The Nick Bare Podcast - 134: Building the Brand: Part 8: For the Committed

Episode Date: August 18, 2025

In this episode, I share my return to the CEO role in early 2024 and our subsequent moves to refocus and rebuild the brand. I discuss the challenges faced, including the decision to let go of certain staff and product lines, and the importance of maintaining a winning culture. This chapter captures our move back to Texas, the building of a new HQ, and the successful launch of new products, all leading up to the present day in August 2025.CHAPTERS:00:00 Introduction01:04 The Return to Leadership04:50 Chapter Eight: Moving Back to Texas07:47 Office Reorganization and Fresh Start15:55 Lessons from Endurance Training20:20 Pruning for Growth: Necessary Endings36:32 Key Initiatives for 202441:03 Expanding Internationally: UK and iHerb43:18 Back in Texas: Business and Personal Life45:48 A Life-Changing Accident51:21 Building a Winning Culture58:39 Leading with Heart and Mind01:03:56 Defining the Vision: Core Values, Purpose, and Goals01:06:41 Summer of 2025: Achievements and Reflections01:14:38 Conclusion: Gratitude and Future OutlookORDER MY 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. At times of chaos, we have to put things back into order. And in this chapter of my life, there was a lot of chaos. And I realized it was my responsibility, it was my doing, to put things back into order. It's never too late to pivot, adjust, adapt, and turn chaos back into order. But in January of 2003, I stepped down from the CEO role. Why? Well, to be honest, I lost confidence in myself.

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 2023 in buckets within months of losing focus. I remember texting my brother, Preston, hey man, we're taking this thing back. We're fixing this. And I had this awakening, this epiphany of 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.

We're 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. Within that next couple weeks, I was back in the CEO role. Our house was up for sale. We were closing down our Nashville office. Vision is everything.

When it comes to brand building, culture, leadership, you will get nowhere without it. You have to realize that your gut and your intuition deserves more credit than you may believe. leave and have the belief that you can do the thing because belief comes before ability. 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. Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the podcast. This is part of our multi-part series of building the brand. this is chapter eight.

Now the last episode, being chapter seven, there was a lot in chapter seven of our building the brand series. This was a hard chapter, but also a very necessary chapter. I learned a lot during chapter seven of building the brand, as I've shared in the episode. Again, if you are just coming across this episode for your first time over the last year plus, I have been breaking down in chapter segments, chapter 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, now 8.

The story of BPN. From the beginning of starting the business out of my college apartment, in western Pennsylvania, bootstrapping the brand with a $20,000 loan from the Military Associated Bank, USAAA, up until today. And I share stories and lessons

and the experiences, the hard, the easy, the wins, the losses, all of it. So if you're just coming across this episode, it being chapter 8, I highly recommend go back and listen to all of the episodes from chapter 1 up until this one. And it really lays out the whole story and journey of building this organization,

bare performance nutrition over now the last 13 years. August actually is when I started the business, August 2012. so we just celebrated 13 years officially. 13 years. That's wild. I mean, it's still just thinking of that, building something, being committed and dedicated to something for 13 years

and seeing the fruits of the labor, the time, the energy, the resources, investment, and then the compounding growth in return of that has been so rewarding. It has changed my life. It has changed many other lives as well. And I'm extremely grateful for the opportunity in guidance and your guys support along the way. Now this next chapter, chapter eight, it starts with the move back to Texas. after nine months of living in Tennessee.

So we got back to Texas officially May of 2024. I moved back into the CEO role in January of 2024. So from January to May, we spent trying to sell our house, find a new place to live in Texas, getting everything wrapped up that we had in Tennessee in terms of the office space for the lease that we signed, the new life that we started there, just like, you know,

the ramp off of a big cross-country move like that with a family, with a team, with an office space. And I was working remotely as the CEO from January till May until we moved back.

So that's where this chapter begins. Moving back to Texas, May of 2012-4, and it ends today. At the time of recording, August of 2025 in our new HQ. Now, this is the first chapter of this Building the Brand series that brings me and us to present day.

This series is not over after this episode, but we won't see an installment of the Building the Brand series potentially for years to come. We have to wait until there's more experiences and lessons learned and stories, which takes time. But chapter 8 brings us to today. August 2025 in our new HQ in Round Rock, Texas. The lessons learned in this chapter,

the concepts are few, but the methods are many. Prune the roses and prune them. consistently. Minimize your key initiatives. If you can understand someone's incentives, you can predict their behaviors. Lead with the heart and the mind and never choose growth over durability. Now like I said, this chapter starts with a move back to Texas, May of 2004. And we picked up right where we left off. What do I mean by that? We picked up right where we left off. To be honest, it felt like the previous 12 to 16 months were a dream. As soon as we got back, I made the decision to move some offices around, rearrange office spaces for a fresh start type feel.

when I got back, I had some apologizing to do to the team. And I took full responsibility, and I still take full responsibility, that as the founder and leader of the organization of the company, I made some decisions that were driven by emotion, or driven by potentially immaturity, lack of experience. I made decisions because I didn't know how to manage and handle the next chapter, especially with a growing family, because I lost that confidence. And I took and still take full responsibility for things that happened to company then, people that were hurt, decisions that were made. And that's why when I came back, I wanted to feel like a fresh start. So we moved offices around.

