The Nick Bare Podcast - 006: Kat Thomas - The Harsh Reality of Entrepreneurship

Episode Date: April 3, 2023

Today on the show, I chat with Kat Thomas and unpack her inspiring yet challenging entrepreneurial journey thus far. Kat opens up for the first time about her struggles as a founder and shares lessons about starting a company and finding your identity outside of work. Kat earned her BA from Duke, started her career at Goldman Sachs as an algorithmic trader of European equities, served as COO of American Health Associates, and co-founded MUSH, a ready-to-eat refrigerated oats brand. She even secured funding from Mark Cuban on ABC's Shark Tank and helped scale to thousands of retailers nationwide. Her decade of business experience has shaped her into an incredible leader and operator today as CEO of Bare Performance Nutrition. Enjoy the episode! Topics: (00:00) - Intro (00:55) - Reality of being a founder (04:30) - What would you do if money wasn’t a concern? (08:30) - Problems in the food industry (13:30) - Kat’s founder story (28:26) - Being your own boss (34:57) - Asking for help (41:00) - Scaling MUSH (49:30) - Appearance on Shark Tank (01:05:53) - 4 Phases of Founder (01:12:41) - Emotional attachment to your business (01:16:29) - Finding our identity (01:26:23) - Kat’s health struggles (01:54:55) - Why you need strong relationships Follow for more: IG: https://www.instagram.com/nickbarefitness/ YT: https://www.youtube.com/@nickbarefitness Keep up with Kat here: IG: https://www.instagram.com/_thekatea/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katherine-thomas

Entrepreneurship has been so romanticized. You have to be careful with entrepreneurship. You can get hurt. Today on the show, we have Kat Thomas, the CEO of Bear Performance Nutrition, and we are unpacking the harsh realities of being a founder. We do not talk enough about the trauma and the struggle of being a founder, and we talk about the Lamborghinis, the mansions, the exits. You will get absolutely annihilated day after day after day.

Kat has a decade of founder and operational experience, growing a consumer brand to thousands of retail stores, and securing funding from Mark Cuban on Shark Tank. Mark, we'd love to. Aye, aye, aye. But her story has been far from easy. I did want to talk about some of your health issues that you experienced. I was getting these very weird shooting chest pains. You immediately know when something's wrong. They found like a small hole in my heart.

He was like, we got to put a pacemaker in you. I was like when, he's like, now. You like 100% took decades off your life to try to build something. And there are some things that you just can't get back. Kat Thomas, when you hear the word founder, what do you think? And I'm going to give some more context to that. Because the internet and social media has unfortunately created these parallels between the term founder and Lamborghinis.

mansions and private jets. So what does, what does founder mean to you? I would immediately say a founder is someone who can create something out of nothing. And I think the most successful founders

that I've met are the people who have this ability to see a future product or a future reality that they want to bring into existence. And they have the ability to move the needle on a daily basis to get to realizing that product or that vision.

The challenge with what you're alluding to and that the internet has romanticized being a founder, we do not talk enough about the hardship, the trauma, and the struggle of being a founder. and we talk about the Lamborghinis, the mansions, the exits, and all of the successes. And I think we need to focus more on the struggle, the failures, the challenges, because that conversation is more real, that conversation is more authentic, and that conversation allows more people to empathize with what entrepreneurship actually is.

Well, that's why I wanted to have this conversation today. It's to really set realistic expectations of this is what you might experience. This is what we have experienced. You know, you're now CEO of BPN, but you are previously a founder. I am a founder of BPN. We both have experienced stress and trauma and success and success and win. and losses and all the good and bad throughout the journey and throughout the process. But my goal with today's conversation, like I said, it's not to scare people away from starting,

but it's more so setting the expectation of this is going to be very, very challenging. I mean, there's always the exception to the role. There is the founder that starts something. It goes wild in a few weeks, months, years, and there's this huge exit. There is always exceptions to the rule, but for majority of the population who want to start something, it's very challenging. It's really hard. It's not supposed to be easy, but you will learn so much to that process.

I am not the same person today that I was 10 and a half years ago before starting this company because of what I experienced through the process and the journey. One thing that I've been really just sitting on recently, is a quote from Simon Sinek. People don't buy what you do. They buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe. You talk about this a lot in terms of how people will spend their money or their time.

The way you spend your time and money should reflect what you believe in and what you want to back. My kind of second question for you with that context is if money or building financial security for you and your family wasn't a concern for the rest of your life, what would you do starting today? What do you believe? What does Kat Thomas believe in enough to dedicate a lifetime to? There's potentially some recency bias, but I don't necessarily actually even think I'd dramatically change what I'm doing because I do think that. BPN is a part of kind of this like broader mission.

I've always been obsessed with the food industry and the nuances of the food industry and this idea that ever since I uncovered when like let's go all the way back to the fat free like low fat craze when everyone said there's a direct correlation between your fat intake and the increase in cardiovascular disease in the United States. And we basically, like, pulled all the fat out of our diet, right? So a whole, a full fat or whole milk serving has nine grams of fat in it. And what we did was we pulled out all that fat. There's obviously nine calories per gram in fat and four in a carbohydrate.

So we pulled out nine grams of fat and we injected 20 grams of sugar to keep that same kind of like caloric profile. And I always come back to that as the foundation of like, that's where the food industry went wrong. And ever since then, you start to peel back the layers and you learn all about these these large corporate entities that are funding kind of the food stamps program and 15% of the food stamps program is going to soda, for instance, and how we're like simultaneously with government legislation.

that exists within the food industry and farm subsidies that go to wheat into corn, but not to like fruits and vegetables. We're simultaneously, and poison is maybe like a strong word, but we're not helping society in how we nourish our people and how we fuel our people, and that inevitably leads to the prevalence of disease. And that to me has been something that I have been so intellectually curious about for as long as I can remember. So to answer your question,

that would be what my life is dedicated to. It's like how do we fix the, and maybe corruption is an extreme word, but maybe it's not, but like how do we fix the corruption that exists between government legislation and the food that's on our grocery store shelves? Because we talk a lot about,

and I don't want to go into a human rights conversation, but I think that living in a country that we live in, with all the resources that we have, we should be able to trust that every product that is on a grocery store shelf is there with an intent to nourish, not to harm. And like that is something that I'm so passionate about. And we right now are relying on people educating themselves to make those decisions for themselves

when really these companies should be making the decisions for the people. And the only products that should make it onto the shelves are the products that are genuinely good for us. And they're genuinely wholesome and they're fueling our bodies in the right way. And that in itself, everyone, at that point, like, you don't actually even need medicine to progress. Like, you don't need the pharmaceutical industry to innovate to the extent that people are looking for it to innovate if we use food as true nourishment and true medicine as opposed to. to kind of poisoning our population and then simultaneously relying on pharmaceuticals to then fix the population.

And that's something that, like, I will, I'll take to my grave and I'll fight for the death for. Is it that it's a lack of education from the government and these programs that are rolling them out, or is it an agenda? Like, is it an agenda to make things happen a certain way so that big companies and the government makes more money,

or is it just the people that are running it don't know what the fuck they're doing? I think it's probably a combination of both. I mean, you always said it best. You talked about being a nutrition major in college and the irony of the person who is teaching you, right? Like, they weren't necessarily the epitome of health themselves, yet they were the person who was, like, delivering the lecture.

So I do think there's something to be said for, like, maybe the right people aren't in the right seats to make the right decisions, like, long term. But I also think there's something to be said for, and this is a challenge with a lot of things in the world, there's no, like, iron fists that can come over top and just say, like, enough is enough. Like, the system's broken, we need to fix it.

Like, no one has that authority to come in and just be like, boom, like, I am getting rid of, I'm, you know, I'm going to tackle the food stamps program and I'm going to change it. I'm going to change the farm subsidies. There's so many intricacies that I'm not even, aware of that go into all of these decisions and no one has the authority nor the resources, nor the education, nor the power to like come over top and say like, no, we're not doing it anymore. It's not fair. It's not right. These companies should not be profiting from these programs,

things like that. And so I think that that's where we've just, over time, we've just gotten in a really, really bad spot and really, really far away from just like foundational principles of like what the food industry should be. And I mean, I think you said it best with the food pyramid. It's like, basically that food pyramid is like whole grains. But people should be able to trust that a piece of bread is just flour and water. You actually don't technically even need like a yeast, right? Because you can make a starter just out of flour and water and it can ferment. So it's like all you need is flour, water, and sea salt. But, like, the bread that's on the shelf isn't flour, water, and sea salt, because it has

preservatives and it has other products in there to ensure that it can sit on a shelf for 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, six months, because they don't want that product to spoil. So, like, there's this constant balance of logistics and supply chain and food preservation and food safety, and then what's, like, actually good for us. and then this becomes a whole battle of local versus global. So localization versus globalization. And right now we're in this period of hyper-globalization where we're super dependent on resources all around the world

when if we went back to our focus on local, you could just go to the fishmonger and you could go to the green grocer and you could go to the baker and you could get all the products that you need in a very, very holistic form, but not, then you have an access problem because right now our economy is based on hyper-globalization and we don't necessarily always have the infrastructure to support localization.

And a lot of these farmers who are local, they're not getting any subsidies, so they have to raise their costs. So you're saying, well, I could get strawberries at the grocery store for $3.99, but when I go to the farmer's market, they cost $8. Like, of course, I'm going to pick the $3.99 because I need to take care of my family and I need to protect my wallet. And so I think the motives are are a little bit off. And that's what leads to kind of this perpetual problem. Well, that's even like the motives of a founder. Like founders, true founders want to create solutions to solve problems. And if we apply that same logic to say like your baker, like there's, you know, say this baker,

who wants to make really good bread for their local economy. And they start doing that with like really clean, simple ingredients. But then there's this opportunity to scale and grow and make more money and then take care of their family. And where the concept of like solving this problem in the beginning then creates this opportunity to grow and scale. And now that baker is adding in these different ingredients to make that bread last longer. and ship further.

So it's like what started as this really strong motive from a founder turned into an opportunity that then changed the entire motive itself. Yep. Which we're probably seeing across the entire economy globally.

Absolutely. And I find it interesting that my question for you in the beginning was what you would do if money wasn't a thing. And it was around food and nutrition. So obviously food and nutrition and helping the world eat better is like part of your ethos.

That's probably why you're working here and leading a sports nutrition brand. But that directly correlates to you starting a consumer product in 2015. Let's go back to that. Let's talk about that journey. Let's talk about the reason behind starting that company. Yeah. And like what were you trying to solve with that? What got you to that point where it was finally, I'm going to start this organization?

