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- [00:00]
Sean Cannell
Hey, before we jump into the show, I wanted to give you a heads up that my free YouTube strategy class is available right now on demand@thinkmasterclass.com on the class, I reveal the one YouTube strategy we use at Think Media to generate over 330,000 views every single day. So if you're new to YouTube, this will help you start right and avoid mistakes. And if you're a YouTube pro, this training will help you multiply your your growth. This class is 100% free and you can watch it now on demand@think masterclass.com now let's jump into today's show. If you've been posting videos, grinding on content, but feel like you're not seeing growth in your business or your brand, then this episode is for you. The mistake 99% of people are making is they think they need to post more, when in fact they actually need a better strategy.
- [00:52]
Nick Baer
There's three ingredients that you need to have a successful business product. It is brand new as people.
- [00:58]
Sean Cannell
So what are the fundamentals of building building a real brand that's authentic and a strong community in today's world.
- [01:04]
Nick Baer
I have a few different strategies in terms of content and storytelling of what we're trying to accomplish, but very few of those is direct conversion and call to action.
- [01:14]
Sean Cannell
Nick Baer is the founder and CEO of Bear Performance Nutrition, an $80 million brand built organically. He's a hybrid athlete, best selling author and a real time case study of how content can scale not just a channel, but an empire. In this episode, you're going to learn the 10 creator business law we're going to be covering. Why creator market fit beats product market fit.
- [01:36]
Nick Baer
Creating content and building my platforms was always done behind the purpose of building my business VPN.
- [01:42]
Sean Cannell
How one failed idea ended up leading to 50,000 new followers in three days.
- [01:48]
Nick Baer
The race blew up. We would have 20,000 people on these.
- [01:51]
Sean Cannell
Live streams and how to build a loyal community that promotes your business for you.
- [01:55]
Nick Baer
An audience is one to many. A community is many to many.
- [01:59]
Sean Cannell
If you're building a YouTube channel, a personal brand or a digital business, this isn't about working harder. This is about thinking smarter and building something that lasts. Nick, welcome to the show.
- [02:10]
Nick Baer
Sean, thank you so much for having me. Appreciate you.
- [02:13]
Sean Cannell
So I'm excited to dive in and eventually we'll get to your story, but I kind of want to go zero to a hundred real quick. And after studying your YouTube channel, over a million subscribers, your Instagram influence the business you've built. I really extrapolated 10 creator business laws that are kind of like branding, marketing, social media. And the first one is creator market fit beats product market fit. So here's the definition that the content you create creates the demand for products, not the other way around. So my question is, you didn't start with a product. You started with content and a community. How did this kind of creator market fit concept come for you and your journey if you kind of unpack that?
- [02:54]
Nick Baer
Well, it might look that way. But if I take you back, I, I may need to provide some context before I get to the answer to that. So I started the business in 2012, and this is when I was in college, and it was before I, I started creating any content. And my approach then in 2012, it was, you know, the supplement industry back then was the wild, Wild West. And YouTube was this new platform and especially Fitness. YouTube was almost even a newer part of the fitness industry as a whole. And in 2012, I saw fitness YouTube becoming a thing. And I saw these creators joining the, the platform and vlogging and just documenting their training and their nutrition behind the scenes of building a personal brand. And I thought then, okay, I'm obsessed with this industry. I'm obsessed with these products. I want to build my own brand. Here's an opportunity. So my, my strategy was to align with some of these fitness YouTubers at the time, send them product to review, eventually sponsor them, turn them into brand ambassadors. And based off my math at the time, when I was 22 years old, I thought if I could convert a small portion of their audience, that I can make $1 million in that first year. And I told my dad, I'm gonna make a million dollars with this business idea. Year one, 2012. And he said, nick, if it was that easy, everyone would do it. Year one, I did $20,000 in revenue. Year two, I did $20,000 in revenue. Year three, $20,000 in revenue. Fast forward two years later, 2014, the business still wasn't growing. That's when I decided to start creating content. So because I had no other option, the business wasn't growing. I had the supply. I had no demand. I had no money to pay anyone. I couldn't hire or pay an agency. I didn't know marketing. My strategy in 2014 was to start documenting everything on YouTube. My training, my nutrition, behind the scenes of building the business, what it's like to be an infantry platoon leader in the army in Fort Hood, Texas. And I, I, I took that approach of, of building a platform, an audience and a community in 2014, that decision there to start documenting everything changed my life and led me on this path to where I'm at today.
- [05:27]
Sean Cannell
And so it's not that influencer marketing doesn't work, but it didn't work for you in those early years.
- [05:33]
Nick Baer
I mean, I think it could have worked in those early years. I just didn't have the funds or the resources to, to do influencer marketing. Right. You know, I, I vividly remember I just told the story recently, 2013, maybe a year after starting the business, I signed our first two athletes. And this was my hometown of Palmyra, Pennsylvania, so central Pennsylvania. And I signed these athletes. They didn't have big social media platforms. Social media was not what it is today back then. And I remember them texting me one day asking if they could come see our headquarters and office and tour the facility. Our headquarters and office was literally a room above the garage of my parents house. And I had to let them down and say, I can't, I can't tour you and show you this place because it doesn't exist. Influencer marketing back then was, was so brand new. I mean, I remember in 2014, 2015 when I started using the platforms and building an audience and community, being an influencer wasn't a thing yet. But having a platform and an AUD and realizing that had leverage and potential, especially significant financial potential, I didn't realize what that would become 10 years later.
- [06:51]
Sean Cannell
So this idea of creator market fit beats product market fit is kind of the idea that now you're leading with who you are first. You create the products that you want and the audience started to gather around you, not products. Do you agree with this? Like also there's the fitness industry so saturated and there's so much supplements and there's a lack of a brand or if there isn't a brand, what's the connection point? Would you say it's true that you've kind of became, as you're shifting into 2014, you, you start becoming the spearhead yourself. And so you were looking for these other individuals. You didn't have the funds or resources, so you started to document your journey. But then also since then, has product innovation basically been a way to scratch your own itch?
- [07:38]
Nick Baer
For sure. I mean, every product that we have launched behind the brand has been selfishly, because it's something that I've wanted to create and use for myself. But people want to follow a person, they want to follow an individual, they want to follow a brand. If the core values, purpose, beliefs and goals are directly aligned with them. I Had the opportunity to spend some time with Jim Sharks founder CEO Ben Francis a few years ago and he came to visit Austin, Texas. We, we showed him and toward him, our office, our headquarters, went to dinner. And one thing he told me that I'll never forget. He said there's, there's three ingredients that you need to have a successful business. It is product. It is brand new. As people, in no specific order, you need a really good product to be successful. And especially in the long term, you need a strong brand and a brand that resonates and that people connect to. And then you need people. For me, I think people might be the most important ingredient of all of that. Not just people on your, your team, your staff, your employees, your family, but the, the individuals that you, you sign or you work with that, that share your beliefs, values and are extensions of your business. But without those three things, you cannot succeed. Brand. For me, I'm a brand builder. I love all things brand. Brand is alive. Brand has a heartbeat. Brand has a DNA. It bleeds. You build a brand in drops, you lose it in buckets. That is one of my favorite quotes. It's not my quote, but it's one of my favorite quotes that I've ever heard. You build a brand in drops and you lose it in buckets. Building a brand is a long term play. It is not done overnight. And you can't buy brand, you can't pay for brand. You have to build it.
- [09:34]
Sean Cannell
So if you were coaching an entrepreneur and somebody that wanted to follow in your footsteps and they wanted to figure out creator market fit, they want to productize. And maybe they've started, and many of our listeners have started with a YouTube channel first, with an Instagram account first they're thinking about productizing. It's kind of a question of what comes first, the chicken or the egg. Well, you're just to be clear on your story, you, you started supplements in a dorm room first.
