Episode · Feb 25, 2026 · 1 hr 35 min
Dirty Feet and a Battered Back
with Nick Bare
Nick Bare is the founder of BPN, a former Army infantry officer, and an endurance athlete.
Summary
Ken and Nick discuss the pressure Nick creates by announcing ambitious goals before he feels ready, and how public accountability can help him follow through. Nick traces his drive to childhood, describes recovering from anorexia, and recounts starting BPN in a college apartment while serving as an Army infantry officer. He talks about Ranger School, bootstrapping the company with a camera and online videos, nearly running out of cash, and learning to stay close to customers as the business grew.
They revisit Leadville, a marathon that felt unusually easy, and Nick's habit of spending too much attention on preparation details. Nick explains why he stepped down as CEO when burnout caught up with him, then returned with a clearer sense of purpose. He and Ken connect faith with marriage, fatherhood, and leadership, and discuss why Nick now measures success by the person he becomes while pursuing a goal.
Show notes
Nick Bare has built his life in public. He announces the goal before he’s ready. He signs up for the race that might break him. He puts the business on the line and accepts the pressure that comes with it.
This episode isn’t about highlight reels. It’s about what happens when discipline meets doubt.
Nick talks about building BPN from a college apartment while serving as an Army infantry officer, surviving Ranger School, nearly running out of cash in the early years, stepping down as CEO from burnout, and eventually coming back to lead with more clarity and humility.
We get into Leadville breaking him, the marathon that felt effortless, and why he believes most people sabotage themselves by “majoring in the minors.” But the real shift came when achievement stopped delivering peace and faith reframed how he sees success, marriage, fatherhood, and leadership.
At its core, this conversation is about overcoming ego, pressure, and the constant pull of ?what’s next.? It’s about becoming the kind of person who doesn’t negotiate when things get hard.
Transcript
Made from YouTube's automatic captions and lightly corrected, so a few words and names may be off. Click a time to play the video from there.
Ken Rideout
Nick Bear, welcome to the show.
Nick Bare
Ken, thank you.
Ken Rideout
Thank you for doing this, man. I really appreciate it.
Nick Bare
I'm grateful. It's just been awesome to see what you've done over the years, especially as you get older, just keep throwing down.
Ken Rideout
Well, for what it's worth, I feel super inspired by you. I think that when I think about hybrid athletes, I think that you are the standard. And I'll tell you why. Cuz there's guys like Hunter McIntyre. They're awesome at Hy Rocks. But, and not to detract from anything he's done. is not an attack on him, but let's see him do an iron man, then a bodybuilding show, then run a sub3h hour marathon. And maybe he could do those things, but there's one guy that is doing those things and that's you.
And I just every time you announce a new goal, I'm like, this is what I love about Nick. He's just like, hey, I'm doing this. And you know that there's a lot of haters out there that are going to be like, there's no way he's going to do that. And then you do it. And when you don't do it, you just dig in, re reccalibrate, and get on to the next goal. And um it's super inspiring to watch.
Nick Bare
I appreciate that. I mean, really, it's just pursuing curiosities and keeping things interesting.
Um you know like the the reason I initially started to explore endurance training is I got tired and bored of just strictly strength training and then I went after a marathon and then I wanted to explore a new curiosity and that evolved into triathlon and then when I was training for Iron Man's you know I threw my name in the hat for Leadville name was selected and then explored that curiosity and for me it's just and wanting to know what I can do, where I can push it, but also being humbled being the new guy in a space and learning in the process.
It's just been fun keeping things fun, interesting, new, and exploring those curiosities.
Ken Rideout
Yeah. But not many people have the courage with the profile the size of yours to announce these audacious goals. I know, for example, with Iron Man, it took me probably 3 years to get to the point where I wanted to get to, which was qualifying for Kona. And for people that don't know, if you just say like, "Hey, I'm going to do an Iron Man." Unless you've ridden a bike, you can't comprehend what 112 miles on a time trial bike feels like until you go and try and ride 50 miles on a road bike and realize, "Oh my god, I'm in way over my head." So, the fact that you announce it and then go and do it is what's incredible to It took me a long time to build up the endurance and the like stamina just to sit in the saddle for five plus hours.
Nick Bare
Yeah. Part of me announcing these big feats, it puts pressure on me, you know, it it's my back up against the wall of I now don't have a choice. I have to perform. And I'm I'm naturally a very disciplined and consistent and committed person. But that extra layer of pressure knowing that there's there's expectations from other people. There is like this accountability that I have on myself, but I know that other people look up to me to hold themselves accountable. So I have to be that role model.
I have to be that that leader. I have to set that standard because I know that other people rely on that display and measure of accountability for themselves. So I feel that weight. I feel that responsibility.
Ken Rideout
Yeah. No, I know what you mean. I certainly feel that responsibility, too. Even if it's fabricated in my own brain, I'm like, "Oh, I know that I have like a small community of people that look for me for um inspiration when it comes to consistency and and and discipline. Like showing up every day to run when it was like I I don't know if you saw I posted a video running in a blizzard and like I didn't realize when I was until I looked at the video that I was covered in like snow and ice.
I just thought I was freezing cold and I had a beard and I was like I look crazy. But um like when I was I felt motivation from the from the community as I was running. I'm like no I want I desperately want to stop. It's [ __ ] snowing and raining and I'm drenched and I'm freezing. It was like 20°. But I was like the easy thing to do would be to stop and totally justified in doing it. But I had a 15-mi run on the calendar.
And everything that I have good in my life right now has come from discipline and dedication and commitment and taking responsibility for myself and and that extra bit of motivation to your point is what kept me going cuz I'm like I know people are going to see this and feel motivated by it. And if it was just for myself and it wasn't and social media didn't exist, I probably would have been like, eh, I'm going to stop. But it wasn't a performative thing. was more like, let me show people that like, hey, there's you you can make excuses or you can just get results.
Nick Bare
Yeah.
Ken Rideout
And you're in control of that.
Nick Bare
Kind of like I mean the title of your book, The Other Side of Hard, there's this this piece of scripture that says, "If the axe is dull and its edge unsharpened, more strength is needed, but more skill is required." When I hear that, I think of like when we are put in positions where our axe becomes dull and unsharpened. That axe which is the courage, the strength, the ability of life, yes, more strength is needed, but skill as well. And one of the skills that I've learned to refine over time is consistency, commitment.
I mean, I will wake up and discipline is is not a challenge for me. Like,
If I say I'm going to run tomorrow morning, I'm waking up and I'm running tomorrow morning. I don't care if it's ice, if it's snow, I don't care if I have to find a way to drive to the HQ to use the treadmill. Like, I'm going to run if I tell myself I'm going to run. And it might not be the best run of my life. But the fact that I went and did it and I honored that commitment, that is a skill that becomes refined and refined and refined over time.
Like one of the things that I've thought about a lot over the years is there's like two groups of people, you know, if you put it in the most simple terms. There is those looking for motivation who need motivation and there's those who don't need motivation. they're going to do regardless. And you can go from the one who needs motivation to the one that's already motivated and and potentially looking for inspiration to be inspired, but that is something at your core like you know you're going to do.
You say you're going to do something, you are going to honor that commitment. You're going to commit to honoring that commitment. And I think that's where a lot of people can improve. You know, there's this opportunity where if you say you're going to do something, ju just do it.
Ken Rideout
Yeah.
Nick Bare
Don't negotiate with yourself. There's there's way too many people negotiating with themselves on a daily basis from the time they wake up to the time they go to sleep. Like, if I tell myself, I'm going to sleep at 9:30 p.m. because I want to get 7 hours of sleep so I can wake up the next morning and run early before the kids wake up, that's that's not hard for me anymore. I'm just going to do it.
Ken Rideout
People underestimate how important that is. And and I can be guilty of this myself at times is getting caught up in the performance and the metrics of workout to workout. Whereas like when you're training for a big endurance event, certainly for a marathon, don't worry about the quality of each workout. Just make sure that each workout gets done. The consistency is what is going to pay off. So, if there are two workouts in a long run or one workout in a in a long run that includes a workout, as long as those workouts get done, even if they're crap, like in preparing for yesterday's half marathon, I had nothing but crap workouts.
I mean, I wasn't in great shape. I trained for literally 5 weeks. I mean, I've always run the 10 miles a day, but none of them were with intensity for months. I was writing the book. My wife had cancer. I was like distracted, but I never missed a run ever. It would be harder for me to miss one than to than to not because I the rewards that I get physiologically from running. But when it's time to show up and you have that kind of consistency and you've built that kind of in base fitness and endurance engine and mindset, like my body was doing things yesterday that I didn't think in a million years it could do.
Like running sub six minute miles uphill, I just, you know, in the five weeks of working out that I did, I could never do that. I would be struggling to run six minutee miles up a hill and thinking like I am gonna get smashed relative to my expectations. But on race day when you have years of consistency and you've done the workouts like your body will give you 90% of the time your body's going to give you what you ask for if you trained it accordingly.
So that's a mistake that I think a lot of people make is getting hung up hung up on the day-to-day metrics versus like what you said conditioning your brain to be like I'm getting up and doing this no matter what.
Nick Bare
Yeah. I mean, that's why one of the favorite my favorite things that my running coach Jeff Cunningham has said is that it's better to be consistently good than occasionally great.
Ken Rideout
Yeah.
Nick Bare
Cuz you meet the athletes, you meet the people who like daytoday they quit, they give in, they they negotiate with themselves, but occasionally they excel.
