103: Answering Your Business Questions | BPN Q&A

For this episode, I decide to take a different approach and use my entrepreneurial journey to address business questions sourced from Instagram about the path of building my company, BPN, from 2012 to January 2025. I cover the biggest mistakes I've made, the transformative shifts in our business strategy, and insights on maintaining profitability while scaling. Alongside my experiences, I share valuable lessons on leadership, the importance of vision and intent, and our future plans, including international expansion. Chapters 00:00 Welcome and Introduction 02:32 The Importance of Learning from Others 05:59 Biggest Mistake in Business 08:34 The Role of Vision and Intent 17:35 Taking a Salary and Early Challenges 33:20 Balancing Growth and Profitability 40:55 Transformative Shifts in Business 49:46 Maximizing Endurance: The Core of Training 51:29 Evolving Business Operations: From Humble Beginnings 58:30 Marketing Evolution: From Organic to Data-Driven 01:06:14 Standing Out in a Competitive Market 01:14:32 Advice to My Younger Self: Lessons Learned 01:22:57 Expanding to the UK and Europe: A Strategic Approach 01:27:16 Raising Capital and Managing Finances 01:31:22 In-House Fulfillment: The BPN Approach 01:38:02 Conclusion: Final Thoughts and Future Plans Become a BPN member FOR FREE - Unlock 20% off FOR LIFE https://www.bareperformancenutrition.com/pages/bpn-membership?srsltid=AfmBOorlpjVeag2kkt3eZ5UpWcFA5Bb2v5V_93lmO47Vn_Y8DRdLwDLL Follow: 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.

• 0:06Nick Bare?

  Hello everyone and welcome back to the podcast. Today's episode is a business question and answer. All things around my entrepreneurial journey from 2012 up until today, January of 2025. And these are questions that were sparked and asked on Instagram. I opened up a question and answer a few days ago and there were a bunch of questions that came across, a lot of questions that were the same questions asked by many different people. When it comes to building business, what I have found is that there is no perfect answer. There's no perfect blueprint.

• 0:51Nick Bare?

  There's no ideal way. The concepts are few, but the methods are many. And what I'm sharing is just based off of my experience, personal decisions that I've made along the way of building BPN on this amazing journey of what it has been up until this point. And a lot of these decisions that I've pursued have led to success while some have often led to mistakes and failures along the way. I'm going to share all of those with you guys.

• 1:29Nick Bare?

  That has been a huge part of, of my content over the years is documenting and sharing the process, the role, the real, the good, the bad, the successes, the failures. Because all of those decisions, all of those outcomes, whether good or bad, have led me towards refining and becoming better and improving to where I am right now, today. I think we can all learn from the experiences of other people. And as I was thinking about just some of these questions and the answers and where

• 2:12Nick Bare?

  I want to take this discussion today.

• 2:18Nick Bare?

  I kept thinking about one of my favorite podcasts and one of my favorite podcasts that I have brought up countless times so far that I highly recommend you guys look into. It's called Founders and the host David Senra, he breaks down biographies and autobiographies from founders, world leaders, athletes, artists, people who have built amazing things.

• 2:48Nick Bare?

  And he dissects their story and their work ethic and the lessons they've learned and how they've gotten to where they were or are at some point. And in the description of the Founders podcast, David Senra quotes Marc Andreessen. And he says, this is the reason for his podcast. And I'm going to share this quote by Marc Andreessen with you guys to say that

• 3:17Nick Bare?

  we can learn so much from other people's stories and experience, people who have done it and been there, we can learn from their successes, but also so much from their failures and the journey in itself. So Marc Andreessen says, there are thousands of years of history in which lots and lots of very smart people worked very hard and ran all types of experiments on how to create new businesses, invent new technology, new ways to manage. They ran these experiments throughout their entire lives.

• 3:59Nick Bare?

  And at some point, somebody put these lessons down in a book. And for very little money and a few hours of time, you and I can learn from someone's accumulated experience. There is so much more to learn from the past than we often realize. You could productively spend your time reading experiences of great people who have come before and you learn every time. And you learn every time. That's why I love listening to the Founders podcast is because I learn from someone else's experience and story every single time.

• 4:40Nick Bare?

  And maybe it's just a small nugget that I carry through that day or that week, but it's powerful. And that content, that information, it compounds. So that call to action is, one, go listen to some episodes of Founder's Podcast. But two, go into this, this next year, go into 2025, asking yourself the question, how can I learn from other people's experience and apply it to my journey to get better, to reach the goals, reach the success, avoid some of the failures or setbacks or mistakes along

• 5:21Nick Bare?

  the way. The failures, mistakes, setbacks, they're going to come regardless, but it'd be pretty ideal if we could minimize some based off of learning from others.

• 5:34Nick Bare?

  So the business Q and A. Question number one.

• 5:40Nick Bare?

  What was the biggest mistake I made in the last 13 years of building BPN?

• 5:49Nick Bare?

  I think the biggest mistake I made was actually in the last 18 months. One of the biggest mistakes I've made was in the last 18 months. And I'll get to it in a little bit, but one of the, the greatest things I believe that we've done as a business also happened in the last 18 months. Don't want to get too far ahead, but I share that to say that these last 18 months have been very transformative for myself and the business.

• 6:23Nick Bare?

  What was the biggest mistake I made in the last 13 years of bootstrapping my business, BPN? That mistake is that I delegated responsibility and vision with lack of control, guidance, or intervention.

• 6:47Nick Bare?

  And this led me down to a path of mistakes that took the business off course.

• 6:56Nick Bare?

  You see, I stepped down from the CEO role.

• 7:01Nick Bare?

  I guess it was January of 2023.

• 7:06Nick Bare?

  And

• 7:08Nick Bare?

  I've shared this many times before, but I gotta share it again because it provides context around what happened. But stepped down from the CEO role,

• 7:17Nick Bare?

  moved just into a founder role of the business. I moved my family and a small creative team to Nashville, Tennessee, thinking that was the necessary next steps in evolution of my role with BPN. But that was

• 7:35Nick Bare?

  not

• 7:37Nick Bare?

  right at all. I was actually self sabotaging. Everything in my life and what I have built up until that point. All ended up working out in the right way for right reasons, but my biggest mistake is that

• 7:56Nick Bare?

  I stopped

• 7:59Nick Bare?

  providing and creating vision and intent, very clear intent.

• 8:09Nick Bare?

  I learned about this in the military, so I should have known how applicable it was to building a business. A commander in the military, like a company commander, a battalion commander, a brigade commander, they create vision. That vision is intent. This is the intent of this mission. This is the intent of this project. This is the intent of what we're about to do. This is why, this is the purpose. This is, this is why we're doing this thing.

• 8:44Nick Bare?

  And then you delegate responsibility below you to execute that intent in that vision.

• 8:55Nick Bare?

  A few years ago, we implemented EOS into our business, which is the Entrepreneurial Operating System. And this is a system based off the book called Traction by Gina Wickman, another great book to read, especially if you are a business owner. And I highly recommend looking into EOS. And after you read Traction, read Rocket Fuel while you're at it.

• 9:25Nick Bare?

  And the Entrepreneurial Operating System is a set of rules and guidelines of how you run and operate a business, a company. And we implemented EOS into our business, and it was very powerful. We still practice some of EOS, but not fully any longer. We've taken what we wanted to keep in the business and working on and improving. We kept those systems and then we adapted to fit our business and the way we want to run BPN specifically. But within EOS, there's a visionary up top, and then there is an integrator.

• 10:09Nick Bare?

  And the visionary, oftentimes the founder, sees very big picture. They are a dreamer. They can see three, five, 10, 20 years into the future for that business. And then the integrator takes that vision, delegates it into directors and managers of the business to execute that vision. So you have commander's intent, you have founder's intent and vision, and there is someone who makes sure that comes to life and it happens. Visionary and integrator. Right now, in the business here at BPN, I am the visionary, Josh Hawley. He is the integrator.

