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

Episode Date: May 1, 2020

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.

This episode is brought to you by Superside.com. So Superside.com. If you need something designed quickly, go to superside.com. Give them a try. We're back. This is the kickoff, Nick. We have a guest today, Nick Bear. Sean doesn't know much about Nick.

Nick, I will, I'm going to say. Do you guys know each other in real life? No. No. I'm a fan. I'm a huge fan of his. And so Nick, we do this podcast, and it's got a great list. 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? 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 at 2012, I was studying nutrition. I started Bayer Performance Nutrition, which is a. sports nutrition, dietary supplement company, knowing absolutely nothing about business and thinking

that I knew it all. And then a short year after I started my business, I joined the military, went active duty army, where I then got stationed in Fort Benning, Georgia for a year, completed the U.S. 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'd transition out of the military in 2017. And we scaled our company from making $20,000 the first year to now making our own track for eight figures this year. That's great.

And so while you were in the military, you were creating content. You were like a YouTuber slash soldier. Yeah, I like to think myself as like the pioneer of military YouTubers. and it wasn't really by 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 stopped 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. 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? 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 on my business and YouTube and stuff before going to PT in the morning. It was 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 were like, yo, guys, I'm seeing you in this guy's YouTube videos. And they loved it. They loved seeing the journey in the process. So they were super supportive. of upper level leadership didn't really feel the same way, but like my guys, my guys and my

platoon, they loved it. Okay, that's cool. And so, and then Sam, do you, do you use his product? Do you take his product? Yeah. So his product is two things. So he has the nutrition business, which I have ordered or 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? I haven't seen any. Should I look at one right now? He's amazing. Nick's awesome. So Nick, what do you have, like 350 or 500,000 subscribers? Subscribers.

I just crossed 400,000, like, last week. Okay, so, Sean, Nick's, like, 194 pounds, right? I know this because I watch him a lot. He used to weigh, like, 250, 220, still, like, ripped, like, a, like, a good 220 or whatever you used to weigh. And he would post these videos of like 220 pound guy runs a six minute mile. 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 too many favors. Right. I have shoulders up. I have no pump right now. No, I mean, I used to weigh like

220, 230 pounds and the focus was just put on size and strength. This was 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 Iron Man. I did an Iron Man triathlon last November. And now I'm training to qualify for the Boston Marathons. So over that journey, I've lost like 30 pounds. And I maintain some size. I mean, I'm nowhere even, I'm not close to as strong and big as I used to be.

He's still huge, Sean. He's so very big. How did your channel like get big? Was it just a steady climb or were there some like, videos that went viral or something that let it take off. Yeah, I mean, for the first two, for the first two years, it 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, 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. I was like, you know, I'm just going to film like a day in my life. So I just carry my small camera off me. I film my PT session. I film what I'm eating.

I interview my platoon sergeants in my platoon. And I just like film this video called Day in the Life of an Infigate Platoon Leader. And I edited it up and I post it. And within like 30 days, that video went to like a million views. But it was crazy was the correlation between subscribers and views. So it gained a million views, which now is 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. And so, Sean, you asked if I use his stuff. I watch his videos every five day. I don't know. You have like two or three a week? It's like, yeah, about two a week right now. Yeah, so I watch all of his videos and I discovered him a year ago. Sean, you remember how I was training for that Iron Man like a few months ago?

Yeah. So 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 wait too much. Like I got to, 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, uh, are 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 have like back channeled and I've learned a lot about them.

And then I also learned about, uh, Bear nutrition, his company. So I've learned a fair bit about this guy. That's why I said it. I feel like I know him even though we've never actually met. Yeah, small world. Yeah, I know, I know pretty well. Small world.

And just so I understand. So you did the YouTube channel. You built the content first and the actual supplements brand second or the or they were happening at the same time. No, so I started my supplement company in 2012. I didn't start social media until 2014. So I see. I think that that kind of blows people's mind now because you,

Typically, like, you'll see 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 created my supply first. And then I realize, okay, well, I have no demand for the supply. How do I create demand? To 2014 is when I started building social media platforms out. Gotcha.

