ET7- Online Magazine Business w/Henry Reith

Making Money Online With A Magazine App

Henry Reith is the founder of an online magazine and content app but the interesting part is it came out of an original desire to network in person with locals in his demographic.

Once the networking got going though the group needed a way to stay in touch and there was a demand for content and education that exceeded what they could get through in the in person events.

Henry saw an opportunity to expand beyond the face to face and built up the online presence. Now they offer regular webinars and tons of great content on the website and through an app.

It’s a classic example of a kind of accidental business opportunity that turned out to be something really cool and much bigger than was originally anticipated.

And he hasn’t stopped there. He clued me in to his system for planning a years worth of marketing in 15 minutes! He is also working on developing products for small businesses and continuing to expand the business. I fully expect to see tons more cool things come from Henry and his team over the next year- maybe that’s why his magazine is called Fridge (OK- I take full responsibility for that poor humor, and promise it won’t happen again!).

Show Links:

Website: http://www.fridgemagazine.com/
Email: henry@fridgemedia.co
Twitter: @HenryReith
LinkedIn: http://au.linkedin.com/in/henryreith/

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Transcript

Matt: I’d like to welcome to today’s episode, Henry Reith, editor and founder of Fridge Magazine and our guest today has got a ton of experience with start-ups, new businesses on entrepreneurship and I’d like to just kinda kick it off. Henry, give us a little bit of your background, how you got started and what you’ve built.

Henry: Hey, Matt! Thanks so much for having me on the podcast. Fridge Magazine is actually 5 years work but that sort of come together and Fridge itself comes to lots of different brand. I just started in Australia. I started about sort of bringing people together for events and then came back to UK. For me, personally, I always wanted to meet people like I am 28, I’m not sort of 6 year old who’s part of the institute of directors or sort of some organization that’s very classic, very old school where you come meet in the hotel. That’s so dead and boring. The square rooms and they give you like; I don’t know if they give you the fantastic things they give you. They give you like some of the worst wine you could have been drinking in your life or some kind of water. That was your choices. To me, anyone who is under, I don’t know, probably 40 or 45, we just grew up in a different world. I’d put it that way. We just have a different perspective on things. So, when I came back to UK, we developed Fridge Networking. That was all about bringing people but bringing people together in a very relaxed environment. We pick kind of cool bus. We basically took out a half bar or a bar where we put young people together. You can buy whatever drinks you want or get them freebie from the bar. We always had some tad going. You can have any drinks you want. That’s the most important thing and then it was really about young people exchanging their views on how to go about business because 1/3 of the employee, sort of work force, is now millennials. So, the trend has been around for a couple of years. It’s definitely here. Millenials often to own this world. I started to own management position isn’t for me. I’ve always tell them my thing. I think I’ve been running my business in start-ups and failures for about 10 years now. Maybe 11. Hopefully, I’ve past out 10 years of learning mark just about now. A couple of years ago, I choose to extend the networking sides. We want it to magazine together to bring just lots of things we were doing and learning from networking and bring out more to a wider audience but it was never supposed to be never bigger than the groups that came to networking. A couple of years later, [inaudible 0:03:17.2] gonna match the magazine. I just launched a brand new app that specific focuses on the process, lots of processes, literally step by step process on how to do things in business. That’s called Fridge Guide. You can search the store. We got a website describing – [inaudible 0:03:39.5] fantastic art as cool as that as well about how to determine if your product’s idea already fits. The website is really maybe a more extended version of the app where you’re looking at the processes like “How do I actually achieve my end goal?” because at the end of the day, ideas are commodity. There are millions of ideas in the world but the only thing that matters is – Process is absolutely priceless to anything we do. Because if we can’t repeat, it’s just pointless doing it. In my opinion, there’s no point doing marketing unless you can repeat that process because if you just sat 8 hours of your day doing that, it’s just impossible. You’ll never gonna grow your business by doing stuff.

Matt: Fair point for sure. You can only scale as big as your time allowed so you gonna start to delegate and in order to delegate effectively, you got to be able to provide the person you are delegating to or a team you’re delegating to, a step by step procedure for them to achieve at least similar, if not the same, better goals than what you are doing on your own. Otherwise, you’re kinda limited to your own time and ability to do it and that’s gonna cap you at a very small level. Just to kind of recap on what you have said, you started out as wanting to have a personal networking group and from that then you grew the Fridge Magazine website and it became more of a virtual or a combination with the personal events of virtual marketing and educational experience. So now, is fridge magazine, the website, is that something that generates revenue for you or is it more of a lead generation? What’s the game plan with that and how does that tie in to some of your other entrepreneurial activity.

