My First Million: #71 with Nick Bare - Monthly vs Annual Subscription Billing, Fitness Events Post-COVID & Making Content To Build $10M+ Biz

All right.

Quick break to tell you about another podcast that we're interested in right now, HubSpot

just launched a Shark Tank rewatch podcast called Another Bite.

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If you want to give it a listen, you can find Another Bite on whatever podcast app you listen

to, like Apple or Spotify or whatever you're using right now.

All right.

Back to the show.

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We are back.

This is the kickoff, Nick.

We have a guest today, Nick Baer.

Sean doesn't know much about Nick.

Nick, I will say-

Do you guys know each other in real life?

No.

No.

I'm a huge fan of his.

So Nick, we do this podcast, and it's got a great listenership, and people reach out

to me all the time, and they think they know me because I'm in their ears, and I feel the

same thing about you, except I get to see you because you're a big YouTuber.

Nick, you want to kind of get background about who you are?

Yeah.

So I'm an entrepreneur based right outside of Austin, Texas, Army veteran.

So I started my business in 2012 when I was in college out in Western Pennsylvania.

Started in 2012, studying nutrition.

I started Bare Performance Nutrition, which is a sports nutrition dietary supplement company,

knowing absolutely nothing about business and thinking that I knew it all.

And then a short year after I started my business, I joined the military, went active

duty Army, where I then got stationed in Fort Benning, Georgia for a year, completed

the U.S. Army Ranger School, Airborne School, Infantry Officer, Basic Course, and then got

sent to Fort Hood, Texas, which landed me in Texas from Pennsylvania, and from there

I started using social media, building social media platforms, scaling my brand.

Long story short, I transitioned out of the military in 2017, and we scaled our company

from making $20,000 the first year to now making our own track for eight figures this

year.

That's great.

And so while you were in the military, you were creating content.

You were like a YouTuber slash soldier?

Yeah, man.

I like to think of myself as like the pioneer of military YouTubers, and it wasn't really

by choice.

I started creating content on YouTube's documenting training nutrition, and it wasn't until my

unit got sent to South Korea for a nine-month rotation that I was like, well, I guess I

either stopped doing all of this stuff, or I take my cameras with me to South Korea.

And that's where people really started getting insight of my military lifestyle, because

up until that point I kept it separate, but it was almost forced to merge.

And at the time, there was no one else really doing it, or at least that I know of, and

it really just picked up.

And were the people around you, were they supportive of it?

Were they like, hey, what are you doing?

This is not about YouTube right now.

What was the reaction you got from kind of your peers or your kind of leadership?

Yeah, I mean, I kept it very separate.

So when I was at work, I can only count like on my hand a few times that I ever took like

a GoPro to like, to work.

But I would work, like I would work on my business and YouTube and stuff before going

to PT in the morning.

It was before 6 a.m.

And then as soon as work was over, like 5 or 6 p.m. if we weren't in the field when

I was back working on my YouTube channel, my business.

So I kept it pretty separate, but my platoon loved it because when I was a platoon leader

in the infantry, I had 40 guys in my platoon, and I was creating these videos on YouTube

and they were in the videos.

So all their friends from across the country, they met in the army, were like, you know,

guys, I'm seeing you in these guys YouTube videos and they loved it.

They loved seeing the journey and the process.

So they were super supportive, upper level leadership didn't really feel the same way.

But like my guys, my guys in my platoon, they loved it.

Okay, that's cool.

And so and then Sam, do you do you use his product?

Do you take his product?

Yeah, so his product is two things.

So he has the nutrition business, which I have ordered or I have and I'm in the process

of ordering more from him.

But the way that I discovered Nick was through YouTube.

Have you seen his YouTube channel, Sean?

I haven't seen any.

Shall I look at one right now?

He's amazing.

Nick's awesome.

So Nick, what do you have like 350 or 500,000 subscribers?

I just crossed $400,000 like last week.

Okay.

So Sean, Nick's like 194 pounds, right?

I know this because I, I watch him a lot.

He used to weigh like 250, 220, still like ripped like about like a good 220 or whatever

used away.

And he would post these videos of like 220 pound guy runs a six minute mile.

Yeah.

So I'm looking at the, I'm looking at your YouTube channel right now and you're like

super jacked.

Are you this jacked right now?

Or was this like, like, I can't, you know, zoom, zoom doesn't do you too many favors.

Right.

I have shoulders up.

I have no pump right now.

No, I mean, I used to weigh like 220, 230 pounds and the focus was just put on size and

strength.

This was like bodybuilding, powerlifting.

And then in the past like a year and a half, I transitioned more to endurance stuff.

So I trained for my first Ironman.

I did an Ironman triathlon last November and now I'm training to qualify for the

Boston Marathon.

So over that journey, I've lost like 30 pounds and I maintain some size.

I mean, I'm nowhere even, I'm not close to as strong and big as I used to be, but

he's still huge.

Sean, he's so very big.

How did your channel like get big?

Was it just a steady climb or were there some like videos that went viral or something

that let let it take off?

Yeah.

I mean, for the first two, for the first two years was very gradual, like the first two

years, I think I gained 30,000 subscribers and this was just like fitness information,

training information, diet information.

And when I went to South Korea, what happened there was this one day, it was like, it was

a week before I had to go to the field with the military for a month.

So we were going to be gone for a month.

So I started filming this video and I was like, you know, I'm just going to film like

a day in my life.

So I just carry my small camera with me.

I film my PT session, I film what I'm eating.

I interview my platoon sergeant, some of my platoon and I just like film this video

called day in the life of an infantry platoon leader and I edit it up and I post it.

And within like 30 days, that video went to like a million views, but it was crazy was

the correlation between subscribers and views.

So it gained a million views, which now is it's nothing like people gain a million views

on videos all the time, but that that million view video gained me like 50,000 subscribers

in 30 days.

So my channel went from 30,000 to 80,000 in like a month.

And so Sean, you asked if I use his stuff.

I watch his videos every five days.

I don't know how you would have like two or three a week.

It's like, yeah, about two a week right now.

Yeah.

So I watched all of his videos and I discovered him a year ago.

Sean, you remember how I was training for that Ironman like a few months ago?

Yeah.

So I, I'm like, I'm not ripped like Nick, but I wait a fair bit.

I weighed 210 pounds and I was like, I can't do this.

I weighed too much.

Like I got it.

And so I saw his, I saw that he was training for it as well.

And I really got into it, but then I saw that he was in Austin.

So Nick, my company, the hustle, we have our, most of our employees at this point are now

in Austin.

And I was like doing research and I called my friend Noah Kagan and I was like, no, do

you know this guy Nick?

He's the best.

And so anyway, I've like back channeled and I've learned a lot about him.

And then I also learned about bear nutrition, his company.

So I've learned a fair bit about this guy.

That's why I was saying, I feel like I know, know him even though we've never actually

met.

Yeah.

Small world.

Yeah.

I know, I know Noah pretty well.

Small world.

And just so I understand.

So you did the YouTube channel, you built the content first and the, the actual supplements

brand second or the, or they were happening at the same time.

No.

So I started my supplement company in 2012.

I didn't start social media until 2014.

So I see.

I think that kind of like blows people's mind now because typically like you'll see people,

let's start companies a lot of times in social media, they build this audience and then they

say, how do I monetize it?

