130: Building the Brand: Part 7 "Focus Isn't An Option"

31:24Nick Bare:But he didn't follow the traditional business practice. He didn't follow the stereotypes. He didn't follow the trends. He didn't follow the blueprints. He paved his own path. He was a trailblazer. He was against all things business. He was building brand. He was building connection. and became a billionaire in the process. I thought to myself while listening to this episode, man, like that's the dream. Do it your own way. Do it in a way that is unapologetic. Do it in a way that is authentic and organic and natural to you. That's the way to win. That's something you can be proud of. and when we decided to sell part of the business, we brought on this financial partner, we started working with these private equity groups.

32:20This shifted the brand in the worst way possible for many different reasons. But one of these reasons was Tam.

32:33Nick Bare:I don't ever want to hear Tam in my life ever again. TAM, T-A-M, stands for Target Addressable Market. In all these conversations with the investment bankers and the private equity groups, they kept asking the question, well, how big is the TAM? How big is the Target Addressable Market? That's all they cared about. How big is this market that you as in your business and we are going after? How big can this business be? I hated that question. I don't know. That's an objective metric that you're looking to apply to a subjective, non-navigated path and journey that hasn't been done before. We're trying to do things here at BPN that haven't been done before.

33:31Nick Bare:How can you put a target addressable market there if we're still in the building process? So these investment bankers and these private equity groups wanted us to shift things that we were doing within the business, within brand, within content, within all of our strategies and tactics to make sure that our TAM was larger. Make sure that we're speaking to and addressing a larger market so the opportunities for growth and scale were larger. So that's what we started doing. You know what happens when you do that? You become unfocused. You're chasing every and any opportunity that is not aligned with your vision.

34:20Nick Bare:The reality is back then we didn't have a defined vision. I am now through this entire learning experience in the mindset that the way that you scale is not going shallow and wide. That might work for some people. There are exceptions to the rule. That's not my rule. My rule is that you stay narrow and you go deep. And you stay narrow and you go as deep as possible until there's nothing left. You keep digging and digging and digging as deep as you can until there's nothing left. and then you go wider. But so many brands and businesses, they think the way you scale and grow is to go shallow and wide.

35:05That's not my approach to building a business or a brand. And it never will be. It is narrow and deep.

35:15Nick Bare:And when you can't go any deeper, then you start to go a little wider. It's not a mile wide. It's not a foot wide. It's not an inch wide. It is a millimeter wide. That's how slow you start expanding outwards. TAM, target addressable market. Ah, makes me cringe just hearing it. So what happened from there?

35:50Nick Bare:Well, the lesson I learned was that an undefined vision creates unfocused strategies and tactics. What happens when you try to go very wide and very shallow, go after Tam, and you don't have a defined vision is that everything is in fair play and game. It's unfocused strategy and tactics. The reason that I'm so convicted into having a clearly defined vision and a clearly defined vision is made up of three components, core values, purpose, and goals. And when you have a very clearly defined vision, your team and the business can operate in a decentralized leadership structure and create their own strategies and tactics knowing that it is acceptable and it works because it's aligned with the core values, purpose, and goals of the organization, the vision.

37:00In 2023, we did not have a defined vision,

37:04Nick Bare:which means we didn't have focused strategies or tactics, which means that we were trying to go very wide and very shallow. and I was prepping for this episode this week, and I was thinking back to 2023 and just all the things that happened. And what's so interesting is that, like in the previous chapter I shared, storytelling became a big part of the business and the brand. content. We became a storytelling content producing machine around endurance events and competitions. We found our niche back then and we started to own it and it started to work really well. Documenting fitness endurance preparations.

38:12Nick Bare:and you know what I did in 2023 right when I sat down from the CEO role of the business right when we launched this process all this stuff just happened simultaneously I decided I was going to do a new fitness prep and that fitness prep was going to be a bodybuilding competition

38:35completely misaligned with

38:38Nick Bare:what was working for us and where we were heading. I mean, I made some decisions in 2023 that lacked focus and lacked vision and were all over the place. If I look back over the course of my lifetime, I'll be 35 years old next month. 2023, when I was 33 years old, just two years ago, So that was a quarter life crisis. It had to have been. I made some choices and decisions that were so unlike me and that were so miscalculated and I didn't listen to my gut and my intuition. And I made some bad choices, which is the only reason I can explain that that's why I decided to go into a bodybuilding prep.

