alright everyone what's happening this is sam so on today's pod i did something it's very selfish so i've got these two friends one is named nick bae so you probably have seen nick on instagram or on youtube he's got millions of followers and he owns this company called bp vpn bayer performance nutrition they do something like sixty million dollars a year in sales so he's a really successful entrepreneur but he's like a fitness fan so he looks like a body builder but he's runs some marathon in like two hours and thirty nine minutes which is a freak time but it's also freak considering how big he is and then we have saw bloom who's another buddy of mine he's really popular on social media on twitter he's a writer you probably have seen them all over the place and i just nerd out on fitness with these guys we also talked a little bit about business so we asked the questions like where do you guys spend your money how much you spend each month where do you like to invest your money we talked about their their companies and how they're growing and we did a lot of business stuff but most of this was about fitness and i just asked them all the fitness questions that i had i had a bunch of listeners send me questions and i think it was a great time and it's really fun to learn about what these guys are doing for training hopefully inspire you so anyway check out the pod yeah i feel like i could rule world i know i could be what i want to from all in in like a day's off on a less travel i ask you so i i tweeted out that you guys were coming on and i got a bunch of questions they range from personal finance fitness business all types of stuff i wanna ask you guys both a couple questions i'm gonna start which i'm gonna start with one that sounds like the hardest but i actually think it's the easiest because you answer this all the time and i'll preface this by saying i've seen your your father in videos i've seen your brother in videos and i've seen you in real life and so i think i know what the answer is because i know the genetics that you come from but someone said generally curious how can nick be natural given his performance please press him on this and so you constantly get asked if you're natural i know you've answered it constantly but just humor me for because this was a a very a lot of people ask this question i am natural and i used to address these these call outs and questions and claims all the time because i would get defensive in it like it was all the time it's been like that since started creating content i even went to the extent of sharing blood work every month i was going to get in blood work every month and i would share it only my videos during my bulk and my cut and people like oh he's faking he's fine he's finding workarounds rounds i'm like guys so i finally gotten to a point where i'm just over addressing the the questions and the claims and the hate around it and i'm just gonna do my thing like even on this last marathon people were like he's using ep what is that like blood doping i'm like what amateur what amateur athlete you know that's running marathons to run marathons is taking ep and blood doping then you're like how do i how do i get does anyone have a guy i'm like yeah i'm like oh like where do you get ep i don't even know where you'd you'd you'd get that i i mean i've seen you in real life you you just have i think you're just okay freak genetically and and i i would be honored if someone asked if i was on a bunch of stuff that would make me feel wonderful dude also by the way like my my thing with this always is like i have a few friends who everyone says this about they're like oh they you know definitely not natural and i just know for a fact that that person has just out worked me in the gym on a daily basis for the last like ten fucking years excuse my language and not by like a ton but by a little bit every single day for ten years and that adds up to something insane and it looks like a totally different human being so like when i see a dude that has way bigger shoulders and may away bigger chest like i know that they probably did that extra set or they did the extra two reps that i was just like oh six is good and stopped and so like i just i i think it's such a cop out when people freak out about like oh are you natural or not but the reality is like sometimes they don't because genetics are real like for example genetics are real like genetics are like definitely a real thing like the the bear genetics are solid dude your dad ran like a sub six mile i don't remember what age he is but he was some you know he was a grown man and he still was huge like you got and then i saw your brother your brother looked like he competed in the strong man games i mean you guys are just huge yes so my my dad sixty my uncle his brother's fifty seven if you saw both of them with their shirts off after running they've still both run marathons half marathons i mean six pack abs chiseled arms and shoulders they don't take anything they're not they're not on t or any of that stuff they're just like farm boys who grew up in central pennsylvania milk cows and and they're hey well dude listen to this so sci texted me i i i noted out with them my is go dude i just hung out with nick bear and and it was amazing and sat was like yeah he's you know he looks great at whatever but how tall and i was like i'm pretty sure he's my high or just like an inch shorter so he's pretty tall and i sent him this picture and i remember in that photo i think i think nick you were at like your weakest you're about to run a marathon i was at my strongest and our squats and bench were like almost the same i think you did five pounds ahead and you just like looked so much better and you know we were like the sucks that like we're kinda comparable i guess it turned the strength but like he just he just has it he just has it like you you just you just have whatever it is that you just you look good i i appreciate that genetics are real if ari laughing can't to help sam you got use you gotta get a tan man you're too pale to you're too pale to have good looking at abs that's genetics man it's that's another shit accept pro he just has it and so i don't know everyone everyone in a comments are gonna make fun of me that i'm just like flirting with you but you know i'm just saying what people think genetics are i a real thing you can take person a person b different genetics same work ethic think same diet same training program and you're not gonna get the same results if people people send me messages all the time like i eat exactly way you eat a train exactly the way you train i run exactly the same miles as you we don't look the same oh yeah because genetically we are not the same like we have different dna so it's gonna have different results it doesn't mean you shouldn't eat right and train and and try to do your best but like i will give i will give genetics the credit they deserve but also i am one of the most consistent people i know in terms of training and recovery and diet like my diet is dialed in i still enjoy myself like me and my wife will go for dinner i'll get some drinks i'll like order the whole menu and try everything i love food i'm a big foodie but my my diet ninety percent of time is so regiment and dialed in i'm eating my meals so i'm not hungry i'm eating my meals when i know i need nutrition to fuel workouts like it is for me a lifestyle that i truly love and embrace are you like that style are you as dialed than you think yeah i mean i'm just like i i probably have a similar wiring to the unit unite like i'm i kind of have like a obsessive personality and so when i when i commit to something or dive in on it it's gonna piss off everyone around me because i'm like if we were traveling during day and i get home at ten pm but i had a six mile run to do i'm going out at ten pm and have to go hit the run yeah and it's not a question and like if i get home at midnight but i'm the type of person that wakes up at four and gets in my cold plunge i'm waking up at four and getting in my gold plunge and i'm i feel the same way as you in general on the genetics thing although i will say like when people say oh i do the same workouts as you i run the same miles i did the same thing i call bullshit is i i just don't like i've i've trained super hard my whole life but there are people that i just know have trained harder than me because i know like in the back of my mind i know for sure that like i could've have probably done two more reps on something but i like was working out of my own in my in my home gym and i just like took it easy and that two reps compounded over five years makes a difference to the point on like time being a lever until i'm honest enough with myself on some things where like with running i post all my stats and so there's no hiding right like if i'm gonna post my cor you know screenshot or whatever on my instagram from any run workout i can't hide from whether or not i put in the right amount of effort on that workout but lifting i can totally hide from it like i'm not you can't see all the stats exactly on what i did and how many reps i hit or whatever it was and so it's also just like the accountability that comes with sharing things publicly on your progress that i feel like for you like you've been basically doing that for what six seven eight years like you've been showing your process in public and the accountability that comes from that that people are out there waiting like oh what's nick's next thing what's he going after is he gonna hit his goal that adds a whole lot of fire like when you're running sim sure and you're struggling mile twenty and you're like this isn't for this isn't for me like i i have a million people out there that wanna see me get this two thirty nine done so i'm gonna go do it i mean that's that's why we included a small clip in a video after that race was over but that's why these when you hit your goal in a race or you hit your going and anything it feels so good when you hit so you know the work that went in and all i kept saying after i got across that finish line at ci i kept saying i'm so fucking proud of that i'm so proud of that one because like you know all the work that goes into it the early mornings hitting your workouts making sure you hit your your paces making sure you fueled properly the night before those big workouts and when i was like mile twenty i knew i was i was running sub two forty like i just knew i was on pace i was like i could hold on for the six miles and i could feel this lump