The Nick Bare Podcast - 019: How Sam Parr Retired With Over $20 Million by Age 31

Episode Date: June 19, 2023

I sit down with the remarkable entrepreneur and investor, Sam Parr. Sam, the brilliant mind behind The Hustle, accomplished an extraordinary feat by retiring at 31 after selling his company to Hubspot. He is now the host of the highly acclaimed podcast, My First Million, and continues to educate and inspire others to succeed in entrepreneurship. In this conversation, we delve into building an audience versus a community, unravel the key differentiators that propel individuals to success, and dive deep into the intriguing story of how Sam sold his company. And all the other captivating stories Sam has experienced as well. Enjoy the episode! Save 10% at BPN Supps: https://bit.ly/nickbare10audio Follow for more:  IG: https://www.instagram.com/nickbarefitness/ YT: https://www.youtube.com/@nickbarefitness Keep up with Sam here:  IG: https://www.instagram.com/thesamparr/ YT: https://www.youtube.com/@MyFirstMillionPod Topics: 00:00 Intro 1:33 “I’m not a businessman, I’m an artist” 13:44 Why Sam started his blog 19:54 Selling The Hustle to Hubspot 32:21 Stepping down from the CEO role 38:23 Overcoming feeling inadequate 43:05 Misconceptions on founder wealth 46:17 Bootstrapping vs. raising capital 50:14 The separator of successful people 53:05 Maintaining creative freedom 1:03:03 Growing in entrepreneurship 1:13:58 Competitive advantages 1:18:09 Sam’s new business model 1:22:27 Content creation 1:28:31 Audience vs. community 1:35:06 Natty or not 1:42:35 Sam’s vision for the future 1:47:49 Selling his business 1:50:57 “Molecule Of More”

An audience is one to many. It's Nick posting videos. It's Sam posting a podcast. A community is many to many. And it has to have like a location in which that's happening, whether it's physical or digital. And the way that you know you have one or the other is quit creating content for a month and come back and what happens or with a community. You, the creator, quit making stuff for a month. And you should come back and you should have more.

It should be more content, more interactions than when you left. It should grow like exponential because it's many to many. But it's like if you quit creating content, BPN's not going to go away. but like Nick Baer's relevance will be. Before jumping into this episode, I want to thank you for tuning in and spending your time with me. Every watch and listen

truly does matter. Now, we've decided to not take on any sponsors for this podcast because we don't want to interrupt your listening experience. But if you do want to support me, you can head over to BPNSups.com for all of your performance,

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and use code Nick Bear 10 to save 10% off your order. Now let's jump right. into this episode. Today on the podcast, we have Sam Parr, founder of the hustle, which was acquired by HubSpot in 2021, creative artist and genius, co-host of my first million podcast and owner of Marathon Ranch, which is something I'm very excited to talk about throughout this conversation. That's funny. I wouldn't have thought, I don't think that that is an impressive enough thing to mention in an introduction, but I'll take it. I've, from, from my perspective, since I got

to Texas in 2014, I've been looking for property. I have toured dozens of properties with real estate agents, walked properties ranging from eight acres to 120 acres. So it's always been my dream to own a ranch in Texas. You got to do it. Now's the time, too. Now is a decent time if you can get better financing than a 7% mortgage rate. But now is a good time. Prices are down. Yeah, all those things are true. And then I have a new thing, Hampton. that's my that's that's that's more impressive than marathon ranch which is uh my new business but um but yeah the hustle that was a i sold that a little while ago that's a big thing that's i think it's read by three and a half million people a day but when we sold it it was like closer to two but they've grown it

nicely it's impressive yeah it's good it's good i didn't think it was gonna turn out to be that big that's for sure which is what you were saying about your thing uh bpn you're like i don't i don't know if it's actually going to be like a huge thing i'm just going to build it forever but yeah things change as you get into it like five or six years, right? I mean, your head's just down, building, building, building, and then you finally lift your head up at some point. You're like, oh, I've actually, we built something pretty impressive that not everyone else is building. Yeah, and you also think, like, this wasn't that hard.

I mean, it is hard when you're doing it, but you're like, why would someone want to buy this? Why don't they just go make their own? You know what I mean? And then you realize you get out there in the world, you're like, oh, that's because it really is actually hard. And most people don't take these wrists and things like that. And so you got to get out and talk to people to realize, oh, I actually do have a sellable asset or I understand now why someone would want to buy this, things like that. Right.

So I've heard you say in multiple interviews and podcasts before, I'm not a businessman. I'm an artist. And I would love for you to explain this because when I heard you say this, it resonated with me to my core. Because for the longest time, I'll get some context. For the longest time, you know, I started as a creative. I started documenting my life on social media and building a brand and building a business because of just pure passion and joy and that's what I loved. And naturally, it evolved into me becoming a quote-unquote businessman and getting involved in

the day-to-day operations and the numbers. And what I found is the more I got into the numbers and into the day-to-day and became more of a businessman, the less time I could spend on the creative. and it robbed me a lot of my passion and joy. So can you explain what that means to you? Yeah. So when you start a company, like for example, my first business, or not my first,

but one of my early businesses was this thing called The Hustle. It was a daily email. It was like a tech and business newsletter. And I started it because before that, I was blogging. I would blog for years just for fun. And that was just like, it's almost like part, like comedy where it's not funny,

but it's like I it's like performative art you know what I mean like to see what you can what you can what you can say what like resonates with people things like that and then it's part like therapy where you just like to get it out there in the world things like that and then we saw that there was an opportunity I was like I think I could turn this into a big thing here's the math whatever and launching it was like art where it's like you know the to drive hype around something and to like turn something into a movement that is very artistic I think and then once the business starts working Maybe that happens at like, it happens at different stages for everyone, but maybe at like, I don't know, 10 million a year in revenue. You see like, oh, wow, if we, if you just can look at a spreadsheet, you'd be like, oh, if we can, I think we could change this number from a 0.5 to a 1.2.

And we do that by deploying this much capital here, hiring this much people here. And it's like optimizing. And that's like a manager almost can do that. And when I, and I, as a lot of small businesses, business owners, they have to be the one doing that. and you start getting into that and you start doing more and more and more of that. And you're like, shit, I'm now optimizing this spreadsheet, which is important. But that's not what I started. I didn't start this for that reason.

I started this because I saw an opportunity and my art is like pouncing on an opportunity and putting my texture and my art within that opportunity, not looking at this Excel sheet and figuring out how to get 1% conversion rate to 2% conversion rate and like doing that on like all this stuff. And there are a lot of people out there. I imagine your CEO is one of them that they get joy from that. I did not get joy from that. And I hated that. And so what I realized was like when people talk about like Warren Buffett,

and everyone would talk about you should read him. And I started reading his shit. And I was like, oh, I hate this. This is the worst. I don't want to look to all these like financials and like trying to figure out where the opportunity is. And then I like would dream about all these like hedge fund guys in New York. I'm like, oh, they're so rich. I want to be like that.

And then I started talking to him. I'm like, oh, this is the lamest. You guys are just looking for like these. loopholes, which are important, but like you're looking just like to take advantage of these like numbers and things like that. That is just so boring to me. And maybe they'll defend it and say they can find art and that. But I was like, I cannot stand that. I like building brands and creating movements and convincing people that like what wasn't a thing is now a thing and you should buy into it. That to me is like the art. And that's why I like doing it. Not so much like, for example,

like I didn't know the difference between revenue and cash flow, which is like a huge distinction. I didn't know that until like four years into our company. And like, I just couldn't stand to like read about all that stuff. And so it just bored me to death. And so that's why I think like I came to the realization of I'm more of an artist where I like to do things that don't make a lot of logical sense. But then maybe a year after I've done them, it's like, oh, yeah, it does make sense for these reasons. Not so much like a spreadsheet junkie where I enjoy like finding opportunities just in numbers

and like optimizing things like that. And also like tax strategy, all that stuff. when you talk to me about that stuff, I'm like, dude, I don't care. It means nothing to me. Just pay someone to do it. Yeah, I'm like, I mean, I don't care. I also thought that I cared a lot about money. It's more so I like winning and progression, but then like, like, dude, I don't care about this money. Just like, you guys just figure it out. It doesn't matter to me. You know what I mean? So that's why I meant by that.

No, I mean, that resonates a lot with me. And I think back to this early years of building BPN, I had no mentors in business. I had no background in business. But I found a brand that I wanted to build and I had so much passion behind it. What was the brand that you wanted to build? What was the initial? So 2012, I saw this massive needs in the market. It's when Jack 3D was really popular. Cray's pre-workout was really popular.

And all these products were being pulled off the market because they were popping positive with banned substances. Was it like NO explode and all that stuff? Yeah, that time frame. Yeah. And I remember taking that stuff and it felt like I was on cocaine. I mean, that was the first pre-work I ever took. Yeah. And, you know, it's funny.

I was probably 17 years old when I bought my first pre-workout. And I would, it was, and it would explode. And I would hide it in my bedroom under my bed because I didn't want my mom to find it. Yeah, I felt like a drug. Yeah, because I thought, she thought I was like taking steroids or something. So I'd hide it. And then I'd pull it out before going to the gym. And I remember I was taking, you know, pre-workout at the time.

And this one day my brother, who's three years younger than me, he pissed me off. And I just like, you know, I'm a 17, 18 year old kid. Hormones are raging. I just like yelled back at him. I remember my brother saying, I remember this like it was yesterday. He's like, dude, why are you so angry? It's like, I'm going to pre-workout, man. I'm taking pre-workout.

But I mean, that was like, that's why I wanted to start BPN is I saw this massive need in the market. And at the time, I was mixing up my own supplements in my dorm room. I was buying ingredients and bulk. I was mixing up. It looked like it. You'd walk into my college dorm room. room, I'd have this scale, and this scale only measured in grams, not milligrams.

So in order to measure caffeine, you were just guessing. You know, I'd measure a gram of caffeine, then I'd back it off like half. And I had this scale in my dorm room. I was buying ingredients in bulk. I'd mix up pre-workout, and then I'd sell to people on the dorm, you know, floor. So people would come to my door, they'd knock, they'd hand me five bucks. I'd hand them a white baggie of white powder. So it looked like I was dealing drugs when I was in college.

But I had so much just like, that filled my cup. I was like, this is what I want to do moving forward. And the vision was what, like clean supplements or something? Supplements that people could trust that were, that didn't have proprietary blends that weren't pixie dusted with a small amount of really good ingredients that were dosed appropriately, like that people could actually trust that what they were taking was what was, you know, what they wanted and needed. The brand that you were going to create was a clean or I don't know what verb is you'd use,

but some type of like clean, trusted, high quality stuff. Yeah, I really leaned into like integrity, transparency, and service from the early stages of building the brand. You know, this is just me, this, this 22 year old kid sitting in a dorm room with no money to my name. I mean, I had maybe $15 in my bank account at any given time. And the only way I was able to build this company was by taking out. a $20,000 loan and then finding a manufacturer in California and starting the whole process.

But those first couple years of building, when I say the first couple years, I'd say six, maybe even seven, it was just focusing on building brand. Like focusing on the product, the people, the brand, the message, the mission. And obviously when you focus on that, you don't focus on the P&L, the balance sheet, the finances, taxes tax regulations, it becomes messy. You know, you miss out on a lot of things. It does become messy, but that shit figures itself out. The brand shit doesn't figure itself out.

Yeah. That doesn't figure itself out. So I think it's actually okay to ignore that stuff. Like, even if you are like, you're going to have to pay for it eventually, you're going to have to pay for these mistakes eventually. Whenever someone tells me, like, I got this idea I filed an LLC, I'm like, dude, what the fuck are you doing? Just use your social security number to collect this money.

You can figure that stuff out later. But the brand stuff and making the product, that stuff you can't figure out later. You've got to nail that. What's interesting, though, is, and I'm sure there's a lot of other people in this situation. One, there's a lot of paralysis by analysis. So people think they have to have all these things lined up before they get started. No. I was never one of those people.

But also, you know, six, seven years in, when I realized how quote unquote messy the things that I've built up into that point were, I felt really ashamed. I was like, oh, I'm a horrible business person. I was so focused on brand. You have these people with finance backgrounds and marketing backgrounds who are building these really clean, operationally efficient businesses. And I'm over here just focused on brand. And I thought I was focused on the wrong thing for the longest period of time.

Not a chance. And then I realized I was focused on the right thing because you can't buy brand. You have to build brand. Exactly. And it's tough. And there's way more people that can go out and figure out all those other mistakes that you made versus the people who can build the brand. That's significantly more rare and harder to find.