I was working at Goldman and I was working on the trading floor and I was an algorithmic trader. And when you're an analyst, everyone starts kind of with like the coffee run. And in Europe, New York was a little bit better about being like, okay, we're not going to kind of do this analyst hazing thing anymore. And London was still like, yeah, no, you can still get the 12 coffees and still make breakfast for, people in the canteen and bring it up and things like that. And I wasn't really adding much value. I was kind of just like a squatting duck on the desk for a little bit of time. But I was also like, you know what? I'm paying my dues. I'm like serving my time, that kind of thing. And then something really interesting happened in that, you know, a couple people left to go to business school.

We had someone on our desk who kind of got sick. Someone who had a very specific skill set was moved to sort of an emerging markets desk. And what happened was my team got smaller and smaller. And before I knew it, I had a lot more responsibility than I should have probably had as an analyst. And I was one of two traders on the desk kind of trading European equities or really executing, rather. We executed large block trades on behalf of kind. and tried to get them the best execution we could

without causing market impact. Is this right after college? This is right after college. And I'd interned there following my junior year in London, got a job offered to move to London and picked up right out of college and did training in New York and then moved to London. And for me, I was one of the only people

who could button push on the desk. In Europe, there's a lot more exchanges, right? So you had to get certified to trade Zetra, which is a German exchange, and Borza Italiano, which is the Italian exchange, and you had to learn how to work with a broker in Spain and a broker in Ireland,

and then you had to be able to trade kind of all of Europe. And so there were a lot of certifications that had to happen to allow me to really button push on behalf of the firm. So what happened was I went from having a little bit of flexibility to I was genuinely chained to my desk because when orders would come in and they breached compliance controls,

be it the price was too aggressive or the price was too passive or the size of the trade was something that needed to be verified or the notional value was something that needed to be verified, you had to be there to action the trade really, really quickly because if a hedge fund's sending it in and they miss liquidity on the book because you didn't push a button fast enough, like they're going to be really, really angry. And so trying to find food that gave me enough sustenance to, like, last me throughout the day became very, very challenging. And my day was the same every single day. I woke up at 450. It was before

the trains even started running in London. So I actually had to take the bus to work every single day. And I'd walk out my door at 520, sometimes 525, and would then have to like sprint. And I'd catch the 530 bus. And then I was on the desk anywhere from 6 o'clock to 610. And then that's when I started to receive trades for South Africa. And then at 7 a.m., the rest of Europe kind of opened to allow me to receive trades. And then at 8 a.m., that's when trading began. And so the breakfast that I always ate was Birchermusely. And Bercher Musley was a Swiss-soaked oats breakfast. It's very, it's a huge part of kind of traditional Swiss breakfast. It's usually oats soaked in either a yogurt or a milk. And, you know, there's grated granny-smith apples and sometimes cranberries and

nuts and things like that. You buy that or do you make that? So I bought it. So there was a coffee shop across the way called Coco de Mama and I didn't really drink coffee at the time, but they always, they had these like little blueberry pods of Birchermusely. And so that was the first time that I ever really had soaked oats. Like I grew up in a in a household that had oatmeal, but I didn't really have soaked oats. And I loved just how accessible it was and how it was cold. Because it didn't, it didn't kind of like hit like that warm oatmeal where then you kind of were like warm and cozy and almost want to go to sleep. Like I needed something that sort of sustained me, but didn't make me feel sort of like

tired, if you will. And so that was my first exposure at it to really overnight oats or to Birch or Musley. And then if you fast forward, when I left Goldman Sachs, I went to a clinical laboratory company in South Florida, a guy I went to college with. His mom started it in 1990 out of a doctor's office. It was a single. it was basically a single location laboratory, grew it to be a $30 million private business.

And then since I was a part of kind of an acquisition, we acquired kind of their largest competitor out of bankruptcy. And I missed that product that I had in London. So I started making it in mason jars, right? And this is where you kind of saw, this is at the same time that you started to see trends of overnight oats on Pinterest, where people are kind of just putting oats and sometimes chia seeds, and sometimes almond milk and apples and things like that into a jar.

They let it sit overnight and then they pop the top and they eat it with a spoon. And so when I was the CEO at that company, that was the breakfast that I had every single morning. And that's when I started, that's when I started making it. And so my co-founder, I'd met, I'd met her at Goldman. And we actually ironically sat next to each other in new higher training because our names were Thomas and Thompson. And, you know, she was looking for a way out from the, for a,

the firm, I was kind of like getting this itch towards entrepreneurship because I had seen what the company that I was at, I had seen what she had built, you know, over the past kind of like, you know, at this point it would have been, you know, over 20 years. That was my first exposure at small business. And I was like, gosh, like, I could really do something, you know. And- At this clinical laboratory. Yeah. What made you want to leave Goldman to go to the laboratory? I think I was always toying with this idea. When I initially went to Duke, I, I got recruited as an athlete and they had a program called Cape, which is the college athletic premedical experience. And I was supposed to go the premed route at Duke. And then it became very,

very apparent once an eight hour like organic lab session had to hit my calendar that it was not going to work with a D1 lacrosse schedule. So I told myself, all right, I can't do premed. I need to go and do something. I need to go and do something else. And if I want to go back into premed, I'll go and just do a postback year and then I'll go to medical school. And that's what I always told myself. And then I kind of got siloed into this finance route. And a lot of people I spoke to were like, hey, you do great in finance. Like you do super well under pressure. You're cool, common collective. You're a great worker. You're conscientious. Like, you know, they're padding your ego and they're just trying to kind of get you in the door. And so I sort of got siloed into this finance route.

And then I had an opportunity to go join this clinical laboratory company. And I think I interpret it in my my head at the time, really the lie that I told myself was, this is your way to access this sort of like medical route without having to go to med school. Like you can get into medicine, you can help people in medicine, but you're just not going to be a doctor. You're going to do it kind of on the business side of things is what I like, you know, my kind of naive self, you know, said in my brain. And that was really really. my first exposure at kind of small business. And then that's when I realized, like, I might actually be able to have more impact if I create something than if I jump into

kind of the field of medicine. And so for me, that's when I was like, we should really, you know, and at the time was kind of talking with my business partner, she was looking for an out from Goldman. And it was like, well, we should really just take this like overnight oats concept and we should try to scale it because everyone can reach into the fridge and they can grab a yogurt and it's very, very accessible. But oats are so good, they're sustainable, they're, you know, lower glycemic index carbohydrate, full of really like of great fiber. They keep you regular. Great for heart health, for cholesterol. We should just try to take that Bertramuselie product and kind of scale it and make it so that people can kind of just pull it out of the fridge and pop the top

and eat it just like they would a yogurt. And so that was kind of the impetus of the idea. And, you know, I remember I kind of created the original recipes in my parents' kitchen in upstate New York. This was before they sold our family home. And I remember being in the kitchen and I was, you know, chopping up Granny Smith apples. I was reducing them down. I was then adding a little bit of cinnamon, a little bit of sea salt. I was doing like a partial blend.

I was making kind of homemade almond milk at the time, squeezing it through. like a cheese cloth. I was doing iterations with, you know, with dairy, so yogurt as well as milk. And I made a bunch of products. One was like an apple one. I made a mixed berry one. And I put these all into a container. I went to, I think like a T.J. Max, I got a bunch of mason jars. I put them into a lunchbox type thing. I put ice packs on it. And I jumped on the Amtrak from Albany down to New York City. And then I met my business partner at the time at her apartment on Wall Street. And we, you know, we tried these products. And then it was shortly thereafter that we kind of moved out to California and began, which I think you can probably

empathize more than anyone. When you finally, like, commit to start, you kind of don't really know what to do. So for us, we were, we were doing, you know, really recipe development, trying to tons of different recipes, trying to dairy-free alternative, trying it with dairy, seeing what sweeteners work because we didn't want to add sugar to anything. So it was like, how do we get the berry flavor to be a little bit like sweeter? So blending berries, we were doing things with banana. We were doing things with peanut butter. And there was this really fun, which I personally love because I love being in a kitchen and I'm a foodie at heart. We were just kind of refining the recipes. And then we'd put them into these little canisters. And then we'd, you

put little notes on top of it. We'd soak them in the fridge, and then next morning we'd try them, and then we'd make notes, and we'd iterate, and we'd iterate, and we'd iterate. And then really, for ease of time, we started in the farmer's market circuit.

And then once we solved for, which was the inevitable problem, which brings us kind of full circle on your comment, if you're going to have to scale something, you eventually have to solve a shelf life problem. We were very adamant about not wanting to add preservatives. So you can put a potassium sorbate in the product, or you can put a soy tachauferol in the product, or you can put a rosemary extract in the product.

But these are all kind of, they're really, they're preservatives. And for us, we didn't want to add any preservatives. So once, I think it was my business partner, actually, I believe was talking to a juice company, and a juice company was using the process of HPP, which is high pressure processing or high pressure pasteurization. and it's a cold pasteurization technique. And what happens is if you put a product in H.D.P.E. plastic and you put it and you seal it, you can actually put it into, it's called Hyperbaric is the machine. They're about $3 to $5 million machines manufactured out of Spain.

It goes into a basically a hyperbaric chamber of water under 87,000 PSI of pressure, which is honestly, I think the pressure at the depth of the, five times the pressure at the depth of the ocean. to give you an idea. And what happens is food spoilage microorganisms can't survive in that pressurized environment. So there's 180 seconds of contact time. And that, you know, that was obviously the impetus of us being able to scale the product because we took a product that was whole food ingredients, you know, four to seven ingredients. We had a shelf life of, you know, anywhere from three to seven days, you know, something like

strawberry would spoil very, very quickly, something like vanilla or chocolate would lasts like a little bit longer because the cacao powder would serve as a natural antioxidant. And it took us to all of a sudden a 60 day shelf life. And so that was the, that was the moment where it was like, okay, 60 days in the food industry, ironically, as sad as it is, it's actually not that long of a shelf life. But that's what then allowed us to then start to have the conversations with Whole Foods and other kind of retail accounts who Whole Foods was actually the first to reach out to us and that process is what allowed us to sort of scale it through those channels of distribution.

How'd you come up with the name? That stemmed from Ashley's dad, I believe. And we both have kind of different origin stories. Like the impetus for me was like a Birchard-Musley product. The impetus for her was soaking her cereal as a kid. You know, like you definitely have two types of serial goers. You have serial goers who they put the milk, on the cereal and they want to eat it super, super quickly because they want it to be very, very

fresh and very, very crisp. Like, they love that experience. And then you also have the complete opposite world, which is the people who like to soak their cereal, and they love when the cereal gets soggy. And they love the cereal milk, and they love when it's soaked. And Ashley was more of the latter. And so she used to kind of soak cereal and then put different trinkets in it, and then her dad used to call it Mush. And then later on down the line, Mush actually became an acronym for mankind's ultimate source of health, which is a lot of people don't know,

but also I think a really, really cool development of the brand. I hear a lot of entrepreneurs, founders, business owners, who, who typically haven't found a lot of success, but they're probably fulfilled and happy with what they're doing. And you ask them the question, like, why did you start something?

