098: Building the Brand: Part 5 "The Hybrid Athlete"

In this fifth installment of the 'Building the Brand' series, I'm taking us through Chapter Five, titled 'The Hybrid Athlete,' covering pivotal moments from April 2019 to 2020. Highlighting my transition from bodybuilding to endurance training, I discuss the profound impact of discovering 'Go One More' and the growth of BPN. We'll cover personal stories, from marathon training to my mother’s battle with cancer. Also covered are key learnings on branding, team building, and the explosive growth of BPN during the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, I introduce the concept of the hybrid athlete, balancing strength training with endurance running, and how this approach has shaped both my life and BPN's future. Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Chapter Five: The Hybrid Athlete 01:24 The Power of Brand: Finding Our Voice 03:04 Lessons Learned in Chapter Five 03:49 The Story of 'Go One More' 13:09 The Birth of a Brand: BPN's Evolution 13:33 Building the Creative Team 22:13 Embracing Endurance: From Bodybuilding to Ironman 27:13 Committing to Ironman Florida 28:09 A Personal Tragedy and Its Impact 35:36 The Growth of BPN During the Pandemic 41:42 Creating G1M Sport: Solving Real Problems 48:49 The Journey to a Sub-Three-Hour Marathon 53:00 Embracing the Hybrid Athlete Lifestyle 57:03 Conclusion and Future Plans Watch or share the full Building the Brand series nowhttps://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLldAMepUaYU6vWd_yEkg7D4Y7fQMowyoZ Strength, endurance, and wellness supplements to fuel your performance. SAVE 10% at BPN Supps:https://bit.ly/nickbare10audio Follow:IG: instagram.com/nickbarefitness/ http://instagram.com/nickbarefitness/YT: youtube.com/@nickbarefitness http://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. October of 2016, I get back from South Korea. I go see this warehouse that we really didn't know if we were going to be able to afford. And I realized in that moment, I'm in the driver's seat. And I have to be accountable for the outcomes we experience. The wins, the losses, the successes, the failures. It was me, Preston and Joe. And for a few months, it was that same routine. Work, work, work. And it was all fun until things started to get really hard. And this game plan that we created earlier on of building a gym to cover some of the expenses and the warehouse lease so that we could build the supplement company on the side.

• 0:45Nick Bare?

  That game plan had so many holes in it that was holding us back from actually accomplishing the things that we wanted to accomplish. We closed the gym. But from the outside looking in, all these people who were kind of watching the journey thought we were failing. That was not it. I was just sharpening my axe. It's this transition period which feels like a lull, but really it's when you are sharpening your axe and you're preparing to go into that next season of battle. 2017 ended up being a really big year for us. That was the first year we did seven figures in revenue. And we documented and shared everything on YouTube. The entire journey, the entire process.

• 1:25Nick Bare?

  I also happened to meet Steph, my now wife, in 2017. After meeting Steph, I went all in on that relationship. I knew early on after meeting Steph, I was going to marry her. And she was a big part of building BPN alongside of us. Now, 2017 was easily the hardest year of my entire life. Cash flow was an absolute nightmare. And just because we were doing seven figures in revenue does not mean seven figures in profit. We started getting more into health and wellness. How can running and endurance training support strength training? So in 2018, we developed and launched Strong Greens.

• 2:10Nick Bare?

  As soon as we launched Strong Greens, it quickly became our best selling product. And that completely shifted where we thought we were going with BPN for the next decade. I want to put myself in uncomfortable situations. I want to seek discomfort because I have the whatever it takes mindset and attitude. And I will burn the boats and I will make it work. We are BPN. We offer effective health and performance supplements you can trust.

• 2:44Nick Bare?

  Welcome back to another episode of the multi-part series on building the brand. This is chapter five and I'm, I'm calling chapter five, the hybrid athlete. This is the first episode of the building the brand multi-part series that you're coming across. I highly recommend you go back and listen to chapter one, chapter two, chapter three, chapter four, and then come back to chapter five because what I've been doing in this series is telling the story of BPN from the start, which was in 2012, up into where we're at today.

• 3:28Nick Bare?

  Now, chapter five is not where we're at today, but eventually in a future episode, I will get there. Now where this chapter starts and where it ends, chapter five, the next chapter.

• 3:42Nick Bare?

  It starts where chapter four ended, moving into our second warehouse, April of 2019. And it ends with the introduction of the hybrid athlete in 2020. This was a very meaningful chapter.

• 4:02Nick Bare?

  It was an evolutionary chapter and this is a chapter where we truly started building a brand. And I would argue that up until this point, seven years in, we were building a company and we were offering a product, but we didn't understand or I didn't understand the power of brand up until this point. This is where we found our voice. This is where we established our true mission that we're living on today. This was pivotal. This chapter

• 4:41Nick Bare?

  was truly pivotal that shifted the trajectory of where we are right now. You see, brand has a heartbeat. Brand is alive. Brand has DNA. Brand and business are two different things. You can't use the word brand to describe company or organization. Brand is emotion. Brand creates real connection. Brand speaks to people. Brand can't be bought. Brand has

• 5:21Nick Bare?

  to be built and you build it drop by drop. One of my favorite quotes is that you build a brand in drops, but you lose it in buckets. It is very fragile. You have to be very intentional with the way you build brand because it has a heartbeat, because it's living, because it has DNA. It is a real thing. The lessons I learned in this chapter, one, who joins your team will directly influence your future success or failure. Two, don't be afraid

• 6:00Nick Bare?

  to change directions. Three, nothing is unbelievable. Four, go one more. Five, fight to survive. Will you sink or swim? Six, create with the intent to solve real problems.

