The Nick Bare Podcast - 103: Answering Your Business Questions | BPN Q&A

Episode Date: January 13, 2025

For this episode, I decide to take a different approach and use my entrepreneurial journey to address business questions sourced from Instagram about the path of building my company, BPN, from 2012 to January 2025. I cover the biggest mistakes I've made, the transformative shifts in our business strategy, and insights on maintaining profitability while scaling. Alongside my experiences, I share valuable lessons on leadership, the importance of vision and intent, and our future plans, including international expansion. Chapters 00:00 Welcome and Introduction 02:32 The Importance of Learning from Others 05:59 Biggest Mistake in Business 08:34 The Role of Vision and Intent 17:35 Taking a Salary and Early Challenges 33:20 Balancing Growth and Profitability 40:55 Transformative Shifts in Business 49:46 Maximizing Endurance: The Core of Training 51:29 Evolving Business Operations: From Humble Beginnings 58:30 Marketing Evolution: From Organic to Data-Driven 01:06:14 Standing Out in a Competitive Market 01:14:32 Advice to My Younger Self: Lessons Learned 01:22:57 Expanding to the UK and Europe: A Strategic Approach 01:27:16 Raising Capital and Managing Finances 01:31:22 In-House Fulfillment: The BPN Approach 01:38:02 Conclusion: Final Thoughts and Future Plans Become a BPN member FOR FREE - Unlock 20% off FOR LIFE https://www.bareperformancenutrition.com/pages/bpn-membership?srsltid=AfmBOorlpjVeag2kkt3eZ5UpWcFA5Bb2v5V_93lmO47Vn_Y8DRdLwDLL Follow: IG: instagram.com/nickbarefitness/ YT: youtube.com/@nickbarefitness

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the podcast. Today's episode is a business question and answer. All things around my entrepreneurial journey from 2012 up until today, January of 2025. And these are questions that were sparked and asked on Instagram. I opened up a question and answer a few days ago, and there were a bunch of questions that came across, a lot of questions that were the same questions asked by many different people. When it comes to building business, what I have found is that there is no perfect answer. There's no perfect blueprint. There's no ideal way. The concepts are few, but the methods are many.

and what I'm sharing is just based off of my experience, personal decisions that I've made along the way of building BPN on this amazing journey of what it has been up until this point. And a lot of these decisions that I've pursued have led to success while some have often led to mistakes and failures along the way. And I'm going to share all of those with you guys. That has been a huge part of my content over the years is documenting and sharing the process. The role, the real, the good, the bad, the successes, the failures. Because all of those decisions, all of those outcomes, whether good or bad,

have led me towards refining and becoming better and improving to where I am right now. today. I think we can all learn from the experiences of other people. And as I was thinking about just some of these questions and the answers and where I want to take this discussion today, I kept thinking about one of my favorite podcasts and one of my favorite podcasts that I have brought up countless times so far that I highly recommend you guys look into. It's called Founders. And the host, David Senra, He breaks down biographies and autobiographies from founders, world leaders, athletes, artists, people who have built amazing things. And he dissects their story and their work ethic and the lessons they've learned and how they've gotten to where they were or are at some point.

and in the description of the founder's podcast, David Senator quotes Mark Andresen. And he says, this is the reason for his podcast. And I'm going to share this quote by Mark and Driesen with you guys to say that we can learn so much from other people's stories and experience. People who have done it and been there, we can learn from their successes, but also so much from their failures and the journey in itself. So Mark Andreessen says, there are thousands of years of history in which lots and lots

of very smart people worked very hard and ran all types of experiments on how to create new businesses, invent new technology, new ways to manage. They ran these experiments throughout their entire lives. And at some point, somebody put these lessons down in a book. And for very little money in a few hours of time, you and I can learn from someone's accumulated experience. There is so much more to learn from the past than we often realize. You could productively spend your time reading experiences of great people who have come before and you learn every time. and you learn every time. That's why I love listening to the Founders podcast

is because I learn from someone else's experience and story every single time. And maybe it's just a small nugget that I carry through that day or that week. But it's powerful. And that content, that information, it compounds. So that call to action is one, go listen to some episodes of Founders. podcast, but two, go into this next year, going to 2025, asking yourself a question,

how can I learn from other people's experience and apply it to my journey to get better, to reach the goals, reach the success, avoid some of the failures or setbacks or mistakes along the way. The failures, mistakes, setbacks, they're going to come regardless, but it'd be pretty ideal if we could minimize some based off of learning from others. So the business Q&A. Question number one, what was the biggest mistake I made in the last 13 years of building BPN? And I think the biggest mistake I made was actually in the last 18 months.

One of the biggest mistakes I've made was in the last 18 months. And I'll get to it in a little bit, but one of the greatest things I believe that we've done as a business also happened in the last 18 months. Don't want to get too far ahead, but I share that to say that these last 18 months have been very transformative for myself and the business. What was the biggest mistake I made in the last 13 years of bootstrapping my business, BPN? That mistake is that I delegated responsibility and vision with lack of control, guidance, or intervention. And this led me down to a path of mistakes that took the business off course. You see, I stepped down from the CEO role.

I guess it was January of 2023. And I've shared this many times before, but I got to share it again because it provides context around what happened. But step down from the CEO role, moved just into a founder role of the business. I moved my family and a small creative team to Nashville, Tennessee, thinking that was the necessary next steps and evolution of my role with BPN. but that was not right at all. I was actually self-sabotaging everything in my life and what I have built up until that point. All ended up working out in the right way for right reasons.

But my biggest mistake is that I stopped providing and creating vision an intent. Very clear intent. I learned about this in the military, so I should have known how applicable it was to building a business. A commander in the military, like a company commander, a battalion commander, a brigade commander, they create vision. That vision is intent. This is the intent of this mission. This is the intent of this project. This is the intent of what we're about to do. This is why. This is the purpose.

