The Nick Bare Podcast - 076: Omega-3 Benefits, July 4th Sale, Western States Reflections, & More

Episode Date: July 22, 2024

I'm deep-diving into the recent whirlwind of activity both in my personal life and at BPN. From celebrating our most successful 4th of July sale ever to gearing up for our 12th anniversary next month, there's so much to share. Firstly, a huge thank you to all our listeners and supporters for making our 4th of July sale a record-breaking success. Your love for our products fuels everything we do at BPN, and we couldn't be more grateful. Today, we'll discuss the importance of omega-3 fatty acids in our diets, inspired by the recent conversation with Max Lugavere. Plus, I'll be sharing some exciting updates on our product lineup and how your feedback is shaping our brand in 2024. On a personal note, I had the incredible opportunity to pace Sally McRae at the legendary Western States 100. The experience has left me inspired and determined to tackle the race myself one day, marking it as a major goal for the future. And of course, I can't wait to fill you in on my latest training regimen, a blend of strength training and cardiovascular conditioning that's been integrated into my workouts lately. Join me as we explore these topics and more on today's episode. Strength, endurance, and wellness supplements to fuel your performance. SAVE 10% at BPN Supps: https://bit.ly/nickbare10audio Follow: IG: https://www.instagram.com/thenickbarepodcast/?hl=en YT: youtube.com/@nickbarefitness Chapters: 0:00 Intro 0:52 Welcome and updates 9:23 Being a forever student 11:35 How my thinking on nutrition has evolved 18:32 Being proactive to have high quality of life in our late years 25:42 Benefits of omega-3 fatty acids 29:46 Sources of omega-3 fatty acids 36:17 Omega 3 supplements 39:35 BPN’s 12-year anniversary 44:37 Fourth of July sale 1:05:28 Western States 100 1:18:16 My new HYROX training routine

It's really easy that as you grow in your personal or professional life and career, that you want to add complexities onto everything you're doing. Because adding complexities sometimes makes you feel smarter or like you're getting better at something. But I found the opposite is true that typically when you add unnecessary complexities, it actually makes everything worse. Simple works. Simple does not mean easy. So I don't want you to think that by me saying simplify your life, simplify your business,

simplify your diet, simplify your training. Oftentimes, simplifying is actually the harder thing to do. It's easy to overcomplicate, but the hard part is simplifying in doing the same thing in less steps or with less people. Simple works. Follow simple. What is going on, guys? And welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Today I will be updating you and speaking about what I've been fascinated by recently, what I've been studying, what I've been learning, what we've been doing in my personal life, but also professional life with BPN, some races we have been a part of, and then some changes to my training that I have started incorporating the last couple weeks. Lots of different changes. And

this past couple months has been quite a season, a heavy season. So we move back to Texas, as many of you know, from Tennessee, early May, and got settled in. Now, at the time this recording, it is July, July 11th, which is actually four days away from my daughter turning two years old. she turns two years old on July 15th. Now over the last couple weeks, we had the Speed Project film premiere that we featured at a theater in Austin, Texas, as well as premiere on YouTube. And then we hosted our 50-mile overnight ultra.

We had 100 runners come in out of state, out of country, actually, to run 50 miles with us throughout the night. We called it Survive the Night on a secluded ranch here in central Texas. And then I went out, which I'm going to talk about today, I went out to California with the BPN team to support Sally McRae as she ran and completed Western States, which is a 100-mile trail race. And I had the opportunity, which I'm very grateful for, to have paced her for the last. about 40 miles of that race, which I want to do myself at some point. I want to run Western States 100. Beautiful race.

So much history behind it. So much respect behind that race. And then coming off of Western States, we moved right into our Fourth of July sale, which was last week. Just wrapped that up. We had achieved and have achieved record-breaking numbers. in terms of number of orders, revenue, sales, and then efficiency of output from our ops and fulfillment team.

That's what has happened in the last couple weeks. And we are about, you know, five to six weeks, give or take from baby number two being born. Steph's due date officially is August 21st. 2024, obviously, when baby boy bear is going to be born or is expected to be born. However, our doctors have told us that they may induce her a little bit earlier. So, I mean, baby boy bear could technically be here any day now. and we are on lockdown here at home waiting for that day to come,

which is going to be a big life transition. And then in middle of September, we are planned to move into our new home. So super excited for that. Very excited to be a dad to a second child. And then we'll move our family into the home that we plan to be in for a long time. So when we came back to Texas, we found a house that was about 70% completed. And we were able to add all of the fixtures and finishes with the builder to customize it to the way that we wanted it to be for our family.

So that's been going on in the background. And right now we are renting a house that we're settled into, we're comfortable, but we are excited to move into our home. in the middle of September. So big things going on not only with the Bayer family, but also the BPN family too. And the team overall has accomplished them, some huge goals and objectives and missions and projects over these last couple weeks that I'm very, very excited and proud about.

Very proud of this team for all they have done and worked towards over these last couple weeks. and, you know, I'll talk about the 4th of July sale and what we learned and what we experienced and some takeaways. But it was a big win for this team. And we cannot have done that without you guys. You guys who listen to these podcast episodes, support the brand, watch the videos, buy the products, use the supplements, train with the go on more, live with the go on more mission and lifestyle. and philosophy. Truly, I just wanted to say thank you.

Thank you for supporting this brand that I have now been building for the last 12 years, not by myself, but with an amazing team, amazing people. And I just want to say from the bottom of my heart, thank you guys for supporting BPN in our mission and everyone who is behind it. So thank you. Thank you for that. Now, some of the things that I'm talking about today are just topics and areas of health and fitness that I've truly been pretty passionate about as of recently. You know, I am and view myself as a forever student. I am always reading something, whether that's a book or a research paper or an article or I'm listening to a podcast or an audiobook.

Every morning when I go run, I am listening to either a podcast or an audiobook. And I'm listening to these things with the intent and the goal of learning something new or expanding my knowledge on something that I am currently educated on, but very passionate and want to learn more about it. Training, fitness is always one of those things. Diet and nutrition is always one of those things. Entrepreneurship, building a business, learning from other founders is another one of those things. and learning from mentors and role models through their experience of being parents

and at the same time chasing their wildest dreams and aspirations. I'm in a season right now having one kid about to have another, about to be a father of two, where I want to learn from people who have been there who have done it, not to tell me what to do necessarily, but to hear their experiences and how they've navigated some of these life transitions and chapters and issues.

