David Bennett

In Episode 11, David and I talk about the massive success he’s been experiencing on TikTok and what balance can look like when it comes to your business and your life.

david-bennett

About the Guest

David is the founder of The Metabolic Body Reset, LLC, the Empowered Living Institute, LLC, and TeachinVideo.com.

David has been working with clients since 2004 to help enable them to take back control of their health and their life. David has a Law Degree, Chiropractic Degree and is certified in
Functional Medicine.

David specializes in helping people overcome and reverse Metabolic Syndrome (weight gain, elevated blood pressure, elevated blood sugar & excess body fat), using the same methods and formula that he used to overcome his own weight and health issues and achieve Metabolic Freedom.

David has recently expanded into helping practitioners step out of their comfort zone and get amazing results using short-form video on social media, without ad spend (teachinvideo.com). David is also a coach for the Perfect Practice Mentorship.

David is inspired by his wife and two children, and in his spare time coaches both his daughter’s softball team and his son’s baseball team, and loves to travel.

GUEST LINKS

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EPISODE LINKS

CapCut

Buddyboss

Learndash

ClickUp

HOSTED BY

Audra Carpenter

SPECIAL GUEST

David Bennett

PRODUCED & EDITED BY

CJ Carpenter

 

 

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EPISODE 11

Episode Transcript

*What follows is an AI-generated transcript may not be 100% accurate. 

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[00:00:00] Audra: in today’s episode of The Mess In the Middle we’re going to explore some different things about what business owners go through working through this messy middle and some of the opportunities that can come from it.

[00:00:52] So I want to welcome my guest, David, to the show . Thank you. I’m very excited for you to be here. Let’s take a few minutes to tell a little bit about your story and where you are showing up in the universe, and then we’ll dive into things from there.

[00:01:07] Sure.

[00:01:08] David Bennett: I have a winding entrepreneurial journey I started out as a trial attorney.

[00:01:16] then, had an opportunity to go back, became a chiropractor, then got certified in functional medicine. and taking that a step further, involved it into a completely online, program for, metabolic health. Nice. And then, spun off of that as well into business coaching specifically with short form video.

[00:01:34] interesting. Yeah. Okay. So when did you start your trial journey?

[00:01:40] Say again? When did you start your trial law trial journey?

[00:01:43] David Bennett: That was in 1996.

[00:01:46] Audra: Okay, so you got into the internet early? Yep. Yeah. Okay.

[00:01:51] David Bennett: the internet was when I came outta chiropractic school, it was out there, but just starting, but as, I evolved my practice, I really wanted to have more opportunity to reach people. and to. Also be tied down in my office,12 hours a day, six days a week.

[00:02:09] Audra: Yeah. Been there, done that. That’s no fun at all. what an amazing opportunity that our generation has, that we can have multiple careers and do very well at them, and then pivot into, or evolve into what’s next.

[00:02:25] So my journey, I did, jobs. So I’ve done both. I’ve been the employee and the employer. My first, entrepreneur experience was, I guess I was maybe 32. So 98, 99 in there, opened up a coffee shop. Had no idea what I was doing, I’m pretty good at asking questions. So lots of struggles, lots of challenges, trying to figure it out.

[00:02:49] Finally figured it out and opened up another store. Did very well, moved to the East coast, and opened up a title company. So I worked for somebody else to learn, real estate on the East Coast, cuz I’ve only, I had only done it on the west coast when I was younger. East Coast, west Coast. Real estate’s very different when it comes to title and escrow.

[00:03:10] Had to learn it. Spent a couple years working for somebody else, then spun off and opened up my own title company. Did that for a long time. And then in 2008 2009, when things were not [00:03:20] so fun in the real estate industry, in 09, somebody introduced me to internet marketing and I was like, wait, it was actually a Dan Kennedy.

[00:03:27] and I was like, wait a second. I can make as much money as I’m making the title business, but I’m not tied to a desk anymore. I just need a computer and internet. let’s go down this path and see what we can do with it. And I’ve owned an agency since 2009, so same thing as you been in the industry a long time.

[00:03:47] David Bennett: Fantastic. And it seems like I hear that more and more from entrepreneurs. It’s you adapt, evolve, and when an opportunity arises, you might split off and go that direction or split off and go both directions

[00:03:59] Audra: at the same time. So what would you say is your biggest challenge right now in the space that you’re in?

[00:04:06] So I guess, let me back up for a second. Which business are you generating Revenue.

[00:04:11] David Bennett: So it’s called the Metabolic Body Reset. It’s the online metabolic program. Okay. Yeah. So the biggest, biggest challenge is actually reaching people, getting the message out there, without having to spend a fortune on advertising.

[00:04:27] As I remember dabbling in Facebook advertising years ago, and it was, I would be all upset, 10 bucks or 15 bucks, now. If you get a lead for that a thousand. It’s just insane. the costs have gone up. And that’s what sort of led me to the, teaching video course that, I was just playing with TikTok and, I put up a video, right before Christmas, I think it was 2019.

[00:04:50] Okay. 2020. And, My kids came to me a couple of days later and said, you have a TikTok account. I was like, yeah, we have one for the office. And and my son was like, [00:05:00] my friends are seeing it. You do, you know you’re viral. Oh, that’s awesome. Is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing?

[00:05:06] Audra: thing? Do I have something?

[00:05:08] Yeah.

[00:05:08] And it ends up with, I. That video was like a couple million views, two 3 million views. And was like, wait, So I got in front of two or 3 million people without spending a lot. I didn’t spend anything. And I got, it took me 15, 20 seconds to do. and that’s what I talked to people, healthcare practitioners specifically about okay, you need to teach, but you need to, what you think everybody knows nobody.