Like occasionally they have they just show up. But it's better to be consistently good. just show up day after day after day then occasionally. Great. On like the heels of what you were just talking about, you know, I one of the observations I have kind of seen from the outside looking in uh to a lot of people in this space right now is like and I've struggled with this in the past. This is how I've come to this kind of realization. There's a lot of things we want to do in a day.
We want to run our miles. We want to train for the marathon. We want to show up for our our job. We want to build a business. We want to achieve. We want to have a family and lead our kids and have a healthy marriage. There's a lot that we're trying to manage daytoday. And what makes it easier is routine. But routines can also be dangerous where it's like, okay, I'm going to wake up at 5:00 a.m. I'm going to knock out my run. After my run, I'm going to uh go into the sauna.
After the song, I'm going to make my breakfast and then I'm going to spend time with the family and kids. And that sounds great until like life throws you a curveball.
Ken Rideout
Exactly.
Nick Bare
So, one of the things that I've really tried to instill into my life these last couple years is routines are great, but responsibilities over routines. Like if if a responsibility of mine is I'm training for this marathon and I gota run 10 miles. I'm gonna run 10 miles tomorrow at some point. But if I wake up to run 10 miles and my kids wake up shortly after I do and my wife's not feeling good,
I'm not going to say screw it and go run those 10 miles, I'm going to find a way to make it work because my responsibilities to my family and my life are much greater than the responsibility of that marathon.
That's right. So like you can still get it all done. You might have to pivot and adapt and shift. Adaptability is I think the name of the game and in trying to manage a lot in your life, a complex and complicated life. But it's responsibilities over routine.
Ken Rideout
One of the things that I want to talk to you about is, and we haven't even touched on it yet, is the success of BPN. I mean, what you've built here is so incredible. I mean, you we both know how many people in the health and wellness space trying to create products and brands and, you know, the odds of succeeding in as a small business owner, the odds are very slim.
And you are like not only succeeding, but thriving. And I want to like go back to childhood and figure out where did that drive come from. Kind of talk through your early life and then get into BPN cuz the one thing that has stuck with me ever since I first talked to you was when you launched BPN and were back home in Pennsylvania and the people you grew up with were almost mocking you about it. That story has enraged me ever since I've heard it. And every time every time I think of you and anytime your name comes up, I'm like, he shoved it right up their ass and showed them like what's possible.
But before we get into that, let's talk about like childhood. Where did you grow up? And um what was childhood like?
Nick Bare
Central Pennsylvania is where I grew up. Small town right outside of Hershey, PA called Palmyra. My dad's side of the family were all dairy farmers in the central Pennsylvania area. Mom's side of the family, majority military. So, my cousin, uncle, grandfather, uh, army and air force military. So, I had this this interesting dynamic growing up where I never had to been told what hard work was.
I just saw it. I saw it from the military perspective, selfless service. And then I saw it from the the dairy farmer perspective. I mean, dairy farming is it's tough.
Ken Rideout
You're not sleeping in and not milking the cows.
Nick Bare
No, you're you're milking the cows every morning and every night. So, I believe like those dynamics of those two sides of the family growing up were extremely instrumental to the man I became today. And looking back, you know, I was always entrepreneurial in some way. Uh, in my early teens, I was mowing grass trying to find a ways to to make additional money. I'd push my lawn mower all over our small town and cut people's grass for 30 bucks. I would dumpster dive because we were growing up in this neighborhood that was a newer neighborhood.
So they're building all these new homes and we were one of the first homes in this neighborhood. So there's there's big dumpsters all over the neighborhood with, you know, wood and debris and leftover material. And I' I'd jump in those dumpsters. I put all this stuff in my wagon. I'd pull back the house. I'd build things and sell it like birdhouses with my grandfather and forts. And I built a quarter pipe and a half pipe once for me and the friends to, you know, skate on.
So I was always resourceful. I was always kind of independent. Uh I was quiet. I was timid. I was I was I was and I believe still am more introverted than extroverted. But I would say entrepreneurial in spirit was always part of my bloodline, my DNA. And I knew what hard work looked like. And then when I went to college, I went to the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. started in 2009 to study nutrition because I was obsessed with the bodybuilding industry and the supplement industry. And uh when I was younger, I had a very severe eating disorder and that led to a kind of passion and uh interest in training and viewing food as fuel and being healthy as opposed to robbing my body of nutrients.
And starving itself. And
Ken Rideout
Would you say the eating disorder was more like akin to like anorexia or more like a body dysmorphia where you like want to get big then you feel too fat? Cuz I do that sometimes. I'm like I want to get muscular then I'm like I'm too big then I want to lose weight then I'm too skinny. And it's like constant struggle. But I still struggle with that.
Nick Bare
Yeah. I mean I still struggle with an unhealthy relationship with food to this day. Uh sometimes it's better, sometimes it's worse. But when I was about 14 years old, it was anorexia. I mean, I starved myself to the point where I was for a year in and out of hospitals.
Ken Rideout
Oh, wow.
Nick Bare
Um, and I knew I was starving myself, but my family and doctors couldn't figure it out. They were running me through all these tests trying to figure out why I was losing so much weight. And I got to the point where we did this one test because I was in and out of the hospital all the time. And we did this one test. They put a scope down my throat and they they realized that the food that I had consumed days prior was still in my stomach.
Like my my organs were essentially shutting down. And finally, I mean, this was on and off for a year. And I had no energy. Complete fatigue. Barely get out of bed. I was I was killing myself by starving myself. I might have been consuming 600 calories a day.
Ken Rideout
Where do you think that was coming from? What was the obsession with being skinny? Well, did you have heavy people in your in your family or life that you like had almost contempt for?
Nick Bare
No, I I to to be honest, I I I have never identified the root cause of it, but I believe it's I found this one way that I could control part of my life and I I attached that. I wanted control. As a young teenager, maybe I felt like life was out of control and I couldn't manage it. And this was one thing in my life I could control. I could control how much food I consumed, how much weight I lost. And I became obsessed with it.
And it took over my entire mind and body to the point where I I could, like I said, could barely get out of bed, no energy. And it got to a point where we were going in for what felt like a routine doctor's appointment. My mom would take me out of school. We'd go to Hershey Medical Center, run multiple tests, and then she'd take me back to school. And this just became routine. And normally we we drive into the Hershey Medical Center and we go into kind of the the ER section and we go in for these tests and appointments.
But in this one particular day, we went to the outpatient clinic part of the Hershey Medical Center. We pulled up at this building and it said eating disorder clinic. And I knew at that moment, oh, they caught me. They know. And my mom marched me up these stairs, walked into the office. The doctor confronted me. We know what you've been doing. You've been starving yourself. We got to make a change. And that's all I needed. I was like, I don't want treatment. I don't want anything.
I will I will fix this. I will change. Give me one chance. I don't I don't want to go through this whole treatment plan and protocol which in retrospect I probably should have done because it was a brutally challenging journey. Like I said, something that still consumes part of my mind today. And it was a a multi-year process to like dig out of that that eating disorder. And I still find myself leaning back to those old habits, particularly when I go into a fitness prep, when I'm pursuing a really ambitious goal, because I know I can control my diet and my weight and my performance, and I get really obsessed with the numbers, specifically the scale.
But that I have to in some capacity be grateful for because it led to my interest in nutrition, and fitness, and training. And I found the gym and I learned how to view food as fuel as opposed to, you know, how little can I consume, how skinny can I get. Now it was how how much can I consume? How strong can I become? Started working at a gym when I was in high school. Just fell in love with with fitness and bodybuilding and strength and supplements.
So that's what I decided I wanted to spend my life pursuing. and you know working in so I went to college in 2009. It was a study nutrition. Uh I was on an Army ROC scholarship. So I I knew that upon graduating college I was going to go right in the military for at least a 4-year commitment. You know at that point in my life again another decision that I made that was instrumental to where I am today. And how BPN came to be was when I was in college, I had no money.
Uh, and I became resourceful. So, I found out how I could kind of spread the small amount of money I had to to supply myself with enough supplements for months and years. So, I would buy ingredients in bulk online. I buy caffeine, citrine malate, beta alanine, creatine. I get shipped to my dorm room. I had a scale. I'd weigh out my own ingredients and I make my own pre-workout. I use it for myself. Then I'd give it to my friends and sell it to people in the dorms.
I was going to all the Arnold fitness expose. I was on bodybuilding.com forums. I was watching fitness YouTube, which was brand new at the time. And between my junior and senior year of college, the military associated bank USA offered a loan to Army ROC cadetses. We didn't have to make our first payment for 18 months. Super low interest rate. They knew we were going to make money as soon as we went into the army. So, they didn't worry about us not being able to pay it back.
And all my peers and friends were taking out this money. They were buying engagement rings, new cars, going on vacations. I was like, "This is my golden ticket to finally start the business I always wanted to start." So, I applied for the loan, got approved for $20,000, found a manufacturer in California, sent them my formula. I spent all the money on inventory. It was 12-week lead times. They shipped it to me. I told my dad I was going to make a million dollars that first year, and I believed it.
Year one, we did $20,000 in revenue. Year two, we did $20,000 in revenue. Year three, we did $20,000 in revenue. It was a humbling beginning to say the least. But I was just obsessed with the brand, the journey, the product, the service, everything.
Ken Rideout
What were you advertising? just online.
Nick Bare
I mean, it was all organic. It was friends and family initially. I remember we went to uh it was me and my brother. We went to a advertising firm in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. And we told them our goal, I think our goal at the time was we wanted to do 20 orders a day. I don't remember what our budget was, but our budget was small. And this advertising firm sat us down and said, "Boys, I don't think we can get you there. One, you don't have the budget for it.