And so with the supplement company, you know, there's a lot of these out there, right? There's like 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 said you're in college or you were pretty young at the time. Why start a new company and what made you think this could actually work? Yeah, so 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 want to do is buy pre-workout to go to the gym.

So we decided, all right, we're going to save up. We're each going to save about $30. We're going to pitch it in. We're going to buy these ingredients in bulk, and we're going to mix up our own pre-workout. So here I am in the dorm's 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 from 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. It looked like I was dealing drugs out of my ingredients. Anthrax or something. Looks like I'm dealing drugs out of my college apartment. But I just, I loved sports performance nutrition. And I love the supplement space. So that's how it started.

Like that's how I started to make my own stuff. And then it was between my, where did your first stuff come from? My first actual production order was from California. But when I used to make my own stuff in the dorms, I would just buy like bulk creatine, bulk caffeine from like other supplement companies it sold single ingredients.

But between my junior and senior of college, I was like, okay, I'm going to turn this into a company. So I found a contract manufacturer based on in California. And I took it out of $20,000 alone. And I placed a production order for supplements, built the website myself, did all like the promo stuff by myself,

the advertising, the logistics, the packing. Everything was done out of my college department. But that's how it all started. That's how I got into it. And what's your revenue now? You said eight figures, so north of a million a month. Yeah, yeah.

We're on track for like $12 million this year. When you launch 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 $20,000 loan, you do all this work. Which category were you in? It works right away or did not work right away? Yeah. So my plan was, I told my dad, I said, I'm going to make a million dollars a year. one and he kind of just laughed at me. So I sent all these bottles of pre-workout to like

YouTubers and fitness, fitness influencers at time, which was a completely different term in 2012. And I thought if they would, I thought, hey, these guys have 100,000 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 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. I had bills to pay. 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 Axel duty military. So I was in and out of the field training all the time. 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. Yeah, I kept it going while I was in the military. I mean, I was gone so much.

I mean, 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 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 opportunity. on 20k in sales what's your typical margins not including if you not including payroll just like your contribution margin on these things um i was in the red then because i was pretty much selling products

at cost because 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 of what i was doing the marketing so my r oi was like zero on the money i was spent spending. 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. What about now? So on a million and dollars in sales, these types of businesses, what can your typical contribution margin be? After expenses with overhead. Just the hard good. Just your fix or your, just like the growth margin.

So after the, after cogs, after shipping. Yeah, we can have roughly 60% profit margins. And then, and then you got to take care of your people and your marketing. But do you guys, do you guys spend anything on marketing now? Yeah, we do. I mean, we didn't start spending money on marketing until 2017. That's when we first started running paid ads. Of 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, on, marketing. But, I mean, the only marketing we do, Facebook, Instagram ads, email marketing, and then like athletes are ambassadors, SEO. Yeah, because I would think that at this point, you guys, I would imagine, I mean, I definitely think you'd want to spend on marketing if you could spend profitably, but I would think that the majority of your sales are coming from your YouTube channel. 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 want. Which is great. This is, yeah, it's where I wanted to go. So I'm happy with that, that kind of transition and evolution. And what was the turning point? So three years, this business kind of sucks. You know, if you're my brother, I'm talking to him and being 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 are doing eight figures. So what was the turning point? Where did it go from a crappy business to a not so crappy business? It was actually when 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, $2,000 to $3,000 month in revenue.

And I told myself by the time I leave, I want to make $10,000 a month in revenue. That was my goal. So, I mean, we had a lot of downtime over there. I told myself, I'm not watching any movies, no TV, no 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, listening to podcasts. And within the first 90 days of being in South Korea, we went from $2,000 a month in revenue 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 insounds of business that I didn't know up until that point. So, Nick, something that we basically, this whole podcast had 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 like 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, in my business, we've not raised any venture capital, but most people raise a lot of money. I mean, bootstrapping, which basically is normal for how to start a company, that's not normal where we live. Have you ever considered raising money and what has been your thought process between of not doing that so far.