• 6:19Nick Bare?

  Number seven, I previously mentioned, brand can't be bought, it must be built. Drop by drop. Those are the lessons I learned in chapter five.

• 6:33Nick Bare?

  And I want to kick this off with a story of go on more. Because this chapter kicks off

• 6:44Nick Bare?

  the foundation of who we are today. The founding story of those three words, go on more, those words that are tattooed on my arm now, that thousands of other people have tattooed on their body as well.

• 6:59Nick Bare?

  Go on more has shaped my perception of my mission. It has shaped my perception of life. And how I want to live, why I want to live. My what, my why, my how, my everything.

• 7:21Nick Bare?

  So here's the story, I've told this many times before, but it fits into this chapter. And I wouldn't be doing this chapter, the justice it deserves, if I didn't tell the story. So I was, I was on a training run in 2019 for the Austin Marathon. And at the time, my wife now, but my, my girlfriend, fiance then, we lived downtown Austin, Steph and I did. We had this beautiful duplex home that we rented. That was about half a mile from Barton Springs, which is this year round, natural spring. That's it's at 60 degrees temperature all year long.

• 8:07Nick Bare?

  It's a swimming hole, it's really popular. It's close to Zilker Park, it's close to the running trail. It's close to all these restaurants, it's a great location, prime time location. And that's where we were living in this year, we were living together.

• 8:22Nick Bare?

  And like I said, it was really close to the, the running trail, there's this 10 mile loop downtown Austin called the Lady Bird Lake Loop, also known as Town Lake to local Austin nights. And I would go do all my runs here. It is one of my favorite places still to this day to run, that and 30A in Florida.

• 8:45Nick Bare?

  So I'm on a training run and I had 18 miles scheduled for that day for this marathon prep.

• 8:53Nick Bare?

  And at this point in my life, I'm not much of a runner. I would run. I had a running background in the military, but after getting out of the military, I just wanted to get as big and strong as possible. And running wasn't a priority to me any longer. But I was still doing the Austin Marathon because I love the Austin Marathon, which is full circle because this year we are the gel and hydration sponsor for the Austin Marathon Series. So our products will be on course at the Austin Marathon.

• 9:24Nick Bare?

  So I'm on this 18 mile training run and I'm 10 miles in. And when I'm 10 miles in, my legs hurt. I'm tired. I'm fatigued.

• 9:35Nick Bare?

  I'm just burnt. I just stop. I just stop running 10 miles in. And I say, I'm done for the day. Like F this. So I start walking back to our house. And as I'm walking back to the house, I'm thinking in my head, man, if I quit on this run like I just did, what does that say about my character? What else will I quit on in my life? The way you do one thing is the way you do everything.

• 10:05Nick Bare?

  Will I quit on my business? Will I quit on my relationship? Will I quit on all of my future commitments and endeavors and goals? Because I'm creating this habit of being a quitter. And I was consciously battling this in my head as I'm walking back to our house. I stopped walking. I turned around. I started walking back to the trail. It's like, nope, I'm finishing this run. I will feel much better if I just finish this run. So I go back to where I stopped and I pick up and I get to mile 18. I run eight more miles. And I go one more. I run 19 miles that day, one more mile than I was supposed to just to prove myself that I could.

• 10:50Nick Bare?

  I go back to our house afterwards and I take my hat off because I'm always wearing a hat.

• 10:57Nick Bare?

  And I take it off, I flip it over, I take a Sharpie marker and I wrote "one more" under the bill.

• 11:03Nick Bare?

  And I take a photo of it and I post it on social media. And the response was wild. All of these people started taking their hats off, writing "one more" under the bill.

• 11:14Nick Bare?

  Taking a photo of it, some posted it, many sent a message to me with that photo. And I realized in that moment, I struck a chord. That connected with so many people, the story of "go one more" and I didn't add much context to that photo.

• 11:33Nick Bare?

  But "one more" meant so much to so many people.

• 11:38Nick Bare?

  So then "one more" evolved to "go one more". And "go one more" became our company mission,

• 11:48Nick Bare?

  our messaging, our foundation. And then I got it tattooed on my left arm, right above my watch. So whenever I'm running and I want to stop, I want to quit, like I did on that 18 mile run, 10 miles in. And when I have to go look at my watch, because I wear my watch on my left arm too, to look at pace or distance, I see "go one more" and I knew that if I tattooed that on my body, there is no way I could not go one more.

• 12:22Nick Bare?

  In the future, when I cross these types of obstacles or resistance. There's no way I could get "go one more" tattooed on my body and not "go one more" when I didn't want to. So it was a commitment to always go one more. When things get hard and they get tough and there's resistance and obstacles. Do you want to hold yourself accountable? Tattoo it on your body. That will hold you accountable. That was for me. Steak in the sand, saying there's no turning back. That was the, the burn the boats moment for me.

• 13:01Nick Bare?

  Tattoo these three words on my body and I promise you, I will change my life to never quit again. That's what that meant to me.

• 13:12Nick Bare?