You don't have the website for it. You don't have the operations for it." They're like, "That's that's going to overwhelm you." Cuz at the time, we were doing one to two orders a week. And again, it was friends and family. Everyone told me, you know, it's going to take three years to get this business off the ground. And I bought into that. It's like, well, I have a three-year now window to buy myself some time because everyone's telling me takes three years to get the brand off the ground.
Ken Rideout
And by the way, are you now in the army while you're doing this?
Nick Bare
So, when I launched it, it was 2012. I was it was between my junior and senior year of college.
Ken Rideout
Okay.
Nick Bare
So, a horrible time to to launch a business because I I launched it with product my senior year of college and then by May I graduated commission to the army got shipped right to Fort Benning, Georgia for a year where I was in infantry school, Ranger school, airborne school, Bradley leader course. After being at Fort Benning for a year, I got shipped to to Texas to Fort Hood, Texas, which is how we ended up here. I was an infantry platoon leader in Texas. At that point, you know, it's two years in into building the business.
Nothing was changing.
Ken Rideout
But in that two years, I assume you're basically off the grid for months at a time, right? So, is your brother doing everything?
Nick Bare
Yeah. But the thing is, there wasn't much happening. Okay.
It was like one or two orders.
Ken Rideout
So, it was like almost on autopilot.
Nick Bare
It was on autopilot. It was just sitting in the background. When I was at Fort Benning, Georgia, I was telling all my peers, all these other lieutenants, hey, I got the supplement business. Like, you should check it out. And they thought it was cool, but nothing was growing. Okay?
You know, it was pretty stagnant. It was plateaued. But when I got to Texas, I had $500 left to my name, and I was like, I'm going to I'm going to go all in. So, I spent that $500. I bought a camera. I bought a mic. I downloaded Final Cut Pro to start editing videos. And I just started filming everything. What I was eating, how I was training behind the scenes of building the business, my experience in the military as a platoon leader. And one fitness YouTube at the time was so much different than it is today.
The fitness industry was so much different than it is today. And there was no one on YouTube that was also in the military documenting and sharing their their experience. So I had a competitive advantage at that point. But I went to YouTube and I was like, I'm gonna I'm gonna give it this one last chance. And as my YouTube community started to grow in 2014, sales slowly started to grow. Slowly. I mean, one additional sale per week. But it was a slow build for I mean, literally from 2012 until today, it's been a slow build.
Ken Rideout
That's that's just it's so incredible. I hope people listening to this realize like number one, whatever you're doing, like if you expect it to be easy, guess what? every idiot would already have done it. Anything worth having is on the other side of hard. Otherwise, people would do it. But isn't it funny to think of how much easier things are now than ever before in terms of getting started? Like you said, spent money building a website. Like every time I go on Twitter, it's like use Claudebot to build a website for $3 right now in 30 seconds.
And it's like everything is readily available in terms of the resources you need to do anything online.
Nick Bare
Oh yeah,
It's crazy. Our first website wasn't built on Shopify. Now our website's built on Shopify. When we launched our website in 2012, I found a friend in college who had his own like hosting platform and he built it for me. And it was like this blocky, broken website. The only way you could check out was through PayPal. And the way I fulfilled orders is I'd go into PayPal. I would see what orders were placed and I'd pull up USPS.com. I would take all the order information. I'd plug it into USPS.
I'd measure the box. I'd weigh the box. I'd print out a label. At that point, I didn't have like the sticky uh labels. I would cut it out. I would tape it on. And then I would drop that order off at the post office on my way to class the next morning. And that's how we were doing it. And all these things were just staged in my apartment in the, you know, Indiana University of Pennsylvania. You know, you had to be resourceful. Yeah. Today, you still have to be resourceful, but we have so many resources at our fingertips that allow us to just be streamlined in these processes.
Ken Rideout
Yeah.
Nick Bare
But I love the bootstrapped brand building part. I love zero to one just figuring it out and having to be adaptable and resourceful
And that for me is like that's where passion comes from. You see so many people starting brands right now because they identify an opportunity.
Yep. And then there's a product or a service for that opportunity and there are great business people but that passion might not be there for like what did I man like mine started with the passion first and then it turned into the business.
Ken Rideout
Yeah.
Nick Bare
It's it's like I love it. I love it more than the business part. I love the product. I love the service. I love the the mission. I love the lifestyle. I love the industry. I love this lifestyle.
Ken Rideout
Yeah. It's funny as an like I've invested in a lot of health and wellness brands. My background is as a I was a banker for 25 years in different areas of finance and Wall Street trading desks. And when I look at a potential investment, I always think does this guy would this guy die to win? Like does he have that mentality of like I'm going to, you know, when you ask them like, well, what's plan B and what's this and what's that? And they're almost like, yeah, there is no plan B.
I'm going to either succeed in this or go down with the ship. That's when I'm like, "All right, that's that's that's like box number one that's got to be ticked is like, do I believe that this guy is like really wants to win?" Because to your point, there's a lot of people that identify an is they they identify an opportunity and they're really smart, but you're like, "This guy's got like 16 different businesses going on and he's already talking about who he's going to sell this to and what's he's going to do after that." And I'm like, "No, no, no, no." Like when I talked to Bill Shufeld, who's a really good friend, the founder of um Athletic Brewing, he walked me through his brewery, which is crazy.
I mean, he what he's built for a non-alcoholic beer brand, like when he started it, I just remember thinking, "Athletic brewing, non-alcoholic beer." Like, isn't there old duels already? Like, who would care about this? But he did. And when I walked through the brewery with him, I'm like, "This is incredible." It looked like Annheiser Bush. And he has two of them, one in San Diego, one in Connecticut. And I said to him, "Wow, this is cool." like who do you think is the buyer for this?
Like what's the exit plan? He he looked at me like almost like like in in a look of incredulousness and was like I'm never selling this. I'm going to run this forever. Like a true missionary versus a mercenary. And that's when I was like, "Oh, this guy is crazy. He's like he's going to they're going to kill." And that that brand, I mean, shortly there after he took like a $50 million investment from General Atlantic and just you just knew it was off to the races from there.
Ken Rideout
So I didn't have to go to officer candidate school. You had done that while ROC.
Nick Bare
Yep.
So I went through ROC in college commissioned as a second lieutenant. Yep. in 2013 in the infantry. Went straight to Fort Benning, Georgia, which is the home of the infantry.
Ken Rideout
Yeah.
Nick Bare
Where I did my uh it's called Ibolic Infantry Officer Basic Leader Course. And that's about a 17week course. And then I went right into Ranger School.
Ken Rideout
And what's that? What is Ranger School?
Nick Bare
So Ranger School is a tactical and leadership evaluation course. It's 61 days if you go straight through.
Ken Rideout
It's voluntary. You can sign up for it. Oh, you have to be selected. How's it work?
Nick Bare
You can you can sign up for it, but just because you like just because you go to your unit and say, "I want to go to Ranger school," doesn't mean you're going to go. Now, almost every infantry officer is going to go to Ranger school because it's expected of you. If like when you go to your unit as an infantry officer, the first thing they do is they look at your shoulder to make sure you have your ranger tab.
Ken Rideout
Okay?
Nick Bare
It's kind of like, okay, you you did the bare minimum to get here. Now we can at least give you some sort of respect because if you show up to your unit as an infantry officer without a ranger tab just makes your life a whole lot harder. So there's this pressure. It's like when I go to Ranger school, I'm not leaving this place until I get this tab. I'm not going to my unit without my tab on my shoulder. So it's 61 days if you go straight through.
Most people don't go straight through. I failed two phases. I failed the first phase and then the second phase which is mountain phase. I was there for four and a half months.
Ken Rideout
Oh man.
Nick Bare
It felt like I was never getting out of Ranger school. So when I finally graduated, I mean, it felt like I was coming out of prison, out of jail. I lost so much weight cuz you're you're pretty much starved while you're there. You're rocking all over, you know, the the mountains of Georgia, the swamps of Florida. Uh you're sleepd deprived. Like you don't sleep much at all. I lost maybe 30 pounds when I was in Ranger school. Damn.
You know, you lose all your muscle. Extremely humbling experience, but I learned so much about myself and other people throughout that experience. Graduated Ranger School July of 2014, went right to airborne school.
Ken Rideout
Again, is that voluntary? Like, can you
Nick Bare
That That's voluntary.
Ken Rideout
Okay. And what was that like?
Nick Bare
Uh, it's a three-week course. I mean, after going through Ranger School, Airborne School is just like a cakewalk. Yeah. You learn how to jump out of airplanes. And then I went to Bradley Leader course, which I believe was a four-week school because a unit I was going to in Texas, uh, was mechanized infantry. So, we used Bradley fighting vehicles. So, it was a course on how to utilize and understand the movement patterns of Bradley fighting vehicles. And after that, I got sent over to Fort Hood, Texas, where I had the opportunity to be a platoon leader for two years.
And I was leading 40 soldiers and non-commission officers in the infantry. And during those two years, nine of those months was spent in South Korea. So, we took that unit to South Korea for a nine-month rotation. And in South Korea, that's actually where I scaled the business. I knew when we went to to South Korea on that 9-month training rotation, I was going to start my transition out of the military because my contract was up. So, I knew I had to make some sort of change with BPN while I was there.
Because if I transition out of the army and BPN was still doing the same amount of revenue it was doing when I got to South Korea, like I can't survive on that.
Ken Rideout
Yeah.
Nick Bare
So, when I got to South Korea, BPN was doing $2,000 a month in revenue. By the time we left South Korea, we were probably doing 15 to20,000 in revenue.