We moved the leadership team to a whole other building because at the time we weren't in our new HQ. We were operating out of three different buildings. And then we had a fourth building that was overflow inventory. So our leadership team was in one building along with warehouse space in our gym, in our podcast studio. And then there was another building that was just our brand team. team. And there was also another building that was our operations team, more warehouse, customer service, and fulfillment. And now we're all under one roof. But I decided to move some offices around. So the leadership team moved into a new office space, the brand team moved

into an office space, came in, added some new murals, build out the spaces, added plant walls, pergolas. Me personally, I love building out new spaces. And I love building out spaces

because there's an energy that comes from the environment. Now, not everyone is, is fueled in this. way. I know some people who can work in a very sterile office space and working environment every day for their entire life and it doesn't bother them. But for me, I am not that way. I can't work in a room with no windows, with no texture, with no color, with no music, with no just like, vibrant energy. And if you see our new and current HQ that we're in right now, I mean, there's

textures everywhere. There's shiplap walls and reclaimed wood and murals and art and different color painted or plastered walls and just energy. Like there's depth, there's texture, there's color, there's sound, there's smell, all of these things, in my opinion, add to the environment and the energy and the culture and the feel of a place. place, it feels alive. You know, when I go into a restaurant, for example, much of my experience in a restaurant is driven by the atmosphere, the environment, the energy there.

It's not just the food. If I go into a restaurant and it has a very sterile environment, the food is going to taste very different to me, as opposed to going somewhere that has good music and energy and live plants and textures and art and all of these things, it adds to the senses of the entire experience. So for me, that's one of the reasons I love building out our office space in a warehouse, and gym, and just our facility overall.

So I came back, I made some changes to our office spaces, that fresh start feel. And one of the reasons that I say we picked up or I picked up right where we left off is I moved into my old office that I was in from 2020 to 2023. This office for me was where I got some of the most important work done that I contributed to building BPN. It's been a lot of time in that office. in this office, I then passed down to who at the time our brand director was Alex Rodriguez, not the baseball player, different Alex Rodriguez, which is funny because sometimes this one time I was telling somebody that our brand director was Alex Rodriguez and they thought that Alex Rodriguez, the baseball player, worked for BPN, different Alex.

And after I moved down to that office into my new office before we moved to Nashville, Alex took over this office. And then when I moved back in or came back, I moved the leadership team into this space and I took that office space back. And I walked in, I remember that I walked in and I closed the door. And on the back of that door, I wrote all over it from 2020 to 2023 and Sharpie marker, different sayings, our goals, mottos. things that were just top of mind.

I mean, some of those things that I wrote in that door between 2020 and 2003 ended up being chapters in my book titled Goin More that I launched in June of 2025. Like on that door, it said doubt is only dangerous when you start doubting yourself.

That was a meaningful chapter and section of my book. And that was a significant phrase and motto that changed my life. Doubt is only dangerous when you start doubting yourself.

So after getting settled into my old, now new office and everyone was in their new working spaces and we had murals back on the walls and we had texture added and we brought some life back to the space, it felt like the previous 12 to 16 months were a dream.

I vividly remember sitting at my desk feeling like it was 2022 again thinking what just happened over the last nearly year and a half I stepped down from the CEO role

I moved my family and a small creative team to Nashville we moved back from Nashville to Austin, Texas and I'm back in my old office space in the CEO role it felt like it was a dream as if it almost was.

We picked up right where we left off. You know, there's a lot of parallels between life as a whole, but in this case, specifically building a business and endurance training. And I can't tell you how many times I've said that because it's so true, it's very applicable. Here's what I mean by that. I said that one of the lessons I learned was that the concepts are few, but the methods are many. One of the things I've learned after working with many coaches over the years for different fitness goals,

whether that's marathons, ultras, triathons, bodybuilding competitions, high rocks, all of those things, and looking over many different training programs and plans. I've learned and realized that most protocols are similar, but have some nuance. and that there's a few concepts that work in all things fitness. There are a few concepts that work, but the methods to achieve those concepts may vary dramatically in many different forms. The concepts are few, the methods are many. In endurance training, we know that in order to build fitness,

in order to build endurance, you need consistency, you need progressive overload we need to increase training volume over time slowly we might have to incorporate some sort of speed work in there that could be tempo runs

that could be critical velocity training on the track we have our long runs that we do once a week there's a fueling strategy there's a recovery plan these are all are all concepts that are part of the protocol to build endurance fitness.

