134: Building the Brand: Part 8: For the Committed

34:07Now, one of the reasons we and I had to let a significant amount of people go over the last 18 months, the main reason was because the business moved into a new category of growth in size and scale. and what the company needed and needs for this next chapter is experience, is skill, is a more specific area of expertise. And that's what I found is one of the more and most, and has been one of the most challenging parts of building a company from the ground up, bootstrapping. you know when you first get started you need generalists you just need people who who believe in what you're doing and want to be a part of and you're not making much money so you can't pay much and they don't have to have experience but they just have to believe and that works for a while and eventually you start scaling and growing you get to a point where you're making more money you're generating more revenue and profits and you can reinvest back in the company.

35:23And one of the best places to reinvest back into a company is the people. So you start hiring people with more experience and skill and specific training and experience to contribute to where you're trying to get to. And then there's another phase after that where you realize you need more specific skill. You need specialists. And the generalists might not be best suited for the next chapter. Those are hard conversations to have. Some of the hardest. But I believe any good leader will make those decisions for the individual, for the team, and for the organization as a whole. But that was one of the realities of these last 18 months, the realities of pruning, as Dr.

36:28Henry Cloud explains in his book, Necessary Endings. So when I got back, I sat down with Josh Hawley, our CFO and COO, and we laid out our key initiatives for 2024. And we had four of them. The first was get the brand back on track and have continuity with performance marketing. So at the time, the brand was unfocused. The brand was still strong, but it needed to be refocused, realigned. And the focus that we provided was three things. Performance endurance, go on more, and for the committed. That is what people should feel when they think of and view and watch and purchase from and support BPN.

37:28Bare performance nutrition is performance endurance. It is go on more and is for the committed. And at the time, our performance marketing strategy looked very different from our organic social strategy. so our brand organic social video photo look feel dna it had alignment but our performance marketing strategy took a different approach and we were testing all these different types of ugc or user generated content trends what some of these agencies that we were working with at time were telling us were best practices for performance marketing. And when we went with the approach, brand back on track, continuity with performance marketing, our performance marketing, our ads, if you will, that we run on social, YouTube, connected TV, Google, wherever we're running performance marketing, it should look and feel just like our organic social does.

38:39That was one of our key initiatives. Second was build a winning culture, which I'll get into. Third, finalize our current and long-term office solutions because at the time, early 2024, we were operating out of those four buildings and we knew that our lease was coming to an end. We were also outgrowing that current space and we needed a long-term office solution, which now has landed us in our 76 ,000 square foot facility, all under one roof. And our fourth key initiative was an initial launch into the UK.

39:20We know and we knew that we had a huge international audience and that we weren't serving them to the best of our ability. We have a long-term approach to international distribution. And we initially wanted to pursue the UK. We have a huge audience in the UK. And there's a few different ways to approach international distribution. You can bring on a partner. You can work with different wholesalers. But what's interesting about dietary supplements, nutritional supplements, is that every country in different territories have their own guidelines and regulations based off of the way that you can use copy on packages, claims, different ingredients, different dosages of ingredients, supplement facts panels and nutrition facts panels look different by country and region and territory.

40:21And we knew that the UK was going to be a big strategy and meaningful opportunity for us in the future. so we didn't want to just work with a distributor and sell our current products because there are legalities there. You can get away with it, but it's not the best approach in our opinion. If we're going to do something, we're going to do it right. The hard right over the easy wrong. So we've been working for a long time now to launch in the UK. And as of today, we have a handful of our products on Amazon UK. So if you are a UK customer, you can buy a handful of our products, electrolytes, GoGels, GoBars, Flight, Creatine on Amazon UK.

41:16Over the next couple of months, we will have more of our products on Amazon UK. Also, if you're an international BPN customer, you can buy our products on iHerb. iHerb serves most of our international customers and they are our primary international supplier and distributor. So if you're international, go to iHerb, but also if you're in the UK, you can buy on Amazon. So over the last 18 months, we've been working with UK Council. So we have UK lawyers, we have UK manufacturers for our products, UK compliance. we've jumped through all the hoops and we've crossed our T's and dotted our I's twice to ensure that we are launching in the UK as compliant and as responsible as possible for this to be a meaningful distribution platform for us.

