Hey, what’s going on? Welcome to the Doug Show. I’m Doug Cunnington, and this, episode will represent, part of a series. Hopefully I’ll do a few of these, but I’m chatting with Lauren Hunter today, who was on the show about three years ago, back in 2022 to share a story of an exit. Uh, she sold a blog in 2021, and today we’re kind of gonna talk about when to throw in the towel on projects, whether it’s a blog, and we will specifically talk about some of the projects that Lauren has been working on over the last few years in different I guess, business models and things that she has been working on.
And we’ll just have a, just kind of a frank conversation about when to stop working on a project slash um, some of our cognitive biases around sunk costs. And then there’s so many biases, but Lauren, how’s it going today?
Hey, it’s going great. I’m happy to be here. I love your show. I love the honesty that comes through in all your episodes.
Uh, I think that is so refreshing. Whereas many, many shows, you know, are edited down and uh, sort of squeezed out, um, you know, just the high level. I really love the undercurrent undertone of, Hey, we’re getting at truth here. We’re getting at what’s really shaking, what, what’s really going on. So I appreciate that about you, Doug.
Thank you. I appreciate that. And, um, you listen to the show some as people that are listening and watching now. But yeah, over the last few months as I’ve tried to find my footing, it’s interesting ’cause I was like, ah, should I continue on with the show? And I heard from many, many people that said yes, and they liked it for certain reasons.
And actually some of the shows where I was like, I don’t know what I’m gonna talk about or what I’m gonna be doing, those were the most popular in the last few months. So, yeah, it’s like, see, that’s
what I’m talking about. It’s
weird
being, being able to say like, I’m not sure. Like, I don’t know. And that’s why, that’s why I emailed you and I was like, Hey, you’re kind of asking the same questions that I’m asking, like, when should I quit?
When should I pivot? Um, you know, I had a, a wise, uh, business coach a bunch of years back, and she said, there’s always three options. There’s, uh, doing things the same way, there’s doing things differently, making some changes or edits or improving, and then there’s quitting. I had a really difficult client at that point.
I was doing, um, public relations consulting, and it was my first client that kicked off my consulting business. And they, I had been with them, they had been with me five and a half years. And it was my boss from the previous company that went over to this company. And so we sort of started out with maybe a not great client relationship and he would just push me and push me and push me and was never satisfied.
And never happy. So I met with this coach about that and she was like, well, you can quit. When I heard her say, you could quit or you could cancel, I was like, oh, the angels were singing. The light bulb went on. I was like, that’s what I need to do. And at five and a half years I said, I sent an email and said, I’m so sorry, but I’m making a pivot and it no longer includes you as a client.
Um, and we parted ways and, you know, have kept a good relationship. But, uh, I think there’s, there’s a lot of factors to, um, quitting that can be positive and. Um, helpful. It doesn’t have to be like, uh, quiet, quitting or like running out on somebody or leaving people high and dry. It really can be kind of planned and calculated and maybe like, just like you exit a business or a blog, um, it could be a 30 day exit or two week notice, or, or, or an alternate, which if you’re running a niche blog, um, like I am, like you do, um, you can alter your strategy plan.
Um, in our pre-talk you said try less hard. I was like, oh yeah, I love that one. Try less hard. The older you get, um, the better you can achieve. Trying, trying less hard, right? You hit 40, you’re like, man, I need to do some things less than I’m doing right now. Um, so that’s an option too, is like, um, maybe don’t blog as much as frequently.
Maybe switch your email. Like, I have a weekly email, um, and maybe it’s biweekly or maybe it’s monthly. Um, not sure. So what do you think about. That try less hard bit.
Sure. Before I try to answer that question, which uh, I probably won’t have a super solid answer for, I do wanna talk about the blog that you sold and you don’t have to reveal it unless you want to or anything like that, but you had a six figure exit, which is super cool.
This was back in 2021, uh, sort of the end of the glory days. And that, I mean, that’s a thing that people
end of the glory days. I love that. It’s true. It’s true. A
different time. Yeah. So.
Yeah, so, um, so the PR work that I mentioned, the clients that I had was in this, um, niche of its own called church technology.
So within like, um, Catholic and Christian, like Protestant, Christian and Catholic space as you know, like we could give the youngins here like a, a quick primer on the beginnings of, uh, SaaS software and websites. And then, you know, down the road you have, uh, live streaming. But at the beginning of all of that, like early two thousands, mid two thousands, like online giving became a thing.
Uh, everyone having a website became a thing and then software delivered over the cloud became a thing. So there was software previous, and this client that I’d had for so long had was the first in the industry making database software. It’s like basically membership management database software for churches to, to manage all their people and their baptisms and.
You know, all the, all the things that churches manage. And so, um, it was in that niche, um, that I got into doing PR work from a company that I worked at. Um, pivoted to PR work as a consultant. And then, um, what happened? So public relations is basically you’re trying to give the media stories. You’re, you’re pitching them stories, you’re bringing up things that should be, you know, you want them to cover.
You want third party verification through, through the media that included, um, radio, tv, print, and now you add digital. And so digital started taking over. Um, you know, web stats were much more measurable than a magazine. Um, and so you had this whole debacle in the industry of magazines that would cover, and there were, um, trade magazines in this industry, a bunch of them.
So I would often write, um, articles on behalf of my clients for these trade magazines. They all started dying off. And all of a sudden I have nobody to pitch, nobody to write for. So one of my clients said, Hey, why don’t you start your own blog, uh, in this niche? And so that’s what I did. It was, um, church tech today, altogether.com.
Um, and I basically built, um, the number one church technology website for information focused at pastors and church leaders. So it was a really, really good niche. Little asterisk here. For those of you listening, um, choosing your niche is like the most important thing. Um, and I sort of accidentally chose that because that’s kind of, I was in high tech pr, pivoted to church tech PR pivoted to that niche.
I didn’t go do a survey and look at dog sites and, you know, lawn equipment and, and then choose this out of the blue. It was like born out of the work that I did. So, um, that was great. Um, I did all direct ads, um, at that point. Revenue from just having ads, except if you had millions and millions of page views, um, you know, wasn’t enough.