just like forming me my throat is getting emotional so thinking man all this work like this is why i did it holding six zero five paces at mile twenty with was six miles left like home stretch and when you finally hit that goal and it's because the work you put in like there is nothing that replaces that my my dad and i have been really close to my whole life and i played baseball in college nick in case in case we we hadn't talked to about that and when i had to retire because i was hurt the hardest thing was telling my dad because so much of our relationship had been built around the sport and built around you know him coming all my practices taking me to all my lessons all that stuff over the years and he told me at the time like i don't care i'm gonna be there to cheer you on in whatever your next thing is in life and at my marathon he surprised me and flew out for it and i remember like those last six miles i was hurting so so bad and all i was thinking the whole time was like i gotta get to my dad he's at the finish line he's there waiting for me and when i crossed the finish line and i had done it i'd gone sub three he was standing there and i like broke down completely i like all of the emotion that you hold in from that you know from trying to get to something like struggling through it hitting your goal that emotion like it's completely unparalleled like nothing i've ever experienced in life just that that rush i think it's why people keep signing up and and doing races or signing up and committing to hard things is because when you finally accomplish it it's like i referenced this part of this book all the time because i think it's so applicable but in tim grover book winning he talks about achieving your first win and when you achieve that first win no matter what it is it builds this little ounce of confidence so then you sit out to achieve another win but that win is larger and more ambitious and it requires more work more effort but when you finally get it builds more confidence and you keep applying this thing over years and years and years and you keep pushing out what that win is and could be through the process of succeeding and failing and winning and losing you build this massive amount of confidence or you finally get to a point in thinking oh i can actually do whatever i wanna do that's a really powerful position to be in that's why i always say there's no such thing as a loser who wakes up at five am and works out because it is so hard to do and if you are losing in life and you're not happy with where you are get up early and working i hate when you say that you piss me off so much or you say that because i get out of bed at seven or eight but they'll be doing stuff until one am whenever you see that i feel so guilty but that is i'm not saying it on the other end that you can't win i'm saying if you're not happy with your position in life one of the biggest reasons is that you need to change yourself identity like you need to start identifying as a winner exactly what nick said like you need to create evidence that proves to yourself that you're a winner and waking up early and working out is the easiest way to do that and like it still sucks but if you do that for a week you immediately are like oh wow i can do that that's one hard thing that i do i'm like you start to change your brain chemistry around who you are as a person dude i feel so shitty i'll wake up i'll look at instagram and i'll be like alright i just got up at eight and then i see nick post and it's like i think on saturday or something it's like dude he just ran eight miles he are just ran seventy two miles at a six fifteen days he'll he like his it's a great post i owe i'm almost and fed his daughter a great meal yeah like he does all those probably even away but i in my head i'm like that dish is going to bed at nine though i'm i'm fuck between ted ted what i am i i am i am the morning person i am not a a night out by any means but now now my know my daughter's is born and she's getting older if i don't wake up at five and work out there's a chance that's it might not get done it's like right now we're going through this sleep progression where she's waking up at the odd times and screaming her head off in the night so last night woke up middle the night gave her bottle put her down she didn't want me to leave her room i ended up sleeping the rest of the night next to her crib my alarm went off at five i was like alright here we go went downstairs went through my routine went out from my run ugh there's nothing that makes me more sick to my stomach than morning air let me ask you guys let me ask you guys a a a quick question this will be it's meant for nick but so i wanna hear you answer too nick covers all fitness and diet stuff extensively on channel but i wanna know his monthly burn so where what he spends his money on and where he puts his money invest his money outside of bp vpn so investing wise at this point my life i haven't gotten to a point where i any personal interest in investing so i just hire a financial adviser and he takes care of all of my investments for me maybe at some point i'll actually be curious and explore that curiosity but like i'll work with a guy we making budget funds probably yeah i'm just like take this money put it where you think it's gonna make me some money other than that i mean most of my money i'm spending is either going towards my mortgage investing back into the business my personal brand and mainly food to be honest like me and i wife spend per month on food just groceries maybe like it's hard to say because we'll do like one big grocery whole week and i get like every other day to the grocery store and i'm going like these exclusive like butcher your shops here in nashville it's like maybe i spend two thousand twenty five hundred dollars a month on groceries but then we're going on to dinner and like when we go to dinner it's we want every appetizer every ent entree we're gonna sample stuff again a few cocktails like we that's our thing is we love sure experiences like that and we'll do some big vacations every year like i'm not going out and buying a lot of materialistic things right now it's more still on experiences so you haven't gotten on the no alcohol training nick nope to be honest i i i really have no interest on the the no alcohol train like i'm not a big drinker but like if me and my wife for going to date night on thursday because thursdays is our day night night i'll get one drink maybe two drinks but i've really really never drink over to drinks ever we do you drink sa hill i'm the same way as nick like i i am i think like when it enhances the experience with the person you're with i love it and then i just i've cut all like drink by myself at home out of my life yeah i do any drinking by myself but like if if i'm with a group of people and we're having like a an old fashioned or open a bottle wine i do think it enhances the experience and conversation is always good and it lighten the mood a little bit and allows you to relax what what's your style what's your answer to that question what do you what do you you do your money the same thing i do you just are in vanguard and index right yeah i mean we were like i was much more fun with my money when i was in my private equity days because then it was like i don't know was just like free wheel and in my twenties doing whatever the hell and then we had a kid and i was like i should probably start just being really boring with this and i feel like you influenced me in this like we're in this group chat altogether with a bunch of absolute degenerate and they all like sling their money into the most degenerate stuff and they're always texting the thread like this is the best opportunity highlight million dollars of aluminum or a million dollars of some some shit that i'd never been heard of and and without fail by the way like six months later it's at its all the time low like this thing just absolutely takes yeah it's or little short stuff or whatever don't even know what if they do but it's like these the terminology i don't even understand i mean it goes back to like the fundamental thing is like you should spend more time figuring out how to increase your income versus like what your returns are investing from the vast majority of people because that's a much bigger lever for your long term financial wealth that's what i did different i just i just focused on how to make more money how to how to build revenue streams and then i got a point where like i was finally ready to start investing and i was able to invest or put away a lot of money a month that i didn't need to spend or or have liquid yeah and it's just like i just like to not have to think about where that is though like yeah i i do that too i just want it to sit in like i basically want to just track an index and just go sit there but to the burn question sam we probably spend like i don't know twenty thirty a month or something like that all in on everything and groceries probably similar to similar to nick we probably spend three to five a month on food i don't even know i don't know what my monthly spend is at the moment but maybe twenty but i can see why new york would be significantly higher but and you're about to get on the northeast grind right yeah i'm thinking about moving up there and i'm looking at the differences in prices and like it's it's it's pretty meaningful compared to texas yeah i think about going to the city so my in laws live around in this in manhattan and i frankly hate manhattan i like brooklyn but i have a newborn and i think that we will likely do the most boo thing on earth but there's a town called the west port connecticut it's next to greenwich connecticut so you could say i'm gonna move to greenwich connecticut which is like clay clay tennis courts and white skirts and shit like that but i think we're going to yeah but we like i i'm testing it out so i rented a place for a few weeks in late january just to see what it's like and i'm looking at what the rent is in like a comparable home tour where i am now because i don't wanna buy at the moment it's like twenty grand a month in rent i mean it's just like crazy so the biggest reason by the way that sam not saying for why he's moving here is because it's like twenty minutes from me and we have a long term plan of my son roman and his daughter naomi starting to build the the par bloom empire here so we need to like start cultivating it early in their in their young years like yeah i'm okay with that we're we're just planning