The Nick Bare Podcast - Archive - If It Matters, You Will Make Time | Nick Bare

Episode Date: July 25, 2022

In this week’s episode, Nick shares with us some thoughts on a concept that has been on his mind recently: If something truly matters to you, you will make time for it. Join Nick as he dives into what it means for something to truly matter to you, and how you can effectively prioritize your life to make time for the things that matter most. More Resources: BPN website: www.bpnsupps.com Nick’s website: www.nickbare.com Nick’s Instagram: www.instagram.com/nickbarefitness Nick’s Youtube: www.youtube.com/user/barelifenutrition Follow Us On Social Media! Instagram: @thebareperformancepodcast Facebook: The Bare Performance Podcast Twitter: @BarePerformPod

Welcome back to another powerful episode of the podcast. I'm your host, Nick Baer, founder and CEO of Bear Performance Nutrition. Every week, we bring you insightful stories, knowledge, and inspiration to help you reach your full potential in life, fitness, and business. If you enjoy the message we're promoting in this podcast, we would greatly appreciate it if you would leave a rating and review on the platform you're listening to. Make sure to subscribe so you don't miss out on future episodes. that embody the go one more mindset. All right, what's going on, guys? Welcome back to another episode of the podcast.

Today's a special day. Today marks one week since my baby girl, Charlie Grace Bear, was born. So July 15th, 2022, at 7.35 a.m. Central Standard Standard Time here in Austin, Texas, Charlie Grace Bear was born. and the last seven days have been difficult, they've been hard, they've been amazing, rewarding. I'm super grateful and appreciative that my daughter is healthy. She's doing really well.

My wife, Steph, she is healthy, doing very well. Charlie Grace was born at six pounds, four ounces. She was a little girl, but she's already surpassed her birth weight. Two days ago, she was six pounds, seven ounces. She's eating like a champ and pooping like a champ. She takes after her dad, I will say that much. But, you know, these last seven days I've learned a lot. And it's been an experience and there's been a few things that have been going through my mind

that I wanted to share in an episode. And this topic alone has been on my mind a lot recently. You know, as I talk about morning run thoughts and the softs, solitude that running provides for me in the morning. And that's why, that's the main reason I run in the morning. It is the solitude. I'll probably be talking about that for the rest of my life. Whether I'm training for a marathon or an ultra or any kind of race,

I'm still going to knock out those morning runs. It might not be every day, but I'm running at least three times a week right now. And it still fills my tank creatively, spiritually, emotionally, mentally, mentally and physically every day that I do it. And the topic that's been in my mind circulating my brain cells for weeks now is if it matters to you, you will make time. If something in your life matters, if it truly matters. And this doesn't mean like your peers, your family, your friends, people on social media

are telling you something matters. No, if it matters to you, like deep down. in your core. You wake up, you think about it. When times get hard, you think about it. When times are easy, you think about it. When you're comfortable, you think about it. When you're laying in bed at night, you think about it.

If it matters to you, you're going to make time for it. Because if you're not willing to make time for it, it really doesn't matter to you. And the reason this has been on my mind, especially the last seven days. And having our first baby girl being born, my first daughter, my first child, time is very very important and I've had to learn how to be effective and efficient with that time and over the next decades that I'm about to live with my children. I'm probably going to learn this lesson over and over and over again even more. I'm going to win through it. I'm going to fail through it. There will be losses and successes and failures and all the good stuff. But what I

hear from a lot of people, and I'll be honest, I've been guilty of it too, not making time for things that really matter. They are typically described or portrayed as excuses. There's a lot of excuses out there. I think we're all guilty, whether it's on a daily basis, a weekly, a monthly, maybe you do it once a year. We make excuses for things that we don't want to make time for. It might be eating healthy.

