The Nick Bare Podcast - 067: We All Start From Zero | A Founder’s Journey

Episode Date: May 20, 2024

In this episode, I'm sharing a new installment in the "Founder's Journey" series about starting from zero. Humble beginnings are nothing to be ashamed of. I started my business in the spare room of my parent's house after taking a $20,000 loan from USAA. This episode will give you a peek behind the curtain of where I started and how I've grown personally and in business to inspire you to take the first step. Save 10% at BPN Supps: https://bit.ly/nickbare10audio Follow for more:  IG: https://www.instagram.com/nickbarefitness/ YT: https://www.youtube.com/@nickbarefitness Topics: 0:00 Intro 1:45 Welcome 8:43 The beginnings of BPN in 2012 21:47 How being a father shaped my perspective 28:37 Starting my business with a USAA loan 36:29 You just have to get started 40:54 My operation in the beginning 50:57 How I launched BPN 58:47 Don’t be intimidated to start from zero 1:05:47 Attracting the right people 1:14:23 Ways I’ve grown

In today's episode of the podcast, I'm talking about what it means to start from zero. And the thought behind this episode starts or stems from this Instagram post that I make every single year. I've done it the last couple of years. And it's these clips of me from 2012, 2013, where I'm fumbling over my words. I'm trying to articulate words and tell story and share information and create content. And it's when I was first getting started with my entrepreneurial journey. I was nervous. I was timid.

I wasn't confident or comfortable talking to camera or trying to build my business. And if you look at those clips back then compared to where I've grown into what I'm doing today. There's a huge difference, a large contrast. But the reality is that we all start from zero. And we all have the ability to grow and change and develop. But we get to choose that growth. But I want this episode to be a reminder that we all start from zero.

All the athletes, celebrities, entrepreneurs, mentors, world leaders that you follow and potentially look up to, they all started from exactly where you're at, maybe right now or where you were years ago when you were just getting started from zero. This past weekend, I was on a run. And as I've talked about the last couple months, one of my favorite podcasts that I'm listening to right now is called Founders by, or the host is David, Senra. And what he does is he reads autobiographies and biographies of world leaders,

entrepreneurs, athletes, some of the best and most successful in the world. And then he summarizes these biographies and autobiographies. So the one specifically that I was listening to this past weekend on my morning run was all about the story of in and out. The fast food burger, fry, and shake, that some of you may have experienced in your lifetime, especially if you're from California. Being here in Texas, we actually have an in-and-out that is three miles, maybe less, from where I'm currently sitting in our HQ. When I got to Texas in 2014, realizing that there was in-and-out here, something I heard of my entire life, I was mind-blown.

And me and my brother, Preston, we had to try it, and we fell in love with In-N-Out. And after listening to this podcast, actually, this past weekend, I fell in love more with In-N-Out. The values, the story, the message of the brand, what they stand behind, and the way that In-N-Out has been grown and built and scaled over the years. But in that podcast episode, talking about the In-N-N-Out found. founder, he actually references a quote from an early Stripe employee. Stripe being the payment processor for a lot of e-commerce websites. And this Stripe employee's name was Richard Burton.

And Richard Burton said, Stripe gave me a mental model for potential. An alien founder assembles a group of Jedi to start a cult and go on a mission together. Richard says that some of the most successful brands have this one thing. They have an alien founder that assembles a group of Jedi to start a cult and go on a mission together. Now, the way Richard Burton is talking about a cult, it's not a cult in the way that you might be thinking of, which may be this rebellious, religious group that brain washes its people and tries to take over the world. This is different. The word cult, the term cult, being used in more of a positive sense than a negative connotation.

And as I heard this reference, this quote reference in this podcast, this weekend on this run, I have not been able to stop thinking about it. Some of the best and biggest brands in the world have been built on the foundation, not necessarily of all the experience and all the knowledge and all the skill, but because they have an alien founder that assembles a group of Jedi to start a cult and go on a mission together. One of the reasons that resonates so much and so well for me is because that is what BPN is. That's the way that I view bear performance nutrition. I am the alien founder who assembled a group of people behind a mission with this cult-like feel.

That's the way that I could best describe building my company, building BPN. And I think that's the way that some of the best brands in the world are truly built. And this is where people get it wrong. And this is the whole foundation of this podcast and what I want to talk about today. It's that we all start from zero. We all start with nothing. No skills, no life experience, no resources, no ability. We all start that way.

But we have the opportunity. Some have more opportunities than others. Some have more resources than others. I'm not ignorant to that fact. But we all start from the same place. We start from zero. But the people who go on to turn their life into something or build something and accomplish something,

it's because they have a vision. And they take that vision and they apply action and they bring together sometimes a group of people to come alongside them and work towards that mission and vision in unison because of a shared belief. I wanted to share that story in the beginning because sometimes we look at these brands

who seem so impressive because they are, but also unattainable and unrealistic and unrelatedable because of how big and grand and large they have become and the amount of money they might generate and the number of employees they have hired and maintained on a regular basis. But that founder, that idea, started from nothing. It started with just a thought, this creation, and then it grew and scaled into the behemoth it is today.

There's oftentimes, and I used to do the same thing, you look at these massive accomplishments or these very successful people and these big brands and you think it's so far from where I'm at when I got started or maybe it's so far from where I'm at today that it feels so unrealistic.

