Episode 139 Transcript

Heather Porter (00:03.683)

Well, hello everyone and welcome back to episode 139. Now question for you. Do you try and hang on to things when you know they're not working anymore? Probably sometimes. I mean, I think we all do, right? And I want to tell you a story on when I did that and just kind of how it unfolded. Cause maybe there's something right now you're thinking about for the new year.

 

that you're wondering if you should keep doing it. So hopefully this little story will help. So with my ex business partner, we used to publish an online magazine called Online Footprint. And it was basically around, you know, yeah, your online footprint or your digital footprint. Gosh, I think I'm trying to remember when this last was published. I want to say 10 years ago, nine years ago, probably in that range. But let me just walk through

 

what we had to do to get this thing out there to the world. So first of all, we wrote our own articles and no, we did not have AI as you know, nine, 10 years ago. So we had to write these articles or hire people to write them. We sometimes would interview people that had to be edited and written and put into an article. We also had contributors. That's really where we tried to get a lot of our content from. But even with that, you can imagine

 

A lot of work that goes into that. have to line them up. You have to chase them for the deadlines. You have to get graphics like photos of them, bios, not just their article, right? So you have your interview articles, you have your own articles, you have your contributor articles. We would then have to put all that together. So we'd have a person on our team that would put it together in a flow and have to look it over like an editor.

 

We then would have to design a cover to the magazine that would oftentimes feature the most well-known contributor or person that we interviewed. So typical magazine, right? Where you have like a whole design template and then we'd put the photo of the person on there. Then we'd have to come up with headlines that promoted what was going on inside the magazine. So we not only had that, then not only editing all the content, but then we have an internal design that had to be done.

 

Heather Porter (02:25.487)

So all the articles fit together in the right way. Then from there, we had to have the files converted into a special type of file that it was then uploaded into an app that we created on Apple in order to sell the magazine through, I think it was called Apple Newsstand at the time. Do you guys remember that when back in the day you'd go onto your Apple device and you'd have like newsstand and you could

 

subscribe to like Oprah magazine or any of the different magazines, well-known magazines. Well, our magazine used to be in that as well. So we had it in there. Once it's up, we had to promote it. So then we would have to write emails to send it out to our database. We had our own Facebook page for it. We would have to write social media posts for that page for our other business account. Yeah, a lot, a lot, a lot goes in it. One.

 

per month, we did this one per month. And we try to use this as like a really great positioning tool to sort of show, yeah, we know our stuff in digital marketing and to expand our network because it was a good foot in the door to reach out to contributors. You know, it's funny is that just getting an article from someone where you don't actually talk to them and there's no human touch point other than an email or two, you don't really build a connection. So,

 

the expanding network idea actually didn't really work. Whereas this podcast, I am face to face with people. have conversations with people and it's much more of a, you know, a relationship that's being built. Magazine, not so much. So that didn't really work out for us. And then we basically thought, okay, this is a great positioning concept, maybe to expand our network and we can promote our business as well. We saw it as another marketing channel where we get it out on the newsstand app and

 

People would read it and then maybe do business with our agency at the time. And so we put ads throughout the magazine, our own ads promoting our own services. But what happened? Well, one year of hard work, spending money, time, resources. We loved the idea, but it never got us a client that we were aware of. It didn't really expand our network either. So...

 

Heather Porter (04:52.485)

We were just like hung up on this. We're like, but the concept seems so great. And we sunk in a lot, as you can tell, over a year's time. And we just kept thinking, no, no, no, just hang in there. It will take off. It will take off. So when is that point when you know to stop working on a project or a service or product? When is that point in your business? For us, we had to finally just go, OK.

 

Let's just admit we lost a lot of money, we lost a lot of time, and it really wasn't a good channel or pathway for us to grow our business. We actually had to get out of our egos and out of our big grandiose ideas for this thing and actually face the facts and go, you know what? No, this just didn't work for us. Maybe it have worked for others or other industries or other topics, but for us in this given time in the world, it just didn't end up working for us. I think there's a moment

 

for all of us when you just feel that it's time to stop. And the hardest thing is when you keep pushing through going, no, no, no, it'll work, it'll work. I know this thing will work. But there's a moment when you just have to say, no, it's time. It's time to close doors on whether it's a project or a business or even a friendship, know, something that's going on in your life. And to realize that might have been a lesson more than a success story, right?

 

could just be a lesson to help you learn what you don't want or what you want more of. And just remember that it is okay to stop when something is not working. It's okay to stop. think we are so trained to push, just push, just hustle, get through it, keep going. But ultimately, as you've heard throughout my podcast so far, if you've been listening for a while, the best thing to do is to say no.

 

to more opportunities that come to you and also know when to say no. So here's your permission you guys in 2025 to say no to things that are no longer working for you or your business. It's okay to let them go. Thank you as always for tuning in and I will talk to you next time.