Yeah. I mean, like I said, 2012, I took on a $20,000 alone, 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 a 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 manufacturer, 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. And then it would be 11 weeks until I had more inventory. So we were constantly out of inventory. We were pissing off all of our customers. Cash flow was like, I was pulling my hair out at night. I was like so stressed down because we're growing, we're making money, but cash flow was so tight because we were scaling. 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 growth because we've essentially doubled revenue year over year 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 100% profit margins that are, we're using to internally fund the growth of the brand.

So what's the best one of those? So training, the last like three years have sold online. training programs, which are PDF downloads. We're about to launch our app within the BPN app, which is a subscription-based training platform called Embrace to Suck Training. And then launching an online nutrition course here shortly. So all of those, because there's really no overhead associated with them, we're using to fund the growth of bare performance nutrition.

Because I personally at this point... Wait, why? But why not just only do that? Because I love the product-based business. I love BPN. I love the employees we have. I love the team of the culture and the community. Like, I could never give up BPN.

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 cows for you to fund the business? I think they could be the same size, if not bigger. Yeah, Sean. Dude, his, you're, I, I, 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 It's new is? It seems, yeah. We both have wives that subscribe 100 bucks a year to her. Oh my God. It's crazy how big that is. And then I also was researching another one.

You know the Diamond Dallas page? Yeah, DDP. Of course. Yeah. Do you know how, so you know what is Schick now is, right? No, no, no, no.

What is it? 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 men use it to rehabilitate themselves. And people love it. And he charges, I think, $50 for three months. And it looks wonderful. Like I almost bought it the other day. I might buy it. But 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. Yeah. I think a lot of people do it. They do it wrong. A lot of people rush it and they don't put any, 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 our training platform, Embrace Suck Training, the subscription, we hired someone who's fully certified, Strength and Conditioning Certified, Green Bray, to build these programs for us.

Because as much education and experiences I have with training, I don't have all the certifications that make me credible to, you know, to watch that. When you're jacked, that's the certification for, do you know how to train? Well, that's the thing. That's what I consider the certification. And that's what most people do. But I mean, some people just have great genetics. And like they don't have those. Is that you?

Did you have great genetics? Were you just naturally pretty ripped? I mean, me, my brother, my dad, we, like the bear family, it's like, it's like grass-fed farmers from central Pennsylvania. So we got some good, we have some good genetics. But dude, I'm like a bean fed farmer from India. It's like, oh, man, we're screwed. And what did you build your platform on?

Okay, and you're saying platform, is it going to be an app? What is it going to be? Which one? So your training, he's saying, did you hire a developer? Did you use some no code tools? How are you building the fitness app? Yeah, the fitness app was built from scratch with a developer here in Austin. So we've been working on that for the past, man, eight months.

And it's not launching officially until this summer. However, we launched it early for free during COVID-19 and just, made a home training portion of it. So like day one, we had like 9,500 downloads on that just because it's, it's free and it's like home training. So like that value we're offering this. People were taking advantage of it. They love it. What's your niche going to be for that? Is it going to be like people who are like, I don't know how I don't know the politically correct way to describe us, but like manly men who are like buff or like heads is it. Yeah, or like nerds who want to get fit, women who want to lose weight?

Like, what's your thing? It's geared towards a functional, like, hybrid athlete. So it's the way I train. Like, going to the gym, throwing weights around, strength training, running up to 10 miles, doing some hikes. It's a combination of a hybrid-style training. I mean, it's called Embrace to Suck. It's going to be difficult.

