The Nick Bare Podcast - Archive - Natasha Van Der Merwe | Impacting Lives & Building Community By Coaching Triathlons

Episode Date: July 4, 2022

Natasha Van Der Merwe is an endurance coach, long time professional triathlete and the Director of Team Programs for Bicycle World. Since 2009, Natasha has coached 100's of athletes, including our host Nick Bare, both online and in person covering all aspects of the sport from training guidance and technique on the swim, bike, and run and ensuring all athletes are fueled for training and race day demands. In this episode, Natasha joins us for the second time on the show to talk with Nick about how her business has grown, and how it has given her the unique opportunity to impact the lives of her athletes, and build community that goes beyond the world of triathlons. 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

In this episode of the Bear Performance Podcast, I don't know everything. And with that, how can I be better? And so every time I'm doing something, like I'm trying to manage 13 staff, I'm like, I know I don't have everything together yet. I'm learning as I do it. And I'm going to continue to fight to be better,

to be a better boss, to be better at running this company. And so through that, I feel like it elevates what is possible for me. Whereas if I came in and said, I know how to do everything, being like, you do it this way, this way, this way, this way. Like, I'm like, no, like, this is the way we're doing it now.

But if we can do this better, we're going to do it better. So just hang in there with me and know that this is just a growth process at all times. And through that, we're going to win. 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 she subscribe so you don't miss out on future episodes that embody the Go One More Mindset. All right, ladies and gentlemen, we have a very special guest on today's podcast. We got Coach Natasha NVDM coaching.

What's going on, Coach? What's up, Nick? I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. I mean, I think the listeners deserve a little bit of context to, I mean, nearly two years ago now when we started working together, you were my Iron Man triathlon coach for what was supposed to be Iron Man, Texas, ended up being challenged Kent Cun. And I think we need to talk about how we started working together.

I've told the story before. Do you want to take a lead on how we connected? Yes. And then feel free to jump in if I get any part of it wrong. Okay. But the story I tell is we did, one of my coaches, Mike actually told me about you. So I followed you on Instagram. And then from there, I remember you posting about your run workouts. And at one workout you did, you had run like a 740 pace and your heart rate, I think, had shown at 160.

And I dropped you a direct message and saying, I don't think that's an aerobic workout, something to that effect. And I remember your response was like, yeah, you know, thanks, whatever. And I remember you're telling that story as well, like, who is this person? Yep. Right. And then outside of that, I just kind of kept track of your training and what you were doing at the time. I believe you had just done Iron Man of Florida and you were getting ready for a marathon. Is, am I correct in saying that?

You weren't doing triathlon at the time, and we were kind of connecting a little bit. I was training for my attempt and failure of my first sub-three attempt. Yes. That's right. Okay. Yeah, and that's when I was following, I was really like following the journey,

and I started watching your YouTube videos and knowing, like, hey, you're right up the road. And so, and then I also started following, like, your first Iron Man attempt, and kind of seeing how you had worked with Taryn. Anyway, I don't know if we're kind of connected by Instagram outside of that, but you kept on getting my name dropped. Like, hey, if you're going to do an Iron Man again, reach out to me.

Is that correct? That's correct. A lot of people are reaching out because I was dropping hints of saying, hey, I think I'm going to train for another Iron Man. And everyone was saying, you've got to reach out to Natasha. You've got to reach on to Natasha. She's in Austin. She's the best Iron Man coach.

She's a pro. So obviously when I said, all right, I'm committing to this next Ironman prep, I reached down to you and said, like, what do you think about working together? Yeah. And I would say that was a pivotal, literally pivotal point in me learning about what endurance training actually was. I thought up until that point in my life, I knew what endurance training was and I thought it was suffering. I thought if I wanted to run faster or get better at endurance, it was going out and running harder and faster. And then you were the first person that kind of said, hey, pull back the reins a little bit.

If you want to run faster, you have to run slower. And I didn't believe it at first. And then I started training with you and I realized, holy crap, this actually works. Yeah. That's, go ahead. And then what's even crazier is, you know, we were just sitting in the office a little bit ago. and I was introducing you to Kat Thomas, who's our chief revenue officer,

and then Josh Holly, who's our CFO, was in the building too, and you asked Kat how she met me, and I'm explaining it was through Jeff, and then we came to the conclusion, myself, Kat, our chief revenue officer, Josh, our chief financial officer,

we only met because of you. So you were the person that brought, everyone together. And it all came back to that one Instagram DM saying, you're running too hard, slow down. So thank you. Now, I'm so glad I did. And man, I remember you reaching out to me like, hey, I'm thinking about doing another Iron Man. And I was like, taken aback. Like, is he going to be asking me to work with him? And I remember screenshoting it and sending it to Andrea, who's a coach of ours. She's also a BPN ambassador and a professional triathlet. I was like, I think he's going to ask me to work with him like what do I do and I didn't sleep like I don't think for the next two days I was just

so excited but so nervous at the same time I think I shared that with you yeah like I just I didn't feel prepared and I think a lot of a conversation is going to be like you're never going to feel prepared you just got to put yourself out there and do it and I knew working with you was just like this massive opportunity and could be life changing and one thing was like I was I ready for that like it's going to be so much work and number two like I'm going to put myself under a microscope like am I prepared for what the knowledge that I had it up to that point the work I'd done with athletes up to that point was I in a position to work with someone like yourself who you know seemingly had it you know all figured out already and so I learned otherwise well I think that's a that's like

one responsibility we have here at BPN with our platform that we've built together over the last decade nearly is that we know when we bring other people onto that platform like yourself or Jeff for example that your coaching practices and techniques are going to be criticized and analyzed and like you said put under a microscope and it's not it's not an easy feat to tackle so I knew when I was asking you to be like the Ironman coach for that prep in that series, it's very different for me just saying like, hey, I'm looking for a coach.

