Building a strength sports media empire with David Thomas Tao of Barbend.com

0:00 Hey, this is Jim. This episode is our conversation with David Thomas Tao, co founder of Barbin dot com and until recently CEO, when they were actually acquired a couple of months ago by by Pillar four, and which is kind of an exciting thing to talk about in the strength space, that someone who is providing news on the strength world actually gets acquired by a serious media company. It seemed I would have never bet that that would have happened years ago, but it certainly did. David somebody that I should have crossed paths with by now, but I hadn't. Mike certainly had. Anyway, we had a great conversation with him that we really enjoyed. Not always the biggest fan of doing remote interviews, but this one was great because he was a great guest. David's in New York City and they just had the experience of the Canadian wildfires blowing smoke their direction, and we're in California and we have that stuff all the time here. So anyway, that's what's going on at the beginning of this conversation. It starter starts in media race, but enjoy it. So we had them on because we're in the Valley basically. So we had them on three sides of us and it looked like that. Yeah, so we had the COVID going on. They're telling you to wear every mask in the sun, and then we have like fucking ash flying from the sky and they're telling you don't leave your house because you're gonna inhale flames or something else. Seeing the world like that literally does feel like, uh uh,

1:32 like a Harrison Ford movie or some shit. Yeah it's Blade Runner. Yeah, something is crazy. I was seeing those pictures on Twitter in New York. I was like, holy shit, Yeah, Dune is a better analogy. That's a little more like topical. I haven't seen the whole thing or the Blade Runner sequel when they're in Vegas. Yeah, Orange Sky liked it. I loved it, and I didn't, you know, didn't like the original Blade Runner the first time I saw it in the theater. I never saw the first I only saw that one, same same director as the New Dude, right, Yeah, which I loved, but I was a nerd for the original one too. So Next Dunes coming soon, Yeah, this year, next year, I think December ish. Yeah, I think they should just call it Next Dune. Yeah, like not Dune two, just next Dune. I don't even Yeah, I need to catch up.

2:21 Welcome to the Next Dune. I haven't seen it, you haven't seen it? Yeah, or like Dune two next to Dune. Yeah. And instead of all the funky names that go with the books, was there is there three books? Oh no, no, no, no, the books are like there's like eight. Yeah, there's like three that were written by Herbert, and then there were a bunch that have like one of his family members names on that they were his side ghost written by somebody else and they just used his name for the hell of it. Yeah. Yeah, they're not as good after after that, Yeah, they get even. I didn't. The second one was okay, and the third one it was just too stupid and sad. I don't like stupid sad stories. I mean, like, you come out of the first book and it's like, you know, okay, so victory has consequences, but it's still victory, right, And then you get into the next one's it's like, oh, this whole governing thing is really complicated and the politics are going to kill us, and oh the politics killed us, and you know, I don't know, is that the core that Star Wars stole kind of the political essence of Doune. Maybe is just what everyone says. Yeah maybe. I think like the universe that Dune made is so big it's like impossible to say everything they came after it didn't still Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah that makes sense. Their attention to detail was so sick that everyone's a copycat, just purely based off covering

3:58 every yeah, facet of sci fi. Yeah, and and yeah, there was stuff that it was borrowed from other you know, like classic sci fi stuff, and there were things that were borrowed from like recognizable current culture too, you know, along the way that made people able to resonate with it a little egg yet heavier than some stuff. Yeah, Star Wars is like a perfect balance. I feel like of like casual and nerdy, where Dune seems extra nerdy. Dude's pretty nerdy. Yeah, like like the Normans aren't speaking of Yeah, worry with David Thomas Tao, who are your self proclaimed proclaimed strength nerd. I'm a I'm a strength nerd and a whiskey nerd.

4:45 I live at that middle of that vent diagram. I feel like I feel like that's a pretty good portion. Um whiskey and lifting for some reason go pretty hand in hand. Maybe it's like the I don't even know what culture because vodka maybe is more popular in the Russian strength world, but America, whiskey and lifting or kind of the gig. Yeah, well it's kind of I yeah, I was just saying Alexei to Rokti was in New York a couple of years ago. He's an Olympic champion, a weightlifter who still does a lot of content and I was hanging out with him and he was like, David, I've never tried the whiskey before. That's wild. And I was like never and he's like, no, huh no, never had He said the like the the the way whisky, and uh that was great.

5:34 It was cool to like introduce someone to that. They're just not a brown liquor. That's wild. It's yeah, not really not really in Ukraine, I guess, uh, not much of a culture around that, but yeah, I introduced him to it. He he knows, he knows what's up now. Well that well, actually, that's a good question. That's a sort of down my list questions like how do you introduce someone to whiskey who has no like, where do you start, which what flavor you think it's going to be the most successful with someone who doesn't have any experience with whiskey, just like a Hennessy and a diet coke, because that's where I had a heady cooke. I think, I think, I think the best place to start with whiskey for someone who's completely new to it is probably bourbon.

6:29 And that's not just because I'm from Kentucky. It's sweeter, it's a little more accessible, like you can have it anytime after a meal. With a meal. You don't want to start with something or someone with something like really smoky or like super high proof. Um, if someone's not used to like neat alcohol, I think like a lower proof bourbon is a really good entry to that to see if they just vibe with it. Plus they're sweeter typically and cheaper exactly because of the corn I mean typically, I mean I can find you expensive bourbon. Yeah I have. I have Bourbon. I paid way too much money for it. Yeah, but like a decent bottle of bourbon is you know, forty bucks? Yeah exactly, exactly. Yeah.

7:18 We we have on the set with us and have since the beginning of of of you know what, when the weekend that we opened the gym, there is a bottle of Red Breast twenty one here that Mike lovingly procured for us. I had to google because I didn't know shit about whiskey. I don't really know anything about anything, to be honest, so I just kind of sit on Google. But that tasted good taste. I love the older red breastuff. I have a bottle of Redbreast twenty seven. I'm waiting to crack for my birthday this year, and that stuff tastes like it tastes like liquid pineapple and papaya. It's like so fruity. I absolutely love it. So is it. It's a big birthday then, so well, every birthday can be big if you believe every piece of everyday's gonna be a personal pizza, if you believe you're right exactly exactly. I say that, But like, my birthday's next month's right when everyone's on vacation, So I always think it's gonna be like a big thing. I invite all these people and it just turns into like meat drinking alone, and I'm like, WHOA, we're doing it up. It's probably better that way did people suck. I just had a big birthday and I got to hang out with my grandkids. But that was it. I was, you know, away from home. I had to travel the next day. I was tired. Yeah. I don't really do birthdays. Yeah, I'm happy, happy thirtieth. By the way, Jim, Yeah, exactly times too. So yeah, um, what's so

8:50 the average Jim Nerd meathhead lift your guy partakes four to seven days a week, right, it's the average whiskey nerd guy partake. So I mean you're just having a whiskey with each meal. You got a breakfast bourbon? Oh no, man. I Since I started doing stuff in the whisky industry, like professional tastings, tasting panels, reviews, I drink so much less. Yeah, because you just like blow out your palette every night. If you drink all the time, and then like you just can't. The temptations always there because there's like an event every night you could go too. So I probably took like two to three maybe evenings a week, and I count how many drinks I have. Otherwise I'm just not able to function. That's my issue. I like alcohol a lot. I like a love red wine, but I'll have like one drink and I'll be hungover for five days. One drink. It happens, It happens. It's so bad. It could be anything. I had one Corona last summer and I'm fucked up for five days.

