Consistently Good Not Occasionally Great - Nick Bare

1. 0:00 – 0:43

   Intro

   1. NBNick Bare0:00

      Life is this massive endurance event where if you try to be occasionally great all the time, you're gonna burn out, but if you keep going consistently good and you just keep moving forward, you know there's gonna be obstacles. There's gonna be speed bumps. There's gonna be resistance. There's gonna be hills, but just keep driving through it consistently. It's not always gonna be fun. It's gonna suck, it's gonna hurt, but that builds endurance and when you look back over a period of time, you think, "I actually made some progress through this because I was consistently good rather than trying to be or look occasionally great."

   2. CWChris Williamson0:31

      Nick Bare, welcome to the show.

   3. NBNick Bare0:32

      Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me in the Bare Performance Podcast studio.

   4. CWChris Williamson0:37

      Thank you for having me here.

   5. NBNick Bare0:40

      It go... Dude, it go- it goes both ways right now.

   6. CWChris Williamson0:42

      (laughs)

2. 0:43 – 8:46

   Nick’s Marathon Progress

   1. CWChris Williamson0:43

      How'd you get on with your recent marathon?

   2. NBNick Bare0:46

      Oh, dude, it was great. I ran, uh, a 2:48:11, two hours 48 minutes, 11 seconds. The goal was to run sub-2:50. Um, that's coming off of... So to give some context, my first marathon was in 2018. This was a three-hour, 57-minute marathon, full sufferfest. My second marathon a year later was four hours, 15 minutes. I got worse, and I told people, "I'm just not a runner. It's never gonna happen." And then I finally committed to and stopped believing that, and after an Ironman I said, "I wanna run my first sub-three-hour marathon." And I went a- I went through the process and journeying and trained for it, and I, I failed. I ran three hours, 24 minutes. I realized it was a lot harder than I thought. I wasn't respecting that time. I went back into another prep and I ran a two-hour, 56-minute, 27-second marathon. This was last January. And, uh, then I realized, "What's holding me back? The only thing that's holding me back is me." So I said, "I'm gonna run a sub-2:50." And we did it. We prepped, we went through the process, went through the journey, stacked the bricks, did the workouts, showed up to Buffalo, New York with all the confidence in the world and crossed that finish line, two hours, 48 minutes, 11 seconds.

   3. CWChris Williamson2:05

      How'd it feel?

   4. NBNick Bare2:07

      It felt... Uh, it's o- it's one of those things, like, you... I interviewed Matthew McConaughey a few months ago, and he said, "Nothing is unbelievable." He hates the word "unbelievable." Unbelievable? It happened. It happens. It's going to happen. So whenever I cross, like, a finish line, this could be a finish line that's actually physically there or, you know, a goal that I've set. When you cross it, looking back, when you set that goal or that objective and you go through the process, if you have the confidence knowing you're going to do it, you're gonna do it. You just need to put in the work now. So when I crossed the finish line, I wasn't like, "Holy crap! Sub-2:50." It was... You know, I knew after mile three I was gonna do it. Like, you know how you're feeling that early on in the race. So it was... It felt really good because there was a lot of weight on the shoulders because I share my goals with the entire world or my audience who- for whoever's watching. I gotta tell people months before it happens, "This is what I'm going to do. Now I'm going to document and show you how I'm going to get there." So then when it's finally time for me to be tested, yeah, there's a lot of weight on my shoulder that I carry. But I think that pressure also provides some power in how I'm going to perform race day.

   5. CWChris Williamson3:33

      It's interesting thinking about what happens when people set themselves targets and they, they slowly build up success over time because you're right. Saying that something's unbelievable or you can't believe that something happened, when that was the outcome that you were working toward, like, that- that's actually what you meant to have happen. And it's the same thing with the podcast or with the supplement company or with whatever it is that you're doing. The growth, the increase in sales, the increase in subscribers, the impact that you have, that's the thing that you were working toward. That shouldn't be unbelievable. I think you're right and words have power. Um, I- I- I just think it's mindless sometimes people say that it's unbelievable. What they actually mean is it's impressive or that's something that's, that's, uh, uh, an sizable accomplishment. They don't mean that it's unbelievable. Maybe unbelievable for them in their position at the moment. But yeah, I mean, it was unbelievable or at least unlikely for you in 2018 when you ran one hour slower than you did only a few years later.

   6. NBNick Bare4:33

      Well, one of the things I like to say is, uh, it's around the word "doubt". I think, I think the word "doubt" is a very powerful word because doubt is only dangerous when you start doubting yourself. My entire life, like, people have doubted me, as they should. Like, there's nothing, there was nothing, there is nothing special about me. When I started my business in 2012, people made fun of me. They would laugh and joke about, like, "Oh, here's Nick with his BPN supplement company," and they would laugh and joke and they all doubted me. My mentors, professors, people I worked for, like my bosses all doubted me. And doubt is okay. Like, anyone can doubt you. But until you start believing that doubt, when you start doubting yourself, that's when it's dangerous.

   7. CWChris Williamson5:23

      Did you end up with a chip on your shoulder because of that?

   8. NBNick Bare5:25

      No. No.

   9. CWChris Williamson5:26

      Yeah, that's- that... I- I thought that that would be your answer and it seems surprising. So in the UK, that would be the sort of narrative where a lot of people, certainly some of my friends, that would be something they'd remember for a long time. You know, the crossing the finish line would be this is a middle finger to all of the people that doubted me or moving into a new office for the supplement company or whatever, hitting a new milestone with subscribers. That would be there, and I always wonder about the usefulness of, uh, retribution, uh, as a motivating force 'cause it can power you to do a lot of pretty impressive things. But I- I'm not convinced it's the healthiest way to, to move forward.

   10. NBNick Bare6:04

       I think sometimes people...... just say that too. Like, they say they have a chip on the shoulder and that's why they do the things they do because they actually don't look ... They don't take inventory and stock of, of what they're actually feeling and experiencing and why they're doing something. Is it because you have so much passion and purpose behind what you're doing? Because for me, whether people are cheering me on or not, I'm gonna keep doing exactly what I'm doing 'cause I love it. Like, I have passion and purpose behind it, and I see there's people that are benefiting from it and it's impacting other peoples' lives. Maybe those people are, you know, watching the YouTube videos, or following the brand, or maybe they're employees here where they're actually working in the HQ, or maybe it's the sons and daughters of employees, or, or significant others of employees that are impacted by the things that we do. So, yeah, like, a chip on the shoulder has never, that's never been my oomph. It's never been my, my reason why. It's because I'm doing something that I love doing with people that I love being surrounded by. That's my goal in life. Like, man if I can do this for the rest of my life, that's pretty fricking cool. Like, I get to do what I love to do with people I love doing it with. Sign me up.

   11. CWChris Williamson7:20

       And the marathon is the last big thing before dad life, right?

   12. NBNick Bare7:23

       That is the last race on the horizon. And I had to convince my wife to let me do that one because we knew ... We found out that we were pregnant when I was prepping for Rocky Raccoon, which is a 100-mile ultra-marathon that we did in February, and, uh, I knew I wanted to run a sub-2:50 marathon. And I ... My goal with it was I wanted to document the whole journey, and through the series the goal was that someone should be able to watch our marathon prep series and they should be able to PR their next race. Like, we wanted to provide them the tools, knowledge, and resources to PR their next race, whether that's their first race ever or their tenth marathon, and we felt a responsibility and obligation to do that through the series. So, I talked to my wife and I said, "I gotta do one more race. We gotta do this series." And she said, "As long as it's before June, that's fine." So, I found a race on May 29th, Buffalo, New York. I told my coach, Jeff Cunningham, I said, "We need to find a race that has a, a flat and fast course profile before June. Let's do it." And he said, "Buffalo, New York." So, knocked that out and I have ... I mean, as we're recording, this is June 9th. Our baby is due July 8th, so we're just about four weeks away. A baby girl I cannot, I cannot wait.

3. 8:46 – 14:04

   Preparations for Fatherhood

   1. NBNick Bare8:46

   2. CWChris Williamson8:46

      You've got this go-one-more ethos thing. With the impending dad life coming up, you're gonna have to make a lot of sacrifices in other areas of your life. And this is something I'm increasingly interested in as guys my age ... I'm 34, you're?

   3. NBNick Bare9:00

      31.

   4. CWChris Williamson9:01

      31. You know, this is the period where you start to think about other people than yourself, and I'm fascinated by whether you've thought about some of the discomfort that you might go through in terms of having to make sacrifices or sucking at areas of your life that previously have been real sources of meaning or accomplishment or achievement for you. Are you ready for that? Are you ready for the fact that you're gonna have to think about something else except for whatever's in front of you?

