The Nick Bare Podcast - 085: Building the Brand: Part 1 "Confidence"

Episode Date: September 23, 2024

In this episode, I kick off a multi-part podcast series sharing the in-depth stories and lessons learned since starting Bare Performance Nutrition in 2012. I discuss the foundation of BPN, focusing on confidence, curiosity, and courage, recounting pivotal moments like battling an eating disorder as a teenager, discovering a passion for fitness and nutrition, joining the Army ROTC, and finally deciding to launch BPN. This episode covers the early challenges, key milestones, and the initial steps taken to grow the brand. Chapters: 00:00 Introduction to the series 03:19 The Birth of BPN 05:05 Overcoming Personal Struggles: My Battle with an Eating Disorder 13:26 Discovering Fitness and Nutrition 19:09 College Life and ROTC Journey 27:01 The Confidence Booster: LDAC Experience 34:14 The Genesis of BPN: From Idea to Reality 39:45 Discovering the Golden Ticket 41:00 Creating a Business Plan 42:40 Launching the First Product 43:58 Facing Industry Challenges 45:53 The Power of Naivety 53:26 Early Marketing Struggles 59:55 The Harsh Realities of Business 01:04:08 Doubt and Determination 01:12:44 Graduation and Future Plans 01:14:14 Preparing for the Next Chapter Strength, endurance, and wellness supplements to fuel your performance. SAVE 10% at BPN Supps: https://bit.ly/nickbare10audio FOLLOW:IG: https://www.instagram.com/thenickbarepodcastYT: youtube.com/@nickbarefitness

What's going on, guys, and welcome back to another episode of the podcast. This kicks off a multi-part podcast series that I've been wanting to do for quite some time now. And the entire series is a combination of stories and lessons that I've learned since starting bare performance nutrition. When I started BPN in 2012, there was a lot that happened. before that and there's been a lot that has happened after that. And I've told and I've shared the story of building BPN on many different platforms in many different ways. But what I've realized is a lot of the times when I've told the story, I have felt rushed.

I've been rushed to tell the story of building BPN in the way with the depth in the stories and the knowledge and the experiences that I truly think it deserves. And that's what I want to use this multi-part podcast series for. It's going to be broken up into a series of chapters. Each chapter will have a beginning. Each chapter will have an end. I'll talk about how I got to certain parts of my life and certain parts of the business, tell stories, lessons that I have learned that are applicable to life, business, family, fitness.

And my goal, I hope, is that one, it's entertaining, but also it provides a lot of valuable information if you are looking to build something as well, whether that's a business or go after this massive fitness school or job promotion or just learn from the successes and failures that I've made along the way. also what this series is for me and my family and my kids as they grow up is this is a resource where I can reflect, I can share, I can point people to, too, and say like from this point to that point, from this year to that year, from the start to the finish, this is what happened. This is how we did it. Here's the mistakes we made and here's what we did right. this is what we learned. There's a lot to unpack that can't be done in one chapter.

It can't be done in one episode. And that's why I want to break it up over the course of multiple episodes, an entire series. And the cool part about this is that it can keep evolving and growing. As I enter a new chapter and then I exit that chapter and move on to the next chapter, I can record another episode, tell the stories, share the stories, and the lessons I've learned in that perspective chapter on its own, and launch more content and keep building off of this. So this is building the brand. This is chapter one.

And here's where it starts. So it starts with having the confidence. to take the first step and start BPN in 2012. And this chapter is going to end in Fort Benning, Georgia, after graduating from college and starting my job, my profession, in the military. August 2012 is when I started BPN, and I landed in Fort Benning, Georgia in October of 2013. Now, some of the lessons that I learned in this chapter is that confidence, curiosity, and courage is required. And you need all three.

And the truth is when it comes to BPN, I didn't truly start making progress. I didn't achieve success. I didn't see any achievement or win until I went all in. When I went all in, that's when things actually started moving. That's when progress actually started being made. When I started BPN, I didn't know what going all in looked like. I didn't know what it felt like. I thought I was all in.

I wanted to be all in, but I didn't know what that really meant. I'm going to share what that looked like and how I learned that the hard way. So here we are talking about confidence. The first lesson that I learned, confidence, where did I gain the confidence to even start BPN in the first place? So some background context. In 2004, 2005, I was 14, 15 years old. I was born in 1990s, so I was a 90s baby. And in 2004, 2005, as I've talked about not many times, but I've shown.

shared this part of my life and this story, I had a severe eating disorder. And to this day, looking back, I don't know what necessarily sparked this eating disorder. And it started small, it started slow, and it snowballed into this epic problem that literally almost killed me. I mean, I was in and out of the hospital. And I think back, like, what? could have sparked it, I believe it was just the ability to have control in my life during a time where I didn't think I had any control or ability to control decisions, outcomes, my life entirely. When I was 14, 15 years old, it started with me slowly starting to eat a little bit less, restricting certain food groups, restricting calories, working out more.

And I said it snowballed. And it got to a point where I was just dropping pounds weekly. And my parents were trying to figure out what was going on with me. So they're pulling me out of school. They're taking me to the hospital. I have outpatient clinic work and procedures being done. They're putting scopes down my throat, looking at my stomach. At one point, they thought I had celiac disease.