Why did you get started? And their response sometimes is, I wanted to be my own boss. I didn't want to work for someone else. And you have the other side of the... I want to change the world. And you want to change the world. You want to solve the problem.

It doesn't matter who you're doing it with or alongside or four. but you want to make an impact and a change. What's your opinion on the founders and people who get started who just start because they want to be their own boss? I think it's a pretty ignorant comment in all honesty. There's going to be a lot of people who are like, hey, well, I did that. And it's like, I'm not saying that you're that same self-aware person today

as you were when you made that comment. But when you start something, there has to be such a big why to doing it because you go through so much shit, you get kicked in the mouth so much, and you are on the ground with sand getting thrown in your face constantly. And I personally don't think wanting to be your own boss is enough to get you through those tough moments. So for me, your Y always has to be much bigger than that.

And that's why I can sit here today and be like, if I go on my run this evening and I get hit by a car and you get a call and it's like, hey, Kat was just hit by a car and she's dead. Like, I'd be like, you know what? I fucking put it all. I left it all out there. Like in this game of life, it's like if life is a field and like we're playing a game, I have put like every like ounce of effort. and I have, my soul is just like on that field. And I can rest easy knowing that I've tried to conduct myself in the best way possible. I've tried to adhere to my value system.

I've tried to maintain the integrity of my character. And none of this means that I'm perfect, but it's like I left it all out there. And I think the person who makes that comment, I'm doing it because I want to be my own boss. I think that's driven by dominance. I think it's driven by power and I think it's driven by ego. And I think those are the persons that you and I are like, put me in a ring with them and like let me swing because I get very, very frustrated with that personality type

because I think it's all talk and no game. Well, it lacks a lot of passion. Yeah. You know, you made a comment earlier about when you go all in on this thing, and in our case it's starting a company, now you're trying to figure out where do I get started. And I was thinking about this question, but you answer it yourself, you go back to the product. Yep.

Because if you're truly passionate about starting something, even if you don't know where to get started in terms of like how to get more market share, how to get more customers, how to get more brand awareness, we resort to, well, let's keep refining the product. Yep. Because if you don't refine the product, if you're not focused on creating the best product, the best service possible, your passion's in it for the wrong reason. Your passion is probably in it for the money. And I think what founders and entrepreneurs learn very quickly is that if you're in it

for the money early on, like, it's not coming. It might not be coming for a decade or two decades. But like where do you get started when you're all in? Focus on the product and the service. Because if you have a really good product and service and your passion is there, then you're actually trying to solve a problem. And you're not just doing it because you want to be your own boss. And I think that answer, that response of, oh, I just want to be my own boss.

But you said, yes, it's ego, it's dominance. But for me, when someone says that, it tells me instantly how much success they've achieved, how far they've pushed this business and this project and what they have accomplished. Because that response to me says, you haven't, you haven't, you haven't, accomplish very much because your perspective is so shallow. Yeah. And what could be so deep? And you know, you're young and you're naive and lacking self-awareness.

And, you know, I think this, it's like self-awareness is almost like this like bell curve, right? It's like, you don't know anything. You get to this point where you're educated and you have a college degree and you've like worked a job for a little bit of time. And you're almost at the peak of this, like, your perception is that you're at the peak of this bell curve when really it's like you then do something challenging like start a business and then you literally like the curve sells off again and then you you realize like I mean the first person to sit in a room just now keep my mouth shut and say I don't know anything because this world is incredibly

vast and there's there's so much to learn and so many people have so many different experiences and you know we now realize that like we're not old and wise like we're just getting started and we're young and we have a lot to learn and life's a great opportunity to continue to learn. So your perspective changes a lot. But I think a lot of people who say, I want to be my own boss, their expectation is that their life's going to get easier when they become their own boss, when really they have no idea what they're signing up for. It's like the smaller the business, the more stuff there is to do.

And then if you're successful enough to get to the point where you have employees, now it's not even just about the business. Now it's also about the personal and professional well-being. of your employees. And you know, I joke around about it, but like I do sometimes feel even here at BPN that it's like people are like, you don't have kids yet.

I'm like, honestly, I sometimes feel like I have 45 kids because being a good leader also comes down to taking care of your team. And there are things that happen in people's lives outside of their professional life that like they need mentors and they need help and they need guidance. And it's our job as leaders to try to, to help them and empower them and to support them in the way that, frankly, like, we didn't have

support when we were on our own. I think there was a two-pronged problem. One, there was this perception that asking for help made me weak. So I never really asked for help. And then two, it was this idea of, I can't let anyone who I love know how much I'm struggling and how challenging this is because I don't want them to worry and I don't want to burden them. And so what happens is when you're a founder and you're on this journey, it is literally the loneliest journey that you can ever go on. And then a lot of people's perception is, well, yeah, but if you've got a great support network and you've got great friends and you've got a great family and you've got great mentors and all of these things, like you'll be okay and

you'll be able to get through it. And it's like, for me personally, I put myself on an island because I knew if I, like, burdened my family with it, that they'd be like, hey, it's not worth it. And they'd pull me back and they'd say, just come home. Like, you're a smart kid. You can go get a job elsewhere. Like, you don't need this. And I knew that I wanted to keep doing it.

So I wasn't necessarily open and honest. People would be like, how are you doing? I'd be like, oh, yeah, it's all good. Just grinding, like grinding out here. Yep, just grinding. Yep, got my head down, just working really hard. Yep, we're just trying to build this. Yep, we're just trying to scale this.

And I was never really honest about like how lonely, how isolated, how scared, how challenged, how much struggle there really was. And I think that that's, you know, when you asked me to like come on here again, I was like, we need to start being more real about this because entrepreneurship has been so romanticized. Like you have Bevna and you've got tech crunch and you've got like all these headlines coming across about all of these companies, getting all these funding, you know, raising all this funding.

You know, you've got venture capital firms. Like, you know, you've got the indreasons of the world that are deploying capital at insane rates, but you've also, like, CPG's got a tremendous amount of capital that's coming in as well. And, like, perception from the outside looking in is, like, entrepreneurship is the place to be. Like, this is my golden ticket to wealth

and financial stability. and success. And it's like, entrepreneurship is really fucking hard and it's really not romantic. And you will get like absolutely annihilated day after day after day. I now don't blame the person who just says, I want to work my nine to five. I'm like, you know what? Good for you for being self-aware and honest with yourself about like what you want out of life. Because that person definitely has a lot more balance than like we ever had. And I used to like shame that person internally. And now I'm like, you know what? I appreciate that you have the wherewithal and the self-awareness to say, like, you don't want to annihilate yourself on a daily basis.

You just want to, like, live the life that you want to live. And that's like a conversation that I have a lot with entrepreneurs. I'm like, you have to really, really want this. Otherwise, you won't make it. And you can see it in people's eyes. Like, I get face to face with entrepreneurs all the time. And like, you know, because like our gut has now been calibrated, like, we now have a bullshit radar that we didn't have when we were 22, 23, 24 years old starting companies, you can see it in their eyes, like whether or not they're going to make it. And it's a long, long, long road. And the companies that are getting the headlines, those are the outliers. But most of the companies have their heads down, they're grinding, they're putting in work,

and it is a long, hard, tiring, arduous road. And you can get there, but your why has to be so profound and it has to be like a fire that is in your soul. And if it's not, you're not going to make it. The outliers definitely get the attention and they definitely get the headlines. And the reality is that there's a lot of entrepreneurs on there. I rarely use the word grind, but there's a lot of entrepreneurs out there that grind their entire life and they never reach outlier status. They never have an exes. They never have an exes. it, there's never a transaction, they're just head down making this bare minimum pay for their entire life. And I mean, it goes back to like you have to, you have to be really passionate

about what you're doing and your why has to be really strong because the one thing I am certain of is entrepreneurship brings collateral damage. Yeah. And that collateral damage builds up year after year after year. And we can get into this later in this episode. but like health issues and burnout and exhaustion and, you know, needing therapy and just like and fixing yourself after like years and years of collateral damage. That is real. And there's a lot of entrepreneurs going to that. Actually, in preparation for this episode, I spent a lot of time on the Harvard Business Review,

just reading articles. The amount of articles on burnout, entrepreneur fatigue, like lost. Lost founders. The reason there's so many articles out there is because so many people are searching that. Yeah. Like so many founders and entrepreneurs get to a certain point where like they can't take any more. And they're depressed. They have anxiety.

Like it's a really dangerous road. Now, with all that being said, it's like I want, I wouldn't trade it in for the world. Same. I would do the same same thing over and over and over again. because I'm so passionate about it. But the reality is, there is collateral damage along the way and it builds. And if you don't have a really strong purpose and reason why you're doing what you're doing, it's going to be a lonely, lost journey.

100%. So you started mush. Yes, sir. How did you start, you know, you focused on product in the beginning. You had a really strong, obvious why and purpose. how did you start building brand awareness? How did people find the product in the company? One of the greatest challenges of consumer is there's this misconception

that if you're on all of these grocery store shelves, that you're doing really well. And I think what we don't focus on enough in the industry is is velocity, right? You can't just be on the shelf. You have to be selling a lot of product that is on the shelves. And it seems obvious, but you'd be blown away by how many products sit on grocery store shelves,

and they just sit there. And so it is very much a chicken egg scenario is as you scale a brand, you don't want to scale too quickly that you don't have the awareness. but you also don't want to have broad awareness and only narrow scale, right? Because if the product's only accessible and call it one city in the United States, but you've got national brand awareness,

people are gonna get frustrated because they wanna try the product and they have no means of finding the product anywhere. But if you're on all shelves nationally, but you don't have any brand awareness, you're just gonna sit on the shelves and you're not gonna have sell through, you're not gonna have velocity.

And so scaling a company is, so much about this balancing this chicken and egg of growing awareness while simultaneously growing number of doors and not getting too far ahead of yourself to the point where you're exhausting resources to scale it nationally, but then you don't have resources left to raise awareness. We self-manufactured, which is very, very unique, which means whereas here at BPN, we place purchase orders with manufacturers after a certain lead time, that product lands at our facility,

goes through banned substance testing, then gets approved for sale, and then that product can be put on the fulfillment line to fulfill orders. We were a perishable product, which means we had to run production every single week. So we would run production in the beginning of the week, which means we also had to control sourcing of raw ingredients,

which is a whole other presents complexity. So California was in a drought in 2015. The base of our product was almond milk. We made our own almond milk. But a lot of people don't realize it takes a tremendous amount of water to grow almonds. So the price of almonds went up dramatically.

You have, you know, challenges with products like vanilla extract coming out of places like Sri Lanka and Madagascar. You know, we used to get our blueberries from Oregon. I don't know if they're still getting from the Pacific Northwest, but the supply chain in itself was very, very complex. We then had to run production. It would then go into a refrigerated truck that I'd then drive up to Orange County.