  And I will tell you right now, like when I got those words tattooed on my body, my life changed forever. I experienced growth in all aspects of my life. Cause I burned the boats. Because I refused to stop, to quit, to follow temptation of resistance. And, and the easy, comfortable pursuit. It was lean in to the hardship, lean in to the challenge from that moment on.

• 13:45Nick Bare?

  Go one more. Initially was just an action. It was just doing more of anything.

• 13:54Nick Bare?

  It was one more mile. It was one more rep. It was one more hour worked on your business. Going more of these last couple of years has evolved for me. And I feel like I have to tell this. Part of the story here, which I will then also tell in the future. In one of these. Follow up. Episodes as well, but. Go one more evolved for me at one point where, yes, it is an action. There's an action applied to doing more of something, but. Really what go one more is, it's an outcome. And you achieve the outcome of go one more, which is. Success and unlock and potential. When you do more of the right things.

• 14:40Nick Bare?

  When you are very intentional, what you're doing more with, you're not just doing more to do more. There's no strategy in that. There are strategy though of doing more of the things that move you closer to your goals. Doing more things. That. Move the needle in your life in a way that you want to move the needle.

• 15:04Nick Bare?

  If you are spending more time working out. But you are neglecting your family in the process, that is not achieving go on more.

• 15:14Nick Bare?

  That is being irresponsible.

• 15:17Nick Bare?

  It's knowing where to apply that stimulus, where to apply that pressure to experience the outcomes of going more.

• 15:29Nick Bare?

  There's still a foundation of having to do the things you don't want to do. There's still the foundation and principle of leaning into resistance and obstacles and hardship, even when you don't want to, to achieve success in life. But it's making sure you're doing more of the right things.

• 15:53Nick Bare?

  But that day on that run in Austin, Texas, where I ran 19 miles, when I planned on running 18, after I quit, when I reached 10, that changed BPN forever. That is where BPN was reborn. That is where we started building a brand, truly building a brand. Now, 2019 was a really pivotal year for the brand because we started building the team, truly building the team at this point.

• 16:29Nick Bare?

  Up until this moment in time, we probably had five employees, myself, Preston, Joe, John Byers, Ryan Kerman, and Steph, my now wife, was helping out as well. This is seven years into building BPN.

• 16:56Nick Bare?

  And we were doing about $4 million in revenue in 2019.

• 17:04Nick Bare?

  And up until this point, I'm still filming, editing, and producing most of my content and BPN's content as well.

• 17:16Nick Bare?

  I mean, what grew our business, what grew VPN and our brand was content. It was videos, primarily videos on YouTube. We documented everything, everything. And over those first seven years, there were time periods where I would hire videographers to help out on a project to project basis and contractors that we would bring on for for certain shoots, just to help out. But we didn't have a full-time creative outside of myself on the team. I would film all day, I would edit all night, and I would turn around the project the next morning.

• 18:01Nick Bare?

  And from the time I got out of the army in 2017 to middle, late 2019, that was my primary responsibility and job. Film, edit, produce, share, storytelling. Film, edit, produce, share, storytelling. Seven days a week, non-stop. And I'm not here to say I hated it, because I didn't. I loved it. I still do love creating. I loved that part of the business. But I was also aware that in order to grow and scale the business, the brand, the company,

• 18:41Nick Bare?

  revenue, the team, I couldn't be filming, editing, producing, sharing, and storytelling moving forward. On my own, at least, I needed help. So, over the course of about a year, we hired, we didn't hire, we started a hiring process for a creative lead. Someone who could truly own the filming and editing process, storytelling, content creation. And I interviewed dozens of people.

• 19:24Nick Bare?

  We would fly people in, test them out. They would stay in my home with me and Steph for a few days. People I didn't even know, never met before. We didn't want to spend money on hotels, so we just put them in a room in our house, which looking back was potentially crazy. Did this for about a year. Would fly people in,

• 19:45Nick Bare?

  give them a room to stay in for a few days, film some projects, take them to dinners, get to know these people.

• 19:52Nick Bare?

  And there were some people who were truly creative talents. But they didn't fit the brand. They didn't fit our values or our beliefs. I couldn't see myself spending a lot of time with them. So it just didn't work out. And then on the flip side, there are people who, they were BPN from, from a value, belief, mission, brotherhood, perspective, but they didn't have the skill to create the content

• 20:24Nick Bare?

  that we wonder needed. And I started becoming really hopeless in this process, thinking after a year in, we weren't going to find someone to fill this role and I was going to have to keep creating content for this foreseeable future.

• 20:40Nick Bare?

  And then this one day I ended up doing a collaboration with another fitness YouTuber at the time.

• 20:48Nick Bare?

  And he brought a videographer with him and that was Jordan Utter. And I spent just a few hours with him and Jordan filming a video.

• 20:58Nick Bare?

  And Jordan was talented. He had the eye for the work. He understood brand,

• 21:05Nick Bare?

  culturally. It's a great fit. Got along with him. Values were aligned. So I reached out shortly after he was down here for that shoot. And I just kicked off a conversation of pretty much, would you be interested ever working for BPN? And at a time in Jordan's life, he was living in Ohio with his fiancee, Michaela. They were just about to get married, like literally weeks away from getting married and starting this next chapter of their life.

• 21:38Nick Bare?