Henry: The very first thing that I started grow up, the networking based on the virtual sales was the actual monthly magazine that you can search to iWest Store or android for fridge magazine and subscribe. The very first thing was actually demonetize product in a funny way. So, the subscription to the magazine is $21.99. For 9 year old subscription, you get issue every month, very selected articles. To get what we could into magazine is also very graphical. There’s a nice way. The magazine allows you to do things that a website cant in terms of graphics and leading people through the process. The magazine was actually the first thing and then sort of 6 months later, the website started developing. At first, we were a networking meeting with a monthly magazine. Then, the magazine went sort of more [inaudible 0:06:32.6] and their websites were followed along. The overall sense of monetizing is we get subscription that very much pays for the magazine process. I’m not ever gonna say that having paid content is gonna earn you $3 million in a year. It pays for itself. We are very proud of what we put into the magazine and the reactions that we get are really good as well. Then, the website, the way that we monetize is – letting out all the secrets here – is we run by weekly webinars and all of them – a webinar, most people don’t spend 2 hours doing a webinar unless they have something to sell. Our rule is “If the audience can generally work away from that webinar, being way more educated than when they turned up for the hour, two-hour webinar, then, that suits us. We got that product to sell at the end. Obviously, we split commission on bringing people to the webinar, our audience. Marketing depends how it all set up. Some people have the hope that our webinar was set up, they marketing system are already set up but lots of time we are marketing the webinar every second week. That brings in quite a bit of revenue as well is when people got their product that they’re selling or service or something that they can basically teach for an hour at least. They can work from the courses and add extra. That’s one area that brings in a fair proportion of our turn over. People that come to website always say or certainly people who want to advertise will say “There’s no banners in you website.” Well, banners are the biggest waste of time for any website owner in the entire world because unless you got millions of people going through your website. We’re not in a millions. Were a sort of a decent thousands. We are in the 20 thousand range. The one cent per click from that is pointless and it pisses people off. Plus this ad is blocking all the rest. Banners are a waste of time. We would much rather work with people who potential advertise on great content and use their great content. [Inaudible 0:09:18.9] Matt, I know, at the end of your podcast, I’ve watch people click your website. I know people have been in your website. People giving your way, working with us to write or create great content is gonna bring people back to the website. We never charge people to be on the website. It’s a two-way thing. We work to promote the content. you provide some great content then the way it comes to is we do have either products that some of our editors have got to suggest people go towards them. We do have our own products as well. I won’t say it out. It depends how fast people are to their systems. They may have liked one of our products. They may have not. But they are, again, I couldn’t care less about doing a course about Facebook advertising because it’s not part of the framework unless there’s a process from a step 1 to step 10. I just looking – Facebook ad isn’t a great business. The current day we are recording this, we just released a photo system for any company startups, small companies and the admin of your company. If the admin gets in the way, it’s generally the worst experience to work somewhere. Matt, I don’t know how good your photo system or how easily you can find things, but if people can’t find things on their own photo system, it’s the small thing in business that just drive people insane. Most people that I consult with because I do marketing consulting as well, you get to their photo system. You’re like “Where do I find your logo?” and they’re like “I don’t know somewhere in your photo system.” “Oh so, is it names logo?” “Probably not. It’s probably names something something times 3 x something.” We’ve got a product coming out. There’s a photo system – $7 and $17 depending which level you want to buy but it’s the most practical thing ever because if you can’t find something and you are struggling to if you have make a decision, where to say something in your photo system but default you are wasting your mind power and stuff. We do have that very practical. Some will say “It seems boring.” but what the most practical products in the world, it depends how far people off to various e-mass systems whether they find product price or maybe from what they’ve said, we might know another product that’s gonna be better for them or is appropriate for them because we very much look at what people are actually liking and reacting to in a e-mass sequences and send them off to that product. That’s with us. There are some affiliate stuff. There are some cross promotion to some of various products or mixed in their as well.