10:00 Corona's fairly. I was gonna say, you're still You're still messed up. Yeah, I still probably shouldn't drive days ago. You should definitely get your liver check because it's not like I don't do steroids. I've never even gone through like a college binge phase. I think my liver's fought. I think maybe my liver is fucked. I don't know. I think I'm just a sissy as part of the issue, and maybe that's it. I'm just running. Actually, what I like to say to boost the confidences. I'm running so optimally that one negative step backwards feels like just a whole wrench in this system. Yep, that's what, yep. Exactly. In college, I had a friend who had a very low alcohol terrence tolerance and nothing wrong with that. He's shaming us and he no, no, no, no no, but he he he vomited once after having a couple of drinks, like just booze wasn't for him, and he just came back from the bathroom at this party and he was like, man, my immune systems too strong.

10:56 Yep, kicking out, all kicking out, destroy all poisons. He just like he just like tapped. He's like tapped his chest and he's like, systems too strong. Man. I'll relate. I guess that works. I guess that works. I relate. Uh to say that. Uh So, you know, one of Mike's friends was questioning me the other day about the whole, you know, process of podcasting, because Mike and I've been doing it for almost ten years now, and he said, like, do you have do you like research guests and you like have like a list of questions you want to ask or whatever? And I'm like, fuck, no, not really. I was sort of a little bit. But there's been there's been a couple of guests that if I had no clue who they were and no connection, yeah, I might do a Google. And then we've done some touchy subject ones right where I would google around. So I didn't sound like a total idiot that I am. But most of the time that people we talked to are in our spheres. Yeah, So the speaking of that. So the one question I really have to ask is how have we not cross paths before? Now? Yeah, I don't know if we've chatted either. Obviously worked with you in your brand a good amount, I don't know if we've actually chatted. Mike, I'm I'm a little I'm a little sad you were on the Barben podcast couple years ago that I remember that.

12:13 I thought it was Jacoble at the time. I was Jake there also or no, was it just me and you? He was? He was? But I think you and me that was on the podcast twenty sixteen, seventeen. Oh no, that was like twenty twenty. Like my memories gone. We weren't we, right, My memory has been gone for we weren't even around, like we We didn't have the podcast until like twenty twenty. Uh yeah, I mean we only launched. We only started in like mid twenty sixteen. Dot com. But to your yeah, barban dot com. Um to your question, Jim, how did we not cross paths? Somebody asked me that recently in New York. If they're in the fitness industry and they used to own a gym like a few blocks from where I used to live, and They're like, how have we not crossed paths? And I thought about it a lot, and my answer is I'm just not very cool.

13:13 And because of that, like people aren't like introducing me to people. Like, people aren't like, oh, I got to follow this guy on social I gotta see what he's up to. People are just like, no, I know, I got you on Twitter. I got you on Twitter probably twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen. I bet I you're like my one follower. Every tweet is just for you. I followed you now, I had only had a mutual followed with Barbin, but I didn't like, I hadn't followed you until very recently. But I know that you've been friends with the Sturets for a long time, right, Oh, they're great. I met the Sturets back in like twenty fourteen, um, when their daughters were in elementary school, and now they're like in college, and that just lows my mind.

14:01 Give us, give us like a thirty second rundown of who you are, what you do. Yeah, just a quick background for the folks listening, because we didn't do any research. You got it, I mean, because your research. Nice to meet you. My name is David. Why the heck am my hair? Well, my name is David Tao. There are a lot of David Taos, so I say David Thomas Taw so people can actually like figure out who the heck guy I am. I co founded Barbend in twenty sixteen. That's probably what I'm best known for. Barbend was my idea. I was a strength nerd for years. I was a really shitty competitive lifter years for years in weightlifting and then in like CrossFit, but I love the stuff. I just immersed in it. I wanted to get to know the culture, and I had a journalism background, So Barbend was like the site I always wanted because I was tired of like having to go to fourteen different forums to get event results and like training tips and stuff like that. So barban kind of started out of a personal passion. It grew much quicker than we expected and then basically grew the like raised money, grew the team. I was CEO of barband. We were actually acquired two months ago, a little lesson two months ago, and I'm still on the team because I want to be. All of our employees switched over, all of our execs switched over, not because we like have to. I want to

15:33 be very transparent. There's no like earnout for founders. But I kind of built my dream job, or was lucky to fall into my dream job, you know, doing content around strength sports and journalism around strength sports. So I can't really imagine working anywhere else. And then on the side, I'd do a lot of work in like the whiskey space, the spirit space. I grew up in the little town in Kentucky where they make most of the world's bourbon, Bardstown, so I've kind of been interested in that connected to that industry for a long time. I hear the Kentucky in your boy. That's a thing I was going to marry. That was on my list. I don't know if you know Brandon the old bird dog. Oh oh yeah.

16:14 You talk to anyone else in my family, they have it. I went to college. Okay, here's the story. Here's here's how I lost the accent. I used to have a little one. So I go to college in Boston. My like second day on campus, I'm drinking out of a paper bag underage on the sidewalk outside of like a frat that I got kicked out of and this this police officers, like Boston cop comes up to me and he starts talking to me. He's clearly like mad, like I'm this like seventeen year old kid at the time, just drinking on the sidewalk. That's not good. But I couldn't understand what he was saying. And when I started talking because of his accent. And when I started talking to him, he couldn't nderstand what I was saying because of my accent. And I realized. I was like, they're not all going to change their accents.

17:10 So I think I want to live here, I'm gonna have to change mine. So Mark Wahlberg Movies gets you, right, The Fighter, Yeah, I watched like that was like true, why I would to college like free way before The Fighter? So I watched. I watched The Departed like seven times in a row. And then I just dropped my accent. So my family still has it. And if I go back, if I go back home, like the cadence changes. Yeah, I speak much slower. It's a little more rhythmic. Yeah, I get that because my my family was all from Oklahoma, and I started off kind of sounded sounding like them. At some point along the way, I was like, I don't really want to say worsh rag for the rest of my life, and so I'm gonna fix that. And so I sound like a pretty much you know, a newscaster now. So does does being raised in Kentucky play any role in the strength, you know, background that you have, Like Kentucky isn't necessarily cross fit, but a lot of powerlifting, a lot of big burly boys running around, obviously very close to Columbus, which is the you know, the epicenter of of now CrossFit, but originally is the powerlifting city of the world. Does that kind of did that seep into your childhood? Definitely not in the childhood. There are a lot of country strong people where I'm from.

18:33 Where I'm from, so, like, you know, people who grew up working on farms doing a lot of manual labor. I did some of that growing up, But yeah, I don't think that impacted me too much. I think that's I know something that Kentucky has become a little more known for. That part of country has become a little better known for. There was, like, weirdly in the small town where I grew up, there was a very high level Highland Games train Jim. So, a lot of like top Highland Games athletes were in Bardstown, Kentucky, because that's even the niche of the niches, right, like obviously you probably a body being up top. Yeah, and then maybe maybe probably CrossFit then powerlifting, weightlifting third tier and high Lands is probably bottom of the strength tier probably so. But you know there's a lot of space. Yeah, a lot of things to three easier, a lot of farm implements. Yeah, that makes sense.