   5. NBNick Bare9:32

      I am ready for that chapter. I will say that probably a year and a a half ago, I wasn't ready for that chapter, and, uh, it's one of those things like, uh, like once it became real, once we got pregnant, once my wife, you know, became pregnant and we knew, alright, we're about nine months out, it wasn't like this flip switched in my mind, but the best way to describe it is, I run in the morning, right? And those morning runs for me provide a lot of solitude, and it's that one time where I have an hour, hour and a half, every day. It's dark out. It's quiet. I don't have my phone. There's no notifications. My mind is clear. It is some of the most powerful moments of my day and I need that more mentally than physically. And what used to happen during those morning runs is that solitude provided me ideas for where to take the business, how to grow the team, who needs hired, who needs fired, what can we do from a customer acquisition standpoint in strategy to, to scale and keep growing. And I, I was filled, my cup was filled during those morning runs on how to grow this business, and I am forever grateful for that. But what started happening once we got pregnant was those moments of solitude in the morning started to evolve and transition, and what I used to start ... or what I started thinking of was, how do I wanna raise my daughter? What values and morals do I hope she gains from me? How am I gonna do this? How do I set her up for success and, like, what does success look like? Is it independence? Is it being entrepreneurial? Is it being challenged and tested? How much do I let her fail? How much do I not let her fail? Like, it's, it's all these things I was asking myself in my morning runs, and that's where I started realizing, okay, my priorities are now shifting. My mindset was, like, molding on these morning runs of I recognize and realize that this next chapter of life is real. It's coming. But my body and mind is almost prepared. It's, like, it's preparing me for it. And, uh, I'm going in ... I'm, I'm not nervous at all. Everyone ask, "Are you nervous? Are you scared?" No. I'm, I'm, I'm super excited. I know it's going to be super challenging. I know it's gonna be hard. But selfishly, I also know I'm gonna grow so much through this experience that I expect and anticipate it's gonna make me a better business owner, it's gonna make me a better leader, it's gonna make me a better friend, better husband. Like, it should only improve all aspects of my life, as-

   6. CWChris Williamson12:05

      Are you saying that having a child is a self-development strategy?

   7. NBNick Bare12:08

      You know what? It's hard to say right now 'cause I still don't have a kid, I'm four weeks out. I'll let you know in a year.

   8. CWChris Williamson12:12

      Yeah.

   9. NBNick Bare12:13

      I'll let you know s- I could, I could look back at this podcast and say, "Dude, I was wrong." But that's what I'm expecting.

   10. CWChris Williamson12:20

       Yeah. What do you think is going to be the biggest challenge that you've got?

   11. NBNick Bare12:26

       The biggest challenge. Um, I think it's going to be balancing right now. I've become really good over the last 10 years of adding more onto my plate, being able to delegate some of that, but also absorb a lot. I'm the type of person that I will absorb a lot of responsibilities and obligations to keep things moving forward. I will hire people to help me, you know, achieve some of these things, but as a business owner and as an entrepreneur, you learn how to juggle and handle a lot of things, right? I think one of the biggest challenges for me, and I've told my wife this already, I recorded a podcast with Steve Weatherford last week and, and he told me, "In life, you gotta make sure your priorities align with your calendar." So it's one thing to say, "I'm a family man. I care about my wife, I care about my, my, uh, daughter. I care about my business. I care about my employees." But look at your calendar. Does your calendar reflect what your priorities say? Like, are they aligned? And, uh, what's gonna be hard for me, and I'll navigate it somehow, but I'm gonna say my priorities are my wife, my daughter, my business, my fitness. But if I look at my calendar, will it reflect that?

   12. CWChris Williamson13:45

       Yep.

   13. NBNick Bare13:46

       And that's what's gonna be challenging. I know it's going to, because like I said, I've become really good at adding more things onto my life-

   14. CWChris Williamson13:53

       Mm-hmm.

   15. NBNick Bare13:53

       ... and absorbing them, rather than eliminating some that aren't as important and focusing and hyper-focusing on, on those select few.

   16. CWChris Williamson14:02

       There's a book called 4,000 Weeks

4. 14:04 – 18:29

   Choose What to Suck At

   1. CWChris Williamson14:04

      by Oliver Burkeman, and it's about time management and productivity and stuff like that. And he's got a concept in that, you'd love the book. I th- think it would-

   2. NBNick Bare14:11

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson14:11

      ... be a great thing for you to read as you go through this little difficult period. And he's got a, uh, an idea that you need to decide in advance what you're going to suck at when you undertake a particular, uh, project. Having a baby is a 18-year project, ish. And, uh, I really like the idea of that, because especially if you're a go-getter, a lot of the time when you start to feel things that you used to value in yourself drop away, the pain of that happening can take your focus away from the thing that you said was the priority right now. So I like the idea of deciding in advance that fitness, maybe condition's going to drop a little bit. I'm probably not going to be able to run as fast. I'm not going to be as mobile or as strong or as lean or as whatever. But that's what I've decided I'm going to suck at in order to look after wife, look after baby, ensure that business and employees and everything else is sorted. And then if there's time for fitness, fitness can come in. And (clears throat) a lot of the time when, when it looks at planning forward, I think people struggle with realizing that it's just for now, it's not for forever. So, you know, powerlifters and bodybuilders understand the concept of periodizing your training, right? I have a, a very specific goal that I'm trying to achieve over the next however long, and I'm going to adapt everything that I do to facilitate that one thing. But when it comes to doing our yearly plan, unless you're very, very intentional about what you've got coming up, you just think that this routine is going to be your routine forever. And looking at something like this and going, "Okay, I know that sleep's going to suffer, diet's going to suffer, maybe going to be some stress, uh, interpersonally between me and my fr- I'm not gonna be as social, uh, like at all. I haven't gonna have time to see friends as much," all that stuff. Those are the things that you're going to suck at this period of- That doesn't mean that I'm not gonna have friends for the rest of my life. That doesn't mean that I can never get back into fitness, but it does... The idea of sucking, choosing something that you're going to suck at means that at least for the next acute period of time when that arises, when the inevitable discomfort of seeing condition drop off or fitness drop off, you go, "Yeah, this is a sign that I'm doing the thing that I'm supposed to be doing in a way." It's like I, I knew that this was the entry price that I had to pay to be able to do this.

   4. NBNick Bare16:22

      I do like that where it's, it is, it is now, it is not forever, 'cause I see this question, this res- their response all the time in regards to this hybrid athlete training and, uh, and, and adding in races. So like for me, when I started getting into fitness, it was putting on size and strength, and me and my brother and we- dad, my dad, we put on size and strength pretty well. We're built for it. So I got strong, I got big, and then I started running and I started losing some of this size, and the responses I was getting from people were, "Aren't you afraid to lose size and strength?" And in the beginning, I was. I was trying to avoid it, but then when you realize, well, in order for me to run this race or this marathon at a certain time or pace or a distance, something has to give, right? Something, something has to give, and it goes back to keep, when you keep adding things onto your life, when you look at almost like this, this tower, and like if I keep adding things onto my life and they're not really stuck, they're just, you're just stacking 'em on top of each other, eventually something has to give. And when it gives, that whole tower falls. So like that's kind of how I've navigated this whole fitness space too, is, you know, there, there are seasons in life where I'm putting emphasis and prior- priority on certain things. Right now, I wanna focus on this race. With that will come a decrease in size and strength. That is okay. It is this temporary feeling for now, but it is not forever. Doesn't have to be forever. So I really like that concept, and I, I think more people, if they got used to that and comfortable with that, they could be, uh, much more efficient at their goals in the present.

   5. CWChris Williamson18:04

      Well, remember as well that the goal is to be an effective, fit, healthy human with a good robust social network and a job you care about in 30 years time. Like, that's the goal.What you're doing right now is supposed to facilitate that overall, and that means that you're going to go through these ebbs and flows. I mean, I'm, I'm screaming this to myself, right? This is a lesson that I very much need to learn.

   6. NBNick Bare18:26

      I think, I think we all are.

   7. CWChris Williamson18:27

      Yeah, which is why it resonated so much.

5. 18:29 – 22:18

   How to Avoid Burnout

   1. CWChris Williamson18:29

      Talking about the hybrid athlete, hybrid CEO, future dad thing at the moment. How do you avoid burnout? So you've spoken about the fact that you take on a lot of responsibility. You were somebody that started the company on your own, and if you needed to learn how to program because you couldn't afford a developer, you'd go and do that, and if you needed to do an all-nighter to pack supplements, you'd do that. How is it that you've transitioned from a period where you just continue to add more and more on top to one where there's more balance, and where you're prepared to delegate control and to relinquish and to bring in other people and talent and stuff like that? 'Cause it's your baby, right?

