Bare Performance Nutrition

Nick Baer was a broke college freshman studying nutrition on an Army ROTC scholarship when inspiration struck in his dorm room. He and his broke buddies wanted to buy pre-workout but couldn't afford it, so they pooled $30 each and decided to make their own. "I have this food scale in my living room next to my bed," Nick recalls, "mixing up these white powders on this food scale, and then kids would come to my dorm and I'd give them a bag of white powder. This pre-workout. I looked like I was dealing drugs." Despite the sketchy appearance, Nick loved sports performance nutrition and saw a real business opportunity. Between his junior and senior year, he decided to go all-in.

In 2012, Nick took a $20,000 loan and placed his first production order with a California-based contract manufacturer. He built the website himself, handled all the promotional work, advertising, logistics, and packing from his college apartment. "Everything was done out of my college apartment," he says. But despite his effort, the launch fell flat. His strategy was to send free samples to fitness YouTubers—who he thought had 100,000 followers that could drive sales. "I thought if they would make a video about it, maybe 1,000 of those people will buy this stuff." They didn't.

The first three years were brutal. Year one: $20,000 in revenue. Year two: $20,000. Year three: $20,000. "There's no growth for three years," Nick admits. Meanwhile, he'd joined the military in 2013 and was in and out of the field constantly—9 weeks gone during Ranger School's 17-week course, four and a half months away for training. Most founders would have quit. Nick kept going, partly because the military kept him busy, so it wasn't his main focus. He was in the red, selling at cost with heavy discounts just to move inventory and pay bills. His marketing ROI was zero. "I didn't pay myself personally until 2017," he says. "I built the brand for five years before I took any money from it."

The breakthrough came during a nine-month rotation to South Korea in 2014-2015. Nick was making only $2-3k per month and set a goal: hit $10k monthly revenue by the time he left. He had downtime and committed to learning. "Every waking moment outside of work with the military was going to be spent learning how to market, how to create videos, how to edit, how to code a website. I read books, listened to podcasts." Within 90 days, revenue hit $10k/month. He also rebranded with new labels, logos, and a rebuilt website—all done while stationed overseas.

The real turning point came when Nick deployed to South Korea and started creating "Day in the Life of an Infantry Platoon Leader" videos on YouTube. One video hit a million views in 30 days and gained him 50,000 subscribers in that month alone—jumping his channel from 30,000 to 80,000 subscribers. His platoon loved being featured and shared the videos across the country. Upper leadership didn't approve, but Nick kept it separate: working on YouTube and his business before 6am PT and after 5-6pm work ended.

In 2017, when he transitioned out of the military, the company had found real traction. That year, Bare Performance grew 750% and hit $1 million in revenue—all organic, with no paid ads yet. But success created new problems: they grew so fast they constantly ran out of inventory. "I would get that inventory in, I would sell out of it in five to seven days and then it'd be 11 weeks until I had more inventory," Nick recalls. "We were constantly out of inventory. We were pissing off all of our customers. Cash flow was like, I was pulling my hair out at night."

Nick solved this by carefully stacking production orders and timing inventory better. After 2017, he doubled revenue year-over-year. Investors approached him, but instead of raising capital, he created additional revenue streams—subscription training programs, PDFs, online nutrition courses—all with near 100% margins. These funded the growth of the core supplement business without dilution.

Bare Performance Nutrition is now on track for $12 million in ARR with roughly 60% contribution margins on products. The company has 400,000+ YouTube subscribers (crossed that milestone during the podcast recording), and Nick is training for the Boston Marathon while maintaining muscle mass at 194 pounds (down from 220-230 previously). The business has evolved far beyond Nick's personal brand—he notes that many customers now don't know who he is, which is exactly where he wanted the brand to go. "Last year, if you would talk to our customer base, a lot of them would say, yeah, I know who Nick Baer is. But I think a lot of our customers now actually don't know who I am, which is the way I want."

The fastest-growing product line is health supplements: greens, reds, multivitamins, and joint support. Strong Greens alone sells 8,000 units monthly. Nick is launching Embrace the Suck, a subscription training app built with a fully certified Green Beret, and an online nutrition course. He's also published a book called "25 Hours a Day," which tells the story of building the company while in the military and shares leadership lessons about slowing down and maintaining perspective under pressure.

Nick remains the sole owner and hasn't raised venture capital. He pays himself a small salary from BPN but makes most of his income from YouTube ads, PDF sales, and affiliate/sponsorship deals. He's obtained BSEG drug-free certification for all products so military personnel can safely use them—a nod to his roots without making military the sole target market. Despite multiple acquisition offers, he has no plans to sell anytime soon.