162: Q&A: Fitness Advice for New Dads, Am I Done with Preps and Races?, Hiring Insights, Phone Disciplines, & More

24:45Nick Bare:They're not a team player. They're not collaborative. They have all the solutions. Another red flag, which is a more long-term red flag, you're rarely going to identify this early on, but maybe in some situations. One of the books I'm reading right now is, it's by John Gordon. It's called The Energy Bus. I highly recommend it. And John Gordon talks about energy vampires. A red flag is an energy vampire. If you identify someone as an energy vampire, you got to get rid of them ASAP. we have had energy vampires here at BPN over the years and they have either been let go or they have self-selected to leave themselves.

25:38Nick Bare:I have found that oftentimes when you have a really strong culture, the culture polices itself. An energy vampire is an individual who sucks the life or energy out of you and your goals. behavioral signs, they often play the victim, refuse to take accountability, are consistently negative, demand attention, and use guilt to manipulate situations. The impact is you end up spending time with them, too much time, and it leads to severe exhaustion, anxiety, and feelings of being drained. you might hear this and think wow that's an extreme do those people actually exist yes yes everywhere energy vampires exist and they suck the energy and life out of everyone they are around you have to get rid of energy vampires and like i said you might not identify that as a red flag early on, but eventually if you do, if you don't get rid of it, it's like a cancer and it overtakes your entire organization and it's extremely dangerous and detrimental.

27:00Nick Bare:So those are some of the red and green flags that we've identified when hiring or even post hiring. Question number three, what fitness advice do you have for new fathers and how to balance training with a change to a routine.

27:19I'll be very honest. When Charlie was born, who was our first child, I struggled with this. And it took me a long time to adapt. As someone who is very rigid and structured with routine, I did not want to break my routine. Like routine for me has always been comfort, consistent and it makes me feel good. It makes me feel like I'm doing the right things. I'm checking off things to do.

27:58Nick Bare:And a routine allows me to stay on track. Having a child definitely disrupted my routine. And what I've learned over time is that I have to, we have to place our responsibilities over our routines. So some of my best fitness advice for new fathers, how to balance training and being a father and your new routine, it's to have a plan, always have a plan. But you have to be okay with that plan getting disrupted and going out the window. This is one of the reasons I wake up at 4.30 a.m. every morning to either run or lift. most days our kids don't wake up until 7 or 7.30 a.m. Most days, but not every day.

28:54Nick Bare:There are days where I wake up at 4.30 a.m., I start getting ready to go for a run and one of our kids is in a sleep regression and wakes up before I go out for that run or shortly after I start running and I have to come back home or not run. And this used to really hurt me. and anger me and stress me out because I had a plan. It was part of my routine. That plan and routine was disrupted. And it sounds so selfish to say that, but it took me some time to have grace for myself and to realize that our life responsibilities, especially our family, our spouses, our kids are much more important than that five mile run that I was going to do.

29:50Nick Bare:I can find time later in the day. And if I can't find time later in the day, maybe I'll do it at night. And if that doesn't work, I'll do it the next day. I'll get back on track. One day isn't going to disrupt and ruin all of my fitness progress. But I have a plan going to every day. and I wake up extra early at 4.30 a.m. so that I can be running or lifting by five, done by six, 6.15, have breakfast, do my Bible reading, get caught up on some work most days before our children wake up. But some days it just doesn't go as planned and you got to give yourself some grace. and be okay with that. You know, one of the ways that we stay on track within our household with fitness and nutrition, and I want to have Steph on the podcast here soon to talk about this, our morning routine and what works for us based off of the season and chapter of life that we're currently in.

31:04Nick Bare:But I'm constantly trying to find ways to be more efficient, to make our lives easier and less stressful. Example, if I wake up at 4.30, I'm training by five, I'm done by 6.15, breakfast is done by 6.45, the kids aren't up yet. I know what we're going to be making for dinner that night. Yesterday is a good example. I knew we were going to be making baked sweet potatoes and chicken and broccolini for dinner. So I try to find these small pockets of time to be more efficient to make the day easier, the more complicated and chaotic it becomes. So before the kids woke up, I was done with all my stuff.