ahead let me ask you guys another question this is a two part so what what do most people get wrong about health and fitness what makes you wanna nick what makes you wanna throw your computer at the window when people say it online and the second thing is would love and honest assessment of time requirements and what's the best bank for your buck for workouts because a lot of us listening are entrepreneurs and we don't have a ton of time so what's like the best bank for your buck so it's a two part i need they they like i can answer both probably in one answer i think most people think that they need to spend like an hour running a day and an hour strength training day so everyone thinks they have to spend like two hours training a day but i think you could easily split that forty five minutes an hour day split between strength and endurance training and get like a really really solid work but i think you have some sort of you have to have some sort of level of cardiovascular conditioning as well as strength into your programming when you say cardiovascular do you mean like hit like a like a sixty minute berries or do you mean like a like a barry's boot class something like that or a body weight thing or do you mean walking or do you mean zone two steady pace stuff i'd say it's a mixture between zone two zone three most people to be honest aren't spending their time in zone two zone two is actually like super low which is like well a hundred and thirty beats per minute for like a thirty year old yeah it's it's it's low and most people are not doing any zone two training so i i what's the benefit of zone two though aerobic base building but what's that mean for does that make me live longer does that make me less likely have heart attack what's to do all those things helps cardiovascular health it helps build your aerobic foundation so that you can utilize oxygen more efficiently like you're not gonna go run a sub three hour marathon just doing speed work you need that aerobic base building where your body is learning how to utilize the oxygen at a more effective and efficient rate by then using fuel sources appropriately alongside of so like i'd say a split between you probably want just talking about cardiovascular conditioning seventy to eighty percent of that training being your aerobic zone whether that zone two zone three which is like lighter so you're walking hiking jogging something like that and then twenty to thirty percent of your cardiovascular conditioning is more hit you go do a berries boot camp you can go do like a my my wife does soul cycle like a soul cycle class hop on your peloton go do some sprints speed workout something like that where the heart rate is getting elevated lac tape threshold type stuff so if you split your your cardiovascular training between aerobic zones and some high intensity interval training and then you have compound movements strength training you're doing some some heavier movements working with free weights barbell machines stuff like that you don't need to spend two hours every day you can spend forty five minutes to an hour you know four days a week five days a week i personally love the train so i'd i'm working out every day a week doing something move my body for strength thinking what do you what do you say like do you tell people like do the five by five or like what what's your suggestion just squat dead live bench right what do you do i mean there's a lot of different ways to approach it like right now i personally enjoy the push pool like split which is a a three day split you can do three workouts a week or you can do six workouts a week so like a push day would be all pushing movements it'd be chest focused shoulders triceps pushing being upper body and then a pull day would be back biceps movements like rows all upper body again and then your lower day is lower body legs quad hamstrings glut i like starting every strength workout with some some warm up movements and then going into a a heavy working compound movement exercise like a barbell squat do a dead lift you do a hex bar dead lift bench press or dumbbell chest press and then having some accessory movements alongside of that to support the development of the muscles that you're utilizing for those big compound movements so that's the way i like to approach cardiovascular and then strength training i don't personally like to mix the two like the the crossfit fit approach i've never fallen in love with that like when i'm strength training i like strength training and when i'm doing my cardio i like cardio but i i don't like like doing them together i like when they're separate and distinct separated now move it on to i think we're like what e me about the fitness space i actually made a post about this yesterday because everyone going into a new year is gonna have new training and diet goals and everyone thinks like there's this new thing that they're gonna do it's gonna change their life it's gonna change their body it's gonna change their health like january first starts people are thinking i need to do something new which should i do i'm a do car now i'm gonna do keto i'm a i'm gonna go like strictly body building now i'm gonna just like just gonna run so if people go to these extremes thinking it's like the magic pill they haven't tried yet that's gonna unlock this hidden potential that was just disguised by everything else they were doing previously and the reality is that like that's not going to change anything if it does like the the changes are incremental but what makes this compounding change in your life and your fitness is your health is just being consistent with eating better drinking more water moving your body that's what everyone's talking about getting in more steps and you're getting in more steps you're just being more active going to the gym on a regular consistent basis it's creating creating habits and routines in your life that help you facilitate these healthy habits on a consistent and regular routine sean was telling me that he was talking her he saw the guy who started a slice it's like a piece pizza app he was like between january first and january eleventh our sales slump and he goes on january twelfth that's national quitting day and he goes we see all time high sales on for people ordering pizza because everyone from their new year's resolution is giving in on january twelfth that's where that's where it ends eleven days that's wild we owned a ton of planet fitness back in my ip days and that like first ten days of the year is like rain maker season like you're just sitting there just like watching the fees poor and like praying to the rain gods for all the money that's coming in and then inevitably those people just don't end up going to the gym it's pay yeah they still do plan of fitness is basically the plan us in his business model doing it they make their business cancel is like yeah i you get you get like ten thousand members for a gym and maybe like you know five ten percent of them actually like regularly use it so the equipment doesn't have to get refresh that often and it's like mean it's an incredible business model alright here's a question for saw hill so we didn't even mention this mcgraw hill sa you mentioned that you were a baseball player i was a runner all through high school and college the base players were usually the douche shoes who made fun of the runners because of our shorts and about a year ago you got it about you got into running you made all these grand claims about these times that you're gonna run you said you're gonna break eighteen in into five k you're gonna break i was like you're an idiot dude do you don't know what the hell you're talking about it turns out you were completely right you nailed all of it you you you crushed it and run and someone asked what the biggest so at this point by way you're a pretty like you're like a pretty successful runner for like in the weekend category in the weekend warrior year category you're like top top in that category which is sounds like a left handed compliment that's not what it that wasn't supposed to be that it was that was a i take that that was a compliment someone said what's the biggest surprise saw hills learned from getting more into running honestly it goes back to what you said like when i was when i was in high school like i thought runners were nerds and in my mind it was like the nerd sport like i couldn't imagine running or like being into i was like oh it's not you know it's not a team sport like it's not it's it doesn't seem hard whatever and i have developed unbelievable respect for endurance athletes and for runners from having gone through this because i mean a a few reasons first off the training is so many hours and so mono naught and you have to fall in love with the long slow runs like you know in baseball it was all intensity so you can get excited about you know like a really fast sprint you know as a picture so like a bull pen session or whatever but with running like if you're gonna be a marathon or you have to love the twenty two mile at a like eight thirty pace just zero fun like you have to fall in love with that and be willing to do that over and over and over again in order to become a great amateur or to become elite you know like on on nick's level and above and you have to do it consistently over a long period of time and then the second one is just like the mental fort two to pull through a race is badass like it hurts so bad i mean i would argue that the five k is the most painful like i did so my my p r is where the two fifty seven marathon which was painful but in like your legs are cramp kind of way where you just need to like grit your teeth to the finish i'd ran the four fifty nine mile which honestly didn't hurt that bad because it was too short to hurt like it was just it was over before it could really start to hurt it was like you're breathing really fast but didn't hurt that bad but the five k which i ran seventeen fifty two was like excruciating pain absolutely like the last five laps of that were the most miserable experience may of my life just like pastor your lac aid threshold awful and the mental fort that runners have and that endurance athletes have to grind through that i now like i no longer think runners are nerds i think it is legit badass ass and especially when it's like a runner that has body weight on them i think it's unbelievable well the the the the runner like the the runner has evolved over the years too like now running become so popular in the past couple years it's