You know, if it matters to you, you will make time to meal prep and, and, and, you know, and prepare a healthy meal for your body and your family. And if it doesn't matter to you, you're probably going to go through the Taco Bell drive-thru at midnight after taking your kids to some baseball tournament two hours away, and you're going to chow down on some crunch wrap Supremes and gut bomb tacos that are going to leave you on the toilet for four days afterwards. You know, if it matters to you.

you, you're going to make time to prepare that meal or go out of the way to go somewhere and get something healthy to feed yourself and your family. Same with fitness. If fitness is a foundational necessity for you, you will make time to train, run, weight training. If your job matters to you, you will make time to get it done. whether you get it done in the normal eight to four or nine to five or if you have to work throughout the night to get that job done if it matters to you you're going to make time you know there's there's people out there and I see it all the time that are trying to find holes in

every story or every piece of advice someone will say if it matters to you you'll make time to get your your workout in today oh must be nice must be nice to be able to just work out have this and that and this and that and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah and all I'm here is excuses you know like listen to yourself there's excuses all over the place and we're all guilty of why we don't make time for things that are actually important and I see the last 48 hours what happens typically when I record a podcast episode like today is it's something it's been in my mind for quite some time. And as the days go by and I start thinking about it more and more, I go deeper on that topic, that's when I decide, okay, let's record an episode on this because

it's something that's super important to me and I believe is probably important to other people and maybe someone else is experiencing this issue or they're telling themselves this lie or excuse. And that's why they're not achieving their full potential. And on my run this, morning to support today's podcast, I was thinking of the word mediocre, mediocrisy. What is the difference or the opposite of being mediocre or living a mediocre life, having a mediocre performance, doing a mediocre job? The difference in the opposite is greatness. It is remarkable. If someone says you are remarkable at your job, that's a compliment. If someone says, yeah, that guy's pretty mediocre at his job, that's an insult. You know, like, imagine being told

you're mediocre at your job. Imagine your kids telling you you're a mediocre father. Imagine your wife telling you you're a mediocre husband. I mean, that should sting. That should her, that should dig deep, that should cut into your soul to the feeling of you're about to bleed out. I want to chase and achieve greatness. I want to be known as remarkable, a remarkable business owner, a remarkable leader, a remarkable friend, a remarkable husband and father. That's what I work towards. And it matters to me.

And because it matters to me, I'm going to make time for the things that allow me to do that. And then as I was running, I was thinking, well, why, why would someone even want or be satisfied or okay with being mediocre at anything? And I believe it's because people who are okay with being mediocre, and maybe you don't even know you're acting in a mediocre way, because you've never strived for greatness. And greatness comes with growing pains, which we'll talk about here in a little bit. If someone is living a mediocre life, I truly believe it's because they don't believe in themselves of what they can achieve. And there's a fear of commitment towards that process to get better. All that requires work. And for some people, work is scary. I have a story

that I want to tell that this is not an anomaly. This is not a, it's not something that's very far out. It's not an outlier for the way that I've lived my life in the past 10 years. And if I look at my entire life as a whole, you know, I started BPN 10 years ago, and that was in 2012. And the reason I started BPN is because I love the supplement space.

I loved nutrition and training and feeling better and getting better. But what sparked the actual decision to start the company was between my junior and senior year of college, I went to this military assessment camp called LDAQ Leadership Development Assessment Course. And all of the Army ROTC cadets in the nation between their junior and senior year of college had to go to this, I believe it was 30 days, a 30-day leadership development assessment course. And your evaluation at this course, it was in Fort Lewis, Washington, your evaluation at this course determined if you went active duty in the Army, if you're a National Guard, if you were reserves, but more importantly, what your branch was.

There were certain branches that a lot of people wanted to earn. Infantry, aviation, those were like the top two. that I remember when I was at this point in my life. Everyone wanted infantry and aviation. These were so hard to get. In order to get those, you had to have a good GPA in college. You had to have a good PT score, and you had to have a good evaluation at LDAQ.

So like 30 days at LDAQ was, you know, there's a lot riding on this assessment. And I did really well at LDAQ. I assessed very well. And because I assessed well, I was able to go active duty infantry in the army. But more importantly, what happened there was I discovered this new found level of confidence that I've never had in my life up until this point.

Like the military, the army, told me that I was evaluated at a high level. And because I was evaluated at a high level and I had the ability and potential to be a strong leader in the army, that gave me so much confidence knowing that that someone else assessed me on that level and I came back from Fort Lewis, Washington, and I launched BPN literally days later, days later, because I was like, if I can do that, what else can I do?

