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

In this episode of the 50% Facts podcast, we sit down with David Thomas Tao, co-founder, former CEO, and now head of brand for Barbend.com. Barbend is a leading website for strength training and fitness that was recently acquired by Pillar4 Media.

In this interview, Tao discusses his journey to becoming the CEO of Barbend, his thoughts on the future of fitness media, and how Barbend has expanded coverage since its founding to serve the growing market.

Tao talks about the challenges of starting a business and the importance of perseverance. He gives insight on what it’s like to try to raise capital, and how to weather the process of being acquired.

David also writes about spirits, so we kick things off with a discussion about winning over first-time whiskey drinkers.

You can find David on Instagram at @davidthomastao and Twitter @d_tao and obviously at barbend.com.

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Hosted by Mike Farr (@silentmikke) https://www.instagram.com/silentmikke/ and Jim McDonald (@thejimmcd). https://www.instagram.com/thejimmcd/

Produced by Jim McDonald. Production assistance by Sam McDonald and Sebastian Brambilla. Theme by Aaron Moore. Branding by Joseph Manzo (@jmanzo523)

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hey, this is Jim. Thisepisode is our conversation with David Thomas Tao,
co founder of Barbin dot com anduntil recently CEO, when they were
actually acquired a couple of months agoby by Pillar four, and which is
kind of an exciting thing to talkabout in the strength space, that someone
who is providing news on the strengthworld actually gets acquired by a serious media

(00:24):
company. It seemed I would havenever 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 thatwe really enjoyed. Not always the biggest
fan of doing remote interviews, butthis one was great because he was a

(00:46):
great guest. David's in New YorkCity 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. Itstarter starts in media race, but enjoy
it. So we had them onbecause we're in the Valley basically. So

(01:11):
we had them on three sides ofus 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 thenwe have like fucking ash flying from the
sky and they're telling you don't leaveyour house because you're gonna inhale flames or
something else. Seeing the world likethat literally does feel like, uh uh,

(01:32):
like a Harrison Ford movie or someshit. Yeah it's Blade Runner.
Yeah, something is crazy. Iwas seeing those pictures on Twitter in New
York. I was like, holyshit, Yeah, Dune is a better
analogy. That's a little more liketopical. I haven't seen the whole thing
or the Blade Runner sequel when they'rein Vegas. Yeah, Orange Sky liked

(01:57):
it. I loved it, andI didn't, you know, didn't like
the original Blade Runner the first timeI saw it in the theater. I
never saw the first I only sawthat 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, Ithink December ish. Yeah, I think
they should just call it Next Dune. Yeah, like not Dune two,

(02:17):
just next Dune. I don't evenYeah, I need to catch up.
Welcome to the Next Dune. Ihaven't seen it, you haven't seen it?
Yeah, or like Dune two nextto Dune. Yeah. And instead
of all the funky names that gowith 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,

(02:40):
and then there were a bunch thathave like one of his family members
names on that they were his sideghost written by somebody else and they just
used his name for the hell ofit. Yeah. Yeah, they're not
as good after after that, Yeah, they get even. I didn't.
The second one was okay, andthe third one it was just too stupid

(03:04):
and sad. I don't like stupidsad stories. I mean, like,
you come out of the first bookand it's like, you know, okay,
so victory has consequences, but it'sstill victory, right, And then
you get into the next one's it'slike, oh, this whole governing thing
is really complicated and the politics aregoing to kill us, and oh the

(03:25):
politics killed us, and you know, I don't know, is that the
core that Star Wars stole kind ofthe 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 impossibleto say everything they came after it didn't

(03:46):
still Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah that makes sense. Their attention
to detail was so sick that everyone'sa copycat, just purely based off covering
every yeah, facet of sci fi. Yeah, and and yeah, there
was stuff that it was borrowed fromother you know, like classic sci fi
stuff, and there were things thatwere borrowed from like recognizable current culture too,

(04:12):
you know, along the way thatmade people able to resonate with it
a little egg yet heavier than somestuff. Yeah, Star Wars is like
a perfect balance. I feel likeof 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 DavidThomas Tao, who are your self proclaimed

(04:38):
proclaimed strength nerd. I'm a I'ma strength nerd and a whiskey nerd.
I live at that middle of thatvent 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'slike the I don't even know what culture
because vodka maybe is more popular inthe Russian strength world, but America,

(05:00):
whiskey and lifting or kind of thegig. Yeah, well it's kind of
I yeah, I was just sayingAlexei to Rokti was in New York a
couple of years ago. He's anOlympic champion, a weightlifter who still does
a lot of content and I washanging out with him and he was like,
David, I've never tried the whiskeybefore. That's wild. And I

(05:23):
was like never and he's like,no, huh no, never had He
said the like the the the waywhisky, and uh that was great.
It was cool to like introduce someoneto that. They're just not a brown
liquor. That's wild. It's yeah, not really not really in Ukraine,

(05:46):
I guess, uh, not muchof a culture around that, but yeah,
I introduced him to it. Hehe 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 likehow do you introduce someone to whiskey who
has no like, where do youstart, which what flavor you think it's

(06:10):
going to be the most successful withsomeone who doesn't have any experience with whiskey,
just like a Hennessy and a dietcoke, 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'scompletely new to it is probably bourbon.
And that's not just because I'm fromKentucky. It's sweeter, it's a little

(06:34):
more accessible, like you can haveit anytime after a meal. With a
meal. You don't want to startwith 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 alower proof bourbon is a really good entry

(06:56):
to that to see if they justvibe with it. Plus they're sweeter typically
and cheaper exactly because of the cornI mean typically, I mean I can
find you expensive bourbon. Yeah Ihave. 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.

(07:18):
We we have on the set withus and have since the beginning of of
of you know what, when theweekend that we opened the gym, there
is a bottle of Red Breast twentyone here that Mike lovingly procured for us.
I had to google because I didn'tknow shit about whiskey. I don't
really know anything about anything, tobe honest, so I just kind of

(07:39):
sit on Google. But that tastedgood taste. I love the older red
breastuff. I have a bottle ofRedbreast twenty seven. I'm waiting to crack
for my birthday this year, andthat stuff tastes like it tastes like liquid
pineapple and papaya. It's like sofruity. I absolutely love it. So

(07:59):
is it. It's a big birthdaythen, so well, every birthday can
be big if you believe every pieceof 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'son vacation, So I always think it's
gonna be like a big thing.I invite all these people and it just

(08:22):
turns into like meat drinking alone,and I'm like, WHOA, we're doing
it up. It's probably better thatway did people suck. I just had
a big birthday and I got tohang out with my grandkids. But that
was it. I was, youknow, away from home. I had
to travel the next day. Iwas tired. Yeah. I don't really
do birthdays. Yeah, I'm happy, happy thirtieth. By the way,