This is why we're doing this thing. And then you delegate responsibility below you to execute that intent in that vision. A few years ago, we implemented EOS into our business, which is the entrepreneurial operating system. and this is a system based off the book called Traction by Gina Wickman, another great book to read, especially if you are a business owner. And I highly recommend looking into EOS. And after you read traction, read Rocket Fuel while you're at it. And the entrepreneurial operating system is a set of rules and guidelines

of how you run and operate a business, a company. and we implemented EOS into our business, and it was very powerful. We still practice some of EOS, but not fully any longer. We've taken what we wanted to keep in the business and working you on and improving. We kept those systems,

and then we adapted to fit our business and the way we want to run BPN specifically. But within EOS, there's a visionary, up top, and then there is an integrator. And the visionary, oftentimes the founder sees very big picture. They are a dreamer. They can see three, five, ten, twenty years into the future for that business. And then the integrator takes that vision,

delegates it into directors and managers of the business to execute that vision. So you have commander's intent, you have founders intent and vision. And there is someone who makes sure that comes to life and it happens. Visionary and integrator. Right now in the business here at BPN, I am the visionary, Josh Hawley. He is the integrator. He makes sure that vision and intent comes to life and it happens and we're tracking its progress.

So I share that. Now to go backwards a little bit, where I messed up, my biggest mistake in these last 13 years, is that as the visionary, that rule is very important because it guides the direction and creates responsibilities and tasks and projects that are aligned with. an intent, a North Star, to other parts of the business. I stopped creating and providing vision, and I stopped creating and providing intent. And I delegated that and got really hands off and assumed that the business was at a point where it could move forward on its own without my vision and intent and hand on the business

moving it forward. That was one irresponsible of myself, and it was very ignorant of myself as well. But I learned in that process, one, vision is very, very important, intent is absolutely critical. But also, I love having my hand on the business. I love creating the vision.

I love sharing the vision, casting the vision, creating the intent, and then watching the team, take that intent and vision and execute on it and bring it to life. Jonathan Swift once said that vision is the art of seeing what is invisible. That's the best part about being a business owner. It's the best part about being a founder. It's the best part about being a team member or an employee for a startup organization that is building.

you get the opportunity to have a vision to see something, to see art that doesn't yet exist. It is invisible. But if you see it and you believe in it, it's real. It's there. It's true. I love being in the founder role. I love having the opportunity and the responsibility of creating vision and sharing that vision. That intent has powerful.

opportunity when the right people in the team can take it and run with it. But if there isn't vision, if there isn't intent being provided to, whether it's a military organization or a business, without vision, without intent, people are wondering aimlessly without any sort of guidance. And my mistake is that I delegated that vision, I delegated that intent without control, without guidance, without intervention, and no one on the team knew where to go or what to do. That was my mistake. That was my greatest mistake. But also an amazing learning lesson about how important intent and vision is for an organization. So what's the solution?

In the military, we talk about centralized command and decentralized command. And decentralized command is when leaders empower leaders at every level to make decisions. So in a decentralized environment, organization, business, in the military, when it's decentralized, you have your vision, you have an intent. And as long as that vision and intent is upheld and maintained, the team below can make decisions on their own as long as it is aligned with the vision and intent. The opposite of that, being centralized command is vision and intent is shared up top. It's then tasked and delegated below. And before any final decision can be made, it has to go down the chain, back up the chain,

for approval and then approved and then you can press go. It's slower. It's more controlled. I would argue it's it's heavily micromanaged. And sometimes you have to run a centralized command in leadership style when there isn't enough trust in the departments or the leaders or the teams below. But when you have trusted directors and managers and team members across all levels of an organization, decentralized command allows you to operate quickly, accurately, and still achieve the vision and

intent created by the founder or the commander. But that was my biggest mistakes in last 13 years is stepping back and assuming that vision and intent would just be created out of thin air and that everyone could just read my mind that's not the case no one's read in your mind that's why effective communication is so important and that vision and that intent coming from up top is absolutely critical but that was my biggest mistakes next question when did i start taking a salary from bpn 2017. I put myself on payroll with BPN in 2017. And this was five years after starting the brand. So I started the brand in 2012 when I was in college. And I'll explain my situation and my experience and how I was able to do that.

It is unique, but every founder's story and journey and situation is unique. No business is cut from the same cloth. And I've shared this before. You know, I didn't take any money out of the business for the first five years. And sometimes the response is, wow, that must have been nice to have that option. It was nice. I'll be honest. It was great because I was making money in the military in the meantime. So that when I transitioned out of the military in 2017, that was the only time I had to put myself on salary.

That was the only time I had to start paying myself so I could afford food and clothes and housing and all of just the basic necessities of living life. For those first five years, I could keep reinvesting all of the money that the business was making back into the business because I was on active duty service with the military. that must have been nice. It was nice, but you know when I was building the business outside of my active duty military hours, either before work, which was, you know, a work day started at 6 a.m. with morning PT. So I was either working before that or after work, which was, you know, it ranged anywhere from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. if we weren't in the field. And then I would work on building the business until

midnight, 1 a.m., 2 a.m., 3 a.m., 4 a.m., whatever I had to do. But within those five years, I was building the business in the background in any free moment that I could find. So, yeah, it was nice to not have to take any money out of the business for the first five years. But the only way I was able to do that is because BPN was my side hustle while I was active duty military. So when I transitioned out of the Army in 2017, 2017 was a really big year for us. It was the first year we crossed into the seven figure revenue mark. We ended that first year, not that first year. year, but 2017 at about 1.7 million in revenue. And we had three employees, myself, Preston,

my brother, and Joe. And I remember putting myself on salary. I put myself, Preston, and Joe at the same time. Because when Preston moved down initially, he moved from Pennsylvania to Texas, I was still in the army. I couldn't pay him. And he knew that. He had money saved up from his previous job and from internships that he worked summers while he was in college. So he had some money that he could live off of those first couple of months in Texas. When Joe moved down, we started paying him, but only what we could afford. And me, Preston and Joe, lived in one house together in Temple, Texas. And that was where we built BPN and we fulfilled orders until we signed our first warehouse lease.

But I remember when we first went on the salary, I didn't even know how to get us on salary. You know, I just assumed before that you just started paying people out in the business account. You just did like a transfer from the business banking account to someone else's account. It was like a wire. And then I realized, well, there's certain programs and there are, platforms and businesses that help you run payroll. So the first payroll provider we started working with was ADP.

Because I vividly remember I had to manually go in and run payroll every two weeks. And sometimes when I would go in and run payroll, what it would cost us to run payroll with those three salaries would stress me out a lot. because even though we did 1.7 million in revenue in 2017, cash flow was really tight because a lot of our money was tied up in inventory. When I first put myself on salary, it was $60,000. 2017, this was after being in the military for four years, transitioned out as a first lieutenant right before hitting captain.