39:30I was in just like a self-destructive mode. That was the catalyst for a year of unfocused effort. I hated that entire bodybuilding prep. I didn't want to train for an aesthetic goal. I didn't care about aesthetic goals anymore.

39:50Nick Bare:I cared about performance goals. A bodybuilding prep was not a performance-focused goal, completely unlike me. but I did that prep and that was probably the worst time I could have went into a bodybuilding prep where I'm eating 16 to 1800 calories a day, the peak of that prep and my body fat got down to 6%. I wasn't sleeping because my calories were so low and my mind was so fuzzy and brain fogged and could barely make it through a training session, could barely make it through a day. and it was not the right physical or mental or emotional space to be in at this point of the business, which led to even more destructive decisions.

40:40We as a brand didn't know who we were anymore, who we wanted to be or who we were serving.

40:51I'm so grateful that we got the brand back on track, which you'll hear towards the end of this episode. But like I said, sometimes for things to get back into order, you have to reach utter chaos. And this was utter chaos this time.

41:13Nick Bare:From the outside looking in, you may not have realized it or experienced it or even known it, but from the inside, seeing in, this is how it felt. I was going through some old Dropbox photos the other day. So we categorized a lot of our media in Dropbox and we have archive photos and footage from back in 2019, 2020 up until today. There's so much media within our Dropbox. I was looking for some photos for something I was adding to our website a few weeks ago. And I came across some old files from 2023, some photo shoots we did. And this just describes how off course we were. If you look at our media team now, we are dialed in our brand team, our marketing team.

42:15We know who we are.

42:17Nick Bare:We know who we want to be. We know where we're heading. we have a very clearly defined vision. We know who we serve. We know who our consumer is. We have clearly defined our tone of voice, our brand guide, our vision statements, our vision guide. But in 2023, we didn't have any of those things. We lacked leadership and that is my fault and my responsibility. But as I was going through these Dropbox files from 2023, some of our brand photos and photo shoots we were doing. There was one of our team taking supplements while playing pickleball on a pickleball course court. There was a volleyball and yoga photo shoot that we did.

43:06Nick Bare:We did like this urban photo shoot on a train and a subway with some of our products. there was a photo shoot that we did with some older people 60s 70 year old people using our products if you follow the bpn brand now you know how intentional we are with videos photos consumer behavior the way our products are being introduced and showcased or focused. That's a difference. The difference between being focused and unfocused is so massively different. It can disrupt and destroy your goals and your success and your progress almost overnight. I've said this before and it's not my quote. I'm not going to act like it is, but you build a brand and drops and you lose it in buckets, literally.

44:10Nick Bare:From 2012 to 2023, 11 years, I spent building BPN. And we built the brand in drops, daily deposits, day after day after day for 11 years. and we almost lost the entire brand in 2023 in buckets within months of losing focus.

44:43Complete lack of focus. In order to build the best brand possible,

44:51Nick Bare:you have to choose durability over growth. If you make decisions just based off of growth, In absence of durability, you will find yourself without a business or a brand in the following years to come. In this season, in chapter BPN, we chose growth over durability. Now we always choose durability over growth.

45:20As I'm sharing some of this, you might be thinking, wow, you're really pulling back the curtain.

45:29And yeah, I'm not proud of this chapter, but it was instrumental to where we are today. I will never make these mistakes again. I don't want to say I'm glad I made these mistakes, but I'm grateful that I made these mistakes because I learned so much in this process. I am a better entrepreneur.