   2. NBNick Bare19:06

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson19:07

      It's your baby, and you're having to let that go. You're having to watch other people fuck about with your baby.

   4. NBNick Bare19:14

      I mean, it has to be very intentional. Like with BPN, I bootstrapped this thing. Um-

   5. CWChris Williamson19:20

      Do you ever take outside funding?

   6. NBNick Bare19:22

      For the first time, we wrapped up a seed round investment about three weeks ago. That was the first time we ever-

   7. CWChris Williamson19:29

      After nearly a decade.

   8. NBNick Bare19:30

      After a decade, you know, and up until a decade, no debt on the business. We never touched a line of credit. It was just, we kept, we kept investing back into the brand. I didn't take any money out of the business for the first five years. Didn't put myself on payroll until 2017. Started the business in 2012.

   9. CWChris Williamson19:48

      That AdSense money, baby. (laughs) That AdSense money, YouTube, you gotta keep me going.

   10. NBNick Bare19:53

       Hey, man, that's, that's what I did.

   11. CWChris Williamson19:54

       (laughs)

   12. NBNick Bare19:54

       Like from, from, from social media and making money on social media and YouTube, I took all that money and invested it back into the business to keep it afloat. Building a product-based business and managing cash flow, that is tough. It ain't easy. So, um, yeah, bootstr- bootstrapped the business, and, uh, I've reached... I will be honest, I have reached many times throughout the last 10 years in a period of burnout. I, I, and-

   13. CWChris Williamson20:22

       What does, how does that manifest for you?

   14. NBNick Bare20:24

       Um, extreme fatigue, stress, exhausted. Um, the team can feel it, like creatively I can't, I can't think, I can't breathe. Like, when I say burnout, maybe burnout isn't the best term or, or word to use. Um, I reach, I reach periods where I, I can feel that I've, I've done too much, I've taken on too much, and I can pull back a little bit and, and kind of refine, reassess, make a better plan, but, you know, it was me, my brother, uh, my brother now is our COO, Joe, who you met, our director of operations, and John Buyers, who's our warehouse manager now. It was us up until 2018, because I had to be very intentional with hiring, and I had to save a lot of that cash and cash flow for inventory. 2019, I had the first opportunity to hire, uh, a media director, Jordan Utter. And I learned a lot through Jordan, because when I hired Jordan, I realized I could offload and delegate a lot of my responsibilities, tasks, and duties, and when I offloaded that, it allowed me to work on the business rather in the business for a lot of things. So I learned a lot by hiring Jordan.

   15. CWChris Williamson21:41

       How did you know that he was the first person you needed to hire?

   16. NBNick Bare21:44

       I tested, I knew I needed to hire a videographer and someone to handle media, and I tested about ten other people. I would meet them on social media or online. I'd, I'd interview them. I'd fly them down, I'd test them for a video or two, they would stay with me in my house, and then-

   17. CWChris Williamson22:03

       You did that with ten people?

   18. NBNick Bare22:04

       For ten people, for about a year and a half. I was very intentional with it. I believe in the term hire slow, fire fast. And, uh, I finally found Jordan,

6. 22:18 – 34:15

   Hiring the Right People

   1. NBNick Bare22:18

      and he just got it. Like I could tell by the look and the feel of the video. He understood me, we shared the same values, moral, morals, principles. We could connect. Like he knew storytelling. He wasn't just trying to recreate what everyone else was recreating and doing as a creative. He wanted to do his own thing and put his own, his own spin on it, and I respected that a lot. So Jordan joined the team. I offered him a full-time job. And for me that was scary. You know, it's like this guy was moving from Ohio to Texas. I was, uh, I was taking a, a chance on Jordan, but he was taking a chance on me as well. And I, I learned and realized the power of being able to delegate and, uh, and, and hand off some of my LEGOs, if you will. And then after Jordan, it was, okay, I see the power in that and what it's doing to build the brand. So I hired someone else for the creative space. Trey. Trey Freeman is now our, our VP of marketing. When I hired Trey, I realized, all right, now I'm building this marketing and media team, and I can now focus on building the business in other areas. This is giving me a lot more time to actually think and not do. And from there, it was just intentionally adding more members onto the team. And the thing is, like when we hire, I'm not hiring based off of where you went to college or university or what your GPA was or, or what tests and certifications you had.

   2. CWChris Williamson23:44

      Deadlift.

   3. NBNick Bare23:45

      (laughs)

   4. CWChris Williamson23:45

      Max deadlift number.

   5. NBNick Bare23:46

      That ... It was not a fitness thing. You had to like fitness. But it was more so like if I met you and you were a good person, you could hold a conversation, you knew, you knew how to maintain relationships, you just were a good person in the beginning of building the business, I, I wanted you on the team. I didn't know what you were gonna do, but I knew you had to be on the team. I want to build this with people like you.

   6. CWChris Williamson24:12

      Well, it's a lot easier to teach skills than it is to teach traits, right?

   7. NBNick Bare24:16

      It is.

   8. CWChris Williamson24:16

      Somebody comes in with the correct traits and attributes. They have humor, they're good as a part of a team, they're resilient, they've got a growth mindset, they're psychologically stable.Try and teach somebody those things, really, really difficult. Try and teach somebody, uh, you taught yourself everything that you now need the people to come in and do, so you know that it's possible to teach that. But yeah, I mean, the Navy SEAL that I had on the show not long ago, this guy was talking about how, uh, you, for the most part, companies hire on skills but fire on attributes. So when they're looking to bring somebody in, they do the credentialism. They look at the CV and where did you go to school and what can you program and such like that. But when they get released, it's because they didn't work well as a part of a team, or because they're humorless, or because they're unable to go above and beyond, or whatever it might be.

   9. NBNick Bare25:00

      Mm-hmm.

   10. CWChris Williamson25:00

       So you go, okay, so why not flip that on its head? Why not presume that somebody that has the right traits and attributes will be able to acquire the skills that they need to be able to do the job? And instead, but what the reason for that is because HR departments, for the most part, are kind of just procedural, operational, like, churn machines, right? It's like the, uh, fulfillment department that we just saw in your factory. It's like, what is it that needs to go into this box? What's the easiest way to systematize that going into this box? Whereas if you've got something that you're building bit by bit, you can actually do it based on attributes.

   11. NBNick Bare25:34

       It's culture, you know, you're building culture. Me and some of the team here recently finished a book, it was called, uh, No Rules Rule, and it's by the, the, the CEO of Netflix, and it's all about building culture within your organization. Now, Netflix has gone to some extremes, right? Where they hire based off of talent density, and they believe that if you hire based off of talent density, meaning you're hiring very talented people, and when you bring very talented people into an organization together, and that talent is dense, they're going to feed and grow off of each other. I mean, they're going to create systems and infrastructure and ideas that are unimaginable, right? Like it's, it's, it's this powerful force that is moving forward. And when you hire talent density and you have talent density in your organization, you can pull back on some of the controls. So like at Netflix, they didn't have a PTO policy. It was unlimited PTO.

   12. CWChris Williamson26:31

       A what?

   13. NBNick Bare26:32

       Uh, paid time off.

   14. CWChris Williamson26:33

       Right.

   15. NBNick Bare26:33

       So they could take two months off if they wanted, or expense reporting. There was no really any expense reporting or guidelines. It was spend the company money how you would spend yours. And obviously it bit them in, in the ass a few times and, right? Like, it failed the model. But overall, when you bring in talented people with the right traits-

   16. CWChris Williamson26:59

       Good intentions.

   17. NBNick Bare26:59

       ... good intentions, you don't have to control them. You don't have to micromanage them, and you have this amazing culture that builds.

   18. CWChris Williamson27:06

       Well, think about how much more scalable that is, right? You know, if, if you want to rote create a, um, this is how to be a Netflix employee.doc, and people have to read that and imbibe it and it, it, it's sort of this very bureaucratic, top-down, dictatorial thing, as opposed to it being social cultural enforcement that you see from the people that are around you. Well, this is just the way that things are done here. This is the way... And obviously this can happen in toxic workplaces as well on the reverse. You can have somebody that comes in who's really, really growth-minded and great, and everybody else is dragging their feet, so it can work both for and against you. But if you're intentional with it, it's so much more scalable because you don't need to constantly be watching everyone over the shoulder. You don't need to have as many rules and procedures. What a procedure and, uh, like an operational report is, is basically an external constraint to try and limit people that don't get it just innately.

