Nick Bare Reveals How To Get Jacked & Run Sub-3 Marathons ft. Sahil Bloom

26:17It's going to change their body. It's going to change their health. It's like January 1st starts. people are thinking i need to do something new what should i do i'm gonna do carnivore now i'm gonna do keto i'm gonna go strictly bodybuilding no i'm just like just gonna run so people go to these extremes thinking it's like the magic pill they haven't tried yet that's gonna unlock this hidden potential that was just disguised by everything else they were doing previously and the reality is that like that's not going to change anything if it does The changes are incremental. But what makes this compounding change in your life, in your fitness, in your health, is just being consistent with eating better, drinking more water, moving your body.

27:03That's why everyone's talking about getting in more steps. When you're getting in more steps, you're just being more active, going to the gym on a regular, consistent basis. it's creating creating habits and routines in your life that help you facilitate these healthy habits on a consistent and regular routine Sean was telling me that he was talking or he saw the guy who started a slice it's like a pizza app he was like between January 1st and January 11th our sales slump and he goes on January 12th that's National Quitting Day and he goes we see all time high sales for people ordering pizza because everyone from their New Year's resolution It's giving in on January 12th.

27:42That's where it ends. 11 days. That's wild. We owned a ton of Planet Fitnesses back in my PE days. And that first 10 days of the year is like Rainmaker season. You're just sitting there watching the fees pour in, praying to the rain gods for all the money that's coming in. And then inevitably, those people just don't end up going to the gym. But they still pay. Yeah, they still pay. Dude, Planet Fitness makes it impossible. It's a business model. Dude, they begin to possibly cancel. Yeah, I mean, you get like 10 ,000 members for a gym and maybe like, you know, 5, 10 % of them actually like regularly use it.

28:19So the equipment doesn't have to get refreshed that often. It's like, I mean, it's an incredible business model. All right, here's a question for Sahil. So we didn't even mention this, but Sahil, you mentioned that you were a baseball player. I was a runner all through high school and college. The baseball players were usually the douches who made fun of the runners because of our shorts. and about a year ago, you got into running. You made all these grand claims about these times that you were going to run. You said you were going to break 18 in the 5k. You're going to break through. I was like, you're an idiot, dude.

28:47You don't know what the hell you're talking about. Turns out you were completely right. You nailed all of it. You crushed it in running. And someone asked what the biggest... So at this point, by the way, you're a pretty successful runner in the weekend warrior category. You're top in that category, which is sounds like a left-handed compliment that's not what that wasn't supposed to be that it was that was a compliment I take that that was a compliment someone said what's the biggest surprise South Hills learned from getting more into running honestly it goes back to what you said like when I was when I was in high school like I thought runners were nerds and in my mind it was like the nerdiest sport like I couldn't imagine running or like being into I was like oh it's not you know it's not a team sport like it's not it doesn't seem hard whatever And I have developed unbelievable respect for endurance athletes and for runners from having gone through this because, I mean, a few reasons.

29:42First off, the training is so many hours and so monotonous. And you have to fall in love with the long, slow runs. In baseball, it was all intensity. So you can get excited about a really fast sprint. I was a pitcher, so a bullpen session or whatever. But with running, if you're going to be a marathoner, you have to love the 22 mile at a 8.30 pace, just zero fun. You have to fall in love with that and be willing to do that over and over and over again in order to become a great amateur or to become elite on Nick's level and above. And you have to do it consistently over a long period of time. And then the second one is just like the mental fortitude to pull through a race is badass.

30:26Like it hurts so bad. I mean, I would argue that the 5k is the most painful. Like I did. So my, my PR is where the two 57 marathon, which was painful, but in like, uh, your legs are cramping kind of way where you just need to like grit your teeth to the finish. I'd ran the four 59 mile, which honestly didn't hurt that bad because it was too short to hurt. Like it was just, it was over before it could really start to hurt. It was like you're breathing really fast, but it didn't hurt that bad. But the 5K, which I ran 1752, was like excruciating pain. Absolutely. The last five laps of that were the most miserable experience maybe of my life.

31:03Just like past your lactate threshold, awful. And the mental fortitude that runners have and that endurance athletes have to grind through that, I now like, I no longer think runners are nerds. I think it is legit badassery. And especially when it's like a runner that has body weight on them. I think it's unbelievable. Well, the runner, the runner has evolved over the years too. Like now running has become so popular in the past couple of years. Do you think it's because of people like you? I mean, I think that you've created like a huge trend of these like, it's now macho to be a runner. Yeah, I do think that like COVID and the pandemic definitely contributed to a lot of that where gyms were closed down.

31:49And this is why a lot of my content actually started growing is because I was pumping out running content for like a year and a half before the pandemic hit. And then pandemic hits, all these gyms close, people have nowhere to work out and train and they need it for their physical health, but also their mental health. So people start running and looking for running content. And my content blew up during that time because everyone was looking for how to run, especially, you know, people who are focused on strength now transitioning and evolving towards running. But I mean, I think running has become cooler because there's a different look to running now.

32:29Like you can carry more weight. You can look like a bodybuilder. You can look like a strength athlete. And there's these different parts of running that exist. Like the ultra scene has come up and I didn't know what ultra running was years ago. And you have like these badass disruptive races like have you guys heard of the speed project no what's that no so the speed project is like this underground race that happens and you start in la and it goes to las vegas there's no spectators there's no rules you just get there as fast as possible and it's a relay race so you have a team of i say like maybe six people i think it's like 300 miles and someone has to be running all the time.

33:15Holy shit. But it's like super disruptive, really like aggressive, in your face look and feel. It's badass. And then you have races. Like, have you guys heard of the Barkley Marathons? No, what are these? Dude, you guys need to watch this documentary like tonight. It's called Where Dreams Go to Die. Oh, I have seen this. And this race happens in Tennessee. It's, I think there's five loops and it's run by this guy named Laz and you can't have a GPS watch. You don't have any sort of sense of where the route is. You're given a map and the map has points on it. There's no trail and you're given a bib number.

