Treeline Journal Hits One Year Mark!
By Chase Parnell — September 20, 2020
You have to celebrate the milestones, right?! This one year duration thing has been big for Treeline Journal. First I completed my one year no beer challenge, now we are celebrating our website surviving one full year, and going forward I’m shifting all my efforts to an equally momentous goal: one year beard. Nikki is fighting me tooth and nail on this and it’s not looking good for me; going to have to dig deep.
This is my State of the Website Address; Nikki will follow with her own in a few days. I want to start by giving a sincere thank you to all of you out there who regularly check in on what we’re putting out into the world. We write and create to provide value to your lives. If it resonates, if it moves you, if it brings you any form of joy or entertainment, then we’re doing our job. And THAT’S a pretty cool job. When we launched Treeline we literally had no idea what we were going to do, how it would work out, or what to expect. If I’m being honest, part of the motivation in starting Treeline was to have an acceptable excuse to leave my law job. So, you’re leaving to start a glorified running blog? Whaaaaat?! Precisely. Life is too short, right? I decided I was done being miserable. I pulled the rip cord, dreamed up Treeline Journal, and convinced Nikki that this might just work out for both of us. How cool would it be to collaborate as a couple? To share yet another aspect of our lives together. I’m sure it’s not for everyone, but getting to work closely with Nikki, feeling like we’re in sync professionally, getting to see her work and excel at something she enjoys, using our respective strengths that compliment each other well; this has honestly been one of the most rewarding aspects of this entire journey.
That said, I’m not going to sugar coat the realities that run in parallel with the good; we are not currently in a financially sustainable place, but day by day, we’re inching closer. And trust me, there have been times where I’ve freaked out and logged in to Linkedin (kill me) to look for a “real job.” Ah, the warm blanket of security. This is how that went: click on Jobs. What am I? Keyword: lawyer. What’s my experience? Sales, contracts and family law. Click search. Job postings begin to load and I’m already feeling literally ill. All the contrived professionalism and phrasing, “Ready to excel at the highest levels of family law? Do you prefer a dynamic, energetic practice to challenge you and display your skills?” Seriously? Excuse me while I find a cliff to jump off.
After a few miserable minutes searching, I’m inevitably reminded of something quite beautiful actually: I AM DOING WHAT I WANT TO DO. Treeline Journal, writing articles, crafting newsletters, creating YouTube videos, coaching; this is fun for me! It honestly feels like the job that is best suited for my personality and strengths. So why look anywhere else? Why not just continue plugging along and really try to make this thing go? And that’s exactly what I’m going to do! I’m committed. I don’t have a backup plan. Sure, I might work my way through some side hustles as Treeline continues to grow, but I’d love to continue to mostly focus on this space.
What Did We Create In A Year?
What did we do with all this time? What did we accomplish in a year? Maybe not as much as we should have, but we did put out a lot! 120 articles/posts on our website, this Thursday we’ll release our 52nd weekly Rise & Grind newsletter, we’ve created 32 YouTube videos, and 25 Run Hard Mom Hard podcast episodes. Not too shabby. Okay, so we released that much content, but how was the quality? Well, that’s harder to define. Some of it was well-received, consumed and shared, maybe a few posts even went viral (if you can call it that in this niche sport of ours), and then some of it totally bombed.
We’ve definitely learned a lot about what kind of content we need to create if Treeline is going to survive. Far and away, my most read/shared/clicked-on articles are the ones I write about the elite side of our sport. Turns out people don’t find my personal stories to be quite as interesting as I thought they would. Ha! That’s okay, Treeline Journal has been a lesson in humility from the beginning. It works out too because I’m a huge nerd and fan of the elite ultra running anyways, so lately I’ve been bumping those stories up a bit. I think many of our Patreon patrons care more about the personal stuff so I’m definitely not going to let that slip away completely, but ultimately, we need to grow traffic so that we can better monetize the site. If a brand comes to us and asks about our traffic, reach, and engagement, we need to be able share numbers with them that would actually provide them value! Someday we might have enough patrons to not have to worry at all about advertising, but we’re not there yet. Right now we have 52 patrons, which is AWESOME!
Where Are We Headed?
What’s the future look like? I’m going to say right now that the future looks GOOD! Now that we’ve found our swimming lanes a bit more, we’re going to keep our nose to the grindstone and keep plugging away. My brother David, who has made his living online since circa 2001, told me I need to go all-in, warrior monk status, which I believe means to live a quiet life and work my zen-filled ass off. Thank you Sensei, I’ll try.
The plan is to continue finding what works, trying to improve our craft, and keep stretching ourselves creatively. In my opinion, the best content is open and honest content. No BS. I feel like we have only just begun to “peel the onion” and we have a lot more we want to share as we navigate life’s ebbs and flows. I want to cover more races and FKT attempts, write more in depth articles on interesting people in our sport, and look for ways to use my writing to create positive change in the world.
If you love what we’re doing and have the resources, your support really does matter. No question about it, we need YOU! Please consider becoming a patron. Just yesterday, we created the following 3-minute video for our Patreon page to better communicate what we do and how Patreon works.
Heading into year two, we need to continue to grow our direct supporters (our patrons) and then also expand our advertising revenue. I have one coaching client and I might try to bump that up to 2-3. Huge shout out to everyone who bought a Treeline hat too! On the to-do list is to expand our shop with a wider variety of Treeline merch. Must get this done ASAP. I also have some larger scale writing projects in the works. Spoiler: I can’t help but want to write fiction. I respect and admire novelists too much to not try it myself. Well, I have tried it. Back in 2017, I finished a novel called Wrangel Island. Three people have read it, four if you include me. It’s better that way, trust me. Practice makes perfect though, so watch out, the next one is going to win all the awards.
To summarize, we are feeling tremendously blessed and happy to have made it a year with this website, this lifestyle, and this ability to be creative on a daily basis. It’s not easy. There is no off-switch. There are an unfathomable amount of projects and articles and videos and things I could be doing at all times of every day.
One step at a time.
Thank you for joining us in our mission to make this dream a reality! We are always open to suggestions and ways we can provide more value to all of you. Feel free to reach out re: anything at chase@treelinejournal.com.
With that, keep reading! Keep listening to Run Hard Mom Hard! Keep sharing! Run! Run a lot! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!