Ken Rideout
Oh wow, that's a big jump.
Nick Bare
So as soon as we got there, I told myself, I'm doing outside of work, no video games, no movies, no hanging out with people, no inter mural sports, like nothing. Everything outside of my time as an infantry platoon leader, I'm spending building this business. And my goal was to be doing $10,000 a month in revenue by the time we left South Korea. Within 90 days of being there, we were doing $10,000 a month in revenue.
Ken Rideout
What changes did you make?
Nick Bare
Uh, I rebuilt the website when we were there. I rebuilt it on Shopify. Uh, launched some new products while we were there. So, I was
Ken Rideout
Who's on the ground helping you in the US while you're doing this? Your brother?
Nick Bare
My brother and dad.
Ken Rideout
Okay.
Nick Bare
They were fulfilling all the orders out of this room that was above my uh my it was my parents house. It was above the garage, like this spare room that they were fulfilling orders out of. So, you're back in the States. Uh, and then I was in South Korea doing the marketing, filming YouTube videos. I obsessed over all of Casey Neistat's YouTube videos. I learned storytelling. I'd watch how he filmed, how he told stories. And on the weekends, I'd go into Soul on a Train and I' I'd have a story and I'd film like Casey and I'd publish a video that night.
And I just obsessed over the marketing, the storytelling, everyone who placed an order. I was writing handwritten thank you notes from South Korea, sending him back to the States every day just learning what I could do.
Ken Rideout
By the way, have you met Casey?
Nick Bare
Never in person. We've talked back and forth.
Ken Rideout
Oh my god, he's my good friend. He gave me a beautiful quote for the book. I've got a I'm going to call him after this. You should have him on the show, man.
Nick Bare
I would love to have Casey on the show.
Ken Rideout
Oh, he would do in a heartbeat. He's the nicest nicest guy.
Nick Bare
He changed my life.
Ken Rideout
Yeah, man. That's a Oh, that's awesome. I was just texting with him yesterday. He texted me after the race. He's a huge runner. I ran a sub three-hour marathon a couple times now. but such a nice guy and super generous and like he's he would love to hear that story. I'm sure you've already probably told him part of it, but he'll hear this for sure. Oh, I'm I'm I'm I'm happy to like make that connection.
Nick Bare
He changed the course of my life for real.
Ken Rideout
So awesome.
Nick Bare
Just watching how he would film and edit and tell stories and captivate the audience and the viewer. I just modeled that in my own unique way. And those platforms started to grow. When I was in in South Korea, I had this one video take off. It was called the day in the life of an infantry platoon leader. And I just filmed my life when I was over there. I interviewed my platoon sergeant. I filmed PT. I filmed the workouts and what I was eating. Published it on YouTube.
And it took off. I mean, it got like a million views. And for me at the time, that was way more than any of my other videos were getting.
Ken Rideout
And was YouTube monet monetized at the time? Were you making money from that? Cuz YouTube now, if you have a successful channel, I don't think most people, if they're not on YouTube, don't realize what an opportunity YouTube is.
Nick Bare
Yeah, I was monetizing videos back then, it wasn't much. Um, I can't remember how much exactly I was making, but every dollar I was making, I was thinking back into the business,
You know, because as a bootstrap brand, all of our money was going into inventory.
Ken Rideout
Yeah.
Nick Bare
We didn't have a line of credit. Mhm. [clears throat and snorts]
We didn't have any terms with manufacturers. So, every time I placed a production order with our manufacturer, I had to pay for all that inventory before we even received it.
Ken Rideout
Yeah.
Nick Bare
So, all of our money was tied up in in inventory.
Ken Rideout
I had an inventory finance company for a couple of years recently um with a guy called Nick Mayer who started um um kettle and fire bone broth and uh that was a freaking crash course in all things um CPG contract manufacturing and the challenges that come with that's what a lot of people don't under stand or they underestimate the importance of having those credit lines or terms with the contract manufacturer. It's such a huge there's such a huge capital need if you get a brand like in the CPG space that scales quickly like all of a sudden you're having to manufacture millions of dollars worth of worth of uh inventory and you you might not have more than a couple thousand dollars.
So solving those problems is where real
Successful entrepreneurs like thrive is when they're problem solvers which obviously you've been.
Nick Bare
Yeah. When I got out of the military in 2017, that was the first year we we crossed the seven figure revenue mark. So we had 1.7 million in revenue 2017, one of the most fun years of my entire life. And I just transitioned out of the military. Finally able to spend all my time building the business. Every morning felt like Christmas morning. But cash flow was an absolute nightmare. all of our inventory or all of our money was tied up in inventory
To the point where
And we had trouble paying rent some months for our warehouse because we were having to stack production orders to keep up with the demand. So the business was scaling. It was growing. It was me, my brother,
And another employee, Joe Pivots, who still works with us.
Ken Rideout
Oh, that's awesome.
Nick Bare
We were just trying to figure it out and bridge the gap without trying to run out of money. And we got so close so many times. But I I didn't know about ways to finance inventory. I didn't know about a line of credit. I didn't know about any of this stuff.
Ken Rideout
That's I hope that people listening understand that. It's the same thing with running. People are like, "Should I get a coach?" I was like, "Ah, I don't know. I got a coach after I ran 233 just running a lot like in a marathon." You know what I mean?
And it's like what you're describing and I'm sorry to interrupt. I know people are going to be like, "Stop interrupting." But I want to highlight the fact that you don't have to know everything to get started. The key to getting started is starting and figuring it out. So that I just want to highlight that for people listening like that you didn't know. You have a a business that's doing $1.7 million and you don't understand a line of credit or any of the like basic metrics that a lot of the kind of more nerdy like entrepreneurs understand so deeply.
But what they lack is the passion and the vision that you had. So,
Nick Bare
I mean, we just had to to learn how to get super creative.
Ken Rideout
Yeah.
Nick Bare
You know, the way that we determined the success of the business at the time is we'd log into our bank account
And as it was loading, I would close one eye and I'd keep one eye open and like, "Please be positive. Please be positive." But sometimes we were surprised and sometimes like, "Oh my gosh, where'd our money go?"
I thought we were going to have at least a couple thousand dollars in here. We had to get creative. I mean, I remember this one time we had to pay rent the next next week and we did not have enough money to cover it. So, we went on social and we said, "For everyone who places an order in the next 24 hours, we will call you personally and have a conversation with you." Hundreds of orders came in for a week. I'm not exaggerating. For a week, I was on the call on the phone making calls to people.
Some calls lasted one minute, some lasted 30 minutes. But like we had to get creative and that was one of the ways we got creative.
Ken Rideout
I freaking love that. Anyone listening, if you buy my book and send me the receipt of a pre-order, I will find a way to talk to you if you're interested. It's powerful. I can't I can't believe that that worked. I mean, it wouldn't like I wouldn't think although I like I love everything you're doing. So, I might I might just do it just to be like, "Oh, have a conversation with him. Let me ask him some questions about the products." But I've thought about ways like that to get creative with the book.
And you know, when you put something out there of yourself, not to make this about me, but you start to feel like, man, this is a reflection on me. I desperately want it to be successful. Obviously, I think it's a good product. But I'm going to talk to you offline about that afterwards. I've got to think of some creative ideas, and I'm going to talk to Casey, too, about recording some content with me, which he's offered to do. But anyway, back to the thing. So, so the people are all looking for phone calls.
So you're spending all your time solving problems and now speaking to customers, which was probably a net positive for you anyway to learn about what the customers think about cuz you get in your own bubble where you're like just thinking about your problems and how you're viewing them. But to hear the customer's perspective from that many verified purchasers must have been powerful in itself.
Nick Bare
Yeah, I think like this past weekend is a a good example and representation of that. Austin Marathon. Uh we were the oncourse nutrition sponsor of the Awesome Marathon. All of our gels and electrolytes were on course. Well, two days before the race, we had the Shakeout run and the day before the race we had the expo. And those opportunities are always really powerful because we get to have one-on-one conversations with the people who are consuming the content and buying the product. And sometimes when you're like in the trenches of building and creating content, it's really easy to forget that there's other people on the side of those podcasts or those videos or those posts.
It's like, let's just get it out there and start work on the next. Get it out there and start working on the next. And then when you have these conversations with people in person, you realize the impact of that content and that message and the mission and how it's changed and saved people's lives. And then you feel that responsibility. And it almost reinjects a passion of, okay, this is why we work so hard. This is why we do it. And you come out of it inspired and motivated to drive even harder.
And those phone calls early on in the days like that was that was that in a nutshell. It was inspiration to realize the responsibility we have to keep going. It's not just for us. It's for like the much greater mission than just us.
Ken Rideout
I love that about the brand is like I don't think that there is another supplement brand out there that so identifies with the founder with you. Like I mean when I think of BPN I think immediately of you not not the products and that's not a knock on the products. is just like, oh, I think of Nick and like obsessing over everything and he's obsessive. So, I'm sure every single product gets the same level of obsession. But it's funny, like maybe two years ago, I was walking through that, we had done one interview previously.
So, I walked by the booth thinking like, "Hey guys, is Nick around?" And they almost looked at me like I was crazy, like almost going to the Arnold Classic and be like, "Hey, is Arnold around?" And they were like, "No, Nick's not here." Like, there would be crazy here. There would be a line of people looking to say hello, which I loved it. I thought it was such an awesome testament to you and like the the the image that you've built with the with not only the social media audience but with your customers like they really love and respect you.