- [10:03]
Nick Baer
Correct.
- [10:04]
Sean Cannell
But for some, they're also like, okay, I want to monetize. Do I try to get into a physical product? Do I launch some kind of merch line? Do I white label? Do I, do I be an ambassador? There's different things. How could I find the right person to be an ambassador with or to partner with? Maybe I don't feel like I want to have the complexity to start my own supplement brand. But many people are making full time careers as through brand sponsorships, letting you do the heavy lifting in your company. But maybe being an ambassador for you, what would you say though would be A framework for someone like really tapping into that authentic, true way of monetizing to find their creator market fit.
- [10:46]
Nick Baer
I actually think that most creators would be most successful not starting their own business and their own brand, and that they will be most successful with brand partnerships and, and making money off of commissions and license fees and going down that route. I think I have the upper hand in leverage in the way that I built my business and, and here's the way I'll lay it out, and here's where I'd love people to, the way that I love people to think about it. I started my business first because I had a very strong, authentic, raw, real passion and interest behind building the business that I started. And then I had to find ways to actually build that business and create demand. And that's why I started creating content. Creating content for me was always not to be an influencer or not to build this massive platform. Creating content and building my platforms was also or was always done behind the purpose of building my business. Bpn. I think one of the issues that people run into is they become a creator, they build this platform, they have this audience, they have this following, and then they think to themselves, how do I monetize this? Which is not necessarily the wrong way to think, but they don't get creative enough and they don't think in an authentic, genuine way enough. And they don't create something or build something that is real and passionate to them. They just see the dollar signs, they see the opportunity which might work for certain individuals, but are you able to do that for the 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 years that it requires to build something very strong and durable that has legacy and legs to stand, stand on? So I think if you're, if you're a creator and you want to build a business, a brand, and you want to take that approach, I mean, there's a million questions you have to ask yourself first. There's a million ways to build a business. Some that require a lot of time, some that require little of your time and energy, but it's probably going to cost more money. But it's, is this business, is this brand something that's real, authentic and honest to yourself and is it something you actually want to spend your time building that might not pay you for years to come in the future?
- [13:12]
Sean Cannell
Did any products flop because they didn't match your audience desires, but you thought they were great ideas?
- [13:18]
Nick Baer
Yeah. So I started the business 2012. Initially it was because I was really interested in the bodybuilding, powerlifting strength industry and space if you would have asked me in 2012 if I still had the business in 2025, what would that business look like? I would have said traditional sports nutrition that has a booth at the Arnold Fitness Expo every year in Columbus, Ohio and we are sponsoring bodybuilders who step on stage. 2018, we launched our first health and wellness supplement that was Strong Greens. It became our best selling product very quickly. So six years into building the business, we are now a split between health and wellness and strength and bodybuilding. In 2020, we launched our first endurance supplement which is G1M sport carbohydrates and electrolytes for endurance athletes. That was slow out of the gates but is now our bestselling product. Over these last 13 years, we have evolved from a traditional sports nutrition bodybuilding supplement brand to an endurance consumer brand, which is so interesting to me because when I got out of the army in 2017, I literally said I will never run a day in my life again. And that's funny because from 2018 to now I've done multiple marathons, ultra marathons, triathlons, Ironmans. It has become who I am, it's my identity, it's what we do here at bpn. So along the way we've discontinued products because they didn't necessarily, necessarily fit who we were trying to become. The vision for the brand, like one of our, our really good selling products actually we just discontinued a few months ago. It was called Endo Pump. Endo Pump was a muscle pump enhancer, non stimulant that is formulated and was meant to increase blood flow to the muscles being trained so you get a stronger pump. This is a feeling that bodybuilders chase after. It did really well for us and we made multiple seven figures on this product. However, it did not align with the vision of what we saw BPN becoming in the future based off of our goals. So we discontinued that product. A few other products that we discontinued along the way, one was a nutrition bar called the Field Bar and one was a meal replacement powder called Strong Food. Those two products I believe didn't succeed even though they are great products is because there wasn't a really direct use case for those products. It was a nice to have. For example, the Feel bar was a a nut based protein bar. Had about 15 grams of fat because it was dense in nut butters, about 25 grams of carbs and like 16 grams of protein. It was a really good tasting bar but it didn't have a clear function. Same with Strong Food. It was really nice to Have. It was an expensive product because the formula was very high quality and impressive. It was a nice to have, but it wasn't a need to have. Where we found the most success with our products is it's a need to have, not a nice to have. And there's a very clear use case for the product. So I'll give you an example. The fuel bar did not perform very well. We discontinued it and we launched a new bar called the Go Bar. The Go Bar is a lightweight oat based bar designed to consume before or during endurance training. There was a very clear use case for that product. The Go Bar does very well for us. Two bars, different messaging, different form factor and use case. And I think when you go into product development, what we've learned is a product has to have a very clear, this is how you use it, this is why you use it. It's not a nice to have. This is a need to have. And this is what it does. This is the problem it solves and this is how it benefits the consumer.
- [17:19]
Sean Cannell
Powerful stories with clear insights that could be applied to any product development. Need to have and nice to have when it comes to, I mean I think digital products coaching as opposed to just fluff like good. But you know, is it, is that essential ingredients? Okay, so we've covered one of our 10 laws creator market fit and covered a lot of nuances of brand which we'll circle back on throughout this conversation. But law number two, stop selling. Start telling stories. Sell better than sales pitches. And again, these laws are coming out of me studying your content, your brand. You've said that storytelling was the missing piece in your early business. What changed when you kind of stopped selling or started to tap into storytelling? And you also. Around this time Casey Neistat was vlogging and coming out. What are some of the lessons you learned there and how this all tied into your journey on YouTube?
- [18:18]
Nick Baer
My business and my YouTube really started to scale when I was stationed in South Korea in 2016 on a nine month training rotation. And when I got to Korea, we're doing $2,000 a month in revenue. My goal after that nine month training rotation was that we were going to be doing. I say we. It was, it was just me. I was gonna be doing $10,000 a month in revenue. And within 90 days we went from $2,000 a month in revenue to $10,000 a month in Revenue. A few things that change. One, I built our website. I rebuilt our website on Shopify. Before I was just on a friend's website. Server, we can only take payments through PayPal. I rebranded the products. So we did new logos, new packaging, new labels, new look and feel, launched a few new products while in Korea and I doubled down on YouTube and I had more clear intention behind what I was creating. And this is when I came across Casey Neistat. And I would just study the way that Casey would tell stories. It could be a 9 minute vlog in New York City. There's a very clear intention of that video. But he takes you through all these different avenues and compartments and side stories to get to this one big overarching story and you're hooked the entire time. So I would take this structure and then I would replicate it in my videos. At the time, like I said, I was stationed in South Korea. I would travel into Seoul on the weekends. I'd have a topic that was on my mind that I wanted to cover in this video. And I would tell this story while taking the the train into Seoul and trying some of the food within the, the fish markets in the streets and interacting with the the local population. And this is where I learned the power of storytelling. And my YouTube channel when I was in Korea grew from 30,000 subscribers to 80,000 subscribers. This is also where I learned and realized that brand building is a long term play. And in every piece of content I create, every video, the goal is not to sell. The goal is to bring people along for the journey in the ride. And it might take them three, six, nine months after coming across my content, viewing it religiously and then finally deciding to purchase until they become a consumer. And that's okay with me. Obviously the goal is to expedite that where it's not taking nine months over time to convert someone to become a purchaser, that is a viewer initially. But I was okay with playing it for the, the long term. I, I wasn't thinking about converting people instantaneously. I was thinking about every piece of content was a deposit into my content bank to build loyalty and retention and bring people along for the journey and the ride so that when they finally do buy in, they are so bought in and hooked and believe that they want to tell everyone they know. Spread the word of BPN and go one more and then customer retention just improves over time.