   19. NBNick Bare27:57

       Mm-hmm.

   20. CWChris Williamson27:58

       What you're doing is you're just, you're trying to create this set of guidelines and, and rules and restrictions so that even an idiot can do this. So me and my business partner, we, I run nightclubs, I have done for a long time, we would operationalize everything, but this is because we were working with 18-year-olds. They were children one year ago, right? You know, they were in school, not even in what we would call college or like high school, two years ago. So it's the first time they've been in a business like this. They needed everything laying out for them. And over time you'd see these, you know, 18-year-old party boys come in and they'd become managers, and by the time they got to 21, 22, maybe they'd done a placement year with us, maybe we'd had them on full-time, you'd just be completely hands off. You'd just say, "Look, he's a problem. Just go... Y- y- you know the sort of solution that we're looking for. You understand what it is that we're trying to do." But especially when you've got a company that you're hiring individually, slowly, for a very specific intentional purpose, I think that you can afford... I found out that for the first, I wanna say it's for the first like 200 hires at SpaceX, Elon Musk dealt with them personally.

   21. NBNick Bare29:04

       I feel, I feel like I heard he say, he said he still hires a lot of them.

   22. CWChris Williamson29:09

       Uh, that wouldn't surprise me.

   23. NBNick Bare29:10

       Like interviews and hires.

   24. CWChris Williamson29:11

       Tyler Cowen just wrote a book called Talent, and in that he, he uses this example, the fact that Elon, richest man on the planet, was involved personally in the hiring of most of the people for the first ha- half decade or more of the business, and very much maybe still be now as well.

   25. NBNick Bare29:29

       I mean, I think it's smart. Here's a, here's a clear example of, of where we found some struggles in that. I mean, I will say scaling a business is hard. And, and why it's so hard, it's not necessarily hard because you're trying to acquire new customers or figuring out where to spend your marketing dollars. It is hiring the right people and bringing the right people on the team. And, uh, going back to controls, so a few months ago, you know, we're growing, we're adding people onto the team, and we have this company vehicle, this company car, it's called the BPN truck. It's wrapped in BPN, uh, logos, and it looks pretty cool. And someone on the team took this truck out for a weekend to use for an event and they brought it back and I went to get in it Monday, and it was a mess. There were empty cans all over the place, wrappers, uh, camera equipment was still in there, it wasn't cleaned out. And I got pretty angry. So I created this new system and this new doc where...If you wanted to use the BPN truck, you had to sign it out, you had to, uh, do this, this checklist of checking for all these pieces. Almost like if you go to Enterprise and you rent a vehicle, you go through the, the checklist. It was like that. And then, it got to a point where no one wanted to even use the vehicle anymore because it was a pain in the ass.

   26. CWChris Williamson30:46

       Yep.

   27. NBNick Bare30:48

       So I got rid of that, and I was, like, what... Looking back, what was I thinking? I- I was... I took a situation where I could have used that as a learning experience and, and development, and I added these constraints to micromanage people who I empower, do, and make big decisions in the business.

   28. CWChris Williamson31:06

       You don't trust them to bring a truck back in a not-shit state.

   29. NBNick Bare31:10

       It's ridiculous. Right? It's like-

   30. CWChris Williamson31:12

       I understand the compulsion, though, you know? It's, it's the reason for all of this bureaucracy. It's why people in companies like to do this. You know what I mean? On the flip side of that as well, there are certain principles, I think, especially in our personal lives, it, it doesn't seem very romantic or very natural to kind of implement that, but Ben Bergeron, uh, the guy from CFNE, he's got this rule, I think it's 5:00 PM. 5:00 PM, he leaves, uh, his gym. It doesn't matter what's happening. Apparently, consistently, they're in a really important meeting, sometimes with people from outside of the company and they're all sat around a table and it's 4:58 and Ben starts packing his stuff up, and the people that work for Ben know what's going on, but everybody else sort of doesn't, and Ben's laptop's away and he's putting it in the bag. He's still talking, you know, da-da-da-da, moving away, and then it's 4:59 and Ben's, "Right, guys, I'm, I'm, I'm off." Even if it's in the middle of the most important meeting. So there's certain things, certain principles, I think, that you can implement in that way that provide very good guardrails, but I think that it's when you begin to create a, an entire enterprise-style check-in/check-out system that, that stops being a principle that is scalable and that people understand. It's like, bring the truck back in a good state, right? Ma- make sure that there's always gas in the tank. Like, don't be an idiot with it. That's a good principle. The entire checklist that takes people 30 minutes to fill in is somehow different.
7. 34:15 – 41:04

   Framework for Being Consistent

   1. NBNick Bare34:15

   2. CWChris Williamson34:15

      Going back to how you're operating personally, one of your coaches says it's better to be consistently good than occasionally great, and it seems like consistency is one of the things that you probably excel at. What are the frameworks or supporting structures that you have that help you to maintain consistency?

   3. NBNick Bare34:36

      Yeah. Y- you know, I, I never really realized that consistency was a quality trait of mine up until maybe a year and a half ago, and it was Jordan Utter, our media director, that said to me, "Nick, you are one of the most consistent people I've ever met." It made me think. Yeah, I guess I, I guess I am, like, pretty consistent. That is my competitive advantage. That is what I, I excel in. If I look back, I'll take you back to, to high school and then going into college. I was never this stud athlete. I was never this stud student. I was very average, very average. You know, when I was playing sports in, in middle school and high school, I was never starting, I didn't make varsity in, in multiple of those sports. I wanted to play collegiate baseball, I wanted to go to the pros. That just wasn't in my deck of cards. My brother, who's three years younger than me, he was a stud. But I always showed up. I always showed up, put in the work, did what I had to do. And for me, I just couldn't get good enough in those two years that I needed to to excel, to go to that next level. And then, when I got to college, I joined the Army ROTC program, I knew I was gonna go into the army. My plan after the army was actually to be a chicken farmer in Central Pennsylvania. That's where I thought I would be at 31 years old. Didn't think I'd be here. And, uh, joined the army, started my business, and when I started the business in 2012, it was never, "I need to make this much money, I need to get the business to this level by this time." It was just this very patient approach of, "I'm just gonna do this until it turns into something. I'm just gonna show up every single day, day after day, brick by brick."And I really didn't see much traction. I mean, I saw these small wins, but when I got to South Korea with the army on a nine-month rotation, what happened was I told myself, "I wanna make $10,000 a month in revenue by the time I leave South Korea. I'm gonna give myself nine months to do this." When I got there, we were doing $2,000 a month in revenue. So we were doing about 25... Between 20 and $25,000 a year in revenue with BPN. This was 2016. And my approach was, "I'm going to try to learn at least one new thing every single day. If I learn at least one new thing every single day, by the time I leave South Korea and come back to the States, I'm gonna have this toolbox of new things that I learned." So that's what I did. I didn't watch any TV, didn't watch any movies, didn't do any socializing. The military was my priority job, but when I got off of work, it was teaching myself how to develop websites, how to, uh, design labels, how to use Photoshop, how to edit videos, how to tell stories, how to, how to build a brand, what is a brand. Like all these aspects of building a business, and within 90 days of being in South Korea, we went from $2,000 a month in revenue to $10,000 a month in revenue. And what I realized then was it was almost like this snowball was slowly picking up. My consistency from the years leading up to that point had finally compounded. It's like investing in the stock market or a business, like you invest at a certain point and that money just slowly starts to compound over time, and it grows and grows and grows. And you don't see it day after day. You don't look back and say like, "Holy crap, look what I made yesterday," or today or tomorrow. It is, "Look what I made over the last five, six, seven, 10 years." And that's where I realized that all I gotta do is just keep showing up and chipping away. I'm not gonna change the world. I'm not gonna change my business. I'm not gonna change my life overnight, but I bet you in 10, 15, 20 years I can be somewhere where I'm really happy and proud to be. And that just became a part of my life. Consistency has just been part of my life since then. I'm, I'm, I'm very disciplined. I know what I need to do, and I think most people do. Most people know what they need to do from the time they wake up to the ti- the time they go to sleep. What do they need to do every single day to get to where they wanna be?

   4. CWChris Williamson39:04

      You think that's true, you think?