it's do you think it's because of people like you i mean i think i think that you've created like a huge trend of these like it's it's now macho to be a runner yeah i i do think that like covid and the pandemic definitely contributed to a lot of that where gyms were closed down and this is why a lot of my content actually started growing is because i was pumping out running content for like a year and a half before their pandemic hit and then pandemic hits all these gyms clothes people have nowhere to to work out and train and they hate for their physical health but also their mental health so people start running and looking for running content and my content blew up during that time because everyone's looking for how to run especially you know people who are focused on strength now transitioning and evolving towards running but i i mean i think running has become core because there's a different look to running now like you can carry more weight you can look like a body blow you can look like at a strength athlete and there's these different parts of running that exist like the ultra scene has come up and i didn't know what ultra running it was years ago and you have like these badass disruptive races like have you guys heard of the speed project no what's up no so says speed project is like this underground race that happens and you start in la and it goes to las vegas there's no spectators there's no rules you just get there as fast as possible and it's a relay race so you have a team of say like maybe six people i think it's like three hundred miles and someone has to be running all the time shit but it's like super disruptive really like aggressive in your face look and feel it's badass ass and then you have races like if you guys heard of the barkley marathons no what are these dude you guys you guys need to watch this documentary like tonight it's called where dreams go to die i haven't seen this and this race happens in tennessee it's i think there there's five loops and it's run by this guy named las and you can't have a gps watch you don't have like any sort of sense of where the route is you're given a map and the map has points on it there's no trail and you're giving a bib number so say your bib number thirteen own this map you have to go find all these points before you come back to the checkpoint and at each point on the map is a book and you have to pull out the corresponding page with your bib number and bring it back to la after each loop to be able to go out and start again and i think there were like six years where no one finished no one one yeah it's like fifteen runners in thirty eight years sounds like a pain butt but i i'm not trying to learn how to read maps i just wanna look at naked like by the way like running to to nick's point running has definitely changed in public perception like i just more and more now i'm like i used to think oh okay lifting like dead lifting to me i'm like oh it's so primal dead lifting like you gotta pick a car up off of your wife or off of kid like you gotta get it up off of them in order to save their life and now i i add running to that but i'm like if you can't go run like super fast to go call for help when someone's in trouble like you that's super primal ultimate like you gotta pick and then you gotta go run two miles to get help from like the nearest aid station we had scott gallo on nick scott gallo is like big so tells entrepreneur or whatever and he he said something that was a was brilliant he's like a he's like a poet he's really good with words and he said he goes my fitness regime i wanna be able to kill and eat most everyone in a room or out run them and then i was like like that that's great i love that that's sounds very like a very practical way to to exercise i enjoy that have you seen theo vaughn on joe rogan talking about who he would eat in a playing mess if you if you haven't seen it it's like one of the funniest theo von clips i've ever seen let me alright i'll ask one or two more the so someone asked do you guys do you guys religiously stick to your programming and do you ever create the programming yourself it really depends on for me like what i'm training for if i have a very specific goal then my training program is specialized to get to that specific goal like for my my marathon prep working with jeff cunningham like he would give him my workouts for the week and i would hit those workouts to a tee i wouldn't miss or skip anything i mean there there's been times where jeff has accidentally sent me my workouts with wrong paces and i'll look at them like oh shit this seems fast and i go out and hit him he's what are you doing i'm like you send this over to me he's like oh that's a typo so like if you if he if you send the program when i'm in a prep i'm doing whatever you tell me to do but outside of that i have a lot of flexibility like today i woke up and i was thinking how does my body feel how far do i wanna run i went and rent ran ten miles sometimes in the middle of run like two to three miles in i i decide how far i'm gonna run based off my feel that's called auto regulation so you adjust your training programming based off your recovery and how you're feeling and how all you slept and all those things so a lot of my training now is flexible but not as rigid because i don't have a specific competition goal at the moment what do i use tahoe i need someone else to write the programs for me otherwise i don't take them seriously and i need to pay for them i've found because when i pay for something i take it way more seriously so my my marathon training i had no program i was just running with my neighbor brian m who's also a i i know nick knows him at also like a fitness influencer and personality that was really into hybrid training as well so i started running with him had no program and then i got connected on text with nick and i was like nick i wanna run a sub three hour marathon what's a workout i should do and nick replied i was like try doing this and it was i don't think i'd run over like sixteen miles at the time by the way and nick replied and said twenty two mile run it was six miles easy to warm up and then it was four rounds of three at six thirty with one at seven ten float he was like if you can do that you'll feel good about being able to run sub three and i had never i mean i had not come close to that but that weekend i had the same thing as what you said with your trainer nick we're like i was like alright i gotta go do that i guess and so i went out and hit that and then i started following nick's marathon program as a result that got me through it wow i i do the same thing by the i've got a a guy that does my programming here in austin since his name's jesse at central athlete and it's expensive i think i pay four hundred dollars a month and i only i i do everything that i'm told because i'm paying money for it and if i won't take it seriously if i'm doing it or i wouldn't go my intensity would be lower i'd like dude i can't do this it's like well jesse told me i have to do it therefore i will do it alright last question you get nutrition coaching to nutrition coaching yeah i use my body tutor it's basically a service when i was like really into it i would call them for five minutes every single day and they would be like alright what's the plan today where like you you have like a quarterly plan you're like i wanna lose weight gain weight i don't wanna eat this i do wanna eat this whatever and then it's like alright what's what what's your plan today in order to hit your goals and you and they you'd have to like show them and then they review your my fitness pal every night and it's like alright you're you're doing you're doing everything according to play so kinda guilt guilt me into doing it but it also teaches me like like i didn't know that you had to get a gram of protein per body pound or per pound of body weight like i didn't know any of that shit and so they like educated me track track tracking nutrition can be super beneficial for people just getting into health fitness it just teaches them about serving sizes and macron nutrients and total calories well i started weighing my food after i saw nick you did it on some of your videos you were like and i thought weighing your food was like cumbersome but like i just saw you like just have a bowl on top of the scale and when you're pouring the chicken in there like i just need about half a pound and you just pour it in there and like oh cool that was really simple and easy you just poured it right into the bowl and put it in microwave wave it and it was like a very easy to track so i started doing after i all your videos actually yeah i don't track my nutrition right now but i still weigh my food just for like serving size allocation yeah now i know but now i just buy like like if i buy a red meat i buy it buy the pound and i know that a pound of red meat reduces to point seven and i know what's in point seven of you know ground beef or point seven of chicken and so yeah that's how i do a lot of it now for weighing last question and this is from me i'm actually curious who influences you guys and what sources do turn to for like like for example there's this guy what's the guy on i think his name's bio lane on in graham what's his day elaine norton lane great so like i like he's like you know new york times did an article where they're like now everyone has their own fitness guru who they trust and so like hub remains like a guy for someone nick you're a guy for someone probably where i'm like if they say this i do what they said who are your your guru your fitness guys that you trust for health and nutrition and what sources do you use lane norton is definitely one for me and what i like about lane is like if anyone's ever saying something and it seems so ridiculous heal and bold and new and fresh i will literally go over the lane platform and wait for him to do a response because he typically does i love his car stuff and like the guy who says like vegetables are bad for you like that's great yeah lane has like a really holistic science based approach to health nutrition he also has a really good app called carbon that is great for people who wanna track their nutrition and and reach a fitness school like fitness wise i follow lane i listen to some humor and stuff i'm typically just i i don't have one person i'm i'm following for fitness nutrition i'm kinda of just like having a pulse and feeling what's out there and then if i hear about something i'll go do my own research so i'll read the actual