(08:46):
Jim, Yeah, exactly times too. So yeah, um, what's so
the average Jim Nerd meathhead lift yourguy partakes four to seven days a week,
right, it's the average whiskey nerdguy partake. So I mean you're
just having a whiskey with each meal. You got a breakfast bourbon? Oh

(09:07):
no, man. I Since Istarted doing stuff in the whisky industry,
like professional tastings, tasting panels,reviews, I drink so much less.
Yeah, because you just like blowout your palette every night. If you
drink all the time, and thenlike you just can't. The temptations always
there because there's like an event everynight you could go too. So I

(09:33):
probably took like two to three maybeevenings a week, and I count how
many drinks I have. Otherwise I'mjust 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 andI'll be hungover for five days. One
drink. It happens, It happens. It's so bad. It could be

(09:54):
anything. I had one Corona lastsummer and I'm fucked up for five days.
Corona's fairly. I was gonna say, you're still You're still messed up.
Yeah, I still probably shouldn't drivedays ago. You should definitely get
your liver check because it's not likeI don't do steroids. I've never even
gone through like a college binge phase. I think my liver's fought. I

(10:18):
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 liketo say to boost the confidences. I'm
running so optimally that one negative stepbackwards feels like just a whole wrench in
this system. Yep, that's what, yep. Exactly. In college,
I had a friend who had avery low alcohol terrence tolerance and nothing wrong

(10:41):
with that. He's shaming us andhe no, no, no, no
no, but he he he vomitedonce 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.
Yep, kicking out, all kickingout, destroy all poisons. He

(11:03):
just like he just like tapped.He's like tapped his chest and he's like,
systems too strong. Man. I'llrelate. I guess that works.
I guess that works. I relate. Uh to say that. Uh So,
you know, one of Mike's friendswas questioning me the other day about
the whole, you know, processof podcasting, because Mike and I've been
doing it for almost ten years now, and he said, like, do

(11:24):
you have do you like research guestsand 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 ofa little bit. But there's been
there's been a couple of guests thatif I had no clue who they were
and no connection, yeah, Imight do a Google. And then we've
done some touchy subject ones right whereI would google around. So I didn't

(11:46):
sound like a total idiot that Iam. But most of the time that
people we talked to are in ourspheres. Yeah, So the speaking of
that. So the one question Ireally 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 inyour brand a good amount, I don't
know if we've actually chatted. Mike, I'm I'm a little I'm a little

(12:09):
sad you were on the Barben podcastcouple years ago that I remember that.
I thought it was Jacoble at thetime. I was Jake there also or
no, was it just me andyou? He was? He was?
But I think you and me thatwas on the podcast twenty sixteen, seventeen.
Oh no, that was like twentytwenty. Like my memories gone.

(12:35):
We weren't we, right, Mymemory has been gone for we weren't even
around, like we We didn't havethe podcast until like twenty twenty. Uh
yeah, I mean we only launched. We only started in like mid twenty
sixteen. Dot com. But toyour yeah, barban dot com. Um
to your question, Jim, howdid we not cross paths? Somebody asked

(12:58):
me that recently in New York.If they're in the fitness industry and they
used to own a gym like afew blocks from where I used to live,
and They're like, how have wenot crossed paths? And I thought
about it a lot, and myanswer is I'm just not very cool.
And because of that, like peoplearen't like introducing me to people. Like,

(13:20):
people aren't like, oh, Igot to follow this guy on social
I gotta see what he's up to. People are just like, no,
I know, I got you onTwitter. I got you on Twitter probably
twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen. Ibet 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

(13:43):
you until very recently. But Iknow 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 incollege, and that just lows my mind.
Give us, give us like athirty second rundown of who you are,

(14:05):
what you do. Yeah, justa quick background for the folks listening,
because we didn't do any research.You got it, I mean,
because your research. Nice to meetyou. 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

(14:26):
can actually like figure out who theheck guy I am. I co founded
Barbend in twenty sixteen. That's probablywhat I'm best known for. Barbend was
my idea. I was a strengthnerd for years. I was a really
shitty competitive lifter years for years inweightlifting and then in like CrossFit, but

(14:48):
I love the stuff. I justimmersed in it. I wanted to get
to know the culture, and Ihad a journalism background, So Barbend was
like the site I always wanted becauseI was tired of like having to go
to fourteen different forums to get eventresults and like training tips and stuff like
that. So barban kind of startedout of a personal passion. It grew

(15:09):
much quicker than we expected and thenbasically grew the like raised money, grew
the team. I was CEO ofbarband. We were actually acquired two months
ago, a little lesson two monthsago, and I'm still on the team
because I want to be. Allof our employees switched over, all of
our execs switched over, not becausewe like have to. I want to

(15:33):
be very transparent. There's no likeearnout for founders. But I kind of
built my dream job, or waslucky to fall into my dream job,
you know, doing content around strengthsports 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 likethe whiskey space, the spirit space.

(15:54):
I grew up in the little townin Kentucky where they make most of the
world's bourbon, Bardstown, so I'vekind 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 tomarry. That was on my list.
I don't know if you know Brandonthe old bird dog. Oh oh yeah.
You talk to anyone else in myfamily, they have it. I

(16:18):
went to college. Okay, here'sthe story. Here's here's how I lost
the accent. I used to havea little one. So I go to
college in Boston. My like secondday on campus, I'm drinking out of
a paper bag underage on the sidewalkoutside of like a frat that I got
kicked out of and this this policeofficers, like Boston cop comes up to

(16:42):
me and he starts talking to me. He's clearly like mad, like I'm
this like seventeen year old kid atthe time, just drinking on the sidewalk.
That's not good. But I couldn'tunderstand what he was saying. And
when I started talking because of hisaccent. And when I started talking to
him, he couldn't nderstand what Iwas saying because of my accent. And

(17:04):
I realized. I was like,they're not all going to change their accents.
So I think I want to livehere, I'm gonna have to change
mine. So Mark Wahlberg Movies getsyou, right, The Fighter, Yeah,
I watched like that was like true, why I would to college like
free way before The Fighter? SoI watched. I watched The Departed like

(17:26):
seven times in a row. Andthen I just dropped my accent. So
my family still has it. Andif 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 Istarted off kind of sounded sounding like them.