- [21:40]
Sean Cannell
How would you describe that storytelling structure if you broke it down? Fast forward to today now you've practiced it a lot, maybe you've refined it. So what, what is your current storytelling structure if you're about to create a new piece of content and we have.
- [21:54]
Nick Baer
A few different like buckets of content we create. There's like vlogs, there are short form or long format actual films around events, stories, people. There is kind of strictly some, some product education type videos behind the scenes of building the business. But really with every piece of content we're creating, and I'm creating it, is laying out what is the goal of this piece? What are we trying to accomplish? Is this that we're trying to educate a consumer on a new product? Is this that we're trying to teach people how to use a product and incorporate it into our everyday life? Is this more so pulling back the curtain and showing people what it's actually like here at BPN in the business? Or is it more broad and overarching where I'm just trying to create a piece of content that shares my core values in hopes that people come across it and they see alignment in themselves and their core values and they want to learn more. Some of my content is conversion, some of it is just to gauge curiosity. I want people to come across and say, I like this, I relate to this. Let me learn more, let me watch more, let me learn more. I give them opportunities and point them in different directions of the podcast or articles or other videos. But I have a few different strategies in terms of content and storytelling of what we're trying to accomplish, but very few of those is direct conversion and call to action. It is more so long term play. And with every piece of content I'm creating, it is how to, how do I, how do I share my vision, my core values, my purpose, beliefs and goals in hopes that someone aligns with that and wants to learn more, that curiosity is sparked.
- [23:49]
Sean Cannell
If a founder said, and this is very common, storytelling is a big buzzword. And a lot of people say like, you got to have story and you need a good brand story and you need a good marketing storytelling. And if you're a public speaker, you need a good story. But yet it seems still to be elusive. If a founder said, I don't know how to tell a story, what would you encourage them if they were about to film their next video? Like practically how they would structure that?
- [24:13]
Nick Baer
That is an issue is for one, not everyone has a really strong story. So don't fabricate your story or don't try to turn something into something that is actually nothing. If you don't have a really strong story, don't force it, you know, But I think people can practice storytelling. And that's exactly what I did when I was in my, my barracks room in South Korea. And it comes with repetition and practice. I mean, I. I can give you an example of what I did when I was in Korea. One video that just. That pops into my head is how much money do. Do I make as a second lieutenant in the army? And you would think that, all right, I'm gonna click on this video, and it's gonna be someone sitting behind a camera like I am right now, and just talking to the camera, you know, here's how much money I make. And this is what the journeys looked like. And this is how much money you can make with more years in service and promotions and rank. But no, I. I laid out my. My day for that weekend. It was probably a Saturday. And like I was telling you, I had to get on the train and travel to the train and spend some time in the city and bounce around and travel back. And I would kind of storyboard and script out. Okay, what are the pieces I want to cover? And then I'd have that in my back pocket or written in my phone. And as I'm traveling, I'm just marking it off. Okay, I've covered part one, part two, part three. So I'm not only providing people value, and I'm actually delivering on what I said the. The title of the video was, but I'm keeping people engaged and interested, and I'm able to add these little nuggets along the way that showcase my personality or my brand or my interests and other things. You get. You get pieces of me with a story that I'm trying to tell that is pretty black and white and boring and clear, and it gauge. Gauges and sparks interest, but it comes with repetition, more repetition, and just trial over and over and over again. You make these refinements and you get better.
- [26:26]
Sean Cannell
This is genius. And what it sounds like is very Casey Neistat esque in the sense of normal talking head. Video is like one layer of storytelling. The fact then you storyboard that and you essentially vlog and take people along with you. There's an overarching level of interest and curiosity. And then there'd be the unpredictable that would happen during the day, as well as just the quirks from that. So it almost sounds like it's almost like good TV in a sense as well, where any great show or movie has multiple overlaying, overlaying narratives and divergent things of interest that keep you engaged. It's just not linear, boring, just told. And if. Am I articulating it right? What are your thoughts on my breakdown of that?
- [27:10]
Nick Baer
The. The unpredictable is the best part, I remember this one video in in Korea where I'm just going through the day and telling the story. And, you know, I'm. I'm thinking of a million things when I'm traveling. So I'm in this cab. I'm looking back at clips on my camera that I filmed. I'm looking at my list of topics I need to cover. I ended up leaving my phone in the cab. I get dropped off, I film some things. I go look for my phone. I can't find it. I had to find this kid on the street who spoke some English. He called my phone and was communicating with the cab driver who had my phone who didn't speak any English. And I filmed all of this. And it became such a fun, engaging, unpredictable moment of the video that I will never forget because it brought life to the story. It was a story within its own genius.
- [28:05]
Sean Cannell
Makes total sense and I think, encouraging for us as listeners to think about get out of the house or think about the core thing you teach, but then bring it into the real world, you know, Fast forward to today. Cameras like the DJI Pocket 3 are incredibly powerful and popular. Are you still vlogging? Sometimes? Because at the level you're at, you have film crews and other things. Is there still times where you're vlogging and what do you vlog on?
- [28:30]
Nick Baer
I think it's really important that I keep vlogging because there's a different feel in a video where it's someone filming you and you don't directly address the camera. Like there's a certain time and place. With some films that we do, we make it very obvious from the beginning. We will not look into camera. We will not talk to the camera. That accomplishes a certain mission for sure. But I've also found when we go too hard on that or that's all we're creating, there is a disconnection between the content and the consumer, the viewer. So I make sure that in at least 80% of our videos, maybe not in every clip, but certain parts of the video, I am holding the camera. I am talking to the camera. You see me flipping it down and showing my shoes, and you know that I'm holding it and talking to it because it brings people in and it makes it feel very real and personable and vulnerable. And I think it's a really important part of it.
- [29:38]
Sean Cannell
Hey, we're going to get back into the conversation with Nick in just a second. But one thing that he said that really stood out to me was content isn't just marketing. It's how you lead people into your mission. And if you're new here, that's exactly what we teach here at Think Media. How to grow your brand and your business with YouTube the smart way. So if you've been thinking about using YouTube to start or grow your brand or as a content creator wanting to monetize and get more views, check out our free one hour masterclass available at think masterclass.com this class is on demand. It's no fluff, highly tactical and you can click the link in the show notes or just go to thinkmasterclass.com to get access to the one hour deep dive training. You're going to learn the one strategy we're using across multiple YouTube channels right now that's generating over 150,000 organic views every single day. No gimmicks, no guesswork. So to check it out, just click the link in the show notes or when you're done listening to today's conversation with Nick, go to think masterclass.com if you're waking up and you're doing a run, what camera are you using today to this film while you're doing your routine, about to head out in the morning by yourself at home?
- [30:50]
Nick Baer
Sony A7S3. That's like my go to 16 to 35 millimeter lens. Sometimes I'll use a GoPro for certain runs but I have run before. I don't do it anymore. I have run before carrying my Sony A7S3 the camera.
- [31:07]
Sean Cannell
It's not small.
- [31:08]
Nick Baer
No dude, I've carried it for a whole 10 mile run before. I don't know why but I've done that.
- [31:14]
Sean Cannell
Okay, that's awesome. Okay, so we've talked about creator market fit, we've talked about storytelling as a second lot. Stop selling, start telling. And really even powerful that you're like very rarely are you even giving a call to action or you're giving like a full on conversion. Like it's so much of of your vision, your core values, your beliefs, creating curiosity and you've built this. I mean the last number I I've seen is a 50 million a year which may be higher now company which this seems counterintuitive. We're about to go to Law 3. But I'm also curious, are you doing any paid traffic or has this all been organic?