articles and peer reviewed literature to see what what do you use for that have you heard of i've been using per complexity for that it's been kinda cool for it's like a chat gp for studies interesting per complexity yeah i have a bookmark here per complexity and it's they do a bad job of explaining what it is but it they basically review tons of different studies you don't have to read all of them and they'll and so you can ask you can ask it a question of like is asp team proven to give cancer and i'll say like well of all these studies here's what here's what they here's the summary i'll check that out late lane has one called reps i also use examine dot com same love them examine dot com is really good and then i'll just go like to pub med pub med and just like read the the articles there from like fitness that's where i'm like pulling a lot of my info outside of fitness like audio like whenever i'm running i'm typically listening an audiobook and that's it's crazy to me that's insane to me that you do that you you can't do that to no like hey i go pay attention and be like it like you usually what i like to do is i like when i'd go for a run i know how many i like beat beep per minute songs so you know songs that are a certain beat per minute and so my stride will go to that that beep per minute you know what i mean which is typically like like around eighty beat or eighty five beats per minute i used to do that when i first started running out would do that be i'll listen to an audiobook and like ten miles i forget i'm running for ten miles they i just i listen to an audiobook during the marathon i did the exact same thing what i listen to the martian andy weir the sci five dude do you guys are so weird that is so weird to me there do you know what book i i just finished up it like i can't recommend enough it's called trust by henry cloud if you guys haven't read that yet or heard of it it's i mean maybe it's just hitting me at like the right time my life but it is a powerful good book what is it it's all about like how to evaluate relationships and trust how to regain or rebuild trust when you've been betrayed what to look for in in in trusting someone a lot of times we think that trust is someone who just like won't lie steal or cheat so we'll hire people we'll bring people onto to our team who meet those requirements oh they don't lie steal or cheat i can trust them or can we trust them in the capacity of the role that we're expecting them to perform dude this is serial killer shit that you could listen to a self help book while you're like while you're like running a marathon i think that's so weird like i would read this you went no headphones for the marathon right now yeah yeah i i didn't know headphones that's what baller do sa like if if you yeah is what baller say i grew across will definitely give you a shit yeah if you like go to a cross country practice or something and like you go run with headphones on like the the hardcore will totally mock but i do it because i'm like this is fun for me i'm doing what i want i'm not gonna what nick said at the beginning by the way which is like when you if you publicly state you're gonna hit some sort of like goals the running like the the running hardcore will definitely talk crap and troll you until you post proof that you actually did it and then you kind of like have earned enough clout like i sort of feel like everyone made fun of me for getting into running and then i like posted some actual verifiable stats and now you yeah now i'm like solid amateur and people can't really make fun of you anymore so now you've like you've like earned to the respect of the crew like the cool kids in the in the cafeteria so now like they can't come beat you up so that's a real thing that actually happens yeah what's your what's your answer to that what's my answer to where i go to yeah and who influences assume and who's like your your person i mean i grew up to my baseball training i was the first client of this guy named eric cr who has now become pretty famous he's the performance coach for the yankee but is now like the major league baseball strength guy like trains max or justin ver or all of like the who's who of baseball and i feel like on baseball guys the worst person to get fitness advice from that's like the fat what he is no he was like the he was the first guy to like really bring strength and performance training to baseball so it was that it was like the fat guys or the steroid era guys who were just meat heads and he brought like true performance training to the sport which now is like the real driver of why every guy throws a hundred miles an hour like guys are hitting absolute tanks all the time like he was really the pioneer of that i mean he's been on like tim ferris podcast he's really really big time and a close friend incredible and then there's this got ben bruno who is like a celebrity trainer pretty big instagram presence and he's more of the like stuff for regular people to actually implement in their life training and i i just love that stuff because it's kind of a cool blend of the like more extreme things that i like doing with the actionable stuff that people can actually take as advice yeah bet bruno he's got like the like the everyday rip guy vibe he he's super super strong functionally and trains like insane legit celebrities out of like a hundred fifty square foot gym in his garage yeah here's him with justin timber length yeah timberlake is like one of his one of his good friends rolls up there and transit them he's he's incredible and then on diet stuff there's this guy zach i think ru is how you pronounce his last name he's like the flexible dieting lifestyle is his instagram handle and he just posts like insane macro recipes basically things that are like delicious but don't completely screw up your diet and i just i nerd out on that kind of stuff he's he's austin texas based yeah he's austin based yeah dude nick do you you probably know like casting these guys i bet i know i know zach i know zach personally he who else is really good for like general health information health and fitness information for people just getting started as jordan sci jordan yeah jordan sci so jordan was an intern at eric cr jim what so jordan is my year in high school he went to lincoln su high school which was like our arrival high school and he was an intern at cr gym when i was training there so i've known jordan since we were like we were killed wow hey he's he's he's got good stuff by the way he was gary vs trainer corey stories saw that i just went to this guy the flexible dieting lifestyle and i'm i'm like typing all the synergies you guys are talking and i'll i'll do a little flex i go to file this guy and it says follow back oh yeah that's awesome zach it's awesome the protein ice cream recipes are like the best thing in the world yeah he this is a great instagram this guy kills it yeah a do you have a creamy at home ninja creamy i do it's the best one of our best purchases my wife and like every saturday that ninja engine creamy you can make like protein ice cream with it they were they they got popular based off of tiktok early on and they like were sold out for months and then they finally came back on the market and we purchased one well i used to do that so what i do with your so vpn so i like to do a scent protein with just water and then i use vpn to like eat and so like for example i'll mix it with some type of liquid and i'll microwave vpn and it's almost like i'm eating like i don't i don't know i mean it's like a dessert because you gave me tea lime pie one and then you gave me a birthday cake one and i think the birthday cake one is discontinued and i would just we would microwave it and just eat it and it was like a a soup flavor or something now i guess i'll use vpn to this cream sam i will change your life right now two cups of whole milk like fair life whole milk a scoop of bp vpn vanilla maybe like two tiny little packets of stevia and some sugar free vanilla pudding mix freeze it overnight put it into the ninja creamy and it is literally identical to like a vanilla mcdonald's mc flu really it comes out insane and then you can put a couple like oreo thins in there and get like a legit mcdonald's mc flurry that has like forty grams of protein and is great for you the this is awesome i'm like literally writing all this down and i'm i just add the creamy to my cart it will change your life i'm not joking it is it is pretty wild i i did it my first time and like i only mixed it once and it came out like what's it you gotta go twice it twice completely different thing to after like one more mix light ice cream setting once open it up pour like a tiny like a tablespoon of whole milk in and then blend it on light ice cream again and it makes the perfect consistency alright i literally just bought it off amazon the creamy and i'll i only have is the best i gotta get bp vanilla out because i only did chocolate birthday cake and tequila lime pie you can do it with whatever flavor you like i just think the vanilla base is so good i wanna hear about this two thirty nine though i'm gonna nerd out on this yeah so nick you're trying to run two thirty nine now for the marathon right no i just did so you just did at ci which is the california international marathon that was december third i ran a two thirty nine twenty and when i went into that prep i was shooting for a sub two forty five and and sub two forty five is about a six fifteen minute per mile pace ended ended up doing six zero five minute for mile pace for all twenty six point two of those miles can you just walk through your progression on the marathon stuff because i feel like i've seen a video so i mean i only i started running in march and someone mentioned your name as soon as i started getting into running as like the person that was pioneering this whole idea of like hybrid athlete whatever it's kinda become like an in invoke thing now but basically a guy that can be both jacked and fit in cardio things not crossfit like actual you know strength related stuff and then and then running and i remember seeing a video of you like a four hour marathon maybe and your progression from that to running maybe sub three for the first time can you just walk through like what your progression has been from start to finish on the different marathons you've done yeah well first off when when you and i first started talking and you said you wanna do a a sub three for your first marathon i thought he was crazy when he said back dude so did