The Nick Bare Podcast - 130: Building the Brand: Part 7 "Focus Isn't An Option"

Episode Date: July 21, 2025

In this episode of the Building the Brand series, we dive into Chapter 7, exploring a tumultuous year and a half characterized by pivotal decisions, personal growth, and business challenges. From stepping down as CEO of BPN in January 2023 to moving back to Texas in May 2024, this chapter covers a ton of the complexities of balancing professional ambitions with my personal life.CHAPTERS06:02 Building a Community08:25 Stepping Down as CEO25:11 Pursuing Private Equity Partnership30:02 Reflections and Realizations45:33 Lessons from Mistakes47:03 Moving to Nashville59:36 Marathon Prep and a Failed Deal01:05:39 Returning to Texas and Reclaiming Leadership01:08:35 Rebuilding the Brand01:16:07 Reflecting on Mistakes and Growth054: Moving Back into CEO Role episode:https://open.spotify.com/episode/1sPjWTR0jyd5agxLxcXacy?si=7xNXEuPBSA6CwEQHtkmnLAORDER MY UPCOMING BOOK HERE:https://www.amazon.com/Go-One-More-Intentional-Life-Changing/dp/1637746210FOLLOW:Become a BPN member FOR FREE - Unlock 20% off FOR LIFEhttps://bpn.team/memberIG: instagram.com/nickbarefitness/YT: youtube.com/@nickbarefitness

Previously on building the brand. I was lucky enough in 2021 to have been given the opportunity to run Leadville 100. If you weren't prepared, it would bury you. It would crush you. Leadville 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. It is authentic to your values. authentic to what you believe in, and your passions, that's how you build a brand. These preps that we document, it helps people reach their goals, whether fitness related or personally. What I'm obsessed with is improvement, getting better. That's what drives me. I want to fail because I'm setting these goals so ambitiously, so bold, so big.

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. 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.

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. we've established. If you're just chasing success, you will make decisions that sacrifice integrity. With our products, with our content, with our mindset, with our community, we fuel performance.

All right, welcome back to another episode of the podcast. This is the next installment of the building the brand series. It's been quite some time since the last one that we uploaded. recorded and uploaded. The previous episode was chapter six. This is chapter seven. If you're unfamiliar with this series, the building the brand series is a multi-part that we are breaking down into chapters.

Series, it is storytelling, it is lessons, it is a step by step of what has gone into building the brand, building BPN from inception in 2012, was started in Pennsylvania out of my college apartment, and each additional chapter builds off of the previous one. So in chapter six, as a recap, the episode that was prior to this one, that one was all about building a content and storytelling machine specifically around endurance races. This is when I signed up for and went after Ironman

and my first Ultra being the Leadville 100, something that changed my life forever and shifted the trajectory of BPN we created and produced a documentary out of that race called More Than the Miles. And then my sub three hour marathon journey, which started at my first marathon in 2018 being three hours, 57 minutes, and the next year being four hours, 15 minutes, and then going after sub three and missing and getting 324, then eventually 256, and then 248. And then in this episode, you'll find out eventually 239, which is my current marathon PR,

two hours, 39 minutes. But with all those fitness preps, we told stories along the way. And those helped build BPN. It was truly revolutionary. And when we started creating those films and telling those stories, it shifted BPN forever to what we are and what we're doing right now. And during the previous chapter, I recognize that there are distinct parallels between endurance training and business and life as a whole. It's where I realize that it's so much better to be

consistently good as opposed to occasionally great. Endurance requires consistently good. Endurance is not built by the occasionally great. And when we were in Leadville, during the week of the Leadville 100 in August of 2021, I've told this story many times before, but we were scouting the course the day prior, myself and the media team, we came across this gentleman in one of the parks outside of Leadville. and we sparked conversation talking about the race and this being my first ultra and our first time

in Leadville. And he told us, you know what, boys, this gentleman was probably in his mid-70s. He said, you know what, boys, the key to this race tomorrow, the way that you will succeed, it is this thing called endurance. When we started laughing, we thought he was joking, but he was serious. And what this man was telling us, what? was so much more wisdom than we took for face value. Endurance is the key to success.

It is the key that unlocks so much in all aspects of life, professionally and personally. And in the previous chapter, this is where we started really building a community and focusing on community as opposed to an audience. An audience is one to many. A community is many to many. And we were going to these races,

and these competitions, we'd see BPN apparel and flags and products all over the course, all over the checkpoints, all over the world, to be honest. People started getting going more tattooed all across their body, thousands of people. This wave, this movement felt like it was a storm, disrupting a sleepy category in space. and this is where we and I specifically realize that what makes a brand so unique is that a brand is alive. A brand bleeds. A brand has a heartbeat. And where the last chapter ended was a massive shift in my life where I started my family.

Steph and I got married and our daughter. Charlie was born. Charlie was born in July of 2022. And at the time this recording, it is July of 2025. Next week, Charlie turns three years old. So it's now three years after this last chapter that I just broke down, ended. And one of the biggest things I learned in the previous chapter was that as hard as it may seem, and to be honest, still does at times, you can balance being a very

driven and ambitious professional at the same time as being personally fulfilled and content. You can go fast and slow at the same time. So that was the previous chapter. Now, chapter seven, which we're diving into today, this chapter ends. or excuse me, this chapter begins, it starts when I step down from the CEO role of BPN in January of 2003. And it ends moving back to Texas just nine months later from Tennessee in May of 2024. Now, I have shared many parts of this story in multiple different podcasts.

and there's one podcast I dedicated specifically to everything that I'm going to, I don't say glance over, but give more of the cliff notes of in this episode. We will link that episode in the description of this episode where I go into much more detail about the move to Tennessee, stepping down from the CEO role, Why, the what, the wear, all the things. But this chapter begins stepping down from the CEO rule, January, 2023, and then it ends moving back to Texas just nine months later from Tennessee in May of 2024. The lessons that I learned in this chapter, focus isn't an option.

