144: Evolution of the Entrepreneur - Should You Turn Passion Into a Career?

In this episode, I walk through the six stages of evolving as an entrepreneur — from a passion for fitness to building a purpose-driven brand. I share how adaptability, leadership, and clarity of purpose fuel long-term success. Whether you're just starting out or scaling your vision, this episode will help you stay rooted in why you began while pushing toward what’s next. CHAPTERS: 00:00 Introduction 02:38 Seeking Inspiration from the Team 04:55 Turning Passion into a Business 07:28 The Importance of Adaptability 08:42 John Maxwell's Insights on Adaptability 12:47 Reflecting on BPN's Evolution 16:33 Starting BPN: The Early Days 35:39 From Passion to Process 40:14 Choosing Your Path: Hands-On or Hands-Off? 43:43 Building Momentum: From $2K to $10K 47:28 Stage Two: From Passion to Process 47:48 Stage Three: Momentum Makes It Real 54:06 Stage Four: Survival of the Fittest 01:05:41 Stage Five: From Process to People 01:13:02 Stage Six: From People to Purpose 01:18:23 Full Circle: Passion and Purpose ORDER MY BOOK HERE: https://www.amazon.com/Go-One-More-Intentional-Life-Changing/dp/1637746210 FOLLOW: Become a BPN member FOR FREE - Unlock 20% off FOR LIFE https://bpn.team/member IG: instagram.com/nickbarefitness/ YT: youtube.com/@nickbarefitness

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

• 0:05Nick Bare?

  Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Today's title, working title, is the evolution of an entrepreneur. And I've broken this up into multiple stages.

• 0:23Nick Bare?

  And how I came to this topic and what I want to share with you guys today is last week, I walked out into our office space, you know, in the new BPN HQ. The way it's set up is the entire facility is 76,000 square feet. 9,000 square feet is dedicated to our gym, our training facility, which we are very grateful and blessed to have. About 15,000 square feet is dedicated to conference rooms, offices, and open concept working spaces.

• 1:03Nick Bare?

  And then a little over 50,000 square feet is dedicated to the warehouse and fulfillment. And the way that the office is set up is we have a big open area in the middle. This is where our brand team is located.

• 1:19Nick Bare?

  These are videographers, editors, photographers, designers. Everyone involved in the brand function of BPN, brand being creative. And then on the perimeter of that open concept are conference rooms and private offices. So I have one of those private offices that looks right out into the brand team. And then if you've watched any of the YouTube videos, my one request in this new HQ was to have my own private door from my office into the gym. So if I'm sitting at my desk, I'm looking out towards the brand team and into my back is a gym.

• 2:04Nick Bare?

  And where my bike is set up right now for my Ironman training is probably 50 feet, if that, from where I sit and work at my desk during the day.

• 2:17Nick Bare?

  I've had this idea actually recently to get rid of my office and just be a floater throughout the open concept space and the conference rooms.

• 2:29Nick Bare?

  And get rid of my own personal office. I'm still considering that. But I share all that to, to paint a picture. I was sitting at my desk one day, planning for some upcoming podcast episodes. And I thought, instead of me trying to come up with this on my own, let me go ask the brand team what they're interested in. So I walked out there, whole brand teams working on, on multiple different projects are down. And I asked the team, what would you be interested in learning or hearing about when it comes to building the business? What I've experienced, what I've learned, the journey of these last almost 14 years now.

• 3:12Nick Bare?

  And this is what they came up with. They wanted to know what it's been like as a founder, as an entrepreneur, building a business. But more importantly, building a business, building a brand that started with

• 3:33Nick Bare?

  true passion. Something that I was so obsessed with and I loved that I decided to turn it into a business.

• 3:44Nick Bare?

  For a lot of those guys and girls who work here at BPN, they have passions. And for many of them, they are, they are pursuing their passion in what they do with their work.

• 4:00Nick Bare?

  For a lot of the creatives, they fell in love with design. They fell in love with film, photography, videography. And they started doing that for their work and then eventually started working for BPN. But I know a lot of those guys and girls have thought about, what if I, at some point in my life, my career, turn this into a business? And if I turn this into a business, will I still be passionate about the thing?

• 4:37Nick Bare?

  You know, growing up, people always told me, don't turn your passion into work because you'll end up hating it.

• 4:45Nick Bare?

  And I would say that for some people, this this might be and can be true. For others, not.

• 4:53Nick Bare?

  I have a different take on it. And that take is that what starts as a passion sometimes, and we turn it into our career, our work, there is an evolution that happens over months and years. And that passion is still the foundation of why we do what we do. But our work, the process,

• 5:21Nick Bare?

  the systems that we put in place, everything has to evolve to build it and scale it and continue growing it.

• 5:31Nick Bare?

  So you don't have to let your passion die when you turn it into work. But you have to be willing to allow it to evolve.

• 5:43Nick Bare?

  It might look, that passion, very different

• 5:48Nick Bare?

  10 years from now.

• 5:50Nick Bare?

  When you turn it into your work, you turn it into your career, it might look significantly different over time, and that's okay.

• 6:00Nick Bare?

  But it's part of the process.

• 6:03Nick Bare?

  And something that I've been talking about for years now is that I love the process. That's why I do a lot of the things that I do. I fell in love with building a business because of the process and what I've learned through it. One of the reasons that I signed up for these races and these competitions,

• 6:24Nick Bare?

  the reason that I'm in this Ironman prep right now is not for a bib. It is not for a medal. It is not for a buckle. It is not for a finish line. It is for what I'm going to learn through the journey, through the process, the breakthrough, the unlock, the transformation that occurs and happens through the process.

• 6:51Nick Bare?

  I mean, literally, I throw away

• 6:54Nick Bare?

  the medals you get from finishing a race. Now, my medals are never first, second, or third. They are participation medals.

• 7:03Nick Bare?

  But I throw those away.

• 7:06Nick Bare?

  As well as the bibs and the buckles and all of the things because

• 7:13Nick Bare?

  the memories and the change that happens through the processes is the reward. That is the result that I'm hoping for as opposed to a finish line.

• 7:28Nick Bare?

  Entrepreneurship is a journey of embracing change and learning how to adapt and evolve over time.

• 7:40Nick Bare?

  Now I'm going to read a segment. I've been pulling this up in a lot of the recent podcast episodes. John C. Maxwell, the Maxwell Daily Reader.

• 7:54Nick Bare?

  365 days of insight to develop the leader within you and influence those around you. I've enjoyed this and a lot of the, the daily insights in this daily reader come from his book, which I'm, I'm rereading again right now. The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. Highly recommend. Our entire leadership team is reading John Maxwell's The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership right now.

• 8:26Nick Bare?

  But this is one that I shared with our team last week at our weekly all hands meeting. It's on page 335 from November 1st and it is titled adaptability.

• 8:42Nick Bare?