  So I convinced Jordan to come back down to Texas to do a video with me and to spend some time. And I cast the vision of what we were building here at BPN, me and the four other team members, and where we were going to go with it one day.

• 21:57Nick Bare?

  And Jordan was bought in from the beginning. He went home, he talked to Michaela, they got married, and right after getting married, they moved down to Texas and they started building with us. We built together.

• 22:14Nick Bare?

  Jordan took, just like every other employee here at BPN,

• 22:20Nick Bare?

  Jordan took a huge risk, not just for himself, but for now his family, him and his wife, to pick up their lives in Ohio and move to Texas to build a business, build a brand with someone he didn't even know for more than a few hours, but believed in what we were building.

• 22:45Nick Bare?

  Those are the type of people that I've searched for

• 22:51Nick Bare?

  over these last couple of years to help build this business. And I found a lot of them.

• 23:00Nick Bare?

  Now, I'd be lying to say that there weren't times when I've made wrong decisions and wrong choices, and I allowed the wrong people to join the team.

• 23:10Nick Bare?

  I'm not batting perfect,

• 23:15Nick Bare?

  but I found a lot of really good people. And a lot of really good people, the people here at BPN right now, have uplifted their lives and their families' lives, and they've moved across the country, and they've quit previous jobs to work here at BPN to come alongside me and build this business, build this brand. And I'm forever grateful for a lot of people. But Jordan, being the first creative hire,

• 23:48Nick Bare?

  After seven years of really doing all of it myself, for the most part, from a creative perspective, Jordan took a huge leap of faith on me. And I'm very, very grateful for that. Not just Jordan, but Jordan and Michaela.

• 24:10Nick Bare?

  That was another shift in the brand's trajectory

• 24:15Nick Bare?

  of leveling up our content and leveling up our storytelling and building out a full creative team. That shifted BPN in another direction.

• 24:27Nick Bare?

  And we were all, we were all in the boat, ready to go in whatever direction BPN was going to take us. We were ready to pivot and adapt to wherever this brand needed to go to reach people, create impact, and become what it is today.

• 24:48Nick Bare?

  Shortly after Jordan started, I had this itch to do something new, do something different. And up until this point, we were a bodybuilding and powerlifting brand. When I started it in 2012, it was the height of the Arnold Fitness Expo and YouTube Fitness and Bodybuilding and Strength Training

• 25:15Nick Bare?

  and the traditional sports nutrition

• 25:20Nick Bare?

  intimidating

• 25:23Nick Bare?

  space, industry. That's when I got into it and that's what I thought BPN would be forever.

• 25:31Nick Bare?

  But things changed in 2019, shortly after Jordan started.

• 25:37Nick Bare?

  And it was a few years after transitioning out of the military, when I got out of the Army, I said, I would never run a day in my life again. And I was pretty committed to that. Luckily, I didn't get that tattoo on my body because I would have had to stick to it.

• 25:54Nick Bare?

  But when I got out of the army, I was tired of running. I was tired of running because the only time I ever ran is when people told me to run. And I was forced to run a certain way, at a certain pace. I never learned how to do it right, or why to do it right.

• 26:12Nick Bare?

  But I did love the physical and mental challenge that running was when I was in the army. There was something that pulled me back towards it when I stopped doing it for an extended period of time because of the clarity you get from it, the endorphins that are released, how good you feel afterwards. But when I left the military, I said, "I'm never running a day in my life again." And I meant it. And then about a year later, I decided to sign up for the Austin Marathon for my first time and test myself. It crushed me. I ran three hours, 57 minutes. Then the following year, I signed up for the Austin Marathon again.

• 26:55Nick Bare?

  Didn't train any differently, ran slower, ran about four hours, 15 minutes.

• 27:03Nick Bare?

  And then after that, which is shortly after Jordan started,

• 27:08Nick Bare?

  I was watching YouTube videos and I came across this YouTube video of the 1982 Ironman World Championships with Julie Moss. And there's this really famous video clip of Julie Moss

• 27:25Nick Bare?

  getting close to the finish line of this Ironman race, this Ironman triathlon race. And she was so fatigued and tired towards the end of this effort that her body was collapsing

• 27:38Nick Bare?

  a very short distance from the finish line. I mean, people were standing at the finish line, filming Julie coming in, and her full body was seizing up and collapsing and falling to the ground. Then she would stand up, she'd stumble a few more steps, and she'd fall to the ground. She'd stand up, she'd stumble a few more steps, and she'd fall to the ground. And with every part of her body, she was just trying to get to the finish line. She was just trying to finish the race. She knew she wasn't gonna finish strong, but she could finish well. And there was so much determination in her eyes that she was just gonna finish what she started.

• 28:23Nick Bare?

  And I saw this clip on YouTube. You should go, go search this on YouTube. Julie Moss, 1982 Ironman World Championship Finish Line. It is truly inspiring. The story in itself is inspiring. I saw this clip and I said, I want to experience that. I want that pain. I want that determination. I want that commitment. I want to train for something like that. So I signed up for my first Ironman.

• 28:56Nick Bare?

  And this was me pursuing endurance training

• 29:01Nick Bare?

  in a full effort. I was gonna put an actual prep in.

• 29:05Nick Bare?

  In my previous marathons before this, I would go log miles. I didn't really track mileage. I didn't track pace. I didn't do speed workouts. I didn't do any of that stuff. I didn't know how to train. I would just go run in the evening for 30 to 45 minutes, a couple of times a week. This was the first time I was actually gonna do a prep.

