Bar Bend Founder David Tao Joins Us On The Steve Jobs Inspired Join Up Dots Podcast
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Introducing David Tao From Bar Bend
David Tao from Bar Bend is today’s guest joining us on the Steve Jobs inspired Join Up Dots business podcast.
He is a man who is an entrepreneur and editor and voice actor based in New York City.
He’s also the co founder and editor of Bar Bend.com, a media brand that provides multi platform coverage of news analysis, training and opinion in strength training and sports.
Now that doesn’t really make sense to you, then consider this if you want to know anything about weightlifting, training routines, big sweaty meeting gyms, and the best products to buy and just all that really interesting stuff around the sport, then Bar Bend has it all.
How The Sports Training Dots Joined Up
The company has become one of the largest and fastest growing fitness size on the web.
And not only that, but Bar Bend is the official media partner of USA weightlifting and he’s also a broadcaster for the 2019 Reebok CrossFit Games.
I assume that’s already occurred.
Now in 2019, our guest was honoured as a Forbes 30 under 30 list make up a media approved Bar Bend’s numerous media partnerships, numerous media partnerships.
He was asked to serve as a colour commentator for both national and international weightlifting competitions along with the Reebok CrossFit Games.
Now originally from Kentucky, he’s now a New York City and seems to be loving life.
So what has made this platform so successful when the web is full of I would have said similar ideas that really never got off the ground.
And is this his lifetime legacy? Or is he just stepping stone to what’s in his heart and his mind?
Well, let’s find out as we bring on to the show to start joining up dots with the one and only David Tao from Bar Bend.
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Full Transcription Of Bar Bend Interview
Intro [0:01]
When we’re young, we have an amazing positive outlook about how great life is going to be. But somewhere along the line we forget to dream and end up settling. Join Up Dots features amazing people who refuse to give up and chose to go after their dreams. This is your blueprint for greatness. So here’s your host live from the back of his garden in the UK, David Ralph.
David Ralph [0:26]
Yes, hello there good morning to you or good morning to every single person who is either listening to the show or going through our coaching or, or whatever you’re doing through the Join Up Dots platform. Thank you so much for being a part of it. And of course, thank you so much for today’s guest who’s joining us on the podcast, because he is a man who is an entrepreneur and editor and voice actor based in New York City. He’s also the co founder and editor of bar band.com. A media brand that provides multi platform coverage of news analysis, training and opinion in strength training. And sports. Now that doesn’t really make sense to you and consider this if you want to know anything about weightlifting, training routines, big sweaty meeting gyms, and the best products that I buy and just all that really interesting stuff around the sport, then barbell has it all. The company has become one of the largest and fastest growing fitness size on the web. And not only that, but BB n is the official media partner of USA weightlifting and he’s also a broadcaster for the 2019 Reebok CrossFit Games. I assume that’s already occurred. Now in 2019, David was honoured as a Forbes 30 under 30 list make up a media approved bar Ben’s numerous media partnerships, numerous media partnerships, he was asked to serve as a colour commentator for both national and international weightlifting competitions along with the Reebok CrossFit Games. Now originally from Kentucky, as I say he’s now a New York City. He seems to be loving life. So what has made this platform so successful when the web is full of I would have said similar ideas that really never got off the ground. And is this his lifetime legacy? Or is he just stepping stone to what’s in his heart and his mind? Well, let’s find out as we bring on to the show to start joining up dots with the one and only David Tao. Good morning David, how are you?
David Tao From Bar Bend [2:22]
I’m doing well. Thanks so much for having me. That was a heck of an intro. I’m going to need to use that as my own. I play track every morning.
David Ralph [2:30]
You You have every morning I’m going to jump right into it. I know. I was looking at his voice actor. what actually is a voice actor and how does somebody become a voice actor? Because I just spent five weeks in America and literally every bar every street corner, somebody would say to me, I love your accent. Could I be a voice actor, sir?
David Tao From Bar Bend [2:52]
I think in many ways you you already are. You’re talking professionally you’re recording yourself professionally and people are hearing you and that’s a huge thing. part of your identity. I think voice acting is something that I kind of fell into, largely from my work doing sports colour commentary. And then I had people reach out and say, Oh, can you do voiceover? Can you read this audio book? Or can you read this commercial for my company? And that’s kind of how I got started in it and then eventually put together a demo reel. You mean casting agents, producers, things like that. Anything in the creative arts, I feel like it’s kind of like breaking out of prison. No two people can do it the same time twice. So you have to kind of figure out your own way. And I think while there are professional voice actors who work in animation that a little bit of that there are people who do it kind of for a full time gig, it’s more of a passion or hobby on the side for me, so very, very interesting, very fun, but certainly something where you have to grind for a long time to make a significant money from it. So I’m glad it’s not my day job. Let me put it that way.
David Ralph [3:52]
Well, you do have to grind everything, don’t you? You know, I was I was in New York and somebody looked at my hands and said, You know Could we photograph your hands? Could you be a hand model? And I thought, Yeah, that’s great. I’ve had no hand kobs at all out of that..