So they put me on a gluten-free diet. at another point, they thought I had a parasite that I picked up on a recent family vacation in Mexico. And the doctors of my family are trying to figure out what's going on with me, why I'm losing all this weight while I'm shriveling up and extremely fatigued. I have brain fog and no energy. And I'm just becoming more frail and frail and frail. I knew deep down what I was doing. I was starving myself. I was killing myself. and I got really good at hiding it. But it got to a point where I was so malnourished, I was so depleted, I couldn't get out of bed,

I couldn't hold a conversation. My hair, I remember, my hair felt like it was straw. It was so unhealthy and brittle and coarse. And I was so thin. My hip bone was just sticking out from my side. you could almost see it through my skin. My skin was so thin and almost transparent. I couldn't work out. Like I said, I could barely get out of bed. I was eating maybe 300, 400 calories a day. I mean, I wasn't eating anything. And for me, it was a success. It was a win. If I would go to bed that night,

starving. That's what my life looked like in 2004, 2005 time frame. And it all changed when one day my mom pulled me out of school, took me to the Hershey Medical Center because at the time we were living in central Pennsylvania. It's where I was born, where I was raised, where I grew up. And we enter the outpatient clinic and we pull into what I thought was a regular weekly procedure where they were going to make me drink some sort of special drink and then put a scope down my throat or do some sort of tests. but on this given day we pull into the outpatient clinic and on the front of this building, it reads eating disorder clinic. And I knew as soon as we pulled up and parked, I had this lump in my throat. I knew I was caught.

I knew that my mom figured out what was going on. I knew that the doctors figured out what was going on. They knew I was starving myself. And I remember this, like it was yesterday, I remember marching up these stairs, these wooden stairs that were stained really dark wood. We march up these stairs into this clinic. The doctor sits me down and says, we know what you've been doing. You've been starving yourself. You have an eating disorder.

And that lump in my throat slowly started to get thicker and thicker and thicker. and I could feel my eyes watering and then tears just flowed down my face. Like all these emotions that I was holding onto for so long, these secrets that I was keeping inside of me, they were now exposed. People caught me and I just lost it. And I told the doctor, I don't want help, I don't need help. I will do this on my own. I will get better. And the conversation after that is very fuzzy and blurry. I don't remember

exactly what was discussed and what happened, but the next thing I remember is getting home, realizing that I needed to get better. I needed to make a change because if I didn't, I was going to be forced to be hospitalized or put on some sort of treatment plan, which I don't know why I wasn't, to be honest, but I convinced my family. I convinced the doctors that I could do it on my own. But I remember getting home, going to the kitchen, knowing that I had to start eating more, opening up the pantry, pulling out a box of Pop-Tarts, flipping it around and seeing that in two Pop-Tarts was like 200 or 400 calories, something like that. It was a lot. It was a a lot of calories.

And I'm thinking, oh my gosh, and these two Pop-Tarts, it's more calories than I've consumed on a daily basis for a long time now. And I forced myself to eat those two Pop-Tarts, and it felt so wrong. I felt so guilty. But that was the beginning of trying to and get better. And it took me months. When I say months, those months might have actually been years. And that eating disorder that I had when I was 14, 15 years old,

still is resurfaced at different parts of my life even today. And I know that it will for the rest of my life. Having unhealthy relationships with food and body dysmorphia and just the way you look, the way you feel, the food that you consume, if you've ever had a serious, a very serious issue with that, I believe. you can get better, but I don't believe that it's something that ever goes away for good. And after I was confronted by that doctor, that eating disorder clinic, and I came home and I started forcing myself to eat more, it wasn't easy by any means. It was a simple fix.

The fix was to eat more food, to consume more calories, to become nourished once again. But was it easy? Absolutely not. It was so challenging. Mentally, it was so challenging. But that journey of getting better to learn how to view food as fuel, as nourishment, as opposed to something that was negative or weak, I turned that control, that obsession of food and eating into a healthy one as opposed to an unhealthy one. And then I started eating more and putting on more weight.

and getting stronger again and fatigue started shedding and my brain fog wasn't there like it used to be. I had more energy. I had more vitality. I started going to the gym. And going to the gym for me was the high school gym. It was this, uh, it was this, like, mobile home that was attached to our school that was converted into an outdoor gym, indoor outdoor gym. these big garage doors would go up, and I would train there after school every day.

And I fell in love with fitness. I fell in love with bodybuilding. I fell in love with finding ways to use food and nutrition and in supplementation to transform my body, the way that I looked, the way that I felt. And that unhealthy obsession slowly turn into a healthy obsession. a healthy obsession of training my body, to eating more food, to using it to promote better performance and better recovery. And that led me to one of my first jobs, which was working at a fitness center called New York Fitness in Pomer, Pennsylvania. And I worked at New York Fitness and I sold

memberships, but I also worked in the smoothie shop. So I would make smoothies for people, and I would sell supplements. And that's where I really got exposed to the supplement industry, the gym industry, the fitness industry. And I loved it. I loved that job. I loved being around people who for that part of their day were there to get better. They were there to work hard, to put in an effort to become healthier, to become fitter. Like when I saw the people that were at the gym during my time of work, that was a time for them to work on themselves. And I loved being around that energy.

I loved being in that space. And I loved that job. And during this time my life, like, I'm just, I'm going all in on this lifestyle. where I'm prioritizing protein in my diet, and I'm making these healthy recipes, and I'm working in the gym, and then in my free time, I'm going to these supplement stores like GNC in vitamin shop

and these mom-and-pop supplement stores in central Pennsylvania, and I would just go there and explore. I would look at the shelves. I would look at all the products. I'd read the labels. I'd see what's in those products. Then I'd go home, get online, and research more about,

the specific ingredient or the type of product or the usage, I would talk to the supplement salespeople behind the desks and just ask all these questions. Like one of my favorite things that I would do is there was this one supplement shop in Hershey, Pennsylvania in the tangor outlets. It might have been a vitamin shop. It might have been a vitamin shop. And I would go in and there was this woman there that would work behind the desk. And I would just ask her questions like, what are people coming in and buying right now? what's the popular supplement that everyone's using? And then she'd go show me and we'd sample it and I'd buy some if I had money from mowing