Well, I created the company first.

So I, I, I created my supply first and then I realized, okay, well, I have no demand for

the supply.

How do I create demand?

Um, 2014 is when I started building social media platforms out.

And so, uh, with the supplement company, you know, there's a lot of these out there, right?

There's like probably, it's probably one of the most competitive categories is sort of

health and fitness, um, you know, supplements and vitamins and protein shakes and all that's

good stuff, pre-workout, post-workout.

So what was your thinking at the time you're, you said you're in college or you're pretty

young at the time, why start a new company and what made you think this could actually

work?

Yes.

I was, I was studying nutrition in college.

I was on an army ROTC scholarship.

Um, I remember being a freshman in college and my buddies in the dorms had no money left

in our bank account.

So all we wanted to do is buy pre-workout to go to the gym.

So we decided, all right, we're going to save up, we're each going to save about $30.

We're going to pitch it in and we're going to buy these ingredients in bulk and we're

going to mix up our own pre-workout.

So here I am in the dorms freshman year.

I have this food scale in my living or in my room next to my bed and I have all these

white powders and ingredients.

So I'm mixing up these white powders on this food scale and then kids would come to my

dorm and I'd give them a bag of white powder, this pre-workout.

It looked like I was dealing drugs out of my, yeah, it looks like I'm dealing drugs out

of my college department, but I just, I love sports performance nutrition and I love the

supplement space.

Um, so that's how it started, like that's how I started to make my own stuff.

And then it was between my, where did your first stuff come from?

My first actual production order was from California, um, but when I used to make my

own stuff in the dorms, I would just buy like bulk creatine, bulk caffeine from like

supplement, other supplement companies that sold single ingredients, but between my junior

and senior of college, I was like, okay, I'm going to turn this into a company.

So I found a contract manufacturer based on California and I took it on a $20,000 loan

and I placed a production order for supplements, built the website myself, did all like the

promo stuff by myself, um, the advertising, the logistics, the packing, everyone's, everything

was done out of my college department, uh, but that's how it all started.

Like that's how I got into it.

And what's your revenue now?

You said eight figures.

So north of a million a month.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, we're on track for like 12, 12 million this year.

And so when you, when you launch this thing, some businesses just work straight out the

gate and then others, most of them, I would say don't.

And so, you know, you take the $20,000 loan, you do all this work, which category were

you in?

It works right away or did not work right away.

Yeah.

So my plan was, I told my dad, I said, I'm going to make a million dollars a year one

and he kind of just laughed at me.

So I sent all these bottles of pre-workout to like YouTubers and fitness, fitness influencers

at the time, which was a completely different term in 2012.

And I thought if they would, I thought, Hey, these guys have a hundred thousand followers

on YouTube.

If they make a video about it, at least maybe a thousand of those people will buy this stuff.

So I sent it to the, the fitness YouTubers.

They like do a half-ass kind of like posting about it.

I launched the company and like literally zero sales come in.

So year one was $20,000 in revenue after just offering like 50% off discounts all the time

to start excited to pay, I had bills to pay year two was $20,000 in revenue.

Year three was $20,000 in revenue.

So there's no growth first three years, but it was a crazy first three years because I

launched this company a year before going to active duty military.

So I was in and out of the field training all the time.

So if this was your main thing, you might not have stuck with it, but you were able

to, you kept it going while you were in the military though.

Yeah.

I kept it going while I was in the military.

I mean, I was gone so much.

I mean, the one, the one course that I was in with the military was the 17 week course.

I think nine of those weeks I was gone just in the woods training.

So I went through ranger school.

I was gone for four and a half months there.

So I was in and out of training all the time, but I was trying to grow the company whenever

I had the opportunity on 20 K and sales.

What's your typical margins and not including if you not including payroll, just like your

contribution margin on these things?

I was in the red then because I was pretty much selling products at cost because of the

discounts I was offering.

I was just trying to move inventory because I had, I had some bills to pay.

And then I was spending money on marketing, which I had no idea what I was doing with

marketing.

So my ROI was like zero on the money I was spending and I kept trying to invest all the

money we were making back into the brand.

So really like, I mean, I didn't pay myself personally until 2017.

I built the brand for five years before I took any money from it.

What about now?

So on a million dollars in sales, these types of businesses, what, what can your typical

contribution margin be?

What are your expenses with overhead?

Just the hard good.

Just your fix or your, just like the growth variable cost.

So after the, after cogs, after shipping, yeah, we can have roughly 60% profit margins.

And then, and then you, and then you got to take care of your people and your marketing.

But do you guys, do you guys spend anything on marketing now?

Yeah, we do.

I mean, we didn't start spending money on marketing until 2017.

That's when we first started running paid ads up until that point.

I mean, we made our first million in 2017 and that was all organic.

And then at that point is when we started spending some money on, on marketing.

But I mean, the only marketing we do, Facebook, Instagram ads, email marketing, and then like

athletes or ambassadors, SEO.

Yeah.

Cause I would think that at this point, you guys, I would imagine, I mean, I definitely

think you'd want to spend on marketing if you could spend profitably, but I would think

that the majority of your sales are coming from your YouTube channel.

They were for a while, but we've now like last year, our brand now today is a completely

different brand than it was last year.

Last year, if you would talk to our customer base, a lot of them would say, yeah, I know

who Nick Bear is, but I think a lot of our customers now actually don't know who I am,

which is the way I want.

Which is great.

This is, yeah, it's where I wanted to go.

So I'm happy with that, that kind of transition and evolution.

And what was the turning point?

So three years, this business kind of sucks.

You know, if you're my brother, I'm talking to you and being like, Hey man, maybe we

should wrap this thing up.

This is not working.

And then, you know, eventually it does turn around and now you guys doing eight figures.

So what was the turning point?

Where did it go from a crappy business to a not so crappy business?

It was actually when I was, I was in South Korea.

So when I got to South Korea for a nine month rotation, we were making about $2,000 a month,

$2,000 to $3,000 a month in revenue, and I told myself by the time I leave, I want to

make $10,000 a month in revenue.

That was my goal.

So we had a lot of downtime over there.

I told myself, I'm not watching any movies, no TV, no like leisure stuff.

Every waking moment outside of work with the military was going to be spent learning how

to market, how to create videos, how to edit.

I told myself how to code a website.

I read books, listened to podcasts, and within the first 90 days of being in South Korea,

we went from $2,000 a month in revenue to $10,000 a month in revenue.

And while I was there, I did a small rebrand of the company with new labels, new logos,

a new website I built while I was there.

So the rebrand helped, but it was just learning the ins and outs of business that I didn't

know up until that point.

So Nick, something that we basically, this whole podcast, it started because Sean and

I have started and sold some things before like companies.

And we also angel invest a fair bit.

And eventually what we started doing was we just like started riffing on the various companies

and opportunities that we're seeing in the market.

And so I want to do that with you.

But before we get to that, where Sean and I live in Silicon Valley, and this isn't necessarily

how I live in my business, we've not raised any venture capital, but most people raise

a lot of money, not, I mean, bootstrapping, which basically is normal for how to start

a company.

That's not normal where we live.

Have you ever considered raising money and what has been your thought process between

of not doing that so far?

Yeah, we, I mean, like I said, 2012, I took on $20,000 alone, which was my first initial

funding.

