Mr. Magazine

Popular Book Company (Canada) Ltd. was incorporated on July 19, 1994 to publish quality workbooks and other learning materials for preschool, elementary, and high school children. The history of Popular Canada is marked with a line-up of successful publications, beginning with MathSmart published in May 1999. The brand became an instant success in Canada.

Today, along with their workbook series, Popular Book Company also has four licensed publications with the Old Farmer’s Almanac—365 Days of Fun and they have more titles coming out under the licensed Paw Patrol name. And they’re expanding into the U.S. market. 

Joe Mastrogiacomo is the chief operating officer of Popular Book and is extremely excited about the growth opportunity the U.S. market offers. I spoke with Joe recently and we talked about the print phenomenon of children’s educational workbooks. According to Joe, print has never been stronger in this area as parents struggle to be both teacher and homeworker during the pandemic. And how even before the pandemic print workbooks for children were very successful for this Canadian company. 

So, please enjoy the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Joe Mastrogiacomo, chief operating officer, Popular Book Company. 

But first the sound-bites:

On placing children’s workbooks with magazines in the marketplace: In fact, it was the pandemic and Linda Ruth, (CEO, PSCS, Publishing Management and Consulting) who actually came up with the idea, because the demand during the pandemic for workbooks since kids were not in school, the demand was super-hot. Linda Ruth came up with the idea saying, because there was such a high demand let’s convert the books into bookazines. And she’s done a wonderful job and so has Comag; they’ve done a great job putting our books in these six pocket displays near the checkout at some of the grocery stores. 

On what he feels the role of print is in educational materials in this digital age: Because we take our content very seriously, we’re worried about the copyright obviously, but more importantly, we’ve found that educational publishing for children’s paperback workbooks, the demand is still increasing every year because parents literally want to have something physical.

On any challenges he thinks he may face moving forward: Eventually we have to migrate into more e-book educational learning, absolutely. And more teaching resources available on our website. But it’s a delicate fine line, the challenges, we don’t want to cut out the distributor. We don’t want to cut out the Costco’s and the Walmart’s of the world. We’re loyal to them. They have the footprint in their stores, so we’re a little bit hesitant to start advertising too much to bring people to our website because we don’t want to disrupt that distribution relationship. That’s the challenge in our world.

On whether he believes the revenue will be the same with e-books as it is with print: Great question. In the short-term, no, I don’t believe so. I really don’t. But in the long-term, I do believe we can. That’s going to be the wave of the future for all workbooks. Children’s books it still is. In my view, in the book market, children’s books are year after year still holding their percentage increases. But it’s going to be the challenge in the future of the revenue, absolutely.

On his roadmap for the future: I think if we concentrate on our mission goal, which is to absolutely take education seriously. Children have to learn and supplemental products is a competitive world. We have to compete around the world and unfortunately, we seem to be falling behind compared to other children in other places around the globe. And in order to keep our competitive advantage, we have to educate our children.

On his definition of success: I guess the definition of success is selling units. We’re going to expand in different subject areas: English, Spanish to English. One of the Paw Patrol’s we’re doing is going to be called Basic English-Spanish Words in January. So, we’re going to expand more in those subject areas. We also have eight books under Complete English Success coming out in January 2022 as well. That’s from Pre-K to Grade Six. 

On whether he’s had any feedback from his audience about the change to bookazines: Because this year has been an abnormal year with the pandemic, the demand was there. Just give me stuff because my kids are at home. I’m going crazy being a teacher and working from home; just give me the content. But in the future, that’s probably a good point. We probably will look at separating, at having content specifically for the magazine industry with a different cover and another book for the book industry with a different cover. Right now they’re both the same, just the SKU number is different.

On anything he’d like to add: We’re very excited about the U.S. market. It’s obviously 10 times the size of the Canadian market. We have a small office in Chicago that does a little bit of our administrative tax work. But we will be expanding and hiring more individuals in the U.S. Right now we deal with U.S. teachers but the majority of the staff is in Canada, but we will be expanding and opening up an office in the U.S. And that’s exciting.

On what makes him tick and click: What I love about this industry, as I said, I was involved with the creation of the “Dummies” company; it’s very entrepreneurial for me. When I came to this company not that long ago, about four years now, there was things to change here in Canada. But I’m the one who pushed to enter the U.S. market. And I think the U.S. market is a tremendous opportunity for  educational workbooks.

On how he unwinds in the evening: I watch CNN. I’m a U.S. political buff. (Laughs) That’s really what my passion is about. I remember as a child getting so excited about watching the Watergate trials. I’ve always been a U.S. political buff. And right now there is a lot of material out there. (Laughs again) I watch way more American news than Canadian. That’s my passion, and traveling. Unfortunately, the travel part has been on hold now for a year. Let’s just hope we can get through this tough time in history.

On what keeps him up at night: The business does. I have to worry about payroll; all our staff has been working from home here in Canada. I let them work from home starting in early March 2020, way before the lockdown here in Canada. The staff was a little apprehensive, production editorial is the only staff I have. The salespeople still come in once and a while. They wear masks in the office and they are socially distanced.

And now the lightly edited Mr. Magazine™ interview with Joe Mastrogiacomo, Chief Operating Officer, Popular Book Company.

Samir Husni: With the pandemic, 2020 was definitely a year unlike any of us had ever seen, and for the world of publishing as well. Your latest entry into the marketplace, the 3 to 1 fun books that you’ve done through a license from the Old Farmer’s Almanac are sold on the magazine racks. Can you tell me more about this phenomenon of books looking like magazines or magazines looking like books?

Joe Mastrogiacomo: Absolutely. In fact, it was the pandemic and Linda Ruth, (CEO, PSCS, Publishing Management and Consulting) who actually came up with the idea, because the demand during the pandemic for workbooks since kids were not in school, the demand was super-hot. We’ve been in publishing in Canada for 27 years doing workbooks. We are the leaders in the market; we have 55 to 60 percent of market share in Canada. We take our contents for workbook education very seriously. And we’ve done well. We have all the major retailers in Canada. 