lawns that summer. And I just, I fell in love with everything from the food and the diet to the training and bodybuilding and getting the pump and trying different supplements and learning and being a student. and I was just so obsessed about all of this. And that's what actually sparked me to go to college and study nutrition. It all started from what I believe was this eating disorder, this unhealthy relationship with food in 2004, 2005, when I was a young teenager, to now me wanting to turn this into more. my life's work. I wanted to help other people transform their body and their mind and their

view on food and their perception of what is healthy versus what is unhealthy. And I thought going to college and studying nutrition, I would learn how to use food, how to use diet, how to use nutrition to maximize performance in the gym, outside of the gym, to change the way you feel, to change the way you look. That's kind of what I expected when I was going to school to study nutrition. The reality is, though, when I got to school to study nutrition, it was more so centered around disease intervention. And at a time, it was all about cardiovascular disease in, in, in the time, it was all about cardiovascular

disease and in diabetes, type two diabetes. And that's really what that area focused on in college. I went to the Indiana University of Pennsylvania was all about. It was disease intervention with nutrition. We really didn't focus anything on sport or athletic achievement or body composition changes. But like I said, it was all disease intervention around cardiovascular disease and diabetes, which was insightful.

It was interesting, but it wasn't necessarily where my passion was. And I went to school, I went to college on an Army ROTC scholarship, which at the time wasn't that super competitive to be awarded. Now, from what I understand, if you are awarded an Army ROTC scholarship or an ROTC scholarship at all, which stands for the Reserve Officer Training Corps, it is highly competitive. And really what sparked my interest in ROTC or joining the military was right before I, right before I graduated high school and went to college, my cousin Matt, who was my mom's brother's son, my cousin Matt joined the army.

and he was stationed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. He was with the 101st Airborne Division. And he was doing multiple deployments, very frequent deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan when the war was very kinetic. I mean, there was a lot going on in Iraq and Afghanistan when I was in high school. And I saw my cousin Matt leave home,

join the military, go on these deployments, and literally transform. from a boy to a man, like turn into this new person that had confidence and strength and he just exemplified someone that I looked up to and who I wanted to be.

And I saw my cousin Matt transform from this boy to this man by joining the military and going to war and I said, I want that for me. I want to be like Matt I'll never forget we were at my uncle's house because Matt was on a deployment coming home for two weeks for R&R. So me, my family, cousins, grandparents, we went to my uncle's house for dinner as Matt was coming home. And I remember Matt walking in in his uniform.

We all sat down. We had dinner. We were talking for a while. It was great to see and hear from him. And my grandma, my mom's mom, my grandma asked him this question, why do you keep doing this? Why do you, why did you join the military? Why are you staying in?

Why do you keep going back to war that you not want to do something else? And I'll never forget Matt saying, well, someone's got to do it. Someone's got to be a person that raises their hand and volunteers and go serve and protects this country and the citizens. and I remember hearing this thinking that it is selfless. That is extreme selflessness. And that was the moment I said, okay, I'm doing that too. I'm pursuing that, that life.

So my uncle kind of put some options in front of me. I could have went and enlisted in the military. I could go RRPC, go to college, become an officer, go serve out. after that. So I applied for this Army ROTC scholarship, which I was awarded. And once you're awarded the scholarship, you then just have to go to apply to universities, to colleges that have Army ROTC programs. And if you get into that school, you then will do ROTC at that school. I was awarded the scholarship. It paid for my full tuition. It paid for my books. And I was given a monthly stipend from my freshman year to my senior year. I think my freshman year I would get paid

like $250 a month. And by the time it was my senior year, I was getting paid $500 a month as a contracted ROTC cadet in college. It was a great deal. Great deal. I mean, they paid for all of my school. The military paid for all my school because I got this scholarship. Now with that scholarship, you have to go into the military afterwards to fulfill your obligations. If you don't go into the military afterwards, you have to pay all that money back that you took from the government. So I went to college on an Army ROTC scholarship, studying nutrition at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania,

also known as IUP. And they say IUP stands for I usually party, big party school, state school, no affiliation with Indiana University. I get that all the time. it's just that IUP was in the town of Indiana, Pennsylvania. And our first employee that me and Preston hired, who still works for us today, Joe Pivots, I actually met Joe because Joe lived in Indiana, Pennsylvania, and while I was at school,

I met Joe's brother in the Army RRTC program, and then I met Joe through his brother during my time there. So here I am in college, studying nutrition, in the Army ROTC program, obsessed with bodybuilding, obsessed with strength training, obsessed with the supplement industry. I mean, if I had my freshman in sophomore year, if I had $30 left to my bank account, which was pretty frequently, instead of saving that $30 for food or toothpaste or deodorant or anything else, I would take that $30. I would go buy a can of pre-workout at the local supplement shop

because I wanted that pre-workout supplement that much more than anything else. For me, the best part of my day was sitting in my apartment or my dorm room, mixing up my pre-workout, starting to drink it, watching bodybuilding videos on YouTube, getting hyped up for the gym and motivated

and then going, hitting a big workout at the school gym. There was this one video I used to watch on repeat, but there were a few, but one specifically. It was a J. Cutler bodybuilding video. And the song in the background of this video was so far away. It was the title of it. But I was watching bodybuilding videos on Ronnie Coleman, on Jay Cutler,

And at a time, fitness YouTube started becoming a thing. And one of the first fitness YouTubers was Matt Ogus and the 3DMJ bodybuilding crew and physiques of greatness. That was early YouTube fitness bodybuilding days. And I would watch these videos religiously. That was my favorite part of the day was watching these fitness videos and taking the supplements, and tracking my diet and going to the gym and getting bigger and getting stronger, it was just like embedded in my blood. It was part of me.

