Mr. Magazine

Publishing During A Pandemic (8)

“I think for publishers, in a certain way, this could potentially be a really golden time, because they are able to connect with their audience more so now than ever before. People actually have the time to read the stuff they care about. People are going to develop new passions and new hobbies. There’s going to be opportunities that come out of this that is not all doom and gloom.” … Joe Hyrkin

The pandemic has paused us all in many of the same ways. Working from home, staying at home, and social distancing ourselves from friends and family that do not live with us. It has caused tragic and enormous loss of life all around the globe. But while we feel and see all the horrible toll this disease has caused, there has to be hope for the future; hope for better days to come. In fact there is a framed poster in my office with the phrase “There is Always Hope” in every language you can imagine.

Joe Hyrkin is CEO of Issuu, the world’s leading Omni channel content tools and publishing digital platform. And while like all of us, Joe has seen the extreme rapidity of working from home and caring for the health and welfare of his employees, he’s also digging for the positive that can come out of this awful nightmare. The caring for others on the personal side, and the creativity and innovation he’s seen from his resilient employees on the professional side.

I spoke with Joe recently and we talked about all of this, the dark days of the disease and the brighter tomorrow we all have faith is coming. While one of the biggest challenges for publishers, he believes, is advertising, he feels there’s going to have to be a whole lot more creativity around how publishers work with advertisers in the midst of all this.

The positive nature of Joe’s thinking shows up in our conversation. So, I hope that you enjoy this eighth installment in the series of Publishing During A Pandemic, in the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Joe Hyrkin, CEO, Issuu.

But first the sound-bites:

On how Issuu is operating during the pandemic: There’s two pieces, one is just the general operations of how the business is running. And on the operations side, we moved to all remote about three weeks ago. We have offices in Palo Alto, Copenhagen, Berlin, and then we have a few people scattered around the United States who are already working remotely. But we now have everyone working from home.

On the business model during the pandemic: On the business side, and this is all tied to operations too, one of the things that I’ve been reminding everybody, and I think it’s important for every company and every business, is don’t conflate what’s happening in your company with what you’re reading in the press. There’s going to be a lot of challenges and huge downturns in advertising, some companies are doing better than others, understand what’s happening in your own company before you just assume it’s going to be lumped in with everything else. For us, it’s been really interesting. We don’t rely on advertising, it’s a small piece of our revenue as we’ve talked about. The bulk of our business is our customers paying us for access to additional tools and services. What we’ve found is we’re actually growing in the midst of this. We’re being very careful; we’ve reduced prices in some areas; we’ve made a number of the features that we used to charge for free, particularly for magazine publishers.

On many major publishers saying their plans have not really changed yet, but that they are doing a lot of content on their digital platforms: For us, more people are using Issuu digital sales now as a way to generate revenue. We’re finding more people using Issuu Collaborate. It’s a great flat planning system, but it also helps in terms of managing collaborators, managing remote workers, managing their contributions, their things coming in on time. It’s always been used for that, but now it’s even more important because there is increasingly no centralized location for publishers. Right now the centralized location is online and on Zoom.

On whether he ever envisioned something like this happening, even in his worst nightmares: No. But not only that, it’s the speed in which we’ve done it. Just think about it. Two months ago. Your ACT 10 Experience was fully scheduled six weeks ago, and I was planning on being there this April. I wasn’t even questioning it. I think it’s amazing how radically the world has changed in a matter of weeks. It’s totally unimaginable. There was a well-known movie about an epidemic, I can’t remember what it was called, but the writer of that script was recently quoted as saying, I couldn’t have written the script to align with what’s been happening in the world right now, because no one would have believed it. It would have been too farfetched.

On whether he thinks everything will go back to the traditional way of doing business after the pandemic is over or the work-from-home directive has given him room for thought: I think most businesses, most not all, are designed to revolve around people operating together in some fashion, but we’re all learning that there’s a lot more flexibility available to us. The biggest challenge that I’m finding with my company right now, my team, is people who have school aged children, particularly elementary schoolchildren and younger, are really struggling. One of the things that I do think will come out of it operationally will be a lot more openness to flexibility, so even when we do go back to the office, I think there will be an openness to flexibility and to connecting with each other and employees more. There’s an empathy that we’re all learning for each other.

On what keeps him up at night: How long is this going to last. And it was interesting for the first couple of weeks, working at home and learning how to use Zoom and those sorts of things, but how do we support the individuals in the company who are most challenged by it, with childcare, as we talked about. With aging parents in some instances. With the distance that people have with their families. There is an extra layer of stress that all of my employees have; some people talk about it, some don’t, but this is on everybody’s mind. And in some instances it weighs pretty heavily on them.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Joe Hyrkin, CEO, Issuu.

Samir Husni: In the doom and gloom environment that we’re living in today, both in the media world and in our everyday reality, how is Issuu operating during this pandemic?