Like, can you coach me? It's me kind of taking stock and inventory of, hey, like, this is the, like, this is what it looks like. You're going to be in these YouTube videos. It's going to be really heavily analyzed. Stay on in the comment section. People are going to tear apart what you're doing,

but there could be like a really amazing opportunity from it. I'm super grateful that you said yes to it was me and Yuli who met you at coffee shop. So thank you for saying yes to Yoli and I. Yeah. No, I remember that meeting so vividly and the whole time, and I told you this before, my knee was shaking and did not stop shaking from underneath the table from the start of the meeting till the end. And I think I was still walking away and I was still shaking and going like, wow. Like I'm so excited, but this is going to be something big and I need to be ready for it.

So, yeah. It was a big prep. I mean, we did it right. And we wrapped, I mean, we did a sub three hour marathon prep build and execution in the middle of a triathlon build. And then we wrapped it up in Cancun, Mexico with the BPN team with some amazing dinners and boat trips and a good race. And overall is just a great experience. Wrapping it all up. Now you've built what is, I believe,

that the fastest and largest growing triathlon coaching business out there. It's insane to have watched the last 18 months. Yeah. How fast your business has grown and how many athletes you're bringing on and how successful your athletes are at racing. and kind of the community you're building as well. I mean, I see you downtown Austin hosting workouts on the weekends. It's really cool to see like you guys going to races and booking an Airbnb and doing dinners and stuff.

I love that, as you know, I love that. And I'm really curious, like as a coach in the fall of 2020, what did that look like? What did your business look like? You were still training as a professional triathlete. I mean, I remember you raised Iron Man Florida that first couple weeks of us prepping together. You have a daughter, you're married. Like, what did life look like in that time frame? It changed dramatically through working with you and then specifically after Ironman, Florida.

That was the turning point where I essentially made a decision that I had this incredible opportunity, a platform of working with you. I had so many people reaching out because they had seen. me coaching you. I had to now at this point make a decision, am I going to still try to race pro? I'd been doing it for 13 years. As you know, it takes a lot of time. I was probably investing 25 to 30 hours a week, like in that preparation and outside of that, you're tired. So like up into that point, I had about 30 athletes I was working with before working with you. And I never marketed. I never really pushed for anything else. I was just very comfortable in my life with a four-year-old at the time. and, you know, supporting my husband in what he was doing at the time.

But then we saw this opportunity coming in the interest, and I literally had to sit down with my husband and my mom who's here. Thankfully, she helps support me and my husband with helping with my daughter, you know, prepare for school in the morning because I'm out at a swim lesson, etc. But we had to sit down and say, okay, are we going to do this? So it wasn't just my decision. It was their decision too. And thankfully, because I couldn't do this without their support.

Thankfully, they were like, yeah, let's do this. And I've told you this before, but when you've reached out and asked me to coach you, like, I'm very strong in my faith and I went to the pastor at our church. And I was like, I need the church to pray for me. Like, is this direction where God wants me to go? And I had this very strong calling that now is the time. Everything I'd done at to that point, like I had a lot of coaching experience. I mean, we can go back on, like, developing the Austin Aquatic and Sports Academy in a year.

We'd gone from zero, no program to like 140 athletes working together. That was preparation for this. I'd work for another coaching company. Had their most athletes and worked a lot with a lot of people for a while before stepping away. That prepared me for this. And then this was like go time. This is time to kind of forge my own path.

So after Iron Man Florida, it kind of all ties together. We're like, we better have a website in place. We better put systems in place because things are going to start happening and I want to be prepared. And so from there it was exactly that. And like any person who reached out for coaching, I responded to like immediately, like, hey, what are your goals? How can I help you? Are we a fit? And before I know it, I had like 50 athletes, like in that next month. And I said, okay, with that, I can't coach all these athletes. We're continuing to get athletes interested. How can I create a system and scale where I can bring other coaches on board to do the same thing. And I can teach them

what I'm doing and we can have more people a part of this program. Luckily, coach Mike, who was the one that pointed me to you, he had actually reached out to me in July prior that here and said, hey, I have some interest here in Waco, about five guys. They want coaching. They know you're busy. They don't want to reach out to you, a little intimidated. Can you coach me on how to coach them? And so that was really my first like practice run of just us getting on a phone call.

I remember standing at the pool at Lifetime Pool. he was just asking me questions like, why do you do this? How do you do this? And then we got a system in place where he was put under my training peaks account, which is a platform we use to give out programs. And he had full access to my library of workouts. I had a whole bunch of plans already built out that like, hey, here's the template with which to start, look at that, understand it, and then manipulate that for that athlete. And so we kind of had a system in place just with him to where I felt confident, okay, let's add someone else. So we sort of went from there is I kind of reached out to who had been in my life at the time. Who did I know, who was

dependable, who had the right work ethic that I had? Because essentially, if you're going to work for me, you're an extension of me and my work ethic and my values. And I started reaching out to those people. And so like Andrea and Keegan and then Nick was another person who I'd coached for 10 years. So like all my coaches, I coached. And that's actually a parameter of who I hire right now. You can have all the credentials and be a coach. but unless you are bought in from the very beginning, we're coaching you, you are brought into training the way we're doing things. Like, that's not who we're one a part of this team.

So anyway, long story short, brought in all these coaches, started putting systems in place, continue to say yes to opportunities, as you talked about sometimes too many yeses, but I felt like that is what was needed for us to scale at the level we were scaling. And I feel like so much more can be done, I just have to now learn. and how to do it in a sustainable manner, at this point it's not sustainable. Like that whole balance thing, as you're growing,

something that's becoming a monster, like it's not happening. And I am fully embracing that. And again, my family, like, this is out of balance. I'm like, I know, like this, but the long term is look how many lives we're changing. Look at what we're building.

It's not happening like this out there. Like, we're building something truly special and we're going to look back and go, man, that was worth it. You know, and in it, I'm working really hard. it in it, I'm like, man, this is work. Even though I'm super tired every single day and stretch. But yeah, that's where we are right now. As far as we've just, I told you, we have like 12 coaches

now. We have a lot of athletes. We're one of the biggest coaching companies in the world. We're having incredible success with the athletes. So, you know, we had, I call it the Nick Bear effect, where you were bringing a lot of athletes in because they were seeing me on your YouTube videos. But now what speaks for itself is the results, the community. I mean, we went from advertising ourselves as, you know, this professional coaching company that we are going to give you that high level experience no matter what level athlete you are. You know, really dig into the details, treat you like a professional, even though this is something like you're just wanting to do as a hobby.