And I get a lot of benefit and fulfillment from sitting in on these conversations and learning from other people's experience. So with all that being said, what I'm going to talk about here is something that I've been very passionate about recently. and this is more so around diet and nutrition. And it's all about omega-3 fatty acid consumption and the significance of it.

Now, let me give a little background, a little context, and how my thoughts and views on nutrition and diet and food has evolved and changed over the years. And the reason I share this is because you might be in a similar situation or you may have been in the past. And I've talked about this before, so it's nothing new, but my hope is that it provides some context, some background. When I first got into the fitness space, it was all about changing my physique, improving my physique, and doing this through working out, primarily bodybuilding and power of thing in the gym, and then diet and nutrition. And the way that I was training and the way that I was eating was to change and manipulate my physique to look a certain way. I wanted a bigger chest. I wanted bigger arms.

I wanted my sleeves to be really tight. I would intentionally buy a shirt one size down so that my sleeves were tighter on my arms. I wanted a six-pack abs. I really didn't care about legs in the beginning. Not going to lie. It was pretty much chest, arms, and abs. That's where I started. Obviously, have grown and evolved from there.

But the way that I looked at food was strictly through that lens. It was calories. It was macronutrients. Protein was a priority. And the quality of protein when I first started wasn't necessarily a concern. but it was just getting the quantity of protein that I needed to build lean muscle tissue and get stronger in the gym, but also recover after this workouts. And then I viewed carbohydrates as my fuel source, my primary fuel source.

Again, source and quality wasn't really a big issue or priority, but it was just numbers. If I knew I wanted to or needed to consume 450 grams of carbs in a day based off my macronutrient and chloric goals at the moment, I was going to fill those 450 grams in with whatever carbs I was craving. It's when flexible dieting and if it fits your macros was a really popular dieting approach. and then carb or not carbohydrates, dietary fat, I viewed it also as an energy source, but more importantly, I viewed fat as something that was really important for proper and optimal hormone function as well as just making things taste better, right? Like whole eggs taste better than egg whites and a fattier ground beef taste a whole lot better than chicken breast and putting an avocado on anything is going to taste really good.

And cooking something in oil is going to be better than not using oil and butter and those types of things. But my main focus then was protein, carbohydrates, calories, and then fats were a secondary thought. That was my mindset around nutrition early on. And the longer I studied it, because I went to school for nutrition, I graduated with the degree in nutrition before going to the Army as an infantry officer. When I was in school, we studied nutrition not necessarily around sports performance and

body composition changes, but really all about disease intervention. And at the time that I was in school between 2009 and 2013, it was all about cardiovascular disease and diabetes or pre-diabetes. So as I educated myself in school, but even more importantly when I graduated from college, and as the fitness and health space evolved and more content and more information was published, books were released, podcast became a big thing. YouTube, you could learn anything on YouTube, like you can today. That was a growing and newer platform as I was growing up and really interested in this

I was just drawn to learning more about health and performance and fitness and food and diet. And that eventually led me to becoming more interested in diet and nutrition and food around quality, as opposed to just quantity. And a carb wasn't a carb at a certain point. A protein wasn't a protein at a certain point. A fat wasn't a fat at a certain point. fiber wasn't just fiber at a certain point. Micronutrients mattered, quality mattered, sourcing mattered.

The makeup of these fats mattered. Where you're getting your food, knowing what's in your food. All these things really started to matter to me because I not only looked at food as a way of manipulating and improving or changing body composition, but also associated food with a feeling. Quality food makes you feel a certain way. It makes you feel better. It makes you and helps you perform better. It helps you live a longer, more quality life.

It helps you prevent a lot of diseases and disorders as you get older. But when I was younger, I didn't truly, I don't want to say understand. I didn't truly appreciate or value the importance of the quality of nutrition. And what we can learn from that, I was more focused on what can nutrition and food do to my arms, chest, and abs. So I'm now here to share with you what I'm truly passionate about, not this specific topic where I'm talking about omega-3 fatty acids, but a way that we can look at our

food choices on a regular basis moving forward. You know, I recently sat down with Max Lugavir for a podcast, and we were talking about the prevention of neurodegenerative disorders with the use of food and implementation of lifestyle modifications and changes. and one of the things when I was watching his film that was all about his mother's battle with dementia, the one big key takeaway that I learned from that film was that by the time we start experiencing symptoms of dementia

or Alzheimer's, for example, those diseases started happening 20 to 30 years, 20 to 30 years before the symptoms actually show up. And what's creating those issues before those symptoms show up is low chronic inflammation in the brain. And that low chronic inflammation is starting because of things that we are either exposed to, toxins, lifestyle choices, stress, lack of sleep, poor diet, ultra-processed foods.

We are neglecting high-quality nutrition, good fat sources like omega-3 fatty acids. watching that film, which was a very, very strong film, I left that feeling obligated to start talking more about what we can do as individuals, but also share with our friends and family, what we can do to make some changes in our food choices, food supply, in our diet, to set us up for success in the long term. not only live longer, but live a more quality life as we get older. Like for me personally, there's a lot of people who are trying to biohack the system

who want to live more years. And that's great. But I'm not necessarily concerned about finding out how to learn how to live more years or add more years onto my life. Like, for example, if I'm going to die when I'm 80 years old, that's like my punch out date 80 years old if i could find a way to live to 90 10 more years by making some changes but the quality of those last 10 years doesn't matter i don't know if i want to live those last 10 years like do i want to live those last 10 years

suffering with a low quality of life or am i more concerned with a more concerned with the years that I spend here on earth maximizing the quality of. For me, I mean, it's a little bit of both. I'd love to live some more years, but also a greater quality of those years. And I think as I'm getting older and now starting a family,

I would like to live more years so I can spend more time with my family. But I want to make sure that those years have quality. And the question is, what can we do now to have more quality in our later years of life so that we're not racing against the clock before time is too late? So there's a bunch of things we can do. Move our body. Exercise, a combination of strength training and cardiovascular conditioning.