• 10:55Nick Bare?

  He makes sure that vision and intent comes to life and it happens, and we're tracking its progress.

• 11:05Nick Bare?

  So I share that.

• 11:08Nick Bare?

  Now to go backwards a little bit, where I messed up, my biggest mistake in these last 13 years is that as the visionary, that rule is very important because it guides the direction and creates

• 11:26Nick Bare?

  responsibilities and tasks and projects that are aligned with an intent, a north star,

• 11:36Nick Bare?

  to other parts of the business.

• 11:39Nick Bare?

  I stopped creating and providing vision and I stopped creating and providing intent and I delegated that and got really hands off and assumed that the business was at a point where it could move forward on its own without my

• 12:00Nick Bare?

  vision and intent and hand on the business, moving it forward.

• 12:06Nick Bare?

  That was one irresponsible of myself and it was very ignorant of myself as well. But I learned in that process, one,

• 12:18Nick Bare?

  vision is very, very important, intent is absolutely critical.

• 12:23Nick Bare?

  But also, I love having my hand on the business. I love creating the vision, I love sharing the vision, casting the vision, creating the intent and then watching the team take that intent and vision and execute on it and bring it to life.

• 12:40Nick Bare?

  Jonathan Swift once said, "That vision is the art of seeing what is invisible."

• 12:51Nick Bare?

  That's the best part about being a business owner, it's the best part about being a founder, it's the best part about being a team member or an employee for a startup organization that is building.

• 13:07Nick Bare?

  You get the opportunity to have a vision to see something, to see art that doesn't yet exist. It is invisible, but if you see it and you believe in it, it's real. It's there. It's true.

• 13:24Nick Bare?

  I love being in the founder role. I love having the opportunity and the responsibility of creating vision and sharing that vision. That intent has powerful opportunity when the right people in the team can take it and run with it.

• 13:43Nick Bare?

  But if there isn't vision, if there isn't intent being provided to, whether it's a military organization or a business, without vision, without intent, people are wondering aimlessly without any sort of guidance. And my mistake is that I delegated that vision, I delegated that intent, without control, without guidance, without intervention,

• 14:11Nick Bare?

  and no one on the team knew where to go or what to do.

• 14:18Nick Bare?

  That was my mistake.

• 14:22Nick Bare?

  That was my greatest mistake, but also an amazing learning lesson about how important intent and vision is for an organization.

• 14:34Nick Bare?

  So what's the solution?

• 14:37Nick Bare?

  In the military, we talk about centralized command and decentralized command.

• 14:43Nick Bare?

  And decentralized command is when leaders empower leaders at every level to make decisions.

• 14:54Nick Bare?

  So in a decentralized environment, organization, business, in the military, when it's decentralized, you have your vision, you have an intent, and as long as that vision and intent is upheld and maintained, the team below can make decisions on their own as long as it is aligned with the vision and intent.

• 15:21Nick Bare?

  The opposite of that being centralized command is vision and intent is shared up top. It's then tasked and delegated below. And before any final decision can be made, it has to go down the chain, back up the chain for approval, and then approved, and then you can press go. It's slower, it's more controlled. I would argue it's it's heavily micromanaged. And sometimes you have to run a centralized command in leadership style when there isn't enough trust

• 16:03Nick Bare?

  in the departments or the leaders or the teams below.

• 16:10Nick Bare?

  But when you have trusted directors and managers and team members across all levels of an organization, decentralized command allows you to operate quickly, accurately, and still achieve the vision and intent

• 16:31Nick Bare?

  created by the founder or the commander.

• 16:36Nick Bare?

  But those are my biggest mistakes in the last 13 years. Is stepping back and assuming that vision and intent would just be created out of thin air? And that everyone could just read my mind? That's not the case. No one's reading your mind. That's why effective communication is so important. And that vision and that intent coming from up top is absolutely critical. But that was one of my biggest mistakes.

• 17:06Nick Bare?

  Next question.

• 17:09Nick Bare?

  When did I start taking a salary from BPN? 2017.

• 17:17Nick Bare?

  I put myself on payroll with BPN in 2017. And this is five years after starting the brand. So I started the brand in 2012. When I was in college and

• 17:31Nick Bare?

  I'll explain my situation and my experience and how I was able to do that. It is unique, but

• 17:39Nick Bare?

  Every founder's story and journey and situation is unique. No business is cut from the same cloth. And I've shared this before. You know, I didn't take any money out of the business for the first five years. And sometimes the response is, wow, that must have been nice to have that option. It was nice. I'll be honest. It was great. Because I was making money in the military in the meantime. So when I transitioned out of the military in 2017, that was the only time I had to put myself on salary. That was the only time I had to start paying myself.

• 18:20Nick Bare?

  So I could afford food and clothes and housing and all of just the basic necessities of living life. For those first five years, I could keep reinvesting all of the money that the business was making back into the business. Because I was on active duty service with the military. That must have been nice. It was nice. But you know, when I was building the business, outside of my active duty military hours, either before work, which was, you know, a work day started at 6:00 a.m. with morning P T. So I was either working before that.

• 19:05Nick Bare?

  Or after work, which was, you know, it ranged anywhere from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. if we weren't in the field. And then I would work on building the business until midnight, 1:00 a.m., 2:00 a.m., 3:00 a.m., 4:00 a.m., whatever I had to do. But within those five years, I was building the business in the background in any free moment that I could find. So, yeah, it was nice to not have to take any money out of the business for the first five years. But the only way I was able to do that

• 19:48Nick Bare?

  is because BPN was my side hustle while I was active duty military.

• 19:57Nick Bare?

  So when I transitioned out of the army in 2017,

• 20:03Nick Bare?

  2017 was a really big year for us. It was the first year we crossed into the seven-figure revenue mark. We ended that first year, not that first year, but 2017 at about 1.7 million in revenue. And we had three employees, myself, Preston, my brother, and Joe.

• 20:28Nick Bare?

  And I remember putting myself on salary. I put myself, Preston, and Joe on salary at the same time. Because when Preston moved down initially, he moved from Pennsylvania to Texas. I was still in the army. I couldn't pay him. And he knew that. He had money saved up from his, his previous job and from internships that he worked summers while he was in college. So he had some money that he could live off of those first couple of months in Texas. When Joe moved down, we started paying him, but only what we could afford. And me, Preston, and Joe lived in one house together in Temple, Texas.

• 21:11Nick Bare?

  And that was where we built BPN and we fulfilled orders until we signed our first warehouse lease.

• 21:21Nick Bare?

  But I remember when we first went on to salary, I didn't even know how to get us on salary. You know, I just assumed before that you just started paying people on the business account. You just did like a transfer from the business banking account to someone else's account. It was like a wire. And then I realized, well, there's, there are certain programs and there's platforms and businesses that help you run payroll. So the first payroll provider we started working with was ADP. Because I vividly remember I had to manually go in and run payroll every two weeks. And sometimes when I'd go in and run payroll,

• 22:06Nick Bare?

  what it would cost us to run payroll with those three salaries would stress me out a lot. Because even though we did 1.7 million in revenue in 2017, cash flow was really tight because a lot of our money was tied up in inventory.

• 22:26Nick Bare?

  When I first put myself on salary, it was $60,000, 2017. This was after being in the military for four years, transitioned out as a first lieutenant right before hitting captain.

• 22:45Nick Bare?

  And the order in which, uh,

• 22:49Nick Bare?

  in which I kind of created and pursued up until this point was starting the business in 2012. I was on an Army ROTC scholarship in college. I knew that I was going to be going active duty military service as soon as I graduated college. So I graduated in 2013, May of 2013. I commissioned into the Army, May of 2013.

