Go One More: The Mindset Behind Building a Multimillion Dollar Business

0:00Passion on its own doesn't build a business. and I learned that the hard way. That's why I started the YouTube channel. Hey, what's going on? It's Benjamin Gottlieb back with Shopify Masters, your companion for starting and building a business. In the middle of training for a marathon, Nick Bear decided to quit. He turned off the path and began his walk home. But along the way, he stopped and started thinking, and I quote, if I quit on this run, what else do I quit on? Nick returned and he not only finished it, but he ran an additional mile. He wrote a reminder of that moment on the brim of his cap and he posted it to Instagram.

0:41From there, Nick's Go One More movement caught on like fire and it's turned into a very successful business and movement with Bear Performance Nutrition. Today, Nick is joining me to share how this mentality, Go One More, has allowed him to work through failures and build a multimillion-dollar success story. Nick, welcome to the show. No, I appreciate it, Ben, and it's a big opportunity, and I'm glad to be here. Well, we're so glad to have you. Just thinking about your story and this origin story of running a marathon, stopping, turning off the path, for a lot of people, I think that would have been it, but somehow you were able to see beyond that initial moment.

1:25Can you take me back to that story that I just recounted? How did you pull yourself up and push through for an extra mile there? This was 2018. It was a year, a little less than a year after I transitioned out of the military. And when I got out of the military, I said, and I actually recorded this on a video and posted it. I said, I would never run a day in my life again. Because when I was in the military, we were being forced to run. I didn't enjoy running, but it was something I had to do for the job. But then when I got out of the military and I committed to never running again, a part of me was missing.

2:07Like I was searching for this uncomfortable discomfort that I knew facilitated and created growth opportunities for me. So I started running again. And for me just to start running, I needed some sort of goal. And that was a marathon. Like 26.2 miles was very daunting to me then. I think daunting to most people. Right. And I didn't really understand what it was going to take to successfully run a marathon. I didn't understand how to really run and what a true training program and prep looked like. and at the time my wife now who was in my fiance we were living downtown austin texas and we were about a half mile off of what's called town lake loop or ladybird lake and there's this beautiful 10 mile loop around the river that's dirt trail concrete boardwalk it's like one of my favorite places to run in the entire world and i had an 18 mile run that day which is part of my marathon prep.

3:13And at mile 10, my legs were hurting. I was tired. I was telling myself I wasn't a runner. I was never going to be a runner, but I just had to get through this prep. And at mile 10, I stopped and I started walking back to the house. And as I'm walking back, I'm thinking, okay, if I quit on this run, first off, no one's going to know. No one's around me. I'm by myself. But if I quit on this run, what else will I quit on in my life? What does this say about my character? And is this a habit that I am building and creating within myself that's going to turn into something much larger down the road?

3:48Am I going to quit on my family? Am I going to quit on my fiance? Am I going to quit on my business, BPN at the time? And I ended up walking back to the trail and I was like, I'm just going to finish this run. I got to mile 18 and I said, I'm going to run one more mile, which was 19. And like you said in the story where you kicked it off. I came back home, wrote one more on the bill of my hat, took a photo of it, posted it. And it kind of really struck a nerve in a lot of my audience and community. And in that moment, it felt so rewarding to not only go back and finish what I started, but do more, put forth more effort.

4:31And then realizing, well, if I apply the same mindset and mentality to other parts of my life. This compounded consistency is going to have incremental growth and success and opportunity for me. And I just applied that lesson from that training run in 2018 to everything I did moving forward. And I believe it's positioned me to where I am today. Well, Nick, I'm so curious because that is such an introspective moment to have in the middle of a very physical activity. I mean, I can't, you know, I was an athlete, especially as a younger man, and I cannot recall a moment where I was sitting and thinking that existentially while exercising.

5:14Was this just a moment of clarity? I mean, how would you describe this to someone who's like, yeah, oh, you're thinking in the middle of your run? Yeah, right. I mean, I'm panting and maybe I'm going to puke pretty soon. I'm guzzling water. How would you describe that moment? I mean, I don't run anymore for the physical benefit necessarily. I run for the mental clarity. And a lot of people think that going out for a run clears their head. And my running coach, Jeff Cunningham, positioned me in a specific way that I'll always remember. He said, people don't run to clear their head because clearing your head is emptiness.

