The Nick Bare Podcast - Archive - Nick Bare | Without Consistency, All Else Fails

Episode Date: December 26, 2022

Episode 159 - Without Consistency, All Else Fails If you do not have the ability to be consistent, that may be the reason you aren’t reaching your goals and accomplishing the things you want from life. In this episode, Nick answers your questions from his Instagram (@nickbarefitness), most of which were about how to be consistent going into 2023. Here, Nick explains his personal mindset when a new year approaches and how he finds renewed motivation whenever he feels distracted. Nick gives practical steps to achieve consistency in everything you do so you can start next year focused. More Resources: BPN Website - Supplements and Apparel: www.bpnsupps.com Nick’s Website: www.nickbare.com Nick’s Youtube: www.youtube.com/user/barelifenutrition Follow Us On Social Media: Instagram: @thebareperformancepodcast Facebook: The Bare Performance Podcast

If there's a goal you want to set in this next year, if there's a New Year's resolution you want to put on your calendar, I would urge you not to choose one of those cookie cutter bullshit resolutions. And I would encourage you to choose to be more consistent. Identify ways that you can be more consistent in your life to achieve the goals that matter to you and that you want to make a change for. And if you identify those goals and you focus on being more consistent, In order to achieve those goals, you're going to see a huge return. 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. Merry Christmas, everybody. The day this episode is launching, it is the day after Christmas.

The day we are recording this episode, it is December 21st, 2022, wrapping up a really solid year, for me at least in terms of personal and professional. BPN has grown a lot over this last year. We've hired a lot into team members. We have a lot of big announcements coming up in the next 30 days that I'm really excited for. And then personally, me and my wife had, we had our first child. Charlie Grace, Bear was born a little over five months ago. So 2022 was, it was a really good year.

It was also a really challenging year, both personally and again, professionally. And the title of this podcast is, without consistency, all else fails. And every single year that I live on this earth, every single year that I've, I put into building the business, working towards my future and goals and just like vision. Like me personally, I'm a visionary type person where I'm looking into the future of where I want to be, what I want to be doing. And I paint this in my head. And I tell my wife, I tell people here that are around me at BPN what this looks at,

what this looks like. I'm always forward thinking, as I've said, backwards planning, and then I'm putting things in place to get to that vision that I put possibly years before. And I asked a few questions on Instagram

this past week, opened up a Q&A, and had some really good questions. And as I'm like looking through these questions this morning and kind of trying to come up with a common denominator or topic of this whole podcast, I kept going back to consistency because a lot of the questions were surrounding consistency or more importantly, lack of consistency.

Because without it, truly all else fails. The first question was like when you're feeling unmotivated or uninspired, what's the go-to? what do you do I do exactly what I would have done whether I was motivated or unmotivated and I I preface that by saying it wasn't always that way now there's a difference between being defeated

and being unmotivated there are times quite frequently that I am defeated in terms of I'm working towards a goal I'm working on a project or trying to do something in the business and it's just not getting there. I either fail or I miss or I'm way off target. That's a defeat.

But being defeated doesn't unmotivate me. I am unmotivated to wake up in the morning sometimes. I am unmotivated to pull an all-nighter and work on a project like I'm going to tonight. Sometimes I'm unmotivated to hit a workout after a full day of work. or putting Charlie down at night after dinner. There are a lot of times in my life when I am unmotivated to do something. I mean, when I wake up in the morning and it's raining outside and it's cold, the last thing I want to do is run five miles.

But I can tell you one thing, regardless of how cold it is, how much rain's coming down, how late I stayed up the night prior. When five o'clock hits on my alarm clock in the morning, I'm rolling out of my bed, I'm walking into the kitchen, and I'm preparing for that five-mile run that right now I'm doing every other day. During marathon prep, it was a lot different.

During marathon prep, that five-mile run was actually anywhere from nine to 13 miles every morning. But what do I do when I'm feeling unmotivated and uninspired? Where do I go? I resort back to what I know and what I personally think I'm pretty good at. that's being consistent, that's showing up. Because I've seen the power of these incremental wins.

You know, 2023 is coming up and a lot of people will make New Year's resolutions. I'm not for or against, personally. If you want to set New Year's resolutions, you should do that. If you don't want to set New Year's resolutions, you shouldn't do that. I personally don't set these New Year's resolutions because I don't personally wait until January 1st to make a change. Yes, January 1st signifies a new year, a new calendar year, but for everything else I'm doing it is just another day. If I want to make a change, if I want to try something new, if I want to set a goal, I'm going to set it as soon as I identify and make a plan, and then I implement.

