The Nick Bare Podcast - 105: Building the Brand: Part 6 "The Storytelling Machine"

Episode Date: January 27, 2025

In Part 6 of the series, I take time and recount the journey of BPN from April 2019 to summer of 2022, highlighting our move to a second warehouse, the introduction of the hybrid athlete, and the explosive growth during the COVID-19 pandemic. We'll talk about some personal milestones, such as my first Ironman, tackling the Leadville 100, and shifting focus to the committed audience. I'll emphasize the importance of storytelling, community building, and lessons learned from endurance training that parallels business and life. The episode reflects on both professional and personal growth, especially after becoming a father. CHAPTERS 00:00 Introduction and Recap of Chapter Five 01:17 Building a Brand: Lessons and Growth 02:09 Endurance Journey and Pandemic Challenges 03:37 The Hybrid Athlete and Business Evolution 04:35 Fatherhood and Shifting Focus 05:42 Key Lessons from Chapter Six 09:59 Content and Storytelling Machine 12:31 Ironman Prep and Business Chaos 21:05 Leadville 100: A Life-Changing Experience 31:01 Rocky Raccoon 100-Miler: Overcoming Adversity 32:28 Marathon Training: Achieving New Personal Records 34:16 The Obsession with Improvement 38:36 Endurance Training and Business Parallels 52:09 Building a Community, Not Just an Audience 58:07 Personal Growth: Balancing Family and Ambition 01:02:58 Conclusion: Reflecting on the Journey Become a BPN member for free - Unlock 20% off for life https://www.bareperformancenutrition.com/pages/bpn-membership?srsltid=AfmBOorlpjVeag2kkt3eZ5UpWcFA5Bb2v5V_93lmO47Vn_Y8DRdLwDLL MENTIONS: Watch More Than the Miles: https://youtu.be/6GdPP_a2sNI?si=b-l4_oI9KZhi8Q_2 Half Time by Bob Buford https://www.amazon.com/Halftime-Significance-Bob-P-Buford/dp/0310344441 From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life by Arthur C. Brooks https://www.amazon.com/Halftime-Significance-Bob-P-Buford/dp/0310344441 FOLLOW: IG: instagram.com/nickbarefitness/ YT: youtube.com/@nickbarefitness

previously on building the brand. So I'm on this 18 mile training run and I'm 10 miles in. And when I'm 10 miles in, my legs hurt. I'm tired. I'm fatigued. And I say I'm done for the day. Man, if I quit on this run, what does that say about my character? What else will I quit on in my life?

The way you do one thing is the way you do everything. So I go back to where I stopped and I get to mile 18. I run eight more miles and then I go one more. One more mile than I was supposed to just a way. approved myself that I could. And I take my hat off, clip it over, I take a Sharpie marker, and I wrote one more under the bill. And I take a photo of it, and I posted on social media, and the response was wild.

All of these people started taking their hats off, writing one more under the bill. After establishing going more than seeing Julie Moss cross the finish line at the Iron Iron Man World Championships in 1982, I was like, this is going more. That's what it means. I need to experience this. I need to train for this. So that's what I did. I committed to Ironman, Florida, which was 2019.

After that, I was addicted to endurance training. Now, between 2019 and 2020, we grew 400%. It was, it was nuts. There's no other way to explain it. We went from about $4 million in revenue to $22 million in revenue in one year. One of the real problems that I experienced when I was in my Iron Man prep is that I couldn't find a fuel source that wouldn't destroy my stomach. So we created G1M Sport. We created a product that solves real problems. G1M Sport is now our best selling product under the entire BPN line.

I committed to running a sub three hour marathon. I trained for another year, whole year. And I ran two hours, 56 minutes, 27 seconds. Doubt is only dangerous when you start doubting yourself. This was an unlock for me. This is where I arrived. the power of intentional choices and commitment, true commitment. And little did I know in 2020 that just launching a YouTube video and a training program called the hybrid athlete would again be this pivotal shift in the trajectory of my life and my work and BPN as a whole, but it did. Welcome back to another episode of the podcast.