i was like man that's i think even told you like that's a bold move but you did it so con congratulations on that but yeah my my my marathon progression so my first marathon was in two thousand eighteen it was about a year after i got out of the military and what's funny is the day i got out of the military i said i would never run a day in my life again and about a year later was wearing my first marathon here we are like thousands of miles later but two thousand eighteen austin marathon ran three fifty seven which was just an absolute dumpster fire but you wait like two twenty five right i was like two twenty five i didn't have a a training program i was a body builder like i was just i just wanted to be as big in yolk as possible brandon this marathon after mile sixteen i hit the wall it was just all downhill from there a year later i signed up for the austin marathon again same training program which was lack thereof of so and i ran a four hour fifteen minute marathon so i'd i ran eighteen minutes slower than the previous year and then after that i signed up for my first iron ironman trained for an iron ironman did iron ironman florida actually started to learn what it takes to build endurance and get better at endurance events and races it you broke twelve hours in that one yeah i did my iron iron ironman in florida in eleven twenty eight but i ran the marathon in four hours and four minutes so the reason that was so kind of significant was i looked back at my previous two marathons i was like man after i just swam and spiked and then ran i was able to run a pretty decent marathon so i told myself on a run sub three and that was the goal and i i i posted this online i said i'm doing a sub three hour marathon and the internet trolls and activity just blew up i mean there are forums on let's run there are forums on on on reddit everyone was like this guy will not run a sub three hour marathon so then i signed up for the austin marathon again i i followed a training program it was a better prep but even in my head i was like i'm not in sub three shape but at the starting line i told myself that you can immensely out will anything i say if i just like i can mentally overcome the physical weakness that i have to run the sub three hour marathon and what's sub three is sub three six fifty per mile i think six fifty one is like two fifty nine fifty nine like if you sneak in under one second the only reason i know that is because of exactly what nick said about mine that everyone was like dude there's no way so i knew in my mind like i just have to keep this under six fifty one my watch base and i'm gonna be fine see i like banking time so i was like i like saving time so at the end if i needed i have it which is the opposite of what like real runners tell you to do i did the same thing by the way like i went out way too fast and then was just like hanging on for dear life doing the math in my head of like okay if i run like a ten minute mile here i'm still gonna make it still because there's like they call it the wall the wall is basically i think it's like when you burn eighteen hundred or twenty two hundred calories or something like that and you start going into what's it called were you like start using muscle as energy i believe or at a mall of cart yeah yeah and that's when that wall is where you're like i can't go any further usually that's in like mile twenty right yeah ranges is yeah based on the individual of like your conditioning your experience glycogen stores how how fast you burn through your body's energy so i went out that austin marathon with a goal running sub three i went out way too fast and within the first six miles i knew i wasn't gonna do sub three like i in the first six miles i was done for and the austin marathon is not flat it's it's hills it's it's like a horrible p r course no one p r's that i know of at the austin marathon so then the remainder of that race so was just holding on ended it running three twenty four so twenty four minutes over sub three everyone on the internet dialed me loved it and i went into another training block immediately after that race was done actually did a real prep this time had a really solid coach jeff cunningham and i ended up running a marathon a year later in two hours fifty six minutes twenty seven seconds so that was the first time i went sub three then a year later i did the buffalo new york marathon in two forty eight and then just recently december third two thousand twenty three i in at two thirty nine twenty which is a six zero five god mile pace what weight were you i was hundred and ninety five pounds oh my god that's ridiculous at one ninety five and were was ridiculous at any at any body weight but you insane at one ninety five were you still squat and while you're i mean were you still strong i i'd i took a lot of time off strength training during that prep so for like thirteen weeks leading up to that race i was still lifting here and there but i wasn't lifting legs heavy i wasn't lifting even upper body really heavy i was just getting some movement in just to maintain and feel good but the priority was was running because what a lot of runners don't realize is like so two thirty nine that's that's impressive that's very impressive but it's more impressive that you're doing it at your body weight that is that is that is like out of this world i i got dinner one time recently with this guy named josh kerr you guys know who josh k unless you're running nerd you don't know who he is but he won the world's he won the world championships recently in the fifteen hundred meter he's like a three forty five mile so one of the fastest mile ever whatever but he's pretty big for a mile for a normal human being you think he's skinny but for a mile he's big and i started talking to him and i was like pretty big how'd you do this he goes man he's from scotland i think he goes when i i came to america when i was seventeen to go to college and i was training for the mile and i but i wasn't used to having fast food and like having restaurants open twenty four hours a day and so i got fat like my first semester there and i weighed two hundred pounds and i broke the mile when i was seventeen or eighteen that year when i weighed two hundred pounds he goes i think i own the world record for the fat sub board mile and like two hundred pounds for like just a guy gallo who was six foot that's not huge but be able to run that time or the time even that you're running or even saw hill you're pretty big too for running those times with that weight that's just like inc incompatible not only because it's hard but what's inc is that you're not getting hurt running fifty to eighty miles a week leading up to it what's like in i the most impressive part here yeah i mean when i first started running i i had a lot of injuries just because my my body mechanics weren't super efficient so i've had knee injuries quad ankles shin calves like everything but now as i've i've run longer with more miles my body has become pretty efficient at form and function and i rarely get injured anymore unless i do like a an ultra marathon i had two you know from my training i just had two like random wife lesson type things from the running that i'm curious nick if you've experience these one was before my marathon i was trying to figure out like how to just like mentally take on the goal of running sub three for it and how to think about like if i'm six miles into the race and i realize i'm not gonna hit it how to make sure i still finish the race and don't just like mentally completely lose it and this marathon told me that for every single race or anything that you're going after you wanna have basically three goals he was like you have your a goal which is the main thing you're trying to hit and then you have a b goal which is like just slightly worse and then you have a seagull which is just like finish the damn race and you can always like you lock in on your a from the start but if you start falling off that and realize you're not gonna hit it you need something to fall back on that keeps you motivated when you're in it and so you have your beagle goal and then the seagull goal is just get to the finish line and i have taken that and like run with it in every area of life now like no matter what it is if you have a fitness goal like a daily fitness goal you wanna you know run every day and work out every day it's good to have that a goal but the reality is that like shit hits the fan sometimes like your kid is up on night or you know like you have a problem at home or something at work pops up and so having that idea of like what is the beagle goal maybe it's a slightly lower version and then the seagull goal is like i'm just gonna go for a walk and get fifteen minutes of movement in that has helped me so much in terms of just like navigating the va of life that inevitably hit when you know you're not gonna have your perfect day every single day yeah i it's like the mindset of like all or nothing so like you see so many people at every marathon every race it's very applicable than anything else in life but you see these elite runners go out and as soon as they fall off of pace they drop out they just fall to the side and i was actually talking to ken ride out a few weeks ago when he was on my podcast and now he lives down the road for me here in in nashville but he was telling me when he did kona ironman years and years and years ago during the race he realized us he wasn't gonna hit the time he wanted so he just dropped down of the race and he i mean him and his family traveled to hawaii for this race so there's a lot of time effort energy money going into it he dropped down of the race and he said it was like his greatest regret ever so he he forced himself to go back the next year for for redemption just to prove himself that he could do it but i think the the feelings and the emotions and just everything that's created when you quit something and drop out because you were on pace for that egg i mean that's like self destruction that hurts so much more than not actually finishing the race now other thing that's funny to me about all runners that i feel like they've gone through you said it like with your first marathon or when you let the military you were like i'm never gonna run again i'm done with this it's like it's like women after they have after they have babies there's like that chemical that gets released that makes them forget how much it hurts going through childbirth i think the same thing happens with the running it