How I came to an understanding regarding exactly what I've been doing this year

Dan Oshinsky is a 2011-12 RJI Fellow, and the founder of Stry, a news service launching in Spring 2012. Here on the RJI blog, Dan's putting himself inside the fishbowl to document a year in the life of a startup. Dan hopes that by being transparent with the process, others can learn from his successes, mistakes and failures.

I was working at the local CBS station in San Antonio at the time. It was a good job. They paid me money; I updated their website. Sometimes I updated the website while sitting at home in sweatpants. Sometimes I ate deep fried bacon and blogged about it. Sometimes I went to San Antonio Spurs games and took photos.

For a first job out of college, San Antonio wasn't too bad.

But I had this idea. It had been percolating for a while. A couple years, actually. And it had evolved, but this is what it had evolved to:

I was going to leave my job. I was going to found a new news service. Kind of like the AP, except this one was going to be smaller. I would have roving reporters out in the field in pursuit of journalism.

It was going to be huge.

I told my bosses I was leaving in a month. On July 1, 2010, I drove to Biloxi, Miss., to report. It was what's next.

Quitting my job was the easy part.

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I left Biloxi, Miss., on Oct. 1, 2010, and I did not know what was happening next. I had just finished roughly three months of reporting on the Gulf Coast and its recovery from Hurricane Katrina. I had proof of concept -- 40,000 words worth. And I had this vague idea that I was going to do the following:

1. Cold call newspaper publishers.

2. Convince them to meet with me.

3. Convince them to give me $10,000.

4. Repeat, with 100 different publishers.

5. Use the $1 million I'd raised, hire reporters, and turn Stry into a real news operation that syndicated original content to these 100 news organizations, and possibly disrupt and/or destroy the Associated Press while I was at it.

With those modest goals in mind, it's almost tough to believe I didn't succeed.

But I remember the first moment when I thought I could actually pull it off. I had seen something on Twitter about an investigative journalism conference in Boston. A company called Placeblogger, which won a hefty amount of money from the Knight Foundation a few years back, was giving away free spots to local news operations. I emailed Placeblogger's Lisa Williams and told her I was interested.

This was on October 5.

On October 14, I was on the phone with Lisa, and she was inviting me up to Boston.

On October 16, I was in Boston, and Lisa was telling me about this thing she was creating: the Placeblogger Angel Fund. She wanted to pair hyperlocal blogs with professional news organizations. She wanted Stry to be one of those professional news organizations. She wanted to give us money to do reporting. She was going to introduce the whole thing at the Online News Association conference in D.C. in 12 days. My logo would be on a very large screen in front of a very large number of people.

Was I interested?

¶¶¶

This is the point in the story where it all gets big. Lisa introduces the thing at ONA. The guys at TechCrunch read about me and name me the Next Big Thing. VCs blow up my phone. I get the million, actually a few, to tell the truth, hire the reporters and kick the APs ass.

And this is the point in the story whrere I tell you it didn't happen quite like that.

¶¶¶

I read Steve Martin's autobiography, "Born Standing Up," a few years back, and there's a story that really echoes with me. Writes Martin:

"There was a baffling moment when Sonny Bono and his partner, Denis Pregnolato, who were becoming showbiz entrepreneurs, approached me at work and took me aside. Sonny and Denis had seen me perform -- I don't know where -- and Sonny said, 'Steve, we've been watching you. We think you are the next big thing, bigger than David Brenner, bigger than Albert Brooks. We would like to work with you and develop a show for you.' I nodded my excitement and never heard from them again, not one word."

Which is basically what happened to me. Minus the Sonny Bono part.

¶¶¶

On October 28, I showed up at an ONA event to see my logo on a big screen. There was a press release at the door. My logo was on it. Lisa stood up in front of a crowd and talked about the Angel Fund. My logo was projected onto a giant wall. During an intermission, I spotted Lisa, and walked over to thank her for including Stry in the whole thing.

I was excited. There were 500 people in the room. I expected a spike in traffic, in RTs and likes, in phone calls from reporters wanting to talk about Stry.

But nothing happened.

My little fantasy turned out to be a bit too dreamy. The journalism world is chasing the next big thing, and sliced bread this ain't. I'm selling words and pictures. Stry's the kind of idea that people hear and think sounds..... ordinary.

My business model won't wow anybody. My stories might.

So the big break I hoped for at ONA? Didn't happen. Turns out that a press release doesn't guarantee press. It was Oct. 28, and nobody was all that interested in what I had to say, and I'd been home in D.C. for less than a month, and I still didn't know what the hell I was supposed to do.

And that was part of the problem: I kept thinking there was something I was supposed to do.

But what I should have been asking was, Why wasn't I actually doing anything?

¶¶¶

Of course, there was still the Angel Fund. And here's the truth: I would love to do something with Lisa and Placeblogger's Angel Fund. It's a fantastic project loaded with potential. Every local blog in the country should be asking Lisa for money. (In fact: Click here. Ask her for some.)

But I haven't done anything with Lisa. Haven't even asked. In fact, since BIloxi, Stry hasn't gone back out on the road. This project's gone into semi-stealth mode.