• 29:29Nick Bare?

  Now, little did I know that this prep in itself would be another pivotal point in not only my life, but the brand's trajectory. Right off the heels of Going More. After establishing Going More, then seeing Julie Moss cross the finish line at the Ironman World Championships in 1982, I was like, this is Going More. That's what it means. I need to experience this. I need to train for this. So that's what I did. I committed to

• 30:00Nick Bare?

  Ironman Florida,

• 30:04Nick Bare?

  which was 2019.

• 30:08Nick Bare?

  And I trained for that. And I learned so much about endurance training, things that I never knew existed before. I was humbled by swimming and cycling and running the right way. I followed a real training program this time.

• 30:26Nick Bare?

  And after that, I was addicted to endurance training. Not just the physical component and the chase to pursue greatness and to find out where my full potential is, but just the mental clarity, the emotional clarity I got from that entire prep and that race.

• 30:53Nick Bare?

  And one of the reasons that prep was so significant and impactful for me is because right after I announced I was doing Ironman Florida and right before I went into the actual prep, my mom passed away from ovarian cancer.

• 31:13Nick Bare?

  So she was diagnosed in January of 2019 with stage four ovarian cancer. She passed away in June of 2019 from cancer. It was very fast. It was very aggressive. And when I found out my mom was diagnosed with cancer, I thought it was gonna be one of those things where she gets diagnosed, she goes on chemo and radiation, maybe she gets surgery, and then a few months later, we forgot it even happened and she was down here living in Texas, being a part of what me and my brother were building with BPN. But it didn't work out that way. This cancer was extremely aggressive.

• 31:58Nick Bare?

  They did surgery, they removed 90% of the tumors in her body. Within a matter of weeks, they all grew back. It took her over and she passed away in June of 2019 in the house we grew up in on hospice. And me and my brother were there next to her when she passed away.

• 32:22Nick Bare?

  So when we came back to Texas,

• 32:26Nick Bare?

  life looked really different for us. And we spent two years, not two years, sorry, when we spent two weeks up in Pennsylvania, where we were with my mom in the ICU for a few days and then she came home on hospice before passing away. And we had all the funeral arrangements and everything around her passing.

• 32:50Nick Bare?

  John Byers was the main one down here in Texas that kept this whole operation alive.

• 32:58Nick Bare?

  From customer service and experience, to shipping out orders, to moving pallets around.

• 33:04Nick Bare?

  John Byers was a rock for me and my family and BPN and this brand.

• 33:13Nick Bare?

  We couldn't have done it without John. Like John is someone, again, that I am so grateful for. So many of these team members here at BPN have had been a part of my life for very significant

• 33:27Nick Bare?

  changes and transitions. And this was one of those. John held this business together while me and my brother had to get back to Pennsylvania and and be there with and for our family.

• 33:40Nick Bare?

  And then when we came back to Texas after my mom passed away,

• 33:45Nick Bare?

  I sunk a lot of my emotions and feelings into this prep. I spent a lot of time on myself, on the bike for hours, on runs for hours, swimming for hours.

• 34:01Nick Bare?

  For me, it was this outlet that I really needed at this chapter and point in my life.

• 34:07Nick Bare?

  Where I just lost my mom. I was building a fast-growing business. I was trying to manage a team and learn how to lead this team.

• 34:19Nick Bare?

  And this Ironman prep allowed me or provided me this outlet, almost an escape of solitude and clarity and depth of thought.

• 34:31Nick Bare?

  It allowed me to funnel some of these emotions into a physical space. So it was, it came into my life at a really good time for me personally.

• 34:44Nick Bare?

  But it also opened up these new opportunities for the business.

• 34:51Nick Bare?

  And to shift, kind of the thought process a little bit.

• 34:58Nick Bare?

  If I look back at some of the things that have happened along the way in this journey since starting in 2012, now 12 years in, I think too many people try to over-control the trajectory of what they're building, whether that's a business, a brand, a team, a family. So many people know where they're at today, and they know where they want to be five, 10, 15 years from now, and they will white-knuckle grip that path, and they don't want anything

• 35:39Nick Bare?

  to take them off that path, because they know exactly, or they think they know exactly where they're going and how they're going to get there.

• 35:47Nick Bare?

  But the reality is that when we're on this journey and we're on this path, new opportunities will present themselves. There will be something that happens along the way that will try to change our direction or shift our trajectory towards where we think we're supposed to go.

• 36:07Nick Bare?

  And if you try to white-knuckle and control and not at least listen to some of these new ideas, or acknowledge some of these new perspectives and opportunities, you might never get to where you want to be, because where you want to be is not where you're supposed to be.

• 36:29Nick Bare?

  A lot of things that have happened to BPN along the way has been us

• 36:35Nick Bare?

  watching, observing, listening, adapting, being open to change, listening to new perspectives. In 2012, when I started the business, if I would have white knuckle gripped that control and said, "We're going to be a bodybuilding strength brand forever, no matter what", and I ignored all these different opportunities,

• 36:59Nick Bare?

  I don't think we'd be a brand today. I don't think we would exist today.

• 37:07Nick Bare?

  But we listened, we observed, we became adaptable and we were willing to pivot when change and opportunity presented itself in front of us.

• 37:22Nick Bare?

