Life gets in the way, but play the long game 

Well it’s been a little while since the last process update or look behind the scenes. 

And that’s mainly what I want to share about in this post, how life has gotten in the way, and how some personal struggles have made it harder to judge the best way to keep woowoo moving forward.

Don’t get me wrong - we are still putting in the work on the execution end of things, with many photo-shoots and interviews - I guess the struggle is on the larger-scale topics, like strategy and direction. 

How my mental health affects my decision making 

Lack of confidence, and more doubts. 

Building something from scratch is always going to raise questions and doubts - and I thought I used to be pretty good at always finding a solution. This was also one of the parts of entrepreneurship or building something that excited me a lot. 

But because of my current mental health, I have a lack of confidence, and the doubts ring stronger and louder than my convictions or optimism. 

So when it comes to some of the bigger decisions, like stories vs services (more on that later), it’s really hard to know which is the right way to go. 

There is a constant battle in my head - made worse by the fact that i’m not my usual self, and can’t rely on blind optimism or confidence to make the right decision (or at least, make any decision and make it work) - instead i’m putting it off, hoping that it will work itself out, or i’ll be back to my old self soon and can make a better decision then. 

Maybe this is ‘the struggle’ of entrepreneurship after all? Where doubts, and lack of confidence are just things you have to learn to deal with along the way. 

What’s our north star?

I think we know it. We believe that telling more stories is the right direction to grow woowoo and turn it into something real. That’s our opportunity. 

More stories means more people, means more awareness, means more opportunity. 

But what if we’re missing something obvious? (there’s that doubt again). 

I think back to when I worked in a bigger company, and the main objective, or reason why we existed was already clear and set. At times of doubt and struggle, you could always come back to this guiding goal that was defined for you. 

But when we’re just 2 people (sometimes with helpers), and we’ve decided what that guiding goal is - and then suddenly you doubt it, how do you know if that’s the right thing to aim for!? 

Again, I think that is strongly connected to my current mindset - I wonder how much less I would entertain those doubtful thoughts if I was at my best… 

Which leads to a topic that we’ve been coming back to again and again over the last couple of months. 

Stories and/vs services

There are 2 main directions that we see in the whole woowoo project at the moment, and it gets a bit confusing because the 2 are definitely linked - we just don’t know how linked they should be, well sometimes we do, but sometimes we don’t. 

Stories: this is why woowoo started. It’s all about meeting people who are chasing something, and sharing their story. Why and how do they do it? What is their thing? We absolutely love this side of the project and want to grow it beyond writing, into video and audio as well (we will make it happen in 2024, maybe already before the end of 2023.)

Services: now this part is kind of a collection of what we do behind the scenes. It’s photography, writing, making videos - all the skills and work we do to bring stories to life basically. 

The thing is, part of our own woowoo, is to turn it into something that could be a source of income. And services are the way we see that happening. 

Here are some examples of how that could work: 

• Photo / video shoots with athletes and events.

• Brands work with us to tell a story of a person using their new kit / bike / shoes / etc.

• Sponsored events, where we share the story and info of the event. 

In the long run, we think that the majority of traffic will be here for the stories - that is what we want to be known for. 

The struggle is that services seem like the way to make it a sustainable business. 

Our current thinking is that they are connected - we focus on stories, but make the services easily discoverable, and share posts like this one with our thoughts, and ‘why’. 

Is it the right thing? We’re not 100% sure, so it might change - but for now that’s what we’re going to do. 

And that leads to the last thought for this update, which is a bit more of a positive one. 

We’re going to kick ourselves, aren’t we?

I guess this is about the importance of playing the long game. 

Whenever we do something - the feeling and feedback is so positive. The people we reach out to interview always love the idea of woowoo, and are super happy to be a part of it and share their story. 

Yet I'm still surprised when people say yes, or want to be a part of it. 

In my mind, we are this almost non-existent ‘thing’ in a very noisy, busy world - there are so many reasons why people wouldn’t want to take part or just ignore us. 

Yet people do. And we have great conversations, and get inspired. 

And it is exactly the reason we started this in the first place. 

And we can see how even if we’re not sure about the right direction, it’s all connected, and it can grow in so many different ways. 

So. 

I think we are gonna kick ourselves (at least for me - Becca, the other main team member of woowoo seems to be pushing me in the right track). 

I want to do more, I could do more. I would do more without some of the doubts? Not sure. 

We have so many ideas about things that we could do, things that we want to do, and we will do them - at some point, I hope. 

Here are some examples just for fun: 

• F1 style pit walk at events - if you’re an f1 fan, you probably know the famous walk Martin Brundle does before a race - in the chaos of the cars lining up and the teams figuring out the final details before the race starts, Martin walks between teams and media to have a chat with the drivers. We think it would be cool to do the same thing at the events where we take photos - quick fire questions about how it’s connected to their ‘woo’. 

• Woowoo on the street - a ‘street interview’ type of content where we set up a stand somewhere, and talk to people about their woo. Getting them to talk about it could be a great step into making it happen, and inspiring the people who watch to go do it as well. 

• Hosting our own race / event - what if we had an event that removed many of the barriers that prevent people from doing their dream race / event? It could be a kind of ‘starters’ event that gives you the experience needed to move on to the next one after. 

• Casa woowoo - some kind of space to host workshops, events, camps - all around your woo. 

Not all of those will work, but we want to try, and it’s frustrating to have so many ideas but not being able to do them all. 

But the good thing is, we are still moving and still producing - maybe slower than we should or could, but that’s where the long game comes in. 

We’ll ‘win’ when we’re still doing these updates and stories in 5 years. I believe in what we’re doing and why, we just need to do more.

I don’t know if that’s helpful for anyone who ends up here - and it doesn’t really have to be. 

The idea of this ‘series’ is to show the challenges / questions we have along the way, to share some insight into the decisions we make behind the scenes - so that one day when we look back, we’ll have a better insight into how it happened, and why we did certain things. 

In the end, these are thoughts and lessons that will help us with wherever this goes.