So, because it was such a slim niche, I was able to go to all these companies, um, directly to their marketing directors, and I put a media kit together and sold banner ads and e-blasts and, um, I had a web designer slash marketing guy who, uh, did my, we wrote free eBooks, did lead magnets and built, grew the list to maybe 20,000.
Then I bought another, uh, magazine that went under. They, they sold me their website. Um, I added their list of 15 or 20,000 people to my list. The list was a huge thing. I mean, you could sell an e-blast for like two or $3,000 to that many people. Wow. Yeah. So I would send one or two a week. Plus the ad revenue and I put packages together.
And then over the years I started like selling to only three months at a time, like a 90 day agreement. No one offs. Like, oh, I wanna put one banner up for $250 a month. Like, I stopped allowing that ’cause I had bigger fish. Kind of grew it from there and, um, took that consulting bit kind of into that advertorial, um, uh, relationship.
Maybe that’s not the right word. But, uh, that was all a piece of what I did. And then I had, you know, grit because of being in that industry and kind of got known, um, through that. So, um, I built it up, but, but I, I learned about myself that, um, I’m really not the type of person to run one business for 14 years.
I need a lot of change, and I need like, a lot of things to grow and pivot and change. Multipotentialite, if you’ve ever heard that term, it’s kinda like some Renaissance person who does 4, 5, 6 different things. So I’m a musician, I’m a writer. I wanted to author books, I wanna do all these other things. So, um, probably about half of the time I ran that business, I was trying to get it ready to sell and I had conversations and networking and, um, did all different things to try to, um, make it alluring to sell.
And even went through some of the initial conversations with some of those, um, organizations that were interested. Um, and then when COVID happened, um, I’d put it on Flippa. I’d had a ton of Flippa, um, meet and greets on Zoom, and some low offers and some weird offers. As you’ll get on a giant marketplace like that.
And then I ended up going back to one of the companies that was in my industry and I said, Hey guys, I, I had an offer for the amount that I wanted to get. And I went back to them and I said, Hey guys, I know we, we um, we got to an initial stage and then called it quits once before. And so I went back to them and said, Hey guys, here I am, uh, any chance you guys are interested, here’s my number.
And it went forward from there.
Perfect. And that’s great ’cause it had like a real valuation, real market value and that, I mean, that’s the best leverage you can get.
Totally. It’s like your job, it’s like you go in, you get an offer outside of your company for $25,000 more a year, you go to your boss. I had already done that in my, my day job before that.
20 something years old. I knew the game. So, um, so it worked. It worked. Uh, it was a, it was a very stressful, um, 30 days though to turn everything over. They had lots and lots of demands and it was exhausting. And I thought, I may never have this energy again. To have ramped things up and have contractors, and have SOPs and have all of the things that you need to sell a business.
Um, it’s an asset sale, but really it’s a business. Um, and so you download and they wanted me to like handhold their sales person and handshake a million different clients, a million different, um, adver, you know, like 30 different advertisers. They, I, so I did all of these calls and then they ended up just kind of running it into the ground, which was super sad.
Um, and, and then they sold it to somebody else who’s doing a great job now. Okay. But COVID, you know, COVID, I, I saw the writing on the wall and I was like, things are going to change. People are not gonna spend the church industry, um. Giving was down, churches were closed. It was really hard. And I like saw, I saw it coming and I got out before, uh, I got out while again was good, so.
Gotcha.
Okay. So after that, uh, you had a good exit, you made it through the transition, all that stuff. We went to Disneyland. Yes. And then, so Perfect. So what happens next? So we were still coming off of COVID. Things were a little funny. Um, the industry was changing and I mean, probably by the time we chatted in 2022, like, uh, you could still probably start a site and get some traffic, but things changed rapidly within the next mm-hmm.
Year and then the following year. And of course now it’s a completely different landscape. So what have you been working on? And I’ll let you hit some bullet points and then we can dive, I’ll hit
bullet. Um, so I, I did a few different courses, um, including like all of your stuff and a few others, you know, that you’ll know, um, that I won’t mention.
But, uh, just kind of like, I felt like I needed to get more education before I started another site, um, because I didn’t wanna do direct ad sales. So I, I guess maybe it’s like, why wouldn’t I just repeat what worked? Um, and, and, but I, I sort of had a distaste in my mouth, like, I really don’t love sales. I mean, it is essential pretty much for any business anywhere, but I didn’t wanna do it the same way.
Um, you know, entrepreneurs are kind of hardheaded sometimes they get an idea in their minds like, oh, I’m gonna do this and I’m gonna do it until it succeeds. And then you’re like, wow, it’s been five years. Should I keep doing it? ’cause I haven’t succeeded yet. And I think that. Maybe it’s like hubris, um, to pull a literary term.
It’s like your, uh, your, uh, greatest strength is your greatest weakness sometimes. So I, um, I had discovered this just a tiny bit of backstory, how I picked the next niche. Um, but I, um, around the age of 40, I had come across Dr. Elaine Aaron’s work on the Highly Sensitive Person, which is a personality trait that was researched by, um, Dr.
Aaron and her husband, Dr. Dr. Aaron. Um, they were both, um, psychologists and researchers. And so they had done like 30 years of research on, um, this trait of sensitivity, which, um. Evidence suggests that it’s like 15 to 30% of of people have like, um, more depth of processing, more, um, mirror neurons in their brain, more, um, awareness of social and emotional situations.
Often they’re called empaths. It’s like another term that’s a little more like new agey. Um, but the people who are, um, sensing, um, more than judging if you wanna look at Myers-Briggs, um, and often are, uh, introverted. Uh, so anyway, I’d come across this book if you wanna look it up. It’s the highly sensitive person is the seminal work.
And then there’s several other books on children and marriage and love and things like that that they’ve, uh, published. So I, um, I often will look back to, to look ahead, which, you know, that sign. Have you seen that sign where it’s like an arrow and it’s like, don’t look back. I don’t know. There was one in my yoga studio and I was like, don’t look back.
Whatcha talking about like, you need to look back to look ahead. So I, I keep, at that point I was using Evernote and I have. Thousands of notes. Um, and they’re super categorized in like folders about all different topics. And I had created this spreadsheet and one of the ideas I had was to write a blog about this HSP trait, highly sensitive person.