But the reality is the founders that started that brand, the board, the people, the organization, they are just like you. They are just like me. They are just like us. They started from zero.

We all start from zero. And if you take anything away from this message today in this podcast, it's that we all start from zero, but we all have the opportunity to grow, but we have to choose growth. I made an Instagram post a few days ago, and I make this Instagram post every single year. I have for the last couple years.

And it's all this old footage from 2012 that I found and edited and put together. And it's when I first got started with my business, with content creation, with sharing my journey, putting myself out there in front of the world to watch experience in real time what I was striving to. to accomplish and do with my life. And if you follow me on Instagram, you might have seen it, but I'll just paint a picture for you of what it was. 2012 was the year that I started my company, BPN. I was living in Pennsylvania. I was going to school at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania,

also known as IUP, no relationship to Indiana University. People always think that. and I have to correct them saying, no, it's just in a small town called Indiana in Pennsylvania, no relationship to Indiana University. So I'm going to school on an Army ROTC scholarship at the time, and I started BPN. I started BPN with a $20,000 alone, which I'll get into it a little bit later. And when I launched the business, I realized that just because you have product, just because you have supply, it doesn't necessarily mean that you create or have demand. And I formulated the products, manufactured it with a copacker, received the inventory a few weeks later, built the website, designed the labels with a friend, launched the business and no sales trickled in.

and I looked at all these other brands out there that were crushing it in my space, in my industry, and then in other industries similar and different as well. And I thought, man, I just don't have it. I don't know what it is, but I don't have it. It was something that all these other people in brands and companies had that I just didn't have. It was the confidence. It was the charisma.

It was the salesmanship. It was the way they carried themselves. It was the experience in the resources and the beautiful websites and the warehouses and all these things. And here I was Nick Bear, 22 years old, sitting in my college apartment, no money to my name, $20,000 in debt, a website that I wasn't super proud of, a product that I spent a lot of working on to formulate and knowing no one wanted what I was offering and what I was selling because I learned the lesson of supply and demand and just because you have supply doesn't mean

you automatically create demand. So what I ended up doing was deciding to document and share my life with the world in hopes that I could build a community, share my mission, and then drive product sales through all of this. So I bought a camera and I just started filming everything. I didn't know what to film. I didn't know how to film. I was awkward in front of the camera. But I just started filming things.

And I didn't post a lot of it. I really didn't start posting any of it until two years later. 2014 is actually when I started posting content on social media on YouTube, primarily, longer form content. and from 2012 to 2014, I was filming things, I was documenting things, but I was embarrassed. I was scared. I was nervous because I didn't have it,

which I still didn't know what it was. If I look back now, the it that I didn't have was the courage. I didn't have the courage to really put myself out there and try harder and try harder and fail because I was constantly comparing myself to these entrepreneurs, these leaders, these brands, these companies that were at it for decades and decades and decades. And I was comparing my first couple days to their first couple decades.

And that's just so unrealistic. It's so unattainable and unrealistic to unrealistic to achieve or, you know, unrealistic to achieve a compare to those two massive differences in time. So a few years later, I went back and I was looking through all these old files on my computer and I found the footage that I documented from 2012 to 2014. There wasn't much, a lot that I deleted and throughout, but there were a few clips. And a few years ago, I found these clips and I edited them together in a montage of just the awkwardness that I was during this time.

And I put it together in a file and I surrounded it with text. And it says, this is your friendly reminder that we all start somewhere, something along those lines. It still says that text. You know, this is your friendly reminder that we all start somewhere. And there's text on the top and there's text on the bottom and in the middle is the footage that I edited and printed and put it. put together of just all these awkward moments.

It's me trying to talk to a camera. You know, one of the shots, I'm like trying to adjust the lights. And I accidentally hit the garbage disposal. I'm in my kitchen filming. I put it on a colored shirt to film this one video talking about the difference between the bro science and real science approach. We had this room above. above my parents' garage in the house that we grew up in, me and my brother, my mom and dad,

and this is where we'd film videos and we'd pack orders. And a few years before that, that's where me and my brother had bunk beds. You know, it's just like looking back at those videos, it's very humbling to see those those early stage decisions and steps that are so necessary, but so hard and uncomfortable. And the reason that I share this every year is that I want people who are trying to achieve some sort of greatness, who are trying to reach their full potential,

who have a goal that they're working towards, whether that's a fitness goal or a career goal or a business that they want to, launch and create, maybe I'm speaking to you right now. Maybe there's something you want to do or you've wanted to do for a long time now. And you haven't because you look at where you're at right now and where you want to be and it feels so far away. And it feels so challenging.

You realize there's so much work that goes into it that it almost feels impossible. Trust me, I've been there before. When I first got started in 2012, I was looking at the bedroom where I was packing and fulfilling orders. I looked at our website. I looked at our customer service. It was just me. You know, in this room, that was probably 10 feet by 10 feet wide and long. And then I was watching these other companies and brands being built online with

dozens if not hundreds of employees working out of 100,000 plus square foot office and warehouse spaces and making sales and going to all these expos and sponsoring and signing athletes and launching commercials and ads and all these things. And I look at where I want to be compared to where I was in the moment in my bedroom packing one order every two to three days. And there was such a big gap in between that I thought, there's no way. It's impossible.

