in the future. So we didn't want to just work with a distributor and sell our current products because there are legalities there.

• 40:42Nick Bare?

  You can get away with it, but it's not the best approach, in our opinion. If we're going to do something, we're going to do it right. The hard right over the easy wrong. So we've been working for a long time now to launch in the UK. And as of today, we have a handful of our products on Amazon UK. So if you are a UK customer, you can buy a handful of our products. Electrolytes, Go gels, Go bars, flight creatine on Amazon UK. Over the next couple of months, we will have more of our products on Amazon UK. Also, if you're an international VPN customer,

• 41:25Nick Bare?

  you can buy our products on iHerb. iHerb serves most of our international customers and they are our primary international supplier and distributor. So if you're international, go to iHerb. But also if you're in the UK, you can buy on Amazon. So over the last

• 41:50Nick Bare?

  18 months, we've been working with UK counsel. So we have UK lawyers. We have UK manufacturers for our products, UK compliance. We've jumped through all the hoops and we've crossed our Ts and dotted our Is twice to ensure that we are launching in the UK as compliant and as responsible as possible for this to be a meaningful distribution platform for us.

• 42:28Nick Bare?

  We made that happen. You know, we've made the initial launch in the UK. It's going to be more meaningful over the years. But that was our fourth key initiative for 2024. And just three months after moving back to Texas, baby Nico was born. August 10th, 2024. It's crazy because my daughter's birthday is July 15th. Then my birthday is August 1st and then my son's is August 10th. So three of our birthdays all happened within a month. And then Steph's is April 22nd, so she's gone to the outlier. But me and Charlie and Nico, we all just celebrated our birthdays. Charlie's three, I'm 35, Nico's one.

• 43:14Nick Bare?

  Happy belated birthday to my beautiful children.

• 43:18Nick Bare?

  But just a few months after moving back to Texas, we were in the full swing of everything.

• 43:24Nick Bare?

  I mean, as soon as we got back, it was hit the ground running and running nonstop. The business got back on track very quickly. We were growing, we were scaling, we were becoming more profitable by the month. BPN was truly thriving. We really hit our stride.

• 43:48Nick Bare?

  I was in the middle of a high rocks prep and YouTube series. I was wrapping up my, my book titled Go One More. I mean, in the editing process, literally, we were in the hospital. Steph was getting ready to, to give birth to Nico and I was trying to wrap up the editing process of my book in the hospital to turn in the manuscript. Because there were deadlines that I had to hit. And Nico came a, a little early. Like he was like two, two weeks early, two to three weeks early. Um, so I kind of like laid out my timeline of I have to have this book turned in, the manuscript completed for when Nico was supposed to be born.

• 44:30Nick Bare?

  He was born early, so I'm in the hospital trying to get this manuscript done to turn into the, the publisher and the editors. So that when Nico was born, we could just be with family for a little bit. At this time, we were in a rental house while we were waiting for our, our house to be finished. Uh, we came across a house when we got back to Texas. And it was like 60% completed. It was a house that got started and then abandoned. And the builder started it and there were some issues with the builder's company and the whole project was abandoned. There was this house we found that was sitting for about two years. So we found a new builder to finish it out for us.

• 45:13Nick Bare?

  And while we were waiting for that home to be done, we were living in a rental off of a very busy road in Georgetown, Texas. And as many of you probably know, during this just crazy season of life, back in the full swing of everything, business is thriving, newborn baby at home, just finished a high rocks prep and YouTube series, building on a house, getting ready to move into our new HQ and, and finish up that project. I was running one morning.

• 45:53Nick Bare?

  Off this main road from the house you're renting. I got hit by a car while I was running. I know, just like threw that out of nowhere potentially, but I, I feel like I had to include this in this chapter because it was a life-changing experience.

• 46:10Nick Bare?

