Nick Bare: $40M Brand, 1.5M Subs, Rented App

Key Takeaways:

Nick Bare started Bare Performance Nutrition in 2012 with a $20,000 loan while serving as a US Army infantry officer. Muscle and Health reported $40 million in revenue for 2022.
His YouTube channel has about 1.5 million subscribers, and BPN ships its own free shopping app rated 4.9 stars on the App Store.
His paid training subscription, Nick Bare Fitness, costs $14.99 per month and runs inside Playbook, where the creator keeps 80 percent and Playbook owns the app listing.
BPN also built a free training app in February 2023. The app tracker AppBrain records it as unpublished from Google Play on February 25, 2025.
Owning a supplement company and renting the subscription product are two different businesses. One compounds under your name.

Nick Bare has done the hard version of almost everything. He built a supplement company from a college apartment, ran it while commissioned in the Army, filmed the whole thing, and turned "hybrid athlete" into a training category people search for by name. Then he did the easy version of one thing. His paid training subscription runs on a platform he does not own. That is the decision most creators with an audience make by default, which is why it is worth studying.

Who Is Nick Bare?

Nick Bare is the founder of Bare Performance Nutrition, a US supplement company he started in 2012, and a fitness creator with about 1.5 million YouTube subscribers. Bare describes himself on nickbare.com as "Founder of Bare Performance Nutrition, Hybrid Athlete, Husband & Father." He started BPN in 2012 out of a college apartment in Pennsylvania with a $20,000 loan, then commissioned into the US Army as an infantry officer and kept the company running through a deployment to South Korea, according to a June 2023 Muscle and Health profile. That profile reports first-year revenue of $20,000 and $40 million in revenue for 2022. He has published on YouTube since 2014, and HypeAuditor tracked the channel at 1,495,308 subscribers in June 2026. He also hosts The Nick Bare Podcast and wrote a book, Go One More. The audience came from documentation rather than from a viral format: ten years of workouts, marathons, supply chain problems, and manufacturing runs. That is the kind of audience that buys things.

How Did a $20,000 Loan Become a $40M Supplement Brand?

Bare sold a physical product to an audience that watched him build the company, which meant every video was both content and distribution. Supplements are a brutal business: manufacturing minimums, inventory, shipping, returns, and a shelf full of competitors who all promise the same thing. Bare's advantage was that people knew where the product came from. He filmed the production orders. The same audience made the BPN app work. It is free, it has been on the App Store since September 2019, and Apple's own store data showed a 4.9 rating from about 1,490 US ratings when we checked on August 10, 2026. That app is a storefront, and it does that job well. Chris Bumstead ran a similar play with Raw Nutrition, which we covered in his profile. Physical product plus a documented founder is a proven combination.

What Does Nick Bare Sell Today?

Bare sells supplements through his own store and app, and sells training through a $14.99 monthly subscription hosted on Playbook, a third-party fitness platform. Here is the full picture, checked on August 10, 2026:

Product	Price	Status today	Who owns the store listing
BPN app	Free	Live on its own App Store listing	Bare Performance Nutrition LLC
BPN Training app	Free	Removed from Google Play, February 2025	Bare Performance Nutrition LLC
Nick Bare Fitness	$14.99/mo or $99.99/yr	Live inside the Playbook app	Playbook Technologies Inc

The Nick Bare Fitness page advertises hybrid training programs, eight nutrition lessons, coaching access, and a seven-day trial. Its checkout link points at my.playbookapp.io/nick-bare. The programs are his. The app around them belongs to Playbook.

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Why Does a Rented App Cost More Than 20 Percent?

Playbook's published terms give creators 80 percent of net subscription revenue, so the visible cost is 20 cents on the dollar. The larger cost is that the app listing, the ratings, the push notifications, and the discovery surface belong to Playbook. Start with the visible number. Playbook states on its site that creators keep "80% of every dollar net to you" with no monthly fee. That is a fair deal by platform standards. At $14.99 per month, 20 percent is $3.00 per subscriber per month, so 10,000 subscribers would send $360,000 a year to the platform. That is arithmetic on the published price rather than a reported Nick Bare Fitness number. The Playbook app has a 4.92 rating from roughly 35,000 ratings, and its App Store description advertises more than 56,000 workouts from more than 500 instructors. Every one of those ratings belongs to Playbook. A subscriber who came for Nick Bare downloads an app with 500 other coaches inside it, and every review that subscriber writes improves Playbook's ranking. Search "hybrid athlete training" in the App Store and you find Peloton, Volt, and TrainingPeaks. You do not find Nick Bare, because there is no Nick Bare app to find. A creator with 1.5 million subscribers is handing App Store discovery to a platform instead of using it. We wrote about the general version of this problem in the platform trap, and about deal structures in what is revenue share.