   5. NBNick Bare39:06

      I, I think, I think people, if they really take inventory of, of their thoughts and priorities, they know what they have to do, but what people end up doing, and I, I'll tell you a story about this. What people end up doing is they look for the shortcuts. "I know what I have to do, but it's gonna take me 10 years. How can I find a shortcut?" When I was in college, here's my story, I wanted to make money, right? I wanted to make money 'cause I was tired of overdrafting my bank account. I was tired of having no money for supplements. Like, I was tired of being broke in college. So what I did is I would email all of these companies, these brands, these companies, these marketing agencies in Central Pennsylvania and out near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and I would say, "Hey, I will, I will paint your logo and I will wrap my car in, in your branding, and I will drive around all over this college if you pay me 100 bucks a month." I knew that wasn't the answer to, to get rich and make money. I knew that wasn't the answer to, to be successful, but I wanted a quick buck. I could have invested that time into studying or, or getting a job somewhere else, or doing anything, but I was like, "How do I make the, the fastest dollar easiest of something I'm already doing?" And I think a lot of people apply that mindset to everything they do in life. They know what it's gonna take to train for this marathon. They know what it's gonna take to get stronger in the gym. They know what it's gonna take to get this next job promotion or build this business. I tell people on social media, I tell people through storytelling, I don't sugarcoat it, like, "This is what it took for me to get from point A to point B." It was really fucking hard. Like, to get to this point in business, it was really hard. But I didn't do anything extra special or out of the ordinary. I don't have a secret key that unlocked some door that has all the secrets of building a business. I was just very consistent, day in, day out.

   6. CWChris Williamson41:02

      I think that's the problem with the narrative

8. 41:04 – 49:16

   Modern Definition of Success

   1. CWChris Williamson41:04

      that we've got around success at the moment, especially reality TV where people just get plucked out of obscurity and then thrown to the top of a mountain where two million people know them and they've got a fast fashion deal for a couple of million bucks a year. It, what it teaches young people about what success consists of is not that you're supposed to do something consistently for a very, very long time that adds value until you eventually reach success. It's that you're supposed to be part of this, like, Hunger Games-style lottery where you get picked out of nowhere and then gifted acclaim for no real reason. You know, previously, "success" used to mean a thing, an accolade, an acclaim, an admiration, an fame. All of that, it existed as a byproduct of somebody doing something that was worthy of fame and accolade and success and admiration. But we've decoupled fame from that now. You can get fame purely for its own sake. People desire fame for the fact that they want to be famous and well-known, not because it's a signal that you have done something worthy of being famous, right? Like, how many people, uh... There's people that eat tons of food on YouTube, and that's the way that they've managed to get themselves into some, like, super, super, super well-known position. Now, e- entertainment's entertainment, and if they've managed to find a niche, then, you know, more fool those of us that haven't decided to do 10,000 calorie challenges every day. But, you can't say that that person adds the same sort of value as an inventor or an artist or a musician or somebody that is building something slowly and consistently over time.And take that to the nth degree, Love Island is just starting in the UK, the new season of that, and that is literally people being pulled out of obscurity. And by the time that they come out, they will be the best known, most talked about people in the entire country. But six weeks ago, they were just s- some hairdresser from the middle of Manchester. So what's changed? Okay, they were in the right place at the right time. So what's the lesson that you take from that? Not that you're supposed to do something very hard for a long period of time, but success is this dice roll that happens to a select few people and has basically no correlation with hard work. It's simply about being in the right place at the right time.

   2. NBNick Bare43:24

      I also think it comes down to, I mean, to each their own, but it's like how do you define success? Do you define success-

   3. CWChris Williamson43:31

      What do you wanna be well-known for?

   4. NBNick Bare43:33

      I wanna, I wanna leave a legacy. Like I want my, my daughter in ten years to say, "This is who my dad was. This is what he did. This is how he changed lives. This is, this is my dad." And, you know, I spent some time with some of the guys that were on, um, The Bachelor, that whole series, and I had some good conversations with some of th- those guys, and they told me that, you know, they went on the show and it changed their life overnight. They were famous. People wanted to know who they were dating, what they were doing, where they were eating, all this stuff about them. But he, he ... Some of them told me that the best way to describe it was it was monopoly money.

   5. CWChris Williamson44:20

      Yep.

   6. NBNick Bare44:20

      They, they had built this, this following overnight. They had this exposure. They had this fame. But they couldn't monetize it. It wasn't success. It was fame. Again, everyone defines success differently, but like for me, it's, it's legacy.

   7. CWChris Williamson44:35

      It's very fragile, that sort of fame. So I'm, I was the first person through the door of season one of Love Island in the UK, so I know the process from that. And you come off and people are interested in surface level stuff, but the difference between ... And this show is significantly bigger now. There is a caveat that, you know, now it, it really does propel you to sort of superstardom. But the difference between the sort of following and interest that I had coming off the back of that reality TV show and being on TV w- an hour a night for a month and where I've got to now with the show, which has been nearly 500 episodes over four years is n- night and day. And even if you were to say, "Well, you could go on Love Island now. Give up the show, go on Love Island now, win it, get all of the accolade," it's still more fragile. That person is still in a worse place than somebody that has built something. And the, the other thing as well is, it's strange about consistency, far more people are talented or enthusiastic about something than they are consistent. Like I, I see people that take up a new pursuit or sport and they find, "I've got ... I'm pretty adept at this," in the early stages. Or that they've got tons and tons of motivation because it's new and there's novelty, but what about 18 months from now when you've done this a million times and your talent's been competed away by all of the other people who were just as talented as you and are now 18 months deep? Well, that's where consistency comes in. And the weird thing is that if you see the world as lacking consistency, that has to be the thing, that has to be the point of highest leverage, because that's the weakness that most people don't have. It's like, look, you can separate yourself from the pack so much more easily by being consistent than b- by, by being talented or enthusiastic. There's this stat that I, I love about podcasts. Uh, 90% of podcasts don't make it past episode three. And of the 90% that do, 90% don't make it past episode 20. So by making 21 podcast episodes, you're in the top percent of all podcasters ever in history. Consistency beats talent and enthusiasm.

   8. NBNick Bare46:44

      I like tying the word endurance with consistency. You can apply this to anything. This is not just endurance through, through training and sports, but if you look at it, like how, how did I get to a 2:48 marathon? I ran a lot of slow miles. You know, in order to run faster, you have to run slower. You have to build your aerobic base and foundation. That is running below your max aerobic heart rate. These runs are pretty boring, right? Like you're, you're putting out this low effort because you're trying to train aerobically so your body can utilize oxygen efficiently, and you have to run a lot of miles below your max aerobic heart rate. Be very consistent and disciplined in thi- in this space and it builds endurance over time. It allows you to run faster and run longer. There's no shortcut to it. You have to log the miles. It might take months. In my case it took years. Years of running slow miles consistently day in and day out in order to build endurance. Endurance is also applied to, to life, right? Like as you're going through life, what is going to happen? You're going to have obstacles. You're gonna have speed bumps. There is going to be resistance. I look at it almost in terms of going up hills, like when, when I'm riding a bike or I'm running, it always feels like I'm either going up a hill or I'm running or riding into a headwind. There are hidwin- headwinds and hills everywhere. That's good, that's a resistance. It's pushing back on you. It's telling you you're alive, that keep pushing through. Those obstacles should be there. Life is this massive endurance event where as you start going, this goes back to consistently good rather than occasionally great. If you try to be occasionally great all the time, you're gonna, you're gonna burn out. You're gonna bonk. You're just gonna stop, you'll have to sit there for ten minutes, get your shit back together and then pick up and keep going. But if you keep going consistently good and you just keep trucking along, keep moving forward.And you know there's gonna be obstacles. There's gonna be speed bumps, there's gonna be resistance, there's gonna be hills, and there's gonna be headwinds all the time. But just keep driving through it consistently. It's not always gonna be fun. It's gonna suck. You're gonna fail, it's gonna hurt, it's probably pretty uncomfortable majority of the time. You're probably gonna get some chaffage between your legs. That's just gonna happen. But that builds endurance. When you look back over a period of time you think, "Huh. I actually made some progress through this, because I was consistently good rather than trying to be or look occasionally

9. 49:16 – 1:02:40

   Consistency in Hard Times

   1. NBNick Bare49:16

      great."

   2. CWChris Williamson49:17

      How do you deal with when the suck comes, then? Not in physical training, I'm talking about in life, with consistency. You get up at 5:00 AM pretty much every single day. Uh, when you've got business stress, YouTube stress, family stress, new baby on the way, competing for this time, the internet's watching you and every runner on the planet hates you, why is it, or what is it that you do ... Where do you go to on the days when you wake up and it really, really is difficult? When the suck comes?