Talk let's talk about the story of when you went home. When did the story that I was talking about earlier where you went home to a bar in Pennsylvania and you bumped into some old high school classmates that were almost like mocking the efforts?
Nick Bare
That was when I was in college still.
Okay. That was probably within the first six to 12 months after starting the business. And this is before I started creating content, but I was, you know, posting on Facebook back then. Here's my company. Here's what we're launching. Here's what we're doing.
And uh I was back home for a weekend in Pennsylvania and I was with some buddies. We went to a bar in Harrisburg, PA. And we walked into this bar and you could see back in the corner there were uh some guys who graduated the year before me.
Ken Rideout
Yep.
Nick Bare
As we walk in I they saw me, I saw them and they start chanting BPN
Ken Rideout
But in a mocking tone.
Nick Bare
It felt celebratory and I realized it was a joke.
Ken Rideout
Yeah.
Nick Bare
They were mocking me. It was demeaning me. It was like look what this guy's trying to do. Like we're going to put him down. And that that has always stuck with me. Like always remember that moment. And I don't remember exactly how I felt in the moment, but I just remember it. I remember these guys trying to bring me down. From that moment on, 2012 until 2026, there have been many times where people try to bring me down. They see what you're trying to do, see what you're trying to build, and they just want to bring you down.
It's like crabs in a bucket. Yep.
Just want to pull you back in. And something that has rung true with me for for many years, it's that doubt is only dangerous when you start doubting yourself.
Yep.
Everyone can doubt you. From the moment that that doubt starts to kind of fall off of them and fall onto you, that's when it's dangerous. When you start to doubt yourself, you need a little bit of spark of like, can I actually do this?
The unknown. Can this be done? But if you truly doubt yourself, that doubt takes over your entire body. It consumes you. So, I've been walking through this life for many years. And so many people said, "You can't, you won't, you shouldn't. It's never going to happen." And I just keep walking. And I recently heard someone tell me that a man on a mission has dirty feet in a battered back because as that man on a mission is walking through unchartered territory, and the way I visualize it, you have a vision.
You know where you're going. But to get there, there's no path. It's streams and it's brush and there's thorns and it's a rough, dirty path. Your feet get dirty walking to that. And everyone behind you wants to pull you down and they're pulling their arrows and they're shooting them right at your back. And this this man on a mission is taking arrow one after another to the back as they just keep trailblazing to where they know they're going. A man or woman always on mission will have dirty feet and a battered back.
And I love that.
Ken Rideout
I have a couple of thoughts. I coached a um I helped coach the um uh cross country team in uh in Nashville, the Brentwood uh high school cross country team, which happens to be the rival high school to the school my kids go to. There's two high schools in the town. But someone was like, "Why are you working at the at our enemy school?" I said, "You know why? Cuz they asked me to help and this school didn't." So anyway, I helped and the girls won the state championships by miles.
They went to the nationals. They were I mean they were awesome. The boys were really good, too. They had like six freshman that were like top freshman in the state. They're going to be awesome for years to come. But one of the things I used to always say to the kids before a race, especially you, as you know, in endurance racing, I would always say, "Whatever you think, it's true. If you think you're tired and you're going to get embarrassed and it's going to go terribly, probably will.
But at the same time, if you think this is just temporary dis discomfort, I'm going to get through this and I can see myself winning. That that voice is just as powerful. So don't waste your time thinking negative thoughts. And and and again to your point, the only opinion of you that really should matter is your own. And that story about the guys chanting BPM uh mockingly in the bar, it it it like when I heard it the first time, it like hurt my heart. I'm like, "Oh, I literally I'm like, I want to kill these guys.
I want to like send them an email remind like showing them like cuz you know that they know like, oh my god, look at what Nick has done." But there's a story in my book, the my last year in high school, my senior year, the final game of the season, we ended up tying our rival who killed us every year. We had a good team and halfway through the like second quarter, I was getting sacked on every other play. And I and I was playing terribly, but we were all playing terribly.
I hear a crowd, "Ride out sucks. Ride out sucks." As a high school senior, dude, it took probably 10 years for me to get over this. I was like, I would think about it and want to throw up. Now I'm kind of past it, but it still like hurts my feelings. I'm like, I cannot believe my peers are up there yelling. My own fans, our own of stands were yelling that I suck. I was like, you know, when you're playing back, you're like, oh my god, maybe I'm not playing as bad as I think I am.
And then to hear the whole crowd chant. And it I say the whole crowd, it was probably like 20 students, but like what you're describing, I'm like, I can't believe that people that I consider my peers and not necessarily my friends, but not my enemies are saying that I suck and like trying to mock me and tear me down. And what I realized as I've gotten older, and I've tell my children this, I'm like, when people waste their time being negative about you and trying to tear you down, you have to realize, as difficult as it is, that they're telling you more about themselves than you.
And I always tell the kids, what what cool person. Like I I told this story before, but like one day I got a a voice memo from The Rock that he liked some content that I posted on social media. I've like played it for the kids. I'm like, "Can you believe this?" And I always say, look at the contrast to that where a guy goes out of his way knowing the guy knows his place in the world. He knows how much this would mean to someone versus someone who doesn't know you being like, "This guy sucks and this is why he sucks." And you're like, "How much time do you have on your hands that you're wasting your time talking [ __ ] about someone else or trying to like hurt someone's feelings?" It just says so much about the person who's being nasty.
And I just love that. I just love that whole story about you because the there is nothing sweeter than like the sting of revenge and them looking and being like Nick is like living his best life. He's like there's nothing better than doing something that you love every day and making a lot of money doing it.
Nick Bare
Yeah. I mean in any moment where I'm uh I'm struggling with people. Yeah. Because I read this book uh years ago, The Courage to be Disliked.
Yes.
Great book. It talks about how like all of our problems in the world are relationship problems,
Relationships with other people that we know or don't know. And if other people in the world didn't exist, we really probably wouldn't have any problems. And in any moment that I'm struggling with people problems, whether it's leadership and management within my own organization or if I catch myself prideful and driven by ego or just having a social presence and the hate that is received and criticism, honestly, I just go to scripture. uh that the Bible does an amazing job of laying out how to respond to hate and how important and impactful love is for one another.
And that always just brings me back to like a grounded position and level of okay, this is we're we're being called to be more Christlike. This is how we live. These are the values. These are the beliefs. this is the way we approach these problems and this criticism and how can we how can I be more like Christ. The Bible and scripture brings me back to baseline of okay it's all good let's move from here.
Ken Rideout
Yeah. It reminds me of uh Ryan Holidayiday talks about all this stuff with stoicism like the um ego is the enemy the hurdle the the hurdle is the way or the obstacle obstacle is the way. Yeah. It's just like it makes perfect sense like everything
And I and I saw a quote from Bezos. He's like every single thing that's causing you anxiety is basically something that you know you have to address, but you're avoiding addressing it. And the best way to deal with it is just to deal with it right now.
And I posted um I reposted a quote from Andrew Huberman during one of his interviews and he said
Something like a psychotherapist told him one of the most profound things he's ever heard and that's that it's all internal. Everything that you're feeling is internal. And when you think about it in his example is if you win a marathon, you don't get like sprinkled like dopamine into your brain. Everything that you're feeling is internally generated by your own brain. Like I want a marathon, the culmination of all my training. All of these things are like manufactured in your own brain. Meaning, if you're feeling anxiety and stress about something that's causing you concern, you you can literally control those thoughts, whether through meditation, through action, and and change the chemical makeup of your brain.
And it's like Rogan had someone on recently that talked about anxiety and depression is almost self-induced because the more you have, then you go to a therapist and all you do is ruminate on your anxiety and depression. And it's like almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy. And through all of this, what I've come to realize is that 99% of all the problems that you have are all the things that we just touched on. Ego, relationships, inability to act on the things that you know that need to be done and looking for external validation when everything you need is in your own brain.
It's just a matter of controlling those thoughts and not letting the distractions come in and sabotage you. Like I said earlier, like whatever you think, it's true. So why waste time thinking about all these doomsday scenarios? We we we ruminate on a hundred ideas. 99 of them might be like negative doom and gloom things. And you realize 90% of the time none of that shit's going to happen. I tell my kids this like you're worrying about like my youngest son's wrestling. I'm like you're worrying about all these things that can happen, all these negative things.
The worst thing that can happen is the guy pins you. You've been pinned before. World champions have been pinned before. We're gonna leave here and I'm still gonna love you and your family is still going to be here and we're gonna like go and have pizza or do whatever we do and no one's going to care. And you know what? You're going to learn from those experiences and know that like I got pinned but I'm still here and I'm moving on to the next thing and I'm going to try not to get pinned the next time.
But the worst thing that you can imagine even if it happens like then what? And when you come to realize that all of these negative thoughts, you're only hurting yourself. When I worked with Teddy Atlas doing the fight podcast, he had a great rap about um about anxiety and nerves, he'd always say that the hardest part about being a fighter was the like one hour or so before a fight when you're in the locker room by yourself. And his analogy was like all of a sudden the mental ninjas start coming over the wall and telling you all the bad things that are going to happen in this fight.
And the guys who would get great because everyone feels the fear. I've talked to Dustin Porier about this. I've been in the locker room with before world title fights and you see everyone's scared. The good guys, the guys who are great figure out a way to do it scared and manage the fear. But to pretend that those fears aren't real is naive. Even what Teddy would say is like as soon as you can beat back those ninjas that are coming over in your imagination and realize, I'm just going to go out and execute and start to get into a flow and block out all these like block out all the um the negative potential that you're imagining, the more present you can be and like greater your odds are of being successful.