• 23:20Nick Bare?

  And then I was on active duty military payroll.

• 23:27Nick Bare?

  Went to Fort Benning for a year. I got the Fort Hood, Texas, 2014. That's when I started using social media

• 23:36Nick Bare?

  to build the brand, documenting my life on YouTube.

• 23:42Nick Bare?

  And then

• 23:45Nick Bare?

  I was able to start generating revenue personally by building a personal brand. YouTube, YouTube ad revenue was somewhat significant. I mean, I used to make more on YouTube ads, probably in 2017,

• 24:04Nick Bare?

  than I do right now. A lot of people would be surprised by that. There were some things that were changed within YouTube, but also now that we just use better music. A lot of the music we use in YouTube videos is copyrighted and we just can't monetize the videos because we want to use copyrighted music. It makes the videos better, in my opinion, as opposed to some of that cheesy copyright free music. You can find some good copyright free music, but not all of it is that great. But I found ways to generate revenue.

• 24:43Nick Bare?

  Through building a personal brand with brand deals, sponsorships, YouTube ad revenue, and this money that I was making on social media, I would pour back into the business to keep it growing. Because at that time, the business was so capital intensive.

• 25:07Nick Bare?

  Because we were trying to get it off the ground. And we were investing a lot of money into inventory. And we didn't have great terms with our manufacturers. So it required a lot of upfront capital. And the way, or one of the ways we were keeping up with this was by

• 25:26Nick Bare?

  taking the money I was making, we were generating on social media

• 25:31Nick Bare?

  through, like I said, ads, brand partnerships,

• 25:37Nick Bare?

  YouTube revenue, and putting it back into the business to keep it burning and churning.

• 25:47Nick Bare?

  And then eventually, when I transitioned out of the military in 2017, put myself on a W-2 salary. $60,000 a year is where I started. How many hours a day was I working when building BPN in the first couple of years? I love this question. And I love the answer that I came up with for this question. The answer is all of them. All of the available hours.

• 26:24Nick Bare?

  And the reason I like this answer and this question

• 26:30Nick Bare?

  is because I would, I would ask someone who wants to start a business, who's thinking about starting a business,

• 26:39Nick Bare?

  how many hours do you want to work to get this thing off the ground, to make this thing successful? How committed are you to building your dream?

• 26:52Nick Bare?

  And if someone's asking the question, how many hours do I have to? How many hours do I need to work in the beginning? If that's a question you are asking,

• 27:03Nick Bare?

  I don't think you are cut out for the journey.

• 27:08Nick Bare?

  I don't think you're cut out to be a founder, to be a business owner. Anyone who's ever started a business,

• 27:18Nick Bare?

  and whether it's failed or succeeded,

• 27:22Nick Bare?

  or it's doing well, or it's not doing as well, they can tell you

• 27:28Nick Bare?

  it's really, really hard.

• 27:31Nick Bare?

  But if you love it, it is really, really rewarding. And you don't care how hard it is. You don't even think about how hard it is. You wouldn't want to be doing anything else. So how many hours did I work on VPN in those first couple of years? All of them. When I was in the Army, every waking moment outside of the Army, and that's no exaggeration, every waking moment outside of the Army, I was working on building VPN.

• 28:02Nick Bare?

  From the minute I woke up until the minute I went to sleep. On the weekends, I would wake up a Saturday morning. I'd have my camera laid out, have my, my batteries all charged. I'd have the idea of the video I wanted to film. I'd have it storyboarded.

• 28:24Nick Bare?

  I'd go, I'd film this whole video. I'd get all the footage I needed. I'd come home. I'd sit in front of my laptop as I plug in my SD card and all my footage is uploading onto my laptop. And I would sit there just waiting for all of those clips, all that footage to upload so I could start editing.

• 28:47Nick Bare?

  And that brought me so much joy, so much fulfillment,

• 28:52Nick Bare?

  because I was building something.

• 28:57Nick Bare?

  And then when I transitioned out of the Army, I had all these available hours

• 29:03Nick Bare?

  that I didn't previously have available to me to build this thing. That's when the brand really took off. Is because I knew how to maximize time. So when I was provided more time,

• 29:17Nick Bare?

  I could create more input to maximize greater output.

• 29:25Nick Bare?

  You see, entrepreneurship is not about freedom from work. It's not necessarily about working less, but it's a freedom to work on the things you want to work on. It's the control of your destiny. It's the control of the outcome for better or for worse. Now, I was recently listening to an episode of the Founder's Podcast with the founder of Hyundai, and that is Chung Ju Young. Crazy story about Chung Ju Young founding Hyundai.

• 30:06Nick Bare?

  And when we think of Hyundai, the car manufacturer, we think of it as a car manufacturer, but before Hyundai was a car manufacturer. They were a construction company. They manufactured boats, ships, and then got into vehicle manufacturing. And the story of where he started in complete utter poverty in South Korea and building multiple businesses that ended up failing before Hyundai. His journey as a founder, as a business owner, is amazingly impressive.

• 30:47Nick Bare?

  But he is quoted in this Founder's episode where he says, "Time is a form of capital provided equally to everyone. If I could be considered a successful person in my chosen profession, it is only because I was able to do my very best based on strong convictions and made the best use of this evenly distributed capital." There's a lot of argument for...

• 31:19Nick Bare?

  How and why certain people achieve certain things?

• 31:24Nick Bare?

  You can say that you were less fortunate with finances, mentorship, guidance,

• 31:33Nick Bare?

  resources, money, and that's why you didn't achieve what you wanted to achieve.

• 31:40Nick Bare?

  But Chung Ju Young doesn't talk about any of those things because he came from nothing. But the one form of capital that is provided equally to everyone is time.

• 31:57Nick Bare?

  And the question is, how do you, how do you use, how do you best use that evenly distributed capital? That's powerful.

• 32:08Nick Bare?

  If you can learn how to maximize time,

• 32:12Nick Bare?

  you can maximize output. So how many hours a day was I working when I first started building BPN this first couple of years?

• 32:22Nick Bare?

  All of them. Next question is, should you pursue growth in your business at the expense of profits?

• 32:35Nick Bare?

  As I mentioned in the beginning of this episode, the concepts are few, the methods are many. There's a lot of different ways to build a business.

• 32:43Nick Bare?

  I have some friends who have built businesses and are building businesses where they prioritize profits.

• 32:51Nick Bare?

  And then I have some friends, I know some people who have businesses that maximize growth at the expense of profit.

• 33:01Nick Bare?

  So we personally, at BPN, we have always operated the business to be profitable. And we operate the business at mid-teens EBITDA. EBITDA is an acronym that

• 33:18Nick Bare?

  is a baseline or a data point for your profitability. And EBITDA stands for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. E B I T D A.

• 33:37Nick Bare?

  So we operate our business mid teens EBITDA and our goal is to have our EBITDA margin. And when I say teens, it's a percentage. Our goal by 2026 is to have 20% EBITDA margins. And we have a budget for 2025 and 2026 showing how we're going to get to 20% EBITDA margins. That is our goal. Our goal for 2026 is 100 million in revenue and 20% EBITDA margins. So that'd be 100 million in revenue, $20 million in profits or EBITDA.

• 34:19Nick Bare?

  But there's different ways to building and scale a business.

• 34:27Nick Bare?

  We've always had very disciplined growth and scale, really because we didn't know any better. When me and my brother were first getting started, we didn't know any other way other than stay lean, be resourceful, invest the money the business is making back into business so you can grow and make a profit. Because if you're not making a profit, why are you doing it in the first place? And there are reasons people don't care about profits. Some people just want to build and grow and scale a business to hit a certain revenue mark and then sell it.