I hate to admit it, but I skipped class more times that I would have liked because I wanted to go to the gym. I wanted to go to the gym and work out as opposed to go to class. And here's where the confidence kicker comes in. So between my junior and senior year of college, as an Army ROTC cadet, we had to go to what was called LDAQ, the leadership development and assessment course. And this was a 30-day evaluation and assessment training that would ultimately determine what you did in the military. So being in ROTC, you would make this dream list.

You make two dream lists. Your first dream list was a list of the job that you wanted to do. You know, maybe you wanted to be military police. Maybe you wanted to be infantry. Maybe you wanted to be armor. Maybe you wanted to be medical services. Maybe you wanted to be a helicopter pilot. You would list the things you wanted to do from most important to least important.

These are the jobs that I want to do. And your other list would be, this is where I want to be stationed. Maybe you want to be in Fort Bragg or Fort Benning or Fort Campbell or Fort Hood, Fort Bliss, like all these different places you list Fort Carson, Colorado. What's the job you're going to do? Where are you going to be stationed? And there was always a high priority where there were really popular jobs and they were very popular duty stations. So in order to get one of the jobs you want and one of the duty stations you want,

you had to perform very well at a few different things. One of those was your GPA. Another thing was your physical fitness test scores. Another was extracurriculars that you were involved with. And then another, the fourth, was your evaluation at LDAQ. So every cadet goes to LDAQ between your junior and senior year of college. Like I said, 30 days of evaluation. You're being evaluated on your leadership ability.

You're running patrols. You're being put in different leadership opportunities and positions and evaluated, assessed, and then scored. And at the end of these 30 days, you're giving a rating. and there are three ratings you can get. One was the E. You wanted the E. This exceeds the standard. The second is an S.

This satisfies the standard. And the third is N. Needs improvement. Well, I finished L-DAC. And as you finish, one of those last couple days, you're given this card. And that card has either an E, S, or N on it.

And if you have an E, you have a better chance of having the job and duty station if you want. As opposed to if you have an N, that means you didn't do really well. And you're probably not going to get the job or the duty station you want. I got an E. Exceeds the standard. And I was very surprised. I thought, I'm just an average guy.

Growing up, I'm just an average person. I'm an average guy who can expect average for the rest of my life. I believed that and I accepted that early on. But for some reason, when I saw that E on that card at Eldac, which was in Fort Lewis Washington at the time, right below Mount Rainier, when I got that card and I saw the E,

it completely shifted my perception of of myself and my ability moving forward. I mean, I can go relive that moment. I can tell you where I was standing, what the barracks looked like, what the ground looked like, what the sky looked like, what that day felt like. Seeing that E completely shifted everything for me. Like it's almost this, this confidence was injected into me in that moment. And I was thinking, hold on, I'm just someone who is average. I'm someone who just satisfies the standard.

I'm not someone who exceeds the standard. Am I? Am I exceptional? Do I have the ability to do something greater than I hoped for or expected out of myself? I needed that win. That win, that E changed everything. One of my favorite books is Tim Grover's winning. And I've shared this analogy so many times,

but it is very applicable to this moment right here. and Tim Grover talks about how you need that first win in life. And when you get that first win, it builds and sparks confidence. And that confidence gives you the ability to go after the next win. But that next win you go after is typically larger. It's more challenging. It's bigger. And then when you accomplish that second win, you build more confidence.

And you keep repeating this over and over again, more. more confidence gives you the ability to go after a bigger win. You're not always going to achieve that win. Sometimes you will fail in that process, but you go after a bigger win. And when you eventually achieve that next bigger win, you build more confidence and you win, you build more confidence and you win and you build more confidence before you know it. Years and years and years, decades and decades and decades later, you've experienced a lot of wins. You've definitely experienced a lot of losses along the way as well.

but you've built a lot of confidence. I needed that first win. That first win was receiving that E at LDAQ in Fort Lewis, Washington in 2012. That was the confidence I needed to take the next step and literally transform my life. Now, like I said, the second part of the lesson I learned was all about exploring and pursuing curiosities. And shortly after getting home from Fort Lewis, Washington, I can remember this like it was yesterday. I was sitting in my parents' kitchen.

And my parents lived, and I grew up in Palmire, Pennsylvania. Behind our house was my best friend, Joel Smith's farm. So this massive cornfield behind us was a beautiful place to grow up. I'm sitting in their kitchen at their bar, looking out into Joel. field. Recently, having lived and experienced and earned this new level of confidence, and I'm registering the LLC for bare performance nutrition. Now, how did I get to this point?

Well, for the two years before this moment, as I was talking about, I'm in college, I'm obsessed with bodybuilding, I'm obsessed with the supplement industry. I was going to the Arnold Fitness Expos, I was watching all these YouTube videos. I was just putting myself in the situations, in the environments, in the industry. I was buying ingredients in bulk online, and I was mixing out my own pre-workout supplements in my dorm in my apartment rooms. So, like, imagine this. I bought this food scale from Walmart.

I had this food scale. and then I buy ingredients in bulk online. I'd buy bulk citraline and creatine and caffeine and beta alanine. And then I'd mix up my own pre-workout. I'd weigh out the bulk ingredient. I'd put it in a little baggy to make exactly what I wanted. 3.2 grams of beta aline, 5 grams of creatine, 200 milligrams of caffeine, which was tough because the scale only measured in grams.

So I was like eyeballing what I thought was 200 million. milligrams of caffeine. And then I would take these supplements my own. I wouldn't flavor them, it was just raw ingredients. And if you walked into my dorm room or my apartment then, you would have thought I was dealing drugs. I mean, there was a white powder everywhere. I have a food scale on the table. I have little baggies. And my friends started finding out that I was making my own supplements. So they would come and buy pre-workout from me. People that I was going to class with, people on ROTC, peers, friends would come to my house or my apartment and they'd hand me a few bucks. I'd hand them a white bag of pre-workout.