[00:05:31] David Bennett: So just take it per, yeah, take it back to the basics. Yeah.

[00:05:33] Audra: Yeah. so let’s go down that path for a minute. So what are you doing with TikTok now? Is it actually helping you generate customers?

[00:05:41] David Bennett: It is, it’s helping generate leads. just like any, social media platform, the goal is to get them off of the social media platform, get their email so that then you can nurture ’em in a more, more controlled way from your side versus being at the whim of an algorithm every day.So you’ve double down. Are you buying ads or your, all your traffic’s organic.

[00:06:01] I buy some ads on Facebook. Okay. we, I actually just got back into that when we’re, trying a quiz to see how that goes. So the buildup for the end of the year run and for metabolic.

[00:06:14] It’s the beginning of the year. Everybody has that, for I’m gonna lose weight machine. Resolution. yeah, so we’re building up to that. So we’re good. We’re testing out that quiz. But otherwise, no. I dabbled in, putting five or $10 behind TikTok every once in a while. but never really saw a huge advantage to that.

[00:06:32] when you can get two or 3000 views off a 20 second video without spending anything.

[00:06:38] Audra: Why spend the money? Yeah. Now are [00:06:40] you getting them to conversions? Because remember them looking at it is just vanity metrics. Unless you can actually get an email or continue that conversation somewhere else. There’s not a lot of.

[00:06:52] what do I wanna say? There’s not a lot of value that we can tie dollars to, right? Iit’s great for brand exposure, don’t get me wrong. I’m definitely for that. But the next step should be how do I get ’em off here and get ’em onto a list or into some kind of lead magnet where I can talk to them further?

[00:07:08] Audra: Or is it just people enjoying my content? it’s

[00:07:10] David Bennett: a sort of a combination, always the goal of the video, and everything is put that call to action out there, your offer. A lot of times when I’m, there’s no real goal, I’ll just say and follow for more, okay. So that they start to see me more.

[00:07:24] But then,like the quiz lead magnet, I did a video and said, Hey, you know what, if you wanna take part in this quiz, just go up into my profile and grab the link. there’s a link tree. and they can go up and grab it. And that’s segregated to the respective what the ad produces and versus what that they’re two separate funnels, same funnel, two separate, so that I can track exactly what’s organic, where it’s coming from and what’s not.

[00:07:47] Yeah,

[00:07:47] sure. What is your, just to tie TikTok in a nice little bow, so give me an idea of how much content do you share where. Followers or likes. I’m not really sure what they call it, but,where’s that?

[00:08:01] David Bennett: So we were at like 200,000 and some odd followers. Ok. and that’s as the, as TikTok goes through and as all platforms do, they’re looking for those bots that are out there who are just, and so the, I think 1 99 or one 98,000 followers, a lot of likes, but [00:08:20] that’s really the followers and the likes aren’t the goal.

[00:08:22] The goal is to get them jump up and look at my. maybe grab a lead magnet. There’s a link to, a website there, look at the program. but that’s always the goal because no matter what you do, you’re always making an offer, whether it’s just like me or whether it’s, Hey, go grab this free, crush your cravings guide.

[00:08:39] Yeah. How often do you produce content? what does your content schedule look like?

[00:08:43] I try to do it five days a week. Okay. Sometimes that doesn’t happen. Okay. Sometimes it happens more. Okay. it really, I sit down at the beginning of the month and see where I’m gonna go with it, and a lot of times I will, I talk to my other colleagues and they laugh because of my office at home.

[00:09:01] I have four or five shirts hanging up on. And I will do and swap ’em out. Yeah. 20 videos in a day because all of a sudden I’ll be like, hey, do you know inflammation is number one cause of, and it’s a 20 second video, it doesn’t take a long time to do. And then I’ll just slowly work through the production aspect of it, which doesn’t take a lot of time, but doesn’t, does take some time and then put ’em out throughout the month.

[00:09:24] Audra: Okay. What kind of tools are you using for. I’m trying to get to is like a simple process that we could recommend for people that have been a little intimidated or hesitant to start TikTok, what they could do to get a few videos up and just start putting themselves out there.

[00:09:42] David Bennett: and I go into a lot more detail in the teaching video course, but Okay.

[00:09:46] I use my phone and people laugh. Ithere, here’s my phone. Okay, it’s an eight. It’s not even an opportunity.

[00:09:53] Audra: Interesting. Good. That’s good though.

[00:09:56] David Bennett: You don’t need fancy equipment. [00:10:00] You really? You wanna give them a look into you, so to speak, whether, shooting in your house or walking with your kids or just, you may be taking a walk and all of a sudden I’ll be like, Hey, lemme do a quick video and say, vitamin D is very important to your health in general to your mood.

[00:10:15] That’s the whole video right there. Maybe your, my kids are walking with me. People like to see that. They wanna know you to go that. No. and trust pro.

[00:10:23] Audra: Okay. Do you, what does post-production look like for you? Do you spend a lot of time doing that?

[00:10:28] David Bennett: Maybe five to 10 minutes. Okay. If it’s complicated.

[00:10:32] because it’s only a 20 to 30 second video. So post-production doesn’t take a lot of time. Maybe adding some captions. the toughest part for me is when I get onto a platform and I have to pick some music. Yeah. Cause it’s just Strikes you that day versus sometimes that can take the longest for me.

[00:10:46] , but it allows to get a message out quickly to a lot of people, is really what it

[00:10:51] Audra: allows. Okay. Okay. What are you using for captions?