David Tao From Bar Bend [4:08]
You were in New York for five weeks, and you got approached by four people complimenting your accent and also to be a hand bottle. I lived in New York for over eight years, and I never get approached positively on the street for anything. I just get people saying, Get out of my way. So I need to learn for you. If you had those kind of experiences here, that’s fantastic.
David Ralph [4:26]
Now let’s talk about bb n.com. Because as I said in the introduction, it’s it’s very far and the more I was on it, the more I was clicking through, I thought, My God, there’s a lot of work on here. And then I realised other people right on it is a it’s not a blog, this is a big, big business. How did it start and what has made it different from so many of the similar kind of sites that are out there today
David Tao From Bar Bend [4:52]
is definitely something that did start as a blog. It’s a very good observation and when I co I co founded BB ed in early 2016 run Mark 2016 with two co founders, friends of mine who became business partners, Kenny, and Joe. And we started off mainly as a blog. And it was something where I was writing most of the content because we had a theory. And we had a theory that people who were interested in strength athletics, CrossFit, power lifting weight lifting strongman, they wanted a central hub to go to for their news, their training, their analysis, but there wasn’t any place like that. If you were interested in crossing, go to cross it calm. If you’re interested in weightlifting, there were some like old forums, there wasn’t a place where people who were interested in different types of strength, strength, training strength that legs could go. So we thought, Well, if we read about all of it under one banner and one brand, maybe that will gain some traction. So we put it up very lightly. We were working on some other projects at the time that actually made money and create revenue barman was something that we were just kind of like, I don’t see how it goes. It did build some traction early on. We were able to raise a round of funding, build a team and the whole impetus behind its growth was let’s treat this as a professional The outlet. A lot of people in the fitness industry and a lot of people, particularly in the strength sports space, were writing blogs. And they were putting up social media accounts that had cool clips and things like that. But they were treating it as a holistic media company coming at it from every angle. So well written articles, good video coverage, in like this full ecosystem of media. So I think the reason that barbell has been, has had the level of success it has and has maintained its growth and is still around when numerous other competitors have really fallen by the wayside closed up shop is because we didn’t leave any stone unturned. We weren’t just a blog, we weren’t just news. We really want to try and treat it as a professional media ecosystem. And as we grew, hire people who were specialists in different aspects of that, so treating it as a true media company, not just a blog. I think that was the secret sauce. I think that’s why we’re still around and I think it’s why so many of our competitors have closed up shop unfortunately,
David Ralph [6:58]
I think one of the others Secret sauces that you had on that, and you’ve still got and it was quite evident is that you’re not benchmarking yourself against online media. You’re benchmarking yourself on offline media. And I had these conversations a lot with people who want to start the podcast. And they say to me, you know, how much how much effort should I do on the actual sound, I say everything you’ve got, you know, you’re against the BBC, you’re against MBC, people have got so much choice. Now. You can’t, you know, if the if it’s not good sound, people won’t stick around. You’ve got to make that effort. But they seem to benchmark themselves against what’s just getting by online and not the big boys. So I think that was your secret sauce as well.
David Tao From Bar Bend [7:42]
You have to you have to have certain quality and everything you do, you’re not going to get it right 100% of the time, all the time. At the start, you’re going to be imperfect. It’s this weird kind of decision branch where you’re like, well, I want to start pushing content, people want something, but at the same time, if I wait a little longer, It will be of higher quality. That’s, of course, a central issue in starting any media brand or a new vertical within an existing media brand. But it’s not resting on your laurels, not saying, Oh, just because we’ve done this, it’s been successful, it’s going to continue to be successful. That’s not the case. If you’re not moving ahead, if you’re not innovating, if you’re not pushing yourself on quality, it could be the sound quality for something like the Join Up, Dots podcast, it could be the article quality on BB. And if you’re not continually pushing yourself to get better, you are going to get left behind no matter what industry you’re covering in the content space. And that’s because people have more choice than ever. those choices are getting better than ever, everyone is upping their quality. And consumers of media are just like consumers of anything, they’ll go to the best product. So if you’re not proving your product over time, and better product, that product is offered up and it’s easy to access. You’re going to lose readers, you’re going to lose viewers. It’s just the way it is today’s media environment because it’s so easy to produce quality content if you really care. And if you build talented team at least it’s easier to reach people with that quality content than it’s ever been. So I 100% agree
David Ralph [9:09]
with you there. And we have you got ugly corners I haven’t seen Have you gone back in sort of Bry Witten or do you all know that that’s out there now we just leave it and we just keep moving forward getting better.
David Tao From Bar Bend [9:23]
Everyone has everyone on live has those articles they wish they had published differently or improve the quality of before they publish. The good thing about digital media is that you can update articles and we do regularly we actually have a section on articles that they’ve been updated. It says last updated on and it gives a date so you can see the publication date. You can see when it’s been updated. For a lot of content that’s necessary if we publish an article that’s, you know, the five heaviest cleaning jerks of all time. It’s an article it does very well for us. It’s a little clip baby, but it’s still very interesting. People really enjoy it. People really liked seeing these big lifts throughout history. We have to update that because if someone breaks a world record or lifts a new record weight, well, guess what the old articles no longer relevant, we have to update that. Sometimes for us, it’s about balancing resources and how much we’re updating old content. We’re definitely not afraid to update old content, we update our reviews fairly consistently. You know, we update our training content, if do research comes out, or new methodology comes out that’s really relevant to that piece. Updating content is actually one of the most challenging things in our space, because you really do need to do it often. And it really does help the quality of your site your metre experience, at the same time, it takes a lot of time updating a piece takes a lot of time. It’s time that you’re not spending writing a new piece of content. So that balance is certainly challenging. I don’t think we’ve cracked the perfect formula on it just yet.
