Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Chris Vaughn. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Chris, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. One of the toughest things about entrepreneurship is that there is almost always unexpected problems that come up – problems that you often can’t read about in advance, can’t prepare for, etc. Have you had such and experience and if so, can you tell us the story of one of those unexpected problems you’ve encountered?

Our main products are local papers that we publish and distribute throughout the paper’s given city. When we were getting ready to expand into Redmond, I sent our current Kirkland clients a PDF copy of the Kirkland paper and mentioned that we were expanding. I gave our current clients the first opportunity to expand their reach with us by having first dibs on Redmond ad space as well as discounted pricing.

On the surface it sounds like a great idea, and it is…. however, the mistake I made was sending a group email to the clients vs individual emails. I just assumed that since everyone was happy and I was sending the offer as good customer service, a group email was the best and easiest method.

About 4 months later a friend of ours, who happens to also be a client, forwarded an email that he received as a response from that “expansion email”. It was from a client who wanted to cancel their ad space subscription and stated that they didn’t receive any results from our ad space.

“Hi there. Please do not charge for me this month and cancel the subscription. I have not gotten one inquiry since I signed up. Thank you.”

Client turnover is a part of doing business in advertising, especially with clients who want ads without a call to action or coupon of some type. But when we realized the cancelation email came in as a response to a group email, and that EVERY current client saw this email, the gravity of the mistake hit hard.

Sure enough, over then next two weeks we lost 4 clients, 2 of which had been paying for double ad spaces.

It was frustrating and came right after we had just lost another client the month prior as part of normal client turnover. I was honestly pretty upset with the client who had canceled by using a response to the group email. But ultimately, I don’t think the former client did it out of malice or even realized what they had done. It was my fault because I had made it possible by putting all my clients in the same email thread.

Lesson learned.

I’m still happy to give special offers to our clients… but, from now on they get them individually.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Before we started Kirkland Advertising, I was working as a marketing sales rep for a fairly large marketing agency and sold the ad spaces found on the backs of grocery store receipts. It was a decent company to work for and the people I worked with were great as well. The only issue I ran into was that I didn’t have control of the end product. I would find a client and get them to sign a year-long contract to place an ad, the company’s art team would design the ad, and then the receipts would get shipped out to the contracted grocery store. Unless I personally stopped and checked every store, there was no guarantee that the store’s managers and employees would place the new rolls into the check stands, and in some cases I had stores refuse to swap out rolls. As the number of stores I had ads running in continued to grow, the more difficult it became to ensure that my clients were happy and had their ads running.

The other pain point that I was running into with the marketing company I was working for was the year-long contract they required of their clients. Coming out of the pandemic, many business owners were unwilling to get locked in to a year contract because they were now afraid of the unknown of the future and already struggling financially.

The lightbulb for Kirkland Advertising came on while Stacy and I were across the water in Silverdale Washington. We had taken the ferry to that area partially as a fun day trip, but also to contact advertising clients that had dropped off during the Covid pandemic…. We figured they would be easy sales, just start them back up.

We walked into a pizza shop and on their counter sat a stack of periodicals that featured local Silverdale and Bremerton businesses. I snagged one as a lead sheet with the intent to contact them all since “Advertisers Advertise!”

A short time later we realized how it was a great form of advertising and an easy business model.

When we got home I emailed the paper owner posing as a potential client and asked how it worked and what the costs were. We realized that we could charge less and not require a contract. I then did some digging into the company that the paper owner mentioned and learned that he was a franchisee. We calculated his franchise fees and the amounts he was charging his clients and we saw that if we did it on our own, the profit margins would allow us to keep our prices even lower…. placing our target cliental in the small to medium sized businesses. It was the sweet spot, because small and medium sized businesses often do not have the marketing budgets to pay for large advertising campaigns, don’t want to risk year-long contracts, and derive most of their customers locally.

Stacy and I decided to jump in with both feet and we created Kirkland Advertising with our periodical named Kirkland’s Cutting Edge. We choose the title because we wanted to welcome all potential advertisers including some that are often not given the opportunity, like religious ads, political ads, or even marijuana shop ads. We hit the pavement and secured enough clients to pay for the first print and we were in business without any business loans.

We’ve grown the business since November of 2022 to now include Redmond’s Cutting Edge and Woodinville’s Cutting Edge, we have built a network of local businesses that distribute our papers, and our periodicals have become a recognized source of local events, activities, and businesses that support other local businesses.

One of the things we are proud of, is that our business has given us the ability and opportunity connect with our communities and to help new businesses and struggling businesses. We’ve given free ad spaces when appropriate, written articles to highlight new businesses, and even featured local history that the community may have not been aware of.

Our goal with Kirkland Advertising is to expand our periodicals into more local communities and as we continue to grow, we plan on adding other revenue streams for the business. Revenue streams that will include networking with outdoor sign manufactures and maintenance companies, printing clients, and other advertising products that connect the public with local businesses.

How’d you meet your business partner?

It’s kind of a funny story.

Stacy was my youngest son’s pre-school teacher when we first met. At the time we were both married to other people and only knew each other on a professional level from parent/teacher conferences and bringing and picking up my son.

It wasn’t until roughly 8 years later that we reconnected and we have been together ever since. When my marriage ended in 2018, I found myself living in Bellevue while working in the foreclosure industry. Stacy had also recently been divorced and had started to make friends with people in the Kirkland area. We ran into each other a couple of times at a local sports bar but the interactions never went beyond a “hello”, “it’s been a while.” etc.

When Covid hit and the foreclosure auctions halted, I was 6 deals in and suddenly found myself out of work.

The broker I worked with had a boat moored by the Kirkland Marina and we began to charter his boat to still have some funds coming in. It was after one of these charters that Stacy and I started dating.

I had just finished a charter and walked from the private marina to the public marina to say hi to a couple of boating friends. Stacy happened to be on that boat and I sat next to her. She put her leg on mine and I said, “Not to be too forward, but I’m spending the night on my friend’s boat. Would you like to join me?” and we’ve been together ever since.

We moved in together within the first month and shortly after, found a small studio apartment in downtown Kirkland. We fell in love with each other and Kirkland, so when we decided to start a business, it made sense to be partners in it and to start it in Kirkland.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

Our company’s motto is “Local Businesses Helping Local Businesses”

What we mean by that, is that we keep our advertisers to small to medium sized local businesses, we focus on local community events and activities, and we mainly distribute our papers through a network of local businesses… like coffee shops, restaurants, retail stores, etc.

By following this motto, we have found that many of our clients come from first being businesses who distributed our papers for us.

We’ve also gained new clients by occasionally giving free ad spaces to new local small businesses and then converting them to paying clients later.     

Contact Info:

• Website: KirklandAdvertising.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kirkland_advertising/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KirklandAdvertising
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/kirkland-advertising-kirkland