34:02So say your bib number is 13. On this map, you have to go find all these points before you come back to the checkpoint. and at each point on the map is a book and you have to pull out the corresponding page with your bib number and bring it back to Laz after each loop to be able to go out and start again. And I think there were like six years where no one finished, no one won. Yeah, it's like 15 runners in 38 years. Dude, that sounds like a pain in the butt. I'm not trying to learn how to read maps. I just want to look good naked. By the way, running, to Nick's point, running has definitely changed in public perception.

34:39I just more and more now, I'm like, I used to think, oh, okay, deadlifting to me. I'm like, oh, it's so primal, deadlifting. You got to pick a car up off of your wife or off of your kid. You got to get it up off of them in order to save their life. And now I add running to that, where I'm like, if you can't go run super fast to go call for help when someone's in trouble, that's super primal to me. You got to pick the car up and then you got to go run two miles to get help from like the nearest aid station. We had Scott Galloway on. Nick, Scott Galloway is just like big successful entrepreneur or whatever.

35:13And he said something that was brilliant. He's like a poet. He's really good with words. And he said, he goes, my fitness regime, I want to be able to kill and eat most everyone in a room or outrun them. I like that. That's great. I love that. That sounds like a very practical way to exercise. I enjoy that. Have you seen Theo Vaughn on Joe Rogan talking about who he would eat in a plane crash? If you haven't seen it, it's like one of the funniest Theo Vaughn clips I've ever seen. I'll ask one or two more. Someone asked, do you guys religiously stick to your programming? Do you ever create the programming yourself?

36:00It really depends on, for me, what I'm training for. If I have a very specific goal, then my training program is specialized to get to that specific goal. So for my marathon prep, working with Jeff Cunningham, he would give me my workouts for the week, and I would hit those workouts to a tee. I wouldn't miss or skip anything. I mean, there's been times where Jeff has accidentally sent me my workouts with wrong paces, and I'll look at him and be like, oh, shit, that seems fast. And I go out and hit him. He said, what are you doing? I'm like, you sent this over to me. He's like, oh, that's a typo.

36:39So if you send the program when I'm in a prep, I'm doing whatever you tell me to do. But outside of that, I have a lot of flexibility. Today I woke up and I was thinking, how does my body feel? How far do I want to run? I went and ran 10 miles. Sometimes in the middle of the run, two to three miles in, I decide how far I'm going to run based off my feel. That's called auto-regulation. So you adjust your training programming based off your recovery and how you're feeling and how well you slept and all those things. So a lot of my training now is flexible, but it's not as rigid because I don't have a specific competition goal at the moment.

37:18What about you, Sahil? I need someone else to write the programs for me. Otherwise, I don't take them seriously and I need to pay for them, I've found, because when I pay for something, I take it way more seriously. So my marathon training, I had no program. I was just running with my neighbor, Brian Mazza, who's also a... I know Nick knows him also. He's like a fitness influencer and personality that was really into hybrid training as well. So I started running with him, had no program. And then I got connected on text with Nick. And I was like, Nick, I want to run a sub three-hour marathon. What's a workout I should do?

37:54And Nick replied and was like, try doing this. And it was, I don't think I'd run over like 16 miles at the time, by the way. And Nick replied and said, 22 mile run. It was six miles, easy to warm up. And then it was four rounds of three at 630 with one at 710 float. He was like, if you can do that, you'll feel good about being able to run sub three. And I had never done. I mean, I had not come close to that. But that weekend, I had the same thing as what you said with your trainer, Nick. We're like, I was like, all right, I got to go do that, I guess. And so I went out and hit that. And then I started following Nick's marathon program as a result.

38:31That got me through it. Wow. I do the same thing, by the way. I've got a guy that does my programming here in Austin. His name is Jesse at Central Athlete. And it's expensive. I think I pay$400 a month. And I do everything that I'm told because I'm paying money for it. And if I won't take it seriously, if I'm doing it, or I wouldn't go, my intensity would be lower. I'd be like, dude, I can't do this. It's like, well, Jesse told me I have to do it. Therefore, I will do it. Alright, last question. You get nutrition coaching too? I get nutrition coaching. Yeah, I use My Body Tutor. It's basically a service.

39:06When I was really into it, I would call them for five minutes every single day. And they would be like, Alright, what's the plan today? Where you have a quarterly plan. You're like, I want to lose weight, gain weight. I don't want to eat this. I do want to eat this, whatever. And it's like, alright, what's your plan today in order to hit your goals? And you'd have to show them. and then they review your MyFitnessPal every night and it's like, all right, you're doing everything according to plan. So it kind of guilts me into doing it, but it also teaches me. I didn't know that you had to get a gram of protein per body pound or per pound of body weight.

39:43I didn't know any of that shit. And so they educated me. I think tracking nutrition can be super beneficial for people just getting into health fitness. It just teaches them about serving sizes and macronutrients and total calories. Well, I started weighing my food after I saw Nick, you did it on some of your videos. You were like, and I thought weighing your food was like cumbersome, but like I just saw you like just have a bowl on top of the scale. And when you were pouring the chicken in there, like I just need about half a pound and you just pour it in there. I'm like, oh, cool. That was really simple and easy.

40:12You just put it right into the bowl and put it in the microwave. And it was like a very easy thing to track. So I started doing it after I saw your videos, actually. Yeah, I don't track my nutrition right now, but I still weigh my food just for like, serving size allocation. Yeah, and now I know, but now I just buy, like if I buy red meat, I buy it by the pound and I know that a pound of red meat reduces to 0.7 and I know what's in 0.7 of, you know, ground beef or 0.7 of chicken. And so, yeah, that's how I do a lot of it now for weighing. Last question. This is from me. I'm actually curious. Who influences you guys and what sources do you turn to for like, like for example, there's this guy, um what's the guy on uh i think his name is bio lane on instagram what's his name lane norton so like i like he's like you know new york times did an article where they're like now everyone has their own fitness guru who they trust and so like huberman is like a guy for someone nick you're a guy for someone probably where i'm like if they say this i do what they say who are your your gurus your fitness guys that you trust for health and nutrition and what sources do you use Lane Norton is definitely one for me.