It's not necessarily a beginner program, but I'd say more so intermediate to advanced. And what will you charge for this? $30 a month. Dude, this is going to make so much more money than profit, like so much more money than protein. Yeah, but our goal is we want, like, I see things as vertically aligned. Like, I want people to come to the bare performance nutrition platform where we're training them properly as opposed to what other people are doing. We're providing great products, the supplements. And we have the nutrition course where like, we're literally like, we want to give them all the assets and tools that they can to become successful within.

one spot. Why are you guys going to succeed at this? Whereas like I would, okay, so I know on it. I don't, I don't have any insider 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. I think Onet's killing it pretty well.

I mean, they have a pretty good representation here in Austin. And 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 Onit, 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 a number. other company's approach where like us internally here, we never really look at what everyone us 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 on a new website. We have new brand colors, guidelines going off of Go One More, which is our slogan. So everything we do is like based off of this for the next 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 are you the sole owner 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 going to be a home run.

Yeah, I mean, this has been something that we've been working on, like all these things for the 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. until midnight, most nights. But now it's a point where these things are coming to life and going to launch and it's going to pay off. Would you ever sell the company? I would in the future for the right price. I don't know what that price is right now, but I don't want to let go of it anytime soon. So do people in the military take pre-workout, you know, do they take branch chains afterwards?

You know, do they, are they consumers? Oh, yeah. Because there's a million plus, I think, soldiers in the Army type of thing. So, you know, how much have you been able to tap into that market, given that that's your background and your brand? and things like that. Because that seems like if you just serve 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 general. Yeah. I mean, that, we, when we first started and I was 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 BPN 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 BSC 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 safe to use these. Some brands go so hard 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. Who does that? Who's a brand that does that? I don't know. I'll see like random brands online that just like, you camo everything, digital like print. But 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 BPN stuff. But I didn't feel right targeting just the military on sales. And I never thought that was like a right

thing to do. 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 got to stay focused, but I believe in that opportunity. And some entrepreneurs are better at recognizing those than others. I'm curious, have you seen any either problems, opportunities, trends in your space that you can kind of riff on and share it. It can be half-baked ideas. But just what are some things you've observed.

Yeah, I mean, like I kind of touched on a little bit earlier, I feel like 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 hit us like, you know, years ago, we pulled ourselves back from a bigger perspective to say, like, we don't have, you don't have to follow this trail that everyone's taking. 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 want things to be organic and natural. And the people that align with our brand, athletes, ambassadors we bring on. We want it to be different. Like we want to set the path. We want to set the standard. I think it's partially a value adapted from the military and things I learned in leadership and just apply it to business. What are some of the faster growing sense? skews in your industry that didn't even exist a year ago?

Our fastest growth right now is like the health industry. And it's been like that for the past 18 months. So like strong green, 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, the 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 and we're

going to add to the line. Well, it quickly became our bestseller. And we'll sell through, you know, 8,000 units a month of strong greens. 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 on midnight and on 8am 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. 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. It's like the health market part of our brand is really taking the lead now. And how big do you think athletic greens is? I bought their stuff before. That seems like a pretty big company, right? I've seen their sponsor stuff on like Instagram and Facebook. I've never used it. I don't know anyone else that's ever used it. I mean, it's hard to tell sometimes with social media because you can make any brand look big, you know.

It's hard to tell. 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? I probably want to do a product-based business. I would do some sort of technology-based business 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 that.

So I'd do something service-based, something tech-based probably. Anything come to mind or just hard to think of it on the spot? I'd say 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. and even when times are tough and times are good, 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, 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 I was heading. And I think doing something with, you know, wearable in fitness and technology-based, that'd be massive. You know who two companies in that space that I think are doing wonderful are

whoop and aura ring. Yeah. 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. Yeah, I was sent a whoop and I just, I couldn't get on board with it. I 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 garment for the rest of my life until 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 team Garmin all the way. 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, like a DEC thing. But I would agree that 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 either investor or advise in this company. And he's doing a kind of an app-based workout thing. but he's not doing influencer stuff. He's doing, it's, it's,

it's AI based. Now, AI is this kind of like a bullshit term, but what he's doing is, 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. 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 think that's bullshit, I think that's bullshit. Why would that be bullshit? Because there's already things like 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 maybe for example two or three weeks you keep the same way 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 well i think it comes down it's a theory of convenience it's called auto-regulation 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 has no pace it knows effort you body has no 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 RPE9. Well, the RPE scale is based on 10. So it means RPE9 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. to play with some sort of auto regulation or perceived effort.

