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Hurricane to Opportunity: Rebuilding Western NC Business with Brett Hulsey · Epic Entrepreneurs

• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Hey there, welcome to this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: I'm Bill Gilliland, your host, and I am also the principal at Action Coach, business Growth Partners and one of the founders of the Asheville Business Summit.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Speaking of the Asheville Business Summit, our guest today is one of the sponsors.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: But before we get there, I want to remind you hey, it's not too late, you can still get tickets to this major event that we're having in Asheville.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Just go to WNCSummitcom.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: Wncsummitcom and all the information is there the schedule, the whole deal and how to get tickets, the sponsors, everything is there.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Just check it out.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: W?
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Wncsummitcom Today I'm super pumped to talk to my friend, brett Holsey.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Now.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: He owns one of our major sponsors, which is called the WNC Business Magazine, and it's part of a large organization that he owns called the Holsey Media Group and he's got a number of publications in there.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: So, brett, welcome to the podcast.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks, bill.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, tell us a little bit about you and Holsey Media and the WNC Business Magazine.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: We have been in business now under Holsey Media for, I guess, going into 11th going on 12 years now under Holsey Media, for, I guess, going into 11th going on 12 years now.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: And we're really a continuation of a previous company, the Fisher Publications, based in Hendersonville, with a publishing history that goes all the way back to 1982, when Hendersonville Magazine was started.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: So the products that we have in our group with Holsey Media the magazine titles a couple of them are older than our company.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: Really, you know they were around and then we acquired them back in 2014 and formed Holsey Media.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: But myself I'm a I guess I'll use the word veteran now because I'm getting older.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: I think I've been in in local media now for almost 30 years, starting back to my college days, when I was at the University of Alabama and started working at the Crimson White student newspaper, and that's how I got into this business, and I wasn't really studying that industry in college at all, but as a part-time job it actually led to a career that I never expected.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: So I've always been thankful for that opportunity, for sure, and it's opened a lot of doors for me and given me a lot of good experience.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: But originally.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: I moved to the Asheville area beginning of 2001 and worked at the Asheville Citizen Times newspaper.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: I was there for a couple of years and then moved to a couple of different newspaper groups in the eastern part of North Carolina and up and just over the line in Tennessee different newspaper groups in the eastern part of North Carolina and up and just over the line in Tennessee and I was on the digital side of the newspaper industry for over a decade.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: Most recently I worked as the vice president of digital strategy and development with a group called Jones Media at the time that published community newspapers throughout eastern Tennessee and as well as up in the Boone and Blowing Rock Banner Elk area in North Carolina and ran their digital division for about seven or eight years.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: But we'd always wanted to come back to the Asheville Hendersonville area.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: My wife and I had and we'd started off here and always kind of looking for opportunities to get back here.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: Through mutual colleagues in the newspaper world I was able to connect with Joni Fisher who had Fisher Publications in Hendersonville and she had published Hendersonville Magazine and Healthcare Resources of Western North Carolina for many years and fortunately it worked out as a good opportunity for us to come back and acquire those publications and start growing from there.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: I always tell people you know the story about getting into that.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: It was a question I had was what is the future of magazines?
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: I mean, I'd worked for over a decade, as I mentioned, on the digital side of the publishing world and everything seemed to be going digital, kind of drinking Kool-Aid every day, read all the headlines.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: And certainly digital has changed a lot of how media functions and how people consume information.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: No doubt about that.
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: But I was pleasantly surprised that magazines still have a life and it's a different reason why I think people would use them and I think there's a lot of misunderstanding about how media works and how consumers behave.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: But I've kind of seen firsthand over the past 10, 12 years.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: You know what really happens and so that's part of our story is that you know we share with people that you know.
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: As I was kind of kicking the tires on the company looking to buy the magazines, my biggest question was how long will I be able to do this for?
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: Will these, you know, continue to be strong or are they just eventually going to fade away?