And the order in which I kind of created and pursued up until this point was starting the business in 2012. I was in an Army ROTC scholarship in college. I knew that I was going to be going active duty, military service as soon as I graduated college. So I graduated in 2013, May of 2013, I commissioned into the Army, May of 2013. And then I was on active duty military payroll, went to Fort Benning for a year. Then I got the Fort Hood, Texas, 2014. That's when I started using social media to build the brand, documenting my life on

YouTube. And then I was able to start generating revenue personally by building a personal brand, YouTube ad revenue was somewhat significant. I mean, I used to make more on YouTube ads probably in 2017 than I do right now. A lot of people would be surprised by that. There are some things that were changed within YouTube, but also now that we just use better music. A lot of the music we use in YouTube videos is copyrighted. and we just can't monetize the videos because we want to use copyrighted music.

It makes the videos better, in my opinion, as opposed to some of that, like, cheesy copyright-free music. You can find some good copyright-free music, but not all of it is that great. But I found ways to generate revenue through building a personal brand with brand deals, sponsorships, YouTube ad revenue. And this money that I was making on social media,

I would pour back into the business to keep it growing. Because at that time, the business was so capital intensive because we were trying to get it off the ground. And we were investing a lot of money into inventory. And we didn't have great terms with our manufacturers. So it required a lot of up. front capital. And the way, or one of the ways we were keeping up with this,

was by taking the money I was making, and we were generating on social media through, like I said, ads, brand partnerships, YouTube revenue, and putting it back into the business to keep it burning and churning. And then eventually, when I transitioned out of the military, 2017, put myself on a W-2 salary.

$60,000 a year is where I started. How many hours a day was I working when building BPN in the first couple of years? I love this question, and I love the answer that I came up with for this question. The answer is all of them. all of the available hours. And the reason I like this answer and this question is because I would ask someone who wants to start a business, who's thinking about starting a business, how many hours do you want to work to get this thing off the ground, to make this thing successful?

How committed are you to building your dream? And if someone's asking the question, how many hours do I have to? How many hours do I need to work in the beginning? If that's a question you are asking, I don't think you are cut out for the journey. I don't think you're cut out to be a founder, to be a business owner. Anyone who's ever started a business and whether it's failed or succeeded or it's doing well or it's not doing as well, they can tell you

it's really, really hard. But if you love it, it is really, really rewarding. And you don't care how hard it is. You don't even think about how hard it is. You don't want to be doing anything else. So how many hours did I work on BPN in this first couple years?

All of them. When I was in the Army, every waking moment outside of the Army, and that's no exaggeration. Every waking moment outside of the Army, I was working on building BPN. From the minute I woke up until the minute I went to sleep.

On the weekends, I would wake up a Saturday morning. I'd have my camera laid out, have my batteries all charged. I'd have the idea of the video I wanted to film. I'd have it storyboarded. I'd go, I'd film this whole video.

I'd get all the footage I needed. I'd come home. I'd sit in front of my laptop as I plug in my SD card and all my footage is uploading onto my laptop. And I would sit there just waiting for all of those clips, all that footage to upload so I could start editing. And that brought me so much joy, so much fulfillment, because I was building something.

And then when I transitioned out of the Army, I had all these available hours that I didn't previously have available to me to build this thing. That's when the brand really took off is because I knew how to maximize time. So when I was provided more time, I could create more input to maximize greater output. You see, entrepreneurship,

ownership is not about freedom from work. It's not necessarily about working less, but it's the freedom to work on the things you want to work on. It's the control of your destiny. It's the control of the outcome for better or for worse. I was recently listening to an episode of the Founders podcast with the founder of Hyundai, and that is Chung, Yu Yang crazy story about Chongju Young founding Hyundai.

And when we think of Hyundai, the car manufacturer, we think of it as a car manufacturer. But before Hyundai was a car manufacturer, they were a construction company. They manufactured boats, ships, and then got into vehicle manufacturing. and the story of where he started in complete utter poverty in South Korea and building multiple businesses that ended up failing before Hyundai, his journey as a founder as a business owner is amazingly impressive. But he is quoted in this founder's episode where he says, time is a form of capital provided equally to everyone.

If I could be considered a successful person in my chosen profession, it is only because I was able to do my very best based on strong convictions and made the best use of this evenly distributed capital. There's a lot of argument for how and why certain people achieve certain things. You can say that you were less fortunate with finances, mentorship, guidance, resources, money. And that's why you didn't achieve what you wanted to achieve. But Chung-Ju Young doesn't talk about any of those things because he came from nothing. but the one form of capital that is provided equally to everyone is time.

And the question is, how do you use, how do you best use that evenly distributed capital? That's powerful. If you can learn how to maximize time, you can maximize output. So how many hours a day was I working when I first started building BPN? This first couple years, all of them. Next question is, should you pursue growth in your business at the expense of profits? As I mentioned in the beginning of this episode, the concepts are few, the methods are many. There's a lot of different ways to build a business.

I have some friends who have built businesses and are building businesses where they prioritize profits. And then I have some friends, I know some people who have businesses that maximize growth at the expense of profit. So we personally, at BPN, we have always operated the business to be profitable. And we operate the business at mid-teens EBITA. EB-DA is an acronym that is a baseline or a data point for your profitability. And EB-A stands for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and emeritization. E-B-I-T-D-A. So we operate our business, mid-teens EB-A, and our goal is to,

to have our EBITA margin. And when I say teens, that's a percentage. Our goal by 2006 is to have 20% EBITA margins. And we have a budget for 2025 and 2006 showing how we're going to get to 20% EBIT of margins. That is our goal. Our goal for 20206 is $100 million in revenue and 20% EBIT of margins. So that would be $100 million in revenue, $20 million in profits or EBITA.

But there's different ways to build and scale a business. We've always had very disciplined growth in scale, really because we didn't know any better. When me and my brother were first getting started, we didn't know any other way other than stay lean, be resourceful, invest the money the business making back into the business so you can grow and make a profit. Because if you're not making a profit, why are you doing it in the first place? And there are reasons people don't care about profits. Some people just want to build and grow and scale a business to hit a certain revenue mark and then sell it to each their own.