Two or three years ago we started to publish for the U.S. market. What happened was that the pandemic hit, obviously, in North America. And although in Canada our sales, Costco, the grocery stores, people were still buying our products because Costco sells groceries up here and Walmart as well, so those two accounts and our online did really well. But in the U.S. market we were in trouble, because the Barnes & Noble’s and the independent bookstores were closed. 

Linda Ruth came up with the idea saying, because there was such a high demand let’s convert the books into bookazines. And she’s done a wonderful job and so has Comag; they’ve done a great job putting our books in these six pocket displays near the checkout at some of the grocery stores. We started mostly in the Midwest and then in the Northeast. The demand has been great and the fulfillment has been pretty good. 

We’ve managed to get to the magazines because those types of grocery stores don’t carry books. I don’t think they have a book section at all. In order to meet that demand, the parent is going through the checkout and they have a child, so they feel a need to buy our books. So, I have to thank Linda Ruth and Comag and ANC; they’ve done a great job in expanding our titles. As I said, we’ve been in business many years and never thought about entering the magazine market. And up here in Canada we’re not in the magazine market because everybody knows our brand up here. But in the states this is going well. 

In fact, we’re expanding our publishing program tremendously. We’re coming out with more licensed product under Paw Patrol; we’ll have three titles, math-based, between the ages of three and five, coming out in June, and then another three under English activity in January. So we have those titles under the Paw Patrol coming out in the future. Then in September, we have four more books being published. We’re going to Pre-K and K for both our Complete Math Success series. Right now we have from Grades One through Six. And our Complete Curriculum Success, we’ve already published Grades One through Six and now we’re going Pre-K and K, and they’re coming out in September. 

Overall the experiments have been great in the magazine market. Higher returns, obviously, in magazines than in books, but what Linda Ruth and Comag decided to do was, because our content is not time sensitive, they kind of turned it into an annual, and that was the most we could do. It worked out well. 

Samir Husni: In this digital age, you’re still in the business of creating ink on paper. What do you think the role of print is in education, entertainment and communication with the younger generation today?

Joe Mastrogiacomo: Because we take our content very seriously, we’re worried about the copyright obviously, but more importantly, we’ve found that educational publishing for children’s paperback workbooks, the demand is still increasing every year because parents literally want to have something physical. It’s hard for a parent to monitor what a child is doing on an iPad, whether the child goes into a room and starts to play video games or whatever. When you have a book and the parent tells the child to do pages 15 through 20 and they know the parent will review it, you can leave the child alone because the book is there.

We find that with supplemental products, and this is a phenomenon worldwide, paper and print is still strong. And we are continuing that phenomenon. What we’ve done with a lot of our product and we’re going to continue this in the U.S. market as well, we have QR codes throughout our books, every book now, if it’s a complete math book, grade six let’s say, we have many QR codes. Automatically, a child can scan a QR code with their phone and it’ll have a teacher within that lesson, additional materials. So we’re expanding in those resources.

And for the smaller children we have a lot of printable materials that they can download as well to help them, especially with Paw Patrol, ages about three to five, some coloring and stuff. Everything we do is educational-based; it’s very serious. All of our product is done and reviewed by teachers in the U.S., they all agreed to the National State Standards, everything is properly reviewed. Everything is tied to curriculum. 

Samir Husni: As you move forward, what do you see as some major challenges you may face and how will you overcome them?

Joe Mastrogiacomo: How long is print going to last? I’ve been in printing for 30 years; I started my career in the late ‘80s. I was with Pearson and educational textbooks at that time, and then a friend of mine, we opened up the “Dummies” company, Excel for Dummies, etc. I started the Canadian sub and he started the U.S. parent. We were always worried about what was going to happen to print. 

For now, it’s working well, as I said. But eventually we have to migrate into more e-book educational learning, absolutely. And more teaching resources available on our website. But it’s a delicate fine line, the challenges, we don’t want to cut out the distributor. We don’t want to cut out the Costco’s and the Walmart’s of the world. We’re loyal to them. They have the footprint in their stores, so we’re a little bit hesitant to start advertising too much to bring people to our website because we don’t want to disrupt that distribution relationship. That’s the challenge in our world. 

Samir Husni: Do you think you can make the same revenue from e-books as you do in print?

Joe Mastrogiacomo: Great question. In the short-term, no, I don’t believe so. I really don’t. But in the long-term, I do believe we can. That’s going to be the wave of the future for all workbooks. Children’s books it still is. In my view, in the book market, children’s books are year after year still holding their percentage increases. But it’s going to be the challenge in the future of the revenue, absolutely. And even the magazine industry, I don’t know it that well, but I’m sure over the last 15 years it has declined as well. I know in Canada, some of the bigger content providers are starting to get out of the magazine business. It’s been tough. 

Like anybody, we’re in that family of books and magazines, so we’re going to be faced with that digital problem as well, the e-commerce.

Samir Husni: What’s your roadmap for the future? 

Joe Mastrogiacomo: I think if we concentrate on our mission goal, which is to absolutely take education seriously. Children have to learn and supplemental products is a competitive world. We have to compete around the world and unfortunately, we seem to be falling behind compared to other children in other places around the globe. And in order to keep our competitive advantage, we have to educate our children. 

Our parent company actually started in Asia, in Singapore. An individual started the company back in 1923. In Asia, especially for math, it’s drilling. That’s how they do it, they drill the math into children. And it’s just practice after practice. And that’s why in the field of math they’ve excelled. Canadian children, American children, we are falling behind. So, what we have to do is keep serious to our content, make sure that it’s always in agreement with the curriculum; we have to provide more and more resources to our consumers, to the parents, making it easier for the children to learn. We need more videos, more online content, and we’ll see what lies ahead for the industry.

Samir Husni: You said your expansion into the U.S. market had been successful. What’s your definition of success?