So what I would encourage a lot of people to do going to the new year, regardless if you want to make a New Year's resolution or not, it's a focus on being more consistent. And you don't have to make this complete 180 in your life. I think it's where a lot of people fail and miss. Regardless, like, you could be a successful, consistent person. And then you set this new goal. and for some reason you think you need to change your life completely to be a 180 and everything

changes and then you quickly realize it's not sustainable because all the things that you used to work for you you now just eliminated to implement these new things to implement just because they are new so like what can you implement into your life that helps you be more consistent that could be one thing at a time. Okay, week number one, or even month number one, what I'm going to change is I'm going to wake up at 5 a.m.

every single morning. I'm going to focus on that. When that alarm goes off, regardless if I want to wake up or not, regardless if I'm unmotivated or motivated, doesn't matter. I'm going to hit the alarm. I'm going to turn it off.

I'm going to throw the covers off. I'm going to roll my feet out of bed. I'm going to stand up and walk out of the room. That's all you've got to find. focus on. One thing at a time. Maybe after you've nailed that down and now you're waking up at 5 a.m. consistently, let's try something new. Okay, instead of going out for lunch every single day, let's prep our food. The night prior, let's block off 10 to 15 minutes to prep a meal. Maybe it's some ground beef and rice, maybe it's some chicken and potatoes, whatever it is. Let's just allocate 10 to 15

minute tonight, put it in your calendar if you have to, set an alarm if you have to, prep that meal so you have it for the next day. Okay, those are two things. Now you're waking up early and now you're prepping your food instead of going on to dinner or going out for lunch. Well, now we want to move more. Well, we don't have time. When are we going to go to the gym?

You know, you have this commitment at 3 p.m., you have this commitment at 4 p.m., you have this commitment at 6 p.m. I think we might have to either wake up earlier or we might have to eliminate and sacrifice other luxuries in order to make time for the gym. What I'm trying to get to with this whole exercise is start making one change at a time if that's what's going to work for you.

And then slowly, as you've adopted them into your routine, add more on top. Just focus on being more consistent, these incremental wins. do you know how different your life could look, how much change you could implement, if literally all you did is instead of waking up when your body naturally woke up

or when your alarm went off at 7.30, 8 a.m., if you woke up at 5 a.m. every single morning. For me personally, that is my morning routine. That's what works for me. I wake up at 5 a.m. I get a lot done between 5 and 8 a.m. Those three hours. I need those three hours every single morning

to set the foundation for a successful day. Because you know what's really cool about being consistent? And I argue and joke about this all the time with people. I say, I'm not a talented person, but because I'm so consistent and makes up for everything else, and I truly believe that, I honestly do. because you don't have to be talented to be consistent. You don't have to have experience to be consistent.

You don't have to have money to be consistent. Consistency compounds. That's what's cool about it. It's kind of like running. You know, if I were to say, I want to get into snowboarding, but I don't have the money or resources to do it, I might not be able to snowboard.

if I say I want to be in a rock band, but I don't have the skill or talent to do so, I can't sing, and it's probably not going to happen. But if I say I want to run, well, the barrier to entry to run is so low. I'm not saying everyone can do it because some people do have physical limitations,

but the barrier to entry to run is so low for so many people, you just got to put one foot in front of the other. The same is for consistency. You just have to choose to be consistent and then implement discipline to make it happen. And when you're consistent for a long period of time, you stack these incremental wins

and it's insane what it will do. What's also crazy to think kind of on the opposite spectrum of that, I was talking to Kat Thomas earlier in the office this morning about this whole concept and she was a college athlete. She was an athlete growing up and she kind of shared the similarities in an analogy of shorting a track workout where say for example you have 400 meter repeats you're doing and say, just for this example, you do that workout three times a week, every week.