You know what I mean? Yeah. So, yeah, like I make jokes with people. Like, you know how people like collect domain names? Right. I'm like, that's a loser behavior. Don't do that. In fact, go and get a sale or collect some type of money for your product before you

even have a domain name. Just use like my new product. That squarespace.com or whatever. You know what I mean? Like get a free URL. Don't buy anything and get momentum and then figure out all that other stuff. But like until you get a couple sales or you have a customer or someone likes your, idea or product or whatever, none of that stuff's important. So I'm in the same boat. I agree.

So when you started your blog initially, what was your goal? Was it the goal to turn it into a business? Were you just trying to have some sort of creative outlet? Yeah. So I used to make money by selling stuff on eBay, like sports equipment, because it was like in high school, like the seniors would leave and I would get their like track and field spikes and I would like sell it on eBay and I made money doing that. And then eventually I went to college and I met a guy named Mike Wolf who was on this TV show called American Pickers. And he like let me work for him for a little while. And I learned a little bit more about entrepreneurship. From there, I started. Were you on the show? Like, occasionally in the background. Like, you know how Mike has like the stores in Iowa and

Nashville? Yeah. I basically was a like $10 an hour employee at the Nashville one. So like if they needed an extra to walk around, maybe you'll see me. But I wasn't like a character or anything. But then I, from there, I started a hot dog stand. And I had a bunch of them. It was called Southern Sam's weaners is as big as a baby's arm. And that was my thing. And then after that, I started like an online store where I was selling like a collectible whiskey. And it was the URL was like something dot WordPress.com.

And then I realized the internet's awesome. It's way better than like selling hot dogs. And so I saw this company. You'll actually get a kick out of this. I read Let's Run every day. There was a guy named Chris Lukasek who at the time was the sixth fastest miler in America. He read Run 347.

and he said, I'm quitting running to join this company called Air Bed and Breakfast. And this was in 2010, I think, when they just started. And I think it was the sixth hire. And I was like, what the hell is this Air Bed and Breakfast thing? And I went to the website and I saw it and I go, that's it. I got to do that. So I started blogging for fun. It was just like Sampar.com.

And I would blog like crazy. And then eventually I was like, I'm going to go work at that company. So I'm going to start blogging stuff that's going to get me recognized by the CEO of Airbnb. And so I did. So I started blogging that and I found all these cool hacks and I would write blogs on like how they could improve. And I emailed it to him. And he was like, oh, okay, this is cool.

Like your ideas, he didn't say this, but your idea is like, you know, we already thought about all that. But that's cool that you are doing this. Come in an interview with me and maybe you can work here. So I did, flew out there from Nashville, got a job interview there because he was like, yeah, great, come and work for us. So I go back to Nashville, sell all my stuff, leave school, move back out there. the day before I'm supposed to start, they were like, man, you lied to us. I was like, what? He goes,

you said you didn't have a criminal record and you do. And when I was in college, I had like some addiction issues and I went to jail for a few days for DUI and then fighting and things like that. And he was right. I totally lied about it. And he caught me. You know, when you go like one of those things where you click like, do you have a misdemeanor or whatever? I clicked, no, because I was like, they're a startup. They're not going to check. They're not going to check. They did. And so I was out in San Francisco with like next to nothing. And I'm like, what am I going to do? So I started blogging again. It was blog like crazy. And one thing led to another. And I eventually started a conference, like a TED Talk style conference. And I got all my customers to come to that event

through blogging. And then it kind of came down to where I realized, oh, this email newsletter thing is actually more powerful. Because the bigger that my email list gets, the more conference tickets I sell. So that's when I realized, like, oh, email is actually more important than blogging, but blogging was like the beginning of everything. So I would blog a ton and I was able to get like millions of people to come to my blog. And I still liked a blog, but it all started with just like on a Tumblr and then eventually a WordPress website of just blogging every single day for, you know, five articles a day some days.

Very similar to YouTube, except YouTube, I guess I didn't know how to edit video, but I knew how to write. So I've been blogging forever. When you were out in Nashville, you were going to school on a track scholarship, correct? Yeah, I was an exceptional high school, 200, 400 meter runner. I was very good. I went to a Division I school to run, and I didn't get that much better because I drank and partied. Back then, like, it's only 10 years ago, but like the nutrition and recovery stuff and all that

type of stuff that we all know now, that was more niche. So like a guy in Nashville, I didn't know about that. You know, I didn't have an iPhone. I didn't like read about this stuff. I mean, even when I was going to school, and I graduated 2013, it was like brand new to the space. Yeah, like there was no, like, you just, my like coach was like, dude, your oven's burning hot enough. You can eat anything you want. Like, I don't know.

We just ate pizza and ice cream all the time. And like, I remember people saying that, like the engine's burning. Just keep, keep feeding the furnace. Yeah, which is nonsense, right? Like, that's, that's, you could 100% out eat a bad diet. You know, or you can out eat running ultras. You can out eat and almost anything, I think. And so anyway, yeah, I was there and I wasn't healthy and I didn't take it seriously,

mentally or like physically. And so eventually I quit my junior year and I started got, that's when I got into business. Did you ever finish college? Yeah. So I left early, but my mother was like, it means a lot to me that you do this. So while I was out in San Francisco, I like completed a bunch of online stuff. And I was really poor. I didn't have any money there.

So I used to like ride a bike to like this Kaplan. testing center and we'd have to take these tests. So technically I did finish. Yeah. It kind of reminds me of, you know, Noah Kagan was on the podcast, talking about how he was one of the early employees at Facebook. Yeah. And ended up getting fired. He got fired. He probably lost out $100 million because of that. And that's, that's my question for you is when you were, you know, first hired by Airbnb, were you offered a comp package with equity? I was offered like $25 an hour. I was like a grunt. I think I did the math. No, I think I could have made like maybe $5 million over the course of that amount of time. I think A, I probably would have gotten

fired or quit before that. And B, I ended up starting a business and I made a lot more than that. So it worked out all right. But now my wife works at Airbnb. And so I used to joke whenever we go, I would go to her office and see her friends, whatever. I'm like, oh, my alma mater, my old stomping grounds. That's funny. It's like I never actually started. So it didn't work out. When you were younger, because obviously it seems like you like going from zero to one, you like starting a lot of things. Yeah, that's my thing. When you were younger, like say, you know, middle school, high school, were you starting a lot of things as well? Yeah, like selling CDs.

Like remember when you could burn a CD? Right. I had a computer that could do that. So like selling CDs. Yeah, I was always doing that. My father owns, he owned a fruit stand, which became like a produce brokerage company, which sounds significantly more sophisticated than it kind of is. So my parents were small business owners. And growing up in the Midwest, it was like, this is just what you do.

you start small businesses. So I thought when I grew up, I was going to own like a restaurant or a bar. And then I like learned about the internet. And I was like, oh, that's the, this is the way to go. Yeah, I was the same way growing up. Like, I would start a lot of different things. A lot of it was around construction. I grew up in this small town right outside of Hershey, Pennsylvania.

And for me, like, starting something was, you know, my dad's side of the family were dairy farmers. And my mom's side of the family, my grandfather on that side, he was like a, a woodworker. So I would spend a lot of time with him and then my other friends selling his own stuff. Yeah, he'd make like birdhouses. And he didn't call himself an entrepreneur. No. He's just like, this is just what you do. You just pick up a skill and you sell it to friends and whoever. Right. There wasn't like this, this title or this big thing behind it. So I watched them like kind of tinkering growing up and, you know, we grew up in this this subdivision, this new neighborhood that was just being built when I was younger. So I think our house was like maybe house number

10 and now there's 400 houses in this neighborhood. But why that's relevant or relevant is because as these houses were being built, there were massive just dumpsters everywhere with scrapwood. So I would take my wagon around growing up and I'd jump in these dumpsters and I pull out all this scrapwood. I go back to our house and I'd build stuff. I'd build like forts in our backyard. I built a boat once that sunk.

No, it sunk. That's what I thought. I built this boat. And my mom was so, like, encouraging. She put it on the back of this trailer. She drove us to, like, this local... Dude, my parents were the same way. Stream, we put it in.

And, like, it went down the stream, maybe 100 feet, and then just right to the bottom. We left it there. It had a steering wheel. It didn't, like, steer anything. It was just this circular piece of it. It was attached by a screw. But, like, I was tinkering early on.

And I always loved taking nothing and turning it into something. That's the, art. Yes. And I think that's why I love zero to one. And I'm curious if you're the same way, maybe this is why you sold the hustle, is because going from one to two is a lot different from going zero to one. Yeah, it is different. So the reason I sold the hustle is, have you ever read the book called How to Get Rich by Felix Dennis? I have not. It's horribly titled. But basically Felix Dennis, he's dead now, but he's kind of like a combination of Richard Branson and Mick Jagger. So he's like this like eccentric billionaire.

who started a bunch of stuff in England that you probably would never have heard of, but one of them went public at a multi-billion dollar evaluation. It was like a tech company, but it was in the 80s, so it wasn't what we think of tech companies. But the most popular thing that you would know is he started Maxim Magazine. And he had a magazine empire before the internet, which is like one of the most profitable things you could have done. He has this book called How to Get Rich.

And he died of cancer in his 70s. And he basically said, like, if I could do it all over again, I would have wanted to sell out by the time I was 35 and made as much money as possible. and then had a bunch of free time to, like, actually spend what I was doing versus becoming addicted to this and becoming like a punch drunk boxer who never, like, gives up and becomes, you know, can't speak after a certain age. And I was like, oh, that sounds, yeah, that sounds cool. Let's do that.

And so when I started the hustle, I was like, I think I can grow this to this point at which I could sell it. And my goal was to make $20 million after taxes by the age of 30. Because I was like, in my head, that means I could spend like $600,000 a year, is like pretty good. You know, that's like kind of luxury and, or it is luxury. And for the rest of my life, and I could like be fine. And so when I sold the company, that was my goal, was to get there. And then what I learned after selling it was like, A, that's, that is awesome. Like, I'm not going to lie about that. That is awesome to be there. But B,

selling is cool. But like, once you have something that's working, it's also cool to like try to do it for 20 years and just compound. I didn't understand compound. compound like compounding growth. Like 30% year and annual growth doesn't sound like a lot, but do that for 20 years. And it gets really big, really fast. It's huge. And that's really hard to understand.

And I didn't understand that until somewhat recently. So now my everything I'm going to start now, I want to go a lot bigger, partially because I think there's like an ego thing, but also partially because I think it's fun to like see the compounding. But I sold because like when I sold the George Floyd rights were happening, COVID was happening. I had gotten sick. And I was like, the world's going to end. And now's my time to get that number. And I should just get out and have some financial security because I felt I was basically poor. I didn't pay myself a lot of money. So that's one of the reasons why I sold. I thought it was a very interesting way that HubSpot approached you

because I've always envisioned that this merger acquisition transaction for a company, larger company, is like this very formal process. But from my understanding, HubSpot literally just sent you an email, like a cold email, trying to acquire your company.

Yeah. So basically for the listener, HubSpot, it's like a $25 billion publicly traded software company. So they're like, I think now they have 7,000 employees. So there's like great, big, awesome company. And we originally, we thought about selling. I hired a banker and we did this like tour where somehow this banker like lined up like 10 companies that they thought wanted to buy us. None of them were interested.

What year was this? 19, 2019. And basically when you're running a company, like 90% of the time, you're like, this is shit. This sucks. I want to get out. And I felt stressed all the time. So I was like, anytime I could get someone interested, I was like, all right, I'm interested. No one was interested.

And then so I said, screw it, I'm not going to go out and look for anything. So one day when I was living in, I was out in New York at the time, they sent me an email. And it's James Gilbert at HubSpot.com or whatever it was. And he says, hey, we're interested in partnership. Do you want to talk? And I replied, I looked him up on LinkedIn and he said, what's the term for merger and acquisitions in a company? It's a corporate, what's it called? It's like a development, corp dev.

Okay. That's like the, usually that's like the term. And I saw he was on that team on LinkedIn. And I go, hey, James, nice to talk to you. I don't want to waste time on any of this. I don't know what partnership means. Just tell me, are you wanting to buy us or not? And he replied back right away.

He goes, yeah, we're interested. I go, sick. Here's a Google Doc. And here's all of the reasons why you shouldn't buy us. If none of those are deal breakers, then I'll get on the phone with you. And I made this like three-page Google Doc. And I said, if you do diligence, do, when you do due diligence, here's what you're going to find.

