The Nick Bare Podcast - 144: Evolution of the Entrepreneur - Should You Turn Passion Into a Career?

Episode Date: October 20, 2025

In this episode, I walk through the six stages of evolving as an entrepreneur — from a passion for fitness to building a purpose-driven brand. I share how adaptability, leadership, and clarity of purpose fuel long-term success. Whether you're just starting out or scaling your vision, this episode will help you stay rooted in why you began while pushing toward what’s next.CHAPTERS:00:00 Introduction02:38 Seeking Inspiration from the Team04:55 Turning Passion into a Business07:28 The Importance of Adaptability08:42 John Maxwell's Insights on Adaptability12:47 Reflecting on BPN's Evolution16:33 Starting BPN: The Early Days35:39 From Passion to Process40:14 Choosing Your Path: Hands-On or Hands-Off?43:43 Building Momentum: From $2K to $10K47:28 Stage Two: From Passion to Process47:48 Stage Three: Momentum Makes It Real54:06 Stage Four: Survival of the Fittest01:05:41 Stage Five: From Process to People01:13:02 Stage Six: From People to Purpose01:18:23 Full Circle: Passion and PurposeORDER 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

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Today's title, working title, is the evolution of an entrepreneur. And I've broken this up into multiple stages. And how I came to this topic and what I want to share with you guys today is last week, I walked out into our office space, you know, in the new BPNHQ, The way it's set up is the entire facility is 76,000 square feet. 9,000 square feet is dedicated to our gym, our training facility, which we are very grateful and blessed to have. About 15,000 square feet is dedicated to conference rooms, offices, and open concept working spaces.

And then a little over 50,000 square feet is dedicated to conference rooms, offices, offices, and open concept working spaces. and then a little over 50,000 square feet is dedicated to the warehouse and fulfillment. And the way that the office is set up is we have a big open area in the middle. This is where our brand team is located. These are videographers, editors, photographers, designers, everyone involved in the brand function of BPN,

brand being creative. And then on the perimeter of that open concept are conference rooms and private offices. So I have one of those private offices that looks right out into the brand team. And then if you've watched any of the YouTube videos, my one request in this new HQ was to have my own private door from my office into the gym. So if I'm sitting at my desk, I'm looking out towards a brand team, and then to my back is the gym, and where my bike is set up right now for my Ironman training is probably 50 feet, if that, from where I sit and work at my desk during the day. I've had this idea actually recently to get rid of my office and just be a floater throughout the open concept space. and the conference rooms and get rid of my own personal office, I'm still considering that.

But I share all of that to paint a picture. I was sitting at my desk one day, planning for some upcoming podcast episodes. And I thought, instead of me trying to come up with this on my own, let me go ask the brand team what they're interested in. So I walked out there, whole brand team's working on multiple different projects are down. And I asked the team, what would you be interested in learning or hearing about when it comes to building the business, what I've experienced, what I've learned the journey

over these last almost 14 years now? And this is what they came up with. They wanted to know what has been like as a founder, as an entrepreneur, building a business, but more importantly, building a business, building a brand that started with true passion, something that I was so obsessed with and I loved that I decided to turn it into a business. For a lot of those guys and girls who work here at BPN, they have passions. And for many of them, they are pursuing their passion. in what they do with their work. For a lot of the creatives,

they fell in love with design, they fell in love with film, photography, videography, and they started doing that for their work and then eventually started working for BPN. But I know a lot of those guys and girls have thought about,

what if I, at some point in my life, my career, turn this into a business. and if I turn this into a business, will I still be passionate about the thing? You know, growing up, people always told me, don't turn your passion into work because it will end up hating it. And I would say that for some people,

this might be and can be true. For others not, I have a different take on it. And that take is that what starts as a passion sometimes and we turn it into our career, our work, there is an evolution that happens over months and years. And that passion is still the foundation of why we do what we do.

But our work, the process, the systems that we put in place, everything has to evolve to build it and scale it and continue growing it. So you don't have to let your passion die when you turn it into work, but you have to be willing to allow it to evolve. It might look that passion very different 10 years from now. When you turn it into your work, you turn it in your career, it might look significantly different over time.

And that's okay. But it's part of the process. And something that I've been talking about for years now is that I love the process. That's why I do a lot of the things that I do. I fell in love with building a business because of the process and what I've learned through it. One of the reasons that I sign up for these races and these competitions, the reason that I'm in this Iron Man prep right now is not for a bib. It is not for a metal.

it is not for a buckle. It is not for a finish line. It is for what I'm going to learn through the journey, through the process, the breakthrough, the unlock, the transformation that occurs and happens through the process.

I mean, literally, I throw away the medals you get from finishing a race. Now, my medals are never for a second or third. They are participation medals. but I throw those away as well as the bibs and the buckles and all of the things because the memories and the change that happens through the processes is a reward.

That is the result that I'm hoping for as opposed to a finish line. Entrepreneurship is a journey of embracing change. and learning how to adapt and evolve over time. Now, I'm going to read a segment. I've been pulling this up in a lot of the recent podcast episodes. John C. Maxwell, the Maxwell Daily Reader. 365 days of insight to develop the leader within you and influence those around you.