Joe Hyrkin: There’s two pieces, one is just the general operations of how the business is running. And on the operations side, we moved to all remote about three weeks ago. We have offices in Palo Alto, Copenhagen, Berlin, and then we have a few people scattered around the United States who are already working remotely. But we now have everyone working from home.

In which case, we’re doing a lot more Zooms. In fact, in the middle of March we had hoped to have a full offsite planning meeting for the next two quarters, and usually we do those in person, in Copenhagen. And people from the U.S., Copenhagen and Berlin all work together for a week on all the planning. That was scheduled for the second week in March, and we kept waiting to see if we were going to be able to do that, or if we should start planning our business remotely. We ended up moving it to Zoom.

The big challenge is there is a nine hour time difference between California and Copenhagen, so operating, and this is a group that has to work together because we’re planning all the details, so what we did was start the meetings early in the morning here. They ran from 6:00 a.m. here in California to 1:00 p.m., which meant it was late afternoon into the evening in Copenhagen. We took an hour break so that people could have dinner with their families. And in fact, for the sole purpose of planning, we delivered meals to people’s homes so they would have time to have a meal with their families during these planning sessions.

There’s this great feature in Zoom called “Raise Your Hand,” so having a meeting with 10 or 12 people, we used that feature and had someone moderating it. It was really productive. We started doing that the week before everyone began working remotely. So, we had a bit of a head start. We’ve done everything remotely since then.

We’ve now had two company-wide meetings. One of the things that I’ve done differently is we usually haven monthly all-hands meetings, where people come together in the three main offices, it’s at the same time, 8:00 a.m. in California, 5:00 p.m. in Europe. We’re now doing two of those a month, just to get people together more frequently. I’ve started doing Zoom for office hours, twice a week to talk about anything, so anyone who wants to talk is more than welcome to do that. We’ve just made a lot of effort to connect with people and communicate with them much more throughout this whole process.

Samir Husni: What about the business model?

Joe Hyrkin: On the business side, and this is all tied to operations too, one of the things that I’ve been reminding everybody, and I think it’s important for every company and every business, is don’t conflate what’s happening in your company with what you’re reading in the press. There’s going to be a lot of challenges and huge downturns in advertising, some companies are doing better than others, understand what’s happening in your own company before you just assume it’s going to be lumped in with everything else.

For us, it’s been really interesting. We don’t rely on advertising, it’s a small piece of our revenue as we’ve talked about. The bulk of our business is our customers paying us for access to additional tools and services. What we’ve found is we’re actually growing in the midst of this. We’re being very careful; we’ve reduced prices in some areas; we’ve made a number of the features that we used to charge for free, particularly for magazine publishers.

We’ve made “Collaborate,” the flat planning system freely available to all Issuu customers. We used to charge a 30 percent rev share for folks who used Issuu digital sales, but we’re not charging the rev share anymore, we’re letting them keep all of that revenue. What we keep finding is increasingly, particularly magazines and newspapers because they can’t print anymore, printing facilities are closed, even if they’re not closed they’re normal means of distributing the printed paper is no longer available. Their concerns around printed stuff related to Covid-19 has to do with is the virus on it and are people passing their germs around.

So, what we’re seeing is this resilience among publishers who are getting their content out there and are continuing to publish. So, they have been moving to Issuu. We’ve seen a number of, particularly university publishers, issuing press releases telling people that they will keep publishing and they’re moving everything to Issuu. There’s an interesting local magazine, the Merritt Herald in British Columbia, they did an entire editorial on moving strictly to digital copies due to Covid-19, which are available on their website through Issuu. We also saw The Kenyon Collegian do that through our Issuu webpage.

What we’re finding is more and more publishers are continuing to create that magazine and newspaper experience and they’re highlighting their use of us. It’s a great responsibility for us; our role in all of this is we have to keep running and operating, making sure that we’re delivering even more for publishers to get their content out.

Samir Husni: Yet every CEO and every publisher that I have spoken with so far have told me that they haven’t changed anything, as far as their frequency, or print? So far the plans are to continue as is. And they’re doing a lot on their digital side, publishing a lot of their content there.

Joe Hyrkin: For us, more people are using Issuu digital sales now as a way to generate revenue. We’re finding more people using Issuu Collaborate. It’s a great flat planning system, but it also helps in terms of managing collaborators, managing remote workers, managing their contributions, their things coming in on time. It’s always been used for that, but now it’s even more important because there is increasingly no centralized location for publishers. Right now the centralized location is online and on Zoom.

We’re also seeing people share and distribute that content through the different channels more: Facebook, Instagram; we’re seeing more creativity around what they can do with digital. I think the big challenge for all the publishers is advertising. We’re seeing these huge cuts: travel, airlines. If you were relying on travel and hospitality to fuel your advertising, you’re going to have to find that somewhere else. There’s going to have to be a whole lot more creativity around how publishers work with advertisers in the midst of all this.