We know that muscle mass, lean muscle tissue, and a strong high VO2 max, are both key indicators of health span and lifespan, having quality life, later on in our later years. And then what can we do to modify our diet to reduce risk of things like hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular disease? what can we do to reduce the risk or potentially prevent dementia?

And that starts right now. If you're in your 20s, in your 30s, even in your 40s, that prevention starts right now. You cannot wait until you are 50, 60, 70 to start making lifestyle changes, whether that's movement or diet and nutrition. You can't wait until you're later. because it is too late. The damage has already been done. The chronic low inflammation has been there just eroding your vascular system, your heart,

your brain for too long that the damage is irreversible. The prevention starts right now. And that's what I'm really passionate about in this chapter of life. And I'll be honest, I think, you know, I'm about to be here. 34 years old next month, which is crazy. I don't feel like I'm in my mid-30s. I really don't. And I think it's a combination of that plus building a family, about to have our second kid,

thinking about those later years and what I want to be able to do with my kids as they're older, I mean, I'll be honest. When I'm like 70 years old, I want people to guess that I'm 50. That'd be pretty cool. Like, look at Mark Sisson. Mark Sisson, the founder of primal kitchens and the primal blueprint. Go look up Mark Sisson on social media. I think he's in his early, maybe mid-70s at this point, and he looks like he's in his 50s.

He moves like he's in his 50s. Him and his wife. Very impressive. But they put so much. I don't even want to say time, but intention in their training, in their movement, in their diet, and their food choices. So omega-3 fatty acid intake, that's what I want to talk about. There are countless studies, countless studies, on the significance of having a diet-rich

in omega-3 fatty acids and reducing not only all-cause mortality, but also reducing the reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease or even sudden onset cardiovascular, I don't say disturbances, heart attacks or strokes, for example. There's been a link between a diet rich in omega-3 fatty acids and the reduction of risk of cardiovascular events. Now, there's an omega-6 fatty acids, and there's omega-3 fatty acids. And these are essential fatty acids. Omega-3 essential fatty acids. You have to get them from your diet.

Your body cannot synthesize them on their own. Omega-6 fatty acids, not all, but a lot of them, have received a lot of attention and hate over the last couple years. because those are what are commonly referred to as seed oils, vegetable oil, canola oil, for example. These oils are an omega-6 fatty acid. And in a lot of cases, are pro-inflammatory. So a lot of people have been pushing people away from these industrial refined seed oils because of the damage that they can do in the body

and more so pushing people towards omega-3 fatty acids or omega-3 fat sources, which we should all be trying to get into our diet on a daily basis. I was listening to some peer-reviewed literature, reading some studies, listening to some podcasts in preparation of today's conversation, and just because it's been something

I've been really interested in recently. And a huge part of our population, many, many people get zero omega-3 fatty acids in their diet on a daily basis. And I believe the average person, I mean, you have obviously people who are getting zero and people who are getting multiple grams of omega-3 fatty acids in their diet on a daily basis. So there's a broad range, but the average overall, from what I've heard, is that roughly each person is getting like 120 milligrams of omega-3 essential fatty acids in their diet on a daily basis, which is not enough. These omega-3 fatty acids are great for the heart, great for

the brain. They are anti-inflammatory. Like I said, there's been research studies showing a reduction in cardiovascular disease and events and a positive correlation with a greater consumption or intake of these omega-3 fatty acids and also a reduced risk of neurodegenerative disorders like dementia, for example. These are things that we want to get into our diet on a daily basis, great for the brain, great for the heart. Now, they might not necessarily build a chest. They might not necessarily give you a six-pack ab.

They might not necessarily give you larger biceps. But you might have six-pack abs, a bigger chest, and bigger biceps for a longer amount of years if you take care of your body with some smart choices like this. Now, we can get omega-3 fatty acids from a few different sources and options. The best option, in my opinion, is fatty fish. Salmon, sardines, anchovies, even muscles, have high concentrations of omega-3 fatty acids. And there's three omega-3 fatty acids. There's EPA, there's DHA, and there's ALA.

Now, we want to look for high concentrations of EPA and DHA. These are the two omega-3 fatty acids. They're going to have the most benefit. You get the most bang for your buck in terms of heart health and brain health, healthy brain function, healthy heart function. ALA is omega-3 fatty acid source that primarily comes from plus. plant sources. It's not as effective. It's not as efficient. EPA and DHA come from animal sources, primarily from fish. And these fattier fishes have high concentration of EPA and DHA. Now, if you are plant-based or you're vegan, for example, you can get, from what I understand,

high concentrations of EPA and DHA from a microalph. type food product because these fatty fish eat this microalgae in the ocean. That's actually what creates the concentration of EPA and DHA. So with all that being said, there's three sources of these omega-3 fatty acids. EPA, DHA, ALA. We want EPA, we want DHA in high concentrations. the best place to get these is from wild caught fish to get the benefit for heart health and brain health. Now, here's some places that I get my omega-3 fatty acids on a weekly basis.

Me and my family, we eat salmon at least once a week, sometimes twice a week, but at least once a week. Try to get wild caught salmon. Actually got some wild caught salmon at the farmer's market in Georgetown last weekend, I believe it was. It was wild caught salmon that was actually caught in Juneau, Alaska, frozen, and then sent right to Texas. Believe it or not, believe it or not. So we made some of that this past week. Salmon is a great source of EPA. in DHA. I have a can of, and I only recently started doing this, but it's because I really do see and understand the importance of these omega-3 fatty acids in our diet.

I eat a can of sardines a few times a week. Not every day. I do this with breakfast. So I'd say three times a week I'm having a can of sardines. And on those days, my breakfast is, this is after my run. a banana, some fruit, additional fruit being either raspberries, blackberries, or blueberries, like the polyphenols and the antioxidants from those berries. And they'll have a can of sardines, which is three ounces.

I'll do two whole eggs and then three quarters cup of egg whites. Now I'll add some sea salt on top of the eggs. I put some saracha on the sardines because they're just better with saracha on the sardines. But that's been my breakfast multiple times a week. Now a can of sardines, the ones that I get, I pick up at natural grocers, but you can get, you know, you can get sardines at any grocery store. I would try to find wild sardines. I get them in water. You can get them in olive oil, in extra virgin olive oil.