• 35:07Nick Bare?

  To each their own, but that's a very dangerous game to play, in my opinion.

• 35:13Nick Bare?

  Very dangerous play. Sam Walton of Walmart once said many times, I mean, I'm a huge fan of Sam Walton.

• 35:25Nick Bare?

  His book is great. There's a few great founders episodes on Sam Walton, but Sam Walton was a huge proponent of profitability. And one of the things he said is, "We had to keep expenses to a minimum." That's where it all started. Our money was made by controlling expenses. Controlling expenses, not growing at the expense of profitability, but maintaining and managing overhead and expenses. That's the only way Walmart was able to grow. It's the only way Walmart was able to beat competition

• 36:08Nick Bare?

  and get to where they were and are today. You see, there's this, this blueprint that some businesses take, where you can go raise a bunch of capital for your business. Like, say you go out to the market and you raise for your business $50 million. You can do this before you even make a dollar. You can go raise capital from investors, venture capitalists. You go raise money. Say you, you raised $50 million before you have a brand, before you know if the market wants you,

• 36:49Nick Bare?

  before you have any sort of feedback on your product. And you spend that $50 million building out systems, hiring people, marketing strategy, ads, acquiring new customers. But what happens so many times by so many different companies is they go raise this money. They spend it. They burn through all of it. They go raise more money. They spend it. They burn through all of it. They go raise more money. They burn it. They spend through all of it. And they have to keep raising money so the business can stay alive. And every time they go and raise more money,

• 37:34Nick Bare?

  they have to give up more equity. And before you know it, there's these founders who own single-digit percentages of their company.

• 37:45Nick Bare?

  Not by choice, but because they had to, because they've had to keep going out and raising capital, raising money, just to keep it alive, just to keep the business able to cover overhead, payroll, insurance, cost of goods, warehouse, office, leases, all of these things. And they're spending all of their money on growth at the expense of profitability. So they have no other option than having to keep raising capital to keep the business alive. The dangerous game to play.

• 38:25Nick Bare?

  I can tell you right now, that is not a game that I want to play. That sounds like a stressful, scary scenario and situation.

• 38:33Nick Bare?

  I like having the ability to flex and pivot.

• 38:38Nick Bare?

  And being financially healthy and strong and lean and resourceful. Because we don't have to go raise capital. We don't have to give up equity. We don't have to tap into significant debt or lines of credit. Because we're operating the business in a healthy way. That prioritizes profitability.

• 39:04Nick Bare?

  And we're still growing at a healthy rate, but not at the expense of profits.

• 39:11Nick Bare?

  But that's just one of the ways to build a business. I'm not saying it's the right way. I'm not saying it's the wrong way. We have chosen to pursue and maintain profitability.

• 39:24Nick Bare?

  But I know a lot of business owners, I know a lot of founders who go after growth at the expense of profits. And it's just a completely different business model, completely different.

• 39:35Nick Bare?

  Next question. What is one of the most powerful shifts you made that transformed the business? I kind of tip my hat to this earlier on in this conversation. But one of those shifts, most powerful shifts happened in the last 18 months. And that was just getting more clear, more focused on who BPN is. And how we're getting to where we want to be.

• 40:07Nick Bare?

  I have a few quotes for you here.

• 40:11Nick Bare?

  Both from James Clear.

• 40:14Nick Bare?

  James Clear said, "In the long run, prioritization beats efficiency."

• 40:23Nick Bare?

  Love that. Prioritize what you're going to work on, who you're serving, and how you're going to get to where you want to be. It's not always about efficiency, but it's about prioritizing where you're spending your time, your money, your resources.

• 40:43Nick Bare?

  And his second quote,

• 40:46Nick Bare?

  "What is one commitment you are continuing to do out of inertia, but if you had the courage to eliminate it, you would immediately benefit from discarding it."

• 41:00Nick Bare?

  Are you committed to doing things just because you have momentum behind it? You have inertia behind it? You've been doing it? You feel like you have to stay committed to it because it's already in motion? Is that why you're committed to that one thing? But what would happen if you stopped doing that one thing? Because you prioritize results? You prioritize outcomes? And you discard that commitment? And you shift, a powerful shift, into something new and different? And the results are 10 times more where that previous commitment was?

• 41:41Nick Bare?

  That's called pruning. One of my favorite books I've read in the last 10 years is called Necessary Endings by Dr. Henry Cloud. And he talks about pruning.

• 41:54Nick Bare?

  And there's an analogy of pruning in terms of a rosebush.

• 42:00Nick Bare?

  If you have a rosebush, every year you have to prune it. You have to cut away the dead stems. You have to trim back the bush. You have to remove some of the thorns. And just prune the entire thing to help it become healthier. And after you prune something, it looks bare, it looks empty.

• 42:25Nick Bare?

  But once the growing season comes back and that rosebush starts to bloom again, because you pruned it, it now has the opportunity and the possibility to grow larger and healthier and more beautiful. But if you wouldn't have pruned it, all of those dead stems and thorns and leaves would have held back its ability to grow back stronger and larger. We have to prune our lives. We have to prune our businesses every once in a while. We have to eliminate and reduce and remove the things that aren't working or that are holding us back. And then prioritize what's actually going to move the needle for us.

• 43:11Nick Bare?

  You see, 2024 was a turning point for our brand because we eliminated a lot of unnecessary pursuits. There were a lot of things that we were spending time on that felt efficient,

• 43:28Nick Bare?

  but weren't actually producing the results we needed. We were over optimizing things that didn't need to be over optimized. But we made this shift in 2024, and this shift will be even greater going into this next year, 2025. We stopped working on a lot of different things. And we've hyper focused where we're going to spend our time, money and energy, what projects we say yes to, more importantly, what projects we say no to.

• 44:02Nick Bare?

  So the powerful shift that transformed our business in 2024, 2025 is understanding, one, who BPN is, who we're speaking to. We're not trying to speak to everyone.

• 44:20Nick Bare?

  And then how do we connect with those people? Which is a tighter, smaller niche.

• 44:29Nick Bare?

  So instead of actually going and casting a larger net to speak to more people, we're refining that net, we're trying to speak to less people, but a stronger niche of person. A more hyper-focused target with a goal of really catering a solution that that niche is experiencing a problem in, and then expanding from there. So you start, you know, it's this like

• 45:01Nick Bare?

  interesting evolution in a business where you start really niche and really small. And as you grow, you start to expand, but what often happens is you expand too far, too fast, too wide.

• 45:14Nick Bare?

  And then you wake up one day thinking, who are we even speaking to? Or who are we trying to speak to anymore?

• 45:23Nick Bare?

  And then overnight, you make a shift saying, this is who we are. This is who we're serving. This is how we're serving them.

• 45:32Nick Bare?

  And if it reduces

• 45:35Nick Bare?

  the target market, that is okay. Sometimes you have to take one step back to take two steps forward.

• 45:45Nick Bare?

  So our 2025 focus, this powerful shift that we made that has transformed our business in the back half of 2024, and I am extremely confident that going into 2025 is going to be game-changing for us.

• 46:02Nick Bare?

  Our 2025 focus is three things. I mean, there are subcategories within each, but three overarching themes for 2025. Go One More is the first. Go One More is BPN. That is our brand ethos. That is our mission. That is who we are. It's what we do. It's what we're about. Go One More. We cannot forget Go One More. And everyone who follows BPN should know what Go One More means and how important it is. Number two, we are a brand for the committed. We're not for everyone. We don't want to be for everyone, but we want to be for people who are committed. And being committed doesn't mean that you are necessarily a professional athlete.

• 46:43Nick Bare?