In 2017, we grew like 1700% or seven, sorry, 750% we grew in 2017.

So at that point is where we started running into inventory issues, because for example,

I had to place a production order for inventory, and that is a 12 week lead time.

So at the time, I didn't have established relations really with manufacturers.

So I had no terms.

So I put 50% down the inventory.

And then when it shipped, I pay it off, I pay off all the inventory before it got to

us.

What was happening it was because we were growing so fast, I would get that inventory

in, I would sell out of it in five to seven days, and then it'd be 11 weeks until I had

more inventory.

So we were constantly out of inventory, we're pissing off all of our customers.

Cash flow was like, I was pulling my hair out at night, you know, I was like, so stressed

out.

So we're growing, we're making money, but cash flow was so tight because we were scaling.

And we slowly dug out of that, just naturally and organically just by stacking some production

orders, timing inventory, getting control of inventory more.

And we kind of set ourself up for success there.

There were some points after that with growth, because we essentially doubled revenue year

over year after 2017, that I thought about taking some investors on and we've had the

opportunity to.

But what I actually ended up doing was creating systems and other services that aren't product

based.

So like subscription services or like virtual services that are essentially just 100% profit

margins that are we're using to internally fund the growth of the brand.

So what are the best one of those?

So training last like three years have sold online training programs, which are PDF downloads.

We're about to launch our app within the BPN app, which is a subscription based training

platform called embrace the suck training.

And then launching a online nutrition course here shortly.

So all of those, because there's really no overhead associated with them, we're using

to fund the growth of their performance nutrition, because I personally at this point, why not

just only do that because I love the product based business.

I love, I love, I love BPN.

I love like the employees we have a lot of the team of the culture in the community.

Like I could never give up BPN.

Do you think any of those could be the same size or bigger?

Or do you think they inherently might be smaller, but good cash, good cash cows for you to fund

the business?

And they, they could be the same size, if not bigger.

Yeah, Sean, I was, dude, his, you're, I've been researching a lot of these influencers

that create fitness apps.

They crush it.

They crush it.

Sean, do you know who Kayla it's new is?

It seems.

Yeah.

We both have wives that subscribe a hundred bucks a year to her.

Oh my God.

It's crazy how big that is.

And then I also was researching another one.

You know, the Diamond Dallas page.

Yeah.

DDP.

You know how, do you know, so, you know what his shtick now is, right?

No, no, no, no.

What is it?

Okay.

So he, uh, Diamond Dallas page is a wrestler from the nineties, probably eighties even.

And, uh, he's, he might be 65 now and he has a yoga training program and a lot of veterans

use it, a lot of manly, like manly men use it to rehabilitate themselves and people love

it.

And he charges, I think $50 for three months and, uh, it looks wonderful.

Like I almost bought it the other day, I might buy it, uh, these, these like training programs,

I imagine the churn is pretty high, but these training programs and these apps, um, they

seem relatively simple to build.

They seem like awesome businesses.

If you can, uh, prevent churn.

Yeah.

Right.

I think a lot of people do it.

They do it wrong.

A lot of people rush it and then they don't put any, they go, especially in the fitness

industry, people just want to turn out, turn out all these products and push them out as

fast as possible.

So like someone that's not qualified to create a fitness-based product or a nutrition-based

product will do it because they think they're qualified, which is a massive liability.

So like, for example, with, with our training platform embraces up training, the subscription,

we hired someone who, who's fully certified, uh, strength and conditioning certified green

bray to build these programs for us because as much education and experience as I have

with training, I don't have all the certifications that, that make me credible to, you know,

to watch that.

When you're jacked, that's the certification for, do you know how to train?

Well, that's the thing.

That's, that's, that's what I consider the certification.

And that's what most people do.

But I mean, some people just have great genetics and like they don't have the, is that you?

Did you have great genetics?

Were you just naturally pretty ripped?

Well, I mean, me, my brother, my dad, we, like the bear family, it's, it's like grass-fed

farmers from central Pennsylvania.

So we got some good, we have some good genetics.

Dude, I'm like a bean-fed farmer from India.

It's like, oh man, we're, we're screwed.

What did you build your platform, this platform on?

Okay.

And your same platform, is it going to be an, uh, an app?

What is it going to be?

Well, which one?

Um, so your training thing, he's saying, did you hire a developer?

Did you use some no-code tools?

How did you, how are you building the fitness app?

Yeah.

The fitness app was built from scratch with a developer, uh, here in Austin.

So we've been working on that for the past, man, eight months.

And it's not, but it's not launching officially till this summer.

However, we launched it early for free during COVID-19 and just made a home training, uh,

portion of it.

So like day one, we had like 9,500 downloads, um, on that just because it's, it's free.

And it's like home training.

So like that value we're offering this people, people are taking advantage of it.

They love it.

What's your niche going to be for that?

What's going to be like, uh, people who are like, uh, I don't know how, I don't know

the politically correct way to describe this, but like manly men who are like buff or like

heads.

Is it?

Yeah.

Or like nerds, nerds who want to get fit women who want to lose weight.

Like what's your thing?

It's, uh, it's geared towards a functional, um, like hybrid athlete.

So it's, it's the way I train, like, uh, going to the gym, throwing weights around, strength

training, running up to 10 miles, doing some hikes, it's, it's a combination of a hybrid

style training that's, I mean, it's called embrace the suck.

It's going to be difficult.

It's not necessarily a beginner program, but I'd say more so intermediate to advanced.

And what will you charge for this $30 a month?

Dude, this is going to make so much more money than profit, like so much more money than

protein.

Yeah.

But our goal is we want to like, I see things as vertically aligned, like I want people

to come to with a bare performance nutrition platform where we're training them properly

as opposed to what we do with them.

We're, we're providing great products, the supplements, and we have the nutrition course

where like, we're literally like, we want to give them all the assets and tools that

they can to become successful within one spot.

Why are you guys going to succeed at this?

Whereas like, I would, okay, so, um, I know on it, I don't, I don't, I don't have any

and set of information on them, I just know of them from Googling and researching the

founders and stuff like that.

They seem, from an outside perspective, that does not seem like a very good business.

If I had to guess, um, why do you think that you guys will succeed at this?

And why do you think that people like those folks are not as good?

I'm not, you don't have to, uh, say they're not as good because you seem like a nice guy,

but I can say it.

I don't think that they're, I would bet they are a super profitable company.

I think, I think on it's killing it pretty well.

I mean, they have a pretty good, uh, representation here in, in Austin and I respect, I respect

everything they do and put out.

Um, I think like where we focus is, and we're a lot of, and I'm not speaking about on it.

I'm just speaking about the supplement industry and fitness industry in general, is there's

a lot of companies that launch and they want to mimic another company's approach where

like us internally here, we never really look at what everyone else is doing.

We talk about what we want to do and what our community and our customers are asking

for and we use that feedback to build out these systems.

So this past year we went through another kind of mini rebrand where we were building

on a new website.

We have new brand colors, guidelines, uh, going off of go one more, which is our, our

slogan.

Um, so everything we do is like based off of this for the next, next year at least campaign

wise, go one more and building campaigns around that.

So we used to be all over the place like when I first launched my business, it was like

I'm selling to everyone who goes to the gym, but over time we've refined our mission and

where we're heading and who we want to attract.

Are you the sole owner?

That's a good place to be.

Yeah.

