 My mom was living in Orange County, she had just moved out here. And so I was like, I could move in with my mom for a little while and not pay rent. I had to make sacrifices, like I had to make, and like these are very like nice sacrifice. Like I was living at like a nice place, like you know what I mean? But they were sacrifices, like giving up some of my independence and I just caught like all my expenses. But yeah, I just like traded a lot of those financial things. That's where like my paycheck was going. They were holding you back in some way, yeah. And now I traded that for basically freedom and doing what I wanted to pursue. This is Startup to Storefront, the podcast where we talk to business owners and entrepreneurs about the untold challenges of scaling a business. Welcome to the podcast. We have Maggie from VegOut Media. Yes. What is VegOut Media? So we are a vegan media and news company. We've got our online platform as well as print and we're on social media too. How did you start? So what is the company about? What kind of things do you feature? It looks like maybe there's a vegan component to it. Yes, so we are, what I tell people is we're basically the vegan version of Time Out. If you've heard of the city guide that's like all over the country or all over the world. And so we show people the best vegan things to eat, see and do in their cities from events to restaurants to, we've started branching into like health and beauty as well. So if it's vegan, we cover it. Oh, like beauty products and stuff. Yeah, yeah. Interesting. Okay. And then how did you start the company? What made you want to get the word out about vegan food and events and things like that? Yes, I moved here five years ago from Michigan. And when I moved here, I was personally just like looking for all the vegan things to do and get involved. So you yourself, you're just looking for where are the restaurants? Yeah, I just wanted to find out about the best restaurants. And I was finding places, but they weren't necessarily, it wasn't like a curated, like I would find like lists of places using Yelp or Happy Cow or other sources, but it wasn't very curated. So I would like go to places and I wasn't too impressed. And I wanted to create something that was completely vegan and it was more of a curation for the audience, something that I would use. Yeah. So this is like 2013, 2014. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. That's interesting. When I moved out here, I started, yeah. So it was like five years ago, started thinking about the idea. I can imagine. So in some parts of the country today, it's difficult being vegan, period. Yes. I don't know what LA was like five years ago, but there's probably not too much content which made it hard to find. LA was actually, it was pretty amazing. I mean, coming from Michigan, right? There was nothing. Like if I went out to dinner, it was like maybe a side salad and french fries. And moving here, I was like super impressed by all of the options. But now, I mean, I've seen it grow so much over the past few years. When you first started, was it like a website that you started or? Yeah. So I first started, I was at my full-time job at an accounting firm and I started, Doing accounting? No, I was doing marketing for an accounting firm. That's better. Yeah. So it was a little more creative, but I think it was like when I started my job there, I also started the website. And it was just like a blog spot website. Okay. And I would post like whenever I felt like it, it wasn't like anything regular. Yeah. My first article was like, how to eat vegan at Taco Bell. I just wanted people to, because my friends would ask me like, what do you eat when you travel? I would travel for work or like. It is hard. Yeah. It would be hard. Yeah. And I would always hear like, I would go vegan, but like eating out's hard. And I'm like, it's not that hard. Like it's, there's options anywhere. So I wanted to show people even at like fast food restaurants, you can have vegan options. So I just wrote the articles myself. And I was like writing and posting one maybe like every week, every other week. And no one was going to the website. I don't even know if anyone knew about the website. I didn't even have an Instagram. I think my personal Instagram existed. Okay. But I sent it to my mom and she's a writer. And so she was like, this is great. We need to like make a real website and be like pumping out content consistently and like get the word out. Oh, wow. So she just started writing our, and she was in Michigan at the time. Now she's out here. So she just started writing articles. And I was like, mom, like this is great, but I don't have like time to do this. Like this is just kind of a side thing. But then I was like, okay, well she's doing the content. We need to let people know about it. I should get on social media, my backgrounds in marketing. So I started the Instagram as like an afterthought and it just kind of took off. I spent a lot of time there and it just grew and grew and grew. And so I was like, okay, there's a need for this. Yeah. Let's do it. Was it mostly on Instagram or were you using Twitter, Facebook? Mostly Instagram. So actually, so a lot of people don't know. We did, my hometown is Kalamazoo, Michigan. And so we did have like a Kalamazoo veg out and it still exists. We don't really update it anymore. But we, when my mom was living there, she was actually like doing content there. And so we found in the different markets, like Facebook was really popular with the Kalamazoo people. Got it. Instagram for LA. So Instagram is like our main social media platform. And were your first posts like you going to fast food restaurants like Taco Bell and figuring out what is the vegan option or what was the- No, so the funny thing is I did like everything from my laptop. I didn't even tell people that I was the founder or that I was like running this. I just like did all the research and like emails and like everything. I think it was like maybe my social anxiety, but I was like, I don't want to go out there. Like I'm just going to do everything from my laptop and like almost like gossip girl style. So I just, I didn't even like go visit restaurants. I mean, I would like- Can you just look at their menus online? I just like their menus online, like make a couple, like I would just figure it all out. And so are you then growing your newsletter or what is it that is like getting the most engagement? Is it the website, the articles? Is it the Instagram posts? So right now, so what's really gotten us to this point, I think is the Instagram for sure, but then as that was growing, I always get scared that like what if Instagram just like goes away. So as we, I mean, we see social media change all the time. So that's why I started, I got a new website. We're actually relaunching like an even better website in the next couple of weeks, which is going to include nationwide. I'm really excited about. And then yeah, we started growing our newsletter. Also the print magazine, which we just launched. Now I have so many questions about the print magazine. So we're in 2019. Yes. Who are you sending the print magazine to? Or is it that, is it somewhere people pick up? Yeah, so we have subscriptions. So we have a subscriber base and then- With addresses. Yes. Okay. Yeah, like real people. And then- People can't see this, but how, so that I'm looking at a magazine in front of me, it's beautiful, it's color. How many pages is this magazine? I think it's around, the first one was a little less, but I think the most recent ones are around 50, 60. Okay. And you're releasing them monthly? Quarterly. Quarterly. Yes, the next one actually comes up October this month. Okay. So I'm just going to think out loud. So I'm like, all right, I decided to start a magazine. Here it is. This is what it looks like. Are you looking for advert, like what kind of content do you want inside of the magazine? Yeah, so we, yeah, we do have