And it was nothing major. It was like, our churn is this, our revenue is this, our projections are this. It was nothing major. Like, I had never been sued or anything, so I didn't put anything like that. But it was like, if Google changes, we will be hurt. If, if, if, if, I don't even remember what it was. But it was like, here's all like the risk that we have. So for like BPN, it would be like, maybe last year we had to do a recall or something like that

for this small thing. We fixed it, but if that happens again on a bigger scale, we could be really screwed, whatever it is. So I listed out all those things and he goes, yeah, none of these, none of these things are deal breakers at all. Let's talk. And I go, all right, great. I get on the phone with them and I didn't hire a banker or anything because I like HubSpot. And I made the huge mistake of them saying, what do you think this is worth? And I told them, huge mistake. Don't say the first number. Did they bite right when you said that? Yeah. Yeah, they go, oh, cool, okay. And I was like, shit. That was where hiring a banker would have been good.

But I made a mistake. And then they're like, look, we're interested. And I go, let me put together a preliminary data room. So a data room for the people listening, it's like a business in a box. It's like as much information about the company. Like looking underneath the hood. But it's really hard to do. So I put a preliminary one together.

And they're like, yeah, look, we're interested. Let's sign an LOI, a letter of intent. And when you sign an LOI, that's like, I don't know how many days they usually have, 15 days, 30 days to like really dive deep on the business. And then you get like a term sheet after that, which is like, all right, here's all the details for the deal. We have 90 days to close this deal and to look through everything. And so we got to the term sheet phase. And I was like, sick, this is awesome. And the thing that I didn't realize was because HubSpot is publicly traded, they have a boarded directors.

And so James had a boss who had a boss, who had a boss, who had a boss. who reported to the CEO, which meant that this was going all the way up. And then the CEO tells the board of directors, they go, yeah or nay, we're interested. And when I thought, when I'm selling a company to these guys, I was like, they're going to pull out any minute. This is just, or they're trying to, like, steal from me, or they're trying to just like get information and they're just going to copy me.

And I told them that eventually. And I was like, what do you guys do? And they're like, look, this deal, let's say we're buying it for 30 or 10 millions of dollars, whatever we're paying for it. This means, like, nothing for us. We make, you know, a billion dollars a year. our reputation is worth more than screwing you out of this. So if we get to the, if we bring this to our board of directors,

think about it, dude. Like, I am going to look stupid in front of my boss now, and he's going to look stupid in front of their boss, and she's going to look stupid in front of their boss. If we say we're going to do this, we're going to do this. And I didn't believe that the whole time. And then I got into the company and I like learned how these big companies work. But throughout that 90 day process,

it was just me and my like head of HR, ED, like getting all these, these people all the information, which is terribly hard. A lot of people don't realize how hard that is. I mean, I don't know if you, I know you, I know you maybe have gone through a process for now. I don't know. But like, it's so much information that you have to give. And the thing about selling a company for 30 or 40 million dollars, it's basically the same in a lot of regards to selling a company for three or four billion dollars, because that number isn't small enough that they can say screw it. Let's just wing it. It's big enough that it matters. You know, if this was like a $5 million deal, they'd be like, well, you know, that's not that much money. 30 or $40 million, that's

enough money where it's like, no, we got to nail this. But I don't have the resources of a billion dollar company. It was just me getting all this information. And it was like the most painful thing, the most painful three months, 90 days I've ever experienced. It was really challenging. Is that how long it took to close? 90 days? 90 days. From the first email till no. They emailed me in October and we closed in February. So between October, so whatever 90 days from February 1st is, what's that? December? December. December? December. January, oh, sorry, November. So they emailed me in October, between October, November was the letter of intent. And then at the beginning of that next month, that's when we got our term sheet. And then

that's when the work started. So 30 days from November. Or sorry, 90 days from November. What was your role in the business? What was your title? Were you CEO at this point during this whole transaction? I had just hired. Well, so I was like talking to this guy, have you heard a Motley Fool? I have not. It's like a huge like $500 million a year like media business. I just hired one of their executives to be the CEO. But he wasn't going to start until like December. And I couldn't tell him about this deal because there's a lot of secrecy around acquisitions.

And in big part because HubSpot is publicly traded. So like when I started talking with them, they're like, hey, don't go and buy HubSpot stock. Don't tell anyone that you're doing this. And if they go buy HubSpot stock, that's illegal. They'll get investigated by the SEC. I didn't think about that. Yeah, it's like a big deal. And I had hired the CEO who wasn't supposed to start, but I said to have an offer and he agreed.

And then like two months into talking to HubSpot, I was like, man, I can't, I got to take this deal. I'm sorry. And so technically I was CEO, but I had just hired a CEO who hadn't even started yet. Was stepping down from the CEO role hard for you? Yeah. It's not hard anymore. So I hired a CEO pretty quickly with my new company. But then, yeah, it was hard.

It was hard because like you see like a Mark Zuckerberg or like a. Evan Spiegel and these like young guys who like do it from beginning to end. But those are rare. Those are super rare. And they also have like C-O's who I bet are like close to being a CEO. Bad-ass operators. Yeah. They're like Cheryl Sandberg at Facebook.

You know what I mean? Like she's a billionaire for that reason. And so yeah, it was really hard. I thought like everyone's going to quit. Like everyone's going to think that I'm a pussy. Like this is soft. This is, and turns out that's all wrong. I went through those same things when I sat down from the CEO role.

What did you say to yourself? I mean, it was tough. Like, I thought I was having a midlife crisis. And I remember I posted a book that I was reading from Strength to Strength. I think I DM'd you. You DM'd me and you said, are you having a midlife crisis? I knew you were going through the process of hiring a CEO. And I don't know, I didn't know you.

Yeah. I just was a fan. But I, yeah. And it was tough. tough for me because what I realized is I had these two massive life transitions happen back to back. One, my daughter was born and then, which shook up my world completely. And two, I sat down from the CEO role and moving into just like a founder role, creative director role or creative, chief creative officer role initially. And those two transitions in life just flipped my world

upside down. And I was thinking myself, like, well, what is my purpose now? Like, what is my mission? If, if Kat is now the CEO, what is my true role in the business? And am I providing real impact? Was this the right decision? Was this the wrong decision? So it took me months to kind of fall into my place and find my routine and my rhythm.

But it's one of those things that, like, you know, when you do something for so long, it just becomes part of you. Like I identified with being the founder and CEO. Yeah, and it feels good to like when you walk in some place to say those words. Founder and CEO. Yeah. Yeah. And I self-identified with that for so long.

When I didn't have that anymore, I didn't know what my identity was. And what's also interesting is, you know, when me and my wife were getting married a few years ago, we went through like premarital counseling. And a lot of our issues that we were experiencing. revolved around me just wanting and needing to work all the time. And that's where a lot of our issues were stemmed from. And I remember this one day we were in counseling and I'm explaining like why I need to work all the time, all the things that are going on.

And the therapist goes, Nick, who are you without BPN? And I was like, motherfucker, how dare you? That therapist is like, got him. Got him. I was like, you're fired. But, like, you know, you identify with this title and this role for so long. It was for me, it was a decade that when you give that up and you hand that off to someone else, like you kind of feel lost for a period of time.

Were you also afraid? Like, when I did it, I was like afraid. I was like, someone's going to ruin this and I have all my net worth in there. And like, it's going to be crushed. Like, were you afraid for that reason too? I personally wasn't just because I trusted Kat so much. And I like I was telling you, when that year started, I went into that year not expecting to ever step down from the CEO role.

But it was like right person, right place, right time, where it was a very national, organic transition in conversation. It was literally just like, hey, cat, I want to just focus on creating content and building the brand. And I want to get out of the day-to-day operational efficiencies. And then nuts and bolts. Do you want to take this role? She said, yeah.

So, like, it was this very natural kind of just progression. And can I guess? I want to guess two or three things. One, did you feel like, like, did you feel like who would ever want to do this or like to do this? Like, did you have doubt on that? And two, did you think, oh, my team's going to be so let down. And you announced to them and they were like, oh, thank God.

Like, that's a smart move. We like this more. Yeah. First off, when we announced the cat was taking the CEO role when I was stepping down, the whole team was like, yeah, we saw this coming. We expected this. But were they pumped? Oh, they were so pumped.

Yeah, and I thought people were going to be like, oh, we're bound. And I was like, they were like, oh, thank God. You know what to be? Like, we preferred this. And what was the other question again? Like, I remember, I remember like having self-doubt where I'm like, who's going to want to run this little, you know, $20 million year business. Like, this is nothing. Like, what do you, you came from all these impressive things?

I've been no one. Why would you ever want to do this? And there's a lot of people who love that. Yeah. So I remember when we officially announced and made it live, you know, there's all this like kind of BS. You do in the background as the CEO that you don't want anyone else to have to do because it's just like admin BS. And I was still doing a lot of that because in my head, I'm like, I feel bad handing this off to someone else because it's just admin BS. And then when Kat saw that I was still doing it, she said, what are you doing?

This is my responsibility now. Yeah, but you, trust me, you don't want to do this. Yeah. I'm like, yes, I do. That's exactly my point, which is you think, like, no one's going to want to do this. And it turns out there's people who do love doing that. And they'll probably think the same way about, like, you starting something. And they're like, I can never do this.

Who's, like, crazy enough? And I don't want the criticism of all this stuff. Or with you, all your videos, particularly like, your shirtless and half naked and all of you. You're like, who the fuck once I put all that shit out on the internet? And you're like, oh, I love this stuff. This is awesome. do you find that because in the space that you're in

especially with the new business Hampton you're surrounded by a lot of founders a lot of entrepreneurs I'm assuming a lot of creatives or artists like yourself do you find there's a lot of people who are creative brand builders

who are artists who start something and then naturally that evolves and then becoming this businessman that they don't want to be and they find themselves in this space in this spot where They're unhappy because they're working on things that they don't want to be working on. So Hampton is like a, it's like a peer group.

So basically like if you're a founder of a certain size, you apply, we interview, and you're put into like groups of eight people who have similar sized businesses as you and you meet once a month and it's like group therapy, whatever. It's awesome. But it's like a common business model, YPO, whatever. And I've learned a lot through that. But also I said I, the hustle, we owned conferences. That was the first thing.

And what I used to do is I would tell these people. So we had the founders of WeWork, Casper. away travel, grammarly, I mean, bonobos, like any startup that was popular between 2012 and 2016 probably spoke. We had hundreds, probably 200 people speak. And I got to meet all of them and I would do this lie. Or I would tell them, let's say they had to speak at 3. I'd be like, oh, mic checks at 10 a.m. So you've got to be in the green room then. There's no mic checks at a conference. The mic works. Like, you don't do anything. You just put the lapel mic on your good. But I would do that because I would want to sit. It was a room like this. I would want to sit in the room with them.

and just shoot the shit. And I would be like, one time it was like the founder of WeWork, Casey Nystatt, the founder of away travel, the founder of class pass, and like the founder of like Casper mattresses or something,

all just sitting in a room. And I just like started talking to some one of them. And then I just shut up because I knew I got the conversation going. And people just started complaining about stuff. They would be like, man, this is like one company that was about to go public.

They're like, I'm afraid of, I've had this one person working for me for three years and I'm afraid to fire them because I just, I don't want the confrontation. This other person that had just been written about in the New York Times for their amazing company was like, I'm so stressed out, man.

I don't know if we're going to make it. And I'm like, what? I just read about you. You're supposed to be the best. And so anyway, it was like all these people complaining about shit. And I remember like Sam Yegan, this guy who started OKCupid, who was now the CEO of Match.com. So like a multi-billion dollar company.

They own Tinder, all this other stuff. He was like pacing back and forth, like so nervous to go on stage. And I'm like, dude, like you have more. employees at this company than I think there's like 3,000 people in this stage right now or in the audience. You have like more people who work for you just in New York. What are you nervous about? And doing all this stuff, I remember thinking, A, these people have insecurities and freak out just like I do. And they have the same self-doubt regardless of how big they are. B, most of them, not all of them, most of them are, I'm in the ballpark of intelligence. I'm kind of

smart. I'm not that smart. I'm in that ballpark. There's some people, like the founder of Gramerley, this guy named Max, he's smarter than me. He's got his, he's got more horsepower. That makes sense. Yeah, there's nothing I'm going to do to keep up with that guy. But there's a whole bunch of other people that are worth hundreds of millions and billions of dollars. Like, I met the guy from WeWork. His name is not the main guy, Adam, the other one.