I mean, you got this, you got a solid nutrition company and then just in my head, if I had

to look forward 18 months in the future, I feel like this is going to be a home run.

Yeah, I mean, this is, this has been something that we've been working on like all these

things for the past, past 18 months.

Um, and they're only now coming to life because of the things we've been doing the past 18

months.

So these past 18 months have been like, you know, seven days a week, uh, 5am till midnight

most nights, but now it's a point where these things are coming to life and going to launch

and it's going to pay off.

Would you ever sell the company?

Um, I would in, in, in the future for the, for the right price, I don't know what that

price is right now, but I don't, I don't want to let go of it anytime soon.

So do you, do people in the military take, you know, pre-workout, you know, do they take

branch chains afterwards?

You know, do they, are they consumers?

Oh yeah.

Cause there's a million plus, I think soldiers in the army type of thing.

So, you know, how, how, how much have you been able to tap into that market given that

it's your background and your brand and things like that, cause that seems like if you just

serve that customer base, if you just won that segment over, you would be one of, you

know, you'd be a $10 million plus brand in general.

Yeah.

I mean, we, when we first started and I was sharing my military story, a lot of the audience

that we attracted was military, so we have a massive military following people send us

messages all the time saying, you know, when they go on a new military installation, they're

seeing VPN shirts all over the place, which is a really cool feeling.

And we recently went through a certification process with our brand.

It's called BSEG drug free certification.

So we third party test all of our products every time they're run so that they are certified

band substance free drug free so that military can take them and know, Hey, I'm safe to use

these.

Some brands go so hard on, on marketing to the military where it's like, it's just like

a military brand, but that's not something I ever wanted to do.

I didn't want, I wanted the people in the military to, who does that, who's a brand

that does that?

I don't know.

I'll see like random brands online and just like, you can't know everything, digital like

print, but we, I never wanted to be a brand that was just strictly military.

I wanted people in the military to align with our values and our mission and want to use

VPN stuff, but I didn't feel right targeting just the military on sales.

And I never thought that was like a right thing to do.

And Sam kind of alluded to this earlier, but one of the things we try to do is we try to

say whenever you're doing something, whenever you're in the middle of a field, you see all

kinds of stuff.

You see problems that your company has that you're like, God, I wish somebody would solve

this problem.

You see other opportunities that you're like, man, we got to stay focused, but that I believe

in that opportunity.

And some entrepreneurs are better at recognizing those than others.

I'm curious, have you seen any either problems, opportunities, trends in your space that you

can kind of riff on and share it can be half baked ideas, but just what are some things

you've observed?

Yeah.

I mean, like I kind of touched on a little bit earlier, I feel like people are people

in the space don't step back and look at the big picture.

They're so just tunnel vision focused in where it's like a trail where one person sets the

trail and everyone's in line just following what everyone else is doing.

But it hit us like years ago, we pulled ourselves back from a bigger perspective to like, we

don't have to follow this trail that everyone's taking.

A clear example is just like content that companies and brands are posting online where

it's like the most unnatural, unorganic, cheesiest post, and we don't align with that.

We want things to be organic and natural and the people that align with our brand, the

athletes, ambassadors we bring on, we want it to be different.

We want to set the path, we want to set the standard.

I think it's partially a value adapted from the military and things I learned in leadership

and just applying it to business.

What are some of the faster growing skews in your industry that didn't even exist a

year ago?

Our fastest growth right now is like the health industry.

And it's been like that for the past 18 months.

So like strong green, strong reds, multivitamins, strong joints, and it's interesting because

when we first launched, we were primarily a sports nutrition brand, protein, pre-workouts,

creatine, and we added strong greens to green superfood supplements to the line thinking

it was just going to be an opportunity for an upsell.

Like, hey, if you want a green supplement, we're going to create one, we're going to

add to the line.

Well, it quickly became our best seller and we'll sell through, you know, 8,000 units

a month of strong greens.

All right, this episode is brought to you by SuperSide.

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It's like the health market part of our brand is really taking the lead now.

And how big do you think Athletic Greens is?

I've bought their stuff before.

That seems like a pretty big company, right?

I've seen their sponsor stuff on Instagram and Facebook.

I've never used it.

I don't know anyone else who's ever used it.

It's hard to tell sometimes with social media because you can make any brand look big, you

know?

It's hard to tell.

If I gave you a million bucks and I said, hey, Nick, I trust your judgment in your space.

You can invest this million bucks in any other company besides yours.

What company would you invest a million bucks into?

I probably wouldn't do a product-based business.

I would do some sort of technology-based business just because I've seen how fast money goes

in a product-based business and you can burn through that and you can burn through a million

dollars like that.

So I'd do something service-based, something tech-based, probably.

Anything come to mind or just hard to think of on the spot?

I'd say something in the health industry because the health industry, health space,

it's not going anywhere anytime soon.

It's only going to get bigger.

And even when times are tough and times are good, health is still a priority for people.

So it would be some sort of health-based either subscription service or just technology.

I think wearables.

What's that?

Is it anything product-based like wearables like the garment I'm wearing now?

I think that's where a lot of stuff is headed and I think doing something with a wearable

in fitness and technology-based, that'd be massive.

You know who two companies in that space that I think are doing wonderful are Woop and Aura

Ring?

I think those guys are just crushing it.

I don't know how, when I think of how to finance a company like that, it makes my head hurt.

It just seems so expensive to start.

But people are buying the fuck out of that stuff, I think.

Yeah, I was sent a Woop and I just, I couldn't get on board with it.

It didn't grab me.

I like being able to see, I like the display.

I want quick, real-time data and I don't want to flick my phone for it.

So I'll wear a garment for the rest of my life until the day I die.

I don't need all the crazy features to it, but anything can measure my heart rate, measure

my sleep, give me a pace on a run while I'm on Team Garmin all the way.

Sean, isn't it funny how Nick said that?

His company from an outside, I think, is awesome.

He's like, yeah, I want to do tech.

So Sean had a company that he sold to Twitch and now he's trying to launch physical goods

like a DTC thing.

But I would agree that tech is the way to go.

So I'm with you on that.

In fact, there's a company I'm looking at investing in.

I really like this guy.

I think I'm going to either invest or advise in this company.

And he's doing a kind of an app-based workout thing, but he's not doing influencer stuff.

He's doing, it's AI-based, now AI is just kind of like a bullshit term.

But what he's doing is pretty simple.

He's like, let's say you're going to do a workout.

And most people just do some random thing like, oh, three sets of 10.

And he's like, why three sets and why 10?

And he's like, well, these are just round numbers people use because there's no science

underneath.

For you on this day, is that the correct amount to be doing of this weight?

So what his theory is, he logs everything so he knows what weight you did, how many

reps you did, how many sets you did last time.

So he knows how to incrementally get you one unit further, a little bit further, a little

bit further, when you need to rest, that sort of thing.

And so over a six-month period, you can get more gains if you use this than not.

And now I think that's, I wasn't-

And that's bullshit, I think.

I think that's bullshit.

Why would that be bullshit?

Because there's already things like, Nick would know way more, but there's so many calculators

that you can do where it helps you, what's it called, periodization, where you can,

it tells you, like, maybe for example, two or three weeks, you keep the same weight,

and then on the third, fourth, fifth week, you increase it by X percent.

I don't understand why you need so much technology to do that.

