#71 with Nick Bare - Monthly vs Annual Subscription Billing, Fitness Events Post-COVID & Making Content To Build $10M+ Biz

Today's ep is possible because of Superside! Head to superside.com to hire a dedicated team of designers! Sam (@thesamparr) and Shaan (@shaanvp) are joined today by entrepreneur and owner of BPN Fitness Nick Bare (@nickbarefitness) who started a suppliment company in his dorm room and built it from $20k to over 8 figures in revenue, alongside building a big online presence with over 400K subscribers. Today they talk about what are his products (0:32), Growing a youtube channel (5:24), Content or business first? (7:34), Does he spend money on marketing? (13:19), Fitness apps crushing it (19:29), Products people in the military use (31:01), Fastest growing segments of the fitness industry (34:12), AI used in fitness apps (37:51), Monthly or annual subscription billing? (40:54), His new book "25 hours a day" (48:58), Book in a box service (52:27), Shaan's biz idea for Nick's huge office (58:39), Endurance athletes and Ironman being a huge business (1:02:43), Audio fitness apps (1:05:39) and Fitness in a post-covid world (1:07:46). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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

• 0:00Sam Parr?

  This episode is brought to you by Superside. So superside.com if you need something designed quickly, go to superside.com, give them a try.

• 0:15Sam Parr?

  We are back. This is the kickoff, Nick. We have a guest today, Nick Baer. Sean doesn't know much about Nick. Nick, I will, I'm gonna say-

• 0:27Shaan Puri?

  You guys know each other in real life?

• 0:28Sam Parr?

  No, no. I'm a fan, I'm a huge fan of his. And so Nick, we, we do this podcast and it's got a great listenership and people reach out to me all the time and they think they know me because I'm in their ears and I feel the same thing about you, except I get to see you because you're a big YouTuber. Nick, you want to kind of give background about who you are?

• 0:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I'm an entrepreneur based out of, right outside of Austin, Texas, Army veteran. So I started my business in 2012 when I was in college out in western Pennsylvania. Started in 2012, I was studying nutrition. I started Baer Performance Nutrition, which is a sports nutrition dietary supplement company, knowing absolutely nothing about business and thinking that I knew it all.

• 1:16Speaker 02

  And then a short year after starting my business, I joined the military, went active duty Army, where I then got stationed in Fort Benning, Georgia for a year, completed the US Army Ranger School, Airborne School, Infantry Officer Basic Course, and then got sent to Fort Hood, Texas, which landed me in Texas from Pennsylvania. And from there, I started using social media, building social media platforms, scaling my brand. Long story short, I transitioned out of the military in 2017 and we scaled our company from making $20,000 the first year to now making, we're on track for eight figures this year.

• 1:51Shaan Puri?

  That's great. And so while you were in the military, you were creating content? You were like a YouTuber slash soldier?

• 1:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, man, I like to think of myself as like the pioneer of military YouTubers. And it wasn't really by, by like choice. I started creating content on YouTube's documenting, training and nutrition. And it wasn't until my unit got sent to South Korea for a nine month rotation. I was like, well, I guess I either stop doing all of this stuff. Or I take my cameras with me to South Korea. And that's where people really started getting insight of my military lifestyle because up until that point, I kept it separate. But it was almost forced to merge. And at the time, there was no one else really doing it, or at least that I know of. And it really just picked up.

• 2:33Shaan Puri?

  And were the people around you, were they supportive of it? Were they like, hey, what are you doing? This is not about YouTube right now. What was the reaction you got from kind of your peers or your kind of leadership?

• 2:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I kept it very separate. So when I was at work, I can only count like on my hand a few times that I ever took like a GoPro to like, to work, but I would work before, like I would work on my business and YouTube and stuff before going to PT in the morning, it's before 6 a.m. And then as soon as work was over at like 5 or 6 p.m., if we weren't in the field. When I was back working on my YouTube channel, my business. So I kept it pretty separate, but my platoon loved it. Because, you know, I was a platoon leader in the infantry. I had 40 guys in my platoon. And I was creating these videos on YouTube. And they were in the videos. So all their friends from across the country they made in the army. Like, yo, guys, I'm seeing you in this guy's YouTube videos. And they loved it. They loved seeing the journey and the process. So they were super supportive.

• 3:29Speaker 02

  Upper level leadership didn't really feel the same way, but like my guys, my guys in my platoon, they loved it.

• 3:34Shaan Puri?

  Okay, that's cool. And so, and then Sam, do you, uh, do you use his product? Do you take his product?

• 3:40Sam Parr?

  Yeah, so his product is two things. So he has the, the nutrition business, which I have ordered, or I'm, I have, and I'm in the process of ordering more from him. But the way that I discovered Nick was through YouTube. Have you seen his YouTube channel, Sean?

• 3:57Shaan Puri?

  I haven't seen any. Should I look at one right now?

• 3:59Sam Parr?

  He's amazing. Nick's awesome. So Nick, what do you have, like 350 or 500,000 subscribers?

• 4:06Speaker 02

  I just crossed 400,000 like last week.

• 4:09Sam Parr?

  Okay, so Sean, Nick's like. 194 pounds, right? I know that's because I've, I watch him a lot. He used to weigh like 250, 220, uh, still like ripped, like, uh, about like, like, uh, uh, a good 220 or whatever he used to weigh. And he would post these videos of like 220 pound guy runs a six minute mile.

• 4:33Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I'm looking at the, I'm looking at your YouTube channel right now and you're like super jacked. Are you this jacked right now or was this like, like I can't, you know, Zoom, Zoom doesn't do YouTube many favors.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  Right.

• 4:42Shaan Puri?

  I have shoulders up.

• 4:44Speaker 02

  I have no pump right now. No, I mean, I, I used to weigh like 220, 230 pounds and the focus was just put on size and strength. So like bodybuilding, powerlifting. And then in the past, like a year and a half, I transitioned more to endurance stuff. So I trained for my first Ironman. I did an Ironman triathlon last November. Uh, and now I'm training to qualify for the Boston Marathon. So over that journey, I've lost like 30 pounds. Um, and I maintained some size. I mean, I'm nowhere even, I'm not close to as strong as and big as I used to be, but.

• 5:14Sam Parr?

  He's still huge, Sean. He's very big.

• 5:17Shaan Puri?

  So how did your channel, uh, like get big? Was it just a steady climb or were there some like videos that went viral or something that let, let it take off?

• 5:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, for the first two, for the first two years was very gradual. Like the first two years, I think I gained 30,000 subscribers. And this was just like fitness information, training information, diet information. And then when I went to South Korea, um, what happened there was this one day, it was like, it was a week before I had to go to the field with the military for a month. So we were going to be gone for a month. So I started filming this video and I was like, you know, I'm just going to film like a day in my life. So I just carried my small camera with me. I filmed my PT session. I filmed what I'm eating. I interviewed my platoon sergeant, some of my platoon. And I just like filmed this video called a day in the life of an infantry platoon leader. And I edited it up and I posted it. And within like 30 days,

• 6:07Speaker 02

  that video went to like a million views. But what was, was crazy was the correlation between subscribers and views. So it gained a million views, which now is, it's nothing. Like people gain a million views on videos all the time. But that, that million view video gained me like 50,000 subscribers in 30 days. So my channel went from 30,000 to 80,000 in like a month.

• 6:32Sam Parr?

  And so Sean, you asked if I use his stuff. I watch his videos every five day. I don't know how you have like two or three a week?

• 6:40Speaker 02

  It's like, yeah, about two a week right now.

• 6:42Sam Parr?

  Yeah, so I watched all of his videos and I discovered him a year ago. Sean, you remember how I was training for that Ironman like a few months ago?

• 6:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:49Sam Parr?

  So I, I'm like, I'm not ripped like Nick, but I weigh a fair bit. I weighed 210 pounds and I was like, I can't do this. I weigh too much. Like I gotta, and so I saw his, I saw that he was training for it as well and I really got into it. But then I saw that he was in Austin. So Nick, my company, The Hustle, we have our, most of our employees at this point are now in Austin and I was like doing research and I called my friend Noah Kagan and I was like, Noah, do you know this guy Nick? He's the best. And so anyway, I've like back channeled and I've learned a lot about him. And then I also learned about Bear Nutrition, his company. So I've learned a fair bit about this guy. That's why I was saying, I feel like I know, know him, even though we've never actually met.

• 7:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, small world. I, yeah, I know, I know Noah pretty well. Small world.

• 7:32Shaan Puri?

  And just so I understand, so you did the YouTube channel, you built the content first and the, the actual supplements brand second, or the, or they were happening at the same time?

