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Episode 008.
How do you use events in your industry? Do you interact with your customers (and potential customers) in-person? Can they experience your products or services in the real-world before purchasing them?
Andrew Perkins is the Events & Business Development Director for Ogden Publications. They publish the legendary self-reliance periodical Mother Earth News. He is one of the main people behind developing the Mother Earth News Fair in 2010, which is a live representation of the magazine. They have grown out the Fairs to six annual shows, spread throughout the continental United States.
Though he started out in the field of journalism, Andrew found himself in the Ad Sales Department and eventually handling large-scale events. We are talking with him about that journey, and what people can expect to find at a Mother Earth News Fair.
Can you profit from using events in your business? You’ll be surprised to find out how, as well as other incredible tid-bits in this first episode of our mini-series about the Mother Earth News Fair of 2019. Listen now!
To find out more about the Mother Earth News Fair go to: http://motherearthnewsfair.com
Find out the business events secrets for growing and strengthening ANY company:
http://brianjpombo.com/secrets/
Full Transcript
Brian: All right. This is the first in a full on series of episodes that we’re going to be doing here at the podcast, all about the Mother Earth News Fair’s.
So what are the mother earth news fairs?
This all stems back from the legendary magazine Mother Earth News. If you don’t know much about Mother Earth News, you should go and check it out if you go to their website and their about section.
Here’s a quick synopsis. They’re the most popular and long running sustainable lifestyle magazine. Mother earth News provides wide ranging expert editorial coverage of organic foods, country living, green transportation, renewable energy, natural health and green building, lively, insightful, and on the cutting edge.
Mother Earth News is the definitive read for the growing number of Americans who choose wisely and live well.
So the Mother Earth News Fair, is like a live presentation of this magazine and their snippet off motherearthnewsfair.com website says, the fair is your passport to money saving hacks, health boosting remedies and environmental strategies from leading experts and entrepreneurs around the country.
In addition to presentations and hands on workshops, you will encounter a vast marketplace of bounding with innovative resources and products to enrich your life.
We even host book signings featuring some of our favorite authors who are available to field questions and hear your stories one-on-one.
It’s also an ideal destination to meet and network with likeminded enthusiasts from across an array of fields from natural health and beauty to homesteading for profit and beyond. Admission for children is free and there are plenty of youth oriented activities including live animals.
With our growing emphasis on interactive programming. You can learn new skill sets live and onsite more than ever before that Mother Earth News Fair is truly an immersive experience where the magazine comes to life.
I think you’ll get a feel for what these things are all about. These original episodes all take place previous to the Mother Earth News Fair that is happening in Albany, Oregon, August 3rd and August 4th of 2019 we’ll also have episodes that take place at the fair and we’ll be talking with people after the fair who attended it and get to hear their perspectives on what went down.
So without further ado, first episode.
Podcast Intro: If you’re someone who refuses to go along to get along, if you question whether the status quo was good enough for you and your family. If you want to leave this world better off than you found it and you consider independence a sacred thing. You may be a prepper, a gardener, a homesteader, a survivalist, or a farmer or rancher, an environmentalist or a rugged outdoorsman. We are here to celebrate you whether you’re looking to improve your Maverick business or to find out more about the latest products and services available to the weekend rebel. From selling chicken eggs online, to building up your food storage or collecting handmade soap.This show is for those who choose the road less traveled the road to self-reliance for those that are living a daring adventure life off the grid.
Brian: Andrew Perkins has been with Ogden Publications since 1999.
Starting as assistant editor, he moved over to ad sales when the company acquired Mother Earth News in 2001. He worked on a variety of special projects before launching the Mother Earth News Fair in 2010 since its inception, it has grown to six locations for fairs and are held every year across the United States.
Andrew Perkins, welcome to the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.
Andrew: Hey Brian, thanks for having me.
Brian: Yeah, why don’t you let us know a little bit about who you are and what you do for Ogden Publications.
Andrew: Well, sure. You summed it up pretty well there. So currently in my role, my title is the events and business development director and a large part of my intention currently in how we’re organized is on what we call our marketing side of our business and business development side of our business.
Currently, a lot of my time is developing and growing the events.
Our flagship events, as you mentioned, are the Mother Earth News Fairs. And through those flagship events that you also mentioned are held annually around the country in a variety of places.
We’ve developed, extension programs, breakout sessions both during the fairs and leading up to them and sometimes shortly after.