Now we can go a layer deeper and we can get more specific. You can layer on more specificity based off of the training program or the coach. The methods may change significantly to achieve those concepts. The concepts are few, the methods are many, in regards to endurance. training. The same thing applies to life. The same thing applies to building a business or building a brand. There's a few concepts at work that are tried and true. And those fundamental principles are applied to leading people, building teams, scaling the size of the business, increasing revenue, maximizing profits, go to market.

strategy for new product development. The concepts are few. The methods are many. And that's one of the the realizations that reinstilled confidence in me as the CEO and founder of a BPN. After talking to many founders and executives, one of the things that I learned and realized

is that no one has the answers. We're all just figuring it out as we go. As we go, we're all just figuring it out. And there's a few things that work, like I said, tried and true, but there's many ways to achieve those concepts. And when I realized that,

I recognize that I have all the tools and skills and resources that I personally need. That's where that confidence was reinjected to build and scale this business and to lead this team and to be the founder and CEO that I want and need to be for this next chapter. Now it's just experimenting and testing these different methods

that are applied to the few concepts. One of the books that I read when I was living in Nashville was called Necessary Endings by Dr. Henry Cloud. which was a book that came into my life at the right time, the right moment, and it just made so much sense. And since then, I've read a bunch of Dr. Henry Cloud's books, and I highly recommend them, but especially necessary endings. I've shared this book with so many people, and most people that I've shared it with have fallen in love with it. And what I want to talk about in regards to that book is,

the lesson that I learned prune the roses and prune them consistently. There are benefits of pruning roses but also unfortunately there are realities unfortunate realities

of pruning the roses as well. Now Dr. Henry Cloud uses analogy in his book Necessary Endings that makes a lot of sense for some of the things I had to do when I came back as a CEO into the business. The way it's explained, think of a rosebush. With a rose bush, every year you have to prune it. So you come in with clippers and you cut away some of the dead stems and thorns and even some of the roses that aren't flourishing and growing.

they may be too small or they may be dying themselves. So you come in and you prune this bush. You cut away. And when you cut all these dead pieces away, the rose bush looks extremely bare and empty. It might look even dead. But you do this

so that the healthy roses, the ones that have potential, can grow and flourish. And then you give it a few, few weeks or months in that rosebush is once again full and beautiful and thriving again. Because you came in and you removed unnecessary parts of the bush that were holding it back and allow it to grow. There's a lot of benefits to pruning a rosebush, but also when it comes to a business, pruning. When you come into a business, you're working on your business,

you have to prune consistently. You can't do it one time and forget about it. If you pruned a rose bush one time and never did it again, it would flourish after pruning it. But then shortly after that, it would start growing stems and thorns, and it would have dead roses on it and just unnecessary pieces of that bush

that would once again hurt it. it'd be negative consequences to that bush. Same thing goes for your life. Same thing goes for a business. You have to prune and you have to prune consistently. And there's benefits to pruning. When it comes to business, you can get rid of unnecessary systems. You can get rid of unnecessary or lower producing products.

you can reduce overhead, you can reduce initiatives that shouldn't be initiative, so on and so forth. You can do so much more when you're working on and doing less. You can do more with less, and you become not only more effective, but also more efficient. Pruning facilitates growth, and it allows the opportunities of value to flourish because they get more attention, they get more resources, they get more time. As a business, when you are focused on less, those things that you are focused on, if they have the attention, if they have the time, if they have the resources, they will explode, or they have the opportunity to explode because you can dedicate more time,

resources, and attention to them. The example of this is that we pruned our product line to give more attention to products that we're performing better or best. So some of the products we have discontinued in the last year, endo pump, which I know a lot of people are upset about, in focus, strong food, and the field bar. We have discontinued these products for various reasons. Some of them just weren't very strong performers.

I think naturally for a product you have developed, you invested time and energy and money into, you don't want to discontinue a product because you invested X amount of time. But if it's not working, it's not performing, it's not leading, any time, money, or energy you spend on those products takes away from other better performing.

products. That's some of the reasons we discontinued in focus, strong food, and the field bar. They just weren't our best performers and that we were finding that we were spending time, energy, and resources, money on these products, and it was taking away from other better performing products. Endopump is kind of a different situation. And I'll explain this in the podcast, but we decided that we wanted to hyper focus on endurance within BPN. EndoPN. endopump is a product that we launched in 2016 maybe and it's a bodybuilding pump enhancing supplement and it didn't necessarily fit with the vision of BPN moving to the future

and even though that product performed very well and we sold a lot of it there was a misalignment between that product, the perception of that product, and what it created for the vision I and we had for the company moving to the future. That's pruning. We pruned the product line so that other products could flourish

and that our vision maintained clear, internally and externally. But there's also unfortunate reality, of pruning as well. And I was hesitant to share this, I'll be honest, but I'm going to because it was, for me at least, a significant part of this chapter.