  I've shared the story a few times, but it was, it was one morning in December 2024. It was shortly after finishing up, uh, High Rocks Dallas. And every morning from this rental, I ran my average eight to 10 mile run every morning on these back country roads and through neighborhoods, but to get there, I had to be on this main road for about a mile.

• 46:39Nick Bare?

  And the speed limit there was 60 miles per hour. There's a, a short shoulder. Uh, cars would fly there. I'd be running there around 5:00 AM. It was sketchy, but I knew it was only a mile. And I just had to stay on there for a mile to get to the,

• 46:58Nick Bare?

  the, um, the back country roads that I would run on.

• 47:04Nick Bare?

  And I did a whole podcast episode on this that goes into detail. So I'll spare you, spare you all the details, but, uh, for broad strokes,

• 47:14Nick Bare?

  I was running. I crossed the road at the wrong time. I was on the other side, running with traffic because I was trying to get to a larger part of the shoulder. Next thing I know, I see the lights on my feet. I hear the screech of tires and I feel the impact of this car hit me as it's going 60 miles per hour. And next thing I know, as I was hit on the right side of the road,

• 47:43Nick Bare?

  I come to, as I'm on the left side of the road, stand up, in shock,

• 47:50Nick Bare?

  realizing I just got hit by a car.

• 47:54Nick Bare?

  And I survived. I'm alive.

• 47:59Nick Bare?

  The person who hit me ended up driving off and someone else stopped and took me back to my home. And after the shock wore off, all the pain kicked in. Steph took me to the hospital. We got scans and checks and we had some stitches and I was bleeding all over the place and couldn't walk for, or couldn't walk well for a few weeks. Um, because the tire went up the back of my left leg. I mean, I had really bad burns from the tire.

• 48:30Nick Bare?

  But that was a wake up call for me. That was a wake up call of, uh, slow down.

• 48:39Nick Bare?

  Recognize what you have been given. Be grateful.

• 48:45Nick Bare?

  Don't take it for granted.

• 48:48Nick Bare?

  Because you can lose everything

• 48:52Nick Bare?

  in a second's notice.

• 48:56Nick Bare?

  That shook me up a lot. And that put my entire life into perspective.

• 49:03Nick Bare?

  I remember that night. The night it happened. And I was giving Charlie a bath within our bedtime routine. Steph was putting Nico down. And I'm just looking at Charlie thinking, if I would have died by getting hit by that car earlier that morning.

• 49:23Nick Bare?

  And Charlie was asking Steph as she was giving her a bath that night, where's dad? And Steph had to tell Charlie, dad's not here. Something happened. The thought of her realizing that, having to live a life without a father crushed me.

• 49:43Nick Bare?

  Crushed me.

• 49:46Nick Bare?

  It put my priorities, it put life, it put the speed at which I was living. The rush at which I was moving.

• 50:02Nick Bare?

  It provided a lot of just context into

• 50:06Nick Bare?

  everything. It was transformational, for sure. And um, I believe I needed that wake up call. Because from the moment I landed back in Texas and reassumed the CEO role, it was go, go, go. I was busy, I was rushed.

• 50:31Nick Bare?

  But I was doing it to myself. And I felt like I had a lot of momentum to make up for, a lot of ground to regain.

• 50:44Nick Bare?

  And after hitting hit by that car and realizing that everything could have been gone that day, it shifted my perspective on, on life and what matters. And the speed and intensity and intentionality at which I want to operate moving forward. But I needed that wake up call. I did. You know, one of the things I've learned in these last 18 or so months.

• 51:13Nick Bare?

  And it's a reoccurring theme in all of the building the brand episodes.

• 51:21Nick Bare?

  Is that people matter.

• 51:24Nick Bare?

  The people matter the most. Something I wrote down here is that culture isn't maintained by leadership. It is maintained by the people, the entire team.

• 51:39Nick Bare?

  You know, one of those reoccurring themes is you can go fast alone, but you can go so much further together if you have the right people. So one of those key initiatives in 2024 was to build a winning culture. What is a winning culture?