But every time you run a 400 meter interval, you cut it five feet short. You slow up and you walk across that line. You don't respect that line at all. Well, for that one lap that you did five feet short, it's just five feet. It's just one lap. But what happens when you do that for,

every single lap, every single workout for days and weeks and months and year, you just shorted yourself miles, literally miles, because you didn't go over the line. What happens when you continue to short yourself a little bit, I mean inches, if not feet, inches, when you do that for 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 40 gears, you miss the mark so much because you cut yourself short intentionally because you weren't consistent by meeting a standard. That's how strong I feel about consistency because without it, all else fails. and me sitting in this room right now at 32 years old the things that have been built so far

and the things that we will build in the future they are a direct result of being consistent that is what has built this entire thing and I'm not just saying that to say it like I wish that for everyone I was speaking to right now I could shake you and tell you this isn't bullshit

Like the only thing that has built, what we have built is, is pure passion and consistency. And I've seen the result of those incremental wins over a decade now. And I can't even comprehend what that same level of passion and consistency will do in another 10, 20, and 30 years. I honestly can't even personally imagine. The second question is how do you balance everything? And the truth is, the honest truth, my life is not balanced right now. And it's not that I don't want it to be balanced. It's just not right now.

And the thing to think about is, like, what do you want to achieve in your life? And when you decide that, you spend time working towards it, you're truly invested. You're truly passionate about it. I was reading this article on Medium.com. It was an article by Stephen Stotland. And he said, mastery, motivation, and imagination.

For someone who embraces the challenge and understands that learning takes work and accepts that there is much less questioning of the cost of change. It is not that it gets easier. It's just that the thoughts of hard and easy are not important. And I love that quote.

He goes on to further say that for the person who sticks to something, pours their heart into it, and uses all resources and imagination to get better, there is really nothing else that they would rather be doing. And when it goes back to to how do I balance everything? And I say that my life is not balanced right now.

I mean, there are three priorities in my life. It is my family. It is my business and is my fitness. Those three things. I don't have time for anything else right now. It's not saying that I don't want to do anything else in life. There are hobbies that I want to introduce in my life at some point, but I don't have time for it right now.

if it doesn't fit into my family, my business, and my fitness, it doesn't fit because what I've already fit into my life at this point is out of balance because of how invested I am in those three things. And then the question is like, well, what is a balanced life? If I'm being brutally honest, if I were looking at my life, if I were looking at my life, honestly from my perspective or from an outsider looking in, I would say you spend too much time on work and not enough time on your family.

And I can be very honest with myself and say that. You know, my family is a priority. My business is a priority. My fitness is a priority. But right now, I'm working on one of my biggest passions in life. And that is BPN. And the reason is, like, I am so passionate about this business that's been built and bootstrapped over the last decade of my life. Because I've poured my heart and soul and blood, sweat, and tears into it.

I truly have. And there's nothing else that I would rather be doing. And it doesn't feel necessarily hard or easy or balanced or out of balanced. It's just, it is what it is. And it's really hard, it's really hard to audibly describe and visually paint a picture of. But I have my three priorities in life. Like I said, it's my family, my business, and my fitness. Those three things, for me, they make the world go around.

And I've eliminated a lot of other things. and I would still say that my life is not balanced because one of those three priorities is pulling a lot more weight than the others at this moment in time. But what keeps me up at night, you know, I'm a brand guy. I am like at my core

I love brand. I love look. I love feel. I love message and mission and emotion. What's cool about a brand for me and why I'm so passionate about is, you know, product.

Without people, product and brand, you can't have a successful organization. I learned that from Ben Francis, the CEO of Jim Shark. Product, it solves a problem for people. It has a function. People, they are, The pulse.

They are the heartbeat. They are the troops that bring it all together. They are the culture. Brand. Brand is an emotion. You connect to a brand. You connect to stories and a message and a mission. It makes you feel a certain way.

It makes you push a different way. I'm sure for a lot of people who love the people, BPN brand and mission and products and people, it's because there's a certain emotion you get from the content, from the team, from the products, from the story. That's why I love brand. And that's what I pour my heart and soul into. And what keeps me up at night is the thought of being complacent and not pushing

our work to its full potential. Like, what are we missing? How can we be more innovative? How can we be more disruptive? Like, last night's a clear example. Last night, I was laying in bed and I had trouble just turning my mind off because I couldn't help but think

what aren't we actively doing right now that we could be? That would be pushing the standards of our company, of our team. Like what am I missing? What am I not doing? And I've been like that for a long, long time. I'm consistently good at putting the pressure on myself.

Even when we're operating at our greatest efficiency, our greatest speeds, I still feel this way. This past August, we had our best month to date leading up to that point. and we ended up breaking that record in November during our Black Friday sale. But up until August 22, that was our best month ever in the last decade of sales. And Josh, he's our CFO. He came in at the end of the month. And he said, you know how I know you guys are a winning team?