5:50People run to gain clarity and clarity is organized thought. it. And every morning when I go run, cause I run six to seven days a week at 5am when I'm running those, that is the most moment of clarity in my entire day. That is when I think of all my business ideas. Those are my most creative moments. That's when I solve problems professionally and personally. There is so much for me, solitude and clarity in that run that I need to add it into my life every day because if I don't, I feel like I lack organized thought and it kind of sets the stage. It sets the foundation and organizes my life. So I am addicted to running partly for the physical benefit, but to be honest, I am addicted to running because of the clarity that I get from it.

6:44So you get clarity from the running and also that experience and all of the things that you do with your fitness is translated into your brand, Bear Performance Nutrition on Shopify. The brand has been incredibly successful in part because of your representation of your own personal life through a number of social channels, including YouTube, which you've done extremely well at. Tell us about the beginning of this channel and why you decided to put yourself forward like this with connection to your brand. I started the brand in 2012. And it was between my junior and senior year of college. I was out at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, because I'm from Pennsylvania originally.

7:27And I was studying nutrition. And I was also in college in the ROTC program. So I knew after graduating from college, I was going straight into the military. And between your junior and senior year of school, the Military Associated Bank, USAA, offers up to a$25 ,000 loan. and a lot of my peers and friends were taking out this loan. They were buying engagement rings, going on vacations, getting new cars. And USAA was doing this for ROTC cadets because they knew right after we graduated college, we were gonna have job security. It was a very low interest rate, no payments for the first 18 months.

8:08And I saw this as my golden ticket to start the business that I'd been wanting to start for years. Because at this point when I was in college, I was buying ingredients in bulk. I was buying caffeine and beta alanine and creatine monohydrate and citrulline. For your physical training to get into the army and to be an officer. Well, I was making these supplements for the gym. I would take these supplements before going to the gym, but ultimately part of the reason was I love training. I loved bodybuilding and strength training at the time, but also in preparation to go into the military. And I was mixing up these products in my dorm room for myself but then i would i would mix some of these up for friends and peers like people would come to my my apartment my dorm room they'd hand me a few bucks i hand them a bag of white powder which was pre-workout probably looked like i was dealing drugs but i was just you know dealing pre-workout at the time right i had this this amazing just passion for the industry, for the space, for the product, for the process.

9:09And when I saw this opportunity to take out this loan, like I said, that was my golden ticket. I was approved for$20 ,000, found a manufacturer, placed our first production order for our pre-workout, which is our flagship product flight, still the same product with a modified formula. And I launched it thinking we were going to make a million dollars that first year. And my game plan was I was going to send product to all these popular fitness YouTubers because fitness YouTube was just kind of coming on the scene at the time. And I did a little math equation on my own. Okay. If I send X amount of YouTubers, fitness YouTubers, X amount of product and a certain percentage of their audience converts, then my sales will be X, Y, and Z.

9:56And at the time I thought that would be seven figures, was a million dollars. And what was it? $20 ,000 in that first year. And that was after offering massive 50 % off discounts just to move inventory. Year one was$20 ,000. Year two was$20 ,000. Year three was$20 ,000. And did you consider that a failure? I wouldn't necessarily say it was a failure. There were a few things happening in that time. One, I started it right before my senior year of college. So my senior year of college, I'm building it in the background or trying to build it. I had no background or experience in e-com, entrepreneurship, business.

10:39And then a year after starting the company, I graduated college. I went to Fort Benning, Georgia for a year of military training where I was in the infantry officer basic course, ranger school, airborne school, Bradley leader course. And I spent a year in Georgia before getting stationed in Fort Hood, Texas in 2014. And people always told me that a business takes three years to get off the ground. And I kind of use that as a justification and an excuse of why we weren't growing. I was like, oh, you know, we haven't passed that three-year mark yet. So it's okay that we haven't experienced growth.