I've enjoyed this, and a lot of the daily, insights in this daily reader come from his book, which I'm rereading again right now, the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership. Highly recommend. Our entire leadership team is reading John Maxwell's, the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership right now. But this is one that I shared with our team last week at our weekly All Hands meeting. It's on page 335. from November 1st, and it is titled Adaptability. I think being adaptable is one of the greatest skills that you can adopt, learn, refine, and implement. But to be adaptable, you have to be willing, is to be open-minded.

So it goes a little something like this. teamwork and personal rigidity just don't mix. If you want to work well with others and be a good team player, you have to be willing to adapt yourself to your team. That could be team, that could be circumstances, that could be situation. Team players who exhibit adaptability have certain characteristics. Adaptable people are, and here are four of the characteristics that I, I really want you to listen to and think on.

Teachability. Diane Nide said, I am willing to put myself through anything. Temporary pain or discomfort means nothing to me as long as I can see that the experience will take me to a new level. I am interested in the unknown, and the only path to the unknown is through breaking barriers. Adaptable people always place a high,

high priority on breaking new ground. They are highly teachable. To be adaptable, you have to be highly teachable. You have to be open to being taught. You have to want to learn. The second characteristic is emotionally secure. People who are not emotionally secure see almost everything as a challenge or a threat. They meet with rigidity or suspicion the addition of another talented person to the team, an alteration in their position or title, or a change in the way things are done. But secure people aren't made nervous by change itself. They evaluate a new situation or a change in their responsibilities based on its merit.

People who are emotionally insecure, I believe are very dangerous people because you can't predict their behaviors. very dangerous. People who view everything as a challenge or a threat are inadaptable. And again, they are very hard to work with in dangerous people. The third characteristic is creative. When difficult times come, creative people find a way. Creativity fosters adaptability. If there is a will, there is a way. And I'll talk about kind of all of these characteristics throughout this episode. And the fourth characteristic is service-minded.

People who are focused on themselves are less likely to make changes for the team than people focused on serving others. If your goal is to serve the team, adapting to accomplish that goal isn't difficult. The first key to being a team player is being willing to adapt yourself to the team. not an expectation that the team will adapt to you. Ooh, that's good. You have to be willing to adapt to the team or the circumstance or your situation and not expecting the team, the circumstance, or the situation to adapt to you.

It ends with the question, are you willing to adapt to your team? Now, I'll add in situation or circumstance, in order to succeed. You got to be adaptable. Entrepreneurship is all about learning, evolving, adapting. That is what I've learned over these last, like I've said, almost 14 years now. And in the same way that my personal entrepreneurial journey has evolved over the years, so as BPN.

If we look back at 2012, which I'm about to get into, when I first started the business. The consumer that we were pursuing, our brand, our products, everything about the business is very different than compared to where we are today. The consumer we're pursuing, the industries we're focused in,

the sports were creating, content around the consumer, the individual. And that's been done based off of adapting to the market and what we personally enjoy and like and the brand maturing and growing and listening to our customers and taking feedback and refining, constantly refining over the years. So if you, you know, just. showed someone, if someone was sitting across me right now, and I showed them BPN in 2012 compared to BPN in 2025,

you probably wouldn't be able to tell they were the same brand. We had different logos, we had different colors, we had different fonts. I actually found this website platform a few years ago where you could go back in time on the internet and look at what your website looked like in previous years. So it was his website. I put in

Bearperformance Nutrition.com and I put in the date and I could see what our website looked like in 2012 when we launched. I could see what our website looked like in 2014, 2016,

2018, 2012, and I had so much fun doing that looking back at the evolution of the brand over time. In 2012, when we launched,

the entire site was black. It was built on a server that my friend managed in college. All the fonts were gray and neon green. The logos were, like the only way to describe it, it looked like that clothing brand affliction. It was like wings and just all these patterns and feathers. and we had no clue. I had no clue what I was doing.

But it's great to go back and look at what you were previously doing compared to what you're doing now to watch the growth, watch the maturity, watch the evolution, watch the adaptability. So if you want to be an entrepreneur or honestly, if you want to be successful with anything, anything, you have to be willing to be willing to be, adaptable. You have to. There's no other option. You have to be teachable. You have to have emotional security. You have to be creative. You have to be service-minded. So like I said, I'm going to break this down into multiple stages to organize this evolution, which I think can be largely applicable to many people starting a brand or a business. Stage one, it's called, it all started with a passion.

This is from 2012, in my case. Somebody paint you a picture, 2012. Many of you probably know this story, but I believe it sets the foundation of where we started. And if you're only familiar with the brand BPN today or in the last couple years, you might be surprised

of how and where we got started in 2012. So 2012, I was 22 years old. I was a junior in college at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. I was studying nutrition and I was on an Army ROTC scholarship. So I knew that upon graduation,

I was going to be going directly into the military. I ended up going into the Army as an active duty infantry officer. But when I got to college, and this was 2009, I discovered the bodybuilding space. And that was YouTube Fitness. I mean, YouTube Fitness back then was brand new. There were a few creators who were vlogging and documenting their life and their training, their food, and their nutrition, very few creators online.