Joe Mastrogiacomo: I guess the definition of success is selling units. We’re going to expand in different subject areas: English, Spanish to English. One of the Paw Patrol’s we’re doing is going to be called Basic English-Spanish Words in January. So, we’re going to expand more in those subject areas. We also have eight books under Complete English Success coming out in January 2022 as well. That’s from Pre-K to Grade Six. 

So far we’re stopping at grade six in the U.S. In Canada we go to grade 12. We have supplemental math books for grades 9-12. So we can expand in different subject areas in the U.S. We can expand into higher grades. We’re the only workbook publishers in all of North America who’s invested in video technology with teachers. Other publishers haven’t done that. We believe we are giving the parents and the children value added material. And in return, our consumers look for our brand. And that’s our goal. To make the brand more recognizable, to always give value added content and always have serious content. There are other publishers out there, but they don’t revise their books. We have a serious editorial team here; we’re about a 30 headcount. So we’re serious. 

Samir Husni: Have you heard any feedback from your audience about changing to the bookazine look?

Joe Mastrogiacomo: Because this year has been an abnormal year with the pandemic, the demand was there. Just give me stuff because my kids are at home. I’m going crazy being a teacher and working from home; just give me the content. But in the future, that’s probably a good point. We probably will look at separating, at having content specifically for the magazine industry with a different cover and another book for the book industry with a different cover. Right now they’re both the same, just the SKU number is different. 

Samir Husni: Is there anything you’d like to add?

Joe Mastrogiacomo: We’re very excited about the U.S. market. It’s obviously 10 times the size of the Canadian market. We have a small office in Chicago that does a little bit of our administrative tax work. But we will be expanding and hiring more individuals in the U.S. Right now we deal with U.S. teachers but the majority of the staff is in Canada, but we will be expanding and opening up an office in the U.S. And that’s exciting. 

The growth is the U.S. market. We’ve tapped ourselves out in the Canadian market. There are no new accounts that we can go after. We have almost 60 percent market share. Then perhaps expand into different markets as well, perhaps the Spanish market, Mexico and some of the other Latin countries around the world. We will start doing workbooks in Spanish, I believe. 

We have the talent and we have the resources. And we have the will to grow. That’s all we specialize in, workbooks. Like I said, our parent company started in 1923 with one store in Singapore. And now we have offices all over the world. Our headquarters is in Singapore. I report in to the greater Hong Kong area and we have offices in Taiwan, the U.K., so we’re expanding. 

Samir Husni: What makes you tick and click, motivates you to get out of bed in the morning?

Joe Mastrogiacomo: What I love about this industry, as I said, I was involved with the creation of the “Dummies” company; it’s very entrepreneurial for me. When I came to this company not that long ago, about four years now, there was things to change here in Canada. But I’m the one who pushed to enter the U.S. market. And I think the U.S. market is a tremendous opportunity for  educational workbooks. 

And if we in North America want to remain competitive with the rest of the world, we have to give more material for our children to expand their minds and learn more. We have to provide them with content so that parents can encourage their children to do more and get ahead. 

Samir Husni: How do you unwind after a hard day’s work?

Joe Mastrogiacomo: I watch CNN. I’m a U.S. political buff. (Laughs) That’s really what my passion is about. I remember as a child getting so excited about watching the Watergate trials. I’ve always been a U.S. political buff. And right now there is a lot of material out there. (Laughs again) I watch way more American news than Canadian. That’s my passion, and traveling. Unfortunately, the travel part has been on hold now for a year. Let’s just hope we can get through this tough time in history. 

Samir Husni: My typical last question; what keeps you up at night?

Joe Mastrogiacomo: The business does. I have to worry about payroll; all our staff has been working from home here in Canada. I let them work from home starting in early March 2020, way before the lockdown here in Canada. The staff was a little apprehensive, production editorial is the only staff I have. The salespeople still come in once and a while. They wear masks in the office and they are socially distanced. 

In September, they came back for a period of 10 days when the COVID numbers went down and then they started going higher again, so now they’re back working from home. I haven’t seen my staff in a year, except for that 10 days in September. I’m looking forward to having them back. So I worry. What keeps me up is that I have a business to run, bills to pay. But it’s a lot of fun. I like being involved in education definitely. It’s rewarding. 

Samir Husni: Thank you. 

Courier is a London-based company that produces a bimonthly magazine and newspaper full of educational and inspirational content for modern entrepreneurs and small businesses, as well as a newsletter, podcast, and events. Since 2013, Courier has empowered the next generation of entrepreneurs with practical and authentic stories that inspire people who want to live and work on their own terms. 

Jeff Taylor is the founder and publisher of Courier and believes his brand can help people be better and do better when it comes to business. In fact, so much so that Courier caught the eye of Mailchimp, an all-in-one marketing platform for small businesses, that acquired Jeff’s company in 2020.

I spoke with Jeff recently and we talked about the acquisition and how the move with Mailchimp has allowed him to bring his brand to a level he has wanted since the beginning, only faster and with an expertise that can’t be denied. Jeff is a believer in print, but also stresses his belief in being platform agnostic in this day and age. Whether it’s a hammer or a saw, as he puts it, print and digital have to work together to meet the customer where they are. They’re both in his toolkit and he utilizes them accordingly.

So, please enjoy the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Jeff Taylor, founder and publisher, Courier magazine.

But first the sound-bites:

On how Courier Media adapted to the pandemic crisis: It was a year when our audience needed us more than ever before. We’re in the business of helping people work sustainably and stand on their own two feet and that’s a really delicate place for a person who’s starting out. Last year was a year when the audience needed the insight and the skills and even just the stories of other people and how they were figuring out a path through this.

On what he hopes to accomplish with the brand in the future: In a couple years’ time, I’d like to think we’re getting excited about the same thing, which is we’re helping more people get started in a better way and we’re cutting the risk of failure for those people. The media glamorizes starting something with this “screw-it, let’s do it” attitude, but it misses that fact that this is people’s mortgages they’re risking, it’s their kids’ school endowments, their careers; it’s a really risky step and they shouldn’t just “screw-it, let’s do it.” If they’re going to do it, we want to make sure they do it in a way that minimizes their risk of failure and leads to maximum satisfaction. 