But I kept going. I kept building. I kept building day after day, brick after brick. And slowly you start making progress. You don't feel it or experience it in the moment. But you look back months and years and a decade plus later and you see the growth that happened. and you quickly realize and acknowledge that it's not impossible. But it does require a lot of intention,

a shit ton of work, patience, time, teamwork, vision, and just relentless pursuit towards your goals and greatness. It doesn't matter how you define that greatness. You need a relentless pursuit. to get there. And that's why I share that video every single year. Because it's a reminder that we all start from zero. And it's me raising my hand saying, look at me.

Look at me in 2012, 2013, 2014. Like, me watching myself then, now that I'm sitting in my HQ in this building, I look back at that young boy where I was 22 years old, 23 years old, just a lack of confidence, no experience, no clue what I was doing or where I was heading. But I had so much passion and purpose and will to just do it that I stuck with it. And it's hopefully a reminder that no matter where you're at right now in your journey. If you're just getting started, if you're a year in, two years in, three years in, five years in, ten years in, however long it is, and you're not where you want to be yet, just remember and realize that we all start from zero, including you, including me, including everyone. because I'm sure a lot of people watch my YouTube videos now

or listen to the podcast. And I'm by no means the best speaker or maybe not the best storyteller, but I believe I've made massive improvements in the way that I articulate my words and my vision and my thoughts and my ideas and stories. But I've only improved because I've wanted to grow. I've wanted to get better.

You have to want to get better to get better. But I hope this empowers you in some way that you realize, okay, where I'm at right now, I'm just getting started. I'm starting from zero. My expectations for what I can do and achieve right now, maybe limited and maybe small, but if I just stick with this

and I work with a relentless pursuit of growth, purpose, and passion, I can get to where I want to be someday. It might not be 12 months from now. It might not even be 12 years from now. But if I stay on the path, stay true to what I believe in, follow my gut and intuition, and lean on data and resources and mentors and guidance along the way,

I hopefully can get to where I want to be. That's where I share that Instagram post every single year. that's why I'm going to keep sharing it every single year because I want you to know that we all start from zero something that's made me think about this a lot recently actually is being a parent now you know our daughter charlie she'll turn two in july right now it's it's may So in two months Our first daughter will turn two years old Which is crazy to think about

I mean two years, it says it goes fast But two years has gone like boom boom fast And then after Charlie turns two years old A month later Our baby boy is going to be born Still working on name We haven't decided yet What we want to name him

We have a few options Steph is in favor of some. I'm in favor of some. So we're going to try to come to a mutual agreement on what we name this baby boy. We'll see. But being a dad, being a parent has made me think a lot about this whole topic. You know, we all start from zero. And I watch my daughter, especially now she's getting a little bit older,

where she's speaking more. I mean, what's crazy today? This is the first time this has happened, this morning actually. I can see she's getting smarter, and she's just making a connection with words and music and things. And, you know, when she used to say cup, she didn't know what cup meant, but now she knows what cup means.

And if she wants her cup filled with water, she knows exactly what that means. If I ask her if she wants toast or a waffle for breakfast, she can tell me if she wants toast or a waffle. And if she wants butter or jelly on it, she can tell me that, which is, I don't know, man. It's just like it's starting to blow my mind. But this morning, she actually sang her first song.

She sang row, row, row your boat on her own. I mean, I often sing to her. I sing her two songs. During the day, I'll sing her row, row, row your boat. And then at night, I'll sing her what I call it the spaghetti song, which is on top of spaghetti all covered in cheese. I lost my poor meatball when somebody sneezed. That song.

I'll sing her that after I get her out of the bath and I'm getting her ready for bed. And she's even starting to sing that song. But what I'm learning from being a first time dad right now with Charlie is that that realization that we all start from zero. My daughter and my son soon to be, they are starting from zero. They are born with no skills, no experiences, no ability to do a lot of the things that we do as we get older.

If we didn't teach her how to talk, she would not know how to talk. I mean, she would be able to say things, but not in a language. She would just babble. And if we didn't teach her what a cup meant or how to wash her hair or brush her teeth. She won't learn how to do those things

because they aren't people, children, babies aren't born with that embedded and encoded into their DNA and their brain and their mind. I mean, certain things are built and established based off of just like instinct, but other things aren't like speech. language. And I feel this huge responsibility. I've felt this huge responsibility to be a good dad even before Charlie was born. But now I feel this greater responsibility of helping guide my children into independent, capable, resourceful, polite, kind, empathetic, hardworking, generous self-service individuals that contribute to a larger part of a community or society.

I feel that responsibility. And you don't want to do these things for them so they don't learn how to do them for themselves, but you want to guide them in that direction. And as I'm sure as my kids get older, I'll learn even more and more and more. I mean, we're just getting started. Me and my small family, we're just getting started being exposed to

and learning how to take this human being that started from zero and educating them and providing them the tools and the skills to accomplish the things that they will one day accomplish

on their own. But I watch this human being just be born and be helpless, but so amazing and so cheerful and so ignorant to the tragedies and the destruction and the sadness of what the world has the potential to be and is. And they're blissful. They're blissfully ignorant to all of this, which is great.