32:03Nick Bare:I diced up all the sweet potatoes. I marinated the chicken, threw it in Ziploc bags. I cleaned up all the broccolini and got it set up. So we just had to throw it in the oven. When we got home at night, everything was prepped. So when I came home later in the day and Steph picked Charlie up from school and we're all getting ready for dinner, it was super simple. We threw the diced sweet potatoes on a pan, threw those in the oven, threw the marinated chicken on the grill, through the broccolini in the oven the last 20 minutes and dinner was done in 40 minutes. All the prep work was done, seamless.

32:43We could sit down at the dinner table, have a family dinner and it made our lives easier. So it's planning, preparing,

32:52Nick Bare:finding these small pockets of time to be more effective and efficient. But at the end of the day, responsibilities outweigh routines. and you got to be okay with the plan going out the window and give yourself some grace. But what I found is that it can't be an excuse for why you don't train, why you don't work out, why you don't eat healthy, because they are both doable. But I received this Instagram message last week and I wanted to share because I think it's a really important message for parents, especially new parents, new fathers. And the summary of this Instagram message was that there was his dad and they had one kid and he wanted to start training for an ultra marathon.

33:59Nick Bare:that was very time consuming. And they had a second kid on the way and he asked me a question and just the way that it was positioned, will this second kid coming ruin my ultra marathon prep? And I read that, I was like, ah, I hope you didn't mean it that way.

34:24but that's placing routine above responsibility.

34:32Nick Bare:That's having your priorities misaligned. There's no way that a kid can and ever should ruin a fitness prep because the kid, the child, your family is much more important than the race, the competition, the fitness prep. Okay, fourth question. What are some important leadership lessons you have learned in the last year? I love this one. I have a few that I'm going to share. Some that have been shared with me from mentors, advisors that I have. Some that I came across in reading, listening to podcasts, audiobooks. The first one is that our inner circle often needs more than we think. And our outer circle often needs less than we think.

35:35Our inner circle, the people in our inner circle, this might be two to six people. The people in our inner circle need us more than we think. And the people in our outer circle, the world, people we aren't closely connected with, maybe acquaintances, people who follow us on social media, they need us less than we think. it's important to prioritize our time and energy to the people closest to us and if you spread yourself too thin you can't go deep and narrow and create significant impact on the people within your inner circle and the reason I think this is a really necessary leadership principle and lesson and I'm at fault of this myself it's really easy that when the people who are within our inner circle typically and generally

36:53are spatially close to us on a daily basis.

36:58Nick Bare:So because we see them, we're around them, it might feel like we are giving them the attention they need and desire, but we're just in their presence. We might not be asking them, like, how are you really doing? Do you need help? What can I do to support you? Like truly having those conversations because it feels like we are with them in their presence. So we're giving them what they need. And the people who aren't closest to us that aren't in our inner circle, they're in our outer circle, our time and energy might be directed and prioritized to them because we automatically think that our inner circle is good, go, check.

37:52Nick Bare:Say good morning, saw them, I'm around them, I'm in a meeting with them, I had breakfast with them, so on and so forth. But the reality is that our inner circle, the people who are closest to us, who are the people that you could call at 3 a.m. and say, I need your help. And they get out of bed, throw their shoes on, hop in the car and drive over to your house right away. That's your inner circle. Our inner circle often needs us more than we think. And our outer circle often needs us less than we think or believe. second leadership lesson is that there's no upside at all to burning a bridge other than a very short-lived emotional victory.

38:46I was just talking to the BPN team about this in our all hands and why you should never

38:58fight hatred with hatred. But we should fight hatred with love and compassion and care.

39:11I myself have burned bridges in the past.

39:19In most cases, because I was prideful and my ego was driving my emotions and it was a very short-lived emotional victory. Somebody hurt me or told me something that I didn't want to hear, even though it was true. And I responded in a way that burned a bridge. And for me, in the way that I responded, it was a win. Ha, take that. That's emotional immaturity. There is nothing more hateful and unprofessional than emotional immaturity. The way that you start something and the way you end or transition out of something are both equally important. And many will begin, fewer will commit, less will persevere, but the strong will finish.

40:26finish well and finish strong. Never burn a bridge. Because the only win, the only victory is a very short-lived emotional one. You also never know when you're going to have to walk back over the bridge that you burned previously. I've experienced that on both sides of it. many times in the past and it never feels good. You really got to swallow your pride and arrive with the most utmost humility possible. The third realization and leadership lesson is accepting the fact that we are not in control of the world. I heard this from a Tony Robbins podcast recently. He said, we are not in control of the world.