Well, I think it comes down to, it's a theory of convenience.

It's called auto-regulation.

And I mean, anyone can auto-regulate, but a lot of people don't understand, say, your

body doesn't know reps, for example, your body knows effort, your body has no pace,

it knows effort.

So that's why a lot of people use like the RPE scale, the rate of perceived exertion.

So if I just said, hey, use this weight for an RPE nine, well, the RPE scale is based

on 10.

So it means RPE nine is one rep short of failure.

So I think using effort as opposed to reps is better.

But auto-regulation is, for example, like if I go into a workout and do one more upset

and I don't feel good, well, I just don't, I don't do what I was supposed to that day.

I just, you know, use common sense and plot out the fitness.

But AI, I can see where AI comes into play with some sort of auto-regulation or perceived

effort.

Yeah, like Sam, for example, you know, our wife subscribed to sweat and it's a workout

program.

There's a million workout programs online.

Why do I need an app?

Why do I pay a subscription?

Right?

People pay for convenience.

They pay for certainty.

They pay for having their hand held to do things.

And so, you know, if you have an app that's going to do the hard work for you of helping

you pick what workout to do today and then what's the numbers, how many should I do

of which so that I can get gains over time, people will pay for that benefit and people

are.

So this, this guy's doing, you know, over, let me, let me pull up his numbers real quick,

but he's doing over a million dollars a month already on this app.

Wow.

And so, so he's had phenomenal success and, and he's grown it, you know, in a very, very

short amount of time, but you know, it's been his, well, well, what was his main source

of growth?

Paid ads?

Paid ads.

Yeah.

So we, Nick, have you heard of Aptiv?

I don't think so.

Aptiv is cool.

So it started by this guy named Ethan.

He spoke at our event hustle con and it's, it's a badass company, but now I want to hear

Nick's opinion, but basically what they do is they, it's just like a, they probably have

a thousand classes and you say like strength, indoor running, outdoor running yoga or a bunch

of different stuff.

And then they have like, they must have, they must license music from someone else and you

say how much time they have and they'll give you a variety of audio classes that you can

do.

It's wonderful.

It's like $10 a year and he scaled it to 20 million in sales and like, I think three

years and it's subscriber revenue.

It's pretty amazing revenue, but I would have to, but the cost of, or the barrier to entry

for a business like that is so low, I have to imagine the competition is stupidly high.

Maybe the most competitive on the iTunes store.

Then any grew that mainly through ads?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I was wondering like for the ads, for subscriptions like that, cause like say, for example, it's

a hundred dollars a year, maybe it's like $10 a month, like you have such a low cost,

like you have like your cost per acquisition has to be pretty low, taking consideration

like the lifetime value that customer.

So like those numbers have to get pretty like messy.

Yeah.

Like, you know, if you're able to acquire a customer for 20 bucks or $40, then you know,

you're saying, okay, cool, I'm going to pay this customer off in, let's call it four months.

And that's the, that's sort of the math you have to do to make that work.

Yeah.

But then it's like, you're waiting to see, you're making sure like that customer holds

on or you're at a loss for that cost per acquisition.

Yeah.

Yes.

But the secret I think, I think that the trick is, and I, so we have a subscription business

called trends, trends.co, it's, and it's a great business.

And what I learned doing that is I went and talked to Ethan of Aptiv as well as like 10

or 20 different subscription companies.

And they were like, I wish we would only do annual billing.

So we only do annual billing and it helps significantly.

And so I think the secret for Aptiv as well as others like it, and I don't know if what

you get, what your guys' plans are, Nick, is you have to do annual billing or three

month billing.

You find that by not offering, so you don't offer monthly?

No, no, we don't.

And I, so do you know the athletic?

The athletic?

Yeah.

It's like this, it's like, how do you describe the athletic?

It's sports, sports news, but you pay for it on subscriptions like local, you know, they're

bored on your local team, but you got to pay for it.

Yeah.

And they raise like, I don't know, $200 million a shit ton of money.

And I talked to those guys and they're like, we wish we only did annual.

And so it definitely limit, I think it limits the amount of people that will sign up, but

I think if your sales copy and your brand branding is good enough, it won't matter.

And I think that that's something that people don't realize and they don't expect is that

they think annual billing will be a turnoff for people, but I don't think so, particularly

if it's $30 a month is what you're charging, that's $360 a year.

That's not quite an impulse purchase, but I think like $199 is an impulse purchase.

And this type of stuff is super easy to test.

You don't even need to know, you don't even need to say, this is better than that.

You literally run both tests and then the data will tell you, okay, when you do monthly,

the conversion rate goes up, but then people will churn out at this month.

And when we do annual, the conversion rates as much and it goes and you just multiply

the two numbers together and it'll tell you which one to do.

Of course, everybody wants annual because you have more certainty, you get more cash

flow, all that good stuff, but you know, it's a math equation and you can run this test

really easily.

I don't think you should be religious about it.

I disagree, Sean.

I don't think you can A-B test this because if you do A-B test this, then customers are

going to expect monthly.

I'd rather just take that around the equation.

Go ahead, Nick.

No, like for most apps, you don't, they don't, most customers don't know what the other

customers are seeing.

I would just automatically assume that your conversion would like take a massive hit if

you didn't offer a monthly subscription.

I can say for our service, I don't think that's true because our conversion is really high.

What's your monthly fee or what's your annual fee?

300, 299.

And we're going to raise the price to probably five or 600.

And I just think that, I just think that annuals, I'd rather, I just think it's better.

And so our company, I haven't raised venture capital, but the cash flow from trends is

just magnificent and it allows us to actually create what we want to make for people.

Otherwise, it's, it's hard.

I have another company, I'm part owner in a software company that does monthly billing.

It's way harder.

It's way harder.

That's an interesting perspective, actually, that it's a really good insight to take over

to this, this training platform.

Yeah, I would, I, and whenever I, I have downloaded like the top fitness apps because I'm a nerd

and I just like looking at how, how marketers do stuff, it seems like most do annual billing

only.

Like I use this app called strong, which helps me track my lifts.

It was, it was only annual billing.

I think active was only annual billing.

I think that like, I always say to myself, I think that like there's a handful of industries

that do things best, particularly people who are developing games for the iPhone.

Those types of marketers are the best.

But I think fitness people are close at like a second or third place for like the best

marketers because it's so freaking competitive.

Oh yeah.

There's new, new fitness app.

I mean, every, every influencer where there were 100,000 followers on, on Instagram is

coming out on the nav now.

Um, that's crazy.

Yeah.

That's not going to work, but that is a temporary phenomenon and then, you know, 18 months from

now, there's going to be a whole bunch of dead apps.

Oh, 100%.

And even in, even in our space, we see people launching, launching companies or, or trying

to copy the things that we do.

Um, I think a lot of people don't realize, well, it took me eight years to build this

thing and grow it and scale it, but we'll see our, some of our direct competitors copying

and following things that we're doing, whether it's a product, whether it's like a marketing

campaign.

Um, but it's like, by the time they, someone else copy someone else, man, you're already

like six months away, you're behind Nick, are you able to do pay yourself well?

Because since you own the whole company or like the, so like I said, Sean and I are like

mostly in Silicon Valley and typically people build their wealth by selling businesses amongst

our friends.

Are, are you able to create wealth along the way?