It looked like I was dealing drugs out of my apartment and my dorm, but I promise you, I wasn't. I was just making and selling my own pre-workout supplement at the time. And I was really loving doing this. So when I was in Fort Lewis, Washington, I was thinking about starting this supplement. company. It was this dream that I always wanted to do and thought how cool it would be, but it was just a wish. It's like one of these things that I was just envisioning, but never thought I would take the action to do it, to pursue it. But like I said, once I received that card that had the

E on it, it changed my life. It changed my perspective on what was possible. So coming back from Fort Lewis, Washington, I really started thinking about this more. Like, hey, I want to, I really want to start the supplement company. I really want to build this thing. I want to launch this pre-workout. And as I was sitting at home for a few days, like, why not? Why not just form the LLC? I'm curious about this.

Let me pursue this curiosity. So I filed the registration for the LLC. And then from there, I was like, well, how do you even make supplements? How do I even go about doing this? So I started just searching online and I find out about private label supplement manufacturers and contract manufacturing and CGMP certifications, which is the current good manufacturing practice certification process. And I just start reaching out to manufacturers.

I just ask questions. You know, what are the minimum order quantities of a supplement that I can order from you guys? what's the process looked like if I want to do this? How do we make it? How do we formulate it? Do I just send you my formula? How do we flavor it? What does this cost me?

All these things I just started asking and engaging with. And there was one manufacturer that I found that was based down in California at the time that we no longer used, but they were a smaller manufacturer. And we actually started having real meaningful conversations about a pre-workout formula and putting it together and placing a production order. But I was missing one thing. Money. Funding.

I couldn't afford to start a supplement company. So I had this registered company, this LLC with the state of Pennsylvania, bare performance nutrition. I had a manufacturer that I was talking to and just exploring these curiosities, really diving deep into it. And then when I came back to college after that summer, I found out about what was considered a pre-commissioning loan with the Military Associated Bank, USAA.

And USAA was offering up to a $25,000 loan to ROTC cadets because they knew that upon graduation, we were going to have a job, a secure job that was paid by the government. So we could take up to $25,000. And it was a very low interest rate, didn't have to start making payments for the first 18 months. For me, this was the golden ticket. It solved the one issue I had, the one problem, which was lack of funding. And a lot of my friends were applying for these loans.

And they were getting approved and they were buying new. cars and engagement rings and they were going on these big, extravagant vacations and planning for these vacations upon graduation before going into the military. And this was my golden ticket. This was my unlock. So what I had to do was create a business plan and present that business plan to my professor of military science, who was at the time Lieutenant Colonel David Meyer, and I presented to him this plan of this company that I was going to, create and launch and this product that I was going to sell and promote mainly through fitness YouTube and I was going to make all of this money.

I thought day one. And he approved me for the loan. I got approved for up to $20,000. And from there, I had everything I needed. I had the business registered. I had the manufacturer in place. I had the funding. And when that $20,000 hit my bank account, I felt like I hit the lottery.

I mean, I'm just rolling in excitement and passion and fuel. And I'm thinking, I'm actually doing this. Like, I'm doing this thing. This is something that I dreamed of at one point, but never thought would actually come to. And there's this thought in the back of my head, like, am I moving too fast? Am I doing the right thing? This feels like it's all coming together. I didn't think it would ever all come together, but it's coming together now.

But once the ball started moving, I couldn't think. about or focus on anything else, except for bare performance nutrition. I was obsessed. I was in love. I had the confidence. I explore curiosity. And I had the courage to press go. This was placing the PO and spending all of that money, all of that $20,000 on inventory.

And the first products we put in a production, which was our pre-workout, flight, we still have flight. It's a different formula now than it used to be. And I can picture me in my apartment with the guys that I lived with. It was me and four other guys. At one point, it was me and five other guys. One of the guys was sleeping on the couch. And me and my roommates in our apartment, which was probably 1,100 square feet, a lot of people in a small amount of space, sitting in the living room, trying to figure out what we should call this pre-workout.

I was asking them all these questions, and we were throwing names out there. We put it on the whiteboard. We were brainstorming. And someone threw out flight. And I remember as soon as I heard flight, it was like, that's it. 2012, someone threw out flight.

And from there, it was like, that was game one. That was the first product that I formulated and put into production. because the vision for the business then was to be a bodybuilding strength brand. There were all these products on the market at the time. They were getting pulled off because of banned substances or illegal substances. People were getting injured and hurt and being sent to the hospital. The entire industry was making products that were hidden behind proprietary blends, which means, you know, I could say this pre-workout has 15 grams of ingredients.

here's the list of ingredients, but we're not going to tell you exactly what amount of each ingredient is in this product. And that's called pixie dusting. So a lot of these companies back then would pixie dust their ingredients. So they put a lot of the cheap ingredients in and a little bit of the expensive ingredients in. So they could say they were in there,

but they couldn't tell you or wouldn't tell you how much of each was actually in there. So I saw this massive opportunity. I said, okay, I'm going to create products with no proprietary blends, fully transparent products that are dosed appropriately, that don't have banned or illegal substances. In the time, there were these two products, these two pre-workouts that were crazy pre-recounts. One was called Jack 3D, the other one was called craze.

And they were high-stimulent, high-notropic formulas that were literally sending people to the hospital. And some of these ingredients ended up getting banned. They are now illegal because they were injuring people. And I saw an opportunity to create a product line or at least one product to get started that the consumer could trust knowing that it would maximize performance, but it was healthy. It was safe. It used, researched, trusted ingredients at the right dosages.

That was my approach from the beginning. I saw that as my competitive advantage, and I was all in. And one of the things that allowed me to have the courage to go all in and press go was being naive and ignorance. Ignorance is bliss. And I want to talk about this for a brief second. A lot of times you will view ignorance and being naive as a weakness. or a negative.