advertisers. That's what makes it possible to pay for print. Print's really expensive. I don't think people realize that. It's really expensive to print. But then, yeah, the content, we just make sure it's exclusive. So it's not stuff that you can get on our website. We go more in depth. We actually, our writers will like go and interview different businesses. We cover events. We started doing like a looks we love. So we actually like do a bunch of different like outfits for that season, products we love, different things like that. How much does one magazine cost to print? So it depends. Like the first issue was more expensive because we got less of them. We printed about a thousand copies the first time and it was around $3 a copy. And then the summer issue we printed 4,000 copies since there were a ton of events. And so we wanted to just hand them out at events. And it came down to I think $2 or maybe a little less than $2 a copy. On the advertising side, are there like a tremendous amount of people that would rather print media than social media? What is that like navigating the advertising world? It's really interesting because you have like two people. I think like one side people love print because it's more straightforward. And it's like, of course, I'll pay for a print advertisement. Like that makes sense. But then there are those people that just, like they just don't think prints like relevant anymore. And everything's on social media. I feel like social media has kind of been oversaturated. And that's why I wanted to create the print magazine. Well, for several reasons. But one of the reasons is because we were actually struggling with selling ads on social media and digitally because people just thought everything should be free. Like, oh, I had these influencers post for me like, why are you guys charging for an ad? And I just felt like there was so much gray area, but it would be easier if we had a magazine we could show people like, this is tangible, like there's value here. This is gonna be physically in front of people. And then we kind of package it along with social and other digital aspects as well. That makes sense. So you kind of do an all for one. Yeah, we have different options, but I think it's easier when you have multiple channels because I mean, one person might want all of them, but one person, you have different types of customers. Yeah. And do you focus on like introducing? So you're kind of in, I mean, I don't know, but it seems like it's a green space. I don't know how many that magazines exist that are targeting the vegan community. Is there a lot of them or are you? There are a couple. There's VegNews, which is like the big national one and then Thrive, which is also national, but there isn't anything local. And are you talking about because everyone's like eco-conscious and we're here like with a print magazine? Yeah, I was worried about that in the beginning because I was thinking vegans might not like print, but I think to me the cost of having like, like sure print can be wasteful and we do have a digital version of people don't want the print. Got it. But I think by like getting this out in non-vegans hands is gonna save a lot more for the environment than whatever the paper is. That makes sense. And that's really where we try to target is the non-vegans. We do, most of our subscribers are vegan, but my passion is helping make it accessible to people who are interested. Yeah. So you guys mail these out all over the country? Yes. Like what's your most doubt? Like if I were looking at a demographic map of where are the vegans hanging out in the United States of America, I'd imagine California is a big place. California is number one for the US, but New York's the close second, that's why we're launching New York this fall as well. But most of our subscribers are in LA just because it's a local magazine, but we do have people across the country. I mean, I remember when I was a little kid, I used to subscribe to every magazine and I actually subscribed to LA Mag. I don't even, it was random, Los Angeles Magazine and I don't know why I did, but I subscribed and I never even came to LA. I was just like in Michigan reading LA Mag, just thought it was so cool. So we have people like that. It's a beautiful magazine. Yeah, yeah. That's like the only one that for some reason, if there's a stack of magazines, it's like the one we bought throw away. Yeah, yeah. Because it's like 10 things to do in LA. Yeah. And we'll have someone visiting and we'll say, ah, let's look at this magazine, but they do a pretty good job. Exactly. So we kind of strive for that too, is like even if you're not physically in Los Angeles, like you can still flip through it and it's beautiful and nice to have on your coffee table. What brought you to do this? So are you a vegan yourself or are you passionate about, let's say, not eating animals? What is it that really drives you to start this company? Yeah, so I went vegetarian when I was 12 years old and then... Just because or was it something that you saw or a family member? It was my cousin down in Indiana was vegetarian. She was like a huge animal rights activist and she was a teenager. She was like way ahead of the time and she would go to all those like KFC protests in Louisville and like dress up as a chicken and like throw, I don't know, it was like extreme. I thought it was really extreme, I'm laughing at the visual but I'm not laughing at the mission. Yeah, no, I mean, I thought it was really like extreme and I always like hated on it and then I went to stay with her for like a couple of weeks. My brother and I went and she convinced us to go vegetarian. I mean, I just remember like eating a bag of beef jerky and her just like looking me in the eyes and saying you're eating a dead cow and it just clicked for me. I wouldn't recommend that tactic like to convince new vegans or vegetarians but it worked for me. And then I went back to Michigan and of course like my Midwestern parents were like, no, you're not gonna be vegetarian. You have to eat what we make. You're in like the cheese herd country. Cheese and like meat every meal, casserole, yeah. And so then my mom, she's a writer. She now works with me. She was writing for various magazines, not vegan magazines. And then she was like, maybe I should like research more before I just tell my kids they can't do this. And so she started researching more. She found some vegetarian magazines. They asked her to write some articles. So she was writing for them. She went vegetarian and then she got an assignment for a vegan article and she didn't even, she'd never even like heard about what that was. And as soon as she got that assignment and did the research, she was, she went vegan and she's been vegan 15 years. So she went vegan first and then I was vegan-ish for like years and years and years. I feel like ranch dressing was like the last thing to go for me. I was like holding on to that. This is like the long-winded story but I took a trip to New Zealand when I was 20, stayed on a dairy farm watching kids as an au pair and one morning I went milk the cows with their dad. And after I hooked the cows up to the machines and like just saw, and that was like where they treat their cows nicely in New Zealand. It was just like horrific. It was horrific. And they were just like miserable and I went vegan as soon as I did that. And then I remember my host mom just kept buying skim milk because she thought it was the same as soy milk. And so I was just like drinking like skim milk like to be polite. But as soon as I got back to the U.S. I just completely stopped. You shut it off. Yeah. That's powerful. Yeah. Cause you experienced it. And a lot of people don't see it. I think my experience with it has been my wife's father. He went full on. He had a heart issue and then just went vegan. He was in great shape and cut out oils, everything like full on. You know, he looked great all of a sudden. Looked amazing, gotten really