41:26What I like about Lane is if anyone's ever saying something and it seems so ridiculous and bold and new and fresh, I will literally go over to Lane's platform and wait for him to do a response because he typically does. I love his carnivore stuff and the guy who says vegetables are bad for you. It's great. Yeah, Lane has a really holistic, science-based approach to health and nutrition. He also has a really good app called Carbon that is great for people who want to track their nutrition and reach their fitness goal. Fitness-wise, I follow Lane. I listen to some Huberman stuff. I'm typically just like, I don't have one person I'm following for fitness and nutrition.

42:15I'm kind of just like having a pulse and feeling what's out there. And then if I hear about something, I'll go do my own research. So I'll read the actual articles and peer-reviewed literature to see what... What do you use for that? Have you heard of... I've been using perplexity for that. It's been kind of cool for... It's like a chat GBT for studies. Interesting. Perplexity? Yeah, I have it bookmarked here. Perplexity. And it's... They do a bad job of explaining what it is. But they basically review tons of different studies. so you don't have to read all of them. And so you can ask it a question of like, is aspartame proven to give cancer?

42:51And I'll say like, well, of all these studies, here's the summary. I'll check that out. Lane has one called Reps. I also use examine.com. Same, love them. Examine.com is really good. And then I'll just go to PubMed and just read the articles there. From fitness, that's where I'm pulling a lot of my info. outside of fitness um just like audiobooks like whenever i'm running i'm typically listening to an audiobook and that's crazy to me that's insane to me that you do that you can't do that dude no like a i don't pay attention and be like it like usually what i like to do is uh i like when i go for a run i know how many i like beat uh beat per minute songs you know songs that are a certain beat per minute and so my stride will go to that beat per minute, you know what I mean?

43:46Which is typically like around 80 or 85 beats per minute. I used to do that. When I first started running, I would do that. But yeah, I'll listen to an audiobook in like 10 miles. I forget I'm running for 10 miles. I listened to an audiobook during the marathon. I did the exact same thing. What? I listened to The Martian, Andy Weir's The Sci-Fi. Dude, you guys are so weird. That is so weird to me. Dude, you know book I just finished up that I can't recommend enough? It's called Trust by Henry Cloud. If you guys haven't read that yet or heard of it, maybe it's just hitting me at the right time in my life, but it is a powerful, good book.

44:24What is it? It's all about how to evaluate relationships and trust, how to regain or rebuild trust when you've been betrayed, what to look for in trusting someone. A lot of the times we think that trust is someone who just won't lie, steal, or cheat. So we'll hire people or bring people onto our team who meet those requirements. Oh, they don't lie, steal, or cheat. I can trust them. Or can we trust them in the capacity of the role that we're expecting them to perform? Dude, this is serial killer shit that you can listen to a self-help book while you're running a marathon. I think that's so weird.

45:05I would read this book. You went no headphones for the marathon, right, Nick? Yeah, yeah. I did no headphones. That's what ballers do, Sahil. Yeah, that is what ballers do. I grew up going across country. Real runners will definitely give you shit. Yeah, if you go to a cross-country practice or something and you go run with headphones on, the hardcores will totally mock you. But I do it anyway because I'm like, this is fun for me. I'm doing what I want. I'm not going to be hardcore. It was what Nick said at the beginning, by the way, which is if you publicly state you're going to hit some sort of goals the running hardcores will definitely talk crap and troll you until you post proof that you actually did it and then you kind of have earned enough clout.

45:47I sort of feel like everyone made fun of me for getting into running and then I posted some actual verifiable stats and now I'm a solid amateur and people can't really make fun of you anymore so now you've earned the respect of the crew like the cool kids in the cafeteria so now they can't come beat you up. That's a real thing that actually happens, yeah. what's your answer to that? What's my answer to where I go to? Yeah. And who influences you? Who's like your person? I mean, I grew up, so my baseball training, I was the first client of this guy named Eric Cressy who has now become pretty famous.

46:23He's the performance coach for the Yankees, but is now like the Major League Baseball strength guy, like trains Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander, all of like the who's who of baseball. Dude, I feel like a baseball guy is the worst person to get fitness advice from. That's like the fattest sport there is. No, he was like the, he was the first guy to like really bring strength and performance training to baseball. So it was that. It was like the fat guys or the steroid era guys who were just meatheads. And he brought like true performance training to the sport, which now is like the real driver of why every guy throws 100 miles an hour.

46:56Like guys are hitting absolute tanks all the time. Like he was really the pioneer of that. I mean, he's been on like Tim Ferriss's podcast. He's really, really big time and a close friend, incredible. Uh, and then there's this guy, Ben Bruno, who is like a celebrity trainer, um, pretty big Instagram presence. And he's more of the like stuff for regular people to actually implement in their life, um, training. And, um, I, I just love that stuff cause it's kind of a cool blend of the like more extreme things that I like doing with the actionable stuff that people can actually take as advice. Yeah.

47:28Ben Bruno, he's got like the, uh, like the everyday rip guy vibe. he he's super super strong functionally um and trains like insane legit celebrities out of like a 150 square foot gym in his garage yeah here's him with justin timberlake yeah timberlake is like one of his one of his good friends rolls up there and trains with him he's he's incredible um and then on diet stuff there's this guy um zach i think ruchelo is how you pronounce his last name he's like the flexible dieting lifestyle is his instagram handle and he just posts like insane macro recipes, basically. Things that are delicious, but don't completely screw up your diet.

