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Adam Sandow

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69
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2024-06-04
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2024-06-04
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  1. “Literally, the words were you're catching a falling knife. Yes, it's still tough because of the economy, but I believe we can fix it. And we did. And it's an amazing centerpiece of our business today. This is when it really hit me. I acquired interior design again, the Bible, evoked for fashion, interior design is vogue for commercial interiors. So interior design has this hall of fame. It's 35 years old. And I didn't even understand it when I was acquiring the whole business. They're all sitting watching these screens. It was a Waldorf Astoria ballroom during December, like the most beautiful place in the world. And we're watching these documentaries of their life's work. It's a big deal to be in the Hall of Fame for interior design. But I stood back and I said, this is an incredible amount of power we have. That and many other instances, as I was building my media company, led me to think, I think, very differently than I think most other media leaders were doing at the time. I remember I was asked to speak on a panel at a really big media conference. And I don't do a lot.”

    2024-06-04 · Invest Like the Best · Adam Sandow - The Power of Print Media - [Invest Like the Best, EP.376] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Business, there's more advertising in Lux than probably the top two or three home magazines combined, but we've focused on quality. You want to open a two-page spread and look at a gorgeous house and read about the designer. That's something that transports you, like a book. News, investment information. No, you want to listen. You want to interact with video, with podcasts, you want to be able to, I think, get closer to the end user there. So there's a place for it. I think my skill has been, what can you build on top? When I bought an interior design magazine, which was just now almost 100 years old, and I bought that magazine coming out of the recession against the advice of everyone I knew in the U.S. saying, Adam, you're”

    2024-06-04 · Invest Like the Best · Adam Sandow - The Power of Print Media - [Invest Like the Best, EP.376] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “You've got to talk about the content itself. You're not going to get news from a magazine anymore. There's a lot of things that I think magazines don't make any more sense for. I also think that. You're not going to put unbelievable quality into not just the content and the photography, but the paper and the printing, if it doesn't feel luxurious, why make it in print? In 10 years from now, there will be print. It's going to be a lot less. It's going to be a lot higher end. It's going to be beautiful objects, the same way that coffee table books. Coffee table books have never been more popular. We just acquired an incredible architecture coffee table book publisher. Sales have never been bigger for these gorgeous, beautiful art pieces that go on your coffee table. I think print has a place for that. But I think print is part of an important ecosystem that, believe me, I'm not print magazines of the future and everything else is dead. It is an important part of an ecosystem to build a company in certain areas where visuals matter. So Lux magazine is something I started in 2005 today. It's an unbelievably massive.”

    2024-06-04 · Invest Like the Best · Adam Sandow - The Power of Print Media - [Invest Like the Best, EP.376] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “They wanted the free magazines. So the FBOs started to see that it was an amenity. It was something that the passengers really loved. And that helped us expand and lock into these very long-term exclusive agreements that we've had now in place for many, many, many years because we made a big investment into the fiscal newsstands, the infrastructure, the distribution. And it was never designed to be a profit center for us. It was designed to be another secret weapon. It was designed for me to say, what's the value of those readers? Okay, a $10 magazine buyer at LaGuardia, that's great. But someone about to spend $80,000 of jet fuel to go round trip Miami LA, that's a different reader. And by the way, those people are not cracking laptops and working on spreadsheets each way. They're on their airplane and they take our magazines. And it's a lot of...”

    2024-06-04 · Invest Like the Best · Adam Sandow - The Power of Print Media - [Invest Like the Best, EP.376] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Had to buy our way in, and it's still very expensive. We've locked into really long term contracts. We've been doing it so long. But it was this amazing thing that happened. We started at 07, and it was tough. They were resistant. They didn't know if they wanted them. It was hand-to-hand combat to get an FBO to even agree. And then the crash happens. And private aviation, I think if you remember, the president was maligning people flying privately. Well, all of a sudden, FBOs started to really hurt. And we got a call from an FBO, a group and they're like, we want more newsstands. And we're like, well, that's great, but we can't afford to pay you. It's a crappy economy and you're expensive. He's like, oh, don't worry about the money. Our passengers love your magazine because it was all my magazines. The great story was we had FBO saying when no one was flying, they would have their big customers who had jets there going, hey, box up those magazines I'm sending to me. I mean, they're cheap.”

    2024-06-04 · Invest Like the Best · Adam Sandow - The Power of Print Media - [Invest Like the Best, EP.376] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Engaged, highly educated. That's the right demographic. But when you've got a generic magazine going to 2 million eyeballs, it's the same thing as now buying programmatic ads online, like blinking banners that are 26 cents a thousand on a generic site showing you generic ads. They just don't work. I relate the old circulation models to that. And a lot of the magazines, I think, today have gotten better at that and trying to go after those better audiences. But that's been our foundation from day one. And that allowed us to come out of nowhere and become successful in a very tough competitive market.”