  You get paid to do this sport or live this lifestyle, but you are committed to this lifestyle because you believe in it and you love it and you're all about it. You don't have to be a professional athlete to live and train like one. Take it serious. Whether you're just going into the gym and training to be a better husband, wife, father, mother, leader, business owner, brother, sister, whatever you're training for, you're just trying to be better. When you go in and train, be committed to giving it your all and doing everything you can to make improvement and get better. We are a brand for the committed. And number three, performance endurance.

• 47:29Nick Bare?

  We are serving the performance endurance market. Those three things.

• 47:36Nick Bare?

  We started in 2012 as a bodybuilding brand and then we started talking to strength athletes and then CrossFit and then runners and then professional sports teams and athletes.

• 47:51Nick Bare?

  And

• 47:54Nick Bare?

  we, at one point went so wide where we were trying to speak to everyone that we weren't speaking to anyone. Go one more for the committed and people who train for performance endurance. Performance endurance isn't necessarily just running. It's not just triathlon. It's not just ultras. It's not

• 48:17Nick Bare?

  being a team sport player where endurance is necessary. It's not just high rocks.

• 48:23Nick Bare?

  Performance endurance is where

• 48:28Nick Bare?

  The tip of the spear of why you train is to maximize and improve endurance. But underneath that, all the other things you do support your performance endurance goals. You strength train because it supports your performance endurance goals. You supplement and monitor your diet and eat healthy and track your macronutrients because it supports your performance endurance goals. You implement mobility and recovery techniques and protocols because it supports your performance endurance goals.

• 49:07Nick Bare?

  It's endurance at the tip of the spear, but that spear needs the foundation of everything else to maximize its potential. Go on more for the committed performance endurance. I mean, we're more focused going into 2025 than we ever had before. We know who we are, who we're speaking to, how we serve those people, what they're about, how they live, how they think.

• 49:47Nick Bare?

  We are prioritizing where we're spending that time, not just trying to be more efficient. In the long run, prioritization beats efficiency. Now, I want to take a quick break in this episode to talk about BPN's new free membership we just launched. And by signing up for this membership, you unlock a massive amount of benefits. And all you need to do to sign up and get started is opt in to our SMS program. And when you do this, it unlocks 20% off subscriptions for life. You get subscriber only free shipping windows and flash sales and exclusive apparel and

• 50:31Nick Bare?

  hat drops that are only available to BPN members.

• 50:37Nick Bare?

  So to get started, go to bpnsubs.com, follow the neon green banners, opt into SMS, and then when you go to purchase on the website, just make sure that you are logged into your account to unlock that 20% off. And at BPN, we only do two sales a year. A lot of you guys know that. It's our annual 4th of July sale and our Black Friday sale. But by signing up and becoming a BPN member, you get these benefits all year long. So go to bpnsubs.com to get started and sign up to become a BPN member today. Next question is, what systems have we implemented to

• 51:22Nick Bare?

  manage cash flow, inventory, and business operations at scale?

• 51:30Nick Bare?

  Let me paint you a picture of what that looked like when we first got started compared to where we are today. Managing cash flow in the beginning was logging on to our business bank account. And if there was money in there to pay for upcoming bills, rent, necessities of the business,

• 51:55Nick Bare?

  cash flow was good. Thumbs up. I vividly remember to this day, logging into my business bank account in those early years with like one eye open and the other one just peeking through. And as I logged on and the page started to refresh and my balance showed up, if it was positive, I was like, all right, we live, we live to see another day. If it was not so positive, I'd start stressing out and

• 52:30Nick Bare?

  try to find a solution to bridge a gap if, if needed. Inventory management was literally me and Preston and Joe writing down on a piece of paper.

• 52:46Nick Bare?

  How many units we are selling a day compared to how many we had? And when we were placing production orders with our manufacturers, if we were selling more than we were in the previous production order, we'd throw some more units onto that next run and hope and pray that it was enough. But there was no sort of equation or inventory tracking that was allowing us to forecast how much more to manufacture, how to have conversations with suppliers, how to negotiate pricing, how to look into the future of how much more we needed. We were just building and building and building

• 53:30Nick Bare?

  and managing the rest to the best of our ability, which was not great, but it worked for the time being. It was three of us this first couple of years with no experience on how to build a business. We were just learning on the fly, lots of manual processes. It was fun. It was stressful. Ignorance is sometimes bliss because we probably didn't know what kind of trouble we were in or how close we were right in the line of failing because we just lacked awareness and education around all things,

• 54:11Nick Bare?

  cash flow, finances, inventory, business ops. That's where we were back then in those first couple of years. And naturally, those systems just evolved over time. And me being honest, those are parts of the business that I don't personally enjoy or love spending a lot of time around. So that's where I've decided to hire people who are really good at what they do to master those parts of the business.

• 54:46Nick Bare?

  And we've hired top tier talent to do those things. And we now have a CFO, a VP of Finance, a Controller, Junior Accountants, Director of Supply Chain, VP of Ops. And the way we manage cash flow and those teams manage cash flow, inventory, forecasting, procurement, the conversations we're having with suppliers of raw materials,

• 55:18Nick Bare?

  manufacturers, we have multiple manufacturing partners across the United States now as opposed to just one manufacturer like it was back in the day. The business operations as we've scaled have changed significantly compared to what they were those first couple of years. But it wasn't this shift that happened overnight. It was these small evolutionary changes where we realized there was a problem. And we hire someone, that person then build on a team. I mean, Josh Hawley really took lead on building in some operational maturity into this business. Coming from a financial background, he was initially our CFO in the beginning,

• 56:02Nick Bare?

  but systems to manage cash flow. And like I said, inventory and forecasting procurement, like building out a really in-depth, detailed and functional, operational side of the business.

• 56:19Nick Bare?

  That has been one of the most necessary parts of scale and growth. And it doesn't always get the attention or the highlight because it's not super sexy. I mean, you might come to BPN's website and social media and see this video that was really well done by our brand team that tells the story of BPN and and go one more and for the committed and it connects with you on this whole new level. And you go on our website and you buy one of our products.

• 56:52Nick Bare?

  And then you receive the product and that is your experience. But what you don't feel, what you don't see, what you don't witness is the operational maturity that's happening in the background that has been built out over years by very talented, hardworking people to make sure that

• 57:11Nick Bare?

  We are building a strong and healthy business. And that our cash flow is managed very appropriately. And that's one of the reasons, one of the only reasons we can maintain mid teens EBITDA. And not run out of inventory all the time. And have great established relationships with our suppliers and manufacturers and distribution partners. But that isn't my bread and butter. That's not what I love. It doesn't bring me all the fulfillment and joy and passion that other parts of the business do. I have all the respect for it. But I have personally hired people who can own that and love that and crush it.

• 57:54Nick Bare?

  To make sure that's an absolutely critical part of our business. How has the marketing strategy and tactics changed from 1 million in revenue to $65 million in revenue? So to pull the curtains back a little bit. 2012, our first year in business, we did $20,000 in revenue. Took us five years to cross the seven figure revenue mark. So 2017, we did 1.7 million. And then in 2024, we finished the year at about 65 million in revenue. The goal for 2025 is a little over 80 million in revenue.

• 58:37Nick Bare?

  And then 2026, 100 million in revenue. That is a goal. That's what we're trying to get to. That is just being completely transparent and maintaining profitability that entire way historically. But also moving forward into the future. How has the marketing strategy and tactics changed? Seth Godin said, Seth Godin is one of my favorite authors. If you got to read one of Seth Godin's book, read Purple Cow or Tribes. Seth Godin said, "Marketing is the act of telling stories about the things we make.

• 59:20Nick Bare?

  Stories that sell and stories that spread. What we make, stories that sell and stories that spread." BPN Marketing.

• 59:35Nick Bare?

  Is all around storytelling.

• 59:38Nick Bare?

  Telling stories of people achieving amazing human accomplishments.