  I think being adaptable is one of the greatest skills that you can adopt, learn, refine and implement. But to be adaptable, you have to be willing is to be open minded. So it goes a little something like this. Teamwork and personal rigidity just don't mix. If you want to work well with others and be a good team player, you have to be willing to adapt yourself to your team.

• 9:18Nick Bare?

  That could be team, that could be circumstances, that could be situation.

• 9:23Nick Bare?

  Team players who exhibit adaptability have certain characteristics. Adaptable people are, and here are four of the characteristics that I really want you to listen to and think on.

• 9:40Nick Bare?

  Teachability.

• 9:43Nick Bare?

  Diane Naid said, "I am willing to put myself through anything. Temporary pain or discomfort means nothing to me as long as I can see that the experience will take me to a new level. I am interested in the unknown, and the only path to the unknown is through breaking barriers. Adaptable people always place a high priority on breaking new ground. They are highly teachable.

• 10:11Nick Bare?

  To be adaptable, you have to be highly teachable. You have to be open to being taught. You have to want to learn.

• 10:20Nick Bare?

  The second characteristic is emotionally secure.

• 10:25Nick Bare?

  People who are not emotionally secure see almost everything as a challenge or a threat.

• 10:31Nick Bare?

  They meet with rigidity or suspicion, the addition of another talented person to the team, an alteration in their position or title, or a change in the way things are done. But secure people aren't made nervous by change itself. They evaluate a new situation or a change in their responsibilities based on its merit.

• 10:55Nick Bare?

  People who are emotionally insecure, I believe are very dangerous people.

• 11:04Nick Bare?

  Because you can't predict their behaviors.

• 11:10Nick Bare?

  Very dangerous. People who view everything as a challenge or a threat

• 11:17Nick Bare?

  are inadaptable. And again, they are very hard to work with and dangerous people.

• 11:26Nick Bare?

  The third characteristic is creative. When difficult times come, creative people find a way. Creativity fosters adaptability. If there is a will, there is a way. And I'll talk about kind of all of these characteristics throughout this episode. And the fourth characteristic is service minded. People who are focused on themselves are less likely to make changes for the team than people focused on serving others. If your goal is to serve the team, adapting to accomplish that goal isn't difficult. The first key to being a team player is being willing to adapt yourself to the team.

• 12:09Nick Bare?

  Not an expectation that the team will adapt to you. Oh, that's good.

• 12:16Nick Bare?

  You have to be willing to adapt to the team or the circumstance or your situation and not expecting the team, the circumstance, or the situation to adapt to you.

• 12:32Nick Bare?

  It ends with a question. Are you willing to adapt to your team? And I'll add in situation or circumstance in order to succeed? You gotta be adaptable.

• 12:47Nick Bare?

  Entrepreneurship is all about learning, evolving, adapting. That is what I've learned over these last, like I've said, almost 14 years now. And in the same way that my personal entrepreneurial journey has evolved over the years, so has BPN.

• 13:08Nick Bare?

  If we look back at 2012, which I'm about to get into, when I first started the business,

• 13:16Nick Bare?

  the consumer that we were pursuing, our, our brand, our products,

• 13:28Nick Bare?

  everything about the business

• 13:31Nick Bare?

  is very different.

• 13:35Nick Bare?

  Then compared to where we are today. The consumer we're pursuing, the industries we're focused in, the sports we're we're creating content around the consumer, the individual. And that's been done based off of adapting to the market and what we personally enjoy and like and the brand maturing and growing and listening to our customers and taking in feedback and refining, constantly refining over the years. So if you

• 14:13Nick Bare?

  you know, just showed someone, if someone was sitting across from me right now and I showed them BPN in 2012 compared to BPN in 2025, you probably wouldn't be able to tell they were the same brand. I mean, we had different logos, we had different colors, we had different fonts. I actually found this this website platform a few years ago where you could go back in time on the internet and look at what your website looked like in previous years. So this website, I put in bearperformancenutrition.com and I put in the date and I could see what our website looked like in 2012 when we launched.

• 14:56Nick Bare?

  I could see what our website looked like in 2014, 2016, 2018, 2021.

• 15:04Nick Bare?

  And I had so much fun doing that, looking back at the evolution of the brand over time. In 2012, when we launched, the entire site was black. It was built on a server that my friend managed in in college.

• 15:21Nick Bare?

  All the fonts were gray and neon green. The logos were

• 15:30Nick Bare?

  like the only way to describe it, it looked like that clothing brand affliction. It was like wings and

• 15:42Nick Bare?

  Just all these patterns and feathers and we had no clue. I had no clue what I was doing.

• 15:53Nick Bare?

  But it's great to go back and look at what you were previously doing compared to what you're doing now. To watch the growth, watch the maturity, watch the evolution, watch the adaptability.

• 16:07Nick Bare?

  So if you want to be an entrepreneur.

• 16:10Nick Bare?

  Or honestly, if you want to be successful at anything, anything, you have to be willing to be adaptable.

• 16:21Nick Bare?

  You have to, there's, there's no other option. You have to be teachable. You have to have emotional security.

• 16:29Nick Bare?

  You have to be creative and you have to be service minded.

• 16:33Nick Bare?

  So like I said, I'm going to break this down into multiple stages to organize this evolution. Which I think can be largely applicable to many people starting a brand or a business. Stage one. It's called, "It All Started With A Passion." This is from 2012 in my case.

• 17:02Nick Bare?

  So let me paint you a picture, 2012. Many of you probably know this story, but I believe it sets the foundation

• 17:10Nick Bare?

  of where we started. And if you're only familiar with the brand BPN today or in the last couple of years, you might be surprised of how and where we got started in 2012. So 2012, I was 22 years old. I was a junior in college at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. I was studying nutrition and I was on an Army ROTC scholarship. So I knew that upon graduation, I was going to be going directly into the military. Ended up going into the Army as an active duty infantry officer.

• 17:50Nick Bare?

  But when I got to college, and this was 2009,

• 17:55Nick Bare?

  I discovered the bodybuilding space.

• 18:00Nick Bare?

  And that was YouTube Fitness. And YouTube Fitness back then was brand new. There were a few creators who were vlogging and documenting their life and their training, and their food, and their nutrition. Very few creators online, but YouTube Fitness was just getting started. Nowhere close to where it is today. And I was watching all of these creators.

• 18:28Nick Bare?

  Bodybuilding.com was a huge platform and resource. There were, there were forums on Bodybuilding.com, and I would read all of these forums. And these forums would be people talking about different training methods and training programs, different diets, what's worked for them, what hasn't.

• 18:50Nick Bare?

  Different supplements. There'd be like supplement logs where brands or Bodybuilding.com would send people these supplements and they would just document the day-to-day experience with these supplements. I spent a lot of time on the Bodybuilding.com forums and just consuming the content that was on this website.

• 19:13Nick Bare?