Today is another part of our multi-part series of building the brain. This is chapter six. Where this chapter starts and where it ends. This chapter begins with the introduction of the hybrid athlete or chapter five left off in the fall of 2020. And it ends when my daughter Charlie was born in the summer of 2022. When I first became a father, I became a parent. It changed my life. I've shared this in the last.

last podcast episode, not part of this, this building the brand series, but the one I released right before this one. And I recommended a book. And that book was called Half Time by Bob Buford. And it talks about how the first chapter of your life is focused on success and the second half of your life can be, should be, has the opportunity to be better than the first chapter, and that second chapter is oftentimes focused on significance as opposed to success. And I believe becoming a father, having children, being a dad, created that shift from just focusing on success to significance. So I highly recommend that book, Halftime. The lessons I learned in this chapter,

and this is one from my favorite author, one of my favorite author is Donald Miller. Be the guide. Don't be the hero. As a business, as a brand, as a leader, position yourself as the guide and never the hero. The second lesson is that it's better to be consistently good

as opposed to occasionally great. The third is that nothing, nothing is unbelievable. And the fourth lesson is that you can be both professionally ambitious and focused, but also present and content at the same time while leading and building a family. It is not one or the other. I had to learn that the hard way. And this, in my opinion, for me at least, is always in evolving journey in lesson that I am re-learning and reinforcing into myself,

into my work, my life, my priorities, my values, everything. So those are the lessons that I learned. Now diving into the meat and potatoes of this chapter, fall of 2020 to summer of 2022. This chapter for BPN set us up for true success. And you got to think at this point, I am eight years into building the business. Eight years. Eight years, I feel like eight years in, we really started to find a groove. We started to catch our stride.

Eight years in. Think if you start today, if you start building something, something today, you start pursuing a goal today, where could you be in eight years? If you just stayed consistent, eight years is a long time. Eight years from today, I will be 42, which is crazy to think. I can't imagine being 42. I can't imagine my daughter being 10 and a half years old. Can't imagine my son being eight and a half years old.

You can get a lot done in eight years. But at the same time, if you're not intentional and deliberate with the things that you are working on or towards, those eight years can go by really fast. And there can be a lot of missed opportunity if you don't seize it. We made a lot of progress in eight years from starting the brand in 2012 up until 2020. But if I think back to 2020, we were just catching a series. stride. We were just getting started. Even as I think about

2004, 2004 was like this refocused year. I could almost say then a year ago, we were just catching our stride. We were just getting started. Because business and building a brand and pursuing professional and personal goals, you're constantly pivoting and adapting and learning and then experimenting.

And every year should almost feel like a new opportunity of where you are refining the previous year, the previous you, your previous self. Because if you didn't learn anything in that prior year to refine and grow and test and scale and just get better at what you do, what you're working, on if you just stay stagnant, that's sad. I want to grow every single year. I want to keep growing every single year. So 2020 felt like we were just getting started. And this is where we started really building out a content and storytelling machine behind endurance races.

And there was never like this conversation where we sat down at a table as a team and we said, we need a new strategy for 2020. What is it? And so on the table didn't say we need to become a content and storytelling machine. It would have been cool if it was that intentional, but it just felt very natural and authentic to us. We were pursuing what we were truly passionate about, what I was what we were interested in.

And at the time, we were interested in pursuing endurance goals. in documenting that process and sharing the journey and being the guide by showcasing how we were and I was setting these goals and then making a plan, hiring a coach, chasing them down, putting in the work, and filming and documenting and sharing all of it. That content and storytelling machine is one of the most important parts of this brand. and it's one of the biggest things that a lot of businesses, a lot of companies, a lot of brands, they ignore, they miss. And it's a huge opportunity.

It's organic content. You don't pay for that content. You can't buy, like I said, you can't buy brand. You have to build it and we build it through storytelling. We build it through documentation. So the endurance races that I signed up for and we document, you know, and we document, you. documented and we shared and we positioned ourselves as the guide and not the hero to help people go after similar goals to teach people about endurance training as we were learning about it ourselves

to teach people how to fuel your training properly how to fuel your workouts how to fuel your races and the story in itself was inspirational motivational there are parallels they're are parallels between these training efforts and these big preps and life itself, especially business. So the first, like, big prep I went into after that first Iron Man and then the first sub three was my second Iron Man. And this was about a six-month prep. It was a long prep.

And unfortunately, during this time, we were in the pandemic. COVID-19 was rampant, and all these races kept getting canceled. I mean, that was going back to Chapter 5, that was one of the reasons that we had to run the sub three-hour marathon on a secluded ranch in central Texas and get that. that course certified and approved because all these marathons across the country were getting canceled because of the pandemic. Same thing with Ironman and triathlons. All these races were getting canceled.