I will admit they're a little bit better in the extra virgin olive oil, but there's a little bit more added fat. So I just like getting mine in water. I drain the water after I open them up, cover them in saracha, and then eat them. And honestly, I look forward to it. I think they're pretty freaking good. Three ounces of these wild sardines provide me 18 grams of protein

and 1,800 milligrams of omega-3 fatty acids. acids between EPA and DHA. That's great. Like having that multiple times a week between the salmon and the sardines, I'm getting some rich sources of EPA and DHA in my diet from this wild caught fish. So, eat your fish. Eat your sardines. Don't knock it until you try it. They look pretty gross. I'm not going to lie. You peel back the can. These little fishes, they have the skin on them and everything. The heads are just chopped off. The tails are chopped off. But throw some saracha on there or some primal kitchens buffalo sauce. And they're pretty good. Now, you got to be careful because when I open up the sardines in the morning and I drain the juice,

I'm very careful where I drain that juice because if it gets on my hands and I go around the kitchen, make breakfast. I get Charlie up from bed. I bring her down stairs. Before you know it, everything smells like sardines. Steph will come out of the room in the morning and like she can smell the sardines on Charlie. She can smell the sardines on the counter. You got to open them, eat them, wash your hands, wash everything you touched because before you know it, you're going to have a fishy house. You're got a fishy kitchen. Eat your fish. Eat your fatty. Eat your fatty fish, get some EPA, get some DHA, get some good protein in there, multiple times a week. There's a good starting point. Now, if you don't want to eat a lot of fatty fish, you don't want to

eat sardines, you don't want to prep your salmon or your muscles or your anchovies, for example, you can take a high-quality fish oil supplement. And I take a high-quality fish oil supplement every single day. And I had been for years and years and years. That's why we created strong omega. So here at BPN, we have a fish oil supplement that we put a lot of time into developing. And not all companies do this.

I'll be honest. We are very intentional and very rigid within our standards of creating this product because we wanted to be highly certified and regulated. So strong omega comes from wild caught anchovies.

And per serving, which is two soft gels, you get 1,200 milligrams of EPA and 600 milligrams of DHA. This is a great starting point for everyone.

You're getting 1,800 milligrams of EPA and DHA in just two soft gels every day. Take it with breakfast. There's a little lemon oil

in there so you don't have the fishy aftertaste or the burps. And like I said, our strong omega supplement is sourced from wild caught anchovies. It's in the triglyceride form, which the triglyceride form is the most bio available and has the best absorption rate that your body can actually use and benefit from. And we really wanted to make sure that when we're creating a fish oil supplement, it was IFOS certified. International fish oil standard certified. So this is a certification process that companies can use or implement into their product to ensure purity, potency, and freshness.

So our product, our fish oil, strong omega is IFOS certified. It's been certified to make sure that the product is pure. It has the amount of EPA and DHA that we say, and it's fresh because there's actually a lot of fish oil products on the market that are already ranted. The fish oil itself can go bad. It can go ranted. And if you ever bought a fish oil supplement, whether that's in a soft gel or liquid, and it smells like rotten. fish, it's because that product is itself ranted. It's rotten. So not only is our strong omega tested and certified by the international fish oil standard, but also for ban substances

by informed support, just like the rest of our entire line. So there's another option. If you want to not have to open up a can of sardines or prepare a fish on a weekly basis, You can take two soft gels of strong omega and get your daily dose of omega-3 fatty acids to ensure your basis is covered. Okay, so moving on, the next thing I wanted to talk about. And really, to be honest, guys, like, I love the podcast. I love this platform because I can just have a deep, meaningful conversation technically by myself.

I'm in a room right now by myself talking to a camera. But I'm talking to you guys. I'm having a conversation with you. I'm letting you know what's on my mind and what I've been thinking about, what I'm really passionate about in the moment,

talking about the business and my family and what I'm learning and how I'm growing and the mistakes I'm making and where I'm failing but succeeding all these things. I love this platform for that reason

because it feels like a a more intimate experience with the people who are along for this journey, who are along for this ride. It's been a wild ride for me since starting this brand almost 12 years ago. You know, next month in August will be 12 years in business for BPN. And we're taking the team actually to celebrate. going on one of my favorite steakhouses here in Austin, Texas, called Steiner Ranch Steakhouse. Really good steaks, really good food, but it's just like the vibe and experience of this restaurant

because it overlooks Lake Travis. Lake Travis is this huge lake here in Austin. And this restaurant sits on the Steiner's Ranch. It's the Steiner family. It's the Steiner family. they have all this property out there. And they have the steakhouse that overlooks Lake Travis. And one of my favorite things to do in the summer is go eat on the back patio. Say a Friday, Saturday night. Let me just paint you a picture. You walk into this very cowboy-like steakhouse in central Texas.

There's cowboy boots. There's cowboy hats everywhere. It's a upscale restaurant. But if like cowboys created an upscale restaurant, that's what it would look and feel like. You walk in, the host takes you into the bar and the dining room to the back patio, which sits above overlooking Lake Travis. Say you get there around 7 p.m., you get seated, and the sun starts to set over the water and it's coming down and you can't even see like the tables in front of you because the

sun is so bright as it comes down in front of you in your eyes and it's kind of just blasting you so you can really only see and engage with the people at your table which is you know why you're there right and there's live music playing and it's typically acoustic sets like one time last summer we were eating dinner and the lead singer of Lone Star was playing some of his songs. And that took me back to a child as my mom and dad would listen to Lone Star. The song Amazed, I think it's called Amazed. That's the song he was playing on this acoustic set. So you're sitting at the steakhouse outside.

Some beads of sweat are dripping down your face a little bit. warm, suns setting, music's playing, people are dancing. You got a glass of a good red wine in front of you. One of my favorite wines there is Stags Leap Petit Surrah. You get a nice bottle of red or a nice glass of red wine in front of you. And then before you know it, your 22-ounce cowboy, rib-eye, bone-in, medium-rare gets dropped off with this big side of mushrooms. And it's just a magical, magical experience. All that to say, that's where we're taking the BPN team next month for our 12-year anniversary birthday party.