(17:48):
At some point along the way,I was like, I don't really
want to say worsh rag for therest of my life, and so I'm
gonna fix that. And so Isound like a pretty much you know,
a newscaster now. So does doesbeing raised in Kentucky play any role in
the strength, you know, backgroundthat you have, Like Kentucky isn't necessarily

(18:12):
cross fit, but a lot ofpowerlifting, a lot of big burly boys
running around, obviously very close toColumbus, which is the you know,
the epicenter of of now CrossFit,but originally is the powerlifting city of the
world. Does that kind of didthat seep into your childhood? Definitely not
in the childhood. There are alot 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 lotof 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 thatKentucky has become a little more known
for. That part of country hasbecome a little better known for. There

(18:55):
was, like, weirdly in thesmall town where I grew up, there
was a very high level Highland Gamestrain Jim. So, a lot of
like top Highland Games athletes were inBardstown, Kentucky, because that's even the
niche of the niches, right,like obviously you probably a body being up
top. Yeah, and then maybemaybe probably CrossFit then powerlifting, weightlifting third
tier and high Lands is probably bottomof the strength tier probably so. But

(19:19):
you know there's a lot of space. Yeah, a lot of things to
three easier, a lot of farmimplements. Yeah, that makes sense.
Easy enough of them makes sense.Oh. The one the one thing that
was interesting was growing up, wehad the Kentucky Bourbon Festival, which is
where my actual first job was,and they had barrel rolling competitions and a

(19:41):
fifty three gallon barrel of whiskey islike five hundred some so like you got
to be able to move those withsome finance something. No, they're like
a couple of ways, Like therewere a couple events. You could roll
them like on their side, whichis takes some strength, and then you
could also roll them on like onthe edge is kind of hard to describe,

(20:03):
um, and you could try andget the spin right to where they
would like kind of like a bowlingball curve, and you could like try
and like get them to go ina certain place. So that was that
was tough. If you ever rolleda barrel of whiskey, that's that's gonna
make a sweat. But i'd bedown. I mean, I think you'd
be pretty good at of me.I'm pretty weak man. Oh yeah,

(20:26):
you you said earlier that you werea mediocre competitor, and then you start
Barman and had a lot of success. That's all of us if we were.
I didn't say it was a mediocrecompetitor. I said it was a
shitty competitor. I just want tobe clear. Is mediocre above Oh yeah,
oh yeah, for sure. WellI 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 whatwe did, we wouldn't be sitting here

(20:48):
talking. We'd be probably lifting inMalta or wherever big competitions are happening.
That's actually I would I would probablyagree with that. That's actually even weirder
why we didn't cross paths. Justthe mediocreness. You know how they say
like, oh, sorry, thosewho can't teach, those who can't do
teach. I'm like one worse thanthat. I couldn't even teach, so

(21:14):
I just started writing about string sportsme too, I couldn't even coach report.
Yeah, yeah, I can't evenwrite. Dude, you got me.
I just talking to him if Ican'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.

(21:37):
I don't know him at all,but his co author on on engineering
the Alpha is somebody that's been friendswith for twenty years. Oh, John,
I know John. Yeah, I'veknown John a long, long long
time. John used to put onthese epic dinners at like Brazilian steakhouses in
New York. Some of the bestfriends I've made in fitness. I'm I

(21:59):
made it dinners. I believe that. Yeah. Yeah, he's really not
operating in fitness anymore. But whenhe was, like he had some epic
mastermind stuff going on, like differentand intentionally different than most of what everybody
else is doing. He's he's morein the relationships. Yeah, storytelling like

(22:22):
sex positivity space now I think,yeah, for sure, what's what's the
first step look like? Kind ofbuilding an empire that Barbend was. Um,
There's obviously a lot of websites thatdo 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

(22:48):
just my opinion, maybe it's yoursas well, just kind of got washed
out and a little commercialized. There. There's always an agenda behind him that
you could feel. Um, whereBarbend, as long as I've read it,
seen it been a part of ithas always seemed to truly be about
the sports and about the lifters andabout the niche itself rather than I've never
felt an agenda once from y'all,which is like major props at least from

(23:11):
a consumer end, although I don'tconsider myself much of a consumer, and
obviously people have to make money offof 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 beingI bet you were mediocre dude. No,

(23:32):
yeah, I doubt you were shittybeing a mediocre lifter, and then
how do you turn that into likea business that's thriving and arguably top of
the game within that space. Imean, I think our timing was very
good. We started at a timewhen people wanted more coverage of this stuff,

(23:52):
and for the first couple of yearswe were all news Like we didn't
have the money to pay people towrite in depth training con nutrition content,
like we couldn't even get brands tosend us equipment to review. And we
also didn't really have a space warbecause we couldn't afford like an office for
that. So the first year waslike me writing thirty plus articles a week

(24:15):
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
timing was also good because that year, it was twenty sixteen, it was
still when like World's Strongest Man didnot release their results publicly, so people
were just clamoring to figure that out. We were able to report on that

(24:38):
early. The Olympics were that year. I wrote reports and recaps for every
weightlifting session at the Olympics. Likefortunately it was in Rio, so the
time zone was similar, but likeI 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, justto clarify, Yeah, actually, And

(25:03):
we I just had this insatiable appetiteto cover everything. And that was before
I had an editorial team. Myco founders were just keeping the site running
like technically SEO. We were selffunding it, and I was just like,
I'm going to become a one maneditorial wrecking ball. And I've never
worked harder in my life or likecrazier hours. And then we're like,

(25:26):
okay, we have some traction peopleare visiting. I remember the first time
we got five thousand viewers in aday than ten thousand and twenty thousand,
and I was like, holy cow, how did you know you got to
do something with that? Do youknow those were good numbers? Did you
did you have a background in runningblogs or something like that, like or
did your did your co founders whatwhat was like a standard you maybe going

(25:47):
by? We I had a backgroundin that they had a background in SEO
and analytics, and and we thoughtthat if we could get to a million
visitors in a month, we'll havemade it like that's like the top tier
we could ever aim for. Likespoiler alert. We blasted past that in
like our second year and we're stillgrowing, but that was like the end

(26:12):
goal, Like we didn't even knowwhat the real end goal was, but
like we'll like get to that andnothing else matters. And now we're trying
to like go in order of magnitudeabove that or like several times above that.
But we tried to raise money inlike late twenty sixteen early twenty seventeen
because we're like, oh, wegot to hire a staff. We can

(26:33):
scale this, right. I wasgetting burnt out, like I can't write
all this myself, would need moneyto pay people. And so we started
going to venture capitalists. And thiswas in the days when like everyone was
like they want to throw money atBuzzFeed, at Vice Media, at like
Mike dot com, which no longerreally exists, and we got turned down
by every VC like doesn't look likelike I have you just like reach out

(26:59):
to them, have a Zoom meetingand like throw them a pitch. Oh
they were in person meetings back then. We were going out to La yesterday.
It was just this is like fromthe pre Zoom era, and people
wanted to meet in person. Soit was like balancing between New York and
California, trying to talk to thesefolks, asking friends of friends for intros.