Matt: That’s interesting. Just on your last point there in terms of folders and organization, I agree with you that’s probably not the front of mind topic on most business owners plates but it is something critical and it’s something that resonates a lot with me because when we do accounting for clients, one of the points we always try and make is if you have to stop and think about where to put something, for example you’ve got one expense called office expense and the other called office supplies, if you buy some toner for your printer, now you have to stop and think “Now, where should I be classifying this expense?” You’re wasting time. You’re stopping at a bottleneck that shouldn’t be there and it’s all due to organizational inefficiency. If you did the thing right, if you had set up your books right, you wouldn’t be running into that problem and likewise with what you’re talking about if you had your folders, your administration side of your business organized right, you wouldn’t have to stop and think and look and try and remember. Everything will have a logical place. That’s an interesting product and one that’s close to my heart. But on your bigger point, I think it’s really interesting how you’ve taken a model that I think some other people have figured out is really successful and that is to teach and provide super high value content to people which gets them interested, gets them engaged, gets them on the webinars and at the end, if there’s a good fit, if there’s a product that makes sense, then, it’s the natural segway to sales pitch but it’s very much a soft sale, a recommendation, vs. something that’s a lot more hype and then when there’s not really any value provided, but you basically just tricked people onto being on a webinar that’s just one long sales pitch. I think the approach you’ve taken is a good approach for a long term success and it’s gonna build your audience loyalty and people are gonna know that you are a resource they can come into for a good content whether or not they end up buying. As a bonus to you, a lot of people may decide to buy from through your affiliate links because you’ve provided so much value but I think providing the value on the front end is so much smarter than trying to just do a long sales pitch or a disguise sales pitch when there’s not a lot of value offered and at the end of it, you’re trying so hard to sell people and got them to click the buy it. I think, you’ve taken a much better approach to the whole project.

Henry: Everyone that is coming on the webinar is someone that – I’m not just picking people out the air. Every single person that has ever done a webinar has done it because either we use their product because we understand the greater sort of impacts their product can make. There’s a fantastic company called Rain Bird AI that do knowledge mapping. They’d hate me say knowledge to mapping. But they help people in a knowledge base and that’s very intelligent. They are gonna hate me for saying all of that. But you know what? We use their products but it was kind of one of those webinars that left you going away. They didn’t even come into the webinar with the idea that they’re gonna sell millions of products because they are very much open to enterprise level and what we use is a free service. But nevertheless, it was one of those webinars that just got so many reactions because people are like “Oh, wow! Oscorp intelligence can do it to my business.”Or “Oh, wow! I didn’t know Oscrop intelligence was gonna have this much impact in the future.” So, it was all, since bringing them in, we didn’t walk away with millions of dollars in our back pack pocket. We are not necessarily going of that every single time we do something. We just want to create great content straight up and then whatever will be, will be. That’s an example where the webinar was just an hour and a half with jaw dropping information and everyone run away like “wow, I didn’t know Oscorp intelligence is having that much of effect.” All these technology that is being signed by enterprise is tripping down to small businesses. And I think small businesses actually have better technology, their enterprise stuff for many many areas. Trying management apps like Toggle that we use, project management stuff like Assignment that we use. I would hate to try and get that in enterprise level system. But for small startups, for people like, I’d say, me with then a couple of helpers that help Fridge work that do sort of a bit work here and there to make some stuff happen. For small team, USANA works insanely well right up to probably a couple hundred people in your company and then you just get into stupid – sort of there’s a million manages for million things. But for startups, small companies don’t have million manages for million things. You just need to do things actually. That actually worth any money to you.

Matt: Definitely. Nothing happens until you start making some sales and delivering the product. Other than that, it’s all just kinda talking and planning but it doesn’t go anywhere. Once you do get up and running, then you just want to have a seamless and as frictionless experience as possible. These tools that are available can help you get there. By all means, that’s what you should be using to run your business as smoothly and efficiently as possible so you’re not wasting a lot of time on admin and bureaucracy and all that kind of stuff. Startups just don’t have the time or the bandwidth to waste time on those kind of activities. So, if there’s a technology solution that will help things run better, by all means, put it in place. So, where does kinda Fridge Magazine go from here? Where do you go from here? How do you fit in with the future of it? And what else you got going on?