But YouTube Fitness was just getting started. Nowhere close to where it is today. And I was watching all these creators. Bodybuilding.com was a huge platform and resource. There were forums on bodybuilding.com. And I would read all these forums. And these forums would be people talking about different training methods and training programs, different diets,

what's worked for them, what hasn't. different supplements. There'd be like supplement logs where brands or bodybuilding.com would send people these supplements and they would just document the day-to-day experience with these supplements. I spent a lot of time on the bodybuilding.com forums

and just consuming the content that was on this website. Also at the time I recently discovered the Arnold Fitness Expo that happened in Columbus, Ohio, once a year. So the Arnold Fitness Expo was his bodybuilding competition, but there was also this massive expo that was multiple days

where brands would set up booths and you would go toward the expo and you'd discover new brands and you'd walk around with a bag and after three days of being there, that bag would be full of hundreds of samples of different products. Protein powders and pre-workouts

and amino acids and creatine and bars and all this different stuff. And you'd have a new pre-workout to try for like three months, a new different pre-workout every day. And I would go to the Arnold Fitness Expo every year. And in college, I became obsessed with not just the industry of weight training, bodybuilding, and lifting weights and getting bigger. and supplements,

became obsessed with the supplement space and industry. But I fell in love. I had a passion for the lifestyle. You know, the lifestyle of waking up with the purpose of eating, lifting, sleeping, just every part of my day,

all 24 hours was about the, the bodybuilding lifestyle, the strength, you know, gym rat lifestyle. I was prepping all my foods for the first time ever. I was living off of chicken, rice, and broccoli. Every three hours, I was consuming my meal. I'd carry my water jug to all my classes so I could consume a gallon of water a day. I'd throw my branched chain amino acids in that jug. I'd watch

you know, bodybuilding motivational videos before going to the gym. I would skip class my freshman and sophomore year all the time to go to the gym. You know, for me, the gym was priority. And then I was trying to find out

how I work all these other parts of my life around the gym. If I didn't get to this, the gym for a day, that ruined my day. If I didn't hit my meals, my macros, with my one cheat meal a week, that would throw off my day. I was obsessed with the lifestyle. I was living it. I mean, I can picture right now sitting in my college apartment, my junior year, it was this probably 1,100 square foot apartment above a bar on Philadelphia Street. of Indiana, Pennsylvania.

And I had five roommates. And this place was a mess. And I had this small, small bedroom with this one little window. And I would, you know, time up my pre-workout meal two hours before a workout, which back then it was pretty similar to what it is now. It's protein powder, oats. I used to add peanut butter and dried cranberries and almonds and apple sauce to it. I had this pre-workout concoction that was super dense in carbohydrates and fats and protein.

It was very calorically dense. I would consume that meal. I'd let it digest, go to class or run an errand. and then I'd come back to my apartment, open up my laptop. I'd watch on YouTube bodybuilding and motivational videos. Typically, it was either Ronnie Coleman or Jay Cutler. And then I'd start sipping on my pre-workout.

And as I'm watching this video, sipping in my pre-workout, I could feel the effects of the beta aline or my skin would start to tingle. The caffeine and the nootropics would kick in. I'd dial in and focus. And then I'd go to the gym, and I'd spend two hours there. And then it was my post to workout meal afterwards.

And I just became obsessed with the lifestyle. It was the first time in my life that I discovered this passion. And I was on fire. On fire. If you ever experienced something like that around a passion, I hope everyone has at some point. the only way to describe it is like it just lights you up inside and out. And then between my junior and senior year of college, as I'm preparing to graduate and go to the Army,

I've shared this part of my story many times before, but we were provided the opportunity to take out a loan with the military associated bank USAA. And it could be up to $25,000. And all of my peers were taking out this loan and they were going on vacations, they were buying engagement rings, they were getting new cars. Because the bank USAA knew that we were about to go in the military. We were about to start making pretty good money. It was secure. We weren't going to have the opportunity to spend much of it.

So they could give us this loan at a super low interest rate with no payments for the first 18 months. And I saw this as my goal. golden ticket to start BPN. So I applied for the loan. I got approved for $20,000, which I remember when that money was wired into my account. I thought I was the richest man on earth, you know, going from seeing $50, $100, sometimes negative $100 in your account in college to then seeing 20,000 in your bank account. I mean, I didn't have a care in the world. I was like, I'm set. I can run this business forever off $20,000. Little did I know how expensive it was to start a business and how fast that money would go. So I had my formula that I wanted to

turn into a product, which was our first pre-workout, our first product, flight, found a manufacturer. They were based down to California, placed a production order for 500 units of this pre-workout. It was shipped to my house, my parents' house. I drove from my college department to my parents' house, picked it up, went back to college, and started operating the business. To get to that point, I was already mixing up my own pre-workout supplements in my dorm room. I'd buy ingredients in bulk. I'd weigh them out on a food scale.

