Community Impact's Newspaper "Flywheel" -- Transforming the Old, Nurturing the New (Part 2)

However John Garrett says he39s found a secret sauce for dual revenue success He is a cofounder along with his wife Jennifer Garrett of the Texasbased newspaper company Community Impact He briefly discussed his very successful quotphygitalquot strategy in a QampampA interview that appeared in MFMInSites last month But we wanted to provide more details about what he refers to as his company39s quotdual transformationquotThat term refers to a process whereby an established company creates a second more nimble entity The legacy company goes through a process of transformation at the same time that it gives the newer company both resources and assets that allow it to develop products or services that are successful That newcomer entity within Community Impact is called Project05In a recent conversation with MFM39s Krista Van Lewen Garrett explained how that39s played outKrista Van Lewen How did you discover the concept of dual transformationJohn Garrett I attended a virtual conference from a CEO group called Tugboat featuring Mark Johnson one of the authors of Dual Transformation I see the opportunity as truly dual that you can both transform your print product and create a digital product and their success can feed off one another The examples in the book are fascinating In some examples Company B is an entirely different entityI think for smart media companies dual transformation can actually act as a flywheel Not seeing a lot of that in the industry and it39s a huge missed opportunityI heard the term quotphygitalquot during the pandemic and realized that39s exactly what we39re doing we39re blending both a physical product print editions and a digital product electronic newslettersVan Lewen What made dual transformation different than other dual revenue strategiesGarrett I knew we needed to play more in the digital space but I didn39t like the models out there How do you get the legacy team to innovate when they39re very busy with their current jobs The dual transformation concept said quotYou39re not quitting on your legacy you can still innovate and it39s important to your future But on the digital side you need a team with a level of independence to allow it to innovatequot This was the first recipe I39d seen that was encouraging The idea is to keep the legacy business going but also transform it in a positive wayVan Lewen Was there a quotsecret saucequot that made dual transformation work for Community ImpactGarrett Our legacy model is well known it39s a physical product delivered to our reader39s homes each month What39s new is that we39re exploring our company39s DNA which I describe as quotWe are curiousquotWe39re curious about other models out there and study them It39s being curious doing the work and not copying what everyone else is doing Once you see something with legs you go all in You source it with people with a good clear vision who are curious themselves and do good work We have a beloved brand now so when we started getting into the digital space it carried overVan Lewen How long did it take to launch your second company Project05 Garrett One of my goals for 2021 was for Project05 to successfully launch and be able to test the digital flywheel Our critical transformation year for digital was 2022 and 2023 will be our critical print transformation yearBy 2024 our print product will look a bit different It will be subtle for our readers they already like what we39re doing but the goal is to build a more modern way of storytelling We39ll use even more infographics photographs and explanatory journalism in a way that engages our readers on complex and sometimes divisive topicsVan Lewen You39ve called dual transformation a quotdifficult process to navigatequot What were the most challenging aspectsGarrett It39s mostly around my personal struggles on patience on product on the numbers I want the results more quickly A couple of navigations have been confusing like getting the reporters for our print products to provide enough content for our digital newslettersNow the heads of each team are collaborating They39re getting people to do more but not in a way that interferes with what they39re already doing Technology has moved so fast and has provided us with many resources to build great productsOn the flipside we39re benefiting from our strengths For one our shareholder structure is just Jennifer and me I study everything I can get my hands on related to the news industry Our structure my curiosity and our sales culture make a great recipe for experimentationVan Lewen Are you still adding 600 subscribers to your digital newsletter each week Garrett Yes We39re in the early phase of seeing digital revenue dollars soar It39s still a small percentage of overall revenue What39s crazy is that our print revenue is still growing we39re both competing with and benefiting from that That39s the flywheelClick the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friendsThe opinions expressed here are the author39s views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet

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Community Impact's Newspaper "Flywheel" -- Transforming the Old, Nurturing the New (Part 2)

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Krista Van Lewen

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Community Impact's Newspaper "Flywheel" -- Transforming the Old, Nurturing the New (Part 2)

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