It's amazing. but if they want to and if my children want to accomplish anything in their lifetime, I can provide them the guidance, the resources, the tools, the education. But Charlie and our future son, they have to actually choose to continuously be courageous enough to take the action to work towards the things that they want in their life. I can't do that for them. and I'm not going to do that for them. I will guide them and I will help them as much as they want and as much as I can,

but I cannot do that for them. Someone else cannot force you to grow in a way that you don't want to grow. Someone else cannot force you to take action on your life. If you don't want to take action on your life, if you don't want to get better, no one else is going to do it for you because we all start from zero. I really want to relate this episode to a lot around business because I know there's a lot of people that follow me who want to start brands, want to start businesses, want to be entrepreneurs. But there's there's an expectations versus reality of what starting in business really does look like.

When I started BPN in 2012, I had a $20,000 loan. and I've told the story before, but I'll tell it again for the context. The way that I got this $20,000 loan, because I'm a broke college student in 2012. Broke college student. I was going to school for free because I was on an Army ROTC scholarship, which I hope that my kids apply for the Army ROTC scholarship. It is a great deal. You apply for the scholarship, which when I applied was not very competitive.

Not many people knew about it. But now, from what I understand and know, it is a pretty competitive scholarship opportunity. So I applied for this scholarship when I was in high school. I was awarded the scholarship, which I was mind-blown that I was awarded this scholarship. And then you choose a school that has an Army ROTC program in it. Now you have to get accepted into the school so that you can apply your scholarship. And I applied for all these schools that I wanted to go to, and I got into very few of them. I wanted to go to college at Charleston in South Carolina.

I wanted to go to South Carolina University. For some reason, even as a younger kid, I always wanted to push South. I applied to Penn State University. I applied to Old Dominion. I applied to a handful of schools, and I got into none of them. So that's when I end up applying the IEP because I knew I could get into IEP, which I did. And they had and have a great Army ROTC program. And the Army ROTC program pays for, or sorry, the Army ROTC scholarship pays for tuition,

room and board, books, and you get a small monthly stipend. And then you have to join the military. and serve afterwards. If you don't end up going into the military and serving, you have to pay back all that money you took from the government. So I was on an Army ROTC scholarship in college. They paid for pretty much everything. And I did four years,

active duty army after college. In between my junior and senior year of school, the Military Associated Bank, USAA, offered up to a $25,000 loan to Army ROTC cadets who are about to graduate, commission into the military, and have a full-time job. And it was a great opportunity.

I mean, you could take out this money and buy an engagement ring, go on vacation, get a new car, do whatever you wanted with it, which a lot of my peers and friends did. They did all of those things. And then you didn't have to make your first payment for 18 months

after graduating at a very low interest rate. I mean, just a stupid, cheap interest rate. But in order to take out this money, you had to have a plan. So you had to present this plan to your professor of military science to get approved. And if you wanted to buy a new car,

it's like, here's the car I want, here's what my monthly payment will be, so on and so forth, approved. I plan on marrying this girl. We've been dating for an excellent number of years. We're going to live together forever and ever and ever and build a family. I want to buy a $5,000 engagement ring, for example, approved. Well, I saw this as my golden ticket.

I thought I got no money to my name right now, but I have this opportunity to take out up to a $25,000 alone. So what they made me do, my professor of military science, and USAA, the bank, they made me write a business plan of how I was going to use this money to turn it into a business, which I did. I created a business plan, presented it to my professor of military science, got approved, not for the full 25,000, but for 20,000, found a manufacturer, placed my first production order for, pre-workout, which was flight.

Flight is still our pre-workout. The formula over the years has evolved and changed, but the foundation of the product stays true. So that was the first product we launched in 2012. It is still one of our products today. Looks a little different, but same name, same foundational purpose and features and functions of that product. And I think back to that moment,

where I had to take this, or in order to take out this loan to start my business, I had to make a plan. Which, if you've listened to any of my content, you know that I'm a massive advocate of planning. I always say, if you fail to plan, you should plan to fail. But there is a caveat to that where you can overplan. you can plan in a way that when you plan and you don't allow yourself to deviate from the plan, you actually can move in the wrong direction or miss opportunities to succeed and actually run yourself into failure. And sometimes you're not experienced enough.

You don't have the background, you don't have the skills, you don't have the resources, you don't have the mentorship to actually create a strategic plan. And if I look back at where I was in 2012 with no experience in business, no experience in entrepreneurship, I didn't have any mentors. My family weren't business owners or entrepreneurs and I didn't have any mentors. So I'm able to take out this $20,000 loan, but I had to create a plan and I was creating a plan that was pretty much just bullshit. I just thought of these things, referenced other business. plans online, put mine together. And after I submitted this business plan, I'm pretty sure I just threw it out. I don't remember what was on it or what it said or how I plan to go from zero to a

million dollars in revenue in this plan. But I had a plan. And I think back to this plan, it's pretty much what I learned when I was in college. It's like you reference other work, you put this thing together, you make it look all pretty. And, it presents well, but it has very little meaning, value, intention, thought behind it. That's what college was for me, if I'm being honest. And I didn't look back at that plan since. I would honestly love to see what it said now, because I'm sure it's hilarious. But as I was listening to another one of the founders episode podcast, this one was with

Herb Kelleher, who's a founder of Southwest Airlines. Something I learned about Southwest Airlines, actually, they have been the longest standing, most profitable airline in history. And I believe they are still profitable. It's been like 40 plus years of straight profitability, which is very rare for an airline business. but he talks about in his book and in the founder's episode they references quote

he talks about planning and how he thinks a lot of planning is BS. He says that reality is chaotic. Planning is order and logical. The two don't square well with one another. The meticulous nitpicking that goes on with most strategic planning processes creates a mental straight jacket that becomes disabling in an industry where things change radically

from one thing to the next. We do have a plan. It's called doing things. We do have a plan. It's called doing things. That's the way that I view a plan. We all start from zero. And it's easy to think that step one,

One is to create a plan. But planning in the beginning, when you're starting from zero, is really hard because you don't know what to plan for. You don't know how to plan. You don't know what to consider and what not to consider. You don't know if you go left or right or front or back. In the beginning, you just have to get started. And that's what I did.