Forget his name. But like, I met him and I'm like, oh man, like, we're, we're close. You may be smarter. You might not, but you're a hundred times wealthier than I am. but you're not a hundred times smarter than me, so I realized that. And then, like, the final thing I think I learned was, like, a lot of the people who are in the position that they are in, they didn't exactly want to be in that,

but they're too nervous to, like, step away or, like, hire someone to do it. And once I realized all of those things, it felt like before I had bad eyesight, and now I have eyeglasses. Like, I could see more clearly. I'm like, oh, man, dude, I just learned from, like, hundreds of people.

And I saw these patterns. So I know that, A, it's cool to high. a CEO. That is the way to go. B, just because you're like raising money is a painful experience, not while you're raising it, but after you have the money. You now have massive expectations. So that's like crazy. So that was a big learning, which is why I prefer not raising money. A lot of startup founders, even if they've raised hundreds of millions of dollars, they're still pretty poor. And if their company doesn't work out after four or five years, all they've made is their $150,000 salary. And they've dedicated eight years to doing their thing. What else was

interesting. But my point being, we're talking about hiring a CEO, like these same like feelings of like inadequacy and all this stuff, it helped me realize that all the people I admire also held had that. And so that made it significantly easier to like make some of these changes in my life. You find there's a, because I found this, there's this this misconception and false expectation that people think that the founders of companies are wealthy, wealthy, wealthy people when in reality, like you're working nonstop for sometimes a pretty conservative salary. Is that the norm? Yeah, yeah. I think, yeah, I think that's the norm. Because if you do the math, like most of them require capital, like particularly what you're in, e-commerce, like, I don't know

your economics, but like in order to supply your Black Friday demand, you have to pay for that, when do you have to pay for that, like in six months in advance? We have like net 30, net 45 term a lot of manufacturers, but we're front-loading inventory in very early on in preparation for a big sale like that. And so I bet you, I don't know for sure, but I bet you there's been a lot of times where your revenue was like $10 million, but you had $50,000 in the bank or something like that. Like, has that ever happened? I mean, now that we have like a really robust financial team and CFO in place, like they

managed cash flow very appropriately. When it was me managing cash flow years ago, yeah, I mean, we were an eight-figure business. and we'd have, you know, $100,000 or $200,000 in the bank, and I was about to pull my hair out, about to lose my mind. Yeah, and so when you think about like, oh, Nick Baers got a business that did $10 million in revenue, but he only has $100,000 in his business account, you're probably only paying yourself $50 or $80,000 a year or less.

And so, like, on paper, you're, you are maybe worth $10 or $20 million, but like, I don't have $10 or $20 million. And so that's, like, pretty common. I have a friend that raised $50 million for his startup. It didn't work out. It went out of business after five years. He got acquired, but it was like an aquire. And the only money that he made was $125,000 a year in salary.

And that's super common. And there's other people, though, who are bootstrap a business, and they can start taking out a lot of money. But it takes like six, seven, eight years, ten years, whatever it takes before you're actually... Like, if you owned 100% of this business, you're at the stage now where you could probably take a meaningful dividend or something, right? I could.

if I wanted to, but I don't. Yeah, if you wanted to. Yeah. And how many years did that take of running the business? We're almost 11 years in. So at what year do you think you could have paid yourself $1 million and you have felt like the business still has enough cash? Maybe a year ago. That's 10 years in.

That's 10 years in. And so a lot of people, and the business is or was, at that point, could have been worth tens of millions. maybe even north of $100 million. And it's like, that's the first year. If we assume that a million dollars is like the threshold of a lot of money, that's the first year that I'm able to like actually see that cash. So like it takes a long time. Not always.

Like digital products are better. So like, you know, if you're selling courses or software, like it can be a lot better. But typically businesses take a long time. Like if you talk to like a restaurant owner, I bet you they don't, even if it's a booming restaurant, they don't get like significant cash flow for like eight or 10 years. still, I mean, it takes a long time to actually turn that asset value into some type of cash. Right. What's your opinion? Because I have a lot of people that reach out to me who want to start businesses and they don't know if they should bootstrap or raise capital initially.

That's a bad question. I think that's a bad question. I think when they say, I'm like, that's like saying like, should you run marathons or lift weights? Two completely different things. Yeah. Well, it's just like, well, what do you want? So the thing about raising money is it's rocket fuel. And rocket fuel doesn't go with cars, regardless of how faster car is or how cool it is. And so you have to ask yourself, like, do I want to build something that's a potential rocket, meaning it could grow at like a really good startup will, I think, what's the equation? It's like it'll triple, triple, triple, double, double.

So the annual growth will triple, triple, triple, and then double, double, double. that's like what you want it to be in order to be a company that could eventually go public in like eight years or whatever that that have you heard that phrase? No, I haven't. So like what that means is like let's say you're in year one you do a 500,000. That means in year two you need to get to 1.5. And then from 1.5, what's triple that? That's 4.5.

4.5. And then you want to, I think, triple it one more time and then double and then double. And then that gets you to like 50 million, I think, in like eight years or six years or something like that. whatever the math is. But it's usually something like that. You have to ask yourself, is this the life I want to sign up for? And if you raise money, raising seed money is a little bit different. So if you raise like 100,000 to maybe a million from a whole bunch of friends and family, if you have a bunch of rich friends, you can get that. That's a little bit different than raising venture capital, which means you now have an institution and they need you to have an exit

in seven years. And they're going to give you $5 million. And then in three more years, they want to give you $20 million. And for those people, you're one. You're one. of a hundred bets that they've made and they need you to either go out of business or sell so they can make 10 to 50 times their money in seven years. And as a founder, you have to ask yourself, like, which mission do I want to sign up for? And so I think it's like, should I raise or should I not raise? It's like, well, I don't know. Like, there's arguments for both are important. Uber wouldn't exist if they didn't raise money. Facebook, probably not. But like Ben and Jerry's will exist without raising money.

So, like, that's pretty sick, too. I'd like to own that. Or, so it's like which one, which mission do you want to sign up for? I also think that when they are just starting out of asking which, should you raise money or not money, should you raise money or not? I think that's a bad question because I think it's,

why don't you just build an initial product or some version of a product to prove that you have something that people even want in the first place and then figure out if you want to raise money or not. I want to go back to, you know, when you're in that green room with all these founders, Casey Nystad was there. He's a wild man. He's wilder in real life than he is on camera. In what way?

He's just bouncy. He was just full of energy. When he spoke at like 10 in the morning. He had already ran 10 miles. And he was just like jumping around. And like there was like a piece of duct tape. There was like a weird backstage. Just imagine a theater.

So there's like stuff all over the place. like there's a roll of duct tape. And he like grabs it and he starts like pulling the duct tape out and like he rips off a piece and he smacks it on his shirt. And if you go and watch his talk, he's got a piece of duct tape on here. And I'm like, dude, can you please pay attention? Make eye contact with me, please. Like look me at the eye.

I need to tell you what to do how this thing works. He's just jumping around. He's just like and then afterwards, these like three volunteers that were working with me and he goes, hey, I'm about to go fly back on this private jet. Do you guys want to go with me? And they go, yeah, let's go. And they just bail. They took off their, like, t-shirt that I gave them.

They just, like, got the plane with them. And I was like, sick, thanks, guys. Dude, that's spontaneous that I need in my life. Dude, he is like that. Gosh, dang. But anyway, sorry, you were asking about that room. Yeah, so that room, if IQ wasn't the clear separator of these people who are massively successful, one of the larger organizations, what is the competitive advantage that these people possess?

So I actually don't want to, I used to downplay this, but it's true. which is luck. Luck's real. Like, there's luck with timing. It could be as big as you're born in this time and you're healthy, but like luck's real. So, like, some of them launched businesses. Like, there's this guy, Alex, who started this company called The Athletic. You know the Athletic? No.

It's like a subscription sports website that sold for like $700 million to New York Times. Oh, wow. He created a subscription, like, news website when people were finally willing to pay for online news. Or there was like the founder of Thread Up, which is like a website where you can sell used clothing.

And he launched it at the right time when eBay was losing steam and women wanted to sell used clothing online. So like there's a little bit of luck that way, regardless if he like researched it or not. But besides that, I would say like just courage. So they just realized

that they're scared regardless, but they do it anyway. So I think that that's like, I used to think that they're just like braver or smarter when it's like, no, you're still freaking out. You just do it anyway. Was there anything other significant things? I mean, that's what I found. Like, the reason I started BPN is one, I had this passion for this thing, this space,

but I was also very ignorant, the risks that I was taking. So you can call it courage, but also it's just an ignorance. Ignorance is a thing. And I was about to say that, which is like, have you ever heard, like, I remember hearing this old pitch, they interviewed, there's a firm. Seattle called Madonna, I think. And Jeff, they were the first investors of Amazon. And they said during his pitch, Bezos goes, you know, if this goes well, I think we can make a hundred million dollars a year. And that was like his pitch. And I've noticed that that's actually a common theme.

I remember talking like to the Casper guys and to all these other companies. And they're like, we thought it could be like a thing. We didn't know if it was going to be like this big, but we just like didn't really care. We're like, let's just get to this next step. You know, there's this phrase that we is called A, B, Z, is like, Z is like, one day, maybe it can become like a $20 billion company that were sold in all the stores and will change

the way people sleep. But right now, let's just see if we can get to like $10,000 in sales. And then the B of that is let's just see, maybe after that we'll figure out if we can get to $500,000 in sales. But anything between B and Z, we'll figure it out as we get there. And there's typically that

attitude I've noticed of it's like, I don't know, let's just get into this and we'll see what happens and we'll figure as we go. That's like a pretty common attitude versus like writing a business plan. You know what I mean? Yeah. I was listening to a podcast, actually this past weekend when I was on run. You listen to a podcast when you run? I do. I recently started doing it and it's usually if I'm prepping for a podcast. So this was a podcast you were on. It was the one I was explained to you was that live podcast with Noah Neville. And one thing that was mentioned in that live podcast was this concept of creative freedom is greater than optimized

growth. And I was reading a book a few months ago. I can't remember what book it was off the top of my head. It might have been traction, actually. I think it was traction. It was when we were implementing EOS into our business. Yeah, which is awesome. And I was reading traction. It talked about how there were these guys who started this business and they got it to $10 million. And they capped it at $10 million. dollars. And all these people came in and said, you can take this business to $100 million. And the founder said, yeah, but I don't want to because I enjoy where I'm at right now. I think a lot of people think that they have to start this thing and take it to the moon. But there's a certain inflection point where you sacrifice creative freedom for optimized growth.

Can you kind of just riff on that for a little bit? And at what point did you feel like you were losing creative freedom for optimized growth with the hustle? My creative freedom, I screwed it up. When I started my company, how old were you and started yours? 22. I was 24, 25. And like, I don't know about you, but like the person who you are at 24, it's not like a fully developed. You don't have your fully, you're still like learning which what you're, what you stand for and what you don't stand for.

100%. And you're trying on new. hats and whatever. The thing I screwed up with my company was like I started out one way of like I said I want to we want to create 10,000 jobs. That was my goal. And I was like, I will just hire tons of people. And then I was like, there's like five other things that I wanted us to do. And then I realized a year in, oh, I don't want to do that at all. I had already hired some people who think that that that's what I want to do. And I didn't have the balls or the courage to like put my foot down and be like, nope, this is what we stand for. Instead, it was like, I just want to appeal to the most amount of people. And that's when

I lost some of the juice. And that's when I screwed up of wanting to appeal to everyone and like not having the courage to like say, this is what I am. And that's one of the reasons why Dave Portnoy at Barstool, who I don't even like that much. But I respect that like he said, this is what we are. This is what we stand for. And I'll look like a fool defending this. And that's kind of like where I screwed up a little bit of when we got bigger. I got more PC. And, and, you know, And I got like more, I told you a story about how like I wanted to get rid of our cleaners because I wanted everyone to clean for themselves to make them feel bought in. And they like had a mutiny.

And I gave in. A strong leader doesn't give in and said, nope, this is what we stand for. If you don't like it, get out. And then what that means is like the people who are really into it are into you even more. And I did a really bad job of doing that. And that's when sometimes we lost our ways a little bit. You know what I mean? Yeah.

Where you don't like put your foot down. It's like, I don't know. you actually seem better than this than I am, but like I kind of sucked at having like hard conversations. And like I would, I just wouldn't good at it. Partially because I was young and partially because I didn't have the tool, the tools on how to do that.

I mean, hard conversations. I mean, those would keep me up at night. But same. Like I was telling you earlier, I was like, if when you get a Slack that says we need to talk,

that's like the worst. Like I don't go to bed. I'm like, what is he going to say to me? He's definitely quitting. Like, and I would freak out. But you seem pretty good at that where you're like,

this is what we are. This is what we stand for. We are doing this. You seem like you are, I'm pretty, I could, earlier in my career, I was easily influenced. You don't seem easily influenced. Is that right? I had to learn through failure with that. So we started initially.