David Ralph [10:50]
Because I focus totally on evergreen. Everything that I do, I think to myself movies be relevant in 1015 years. I couldn’t imagine doing like a 10 neurology podcast or a technology of something that’s moving at such a pace? That’s it, Tiger you out? Do you? I know you sort of alluded to it that it does vary a bit, but does it sort of tire you out that you are constantly, you know, keeping up with the trends,
David Tao From Bar Bend [11:17]
it can get tired, I wouldn’t be in media and I wouldn’t be a media entrepreneur, if I didn’t enjoy that push. Or if I didn’t enjoy kind of keeping up with the Joneses, right? If I see a competitor, or someone who’s not competing with us directly on the type of content or the category, but maybe just in the media space, I see them doing something really good. It really fires me up, I feel like I have to catch them and then do it better. If I didn’t get a lot of energy out of that, then I wouldn’t be doing what I do today. I will say something that helps over time. And something that Barbara will continue to do over time is create specialists within different verticals. So two years ago. We didn’t have a news vertical separate from our training in from our training content. It was the same editors touching our news content as touching our evergreen training content, how to bench press better things like that. Now, we have started to separate out these teams to where we have our news team, which is has some separation from a different set of responsibilities from our team that’s editing, training content from our contributors around the globe, things like that. And that increase separation definitely takes the edge off as far as stress because you know, you can put people in place to succeed and get really, really good at those specific things. That’s definitely a good strategy we’ve used to make everything seem a little bit more manageable. And also when we try new best practices at something we see competitor, competitor doing, maybe something we’re just excited to try for the first time. We can do it one by one within those individual verticals, without having to institute it site wide at once which can be very intimidating and require a lot of heavy lifting. All
David Ralph [13:00]
Now looking at Bob, and this is something that interests me not just with your business, David but with with so many other people’s businesses that I review. It’s not obvious from the outside, how you make money on it. I look at it and I think to myself, Oh, okay. They’re going to be selling products they’re going to be setting training, can even know what I’m thinking my best is not screaming at me that there is money running through this. What am I looking at wrong?
David Tao From Bar Bend [13:27]
Well, first off, I want to say that’s, that’s intentional. In many ways, we didn’t heavily monetize BB n for the first one to two years of its existence because we wanted to build your your trust, and we wanted to make sure that our content could exist well on its own two feet. Barbie makes money in a few different ways. We do have ads on the site, that’s probably the one that you’re going to see most regularly is going to be front and centre. You know, we do have had placements on our site just like any other media site that gets a significant amount of traffic. We must monetize that traffic through an ad network. So that’s going to be the most obvious. And that’s going to be the one that if you go back and you look at, you know, today’s news pieces or the training content on BBs, you’re going to go, Okay, there are ads, I see an ad on the homepage, I see this ad, we make money off that, in that same thing. We didn’t make money off sponsored content. We have sponsored content partnerships, with brands, big and small. We’ve done some really cool stuff I like to point out was Under Armour, worked with them twice in 2019 on some really cool sponsored content opportunities. So that content obviously is disclosed and labelled as sponsored. But it’s a way for those brands to work with us and for us to help create some really awesome content around brand product launches or new brand initiatives. So that is a lucrative endeavour for barbet. We also do we do make some revenue in the affiliate space based on some of our reviews and roundups and and things like that. And those are really the main ways barbet monetizable. In addition, I should point out we have a growing YouTube channel that’s really started to grow at a pace I’m finally happy with. And we do make some money off of monetizing YouTube videos, and things like that on that platform. So it’s a fairly diversified series of revenue streams. One we’re always looking to continually diversify, but it really makes me smile. When you say that, you know, your doesn’t scream to you that we’re monetizing this content. Because, look, as a growing business, we want to continue to monetize, we want to increase our revenue, but we don’t want that to be so much so that the first thing you think when you go to the site is they’re just, they must be making money this way, this way, in this way, it’s something you have to like dig a little bit more to see or to realise that means to me, it’s not getting in the way of the content necessarily, and I do appreciate that.