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 benefit and people are. So this guy's doing, you know, over, let me pull up his numbers real quick, but he's doing over a million dollars a month already on this app. And so he's had phenomenal success and he's grown it, you know, in a very, very short amount of time. But, you know, it's been his, well, what was his main source of growth, paid ads?

Payd ads, yeah. So we, Nick, have you heard of active? I don't think so. So active is cool. So it started by this guy named Ethan. He spoke at our event, HustleCon. And it's a badass company. But now I want to hear Nick's opinion.

But basically what they do is 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 licensed 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 $100 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 the cost or the barrier to entry for a business like that is so low. I have to imagine that the competition is stupidly high. Maybe the most competitive on the iTunes store. And he grew that mainly through ads. Yeah. Yeah. I always wonder, like, for the ads, for subscriptions like that. Because, like, say, for example, it's $100 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 consideration, like, the lifetime value that customer. So, like, those numbers have to get pretty, like, messy. Yeah, like, you know, if you're able to acquire a customer for $20 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. Yeah, but 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. Yes, but the secret, I think, I think that the trick is, and I, so we have a subscription business called Trends, Trends. And it's a great business. And what I learned doing that is I went and talked to Ethan of Aptive 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 Aptiv as well as others like it.

And I don't know what your guys' plans are, Nick, is you have to do annual billing or three-month billing. You find that by not offering, so you don't offer monthly? No, no, we don't. And I, so do you know the athletic? The athletic? Yeah, it's like this, it's like, how do you describe the athletic? It's sports, sports news, but you pay for it on subscriptions. Like local, you know, they're bored on your local team, but you got to pay for it.

Yeah, and they raise like, I don't know, $200 million, a shit ton of money. And I talked to those guys and they're like, we wish we only did annual. And so it definitely limit, 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 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 turnoff for people, but I don't think so, particularly if it's $30 a month is what you're charging. That's $360 a year.

That's not quite an impulse purchase, but I think like $199 is an impulse purchase. 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 will churn out at this month. And when we do annual, the conversion rates 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. I disagree, Sean. 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. No, like for most apps, you don't, most customers don't know what the other customers are. seeing. I would just automatically assume that your conversion would take a massive hit if you didn't

offer a monthly. I can say for our service, I don't think that's true because our conversion is really high. What's your monthly fee or what's your annual fee? 300. 299. And we're going to raise the price to probably five or 600. And I just think that I just think that annuals I'd rather 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. Otherwise, it's hard. I have another company.

I'm a partner in a software company that does monthly billing. It's way harder. It's way harder. That's an interesting perspective, actually. That's a really good insight to take over to this training platform. Yeah, I would. Whenever 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, I use this app called Strong, which helps me track my lifts. It was only annual billing. I think active was only annual billing. I think that, like, I always say to myself, I think there's a handful of industries that do things best, particularly people who are 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. Oh, yeah. I mean, there's new fitness app. I mean, every influencer where there are 100,000 followers on Instagram is coming out with an app now. That's crazy. Yeah, that's not going to work. That is a temporary phenomenon.