But that's a very dangerous game to play, in my opinion. It's very dangerous play. Sam Walton of Walmart once said many times. I mean, I'm a huge fan of Sam Walton. His book is great. There's a few great founders episodes on Sam Bolton. But Sam Walton was a huge proponent of profitability. And one of the things he said is we had to keep expenses to a minimum

that's where it all started. Our money was made by controlling expenses. Controlling expenses, not growing at the expense of profitability, but maintaining and managing overhead and expenses. That's the only way Walmart was able to grow. It's the only way Walmart was able to beat competition and get to where they were and are today. You see, there's this blueprint that some businesses take

where you can go raise a bunch of capital for your business. Like, say you go out to the market and you raise for your business $50 million. You can do this before you even make a dollar. You can go raise capital from investors, venture capitalists. You go raise money. say you raise $50 million before you have a brand,

before you know if the market wants you, before you have any sort of feedback on your product. And you spend that $50 million, building out on systems, hiring people, marketing strategy, ads, acquire new customers. But what happens so many times

by so many different companies is they go raise this money, they spend it, they burn through all of it, they go raise more money, they spend it, they burn through all of it, they go raise more money, they burn it, they spend through all of it, and they have to keep raising money

so the business can stay alive. And every time they go and raise more money, they have to give up more equity. And before you know it, there's these founders who own single digit percentages of their company, not by choice, but because they had to, because they've had to keep going out and raising capital, raising money just to keep it alive.

Just to keep the business able to cover overhead, payroll, insurance, cost of goods, warehouse, office, leases, all of these things. And they're spending all of their money on growth at the expense of problems. So they have no other option than having to keep raising capital to keep the business alive. It's a dangerous game to play. I can tell you right now that is not a game that I want to play. That sounds like a stressful, scary scenario and situation. I like having the ability to flex and pivot and being financially healthy and strong and lean

and resourceful because we don't have to go raise capital. We don't have to give up equity. We don't have to tap into significant debt or lines of credit because we're operating the business in a healthy way that prioritizes profitability and we're still growing at a healthy rate but not at the expense of profits. But that's just one of the ways to build a business. of business. I'm not saying it's the right way. I'm not saying it's the wrong way.

We have chosen to pursue and maintain profitability, but I know a lot of business owners. I know a lot of founders who go after growth at the expensive profits. And it's just a completely different business model. Completely different. Next question. What is one of the most powerful shifts you made that transform the business? I kind of tipped my hat to this earlier you're on in this conversation. But one of those shifts, most powerful shifts, happened in the last 18 months. And that was just getting more clear, more focused on who BPN is and how we're getting to where we want to be.

I have a few quotes for you here, both from James Clear. James Clear said, in the long run, prioritization beats efficiency. Love that. Prioritize what you're going to work on, who you're serving, and how you're going to get to where you want to be. It's not always about efficiency,

but it's about prioritizing where you're spending your time, your money, your resources. And his second quote, what is one commitment you are continuing to do out of inertia, but if you had the courage to eliminate it, you would immediately benefit from discarding it. Are you committed to doing things just because you have momentum behind it? You have inertia behind it.

You've been doing it. You feel like you have to stay committed to it because it's already in motion? Is that why you're committed to that one thing? But what would happen if you stop doing that one thing because you prioritize results? You prioritize outcomes. And you discard that commitment and you shift,

a powerful shift, and it's something new and different, and the results are 10 times more where that previous commitment was. That's called pruning. One of my favorite books I've read in the last 10 years is called Necessary Endings by Dr. Henry Cloud. And he talks about pruning. And there's an analogy of pruning in terms of a rose bush.

If you have a rose bush every year you have to prune it. You have to cut away the dead stems. You have to trim back the bush. You have to remove some of the thorns. and just prune the entire thing to help it become healthier. And after you prune something, it looks bare, it looks empty. But once the growing season comes back and that rose bush starts to bloom again, because you pruned it, it now has the opportunity and the possibility to grow larger

and healthier and more beautiful. but if you wouldn't have pruned it, all of those dead stems and thorns and leaves would have held back its ability to grow back stronger and larger. We have to prune our lives. We have to prune our businesses every once in a while. We have to eliminate and reduce and remove the things that aren't working or that are holding us back

and then prioritize what's actually going to move the needle for it. us. You see, 2024 was a turning point for our brand because we eliminated a lot of unnecessary pursuits. There were a lot of things that we were spending time on that felt efficient, but weren't actually producing the results we needed. We were over-optimizing things that didn't need to be over optimized. But we made this shift in 2024, and this shift will be even greater going into this next year, 2025, where we stopped working on a lot of different things. And we've hyper-focused where we're going to spend our time, money, and energy. What projects we say yes to. More importantly, what projects we say no to.

So the powerful shift that transformed our business in 2024, 2025, is understanding one, who BPN is, who we're speaking to. We're not trying to speak to everyone. And then how do we connect with those people, which is a tighter, smaller niche? So instead of actually going and casting a larger net to speak to more people, or refining that net or trying to speak to less people, but a stronger niche of person. A more hyper-focused target with a goal of really catering a solution

that that niche is experiencing a problem in and then expanding from there. So you start, you know, it's this like interesting evolution in a business where you start really niche and really small and as you grow, you start to expand. But what often happens is you expand too far, too fast, too wide. And then you wake up one day thinking

who we're even speaking to or who are we trying to speak to anymore. And then overnight you make a shift saying, this is who we are, this is who we're serving, this is how we're serving them. And if it reduces the target market, that is okay.

Sometimes just to take one step back to take two steps forward. So our 2025 focus, this powerful shift that we made that has transformed our business in the back half of 2024. And I am extremely confident that going to 2025 is going to be game changing for us. Our 2025 focus is three things. I mean, there are subcategories within each, but three overarching themes for 2025. Go One More is the first. Go One More is BPN.

That is our brand ethos. That is our mission. That is who we are. It's what we do. It's what we're about. Go One More. We cannot forget Go One More. And everyone who follows BPN should know what Go One More means and how important it is.

Number two, we are a brand for the committed. We're not for everyone. We don't want to be for everyone, but we want to be for people who are committed. And being committed doesn't mean that you are necessarily a professional athlete or you get paid to do this sport or live this lifestyle, but you are committed to this lifestyle because you believe in it and you love it and you're all about it.

You don't have to be a professional athlete to live and train like one. Take it serious. Whether you're just going into the gym in training to be a better husband, wife, father, mother, leader, business owner, brother, sister, whatever you're training for. You're just trying to be better. When you go in and train, be committed to giving it your all and doing everything you can to make improvement and get better.