good shape. And then my wife's mother did the same thing and they were already in great shape and then they just gotten better shape. But they also, they just felt better. And for them it's quite literally it's like they're buying life. They're gaining life again. And they grew up on it or the father grew up on a dairy farm. And so for him it was almost like he took it the marketing of the machine, let's say of like drink milk and build strong bones was flawed in a lot of ways. Oh yeah. And so for him it was, he was so upset. I remember at just the marketing and feeling like he had been lied to for so long. Oh yeah. It's horrific. And now there's like an awakening, but even, I mean for him he talks about how some doctors still don't really understand it. There's still so much science that's not there. The last thing's like, where do you get your protein? It's like still super misunderstood but actually the dairy thing, the dairy campaigns that really drove me nuts. Before moving out here I was an AmeriCorps member and so I worked in an elementary school with kids and one of the programs I was working on was funded by the dairy industry but it was all about like eating healthy and exercising. And I was vegan at the time. I was just like, this is so contradictory. Like you can't tell kids to drink milk and they're getting sick and then be promoting it as healthy. Like that just drove me, like there's so much disconnect. So that also kind of like fueled my fire to like do something like this. Yeah, that's great. And so in your articles or in your magazine do you spend a lot of time? Cause I imagine people reading this are probably aware. They're probably vegans, right? And so what is it that you focus on? Is it introducing them to new things, new ideas? Or when you first started, was it just introducing, was it introducing the science? Was it? No, so we actually don't, and that's from the beginning I've been really like strict on like we don't when we bring writers on, we don't talk about animal rights. We don't talk about the health side. We don't talk about, not to say these are born, these are equally all very important, but that's not our brand. We just want to make veganism approachable. And you can tell it's a vegan magazine if you look at the cover. I mean, we probably have the word vegan. Yeah, we do. On there, but we're not like throwing that in people's face. We just want it to be like an attractive, like that ice cream cone looks good. I want to eat it. Oh, it happens to be vegan. What? You know? That's my mission. And I do that in person too. When friends come to visit, I'll just take them to restaurants and like their vegan restaurants or vegan, not like the, you know, vegan friendly restaurants and they'll get, I'll just order something vegan. They eat it, they love it. I've found, like I've been vegan eight years and I've tried multiple tactics of like getting my friends to go vegan, my family to go vegan. And the one that works best is just like showing people good food. And yeah, I think people think when you go vegan, you're giving things up. But I think you actually, especially in LA, like there, you can still enjoy your favorite, you know? And of course we're not eating all of the stuff we post on our Instagram page. So I wouldn't advise that either. I'm not trying to tell people like, all this junk food is healthy. It's still sugar and still process. It's not like healthy for you, but when you want to indulge, there's options. Yeah, the Oreo. Yeah. Yeah, there's like the accidentally vegan stuff that you can still eat. Yeah. How big is your team? We have 16 people on the team. Yeah. Writers. We have writers, graphic designers, photographers, mostly creatives. And then we have a couple sales people. Okay. And the sales people are on the hunt for advertising. Yes. And distribution as well. See, I have no idea about this world. For writers, are they doing one article a week? What's the, what is that like? It depends. So we have, on our team, we have staff writers and the staff writers are doing, yeah, regular content for the website. Or for social media. Yeah. So we'll post the website and then run it through social media. But in the beginning we were posting much less, like maybe one a week or a couple of week. Now we try to get at least one article per day on the website. And then... Is that challenging? Yes and no. I think we, so we have a couple different categories of content and like there's the content like best vegan ice cream that you can write whenever and it's, it's not new, like it's not new. So you could just write that whenever and we can, you know, throw it up there. But then we get like press releases too. And that makes it easier because we're like getting press releases and if it's newsworthy we'll cover it and then it makes it a little easier. So it's not like we're coming up with all the ideas ourselves. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's a lot of work. Yeah. And then the magazine's like a whole another ballpark. I think I didn't realize how much work the print magazine was going to be. What's the most work about it? I think the level of detail with digital, like you don't want to make mistakes when you're posting something online. But if you do, you can like go in and edit it. Like real quick. With print, once it's printed, there's no going back. So just going through like the amount of editing that goes into print magazine is just the hours. It's crazy. And is it always super close to the deadline type of event? Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, it's always just like just late nights, like early mornings, getting close to the, when we're sending it to print. Do you do the final review? Yeah, I do. Yeah. At this point I'm like, yeah, it's like my baby. So I'm like just going through everything, every little detail I have a couple of people read through and our designer is amazing. He's actually working on the issue right now that's coming out. But yeah, and then I think as well, not just the detail, but as soon as it goes to printer, like you would think, okay, we can celebrate, but it's like goes to printer, then you have to find, it's like, okay, now distribution plan. Like you just move into the next thing and we have people working on that like while we're working on the artwork, but it just is nonstop. It's like distribution. And then you have to think about like selling ads for the next issue. Right. How does the distribution work? So I'm at the printer, we've printed a thousand of these. You have your subscribers, you have the addresses, and now what do you do? Do you go to like USPS? So it'd be nice if we had like a mailing house or something, which we might get to that point. But currently it's literally, I don't think people know this, but it's literally at my apartment, a truck comes and drops off all the magazines. Okay, so the print truck comes. Print truck comes, drops off all the magazines. I have my little brother help me carry them up the stairs. Yeah. He helps me sort like, we have our like list of subscribers and then he just like does a, he like hits a button and then it just prints all the labels. And then- Okay, so the mailing labels. Yeah, so I have my brother on that. Like he's like printing labels and then making my family work. Yeah, we go through and just like- You slap them a lot. Put them in envelopes, yeah, ourselves. They sound like a Manila envelope. Just, yeah, just like a regular- Like a yellow. They're white, but it's, yeah. Yeah, I got it, okay. Just a regular envelope. And I originally had wanted to just like slap the label on the magazine. Like you usually see you when you get a magazine, which led me to like driving to some part of LA I've never been before to go to this like USPS headquarters and like talking to this person that like I don't even know how I got through like the gate. And I learned so much about mailing, but I learned that you can literally with magazines just like put them in an