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: And you know the thing that gave us confidence in moving forward with buying those two magazines at the time and then afterwards starting other publications, is we see that they're being picked up and used.
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: And they're being picked up by, I think, highly qualified consumers who are very engaged and they're actively looking for information which really makes them a shopper.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: They're on the hunt for information as they use our publications really, and you know we saw firsthand, you know, as this market has grown and boomed and you know tourism has always been a major influence here.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: Relocation here as well, you know.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: Healthy economy, really diverse economy.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: You know we find that we keep putting magazines out and people keep picking them up and our clients have been with us for many years now and there are some people who are advertising in Hendersonville Magazine who have been advertising since it started in 1982.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: And they've been in the edition annually ever since then.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: There are others that started their business after Hendersonville Magazine began publishing but since they've started they've been in the magazine every year since then.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: So we've really been fortunate to have a lot of loyal clients, you know, and a strong retention rate.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: But I think that comes from the success and the benefits they receive from the marketing partnerships we have.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: So it's been a fun ride.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: And what's really been fun, you know, the last 10 years is once we got into the business and started publishing the two existing magazines.
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: It gave us a platform to see other opportunities where maybe some markets were underserved.
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: And you know we've jumped in and we've launched or acquired about 10 other titles in that time.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: We've launched several new brands, you know, in terms of local media publications, that all have a digital component as well, with, you know, the websites, social media, email newsletters, et cetera.
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: And then over the last several years there have been other opportunities where people who may have had one publication or a small group of publications have come to us and said it's time for me to retire or do something different.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: Would you be interested in carrying this on?
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: And so it's been a good fit for our company to do that.
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: So you know, if you look back over the past decade, only two of the titles you know we publish today existed back then under our group, and so the growth we've had has been, I think, a testament to the good people we've had working with us who are really engaged in the community, and certainly you know the hundreds of businesses that we work with across Western North Carolina and now into upstate South Carolina.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: That's cool.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: That's cool.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: I'm going to ask you some.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: I know you're a sponsor and we'll get to the summit in a minute and what that's about, but I want to.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: I'm going to ask you the business questions that I always ask business owners, because I think it, I think it could be useful for for our audience.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: So listen, if you had to start over in business, what?
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: would you do differently?
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: That sounds like an easy question, but mine goes a lot of places when you ask that, I don't have a great answer for you.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: I think I've learned things along the way and adjusted as I've gone and I think you know probably I think this plays into what you offer through Action Coach as well, because I've benefited from you and Action Coach, as I've worked with you over the years is maybe a little more planning on the front end, but I also think it's okay that you know sometimes you don't know what you need to work on and need to plan for until you get into it.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: So I don't know that I would have known what to plan for at the very beginning.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: But I would certainly advise anyone you know plan as much as you can on the front end, but expect that you're going to need to continue planning and adjusting because it doesn't stay the same.
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: You know I didn't know what to ask myself or what I needed to find out information on 10, 12 years ago and I've learned some of that over the years and so.
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: But I think anybody would benefit from getting the best plan in place on the front end At the same time, not putting it on the back burner.
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: You know, continuing to proactively plan for what's next and what ifs, and those kind of things.
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: I will say I probably haven't done as much of that and I think you know something like Hurricane Alene is hard for anyone to plan for or avoid, but you know there were some lessons that businesses learned, you know, as a result of that.
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: They never thought they needed to be prepared for, but they learned.
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: You know that now you should be, and so you know whether it's a hurricane or whether it's just a bump in business or a change in the business climate or new opportunities or whatever.
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: I think being more proactive and less reactive in planning.
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: You know, hindsight, I wish I would have done more of that over the past 10, 12 years and something I continually try to remind myself as I go forward, that you know, trying to get ahead of the curve, more of really kind of driving the bus, so to speak, of where we're going next.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: Sometimes you have to, like, actually do some stuff for a while before you can figure out what to plan for, but being proactive is way better than being reactive, for sure, so it's.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: I mean, we, you know we teach proactive strategic versus reactive tactical.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: So you know it's an interesting one.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, I think you hit on the next one, like what are some of the bigger learnings that you've had over that time?
