We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Zach Collier a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Zach, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea?

The development of Provo Music Magazine was a classic “see a need, fill a need” scenario. I’m a musician myself. Back in 2016, I was booking shows for my band and was having a difficult time finding local acts who shared the same sound and would fit nicely with us on a bill. Google searches turned up irrelevant results. Facebook searches were a bust. I quickly discovered there was no centralized hub for Utah indie music. So I started doing the digging and sleuthing myself.

Soon I had a sprawling spreadsheet of acts and their members, genres, audience sizes, release dates, etc. I realized this information would be helpful to others (including the bands themselves, who often weren’t showing up in search results), and I so I started writing.

Zach, 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?

Most creatives struggle financially for several years before things start going their way. There’s a practical reason for this: art is immensely powerful, but not obviously valuable. People can’t survive without food, but everyone in the world will survive without your music, you know? It’s not until the art touches someone that its value becomes apparent. The only issue is that music is incredibly expensive to make. It’s time intensive, and it costs money to buy instruments, book studio space, mix, master, design, and distribute. By the time musicians reach the end of that production pipeline, they don’t have any money or energy left over to tell people about the thing they made.

Provo Music Magazine aims to be the PR firm that the musicians in the scene can’t afford. We want to provide quality content that they can’t make themselves, and put them in front of an audience only we can reach – simply because we believe what they do is valuable. We then present that art and information to readers who have no idea these artists exist, but want to know who in their community is doing rad stuff. Bridging that gap – fixing that disconnect – opens doors for everyone involved.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

We’ve bootstrapped this bad boy. Luckily computers exist, so we were able to create a digital version of what we hoped to print and distribute to the community. We scheduled time to meet with local businesses, and pitched them on our vision and mission, as well as the benefits of advertising with our publication. We never went to print until we sold all of our ad space. After succeeding, we did it again. And again. Eventually we had proof of concept, and were confident enough to apply for a traditional business loan to help things scale and run more smoothly, all while knowing our core model was sound.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

There’s so much speculation and bad advice out there about growing a following on social media. The only real advice is that consistency and authenticity are key. Consistency doesn’t have to mean once a day. Consistency can be Monday – Friday with weekends off (like us), once a week, twice a week – whatever. Just make sure you create systems that allow you to keep up without getting burned out. And make sure that what you’re creating is authentic, simply because if it’s not, that consistency is going to feel like a trap. It’ll be a drag and a stressor that eats away at your life and your time and prevents you from doing things you’d rather be doing. That’s no way to live. So make sure you post what you love and what interests you, and do it regularly. Everything else will grow organically.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://provomusicmagazine.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/provomusicmag/
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/provomusicmagazine
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zachary-collier-52174190/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/provomusicmag
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@provomusicmagazine733

Image Credits
The photo of me in the cowboy hat: Datura Photo The photo of the man singing: Joseph Hawkins