And then, you know, 18 months from now, there's going to be a whole bunch of dead apps. Oh, 100%. I mean, even in our space, we see people launching companies 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 build this thing and grow it and scale it. But we'll see some of our direct competitors copying and following things that we're doing, whether it's a product, whether it's like a marketing campaign. But it's like by the time they, someone else copy someone else, man, you're already like six months or a year behind. Nick, are you able to do you pay yourself well? Because since you own

the whole company or like the so like i said chona 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 um just as little as possible i think a small i think a very small paycheck from bpn but then i have additional revenue sources um from other things I do. It's like I haven't, I haven't increased my pay since I started paying myself in 2017. So then is most of your income from like YouTube ads and your PDFs? Yeah, YouTube ads, PDFs, other contracts I have with other companies, like retainers for some marketing stuff that I've been doing. But that's the majority of my money. BPN is probably

what I pay myself on salary through BPN is a smallest amount of money that I make. And how do you have time to do marketing for other people? 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. It sounds like you're the model. You're not the marketer, right? You're giving your likeness to them. Is that right?

Yeah. Yeah. So it's like some posts that I'm doing for them. Oh, oh. 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 or my book that I launched, stuff like that.

And what's the premise of the book? So the book's called, what, 25 hours? The book's called 25 hours a day. So it's essentially... What does that mean? Is that your philosophy? Well, the story behind it is I was sitting in Fort Benning, Georgia and I was talking to the captains from the 75th Ranger Regiment.

And I turned to one of them. This was before I met my platoon. when I'm still in training. I just got done with the 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 a fan, when bolts are flying over a shoulder, I'll look at him and he's as calm as the other side of the pillow. He's as cool as the other side of the pill. He just, he doesn't react to anything. He just slows down time itself. So they go, shit, well, I need to

slow down time itself. 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. I'm living my day like I have 25 hours. So like when I was first building the brand 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 luckers 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. 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 worked. So that was the premise behind like coming up with a story. So what does that mean? So how does one live with 25 hours in the day? Is it I sleep one hour less? Is that the trick? 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 a 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 that adapted, just like slowing down the day. 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 food. And I think like the military itself had a really strong impact in that.

But the concept of 25 hours a day, it just kept sticking with me because it's like everyone's so rushed to do things in a day that only is 24 hours. It's like, well, I'm going to give myself 25 hours. Who, did someone publish that or did you self-published that book? Lioncrest Publishing published that here in Austin. Do they give you a, oh, Tucker. Yep, yeah, Tucker's company. Tucker's a good friend of mine.

So then you didn't get like an advance on it. No, I didn't. Do you think that that book sales will be a significant stream of revenue? Not significant. I mean, they've done pretty well so far. but I think it's just a really good way to get the story out about the brand. So it's another way for people to connect with bare performance nutrition at a deeper level other than it just being a supplement company because there's such a strong story behind it.

Sean, have you heard of Lioncrest? No, that's part of the book in the box thing. Yeah, so Tucker Max, who's an angel investor in my company and someone 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 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 go straight it for you. And then they offered more services. I think now they charge $36,000. And 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? Yeah, it was a good experience overall. It was nice having them right here in Austin that I could kind of bounce ideas off to you and go to the office and stuff.

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? I came across Scribe and Tucker like years ago. So I was on their email list. And writing and 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 going to do. it. So I just made the move. It was like January of 2019 is when I started working with them. 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 was like, A, how much time is this going to take? Because, you know, I don't think this is going to be like some big winner. It's like a fun project. It's nice to have. And then B, you know, what's really going to come with this? So, you know, how many people will actually read this thing? You know, is this going to 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? It took a lot. I mean, it was a lot of time. It required a lot of time. And it was essentially all of of 2019. 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. Um, 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 breezing 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 that's what I wanted it for. That's great. Yeah, everything in one place. And so how many books, like, I guess, sold or whatever? would you consider like a success for this? I think like week one, we sold like 10,000 copies. That seems great to me. That sounds awesome, actually.