I'd weigh out 5 grams of creatine, 200 milligrams of caffeine, 3 to 4 grams of beta alenine, 4 to 6 grams of citraline, tyrosine. I was mixing up my own pre-workout supplement before this because I had such a passion around supplement science in nutrition and performance and bodybuilding. Like I said, the lifestyle. And then I turned it into my work, my potential career, alongside of my job as an active duty

infantry officer. Now, I knew, I knew that I wasn't going to be able to dedicate all my time to building this business. Because a year after starting BPN, I graduated from college. I knew I was going directly into the Army. I was going to have a year of training at Fort Benning, Georgia, and then arrive at my first duty assignment, which ended up being Fort Hood, Texas.

So building BPN was going to be after, or going to have to be something that did in my free time, alongside of. And one of the questions I get to this day from people is, should you turn your passion into your profession? Why or why not? do I regret turning my passion into my work. And you have to be very honest with yourself.

And you can't try to convince yourself that you want to do something that you really might not want to. For example, if someone told you, hey, before you start this business, I know you're, let's, let's, for example, say that we're back in 2012. and I'm living this lifestyle. I'm watching these bodybuilding motivational videos. I'm skipping class to go to the gym,

eating every three hours, chicken, rice, broccoli, all of the things. Just living the life, living the gym rat life. And I make the decision to turn it into a business, my work, my future career. And if a mentor would have pulled me aside and said, I see what you're doing, but let me just ask you a question.

I see you have this passion around the lifestyle and you are lit up with what you are doing, what you're learning, how you're training, how you're eating. But I want to just give you a piece of advice. If you turn this into your work right now, will you be okay in two years, three years, five years, ten years, that by making this decision to turn your passion into your work, 10 years from now,

you might not be able to be living the lifestyle that you live now because the work has evolved and transformed into something different. Your passion is now your livelihood. Do you have a different relationship with that passion? And if someone would have approached me back then, I would have said,

yeah, no, it's all good. I'll figure this out. I'm not thinking two, three, five, ten years in the future. And I think that requires a level of self-awareness that many of us aren't willing to explore or really think about. Because that's the reality of it.

For many people who start a business or pursue a career as a whole, if you're fortunate enough, you're pursuing that career, you're starting that business because you love something about it, whether that's being a doctor or a lawyer, or you build homes,

or you run sales training, whatever it is, chances are you're pursuing that as a career because you found something you'd love at some point. But will you be okay with turning what you love into your work? or there's a chance that it's not your passion anymore because you're not doing it just because you get the choice to, but because you have to.

That's a really hard question to have to ask yourself. And that's honestly what has sparked this entire podcast in discussion. Because what I found is the passion doesn't have to die. But it's probably going to, in 99% of the cases going to evolve and you have to be okay and willing to adapt

with that evolution to keep the passion burning hot. The passion is going to look different. I mean, I'm not living the bodybuilding lifestyle in 2025. I'm not skipping work

and I'm not skipping nights out with my family to go to the gym. And I'm not carrying a gallon jug around every day. And I'm not eating chicken rice and broccoli every three hours. I'm not watching bodybuilding YouTube videos. And I'm not on these bodybuilding.com forums anymore. I'm grateful that my passion that started in 2012 is still similar.

And it is the foundation for what I'm doing today. But there has been a huge evolution. in the process. As I was thinking about this, I couldn't help but think back to a few months ago, maybe over a year ago now, I had Jordan's site on the podcast.

And I love Jordan. I love what he does in the health and fitness performance space. And he walked into our HQ, which was our old HQ, our old office building at the time before he moved into this new one. And he was looking around and he was like,

dude, this is amazing. I love this. I'm so proud of you. But I would never want this for myself. He's like, I don't want to have to manage all of these people and have the responsibility. And I don't want my passion to turn into this thing that I have to manage and adapt to and evolve. I want to keep the thing that I'm doing that I'm so passionate about. at the scale it is right now

so I can manage that and I still love it forever. And I respected that perspective and that opinion and that he shared that with me because we all get the choice to turn our passions

into what they become. Do we keep them at the scale? And I don't want to say small, but do we keep them at the scale that is manageable and familiar and comfortable or do we take the chance and turn that passion into something of much larger scale

with the chances that the passion, which is so fiery hot, might burn out because you're not able to dedicate your time to the actual passion anymore because of what is required through the process. So that's stage one. I think whether you're an entrepreneur or you're pursuing a career, in many cases, not all cases,

but many cases, it starts with a passion. Now, stage two is titled From Passion to Process. And I would say that this started in 2016, four years after starting the business. And the first couple of years of my entrepreneurial journey, or interesting because, as I mentioned, I started BPM in 2012. I graduated college in 2013. Commissioned in the U.S. Army went right to Fort Bedding, Georgia for a year of training. Then from Fort Benning, Georgia to Fort Hood, Texas, took over a platoon as an infantry

platoon leader, which was a very demanding and full job. So I was building the business in my free time. before work, after work, and this was primarily through social media and documenting my journey of building BPN and my training, nutrition, and experience with the military. And then when I got stationed in South Korea for my nine-month training rotation in 2016, this is where stage two really started to evolve. And this is where I learned that your profession, what you turn into work,

might start stealing time away from what was once your passion. Because that passion now turns into a process. And I realized that in the first three, almost four years of starting BPN, things weren't changing. I wasn't willing to adapt. I didn't prioritize the process because I was so obsessed with the passion that I was dedicating my time, my energy, my resources to the passion as opposed to the process of building the business.