• 51:56Nick Bare?

  I think it can be defined differently for different businesses or organizations or people, individuals. But for me, a winning culture is a team and culture that is committed. It is bought into the mission that truly believes it. They don't just say or tell themselves, I believe in this. No, they believe. They believe to their core in what the organization, what the team is working to accomplish. The vision and the mission. Truly committed. That, that is a, a key component of winning culture.

• 52:38Nick Bare?

  They understand the vision as well as where and why they are striving to get there. They are selfless. They are humble. They are hardworking. They are dedicated. They are coachable.

• 52:57Nick Bare?

  That is what makes up a winning culture. It is the people.

• 53:02Nick Bare?

  You need strong leaders in a business. But strong leaders alone cannot make up a winning culture. It is everyone. From the people who sit in the C-suite. From the people who have been there for 13 years. For the people who have been there for 13 days. For the people who have been there for 13 hours. Everyone contributes to the winning culture and having one person.

• 53:32Nick Bare?

  Who doesn't fit, who doesn't believe. Who isn't committed, who isn't humble. Who isn't hardworking, who isn't coachable. Who isn't selfless, who isn't dedicated. Having one person, the wrong person on that team will erode the winning culture. I know because we've experienced it.

• 53:53Nick Bare?

  If you have one person

• 53:56Nick Bare?

  who wants to take away or erode that winning culture, it will happen. One of the best things I ever heard was that you need A players on your team.

• 54:10Nick Bare?

  That was one of our key initiatives for 2025, A players only.

• 54:17Nick Bare?

  If you have a B player or a C player,

• 54:24Nick Bare?

  it will lower the expectations, the stakes, the accountability of all of the A players.

• 54:36Nick Bare?

  If you have a C player,

• 54:41Nick Bare?

  it brings the expectations, the standards, lower for everyone.

• 54:49Nick Bare?

  Setting the bar so high, setting the standard so high, and then working to hold that standard is not an option, is absolutely essential, it is critical.

• 55:01Nick Bare?

  I said that one of the lessons I learned in this chapter is that if you can understand someone's incentives, you can then predict their behaviors. This is something that I heard initially from Donald Miller, who's one of my favorite authors and speakers and entrepreneurs.

• 55:20Nick Bare?

  And I found it to be so true. If someone is truly just incentivized by money or notoriety or building their resume or

• 55:36Nick Bare?

  power, their behavior will reflect that.

• 55:44Nick Bare?

  Now, you might be able to say, you know, well, everyone is motivated by different things. And that is completely true, and that is completely okay. But as a leader of an organization,

• 55:55Nick Bare?

  you have to recognize that.

• 55:58Nick Bare?

  That, yeah, people are motivated by different things, but that will shift the culture of an organization. If half the people are just motivated, they're only there for the money, the notoriety, as something they can put on their LinkedIn or their resume, and they don't believe in the mission, they don't believe in the culture, they don't believe in what you're trying to accomplish or who you're trying to impact, that will take away from the culture. Their behaviors will reflect that. And vice versa, if you have people who are on the team for the right reason, they want to create impact, they want to help people, they want to save lives, they want to create products that help people reach their goals.

• 56:45Nick Bare?

  Their behaviors will reflect those incentives.

• 56:52Nick Bare?

  So there's not necessarily a right or wrong. It's not what I'm saying. But it is.

• 56:58Nick Bare?

  What kind of culture are you trying to build and establish?

• 57:03Nick Bare?

  And when you identify that, you can then go hire people based off of their personal incentives. And you can know that their behaviors that they

• 57:16Nick Bare?

  practice

• 57:18Nick Bare?

  will be reinforced by those incentives.

• 57:25Nick Bare?

  It's one of the best ways to hire.

• 57:28Nick Bare?

  Hire based off of incentives and you can then predict the behaviors, which ultimately determines your culture of an organization.

• 57:40Nick Bare?

