
This last issue went very well. We got a lot of great feedback, emails, comments, and people calling me. We also really turned around on sales. We doubled our advertising sales from the first to second issue. The first issue, people read it, set it aside and did not realize what it was exactly, that they were going to receive it every week. The second issue more people realized that this was a normal, monthly thing. This third issue will be huge.
Tell me about your back story.
I grew up in Webster, NY. I went to grade school at Holy Trinity School, a catholic school. I went to Bishop Kearney High School for two years. Now we have our kids going to school there. After high school I worked for five years in the restaurant business as manager and bartender. It gives you that direct one on one experience with customers, with immediate feedback. This honed my customer service skills. I met my wife when I was pretty young. We were both 21 and she was just finishing college. Shortly after that we had our first kid. My oldest is now 24. In fact, tomorrow is our 25th wedding anniversary.
How old are your children?
My son is 24. I have a daughter who is 20 and a daughter who is 16. Our youngest is a boy and is 13.
How did you get to the point of producing Connecting Rochester.
For the last ten years I was with Messenger Post Media. I started as a reporter for a year and then there was an opening in the sales department, so I went there. I did a pretty good job and became a sales manager. Then, I spent the last couple of years there as the Director of Advertising.
We had a lot of success with working on special publications, supplements to the paper. We had success with that because we started meeting with and reaching out to a lot of organizations all over the greater Rochester area and talking about their needs and what types of things they wanted to see. From that, we began to produce a lot of niche products that met the needs of the organizations we were working with. A publication would often be geared towards an event, as an example, the festivals during the summer. It was not so much coming up with a section that people would want to read or advertise in, but finding an organization and collaborating with them on a project. That is the parallel to what we are doing now with Connecting Rochester.
Connecting Rochester is an offshoot of that, working with organizations like the Chambers of Commerce or small businesses to try to find something that might take care of their needs. There are a lot of great Chamber leaders who we have been able to help by providing our publication for their businesses. It is an added value piece for being a member of the chamber.
Where did the idea come from?
I really wanted it to be something that would engage the readers. The content is smoking and people are excited to read it. For this reason, organizations want to advertise in it. We wanted to create something geared towards small to medium sized businesses. All of the content is geared towards them. We have gotten a lot of good feedback. People have said that we are filling a need.
How does it feel to be an entrepreneur? What are the best and worst parts of that?
You are entering the lifestyle of an entrepreneur. You are pretty much off relying upon your own efforts and abilities to succeed. I believe that the best way to do this is to connect and collaborate with as many people as possible to help your idea grow. That is what I always enjoyed about my job in the years before. Now, as an entrepreneur, I am able to do that and do it in the way that I think is right. There is a lot more risk involved, sure, and that is probably the most fearful part, however it is just another challenge you are going to have to deal with. Being a small business owner for the first time, I have a whole new respect for business owners.
It is amazing once you become an entrepreneur how people now begin to reach out to you, to help you succeed. There is a real community of entrepreneurs out there who want to help each other. And honestly, that is the most welcome surprise.
Even though the economy is not in the greatest shape, there are opportunities. When things change, opportunities are created.
What is your vision with the magazine?
I hope that on its own it becomes a great guide for small to medium business owners. This is really the first publication in what we hope will be many publications with my company, Spiritus Media Group. We intend to continue to seek out more organizations in the greater Rochester area and find out what more we can do to collaborate and produce publications that are tailored toward niche audiences.
This magazine is read by influential people, people who are out talking to other people all of the time.
One of the other things that we do besides the publications is that we are a reseller for a website designer company, SiteBrandBuilder. It is an incredible piece of technology, giving you the ability to build your own website, maintain and change it without having to know any kind of code. They really have a great spirit in that they are trying to give people the opportunity to do things with their websites on their own.
What do you do in your free time? I know you are exceptionally busy. Maybe you count free time as a meal every once in a while...
Most of that is taken up with being part of my kid’s lives. They are involved in lots of things and we have always been involved in what they are involved in. I am serving as the President of the Parents’ Association at Bishop Kearney. It is a great institution that I am very proud of.
I also love golfing. I am not a good golfer, but I love being out on the course. That to me is something to be able to do more of at some point. I also love reading great books.