But it really elevates experience for them and gets them like really deep into training for triathlon to see how far they can go. But now the marketing has changed to like be a part of this community. Like we are training together. Even if you're not in Austin, like we have a Slack channel. We have weekly team Zoom calls. Hey, we're going to this race. Let's all go together.

You know, we had 70 people at Texas 70.3 all racing together. A lot of people staying in houses together. We had a team meal the day before and people want to be a part of that experience. So. That's like a new energy that I've never seen from you. I love that. I've changed a lot. Like, yeah.

What do you think has changed the most? Like what has facilitated that change? Is it just the the grit required to keep moving at such a fast pace of scale? Yeah. Number one, I love this. Like, you know, I loved being a professional triathlet. Like, what a dream that I could get up and just train every day. I had the support of my family.

I had sponsor support, but then building this as a coach and being able to support other athletes and their goals and giving them essentially the experience that I wish I had for 13 years. Like I have pockets of time where I was like, wow, this is incredible. It's life changing. I could conquer the world right now because of what I'm experiencing through this journey of trying to become the best professional triathlete. How can I create this for everybody else who wants to be a part of it? and that is so it drives me like crazy

and so we're always trying to kind of step that up to make sure that these athletes are feeling like they can conquer the world based on like what we're providing but yeah I think confidence has come from doing like I went into this we talk about the plane took off and I didn't have the wings in place like we had to build the wings and put in the engine as it wasn't already going and I didn't have that confidence in what we were doing

until we just started taking that next step, that next step. And then I continue to have conversations like this and say, wow, we got something super special here. And through that, this passion has just grown and continue to grow. And that's where, and what you're hearing right now. That's where I'm here right now. Yeah, I mean, it's, you're like a new person.

It's, there's so much energy. And it's, it's real energy. you can feel it you can see it do you think that uh when you were you were just training as a professional triathlete you were coaching those 30 people do you look back at that and think that was you know that was like a i don't want to say a selfish time of life but you were training for yourself and now it has shifted to where you are coaching for others absolutely 100% it was all about me but I did know through that time and you could even call me out and say

you had a calling on your life like God put this calling on your life you did not follow that like you were being like very like no it's more about me and that's what I felt like I knew that what I was going through at that moment of time was going to be used for me to make a greater impact in the future and I went through the motions knowing that

and then finally like it hit I was like, now is the time. Like, I am prepared to do that. Could I have done it sooner? Yeah, probably. You know, it really did just take, making that decision just to go all in. But yeah, I was being selfish. I was excited about continuing to develop as an athlete.

It was very comfortable. Like, just training, hanging out with my daughter. Coaching 30 athletes was like, you know, brushing my teeth. It was so easy at the time. But the level of attention and detail I put into, like, all the athletes I do now, you could almost say I was mailing it in at the time based on how much. much we've stepped it up at this point. I like to say that it's one of those things that you can't, if you don't practice what you preach, you shouldn't be able to teach. And that's kind of like

things that I've had to do with the business or even training because my business is built around fitness and nutrition and training that sometimes you have to invest time, money, energy, resources into yourself so that you can learn through that process directly. Like you had to invest time as a professional triathlet to have the credibility, authority, experience, and education required to be the best coach, the best

team, the best coaching business in the world. And if you wouldn't have done that, you wanted to have invested that time, money, energy, resources into yourself, there's no way you could be doing this right now. I think way too often people want to skip that step

and they want to be the CEO. They want to be the head coach, the best coaching business in the world. They want to run this business and that business, but they don't want to learn about the process to get there. They want to skip steps, A, B, C, D, and get all the way to the end. And it just doesn't work that way. Oh, no, absolutely.

I mean, I think, I've asked a couple of, like, our athletes, like, why are you working with me? Why are you working with us? Because we have some incredibly talented athletes. and their answer was like you've been there like you've experienced everything um and that honestly my coaching is based off of a lot of my experience like firsthand and and i can also say like every workout every block i'm putting my athletes through i've done before so i understand not only the physical component but like the mental component the emotional component and and i can relate to

athletes on just like a next level because like the fear that they take going into races like the emotions they have after having failed a workout like I can speak to it because I had to go through that so many times and honestly like now we speak about it like I don't think I was fully prepared to be in the position I am now prior to the last year of my racing because that last year like when COVID shut down and like you had to be very introspective of like why am I doing this how can I like really going to like that different mindset. And it shifted to a, hey, I want to be the best to the world to like a, I just want to be the best person in the world.

Like I want this growth mindset to set me up for success in life. And I only got that in that last year right before working with you. That has now allowed me to be the coach I am today. So yeah, I don't think I was actually fully complete. And then it just happened. When you were, when you were still training as a pro and you're getting ready to go from race to race to race. Did you at the time want to build the biggest coaching business in the world?

Or was it I'm just pretty comfortable where I'm at? I'm just going to ride this out. Yeah, I was comfortable where I was at the time, but I knew I was set for more. I felt that deep in, deep in my, you know, put it on my stomach, whatever you want to call it. But like, I knew that more was coming. it was really, as you said, like, the selfishness, which we're all naturally selfish, the naturally

lazy part of like, I am so content, we have everything we need right now. Why do I have to do that? Why do I have to put myself out into what is like managing, you know, 12 other people, 13 other people? Like, there's so much work that comes in with that. There's 13 relationships that you have to foster and grow with, along with now the many, many athletes as well. Did I want to expose myself to all of that? So, yeah, I didn't think long-term, like, hey, this is what I'm going to do. But did I think, is it possible? I feel like I always knew this was possible if I wanted to make the decision to just go for it. And that's what I did.

Well, like I always say, growth is a choice. Yeah. You can sit back and, like, go through the motions and wish and hope that it happens one day. But it has to be this active decision of, well, it's not happening on its own. I now have to disrupt everything that I know, which is normal, and it's going to be very, very uncomfortable. And I have to do that over and over and over again. I think anyone that works with me knows that, like, I am really good at disrupting normalcy.