We're taking the team there to celebrate just all their hard work over the last couple months and over these last 12 years. We'll all be splitting up some ribbyes and some fillets over the water. has music's playing on this Cowboy Steak House right outside of Austin, Texas. It's going to be beautiful. But last week, we launched our Fourth of July sale. And I just want to talk a little bit about the meaning of this sale, this event. Because we at BPN, we only do two sales a year. we do a 4th of July sale and a black Friday sale. So our 4th of July sale is from July 3rd to July 5th.

And then our black Friday sale will be around Thanksgiving time in November. And we only do two sales a year. We'll never do more than that. And it was a 20% off sale. We always do 20% off site wide. certain products were 30% off. And we did something different this year where if you signed up for a subscription, you could lock in a 20% off discount for life,

or at least until you canceled that subscription. So if you signed up for a subscription of way protein, for example, you locked in a 20% off discount until you end or cancel that subscription. 20% all for life. We've never done that before. But one of our goals is to increase the amount of subscriptions we have or the amount of products we have on subscription, active subscriptions, because we know that when people will subscribe to a product or a training program, it increases their likelihood of success through consistency.

Consistent action, consistent training, consistent consumption, consistent consumption of these products increases the likelihood of success in helping you reach your fitness, performance, health goals. So subscription is something that we're trying to encourage people to do, and it also helps with our business model in terms of inventory, forecasting,

and projections, and growth, and loyalty and retirement, attention. So that's something we did this this past year, 20% off, state wide, select products, 30% off, and then this new subscription activation. Before I dive into all of this, again, I just want to thank you guys for supporting the brand, especially during a sale like this, because this team works so hard to bring everything together. You know, it's not something we just launched out of thin air. There's inventory forecasting and purchasing that has to happen months in advance.

The brand and media team and marketing team does a lot of preparation with content and our website and back-end support to make sure that the website and our software and our platforms can withstand some of the traffic that we're going to receive. But it really puts a big stress and pressure and workload on our fulfillment team, on our ops team. Because just because we sell these products doesn't mean we launched the site and the sale, it goes live. Products are sold.

We make money. We keep growing. Well, those orders have to be fulfilled. And someone has to fulfill those orders. And our ops team, our fulfillment team, warehouse, customer service, support, experience, they crush it. absolutely crush it and they crush it for us during the sale this year. We launched the sale last Wednesday.

At the time of this recording, it is Thursday and they will have all orders out by the end of day today. Which is wild. I mean, we used to do sales like this with half the amount of orders and it would take us twice the amount of time to get all of the orders fulfilled and out of the door. So that ops team has been showing up over the last week between 2 and 3 a.m. And they're packing nonstop until 5 p.m. They've done that every day, except for the 4th of July. We took off the 4th of July. They worked at the weekend.

No complaints. Energy has been high. Morale has been high. They're tired, obviously. But they want to make sure that the people who order the product and have supported the brand are getting their order as fast and accurately and efficiently as possible. And we cannot do what we do without that team, that ops team, the fulfillment team, the customer service team.

Everyone plays a huge role in it, but that team gets worked pretty hard right after our sale launches. Our top sellers for the 4th of July sale were way protein. electrolytes, G1M Sport, creatine, flight, which is our pre-workout, and then go gels. In that order. Weigh protein, electrolytes, G1M Sport, creatine, flight, go gels. Some things that happened this year that we haven't experienced before. First off, we launched a new flavor of weight protein during the sale, and it was banana

French toast. naturally sweetened with stevia and monk fruit we're actually moving all of our weight proteins over to natural sweeteners before they had sucralose in them but we're seeing a an ask a demand and interest from the consumer that natural sweeteners are more attractive than artificial sweeteners that being sucralose like we were using before this transition and this was our first protein that we launched that is naturally sweetened with stevia and monk fruit. But like I said, we'll be moving all of our weight proteins over to natural sweeteners over the next couple of months. And we launched 6,000 units of this banana French toast weight protein.

I don't know if there's been a product that we've ever launched before where we sold out on first day. but we sold out first day of banana french toast weight protein 6,000 units went the first day. We did 30,000 orders total during that three-day sale. And the significance of that is for the last couple years, during the 4th of July sale and the Black Friday sale, I've been wanting to hit 30,000 orders during the sale. It's been this milestone that's kind of been like hanging over my head for quite some time now. And I always wanted to hit it. We as a team always wanted to hit it.

And we got close, but we never did it. 2004 was our year. We finally did it. We surpassed 30,000 orders during a sale. So within those three days, 30,000 orders. came in, we sold out of our new weight protein flavor. To be honest, most of those orders came in within the first 10 minutes. I mean, as soon as we launched the sale, thousands of orders rolled in within minutes.

It was wild to watch. We brought the whole team together in our war room. And we had Shopify, which is the platform we use for our website, Shopify pulled up. and there's this live view, and it shows revenue, it shows orders, it shows top products, it shows this heat map of the U.S.,

and it's in real-time updating and populating, and the team is just watching these numbers grow and scale. And why this was so important for this team to experience a witness is because all of the hard work they put in, and we put in these last couple months, really focusing on brand and storytelling. And to be honest, these last couple months, we just focused on building the best brand possible.

And I stopped even being concerned or worried about sales or revenue. I let Josh, who's our CFO, oversee and worry about that. But these last couple months, getting back to Texas, moving back into the CEO role, my direction to the team was, let's just build the best brand possible. Let's build a brand that has strong mission,

strong message, connects with the consumer, solves problems, is disruptive and kick ass. Let's not look at the numbers. It's not worry about the numbers. Let's just focus on brand and mission and message and storytelling and connection.

And that's what we did. That's what we focused on. So then to see the Fourth of July sale launch with the entire team there and having the best numbers and data and sales that we've ever experienced, and reinforced this team, we're doing the right thing. We're focusing on the right things. And if you focus on the right things, everything else will fall in place. That's why I share these numbers.

I don't share these numbers to say, look what we did. But I share these numbers, one, to say, look what you guys helped us do. So thank you for that. And two, to share that by simplifying our business model, because we stopped doing a lot of things we were historically and previously doing. We said no to more things in the last six to eight months. ever said no to before. We said yes to the right things. We prioritized brand and storytelling and solving problems and the consumer over any other metrics or data points. We simplified the business

and it all led us to the right place. That was so powerful for the brand team and the entire organization and company to experience a witness. So we had 30,000 orders. We, surpassed 50,000 active subscriptions. So there are more than 50,000 active subscriptions currently from BPN customers. I vividly remember two, three years ago when we had 4,000 active subscriptions. Seeing and hearing those numbers blew my mind. And what I'm really excited about, actually, has been the growth of G1M sport. So in 2020, we launched G1M Sport.

