RVANews, the online news magazine I created with my co-owner and pal Scott Pharr, recently turned five. How crazy is that? Don’t they say that something like 100% of all businesses never last five years?
We’re defying the odds over here.
For the past half decade RVANews has been covering Richmond news in a totally online, totally local way-while staying totally profitable, to boot. We’ve made tons of mistakes and learned 1000 lessons in the process; overall, it’s been a good ride. Here are three of the lessons that I’ve learned:
DON’T SLEEP ON OPPORTUNITY
For really awesome things to happen in your life you’re going to need a little bit of luck-but only a little bit; after that it’s up to you to do something with it. When we started RVANews, it was just a side project.
We’d dabbled in advertising sales for a while, but never really made a serious go of it. Then, out of nowhere, we stumbled across the very best ad salesperson in all of Richmond-while she was looking for a new job. We took a risk and hired her. It was by far the best decision we’ve ever made as a business.
We didn’t apply for round after round of venture capital funding. Our long-term plan for RVANews isn’t to be acquired by Facebook for a billion dollars. We aren’t BFFs with Warren Buffett. We took the bit of luck handed to us (in the form of a totally rock star ad salesperson) and parlayed it into success through a lot of hard work.
JUST ASK A GUY
If you want to do something great, don’t be afraid to get in front of the right person. With the recent explosion of RVA pride, we decided to make and sell some fantastic RVA-branded merch. But first we wanted to get the OK from the fine folks at Venture Richmond, the shepherds of the new RVA logo. Not only did they give us their blessing, they’ve also been great partners and promoters of our efforts.
After a couple months of retail sales (I would have never thought I’d be selling tangible goods, things not made of ones-and-zeros), it’s become a non-trivial income stream. If you never ask, you’ll never know.
IT’S A SMALL WORLD, SO SHAKE EVERYONE’S HAND
People say that Richmond is a small town, and that’s true. But, really, the world’s a small town. You never know how the next person you meet will factor into your life-they could be your next salesperson, investor, or lead developer.
There’s a corollary to this lesson: You gain nothing by acting like a jerk. If the next person you meet has the power to change your life/business for the better, they might have the power to absolutely grind it into the dirt. Why take the risk? Be nice. Don’t talk bad about anyone, not in emails, not on Twitter, not at happy hour, not ever. You’ve got too much to lose.
So there you go-just three out of the 1,000 lessons we’ve learned over the last five years. While we’re still working on learning from 2012’s lessons, we’re excited to see what we can screw up (and learn from) in 2013.