How to Build Authority and Grow Your Brand with Jill Burk

On this show, we talk a lot about how to stand out in our marketplaces. But it seems like whatever we do, our competitors tend to do it as well, making standing out even more difficult. Gosh, there's a lot of noise out there. But what happens if there was a way to stand out in your market while building brand authority, expanding your reach while tapping into your competitors as collaborators, not as— Well, collaborators. And that's what we're talking about today on Experience Leadership.

Welcome to Experience Leadership, a podcast that challenges small business owners and entrepreneurs just like you to dare to be the exception. Join our host, Customer Experience Expert Marc Haine, as he uncovers relevant and timely content To help you script and direct your business and teams to create jaw-dropping experiences your customers and staff deserve. Here is the host of Experience Leadership, author of Lights! Camera! Action!, customer experience expert Marc Haine.

Welcome to this episode! I am your host, customer and employee experience strategist Marc Haine, and I am tickled That my guest today is the Director of Outreach for MAGNETCAST, Jill Burke. And today, we will be diving into how a little-known digital strategy can transform the way you market your business, boost your brand authority, and turn your marketing efforts into a profit center. Whether you're a business owner, frontline manager, or simply looking to take control of your message, this episode is packed with actionable insights that you won't want to miss. I do have one simple request. If there's somebody in your circle who could benefit from the insights that we're sharing with you today, please do them a favor and pass along the link to this episode. And of course, if you haven't done so yet, make sure you subscribe to this podcast. I know how it feels. You've got a business to run and you have a brand to build and an audience to engage. But with all the hustle and all the bustle that you're driving into, it feels like all you're doing with your marketing is just screaming into the void. Sure, you've tried all the traditional marketing routes, social media, email, newsletters, maybe even some paid ads. But the return is barely enough to justify the time and the money that you're pouring in. Does that sound familiar? What if there was a way to not only reach a bigger audience but also position yourself as an authority in your industry? Build that know, like, and trust factor. And what if this tool actually made you money instead of draining your marketing budget? Well, that brings us to our Question of the Day. So, as a business leader, are you struggling to stand out in a crowded marketplace while juggling the never-ending costs for not just money But your time trying to connect with your customers in a way that resonates with them. And you don't have to— it doesn't have to cost you an arm and a leg. And it doesn't have to burn through all that time that you don't have. I'd love for you to drop your thoughts and your questions in the comment below here. And of course, if you have the, oh my God, this is me moment, share that as well. I'd love to hear from you. As I mentioned, our guest today is someone who has mastered the art of turning a simple concept into a game-changing tool for business growth. After running a successful mobile massage practice for 20 years, she made a bold pivot diving into the world of digital magazines.

Yeah!

Now, as the Outreach Director at MagCast, she's helping entrepreneurs and business owners build brand authority, engage with their audience, and create profitable revenue streams through the power of digital publishing. She's here to show us how you can control your message, boost your credibility, and even transform your marketing expenses into profit, all while keeping your workload manageable. Jill, welcome to the show. I am so tickled you are here today.

I'm so tickled to be here.

See, that's 3 times we used the word tickled now. Right?

Like, it should be a drinking game.

It should be. If people have a bingo card, tickled 3 times.

Yeah.

So Jill, maybe we could start off telling us a little bit about what you do. What is MAGCast and how do you service your clients?

Sure.

So MagCast is a digital magazine, but it's a— it's not like a flipbook or a digital newsletter or something. It is a real magazine. You download it through your iOS app or Google Play Store, and it shows up in your iPad, and you, you read it just like a magazine. It looks like a traditional magazine, except of course it's a lot more portable and people can reach it a lot easier. And it gives you a chance to change all of your marketing strategies completely. And you can actually see what's making you money because the magazine itself is an asset that makes money. And because, you know, you put 11 or 12 articles in a magazine, 9 maybe, depending on how long they are, and you can see the money come in from everything you place.