Tough to make people care if they don't know you exist.

Stry was given a break, but the relationship between Stry and Placeblogger never went beyond a dinnertime conversation in Boston and a handshake in DC. I didn't do enough to build that relationship. The Angel Fund could have -- should have -- helped me. It didn't, and the fault is mine.

¶¶¶

Another story from that Steve Martin autobiography. He's talking about his first appearance on "The Tonight Show." He was quite nervous about it. This was October 1972. He writes:

"There was a belief that one appearance on 'The Tonight Show' made you a star. But here are the facts. The first time you do the show, nothing. The second time you do the show, nothing. The sixth time you do the show, someone might come up to you and say, 'Hi, I think we met at Harry's Christmas party.' The tenth time you do the show, you could conceivably be remembered as being seen somewhere on television. The twelfth time you do the show, you might hear, 'Oh, I know you. You're that guy.'

"But I didn't know that."

Which is basically what happened to me. Minus the being-on-TV part.

¶¶¶

The second simplest thing to grasp about entrepreneurship is this: You build upon your own breaks. You build relationships. You force yourself in front of people. You talk about what you're doing as much as you can.

Networking is a golden ticket, and I'm trying like hell to get better at it. I'm not there yet. Not even close.

¶¶¶

I remember a moment when I got a little bit worried about Stry. It was back at ONA. I was at lunch, and I was sitting next to someone who worked for a magazine. It is a prestigious magazine that prints on fancy pages with pretty pictures. It makes money. Lots of it. I handed her my business card.

On the back of my business card is Stry's mission statement. One section reads:

We're "Stry, a band of reporters in pursuit of storytelling. We travel the country for months at a time, and when we find an issue worth talking about, we dig into it. We won’t stop digging until we’ve covered the story as thoroughly as we can."

She looked up at me. "You travel the country for months at a time?"

I hemmed and hawed and explained that, well, yeah, I -- I mean, we, WE -- we want to, yes, we want to do that.

And I saw the look on her face. It said, quite simply, "This guy hasn't done jack."

She knew it; I knew it. If you don't believe something, there's no way to fake your way around it.

Because the simplest thing to grasp about entrepreneurship is this: Do something. Do anything. It does not matter what it is. But you must do it, and do it a lot.

Action is all that matters.

Being a first-timer at entrepreneurship is just like being a first-timer at golf or painting or Bananagrams. You practice. You build yourself into something with practice and time. This isn't YouTube stardom. There isn't a moment when, one day, everything just happens.

You build and build, and eventually, if you do it well enough, you actually have something to keep building upon.

¶¶¶

Of course, it's not like ONA was all bad. I met some of last year's RJI fellows there and started talking to them about it. Considered the idea of applying for one of these fellowships. Didn't seem all that likely that I'd be here, but now, here I am.

¶¶¶

I spoke at an event a few months back just outside of DC. It was called Disruptathon, and they'd invited eight businesses that were creating change in media. Stry was one of the eight competing for the title of "Most Disruptive." A few minutes before the event, some of the presenters were talking, trying to take our minds off the event. And one presenter asked, "What happens if I win Disruptathon?" Then he answered his own question: "Nothing," he said. "Nothing happens if I win this thing."

And there's truth to that. Disruptathon's just a cool little media event. In a couple years, it might be something big, with major media coverage and big players in the room. It isn't yet.

So the presenter was right, to some extent. Winning the event wasn't going to change any of our lives. But good things come from an event like that. Maybe I meet some people. Maybe they can help me. Maybe someone they know will.

Disruptathon didn't help me publish any more stories, nor did it help me fund them. But it got me in front of some people I needed to get in front of. That's a start.

¶¶¶

The one other entrepreneurial lesson that seems painfully obvious now is this:

Say yes.

Say yes to networking, or to meetings, or to the guy in the hall who says, Yeah, I've got a great idea for you. Good things happen, but only when you say yes.

¶¶¶

An aside, for a second. Think about your favorite band. Now think about this: How'd they get started?

I was thinking about this a few months back. I saw U2 in concert. They played in front of 80,000 people in an NFL stadium. Not bad for some guys who met in grade school 30 years ago in Ireland.

Here's how a band gets started, even a band like U2: You form. You practice. You get in front of people. Not a lot at first. You keep doing your thing. You say yes to any opportunity. You play in coffee shops and dinner theaters and on sidewalks. You build followers, fans. You build a community around your music. And you keep pumping stuff out. Motion is crucial; speed is irrelevant. What matters is motion. Forward/backward/sideways -- motion matters, and stagnation kills.

Same thing applies to building a business. Motion matters.

The simple truth is, to bring it back to me: Stry, at some point in 2010-11, stopped. I was stuck between trying to make Stry happen and trying to get a new job, and kind of started doing a little of both. In essence, I'd gotten stuck. Stry wasn't going anywhere. I wasn't moving anymore.

Of all the good and bad things to happen to me this year, this was the only thing that really mattered, and I was too wrapped up in everything else to even realize it.