It is a requirement for success. Number two, it's never too late to pivot. adjust and adapt. Number three, ego is the enemy, or at least it can be, if you allow it to. Number four, your gut or intuition deserves more credit than you may believe. And number five, always place people in the mission first. Financial success will follow. Okay, this chapter is jam-packed. And I say, I sat down for a while to really lay this one out because even though, I mean, from the start to the end of this chapter, it's about a year and a half, roughly, but so much happened in this,

in this year and a half. And this was the biggest learning lesson of my life. And as hard as this year and a half was, it was instrumental to where I am today. it was absolutely necessary. I believe God guided me to make some of these decisions and experience this hardship so that I could be appreciative and grateful. I was forced to reflect.

I was forced to have some very honest conversations with myself and my family. This chapter is packed. And it changed my life. It changed my family's life. It changed this business forever. but I believe it was just part of my story. I believe it is part of my story.

And it was necessary. It needed to happen. And it put a lot of things into the right place. Sometimes when things get really messy, there has to be some sort of massive shakeup to put it back into order. You know, I'll sit in church actually two weeks ago. And we go to Celebration Church in Georgetown, Texas. Pastor Joe Champion was speaking. And I wasn't, I wasn't planning on talking about this,

but this just popped to my head. And of all the just the chaos in the world at the moment, especially two weeks ago of what was going on. And sometimes as a Christian, you wonder why all this chaos is happening. And why God is all. allowing it? What is the reason? How are we supposed to get involved and solve if we shouldn't be violent or forceful given the circumstances? And Pastor Joe was explaining how at times of chaos that we have to put things back into order. And sometimes there are extreme measures that need to be taken in order to create order from chaos. You know, if we think about the way our military is trained in response to chaos,

there's a purpose. There's a mission. There's a meaning behind that. It is to put chaos back into order. We have a duty and we have a responsibility as a country and as a society to respond with that level of involvement. And the reason I share that is to say that sometimes in life, you will experience what feels like pure chaos. And it is your, our, my responsibility to apply order back to chaos, to solve chaos with order. And in this chapter of my life,

there's a lot of chaos. And I realized it was my responsibility, it was my doing, to put things back into order. And I did that through making some poor decisions and making some right decisions. One of the reasons I shared that one of the lessons is it's never too late to pivot, adjust, and adapt is because if at times in life you feel like you're too far in,

you're too deep, I want you to realize that it's never too late to pivot, adjust, adapt, and turn chaos back into order. But you have to take that responsibility, make a plan, take action, and see it through. I was once told that you should build a brand or a business as if you were to own it forever. And I could not agree with that more.

As a business owner, you start a business not knowing what it can become. And I started my business in 2012 when I was 22 years old. The ceiling for what I thought could happen and the success that I could experience and where we would take the business is nowhere close to where it is today. The glass ceiling that I had in my own mind is nowhere are close to where and what we're doing right now. But I think that most business owners have this goal, this dream that you start a business to one day sell that business.

But in that process, you should build it as if you are going to own it forever and pass it on to your kids and your kids' kids, kids, kids, and generations to come will continue running this business. And some businesses are like that and some are not. It's just the reality of entrepreneurship. And there's many different methods to take in terms of building, scaling, growing, selling, holding, acquiring, merging a business and a brand. But in January of 2003, I stepped down from the CEO role.

Why? Well, to be honest, I lost confidence in myself. and I didn't respect a lesson that I learned in the previous chapter. You know, the previous chapter or chapter six, I was talking about a lesson that I learned then. And that was that belief comes before ability. And I should have listened to my own advice in this chapter. Because I lost belief in my ability to be the CEO

for this next chapter business. I got my own head. Other people got my head. I was also at this interesting transition point in my life where up until this moment, I dedicated and committed every waking moment to building BPN. And then when Charlie was born in July of 2022,

and I've talked about this many times before, but it really shook my life up. I was trying to figure out how to balance being all in on building the business, but also all in on my family and being present and content and fulfilled. And I was really struggling with balancing these two. And if I'm being honest, if I've learned anything over these last three years, is that you're just trying to navigate different transitions in parts of your life in different seasons.

But there is always this unbalanced feeling of being very professionally, ambitiously driven and wanting to sync all of your time and energy and resources into building a brand or your career, especially if you're very passionate and mission driven behind your career. But in the same time, being a very active and present husband and father, I mean, this is something that I struggle with still. And I'm sure some of you listening can relate. Some, maybe not.

I love my family. I love my work. And I want to spend all of my time on each one of those things. So constantly being pulled in different directions. But when Charlie was born in July of 2022, that was my first time experiencing that. Because up until that moment, I had limited responsibility.

outside of my job, what I was building, BPN, and nothing else was really stealing my time. I didn't have to split my time and energy and presence between multiple people or things or passions and loves. My wife, yes, Steph, but we were building together. So when Charlie was born, things really shifted. And I was trying to navigate this new period of life. And a few months after that, I started losing confidence in myself to be the CEO to take BPN to the next level.