And so I made this spreadsheet. I had a bunch of other ideas. We had Australian Shepherd at that time. I was like, maybe I need an Australian Shepherd blog. There was somebody doing that already that seemed to be doing a good job. There was also a highly sensitive person blog that was doing a really good job.
And I was like, maybe I can do better or maybe I can do different. Um, and so, um, when I went back looking at my chart and then looking through all of my Evernotes, I mean I had like over a hundred notes about sensitivity and my relationship to that. And um, you know, you can’t. Really exist in the blogging space if you’re not somebody who has a bunch of ideas for articles.
’cause that’s like, pretty much 90% of it is thinking up different ideas unless you’re getting it all from keywords, which you can also do. Uh, so, uh, so anyway, that’s, uh, hs p journey.com was born. So that was pretty much right away. 2021. Um, I think September was like the first blog post. So, um, I am a slow and steady kind of person, so I am, I’m not one to write a hundred posts like overnight and kick all of them out.
So I, I just say gonna do, um, Monday and Wednesday, um, or or two in one. I did two in one. Liketu Monday to Tuesday, and then sent an email newsletter Wednesday with both, um, got a lead mag magnet up on the site. Um, started growing the list. Um, but it was a lot slower. Uh, and the traffic was up before the email lit.
The email list still isn’t great. Um, so some of the questions I’ve been asking through that process are, um, you know, am I eventually going to run out of things that I care about writing about? Um, I do, uh, use guest writers. So I, I, um, I’m good at networking and I built a list and I, you know, go off Instagram and invite people to guest write.
And I, I haven’t yet been able to pay people like I used to with my old site. Um, so I just pay them in link and marketing value, make sure they have a bio, make sure they have some links in the, uh, the text that go back to them. Um, and then I realized I was going to, if I didn’t wanna sell direct ads, I was gonna have to get on a network first.
I did Google ads, um, which is like chunk change. And then. Um, Mediavine, um, announced their Grow by journey or Journey Grow. I don’t know why they have two names for it. I just call it Grow. Um, but it’s their like lower tier. Um, and so I got on that and now have, again, not impressive revenue. It’s like $75 a month or something of revenue.
Um, but the, the trick I feel like of niche blogging is, um, you know, picking a niche that’s wide enough, you’re gonna get enough traffic if you’re gonna try to get ad revenue, which it’s, it’s already maybe not great, even if you have half a million page views a month. I have like 30,000 page views a month.
So that’s been a challenge. And then going direct for ads, I did put a media kit together. I have done some of that, but it’s like you’re talking about personality stuff. So it’s who are the, you know, spas, um, resorts, like the money just isn’t there to spend on direct advertising in the same way that it was in a tech space.
Sure. Interesting. one of the topics we wanna cover here is like when to throw in the towel. And I think if I, um, understand correctly, you would like some of my opinions, right? Like what? Yeah. How I might Well, so here’s, yeah.
Can I, uh, I just wanna tell you one more thing. Sure. So one of the people that I came across, um, was the Nickerson Institute and they had a coaching certification for, um, like around this highly sensitive person.
So I had thought about life coaching or, um, entrepreneur coaching. Um, and I, and then I did publish two books and, um, somebody kept breaking down my door to book, do book coaching with them. So I developed a book coaching. So anyway, the sensitivity certification, I was an affiliate for them and it was like a third of the cost to do their certification.
So I went ahead and did that and I thought, okay, if I don’t wanna sell ads directly and I am interested in coaching. Then, uh, I might as well get the certification and just go the coach route. Where the site is, is bringing in, um, new potential coaching clients. And so that, that was starting to work. But now all of a sudden, and I think it could be economics of the current state of things, people trim.
Typically when they’re trimming their budget and you’re talking business to consumer, they’re trimming, um, eating out, they’re trimming, coaching, they’re trimming, beautification, like nails, hair waxing, um, you know, because groceries are like 30% more, you know, the basics cost more. Yep. So anyway, I have a few coaching clients, but it sorta ramped up and then it dropped off and I decided to pivot in another direction, which we can talk about later.
Go ahead with your,
okay, so question one of, maybe this is a, a coaching. Thing that you learned since you went through your certification? So if you were giving someone advice, someone that you were coaching, right? They said, eh, I think I wanna try to start a blog and work online, what would you tell them?
Hmm. Um, I would say, don’t quit your day job. Same thing with becoming an author. Like authors don’t make, um, I do make some money every month from my two books, um, but you need a lot more, a lot more. You need a lot more. So especially when you’re starting out, you’re not gonna come out of the gate charging more than a therapist makes.
Um, and so people are going to, uh, look at that and I know that that can be delicate. There’s also, um, a bit of performance around it, and I think that holds me back a little bit. Um, but, you know, being visible, doing webinars, doing, uh, reels, doing. YouTube content, which I, I did do that. I would record a YouTube with a guest writer for every post.
And, um, those were good. But again, you know, you, you’ve been at YouTube a long time. Everything takes a lot of devoted time and energy to get your stats up. And then even then they got a hundred thousand people watching still not bringing in a lot of revenue. So, um, every other day somebody says to me, either says to me, I wanna start a podcast, or says, you should start a podcast.
I’m gonna kick the question back to you. What do you tell them? Um, I know what I say. What do you tell them about a podcast? Starting a podcast?
Yeah. It, it is, it’s great. Actually. I was just helping someone the other day and I think they, like, at this point I’ve talked about podcasting with other people already.
So I’m like, Hey, check out these interviews, which are a few hours, but, but generally it’s like. Yeah, it’s gonna take longer than you think. Each episode, the planning, the technology and whatever little thing you think is fairly simple, it’s probably a little bit harder than that. It might actually be simple, but the learning curve is, uh, pretty steep when you put everything together.
And then to your point, as far as like earning money, you can earn some money, but probably not anything close to what you’re thinking. Like you have to be one of the very top podcasters, which I mean, if you look through the list, uh, like the top list, it’s not that many. Yeah. It’s like not
that many that are making, there’s
dozens of them.
There’s, there’s different, uh, categories and stuff. But, but as I, like, I, I’m, I have some other friends that are podcasters and, um, one, I won’t mention this show specifically, but the point is I think he and I have like similar. Um, stats and he was starting to do more ads and I, I was like, these ads kind of suck.