and then when that changed and I made the decision, I'm going to dedicate now my time, energy, and resources into building the business, there was a cost to that. And that cost was that I couldn't spend as much time living the lifestyle of what I was once so passionate about. But what I discovered through this is that that passion for the lifestyle

that passion for the gym, that passion for the meals every three hours, that passion for the bodybuilding motivational videos, all of those things. It didn't die. It just started to expand and evolve. And it evolved into falling in love with the process of building the business,

which I didn't think that I was going to love initially. to be honest, I thought the business was going to build itself, which I was so poorly mistaken. And this might be a temporary or permanent experience. What I mean by that is for an entrepreneurial journey, there's so many different ways to build a business. One of my favorite quotes is, the concepts are few, but the methods are many. there are many different methods to build a business. And from a founder, you know,

I've had friends who have founded businesses and some have taken one route, some have taken the other route. But for many of the friends and founders who have started businesses, it started in stage one. It was this passion that was fiery hot.

And then you get to a point where you realize that the process is more, demanding and it's pulling me out of what I'm so passionate about. So I've had a friend founders who go Route 1, which is they double down on being the operator of that business. They get into the weeds. They embrace the process and learn how to scale the business.

That's Route 1. Route 2 is that they want to be completely hands off and they go either sell that business or they hire people or delegate all the responsibilities of operating and building the business. So they can just keep living the lifestyle and someone else builds the business alongside of them. There's not a right or wrong answer. There's just two different routes. And that's why I say that feeling of the passion pulling you more towards the process, that can either be temporary or permanent.

It's temporary if you offload and delegate all the business responsibilities to someone else. It's permanent if you make the decision to operate the business and be involved in the process. So this is a pivotal point, a crucial point for many founders and entrepreneurs. How involved do you want to be in the day-to-day operations of the business, which might pull you away from the reason you started it in the first place. But in my case, I fell in love with the process. I fell in love with operating the business. I fell in love with learning how to tell stories and build brand and code websites.

I fell in love more with that than I was in love with the bodybuilding lifestyle that I embraced in 2012 when I first started. BPN. In 2016, I embraced the process and I fell in love with it. The passion had evolved. Like I said, it went from passion to process. So here I am, 2016, stationed Camp Casey, South Korea, and I'm sitting in my barracks from one night and I'm just thinking this was right when I got there. I knew I was going to be transitioning out of the military the following year.

2017, I had a four-year active duty army contract. And I had a decision to make. If I was going to transition out of the military in one year, BPN was not large enough at the time for me to live off of. I couldn't sustain a living off of it. We were generating $2,000 a month in revenue at the beginning of $2,000. So I had a choice as I was sitting in that barracks room on my bed in South Korea in 2016. Do I double down in the process and turn this business into something that will be something? Or do I let it die and then post-Army career and exit go find a new job?

just find something different and something new. And I decided to double down on BPN. And the goal was by the time I left South Korea on this nine-month training rotation, my goal was to go from doing $2,000 a month in revenue to $10,000 a month in revenue. And we did that within the first 90 days. And I fell in love with that process in the first 90 days. some of the things I did was

dedicate a lot of time to learning how to tell stories and document my life on YouTube. And I learned this primarily from watching Casey Nice stat YouTube videos. Every night I'd sit in my barracks room and for the few people

who'd placed orders that day I would write handwritten thank you notes in my barracks room I'd put their name there, what they ordered, I'd thank them, I'd add a little note there. I'd lick the seal,

I'd put it in an envelope, put a few stamps on it, and then drop it off the next morning and send those back to the States or from wherever they ordered. But I'd do that every night, for months, every order that was placed.

I orders with my manufacturing team, and we got samples made. and I got those samples shipped me in South Korea, and then I would ask people online who wants a free sample. Hundreds of people would send me emails asking for free samples. So at night, again, I'd package up these free samples, which were just individual trial sizes of our pre-recount flight. I'd put it in an envelope.

I'd lick the seal, put a few stamps on it. drop it off at the post office the next morning on post. And it would take sometimes weeks for these people to receive their thank you notes or their samples. But I was doing this every night. And I was learning how to test different functions and features and appearances on our website. I taught myself how to code parts of the website. I just realized that if I,

wanted this to become something, I had to take the action and adapt to what was required to continue building this business into something that could be of worth some value, and at a bare minimum, I could sustain a living off of. And that's what happened in the first 90 days, because I fell in love. with the process, truly. I mean, I'd be leaving work in the evenings and going back to my barracks room, and I could feel this fire inside of me. I mean, I couldn't get to my barracks room fast enough.