And as soon as things become normal and complacent and they're not growing, I'm going to come in and flip tables and disrupt whatever is happening because I know I have to force growth. I remember when we we signed our second lease for the building that we took over in this business park. That was 10,000 square feet. Our rent was obviously more than our first warehouse. Our first warehouse was 6,000 square feet and it was a little bit older. But I remember we didn't really need to move into this new space yet. But I knew that if we moved into this new space, which was bigger, it was more expensive, it was more intimidated. I knew it would disrupt what we were currently doing

and it would force me to grow. I'd have to wake up every morning saying if I don't choose growth, we will fail. It's like almost forcing yourself into this position that makes you so uncomfortable that there is this risk of losing it and you have to, I mean, you know, as a founder of a startup of a business,

you are fighting every single day to push it forward. And no one will ever believe in it as much as you believe in it or want it, but it's a constant fight every day that someone could tell you, I'm not going to pay you any more of the rest of your life for this job, but you're going to fight for it and you're just going to keep fighting for it. Yeah, no, absolutely. Like, just as you said, like every day I wake up, I'm like,

like, I'll sigh, like, okay, big day today. Like, I can let that be overwhelming and say, this is too much, or I can be excited about what we're going to do and how we're going to tackle. what's ahead of us. And so again, going back to it's a choice. Am I uncomfortable every single day? Absolutely. But if I wasn't, I would feel like what am we doing here? You know, we have the opportunity to do something big and have a lot of people be a part of it, something that's probably hasn't been done at where we're going with us and where we want to now go with it. I'm not going to settle for any less right now. You know, so yeah.

It is what it is. You mentioned, like right now having that conversation with your family about, hey, I realize right now is very unbalanced. I like to refer to these moments in life as sprints or chapters where the truth is, people ask me the question all the time, well, how do you balance all this stuff? You don't. Like, there are moments in life. And it could be a week, it could be a month, it could be a year, it could be five years.

like you have to sprint through whatever you're going through it now to get to the other side. I was just listening to an interview talking about Casey Nicstat, who was a YouTuber, and he did this thing a few years ago where he vlogged every single day, I think for three years. And over the course of those three years of vlogging every single day and documenting, putting out videos and his platform, his audience, his brand skyrocketed. Through those three years, that sprint, he lost a lot of friends. He had to say no to a lot of people. He had to turn down a lot of things.

He almost got divorced. He didn't spend much time with his kids. But he built something pretty amazing over this three years. And now he stepped away and he said, now I'm going to spend all this time with my family. sometimes you got to go like you just got to embrace this sprint and and you just got to set real expectations for the people around you like hey this is happening right now i'm sorry it's not balanced but this is what we need to do to get to their side the truth is most people aren't willing to even enter that sprint or that fight because of the unbalanced life that it that brings but

can you talk more on what that feels like right now to be in the sprint yeah um I will say as far as my family is concerned, I have always been unbalanced in nature. I've always kind of like when I'm training, I'm like, I'm fully focused on trying to be the best triathlete I can be. So I'm going to say no to a lot of things, like social events because I got to recover and be ready for this. So someone would look at that and say, wow, you are, you know, sacrificing, you know, these relationships or this fun time. And I'm like, no, like, this is an investment in my future. like and I'm so passionate about doing this like why would I do that likely my family has been on board from that board with that from the very start so like when this came about like we've been here before you know and what's great is again if we talk about that preparation you know we actually had more bumpy times back then but we had to get through and we had to communicate and now like when this kicked off like we had that communication like down pat like I wasn't just going off and doing my own

thing like from the start. I'm like, okay, this is what I have to do. Like, is that okay? And luckily, like, they're like, yeah, we see what you're doing. We see the impact you're making. Like, you've got to just, you got to go for it. So I think just communication is key, always checking in, always checking in with the other person. I am very ambitious when it comes to trying to take these next steps because I honestly look at the business and we've done a lot, but there's like a hundred other things we could do. And, and I check in with, hey, these are five next steps. And, I feel like I should do. And luckily my husband is there to like bounce those ideas off me.

And most of the times I don't listen. I forge ahead. But then I come back and go like, yeah, you were right. You've known me now for the last 13 years to say like that was too much. And so again, that communication of like having that back and forth of like, okay, we need to be comfortable with what we're doing here. But yeah, he understands like this is more than me. And I think that is super important.

again, our faith is super important to us. And so when you see like, I feel like I have a calling on my life to do this right now. And he's like, I'm not going to stand in the way of that. That is extremely helpful. But yeah, I don't see myself stepping away. Like you talked about Casey as far as like building this big thing and then like being okay to step away. Like I love this so much. Like all my best friends right now, all the athletes I coach and that just happens because when you are investing time in these athletes and trying to make these dreams come true for them. Like, you develop relationships, like really good friendships and you care. Like, I genuinely care for the health and well-being, you could say,

and for someone's future of every single one of my athletes and every single one of my coaches. And that is something that is driving me so much right now. And there's been opportunities where, like, I can go on vacation here and rest. And I'm just working all the time because I'm so passionate about what I'm doing. So like the thought of even like pulling away, I just don't see it right now. What I do see is there's a lot of things in the business where I don't have to touch. Like I'm setting the groundwork of things like we talked to me like quality control for our coaches. Like we got manuals here.

We have getting a social media person here. All things I had to control, I'm now handing off to make some things easier and hopefully make it sustainable. But but do I truly believe I'm going to get to a point of like chilling from? Probably not. Like, I just don't see it. Well, I'd love to talk about that transition of starting a business. Because I would say 99.9% of fitness coaching businesses never get to this point. Because what that coach does in the beginning is they try to do everything.

They become the Swiss Army pocket knife and they try to maintain the Swiss Army pocket knife. I was thinking about this the other day. I was talking to someone. When I started my company, I was the Swiss Army pocket knife. You have to. Everyone has to. You have like the nail clippers.

You have the file. You have the knife, the bottle opener. You have to have all those tools and resources that are attached to you. So you can pivot, you can grow, be resourceful. As you scale, in order to successfully scale at an appropriate rate, you break off each one of those tools, you hand them to someone else. Like, now this person gets to hold the file, and this person gets to hold the nail clipper, and this person gets to hold the knife.

