My Passion Has No Business Plan

So, today, I had to meet with a coach-mentor as part of this free program that’s meant to help little, news sites like mine be a bit more sustainable.

I did not want to do this.

He’s a lovely man, but I really did not want to meet him because if I met him it meant that I had to admit that I had no real plan when I started the Bar Harbor Story (Our local news site that puts out about 3 articles a day, about 80% of them written by me.). He’s supposed to help us make an action plan or something.

“What’s your most stable revenue?” he asked.

I laughed.

We’ve never advertised.

We never grew and started covering another town without being asked.

And it’s ended up taking 90% of my waking hours.

And it’s free.

This is, of course, a terrible business plan: Make something free. Let people voluntarily choose to pay. Spend all your time doing it so you can’t really make money anywhere else.

Who wants to admit that they did this?

We’ve been so lucky because we’ve grown by a third from last year. People have voluntarily subscribed. Some lovely and kind local businesses have sponsored us and we have more subscribers than we ever imagined, bringing in hundreds of thousands of views every month.

From a business perspective, this is comically flawed, right? Create something labor-intensive, give it away, hope people voluntarily support it, and become so busy producing it that you have little time left to earn money elsewhere.

It is not an easy thing to say out loud. I kind of feel like I should wear a sign on me that says OOPS in big letters.

Anyway, that was the brave part of today. I showed up and told the truth about how clueless I was/am.

I talked about how deeply I believe in local journalism and local community (which is to a level of schmaltz that most journalist won’t admit to), how much I care about this small, scrappy publication, and small, scrappy island community and how strongly I want them all to survive and thrive.

I also admitted that passion and belief, while essential, are not the same thing as sustainability, which is kind of a bummer.

And also that I am clueless about making money.

There is a weird vulnerability in admitting that you built something with your heart before you built it with a spreadsheet. Yes, he mentioned spreadsheets. I panicked. It was sad, that poor man.

Anyway, it all feels uncomfortable. It’s like stepping into the middle of the room and inviting someone to examine the messy middle of a dream where you’re standing naked in the middle of the street, but there is also relief in it, right?

That’s because the moment you admit you don’t have all the answers is the moment you finally create space to start finding them.

Bravery is often framed as bold or dramatic, but sometimes it looks a lot quieter. Sometimes it is simply opening the meeting link you’ve been dreading. Sometimes it is allowing someone to see the uncertainty behind the work you care about.

Sometimes it is saying, “I absolutely have no clue how to do this in a way that involves segmenting readership and spreadsheets.”

If you are building something meaningful and a little bit terrifying, this is your reminder that showing up matters, honesty matters, and asking for help matters.

Happy Be Brave Friday! I’m wishing you all so much luck. You’ve got this. Me? Eh. Let’s hope!

This is cross-posted from my Substack, which is here.