David Ralph [15:45]
I appreciate it as well. And that’s certainly something that I did in Join Up Dots. I recorded thousands of episodes before I really sort of started to monetize it like I knew I could and my focus was value first order way But I now speak to people and I was just speaking to a guy before you, who is very much in the opposite mindset where he’s saying, that is stupid becoming an influencer. It’s stupid providing value value, you’ve got bills to pay. And so there is a sort of 5050 side. Where is it courses, the courses? Could we give advice to the listener The best way to go, obviously, just to do it,
David Tao From Bar Bend [16:25]
my advice to myself and we can get to this later in the podcast today, in this episode, I would have monetized a little more, a little more sooner, I will send more aggressively because I don’t think aggressively is the right word. But I would have started exploring some of our current revenue streams earlier on in the site’s life lifespan, because I think that would have given us more data, more reader feedback, and just being a smarter about how we wanted to monetize, because we had this kind of artificial waiting time where we said, we’re not really going to monetize until we hit, you know, a million Readers in a month or something like that. And that number was just kind of pulled out of nowhere. We were like, well, you know why, why wait till you have a million readers, because you should still care about the experience that your first hundred thousand readers have. And so we explored monetizing with a much smaller audience, yes, we would have made less money. But we would have been able to make better inferences and get better feedback about the experience of those hundred thousand readers, and how they were interacting with our content. And if our monetization efforts were getting in the way of their experience of our content, before we had the million metres, which is when we did start monetizing. And we didn’t have the data and we didn’t have the experience. And we didn’t have the feedback from a smaller but still in touch and responsive audience. So I wouldn’t actually just tried these revenue streams earlier and started tweeting them a little bit earlier with a smaller audience, instead of just kind of setting this arbitrary number of saying, Oh, we get to a million readers, and then we you know, we turn off the tap sort of thing. There wasn’t a whole lot of logic behind behind that epic getting at least tonight, but
David Ralph [18:03]
Well, let’s play some words now. And then we’re going to delve back into that because there’s certainly a synergy with that mindset. And what I went through his Oprah,
Oprah Winfrey [18:11]
the way through the challenge is to get still and ask yourself, what is the next right move? not think about, Oh, I got all of this stuff. What is the next right move? And then from that space, make the next right move, and the next right move, and not to be overwhelmed by it. Because you know, your life is bigger than that one moment. You know, you’re not defined by what somebody says, is a failure for you, because failure is just there to point you in a different direction.
David Ralph [18:42]
Now, jumping back into the conversation after Oprah, I did something very similar to you. I kept on pushing the ceiling higher of Join Up Dots where I would be saying, once I get 30,000 people a month once I get 100,000 people a month once I get five hundred thousand. And there was no reason for it, there was no reason I look back on it. And I think it was just that I didn’t really have the nailed down competence, that the value that I could provide was going to be received in the right way by the people out there. So I hung back. Does that kind of make sense to you? Does that have any resonance with you as well?
David Tao From Bar Bend [19:22]
Oh, I mean, it certainly does. It’s, but again, we create these barriers in our minds. And we say, Well, you know, there’s a reason that I will start doing this, I want to explore this until I get to this many listeners or this many readers for this many viewers, and we it’s easy to create that internal logic and during while you’re going through this, and it’s very easy to discredit that internal logic, in hindsight, and I think the entrepreneurs journey is oftentimes about seeing both sides of that it’s about seeing Okay, what is correct about my current in terms of logic, what is potentially flawed about it? What am I being subjective versus objective about? And how am I going to think about this 510 15 years down the road? I love that you mentioned earlier in this recording that you like to think how contents going to perform 1015 years down the road, is it still going to be relevant, we can ask the same thing about our ideas and our internal processes for developing those ideas or entrepreneurial journeys. It’s tough, and it takes a lot of practice. So it’s something you can get better with over time. I do believe that.
David Ralph [20:32]
So with somebody out there now, maybe they’re listening to this and I thinking yeah, I come down the gym all the time, you know, that this, this is something that I could do. One of the things which is very evident in the online world is there’s no competition. You could have people doing what you’re doing all over the place, and it still wouldn’t touch the sides of what you’re willing to earn and able to earn. Do you have any advice for them to sort of start getting the ball rolling
David Tao From Bar Bend [21:00]
I do think that there is competition online. And I do think that in these niche markets, like we’re barbecue is, there are a limited number of places people are willing to go to get their content, because every additional click is more work for them. So, you know, I do think that they’re the ones online space is fairly wide open, but at the same time, you can’t assume that you’re not going to run up against challenges based on what your competitors in the space are doing. So I do want to say that as far as getting started, I am a big believer in niche media. I’m a big believer in identifying your audiences ahead of time niche media can mean a lot of different things. It can mean specific demographics based on location, interest, age groups, you name it, and age groups in interest groups often, you know, overlap and we use those interchangeably in many ways. I’m big fan of identifying a narrower audience to target and create value for like you said, we’re Rather than just putting up you know, a blog and trying to go head to head with the BBC, or CNN, even in the sports world, the reason we started BB it was because we wanted to do a niche within a niche. There was okay, there was the world of sports. And then under that much smaller than that more specific, the world of strength sports. So I think niche media is in a good place. Obviously, I might be a little biassed on that because that’s where I live my life and build my career. But if you’re just getting started out, see if you can identify an underserved but passionate, smaller demographic create value for them. And I think you’re going to have a lot more success in the near and mid term special.