Most coaches that I have observed and seen have never gotten to the point where they're willing or able to break off those tools and hand those off. Was that hard for you to be the Swiss Army pocket knife and finally allow people, delegate responsibility and empower those to act on your behalf? Absolutely. it was a very uncomfortable decision to make. I ended up hiring a business coach in July of last year around there. That was the catalyst of me delegating everything.

First meeting, we looked at everything that I was doing and said, okay, we have to like really legitimize this business because as we were growing over the six months, my focus was just the athletes, making sure there is. getting taken care of, the business will figure out itself. I didn't even know how much money I was making. That's obviously not what's driving me. Like I had no idea. So I didn't even feel comfortable hiring anyone because I didn't even know how much I was making. I was just like bringing athletes on. Like let's take you get you taken care of. Let's make you great athletes. So the first

step was seeing what do you have and then making like a spreadsheet of like, okay, you need to now pay yourself a certain amount and the rest goes into the business and now you're making business decisions and so a lot of what I'm bringing in personally actually just going back into the business a lot of like what you did so that I could hire these people but I didn't know to do that I had to hire someone to tell me like this is what you should be doing at this point and then he said okay well who who's invested and who you do you trust and that goes back to my entire staff everyone has being in NVDM coaching as an athlete. And through that, they're brought into the way we do things. So they're all being coached by the same system. They're not looking elsewhere. Like, they fully

believe in what we're doing is what's going to help an athlete thrive and become the best athlete they can be. And we've developed a relationship where I can trust them. I know their character. I know that they're excited about what's happening. They are all in. And so I have those people. And now as you said, it's like, okay, I need a hand this off to you. Let's start here, luckily. All of them were like, I will do whatever it takes to help you at this point until you figure out like the books and how much you can pay me and from there. And so they stepped forward and said, let me just take that off your plate.

And I was able to like test that out. Does that feel comfortable? And it did. Okay, you take it. I'm going to now pay you this. And it's kind of scaling from there. So I'm very lucky to have those people to get started and to get into the position I am now. Now I'm in the place where I'm like, I know how much money we have in the business.

What is the next thing that we need to do? Who can I hire? And within that, I'm looking at the team. We have a lot of people from the coaches to the athletes. What are their skill sets? They've been in this. They understand the mission. Okay, do you want to be a part of this?

And so we just hired like Simon Shee. Yeah. He's great on like TikTok and his little reels. But then YouTube, like he has like millions of. followers on his tic, on his Rubik's Cube. And so I was like, okay, I'm, instead of like going outside of what we're doing, I'm going to hire Simon Shee because it's part of like, he's been one of my first athletes. He saw me on your show. And I also want to, it's dual purpose. I want to support him because he's trying to go to the Olympics. Like he turned from zero triathlon to

professional triathlete in less than a year. That's amazing. And now, like, he's on the path of like, I want to do this. I'm like, okay, well, how can I support him to do this? So he quit his other job to do this, he's fully supportive of NVDM and so will be of him. And because I know him, because I've coached him for nine years, I know his character, I know where he stands. I can kind of invest back into that. That's my process. What is at this point now, what has become your favorite part of the coaching business? Favorite part of the coaching business? Definitely the relationships. the community is incredible. I feel like we're at a point now.

If I did want to kind of step away a little bit, it runs itself. Because we call them the OG, like the original crew, right? They are so invested in what NVDM is doing and upholding that community that any time I have to call on someone and say, hey, can you lead this? Can you do this? Like, we were just at Lubbock and we had this massive spread of food for everyone the night before the race. That was two athletes of ours.

saying, hey, we want to cook dinner. They went to Costco. They prepared the meals for like 30 people because they're so kind of invested in like the community that we've built. And that is super special. Like I can't believe like we have such an incredible crew of people in this. And the relationships like we have folks. Yes, they're developing relationships here in Austin.

And outside of training, they're hanging out all the time together. But we have folks that there's one in New York. There's one in Kansas. They have written together on Zwift, you know, or they've seen each other as race. in my understanding, like, they're texting each other all the time. They're going to go visit and train with each other. I mean, how cool is that? That's awesome.

So that, that's like, that drives me a lot. It's interesting with the business, like, every chapter, which could be a month or a year or whatever, every chapter of, like, a business brings this new insight and perspective of what you love and what you don't love about building a business. So, like, right now, for example, what I don't love is operations. So I've delegated that like Preston,

Kat, you guys take over operations. What I love right now, and like this is, this is what I love about building a business is where I've always loved about working with the team and building a team. And I think this is what I learned during my time in the Army is

I love building teams and empowering teams and developing people. I love working with my managers, is my directors and empowering them and providing insight and context and direction and perspective of here's a vision of where we're going. This is your North Star and then watching them take full responsibility of that and running with it. You know, it's it's really amazing to see when you bring people together with initiative.

We're just having this conversation this past week. you can always pull initiative back, but it's really hard to push initiative forward. And people are like one of the only things that can actually build and create and have initiative. You can't automate it. You can't find it in a computer. It's like people have initiative or they don't. And I had the opportunity to spend some time with Ben Francis a few weeks ago, CEO of Jim Shark. And I've told the story a million times, probably already on the podcast.

podcast, but spent a few hours with them. And those few hours were super powerful and impactful. And he said there's three things that will hold a business back. It's the product, the brand, or the people. You know, your product is your training programs, your coaches, your athletes, your brand is like the look and the feel and the professional portrayal of the coaching business for the people. You have to have the right people. You have to have the right the right people in place, people who are bought in, who believe in what you're doing, they see the vision, they see the North Star. And if you don't have the right people in place, you can have the best product,

you can have the best brand, but you will fail without the people. And that is one thing you can't buy it. Yeah. You can, they have to be bought in. They have to almost find you. And that's what I love about the business right now, is finding the right people for the right jobs and just empowering them and seeing them take full initiative and owning it like it's theirs.

Absolutely. I don't hire people based on their credentials. Did you do this course? How smart are you? I hire people for exactly that. How driven are they? Their ability to be people, people. I mean, we're in the communication business.