Nick Bare
Yeah, I love that. I mean, you got to find a way to center yourself.
Yeah. bring yourself back to eliminating distractions and creating the boundaries and like okay this is my vision you know vision being these three components of core values purpose and goals something that that I've really been sitting on lately that I think you would appreciate and uh resonate with is this concept of like what holds so many people back is they try to major in the minors
You can apply it to running
Yep It's everyone's avoiding the big needle moving things that progress them forward. They obsess over the pair of shoes or the next watch and piece of technology uh or like certain heart rate data uh or like new workouts or uh nutrition strategies that have never been observed or implemented before. They get so obsessed on the small things. I can apply it to uh creating films and videography and creatives. Like instead of learning how to tell really great stories, they obsess over like the new lens or the new uh camera body.
It's like you're you're trying to major in the minors, the things that actually don't move the needle. And if people are are hating on you or criticizing you and you obsess over that, you are majoring in the minors. If I reflect back on like these last couple years for me, one of the things that has led me to where I am today is I've in my opinion done a good job at majoring in the majors and identifying the minors but not paying them too much attention or obsessing or over consuming because I know that if I major in the minors, I'm actually not going to see growth.
I'm just going to be turning my wheels.
Ken Rideout
Yeah. Along those lines, you mentioned shoes. I always tell people when like what kind of shoes? I said, let me ask you this. What time are you going to run in the marathon? Like, I love to run under 330. I said, you're worrying about what the winner of the Daytona 500 had on their car for tires and you're driving a Prius. Like, what's it doesn't matter. Like, you just need tires. You just need to like start driving.
Like, worrying about shoes is like it's such a personal thing. and worrying about what someone who's running a 215 marathon when you're going to run a 345 is like you're focusing to your point on minor details that are completely irrelevant and distracting you. But you've done so many different things. And having done some of those things myself, I think that one of the things that I really admire about you and BPN is that you personify understanding all the details of athletic training and all the nutritional details.
Meaning you've done ultras, you've run super competitive marathons. I mean, at your weight running the What was your best marathon? 240 something.
Nick Bare
239.
Ken Rideout
23. It's insane. I mean, if anyone hasn't seen you, I mean, you are very Moscow, 239 Marathon, the Leadville 100, Iron Man's, and then to win a bodybuilding show, it just shows that you've absolutely mastered not only all these training techniques and vastly different training techniques, but all the dietary and nutrition concerns that go along with these things, which are um, to your point, a major component of all these things. And I think you're literally like no one personifies their brand more than you do. You've mastered the art of marketing your product.
Nick Bare
I appreciate that.
Ken Rideout
I love it.
Nick Bare
I like to be able to control the controllables. So if I'm going to go do something, I'm going to do it right. Like you will never see me just go run a marathon to run a marathon. If I'm doing a marathon, I'm putting a prep in.
I'm coming to throw down. So, I I don't just like go to all these like races just for like the fun of it. Yeah, that's just not me.
I'm going to lay out a prep. I'm going to dial my nutrition. I'm going to know where my weight needs to be. I'm going to know what the course looks like. I'm going to know what I'm going to run. And I'm going to, you know, forward think and then backwards plan. These are the workouts I need to hit at these splits, at these paces. This is the weight I need to be at. These are what my macros and calories need to be at. this is what my recovery needs to be.
I I'm going to eliminate every other distraction out of my life and set these really hard boundaries. I enjoy that.
That that is that's that's fun for me. I enjoy the the prep in the process much more than the race and the competition. I I love dialing things in learning and realizing where you can major in the majors. You know, I'm not the guy who's who's worried about his his fit check
And like what I'm wearing. It's like how light can I be? How short can the shorts be? And like can I can I go shirtless for this? But it's like what can I do from now until then to get as fit and fast and healthy as possible to throw down on race day because there's no feeling like you know when you're at the starting line, you know you prepped well, you know you tapered well, you carved up well and like your whole body is this compressed spring that is ready to launch.
Gun goes off. You go out for that first mile and you're like, "Okay, like this feels good and easy." And when you're clipping mile after mile after mile in really good shape, there's no feeling like that because you know, you don't just get there by showing up on race day. It's the 12, 16, 20 plus weeks of prep that got you to that point. It's intentional.
Ken Rideout
Yeah. To your point about loving the process, man. You have to because every single morning I've ever woken up for a race, I thought, why am I doing this? Why did I put this pressure on myself? The nerves are like through the roof. That's the crazy thing is like I think people think that this is easy for you or this must be so much fun. I'm like, no man, I am like a nasty person before the race starts because I'm so I've done so much like it's like test day.
Even yesterday, I was like, man, I am so nervous. I don't know if it's going to go well. But to your point, I can remember running in the Chicago marathon when I won the age group world championships and I ran past my coach Mario Froli around halfway and I was just like, dude, I'm on one. I feel good. But I'm always, you know, as you know with experience, like things can go badly in a hurry. But when you're feeling magical and floating along, it's like, yes, it's working.
But I've also been at halfway where I'm like, I have a piano on my back and I don't know how I'm going to finish this. I don't know how I'm going to get to the finish line, which is how I felt yesterday.
Nick Bare
I mean, they all had like their own special place. Like the the bodybuilding prep, for example, was the most miserable. Uh
Ken Rideout
The dieting I assume, right?
Nick Bare
Yeah. Because like for a bodybuilding prep, it's 24/7. Yeah. I mean, it gets to a point where you're just hungry and tired all the time. You look great, but you feel horrible mentally, emotionally, physically. So, that was like on another level of just fatigue and exhaustion. And when that one was done, it was like, "Thank God."
Ken Rideout
Yeah.
Nick Bare
But then when I ran Leadville 100, for example, that was my first ultra.
One, I didn't put in enough miles for that prep. Two, I severely underestimated elevation uh and the amount of climbing. I mean that race broke me off.
Yeah.
And
Ken Rideout
But you finished the first time.
Nick Bare
I finished and when I But I finished I was like I want redemption.
Ken Rideout
Yeah.
Nick Bare
And that's why I signed up for Rocky Raccoon 100 mileer right after that. Hired Zack Bidder as my coach.
Ken Rideout
Yep.
Nick Bare
And I logged a bunch of miles. Mean every weekend I was doing 20 to 30 mile runs in my neighborhood and I believe I ran Rocky Raccoon like 19 hours. I was really happy with that one. But Lead really broke me off and I I learned a lot from that. But then looking at like my 239 marathon prep, I mean, I put in a really good prep for that and I was so proud of that race in terms of the way I felt at the end.
Like if I look back at all the races and competitions I've done, that is that was the best run of my entire life. Like holding a 605 minute per mile pace, like felt like nothing.
Yeah.
And it was one of those races where like I feel good at mile 9. How am I going to feel at mile 12? I feel good at mile 12. How am I going to feel at mile at 17? I feel good at mile 17. How am I going to feel at mile 21? And you're like, "Oh, I'm just going to feel good this whole way through."
Ken Rideout
Yeah,
Nick Bare
That was like the best run of my whole life. And if I look at Iron Man prep, the amount of work that goes into an Iron Man prep is insane. 20 to 22 hours a week. You know, every Monday I was on the bike for anywhere from three to six hours here in HQ. And then trying to put in an Iron Man prep around being the founder and CEO of a business and having two young kids and manage a a healthy marriage and relationship was extremely challenging.
Ken Rideout
Yep.
Nick Bare
So they all all came with their own nuances, but I've learned so much from each additional one. And I believe that yes, I've gotten fitter and stronger, but I've gained a lot more wisdom along the way of how to do them properly while also managing a business and leading a family.
Ken Rideout
Yeah, the the Iron Man there are so many variables. That was the one thing I didn't like is like you could get a flat tire and it could like you could waste 10 minutes changing the flat tire and if you don't think you're going to learn how to do it and you neglect learning to do it, that could be 20 minutes. Like, so you have to know every component of your bike, how to fix it on the fly, things can go wrong in the swim. There's just I I didn't like the fact that there were so many things outside of my control, but I did like the fact that if you I do what you do.
I obsess over everything. I know where my spot in transition is going to be. I'm looking how am I coming out of transition? Where am I going to do this? How am I getting on and off the bike? Like obsessing over the little details so that you could control all the controllables. And if something happens, okay, what am I going to do about it? And it's still I've had races go right and races go wrong. But there's nothing better to your point about running a marathon when things are going well.
It's only happened a few times for me where I was like racing the last 10k versus surviving. And it was in uh in Tokyo somewhere in the last like two or three miles, you know, and there's a lot of professional runners on Strava. And I log all my runs. Every single run I've ever done is on Strava, including races. And I ran through the last few miles of Tokyo as fast as I've ever run and got like one or two kms on a major marathon course and I was like, "Oh my god." Like I had beaten some of the pros.
I was like, "Man, I wonder if the like if the GPS is off or something." But looking through it, I was like, "Wow." Like that feeling is magical when so from for the first half of the race a few people would go I start very close to the finish start line all the time and just like bully my way up there and maybe a few people passed during the early stage of the races maybe through the middle but from the halfway point of Tokyo until the end not a single person went past me I was just passing people and that's when that feeling is like
If you could bottle it it's like the best feeling in the world done it all right
Nick Bare
It's it's like such an incredible feeling And it's one of those feelings. It's so great because you you can't get it all the time.
Ken Rideout
Exactly.
Nick Bare
You you have to actually put a build in place to to experience it. I think what makes the marathon so special, at least in my opinion, is it's a very honest test.
Oh yeah.