    2024-06-04 · Invest Like the Best · Adam Sandow - The Power of Print Media - [Invest Like the Best, EP.376] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “I want 25,000 copies a month going into people getting onto an airplane, burning 10,000 an hour to fly. And that was the whole thing. So we were this contrarian from day one. So it looked like a magazine. But all of a sudden, we've got a recurring revenue business here. We've got a data business there. We're circulating our magazines, getting in the hands of the best people. So I was this outsider that came from the outside of the business. And I just said, we're going to do nothing the way that magazines do. And a lot of times when these big magazines close, it's because they've trained the advertisers to buy eyeballs by the pound, not the quality. And look, I think you'll see now there are some magazines that have been very successful. Monocle's a great example. Teller is, I think, a genius of this stuff. He makes an expensive, beautiful cerebral magazine that goes to a really good-sized audience, but it's high.”

    2024-06-04 · Invest Like the Best · Adam Sandow - The Power of Print Media - [Invest Like the Best, EP.376] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “And I was talking to the president of the company we were buying it from, and I told him about MediaJet. I go, Candidly, it's my secret weapon because you can't imagine how many magazines and I never forgot this. He said, Adam, that's stupid. I said, what do you mean that's stupid? He said, that's public place distribution on your audit. Agencies discount that to zero. You're wasting money. And I said, that is why I'm buying your magazine at 10 cents on the dollar because I don't care about the audit.”

    2024-06-04 · Invest Like the Best · Adam Sandow - The Power of Print Media - [Invest Like the Best, EP.376] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “But someone who buys $10 magazine will now engage in a different way. So the circulation strategy was very different. And what I said was, if I put the quality into the paper, the design, the content, if I put it into making sure it's in the best train stations, the best airports everywhere, I will get the best readers. And we did. And to this day, that strategy has never changed with almost everything we do. I want the best readers. I don't want the most readers. I own a company called MediaJet. 16, maybe 17 years old. About 17 years ago, I bought up all the rights in private airports to put newsstands. Originally, it was just for my magazines. Why? Because, you know, rest assured, anyone flying on a regular basis privately, and you know this, is just a different demographic. I don't even need to charge them for my magazines. It's funny. We were buying of really big magazine in 2000.”

    2024-06-04 · Invest Like the Best · Adam Sandow - The Power of Print Media - [Invest Like the Best, EP.376] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “In my opinion, what I want is I want a woman that walks into a newsstand that says, I'm going to buy that really thick, gorgeous beauty magazine that's $10. And we literally, Patrick, was, what's the value of a $10 magazine buyer? Almost the cost of a year subscription. And what I did is I spent all of our money buying up every slot on every newsstand that I could. We would spend more money with Barnes& Noble than any other publisher because I said this is real estate for me. I'll never make money selling magazines. In fact, I'll lose money. But that's where I'm going to get the best readers. What happens? The magazine gets the best reader smaller. We never were the biggest.”

    2024-06-04 · Invest Like the Best · Adam Sandow - The Power of Print Media - [Invest Like the Best, EP.376] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “The secret of magazine business again, it's old news if you know the industry was in many cases, publishers use third parties that will keep all the money and they give the publisher a penny. The publisher goes, thank you for the penny. It's paid, we've got paid readers. And when you look at the demographics of these magazines, you go, you have a million readers reading a high-end home magazine with an average household income of $80,000. That doesn't make sense. Well, they're in an arms race to get a million readers. And what I saw in the magazine business was, my God, that's a pretty flawed strategy. What I want are the best readers. In 2005, I want you to read, where do you get the best readers? The newsstand, paying full rate for a magazine. So we went and we launched, there's a lot of my magazines, but when I launched New Beauty, I said, I don't want all the readers and I don't want bulk eyeballs. It's a very expensive losing proposition.”

    2024-06-04 · Invest Like the Best · Adam Sandow - The Power of Print Media - [Invest Like the Best, EP.376] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “So I'll get a little specific to magazines for a minute. It'll help you, I think, understand, or at least it'll give you light into how I thought. Back in 2000, even to this day, if you think about magazine subscriptions, think of any generic magazine that you might subscribe, or maybe you used to subscribe to, you'd see 12 issues for $12. And by the way, you get a tote bag. Why was it so cheap? Why was publishers clearinghouse a thing? Why could you redeem frequent flyer migles back in the day, an incredible company Michael Lobill, synapse? Why could you do that? Because publishers got hooked on a drug called circulation. So what does that mean? It means that a magazine says, we have 500,000 people that love us so much, they'll pay to get a subscription. We have 600,000, a million people that are paying. So there was an arms race created by getting mass eyeballs to subscribe.”

    2024-06-04 · Invest Like the Best · Adam Sandow - The Power of Print Media - [Invest Like the Best, EP.376] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “But we were suddenly seen not as a magazine, we were suddenly seen as an innovator in the beauty space. And that helped us sell more ads. So that theme I've carried out, that as I build the media platforms, it allows us to get into other kinds of businesses, businesses that are in many cases sexier and more interesting than magazines. But the magazines gave us the authority to create these kinds of new businesses. I've always tried to run with that thought. And that's been our strategy, and it still is to this day.”