I believed myself finally. I could believe in what I could accomplish moving forward and I was hungry for it. That's what made me start BPN. But when I was then stationed at Fort Hood, Texas, you know, I got to Texas in 2014, and we would go out on training operations. We would go to the field, quote unquote, field,

sometimes for seven days, 14 days, sometimes for a month. We'd be in the field for a month. And what the field was, was we had training operational settings, in Fort Hood. It might be ranges where we would shoot our Bradley

fighting vehicles or our rifles or machine guns. It might be mount sites where, you know, we're working close quarters combat operations and training. Around Fort Hood and every military installation, you have the field

which is just, it's just training area. Acres and acres and miles and miles of training areas and you spend, like I said, days, weeks, months there. And we would be in the field all the time training. And at this point my life, I was building BPN on the side. I was training a lot. I was spot on my nutrition. I wanted to improve my fitness and learn as much as possible about training and nutrition and continuing my education and supplementation and business and building the company in my free time,

which when I was in the field, there was no free time. And for anyone who is a fitness junkie and loves to work out and loves to train, I'm sure you can relate where, you know, days off can be tough sometimes. Taking a day off from training mentally is difficult. Emotionally, it's difficult. But sometimes say you go on vacation or you go on a trip and you have two, three, four, five, six, seven days away from working out or training. If you don't have access to anything, it starts to wear on you. Where one, you feel like

you're losing all your fitness that you've built over years. Two, you start feeling soft. And my muscle is just wilting away. And I mean, last but not least, you just don't feel your best. You kind of feel like crap when you're not training. If I'm not running or weight training or moving my body or sweating, if I'm not sweating on a daily basis, something feels off. I feel best when I'm sweaty. I love just dripping sweat once a day. That's why I love living in Texas. I can drop.

Man, ounces and ounces of sweat on a five mile early run like I did this morning. And we go to the field for these long extended periods of time, and obviously I wasn't really working out as intense as I would be back when we were in garrison. You know, when we were in the field, we would do push-ups at night, we'd go for runs, we do pull-ups, but it was the best way we could move our body at the time. Sometimes nothing compares to

getting ready for a training session, taking your pre-workout, getting into the zone, spending an hour, hour and a half in the gym or on a run, and just kind of that solitude sinks in. And when you have a really solid training session, the day is just right.

Life is good, right? You're like, it's a high. in the field working out it wasn't like that you know you had 10 minutes hey let's not on as many push-ups as possible in 10 minutes hey we have like a 30-minute lull period before the next training iteration starts let's go for a 1 to 2-mile run something like that so when we'd come back from the field we'd get back and sometimes it was 9 10 11 p.m. Sometimes it was midnight or 1 2 a.m. like we would get back from the field at these odd

random times because there's the transportation back from the field. We have to check in our vehicles. We'd have to check in our weapons. We'd have to get cleared by the first sergeant and the commander and once the first sergeant commander said we could go, went to our

vehicles, drove home. And what most people did is just racked down and slept. But for me, what I did is I went straight to the gym every time. You see, I got to Texas, what I searched for was a home training site. You know, if you've ever moved around, there's a few things you look for right when you get,

you get to that new location. One is probably, and this is in no specific order, so don't judge me. One is probably a grocery store. Okay, where is the closest grocery store to my house? The second is probably a church. Where's the church that I'm going to go to with my family? The third, you're definitely looking for your gym. I mean, some people will even move to certain areas for specific gyms.

That's intense, but people do it. I promise you. And when I got to Fort Hood, Texas, I can tell you one thing. I discovered the beauty of H.E.B. grocery stores. There's nothing like it. I mean, that sold me on Texas right away. I thought I was in heaven. And then I found a gym.

Now the first gym that I found, I actually ended up getting kicked out of because I was filming YouTube videos in that gym without getting permission. So I got kicked out of that gym. It was a sad day. But that sad day, that sour moment turned really sweet because I found a badass gym. That was called the field house in Temple, Texas. And I trained there for two years. two years until we actually built our own gym out of BPNHQ but the field house was great because it was a raw bodybuilding powerlifting gym

and it was open 24-7 so I could get into this gym with my key fob whenever I wanted so whenever we'd come back from the field late at night I would go back to my house I'd grab some pre-workout I would change I would go straight to that gym and I knock out an intense training session because the first thing I wanted to do to do when I got back. It wasn't sleep. It wasn't rest. It wasn't go again through Taco Bell Drive-thru and eat some gut bomb. So I was shit my pants the next four days. While a lot of people did that, it wasn't me because it mattered to me. Training, my fitness, my health, getting back on a routine, a rhythm and feeling good. It mattered to me. So I've made time. Most of the times when

get back from the field, I would go straight to the gym, and then from that workout, I'd go back home, I'd shower, and we'd have to go back into work, you know, for a normal work day. And I would just skip sleep that night. What I'd end up doing is I'd sleep after PT between PT and first call, and then on our lunch break, I would sleep again. So, you know, there's two hours to sleep. But the first thing I would do when getting back from the field is I would go to the gym, because it mattered to me.