45:57Nick Bare:I'm a better founder. I'm a better leader. I'm a better CEO now because I went through this. And I'm sharing it with you because if you're in a similar situation or position and you feel helpless, it is never too late to pivot, course correct, adjust and get back on track. and you don't have to be an entrepreneur. You don't have to be a business owner. You don't have to be a founder. You don't have to be an executive to do that. No matter where you're at in your life, if you feel off course, if you feel like there's chaos, take responsibility, put things back into order.

46:43So things did get worse before they got better. All right, so here we are unfocused.

46:52Nick Bare:no clearly defined vision strategies and tactics are trying to go after Tam very wide, very shallow and then me and my family decided to move to Nashville why did we decide to move to Nashville at this time? to be honest the financial process was wearing me down that was part of it it's not what I wanted to be working on or towards. And it felt very misaligned with the reason I started BPN in the first place. I also felt like I was stepping on the new CEO's toes and that by me moving away physically, it would allow for the team to operate more professionally without me there daily. I needed a creative reset.

47:48Nick Bare:I was just ready for new place, new space, new faces. And I felt stuck and in between what I was doing and what I needed to be doing. As I mentioned, after stepping out of the CEO role, I moved into a chief creative officer role. And my responsibility was brand amplification. Really creating content that aligned with our vision and our purpose and our goals in creating content to help grow and scale the brand. And at that point, one of the things that we did is completely separated the media team that was working on my content and the media team that was working on BPN content. We completely separated those teams, which was one of the worst decisions we made.

48:42Nick Bare:Those teams now are the same team because the content has to move in the same direction. There can be a different approach to the content I produce for my platforms and the content that BPN produces for their platforms, but there needs to be alignment because the vision is the same. The core values, the purpose, the goals are the same. We're trying to get to the same place. There's just different methods in order to get there. Same team, same fight, same mission. But at this point, it wasn't like that. So Steph and I started talking and we decided we were going to move to Nashville. Phil, we didn't really put a definitive timeline on it, but we said, hey, let's put our house up for sale.

49:35And if it sells, that's God telling us that we should move. That's what we thought.

49:43Nick Bare:So we listed the house for a price that we thought would never sell. And we listed our house for two times what we paid for it just three years prior. and we sold the house within hours. Literally within hours of putting it on the market for two times we paid for it three years prior, it sold. So then everything started just happening very quickly. We now had a timeline on closing. We had to find a house in Nashville. Before I know it, I'm packing up the house and we're making our way to the middle of Tennessee to set up a new office with a small creative team for this next chapter of my life and BPN's journey.

50:34Nick Bare:So we signed a lease for an office based in Nashville, downtown Nashville. We bought a house in the 12 South Green Hills area. Me and my family moved. Jordan Utter and his family moved with us. and Ian Rodriguez moved with us as well. So it was three of us that made the move from Austin to Nashville. We set up a small BPN creative office. Like I said, right downtown Nashville, Tennessee. And we started working on content that was driving awareness and traffic for the brand. And that's where I thought we were going to be for the rest of our lives. And I'll never forget, I'll never forget the way we got to Nashville like I said it all happened so fast we packed up the moving truck movers came loaded up our home took off started making their way towards Tennessee from Texas Steph got on a plane with Charlie who was our only child at the time and they flew to Nashville.

51:48Nick Bare:I packed up my truck with as much as I could fill in it with our two dogs and I made my way to drive from Texas to Tennessee. And I had to stop at BPN on the way to throw some stuff away in the dumpster. And as I was pulling up to BPN HQ, I felt like I was abandoning the people, the team, the business, even though we were continuing the mission in Tennessee, it just didn't feel right. And I dropped off all the trash. I will never forget this moment. I was driving away from BP and HQ to make my way to Nashville. And I could not look in the rear view mirror to see the HQ behind me because I didn't want to see what I was leaving behind.

52:42Nick Bare:I was ashamed. I was embarrassed. Didn't feel right. I felt like it was all happening way too fast, way too quickly. And I just kept driving. And that whole ride, it just not sit well with me. It was one of those things, you know, where you have an idea, you don't think it the whole way through and you start putting that idea into action and you realize it might not be what you want to do, but before you know it, you're too far in. So you keep going. And then when it finally all happens and it's reality, you feel like it's too late to turn back and you've realized or think you've realized that you made the wrong choice and decision.