[00:10:55] I use an app, free app called Cap Cut. Cap cut. Okay. C A P C U T. Okay. And, it does auto captioning. Okay, good. You always use, Facebook does auto captioning.

[00:11:06] David Bennett: I think TikTok does auto captioning, but this gives, that gives me a little bit of an opportunity to go in and proofread it and make sure that it’s accurate the

[00:11:15] Audra: way it looks. Yeah. So are you taking your TikTok and also putting it up on.

[00:11:20] David Bennett: Yes, so my, so I put a TikTok about an hour ago. Okay. We also went to YouTube shorts, Instagram reels, Facebook reels, LinkedIn and Pinterest.

[00:11:31] Audra: Okay. And where do you feel you’re getting the best growth from IT Exposure.

[00:11:36] David Bennett: Depends on the week. Depends on the month. Oh, does it? Okay. [00:11:40] Yeah. That’s why I put ’em across all platforms. Iif you’re gonna do it, you might as well get it out. Cause different people are on different platforms. Sure. We all have a favorite.

[00:11:47] We like to spend time scrolling through. So it just depends,TikTok will give you a lot of exposure, but you don’t really, have any control over where the exposure’s coming from. Where in the. Okay. you can try to put some hashtags in. Facebook is a little more, I think pointed, targeted.

[00:12:03] Yeah. Yeah. My experience seems like it goes to a lot more of the United States in my case. Yeah. Okay.

[00:12:11] Audra: Which could be possible future customers or clients of your programs, right? Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. do you find that you need to schedule them at different days of the week or you just put ’em all up at the exact same time?

[00:12:23] So no matter what platform you’re on, people see it at 10:00 AM It’s 10:00 AM It’s when I get it done.

[00:12:30] David Bennett: Okay. I’ve listened to a ton of people. It’s gotta be at this time, it’s gotta be at this time. And I see no real, difference. II one at the beginning of this year that got a couple million views and it was like four 30 in the afternoon on a Thursday.

[00:12:43] That’s the last thing I want to do at four 30, but that’s when I happen to get it done and put

[00:12:48] Audra: it Okay guys, so the important points to take away from what we’ve just talked about, It doesn’t matter the industry that you’re in, he was doing chiropractic. So you talk about health and nutrition, or you talk about, I talk kinda the broad topic.

[00:13:02] I talk

[00:13:03] David Bennett: a lot about weight loss. Weight loss, that’s metabolic syndrome. Okay. And that’s what people think of versus, yeah. metabolic includes energy, it includes hormones and it includes a lot more about your health, inflammation. But weight loss is always, where’s the pain?

[00:13:18] yeah.

[00:13:19] Audra: Which is a [00:13:20] great point because weight loss is one of the most competitive terms in the world to ever be able to rank or get any kind of traffic for. So you doing that well with that kind of term. That’s awesome. So if you guys think about what he’s just said, he’s focused on a topic, he’s posting content out Now, are there ways to increase that or decrease that there is.

[00:13:43] Number one takeaway I want you guys to get from all of this is his consistency. You do have to do it even if you can’t figure out any of the others. He’s doing some batch creating. He’s doing it consistently and he is staying in his lane as far as the things that he wants to be known for. And being able to share this content across all the different platforms allows him to reach and expand his audience and the people that are interested.

[00:14:10] I would definitely take it, and you’re going in that direction. The next best step is lead magnets, where you can, move traffic even a little bit further. there’s plenty of brand. It sounds like you’re getting lots of great brand exposure. Now. It’s taken all that and moving ’em to the next step where you can start converting ’em and it could be a low offer ticket, like you just said, some free ebook.

[00:14:32] Maybe it’s a paid book. Where if you’ve written anything that would be of value to that audience that they could opt in for or get off of Kindle or something like that for a few bucks, just to get ’em into that paying place of what your products and services are. That’s awesome. That’s really

[00:14:50] David Bennett: awesome.

[00:14:51] Absolutely. I’ve seen this more in, in my space. It’s paid challenges. Yeah.

[00:14:56] Audra: Challenging.

[00:14:57] David Bennett: I’ll say some extravagant, but five or $10 just to [00:15:00] get a little buy-in. from the client. I haven’t done one of those, but I’m starting to see it more and more.

[00:15:05] Audra: Do you have a group?

[00:15:07] We do. Okay.

[00:15:08] Where’s that at?

[00:15:09] David Bennett: Facebook. Oh, that’s on Facebook? Yeah. Okay. It’s called Weight Loss and Metabolic Health.

[00:15:13] Audra: Okay, and what’s the activity in there? membership? So

[00:15:17] David Bennett: we run a little challenge every week. last week it was a no alcohol challenge. , we could get through the whole week without having a drink.

[00:15:23] and just ask everybody to be in. sometimes it’s a, exercise challenge. Sometimes it’s a different, eat the colors of the rainbow challenge, but, and then the theme stays throughout the week on that idea. Yeah. With a recipe that goes along with the idea. Nice. And it’s free.

[00:15:36] David Bennett: It’s work, but it’s good work. cause people like it. Yeah.

[00:15:41] Audra: Are you able to convert those people to paying members?

[00:15:45] David Bennett: Sometimes. Sometimes. Sometimes. Ok. You know,cause you have really no control over who wants to access that membership. there’s no conversation before they get in other than, Hey, gimme your name and gimme again.

[00:15:56] This. Give your name, gimme your email. , because then I can take them off and get to ’em a separate way. But it’s a little, you’re pretty much letting people, just people in who answer the question like, yeah, I

[00:16:06] Audra: went in. Okay, you might add the question to it. Why do you want to be in? And then it’s starts giving you some more data as to, this person’s here for weight loss.