(27:23):
I had done some business journalism,so I was asking like my contacts
for intros, and like the meetingswere so bad because no one believed in
our idea. No one thought thatcould ever be anything. I literally remember,
like the one that sticks out inmy head is I got coffee in
downtown Manhattan with this venture capitalist andpart way through he was like, oh,

(27:48):
I need to go to the bathroom, Like this is interesting, let
me just pop to the bathroom realquick. And I was like cool,
and he just gets up and likehe didn't even he didn't even like walk
toward the bathroom. He just saidthat and then like walked out the fucking
door. That's bad, I didthink. I think I teared up with
this coffee shot wild. That's justwild too, Like human nature is like

(28:11):
still like that. Could you justsay 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 coffeeor leave. But I think I
think everyone in the coffee shop thoughthe had just dumped you. Like I
was like of sitting there alone andsomewhat emotions. So all that all I

(28:34):
have to say, Like we wewere able to raise zero institutional dollars and
because of that, we had toraise a seed round. That's friends,
family, and people in the fitnessindustry. 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 wereWe had to like really leverage our own

(29:00):
personal networks, right, Like,um, I don't I don't come from
wealth. My co founders didn't comefrom wealth, but we're you know,
I like talking to people I knewin college who worked in finance and had
done well. Um, talking tolike my co founders, family members,
people I knew in fitness, justtrying to get what we could just so
we could hire some basic staff andgrow. And because of that, we

(29:23):
knew there was no more money coming. Like we raised the seed round and
we're like, cool, this isit. We have to make this work.
And I think ultimately the reason wewere 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 isthe cash we have, We have this
runway, and if we can't getprofitable in that time, we're fucked.

(29:48):
And that was like that number,like the money in the bank account would
whittle down, you know, everyweek 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 andcontent was great for us because now I
look back at every company in contentthat did raise venture capital. BuzzFeed News

(30:11):
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. Theywere like the biggest tenant. And someone
recently reached out to me actually yesterdayand they're like, hey, do you
want to take over the lease forVice's building, and like, we don't

(30:33):
even have an office in New Yorkanymore. Yeah, we went remote during
COVID, But I was like,how fucking funny is that? Yeah?
Who made it? Kind of outof that space? Like bar stool,
they're kind of barstool. They're kindof 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 tobe a successful Oh my god. And

(30:56):
they're in New York too, right, barstool Iza Right, So Porty is
the New York pizza taster. He'sthe yeah one yeah, the one bite
or whatever it is. I don'tI don't really follow them, but yeah,
I think I think we got reallylucky because everyone was like, oh,

(31:17):
you got to raise venture capital,and the fact that we weren't let
let us dodge a bullet. Becauselike venture capital and venture capitalists, they
pushed these content companies to grow unsustainablyand there was no way they could actually
make revenue to give vcs that hundredextra return, right, And like,

(31:38):
we raised revenue and we gave ourinvestors a great return. They're super happy
when we were acquired. They werelike over the moon, But they're individuals.
We didn't give up control of thecompany when we raise money. We
weren't like, we're going to raisemoney, you all get four board seats.
That's not how it worked. Andso we controlled our own destiny and

(31:59):
we had to build like a realsustainable 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 waythat these other um outlets did. Uh.

(32:20):
It just it really does set youup for success when success comes around,
I guess, and I think tothe fitness industry and the strength world
grew for sure, like it wasmuch smaller in twenty sixteen than it is
now. Yeah, I would sayso we kind of rode that rising tide.
Yeah, twenty sixteen, you know, at least in our timeline.
Yeah, it was probably like,yeah, the first big peak that continued

(32:44):
to just spread the roots kind ofthe tree, you know, twenty twelve
to twenty sixteen was was kind ofthe spark that it is now today.
I mean you can even just seeit in like basic social media followers,
Like the biggest social media quote unquotestar in twenty sixteen, maybe you had
five hundred thousand followers on Instagram orsomething, and now the biggest stars of
ten million. Yeah you know anInstagram. Sure, Instagram's grown or whatever,

(33:08):
but that's and you're we're talking aboutit time too. That um,
you know, YouTube fitness was reallyexploding, and it was maybe easier to
accumulate audience like most of the bigfolks now that we know are not necessarily
accumulating audience. They're trying to holdon yeah to audience yeah, or they're

(33:29):
newer from yeah TikTok space or yeahyeah, the whole the whole industry has
just changed immensely. I mean,it's gotten younger, which is cool,
right because the next gen has comein 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 topivot based on that or do you observe

(33:52):
that world at all? Or doyou just stick to the roots of twenty
sixteen, like all right, we'recrossfits, 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
over time. We didn't cover bodybuildinguntil twenty twenty so like and that's partially

(34:13):
because I was running the editorial team. Bodybuilding was not my competency. It
wasn't until Andrew Guttman came on asour managing editor. Now he's our head
of content. You know he hada 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 begoing back, and I was suddenly get

(34:36):
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.
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, Iwas getting text from people at other public

(35:00):
actions and fitness and they were freakingout. 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'mnot 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 getbroader in the type of content we produce.

(35:23):
With more resources, we were ableto write training content and find people
to write training content, like thepeople who are qualified to write that nutrition
content reviews. And in addition,the demographics completely changed, right, Like
our audience was almost all male whenwe started. We have more women reading
now, more people of color readingnow. And like a lot of people,

(35:45):
I haven't. I haven't been aface of the brand for a long
time. It's kind of more recentlythat I've been doing podcasts like this and
talking to great folks like yourself.But like, I'm a person of color.
I was in you know, I'vebeen interested in strength for a long
time, and you know, thefirst few gyms I went to, I
was like the only non white guy, right, And that's totally cool.

(36:06):
I was always welcome, Like itdidn't impact my journey, I don't feel.
But gyms are more diverse now youhave more women involved, more people
of color, you know, Ithink that, Well, this is a
little sad, but like every timewe post anything for Pride Month, we
lose followers. But like, peopleweren't even doing that six or seven years

(36:28):
ago, right, people weren't evenacknowledging that, Like, oh, people
of diverse sexual and general and sexualorientations and genders are like interested in lifting.
It's almost like everyone can be interestedin lifting, and as yeah,
crazy, silly, silly to thinkthat, right, I'm being sarcastic,
clearly. But as as the demographicsgrew, and as he acknowledged demographics grew,

(36:55):
and as more different types of peoplebecame publicly interested in all sorts of
strength, competitive, non competitive,we had to broaden the type of content
we were writing or the types ofcontent 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

(37:15):
the ripped white guy, you know, and every art Yeah, and like,
look, we've had to rely onstock photos before. It kind of
sucks sometimes, but and we haven'talways been perfect, Like we've messed up
so many times. But our mantrais like, hey, the space is
getting bigger and more diverse, ourcontent 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 insome senses, and obviously the lead of
Arnold and some of the bigger figuresthat have made it popular. But I
do think it's all cyclical, youknow, like twenty six teams a great

(38:00):
example, like crossfits at its freakingpeak. 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 minicomeback as a little bit more even with
or strength sports in general, alittle bit more even with the body building
world. But I'm already seeing it, Like how many people on Instagram and

(38:21):
stuff are just throwing themselves into powerliftingmeets out of nowhere. So I think
that cycle is back. So youguys probably just try to read some of
that. You might even know youmight even be part of the snowball of
that effect. We're at the sizeto where like we kind of build our
own audience sometimes, like if wewrite more content on a specific thing,
we see that search volume for thatstuff starts increasing, which is like a