On how he balances the social responsibility of the magazine with the moneymaking side: I’ve never thought of the two of them separately. I don’t think of us as a social good or bad or anything like that. I just came at it from a problem point of view, which was I had this problem in my life and a lot of my friends had the same problem, there was nothing for people like us in this sort of territory. And I just tried to come up with a product solution to that. 

On the role of print in his business mix: There’s a whole conversation in media that I’ve just chosen not to get into, which is print versus digital. And the print fetishists who opine that print is wonderful and we need to protect print. And then the digital people who are like ‘print is dead, there’s no role for it’. And maybe it’s because I wasn’t from that sector, but I just looked at it and thought there’s all different media and they’re kind of like a toolkit and you use a hammer for some jobs and a saw for others. What’s the job that I’m trying to do? 

On how he decides when to use print and when to use digital: That’s a great question. I was just having a conversation with our editorial director, Danny, on exactly this. We’re re-looking at the role of podcasts at the moment. And the conversation for us begins with how we can earn a place in our audience’s media diet.  I think this is rare for media, I feel like media begins at ‘We’re this title and we cover this territory and we strategically need to be in these mediums because that’s where advertiser dollars are. And I think a product company works completely the other way around, which is where is the audience and what are their problems? And are we in a unique position to be able to add something in that medium to help them solve their problems or supply something they previously didn’t have?

On whether now that he is a part of a bigger company that has influenced any of his editorial or publishing decisions: This is going to sound sycophantic, and I don’t mean it to be, but it comes from a place where I wasn’t looking to sell my company. In fact, I was out raising a little bit of investment to help us grow and when Mailchimp approached us and suggested doing something bigger and more permanent. We knew the team well as they’d been great brand partners of ours, but when they first suggested an acquisition, I was like ‘no, don’t be messing with my investment round, I’m not interested in selling my business. 

On anything he’d like to add: The one caveat I’d put on the whole print thing is sometimes when I talk about not having  a print fetish, people think that I’m somehow not supportive of print or that we might not do print in the future. And it’s possible, just like any media, we may not do it in the future, but I do think print is a really special medium. We’ve invested a lot in it and I think there’s a great place for it, but I think the majority of print people need to evolve their business models a lot. 

On what makes him tick and click: I love making things and I love being able to show people something new or help them do something better. I’ve always liked being the one in my circle that would field questions from friends like ‘hey, what’s the best juicer I should buy’ or ‘do you know how to manage your heart rate so you can get the most efficiency from a run’. I’ve just wanted to know stuff in a polymathic sort of way and show people ‘here’s how you can do things better. 

On how he unwinds in the evenings: It’s strange actually, COVID inspired my partner and I to move out of a Central London apartment to the country so we now live in the beautiful Chilterns in Buckinghamshire about an hour out of London. So, not only have we had the adjustment from COVID and social distancing, we’ve also been experiencing the difference between city and rural living. Increasingly, I’m enjoying just getting outside in the environment, fresh air, walking our new puppy Brody, exercising so much more, things like that. I love to get in the kitchen and cook. I love good film; I watch a lot of film. Just trying to live better and be happier as a consequence. 

On what keeps him up at night: (Laughs) I’m a really good sleeper; it’s my only God-given talent. I can sleep anywhere and anytime. So, I have to say that very little keeps me awake at night. But what do I worry about? What I worry about more than anything else is climate change and how we’re probably a part of the damage that’s been going on. I mean, we are most definitely.

And now for the lightly edited Mr. Magazine™ interview with Jeff Taylor, founder and publisher, Courier magazine. 

Samir Husni: With the pandemic, 2020 was a completely different year than any of us had ever seen or experienced. Can you tell us about how Courier adapted to the crisis?

Jeff Taylor: I think it was mixed, and for a lot of people I think it was mixed as well. We were certainly not immune to the print channel being effectively shut down at a time when we felt we were really hitting our stride with print. So many of our team have been touched by various elements of COVID; we have a really international team who traveled, so we had all of those things.

But on the flip side, it was a year when our audience needed us more than ever before. We’re in the business of helping people work sustainably and stand on their own two feet and that’s a really delicate place for a person who’s starting out. Last year was a year when the audience needed the insight and the skills and even just the stories of other people and how they were figuring out a path through this. 

It meant a really quick move from us; we didn’t move away from print, although we did put our newspaper on ice, but we kept our magazine growing. We retooled our podcasts and our emails to move toward COVID coverage very quickly and just tried to understand what the audience needed and meet those needs as much as we could. It was certainly an invigorating year; it kept us on our toes.

Samir Husni: Two years from now you’ll be celebrating the 10^th anniversary of the magazine that you founded, but now it’s much more than a magazine, now it’s Courier Media. If you and I are having this conversation then, in 2023, what would you hope to tell me you had accomplished with the brand?

Jeff Taylor: It’s funny, it’s like this business was born for me personally for the same mission that the company has itself. I had a pretty senior job; I used to fly around the world doing exciting things, but actually I wasn’t very happy necessarily with the way my life was structured and how I was living my life. The very kernel of Courier is to be a beacon for people who want to work and live on their own terms. Everything that we do comes from that place. We think everyone has a right to structure their life in a way that they can earn a living, but can enjoy their life as well and get satisfaction from it.

And I kind of apply that to what are our ambitions. It’s lovely to sell more copies or get complimentary notes, but what really makes the difference for me personally and I think the team is, when we get an email from someone who says I come from a background that I never would have thought I could go off and do that, whether that’s gender, race, sexuality, socioeconomic status, just whatever, but I don’t look like the sort of person you see in business media or on Shark Tank. But you guys made me feel like I could do it and you showed me the way. And because of that, I’ve done it.