Wow.

So instead of like, Like you said, shouting into the void where we're sending out a message and hoping it lands with someone or hoping they open their email. It switches it up. They're waiting for your content. They've subscribed. They're paying you to deliver your message to them every month.

Love it. So why don't we just rewind a little bit?

Sure.

What are some of the biggest challenges you think business owners have faced when trying to build authority and to stand out in the marketplace?

I think that's a huge challenge we face in lots of ways. When you're new in business, it's just finding some way to be recognized, to just even land on somebody's awareness scale is hard enough.

Mm-hmm.

And then as you, as you establish your business and you get more involved, you have to go farther into the background sometimes. And so what you're doing as a business owner is so much of the background stuff. that your connection with your customers deteriorates because you may not see every one of them. You may not see them every day. You may not see them every time they visit your location. Or if you're doing a digital or an online business, they might not have any connection with you at all. And I think with AI and all the other things, what we're forgetting is how important our connections are, that 9 times out of 10, That connection will tip the scale regardless of what you're selling, right? Like, you're going to buy insurance from somebody you know, you're going to buy a house from somebody you know. But if you have a business that is more based on relationships and less transactional, it is 100% of the buyer's decision is a connection to your business somehow, either your staff or you, or even if it's a billboard with your face on it, they feel a connection. And I think truthfully, we have forgotten the power of connections.

Yeah. Well, I mean, is it forgotten the power of connections or are we not leveraging the power of connection? Because I mean, there's so many things out there with social media and how you have to engage. And you have to make sure you're engaging with the people on Instagram and engaging with the people on LinkedIn. Maybe we're doing newsletters and we're posting out our expertise on our website on a newsletter and hoping to goodness somebody reads it. But a lot of times, it fails to create the lasting impact or even to generate that return on investment, the time and money investment that we make to do it. So, is it that we're not focused on trying to connect or is it that we're just doing it all wrong?

When you're running a small or medium business, it could be your time is so stretched that it could be that you're not putting the attention into the connection that makes that connection really resonate with the people you're trying to connect with. I think also that we think connections should be easy and simple. And by posting something on social media or using AI to generate a bunch of posts, that that is the connection. I think we've forgotten what connection is.

Gotcha. So, is there a way that businesses could look at their existing marketing strategy? And are there any telltale signs that a business's marketing efforts are falling flat and not delivering kind of the expected returns? What are things they should be looking out for? Oh, by the way, I only ask little questions.

I was just gonna say, I think part of the problem of marketing overall, and I was just, because there's an election going on, I was reading something about how much money is spent on blasting out messages and how little we can tell whether or not those messages are working. It's a little like that spray and pray kind of like you throw a bunch of stuff out there. And pray something connects. You can tell if something is connecting. People will comment on it when they see you. They'll say they saw something, or they'll message you back and say, I love this, or I hate this, or this, whatever. But I think also a lot of it is a message has to hit a lot of times before it permeates through all of the noise if it's just another piece of content that you see. So if you're putting something out on Facebook or you're putting something into the Twitter or whatever it's called, it is one of 1,000 messages. In fact, it might even be one of 1,000 messages they see in 10 minutes. So how does that— how do they get even a chance to resonate with your content under those circumstances? It's just one of— or if you're driving down the street and you see signs, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, you're seeing 1,000 signs, right? One of them might resonate for whatever reason. But it's hard as a person who's paying for those messages to be out there, whether it's in time or money, to really know what's, what's working. I mean, if you're in the theater, you can tell you've got a full theater.

Yes.

Your message resonates.

Yeah.

If you're a business, you can tell. Yeah.

We used to have bounce-back promotions in retail and in hospitality. So if people came in with the coupon, you knew that they clipped it from the newspaper. Yes, that worked.

Yeah. Yeah. And those were great, right? Like you could see that they worked.

Yes.

Now, when was the last time you opened a newspaper, Marc?