David Ralph [22:38]
I agree. I agree. Totally. And as I say, if you market to all folk you go broke and if you go niche, you get rich. And literally you can’t go deep enough, can you
David Tao From Bar Bend [22:49]
every time I think to myself, okay, we’ve reached the most specific audience that we can reach. I’m wrong. I’ve been wrong every time I thought that even in the world of strength. Sports and strength athletics. We said we said, okay, that’s the niche within a niche, maybe within a niche, that’s good enough. But I see people doing fantastic work in the space, some of our competitors, some of our other media partners, who are even more niche than us. They’re just touching weightlifting. They’re just touching CrossFit. They’re just touching, power lifting. And oftentimes, there have been points over the last few years where they’ve released a new type of content or a new series, and they’ve really kicked our butts with it, because they are concentrated and focused on creating value for those niches that are even more niche than the demographics we’re targeting. And that makes us reassess. And that really pushes us to create better content for those subdivided demographics. You can’t get too nice, I love the way
David Ralph [23:44]
that and he can’t because it’s easier to get the traffic because there’s not as much competition. You know, I did. I do a lot of online business coaching. And one of the things that I say to everyone is, think about your next door neighbour, but You think about the other side of the world, you know, it’s easier with Google search and local search to dominate a small area and work out in circles. Benny is actually just sort of throwing it out and trying to get global domination
David Tao From Bar Bend [24:15]
is the really cool thing about identifying your demographics ahead of time, or at least trying to identify your graph your demographics ahead of time, you can get feedback, you can build your content in such a way and you can build your content systems in such a way to where you can actually talk to your readers and you can hear about what they like where else they’re getting their content, what they’re not liking about your platform. That feedback is huge. Everyone has a different way of doing that. It’s different in the podcasting space is the written content space and it is the video space. But you can talk to your next door neighbour, it’s harder to reach someone halfway across the globe, who you don’t even you don’t even know their name. You don’t know how to get in touch with him. Target demographics, where you can get free And be in conversation with them, talk to them, don’t just talk at them. And that data, and that feedback is going to be one of the most valuable assets you have in producing content that really stands on its own two feet long term.
David Ralph [25:15]
It does blow my mind when I think of the opportunities. And I think that’s one of the issues nowadays. But the creating a business seems too complicated because there are so many different opportunities that you can target on Google ads, you can target on Facebook, you can do Instagram, you can do YouTube. Traffic is everywhere. And I think the mistake that people make is that I go for everywhere, instead of finding one source, and really sort of doing something amazingly. Now you said that YouTube is exploding for you, which I’m delighted because I can see that I can see how that would work people watch. They can see it live, they can learn from it. That’s got to be more useful for you, man. Say, I don’t know, Instagram or Pinterest or whatever the other sort of forms of media,
David Tao From Bar Bend [26:05]
Instagram was one of the first platforms where we experienced really good growth as far as social platforms. And that’s because in the strength world, Instagram is huge is still the leader. You have your top athletes, you have your top gyms, they’re posting their heavy lifts, Instagram is I know, it wasn’t designed specifically for strength athletes, but the format of those short videos and clips. It’s absolutely perfect for the strength world for you know, showing how strong you are in these very short time frames. YouTube is something that in the fitness space has grown tremendously over the last few years. But it It wasn’t on our radar as early we didn’t think that as a brand. We can really create an engaged audience on YouTube because who wants to hear a brand talk right, a brand is faceless. Well turns out our brand isn’t faceless. We have really great knowledgeable and entertaining editors. Writers I myself am on camera a lot these days of filming something right after this recording for the Join Up Dots podcast. And we realised that we could put faces behind our brand. And that was a real breakthrough for us on youtube when it’s like, okay, we can show our faces, people will want to hear our voices, maybe they do want to hear what we have to say, as you know, quote unquote, experts in the space who are eating, sleeping, breathing, writing, living, spring sports. And so that was a breakthrough. For us. It was like, well, a brand isn’t very entertaining. How do you make videos coming from a brand? That’s a different mindset than our current strategy, which is how do you make videos and video content coming from the experts at orbit coming from the BB Ed team and the specific people behind that? It’s a lot more fun as far as producing that content. And the audience reaction has been tremendously better than when we were basically producing quote unquote, brand videos.
David Ralph [27:57]
So the personal brand has really come on For now for your business,
David Tao From Bar Bend [28:02]
the personalities behind our bread, I should say, it’s not in the go to BB and YouTube channel, you don’t just see the barbell team and it’s a morphic doesn’t have a name. You see, Jake, our fitness editor, you see Celia, one of our news writers. You see Nick, our nutrition editor, you see David, the editorial director and co founder doing these things and demonstrating these things on camera a little later today. I’m recording a video with our nutrition editor, or we’re going to try and replicate the actor Terry cruises cheat day meals, we’re going to try and eat exactly what he does during one of his legendary cheat days. And that’s fun. Is it something that’s going to change someone’s life, get them up off the couch and get them into strength training? Not necessarily, but Terry Crews is one of the most visible proponents of strength training in the world. He’s a former professional football player. He talks about a strength training routine. Here’s the fun aspect of his life. He’s trying He’s talked about publicly, and we as kind of normal people, we don’t look like Terry Crews. You know, we’re not, we’re not, we’re not Terry Crews, we’re going to try this thing out. And we’re going to bring that content to our audience. And it’s going to be fun, and it’s going to showcase our personalities a little bit. So that is definitely a type of content that we’ve been exploring more for the past three to four months, we’ve seen success from it. And I think it’s just the tip of the iceberg for the kind of entertainment insight that we can actually bring to our audience in that medium.