So that’s consuming a lot of my attention, we’re entering a phase where we’re actively looking for new locations that we’ve never been before. It’s a lot of logistics work that goes into that work.
We plan out, you know, a year or sometimes two in advance. And so that’s been consuming a lot of my time, but that’s okay because I’ve got a great team.
We have a fairly substantial ancillary product, merchandise business, you know, we source product and we manufacture products that are endemic to the interests of the folks that read our magazines and visit our websites, Mother Earth News being the large one.
So I oversee that, but we’ve got a great team that is working day in, day out on that initiative. But those are the two big main things.
Brian: Got it. So we got a little bit of your resume background and everything.
How did you end up at this point, personally?
How do you connect with all of this? How did you end up at Ogden Publications and so forth?
Andrew: Sure. So, you know, I grew up close to where we’re located, which is in Topeka, Kansas. And I started with Ogden publications fairly shortly out of college.
It was maybe less than a year out of college. And my background, my degree was in journalism with an emphasis in business that was in the late nineties. The job market was kind of tough.
I wanted to stay in the field of journalism at that time, it seemed like a good idea.
Ogden is one of the few innovating company when it comes to consumer publishing. And a job opened up as an assistant editor for a magazine here that we still produce called Grit.
At the time we only produced two magazines. The magazines had just been acquired by our current owners. So there was these two rural lifestyle magazines.
I think they just launched a third one. And so I came in as an editor, worked for years on the editorial side of our business. I mentioned to our publisher at the time that I was go getter. I’d like to experience other sides of the business and really learn as much as I can and absorb as much as I can about the business in our industry and a opportunity came up to move into ad sales and I thought, well boy that’s not quite what I was thinking.
I don’t know about sales, but then I meditated on it for a little bit and I thought, you know, if I’m really going to be serious about understanding comprehensively how this business works, I need to go outside of my comfort zone.
I got into ad sales shortly after that we launched, actually it was soon after that that we acquired Mother Earth News.
So I was around when we acquired that and my jump into ad sales stemmed from somebody who was currently selling for some other publications that we have moved over to work on the Mother Earth News project. And that’s when I kind of got called over from the editorial side and jumped into ad sales.
Soon after that we launched another publication and I was gratefully picked to be a team to help coordinate the launch of this other magazine.
It was a motorcycle enthusiasts magazine, which was a fun project for me. And when I was working for the motorcycle magazine in that launch, I started building up a fairly decent product portfolio that were endemic to classic and vintage motorcycle enthusiasts, apparel, books, things like that.
With the success of that, we all recognize a need to sort of build that up across the entire company. This is all goes along with the evolution of the publishing industry over the last 15 years.
You know what I mean? Publishers who are on their toes and not back on their heels are constantly innovating and trying to figure out ways to engage with their readers as the landscape changes and print as subscriptions decline and advertising conventional ad sales move from traditional print to digital, now to social media, publishers have need to reinvent themselves.
That’s the same for us. And I’ve been fortunate enough to be on the forefront of that. Of course the Genesis of that was what I was doing then.
It evolved into this idea of, hey, here’s our biggest title, Mother Earth News. Back in the 70’s Mother Earth News used to have a location in North Carolina where they were published, but a physical location where they developed an eco village. Where they invented and they built things and they tested ideas that authors wrote for articles.
They were doing things that were really engaging people beyond just words on paper. We kind of thought this was back in 2008, 2009 we thought, you know, maybe we don’t buy land and build out this permanent spread just yet. But what if we took the idea of what the eco village was, what the inspiration for that was.
And we developed an event where people can come and we’ve developed this tremendous community of folks that are specialists in these various areas that are covered in the magazine there.
They’re pretty renowned authors and well-known influencers. What if we create an environment where we can bring that community together, invite our readers and they can engage on a personal level.
That was an idea that was an approved idea and we launched the first one in 2010 since there, it’s just grown every year and it’s exciting thing to be a part of.
Brian: Where was that first one at?
Andrew: It was on a ski resort actually in Pennsylvania. It’s called Seven Springs Mountain Resort is about an hour Southeast.
Brian: Very cool. Who’s the ideal attendee for the Mother Earth News Fairs? Who’s just the perfect person that you think would get the most out of it?
Andrew: Well I like to say everyone of course, but for sure people who are interested and very passionate about being more self reliant for themselves, whether that’s growing their own food.
If you want to get into beekeeping or raising small heritage breed livestock, I think that if you’re that type of person, whether that’s on a hundred acres or a thousand acres even or if that’s on a half acre, I think that the Mother Earth News is the best event opportunity that you could possibly find in the country.