It would get processed through HPP. It would get lit it. It'd get boxed. It'd get palletized. And then we'd take those purchase orders that we received from distributors. We'd build those pallets for them. Trucks would come in on Thursday. Everything would ship out.

and then it would start to hit kind of grocery store shelves. Why not use a contract manufacturer from the beginning? Combination of a multitude of things. One, we literally started by simply just filling containers by hand and then sealing them. So it was really a cost thing. It was how do we preserve our margins? Contract manufacturers were very, very expensive.

And then the other challenge was for a seemingly simple product, it was actually pretty complex to manufacture. so we couldn't ensure the integrity of the product coming out of a co-man. And then the other thing is just this chicken egg of minimum water quantities, right? If they say, oh, well, it's not worth me running your product unless I can run a quarter million units. They've run a quarter million units and I only have a 60-day shelf life. It's like we would just spoil out all the products. We couldn't afford that.

So we had to be able to run smaller batches. I mean, we literally started, like, embarrassing. I mean, I guess it's not even embarrassing. It's just probably going to be surprising to people, but, like, it started in metal bowls. It then went to Home Depot five-gallon buckets. It then went to, like, garbage bins that were obviously, like, new garbage bins and sanitized and everything like that.

To then it went to kind of, like, incredibly large steel vats. But, you know, there was a point when we were making it in Home Depot buckets, and we were still scooping it by hand, and then we were hand-sealing it, and then we were putting them into milk crates, and then we were palletizing it, and then we were putting it into the truck.

And so really, it's to go to someone like a contract manufacturer, you're assuming that the size of the purchase orders can support that relationship, but for us, it couldn't. We didn't, we needed more business. We needed more accounts. We needed more retail doors before we could kind of go down that route.

But then in regards to raising awareness, So it's like we have this product. And then it was really just like a hustle game. It's like once we got into Whole Foods, the beauty of it at the time was when we first started in Whole Foods. It was before the Amazon acquisition. So Whole Foods is great at their commitment to local and allowing each store to sort of have its own unique footprint.

Now Whole Foods is a little bit more like planograms where they want us to be able to walk into the store in Austin and then walk into a store in New York City and find the same exact products in both stores. There used to be a little bit more uniqueness, I would say, to the stores. But really it comes down to kind of making friends with people on the ground. So the store in Redondo Beach says, like, okay, you can bring in two skews.

You're going to bring in vanilla and blueberry. You make friends with the guy. You demo the shit out of the product. It's like, hey, man, just give me one more setting. Okay, so then it gets, you get blueberry, vanilla, and chocolate. and you come back next week and you demo again and then you get four facings. And then maybe you sneak around back, pull down the tags and put up another fifth facing. And like you're constantly on the ground like advocating for your product.

And for me, like we did that production run. The product got processed in Orange County. It would then go back in the truck. I'd then make all the different drops at the distributors. And then in between those drops at the distributors or after I'd done them and the truck was empty, that's when it was like, okay, cool, now it's time to demo. and I would just hit as many Whole Food stores in L.A. as I possibly can. And to your point, people aren't buying the product. They're buying you.

When I was selling the product at Whole Foods, I mean, and thank goodness for these people nowadays, but I think they probably just felt bad for me. They were like, this kid is obviously just incredibly passionate about this product. Like, let me just buy a container from her. but that was a huge part of like raising awareness is just getting people to trial the product because overnight oats or soaked oats or musli or whatever you want to call the product,

it wasn't really common. It was a new category in the industry. And it wasn't a yogurt, but it was kind of merchandised in the yogurt set at the time. But like sometimes we'd be merchandised and like grab and go where people come in and they buy kind of their kombuchas and their pre-made meals or things like that,

demoing was a huge part of kind of getting people to trial the product. And then they'd buy one and they'd take it home. They'd realize their kid loved it and then they'd come back and they'd buy four, right? Or they'd try one and they'd feel great after their lift at the gym and then they'd come back and they'd buy more.

And so you start to gain this like momentum through, for us, it was predominantly whole foods. And then we also brought on distribution in New York City so a distributor started to put it into a lot of the bodegas and whatnot. So you have this sort of simultaneous like L.A. New York awareness that's growing. And then in June of 2017, we filmed for Shark Tank. And we didn't really think that this was going to be something that ever happened.

But it happened. I don't know if it was just a function of we were in San Diego, which was in close proximity to L.A. or whatnot. But we had the opportunity to film with that. that episode aired in November. And at the time, we weren't national with Whole Foods. I think we were really just in like the Southern Pacific region, maybe starting to get into New York City.

We weren't set up as a direct-to-consumer brand like BPN is. Like we were really just, we were really retail only, as well had had some wholesale relationships with some gyms and athletic clubs and things like that. And that was where the awareness really skyrocketed, right? you got a ton of eyes on the brand. And then from there it was our job to like, okay, people want the product. Now we have to fill in the country with more distribution to make the product more accessible so that these people can go to their local grocery store and buy up the product.

What was the initial response after that Shark Tank episode aired? Shark Tank was an interesting one because in hindsight, like, we absolutely fell on our faces. We were arguably a little bit too early because we didn't have national distribution so we couldn't just throw a post up on social and say like grab the product at your local Whole Foods because it was only in certain regions. So what ended up happening was everyone ordered from our website

and the goal of kind of launching, you know, a pretty bare bones website to allow people to order was, okay, we should capture the liquidity of the airing. Did you guys stand up the website just for, the launching of that episode or was it already? Yeah. And then you had it set where like you didn't have a certain amount of inventory up. It was just open.

It was just open. Yeah. It was a mistake. But it was open. So we just, we let the orders roll in. I think we were told, and I might be butchering these numbers, but I think we were told to expect between two to three thousand orders. And I think we were selling it as like, gosh, I can't even remember a 10 pack or a 12

pack, six flavors times two units or five flavors times two units. And we were told to expect, I think, between 2,000 and 3,000 orders. I think we got 12,500 orders in like the first 12 hours. And we very, very quickly realized that we were in trouble. Because on the episode, we had this very custom container and underneath the container was a spoon. And, you know, we're obviously marketing this as a product that was a grab and go breakfast, post-workout, snack. And the beauty of it was, like, you can just pull it out, pop the top, and, like, have your experience. Well, you can't sell a product if you don't have a container. And that container was originally designed by another company who abandoned the mold. And so they never actually, the manufacturer of that

container never actually built out the entire line to be able to actually run it. It was being run on like an innovation line, which was like a much slower process of actually like creating the container. So we ran out of containers like immediately. We ran out of almond butter. We ran out of everything. And, you know, at the time, we didn't have the knowledge or the foresight to be like, okay, let's take this investment that we have. Let's take this cash and let's like buy up a ton of ingredients so that we can support this launch. We were just like, okay, we've stocked up to what we think we're going to need and we blew through that. And, you know, eventually the team secured another machine because at that point,

we were still hand filling, right? So imagine like a Home Depot bucket, like full of cold oats. Wasn't even cold at the time. It was manufactured at room temperature and then it was cooled down when it went on the truck. So you're hand filling it and then your hand sealing it two at a time and then taking those off and then putting them into a crate and then loading them into a palette into a truck. So our whole manufacturing process was like a glorified home kitchen, if you will. It was not a manufacturing facility. Now we were compliant and we had passed all our tests and we had been inspected and everything like that, but it wasn't, we didn't have automation. We didn't have machinery. How many people were working in operations at that point?

I mean, we were like pulling in. I was like pulling in my soccer team. Like we had like a core, We had a core team of like four people plus interns is kind of, I guess, what you would say, maybe. And then I was like pulling in like a soccer team for like production being like, okay, everyone, this is how you sanitize your arms. Like this is how you sanitize everything. Like put your hair net on. And then like we just had a bunch of buckets and we'd had a bunch of scales and it was like, we need help.

I pulled in my hockey team. I had a retired cop who was our goalie, Kevin. He was like 68 years old. I called him one night. I was like, hey man, like, I really need your help. 68 year old guy coming and just helping me like seal containers. It's amazing. Honestly, it was, I look back in hindsight and I'm like,

I need to sit down for an entire day one day, and I need to just go through my phone book. And I just need to make a five-minute phone calls to all these people and just be like, I love you. And I'm sorry if I traumatized you, but like you have no idea that you are responsible for this business now existing. because it was, like people say, like, it takes a village to raise a kid. Like, it takes a village to build a company.

Like, we were doing the best that we could, but I was trying to get help wherever, like, wherever we could because we were just behind. We were backlogged. So then simultaneously, like, customer service is, you know, we were running production during the day, and then I was doing customer service, like, till wee hours of the night, sleeping for a couple hours and then like starting all over again. And people get super nasty too when you, you know, when you take your, when you take their money and then you don't have like a time horizon on when they're going to get the product. Yeah. Well, how long did it take to fulfill

12,500 orders? Well, they also kept coming in too, right? So that's the challenge. It doesn't just stop. We like left it on. So even though we, we'd ship out 2,000 and then, you know, more would keep coming in, but we were kind of buried for a good solid, like three, four, five months of just playing like this cat and mouse of like ketchup. Because then it's also becomes a cash flow thing where you're like, I need to be careful buying up all of these ingredients. Like, it becomes a little bit of a game there. And we were intentional about, you know, wanting to keep the business profitable. So we arguably missed out on a lot of opportunities. of at that point we weren't even focusing on what we should have been focusing on,

which is how do we scale this product through retail? How do we turn on more regions of whole foods? How do we turn on new distributors? How do we turn on new maybe regional grocers or just get more business? We were so reactionary focused on trying to get the product to the end user through direct-to-consumer. and at one point we were even using an automated hummus machine and putting it into like an eight ounce hummus container as opposed to the container that was advertised on TV.

So that's like rule number one. Like don't tell someone they're going to get something and then ship them something else. And we gave them two free units and we're like, oh, it's going to be okay, we're going to give them two free units. It doesn't work that way. Like people wanted the spoon, people wanted the container. It was a cool container.

It was swaggy. like they didn't want like a clamshell type hummus container full of mush. Well, that's a tough part is, you know, people want to start a company and they wanted to blow up overnight. I think every founder, every operator in the beginning would say, blow this thing up as fast as possible. But then when you feel the effects of this disruption and blow up, you don't have operational efficiency built in, and you're feeling the effects and it's, I'm drowning right now. Like for how long did you feel like you were drowning

until you could finally come up for air? Honestly, pretty much for all of 2018, if I'm being honest. That's when like the going got like really, really, just like really, really tough too. Because there's also this, this challenge when you're a founder of you don't have resources.

And so you want to be able to have like the awareness to like delegate and to like pass the Legos, but like we didn't have the resources to, to like hire. And so you're doing everything, but then you kind of just get into this routine of doing everything and it's not sustainable, but you're running,

I mean, I think I probably ran in 2018. This was before wearable devices. I don't know when I got my like first Apple watch, but I would bet you, if you had an Apple Watch on me from the end of 2017 through 2018, I would bet that I probably averaged two hours and 20 minutes of sleep for an entire year.

