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

**Nick Bare** (0:06)
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Today's episode is a question and answer that I prompted on Instagram a few days ago. Some really good questions, and things that I've wanted to touch on, but haven't been able to find a way to naturally and organically incorporate them into an episode up until this point. You know, I was just talking to Matt, who is the podcast producer, runs the entire show. And there's a lot of conversations that I have on a daily basis, whether that is talking to the BPN team, we're in one of our leadership or brand meetings, I'm on a call with somebody or a group of people. And when I leave these meetings or these calls, I typically just take notes of things that were said or thoughts that I had, that I wanted to retouch on at some point. They left a lasting impression. And this episode is one of those opportunities to incorporate some of this content. Like this morning, for example, we had one of our all hands meetings with the BPN team. And we do this once or twice, sometimes three times a month here at BPN. And this morning, which is a Thursday, the team arrived at 9:30 a.m. We kicked off a team lift, which was awesome. We all went into the gym and we threw down. Everyone was training in their style. We had people doing strength workouts. Me and some of the guys did a back and biceps workout. There were people on treadmills. Oz is training for his first half Ironman. So he was on his bike doing an hour endurance bike session. There were some high rocks, circuits going down. So we trained for an hour. And then Eric from El Ambre Taco pulled his truck up behind HQ, served tacos to everyone. And then after that, we had about an hour meeting, talking about some initiatives we're working on here at BPN and just some thoughts that I wanted to share with the team. And some of those things that I share with the team are incorporated into today's question and answer. I also had this realization this past month, and I just felt called to share this. It's been an observation at most. But I think what's been so interesting, or one of the things that's been very interesting about building this organization and sharing my life online since 2014 You know, I've been documenting everything. For the last 12 years, I started BPN in 2012 And as many of you know, those first couple of years were brutal. In 2014, I picked up a camera and decided that my last resort to try to grow this business was just to start documenting and creating content. And I filmed everything. And I had no clue where to get started, but I just started filming my work ounce. What I was eating behind the scenes of building the business, my experience as an infantry platoon leader at the time, stationed at Fort Hood, leading a platoon. And that changed the entire trajectory of my life, truly picking up that camera. I spent the last $500 to my name on a Canon T3i, a 50-millimeter lens, a RØDE microphone, and I was editing on my laptop at night with all the compiled footage I had from the previous day. And I've shared a lot over the last 12 years. Everything we've done to build the business, races, preps, competitions, training, meeting Steph, getting married, having kids. You know, everything, documented everything. And I've shared it in real time, which is unique. You know, typically when someone shares their life, it's a reflection of the time, the past. So one might share a journal or write a book or make a film, a documentary. But in this case, with myself and BPN, we have been sharing in real time as it's been happening, what we've been learning, experiencing, winning, losing, succeeding, failing along the way in real time. So oftentimes, what I hear from people is, you know, I thought Nick was focused on X, Y, and Z, and now it's this. Or here's the next Nick Bare chapter or era. Or even sometimes I hear that what I'm doing is flip floppy. You know, one year I'm focused on strength training, and the next year I'm focused on endurance training. One year I'm sharing certain leadership principles that I'm implementing, and the next year, I've eliminated those leadership principles and I'm trying new things. And while it might look flip floppy from the outside looking in, it is just the evolution, the growth, the transformation that I and we are experiencing in real time. That is the pro and con of sharing growth as it's happening with everyone. Growth, learning, scale, transformation, it is not linear, it is not neat, it is not perfect, it is messy. It is messy the entire way through. And I've loved that we've been able to share that in real time, because you can watch the transformation, you can watch the growth. I oftentimes go back and watch old videos from 2017, 2018, 2019, and it's so amazing, but at the same time, cringey to watch what we were doing, what we were saying, what we thought we knew, how ignorant and naïve we actually were, we thought we had it figured out.