Now, people are going to say that's excessive. It's unnecessary. One workout isn't going to change anything. And the thing is, you're right. You are 100% correct. That one workout by no means was going to make me any stronger. It wasn't going to build any more muscle. It probably was actually doing worse effects than good.

But mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, I felt better doing that. I just came out of the field for who knows how long, eating MREs and feeling soft and like crap. And the first thing I wanted to do was lay that foundation. And for me, that foundation is health and fitness. If my health and fitness is taken care of, and I truly believe this, if I prioritize my health and fitness in life, working out, sweating, pushing myself, choosing nutrient dense, healthy foods, taking my supplements. If that's the foundation of everything I do,

it makes everything better for me. I can show up as a better business owner, a better leader, better employee, a better father, a better husband. That's foundation. That's why when I got back from the field, the first thing I would do is I'd make time to train

and get after it and kick ass. And then, from there, let's get back into rhythm and a routine. and that was that was like that for years, to be honest because it mattered to me. It really did. You know, I have stories like this for days

and one to kind of put it in like a business perspective. 2017 for me, and I'll be talking about the year of 2017. I should get a tattooed to my body. The year of 2017 was really important for me because it was the year that I transitioned out of the Army It was the year that I had to support myself with BPN and there's no more Army paycheck coming in anymore. It was the year that we got our first warehouse.

For BPN, it was our first year we did seven figures in business. There was a lot of great things that happened. It was also the hardest year of my entire life up until this point. Why? building a business and bootstrapping in business is freaking tough. Cash flow was a nightmare. We were growing and we had to keep investing all of the cash we had on hand into the business, into the inventory, into the product to continue growing it.

We didn't understand or know about financing inventory or lines of credit or loans at that time. Like me and my brother were just learning as we went bootstrapping as we as we took one day at a time and we thought the only way to grow business was by reinvesting the profits of the organization back into the business. That's all we knew. We didn't know there was any other way to do it.

Now, in retrospect, now, I know a whole lot more effective and efficient ways that I could have grown BPN, but we can't go back nor would I want to go back because I learned so much to that process and journey. But when I got back from San Francisco, South Korea in 2000 and right before 2017. We got back from South Korea on a nine-month rotation.

And at this point of my life, my brother is living in Texas in my house in Temple. He moved down from Pennsylvania after I asked him to quit his job, moved down, told him I couldn't pay him, but we needed to find an HQ and build BPN. And he didn't hesitate at all. And he made that move and did that because he believed in what. we were about to build and what we did build. So this point of my life, what it looks like is I'm in the process of transitioning out of the military.

I'm no longer a platoon leader. And I had two years of amazing infantry platoon leader experience. And then I was moved to the S3 operations office as I was getting ready to transition out of the military. So I'm working in the S3 shop as a lieutenant in the Army. We just signed our lease for our first warehouse, which we really cannot afford, like by any means. But we made it happen some way. My brother moved down from Pennsylvania to Texas.

He was living in my house. He was driving my truck. I couldn't pay him. And we were living off of my last year of Army money. And what was growing the business at the time, we were doing no paid advertising, no digital ads. It was all organic through creating content. And because BPN mattered so much to me for a lot of reasons, one, I believed in the company, I believed in the products, I believed in our mission.

I believed my brother moving from Pennsylvania and quitting his job and believing what we were doing that I was so grateful for that, that I promised him, We would not fail. We would make it happen. And all of this mattered so much to me. I was going to do whatever it took to build the business. I was going to make time. I made time because it mattered to me.