[00:16:16] This person’s here cuz they’re struggling with hormones. This person’s. And it’ll just allow you to start segmenting that list post Facebook group.

[00:16:24] David Bennett: There’s a difference of opinion on this. I can’t see where I sit. Cause then you’re collecting health information.

[00:16:32] make it more generic

[00:16:33] David Bennett: than that, depending on Yeah.

[00:16:35] Depends on who you talk to. Whether they’re like, oh yeah, you can, is this HIPPA type

[00:16:39] Audra: stuff?

[00:16:39] David Bennett: Yeah. [00:16:40] yeah.

[00:16:40] Audra: how about, what’s your goal to get out of the. That might

[00:16:44] David Bennett: work. something like that. I think the title, the group, weight loss and Metabolic Health gives it away why everybody is asking to join it.

[00:16:51] I’d be surprised on some of the answers that you can get, but I would try it. How big is your, what’s your goal’s again? How big is your group? About 1200. Okay. That’s decent size. Yeah. Yeah. Or even post a little, maybe do a poll inside the group for the 1200 you already have. what have you learned from the group?

[00:17:11] what’s been the most interesting content from the group? you can, again, it’s just repositioning the ask. So they’re not giving away that you stay HIPAA compliant, you’re not get yourself into any kind of issues. But they can give you feedback as to, know, I really, it’s a good idea.

[00:17:26] Audra: Enjoyed, yeah. I really enjoyed the, eat the color of the Rainbow program. And then that just sends you down of, okay, 82 people responded to this. We need to produce more content around that, because that’s what really got them going. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, I would definitely look at stuff like that.

[00:17:44] so where are you headed? Do you, with all these different moving pieces that you’ve got on social media, where are you driving ’em to next? You’ve got an email list. What does that look like?

[00:17:55] David Bennett: So the email list is, newsletters and then when I make an offer, there’s always an offer out there.

[00:18:01] But like right now, the email list is driving towards the New Years. A group going through the metabolic body reset so that, there’s not any direct marketing right now. It’s more educational. . So do you have a team or do you work with yourself and maybe a couple VAs that support you? How do you get all this content [00:18:20] produced? Or not just the content, but the marketing in general?

[00:18:23] I have a va. Okay. Who’s a 16 year old son who needs money, okay, awesome.

[00:18:28] Audra: Those are the best .

[00:18:31] David Bennett: And, that’s really it. I do the rest myself. I limit my chiropractic hours in two days a week. and then do. the rest of it, today, Wednesday, which is today is my day to do this kind of stuff. Okay. And do other marketing and the review stuff and just go through all the, I’ll call it the paper and the nitty gritty of getting the message out.

[00:18:52] Yeah.

[00:18:53] Audra: Okay. How many hours a week do you think you spend doing this

[00:18:56] David Bennett: in the fall and spring? Probably, Doing just the marketing and getting probably about 20, 25 in the summer. I dial that back a little bit because I also coach softball and baseball, so if it’s noon, I’m probably not sitting in the office doing anything.

[00:19:15] I’ve already started thinking about, okay, let’s go look at a field. Let’s go do this.

[00:19:19] That’s actually not bad considering the business that you’re building. So you must have some really good systems.

[00:19:25] David Bennett: I didn’t count the hours, the eight hours on the two days in the chiropractic. So you throw the 30 another, 16, 18 in there.

[00:19:33] okay, so it does become a full week, the goal of doing more online, the goal of being more of an entrepreneur versus this, brick and mortar is to have freedom. So that I can go do that with my kids while they’re young. , I can sit in the office when they’re in college and after.

[00:19:48] Audra: That’s good. That’s a great way to position it. And I think that’s the reason why a lot of people start a business now. They just want a better quality of life. when my kids were younger, I had some of the [00:20:00] time I had a job, some of the time I was self-employed. But being a single parent. I work 60, 70 hours a week, sometimes 80 hours a week.

[00:20:09] in the early days of my coffee shop, I have three kids. They were under the age of 10. They came to work with me. They were outta school. They came to work with me. Every one of ’em knew how to make espresso, but they didn’t really work there. I had employees don’t get me. there was no child labor.

[00:20:25] Audra: Nobody was harmed in that. But, they had to come and they had to hang. And I had a space for them and all that kind of good stuff. But you do what you gotta do and you make the sacrifices you choose to make. we don’t have to make them right. We can go get a job and punch a clock and leave it at the office when we go home.

[00:20:42] But for me, I wanted something different. I wanted something more. And being a single parent, my kids never did without, not after I started making some money. After I figured it out right then it was a little different. But at the beginning, yeah, you make a lot of sacrifices.

[00:20:57] David Bennett: I just started having a similar conversation with my 16 year old Yeah.

[00:21:01] Toward college. And I’m like, look, if you, depending on the lifestyle you want , you have to think about that. if you, and I’ll just use engineering or law. Yeah. you’re gonna be in an office working for somebody. You’re not gonna be able to say, Hey, I’m leaving at three o’clock to go to the baseball field.

[00:21:16] It’s just not gonna work. So you have to start thinking about that and where you can go with your passion, where you can go with what you wanna do and how you can do that to

[00:21:25] Audra: allow that. And that’s, I think, a huge part of. When you’re at that point, probably 16 to about 25 if you go to college, if you don’t go to college, there’s so much great, amazing training out there that if it’s [00:21:40] not something like a law degree or a medical degree or something engineering, that you have to have college for.