just is like a little more delayed like when i finished my marathon i was like fuck this i'm never running another marathon like that was the most painful thing i had ever experienced like the last six miles i wouldn't wish that on my worst damn enemy in the world and then like two weeks later i'm like mh like which one should i sign up for next year like i gotta go two forty nine i gotta do this yeah i mean i it's i'm same with ultra like i finished an ultra amount for two weeks i can't walk my like telling are falling off and i talked to my wife like this is this was stupid why did i do this but i'm useless i can't help out at home and i find myself signing up for further other ultra shortly after dude your ultra documentary was so good i i remember i like had i subscribed for like the premier so i was like sitting at my tv waiting for it to come out it was an hour long about lead i think right yeah it was so good i remember i was like one of the first ones i was like alright it's coming up at this time sarah let's sit down and watch it and what's crazy about you is like there's this whole thing where these people who wanna talk in cliches are like every media or every company should be a media company yada yada yada and the thing is they mostly suck at it you're actually one of the few guys that has like your supplements they meet i don't know what the grade is but you know i know i've talked to you and talked to other people about it and your competitors will be like yeah vpn they they meet this particular grade they are of high quality but you also you'd nail that the supplement thing but then you also are nailing the media thing and no one else or very a few other people are doing that where they're you're actually really nailing it it's almost you could argue that your media is even better than the supplements because supplements like i don't know how the industry works but it seems like yeah they're like these five are great but your media is awesome i appreciate that you had like it looked like you had three or four guys following you around the whole time your wife is there i feel like i know her because of of the videos and then she was following you on instagram or and talking about your splits and these guys have these beautiful cameras it was just like it it was a great documentary how many views did that have the lead doc now has i think one and a half million it was so good man it was so good are you did you come up with that storyline or do you just hire good a good team that's my creative director jordan in house here where is he from jordan is from ohio geographically but he was just when i met him he was employee number four at bp vpn and he was filming for another youtuber when i met him as a freelancer and i was looking for a videographer at the time because was two thousand nineteen at the time i was still filming and editing all my own videos that's crazy that's a shit ton of work i mean all i did all literally all i did was work and two thousand nineteen it was the the first time i was able to bring some on i'm on but i was looking for like over a year for the right person i would fly people down they would stay with me at a meeting we'd film something it just didn't feel rates so i didn't pursue it met jordan felt right he moved down creative director he led my content for a while then he went and led vpn content for a while and now he's back working on directly on my content again but he came up with a storyline the the whole production the scouting the editing process obviously we had a lot of guys on the team supporting that editing and and filming and and production but jordan led that that project we just launched the last man standing alt that he led and created with ian rodriguez here on my team and we posted the ci race video monday but yeah jordan is a super talented creative what's your how much are you spending per year on a team for content and are you able to are you tracking the roi or is this just like a thing where you're like i'm i'm pretty sure it's working it's i'm pretty sure it's working i mean our our media team is mean with videography just videographer photographers we have ten but then we have our social team and a a lot of my business decisions as like as an entrepreneur one thing i've learned and i think we were talking about this one when you're on my podcast a few months ago is that i make a lot of my decisions that i've made a lot of my decisions in business based off of intuition and gut feeling i never looked at the p and l i never looked at the balance sheet if i had this feeling that it i was working and i could feel momentum and i had a pulse on it i was just like keep keep spending keep hiring then finally at one point i i hired operators a cfo a ceo and they're like hey we have put some some guard rails around this but like all of my decisions in business had been intuition got if it feels right i'm gonna do it i have a i have a feeling there's gonna be an roi i might not be able to measure it but i can subjective tell if it's gonna work or it is working is it separate at all like the nick bear fitness platform in your personal social media is that separate from bp vpn as like a functional entity or are the people like the videographer the ten people is that all under bp vpn yeah the whole process has changed significantly over the last couple years so originally it was all one team and then at one point we separated out where i have now have the nick bear fitness business and then the bear performance nutrition business so they were like two separate teams and the nick bear fitness business is your app right your app and your channel yeah it's like my my content my ip my my channel my training app stuff like that i used to do brand deals i don't do any brand deals anymore dude h should have been paying you like seven figures a year i bought hoc because of you because i saw i was like oh big guy wears hoc hoc is is thing the amount of the amount of h rin cons i sold when i first started running has to be absolutely ridiculous so just talk about the separation we separated out nick bare fitness team and vpn team for a while really it it made no sense of what we were doing and why we're doing it just i just thought it was the professional move to take in the next step and stage of business now we've brought it all back into one entity i still have the nick bear fitness business but everyone that is working on media is on bp vpn payroll is a vpn team member and all the content we're creating is in the hope of building the supplement business now the teams are separated working on different projects like i have my creative director jordan who's leading my content ian who's working on my content everett who's a podcast producer and then we have the videographer first creative that are working on just vpn stuff but there's definitely crossover and the lines are blur blur than they used to be do you think that dings your valuation if you ever wanted to sell the company because it's so tied onto you i don't know if it it dings the valuation but i definitely think that a process and a sale would come with a whole lot of structure a lot of ip ip negotiations and possibly issues i feel like it's less than you think actually i i was always impressed so i had actually taken bp vpn supplements before knowing you and had no idea who you were or that you're involved they just like popped up as one of the supplements i was taking no that's not the bulk you think you think nah that's a bulk of custom honestly i have no idea i just remember like back in my private equity days we looked at on it you remember that brand yeah i don't know if it's still around on it was selling and it was like they had a huge exit well it was so tied to joe rogan and what was the name aubrey marcus yeah aubrey marcus and that was like when we were looking at it private equity guys like that's their biggest fear is like oh how involved are these two guys like is it a key man risk all this stuff and then ultimately they ended up getting to an amazing exit with somebody and you know they put guard rails around it they get like key man insurance or whatever it is but i i would i i mean i'd be interested to find out actually like run a survey of your customers like what proportion actually end up coming through you and your media versus now just like the flywheel is spinning seo is there and the business kind of just you know a self prop well that's been the fear with my businesses which is i don't wanna make it me i wanna make it its own thing but me or nick or sci like that gets initial base but it's like at what point do you when do you make the transition and it's a that's a challenging there's i don't know the answer to that question and i'm afraid of the repercussions of making the wrong the making the wrong choice you know what i mean yeah i that that's been a topic of discussion for the last couple years with us and trying to figure out how to navigate that and for a while i kept leaning into okay well let's separate in the hopes of building vpn away from myself so that it's separate and distinct can stand on its own but what i i found by doing that is the separation created this loss of vision and brand so i've kind of just like flipped my whole thought process on that and said screw whatever happens in the future and i'm gonna lean fully back in and i don't care really how it affects valuation or the end process anymore i'm just gonna build a brand that i'm really proud of and the way i wanna build it and whatever happens happens and if someone comes knocking on my door in the next couple of years and says like hey we love what you're doing let's talk but if you don't like it you know i just wanna make sure i'm enjoying the process and not building in business based off of kpis and milestones and i bet your i mean i have i have no idea i've never seen you comment on this but i would i would have to assume the app that you have how much do you charge fifty bucks a month or something it's nineteen ninety nine a month so i would have to imagine that's doing well too right i mean i i make much more money outside of bp vpn than i make personally with bp vpn yeah i mean i i think it's killing it style have you ever thought about doing it yeah i mean that type of business model is incredible right it's just like the ultimate scalability and you know as your personal branding it just for you as you think about reinvest cash flows into your brand building it just makes it it makes it so much more dynamic because you can run all of your media