Which obviously has significant health consequences. And even when you did sleep, there was so much like, fear and anxiety of like everything that had to get done, that it wasn't, like, it wasn't true sleep. It wasn't restful sleep. It was anxious sleep. And, you know, you and I talked earlier about the challenges of a perishable product. It's, you know, once again, it was, it was naive to go down this route, but it's a great learning experience because there's nothing harder logistically than dealing with a perishable product, at least in my eyes. And maybe that's

a naive comment. Maybe meat, perishable meat would probably be harder than what we had because we didn't have meat in it. So meat's a whole other game because you get the USDA involved. But a perishable product that's refrigerated, 32 degrees is freezing, 42 degrees is the red zone. The red zone is where when you breach this temperature, this is when food spoilage starts to happen. So food spoilage microorganisms start to form it between 42 and 44 degrees. Someone might have to fact check me on that,

but I'm pretty sure that's right. And it's the same reason why people say don't defrost your meat on the counter because if it starts to warm up to that temperature, you can actually get sick. I've made that mistake before. Yeah. And that's a very real thing.

So when you're dealing with a perishable product, you're manufacturing it at like room temperature, or when we started to get a little bit more, maybe sophisticated is the right word, we started to add ice to it, so it actually was dropping the temperature faster, which was better for elongating shelf life. But that's a really, really narrow window to deal with, right?

When you're shipping a Garmin watcharound or you're shipping a flannel or you're shipping a hat, it's like, yeah, maybe it'll get, maybe the package will get misplaced and maybe it'll take an extra day, but it's no skin off of your back. It's like when you're shipping a perishable product, it's like you have 33 to 41,

and if it breaches that zone, like you're in trouble. And so trucks moving around the country carrying perishable products, like it is not an easy business. And then you think about like summer, it's like you manufacture a product, you put it in the back of the truck,

you go and you drop it at a distribution, you open up the back, you've got the reefers going at 33 degrees, basically as cold as you can possibly get it. They forklifted out of the truck, but then they need to go rearrange their warehouse to make room. So what do they do? They drop the pallet right outside in the California sun, you know, in Coachella Valley where it's like a desert,

and the product just sits there in the sun and it just like bakes. And the temperature just slowly starts to rise. And I'm not there. I didn't see it. I already made the drop. They signed off. I'm like out of there. And then that product is going to go on the whole food shelves. And someone's going to open up the container. They're going to take a bite and it's going to be spoiled because it sat in the sun for 60 minutes and the temperature breached that 42 degrees, which caused the almond milk to spoil. But it's like, how do I police that as a founder? And these were some of the challenges that you start to like run into as you're dealing with a perishable product. You know, and you even think of someone driving a truck across the country from. California to New York, it's like that guy has to stop and take his break every, I forgot what the regulations are, but I think it's like every 12 hours, they can't drive longer than 12 hours or maybe it's 10 hours now. But when he stops and he takes his break and he he sleeps to then start his shift the next time, like, what happens if he falls asleep in the reefer

breaks? And they've got 26 pallets of products sitting on a truck. It's like, but then it like, it only gets up to 46 degrees and then it kicks back on. He turns it back on and it goes back down, but I don't know that that happened. And then that product makes its way into grocery stores. And so there's a lot of complexity to managing cold chain that people don't really, it's not that they don't care. They just don't think about it because it's never been relevant for them to think about. And then that complexity in 2017, this was before there was a lot of technology with

shippers and insulation and ice packs where we've gotten a lot better. in the past five years with shipping perishable product to people's doors. We've gotten smarter shipping it with a combination of ice packs and dry ice, starting it frozen.

So if it slacks out, you're still like in the safe zone. We've gotten a lot smarter with it, but that technology in 2017 was still relatively new. And so we were really just like learning by failing, which, you know,

is sometimes okay, but when you're dealing with a food product, and food safety, it can also become scary at times. I've seen recently I've ordered perishable products like meat and there's these little like sticks that go in the packs that tell you if that package ever reached a certain temperature. You and I were talking to a local company here in this past year about getting involved in helping them.

They were perishable, perishable meats. and they were shipping from Austin to my home, which is 30 minutes, and it would arrive to my doorstep already warm. Even though they were like cold packs inside. I mean, there's some companies that do a really, really good job. I've ordered a butcher box. Yep. You do a great job.

Yeah. That stuff comes like a frozen solid. Yeah. And I've ordered from some companies where I get it and it's warm. You don't know if you can eat it or not. I don't know if I can eat it or not. But then they'll have those little stickers that'll say, don't eat or is. safe.

So obviously, technology is getting better. But I can only imagine the complexities as an entrepreneur and business owner of trying to move perishable products across the world because, like, we, we personally don't have that issue. Yeah. I mean,

we have expirations on our products, but it's not like temperature doesn't necessarily affect that. And we don't have days. We have like years. Yeah. I was reading this article. I believe this one was on, I believe this one was on the,

the Harvard Business Review, Orison Forbes. And it's called The Four Phases as a founder. And it's from this book called Entrepreneur Transitions by Roy Camarano's. And I thought it was spot on. Like spot on. I sent it to you.

Yep. And this is why I think we connect so well is because we've both been through the trials and tribulations of starting a business and realizing how hard and difficult it is. And it's emotional. It's traumatic. It's changed our lives.

Absolutely. Right? It's like we both share that experience in different ways. But with that being said, it's something that I think most entrepreneurs and founders have to go through to get to a certain point. And this article talked about the four phases of the founder. And it states that if a founder can successfully navigate these levels,

there's a good chance they can stay on and grow the business successfully. I'm going to break down these four levels because I was reading this article. It was spot on. Yeah. I don't know if you read it, but I read it last week, but I did read it. It's wild. Yeah. Level one, this is the most common scenario when a founder starts a business,

either because they have some genius idea or invention or a better way of doing something, the challenge that they need to understand everything a business needs and perform in all of these capacities. They act as the buyer, the salesperson, the bookkeeper, the production person, etc. many companies fail in this stage as the founder is juggling a huge amount of tasks and it can take years to get a business off the ground and start seeing income. Yep. And we've been there. Yeah.

You're doing everything. You wear everything, every hat. You don't have any money to hire people or finance more inventory or finance more equipment to build capacity. It's also hard to see the forest through the trees in that first analogy. I think it's easy for us in retrospect to look back and be like, oh, I could have done this differently and this would have been more efficient. And I think if I launched it today, I could probably get it off the ground in six months and be profitable in 12. But it's like, when you're in

it and you're so bogged down with all of those tasks, like there is no mental clarity. There is no, let me just delegate and elevate. Let me just clear my mind and figure out, where do I need to focus? Where can I add the most value work? And I lean into my area of genius. like there isn't this ability, you don't feel grounded, therefore you're very, you're very reactionary. Extremely reactionary.

Yeah. And you're just like, you're just trying to survive. You're more in fight or flight, which is like, so adrenaline is like coursing through your veins, which I think also impacts your ability to like, actually like prioritize

and be intentional with every step that you're taking. That's level one. Then you graduate to level two. Once the founder has surpassed him the challenges of the first level, he or she can start to hire people to help with many functions of the business. Many founders think that if they can duplicate themselves

in each of the functions, they can accomplish so much more. But there's danger zones. Mostly because of what I call octopus syndrome where they have a head with many arms. Everyone is operating as an extension of the founder and the founder is constantly bogged down by questions and needing to make all the decisions.

Yep. which like the only way to describe that like level two is you start hiring people to think it's going to alleviate some of the issues but it it causes almost more issues because you're correcting and still the source of truth which is difficult level three when you graduate level two the founder will either have lost some of their good people due to micromanaging or they will threaten to leave and as a result the founder will allow everyone to sort of run their own show. This is, this is why I let everyone run their own show at some point. This is probably 2000 in 19, 2020. For a while, it seems like this approach is working, but then things are to fail because between the cracks, as the founder has created multiple silos that are not speaking to each other or worse competing with each other, the founder will try to intervene, but that two can make it worse. Often the founder will be, feel displaced or sign-loyal. and questioned their role.

I remember this happening. It's probably 2020 where I started trying to delegate and elevate more, but I wasn't giving the clearest direction because I was like, okay, you guys handle this. I'll go handle this part of the business. And it seemed like it was working. And then I quickly realized it wasn't. So I tried to intervene and just like flip the table and change all these things.

And it made matters worse. Level four, which in my opinion, I have now reached level four. When I was reading this article, I was actually very proud of myself. Level four is like the highest level that you can get to. You beat the game. I beat the game. It is at this stage the founder becomes a visionary leader by combining positive traits and focusing on creating other leaders. He or she inspires employees with their vision and influence.

powers and to make decisions with clear accountability for results. How founders navigate this level will determine the success of the business and the success of the founder. I mean, through the transition of me stepping out of the CEO role, you moving into the CEO role a few months ago, and now me trying to truly operate as a visionary in the business, that is level four to me. and it ends with oftentimes founders have an aha moment when I share with them the steps to becoming a visionary leader.

It resonates, yet they need someone from the outside to be open and honest about this sometimes painful journey. It's spot on. It's a great article. Honestly, it was a great article, and I've hit all four of these levels. Yeah. But I didn't know about these four levels.

And I think in the beginning, you're so much in the weeds, like you say, it's reactionary that you never see an ability to get out of that. And you get to a point where you're thinking, like, this is now my new norm. I can't have any other parts of my life because the business now consumes everything. Everything. Everything. Every ounce of like your mind and body and soul. Yeah.

I think a lot of us fight who we are naturally. only to get to a certain point in our life when we're just very content with who we are and how we function and we commit to leaning into who we are as a person and not trying to be something that we're not. When you're a founder, it's so hard to like take a step back and remove all that emotion. A lot of the decisions that I made, like I was doing the best job that I possibly could with the resources that I had. And I stand by. Like, I worked harder than anyone I've ever met in my life. And I know that in my heart of hearts. And I can take that to my grave with me. But what I will say is as a founder, there was an emotional attachment to the

business that the business was my identity. And my identity was the business. I resonate with that completely. And that is like, it's a very, like, scary place to be as a founder because you literally have nothing else. That's what it feels like. You know, your parents will say, you've got so much to live for, your friends will say, but like literally in your heart of hearts and in your soul, there is nothing else in your life. And your personal identity is pegged to the success of this business. And it's, it's a very, dangerous place to be as a founder because it impacts your ability to make sound decisions. The best analogy I could give you is when you study for an exam. Everyone says, like, you don't

want to cram for an exam. You want to study and then you want to get a really good night's rest. Because during that good night's rest, there's something that happens in your brain chemistry. You actually get to process the information, get to process the experiences and hopes that you actually, like, retain it. I felt like my entire time as a founder, I never had any time to process. And so when I then stepped out of the business in 2019, for the first time I was able to process all of the experiences that I had been through, good, bad, and ugly. And then that, I think, is when, like, true growth actually starts to happen. Then you start to have these conversations with, like, other founders, and you try to

just give them little tidbits of advice, and they treat as though it's profound, but to you, it's, you know, it's very, very simple advice. And I think that that's what's been great about BPN is for, because I'm not the founder here, I love the business, I love our team, I love you as a founder, I love our products,

but there still isn't as much of an emotional attachment as there was with me to mush, which allows me to make more sound decision. as an operator and allows me to remove that emotional bias that I had as a founder and as an operator. And I think that that is something that, you know, in hindsight, I wish I had, but I also have to be gentle and kind and be like, you were a kid doing the best job you could with the resources that you had during an incredibly difficult time. So I try not to like beat my younger self up, but at the same time, I am super proud to like sit here and say, to you, like, yeah, I've been through all of those stages.