And if you guys have been following the YouTube channel and the training series for any amount of time, you might remember this, but I was in my first Ironman prep. And I started understanding and learning the importance of fueling properly, utilizing carbohydrates and electrolytes to maximize performance, optimize recovery, and fuel these workouts because you needed carbohydrates and electrolytes, especially training here in Texas, to get through some of these big, multiple hour bike and run and swim sessions. And I cannot find a product on the market.

Truthfully, I cannot find a product in the market at the time that wasn't destroying my stomach. Because a lot of the powders and gels that were on the market and still are today are multodextrin. based. Maltodextrin is a cheap carbohydrate source. And there's this thing in endurance training called gut rot, because you have to get enough calories in throughout training to fuel your performance, but also fueling with something that digest quickly and doesn't create cramping or bloating or gas or just GI distress. And all the products at the time on the

market, we're creating this intense gastrointestinal discomfort and distress in my gut. So I made it a mission to create a product at a time for myself. But then we ended up launching it and selling it on our website, which is now G1M Sport. And I tested dozens of carbohydrate sources and powders. And so I found the one that we used today, which is called cluster dextrin. Cluster dextrin is very fast gastric emptying, which means that quickly after consumption, you drink it, it digests quickly and it reduces risk of GI distress, gas, bloating, belching, or burping, which is common as you're trying to fuel and train.

So I came across cluster dextrin, which we then formulated with a full electrolyte profile to create G1M sport. G&M sports in 2020 has been my primary fuel source for all of my endurance training. I use it before every run in the morning. I do two scoops before every run. I'll use it during these ultras,

pre-marathon race. During my triathlon seasons, I was having GUNM sport and my water bottles on my bike. I'll use it before I go and do some like my bigger strength training or circuit training workouts now. G&M sport has been like my favorite product since we launched it in 2020. But it was also one of those like sleeper products that a lot of people didn't truly appreciate

because fueling performance, fueling endurance training wasn't, I guess as popular a few years go as it is today. More people have realized and now understand the importance of properly fueling your workouts, especially with endurance training and especially with endurance training during the warmer, hotter months of the year. Summer. Summer in Texas, you need fuel. You need electrolytes. So when we launched it, it did well, but it didn't crush it. And over this last year, we've seen exponential growth of GOMSport. It's been wild. And we've tried to pinpoint where that growth is coming from.

And the only thing I can assume is it's just people have started to discover the product. And it's just this compounding consistency of people using it and talking about it and sharing it. But just to give some data points. And I like sharing data points because I, I personally hate listening to podcasts or stories as a founder, as an entrepreneur, as a business owner. And there's no data points or metrics because it all just feels lofty at that point. I want to hear some real stuff.

So in January of 2023, we were selling 3,500 units of G1M sport a month. So that's what we did in January of 2023. In January of 2023, January, the beginning of the year is always a good month for supplement sales for sports performance. 3,500 units of G&M sport per month, January, 2023. July, 2024, we will sell more than 18,000 units of G1M sport. January 2003,

3,500 units. July, 24, 18,000 units. G1M Sport is growing for us significantly. And if I had to guess, it's probably going to be

one of our best selling, if not our best seller in the next couple months. We currently have three flavors, lemon lime, fruit punch, salted watermelon, and on order right now, which should land early fall, we have an orange flavor that is releasing.

That's naturally sweetened, a naturally sweetened product, carbs and electrolytes, and is going wild on our website right now. But after we do these sales and we do these campaigns or launches, we do a debrief and we talked about what worked so that we can keep doing that. and what didn't work so we can either change it or stop doing it. And the key takeaway from me after the success of the sale for our team

was to simplify everything. We can apply this to our entire lives, not just business. Our work, our fitness, family, it's really easy that as you grow in your personal or professional life and career that you want to add complexities onto everything you're doing. Because adding complexities sometimes makes you feel smarter or more advanced

or like you're getting better at something. But I found the opposite is true that typically when you add unnecessary complexities onto what you are doing that provide little to no incremental gain, it actually makes everything worse. It's actually destructive. My goal now is actually to do more by doing less, to simplify parts of my life, parts of this business.

Like previous sales, for example, we would make our customer and user journey on our website so complicated and complex because we wanted to say everything and anything on the homepage, on the product pages, on the collection pages. We had banners. We had call outs. We made the user or customer flow and journey so complex and overdone that we actually didn't have as successful as a sale.

Because it was just complicated. It was confusing. This year we just simplified everything. The sale was simple, the messaging, the branding, the user. customer journey, our emails, our SMS. It was all concise, consolidated, clear, straight to the point. Simple works. And as I've talked about before, simple does not mean easy. So I don't want you to think that by me saying simplify your life, simplify your business, simplify your diet, simplify your training. It is not that I'm saying take the easy route. Oftentimes,

simplifying is actually the harder thing to do. It's easy to overcomplicate. It's easy to stack one thing on top of another thing, on top of another thing. But the hard part is simplifying in doing the same thing in less steps or with less people. Simple works. Follow simple. Now the week before we had our Fourth of July sale, I was out in California. It was me, Trey, Landry, Stephen, Lily, and we met up with Tyler and Sarah, as well as the entire McRae family. And Sally McRae, who's one of BPN's athletes,

professional ultra-runner, ran Western States 100. Western States is the world's oldest 100-mile trail race, and it was first done in 1974. It starts in Olympic Valley, California, and it ends in Auburn, California, on a high school track, which is really unique and it was very cool to see. It climbs more than 18,000 feet and descends nearly 23,000 feet. Western States is an iconic race.

Now, I've been to multiple ultramarathons. that I've either done myself or just been there to support and watch. And a lot of these ultras have the same type of come hang out, set up your tent, camp, go run 100 miles, and just have fun out there. Western states had a different feel. Western states had an elite performance focused feel. I mean, people weren't there just to run Western states. People go there to race Western states.