53:31That's what it felt like in that moment, this empty pit in my stomach. It didn't feel good. It didn't feel right. So when we got to Tennessee, we started setting up our office right away.

53:49And literally a week after getting to Nashville, we had already a race on the calendar, on the schedule out in Maine, Pylon Farmers, Maine. So we spent a week unpacking, getting our house set up, getting a new office set up. And then we flew from Tennessee, from Nashville to Maine for the last man standing race, which was in September of 2023.

54:23this was a very pivotal race in moment for me and I talk about this in my book that I just launched Go One More but it was at this race that I unlocked a new meaning of Go One More and that was that Go One More those three simple words that were the foundation of BPN, go on more is much more than an action. Go on more is an outcome. This is why I wrote this whole book. And it's much more than just doing more of everything. It's doing more of the right thing at the right time with the right people. And the way that I unlock this, and I described this story in the beginning of the book, is we got to the race.

55:16And we set up our campsite.

55:17Nick Bare:So last man standing style race. It was a 4.2 mile loop that restarted every hour on the hour until there was one runner left. In this race, I ended up going just over a hundred miles. And when we were setting up our campsite, there was this gentleman and his wife at a campsite close by that I knew of, but not very well, just from social media. And our campsite looked like it was built out for us to live there for months. I mean, we had everything we needed. And this gentleman and his wife, their campsite was very minimum. It was bare. There was no covering. There was no tent. It was just like a blanket and some food and a chair.

56:10So we invited him and his wife to come over to our campsite and stay with us because we had more than we needed.

56:17Nick Bare:So they came over and the energy he brought was just pure negativity. You could tell he didn't want to be there. You could tell he was over-trained. You could tell the race wasn't a focus of his. And I thought to myself, is this what people think that go on more looks like? it's wearing yourself down, being a burden and a negativity to people around you, to your family, to being collateral damage and destructive. Is this person taking my mission and my message and applying it in the wrong way? Yes, they are taking the action of go one more and applying it in a way that could produce results, but it lacks intentionality.

57:19Nick Bare:It lacks purpose. It lacks reason. It lacks responsibility of your other priorities in life. And throughout this race, I kept thinking about this gentleman and his wife. And eventually he dropped down early and complained and they went home and they left our campsite and it brought energy and vibes back into our space again once they were gone. But I unlocked this new thought and perspective during that race. And that's that go on more is much more than an action. That is part of it. Go on more is an outcome. It is a success that you achieve with the right clarity and intentionality behind the decisions you're making.

58:05The who, the what, and the why. that is what ultimately sparked my book. And I started writing the book shortly after that.

58:23Nick Bare:And through the process of writing that book in Nashville, I had to rewrite it multiple times because initially when I wrote the book, it ended with us moving to Nashville and that's where the future of our life was going to be from that point moving forward. And then you'll see why throughout the story, why the ending of that book had to change. And I ended up rewriting that book two times. The publishing date got pushed back on two separate occasions because I had to rewrite the book multiple times because my life changed so much in the matter of a year and a half. And the lessons that I learned evolved and were so transformative within a year and a half.

59:13So the last man standing race in Pineland Farms, Maine in September of 2023 was life-changing.

59:19Nick Bare:And that gave me a lot of perspective in the months to come for what I was about to navigate and deal with in terms of our personal life now being in Tennessee and my professional future and career with BPN moving forward. And then after the last man standing race was done, I went right into a marathon prep in Tennessee. And that was for the California International Marathon December of 2023. That's where I ended up running my lifetime PR of two hours, 39 minutes.

59:56Nick Bare:And during that prep, which was a very stressful prep because keep in mind, we are still in the middle of this financial process that we are running with this investment bank and this private equity group that started when I was still in Texas and then continued when I moved to Tennessee. I thought a few months after moving to Nashville that we were going to close this deal and my life was going to change forever, to be honest. And just days before we were supposed to close the deal, it ended up falling apart. and it just so happened that was days before I was supposed to fly to Sacramento, California to run the California International Marathon.