11:17The reality is I was hoping for success. And I that just by having supply, that demand would automatically be there. It was a great lesson of supply and demand. Just because you have the product doesn't mean there's someone on the other side that wants to buy it. So that's a long way of getting to your question of the YouTube channel, the genesis and origin of that. 2014, I landed in Fort Hood, Texas, realizing my business, BPN, has not really grown up until that point. I needed demand for that supply. I had no money to pay anyone else. I was broke. I had$500 in my name. And I spent that last$500 on a camera.

11:58I got a Canon T3i. And I said, if I spend my last$500, I'm committed to documenting my life, putting it on YouTube and building a community in hopes of creating demand for this business and this product that I have because I was so passionate about it. But passion on its own doesn't build a business. And I learned that the hard way. that's why I started YouTube channel. And the goal at the time was if I can just get 10 ,000 subscribers on YouTube, lifetime, 10 ,000 subscribers, that's a win. That's success. So I spent every waking moment, literally every waking moment outside of my job in the military, building the business and creating content for YouTube and just documenting everything.

12:47Well, and clearly that has been a successful recipe not to use a pun there, but a successful recipe for you and your brand. The YouTube channel has garnered an incredible following over the years. But the environment, the reality of YouTube is so different today than it was, gosh, when you started the channel close to a decade ago. How are you staying relevant as the platform changes where there's more emphasis now in short form contents? How are you staying relevant and what sort of advice might you have for someone who's trying to start a channel today? Number one, be authentic and genuine to yourself and what's true to you.

13:28Don't jump on all the trends and what's popular. And I would encourage people to honestly just provide resistance against what everyone else is telling them to do. That's what I've kind of done up until this point where, you know, I started YouTube with long form content of just documenting and sharing and providing advice, inspiration, education, instruction. And over the years, since I got started, you know, 10 years now on YouTube, people would come to me and say, you know, short form is the win now, long form isn't there anymore. Well, we went and made our videos even longer. We went from 15 minute vlogs to 45 minute vlogs.

14:17And people would say like, you know, this is trending. You have to jump on this and try that. And YouTube thumbnails have to be fully optimized and look like everyone else's. And we just didn't do that. And by staying in our lane, from my perspective and opinion, staying in our lane, creating content that was authentic and genuine to us, things that we truly were passionate about. It allowed us to have a competitive advantage against everyone else who was conforming to what is supposed to be acceptable by society and the norms and the social trends. And one of my favorite things that one of my favorite authors, Donald Miller said, that is a really firm foundational value in our business is that as we create content, you have to position yourself as a guide and never a hero.

15:09So a lot of our content is around fitness preps, transforming your body, eating healthier, the entrepreneurial journey of building the business, now being a husband and a father. And my North Star for my content is being a role model, choosing the hard right over the easy wrong and being, like I said, authentic to what I believe in and being that guide that is moving through life, but also showing people what I'm doing, how I'm failing, how I'm learning from that, what we're doing in the business, how to improve your fitness, your nutrition, your health, overall, everything that we embody here at BPN.

15:52And I mean, to wrap all of that up with one bow, I'd say we just did what felt natural to us and we ignored what everyone else was telling us we should be doing. Great advice from Nick Baer. He's our guest today. He's the founder of Baer Performance Nutrition. Nick, before we continue, I want to get back to this idea of authenticity. You know, I do a lot of these interviews we do on Shopify Masters, and I hear that phrase a lot from successful business owners, successful entrepreneurs, this idea of authenticity, and it makes a lot of sense. But in reality, when you're actually doing this, I mean, what does authenticity really mean to you?

16:35I mean, you have to, you have to take inventory and audit of, of your life. And this is, I think something everyone should do is having very honest conversation with yourself. And you can either write it out or it's something you can think of when you're on a run or meditating or however you find moments of solitude and silence. But if I look at my life, what matters to me? Where do I want to be in 10, 20, 30, 40 years? How do I want to be perceived by my friends and my family and my coworkers in a community? What's the impact that I want to create? But at its foundation, what matters to me? What do I enjoy?