In the beginning, I didn't have much of a plan. I had a vision. I had a North Star. I didn't have a plan. I just did. I was just doing. I would wake up every single day, worked towards my North Star and worked towards my vision,

and just did what I had to do. I was blocking and tackling issues and problems and creating solutions and finding just different ways to do one thing and different strategies to apply and to test. and that's what's so hard for so many people when they're first getting started is that the expectations is that oh you want to go do this great big thing with your life you have this massive goal this business you want to start this career you want to develop

well what's your plan and you ask someone who is just starting from zero who is just getting started what's your plan and they sit there and they think well shit i don't have a plan So I must not have it. Well, what's it? I don't know, but that guy's got it and he's got a plan. Yeah, but that guy's been at it for 20, 30 years. He's a lot of context and experience to build a plan off of. In the beginning, you just have to get started.

Or do you get started? Just get started. Just start doing things, trying things, experimenting, testing. If it works, do more of it. If it doesn't do less of it. In the beginning, it's just taking steps forward. And while you're taking steps forward, sometimes it's going to feel like you're walking sideways or backwards because you probably actually are. But you have to take those steps because if you don't take a step in any direction, there's no way you're ever going to take a step forward.

That step has to be the first thing. You don't always have to have a plan in the beginning. You don't. sometimes the plan is just to do. Just get started. Because if you're starting at zero, you can't go to negative one. You can't go to negative two.

You can't go to negative three. When you're at zero, you're on the ground. You're on the floor. There's no backwards. There's only upwards. And the only way you go upwards is by taking a step. I want to paint you a picture

of what the beginning looked like for me. What 2012 looked like physically, like the space that I was operating out of. Because it's in my head and it, it's in my mind often, actually. I think back to 2012, I think back to 2014, I think back to 2017, pretty frequently. Especially, you know, right now we're operating out of about 50,000 square feet of warehouse and office space and creative space. we're planning for our next future HK right now,

which is set to be about 80,000 square feet. And sometimes people see this building who are just getting started in their entrepreneurial journey. And there's two reactions. Maybe there's three reactions. One, there's a person that sees it that is like, holy crap.

Look what you guys built. They're impressed. The second is they see what we built and where we're at compared to where they're at right now And they think, man, I just don't have it. I don't have this. I don't have 50,000 square feet. I don't have employees. I don't have sales.

That's okay. We all start from zero. And the third person is someone who sees it and isn't impressed. And it's just a warehouse and walls and products. And that's okay. That's definitely okay. But like me, for example, I will drive around in business parks and drive through empty warehouse spaces and I get excited about that.

I get super excited about commercial real estate and in business parks and warehouses because what I see is opportunity. What I see is, you know, some young 20, 21, 22 year old kid right now who's building something in his bedroom that one day may occupy a 500,000 square foot warehouse and office space. That's a dream. It's an achievable dream. It really is. But in 2012, I first started working out of this room like I was previously talking about above my parents' garage. So we moved into a new house when I was about five years old. In Central, Pennsylvania in this town called Pomerah. Our backyard was a farmer's field. It was actually my

best friend growing up, Joel Smith, his farm, his family farm. And we moved into this new house when I was about five years old. So my brother would have been about two years old. And we had this room above the garage, which was called a bonus room that for the first couple years we lived in this house, it wasn't finished. It was just particle, and two by four beams in some exposed insulation. And then eventually my parents decided to finish this room. So they added floors and carpet and drywall and we painted it. And me and my brother had bunk beds in there.

And we played ice hockey growing up. And I remember just like the colors that my mom painted this room that me and my brother suggested. It was like we used tan. I've always loved tan. And if you see some of the BPN branding today, you'll see tan in different aspects of our design elements. So it was like tan walls and then it was navy blue, not ceilings, but the way the room was built, there was like the wall and then a wall between the main walls and the ceiling. And these walls were like on these 45 degree angles.

It was like a perched ceiling. and we painted that perch section, this dark navy blue, and then there was a wallpaper, like, border or banner that went around the entire bedroom that probably started it like, you know, five and a half feet high,

and it was maybe a foot wide. And it was these illustrations of hockey players because me and my brother played ice hockey growing up. Central Pennsylvania, I mean, a big hockey area. Hershey Bears are there and it's a you know, the northeast is just big in ice hockey and we played a lot of ice hockey growing up.