And I talk to my athletes. I say, at the end of the day, it's not like what was on paper. It's going to inspire this athlete to do great things. is how can you encourage them? Like, how do you make them feel? Do they feel like you believe in them? You know, and so it's like, I'm finding those people that can be that to their athletes.

And then those people that are like, hey, I'm all in. And I can teach you how to be a coach. But Ken, do you have that magnetic personality where everyone is excited to be there with you at this training camp, at this race? Are you in a position where you know how to communicate with someone at that moment?

where maybe they're struggling or where they need that extra step of encouragement. And so, yeah, it's super cool to see how they've developed as well. Because a lot of them are like new in that. But as soon as they get that confidence of like, oh, I can do this. Like, it's super cool to see them, like, evolve and become better. Just like myself. Like, I'm a totally different person. Oh, I'm telling you, I see it.

I feel it. It's like, it's a confidence thing. Yeah. Yeah, I think everyone, I tell the team here all the time, everyone has it, like everyone has confidence in them. Sometimes it's just hidden, they don't know how to express it yet, and sometimes you just need that first win. And that first win realizes, okay, I think I have some potential here to do something. And you grab a few other wins, but there's a lot of failures and losses throughout that process. And on its own before you know what, these wins stack up, these failures stack up, and you build this confidence throughout.

You finally get to a point where you're like, there's nothing that I can't do. Challenge me, test me. Show me, tell me something that I can't do and I'll show you, I can do it. Yeah. I think once you finally actually realize that and believe it, you got to believe it. You can't just say it. Once you believe it, there's nothing that's off the table. You can do anything.

You can build it anything. You can be anyone. You just got to believe it and do it. I 100% agree with that. And I do think from my standpoint, I always look at that. from a humble perspective of like I don't know everything and with that how can I be better and so every time I'm doing something like I'm trying to manage 13 staff I'm like I know I don't have everything together yet I'm learning as I do it and I'm going to continue to fight to be better

to be a better boss to be better at running this company and so through that I feel like it elevates what is possible for me whereas if I came in and said I know how to do everything thing like you do it this way this way this way like I'm like no like this is the way we're doing it now but if we can do this better we're going to do it better so just hang in there with me and know that this is just the growth process at all times and and through that we're going to win you know we like to say that there's no ego here at bpn it's like whoever has the best idea that idea is going to win if we go to a meeting most of the times my idea gets absolutely trampled upon and dissected and destroyed.

I'm like, you know what? You guys are right. Like, we're obviously not moving forward with my idea. Yeah. It's, there's no ego. Let's all work on this together. If you bring more people, like we always say, like you can go really fast by yourself, but you can go so much further together.

You bring all these perspectives, all these ideas in. You work as a team. When you have a high functioning team and you see what they are capable of, that's I mean that's that's powerful that's unstoppable that is a storm what did it feel like you know I know this is as a founder of a startup and a company when you over commit to certain things I'm sure you felt this as a coach because what's hard about building something is it as you're building something and it's growing and scaling you are trying to match or build your systems

and infrastructure at the same rate or faster of the growth of your organization. And that's really hard. And what typically happens in that process is you overcommit to opportunities that present themselves to you. You know, Josh or CFO, he told me early on when he first started working here, he said, Nick, the hardest job you're going to have of building this business is not saying yes to everything. You're going to want to chase all these opportunities because as we can,

grow all these opportunities here and present themselves something's going to pop up and you're going to say we we have to jump on this and something else is going to pop up and say we have to jump on this but what happens then is you spread yourself so thin you're not going deep into anything how does that felt as you've built and scaled this company of becoming better at not overcommitting to things yeah so I'll first speak to the fact that in the beginning I feel like it's super important to say yes to everything because you don't know what opportunity is the one that's going to hit. I agree with that. Yeah. So I did that for a long time and to a certain extent I still continue to do that because we are. I mean, we're 18 months into the business. But that is

where I needed that business coach and I needed the other people around me to bounce ideas off and say, okay, these are the next five things we could do. What are the things that we should do? do. And a lot of the times, like, I have an idea of what that is, but then having that affirmation from them, like, yeah, this is what you should do. And in some cases, I'm pushed even beyond where I'm comfortable. Like, I know I should do this one thing. I feel comfortable with it. And they're like, man, this is an opportunity. You need to even do that. That seems so much. But sure enough, I do it. And it's something that really pushes us forwards. So, yeah, I mean, going back, I think the question as far as like over committing. Yeah, I think just having people around you to keep you

in check is helpful. And in the beginning, I just did say yes to everything. And now I always bounce those ideas of someone else. Because, you know, we talked about yes, legitimize the company. The other was like, don't burn out. Like as you said, the reason why these companies fail a couple years in is the owner is burnt out before systems are in place. And that is from overcommitting. And so, yeah, I have to be thoughtful about that. At the same breath, whenever I decide to say yes, instead of thinking like, oh, this is another big thing I now have to do, I'm like, what a gift, like what a blessing that I get to do this.

And so I just reshift my mindset on everything that seems too much to go, well, if you were on the sideline looking at that, would you be more pissed off that you didn't get that opportunity? And the answer is almost always yes. Like, I'm like, no, I'd rather get that opportunity. And then I'll deal with it later. And that's kind of how I've operated. I've said yes to many things.

Like we added camps, elite team, sponsors, like all those added very big to-dos that we had to do for this year, which was clearly too much. But I'm like, I would regret not doing that. I feel like this has to be done. And then in hindsight, I'm going to say that was too much. Like, let's take that one away, you know. I've been there.

I've been there. I felt that. and in the midst of it, you're thinking, shit. I said yes, there's way too many things. But once you commit, like, you own it. Yeah. That's a responsibility. Once you commit to something, all right, I'm going to see this through.

The way you do one thing is the way you do everything. And I've observed that very early on with you. It's like when you were my coach and I was doing big bike workouts, big gear workouts, you were on your kicker, on your bike, right next to me, and the old BPN gym. And when we were going and traveling for certain things, you were there doing it too.