- [31:56]
Nick Baer
We do paid, we do paid now. This year we'll do just north of 80 million in revenue. And I didn't start doing any paid advertising until 2017. So from 2012 to 2017 we weren't doing any, any paid advertising. Then we started doing some paid advertising. But those first five years, like to get the business, we got the business about 1.7 million in revenue without any paid advertising. And that was all through organic content, that was through email campaigns. And then as we started growing and becoming more sophisticated, you know, hired a VP of marketing, started working with different agencies on ad spend. We've learned a lot over the years. There have been times where we've been super inefficient with our paid marketing. We're in a chapter and season right now. We're extremely efficient with our paid advertising marketing. And it's probably the least amount we've spent on paid marketing in the last couple years. Something we actually changed about two years ago. And this is something I feel very strongly about, but you can only do if you have a really strong brand, is that I started hiring people who came from some of these brands out there that are consumer brands that take like the, the traditional playbook approach of you need this amount of me, this amount of pieces of ugc and the UGC should look like this and it needs to have this hook and this call to action and it needs to say all these things and it shouldn't feel or look like your organic brand. And you got to constantly be selling. And we took that approach and we spent lot of money on paid advertising and we, we pushed it really hard and it converted horribly. And our, our return on ad spend was a nightmare. We then made this shift a few years ago where we said we will not create any sort of paid advertising content that we would not put on our own organic platforms. And if you've seen VPN's organic platform, we have a very, very strict standard for what we post in terms of brand content, product content, the look, the feel, the tone of voice, the messaging. So all of our paid advertising content pieces now look and feel just like it could live on our organic feeds. It is very on brand. It. It doesn't take the traditional playbook approach of using all this different UGC or diverse types of content pieces. Our conversion is the best it's ever been and our ad spend is the lowest it's been in years. But we've had to learn the hard way of just testing, monitoring, auditing. I think it's really easy to spend money digitally and these platforms tell you you're getting a certain return. But if you don't do your due diligence and actually learn how to measure that and find out what's incremental you can be wasting a lot of money.
- [35:02]
Sean Cannell
So much gold in this conversation. Move into the third law and you've already unpacked some of your early story, but this one is true for you and essential in the creator economy. Start before you're ready because waiting for perfectionism kills momentum. And so when you think back to the early days, learning as you went, what gave you the confidence to kind of start before you were ready? Did you feel ready? Were you just moving fast, breaking things in those early days? And why is that important for anybody listening, that's starting something new?
- [35:32]
Nick Baer
I think I felt ready in the early days based off of ignorance and being naive. I truly thought, I mean I, I told, I say my team in 2016, 2017, it was me, my brother and our friend Joe who still works in the business. And I told them and I believed it. I said, guys, we're one of the biggest supplement companies in the industry right now. We were doing 1.7 million in revenue. I thought we were competing with the, the, the big players in the game, but I was so bought in and believed in what we were doing so much that I believed that myself. But when I was building BPN in the early days, it was blinders on. I wasn't looking to the left, I wasn't looking to the right, it was head down, build, build, authentically build what I want to build and connect with an audience. And if I'm getting really good feedback from them, like let's just keep doing that. And if you look back at some of my first pieces of content, like there is this one piece that I share every year and it is me sitting at a table in a room above the garage of my parents house talking to a camera. I had this big BPN green poster behind me. I was stumbling over my words. I didn't know what I was saying. It was so difficult, awkward, challenging and uncomfortable. But I knew that's what I had to do to get better and get to the next part, the next chapter. And I just stuck it out. I just stuck it out. Those first maybe even couple hundred videos on YouTube I've ever posted are painful to go back and watch. So if anyone is afraid to get started or they say, you know, I'm just not good on camera or I don't know how to use social media, neither does anyone else when they first get started. But that's what separates the people who make it somewhere and those who don't is that you have to be willing to just jump in and sprint and run before you're ready. I heard this, this analogy a few weeks ago and I loved it. It was on a podcast and I can't remember which podcast podcast it was. It might have been my first million with Sam Par and he was talking about like people who want to be the best and he was relating it to a marathon. Everyone says it's a marathon, it's not a sprint. Which is true. You have to approach building a business, building a brand like it is a long term play. But if you want to be the best, you know, the best marathon runners in the world, Kipchoge for example, go try to run a mile with at Kipchoge's marathon pace. It is going to be a dead sprint for you. So just because you're taking the approach of it is a marathon, it's not a sprint. It doesn't mean you move any slower. Like you still have to sprint in every chapter, every phase, every mile to keep up with the best.
- [38:27]
Sean Cannell
I'm curious before we move on to the next law, you've got a new book out. Go one more find the clarity to make intentional life changing choices. And so much of success in any endeavor is coming back to these principles you share in this book. And so under the idea what's one that comes to mind when you do think about the mindset necessary when we're starting before ready, waiting for perfectionism kills momentum. And we'll circle back to the book a little bit later. But maybe there's a story or an idea that comes from the book that ties in here.
- [39:00]
Nick Baer
I mean one of my favorite quotes that's in the book. It's a chapter in the book that my running coach Jeff Cunningham said a few years ago that has stuck with me ever since is that it's better to be consistently good than occasionally great. And I, I tell people this all the time and I say this very humbly and there's a lot of awareness here. I believe that my greatest strength in life is my ability to be extremely consistent. Even if you look at me when I was younger, a child in high school, I was never the stud athlete. I never really stood out. There was nothing about me early on where someone said that guy's going to build these platforms and this business one day. But I've always just been very consistently good and that is my strength. I am very consistently good. I, I, I do the things every day, every week, every month, every year that I know I need to do to get to where I want to be. I'm never going to have that Year where it's just a blow up Hail Mary year. But I know 10 years from today, I'm going to be much further than I am today. And I think a lot of people should take that approach, which is a hard approach to take because it truly does play the long game. But if you are willing to embrace and endure the process and show up consistently good rather than occasionally great, you will win massively in the future.
- [40:30]
Sean Cannell
I love it. Okay, let's hit Law, Law number four, which is turn your team into characters. So this started with you, but over the years you've involved your team into the story. People followed really the movement you've built. How is your approach in thinking about a good story as multiple characters? And what has been your approach? Preston, Joe, other team members? Thinking about sort of a team mentality and a brand mentality.
- [40:58]
Nick Baer
I mean, one of the things I've learned over time is that you can go really fast alone, but you can go so much further together. For starters, I don't want to, to build this business and I don't want to live this life alone. No amount of money can make up for relationships and community and people in that journey, in that process. So I, I truly want to do this with a team. And I found that when you add that into your content strategy and people see it and they realize that it's real, they want to be a part of it as well. It's not just, hey, I'm following this one person, but I'm following this group of people, this family, and I'm now a part of that family from the outside looking in. One of my favorite things that Sam Parr actually ever said, and I think this was when he was on my podcast, he said, as a creator, and I think this is one of the, as a, in a crater economy, this is one of the biggest pieces of information you can grab onto. There's a difference between having an audience and having a community. An audience is one to many. A community is many to many. As a creator, if you focus on building a community as opposed to an audience one, you will experience more success. But as the creator, your brand, your success, your financial security does not rely on you consistently and constantly creating and doing more things because the community is talking within themselves in creating on their own and sharing and spreading the word on your behalf. So that has become part of our strategy and then also just part of our standard operating procedures of work.
- [42:49]
Sean Cannell
And how. What's your philosophy? When people kind of have different approaches, if they're going to include their Kids, their wife, their family on social media. That's sort of maybe a self awareness question. Some individuals don't include any of their personal life, others do. How, how do you, how would you coach somebody for maybe figuring out how they want to build their brand?