42:27We made that happen. We've made the initial launch in the UK. It's going to be more meaningful over the years, but that was our fourth key initiative for 2024. In just three months after moving back to Texas, baby Nico was born August 10th, 2024. It's crazy because my daughter's birthday is July 15th, then my birthday is August 1st, and then my son's is August 10th. So three of our birthdays all happened within a month. And then Steph's is April 22nd. So she's kind of the outlier. But me and Charlie and Nico, we all just celebrated our birthdays. Charlie's three, I'm 35, Nico's one. Happy belated birthday to my beautiful children.

43:17But just a few months after moving back to Texas, we were in the full swing of everything. I mean, as soon as we got back, It was hit the ground running and running nonstop. The business got back on track very quickly. We were growing. We were scaling. We were becoming more profitable by the month. BPN was truly thriving. We really hit our stride. I was in the middle of a high rocks prep and YouTube series. I was wrapping up my book titled Go One More. I mean in the editing process literally we were in the hospital Steph was getting ready to give birth to Nico and I was trying to wrap up the editing process of my book in the hospital to turn in the manuscript because there were deadlines that I had to hit and Nico came a a little early like he was like two two weeks early two to three weeks early so I kind of like laid out my timeline of I have to have this book turned in the manuscript completed for when Nico was supposed to be born he was born early so I'm in the hospital trying to get this manuscript done to turn into the the publisher and the editors so that when Nico was born we could just be with family for a little bit at this time we were in a rental house while we were waiting for our house to be finished.

44:50We came across a house when we got back to Texas and it was like 60 % completed. It was a house that got started and then abandoned and the builder started it and there were some issues with the builder's company and the whole project was abandoned. There was this house we found that was sitting for about two years. So we found a new builder to finish it out for us. And while we were waiting for that home to be done, we were living in a rental off of a very busy road in Georgetown, Texas. And as many of you probably know, during this just crazy season of life, back in the full swing of everything, business is thriving, newborn baby at home, just finished a higher rocks prep and youtube series building on a house getting ready to move into our new hq and and finish up that project i was running one morning off this main road from the house we were renting i got hit by a car while i was running i know i just like threw that out of nowhere potentially but i i feel like i had to include this in this chapter because it was a life-changing experience.

46:09I've shared the story a few times, but it was one morning in December, 2024. It was shortly after finishing up High Rocks, Dallas. And every morning from this rental, I ran my average eight to 10 mile run every morning on these back country roads and through neighborhoods. But to get there, I had to be on this main road for about a mile. And the speed limit there was 60 miles per hour. There's a short shoulder. Cars would fly there. I'd be running there around 5 a.m. It was sketchy, but I knew it was only a mile. And I just had to stay on there for a mile to get to the backcountry roads that I would run on.

47:03And I did a whole podcast episode on this that goes into detail. So I'll spare you all the details, but for broad strokes, I was running. I crossed the road at the wrong time. I was on the other side running with traffic because I was trying to get to a larger part of the shoulder. next thing I know I see the lights on my feet I hear the screech of tires and I feel the impact of this car hit me as it's going 60 miles per hour and next thing I know as I was hit on the right side of the road I come to as I'm on the left side of the road stand up in shock realizing I just got hit by a car and I survived.

47:55I'm alive. The person who hit me ended up driving off and someone else stopped and took me back to my home. And after the shock wore off, all the pain kicked in. Staff took me to the hospital. We got scans and checks and we got some stitches and I was bleeding all over the place and couldn't walk well for a few weeks. because the tire went up the back of my left leg. I mean, I had really bad burns from the tire. But that was a wake-up call for me. That was a wake-up call of slow down, recognize what you have been given, be grateful, don't take it for granted because you can lose everything in a second's notice.

48:55That shook me up a lot and that put my entire life into perspective. I remember that night, the night it happened and I was giving Charlie a bath with another bedtime routine. Steph was putting Nico down and I'm just looking at Charlie thinking, if I would have died by getting hit by that car earlier that morning and Charlie was asking Steph as she was giving her a bath that night, where's dad? And Steph had to tell Charlie, dad's not here. Something happened. The thought of her realizing that and having to live a life without a father crushed me. Crushed me. it put my priorities it put life it put the speed at which i was living the rush at which i was moving it provided a lot of just context into everything it was transformational for sure and um I believe I needed that wake-up call because from the moment I landed back in Texas and re-assumed the CEO role, it was go, go, go.