(38:45):
little crazy to think of. TheOther thing I want to point out is
as people have been in the strengthgame for longer, the age demographics grow,
right, so, like so muchof our readership right now, masters
athletes, people interested in lifting overthirty, forty, fifty, sixty seventy.
Some of the content that does thebest for us is highlighting people who

(39:06):
are not necessarily setting world records asa twenty five year old, right,
but people who are doing inspiring andcool 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 resultsfor powerlifting, weightlifting a little less so,
but it's catching up CrossFit bodybuilding.That stuff does insanely good and it

(39:29):
was not that way back in twentysixteen. Yeah, yeah, So what's
happened is like strength has gotten bigger. Oh, sorry to interrupt. People
are finding it and they're sticking withit, right, So, like if
you found it as a thirty fiveyear old in twenty sixteen, you're now
a forty two forty three year old. Your approach you're chaining training has probably

(39:50):
changed a little bit. The contentyou're looking for has changed a little bit.
Cool. We have to adapt alot 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 twentiesand then you dabble in weightlifting in your
thirties and then now you're the youknow, just the jim bro in your
forties or something. And even myselfof slightly guilty or you know, of

(40:12):
dabbling in different places when you youhit a roadblocker BJJ. Yeah, when
mediocre, when mediocrity was too loud, I would try something new. All
right, this goes a mediocre victimof 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,

(40:36):
yeah, I don't mind. There'ssomething to be said for the power of
being bad at something, No,for sure, and jokes aside. I
think being bad at and continuing todo it that makes this badass. My
friend, it's easy to fucking dosomeone you're good. It's hard to do
shit when you saw, especially ina public way. Oh yeah, I'm
real public about am I sucking everyoneelse? Everyone knows mediocre physique, mediocre

(41:01):
personality, all of it. SoI wanted to ask about this acquisition process,
like what was the due diligence likeabout that? And did they like
approach you from the beginning or wereyou, like, did you guys have
a price tag on yourself beforehand orwhat what happened? So, one thing

(41:23):
I want to point out is thatI think media companies can only get so
big on their own. Yeah,right, Like, eventually you're at the
whims of the algorithm. Google changessomething. Facebook change is something, Instagram
change is something. It creates fluctuationsto impacts your revenue right directly through ads

(41:44):
or indirectly through other sources, sponsorships, you name it. And like,
if Google change your algorithm, thatchanges our bottom line as CEO, Suddenly
I'm like, cool, we haveto reallocate expenses month to month. It
kind of sucks, but part ofthe game, it's fine. As part
of a bigger media company, you'reable to weather that storm and it all

(42:07):
kind of evens out because they havemore resources and then more diversified, right,
so you can actually like put moneytowards more predictable growth. You have
more time, you're hedged. Sowe were always open to the idea of
being acquired, but we weren't shoppingourselves around to answer your question, and

(42:27):
we actually started getting a lot ofinbound offers and interest, like twenty one
late twenty twenty one. But here'sthe deal. When websites sell online,
they often don't sell as media companies. Oftentimes people just want the website,
they want the asset, and theywant to like scrap it for parts,

(42:49):
right, they want to just likesqueeze it for all it's worth. And
we had a team at that pointwhen we sold, we had geez I
think it was like seventeen full timeemployees. Those are people with lives careers
like they work at Barbon because theywanted to build a career in strength content.
I was terrified of the idea ofselling to a company that wouldn't respect

(43:16):
that commitment that we'd made to ouremployees and they'd made to us. So
we weren't even entertaining acquisition offers foranyone who didn't want to keep on our
entire team. Right, That waslike pretty much a non starter. And
so when Pillar four reached out,we had a relationship with that company.

(43:36):
My co founders and I, youknow, 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 appealedto me. They're based in North Carolina,
and so when they reached out andthey were like, hey, we

(43:57):
like how you all do business.We just want to add gas the engine.
We want to grow. We wantto take what you're doing, we
want to learn from it, maybeapply it to our other properties too,
and then just help you grow moreand more. And that was really appealing
to us. And so the outcomeended up being good for us, good
for our employees, great for ourinvestors, and everyone poored it over,

(44:19):
Like every single employee poored it over, and the exact team and the founders.
We're still working there because we wantto, and they've actually allowed us
to. Well, we have hiredand we've had more resources to hire more
people. Like our team is nowbigger and has grown faster as part of
Pillar four compared to when we wereindependent. Right, So I look at

(44:44):
our like Monday weekly kickoff calls,and they are all these new faces and
I'm like, Wow, they wouldn'tbe here if we hadn't gotten acquired.
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

(45:06):
misunderstandings. You want everyone to havethe same info. Obviously, lawyers and
accountants are involved. I love ourlawyers at accountants. I love Pillar For
as lawyers and accounts, but youbasically are trying to run a company while
spending months on endless calls and duediligence fact finding with them. Right,

(45:29):
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 thesite's entire existence. You have to go
through all of it. It's reallycomplex, but we needed to do that
so that when we were acquired,so that once it was finalized, we

(45:52):
could just keep the momentum going,right. So the whole goal was like,
Okay, our employees are all comingover, how do we disrupt their
day to day the minimum amount sothey can just keep doing what they're doing
producing great content. And we weren'tperfect at it right right, but I
think it was a gradual enough transitionto where people could keep doing what they

(46:14):
were doing, get better at it, and then integrate more resources as Pillar
For provided them. And my dayto day is the one that's changed the
most, Right, Like, I'mnot 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 videostrategy, podcasting strategy now that we have

(46:36):
more resources and more people. Somy day job completely shifted. But for
everyone else, I think it's beena pretty gradual transition, and there's been
relatively little change for them in termsof like acquisition and stuff. Jim and
I have had a couple of experiencesin the past couple of years of just

(46:58):
dipping our toes into the world andseeing how crazy it is, looking at
the numbers, and kind of doinga 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 livesand jobs involved, and the content
game it's so easy, right evenAnd maybe you disagree, but I assume
you do. You write an article, it bombs, you learn from it,

(47:20):
you move on. Right that thecycles not even twenty four hours anymore,
it's one hour. Did this dowell? Did it not? As
long as you stick to obviously whoyou are in morals and all that,
who cares, right, there's noharm. You just forget you move on.
So like my confidence with content isI don't because day one I've just
been me that I'm not like anact or anything. I can't fuck up.
There's I have no you know whatI mean? I have full confidence

(47:44):
going into something. If someone askedme to talk or write or do a
video, fuck it, you askfor me, You're getting me, right,
But doing something that affects so manypeople, and it's such a big
business, Like you said, allthe employees looked at it and all kind
of agreed. But what you theconfidence? It sounds like after your audit
it felt like a no brainer.But what gave you the confidence to say,

(48:06):
like, all right, this isa huge move, but this is
for the net good. I believedit was. But I'm not gonna lie
and say it didn't keep me upat 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. Ididn't just like make decisions and everything changed