In a couple years’ time, I’d like to think we’re getting excited about the same thing, which is we’re helping more people get started in a better way and we’re cutting the risk of failure for those people. The media glamorizes starting something with this “screw-it, let’s do it” attitude, but it misses that fact that this is people’s mortgages they’re risking, it’s their kids’ school endowments, their careers; it’s a really risky step and they shouldn’t just “screw-it, let’s do it.” If they’re going to do it, we want to make sure they do it in a way that minimizes their risk of failure and leads to maximum satisfaction.

So, I’d like to think that in a couple of years we’re just feeling like we’ve impacted so many more people’s journeys in this way. And that’s what the Mailchimp opportunity gives us and the growth that we’re getting just means that we can impact so many more people in a positive way. 

Samir Husni: How do you balance the social responsibility of the magazine with the moneymaking aspect of the business?

Jeff Taylor: I’ve never thought of the two of them separately. I don’t think of us as a social good or bad or anything like that. I just came at it from a problem point of view, which was I had this problem in my life and a lot of my friends had the same problem, there was nothing for people like us in this sort of territory. And I just tried to come up with a product solution to that. 

But I do think that whenever we’re looking at a business with any type of social good or mission attached to it, my first instinct is you’ve got to be twice as hard on that business doing the due diligence of asking is it a real business? We didn’t bring investors on, so I had to build a business that made money from the beginning. We were nearly always profitable before we were acquired. The only time we weren’t was when we were investing for growth. And I think it’s that same thing. In order to do good, you have to be a good business first and foremost. So, they go hand in hand for me. And if they don’t you’ve got the wrong business or the wrong social purpose and you won’t be in business in or year or two, because if you can’t pay wages or keep the lights on, it doesn’t matter how good-hearted you are, you aren’t going to survive.

I’ve never conceived of us as a media company and I still don’t think of us that way. It might sound like just jargon, but I think of us as a product company. I didn’t come from media; my early career was in advertising, but actually I come from products and marketing. Even our editorial process is very different. Our editorial team work to ‘use cases’, they work to missions for everything we put out that’s bigger, solving problems for our audience. We work to be an essential partner for our customers. The fact that a lot of our output is media is because that’s just the product that we make. 

Samir Husni: Among the many products that you make, one is the print magazine. Can you tell me a little about the role of print in this digital age and the role of print in the mix of your products?

Jeff Taylor: There’s a whole conversation in media that I’ve just chosen not to get into, which is print versus digital. And the print fetishists who opine that print is wonderful and we need to protect print. And then the digital people who are like ‘print is dead, there’s no role for it’. And maybe it’s because I wasn’t from that sector, but I just looked at it and thought there’s all different media and they’re kind of like a toolkit and you use a hammer for some jobs and a saw for others. What’s the job that I’m trying to do? 

When we started, I was trying to find something that had a clear economic return on it. And even though digital, especially at that stage, was very in fashion, it was much harder to identify where the revenues were going to come from. Whereas there were big brands advertising in print and there continues to be so it seemed like a more secure choice. 

But also, I wanted to create a really evocative world for Courier that I think is very hard to do in digital. Or certainly hard to do at that time with the budgets we had. And print seemed to me to be this amazing place where we could take often quite dry concepts and bring them to life in an evocative way and then bring to life the world of brands and people doing things beautifully. My dirty secret in starting a magazine is I’m not a very big reader; I struggle to sit and read for a long period of time. My inspiration in those days was Tumblr. In those days, before it got overrun with adult content it was this wonderful environment where you would go through photo after photo in your feed. And I tried to conceive what that might be like in print for our audience. And that’s why we ended up in print.

Samir Husni: You’re definitely platform agnostic, but for those in your audience who are still platform specific, how do you decide when to use the saw and when to use the hammer? 

Jeff Taylor: That’s a great question. I was just having a conversation with our editorial director, Danny, on exactly this. We’re re-looking at the role of podcasts at the moment. And the conversation for us begins with how we can earn a place in our audience’s media diet.  I think this is rare for media, I feel like media begins at ‘We’re this title and we cover this territory and we strategically need to be in these mediums because that’s where advertiser dollars are. And I think a product company works completely the other way around, which is where is the audience and what are their problems? And are we in a unique position to be able to add something in that medium to help them solve their problems or supply something they previously didn’t have? 

I’ll give you a good example with Instagram. We have an Instagram presence, but we’ve really struggled to grow our Instagram channel. And for ages we’d bring in people who knew about it and have long sessions. And then it suddenly hit me, we just don’t have that much to contribute to our audience on Instagram. We can put up photos of businesses or whatever, but although our audience is on Instagram, there isn’t a natural intersection between what people need from us and what we can do on that platform. 

Whereas we’ve been talking about Clubhouse and instantly you go ‘I can completely see the role for Courier on Clubhouse.’ We can talk to our audience, they can ask us questions live and we can solve them. We can bring people front and center, help them with one of their core issues, how do I do this, where do I find that? Who’s someone I can get inspiration from? And so I think that’s a long way of saying we kind of let the audience guide us there.

I feel like our job is to know our audience inside and out and then to figure out where we can take them. And in a lot of cases they don’t even realize it yet and that’s how I try to approach what medium we should be in.

Samir Husni: Do you feel there’s a difference now between Jeff Taylor, the owner and founder, and the Jeff Taylor who is now part of a big company? Did that influence any of the editorial, publishing, broadcasting decisions that you’ve made?

Jeff Taylor: This is going to sound sycophantic, and I don’t mean it to be, but it comes from a place where I wasn’t looking to sell my company. In fact, I was out raising a little bit of investment to help us grow and when Mailchimp approached us and suggested doing something bigger and more permanent. We knew the team well as they’d been great brand partners of ours, but when they first suggested an acquisition, I was like ‘no, don’t be messing with my investment round, I’m not interested in selling my business. ‘

But the more time we spent talking about what we could achieve together, and I think really understanding what they saw in the business, the more it convinced me that actually I could realize everything I was trying to achieve with Courier, but do it faster and on a bigger platform with better expertise behind us by doing it with them. And that’s where the acquisition really came from. 