Henry: That’s pretty interesting because we actually been doing a lot of talking [inaudible 0:18:58.7], we don’t really want to go down where you have tons of crappy courses. I’m not saying they’re all crap but the [inaudible 0:19:11.2] where it’s very much part of process to go make a course, just take the books and off you go. I’ve actually lit pretty courses how to set up your Facebook fan page that has a position in the world but I don’t think you kinda need to. The millenials are starting to own this world like if a millennial concepts Facebook fan page, were in some serious trouble here. More sort of our area is yes, that will be a framework of courses that come in a framework. They come on a process-driven basis that are a lot more do this right here and have this results or keep repeating this step by step process. Something we once get back into. We don’t do face to face meetings anymore. Most of the people who work at Fridge are on all other world. I rarely see people on the face to face basis in terms of the actual working of Fridge magazine. We want to take this back to almost the floor again. I think, what we are heading in the company this time is actually doing conventions and meet ups not because we used to. Instead of bringing, force people in cities together, fifty people, we’re talking the decent size, proper thousands people events is where we are heading with this. That’s gonna be all over the world. I suspect, first is Australia and United States. I don’t know if anyone has – certainly from someone from outside, you can pick this up very easily when you go to either to States, Canada or Australia. They are very unique positions in terms of launching product. Australia’s population base is based from 5 areas. [Inaudible 0:21:17.3] In the States, you got some very specific cities. You’ve got major cities. If you wanna go off those cities and launch a product, you only have to concentrate on small area and coming from an offline background, that’s really not a position to be in. I think I ever owning States is so lucky. In UK or in Europe, you think “Where am I gonna launch this product?” and you’ve got so many towns and villages and these things you know, these metropolis extend into this village, that village, that town, this city. They go everywhere. So when you launch product, you’ve got to look at UK as a whole or somewhere in Europe, in Germany, you got a whole lot of places that you wanted to go and launch a product. In the States, when I got to New York, I got down to Florida. I’ve got up to Seattle. I’ve got down to San Francisco and LA. You’ve got sort of one half of population. If you want to launch a product on the ground, go to field marketing, these are fantastic places to go and do it because you only to conquer a very small audience in effect of the whole country and after you got sort of that attraction behind it [inaudible 0:22:43.0]. Same in Australia, you already got 5 places to go and conquer and it’s a lot of easy to make those places individual task and go through them one by one than trying to turn up to a country and go “I want to take over this whole country with the product.” That’s exactly what I go into every mindset with I want to take over the world with every product that I’ve ever done. For us, we gonna take it back to the floor and bring it together, maybe annual conventions around, more of the millennial side, the youngest side, the process driven side of doing, building an actual business. That’s gonna be a huge thing for us for the next couple of years is actually going back to the street you could say.

Matt: Well, I’m sure that’s gonna be disappointing to hear for the people out in Alice Spring in Australia but for the people that are either able to travel and live in some of the bigger centers that you mentioned, I think that is a fantastic idea. I think the face to face relationships and the meeting in person is a huge piece of the overall business success a lot of people have and although you can do a lot of things online, you can do a lot of things virtually, I don’t think there’s any substitute for being able to meet people in person and make those connections and I think if you made that friendship in real life and actual face to face conversation, that’s gonna carry back and carry on for a long time vs. people that you may just you’ve interacted a little bit on twitter or send an email here and there, they’re not gonna have the same kind of loyalty and the same understanding of your business and the same incentive to make a partnership work with you or make an affiliation work with you as they will if you sat down and had a beer with them or shared some stories over dinner or gotten to meet each other in the hallway of the convention or something. I think, being able to have that personal interaction is gonna be huge and if you can bring back that personal element to what you’re doing, I think it’s gonna be a tremendous boost to your success. With that said, and keeping the time in mind, let me ask you this, for people who are interested in kind of finding out more either about the magazine or some of what you are doing, what are the ways they can contact you or where should they go and look for you and find you online?

Henry: So, the very easiest way is always to go to FridgeMagazine.com. That’s where the magazine and all of the other sort of projects based on around the magazine. You can get access to the monthly magazine through that. You got fantastic articles and if you go to Fridge Magazine, you can find Matt’s fantastic article as well. I have saved a very good list on there. If there’s demand for a new product, some new books, you got a lot of experience in that area, it’s probably quite nice from an accounting point of view to that subject. So, you go to fridgemagazine.com. Also for me, I talk about process in terms of business in general. But for me, the big thing for me is marketing so I do bit of blogging, where when I do a blog it kinda mean something because I do lots of other. I also teach the preference content formula that’s actually a step by step guide to create a great content and the best place to come and find about that is to go to henryreith.co. I’ve got a 10 step process for creating a great content in about 15 minutes so your whole month of content can be done in 15 minutes. Most people think that’s impossible. Most people stress out about content but I work with companies on their content creation processes specifically. I do fairly regular webinars over henryreith.co. You can jump on the mailing list and the next webinar that comes around, if you are one of the lucky hundred that actually got to attend because there’s generally people who miss out. I teach the whole process on the webinar, end to end. The process isn’t my product actually, isn’t the thing that I’m gonna charge you money for. The content creation process should be really easy and content creation should be only a very small part of your marketing. The fact that people put something on the site is the start of the overall process. But being able to do that in 15 minutes, just take the stress out. Relax so much more. Yeah. That’s fridgemagazine.com, henryreith.co and @henryreith on Twitter as well.

Matt: That’s awesome! Obviously, all these links will be on the show notes on the site but 15 minutes to do the content for a month sounds like something I’m definitely gonna have to check out. I know I’ve been spending more than 15 minutes a month right now so there is a lot of room for improvement for me. I appreciate you taking the time to be on the show and I wish you a good rest of the day.

Henry: And you as well, Matt. Thank you so much for having me.