  Also at the time, I recently discovered the Arnold Fitness Expo that happened in Columbus, Ohio, once a year. So the Arnold Fitness Expo was this bodybuilding competition, but there was also this massive expo that was multiple days where brands would set up booths and you would, you would go toward the expo and you'd discover new brands and you'd walk around with a bag and after three days of being there, that bag would be full of hundreds of samples of different products. Protein powders and pre-workouts and amino acids and creatine and bars and all this different stuff. And you'd have a new pre-workout to try for like three months, a new different

• 19:58Nick Bare?

  pre-workout every day. And I would go to the Arnold Fitness Expo every year.

• 20:06Nick Bare?

  And in college, I became obsessed with not just the industry

• 20:11Nick Bare?

  of

• 20:13Nick Bare?

  weight training, bodybuilding and lifting weights and getting bigger

• 20:20Nick Bare?

  and supplements.

• 20:23Nick Bare?

  Became obsessed with the supplement space and industry.

• 20:27Nick Bare?

  But I fell in love. I had a passion for the lifestyle. You know, the lifestyle of waking up

• 20:39Nick Bare?

  with the purpose of eating, lifting, sleeping.

• 20:47Nick Bare?

  Just every part of my day, all 24 hours was about the the bodybuilding lifestyle, this strength, you know, gym rat lifestyle. I was prepping all my foods for the first time ever. I was living off of chicken, rice and broccoli. Every three hours I was consuming my meal, I'd carry my water jug to all my classes so I could consume a gallon of water a day. I'd throw my branched chain amino acids in that jug. I'd watch

• 21:23Nick Bare?

  you know, bodybuilding motivational videos before going to the gym.

• 21:28Nick Bare?

  I would skip class my freshman and sophomore year all the time to go to the gym. You know, for me,

• 21:39Nick Bare?

  the gym was priority. And then I was trying to find out how I work all these other parts of my life around the gym. If I didn't get to the gym for a day,

• 21:51Nick Bare?

  that ruined my day. If I didn't hit my meals, my macros with my one cheat meal a week, that would throw off my day. I was obsessed with the lifestyle. I was living it. I mean, I can, I can picture right now, sitting in my college apartment, my junior year. It was this probably 1100 square foot apartment, uh, above a bar on Philadelphia Street of Indiana, Pennsylvania.

• 22:22Nick Bare?

  And I had five roommates.

• 22:25Nick Bare?

  And this place was a mess. And I had this small, small bedroom with this one little window.

• 22:32Nick Bare?

  And I would, you know, time up my pre-workout meal.

• 22:38Nick Bare?

  Uh, two hours before a workout, which, which back then was pretty similar to what it is now. It's protein powder, oats. Uh, I used to add peanut butter and dried cranberries and almonds and, uh, applesauce to it. I had this, this pre-workout concoction that was super dense in carbohydrates and fats and, and protein. It was very calorically dense. I would consume that meal. I'd let it digest, go to class or run an errand. And then I'd come back to my, my apartment, open up my laptop. I'd watch on YouTube, bodybuilding and motivational videos.

• 23:23Nick Bare?

  Typically it was either Ronnie Coleman or, or Jay Cutler.

• 23:27Nick Bare?

  And then I'd start sipping on my pre-workout. And as I'm watching this video, sipping on my pre-workout, I could feel the effects of the beta alanine where my skin would start to tingle, the caffeine and the nootropics would kick in. I'd, I'd dial in focus.

• 23:43Nick Bare?

  And then I'd go to the gym. And I'd, I'd spend two hours there.

• 23:50Nick Bare?

  And then it was my post-workout meal afterwards. And I just became obsessed with the lifestyle. I, it was, it was the first time in my life that I discovered this passion. And I was on fire, on fire. If you've ever experienced something like that around a passion, I hope everyone has at some point.

• 24:14Nick Bare?

  The only way to describe it is like, it just lights you up, inside and out. And then between my junior and senior year of college, as I'm preparing to graduate and go to the army.

• 24:30Nick Bare?

  I've shared this part of my story many times before, but we were provided the opportunity to take out a loan with a military-associated bank, USAA.

• 24:41Nick Bare?

  And it could be up to $25,000. And all of my peers were taking out this loan and they were going on vacations, they were buying engagement rings, they were getting new cars.

• 24:52Nick Bare?

  Because the bank, USAA, knew that we were about to go in the military, we were about to start making pretty good money, it was secure, we weren't going to have the opportunity to spend much of it. So they could give us this loan at a super low interest rate with no payments for the first 18 months. And I saw this as my golden ticket to start BPN.

• 25:17Nick Bare?

  So I applied for the loan, I got approved for $20,000, which I remember when that money was wired into my account, I thought I was the richest man on earth. You know, going from seeing 50, $100, sometimes negative $100 in your account in college, to then seeing 20,000 in your bank account. I mean, I didn't have a care in the world. I was like, I'm set. I can run this business forever off, off $20,000. Little did I know how expensive it was to start a business and how fast that money would go. So I had my formula that

• 26:01Nick Bare?

  I wanted to, to turn into a product, which was our first pre-workout, our first product, Flight. Found a manufacturer, they were based out of California, placed a production order for 500 units of this pre-workout. It was shipped to my, my house, my parents' house. I drove from my college apartment to my parents' house, picked it up, went back to college, and started operating the business.

• 26:30Nick Bare?

  To get to that point,

• 26:33Nick Bare?

  I was already mixing up my own pre-workout supplements in my dorm room. I'd buy ingredients in bulk. I'd weigh them out on a food scale.

• 26:43Nick Bare?

  You know, I'd weigh out five grams of creatine, 200 milligrams of caffeine, three to four grams of beta alanine,

• 26:53Nick Bare?

  four to six grams of citrulline, tyrosine. I was mixing up my own pre-workout supplement before this

• 27:03Nick Bare?

  because I had such a passion around supplement science and nutrition and performance and bodybuilding. And like I said, the lifestyle.

• 27:13Nick Bare?

  And then I turned it into

• 27:18Nick Bare?

  my work.

• 27:21Nick Bare?

  My potential career alongside of my job as an active duty infantry officer.

• 27:31Nick Bare?

  Now, I knew,

• 27:35Nick Bare?

  I knew that I wasn't going to be able to dedicate all of my time to building this business. Because a year after starting BPN, I graduated from college. I knew I was going directly into the army. I was gonna have a year of training at Fort Benning, Georgia, and then arrive at my first duty assignment, which ended up being Fort Hood, Texas. So building BPN was gonna be have to, or gonna have to be something I did

• 28:03Nick Bare?

  in my free time alongside of.

• 28:09Nick Bare?

  And one of the questions I get to this day from people is,

• 28:14Nick Bare?

  you know, should you turn your passion into your profession? Why or why not?

• 28:22Nick Bare?

  Do I

• 28:24Nick Bare?

  regret turning my passion into my work?

• 28:30Nick Bare?