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: You know, I think From a hiring standpoint, a team standpoint, I've noticed that in my, in my career, when I worked for someone else you know a larger organization, a newspaper group or media company, and I was in managerial role, roles where I had responsibility for hiring, and you know a larger organization a newspaper group or a media company, and I was in managerial roles where I had responsibility for, you know, hiring and you know training the divisions of my staff.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: I think and this might've just been kind of coming with you know, early age in the working world I shared this with someone the other day that I used to think that when it comes to hiring someone, it was simply about you know, the most qualified person on paper is who you should go for.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: And I'm not saying that we've made mistakes in that area, but what I've seen, just in general business and talking to other business owners, that I think sometimes there hasn't been as much emphasis as it should have been on you know who's the right fit for the team.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: And the other thing I think I've seen is when I worked with much larger companies that might've had, you know, I've worked in newspapers that had 400 people in one building.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: You know, if you hire someone at a 400, you know, and everybody has a different personality, different working style, different strengths, different weaknesses, different experiences.
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: Um, you know, one person doesn't change the culture that much of a group of 400 unless they're in a, you know, top leadership position, let's say, um, but what I realized in working with a really small team you know of you know we've got you know roughly 10 people who are really full-time with us and you know 10 of you know we've got you know roughly 10 people who are really full-time with us and you know 10 more that you know do different a variety of of jobs and tasks in our group to help us get things done that are on different levels of you know part-time plans.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: But especially in a kind of a core full-time team, one person really changes the culture in a small group and so and that not that this, not that this changes it for the worst, but it can feel different.
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: I've gone through stages of our office environment feeling different based on who's sitting stagnant.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: It keeps you on your toes.
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: You realize that you know there's a new dynamic when different people with different strengths and weaknesses, ways of doing things, et cetera, are in the mix.
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: But I think it also leads to needing to be more thoughtful about you know.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: You know who's the best fit for the team right now.
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: You know what.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: What do we need?
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: We went through an exercise several years ago of you know doing personality profiles and disk profiles, and what we came out of that with was.
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: There was a and I can't remember all the you know the different labels that are kind of titles that are given to those classifications but there was a kind of a gap in our team.
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: We didn't have somebody who really had a strong leaning towards, you know, this profile and this is how they work and this is what they excel in.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: We had a lot of people who kind of had the opposite personality, but we had a, you know a quadrant, so to speak, of that disc circle that was just missing from our team and looking back on it, I realized not having somebody who had that work style and that mentality and that natural leaning you know, was really kind of holding us back because I didn't realize it until we brought somebody who had that.
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: Then I saw how much we improved by having that type of person in the company.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: And so those are things you don't think about when you're starting off in business.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: At least, I didn't for sure, but it's something I've learned along the way.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I love it, I love it.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: Well, that gets into the employment side as well.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: What do you think some of the common misconceptions about running a business are?
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: I don't know that anybody assumes it's just easy, but I think only business owners know what goes into it, that nobody else is ever going to see the little things that you know, at the end of the day it has to be done by somebody and if something hasn't gone well, it wasn't planned for successfully or just wasn't executed successfully, it's got to get done.
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: The little things to take care of, you know, there are those early mornings and nights and weekends and craziness behind the scenes that I never knew existed until I was in it.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: And I just think you can't until you're in it, and I think the goal is to avoid that as much as possible.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: And I know planning from your team can certainly help with that.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: You know, not having someone who's doing everything and trying to bring some order to the systems, I think sometimes there's no way around it.
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: There are going to be things that just have to be done and it a lot of times comes down to the owner of the business to make sure that happens.
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: I think it's also the, you know, it's the feeling of responsibility because and I think especially gosh over the last few years surviving COVID, recovering from Hurricane Helene, you know, with larger teams at the time.