    2024-06-04 · Invest Like the Best · Adam Sandow - The Power of Print Media - [Invest Like the Best, EP.376] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “That the magazine gave me, allowed me to go to a giant beauty company and say, I know this is going to sound crazy, but I want you to take an 18-wheeler full of full-size products and bring it to my warehouse. I'm not going to pay for the products, but I'm going to guarantee that I get it into the hands of women who are willing to spend a few hundred dollars a year to try the product. Well, that was at the time revolutionary. We were the first ones. I remember we were in Time magazine on the Wall Street Journal and we invented this.”

    2024-06-04 · Invest Like the Best · Adam Sandow - The Power of Print Media - [Invest Like the Best, EP.376] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “My best friend building all these incredibly successful companies. But I love this idea of they're not selling alarms, they're providing a recurring revenue service at incredibly high margins by monitoring. So I said, how do I bring that into media? How does recurring revenue come into media? And we started to really innovate. And I invented very proudly, we were the first ones many years to invent this beauty subscription program. We have these $10 magazine readers. I think back in 2002, a woman buying a beauty magazine at $10 when the competitors are $3. We had this very incredible audience. And I said, what would they pay if they could try the newest, coolest products that we send subscription-wise to their house four times a year? So we went to the beauty companies. And what I learned was the credibility of the magazine, you'll hear this as a common thread in my career. The credibility”

    2024-06-04 · Invest Like the Best · Adam Sandow - The Power of Print Media - [Invest Like the Best, EP.376] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “I love to start with pain points. And I always say don't tell me the pain points as you think they relate to me, a magazine publisher. Tell me pain points. And I'm sitting in a meeting in 06 and this beauty company, big, big company. They said, Adam, look, we love the magazine. We buy ads in it. But if people will just try our product, they're going to love it. We have got this incredible product. Our struggle is how do we get it into qualified hands? Not hands. How do we get our sample into qualified hands? And I went back with the team. I remember like it was yesterday. We sat in a room and I said, guys, I've got this idea. I love recurring revenue businesses. My best friend is the CEO of one of the largest alarm companies. He's been his whole life in the alarm industry. And in college, he would talk about the recurring revenue business of alarms. And I learned, I'm a subject matter expert in the alarm industry just through osmosis.”

    2024-06-04 · Invest Like the Best · Adam Sandow - The Power of Print Media - [Invest Like the Best, EP.376] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Is here. Let's kill the magazines and sell banners on websites, and that's going to be our salvation. I always thought that we could build very innovative business models into everything we did. So we started a beauty magazine in 2005 very successfully, profitable on its first issue. Very proud of that. But a year into that business as I'm scaling it, I'm sitting with advertisers and they're saying, Adam, you know, we love what you're doing in the magazine business. We love this magazine. It's very unique. $10 on the news. We still publish it. 20 years later, I still own New Beauty. It's this amazing, amazing business. The industry loved the magazine. They loved the thinking. It was very different from everything about this magazine visually, our circulation strategy, our newsstand strategy. Everything was different. But I would sit with manufacturers of product and I would say, tell me your problems, tell me your pain points. And this is what I do. This is a theme, Patrick, in every single thing that I do in any business I build.”

    2024-06-04 · Invest Like the Best · Adam Sandow - The Power of Print Media - [Invest Like the Best, EP.376] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Helped build the not.com, which was this incredible media platform, very much online. And I'm going to go back and I'm going to build a company from scratch and I'm going to start a magazine. So I started in the beauty category, having no particular affinity personally for it, but I thought this is an amazing category. And very quickly, as I started to build the media business, we started to inject a lot of innovation in our thinking. So it looked like a magazine, and it was. In every magazine that I started or acquired, I started to inject a lot of creativity because I saw this convergence. I saw media still very strong. This was early 2000s. Media was very strong. Magazines were very, very strong. But you had this coming threat of digital advertising. And I never gave in, I say it like that. I never gave in to a print company saying, my God, digital.”

    2024-06-04 · Invest Like the Best · Adam Sandow - The Power of Print Media - [Invest Like the Best, EP.376] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Yeah, Patrick, thanks. I definitely have a bit of a unique path. Look, I've been an entrepreneur my entire life. In high school, I was an entrepreneur as a freshman in college. I think I had 12 employees and I was an entrepreneur. It's in my blood. About 22 years ago, when I started this company, I had a love of media and I started in the magazine business. Prior I had built custom publishing companies. I had built media companies. And when I started this company, I said, I've got this love of media. I'm going to build a foundation in magazines. I loved magazines. Personally, as a kid, I would always buy magazines. I would buy things off the newstands and just dream of all kinds of great things. And that's how you discovered things, whether it was popular science or the architecture magazines or Rob Report in the early days. I remember as a kid on seventh grade on the bus reading Rob Report, like a crazy person. And I was fascinated by magazines. So I always love them. And I started the company.”

    2024-06-04 · Invest Like the Best · Adam Sandow - The Power of Print Media - [Invest Like the Best, EP.376] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source