Like I don’t think it fits with what he believes or whatever, but he is part of a, a network, so I think he has to run, he has to run the ads. So he is doing live reads and some other stuff, and I think he said he’s making it, it must be about 800 bucks a month. And I’m like, you’re doing like five minutes of ads and you do some in the beginning, in the middle and the end.
And I’m like, what are you doing dude? Like, it’s not even like the guy doesn’t really need the money. I’m like, why is he even doing these ads? Like, he’s better off doing ’em for free instead of doing dumb ads. So anyway, the point being, um, not that I have a huge show, but like the one that I’m talking about, mile Hi-Fi, um, yeah, you know, it’s getting, um, probably.
Five to 7,000 downloads per episode, roughly. If you include YouTube and um, the audio side, there’s more on the audio side. So anyway, the point is it’s not as much as you think. So, um, at this point, so like you, you, you do have like the niches that you’re interested in and things that you spent time on, and there’s topics which you have vetted.
So you mentioned like, um, other platforms where you’re putting the content and I think, I mean, that’s where things have moved, right? So things move from blogs into essentially social media or YouTube content, which is perhaps a blend of the two. So for Jen, you know, like Pinterest is Sure. Yeah. So have you been able to pivot or is is that a route where you’re like, I’m actually interested?
Yeah, I think
I’m asking the questions because social media takes a lot of energy. Um. For me anyway. Um, any ask anyone who’s more on the introvert side and social media is like, oh, you know, you have to do it. Um, but you sort of despise it. Um, and I don’t know if you fall into that category, but it’s a necessary evil.
And I, I always tell younger people, I have a teen and young adult kids and I mean, they have no clue. I’m like, I have been at social media. I’ve been working at social media, but since before you were born, you know what I mean? And they’re like, oh mom, you don’t know how to do Instagram. I was like, I’ve been on Instagram since you were two.
You know? Um, so that’s always funny. But I say, uh, social media is fun unless it’s part of your job. Makes sense. And then’s kind of makes sense. Yeah. Kind of not fun. Um, but being able to whittle down. So I’ve had Facebook pages for, uh, HS. P Journey. I have another little site that I bought along the way called Earn It save it.com, which I thought was a great domain name.
Um. And I’ve since realized that personal finance is like a nut that maybe is not crackable at the moment. Um, yeah. So anyway, um, I have Facebook pages and for my author, like I have an author Facebook page and Facebook makes it very tricky to even like, delete your, your page. Like I, I could have sworn I spent a whole afternoon deleting, turning it off, saying like, don’t make it public, don’t want it.
And nope, I’m still getting views. It’ll tell me like, I’m getting 200 views to my author page. I’m like, who is on this page? I haven’t updated it in forever. Like, what are they looking at? Um, so that’s a question too. And then what to do if you decide, I no longer want my, um, Facebook business page, but I have 86 people, I think I have 86 people for HSP journeys.
What can I do with those people? Can I send them a message and invite them to join my email list, for instance? Sure. I could do that. Um, I could, uh, let them know and I already did go through. I think I have a group. And I have a page. So the group, uh, I did schedule some posts there and I, I think that one of the biggest challenges in life and with blogging as a microcosm of life is that you have, even amongst one type of business, you have literally 30 different things you need to be doing or you could be doing.
And so knowing where to focus, knowing where to find your people, knowing how to, um, spend your time. Because what can happen, right? I have a friend who’s struggling with her, um, lead magnet and download, well, she has spent the last two weeks working on this. And I’m like, why would you spend two weeks on this?
Like, you’ve lost so much. You could be doing so many other things, right? Or hire somebody for an hour and they can do this for you. Uh, and so knowing where to put your time, where, where to put, uh, what basket to put your eggs in. I think that, how, how do you go through that process with what you do? Have you done that well?
Um.
That’s a, it’s a great question. I’m sticking it
to you.
Yeah. Yeah. When we were doing, we were chatting before we hit record and overall I was talking about how I do very little work now. Mostly it’s like re recording these interviews and some very light emailing. So that said, so right now my chops of prioritizing and figuring out like where to spend time, it’s, um, it’s either so honed and refined right now that I’m only doing like the bare minimum or it’s so atrophied that I’m only doing the bare minimum.
I’m not sure which one, but I’m not doing very much right now. Um, so it really is like I’m publishing shows and I’m spending time, uh, writing back certain emails, but I ignore a ton. I ignore much more now. Sure. Um, all that to say in the past, I was very good. With figuring out what to work on. I think now, in hindsight, and I’m 12 years, uh, wiser than I was when I first got started, I probably just got lucky.
I think I did a whole bunch of stuff. Like to your point, you’re like, I wanna be working on a bunch of things. I had a full-time job at the time and I was probably putting in anywhere from eight to 12 hours a um, a day during a normal workday. And I was working on my own projects. I was over caffeinated, waking up too early and not getting enough sleep.
So like I was, I, I was, I was running, um, hotter than I am now, but I was also younger, so I actually like, literally had more energy. Yeah, totally. You know what I’m talking about. So like, totally get it. Yeah. So some people like you just get a little more tired, you wanna sleep more, there’s other stuff you wanna worry about.
Um, all that to say. It’s really hard to figure out what you need to work on. And it might only be in hindsight where you’re like, oh yeah, I spent time on the right thing. So unfulfilling answer the, the one other thing I’ll, I’ll mention, I’m gonna write that down. Unfulfilling answer.
Yeah, I was gonna say like, deadlines.
So like giving yourself, um, 90 days or giving yourself six months and finish what you’re gonna say if you can remember what you’re gonna say.
I’ll just jump to that. That that’s a great way to look at it, where you’re like, I will give myself an appropriate amount of time, which might be something you just have to figure out and arbitrarily decide something, right?
Because like you could ask around and try to hear what other people have mentioned, but maybe you don’t have anyone to ask that has enough experience to give you like a real answer. So you might just have to arbitrarily say that. Yeah, 90 days. I’ll give it a good, good run because what’ll
happen, right?
What’ll happen is time keeps on slipping, fill in the blank into the future, right?