People go there to break records. People go there to PR. People go there. Runners go there to shift the trajectory of their running career. If you place top 10 at Western States, you are setting your life up as a runner for success and to potentially be a professional runner after that, a sponsored professional runner.

So as you walk through the valley and people are checking in for the race before the race starts and even during the race, you can feel the vibe that is performance focused, that is speed, that is serious, where people are there to go let it rip. And a few months before this weekend, Sally reached out to me and she asked if I would pace her at Western States. And of course I said yes.

So I ended up pacing Sally for about the last 40 miles. I picked her up at Forest Hill, which is mile marker 62. And I ran with her throughout the night to the finish line. to finish Western States with her. And she started off really strong, but unfortunately, Sally had some stomach issues, nausea.

She was vomiting on core. She got really sick. During these ultras, sometimes your stomach just turns on you. Where you're trying to get in a lot of calories while still moving your body very fast. When I run ultras, for example, I'm trying to get in roughly five.

500 calories per hour while still running as fast as possible. Some days your body's all about it. Some days it's not. Some days your body just doesn't want to eat, digest, assimilate, and also put out a big effort at the same time. That unfortunately is what happened to Sally during Western States, where she started getting sick, I think around mile 45. So by the time I picked her up at Forest Hill, which was sick.

62, she was throwing up a lot. And from 62 to the finish line, you know, we were stopping a lot. And she was throwing up and she was getting sick. And we were moving. You know, we were jogging. We were hiking. We were walking some, but she was not feeling good. And she couldn't keep any food down. And Sally has talked a lot about this on her podcast as well as on social. but she couldn't eat anything or drink anything those last 50 miles. I mean, she pretty much fasted that last 50 miles. So when I picked her up at about 6.30 p.m., I want to say we came in at the finish line around 9 a.m. And she couldn't consume any food or liquids pretty much that entire time without it coming back up.

but Western States was an amazing experience. Even the 40-ish miles that I spent with Sally, we talked the entire time. The entire time, we were on the trail. We held a conversation the entire time. We didn't stop talking once. It was an incredible experience. And me and Sally got so much closer.

I left that race. I left that event, knowing Sally on a whole different level, and learned a lot from her, learned a lot about her, I'll forever cherish the time spent in the mountains with Sally during Western States. And she told me, she said, she asked me to pace her at Western States because she wants me to get bit by the Western States bug so that I want to go back and run it. And I'll tell you right now, I want to go back and run it. I want to go run it on my own.

I'm itching to get out there for Western states because what's so unique about this race? Now, I've talked about the vibe and the energy of the people and the atmosphere and the environment, but it starts off. The first four miles, you climb a mountain for about 2,500 feet. And there's lots of climbs for the first 50 miles. You spend a good stretch in canyons. and those canyons are 100 plus degrees that just cook people.

And you come out of the canyons and you're on a bunch of climbing again. You cross a river. When we cross the river, we're up to our chest in water. There's a cold river middle of the night. And in the last couple of miles, as the race finishes,

you're climbing up a mountain to come down the other side into Auburn and finish on a track. It's just such an amazing race. that cherishes and encourage speed. And I want that. I want to go after that Western States buckle and finish. Now Western States is unique where it is a lottery.

So you can't just sign up for Western States. You can put your name in the hat. I thought there to some people out there who were running Western States and they've been entering the lottery for nine years. Nine years. Every year they put their name in the hat, lottery ticket doesn't get pulled. And you have to qualify for Western States. So there's a few races, not a few, but there's a handful of races that you have to do.

I believe the year before Western States, you have to have a valid qualifying race and time to be able to put a lottery ticket in to run Western States. So that's what I got to do next. I got to choose a qualifying race. Not sure if I'm going to do it this year, maybe next year, especially with the baby on the way in the next couple weeks. I'm going to navigate that one first. But in the next couple years, my goal is to run Western States.

I want to run the world's oldest 100-mile trail race. A few stories from that experience. first off when we got into town we got there like two days before the race started we flew in Thursday race kicked off Saturday and it was just a lot of prep

because we created a film with Sally so we were scouting we were filming we were our media team was linking up going over strategy game plan for the race as well as our media plan and fry

day, before the race started, we decided we were going to do steaks for dinner. And I was going to run to the store, get steaks. We're going to cook steaks for everyone, have like some rice and steak to wrap up the night and then go support Sally the next morning. And it just so happened, we ran out of time and we couldn't go get the steaks. And I shit you not. I turned to Trey and I said, Trey, we're not going to have time to go at the stakes. We'll just do like ground beef and rice tonight for dinner. I shit you not. Three minutes later, someone knocks on the door. Go to the door and it's this gentleman who is selling boxes of locally raised beef, steaks, ribby steaks, New York strips, fillets. I just share that because it's a wildest story.

We're in this log cabin in the middle of Olympic Valley, California. running out of time to go to the store to get stakes, and then this guy shows up on our doorstep. I mean, we're not even in like a neighborhood. We're a secluded log cabin. This guy knocks on our door. He's just going around coincidentally selling stakes out of the back of his truck. And you can bet we bought some steaks.

We made strips. We made rib-eyes. We made filets that night. We ate good. But it blew my mind. This guy just shows up on our door literally three minutes later after saying that. It was a gift from God. God blessed us with some high quality, locally sourced red meat to fuel our bodies,

our souls, and our mind for Western States 100 the next day. Second story, we were on the trail, me and Sally, in the middle of the night. And there was bear poop everywhere. fresh bear poop. So we knew there were bears out there. And middle of the night, we're probably at mile marker 85. So we're getting close to the finish line.

And Sally heard a noise. I heard the noise too. You could hear this thing running down the mountain right by us. And Sally just goes, that's a bear. It's pretty close. So I'm on high alert. I'm ready to see this bear. And one, two minutes later,

later, Sally's ahead of me and I hear her let out this screaming, screeching cry that I will never be able to not hear in my life again. It was one of those screams that sounded like somebody was getting attacked and murdered. Like, no other way for me to describe it. It was insane. Every hair on my body for the little hair that I have left because I shaved just about everything, the little tiny hairs that were slowly starting to grow back in on my body after a fresh shave we're all standing up. I was fully prepared that we're about to fight this bear. Ended up just being a bat that flew into Sally's face and scared her.