48:08I nerd out on that kind of stuff. He's Austin, Texas-based. Yeah, he's Austin-based. Dude, Nick, you probably know half these guys, I would bet. I know Zach. I know Zach personally. You know who else is really good for general health information, health and fitness information for people just getting started is Jordan Syatt. Jordan? Yeah. Jordan Syatt. So Jordan was an intern at Eric Cressy's gym. So Jordan is my year in high school. He went to Lincoln Sudbury High School, which was like our rival high school. And he was an intern at Cressy's gym when I was training there. So I've known Jordan since we were like, we were kids.

48:43Oh, wow. Yeah, he's got good stuff. By the way. Yeah, he was Gary V's trainer. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I saw that. I just went to this guy, the flexible dieting lifestyle. And I'm like typing all this in as you guys are talking. And I'll do a little flex. I go to follow this guy. And it says, follow back. Oh, yeah. That's awesome. Zach, it's awesome. The protein ice cream recipes are like the best thing in the world. Yeah. This is a great Instagram. This guy kills it. Do you have a creamy at home? Ninja creamy? I do. Oh, it's the best. One of our best purchases, my wife and I, like every Saturday.

49:19The ninja creamy, you can make like protein ice cream with it. They got popular based off of TikTok early on and they were sold out for months. and then they finally came back on the market and we purchased one. Well, I used to do that. So what I do with your, so BPN, so I like to do a scent protein with just water and then I use BPN to like eat. And so like, for example, I'll mix it with some type of liquid and I'll microwave BPN and it's almost like I'm eating like, I don't know. I mean, it's like a dessert because you gave me the key lime pie one and then you gave me a birthday cake one and I think the birthday cake one is discontinued and I would just, we would microwave it and just eat it.

50:00And it was like a souffle or something. Now I guess I'll use BPN to this creamy. Sam, I will change your life right now. Two cups of whole milk, like Fairlife whole milk, a scoop of BPN vanilla, maybe like two tiny little packets of Stevia and some sugar-free vanilla pudding mix. Freeze it overnight, put it into the Ninja Creamy and it is literally identical to like a vanilla McDonald's McFlurry. Really? It comes out insane. And then you can put a couple like Oreo thins in there and get like a legit McDonald's McFlurry that has like 40 grams of protein and is great for you. Shoot, this is awesome.

50:39I'm like literally writing all this down and I just add the creamy to my cart. It will change your life. I'm not joking. It is pretty wild. I did it my first time and like I only mixed it once and it came out. I was like, what's this? Yeah, you got to go twice. So I did it twice? Completely different thing. After like one more mix. Yeah. light ice cream setting once, open it up, pour like a tiny, like a tablespoon of whole milk in and then blend it on light ice cream again and it makes the perfect consistency. All right. I literally just bought it off Amazon, the creamy. And I only have... It's the best.

51:11I got to get BPN vanilla now because I only did chocolate, birthday cake and key lime pie. You can do it with whatever flavor you like. I just think the vanilla base is so good. I want to hear about this 239 though. I'm going to nerd out on this. Yeah. So Nick, you're trying to rent 239 now for the marathon, right? No, I just did. You just did. At CIM, which is the California International Marathon, that was December 3rd, I ran a 239.20. And when I went into that prep, I was shooting for a sub 245. And sub 245 is about a 615 minute per mile pace. Ended up doing 605 minute per mile pace for all 26.2 of those miles.

51:51Can you just walk through your progression on the marathon stuff? Because I feel like I've seen a video. So I mean, I only, I started running in March and someone mentioned your name as soon as I started getting into running as like the person that was pioneering this whole idea of like hybrid athlete, whatever. It's kind of become like an invoke thing now, but basically a guy that can be both jacked and fit in cardio things, not CrossFit, like actual strength related stuff and then running. And I remember seeing a video of you, like a four hour marathon maybe, and your progression from that to running maybe sub three for the first time.

52:28Can you just walk through like what your progression has been from start to finish on the different marathons you've done? Yeah. Well, first off, when you and I first started talking and you said you wanted to do a sub three for your first marathon. I thought he was crazy when he said that. So did I. I was like, man, that's, that's, I think I even told you like, that's a bold move, but you did it. So congratulations on that. Um, but yeah, my, my, my marathon progression. So my first marathon was in 2018. It was about a year after I got out of the military. And what's funny is the day I got out of the military, I said I would never run a day in my life again.

53:04And about a year later, I was running my first marathon and here we are like thousands of miles later. But 2018, Austin Marathon, I ran a 357, which was just an absolute dumpster fire. But you weighed like 225, right? I was like 225. I didn't have a training program. I was a bodybuilder. I just wanted to be as big and yoked as possible. Ran this marathon. After mile 16, I hit the wall. It was just all downhill from there. A year later, I signed up for the Austin Marathon again, same training program, which was lack thereof. And I ran a four-hour, 15-minute marathon. So I ran 18 minutes slower than the previous year.

53:50And then after that, I signed up for my first Ironman, trained for an Ironman, did Ironman Florida, actually started to learn what it takes to build endurance and get better at endurance events and races. You broke 12 hours in that one? Yeah, I did my Ironman in Florida in 11.28, but I ran the marathon in four hours and four minutes. So the reason that was so kind of significant was I looked back at my previous two marathons. I was like, man, after I just swam and biked and then ran, I was able to run a pretty decent marathon. So I told myself I want to run sub three. And that was the goal. And I posted this online.

54:34I said, I'm doing a sub three hour marathon. And the internet trolls and activity just blew up. I mean, there are forums on let's run. There are forums on, on Reddit. Everyone was like, this guy will not run a sub three hour marathon. So then I signed up for the Austin marathon again. I followed a training program. It was a better prep, but even in my head, I was like, I'm not in sub three shape. But at the starting line, I told myself that you can mentally out will anything. I'll say if I just like, I can mentally overcome the physical weakness that I have to run the sub three hour marathon. And what's sub three?