One of the hardest things you have to do as a founder, as a CEO, as a boss, as a manager, someone who leads people is letting people go. That is

that is hard. And it doesn't get easier. It's really hard decisions. But it's sometimes the hard decisions that are the right decisions for both the company and the individual. When I came back, moved into the CEO role, we and I had to let go a significant amount of people the 18 months following my return.

after reassuming the CEO role again for a few different reasons. Again, prune and pruned consistently. There are benefits, but there are also unfortunate realities, and this is some of those unfortunate realities. We had to let go people for a few reasons. One of those reasons is that we didn't need the roles any longer.

As we improved our focus, and reduced our initiatives. Some of the roles that we hired for previously, we just didn't need anymore. Some of those roles weren't aligned with the key initiatives, the new key initiatives that we laid out and selected. For some people, they just weren't culture fits any longer for the organization.

They didn't believe in what we were building. They didn't contribute to the members, mission, in the energy, in a culture, and what we were all about. And in some cases, the company outgrew the individual's ability, which those are some of the hardest, unfortunate realities of pruning. You know, when someone has been with the business for a long time, and it's been extremely loyal and dedicated and committed, and when the business outgrows their skills and ability, those in my opinion are the hardest decisions to make, the ones that you really don't have to, or you don't want to, but you have to. And one of the things that we learned, or at least I learned

in EOS, so we implemented EOS, which is the entrepreneurial operating system a few years ago. We don't today still fully adopt all the principles of EOS, but we, we don't today still fully adopt all the principles of EOS, but we we still hold on to certain parts of it. EOS, the entrepreneurial operating system. If you're curious, there's two books to read.

One is traction. The other one is rocket fuel by Gino Wickman. It explains this entrepreneurial operating system that you can implement into your business that I believe is extremely beneficial. And like I said, we used to have it fully implemented and now we just keep bits and pieces within that we have found worked for us.

But one of the things that we learned in EOS is right person, right seat. So when you build out your business organizational structure, you don't build it out based off the people you have on the team. You build it out based off what rules you need for your goals, for your mission, for your vision, to execute all of those things to get to where you want to be, what are the rules? What does that organizational structure look like? And then you look at your team and you say, do I have the right person in the right seat? Are there seats that need to be filled?

Do we need to go higher? Do we have the right seat but the wrong person? And if we have the right seat but the wrong person, do we have someone on the team already that can fill that seat, that there can be a match? But unfortunately, even if you have a, of the right person, but that seat doesn't exist any longer or a seat doesn't exist for them. What I learned in EOS, which is hard, but it's true, you cannot create a seat for somebody.

It doesn't help either the organization or them. And I had to learn this a hard way. One of the mistakes I made over my career of building a business is even when I recognize that an individual who was a great person, hard worker, contributed. If they were in a role, and that role wasn't needed for the next chapter, I would create a role for them to keep them around.

And sometimes by doing this, they're being underutilized. They're not growing personally or professionally. They're not being challenged. you're just keeping them around because you love them and you care for them and they match the core values

and they believe in the mission but just creating a role for them to keep them around doesn't help them grow and it's holding them back and as hard as some of these conversations can be and were over these last 18 months

of unfortunately having to let a significant amount of people go. I believe it is best for both parties and it is a disservice to an individual to put them in a position where they can't grow personally and professionally. Now, one of the reasons we and I had to let a significant amount of people go over the last 18 months, the main reason was because the business moved into a new category of growth in size and scale.

And what the company needed and needs for this next chapter is experience, is skill, is a more specific area of expertise. And that's what I found is one of the more and most, it has been one of the most, challenging parts of of building a company from the ground up bootstrapping you know when you first get started you need generalists you just need people

who believe in what you're doing and want to be a part of and you're not making much money so you can't pay much and they don't have to have experience but they just have to believe and that works for a while and eventually you start scaling and growing

you get to a point where you're making more money or generating more revenue and profits and you can reinvest back in the company and one of the best places to reinvest back into a company is the people. You start hiring people with more experience and skill and specific training and experience to contribute to where you're trying to get to.

And then there's another phase after that where you realize you need more, specific skill. You need specialists. And the generalists might not be best suited for the next chapter. Those are hard conversations to have, some of the hardest. But I believe any good leader will make those decisions for the individual, for the team, and for the organization as a whole.

but that was one of the the realities of these last 18 months the realities of pruning as Dr. Henry Cloud explains in his book, Necessary Endings. So when I got back, I sat down with Josh Holly, our CFO and COO,

and we laid out our key initiatives for 2024. And we had four of them. The first was get the brand back on track and have continuity with performance marketing. So at the time, uh, the brand was unfocused. The brand was still strong, but it needed to be refocused, realligned. And the focus that we provided was three things. Performance endurance, go on more and for the committed.