And we documented this prep for, like I said, six months. I was training. Tyler McCain, Yulee, Uly, Ulysses, Gabriel. They were filming it. we were filming, editing, publishing videos seven days a week. Like working on content. We were working seven days a week for six months on this prep, training 18 to 20 hours a week. And behind the scenes, building the business, building the business alongside of training for this Iron Man,

documenting the series, telling the story. Again, being the guide, never the hero. Position yourself as the hero is, here I am, look at me, beating my chest, follow what I'm doing, because I am the greatest. I am the goat.

That has never been our approach. It has never been our agenda. That has never been our narrative. Some brands do that. Some people do that. I agree with the way that Donald Miller approaches storytelling and brand building, and it's to always position yourselves as the guide and never the hero.

People don't want to follow a hero. People don't want to support a hero. People don't trust the hero all the time. People want to follow. They want to be taught by. They want to support the guide. That's an opportunity to help people get from where they are to where they want to be. I remember during this, this Ironman prep, which was a lot. Every day, started with a run,

and then there was some sort of big bike workout. And then a couple times a week, there was a swim on top of that, 18 to 20 hours of training a week. I'll never forget, I was in the middle of prep, and it was it was Black Friday during this time. And we launched our Black Friday sale, And some of these days I had to be on the bike anywhere from three hours to six hours. There were some big bike sessions. We launched our Black Friday sale. And as soon as the Black Friday sale went live, my coach, who's Natasha, came into BPNHQ. And we went over to the gym here at HQ and started doing a big bike workout.

It was a multiple hour bike workout shortly after we launched the Black Friday sale. So I'm on this bike. I'm in the middle of this big, this big, really important workout. We were filming it, we were documenting it, we were in the pain cave. And as I'm in the gym training, I see some of the members of BPN walking into the gym.

And they're bringing me this problem. Our credit card processor went down during the sale because of the massive amount of just traffic and volume to the website and so many orders came in, so fast. That happens during our Fourth of July sale and our Black Friday sale every year. These are the only two sales we do each year. We do one in July and then one in November for Black Friday. And because we don't do many sales a year, we're not a sale driven brand. When we do them, they drive a lot of traffic to the website. There's a lot of volume all at once.

thousands of people on the website when we launch, thousands of orders coming in very, very quickly. And what happened was that because so many people were on the website only launched, and so many orders came in so quickly, the website didn't go down. We used Shopify. Shopify is extremely reliable. It's very well built.

But at the time, we were using a third-party credit card processor that was plugged into our Shopify site. And because so many orders came in so fast, it triggered a risk warning in our third party credit card processor or they shut down our processor because it looked like we were getting attacked. It looked like there were all these fake orders coming in because this software was reading, it is abnormal for this many orders to come in this quickly. risk, spam, being hacked, shut down.

So, here I am on the bike, mid-workout, or film this video. Team comes to me. I'm on the phone. I have my laptop in front of me.

I have one laptop which has my Zwift, which was the cycling training software I was using at the time. And my workout was plugged into there. I have another laptop open. with our website, I'm on the phone with our credit card processor trying to get things back up and running, and I'm doing the workout. And I think back to this moment of just the chaos of what it was.

And I was trying to do so many things at once. And it felt like this massive weight on my shoulders, because all these people were on our website trying to order. It was a big moment for the brand because these sales generate a lot of revenue for us and no one could check out. No one could place an order because we were down for this period of time when our credit card processor was just out of commission. That story in itself describes 2020, 2021 in a nutshell, truly balancing being a founder, a business owner, a CEO, an athlete, a content creator, in trying to merge, marry, and blend all of those things together.

Sometimes, and most of the time it worked out very well where I could compartmentalize each one of these things in blocks throughout the day. But at the same time, there were moments where they fell on top of each other. This was one of those pure chaos. After that Iron Man series, which we ended up doing a challenge race, challenge is another organization. We ended up doing Challenge Can't Koon. When I was a few weeks out from this challenge race and we were wrapping up this Ironman prep, this triathlon prep, the entire series, which six months was a long time of creating

and documenting. A few weeks before it was over, and I raced in Cancun, I was selected through the Leadville 100 lottery to run the Leadville 100 Ultra Marathon. And for a few years leading up to this, I would put my name in the lottery, but was never selected. This was like my first ultra that I wanted to do. I was new to the ultra space. But just like when I signed up for my first ultra, I was.

first Iron Man, I saw videos of athletes like Julie Moss struggling and fighting to get across the finish line. And I read this book early on in my endurance interests called Born to Run. And Born to Run describes Leadville 100. And it's this famous ultramarathon that is extremely challenging in Leadville, Colorado, at elevation, climbing mountains, truly embracing this suck for 100 miles. Leadville starts at about 10,000 feet of elevation. I believe at the peak you climb to over 13,000 feet of elevation over hopes pass. In a few weeks before Challenge Cancun, I learned that my name was pulled for the lottery that year, for Leadville. Thousands of people put their names in this lottery to run Leadville 100 every year.