Yeah. Ages. Honestly, ages.

Right?

Yep. It's interesting because part of what we're talking about is we want to get our message out there so that people, you mentioned know, like, and trust earlier, or at least offline we did. And this idea that we want to look like the good guys, we want to build our authority, we want to show that we're credible. How much does that play into a business's ability to attract and retain their customers?

If I know that you know what you're talking about, or I— and I feel a connection to your knowledge, I am way more likely to give you a call and say, Marc, can you solve my problem? Can you sell me this? Can you make me this reservation? Can you do this? Whereas if you're just a name on a list, it's really Good luck.

Yeah.

So when you have authority— and it— the way we teach magazine publishing, you don't have to write everything. You're publishing, you're putting together, you're a curator. But when you grab that space in your marketplace, when you hold on to it and you put out the preeminent content in your marketplace, you're obviously an authority on that in people's minds. And when you're an obvious authority, You're the first person that somebody will call. They might call their sister's cousin first, but you'd be the— but after she doesn't know what she's talking about or she can't help you, the person who they resonate with as somebody who really knows that market is going to be their second call, if not their first.

It's interesting because I do talk to a lot of entrepreneurs, and I think we put ourselves into a bubble because we know what we know, but we actually don't know what We do know. And so, like, a perfect example would be in our example right now. If a plumber would be watching this— hi, plumber, it's nice to have you. Thank you for all the work you do fixing leaks. But he might be watching this going, I'm not an authority, I'm just a plumber. What do you tell people like that?

Librarians don't know everything, but they know how to get— well, most librarians know everything, but they know how to find the information and they know how to put that information In front of people.

Right.

So, part of being an authority is knowing how to find the answer to your question and having it put in front of my questioner, my client, my customer in a way that they can access that information.

Yes.

And my response to them is, why do people hire you? Well, because they need a plumber. Why do they need a plumber? Because they can't do it themselves. And it's like, well, that's the authority. That's your authority piece. That means you have a whole bunch of people who don't know your vocation, lots of people who are curious. And if social media is any indication, we love behind-the-scenes content. We love to know what people are doing behind the scenes to make stuff happen.

Yeah, we really do. Yeah, that's such a fun way to look at a problem too. If also when we know something really well, we're comfortable with our knowledge, we're good at it, we have a tendency to dumb down our ability to do that. We think that that's not— anybody could do that. Exactly. Everybody knows how to fix a kitchen sink clog.

Yeah.

But the truth of it is, lots of people don't know what we know.

Right.

And sometimes you just have to be a little Trumponian and say, I am good at this. I am smart at this. I know what this is. As much as, you know, That's a different problem. But saying you're good at something is part of letting— it's a permission structure for other people to realize that you have gifts.

Yes. And I guess the big differential though is you're not telling people you're smart. You're not telling people you know this. You're sharing your expertise. But you're not going to people and saying, hey, I'm the best plumber. I'm the best plumber. I have all sorts of awards and I've done schooling and I have all these customers. You should hire me. People would just close down and shut down, right?

So, we've both written books.

Yes. Right?

When you write a book, you show. You don't just say, Marc is the smartest person in the room.

Yeah.

You demonstrate through the dialogue and through how you set things up.

Yes.

Because that's what resonates with readers. They want to come to the conclusions themselves. Yes.

And again, for the people who take marketing, small business owners and managers, who post on social media, you're posting the wrong things because you're telling the world how great you are. But to your point, you're not showing them how great you are.

Yeah. When you do show how great you are, it's important to be authentic with that.

Yes, absolutely.

Yeah.

It's showing who you authentically are and what you're authentically capable of doing and the authentic value you bring to the world. Pure and simple. Yeah. When we come back, I'd like to explore The benefits of creating a digital magazine. I'd like to dig a little bit deeper into this because this is the solution that we're, we're going to be supporting in this episode.

It's a very good solution.

And we'll get to it right after this.