that is what people should feel when they think of in view and watch and purchase from and support BPN bare performance nutrition is performance endurance it is go on more and is for the committed and at the time our performance marketing strategy

looked very different from our organic social strategy so our brand organic social, video, photo, look, feel, DNA. It had alignment. But our performance marketing strategy took a different approach. And we were testing all these different types of UGC or user-generated content, trends, what some of these agencies that we were working with at time were telling us were best practices for performance marketing. and when we went with the approach,

brand back on track, continuity with performance marketing, our performance marketing, our ads, if you will, that we run on social, YouTube, connected TV, Google,

wherever we're running performance marketing, it should look and feel just like our organic social does. That was one of our key initiatives. Second was build a winning culture. which I'll get into. Third, finalize our current and long-term office solutions. Because at the time, early 2024, we were operating out of those four buildings,

and we knew that our lease was coming to an end. We were also outgrowing that current space, and we needed a long-term office solution, which now has landed us in our 76,000 square foot facility, all under one roof. And our fourth key initiative was an illicit. initial launch into the UK. We know and we knew that we had a huge international audience

and that we weren't serving them to the best of our ability. We have a long-term approach to international distribution. And we initially wanted to pursue the UK. We have a huge audience in the UK. And there's a few different ways to approach international distribution. You can bring on a partner, You can work with different wholesalers. But what's interesting about dietary supplements, nutritional supplements,

is that every country in different territories have their own guidelines and regulations based off of the way that you can use copy on packages, claims, different ingredients, different dosages of ingredients, supplement fax panels and nutrition fax panels look different by country and region and territory. And we knew that the UK was going to be a big strategy and meaningful opportunity for us in the future. So we didn't want to just work with a distributor and sell our current products because there are legalities there. You can get away with it, but it's not the best approach in our opinion. If we're going to do something, we're going to do it right.

the hard right over the easy wrong. So we've been working for a long time now to launch the UK. And as of today, we have a handful of our products on Amazon UK. So if you are a UK customer, you can buy a handful of our products, electrolytes, go gels, go bars, flight, creatine on Amazon UK. Over the next couple of months, we will have more of our products on Amazon. UK. Also, if you're an international BPN customer, you can buy our products on IHERB. IHERB serves most of our international customers, and they are our primary international supplier and distributor. So if

you're international, go to IHERB, but also if you're in the UK, you can buy on Amazon. So over the last 18 months, we've been working with UK Council. So we have UK lawyers. We have UK manufacturers for our products, UK compliance. We've jumped through all the hoops, and we've crossed our T's and dotted our eyes twice to ensure that we are launching in the UK, as compliant and as responsible as possible for this to be a meaningful distribution platform for us.

We made that happen. We've made the initial launch into the UK. It's going to be more meaningful over the years. But that was our fourth key initiative for 2024. In just three months after moving back to Texas, baby Nico was born. August 10th, 2000. It's crazy because my daughter's birthday is July 15th. Then my birthday is August 1st.

And then my sons is August 10th. So three of our birthdays all happen within a month. And then Steph's is April 22nd. So she's gone to the outlier. But me and Charlie and Nico, we all just celebrated our birthdays. Charlie's three. I'm 35. Nico's one.

Happy belated birthday to my beautiful children. But just a few months after moving back to Texas, we were in the full swing of everything. I mean, as soon as we got back, it was hit the ground running and running nonstop. The business got back on track very quickly. We were growing. We were scaling. We were becoming more profitable by the month. BPN was truly thriving.

We really hit our stride. I was in the middle of a high rocks prep and YouTube series. I was wrapping up my book titled Go On More. I mean, in the editing process, literally we were in the hospital. Steph was getting ready to give birth to Nico. And I was trying to wrap up the editing process of my book in the hospital to turn in the manuscript. Because there were deadlines that I had to hit. And Nico came a little early.

He was like two weeks early, two to three weeks early. So I kind of laid out my timeline of I have to have this book turned in, the manuscript completed for when Nico was supposed to be born. He was born early, so I'm in the hospital trying to get this manuscript done to turn into the publisher and the editors so that when Nico was born, we could just be with family for a little bit. At this time, we were in a rental house while we were waiting for, for our house to be finished.

We came across a house when we got back to Texas, and it was like 60% completed. It was a house that got started and then abandoned, and the builder started it, and there were some issues with the builder's company, and the whole project was abandoned. There was this house we found that was sitting for about two years. So we found a new builder to finish it out for us,

and while we were waiting for that at home to be done, We were living in a rental off of a very busy road in Georgetown, Texas. And as many of you probably know, during this just crazy season of life, back in the full swing of everything, business is thriving, newborn baby at home, just finished a high rock prep and YouTube series, building on a house, getting ready to move into our new eight, and finish up that project. I was running one morning off this main road from the house we were running.

I got hit by a car while I was running. I know I just threw that out of nowhere potentially, but I felt like I had to include this in this chapter because it was a life-changing experience. I've shared the story a few times, but it was one morning in December, 2014, It was shortly after finishing up High Rocks, Dallas

and every morning from this rental I ran my average 8 to 10 mile run every morning on these backcountry roads and through neighborhoods. But to get there, I had to be on this main road for about a mile. And the speed limit there was 60 miles per hour.