Okay. No, Steve Miller fan. Yep. Fans. Um, so time just keeps going and you’re busy and you’re thinking about what you’re gonna make for dinner, and you’re planning a trip and then your dog gets sick, and then your kids need something and then you, and six months, another six months goes by and you’re like, oh, I really should evaluate, like, my efforts.
Like why am I, am I doing things the same? And, um, I don’t know, better entre. I, I, I’ve been an exhausted, uh, PTSD post stress. Entrepreneur. So I’m like, I’m just gonna relax. I’m just gonna do it at my pace. This is my goal to do one post. I shift it down one post a month or one post a week and one email. And if I do it between Tuesday and Thursday, that works for me.
I get it out. But I, I lowered the stress level on myself ’cause I have other things that I’m doing now. And, um, and that works. But also then you need, do, need to periodically ask just like your workout routine or what you’re eating, you know, you’re trying to eat better ’cause you have some gut symptoms and you keep eating the same thing.
You know, that’s the definition of insanity. Doing the same thing, expecting different results. So I don’t wanna slip into that. Um, uh, that would happen with the old site church tech today. And then, you know, I’m a person of faith, so I’d be like, God, please send me, send me some encouragement. Like help me know that I’m, I should still be doing this.
’cause I wanted to quit so many times, even though it was good, even though it provided income, I was. Worn out, I was burnt out. Um, and inevitably I’d get an email, like a random email from somebody saying, Hey, your site really helped me. This article was super helpful. I just wanna say thank you. And so then I would keep going.
Okay. Yeah. So one, one other like, observation and, and that I hope it kind of fits in. Please, please. The, um, when I started working on, uh, different kinds of websites, or actually you could generalize it more, um, to other hobbies and stuff, which I’ll give examples. But basically when I started something that I, that I was eventually successful with, usually got started pretty quick and it didn’t mm-hmm.
It didn’t feel like as much effort. Now that’s not, this is a fine line, right? ’cause like sometimes you have to put in the time and mm-hmm. You have to spend. Hours and weeks and months, and you have to really put in the effort, but often you’ll have some quick wins and or mm-hmm. It feels more natural to your personality to work on this so it doesn’t feel as bad.
And there was a time, like when you and I started blogging, uh, many years ago, like you could get traction a little bit more quickly, and then towards the end of the glory days, as I mentioned mm-hmm. It would take, um, you know, six months to get a, you know, a dozen people on your site. And then it would take a year.
And then people were like, just need to like, work with no positive results for two years, which is a really long time. And that is a really long time and, and like eventually that stopped working. And there could be other stuff, right? I mean,
the plateau is another thing to note and what to do when you hit the plateau.
Um, and that will happen probably in any given niche, but, um, it happened with Church Tech today and that was definitely a sign. And then you have to rejigger things like clean your email list. You have to go through and update your content. There’s all these things that you can do. And if you still don’t see a boost, you also, and I, I, I think it was a number of years, I had a COVID like surge because people were trying to figure out how to live stream and had a ton of live streaming articles.
But as soon as that kind of tapered back down to the regular plateau, I was like, yep, it’s time to go. Um, and so with HSP journey, um, I did see a lot of traction. Um, I was measuring things more closely. Um, definitely like maybe 15, 20% increase week over week. That was really good. Um, and, and now, um. Um, I feel like it’s been plateaued for a little bit, and so, uh, that’s why I’m asking the question.
Um, and then I’m thinking how, how can I streamline in terms of fewer social sites that I, I use a software called Co-Schedule Marketing Calendar, um, which is, which is great, but I also feel like I want less overall. I want less. I want simplicity. I want less. I know you come from project management. Like I, I downloaded, um, Clickup and got a free account.
I’m like, God, this is complicated. Like, there’s so many, I mean, it’s great. I’m sure it’s great. A ton of bloggers are using it. Um, but I’m like, man, I’m just a zone where I don’t want all of that complexity. I don’t want 10 sub tasks related to a project. Like I want simplification. I want. Um, I don’t want contractors, I just wanna be solo.
So do I need project management software? I could just write it down a piece of paper. Actually I use Evernote or, uh, OneNote and I just put a big, I trans moved all the tasks over to a big list. Um, so that’s where another side question is maybe those three things you can choose, um, you know, to quit, to pivot or to keep things the same.
The pivot or the change. That’s where maybe a phase prior to quitting for me personally, um, is, uh, the streamlining and the simplifying. So that’s where I was, I was considering okay, maybe, um, maybe I can go down to just two articles a month. ’cause I’m, I’m, I think I’m nearing 200. So that 100 marks super important.
And then after that, you know, maybe 200, but often the plateau hits and the traffic is coming in. And it doesn’t really make a whole big difference if you’re publishing daily, weekly, um, monthly. Definitely. Do you, do you concur with that when you get to that plateau and the traffic is coming?
I don’t know anymore.
Yeah. You don’t know anymore. Okay. Yeah,
so that’s been my experience. That’s been my experience that, ’cause I had a bunch of health stuff happen in the last couple years too, and I skipped a few and I started going through old posts and re republishing them. Um, so checking to make sure the content’s all fresh, making sure my coaching blurb is in there.
And then, um, and I have a coaching ask, like with a picture, um, in every blog post in a free intro call link. Um, and so that’s also a little bit of like playfulness, curiosity, experimentation. Like, okay, I’m gonna pivot. I wanna see, I’m gonna watch the traffic every day for 30 days and I’m gonna publish. X times instead of X times, and I’m gonna see if there’s any traffic difference.
So that’s interesting because then if I wanna keep the leads coming in for coaching, but I’m not making this a primary business, I really only spend, I wanna spend five hours or less a month on this and just keep it running. If it generates a couple, you know, $500 or less of income, okay, maybe I’ll keep it.
Okay. I’ll just run it five hours a month. I won’t try to sell it ’cause I could try to sell it to another coach in the niche.
Interesting.
Okay.
So in the beginning of that, and you could reel me back in, so in the beginning of that, you were essentially, you were talking another way to state it, you know, the pivot would be a change in scope, so mm-hmm.
You do a little bit less, but you, you continue doing it. And, um, I think I’ve heard, uh. Um, James Clear, maybe talk about it in Atomic Habits and or interviews. And he’s not the first person to, to say, oh, you can change the scope, but like if you want to go to the gym, but you’re like, I don’t really feel like going to the gym instead of doing a normal workout, let’s say you didn’t get enough sleep, still go to the gym.