So we had this bonus room and my parents finished out and me and my brother had bunk beds in for a few years and then we eventually moved into our own rooms and this room just became like our computer room

and storage and we used to play these things called little sticks like these small small like hockey nets and you play on your knees in these small little plastic hockey sticks and you'd use like a tennis ball

and you'd play hockey in there and it'd get super aggressive and we'd throw each other through balls pretty much but this was like our little sticks arena the room was just positioned it was very narrow and long so it was perfect for like a hockey

arena small hockey arena. And we played little sticks in there. And then when I launched the business in 2012, I remember sitting my parents' kitchen and filling out the information online to submit my registration for the LLC, Bayer Performance Nutrition LLC with the state of Pennsylvania. I remember where I was sitting. I remember what my laptop looked like. It was like this huge, huge laptop I had for college. And I remember filling out the registration there and then submitting the purchase order for my first round of pre-workout with a manufacturer that I sourced because at the time,

I was obsessed with the supplement industry. I was actually mixing up my own pre-workout in my dorm room because I'd buy ingredients in bulk. I'd mix them up in my room. I'd pack them up in baggies and I'd sell them to friends, peers, people who were in the dorm room with me and who live next to my apartment for the first couple years of college. So if you walked into my bedroom when I was in college in those early years, you'd see a scale, a food scale in my bedroom. I'd have all these different bags of white powder sitting around, which were all materials, like caffeine, beta alanine, cituline mallate, creatine, bedin, bedin and hydros, tyrazine. And then I'd put them in baggies.

I'd weigh out the ingredients, put it in baggies, and then sell to people. And I was making pre-workout when I was in college. It looked like I was a drug dealer. I mean, if someone walked in, if a cop walked into my room in college and saw a scale white powders and baggies everywhere. They think I was dealing cocaine or some sort of illegal substance.

But that was my early college days. And that ended up evolving into just having the courage to take out this loan and launch this company. And 2012, after having the courage to do all of that,

and being obsessed with the space in this industry and filing for the LLC and placing the first production order for flight, our pre-workout, and having a friend design our website and our logos for free, I established that bonus room in my parents' house as like, this is our HQ. This is where we'll store inventory and all the boxes. This is where we'll pack orders, which looking back was a stupid, his place to put it. We put it on the second floor, the second story of my parents' house, which was not even close to the stairs to get downstairs to get outside. So that first round of

inventory was delivered. It was 500 bottles, 500 units of pre-workout. And we carried all those boxes up to that bonus room. We stacked them all up. And I put together this white folding table and a printer, and I had packing supplies and tape, and all the things I needed to fulfill orders. And I had my HQ, my setup. I had a banner on the wall that was neon green. It said bare performance nutrition, again, with those tan, navy blue,

and the ice hockey banner wallpaper in the background. I remember filming videos there, which I thought were like these super professional videos, You could see the corner of the hockey wallpaper illustration sticking out in the corner of the video. And that was the beginning. That was starting from zero for me. Just looking back, like humbling beginnings. The humble beginnings were real.

That was 2012. And then a year later, after starting the business, ended up going to college. Oh, no, sorry. 2012, I was in college. So a year after starting the business, I actually was graduating from college. So from 2012 to 2013, I kind of had two offices. One, I had the office that was my parents' bonus room above the garage. and I also had an office at my college, which was my apartment room.

So my apartment in college at this time, I was sharing with five other guys. It was about 1,100 square feet, jam-packed with dudes in a small amount of space. And my room was about 10 feet by 10 feet. And I had some inventory there. So what I would do is I would, on the weekends, and at the time I was going home a lot, because I was going home a lot, because I wanted to be around,

I called my HQ, I wanted to be around the product. And I wanted to be focused on building the business. On the weekends, I was going home, and I was just taking steps forward. Again, I didn't really have a plan, but I was just trying to figure out what I was supposed to do

to grow this business, to grow this brand. and then during the week, I would drive product in my car back up to college, which is about three and a half hours away. So grew up around the Hershey, Pennsylvania area, went to school around the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area. Now I would drive my product up to my college room, you know, a box or two of pre-workout. And I would pack orders in my bedroom and night during this time. And I would drop off the packages at the post office if any orders came in the previous day

on my way to class the next morning. And I vividly remember getting started that year because I decided to use USPS, the United States Postal Service to fulfill all of my orders. Because if you use the United States Postal Service, you would get free boxes. So I would go on their website. I'd order free boxes. These boxes would get dropped off at my apartment or my parents' house. We'd use those boxes to ship out the orders.

So I would drop off the orders the next day on the class. And when I say orders, it was maybe one to two. I don't want to even say like every day, maybe every other day, every third day. There weren't many orders coming at a time. And the people that were ordering were like friends and family. just getting started. And I was just trying to share the word of BPN with everyone in college. Everyone I could.

Army ROTC cadets, people in my classes, people at the college gym. I was handing out a free pre-workout to everyone and anyone that would take it. And going back to what I originally started talking about in the beginning, where I quickly realized just because you have supply does not necessarily mean you have demand. you have to create demand for the supply that you have, one, to maintain cash flow and healthy margins, but to be able to not only thrive, but survive. Those are my two offices in the early days. It was that bonus room above my parents' garage.

It was my small college apartment, which we had this apartment, on Philadelphia Street in Indiana, Pennsylvania that was surrounded by bars that was super loud at night, didn't have any AC. Like I said, five guys. It was disgusting.

It was dirty. It was a mess. But it's where we launched. It's where I launched the business. Like I remember what my desk looked like, where my bed was. And I remember sitting at my desk, I can remember to this day, 2012, like it was yesterday. I remember sitting at my desk in my apartment at IEP and the guy who was designing our website for free was sending me over screenshots to review and look at.