[00:21:46] Start pursuing it now and even just to explore it to see if it’s something that you have interest in. If you want to go into some of the engineering. Also, as far as the cloud-based stuff, go to Amazon a w s or go to Salesforce. They’ve got some ridiculous great training and they also do job placement, and the majority of their training is free.

[00:22:09] So if that’s a, an industry that you’re interested in, there are plenty of opportunities out there. And like I said, they’ll help with job placement afterwards. If you can get Salesforce certified, you can pretty much write a ticket at that point, which is really great depending on what you wanna do.

[00:22:25] Businesses and employees, like I said, I’ve wore both hats. I can take orders. I don’t have any issues with that. I also can lead when it’s my turn to lead. we need both. We need the balance of both of those if we want a company or a business to be successful. So what would you say is the, I started with what is the biggest challenge of what you’re doing, but now that we’ve got a little bit of understanding of all the things that you do, the things that are working and the things that you’re sticking to consistently, where would you see the biggest obstacles in getting to whatever this next level is for you?

[00:23:00] the playoff between, personal time and business time. Okay. Because it does take more like as you ramp up to a launch , it takes a lot more time. and that’s why I don’t do a lot of launching in the summer. Cause I don’t want have that trade off in December. That trade off is fine cuz it’s dark here in Pennsylvania at four 30 and [00:23:20]

[00:23:20] Audra: cold.

[00:23:20] So cloudy and .

[00:23:22] David Bennett: Exactly. it’s that trade off. Cause the more you. You hear it all the time, oh, I put up this course and it just took off. And, but there’s still backend stuff to that. They’re still working on the accounting side, working on improving the material, the materials never, stagnant.

[00:23:37] Finished. Yeah, because there’s always, in the, teaching video course I have an automation and the emails, they don’t, you never end the automation cause. Little bit. Every week or so I find something new out about short form video and I send an email. So it just keeps trickling out that way.

[00:23:54] Okay. But yeah, it’s just that trade off of personal time versus business time and what you wanna do. That’s the next big hurdle,

[00:24:01] So I, I would say for so many years of me doing this, initially in my entrepreneur journey, I tried to find balance. Because I so struggled, like I said, single mom.

[00:24:13] I didn’t go to college till I was, 26, so I did it backwards. I got married, had kids, got divorced, went to school. Launched a business kind of thing. So I did it completely outta order, but whatever it was my order. There is no order. There is no order. Order. Yeah, that’s true. I did a harder path.

[00:24:32] Audra: How’s that? but I did go to college and having three kids and being a full-time student and having three coffee shops and 65 employees, it’s a lot of work. And there was no way to find balance. And the minute I finally let myself off the hook and said, it’s okay, you don’t have to find balance.

[00:24:51] You have to be present and continue to move forward. Make sure your kids are taken care of, make sure your employees are taken care of and your customers [00:25:00] and you get through school. Cuz I was determined to get through school and I did, took me five years, but I double majored, so I got through it.

[00:25:06] once I gave that up, then I gave myself permission to just be present. And like I said, as long as I was getting closer to my goals and continuing to evolve as a human, that was enough and I was okay with that, and I had to just, Stopped apologizing for always thinking about work or always being in the work mode.

[00:25:26] David Bennett: but, and I, when I talk to other healthcare entrepreneurs, a lot of times they’ll say I did, I took the weekend off and I felt like I really should be doing this or doing that, okay. You just have to give yourself permission to do that. we don’t need to be working 24 7. The goal of putting something out online or being an entrepreneur .

[00:25:44] My personal belief is not working 24 7, but then you get caught in that catch 22 of you’re always checking the internet. You’re always checking the stats. Check this, see what happened. Yeah.

[00:25:56] Audra: Crazy, right? Yep. Absolutely. It’s crazy and it’s all control. It’s all about managing yourself and your expectations.

[00:26:03] I get to the place on social media where, because I do it for a living, I’m always on there, but then I find the waters get a little bit messy where I pivot from being a promoter to a consumer. And before you know it, I’ve gone down some kind of rabbit hole. So I’ve had to put something in place where I check it in the morning, update everything I need to update, and I do like you.

[00:26:26] So I batch create social media ahead of. I have a scheduling tool that I put it into and it’s all scheduled for the week. I try to do at least a week at a time. Sometimes I’ll get a little excited and get a little further, but [00:26:40] I try to produce and last week just sucked cuz Ivan just really threw a wrench in things for us.

[00:26:45] But, I have to manage that with proper expectations. Otherwise I don’t have, notifications come to my phone. Those are all turned. And then I’ll go in twice a day and check in or respond or do any kind of, engaging that I need to do. But otherwise, your whole day is social media and that is just one marketing channel.

[00:27:07] You have so many other things that you still need to get done, and I think that’s some of the challenges small businesses run into. Yes, because we live life online. We forget that it’s just a marketing channel. It’s just one little piece of the whole thing about running a successful business. You need time for email, you need time for your website.

[00:27:27] You need time to write or create content. You need time to network with humans. , absolutely. It’s a four, four process. Yeah, right? Yeah. So without any kind of balance or boundaries set for yourself. It’s gonna be very tough to have a successful business. Almost impossible, right?

[00:27:47] David Bennett: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

[00:27:48] And there are times where, my phone goes off at eight o’clock, no notifications other than, my mother-in-law and my mother come in because they’re elderly and doesn’t come back on again until 6:00 AM It just good. Doesn’t happen. It’s left downstairs instead of upstairs with me.