41:28We're not and never will be. So don't even try to be. But we are, however, or we do, however, have the ability to influence it through positive leadership. We can influence the world, but we cannot control the world. We can only control what is above our eyes, our minds, our thoughts, our perspectives, our ideas, our opinions, the way that we show up with either positivity or negativity. We can't control the world. We can influence it. The only thing we can control is our thoughts, our minds above our eyes. And he ended with freedom comes from growth, not from control.

42:20Nick Bare:this can be applied professionally and personally there have been many times in my life where i'm stressed back is pressed up against the wall i want to white knuckle and just

42:38control every part of my life and whenever i do that things get worse because I learned that I don't have the ability to control every part of my life. There are things that we are completely out of control. We cannot control the world. We can influence it. But freedom comes from growth, personal professional growth, not from control.

43:09Nick Bare:And the last important leadership lesson I'll share that I learned last year This was shared with me yesterday, actually, from a mentor. Probably my favorite one I'm going to share. A man or woman on a mission has dirty feet and a battered back.

43:33This is also something I shared with the BPN team. I'll reference a Lewis Howes quote. people without purpose in a meaningful mission are dangerous people, not only to themselves, but to those around them. When someone is on a mission, they know who they are, what they believe in, what they stand for, and where they're going.

44:03Nick Bare:That's how you create culture. That's how you create a tribe. That's how you create community. That's how you create a movement. And when you stand for something and you're bold in that, it also means that you don't stand for other things. And that's going to rub some people the wrong way. And that's okay. When you're on a mission, you have dirty feet and a battered back. a man or a woman on a mission, visually, the way that I see it,

44:44they're dredging through mud and thorn bushes and uncharted territory. And there's thorn bushes that are cutting them

44:58Nick Bare:and there's brush and thicket and trees. They're breaking through and there's no path. There's no road in which they are going. They are leading. They are trailblazers. They are pioneers on a mission. And people are going to see this. And if they don't align with who you are, what you believe in, what you're pursuing, where you're going, how you're getting there, they're going to stand behind you. and shoot arrows at your back to try to bring you down. And there's that man or woman on that mission, pushing through the mud, pushing through the brush, making a path, trailblazing, and people behind just battering the back of them.

45:54And that's okay. You got to accept that. Someone's got to do it. If not you, then who? being bold, standing for something, knowing who you are and where you're going, it's going to attract the right people and it's going to deter the wrong people. What else could you ask for? Next question is, what has changed the most in the way that you and the BPN team operate the business over the last couple of years? There's a lot of things that we have changed but I will focus on the fact that we have defined and shared and been disciplined within our execution of our vision, focus, alignment, and systems.

46:54Years ago, and I've talked about this before, the vision of BPN was in my head and I would loosely share it with the team. But as the organization grew, the team grew, our initiatives grew, our responsibilities grew and became more complex. I learned how necessary it is to define your vision and then share that vision. Vision is made up of three components, core values, purpose, and goals. core values and purpose don't change more than once every 100 years.

47:36Nick Bare:Goals are 10 to 25-year targets. And I learned this from chapter four of BE 2.0, which is Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0. It's a book by Jim Collins. If you haven't read chapter four, the vision chapter, it's extremely important. But defining our vision and defining it by core values, purpose, and goals and sharing that with the team has been extremely beneficial. It has created focus. It has allowed us to say yes to the right things, but more importantly, no to the wrong things. And it has created alignment within the entire organization and team. One of my favorite quotes from Greg Cruschel actually is all about having focus.

48:29Nick Bare:he talks about some of the habits that leaders make, the bad habits that leaders make that can destruct their ability to lead and an organization. And one of those is that leaders do too much. And he says, doing too much doesn't just rob you of energy, but it suffocates your productivity. one of the things we've changed in the last couple of years is just focus, doing more with less. And we have a handful of key initiatives for 2026, and we're hyper-focused on those initiatives. And we say no to a lot of things, a lot of opportunities, but also a lot of distractions so that we can stay focused because you and your team can only do so much.