   3. NBNick Bare49:53

      I'm gonna ask the question: If not me, then- then who? Like, I am, I am in complete control of where my life is going and ends up. We all are. And as soon as you accept that, that no one else is, no one else cares as much about your goals than you do. And if someone cares more about your goals for you than you do, you're probably doing it for the wrong reason, or you don't care enough. So from the time I wake up 'til the time I go to sleep, I think, "No one wants what I want as much as I do, and no one ever will," and that's how it should be. And I am directly responsible for what I accomplish and don't accomplish. If I don't accomplish it, I have to take responsibility. I am accountable. That means I failed my employees. It means I failed my- my wife, my family.

   4. CWChris Williamson50:44

      (coughs) .

   5. NBNick Bare50:45

      I failed. That comes down to me. So it- it's constantly realizing that I'm responsible. Taking that responsibility, owning that responsibility. I don't think enough people do.

   6. CWChris Williamson50:59

      That can add a lot of pressure on, though. You know, that can feel overwhelming. Th- th- this is on my shoulders, the successes are mine to bear, the failures are mine to bear. Does that not sometimes make you feel overwhelmed?

   7. NBNick Bare51:12

      All the time. (laughs)

   8. CWChris Williamson51:13

      Okay, so how do you deal with the overwhelm?

   9. NBNick Bare51:20

      A lot of it is ... to be honest, just, it's talking it out loud. Sitting down with my wife and, like, explaining. And it's not venting. Venting and complaining is- is a lot different from just communicating. Sometimes, like, it typically happens at dinner or after dinner. I let my wife know, like, what I'm experiencing, what I'm going through. Like, how- how can we find solutions for this? And I honestly have a really solid team here at BPN, and sometimes I'll sit down with- with my BPN marketing media director, Kat, my brother, like, anyone here in the business, and I just kind of say, "This is what's happening right now. I need some help." And they are always very quick to jump in and offer solutions and help. I- I- I realize that I am a very ... I have a very amazing opportunity with amazing people surrounding me. And a few months ago, we- we recorded this documentary called More Than the Miles. Our team went out to Leadville, Colorado. We did Leadville 100. It was a 100-mile ultra-marathon, and, uh, we- we completed it as a team. And the one thing we kept saying out there was, "You can go really fast alone, but you can go so much further together." So even though I- I feel that responsibility, I'm overwhelmed, I'm stressed for what I feel like is on my shoulders, and I wanna make this very evident: the reality is, it's not all on my shoulders. 'Cause my team, my family, my wife, they are bought in as much as I'm bought in. They- they weigh that burden of responsibility almost as much as I do. And I don't ask them to. I never do. But when you surround yourself and you bring really good people onto your team and in your life, they will take that responsibility and accountability, and they will hold some of that so that you don't have to hold it all. Even though you feel like you are, they help out so much.

   10. CWChris Williamson53:25

       This is the interesting point, right? So this is precisely where I think a lot of people get stuck. You spend a lot of time crafting a life built around your ability to get things done. As you progress through life, you start to need the assistance of other people, and other people just gravitate toward the stuff that you're doing. Then, as the stakes become higher, you have to realize that you need to rely on other people. But that's not what got you here. What got you here was relying on yourself. So now you need a new skill set.

   11. NBNick Bare54:00

       Mm-hmm.

   12. CWChris Williamson54:00

       You can't continue to leverage your time. You have to outsource, you have to delegate, you have to ask for help. You have to relinquish control. And it's that- that exact point, I think, that is what's very interesting. How do people let go of a strategy that they know was effective for them in the past, they know that they were a solo ranger that was able to get things done simply by the sweat of their brow, and now the stakes are so high that they can't continue to do that? And if they try, it's gonna be- they're gonna get burned out. How is it that they get from solo ranger to somebody that now can allow other people in-... that can open up, that can be vulnerable, that can show weakness, that can ask for help. That, that I think is one of the most important elements, and I think it's (clears throat) one of the ceiling caps that a lot of people get to when it comes to, uh, their growth, uh, whether it be personally, in business, um, emotionally, spiritually as well, that the tools that got them here are not the same ones that are gonna get you there. The things that you did that got you from naught to 75 are not what's going to get you from 75 to 90, or from 90 to 95.

   13. NBNick Bare55:17

       You have to invite that in. There's a book called What Got You Here Won't Get You There.

   14. CWChris Williamson55:23

       Hmm.

   15. NBNick Bare55:24

       And we say it here all the time. O- once you finally invite that in and recognize it, and it, it's, it's, it's really hard to invite in, because you're saying, "What took you from zero to 75 was great, it was fun. I'm pretty comfortable with it. I enjoy being in here and operating there. We could operate here the rest of our life and do really well, but we're just gonna stay right there." Or, "Do we want to go all in, put all of our chips and r- risk it all and bet on ourself, and do we wanna kind of," I don't wanna say forget what we did from zero to 75, but, "We now need to establish a new plan to get from 75 to 100." And once you invite that in and recognize that, that's where we're at with BPN right now. We say it all the time. We can't keep looking back on, on what we did in the past. We need to look at what we're gonna do in the future. Jesse Itzler says this one thing, he says he doesn't hang his hat on any of his previous accomplishments. Any of the businesses that he's sold, which he's sold for a lot of money, the books he's read, the things he's done, you will never find him talking about that where he's hung his hat on that. "Well, back in the day, I sold this business for this much money and that's who I am." No, he's, he's talking about what he's doing this year and what he's doing in the future, because what got him to this point was great, but what gets him to phase two won't work the same way. In business or in life, we all have an edge. That edge is what makes us, us. Like, BPN has an edge. I have an edge. You gotta know your edge, and that edge will be with you from the time you are born till the time you die. Maintain that edge. Keep that edge moving forward 'cause that, that's what makes you, you. That's what makes your brand, your brand. That's why people followed you in the first place. That edge has to maintain, but something else has to change to get from 75 to 100. The hardest part in life is, that usually comes down to people, are the right people in your life that you need to be surrounding yourself with. Sometimes people will hold you back. Like, are you, are you, are you selecting people to be in your life as your friends, as your employees, as your coworkers, as your mentors that are helping you and allowing you to grow and develop? Or are they keeping you at 75, and 75 is stuck?

   16. CWChris Williamson57:55

       Or are you keeping yourself at 75 by not letting anybody else in? I think that I see this a lot on the internet, especially with guys, right? You know, we've got a, a very individualistic, atomized meritocracy as a society at the moment, you know, and there is a little bit of romanticism around the monk mode Solo Ranger going and getting after it himself or herself. But I, I do think that there are far more people than admit it to themselves that are scared. They're scared of the fact that if they open this up, this is uncharted territory for them, that they need to have faith in other people, and that there is something safe, familiar, reassuring about just doing it yourself and about not, not relying too much on other people. You, you'd spoke there about, you know, betting on yourself and, and trusting your gut, which I think is, uh, the intuition thing is a big part of how you make decisions. Where's that bravery come from? Is that just something that's innate in you? Do you ever have self-doubt? Because a lot of people, smart people that like to read and are sort of cerebral and cognitively minded, they can talk themselves out of something that every fiber of their being-

   17. NBNick Bare59:07

       Mm-hmm.

   18. CWChris Williamson59:07

       ... is screaming at them to do.

   19. NBNick Bare59:09

       I think it comes from experience. There's been a lot of times where I haven't trusted my gut and I've tried to resort to something I've read or heard someone else say or do, and I think as much as my gut is telling me to choose option A, all of my experience from other people, this guy that I know, this girl that I've come across, this podcast that I listen to, it's telling me to choose option B. And as soon as I commit to option B, it fails, and I think, "Ugh, shoulda listened to my gut." Over time, it comes with reps. You just need to get more reps in. It's okay to, like, fail your entire life at things. Failing is getting reps in. Sometimes you're gonna make the right choice, sometimes you're gonna make the wrong choice. It happens. But the more reps you get, the more comfortable knowing, just based off your gut feeling, intuition, "What should I be doing?" And a lot of the time, it comes down to making decisions based off your foundational values and principles. I've learned over time that if I make decisions based off of my valuable- values and principles and, and morals, that is my compass that will always point me in the right direction. And I know what that looks like and I know what that feels like. I think that it's a bigger question and debate to open up of, a lot of people have never built their life on a foundation of values, principles, and morals, and if you don't have that vou- that foundation built, I mean, what are you building off of? You gotta build off of something that is solid, and if it's not solid, it's just gonna crumble.

   20. CWChris Williamson1:00:47

       What are the values and principles that you rely on?