• 7:41Speaker 02

  No, so I started my supplement company in 2012. I didn't start social media until 2014. So

• 7:48Shaan Puri?

  I see.

• 7:48Speaker 02

  I think that that kind of like blows people's mind now because you typically like, you'll see people, people that start companies, a lot of times in social media, they build this audience and then they say, how do I monetize it? Well, I created the company first. So I, I created my supply first and then I realized, okay, well I have no demand for the supply. How do I create demand? So 2014 is when I started building social media platforms out.

• 8:12Shaan Puri?

  Gotcha. And so with the supplement company, you know, there's a lot of these out there, right? There's like probably, it's probably one of the most competitive categories is sort of health and fitness. You know, supplements and vitamins and protein shakes and all that's good stuff, pre-workout, post-workout. So what was your thinking at the time? You're, you said you're, you're in college or you're, you were sort of pretty young at the time. Why start a new company? And what made you think this could actually work?

• 8:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I was, I was studying nutrition in college. I was on an Army ROTC scholarship. I remember being a freshman in college and my buddies in the dorms had no money left in our bank account. So all we wanted to do is buy pre-workout to go to the gym. So we decided, all right, we're gonna save up, we're each gonna save about thirty dollars, we're gonna pitch it in, we're gonna buy these ingredients in bulk, and we're gonna mix up our own pre-workout. So here I am in the dorms freshman year, I have this food scale in my living, or in my room, next to my bed, and I have all these white powders, some ingredients. So I'm mixing up these white powders on this food scale, and then kids would come in my dorm, and I'd give them a bag of white powder, this pre-workout, looked like I was dealing drugs out of my

• 9:18Sam Parr?

  Anthrax or something.

• 9:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, looks like I'm dealing drugs out of my college apartment. But I just, I loved sports performance nutrition, and I loved the supplement space. Um, so that's how it started, like, that's how I started to make my own stuff, and then it was between my

• 9:33Sam Parr?

  Where did your first stuff come from?

• 9:36Speaker 02

  My first actual production order was from California. Um, but when I used to make my own stuff in the dorms, I would just buy like bulk creatine, bulk caffeine, from like supplement, other supplement companies that sold just single ingredients. But between my junior and senior of college, I was like, okay, I'm gonna turn this into a company. So I found a contract manufacturer based out of California, and I took out a twenty thousand dollar loan, and I, I placed a production order for supplements, built the website myself, did all like the promo stuff by myself, um, the advertising, the logistics, the packing, everyone's, everything was done out of my college apartment. Uh, but that's how it all started, like, that's how I got into it.

• 10:18Sam Parr?

  And what's your revenue now? You said eight figures, so north of a million a month.

• 10:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, um, we're on track for like twelve mil, twelve million this year.

• 10:27Shaan Puri?

  And so when you, when you launched this thing, some businesses just work straight out the gate, and then others, most of them, I would say, don't, and so, you know, you take the twenty thousand dollar loan, you do all this work, which category were you in? It works right away, or did not work right away?

• 10:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I, my plan was, I told my dad, I said, I'm gonna make a million dollars year one, and he got in his last to me. So I sent all these bottles of pre-workout to like YouTubers and fitness, fitness influencers at the time, which was a completely different term in two thousand twelve, and I thought if they would, I thought, hey, these guys have a hundred thousand followers on YouTube, if they make a video about it, at least maybe a thousand of those people will buy this stuff. So I sent it to the the fitness YouTubers. They like do a half ass kind of like posting about it. I launched the company and like literally zero sales come in. So year one was $20,000 in revenue after just offering like 50% off discounts all the time to start. Cause I had bills to pay.

• 11:27Speaker 02

  Year two was $20,000 in revenue. Year three was $20,000 in revenue. So there's no growth first three years, but it was a crazy first three years because I launched this company a year before going to act with D D military. So I was in and out of the the field training all the time.

• 11:44Shaan Puri?

  So if this was your main thing, you might not have stuck with it, but you were able to, you kept it going while you were in the military though.

• 11:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, I kept it going while I was in the military. I mean, I was gone so much. Uh, I mean, the, the one, the one course that I was in with the military was the 17 week course. I think nine of those weeks I was gone, just in the, in the woods training. And so I went through Ranger School. I was gone for four and a half months there. So I was in and out of training all the time, but I was trying to grow the company whenever I had the, the opportunity.

• 12:15Sam Parr?

  On 20K in sales, what's your typical margins, not including if you, not including payroll, just like your contribution margin on these things?

• 12:24Speaker 02

  I was in the red then because I was pretty much selling products at cost. Because of the discounts I was offering. I was just trying to move inventory because I had, I had some bills to pay. And then I was spending money on marketing, which I had no idea what I was doing with marketing. So my ROI was like zero on the money I was spending.

• 12:46Speaker 02

  And I kept trying to invest all the money we were making back into the brand. So really like, I mean, I didn't pay myself personally until 2017. I built the brand for five years before I took any money from it.

• 12:57Sam Parr?

  What about now? So on a million in dollars in sales, these types of businesses, what, what can your typical contribution margin be?

• 13:04Speaker 02

  After expenses with overhead.

• 13:07Sam Parr?

  Uh, just the hard good, just, uh, just your fix, uh, or your, um, just like the, the growth.

• 13:13Shaan Puri?

  Variable cost. So after the, after COGS, after shipping.

• 13:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, we can have, uh, roughly 60% profit margins.

• 13:20Sam Parr?

  And then, so, and then, and then you gotta take care of your people and your marketing. Well, are, but do you guys, do you guys spend any on marketing now?

• 13:27Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, we do. I mean, we didn't start spending money on marketing until 2017. That's when we first started running paid ads. Up until that point, I mean, we made our first million in 2017 and that was all organic. And then at that point is when we started spending some money on, on marketing. But I mean, the only marketing we do, Facebook, Instagram ads, uh, email marketing, and then like athletes are ambassadors, SEO.

• 13:53Sam Parr?

  Yeah. Cause I, I would think that at this point, you guys, I would imagine, I mean, I, I definitely think you'd wanna spend on marketing if you could spend profitably. But I would think that the majority of your sales are coming from your YouTube channel.

• 14:04Speaker 02

  They were for a while, but we've now, like last year, our brand now today is a completely different brand than it was last year. Last year, if you would talk to our customer base, a lot of them would say, yeah, I know who Nick Bear is. But I think a lot of our customers now actually don't know who I am, which is the way I wanted.

• 14:23Sam Parr?

  Which is great.

• 14:24Speaker 02

  This is, yeah, it's where I wanted to go. Um, so I'm happy with that, that kind of transition and evolution.

• 14:31Shaan Puri?

  And what was the turning point? So three years, this business kinda sucks. Uh, you know, if you're my brother, I'm talking to you and be like, hey, man, maybe we should wrap this thing up. This is not working. And then, you know, eventually it does turn around and now you guys do an eight figure. So what was the turning point? Where did it go from a crappy business to a not so crappy business?

• 14:48Speaker 02

  It was actually when I was, I was in South Korea. So when I got to South Korea for a nine month rotation, we were making about $2,000 a month, two to $3,000 a month in revenue. And I told myself by the time I leave, I wanna make, uh, $10,000 a month in revenue. That was my goal. So. We had a lot of downtime over there. I told myself, I'm not watching any movies, no TV, uh, no like leisure stuff. Every waking moment outside of work with the military was going to be spent learning how to market, how to create videos, how to edit. I taught myself how to code a website. I read books, listen to podcasts. And within the first 90 days of being in South Korea, we went from $2,000 a month in revenue

• 15:30Speaker 02

  to $10,000 a month in revenue. And while I was there, I did a small rebrand of the company with new labels, new logos, a new website I built while I was there. So the rebrand helped. But it was just learning the ins and outs of business that I didn't know up until that point.

• 15:48Sam Parr?

  So Nick, something that we, basically this whole podcast, it started because Sean and I have started and sold some things before, like companies, and we also angel invest a fair bit. And eventually what we started doing was we just started riffing on the various companies and opportunities that we're seeing in the market. And so I want to do that with you. But before we get to that, where Sean and I live in Silicon Valley, and this isn't necessarily how I live, or in my business, we've not raised any venture capital, but most people raise a lot of money. Not, I mean, bootstrapping, which basically is normal for how to start a company, that's not normal where we live. Have you ever considered

• 16:30Sam Parr?

  raising money? And what has been your thought process between of not doing that so far?

