Discussion - Housekeeping - Next Steps

Question is for our Patreons. I believe in direct conversation.

Here is my reality. My wife works as a doctor at a large hospital. Loves her job but the stories of the problems in the American medical system of shrinking budgets, more demands, more hours, and shrinking pay? This is systemwide - not just a nursing issue.

We have a parent company and if you read our Situation Reports you know that - Badon Hill Group, LLC.

Badon Hill Group, LLC was once upon a time Badon Hill Marketing. The name is another story for another time. We got a couple of rentals and my wife started a nursery (plants) and the parent was renamed to "Badon Hill Group LLC" because it was easier to put everything under one umbrella. Additionally, as the marketing side of the house grew, the partnership (from a legal standpoint) didn't make sense anymore - too much legal exposure.

During the protests in Seattle in 2020, the Seattle Police were actively targeting members of the media. I am going to beg of you, before you cancel your subscription or flame in the comments, "well there were riots going on," to remember - the truth matters.

I was there. I was there almost every day and the camera doesn't lie. I wasn't there on July 25 when things got as bad as it could get - including the arrest and detention of foreign reporters (literally international incident with a reporter from the UK Independent). Keep reading.

On August 10, the federal courts defined what a journalist is in the eyes of the court. Seattle Police argued that people were holding cell phones, claiming to be a journalist while rioting and attacking the police. Full stop - the best disinformation is rooted in truth because it is harder to disprove. The Seattle Police were partially correct in this allegation, but were grossly overstating the actions of what I call "activist journalists."

Full stop part two. Activist journalists fall into two groups. Those that push the line - have a crystal clear agenda, but don't move into the realm of protest organizers or get involved in direct action. In my eyes, that's still a journalist. Then there are those that cross those lines. As soon as you lead a march, or kick over a trash can - you've crossed the line and you're not a journalist. That's why I say there is some truth.

Now that you have all that background, based on the federal court decision, Malcontent News got pulled under Badon Hill Group LLC for legal reasons. It provided a huge shield for us and enabled us to provide more coverage. It also was a good move because on September 7, 2020, I was doxxed by the President of the Seattle Police Union (that's a whole different story) and had the immediate support of the Puget Sound journalism community. 

Where am I at now?

Exhausted - with too many balls in the air - but closer to where I really want to be.

So what am I doing?

I'm negotiating with some of my marketing clients to step back, reduce hours, refusing work, and jettisoning some clients. I'm making more time to focus on - news.

My wife, who runs the nursery side of the house has invested a lot of money into it and things are in a state of flux. She's good at it, loves it, but like me, it has reached a point that this is a fulltime second job and she too is - exhausted.

Where do I want to get?

I want out of the marketing. 100% - out. Full confession, I've just seen too much at this point. As "woke" as this is going to sound, my eyes are opened up to the real issues of the world - and there are big problems. It just feels outright dystopian to be writing about some amazing product/service buy this - then transition to the side of our work you see.

Here is our plan for Badon Hill Group, LLC

1) Continue to do video recording and editing opportunistically. We're extremely good at video editing and fast and we're a bit crazy because we like doing it. A lot of people hate doing it because of the client, "hey can we edit these five frames because that transition is a little wonky," but we love that stuff. Weird I know. We are also extremely capable of doing virtual events. Anyone who has used us has been blown away. We'll continue that opportunistically.

2) Expand the nursery - we have a plan and the capital. We're going to hire someone to help the wife and we have a really good plan here.

3) Hire a business manager - we're drowning in this stuff - the whole LLC side of the house is drowning. From the board, to the bookkeeper, to us, to the fact checkers, to the mods/admins on the social media sites. What is killing us is things like invoicing (so behind) and the back of the house. There is no time to focus on it, time to bring someone in.

4) Move to doing news fulltime, grow the channel, execute on the bigger plan. Item 3 has us stuck on things like podcasts and returning to in-studio shows. We have amazing people asking US to do interviews and we have no capacity. AMAZING people. And the thing is I know it is so important to do because if you get a big name, you generally get more big names and more eyeballs. Time, time, time.

So how do we get here - which leads to the question.

We lost 10% of our Patreons from May to June. There is always a drop (and the number will go up a bit). Some of that is credit cards that expired etc. etc. and people just need to update their payment info. But we did have our biggest percentage and the total number of Patreons say - "no thanks."

That's created a bit of panic in me personally - if I'm getting ready to bet the farm, I need to understand what we need to do better. If the answer is you just need to focus on Ukraine you need to realize at some point the war is going to end. If we are a single subject news source that's a recipe for complete failure. People will get bored with the war (already happening) and the war will end. Then what?

Preaching to the choir back of the envelope math. If 1% of our social following across all channels became Patreons - I could quit every other extracurricular activity tomorrow. I mean do I have addictions of food, clothing, and shelter after all. The number is actually even lower than that - it's about 7/10 of 1%. No - don't increase your subscriptions - that's not the ask here. But advancing to around 1900 to 2000 Patreons would be game-changing. By the way, that may sound easy but the fact is less than 700 creators on the Patreon system have 2000 or more subscribers!

Here is what I know - if we got to that point we could go back to doing 3 studio shows a week at a set time with prepared stories, and we could reboot the completely neglected website (we're in the process of that right now). We could get the podcast going. We could podcast the studio shows by handing them off to post-production editing. All of that activity gets more eyeballs - off to the races. More eyeballs, more subscribers, more stories, more coverage.

Long ass transparency post - so what can we do better - looking for constructive feedback. The personal challenge I'm facing is this has moved to a place where it is a fulltime job, on top of the fulltime job, but I can't get rid of the fulltime job I want to get rid of because I need to eat. I know that the fulltime job I want to do could become the fulltime job - but I need to understand what's going with the sudden attrition to make an informed decision.

We've basically won our legal fight with TikTok (now that I've written that we'll have 3 videos taken down tomorrow). Things have gotten MUCH better, and now we're in a place where - I barely have time to do TikToks - oh the irony!

So - let me have it in the comments.