And I especially think that that’s important for young people. 20 somethings that are getting hip to things like charcuterie, food preservation, and all of these DIY things that grandma used to do back in the days or maybe even great grandma and we just don’t see anymore.
The industrial food environment that we’re in and they want to learn what it’s all about and what to do, they can get a taste of that at the fair, literally, figuratively.
Brian: Yeah, absolutely. So what do you hope people are going to walk away with when they’re done at the fair, let’s say they went for one day or two, what do you hope they’re really going to walk away with?
Andrew: That’s a good question. I think the number one thing that I hope to see or that I wish to see is that people come in with a certain amount of hesitation, even anxiety about doing these things that they’ve always thought that they’ve wanted to do, but don’t know if they can invest the resources are at the time or they’re just scared to kind of jump off that tipping point.
The hope is that they come away realizing that it might be a little bit easier than they think.
It might be, quite a bit more economical that they think. And they have a few key pieces of advice and some resources hopefully, that they picked up from our bookstore that can get them on at least on the track that they want to be on.
So that’s the number one thing.
But lately we’ve really put a lot more into the hands on experience of being affairs.
This is something we started actually in Oregon two years ago, at the Oregon fair. We call it our hands on sessions.
So for years, up until a couple of years ago, really the programming was information-based only.
You came and you sat in a classroom setting, you listened to and will presentation and maybe watched a PowerPoint and you know, some of them are incredibly good and that information is incredibly valuable and they’re still popular and valuable, but we wanted to create an environment where people can actually get in and do some of these things.
When you say what do you want them to take away with them when they leave the fair, we actually do want them to take away cured meat, sauerkraut, a stitched leather bag that they just did from themselves, a home herbal remedy concoction that they learned how to make an a class. So real stuff.
Brian: Yeah, absolutely. That’s great.
Commercial Break: Okay, we’re going to pause the conversation right there. What you’re listening to right now is a special edition podcast. These episodes all have to do with the Mother Earth News fair in Albany, Oregon of 2019 at the time I’m recording this, we have learned so much about how to take advantage of events and I want you to be able to use this information in your own business. Go to BrianJPombo.com/secrets. We are going to be putting out helpful materials on how you can use events to grow your business.
When you go to this page, you will either see our latest programs or if you make it there early enough, you will see an email address, capture page, put in your email address and we will be sure and update you. As soon as we get these out there, you’re not going to want to miss this.
If you get in early enough, you can get a special deal. These are principles that never go away. These programs will be based on the experience of people who have written books, spoken at the events or exhibited.
They’re talking about how to use events, books, and speaking all to build your business.
That’s BrianJPombo.com/secrets.
BrianJPombo.com/secrets and now back to the conversation.
Brian: We have business owners and executives who listen because we look a lot at self-reliance style businesses on this podcast. What do you think from that perspective that they would be able to get from an event like this?
Andrew: Well, you know, we work very hard and we have all along on really getting in with our companies that get involved in our partners that get involved, making sure we understand what level of engagement that they’re track that they want to get out of these people.
If they recognize, and that’s sort of the entry point, they recognize that our constituency is one that they’re interested in engaging with.
Then the next step is to figure out what level are they excited about to engage with them at. That could be, you know, sort of a conventional participation. You have a booth, maybe you want to just get your name in front of them as much as possible. So the stage screens have the digital screens have the logos on there.
Maybe they want to curate an aspect of the programming.
We have great partner of ours that’s been a partner for years is the Livestock Conservancy. Their involvement is very important to us and I think important to them where they’re excited to engage with their members in these areas that we go to in the country by curating a stage of their breeders to come and talk about the challenges and the surprises and maybe even the basics of getting started with some of these breeds.
That’s an example of engagement that we can work with them on offering.
We’ve had tractor companies that come in and they’re like, we got to sell tractors and we found the way we sell tractors to get people on them and to get digging with them and going with them.
So we’ve put together field days that are adjacent to the fairs where people can come in and just test drive tractors all day, that kind of thing.
Those are just a few examples that we try to work with them after we’ve gotten an idea of what level they want to engage at.
Brian: Great. If someone’s interested in becoming, like you said, a curator, a sponsor and exhibitor, a speaker or contribute in any way to the fair, who should they get ahold of and how should they do it?
Andrew: The easiest way is to go to our website. We have a contact us form and that contact form includes specifically if they’re interested in getting information on either exhibiting or sponsoring and we’re certainly responsive within, 24 hours on those inquiries.