I knew exactly who we were, what we stood for, what we were going to do, what we were going to build. And I would say like two years ago, I realized, okay, I think we've tapped out this, this movement. we need to... What was the movement? It was just like, grittier, uh, more in your face,

intense, disruptive type all around go on more. Like, if you don't, if you don't believe in this mission, in this message, like hardcore, like,

more hardcore, more intense. Athlete guys. Yep. And I got to a point, maybe like two years ago, I was like, okay,

well, we need to be more approachable to appeal to a larger audience. I think you had an ad that I saw where it was like, was there like a bunch of weight lifters and they're like mutants? Yeah, uh, yes. It was, uh, the banned substance. Um, big earthy arms ad. Yeah. And that was like, that was kind of hardcore. Yeah, that was that was badass. Like that was BPN. And we got off course a little bit because what I found is, you know, you hire more people and those people bring in perspectives and thoughts and opinions and they start injecting that. And if, if you don't keep a really tight lane, like a left

and right limit on on brand, on creative, on messaging, it will go all over the place. And there was a point about two years ago where our messaging started going all over the place. Like, who are we actually trying to message to? Are we trying to go too broad? And recently we've ruled it back in of we are a hybrid athlete brand. We were going after the hybrid athlete. Did you make up that thing?

I didn't make it up, but like the story behind the hybrid athlete is, In 2018, I was writing a training program just to share with my audience for free. And it's when I just started running. So up until that point, like historically, I was a strength bodybuilding athlete. And I just recently started running. I was training for a marathon. So I was adding mileage into my training programs. And I was sharing with the people who followed me what and how I was training.

So I wrote this program out, and right before I launched it, like literally probably an hour before I put it on the website, I was like, what do I call this thing? Well, it was a cross between running and lifting. I heard hybrid before. Let's just call it hybrid athlete training. You didn't make this, this trend. I wasn't sure if this was like a common thing that you discovered and you just made popular or this is like an invention. Because I hear people say hybrid athlete all the time now. I didn't create it.

There was a gentleman years before me who wrote a book on it that I recently found out about. So I'm not going to take credit for creating it. So you created it and you thought you did. I thought I did. That's cool. I would argue that I gave it a lot of exposure. Oh, for sure. And definitely like pioneered it in these past couple years.

Are you going to make Nick, what's it called Nick Bear training? What do you call it? Just Nick Bear Fitness. Are you going to make that into its own big thing? Or are you just going to let that run in the background, you think? Of like training programs? Yeah. I think I'm going to let it run in the background.

Like as I'm evolving in my. personal and professional career. I don't want to just be known as the fitness guy. I don't want to be known as just this guy who can run fast and lift heavy and like this hybrid athlete. What do you want to be known as then? I want to be evaluated and judged more on like my thoughts and opinions rather than my body. Guys, I'm not just this hot guy. Yeah, I mean, it sounds like...

I'm not this hot ripped, amazing looking person. It sounds shallow, but at the same time, like, you know, know what I spent the last decade plus building, it's more than just what I eat and how I train. And you can only do so many races. You can only do so many competitions. You can only talk about this stuff for so long. How big is the team of doing that? Like my personal team. Uh-huh. The fitness stuff. So my personal team is two people. It's Jordan who you met. Yeah. And then Ian. So you have a, this quote, side hustle is like a great, that's a great business. It is, yeah. I mean, it's like I have BPN. We kind of talk about this. Like, I have BPN where I spend a lot of my time and energy. And then the fitness business, which is a separate LLC, Nick Bear Fitness LLC. That's where I have like all of my content creation and generation, my fitness training app. Any partnerships.

Is BPN pay you to advertise on Nick Baer? No. Okay. So you just do it for free. Yep. Okay. Because there's an incentive for me to grow the business. Like I am the founder. owner. I just was wondering if there's some like interesting tax things where where you could like, I don't know, pay your, you could pay you're that LLC instead of you taking out a salary. Yeah. I'm sure there is. But you don't care. It goes back to like, I don't want to complicate it. I just want to keep building with my head down because it's what I love doing. But yeah, that's like kind of where I'm out right now with like fitness is like my identity. It is and always will be part of my life But I do want to be more than that

I want to be a role model I want to be a role model Yeah that's my goal is Yeah I'm working on a second book right now What was that going to be called? Do you know? It's going to be called going more What was the first one called?

25 hours a day Okay Yeah I saw you doing all the promotion It was weird seeing you Without a hat on with your hair combed And I was like Why does this guy got a fucking shirt on And it has a collar

What the hell is? Shirt on with no hat It's it's uncomfortable I think I saw you in Fox or something. I'm like, what is that plaid stuff on his body? Is that a shirt? It's rare. I thought it was weird.

I was like, why are his knees covered? I've never seen it. What are those things? Is that pants? Cowboy boots on too. I know. I liked it. But you looked weird.

You look different. I'm not used to seeing you like that. Is there anyone else like dead or alive who you look to? And you're like, I'm going to take, I'm going to learn. I'm going to take attributes from these people and apply them to myself. No one off the top of my head, but I'll listen to a lot of books and a lot of podcasts, and I'll take bits and pieces from everything. Like one book that I'm reading right now that I'm really enjoying, it's called The Courage to

Be Disliked. Yeah, I just bought it. Oh, you did? Because it was about having hard conversations because I suck it in negotiating. It's a great. Have you started it yet? No, I literally just got it last night. It's great.

Because I told someone I was like, dude, I suck it negotiating. I just say yes to everything because I'm so uncomfortable. And they said that book. It's a great book. I listen to it when I'm running and it's essentially at the point I'm in the book right now it's a conversation between this philosopher

and this younger gentleman and they identify that the world in itself is simple but we make it complex and all the issues that we experience are interpersonal relationship issues. I mean this is like prime example of being a business owner

or an entrepreneur. It's like all the issues you experience especially as you get larger and bigger are with employees, agencies, other people. Yeah, once you get past like 30 employees, it's like you as a CEO or leader, it's not so much that you're focused on products. You're more so just like a therapist and a collector of people. Right.

Like your whole job is just to collect people and put them in the right seats. And that's basically, and then delete people if they, if they don't fit anymore. At what point in the hustle did you start feeling this? How many employees? 15 people probably. 15? Yeah, but now with. Like with Hampton, we're small.

Our whole thesis is let's try to overpay, like let's pay a lot in salary and things like that in creative place. If someone would want to work there for five or ten years versus like the average tenure at Facebook is like 18 months or something. It's like nothing. And to hire less people if possible, but we'll still need to hire. I mean, I think that business can get to $100 million in revenue with 50 people. but once you have a little bit of money and like once I made money I realized a few things. One, when I was running my first company, it was all my money in the business. And I was thinking, if this doesn't work, I'm broke.

And so I was very defensive at times when I should have been offensive. So there was days where or months where like Facebook ads were doing great for us. I should have just poured way more into that. But instead I was like, no, we can't ever have less than a million dollars in the bank. Because it's your net worth. Yeah. And I was too defensive and that screwed it up. I should have been way offensive. So one of my best friends now is named Austin Reef. He runs a company called Morning Brew, which was our competitors. We were basically, they were one year ahead of us or older than us. And we were tracking the same way. So like our revenue was something like 500,000 to 2.2 million to like 7 million to 12. And then we were going to do 20 the year we sold. And they were like doing the same thing where they went from like they did almost those same numbers, but they went from like 20. to like 40 and then to 70 and now this year they'll do 85 million

and they're probably worth $250, $300 million. And now we're while I was running the company I hated him because there's my enemy so I was like now I must crush you but now that we're no longer enemies he's a great guy and I like him a lot

and he would tell me now we'll like reveal exactly how we were running our businesses because it didn't matter and he was like yeah you guys I noticed you pulled back on your ad spend we went harder because we got better tax that month. And that's when we actually got ahead of you in terms of subscriber base. And I was like, I screwed up so much, like being too defensive. And so now that you have a little

bit of money. Were they also bootstrapped or were they funded? Yeah, same thing. He just had a finance background. And so he was more emotionally like, this is not like to me, I was like, that's a million dollars. For me, that's like my future house. For him, it was like, this is just capital allocation. So to me, it's just a spreadsheet where it's like, well, if I, put this much money into, if I have a machine that turns $1.50 into $1.50, like, I'm just going to empty my money bucket into that machine because why wouldn't I? He thought about it more logical where I was, I was significantly more emotional. But now that I have like a little bit of something and it's like, well, if this business doesn't work out, I'm still rich. Like, I'm fine.

I don't need this shit. Now that I have that attitude, it's kind of like when you like meet a girl. When you meet a girl and you don't try and you don't really want to meet her, he likes you more. And you end up having a better chance of actually being with her. Whereas when you're desperate, she don't want you. You know what I mean? And so I kind of treat my money that way in business where I'm like, I don't need you. If this works, great. If it doesn't work, whatever, I'm fine. And now I make way more because we're talking about like employees and things like that. But basically like now I realize that, A, having more money to invest in stuff, I care less, which makes me more successful, actually. But B, earlier on, and then,

that life cycle of Hampton, I realized I'm a collector of people and I could afford to hire people. Whereas with the hustle, I was afraid to like, because a good employee, even the best employee needs three months to ramp up and like produce anything. Most people take them probably six months. But now I'm like, no, no, no, I just have to collect the best people and I put them in the right position and then they'll figure it out. And I realize that, you know, I have failed a bunch before I kind of realized that was the answer. Other than kind of your ability to take more risk and then be less emotional with business decisions. What else are you doing with Hampton that you learned from building the hustle? What's making this business model more fun or easier?

Hiring people that match culturally. So like before it was like anyone who was willing to take a chance of me and come and might join my company. I was like, oh please thank you. Like I need you. Now it's like this is what we stand for. You either in or you ain't. You know what I mean? I have a tattoo up of my pirate ship. And it's like, you either get on the pirate ship and these are the values that you're on board with or everyone else. We don't care. We're just going to sail right by you. And so with this company, we're doing a better job of seating out people earlier on.

Like, I'm not a very political person, but like this wokeness of like entitlement that I experienced in San Francisco and I experience a lot in New York. Like people complaining about things that I think are. not worthy of complaining. They're not like particularly real issues. And so like seating out people who I think who are geared towards that and getting them out of the interviews, like getting them out of the system right away. Yeah. That's important. So like cultural stuff. I always thought culture was like a weak word. I'm like, what the fuck is culture? Now I realize that's, it's totally not true. Like that is really important. And so figuring out what values you stand for and not letting people who aren't on board with those values, not letting them on on board of your shit.

is really actually important. That's not some fluffy stuff. That's actually really important. We implemented EOS in the business this past year. And part of implementing EOS is this people analyzer tool that you use. So first you analyze everyone and make sure they fit the brand values. And then you also analyze them based off their position if they get it, want it, and have the capacity to do it.

and I was having a conversation with Seth Godin, he was on the podcast two weeks ago. Oh, cool. And one of the things that he said is turnover is okay. And as a business owner, you're always thinking you want the lowest turnover possible. And he's like, no, turnover is okay. Because if I'm steering this ship and that ship is the business and we're going from, say, Florida to New York, but the ship that you want to get on is going from Florida to California, you're in the wrong ship. or at least you got to bounce part way through.

Exactly. So if you stay on the wrong ship for too long, you're going to build resentment, you're going to be anger. And it's okay. Like that someone has a tour of duty for one or two years. Completely okay. That's totally okay.

Before I was like, no, why aren't you on board with this for life? You know, blood in, blood out. Why aren't you on this? It's like, where's your loyalty?

Yeah. And before I was like, no, no, man. Like, it's cool that you don't care as much as I care. I don't expect you to. Yeah.