Throw my shoes off, jump onto my bed, pull my laptop out, start working on the website, responding to customer service emails, editing a YouTube video, I mean, just like a fire lit up inside me, which was so different from the fire that initially kickstarted the idea of BPN in 2012. So stage two is from passion to process. That passion started to evolve from the lifestyle, the idea, the concepts,

to the process of building something. Stage three, I have titled as Momentum makes it real. And this would be the back half of 2016 but especially going into 2017. Before we started gaining momentum,

I say we, it was really just me until my brother Preston and Joe joined me late 2016 going into 2017. When I didn't have any momentum from 2012, to early 2016, this first four years, the stakes were low.

There wasn't really much or anything to lose. And when you don't have much to lose, it doesn't necessarily feel real. You know, I was fortunate in a sense that I was in the Army full time. I was getting paid, a good salary from the military. And I was building the business on the side with my free time. There wasn't much free time, but the little free time I had, I was building VPN. So I didn't need VPN to succeed or crush it. I didn't require momentum in this first four years.

Really, this first four years allowed me to test and experiment and just try different things. See what was resonating with people. See what worked. really just be a student. The first four years of my entrepreneurial journey was being a student in preparation for the transition

on the military military 2017. But once we finally started gaining momentum, you know, when we went from doing $2,000 a month in revenue to $10,000 a month in revenue, that momentum made it real

because there was then something to lose. That got me excited. but there was also a level of pressure that's put on you then. Your back is pressed up against the wall. And there's this responsibility to maintain. You don't want to lose the momentum once you experience it, once you gain it. And when I think about it, in that realization, for almost the last 10 years now, it has been a fight to maintain the momentum.

That's what makes this entrepreneurial journey so exciting. That's what makes it go so fast. It's also what makes it so scary and intimidating and stressful. Is that once you have that momentum, which makes it all real, it is now something. It is a thing. You then have to maintain. and gain more momentum.

The stakes are higher. The risks are larger, but there's also bigger risks. Now, 2017 was the first year that we generated seven figures in revenue. That was organically. That was without paid advertising. But one of the reasons that that momentum made it so real is because the responsibility was now greater. Not just for myself.

Part of it was for myself. You know, I transitioned out of the military, so I didn't have that steady military salary any longer. But during those two years, 2016, 2017, we as a business made some big moves. One of those was my brother Preston quit his job in Pennsylvania, moved down to Texas. I told him I couldn't pay him. And he said, okay, that's fine. And then our friend Joe picked up and left Pennsylvania and moved down to Texas and joined us. So it was me. me, Preston, and Joe, living in a house together as I was transitioning out of the military, building BPN.

We had this momentum, and I felt this responsibility for those two guys. That responsibility was heavy. And I felt it every single day. And I could not let my foot off the gas because it wasn't just me anymore. It was those guys. And I was responsible for them. and then we signed our first warehouse lease, which put more pressure on us.

And what I've learned through that process is sometimes the best way to maintain and gain momentum is to find ways and opportunities to put pressure on yourself. Now, if I think back to it, if I wasn't going to transition out of the military, I probably wouldn't have had the pressure on me to fight to survive.

If Preston and Joe didn't move from Pennsylvania to Texas to work alongside of me for free until I could pay them, I don't know if I would have had that pressure to fight to survive. Momentum makes it real. And sometimes you have to find ways to keep pressure on you so you can feel the pressure to maintain that momentum. But that's stage three. Momentum.

Once you get it, once you experience it, you then fight to keep it. Stage four, survival of the fittest. This was roughly 2018 and 2019, and we were scaling at a healthy rate, but we were running very, very low on cash. None of us, me, Preston and Joe, had finance or accounting backgrounds.

We thought and knew that the health of our company was based off of what we had in the business bank account. If the business bank account was enough to just get by, if it was positive, we were good for at least another day. But there were many days and many weeks where we ran very low on cash. because we didn't have cash injections in the business. I didn't know or understand how to utilize lines of credit.

I didn't know how to utilize different forms of investment or loans or terms or terms for that matter. you know, one of the reasons that cash got so tight is we didn't have terms with our manufacturing partners. So when we placed a production order, which we had 12-week lead times, we had to put 50% of the money down. And then once that order was completed and shipped to us, we'd have to pay off the remainder and remaining 50%. So we were prepaying all of our inventory before receiving it, which ties up a lot of your cash in inventory. A lot of our cash was sitting on shelves in our warehouse. So between money tied up in inventory on our shelves,

money tied up in inventory through production orders with our manufacturers, our warehouse lease, which we signed one to two years prior. I mean, we were tight on. cash for many days, many weeks, many months. And this is the phase and stage of survival that many entrepreneurs and business owners and founders go through. You learn a lot through these years.