  Winning cultures win.

• 57:44Nick Bare?

  They don't consistently lose.

• 57:47Nick Bare?

  Winning cultures win. Winning cultures are also led by example.

• 57:53Nick Bare?

  People who lead by example, people who lead winning cultures, they don't just tell the team. They don't just tell their departments

• 58:04Nick Bare?

  what to do or how to do it. They show them the right way, the only way,

• 58:13Nick Bare?

  the example, show, don't tell. That is something we've said for years now here at BPN. And I can't reiterate how important that is. Show, don't tell. We apply that to leading teams, building business, creating content, documenting these, these preps, these stories. Show, don't tell. So one of the lessons that I learned was that you need to lead with the heart and the mind.

• 58:47Nick Bare?

  And as I was thinking about this, something that came to mind was that brand building is all about leadership, leading. And one of the things that I've known forever, but that has been reinforced, I don't want to say forever, I've known for a long time, but that's been reinforced over these last 18 months is to lead with the heart and mind, the heart and the mind.

• 59:16Nick Bare?

  As a consumer brand,

• 59:20Nick Bare?

  especially around performance nutrition, performance endurance, health, wellness, recovery, there's two aspects of building a brand and something that we are always trying to straddle and that we are mindful of.

• 59:37Nick Bare?

  There is the mind that requires education and knowledge, how our products are made, why we source certain ingredients, why we utilize specific dosages of certain ingredients,

• 59:54Nick Bare?

  what the consumer can expect from the product, those ingredients, how to use it, when to use it, why to use it, all of those things is educating the mind.

• 1:00:07Nick Bare?

  That is a very important aspect of a consumer focused brand, especially in our space.

• 1:00:17Nick Bare?

  But that's about 50% of what we need to focus on. The other 50%, if not more, is leading with the heart.

• 1:00:26Nick Bare?

  That's the brand mission, that's the story we share, it's the content we create. It is emotional connection with a community, a consumer, a customer.

• 1:00:39Nick Bare?

  I think the best brands in the world do a really good job at leading with the heart and the mind in mind.

• 1:00:51Nick Bare?

  It is educational, it is value, it is the what, it is the why, it is the how.

• 1:00:58Nick Bare?

  But then there is the emotional connection component that is just as critical. That is the brand component, the living, breathing DNA of Go On More, of For The Committed, of Endurance Performance.

• 1:01:16Nick Bare?

  There's a reason that thousands of people have Go One More tattooed on their body.

• 1:01:21Nick Bare?

  It's because it means something to people. It's changed lives.

• 1:01:26Nick Bare?

  It's an emotional connection. It is real. It's not fabricated.

• 1:01:32Nick Bare?

  It is not intentionally founded to sell product. It means something. It means something to us. It means something to you. It means something to the consumer. It means something to our community. Lead with the heart and the mind.

• 1:01:53Nick Bare?

  I've brought this up so many different times, but it's, it's very applicable to this chapter is because I read this book during this chapter. And that is BE 2.0, Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0.

• 1:02:11Nick Bare?

  This book changed everything for me. Because prior to this, I didn't clearly define the vision that I had up in my head to the team, the organization. I would speak about it freely and openly, frequently, but I never wrote it down. I never clearly defined it so that a team could create strategy and tactics based off of the vision that I had up in my head. And when I clearly defined the vision based off what I learned in chapter four of this book, BE 2.0,

• 1:02:52Nick Bare?

  I believe it made a big difference in the entire organization. Because everyone then knew what we were working towards and what we were trying to achieve and why.

• 1:03:03Nick Bare?

  And a vision is made up of three components, core values, purpose, and goals. The way that Jim Collins explained this, core values and purpose should not change more than once every 100 years and goals are 10 to 25 year targets.

• 1:03:19Nick Bare?