1:00:41And when the deal fell apart, you would think after putting months and months and months of

1:00:48Nick Bare:work and energy and money into this process and this deal to get this transaction done, And you would think when I got the phone call, it was about 10 p.m. at night from the investment banker. And he said, hey, pencils down, deal's done. We're not closing this one. And you would have thought, and I would have thought, I would have been crushed and devastated. All this work for nothing. But honestly, it was such a sense of relief. it felt like it was the best possible outcome. This deal was being structured in a way that was not conducive or productive for me or the business. It felt like it was being forced to get done.

1:01:44It just wasn't the right partner.

1:01:46Nick Bare:It wasn't the right time. It wasn't the right valuation. It wasn't the right anything. And the fact that it didn't get done felt like another sign from God of saying, I'm going to give you a second chance to provide and create order to this chaos. So I got that call days before the California International Marathon, days before the race was supposed to be kicking off, days before the deal was supposed to be done. It felt like this sense of relief. Like my shoulder sat back better. I slept so much better at night. And when I showed up to Sacramento, California to throw down to that race, I felt more focused than ever before.

1:02:31Nick Bare:That was the best run of my entire life. No exaggeration. That run was a high the entire way through, all 26.2 miles. I towed the line of that race and I was so dialed in. I didn't hear or see anyone around me at that start line. And as soon as that gun went off, I was in every mile of those 26.2, focused on my heart rate, focused on my fueling, focused on my breathing, focused on my mentality. It was the most intentional run, the most focused run of my life. And maybe that was like a foreshadowing of what was about to come.

1:03:25but it felt so right. And for that to be a massive PR,

1:03:28Nick Bare:I mean, I was going into that race trying to run sub two hours, 49, 45 minutes, sorry, sub 245 and ended up breaking that by like six minutes, 239. I was very, very happy. So here's where things start to get really interesting. This was December, 2023. three. And we just found out that Steph was pregnant with baby number two, who is my son, Nico. Nico actually turns one year old next month, August 10th. My daughter's birthday is July 15th. My birthday is August 1st. My son is August 10th. So pretty much my birthday is just non-existent for the rest of my life because my kids take over my birthday, which is all good.

1:04:23I'd rather celebrate their birthdays than my birthday, to be fair. So at this point of our life, the deal just fell apart. I just ran a lifetime PR, 239 in the marathon. Steph finds out she's pregnant with baby number two, being Nico. and I start having this confidence re-injected back into me. I remember texting my brother, Preston, this month. And I can't remember exactly what I said. I'll have to go back and find the text messages. But it was along the lines of, hey man, we're taking this thing back. We're fixing this. Time is now, let's go.

1:05:15and I had this awakening, this epiphany of how do we get to this point?

1:05:21Nick Bare:How do we get to this point where I'm not the CEO anymore? I'm not leading the business. I'm not in Texas. I'm not with a team. We're distracted. We're unfocused. There's nothing else I can do right now other than just start to fix it. So I flew back to Texas, announced I was coming back as CEO and moving back to Texas. This was December, January timeframe, December, 2023, January, 2024. And I talked to my family and I talked to the team and we all decided we were moving back to Texas. Just a few months after being in Tennessee. very expensive decisions, very expensive moves, but it was the only right decision in that moment.

1:06:18I realized I made a lot of wrong decisions

1:06:20Nick Bare:that affected a lot of people's lives. I took and take full responsibility of that. But the only option was to cut our losses and fix everything and move back to Texas. and that's what we did. Within that next couple of weeks, I was back in the CEO role. Our house was up for sale. We were closing down our Nashville office. I was remote CEO from January until early May of 2024. During those months, I was on Zoom calls all day, every day in my office at the house in Tennessee until we moved. Just because it took some time to find a new house, took time to sell our house, took time to break down the Nashville office that we just signed a lease for, get a new tenant to take that over, and just moving my family and Jordan's family and Ian back to Texas.