Or is it mostly, um, just as little as possible?

I think it's small, I think a very small paycheck from BPN, but then I have additional

revenue sources, um, from other things I do.

So like I haven't, I haven't increased my pay since I started paying myself in 2017.

So then is most your income from like YouTube ads and your PDFs?

Yeah, YouTube ads, uh, PDFs, other contracts I have with other companies, uh, like retainers

for, for some marketing stuff that I've been doing, um, but that, that's majority of my

money.

BPN is probably what I pay myself on salary through BPN is the smallest amount of money

that I make.

Um, and what, how do you have time to do marketing for other people?

Um, I mean, it's something that I used to do more of and something this year that I'm

actually, I've cut back on like a lot of my contracts that I had.

It sounds like you're the, you're the, you're the model, you're not the marketer, right?

You're the, you're the, you're giving your likeness to them.

Is that right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it's like some posts that I'm doing for them.

Oh, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not doing their marketing.

Like it's a paid post here and there or a YouTube feature or I promote a product and

it's an affiliate sale, um, or my book that I launched, stuff like that.

So what's the premise of the book?

So the book's called what 25 hours, books called 25 hours a day.

So it's essentially.

What does that mean?

Is that your philosophy?

Uh, well, the story behind it is I was sitting in Fort Benning, Georgia and I was, I was

talking to the captains from the 75th ranger regiment and I turned to one of them and this

was before I, I met my platoon.

This is when I'm still in training.

I just got done with the ranger school.

I turned to this one captain and I said, like, you know, tell me how to be a good leader

in the military.

And he essentially, and this stuck with me, he pointed to a guy across the room and he's

like, you see that guy over there, that guy when like shit hits a fan, when, when bolts

are flying over a shoulder, he, I'll look at him and he's just calm as the other side

of the pillow.

He's as cool as the other side of the pillow.

He just, he doesn't react to anything.

He just slows down time itself.

So they go, shit, well, I need to slow down time itself.

So I came up with this concept in my head and it stuck with me for a long time.

Like I'm just literally extending my day to 25 hours.

Like I'm living my day, like I have 25 hours.

So like when I was first building the brand and in the book is about building my company

and going to the military and the lessons I learned in the military and applying those

to being a leader in business.

I essentially would just like sacrifice sleep if I had to.

I've sacrificed all luck because if I had to, because I didn't have a choice.

It's not like I'm out here just like working for to work.

It's that my, the amount of time I had to work was so small because of the military.

So I just adapted this mindset of just living like a life of like 25 hours a day.

Something that no one else was able to do.

But mentally, to me, it worked.

So that was the premise behind like coming up with a story.

So what does that mean?

So how does one live with 25 hours in a day?

Is it I sleep one hour less?

Is that the trick?

If you have to, yeah.

I mean, it's mentally slowing down time itself to me.

So it's like, wow, and I'll watch people do this in business and fitness with social

media stuff.

Like they're so reactive.

So like, as soon as like shit hits a fan or something goes wrong, they're jumping

into conclusions and the Russian to failure.

And it's like, they're not able to pull themselves back and like look at it from a bigger perspective.

And I learned that from the military.

It's like shit is always going to go wrong, but like you look up, like pull yourself back

and like slow down time itself where it's like you're in a movie and everything else

is still going on, but you're watching yourself from like a third person.

And it's just like this mindset that adaptive just like slowing down the day.

And if you don't get sleep that day, you don't get sleep.

If you don't get food that day, you don't get, you don't get food.

And I think like the military itself had a really strong impact in that, but the concept

of 25 hours a day, it's like, it just kept sticking with me because it's like everyone's

so rushed to do things in a day that only has 24 hours.

It's like, well, I'm going to give myself 25 hours.

Who did someone publish that or did you self publish that book?

Lion Kress Publishing published out here in Austin.

Do they give you an, oh, Tucker.

Yep.

Yeah.

Tucker's company.

So then you didn't get like an advance on it?

No, I didn't.

Do you think that that book sales will be a significant stream of revenue?

Not significant.

I mean, they, they've done pretty well so far, but I think it's just a really good way to

get the story on about the brand.

So it's another way for people to connect with bare performance nutrition at a deeper

level other than it just being a supplement company because there's such a strong story

behind it.

Sean, have you heard of Lion Kress?

No, that's part of the book in the box thing.

Yeah.

So Tucker Max, who's an angel investor in my company and someone I look up to, he created

this business and at first what it was was you paid $25,000 and they would write a book

for you where basically what you do is you like, I'm kind of, I don't want to disrespect

them, so I don't want to dumb it down too much, but basically you, they asked you a series

of questions and you kind of dictated to them and they helped go straight it for you.

And then they offered more services.

I think now they charge $36,000 and they all then eventually they offered more services

where they would like help like launch it, make the design it and a ton of cool stuff.

It was awesome.

Did you like that experience, Nick?

Yeah, it was a good experience.

Overall, it was nice having them right here in Austin that I could kind of bounce ideas

off to you and go to the office and stuff.

Did they approach you, did they like cold email you saying, hey, Nick, your story would

be great or did you try to find them or how did that happen?

I came across Scribe and Tucker like years ago, so I was on their email list and writing

a book was always on my mind.

So I got like a, you know, one of their emails one day, I was like, man, today's the day

I'm going to do it.

So I just made the move, it was like January of 2019 is when I started working with them.

I've thought about this, oh, nice, the book in the box method.

So I've thought about doing this.

But then, you know, the questions that I have was like, A, how much time is this going

to take?

Because, you know, I don't think this is going to be like some big winner, it's like a fun

project, it's nice to have.

And then B, you know, what's really going to come of this?

So you know, how many people will actually read this thing that, you know, is this going

to have a big impact or small impact?

So what was your experience?

So how long did it take you to, you know, how much time did it take on your end to get

this thing done, and then what was the impact?

It took a lot, I mean, it was a lot of time.

It required a lot of time and it was essentially all of 2019 and it launched January 28th of

2020.

But the impact is great.

I mean, a lot of my audience, a lot of people that follow me, they know the story.

But the thing was, all my story is spread out over years in hundreds of videos of YouTube.

And for me to say, hey, go watch hundreds of hours of content on YouTube to find out what

the story is.

My thought process and breezing was, well, I'll create this book that tells the story

that shares nuggets and information that I haven't talked about before, but it's a well-organized

way of creatively telling the story and then that's what I wanted it for.

That's great.

Yeah, everything in one place.

And so how many books like I guess sold or whatever would you consider like a success

for this?

I think like week one, we sold like 10,000 copies.

That seems great to me.

That sounds awesome actually.

Yeah, I don't know what the number of total copies I'm at right now.

Like week one was like 10,000, I believe.

Did you have a goal for it or you were just like whatever?

I was kind of just like whatever.

I wanted to get as many hands of people as possible to find out the story, find out more

about bare performance attrition.

I really wanted to create the book as well to be more of a credible source in the space.

You know, when I first started, I was seen as a YouTuber and I think some people still

see me as a YouTuber.

I don't want to be seen as a YouTuber the rest of my life.

I want to be seen as entrepreneur, business owner, author.

So it was another way to build credibility in my space and that was another one of the

reasons.

When you do a video and so you have 400,000 subscribers, you said when you do a video,

let's say that you do a video and it's not like, it's not overly promotional, but let's

say you do this video and you're like, all right, we have this new athletic or this new

green product, the greens or whatever, or this new protein powder and you launch it.