Another big thing that I've changed with this business is pricing. So a lot of first-time entrepreneurs, they care about, like, product and stuff like that, which is important, but not enough about marketing and distribution. So, like, getting eyeballs and customers. And in doing that, you, like, one crazy thing that a lot of first-time founders do, which is what I did is you price your product too cheap because you're like, I want everyone to be able to afford this, whatever. But then you can't fucking acquire a customer. And so with Hampton, I picked a more higher-end product, a higher-end offering, and I charge more. higher-end audience. And I charge more so I could provide better value versus at the hustle, we would sell, like, you know, we made, so the hustle was a daily newsletter. And we were one of

the handful of companies that kind of invented like advertising in an email. There's no such thing as like an ad network for email, at least when we started there wasn't. So we helped kind of pioneer that. But then we also had this thing called Trends, which was like a paid subscription service. And it was $300 a year, which is like $25 a month. And I was like, oh, that's great. a year. Then I realized, like, dude, it's hard. Like, in order to build that into a business that make, like, you'd have to have 100,000 customers in order to get to $30 million. That's fucking impossible. That's a lot of people. That's a lot of people. And most people who have, like, ideas for apps, I'm like, hey, just, just so you know, like, let's just map this out. To get to

100 million in revenue, which is, like, the threshold of where you need to be in order to raise, like, $20 million. You need 10 million people to get this. Tell me how you're going to get 10 million people. Like, it's impossible. It's, like, really hard. There's a reason there's only like seven social apps that exist that are actually sustainable. And some of them are barely sustainable. Twitter, you know, barely sustainable. Whereas there's tens of thousands of enterprise companies you've never fucking heard of that are quietly in the background making hundreds of millions of dollars because they're able to hire a Salesforce and sell a product that's tens of thousands of dollars a year.

And so like with this company, I wanted to sell something that I could actually like invest enough money to make the service good. you know what I mean? In order to make the service good, I had to charge a lot of money. Like, you guys probably hate your low cost products, I'd imagine. It's probably like the biggest pain in the ass for you guys. Is that true? Yeah, I mean, it makes customer acquisition cost difficult, but because we have such strong retention and loyalty and return customer rate, our lifetime value is very large. It's like we can afford higher, you know, cack, but still like, you know, when I initially launched BPN, my competitive advantage, because I had no overhead,

literally it was just me in my apartment. I was looking at my margins. I was like, well, I can charge this because nothing goes into it. Then you hire more people and you get offices and, you know, insurance and all this stuff. You're covering people's benefits. You realize there's a lot more that goes into this product. So we've had to raise prices over the years, especially with inflation and supply chain concerns and issues. You aren't on the cheap end. I buy your stuff at Central Market. I think I paid 50 bucks.

How much did I pay there? 45. For protein? Yeah. It's probably like 4499. Yeah. But like a lot of first time young entrepreneurs, they think no one can afford this.

And like, you know, guys like yuppies like me, I'm like, no, dude, I want that, I want the good shit. I'm going to pay for it. And that's a significantly better market in most cases than you know, the cheapest stuff. Yeah, I mean, we've gone after quality. That's why we get everything tested for banned substances.

That's why we source quality ingredients. A lot of those are trademarked studied ingredients. It's like we don't cut any corners, but that obviously comes with a much larger cost of goods for us. But that's smart that you notice that because most people don't notice that. They just say, I want to charge the least amount, because I want the least amount of friction. Yeah.

But it's kind of, it's kind of, the inverse is actually true, which is like kind of the higher it is, the more you buy into it. How are you finding your acquiring customers now with Hampton at a higher price point? Is it word of mouth or you in paid ads? No payout, paid ads. The only paid ads we do are, if you Google the word Hampton, we have to buy the ad words because we're not, our SEO isn't good enough to even show up because the URL is six months old or whatever. But my podcast, you know, we get anywhere from, sometimes it could be 150,000. thousand downloads per episode, 200,000 downloads per episode. And then our YouTube will get hundreds of thousands of downloads per episode sometimes. So basically I built it, I built it privately for six months or so. And I got it to like, I don't remember how much revenue, but millions of dollars. It was just me and one guy did it. And I took all the calls and I interviewed

people and put them in groups, whatever. And the website was hampton.com. So like, we started with no money. And then I launched, I wanted to make sure the product work. and everything was working well. And I also wanted to prove myself I could do without my audience. Now that I have an audience, the day I announced it on Twitter and my pod,

we had 5,000 applicants and we will not accept all 5,000 of them. We'll only accept a very tiny fraction of them. And all 5,000 probably don't even want to join, but 5,000 times 8,500, you know, that's like $45 million. What is that? Yeah, like $40 million in demand

or something like that. So having an audience, like is like game changing. I mean when you launch a product on your what's your biggest driver of traffic, YouTube or Instagram? Me personally. They're they're pretty split. Oh really? Yeah. Wow. So that's amazing because it's so much easier to just make an Instagram post and it is a YouTube video. But what if when you launch like I forget what you guys is new as product was maybe field bars? We just launched a key lime pie of weight protein. Okay. When you do a announcement on YouTube or Instagram does it drive just a shitload of sales?

It used to. Did you have a million dollar day? Have we had a million dollar day? Yeah. Yes. From you? No, not just for me. You think you could?

If I just went on and made a post right now, no. But it'd have to be like a synchronized kind of lead up. Like a launch. Yeah, but like the brand has also gotten to a point where it's, it's not reliant on me anymore. That's magic, right? It's, it's exactly like, I mean, it took me three or four. four years to get to that point. But like, we can launch something and I don't have to post anything or talk about it.

And it does just as well, just by the brands, you know, email marketing, SMS, paid organic platforms. But, dude, having an audience is so valuable. It's so valuable. Do you think that this would have worked without you doing the YouTube thing? From the beginning? Yeah. Absolutely not.

Yeah. So I am a big fan of audiences. And I'm a big fan of audiences. in monetizing in non-influencer ways. So, like, a lot of people will get popular, and then they'll sell ads, which is what my company did. But instead, I think you should launch businesses to your audience.

And I think that that's a really interesting move. Originally, it was only a handful of people doing it, like the Kardashian type of people, Rihanna. But, like, now we're seeing a bunch of people do it. Like, because you're famous, you have this little side business that does awesome and you don't even, like, think about it. You know what I mean?

That's just spending money and it's a lot of money. I think that more people should build audiences and sell real products. And I think that's like you're going to see a lot more people doing that. And I think it should be more popular than it is. With Hampton, what is like, you know, you said you had 5,000 applicants, but not all of them are going to be selected. What is kind of like your minimum requirements? Yeah. So the minimums are at least $2 million in revenue or $5 million in funding or you've sold a business for at least $5 million.

Most businesses that are average revenues. is about 25 million. So we prefer like the 10 to 20 million, but there are some people who are just starting out, but they've previously sold the company for like $30 million. So it's like, yeah, you could do it. So we're not going to- There's always founders or executives too. So right now it's CEOs or founders only. Maybe we can do that other like CFOs, chief legal, whatever. So you have to meet those minimum threshold requirements. Number two, you have to be digital first. So you have to be, you don't have to be like a tech company in that like Casper or BPN is not technically a tech company, but you guys are speaking the same language.

We're talking about CAQ, things like that. So it's got to be a digital business. And then we interview everyone and you can't be an asshole. So if you meet all those, then oftentimes we'll send you an invite. So my business is a community-based business. It's like a peer-based business. I got the inspiration because have you heard of a Vistage? No.

They do this. They've been around since the 50s. They were doing like 400 million in revenue and like 150 million in EBITs. and they sold two years ago for like one point something billion. Some red iron capital or some PE firm. Because these businesses,

if you set it up and you empower the community, they kind of run themselves. And so when I was starting this business, have you heard of Iiki guy? I haven't. No. It's like a Japanese concept. And so visualize this, almost like a Venn diagram

that kind of looks like the Olympic rings. But there's four rings. And it's what the world wants. what the world is willing to pay for, what you're good at, and what you like to do. And the ideal situation is to find something in the middle that overlaps with all of those things. And so you seek out things. And so for me, I was like, well, I like entrepreneurship. I like community building. I don't want to do a low-end product because I don't want to have to go for the masses. And I want to create a business that could become a billion-dollar company just because of ego reasons.

And that excites me. It's like you wanting to run a sub three-hour marathon. It's just some goal you made up and it's exciting. And so I came up with this business based off of a bunch of research where I'm like, I think this business is one of those businesses where people will like dismiss just like newsletters. So like the hustle, that could have been a hundred million dollar your company. I sold too early, but I know it could be because my friend is doing it now. And with this business, I was like, I'm not going to sell early this time.

And I think I can make it into a billion dollar company. And I wanted to pick something that people would kind of dismiss and not think could be a cool company. I'm like, no, I can do the math. I know this can get there. Like physics allows this to work and the market is big enough. It just can I execute. So that's one of the reasons why.

And it also fit all of my like wants and needs and skill set and things like that. That's why I like this business model. I think it's really cool. Is that requiring a lot of your time right now? Most of your time? The first six months, it was a hundred hour, hundred hour weeks. I hired a CEO. So now I'm more like come and hang out with you and do things like this.

But I really have to put most of my focus on my podcast because having it, that audience is essential for building the brand. So that's where I spend most of my time actually is on content creation. Same shit as you. When you were running your company, how many hours a day were business building versus content creation? I mean, at the peak of it, like when we really started to grow before I stepped down from the CEO role, I would say two to three hours a week was content.

Oh, that's insane. The rest was all meetings, calls. What a waste, right? and I just wasn't happy. You know, like... That's such a waste of like... Because there's literally only one person who could do what you did content-wise,

but probably 50 people, or there's probably three people just in your organization who could have done the other stuff. Yeah, and that's like, having that realization, that's when I was like, I gotta get out of this role.

I got to get back to creating me because spent the last decade creating and building this audience and community, and that is leverage for the brand. Were you editing your videos early on? Early on, up until two,

2019 I was editing. No shit. Oh my own videos. That's so much work, isn't it? To be honest, I still, I just recently started jumping back into some edits. And Jordan, my creative director. And you actually know how to use like the software? Yeah, it's because I actually enjoy it.

Like, Jordan gets so mad at me because I try to hop back in the edits. And he's like, dude, you shouldn't be doing that. But part of me like likes getting back in the edits once in a while. But up until 2019, I was editing for those first seven years. I edited all my stuff. How long did my video take to edit? And BPN stuff. One YouTube video would take, I mean, it could take three hours.

It could take seven hours. Dude, that's insane. I took them, your Leadville thing was like a movie. That was amazing. That took way longer. But I took Casey Nice to add a course called monthly, monthly. Is it called monthly? It's like a platform where you learn something in a month.

And he did a video course and I took it. And I made like a video. And I was like, dude, I don't, I don't enjoy this editing. You think that these YouTubers is just coming up with good ideas. It's like, no, man. You got to like practice. like it's like an art form, like sit there in that computer and do that.

Like, I don't like that. But I love like his edits. And I'm like, oh, that's so simple. Like, anyone could do that.

And then I start doing it. I'm like, this guy's Picasso, man, I can't do it. He's good. He's good. And your stuff was good too.

Your edits were great. And like, you start like, when I was like trying to make these videos for fun, you don't realize that like you're doing like, I don't even know what you're doing. Dozens or even hundreds of clips per thing. And you got to like find them and chop them up.

It's hard work. I didn't realize how hard that was. I mean, like, I can edit a video now, but it's nowhere close to, like, for example, what Jordan and Ian can do. Like, I can't create the videos that they create. My editing is more, like, baseline, just, like, storyboarding and putting clips together and cutting and adding music. Did you study, like, build up tension here, release tension, build it up again here,

like, get to the arc. Like, did you, like... No. Like, what I would do, like, the way I learned editing was actually through Casey. So I found Casey's videos, Casey's Nistad's videos, when I was, I was in Korea in 2016. And

I found Casey. I was in Korea. I had all this free time. So I would go out into Seoul and I'd film stuff similar to the way Casey would film and then I would edit it similar to the way Casey would edit. And that's how I learned how to put videos together. I remember seeing you like slam a cabinet and like

do all these like what transitions. Yeah. And he like had these like really like of him hitting shit. Yeah. You know what I mean? So like that's how I, learned how to edit. But, like, I would just feel out the story. It's like I would, the way I edit now is like, I'll put together like 30 seconds and

I'll go back and watch it. And I'll think in my head, okay, like, where should this story? Where should this video go next? Is this going to lose people? Is it going to gain attention? It's going to get people excited. So I would use music and clips and, like, transitions and storytelling to keep people engaged because I learned that through Casey.

But there wasn't like a. I need to create this story out of this video. Our team does that really good. A good job with that, like, the Leadville Dock. That took them, I think, eight weeks to edit because it's telling this story that, like, brings in the audience. Yeah, and you guys did a good job of having, like, a premiere and stuff. Yeah, it was...

I watched it. Like, when I said down on my TV, I watched it. That was probably the best video we've ever produced, put out. I mean, there was so much work that went to that. This team was climbing mountains. I got at the top at Hope's Pass, which is like a three-mile climb up like 3,000 feet, and the video team was at the top of Hope's Pass.

I was like, how'd you guys get up here? They were like, we climbed. That's insane. For this one shot. But yeah, there was so much work that went into that video. How many times are you getting recognized? Like when you walk through Austin, is it guaranteed that someone's going to say, what's up?