  And you have to be very honest with yourself.

• 28:34Nick Bare?

  And you can't try to convince yourself that you want to do something that you really might not want to.

• 28:43Nick Bare?

  For example, if someone told you,

• 28:48Nick Bare?

  hey, before you start this business, I know you're,

• 28:52Nick Bare?

  let's, let's, for example, say that we're back in 2012.

• 28:59Nick Bare?

  And I'm living this lifestyle. I'm watching these bodybuilding motivational videos. I'm skipping class to go to the gym, eating every three hours, chicken, rice, broccoli, all of the things, just living the life, living, living the gym rat life. And I make the decision to turn it into a business, my work, my future career. And if a mentor would have pulled me aside and said,

• 29:28Nick Bare?

  I see what you're doing, but let me just ask you a question.

• 29:32Nick Bare?

  I see you have this passion around the lifestyle.

• 29:36Nick Bare?

  And you are lit up with what you are doing, what you're learning, how you're training, how you're eating.

• 29:44Nick Bare?

  But I want to just give you a piece of advice. If you turn this into your work right now,

• 29:50Nick Bare?

  will you be okay in two years, three years, five years, 10 years?

• 29:58Nick Bare?

  That by making this decision to turn your passion into your work, 10 years from now, you might not be able to be living the lifestyle that you live now because the work has evolved and transformed into something different.

• 30:18Nick Bare?

  Your passion is now your livelihood.

• 30:23Nick Bare?

  You have a different relationship with that passion.

• 30:27Nick Bare?

  And if someone would have pushed me back then, I would have said,

• 30:32Nick Bare?

  yeah, no, it's all good. You know, I'll figure this out. I'm not thinking two, three, five, 10 years in the future. And I think that requires a level of self-awareness that many of us aren't willing to explore

• 30:47Nick Bare?

  or really think about.

• 30:51Nick Bare?

  That's the reality of it. For many people who start

• 30:56Nick Bare?

  a business

• 30:58Nick Bare?

  or pursue a career as a whole.

• 31:03Nick Bare?

  If you're fortunate enough, you're pursuing that career, you're starting that business because you love something about it. Whether that's being a doctor or a lawyer, or you you build homes

• 31:19Nick Bare?

  or you run sales training, whatever it is. Chances are you're pursuing that as a career because you found something you love at some point.

• 31:32Nick Bare?

  But will you be okay with turning what you love into your work? Or there's a chance that it's not your passion anymore? Because you're not doing it just because you get the choice to, but because you have to.

• 31:51Nick Bare?

  That's a really hard question to have to ask yourself.

• 31:56Nick Bare?

  And that's honestly what has sparked this entire podcast and discussion. Because what I found is the passion doesn't have to die.

• 32:07Nick Bare?

  But it's probably going to in 99% of the cases going to evolve.

• 32:14Nick Bare?

  And you have to be okay and willing to adapt with that evolution

• 32:19Nick Bare?

  to keep the passion burning hot. The passion is going to look different. I mean, I'm not living the bodybuilding lifestyle in 2025. I'm not skipping work and I'm not skipping nights out with my family to go to the gym. And I'm not carrying a gallon jug around every day. And I'm not eating chicken, rice and broccoli every three hours. I'm not watching bodybuilding YouTube videos and I'm not

• 32:51Nick Bare?

  on these bodybuilding.com forums anymore.

• 32:58Nick Bare?

  I'm grateful that my passion that started in 2012 is still similar and it is the foundation for what I'm doing today, but there's been a huge evolution in the process.

• 33:15Nick Bare?

  As I was thinking about this, I couldn't help but think back to a few months ago, maybe over a year ago now, I had Jordan Syatt on the podcast and I loved Jordan. I love what he does in the health and fitness performance space. And he walked into our HQ, which was our old HQ, our old office building at the time, before we moved into this new one. And he was looking around and he's like, dude, this is amazing. I love this. I'm so proud of you, but I would never want this for myself. He's like, I don't want to have to manage all of these people and

• 33:59Nick Bare?

  have the responsibility. And I don't want my passion to turn into this thing that I have to manage and adapt to and evolve. I want to keep the thing that I'm doing, that I'm so passionate about, at the scale it is right now, so I can manage that and I still love it forever. And I respected that perspective and that opinion and that he shared that with me.

• 34:34Nick Bare?

  Because we all get the choice to

• 34:39Nick Bare?

  turn our passions into what they become.

• 34:44Nick Bare?

  Do we keep them at the scale, and I don't want to say small, but do we keep them at the scale that is manageable?

• 34:51Nick Bare?

  And familiar and comfortable. Or do we take the chance? And turn that passion into something?

• 35:01Nick Bare?

  Of much larger scale?

• 35:04Nick Bare?

  What the chances that?

• 35:07Nick Bare?

  The passion, which is so fiery hot?

• 35:11Nick Bare?

  Might burn out? Because you're not able to dedicate your time to the actual passion anymore? Because of what is required through the process? So that's stage one. I think whether you're an entrepreneur? Or you're pursuing a career? In many cases, not all cases. But many cases. It starts with a passion. Now, stage two? Is titled From Passion to Process? And I would say that this started in 2016. Four years after starting? The business and the first couple of years of? Of my entrepreneurial journey?

• 35:55Nick Bare?

  Were interesting because as I mentioned? I started BPN in 2012. I graduated college in 2013. Commissioned in the US Army, went right to Fort Benning, Georgia for a year of training. Then from Fort Benning, Georgia to Fort Hood, Texas? Took over a platoon as an infantry platoon leader?

• 36:15Nick Bare?

  Which was a very? Demanding? In full job? So I was building the business?

• 36:25Nick Bare?

  In my free time? Before work, after work, and this was primarily? Through social media? And documenting? My journey of building BPN and my training and attrition and? Experience with the military?

• 36:43Nick Bare?

  And then when I got stationed in South Korea for my nine month training rotation in 2016? This is where? Stage two? Really started to?

• 36:58Nick Bare?

  Evolve.

• 37:00Nick Bare?

  And this is where I learned that

• 37:03Nick Bare?

  your profession,

• 37:06Nick Bare?

  what you turn into work, might start stealing time away from what was once your passion.

• 37:14Nick Bare?

  Because that passion now turns into a process.

• 37:19Nick Bare?

  And I realized that in the first three, almost four years of, of starting BPN, things weren't changing.

• 37:28Nick Bare?

  I wasn't willing to adapt. I didn't prioritize the process because I was so obsessed with the passion that I was dedicating my time, my energy, my resources to the passion as opposed to the process of building the business. And then when that changed and I, I made the decision, I'm going to dedicate now my time, energy and resources into building the business.

• 38:02Nick Bare?

  There was a cost to that and that cost was that I couldn't spend as much time

• 38:08Nick Bare?

  living the lifestyle of what I was once so passionate about.

• 38:15Nick Bare?