(48:30):
right, Um, But it definitelykept me up at night. It was
a huge stressor I looked even moreragged than I look now after due diligence
on what I looked like a lotof whiskey consumed almost none, almost none,
which is the problem. Maybe thatwas the issue this decision, would
like I already looked like a muppet. I looked even worse coming out of

(48:52):
due diligence. You know, youbring up a good point, Mike about
like you can you can see whenthings succeed and flop digital content, you
can get instant gratification, but youalso get instantaneous disappointment, and you have
to adapt to both and just moveon. And like, you don't have
time to be sad that a pieceof content didn't perform, because if you

(49:15):
don't move on, your competitors aregoing 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 thinkwe're the biggest and best. But you
don't stay there by stagnating. Shootor shoot is what we say. Next
shot? Yeah, next shot,you miss a shot. You gotta goldfish

(49:37):
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 itdoes to me as as part of the
business structure or you know, performanceor whatever. I have talked with my

(49:58):
therapist a lot about that, becauseevery decision I make, I feel like
always look terrible. Like the impostersyndrome 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 nexteighteen months will be at I mean,

(50:22):
this is kind of a guestimate anda lot of it's seasonal, but like,
I think the next eighteen months we'regoing to be at about forty five
million readers a year. You're likethat trajector do you know other websites or
like, because even for me,like what, what can you compare that
to somebody else? Like give usa reference of like a mainstream media or

(50:43):
something like that, so so wecan see what Ballpark y'all are in,
um, because in my brain that'snot that's an insane shit. We we
were and anyone can correct me onthis, but as far as I know,
pre acquisition, we were the largestindependent fitness publisher in the world.
Yeah, I don't doubt it,right, And I think that we're still

(51:06):
one of the largest now, we'rejust 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 dreambecause I never knew this as possible.
But now my dream is to haveLet me be honest, my dream is
to is to be the biggest investLike men's health is kind of the elephant

(51:29):
in the room they get. Theyget a lot more traffic than we do.
It's not all fitness content. Alot of it's their celebrity content now,
so it's a little bit apples tooranges. Yeah, they're like teaching
that I want banana and some weirdshit. I followed them on Facebook.
No, no shame because I've workedwith them too in the past. But
they post them crazy shit now,Like I have no clue what they're posting.

(51:52):
Sometimes I swear to God, it'slike the banana versus Apple conversation or
something. They write a lot ofdifferent stuff and I don't I don't pretend
to know their strategy, but I'mclose with a lot of folks there.
EBB Samuel close personal friend. I'mgetting dinner with him in like in two
days. Great guy. But Iwant Barben to be bigger than that,

(52:15):
Like, I want Barbin to bea bigger brand and fitness than Men's Health,
which was unthinkable when we started becauseBarben is a strength brand. Yeah.
How can a strength brand be biggerthan one of the biggest fitness brands?
Right? And I think that's becausepeople are realizing strength is a part
of fitness. You can't be fitand you can't have that be a priority

(52:37):
in your life if there's not sometype of resistance training that you're incorporating.
Yeah, I mean that's like thebiggest change over, Like you know,
the decade and decade and a halfof Doune fitness is how many people know
what a squat and deadlift are andcan at least perform them in some aspect.
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

(53:00):
to have the tiered pyramid one whereyou have to walk out eight feet to
squat it or you're gonna hit theside posts. Oh I kind of miss
that one. Yeah, I don'thate it. I don't. I don't
know why, and I'm not I'mnot that short, so like those safeties
didn't catch me anyways. But yougo to any commercial gym now there's minimum
like five squat racks, and againpeople are, you know, figuring out
how to squat properly, but atleast people are trying. And so I

(53:21):
think Tier truth to your words,like like whether you want to call it
old school bodybuilding, right, theArnold 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 machinebased and so cardio based. Um that
now things are expanding, and likeyou said, you had to expand your
demo, but that's because the demoitself kind of expanded. Bodybuilders squat more,

(53:45):
you know, even like Sea Bumblewill do some rtls or some deadlosts
with you, and he's the guyright now versus a couple of years ago.
You know, everyone's just sitting ona machine. So it is interesting
to go into that next echelon.So you guys are Tier one already,
but to be the website, doyou think there's big changes you got to
make. Is there is there newstrat and you don't have to do anything
you know, confidential or secret?But is there like a leap you guys

(54:07):
have to take or is it justlike continuing to hike Everest They're they're leaps.
I'm a pretty straight shooter. Wehave 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 seethe press release next week. Barband acquires

(54:31):
fifty percent facts. Uh barb inmy brain, you don't want to.
You don't want to, you don'twant to. Um, Yeah, we
have to. We have to bemore multimedia. Like social media has not

(54:52):
been a priority for us for years. We have not had a dedicated social
team. UM. Video has notbeen a huge priority for us for a
while. We have to go hamon all of those, right, Like
we have to be producing basically dailyvideo content, podcasting content. We have
to get broader and more diverse.We have to incorporate that into our written

(55:13):
content and our social game. Wegot up our social game like ten X,
and we have more resources to dothat, and we have game plans
to do do that, but itdoesn't come immediately. Right like the month
after we got acquired, I waskind of like, yeah, we gotta
do it, blah blah blah.And then everyone was like, well,

(55:35):
like, maybe we make sure thateverything else, you know, the things
that are like driving revenue already,maybe we like optimize those a little bit.
And I was like, oh thatmakes a lot of sense. Yeah,
yeah, my brain like shifted sinceI wasn't see CEO anymore. I
was like, Oh, let's go. And that's still the energy. But

(55:57):
we have to get more multimedia.We have to be more cross platform.
That's what the big mainstream out let'shave done. One thing that we don't
have plans for. And again Iwant to be very honest about this.
UM, I don't call all theshots 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

(56:22):
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'veso so I've been told as far as
you know, smoke signals, Ijust yell, I just yell, And
however many people hear the content.Yeah, we have to make bigger on

(56:49):
I listened to your interview on themass Anomics podcast, and actually I think
that that Tanner connected us because II mentioned to him that it was really
really good interview. And one ofthe things that really like resonated with me
was when you started talking about thewhen Barbin started attraction, Like when you

(57:12):
started realizing, oh, we're actuallylike people are are people are engaging with
our content and it's kind of developinga life of its own. And that's
something that Mike and I experienced withour first podcast, like it when it
started to take off, which waspretty early, but like you know,
definitely we started in thirteen. Definitelyby fifteen, it was like crazy on

(57:35):
a level that I hadn't really anticipated. Um And and really I never had
any thought about, like how dowe make it bigger because it just kind
of kind of kept going and nota 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

(57:57):
decisions about what direction to go whenyou realized that you were actually gaining traction?
Well, first off, I'm reallypleased 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 Factsbecause I knew who you were really

(58:21):
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 ofdata. We have seven years of tens
and hundreds literally hundreds of millions ofsite impressions. Right, it might be