envelope and I decided that was the best way for us to ship for now until we grow. Got it. Yeah. How long does that take? Right now, like we're at the point where like our subscribers, it's like it's in the hundreds right now for subscribers because we also sell at stores. People buy the magazine. Yeah. How much does it cost to buy? $5.99 in the store. Is that expensive for a magazine? No, that's cheap. Prints like like now prints up to like for a magazine the size like I've seen them at like $9.99, $12.99 just because it's expensive to print. Right. And that's why we decided like it looks very like ego the look and I love it, but this paper quality is actually a lot cheaper than like if you got a gloss or something like that. When you, let's say, get these in a store, is there a, what's like the split? Does the store take a percentage or how does that work? Yeah. So it varies like it depends on the store. So for stores, it's yeah, they get like a percentage when they sell. Okay. But they're not buying them up front. Some do. It just depends. I got it. For hotels, that's like really when I started this, I wanted this to be a guidebook for tourists. And so we're working on getting in hotels and for hotels, we've just been handing them out for free for guests just to like get in there. But at stores, people, yeah, pay for it. That's like my big vision is like to be a guidebook in a hotel room, when you walk in and you, cause that's something I'd love if I was a tourist and like came and like had that, it'd be amazing. Right now it's very grassroots. I'm like doing a lot of it myself. People, it's funny because, and I'm very transparent about this, but yeah, but I think it's helpful because I like, as someone who wants to start something, like I want people to know how much work it is. Like it's not, it's not easy. You don't just have someone else, you don't just start a business and then have someone like do everything for you. I mean, that would be nice. But like, I'm bootstrapped from the beginning so we don't have investors. So I still do a lot of the work myself and it's funny. People will be like, oh yeah, can you have like your assistant drop off or like whoever like drop off the M like, yep. And then it's like always just me that shows up. Like I do a lot of the deliveries. I do a lot of the like physical labor and... Do you pay yourself? I just started paying myself. I just started paying myself. Congratulations. Thanks, yeah, I know it, but it was a hard decision because it's like, I mean, you can relate, like you just want to put everything back into the business. But you don't want to be homeless, so. Exactly, and you want to take care of like everyone else before, you know, but you have to take care of yourself and like, otherwise it's not going to be sustainable. And this is your full-time job now? It is, yeah. That's right. I left my corporate job a year, actually like exactly a year ago, end of September. So what was the decision to leave? Was it something that happened with the company or you just said this will never grow until, yeah. It was pretty much like this will never grow. I was working both, like my schedule, looking back, my schedule was just insane. I was working my full-time. You're working at an accounting firm, insane schedule. Well, so I was like, I was working like 40 plus hours a week at the accounting firm. I would work more like, I travel a lot and put on events for them. And so I was a lot of travel hours too. And then trying to do this, like I would wake up at like 5 a.m., go to the gym, then like work on veg out, then commute to work or sometimes work from home, but work a full work day. And then you're just at the end of like a corporate job, work day. You just don't want to do anything to, but then I would work veg out again. I would work veg out on lunch break. And I just had like no time for anything else. And then I just realized on, I just realized like the opportunities I was missing out on because I would be invited to different things, tastings and events. And I couldn't go because it was during the day when I was working and so. So did you save, I guess a little bit of money and sort of plan it or was it? That would have been nice. Okay. That would have been nice. No, I mean, I didn't have a lot of savings. I really was working a job to just pay for like my nice car and my nice apartment and had no plan really. And it was just like, I'm just doing this. And I didn't, being from the Midwest, I didn't really see another option. It was like everyone goes to like a good university and then gets a good job and then you like buy nice things. And like that's just like everyone's life, you know? That's the treadmill. Yeah. And so I was just doing that. And then it just hit me one day. And I was like, I couldn't do it. My mom was living in Orange County. She had just moved out here. Go mom. I'll support you. Yeah. And so I was like, I could move in with my mom for a little while and not pay rent. My pride took a hit because I was like 27 at the time. You're dating. It's tough to date. Yeah. And being like South OC, like I did not want to live there. Like it wasn't, it was like two hours to get to the city. So I had to make sacrifices. Like I had to make, and like these are very like nice sacrifice. Like I was living at like a nice place. No, but there were sacrifices. You know what I mean? But there were sacrifices. For sure. Like giving up some of my independence and I just caught like all my expenses gave up my Equinox gym membership and like all these nice things that I had. Great gym by the way. I loved it. I loved it. I actually, yeah. But yeah, I just like traded a lot of those financial things. That's where like my paycheck was going. They were holding you back in some way. Yeah. And now I traded that for basically freedom and doing what I wanted to pursue. That's such a good story. And I actually just sold my, I actually just sold my Lexus like two weeks ago and took my sister's like old Chevy. It was like, it's the 2009 but I'm driving that around now so. It's really amazing what happens when there's an awakening as it relates to, you start to view money as a way to fuel your growth and your company and you start to, you realize like things are nothing but they're kind of speed bumps that you've placed in front of yourself because you've bought them. But they hold you back in a lot of ways. But it's tough to make that switch because society and everybody around you is living large. Right. I didn't even see it as an option. Like which sounds silly. I can almost relate it to veganism where I didn't even see like being vegan as an option. Like you're just, it's so ingrained in you. You're just going along and then you're like, wait, why am I doing this? Like why am I, why do I have a car payment? I don't need to have a car payment. There's like my sister's like car that is perfectly fine. Like sitting in my mom's driveway. Like I don't need a car payment. I'll just take that one. I think people just are going and they don't think of the other option. It's tough. I mean, it's tough to make the connection and I think once you do you're kind of like weird or you're afraid. Yeah. I lived at home for two years when I graduated college. I had some student loans and I for sure didn't, I didn't want them and so I lived at home and fortunate or unfortunate the stock market crashed at that time. Yeah. And so then I was able to buy a property in Boston because everything was like on sale and Uncle Obama was giving out $8,000 to first time home buyers. And so that kind of, it all worked out. But while I was living at home I'll never forget this. My mom after like a year and a half said, are you going to start contributing financially? And I said, no, like you're my mom. Why would I start? She's like, that's not how this works. And so I said, all right, let's go to Costco. So went to Costco and I think I spent $600 in groceries or something. And I was like, I'll pay for this. This is my