[00:28:06] No need to have it. no. so you do have to set those boundaries. and you have to set them very, and you have to adhere to ’em is really what it’s .

[00:28:13] Audra: That’s probably . That’s

[00:28:15] David Bennett: probably the biggest, that’s the toughest part. Cause you’re like, oh, just two seconds and then an hour later you’re like, ah, [00:28:20] and I still didn’t do what I said I was gonna do and I looked at Facebook or whatever.

[00:28:23] Audra: Yeah. So I think that’s a huge takeaway here. If you’re struggling to get some momentum in your business or really to get it all, Without systems and some boundaries for yourself, you’re never going to. So stop beating yourself up. Stop, having expectations or being disappointed that you didn’t get done.

[00:28:42] the three page checklist that you set for yourself today, because it’s not gonna happen. We’ve been there, done that, learn from us in our mistakes. I’ve gotten really good over the last year as I pivot, so mine was agency since 2009. Started with social media, went into web design, had to learn seo, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:29:04] in 13 years you’re gonna do it all. I’ve done it all. And the difference for me is I actually can get in the weeds if you need me to build you an email campaign or a landing page or ClickFunnels, or, use social media or don’t do Photoshop. But other than that, there’s quite a bit that I can do myself.

[00:29:24] Audra: Just because I’ve been forced to learn that. But how it served me on the other side is I can actually go in and assess businesses. So that’s what I’ve been doing the last few years, is I’ll go into a company, grab their p and l. And then we’ll sit down and we’ll go through their processes and they’re online and all the different moving parts, and I’ll find money for them.

[00:29:44] Okay, you’re not optimizing this. If we did this and this will generate 10% more. If we did this, we could do this. And that’s really the sweet spot that I’ve got to. But what I found was probably 20 18, 17 18, I, I don’t wanna do [00:30:00] services. getting out of the how, I know how to do the how, but I don’t want to be the one physically doing it anymore.

[00:30:05] . So I decided to launch the marketplace that I’ve recently built. and the point of me bringing that up is I had to get super intentional. On the content that I had to produce, I use AI to help me write and create new content. I use AI art to design specific images that I want. I have seven websites.

[00:30:27] Audra: That are part of the marketplace right now. I have a training site, I have a WordPress hosting site. I have a freelance website, and all these pieces are just getting going. it’s like brand new to the space. , but I can’t pull off something like this if I don’t control. That’s a terrible word.

[00:30:47] If I don’t manage my time and look at marketing and my. Interaction with the internet and social media in a way of, it’s a task we’re there to promote. If I wanna get on and see what my friends and my family are doing, that’s completely different. Then I have the intention to sit down and just scroll for 30 minutes or get lost in TikTok for an hour.

[00:31:10] But yeah, you schedule that and you set that aside for yourself and you don’t have to be so rigid. I still get out and run. I still spend time with friends, not a lot. I do work a lot, but I’m choosing to do that. Like you said, we need to choose where we’re spending our time. this journey we have goes quick and if you are not doing what you want because you’re lost in all these crazy details or fomo, my friends are on TikTok or my, this person got these leads, or [00:31:40] this person selling their coaching, you will never find success in your business, so absolutely.

[00:31:47] Step back. Absolutely. Take a look at the big picture. Okay, where do I wanna go? Why do I wanna go there? And what has to happen for me to be able to get on that path and then go from there? Then you actually have a chance at it, right?

[00:32:01] David Bennett: You do At that point, because yeah, you have take lot of time working with other people and working on other people to get them to know, and trust us, but you also have to work on.

[00:32:10] Get to know yourself, know what your boundaries are, and to like yourself, like where you’re at, to be able to say, okay, it’s five o’clock, I’m done today. Didn’t get, didn’t completely get done, but I’m done today.

[00:32:21] and be okay with that .

[00:32:22] Audra: exactly. Exactly. and not feel guilty about it. You were talking about you had to grow into the space that you personally have to, So for me, each business has forced me to be evolved to a different Audra. Without doing that, I wouldn’t be able to handle that. So I’ve had a lot of friends come to me saying, you’ve been working on this marketplace for four years now. Why didn’t you just launch with one property? it’s not a skill thing.

[00:32:50] I have the expertise, I have the knowledge, I have the market. I knew what I wanted, but looking back at all these plans I had created back in 2017. I wasn’t the person to be able to launch something this big. I wasn’t there yet. I, logically knew what I wanted. Passionately knew what I wanted, but I wasn’t personally in a place where I could handle, something this big.

[00:33:17] like I said, there’s seven properties in there [00:33:20] and I’m not done yet. I kind of building, those are my anchor stores, but I’m trying to build out the whole process for startups to small medium sized businesses where I’ve built the whole infrastructure for you from validating your idea to launching, to growing, to scaling.

[00:33:35] Audra: So I’ve tied in, zindolabs is the real baby of this, but it’s training, but it’s also community. So it’s kind of baby version, LinkedIn and LinkedIn learning, but in one platform for small business. And then I built out the whole backend of that as well, where I created all your SOPs, all your getting started guides, all your how-tos, editorial calendar, social media, video.

[00:34:00] It’s all in there. There’s hundreds of them in there. the point of bringing all that up is I was only able to do that once I evolved into the person that could actually do. So yes, we want it to come faster. We want to be done faster. It feels like I’ve been, reliving the same day for five years, but I had to get there too.

[00:34:22] And I think that’s the point. Give yourself a little bit of grace. A little bit of, okay. I’m also evolving as I’m launching and growing this business into the person I need to be to handle the amazing things that are gonna come down the road. Sometimes

[00:34:38] David Bennett: the evolution, when you were saying. I hated social media.