We are a brand for the committed. And number three, performance endurance. We are serving the performance endurance. market. Those three things. We started in 2012 as a bodybuilding brand, and then we started talking to strength athletes, and then CrossFit, and then runners, and then professional sports teams and athletes. And we, at one point, went so wide where we were trying to speak to everyone that we weren't speaking to anyone. Go on more for the committed and people who train for performance endurance. Performance endurance isn't necessarily just running. It's not just

triathlon. It's not just ultras. It's not being a team sport player where endurance is necessary. It's not just high rocks. Performance endurance is where the tip of the spear of why you train is to maximize and improve endurance. But underneath that, all the other things you do support your performance endurance goals. You strength train because it supports your performance endurance goals. You supplement and monitor your diet and eat healthy and track your macronutrients because it supports your performance endurance goals. You implement mobility and recovery techniques and protocols because it supports your performance endurance goals.

It's an endurance. at the tip of the spear, but that spear needs a foundation of everything else to maximize its potential. Go on more for the committed performance endurance. I mean, we're more focused going into 2025 than we ever have before. We know who we are, who we're speaking to, how we serve those people, what they're about, how they live, how they think we are prioritizing or we're spending that time, not just trying to be more efficient. In the long run, prioritization beats efficiency.

Now, I want to take a quick break in this episode to talk about BPN's new free membership we just launched. And by signing up for this membership, you unlock a massive amount of benefits. and all you need to do to sign up and get started is opt in to our SMS program. And when you do this, it unlocks 20% off subscriptions for life. You get subscriber only free shipping windows and flash sales and exclusive apparel and hat drops that are only available to BPN members. So to get started, go to BPNSups.com, follow the neon-greens.

green banners, opt in to SMS, and then when you go to purchase on the website, just make sure that you are logged into your account to unlock that 20% off. And at BPN, we only do two sales a year. A lot of you guys know that. It's our annual Fourth of July sale and our Black Friday sale. But by signing up and becoming a BPN member, you get these benefits all year long. So go to BPNsup.com to get started and sign up to become a BPN member today. Next question is, what systems have we implemented to manage cash flow, inventory, and business operations at scale? Let me paint you a picture of what that looked like when we first got started compared to where we are today. managing cash flow in the beginning was logging on to our business bank account.

And if there was money in there to pay for upcoming bills, rent, necessities of the business, cash flow was good. Thumbs up. I vividly remember to this day logging into my business bank account in those early years with like one eye open and the other one just peeking through. And as I logged on and the page started to refresh and my balance showed up, if it was positive, I was like, all right, we live to see another day. If it was not so positive, I'd start stressing out and try to find a solution to bridge a gap if needed. Inventory management,

was literally me and Preston and Joe writing down on a piece of paper how many units we were selling a day compared to how many we had. And when we were placing production orders with our manufacturers, if we were selling more than we were in the previous production order, we'd throw some more units onto that next run and hope and pray that it was enough. But there was no sort of equation or inventory tracking that was allowing us to forecast how much more to manufacture, how to have conversations with suppliers, how to negotiate pricing, how to look into the future of how much more we needed. We were just building and building and building and managing the rest to the best of our ability, which was not great, but it worked.

For the time being, it was three of us this first couple years with no experience on how to build a business. We're just learning on the fly. Lots of manual processes. It was fun. It was stressful. Ignorance is sometimes bliss because we probably didn't know what kind of trouble we were in or how close we were right in the line of failing because we just lacked. awareness and education around all things, cash flow, finances, inventory, business ops. That's where we were back then in those first couple years.

And naturally, those systems just evolved over time. And me being honest, those are parts of the business that I don't personally enjoy or love spending a lot of time around. So that's where I've decided to hire people who are really good at what they do. to master those parts of the business. And we've hired top-tier talent to do those things. And we now have a CFO, a VP of finance, a controller, junior accountants, director of supply chain, BP of ops.

And the way we manage cash flow and those teams manage cash flow, inventory, forecasting, procurement, The conversations we're having with suppliers of raw materials, manufacturers. We have multiple manufacturing partners across the United States now as opposed to just one manufacturer like it was back in the day. The business operations, as we've scaled, have changed significantly compared to what they were those first couple years. But it wasn't this shift that happened overnight.

It was these small evolutionary changes where we realized there was a problem. them and we hire someone, that person then build on a team. I mean, Josh Holly really took lead on building in some operational maturity into this business coming from a financial background. He was initially our CFO in the beginning, but systems to manage cash flow. And like I said, inventory and forecasting procurement, like building out a really in-depth, detailed, and functional, operational side of the business, that has been one of the most necessary parts of scale and growth. And it doesn't always get the attention or the highlight because it's not super sexy. I mean, you might come to BPN's website and social media and see this

video that was really well done by our brand team that tells the story of BPN and, and go on more and for the committed and it connects with you on this whole new level and you go on our website and you buy one of our products and then you receive the product and that is your experience but what you don't feel what you don't see what you don't witness is the operational maturity that's happening in the background that has been built out over years by very talented hardworking people to make sure that we are building a strong and healthy business and that our cash flows managed very appropriately. And that's one of the reasons, one of the only reasons we can maintain mid-teens EBIDA

and not run out of inventory all the time and have great established relationships with our suppliers and manufacturers and distribution partners. But that isn't my bread and butter. That's not what I love. It doesn't bring me all the fulfillment and joy and people. passionate other parts of the business do. I have all of the respect for it, but I have personally hired people who can own that and love that and crush it to make sure that's an absolutely critical part of our business. How has the marketing strategy and tactics changed from

$1 million in revenue to $65 million in revenue? So to pull the curtains back a little bit, 2012, our first year in business, we did $20,000 in revenue. It took us five years to cross the seven figure revenue mark. So, 2017, we did $1.7 million. And then in 2024, we finished the year at about $65 million in revenue. The goal for 2025 is a little over $80 million in revenue. And then in $2026, $100 million in revenue. That is a goal. That's where we're trying to get to.

That is just being completely transparent and maintaining profitability that entire way historically, but also moving forward into the future. How is the marketing strategy and tactics changed? Seth Godin said, and Seth Godin is one of my favorite authors. If you got to read one of Seth Godin's book, read Purple Cowell or Tribes. Seth Godin said, marketing is the act of telling stories about the things we make, stories that sell and stories that spread. What we make, stories that sell in stories that spread. BPN marketing is all around storytelling.