• 59:50Nick Bare?

  By pursuing their greatest potential.

• 59:53Nick Bare?

  The beginning of our marketing strategy started with organic YouTube content.

• 1:00:00Nick Bare?

  Now 2014, 2014, 15, 16. It was all organic marketing. It was YouTube videos, Instagram stories. We started signing some athletes to utilize their social media platforms. We did some email marketing. 2017 was the first year we actually dipped our toes into some paid marketing. And it wasn't really good paid marketing. We brought on an agency that

• 1:00:36Nick Bare?

  helped us, but probably hurt us more than they actually helped us.

• 1:00:45Nick Bare?

  And now we have a VP of Marketing, Maury Matrani, who has a marketing team for BPN. We truly believe that marketing and brand, while different, have to be married and aligned to build a very strong organization. We lead with brand in everything we do.

• 1:01:09Nick Bare?

  Brand is tone of voice, is what you feel, is representation, is it is a visual component. It is storytelling, it is mission, it is DNA. You can feel branding. Brand has a heartbeat. We lead with brand and then we use marketing, paid marketing, to leverage our brand content.

• 1:01:40Nick Bare?

  When we first got into paid advertising, this first couple of years, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 even,

• 1:01:49Nick Bare?

  we hired agencies, we let agencies dictate our marketing strategy, even some of our content strategy, where our paid marketing felt very different from our brand content.

• 1:02:05Nick Bare?

  Because we thought that was the blueprint, that was a playbook that we had to run based off of what agencies were telling us. And we eventually realized, there's no rules to this. We're going to create our own rules.

• 1:02:17Nick Bare?

  So then we took over, we started leading and creating a strategy for paid marketing that felt and looked very much like the BPN brand. And what ended up happening was

• 1:02:31Nick Bare?

  our customer acquisition cost decreased, our return on ad spend increased, we became more efficient at paid advertising and marketing by prioritizing brand and storytelling and alignment.

• 1:02:51Nick Bare?

  So

• 1:02:53Nick Bare?

  our strategy has changed significantly over the years when it comes to marketing.

• 1:03:00Nick Bare?

  And that is really just leading with brand and letting marketing leverage our brand content because we have a big in-house creative team.

• 1:03:12Nick Bare?

  But when it comes to tactics, you know, bringing on a VP of Marketing, that being Maury, who works alongside our finance team to build out a marketing budget.

• 1:03:23Nick Bare?

  And then from that marketing budget,

• 1:03:27Nick Bare?

  aligning and prioritizing how much we want to spend to acquire a new customer and what that acquisition cost is going to look like per platform. And then measuring the return of that ad spend and then incrementality of the platform that we are investing into. So there's a lot of data. I mean, we are a big data team. We have so many different data dashboards that we're monitoring. We've brought on a third-party agency that has helped us build out some of these data-driven platforms that provide us just so much insight into where we're putting money, our return,

• 1:04:10Nick Bare?

  how it's working for us, the efficiency, so we can make more informed decisions. So our finance team, our marketing team, the tactics that they are leading with are data-driven. And then our strategy is high-level coming from a brand-direction approach. But we measure everything, we track everything, and then we refine our tactics based off that data. Next question is how to stand out in a crowded or competitive market. When I first started BPN in college, so many people pushed back against that pursuit

• 1:04:54Nick Bare?

  because they told me that the market and the industry that I was trying to enter was super-competitive, and it was saturated, and it was going to be really hard to break through. And I didn't care. I really did not care. Because I knew that if you could pursue your own path and not try to just replicate and copy what all of the other brands and businesses in your sector were doing, you could stand out. There is a niche for everyone. Some people will argue that having the best product possible

• 1:05:39Nick Bare?

  will help you stand out in a crowded, competitive market. And I agree, you need a great product. But a quality product nowadays is the standard. It is the expectation. You need a great product. It's not even an option. If you don't have a great, amazing, remarkable, quality product, your business will not make it for those first couple of years. It probably won't even get off the ground. Quality is expected. Quality is the standard.

• 1:06:13Nick Bare?

  You need to have great products to build a sustainable and successful company. So yes, that will help you stand out from the competition. But like the bottom 20% of the competition. To be in the top 20%, to be in the top 10%, quality is expected.

• 1:06:37Nick Bare?

  The other thing you need to do is you have to create real value that solves actual customer problems.

• 1:06:46Nick Bare?

  If your product or service does not actually create value and solve a problem and connect with a customer,

• 1:06:57Nick Bare?

  it's not going to last more than a couple of years, even if it somehow makes it off the ground from the beginning. Create value that solves real customer problems.

• 1:07:11Nick Bare?

  And I believe to have to stand out in a crowded and competitive market, you have to have a brand.

• 1:07:19Nick Bare?

  That brand has a voice and you have to be ruthless in the process of maintaining that voice.

• 1:07:28Nick Bare?

  Brand connects with people. There's a difference between buying a product that is just out of commodity. Like I buy toilet paper, I buy paper towels

• 1:07:43Nick Bare?

  based off of commodity.

• 1:07:47Nick Bare?

  You know, like what, what brand have I've been buying for years? What brand has the best packaging? And I just go buy toilet paper and paper towels based off that. If I go to the store and I have to buy just whatever's left, I could rarely be able to tell you a difference. Unless I'm going to the grocery store and all they have is like single ply toilet paper left. And as I'm using that toilet paper, it rips between my fingers. Then I'm going to be like, okay, I'm not buying this toilet paper again. I'm going back to my like five-layer self-destructible toilet paper. But there's commodity products you just buy based off of

• 1:08:25Nick Bare?

  habitual historical trends. And there's products you buy because you have a connection to the story, to the founder, to the brand, to the mission.

• 1:08:39Nick Bare?

  When I make purchases that aren't just commodity, I'm buying because I believe in that brand. I believe in the movement. I believe in the people behind it. That's how you stand out in a crowded and competitive market. Create a real connection. How do you create that real connection? With clear, effective messaging and communication. By changing the rules of the game. Seth Godin also said, "The obvious winners in business are the mid-sized and smaller companies looking to increase market share." These are the companies that have nothing to lose,

• 1:09:22Nick Bare?

  but more importantly, they realize they have a lot to gain by changing the rules of the game. If you're a mid-sized, small company, you have the opportunity to change the rules of the game, to change the market that you're trying to operate in. How do you stand out? Change the rules of the game. We spent this last year building out our brand tone of voice. And we worked with a copywriter who had experience with a lot of brands that we respect and look up to. And we hired this copywriter and she joined our team for about six months

• 1:10:05Nick Bare?

  and helped us establish our tone of voice. How we speak, what we say, what we don't say. How do we use words? How do we use effective communication to take the vision and intent of BPN and put it into words and letters and paragraphs? How do we take what's in our mind and dump it onto this piece of paper so that we can then share it with the team to speak effectively to the market we're trying to serve? So I'm going to share some of that tone of voice with you here. Our vision is to fuel performance and elevate athletic potential.

• 1:10:45Nick Bare?

  Our mission is that we obsess over equipping people with the highest quality fuel, authentic creativity, and a team of committed people to go one more. And we exist.

• 1:11:00Nick Bare?

  Four, we are a brand for the committed, those unwavering in the pursuit of their goals, never accepting mediocrity.

• 1:11:11Nick Bare?

  Our tone of voice, our tonality is one, we're empowering, two, we're vigorous, three, we're raw. We are high achievers, risk takers, champions, but we're not here for the glory. We're here for the journey, for the underdog, for our families, for our team, driven to achieve, drawn to challenges. Every day we strive for more because easy is not in our vocabulary. Yeah, we're those people, the hungry, the committed, the whatever it takes crew. Welcome to BPN, we're just getting started. Go one more. In our voice, if our voice were a person, they'd be the tough, loving coach.