But instead of a 45 minute or an hour workout, just do like 15 minutes and then you still have some reps in and you have the habit and all that stuff. Yes. So it adheres. I, so I think that is a fine way to do it. And like you said, you could test what’s going on, but I’ll tell a side story. Earlier this year I had a blog, like the last one that I created, and this was back in 2020 and it grew up and it started getting more traffic over the years, but then it sort of tapered.
Tapered off and I stopped spending time on it probably in 2023 when things were changing and I was putting a decent amount of effort, uh, like I was mentioning before, put a decent amount of effort for, um, several months and got good traction, but then different updates hit it. But I was still putting in, um, I had a few editors working on it.
I was still adding content, improving it, all the things we used to do in those days, and no results. Nothing was happening. So I, I pulled the plug. I was like, we’re not doing any work on it. A few months ago in 2025, the, uh, the hosting was up for renewal and so was the domain name. I was still making, I don’t know, say $50 a month, give or take.
So there was some intrinsic value. There was traffic. I could have tried to sell it, I could have tried to do something with it, but I didn’t wanna put any effort in. So this is like. I just quit. I turned it off. I didn’t renew. Okay. Um, it’s, it’s gone. And yeah, some people are probably like, you’re an idiot, Doug.
You could have sold it for a few thousand dollars or whatever. Yeah, a thousand dollars. But I would still have to spend,
how much trouble would it be? Exactly.
So I’m like, okay, I can get a couple thousand dollars, but it’s going to, let’s say it’ll take me 20 hours total to like do transfers and negotiate and this other thing.
And I’m like, I don’t wanna do any of that. This is not worth it to me at all. And everyone has to draw their own, um, time, value of money and expected value and effort in what you wanna work on and all that stuff. I didn’t wanna do any at, at all, so I just threw it away. I’m not saying you need to do that, but if you, if you’re like, I don’t wanna do, um, some of the social media stuff, there’s too much complexity.
Yeah. You could just change it to whatever you want. ’cause it at some point. You don’t like, if you know how you wanna run things, then you could just change it to that. Yeah. And make the constraints your own instead of like, Hey, this is a great, I don’t even know what Clickup is. Isn’t that correct? I don’t, I’ve never That’s awesome.
That’s awesome. But I don’t know what, it’s
Asana. Asana you probably used, um, oh yeah. I used Asana for a bit. ’cause my contractor was, was on that. They’re all annoying and Co-Schedule is great. It’s tied, it’s more for bloggers who are, you know, it’s tied to your WordPress post. So that’s what keeps me there.
And I’m an affiliate and I, they give a fabulous 50% discount if you keep the review up on your website. So every year I update the review and get 50% off, but it’s still three $50 a year, 50% off for the single license. Um, yeah. So it’s still like a big chunk of money. So I, I don’t know, I’m just, I’m in a phase where I wanna simplify and streamline because I’m, I’m doing something totally different.
To earn money. Um, and so another thought as you were talking, I was like, um, oh yeah, I had this idea. Um, because I have an author blog and actually my author blog where I, in the past couple of years have, have hardly posted because of this per this health stuff. I’ve been going through couple, three times, maybe four times, and I have a list.
But as we all know, or maybe you don’t know if you’re listening, if you ignore your list and you have a few hundred people on it and a bunch of years go by, like people don’t remember you, people, even friends, even friends and family will unsubscribe. So, uh, true. Yeah. So, um, uh, another side note, um, as an author, and this is total chance and super cool, um, but a good friend of mine from writer’s conferences, she became an agent.
And then she signed me. So I have an agent, I’m a literary agent, but traditional publishing is kind of in the crapper. Um, in case you didn’t know that, uh, self-publishing is, is where it’s at. Uh, traditional publishing takes a lot of time, a lot of energy, uh, does not pay very well unless you have a, you know, New York Best Time, best New York Times bestselling list.
However, um, the book that I was agented for is related to this highly sensitive person blog, and so you can, you know, blog your way to traditional publishing. Um, you can sort of do that still because I had enough street cred with this blog, um, that they thought it was a good, a good, uh, idea. So I’m still in that process of, um, finishing my book proposal, but I am.
I have not been motivated. And part of it I think is due to the fact that, um, you know, I’m not seeing the results with the blog. And so, um, shh, don’t tell anybody. So, so as a business person, I’m like, Hmm, that tells me that maybe a book would not do that well. Um,
interesting. Well, and side note on that, so like, if you have the book, then you can go out and be on other outlets, right?
So you could be on YouTube. Oh yeah. Podcast, all that kind of stuff. And even though. Uh, if anyone has a book out there, please don’t email me. I get like five emails a day. I don’t wanna, if you have a a book, I don’t wanna talk to you. That’s what tell you about.
Yeah.
Hold. Yeah. I immediately, yeah. So I don’t wanna hear about your Yeah, I mean, that’s,
that’s the, an that’s the antidote to starting your own podcast is you pitch yourself to every other podcast to talk about your book or blog or expertise.
That’s PR 1 0 1, but not Doug guys. Doug doesn’t want it,
so, yeah. No, I have a video, which it’ll end up being a rant, so I need to figure out the right, uh, I, I need to make it, make sure it’s funny. Um, unless ranty and just pure sarcasm. Totally. But, um. Yeah, I, I get so many emails and these people just, um, have their automated sequence and they’re like, oh, I know life’s busy.
Maybe you missed the email, but don’t you want to hear from, again, this asshole with a book or what, whatever thing they’re doing. I’m like, I don’t wanna talk to you. Like there’s a bazillion people that I already know and I don’t need help. Uh, no podcaster needs help getting like people on their show anyway, unless 12
people are listening to your podcast.
And then, you know, I get tons of asks and I was on, um, matchmaker and FM something or something fm, uh, podcast fm. Um, and now they will pitch you within the podcasting platform and charge you. They wanna charge you a fee to be on their podcast, which is a whole spiral into darkness.
Right. There was, I like, as I was getting so many pitches, I was like, ah, you know what?