The way that I started BPN is very unique. And I think my involvement in the business today is still very unique. I haven't found many other founders in a similar situation and position as mine. You'll find a lot of people online who build a community or an audience, a platform on social media, and there are people behind those follows and those subscribes and their support. And then sometimes when people build a platform, a social media community, they will then leverage that and start a business. I did it the other way around.

I started my business in 2012, whereas I wasn't growing, had no money left to do anything else other than dedicate some time and commit to building an online presence and platform to then help the business scale. Putting myself out there on social media was not something I wanted to do in the beginning,

but I had to do because if I didn't, BPN would not be a thing today. I created these platforms. I started documenting my life. I started making YouTube videos in 2014 because for the previous two years, the business wasn't generating any level of success. I did these things out of survival

to just kickstart BPN. So then I found myself as the business scaled and grew over years, that I was splitting my time between running and operating and building a business and then creating content and pursuing these fitness preps and goals and documenting that process. And then when I started a family and Charlie was born, I was now splitting my life between these three things that equally took up a lot of time. Creating content, fitness preps, running social media platforms, building and running in business, being in the business, and then dedicating time to a family.

This is one of the reasons that I really dislike when I'm categorized or titled as an influencer. I just don't like that title. I never did. I'm not an influencer. I'm an entrepreneur. I'm a founder, but I'm also a creator. I create content. I didn't start building these social media platforms to be an influencer, but I created these social media platforms to build a business, create content, inspire individuals, build a legacy that I'm proud of, be a role model, be a light in all the darkness that exists, it wasn't to be an influencer. That was never my agenda.

That was never my purpose. And it never will be. So sometimes when I get called an influencer, that hurts. It hurts. I really dislike that term. I just do. I just do. But I stepped down from the CEO role during this time because I lost confidence in myself

to do all three of these things. Create content, drive awareness for the business, run the business and lead the team, and be an active and supportive father and husband. I didn't believe in my ability any longer. And again, some of this was coming from my thoughts and insecurities. some of it was being guided by mentors and advisors and people in the business. Someone told me once that, hey, I think it's time to level up BPN and bring in a true professional, a true operator.

And this is probably the time for you to step into a different direction and into a new role. And when I get advice like that, or at least I used to, I took it serious, especially coming from people I liked and trusted and respected. So that's what I did. In January of 2023, I stepped down from the CEO role. And I moved into a chief creative officer role. And simultaneously, we started running a financial process to bring on a private equity partner.

So this is what the podcast had I mentioned in the beginning this episode. this is where I really go into find details throughout that episode that we're going to link if you want to go listen to that one after you listen to this one but that I'll give some more

in the weeds details of what I'm going to glance over here but we brought on an investment bank because we wanted to sell part of the business so the deal that we were pursuing at that time in 2003 is that I was going to sell a minority share of the business to a private equity partner.

So we hired an investment bank. The investment bank helped us run a process, which is essentially where you create materials and you cast this wide net to financial institutions and partners who, if they are interested in, will come and learn more. And then you eventually, after entertainment,

a bunch of different groups, get to a point where you go exclusive with one group in the hopes of getting a business transaction done where you sell part of the business to, in this case, it was a private equity group, and then they own part of the business, and you build that business together in hopes of getting to a second transaction or a larger exit to in hopes of being a strategic buyer in the future. A strategic buyer would be, for example, Unilever or Nestle, one of these large corporations that buy businesses based off of their portfolio needs. So we ran this process and we ended up going exclusive with a private equity partner in hopes of

getting a deal done. So this was about a year process. I'll give a little nugget here, which I'll address here in a little bit, but the deal never got done. The deal fell apart. at the two-yard line right before it was about to get completed. But going into a financial process, you know, hiring an investment bank and trying to partner with a private equity group, it is a huge distraction to the business, huge distraction,

because you're not only trying to run the business as your full-time job, but you're also dealing with lawyers and you're dealing with the investment bankers and you're dealing with the potential new partner, and there's a lot of due diligence that is required. There's a lot of legal documents that are required to get drafted. There's a lot of calls all the time every day for months up to a year. It is a huge distraction to your normal day job. So right after, or shortly after I sat down from the CEO role, we launched a financial process and went into this huge distraction for the next year.

why did I want to bring on a private equity partner? First off, I was looking for strategic assistance and support to scale and grow the business to get to a future exit years down the road. So one, I wanted a partner that was going to help us navigate these new seasons and obstacles and hardships of building a brand to get to the level that we want to wanted to get to at one point. And at this point, 2003 was 11 years into building the business, didn't take any meaningful money out of the business at this point. And it was an opportunity to take some chips off the table. Taking the chips off the table is a quote, which pretty much

says to de-risk a little bit. Now, you sell part of your business to a private equity partner in this case and you get some liquidity from the sale that kind of makes you more financially secure and sets you and your family up for success in the future so that you can go back to building with a partner in place, some money in your pocket, you've de-risked, and now you can go swing for the fences. So those were some of the reasons that I was at the time pursuing a private equity partnership. That's why we hired the investment banker. That's why I sat down from the CEO role.

And like I said, it was a huge distraction to the business. And this distraction, honestly, made me lose a lot of interest in what had been my passion for the 11 previous years. Because I was working on things that I didn't want to be working on. I was on calls with lawyers. I was on calls with bankers. I was on calls with people who didn't understand the business or what we were trying to build.

