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Jumpstart Episode 11: Dan Hammond
- American Hometown Publishing is the only social media business dedicated to recipes and coupons.
- In 1 year they have surpassed all of AllRecipes.com‘s eight years of content.
- Started with Publishing Group of America in 1999.
- Answered the question “Why doesn’t media go to the rest of the country?”
- Largest publishing launch in American history.
- Harvard added their business model to their business curriculum.
- Raised 30 million to launch company .
- Rural Americans make up 35% of the country’s population.
- Rural Americans match or outspend the rest of the country with spending, with the exception of “dining out” and “travel”.
- Dan was inspired by Sam Walton.
- He doesn’t consider himself a serial entrepreneur.
- He reads 3 or 4 newspapers everyday and consumes lots of radio and TV.
- What he reads online mainly comes from traditional media.
- There are only 250 major urban newspapers in the country compared with over 7,000 community newspapers.
- Rural newspapers tell you: who got married, who died, who got arrested, and what the score was at the local school sports team.
- Contact Dan at Justapinch.com or AmericanHomeTownPublishing.com
Dan’s 3 tips every entrepreneur needs to know
- Basic blocking and tackling. Don’t wing it. You need to put your whole concept and business plan on paper. If you don’t commit it to paper, who will never force important questions.
- Marry yourself to a very good financial person.
- What ever you do. It will take you twice as long as you say it will. It will cost you twice as much as you say it will. It will achieve half of what you think you you’ll do. If you can apply this, you have something.
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Jumpstart theme song “DLDN Instrumental (ft. Onlymeith, Mellotroniac)” by: St. Paul from ccMixter.
TRANSCRIPT
Dave: Welcome to Jumpstart. I am your host Dave Delany. My guest today is Dan Hammond; Chairman, President, and CEO of American Hometown Publishing. Hi Dan, how are you?
Dan: Hi Dave, how are you?
Dave: I’m great, thanks. Thanks for joining me today.
Dan: Thank you.
Dave: So tell us a little about American Hometown Publishing. What is it that you do?
Dan: Well, American Hometown Publishing; we own and manage small town community newspapers all around the country predominantly along the Mason-Dixon Line in three different states, and we operate in digital social business.
Dave: Tell me about the digital social side of things.
Dan: Well, it’s – actually the concept for it came from a previous company of mine called Publishing Group of America who we ran almost a decade ago and sold it. But it is the only social media business that is all around food – swapping recipes and coupons.
Dave: Ooh, interesting. Interesting. So does that have tie ends with like recipe sites like Epicurious and things like that? How does that…
Dan: Well, actually we’re kind of hot property right now. We’re growing faster than any of them.
Dave: Wow.
Dan: We’ve been operating for a year – just to give you an idea. Allrecipes.com which is one of the market leaders for year has amassed forty-six thousand recipes that they have purchased, scraped, or have been posted by their users.
Dave: Uh-hm.
Dan: In one year, we have amassed over thirty thousand recipes all posted by users. So we’ve actually done in one year what they did in eight.
Dave: That’s fantastic. (Laugh)
Dan: I know. It’s unbelievable and it’s totally social. And so the stickiness of the members spend on average – twenty page views and seventeen minute per session.
Dave: Oh that’s great. That’s really great. That’s a huge success.
Dan: We’re very excited about it. So we’re a company that has this married between old media, analog publishing, small town community newspapers, and new media. It all came from what we did previously which was traditional media in the early 2000s.
Dave: Uh-hm. So how did you get started? I mean, what made you decide to start this business?
Dan: Well, Publishing Group of America which is probably one of the greater media success stories that nobody’s ever heard of – believe it or not in Nashville – was conceived and launched in 1999. And that was really based on the answer to a question a friend asked of me a number of years earlier which was: Why doesn’t media go to the rest of the country? And I sad, “Well, what do you mean by the rest of the country?” And he said, “Well you know, small towns.” And I’m from a small town. I was just under the impression there just weren’t enough of us and we didn’t have enough money, and mass marketing was really where it was at in 1999/2000.And doing research, I was stunned to see that rural Americans – which make up thirty-five percent of the US population – match or outspend urban Americans in every single category except two – dining out and travel. They buy as much toilet tissue, toothpaste, and you name it.