19:26 Easy enough of them makes sense. Oh. The one the one thing that was interesting was growing up, we had the Kentucky Bourbon Festival, which is where my actual first job was, and they had barrel rolling competitions and a fifty three gallon barrel of whiskey is like five hundred some so like you got to be able to move those with some finance something. No, they're like a couple of ways, Like there were a couple events. You could roll them like on their side, which is takes some strength, and then you could also roll them on like on the edge is kind of hard to describe, um, and you could try and get the spin right to where they would like kind of like a bowling ball curve, and you could like try and like get them to go in a certain place. So that was that was tough. If you ever rolled a barrel of whiskey, that's that's gonna make a sweat. But i'd be down. I mean, I think you'd be pretty good at of me. I'm pretty weak man. Oh yeah, you you said earlier that you were a mediocre competitor, and then you start Barman and had a lot of success. That's all of us if we were.

20:33 I didn't say it was a mediocre competitor. I said it was a shitty competitor. I just want to be clear. Is mediocre above Oh yeah, oh yeah, for sure. Well I would probably consider myself mediocre. I guess I don't really know. But either way, the point is that if we were actually good at what we did, we wouldn't be sitting here talking. We'd be probably lifting in Malta or wherever big competitions are happening. That's actually I would I would probably agree with that. That's actually even weirder why we didn't cross paths. Just the mediocreness. You know how they say like, oh, sorry, those who can't teach, those who can't do teach. I'm like one worse than that. I couldn't even teach, so I just started writing about string sports me too, I couldn't even coach report.

21:18 Yeah, yeah, I can't even write. Dude, you got me. I just talking to him if I can't even spell, Well, you know the other but you're so charming. It's all fake, it's all made up. The other connection, too, is like, you're friends with Bournstein, right, Adam's great. Yeah, I got him way like twenty twelve. I don't know him at all, but his co author on on engineering the Alpha is somebody that's been friends with for twenty years. Oh, John, I know John. Yeah, I've known John a long, long long time. John used to put on these epic dinners at like Brazilian steakhouses in New York. Some of the best friends I've made in fitness. I'm I made it dinners. I believe that. Yeah. Yeah, he's really not operating in fitness anymore. But when he was, like he had some epic mastermind stuff going on, like different and intentionally different than most of what everybody else is doing. He's he's more in the relationships. Yeah, storytelling like sex positivity space now I think, yeah, for sure, what's what's the first step look like? Kind of building an empire that Barbend was. Um, There's obviously a lot of websites that do things like that, Um, bodybuilding dot com come to mind, or t Nation for those that are a little more niched out. Um. But even those, and maybe this is just my opinion, maybe it's yours as well, just kind of got washed

22:52 out and a little commercialized. There. There's always an agenda behind him that you could feel. Um, where Barbend, as long as I've read it, seen it been a part of it has always seemed to truly be about the sports and about the lifters and about the niche itself rather than I've never felt an agenda once from y'all, which is like major props at least from a consumer end, although I don't consider myself much of a consumer, and obviously people have to make money off of what they do, so I don't necessarily blame te Nation, But yeah, everything kind of gets watered down. So how how do you turn, Like you said, a little bit of a journalism background, enjoying lifting being I bet you were mediocre dude. No, yeah, I doubt you were shitty being a mediocre lifter, and then how do you turn that into like a business that's thriving and arguably top of the game within that space. I mean, I think our timing was very good. We started at a time when people wanted more coverage of this stuff, and for the first couple of years we were all news Like we didn't have the money to pay people to write in depth training con nutrition content, like we couldn't even get brands to send us equipment to review. And we also didn't really have a space war because we couldn't afford like an office for that. So the first year was like me writing thirty plus articles a week just on like every news thing, like if it results, you know, world records, this person's injured, they're out of this competition. And our

24:26 timing was also good because that year, it was twenty sixteen, it was still when like World's Strongest Man did not release their results publicly, so people were just clamoring to figure that out. We were able to report on that early. The Olympics were that year. I wrote reports and recaps for every weightlifting session at the Olympics. Like fortunately it was in Rio, so the time zone was similar, but like I just didn't like I think I skipped my own birthday party that year, not that I had a birthday party. I skiped my own drinking, just to clarify, Yeah, actually, And we I just had this insatiable appetite to cover everything. And that was before I had an editorial team. My co founders were just keeping the site running like technically SEO. We were self funding it, and I was just like, I'm going to become a one man editorial wrecking ball. And I've never worked harder in my life or like crazier hours. And then we're like, okay, we have some traction people are visiting. I remember the first time we got five thousand viewers in a day than ten thousand and twenty thousand, and I was like, holy cow, how did you know you got to do something with that? Do you know those were good numbers? Did you did you have a background in running blogs or something like that, like or did your did your co founders what what was like a standard you maybe going by? We I had a background in that they had a background in SEO and analytics, and and we thought that if we could get to a million

25:56 visitors in a month, we'll have made it like that's like the top tier we could ever aim for. Like spoiler alert. We blasted past that in like our second year and we're still growing, but that was like the end goal, Like we didn't even know what the real end goal was, but like we'll like get to that and nothing else matters. And now we're trying to like go in order of magnitude above that or like several times above that. But we tried to raise money in like late twenty sixteen early twenty seventeen because we're like, oh, we got to hire a staff. We can scale this, right. I was getting burnt out, like I can't write all this myself, would need money to pay people. And so we started going to venture capitalists. And this was in the days when like everyone was like they want to throw money at BuzzFeed, at Vice Media, at like Mike dot com, which no longer really exists, and we got turned down by every VC like doesn't look like like I have you just like reach out to them, have a Zoom meeting and like throw them a pitch. Oh they were in person meetings back then. We were going out to La yesterday.

27:11 It was just this is like from the pre Zoom era, and people wanted to meet in person. So it was like balancing between New York and California, trying to talk to these folks, asking friends of friends for intros. I had done some business journalism, so I was asking like my contacts for intros, and like the meetings were so bad because no one believed in our idea. No one thought that could ever be anything. I literally remember, like the one that sticks out in my head is I got coffee in downtown Manhattan with this venture capitalist and part way through he was like, oh, I need to go to the bathroom, Like this is interesting, let me just pop to the bathroom real quick. And I was like cool, and he just gets up and like he didn't even he didn't even like walk toward the bathroom. He just said that and then like walked out the fucking door. That's bad, I did think. I think I teared up with this coffee shot wild. That's just wild too, Like human nature is like still like that. Could you just say like, yeah, man, I don't think this is for me. It's not really up my alley. Um, and then just like finish your coffee or leave. But I think I think everyone in the coffee shop thought he had just dumped you. Like I was like of sitting there alone and somewhat emotions. So all that all I have to say, Like we we were able to raise zero institutional dollars and because of that, we had to raise a seed round. That's friends,

28:44 family, and people in the fitness industry. There's some rich people all individuals there are there are, Um, we did not get a lot of money from them, but we we were We had to like really leverage our own personal networks, right, Like, um, I don't I don't come from wealth. My co founders didn't come from wealth, but we're you know, I like talking to people I knew in college who worked in finance and had done well. Um, talking to like my co founders, family members, people I knew in fitness, just trying to get what we could just so we could hire some basic staff and grow. And because of that, we knew there was no more money coming. Like we raised the seed round and we're like, cool, this is it. We have to make this work.

