A fellow journalist might not get this, but a fellow small business owner will: It often feels really, really lonely.
In our case, for nearly seven full years since DK Pittsburgh Sports was born, Dali and I have been able to discuss concepts with each other, debate how to approach this or that, all that stuff. Which has been great. I mean, here we are, still standing about ... oh, nearly seven full years after we'd been widely expected to fail.
At the same time, neither of us had ever run a business, or managed a staff, or marketed, or sought sponsorships, or designed our own app/site. And doing all of that, on top of the writing and other editorial tasks I couldn't exactly cast aside, has taken up so much of our time that there's seldom a spare second for any semblance of establishing a broader vision.
In late April, we brought on two minority partners, Ramin Baghai and David Rosenblatt, whose awesome Rob Ullman caricatures we're unveiling right here in this feature to completely blindside them this morning:
ROB ULLMAN / DKPS
Ramin Baghai, left, and David Rosenblatt.
In that time, they've both dived in headfirst. Into everything. Our finances. (We're doing ... OK.) Our future planning. (Ha!) Our tech. (Very much a work in progress.) And they've met with every member of our staff, usually one-on-one, to try to gather as much information from as many sources as possible to push us up to the next level.
What is that, exactly?
Let's just say it's beginning to crystallize into something like this:
