Working vacations - getting away

I am writing this from the wonderful city of Toronto where my wife and I are visiting friends. Here the discussions focus around babies (our friends just had a baby boy) and soccer (Manchester United vs Arsenal and the World Cup). I am an avid United fan while my friend is an Arsenal fan. Even though I am away for the Memorial Day weekend, my thoughts inevitably turn time and again to my magazine.

It reminds me of an interview I had with the owner of a specialty store who told me that he has not had an all out vacation in a long time. Usually when he gets away it is a working vacation, meaning that he combines work with leisure. He would have to call on suppliers and customers while trying to get away to the beaches or clubs or other areas he likes to hang out.

Now there is a big difference with what this business owner does and what I do. His business accounts for how he feeds his family but my venture is a venture on-the-side or a weekend project. I still have my 9-to5 which pays the bills and my career is intact. So while I can take vacations in the true sense of the word, most small business owners have to roll their vacations in to their business trips.

Despite the fact however that this is a vacation weekend getaway for my wife and I, I still make mental notes about what to do when I get back. As a matter of fact, my flight from Fort Lauderdale was 3 hours and I took that time to write an opening "welcome" letter that I aim to print that will introduce the magazine to readers. That was 3 hours well spent.

I guess there is no getting away anymore.

Networking in the Caribbean community abroad - is it valuable

Well, in starting up my magazine one thing I knew I must do is to network: get in front of various individuals out there that are known in the community and see what they think about the idea and if they would support it. This is probably much more important than securing any advertising commitment. Once you make the right connections and gain credibility then your idea will be supported and then hopefully the dollars will follow to sustain your venture. So the story that I want to relate here will open up what has become my new lease on life: networking is valuable and so is taking care of your community (whatever and whoever that community consists of). See, the mistake I have made here after being transplanted from Jamaica to South Florida is that I have been indifferent at times where fellow Caribbean brethren are concerned. Now that is not the same as turning your back but the results are no different.

So here I am approaching this well known member of the community in Broward County and pitched the idea to this individual who turned to me after I was done and said "You know I have never heard of you. If you have been around I am sure I would have heard of you" At this point I explained that I was basically new to the scene (in terms of trying a venture, NOT new in terms of living in the area). Then I was asked well did you get involved in this and that to which the answer was no (this was not that long ago and we are still involved in the whole immigration scenario with Congress etc). And then it hit me what she was saying. If you take care of your community your community will take care of you. See I came to realize that if I had been involved in the community all this time I would not have the credibility problem. But now I do. So I researched organizations that I could get involved in, which was easy beacuse this is the fulcrum of my magazine. And then applied for membership with the full aim of getting involved. It is situations like this that I hope to help others avoid in the future.

When I came here to the US, I went straight to college. There was always emphasis on networking but there was no real push to network with the Caribbean community (or maybe I chose not to see it). But as part of my magazine evolution I hope to put it out there to students (and to business leaders) that this is important. I think it is overlooked at times that our business leaders look to help businesses but not the students as much. So hopefully we will get that to change a bit. I know I have already changed in this regard, having learned my lesson. It was a harsh one but the conversation that I mentioned earlier is one of the best lessons I have learned in "mi ole age!"

Selling advertising

My experience thus far in trying to start this publication has been trying. Since I am not one who considers myself to be a salesperson, it is most awkward to call people up on the telephone and ask them to advertise in my magazine. Even much more difficult is the fact that I am asking them to advertise in a magazine that 1. they have never seen and 2. has not yet been published. Talk about a tough sell. I remember quite vividly the first time I heard someone say "I am not interested!" That should have been a deflating moment but instead what I heard was "You are in the game now." So I grabbed the next number and proceeded to call.

My advertising strategy was to separate all the companies that I could get a hold of in the South Florida area that might be interested in the Caribbean population into tiers (Most likely, likely, probables etc) and call them in that order. That way I would spend the most time on the most likely ones first. At the top of my list was an airline (which will remain nameless). To this day I have not been able to speak with anyone there. So what is worst than hearing I am not interested?" Answer: not hearing anything at all. Well it is my hope to go on producing this magazine and then mail them a copy and make the pitch from there. But I was quite certain this particular airline would be all over this idea. Well I firmly believe that they will be; just not yet.

I am going to close with a thought that a business owner in Lauderdale Lakes said to me not long ago. He said that Caribbean business owners do not want to spend the money to market themselves properly. I wonder if that is true. I will share my thoughts on that in the near future when I hit him up for advertising! But maybe he has a point. From my point of view, only time will tell.