1:07:25Nick Bare:And I was remote CEO on Zoom calls, January to May, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. every single day. And I had a conversation with Josh, who's our CFO and COO, when I came back as CEO. And we both recognized the brand was way off track from where we wanted it to be and needed it to be. and I had a conversation with Josh and I said, I'm just going to get this brand back on track. I'm going to get us hyper-focused. I'm going to get everything we do to look, feel, and be right again. And I don't want anything financial to guide or dictate that. Please just tell me if I'm heading in a really bad direction financially and I'm about to bury this entire thing.

1:08:17Nick Bare:But if I'm not, I don't want to see any financials. I'm just going to build this business and this brand by gut feel, intuition, and just

1:08:31subjective energy.

1:08:33Nick Bare:And that's what we did. And we turned the business around. We planned for Josh and I, we thought it was going to take a year to turn everything back around to get brand content back on track, to get paid digital advertising and marketing back on track, to get vision and team alignment and the athlete program and all these things just realigned again. We planned for an entire year and we thought 2024 was just going to be a wash year for us. And we ended up getting the brand in all aspects of the business, front of house and back of house, back on track within, I'd say, 90 days, fully back on track.

1:09:17Nick Bare:Profitability and EBITDA back in the mid-teens range, revenue growing, becoming more effective and efficient with all of our brand and marketing content and digital advertising strategies and performance. Everything got back on track really quickly. And that's when Josh finally started to share with me some of the financial data that proved that all the things that we were feeling were reflecting in the data in the financials in a positive way. But that was a really powerful conversation with Josh. And I will always respect and remember that because I went to him telling him, dude, we just got to fix things right now, regardless of what it does to the financial impact of the business.

1:10:09And he said, I trust you. I get it. I support you. Let's go. And that's what I really needed. I needed a teammate alongside me in that moment that was just like, I trust you. I get it. I'm here to support in any way. Let's go. And that was very meaningful to me. And I needed that. It was January, 2024. A month later, we had the Austin Marathon, 2024, where we were a meaningful nutrition partner of that race. And this was going to be our first big event back

1:10:59after re-injecting order to chaos, if you will. the team felt really good. The energy felt really good. And before we kicked off that race,

1:11:14Nick Bare:because we hosted the shakeout run, we had a team there, we handed out hats. We brought it together and activated the community throughout that weekend in a meaningful way. And people showed up, people showed up. The energy was electric. It was next level. I mean, you could feel it like coursing through your veins, like goosebumps all across your body because you could just tell the brand reshifted so quickly back to where we needed to be. And I say this very humbly and it lacks ego and pride, but this is the power of having a founder and leader in place who can speak vision and knows where the brand needs to go and how to get there and has a team that is in full support and trust and respect and willing to back up that vision and that mission and the strategy and the tactics and those goals, you can't replace vision with anything else.

1:12:37It is that important. Vision is everything. When it comes to brand building, culture, leadership, you will get nowhere without it. Leadership and vision, it is not just an amplifier.

1:12:58like I said in the beginning of this episode focus isn't an option it's a requirement for success the Austin Marathon 2024 was what the brand needed and it put things back into place

1:13:13Nick Bare:into perspective and right before we kicked off the Austin Marathon I shared this manifesto with the team that I'm about to read and after I shared it with the team I posted on social media to share with our community. And then I included this in our book. And this was right around the time of the Austin marathon when things started to get back on track. And I was still living in Tennessee at the time, but me and the family and Jordan and Ian were traveling back from Tennessee to Texas frequently to get the brand back on track and just being active in our new roles again as we prepared to move back to Texas.

1:13:59Nick Bare:The manifesto goes, 2024 is going to be different. This is the year we show up as our true, authentic, unapologetic selves. It's how BPN started. It's how we were built. You can't buy brand story, mission, or vision. It has to be created. It's forged through hardship. It's born by toughness. we fuel performance. We fuel individuals through training, supplements, nutrition, education, content, motivation, and by showing them how to be tough. Real toughness is not for show. It's not intended to intimidate. It is the ability to pursue greatness without sacrifice of integrity. It is choosing the hard right over the easy wrong.