The big challenge that I’m finding is we just don’t know how long this is all going to last. So, if it’s going to be a month, okay we can keep things pretty much the way they were operating before, we don’t have to make a huge number of changes, we’ll be back to normal in a month. But we don’t know. We don’t know what’s going to happen to the businesses that were advertising, both big and small.

Samir Husni: Did you ever envision something like this happening, even in your worst nightmares? The entire world shutting down?

Joe Hyrkin: No. But not only that, it’s the speed in which we’ve done it. Just think about it. Two months ago. Your ACT 10 Experience was fully scheduled six weeks ago, and I was planning on being there this April. I wasn’t even questioning it. I think it’s amazing how radically the world has changed in a matter of weeks. It’s totally unimaginable. There was a well-known movie about an epidemic, I can’t remember what it was called, but the writer of that script was recently quoted as saying, I couldn’t have written the script to align with what’s been happening in the world right now, because no one would have believed it. It would have been too farfetched.

Samir Husni: As CEO of a major digital company, do you think you’ll return to your traditional way of doing work after this is over? Or has the work-from-home directive given you room for thought?

Joe Hyrkin: I think most businesses, most not all, are designed to revolve around people operating together in some fashion, but we’re all learning that there’s a lot more flexibility available to us. The biggest challenge that I’m finding with my company right now, my team, is people who have school aged children, particularly elementary schoolchildren and younger, are really struggling.

They’re trying to balance being with their family all day, childcare that they now have to do themselves, and they’re having to learn how to homeschool. I have brilliant engineers and brilliant marketers who are really good at what they do every day in the office, they don’t know how to homeschool. We’re demanding culturally, there is a huge demand on people, to be able to figure out how to balance their home life with homeschooling and trying to get their work done. And we’re trying to be as flexible as we can. We understand that people are challenged with all of these things. And we know some of the work is going to come late.

We’re asking people who have a little extra time to help. We’re moving deadlines in certain instances and we’re having everyone reach out to their manager or the exec staff if they’re too challenged; let’s talk through it and be flexible.

One of the things that I do think will come out of it operationally will be a lot more openness to flexibility, so even when we do go back to the office, I think there will be an openness to flexibility and to connecting with each other and employees more. There’s an empathy that we’re all learning for each other.

The other thing that’s interesting is doing everything by Zoom, we’re all seeing into each other’s homes. You meet people in the office, you see them with their tie, you see them however they operate, then suddenly we’re seeing people’s bookshelves or their art in their homes. If they have children, put them in your lap for the Zoom, we’re encouraging that, it’s totally fine. There is a humanness that is one of the silver linings to this process.

Samir Husni: My typical last question; what’s keeping you up at night these days?

Joe Hyrkin: How long is this going to last. And it was interesting for the first couple of weeks, working at home and learning how to use Zoom and those sorts of things, but how do we support the individuals in the company who are most challenged by it, with childcare, as we talked about. With aging parents in some instances. With the distance that people have with their families. There is an extra layer of stress that all of my employees have; some people talk about it, some don’t, but this is on everybody’s mind. And in some instances it weighs pretty heavily on them.

Then what will be the follow-on economic fallout. I think we’re all kind of in the middle of what’s happening right now, day-to-day, but once we do start to go back to work and when we discover the new normal, whatever that may be, what kind of economic environment are we going to be walking back into? We’re going to see so many stores closed, businesses closed. In my neck of the woods, in Silicon Valley, we’re going to see many well-funded startups that are going to fail. What is the overall impact going to be on how we’re operating?

When this started, the economy was in really good shape, people talk about that, and now it’s being discussed as a health crisis. What keeps me up at night related to this is, yes it’s a health crisis and we’re going to start to see real economic challenges as well, but will we be able to bounce back from that quickly?

The flip side is the best companies, the best innovations, some of the best creativity manifests out of these challenges. If we look back at the 2008 financial crisis, so many interesting creative products and businesses and ways of operating evolved out of that. So, I am excited to see what manifests; what new products and what new ways of operating come out of this.

I think for publishers, in a certain way, this could potentially be a really golden time, because they are able to connect with their audience more so now than ever before. People actually have the time to read the stuff they care about. People are going to develop new passions and new hobbies. There’s going to be opportunities that come out of this that is not all doom and gloom.

One of the things I always love about talking to you is you have this great perspective on the longevity of the magazine world. It has gone through all kinds of upheavals, from wars to Depressions to digital, to on and on. And yet it keeps going. So, what will the new evolutions of this category, of this sort of ecosystem of journalism and print content; where is that going to go? That’s an exciting thing, I think.

Samir Husni: Thank you.