- [43:11]
Nick Baer
Yeah, that's a tough one. You know, in, in the beginning when I started creating content, it was just sharing everything, everything. I just documented every part of it. So as my life progressed and I got married and we started family and we had kids and now I have two kids, I have a three year old daughter and a almost one year old son that just naturally became part of the storytelling piece of my content in my life. And I think there are a bunch of different ways to approach this and I will share why I continue to share and document my life, many parts of it in my, my story and my family. I feel this massive responsibility as a creator, as a leader, as a content, a content creator, business owner, role model that I'm trying to inspire, guide, mentor, coach people who are in my same season of life or people who are in a season of life behind me or even ahead of me that are trying to become fathers one day. Partners, spouses, business leaders, coaches. And I feel this responsibility to share all those aspects to show and say you can be a very dedicated and committed professional who leads a team, who builds a business, who takes care of their body, but also has a foundation of faith and is a believer in God and is a strong, committed husband and father. And I feel this responsibility to be a role model in this space. That's why I continue to share all of those things.
- [45:05]
Sean Cannell
Yeah, that's powerful. What are your thoughts before we move on with. You've built such a strong personal brand and there's so much you're clearly like. It's a, you're a founder led brand. You know, Russell Brunson talks about the attractive character and in some cases there's different approaches. Some CEOs might hire other talent or work with different individuals. They don't want to be on camera. Clearly you're kind of, you're such a driver here. If you look far into the future, are you already thinking about succession and thinking about the limitation of being such a, you know, powerful personal brand? And how do you, how are you thinking decades ahead?
- [45:46]
Nick Baer
Absolutely. There is such a thing as key man risk. And as business develops and grows and you start exploring opportunities into the future, key man risk is a big issue. There's a, it's a blessing and a curse. There are pros and cons of being a founder led business, especially a founder led business who is also a content creator. So we have started implementing strategies the last couple years and we plan to and we have strong strategies going to the future of de risking the business off of me. And as we brought on more athletes and partners and ambassadors who embody the brand just as much as I do, showcasing them, using them and bringing them alongside our events, our activations, our content pieces, our storytelling, that is, that has been extremely beneficial. And we measure actually a lot of that data through post purchase surveys pretty regularly. So we, we had this survey we recently ran that showed three years ago, 80% of the new customers purchasing from BPN bought because they came across my content. We ran that same survey multiple times this past year and it showed that 40% of the people who are buying from BPN are coming from my content. And if someone had an ego, they'd probably say oh no, like pump more content with me. But I see that that trend of data and I get jacked up because that shows our strategy is working. So I think you can, you can build a brand off of a founder, maybe even a founder who is a content creator. I think that is a strong strategy initially, but there has to be a plan in place to de risk that key man issue and diversify maybe at some point or years into the future. It's going to take a long time, has to be very intentional, very strategic, but it can work.
- [48:01]
Sean Cannell
Let's go a little bit deeper in brand law number five is embody the brand. And you've touched on this and you're living it at the highest level. Being the message, living the brand. Not just talking about it, being about it. You've said that the brand isn't just a motto, it's a mindset that you embody and you're the embodiment of this. Go one more movement. How do you keep alignment between personal life, content and company culture?
- [48:29]
Nick Baer
So I read this book this past year that put a lot of things in perspective. It's one of my favorite business books I've ever read. It's Be 2.0 by Jim Collins. Chapter four is all about vision. And up until this past year, my vision for who BPN was and where we were going was all in my head. And I would share it audibly, as much as possible, as frequently as possible, to everyone and anyone. But I didn't ever clearly define it after reading this book. I think every entrepreneur, business owner, creator should read this book. Even if you're not in business, you can apply this to your family. There's three components to vision, its core values, its purpose, and its goals. Core values and purpose should not change more than once every 100 years. And goals are 10 to 25 year targets. When I went through that vision, creating, experience and experiment, and I clearly defined all of those components, shared it with a team, it made everyone's job so much easier. It made their ability to make consistent decisions much simpler. It was easier to say yes to things and it was much easier to say no to things. It created alignment throughout the entire business and our brand, from operations to marketing to social media to storytelling to product development. For me, interesting enough, the vision for the business is very closely aligned with my lifestyle that I live for myself and my family and our goals and what we want to do. And that's part of the leverage you have as a founder and CEO of your own business. But I believe you can apply that same vision, creating, experience and experiment not only to your business, your brand, what you're doing on social, what you're creating, but your family and your entire life. And I highly encourage it.
- [50:29]
Sean Cannell
What do you think? You might just make up some, you know, gut feeling observations of when you witness other businesses right now, maybe in your industry, maybe in the creator economy, how much lack of authenticity or authenticity is there when it comes to this idea of brand? Because it feels like when talking to you, and I'm, you know, a super fan of even just the products and bpn, so I've been able to witness and see the alignment and the authenticity over the years. Maybe the question is like, how much fake stuff do you think is out there? Or how much. And I'm not saying there's even bad intent. Maybe people that just don't get it or they're trying to copy somebody else. I don't know if the question's coming across clear. What do you think are the mistakes that people make in this by maybe trying to say they're a brand? But there's, there's disconnection. I don't know if these ramblings are prompting any thoughts from you.
- [51:20]
Nick Baer
I don't think that the big issue is that people are trying to be inauthentic. I don't think they're trying to fake it. I really don't. I think people, I think most people want to build something that is strong and durable. It aligns with what they love and they're passionate about. My, of my observation in so many of the brands out there, so many, is that they are lost and confused they don't know who they are, who they're speaking to or where they're heading. And that every opportunity is the right opportunity. We have been unfocused before and when you are unfocused, it is the most dangerous place to be. You know, one opportunity comes across your lap and you don't want to say no to it because it's a great opportunity, so you take it. But if that opportunity does not align with that vision, you have your core values, your purpose, your goals, you should not pursue it. So I think so many people have not gone through the exercise of clear defining their vision of where they're trying to get to. So they don't know what to work on, what their strategy is. You really can't create strategy or tactics if you don't have a vision. Everyone's working off of some other goal or metric and there's not alignment. And I'd say most businesses are probably working towards 20 objectives. Strip that down to 3 to 5 and just hyper focus on this 3 to 5 and you will see massive return in success.
- [52:52]
Sean Cannell
Genius. I didn't formulate the question necessarily great. But the answer turned out amazing. And so we're talking about embodying the brand. And this brings us to line number six. Big bets get big attention. So some of the things that you've done, like high stakes, high commitment events or activations have captured attention. And one just happened. The backyard ultra marathon event. Individuals were running over four miles every hour on the hour and this thing went viral. And I want to say the numbers, you might have the updated numbers. Over 50,000 new followers in 72 hours. Organic breakdown, you know, no paid ads, pure creativity. What, what happened here? How did this come about? And in the intersection, maybe like there's kind of the marketing and branding lessons, but this is also just an overflow of who you are as doing this kind of go one more movement. So break this story down.
- [53:46]
Nick Baer
Yeah. Would you say the title of this.
- [53:48]
Sean Cannell
One was Big bets get big attention?
