We recently connected with Glenn Murray and have shared our conversation below.
Glenn, appreciate you joining us today. Folks often look at a successful business and imagine it was an overnight success, but from what we’ve seen this is often far from the truth. We’d love to hear your scaling up story – walk us through how you grew over time – what were some of the big things you had to do to grow and what was that scaling up journey like?
One of the things I learned early in my days working for GE was that diversification is survival when it comes to growing a business. The business i started many years ago look nothing like the one I have today. We started as an events company focusing on the arts (music, visual arts, books). I knew books were a popular business so I created 220 Publishing at first it was just being able to give authors a platform to tell their stories but it morphed into a business that helps them maximize their reach leveraging their writing. Then we stumbled almost literally on the Wine Crawl concept. I had hosted wine events and Wine Crawl became one of the more successful ventures creating an experience around wine and food tasting. That diversification actually created the Books and Bottles event which led to the Books and Bottles streaming show. So I was able to combine two of my best ideas and expand them to another platform (streaming television). The moral of the story is never get “settled” into one way of thinking about your business. Always be open to diversification, taking some swings and absorbing the misses. You never know what your idea can become.
Glenn, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
My background is marketing and I’ve been fortunate to have spent time at some great companies like GE, Leo Burnett and others. I started out supporting my parents art business and created an arts marketing business called Kreations with a friend. From that venture grew a desire to create an arts marketing entity and 220 Communications was that vehicle. Hosting arts, music and other events around the Chicago area . From there I saw that whenever we hosted authors that was the most popular of the events. So 220 Publishing (www.220publishing) became a way to grow the audience. We continued to host charitable events and wine tastings were always the most popular. So on a trip to Napa I got the idea to create Wine Crawl (wine-crawl.com) a private wine tour with events in several cities. So 220 Communications morphed from events to two major categories I like to call Books and Bottles (which happens to be the name of a show I co-produce with my production company G-Rose (a joint venture with actress /model Keisha Rose) and Inde TV a streaming network.
What sets us apart is that no matter the business venture the goal is the uplift of people. Be it through their writing with the publishing company . Introducing new entrepreneurs in the wine industry at our Wine Crawl events. And now through our production ventures.
I’m most proud of the number of people we’ve been able to help publish their first book. Of the over 60 titles we’ve helped nearly 40 writers become first time authors. I’m proud of the shows we produce and I’m extremely proud of the people that help make all my crazy ideas come to fruition.
How did you build your audience on social media?
I came from the old direct marketing, direct mail world. So I understood the value of a one to one relationship. I built my social media by literally connecting with people online and creating a goal of telling 3 people a day about my business. This was the early 2000s before facebook made it easy. I built databases of the people I met and segmented them by city and event preference. I slowly built an audience of close to 10K emails over that time (10K was a big deal before social media took off). What it helped me do was get a head start on social media because I had connected to so many prior to Facebook. We’ve continued to grow and expand onto Instagram and now we’re even “dabbling” in Tik Tock ,
My advice for those starting out is to be your authentic self. Social media is full of posers, pretenders and snake oil salesmen. You need to allow your authenticity to stand out. True connection with people wins the day. Even if they don’t become your customers they become people who can vouch for your character, which is the greatest referral of them all. Also show up every day understanding your goal. Whatever you put out will stick with you. That is the gift and course of a world that leans heavily on perceiving and shaping opinion by what they see online.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
I have so many failed tries at things…from event ideas, business ideas, moving to fast in one direction to moving to slow on other things.
My resilience was built like exercise helps to build muscle and stamina. There isn’t just one story that can define it. Here are a few quick stories that truly made me want to give up.
* I had a speaking spot as a panelist at South by Southwest It was my biggest opportunity by far to promote all that I was doing. I had business cards, fliers and my website was being rebuilt to a fancy new shiny model ready for people to visit. The day of the panel my web developer called me to tell me that she couldn’t finish the site and she had lost all the work that was done and I had no website to direct people to. I had to quickly pivot to other social media platforms and adjust my thinking about how I would present my business with only minutes to prepare. I was devastated with the loss but sometimes the show goes on without regard to your feelings. You must always be ready for the shift. And “Shift” happens when you least expect it.
* At one point we outsourced our social media and landed a large conference . I was unable to manage the entire conference so I hired someone I respected as a professional marketer to manage the client and the events social media. The day before the conference she quit without a word to me. Leaving me to manage the conference while also working a job. To add salt to the wound. When I discovered she had quit another project manager that same day (within 30 minutes of the first disaster) resigned abruptly . This is a nightmare for small companies with shoestring budgets and limited staff. I spent a week juggling between the two projects and a job to manage them. It was a sign that sometimes we run fast and try to take people with us that don’t always share the same vision. They understood how important they were to the business but none of that mattered because they were running in different directions. There were signs but I was blindly looking to grow and I ignored them. Never let the shiny object interfere with real planning an preparation. It takes time to build the right team when the vision is yours and yours alone. It takes a special person to embrace your vision and run with it like its your own.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.220communications.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/220publishing/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/glenn220
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/glenn-r-murray-a477822/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/mediatwo20
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCj68vH26QR696_i4zLMZysA
- Other: Wine Crawl www.wine-crawl.com Live From The Cave (show) https://www.facebook.com/livefromthecaveshow Books and Bottles https://inde.tv/categories/books-and-bottles
Image Credits
Photo Credits Ven Sherrod Photography, Evan Marcus Imagery