So, a year on, my brief from Mailchimp is to be more Courier and to get our resources and our stories in more people’s hands, in more places, in more ways to support the growth and boost the success of as many small businesses as we can. And the funny thing is although Mailchimp is in a completely different industry to what we’re in, our values and our missions are identical. And so it has been an incredibly seamless experience. They just want us to be more Courier. And they’re an enormous support in helping us do that.

Samir Husni:  Is there anything you’d like to add?

Jeff Taylor: The one caveat I’d put on the whole print thing is sometimes when I talk about not having  a print fetish, people think that I’m somehow not supportive of print or that we might not do print in the future. And it’s possible, just like any media, we may not do it in the future, but I do think print is a really special medium. We’ve invested a lot in it and I think there’s a great place for it, but I think the majority of print people need to evolve their business models a lot. 

And I think the biggest threat to print is actually the crumbling of the distribution infrastructure and network that print gets sold through. It was an old clunky industry that COVID has hit incredibly hard. I don’t know to what extent it’s ever going to recover and come back. 

We see the devastation in small business and a lot of print gets sold through small business. So, we’re always watching it to see, but we’re growing our print numbers in terms of subscriptions. We think we’ll be able to come back quite strongly as the distribution opens up. I hope print has a strong future, but we just keep an eye on these things. 

Samir Husni: What makes you tick and click and motivates you to get out of bed in the mornings?

Jeff Taylor: I love making things and I love being able to show people something new or help them do something better. I’ve always liked being the one in my circle that would field questions from friends like ‘hey, what’s the best juicer I should buy’ or ‘do you know how to manage your heart rate so you can get the most efficiency from a run’. I’ve just wanted to know stuff in a polymathic sort of way and show people ‘here’s how you can do things better. 

And I think that’s what I love about Courier. It’s not for a social reason, but as much as anything it’s just because I love being the epicenter of ‘you can be better, you can be happier, you can be richer, you can be more stable, you can be whatever it is you want to be. That’s our mission is to help people achieve what they define as ‘success’. It’s not our job to tell you what your ambitions should be, which is a mistake I think a lot of media make. We just like to put out a whole great kind of smorgasbord of things and point you in the right direction and show you stuff. 

You’ll notice Courier very rarely says we think you should do this or we think this is in or out, we never really talk like that. We just try to find a whole lot of stuff that we think is reallyuseful or interesting or whatever, and put it in front of you and assume you’re intelligent enough to make your own decisions about it.

Samir Husni: How do you unwind in the evenings?

Jeff Taylor: It’s strange actually, COVID inspired my partner and I to move out of a Central London apartment to the country so we now live in the beautiful Chilterns in Buckinghamshire about an hour out of London. So, not only have we had the adjustment from COVID and social distancing, we’ve also been experiencing the difference between city and rural living. Increasingly, I’m enjoying just getting outside in the environment, fresh air, walking our new puppy Brody, exercising so much more, things like that. I love to get in the kitchen and cook. I love good film; I watch a lot of film. Just trying to live better and be happier as a consequence.

Samir Husni: My typical last question; what keeps you up at night?

Jeff Taylor: (Laughs) I’m a really good sleeper; it’s my only God-given talent. I can sleep anywhere and anytime. So, I have to say that very little keeps me awake at night. But what do I worry about? What I worry about more than anything else is climate change and how we’re probably a part of the damage that’s been going on. I mean, we are most definitely. 

And I do think a lot about the social gap that’s just increasingly emerging in our society and the concentration of wealth among the richest .1 percent and what that’s doing to fracture our economy, from a social point of view, but also from an economic point of view. It just doesn’t make sense. I’m Australian and the Australian system is very different from the British or the American system. It’s much closer to a social democracy . I do think a lot about that and how we not just protect our democracy, but actually return to perhaps a more socially democratic way. 

Samir Husni: Thank you. 

“That’s why I feel there is a life for print, but it’s just a question of what is so valuable that we have to print it? And that’s where we search for stories. Automotive Industries clients do not invest good money after a bad story. So we find if they’re willing to invest in the story, the technology is valuable…it’s worth it.” John Larkin…

I spoke with John recently and we talked about the past, present and future of Automotive Industries. It was a delightful conversation from his home base in Jerusalem. John says he is just passing the torch for the next generation to carry on the traditions of AI and to bring on even more innovations in print partnerships and growth.

Indeed. Mr. Magazine™ would have to agree with John’s optimism and vision. The longevity of the brand stands strong.

So please enjoy the Mr. Magazine™ interview with John Larkin, publisher, Automotive Industries magazine.

But first the sound-bites:

On the direction he sees the 125-year-old magazine heading: The way I see her future, including her print future, is that everything we do in print, of course we do in all formats. So today I feel that the print side is only one percent of the distribution, even less than one percent. However, I use the print side as the key to everything else.

On where the most revenue comes from, print or digital or both: We use the advertising revenue, one purchase, one advertisement, which is in print, we use that to trigger pretty much all of our revenue. We have subscription revenue from collectors, from universities, from libraries, this may transition as we get more knowledge, at the moment we allow one advertisement purchase. this gives our customers print exposure, it gives them web banners, and it gives them an opportunity for an editorial partnership. So we just ask for one purchase, one ticket to the party and we give them full exposure.

On where he would like the magazine to be on its 128^th anniversary: The dream is a 24-hour operation. Of course it has to be in English, but then bringing in second languages for the auto industry, whether the principle second language is German, then Spanish, then Chinese. But let’s just think about the English language as a trading language first. So a 24-hour operation publishing news around the clock. A 24-hour channel, whether it’s a Zoom channel or just “a” channel, a digital channel, 24 hours, serving designers and engineers around the globe. That would be the right future and present for Automotive Industries.