- [53:51]
Nick Baer
Yeah. I love that. That's a great observation. Before I get into the ultra, a few other things that that really helped our growth over the years. One, when I said I was going to run my first sub three hour marathon, everyone said you will not. There were threads all over the Internet, all over Reddit, all over, let's run saying there's no way this guy's running sub three. And guess what? I said I was going to run sub three. I went out and tried it and I ran 324. I missed it. And I trained for a whole nother year and then I got it. I got 256. But that grabbed so much attention because I threw this thing out there and said I was going to do it and people doubted it. Again, one of my favorite quotes, belief comes before ability. And then when we started talking about hybrid athlete training and this combination of lifting heavy and running far, which was contradicting to the way so many people train and the lifestyle of fitness, that grabbed a lot of attention. There was a big bet and we believed in it and had a pay big payoff. There were a few moments over the course of time where I went all in because I believed in it and I saw the potential and I saw the future. And it paid off. They go one more ultra. This is actually a super interesting story of how we got to this point that I feel like I gotta share. So last year we decided we wanted to host an event and we wanted to do something fun, different, exciting. So this race was gonna be in a parking garage here in Austin. It was a relay race, a two mile, two mile race, four person teams. So each person had to do 800 meters in the parking garage. And the years before we hosted events, they were lottery systems. We would have thousands of people sign up for these lotteries to be selected, randomly selected for this race. This parking garage won in Austin. It was going to be fun. You didn't have to prepare for it. You would finish it and feel fresh. You know you weren't going to be hurt or damaged. It was just supposed to be light, fun and engaging. We launched signups for it thinking that thousands of people were going to sign up like they have for our previous races. Historically, I think there were like 26 people who signed up. Huge failure. What we learned through that experience, though, is that we were trying to speak to our consumer in a way that they didn't want to be spoken to. Our consumer does not want fun, easy, engaging, light. They want challenging. They want something that's going to break them. They want something that requires focus and a long preparation. So that relay race that failed for us, the team initially was super bummed that it didn't work. And I told them, guys, brands pay millions of dollars for this type of consumer insight and research. This is the greatest thing that has ever happened to us. This failure will pay off in dividends in the future. So we went back to the drawing board and we came up with the Go one More Ultra. It's based off of a last man style, last man standing style race. 4.2 mile loop. It restarts every hour on the hour until there's one person left. Everyone else that DNF did not finish. So if you finish that loop, that 4.2 mile loop in 40 minutes, you have 20 minutes to rest until the next loop begins. We had over 5,000 people enter the lottery. This race was hosted on our ranch. 125 runners were selected. Uh, some people didn't show up. So we had 120 people line up to start the race, which was May 24, 2025. And after 56 hours, there were two runners left. They ran 235 miles. And the only reason the race ended is because this crazy storm came into Austin and destroyed the course, the ranch, our tents, everything. What's very interesting and gives me like goosebumps is two days before that race kicked off, I messaged our CFO and coo, Josh Holley, and one of our advisors, Chris Hickey, and I said, I have a feeling about this race. You know, a few months ago, we were the Austin Marathon, and we activated the Austin Marathon in a very disruptive way. And it paid off very well for us. And I said that was a powerful event. But this ultra in two days, I have a feeling it's going to change the game for us. We kicked off that race. There was a lot of buzz behind it, but as the race went on and there were two runners left that were battling it out by themselves for 20, 26 hours on their own. What happened online was crazy. It started going viral. People were hosting watch parties, tuning into our live. One of our, our guys on the team, Trey Freeman, who's been with me for five years now, he runs our social and communications. He was chasing the runners around for 20 hours on live so that people could tune in and watch. We would have 20,000 people on these live streams. BPN's Instagram grew by 50,000 followers in three days. The race blew up. Absolutely blew up. And it put us on the map for endurance in the ultra space. Huge win. But the best part about going viral is that when you go viral for something that's very closely tie and identify to your brand. Like, if we would have had a meme go viral on our page, there's nothing cool about that. You get no win. This was a race called the Go. One more ultra on our ranch. One additional loop every hour, on the hour. I mean, it spoke to our consumer, it spoke to our mesh message, it spoke to our mission. It brought people into the fold of who we want to be talking to it was the biggest win we've ever experienced for the brand.
- [60:19]
Sean Cannell
Is there any other thoughts? If you're for listeners, the scope of where you're at, the ability to have a ranch, you know, a team to execute and we already talked about starting before you're ready. But if you, if you were to get people into a creative headspace to be thinking about doing that for their brand, doing that for their business, thinking this way for their company, big bets get big attention. What would be a thought or a prompt you'd have for them?
- [60:46]
Nick Baer
I think disruption wins and you have to find something that is not replicable. The, the best way that I've. I've been described to this is take an event, take a package, take anything. If you can swap out your logo for someone else's, you can't own it. Find something that you can truly own, that you can disrupt and that is very closely aligned with your mission, your beliefs, your product, your services and go all into that. I think that in person events have a lot of opportunity but I think that most people, 99.9% of people don't know how to do in person in real life events. Right. They try to follow this blueprint and they just check the box. It, it has no connection. There's nothing authentic about it. It doesn't connect with people, it doesn't activate people. It's boring. And I think there's a, there's a way to use in person events to truly activate.
- [61:58]
Sean Cannell
All right, we have a couple more laws and we can hit these pretty quickly here. Use content to learn, not just promote. Number seven. You might give another quick thought on this. You already hit getting feedback post purchase surveys. But you know I was actually just watching your stories and you were talking about okay, do you want creatine gummies? Would you be most interested in or would you want it tabs so they're a little less maybe carb centric. What would be most interesting? That's a direct survey that was on your Instagram stories. But what is your thinking as far as using content as a listening device and getting audience feedback to shape your products or your brand's direction.
- [62:41]
Nick Baer
It is a game changer but it has to be done in the right way. So you can't run surveys or ask your audience for their opinion and for advice if you're not going to actually incorporate it and use it. If you are a content creator and you have a platform, you have a community, you have an audience, you should be asking for feedback that guides your product, services, marketing, Everything you do. And I don't think that most content creators realize how powerful that is. I mean, if you do a, a brand survey and you don't have a platform already existing, to do that in a right way, you have to hire a third party agency and it's going to cost you multiple six figures, potentially. It's very expensive. If you have a platform and an audience, you can run a survey, multiple surveys very frequently and get all that information for free and then follow up and provide those people with exactly what they asked for and wanted. It has worked so well for us. I mean, sometimes when we run these, these surveys and these polls on my company's Instagram or my Instagram, for example, we'll get 10,000 plus responses. You know, what color hat do you want? For example? Black. Okay. We launched a, a black cle. Go on. More hat. A few weeks ago just to our SMS list, which I think there's a lot of power in sms, lots of power in SMS marketing just to our SMS list. And we sold, we only ordered 3000 hats initially because we didn't know how well they would do. We sold 3,000 hats in six minutes just to an SMS list. And that's because we asked them, what color hat do you want? What style hat do you want? Will you buy it if we bring it? They're primed. It's their feedback. They asked for it, now we deliver.
- [64:47]
Sean Cannell
All right, amazing. Okay, law number eight, clarify your brand message. We've already talked a lot about branding, but some of the things you've talked about is you, you brought Story brand workshop in for your whole team. Donald Miller, what came out of that for just your internal branding and your external branding?
- [65:06]
Nick Baer
That was a powerful workshop for us back then and it, it clarified a lot of things for us over the years. We've, we've done multiple different variations of that internally. We brought in consultants and worked with groups to helped us get there. But one of the biggest key takeaways that I personally took from the Story Brand workshop was that the goal with marketing and messaging is that you're trying to make a consumer, a viewer, a listener, burn as few calories as possible. So if you put something out there, is it super confusing? And does someone have to think about it? Does someone have to burn calories to try to figure out, what is this? How do I use it? Who's it for? What are the benefits? I look at some brands right now who launch a business or a product behind a name that you can't even pronounce. I'm instantly turned off because I'm thinking, I, I don't want to spend the mental energy, the mental calories, first off trying to pronounce this and then figuring out what exactly it is that you do. So I think people can instantly increase conversions in success by clarifying names of product, clear intent and usage. I mean, I, I can go back to the example of the products that haven't worked for us in the past or ones that didn't have a very clear use case. We had to get creative in the way that we explained why someone should use it. Here's how you can potentially use it because it's a need to have, not a must have. When it's, here's this product, here's exactly how you use it, here's this service, here's exactly what you're going to get out of it. It is very clear the consumer has to burn very few calories to understand that. And it's much easier to go forth and purchase, consume, use.