  But what I discovered through this is that that passion for the lifestyle, that passion for the gym, that passion for the meals every three hours, that passion for the bodybuilding, motivational videos, all of those things, it didn't die.

• 38:36Nick Bare?

  It just started to expand and evolve. And it evolved into falling in love with the process of building the business.

• 38:48Nick Bare?

  Which I didn't think that I was going to love initially. To be honest, I thought the business was going to build itself, which I was so

• 38:57Nick Bare?

  poorly mistaken.

• 39:02Nick Bare?

  And this might be

• 39:05Nick Bare?

  a temporary or permanent experience. What I mean by that is

• 39:16Nick Bare?

  For an entrepreneurial journey,

• 39:19Nick Bare?

  there's so many different ways to build a business. One of my favorite quotes is, "The concepts are few, but the methods are many." There are many different methods to build a business.

• 39:33Nick Bare?

  And from a founder, you know, I've had friends who have founded businesses, and some have taken one route, some have taken the other route.

• 39:45Nick Bare?

  But for many of the friends and founders who have started businesses, it started in stage one. It was this passion that was fiery hot. And then you get to a point where you realize that the process is more demanding, and it's pulling me out of what I'm so passionate about. So I've had friend founders who go route one, which is they double down on being the operator of that business. They get into the weeds. They embrace the process and learn how to scale the business. That's route one. Route two is that they want to be completely hands-off, and they go either sell that business, or they

• 40:30Nick Bare?

  hire people, or delegate all the responsibilities of operating and building the business. So they can just keep living the lifestyle, and someone else builds the business alongside of them. There's not a right or wrong answer. There's just two different routes.

• 40:47Nick Bare?

  And that's why I say that feeling of the passion pulling you more towards the process, that can either be temporary or permanent. It's temporary if you offload and delegate all the business responsibilities to someone else. It's permanent if you make the decision to operate the business and be involved in the process. So this is a pivotal point, a crucial point for many founders and entrepreneurs. How involved do you want to be in the day-to-day operations of the business, which might pull you away from the reason you started it in the first place?

• 41:29Nick Bare?

  But in my case, I fell in love with the process. I fell in love with operating the business. I fell in love with with

• 41:38Nick Bare?

  learning how to Tell stories and build brand and code websites. I fell in love more with that than I was in love with the bodybuilding lifestyle that I embraced in 2012 when I first started BPN.

• 42:01Nick Bare?

  In 2016, I embraced the process and I fell in love with it.

• 42:07Nick Bare?

  The passion had evolved. Like I said, it went from passion to process.

• 42:17Nick Bare?

  So here I am, 2016, stationed Camp Casey, South Korea.

• 42:26Nick Bare?

  And I'm sitting in my barracks room one night and I'm just thinking, this was right when I got there.

• 42:34Nick Bare?

  I knew I was going to be transitioning out of the military the following year, 2017. I had a four-year active duty army contract.

• 42:43Nick Bare?

  And I had a decision to make. If I was going to transition out of the military in one year,

• 42:49Nick Bare?

  BPN was not large enough at the time for me to live off of. I couldn't sustain a living off of it. We were generating $2,000 a month in revenue at the beginning of 2016.

• 43:06Nick Bare?

  So I had a choice as I was sitting in that barracks room in my bed in South Korea in 2016.

• 43:14Nick Bare?

  Do I double down in the process and turn this business into something that will be something? Or do I let it die?

• 43:29Nick Bare?

  And then post-army career and exit, go find a new job? Just find something different, something new?

• 43:40Nick Bare?

  And I decided to double down on BPN. And the goal was by the time I left South Korea on this nine-month training rotation, my goal was to go from doing $2,000 a month in revenue to $10,000 a month in revenue. And we did that within the first 90 days.

• 44:03Nick Bare?

  And I fell in love with that process in the first 90 days.

• 44:10Nick Bare?

  Some of the things I did was

• 44:16Nick Bare?

  dedicate a lot of time to learning how to tell stories and document my life on YouTube. And I learned this primarily from watching Casey Neistat YouTube videos.

• 44:31Nick Bare?

  Every night, I'd sit in my barracks room. And for the few people who placed orders that day, I would write handwritten thank you notes in my barracks room.

• 44:43Nick Bare?

  I'd put their name there, what they ordered. I'd thank them. I'd add a little note there.

• 44:50Nick Bare?

  I'd lick the seal. I'd put it in an envelope, put a few stamps on it, and then drop it off the next morning and send those back to the States or from wherever they ordered. But I'd do that every night for months, every order that was placed. I worked with my manufacturing team and we got samples made. And I got those samples shipped to me in South Korea. And then I would ask people online, who wants a free sample? Hundreds of people would send me emails asking for free samples. So at night, again, I'd package up these free samples, which were just individual trial sizes of our pre workout flight.

• 45:35Nick Bare?

  I'd put it in an envelope. I'd lick the seal, put a few stamps on it, drop it off at the post office the next morning on post. And it would take sometimes weeks for these people to receive their thank you notes or their samples. But I was doing this every night.

• 45:57Nick Bare?

  And I was learning how to test different functions and features and appearances on our website. I taught myself how to code parts of the website.

• 46:09Nick Bare?

  I just realized that if I wanted this to become something, I had to take the action and adapt to what was required

• 46:21Nick Bare?

  to continue building this business into something that could be of worth some value and at a bare minimum, I could sustain a living off of. And that's what happened in the first 90 days. Because I fell in love with the process, truly. I mean, I'd be leaving work in the evenings and going back to my barracks room. And I could feel this fire inside of me. I mean, I couldn't get to my barracks room fast enough. Throw my shoes off, jump onto my bed, pull my laptop out,

• 47:06Nick Bare?

  start working on the website, responding to customer service emails,

• 47:12Nick Bare?

  editing a YouTube video. I mean, just like a fire lit up inside me, which was so different from the fire that initially kickstarted the idea of BPN in 2012.

• 47:28Nick Bare?

  So, stage two is from passion to process.

• 47:34Nick Bare?

  That passion started to evolve from the lifestyle,

• 47:41Nick Bare?

  the idea, the concepts, to the process of building something.

• 47:48Nick Bare?

  Stage three, I have titled as Momentum Makes It Real.

• 47:56Nick Bare?

  And this would be the back half of 2016, but especially going into 2017.

• 48:07Nick Bare?

  Before we started gaining momentum, I say "we," it was really just me, until my brother Preston and Joe joined me late 2016, going into 2017.

• 48:23Nick Bare?