How much traffic will you send to that product in 24 hours?

Really depends on what it is.

We have a launch coming up May 6 for a new endurance supplement and I think like that

day we might sell 3,000 units, like Black Friday, for example, Black Friday 48 hours

with like, I think it was 9,000 orders, but that'll be a mix right of paid, your email

list plus your YouTube plus that'll be the total kind of marketing.

Yeah, it's like the culmination of all efforts coming together.

Right.

So why are you operating the business now or do you have a partner who handles most

day to day?

Are you in the trenches still?

I'm still in the trenches.

We just hired a director of business operations who's kind of in the process of taking over

a lot of my admin stuff.

He started April 1st, so that's still like in a transition, but I got to a point where

I was handling way too much in the business rather than working on the business stuff.

Yeah, why wouldn't you just like hire a young guy to follow you all the time with the camera

and just start churning the shit out because your stuff's good.

Why?

Why don't you just only do content?

I did hire a full-time videographer like six months ago and then their performance nutrition

grew so much that he had to be the sole videographer for BPM.

We have another creative that starts May 4th and then our next hire is going to be another

videographer just for my content.

But trying to keep up with our scale, I'm really slow to hire just because we have just strong

culture here that I want to maintain that culture.

I don't want to bring in like essentially cancer that ruins that.

Sean, you should see their office.

They have like, it's like a, I don't know, how many square feet do you guys have?

We're now in 20,000 square feet.

Holy shit.

So they got this like 20,000 square foot warehouse and it has like a huge gym which with turf

and all this, it's really cool.

What do you pay for 20,000 square feet in the suburbs of Austin, right?

It's north Austin.

It's about $28,000 a month.

28 grand a month.

So like $1.20 per square foot or something.

Okay.

So Nick, you can do my idea then.

So I had this idea not long ago.

I don't think it's a great business idea, but I just think it's fun and I think it actually

would align well with what you're doing, which is, you know, like the NFL Combine?

Yeah.

So basically, I think that as youth sports has gotten more and more competitive and people

really care more and they're spending a lot of money on trainers and travel teams and whatnot.

I think there should be a combine for youth athletes.

And so if you have a facility where you have this, you know, place where you could do a

40 yard dash and you could do a vertical leap and you could do all this stuff.

I think it'd be great to host a field day and you let any young athlete come.

They pay their 50 bucks and they're going to get official time scores.

They're bare for.

They're going to get their measurements.

They're going to get everything.

And it's going to be given to them as sort of an official certification or official

bare certification.

And you could just do it out of your facility and it would just be a good marketing event

for your thing.

But I really think there's quite a lot of demand for youth athletes to sort of start

to build their resume like, like they see the pros do, especially here in Texas football

is no joke here.

Exactly.

Yeah.

It's not bad.

Yeah.

It's like a combine, but you have to add it like a five mile run.

Yeah.

Exactly.

You do whatever, whatever you believe like a all round fitness test is.

Yeah.

We've, we've bounced around the idea of, of building something similar to like, you know,

tough mutters, the go rocks, like Spartan races.

We kind of see embraced suck training going towards that model someday.

There's no plan in place yet to get there, but it's kind of just like the vision we see

of taking it to something similar to that.

It'd be interesting to see what is a tough mutter kind of in the post COVID world, right?

Where like, I think in general, large gatherings, large events where there's lack of sanitation

is not going to be a popular thing for the next, I don't know, 18 months or forever.

I'm not sure.

And, and so I wonder what would be the same, a similar thing where it's a way to test yourself.

Something you sort of brag worthy, like something you could share that you're doing, but maybe

it's something that you could do in your backyard or your garage, and it is sort of the bear

challenge.

And you know, you can, the person sort of gets, they, they open up your app or whatever

and it sort of auto films like a time lapse of them doing the whole thing.

And this is a very tough thing to do, but everybody's doing it on their own, not, not

in one large gathering.

Yeah.

It's kind of like, you know, all the races now are virtual, like there's virtual 5Ks

and doing a virtual one mile race this weekend.

I think honestly for like the time being, a lot of stuff will go virtual just because

of the way everything with COVID-19 is, I mean, how does that work?

You just go run on your own and just post your time or what?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Have you heard of, have you heard of Zeus, Sean?

No.

What's it called, Nick?

Is it Zeus?

What's the site?

Is that it?

The cycling one?

Zeus is a dating site.

What's the cycling one that starts with a Z?

Oh man.

I know what you're talking about.

It's huge.

They raise like a hundred million in funding.

Yeah.

What do they do?

Swift.

So, Zwift.

Yeah.

So what they do is it's Ironman or basically competitive cyclists love it and what you

do is you hook it up to a smart trainer.

It's expensive.

Like their trainer costs like $500 and then the people who are really into it, what they

do is they, it's usually people who have money and so you put your smart trainer, Sean,

which is like this like little stand that you put your bike on and then you put a big

screen TV or a computer in front of you and you can do rides with competitors.

So you can like do like a group ride where it looks, it's just like a video game.

You're like riding your bike on this screen and you're competing with people and you

can do time, you can do time trials.

It's huge.

I think, dude, I would have never believed this.

I mean, $164 million raised at a $500 to a billion dollar valuation.

Wow.

This is, it's huge.

It's huge.

They probably don't even have that many customers.

So I mean, cycling is not that big of a market.

Endurance market, like endurance sports, endurance athletes, they will spend money.

Like that's a, that's a space to get into and that's kind of why we're, we're not creating

products in the endurance market because we have, we have a company here in Austin called

Roka.

You know, Roka makes like triathlon gear, running stuff.

I bought my, my, my trisuit from them because of you.

Yeah.

They make great stuff, but like they're dominating the market right now because that's like a

market that from what I see is almost behind in times and then that space of fitness and

like Roka just went out there and absolutely wrecked and destroyed it.

Nick, we had Lance Armstrong on the podcast a while back and like a few months ago and

I, I was trying to convince him, he needs to become the Jimmy Buffett of weekend warriors.

So like have like hotels for people who are training for Ironmans have just sell all types

of cool, interesting stuff for that endurance crowd because I agree.

If you look at Ironman and you look at the participant growth, it's pretty phenomenal.

It's just because it's a bunch of rich white dudes who are looking for like, who want to

stay young for a long time and are doing all types of interesting things to do that.

And it's crazy.

It's growing like crazy.

Yeah.

I mean, we think, we think breaking into that market, like from a nutrition standpoint,

it's going to be really big for us.

But like, yeah, when I launched my Ironman series, like that, that blew the channel up.

Like that was a big spike in growth in my channel just because that attracted so many

new people.

This is crazy.

So if I'm looking at Ironman competitors by calendar year, so you're right.

So somewhere around 2011, it started spiking and it grew year over year up till 2014, 15.

It's been about the same since then.

A Chinese company bought Ironman for about 500 million bucks, really 80,000 athletes

that are in the, I don't know what Kona is, but I guess that's the official one.

So 80,000 athletes who do the official Ironman thing per year, Kona's like the qualifier.

They have a million participants a year.

Ironman does.

I almost did a big case study on them.

I'm really interested in Ironman.

Yeah.

The richest man in China, he's a real estate developer and he has a company that now owns

a bunch of stuff.