Favorite books?
I have recently been reading a lot of Dr. Wayne Dyer. He is absolutely fascinating. I just started reading The Shack by William T. Young. I just sat down and started it.
What is your secret to success in mobilizing people to work for you? You have assembled quite a team in a very short period of time to help you produce, edit, publish, and contribute and write columns for the magazine. How do you make that happen?
It is not a secret. You are only as good as your people. I have found lots of incredible people. That is the cool thing about being an entrepreneur... you only work with people you want to work with. You don’t have to work with people you don’t want to. I get to share time at work with good people I enjoy being around.
I have realized that if you treat people well, only good things will come from that. You get in return what you give to others.
There are now a lot of people who want to contribute! It’s amazing. We show people what we want to do and ask them to contribute whatever they think they can contribute. The columnists have been doing a great job. They are writing about something that has to do with their experience, making them able to connect better with readers.
You read the papers every day and hear bad news all of the time, and you hear the reasons why you can’t do all sorts of things. We want people to finish reading this magazine and feel inspired to push through, knowing that they can succeed in whatever the economy is. We want to keep focused on that. We will be covering stories of people who have had some real challenges; however, we are trying to keep it positive.
There was a magazine around for a while called Business Strategies which was similar to what we are doing. We have heard a lot of positive feedback from their former readers.
What have been the most memorable moments of this process so far?
I guess it would have been the first time that we went to the printers and ended with the actual hard copy in our hands. That was kind of exciting. However, the second one might have been even more exciting.
How many hours every week are you working?
It’s probably better not to count. Because then I would have to figure out my hourly wage...
I am working from home, we don’t have a set office. People say you need to keep your work separate from home, and it is very hard to work from home because everything blends together. But, that can be fun also.
How is the family handling the whole process?
They are handling it just great. My oldest is getting involved and doing a little bit with the website and is starting to get out doing sales for us also.
What is your advice to Western NY? Everyone is feeling heat from the recession. How should they handle it?
It is not as bad as you think it is. It’s just not. If you really think it is bad, it will be. We need a lot more people out there trumpeting all of the good things that are going on. You need to associate with positive people who know that you can succeed. Find people like that to hang around with. The economy is what it is, and there are some things you can’t do now, but focus on the things you can do. Find people who have hope, regardless of how things are turning out right now.
What about words of advice to people who are deciding to become entrepreneurs? You decided to make a huge career change in starting your publishing company, a choice not many would be willing to make.
In looking back there are a lot of things I would have done better, started out being better capitalized. However, sometimes you just have to trust your own instincts, and make a move right now. You can’t wait until everything is perfect to do something. Like we were talking about earlier, with the changes in the economy people have to ask themselves; Is this truly what I want to do.
Ask yourself, what do I want to spend eight to twelve hours of my day doing. If you can find it and start doing whatever it is, you will be happy.
Everybody says, get a safe job. I don’t know if there are safe jobs anymore.
And here is good advice for someone who is thinking about leaving their job. Before they leave, they should go through the process of actually starting their own company. It is pretty easy to incorporate and get a bank account set up. Just going through that process you learn so much, and when the opportunity opens up to start your own business, you will be ahead of the game in order to jump on it quicker.
People are probably contacting you all of the time now with different ideas and different opportunities related to your magazine. How do you sift through it all?
That has been another benefit to all of this. Lots of people have contacted me who are very interested in the magazine. I have gained more friends in the community since I started this in the beginning of the year than in the ten years at Messenger Post Media. Also, it is tough to pick and choose who the subjects for the magazine are. We can only fit in four subjects a month, so we will never run out of material.
Where is the distribution right now?
We are distributing to Monroe County Chambers of Commerce and we are expanding all over the greater Rochester area.
Anything else?
I’d like to ask for feedback on the magazine. If people could just send a quick email on what their thoughts are, the good, the bad and the ugly. We are only going to succeed by improving. We are not doing this in isolation! We get feedback from a lot of people and always appreciate it!
Jerry’s email address is jerry@connectingrochester.com
Check out connectingrochester.com and keep an eye out for the magazine.