I just wanted to build the best brand possible. I wanted to inspire people. I wanted to motivate people. I wanted to create content and get behind this brand that had so much momentum and energy and was alive and could bleed and had DNA. That's what I love.

I'm a brand builder. I heard this, this saying months ago. It was on the Founders podcast hosted by David Senra. And I can't remember what founder said this. But he described himself as the anti-business billionaire. And I thought, wow, that's powerful. And the reason he described himself as the anti-business billionaire is because

the business he built was worth over a billion dollars. He was worth over a billion. But he didn't follow the traditional business practice. He didn't follow the stereotypes. He didn't follow the trends. He didn't follow the blueprints. He paved his own path. He was a trailblazer.

He was against all things business. He was building brand. He was building connection. He became a billionaire in the process. I thought to myself while listening to this episode, man, that's the dream. Do it your own way. Do it in a way that is unapologetic. Do it in a way that is authentic and organic and natural to you.

That's the way to win. That's something you can be proud of. And when we decided to sell part of the business, we brought on this financial partner, we started working with these private equity groups. This shifted the brand in the worst way possible. for many different reasons. But one of these reasons was Tam.

I don't ever want to hear Tam in my life ever again. Tam, T-A-M stands for target addressable market. In all these conversations with the investment bankers and the private equity groups, they kept asking the question, well, how big is the Tam? How big is the target addressable market? That's all they cared about. How big is this market that you as in your business and we are going after?

How big can this business be? I hated that question. I don't know. That's an objective metric that you're looking to apply to a subjective, non-navigated path and journey that hasn't been done before. we're trying to do things here at BPN that haven't been done before. How can you put a target addressable market there if we're still in the building process? So these investment bankers and these private equity groups wanted us to shift things that we're doing within the business, within brand, within content, within all of our strategies and tactics to make sure that our TAM was larger.

make sure that we're speaking to and addressing a larger market so the opportunities for growth and scale or larger. So that's what we started doing. You know what happens when you do that? You become unfocused. You're chasing every and any opportunity that is not aligned with your vision. The reality is back then we didn't have a defined vision. I am now through the this entire learning experience in the mindset that the way that you scale is not going shallow and wide. That might work for some people. There are exceptions to the rule. That's not my rule. My rule is that you stay narrow and you go deep. And you stay narrow and you go as deep as possible until there's nothing left. You keep digging and digging and digging as deep as you can

until there's nothing left and then you go wider. But so many brands and businesses, they think the way you scale and grow is to go shallow and wide. That's not my approach to building a business or brand. And it never will be. It is narrow and deep. And when you can't go any deeper, then you start to go a little wider.

It's not a mile wide. It's not a foot wide. It's not an inch wide, it is a millimeter wide. That's how slow you start expanding outwards. Tam, target addressable market. Ah, makes me cringe just hearing it. So what happened from there? Well, the lesson I learned was that an undefined vision

creates unfocused strategies and tactics. what happens when you try to go very wide and very shallow, go after Tam, and you don't have a defined vision, is that everything is in fair playing game. It's unfocused strategy and tactics. The reason that I'm so convicted into having a clearly defined vision

and a clearly defined vision is made up of three components, core values, purpose, and goals. And when you have a very clearly defined vision, your team and the business can operate in a decentralized leadership structure and create their own strategies and tactics knowing that it is acceptable and it works because it's aligned with the core values, purpose, and goals of the organization. The vision.

In 2023, we did not have a defined vision, which means we didn't have focused strategies or tactics, which means that we were trying to go very wide and very shallow. And I was prepping for this episode this week, and I was thinking back to 2003 and just all the things that happened. And what's so interesting is that, like in the previous chapter I shared, storytelling became a big part of the business and the brand. Content, we became a storytelling content-producing machine around endurance events and competitions. We found our niche back then.

and we started to own it and it started to work really well. Documenting fitness endurance preparations. And you know what I did in in 2003? Right when I sat down from the CEO role of the business,

right when we launched this process, all this stuff just happened simultaneously. I decided I was going to do a new fitness prep. And that fitness prep was going to be a bodybuilding competition. completely misaligned with what was working for us and where we were heading. I made some decisions in 2023 that lacked focus and lacked vision and were all over the place.

If I look back over the course of my lifetime, I'll be 35 years old next month. 2003 when I was 33 years old, just two years ago, that was a quarter life crisis. It had to have been. I made some choices and decisions that were so unlike me and that were so miscalculated and I didn't listen to my gut and my intuition. And I made some bad choices, which is the only reason I can explain that that's why decided to go into a bodybuilding prep. I was into just like a self-destructive mode. That was the catalyst for a year of unfocused effort. I hated that entire bodybuilding prep. I didn't want to train

for an aesthetic goal. I didn't care about aesthetic goals anymore. I cared about performance goals. A body modeling prep was not a performance focused goal. Completely unlike me. But I did that prep and that was probably the worst time I could have went into a bodybuilding prep where I'm eating 16 to 1,800 calories a day, the peak of that prep. And my body fat got down to 6%. I wasn't sleeping because my calories were so low and my mind was so fuzzy and brain fogged and could barely make it through a training session, could barely make it through a day. And it was not the right physical or mental.

or emotional space to be in at this point of the business, which led to even more destructive decisions. We as a brand didn't know who we were anymore, who we wanted to be, or who we were serving. I'm so grateful that we got the brand back on track, which you'll hear towards the end of this episode. But like I said, sometimes for things to get back, into order you have to reach utter chaos. And this was utter chaos this time. From the outside

looking in, you may not have rurized it or experienced it or even known it, but from the inside, seeing in, this is how it felt. I was going through some old Dropbox photos the other day. So we categorize a lot of our media in Dropbox, and we have archive photos and footage from back in 2019, 2020, up until today. There's so much media within our Dropbox. I was looking for some photos for something I was adding to our website a few weeks ago. And I came across some old files from 2023, some photo shoots we did.