contribution. And then I moved out like two months later. I was like, I'm never doing that. I don't know, there was so, it's so weird. My mom was my roommate basically. And I was like, this is so terrible. It is. And it's, yeah, but I think you just make if you're an entrepreneur or you're someone who's like super passionate about, you know making your business work or making your dream work. I think you'll take those temporary, couple steps backward. That's what I always tell people. Couple steps backward to take, you know, big steps forward. It's just temporary sacrifices for long-term goals. Yeah, totally. What was your first hire? Who was the first person that you brought on to help you? Graphic designer. Yeah, so Joel, who is an amazing human, he actually like slid into my DMs like a couple, like about a year after I started, he just hit me up and was like- On Veg out of LA? Yeah. We were at like 20,000 followers at the time and he was like working for a vegan festival, helping them just like freelance. He had quit his job and he was just like helping freelance do some stuff. And he was just like, hey- You need help. He's like, if you need any help, I'd like love to design some stuff for you. I'm handy with a camera. Like he was just really modest about it. And I was like, that's great, but I don't have any money to pay you. I'm not even paying myself. Like this is just very part time. You know, I hadn't left my corporate job. So I'll let you know in the future. And he was like, I don't care. Like, I love what you're doing. I love your mission. Oh, wow. I want to do this with you. And I was like, okay. So he just like started helping me. We didn't even meet in person for like a couple of months after that. Wow. Yeah. I mean, he's been with me since. He was the first person, besides my mom. She was just helping you for free. Yeah. Cause she's my mom. And then it was kind of cool to like grow with him. Like initially like we weren't paying him anything and like now we can and he's the one who does the entire design for the magazine and he'll do like graphics for Instagram and. And is it his full time job pretty much? Or is he still? He's not full. He still has like freelance for other, you know, other people, but we probably take most of his hours at least around magazine time. But he also does all the, like a lot of the photography like the cover shot was his. That's my hand. I love that. I love the scrappiness of that. That's my hand. Well, the funny, there's a funny story behind that cover. This one was actually planned. But this one and the people who are, who are just listening magazine cover and it's a hand magazine holding an ice cream cone. Yes. So we're getting more advanced. Like with the fall shoot, with the fall shoot. It's hilarious. This coming out this October. We actually did a cover shoot where we like went to we're featuring Daniela Monet who's like a vegan celebrity. And we like went to her, you know, house and we did this whole shoot and it was like very professional. But this one, we literally, Joel and I were like sitting at a coffee shop late at night and we were like, okay, the magazine looks great. And then we're like, but we don't have a cover. And this was like right before we had to send it to print. And we were freaking out and we were not even supposed to have like an ice cream article in this one. But I was like, I have an idea, let's just do, do you have any like pictures of ice cream cones? And so he just like pulled up pictures that he had like taken in the past and like pulled in a background and it looks great. The magic of graphic design. Yeah. I was like, okay. I was like, we're never doing that again. Like we need to like play an out cover shoot. Yeah. Yeah. And what month is this one from? This is, this came out in June. Okay. Yeah. How did you grow your Instagram? So now you have, how many followers do you have now? We're about to hit 80,000. And so when you first started, how did you go about getting it out there? Was it just hashtag heavy? What was sort of the strategy? Lots of hashtags. And then I was just on it all the time. Like I personally was just- Were stories a thing? No. On Instagram? Not really. You didn't use Snapchat just five years ago. Okay. No, we didn't, I didn't even really know what stories were when they first came. I didn't do stories for a long time. Yeah. I was just posting and going back, like it's fun to like scroll all the way back down. We've archived a couple things, but like I know some accounts archive like their whole past. Like you can still, if you have time and just scroll to the beginning, it's like embarrassing some of the stuff I posted. Like I would be like at Starbucks and like eat a bagel with like avocado spread and was like, this is vegan and like post it. And it was like my crappy like camera phone at the time. So we've evolved there. And I think that's so important cause people are like, I want like this awesome Instagram account. And it's like, you just have to like start somewhere. Like we recently like within the last half year started putting a little bit of money into Instagram ads when people do like paid ads with us. We take a portion and like put it toward advertising. What is that like? So like a brand will approach you guys and then you'll do like a paid sponsorship through your account. Yeah. Yeah. So we'll do like giveaways or just like a promotion, you know, go buy this product online or go to this restaurant and use this coupon code, whatever. Have you found that that to be successful? Like a lot of people go and use the code or... There's two different types of advertising that we do. One's like flat rate and then one's affiliate which we get a percentage is just commission based of whatever we sell for a company. Do you manage all of that yourself? Currently, yes. That's a lot. Yeah. But my background's in marketing. So I actually like love that portion. Okay. But yeah, I'm still doing that. I need to grow that side of the team. We have a ton of creatives but I need to grow like more on the business side. Yeah. So affiliate marketing through Instagram, I think again, I think it's like super oversaturated now because in the beginning it worked really well and we saw success. But I think now there's like every influencer out there like use my code for like this skinny tee or like whatever it is. Right. And it just kind of loses like the authenticity. Cause it doesn't always fit the person. Right. Exactly. And so now we're trying to transition. We still do affiliate on social media but what I'm excited about is when we launch our new website we're going to do a lot more of that through our website and just like tie it in really organically and you know, we don't promote things that like we don't use ourselves and this is stuff that like people, sure we get a cut of it but I'm very transparent. It's like we need, if you want free content, like we have to like feed ourselves and like we have to monetize somehow, right? So it's like you can support us by if you want to buy this product just use our code anyway, you know? And when you just started just to give people a sense who are let's say sitting at home thinking like, all right, I'm going to start my website right now. I'm going to launch it. I'm going to launch my Instagram. Yeah. What was your growth like on these platforms? And so for every hundred Instagram followers you might get two website visits or what did that look like? I don't, yeah. I don't know about like the followers to like website but as far as like Instagram followers I remember like last November we were at 50K and then now we're at like about 30K like this past year but it's been like all or get like very little advertising dollars, mostly organic. So at some point it's just snowballs it sounds like. Yeah. I've heard it at 10K people just it just kind of goes. It does. But yeah, like I'm on it less. I have someone managing it now or helping you manage it. And so I'm on less but in the