  This moment in time, where I signed up for an Ironman,

• 37:27Nick Bare?

  fell in love with endurance training,

• 37:31Nick Bare?

  saw an opportunity for one, yes, but my personal

• 37:38Nick Bare?

  interests, my personal passions, my personal desires were also changing and shifting. And I didn't want to white knuckle the trajectory of BPN. I wanted it to be, and still do, an extension of what I believe in, what I'm interested in, what I'm passionate about. And it wasn't necessarily just strength training and bodybuilding anymore. It's now, was becoming endurance training.

• 38:07Nick Bare?

  And that was a shift in BPN's mission,

• 38:13Nick Bare?

  a pivotal shift

• 38:16Nick Bare?

  that we now are experiencing in a very meaningful way. Now, between 2019 and 2020, we grew 400%.

• 38:27Nick Bare?

  It was

• 38:30Nick Bare?

  it was nuts. There's no other way to explain it. We went from about 4 million in revenue to 22 million in revenue in one year.

• 38:42Nick Bare?

  And this was during the pandemic, COVID-19.

• 38:49Nick Bare?

  A few things happened during that time. One, people started prioritizing their health more.

• 38:56Nick Bare?

  So us being a sports nutrition and health company, there were a lot more eyeballs on our products. There was a lot more demand for our products. Also, at that time, gyms closed down, public training facilities closed down. So a lot of people started running. And for about a year, year and a half up until the pandemic, we were creating a lot of running content. So we had a lot of running content online, Ironman prep series, marathon prep series. So when lockdown happened and people couldn't go to gyms any longer and they started running, they started searching on Google and YouTube,

• 39:39Nick Bare?

  which YouTube is the second biggest search engine online after Google. They were finding a lot of my content and VPN's content, which drew a lot of eyeballs and traction to the brand. And we were also seven, eight years in. And a lot of the work we were doing for seven to eight years leading up to that point just compounded to put us in a really good position to grow at a significant rate and go one more. The foundation now of VPN's mission connected with a whole lot of people, especially during the pandemic. So during that year, we grew a lot. We grew 400%.

• 40:24Nick Bare?

  But what was really challenging about that year was again, supply chain issues. We didn't have a lot of experience in the business. We didn't have a lot of formal experienced employees. The people that worked for VPN up until that point were people we loved and cared about, and they were friends. And we knew they had good values and beliefs. So we found a role for them. We had a fractional CFO at the time, but no one.

• 40:57Nick Bare?

  Full time, who was really, truly managing inventory forecasting and production orders. And we also just could not in any way predict that we were going to grow 400% from 2019 to 2020. So, supply chain issues were a huge problem during that year. At some points in time, we were sold out of half of our products. Just because we were growing, we're selling it so fast, we could not keep it in stock. Our manufacturers couldn't make it fast enough for us. And we couldn't afford to place bigger production orders than we were already placing.

• 41:40Nick Bare?

  That was a really stressful time. And during the stressful times, you have to decide how committed are you?

• 41:48Nick Bare?

  And are you going to sink or are you going to swim? We could have sank and just gave up and realized how hard that year was going to be. Cause it was a hard year.

• 42:01Nick Bare?

  But we decided to swim and keep our head above water. And we leaned into work and we worked and we worked and we worked harder than ever before. To keep up with supply chain issues, to keep up with the growth, to keep up with demand and getting orders down as fast as possible. Because we saw this massive opportunity where we are growing so fast. Going from 4 million in revenue to 22 million in revenue in a year is insane growth. With a small inexperienced team, we couldn't believe it.

• 42:37Nick Bare?

  And we're lucky that we moved into the new warehouse before we really needed to. It was almost like it was a blessing from God saying, Nick, you better go sign a new warehouse lease. Because you're about to grow 400%. If we would have experienced that 400% growth that we did in our old warehouse that was 6,000 square feet. There's no way we would have made it. I don't know where we would have put products.

• 43:05Nick Bare?

  Because when we moved into this new business park, we took over 10,000 square feet. There were no other businesses in this entire business park. So as we needed more space, it was really easy to grab an additional 10,000 square feet here and 10,000 square feet there. We're right now in roughly 50,000 square feet. But during this year and this massive growth, we would go to our landlord and say, hey, can we have the suite next door to us to our left? Done. No one's in there. Hey, can we grab this 10,000 square feet that's in the building behind us? Done. There's no one in there. And we would just pick up more space as we needed it and add it on to our lease during this year.

• 43:48Nick Bare?

  Luckily, luckily, luckily, we moved into this new business park when we did because it was right before things took off.

• 43:58Nick Bare?

  So coming off of just explosive growth from 2019 to 2020. And as

• 44:09Nick Bare?

  some of our sales and revenue became more steady and predictable, we started planning for the next evolution of BPN and where we were heading and the mission that we wanted to serve.

• 44:26Nick Bare?

  And in the beginning, I shared that one of the lessons was to create with the intent to solve real problems.

• 44:33Nick Bare?

  One of the real problems that I experienced when I was in my Ironman prep is that I couldn't find a fuel source that wouldn't destroy my stomach, destroy my gut. And when you're on the bike for four to six hours and you're training for 20 hours a week, you have to fuel your training, you have to fuel your performance with carbohydrates and electrolytes, especially because I was training in the spring and summer

• 45:04Nick Bare?

  and early fall for my Ironman.