We went to training camp in Fredericksburg. You were there training and doing the workouts with us. And it's just one of those things. You were a coach, and you could have easily taken the easier route and sat on a chair and said, do this, do that, do this. But no, you showed,

up to every workout here at BPNHQ, you met me at the pool, you put me through the workout, you did the workout with me. And at that point, like, you didn't have to tell me what kind of coach you were. I knew. Like, you're bought in. The way you do one thing is the way you do everything. The way you train, the way you eat, the way you show up as a wife, a mom, a coach. I was like, you're going to build the biggest freaking coaching business in the world because I know how you operate. And the way you do that is, well, you're going to build a bigist. And the way you do that is way you're going to build this business and it's the way you've built this business so it's really cool to see so I sit here I'm saying like I'm not surprised you've built this beast of a

coaching business that hasn't just scale but it's scaled with such quality control along the way it's because it's the way you operate it's just a characteristic it's a trait it's a skill yeah and it's a learn skill it's daily decision that I have to make to show up one of our t-shirts says show up And literally, I live by those words. Like, you have to. If you're deciding to do this, you have to show up every single day. Like, I don't understand when coaches are putting athletes through workouts, and it's a big one.

And I'm like, well, you should be there to support these athletes. You're doing everything it takes to set everyone up for success. Number one. Number two is preparation. Like, what I didn't know I was able to do through a lot of preparation. Like, what you didn't know when I was coaching you was to give me confidence, even though I knew it, but I still. felt somewhat insecure or unequipped.

I was like, how can I at least come through on these YouTube videos, knowing, feel like I'm presenting as if I know what I'm talking about, right? Oh, I know you prepared for that. And that came through like so much preparation. Like I wrote little scripts. I was thinking about it the night before of how am I going to say this in as fewer words as possible articulating really well. So not only you understood, but everyone else did too.

And that's just preparation. I'm not winging it. And I'm not winging this business. either, you know, and that's what it takes. Yeah, that's, that's one thing I noticed, trust me, I noticed that early on is because when we create content, we approach it professionally. This is a job. We're not just putting a video out there.

We're not just filming something to film it. Like, there's an intent and purpose behind every video. So I would text you the night before, like, hey, this is like what we're thinking about talking about for this segment of this video coming up in this Iron Man prep series. And when Tyler and Yoli put the camera on you and pressed record, I knew you had it scripted out. Like, you came prepared with notes of what you wanted to say and what you wanted to share. Because, like I said, the way you do one thing is the way you do everything.

To be a professional is not this light, like, handout. Like, the word professional to me means you do everything in a professional way and sense. It's like the clear example of a grocery cart. you're going to the grocery store and you see him some guy put his groceries in a cart and he just throws the cart in the grass. I told Steph

that when we have our baby girl when me and my daughter are walking back to our truck and we see some guy there was a grocery cart in the grass after not putting it back. I'm going to use that as an opportunity to teach her daughter a lesson. I'm going to walk up to that guy

and I'm going to say, sir, I don't want my daughter to learn bad habits from you. So we're going to have you put your grocery cart back. Going off a little tangent right now, but this is one of my biggest pet peeves. We were just at Home Depot this past weekend. There's grocery carts everywhere.

I'm like, how hard is it? Just like, you know what? The fact that you can't do that, I can only imagine what your work looks like. I can only imagine what your family looks like. I can only imagine what your diet looks like. Can I imagine what your fitness looks like. I'm judging you based off the way you do that one thing

because I guarantee it's how you do everything. Absolutely. And sadly, society is moving in that direction. And what I've talked with the coaches, I'm like, if you want to get after it and do things right, like now is the opportunity. Because honestly, most of the people out there are not doing it.

They're putting their grocery cart in the grass, right? Yeah. So what's it been like, you know, as you've scaled this organization, you brought on more athletes. I see very, like, large similarities in parallel. between your coaching business and VPN in a sense that as we grow,

we still want to maintain an uphold culture. And I watch you downtown Austin at either Barton Springs or on the trail or at Austin High Track doing workouts with massive amounts of people. Or like when you go to these races, you're doing the dinners with everyone hosting events. Is that something you intentionally wanted to maintain or did it just happen with the people you brought on? Extremely intentional about that because culture is everything.

And for me, culture is how do you feel when you show up to a workout like that? It starts there. So when we had athletes show up for their very first workout, we want them to feel super welcome and be a part of the team, feel a part of the team. That's culture, building culture. And so we always introduce them, you know, because that doesn't happen at other clubs.

Like you show up and no one really knows who you. you go off and do the workout and you're like, I didn't really meet anyone. The coach barely talked to me and you leave. We're like, no, let's learn about you. What race are you training for? How long have you been doing the sport? And so they each have their little introduction. And then we have teammates that have taken upon themselves.

When they show up, they're going around giving fist bumps to everyone to welcome. And if they see a new face, they're having those conversations right off the bat. And so that is super important. And that is something like we intentionally started to do it. It continued to evolve into what I, just talked about and now we're like we have to keep doing that to to make everyone feel welcome i mean we talk about um we want to create this experience not just for the elite athlete however it's an elite athlete experience where you're showing up and not only are you getting this incredible like camaraderie

with other athletes like lifting each other up you're getting incredible coaching as well and then you feel like man i'm leaving you're so empowered to do something much bigger than i even sit myself out to do because a lot of people get into the sport, they're like, I just want to try it out. Now they're like, I want to qualify for worlds. I want to be a professional triathlete. And a lot of that has been built up because of how inspiring, a welcoming, how like you can do it too. I did it. Our culture is. It's everything. It literally feels like and looks like that this coaching business has transformed your life. Over the last like 18 months, would you say you feel like you're in this new chapter of life for you and your family and your goals and everything?

Yeah, I'm like night and day a different person. I'm fully aware of it. And I feel like I have to live up to that every day. And I'm excited about that. You know, I'm like, today I'm waking up and I have this opportunity to do this. Like, let me not waste it. And then what can I learn from that? And how can I grow from this as well?