17:18What am I passionate about? And then going all in on those things. That's some high level thinking that you're doing on on a consistent basis, right? I'm a big fan of what I call forward thinking backwards planning and the military is massively popular for what's considered backwards planning. But I apply this to my entire life where I will look into the future, say that's next week or next month or next year or maybe 10 years from now. And I have a vision of where I wanna be, what I wanna be doing, who I wanna be doing it with, what that looks like. And then you backwards plan from that moment in time until today, what do we need to accomplish?

17:55What milestones do we need to check from now until then to get there? But I think a lot of people live their life in a more reactive approach as opposed to proactive. And they're also influenced. I mean, I'm guilty of this as well. We're influenced by dopamine and what we think we want as opposed to what we like actually in the moment. And we start pursuing things that aren't authentic to us, but there are things that we're pursuing because, you know, Joe on Instagram says that we should want that. And the trends that are on social or the media and all these resources are saying, this is where we should guide our life to achieve success.

18:39But does that resonate with you? Maybe, maybe not. And if it doesn't, why are you following that path? Well, it's a great question. I think it's a great reminder to constantly be re-examining what you're doing, who you are, and how it fits into your business or your goals as an entrepreneur. Nick Baer is my guest. And before we continue with the program, I'm going to take a quick moment here to stop and to thank you for listening to Shopify Masters today and every day that you tune in. You know, this program is your companion for starting and building a business. We are an official podcast from Shopify, but we're also building something else.

19:15We're building a community of entrepreneurs on YouTube where Nick has been so successful. So please, if you can head over to our YouTube channel and subscribe, let us know what you think, leave a comment. We really appreciate it. Nick, I want to get back to this concept that you brought up before we went to the break about authenticity, being real, being true to yourself and thinking ahead. You know, you can't take on debt. You can't get comfortable with financing if you're not thinking ahead. And when you were recounting your story, you told me in the first three years, $20 ,000 was what you made.

19:54Clearly that has blown up exponentially since then. Let's talk about financing. How did you begin to feel more confident managing finances and taking on debt in order to scale your business? I mean, this is one of the biggest mistakes I made early on. Started the business 2012, like I said, and the first couple of years was very slow growth. So we were able to finance future production orders, materials, anything we really needed with the cash flow because there wasn't a high demand for cash. We weren't spending a lot and we also weren't making a lot. So it was kind of just like this slow burn in the background.

20:39And to be fair, you were preoccupied as well. I mean, you were in the military. It wasn't like you had every single waking hour to dedicate to your business, right? No, it was only, I mean, multiple hours a day. I'd get back from a normal day in the military at 6 p.m. I'd go to the gym till say like, you know, 7.30, 8. and then I'm filming content, editing, working in the business until midnight. Did this for years. And I'd wake up early and do the same thing before going into work for PT with the military. So it was just being built in the background those first couple of years. When I transitioned out of the military in 2017, that was my first opportunity to go all in on the business.

21:26We actually did seven figures in 2017. It was three employees. It was me, it was my brother and Joe Pivots, who still works with us today. And we had a 6 ,000 square foot warehouse and we surpassed seven figures in revenue, but it was the most stressful year my entire life because coming from a family of dairy farmers, you are told and taught that the only money you have to spend is the money that's in your bank account. You don't take out credit cards. You don't take out additional loans that you don't require. So the only way I thought we could build a business was the cash that we had in our account.

22:07That was the determining factor for me of, is it a good day? Is it a bad day? How fast can we grow? I didn't understand inventory financing. I didn't understand additional loans and lines of credit. I didn't understand the power of strategically being able to leverage debt to build a business and do it in a smart, healthy way. So we bootstrapped for years and years and years, and we probably created unnecessary stressors and headaches because we were so stressed out about being strapped for cash. I mean, there were moments literally where we're a growing business and we couldn't keep product in stock and all of our money, liquid cash was tied up in inventory, in production orders that had 12 week lead times that we had to pay for prior to them shipping to us.

23:03And there'd be days where we'd be looking at the bank account knowing rent was due the next week and we didn't have enough money to cover rent. And we somehow always found a way to bridge that gap, barely. And we just dug out of that hole and it was a really, really tough time. And then eventually we brought on a fractional CFO and then a full-time CFO. And when we brought on the full-time CFO, who's Josh Hawley, he still works here in the business. He's CFO and COO now. He saw this and was like, wait a minute, fellas, there's another way, right? Changed my life. Changed my life. And I would encourage other entrepreneurs, like finance wasn't my background and finance was not my strength.