When the spotlight shines on your business, are customers applauding or yawning? In other words, how is your business performing? Make your business a star with a new book, Lights! Camera! Action!, Business Operational Excellence Through the lens of live theater by Marc Haine. Marc uses his business and acting experience to help you see your business like a live show so you can create a performance your customers will never forget. Buy Lights! Camera! Action! today at your favorite online retailer or directly at marchaine.com.

Welcome back! I am here with Jill Burke of MAGAcast. We're having this great conversation about a new way of thinking about your marketing. And that is through digital magazines. So just out of curiosity, Jo, what led you to digital magazines as a solution for this really common business problem?

Well, funny story. I was doing the Hard 75, which is the 75 days of no alcohol and 2 workouts a day.

Yeah.

And on one of my last days, one of those workouts has to be outside. So every day for 75 days last fall, I did a 45-minute walk and I was thinking about the problem, exactly that problem. How do I authentically connect with an audience about what I am offering? How do I let them know without breaking the bank? Because anybody who's done Facebook ads or traditional marketing, it is crazy. And I thought, God, I need to be part of the business model where you're collecting advertising revenue instead of part of the business model where you're bleeding out advertising dollars. Yeah, it does. You can go broke paying for advertising.

And there's no shortage of people who want to take your money.

Yeah. So I called my girlfriend at the time, or what— she's a partner in some of the things I'm doing, and I said, Tara, my God, let's start a magazine. And then I just started the investigating process, ended up with these guys at MagCast. And said to them, like, called them, talked to them a bit on the phone. And then I hung up the phone and I investigated some more and saw the other things out there. And I called them back and I said, yes, I'm in. And oh my God, you should hire me as your director of outreach because you are not reaching enough people. Not enough people know this is a solution. So a little bit back and forth, they called me back and said, you're in.

Ta-da!

So here I am.

So how is this different from traditional media? How— this whole idea of digital publishing, how is it different from, I mean, creating a paper magazine or the traditional media that we have that is slowly waning?

Exactly like creating a paper magazine. Truly, you gather your articles, you gather your photographs. One of the things we teach is, first of all, how to find your niche so that you're really talking to the right people and that whatever you're talking about is, is a big enough audience that it's worth your time. So if you're selling insurance, maybe it's not the best fit. If you're doing something where you have an ongoing relationship with your customers, it's a better fit. And then from there, we teach you how to find people in your field, in your niche that are already producing writing that maybe doesn't get enough attention. And we help you bring those people into your fold so that they win. They get way more eyeballs on what they've already written and done. And you win by getting content, and you bait— and you double win because you've also got more than one way to monetize that marketing that goes out. But you can really tell a good story in a magazine. A newsletter, even a, even a fairly good newsletter, is probably 1 to 2 pages.

Yeah.

Whereas— and it's— and there might be pictures, but they're small. Whereas a magazine It's the size of your iPad. It's the size of your computer screen. The pictures are beautiful and vibrant. You can really tell a complete story. And you have that chance through, let's say, 9 to 12 articles in an issue of arcing a story or weaving together information that will connect to your audience and will lead them where you need them to go. I don't know any other marketing platform that allows you to do that in a way. And because we have magazines on raising kids with dyslexia, photography, tiny houses, arts and crafts, you can monetize all of those things that you put in— courses and programs, coaching things that come in through the magazine— really gives you a very robust set of tools to monetize your marketing before it even goes out. And then we, it's a sellable asset. We have, we have a guy a couple of years ago who sold his magazine for a couple million bucks.

Wow.

So it's, it's a very different approach.

So as we're talking to grassroots businesses, if somebody decided that they want to work with you and kind of explore MagCast a little bit, what are some of the immediate benefits that business owners and managers can see if they introduce digital magazine into their marketing strategy?