And I've come out the other side and I've grown and I've developed and I've evolved. And the fact that I have been a founder's, I think what allows me to then be maybe the less emotional, less bias operator that I am today. I think it was two years ago right after Steph and I got married. We went to, it was supposed to be premarital counseling. We didn't have time because I was building the business. So we went, did post-marital counseling, but so-called it premarral counseling. Yep.

And I remember the therapist asked me the question because we were trying to figure out where issues in our relationship could have come from. And a lot of it was like I was prioritizing the business over Steph. And I can say that because I'm very aware and honest of it. of that. And a therapist asked me the question, well, who are you without this company, without BPN?

And it's an offense to that. I was like extremely offended because in my mind, I'm going straight to, do you know what I've been through the last eight years to get this thing to this point? No, it's not Apple. It's not, you know, Tesla.

It's not SpaceX, but like, I've put so much into this. And for you to ask that question, I'm offended. I was truly angry. And I thought more on it. Like, who am I without the business? And I didn't know for a long time.

And if we now look at some of the decisions I've made to get me to the point where I am now, stepping down from the CEO role and you moving into the CEO role and me truly moving into a founder role and prioritizing family again, which I haven't done my entire life, I'm growing and. changing as a person and in learning through that. But I'm also realizing the growth that BPN is now experiencing through that new relationship that I have with the business, which is something I never thought would happen. You know, you elevate and delegate and then like you start removing yourself a little

bit from the operational aspect of the business. And you can make better informed decisions that help it grow and scale. Because when you're in it, you're in the weeds. It is so cloudy and foggy and distracting. You just pull yourself back a little bit and you see it from a completely different perspective. And I can now say that in retrospect. The last like two years of going through that, I didn't know what I was going through. It was like chipping away here and there.

But for me, these last like six months have changed the trajectory of my life in terms of just, like fulfillment and happiness and the transition and reprioritizing a family again. But when you're in it, you don't know you're in it. Yeah. And it's like that's the hardest part is it's like telling an addict they're addicted and they don't think they're addicted. It's always hard to see the forest through the trees there. And I mean, I think you and I talk a lot about identity.

And I think the challenge is if you're, if you're a high achieving. personality type, you're always going to attach your identity to your successes and your successes to your identity. But I'll be very, very candid. I'm working like so hard to try to build like a self-ident because I feel like for my entire life, you know, even as a kid, like I was always, I was always an athlete. So much of my identity as a kid was, she's this, this, this tomboy kid who plays soccer and hockey and lacrosse with the boys and that kind of thing. So then I got to Duke and so much of my identity became a Duke student athlete, you know. And then you get to Goldman and all of a sudden your identity is linked to Goldman.

And then you become a founder, your identities linked to the business. And then you go to Shark Tank and then your identity's like, oh, you were the girl, you're one of the mush girls from Shark Tank, right? and it's, I've been fighting my entire life to be like, hey, like, I'm Catherine Thomas from, you know, small town, upstate New York. Like, I got two parents. I got three siblings. Like, I do have a personal identity. Like, so much of my identity is related to, you know, my, like, my character, like, yeah, I'm six feet tall, but I'm really just a gentle giant. Like, I won't her to fly. Like I'm a super warm person. I'm very sensitive. I'm very low dominance. I actually love,

you know, I'm in a leadership role here, but I love being a follower. I love when my friends tell me just be here at this time and you'll have a great time. I'm like, perfect. I don't have to make a decision. I absolutely love it. And so much of that is my like self-identity. But society right now, there's so much correlation between like who a person is and what what their successes are. And I that that brings us back. If you go back to your comment on the mansions and the Lamborghinis, this is where social gets like, this is where my, this is where I've got beef with social media and you know I have beef with social media and I like, I talk very candidly about it. Let's say like, we went to a restaurant in downtown Austin and you see a guy get out of a Maserati and he,

he's like really you know he you know he you know he he he he valets his car he flips the keys to the valet guy he's very like standoffish doesn't give him a tip maybe someone gets out of the passenger seat he doesn't have like the decency to like kind of like greet them he maybe says something kind of nasty to like the valet guy he walks into a restaurant doesn't hold the door for like his missus who's behind them. It's like if you and I saw that behavior, we would immediately be like, man, that guy doesn't seem like a very nice guy. We wouldn't be like, wow, that guy's got a Maserati. I wonder what he does. I want to be friends with him. But then people go on to social media. They see him post that picture with his missus in front of his Maserati at a nice restaurant in Austin,

Texas and they say, I'm going to give this guy a follow. So, like, in reality, you would never let that man come into your life because you would immediately be like, man, like, doesn't seem like, doesn't seem like the greatest guy, doesn't seem like he has incredible character. Maybe I'm judging a book by its cover, but, like, I saw how he treated the valet man and, like, you can judge character by how you treat a person you need the least. So, like, I don't really want to associate with them. But then we let this person come into our life. and own what people are calling the most valuable real estate in the world, which is a cell phone screen.

And we don't even think twice about it. And we let him come into our mind and our safe place. And we let him come into our home. And we let him come to our bed when we're scrolling on Instagram at night. And that just like blows my mind. And that's why I like struggle with social because I actually think as humans, we have a really good, like our gut. you and I talk about this a lot, like our vagal nerve,

like the actual chemical reaction that happens in your gut when you have to make a decision and, like, people say follow your gut. It's like a very real thing. It's calibrated over a period of time, and it gets stronger and stronger and more reliable, the older and older you get, I would argue, as you have more life experiences. So something in our gut says that's not like a great person,

don't associate with them, but like you can't gut check someone on social media. And that's something that I've been thinking, like a lot about recently is I think we need to be a bit more vulnerable to show people it is great to be authentic and it is great to be real. And you can actually be authentic and you can actually be real on social media as well. And I think that that's something that you do really well. And I think that that is why you have the audience that you have. Because I think we have a community

that has a really good bullshit radar and I think that that's also why they're gravitating towards BPN and gravitating towards what we're doing. It goes back to like the beginning of this podcast when I talked about the Simon Sinek quote of people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. Yeah.

Through the events we do, the content we produce, people realize and see and know that we have a true why. I mean, I've met a lot of people in person that I've conversed with and follow on social media over the years. And I can confidently say that there's a small, small, small percentage of those people that are actually who they are as they portray themselves online. And I've been disappointed by so many people that I met in person that I've seen on social. and it's tough because part of you starts feeling like, well, am I the bad person? And am I losing faith in humanity?

Yep. And am I losing faith in everyone? Or is it just that I've been following some bullshit? Because if you take a look at the people that I surround myself with on a daily basis in the business and in my social life, they don't have these massive social followings. They're not going and posting all this stuff online. because I've met these people.

Yeah. And they're smoking mirrors and they're bullshit. Not all of them, but a lot of them. Yeah. I've been disappointed. Yeah. Through the process. I did want to talk about some of your health issues that you experienced.

Yep. Primarily, like after or throughout your entrepreneurial journey. And I'm curious if you think that the issues that you've experienced are related to this stress through building a business and the trauma and just collateral damage of of being a founder? I think if you asked me that question in 2019, I think I would tell you that I am an anomaly and that life happens and, you know, I developed a heart condition and I wasn't predisposed to develop in a heart condition, but it was just, you know, it's the cards that I was dealt

and that's it. I think if we're going to be more honest, I think we have to, we have to be honest that my health issues were most likely caused by being a founder. And I use the analogy of my physical body failed me before, like, my brain would ever quit. And I'm not necessarily. proud of that. You know, the first health issue that I had was just autoimmune. So runs in the

family. Sister has Hashimoto's. I have Hashimoto's. My dad's got, it manifested my dad as, you know, type 1 and a half diabetes, right? So late onset. So 2010, he developed diabetes. You wouldn't know the guy's 510, 160 pounds, swims every morning. Like, honestly, like a real fireball, like doesn't look like a typical diabetic, but is now insulin dependent because an autoimmune condition attacked his pancreas, so he doesn't produce insulin anymore. So my first thing was just Hashimoto's, which honestly, there's two camps. Like, I try to not let it rule my life. You know, you take a thyroid hormone every single morning. You wait 60 minutes, and then you're able to like eat your food. You have to kind of watch your TSA, your T3, your T4 levels.

Just make sure that they stay in tune. Otherwise, your endocrine system is a little. bit out of whack. So went to the primary care physician in probably 2017, and I was getting these very weird, like shooting chest pains that would kind of just come out of nowhere. Like, I'd be sitting here having a conversation with you. It was almost like, do you ever get a catch as a kid where you're like, ooh, like my heart, my heart caught. It was almost like a catch, but it just like didn't go away and it would like take my breath away and I would find myself this motion when you try to like hit your heart it's actually a natural reaction it's called val salva and I would hit my heart because I could feel that the rhythm was like off and I would hit it and sometimes I'd had people

hit me on the back because that was like almost more effective and like trying to reset your heartbeat something like that yeah it'd catch and then eventually like it'd go back and I'd be okay and so I went to the primary care, and I had to always see the primary care because I always had to get blood work to just check my thyroid and just make sure we didn't need to tweak my medicine or anything. So I went for a normal checkup. And I kind of told her, I was like, look, like, not an alarmist. I'm like very, I'm the opposite of a hypochondriac. I'm kind of like, I'm good. I got this. We're good. I'm good. I experienced something. It'll work its way out. Yeah. It's like we're good. Like human body, powerful machine. It's going to be fine.

she did a she did an EKG and it came back very abnormal and at this point my resting heart rate was like was in the 30s and they always chalked it up to like oh she's a division one athlete like yeah she's in the same level of shape as like Lance Armstrong and and at the time once they started to do more work so they she started found the EKG she referred me to cardiology cardiology did an echo cardiogram and the technician, I lied down on the table. He did the echo. My rate was 31. And he said, this is the lowest rate.