49:24You can only do so much. And if you spread yourself too thin, you don't just rob yourself of energy, like Craig Your Shell says, but you suffocate your

49:34Nick Bare:productivity. We have given projects and initiatives more time and attention to maximize their effectiveness. And to be honest, we used to set ourselves up for failure by taking on too much, doing too much and not giving projects and initiatives enough time to breathe and really do them right. And we fell into this bad habit for years and it felt like we could never get out of it where we threw so much onto our marketing calendar. We had events and product launches and initiatives and campaigns and all these different things. and we thought we could handle all of them within a given year. But when push came down to shove, I mean, it was back up against the wall, just like trying to keep up month after month after month.

50:34And we finally realized, okay, we are unproductive because we're trying to do so much and we're exhausted at the same time. We're exhausted and unproductive. so we made a change do more with less I'd say one of the other changes that we've implemented and this has come with hiring more specialists as opposed to generalists is we've implemented more effective systems into the business I think there's a point where you can over systematize a business where it becomes a robot

51:11Nick Bare:and it's just like everything is automated. I don't think everything should be automated, but building appropriate systems within a business allows for better communication, collaboration, productivity. Having the right amount of systems in a business is important. There's a difference between being busy and productive. I recently had Colonel Ed Arnston on the podcast and we were talking about this. I don't think we shared it on the actual episode, but we talked about it off air. It's this concept around what he called unpurposeful activity. And it's something he's identified and eliminated over his 20 plus years of military leadership and service.

52:06and it's when people spend their time doing too much of unproductive activity and it's detrimental to the individual but also the organization. So vision, focus, alignment, systems and then eliminating, identifying and eliminating unproposable activity has been game-changing to the way we operate BPN the last couple of years. Next question is, what disciplines do you and Steph have around technology and or your phones? I thought this was a great question.

52:56I think it's safe to say many of us struggle with a technology phone addiction and I hate to admit it. I think back to growing up in the 90s. I was born in 1990. It's like late 90s, early 2000s before the iPhone was a thing. I mean, I remember when text messaging first became a thing and that was a distraction to us. Now we're carrying around small computers in our hands on a daily basis. I remember in high school, our house growing up was like the house to be at. My friends would sleep over in our basement almost every night, every summer. There'd be like six of us

54:02Nick Bare:I would sleep over in the basement. We'd have Halo parties. So we would link up all these different Xboxes and play Halo. We'd play capture the flag outside. We'd ride our bikes around town. We were always outside. And we had this one friend who was dating this girl and they were texting all the time. It's when texting first became a thing. And we'd always get mad at him because he'd always be on his phone texting. and it was even before like phones had the full like screen of all the letters. It was like one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, zero and each number had three letters so you have to press the number on the phone

54:52to pull a different letter up. I mean, text messaging back then took forever. You know, if like one was ABC, you pressed one three times to get C to populate on the screen for the text. And we get so mad at this one friend for always being on his phone texting. I can only imagine now what it's like for groups of friends to get together in high school if they do. And what role phones in technology play. I'm really fortunate and grateful that when I was in middle school and high school, phones just weren't the distraction that they are today. But they're a distraction to all of us. It's pretty disgusting.

55:46I always say at some point in my life, I'd love to get to a point where I have a flip phone again. Right now, based off my role in the business and just what I do for work, I don't know if it's doable, but that's the vision for myself in the future, in my family. We get back to living off flip phones. There's this one phone actually I've been thinking about buying. It's called the light phone. And essentially all you can do on it is text, call, it has a calculator,

56:24Nick Bare:it has like a notes section, maybe a calendar and I think directions and music. Like you can import songs onto it. I've been thinking about buying that and maybe leaving my iPhone to the office and then using the light phone when I'm home on the weekends, the mornings, the evenings. because I hate the fact that my phone steals my presence. And we can incorporate disciplines and boundaries as much as possible, but we are weak humans and we will find ways to break those boundaries. But some of the disciplines that Steph and I have around technology and phones, something that we've recently started doing actually is utilizing this app.

57:16Nick Bare:it's called app block we use it for our phones so what we do right now is and we recently started incorporating this we do a weekend social media fast so we turn on this app within the app you can set timelines and like schedules essentially to be able to use certain apps in your phone. So right now, the way we have it set up is that we can't access any of the social media Saturday and Sunday on our phones. And then during the week, the way I have mine set up is that I can't access social media on my phone from 4 p.m. until 7.30 p.m. I typically leave the office at 4 p.m. and then we get the kids down around 7.30 p.m.