Sure. Well, one is they're going to see that their email list explodes. So the people that they're talking to will, will exponentially grow. That is going to be— so then they get the— you can really see who you're reaching and how that's developing. The second thing they're going to see is that through the placements of articles, you can, you can do those bounce-back coupons like you said. They're going to see how things work and what resonates with people. Because they're going to see it start to come back, or links get clicked, all of those things. They have a very complete idea of what is resonating within their issues so that they know what's connecting. And then a lot of it from there will depend on what they're selling. If they're selling tours, they'll see an increase in bookings. If they're selling— let's say they've got a photography magazine— they'll see the links in the magazine For advertisements of all sorts. They can see what people are clicking on because it's digital, and every time somebody clicks on it, you can see what's happening, and then you get a check. So one of the best ways to tell what's resonating is you will get money in your account.

Gotta love that. If this is resonating for the audience, how can they get in touch with you, Jill?

So jburk@magcast.co. Okay, that's the easiest way. And tell me you'd like a copy of my magazine, Savor Europe. I will send you a free issue. And otherwise, you can also go on magcast.net/jill and you can even register for one of our upcoming— and put the /jill in because then we can see that this resonated.

Right.

And then I know, right? So that I can track it back to Marc and maybe, you know, give him a little thank you. And that's a great way to always see what resonates. But send me an email. I'd be delighted to talk to you.

And we do have the links in the show notes. Make sure they check it out. How can a digital magazine like we're talking about help a business take control of their brand message and the positioning within the industry as an authority? Like, what is it about that? Because it's one thing to be an editor, but how does the rest of it resonate?

Okay, so it really depends on niches, but let's say you wanted to do a BMW magazine. You wanted to talk about cars. If you just talk about cars with strangers on the street, Or you have a clear— you might have a dealership and you sell BMWs. You'd be able to— there's some authority there. People see you, they come in. With a magazine, it shows up in their inbox and they, instead of seeing you as a salesperson, they see you as a conveyor of information. So it changes your relationship from sales or from marketing or from whatever to education. And when you're an educator, even if you're curating information that other people are putting together, as an educator, as the person that puts out the magazine, you automatically have authority.

Because it makes you the subject matter expert because you're sharing the information.

Because people are— people are Marc Haine, the publisher of BMW Magazine, rather than Marc Haine, the sales guy on the floor of the BMW dealership.

Gotcha. So you mentioned this idea that publishing a magazine actually generates income. You said if you click on something, you get money. How does that all work from the perspective of a digital magazine? How does, how does one monetize this magazine as opposed to just blowing through their time and their—

Absolutely. One of the things that we do extraordinarily well at MagCast, 99% of our publishers, and we have well over 3,000, of them before they put out their first magazine have never worked in publishing. They've never written anything, they've never published a book, they've never published a magazine, they didn't work for a newspaper when they were a kid. So as part of our education process, when we take them from being little Jill on the corner selling her massage services— massage therapy services, I want to be clear, that was therapeutic.

Thank you.

So part of our process between moving somebody from business owner or author, whatever they are, to publisher is we do a very robust 5-day training program. Part of that training program is we help you connect with platforms that will place ads in your magazine. The wonderful joy of digital magazines rather than print magazines is in a print magazine, somebody would pay you upfront to have that published in there, whereas in a digital magazine, much like your Google clicks or your Facebook ads, those are designed on a cost-per-click basis. So as my reader, when you go through the magazine and you click on an ad or you click on a link— and listen, we can get you Reeboks in that first issue. Like, we're not talking about something you've never heard of in your magazine. We're talking about Giant ads brands. And when they click on that ad, Reebok will go, oh, look it, somebody just saw our ad in this magazine, and they will calculate that and send a check. It's one of the most surprising things for our new publishers when that income starts to come in because you almost never expect to wake up on a Tuesday with a $340 check from Reebok.

Right. Well, and it's this whole thing about what we talk about in business space now is this idea of passive income.

Yeah.

How cool is that?

And multiple streams of income.

