231: Building and Selling a Profitable Content-Based Business with David Thomas Tao

Written By Jenny Blake

“Let’s build ESPN.com for strength, and convince everyone they can lift weights.” With this mission in mind, the first six months of building the BarBend platform were a blur for today’s guest. By the end of the first year in 2016, they had had 1.4 million readers. By 2022, they had over 31 million registered users, allowing them to sell the business in 2023.

In this conversation, we cover David Tao’s take on the media landscape and how to build a profitable content-based business; raising a seed round of funding from friends and family after getting rejected from every venture pitch; the biggest mistake he made while experimenting with monetization strategies; and how he navigated a successful acquisition with a shared vision at the new parent company, Pillar4.

More About David: David Thomas Tao is an entrepreneur and writer based in NYC. He's the co-founder and former CEO of BarBend.com, the world's premiere strength sports and strength training media platform. A proud Kentucky native, David is also a Forbes 30 Under 30 Listmaker, Kentucky Colonel, and a noted whiskey/spirits writer and judge, appearing yearly on national tasting panels. BarBend was recently acquired in a thrilling deal that included hiring all employees and the executive team has chosen to stay on as well.

🌟 3 Key Takeaways

  • Burnout and bottlenecks are two red flags that you need to hire team members who can help.

  • Don’t be afraid to kill something promising if it’s not what you are best at, and if it’s not what you’ve built your team to be best at.

  • When you have moments of fleeting clarity, pay attention: they aren’t flukes. Write them down; for example, when you wish you were doing something else with the business.

📝 Permission

If you’re bad at business development and partnerships, delegate that!

✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next

Consider what kind of help you could get on the “biz dev” front: what would be one small next step? Even if it’s something like employing the Cyrano Strategy for Delegating Important Comms so you aren’t the only one interacting with potential clients.

🔗 Resources Mentioned

📚 Books Mentioned

🎧 Related Episodes

🌟Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review

❤️ Join our BFF community for Heart-Based Business owners

💌 Subscribe to the Time Well Spent newsletter: http://itsfreetime.com/join

💬 I’d love to hear what’s on your mind! Take the Free Time listener survey

☎️ Submit a voice question or comment for future episodes: http://itsfreetime.com/ask

🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts

📝 Check out full show notes from this episode: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/231

Jenny Blake

Jenny Blake is a career and business strategist and international speaker who helps people people organize their brain, move beyond burnout and create sustainable careers they love. She is the author of PIVOT: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One (Portfolio/Penguin Random House, September 2016). Jenny left her job in career development at Google in 2011 after five and a half years at the company to launch her first book, Life After College, and has since run her own consulting business in New York City. Find her on Twitter @Jenny_Blake and subscribe to the Pivot Podcast. 

http://PivotMethod.com
Previous

232: 11 Practices to Strengthen Business Intuition (Part One)
Next

230: What’s Your Ratio of Quantity to Quality for Ongoing Creative Work?