And this just describes how off course we were. You know, if you look at our media team now, we are dialed in our brand team, our marketing team. We know who we are. We know who we want to be. We know where we're heading. We have a very clearly defined vision. We know who we serve.

We know who our consumer is. We have clearly defined our tone of voice, our brand guide, our vision statements, our vision guide. But in 2023, we didn't have. any of those things. We lacked leadership and that is my fault and my responsibility. But as I was going through these Dropbox files from 2023, some of our brand photos and photo shoots we were doing, there was one of our team taking supplements while playing pickleball

on a pickleball course, court. There was a volleyball and yoga photo shoot that we did. We did like this urban photo shoot on a train and a subway with some of our products. There was a photo shoot that we did with some older people, 60s, 70-year-old people using our products. If you follow the BPN brand now, you know how intentional we are with videos, photos, consumer behavior, the way our products are being introduced. and showcased, we're focused. That's a difference. The difference between being focused and unfocused is so massively different.

It can disrupt and destroy your goals and your success and your progress almost overnight. I've said this before, and it's not my quote. I'm not going to act like it is, but you build a brand in drops and you lose it in buckets. Literally. From 2012 to 2023, 11 years, I spent building BPN and we built the brand in drops, daily deposits, day after day after day for 11 years. And we almost lost the entire brand in 2003 in buckets within months of losing focus, complete lack of focus.

In order to build the best brand possible, you have to choose durability over growth. If you make decisions just based off of growth in absence of durability, you will find yourself without a business or a brand in the following years to come. In this season in chapter of BPN, we chose growth over durability. Now we always choose durability over growth. as I'm sharing some of this, you might be thinking, wow, you're really pulling back the curtain.

And yeah, I'm not proud of this chapter, but it was instrumental to where we are today. I will never make these mistakes again. I don't want to say I'm glad I made these mistakes, but I'm grateful that I made these mistakes because I learned so much in this process. process. I am a better entrepreneur. I'm a better founder. I'm a better leader. I'm a better CEO now

because I went through this. And I'm sharing it with you because if you're in a similar situation or position and you feel helpless, it is never too late to pivot, course correct, adjust, and get back on track. And you don't have to be an entrepreneur. You don't have to be an entrepreneur. You don't have to be a business owner. You don't have to be a founder. You don't have to be an executive to do that. No matter where you're at in your life, if you feel off course, if you feel like there's chaos,

take responsibility, put things back into order. So things did get worse before they got better. All right. So here we are unfocused. No clearly defined vision. Strategies and tactics are trying to go after Tam, very wide, very shallow. And then me and my family decided to move to Nashville.

Why did we decide to move to Nashville at this time? To be honest, the financial process was wearing me down. That was part of it. It's not what I wanted to be working on or towards, and it felt very misaligned with the reason I started BPN in the first place. I also felt like I was stepping on the new CEO's toes, and that by me moving away physically, it would allow for the team to operate more professionally

without me there daily. I needed a creative reset. I was just ready for new place, new space, new faces. And I felt stuck and in between what I was doing and what I needed to be doing. As I mentioned, after stepping out of the CEO role, I moved into a chief creative officer role, and my responsibility was brand amplification.

We're really creating content that aligned with our vision and our purpose and our goals in creating content to help grow and scale the brand. And at that point, one of the things that we did is completely separated, the media team that was working on my content, and the media team that was working on BPN content. We completely separated those teams, which was one of the worst decisions we made. Those teams now are the same team because the content has to move in the same direction. There can be a different approach to the content I produce for my platforms

and the content that BPN produces for their platforms, but there needs to be alignment because the vision is the same. The core values, the purpose, the goals are the same. We're trying to get to the same place. There's just different methods in order to get there. Same team, same fight, same mission. But at this point, it wasn't like that. So Steph and I started talking and we decided we were going to move to Nashville. We didn't really put a, um, a definitive timeline on it, but we said, hey, let's put our house up for sale. And if it sells, that's God telling us that we should move. That's what we thought.

So we listed the house for a price that we thought would never sell. And we listed our house for two times, what we paid for it just three years prior. And we sold the house within hours, literally within hours of putting it on the market for two times we paid for it three years prior it sold so then everything started just happening very quickly we now had a timeline on closing we had to find a house in nashville before i know it i'm packing up the house and we're making our way to the middle of tennessee to set up a new office with a small creative team for this next chapter of my life and BPN's journey. So we signed a lease for an office base in Nashville, downtown Nashville.

We bought a house in the 12 South Green Hills area. Me and my family moved. Jordan Utter and his family moved with us. And Ian Rodriguez moved with us as well. So it was three of us that made the move from Austin to Nashville. We set up a small BPN creative office. Like I said, right downtown Nashville, Tennessee, and we started working on content that was driving awareness and traffic for the brand. And that's where I thought we were going to be for the rest of our lives. And I'll never forget, I'll never forget the way we got to Nashville, like I said, it all happened so fast. We packed up the moving truck. Movers came, loaded up our home, took off, started making their way towards Tennessee from Texas.