50:26I was busy. I was rushed. But I was doing it to myself. And I felt like I had a lot of momentum to make up for, a lot of ground to regain. And after hitting, hit by that car and realizing that everything could have been gone that day, it shifted my perspective on, on life and what matters and the speed and intensity and intentionality at which I want to operate moving forward. But I needed that wake up call. I did. You know, one of the things I've learned in these last 18 or so months, and it's a reoccurring theme in all of the Building the Brand episodes, is that people matter. The people matter the most.

51:28Something I wrote down here is that culture isn't maintained by leadership. It is maintained by the people. the entire team you know one of those recurring themes is you can go fast alone but you can go so much further together if you have the right people so one of those key initiatives in 2024 was to build a winning culture what is a winning culture I think it can be defined differently for different businesses or organizations or people or individuals but for me a winning culture is a team and culture that is committed that is bought into the mission that truly believes it they don't just say or tell themselves i believe in this now they believe they believe to their core in what the organization what the team is working to accomplish, the vision and the mission.

52:31Truly committed. That is a key component of winning culture. They understand the vision as well as where and why they are striving to get there. They are selfless. They are humble. They are hardworking. They are dedicated. They are coachable.

52:56that is what makes up a winning culture it is the people you need strong leaders in a business but strong leaders alone cannot make up a winning culture it is everyone from the people who sit in the c-suite from the people who have been there for 13 years, for the people who have been there for 13 days, for the people who have been there for 13 hours, everyone contributes to the winning culture. And having one person who doesn't fit, who doesn't believe, who isn't committed, who isn't humble, who isn't hardworking, who isn't coachable, who isn't selfless, who isn't dedicated, having one person, the wrong person on that team will erode the winning culture.

53:49I know because we've experienced it. If you have one person who wants to take away or erode that winning culture, it will happen. One of the best things I ever heard was that you need A players on your team. That was one of our key initiatives for 2025. A players only. if you have a B player or a C player, it will lower the expectations, the stakes, the accountability of all of the A players.

54:35If you have a C player, it brings the expectations, the standards lower for everyone. Setting the bar so high, setting the standard so high, and then working to hold that standard is not an option. It is absolutely essential. It is critical. I said that one of the lessons I learned in this chapter is that if you can understand someone's incentives, you can then predict their behaviors. this is something that I heard initially from Donald Miller, who's one of my favorite authors and speakers and entrepreneurs. And I found it to be so true. If someone is truly just incentivized by money or notoriety or building their resume or

55:37power, their behavior will reflect that.

55:44Now, you might be able to say, yeah, well, everyone is motivated by different things. And that is completely true. And that is completely okay. But as a leader of an organization, you have to recognize that. That, yeah, people are motivated by different things, but that will shift the culture of an organization. If half the people are just motivated, they're only there for the money, the notoriety as something they can put on their LinkedIn or their resume, and they don't believe in the mission, they don't believe in the culture, they don't believe in what you're trying to accomplish or who you're trying to impact, that will take away from the culture.

56:28Their behaviors will reflect that and vice versa. If you have people who are on the team for the right reason, they want to create impact, they want to help people, they want to save lives, they want to create products that help people reach their goals, their behaviors will reflect those incentives.

56:52So there's not necessarily a right or wrong, it's not what I'm saying, but it is what kind of culture are you trying to build and establish? And when you identify that, you can then go hire people based off of their personal incentives. And you can know that their behaviors that they practice will be reinforced by those incentives. It's one of the best ways to hire. Hire based off of incentives and you can then predict the behaviors which ultimately determines your culture of an organization.

57:39Winning cultures win. They don't consistently lose. Winning cultures win. Winning cultures are also led by example. People who lead by example, people who lead winning cultures, they don't just tell the team. They don't just tell their departments what to do or how to do it. They show them the right way, the only way, the example. Show, don't tell. That is something we've said for years now here at BPN. And I can't reiterate how important that is. Show, don't tell. If we apply that to leading teams, building business, creating content, documenting these preps, these stories, show, don't tell. So one of the lessons I said I learned was that you need to lead with the heart and the mind.