Yeah, I don't know what the number of total copies I'm at right now. Like week one was like $10,000, I believe. Did you have a goal for it or you were just like, whatever? I was kind of just like whatever. I wanted to get as many hands of people as possible to find out the story, find out more about bare performance nutrition. I really wanted to create the 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 YouTube 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. 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 like, it's not overly promotional, but let's say you do this video and you're like, all right, we have these new,

these new athletic or these new green, this new green product, the greens are whatever, or this new protein powder. And you launch it, how much traffic will you send to that product in 24 hours? 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. Wow. Like Black Friday, for example, Black Friday, like 48 hours.

We had like, I think it was 9,000 orders. But that'll be a mix, right? I've paid your email list plus your YouTube. That'll be the total kind of marketing. Yeah, it's like the culmination of all efforts coming together. Right. 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? 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.

Yeah. Why wouldn't you just like hire a young guy to follow you all the time with the camera and just start churning the shit out? because your stuff's good. Why don't you just only do content? I did hire a full-time videographer like six months ago. And then Bayer Performance Nutrition grew so much that he had to be the sole videographer for BPM.

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. I'm really slow to hire just because we have to just strong calls. here that I want to maintain that culture. I don't want to bring in like essentially a cancer that ruins that. Sean, you should see their office. They have like it's like a, uh, I don't know what, how many square feet do you guys have? We're now in 20,000 square foot. 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 suburb's of Austin, right? It's north Austin. It's about 28,000 a month. 28 grand a month, so like $1.20 per square foot or something. Okay, so Nick, you can do my idea then. So I had this idea not long ago. 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? Yeah.

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, I think it would be great to 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. They're their bear. 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 you could just do it out of your facility. And it would just be a good marketing event for your thing. But I, I really think there's quite a lot of demand for youth athletes to sort of start to build their resume like they see the pros do. Especially here in Texas. Football is no joke here. Exactly. Yeah, it's not bad. Yeah.

It's like a combine, but you have to add it in like a five-mile run. Yeah, exactly. You do whatever you believe like an all-round fitness test is. Yeah, we've bounced around the idea of building something similar to like, you know, a tough. Mudders, the Go Rocks, like Spartan races. We kind of seen Brace Suck training going towards that model someday. There's no plan in place yet to get there. But it's kind of just like the vision we see of taking it to something similar to that. 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 not going to be a popular thing for the next I don't know, 18 months or forever, I'm not sure. And so I wonder what would be a similar thing where it's a way to test yourself, something you sort of bragworthy, 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, you know, you can, the person sort of gets, they open up your app or whatever, and it sort of auto films like a time lapse of them doing the whole thing.

And this is a very tough thing to do. everybody's doing it on their own, not one large gathering. Yeah, it's kind of like, you know, all the races now are virtual, like this virtual 5Ks. I'm doing a virtual one-mile race this weekend. 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. I mean, how does that work? You just go run on your own and just post your time or what?

Yeah, I mean. Yeah, have you heard of Zoochon? No. What's it called, Nick? Is it Zusk? What's the site? Is that it? The cycling one?

Zeus is a dating site. Oh. What's the, um. What's this? cycling one that starts with the Z. Oh man. I know you're talking about. It's huge.

They base like 100 million in funding. Yeah. What do they do? Swift. So Zwift. Yeah. So what they do is it's Ironmen 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 smart trainer. trainer, Sean, which is like this 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. I think I would have never believe this. I mean, $164 million raised at a $500 to a billion dollar valuation. Wow.

This is. It's huge. It's huge. They probably don't even have that many customers. I mean, cycling is not that big of a market. The endurance market, like endurance sports, endurance athletes, they will spend money. Like, that's a space to get into. And that's kind of why, like, we're not creating products in the endurance market.

Because we have a company here in Austin called Roka. You know, Roka makes, like, triathlon gear running stuff. I bought my, my trisuit from them because of you. Yeah, I mean, Roka makes great. stuff. But like they're dominating the market right now because that's like a market that from what I see is almost behind in times and that space of fitness. And like Roku just went out there and absolutely wrecked and destroyed it. Nick, we had Lance Armstrong on the podcast a while back and like a few months ago. And I was trying to convince him he needs to become the Jimmy Buffett of weekend warriors.