• 16:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, like I said, 2012, I took out a $20,000 loan, which was my first initial funding. 2017, we grew like 1,700% or 750%, we grew in 2017. So at that point is where we started running into inventory issues because, for example, I had to place a production order for inventory, and that is a 12-week lead time. So at the time, I didn't have established relations really with manufacturers, so I had no terms. So I put 50% down for that inventory, and when it shipped, I'd pay it off. I'd pay off all the inventory before it got to us. What was happening was because we were growing so fast, I would get that inventory in, I would sell out of it in five to seven days,

• 17:20Speaker 02

  and then it would be 11 weeks until I had more inventory. So we were constantly out of inventory. We're pissing off all of our customers. Cash flow was like, I was pulling my hair out at night, you know, I was like so stressed out. Cause we're growing, we're making money, but cash flow was so tight because we were scaling.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  And we slowly dug out of that just naturally and organically just by stacking some production orders, timing inventory, getting control of inventory more. And we kind of set ourselves up for success there. There were some points after that with, with growth. Because we've essentially doubled revenue year over year after, after 2017. That I thought about taking some investors on and we've had the opportunity to. But what I actually ended up doing was creating systems and other services that aren't product based. So like subscription services or like virtual services. That are essentially just a hundred percent profit margins that are, we're using to internally fund the growth of the brand.

• 18:25Shaan Puri?

  So what's the best one of those?

• 18:28Speaker 02

  So training, the last like three years of sold online training programs, which are PDF downloads.

• 18:36Speaker 02

  We're about to launch our app within the BPN app, which is a subscription based training platform. Called Embrace the Suck Training. And then launching a online nutrition course here shortly. So all of those, because there's like really no overhead associated with them. We're using to fund the growth of bear performance nutrition. Cause I, I personally at this point.

• 19:00Sam Parr?

  But why, why not just only do that?

• 19:03Speaker 02

  Cause, cause I love the product based business. I love, I love, I love BPN. I love like the employees we have, all the team of the culture and the community. Like I could never give up BPN.

• 19:14Shaan Puri?

  Do you think any of those could be the same size or bigger? Or do you think they inherently might be smaller, but good cash, good cash cows for you to fund the business?

• 19:22Speaker 02

  I think they, they could be the same size, if not bigger.

• 19:26Sam Parr?

  Yeah, Sean, what dude, his, you're, I've been researching a lot of these influencers that create fitness apps. They crush it. They crush it. Sean, do you know who Kayla Itznew is?

• 19:39Shaan Puri?

  It seems, yeah, we both have wives that subscribe a hundred bucks a year to her.

• 19:43Sam Parr?

  Oh my god, it's crazy how big that is. And then I also was researching another one. You know Diamond Dallas Page?

• 19:50Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, DDP, of course.

• 19:51Sam Parr?

  Yeah, do you know how, do you know, so you know what his shtick now is, right?

• 19:55Shaan Puri?

  No, no, no, what is it?

• 19:56Sam Parr?

  Okay, so he, Diamond Dallas Page is a wrestler from the 90s, probably 80s even, and he's, he might be 65 now, and he has a yoga training program, and a lot of veterans use it, a lot of manly, like manly men use it to rehabilitate themselves, and people love it. And he charges, I think, fifty dollars for three months. And it looks wonderful. Like, I almost bought it the other day, I might buy it. But these, these like training programs, I imagine the churn is pretty high, but these training programs and these apps, they seem relatively simple to build. They seem like awesome businesses if you can prevent churn.

• 20:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think a lot of people do it, they do it wrong. A lot of people rush it and they, they don't put any, like, especially in the fitness industry, people just want to turn out all these products and push them out as fast as possible. So like, someone that's not qualified to create a fitness-based product or a nutrition-based product will do it because they think they're qualified, which is a massive liability. So like, for example, with, with our training platform, Embrace Suck Training, the subscription, we hired someone who's fully certified, strength and conditioning certified, Green Beret, to build these programs for us, because as much education and experience as I have with training,

• 21:17Speaker 02

  I don't have all the certifications that, that make me credible to, you know, to watch that.

• 21:24Shaan Puri?

  Dude, when you're jacked, that's the certification for do you know how to train?

• 21:27Speaker 02

  Well, that's the thing.

• 21:28Shaan Puri?

  That's what I consider the certification.

• 21:29Speaker 02

  And that's what most people do, but I mean, some people just have great genetics and like, they don't have those.

• 21:34Shaan Puri?

  Is that you? Did you have great genetics? Were you just naturally pretty ripped?

• 21:37Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, me, my brother, my dad, we, like, the Bear family, it's, it's like grass-fed farmers from central Pennsylvania, so we got, we got some good, we have some good genetics.

• 21:47Shaan Puri?

  Dude, I'm like a bean-fed farmer from India. It's like, oh man, we're screwed.

• 21:52Sam Parr?

  And what did you build your platform, this platform on? Okay, in your same platform, is it gonna be an, uh, an app? What is it gonna be?

• 22:00Speaker 02

  Which one?

• 22:02Shaan Puri?

  So your training thing, he's saying, did you hire a developer? Did you use some no-code tools? How did you, how are you building the fitness app?

• 22:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, the fitness app was built from scratch with a developer, uh, here in Austin. So we've been working on that for the past, man, eight months. And it's not, it's not launching officially till this summer. However, we launched it early for free during COVID-19 and just made a home training, uh, portion of it. So like day one, we had like 9,500 downloads, um, on that just because it's, it's free. And it's like home training. So like that value we're offering is people, the people are taking advantage of it. They love it.

• 22:40Sam Parr?

  What's your niche gonna be for that? Is it gonna be like, uh, people who are like, uh, I don't know how, I don't know the politically correct way to describe this, but like manly men who are like buff or like?

• 22:51Speaker 02

  Meatheads, is it?

• 22:52Sam Parr?

  Yeah, are like nerds, nerds who wanna get fit, women who wanna lose weight? Like, what's your thing?

• 22:58Speaker 02

  It's a, it's geared towards a functional, um, like hybrid athlete. So it's, it's the way I train, like, uh, going to the gym, throwing weights around, strength training, running up to 10 miles, doing some hikes. It's, it's a combination of a hybrid style training. That's, I mean, it's called embrace the suck. It's gonna be difficult. It's not necessarily a beginner program, but I'd say more so intermediate to advanced.

• 23:23Sam Parr?

  And what will you charge for this?

• 23:24Speaker 02

  $30 a month.

• 23:26Sam Parr?

  Dude, this is gonna make so much more money than profit, like so much more money than protein.

• 23:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, but our, our goal is, we want like, I see things as vertically aligned. Like I want people to come to the Bear Performance Nutrition Platform where we're training them properly as opposed to what other people do. We're, we're providing great products, the supplements, and we have the nutrition course where like, we're literally like, we wanna give them all the assets and tools that they can to become successful within one spot.

• 23:57Sam Parr?

  Why are you guys gonna succeed at this whereas like I would okay so I know Onnit I don't I don't have any inside information on them I just know of them from Googling and researching the founders and stuff like that they seem from an outside perspective that does not seem like a very good business if I had to guess why do you think that you guys will succeed at this and why do you think that people like those folks are not as good I'm not you don't have to say they're not as good because you seem like a nice guy but I can say it I don't think that they're I would bet they aren't a super profitable company

• 24:34Speaker 02

  I think I think Onnit's killing it pretty well I mean they have a pretty good representation here in Austin and I respect I respect everything they do and put out I think like where we focus is and we're a lot of and I'm not speaking about Onnit I'm just speaking about the supplement industry and fitness industry in general is there's a lot of companies that launch and they want to mimic another company's approach where like us internally here we never really look at what everyone else is doing we talk about what we want to do and what our community and our customers are asking for and we use that feedback to build out these systems so this past year we went through another kind of mini rebrand where we were building out a new website we have new brand colors guidelines going off of go one more which is our slogan

• 25:21Speaker 02

  so everything we do is like based off of this for the next year at least campaign wise go one more and building campaigns around that so we used to be all over the place like when I first launched my business it was like I'm selling to everyone who goes to the gym but over time we've refined our mission and where we're heading and who we want to attract

• 25:41Sam Parr?

  are you the sole owner

• 25:44Sam Parr?

  that's a good place to be huh I mean you got this you got a solid nutrition company and then just in my head if I had to look forward 18 months in the future I feel like this is gonna be a home run

• 25:57Speaker 02

  yeah I mean this is this has been something that we've been working on like all these things for the past past 18 months and they're only now coming to life because of the things we've been doing the past 18 months so these past 18 months have been like you know seven days a week 5 a.m. till midnight most nights but now it's a point where these things are coming to life and gonna launch and it's gonna pay off

• 26:22Sam Parr?