29:30 And I think ultimately the reason we were successful as a business is because we weren't expecting another influx of cash. There was no Series A, Series B. We're like, this is the cash we have, We have this runway, and if we can't get profitable in that time, we're fucked. And that was like that number, like the money in the bank account would whittle down, you know, every week as we paid people, and we're familiar with the you know figure. Yeah, and figuring out how to get profitable and build a real business and content was great for us because now I look back at every company in content that did raise venture capital. BuzzFeed News just shuddered. Vice just declared bankruptcy, right, Actually, hilariously, we used to share a building with Vice. We had like a very small office and they're very big building. They were like the biggest tenant. And someone recently reached out to me actually yesterday and they're like, hey, do you want to take over the lease for Vice's building, and like, we don't even have an office in New York anymore. Yeah, we went remote during COVID, But I was like, how fucking funny is that? Yeah?

30:41 Who made it? Kind of out of that space? Like bar stool, they're kind of barstool. They're kind of like a similar one that's had a lot of success lately. Um, if you're your name had to start with Baar and then you were going to be a successful Oh my god. And they're in New York too, right, barstool Iza Right, So Porty is the New York pizza taster. He's the yeah one yeah, the one bite or whatever it is. I don't I don't really follow them, but yeah, I think I think we got really lucky because everyone was like, oh, you got to raise venture capital, and the fact that we weren't let let us dodge a bullet. Because like venture capital and venture capitalists, they pushed these content companies to grow unsustainably and there was no way they could actually make revenue to give vcs that hundred extra return, right, And like, we raised revenue and we gave our investors a great return. They're super happy when we were acquired. They were like over the moon, But they're individuals.

31:48 We didn't give up control of the company when we raise money. We weren't like, we're going to raise money, you all get four board seats. That's not how it worked. And so we controlled our own destiny and we had to build like a real sustainable business. Yeah. That makes you exercise some discipline that you know, having a giant budget and being pushed to go just hard in in the way that these other um outlets did. Uh. It just it really does set you up for success when success comes around, I guess, and I think to the fitness industry and the strength world grew for sure, like it was much smaller in twenty sixteen than it is now. Yeah, I would say so we kind of rode that rising tide.

32:37 Yeah, twenty sixteen, you know, at least in our timeline. Yeah, it was probably like, yeah, the first big peak that continued to just spread the roots kind of the tree, you know, twenty twelve to twenty sixteen was was kind of the spark that it is now today. I mean you can even just see it in like basic social media followers, Like the biggest social media quote unquote star in twenty sixteen, maybe you had five hundred thousand followers on Instagram or something, and now the biggest stars of ten million. Yeah you know an Instagram. Sure, Instagram's grown or whatever, but that's and you're we're talking about it time too. That um, you know, YouTube fitness was really exploding, and it was maybe easier to accumulate audience like most of the big folks now that we know are not necessarily accumulating audience. They're trying to hold on yeah to audience yeah, or they're newer from yeah TikTok space or yeah yeah, the whole the whole industry has just changed immensely. I mean, it's gotten younger, which is cool, right because the next gen has come in during pandemic and they use TikTok as their main platform and spread it elsewhere. But it is it is an interesting space. Have you guys had to pivot based on that or do you observe that world at all? Or do you just stick to the roots of twenty sixteen, like all right, we're crossfits, strongman, powerlifting, weightlifting, We're going to report on that. Or do you start to dabble around and say, all right, man contents. You know, the entire game has switched. How how do we adapt? We've had to get broader and broader

34:07 over time. We didn't cover bodybuilding until twenty twenty so like and that's partially because I was running the editorial team. Bodybuilding was not my competency. It wasn't until Andrew Guttman came on as our managing editor. Now he's our head of content. You know he had a background in covering bodybuilding. He could build a team to cover bodybuilding. I remember the first Olympia we covered. It was that weird pandemic Olympia. They hadn't I think Florida in late twenty twenty. I think they might be going back, and I was suddenly get it might be going back. Yeah, it kind of makes sense for it to be in Florida. Yeah, I don't know. They're both kind of the same to me. Well, they're both very like exbowee convention e.

34:47 That's what I meant by that exactly. You can wear very little clothing in both. There you go. Um. But I remember the first time we covered bodybuilding in twenty twenty, I was getting text from people at other public actions and fitness and they were freaking out. They're like, since when did you all cover bodybuilding? Like like, we're getting less traffic because of you, which is not the intent. I'm not trying to like drink anyone else, but I was like bodybuilding since now, since now, But I think I think that we've had to get broader in the type of content we produce. With more resources, we were able to write training content and find people to write training content, like the people who are qualified to write that nutrition content reviews. And in addition, the demographics completely changed, right, Like our audience was almost all male when we started. We have more women reading now, more people of color reading now. And like a lot of people, I haven't. I haven't been a face of the brand for a long time. It's kind of more recently that I've been doing podcasts like this and talking to great folks like yourself. But like, I'm a person of color.

35:55 I was in you know, I've been interested in strength for a long time, and you know, the first few gyms I went to, I was like the only non white guy, right, And that's totally cool. I was always welcome, Like it didn't impact my journey, I don't feel. But gyms are more diverse now you have more women involved, more people of color, you know, I think that, Well, this is a little sad, but like every time we post anything for Pride Month, we lose followers. But like, people weren't even doing that six or seven years ago, right, people weren't even acknowledging that, Like, oh, people of diverse sexual and general and sexual orientations and genders are like interested in lifting.

36:37 It's almost like everyone can be interested in lifting, and as yeah, crazy, silly, silly to think that, right, I'm being sarcastic, clearly. But as as the demographics grew, and as he acknowledged demographics grew, and as more different types of people became publicly interested in all sorts of strength, competitive, non competitive, we had to broaden the type of content we were writing or the types of content we were writing, right, And a big thing for us is like, hey, let's not have the same people in every featured image. Yeah, it's not just going to be like the ripped white guy, you know, and every art Yeah, and like, look, we've had to rely on stock photos before. It kind of sucks sometimes, but and we haven't always been perfect, Like we've messed up so many times. But our mantra is like, hey, the space is getting bigger and more diverse, our content has to get bigger and more diverse.

37:40 Yeah, makes sense. I mean, even just the body building thing. And I think everything goes in cycles, although bodybuilding probably will always be the number one, you know, like gym, sport or hobby, just because I think just human nature in some senses, and obviously the lead of Arnold and some of the bigger figures that have made it popular. But I do think it's all cyclical, you know, like twenty six teams a great example, like crossfits at its freaking peak. Powerliftings insanely popular on the internet, and we're slowly maybe creeping there already. I predicted like three years that powerlifting would kind of make its mini comeback as a little bit more even with or strength sports in general, a little bit more even with the body building world. But I'm already seeing it, Like how many people on Instagram and stuff are just throwing themselves into powerlifting meets out of nowhere. So I think that cycle is back. So you guys probably just try to read some of that. You might even know you might even be part of the snowball of that effect. We're at the size to where like we kind of build our own audience sometimes, like if we write more content on a specific thing, we see that search volume for that stuff starts increasing, which is like a little crazy to think of. The Other thing I want to point out is as people have been in the strength game for longer, the age demographics grow, right, so, like so much of our readership right now, masters athletes, people interested in lifting over thirty, forty, fifty, sixty seventy.