(58:42):
in the billions now if you lookat the impressions we've had, and so
we can dig into that data andsee where the trends are going before they
might even be trends. So whenit comes to like, okay, say
we want to expand podcasts, Saywe want to have five different podcasts a
year from now, where the fastestgrowing demographics, the fastest growing subjects,

(59:02):
the best engagement. That's actually notmy strength. I'm not the best at
coming through that data. We havehired 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 ourpants to start Barbend was founded on a

(59:24):
hunch that we could make a businessout of the strength world, that people
were hungry for that strength content,without really having the example that proved it
could work. I mean, theteenage existed, Breaking Muscle existed. We
actually acquired Breaking Muscle a couple ofyears ago, but it was a bit
of a hunch, which is probablyone reason we weren't able to raise money

(59:45):
that easily, because like, peopledon'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 throughall 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 valuableassets, right, is the data that

(01:00:07):
we've had from seven years of doingthis over and over and over again.
So now those decisions are a lotmore informed. But the first few years
it was a lot of throw thingsagainst the wall and see what sticks.
Yeah I get that for sure,Yeah, I know. We Our first

(01:00:28):
podcast was started on a hunch ofmine 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 whatwe're what we were presenting. What we

(01:00:50):
didn't have a lot of was databecause 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

(01:01:13):
podcast app under specific iOS versions.You know, It's it's inadequate, and
so it's difficult to plan. Yousort of just have to like watch the
whole watch the whole scene and figureout, like who who else looks like
they're doing something? And I thinkthat there's a danger in that because you

(01:01:35):
end up kind of I think youwere saying earlier, sort of bring on
the people who are a little bitless reliable in terms of information and a
little bit more sensational, you know, in terms of content. I'm sorry
about that. In terms of likecontent itself, the world's weird right now.

(01:01:58):
I feel like and maybe you know, you said you're not the data
guy, but I'm sure your dataguys inform you on what's going on with
the data, or maybe you haveyour own opinions. But on my end,
like TikTok's this five second content appright, you're watching something for five
freaking seconds, and that's obviously oneof the most popular social media's on the
planet. And then the other endyou have stuff like live stream, Twitch,

(01:02:22):
kick, Rumble, all these placesand podcasts, which are you know,
the most popular podcasts typically are superlong format. We're talking hour or
two hour, three hour, andlive 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

(01:02:42):
whatever, and maybe they do,I don't know, but people are clearly
tapping into three hour podcasts and eighthour live streams. Yeah, how has
that affected your guys' strategy? Iknow a lot of your stuff's written,
but you obviously create video content andaudio content as well. Do you see
that going anywhere? What's your opinionson it? And how do you guys
kind of wiggle around the changing ofthe media's. Interestingly, in the written

(01:03:08):
world, the tolerance for longer piecesof 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 itcould be like event results, So how
do you add more contexts to thoseevent results, right, like the athletes
history or the competition's history, orcomparing it to previous iterations? How do

(01:03:31):
you really flush that out? Onthe evergreen side, like could be training
content right like you got to GoDeep. We write a lot of three
thousand word articles and we used tonot do that, but that content performs
really well now. And it's almostlike when people are looking for something in
a written form factor they want tospend time on it because they want to

(01:03:52):
focus in on it. So that'skind of the trend we've been seeing on
the written side. On the videoon podcast side, you know, we're
really focusing on adding more resources andfirepower to that, and so when it
comes to length I, we don'thave a ton of recent data because we

(01:04:13):
haven't really produced regular videos for likea year, and so moving forward the
strategy, it is like, Okay, how can we produce a lot of
different types of video and then startdoubling 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

(01:04:34):
depth review on something like people wanta lot of info, you can't make
those two. Yeah, you can'tmake those too long. But if it's
just like, hey, we're recappingan event, there's sometimes people want something
shorter. They're like, Okay,I want to get all the download on

(01:04:55):
this in five minutes. And thenyou know, maybe if I want something
really in depth and all this additionalcontext, I'll go to the written version,
right, and I'll compare that toprevious event results or something like that.
So I'm kind of excited to findout. But yeah, that implication
for the written world a world forthe written world, that context is generally

(01:05:16):
getting longer. We've seen that ina pretty pronounced way. That's interesting.
Have you noticed, like we havenoticed that when you're producing something that's basically
that's intended to be very basic forsomeone who's just coming into into a particular
sport, that there just isn't away to be basic enough, Like there
isn't a way to break it downenough. It's an explain like I'm five,

(01:05:41):
but I'm three, you know.So there's something that we start applying
to our content early on that Ithink people in fitness we're slow to catch
up on. So I have ajournalism 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

(01:06:02):
broadly applicable, and you get moreand more narrow. So the further you
get down in an article, themore specific you get, the nerdier you
get, basically, right, themore 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 CrossFitGames, you know that first paragraph,

(01:06:24):
like everyone's going to understand what itmeans, right, Like the CrossFit games
just happened. Here's what that is, Here's where it was, and when
it was here's who won. Right. And as you get further down the
article, and this is why longercontents performing better. I think, at
least in one capacity, you addmore subsections to give more specific contexts,

(01:06:44):
and by the time you get tothe bottom, people who have made it
that far, well, they've hadall the contexts you've written previously, so
they definitely know more, and ifthey do make it further down, they're
probably more interested than someone who's justtaking a cursory glance, and the assumed
level of knowledge has increased the furtheryou go down the page. Interesting,

(01:07:06):
That makes sense. Yeah, Iknow nothing about the written world, even
though I think I wrote something foryou guys. You guys probably chopped it
up and hopefully made it way betterbecause it sucked. We just maybe you
wrote a regular pyramid and we justturned it upside down. Well, I
probably wrote a square for all Iknow. 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'sit. I was checking. Okay,

(01:07:28):
so you did you did the barbeIn podcast Mike in twenty nineteen Deep Depression
Man, October twenty eighteen to abouttwenty twenty three January, My Memories shot.
I just came out of a smoke, a fog, not even mirrors,
just smoke. Yeah no, no, there's no mirrors, mirror shit.

(01:07:51):
Yeah, it's been it's been ahell of five years over here.
Well, okay, so in ain a muller Vain. This is something
I'm trying to do um with everyepisode now and I don't know if it
depends on my memory, so itcould be spotty. But um uh,
what I want to ask is everyweek has kind of it's rose and it's

(01:08:15):
thorn, so you can choose eitheror or give both. But do you
have anything that fits in those categoriesthat you're able to talk about for for
this week? For this week?Yes? Oh well wait, wait,

(01:08:39):
every Rose says it's thorn? Wasthat poison? Was that the band?
I believe? Yeah? Okay,whenever stuck in my head on a loop
now still think of Seal Seal Kissfrom 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 ruinit. That song still slaps it does,

(01:09:00):
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, solike 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 broaderand broader. SEO is like everything.