You know, like you can look at an Iron Man and be like, "Yeah, like the transitions weren't set up correctly. The swimmers got in my way. Uh the bike course had like this massive headwind. Like there's like ways to find reasons to justify your performance.
Ken Rideout
Yep. [snorts]
Nick Bare
You look at an ultra for example, I it's like the climbs were insane and my stomach turned or you know all these things. But the marathon it's point A to point B.
Yep.
And it's like you just got to get started and you hit your you hold your pace and it's like how long can I hold this pace until the wheels start to fall off?
Yep. And it's an a very honest assessment of your fitness unlike anything else.
Ken Rideout
Yeah. Um we could talk for days about all your accomplishments, but anyone following you knows that they all the things that you've done that we've outlined before. But the last thing I want to touch on is your you seem to have recently found like a calling to um religion. Um and I was talking to our mutual friend yesterday. I was at a birthday party for Mike Pner and um Steve Weatherford was there and I was telling him I'm coming to see you and he's a super religious guy.
Like I love him. He's just the most spiritual kind person. For anyone who doesn't know, he's the uh he was the punter for the Giants. I think he won a Super Bowl. He played for a bunch of teams.
But first time I met him, I didn't know who he was. I was doing one of those 29 or 29 events with Jesse Edler and Marotelik where you walk up the mountain and take a gondola down until you've climbed 29,000 ft, the equivalent of Mount Everest. And Weatherford was there with like cut off sweatpants that look like hot pants, a string tank top. And he literally looked like either a WWE wrestler or a professional bodybuilder, just gigantic. And I'm thinking, my god, someone's like, "Oh, he's the punter." So, as I was walking past him, I was with a couple of Olympic triathletes and we were just like banging out these things, banging out these laps.
And we walked past him and he was just, you know, taking his time and I was like, "Hey man, you played football?" "Yeah." He I said, "What position?" And before he could answer, I kept going, "Let me guess. Defensive end." He's like, "No, no, I was the the linebacker, offensive guard." And he's like, "Punter?" I was like, "Punter? He You have more muscles than every punter in the league combined. He does not look like a punter."
Nick Bare
He's massive.
Ken Rideout
Oh, dude. He is He's a bodybuilder. He's so big. Um, but anyway, he spoke like glowingly about you and said to say hello, but he was saying like, "Yeah, Nick has really like dove deep into the faith and uh I want to talk to you about it because my wife takes the kids to church every Sunday and I do my long run, but and I every time I feel terribly guilty because I'm not not religious, but I just haven't made the time and commitment to explore.
I grew up Catholic, went through the whole process and did all the like steps required to be a good Catholic." And uh but my wife now takes the kids to different um Christian churches. She's tried a bunch of them, but uh now she goes to one um I'm spacing on the name, but it's a big one in Nashville, and it's more like
Nick Bare
There's some great churches in Nashville.
Ken Rideout
No, it it's a big one and but it's it's it's not non-denominational, but it's like very welcoming to all religions of any Christian religion. Anyway, I keep telling her, I'm going to go. I'm going to go. So, I'm curious to know from you like what's the what's that journey been like and whatever you want to share about the experience.
Nick Bare
I grew up going to church like every Sunday we go to to church. Growing up in Pennsylvania and for me it was more of just like a a routine and a ritual. It wasn't a relationship with with God with Christ. And for majority of my life, I'd consider myself a a lukewarm Christian. It's like one foot in, one foot out.
Ken Rideout
That's how I would describe myself right now.
Nick Bare
Steph would have to motivate me or pull me to go to church.
And I would find any excuse not to. I'd go for my long run. I'd have training schedule, put work stuff on the the calendar. I was like this for a long time, majority of my life. And I didn't know what it actually meant to like have a relationship with Christ and what faith was, you know. And then a few months ago, this probably June, July of 2025, so just recently, I reached a point in my life where I just became hopeless. Like I thought all of these things were going to eventually bring joy and fulfillment and happiness.
More races, more performance, a faster marathon time, more money, a bigger business, more Instagram followers, more YouTube views. Like, I was waiting for if I just get to this next level and this next level and next this next level, I'll finally be able to rest and be at peace and be joyful. And it never came. It never came. And this past summer, I just became hopeless. Like, it's impossible. I'm never going to get there. Steph and I I mean Steph committed her life to following Christ a few years ago and always hoped I would get here, but I think and I don't want to put words in her mouth, but I think she kind of gave up on me in that sense.
And we were at a concert actually this summer. It was a Brandon Lake uh worship concert. It was a worship night with Phil Wickham and Brandon Lake. And it was me, Steph, and our daughter Charlie. And I've sat in church many times before where someone on stage, pastor says, you know, raise your hand right here if you want to commit your life to Christ. And I was just sat in the back, arms crossed, like I'm not doing this.
I saw see all these other people raise their hand and I was like, no. Um I think I at some points even like shook my head at these people. It's like I don't see what they see. And we're at this concert and it was at like the peak of feeling hopeless. I threw my hand up. I was like, "You know what? I'm going to do it. I'm going to commit my life to following Christ right here." Went home, fell asleep. Next morning, nothing. But over the next couple days, and this is like no exaggeration, this is like from my point of view, like I was radically saved.
Uh, I could feel like the Holy Spirit take over my entire body and mind. I could feel myself transforming into a new man, a new person where my life mission was like evolved and transformed and different. I could feel like the Holy Spirit from God like within me guiding my mission and my words and my values. and over the next couple days and weeks and months became a completely different man.
Ken Rideout
Can you describe it to me like what what what describe the feeling a little deeper? You you feel the Holy Spirit in you like give me more details.
Nick Bare
It's like um
Ken Rideout
Cuz there's a part of me that wants that feeling and I'm like I'm exactly where you are. I'm like I don't put my hand up. I'm like I want to be more involved if nothing else just because my wife and children are into it.
Nick Bare
So yeah, I think what held me back for so long is pride and ego. It's like I I thought that I could manhandle and willpower my way to success and joy and peace and happiness and my pride and ego held me back from allowing Christ to come in.
And the only way to describe it is like I had these blinders over my eyes and when I actually surrendered my life because I realized I am weak on my own. I just I just gave I was like I am I'm I am when we are all people we are weak on our own. We need someone something stronger and that is God. And when I actually finally surrendered everything to him I was like you know what Lord I I am not in control. You're in control.
This is your show. I will do whatever you want me to do. I am like by your will, by your way. It's like I had these blinders over my eyes. And they just went away. And I saw all these things for the first time. It's almost like someone who is blind who is given the opportunity to see. And I saw life through a different lens in perspective. And for the first time in my life, my shoulders just just chilled. And I was like the most at peace, restful, joyful I've ever been in my life.
Things that used to bother me, people coming at me, attacking me, didn't bother me anymore. Being a father, being a husband was putting this new level of perspective and obligation or responsibility. Being a leader and a role model to my business and young men and women who follow me, like felt a whole lot heavier. And I realized in that moment I am weak on my own and I always will be. And I need someone a savior to guide me to be stronger. And that is Jesus Christ.
That is God. That is Lord. And it has transformed my life. It has transformed my marriage. It has transformed me as a a father and a leader. But it doesn't make life any easier. It makes life harder.
Yeah. You know, like I have to wake up every morning and die to myself and realize I can't do this on my own. I need God. I need to to follow Jesus to be stronger, to be the man that I want to be, not just for myself, but for the people in my life. Take up my cross and follow him. And everyone told me, "Man, when I when I gave my life to Christ, I said, "Dude, your life is about to get a whole lot harder." Like what are you talking about?
I thought it's supposed to get like a lot easier. No, no, no. Like the enemy attacks in many ways, but it's brought this new level of peace and rest that I've never experienced in my life because I've always been like the next thing, the next thing, the next thing. Don't slow down. Keep working. And in the process, I sacrificed parts of my marriage. I sacrificed parts of my my family, my presence as a father, a leader to the people in this business. my responsibility with the people who follow me online and man it's just like it's it's changed my life and um I don't recognize the person that I was a year ago based off this transformation that I've gone through.
Ken Rideout
So amazing to hear you say that because I've always thought of you the same way I think of you now as just like one of the kindest, most generous people that I've met in this industry. Like even the fact when you say people attacking you, I'm like these idiots that would attack you don't know you at all because if they did you'd be like you can disagree with people but but that doesn't equate to attacking and your wife is one of the nicest people I've ever met.
We have that in common where our wives are definitely our better halves. Everyone that meets my wife loves her and everyone who meets your wife loves her. I actually we talk about her all the time cuz my wife has recently gotten into um sourdough. So she's like part of the sourdough mafia now and every time she makes it I'm like no no you got to see Nick Bear's wife makes it. It's like real airy and ours is dense. Not in a not in a critical way cuz she's like why is this so dense and I'm like I don't know what she's doing but it's got a lot of like air bubbles and stuff in it and we've become obsessed with um sourdough but um ever since we I had some of Steph's when we did the race from um LA to Vegas.
Nick Bare
That's right. She brought a loaf.
Ken Rideout
No, I was so obsessed and she's so kind and so generous. I just um I love her. I want to talk about BPN to the extent you're comfortable talking about it. I know you did a transaction. You moved to Nashville. You had to hired a new CEO. It didn't work out. You came back like I want to I want to talk to you about that whole scenario about how what happened and how you transformed it and where you are now versus where you are then if you're comfortable with it.
Nick Bare
Yeah. No, I mean I certain certainly like can share part of it but not all the details.
You know, I reached a point in 2023 where I was kind of just I was kind of burned out.
Yeah.
And I wanted a break and I stepped down from the CEO role at that point, put a new CEO in place, moved myself and a small team to Nashville.