Telling stories of people achieving amazing human, accomplishments by pursuing their greatest potential. The beginning of our marketing strategy started with organic YouTube content. That was 2014. 2014, 15, 16. It was all organic marketing. It was YouTube videos, Instagram stories. We started signing some athletes.

to utilize their social media platforms. We did some email marketing. 2017 was the first year we actually dipped our toes into some paid marketing. And it wasn't really good paid marketing. We brought on an agency that helped us, but probably hurt us more than they actually helped us. And now we have a VP of marketing, Mori Matrani, who has a marketing team for BPN.

and we truly believe that marketing and brand, while different, have to be married and aligned to build a very strong organization. We lead with brand and everything we do. Brand is tone of voice, is what you feel, it is representation, it is a visual component, it is storytelling, it is mission, it is DNA. you can feel brand. Brand has a heartbeat. We lead with brand.

And then we use marketing, paid marketing, to leverage our brand content. When we first got into paid advertising, those first couple years, 2017, 2018, 2009, 2012, 2020, even. We hired agencies. We let agencies dictate our marketing strategy,

even some of our content strategy, where our paid marketing felt very different from our brand content. Because we thought that was the blueprint, that was a playbook that we had to run based off of what agencies were telling us. And we eventually realized, there's no rules of this.

We're going to create our own rules. So then we took over, we started leading and creating strategy for paid marketing that felt and looked very much like the BPN brand. And what ended up happening was our customer acquisition cost decreased. Our return on ad spend increased. We became more efficient at paid advertising and marketing by prioritizing brand and storytelling and alignment.

So our strategy has changed significantly over the years when it comes to marketing. And that is really just leading with brand and letting marketing leverage our brand content because we have a big in-house creative team. But when it comes to tactics, you know, bringing on a VP of marketing, that being Mori, who works alongside our finance team to build out a marketing budget. And then from that marketing budget, aligning and prioritizing how much we want to spend to acquire a new customer and what that acquisition cost is going to look like per platform and then measuring the return of that ad spend and then incrementality of the platform that we're

investing in two. So there's a lot of data. I mean, we are a big data team. We have so many different data dashboards that we're monitoring. We've brought one a third-party agency that has helped us build out some of these data-driven platforms that provide us just so much insight into where we're putting money, our return, how it's working for us, the efficiency, so we can make more informed decisions. So our finance team, our marketing team, the tactics that they are leading with are data-driven.

And then our strategy is high-level coming from a brand direction approach. But we measure everything, we track everything, and then we refine our tactics based off that data. Next question is how to stand out in a crowded or competitive market. when I first started BPN in college, so many people pushed back against that pursuit because they told me that the market and the industry that I was trying to enter was super competitive and it was saturated and it was going to be really hard to break through. And I didn't care. I really did not care because I knew that if you could pursue your own path and not try to just replicate and copy what all of the other brands and businesses in your sector were doing, you could stand down.

There is a niche for everyone. Some people will argue that having the best product possible will help you stand out a crowded competitive market. And I agree, you need a great product. But a quality product nowadays is the standard. It is the expectation. You need a great product. It's not even an option.

If you don't have a great, amazing, remarkable quality product, your business will not make it for those first couple of years. It probably won't even get off the ground. Quality is expected. quality is the standard. You need to have great products to build a sustainable and successful company. So yes, that will help you stand out from the competition. But like the bottom 20% of the competition, to be in the top 20%, to be in the top 10%, quality is expected.

The other thing you need to do is you have to create real value. that solves actual customer problems. If your product or service does not actually create value and solve a problem and connect with a customer, it's not going to last more than a couple years, even if it somehow makes it off the ground from the beginning. Create value that solves real customer problems. And I believe to stand out in a crowded and competitive market, you have to have a brand. That brand has a voice.

And you have to be ruthless in the process of maintaining that voice. Brand connects with people. There's a difference between buying a product that is just out of commodity. I buy toilet paper. I buy paper towels. based off of commodity. You know, like, what brand have I been buying for years? What brand has the best packaging?

And I just go buy toilet paper and paper towels based off that. If I go to the store and I have to buy just whatever's left, I could rarely be able to tell you a difference unless I'm going to the grocery store and all they have is like single-ply toilet paper left. And as I'm using that toilet paper, it rips between my fingers. Then I'm going to be like, okay, I'm not buying this toilet. paper again. I'm going back to my like five layer self-destructible toilet paper. But there's commodity products. You just buy based off of habitual historical trends. And there's products

you buy because you have a connection to the story, to the founder, to the brand, to the mission. When I make purchases that aren't just commodity, I'm buying because I believe in that brand. I I believe in the movement. I believe in the people behind it. That's how you stand out in a crowded and competitive market. Create a real connection. How do you create that real connection? With clear, effective messaging and communication.

And by changing the rules of the game, Seth Godin also said the obvious winners in business are the mid-sized in smaller companies looking to increase market share? These are the companies that have nothing to lose, but more importantly, they realize they have a lot to gain by changing the rules of the game. If you're a mid-sized, a small company, you have the opportunity to change the rules of the game,

to change the market that you're trying to operate in. How do you stand out? change the rules of the game. We spent this last year building out our brand tone of voice. And we worked with a copywriter who had experience with a lot of brands that we respect and look up to. And we hired this copywriter and she joined our team for about six months and helped us establish our tone of voice. How we speak, what we say, what we don't say. how do we use words?

How do we use effective communication to take the vision and intent of BPN and put it into words and letters and paragraphs? How do we take what's in our mind and dump it onto this piece of paper so that we can then share it with the team to speak effectively to the market we're trying to serve? So I'm going to share some of that tone of voice with you here. our vision is to fuel performance and elevate athletic potential. Our mission is that we obsess over equipping people with the highest quality fuel, authentic creativity, and a team of committed people to go one more. And we exist for, we are a brand for the committed, those unwavering in the pursuit of their goals, never accepting mediocrity.

our tone of voice, our tonality is one, we're empowering, two, we're vigorous, three, we're raw. We are high achievers, risk takers, champions, but we're not here for the glory. We're here for the journey, for the underdog, for our families, for our team, driven to achieve, drawn to challenges. Every day we strive for more because easy is not in our vocabulary. Yeah, we're those people, the hungry, the committed, the whatever it takes. takes crew. Welcome to BPN. We're just getting started. Go one more. And our voice, if our voice were a person, they'd be the tough, loving coach. That's just part of our brand tone of voice. It's a multiple page deck that we put together that helps us ensure that the way we're

speaking and the way that we're talking to our audience, to that niche, to our market, that's what helps us stand down. So we know who we are and who we're speaking to. We're not just creating other commodity products. No, we're creating products and serve a specific audience that creates real value and solves real problems. That's how we stand down in a competitive, crowded market. Because once you find out who you are and who you're serving, I'll tell you what. that market ain't as crowded as you think it was.