  Would you ever sell the company?

• 26:24Speaker 02

  Um, I would in, in, in the future for the, for the right price. I don't know what that price is right now, but I don't, I don't want to let go of it anytime soon.

• 26:33Shaan Puri?

  So, uh, do you, do people in the military take, you know, pre-workout, you know, do they take branch chains afterwards? You know, do they, are they consumers of those products?

• 26:43Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 26:43Shaan Puri?

  Cause there's a million plus, I think, soldiers in the army, uh, type of thing. So, you know, how, how, how much have you been able to tap into that market, given that that's your background and your brand and things like that? Cause that seems like if you just served that customer base, if you just won that segment over, you would be one of, you know, you'd be a $10 million plus brand in, in general.

• 27:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, that, we, when we first started and now sharing my military story, a lot of the audience that we attracted was military. So we have a massive military following. People send us messages all the time saying, you know, when they go on a new military installation, they're seeing VPN shirts all over the place, which is a really cool feeling. And we recently went through a certification process with our brand. It's called BSEG Drug Free Certification. So we third-party test all of our products every time they're run so that they are certified, banned substance free, drug free, so that military can take them and know, hey, I'm, I'm safe to use these.

• 27:41Speaker 02

  Some brands go so hard on, on marketing to the military where it's like, it's just like a military brand, but that's not something I ever wanted to do. I didn't want, I wanted the people in the military to-

• 27:53Shaan Puri?

  Who does that? Who, who's a brand that does that?

• 27:55Speaker 02

  I don't know. I'll see like random brands online that just like you, you camo everything, digital, like print.

• 28:03Speaker 02

  But we, I never wanted to be a brand that was just strictly military. I wanted people in the military to align with our values and our mission and want to use VPN stuff. But I didn't feel right targeting just the military on sales. And I, I never thought that was like the right thing to do.

• 28:17Shaan Puri?

  And Sam kind of alluded to this earlier, but one of the things we try to do is we try to say, whenever you're doing something, whenever you're in the middle of a field, you see all kinds of stuff. You see problems that your company has that you're like, God, I wish somebody would solve this problem. You see other opportunities that you're like, man, we gotta stay focused, but that, I, I believe in that opportunity. And, um, some entrepreneurs are better at recognizing those than others. Uh, I'm curious, have you seen any either problems, opportunities, trends in your space that you can kind of riff on and, and share? It can be half-baked ideas, but just what are some things you've observed?

• 28:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, like I kind of touched on a little bit earlier. I feel like people are, people in the space don't step back and look at the big picture. They're so just tunnel vision focused in where it's like a trail where one person sets the trail and everyone's in line just following what everyone else is doing. But it, it hit us like, you know, years ago where we pulled ourselves back from a bigger perspective. So like, we don't have, you don't have to follow this trail that everyone's taking. You know, a clear example is just like content that companies and brands are posting online. Where it's like the most unnatural, unorganic, cheesiest post. And we don't align with that. Like, we, we want things to be organic and natural and, and the people that align with our brand, the athletes, ambassadors we bring on.

• 29:34Speaker 02

  We want it to be different. Like, we want to set the path. We want to set the standard. I think that's, that's partially a value adapted from the military and things I learned in leadership and just applying it to business.

• 29:44Sam Parr?

  What are some of the faster growing SKUs in, in your industry that didn't even exist a year ago?

• 29:53Speaker 02

  Our fastest growth right now is like the health industry. And it's been like that for the past 18 months. So like, Strong Greens, Strong Reds, multivitamins, Strong Joints. And it's interesting because when we first launched, we were primarily a sports nutrition brand. Protein, pre-workouts, creatine. And we added Strong Greens, a green superfood supplement to the line, thinking it was just going to be an opportunity for an upsell. Like, hey, if you want a green supplement, we're going to create one. We're going to add to the line. Well, it quickly became our best seller and we'll sell through, you know, 8,000 units a month of Strong Greens.

• 30:28Sam Parr?

  All right. This episode is brought to you by Superside. So here's the deal. I'm incredibly impatient, like horribly impatient. I get an idea at midnight and on 8:00 AM the next day, I want it done. And unfortunately, hiring people to get that stuff done is really time consuming. It takes forever. So superside.com, here's what it does. You go to superside.com. They already have a team of designers ready to go. You tell them what you want and they get it done. It's 20 times faster than traditional hiring and 50% more affordable than agencies. If you need something designed and need it done well and fast, try them out. Superside.com. I've used them before. Love them.

• 31:03Speaker 02

  It's like the health market part of our brand is really taking the lead now.

• 31:08Sam Parr?

  And how big do you think Athletic Greens is? I've bought their stuff before. That seems like a pretty big company, right?

• 31:16Speaker 02

  I've seen I've seen their sponsored stuff on like Instagram, Facebook. I've never used it. I don't know anyone else that's ever used it.

• 31:25Speaker 02

  I mean, it's hard to tell sometimes with with social media because you can make any brand look big, you know? It's hard to tell.

• 31:33Shaan Puri?

  If I gave you a million bucks and I said, hey, Nick, I trust your judgment in your space, you can invest this million bucks in any other company besides yours. What company would you invest a million bucks into?

• 31:45Speaker 02

  I probably wouldn't do a product-based business. I would do some sort of some sort of technology-based business.

• 31:53Speaker 02

  Just because I've seen how fast money goes in a product-based business and you can burn through that and you can burn through a million dollars like like that. So I'd do something service-based, something tech-based, probably.

• 32:03Shaan Puri?

  Anything come to mind or just hard to think of on the spot?

• 32:05Speaker 02

  I'd say something something in the health industry because the health industry, health space, it's not going anywhere anytime soon. It's only going to get bigger.

• 32:13Speaker 02

  And even when times are tough and times are good, like health is still a priority for people. So it would be some sort of health-based, either subscription service or just technology. I think wearables, something if anything product-based, like wearables, like the garment I'm wearing now. I think that's like, yeah, that's where a lot of stuff is headed. And I think doing something with a wearable in fitness and technology-based, that'd be massive.

• 32:39Sam Parr?

  You know who two companies in that space that I think are doing wonderful are Whoop and Aura Ring.

• 32:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:49Sam Parr?

  I I think those guys are just crushing it. I don't know how, when I think of how to finance a company like that, it makes my head hurt. Like that, it just seems so expensive to start, but people are buying the fuck out of that stuff, I think.

• 33:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was saying a Whoop. And I just, I couldn't get on board with it. I, I, it didn't like grab me. I like being able to see, like, I like the display. Like, I want quick, real-time data. And I don't want to have to look at my phone for it. So like, I'll, I'll wear a Garmin for the rest of my life till the day I die. I don't need all the crazy features to it, but like anything can like measure my heart rate, measure my sleep. Give me a pace on a run. I'm all, I'm, I'm team Garmin all the way.

• 33:34Sam Parr?

  Sean, isn't it funny how Nick said that? So his company from an outside, I think is awesome. And he was like, yeah, I want to do tech. And then, so Sean had a company that he sold to Twitch. And now he's trying to launch physical goods.

• 33:50Sam Parr?

  Like a D to C thing.

• 33:52Shaan Puri?

  But I, I would agree that um, tech is the way to go. So I'm with you on that. In fact, there's a company I'm looking at investing in. I really like this guy. I think I'm a either investor advising this company. Um, and they, he's doing a kind of a, a, a app-based workout thing, but he's, he's not doing influencer stuff. He's doing, um, it's, it's a, it's, it's AI-based. Now, AI is just kind of like a bullshit term. But what he's doing is, um, pretty simple. He's like, you know, let's say you're going to do a workout. And most people just do some random thing like, oh, three sets of 10. And he's like, why three sets and why 10? And he's like, well, these are just round numbers people use because there's no science underneath.

• 34:32Shaan Puri?

  Uh, you know, like for you on this day, is that the correct amount to be doing of this weight? So what his theory is, he logs everything. So he knows what weight you did, how many reps you did, how many sets you did last time. And so he knows how to incrementally get you once, one unit further, a little bit further, a little bit further, when you need to rest, that sort of thing. And so that over a six-month period, you can get more gains if you use this than not. And now I, I think that's.

• 34:57Sam Parr?

  That's bullshit, I think. I think that's bullshit.

• 34:59Shaan Puri?

  Why would that be bullshit?

• 35:00Sam Parr?