On whether he envisions only a green light up ahead, no red or yellow: Our responsibility is to share. To receive information and then to share it. Mobility is a beautiful thing. It’s a dream. From the time the caveman and cavewoman were sitting under the stars around their campfire, we’ve always dreamt about mobility, getting from A to B, whether it’s going to Mars with the Tesla and Elon Musk, mobility is a dream. I love it when a carmaker brings out the most amazing vehicle and he displays it at one of the trade shows. Yet seconds later, the designers and engineers are already working on the next idea. It’s without end.

On why people comes before product and process in the magazine’s tagline: I can’t take credit for that, I wish I could. When I took over Automotive Industries I did not try to change the model because it was already very successful with some of the biggest publishing houses in the world, Cahners & Reed Publishing, for example, and when we acquired Automotive Industries that was already their tagline: People, Product, Process. I didn’t want to change anything. I knew these guys had got it right. She’s such a premier brand in the industry; she’s an iconic brand in automotive design, and I felt if I touched it, I didn’t want to break it. (Laughs)

On why there is a bicycle on the current cover of Automotive Industries: (Laughs) And why did we do that? That interview is an interesting personality Ernst Prost, CEO of Liqui Moly, who took an opposite approach during the pandemic. He hired extra staff, he published more news; I’m not sure about his investments, but he probably invested more in opportunities and their turnover went up 38 percent year over year, when everybody else was going down. And we wrote about that.

On what makes him get out of bed in the morning: I wake up optimistic. I like to wake up with the sun. I love growth. I love ideas that have been born, that are coming to fruition. Maybe the seed of the idea was a while ago, but I love it when it comes together. The greatest satisfaction is when a customer sends me a testimonial or sends me a note saying that they love what we did for them. Getting that feedback gives me joy.

On how he unwinds in the evenings: I like to meditate. And then I like to do a little bit of non-automotive news in the evening. And music; I like some gentle classical music just to soothe the day. I like to work to the point of being tired and then make a nice meal and then fall asleep. (Laughs)

On what keeps him up at night: Not a lot. As long as my family are healthy, I’m comfortable. I just want them to be healthy and then I can sleep well. I can deal with challenges in the morning. I get up very early. I kind of like to be half exhausted, especially after my evening meal and then go to bed relatively early. As long as my family are healthy, then I can sleep.

And now for the lightly edited Mr. Magazine™ interview with John Larkin, publisher, Automotive Industries magazine. 

Samir Husni: As publisher of a magazine that’s almost 125 years old, in what direction do you see the future of Automotive Industries heading?

Larkin: The transition for Automotive Industries and yes, she’s 125-years-young; I like to say that she is the grandmother dancing at the wedding. She’s full of energy. She a 125-year-old startup. In a way, I feel that we’ve been preparing for the digital age from probably 2000 onward.

I wasn’t with Automotive Industries in 2000, but I did take over as publisher 16 years ago. I constantly have the mentality that we should be virtual as an organization, that our costs should be principally toward the magazine, so if a client spends X to advertise with us, then as much of their cost is toward the magazine and toward the cost of sale. Very little cost needs to be indirect cost, so therefore the advertiser is getting a bigger bang for his buck.

How we achieve that, my office is my home. So any fixed costs are at a minimum. That has made us light as an organization. The pandemic only accelerated our journey to digital, but not full digital because I feel that Automotive Industries has been 125 years in print, so my goal is to pass the torch to the next publisher. I feel I’m only holding the torch. And I’ve always had that mentality since my beginning with AI (Automotive Industries).

The way I see her future, including her print future, is that everything we do in print, we publish in all formats. So today I feel that the print side is only one percent of the distribution, even less than one percent. However, We use the print side as the key to everything else. So when we do a story with a client or any contact within industry, we create a front cover for them and we broadcast that front cover. We print that edition with their front cover; we’ll give them as many print editions as they need, but we will then broadcast that front cover edition to tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of automotive industry professionals through various social media platforms.

It’s an interesting question, the life of print, for me, the answer is very simple. If something is important enough, it will have life in print. Everybody will print their marriage certificate; everyone will print their birth certificate; photographs of special memories of their family, and so on. Into the future my feeling is if something is important enough, it will have a print life.

So my goal with Automotive Industries is that we go in the direction of collectible print; go in the direction of a souvenir editions, even a hardback edition, where people will own that particular edition without end, for an eternity. So I feel there is the collectible element and the social media element, which is also unlimited in numbers.

I want Automotive Industries to be in print for many, many years into the future, but also of course, relevant in print, which I feel is in the direction of collectible, souvenir, celebrating anniversaries, such as a 100 year anniversary of a car-making company, a 100 year anniversary of a supply company, an amazing new model or innovation that people are so excited about that they want a print collectible version. We use that print cover to broadcast to potentially millions of people.

Samir Husni: Is most of the revenue coming from print or digital or both?

Larkin: We use the advertising revenue, one purchase, one advertisement, which is in print, we use that to trigger pretty much all of our revenue. We have subscription revenue from collectors, from universities, from libraries, but at the moment and this may transition as we get more knowledge, at the moment, we allow one advertisement purchase, that gives our customers print exposure, it gives them web banners and it gives them an opportunity for an editorial partnership. So we just ask for one purchase, one ticket to the party and we give them full exposure in all formats.

Our goal is to reintroduce Automotive Industries to a bigger publishing organization, that can obviously go in the direction post-pandemic of conferences and events because of her brand equity. She has readers in various supply companies around the world and in the United States who have been reading trusted editorial content from AI generation to generation.

So the easy answer is all of our revenue is from print advertising, because we just bundle it into the same package.

Samir Husni: Where do you want to see the magazine for its 128^th anniversary?

Larkin: The dream is a 24-hour operation. Of course it has to be in English, but then bringing in second languages for the auto industry, whether the principle second language is German, then Spanish, then Chinese. But let’s just think about the English language as a trading language. So a 24-hour operation publishing news around the clock. A 24-hour channel, whether it’s a Zoom channel or just “a” channel, a digital channel, serving designers and engineers around the globe. That would be the right future and present for Automotive Industries.