Not many moments in my life that I've had that feeling where I was ready to fight for my life thinking that we were being attacked in the woods by a bear. Real thing, that didn't happen. I mean, the story happened, but the bear didn't attack us was a bat. And the last thing that I want to share with you guys. Something new that I've been doing with my workouts. Running is still about the same weekly mileage that I've been doing for the last. couple of months.

My normal morning run right now is 7 to 8 miles. A few times a week, I'll do a shorter 5-mile or based off of how I'm feeling. A lot of my run programming is auto-regulated, meaning I will wake up in the morning. And depending on how I'm feeling, in terms of just like energy, recovery, I'll let that dictate what I'm going to do for my morning run. nine times out of 10, it's going to be a 7 to 8 miler. But if I'm feeling beat up, like pretty beat up, I'll do a 5-mileer, especially considering what workout I might be doing in the afternoon.

And it's very rare, but sometimes if I'm feeling really beat up, I will just take a day off of running altogether. I'm probably running about 10 days straight right now and then a day off. 10 days straight, day off. And that's kind of where my mileage is at sitting. So you could say I'm running, you know, seven days of weeks. Let's say six days a week, seven. I'm running probably like 40 to 45 miles a week right now.

Ballpark. That's where I'm sitting. Strength training, strength training three to four days a week right now. It's a split between push, pull, lower body, strength, and then shoulders and arms, which I just consider like a fun, good pump day. I've recently started adding on high rocks circuit training workouts throughout the week. I've wanted to just switch things up a little bit. Add something different in, spice up the workouts.

And one of our guys here who works in the warehouse on the ops team, Simon, started talking me into doing some of these high rocks workouts. with them. And Hirox is this event that actually started in the UK and then recently has made its way over to the U.S. And it's a competition. And each competition is the same workout. So you know what the workout is before you go into the competition. And it's eight sets. I guess you could say. And each set is a 1K run with a functional movement. So for example, 1K run, 1K ski, 1K run, 100 wall balls, 1K run, 1K run, 1K row, 1K run, sled push, 1K run, sled pull, 1K run

broad burpee jumps so there's these eight sets each set has a 1K run plus a functional movement whereas with CrossFit for example I never really got into CrossFit

much I tried it for a little bit back in 2017 but didn't really love it and what I didn't like about it was the the technical Olympic lifting and skill required for that.

One, I just wasn't good at it. And two, I didn't enjoy it. And I really didn't have the mobility for it, especially after years of bodybuilding and strength training. My mobility was just horrible. And again, wasn't good at it, didn't enjoy it. But with CrossFit, you never really know what the workouts are going to be from what I understand.

You know, you go into like the open or you go into these big workouts or you go to a gym. you don't know what the workout is going to be because it's unpredictable and there's a lot of skill required. With high rocks, for example, you know exactly what the workouts are whether you're going to one of the big competitions or if you do well at the competition, you go to like the regionals and the regionals to the world championships. It's always the same workout. So you know what you're building up to and what you can train for.

and a lot of these workouts that Simon has kind of shown me and introduced me to will be a combination of running, sleds, wall balls, ski, row, lunge, these different type of movements that you can combine in a way

over an extended period of time in multiple rounds to build this just big base and engine. and I've really been enjoying those. So I'm throwing in two to three bigger high rock style workouts a week. Like today, for example, I'll do one. I will do lower body strength for about 30 minutes. And then I will do like a 40 minute high rocks workout after that that is lower body focused. And I will 100% feel the strength train I did before.

So today's workout is probably going to look like, lay extensions, leg curls, and then barbell squats, maybe some leg press or hack squats, and then after that I'll go into a high rock circuit that I'll build out. So it's probably going to be a combination of multiple rounds, but within those rounds, some ski erg, some rower, some wall balls, some lunge, and sled push. and that will just do some damage to my lower body. I'm going to feel it. But it's also a cardiovascular conditioning workout.

So what I found like these high rocks workouts compared to when I used to do CrossFit, the foundation of my training is still running and lifting, but I'm throwing, like I said, two to three of these high rocks workouts onto my training program each week. I found that it favors aerobic conditioning, which plays in my strength. right now. They're longer workouts. So these crossfit circuits, you know, when I used to do them back a couple years ago, they could be anywhere from like three minutes to 12 minutes. Well, these like

high rocks workouts, they're up to 40 minutes, an hour, an hour plus sometimes. And your heart rate is staying lower, even though it's, it's moving through periods of higher heart rate, lower heart rate. and it favors aerobic conditioning, but it's like this slow burn of just churning and building this engine. It has less skill required, so no Olympic weightlifting, which I love.

And I found that it complements lifting and running very well, especially if you have a foundation of lifting and running. So you've probably seen on Instagram, I've been sharing some of these workouts, and I've been enjoying them multiple times a week. What's also really fun is we have this big whiteboard in the BPN gym. I'll write these workouts down that I'm doing.

And then the team will come in while I'm doing them. We'll do them together or they'll come in later at night or the next morning and they'll hit those same workouts. But we'll have like four or five people in the gym doing the same workout at the same time. You get a little competitive. You watch people kind of suck and hurt together, brings everyone together a little bit more. We've recently had to buy more sleds and ski ergs and rowers and ball balls and all the things. But it's been really good of just like team building, camaraderie building with the other team members within BPN of doing these workouts together.

So when we go into the gym, we do these bodybuilding workouts. A lot of the times, there's strength workouts. Everyone's together but doing their own thing. These circuit workouts we've been doing recently have been great. because we can actually do them together, which is different and unique than what we've been doing in the past. So that's how some of my training has been changing.

And as I start incorporating more of it, I will share with you what I'm learning, what I'm enjoying, why I'm doing it potentially. And we'll encourage you guys to do some of these workouts that I'm sharing on social. So that's some of the things

I just wanted to update everyone on. Things that I'm loving, things we've been doing recently, My obsession with omega-3 fatty acids and the quality of nutrition sources. Our BPN, Fourth of July, sale wrap up that we could not have achieved without the help and support and love of you guys. Being out at Western States with Sally McRae and then introducing some of these high rocks workouts into my weekly training split. So, hope you guys enjoyed this one. As always, go one more.

And we'll see you. in the next episode.