1:14:46Nick Bare:Toughness is a driven commitment through confidence. We have changed lives, transformed from rock bottom. That is the power of going more. It has saved people from their lowest of lows. And that is a responsibility that should not be taken lightly. I'm not here to follow a blueprint or build a business based on what has been done before. I'm here to pave a path. We're pioneers. We lead from the front, trailblazers. Let's take everything we learned in 2023, the good and the bad, the wins and the losses. Let's learn from all of it as we enter 2024. If you're on this team, you better be here to win because if we're not going to try and be the best, we shouldn't be doing it at all.

1:15:34Nick Bare:It feels good to win. It feels good to chase down your wildest dreams and aspirations, and it feels even better to do it as a team. If at any point you are lost, confused, misguided or unmotivated, I encourage you to raise your hand. Ask for help. We cannot be the best by operating through independent silos. It's time to row the boat in the same direction with the support of each other to build the best brand BPN can be. Be tough. Be really fucking tough. As we made the move back to Texas, and I made that lonely drive with the dogs once again, but this time going from north to south as opposed to south to north, just a few months after making that big move, I had a lot of time to think to myself.

1:16:31That drive back to Texas felt much different than the drive from Texas to Tennessee.

1:16:37Nick Bare:The energy was different. The creativity was different. The intentionality was different. I was a different person at this point in my life. And something I kept thinking about was, I was talking to myself, Nick, for this next chapter, personally and professionally, you have to realize that your gut and your intuition deserves more credit than you may believe. When in doubt and when challenged through a decision, first, have a clearly defined vision, but trust your gut and have the belief that you can do the thing because belief comes before ability. And remove ego. Ego is the enemy, as Ryan Holiday says.

1:17:33And within Ryan Holiday's book, Ego is the Enemy, he says, this is what ego does. It crosses out what matters and replaces it with what doesn't. To make that move back to Texas, there was no ego I could have. I had to remove all ego. I had to be vulnerable. I had to be honest and I had to be responsible. Ego would have kept me in Tennessee. Ego would have crossed out exactly what matters and replaced it with what doesn't. Ego would have led me and guided me to making the wrong decisions. when I got back I told the team I made a mistake I made many mistakes now it's my responsibility to fix it I realized that a lot of people were

1:18:42hurt with some of those decisions that I made over the previous year and I am very apologetic for that mainly internally in the business because people had to feel the impact and the effects of an entrepreneur and a founder trying to navigate different life transitions. But that entire experience, that entire year and a half was the greatest learning lesson that I needed to experience in my 35 almost years of life so far.

1:19:25I realize that you always place the mission and the people first. Financial success will follow if you do that. And sometimes to be the greatest leader you can be, it requires you to take some time away and work on yourself. Learn, reflect, recognize, and then come back stronger. In my book, I quote Erwin McManus, and he talks about having a sharp ax.

1:20:06And sometimes you'll go through a lull of life, and it feels like you are falling behind, and you are misguided, and you are missing out, and you're not in the fight. But the reality is you're just sharpening your ax. the way I look at that year and a half, which was a front row seat in the arena of learning how to build a business and how to lead a team and what is required of the strongest culture. I mean, this made me,

1:20:47Nick Bare:this experience made me such a better entrepreneur and founder and leader and husband and father and all of the things. but sometimes to stay in the fight with a sharp ax, you have to take a tactical pause and step away so you can sharpen the blade, sharpen your ax so when you come back into battle, you're swinging with a refined and sharp edge as opposed to trying to grind with a dull edge over time. Sometimes time away is necessary. It's the right approach. Chapter seven was a meaty one. Chapter seven, like I said, it started from stepping down from the CEO role in January, 2023 and ending by moving back to Texas after nine months of living in Tennessee, May of 2024, getting the brand back on track, getting the culture back on track, building a healthy organization, subjectively and objectively, again, full of life lessons and learning experiences.

1:22:11Nick Bare:And as painful as they were, and it was, it was, in my opinion, and absolutely necessary to get us to where we are today.

1:22:25So until the next episode, as always, go on more.