  So I'm going to share this with you guys of what I documented and shared with the team. So that we can be more consistent in our messaging. We can be more consistent in our decisions. We can be more consistent in the strategies and the tactics that we create to accomplish our goals. So if we're presented with an opportunity. If it doesn't align with these core values, purpose and goals, we say no to it. It's an easy no. So we say no to a whole lot more things. But when we say yes, we know that yes is aligned with what we're trying to accomplish. So here's how I defined our vision based off of core values, purpose and goals and share this with the team. Our core values.

• 1:04:03Nick Bare?

  We share stories of incredible human achievement. We are a brand for the committed, those unwavering in the pursuit of their goals, never accepting mediocrity. We hold ourselves to the same standard we expect from our customers, athletes and partners. We are consistently good rather than occasionally great. We believe in hard work. We will never sacrifice profitability for growth. We have hard conversations. We are professional and treat everyone with respect regardless of how they treat us. We lead, but we also listen.

• 1:04:37Nick Bare?

  Product quality will never be sacrificed for profit. We take care of our people and treat them like family. Our brand will never be eroded in the process of growth, scale and expansion. We are resourceful, spending as little as necessary to achieve the outcomes we desire. We are problem solvers. Purpose. Help people realize that anything is achievable with hard work, commitment and consistency. And then provide them the fuel, resources and inspiration to do it. Goals. Become the most recognized and respected endurance consumer brand in the world by 2035.

• 1:05:17Nick Bare?

  Sell the most endurance gels in the world by 2035.

• 1:05:24Nick Bare?

  GUM Sport and the extensions of the line to include GUM Sport Plus and RTDs generate $100 million in revenue by 2035. That is $100 million in revenue per year by 2035. Be known as the Apple or Nike of the sports nutrition industry and inspire more runners to be lifters and lifters to be runners.

• 1:05:52Nick Bare?

  Creating that

• 1:05:55Nick Bare?

  that vision statement, which is the combination of heart and mind, I believe made one of the biggest impacts on the business in 2025. And I have to give all the credit to Jim Collins from BE 2.0.

• 1:06:16Nick Bare?

  Because after reading that book, I realized I didn't clearly and have never clearly defined our vision.

• 1:06:23Nick Bare?

  And the team requires that to operate independently from me in a decentralized leadership manner and execute with confidence that they are doing something that is aligned with the purpose, core values and goals of our organization. And now, as we come to the summer of 2025, these last couple of months that we have lived and experienced.

• 1:06:59Nick Bare?

  I would, I would argue

• 1:07:03Nick Bare?

  the most successful summer of BPN history, the most successful couple of months, month stretch of BPN history.

• 1:07:14Nick Bare?

  But it was from the result of just compounding consistency over the years. All of the things that we

• 1:07:24Nick Bare?

  experienced, the projects, the races,

• 1:07:29Nick Bare?

  everything this, this past summer that I'm about to share.

• 1:07:34Nick Bare?

  It was the result of focus and compound inconsistency over 13 years. So none of these things happened because of one decision. None of these things happened because of one month. 13 years have led to all of this.

• 1:07:53Nick Bare?

  So we hosted the Go One More Ultra in May of 2025, which was a viral race.

• 1:08:00Nick Bare?

  Wasn't intended to be a viral race, but it turned into a viral race at Bear Ranch.

• 1:08:06Nick Bare?

  Uh, it was a last man standing style race. Two runners, Kim and Kendall battled it out for 235 miles.

• 1:08:19Nick Bare?

  4.2 mile loop that restarted every hour on the hour until there was one person left. But there were two people left in this case because a wild storm came through and made it impossible to continue the race. So it ended up in a shared win between Kim and Kendall. That film will be released, the Go One More Ultra film, September 5th, 2025. And we'll be launching the Go One More Ultra of 2026, which will be hosted again on Bear Ranch in April of 2026.

• 1:08:59Nick Bare?