I’ll see. ’cause I saw some other. Th this has been a few years, but other podcasters were like, Hey, you could be on my show, but I’ll charge you blah, blah, blah. So I like sent those. I’m like, sure. It’ll be like $3,000 if you wanna do it. I’ll ask whatever questions you want. If you’re nuts
enough to
pay that much to podcast,
then good for you.
It’s a great hourly rate. There’s no, yeah. So anyway, um, back on track here. So, um, one of the points I want to hit is, uh, and, and it was the theme. Great question, Lauren, is we to throw in the towel and it’s really hard, but it’s okay because basically if it’s all opportunity cost, right? So I almost view everything with opportunity costs now.
So I think it’s totally fine to quit things, especially if you’re like, this isn’t working out how I thought people should look up sunk costs if they’re not super familiar with it. But that’s the thing that sucks us in and makes us value like our previous effort, which we need to just evaluate things.
How they stand right now. And if you’re working on, not you specifically Lauren, but if one is mm-hmm. Working on something that me and they’re saying yes to that, it means they’re saying no to saying no to something else. Yeah. That’s just something e everything else. Because if you’re working on that, yeah.
Like you’re not doing anything like
you. Well an example for me is I do a bunch of other stuff during the day and I’m sort of bad at, I should do, I should do the blogging during the day when my husband’s at work. But inevitably what happens is I get like 90% of it done and then I need to do the social media, which I’m always like, ah, I gotta do this social media.
And then I take my computer and sit on the couch after dinner and we’re watching a show, but I’m doing this social media and so I could get back an hour and a half of sitting there ’cause I’m less effective in the evening on the couch getting interrupted. Um, you know, I could get back a whole evening a week ’cause that’s when I usually work on that.
Um, so. Yeah, it’s a simple way to look at it. Um, and then you can never get back. It’s like with my old site that I sold, yes, I got a good price for it, but you immediately turn around and give 30% of it back to the government, um, immediately. Um, even with a good tax accountant, they’re like, yep, here’s the lowest amount.
And then you, you know, put some in the bank and then you buy a car. I needed a car, bought a car, um, with cash. Um, and then that car subsequently got crashed in a not my fault, terrible car accident. Um, had a do-over, got a big chunk, did not spend the same amount on the car, put half of it back in the bank, right.
Um, things like that. Uh, you don’t always get a do-over in life, but, um, thinking about the copious amount of hours on the first site that I built, ’cause I was 14 years, so you think about all the time you’re thinking about your business when you’re jogging or when you’re driving. Or when you’re on podcasts talking about your best, you know, I’m still spending time on it, right?
Yeah. Um, but you can never get that back. That’s, that’s time that you have worked that you cannot get back. So you do, like, you, you turning off the lights on the, the blog. Um, I don’t know that it’s really worth it and I’m thinking about this, earn it save it.com site, which I don’t know if you like doing matches, but I know you’re sort of in the financial space.
But I have thought about giving it away too. I mean, I did spend like, I think $3,000 on it ’cause it had a good chunk of traffic. But, um, and then I bought another little site for like $500 and I moved all the content over. Um, and nothing has just really worked super great. Um, right. Yeah. So at that point it’s like, and I, I’ve asked my son, I, I need to, I need to go wider and maybe put it in a Facebook group and just say, Hey, like, are there any new college grads?
I’d like to gift this site to a new college grad who’s. Who wants to play with either finance or a recipe site or a cooking site. Like it could go a few different directions. Sure. Um, just as like a goodwill offering maybe.
Yeah. No, I think that’s, that’s totally cool. And, and I think, uh, obviously like we’ve, we kind of talked about, um, once you sell it, like your first site, you said, ah, somebody bought it and kind of ran it into the ground.
Now it’s sort of recovered, but like, I hear this a lot where people sell their business to someone and then it’s, it just slowly gets run into the ground. And that’s pretty common. I hear that all the time where like just things didn’t work out. Maybe it’s timing, maybe it’s the context of like what, you know, running it.
But, but anyway, just as long as you’re fine with it, just eventually, uh, probably nothing will happen to it. Right. Because if you give it away, then the person doesn’t have. They don’t place. Yeah. They don’t have any skin in the game. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe it’s, maybe
it’s just a super inexpensive, um,
and that could be a thing where you’re just like, Hey, you know what, like it’ll cost you a little bit to cover transfer fees, which would be legit.
Yeah. I mean that takes you time and that kind of stuff, but I think that would be a great way, and I’m sure, you know, if you, if you ask around a little bit more, someone would be like, sure, I kind of, they could learn some stuff and yeah. Maybe they find something they like out, like a sandbox. Yeah. Cool. So I tried to help a little bit here, but I’m, most of the time I said I don’t know the answer to this.
And, and I, uh, but, but what, how, how could we clo close this out? Like was this like Yeah. Close
it out. Um, so IJI think giving some attention to the steps before you quit. ’cause I’m, I’m sure there are people who are maybe more apt to quit after shorter period of time. Whereas, um, maybe I fall on the side of the fence that’s like, oh, maybe I should give it another six months.
Or what are the, I’m also thinking about what are the intangibles? So, or how can I, um, how can I merge? So if I, if I have some emotion tied to the brand, which I do because it, as much as I try to like just do things that maybe might earn income that I could eventually sell off, I set this up the way that I could sell it more easily than previous.
So it’s got a separate MailChimp account. It’s got, um, it’s in a shared hosting, but not a big deal. I got a email, you know, that’s editor@hspjourney.com. If you wanna email me listeners, you’re welcome to pitch me a story if you are in the wellness or psychology or the therapeutic space, the therapy space.
Um, but, um, I set it up so that I could sell it, thinking that maybe I would sell it. But as with anything you, you write, um, a hundred plus blog posts. And you’re like, I got skin in the game. Like, I got a lot of myself. I write from the heart, I include stories from my own life. And um, so when I, you know, the posts that I had like that, that were kind of more personal, um, when I sold the other site, I just put those in a, um, a list in the whatever the document, the legal document was called.
And I said like, these, these you have, uh, digital rights to, but you do not own the content to these 10 articles. So, so that’s another way. So I guess we’re trying to wrap things. I would just say that it’s not cut and dry. It doesn’t have to be cut and dry. Like if you, if you have a lot of passion for something, but maybe it’s not, um, it’s not bringing in the income or you can’t quite see where the value is, you could.