Steph got on a plane with Charlie, who was our only child at the time, and they flew to Nashville. I packed up my truck with as much as I could fill in it with our two dogs, and I made my way to drive from Texas to Tennessee. and I had to stop at BPN on the way to throw some stuff away in the dumpster. And as I was pulling up to BPNHQ, I felt like I was abandoning the people, the team, the business, even though we were continuing the mission in Tennessee,

it just didn't feel right. And I dropped off all the trash, and I will never forget this moment. I was driving away from BPNHQ to make my way, way to Nashville and I could not look in the rear view mirror to see the HK behind me because I didn't want to see what I was leaving behind. I was ashamed. I was embarrassed. Didn't feel right. I felt like it was all happening way too fast, way too quickly and I just kept driving. And that whole ride, it just not sit well with me. It was one of those things, you know,

know where you have an idea, you don't think it the whole way through, and you start putting that idea into action, and you realize it might not be what you want to do, but before you know it, you're too far in, so you keep going. And then when it finally all happens and it's reality, you feel like it's too late to turn back and you've realized or think you've realized that you made the wrong choice and decision. That's what it felt like in that moment. this empty pit in my stomach. It didn't feel good. It didn't feel right.

So when we got to Tennessee, we started setting up our office right away. And literally a week after getting to Nashville, we had already a race on the calendar on the schedule out in Maine, Pileland Farm was Maine. So we spent a week unpacking, getting our house set up, getting the new office set up. And then we flew from Tennessee, from Nashville to Maine for the last man standing race,

which was in September of 2023. This was a very pivotal race in moment for me. And I talk about this in my book that I just launched Go One More, but it was at this race that I unlocked. a new meaning of go on more. And that was that go on more, those three simple words that were the foundation of BPN,

going more is much more than an action. Go on more is an outcome. This is why I wrote this whole book. And it's much more than just doing more of everything. It's doing more of the right thing at the right time with the right people. And the way that I unlock this, and I described this story in the beginning of the book, is we got to the race and we set up our campsite. It was the last man standing style race.

It was a 4.2 mile loop that restarted every hour on the hour until there was one runner left. In this race, I ended up going just over 100 miles. And when we were setting up our campsite, there was this gentleman and his wife, at a campsite close by that I knew of but not very well just from social media and our campsite

looked like it was built out for us to live there for months. I mean, we had everything we needed. And this gentleman and his wife, their campsite was very minimum. It was bare. There was no covering. There was no tent. It was just like a blanket and some food in a chair. So we invited him and his wife to come over to our campsite and stay with us because we had more than we needed. So they came over and the energy he brought was just pure negativity.

You could tell he didn't want to be there. You could tell he was overtrained. You could tell the race wasn't a focus of his. And I thought to myself, is this what people think that Go On More looks like? it's wearing yourself down being a a burden and a negativity to people around you to your family to being collateral damage and destructive is this person taking my mission and my message and in my message and applying it in the wrong way. Yes, they are taking the action of go one more and applying it a way that could produce results, but it lacks intentionality. It lacks purpose.

It lacks reason. It lacks responsibility of your other priorities in life. And throughout this race, I kept thinking about this gentleman and his wife. And eventually he dropped down early and complained and they went home, they left our campsite, and it brought energy and vibes back into our space again once they were gone. But I unlocked this new thought in perspective during that race,

and that's that, go on more is much more than an action. That is part of it. Go on more as an outcome. It is a success that you achieve with the right clarity and intentionality behind the decisions you're making.

The who, the what, and the why. That is what ultimately sparked my book. And I started writing the book shortly after that. And through the process of writing that book in Nashville, I had to rewrite it multiple times because initially when I wrote the book, it ended with us moving to Nashville and that's where the future of our life

was going to be from that point moving forward. And then you'll see why throughout the story, why the ending in that book had to change. And I ended up rewriting that book two times. The publishing date got pushed back on two separate occasions because I had to rewrite the book multiple times because my life changed so much in the matter of a year and a half. And the lessons that I learned evolved

and were so transformative within a year and a half. So the last man standing race in Pineland Farms, Maine, in September of 2023, was life-changing. And that gave me a lot of perspective in the months to come for what I was about to navigate and deal with in terms of our personal life now being in Tennessee and my professional future and career with BPN moving forward. And then after the last man standing race was done,

I went right into a marathon prep in Tennessee, and that was for the California International Marathon, December of 2023. That's where I ended up running my lifetime PR of two hours, 39 minutes. And during that prep, which was a very stressful prep, because keep in mind, we were still in the middle of this financial process that we are running with this investment bank

and this private equity group that started when I was still in Texas and then continued. when I moved to Tennessee. I thought a few months after moving to Nashville that we were going to close this deal and my life was going to change forever, to be honest. And just days before we were supposed to close the deal, it ended up falling apart. And it just so happened.

That was days before I was supposed to fly to Sacramento, California to run the California International Marathon. And when the deal fell apart, you would think after. putting months and months and months of work and energy and money into this process and this deal to get this transaction done, you would think when I got the phone call, it was about 10 p.m. At night from the investment banker and he said, hey, pencils down, deal's done. We're not closing this one. and you would have thought, and I would have thought,

I would have been crushed and devastated, all this work for nothing. But honestly, it was such a sense of relief. It felt like it was the best possible outcome. This deal was being structured in a way that was not conducive or productive for me or the business. It felt like it was being forced to get done. It just wasn't the right partner.