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: You know, our team was bigger during COVID than it had been, you know, several years before that, as we were growing.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: And then our team had gotten even bigger over the last couple of years, particularly with the acquisition of the Laurel of Asheville magazine, which practically doubled our staff.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: And then Hurricane Alene comes and the first thought I had, after just the shock of what had happened to the area, was what is this going to mean next and how are things going to be different?
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: What do we need to be prepared for?
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: How do we take care of our team?
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: How do we make sure that they continue to have support to be successful?
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: And you know, when you're you're, you're kind of the caretaker of that, of that, I think.
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: And you know, for the employees themselves, for the families, for the businesses that you serve and their clients, you know, trying to help them grow, you definitely evolve into having that sense of responsibility for everybody who's part of the organization to make sure that it's it's serving everybody who's part of it.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I like that.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: So what do you attribute your growth to?
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I like that.
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: So what do you attribute your growth to?
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: I think it's been easier to as we've launched something new or maybe acquired an existing publication that was in the market.
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: That was a good fit for us.
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: I think certainly just the economies of scale and scalability make it easier tactically to do that.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: But I think with time comes the experience and I think trying to get better every day, every week, every month, position the product, how to market it, how to, you know, grow the revenue, how to make sure it's serving clients well and doing the best for them, I think kind of.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: You know, from a practical standpoint, one of the biggest things that has helped us here in the market is we're publishing more magazine titles than anybody else in Western North Carolina is that our distribution just keeps strengthening when we add more things to it, because it means that we're you know we're cross-distributing one product and another in multiple locations.
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: You know so, for example, we might work with the healthcare community through our healthcare resources.
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: Publication and delivering magazines inside of those facilities and those locations might also lead to expanded distribution of another product that makes sense to be there for that audience.
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: So that has strengthened our visibility, our distribution network, which, ultimately, is where the rubber meets the road for us is getting our clients' messages into the hands of the people they want to connect with.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: That's really, at the end of the day, what we do, and that has gotten better, I think, as we've grown, because we've been able to leverage the assets.
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: We have to make that stronger.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's awesome.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: That's awesome.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: Let's switch gears a minute and talk a little bit about it and talk a little bit about the summit and what's going on business-wise in our region right now.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: So you've been a big supporter of the summit.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: You've sponsored it every single year.
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: We've done it and first of all, I just want to say thank you for that.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: That's been a big.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: You believed in it before.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: A lot of people did, and so we want to thank you for that Enjoyable.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: Why do you keep supporting the Asheville Business Summit?
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: Well, I guess you know several reasons, but you know one is just I think it's important for the local business community.
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: So the timing was perfect and we were glad to be able to sponsor Dan and have copies there at that event and, you know, kind of helped us kick off as well and, you know, kind of helped us kick off as well, you know, at the same time.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: So it's been good to grow, you know, with you all, as we've been doing the summit and being the media partner of that for the last several years.
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: So I think you know it just obviously goes hand in hand.
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: We created the WNC Business Magazine because we realized there was a gap in the market here.
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: There really was no, there was no business journal, there was nothing that was really providing helpful information, keeping people informed of what was going on around the region.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: And we've tried to focus not just on Asheville.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: Our WNC Business Magazine is WNC-wide, so to speak.
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: It's 22 counties across Western North Carolina where we seek news and information.
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: We have subscribers and clients from across the region and so it's, you know, it's beyond Asheville and we look for, you know, what we can share from.
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: We really try to be as diverse as possible in terms of the industries.
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: We're talking about the examples and the, you know, the kind of the showcase features we're doing on who's doing what in a variety of markets in different geographic locations.
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: You know, we want to know and share what's going on in Banner Elk, what's going on in Maggie Valley, what's going on in Tryon or Franklin not, you know, not just Asheville and Hendersonville, but I think you know connecting the audience we have of local business owners.
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: Most of them are just small entrepreneurs.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: We also have people that we reach who are, you know, they're not the owner of a company, but they're the VP of sales or the CFO or the HR director.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: And I think they all belong at the summit as well, because I think there are lessons you can learn, whether you're the business owner or whether you're working in the business.