And he recently bought Ironman about three years ago, four years ago for maybe three

or $400 million.

And then he sold it about four months ago, right before Corona for like a profit of $100

to $200 million.

A good profit.

I forget who he sold it to, but it's changing hands.

And then another one that's that they bought was the rock and roll marathon, which is a

series of marathons in Austin, Nashville, Charlotte, things like that.

And they have a band every mile.

And it's not a sophisticated business.

I mean, they're not like hard.

You just have to build a brand around them.

And they're pretty good, I think, because people, it's growing like crazy, but the downside

is like during Corona, like they just are completely dead.

Nothing they can do yet.

That's tough.

Okay.

So I got a business idea for you.

So, so I don't know if you've ever done these through the Nike training app.

They have these like guided runs.

I don't know if you guys have ever seen these, but yeah, they're pretty, it's pretty cool.

You just say like, all right, I'm going to go for a 20 minute run.

And there's like a kind of the Nike running coach is talking to you mixed in with music

as you do it.

It's pretty good.

And so let's say, you know, again, if this sort of whole endurance market is as big as

it seems, which I believe, how do you, how do you do this?

How do you make like sort of a virtual version of this?

That's really great.

And I wonder if you could do this, you know, into people's AirPods, how do you have a live,

you know, you know, maybe set of surprise guests that every mile switch, and it's a new sort

of celebrity coach in your ear, new DJ on set or whatever it is, and you take people

through, you know, a 10 mile run or whatever it is.

But it's a live, it's a live audio experience for anybody that shows up that day at that

time to run in their neighborhood.

Yeah.

What do you mean?

How do you do that?

It's easy.

Go ahead.

We started talking about doing something similar to that where we were going to film, um,

like one of my 10 mile runs, or like a half marathon, or even a marathon, and streaming

on Facebook and Instagram, uh, to see like people engaged in watching, and it's just

going to be me running, but we'd have to get the team involved or something.

We thought about doing that.

We talked about that idea.

But it's like, how interesting can you make it?

You know?

Yeah, that's why I think you got to do audio so that you need people to participate so

they can't be watching, right?

Because they can't be on the phone while they're running or whatever.

And so if you do it audio, if you go in their ears and they can go outside and they can

start their run, or just like you're going to do a virtual 5k or whatever it is you said,

um, how do you do that?

But you know, what would you be able to do where you could charge 50 bucks to enter?

And like, what would you need to provide?

And maybe there are celebrities today who would be down to kind of help, you know, help people

stay fit during this, you know, really weird time by, by being a guest or, you know, hopping

into, hopping on, on the microphone, um, during, you know, a certain part of the race.

That'd be cool.

It's like so weird right now because no one knows when all of this COVID stuff is going

to end.

So that's, that's what we're trying to figure out now is how far in advance we plan for

and what makes most sense to spend time on.

And I say like, say, say you spent all your time doing stuff that all these, these lifts

get taken away.

And people are like, well, the way I view it, um, is, is like.

You have this six month period right now for sure where, um, there's going to be some,

some kind of rolling shelter in place, uh, situation.

And everybody's now aware that this is the way that life could be.

So they will, like businesses will buy products now because they know, Hey, at any time we

could have to support a remote workforce.

Same thing on the consumer side where it's like you take a loan of users.

You're like, Hey, can I get a loan of like 2 million users?

Um, and I know I have to kind of pay them back when the world, you know, reopens, but

if I love, if I borrow these users today and I can give them some experience, some percentage

of them are going to stick with this when the world sort of goes back to whatever the

new normal is going to be.

And so the way I look at it is you can get free adoption of some of some new experience

during the next six to nine months.

Um, and so you get this crazy adoption now, what percentage of them stick with you?

I don't know, you're going to have to pay back some of those users who will not, who

will not continue with you.

But you know, maybe 20% of them, maybe 30% of them will actually stick with whatever

new experience you have and actually carry it forward post this.

And so I think it's just this great window of time where you're going to get a bunch

of free adoption.

And that's how I would think about any business during this time.

Yeah.

That's kind of what we deal with, with that free embrace, home training, you know, that's

a perfect example.

Yeah.

So as it's been going on, people have fallen off naturally.

Like they've, they found places to train and work on that.

We've had a lot of people, you know, stay on the, on the, the program and the platform.

So yeah, I mean, I mean, it's an interesting time.

It's, I think it's time to be innovative and create something different.

Sean, did you know Tough Mudder filed for bankruptcy a few months ago?

Yeah.

We, we talked about it on here.

I don't, what ended up happening?

Did they actually close it to trade hands?

What happened?

Uh, not yet, but it's looking like it.

It's, it's a month ago, they almost made a deal, but they did file for bankruptcy and

that fucking company took off, man.

They got to a hundred million in sales in like three or four years.

So Nick, you should go get involved in that and you should go, uh, cause you'll be able

to go see all their numbers, all their usage, all their everything.

So if you've ever thought about doing your own race, you know, Tough Mudder's books

are open right now and whether you buy them or not, doesn't matter.

You can go under, you can go get all their information for free right now.

What was their issue?

What, what was the reason for bankruptcy?

I don't know.

I know that I don't know that all the details, I do know that the founder, I think his name

is Will Dean.

I think that he was a controversial guy.

Um, I think there were some lawsuits.

They also owe active networks, 18 active networks is like the ticketing platform.

They owe them like $18 million.

I don't think that it was a matter.

Uh, well, I do know that over the last handful of years, demand plateaued for Spartan race

and Tough Mudder.

That definitely happened.

Like that shit was like a novelty and it kind of got old fast.

And I think that, uh, it was more like a one-off experience versus a marathon that you do every

single year or you do like three or four a year.

And so I think that demand definitely plateaued and there was not space for all of them in

the market.

But then also it seems like they had really bad cash management and they just couldn't

handle their, um, debts, they, uh, they didn't raise any money.

So in February, it actually did sell out of bankruptcy to Spartan race.

And so Spartan race paid $700,000 and assumed $10 million of their liabilities and had to

honor the prepaid tickets to like Tough Mudder events that are coming up.

But that was the price paid by Spartan for, for Tough Mudder.

That's awesome.

That's the deal.

That's kind of what I see those races anyways is like, it's a one-off type thing.

It's not something I'm not going to train for a Tough Mudder or Spartan race like on

a quarterly basis.

I'm going to train for a marathon or something like that, but like it's hard to measure your

improvement on a race like that.

There's like, there's no baseline.

Um, Sean, is there anything else you want to discuss before we wrap up?

No, we should wrap up.

Nick, where should people, I don't know, follow you, find you, where should they check out?

You guys have a podcast, a Twitter.

Where do you want to send people?

Yeah.

Instagram.

My personal is Nick Bear.

It's B-A-R-E fitness.

Our company, Instagram is bpnsupps and our company website is bearperformance nutrition

dot com.

Awesome.

I just got a rowing machine.

So I'm going to go row right after this and, uh, in your honor, I'll be thinking about

you the whole time.

Yeah.

I got seven miles to do this.

I'll be running.

Awesome.

Thanks for this, dude.

This is awesome.

You are, uh, I, I, we have a lot of cool guests on here, but, uh, I'm super pumped that you're

here because I am a personally a big fan.

So selfishly, this is awesome for me.

I appreciate it.

All right.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.