It wasn't the right time, wasn't the right valuation. It wasn't the right anything. And the fact that it didn't get done felt like another sign from God of saying, I'm going to give you a second chance to provide and create order to this chaos. So I got that call days before the California International Marathon, days before the race was supposed to be kicking off, days before the deal was supposed to be done, it felt like this sense of relief.

Like my shoulder sat back better. I slept so much better at night. And when I showed up to Sacramento, California to throw down to that race, I felt more focused than ever before. That was the best run of my entire life. No exaggeration. That run was a high, the entire way through,

all 26.2 miles. I towed the line of that race and I was so dialed in. I didn't hear or see anyone around me at that start line. And as soon as that gun went off, I was in every mile of those 26.2, focused on my heart rate, focused on my fueling,

focused on my breathing, focused on my mentality. It was the most intentional run, the most focused run of my life. And maybe that was like a foreshadowing of what was about to come, but it felt so right. And for that to be a massive PR,

I mean, I was going into that race trying to run sub two hours, 49, 45 minutes, sorry, sub 245. And ended up breaking that by like six minutes, 239. I was very, very happy. So here's where things start to get really interesting. This was December, 2023. And we just found out that Steph was pregnant with baby number two, who is my son, Nico. Nico actually turns one year old next month, August 10th.

My daughter's birthday is July 15th. My birthday is August 1st. My son is August 10th. So pretty much my birthday is just not existing for the rest of my life because my kids take over my birthday, which is all good. I'd rather celebrate their birthdays than my birthday, to be fair. So at this point of our life, the deal just fell apart. I just ran a lifetime PR 239 in the marathon. Steph finds out she's pregnant with baby number two being Nico. And I start having this confidence reinjected back into me. I remember texting my brother, Preston.

this month. And I can't remember exactly what I said. I'll have to go back and find the text messages. But it was along the lines of, hey man, we're taking this thing back. We're fixing this. Time is now. Let's go.

And I had this awakening, this epiphany of how do we get to this point? How do we get to this point where I'm not the CEO anymore? I'm not leading the business. I'm not in Texas. I'm not with a team. were distracted, we're unfocused. There's nothing else I can do right now other than just start to fix it.

So I flew back to Texas, announced I was coming back as CEO and moving back to Texas. This was December, January timeframe, December, 2003, January, 24. And I talked to my family and I talked to the team. and we all decided we were moving back to Texas. Just a few months after being in Tennessee. Very expensive decisions, very expensive moves, but it was the only right decision in that moment. I realized they made a lot of wrong decisions

that affected a lot of people's lives. I took and take full responsibility of that. But the only option was to cut our losses and fix everything and move back to Texas. And that's what we did. Within that next couple of weeks, I was back in the CEO role. Our house was up for sale.

We were closing down our Nashville office. I was remote CEO from January until early May of 2024. During those months, I was on Zoom calls all day, every day in my office at the house in Tennessee until we moved. Just because it took some time to find a new house, took time to sell our house, took time to break down the Nashville office that we just signed a lease for,

get a new tenant to take that over, and just moving my family and Jordan's family and Ian back to Texas. And I was remote CEO on Zoom calls, January to May, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. every single day. And I had a conversation with Josh, who's our CFO and CFO. When I came back as CEO, and we both recognized the brand was way off track from where we wanted it to be and needed to be.

And I had a conversation with Josh, and I said, I'm just going to get this brand back on track. I'm going to get us hyper-focused. I'm going to get everything we do to look, feel, and be right again. and I don't want anything to financial to guide or dictate that. Please just tell me if I'm heading in a really bad direction financially and I'm about to bury this entire thing. But if I'm not, I don't want to see any financials.

I'm just going to build this business and this brand by gut feel, intuition, and just subjective energy. And that's what we did. and we turn the business around. We planned for Josh and I, we thought it was going to take a year to turn everything back around to get brand content back on track,

to get paid digital advertising and marketing back on track, to get vision and team alignment and the athlete program and all these things just realigned again. We planned for an entire year, and we thought 2024 was just going to be a wash year for us. And we ended up getting the brand in all aspects of the business, front of house and back of house, back on track

within, I'd say, 90 days, fully back on track. Profitability and EBITA back in the mid-teens range, revenue growing, becoming more effective and efficient with all of our brand and marketing, content, and digital advertising strategies and performance, everything got back on track really quickly. And that's when Josh finally started to share with me some of the financial data that proved that all the things that we were feeling were reflecting in the data in the financials in a positive way. But that was a really powerful conversation with Josh, and I will always respect and remember that because I went to him telling him, dude, we just got to fix things right now, regardless of what it does to

the financial impact of the business. And he said, I trust you. I get it. I support you. Let's go. And that's what I really needed. I needed a teammate alongside me in that moment that was just like, I trust you, I get it.

I'm here to support in any way. Let's go. And that was very meaningful to me. And I needed that. This was January, 2004. A month later, we had the Austin Marathon, 2004, where we were a meaningful nutrition partner of that race. And this was going to be our first big event back

after reinjecting order to chaos, if you will. The team felt really good, the energy felt really good. And before we kicked off that race, because we hosted the shakeout run, we had a team there, we handed out hats. We brought it together and activated the community

throughout that weekend in a meaningful way, and people showed up. People showed up. The energy was electric. It was next level. I mean, you could feel it, like coursing through your veins. like goosebumps all across your body

because you can just tell the brand reshifted so quickly back to where we needed to be. And I say this very humbly, and it lacks ego and pride. But this is the power of having a founder and leader in place who can speak vision and knows where the brand needs to go and how to get there.