Why? Because that reflects the automotive industry. General Motors is not a North American operation. General Motors is a 24-hour operation. So is Ford Motor Company, all the German makers, the Chinese makers, all the Asian makers, it’s a 24-hour conversation between professionals in the industry. I can see AI being a 24-hour news operation. And then giving designers and engineers the opportunity to plug into Automotive Industries anytime of the day or night with some type of live activity. That live activity could be a news channel around the clock, of course it already exists as a 24-hour print operation.

One of the blessings in disguise during these last 12 months was that we re-broadcast the website a hundred percent, so we moved from our old platform, which was dated from 16 years ago, and then we went with WordPress, an application programming interface which we find very efficient. It’s a bit like driving one of the luxury makers’ vehicles. We used the quiet time during the pandemic to race ahead with our digital platform. As a 24-hour operation, Automotive Industries would reflect the news requirements of the automotive industry today.

Samir Husni: You envision only a green light? There is no red or yellow light ahead?

Larkin: Our responsibility is to share. To receive information and then to share it. Mobility is a beautiful thing. It’s a dream. From the time of the caveman and cavewoman sitting and wondering under the stars around their campfire, we’ve always dreamt about mobility and getting from A to B. Whether it’s going to Mars with Tesla’s creator Elon Musk, it’s mobility, it is a dream. I love it when a carmaker brings out the most amazing vehicle and displays it at one of the trade shows. Yet seconds later, the designers and engineers are already working on the next idea. It’s creativity without end.

So the dream for Automotive Industries is just to reflect that news. It’s not us, it’s the engineers and designers. All we’re doing is being a stage or a platform to let them share their amazing developments. Whether it’s a technology that saves a life or whether it’s a technology that gives  greater fuel efficiency so that we’re saving the planet, it just doesn’t stop. It’s beautiful.

We could have 100 times more people than we have and we still couldn’t share all the news. (Laughs) I love the energy of the industry and the innovations in the industry. I’m very lucky that I work with AI which has been sharing those innovations since the birth of the industry and I am looking forward to passing it on to the next person.

Samir Husni: The tagline for Automotive Industries is people, product, process. Usually in most of the trade magazines, the focus is on the trade itself, you put people first. Why is it people before product and process?

Larkin: I can’t take credit for that, I wish I could. When I took over Automotive Industries I did not try to change the model because it was already very successful with some of the biggest publishing houses in the world, Cahners & Reed Publishing, for example, and when we acquired Automotive Industries that was already their tagline: People, Product, Process. I didn’t want to change anything. I knew these guys had got it right. She’s such a premier brand in the industry; she’s an iconic brand in automotive design, and I felt if I touched it, I didn’t want to break it. (Laughs)

But it rings true. And the bottom line is, yes, it is the people who design the cars. It’s the people who come up with a new method for factory automation. The original editors of Automotive Industries called for a society of engineers to make the parts for the cars more common, otherwise inventors from different parts of the world would be coming up with different sized engines and wheels and it would be a big mess.

So, our founding editors helped create the Society of Automotive Engineers. The “Horseless Age,” was founded in 1895, 10 years before Ford Motor Company was started. However, for 10 years before starting Ford Motor Company, Henry Ford was in racing circles whose members would meet every month in a different city to have a racing event. They started publishing a newsletter for their members distributed at these events and by mail. So, I’m confident that Henry Ford was among those professors, inventors, doctors and racing enthusiasts who were among our first readers in 1895.

Samir Husni: I have to ask, the current issue of Automotive Industries, a car magazine, has a bicycle on its cover? 

Larkin: (Laughs) And why did we do that? That interview is an interesting personality, Ernst Prost, CEO of Liqui Moly, who took an opposite approach during the pandemic. He hired extra staff, he published more news; I’m not sure about his investments, but he probably invested more in opportunities and their turnover went up 38 percent year over year, when everybody else was going down. And we wrote about that.

We did a cover to celebrate his 30 year relationship with one of the executives in his corporation. And one of the things that he talked about in that conversation was how longevity, loyalty of staff; how many of his workers have been with him 30 years or longer in the company. He was dedicated to relationships, dedicated to investing in his customers. So I loved the bicycle because it was like, “Wait a minute, what’s going on here?” We’re talking about cars and there’s a bicycle on the cover. So it was just to get people to think twice.

That’s a good example where Sebastian Zelger, Ernst’s CEO of Liqui Moly’s operation in the United States shared this edition with a thousand of his contacts, so that’s how we help to get their print story go viral in the social media world. That’s why I feel there is a life for print, but it’s just a question of what is so valuable that we have to print it? And that’s where we search for stories. Automotive Industries clients do not invest good money after a bad story. So we find if they’re willing to invest in the story, the technology is valuable…it’s worth it.

Samir Husni: What makes you tick? What motivates you to get out of bed in the morning?

Larkin: I wake up optimistic. I like to wake up with the sun. I love growth. I love ideas that have been born, that are coming to fruition. Maybe the seed of the idea was a while ago, but I love it when it comes together. The greatest satisfaction is when a customer sends me a testimonial or sends me a note saying that they love what we did for them. Getting that feedback gives me joy.

What wakes me up in the morning? I just feel having all areas of my life fairly balanced, like the spurs of a wheel. Of course, my family and of course, health and Automotive Industries’ growth. I want AI to be in good hands. So I guess it’s a combination of things.

Samir Husni: How do you unwind in the evenings after a long day of work?

Larkin:  like to meditate. And then I like to do a little bit of non-automotive news in the evening. And music; I like some gentle classical music just to soothe the day. I like to work to the point of being tired and then make a nice meal and then fall asleep. (Laughs)

Samir Husni: My typical last question; what keeps you up at night?

Larkin: Not a lot. As long as my family are healthy, I’m comfortable. I just want them to be healthy and then I can sleep well. I can deal with challenges in the morning. I get up very early. I kind of like to be half exhausted, especially after my evening meal and then go to bed relatively early. As long as my family are healthy, then I can sleep.

Samir Husni: Thank you.