   21. NBNick Bare1:00:49

       Integrity-... transparency with my team, um, having strong faith, being dependable, um, selfless service. Some of those are just some of the values. Some of those I learned in the military. A lot of those I learned from-

   22. CWChris Williamson1:01:07

       (coughs)

   23. NBNick Bare1:01:08

       ... family growing up. My mom. A lot of them I've learned through being an entrepreneur and business owner and being responsible for other people. And you learn through that, when you're put in a leadership position or you experience good and bad leadership, you realize what people are looking for. What helps people move forward? How, how, how does it help people in the mission organization overall accomplish something together? I think that that foundation is absolutely essential. And it's one of those things, like you can't build your foundation off of your mentors or whoever you follow on social media or your favorite person. It's gotta be a really honest conversation with yourself of taking inventory and stock. What are your priorities? What do you truly value? Like, what does your life look like in five to 10 years as success? How do you define success? You know, like I, I think that's one thing that a lot of people misunderstand is like success doesn't... It's not this one area of life. Like, you define success however you want. Maybe you don't care about money and you want to have a really strong family and relationship. Maybe you do care about money. Maybe you want to build a business. Maybe you, maybe you just want to be loyal to the people that are in your life. Like, success means something different to everyone, but you have to define it for yourself because if you don't, you're not living for yourself. That's scary.

   24. CWChris Williamson1:02:39

       Does

10. 1:02:40 – 1:08:14

    Define Personal Success

    1. CWChris Williamson1:02:40

       this... I think it's Aristotle who says, um, "If a man knows not where he goes, no wind is favorable." And the point of that is i- if you don't work out what success, by your own definition, you can choose, you can decide whatever it is that you want success to mean, but you have to choose, right? And if you don't, what you're doing is you're retrofitting other people's, society's norms or the paths of least resistance, or the weird ways that you've dealt with your p- previous traumas. That's what's defining the direction that you go in, in terms of success. Uh, uh, uh, this question I kept on asking people when lockdown started in the UK was, "What would have had to have happened by the end of lockdown for you to look back on lockdown and consider it a success?" You can have anything, right? Everybody's locked in the house. Yeah, you can't fly around the world and stuff, but you've got... We didn't know how long, but you ended up with like six months. Pick something. What would it be? Do, do you want to learn to handstand? Do you want to develop a relationship with your mom? Do you want to build a new skill? Like, what is it? Pick anything. And I think that looking at retrofitting your view of success based on what you want success to be in your life, that's the... It really is the only way to ensure that you're doing the right thing. Because i- if you don't, then you're going to end up at a place in life not only that you don't want to be, but that you didn't even mean to get to.

    2. NBNick Bare1:04:07

       Success also changes and evolves over a lifetime. If I look back at what for me was defined as success three years ago is now very different for, for my life right now and what I'm planning for in the future. Like, a successful life for me now is... I'm, I'm very happy that I, I decided to start building my business when I did and spent the last 10 years of just hammering down to build this thing because what I've realized that it's allowed me to do is I can now be super present for my family and my kids in the future. Success for me, like if I had to paint you a picture of what success looks like for me in, in 10 years from now and my daughter's 10 years old, maybe we have some more kids. We are on 20 to 50 acres, own a big property with these big oak trees. We have this long driveway and, uh, we have animals on our property. We have gardens, we have produce, we have chicken houses. And-

    3. CWChris Williamson1:05:16

       You did end up becoming a chicken farmer.

    4. NBNick Bare1:05:18

       I... (laughs) We'll see. Give me, give me-

    5. CWChris Williamson1:05:19

       (laughs)

    6. NBNick Bare1:05:20

       ... 10 years. Give me 10 years. And, uh, I'm still working to build something, whether that's BPN or another business from investing in businesses, and I'm, I'm challenged every day in some sort of business environment, but I'm not working a lot. Like, I'm choosing my hours of when I, I work.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:05:38

       Do you wanna dial that back? Having spent 10 years of real nose against grindstone stuff, is that something that over the next 10 years that you're wanting to spend less time on?

    8. NBNick Bare1:05:48

       Absolutely. Because with my kids and my family being built out, I... Like, for s- success for me, I wanna be a very present father. I wanna be actively involved. I don't wanna be a helicopter parent, but I wanna be facilitating challenges and growth and opportunities for my kids. And, you know, I had someone on the podcast last week, uh, Matt Berdeau, and he's the founder of, uh, Acton Academy of Placer Schools. And he comes in and helps people build out these private schools that are very unconventional. They're very entrepreneurial, growth-driven. Um, the, the curriculum is kind of guided by asking questions.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:06:39

       This is some Tim Kennedy shit, isn't it?

    10. NBNick Bare1:06:41

        So Matt worked with Tim to open the school here in Cedar Park.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:06:46

        Of course he did.

    12. NBNick Bare1:06:47

        Matt and Tim are really good friends.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:06:48

        Are you gonna send your kids to Tim's school and come back and they're gonna be putting you in rear naked chokes and stuff at six years old?

    14. NBNick Bare1:06:54

        I wanna open my own school.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:06:55

        (laughs) Oh, nice.

    16. NBNick Bare1:06:56

        I want to open one of the Acton schools 'cause-I see that's where I can give back, that's where I can impact. All that being said, like, that's where I ... Success for me is I'm helping people grow and develop in their life, and they're building the life they want, and that's from time kids are going to school, maybe they're older, but just getting really involved in the community that I'm surrounded by, and always being present there for my, for my kids. And what makes me say that is, it was a few months ago, might have been a year ago, I was listening to this podcast, and, uh, there's this guy telling this story, and he spent 25 years building this business, and finally he sold that business. He sold that business for hundreds of millions of dollars and think he was, like, 55 years old, something like that. And, uh, when he sold the business, he went to his family and he said, "All right, guys, I'm done working."

    17. CWChris Williamson1:07:53

        We made it.

    18. NBNick Bare1:07:54

        "We made it. We're gonna travel the world." And all of his kids looked at him and said, "We don't wanna travel with you. We don't even know you. You've been gone for the last 25 years of our life. The last thing we wanna do is spend time with you." That, for me, is failure. That's what the opposite of success looks like. That is ultimate failure.

11. 1:08:14 – 1:18:18

    Moving Towards Intentional Parenting

    1. NBNick Bare1:08:14

    2. CWChris Williamson1:08:14

       How brilliant is it that this period that we're in now... I- I- I'm not a dad yet, not- not as far as I'm aware, but I, uh, (laughs) I can't wait to be one. I really, really can't wait to be a dad. Uh, and when I look back at, you know, my dad and how hard he had to work to support me and mom as we were growing up, it was so restrictive compared with the options that we have now. And that's not to say, you know, two parent incomes and real living wages and stuff, they are difficult, but every time that I speak to another guy who's about my age who is family-oriented, all of us are thinking the same thing, like, "I can't wait to be there for my kids." I want to use all of the very nerdy hours that I've spent on my own stretching and listening to podcasts or going on walks and hearing audiobooks or reading or doing whatever, and I wanna synthesize all of this, especially if you're a creator, right? You know, thousands of hours that you've spent planning, scripting, recording, editing, uploading, promoting videos, and that's been for people that you care about, right? But they're not your genetic lineage.

    3. NBNick Bare1:09:24

       Right.

    4. CWChris Williamson1:09:24

       They're not, they're not that sense of you. They're not pure legacy. And now we have this... Everybody that I speak to about this has the same approach. Everyone. David Perell, one of my buddies who's in Austin, he said the other day, as he imagines more and more about becoming a father, which he isn't yet, but is, can't wait to be, as he imagines more and more about it, he realizes that a lot of what he did in his 20s and his early 30s was building a life that allowed him to become the father that he wants to be, even though that wasn't the goal, right? But by working hard, by giving himself freedom, by making smart choices, he's positioned himself in the place to become the sort of father that he wants to be. And that's, it- it seems like a very different, a much more intentional and deliberate form of parenting than pretty much anything that I've heard before. Certainly, you know, if I was to ask my dad about the way that he planned his life, it was very much just do what you can, right, to provide for the family. It- it didn't have this same degree of intentionality to it, because I don't think that maybe the information was there quite so much. I also think that parents having kids earlier doesn't allow them to perhaps build... You know, parents are having kids when they, not long ago, were still kids. If you're a 20-year-old parent, well, think about all of the stuff that you've learned... Almost everything that you value in yourself in terms of the insights you're going to pass on to your children has been developed over the last 11 years. So, I just think it's really cool. It's a really, really awesome time to think about families moving forward and, and, and what it's going to facilitate in kids and what it means for, for parenting.