[00:34:45] I hated doing

[00:34:46] Audra: videos. And look at you, it’s TikTok,

[00:34:50] David Bennett: right? So it’s like just you have to be ready for when the opportunity presents itself. But if that opportunity would’ve presented itself in 2015, 16, I would’ve blown right over it. And [00:35:00] no way

[00:35:00] Audra: TikTok has been

[00:35:01] David Bennett: around that long. No, it hasn’t, but Facebook and video there, it’s like I couldn’t stand doing it.

[00:35:07] And and then the evolution into the course on the short form was just a matter of, I was asked to be on a marketing panel to talk about using TikTok and organic growth and, The gentleman said, do you have anything to offer at the end? And I said, oh, great. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:35:22] I have a course on this. Nice. And I hung up the phone and was like, okay, I got two months to write a course. , get this going.

[00:35:30] Audra: Yeah. Ready, fire, aim. Good for you. Yeah.

[00:35:33] David Bennett: So yeah, you have to be ready for it is what it’s, yeah. Because if that would’ve presented itself three years before, I would’ve never.

[00:35:39] Audra: You wouldn’t been able to it.

[00:35:40] All right, David, so what last parting words would you share for anybody that is stuck in the middle, maybe questioning their direction or starting to get some momentum and not sure what to do with it, what would you suggest?

[00:35:56] David Bennett: Follow your heart then use your brain when you’re following your heart.

[00:36:00] You know, there’s an old, quote out there. done is never perfect. Perfect is never done. So just get out and do what your heart tells you to do and your brain confirms.

[00:36:10] Audra: That’s good. Amen. All right. How do people find you now in the show notes? Sorry, I was just gonna add that’s right in the show notes, we’ll have links to all of David’s profiles and to find out more about him.

[00:36:22] But I’m gonna let him throw in a couple of, best ways to learn more about your content.

[00:36:28] David Bennett: The two best ways for the metabolic program is just metabolic, not just, but metabolic body reset all one word.com. Okay. And that talks about a lot of explanation on there, what we [00:36:40] do and how we do it. A lot of people, testimonials of people who’ve done it.

[00:36:43] Nice. We’ve gotten more than I call ’em, fees, non-scale victories. Victories. It’s not the number, but how they feel, how they. Just the confidence they have. Or their, medical health has improved. and the other one is teach in video. It’s t e a c h i n video com. Okay. and that talks about the course on how to get yourself onto platforms and repurposing and just doing.

[00:37:08] Audra: Doing it. That’s all it is. You just gotta do it. Yep. Absolutely. All right, David, thanks again so much for being here. I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation I, and best of success. I can’t wait to check back in and see where things are headed for you.

[00:37:24] David Bennett: Thank you and best of luck to you on getting all those launched and out there

[00:37:30] It’s a journey.

[00:37:31] Audra: It’s a journey we all love. It’s a journey. I wouldn’t change it,

[00:37:35] You know, just on a side note, my mom asked me, Sometimes when the lotto is really big, she’s like, are you gonna play? I’m not much of, you know, I know I gotta earn it. I’m gonna earn it.

[00:37:44] Audra: I’m not gonna be winning it. And I’m like, no. And she’s like, well, what if you won? What would you do? Would you still do? And I’m like, mom, I gotta see this across the finish line. I’m still gonna do this. It’s not about money, it’s about this. This is my purpose. This is what I’m supposed to do.

[00:37:59] David Bennett: Even if you had all that money, you still have 24 hours in a day.

[00:38:02] Audra: I would still do it. Yeah. I would just do it faster. That’s the only thing that would change. I would hire a bunch of people to help me finish implementing everything.

[00:38:10] David Bennett: I’m that type of personality. I like to figure out what, how it works before I hire somebody.

[00:38:15] Yeah. So that I can know, what’s going on and be able to tweak it a as needed, but yeah, [00:38:20] that’s the only way you get results. My first few years in marketing, the majority of the companies I would go into were just that they didn’t know what they were doing. They, somebody sold them a $5,000 s e o package to get ’em on the front page of Google and they paid it cause they didn’t know any different.

[00:38:39] Audra: And I did so much cleanup. The challenge is most business owners don’t want to learn what they need to hire for, cuz they just wanna hire it. So they wanna find the best. But what ends up happening is it ends up costing them a lot more because they didn’t do their homework ahead of time to make sure they hired somebody that could actually deliver.

[00:38:58] David Bennett: I just had this conversation in small group discussion a week or two ago. And they were talking about their marketing people and they’re paying an exorbitant amount of money. And I said, whatcha are you getting? And a husband and wife team both basically were quiet and we’re not really sure. And I was like, but you need to get on this really quickly because yes, they are posting stuff, they are doing stuff, but what are you getting?

[00:39:21] what’s your return on investment here?

[00:39:23] Yeah.

[00:39:23] Audra: Yeah. if you run across people like that, that zindolabs can help. I have an affiliate program. I’m just saying. Send me a link. Absolutely. Absolutely. I’ve got, so the way that I did it was, I built on WordPress. I used a community called Buddy Boss.

[00:39:39] Are you familiar with that? No. Buddyboss’s community. It would be like a Facebook group or any other group. Right on. Okay. I’m gonna have to go

[00:39:47] look that up. Yeah. and I’m using Learn Dash as my l m s. So what I’ve done was, say you take a course with me, none of my courses on the site, which I think I have nine so far.