  Because there's already things like, uh, Nick would know way more. But like, there's so many calculators that you can do where it helps you period, what's it called, periodization? Where you can like, it tells you like, like maybe for example, two or three weeks, you keep the same weight. And then on the third, fourth, fifth week, you, you increase it by X percent. I don't understand why you need so much technology to do that.

• 35:22Speaker 02

  Well, I think it comes down, it's, it's a theory of.

• 35:24Shaan Puri?

  Convenience.

• 35:25Speaker 02

  It's called auto-regulation. And I mean, like, anyone can auto-regulate. But a lot of people don't understand. It's like your body doesn't know reps. For example, your body knows effort. Your body doesn't know pace. It knows effort. So that's why a lot of people use like the RPE scale, the rate of perceived exertion. So if I just said, hey, use this weight for an RPE nine. Well, the RPE scale is based on 10. So it means RPE nine is one rep short of failure. So I think using effort as opposed to reps is better. But auto regulation is, for example, like if I go into workout and do one more upset and I don't feel good, well, I just don't, I don't do what I was supposed to that day. I just, you know, you use common sense and apply that to fitness. But AI, I can see where AI comes into play with some sort of auto regulation and perceived effort.

• 36:09Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, like Sam, for example, you know, our wives subscribe to Sweat and it's a workout program. There's a million workout programs online. Why do you, why do I need an app? Why do I pay a subscription, right? People pay for convenience. They pay for certainty. They pay for having their handheld to do things. And so, you know, if you have an app that's going to do the hard work for you of helping you, A, pick what workout to do today, and then what's the numbers? How many should I do of which so that I can get gains over time? People will pay for that, that benefit. And people are. So this, this guy's doing, you know, over, let me, let me pull up his numbers real quick, but he's doing over a million dollars a month already on this app. And so, so he's had phenomenal success. And, and he's grown it, you know, in a very, very short amount of time. But

• 36:55Sam Parr?

  What's been his, what, what was his main source of growth? Paid ads?

• 36:59Shaan Puri?

  Paid ads, yeah.

• 37:00Sam Parr?

  So we, Nick, have you heard of Aptiv?

• 37:03Speaker 02

  Uh, I don't think so.

• 37:05Sam Parr?

  Aptiv is cool. So it started by this guy named Ethan. Uh, he spoke at our event HustleCon. And it's, it's a badass company. Um, but now I want to hear Nick's opinion. But basically, what they do is, uh, they, it's just like a, they probably have a thousand classes and you say like strength, indoor running, outdoor running, yoga, or a bunch of different stuff. And then they have like, they must have, they must license music from someone else. And you say how much time they have, and they'll give you a variety of audio classes that you can do. It's wonderful. It's a hundred dollars a year. And he scaled it to 20 million in sales in like, I think, three years. And it's subscriber revenue. It's pretty amazing revenue. But I would have to, but the costs of, or the barrier to entry for a business like that is so low. I have to imagine

• 37:49Sam Parr?

  the competition is stupidly high. Maybe the, the most competitive on the iTunes store.

• 37:55Speaker 02

  And he grew that mainly through ads?

• 37:58Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 37:59Speaker 02

  I always wonder like for the ads for subscriptions like that. Cause like say for example, it's a hundred dollars a year, maybe it's like $10 a month. Like you have such a low cost, like you have like your cost per acquisition has to be pretty low. Taking into consideration like the lifetime value that customer. So like those numbers have to get pretty like messy.

• 38:21Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, like, you know, if you're able to acquire a customer for 20 bucks or $40, then you know, you're saying, okay, cool. I'm going to pay this customer off in, let's call it four months. And that's the, that's sort of the math you have to do to make that work.

• 38:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, then it's like you're waiting to see, you're making sure like that customer holds on or you're at a loss for that cost per acquisition.

• 38:43Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yes, but the secret, I think, I think that the trick is, and I, so we have a subscription business called Trends, trends.co. It's, and it's a great business. And what I learned doing that is I went and talked to Ethan of Active as well as like 10 or 20 different subscription companies. And they were like, I wish we would only do annual billing. So we only do annual billing and it helps significantly. And so I think the secret for Active as well as others like it, and I don't know if what you, what your guys' plans are, Nick, is you have to do annual billing. Or three month billing.

• 39:17Speaker 02

  Do you find that by not offering, so you don't offer monthly?

• 39:22Sam Parr?

  No, no, we don't. And I, so do you know the athletic?

• 39:27Speaker 02

  The athletic?

• 39:29Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's like this, uh, it's like, uh, how do you describe the athletic?

• 39:32Shaan Puri?

  It's sports, sports news, but you pay for it on subscriptions, like local, you know, they, they're bored on your local team, but you gotta pay for it.

• 39:39Sam Parr?

  Yeah, and they raised like, I don't know, 200 million dollars, a shit ton of money. And, um, I talked to those guys and they're like, we wish we only did annual. And so does it, it, we, it definitely limit, it, I think it limits the amount of people that will sign up. But I think if your sales copy and your brand branding is good enough, it, it won't matter. And I think that that's something that people don't realize and they don't expect is that they think annual billing will be a turn off for people. But I don't think so, particularly if it's, uh, 30. Thirty, thirty dollars a month is what you're charging, that's three hundred and sixty dollars a year. That's not quite an impulse purchase, but I think like a hundred and ninety-nine dollars is an impulse purchase. And

• 40:18Shaan Puri?

  But this type of stuff is super easy to test. You don't even need to know, you don't even need to say this is better than that. You literally run both tests and then the data will tell you, okay, when you do monthly, the conversion rate goes up, but then people churn out at this month. And when we do annual, the conversion rate's this much and it goes, and you just multiply the two numbers together and it'll tell you which one to do. Of course, everybody wants annual because you have more certainty, you get more cash flow, all that good stuff. But, you know, it's a math equation and you can run this test really easily. I don't think you should be religious about it.

• 40:47Sam Parr?

  I disagree, Sean. I, I don't think you can A B test this because if you do A B test this, then customers are going to expect monthly. I'd rather just take that right out of the equation. Go ahead, Nick.

• 40:56Shaan Puri?

  No, like for, for most apps, you don't, they don't, most customers don't know what the other customers are seeing.

• 41:02Speaker 02

  I would, I would just automatically assume that your conversion would like take a massive hit if you didn't offer a monthly subscription.

• 41:07Sam Parr?

  I can say for our service, I don't think that's true because our conversion's really high.

• 41:12Speaker 02

  What's your, what's your monthly fee and your annual, or what's your annual fee?

• 41:15Sam Parr?

  Three hundred, two ninety-nine. Um, and, and we're going to raise the price to probably five or six hundred.

• 41:23Sam Parr?

  Um, and I just think that, I just think that annuals, I'd rather, I, I just think it's better. And so our company, I haven't raised venture capital, but the cash flow from trends is just magnificent and it allows us to actually create what we want to make for people. Uh, otherwise it's, it's hard. I have another company, I'm part owner in a software company that does monthly billing. It's way harder. It's way harder.

• 41:47Speaker 02

  That's, that's interesting perspective, actually, that it's a really good insight to take over to this, uh, this training platform.

• 41:55Sam Parr?

  Uh, yeah, I would, I, and whenever I, I have downloaded like the top fitness apps, because I'm a nerd and I just like looking at how, how marketers do stuff. It seems like most do annual billing only. Like, uh, I use this app called Strong, which helps me track my lifts. It was, it was only annual billing. I think Aptiv was only annual billing. I think that like, I always say to myself, I think like, there's a handful of industries that do things best, particularly people who are uh, developing games for the iPhone. Those types of marketers are the best. And I think fitness people are close at like a second or third place for like the best marketers because it's so freaking competitive.

• 42:34Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. I mean, there's new, new fitness app. I mean, every Every influencer, there were a hundred thousand followers on Instagram is coming out with an app now. That's crazy.

• 42:45Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that's not gonna work. Like that, that is a temporary phenomenon and then, you know, eighteen months from now, there's gonna be a whole bunch of dead apps.

• 42:54Speaker 02

  Oh, one hundred percent. I mean, even in, even in our space, we see people launching, launching companies or, or trying to copy the things that we do. I think a lot of people don't realize, well, it took me eight years to, to build this thing and grow and scale it. But we'll see our, some of our direct competitors copying and following things that we're doing, whether it's a product, whether it's like a, a marketing campaign.

• 43:18Speaker 02

  But it's like by the time they, someone else copies someone else, man, you're already like six months or a year behind.

• 43:25Sam Parr?

  Nick, are you able to, do you pay yourself well? Because since you own the whole company or like the, so like I said, Sean and I are like mostly in Silicon Valley. And typically people build their wealth by selling businesses amongst our friends. Are, are you able to create wealth along the way or is it mostly just as little as possible?