Pretty good, pretty good chance. But it's cool because people would just say, I go on more. that's typically what it is when I'm running downtown on Lady Bird Lake Loop I'll see going more hats BPN gear

or I'll just hear someone yell going more across the trail would you super cool that's badass right how many podcast guests do you have I was telling you earlier and I thought you maybe thought I was bullshit but I was like no I watch all your stuff

like I know I know what's going on you're like saying yeah we're doing this I'm like yeah I know I watched the video I already know you're expanding I appreciate that Like, I know it all. Do a lot of your guests, like, actually pay attention to all your stuff? No, not most. So, like, usually when people come in, like, I have to give context and explain

of, like, how we built this and how we got to this point. Sometimes people come in, they're like, oh, I thought this was just, like, a podcast studio and you, like, ran a small supplement shop in the back. No, like, I've been building this business for 11 years now. Like, I put everything into this thing. That's why, like, building an audience is important is because you get, like, you can get so bought in to this shit. And then I was like, well, I bought BPN just because I'm like, well, I actually didn't look at the labels. I don't know anything about it, but I know what Nick stands for. Therefore, like, I just trust that he is doing the right thing and it's like a safe

product. You've talked about the difference between an audience and a community. Yeah. And you've used those two words multiple times throughout this, this conversation so far. Can you say like building an audience is really important, but also having a community is just as important. Can you talk about the two, which to focus on. So people use that all the time, and they change them all the time. And I'm like, no, it's actually a huge difference. And it's really important because it's a tap, it's a very, it's like a tactical difference. So

an audience is one to many. It's Nick posting videos. It's Sam hosting a podcast. A community is many to many. And that, and it has to have like a location in which that's happening, whether it's physical or digital. And the way that you know you have one

or the other is quit creating content for a month and come back and what happens or with a community, you quit making, you, the creator, quit making stuff for a month and you should come back and you should have more. It should be more content, more interactions than when you left. It should grow like exponential, exponentially because it's many to many. And they're a really big difference because when I started the hustle, I kind of started it like you where it was like my name was tied to the brand and that sucks because it's actually great because it makes it easier to start but it sucks to scale and to sell because the people are like well whems if you leave so you have to do a good job of getting beyond you but the reason I wanted a community and not an audience was like I want

it to run itself and to work on its own and so you sort of had of a community at least I haven't explored all your stuff maybe hybrid athlete the app might have one but it's like if you quit creating content. I don't think that BPN's not going to go away, but like Nick Baer's relevance will be, just like Casey Nyset's relevance has gone away. And he has to do all the work to create that. Like if he isn't filming something and he's in his videos, it's less, it's not him to me. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Versus like if you create a subreddit and people are active in it and they're just talking about their own shit, then that you don't have to be there at all and your brain could still live on. You know what I mean? So what ways can creators build

communities outside of say your traditional Facebook group? Well, I would say you don't have to have a community. So like don't do it just because you want to do it or because you think you need to do it. The thing about community is like the creator has to be very actively involved in the beginning and then can really quickly get out. But I think Facebook groups are an awesome first place. I like, I used to think Slack was horrible for building communities. Now if you're building a professional community. I think it's the way to go. All the young kids for like anything Gen Z related use, I don't know what's it called Discord. Discord. I can't find I'm too old.

I haven't gotten on it yet, but I've heard everyone talk about it. I can't figure it out. It's like, it looks like Slack, but it's way more complicated. What's another good way to build a community? I think that most people who they think of building a community, they'll build their own website and have a forum. Dude, that's so hard to do. That's really challenging to pull that off. Most users don't go just to a website in order to like interact on the forum. It's really hard to do. And the people who've pulled that off, they're very valuable. It's a very valuable business. I've actually heard you mentioned that on a podcast you're on. And it was really good timing because we built out the BPN training app this past year. And within that app version two that

we were going to build that I got priced out and did a full discovery on was a Reddit type thread or community board within the app and we were going to start building this out and I was like I don't know if we should build this out yet then I heard your podcast talking about that and I was like we'll pump the brakes. Dude people, it's just hard. It's just like if you look at your own behavior

like there's probably only a handful of those things that you go to that you actually like have a username and you actually like the thing about a community is it's like a marketplace and a good marketplace has liquidity meaning there's a the balance of so like eBay you sell a car you have a car someone who wants to buy a car

liquidity means you need people to be buying lots of cars and for new buyers to keep coming and new cars to keep coming. To make a community work that means you need lots of people posting content and lots of people consuming content and then more people posting and reacting

and then more people consuming that type of thing. Most communities like have like a 0.5 or a 1% contribution rate, contributor rate. Meaning, if you have 100 active users, maybe one or two or three people will be making the content and the rest of the people will be consuming it. So you kind of need a lot of people,

or you have to figure out how to make that rate higher. You make that rate higher by making it easier to consume. So a Facebook group, a lot of times, the Facebook groups that I have will have a 10% or 15% rate of active members to posters, or consumers versus posters, because they're already on Facebook already. So it makes it really easy.

Versus Nickbear.com slash forum, not that many people are going to go to that. And so your rate of posters and consumers is just going to be out of whack and it's going to suck. And so you have to remove as much friction as possible in order to get that liquidity in your kind of marketplace or community. You know what I mean?

So I guess the argument is like there isn't necessarily like you need to build an audience first and then focus on building a community. it kind of goes back to the same thing of should you bootstrap or fundraise. What is it that serves your purpose? Yeah. And you don't need a community. Like if you're an audience company, just be an audience company.

Just do that and be awesome at it. But they're different. And like, for example, Reddit, that's a community. Do you ever go to Reddit? Occasionally. So I love Reddit. And like if they were to launch a media company, which they tried to do, it wasn't that good. Because they're not like a content audience.

audience company. They're a really good community company. You know what I mean? Versus like if New York Times, which is an audience company, try to create like a community, they have like a Facebook group for like some of their stuff, but it's like, that's not their specialty, I don't think, it's like community building. You know what I'm saying? That makes a lot more sense the way you described it there. They're like two different things. Like it's a different skill set. Similar, but different. You know what I mean? Yeah. So like managing communities are, is tough. And there's people who can do it who can't make a YouTube video and make people like them like you have. You know what I mean? That makes sense. But like you have got a

pretty good community. The best part about you, I told you I was going to bring this up. Is your Natty versus not Natty stuff? It's a lot of it. Dude, it's a lot of it. And you said you don't read it. Dude, that shit's the best. It is so good. I say let it go. Not let it go as it like let it go as and like let that shit happen. You should let the, if I were to do I would even make content just to get people to keep talking about that. Which camera is on? Guys, I'm here right now. He's definitely jacked and he's shredded and he's huge but you're like jacked and huge and shredded enough

that it's very clearly that you're very genetically gifted and you're not on anything besides that other needle that I did see something. I'm joking. There was no needles. The thing is like if I could really lean into that content and I know that controversy gains a lot

of traction and attention but you don't even reference it. I don't reference it. You should reference it. The only like only reference we ever did to it and it gained no attention because I think we just did it so properly it's through my entire build and my entire

cut. We got blood work done. We filmed the blood work. We shared the results and like no one ever commented anything about it. There was never a comment about it. But like there's all these threads there are these videos, there's these articles. I read them all the time.

And I used to, even like comments. Why don't you post? And you don't reply. And let's run, you never reply. If I go into the let's run thread, it will mess with my head for months. And I'm just being very honest. But why would it mess with your head if you're not doing anything wrong?

Why do you care? Because of like a few things. One, I hate when people speak on my behalf. So it's one thing to say like, is Nick Bear, Natty, or not. But when there's people saying Nick Bear is taking XYZ and they're just making these claims about me. It's like, how do I fight that? So that's one reason.

The second is that there's a fear of the way it tarnishes what I've built. And I'm always afraid that there's, I know there's people actively in this world trying to take me down right now. That actually does scare me. Why do they want to take you down? What's their argument? I mean, I'm sure there's people trying to take you down. Yeah, but they would say like I'm an asshole. For me, I think it's just that like, I'm honestly the only thing I can think of, I'm a nice guy who's built some.

something through hard work and people want to believe that there's something else that I've done to get here. Is that and that's like steroids? That or like anything else. They're like there's always like just comments. Right. Okay. Like there's like people are always looking for like, you just don't have like a, I've talked to a lot of people who know you and everyone says, dude, he's so nice. He does all the right stuff. And like maybe, maybe there's been times or you made business decisions that were only mistakes. But like, I've never heard anyone actually say anything where it's like, dude, that guy's not real or like he's not really actually strong.

Or like, like, everyone I've talked to says like, dude, he puts in the work, he eats well. Like everyone says that I've talked to about you. And there's probably been 10 or 20 people. Yeah. I mean, my only assumption is that like, you know, I've chosen the hard right. I say this all the time. I've chosen the hard right over the easy wrong for the last decade plus in my life. And people are just looking for, where's the whole?

Where did he mess up? Where did he go wrong? Yes, I've made some poor business decisions. Those are just mistakes. Those aren't. I've made mistakes, but nothing intentionally destructive along the way. I wasn't referencing anything, by the way. I was just assuming you've made a business mistake.

Yeah, yeah, I've made plenty of business mistakes. But I think it's one of the reasons, like, I don't allow myself to read the comments or go on these articles and these threads or watch the videos is for me, I already know what they're going to say. So what, when is there to, like, soak up my energy? and I just don't want to put that in that mind space. It's really easy to say like, oh, just don't let it affect you.

But for some reason, it still does for me. When I first started following you, I was like, oh, this guy has to be on steroids because he's so big. And then I saw your dad. And I was like, oh, this guy, look at what he comes from. And then I saw this other guy

who kept seeing your video. It's like, oh, that's his brother. I'm like, oh, look at that guy. That guy's an ox. Like, you guys, you could just, there's genetic freaks out there. And they exist. you guys are that. And then I got to know you in your videos and I'm like, dude, there's

no way this guy does anything that is like even borderline ethical or unethical. Like, it's very clear. You could watch five of his videos and you understand like what he stands for. There's this guy who sent me a message on Instagram the other day. And he said, hey man, like I'm training the exact same way you train. I'm eating the exact same way you eat. But I don't look like you. Tell me the truth. What are you on? And like, dude, You're like, you're neglecting two very important things. One, the time in which, like, you have to train and eat a certain way to get to a certain point. And two, genetics.

They're real. They're so real. Some people will train their ass off for years and eat the cleanest diet and make, like, very small progress. You're going to make progress regardless, but like very small progress. Then there's people who can start eating right and training heavy for six months and they turn into a different person. And then also, you had a guy, one of your videos you ran, I think he ran a sub five-minute mile. with you. I forget exactly. Mitch Amens. And then he, did he also like squat 500 pounds?

Oh, sorry, that's Adam Klink. He works here. Yeah. And like, no disrespect, Adam. But like, you are more of a bodybuilder, like, looking guy than him. And he outperformed you. Yeah. Like, it just falls differently on some people. You know what I mean? It's the same with me. Like, I was joking with you that when you were at your weak point and I was at my strong point, we had almost the same numbers. You were still a little bit better. I don't look like you. Like, it didn't, and it doesn't matter if I would perform as good. as you. Like, people just look different.

You know what I mean? Yeah, it's one of those things like, I fought it online for so long. And I'm finally at a point where I'm like, screw it, I'm just going to keep doing my thing and just like head down the same way I built the brand and stay in my lane. And I know there's going to be more videos.

I know there's going to be more articles, but I just avoid it. Yeah, but I, if I was in your position, I would make jokes, but I think your judgment is better than mine. You know, I think the judge was better as much. But then once I saw your dad do that six minute mile

and he looked the way he looks, I was like, oh, this dude just like, he was born, he was just born. I've never seen, I've never seen your mother. Did your mother pass away? She passed away until 19. I'm sorry. I mean, she was also like great shape.

My mom was running like 5Ks weekly before she got sick. And what's your heritage? Do you know? I think there's some German roots in there. Just white though. That's what I say. There's nothing special.

People ask me, they're like, I'm just fucking white. Midwestern. My wife is half black, half Jewish. And so our kids are going to be white, black, like Russian Jew, a little bit of Italian. And I'm like praying. I'm like, this kid's going to be an ox. This is going to be a superhuman because we're going to have like a little bit of all, a little bit of everything. And I'm just like praying for that.