55:12Is sub three 650 per mile? I think 651 is like 259.59. Like if you sneak in under one second. And the only reason I know that is because of exactly what Nick said about mine that everyone was like, dude, there's no way. So I knew in my mind, like I just have to keep this under 651 my watch base and I'm going to be fine. Hey, this episode is brought to you by Mercury. They're the fintech of choice for over 200 ,000 companies. I myself use it for eight different companies. The reason why we all choose it is because it does everything you need under one roof. So like my e-commerce company, it's super important for us to be able to easily wire transfer, pay all our different vendors and suppliers all around the world.

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56:22So highly, highly recommend it. If you're not using Mercury, I question your judgment. So that's it. You've Put it on My First Million. For more information, check out mercury.com. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Check show notes for details. See, I like banking time. So I always like, I like saving time. So at the end, if I need it, I have it. Which is the opposite of what like real runners tell you to do. I did the same thing, by the way. Like I went out way too fast and then was just like hanging on for dear life, doing the math in my head of like, okay, if I run like a 10 minute mile here, I'm still going to make it.

56:55I'm still because there's like they call it the wall. The wall is basically I think it's like when you burn eighteen hundred or twenty two hundred calories or something like that and you start going into what's it called where you like start using muscle as energy, I believe, or instead of car. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's when that wall is where you're like, I can't go any further. Usually that's in like mile 20, right? Yeah, ranges based on the individual of like your conditioning, your experience, glycogen stores, how fast you burn through your body's energy. So I went out that Austin marathon with a goal of running sub three.

57:29I went out way too fast. And within the first six miles, I knew I wasn't going to do sub three. In the first six miles, I was done for. And the Austin marathon is not flat. It's hills. It's like a horrible PR course. No one PRs that I know of at the Austin marathon. So then the remainder of that race, I was just holding on. Ended up running 324, so 24 minutes over sub three. Everyone on the internet that dialed me loved it. And I went into another training block immediately after that race was done. I actually did a real prep this time. Had a really solid coach, Jeff Cunningham. And I ended up running a marathon a year later in two hours, 56 minutes, 27 seconds.

58:15So that was the first time I went sub three. then a year later i did the buffalo new york marathon in 248 and then just recently december 3rd 2023 i ran a 239 20 which is a 605 mile pace what weight were you i was 195 pounds oh my god that's ridiculous at 195 and it's ridiculous at any at any body weight but it's insane at 195 Were you still squatting and benching while you're, I mean, were you still strong? I, I, I took a lot of time off strength training during that prep. So for like 13 weeks leading up to that race, I was still lifting here and there, but I wasn't lifting legs heavy. I wasn't lifting even upper body really heavy.

59:05I was just getting some movement in just to maintain and feel good. But the priority was, was running. because what a lot of runners don't realize is like so 239 that's that's impressive that's very impressive but it's more impressive that you're doing it at your body weight that is that is that is like out of this world i um i got dinner one time recently with uh this guy named josh kerr you guys know who josh kerr is unless you're a running nerd you don't know who he is but he won the world he won the world championships recently in the 1500 meter he's like a 345 miler so one of the fastest milers ever, whatever.

59:39But he's pretty big for a miler. For a normal human being, you'd think he's skinny. But for a miler, he's big. And I started talking to him. I was like, you're pretty big. How'd you do this? He goes, man, he's from Scotland, I think. He goes, I came to America when I was 17 to go to college. And I was training for the mile. But I wasn't used to having fast food and having restaurants open 24 hours a day. And so I got fat my first semester there. And I weighed 200 pounds. And I broke the mile when I was 17 or 18 that year, when I weighed 200 pounds, he goes, I think I own the world record for the fattest sub four mile.

1:00:13And like 200 pounds for like just a guy who's six foot, that's not huge. But to be able to run that time or the time even that you're running or even Sahil, you're pretty big too. For running those times with that weight, that's just like inconceivable. Not only because it's hard, but what's inconceivable is that you're not getting hurt running 50 to 80 miles a week leading up to it. That's what's like in my mind, the most impressive part here. Yeah, I mean, when I first started running, I had a lot of injuries just because my body mechanics weren't super efficient. So I've had knee injuries, quads, ankles, shins, calves, like everything.

1:00:54But now as I've run longer with more miles, my body has become pretty efficient at form and function. And I rarely get injured anymore unless I do like an ultra marathon. I had two, you know, from my training, I just had two like random life lesson type things from the running that I'm curious, Nick, if you've experienced these. one was before my marathon i was trying to figure out like how to just like mentally take on um the goal of running sub three for it and how to think about like if i'm six miles into the race and i realize i'm not going to hit it how to make sure i still finish the race and don't just like mentally completely lose it and this marathoner told me that for every single race or anything that you're going after you want to have basically three goals he was like you have your a goal which is the main thing you're trying to hit.

1:01:47And then you have a B goal, which is just slightly worse. And then you have a C goal, which is just finish the damn race. And you lock in on your A goal from the start. But if you start falling off that and realize you're not going to hit it, you need something to fall back on that keeps you motivated when you're in it. And so you have your B goal. And then the C goal is just get to the finish line. And I have taken that and run with it in every area of life now. No matter what it is, if you have a fitness goal, like a daily fitness goal, you want to run every day and work out every day. It's good to have that A goal.

1:02:18But the reality is that shit hits the fan sometimes. Your kid is up all night or you have a problem at home or something at work pops up. And so having that idea of what is the B goal, maybe it's a slightly lower version. And then the C goal is like, I'm just going to go for a walk and get 15 minutes of movement in. That has helped me so much in terms of just navigating the vagaries of life that inevitably hit when you know you're not going to have your perfect day every single day. yeah it's like the mindset of like all or nothing it's like you see so many people at every marathon every race it's very applicable to anything else in life but like you see these elite runners go out and as soon as they fall off of pace they drop out they just fall to the side and I was actually talking to Ken Rideout a few weeks ago when he was on my podcast and now he lives right down the road from me here in Nashville.