• 43:48Speaker 02

  I take a small, I take a very small paycheck from BPN, but then I have additional revenue sources. From other things I do. It's like I haven't, I haven't increased my pay since I started paying myself in 2017.

• 44:02Sam Parr?

  So then is most of your income from like YouTube ads and, and your PDFs?

• 44:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, YouTube ads, PDFs, other contracts I have with other companies, like retainers for, for some marketing stuff that I've been doing.

• 44:18Speaker 02

  But that, that's the majority of my money. BPN is probably, what I pay myself on salary through BPN is the smallest amount of money that I make.

• 44:26Sam Parr?

  And what, how do you have time to do marketing for other people?

• 44:31Speaker 02

  Um, I mean, it's something that I used to do more of and something this year that I'm actually, I've cut back on like a lot of my contracts that I had.

• 44:40Shaan Puri?

  It sounds like you're the, you're the, you're the model, you're not the marketer, right? You're the, you're the, you're giving your likeness to them, is that right?

• 44:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, so it's like some posts that I'm doing for them. Oh, oh, oh. And I'm not, I'm not doing their marketing, like it's a paid post here and there or a YouTube feature. Or I promote a product and it's an affiliate sale, um, or my book that I launched, stuff like that, so.

• 45:05Shaan Puri?

  And what's the premise of the book? So the book's called, what, 25 hours?

• 45:08Speaker 02

  Book's called 25 hours a day, so it's essentially.

• 45:10Shaan Puri?

  What does that mean? Is that your philosophy?

• 45:12Speaker 02

  Uh, well, the story behind it is I was sitting in Fort Benning, Georgia, and I was, I was talking to the, the captains from the 75th Ranger Regiment. And I turned to one of them, and this was before I, I met my platoon, this is when I'm still in training, I just got done with Ranger School. I turned to this one captain, I said like, you know, tell me how to be a good leader in the military. And he essentially, and it stuck with me, he pointed to a guy across the room. And he's like, you see that guy over there? That guy when like shit hits the fan, when, when bullets are flying over his shoulder. He, I'll look at him and he's as calm as the other side of the pillow. Like he's as cool as the other side of the pillow, he just, he doesn't react to anything, he just slows down time itself. So they go, oh shit, well, I need to slow down time itself.

• 45:56Speaker 02

  So I came up with this concept in my head and it stuck with me for a long time, like, I'm just literally extending my day to 25 hours, like I'm living my day like I have 25 hours. So like when I was first building the brand and, and the book is about building my company and going through the military. And the lessons I learned in the military and applying those to being a leader in business. I essentially would just like sacrifice sleep if I had to. I would sacrifice all luckies if I had to, because I didn't have a choice, it's not like I'm out here just like working for, to work. It's that my, the amount of time I had to work was so small because of the military. Um, so I just adapted this mindset of just living like a life of like 25 hours a day. Something that no one else was able to do, but mentally to me it, it, it worked. So that was the premise behind like coming up with the story.

• 46:39Shaan Puri?

  So what, what, what does that mean? So, so you, so how does one live with 25 hours in a day? Is it, I sleep one hour less, is that the trick?

• 46:46Speaker 02

  If you have to, yeah, I mean, it's mentally slowing down. Time itself to me. So it's like wild and I'll watch people do this in business like and fitness with social media stuff like they're so reactive. So like as soon as like shit hits the fan or something goes wrong, they're jumping to conclusions and they're rushing to failure. And it's like they're not able to pull themselves back and like look at it from a bigger perspective. And I learned that from the military. It's like shit is always going to go wrong. But like you live up to like pull yourself back and like slow down time itself. Where it's like you're in a movie and everything else is still going on, but you're watching yourself from like a third person. And it's just like this mindset adaptive, just like slowing down the day.

• 47:30Speaker 02

  And if you don't get sleep that day, you don't get sleep. If you don't get food that day, you don't get, you don't get food. And I think the military itself had a really strong impact in that. But the concept of 25 hours a day, it's like, it just kept sticking with me because it's like everyone's so rushed. To do things in a day that only has 24 hours. It's like, well, I'm going to give myself 25 hours.

• 47:51Sam Parr?

  Who, uh, did someone publish that or did you self-publish that book?

• 47:54Speaker 02

  Uh, Lioncrest Publishing published that here in Austin.

• 47:57Sam Parr?

  Do they give you an, oh, uh, Tucker?

• 47:59Speaker 02

  Yep. Yeah, Tucker's company.

• 48:01Sam Parr?

  Tucker's a good friend of mine. Did, uh, so then you didn't get like an advance on it?

• 48:05Speaker 02

  No, I didn't.

• 48:07Sam Parr?

  Do you think that that book sales will be a significant stream of revenue?

• 48:12Speaker 02

  Not significant. I mean, they, they've done pretty well so far. But I think it's just a really good way to get the story on about the brand.

• 48:23Speaker 02

  So I guess it's another way for people to connect with bear performance nutrition at a deeper level. Other than it just being a supplement company because there's such a strong story behind it.

• 48:34Sam Parr?

  Sean, have you heard of Lioncrest? No, that's a part of the book in the box thing. Yeah. So Tucker Max, who's an angel investor in my company and someone I, I look up to. He created this business and at first what it was, was you paid $25,000 and they would write a book for you. Um, where basically what you do is you like would, I'm kind of, I don't want to disrespect them. So I don't want to dumb it down. Too much, but basically you, they asked you a series of questions and you kind of dictated to them and they helped gross write it for you. And then they offered more services. I think now they charge $36,000. And they, then eventually they offered more services where they would like help like launch it, make the, design it and a ton of cool stuff. It was awesome. Did you like that experience, Nick?

• 49:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was it was a good experience. Um, overall, it was nice having them right here in Austin. That I could kind of bounce ideas off to and go to go to the office and stuff.

• 49:25Shaan Puri?

  Did they approach you? Did they like cold email you saying, hey, Nick, your story would be great? Or did you try to find them? Or how did that happen?

• 49:32Speaker 02

  I came across Scribe and Tucker like years ago. So I was on their email list. And writing a book was always on my mind. So I got like a, you know, one of their emails one day. I was like, man, today's the day I'm gonna do it. Um, so I just made the move. It was like January of 2019 is when I started started working with them.

• 49:52Shaan Puri?

  I've I've I've thought about this. Oh, nice. The book in the box method. So I've thought about doing this. But then, you know, the questions that I have is like, A, how much time is this gonna take? Because, you know, I don't think this is gonna be like some big winner winner. It's like a fun project. It's nice to have. And then B, uh, you know, what's really gonna come with this? So, you know, how many people will actually read this thing? Um, that, you know, is this gonna have a big impact or small impact? So what was your experience? So how long did it take you to, you know, how much time did it take on your end to get this thing done? And then, uh, what was the impact?

• 50:24Speaker 02

  It was a lot of time. It required a lot of time and it was essentially all of of 2019. Uh, and it launched January 28th of 2020. But the impact is great. I mean, my, a lot of my audience, a lot of people that follow me, they know the story. But the the thing was, all my story is spread out over years in hundreds of videos of YouTube. And for me to say, hey, go watch hundreds of hours of content on YouTube to find out what the story is. My thought process and reasoning was, well, I'll create this book that tells a story that shares nuggets and information that I haven't talked about before. But it's a well organized way of creatively telling the story. And then that's what I wanted it for.

• 51:10Shaan Puri?

  That's great. Yeah, everything in one place. And so how how many books like I guess sold or whatever? Would you consider like a success for this?

• 51:17Speaker 02

  Um, I think like week one, we sold like 10,000 copies.

• 51:23Sam Parr?

  That seems great to me.

• 51:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know what the number of total copies amount right now. Like week one was like 10,000, I believe.

• 51:30Shaan Puri?

  Did you have a goal for it? Or you were just like, whatever?

• 51:32Speaker 02

  I was kind of just like, whatever, like.

• 51:35Speaker 02

  I wanted to get as many hands of people as possible to find out the story, find out more about Bear Performance Nutrition. I really wanted to create a book as well to be more of a credible source in the space. You know, when I first started, I was seen as a YouTuber, and I think some people still see me as a YouTuber. I don't want to be seen as a YouTuber the rest of my life. I want to be seen as entrepreneur, business owner, author. So it was another way to build credibility in my space, and that was another one of the reasons.

• 52:07Sam Parr?