If I could talk to myself in 2012 when I was first getting started, what advice would I give myself? First, start reading early and read a lot. Stephen Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, another book that I highly recommend, said, there's no better way to inform and expand your mind on a regular basis than to get into the habit of reading good literature. When I started reading more self-help, business, entrepreneurship, biographies, autobiographies, when I started reading more, it game changed my business.

I made much more money. I became a better leader. I made more sound, more informative, stronger business decisions. Start reading early and read a lot. In 2012, if you would have told Nick Bear, you got to start reading more, he would have laughed and said, that's a waste of my time. Which is so ridiculous and just ignorant. Because now I listen to audiobooks all the time.

I'm reading as many opportunities I have. Because I know the power in reading and learning and being a student, constantly being a student. The second thing, second piece of advice I'd give myself. I'd say, Nick, the main thing that's going to hold you back from achieving what you want to achieve

is you. It's yourself. The book that I'm currently reading and listening to is called The Mountain is You by Brian O'East. It is so good. And the subtitle is

transforming self-sabotage into self-mastering. And this book, an audiobook, has made me realize how many times and how many ways I've been self-sabotaging over the years. And what I need to change should turn that self-sabotage into self-mastery. And one of the quotes from that book that I'll share with you here, she says, let's be clear about something. to put an end to your self-sabotaging behavior absolutely means it changed on the horizon. Your new life is going to cost you your old one.

It's going to cost you your comfort zone and your sense of direction. It's going to cost you relationships and friendships. It's going to cost you being liked and understood. It doesn't matter. The people who are meant for you are going to meet you on the other side. You're going to build a new comfort zone around the things that actually move you forward Instead of being liked, you're going to be loved. Instead of being understood, you're going to be seen.

All you're going to lose is what was built for a person you no longer are. Remaining attached to your old life is the first and final act of self-sabotage and releasing it is what we must prepare for to truly be willing to see real change. The only thing that's going to hold you back from success and achieving what you want to accomplish is yourself. It's nothing else. You can't blame situations, the market, the environment, finances, other people you've hired, anything else.

If you want to see change, you've got to change yourself. You have to be willing to endure that process. So I say, hey, Nick, you want to build this business over these next couple of decades along the way, you've got to be willing to change. And if you're not getting to where you want to be, you better be willing to have those hard conversations with yourself and have the self-awareness to realize something's got to change. Because if it doesn't, you're self-sabotaging your potential. The third thing would be stop trying to avoid problems. Entrepreneurship is all about problem solving and problems are opportunities.

Don't get into business. Don't pursue this journey if you don't want to solve problems. Because building a business, being an entrepreneur is all about problem solving. And if you're going to work for a startup, if you're going to work for an entrepreneur, don't pursue that job if you don't want to solve problems. Because you are working for a business that solves problems. We are all in the problem solving business. And the next piece of advice would be hiring the right people and putting them in the right

role in the right seat is one of the most important things you can do in your business. Having people that you love and trust and that are skilled and that are talented. In making sure they are in the right seat, they are in the right role in the business to maximize their skills and the business needs and desires will give you the most likely chance of success in succeeding. And those first couple hires you make, those are the most important. Because that sets the tone. That sets the standard.

That sets the culture for every additional hire after that. Next piece of advice I'd give is to play the long game over and over and over again. And every shortcut is a mirage. And while there's these shortcuts that exist and they may seem to be that golden answer I can promise you they're not. Play the long game. Be in it for years and years and years, if not decades and decades and decades. You will get stronger.

You will become more productive, more effective, more efficient, more refined, get better and better and better. Play the long game. Be in it for the long game. Over and over. The last piece of advice that I gave myself in 2012 is to trust your gut and build what you want to build, what you want to build, not what other people want you to build or not what other people want to be built. Trust your gut and build what you want to build, but be self-aware enough to distinguish between intuition, gut feel, and fear. Another few quotes in The Mountain is You, all about the difference between intuition and fear.

She says that this is how you start telling the difference between your thoughts that are informed by intuition and thoughts that are informed by fear. Intuitive thoughts are calm. Intruding thoughts are hectic and fear-inducing thoughts are rational. They make a degree of sense. intuitive thoughts, intuition, gut feel. They make a degree of sense. They are rational. They are calm. Don't allow fear to guide your decision-making progress or process.

Don't allow emotion to dictate what you do or don't do. But trust your intuition, trust your gut. But be self-aware enough to know the difference between intuition and fear. The next question is all about our plans to expand the UK and Europe. I get this question daily hundreds of times. It's not even exaggeration. Hundreds of messages a day to me and the BPN team asking when we're going to expand

to Europe, UK, specifically. And over these last 18 months, we've been laying the groundwork that is needed to launch in the UK, EU. Now, there is a right way to do things, and there is a fast way to do things. And the fast way is, I would argue,

a shortcut in the wrong way. We could, I don't say easily, but we could have launched in UK, EU, a long time ago. But we wanted to ensure that we're doing things the right way. We're crossing our T's, we're dotting our eyes. We are compliant with this process because this is an investment we're making into the future of BPN.

We see a huge opportunity in the UK, EU for BPN in our products and our brand. And we want to ensure that we're taking all the necessary steps. and precautions. So when we do launch, it's in a meaningful way. And that that market can be an equal opportunity as the U.S. is for us right now. So over these last 18 months, we've been working with international legal counsel to make sure that we have compliance with all the copy on our labels, on our website, ingredients. We have new labels made specifically for UK, EU. All of the legal hoops that we've been jumping through,

modifications, changes, compliance. That has been a huge hurdle. But we now over in the UK, we have a manufacturer for a lot of our products. Some of our products will have to import from the U.S. to UK, EU, but we do have a manufacturer over there now that can handle a large, portion of our products. We have reformulated some products to be compliant

internationally. We have new labels for UK EU that are compliant. We have a distribution strategy. Over in UK EU, we have a third-party fulfillment team that will be fulfilling our orders that come from our manufacturing facility that is over there, but we'll also be utilizing Amazon for some distribution. We've aligned with some wholesale retail partners to be selling our products. We've started, if you've noticed, signing some UK-EU athletes to help grow, promote, and expand the brand outside of the U.S. So it's been a long process for us so far, but we wanted to ensure that when we're ready

to launch, we're launching the right way. The right way takes longer. We're playing the long game. We're not taking the shortcuts. We're not chasing that mirage. We are in it for the long game. And since this is going to be a big investment because we see a huge opportunity,

we're taking all the necessary precautions and being as compliant as legally required to make sure that when we launch over there, we're ready for you guys, and you guys are ready for us. Okay, the next question is all about raising capital, taking on investors, and leveraging debt when we first got started.