Very cool.

Yeah.

And so this idea then, they take the course, they learn all about what MAGCast can do for them, and then they solicit other experts. We mentioned at the beginning that we're turning our competitors into contributors. So we can, if we have an industry magazine, then we can actually go out to our competitors and say, hey, I have a magazine. Would you like to contribute to it? I'd love for you to talk about some aspect of your business.

And we need to make it even simpler than that. So if I'm going to put a business magazine together, I would say to you, Marc, I see your book here. I'd really like to take this chapter that's already written and just put it in my magazine as an article with links to you and your book would be one really great way. Then I'm not waiting for content from someone. You've already done that. And really what we do mostly is we look for people that have an audience. They have their own blog, they have their own whatever. So they're writing— they're already writing content in our space, and we send them a message and say, listen, I found this piece of content you wrote 18 months ago, so probably nobody's read it in the last 2 months, really, between you and me. But I'd love to take that article that's already written and just give it a magazine treatment. We're going to put great photos in it. It's going to have a lovely spread. It's going to have all your links and your accreditation. And we're gonna put it into the magazine. Almost everyone says yes because it raises your profile as a writer. It is more eyes on all of your stuff.

Sure, but then again, going back to our plumber example, this would be a great way for them to showcase their expertise in a different way than is what everybody else is doing, which is social media ads and the whole thing. A plumber could use the same model, by going to his plumbing conference and talking to some of his key people and saying, hey, I'm putting a magazine together. I'd love to get some ideas from you on what you would like to contribute, and then we can share in the windfall.

But even more fun than that, because plumbing could be a very video kind of friendly thing, you can find somebody in a YouTube space, because this is a digital magazine, it can play video.

Magical.

Magical.

Magical.

And not only— so it plays a video, you can transcribe the video underneath, so you've got text.

Yep.

But you can include that link right to his YouTube channel. And honestly, if you're trying to get eyes on your YouTube channel, what a great way to do it.

Yeah, it seems like it could form a really significant part of a marketing budget for any business at this junction.

Especially because it turns your marketing budget into an expense to a credit.

And so, when somebody gets started, starting from scratch, they take the 5-day course, when could they expect to see results? And by results, I don't just mean the checks in the mail, but to see kind of the bounce back, to see that their investment of time and money is actually paying a return.

So a lot of that will depend on how fast you can get your, your magazine together. But let's say you've got your magazine, it's done, and then we're going to start the clock from the time it's ready. So you can— you will see, because we also teach you how to do the launch. So So that your launch itself produces income. And we have had people do great launches if they follow, you know, Kevin, who's my colleague, will hold your hand and kick your ass, a little bit of both. And if you let him help you, we have had people like take their launch and, and make tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands, but tens. And let's be honest, low tens, but still. Tens. And so, so that's an almost immediate return on investment. And then as you take and develop your audience and work with them— so for instance, if I was going to do a business magazine and I know that Marc Haine is an amazing business coach, and I do it, I take one of your things, I put it in there, but then we also have a link to your— we're gonna— you and I are gonna put together a conference on this, except I'm not going to teach because that's not my skill set. You're going to teach. I'm going to get the people in the seats, and then we split the revenue. So things like that can produce revenue within the first 2 or 3 weeks because they're right in front of people and we've put the expert in front of them in a really great way that highlights their skills. We're going to put some bums in seats and we're going to see some revenue.

I like that.

So I would say most people start to see revenue within the first 6 weeks.

Okay. And so how does this manifest itself then to brand awareness? It's just the fact— are they able then to take the articles and actually repost them on LinkedIn and link to the magazines and that sort of thing?

Absolutely. Yeah, we ask them to do— we like, if I'm gonna put you in a magazine, I'm also going to say, Marc, let's give 1,000 of your followers a subscription for a buck this month as a thank you, which then helps them boost their profile as a contributor. But also helps me build my ever-important mailing list and subscriber list. Yep.

