Keeping It Simple

Our Business Model in One Word: Independence

Photo by Andrew Svk on Unsplash

This is the first time I’ve written here since we launched Escape Collective and I felt like this would be the right place to connect with the people who originally signed up to this Substack, as well as many more who have subscribed through Substack’s recommendations since.

It’s coming up on three years since we launched and for those of you who haven’t been following, it’s going tremendously well. When I say that, I actually mean that it’s going exactly as I predicted. No better, no worse. Yes, lots of bumps in the road that I never expected, but steady and predictable for the most part.

One premise we launched on that I knew would be a foundational element of our being is our independence. But I didn’t think actually think anyone would care about this except for us.

What does this word mean to us? That was something I never anticipated on needing to define, but it turns out that it means different things to different people. Let’s start with what it doesn’t mean: Independence isn’t us shooting off our mouths and pissing people off just because we can. It doesn’t mean we don’t have stakeholders and it doesn’t mean that life isn’t complicated sometimes and we need to make concessions. It simply means that we have very intentionally chosen who our customers are (i.e. our members, not advertisers) and who our initial investors are. Those two things keep us aligned with the right principles and motivations. Like I said, life can get complicated and sometimes we upset stakeholders (members, the bike industry, friends, athletes - after all, everyone loves the news until you are the news). But what it does mean is that we don’t live or die by these decisions if they’re made with our members’ best interests in mind, and that we always remember that they are our customer.

Independence, Tested

Over the weekend we had a little drama. A brand had an overzealous marketing person who announced to their database a ‘partnership’ between us and the brand:

“XXX is excited to partner with Escape Collective, united by a commitment to craftsmanship and performance. This collaboration will produce educational content, including product testing and practical guides, to help athletes maximize the benefits of their gear. By blending XXX’s expertise in XYZ with Escape Collective's storytelling, the partnership aims to promote proper practices and enhance accessibility for riders everywhere.”

It was an honest mistake and internal miscommunication which they quickly rectified and were truly apologetic. In fact, I’m flattered that we’re at the point where any business is so enthusiastic to associate themselves with us. But our motives were quickly questioned by many of our members, and wondered if we changed our business model to make a quick buck.

This reminded me how incredibly important our independence is (perceived and real) and how much our members and staff value it. It’s critical to our being.

This is a problem older than all of us

In June 1836 the Paris newspaper La Presse became the first media business to introduce advertising to lower its price, extend its readership and increase its bottom line. It was a brilliant strategy that served the world decently well for 170 years. Media is most effective when it reaches as many people as possible, and this was a clever way to allow for that. It wasn’t without its problems and the issue of media being influenced by the powerful isn’t a new one. Church and state has always been a key tenet of media, and the digital age has pushed media businesses to blur this line in order to stay alive.

We’re at the point now where the incentives at play on the open web have obliterated this business model. There is a different path though. That is, making the reader the customer. When we choose who our customer is, we choose our future. Advertisers are fickle customers. They’re happy to pay for and demand more of the things your readers don’t want, will do so until your readers leave, and then they’ll abandon you. This isn’t meant to be a personal jab towards advertisers. I’ve been on an advertiser before and I see how the incentives drive this behaviour.

The alternative

From the beginning we knew we had to set ourselves up differently than traditional media companies of today. It’s not because we’re clever, it’s because there was no other way we could think of. For the first two years after launch, I’ll admit, we were a bit lost. We didn’t know how to work with the bike industry on things like stories and product reviews without that implicit handshake of an ad deal that would get them prioritised. Back at CyclingTips we always first considered what would be most interesting or important to our readers, but when all else was equal, the deciding factor would often be who was paying us (which would never influence our words). That shouldn’t come as a shock, because those advertisers were our customer. I thought we walked that line fairly well with only a handful of incidents (mostly with one brand who you can probably guess), and it kept our content free to consume for most of our existence.

These days, when a brand or PR firm asks us to review something or write a story, our editors have data that makes it clear for them to decide if it’s worthwhile or not (usually). Will it delight our current members? Will it sign up new members? Simple. Oftentimes, there are important stories and reporting that fall outside of these buckets, and that’s something we need to figure out.

What I’ve learned after 15 years in cycling media is that keeping it simple and being crystal clear on who your customer is, is the most effective way of growth and survival. From the investors you choose to the people you are building for, make sure they don’t complicate your job of providing value to the end customer. This is true for every business, but it’s not the way media has traditionally been run.

If you don’t, you eventually end up with a mess of stakeholders who are impossible to keep happy and end up with an ongoing shitshow like this.

All you influencers, YouTubers and Substackers out there starting out the way I did back when I began CyclingTips, beware of the short-term temptation of taking money from advertisers. It’s a trap. Not because there are bad people behind these brands - quite the opposite. It’s just a horrible business to be in.

We don’t have it all figured out, but decisions are pretty simple for us these days.

It’s good to be back here. Thanks for reading.