  When I didn't have any momentum from 2012 to early 2016, this first four years,

• 48:32Nick Bare?

  the stakes were low. There wasn't really much or anything to lose. And when you don't have much to lose,

• 48:41Nick Bare?

  it doesn't necessarily feel real. You know, I was fortunate

• 48:48Nick Bare?

  in a sense that I was in the Army full-time. I was getting paid a good salary from the military. And I was building the business on the side with my free time. There wasn't much free time, but the little free time I had, I was building VPN. So I didn't need VPN to succeed or crush it. I didn't require momentum in this first four years. Really, those first four years allowed me to test and experience, experiment and

• 49:25Nick Bare?

  just try different things, see what was resonating with people, see what worked. Really just be a student. The first four years of my entrepreneurial journey was being a student

• 49:40Nick Bare?

  in preparation for the transition out of the military 2017.

• 49:47Nick Bare?

  But once we finally started gaining momentum,

• 49:51Nick Bare?

  you know, when we went from doing $2,000 a month in revenue to $10,000 a month in revenue,

• 49:58Nick Bare?

  that momentum made it real because there was then something to lose.

• 50:03Nick Bare?

  That got me excited. But there was also a level of pressure

• 50:10Nick Bare?

  that's put on you then. Your back is pressed up against the wall.

• 50:18Nick Bare?

  And there's this, there's this responsibility to maintain. You don't want to lose the momentum. Once you experience it, once you gain it. And I think about it and that realization.

• 50:36Nick Bare?

  For almost the last 10 years now.

• 50:41Nick Bare?

  It has been a fight to maintain the momentum.

• 50:48Nick Bare?

  That's what makes this entrepreneurial journey so exciting. That's what makes it go so fast. It's also what makes it so scary and intimidating and stressful.

• 51:03Nick Bare?

  Is that once you have that momentum, which makes it all real. It is now something. It is a thing.

• 51:12Nick Bare?

  You then have to maintain and gain more momentum.

• 51:17Nick Bare?

  The stakes are higher.

• 51:21Nick Bare?

  The risks are larger, but there's also bigger risks.

• 51:26Nick Bare?

  Now, 2017 was the first year that we generated seven figures in revenue.

• 51:32Nick Bare?

  That was organically, that was without paid advertising.

• 51:38Nick Bare?

  But one of the reasons that that momentum made it so real is because the responsibility was now greater. Not just for myself.

• 51:48Nick Bare?

  Part of it was for myself, you know, I transitioned out of the military, so I didn't have that steady military salary any longer.

• 51:57Nick Bare?

  But during those two years, 2016, 2017. We as a business made some big moves. One of those was my brother Preston quit his job in Pennsylvania, moved down to Texas. And I told him I couldn't pay him. And he said, okay, that's fine. And then our friend Joe.

• 52:19Nick Bare?

  Picked up and left Pennsylvania and moved down to Texas and joined us. So it was me, Preston and Joe, living in a house together as I was transitioning out of the military, building BPN. We had this momentum and I felt this responsibility for those two guys. That responsibility was heavy. And I felt it every single day. And I could not let my foot off the gas because it wasn't just me anymore. It was those guys and I was responsible for them.

• 52:53Nick Bare?

  And then we signed our first warehouse lease, which put more pressure on us.

• 53:00Nick Bare?

  And what I've learned through that process is

• 53:05Nick Bare?

  sometimes the best way to maintain and gain momentum is to find ways and opportunities to put pressure on yourself.

• 53:16Nick Bare?

  Now, if I think back to it, if I wasn't going to transition out of the military, I probably wouldn't have had the pressure on me

• 53:27Nick Bare?

  to fight to survive. If Preston and Joe didn't move from Pennsylvania to Texas to work alongside of me for free until I could pay them,

• 53:39Nick Bare?

  I don't know if I would have had that pressure to fight to survive.

• 53:45Nick Bare?

  Momentum makes it real.

• 53:49Nick Bare?

  And sometimes you have to find ways to keep pressure on you. So you can feel the pressure to maintain that momentum.

• 53:59Nick Bare?

  But that's stage three.

• 54:02Nick Bare?

  Momentum. Once you get it, once you experience it, you then fight to keep it. Stage four.

• 54:11Nick Bare?

  Survival of the fittest.

• 54:15Nick Bare?

  This was roughly 2018 and 2019. And we were scaling at a healthy rate.

• 54:24Nick Bare?

  But we were running very, very low on cash.

• 54:31Nick Bare?

  None of us, me, Preston and Joe, had finance or accounting backgrounds.

• 54:39Nick Bare?

  We thought and knew that the health of our company was based off of what we had in the business bank account. If the business bank account was

• 54:52Nick Bare?

  enough to just get by, if it was positive, we were good for at least another day. But there were many days and many weeks where we ran very low on cash.

• 55:08Nick Bare?

  Because we didn't have cash injections into the business. I didn't know or understand how to utilize lines of credit.

• 55:20Nick Bare?

  I didn't know how to utilize different forms of investment or loans or terms for that matter.

• 55:37Nick Bare?

  You know, one of the reasons that cash got so tight is we didn't have terms with our manufacturing partners. So when we placed a production order, which we had 12 week lead times, we had to put 50% of the money down. And then, once that order was completed and shipped to us, we'd have to pay off the remainder and remaining 50%. So we were prepaying all of our inventory before receiving it, which ties up a lot of your cash in the inventory. A lot of our cash was sitting on shelves in our warehouse.

• 56:12Nick Bare?

  So between money tied up in inventory on our shelves, money tied up in inventory through production orders with our manufacturers,

• 56:24Nick Bare?

  our

• 56:26Nick Bare?

  Our warehouse lease,

• 56:30Nick Bare?

  which we signed one to two years prior. I mean, we were tight on cash for many days, many weeks, many months.

• 56:44Nick Bare?

  And this is the phase and stage of of survival that many entrepreneurs and business owners and founders go through. You learn a lot through these years. And for some, these years last a whole lot longer than others.

• 57:03Nick Bare?

  You know, we fortunately operated as lean and resourceful as possible for as long as possible to maintain profitability and to get to a point where we had healthy cash flows. And that we weren't just trying to survive every day, but we started to eventually thrive. I mean, there were many nights in 2018, 2019 that I would lay in bed trying to figure out how we were going to make it one more week.

• 57:35Nick Bare?

  Just stressed beyond all belief.

• 57:43Nick Bare?

  And what happens to a lot of people in this stage, survival of the fittest, is that

• 57:49Nick Bare?

  they end up making decisions that are driven through and by emotions as opposed to

• 58:00Nick Bare?

  being patient and being rational. And this almost happened to us once. So here's the story.

• 58:09Nick Bare?

  This was probably 2019, maybe 2018. And

• 58:17Nick Bare?

  we were tight on cash and our manufacturers knew it.

• 58:22Nick Bare?

  And at the time, one of our manufacturing partners

• 58:28Nick Bare?

  offered us up this solution and it was to invest into VPN.

• 58:34Nick Bare?

  So their proposal was that they would inject $100,000 into our business.

• 58:43Nick Bare?

  But with that hundred thousand dollar cash injection,

• 58:48Nick Bare?

  they would own 10% of the company

• 58:51Nick Bare?

  at a $1 million valuation.