And I believe maybe 800 or 900 are selected. I was lucky enough in 2021 to have been given the opportunity to run Leadville 100. This was, you know, really not dipping my toes in endurance anymore. This was a big boy race. This was no, like, go out there and put forth your best effort. No, if you didn't train for, and if you weren't prepared for this race, not just 100-mile, but 100-mile are in the rocky mountains of Leadville, Colorado. If you weren't prepared, it would bury you.

It would crush you. You wouldn't finish. I crossed that finish line in 27 minutes, 53 seconds. That race intimidated me, and I trained my ass off for Leadville. I found as much elevation as I could here in Central Texas. I ran technical trails to get my feet, my eyes ready. I opted on the stairmaster as much as possible. I wanted to be ready for when I got out to,

leadville. One of my favorite quotes, one of my favorite sayings is, if you fail to prepare, you should prepare to fail. I did not want to fail at Leadville, so I ensured that I prepared. Leadville 100 was truly an emotional, life-changing experience. We created a documentary out of that experience called More Than the Miles, and it's reached millions of people online. that piece was significant in terms of brand awareness and amplification for BPN. I truly believe that that film, that documentary, made a very significant impact on the brand, our success, and where we are today.

I still come across people who have interacted with the brand, who are introduced to the brand, through this experience, through this film, and we titled it more than the miles. Tyler McCain actually came up with that title, more than the miles. We were thinking of a title for a few weeks, and he presented that to me, and I fell in love with it. I actually have it tattooed on my side, more than the miles. And the whole concept behind that film, it wasn't just documenting a race from start to finish.

It wasn't just showcasing the 100 miles and the Rocky Mountains of Leadville, Colorado, as a brand that is built on content and storytelling, there had to be a story that was worth telling, a story that was worth sharing. That story was more than the miles. And the lesson learned was that you can go really fast alone, but you can go much further together. We took a large team out to Leadville.

I was the person who was actually running the race. ran the 100 miles, but I could have not have completed those 100 miles without the crew, without the team, without our brand, without the family. And we had people crewing and massaging my legs at checkpoints, filling up my fuel sources, making me food, putting icy hot on my knees. We have this one part of the film, which if you haven't watched it, go watch more. than the miles, the Leadville 100 documentary you posted on YouTube. There's this one part of the film where I'm coming back from Hope's Pass because Leadville isn't out and back. So it's 50 miles out, 50 miles back. And when you get the

mile, I believe 38, you have to climb up over Hope's Pass, which is a big climb, reach the 50 mile mark, climb back over Hope's Pass. By the time you get back from Hope's Pass, it's mile marker 62, and then you have another 38 miles to go to the finish line. And I come in back to Twin Lakes checkpoint after going over, who was passed twice, mile marker 62. And I see my crew there. And I come in and everyone's asking me, what do you need? What do you want?

My brother made me a cheeseburger, which was great. The crew was there helping out. And I asked for nut butter. So Steph hands me this packet. of almond butter. It's like Justin's almond butter. I was like, no, no, no, like the squirrel's nut butter. What I was asking for was like squirrel's nut butter

is this natural anti-chafe cream that I use. You put it on your toes. You can put it in your armpits, on your lats, where you're going to chafe in between your thighs. At that point, I was chafing up, so I just wanted to throw nut butter all over myself. And like squirrel's nut butter is great for pretty much what it's titled for.

Nut butter. So I ask for nut butter. Steph tries to hand me the peanut butter. I ask for the actual nut butter and I lather up. But we captured that in the film. You can go fast alone, but you can go so much further together.