39:02 Some of the content that does the best for us is highlighting people who are not necessarily setting world records as a twenty five year old, right, but people who are doing inspiring and cool things on the record front, the news front, the pr front, who are older in all sorts of age categories. We write on master's results for powerlifting, weightlifting a little less so, but it's catching up CrossFit bodybuilding. That stuff does insanely good and it was not that way back in twenty sixteen. Yeah, yeah, So what's happened is like strength has gotten bigger. Oh, sorry to interrupt. People are finding it and they're sticking with it, right, So, like if you found it as a thirty five year old in twenty sixteen, you're now a forty two forty three year old. Your approach you're chaining training has probably changed a little bit. The content you're looking for has changed a little bit.

39:53 Cool. We have to adapt a lot of them, like hopping back and forth between the niches too. I feel like a i'm a thing like maybe you're a crossfitter in your twenties and then you dabble in weightlifting in your thirties and then now you're the you know, just the jim bro in your forties or something. And even myself of slightly guilty or you know, of dabbling in different places when you you hit a roadblocker BJJ. Yeah, when mediocre, when mediocrity was too loud, I would try something new. All right, this goes a mediocre victim of my own nonfences, suck at weightlifting instead now for a little bit maybe, and then now I'm like sucking at fake CrossFit, just sucking at all. I'm sorry, yes, right, yeah, I don't mind. There's something to be said for the power of being bad at something, No, for sure, and jokes aside. I think being bad at and continuing to do it that makes this badass. My friend, it's easy to fucking do someone you're good. It's hard to do shit when you saw, especially in a public way. Oh yeah, I'm real public about am I sucking everyone else? Everyone knows mediocre physique, mediocre personality, all of it. So I wanted to ask about this acquisition process, like what was the due diligence like about that? And did they like approach you from the beginning or were you, like, did you guys have a price tag on yourself beforehand or what what happened? So, one thing

41:23 I want to point out is that I think media companies can only get so big on their own. Yeah, right, Like, eventually you're at the whims of the algorithm. Google changes something. Facebook change is something, Instagram change is something. It creates fluctuations to impacts your revenue right directly through ads or indirectly through other sources, sponsorships, you name it. And like, if Google change your algorithm, that changes our bottom line as CEO, Suddenly I'm like, cool, we have to reallocate expenses month to month. It kind of sucks, but part of the game, it's fine. As part of a bigger media company, you're able to weather that storm and it all kind of evens out because they have more resources and then more diversified, right, so you can actually like put money towards more predictable growth. You have more time, you're hedged. So we were always open to the idea of being acquired, but we weren't shopping ourselves around to answer your question, and we actually started getting a lot of inbound offers and interest, like twenty one late twenty twenty one. But here's the deal. When websites sell online, they often don't sell as media companies. Oftentimes people just want the website, they want the asset, and they want to like scrap it for parts, right, they want to just like squeeze it for all it's worth. And we had a team at that point when we sold, we had geez I

42:57 think it was like seventeen full time employees. Those are people with lives careers like they work at Barbon because they wanted to build a career in strength content. I was terrified of the idea of selling to a company that wouldn't respect that commitment that we'd made to our employees and they'd made to us. So we weren't even entertaining acquisition offers for anyone who didn't want to keep on our entire team. Right, That was like pretty much a non starter. And so when Pillar four reached out, we had a relationship with that company. My co founders and I, you know, we've known the CEO, Todd for a while, great guy. We've seen how they do business, We've seen them grow over the years. Very much a company with a lot of Southern hospitality, which very much appealed to me. They're based in North Carolina, and so when they reached out and they were like, hey, we like how you all do business. We just want to add gas the engine.

44:00 We want to grow. We want to take what you're doing, we want to learn from it, maybe apply it to our other properties too, and then just help you grow more and more. And that was really appealing to us. And so the outcome ended up being good for us, good for our employees, great for our investors, and everyone poored it over, Like every single employee poored it over, and the exact team and the founders. We're still working there because we want to, and they've actually allowed us to. Well, we have hired and we've had more resources to hire more people. Like our team is now bigger and has grown faster as part of Pillar four compared to when we were independent. Right, So I look at our like Monday weekly kickoff calls, and they are all these new faces and I'm like, Wow, they wouldn't be here if we hadn't gotten acquired.

44:52 The due diligence process itself, though, who it is for selling any company at of any size. It's complicated, right, because you don't want any misunderstandings. You want everyone to have the same info. Obviously, lawyers and accountants are involved. I love our lawyers at accountants. I love Pillar For as lawyers and accounts, but you basically are trying to run a company while spending months on endless calls and due diligence fact finding with them. Right, So you're going through tax returns, you're going through P and L's, you're going I mean, your your websites, You're going through all the analytics, like every month of analytics for the site's entire existence. You have to go through all of it. It's really complex, but we needed to do that so that when we were acquired, so that once it was finalized, we could just keep the momentum going, right. So the whole goal was like, Okay, our employees are all coming over, how do we disrupt their day to day the minimum amount so they can just keep doing what they're doing producing great content. And we weren't perfect at it right right, but I think it was a gradual enough transition to where people could keep doing what they were doing, get better at it, and then integrate more resources as Pillar For provided them. And my day to day is the one that's changed the

46:22 most, Right, Like, I'm not CEO anymore. A lot of my job is doing like brand outreach, talking to people about the brand, thinking about how we're going to expand video strategy, podcasting strategy now that we have more resources and more people. So my day job completely shifted. But for everyone else, I think it's been a pretty gradual transition, and there's been relatively little change for them in terms of like acquisition and stuff. Jim and I have had a couple of experiences in the past couple of years of just dipping our toes into the world and seeing how crazy it is, looking at the numbers, and kind of doing a full audit, like you said, with different teams, and like, that's big decisions. There's big money involved, like you said, there's other lives and jobs involved, and the content game it's so easy, right even And maybe you disagree, but I assume you do. You write an article, it bombs, you learn from it, you move on. Right that the cycles not even twenty four hours anymore, it's one hour. Did this do well? Did it not? As long as you stick to obviously who you are in morals and all that, who cares, right, there's no harm. You just forget you move on.

47:34 So like my confidence with content is I don't because day one I've just been me that I'm not like an act or anything. I can't fuck up. There's I have no you know what I mean? I have full confidence going into something. If someone asked me to talk or write or do a video, fuck it, you ask for me, You're getting me, right, But doing something that affects so many people, and it's such a big business, Like you said, all the employees looked at it and all kind of agreed. But what you the confidence? It sounds like after your audit it felt like a no brainer. But what gave you the confidence to say, like, all right, this is a huge move, but this is for the net good. I believed it was. But I'm not gonna lie and say it didn't keep me up at night. Right, when you're running a company and you're making big decisions, and it wasn't just me, right, it's my co founders in my exacts, and it wasn't No decision was unilateral, even a CEO. I didn't just like make decisions and everything changed right, Um, But it definitely kept me up at night. It was a huge stressor I looked even more ragged than I look now after due diligence on what I looked like a lot of whiskey consumed almost none, almost none, which is the problem. Maybe that was the issue this decision, would like I already looked like a muppet. I looked even worse coming out of due diligence. You know, you bring up a good point, Mike about like you can you can see when things succeed and flop digital content, you can get instant gratification, but you also get instantaneous disappointment, and you have