• 45:09Nick Bare?

  And all the products on the market at the time used Multidextrin, or Dextrose, or other cheap carbohydrate sources as their primary carb source, as their primary fuel source for their athletes. And the problem with this is that it has a low molecular weight, which means it digests very slowly. And for an endurance athlete who's training, running, swimming, cycling, and you're trying to get 60 to 90 grams of carbs in your body per hour, if it's digesting very slow, you will start getting gut rot, stomach discomfort, bloating, gas, cramping, which I was experiencing

• 45:55Nick Bare?

  on my first Ironman prep all the time because I could not find a fuel source that wasn't solving any of these problems. Yes, it was supplying me with the carbs and electrolytes that I needed, but with all these negative side effects and consequences. So going into 2020, planning to do more marathons and more Ironmans, the first thing I thought of was we need to create an endurance fuel product. Yes, for endurance athletes to use, but to be honest, selfishly, for myself to use for these future preps and these future races. So we started working on an endurance product. The intent being carbohydrates and electrolytes.

• 46:40Nick Bare?

  But carbohydrates that were fast gastric emptying and didn't cause stomach discomfort, gas, bloating, gut rot, all of those negative issues. And we tested dozens of carb sources over weeks and months. We tried everything, and so many caused the same problems. After consuming in excess of them while training, it would just wreck your stomach. It would wreck your gut. And then we finally found the carb source that I fell in love with that we use today. It's called Cluster Dextrin. Cluster Dextrin has a high molecular weight, meaning it is very fast gastric emptying.

• 47:26Nick Bare?

  It digests very quickly, very easily. You don't get gas, bloating, stomach discomfort, GI issues, cramping, none of that. So we created G1M Sport. 20 grams carbohydrates per serving in the form of Cluster Dextrin, 350 milligrams of sodium per serving. And created this primarily to fuel endurance athletes, runners, triathletes, ultra runners.

• 47:59Nick Bare?

  And when we first launched this product, it did well, but we never thought it would be a hero product. We never thought it would be a best seller. It was just serving in this small niche of what was then endurance athletes and what is now huge.

• 48:17Nick Bare?

  And we were selling a few hundred bags then, which we then evolved into bottles of G1M Sport per month.

• 48:27Nick Bare?

  G1M Sport today is our hero product. It is our number one selling product. In January of 2023, we were selling about 2,000 units of G1M Sport per month. So it grew from the time we launched in 2020 to 2023. But today we are selling over 25,000 units of G1M Sport per month.

• 48:53Nick Bare?

  Why?

• 48:55Nick Bare?

  We created a product that solves real problems for real people, real athletes who want to accomplish real results.

• 49:08Nick Bare?

  That's what we did. We solved the problem. People initially figured out that it worked. But then when word of mouth spread the usability and the effectiveness of this product, it went nuts. G1M Sport is now our best selling product under the entire BPN line. One of the key takeaways from this chapter that I wrote down here that I think is it's very important to share for business owners, brand builders,

• 49:43Nick Bare?

  just people to be aware of. During this chapter, we launched a lot of new products, endurance products, health and wellness products. We launched Strong Reds. We launched Strong Multivitamin, Strong Joints, Strong Omega, G1M Sport, like I talked about.

• 50:04Nick Bare?

  We hired more employees. We acquired more warehouse and office space within the business park. We didn't have all the formal processes in a business like we do now.

• 50:17Nick Bare?

  We didn't have a full-time CFO like we do now.

• 50:22Nick Bare?

  But Preston and I,

• 50:25Nick Bare?

  we didn't know everything, obviously. But we knew how to work and we knew how to stay lean.

• 50:35Nick Bare?

  And when you know how to work, you know how to be resourceful with resources, time and money,

• 50:44Nick Bare?

  you can make very little go very far. We didn't spend a lot.

• 50:51Nick Bare?

  We didn't pay ourselves much. We did what we had to do to keep the business alive. We knew how to work. That's something that we were taught from an early age. We had a work ethic and we knew how to apply it. And we knew how to be resourceful and lean. And that kept us afloat. That is one of the only things that allowed us to make it through those tough years. When cash was tight and money was tied up in inventory. And we didn't have all the formal processes and we were running out of inventory and supply. But we could work and we could stay lean and that kept us afloat. Now, after my first Ironman.

• 51:38Nick Bare?

  I ran my marathon in that Ironman, I believe in four hours and four minutes.

• 51:45Nick Bare?

  And I thought back to my first two marathons after that, ran my first marathon, like I said, around three hours, 57 minutes, my second marathon, four hours, 15 minutes.

• 51:58Nick Bare?

  And then I did a full Ironman and my marathon to the end of the Ironman was four hours and four minutes.

• 52:06Nick Bare?

  I was like, something doesn't add up. I'm getting fitter, I'm getting faster. How fast can I get?

• 52:13Nick Bare?

  So that's when I went all in on endurance training. That's when I became fully committed

• 52:21Nick Bare?

  to finding out where my full potential exists.

• 52:25Nick Bare?

  This moment in time changed my life, again pivotal, and changed the success and growth of BPN forever. I committed to running a sub-three hour marathon.

• 52:41Nick Bare?

  And when I put that out into the world, into existence, there was so much doubt. There's no way this guy is going to run a sub-three hour marathon. There were articles written saying Nick Baer will never run a sub-three hour marathon.