He'd been doing it for 18 years. He said, this is the lowest rate that I've ever witnessed in person. And they found like a small hole in my heart. Blood was shunting from one atria to the other, but it wasn't like an insane amount. They do something called a bubble test. They hook you up to an IV. And they see if blood shunts between the atria to like to tell you that there's a little hole there. And it, it, it, it, it wasn't horrible. And everyone was kind of saying what,

based on your symptoms, it sounds like it's something more electrical and not necessarily like a hole. They did more. They did kind of stress tests. They put you on a treadmill and you do this one, one test to really kind of strain your heart and see how it reacts. And then the last test that they did was a, um, was a heart monitor. And it was really just like you kind of, you, you know, you put alcohol on your chest and, you know, for guys, you would shave your chest, and then you'd put this little device on there that has this sticky thing on it,

and then it's got a little button in the center. And I was basically told, whenever you experience, like, the chest pain, hit the button. And they, you know, they analyzed the data, and they said, you know, there's definitely something going on. So within 15 seconds of hitting the button,

my heart rate would usually go from my resting rate at about 30 to 35 beats per minute, or really 31 to 35 beats per minute, to 1.35 to 1.305 to 1. 150 with no change in exertion. So it's like, I'm sitting here. I'm not exerting myself, but I'm shooting up. And I was feeling that, that like shooting pain. Basically went to, I remember I went to the East Coast. I got a call in April of 2018. I was at a rental car place in Brooklyn. And the doctor said, we found something. You need to go see a specialist. So I jumped

in the car, I drove down. My parents, and still are there, they now live in Baltimore, Maryland. And, you know, my parents immediately were like, all right, well, you know, at the time, I think I was, what, 27 or 28, they were like, we need to see some, we need to, like, go to the head honchos. So I called Hopkins. And I said, look, like, I'm, you know, this is what they're telling me. This is the test they've done. I think I want a second opinion. And Hopkins is really good in that, because they're a teaching hospital, they also really want to learn from their patients. They almost want these cases that are anomalies

because it allows them to continue to innovate and learn. So interestingly enough, they got me in the next day. And I think that was a function of just being a young, like, woman who had a history of being a college athlete. And I saw cardiologist, my cardiologist, his name is ironically Dr. Love. So he's a heart doctor. His name is Dr. Love. And he was like,

he was like, I think you have either kind of like a combination of six sinus syndrome. So your sinus node is kind of sluggish. And, you know, that that node sort of paces your, your heart. And he was like, what's happening is there's a backup system of your heart. So when your heart interprets that that initial beat is not going to come from that AV node, you'll get what's called a junctional escape rhythm. So something will fire to basically like jumpstart your heart. your heart and that that backup system is firing and you're getting what's called a junctional escape rhythm and that's what you're that's what you're feeling and he's like so we need to figure out a way to like to bring up your base heart rate and so you know they tried different they tried different medicines and they monitored me they redid tests they um put more heart monitors on me everything like that and at this point there were definitely times when I was driving the truck I actually think I got that call in April. It would have been June that I totaled my forerunner.

And there was, I kind of said, you know, there was a guy who jumped in front of a car crossing the park. He wasn't crossing on the crosswalk. One person slammed on their brakes. Another person slammed on their brakes. And then I slammed on my brakes and ran into the Subaru in front of me. You know, and the police asked me what happened. I was like, well, you know, everything happened so fast.

like this kid jumps out on the road and like slammed into the person behind me. And reality was, is like, I think I fell asleep. And I didn't fall asleep. I passed out. And I've never really admitted that, but that's definitely what happened is something in my heart. When you start to get to that base rate, you're kind of going like, you're dipping in and out of consciousness. And so I was slow to react because I was kind of starting to pass out.

And so I totaled my car. and it would have been, you know, two months later, we went, I had to go back to Hopkins that August. I saw a doctor love. And he was like, we got to put a pacemaker in you. He's like, because you're going to be driving a car, and you're going to go around a curve, and you're going to fall asleep,

and you're going to go over the ledge, and you're going to die. I was like, oh, that's pretty scary to think about. Like, okay, I was scared to death because I'm like, this doesn't make any sense. like I'm the healthiest of the four kids. Like my parents don't have a heart condition. And like here I am with not just like a heart condition,

but what they're kind of saying is like pretty bad. So September 2018, they put a pacemaker in me. They did actually a very unique implantation. They did what's called a sub-memory implantation. So a plastic surgeon actually created a pocket in my left breast. And they hid the pacemaker in my left breast. and it's a very, for them, once again, it was an opportunity to study.

There's like, you know, a little case study that they did on it, and they have follow-up pictures and whatnot of the closure. What does the pacemaker run off of? Like, what powers it? The battery. How long's the battery last?

Six to nine years. So this was another thing. So these things don't become relevant until all of a sudden they're relevant. And then you're like, shit. So like, I have to have, you have to think, if I got a pacemaker installed in 2018, I'll have to get another pacemaker.

stalled in 2028 and 2038 and 2048 and 2058 for however long I live, right? Maybe even more frequently than that. The pacemaker paces me 68% of the time. So in the words of Dr. Love, like, wow, you really needed this. Like, I was like, oh, that's good to know. So it brings my base rate up from what was that sort of lazy 31 to 35 range up to 50. So I'm, always, I can't go below 50, but it doesn't do anything on the top threshold. So I can still work out and I get my heart rate up on my own and everything like that. But there is some new technology where they have leadless pacemakers and they just inject it into the heart and there isn't a lead. So the pacemaker is tucked in the side of my breast. The lead runs up through the

vest through the thoracic outlet and comes down to my heart. So it's running through that subclavian vein. The leadless pacemakers, though, they work, but they inject them, but then there's no way of getting it out. So you, like, build, like, a cemetery of pacemakers of these little devices because they just inject a new one, and they inject the new one, and then scar tissue forms around it. So for right now, we went with the lead, because that was what was recommended to me, and then we picked basically the smallest wire that they possibly could. And, you know, the hopes is that over the course of my lifetime, maybe the technology evolves to the point where maybe I don't need a surgery every 10 years to replace the pacemaker. But yeah, and you eventually

might need to move it too. So it's like in the left breast. So like we could go over to like the right breast. You can go back traditionally like on the chest because scar tissue forms around it. So it gets to the point where there might just be too much scar tissue that the lead can't correctly kind of like adhere to the device. So everything was fine then until really about would have been six months later and I'd missed, you know, and you can relate to this,

I'd missed all family events and weddings, you know, it feels like up to this point. And one of my best friends from college who was in my year was getting married in Florida. And I remember it was this like last ditch run to the airport where I was like,

I'm not prepared, I'm not packed, like, do I even have a dress? and I remember trying to put on, like, silk blouse, and I went to stick my arm in it, and I couldn't pull the blouse over my, like, left biceb. It's like, oh, that's, like, weird. And I had a little paper IKEA measuring tape that's, like, the little paper one that you cut out,

and I kind of wrapped it around my bicep, and I had about it was either two and a quarter or two and a half inches of upper arm swelling in my bicep. So my left arm compared to my right arm. And so I called up the endocrinologist in San Diego and I said, not the endocrinologist, the electrophysiologist in San Diego. And I said, hey, like, I've got upper arm swelling. Should I be concerned?

And they said, oh, well, you know, you did have a pacemaker, like, put in. It might just be your body's reaction to kind of like a foreign substance in your body. I was like, oh, it seems like a logical explanation. How soon after the pacemaker was installed? This is March. So this is six months. Okay. And they said, you know what, let's just play it safe.

can you come in, you know, can you come in for a scan? And I said, oh, well, I'm going to a wedding. You think I'm like, okay? And they said, yeah, you can go to the wedding. When do you go back? I said, Sunday, they say, okay, first thing, Monday morning, come in and we'll do an ultrasound. So I went in, I did an ultrasound. You immediately know when something's wrong because the tech keeps, like, going over the same spot.

Like, usually ultrasounds are pretty quick, and, like, they keep going over the same spot, and they kind of, like, pause, and they hit the, you know, buttons and take notes. And doctor calls me literally like immediately after. Like I don't even think I had walked out of the building. It was like, hey, like we found blood clots in your subclavian vein. And I said, okay, what's that mean? And they said, well, do you have a family history of blood clots? And I said, no. And they said, are you any, what medications are you on? Is there anything that, like, so they wanted the vet to see if anything I was taking could potentially cause blood clots. And I said, yeah. They said, okay, that's not it.

So they said, okay, we need to put you on a high dose blood thinner. We're going to see if these clear out and we're going to monitor you. And I said, okay. So I went on, it was a drug called Eloquist at the time. And started, at that point, something started to like click in my brain. I was like, I need to like start to do my own, like a little bit of my own research here. And we kept on for a while, stayed on the blood thinners for like weeks, weeks, weeks. And then three weeks later, they asked me to come back for another scan.

came back for another scan. This time they wouldn't let me leave the building. The tech called her supervisor. I was still there. Then my doctor called me. And they said the clots have spread. You now have a lot of clots in your left internal jugular. So in your neck.

And I was like, what is going on? And at this point, I'd started to do like a little bit of research. And the only thing that I had found was there was a very, unique pattern of like the veins on my arm were like popping it was it was almost like I'd take an endopump and like everything was popping out of my arm and there was this very unique like pattern that was on this like my inside shoulder and the one thing that they said we're going to send you to a vascular surgeon and I said okay and went and saw the vascular surgeon I said I read about this thing called like Padgett Schroeder or whatever he's like oh it's super rare like there's no way you like

have that and everything. He did a CT scan, which they basically interrogate your arm, and they have your arm go up, and then they have your arm at rest. And what that CT scan revealed was when my arm was raised, my subclavian vein, which was the same vein that the wire was running through, was getting 100% pinched between my clavicle and my first rib. And right at that pinch point is where these clots were forming. So it was like pinch, pinch, pinch, it was like an incessant pinch. And from all this labor from the business, I was constantly like moving things around, lifting up bags of oats,

almond butter, crates, like throwing them up, wrapping pallets, things like that. And he said you need, you know, you need surgery. Right when he said you need surgery, I called Dr. Love and I was like, these guys are telling me that I've got this thing called vascular thoracic outlet syndrome

that I'm positive for vascular as well as arterial. So like there's issues with the vein and the artery. And he was like, don't let anyone touch you. Like I'll call you right back. and he went to the vascular department at Hopkins, and he called me back, and he was like, you need to get on a plane, you need to come here, like, right now. And so I remember jumping in an Uber.