  When you do a video, and so you have 400,000 subscribers, you said, when you do a video, let's say that you do a video and it's not overly promotional, but let's say you do this video and you're like, alright, we have these new athletic, or these new green, this new green product, greens, or whatever, or this new protein powder, and you launch it, how much traffic will you send to that product in 24 hours?

• 52:35Speaker 02

  It really depends on what it is. We have a launch coming up, May 6, for a new endurance supplement, and I think like, that day, we might sell 3,000 units. Like, Black Friday, for example, Black Friday, like 48 hours, we had like, I think it was 9,000 orders.

• 52:55Shaan Puri?

  But that'll be a mix, right, of paid, your email list, plus your YouTube, plus that'll be the total kind of marketing.

• 53:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like, it's like the culmination of all efforts coming together.

• 53:07Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 53:07Sam Parr?

  So why, are you operating the business now, or do you have a partner who handles most day to day? Are you in the trenches still?

• 53:14Speaker 02

  I'm still in the trenches. We just hired a Director of Business Operations, who's kind of in the process of taking over a lot of my admin stuff. He started April 1st. So that's still like in a transition. But I got to a point where I was handling way too much in the business, rather than working on the business stuff.

• 53:33Sam Parr?

  Yeah, why wouldn't you just like hire a young guy to follow you all the time with the camera? And just start churning this shit out because your stuff's good. Why, why don't you just only do content?

• 53:44Speaker 02

  I did hire a full-time videographer like six months ago. And then their performance nutrition grew so much that he had to be the sole videographer for BPN. We have another creative that starts May 4th. And then our next hire is going to be another videographer just for my content. But trying to keep up with our scale. And I'm really slow to hire just because we have just strong culture here. That I want to maintain that culture. I don't want to bring in like essentially cancer that ruins that.

• 54:17Sam Parr?

  Sean, you should see their office. They have like, it's like a, I don't know, what, how many square feet do you guys have?

• 54:22Speaker 02

  We're now in 20,000 square.

• 54:24Sam Parr?

  Holy shit. So they got this like 20,000 square foot warehouse and it has like a huge gym which with turf and all this. It's, it's really cool. What do you, what do you pay for 20,000 square feet in the suburbs of Austin, right?

• 54:36Speaker 02

  It's North Austin. Uh, it's about 28,000 a month.

• 54:41Sam Parr?

  28 grand a month, so uh, uh, like a dollar 20 per square foot or something?

• 54:46Shaan Puri?

  Okay, so Nick, you can do my idea then. So I had this idea not long ago. Uh, I don't think it's a great business idea, but I just think it's fun. And I think it actually would align well with what you're doing, which is, you know, like the NFL Combine?

• 54:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:58Shaan Puri?

  So basically I think that as youth sports has gotten more and more competitive and people really care more. And they're spending a lot of money on trainers and travel teams and whatnot. I think there should be a combine for youth athletes. And so if you have a facility where you have this, you know, place where you could do a 40 yard dash and you could do a vertical leap and you could do all this stuff. Uh, I think it'd be great to hold, host a field day and you let any young athlete come. They pay their 50 bucks and they're going to get official time scores.

• 55:26Sam Parr?

  Their bare score.

• 55:28Shaan Puri?

  They're going to get their measurements, they're going to get everything. And it's going to be given to them as sort of an official certification or official bear certification. And um, you could just do it out of your facility and it would just be a good marketing event for your thing. Uh, but I really think there's quite a lot of demand for um, youth athletes to sort of start to, to build their resume like, like they see the pros do.

• 55:48Speaker 02

  Oh man, especially, especially here in Texas, football is no joke here.

• 55:51Shaan Puri?

  Exactly.

• 55:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's not bad. Yeah.

• 55:54Sam Parr?

  It's like a, it's like a combine, but you have to add in like a five mile run.

• 55:59Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. You do whatever, whatever you believe like an all around fitness test is.

• 56:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, we, we've bounced around the idea of, of building something similar to like, you know, tough mutters, the go rocks, like Spartan races. Um, we kind of seen race suck training going towards that model someday. There's no plan in place yet to, to get there, but it's kind of just like the vision we see of, of taking it to something similar to that.

• 56:27Shaan Puri?

  It'd be interesting to see what is a tough mutter kind of in the post COVID world, right? Where like, I think in general, large gatherings, large events where there's lack of sanitation is, is not going to be a popular thing. For the next, I don't know, 18 months or forever. I'm not sure. And, um, and so I wonder what would be the same, a similar thing where it's a way to test yourself. Something you sort of brag worthy, like something you could share that you're doing. But maybe it's something that you could do in your backyard or your garage and it is sort of the bare challenge. And, um, you know, you can, the person sort of gets, they, they open up your app or whatever, and it sort of auto films like a time lapse of them doing the whole thing.

• 57:09Shaan Puri?

  And this is a very tough thing to do, but everybody's doing it on their own, not, not in one large gathering.

• 57:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's kind of like, you know, all the races now are virtual, like there's virtual 5Ks. I'm doing a virtual one mile race this weekend. And I think honestly, for like the time being, a lot of stuff will go virtual just because of the way everything with COVID-19 is.

• 57:27Shaan Puri?

  I mean, how does that work? You just go run on your own and just post your time or what?

• 57:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean.

• 57:31Sam Parr?

  Yeah. Have you heard of, have you heard of Zoo, Sean?

• 57:33Shaan Puri?

  No.

• 57:34Sam Parr?

  What's it called, Nick? Is it Zeus? What's the site? Is that it? The cycling one?

• 57:38Shaan Puri?

  Zeus is a dating.

• 57:40Sam Parr?

  What's the cycling one that starts with a Z?

• 57:42Speaker 02

  Oh man, I know what you're talking about. Um.

• 57:45Sam Parr?

  It's huge. They raised like a hundred million in funding.

• 57:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:48Shaan Puri?

  What do they do?

• 57:49Speaker 02

  Swift.

• 57:49Sam Parr?

  So, Z-WiFt. Yeah, so what they do is it's Ironman or basically competitive cyclists love it. And what you do is you hook it up to a smart trainer. It's expensive, like their trainer costs like $500. And then the people who are really into it, what they do is they, it's usually people who have money. And so you put your, your smart trainer, Sean, which is like this like little stand that you put your bike on. And then you put a big screen TV or a computer in front of you and you can do rides with competitors. So you can like do like a group ride where it looks, it's just like a video game. You're like riding your bike on this screen and you're competing with people. And you can do time, you can do time trials. It's huge.

• 58:32Shaan Puri?

  Dude, I would have never believed this. I mean, 164 million dollars raised at a 500 to a billion dollar valuation. Wow, this is.

• 58:40Sam Parr?

  It's huge. It's, it's huge. It probably don't even have that many customers. So I mean, cycling is not that big of a market.

• 58:47Speaker 02

  The endurance market, endurance sports, endurance athletes, they will spend money. Like that, that's a, that's a space to get into. And that's kind of why like we're, we're now creating products in the endurance market. Cause we have, we have a company here in Austin called Roka. You know, Roka makes like triathlon gear, running stuff.

• 59:05Sam Parr?

  I bought my, uh, my, my tri suit from them because of you.

• 59:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, Roka makes great stuff, but like they're dominating the market right now. Cause it's, that's like a market that from what I see is almost behind in, in times. And then that space of fitness and like Roka just went out there and absolutely wrecked and destroyed it.

• 59:23Sam Parr?

  Which, uh, Nick, we had Lance Armstrong on the podcast a while back and like a few months ago. And I, we're, I was trying to convince him, he needs to become the Jimmy Buffett of weekend warriors. So like, uh, have like hotels for people who are training for Ironmans have, just sell all types of cool, interesting stuff for that endurance crowd. Cause I agree, if you look at, um, Ironman and you look at the participant growth, it's pretty phenomenal. It's just because it's a bunch of rich, white dudes who, uh, are looking for like, who want to stay young for a long time and are doing all types of interesting things to do that. And it's crazy, it's growing like crazy.

• 1:00:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, we think, we think breaking into that market, like from a nutrition standpoint, it's going to be really big for us. Um, but like, yeah, when I, when I launched my, like, Ironman series, like that, that blew the channel up. There was a big spike in growth in my channel, just because that attracted so many new people.

• 1:00:17Shaan Puri?

  This is crazy. So if I'm looking at Ironman competitors by calendar year. So you're right. So somewhere around 2011, it started spiking and it grew year over year up till 2014, 15. It's been about the same since then.

• 1:00:30Sam Parr?

  A Chinese company bought Ironman for about 500 million bucks.

• 1:00:34Shaan Puri?