There's a short shoulder. Cars would fly there. I'd be running there. around 5 a.m. It was sketchy, but I knew it was only a mile. And I just had to stay on there for a mile to get to the the backcountry roads that I would run on. And I did a whole podcast episode on this

that goes into detail. So I'll spare you all the details. But for broad strokes, I was running. I crossed the road. at the wrong time. I was on the other side running with traffic because I was trying to get to a larger part of the shoulder. Next thing I know, I see the lights of my feet. I hear the screech of tires and I feel the impact of this car hit me as it's going 60 miles per hour. And next thing I know,

as I was hit on the right side of the road, I come to as I'm on the left side of the road, stand up, in shock, realizing I just got hit by a car. And I survived. I'm alive. The person who hit me ended up driving off and someone else stops and took me back to my home. And after the shock wore off, all the pain kicked in.

Staff took me to the hospital. We got scans and checks and got some stitches and I was bleeding all over the place and couldn't walk well for a few weeks because the tire went up the back of my left leg. I mean, I had really bad burns from the tire. But that was a wake-up call for me. That was a wake-up call of slow down,

recognize what you have been given. Be grateful. Don't take it for granted because you can lose everything. everything in a second's notice. That shook me up a lot, and that put my entire life into perspective. I remember that night, the night it happened, and I was giving Charlie a bath with another bedtime routine.

Steph was putting Nico down, and I'm just looking at Charlie thinking, if I would have died by getting hit by that car earlier that morning, and Charlie was asking, Steph as she was giving her bath that night, worse dad. And Steph had to tell Charlie, Dad's not here. Something happened. The thought of her

realizing that and having to live a life without a father crushed me. Crushed me. It put my priorities, it put life, it put the speed at which I was living, the rush

at which I was moving. It provided a lot of just context into everything. It was transformational, for sure. And I believe I needed that wake-up call. Because from the moment I landed back in Texas and reassumed the CEO role, it was go, go, go.

I was busy. I was rushed. but I was doing it to myself. And I felt like I had a lot of momentum to make up for, a lot of ground to regain. And after hitting hit by that car and realizing that everything could have been gone that day, it shifted my perspective on life and what matters. And the speed and intensity and intentionality at which I want to operate moving forward.

but I needed that wake-up call. I did. You know, one of the things I've learned in these last 18 or so months, and it's a reoccurring theme in all of the building the brand episodes, is that people matter. The people matter the most. Something I wrote down here is that culture isn't maintained by leadership. It is maintained by the people, the entire team.

You know, one of those recurring themes is you can go fast alone, but you can go so much further together if you have the right people. So one of those key initiatives in 2024 was to build a winning culture. What is a winning culture? I think it can be defined differently for different businesses or organizations or people, individuals. But for me, a winning culture is a team in culture that is committed. It is bought into the mission that truly believes it. They don't just say or tell themselves, I believe in this. No, they believe. They believe to their core in what the organization,

what the team is working to accomplish. The vision and the mission. Truly committed. That is a key component of winning culture. They understand the vision. as well as where and why they are striving to get there. They are selfless, they are humble, they are hardworking, they are dedicated, they are coachable.

That is what makes up a winning culture. It is the people. You need strong leaders in a business, but strong leaders alone cannot make up a winning culture. It is everyone. from the people who sit in the C-suite, from the people who have been there for 13 years, for the people who have been there for 13 days,

for the people who have been there for 13 hours, everyone contributes to the winning culture and having one person who doesn't fit, who doesn't believe, who isn't committed, who isn't humble, who isn't hardworking, who isn't coachable, who isn't selfless, who isn't dedicated,

Having one person, the wrong person, on that team will erode the winning culture. I know because we've experienced it. If you have one person who wants to take away or erode that winning culture, it will happen. One of the best things I ever heard was that you need A players on your team. That was one of our key initiatives for 2025. A players only. If you have a B player or a C player, it will lower the expectations, the stakes, the accountability of all of the A players. If you have a C player, it brings the expectations, the standards lower for everyone.

Setting the bar so high, setting the standard so high, and then working to hold that standard, is not an option. It is absolutely essential. It is critical. I said that one of the lessons I learned in this chapter is that if you can understand someone's incentives, you can then predict their behaviors. This is something that I heard initially from Donald Miller, who's one of my favorite authors and speakers and entrepreneurs, and I found it to be so true. If someone is truly just incentivized by money or notoriety or building their resume or power, their behavior will reflect that. Now, you might be able to say, yeah, well, everyone is motivated by different things.