1:03:11But he was telling me when he did Kona Ironman years and years and years ago, during the race, he realized he wasn't going to hit the time he wanted. So he just dropped down to the race. And him and his family traveled to Hawaii for this race. So there's a lot of time, effort, energy, money going into it. He dropped down to the race and he said it was like his greatest regret ever. So he forced himself to go back the next year for redemption just to prove to himself that he could do it. I think the feelings and the emotions and just everything that's created when you quit something and drop out because you weren't on pace for that A goal, I mean, that's like self-destruction.

1:03:53That hurts so much more than not actually finishing the race. The other thing that's funny to me about all runners that I feel like they've gone through, you said it with your first marathon, or when you left the military you were like, I'm never going to run again. I'm done with this. It's like women after they have babies, there's that chemical that gets released that makes them forget how much it hurts going through childbirth. I think the same thing happens with running. It just is a little more delayed. When I finished my marathon, I was like, fuck this. I'm never running another marathon.

1:04:23That was the most painful thing I had ever experienced. The last six miles, I wouldn't wish that on my worst damn enemy in the world. Then two weeks later, I'm like, hmm, which one should I sign up for next year like i gotta go 249 i gotta do this yeah i mean it's i'm the same way with ultras like i finished an ultra and i'm out for two weeks i can't walk my toenails are falling off and i talked to my wife i'm like this is this was stupid why did i do this i'm useless i can't help out at home and i find myself signing up for another ultra shortly after dude your ultra documentary was so good i i remember i like had i subscribed for like the premiere so i was like sitting at my TV waiting for it to come out.

1:05:02It was an hour long about Leadville, I think, right? Yeah. It was so good. I remember I was one of the first ones. I was like, all right, it's coming up at this time, Sarah. Let's sit down and watch it. And what's crazy about you is there's this whole thing where these people who want to talk in cliches are like, every media or every company should be a media company, yada, yada, yada. And the thing is, they mostly suck at it. You're actually one of the few guys that has your supplements, they meet... I don't know what the grade is, but I know I've talked to you and I've talked to other people about it and your competitors will be like, yeah, BPN, they meet this particular grade.

1:05:36They are of high quality. So you nail that, the supplement thing, but then you also are nailing the media thing. And no one else or very few other people are doing that, where you're actually really nailing it. It's almost you could argue that your media is even better than the supplements because supplements like... I don't know how the industry works, but it seems like, yeah, these five are great, but your media is awesome. I appreciate that. It looked like you had three or four guys following you around the whole time. Your wife was there. I feel like I know her because of the videos. And then she was following you on Instagram and talking about your splits.

1:06:10And these guys had these beautiful cameras. It was just like, it was a great documentary. How many views did that have? The Leadville Doc now has, I think, one and a half million. It was so good, man. It was so good. Are you, did you come up with that storyline or do you just hire a good team? That's my creative director, Jordan, in-house here. Where's he from? Jordan is from Ohio, geographically. But he was just, when I met him, he was employee number four at BPN. And he was filming for another YouTuber when I met him as a freelancer. And I was looking for a videographer at the time because this was 2019.

1:06:52At the time, I was still filming and editing all my own videos. That's crazy. That's a shit ton of work. I mean, all I did, literally all I did was work. And 2019 was the first time I was able to bring someone on, but I was looking for like over a year for the right person. I would fly people down. They would stay with me. I'd meet them. We'd film something. It just didn't feel right. So I didn't pursue it. Met Jordan. Felt right. He moved down. creative director he led my content for a while then he went and led bpn's content for a while and now he's back working directly on my content again but he came up with the storyline the the whole production the scouting the editing process obviously we had a lot of guys on the team supporting that editing and filming and production but jordan led that that project we just launched the last man standing ultra that he led and created with ian rodriguez here on my team and we posted the cim race video monday but yeah jordan is a super talented creative what's your how much are you spending per year on a team for content and are you able to are you tracking the roi or is this just like a thing where you're like i'm pretty sure it's worth it's a i'm pretty sure it's working.

1:08:15I mean, our media team is, I mean, with video, just videographers, photographers, we have 10, but then we have our social team and a lot of my business decisions as like, as an entrepreneur, one thing I've learned, and I think we were talking about this when, when you were on my podcast a few months ago, is that I make a lot of my decisions and I've made a lot of my decisions in business based off of intuition and gut feeling. I never looked at the P &L. I never looked at the balance sheet. If I had this feeling that it was working and I could feel momentum and I had a pulse on it, I was just like, keep spending, keep hiring.

1:09:01Then finally, at one point, I hired operators, a CFO, a CEO, and they're like, hey, we got to put some some guardrails around this. But like all of my decisions in business have been intuition, gut. If it feels right, I'm going to do it. I have a feeling there's going to be an ROI. I might not be able to measure it, but I can subjectively tell if it's going to work or it is working. Is it separate at all? Like the Nick Bear Fitness platform and your personal social media, is that separate from BPN as like a functional entity or are the people like the videographers, the 10 people, is that all under BPN?

1:09:39Yeah, the whole process has changed significantly over the last couple years. So originally it was all one team. And then at one point we separated out where I now have the Nick Bear fitness business and then the Bear performance nutrition business. So there were like two separate teams. And the Nick Bear fitness business is your app, right your app and your channel yeah it's like my my content my ip uh my my channel my training app stuff like that i used to do brand deals i don't do any brand deals anymore dude hoka should have been paying you like seven figures a year i bought hokus because of you because i saw i was like oh big guy wears hokus hokus is the thing the amount of the amount of hoka rincons i sold when i first started running has to be absolutely ridiculous us.