But I would argue against that in some situations and circumstances. Sometimes being ignorant or naive is best. It allows you to get started. You don't know what could go wrong. You don't know what will go wrong. You don't know how hard it's going to be. When I pressed go and I had all this passion behind something I was building, I thought it was going to be a whole lot easier than it actually was.

Throughout this series and all these episodes, you'll realize how hard it actually was. I thought it was going to be a whole lot easier than it actually was. I was ignorant. I was naive to how hard and challenging building a business, bootstrapping a business was going to be and is. And I truly believe that if I would have known, how hard it was going to be.

If someone would have told me, if I wouldn't have been as ignorant or naive to the process, I don't know if I ever would have gotten started. I think that would have intimidated me. I think it would have turned me off. I think it would have discouraged me from ever taking that first step

in saying, I'm going to pursue this. But being naive, being ignorant to the risks that I was taking, how long it was going to require me to just drive and push and push and build. If I wouldn't have been naive to that,

I don't know if I would have ever gotten started. So there's probably a lot of people that are listening. This might be you. There's something you want to do. There's a goal you want to pursue. There's a business you want to start. But you don't think you have all the resources. You don't have all the skills.

you don't have all the knowledge yet, that's okay. That actually might be even better for you. Get started while you are naive. Get started while you are ignorant. Because if you wait too long and you find out how hard it's going to be, how long it's going to take, you might actually never get started in the first place. Being naive to the massive risks you're going to take

and how hard that challenge is actually going to be to get to where you want to be, being naive can actually be a competitive advantage. You need that on your side. Now, once you get started, you're going to realize what comes with building and scaling and bootstrapping. But don't let that naivety discourage you or persuade you to not get started in the first place. If I would have done that, I wouldn't be here today. So from here I would love to say that it was all blue skies and rainbows and butterflies from there,

but that's not necessarily the way it worked out. I had the confidence. I had explore the curiosity. I had the courage to decide to go, to place that production order to spend the $20,000. And at this point, I realized. Okay, flight is in production. There were 12 week lead times. I have 12 weeks to get this company ready to launch.

And by the way, I have no money left over. So here's what we did. I went to one of my friends in our hometown, and I asked him to design a logo as well as packaging for our pre-workout flight. and then I would pay him in supplements. And he did that. Now, there are multiple people along this journey that in the beginning I cannot pay. And I am very grateful for all of those people.

But one of the things I always said to these people along the way was, you know, I'm building right now. And if you believe in what I'm building and we're building, you come alongside and you stick with me. I promise you like we'll all be rewarded. someday. And I truly meant that. But there are a lot of people. I don't blame them that as it started getting hard and challenging and difficult, they realized that they weren't willing or they couldn't hold on to that dream that I was pursuing. And they decided to go a different direction. That's completely okay. I get it. But I didn't have the money to pay a lot of people early on. so I'd pay them in supplements.

Or I'd tell them, hey, just stick with me. And like, there will be something one day for all of us. So I'm grateful for all those people that were in my life, in BPN for small periods of time, large periods of time that contributed to where we are today. Because I couldn't have gotten here without them. My friend that designed the logo and the label for flight for free, I needed that. I couldn't do that on my own.

I tried. It was no good. I had another friend who designed our website. Now I had to pay him. It was very cheap. Very, very cheap. And it was hosted on his server, but we launched it.

It wasn't anything crazy. It wasn't beautiful, but it worked. This is before I started using Shopify, which we used now. So this was like a custom-built website. It looked honestly. like a

what's that old clothing brand Affliction it looked like an Affliction T-shirt which is like all this

this extravagant Gothic cursive crazy designs everywhere our website and our packaging

looked like that we had no direction we had no vision it was just it looked like an affliction ad to be honest

website was all black neon green we weren't using Shopify like I said. So the only way to purchase our products was through a checkout that went through PayPal, which ended up being a nightmare of a situation back then because there was a lot of fraud issues. And I learned my lesson of how not to launch a website. But I had a friend designed our website for free or for cheap. And I decided and realized that we needed marketing material.

I couldn't pay a model or someone to take photos. So I dieted down over the course of weeks for this photo shoot. We did a photo shoot in Indiana, Pennsylvania at this training facility called The Gym. And I got lean. One of my friends had a camera. I was a photographer. He said that he would do the photos if I bought him a flash for his camera. So I bought him a flash for his camera.

He took the photos of me in the gym. Those were the photos on the website, marketing, our pre-worked on a flight. We had a tank top. We had a t-shirt. We had a hat. We were selling as well. And then I started creating content. And I knew that I needed to have some sort of demand.

I needed to create some sort of hype behind this product launch. And the first thing I did is I went to YouTube. And I went to the bodybuilding.com forums. And again, I couldn't pay anyone to do this. I had no money left. All my money went into inventory. Small amount went into the website. And I went to the bodyblown.com forums,

and I'll never forget starting to create content. The bodybuilding.com forums back then were just the thing to do in the fitness industry. People would log their experience with different supplements. People would log their experience with different training program, share information, advice, all these things. And if you were on bodybuilding.com, the more posts that you made, the more engagement you had within the community,

the better ranking and score you would get for your profile. So this is like the first time I'm ever posting something, and there was this pre-workout meal that I would consume before going to the gym every day that worked really well for me that I loved that I wanted to share with other people. It was actually overnight oats, similar to what I still eat every day for my pre-workout meal. and I shared this overnight oats recipe in the bodybuilding.com forums, and it got demolished.

You got so much hate and criticism that I took it down right away. And I was like, what? I'm just trying to share valuable information. Why is this receiving so much hate? That was my first introduction to keyboard warriors and just the negative space that you can experience online with other people. So I gave up on the bodybund.com forums. Like that's not for me. That's just that's too negative of a space.