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: You know, really, at a higher level, you should be thinking like the business owner.
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: Even if you're not the owner of the company, you should be thinking about your division of the company as the business you run.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: So I think there are lessons to learn, whether you're the owner or whether you're a key employee of a company.
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: That's there.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I love that, I love that.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: And you know we called it the actual business summit because it's in Asheville, but it serves.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: I mean, we had a we had a guy from from.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: Africa last year, from Ghana, you know, come.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: So yeah, we're I mean we what one of our visions is to this thing that people would come from all over the world to Asheville to to experience and learn business and and, uh, so that, and so that's coming about.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: So certainly we're about Western North Carolina as well.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: I have always thought it was a great fit.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: Now, what have you seen in the?
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: You know we had a lean.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: I mean part of the deal with the summit is like all right, it's been about a year.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: What do we do now?
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: Like, how do we?
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: You know, people have had a chance to absorb it.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: It's, you know, it's one of those impactful things of people in our region, like where were you on the day?
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: Like it was.
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: There's a few events in your life, like where were you on the day that the hurricane hit and what happened and how were you impacted?
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: Because everyone was impacted.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: And then you know what we've seen is, you know, somewhere in late spring, early summer, I think, people finally wrap their heads around and are starting to think about all right now, how do we use this positively?
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: First of all, how do we?
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: I mean, one of the things when we created the summit was because it was we were coming out of COVID.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: I mean, it was one of the first events where the big events where you could actually get together and not be too scared or you know, there were a lot of masks still there but you know, one of the one of the main functions of the summit is to get people together, cause I always say you're probably gonna learn more in the hallway or over lunch.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: Then you know you're going to learn a lot from our speakers.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: We got great speakers, but you know putting them together.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: So what are you seeing like in the marketplace around?
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: You know where people's heads are going now and you know how we're going to be able to use this as a catalyst to move business forward in Western North Carolina.
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I've seen kind of slow but steady improvement in the outlook and the mindset and just kind of the you know it's not real quantifiable but the vibes that people have Some of the things we were seeing are very quantifiable.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: That people have Some of the things we were seeing are very quantifiable.
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: But I reminded our team last year as this happened and of course you know we had we had one team member who was really displaced, I mean was in a remote area with a lot of damage and gosh.
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: I mean they literally had rescued people on a paddleboard for several days and running food and supplies and that kind of thing.
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: I mean everybody in our team was going through a very different experience based on where they live.
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: This one, you know, went through a lot more than the rest of us did.
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: But you know, one of the first things we said to everybody is that you know, tough times make tougher people and we've already gone through COVID, which was scary and uncertainty was there and it was hard.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: But I think we came out stronger from that.
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: And you know, one of the first things I thought of when Lean happened was we've got to draw back on some of that experience from COVID of what was it we did, what was it we said, how did we behave?
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: That led us through it, and so I tried to, you know, remember what worked then that we can reapply now and it still wasn't exactly the same, but there were definitely some lessons.
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: But, you know, one of the things we talked about as a team back during COVID and reemphasized again in Helene is that we know there are some things we can't control.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: We know that real things have happened.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: You know some lives have been turned upside down, for sure, across the region, but nothing else really impacts us more than what we choose to do every day.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: We we've got to have the mindset that we're going to continue to do what we do and do it well and, you know, do it even better than we have before to make sure we stay strong.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: So I think what we've seen over the past year is that you know, early this year I think there was certainly you know you go through, you go through a lean and you also go through an election year.
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: You know, and you have the follow-up from the election year and what's on people's minds and what are they unsure about.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: You know, in the marketplace.
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: But more practically speaking, I think we've seen some improvement.
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: We've seen some pickup and some comfort among the business community and some optimism over the last several months.
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: I've really noticed that One way we measure that is, you know, obviously just demand for the business we do with.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: You know, businesses who are either new or existing businesses reaching out to us and saying we want to, you know, have a marketing partnership with you to reach your customers, because we're going into this market or we're starting a business, or we've been here but we want to expand, so we're going into this market or we're starting a business, or we've been here but we want to expand.