And for some, these years last a whole lot longer than others. You know, we fortunately operated. as lean and resourceful as possible for as long as possible to maintain profitability and to get to a point where we had healthy cash flows and that we weren't just trying to survive every day, but we started to eventually thrive. I mean, there were many nights in 2018 and 2019 that I would lay in bed trying to figure out how we were going to make it one more week. Just stressed. beyond all belief.

And what happens to a lot of people in this stage, survival of the fittest, is that they end up making decisions that are driven through and by emotions as opposed to being patient and being rational. And this almost happened to us once. So here's the story. This was probably 2019,

maybe 2018. and we were tight on cash and our manufacturers knew it. And at a time, one of our manufacturing partners offered us up this solution and it was to invest into BPN. So their proposal was that they would inject $100,000 into our business. But with that $100,000 cash injection, they would own $10,000. of the company at a one million dollar valuation. And at the time, that sounded great.

Someone is telling me this business is worth a million dollars. And they're going to give us $100,000, which would save us for the next couple months, we can figure out how to get by, but they want 10% of the business. if I would have accepted that offer out of emotion, that would have been one of the biggest mistakes in my entrepreneurial career ever. 10% of the business at a $1 million valuation. I'm so glad we didn't do that.

I'm so glad I was patient and we just, we just did what we had to do to get by and dig out of that hole because that would have been a horrible decision. And I see a lot of founders,

I see a lot of business owners falling victim to this. They get themselves to a really tough spot and someone swoops in, whether that's an investor or a friend or a bank, and they promise to save you. But that that saving

comes with the cost and that is sometimes giving up equity in your organization in many cases for a lot of founders way too much equity just because they're afraid of what it's going to take

to maintain that survival. Luckily, we didn't take that deal and me, Preston, and Joe really just applied the whatever it takes mindset. I mean, a few of the things that we did in those years that I have just like such great memories about. Remember our early Black Friday sales in those years?

And it'd be the three of us back in the warehouse for two weeks. And we'd be at the warehouse in the office for 24 hours. 24 hours for one to two weeks. And we'd take shifts and we'd sleep in the office and we get food delivered. and we'd live off of energy drinks and caffeine and as much fun as it was, it was absolutely exhausting. But we didn't have the resources,

we didn't have the ability to hire more people. So the three of us had to do it ourselves. We made our Black Friday and Fourth of July sales look very different now than they did back then. And this past July for our summer sale, we brought in some temporary staff, to help us fulfill all the orders. We got 35,000 orders out within seven days. And I believe we had with temporary staff 24 people packing orders around the clock, much different operational strategies

now compared to back then. I remember this one time where we were really tight on cash and we had to make a payment for our rent the following week, and I knew we weren't going to have the money. So I went on social media, and we sent on an email, and we said that everyone who places an order in the next 24 hours will get a call from us personally. And thousands of orders rolled in. And for weeks, we were calling people around the clock,

thanking them for their order. Some people we talked to for 60 seconds, some people we talked to for 25 minutes, but we did that for an extended period of time. But that uptick in sales generated enough revenue for us to pay the rent the next week. And it saved us. And I'll never forget when we first launched weight protein. And I was so impatient to launch the protein.

And we were building all this hype and this buzz about our weight protein launch. Before that, we only had a few other products. It was flight. Our branch chain amino acid product, creatine, and our pump enhancer back then, which was endopump. And we built a lot of hype and buzz

around this weight protein launch. And we were talking to our manufacturer and it was supposed to arrive to us on a Monday. Monday goes, doesn't arrive. It's supposed to arrive Tuesday. Tuesday arrives. no protein. Wednesday,

same thing. And they were just waiting for a truck to pick up the protein from the manufacturing facility and then bring it to us in Texas. And I became impatient

and I just assumed that it would arrive Thursday. So we launched the product on our website and the manufacturer still didn't ship the product. So then, And me, Preston, and Joe are freaking out because we sold all of this protein, but we still didn't have the product. So we went and we rented a U-Haul and we drove to the facility and we picked up the product and we drove it back to our warehouse and we emptied it off the truck and fulfilled all of the orders.

And all that to say, stage four, survival of fittest, you just do whatever it takes. you get resourceful, you get creative, you adapt. You adapt to survive. This is the stage where many people quit and they give up and it gets too hard. This is the stage of testing true endurance.

Who is going to persevere to make this work? Who is going to persevere to see what's on the other side. Because if you quit too early, you'll never know what's on the other side. Stage four, survival of the fittest, that is the test.

Now, stage five is from process to people. And for me, this was in 2020 and 2021. And a note I have here is, if you decided to forego delegating your entire business operations to someone else in stage two, this is the stage when you learn how to delegate, lead, and empower individuals to scale.

Scale, growth, and the health of an organization is dependent on the leadership of the organization. And this is where it is more important than ever before to have the right people in the right seats. It requires recruiting talent while also empowering and developing individual teams. This is a stage where leadership separates the highly successful from everyone else.

Leadership is the lid to the success of the organization. And I believe that those first couple hires that you make are the most important hires you're going to make. Because those first few hires you make, they set the tone. They carry and embody and live the core values and purpose of the organization. They guide the vision alongside of the founder.