Like I like joke with my wife. I'm like our baby. Like you know how like bulldogs are like always have issues. But like a mutt is like will live forever and they're healthy. Yeah. That's what our child's going to be. We want that much. What a nice,

diverse, genetically diverse kid. Is that part of, I'm assuming you bought the ranch after the acquisition? Every time someone sells a company, they go through a little bit of a crisis where they're like,

what do I do next? And they think probably A, they'll be successful at everything because they were successful at this and B, like, what's the point? I should just, what should I do? So I wanted to get the Airbnb's

because I like them. and I always wanted to own a lot of land, partially because in case the world ends, I want a place to go, and partially because I associate that with what a man should do is like own land, which are both kind of flawed thinking. So I bought this place in Fredericksburg, Texas,

Marathon Ranch.com. I was going to make like a fitness hotel. Then I got this, I bought this place. It's like 20 acres. It's really beautiful. And I realize that A, I hate real estate. It's so boring. It's really boring.

It takes forever. You have an idea and it takes like six months to see results. I went through a phase where I was like, I'm going to get into real estate. Dude, I thought it was like the greatest thing ever. I'm like, oh, you guys do that because like you have patience and you're good at spreadsheets. I do this other shit because I don't have patience and I'm good at computers. And then B, most people just want like a nice place to live. They don't need like that fancy of a gym.

So I built a gym out there, but I was like, I'm going to do a coal plunge. There's son of this and that. And then I was like, let's just do like a squat rack, dumbbells and a ping pong table. and it's more than enough. It's beautiful. Yeah, it's cool. You've seen the website? Yeah, I was on the website going through the gallery.

It's beautiful. It's cool. And so it's doing well. It's doing well. But if I had to do it again, I don't know if I would. It's just like, do you own a home? I do own a home, yeah. Do you like owning a home?

I don't like owning a home. I don't mind it. So I would be happy to rent forever or for a long period of time. The next time I'm going to buy a piece of property or like my home, I own a home here and I own some other properties. One day soon, I'm going to sell it all and I want to rent until my children are old enough to go to school. And then I want to buy a home that I'll live in for like 30 years. Around them.

Wherever like the best school is, like this will be our place for 30 years. Yeah. The reason I don't like owning property is like there's so many costs that most people don't realize. So I'm like on this big crusade where it's like I think buying a primary not, and cash flowing home is actually not a good investment, but we're told it is. I think it's not. It's better to keep your money in the bank or money in stocks and bonds and things like that, and then instead rent. But you should buy if it makes you happy. But don't confuse yourself and call it like a good investment. At best, it's a store value, meaning it will grow likely

with inflation. But sometimes you'll make a lot of money. Sometimes you're going to lose money, but I don't think you should consider it an investment. It's just a store value. But anyway, I think most people think that when they buy a home, they're paying down the principle. No, dude, you're paying their interest for the first 20 years. Yeah, and also, yeah, it's crazy. So I think that, like, buying a home should be an emotional decision, not a financial decision. You should buy what you can afford,

but you should do it because you like it, just like you do with the car. And, like, just owning stuff, what I've realized, it drags me down. Like, so I have one nice car, and I kind of even regret getting a nice car. I just hate the idea of, like, these things. Sometimes they start to own you versus the other way around.

So that's a little bit of the downside of like owning Airbnb's. But I do have a manager who manages it. So I'm mostly hands off and I give them 20% of the revenue, which is a lot. But I don't touch it. But it is awesome to go out there and just shoot guns and ride motorcycles and shit. How much time do you guys spend out there versus time you spend booking it? Oh, ideally I will never go out there because it's booked all the time. But I only go out there two times a month.

I have like four wheelers out there. So I'll go out there and shoot guns. I've seen your videos. You, like, riding little... Just being redneck. Just doing redneck stuff. And I'm not like a country guy. I don't know anything about shit.

But I, like, I bought a gun and, like, learn how to use it. And so I like to shoot stuff. And we have a really nice gym out there. It says just the bare minimums, but it's awesome because it's huge. And we could pull up the garage and, like, see the sunset. And so it's really fun. Are you thinking about getting into Airbnb's? No.

At one point, I did. But, like, in this next chapter of life for me, I want to do more with less. and I don't want to be attached to all these things. That's my point. Yeah, I just like, now that you have a family, are you thinking about moving? Eventually.

And do you think like, oh, moving's going to be a hassle because I got to like sell the house to do all this stuff? I'm already worried about the things that are breaking. Like, clear example, this past weekend we were in the pool and this little, like,

tile or something. This little tile fell off. And I was like, oh my gosh, we have to fix this before we move. My wife's like, when are we moving? I'm like, I don't know, but when we move, like, I'm going to have to fix this.

Yeah, I do the same thing. Instead, I'd rather just call landlord and just say, hey, this broke, fix it, please. I'd rather do that any day of the week. I'd rather do that any of the way. So I split time. I live in Brooklyn and Austin. I rent a place up there and I own a place here. The renting is just so much more stress-free.

And I understand when you have a kid and you want to go to school and stuff like that, it's better to maybe own emotionally. But now I'm totally happy renting. So when you sold the business, I'm assuming it's just one day, this lump of money just ends up in your bank account. One day, a wire, yeah, like you're on the phone and you do a wire and then you just keep refreshing on your computer and you just get tens of millions of dollars in your bank account. And I called the bank ahead of time.

I went down to the chase and I was like, and I was sitting with a teller. And I was like, I don't know if I'm supposed to tell you this or someone of these guys at the desk, but like, over the next few days, I'm going to get an influx of money. I want to make sure you're cool with it. And they're like, okay, like how much? And I was like, and I said a number and it was like tens of millions of dollars. And she was like, shocked. And she's like, yeah, that's fine.

And I felt like, are you about to rob me? Like, what's going on? Like, am I a target now? But yeah. And then I also got stock in the company. And here's the crazy part. The stock vested over like a year or something. The day we sold it was $350, a share.

And then it grew to like $850. So whatever that is, a double and a half. So 2.5X it like grew as it was vesting. And then it went back down. But I've never sold any of the stock so far. So I got a bunch of cash and a bunch of stock. And then now my podcast, MFM, I sold that with the company, but they pay me a lot of money to continue hosting it.

So is that your only tie to the hustle now is hosting the podcast? Yeah. So the hustle turned into this thing called HubSpot Media. So HubSpot Media, I think they announced that they do $1.5 billion in revenue. most of their new users came through their blog, but their blog got so big that they're like, we need more channels, let's buy a newsletter,

and they use that to get to sell software because we had a lot of like business owners. And then when I sold the company, I was like, hey, I'm out of here the day we sell, but I'm going to continue hosting the podcast. And they said, great, that's what we want you to do. So I host that, and then they pay me a big fee as if I'm like, you know, like talent, like a Howard Stern.

Yeah. And so I'm able to promote my own stuff on there. I'm able to say whatever I want. They've never censored me. but I get paid a large amount of money to do it. So I still have ties to them and I'm still buddies and homies with those guys, but I have nothing to do with it. So like anything they do,

do you like it or hate it, I had nothing to do with it. Did your life change in a way that you thought it would after the acquisition? Do you know how people say money doesn't make you happier? It kind of does. It does. People say like, well, you still have problems. You don't have any money problems.

And I'm like, yeah, but that's all I had was like money problems. I would not pay on the bus sometimes. I didn't have any money. So the fact that I can have really great health care or I can just call someone to come over and work on a thing that's broke and I don't have to do it. Yeah, so that made me feel way better.

But your happiness definitely plateaus. So like you get paid and you have this like dopamine hit and then you go right back down to just a little bit above where you were before, if that makes sense, I think. Humans get used to shit real fast. I mean, did you ever heard of how, like, someone got their leg amputated,

and like six months later, they're back to where they were before in terms of happiness? Like, we adapt super fast, and so things, you get used to everything really quickly. Have you ever read the book, The Molecule of More? No. What does it say? Do I always want more? Pretty much. It's all about dopamine and how dopamine controls our lives and addictions and one seed means.

I saw you reference it before. Yeah, it's a really good book, but. What's the takeaway? Is there a cure to this, or is it, is it answer it's no? enough. I think it's being aware of like what dopamine in the brain actually wants us to desire and there are certain things like they they explain it like kind of similar to what you just described like say a cheeseburger for example like say you're on your diet and you're really strict on that diet and someone puts a cheeseburger in front of you and your dopamine goes nuts

like you desire that that burger so much you take a bite and that first bite and that first bite is amazing. You're just like, holy shit, this is so good. And with every bite after that, you get less dopamine released and you have less enjoyment. And then by the time you're done with your burger, you're like, shit, I just cheated on my diet. So it's all about how the things that we desire, the things that we want aren't actually the things that we like. Right. And we chase things that we want as opposed to things that we actually like and need. I've got this friend who a, is a billionaire. And he, on his way up to becoming a billionaire, he was like going to take a company public. And he like went to this guy's house who had a $10 million home, like they were meeting

with bankers. And the guy in the $10 million home was like, yeah, this little shack, it's pretty nice. The guy down the street's got a $30 million one. He was like, what? Are you kidding me? And then he like goes to like this guy who's got like a $50 million. Or no, he went to a guy's house who was worth $500 million. And the guy was like, it's pretty great. I got most everything I need, but can't afford a sports team. and then he went to a guy, another guy's house who's worth $5 billion. And the guy was complaining about like, yeah, but I don't have Amazon. I didn't start Amazon.

And so my friend is always like, and the thing that I've learned is it's never enough. No matter what you have, it's never. You're without being conscious about it and trying to break this habit, it feels like it's never enough. And like, I remember thinking, if I had what I had today, I will never want more. I'm set forever. And then after about six months, you're like, yeah, but I can do it more. what if I had three houses? You know what I mean?

Right. And I think you need to fight that, but it is natural. It's the same way with like running. You know, you're like, yeah, but if I would have went harder, a mile 20 instead of stopping for water, I bet you I could have broke 30 seconds off that time. You know what I mean? Yeah.

I was actually thinking about that on my run this morning. I was listening to a Ben Greensfield podcast before I went running. What time did you run at 4 a.m.? I started my run this morning. at like 5.40. How do you listen to a podcast? So I wake up at 5. Today, my schedule was a little off today.

I woke up at 5. Oh, lazy. But Charlie woke up before that. So Charlie woke up at 4.45. So I got up, gave her a bottle. What time you go to bed? Put her back to sleep. Like 10.

Okay. So she woke up early, which gave me like an additional 30 minutes to drink a coffee and listen to some podcast before I went running. Because I wanted to go to the bathroom before I started my run. And this Ben Greensfield podcast was, he's a spiritual guy and he was just talking about how in the Bible God said that he will over deliver and give you more than you could have ever desired in your life. And I was thinking

about that when I was running. I was like, man, I got like, I get more than I need right now. Like I'm on this early morning run. My daughter's asleep. My wife's waking up. I'm running in my neighborhood to my house. Then I'm going to go into work on the parts of the business that I want to work on. There's nothing else in my life right now that I need. But you still get like depressed sometimes? Not as much as I used to. Honestly, since my daughter was born, like not as much. Like my perspective has changed completely, but I used to. I used to like be in this flow and be so content and happy with what I was doing. And I would see one of my competitors growing faster. But I used to, I used to always look at what other people were doing. Like comparison is the

thief of joy, right? But ever since my daughter was born and I've had more clarity into what I want and what I need, this morning was one of those mornings where I was just thinking, I got everything I need. Like, I'm pretty happy. But that might change tomorrow. All right. There's ebbs and flows.

There is ebbs and flows. Yeah. I mean, for sure. I mean, I always think, I'm like, well, if I get this, I'll be happy. You hit it and then it's pretty sick. and then you go right back to normal. Right. Small celebration and then like back to baseline.

100%. That's what I think. Well, Sam, man, I appreciate it. Is this going to be a good pod? This is a great pod. I want this to be the best pod. I've listened to Ryan Hall. I've listened to who else did I tell you?

Nick Simmons. I've listened to Ken Wright out. What else? I don't, I can't be better than them because Nick and Ryan or Olympic medalist, I believe Ken is just hardcore. Bad ass. So I can't out story them.

But maybe somehow we can outvalue them. There's a lot of value takeaway in here. And I think why I was really excited for this conversation is, you know, watching you step down from the CEO role and then build the business and sell the business and then identify when I posted from Strength to Strength. When you identified that, I was like, all right, founders get founders. No one else called you out?

No. No. Founders, like founders, they get founders. Like our CEO, Kat, she was a founder of a business. And like, that's why we get along so well. She co-founded Mush Overnet Oats. So she just like gets the struggle. She gets like the hard time.

She gets the emotional roller coaster of which it is. That is a huge company, right? Yeah, it's a massive company. Yeah. But I think this was a really good conversation. conversation. Appreciate it. That's a wrap.