David Ralph [29:32]
I think you’ve got that right. Because I’ve always been not so much any interviews when I’m doing the interviews, but on my solo shows, I’m really trying to sort of let rip and and bring the entertainment value to the fore because I know that you’ve got two wins, you’ve got people that want the content and you’ve got people that want to be entertained, was getting the content. And I’ve noticed a programme you’ve probably seen it yourself on YouTube, called hot wings where this guy Get celebrities to sit down and eat a series of chicken wings that get hotter and hotter and hotter. Now, if you took away the sort of torture element, and seeing the celebrity struggle, it wouldn’t get off the ground. But it’s the hybrid of having fascination we’ve seen these people go through something. And also the content, which is very good interviews, all in one piece, suddenly gets the ball rolling and growth is exponential,
David Tao From Bar Bend [30:27]
if you can, if you can really find a good conceit, like like the creators. And you can reach these great personalities, and these people who are willing to put themselves through this publicly, and our names that people are already interested in finding out more about, I mean, it’s a perfect storm of content. In fact, it’s something that we are we’ve referenced top one specifically because there are a few new series of content that we are going to be rolling out a little later this year. Where we are interacting with famous people in strength training. And it’s it’s not over eating progressively hotter chicken wings, I kind of wish it was. But I think that’s been a little bit too much of a carbon copy. But it’s going to be us, it’s going to be us interacting with them in cool ways, and basically showcasing a different side of them strength, top strength athletes, they tend to do very well in social media, they build big followings, and it’s easy to put them on a pedestal. But these are real people with real issues, real problems, real hidden talents and things about themselves that might not be super public on social media, but are still interesting, and make them deep, rich personalities. So how do we bring that out in a way that is still relevant to an audience interested in strength training, but it’s different than seeing this athlete just you know in a gym, squatting? 800 pounds, right? hot ones found out a really cool way to do that with mainstream celebrities. I’m really excited. I did try and figure out the way that Barbara is going to do that with straight celebrities
David Ralph [32:04]
and that do you go to the gym Do you lift weights yourself baby cuz I’m aware but I’ve never been in a gym in my life. I’ve never done anything I I can barely lift a pen off the desk, let alone 100 pounds, I just come five minutes.
David Tao From Bar Bend [32:19]
I’m pretty sure you’re going to lifting, lifting a microphone. Now I am I am very into strength training. I got my start as a college athlete and in many ways enjoyed the weight room sessions more than I was enjoying being on the field that triggered something in my mind. And you know, I’ve been into strength training ever since I trained in the sport of weightlifting for a number of years. And I was the CO owner of a CrossFit gym for a number of years as well. So I currently do work out out of out of CrossFit gym so you get exposure to weight lifting, power lifting all these sorts of movements. But yeah, I personally am very into Strength training. I am not an elite athlete, I am not competing at an international level in anything. But strength training is a huge part of my life. I’m in the gym several times a week. And I really do like exploring different modalities and methodologies behind strength training. So at this point in my career, I’m not really competing or focused on the content production around strength training, it’s actually more fun because I get to bounce around and try different things in the gym. If I want to work out with a power lifter, with a power lifter, I can do that. If I want to go back into those weightlifting movements where I’m more familiar, I can do that. If I want to be a sweaty, useless pile on the ground after a long CrossFit workout. Well, I can do that as well. I really have a lot of fun with it. And every week is a little bit different because we’re interacting with so many different athletes. I get to try a little bit of what they’re doing. And I guess just explore my fitness and strength training a little bit more at this point.
David Ralph [33:50]
It’s fun. Have you gotten the phrase in America bingo wings. Have you heard of bingo wings?
David Tao From Bar Bend [33:56]
I have never heard that before. You’re gonna have to I’m very
David Ralph [34:01]
Well, you know, big game bingo that the old people play
David Tao From Bar Bend [34:05]
I got and even the young people I played.
David Ralph [34:08]
Well, if you imagine the old ladies of about 1890, putting their hands up and saying bingo, and the bottom of their sort of lower arms flapping, where all the muscles gone. We call those bingo Wings Over here, when people have let their muscles just sake, and I’m not even 50 and my kids started pointing out my bingo wings. Is there something that I can do about this? That doesn’t take any effort, David?
David Tao From Bar Bend [34:36]
Well, anything that creates change takes effort, whether it’s in business or fitness, you know that. And I think you’re certainly a proponent of that. That’s a big reason for the Join Up Dots ecosystem of content is inspiring people to put in that effort, right? And find actual way actionable ways to do that. You also think about fitness and strength training, is it if they’re too late, I get a lot of people I just turned four. And I have some friends who have said, You know, I wish I started strength training in my 20s. Now that I’m 3030 was too late.