And that Leadville 100 doc captured that story very well. I remember coming in to the finish line in that race and you come up over these hills and you can see downtown Leadville where the finish line is at and everyone's cheering for you and at this point you know I'm 27 hours 40 minutes into the race and I know I'm about to finish in the next 15 minutes and I started getting really choked up but emotional because I'm approaching the finish line I asked and we you can hear this you can wit

and watched this in the film, I asked, where's my team at? Where's my team? I wanted to cross the finish line with my team because I didn't do this by myself. I did this with my family, my team, my people, I wanted them there with me. And when I crossed the finish line, there was this old gentleman there who was putting the ribbons around every runner's neck and then giving them a hug. And I remember that. I'll always remember that. It was a very powerful moment. and makes me think back to one of my favorite books called The Power of Moments by the Heath Brothers. And as a brand, we have the opportunity. As a business, you have the opportunity to create these moments for people along the journey,

along the way to remember forever. Leadville 100 for me was very impactful. And there were so many memories and so many moments that I'll remember. but I'll always remember that gentleman who put that ribbon around my neck and gave me a hug. That was a powerful moment. You can go fast alone,

but you can go so much further together. 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 green. 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 BPNSups.com to get started and sign up to become a BPN member today.

After Leadville, I wanted to do another 100-mile, but I wanted to go fast. 27 hours, 53 minutes. That was hard. It was challenging. But I wasn't moving very fast because I was climbing mountains. So I hired a coach, Zach Bitter, and I put in a big prep for my next ultra. which was just a few months after, Rocky Raccoon in Huntsville, Texas. I did that 100-mile in 19 hours, 13 minutes.

I was in great shape for that race. I wanted to go fast. I did go fast. My training was locked in for that prep. Every weekend, every Saturday morning, it felt like I was doing 30-mile runs. 30-mile runs throughout my neighborhood. What was interesting about Rocky Raccoon is there was a different story to tell.

And within the first, I think it was maybe 10 or 15 miles of Rocky Raccoon, I twisted my ankle so bad, so bad that our team taped up my foot so tight with so much tape that it was essentially in a boot. I could not move that leg or that foot, that entire race. It was in a boot. It was so tight. it was so packed because it was so sprained. And I was really happy with that performance, 19 hours, 13 minutes. Again, we documented, we shared, we positioned ourselves as the guide and not the hero. And with each one of these additional races that we were going to, we saw more BPN fans.

We saw more BPN and go on more apparel hats, shirts, flags. We were witnessing the community growing in person. not just online. And then after Rocky Raccoon, I wanted to go back to the marathon. Over the years, I've always been pulled back to the marathon. That is my favorite thing to train for.

I love the marathon. I feel like it speaks to BPN and going more and for the committed so well. I wanted to go sub 250. And in the Buffalo New York Marathon, again, we documented this entire prep. We shared the journey.

We taught people how to PR their next marathon. That was the goal for this prep. Teach people how to run faster. Give people the tools, resources, education, knowledge, skill to apply to their fueling, to apply to their training to run a faster marathon, to PR their next race. I set the goal of two hours, 50 minutes, and I ran two hours, 48 minutes. During those two years, there were ultras, there were triathlons, there were marathons that I ran. And I've learned a lot from doing a lot of these preps.

For me, it's the best of both worlds because the brand grows in the process, the community grows. It's motivational. It's aspirational. It helps people. These videos that we create, these preps that we document, position ourselves as a guide and not the hero, it helps people reach their goals, whether fitness related or personally driven. But what I've learned is that I'm not necessarily obsessed with a sport. I'm not obsessed with even a distance of a race. I'm not obsessed with a training philosophy or model or type.

The box doesn't exist there. What I'm obsessed with is improvement, getting better. That's what drives me. Just like I was talking about in the beginning of this episode, I want to know that each incremental year, year after year after year, I am getting better at something, whether that is a better leader, entrepreneur, brand builder, business owner, father, husband, athlete. I want to keep getting better.

I want to keep growing. I want to keep learning. I want to fail in the process. I want to fail because I'm setting these goals so ambitiously, so bold, so big that if I don't fail every once in a while, I don't think I'm setting my goals big enough. I'm obsessed with improvement. I'm not obsessed with sport or activity. I also learned that during these fitness challenges

and these preps along the way, that my potential is not limited to the thoughts or opinions casted by others. Nothing is unbelievable. Nothing is unbelievable. I'm now pursuing a 230 marathon. If you would have told Nick Bear in 2018 and in 2019,

after I ran a three-hour 57-minute marathon and then the following year, a four-hour-15-minute marathon, if you would have pulled that kid aside and said, hey, one day you're going to be chasing a 230 marathon. He would have said, ain't no way. No freaking way, man. That's because back then I didn't believe in my ability.

belief comes before ability it was unbelievable to me back then and through these efforts and when you set really big goals and you go after them and you fail and then you achieve and you achieve it builds more confidence and that confidence

instills within you that nothing is unbelievable if you want to build a multi-million dollar business who's to say that you can't. Truthfully, who's to say that you can't? If you want to run a faster marathon, who's to say that you can't or you won't? If you want to lose weight, who's to say that you can't or you won't? If you want to change your life, you want to have a new job, if you want to be a better husband, you want to be a better father, you want to be a better leader in your business,

you want to be respected in your professional career. No one can say you can't. Nothing is unbelievable. You can do whatever you want. And when you truly believe that, I mean, truly believe it. I mean, that is power. That is powerful. And through these pursuits, I realize that my potential is not limited to the thoughts or opinions casted by others. Nothing is unbelievable.