58:47And as I was thinking about this, something that came to mind was that brand building is all about leadership. leading. And one of the things that I've known forever, but that has been reinforced, I don't want to say forever, I've known for a long time, but that's been reinforced over these last 18 months is to lead with the heart and mind. The heart and the mind. As a consumer brand, especially around performance nutrition, performance, endurance, health, wellness, recovery. There's two aspects of building a brand and something that we are always trying to straddle and that we are mindful of.

59:37There is the mind that requires education and knowledge, how our products are made, why we source certain ingredients, why we utilize specific dosages of certain ingredients. what the consumer can expect from the product, those ingredients, how to use it, when to use it, why to use it, all of those things is educating the mind. That is a very important aspect of a consumer-focused brand, especially in our space. But that's about 50 % of what we need to focus on. The other 50%, if not more, is leading with the heart. That's the brand mission. That's the story we share. It's the content we create.

1:00:31It is emotional connection with a community, a consumer, a customer. I think the best brands in the world do a really good job at leading with the heart and the mind in mind. It is educational. It is value. It is the what, it is the why, it is the how. But then there is the emotional connection component that is just as critical. That is the brand component. The living, breathing DNA of Go On More, of For The Committed, of Endurance Performance. There's a reason that thousands of people have Go On More tattooed on their body. it's because it means something to people. It's changed lives. It's an emotional connection.

1:01:28It is real. It is not fabricated. It is not intentionally founded to sell product. It means something. It means something to us. It means something to you. It means something to the consumer. It means something to our community. lead with the heart and the mind. I've brought this up so many different times, but it's very applicable to this chapter is because I read this book during this chapter. And that is BE 2.0, Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0. This book changed everything for me because prior to this, I didn't clearly define the vision that I had up in my head to the team, the organization. I would speak about it freely and openly, frequently, but I never wrote it down.

1:02:32I never clearly defined it so that a team could create strategy and tactics based off of the vision that I had up in my head. and when I clearly defined the vision based off what I learned in chapter four of this book, BE 2.0, I believe it made a big difference in the entire organization because everyone then knew what we were working towards and what we were trying to achieve and why. And a vision is made up of three components, core values, purpose, and goals. The way that Jim Collins explained this, Core values and purpose should not change more than once every 100 years and goals are 10 to 25 year targets.

1:03:19So I'm gonna share this with you guys of what I documented and shared with the team so that we can be more consistent in our messaging. We can be more consistent in our decisions. We can be more consistent in the strategies and the tactics that we create to accomplish our goals. so that if we're presented with an opportunity, if it doesn't align with these core values, purpose, and goals, we say no to it. It's an easy no. So we say no to a whole lot more things, but when we say yes, we know that yes is aligned with what we're trying to accomplish. So here's how I defined our vision based off of core values, purpose, and goals and share this with the team.

1:04:01Our core values. We share stories of incredible human achievement. We are a brand for the committed. those unwavering in the pursuit of their goals, never accepting mediocrity. We hold ourselves to the same standard we expect from our customers, athletes, and partners. We are consistently good rather than occasionally great. We believe in hard work. We will never sacrifice profitability for growth. We have hard conversations. We are professional and treat everyone with respect regardless of how they treat us. We lead, but we also listen. Product quality will never be sacrificed for profit. We take care of our people and treat them like family.

1:04:43Our brand will never be eroded in the process of growth, scale, and expansion. We are resourceful, spending as little as necessary to achieve the outcomes we desire. We are problem solvers. Purpose Help people realize that anything is achievable with hard work, commitment, and consistency, and then provide them the fuel, resources, and inspiration to do it. Goals. Become the most recognized and respected endurance consumer brand in the world by 2035. Sell the most endurance gels in the world by 2035. G1M Sport and the extensions of the line to include G1M Sport Plus and RTDs generate$100 million in revenue by 2035.

1:05:36That is$100 million in revenue per year by 2035. Be known as the Apple or Nike of the sports nutrition industry and inspire more runners to be lifters and lifters to be runners.