Do some kind of hybrid thing where you, you sell it, but you retain some of the, um, intelligence value, um, or in, um, what’s it called, the copyright to, yeah. And so thank you intellectual, um, property to some of the info. You can do that. You can sell it and you can re retain rights to some of the content if you want.
Or you can say you have to give a, give, tap the hat to the original owner, like on the about page. Like, you know, John Smith was the original creator of this site and he created it with a passion for blah, blah, blah. Right now Paula owns it. You know, whatever the story is, the story of the business, the origin story that you might share, um, if there are enough things, like for me having the potential book deal, um, that maybe is carrot out there in the future, that’s probably enough.
Or if I get, um, a couple of coaching leads a month. It’s not a lot. It’s a trickle, but it’s there. The other thing I’ve thought about is like if, um, a lot of people as an entrepreneur, you maybe have like a site with your name like I do, um, lauren hunter.net. You might have like a home that’s your digital home.
And then from there you link out, you know, you can do the interlinking, which is helpful, and bring traffic from one to the other. You can also copy content and do a rewrite on your content. A lot of AI softwares is like mediocre at doing that. Or you can, I just pull the intro, pull the conclusion, do an AI rewrite, check it, and then move the sections around and like reorder the numbers if it’s a number post.
So that, um, hopefully it’s gonna get not dinged as like the identical content. Um, so that’s another idea is like the merger. Um, and I did that once with a site that I bought. Um, it was called Christian Media something Christian Media. I don’t even remember the name isn’t that great. Um, but I took all their content.
Actually I looked article by article at the traffic and I only took the top like 10 or 20 articles that were bringing in traffic. Some of them were wonky pieces that I was like, why is there so much traffic? Like, I don’t, this is not something I would write about on church tech today, but, you know, I was like, the traffic is the traffic.
So I moved it over and then did the redirects. Um, and that made sense. So if you can milk your project, blog, whatever it is enough that it makes sense, then I think it makes sense to keep it and not sell something for like, let’s say $5,000 or less. It’s not that much money. You do have to pay taxes on it, and it’s, that’s really not that much money.
Um, so if you’re not churning out starter blogs, which some people do, you know, maybe that’s your bread and butter, but for everybody else. 5,000 or less if you can’t sell it or your revenue’s not high enough to charge $5,000 or more, probably it’s going to be worth more to you to do some sort of hybrid or some sort of, um, downshift into publishing, you know, a couple times a month or, um, something like that.
So that, I think that’s how I’d wrap it up. Like, and, and I’m always looking for like guidelines or metrics. ’cause I struggle with like decision fatigue. So for me, like this conversation helps a lot because now I can, I can go away and say, okay, if I, if I can ramp it up to make more than $5,000, then it would make sense to sell it and I can move on to something else.
And you do get a rush when you sell something or you quit something and you turn it off. You all of a sudden get a burst of energy toward whatever other situation you could possibly be spending your time on. Um, but if it’s less, then maybe you need to look at a way to like harness what you do have and use it for good somewhere else.
Mm-hmm.
Lauren, that was a good wrap up. I, I’m looking forward to hearing what you decide. And one, one thing I’ll point out too is like, because you have, um, you have coaching, you have the potential book, like there’s a clear path where you, you can kind of choose what you want to do with it and how you wanna do it.
And there’s like future value in there too, which is pretty important. And the final thing that we didn’t really talk about, and I think you as an experience entrepreneur, like we didn’t even need to mention it. Like there’s certain activities where it’s like, clearly this is directly in the critical path of earning money and we all have like the minimum that we need to earn per month or week or what, however people, um, determine that.
So like, we didn’t even talk about that, but like obviously if people have a certain amount that they need to earn to pay the bills and everything, then there’s this like that kinda, that prioritizes things very clearly where you’re like, this is a revenue generating activity, so I should work on that. Or it’s in the, the line of things that you do in that critical path, it becomes
a hobby.
Hmm. Yeah. Is it a hobby? You know? And then there’s some gray area where you’re like, well, I make, let’s see, after expenses, I make, you know, $50 on it, like your site. Um, you know, we went to Chipotle after church on Sunday and for four people it’s like $57. Uh, so, you know, is that enough to pay for your Chipotle lunch?
I don’t know. Probably not. Um, so yeah, the intangible value needs to be worth enough for it to make sense. And then, um, I, I, I can’t stress enough, um. I see a lot of young entrepreneurs thinking that just because they have a business, they can sort of spend money carte blanche. And that’s also a danger zone.
Like, don’t go on lots of business lunches. If this is your only business. Like, uh, you need to have the, you need to have the expenses down to like $10 a month, $15 a month. Don’t be paying for extra software. I just quit a couple of plugins that renewed. I’m like, I know how to do this without the plugin.
Like I, yeah, I still run the free version, but I don’t need the pro version. I can, I don’t really see a jump in traffic with the pro version. So there’s a couple I do pay for, um, link Whispers being one of them. Um, love Link Whisper. Mm-hmm. Um, and then a few others in the SEO area that I decided I, I’m gonna go without.
Um, and I’m okay there. Um, and then hosting, I’ve shared hosting that. All three sites, four sites, however many I have. But also looking at those, those listed domain names. Um, I bought another one, I think I bought Highly Sensitive Weekly that points to the page with the newsletter. It’s not really necessary, right?
It’s not, I don’t get any traffic through that. Um, the old adage of like, own every iteration of your domain name that could possibly point to your site. Like I have Lauren Hunter author and I had Lauren Hunter Musician and blah, blah, blah. Like five of them, six of them. And I don’t know, does it matter?
Probably not. How many, how many dogs are there out there that do exactly what you do? Yeah, there’s, there’s only one. The one and only. Yeah. So anyway, I think the strategy moving forward in all areas are like simplify, streamline, cut out the ping for the domain names that probably no one’s ever going to steal and try to, you know, replicate my likeness on.
Yeah.
Alright, Lauren, this has been awesome. We’ll link up so people could check out some of the stuff in the previous interview if you wanna Yeah. Go back in time the last couple years. So thanks Lauren. Appreciate it.
Yeah, thanks Doug. Appreciate it. Have a great, great day.