Ken Rideout
I would say a very competent CPO CEO from the perspective of a resume.
Nick Bare
Yep. Yeah. And um it just didn't end up working out. So me and the the team, my family had to close down the small office we had in Nashville. We were only there for about 9 months. Came back to Texas and I put myself back in the CEO role. And the the the biggest thing I learned in that experience, which was a painful, expensive experience was how important vision is
Ken Rideout
And passion. I would say
Nick Bare
Vision and passion like vision is everything. I've read this really good book in the last few years. It's called BE 2.0 by Jim Collins, Beyond Entrepreneurship. Chapter 4 is the vision chapter. And for any anyone out there who's an entrepreneur, wants to start a business, like go read this chapter. And it talks about how vision is made up of three components. It is core values, it is purpose, and its goals. Your core values and your purpose don't change more than once every 100 years.
Your goals are 10 to 25 year targets. I can have the vision up in my head, but if I don't clearly define it, write it down and share it, no one else knows what it is. And if no one knows what your vision is, if no one knows in your organization what you stand for, what your core values are, why you're doing it, your purpose, and your goals, how are they supposed to know what they say yes to, what they say no to. Where I failed in that that process is by putting a CEO in place as the founder who's been running the business for over a decade.
I should have very clearly defined the vision that I had for the organization. Here's our core values. Here's our purpose. Here's our goals. Now, we go execute. One of my favorite business models as well is that I've learned from, it's called EOS, the entrepreneurial operating system by Gina Wickman. There's a great book that references this called Traction and then another one called Rocket Fuel. I think every founder entrepreneur should read traction and rocket fuel. And it talks about how in an organization typically a founder le organization there is a visionary and then there's an integrator.
The visionary I'm a visionary. I look in the future I think big picture strategic these needlem moving objectives like you need someone who's a visionary in an organization but you need someone who's an integrator as well. So the integrator sits between the visionary and the organization and puts that plan into practice. Without the vision, without the visionary, the integrator doesn't know what or how to do it. But you have to know like who you are. Are you the visionary? Are you the integrator? That whole experience of moving out of the role, moving to Nashville, moving back, going back in the CEO role, I learned a lot.
I was humbled significantly. Uh but I believe it it developed me as a much better leader, as a much better entrepreneur and realizing how important vision is and making sure that that vision is communicated to everyone in the organization.
Ken Rideout
When you look back and we don't have to talk specific numbers, but let's say the business was doing $100 a year in revenue, you step out, it goes to let's say 90. Where is it now versus where it was when you stepped down?
Nick Bare
uh when I moved out of the CEO role in 2023, we might have been doing 50 million in revenue.
Uh and now we're doing about 80 million in revenue. So we still working towards getting the the business over the 100 million revenue mark, but at a sustainable profitable rate.
Ken Rideout
Yeah.
Nick Bare
So our goals are, you know, 100 million in revenue, 20% ebida margins. Y
But we've always operated the business to be profitable mid- teens IBIDA.
Ken Rideout
So when you like looking back the lesson there and I think there's a lot of lessons for anyone who's in the CPG space like from an investor operator uh incoming CEO just understanding when someone's personality passion and vision is so deeply tied to the brand. I remember thinking like wow he's get he's moving to Nashville very quickly. I think that he's underestimating how important he is to the business. And selfishly, I was like, "Damn it, he's leaving Nashville." You lived like you your new house you were building was like 2 miles from me.
And I was like, "Oh, I'm going to get some good training in with Nick." Because we both tend to do a lot of training on our own early in the morning. And I was like, "This is going to be perfect to have a friend here who's as crazy as I am."
But would you say that that was like one of the main takeaways is that Yeah. that you know finding someone to replace your passion, vision and like obsessiveness over the brand is like a very very challenging aspect. And from a buyer's perspective, understanding when you're buying a brand like that, you need to know what you're getting in terms of okay, what can we execute without that founder and what kind of earnout structure has to be in place for it to make sense for everyone involved because I can't buy this company, Nick leaves and it goes from 50 to 30.
Nick Bare
Yeah, a few learning lessons. One, it's like as the founder and visionary, it's building out a team alongside of you who can do the things that you don't want to do.
Ken Rideout
Yeah.
Nick Bare
Like I love staying focused on mission and the people and the culture and the product and the lifestyle. But when it comes to the day-to-day parts of the business, like I have to find ways to delegate those responsibilities because there's certain things like I don't love to do and that sucks my energy away
And that makes me a less effective entrepreneur and founder. So, it's building out a very effective team alongside of you so you can focus on what you thrive in and then delegate what you don't thrive in. But I think the the biggest learning lesson was just the power of focus. You know, when I moved out of the CEO role initially, we started pursuing a lot of what may have looked like opportunities, but were actually distractions.
Ken Rideout
Yeah.
Nick Bare
And when I came back,
Ken Rideout
Can you give an example?
Nick Bare
Uh, new sports.
Ken Rideout
Yep.
Nick Bare
New markets, products that didn't align with where we wanted to go, where we were heading. um look and feel of the brand, uh variations of the logos and colors and just brand feel. Uh I think we we tried to go a little bit too broad and less deep and people were just like this isn't the BPN I fell in love with.
Ken Rideout
Yeah.
Nick Bare
So you got to find your lane and and stay narrow and go as deep as possible. And when you can't go any deeper, like when you hit rock, maybe that's then when you start to expand. But we went too wide, too fast, too narrow and in that pursuit lost like our DNA a little bit. So coming back to that resonated with our consumer and I just realized in that process like everything might look like an opportunity but nine times out of 10 it's actually a distraction.
Ken Rideout
When you think about BPN, what are the top like one, two, or three products that you think, say a new consumer is listening to this, they're trying to get into their fitness journey? Because people ask me this a lot of times, like what what if you only have one or two supplements, what are they? So, if I'm if I'm new to endurance sports and I need to go supplement my nutritional plan, what are the products from BPN I should look at first?
Nick Bare
I'd say from an endurance perspective, GM Sport Plus, which is like our pre-workout for endurance athletes.
Ken Rideout
Does
That have caffeine?
Nick Bare
It does. It's 20 grams of carbohydrates in a very fast digesting carbohydrate source called cluster dextrin, 350 milligrams of sodium, 150 milligrams of caffeine, and then no tropics.
Ken Rideout
The mental acuity.
Nick Bare
It's like one of our bestselling products right now, GM Sport.
Ken Rideout
That's a brand new sport cuz G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G I mean G G1 is go one more G GM go one more um and I I mean it's relatively new cuz like how long ago did you launch that?
Nick Bare
So we launched the original G1M Sport in 2020. We launched GM Sport Plus which has the caffeine inropics
Ken Rideout
Last year. That yeah that's what I remember is the big push around that
Nick Bare
And that's crushing it for us.
Good.
Uh our go gels, our endurance gels are uh very easily digestible. So, it's fruit purees and concentrates.
Ken Rideout
Those I've used and can attest that that they're excellent. They're delicious, too.
Oh, people ask me like, "What gels do you use?" And like, for a long time, I used Mortens. And they were like, "How are they?" I'm like, "Uh, that's like asking me, "How does the gasoline in my car taste?" I couldn't care less. Like, I'm not eating gels for pleasure. But yours literally tastes like applesauce. The cinnamon apple ones. I'm like, "These actually taste really good." But I actually used them yesterday be I took one before the race and one during the race cuz they were handing them out at the expo.
Nick Bare
Yep. Yes. We have those in regular non-calf and now caffeinated. Yep.
The caffeinated have 75 milligrams of caffeine each.
Um our protein, you know, we we have traditional whey protein. Next month in March, we're launching a whey protein isolate. We have a plant-based protein. We take a lot of pride in uh our protein suppliers, but also just the flavors are incredible. And then our creatine, it's just creatine monohydrate, but it's sourced exclusively from Creapure. So, it's, you know, one of the most pure, studied, safe creatine monohydrates on the market. I'd say those are like great entry level go-to products for people to start with BPN.
Ken Rideout
How many grams of creatine a day do you take? And what do you think the average um weekend warrior type should be taking?
Nick Bare
I take 10 grams a day. I think people should take anywhere from 5 to 10 grams. Uh, I always view creatine as an energy enabler, whether that's mental energy in and processing or physical energy because your your brain uses 20% of your body's energy and your body will store creatine in the muscles and in the brain as phosine. So at any point when your body is utilizing energy and breaking down ATP, if you have creatine phosphate stored in the body, it's going to help regenerate that energy in a much more effective and efficient way.
Ken Rideout
Well, I feel like we could talk about nutrition. I like as you're talking, I'm like, "Oh, let's talk about NAD." And I could feel like I could go down a million rabbit holes, but I know you've uh got some stuff to do today, and I want to be sensitive to your time, but honestly, dude, I can't thank you enough. I really appreciate your friendship. I have so much respect for you and um I'm so proud of all the accomplishments that you've achieved and I'm excited to see what comes next for you and congratulations on all the success and your new found faith and um look forward to continuing our friendship.
Nick Bare
Thank you.
Thank you, Ken. I appreciate you.
Ken Rideout
Appreciate you, brother.
Thanks a lot for being with us and we'll see you next
Key takeaways
- Public goals can create accountability, but they also add pressure that has to be managed.
- Nick says early work on BPN required using limited cash and learning to make content himself.
- Responsibilities to family sometimes matter more than following a training routine exactly.
- Detailed preparation can distract from the few decisions that most affect a race.
- Nick connects faith with a healthier view of success, marriage, fatherhood, and leadership.
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