But yeah, I think it comes back to what I've said before. Like, I just feel like I've stepped into my calling. and I'm feeling like the supernatural power inside of me like that that drives us to be honest like I tap into that I'm fully aware I'm like tired I like wake up I'm I was tired today like when you said hey we'll do it another day and I was like yes I'm so tired because I got home from love like late yesterday yeah and my five year old like she just wants to play she's so excited for mom to be home and like we got to sleep super late last night I was on the deck this morning and I'm like I'm so tired and I was like I need like spurred inside of me to like bring out like energy

encouragement, great coaching. And I surprise myself sometimes. So it's just not me. And I feel like, yeah, it's, I'm tapping into that. I'm tapping into that fully. And that's what you see here today. I mean, passion and purpose will fuel you when you're running on fumes for a long, long time. And there's no way to describe it.

And if people haven't experienced it, I don't think they've truly found like their passion and purpose of what they'd love to do because you can't bullshit it. You can't run on fumes for a long period of time because you'll burn out. You'll fall to the wayside and you'll have no motivation to get back started and start it again,

but it's hard to describe what that feels like where you could run off just fumes. And there is this unrelentless desire and need just to keep pushing forward. one step after another. Yeah. Yeah. The best I can describe is you're completely wasted.

You're tired. And you've just, without taking caffeine, you've take like this energy drink. And it's just like woken you up. But you didn't take the energy drink. It's just passion. It's just woken you up. And I'm like, how was I so tired?

And all of a sudden by doing what I love, I'm this energized right now. Then you know you're in the right. You're doing the right thing. Which is super cool. So what's the future of? of NVDM. What's next? What do you want to build it into? What do you want to achieve through this, this journey in this organization? So that is an interesting question that I feel like I can

answer in so many ways. I will start with saying that there's only so much planning that I can do in the sense that, like, this is God's business, and I am the person in charge of this business of what he's called me to do. So there's a part of me that is fully, like, he's in charge, he's going to lead the way. And I fully believe that. And so there's that, okay? Then there's the part of me, like, what we've created is super special. I want as many people a part of it as as possible. As many athletes, as many coaches that we're training up because it's life-changing. how can we build the infrastructure for that to be possible? How can we keep this energy alive for this to keep rolling?

And so with that, I look at what is the next step ahead of me because that's as far as I can look like. I think, yes, down the road, I feel like if we keep doing what we're doing and we're continuing looking for areas we can improve, we're going to be the biggest coaching company of the world if we're not there already. And opportunities are going to come from that.

I just feel like there is so much we can do it. in this space, you know, and at this point, I just want to do what the next thing in front of me is. And then in a year's time, yeah, we'll see what we came up with, to be honest. But there's a lot we can do. And I fully believe we'll just keep taking steps to do every single one of those things. Because there's no sitting back and going like, I'm cool where we are. Like I actually, for a moment, like the days that I'm tired, I'm like, you know what, we can just stay here.

And I had the conversation with my business coach and he was like, okay, you're a lot. lifestyle brand or now you're a performance brand and you're going to go for it. What do you want to do? I was like, we're going for it. And then I had that call with our coaches. I'm like, you're in or you're out. Man, everyone has stepped it up. It's been incredible. And I just, I just see us continuing to do that. I still would like to explore the idea of, remember we were in Fredericksburg and we were at that. I still like, what was that road in Fredericksburg? We got at the top of the hill. We're at the top of the and it goes down into this valley where all the motorcycle riders uh take that route yeah you know i'm talking about i do the one we're like going 50 miles an hour down the hill yeah that one well i remember

getting the top of that and i was like i don't even feel like we're in texas anymore yeah i passed goats sheep bison longhorns there were like animals running across the road and i had no clue we were but you brought up the idea we were on that trip in fredericksburg to uh you wanted to create like these massive coaching athlete weekends and camps at some point. I would love to get involved in that because that weekend in Fredericksburg was epic because we did,

you know, runs throughout Fredericksburg. We went into these epic rides. I was riding with, you know, next to Keegan and Andrea, who Keegan just bombs these hills. I'm riding the break the entire time. And, you know, it's wine country, so we had a little bit of wine,

a little bit of cheese. It was just an epic weekend. And I think doing that at a massive scale because, you know, in real life events are so powerful. Not everyone has access to them in their city or local area. But bringing these people together,

I mean, you see the power in it and meeting and connecting and yet people coming together who have shared interests and mindsets and they're focused on growth. They want to become better. better and they might not have that in their local area. And so many people can benefit from being surrounded by people who want more out of life.

And when you surround yourself with people who want more on a life, it just fills your cup. It just fills your cup. When you fill your cup, you feel like you have this conference. You can do anything. Yeah. But you need to surround yourself with people like that. Full circle, we should do some epic camps in Fredericksburg. We should.

That'd be cool. That was an epic time. was, yeah, such a great place to be able to do everything, really, but then also have like that community aspect. And, you know, with what we did, as you said, in town and hanging out and building relationships. Yeah, I mean, we, we had a camp in April. We had 65 athletes come into town from all over the country.

And as you said, like, they left like different people of what they knew was now possible. And then the relationships that built from that weekend. We have a summer camp coming up in Marfa. We have 30 people going to that. But a big area of where this business can grow, especially with you involved, is like, yeah, like these are super empowering opportunities to make an impact.

And that at the end of the day is why I'm in this business to change and help people, love on people, make a difference. So any opportunity there, like, yeah, you've got to jump on it. You can't say no to that. You can overcomit because it's worth it. I agree. Well, Coach, congrats. I mean, what you built with NVDM has been amazing to see.

It's impressive to say the least. But if anyone deserves it, you deserve it because you earned it. Right. And like we talked about the beginning, all our platform did, VPNs, was provide this spark. And I've said this before, but if you give the wrong person, the spark or the exposure to an audience to give the wrong person that spark it will paint them as a really bad person

and it will blow up in their face. It's just a pizzle out. But you give the right person the spark someone who has been working their ass off for years to get to this point and truly deserves it and they get that spark you're on a rocket chip, right? It only does good thing. So you deserve it. Awesome work. It's epic to see. Thank you. I appreciate you. Likewise, very much. Thank you, Nick.

All right, we will do an episode in the future when NVDM takes over the world. Absolutely. All right, we'll see you. 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.