49:07 to adapt to both and just move on. And like, you don't have time to be sad that a piece of content didn't perform, because if you don't move on, your competitors are going to catch up or beat you. And we have competitors, right, We're in a competitive space. Now we're not the only one. I think we're the biggest and best. But you don't stay there by stagnating. Shoot or shoot is what we say. Next shot? Yeah, next shot, you miss a shot. You gotta goldfish memory and keep moving. Yeah, that makes sense. Was there any point in the process where you're thinking, geez, I hope that that doesn't look as bad to other people as it does to me as as part of the business structure or you know, performance or whatever. I have talked with my therapist a lot about that, because every decision I make, I feel like always look terrible. Like the imposter syndrome is real, yep, especially when you start getting Mike you mentioned it, like a real audience. We had over thirty one million readers last year. That's insane, it's right, Like I think bar Bend in the next eighteen months will be at I mean, this is kind of a guestimate and a lot of it's seasonal, but like, I think the next eighteen months we're going to be at about forty five million readers a year. You're like that trajector do you know other websites or like, because even for me, like what, what can you compare that

50:38 to somebody else? Like give us a reference of like a mainstream media or something like that, so so we can see what Ballpark y'all are in, um, because in my brain that's not that's an insane shit. We we were and anyone can correct me on this, but as far as I know, pre acquisition, we were the largest independent fitness publisher in the world. Yeah, I don't doubt it, right, And I think that we're still one of the largest now, we're just not independent quote technically independent, and I think that. You know, my dream was always to build something. Now this actually wasn't always my dream because I never knew this as possible.

51:20 But now my dream is to have Let me be honest, my dream is to is to be the biggest invest Like men's health is kind of the elephant in the room they get. They get a lot more traffic than we do. It's not all fitness content. A lot of it's their celebrity content now, so it's a little bit apples to oranges. Yeah, they're like teaching that I want banana and some weird shit. I followed them on Facebook. No, no shame because I've worked with them too in the past. But they post them crazy shit now, Like I have no clue what they're posting. Sometimes I swear to God, it's like the banana versus Apple conversation or something. They write a lot of different stuff and I don't I don't pretend to know their strategy, but I'm close with a lot of folks there.

52:05 EBB Samuel close personal friend. I'm getting dinner with him in like in two days. Great guy. But I want Barben to be bigger than that, Like, I want Barbin to be a bigger brand and fitness than Men's Health, which was unthinkable when we started because Barben is a strength brand. Yeah. How can a strength brand be bigger than one of the biggest fitness brands? Right? And I think that's because people are realizing strength is a part of fitness. You can't be fit and you can't have that be a priority in your life if there's not some type of resistance training that you're incorporating. Yeah, I mean that's like the biggest change over, Like you know, the decade and decade and a half of Doune fitness is how many people know what a squat and deadlift are and can at least perform them in some aspect.

52:54 They're not perfect by any means, But you go to a commercial gym now there's so many squat wrecks. All the commercial gyms here. They used to have the tiered pyramid one where you have to walk out eight feet to squat it or you're gonna hit the side posts. Oh I kind of miss that one. Yeah, I don't hate it. I don't. I don't know why, and I'm not I'm not that short, so like those safeties didn't catch me anyways. But you go to any commercial gym now there's minimum like five squat racks, and again people are, you know, figuring out how to squat properly, but at least people are trying. And so I think Tier truth to your words, like like whether you want to call it old school bodybuilding, right, the Arnold squatted, Ronnie Coleman squatted, some of the most iconic guys did. But there was an era there of twenty thirty years where it was so machine based and so cardio based. Um that now things are expanding, and like you said, you had to expand your demo, but that's because the demo itself kind of expanded. Bodybuilders squat more, you know, even like Sea Bumble will do some rtls or some deadlosts with you, and he's the guy right now versus a couple of years ago.

53:51 You know, everyone's just sitting on a machine. So it is interesting to go into that next echelon. So you guys are Tier one already, but to be the website, do you think there's big changes you got to make. Is there is there new strat and you don't have to do anything you know, confidential or secret? But is there like a leap you guys have to take or is it just like continuing to hike Everest They're they're leaps. I'm a pretty straight shooter. We have to be more multimedia. We have to expand our podcast offerings. We have to expand our video offerings. We actually just hired a new videographer. I know, two podcast. I mean that's that's a you're gonna see the press release next week. Barband acquires fifty percent facts. Uh barb in my brain, you don't want to.

54:42 You don't want to, you don't want to. Um, Yeah, we have to. We have to be more multimedia. Like social media has not been a priority for us for years. We have not had a dedicated social team. UM. Video has not been a huge priority for us for a while. We have to go ham on all of those, right, Like we have to be producing basically daily video content, podcasting content. We have to get broader and more diverse. We have to incorporate that into our written content and our social game. We got up our social game like ten X, and we have more resources to do that, and we have game plans to do do that, but it doesn't come immediately. Right like the month after we got acquired, I was kind of like, yeah, we gotta do it, blah blah blah. And then everyone was like, well, like, maybe we make sure that everything else, you know, the things that are like driving revenue already, maybe we like optimize those a little bit.

55:44 And I was like, oh that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, yeah, my brain like shifted since I wasn't see CEO anymore. I was like, Oh, let's go. And that's still the energy. But we have to get more multimedia. We have to be more cross platform. That's what the big mainstream out let's have done. One thing that we don't have plans for. And again I want to be very honest about this. UM, I don't call all the shots anymore. But subscriptions. We're not big on those, right. UM. People have asked that, they're like, what about paywalled content or like, uh, you know, I mean that for like our on site content, we have newsletters. Our newsletters are growing, they're pretty big. Um, you do subscribe to those because that's how email works. Um, I've so so I've been told as far as you know, smoke signals, I just yell, I just yell, And however many people hear the content. Yeah, we have to make bigger on I listened to your interview on the mass Anomics podcast, and actually I think that that Tanner connected us because I I mentioned to him that it was really really good interview. And one of the things that really like resonated with me was when you started talking about the when Barbin started attraction, Like when you started realizing, oh, we're actually like people are are people are engaging with

57:17 our content and it's kind of developing a life of its own. And that's something that Mike and I experienced with our first podcast, like it when it started to take off, which was pretty early, but like you know, definitely we started in thirteen. Definitely by fifteen, it was like crazy on a level that I hadn't really anticipated. Um And and really I never had any thought about, like how do we make it bigger because it just kind of kind of kept going and not a lot of strategy. Yeah, not a lot of strategy at all. And obviously you guys put more thought into that than we did. And Uh, Like what how did you make those decisions about what direction to go when you realized that you were actually gaining traction?

58:07 Well, first off, I'm really pleased you listen to the Masonomics interview. Those guys are a lot of fun. And when you reached out Jim, I was like the Jim from Facts because I knew who you were really I did, I did? Okay, okay, okay. As far as figuring out where to go next, and like how we do that planning and strategy, we have a mountain of data. We have seven years of tens and hundreds literally hundreds of millions of site impressions. Right, it might be in the billions now if you look at the impressions we've had, and so we can dig into that data and see where the trends are going before they might even be trends. So when it comes to like, okay, say we want to expand podcasts, Say we want to have five different podcasts a year from now, where the fastest growing demographics, the fastest growing subjects, the best engagement. That's actually not my strength. I'm not the best at coming through that data. We have hired since the Pillar for acquisition more people who have a specialty in that realm, and so for us, we kind of flew by the seat of our pants to start Barbend was founded on a hunch that we could make a business out of the strength world, that people were hungry for that strength content, without really having the example that proved it could work. I mean, the teenage existed, Breaking Muscle existed. We

59:37 actually acquired Breaking Muscle a couple of years ago, but it was a bit of a hunch, which is probably one reason we weren't able to raise money that easily, because like, people don't want to give you hundreds of thousands of dollars when you're like I think, yeah, I believe in this. But but now we can comb through all this data we have and we can see where the trends are going, and we have that in a way, it's like one of our most valuable assets, right, is the data that we've had from seven years of doing this over and over and over again. So now those decisions are a lot more informed. But the first few years it was a lot of throw things against the wall and see what sticks.