23:49and I would still say that finance is not my strength. I'm more of a brand marketing building person. That is what I enjoy. That's where my passion is. That's where my strengths are. When we hired Josh and he came on and built out just standard operating procedures in the business, brought the business to a healthy level financially of just cleaning things up, having structure, having budgets. it's, it unlocked so much ability to grow. So my message to other entrepreneurs is if that's not your strength, outsource that. It's better to find someone, pay someone, bring someone on the team that can do that.

24:31And that is their strength. That is their passion. So you can focus on things that you want to be doing, working on, and things that are actually going to move the needle in the business. So lean into your strengths, delegate your weaknesses. That's the approach that you would take and you have taken with your business. Absolutely. That's still the strategy I take with a business. There is better growth opportunity for me to spend time in the areas of the business that I am one passionate about and can make great incremental progress and then delegate the responsibilities to other people who are specialists in those skills in those parts of the business.

25:10Well, let's talk about hiring a little bit because the business is now well beyond seven figures, eight figures, I believe teammates, no longer just three, there's a 40 plus several dozen employees and teammates, but you have to hire the right people in order to have this sort of success that you've seen. How do you find the right people to hire? I think there's like some stages to hiring. You know, when you, when you first get started when we first got started. And we were not a business that had private equity behind us or VC funded. So the money that we had, the ability to invest into the team was pretty limited.

25:54And we had to hire generalists. So in the beginning, I hired more so for personality fit, culture fit, people who were bought into the mission, believed in what we were building, the product, the space, the lifestyle. and those generalists, I just put them into a role that I thought they could excel in, and that got us to a certain point, and we got to a certain point where the business started outgrowing some of the generalists that were in those positions, and we had to start hiring some specialists, so it was finding places to move some of these more generalists into different positions. Some of those generalists actually turned into specialists with the experience and time.

26:41But then it was going out and searching for those specialists who could truly take a job and a responsibility and own it and achieve certain KPIs and milestones and objective data points. So our hiring process comes from a few things. One, it has to be a culture fit. Like they have to believe in the mission and the vision and the product and be interested in the industry and the lifestyle, everything that we are doing. They have to be a culture fit. That's like checkbox one unlocked. Checkbox two is then what position are we hiring for? What skills are required? Can we go out and find that position on our own?

27:29Or do we have to bring in a recruiter? We've actually been using a recruiter this last year more so than previous years because we are now requiring more specialist roles that have the experience that's very directly applicable to the industry and space we're in. And coincidentally, the specialist in hiring is the recruiter, which you're also identifying as a role, a person that you need to achieve the highest level of success. Yes. We've had great success and wins with using some good recruiters to bring on top tier talent. So top tier talents, being comfortable with debt, being authentic, comfortable with financing, all some great pieces of advice for founders.

28:12When you look ahead now to what's next for your company that you've been running for the better part of a decade, if not longer, what would you say is next for Bear Performance Nutrition? Well, we just signed a new lease for our future HQ. So it'll be 76 ,000 square feet. We'll be moving in there next April. So April of 2025. And just to give like a little history of where we started and where we're going, 2012 launched in my college apartment. And that was totally 76 ,000 square feet to your college apartment, right? That was probably like 76 square feet. Right. So from there, my brother then moved the company down to Texas while I was stationed in South Korea in 2016.

29:02And we operated the business out of my house, this small, I believe, 1 ,300-square-foot house in Temple, Texas. And then a year later, we signed our first warehouse lease, which was 6 ,000 square feet. And in 2019, we moved into a space that was 10 ,000 square feet. and then from 2019 until now, we've just grabbed more space in our current business park where we're operating out of roughly 50 ,000 square feet. And now this new HQ that we're building will be 76 ,000 square feet, but it's higher. So we can stack inventory one pallet higher, which gives us more space and ability. So that's like a primary objective of what we're working on in this next year, but more so from like a business brand approach.