• 58:56Nick Bare?

  And at the time, that sounded great. Someone is telling me this business is worth a million dollars. And they're going to give us $100,000, which would save us for the next couple of months. We can figure out how to get by, but they want 10% of the business.

• 59:18Nick Bare?

  If I would have accepted that offer

• 59:22Nick Bare?

  out of emotion,

• 59:26Nick Bare?

  that would have been one of the biggest mistakes in my entrepreneurial career

• 59:34Nick Bare?

  ever. 10% of the business at a $1 million valuation.

• 59:42Nick Bare?

  So glad we didn't do that. So glad I was patient and we just,

• 59:53Nick Bare?

  we just did what we had to do to get by and dig out of that hole.

• 59:58Nick Bare?

  Because that would have been a horrible decision. And I see a lot of founders, I see a lot of business owners falling victim to this. You know, they get themselves to a really tough spot and someone swoops in, whether that's an investor or a friend or a bank.

• 1:00:20Nick Bare?

  And they promise to save you, but that, that,

• 1:00:24Nick Bare?

  that saving

• 1:00:27Nick Bare?

  comes with a cost and that is sometimes giving up equity in your organization. In many cases, for a lot of founders, way too much equity.

• 1:00:38Nick Bare?

  Just because they're afraid of what it's gonna take to maintain that survival. Luckily, we didn't take that deal.

• 1:00:50Nick Bare?

  And me, Preston and Joe really just applied the whatever it takes mindset.

• 1:00:56Nick Bare?

  I mean, a few of the things that we did in those years that I have just like such great memories about. Remember our, our early Black Friday sales in those years? And it'd be the three of us back in the warehouse for two weeks. And we'd be at the, the warehouse in the office for 24 hours. 24 hours for one to two weeks. And we'd take shifts and we'd sleep in the office and we'd get food delivered. And we'd live off of energy drinks and caffeine and as much fun as it was, it was absolutely exhausting. But we didn't have the resources. We didn't have the ability to hire more people.

• 1:01:41Nick Bare?

  So the three of us had to do it ourselves.

• 1:01:45Nick Bare?

  I mean, our Black Friday and, and 4th of July sales look very different now than they, they did back then. And this past July for our summer sale, we brought in some temporary staff to help us fulfill all the orders. We got 35,000 orders out within seven days. And I believe we had with temporary staff, 24 people packing orders around the clock. Much different operational strategies now compared to back then. I remember this one time where we were really tight on cash and we had to make a payment for our rent the following week. And, and I knew we weren't gonna have the money.

• 1:02:31Nick Bare?

  So I went on social media and we sent out an email. And we said that everyone who places an order in the next 24 hours will get a call from us personally. And thousands of orders rolled in. And for weeks, we were calling people around the clock, thanking them for their order. Some people we talked to for 60 seconds, some people we talked to for 25 minutes. But we did that for like an extended period of time.

• 1:03:01Nick Bare?

  But that uptick in sales generated enough revenue for us to pay the rent the next week, and it saved us.

• 1:03:12Nick Bare?

  And I'll never forget when we first launched Whey Protein. And I was so impatient to launch the protein. And we were building all this hype and this buzz about our Whey Protein launch. Before that, we only had a few other products. It was Flight, our branched-chain amino acid product, Creatine, and our Pump Enhancer back then, which was Endo Pump.

• 1:03:43Nick Bare?

  And we built a lot of hype and buzz around this Whey Protein launch.

• 1:03:48Nick Bare?

  And we're talking to our manufacturer, and it was supposed to arrive to us on a Monday. Monday goes, doesn't arrive. Supposed to arrive Tuesday. Tuesday arrives, no protein.

• 1:04:01Nick Bare?

  Wednesday, same thing.

• 1:04:04Nick Bare?

  And they were just waiting for a truck to pick up the protein from the manufacturing facility and then bring it to us in Texas.

• 1:04:16Nick Bare?

  And I became impatient, and I just assumed that it would arrive Thursday. So we'd launched the product on our website.

• 1:04:25Nick Bare?

  And the manufacturer still didn't ship the product.

• 1:04:29Nick Bare?

  So then me, Preston, and Joe were freaking out because we sold all of this protein, but we still didn't have the product. So we went and we rented a U-Haul. And we drove to the facility, and we picked up the product, and we drove it back to our warehouse, and we emptied it off the truck and fulfilled all of the orders.

• 1:04:50Nick Bare?

  And all that to say, stage four of survival of the fittest, you just do whatever it takes. You get resourceful. You get creative. You adapt. You adapt to survive.

• 1:05:08Nick Bare?

  This is the stage where many people quit. And they give up, and it gets too hard.

• 1:05:15Nick Bare?

  This is the stage of testing true endurance.

• 1:05:23Nick Bare?

  Who is going to persevere to make this work? Who is going to persevere to see what's on the other side? Because if you quit too early, you'll never know what's on the other side. Stage four, survival of the fittest, that is the test. Now, stage five is from process to people. And for me, this was in 2020 and 2021. And a note I have here is if you decided to forego delegating your entire business operations to someone else in stage two,

• 1:06:03Nick Bare?

  this is the stage when you learn how to delegate, lead, and empower individuals to scale. Scale, growth, and the health of an organization is dependent on the leadership of the organization. And this is where it is more important than ever before to have the right people in the right seats. It requires recruiting talent while also empowering and developing individual teams. This is a stage where leadership separates the highly successful from everyone else.

• 1:06:48Nick Bare?

  Leadership is the lid to the success of the organization. And I believe that those first couple hires that you make are the most important hires you're gonna make. Because those first few hires you make, they set the tone. They carry and embody and live the core values and purpose of the organization. They guide the vision alongside of the founder.

• 1:07:25Nick Bare?

  Some of those first couple hires that that we made,

• 1:07:31Nick Bare?

  those people are still working at VPN.

• 1:07:34Nick Bare?

  Joe, Preston, John, Jordan, Kerm, Trey.

• 1:07:44Nick Bare?

  Those people ride or die. Loyal, hardworking, committed individuals.

• 1:07:55Nick Bare?

  Those were some of the first employees at VPN. They are still here today, building and facilitating growth and scale.

• 1:08:08Nick Bare?

  Vision through this entire process is absolutely essential.

• 1:08:16Nick Bare?

  People can can execute, people can be disciplined, people can be committed. But if people don't know what

• 1:08:26Nick Bare?

  the vision is, if people don't know where you want to go, where you're heading and why, it's almost impossible for people to execute.

• 1:08:40Nick Bare?

  One of the things I have noted here on the importance of vision

• 1:08:46Nick Bare?

  alongside people.

• 1:08:49Nick Bare?

  It's Proverbs, chapter 29, verse 18. Where there is no vision, the people perish.

• 1:09:01Nick Bare?