And that is completely true. And that is completely okay. But as a leader of an organization, you have to recognize that. That, yeah, people are motivated by different things. But that will shift the culture of an organization. If half the people are just motivated, they're only there for the money, the notoriety, as something they can put on their LinkedIn or their resume, and they don't believe in the mission, they don't believe in the culture, they don't believe in what you're trying to accomplish

or who you're trying to impact, that will take away from the culture. Their behaviors will reflect that. and vice versa, if you have people who are on the team for the right reason, they want to create impact, they want to help people, they want to save lives, they want to create products that help people reach their goals. Their behaviors will reflect those incentives. So there's not necessarily a right or wrong.

It's not what I'm saying, but it is what kind of culture are you trying to build and establish? And when you identify that, you can then go hire people based off of their personal incentives. And you can know that their behaviors that they practice will be reinforced by those incentives. It's one of the best ways to hire. Hire based off of incentives and you can then predict the behaviors, which ultimately determines your culture of an organization.

Winning cultures win. They don't consistently lose. Winning cultures win. Winning cultures are also led by example. People who lead by example, people who lead winning cultures, they don't just tell the team, they don't just tell their departments

what to do or how to do it. They show them. The right way, the only way, the example. Show, don't tell. That is something we've said for years now here at BPN, and I can't reiterate how important that is. Show, don't tell.

We apply that to leading teams, building business, creating content, documenting these preps, these stories, show, don't tell. So one of the lessons I said I learned was that you need to lead with the heart and the mind. And as I was thinking about this, something that came to mind was that brand building is all about leadership. Leading. And one of the things that I've known forever, but that has been reinforced, I don't want to say forever, I've known for a long time,

but that's been reinforced over these last 18 months is the lead with the heart and mind. The heart and the mind. as a consumer brand, especially around performance nutrition, performance endurance, health, wellness recovery,

there's two aspects of building a brand and something that we are always trying to straddle and that we are mindful of. There is the mind that requires education and knowledge, how our products are made, why we source certain ingredients, why we utilize specific dosages of certain ingredients,

what the consumer can expect from the product, those ingredients, how to use it, when to use it, why to use it, all of those things. It is educating the mind. That is a very important aspect of a consumer-focused brand, especially in our space. But that's about 50% of what we need to focus on. The other 50%, if not more,

is leading with the heart. That's the brand mission. That's the story we share. It's the content we create. It is emotional connection with a community, a consumer, a customer. I think the best brands in the world do a really good job at leading

with the heart and the mind in mind. It is educational, it is value, it is the what, it is the why, it is the how. But then there is the emotional connection component that is just as critical. That is the brand component. The living, breathing DNA of Go on More, of for the committed of endurance performance.

There's a reason that thousands of people have go on and more tattooed on their body. It's because it means something to people. It's changed lives. It's an emotional connection. It is real. It is not fabricated. It is not intentionally founded to sell product. It means something.

It means something to us. It means something to you. It means something to the consumer. It means something to our. community. Lead with the heart and the mind. I've brought this up so many different times, but it's very applicable to this chapter

is because I read this book during this chapter. And that is BE 2.0, Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0. This book changed everything for me. Because prior to this, I didn't clearly define the vision that I had up in my head to the team and the organization. I would speak about it freely and openly, frequently,

but I never wrote it down, I never clearly defined it so that a team could create strategy and tactics based off of the vision that I had up in my head. And when I clearly defined the vision based off what I learned in chapter four of the book, B.E 2.0, I believe it made a big difference in the entire organization because everyone

then knew what we were working towards and what we were trying to achieve and why. And a vision is made up of three components, core values, purpose, and goals. The way that Jim Collins explained this, core values and purpose should not change more than once every 100 years and goals are 10 to 25 year targets. So I'm going to share this with you guys of what I documented and shared with the team so that we can be more consistent in our messaging. We can be more consistent in our decisions. We can be more consistent in the strategies and the tactics that we create to accomplish our goals. So that if we're presented with an opportunity, if it doesn't align with these core values, purpose, and goals, we say no to it. It's an easy no.

So we say no to a whole lot more things, but when we say yes, we know that yes is aligned with what we're trying to accomplish. So here is how I defined our vision based off core values, purpose, and goals, and share this with the team. Our core values. We share stories of incredible human achievement. We are a brand for the committed, those unwavering in the pursuit of their goals, never accepting mediocrity. We hold ourselves to the same standard we expect from our customers, athletes, and partners. We are consistently good rather than occasionally great.

We believe in hard work. We will never sacrifice profitability for growth. We have hard conversations. We are professional and treat everyone with respect, regardless of how they treat us. We lead, but we also listen. Product quality will never be sacrificed for profit. We take care of our people and treat them like family.