1:10:32So just talking about the separation, we separated out Nick Bear fitness team and BPN team for a while. Really, it made no sense of what we were doing and why we're doing it. I just thought it was the professional move to take in that next step and stage of business. Now we've brought it all back into one entity. I still have the Nick Bear fitness business, but everyone that just working on media, is on BPN payroll, is a BPN team member. And all the content we're creating is in the hope of building the supplement business. Now, the teams are separated and working on different projects. I have my creative director, Jordan, who's leading my content, Ian, who's working on my content, Everett, who's a podcast producer.

1:11:19And then we have videographers, creatives that are working on just BPN stuff. But there's definitely crossover, and the lines are blurrier than they used to be. Do you think that dings your valuation if you ever wanted to sell the company because it's so tied onto you? I don't know if it dings the valuation, but I definitely think that a process and a sale would come with a whole lot of structure, a lot of IP negotiations and possibly issues. I feel like it's less than you think actually I was always impressed so I had actually taken BPN supplements before knowing you and had no idea who you were or that you were involved they just like popped up as one of the supplements I was taking that's not the bulk you think honestly I have no idea I just remember like back in my private equity days we looked at Onnit you remember that brand I don't know if it's still around Onnit was selling and it was like they had a huge exit Well, it was so tied to Joe Rogan and what was his name?

1:12:23Aubrey. Marcus. Yeah, Aubrey Marcus. And that was like when we were looking at it, private equity guys, that's their biggest fear is like, oh, how involved are these two guys? Is it a key man risk? All this stuff. And then ultimately, they ended up getting to an amazing exit with somebody. And they put guardrails around it. They get key man insurance or whatever it is. But I would be interested to find out, actually run a survey of your customers, what proportion actually end up coming through you and your media versus now just like the flywheel is spinning, SEO is there, and the business is self-propagating?

1:12:58Well, that's been the fear with my businesses, which is I don't want to make it me. I want to make it its own thing. But me or Nick or Sahil, that gets initial base. But it's like, at what point do you... When do you make the transition? And that's a challenging... I don't know the answer to that question. And I'm afraid of the repercussions of making the wrong choice. You know what I mean? Yeah, that's been a topic of discussion for the last couple of years with us and trying to figure out how to navigate that. And for a while, I kept leaning into, okay, well, let's separate in the hopes of building VPN away from myself so that it's separate and distinct and can stand on its own.

1:13:41But what I found by doing that is the separation created this loss of vision and brand. So I've kind of just like flipped my whole thought process on that and said, screw whatever happens in the future. And I'm going to lean fully back in and I don't care really how it affects valuation or the end process anymore. I'm just going to build a brand that I'm really proud of and the way I want to build it and whatever happens, happens. And if someone comes knocking on my door in the next couple of years and says like, hey, we love what you're doing, let's talk. But if you don't like it, you know, I just want to make sure I'm enjoying the process and not building a business based off of KPIs and milestones.

1:14:26And I bet you're, I mean, I have no idea. I've never seen you comment on this, but I would have to assume the app that you have, how much do you charge? 50 bucks a month or something? It's$19.99 a month. So I would have to imagine that's doing well too, right? I mean, I make much more money outside of BPN than I make personally with BPN. Yeah, I mean, I think it's killing it. Sahil, have you ever thought about doing it? Yeah, I mean, that type of business model is incredible, right? It's just like the ultimate scalability. And as your personal brand, just for you, as you think about reinvesting cash flows into your brand building, it just makes it makes it so much more dynamic because you can run all of your media stuff at break even if you want to like you can just reinvest all the cash that you're generating from YouTube ads from the app from any of those things into creating better and better content and create this massive flywheel and just count on BPN as the like long term upside bet.

1:15:25Yeah, but if I had a bet, I bet you, Nick, if I had a bet, Nick has probably been even though his net worth has skyrocketed. If I had to bet, you've lived relatively poor compared to the net worth that you've created, cash flow poor. And now you probably taste this and you're like, okay, finally, I can afford to live like I want to live as opposed to just living on$80 ,000 a year. Yeah, I mean, for the first... I didn't take any money out of the business for the first five years. What do you get? Just like an army? Or you get like a military stipend or something? Yeah, so it worked well because I started the business 2012.

1:16:072017 is the year I transitioned out of the army. So I actually had to start paying myself then, me and my brother, who moved down from Pennsylvania to help us build a business. We signed our first warehouse lease that year. It was the first year we hit seven figures in revenue. And it was also like the most challenging year of my entire life because I didn't know anything about financing inventory. I didn't know anything about leveraging debt. I didn't know anything about taking out business loans or utilizing lines of credit. Cash flow was an absolute nightmare. The only money I thought I had to spend was the money that was in the bank account.

1:16:43We had no terms with manufacturers. 2017 was arguably the worst and hardest year of my life, but also the best year of my life that if I could go relive any year, right now, it'd be that year. That's insane. That's one thing, by the way, just the time frame on all of this. I feel like people don't appreciate time as a lever for growth on anything as much as they should. And actually, people in fitness and athletes understand it better because they understand that growing slowly is the game and just getting better slowly. When I look at your YouTube channel and go to most popular videos, a bunch of these videos, you've been at this for years and years.

1:17:23There's a six-year-old video, four-year-old video, three-year-old video, eight-year-old video, the 10 ,000 calorie cheat day challenge. Some of this stuff, you've just been at it. And I know you just said it. You were editing these. You were actually on the ground spending the 100-hour weeks doing this stuff for a long, long time. It wasn't like you all of a sudden popped up and had this unbelievable production quality that you have today. So I also just think appreciating time as a lever for growth on these fronts is incredible. That is one thing that's been a powerful skill for myself over this last decade plus is just the consistency at which I've just kept doing the thing.