Dave: Yup.
Dan: They got more trucks in the driveway. And the interesting phenomena work because while their cost of living is lower, they also have fewer mortgages on their family budget.
Dave: Uh-hm.
Dan: So we began this company called Publishing Group of America which turned out to be the largest publishing launch in US history. We are actually bigger than Oprah when she launched.
Dave: Wow.
Dan: Our products are now in thirty-six million homes all across the US every week.
Dave: That’s amazing.
Dan: Yeah it’s – and you know – and in national, we had a bit of low profile so I’m not sure that there’s ever really been a larger publishing scenario coming out of Nashville. We were actually – nationally, we received quite a bit of recognition. We were – we’re the only – Publishing Group of America is the only company to be recognized as having the most notable media launch not only once, not twice, three times with our three products. No company’s ever received that. There’s only been twenty-five companies recognized in history. Moreover, Harvard put our business model because they thought it was kind of a paradigm shift into their curriculum for two years which was really fun.
Dave: Yeah.
Dan: You need to go to Harvard and launch the best and brightest debate our business.
Dave: That’s amazing. Who inspired to get started here?
Dan: Sam Walton. You know, the original question was: Why can’t media go to small towns? And it really — you know, I was studying this idea all the way back into the late 80’s. And you know, that was an interesting time because Wal-Mart was really taking off following about a decade and a half earlier when people told him you couldn’t build a mass discounter in communities smaller than fifty thousand. And of course, Sam Walton knew intrinsically how strong rural America, and proved them wrong to the fact that now it’s one of the world’s largest corporations. And their core stores are still rural America. And when I saw that, I believed that you could build media enterprise in a similar fashion. And that’s exactly what took place.
Dave: So tell me about blogs and websites that you read.
Dan: Well you know, I’m an interesting antithesis of a typical media guy. You know we’ve had our modicum of success nationally, and certainly we’ve been extremely blessed. But I’m not a – I’ve been described as a serial entrepreneur but I don’t see myself that way. I’ve been in corporate America for a number of years and I have all the white shirts hanging up in the closet.
Dave: (Laugh)
Dan: But I’m quite a mix. So I am huge reader of Analog Publishing. I read three or four newspaper every day.
Dave: Uh-hm.
Dan: I consume large amounts of media radio, TV, and the internet. But I’m not a deep internet user of media. I mean, I have stories and articles that are sent to me [Inaudible – 00:07:11] fro brick-and-mortar institutions; Wall Street Journal, Garnet…
Dave: Right.
Dan: You name it. And I guess part of that is – you know, one of the learning lessons that I took away when I started Publishing Group of America – and that was the situation that worked. I went out with my partners – a guy named Steve Young – and he and I went to New York, Chicago, Boston, and together without any help, we were naïve and successful in raising thirty million dollars to launch that company. In ‘99 you know, that was the height of the DICOM plethora. And what I saw was that so many internet companies were hoping to change the world. And while some absolutely did; the vast majority didn’t. And the guys who won were the old dinosaur brick-and-mortar companies.
Dave: Uh-hm.
Dan: Back to Wal-Mart for example, you know they didn’t sell a lick of anything on the internet for decades. And today, they sell quite a bit of products over the internet. So I’m a big believer – and I love innovation, I love technology. But I also love and believe in old line, well-run companies because they do have the ability to adjust, move, and take advantage of the new technologies.
Dave: For sure, you can’t forget your roots as far as newsprint does do you? I mean…
Dan: Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Dave: That’s your bread and butter.