And it has a team that is in full support and trust and respect and willing to back up that vision and that mission and the strategy and the tactics and those goals. You can't replace vision with anything else. It is that important. Vision is everything. When it comes to brand building, culture, leadership, you will get nowhere without it. Leadership and vision, it is not just an amplifier.

Like I said in the beginning of episode, focus isn't an option. It's a requirement for success. The Austin Marathon, 2004, was what the brand needed. And it put things back into place and into perspective. And right before we kicked off the Austin Marathon, I shared this manifesto with the team that I'm about to read.

And after I shared it with a team, I posted on social media to share with our community, and then I included this in our book. This was right around the time of the Austin Marathon when things started to get back on track. I was still living in Tennessee at the time, but me and the family and Jordan and Ian were traveling back from Tennessee to Texas frequently

to get the brand back on track and just being active in our new roles again as we prepared to move back to Texas. The manifesto goes, 2024 is going to be different. This is the year we show up as our true, authentic, unapologetic selves. It's how BPN started. It's how we were built. You can't buy brand story, mission, or vision.

It has to be created. It's forged through hardship. It's borne by toughness. We fuel performance. We fuel individuals through training, supplements, nutrition, education, content, motivation, and by showing them how to be tough. Real toughness is not for show. It's not intended to intimidate.

It is the ability to pursue greatness without sacrifice of integrity. It is choosing the hard right over the easy wrong. Toughness is a driven commitment through confidence. We have changed lives, transformed from rock bottom. That is the power of going more. It has saved people from their lowest of lows, and that is a responsibility that should not be taken lightly. I'm not here to follow a blueprint or build a business

based on what has been done before. I'm here to pave a path. We're pioneers. We lead from the front. Trailblazers. Let's take everything we learned in 2003, the good and the bad, the wins and the losses. Let's learn from all of it as we enter 2004.

If you're on this team, you better be here to win because if we're not going to try and be the best, we shouldn't be doing it at all. It feels good to win. It feels good to chase down your wildest dreams and aspirations, and it feels even better to do it as a team. If at any point you are lost, confused, misguided, or unmotivated,

I encourage you to raise your hand. Ask for help. We cannot be the best by operating through independent silos. It's time to row the boat in the same direction. With the sport of each other, to build the best brand BPN can be. Be tough. Be really fucking tough.

As we made the move back to Texas, and I made that lonely drive with the dogs once again, but this time going, from north to south, as opposed to south to north, just a few months after making that big move, I had a lot of time to think to myself. That drive back to Texas felt much different than the drive from Texas, Tennessee. The energy was different. The creativity was different. The intentionality was different. I was a different person at this point in my life. And something I kept thinking about was I was talking to myself, Nick, for this next chapter, personally and professionally,

you have to realize that your gut and your intuition deserves more credit than you may believe. When in doubt and when challenged through a decision, first, have a clearly defined vision, but trust your gut. and have the belief that you can do the thing because belief comes before ability and remove ego. Ego is the enemy, as Ryan Holiday says, and within Ryan Holiday's book,

Ego is the enemy, he says, this is what ego does. It crosses out what matters and replaces it with what doesn't. To make that move back to Texas, there was no ego I could have. I had to remove all ego.

I had to be vulnerable. I had to be honest and I had to be responsible. Ego would have kept me in Tennessee. Ego would have crossed out exactly what matters and replaced it with what doesn't. Ego would have led me and guided me to making the wrong decisions. When I got back, I told the team, I made a mistake.

I made many mistakes, and now it's my responsibility to fix it. I realized that a lot of people were hurt with some of those decisions that I made over the previous year. And I am very apologetic for that, mainly internally in the business. because people had to feel the impact and the effects of an entrepreneur and a founder trying to navigate different life transitions. But that entire experience, that entire year and a half, was the greatest learning lesson that I needed to experience in my 35 almost years of life so far. I realize that you always place the mission and the people,

people first. Financial success will follow if you do that. And sometimes to be the greatest leader you can be, it requires you to take some time away and work on yourself. Learn, reflect, recognize, and then come back stronger. In my book, I quote Irwin McManus. And he talks about having a sharp axe. And sometimes you'll go through a lull of life. And it feels like you are falling behind and you are misguided and you are missing out.

And you're not in the fight. But the reality is you're just sharpening your axe. The way I look at that year and a half, which was a front row seat in the arena of learning how to build a business and how to lead a team and what is required of the strongest culture. I mean, this experience made me such a better entrepreneur and founder and leader and husband and father and all of the things.

But sometimes to stay in the fight with a sharp axe, you have to take a tactical pause and step away so you can sharpen the blade. sharpen your axe. So when you come back into battle, you're swinging with a refined and sharp edge, as opposed to trying to grind with a dull edge over time. Sometimes time away is necessary. It's the right approach. Chapter 7 was a meaty one. Chapter 7, like I said, it started from stepping down from the CEO role in January, 2003, an ending by moving back to Texas after nine months of living in Tennessee, May of 2024, getting the brand back on track, getting the culture back on track, building a healthy organization subjectively and objectively, again, full of life

lessons and learning experiences. And as painful as they were, and it was, it was, in my opinion, absolutely necessary to get us to where we are today. So until the next episode, as always, go on more.