    5. NBNick Bare1:11:08

       Yeah, because I look back at, you know, when I was little, my mom was a school teacher. My mom knew she was gonna be teaching in the school until she retired. There was no early retirement, right? So it's... I think we now have... It's more accessible. We have more opportunities to set ourselves up for success early on in life if you make that decision and choice in your 20s and 30s. And that's exact- exact way I see it, like, I now have built this career, I've built this business, I've built this life that allows me, because the work that I put in allows me to be the father and husband I am in the future. I think of all the things I've done, failed at, accomplished, wins, losses, highs, lows, over the course of my life, if there's one thing I'm very proud of, it is that. And I say that now, but when I look back, I'm- I'm very thankful and grateful that I started when I did, like I said a few minutes ago, because I know what that's gonna allow me to do in five, six, seven years from now.

    6. CWChris Williamson1:12:20

       That's a really important lesson. There's no one that I speak to that's doing something, that's started a blog or a Substack or a YouTube channel or anything, right, a business, that says, "I wish I'd started later." And that doesn't matter how late they started, right? Every single person is happy that they started then, or perhaps that they could have done it earlier. So that's a lesson to anybody that hasn't yet or is vacillating or sat on the fence about what it, whether it is that they should or shouldn't do that. Every single person that I've spoken to about this is happy that they started when they did or earlier.

    7. NBNick Bare1:12:54

       Well, I think one of my greatest traits in 2012 was that I was honestly stupid. I was, I was ignorant to the risks that I was taking. And, uh, while everyone else around me...... had a paralysis by analysis. I mean, I graduated with some kids who were, who were geniuses. They were smart. They went to Ivy League schools. I, I was not getting into an Ivy League school. I couldn't even get into Penn State University. I went to Indiana University of Pennsylvania in Western Pennsylvania near Pittsburgh. I was not, like, this genius dude. So I think that because I was so ignorant to the risks that I was taking in 2012 when I thought, "I'm gonna start this supplement company all by myself, and we're gonna see where it gets to," I didn't know, like, what could happen. I didn't know how much money it was gonna cost to get started. I didn't know how much money it was gonna take to maintain, sustain. I didn't know cash flow. I didn't understand finances, marketing, branding, nothing. But I knew what I wanted to do. I knew what I loved. I was ignorant to everything else. That's what allowed me to get started. And sometimes that's all you need, is everyone's waiting for the right time, the right place, the right money. "I'm, I'm gonna, I'm gonna start training for this next, next year. I'm gonna build this business in like, in like three years from now so that when, you know, the time is right, I can build this business and make a lot of money in six months." Good luck with that plan. Just get started. Just, just establish the, the foothold in there and slowly start building off of it. Once you establish that foothold, you can, you can build. This is the best way to describe it. So like, I talk about this dream in the, in the future of this property on 20 to 50 acres, having this, this farm with my kids and all this kind of stuff. And I'm not the type of person who's gonna wait 10 years from now to go, to go buy that property. I'm actively right now looking for property.

    8. CWChris Williamson1:14:49

       Well, that's because you know that you live in Austin, so the property is gonna be five times as expensive in 10 years.

    9. NBNick Bare1:14:53

       Truth.

    10. CWChris Williamson1:14:54

        (laughs)

    11. NBNick Bare1:14:55

        Truth. But I wanna buy that property now and, and I wanna start, you know, changing it. I wanna add some terrain features and-

    12. CWChris Williamson1:15:03

        Do you know Mike Cagiu from Working Against Gravity?

    13. NBNick Bare1:15:06

        Uh, yeah.

    14. CWChris Williamson1:15:06

        Yeah, so him and Ade have just got something, uh, two hours west, two hours east, sorry, of Austin. Dude, it's so nice. It's so gorgeous. Similar to what you're talking about.

    15. NBNick Bare1:15:18

        Mm-hmm.

    16. CWChris Williamson1:15:18

        And it's, oh man, I went up there. It's got its own little lake so you can go out boating, and him and his little boy go out and they fish off this little dup, dup, dup, dup, like a little, like old wooden... Ah, dude, it's spectacular. They had a festival up there a couple of weeks ago. It's outstanding. Like, it's so perfect, so beautiful. And you just think, "Well, why wouldn't you do that? Why, wha- If that's the sort of thing that you want to, that you wanna be able to provide to your family, like, why wouldn't you do that?" And you're right, apart from the insane property prices in Austin.

    17. NBNick Bare1:15:52

        Have you ever read the book Deep Work by Cal Newport?

    18. CWChris Williamson1:15:54

        Yes.

    19. NBNick Bare1:15:56

        So this is a, this is a clear example of, uh, a lot of times w- we wanna be busier. We wanna be doing more. I think hustle culture is, like it's evil. "What, what can I constantly be doing to gain the edge or get to the next level?" When it's not necessarily productive, it's just busy. I think Deep Work by Cal Newport is a very interesting read because it almost forces you to find opportunities in areas of solitude and presence and quietness, and, uh, eliminate distractions and just stop being busy. Just be present. Because when you are, you're going to make up so much ground in that time. Your mind is clear, it is thinking, it is firing, it is optimized. Again, that's why I like running. But I know that in the future when I am less busy and I'm more productive, that's when all my wisdom is gonna kind of start unfolding. You can be present, you can think, you can, you can go deep. Depth is something that we lack a lot of the times, and I always say, like you can, you can judge someone's depth if you go to conver-, if you go to dinner with someone. Say you go to dinner with someone for the first time ever, and the conversation is probably gonna go one or two ways. One, it's all shallow, it's all surface level. "Uh, how about that weather here? Like, uh, how about that coronavirus v- virus stuff?" You know, you're just talking bullshit.

    20. CWChris Williamson1:17:32

        Every Uber conversation you've ever had.

    21. NBNick Bare1:17:34

        Oh my gosh. "Where, where should I eat around here? What do you recommend?" Some conversations stay there, they stay shallow, and it's just boring. It's just boring. Or you can go to dinner with someone for the first time in your life and you're talking about some deep shit. Like, you are reaching depth in that conversation. Those are the conversations I don't wanna end. I wanna have that dinner a million times over again with that person, because we're actually getting somewhere. And sometimes people have never actually had a deep conversation in their life. They live in the shallow. They live in just like the, the shortness. That's boring. I wanna go deep.

12. 1:18:18 – 1:23:41

    The Price Paid for Success

    1. NBNick Bare1:18:18

    2. CWChris Williamson1:18:18

       One of the things that I think about when looking at the business and the channel and stuff that you've built is that it probably inspires a lot of people. You know, you think CEO supplement company, massive growth, YouTube channel, hybrid athlete, following of fans that genuinely seem to connect with you and care what y- care about what it is that you do. It's a very, uh, envious lifestyle. But with a lot of people that are in positions like that, I think there's, uh, prices that they pay that very few other people see. So what's the price that you pay for being you?

    3. NBNick Bare1:18:58

       The, the price that I'm currently paying right now, I mean, sometimes that, that sacrifice and that, that price changes. I would say right now the price that I'm paying, I had this conversation with my wife last night, I feel like I haven't been present lately.'Cause you go from, I mean, the, the list of things to do or think about, or, or meetings to have, they never end, right? There's always something you can be working on and as your team grows, there's more people to be working with and helping them. And, uh, I'd say that the one thing that I struggle with right now is from 5:00 A.M. until 11:00 P.M., that is a jam-packed day. There's no let-up. It's, you know, we're either creating and filming content, I'm, I'm training, um, I'm meeting with the team, we're trying to get in some wholesale retail accounts right now. We just wrapped up this seed round investment, uh, a few weeks ago. I think a lot of people think that my full-time job is to train, but I train like everyone else. I train at 6:00 A.M. before going into work and get in the office at 8:00 A.M. Or I train after work at 5:00, 6:00 P.M. That's when I train. When I'm at work, I'm working. The one thing that I, I can confidently say right now is I struggle with being present. It's something that I'm working to solve and fix, and building out systems and plans to alleviate that hopefully before the baby gets here. But, uh, I also believe that sometimes in life there are necessary sprints. Sometimes you have to sprint through periods of time to get a lot of stuff done. As long as that sprint has, you know, time where it opens up and you can kind of decompress and, "All right, that was a tough sprint. This is what we accomplished, this is where we're gonna sustain, this is how we're gonna improve." But sprints are gonna happen in life, in business. Y- you can't avoid it sometimes, but I think consciously being able to recognize and tell yourself what your weaknesses are, or what you're struggling with at the moment. It'd be a bigger issue if I was going non-stop through this sprint and I didn't recognize that I wasn't present all the time. But when my wife can either call me out on it or I can tell my wife, like, "I know I'm not present right now and I don't really like that. I'm not really proud of that right now. But I gotta get through this moment."

Episode duration: 1:24:21