• 1:11:55Nick Bare?

  That's just part of our brand tone of voice. It's a multiple page deck that we put together that helps us ensure that the way we're speaking and the way that we're talking to our audience, to that niche, to our market, that's what helps us stand out because we know who we are and who we're speaking to. We're not just creating another commodity products. No, we're creating products that serve a specific audience that creates real value and solves real problems. That's how we stand out in a competitive, crowded market. Because once you find out who you are and who you're serving, I'll tell you what, that

• 1:12:39Nick Bare?

  market ain't as crowded as you think it was.

• 1:12:44Nick Bare?

  If I could talk to myself in 2012, when I was first getting started, what advice would I give myself?

• 1:12:53Nick Bare?

  First, start reading early and read a lot.

• 1:12:59Nick Bare?

  Stephen Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, another book that I highly recommend, said, "There's no better way to inform and expand your mind on a regular basis than to get into the habit of reading good literature." When I started reading more self-help, business, entrepreneurship, biographies, autobiographies, when I started reading more, it game changed my business. I made much more money. I became a better leader. I made more sound, more informative, stronger business decisions. Start reading early and read a lot.

• 1:13:46Nick Bare?

  In 2012, if you would have told Nick Baer, "You gotta start reading more", he would have laughed and said, "It's a waste of my time", which is so ridiculous and just ignorant. Because now I listen to audiobooks all the time.

• 1:14:03Nick Bare?

  I'm reading as many opportunities I have

• 1:14:07Nick Bare?

  because I know the power in reading and learning and being a student, constantly being a student. The second thing, second piece of advice I'd give myself,

• 1:14:19Nick Bare?

  I'd say, "Nick, the main thing that's gonna hold you back from achieving what you want to achieve is you. It's yourself." The book that I'm currently reading and listening to is called The Mountain is You by Bran Ouest. It is so good.

• 1:14:38Nick Bare?

  And the subtitle is Transforming Self-Sabotage into Self-Mastery. And this, this book, an audiobook, has made me realize how many times and how many ways I've been self-sabotaging over the years. And what I need to change to turn that self-sabotage into self-mastery. And one of the quotes from that book that I'll share with you here, she says,

• 1:15:09Nick Bare?

  Let's be clear about something. To put an end to your self sabotaging behavior absolutely means it changes on the horizon. Your new life is going to cost you your old one. It's going to cost you your comfort zone and your sense of direction. It's going to cost you relationships and friendships. It's going to cost you being liked and understood. It doesn't matter. The people who are meant for you are going to meet you on the other side. You're going to build a new comfort zone around the things that actually move you forward. Instead of being liked, you're going to be loved. Instead of being understood, you're going to be seen. All you're going to lose is what was built for a person you no longer are.

• 1:15:51Nick Bare?

  Remaining attached to your old life is the first and final act of self sabotage. And releasing it is what we must prepare for to truly be willing to see real change.

• 1:16:04Nick Bare?

  The only thing that's going to hold you back from success and achieving what you want to accomplish is yourself. It's nothing else. You can't blame situations, the market, the environment, finances, other people you've hired, anything else.

• 1:16:24Nick Bare?

  If you want to see change, you got to change yourself. You have to be willing to endure that process. So I say, hey Nick, you want to build this business over these next couple of decades? Along the way, you got to be willing to change. If you're not getting to where you want to be, you better be willing to have those hard conversations with yourself and have the self-awareness to realize something's got to change. Because if it doesn't, you're self sabotaging your potential.

• 1:16:54Nick Bare?

  The third thing would be stop trying to avoid problems. Entrepreneurship is all about problem solving and problems are opportunities. Don't get into business, don't pursue this journey if you don't want to solve problems. Because building a business, being an entrepreneur, is all about problem solving.

• 1:17:16Nick Bare?

  And if you're going to work for a startup, if you're going to work for an entrepreneur, don't pursue that job if you don't want to solve problems. Because you are working for a business that solves problems. We are all in the problem solving business.

• 1:17:33Nick Bare?

  The next piece of advice would be hiring the right people and putting them in the right role, in the right seat is one of the most important things you can do in your business. Having people that you love and trust and that are skilled and that are talented.

• 1:17:52Nick Bare?

  And making sure they are in the right seat, they are in the right role in the business to maximize their skills.

• 1:18:00Nick Bare?

  And the business needs and desires.

• 1:18:04Nick Bare?

  Will give you the likely, the most likely chance of success in succeeding. And those first couple hires you make, those are the most important. Cause that sets the tone, that sets the standard, that sets the culture for every additional hire after that.

• 1:18:25Nick Bare?

  Next piece of advice I'd give is to play the long game. Over and over and over again, that every shortcut is a mirage. And while there's these shortcuts that exist and they may seem to be that golden answer. I can promise you they're not. Play the long game. Be in it for years and years and years, if not decades and decades and decades. You will get stronger, you'll become more productive, more effective, more efficient. More refined, get better and better and better. Play the long game, be in it for the long game.

• 1:19:11Nick Bare?

  Over and over.

• 1:19:15Nick Bare?

  The last piece of advice that I give myself in 2012.

• 1:19:19Nick Bare?

  Is to trust your gut and build what you want to build. What you want to build, not what other people want you to build. Or not what other people want to be built. Trust your gut and build what you want to build, but be self-aware enough to distinguish between intuition, gut feel and fear.

• 1:19:42Nick Bare?

  Another few quotes in "The Mountain is You", all about the difference between intuition and fear.

• 1:19:53Nick Bare?

  She says that, "This is how you start telling the difference between your thoughts that are informed by intuition and thoughts that are informed by fear. Intuitive thoughts are calm. Intruding thoughts are hectic and fear-inducing. Intuitive thoughts are rational. They make a degree of sense."

• 1:20:15Nick Bare?

  Intuitive thoughts, intuition, gut feel, they make a degree of sense. They are rational. They are calm.

• 1:20:26Nick Bare?

  Don't allow fear to guide your decision-making progress or process.

• 1:20:35Nick Bare?

  Don't allow emotion to dictate what you do or don't do. But trust your intuition, trust your gut, but be self-aware enough to know the difference between intuition and fear. The next question is all about our plans to expand to the UK and in Europe. I get this question daily,

• 1:21:00Nick Bare?

  hundreds of times. It's not even exaggeration. Hundreds of messages a day to me and the BPN team asking when we're going to expand to Europe, UK specifically. And over these last 18 months, we've been laying the groundwork that is needed to launch in the UK, EU.

• 1:21:30Nick Bare?

  Now, there is a right way to do things, and there is a fast way to do things. And the fast way is, I would argue, a shortcut in the wrong way. We could, I don't say easily, but we could have launched in UK, EU a long time ago.

• 1:21:48Nick Bare?

  But we wanted to ensure that we're doing things the right way, we're crossing our Ts, we're dotting our Is. We are compliant with this process because this is an investment we're making into the future of BPN. We see a huge opportunity

• 1:22:07Nick Bare?

  in the UK, EU for BPN, in our products, in our brand. And we want to ensure that we're taking all the necessary steps and precautions. So when we do launch, it's in a meaningful way. And that that market can be an equal opportunity as the US is for us right now.

• 1:22:29Nick Bare?

  So over these last 18 months, we've been working with international legal counsel to make sure that we have compliance with all of the copy on our labels, on our website, ingredients. We have new labels made specifically for UK, EU. All of the legal hoops that we've been jumping through, modifications, changes, compliance. That has been a huge hurdle.

• 1:23:01Nick Bare?