1:00:22 Yeah I get that for sure, Yeah, I know. We Our first podcast was started on a hunch of mine that we could connect more more closely with an audience in a longer format. People would engage more and and and see themselves more in in in what we're what we were presenting. What we didn't have a lot of was data because podcasting is still way way way behind in terms of demos. For sure, you have to run a survey if you really want to know something. Um, you know, Apple has better numbers now than they used to, but that's only people who are using their podcast app under specific iOS versions. You know, It's it's inadequate, and so it's difficult to plan. You sort of just have to like watch the whole watch the whole scene and figure out, like who who else looks like they're doing something? And I think that there's a danger in that because you end up kind of I think you were saying earlier, sort of bring on the people who are a little bit less reliable in terms of information and a little bit more sensational, you know, in terms of content. I'm sorry

1:01:52 about that. In terms of like content itself, the world's weird right now. I feel like and maybe you know, you said you're not the data guy, but I'm sure your data guys inform you on what's going on with the data, or maybe you have your own opinions. But on my end, like TikTok's this five second content app right, you're watching something for five freaking seconds, and that's obviously one of the most popular social media's on the planet. And then the other end you have stuff like live stream, Twitch, kick, Rumble, all these places and podcasts, which are you know, the most popular podcasts typically are super long format. We're talking hour or two hour, three hour, and live streams. I mean those guys go for five to eight hours a day. And so it seems like the extremes of content because everyone says like, oh, the whole world has ADHD and whatever, and maybe they do, I don't know, but people are clearly tapping into three hour podcasts and eight hour live streams. Yeah, how has that affected your guys' strategy? I know a lot of your stuff's written, but you obviously create video content and audio content as well. Do you see that going anywhere? What's your opinions on it? And how do you guys kind of wiggle around the changing of the media's. Interestingly, in the written world, the tolerance for longer pieces of content has grown, so we're actually writing longer pieces of content now. And that's on the news side, that's on the evergreen side. So it could be like event results, So how do you add more contexts to those event results, right, like the athletes

1:03:27 history or the competition's history, or comparing it to previous iterations? How do you really flush that out? On the evergreen side, like could be training content right like you got to Go Deep. We write a lot of three thousand word articles and we used to not do that, but that content performs really well now. And it's almost like when people are looking for something in a written form factor they want to spend time on it because they want to focus in on it. So that's kind of the trend we've been seeing on the written side. On the video on podcast side, you know, we're really focusing on adding more resources and firepower to that, and so when it comes to length I, we don't have a ton of recent data because we haven't really produced regular videos for like a year, and so moving forward the strategy, it is like, Okay, how can we produce a lot of different types of video and then start doubling down on what perform as well, something you all know very very well, and different types of video content are going to need different time domains. Right, So if it's like an in depth review on something like people want a lot of info, you can't make those two. Yeah, you can't make those too long. But if it's just like, hey, we're recapping an event, there's sometimes people want something shorter. They're like, Okay, I want to get all the download on this in five minutes. And then you know, maybe if I want something

1:04:59 really in depth and all this additional context, I'll go to the written version, right, and I'll compare that to previous event results or something like that. So I'm kind of excited to find out. But yeah, that implication for the written world a world for the written world, that context is generally getting longer. We've seen that in a pretty pronounced way. That's interesting. Have you noticed, like we have noticed that when you're producing something that's basically that's intended to be very basic for someone who's just coming into into a particular sport, that there just isn't a way to be basic enough, Like there isn't a way to break it down enough. It's an explain like I'm five, but I'm three, you know. So there's something that we start applying to our content early on that I think people in fitness we're slow to catch up on. So I have a journalism background, and they call it the inverse pyramid. So if you write, like a report on something, or if you write a news article, you start really broad with the stuff that's broadly applicable, and you get more and more narrow. So the further you get down in an article, the more specific you get, the nerdier you get, basically, right, the more you assume people already know, and we structure our news coverage like that, right, So it could be a result from the Olympics or the CrossFit Games, you know that first paragraph, like everyone's going to understand what it means, right, Like the CrossFit games just happened. Here's what that is, Here's where it was, and when

1:06:30 it was here's who won. Right. And as you get further down the article, and this is why longer contents performing better. I think, at least in one capacity, you add more subsections to give more specific contexts, and by the time you get to the bottom, people who have made it that far, well, they've had all the contexts you've written previously, so they definitely know more, and if they do make it further down, they're probably more interested than someone who's just taking a cursory glance, and the assumed level of knowledge has increased the further you go down the page. Interesting, That makes sense. Yeah, I know nothing about the written world, even though I think I wrote something for you guys. You guys probably chopped it up and hopefully made it way better because it sucked. We just maybe you wrote a regular pyramid and we just turned it upside down. Well, I probably wrote a square for all I know. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. Always drop out. I don't know shit. I know to lift the barbel mediocre, mediocrely that's it. I was checking. Okay, so you did you did the barbe In podcast Mike in twenty nineteen Deep Depression Man, October twenty eighteen to about twenty twenty three January, My Memories shot.

1:07:41 I just came out of a smoke, a fog, not even mirrors, just smoke. Yeah no, no, there's no mirrors, mirror shit. Yeah, it's been it's been a hell of five years over here. Well, okay, so in a in a muller Vain. This is something I'm trying to do um with every episode now and I don't know if it depends on my memory, so it could be spotty. But um uh, what I want to ask is every week has kind of it's rose and it's thorn, so you can choose either or or give both. But do you have anything that fits in those categories that you're able to talk about for for this week? For this week? Yes? Oh well wait, wait, every Rose says it's thorn? Was that poison? Was that the band?

1:08:41 I believe? Yeah? Okay, whenever stuck in my head on a loop now still think of Seal Seal Kiss from a Rose by the Batman. Yeah, forever epic, epic, Yeah, totally. I only recently learned what the lyrics to that song are. I don't want to they don't make any sense. Yeah, I might ruin it. That song still slaps it does, Okay, what's the thorn this week? So we just had a big reporting session for barband for SEO basically, and Barban's completely organic. We're not paying for traffic, right, so like SEO is basically everything and stop just Google traffic. It's YouTube traffic. It's social traffic, it's being traffic. It you know, it gets broader and broader. SEO is like everything.

1:09:24 So right now we're coming off of a period where there are a lot of events and now there aren't so many events, right, and that'll pick back up around the CrossFit games. So there's like this lull in the news cycle and strength and we've experienced a traffic dip because of that. Right now. It doesn't mean like our traffic has been cut in half, right, but it's less than it was when the World's Strongest Man was going on in April. Right, It's just like a little dip and it'll pick back up as more events happen. And contextualizing that, especially for like new employee for the Broader pillar for a team, which was very understanding because they have a lot of experience with this, Like that's a bit of a thorn because you look at that graph and it's a dip and you want things to go up and up and up and up. And for the first few years at bar Bend, it was like always up into the right, like every month we had growth. Because if you're starting from nothing you have, you can't go down right, right, you can't have like negative traffic, like I got used to the hockey stick. Yeah, and now it progress is not linear anymore, and that's been the thorn. It's still a thorn for me because I remember those for a few years, right, and I remember how it's just built and built and built and built. It felt like we're on a rocket ship, right, and you know, now it's a little more up and down, so predictably up and down. But that's a bit of a thorn.