I'm going to try YouTube now. So I launched a YouTube channel and I filmed a video of me talking about diet and nutrition and training and I posted it on YouTube thinking this is just valuable information. And once again, it received criticism and hate and all these things that I didn't intend or expect to. receive. So I took that video down and I deleted the YouTube channel. And I thought, you know what? Content might not just be my thing. I'm just going to build this business in the background. So I focused on getting all the logistical parts of launching BPN ready. I had my packing station set up in my apartment. I had my printer. I had my tape gun, my scissors for the label that I could

printout, cut, tape on the box. At the time, I was fulfilling all my orders through USPS. So if you were using USPS to fulfill all of your orders, you could actually get boxes for free. And that's what I was doing. I'd go get boxes for free from the post office. I'd use those. And that was like my system of how I was going to ship orders. And here it is. The day to come, 12 weeks later, I get the notification that my inventory shipped. It was 500 units of flight pre-workout. I spent these last 12 weeks getting ready, building the website, logos were designed, labels were designed.

They were sent off to the printer to be then sent to the manufacturing facility. I had apparel ready to ship. I had my fulfillment station, my room ready. I did a photo shoot after dieting down with my friend. All the things were ready to launch. And I get the notification that the shipments come into the house. Now, I shipped it back to my parents' house in Pennsylvania, which was three hours away, three and a half hours away from where I went to school.

So I went back home and I'm preparing for this order to arrive. I'm telling my dad my game planned for how I was going to make a million dollars that first year. And I said, dad, here's the plan. there's all these fitness YouTubers online, and it's this new space. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to ship each one of them a bottle of pre-workout. And the fitness influencer space, if you will, back in 2012, which was much different than it is today. I mean, you could send someone anything for free, and they would make a YouTube video about it for free, just for sending it to them. Now to do that, you have to spend a lot of money to get anyone to talk about any of your products.

But I said my goal was to send all of these fitness YouTubers at time I bought off pre-workout. And I told my dad, you know, look at look at the numbers they have. Look at the many subscribers they have. Look at the many, how many views they get on each video. And if just a fraction of those viewers buy this product after this fitness YouTuber talks about it, based off of my calculations, I'm going to make a million dollars this first year. And he said, Nick, if it was that easy, everyone would do it. There is a reason that quote is now painted on the wall in BPNHQ.

Fast forward a little bit. That first year in business, we did $20,000 in revenue. Second year in business, we did $20,000 in revenue. Third year in business, we did $20,000 in revenue. I learned the harsh realities that just because you have supply does not mean you have demand. So I'm going back to Pennsylvania to receive this shipment of 500 units of flight pre-workout. And for some reason, I just imagined this tractor trailer coming in and dropping off all these pallets of supplements. I thought 500 units would take up a whole lot more space than it did.

So I'm clearing space in the room above my parents' garage. I'm clearing space in the basement. I'm clearing space in the garage itself because my plan was I was going to store all the inventory at my parents' house. And then as I needed product to fulfill, I'd come back home, I'd grab a few boxes. I'd drive it back to college three, three and a half hours away. I fulfill those. I'd fulfill those orders and come back as needed to replenish my supply. Well, 500 units ended up being like one pallet. It was not much at all. I expected a truckload to be delivered. It was one palette. So I was a little disappointed by how much inventory actually was. And I carried all of those boxes up to the room of my parents' garage, threw a few boxes in my car at the time.

which I think it was a Chevy Cobalt, a red Chevy Cobalt. And I drove those few boxes back to college to get ready to launch. And the day comes, I launch the website. I'm telling all my friends and family, I'm building up all this hype on campus in the college gym, in the Army ROTC program, thinking we were going to sell out day one. I'm already planning for launch number two. production order number two.

I just needed the money from launch number one to finance launch number two. I add the inventory of the website, make it live, crickets. Nothing. Day two, one order might have come in. Day three, two orders might have come in. Day four, zero orders come in. Day five, one order comes in. I'm thinking, oh, man, this is going to be a whole lot harder than I thought it was going to be.

And that was the moment where that ignorance and being naive that helped me get started, I slowly started to lose a little bit of that confidence. I slowly started to think maybe I am just average. Maybe that E exceeds the standard that I received in Fort Lewis, Washington, and LDAC. Maybe that was just a mess up. Maybe that was a mistake. maybe that was just an occasion where I exceeded the standard. Maybe that wasn't who I am or ever will be.

I started to lose a little bit of confidence, but I kept building and running the company. I kept spending my free time, working on the website, working on new products, trying to learn how to market, trying to get the name out there. But sales just slowly start,

and kept trickling in. You know, one of my favorite things to say is doubt is only dangerous when you start doubting yourself. And the reason I love this saying, this phrase so much, is because it applies to much of my life, where there have been many times that other people have doubted me. and if I would have truly embraced that doubt, and if I would have let that doubt transfer from other people to myself, and I would have believed that fully,

there's no way, not one chance I'd be where I am today. I mean, I vividly remember college after launching, people were realizing that it wasn't the massive success that I thought it was going to be. I remember this one evening being back home in Pennsylvania. I came back for a weekend and I was with my friends at a local bar. This was a few weeks or months after launching BPN and I walk in this bar with my friends. And there were these kids in the back who graduated a year before us.