1:18:05But even the one thing Sam and I talked about when he was on my podcast, I think you were going to do a speech and you're back in like the green room before going out to the speech and you're talking to all these high worth individuals who are super powerful and they're all sitting there super insecure and scared and nervous and like, they're like, holy shit, these people aren't any more secure, confident or better than me. And I think once you realize that, that I have all the skills that I need to take whatever I want to take to the top, I just have to apply it. Because I used to think, and I went through this phase where I was like, okay, I'll get this business.

1:18:43I'll get this thing to this level, but at some point I'm not going to be smart enough. So I'm going to have to outsource people to come in and take it from where I built it to where it needs or can go. And sometimes you do that, but you don't have to. And I've realized that there's no one smarter than me that's going to take this business to the level it needs to go. I just have to be super consistent at this approach for a long period of time and it's going to pay off in dividends. But you did hire a CEO. I think, what are you, a year into that? A little over a year. Yep. How's that? It's been great.

1:19:18I mean, the main reason I wanted to step out of the CEO role, and I wasn't actively looking to hire a CEO, but Kat came into the business first as kind of just an advisor. And then she joined as the chief revenue officer, leaning into more operations. And then we just had a conversation one day. I was like, hey, would you ever want to be CEO? Because I really just want to focus on creating content and brand building. And she was like, yeah, if you want me to be CEO, I'll be CEO. So we made the switch because the business got to a point and a size where I wasn't spending my time on the things that I was passionate about anymore.

1:20:02I was spending my time on like people management and lawsuits and retail and finances and P &L and balance sheets. And I was like, this is all like super critical, important stuff, but I don't love it. I want to focus on what I love and that's creating content. That's building brand. That's getting people jacked up. It's talking about the products. It's working on new product innovation. And that's why I wanted to make that change, which has been like much harder than I thought it would be. And I'm only now a year in of that transition, really finding my lane. But this last year for me has been an interesting one.

1:20:44Dude, and it's hard. So I have a CEO too. We'll be at one year in a couple months. And it's hard because you want to be a good, I don't know what it's called, a good partner with your CEO where you want them to make mistakes and you want them to put their flavor and stuff because you got to let a CEO do that. But then at the same time, you're like, but I already did all this and I can tell you what the outcome of this is going to be. Or, uh, you know, it's just like, it's really, it's a, it's a, it's like getting married where you, but not living together right away. And so you get married and then you move in and you're like, Oh, you're fucking quit leaving the cap off the toothpaste.

1:21:23And it's like, well, no, you can't like bitch about little stuff. You got to let them do what they want to do. You know what I mean? It's like kind of weird. It's like a, it's like a weird, it's a weird thing, but you have to learn how to like manage each other. And it's, and it is a challenge. But when it works, it's hard. It's the best. At any point, do you feel the need to jump back into the CEO role? Well, in my, when I get pissed off, I'll be like, I got to do this. And then I'll get like end of week or end of month updates. And I'm like, oh my God, Jordan is so much better at me than all of these things.

1:21:54And I, and, and also like, I would have done this different, this different, this different. And those three things I probably would have been wrong about. So the name of the game isn't being right 100 % of the time. The name of the game is being right for the right things most of the time. And I just had to have empathy and put myself in his shoes. And that helped a lot. But no, on a bad day, when I get pissed off, I'm like, I should do this. And then 99 % of the time, I'm like, you are more talented than I am at so many things. I cannot do this. Yeah, I think sometimes too when you're when you're far removed from the position for an extended period of time, you forget all the bad things you used to deal with.

1:22:36You only remember the good. Like, man, I kind of missed this. And you get exposed to all the things, the bad things that you don't miss. Too much. No, you got it. You run with it. It also kind of, just before you jump forward from that, Sam, it also differs greatly between like a true business operations endeavor and a creative endeavor. Like you couldn't step away and truly have a CEO just like running your content apparatus because it would lose the Nick soul that is in it. It's in every single piece of content that exists. You can like build your team around it, but you actually being in that creatively, I think is so key.

1:23:15There was this, I think it was Jerry Seinfeld did an interview with, I think it was like the Harvard Business Review. and they asked him about the fact that him and Larry David basically wrote every episode of Seinfeld and after nine years, they had basically burned out and so the show just had to end because they had burned out on doing it and the Harvard Business Review was like, could you have hired McKinsey to come in and help you find a better model and design something? And Jerry Seinfeld said, who's McKinsey? And they said, it's a consulting firm and Seinfeld responded, are they funny? And basically his point was, I don't need them if they're not funny because the efficient way of doing the creative thing is actually the wrong way.

1:23:56And what he said is the right way is the hard way. The show was successful because they did it the hard way. They micromanaged every single detail of the creative process and they really had their soul in it. And so I think that your creative success and what has allowed all your businesses to thrive are also fundamentally tied to the fact that you have your soul in every single piece of content that you guys are putting together. Yeah, I agree with that. I think sometimes entrepreneurship and building a business and founding a company, from the outside looking in, people make it seem easy. So it's romanticized and everyone's like, oh, I could start a business.

1:24:33I could do it. And then you finally do it and you have this passion around everything you're building, but then it gets hard and it gets challenging and then it grows. And then your passions are sidelined for the priorities for other parts of the business. But it's just maintaining that consistent work ethic, even when you're working on things that you truly weren't passionate about in the beginning, but you know it drives business and leads you to an ultimate end goal. Well, guys, I appreciate you coming on. It was a little impromptu, but this is fun. I just like hanging out with you guys and learning.

1:25:13Nick, Sahil, I'm close to Sahil, so I don't have to say this to him. But Nick, I've looked up to you for a while now, and I appreciate you doing this. Sahil, I appreciate you doing this, too. This is awesome. Thanks, guys. Appreciate the opportunity. All right, that's the pod. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I can be what I want to. I put my all in it like no day's on. on the road, let's travel, never looking back.

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