And he said, how? And he said, you guys, we have the best month to date in company history. history and you're pissed off. You're pissed off at at yourselves. And I said, absolutely, yeah, we are, because we know we can do better. Yes, we celebrate wins. I don't want you to get the wrong picture that like we're all just like moving around here at BPN, even when we have really good days. We celebrate wins.

We celebrate each other. But internally, there's like this, this really strong motivation that, you know, that you're, you is like this gear that is just turning in my body that it feels like if I'm just trying to push the standards, I'm just trying to push to reach what our full potential is. No one knows. You don't know what your full potential is. And I don't even know if there is a full potential. You just keep growing and learning and scaling as you go throughout the years.

But throughout your lifetime, like you will reach a peak of your full potential. and you don't know if you're going to reach that next week or next year or 20 years from now. You don't know. But I want to push that as far as possible. How far can I push my life and the things that I do and the things that I accomplish? Because I am grateful for the opportunity to have one. I'm grateful for the opportunity to have a life. And I've seen what.

helps me achieve that. It's consistency. It's being consistent. Time and time and time again. Here's a question that I see like all the time, time and time and time again. And I see so many people struggle with this. And I get this question every time I open up a Q&A. How much do you overthink your training in nutrition? It's a very simple answer. It's two words. It's, it's I don't. I don't overthink my training and nutrition. The time that you spend overthinking training, you think you overthink like how many calories you're eating,

what your macros are, if you've missed your macro goals for a day by a gram or not, all the time you're spending on overthinking, you can be spending on other aspects of your life. Training and nutrition is not a complicated process. You make a plan, you follow the plan, you track the progress and then you adjust that plan. But there's this thing called paralysis by analysis.

And I think it's what happens to a lot of people. You can overthink anything. Literally anything. I got this question, I was on a podcast yesterday. I got this question of like when you first started your company, weren't you afraid by how small you were and how much competition was out there? And my answer,

was, well, I was ignorant to the risks that I was taking. I didn't know how small we were. I mean, you can't get any smaller. We had a $20,000 loan. I was operating the business out of my college apartment. You can't get much smaller than that. But I didn't know what risks I was taking. I didn't know how big the supplement industry was.

I didn't know how competitive it was. And at the same time, I didn't care. I didn't care. I didn't overthink it. I didn't overanalyze. I didn't over study. I had this passion of this thing that I wanted to do and I knew how I wanted to do it

and then I just went all in. But so many people can't make decisive decisions. One of the best qualities of a strong leader of a strong employee that I at least look for. I get this question all the time too is like, what qualities do you look for and a great employee, it's the ability to make a decision.

Make a decision fast that is thought through, has some validity, and then you own that decision, and you execute. But I can't tell you how many times, like I've tasked things out to teams or people. And within a timeline of when they need to make a decision and execute,

they spend 90% of the time, deciding what decision to make and then they allow themselves 10% to execute and they always miss the deadline. I want people who are making decisions who are very decisive in that process and then executing on it.

And guess what? When you're really consistent with that, it allows you more time to execute. It allows you more time to test and learn and succeed, but also fail. And sometimes you need that. Sometimes you need some failures.

Stop overthinking. everything. Stop overthinking training. Stop overthinking your diet. Stop overthinking, you know, the business that you want to start and the market that it's in. Yes, make a plan. Make sure that plan is deliberate and it's intentional and it has strategy and you mitigate risk. Yes, like do your due diligence. But then make a decision and run with it. Run with it. Where do you think your drive of consistency has come from? it hasn't always been this way. I can tell you this.

I've noticed these small effects of it working over the last 10 plus years of my life. And the more I've applied it, the more success it is brought. The longer I've applied it, the more success it is brought. And now, because I've seen the rewards of being consistent, I literally have no other option other than practicing it every single day and everything I do.

And like if we go back to you know, when I was in college, I would say I was consistent. I was more consistent than most. I was more consistent than most when I say most, like maybe 90% of the people. And part of that was embedded into my DNA. When I was in high school, I didn't have as much consistency.