Dan: You look at my current company, American Hometown Publishing – we’ll have community newspapers. You know, vast majority of Americans; sixty percent of the US base gets their news, whether it’s radio, internet, TV – it’s primarily coming out of the news rooms from the major urban newspapers. But most people don’t know that there are only two-hundred and fifty urban newspapers in this country. And those ones are challenged. Their business model is under attack. However, community newspapers like I have – small town newspapers – we’re talking average circulations over about five thousand – Dave, there’s seven thousand of those papers across the country.
Dave: Wow.
Dan: They’re the oldest media properties. Ben Franklin started one of the first ones in this country. They’d been on a growth curve ever since. They have huge operating margins, low cost [Inaudible – 00:09:48]. They’re all monopolies. And you know, you go into a small town and eighty percent of the population gets them because – and this is the key for me whether it’s an internet business, whether it’s an analog publishing business – their news, their product, what they sell is completely, totally, one hundred percent proprietary. They don’t cover state, national, or international news. When you go into a small town and get the newspaper; it’s the only place to find out who got married, who died, who got arrested, and what the score was in the local school sports.
Dave: (Laugh) Right.
Dan: It’s a quick read.
Dave: Yup.
Dan: Everybody reads it.
Dave: That’s great. So – and you sort of touched on some tips in there anyway – but I usually close each show with asking my guest for three tips that you would offer any entrepreneur perhaps starting out or even someone that’s been in the business for a lot – for quite a while.
Dan: Yeah, you know the first tip is I’m a huge believer in basic blocking and tackling. What that means is that any person, any entrepreneur who’s getting ready to start out – don’t wing it. You need to put your entire concept in business plan on paper. It’s usually – for most; including myself – a daunting task when you sit there in front of it. But if you don’t commit it to paper, you will never force certain questions about your operations, your logistics, your finances that you have to face. Putting it in paper – and it takes – it’ll take twice as long as you think it will to get through it – you will face certain questions and obstacles that will have to answer, and you will actually build out your roadmap. It’s the most important step I think you can do.
Dave: Uh-hm. That’s great
Dan: The second thing I would add to that is you need to marry yourself to a very good financial person that – this is – I see this more times than not – and with companies that startups that kind of litter the roadside; that are not successful – the last thing they consider is bringing somebody in who has a financial grounding. If you’re the founder, if you’re the marketing sales technical production mind putting this business together, you need to join yourself at the hip with somebody who can look at the business from a totally different perspective that being financial – because they’re going to question everything you do. And that’s a really good marriage because financial people see a business through a totally different prism; and it’s valuable – extremely valuable. It will help you immensely particularly in the early years.
Dave: Yeah.
Dan: I guess the third that I would add is just kind of a rule of thumb that was presented to me once a number of years ago when I was founding Publishing Group of America, and I have never ever seen it fail. And it’s just a rule of thumb. When you build your business plan, when you look at your business, you need to brush it against this rule if you will. And if it can pass this rule, then you really do have something. And that is – whatever you do, it will take you twice as long as you say it will. It will cost you twice as much as you say it will. And you’ll achieve half of what you think you’ll do. If you can apply that rule of thumb to your business and it still makes sense, then you’ve got something.
Dave: Oh that’s great. That’s great advice. Thank you so much for taking the time with me Dan.
Dan: Oh, you’re most welcome Dave.
Dave: And where can people find you?
Dan: Well, our headquarters are in downtown, lovely Franklin, in one hundred and ten year old Victorian house. But we’re – our digital social business is called justapinch.com.
Dave: Okay.
Dan: That’s easy to find.
Dave: Yeah.
Dan: And americanhometownpublishing.com is our corporate site.
Dave: Well, thank you again Dan and I’ll to you again so.
Dan: Right, happy to help.
Posted on May 29, 2011
Categories: Blog, Podcast
Tags: American Hometown Publishing, Dan Hammond, newspapers, Publishing Group of America, rural, Sam Walton