[00:39:59] I’ve got another [00:40:00] 40 in the works. But, they’re never more than two hours total. I would say even say an hour and a half from start to finish. Cause we’re entrepreneurs, we don’t have 35 hours to watch video. We have to learn things fast. My

[00:40:14] David Bennett: teaching video course is. And I tell people right up front, I shot it on my phone.

[00:40:19] Cause this is what you’re gonna do. And if you watch it from start to finish, the five modules, it’s gonna take you less than an hour. But you need to do for each module. yeah. Be able To get benefit of the everything. Cause you don’t have time. You don’t. So then I took it a step further. Like I said, I’ve done marketing for a long time. I was VP of marketing for some, 20 million plus dollar companies. I’ve gone into companies, set up memberships, grown them from nothing. So I was like, okay, what are all the things that I really liked and where do I feel like memberships struggled.

[00:40:48] Where that we just missed a mark for paying members. Some of it’s closing the loop for your clients, so you taught ’em You gave them cheat sheets or checklists or whatever, they still really don’t know how to apply it cuz they don’t have your knowledge and you’ve created it from a perspective of an expert marketer or an expert in that industry.

[00:41:09] Audra: Yeah. There’s no way to backfill that knowledge for them. So what I did was, I’ve actually tied in ClickUp. Have you heard of ClickUp? No, I haven’t. do you know what Trello is? Or Asana? Yeah. Okay, so click up like that. Okay. But on steroid. Just frigging amazing what it does. But what I did was, so you take, maybe I’m gonna give you a course on how to build your first email list, right?

[00:41:33] A lot of my courses, I’m trying to build you in stages. So I wanna give you the basic stuff that I’ll advance you and scale you as your [00:41:40] company scales. But I connected click up. So module. And then you go into your click up account. I created checklists and cheat sheets and everything for you, but I created ’em in a way that they’re actually tasks for you to take what you just learned and actually implement in your business in real time.

[00:42:00] Then I take it a step further and I say, okay, I just taught you. What do you mail? Marketing is why to do it, the benefits, the blah, blah, blah, tools, all that kind of good stuff. Here’s your s o p. Let’s actually go send an email. What are the components of an email, and I built all of that out into this system.

[00:42:18] . So all it does is plug and play. What’s the headline of your email? What’s the goal of it? How many, what list is it going to? What’s your open rate? What’s your click through, blah. I’ve already built all that for you.

[00:42:31] David Bennett: That’s fantastic cause a lot of people don’t. You have to go look at those emails and see where they’re going.

[00:42:37] Are they getting where you want ’em to go?

[00:42:38] so you still have to bring your data back depending on the tool that you’re using. But the thing is I’ve already told you what you need.

[00:42:45] Audra: There’s beautiful content available online. you could do anything right between YouTube and some of these big players out there. Their content is amazing of what you can learn. Here’s the challenge though. new business owner goes out trying to learn how to use Instagram. They read blog posts from Buffer or later or preview app or any of these guys, and they’ve got, okay, I understand what this goal is.

[00:43:10] Now I can create myself a strategy. But how do I create the content? What tools do I use? How do I see if I’m, what’s working? How often should I post? But there’s all the how stuff [00:43:20] is actually missing, right? down in the week we

[00:43:22] David Bennett: talk to people. They’re all over the place with that

[00:43:25] Audra: as well, right? So that’s the goal of this site, is to actually close the loop in online training.

[00:43:32] Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. That’s why it’s taken me four years, . I had to get it to a place where I could exhaust. Okay. Now what? Okay, now what? Okay. What would happen next? What would happen next? Until I, there’s nothing start to loop over again. Then I knew I was done with that topic. you gotta go all the way through actually reviewing the data.

[00:43:53] People get it posted, but never come back and tell you what the data looks like.

[00:43:57] it was an eyeopener for me when I started following, I dunno if Adrian Richardson, she has Oh,yeah. And got a spreadsheet from her to plug the numbers into and. Oh, I really, granted I got leads, but it’s not doing that well.

[00:44:14] Audra: It’s not as doing as well as I thought it was.

[00:44:16] exactly. I was like, oh, I spent this money and I got this. Okay, great. Yeah.

[00:44:21] Audra: But, I think the other thing data will do for you is it helps remove the emotion. Cause numbers don’t lie, but it also says, oh my gosh, I wasted so much time. If I could have just done this.

[00:44:34] I would’ve got better results and I would’ve been able to get all that time back. Absolutely.

[00:44:38] Alright, David I’ll have to check out your, I’ve avoided TikTok. Where do you stand with the data issues in China?

[00:44:47] David Bennett: Everybody’s collecting everything at every possible moment. yeah. Across all the platforms, because you probably have experienced this. I know I have, I’ll be talking to my son about, Hey, we need to get a new blade for the lawnmower or this, and then all of a sudden [00:45:00] there’s lawnmower parts that are popping up on Facebook and I don’t have Alexa.

[00:45:04] I have all that shut off on my phone and I’m like, where are they getting this from? Facebook, oh yeah, definitely. Somebody’s listening, somebody’s doing so I. I did it because I happened to just be watching a webinar where the guy was talking about, the algorithm and how you can get organically out there versus Facebook.

[00:45:21] So I figured I’d give it a try. Okay. So I don’t like the data ideas. ,

[00:45:26] Audra: it is what it is. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I might have to revisit it. I have avoided video like nobody’s business. a, it’s a good challenge.

[00:45:35] David Bennett: You could chop this podcast up into probably 200. yeah. With little 15, 20 second blurbs of what you said.

[00:45:43] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:45:45] Audra: Okay, all thank you all.

[00:45:47] David Bennett: Have a great rest of the day. You as well. Take care. Bye.

 

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