I also realize that the way you get better, the way you keep improving in life, no matter what it is, it sounds so cliche, it's been overused and oversaid, but it is so true. Be consistent. Be consistent. Not for a few days, not for a few weeks, not even for a few months, for years. Year after year after year. If you learn how to be disciplined with your consistency, that's how you keep improving. Year after year after year. that's the goal ledville 100 unlocked a new hunger that didn't previously have that hunger got itched during the iron man series i learned a lot about endurance training it was challenging it was hard but ledville broke me and ledville made me realize that it was more than the

miles, there was a bigger opportunity to learn and share and document and build the brand. Lett-O-100 was this turning point and the brand's trajectory because we became a content and storytelling machine. You can't buy that. You got to build it. And when you build it from the ground up, it is authentic to your mission. mission. It is authentic to your values. It's authentic to what you believe in and your passions. That's how you build a brand connecting with people through storytelling.

That's been my approach and it's worked. There are parallels between endurance training and business and life. This is so applicable to business. But going back to Leadville, the days before, I've shared this story before, but it's very, very meaningful to get this message across, we got to Leadville a few days before the race actually started. And we were walking the course, we were scouting the course, just to get eyes on, but also to plan how we were going to move our media crew across 100 miles to document this race as well as possible without getting in the way

of other crews or racers or just people in general. We wanted to respect the race. Every race we go to and document we want to respect the race and the racers. So we're scouting out the location and we run into this gentleman

who's on the course of all this older gentleman. He's probably in his 70s. And we just start striking up conversation. He's asking who's running the race? I raise my hand. I say I'm running. Leadville, my first time, my first ultra. And he starts walking away and then he turns around.

He says, you know what? You know what the secret to this whole thing is? It's this thing called endurance. And we all started laughing thinking he was joking that he was dead serious. We walked away, not thinking much of it. And as I reflected on that moment and that conversation with that gentleman,

I realized what he was telling us because he provided more context. He said it's typically the younger guys that fall out of this race. They balk, they fail, they get injured. The older men and women who go out and do Leadville are typically the ones who succeed. And it's not based off of physical performance necessarily. but there's a mental edge there and there's more wisdom. There's patience. There's respect.

The younger kids, the younger guys and girls go out so hot, so fast in some of these races that by the time they get them mile 50, they're done. They're burnt. And here you have the older runners who start out slower. They pace themselves. They're patient. They're well behind these faster, younger race. runners, but they make the mile 50 and they make it across the finish line under the 30

hour time cap crossing the 100 mile mark because of wisdom. Endurance is patience. Endurance is wisdom. Endurance is playing the long game. It's not going out too hot, too fast. It's building brick by brick. It's being consistently good as opposed to occasionally great. just like any other endurance fitness prep,

you have to keep showing up. Even on the days that you don't want to and log the long, slow, base building miles. That's not only applicable to endurance training. That is applicable to life. That is applicable to business. In business, building a brand, I have and we have always played the long game.

There have been opportunities that we could have chased early on and still today that provide us massive benefit, huge returns on investment, growth in sales, and revenue and profits. But we don't pursue those things because they're short-sighted, they devalue the brand, they're not moral or ethical or right or aligned with what we believe in. So we don't. We play the long game. We know our mission, we know our vision, we've established our values, we've shared those things,

and we only pursue objectives and goals and growth strategies that align with those things that we've established. Too many brands, too many businesses, companies, founders, they're just chasing success. That's why this book that I recently just read halftime by Bob Bufert talking about the life transition from success to significance is so important because if you're just chasing success, you will make decisions that sacrifice integrity. I heard this quote months ago that I fell in love with. It was once you trade integrity for success, you can never make that trade back. Once you make decisions to make more money or be more successful and they sacrifice integrity.

they sacrifice your values, they sacrifice your mission and what you believe in, when you commit to that, you say yes and you do it, you can't trade that back in. It's really hard to build back trust and integrity. You build a brand in drops,

you build trust in drops, you build relationships in drops, and you lose them in buckets. There's so many parallels between endurance training in the way that we approach business, the way that we approach life. That's probably why we've become a performance endurance brand. We have naturally evolved to that space

because of the parallels that exist between what you need to do to succeed in endurance training in the way that we approach the long game of life and business. Coming out of all those endurance preps, we created a lot of really strong, storytelling content pieces. And we've refined our mission, who we speak to, how we speak to them, how we speak to you, and what our focus is.