• 52:59Nick Bare?

  Two things I want to share with you. One, doubt is only dangerous when you start doubting yourself. Everyone in this world, everyone in the room, friends, family, people who are closest to you, can tell you that you can't do something. But until you actually believe that yourself, doesn't matter. Doubt is only dangerous when you start doubting yourself. Number two, nothing is unbelievable.

• 53:26Nick Bare?

  Nothing. You could say you're gonna go run a two-hour marathon and everyone will say, impossible. No way.

• 53:37Nick Bare?

  Who knows? Maybe you could. Nothing is unbelievable.

• 53:44Nick Bare?

  Nothing.

• 53:46Nick Bare?

  You just got to put in the work to find out.

• 53:51Nick Bare?

  When I said I wanted to run a sub-three-hour marathon, everyone said, no way. I said, I'm gonna prove you wrong. So I went and I trained.

• 54:01Nick Bare?

  And I toed the line at the Austin Marathon in 2020. And I ran three hours, 24 minutes. 24 minutes off of my goal. Huge swing and a miss. And all the doubters loved it. They loved every one of those 24 minutes over three hours that I missed.

• 54:21Nick Bare?

  So.

• 54:23Nick Bare?

  I recommitted. I said, I'm still gonna run a sub-three-hour marathon. I trained for another year. Whole year.

• 54:33Nick Bare?

  And I ran two hours, 56 minutes, 27 seconds.

• 54:40Nick Bare?

  Doubt is only dangerous when you start doubting yourself.

• 54:46Nick Bare?

  This was an unlock for me. This is where I realized. The power of intentional choices and commitment, true commitment.

• 54:58Nick Bare?

  I spent a whole year training. To run sub-three hours in the marathon.

• 55:06Nick Bare?

  And I did it. I did it because of commitment.

• 55:13Nick Bare?

  And after that, it was. What's next? What else can I accomplish?

• 55:22Nick Bare?

  And these future episodes will share the races I've done after that, but there's. 100-mile ultra races. Marathons, my current PR is two hours and 39 minutes.

• 55:37Nick Bare?

  Pushing the mind and body to full extremes.

• 55:44Nick Bare?

  But as an athlete myself,

• 55:47Nick Bare?

  who has this background in strength and bodybuilding, but now falling in love with endurance training, which is almost like cheating on an old girlfriend. You know, like a few years ago, if you were a bodybuilder or a powerlifter,

• 56:05Nick Bare?

  you didn't even associate with endurance athletes. And if you were an endurance athlete, you didn't even associate or talk to or look at strength athletes or bodybuilders. It's like, don't cross that line. Don't intermingle.

• 56:22Nick Bare?

  But coming from a strength and bodybuilding background and then falling in love with endurance training.

• 56:29Nick Bare?

  For me, I wanted to be able to do both. I didn't want to have to pick one or the other. And everyone wanted me to pick one or the other. Well, now are you going to be a strength athlete? Are you going to be a runner? What do you want to be? Choose, tell us, which side are you committing to? And I wanted to stay right there in the middle. I wanted to do both.

• 56:49Nick Bare?

  So I was still strength training and bodybuilding. And I loved being in the gym. But then I was running. And my daily routine eventually evolved to where I started running every morning and lifting in the evening.

• 57:06Nick Bare?

  And it was in the fall of 2020, where I started writing training programs and sharing these training programs with the people who followed me on social media. And everyone was asking for a training program that followed a structure that I was following at the moment, where I would run in the morning and I would lift in the evenings. So I wrote this training program. And when I finished writing it,

• 57:34Nick Bare?

  I couldn't figure out what to title it. So I just titled it, "The Hybrid Athlete Training Program." Now, I will make this very clear right now. I by no means founded the hybrid athlete or created the hybrid athlete. I have since then learned that there were books written about the hybrid athlete before I started using the term. Books that I haven't read or heard of. But I just thought, what is this cross between these two things? It's hybrid. It's running and lifting. So I'll just call it the Hybrid Athlete Training Model, Training Program.

• 58:16Nick Bare?

  And I launched it and just like when I got, go one more tattoo to my arm and I took that photo of my hat and I posted on social media and the response was wild initially. The same thing happened with the hybrid athlete. Running and lifting, it was these two things that, it's like mixing oil and water. People just could not understand how those two go together. And that was the way I was training. It's the way I loved training. And the hybrid athlete became my thing in 2020. There were so many questions coming in, "How do you balance running and strength training?" So a lot of my content was about how to balance running and strength training.

• 58:59Nick Bare?

  How to run far, how to run fast, how to lift heavy and be strong and look strong. And little did I know in 2020, that just launching a YouTube video and a training program called "The Hybrid Athlete" would again be this pivotal shift in the trajectory of my life and my work and BPN as a whole. But it did.

• 59:27Nick Bare?

  I would have never guessed that the hybrid athlete was going to become such a big thing like it is today, but it did. And the hybrid athlete became my thing in 2020 and still is for almost five years later. And that's where chapter five is going to end us. So until the next episode, guys, thanks for tuning in. This was a pivotal chapter in my life and VPN story, a very exciting one. But without this chapter, there's no way we'd be where we're at today.

• 1:00:08Nick Bare?

  So thanks for all the love and support. Appreciate you guys and we'll see you in the next one.