  But we now, over in the UK, we have a manufacturer for a lot of our products. Some of our products will have to import from the US to UK, EU. But we do have a manufacturer over there now that can handle a large portion of our products. We have reformulated some products to be compliant internationally. We have new labels for UK, EU that are compliant. We have a distribution strategy. Over in UK, EU, we have a third-party fulfillment team that will be fulfilling our orders that come from our manufacturing facility that is over there.

• 1:23:45Nick Bare?

  But we'll also be utilizing Amazon for some distribution. We've aligned with some wholesale retail partners to be selling our products. We started, if you've noticed, signing some UK, EU athletes to help grow, promote, and expand the brand outside of the US.

• 1:24:10Nick Bare?

  So it's been a long process for us so far, but we wanted to ensure that when we're ready to launch, we're launching the right way. The right way takes longer. We're playing the long game. We're not taking the shortcuts. We're not chasing that mirage. We are in it for the long game. And since this is going to be a big investment, because we see a huge opportunity, we're taking all the necessary precautions and being as compliant as legally required to make sure that when we launch over there, we're ready for you guys, you

• 1:24:53Nick Bare?

  guys are ready for us. Okay, the next question is all about raising capital, taking on investors, and leveraging debt when we first got started. So what did we do here at BPN? 2012, launched the business with a $20,000 loan from the Military Associated Bank, USAA. That's how I was able to finance my first round of inventory, build out my website, all of those things. And I spent all of that $20,000, which was a really good deal, because I didn't have to start making payments for 18 months after getting the money from that loan. And it was a super low interest rate. So I spent all that 20K initially on our first production

• 1:25:36Nick Bare?

  order and just getting the business up and running. And for those first couple of years, didn't require any additional capital, other than the cash flow that was coming in from product being sold, to place future production orders to maintain inventory and just keep the business running while I was in the military in the background. Now, between 2016 and 2018, when cash flow got really tight, because we were scaling, we were growing, we had to stack production orders on top of each other, to make sure we had enough inventory, and also keep up with the growth, there were a few times where we took out working capital

• 1:26:16Nick Bare?

  loans, to just bridge the gap for short periods of time. So we'd take out anywhere from $20,000 to maybe $50,000 with PayPal, or Shopify, for example, and use these working capital loans where...

• 1:26:36Nick Bare?

  These companies like PayPal will give you cash upfront to purchase inventory or finance parts of your business. And then they take your percentage of revenue each month until you pay back these loans. And we would take a few of these working capital loans out to bridge the gap, but then pay them off very quickly. And then in 2022, we actually did a seed round investment into the business. So I gave up 10% of my equity in BPN to bring on some strategic advisors and investors to help us make more informed decisions, build on the team, and then pursue this next phase of growth for BPN.

• 1:27:21Nick Bare?

  So by giving up 10% equity in the business, there were a few million dollars that came in during that round that went to our balance sheet. It helped facilitated growth of the business, the brand. We didn't need that money, but what I was more interested in was the strategic guidance and mentorship from those investors that came in. So we didn't just take money through this seed round investment from anyone and everyone. It was very intentional people that we pursued and reached out to that we wanted to bring on to our team to help us make better decisions to build and scale the business.

• 1:28:03Nick Bare?

  And that proved to be a very strategic and smart seed round investment. But currently, we have no debt on the business. We've never touched a line of credit. And as I previously mentioned, we operate the business mid-teens EBITDA and we pursue profitability over growth. And the last question I'm going to answer is have we ever considered or do we plan to outsource fulfillment? We explored it. We tested it and realized that it wasn't for us. So that's a big question that I think a lot of brands and businesses.

• 1:28:47Nick Bare?

  Have to answer at a few different parts of building a business. One, when you first get started, you have to decide, do we want to fulfill

• 1:28:59Nick Bare?

  and pack orders ourselves? Or do we initially outsource this to a third-party logistics company? There are three PL partners who all they do, and they're located across the US, is they will hold your inventory and they will pack all of your orders. And that's all they do. And they're very fast, efficient, effective at that thing. Initially, when we launched BPN, we decided to own and handle our own fulfillment and orders. And as we grew and scaled, we revisited that question multiple times.

• 1:29:38Nick Bare?

  Because you get to a point where you have to ask yourself, do you want to spend more time and more energy and more resources, more money, on building out your fulfillment operations side of the business? Being automation, in-space warehouse, a team, team leads, directors? It's a huge part of the business. Do we want to keep that in-house and own that and manage that? Or is it better to outsource? So we decided to test it a few years ago.

• 1:30:14Nick Bare?

  Like I said, we realized it wasn't for us. So the way we tested is that we onboarded a third-party micro fulfillment model

• 1:30:23Nick Bare?

  organization. So there was this three PL partner that we worked with for a small period of time. And they had hubs located across the US and they would hold some of our inventory. And if an order was placed in a certain proximity to their hub, they would fill that order for us. And all remaining orders were fulfilled by our team here at BPN HQ in Round Rock, Texas.

• 1:30:49Nick Bare?

  And what we found with this model is, one, it was not more cost-effective. It was actually more expensive for us to use a three PL partner. But two,

• 1:31:03Nick Bare?

  We didn't have control over fulfillment. There was a lower quality in fulfillment. There are more errors. There was communication issues and just a lack of care. When someone else is packing and fulfilling your order so it has no connection to your company, to your brand, to your customers, the same level of care that you would take is not the same. And you cannot expect or anticipate it to be the same level of care. So we tested that model. We tested a 3PL model. We realized it wasn't for us. We weren't going to pursue it. So we ended that relationship and working with that 3PL partner, that micro fulfillment model.

• 1:31:48Nick Bare?

  And we went all in to bringing fulfillment in-house at BPN. So we now fulfill all of the orders outside of Amazon that come in through BPN's website, whether that's wholesale, retail, and orders coming through our website specifically. And in 2024, we made the decision to go all in on our internal team. We built out that team further. We invested into automation and technology. So we have now this machine in BPN HQ where it's called the Opera. Half the orders go through this machine.

• 1:32:30Nick Bare?

  And this machine actually automatically packs and fulfills orders. And then we have a manual line where we have order fulfillment specialists on the line who are packing orders throughout the day as well. So the way this machine works, the Opera, if you haven't seen a video of it on our social media platforms, or I've shared a lot of these videos on YouTube. We place the order, the products that are in that order on this belt. The belt takes it through the line. And as it goes through the line, it is scanned based off dimensions of the products. It pulls corrugated cardboard underneath the machine, cuts the cardboard to the perfect

• 1:33:13Nick Bare?

  dimensions around the product that's on the belt. It wraps the cardboard and builds a box around those products.

• 1:33:22Nick Bare?

  Closes it up with glue and not tape. So now that order is more efficient in terms of space. It doesn't require any void fill.

• 1:33:32Nick Bare?

  The machine, the Opera, places a packing label on top, moves it down the line, where it is then sorted based off of the shipping carrier that is going to take that order to its final destination. So now our warehouse internally is split between automated fulfillment and manual fulfillment. And we can continue to invest into our team here at HQ, where we're not only hiring more people, but we're providing greater skill sets to the team that isn't here. I mean, the team is now learning skills in terms of automation and working with the Opera and the team that has installed or manufactured and installed the Opera.

• 1:34:13Nick Bare?

  Our team is learning skills internally in terms of working with wholesale accounts, retail accounts, Amazon, logistics companies, managing inventory.

• 1:34:30Nick Bare?

  It looks so much different than it did years ago. And as we move into this new HQ in April of 2025, it's going to look even more different. And it's going to be more sophisticated with more technology, more automation, and a greater, even more developed team. But that is the method that we have chosen at BPN for order fulfillment. We don't plan to outsource it. We will keep it in-house and we will continue investing in our team here at HQ. So those are the questions that I wanted to personally answer for this business Q and A.

• 1:35:10Nick Bare?

  Hope you guys enjoyed it. As always, go on more.