1:10:51 And like you never want to tell a new employee like, hey, our traffic's a little bit down this month, right, yeah, yeah, it just never feels and then you have to plain why even if you predict it, even if you predicted even notes coming, even if it's normal, it just numb feels good. Yeah. The rose is UM. I had a lot of folks reach out to me yesterday and today, like even this morning, um, and they are interested in covering Barbin from the business standpoint, which is something I've been really excited to do. Like I love the fitness world. I'm honored to be on this podcast. Thank you for having me, thank you for being here. It's when I listened to I hope your audience hates me less after this. I do have some haters. That means you're doing it. Shout out to like the two shout out to like the two haters. And I'm pretty sure that like my mom runs both of those accounts. Um, yeah, her olds. But like, it's been really cool that people have been looking at Barbin now post acquisition and they're like, oh, this is like a mainstream media story. Yeah, because like every media outlet, if you were just follow the news, is struggling.

1:12:00 Vice went bankrupt, BuzzFeed News just shuddered, like, you know, the Washington Post has had layoffs, but it's not all doom and gloom. The Athletic yesterday. Yeah, that's stunning to me. I just like to shift away from the strategy that was working. Yeah, I mean that's like the strategy the New York Times acquired them for, right exactly. It's like, now, we just want to make us now. And I like that more people are interested in us. Obviously it strokes my ego. I'm like, yeah, I'll talk about this business I started b Yeah, well, I don't mind if I do. But I like that people are looking at a business that's endemic to the strength community and they're saying, oh, that's a real business. There are content lessons there for other audiences and other communities, because when we first started, a big reason no vcs wanted to give us money was because they didn't think Strength was a real audience or a real community.

1:12:58 They didn't think it was worth a ship, and it was a lot smaller than to be fair. But now that people are looking at us and they're like, oh, maybe other different outlets in different spaces can learn something from Barben that that feels really good, and maybe it'll show some people that like a career in media like can actually happen, right, you can actually still build something in this space. It's not just everything going out of business, yeah, or a side hobby. So I think that's what most people probably think of, you know, even even with what we do. Or oh you kind of do YouTube, Oh yeah, kind of do YouTube? Yeah, Oh you kind of kind of do that. Oh yeah, you kind of do that. Oh you kind of write about sports, or you kind of have a podcast. Because it has all of it's gotten so popular that it's almost become hobified, like it had to be a hobby in twenty ten. Yeah, when you start a podcast for YouTube because there no one was doing it. There's no such thing. But there's enough history now.

1:13:51 But then everyone, yeah, hopped on the train. And so for ninety nine percent of people it is a hobby. But that doesn't mean the one percent doesn't insane potential. If you stick with it and have have some keys that that the world wants to see, no read by, and then you take it seriously long enough, kind of anything can become something. Yeah, for sure. I want to thank you for joining us today and thanks for having me guess, and you should come visit us because I think you would enjoy yourself here. You ever head to the West Coast not La, say La, California's big La sucks. I didn't. I don't like it.

1:14:33 I don't like La. Oh my god, I'm gonna get canceled Disneylands all day. Yeah, you know how to not make friends say that the second biggest city in America isn't fun. No, it sucks. If they know it too, everyone, they're starting to realize it sucks. It's always well. Look, I need to make a West Coast trip soon. I'd love to come see you guys. I'd love to avoid La. If I could, and the next time you guys are in New York, let me know. I'll show you a good time. I would love too. Haven't been'll be one of the I don't think I've been since twenty fifteen. No, No, you've been since yeah, seventeen, maybe seventeen eighteen. Kenny Santucci, you might be familiar with the name. Good good friend of mine.

1:15:15 Yeah, he used to have me out there for some seminars and things, and I think he's still having pretty big seminars. Yeah. The Strong, the Strongest, Yeah, the Strong New York. I'm working out with him Friday at his new spot. Well, it's not so new anymore. They've been there for a couple of years. Yeah, but uh went Strong October Ougus whenever he's doing that, I think, so that might be an excuse. It was October last year. Yeah, that might be a good excuse to head out there. Um. It's a good community. They've been doing a lot of outdoor workouts they called the street Beat. Yeah, so they're just like working out literally, like on the streets next to where the gym is and people freaking love it. It's awesome. They're in Manhattan still. Yeah, they're in Manhattan. They're in UM like kind of right above Madison Square Park. Okay, so I'm in Brooklyn, UM, but I try and work out there like once a week, once every other week. So I'll grab or work out with him on Friday. Yeah, Kenny's a fun time awesome. Where can people find you? Well, obviously follow Barbend, follow Breaking Muscle, which Barband also owns, the Barben podcast, which I still host. They still let me host that, so I'll keep posting until they say don't, which is weird but fun me personally. You can find me on Instagram at David Thomas Tow on Twitter at d underscore Town. That's d underscore Tao. And this is this is the big mistake I make.

1:16:39 If you want to email me, I'll give out my email David at barben dot com. So email me with all your complaints. I was gonna say accolades and admiration, but let's be honest, you don't have any of that. What's emailing me? It's a complaint. Yeah, what's the majority of the emails you get from like random? The majority of random emails that I get, and that like we get at our info app barbend and a lot of other stuff. U is athletes who want us to cover them, which is great, which is awesome, or people who are upset that we don't cover like events more in depth, like like smaller events or mid tier events more in depth. And that always used to like really hurt me because some of them are kind of mean emails. Yeah, but that's but, but someone contextualized it to me. It actually might have been Tanner from Masonomics.

1:17:27 He's like, wait a minute. Their complaints are that they want more of your product, yeah, because content is your product, right, And I was like, oh, that's actually fine, and we want to cover more, right, but as our team is only so big, like as we grow and as our capacity grows, we can write more and more in depth on more events, more athletes, more topics. Cool, So like most of our quote unquote hate mail as people saying, hey, we want more barband And once I started thinking it like that, I was like, cool, I'll just give out my email send me all those Yeah, pretty good place to be in. Yeah, I'm gonna send you my resume every day. Now I'm scheduling mail show. Let's go every single day. It'll be my resume every morning, it's like, oh, it's Mike again. Yeah, let's see what mediocre deadlift he did today. Mike, y'all just follow you my own reports of my workouts. It'll just do my Just get to send me your training lock. Yeah, it'll be my training lock. Yeah.

1:18:25 Wow, two sets of two. That guy's working hard today. All the outtakes from a YouTube videos, yeah yeah, just scrap. Yeah, everything that you edit out, send my way, pilot and send it my way. No, I don't. We probably don't edit a lot out. Sadly, that's part of the issue. Who knows the bullshit I say? Mikey Um, ladies and gentlemen, thanks for listening. We got new episodes every single Wednesday and Friday. Here subscribe, share your friends. I appreciate you. Three sp dot c for all your clothing needs. Third Street Barbels. Start going to California if you are in town. Um, and I'm selling Mike where you want to find me. I am at the Jim McDean all the social media. The show is fifty percent facts or pretenders of word it fift you is just numbers forcipercent backs. The Stupid Funding Podcast Association with iheartly that bign percent facts now brought to you by barback dot com. Thanks so much for a