Unknown Speaker [35:07]
No, it’s not too late. You’re still young, you’re, it’s not too
David Tao From Bar Bend [35:11]
late to get the strength training if you’re 50 6070. In fact, one of the fastest growing demographics across strength sports is was called masters, lifting masters power lifting, weight lifting, CrossFit, you name it, where people who maybe have never touched a weight for the first 50 years of their lives, get interested in strength training, start strength training, and even start competing against other people in their age categories, much later on in life, strength sports or something that you can you can have for life, they are sports, that you can, you can participate in for life, you can train it for life. Now, when you’re 16 years old, you’re not going to be maybe as quick maybe you’re not going to be as agile. Maybe you’re not going to be as strong as you were when you were 20 years old. Or maybe you don’t have that same physical potential. That’s okay. You can still improve your body. You can still learn these words. But you can still build a community and find the community and strength No matter what age you are. So for the folks listening who think maybe Oh, the ship is sale, I’m not you know, super young anymore. And you know, I’m not, I’m not going to go to the gym with all these 21 year olds, Masters, weightlifting, Masters power lifting masters, CrossFit, it exists, you can find a community you can find people in your age demographic and your age group that are interested in strength training, you can build some really great friendships, and you can really, really improve your fitness no matter how old you are. I’ve seen people get into strength training in their 70s and set world records on the international stage after a few years of strength training, even though they never touched a weight for the first seven decades of their lives. It’s really inspiring stuff.
David Ralph [36:50]
But by that age, I’m just trying to keep control of my bladder, let alone lifting heavy weights. That can’t be good, can it?
David Tao From Bar Bend [36:57]
Well, you know, that’s funny because being stronger makes you better at just about everything. If you want to have better bladder control, getting your core stronger and the musculature surrounding your bladder and internal organs in your torso, guess what it’s going to be better. getting stronger is something that, you know, we have started to write more and want to write more on strength training surrounding pregnancy, which is a really, really hot topic and something that a lot of people are getting interested in. And rightly so. There’s a lot of interesting data anecdotal and, you know, scientific, suggesting that being stronger, helps women better deal with the physical challenges of childbirth. That’s both before you know before, during, and postpartum. There’s really no aspect of life where being stronger doesn’t help. If you just feel creaky. And you’re having difficulty getting up out of a chair as you get older, being stronger is going to help you do that. And a lot of people assume that strength training makes you kind of this stupid Bored makes you creaky. It’s bad for your joints, strength training, when done smartly. And when done under the supervision and in conjunction with a qualified coach and people don’t know what they’re doing. It’s one of the of the best things you can do long term to build and improve your mobility and to feel less pain when you’re just going about your daily routine. That’s something that people really have a tough time wrapping their heads around, but I promise you, if you are stronger, everything you do physically in life, your day just gets easier. That’s a fact.
David Ralph [38:36]
And can you promise me if I start going down to the gym, I won’t end up looking like a ninja turtle because they get those big next don’t know and they can’t look left over.
David Tao From Bar Bend [38:46]
I can absolutely promise you that and everyone that we get that all the time and people ask men and women they say well, I started strength training. I was gonna look like a bodybuilder that points to, you know the world’s top bodybuilders who have been training for 20 years to be that size. No, that’s not the case. I promise you, you can take, I promise you directly David Ralph, that if you start going down to the gym a year from now and you do it regularly, a year from now, you’re going to be a you gotta stick with it here, you got to stick with it. You’re going to be happier and feel better than you were than you do now. And you’re not going to look like a muscle bound freak. I promise you that. I absolutely promise you that 95% of people who strength train, don’t, you know, are not putting on this crazy amount of muscle mass that’s even more than 95% if you want to put on a lot of muscle mass and you want to look like a ninja turtle. It’s really hard and people train their entire lives for that they dedicate their entire lives to that just going down to the gym three or four times a week trying to improve your mobility, your strength, your movement patterns, just trying to improve your life. Yeah, your body might change. ways that you’re happy with, but I promise you, you’re not going to look like Mr. Olympia after a year. It’s just not.
David Ralph [40:06]
you’ve convinced me you’ve convinced me, I’m going to be going down there three times a week from now on, David. But I do promise you I lie a lot as well. So I may not even go there once, but based on this podcast, three times a when,
David Tao From Bar Bend [40:21]
I mean, that’s, and I think three times a week is a, it’s a frequency that’s very accessible. And that I think a lot of entrepreneurs, you can see them committing to because, you know, if you being a true gym rat, spending two hours a day in the gym, five days a week, that’s just untenable for most people, but 45 minutes, three times a week. Now you’re talking, you’re talking to somebody, it’s gonna make a difference, going to improve your health and well being it’s gonna improve your mental well being. And it’s like, yeah, maybe I can make that three times a week. Maybe that’s not
David Ralph [40:51]
but let’s play some words. Now, the last of our speeches that we generally play on this show. This is a guy who, unfortunately would love to be going down the Jim because he’s no longer With us by His words, he is Steve Jobs.
Steve Jobs [41:02]
Of course, it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later. Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something, your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leaves you off the well worn path. And that will make all the difference.
David Ralph [41:37]
Dude, I make all the difference those words to you, David.
David Tao From Bar Bend [41:39]
It’s interesting because I’ve been and maybe it’s just because I turned 30 very recently, but this this tension between what I’m able to see in the future and work toward and what is just going to happen whether or not I plan it intentionally, certainly been on my mind a lot recently. So I think I can certainly take some inspiration from that clip and maybe a bit of solace from that clip and knowing that, yeah, as much as we try and as hard as we work to do things intentionally, it is impossible. With foresight to connect all the dots, you can only do it, you can only do it after the fact. So, you know, maybe some of that stress of like, Oh, I need to line up this opportunity and this opportunity, this opportunity for my business. Well, knowing that some of that is just going to happen, and so it’s going to be a little bit out of your control. I can take some comfort from that. So I am glad you played that clip.