When I got to college, I started to see the result of, really, I learned it through training and fitness. I saw the result of going to the gym every single day. I saw the result of eating a high protein diet. I saw the result of eliminating a lot of processed foods and eating whole nutrient-dense food sources and eating in a chloric surplus. In college, I put on a lot of strength, a lot of size. and I saw the direct result of being consistent with my diet and my training. That I think was my first exposure to the result of consistency. And then I joined the Army and I saw the result of consistency

through the four and a half months that I spent in Ranger School. And then building a business, I saw the result of being consistent. With social media, for example. And I started my YouTube channel in 2014, and started at zero subscribers and slowly started building this community. And I saw the direct result or reward of building a community, more people becoming engaged by more consistent content being published on these platforms. I saw the direct result of it.

And I saw it in my training and my fitness. And at this point, the more that I do it, the more I'm convinced that it's not just by hope, it's not just by chance, it's not just by luck, it is the direct result of being consistent because without it, all else fails.

All else fails. The last question I'm going to cover is, I found this one really interesting because obviously you guys know we're in the hybrid build right now. And I finished the Buffalo, New York, Marathon at like 187 pounds. I was light. And now I'm about 225 pounds.

We've gained significant weight. And that's through one increasing cooler intake being in a caloric surplus. And then two, decreasing energy expenditure or the amount of running that I've been doing on a weekly basis. And those two things and then some changes to my strength training have facilitated that, that result. And the question here was, has there been a change in your mental state now that you are bulking?

You seem more lively and happier. And yeah, I have more, some of this is, like, physical changes in the result of, and some is mental and emotional. And I'll explain both. So when I was deep into a marathon prep or any endurance prep, it beats down your body pretty significantly, especially when you're trying to really push the standards for your personal physical potential. You know, this last marathon prep I was going for a big PR of sub 250.

And I had to get lighter. I had to get faster. and I mean at night I was pretty much a walking zombie I was just exhausted from work and content creation and then running the business zombie at the end of the night like very desensitized to all things energy by the back half of that prep so like mentally or physically that's how it was affected physically now mentally and emotionally this is kind of where I want to lean into. The reason that I've been able to be very consistent when I set a goal.

So I'll set these goals, I'll set these objectives, whether they are 16-week fitness prep, whether it's a six-month business project, or whether it's a five-year business target. I set these goals. and the reason or one of the reasons I'm able to be so consistent is because I am really good at being obsessed. I have a obsessive personality. And once I commit to something, once I decide that I'm going to do it, once I choose, I am literally all in. I obsess on the process.

I obsess on the goal. I obsess on the result. And when I'm obsessed on achieving something, that obsession controls part of my mind mentally and emotionally where I'm distracted from other parts of my life. I'm not saying this is a win. I'm not saying this is a good thing. I'm not saying that this is a strength of mind by any means.

I'm just explaining how things work for me personally. And it's been like this for years and years and years, where when I commit to something and I go all in, I make a plan, one of the reasons I'm able to be so consistent is because I obsess on the process and achieving. And I neglect some of my other priorities in my life. I can consciously say that.

That's how kind of like my physical, mental, and emotional well-being or health is affected when I go into like a big prep. Now, yes, we're in kind of like this training series right now where I'm putting on weight, I'm in a chloric surplus, I'm training more, volumes higher, and it's really fun right now. And it is structured, but it is not extremely strict.

Now, I know when we go into the hybrid cut starting March 1st, that obsession will kick back in. I know it. regardless if I want it to or not, it will. And the reason I'm going to be able to be so consistent and disciplined through the hybrid cut, which will be March, April, May, June, maybe July, is because I obsess on that goal, I obsess on the process, I obsess on that journey.

And when you have an obsession paired with consistency and discipline, it's pretty unstoppable. It's pretty crazy. But it's how my mind work. It's how the gears it's how they turn. So that's what I wanted to cover in this episode.

I wanted to answer a few questions, all about consistency. I really wanted to drive home the message that if there's a goal you want to set in this next year, if there's a New Year's resolution you want to put on your calendar

I would urge you to not go after the typical I'm going to eat less chocolate I'm going to drink only one glass of wine in night

I'm going to exercise more I'm not going to eat any cheeseburgers and fries whatever whatever New Year's resolution you pulled out of a fortune cookie or someone else told you to do.

I would urge you not to choose one of those cookie cutter bullshit resolutions. And I would encourage you to choose to be more consistent. Identify ways that you can be more consistent in your life to achieve the goals that matter to you and that you want to make a change for. and if you identify those goals and you focus on being more consistent in order to achieve those goals, you're going to see a huge return.

So thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Bear Performance Podcast. We'll see you guys 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 live through the Go One More mindset. If you are ready to take your health and performance to the next level, head over to bpnsubs.com to take the first step.