  Now, I share that

• 1:09:04Nick Bare?

  and I have to say, I don't want to

• 1:09:10Nick Bare?

  act like or assume that God, within the context of the Bible, is talking about our personal dreams or goals.

• 1:09:26Nick Bare?

  Because without God's revealed truth or moral direction, people lose self-control, discipline, and moral order.

• 1:09:38Nick Bare?

  Where there is no vision, the people perish. This doesn't mean personal dreams or goals, but rather God's revealed truth and direction for His people. Be very clear with that.

• 1:09:51Nick Bare?

  But I believe that

• 1:09:55Nick Bare?

  while God is not talking about personal goals or dreams in this context of the written scripture,

• 1:10:04Nick Bare?

  we can apply this to our everyday life.

• 1:10:09Nick Bare?

  Where there is no vision, the people perish.

• 1:10:14Nick Bare?

  What I've learned in stage five is that when you transition from the process and the processes and the SOPs that are required to scale and grow the business, those processes are critical and they get you to

• 1:10:35Nick Bare?

  an additional stage and growth lever and opportunities.

• 1:10:40Nick Bare?

  But what holds so many businesses back is not the processes, but it's the people. You need the right people,

• 1:10:50Nick Bare?

  people who are aligned with the core values of the organization,

• 1:10:55Nick Bare?

  who believe in the organization, who want to win.

• 1:10:59Nick Bare?

  But having the right people in the right seats, in the right roles. If you have the right people on the team, in the right roles, you can truly maximize success

• 1:11:12Nick Bare?

  and scale and experience exponential growth.

• 1:11:19Nick Bare?

  But those people also need vision. And that vision comes from leadership and most cases, the founder.

• 1:11:31Nick Bare?

  Stage five for me was

• 1:11:36Nick Bare?

  where I really started to understand

• 1:11:41Nick Bare?

  and realize that

• 1:11:46Nick Bare?

  what scales and grows a business,

• 1:11:50Nick Bare?

  at the foundation, you have to have great products.

• 1:11:55Nick Bare?

  You have to have quality product or service. And great branding helps as well. And a mission that connects with individuals

• 1:12:07Nick Bare?

  on a very intimate level.

• 1:12:10Nick Bare?

  But without the right people in the right seats of your organization,

• 1:12:15Nick Bare?

  you will be held back significantly. I believe in people. And I also believe that when there is no vision, that people perish.

• 1:12:27Nick Bare?

  Stage five, 2020, 2021, was the moment that I really embraced and leaned into becoming the leader that the business needed and required me to be.

• 1:12:45Nick Bare?

  It's not just operating and managing and implementing process anymore. It's leading people, putting people first. If you put the people first, everything else falls into place. And stage six, this brings it full circle.

• 1:13:05Nick Bare?

  It's from passion

• 1:13:09Nick Bare?

  to process to people to purpose.

• 1:13:16Nick Bare?

  This ultimately is wisdom.

• 1:13:21Nick Bare?

  It's not just knowing what you have to do, but it's understanding what you have to do and why. And I'd say for me, in this case, 2024, 2025, in the last two years, I've gotten to a stage six.

• 1:13:42Nick Bare?

  And in the building process over these last 14 years, so much of it feels

• 1:13:51Nick Bare?

  Messy. You know, it's reactive. You're adapting in real time and you're making decisions at the best of your ability. And you're pivoting here and you're pivoting there. And you're just trying to figure it out. Some days you're trying to figure out how to reach more customers. Some days you're trying to figure out what products need to be developed to to enter into new markets or categories or interests. Some days you're trying to figure out how to make a few extra bucks. You can pay rent the next week. There are so many challenges that are sometimes simple, but also sometimes very complex over the journey of

• 1:14:36Nick Bare?

  being an entrepreneur and taking what was once just a love for something, a passion,

• 1:14:45Nick Bare?

  and then turning it into something.

• 1:14:48Nick Bare?

  And then, once you make that decision, that conscious decision and commitment,

• 1:14:54Nick Bare?

  I mean, you hop on this roller coaster and it's hold on for dear life because this journey is about to get wild and crazy. And it's just going to get faster and faster and faster.

• 1:15:08Nick Bare?

  Starts with passion. It evolves to process. Then evolves to the people. And then ultimately evolves to the purpose.

• 1:15:19Nick Bare?

  Why you're doing what you're doing? Which goes back to

• 1:15:27Nick Bare?

  that first decision in 2012.

• 1:15:31Nick Bare?

  Why did I decide to start BPN? Why sports nutrition products?

• 1:15:42Nick Bare?

  And if you think about it today, we're still doing it for the same purpose. It is to help people. It is to serve others

• 1:15:52Nick Bare?

  for a lifestyle that we believe in, for a lifestyle that we live. Although it looks a little bit different now than it did back then. The purpose is very similar.

• 1:16:08Nick Bare?

  But we've only been able to get here

• 1:16:12Nick Bare?

  because we have, as a team, been open to the evolution. We've been adaptable. We've been teachable. We've been emotionally secure, creative, and service-minded. And that requires humility. That requires confidence, which is built over time.

• 1:16:37Nick Bare?

  It requires

• 1:16:41Nick Bare?

  the ability to make decisions that aren't rooted in emotions, but are rational and patient.

• 1:16:52Nick Bare?

  It requires you to play the long game,

• 1:16:55Nick Bare?

  making the decision that is hard, but right,

• 1:17:03Nick Bare?

  over and over and over again. They have said before, "You build a brand and drops, and you lose it in buckets."

• 1:17:12Nick Bare?

  True purpose, which is wisdom, it's all about impact. It's all about legacy. And it's about serving people. It's more than hitting revenue targets. It's more than making a profit. It's more than any financial milestone. There's a greater purpose behind it. And if I look back at that 22-year-old kid in Western Pennsylvania, sitting in his apartment,

• 1:17:39Nick Bare?

  mixing up his own pre-workout supplements

• 1:17:44Nick Bare?

  because he was so lit on fire because of the lifestyle that he was living and found and embraced.

• 1:17:55Nick Bare?

  That 22-year-old kid wasn't doing it because he thought he could make an extra buck

• 1:18:04Nick Bare?

  or because he wanted his company to be valued at a certain multiple one day

• 1:18:12Nick Bare?

  or any of those things.

• 1:18:15Nick Bare?

  It was because of a passion, impact, legacy, and serving people.

• 1:18:22Nick Bare?

  So these six stages,

• 1:18:26Nick Bare?

  they're not linear, but it is a full circle stage, which brings us right back to where we got started. Passion and purpose. Just a little bit wiser.

• 1:18:40Nick Bare?

  So, I hope you guys enjoyed this episode, the evolution of an entrepreneur.

• 1:18:49Nick Bare?

  If you have a passion, and you want to turn it into something, that passion doesn't have to die along the way. But it's definitely going to evolve.

• 1:19:02Nick Bare?

  So I'll see you guys in the next episode.