beginning I was, that's what I was going to say. I was literally on there engaging with people coming up with like creative ways to just start conversations and like get people involved and like really feel like there was like community on the digital platform that I was creating and just build that community. Like looking back I spent so many hours on Instagram it was insane. That was all, like all my free time was just on Instagram like liking people's like photos and like now like I like to just put my phone down and not go on Instagram but at the time I was just on Instagram all day. Responding. Just yeah, messages, everything. Do you ever think about creating either a conference or I mean maybe you do this now I don't know but like sponsoring a food hall type of event and then you bring all your vendors, everyone that you've let maybe featured in a magazine. Yeah, so we have thought about different types of events and we've done three or four events actually this year. Our biggest one is our awards. So every year we do like a best of LA awards and it's all the vegan restaurants and there's different categories and all of our readers get to vote and then crown winners in different categories and they come and get to party and hang out with us. Did you have you done that before? That's a really good idea. No, but that's my genius marketing background trying to get that's one way I built engagement. I was like, I'm just gonna create an awards and people are gonna vote for it and then I'm gonna get their emails. That's actually really smart. Yeah, yeah. That's really smart. And then the restaurants are gonna promote it because they wanna win and then the followers are gonna promote it because they love this restaurant. Right, so you're gaining everyone else's let's say a social capital. Where was the event? So we rented out on Peerspace.com we just rented out some like artists space that are like a loft downtown LA. How big is it? I don't know how but it was like multiple levels. It was really cool. There was like a submarine in the middle. Like it was a pretty sweet space but we had like 200 people in there. Okay, yeah. And then you're on stage or is there a stage or like a whole ceremony? So we didn't actually do the ceremony. We wanna do the ceremony this next year. But the first year I was like so the first year we didn't even do any kind of party at all and then the second year which was this past year we did the party which was just kind of like the reception portion. And then this I did give like a speech and then this next year we wanna actually do like a ceremony. How many people do you think will go to this year's? I like keeping them smaller just like cause then it's more exclusive it's more Hollywood it's more like invite only kind of thing people love that cause if like anyone can go like who's buying a ticket like but if it's like invite only or like you know higher ticket but like less people can go I feel like people love that kind of treatment. And do you sell the tickets? So this past year we did like half was like influencer invite and then half was like open to our audience but also like the events events are so much work like a magazine's a lot of work but events I feel like that's something that like it's a wedding yeah like people love events and they're like oh you should do events they're great and after doing events I don't know like I always say like I'm not gonna do another event because it takes so many hours and like the financial side doesn't always make sense it's more been like a marketing thing for us you can make money off of them but You're saying it's not that much money? Yeah like we made money off like the first one and then we broke even we lost on one I think it depends on like your goals too like when we did our magazine launch party our goal was more so to just like get the word out about the magazine it wasn't to like make money off the event so Right what are the economics if you want to make money is it just sell more tickets? Sell more tickets Less free giveaways on the tickets Yeah basically sell more tickets more sponsorships that kind of stuff VIP tickets even because then you know Yeah you can do different stuff but I prefer kind of like how I don't want to open a restaurant I prefer just being the middleman and promoting other people's events but I do love putting on events it just takes everything out of me because I'm super detail oriented so like when I do events like they're gonna be great and they have been great but it's just like so time consuming You have to have everything planned out to like the minute Yeah and that's another thing that I could probably hand off to someone to do but like I'm so like I'm such a control freak I'm like I'm one It's stuff for entrepreneurs in general because it's like you have to do it yourself so you understand the system so you can then teach them on the system but at the beginning you have to sort of assume that control because it's your name at the end of the day How long have you been doing this now? Veg out? Three years Three years What's next year look like for you? Like what are your and when you when you think about let's say 2020 2021 you know what are some milestones that you set some goals that you set for yourself Is it subscriber count? Is it events? What are what are like some of the your North Star let's say the things that you try to work towards Yeah goals are really nice and I need to get better at making goals I feel like I'm always in the day to day just trying to like keep things afloat but no I want I envision Veg out to be in like every major city here and I want to go to London and other international cities It's such a need for people who are vegan, Veg curious to find options there's nothing out there that's like super curated makes it super easy for people so I really want to focus on expansion but at the same time like doing it in a calculated way so we're not just like growing rapidly and then everything falls apart like it's very strategic we're launching New York next and we just want to make sure that everything's we kind of have our blueprint now for LA and then we're going to do the same thing in New York and for a media company I have no idea what this is like but do they do you guys raise money or like what does that look like do you need money to grow or is it just keep doing what you're doing until you self sustain what's that look like Yeah, so that's a good question so I mean there are different ways in the beginning I was googling how do you make money with a media company like how do you revenue models what did it say business plans it was basically like be you know like inherit a lot of money and then start a media company that was basically like the advice I was like well that's not going for me it's a great strategy it's basically like just already have money and then start a media company but it's hard when you're starting out because you can't get investors because you don't have anything to show people no one's going to invest just like any startup so I in the beginning because I didn't have another option just bootstrapped and I didn't even have honestly not until a year ago I didn't even have like a revenue model I was really just a blog in a way not bringing in income like I would sell like a sponsored post once in a while but I wasn't bringing in anything I was really just focused on building the audience and at the time I had my full-time job so it was like fine but I think that's the thing is like I think if you're going to start a media company you have to know sure if you have money up front or investors or whatever you can just jump right in but it was actually a blessing that I had to like grow the audience because now we have that audience and we have something to sell them but at the time we were just gaining trust it took years to build and then we introduced a product where I think a lot of people come out with a product but then they have no audience we did the