  This race went viral for us, in my opinion, because

• 1:09:05Nick Bare?

  over the years, we have chose growth, or excuse me, we have chose durability over growth. So many brands and businesses choose growth over durability. You know, let's make this decision, even though it's not the right brand decision because we're going to. Make a few extra million dollars here, or we're gonna squeeze a few extra points of margin here. We can become a little bit more profitable here. So they make decisions for growth and sacrifice durability. And I believe that the best businesses and brands, and I humbly include BPN in that, continue to grow

• 1:09:49Nick Bare?

  at a healthy rate year over year because we pursue durability over growth. It's a long-term play. We make decisions that set us up for the long term. And one of the reasons I believe the Go One More Ultra went viral in the way that it did, because there have been many other wild, crazy endurance ultra races around the world. There are many last man standing style races or backyard ultras every year.

• 1:10:30Nick Bare?

  But this one went viral for us because of the way the brand has been positioned over the years. The work that we have put into storytelling and documenting our shift to performance endurance over these last 18 months. Everything was kind of primed for us to have this opportunity to experience large-scale awareness and exposure from a race like this. It's because we pursued durability over growth. Also this past summer, I launched my book, Go One More, which became a New York Times bestseller. Very grateful for your guys' support

• 1:11:13Nick Bare?

  on that book. And the book means a lot to me because it's all about how I said in the beginning, "Go one more," those three simple words have evolved for me over time from being just an action to an outcome.

• 1:11:27Nick Bare?

  We moved into our new HQ, 76,000 square foot facility, all under one roof for the first time in years. We have about 15,000 square feet of office space, a 9,000 square foot gym, over 50,000 square feet of warehouse and fulfillment. It's a beautiful space, again, that I'm so grateful and proud of.

• 1:11:48Nick Bare?

  And that's a result of years and years and years of hard work.

• 1:11:54Nick Bare?

  And maintaining profitability. And moving to the space is truly surreal. Watching it being built was

• 1:12:05Nick Bare?

  so rewarding. You know, experiencing the fruits of your labor come together. And not just to watch it happen and experience and have it, but to do it with people that you love and care about significantly.

• 1:12:19Nick Bare?

  And then we launched the future of endurance G1M sport plus.

• 1:12:26Nick Bare?

  Which was our most successful product launched to date and now our best selling product.

• 1:12:33Nick Bare?

  Our best selling product these last two years was G1M sport. Carbohydrates and electrolytes for endurance athletes, fuel and hydration. And we had a very confident feeling that launching a version of that that was caffeinated with no tropics.

• 1:12:51Nick Bare?

  The first pre-workout for endurance athletes on the market.

• 1:12:57Nick Bare?

  We had a hypothesis, I had a hypothesis that it was going to do really well for the brand. And it did. And once people started trying it and experimenting with it and using it for their training. Uh, realizing how good of a product, how great of a product it is. It's performed very well for us and very quickly within weeks became our best selling product. Uh, which is huge for us. The summer of 2025 was was a big win for the team and felt really good. And even more so.

• 1:13:37Nick Bare?

  You know, just moving back to Texas after the move to Tennessee and moving back into the CEO role. All of those decisions, the right and the wrong.

• 1:13:50Nick Bare?

  Being back in the office, leading the team again. Made all of those decisions worth it.

• 1:13:58Nick Bare?

  But then a year later. Having experienced the summer of 2025 that we did.

• 1:14:08Nick Bare?

  Big wins and success, it's great.

• 1:14:13Nick Bare?

  But it's even greater, it's even better, it's even sweeter when you know it's the result of a lot of hard work from a lot of people who have committed

• 1:14:25Nick Bare?

  their professional career to contribute to a mission that was started 13 years prior and is still living and breathing and impacting.

• 1:14:38Nick Bare?

  So that leads us to where we are right now.

• 1:14:44Nick Bare?

  August 2025, Chapter 8 of Bear Performance Nutrition. Thank you guys for following along. Thank you for supporting the brand. Thank you for believing in the mission and the vision. I appreciate you guys. I love you. And as always, don't want more.