- [67:06]
Sean Cannell
This is genius. It makes we work long and hard to come up with different YouTube titles. And we are asking ourselves, is it, is it clear? Does it trigger curiosity? The longer it gets, the more complex it gets. Well, maybe it's accurate, but. And what language is it using? And it's kind of going through this. So you could apply this clarity of brand messaging to product packaging, product names, to your business overall, to your content overall. Are you still involved in the tactics of that? How has your team evolved in terms of how you title the YouTube video or how you position social media content?
- [67:43]
Nick Baer
So the, the person that runs all social and communications for the business, like I mentioned before, his name is Trey Freeman. In 2019, there were four people on the team here at BPN. And then I hired our first creative in 2019. That was Jordan uttered. So from 2012 to 2019, I was filming, editing, posting all the videos for myself and bpm. Then I hired Jordan and then we hired Trey. Jordan and Trey know the brand just as well as I do, believe in the brand just as much as I do. So having someone, two people that are creating the content and then creating the social strategy and the communications to copy, who really understand and know the brand. And not just the brand, but also my vision for the brand is extremely beneficial. Those are two very important roles. But we actually did this workshop. We brought in a copywriter about two years ago and she's a consultant. She came from working at Nike previously and she helped us build out our tone of voice guide. So we have a brand guide that says here's the colors you use, here's the logos we use, here's what social content should look like, here's what videos should look like, here's how we add captions to videos. That's our brand guide. We then have a tone of voice guide. That is who we speak to, how we speak, what we say, what we don't say, what emojis we can use, what emojis we don't use. We don't use exclamation marks ever. What we capitalize, what we don't capitalize. So between our brand guide and our tone of voice guide, those are our bibles here that Jordan and Trey both hold the standard for.
- [69:40]
Sean Cannell
It's fire and great application for us. Even if we were to perhaps just go have a conversation with Chad GPT, you're listening to this. You might not be bringing in a copywriter that could run a workshop that's previously been with Nike, but even to have a discussion with Chad beat replaying what Nick just broke down and building out a tone of voice guide and a brand guide for your own YouTube channel and brand. Okay, two more laws. Number nine, productize your process. We touched on this a little bit earlier, but every product you promote is something you use. And when did you realize that your life was the roadmap for product development? You recently just launched a brand new product as well. And this would speak to the continuous you being kind of a guinea pig, the research and development process of wanting to innovate and continue to expand your product line. So. So what are your thoughts on this productizing? Scratching your own itch for listeners, this.
- [70:42]
Nick Baer
Is one of the reasons that I, I like the long term approach of building a business and a brand. You build it in, drop it, you lose in or you build it in, drops, you lose it in buckets. And when we launched the business it was one product and then it was two and then it was three and then it was four and then it was five, so on and so forth. What I see a lot of businesses and brands do is they come out of the gates with 10 products just because they feel obligated to have 10 plus products. Sometimes those products aren't necessary. Again, they might be nice to have but not need to haves every product that we've created. And I'm just sharing my experience and I think people can apply this to theirs as well. Every product that we've created was because it was something that we saw a problem that could be addressed and solved, something that we wanted to use or something that we were already using but saw opportunities to improve and make better. We know our brand so well. We live the lifestyle of our brand. We know our consumers very well. We know what they're looking for, what they need. But also when you start doing this long enough, your consumer, especially your loyal consumers will tell you what they need that you don't already offer. So one of the things that our consumers were asking for two years ago was a caffeinated version of our bestselling product G1M Sport. So we came out with G1M Sport plus which is carbs, electrolytes, caffeine, nootropics. One of the things our consumer's asking for right now. Cuz endurance gels are one of our biggest selling products here at BPN. Our endurance gel right now is 24 grams of carbs per serving. Our consumer is asking for a 50 gram carb endurance gel. So that's something we're currently working on with manufacturers to bring to life because we see a need. There's enough people asking for it. But even much more than than product creation, I would even say distribution like we, we listen to our consumers in terms of where do they want to buy BPN products at? Is it our website? Is it Amazon? Is it retail? Is it internationally? Right now we're getting a lot of demand from the UK and in Europe specifically for our products Australia. So I think you should go into the approach of build products and offerings that are authentic to your brand that solve a prod problem that you would use yourself that your consumers are asking for and want. But then beyond product, what does distribution look like and how do we maximize that to get into as many people's hands as possible with convenience?
- [73:28]
Sean Cannell
How would you suggest creators audit their own life or product opportunities early on you said the majority of creators would do best as an ambassador brand deal sponsorships with somebody else who's doing the heavy lifting of building a company. How if somebody's thinking about a filtering process or is it as simple as just maybe looking at their credit card statement and saying where do you spend money? What do you already invest in? If they wanted to look for those opportunities to partner up, how could they audit their own life for the fit?
- [73:57]
Nick Baer
I find a lot of these problems on my early morning run. That's where I can really digest what has happened from the previous day. And that's where I do my deepest thinking that might be different for everyone. But to answer that question, it comes down just having a level of awareness and taking notes throughout the day, I'm constantly observing. I think this is one thing that we can all get better at is because we're always distracted, especially by the phone that's in our hand or the email that's being pinged, or the slack message that's coming across. We can do a whole lot better just being more aware and auditing and taking notes. So I'm constantly observing and I'm just observing the way that I move and live and I watch other people and I'll just go in our break room sometimes and watch the way that people mix up their food. And you can learn a lot about what people need based off just watching. You're seeing people add certain sauces or here's an example, this might be completely sidetracked, but it's, it's, it reinforces just the power of observation. Initially here at bpn, we, we provide lunch for everyone. So we were bringing in this meal prep service called Snap Kitchen here in Austin. And it was these pre prepped meals and it would have like a meat, a veggie, maybe some rice and some sauce all mixed together in a bowl. You could throw the microwave and heat it up. And after watching people's behaviors for a while, we realized that most people were just going towards the bulked meats that were prepped. So in addition to the meal preps meals that were coming with this order every week, there was also like bulk chicken, bulk bison, hamburger patties. So we were watching people, they were just getting the bulk meat or taking the meat out of the pre prep meals and then adding a packet of rice and heating all that up. They just wanted the meat and rice. So we stopped purchasing a lot of the pre prepped meals and we started buying meat in bulk, in rice packets in bulk so they could just mix up their meat and rice. That was just based off of adaptations and evolutions of observation and then implementing what you learn through observation. I think a lot of people could sit back and just look at parts of their life or watch other people. The way we came up with GM Sport plus, for example, is that in the morning, wake up, have to take our fuel source, GM Sport and then we go make an espresso or a coffee. So you're drinking two beverages in my case at 4:30am before going on this run. I just want one thing. So what I started doing is mixing up my GM sport, taking a caffeine tab, opening it up, taking an Alpha GPC tab, opening it up, taking a tyrosine tab, opening up and dumping in and Then I eventually realized if I'm doing this, I'm sure other people want to do this. We should turn this into a product. Observe, document, reflect, and then see if there's actually a market fit survey and then build and implement.
- [77:09]
Sean Cannell
That's deep.
- [77:09]
Nick Baer
It's.