Our brand will never be eroded in the process of growth, scale, and expansion. We are resourceful, spending as little as necessary to achieve the outcomes we desire. We are problem solvers. Purpose. Help people realize that anything is achievable with hard work, commitment, and consistency, and then provide them the fuel, resources, and inspiration to do it. Goals. Become the most recognized and respected endurance consumer brand in the world by 2035.

sell the most endurance gels in the world by 2035. GOM Sport and the extensions of the line to include GUNM Sport Plus and RTDs generate $100 million in revenue by 2035. That is $100 million in revenue per year by 2035. Be known as the Apple or Nike of the sports nutrition industry and inspire more runners to be lifters and lifters to be runners. Creating that vision statement, which is the combination of heart and mind, I believe made one of the biggest impacts on the business in 2025.

I have to give all the credit to Jim Collins from BE 2.0. because after reading that book, I realized I didn't clearly and have never clearly defined our vision. And the team requires that to operate independently from me in a decentralized leadership manner and execute with confidence that they are doing something that is aligned with the purpose, core values and goals of our organization. And now as we come to the summer of 2025, these last couple months that we have lived and experienced, I would argue the most successful summer of BPN history,

the most successful couple months, stretch of BPN history. But it was from the result of just, compounding consistency over the years. All of the things that we experience, the projects, the races, everything this past summer that I'm about to share, it was the result of focus

and compounding consistency over 13 years. So none of these things happened because of one decision. None of these things happened because of one month, 13 years have led to all of this. So we hosted the Go and More Ultra in May of 2025, which was a viral race. It wasn't intended to be a viral race, but it turned into a viral race at Bear Ranch.

It was a last man standing style race. Two runners, Kim and Kendall battled it out for 235 miles. 4.2 mile loop that restarted every hour on the hour until there was one person left, but there were two people left in this case because a wild storm came through and made it impossible to continue the race. So it ended up in a shared win between Kim and Kendall. That film will be released, the Go and More Ultra Film September 5th, 2025. and we'll be launching the Goinmore Ultra of 2026,

which will be hosted again on Bear Ranch in April of 2006. This race went viral for us, in my opinion, because over the years we have chose growth, or excuse me, we have chose durability over growth. So many brands and businesses choose growth over durability. You know, let's make this decision, even though it's not the right brand decision because we're going to

make a few extra million dollars here or we're going to squeeze a few extra points of margin here. We can become a little bit more profitable here. So they make decisions for growth and sacrifice durability. And I believe that the best businesses in brands, and I humbly include BPN in that, continue to grow at a healthy rate,

year over year because we pursue durability over growth. It's a long-term play. We make decisions that set us up for the long-term. And one of the reasons I believe the Go and More Ultra went viral in the way that it did because there have been

many other wild, crazy endurance ultra races around the world. old. There are many last man standing style races or backyard ultras every year. But this one went viral for us because of the way the brand has been positioned over the years. The work that we have put into storytelling and documenting our shift to performance endurance over these last 18 months, everything was kind of primed for us to have this opportunity to experience large scale awareness and exposure from a race like this. It's because we pursued durability overgrowth.

Also this past summer, I launched my book Go One More, which became a New York Times bestseller. Very grateful for your guys support on that book. and the book means a lot to me because it's all about how I said in the beginning, go on more. Those three simple words have evolved for me over time from being just an action to an outcome. We moved into our new HQ, 76,000 square foot facility, all under one roof for the first time in years. We have about 15,000 square feet of office space, a 9,000 square foot gym, over 50,000 square feet of warehouse and fulfillment. It's a beautiful space.

again that I'm so grateful and proud of and that's a result of years and years and years of hard work and maintaining profitability and moving to the space is truly surreal watching it being built was so rewarding you know experiencing the fruits of your labor

come together and not just to watch it happen and experience and have it but to do it with people that you love and care about significantly. And then we launched the future of endurance G1M Sport Plus, which was our most successful product launched to date and now our best selling product. Our best selling product these last two years was G1M Sport,

carbohydrates and electrolytes for endurance athletes, fuel and hydration. And we had a very confident feeling that launching a version of that that was caffeinated with notropics. The first pre-workout for endurance athletes on the market, we had a hypothesis. I had a hypothesis that it was going to do really well for the brand.

And it did. And once people started trying it and experimenting with it and using it for their training, realizing how good of a product, how great of a product it is, it's performed very well for us and very quickly within weeks became our best selling product,

which is huge for us. The summer of 2025 was a big win for the team and felt really good. And even more so, just moving back to Texas after the move to Tennessee and moving back into the CEO role, all of those decisions,

the right and the wrong, being back in the office, leading the team again, made all those decisions worth it. But then a year later, having experienced the summer of 2025 that we did, big wins and success, it's great, but it's even greater, it's even better,

it's even sweeter, when you know it's the result of a lot of hard work from a lot of people who have committed, their professional career to contribute to a mission that was started 13 years prior, and is still living and breathing and impacting. So that leaves us to where we are right now. August 2025, Chapter 8 of Bear Performance, Nutrition.

Thank you guys for following along. Thank you for supporting the brand. Thank you for believing in the mission and the vision. I appreciate you guys. I love you. And as always, go on more.