So like have like hotels for people who are training for Iron Man's have just sell all types of of cool, interesting stuff for that endurance crowd. Because I agree. If you look at Iron Man and you look at the participant growth, it's pretty phenomenal. It's just because it's a bunch of rich white dudes who 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.

Yeah, I mean, we think breaking into that market like from a nutrition standpoint, it's going to be really big for us. But like, yeah, when I launched my Iron Man series, Like, that, that blew the channel up. That was a big spiking growth in my channel just because that attracted so many new people. 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 until 2014, 15.

It's been about the same since then. A Chinese company bought Ironman for about 500 million bucks. 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 Iron Man thing per year. Cohn is like the qualifier. They have a million participants a year. Iron Man does.

I almost did a big case study on them. I'm really interested in Ironman. Yeah. 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 Iron Man about three years ago, four years ago, for maybe three or $400 million. And then he sold it about four months ago,

right before Corona for like a profit of $100 to $200 million, 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, because people, it's growing like, like crazy, but the downside is like during Corona, like they just are completely dead. 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 guided runs. I don't know if you guys have ever seen these, but yeah, they're awesome. It's pretty cool. You just say like, all right, I'm going to go for a 20 minute run. And 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 this sort of whole endurance

market 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 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, maybe set 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 a 10 mile run or whatever it is 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 what do you mean how do you do that it's easy we we we started talking about doing something similar to that where we were going to film 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 going to 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? Yeah, that's why I think you've got to do audio so that you need people to participate, so they can't be watching, right, because they can't be on the 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 going to do a virtual 5K or whatever it is, you said, how do you do that? But, you know, 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 that'd be cool it's like so weird right now because no one knows when all this COVID stuff's going to 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. Say you spend all your time doing stuff, then all these lifts get taken away.

And people are like, well, the way I view it is like you have this six-month period right now, for sure, where there's going to be 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, and I know I have to kind of pay them back when the world reopens. But if I borrow these users today and I can give them some experience, some percentage of them are going to stick with this when the world sort of goes back to whatever the new normal is going to be.

And so the way I look at it is you can get free adoption of some new experience during the next six to nine months. And so you get this crazy adoption. Now, what percentage of them stick with you? I don't know. You're going to have to pay back some of those users 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 going to get a bunch of free adoption. And that's how I would think about any business during this time.

Yeah, that's kind of what we did with that free embrace of succumb training, you know, portion. Exactly. That's a perfect example. Yeah. So as it's been going on, people have fallen off naturally. Like they've found places to train and work on that. We've had a lot of people, you know, stay on the program and the platform. So, yeah, I mean, it's an interesting time. I think it's time to be innovative and create something different. Sean, do you know a tough matter file for bankruptcy a few months ago?

Yeah, we talked about it. it on here. What ended up happening? Did they actually close? Did it trade hands? What happened? 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 a hundred million in sales in like three or four years. So Nick, you should go get involved in that and you should go, because 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 Mudders books are open right now. and whether you buy them or not, it doesn't matter.

You can go get all their information for free right now. What was their issue? What was the reason for bankruptcy? I don't know. 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. Active networks is like the ticketing platform. They owe them like $18 million. 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 muttered. 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 seems like they had really bad cash management and they just couldn't handle their debts. They didn't raise any money. 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 the prepaid tickets to like tough mutter events that are coming up. But that was the price paid by Spartan for tough mutter. That's awesome. That's the deal. 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 mutter 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. Sean, is there anything else you want to discuss before we wrap up? No, we should wrap up. Nick, where should people follow you, find you? What should they check out? You guys have a podcast, a Twitter. Where do you want to send people?

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

I got seven miles to do this. I'll be running. Awesome. Thanks for this, dude. This is awesome. You are, 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. I appreciate it.

Thanks, guys.