opposite which I don't know which one's harder but just like not having anything to sell people and like doing everything for free it was I mean I did it because I loved it but if I wanted to make like money up front I would not have chose this business model I think it makes sense growing the audience is certainly a path introducing a product to an existing audience is much easier than the opposite exactly so we grew the audience but we couldn't sell advertising because we didn't have an audience in the beginning so it was just all bootstrapped and then we got to the point where people were maybe interested in investing but I've made a decision at least as of now that like I don't want outside investors just because like I have this vision and like that's always how I've been like since I was a little kid I'm like I'm doing it this way like no one can tell me what to do but not to say in the future like we might go down that route if I meet an investor that clicks but currently it's just been like okay we have a magazine let's raise money through advertising you know to pay for print and to pay people right now are you like 100% on your company or what's what does that look like yeah I am yeah and I didn't I didn't bring on a co-founder so you could easily bring on an investor and retain like at least maybe that's true 100% of your company that's true I could right yeah I think the advice I always give people is when you deal with investors when make sure you're protected in terms of your legal documents and then to really unless they can help you unless they're like a strategic investor there's no reason to bring on or bring them on as a board member or as a controlling party in any way because they'll get in your way at some point and that's not why you started your company but yeah totally right I mean people mess this up all the time yeah exactly and it's hard yeah I mean there's not too much information out there investing is neither an art or a science a lot of it's just feel yeah yeah and I've had conversations with people who are potentially interested and you know they really are focused on like the medical side which I'm like that's important but that's not what Veg Out is you know or like they're really like focused on like oh animal rights or something it's just like they need to share the same vision I think that's like super important do you think brands are moving so do you ever cover that and so do you ever cover in your magazine McDonald's with the or some of these fast food chains moving to be on meat what is what is your outlook on the market in terms of these huge companies and how they're addressing either just consciousness of animal rights or it tastes the same yeah let's move on the product that's probably cheaper at scale yeah so I think big companies like they're obviously one thing in mind is money right so they're gonna make money however they can but if there's a demand for a vegan product they'll sell the vegan product right and so we have gotten you know hate from the vegan community when we promote options at Carl's Jr. or at Burger King they just launched nationwide The Impossible Lopper or some of the Del Taco some of these like chain fast food restaurants there are a couple types of vegans I think the people who like make all their food at home or like only go to vegan restaurants which is like the ideal like I prefer to do that too but being from the Midwest and just having a bigger view why are you laughing I just love it the nostalgia of these places for you but I just I go back there and it's a really good it's really humbling it's a good reminder that like I'm in my LA vegan bubble and it's great that we have all these restaurants but I have to remember like there are people with like little to no vegan options in some of these places I remember road trips to Indiana growing up where like my only vegetarian option was like at a Taco Bell which is like why I wrote that article when we started so I think it's really important sure that's interesting so you view these sort of big companies as a way to literally introduce these products to exactly America exactly yeah and I'm not recommending like if you're already vegan and you already like know what you're doing and like everything's going like I'm not saying like go try the impossible offer if you want to that's fine and I'm like that's great I'm not judging but I just think of someone in the middle like my dad for instance like if he's gonna go to a fast food restaurant anyway which he does he's actually come a long way and it's like almost vegan now which is amazing but say he wants to like go get a burger and then he goes and then he looks oh and they have what is this impossible and then he just like by chance tries it or someone says oh have you tried the impossible and there's that option and then he likes it he likes it and then maybe he keeps or because it's like better for his health or whatever and then he keeps ordering that instead of the meat option right that's a win and that's like helping someone maybe they're never gonna be vegan but they're eating one less animal meal and like if you can eat every little bit exactly like people it's not about everyone going 100% vegan it's about everyone you know eating less animal products what if you partnered with let's say a McDonald's or a Burger King and the rapper on the burger was like Veg Out that would be amazing Veg Out LA or whatever right whatever market they're in Veg Out Media yeah see that I would love to do that like I'd love to do more stuff like that if any Burger King executives are listening let's get that done that'd be cool right yeah stuff like that I love like because then you're literally introduced so I guess the way I think about this is if it pencils so if if it does make more money and so if it if they can per pound by the vegan item cheaper than meat and it's more reliable because they can produce it at scale as opposed to waiting for cows then it would make sense for them to bring their entire product line right chicken McNuggets the whole bit over to the the vegan side yeah I think I think the issue on the bigger scale is the government and they're subsidizing meat and dairy so then the vegan products are still more expensive and so there's that and the price point thing like for now I mean that right right but yeah that I mean that would be awesome all right so you're expanding to New York yeah what does that mean does that mean a lot of you go to New York are you going to be hanging out in New York for a month what does that look like for a media company so we're working from from LA we're working on getting the magazine ready and then we're going to have it I kind of like saw what the cost of printing in LA was to ship and use our current printer and then shipped to New York but it was going to be too expensive so I'm finding a printer in New York we're going to have them all printed there and then my older brother lucky like he lives in Brooklyn so I'm just going to have them delivered to his apartment and hopefully I haven't asked him yet then I'm going to go to New York along with a couple of people on my team and we're just going to grassroots like for how long so how long does it take you to set up in a city I don't know I haven't done it yet I mean LA was our first so we'll find out but we've already started making connections digitally so our sales person has been on it and we've sold advertising already for New York and the content's done for New York so we've like reached out to people so people are familiar with us as far as like the restaurants go yeah and some of like the influencers and people like that who are going to help us market it what's an influencer in your opinion so at what point does someone become an influencer you know I think a true influencer it doesn't matter how many followers you have like if people listen to what you're saying like that's a true influencer but on how do you gauge that if we talk a media