So here's a day in the life of 2017 as I was transitioning out of the Army into full-time entrepreneur. I'd wake up around 4.4.30 a.m. and I'd spend about 30 minutes getting any remaining work done that I didn't from the night prior. Then I'd hop in my truck and I would drive into work. I get to work and we would have at around 6 a.m. a morning meeting with company leadership. This was the platoon leaders, the platoon sergeants, the first sergeant, and our company commander. And after that morning meeting, we'd go for first formation at 6.5.

30 and then from 6.30 to 8, we would have mandatory morning PT sessions. We were the running, doing push-ups, doing ruck marches, doing circuit workouts. We had our PT session for the platoon in the morning. And then from 8 to 9, I would go to my truck real quick. I would eat my breakfast, and I would fall asleep. And I'd sleep in my truck for an hour. And then as soon as 9 hit, I get out of my truck, I'd go into work and I work for the day. Now, during lunch break, I'd do the same thing. I would go to my truck, I'd eat lunch real quick, and I would sleep in my truck for an hour, and I'd come back in.

And then typically, if we weren't in the field, we were off of work by like 4 p.m., 5 p.m., and I'd hop in my truck. I'd drive back to our house, which was in Temple, Texas. I'd pick up my brother. Me and my brother would go to our HQ that we were building out, and we would work on on building out the location. We would fulfill orders. We were filming content.

We were documenting the process. We were building a small gym in the other times. We were working out in our HQ as if you were getting everything ready. And we would spend hours there. We would probably leave the HQ, which was about 45 minutes from my house and temple. we'd probably leave there at 11 p.m. midnight sometimes. We would drive back in a temple. And I would edit the YouTube video that we just filmed from that day

to be released for the next day. And I would sleep hour, two hours at night. I fell asleep so many times my laptop in my lap editing. And I'd wake up to my alarm to go to PT the next morning and do it all over again. And I did this for months. months. Why? Because it mattered to me. And I was going to make time because it mattered. It would have been very easy, very easy and very comfortable to say, I'm going to wait until I'm out of the army to pursue building this business. Well, guess what? If I would have done that, it would have been too

late. I'd have had no money coming in. Me and my brother would have starved to death. And the transition would have been a nightmare. I hear, all the time. I hear this excuse all the time from people. Well, let me wrap this one thing up first, and then I'll start that. I'm going to start eating healthy after this vacation. I'm going to start working out after I get married. I'm going to start this after that. And then when that time comes, it's another stepping stone. You just keep pushing it out further and further and further. And by the time you know it, it's a decade later and you didn't do anything you said you were going to do because you didn't make time for it because the truth is it really didn't matter.

And if it doesn't matter, why are you even talking about it? That was 2017. That was absolute madness. It was crazy. And while I say it was the hardest year of my life, one of the ways I describe it all the time is it felt like Christmas every single morning. Because I was waking up so passionate about what I was doing because it matters. because it mattered to me.

It really did, and it still does. You know, we're seven days into this baby being in our life. And like I said, in the beginning of the episode, it's been challenging. It's been tough. And we've made it work. And with any new life change, with any new routine,

a new job, you have a baby, you get married, you move, whatever it is. Like when life changes, the initial blast is something new is typically perceived

as much more difficult than it really is. Now, by no means, am I saying that having a baby is not difficult. I'm not saying that by any means. But in general, with a lot of things, the initial blast of change typically is scary,

it stings, and it's overwhelming. But as the dust settles, you quickly realize, like, I can handle this. I can do this. It's not as bad as I thought it would be. I just need to make a plan and build a system and some structure and a routine to facilitate what matters. Now, when I look at my life right now,

things that matter to me, my daughter, my wife, my business, my team, my health, my fitness, witness. Those are some of my top priorities of my life right now. And because they all matter to me, I'm going to make time for all of them. Now, it might look different than it did eight days ago, but a clear example was like training in nutrition right now with the newborn. What I'm finding is this first couple of days were very overwhelming. In my head, I was like, how does anyone do anything with a newborn. And then after the dust settled a little bit,

I realized, okay, if you have support, my wife is an amazing support. Steph's an amazing support person in my life. Steph's mom is in town right now helping us out because we don't have a family that lives, you know, in Texas with us. And I have found a routine in the morning that works right now. It might not work tomorrow. It might not work a week from now or a month from now,

but it worked right now. It worked today and it worked the last couple days. What I found with this newborn is she wakes up every two to three hours. And when she wakes up, we change her diaper, we feed her, sometimes we change her diaper again,

and we put her down to sleep. And she'll sleep for two to three hours. She does this through the night and then through the day right now too. So once I discovered this schedule that this baby is on, I thought to myself, well, I can adjust my life right now based off of her schedule. So what happens in the morning, like say that two to three hours ends at 4 a.m. Like this morning, 4 a.m. hit.

