What next for The Knot?

I thought about shutting down The Knot this weekend.

I started The Knot with a lot of gusto, I was running up and down Piccadily with a mic last year. I’ve put time and money in, found a great team of writers, made a great podcast with dissident agency, put events on and more. We’ve made a splash and we make a difference. But we don’t make ends meet and it’ll be a while until we do in a meaningful way. It’s going to be a long, slow burn.

I’m not writing to say goodbye, because in my frustration and questioning of how to build this challenger media brand in Stoke and Staffordshire, I confronted the very reasons I started The Knot in the first place.

The Knot on the tills across Titanic Brewery venues in Stoke!

Let me tell you the story of my last few days.

It begins on Thursday, I wake in the morning thinking; “What am I going to do about The Knot? It’s losing me money. It’s growing slowly. It’s chicken and egg. I need to put more in to grow the audience and then it’ll be able to sustain itself with advertising and memberships. But I’m tired and it’ll take a lot more resource to grow the audience. Plus, what’s in it for me? Catch 22.”

I’m mulling all this over as I whizz up the A500 on the way to Hanley to meet my mate Joe (founder of Unspun) for lunch. He’s late because there’s been a crash on the way from Leek to Hanley (of course). Hanley is humming. There’s a steady buzz of people and this town will never cease to amaze me - something about it speaks to me. It’s so… odd. The diversity, the bits that are run down, the bits that are way more alive than you’d think and the difference between people’s perception and reality of the place. Trinity Street is a nostalgia tour for anyone born in the 80s/90s and the city’s only independent bookshop has been flooded out of its premises by what I can only guess as a faulty landlord pipe. Many stories to tell.

I always park on the shiny new Smithfield car park. The one that people like to use as a symbol of Stoke’s regeneration failures and council mismanagement, it’s always about half full when I use it and there are nice cars in there driven by professional looking people, who knew? Another story.

I sat outside Slamwich Club with a coffee waiting for Joe. Enjoying the sun and watching the world go by, sending emails as I sat there. Looking at the two barbers outside of Fades sitting outside, looking cool and happy.

I couldn’t help but overhear the conversation a group of three were having to my right. Two women, one man. In suits. Councillors, politicians I think - that’s what I picked up from their conversation. I heard a number of derogatory comments about Hanley too. About the car park nobody uses that I’d just parked in. About how it’s a joke. Something about Labour. Something about Keir Starmer. Something about the Council. Sneers. Laughs. A jibe about growing up in Longton, “who’s the snob now?” The conversation irritated me. As if talking Stoke down is a sport.

I saw Dereece, the owner of Desire cocktail bar, going about his business. I saw the guys in Pockets talking to a customer. Slamwich Club was busy. Yet my ears were full of this conversation that sought to poke holes in this city once again. On the day I was thinking I was done with The Knot, tired of pushing a fledgling media outlet uphill in a place without a burgeoning economy. Overhearing this conversation touched into the wound I’d set out to heal when I began this journey.

To this day I still find it hard to put my finger on why people’s negativity towards this area bothers me so much. On some level I knows it’s personal, I live here and I’m from here - so I take the criticism as if it’s directed at me, my family and my life choices. But I’m wise enough to have detached from that, where I live doesn’t define me. I think what bothers me just as much is that this embittered view is so narrow-minded. And this narrow mindedness is exactly what holds Stoke and its people back. It’s this very culture that drives people to either leave, close up or become equally narrow minded. I just want more kindness and compassion, more pragmatism and perspective - Stoke and the world would be a better place.

I also hate people poking fun at a place and its people and getting pleasure out of it. It’s like a form of bullying and I can’t stand it. The judgement, the blaming - it riles and angers me. This mindset is like the dirt on my patio tiles. Must be blasted off with clean, fresh, powerful water.

Joe arrived and the food at Little Dumpling King was class as always. I followed it up with popping in to see the Stoke Creates team and working for an hour from Smithfield co-working space, where Adele was prepping an office for a new tenant to move in.

This purring of life going on in Hanley, and across Stoke-on-Trent and North Staffordshire, lived out by kind, hard-working, caring, creative people - this is the very reason The Knot matters to me. To tell these stories, for these people, about these people.

My frustration with The Knot’s lack of progress then turned into a healthier, “what next?” question in my mind, which ebbed into the weekend. One I took with me to Whitmore Lakes for a 13 degree cold dip and a sauna this morning. Then to Cafe Piccoloco in Newcastle for an electric Long Black served by owner Ben, then on the canals in Stone for an evening walk. What next for The Knot? How to tell more stories to more people about the beauty of this place? How to do it sustainably so I and my business bank account don’t run out of steam?

Time for something to shift

It’s time for something to shift in The Knot. I can’t keep putting money in, that’s for certain. Therefore it’s likely that the way we write and who writes The Knot is going to have to change. The most obvious next move that both feels like an evolution and a move towards more sustainability is to expand the writing team towards younger writers looking for exposure and experience - able to use The Knot’s platform to train their journalistic muscles. If that’s you, or someone you know, keep reading and reach out to me directly.

One of the thoughts that has stopped me pressing the big red delete button is that if we were to give up, it really would be typical. So many things in Stoke start off with good energy, and all the best intentions, only to wither and die when excitement, energy and resource runs out. Then we all say “oh what a shame” and maybe we point out why it was never going to work in the first place. I could see it happening with The Knot. I’d throw in the towel and I could imagine the sigh of defeat “of course, same old Stoke” - another new initiative that just doesn’t work, that doesn’t get the traction, the support, or the money to have a really good go. It was never going to work anyway, told you so. The challenger media organisation can’t make money, but there’ll be enough wasted elsewhere on some ill thought-out regeneration project instead.

I can’t let that happen. I can’t fail to the same old Stoke mantra. I’m not giving up on The Knot. Whatever we have to do to shift things around to keep growing, we will.

How you can help

If you’re here, you’ve read this until the end and you read The Knot regularly. Please email back and say hello. Why do you read and what’s your favourite bit? That’d help put some more fuel in the tank and connect me to the real humans who read avidly every week.

You can help in these four ways too:

1. Become a paid subscriber ❤️

2. Help us find a headline sponsor 🎯 The Knot reaches 30,000-100,000 people a month and for £500 a month, a business could be synonymous with good news in Stoke and Staffordshire across every issue and social media. This partnership would fund more growth and grow that reach too.

3. Become a Patron. Donate £250+ 💸 Email me directly james@theknot.group or respond to this.

4. Volunteer regular writing to The Knot ✍🏼 Email me with a bit about you and some of your recent writing. I’m looking for writers who can contribute one piece of writing per week for a six month commitment.

5. Build The Knot with me as a Partner 🤝 If you’re an entrepreneur or business owner and are interested in building The Knot with me, as a partner/director - email me, let’s do it.

Cheers,

James x

PS: and remember, when you see something good - think: “That’s one for The Knot”