Very cool. I'd love to get into some cautionaries and some pitfalls as people consider this for their business. And we'll get to that right after this.

Attention meeting and event planners. Is your company or association planning a live or virtual conference, seminar, or staff retreat? Are you looking for a fresh, energetic perspective? On what it takes to put on a jaw-dropping experience for your customers or staff? Book customer experience expert Marc Haine for your next group event. Past participants have said, Marc kept us in stitches while teaching us how important and powerful actually designing our customer experience can be. Read more testimonials and find out how Marc can serve you and your group. That's marchaine.com.

We are having a phenomenal discussion and I hope to heck you're getting a lot from it. As evident from our discussion today, you can tell that Jill and I are deeply dedicated to supporting business leaders just like you. So, if you need our help or if you're in the midst of planning a leadership retreat or an industry conference and you're looking for some amazing content, we're just a message away. Feel free to reach out.

Just a message away.

Just a message. And so, you can reach out for a conversation about your unique challenges or to discuss how we can collaborate to achieve your goals. Our link is in the show notes. So, don't be shy. Go ahead and click our link in the show notes.

Collaboration is everything.

It's everything these days, right? It's everything. It's all even you and I just connecting at the very beginning. You go, oh, I know somebody at this. I'm going to connect you. Because this is what we do now as professionals. It's like, oh, I think you could provide value to somebody. Just like I started this show off, if you know anybody who could use what we're talking about today, it's like, oh, I know Steve has been looking at different ways to monetize his message and trying to get out there. And maybe I'll share this episode.

Ta-da!

Collaboration.

Ta-da!

That's the second word of the day.

Love these words of the day. They're magical.

So, people are tuning into this and they're thinking, oh, this is a really great idea. What advice would you give them to avoid kind of the pitfalls and what cautionaries would you have getting started?

So, if your audience is transactional rather than relationshipal, that's not a word. But if we're using words of the day, I'm going to make up some. If your audience is transactional and not based on relationships and connections, this is a bad fit. So, if they just come in and they give you money for something without caring who made it, who produced it, or it's a one-time kind of thing. Every once in a while you need to renew your insurance, you might go in and talk to somebody, but that's not an ongoing relationship really. If your audience is not really a niche, if it's too broad and too— it just doesn't really have any nichey things to it, it may not be a fit. But that's when— You have a conversation with my other colleague, Damien, and he really helps you narrow it down. But those are 2 ideas of things that are just not really a smart fit.

So, it's not that people don't have a niche. Maybe they just don't realize their niche because every business has a niche. I don't care if you're a hardware store, or a grocery store, or an optometrist. You all have niches and you all have target markets. It's just maybe understanding what that looks like.

Well, and so like in the plumber example, You may not be a good fit for this if you're just talking about plumbing. That may not be something that from a consumer standpoint would be a good magazine. However, if you're a plumber that really works with other plumbers and helps educate them and maybe supplies them with tools or education or educational credits, I honestly don't know that much about plumbing except that You could tell when you need them.

You can— that's the one thing. But, you know, to that point though, you could have like a plumber could start like a home renovation magazine and invite different other subject matter experts to come in.

Or if you're a really big plumbing company, you might want to even just do an interior magazine that goes to all of the stores that sell your product, that goes to the plumbers that might need to learn something or access some information. find out what's new. So part of the niche, I think, is niching your audience more than— as much as it is niching your, your product or your message.

Yep.

And so every— you're right, everybody has a niche. I think like a restaurant group would be super fascinating to do a magazine about. I'd love to see somebody do a magazine about like First Nations artists. I think there's some really amazing niches out there. that are just kind of a void and there's such great content. And if you have 2 or 3 ideas of things that you might want to speak about on an ongoing basis, it is really worth having a conversation to help you hone that in and decide if this is a good fit for you. And really, truly, if we don't think that it's a fit, we will not take your money.