And one of those things is realizing that what our job is here at BPN, our mission is to fuel performance. We fuel performance, we fuel goals through our supplements. through our content, through our mission, through the way we serve people. We fuel performance. We fuel your performance. That's our goal. It's our mission.

We want to fuel your performance with our products, with our content, with our mindset, with our community. I learned the hard way, again, the parallels between endurance training and life. once you train fueled, you will never train fasted again. I've said this before in the context of using carbohydrates and electrolytes, calories as a whole, to fuel your endurance efforts, your workouts, your training, your races. Once you train fueled and you realize how much this fuel benefits your training and your recovery and the outcomes, you'll never go back to training fasted.

But the same thing is applicable to the content we're creating for you to consume. We don't want to spend time creating content that is meaningless, that has no impact, it has no substance. Because when we, or if we create that type of content, we are feeding you emptiness, garbage. You can't use that as fuel for your performance. It's like our job, our responsibility is to create these fuel sources. Again, not just supplements, but knowledge, education, inspiration, storytelling content pieces. That fuel is being created physically and emotionally, mentally, to help you fuel everything that you do, all of your performance endeavors. During this time is also when we really started to invest in our quality.

program at BPN and banned substance testing. Years ago, we started, there's multiple different organizations that do ban substance testing in the supplement industry. We started with the banned substance control group, BSCG, and then we transitioned to a more graduate level testing agency called Informed Sport. so then we were enrolled in the informed sport, banned substance testing program. And these past couple months,

we've transitioned to NSF for sport, which NSF for sport is the banned substance testing organization and accreditation that is recognized by collegiate sports programs, professional sports programs. We do this because we believe in our products, we believe in quality, we believe in continuously investing in the products we're creating to fuel your performance.

Building out a robust quality program and a ban substance testing program, it's a massive endeavor. We have a director of quality control in-house now that used to work at one of our manufacturing facilities. Nick Dowling, he's on our team here, absolutely crushes. I have so much trust in him behind our quality program. Like I said, that quality program has been built out very intensively, it's very robust. We not only get our products tested by NSF for sport for banned substances, but we get all of our products tested as well for label accuracy and claims. so you can rest assured knowing that not only are our products tested for banned substances,

but they are tested, certified, verified to say that what we place on that supplement facts or nutrition facts panel on the back, what ingredients we say are in that product at what dosages, they have been verified by the NSF program, which is part of our quality program. and we've invested over the years millions of dollars into this program. That is a cost that we do not pass on to the consumer. It used to cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Now it costs us over a million dollars a year to maintain and build out this type of quality program.

But we believe in it. we believe in fueling your performance. You can only fuel your performance with a quality, tested, trusted product. So as I mentioned, as we were going to all of these races during this time period, we are seeing more people racing, running, crewing, wearing BPN, going more shirts, wearing the hats they'd have flags posted up at their checkpoints,

their campsites. We witnessed the community growing with us and in front of us. As you build a brand, there's a difference between an audience and a community. And I first heard this described by

Sampar. Sampar describe the difference between an audience and a community in this way. An audience is when there's one person speaking to many. One to many. If you go to a live speaking event, you go to watch a speaker or a comedian. One person on stage speaking to a crowd, they are speaking to an audience, one to many. A community is many to many.

An audience refers to a group of people who are passively, passively consuming content from a single source. Audience is passive. A community is a group of people who actively, community is active, actively engage with each other around a shared interest, forming deeper connections, and a sense of belonging beyond just,

consuming content from a single source. What we were doing without even knowing it or trying it by truly being authentic to what we believed in, believing in our mission so much wanting to help people, positioning ourselves as a guide and not a hero, bringing people along through the journey as we were documenting these preps and storytelling and creating these videos. in these training series and going to these races, we were building a community. We were building an active community

of people who weren't just consuming the content passively. They were actively engaging with each other. You'd witness people at these races where someone would have a go and more hat on, another person would have a go on more t-shirt on. They'd be passing each other. They'd stop and start a conversation. They'd connect.