A rented app pays you monthly. An owned app pays you and grows an asset.

Built by Foundry builds, launches, and runs custom creator apps for $0 upfront on a revenue share. You own the business, the listing, and the customer relationship.

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The Free Training App That Disappeared

BPN announced a free BPN Training app in February 2023, with 12 to 16 week programs for hybrid athletes, 5K, half marathon, and marathon distances, plus Garmin Connect syncing. AppBrain, which tracks store listings, records the Android version as last updated in July 2024, rated 4.87 from 490 ratings, and unpublished from Google Play on February 25, 2025. A US App Store search for "BPN Training" today returns the BPN shopping app instead.

A free training app funded by supplement sales is a defensible strategy. Most creator apps get abandoned because nobody owns them after launch, and this one was no different. Software needs updates, store compliance, crash triage, and someone whose job is the next release. That work is what App Care exists to handle.

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4 Moves Creator Founders Can Copy

1. Document the build. Bare's ten years of behind-the-scenes video is why his customers trust a tub of powder with his name on it. Show the work before you sell the product. 2. Sell something that renews. Supplements repeat when the customer remembers to reorder. A subscription repeats whether they remember or not. 3. Count the second cost. Twenty percent of revenue is the number you can see. The ratings, the listing, the notification permission, and the store ranking are the ones you cannot, and they compound for whoever owns them. 4. Staff the app after launch. A shipped app with no operator becomes an unpublished app. Budget the second year before you build the first version.

If You Have 50K Engaged Followers

You do not need 1.5 million subscribers or a $40 million supplement company to run this math. Fifty thousand engaged followers converting at 2 percent gives you 1,000 subscribers. At $14.99 per month, that is $14,990 in gross MRR. On a rented platform, roughly $3,000 of that goes to the platform every month, and the App Store listing that new customers search never has your name on it. On your own app, the listing, the reviews, the notification channel, and the resale value are yours. Bare earned his position the hard way. Most creators reading this have a smaller audience and a cleaner slate, so the ownership decision is still in front of them. Built by Foundry closes that gap with product strategy, design, engineering, App Store launch, analytics, and ongoing operation under one revenue-share partnership. Our about page explains how the model works.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does Nick Bare Fitness cost?

Nick Bare Fitness costs $14.99 per month or $99.99 per year, with a seven-day free trial, according to its official site. The subscription is hosted on the Playbook platform.

How much revenue does Bare Performance Nutrition make?

Muscle and Health reported in June 2023 that Bare Performance Nutrition reached $40 million in revenue in 2022, after $20,000 in its first year. Nick Bare founded the company in 2012 with a $20,000 loan.

Playbook states on its website that creators keep 80 percent of every dollar net to them, with no monthly fee and no setup cost. Playbook keeps the remaining 20 percent.

Does Nick Bare have his own app?

Bare Performance Nutrition publishes a free shopping app on the App Store under its own developer account. Nick Bare's paid training programs run inside the Playbook app rather than a standalone Nick Bare app.

Own the listing, the reviews, and the customer relationship.

Built by Foundry builds, launches, and runs custom creator apps in about three weeks. $0 upfront. Revenue share. Your training method becomes a company with your name on the App Store.

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Nick Bare: $40M Brand, 1.5M Subs, Rented App

Get Creator Revenue Insights

Who Is Nick Bare?

How Did a $20,000 Loan Become a $40M Supplement Brand?

What Does Nick Bare Sell Today?

Why Does a Rented App Cost More Than 20 Percent?

The Free Training App That Disappeared

4 Moves Creator Founders Can Copy

If You Have 50K Engaged Followers

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does Nick Bare Fitness cost?

How much revenue does Bare Performance Nutrition make?

Does Nick Bare have his own app?

Creators who already did this

Curious what your app could be?

Keep reading

Nick Bare: $40M Brand, 1.5M Subs, Rented App

Get Creator Revenue Insights

Who Is Nick Bare?

How Did a $20,000 Loan Become a $40M Supplement Brand?

What Does Nick Bare Sell Today?

Why Does a Rented App Cost More Than 20 Percent?

The Free Training App That Disappeared

4 Moves Creator Founders Can Copy

If You Have 50K Engaged Followers

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does Nick Bare Fitness cost?

How much revenue does Bare Performance Nutrition make?

What is Playbook's revenue share for creators?

Does Nick Bare have his own app?

Creators who already did this

Curious what your app could be?

Keep reading