I think that any industry association, this would be a brilliant fit for them. Because it's non-dues revenue generating for them if they decide to jump on that bandwagon because an association will serve a niche, right? And so, like, I just see potential for this all over the place. Yeah.

I see potential for this all— like, that's why I called them back and said, really, I want to do your outreach because there's no limit to where this is a good fit. It would be a good fit for a grocery store. that wants to provide recipes. Yeah.

Nutritional advice, weight advice, any number of things that grocery store could leverage something like this for.

Yeah.

And you have tons of staff and a lot of them have subject matter expertise as well.

Yeah. Yeah. They're already maybe talking about things in their social media.

And they're always answering questions from customers.

And what a great way to recognize your staff.

Yeah.

Let them shine.

Yeah.

Which then might reduce your turnover, which is a very big expense for some companies.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, there's all sorts of, you know, my biggest concern is readership levels, right? Making sure that we could get it out and get it marketed. Because like anything, I think even like this podcast, I mean, we're episode 215-ish, give or take. And, you know, we, in order to get the audience base I have, I've had to be very consistent with generating, making sure that we go live every Wednesday, making sure that we don't miss weeks. Have we missed weeks? Absolutely we have. But the consistency has been there, and that's the only way that we've been able to build this channel. And so I imagine the same thing with a magazine. It's not just a one-and-done thing. We need to incorporate this as part of a strategy.

And really, truthfully, you don't even want— you like, you really don't want to see a magazine with only 1 or 2 issues on the front page. Of course, that's how it's going to start. But even if you're only putting out 4 or 5 issues a year, you really need to make sure that you have a cadence and you stick to the cadence.

Yes.

Because— and people will buy back issues. So as you go on and you get better and better and better and you give out messages consistently, people will go back and buy issues you've already done just because they love your message.

Love it. This has been absolutely brilliant, Jill. Thank you so much for sharing this with us. Do you have any last thoughts about what we've been talking about today?

Just call us. Just call me. Well, don't call me because I haven't given you my number. I'm not going to give you my number because Marc is going to put this everywhere and I don't want to be a bathroom wall kind of thing. Send me an email if you have questions. We'll organize a Calendly link and we'll meet on Zoom and we'll answer any questions that you've got.

Lovely. And so the link is in the show notes. Could you remind everybody one more time how they can get a hold of you? jburke@meg Love it. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Marc.

I really truly enjoyed this. This is eye-opening and it's so much fun. It's something that I'm personally going to be exploring into to see how I could leverage this because it's an idea I never thought was out there. So, thank you so much for sharing that with us today.

Hardly anyone wakes up in the morning and says, I need a magazine.

Right, exactly. Well, I mean, there was that one Tuesday.

But you probably do.

Thank you so much, Jill.

It's been a Have a wonderful day. Thank you for having me.

Why don't you let me know if this was of value to you? As always, my offer stands. If you would like 30 minutes of my time to brainstorm your business with you and your team, feel free to book some time on my online calendar. The link is in the show notes. It would be my honor to be of service to you. And while you're at it, why don't you go ahead and leave a comment or a review about this episode? Was it valuable? I'd love to get some feedback. Were you able to get anything out of it? And of course, if you haven't done so yet, please make sure you go ahead and subscribe to this podcast. That way, you get notified whenever I bring you fresh new content just like what we brought you with Jill today. Thank you so much for joining me. My name is Marc Haine. I hope you stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope you dare to be the exception.

Thank you for joining us this week on Experience Thanks, Marc.

Thanks, Marc.

Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you. And for joining us on today's episode of The Marc Haine Experience, Leadership.

Make sure you visit marchaine.com for a full directory of available episodes. While you're at it, if you found today's content valuable, please share it and tell your friends about the show. As Marc says, knowledge is power, but only if you share it. Be sure to tune in each week for the newest episode. Please stay safe, stay healthy, and dare to be the exception.