Some of those first couple hires that we made, those people are still working at BPN. Joe, Preston, John, Jordan, Kirm, Trey. Those people, ride or die, loyal, hardworking, committed individuals. Those were some of the first employees at BPN. They are still here today building and facilitating growth in scale. Vision through this entire process. is absolutely essential.

People can execute, people can be disciplined, people can be committed, but if people don't know what the vision is, if people don't know where you want to go, where you're heading, and why, it's almost impossible for people to execute.

One of the things I have noted here, on the importance of vision, alongside people, It's Proverbs chapter 29, verse 18, where there is no vision, the people perish. Now, I share that, and I have to say I don't want to act like or assume that God within the context of the Bible is talking about our personal dreams or goals. because without God's revealed truth or moral direction, people lose self-control, discipline, and moral order. Where there is no vision that people perish,

this doesn't mean personal dreams or goals, but rather God's revealed truth and direction for his people. I'll be very clear with that. But I believe that while God is not talking about personal goals or dreams in this context of the written scripture, we can apply this to our everyday life. Where there is no vision, the people perish. What I've learned in stage five

is that when you transition from the process and the processes and the SOPs that are required to scale and grow the business, those processes are critical and they get you to an additional stage and growth lever and opportunities. But what holds so many businesses back is not the processes, but it's the people. You need the right people, people who are aligned with the core values of the organization, who believe in the organization, who want to win. but having the right people in the right seats,

in the right roles. If you have the right people in the team, in the right roles, you can truly maximize success and scale and experience exponential growth. But those people also need vision. And that vision comes from leadership,

in most cases, the founder. Stage five, for me was where I really started to understand and realize that what scales and grows a business at the foundation, you have to have great products. You have to have quality product or service. And great branding helps as well. And a mission that connects with individual on a very intimate level. But without the right people

in the right seats of your organization, you will be held back significantly. I believe in people. And I also believe that when there is no vision, that people perish. Stage 5, 2020, 2021, was the moment that I really embraced and leaned into

becoming the leader that the business needed and required me to be. It's not just operating and managing and implementing process anymore. It's leading people, putting people first. If put the people first, everything else falls into place. In stage six, this brings it full circle. It's from passion to process. to people, to purpose. This ultimately is wisdom.

It's not just knowing what you have to do, but it's understanding what you have to do and why. And I'd say for me, in this case, 2004, 2025. In the last two years, I've gotten to stage six. And in the building process over these last 14 years, so much of it feels messy. You know, it's reactive.

You're adapting in real time and you're making decisions at the best of your ability. And you're pivoting here and you're pivoting there. And you're just trying to figure it out. Some days you're trying to figure out how to reach more customers. Some days you're trying to figure out what products need to be developed. to enter into new markets or categories or interests. Some days you're trying to figure out how to make a few extra bucks so you can pay rent the next week.

There are so many challenges that are sometimes simple, but also sometimes very complex over the journey of being an entrepreneur and taking what was once just a love for something. a passion and then turning it into something. And then once you make that decision, that conscious decision and commitment, I mean, you hop on this roller coaster and it's hold on for dear life

because this journey is about to get wild and crazy and it's just going to get faster and faster and faster. It starts with passion. It evolves to process, then evolves to the people, and then ultimately evolves to the purpose. Why you're doing what you're doing, which goes back to that first decision in 2012.

Why did I decide to start BPN? Why sports nutrition products? And if you think about it, today we're still doing it for the same purpose. It is to help people. Is it to serve others? for a lifestyle that we believe in, for a lifestyle that we live, although it looks a little bit different now than it did back then,

the purpose is very similar, but we've only been able to get here because we have as a team been open to the evolution. We've been adaptable. We've been teachable. we've been emotionally secure, creative, and service-minded. And that requires humility. That requires confidence, which is built over time.

It requires the ability to make decisions that aren't rooted in emotions, but are rational and patient. It requires you to play the long game, making the decision that is hard, but right, over and over and over again. They have said before, you build a brand in drops and you lose it in buckets. True purpose, which is wisdom. It's all about impact. It's all about legacy.

And it's about serving people. It's more than hitting revenue targets. It's more than making a profit. It's more than any financial milestone. There's a greater purpose behind it. If I look back at that 22-year-old kid in Western Pennsylvania, sitting in his apartment, mixing up his own pre-workout supplements because he was so lit on fire because of the lifestyle that he was living and found and embraced, that 22-year-old kid wasn't doing it because he thought he could make a

extra buck or because he wanted this company to be valued at a certain multiple one day or any of those things it was because of a passion impact legacy in serving people so these six stages they're not linear but it is a full circle stage which brings us right back to where we got started. Passion and purpose. Just a little bit wiser. So, hope you guys enjoyed this episode, the evolution of an entrepreneur. If you have a passion and you want to turn it into something, that passion doesn't have to die along the way, but it's definitely going to evolve. So we'll see you guys in the next episode. Thank you.