They'd share. phone numbers. They'd link up and train later. This community was growing behind Go One More, behind the inspirational messages, behind the stories. It was amazing to witness. It was amazing to watch. If you're building a brand, if you're building a business, don't build an audience. Build a community. And again, building a community is not something you can buy, you have to build it. Drop by drop, brick by brick. And when we really truly realized how powerful the community was that we started building,

it's when we started witnessing all these go on more tattoos. I mean, I got my go on more tattoo, 2019, I believe, and I got going more tattooed on my left wrist right above, where I wear my watch because what I wanted was that as I was running, if I ever thought of stopping, if I ever thought of quitting, if I ever thought of slowing down, whenever I'd go to look at my watch to see how far I was, how fast I was, pull some data, some metrics from it, I would always have to look at go on more. That was a commitment of get it tattooed on your body, so there's no option to retreat.

There's no option to quit. It was a burn the boats type mentality. Get it tattooed so you can't ever go back to the old way you were living. And that connected with so many people that our inboxes started flooding with images of other people getting Go One More tattooed on themselves. There are thousands of people now with Go One More tattooed on themselves. There are thousands of people now with go on more tattooed on their bodies because, man, it's, it's meaningful. There is so much power behind those three words and it is a commitment to yourself and that people around you that when things get tough and they will, not just a race, not just a run, not just fitness, but when life gets hard and life is going to get hard, it will at some point for everyone. There are obstacles, there's resistance.

If you got that tattooed right on your arm, you have no other option of, all right, it's time to lean in and embrace this. Go one more and see it through to the other side. Thousands of other people have gotten this tagline tattooed on their body. And that was a very clear indication that we don't have an audience. We have a community. And to wrap up this chapter, during this chapter itself, chapter six, between these two years, I started moving into a new chapter of life myself, went through this transition where I got married to Steph, who was my fiance and now my wife.

Steph and I got married during this time period. And we started our family. Charlie was born in July of 2022, and it changed my life forever. And before I had kids, I didn't know what that would feel like or look like, but it has been such an amazing experience to become a dad. It's been so challenging.

It's been really hard. And when Charlie was initially born, it rocked my world. To be honest, I didn't think that I could be, professionally ambitious and a really good dad at the same time. I thought I had to choose. And I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. And I was pretty lost after Charlie was born, to be honest, because I was being pulled in these two different directions. And it took me a long

time. I'm by no means perfect. It's constantly this evolving journey and I'm learning. but I've realized after Charlie was born and there was his natural transition of life, that you can be both professionally ambitious and chase these massive goals that you set, but also be very fulfilled, very content, very present with your family and at home. You can lead your family and build a business at the same time. You can pursue your personal career and lead your family at the same time. They both can be done. It requires intentionality.

It requires planning. It requires pruning in other parts of your life. But there was a book that I read during this chapter of my life because I was honestly struggling. And it's a book by Arthur Brooks, who's a social scientist. And the book is called From Strength to Strength. It's about these natural life transitions that we go through. And they sometimes feel like a midlife or quarter life crisis when in reality it's just a

natural life transition that we are moving through. And we go through these natural life transitions every 12, 18 months. It can be the birth of a child. It can be a move across country. You get married. There's a loss of your family. You get fired. you get hired, all of these things happen all the time throughout life.

And there are these natural transitions that we have to identify, learn from, lean into, and grow through. But this changed my life, getting married and starting a family. It reshifted my priorities. I had to take a step back to take two steps forward and learn how to be a husband, how to be a father. And at the same time, how to build and lead a business. And I didn't think you could do both at one point.

But I learned over time and experience and failures and mistakes that you can, that you 100% can. And you should. Chapter 6 was a big one for me. We built the content storytelling machine. We built. we built community. Again, something that can't be bought, it has to be built.

And when you play the long game, you make the right decisions, as you build that, it becomes very durable, very strong, very rigid, very adaptable, but it's been a very impactful part of my life.

This experience, these two years, were really powerful for me. So that's chapter six. Hope you guys are enjoying this series. I personally am really enjoying revisiting some of these topics, revisiting some of these previous periods of my life and especially building BPN. Because it's been a fun journey.

It's been a hard, challenging journey, but it's been so fulfilling and so rewarding. So thanks for tuning in. I appreciate you guys listening. And as always, go on more. You know.