And she woke up. She was crying. I went in. I changed her diaper. I handed her off to Steph. Steph fed her. I changed her diaper again. And then I knew I was going to put her down to sleep.

and I had about two to three hours to knock out things that I had to. Didn't matter what time it was. I knew that that's when my opportunity was. I had to seize the opportunity as it presented itself to me. So I grabbed my running clothes. I headed for the garage and I went out for my morning workout. And I knocked out a five-mile run with eight 100-meter sprints in front of the house, came back into the house afterwards,

still asleep. All was good. I was carrying my phone with me the whole time too, just in case there was an issue that Steph had to call me. But I found a routine that worked within days of a big, dramatic life change. And I'm sure people are thinking, why don't you just sleep in? Just sleep in and get sleep. Get sleep now. You're going to need it as a new dad. Don't sacrifice to sleep. Well, no, that's when the time works for me. And because my, health, my fitness, my training, my workouts, sweating matters to me. I will make time when I have to to get it done. Because what happens after doing that early morning workout is I'm able to show up as a

better husband, as a better father, as a better leader, as a better entrepreneur, for BPN. My foundation is set for the day. Now we build off of that. The last thing I want to talk about, this was going through my head this morning specifically, there's a lot that goes to my head on these morning runs. I'll tell you what, it's the best solitude you'll ever have an experience. You just got to start. And it's all about growth.

And I say this thing, I've said this thing for years now that I think just clicks and it works. The concept that growth is a choice. You have to continue to grow, to choose growth. to grow. It's not just going to land in your lap and happen. It won't. Are there outliers and exceptions to the rule? Yes, but they're typically bullshit.

In order to actually grow, you need to choose growth. You have to decide, I want to grow in this period of my life, and I'm going to facilitate, actively facilitate that growth. The reality is that everyone wants to grow. Deep down, do you think this is why, people cannot break through mediocre because people want to grow. People want to get better. However, as soon as you choose growth and growing starts,

you start taking classes or reading books or listening to podcasts, talking to mentors, working out, training, eating healthy, you're educating yourself, all these things that funnel into growth, depending on how you define it. First thing that happens is growing pain start. Think of it as a plant. Like you have this seed, you drop in this rich soil. When you drop that seed, that is growth.

And when you water it, you tip, you know, you tip your little watering jug onto that seed. and you're watering this seed, that is growth. Those are, that is things you are doing to actively stimulate that seed. And when it breaks through the surface of that soil,

that's when growing pains start. And what typically happens when growing pains start is people quit. It is resistance, they are obstacles, it is uncomfortable. And then people look back and they realized, this actually doesn't matter to me anymore. I'm not going to make time for this.

It really doesn't help me. I really don't need this. It doesn't matter. So they quit. If you want to make a life change, if there's something that matters to you and you decide that you're going to make time for things that matter, there's going to be resistance,

there's going to be obstacles, there's going to be sacrifices required, and what that looks like is growing pains. You see, everyone loves the concept of growth, but no one wants the growing pains that come along with it. That's where you grow. That's where it's all at. That is the adaptation.

That is the stimulus. Growing pains are essential. Growth in itself isn't sexy. I don't think it ever will be. Because these growing pains sometimes obscure the beauty of growth until it's actually here. You have to go through the mud to get to the other side. It comes down to, if there's something that matters to you,

you're going to make time for it. There's things that matter to me in my life that I make time for. And if it doesn't really matter or you're not willing to make the time, one, it might not be that important, but two, you're probably most likely lying to yourself and making excuses of why it doesn't matter, why it's not important and why you're not willing to make the time. So with that being said, thanks for tuning in guys, and we'll see you in the next episode. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Bear Performance Podcast.

Please leave a rating and review on the platform you are listening to if you enjoyed it. It helps us to grow and reach more people with the intent of changing lives through the Go One More mindset. If you are ready to take your health and performance to the next level, head over to BPNSups.com to take the first step.