And they were chanting BPN in the back like BPN, BPN, BPN. BPN. And I looked back at them. And as I look back, they started laughing at me and pointing. And I realized they weren't cheering for me. They were making fun of me. And that stung. And I'll never forget that. And I also remember being at college during this time, and there were rumors going around

that my professors found out that I started the supplement company. And some of these rumors were being spread that the professor of the college was going to try and remove me from the program because I started the supplement company. And now it wasn't acceptable to be in this program, this nutrition program on a dietetics route and also have a sports nutrition supplement company. It wasn't something they wanted within their program. There was a lot of doubt that started being casted on me from outsiders. And there were people that were justifying the lack of my growth.

and success. And they were telling me, Nick, don't worry, there's this general rule that it takes three years to get a company off the ground. And I remember hearing this thinking, oh, that makes sense. Like, I have three years to actually see any growth potential in this business. And I use that for a period of time to justify the lack of growth we are experiencing. There's no blueprint. There's no rulebook. There's no guide. There's nothing that says, after three years, you will now see success. After three years, you will now grow. And after a few months of seeing little to no traction,

I mean, the only way we were able to move inventory is by offering 50% off discounts every other week. And that's what I was doing. 50% off discounts just to move inventory because I knew with each additional month, I was getting closer to when I had to pay back this loan. And I didn't have any money to pay back this loan. So me and my brother Preston at the time, we go link up with this advertising marketing agency in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which was a city about 45 minutes from where I grew up.

And we met with this marketing agency and we showed them the company, the website, our sales. And they said, well, what is your goal? And I said, I just want to be doing 20 orders a day. If we can do 20 orders a day, that for me is a lifetime success and win. and they said, man, based off what you got right now, I don't think we can help you get there. 20 orders a day. And I think it was like PPC,

pay-per-click ads on like Google and the internet. And I'm thinking, man, these guys are the experts. They're the geniuses. If they can't help me get there, how am I ever going to get there? Like, what is the path? And I started to become a little discouraged. But as many people that,

doubted what I was building. I never lost that doubt. I never lost that doubt. Launched the business or formed the business August 2012. And for a year, which is my last year in college, I was focused on a few things. One, graduating college, graduating and then going into the army, into the military, and then building BPN in all my free time. And based off of my evaluation at LDAQ, my grades, my GPA, my involvement in extracurriculars, my fitness score, I got the job that I wanted infantry, active duty. Fort Hood. Fort Hood wasn't my first choice, but I knew that upon graduation, I was going to be going to Fort Benning, Georgia for some training, which is where all the infantry officers train for about a year, before going to

Fort Hood, which is where I was going to be stationed. And right before graduating, I remember sitting down with my professor of military science because I still fully believed in what I could do with BPN. and where I was going to take it. And I actually asked him, I said, sir, what do you think about me not going active duty and me going either reserve or national guard so that I can spend all my time building this company?

And I truly was going to do that. I wanted to do that. And sometimes you need guides, you need mentors, you need people in your life that don't tell you what you want to hear, but they tell you what you need to hear. And he highly encouraged me against doing that. He actually told me he wouldn't allow that.

He needed me. He wanted me to go active duty infantry because he knew I needed more time to work on this company. He knew that this business, BPN, was not going to reach the level of success. I wanted it to be or needed in his first couple years. And he was right. I needed time. I needed experience. I need to learn the hard things about life that would set me up for success to truly build the company I wanted to build in the way that I wanted to build it.

So I thought, again, it was going to be easy. I thought I was going to launch this company. I was going to make a million dollars. I was going to end up going National Guard or Reserve instead of active duty so I could spend all my time building this multi-million dollar business out of the gates, out of college. And he said, no, that's not going to happen. I know you see it this way, Nick, but I can promise you it's not going to work out that way. And I trusted him. And here's the thing.

I've heard this quote many times before, but belief comes before ability. You only ever have the ability if you have the belief first. The only reason, the only way I was ever able to build BPN into what it is today is because I had the belief that I could. I had the belief that I would. And that belief then provided me the ability to go do it. But if people are doubting you, and if you start believing into that doubt, that doubt then becomes extremely dangerous.

Just because people are doubting you does not mean doubt is dangerous. It is only dangerous when you start doubting yourself. And then you don't believe in yourself. And if you don't believe in yourself, you will never have the ability. to do. So I graduated college, bachelors of science and nutrition, BPN is still being built in the background, we're on a run rate of about $20,000 in revenue a year. Not extremely profitable because we were offering 50% off discounts, or I was offering 50% off discounts. Orders would come in to my apartment, into my dorm. I'd pack them up. I'd drop them off at the post office,

my way to school, one way to class every couple days. And I was preparing for this next chapter of life. And I knew that next chapter of life was going to provide me opportunity. It was going to provide me an opportunity of experience, growth, leadership, management. And I knew in the back of my head that I would be able to use these experiences. I would be able to use these opportunities to build my business into what I wanted to build it into someday. And I was no longer rushing for an outcome. I was no longer rushing for a milestone or success.

I learned that I had to slow down, be patient in my weaknesses, and allow these opportunities, these experiences to help me grow and adapt to then at some point do the thing that I wanted to do, build BPN, the brand that I knew it could be, have the ability based off of the belief. So I graduated college, degree in nutrition, Indiana, University of Pennsylvania, and I started packing up my stuff and preparing for the move to Fort Benning, Georgia. Now, in Fort Benning, Georgia, I was there for a year. I was in the infantry officer basic course, Ranger School, Airborne School, Bradley Leader course.

I was there for a year before moving to my permanent duty station in Fort Hood, Texas. That's the first chapter of building BPN. That's the confidence. It's the curiosity. It's the courage. It's enduring the process to just get that thing off the ground. It's not even zero to one. It's like zero to point five.

in Fort Benning, which will be part of the next chapter, my life changed significantly all over again. I built more confidence. I had more wins. I had a lot of failure. I had a lot of loss. I learned a lot about myself and my ability. But I needed that chapter, that next chapter, to position me to where I am today. It shifted the trajectory of my life. So that's what I'll share in the, the follow-up episode, the next episode of the series, Chapter 2. Guys, thanks for tuning in for part one for chapter one of this multi-part series.

There's a lot to unpack, a lot of stories, a lot of lessons. That's why I want to take it over the course of a few different episodes. So we'll see you in that next one. As always, go on more.