David Ralph [42:35]
I agree with you totally. I used to try to make all my dots join up. And now I just do a day’s work. And I see what happens.
David Tao From Bar Bend [42:43]
It’s a good policy. And one thing that I love about the work you do is that you get to over the course of the day over the course of your day you get to learn from multiple people that maybe you haven’t connected with closely before, and you get to learn about how their dots joined up in high So that’s going to be a really cool feeling to like think about that, in hindsight to get to experience a little slice of their journeys as well. And you need to do that on the regular. So that’s got to be a real cool perk really cool perk of running the Join Up Dots ecosystem.
David Ralph [43:13]
Yeah, as I say to people, I’ve never had a business coach. I’ve had 2000 of them. And I think that’s about right, every single conversation. Something goes into my brain. Wow, that that is the gold. Well, this is the end of the show now. And this is the bit that we’ve been building up to. And the bit we called a sermon on the MC one, we’re going to send you back in time to have a one on one with your younger self. And if you could speak to the young David, what age would you choose and what advice would you love to give him what we’re going to find out because we’re going to play the music and when it fades up, this is the Sermon on the mic.
David Tao From Bar Bend [44:10]
A 21 year old David, you are probably listening to this right now. And you’re maybe a little scared, you just graduated from college, you have spent the last four years telling yourself or maybe falsely telling yourself that you need to be the best at a few specific things. And that if you don’t have those particular goals, and if you don’t hit that superlative level, in your experience in those few things, that you’re a failure. And right now I know because I was you that you want to try a bunch of different things. You want to try 10 different things, throw them against the board, see what sticks and see what doesn’t, but you’re scared You’re too scared to do that. Because you feel like you tend things not to the best of your ability or not better than anyone else, that it’s wasted time. I’m here to tell you it’s not If I can go back in time, and I’m talking to you back in time, so that’s the next best thing, I would have tried more things, I would have failed at more things. Because sometimes the best lesson to learn from that failure and more importantly than that, because that’s a little bit cliche. The best people you meet are from those failures. Over the last 910 years, since I wish you the best friendships I’ve made, the best business partnerships I’ve made, actually came from things maybe not working out the first time, or at least not working out the way I expected the first time. But if you can find those people who embrace you in those moments of failure, or when the train goes off the tracks in a slightly different direction than you anticipated, well, those are the people you’re going to want to stick with and work with, again, because those are the personalities who are going to support you and who you’re going to want to support no matter what their people are going to want to invest in you. Not just your idea, just as You’re going to want to invest in those people, not just their ideas. So fail, get out there, try things, you’re really bad at that, you know, you’re probably going to fail that, because you’re going to meet more people, and you’re going to meet them earlier on. And that’s the best asset you can take from your 20s into the next phase of your life.
David Ralph [46:16]
Great advice for everyone who’s listening, as well. So David, what’s the number one best way that our audience can connect with you, sir?
David Tao From Bar Bend [46:23]
Sure. I’m on Instagram at David Thomas Tao, I’m on Twitter at t underscore town. But if you follow BB Ed, or go to bb n.com, you can get in touch with me there you can contact info at BB end. I’m giving you many ways, completely failing to answer this in a concise way. But you can reach out to me personally, you can reach out to barbut on social media, get in touch with any of us, any of our editors. We love hearing from you. All
David Ralph [46:49]
right stuff and we will make it very simple by having all the links on the show notes. David, thank you so much for spending time with us today. joining up those dots and, as always, please come back again when you’ve got more dots to join up, because I do believe that by joining up those dots and connecting our past is always the best way to build our futures. David, thank you so much, Mr. David towel. So you get a hobby, and you drill down, drill down, drill down to a real tight niche, and when you start building content and video and, and grow your audience, and the key thing is, it doesn’t have to be a global audience. It can be a very small audience. If you’re providing the right value to these people. And people struggle with this all the time. They can’t get the idea in their head, that you don’t need to have millions and millions of people scattered everywhere. You just need to have the right people coming to you. And if you do it in the right way, you will make a business that works. I promise you I do it time and time again for people across the world. You go niche and bingo niche again and the closest you can do to win You live, you will win the game. It’s amazing how crap people are locally at knowing how online businesses work. That’s the key to it all. Until next time, thank you so much as always, for being here, as I always say, anybody who is interested in getting an online business off the ground by will be totally stressed, Bry transportable, and you’ve heard me say this before, jump over to Join Up Dots, send us a message. And I will interview you personally to see if you’re a fit for the next one. Until next time, I’ll see you again. Bye bye.
Outro [48:34]
David doesn’t want you to become a faded version of the brilliant self you are wants to become. So he’s put together an amazing guide for you called the eight pieces of advice that every successful entrepreneur practices, including the two that changed his life. Head over to Join Up dots.com to download this amazing guide for free and we’ll see you tomorrow on Join Up Dots.