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: So we're seeing an increase in that, particularly over the last several months.
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: And what we've also seen is and this is, I think, a great measure of the activity in the marketplace here is just the pickup rate and the restock rate of the publications that we put out for free all around the area, when we started noticing a really big uptick in the middle of summer, probably early mid July, that things were moving faster and there was more traffic around the area than there had been, you know, in the spring and in the early summer.
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: And we measure that in things like Biltmore State emailing us every week or two saying we need more copies of the discovery map of Asheville, we need more copies of the Asheville Ale Trail, we need more copies of the discovery map of Asheville, we need more copies of the Asheville L-Trail, we need more copies of the Laurel of Asheville.
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: And we get you know the similar requests from the Asheville Airport saying bring more of these, bring more of that.
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: The Asheville Visitor Center saying we're out of these things, we're getting busier, please bring more.
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: And so I think that's a good sign.
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: You know when that activity is picking up and we have high demand for what we're doing, people.
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: That activity is picking up and we have high demand for what we're doing.
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: People are coming to the area, they're spending money, they're still visiting here, looking at relocation here as well, and I think we've seen just local businesses seem to have more optimism right now about kind of getting geared back up and moving on and moving forward.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: I love that.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: That is very encouraging.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: That is very encouraging.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: So what that means for you folks is that the summit, that's what we're going to be talking about.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: We're going to be talking about, like, what do you do now?
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: Like, how do you, how do you move forward after something like this?
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, is there anything else you'd like to say or any advice you have for business owners in our marketplace?
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: I think you know we all benefit when we work together better, whether it's just from a networking standpoint or sharing connections and doing business with each other as much as we can standpoint, or, you know, sharing connections and doing business with each other as much as we can.
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: We're very fortunate.
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: I think we've been doing business with around 800 different clients across Western and upstate South Carolina over the last couple of years, and so our business is very diverse in terms of the industries we reach big and small businesses and everything in between.
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: We're thankful for all those partnerships, you know, regardless of any size, but it's it.
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: It also gives us an insight into all these different slices of life in the business world of you know, from one to another around the area.
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: That's what I enjoy about what we do.
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: But I think you know, one of the reasons we started WNC Business Magazine as well was because of all those industries that we touched through our other publications.
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: We've seen that, even though the industries may be different, on the back end of things there are a lot of similar challenges, similar questions that business owners have, regardless of the industry.
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: They're in similar opportunities, and running a brewery may sound very different from running a dentist's office, but there are some things that have to be done, no matter what kind of business you have, and you can still learn from each other and I've seen that.
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: You know through connections that we have with people and, I think, opportunities.
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: Like you know what we share through WNC Business Magazine and through our WNC Business Today newsletter.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: The content we publish on WNCBusinesscom is very similar to the learning that comes from you know the Asheville Business Summit of.
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: You know hearing some expertise from key speakers, but, as you mentioned, connecting with people in the hallway, connecting with people at lunch and at the vendor tables, and you know talking to people in the breaks.
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: Regardless of the industry, there's opportunities to learn from each other and I've certainly learned things from you know business owners that have nothing to do with my industry, but as you sit and talk to them, we have a lot more in common.
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: You know behind the scenes than most people might think.
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Like I said, the speakers are going to be great, but this is going to be one of the biggest, best networking opportunities in our area, so you're going to want to be there.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: Hey, listen.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: Thanks, Brett.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: We really appreciate you doing this and getting on the podcast, sharing your wisdom, and thank you so much for being one of our well-being the media sponsor.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: That's one of our key sponsorships that we have every year.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: Well being the media sponsor that's one of our key sponsorships that we have every year.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: We appreciate you and.
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: WNC Magazine and your support of business here in Western North Carolina.
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you for the opportunity.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: We look forward to it.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: Hey, make sure you get those tickets, and until next time, all the best.