I booked a Southwest flight. It was like the only flight that I could get on. I remember being in the Uber, trying to get my medical records, like, sent over to Hopkins. Bobby was deployed at the time. So he was over in Oman or Bob, rain or somewhere. So he was helping me try to like get things in line, jumped on that plane, landed that night next morning at 6 a.m. went to Hopkins, saw Dr. Lum, who's a vascular

surgeon at Hopkins. And he said, he redid all the ultrasound and everything. He said, you're positive for vascular thoracic outlet. We need to do surgery. And I was like, when? He's like, now. I was like, oh, okay. So he said, I can't do it right now because you're on blood thinners, but you need to stop it. We need 48 hours for your blood to start to coagulate more, and then we're going to do surgery. And what they did is they, obviously you go under, but they went in through,

the guy in San Diego would have kind of really severed me along my, like, collarbone. Dr. Lum did actually, which I'm very thankful for, he actually went in through my armpit, and they carved out my first rib, and they slipped my, the first rib attaches your middle, scaling comes down from your neck and attaches to your first rib, they snipped the middle scalene and they removed that. And then they did rounds of angioplasty and venoplasty to basically blow up the vein to move the clots like through. And then we, I think we did,

it was two or three, you know, six weeks after that. And then like two months after that and then another two months, they kept doing multiple rounds of angioplasty and venoplasti to kind of keep moving the clots through, stayed on blood thinners for over a year, PT, over a year, all of that stuff. And to bring it full circle, it's, you know, the vascular thoracic outlet, putting the pacemaker wire through the thoracic outlet was really the straw that broke the camel's back. I was probably predisposed to get something like that, but I would have been fine had we never put like a pacemaker wire in there. But the heart condition is the thing that you can debate. Was this something that I was genetically predisposed to? Was this an act of God just,

you know, dealing me a hand of cards? Or was it related to being a founder, being extremely stressed, putting a tremendous amount of stress on my heart over a long period of time? And it's, as I get older and older, it's like, all right, let's just call a spade a spade. Like, you didn't sleep, which is incredibly stressful on your heart. There's an incredible amount of stress just in the business. Like, you arguably did this. to yourself. And to think that that's actually even humanly possible, that the human body is capable of like putting yourself through that and still not stopping. I mean, a lot of people would be like, wow, like the amount of grit you have to have, like they would probably reward it.

I would probably look back at myself and be like, that's disgusting. Like life is so precious and such an opportunity and you like, you like 100% like took decades off your life to try to build something. And so I think like that's where I caution entrepreneurs. I'm like, you have to know what you're signing up for. It's like I wouldn't change it for the world because I've grown into an entirely new person. I think you would echo that sentiment, but it's like it comes with an incredible amount of trade-off and that it comes with incredible risks and there are some things that you just can't

get back and like for me like that's health it's like I will forever have a pay have a pacemaker have a history of blood clots I now suffer from extremely bad anemia because I was on sorrelto a blood thinner and eloquist for an extended period of time and I guarantee you these drugs were not tested on 30-year-old women who still get periods. And so it's like, my anemia is literally like, they fill me up with iron infusions. I don't really absorb that much of it because of whatever reason now. The tank gets lessened. They fill me back up with an infusion. The tank gets lowered. And it's like this perpetual cycle. So there are things that I can't get back. And that's totally fine. And I'm now content with it. It took me a long time to like,

to be content and to be proud that I'm on the other side, that I can run, that I can be here for all of these guys personally and professionally, that I can help you and that I can lead BPN. It's taken a lot for me to get here, but I always will be the first person to wave the flag of, like, you have to be careful with entrepreneurship, because, like, you can get hurt, you know, and you will push your body to a limit that you've never been before.

and it will change you forever, whether or not you want to admit it. What's like we said in the beginning of this episode, the goal isn't to scare people away from starting something or chasing a dream or being ambitious, but it's the reality of it. I look back at the last 10 and a half years, and to get to this point, there's been weeks and months and years

that have been a blur and things that I've had to do to get the business at this point through like, you know, creating content and the fitness preps we've done and not sleeping and the massive amount of stress. Like stress alone on a body over an extended period of time just like wears and where's and and wears and wears. And I think for me, for the longest time, as long as I was just doing it to myself, it was okay. Like, destroying my body, not sleeping.

You know, like, I've always said I've sacrificed my personal health for the business. And that's okay to me. But now that I'm starting to see the effects it's having on my face. family, like Steph, and now that I'm a dad on Charlie, I've started thinking about it in different ways. Or it's like, for me, it was like, okay, it was okay for me to do this to myself for a long time to get this to a certain point, but there's got to be a better way. Yep.

And there is a better way, but unfortunately, like, you have to go through level one, two, and three sometimes to get to level four, to get to that point. and there's no way to get through level one, two, and three. In my opinion, any other way, as long as you're a bootstrapped founder. Yep. If you get started with venture capital and all these investors and partners

and experience, like, maybe there is another way, but like, we didn't do it that way. No. I think from our experience of what we're talking about, like this is from a bootstrapped perspective. Perspective. And I wouldn't want it any other way personally because it is earned. And no one can take that away from a founder who has earned what they've built through just bootstrapping.

I will always look back at this journey and this experience is like one of the most rewarding and profound and life changing that I've probably could have ever put myself through and experienced. I know being like a father and a husband will also do that same thing. but there's a special place in my heart for founders and definitely from my experience and what I've learned through it. And, you know, when you meet another founder and you have a conversation and you can instantly connect about shared experiences

that were so similar, it's like Army buddies. Yeah. Right? Like it's hard to describe, but there's like this shared bond connection and we're like, you get it. You've been there.

100%. And it's tough. it's challenging, but so rewarding. I mean, it's 100% the most challenging thing that I've ever done in my life, and it's 100% the most rewarding thing that I've ever done in my life. And I can sit here at 32 years old and say that it's forever changed me as a person. I've grown tremendously. But, like, to your point, the only caution is perception when you're in it as a founder

is that, you know, you're putting the business. above yourself. So perception is in your, in your mind, in a weird twisted way, you're saying I'm being selfless because I'm putting the business ahead of my own personal interests. But there is a shift that happens. And at some point, that selfless turns into selfish. I 100% agree. Whether or not you believe it and whether or not you can see it when it's happening, it does because you can't be, you can't be the person you want to be. be, you can't be the operator you want to be, you can't be the founder you want to be. And so, it is something to be, like, hyper aware of as a founder. Like, it's something that I'm always the

person who tries to preach, like, balance is, is in, and founder just don't go in the same sentence. You can't say it's, like, balance, but I am the person who always is encouraging of, of founders to like, hey, you got to, you got to find something that allows you to like stay grounded and to actually like visit your thoughts and slow down on like a daily basis. So whether or not you do yoga or whether or not you meditate or whether or not like surfing is your form of active meditation or running is your form of active meditation, you need to find some release that you commit to on a daily basis and that needs to become a priority.

Otherwise, you'll end up doing what I did, which was run your physical being into the ground. And people say they can run into the ground, but I'll be honest, like I actually haven't met someone who can say, like, I built something and I hurt my like likelihood of longevity in the process. the whole concept of this episode

was supposed to be an honest conversation about the realities of the founder. I think we accomplished that. And the first thing, you know, first question I asked was the parallels that the internet and social media has created around

founder and private jets and Lamborghinis and mansions. And from, at least from my seat, that is so far from the truth. That when I see that, I'm like, bullshit. Yeah.

Let's talk about what it's really like. Yeah. Because it's hard and it's challenging. And it is rewarding. But like, rewarding for me isn't a private jet. Rewarding for me isn't a Lamborghini. Rewarding for me is being really proud of where you decided to spend your time and what passion and why, the people you do it with.

And then the relationships, you're not. not only create that process, but you maintain and save because I have lost some friendships along this journey and along this way. But if I would have went through this whole process and lost my family, my wife, my future kids, that's something I would not be proud of. I think of one of the things that I'm most proud of is I'm like most proud of the fact that like I have friends at home that I met at the bus stop in 1995 when I started kindergarten in upstate New York. And I'm super proud to say that like I still have all of those friendships intact. And I think there are so many people in my life from elementary school, middle school, high school, college who,

I mean, I think they'd be sad to know that, like, I didn't ask for help more, but they have no idea how important they were in keeping me, like, grounded throughout the entire journey. Because it's like, when you're building something, a lot of people start to, like, latch on to the success of that. Like, they want to associate with you because they, they think you're moronic for starting. And they're like, what are you doing?

Like, you've got a good job. Like, why do you know? need to go out and do this thing. Like, why is it so important? To then when you start to gain traction, people start to gravitate, like, grab onto you. And you can sort of like feel it. You're like, is this authentic?

Like, why are you reaching out to me? Like, I haven't talked to you in five years. But the really cool thing for me is I'm super fortunate to have a core group of friends. They freaking loved me when I was a tomboy and had a short-haired cut in 1995. and all the way through we went to prom senior year, all the way through college. And they texted me this morning. And I'm so proud to say that, like,

those relationships are still intact. And I think for anyone who's going to pick a journey to go on, I would encourage you to make sure that you have people who can ground you because the world is going to look at you differently once you're a founder, but you always want to be able to come back to people that feel like home. Because home to many people is a physical place, but home to me is very much a feeling.

And I've always prided myself on trying to keep a really great group that they love me for me, whether or not I'm successful or not, and they keep me so, so, so grounded. And they keep me honest. And they're the only people who look me in the eyes and they ask the hardest questions that I need to be asked. on these journeys. And that's something that I'm extremely,

extremely blessed and grateful for. You don't need a lot of those relationships, but you need some that are really strong. Yeah. And I look back at some like the relationships that I still value the most in life, and it is like my friends from high school. And I don't stay in contact with them as much as I should or I've wanted to in the past.

it has been more of a priority lately. Yeah. Yeah, you don't need a thousand, but you need a handful of really strong people in your life. Absolutely. The coolest thing about those relationships, too, are like all my friends are doing such different things. And like, it genuinely doesn't matter.

Like, we don't talk about our professions at all. Like, we hang out and we laugh. And, like, we have fun together. And making sure that you have that group. is important. And if you don't have that group, I think you need to ask yourself why. Because for me, on this journey, when people don't have that group, I frequently realize that that's because their character is wavered. That's a huge part of even when I meet people is, you know, even when I met you is going to dinner with you and Steph, like understanding who you are, where you came from

where you want to go. And, you know, we have a blessing here in that like you and Preston literally work right across from each other. So I get to see how siblings act on, interact on a daily basis, which is also like really, really telling. Like you are an incredibly generous, like, big brother. And you, you're not vocal about winging Preston, but you wing the shit out of Preston. And that's, like, awesome to see. But I would always caution people, like, if you're, if you're going to start something and you start to surround yourself with people, it's like, make sure that those people are grounded as well. And if you can't have dinner with someone and they don't want to introduce you to their friends

or introduce you to their family or introduce you to people they grew up with, like those are red flags because it probably means that that person doesn't necessarily have their personal identity figured out. I agree. Ladies and gentlemen, Kat Thomas, CEO of Bear Performance Intrition, and prior founder. Thanks, Nick. Thank you.

Always a pleasure. That's a wrap.