So what did we do here at BPN? 2012 launched the business with a $20,000 loan from the Military Associated Bank, USAA. That's how I was able to find. my first round of inventory, filled out my website, all of those things. And I spent all of that $20,000,

which was a really good deal because I didn't have to start making payments for 18 months after getting the money from that loan. And it was a super low interest rate. So I spent all that 20K initially on our first production order and just getting the business up and running.

And for those first couple years, didn't require any additional capital other than the cash flow that was coming in from product being sold to place future production orders to maintain inventory and just keep the business running while I was in the military in the background. Now between 2016 and 2018, when cash flow got really tight because we were scaling, we were growing, we had to stack production orders on top of each other to make sure we had enough inventory and also keep up with the growth.

there were a few times where we took out working capital loans to just bridge the gap for short periods of time. So we take out anywhere from $20,000 to maybe $50,000 with like PayPal or Shopify, for example, and use these working capital loans where these companies like PayPal will give you cash upfront to purchase. inventory or finance parts of your business. And then they take your percentage of revenue each month until you pay back these loans. And we would take a few of these working capital loans out to bridge the gap, but then pay them off very quickly. And then in 2022, we actually did a seed round investment into the business.

So I gave up 10% of my equity in BPN to bring on some strategic advisors. and investors to help us make more informed decisions, build on the team, and then pursue this next phase of growth for BPN. So by giving up 10% equity in the business, there were a few million dollars that came in during that round that went to our balance sheet that helped facilitate growth of the business, the brand.

We didn't need that money, but what I was more interested in was the strategic guidance and mentorship from those investors that came in. So we didn't just take money through the seed around investment from anyone and everyone. It was very intentional people that we pursued and reached on to that we wanted to bring on to our team to help us make better decisions to build and scale the business. And that proved to be a very strategic and smart seed around investment. But currently, We have no debt on the business. We've never touched a line of credit.

And as I previously mentioned, we operate the business mid-teens EBDA, and we pursue profitability over growth. And the last question I'm going to answer is have we ever considered or do we plan to outsource fulfillment? We explored it. We tested it and realized that it wasn't for us. So that's a big question that I think a lot of brands and businesses have to answer at a few different parts of building a business. One, when you first get started, you have to decide do we want to fulfill and pack orders ourselves, or do we initially outsource this to a third-party logistics company? There are three PL partners who all they do, and they're located

across the US is they will hold your inventory and they will pack all of your orders. And that's all they do. And they're very fast, efficient, effective at that thing. Initially, when we launched BPN, we decided to own and handle our own fulfillment and orders. And as we grew and scaled, we revisited that question multiple times. Because you get to a point where you have to ask yourself, do you want to spend more time and more energy and more resources, more money on building

out your fulfillment operations side of the business being automation in space, warehouse, a team, team leads, directors. It's a huge part of the business. Do we want to keep that in house and own that and manage that or is it better to outsource? So we decided to test it a few years ago. Like I said, we realized it wasn't for us. So the way we tested it is that we onboarded a third-party micro-fulfillment model organization. So there was this 3PL partner that we worked with for a small period of time.

And they had hubs located across the U.S. And they would hold some of our inventory. And if an order was placed in a certain, proximity to their hub, they would fulfill that order for us. And all remaining orders were fulfilled by our team here at BPNHQ in Round Rock, Texas. And what we found with this model is, one, it was not more cost effective. It was actually more expensive for us to use a 3PL partner. But two, we didn't have control over fulfillment.

there was a lower quality and fulfillment. There are more errors. There was communication issues and just a lack of care. When someone else is packing and fulfilling your order so it has no connection to your company, to your brand, to your customers, the same level of care that you would take is not the same. And you cannot expect or anticipate it to be the same level of care. So we tested that model. We tested a 3PL model, realized it wasn't.

for us. We weren't going to pursue it. So we ended that relationship and working with that 3PL partner, that micro-fulfillment model. And we went all in to bringing fulfillment in-house at BPN. So we now fulfill all of the orders outside of Amazon that come in through BPN's website, whether that's wholesale, retail, and orders coming through our website specifically. And in 2024, we made the decision to go all in on our internal team. We built out that team further. We invested into automation and technology. So we have now this machine in BPNHQ where it's called the opera.

Half the orders go through this machine. And this machine actually automatically packs and fulfills orders. and then we have a manual line where we have order fulfillment specialists on the line who are packing orders throughout the day as well. It's the way this machine works, the opera, if you haven't seen a video of it on our social media platforms or I've shared a lot of these videos on YouTube, we place the order, the products that are in that order on this belt. The belt takes it through the line.

And as it goes through the line, it is scanned based off dimensions of the products. It pulls corrugated cardboard underneath the machine, cuts the cardboard to the perfect dimensions around the product that's on the belt. It wraps the cardboard and builds a box around those products, closes it up with glue and not tape. So now that order is more efficient in terms of space, it doesn't require any void fill. The machine, the opera, places a packing label on top,

moves it down the line where it is then sorted based off of the shipping carrier that is going to take that order to its final destination. So now our warehouse internally is split between automated fulfillment and manual fulfillment. And we can continue to invest into our team here at HQ where we're not only hiring more people, but we're providing greater skill sets to the team that isn't here. I mean, the team is now learning skills in terms of automation, and working with the opera and the team that has installed or manufactured and installed the opera. Our team is learning skills internally in terms of working with wholesale accounts, retail accounts,

Amazon, logistics companies, managing inventory. It looks so much different than it did years ago. and as we move into this new HQ in April of 2025, it's going to look even more different. And it's going to be more sophisticated with more technology, more automation, and a greater, even more developed team. But that is the method that we have chosen at BPN for order fulfillment. We don't plan to outsource it.

We will keep it in-house, and we will continue investing in our team here at HQ. So those are the questions that I wanted to personally answer for this business Q&A. Hope you guys enjoyed it. And as always, go on more.