company perspective yeah if we if we talk like numbers and like social media there's different levels like I think in the vegan community if you're looking at vegan influencers it's anywhere like micro influencers anywhere from like 10k to 20k and then you have like the big accounts that have you know like 100k plus but I think this might I used to think like oh it's a number of followers but it's really the engagement if someone has like 10, 20k but they get a lot of engagement people are responding to their stories and to their posts and they're getting comments that's powerful and I love influencers I have a lot of influencer friends don't get me wrong but I think not that the trend is like getting away from influencer marketing but I think it was really hot half a year ago, a year ago and now it's not dying out but I think something has to kind of like change because people are kind of sick of as a consumer people are sick of seeing the same stuff all the time totally yeah one of the things we're working on is so we do a lot of real estate development and in doing that we film the whole thing and so it's like much more realistic if we're bringing on brands that promote our guys in the field or they're wearing the products or the products are in use because then it's like real yeah it's like they're quite literally using the products as opposed to that's great like if someone were to give me a hammer I don't use a hammer you don't want me using a hammer so me standing with a hammer is pretty stupid yeah just people know like Diego doesn't do that yeah that's not you know what I mean yeah and so that the honesty of it has to shift exactly and I think that's what it is so I think the influencers that are like doing well right now and that brands are wanting to work with are the ones who are really it's like so cliche but authentic and just I think there was that time and place on Instagram for like the perfectly curated grid with like everything planned out and you know I come from digital marketing background so like I know this I've been to all the conferences and it's like you have that like have this grid everything planned out do the photo shoot plan it out in advance but now I think people are like if you're at a restaurant and you're like feeling it you're feeling yourself like post it you know like do you have a an LA celebrity vegan story so yeah no so there is like the vegan celebrity kind of like they exist they exist yeah like Billy Eilish just be a lot of celebrities are vegan actually and the pro act of the matter yeah got it yeah there are actually a bunch that I'm looking forward to working within the future because how do you how do you do that do you reach out to who um so it depends it's kind of like sales sometimes people approach you for advertising sometimes you approach them right so sometimes people reach out to us like wanting to be featured but in the beginning we're mostly reaching out especially if they're like bigger celebrities reaching out to them yeah or like organically meeting them somehow for them this is I want to make it clear so that with people listening as they're starting whatever their company wherever they're at so as your salesperson hitting them up is that meeting their publicist is it so for contact me on the Instagram so for celebrities our salesperson is not reaching out to them for celebrities it's mostly me um do handling those contacts okay so for so I'll give you an example for the issue that's coming out this month we have Daniela Monet um on the cover and she she was in a Nickelodeon show but she's got it like now she's that was like in her younger years now she's a business owner she's got like three different businesses and opened a vegan restaurant on Melrose so she's like doing a lot in the community I feel like I should know this person I don't okay so she's awesome and we just did a cover shoot with her and that was a case of just reaching out to her PR team um she has the contact on Instagram and we just reached out and then we set it up and we did it so it could be that easy yeah it could be that easy so I mean I've tried to reach out to Jaden Smith's PR people so like if anyone's listening who like has a Jaden Smith hookup like let me know because some of them are a lot more untouchable and harder to get in contact with but as we grow too right I think more celebrities will want to work with us I happened to meet the guy who was Aladdin in the feature film Me and I'm Assoon um is a friend of mine and around the sitting at the same time but about a year ago he launched his vegan brand called Evolving Vegan and they're doing really cool stuff what are they what are they focused on? theirs is like uh Instagram TV series and they go around the country and like interview restaurant owners and it's really cool he hosts it and then they're coming out with a book so they like create yes what a good idea yeah so so so so they're creating a brand similar to ours but but different but we have similar visions and so we met about a year ago and we've worked together but that was like before he was like in the film and like I see big so I think something like veganism where it's people are really passionate about it celebrities are not it's like people see that you're doing this out of the good sure you're making money it's a business but you're doing this out of the goodness of your heart um and so people are more willing to work together versus other industries where it's like super like cut throughout competition and so just to go back to New York so you're reaching out yeah oh yeah going tangent yeah totally cool restaurants I haven't bought a ticket yet so I'm thinking I probably just want to be out there for a couple weeks to a month when we launch and when you go is it is it you maybe two or three other people and it's just a lot of photos what is it that you guys are looking for yeah I'm after we send the LA magazine to print I'm going to be working on this plan so I think LA we're we're more established so for New York we're just kind of going to start at the beginning start small and build that's kind of how I've done everything is just like start small and then just one foot in front of the other build it up so we'll print less copies than we printed in LA and then we'll probably end up just like handing them out for free to start off with just to like get the word out I don't think there will be any events while I'm there so we're not going to go to events but we'll probably try to plan something with a couple of the restaurants to like create our own events different types of like influencer events things like that and then just like meeting with restaurant owners and introducing myself to people building my network I think that's the most important thing in LA I you know I know a lot of the owners and the influencers and I don't really know too many people in New York so well listen tell everyone where they can find you you can find us on Instagram at Veg Out Los Angeles Facebook Veg Out Los Angeles and then our website is vegoutla.com if you want to subscribe to the magazine it's shop.vegoutmag.com yeah yeah and if you're looking for anyone to feature yeah people just hit you up on Instagram yeah you can send us an Instagram message or email us at hello at vegoutla.com oh that's so easy yeah that's amazing yeah we're pretty accessible so hit us up Maggie thank you yeah thank you so much yeah you bet thanks for having me on we here at Start Up the Storefront would love to hear feedback from you reach out and let us know what you think about the show make sure to give us a rating on iTunes anything over five stars is the only way to go our music is composed by DoubleTouch you can find us on Facebook and Instagram at Start Up the Storefront for more information on the products and businesses featured on the show check out the links in the show notes make sure to subscribe so you don't miss a single episode thanks for listening and we'll see you next time