1:05:52Creating that vision statement, which is the combination of heart and mind, I believe made one of the biggest impacts on the business in 2025. And I have to give all the credit to Jim Collins from BE 2.0. Because after reading that book, I realized I didn't clearly and have never clearly defined our vision. And the team requires that to operate independently from me in a decentralized leadership manner and execute with confidence that they are doing something that is aligned with the purpose, core values and goals of our organization. And now as we come to the summer of 2025, these last couple of months that we have lived and experienced I would argue the most successful summer of BPN history the most successful couple months stretch of BPN history but it was from the result of just compounding consistency over the years all of the things that we experience the projects the races everything this past summer that I'm about to share, it was the result of focus and compounding consistency over 13 years.

1:07:40So none of these things happen because of one decision. None of these things happen because of one month. 13 years have led to all of this. So we hosted the Go One More Ultra in May of 2025. which was a viral race. It wasn't intended to be a viral race, but it turned into a viral race at Bear Ranch. It was a last man standing style race. Two runners, Kim and Kendall battled it out for 235 miles. 4.2 mile loop that restarted every hour on the hour until there was one person left, but there were two people left in this case because a wild storm came through and made it impossible to continue the race.

1:08:34So it ended up in a shared win between Kim and Kendall. That film will be released, the Go One More Ultra film, September 5th, 2025. And we'll be launching the Go One More Ultra of 2026, which will be hosted again on Bear Ranch in April of 2026. This race went viral for us, in my opinion, because over the years we have chose growth or excuse me, we have chose durability over growth. So many brands and businesses choose growth over durability. You know, let's make this decision even though it's not the right brand decision because we're going to make a few extra million dollars here or we're going to squeeze a few extra points of margin here.

1:09:31We can become a little bit more profitable here. So they make decisions for growth and sacrifice durability. And I believe that the best businesses and brands, and I humbly include BPN in that, continue to grow at a healthy rate year over year because we pursue durability over growth. It's a long-term play. We make decisions that set us up for the long term. And one of the reasons I believe the Go One More Ultra went viral in the way that it did because there have been many other wild, crazy endurance ultra races around the world. There are many last man standing style races or backyard ultras every year.

1:10:29But this one went viral for us because of the way the brand has been positioned over the years. the work that we have put into storytelling and documenting, our shift to performance endurance over these last 18 months, everything was kind of primed for us to have this opportunity to experience large-scale awareness and exposure from a race like this. It's because we pursued durability over growth. also this past summer i launched my book go one more which became a new york times bestseller very grateful for your guys support on that book and the book means a lot to me because it's all about how i said in the beginning go one more those three simple words have evolved for me over time from being just an action to an outcome we moved into our new hq 76 000 square foot facility all under one roof for the first time in years.

1:11:34We have about 15 ,000 square feet of office space, a 9 ,000 square foot gym, over 50 ,000 square feet of warehouse and fulfillment. It's a beautiful space, again, that I'm so grateful and proud of. And that's a result of years and years and years of hard work and maintaining profitability. and moving to the space is truly surreal. Watching it being built was so rewarding. Experiencing the fruits of your labor come together and not just to watch it happen and experience and have it, but to do it with people that you love and care about significantly. And then we launched the Future of Endurance G1M Sport Plus which was our most successful product launched to date and now our best-selling product.

1:12:32Our best-selling product these last two years was G1M Sport. Carbohydrates and electrolytes for endurance athletes, fuel and hydration. And we had a very confident feeling that launching a version of that that was caffeinated with nootropics, the first pre-workout for endurance athletes on the market. We had a hypothesis. I had a hypothesis that it was going to do really well for the brand. And it did. And once people started trying it and experimenting with it and using it for their training, realizing how good of a product, how great of a product it is, it's performed very well for us. and very quickly within weeks became our best selling product, which is huge for us.

1:13:26The summer of 2025 was a big win for the team and it felt really good. And even more so, just moving back to Texas after the move to Tennessee and moving back into the CEO role, all of those decisions, the right and the wrong, being back in the office, leading the team again, made all of those decisions worth it. But then a year later, having experienced the summer of 2025 that we did,

1:14:07big wins and success, it's great. But it's even greater, it's even better, it's even sweeter when you know it's the result of a lot of hard work from a lot of people who have committed their professional career to contribute to a mission that was started 13 years prior and is still living and breathing and impacting. So that leaves us to where we are right now. August 2025, chapter eight of Bear Performance Nutrition. Thank you guys for following along. Thank you for supporting the brand. Thank you for believing in the mission and the vision. I appreciate you guys. I love you. And as always, go one more.

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