And it was the first website we launched, the first logos we used. The whole website was all black. And there was a lot of neon green. And I think it was like inflection or affliction inspired. That old affliction brand, you know, with the t-shirts that had like these crazy designs. I mean, there were like these designs and these textures and these font elements all over the website that I had a friend helped design that was so extravagant and crazy that you really couldn't read what it said. It was really like an affliction t-shirt.

Cross between WarpTor and Performance Supplements. That was the first BPN website. And when we launched, I didn't know how to get all these things set up. Like Shopify wasn't a platform then. This was pre-Shopify. So the payment processor we used on the website was PayPal. We linked to PayPal. And I didn't think of any issues in the beginning faces that.

But I remember this one day where there were like four orders that came through on the website. And obviously they went through the PayPal checkout. And each order was like $500. So this one day I ended up doing $2,000 in revenue early on, which I could not believe. So obviously I wanted to fulfill these orders as fast as possible to get these people a product. And in my head, I'm thinking, holy crap, like people found BPN. Like they're starting to order all these products because they're in love with it or it's about to blow up. Like we're on the cusp.

I'm on the cusp of just expansion and explosion. I need to prepare for all this fulfillment, all this demand. And after that day, that $2,000 day, again, I went back to just crickets. Crickets, crickets. And a few days later, I get this notification from PayPal that those four orders were actually fraud and that they were taking that money back from me because those orders were done under someone else's PayPal account that was hacked. So I sent $2,000 worth of product, but didn't even make $2,000 because they took the $2,000

away from me. I'll never forget that day. A great high followed by a very dramatic low, which is essentially the roller coaster ride of what entrepreneurship is all about. You know, one of the things that I want to really reinforce and hope that you're going to take away from this episode is that you shouldn't and you can't be intimidated

to start from zero. Starting from zero is actually a blessing. It can be a blessing. Ignorance is bliss because like I talked about, if you're starting from zero, you can't go to negative one. You're already on the ground. You're on the floor.

Any step or decision you make is going to be up. It's going to be onwards. It's going to be gross. growth and it's going to be progress. So when you start from zero, you have nothing to lose. As you get larger and bigger, you have more responsibility. You then have something to lose. But in the beginning, when you're starting from zero, that's the best time to fail.

That's the best time to make the mistakes. and that's the best time to just take steps to figure out what works and what doesn't. And it builds character. That step, that's courage. I had Jimmy DeSico on the podcast, I guess it was a few years ago now.

Him and his brothers are the founders of Super Coffee, which is actually based on of Austin, Texas here now. And one of the things that we talked a lot about was learning how to manage stress and chaos. And I don't think the journey ever gets easier. It doesn't. It only gets more challenging. The journey of building something,

whether that's a family, the life that you want, a career, a business, anything, the larger that goal becomes, the longer that you do it, it never gets easier. It's only going to get harder. but you get better at managing chaos. You get better, more efficient at managing the stress.

So the things that you are experiencing when you start from zero, day one, the chaos, the stress, the emotions, it might feel like the end of the world. And most times the reality is that it's not. And in one, three, five years, you might experience that, same issue, that same concern, that same problem. And it's just to something that goes in one ear and out the other. You don't even think about it because you become so efficient at just managing chaos and stress. And then five, 10, 15, 20 years later, the things that you have become adaptable and resilient

to manage and handle is so much more significant than you ever thought you could have managed or handled because you grew. because of the relative nature of what is hard. And that comes with adaptability. That becomes with the resilience and the exposure and repetition of just this stimulus that is chaos, that is stress. That is, in my opinion, what working towards your goals and dreams is all about. It's a lot of stress management. It's a lot of fatigue management.

There's a quote that I want to reference here because when I first got started, I vividly remember there are a lot of people who didn't understand what I was doing, why I was doing it, and how I was going to do it. And I was talking to someone earlier this week about this where they have this thing they're working towards and they believe in it fully, 100%. They have passion. They have purpose behind it. There's a want, their desire.

a will, there's an ability, there's a belief. And as we talked about in the last couple episodes, belief comes before ability. But everyone else in their life is anti what they are working towards. Not because it has all these negative consequences or that it's morally or ethically incorrect, but because they don't believe that they can achieve it. when I first got started, now starting from zero, there were a lot of people who,

one, told me it couldn't be done, but two, lowered the ceiling or tried lowering my ceiling of expectations of what I could accomplish because they thought they were doing me a favor and saving me the disappointment that I was going to experience

when I didn't achieve it or didn't do it. And Theodore Roosevelt says, it is not the critic who counts. Not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena,

whose face is marred by dust and sweat, in blood, who strives, who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and no shortcoming. But who does actually strive to do the deeds? Who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails, at least fails while daring greatly. So his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls

who neither know victory nor defeat. Deodor Roosevelt. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena. Going back to the way I kicked off this podcast originally, the Richard Burton quote, who was the one early Stripe employee, where he said,

Stripe gave me a mental model for potential. An alien founder assembles a group of Jedi to start a cult and go on a mission together. As I talked about in the beginning of this episode, I haven't been able to shake that quote. There's a lot of meaning. For me, there's a lot of relatability behind that quote. And I think in order to build something great,

especially, you know, as we're talking about business and entrepreneurship, you first have to create a great product that is backed by a strong brand and mission. And if you do that, you will track the right people. And I'm a big fan of this book by Netflix's co-founder called No Rules Rule. His name's Reed Hasting. And in this book, he talks about the type of employees that they had tried. track and they hire.

