Hello, everyone. I ended up taking two weeks off. These weren’t planned. I know that some people don’t want the world to know their struggles, but I feel I owe it to my subscribers, advertisers, and anyone else interested in my newspaper to be honest. In a world that makes it difficult to be vulnerable, I feel honesty is the best policy.
The reason I’ve taken this past week off…well, two weeks… is that I have struggled to pay for the printing of my newspapers. Unlike some other papers, I have to prepay for each batch that I print. While I always knew printing would be my top expense, I didn’t fully grasp how much it would cost. Some things changed within the first few weeks of printing, and that threw my budget out of whack. To put it into perspective, I pay more for printing in a week than I do for monthly rent for my office space.
There are also some mental health and religious components to my struggles in the past month or two. But those, along with the printing issue, are only symptoms of the main problem. And that is that I have not been here enough.
My business model was that I would work a side hustle while I build this newspaper to where it needs to be. I was struggling at first to do both, and someone mentioned that I needed to be okay with asking for help. I’m not a salesperson, so I wasn’t comfortable with selling advertising on top of doing everything else. So I thought, “Okay. Let me ask for help with advertising.”
The business model didn’t work. The person I brought on to help with advertising didn’t have luck in March, and I wasn’t there to pick up the slack on that end as much as I should have or to hold them accountable. My side hustle is DoorDash, and while I had a great run with it, I was struggling to afford everything at the best of times. And in the past month, I haven’t had any luck with it. It’s not a steady income, but it depends on which orders come in and what the offers to drivers are. It’s been horrible lately. I’ve tried applying to other jobs, but one of a few things would happen: I never heard back from them, the job didn’t exist, the job was a scam, or, the rarest outcome, I heard back from the company only to be given some evaluation or test and get ghosted afterwards.
I don’t want to get too religious, but I think this past month was God trying to tell me that I needed to stop doing things the way I was doing them. Instead of working a side job, I should have been putting everything into this business. I did most of that in the beginning, but I was working two full-time jobs, and the more important of the two took lower priority. I tried working 14 hours a day between the two instead of 10 or 12 hours on the business alone.
The other issue is that I’m really hard on myself. I’m pretty patient with others, but I don’t give myself that same grace. And being a business owner, I have a lot more stress and stake in how my life goes, which means more pressure on myself and even less patience. I was also focused too much on how unfair things were for me instead of thinking about how to get over it.
I think the additional pressure came from the feeling that I was failing the same community that has given me so much. About a year ago was really the first time I felt like I belonged and loved since at least my college years. It’s difficult to put into words. This career path has brought me many relationships, and this newspaper has only strengthened those relationships.
I started this newspaper for many of the wrong reasons. I was spiteful about what had happened at the other newspapers I worked at, and I wanted to prove that you could be a good person, work hard, contribute to the town regularly, and that people would be receptive to that. But the main thing was I didn’t want to lose those relationships. I wanted to strengthen them.
It became clear to me this week that the problem wasn’t only that I wasn’t working hard enough. I was working too hard in the wrong areas. I was so afraid of losing all these relationships that I panicked. And in my panic, I lost focus on being there for the same people I claimed I loved. After all, if this failed, what would I do? I was already having trouble getting any job to work on the side while building this up. What if I had the same issues if this business venture didn’t work out?
I should have spent 10 hours a day here instead of six hours a day here and eight hours doing DoorDash. Although I’m not a fan of selling ads, selling about $1,000 in ads was much easier than grinding through 40, 50, maybe 60 hours a week of DoorDash to get $1,000. It would be less wear and tear on the vehicle.
So, here’s the plan. I’m changing my business hours a bit. I am looking to be open from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Monday and Tuesday. I’ll be open at the office from 8 to 11 a.m. on Wednesday and Saturday. I’ll be closed on Thursday and Friday. I’m closing those days because Thursdays are dedicated to newspaper delivery. I also want Friday to be the day when I catch up on newspaper business, whether that’s visiting Waseca for historical tidbits or mailing out bills and newspapers. I chose Saturday to be open to give potential visitors who may work during my weekday hours a chance to come in during the weekend. I can’t guarantee I’ll always be around, but I will be in the area.
You know how I mentioned someone told me that I need to be okay with asking for help? Well, I’m asking all of you for help. I’m going to take this week to collect all the ad revenue I can. But to businesses out there watching this, I’d love to get you involved in advertising with my newspaper. My goal for this month is $5,000 of advertising. There are a lot of events going on that I would like to highlight with special sections, but that’s only possible with advertising.
If you haven’t subscribed yet, that also helps. It may not be as much revenue as advertising, but every subscription helps. Not only does it add to revenue, but it also gives potential advertisers an idea of how many people would see their ad in the paper. The more subscribers, the more eyes on their ads, and the more likely they’ll go in the paper. At the end of the day, it’s all about business.
While I’m not going to have a physical copy for May 1, I still want to put out something. So, I will be sharing a link to an E-Edition for this week. This will not be hidden behind a paywall for E-Edition subscribers. It will be free for everyone. Most stories featured in that will be in the May 8 paper.
I will be considering changing my ad rates, too. I don’t want to, but I may need to, depending on how my advertising campaign goes this month. I interviewed someone about their business. I don’t know is she wants to be mentioned by name, but when I interviewed her, one of the things she claimed was a challenge was figuring out how to bid out her work. She wanted to be cheap for her clients while also being fair to herself. I have to start doing that, too.
I’m also hoping to make time for music. Since starting, I’ve not had a ton of time to do music. I’ve participated in the JWP swing show and musical bands, but I haven’t done much else musically. I need to do that to stay sane.
I’m hoping to turn things around here and make a strong comeback. I thought about switching to bi-weekly or even monthly. But I want to keep up with the competition. I know some out there want to see me fail. I don’t want to give them any satisfaction. It’s going to take a lot for me to give up. I’ll do everything I can before I quit this. I love this job and this town way too much to just drop this.
Thanks to everyone’s support. And I apologize for not being there for you all. But instead of saying it, I want to prove it. I love you all, and God bless.