stuff at breakeven if you want to like you can just reinvest all the cash that you're generating from youtube ads from the app from any of those things into creating better and better content and create this massive flywheel and just count on vpn as the like long term upside bet but if i had a bet i i bet you nick if i had a bet nick has probably been even though his net worth has skyrocketed i if i had a bet you'd lit you've lived relative poor compared to the net worth that you've created cash flow poor and now you probably taste this and you're like okay finally i can afford like to live like i wanna live as opposed to just living on eighty thousand dollars a year yeah i mean for the first yeah i i think get any money on the business for the first five years what do you get like just like a like a army or you get like a military s in or something yeah so it works it worked well because started the business two thousand twelve two seventeen is the year transition out the army so i actually had to start paying myself then me and my brother he moved down from pennsylvania to help us build the business we signed our first warehouse lease that year it was the first year we hit seven figures in revenue and it was also like the most challenging year in my entire life because i know anything about financing inventory i know anything about leveraging debt i know anything about taking out business loans utilizing lines of credit cash flows an absolute nightmare the only money i thought i had to spend was the money that was in the bank account we had no terms of manufacturers like two thousand seventeen was arguably the the worst and hardest year in my life but also the best year in my life that if i feel relive any year right now it'd be that year that's insane that's one thing by the way like just the the time frame on all of this i feel like people don't appreciate time as a lever for growth on anything as much as they should and actually like people in fitness and athletes understand it better because they understand that like growing slowly as the game and just getting better slowly like when i look at your youtube channel and go to most popular videos a bunch of these videos like you've been at this for years and years there's like six year old video four year old video three year old video like eight year old video the ten thousand calorie cheat day challenge like some of this stuff you've just been at it and i know you just said it you were editing these like you were actually on the ground spending the like hundred hour weeks doing this stuff for a long long time it wasn't like you all of a sudden popped up and had this unbelievable you know production quality that you have today so i i also just think like appreciating time as a lever for growth on these fronts is incredible that is one one thing that's been a powerful skill for myself or this last decade plus is just the consistency at which i've just kept doing the thing but even the one thing sam and i talked about when he was on my podcast i think you're you're were gonna do like a speech and you you're back in like the green room before going on to the speech and you're talking to all these high worth individuals who are super powerful and they're all sitting there super insecure and scared or nervous and like yeah great holy shit these people aren't any more secure confident or better than me and i think once you realized that and i have all the skills that i need to take whatever is i i wanna take to the top i just have to apply it because i used to think and i went through this phase where i was like okay i'll get this business i'll get this thing to this this level but at some point i'm not gonna be spun enough i'm gonna have to outsource people to come in and and take it from where i build it to where it needs or can go and sometimes you do that but you don't have to and i've realized that there's no smarter than me it's gonna take this business to the level it needs to go i just have to be super consistent at this approach for a long period of time and it's gonna pay off in dividends but you did hire a ceo i think what are you a year into that a little over a year yep how's that it's been great i mean the the main reason i wanted to step out of the ceo role and i i i wasn't actively looking to hire a ceo but kat came into the business first is kind of said an advisor and then she joined as the chief revenue officer leaning into more operations and then we just had a conversation one day i was like hey would you ever wanna be ceo because i really just wanna like focus on creating content brand building and she's like yeah if you want me to be ceo be ceo so we made the switch because the business got to a point in a size where i wasn't spending my time on of the things that i was passionate about anymore i'll spending my time on like people management and lawsuits and retail and finances and p and l and balance sheets it sounds like this is all like super critical important stuff but i don't love it i wanna focus on what i love and that's creating content that's building brand that's getting people jacked up it's talking about the products it's working on new product innovation and that's why i wanted to make that change which has been like much harder than i thought it would be and i'm only now a year in of that transition really finding my lane but this last year for me has been an interesting one dude and it's hard so i i have a ceo too we'll be at one year in a couple months and it's hard because you want to be a good i don't know what it's called a good partner with your ceo where you want them to make mistakes and you want them to you know put their flavor and stuff because you gotta let a ceo do that but then at the same time you're like but i already did all this and i can tell you what the outcome of this is gonna be or you know it's just like it's really it's a it's a it's like getting married where you and but not living together right away and so you get married and then you move in and you're like oh you're fucking quit leaving the cap off the toothpaste since it's like well no you can't like bitch about little stuff you gotta a little them deal do what they wanna do you know what mean it's like kinda weird it's like it's like a weird there's it's a weird thing but you have to learn how to like manage each other and it's and it is a challenge when it works it's hard it's a it's the best at any point do you feel the need to jump back into the ceo role well in my when i get pissed off i'll be like i gotta do this and then i'll get like end of week or end a month updates and i'm like oh my god jordan is so much better at me than all of these things and i and and also like i would have done this different this different this different and those three things i probably would have been wrong about so like the the name of the game is it being right a hundred percent of the time the name of the game is being right for the right things most of the time and i just had like kinda like have empathy and put myself in his shoes and that helped a lot but no like when on a bad day when i get pissed off i'm like i should do this and then ninety nine percent of the time i'm like you are more talented than i am at so many things i cannot do this yeah i think sometimes too when you're when you're far removed from the position for an extended period of time you forget all the bad things you have to used to deal with yeah like you only remember the good man i kind of missed this and you get exposed to all the the things the bad thing like you don't miss it too much now you got it you run with it it also kind of i just before you jump forward from that sam it it also differs greatly between like a true business operations endeavor and a creative endeavor like you couldn't step away and truly have a ceo just like running your content apparatus because it would lose it would lose the like the nick soul that is in it that's in every single piece of content that exists you can like build your team around it but you actually being in that creatively i think it's so key there was this think it like it was jerry seinfeld did a interview with i think it was like the harvard business review and they they asked him about the fact that him and larry david basically like wrote every episode of seinfeld and after nine years they had basically burned out and so the show just had to end because they burned out on doing it and the harvard business review was like could you have hired mckinsey to come in and like help you find a better model and design something and jerry seinfeld said who's mckinsey and they said it's a consulting firm and seinfeld responded are they funny ben basically his point was you don't like i don't need them if they're not funny because the efficient way of doing the creative thing is actually the wrong way and what he said is the right way is the hard way the show was success bowl because they did it the hardware way they micro managed every single detail of the creative process and they really had their soul in it and so i think that like your creative success and what has allowed all your businesses to thrive are also fundamentally tied to the fact that you have your soul in every single piece content that you guys are putting together yeah i i agree with that i i think sometimes entrepreneurship and building a business and and founding and company from the outside looking in like people make it seem easy so it's romanticized and everyone's like oh i could start a business i could do it and then you finally do it and that you have this passion around everything you're building but then it gets hard and it gets challenging and then it grows and then you know your passions are sidelined for the priorities other of the further other parts of the business but it's just maintaining that consistent work ethic even when you're working on things that you truly weren't passionate about in the beginning but you know it drives business and leads you to an ultimate end goal well guys i appreciate you coming on it was a little impromptu but this is fun i just like hanging out with you guys and and learning and nick sa hill i'm close to saw hill so i have to say this to him but nick i've i've looked up to you for a a while now and i appreciate you doing this sa hill i appreciate you doing this too this is awesome no thanks guys appreciate the opportunity yeah alright that's the pod i feel like i could rule where to know i could be what i want to put at all in it like a days on a road less travel never looking back