- [77:10]
Sean Cannell
Rewind that part. But you broke the whole thing down to, to that product. Okay, as we truly land the plane, we're gonna hit the 10th law. But I do want to hear a little bit more and encourage listeners. You do have a new book and if you've found some insights, some aha moments and some epiphanies today, check out the show notes. Check out the link in the show notes to Nick's new book, Go One More. What was your vision behind the book? Why write a book? And what will people encounter with in this book? And I imagine it's also an audio as well, which would be a great way to consume it. And so we'll have it all linked up in the show notes, but tell us a little bit more about it.
- [77:47]
Nick Baer
So Go On More is our brand tagline. It's our mission. It's tattooed on me. It's also tattooed on thousands of other people as well. And I founded go on more 2019. 2020. I was on a training run for one of my first marathons in Austin, Texas and I had an 18 mile run scheduled for that day. I was 10 miles into that run, legs fet heavy, I was tired, I was fatigued. I quit. I started walking back to my the house that me and my wife were renting at the time. As I'm walking back to the house, I'm thinking to myself, if I quit on this run right now, what does that one say about my character? And then two, what else will I quit on in my life? Will I quit on my business? Will I quit on my. My wife, my future family? So I turned around, I walked back to the trail, I ran the additional eight miles and I ran one more to prove to myself that I could. I ran 19 miles that day, came back to the house, wrote one more on the bill of the hat, under the bill, took a photo of it, not thinking much of it, posted on social media, and it took off. And all of these people started writing one more on the bill of their hat and then taking a photo of it and sharing it with me. So I realized I struck a nerve there in many people. That then evolved into Go One More. We trademarked. It became part of our mission. It became our mission. But back then, Go One More for me was just an action. It was doing more of anything in hopes that it would achieve some sort of success in results. One more hour on your business, one more mile, ran one more hour in the gym. And then over the years I realized that going more is much more than an action, it's actually an outcome. And you only achieve the outcome of going more when the action you're applying to your life is very intentional. It's doing the right things at the right time, in the right place, with the right people. There is still a component of Go1more which is an action, but it's much more than that. It's an outcome. This book is the lessons and stories and principles that I've learned over the last couple years of how Go and More has evolved for me and the mission and journey I'm on to create a legacy that I'm proud of, with people that I love and living a life that is both ambitious and content at the same time.
- [80:11]
Sean Cannell
Inspiring and a must read. So definitely pick up a copy of the book in whatever format you love and hit that in the show Notes we do have one final law, but I do have a quick question As a student of brand, is there any like immediate brands that come to mind that you love? Maybe an entirely different industry could be a fashion brand, something and maybe one reason why do you find yourself studying different brands and thinking about, especially in this new era of social media dtc, the ability to start things from anywhere in the world of maybe a few that you've been inspired by.
- [80:47]
Nick Baer
Apple is the first one that comes off come come to mind. One of my favorite podcast is Founders by David Senra and he shares the stories, life and work of successful entrepreneurs, athletes, businesses. There's a lot of people that I highly look up to and respect. Not necessarily in business, but for how focused they have been in their life and just dedicated all their time and energy and resources to their craft. And maybe the goal wasn't to make money, it was to create impact. But in in the end result it did create them. In some cases, generational wealth like Michael Jordan and Kobe, Steve Jobs, Apple. Apple knows exactly who they are, what they're trying to solve, the problem they're trying to fix. They're not trying to create a solution for everyone. Their messaging is clear, the product is clear. Not everyone loves Apple and that's okay. You shouldn't try to be something for everyone. But for the people who are Apple buyers and purchasers, they probably have all Apple products. It's easy to use, it's very clear it's not overly complicated. That is clarity. That is genius. Brand marketing and positioning strong.
- [82:12]
Sean Cannell
Okay, last one. Law number 10. And this one is summarized as one big action beats a hundred small ideas. You touched on bold moves earlier on and there being these pivotal moments, you declared, I'm going to run a sub 3 marathon. Missed it the first year. Got it the second year stirred up some controversy in the industry. People saying he couldn't do it. From choosing ultra races to launching new product lines. What are some of your final thoughts? Good place to end the podcast. One big action beats 100 small ideas.
- [82:43]
Nick Baer
I say no to a lot of things, and it wasn't always that case. I used to say yes to everything, and I even used to tell people, say yes to everything because you will learn something from it. In the early days when I didn't know, I didn't know how to get started. I didn't know where to go. I didn't know what to do. Everyone who would cold call me or email me trying to sell a product or a service, I would take that call in hopes of learning something. Sometimes I did, sometimes I did not. But it got to a point where I couldn't keep doing that because time became more valuable and limited. And now the. The amount of things I say no to is immense. I say no to a hundred things a month, like big things. And when I say yes, it is a very confident yes. That's why it's so important to have that vision, because you can be more consistent with your yeses, but also your nos. So a few months ago, a brand approached us to do a collaboration, and if that brand would have approached me two years ago, I would have done wild things to make that happen. It was a dream come true. Like this was a dream brand that I wanted to collab with. But when they came to us a few months ago, there wasn't alignment between our core values and our purpose. And it didn't help us get to our goals, the goals that we clearly defined. It wasn't going to help us get there. So ultimately it would have been a distraction. So we had to say no to that brand collaboration, which so many people did not understand because it wasn't a hard yes. So the only way you get to where you want to be is by saying no many, many, many times because you know exactly what you're waiting for to say yes to.
- [84:30]
Sean Cannell
Well, I don't know how you feel, but this has been one of my favorite conversations on The Think Media Podcast 10 Creator Business Laws from Nick Baer and if you're watching the YouTube version, I'd love to hear your biggest takeaway moment or aha moment in the comments section. If you watch or listen somewhere else, it does help the podcast out to rate or to review or to hit the like button or to share or to do all of the above. And I want to thank you for being a part of our community. Lastly, if you are wanting to get serious about YouTube and you understand the power of coaching and accountability, check out viralvideocoach.com on that page you'll find a simple application to see if you would be a good fit for working with one of Our Think Media YouTube coaches to reach your goals faster. You know, personally I love investing in my learning. I buy books and courses and I go to events and it's all been very transformational. I watch YouTube videos, but the greatest quantum leaps in my life have been when I invested in coaching. I was at one point dealing with chronic pain and nerve entrapment and tendonitis and tendinosis in my right arm from working at a computer. And I remember when I hired Erica and Joe Wong in Las Vegas and from White Wong Physical Physiotherapy and everything started to change. It was a big investment, it was a multi month investment, but it was a higher level of implementation accountability. I learned that when you pay, you pay attention. Because I never missed my sessions, I would show up and whether it was the exercises, whether it was the information, whether it was my shoulder getting dry needled and having Joe shoving needles in my arm, it was all helping me with progress and recovery to reach my goals. And that's essentially what we've created at Think Media. We've got a lot of different ways you can get engage with us and if you're loving this free content, super grateful. You know, hang out with us here on the podcast if you want to go to a higher level. We've got a YouTube course and a community, but we also have a coaching program and some individuals realize like that's the shortcut. Having a strategist that knows you and can look at your channel and can give you that one on one feedback. But also the accountability, also the access to me, also the access to just our entire team and our playbooks, all of our checklists and resources and the softwares that we use. So if that sounds interesting to you and you just want to learn more, you could go to Viral Video coach. Com, you fill out an application and if it's a good fit you could jump on the phone with somebody at Thick Media and we could talk about our offerings and see if they're a good fit. And the cool thing is, if not, it's no big deal. We only work with people that are a good fit so that it's a win win for both of us. So again, if you want to check that out, go to viral video coach.com I want to thank you again for being a part of our community, being a part of the Think Media movement. My name is Sean Cannell, your guide to building a profitable YouTube channel. Appreciate you so much. This is the Think Media podcast and I cannot wait to connect with you in a future episode.