(01:09:24):
So right now we're coming off ofa period where there are a lot of
events and now there aren't so manyevents, right, and that'll pick back
up around the CrossFit games. Sothere's like this lull in the news cycle
and strength and we've experienced a trafficdip because of that. Right now.
It doesn't mean like our traffic hasbeen cut in half, right, but

(01:09:47):
it's less than it was when theWorld's Strongest Man was going on in April.
Right, It's just like a littledip 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, whichwas very understanding because they have a lot
of experience with this, Like that'sa bit of a thorn because you look
at that graph and it's a dipand you want things to go up and

(01:10:10):
up and up and up. Andfor the first few years at bar Bend,
it was like always up into theright, like every month we had
growth. Because if you're starting fromnothing you have, you can't go down
right, right, you can't havelike negative traffic, like I got used
to the hockey stick. Yeah,and now it progress is not linear anymore,

(01:10:32):
and that's been the thorn. It'sstill 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.
And like you never want to tella new employee like, hey,

(01:10:55):
our traffic's a little bit down thismonth, right, yeah, yeah,
it just never feels and then youhave to plain why even if you predict
it, even if you predicted evennotes coming, even if it's normal,
it just numb feels good. Yeah. The rose is UM. I had
a lot of folks reach out tome yesterday and today, like even this
morning, um, and they areinterested in covering Barbin from the business standpoint,

(01:11:19):
which is something I've been really excitedto do. Like I love the
fitness world. I'm honored to beon 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 outto like the two shout out to like
the two haters. And I'm prettysure that like my mom runs both of

(01:11:42):
those accounts. Um, yeah,her olds. But like, it's been
really cool that people have been lookingat Barbin now post acquisition and they're like,
oh, this is like a mainstreammedia story. Yeah, because like
every media outlet, if you werejust follow the news, is struggling.
Vice went bankrupt, BuzzFeed News justshuddered, like, you know, the

(01:12:03):
Washington Post has had layoffs, butit's not all doom and gloom. The
Athletic yesterday. Yeah, that's stunningto 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 themfor, right exactly. It's like,
now, we just want to makeus now. And I like that more

(01:12:29):
people are interested in us. Obviouslyit strokes my ego. I'm like,
yeah, I'll talk about this businessI started b Yeah, well, I
don't mind if I do. ButI like that people are looking at a
business that's endemic to the strength communityand they're saying, oh, that's a
real business. There are content lessonsthere for other audiences and other communities,

(01:12:49):
because when we first started, abig reason no vcs wanted to give us
money was because they didn't think Strengthwas a real audience or a real community.
They didn't think it was worth aship, and it was a lot
smaller than to be fair. Butnow that people are looking at us and
they're like, oh, maybe otherdifferent outlets in different spaces can learn something
from Barben that that feels really good, and maybe it'll show some people that

(01:13:15):
like a career in media like canactually 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 kindof do that. Oh yeah, you

(01:13:36):
kind of do that. Oh youkind of write about sports, or you
kind of have a podcast. Becauseit has all of it's gotten so popular
that it's almost become hobified, likeit had to be a hobby in twenty
ten. Yeah, when you starta podcast for YouTube because there no one
was doing it. There's no suchthing. But there's enough history now.
But then everyone, yeah, hoppedon the train. And so for ninety

(01:13:56):
nine percent of people it is ahobby. But that doesn't mean the one
percent doesn't insane potential. If youstick 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, kindof anything can become something. Yeah,
for sure. I want to thankyou for joining us today and thanks for

(01:14:21):
having me guess, and you shouldcome visit us because I think you would
enjoy yourself here. You ever headto the West Coast not La, say
La, California's big La sucks.I didn't. I don't like it.
I don't like La. Oh mygod, I'm gonna get canceled Disneylands all
day. Yeah, you know howto not make friends say that the second

(01:14:44):
biggest city in America isn't fun.No, it sucks. If they know
it too, everyone, they're startingto realize it sucks. It's always well.
Look, I need to make aWest Coast trip soon. I'd love
to come see you guys. I'dlove to avoid La. If I could,
and the next time you guys arein 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 thinkI've been since twenty fifteen. No,

(01:15:08):
No, you've been since yeah,seventeen, maybe seventeen eighteen. Kenny Santucci,
you might be familiar with the name. Good good friend of mine.
Yeah, he used to have meout there for some seminars and things,
and I think he's still having prettybig seminars. Yeah. The Strong,
the Strongest, Yeah, the StrongNew 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

(01:15:31):
Ougus whenever he's doing that, Ithink, 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 calledthe street Beat. Yeah, so they're
just like working out literally, likeon the streets next to where the gym
is and people freaking love it.It's awesome. They're in Manhattan still.

(01:15:53):
Yeah, they're in Manhattan. They'rein UM like kind of right above Madison
Square Park. Okay, so I'min Brooklyn, UM, but I try
and work out there like once aweek, once every other week. So
I'll grab or work out with himon Friday. Yeah, Kenny's a fun
time awesome. Where can people findyou? Well, obviously follow Barbend,

(01:16:14):
follow Breaking Muscle, which Barband alsoowns, the Barben podcast, which I
still host. They still let mehost that, so I'll keep posting until
they say don't, which is weirdbut fun me personally. You can find
me on Instagram at David Thomas Towon Twitter at d underscore Town. That's
d underscore Tao. And this isthis is the big mistake I make.

(01:16:39):
If you want to email me,I'll give out my email David at barben
dot com. So email me withall your complaints. I was gonna say
accolades and admiration, but let's behonest, 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

(01:16:59):
get, and that like we getat our info app barbend and a lot
of other stuff. U is athleteswho 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 alwaysused to like really hurt me because some
of them are kind of mean emails. Yeah, but that's but, but

(01:17:23):
someone contextualized it to me. Itactually might have been Tanner from Masonomics.
He's like, wait a minute.Their complaints are that they want more of
your product, yeah, because contentis your product, right, And I
was like, oh, that's actuallyfine, and we want to cover more,
right, but as our team isonly so big, like as we
grow and as our capacity grows,we can write more and more in depth

(01:17:45):
on more events, more athletes,more topics. Cool, So like most
of our quote unquote hate mail aspeople saying, hey, we want more
barband And once I started thinking itlike that, I was like, cool,
I'll just give out my email sendme 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'sgo every single day. It'll be

(01:18:11):
my resume every morning, it's like, oh, it's Mike again. Yeah,
let's see what mediocre deadlift he didtoday. 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.
Wow, two sets of two.That guy's working hard today. All
the outtakes from a YouTube videos,yeah yeah, just scrap. Yeah,

(01:18:34):
everything that you edit out, sendmy 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. Heresubscribe, share your friends. I appreciate

(01:18:55):
you. Three sp dot c forall your clothing needs. Third Street Barbels.
Start going to California if you arein town. Um, and I'm
selling Mike where you want to findme. I am at the Jim McDean
all the social media. The showis fifty percent facts or pretenders of word
it fift you is just numbers forcipercentbacks. The Stupid Funding Podcast Association with
iheartly that bign percent facts now broughtto you by barback dot com. Thanks

(01:19:18):
so much for a