  Really? 80,000 athletes that are in the, I don't know what Kona is, but I guess that's the official one. So 80,000 athletes who do the official Ironman thing per year. Kona is like the qualifier.

• 1:00:47Sam Parr?

  They have a million participants a year. Ironman does. I almost did a big case study on them. I'm really interested in Ironman. Yeah.

• 1:00:54Sam Parr?

  The richest man in China, he's a real estate developer and he has a company that now owns a bunch of stuff. And he recently bought Ironman about three years ago, four years ago for maybe 300 or 400 million dollars. And then he sold it about four months ago, right before Corona for like a profit of 100 to 200 million dollars. A good profit. I forget who he sold it to, but it's changing hands. And then another one that's, that they bought was the Rock and Roll Marathon, which is a series of marathons in Austin, Nashville, Charlotte, things like that. And they have a band every mile and it's not a sophisticated business. I mean, they're not like hard. You just have to build a brand around them and they're pretty good, I think.

• 1:01:35Sam Parr?

  Because people, it's growing like crazy, but the downside is like during Corona, like they just are completely dead.

• 1:01:43Shaan Puri?

  Nothing they can do. Yeah, that's tough. Okay. So I got a business idea for you. So, so I don't know if you've ever done these through the Nike training app. They have these like guided runs. I don't know if you guys have ever seen these, but

• 1:01:55Sam Parr?

  Yeah, they're off.

• 1:01:55Shaan Puri?

  It's pretty, it's pretty cool. You just say like, all right, I'm going to go for a 20 minute run. And it, there's like a kind of the Nike running coach is talking to you mixed in with music as you do it. It's pretty good. And so let's say, you know, again, if, if this sort of whole endurance market is, is as big as it seems, which I believe, how do you, how do you do this? How do you make like sort of a? A virtual version of this that's really great. And I wonder if you could do this, you know, into people's AirPods. How do you have a live, you know, you know, maybe set of of surprise guests that every mile switch and it's a new sort of celebrity coach in your ear, new DJ on set, or whatever it is. And you take people through, you know, a 10 mile run or whatever it is.

• 1:02:39Shaan Puri?

  But it's a live, it's a live audio experience for anybody that shows up that day at that time to run in their neighborhood.

• 1:02:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, what do you mean? How do you do that?

• 1:02:47Sam Parr?

  It's easy.

• 1:02:48Speaker 02

  We, we, we started, we started talking about doing something similar to that where we were gonna film,

• 1:02:55Speaker 02

  like one of my 10 mile runs, or like a half marathon, or even a marathon, and and streaming on Facebook and Instagram, to see like, people engaged in watching. It's just gonna be me running, but we'd have to get the team involved or something. We thought about doing that. We talked about that idea. But it's like, how interesting can you make it? You know?

• 1:03:15Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that's why I think you gotta do audio so that you you need people to participate so they can't be watching, right? Because they can't be on their phone while they're running or whatever. And so if you do it audio, if you go in their ears, and they can go outside and they can start their run, or just like you're gonna do a virtual 5K, or whatever it is you said. How do you do that? But, you know, what what would you be able to do where you could charge 50 bucks to enter? And like, what would you need to provide? And maybe there are celebrities today who would be down to kind of help, you know, help people stay fit during this, you know, really weird time by by being a guest, or, you know, hopping into hopping on on the microphone during, you know, a certain part of the race.

• 1:03:53Speaker 02

  That'd be cool. It's it's like so weird right now because no one knows when all this COVID stuff's gonna end. So that's, that's what we're trying to figure out now is how far in advance we plan for, and what makes most sense to spend time on. And like, say, like, say, say you spend all your time doing stuff, then all these, these lifts get taken away. And people are like, well.

• 1:04:15Shaan Puri?

  The way I view it is is like, you have this six month period right now, for sure, where.

• 1:04:23Shaan Puri?

  There's gonna be some, some kind of rolling shelter in place situation. And everybody's now aware that this is the way that life could be. So they will, like businesses will buy products now because they know, hey, at any time, we could have to support a remote workforce. Same thing on the consumer side where it's like you take a loan of users. You're like, hey, can I get a loan of like 2 million users? Because, um, and I know I have to kind of pay them back when the world, you know, reopens. But if I, if I borrow these users today and I can give them some experience, some percentage of them are gonna stick with this when the world sort of goes back to whatever the new normal is gonna be. And so the way I look at it is you can get free adoption of a, of some new experience during the next six to nine months.

• 1:05:08Shaan Puri?

  And so you get this crazy adoption. Now, what percentage of them stick with you? I don't know, you're gonna have to pay back some of those users who will not, who will not continue with you. But, you know, maybe 20% of them, maybe 30% of them will actually stick with whatever new experience you have and actually carry it forward post this. And so I think it's just this great window of time where you're gonna get a bunch of free adoption. And that's how I would think about any business during this time.

• 1:05:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's kind of what we deal with, with that free embrace suck home training, you know.

• 1:05:33Shaan Puri?

  Exactly, that's a perfect example.

• 1:05:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, so as it's been going on, people have fallen off naturally, like they've, they've found places to train and work on that. We've had a lot of people, you know, stay on the, on the program and the platform. So, yeah, I mean, I mean, it's, it's an interesting time. It's, I think it's time to be innovative and create something different.

• 1:05:55Sam Parr?

  Sean, did you know Tough Mudder filed for bankruptcy a few months ago?

• 1:05:58Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, we, we talked about it on here. I don't, what ended up happening? Did they actually close, did they trade hands? What happened?

• 1:06:04Sam Parr?

  Not yet, but it's looking like it, it's, it was, it's a month ago, they almost made a deal, but they did file for bankruptcy. And that fucking company took off, man. They got to 100 million in sales in like three or four years.

• 1:06:16Shaan Puri?

  So Nick, you should go get involved in that and you should go, uh, cause you'll be able to go see all their numbers, all their usage, all their everything. So if you've ever thought about doing your own race, you know, Tough Mudder's books are open right now. And whether you buy them or not, doesn't matter, you can go under, you can go get all their information for free right now.

• 1:06:32Speaker 02

  What was their issue? What, what, what was the reason for bankruptcy?

• 1:06:36Sam Parr?

  I don't know. I know that I don't know that all the details. I do know that the founder, I think his name is Will Dean. I think that he was a controversial guy. I think there were some lawsuits. They also owe Active Networks, 18. Active Networks is like the ticketing platform. They owe them like 18 million dollars. I don't think that it was a matter. Well, I do know that over the last handful of years, demand plateaued for Spartan Race and Tough Mudder. That definitely happened. Like, that shit was like a novelty and it kind of got old fast. And I think that it was more like a one-off experience versus a marathon that you do every single year, or you do like three or four a year. And so I think that demand definitely plateaued and there was not space for all of them in the market. But then also, it seemed like they had really bad cash management

• 1:07:18Sam Parr?

  and they just couldn't handle their debts. They didn't raise any money.

• 1:07:23Shaan Puri?

  So in February, it actually did sell out of bankruptcy to Spartan Race. And so Spartan Race paid $700,000 and assumed $10 million of their liabilities and had to honor the prepaid tickets to like Tough Mudder events that are coming up. But that was the price paid by Spartan for Tough Mudder.

• 1:07:40Sam Parr?

  That's awesome.

• 1:07:42Speaker 02

  That's kind of the way I see those races anyways, is like, it's a one-off type thing. It's not something, I'm not going to train for a Tough Mudder or Spartan Race, like, on a quarterly basis. I'm going to train for a marathon or something like that. But like, it's hard to measure your improvement on a race like that. There's like, there's no baseline.

• 1:08:00Sam Parr?

  Sean, is there anything else you want to discuss before we wrap up?

• 1:08:03Shaan Puri?

  No, we should wrap up. Nick, where should people follow you, find you? Where should they check out? You guys have a podcast, a Twitter? Where do you want to send people?

• 1:08:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, Instagram. My personal is Nick Bare. It's B-A-R-E Fitness. Our company Instagram is BPN Sups. And our company website is bearperformancenutrition.com.

• 1:08:23Shaan Puri?

  Awesome. I just got a rowing machine, so I'm going to go row right after this. And in your honor, I'll be thinking about you the whole time.

• 1:08:28Speaker 02

  I got seven miles to do, so I'll be running.

• 1:08:32Sam Parr?

  Awesome. Thanks for this, dude. This is awesome. You are, I, we have a lot of cool guests on here, but I'm super pumped that you're here because I am personally a big fan. So selfishly, this is awesome for me.

• 1:08:43Speaker 02

  I appreciate it. No, thanks, guys.