58:16So my social media is blocked during this time. This is family time. And then it also is blocked from 9 p.m. until 6.30 a.m. This is Monday through Friday. So I have accessibility on social from 7.30 p.m. to 9 p.m. If I have to check stuff, upload something, but not until 6.30 a.m. the next morning. And I've had to activate this mode within that app. It's called strict mode

58:48Nick Bare:where you can't just turn the app off. You have to open up the app. You have to wait five minutes for it to deactivate. It's ridiculous, like the type of boundaries that we have to incorporate to keep ourselves from being addicted to technology, social media. but it is what it is. We have found that the weekend fast is amazing for just our presence in our attention on the weekends. And we're going to keep doing that. And then using the scheduled blockings during the week has been beneficial as well. And activating strict mode so we don't go in there and turn it off. But other than that, I mean, we don't watch much TV, movies, or television.

59:39It's not that we don't want to, but we just really don't have time to. By the time we get the kids down, normally in the evening, we get the kids down 7.30, 8 p.m.

59:50Nick Bare:We will sauna and then shower, get ready for bed. And we try to be asleep by 9.30 p.m. most nights. So we shoot for. so there just really isn't time for movies and tv shows and series or any that kind of stuff and to be honest when i'm on social media i actually don't consume much content on social media i'm posting and engaging with my content vpn's content but when i do consume content on social media, it is for recipes. I get a lot of recipe ideas and inspiration. And I just love seeing the creativity that people incorporate into their food and cooking and things that we can easily incorporate into our meals for the family that is quick, simple, healthy, nutritious, and delicious.

1:00:51And the last question I will touch on. this is in response to the Ironman film that we released on January 29th, 2026. It was called The Last Dance. The question is, are you done with races, preps, and fitness competitions forever? And not necessarily. I'm sure at some point I'll get the itch to prep and train for a competitive marathon time again, or maybe an ultra or maybe a high rocks, who knows? But the intent of that film, the message that we wanted to get across, the message that I wanted to share is that for the last seven, eight years now, I've gone from fitness prep to fitness prep to fitness prep, marathons to Ironmans to ultras to bodybuilding competition,

1:01:59Nick Bare:to high rocks, to marathons, to ultras, to Ironmans. For the last seven to eight years, it's been prep to prep to prep. And we document these preps and we film all of it. And it's extremely time demanding, energy demanding. Doesn't just take away from my physical and mental energy, but it takes away from my physical and mental energy for my family and the team.

1:02:37And I love training. I love competing. I love racing. but I found that my identity became rooted in performance, in these preps, in achieving. And I didn't want that any longer. I didn't need that to be my identity any longer. And I learned a lot of these last seven, eight years.

1:03:05Nick Bare:I love training, love training. I'm still getting after it every day. This morning I ran five miles and then I lifted with a team. Like I said, during the team lifted a back and biceps workout. Health, fitness, training, doing hard things, pushing myself will always for the rest of my life be foundational, fundamental, instrumental.

1:03:35But the chapter and era of me going from race to race to race, competition to competition to competition, because my identity was rooted in those preps in the performance is over. Not to say that I'll never do a prep again or a race again or a competition again, but I don't need them to justify my worth and who I am. Because I know who I am and what I'm rooted in is much greater than the fitness prep, the competition, the race. I found myself needing those things to consider myself worthy of anything. And I see a lot of athletes and other people, other men doing the same thing. And I wanted to be a leader and a role model to share that you don't need the race after race, after race, the prep after prep after prep, the performance constantly to be worthy of anything.

1:04:51And this film, The Last Dance, was a story in showcasing the transformation, the renewing of my mind, of my soul in this realization. the work doesn't stop. It's not slowing down, but it's not sacrificing my time and energy, physical and mental for the prep because there's other people that deserve that energy that are much more important and prioritized in my life.

1:05:32So that's why it's called The Last Dance. not saying I'm never doing a race again, but in the near future, it's not on the schedule. It's not a priority. I got some other goals I'm pursuing at the moment. So I hope you guys enjoyed this one. I appreciate you sharing

1:05:58Nick Bare:and asking questions that facilitated and sparked some of these responses. Love you guys. Appreciate you. And as always, go on more.