And he said, they are big-hearted champions who pick up the trash. Big-hearted. Kind, empathetic, warm. Champions want to win. Pick up the trash. Self-responsibility. They're not above and beyond doing basic skill level and stuff. Or just taking care of their workspace and themselves.

Self-responsibility. Self-ownership. Big Harden champions. who pick up the trash. And what I was thinking about, as I was thinking on this topic right here, you know, you first create a great product that is backed by a strong brand and mission, and then you attract the right people. And you give these people the opportunity and the space to grow.

I share this with our brand team today because every week, each department has one big meeting. We don't do a lot of meetings. but we do one big meeting per department. We call them our weekly L10. And that's based off of the foundation of EOS, which is the entrepreneurial operating system that we implemented into our business a few years ago.

And we don't fully still incorporate all things EOS, but we still incorporate some of the pieces and structure of what EOS was all about. but one of the things that the entrepreneurial operating system encourages is the way you set up in host meetings, and we still do that. And we had our leadership L10 this morning. And then right before I recorded this podcast, we had our brand L10. Each meeting is about 90 minutes long.

And we discuss any headlines. So things we need to talk about in terms of people, vendors, suppliers, partners, And then we discuss issues. And as we discuss issues, we solve issues and we create to-do's out of those issues to follow up with the following week. So really the whole 90 minutes is just addressing and solving issues that we're experiencing from previous week. And everyone and anyone can add issues to that list throughout the week that we can then solve for during the weekly L10. and I shared this whole concept of first creating a great product that is backed by a strong branded mission and through that you attract the right people and sometimes you attract

people who believe in the mission and that are aligned with your values and want the opportunity to grow but might not have all the skills yet. And as I was thinking about that, I kept thinking about one of BPN's first employees, who is Yuli, Uly, Ulysses Gabriel. If you've been following on the YouTube channel for any amount of time now, the last couple years, you've probably heard of and seen Yoli. And I remember when Yoli first got started. And me and Jordan were just talking about this.

we were looking to hire our second videographer, editor, creative on the team. Jordan Utter was our first creative hire that we ever made in 2019. From 2012 to 2019, before Jordan was hired, I did all of our creative assets. I mean, we contracted some things every once in a while, but all the YouTube videos, a lot of the product photos, website photos. I was managing and handling all of that for the first seven years until Jordan was hired in 2019. And after we hired Jordan in 2019, I realized just how impactful that was on the business and the brand. And I knew we had to grow the brand team, the creative department.

So that's when Yuley interviewed and we eventually gave Yoli a job. And we were on the fence of offering your way the job because he was so brand new to videography and editing and film and storytelling that for me and Jordan almost felt like a risk. And I remember when he got started in the videos he was editing. And I just remember he was putting keyframes all over his entire editing timeline. And I was thinking, man, I don't know if this kid's going to get there. I don't know if he has it But I could tell with yoi

He just He wanted to get better so bad He wanted to grow He was obsessed with learning And he was constantly asking For feedback And what he was doing wrong And what he was doing right

And how he could get better And he was staying at the office Just all day and all night Just working and learning And studying And I saw all year you'll be develop so fast, so well over the course of two to three years, that he is now, in my opinion, one of the best filmmakers, editors, storytellers that I've

ever worked with. I mean, just incredible growth in progress. And I watched Yulele start from zero, or at least close to zero. or at least close to zero and in his first couple months of filming and editing and just getting started and seeing where he has gone

over these last couple years has been absolutely rewarding and amazing and remarkable to watch because the only reason he grew at the rate he grew and the only reason he got better and the way that he got better

is because he wanted to get better he wanted to grow In the beginning, he didn't have a plan because he didn't know what plan to put forward. But he was just taking steps. He was just doing the work, whatever that work was. And seeing him grow and develop has been amazing to watch,

but I've seen the same thing happen as so many other people in this building on the BPN team. I've seen people come in with no experience, no skills, no mentorship, no guidance. But they wanted to grow so badly. and they want to grow, they want to develop,

and they want to get better, and they want the feedback. And they start from zero, and they change the trajectory of their life, their family's financial status, their ability to do the things they want to do with their time and their position and their future, but they start from zero.

We all start from zero. Some things that I've learned in ways I've grown in my entrepreneurial journey that I've jotted down here. After starting from zero, just with consistency and time and work and a will and desire to grow and get better, I've grown in my ability to become resilient and adaptable, to appreciate delayed gratification. the utmost respect for compounding consistency, seeing the big picture perspective.

I've learned not to sweat the small stuff because a lot of times the small stuff doesn't really matter. And I've hyper-focused and grown as a leader, a manager, and developing people, team, and culture. I've learned those things by not just creating a strategic strict plan and following it, but by doing, just by doing things. And as I've done things and I've learned from those experiences, I then have been able to create plans to strategically get better and to grow and develop.

So my message to anyone listening to this podcast, this episode is a reminder that we all start from zero. And just because you're not born with it doesn't mean you can't have it. But we don't have to have a plan in the beginning. But we have to do the thing. Just do it. Just get started. We all start from zero. Zero.