So that website’s, www.motherearthnewsfair.com.
Brian: Great, perfect. And then why are you doing it as a company? You know from your perspective, what’s Ogden Publications and Mother Earth News get out of putting on these events?
Andrew: A key point from a business standpoint, candidly is what I already sort of talked about it to be an OnPoint publisher in 2019, you really have to be out there knowing who your audience is, knowing what your niche is and then getting in there and really understanding how to engage them in the face of some of the challenges that the industry is facing.
One of the ways that we recognize that we need to do that from a business standpoint is to offer a real life, real time engagement.
Social media can’t take that away from us like they may have done with advertising and free blog websites maybe can’t take that away from us the way they may have traditional print subscription.
Nothing can replace that sort of face to face time.
That’s really important for us. Now, me personally, I couldn’t be more fulfilled in my career as it turns out than to go to these events year over year and see these people really see their lives change and it’s exciting for me because it’s also very apolitical.
I introduce myself as somebody who works with Mother Earth News and if they’ve not heard of it or if they’re not aware of it, you know there’s oftentimes the context that it’s sort of a hippie rag.
And then of course I know that a lot of the background is much more sort of on the liberal, libertarian side in terms of the political spectrum. But all in there are people who just want to learn how to do things for themselves and you see these people of different walks of lifes and different perspectives come together and just sort of sit in a room and make cheese and sauerkraut and all get along and it’s like, oh hey, we really have needed something like this. Through all the noise.
This is such a great experience. So it’s really fulfilling for me to see that and be involved in something like that versus other occupations that I might’ve gotten myself.
Brian: Absolutely. What’s left, I know you’ve put on quite a few of them already this year. We have Albany, Oregon coming up, which I’m going to be attending with my podcast producer Sean.
Are there any other Mother Earth News Fairs that people can plug into?
Andrew: Yeah, we’re halfway through the year, so we will have six this year. We’ve done the first three. Albany, Oregon’s the next one that’s coming up two weeks from today on August 2nd and 3rd, I believe.
Then in September we’ll be back at Seven Springs where the first Mother Earth News Fair was. I highly recommend of all the events, that one is unique because it’s held in a resort setting.
Everybody stays there, we hang out at night versus going back to the hotel or wherever. It’s truly special in that regard.
It’s also a two and a half day event and there’s a lot of extended programs outside of just the fair.
Then we’ll wrap up the year in October with our own hometown fair here. And you can find the specific dates on that on our website.
Brian: Great. And if listeners are interested in finding out more or purchase tickets, they can find them on your website at motherearthnewsfair.com.
Andrew: Yeah.
Brian: Fabulous. Well is there any questions I didn’t ask you that you’d like to answer Andrew?
Andrew: I always point out that the Mother Earth News Fairs are family oriented events. They’re very kid friendly.
We have a full slate of kids programming that happens. Kids typically love the animals. The breeds that we bring in and for that reason kids 17 or under are always free at all of our fairs.
So that can save quite a bit and make a difference when deciding whether or not to come.
Also, I should point out that we have a free newsletter.
It’s called Mother Earth News Live. You can sign up for it right on our website.
We kind of hit people up for it pretty square. So it’s not hard to miss and that’s a free newsletter.
We send it out weekly. It’s updates. It’s not just like updates and this is what’s happening. I mean there’s actual content, relevant stuff to what people might be doing, but it was also the best way to stay up to date on what we’re doing with the Mother Earth News Fairs and it’s also something that we use to give exclusive discounts too.
And so it’s the best way to save if you’re interested in that.
Brian: Awesome. That’s really great, Andrew, I really appreciate you giving us time. This is going to be the first in a series of episodes that we have where we’ll be interviewing other speakers and contributors to the Mother Earth News Fair and so can’t wait to find out more and I can’t wait to attend the one in Albany.
So appreciate you giving us your time, thanks for being on the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.
Andrew: Thanks for having me, Brian.
Closing Thoughts With Brian: This is a great kickoff and intro to the Mother Earth News Fairs and to the idea of event marketing to begin with. When you hear this, don’t just think about the mother earth news fairs, just think about how you can use these things to be able to help your business.
A lot of these principles go across the board. Some of the stuff that Andrew mentioned, I’d like to point out real quick.
Number one is the reinvention of publishing. 20 years ago, paper and ink magazines were still very popular and still very, very big business.
Since the advent of the internet, it’s slowed down magazine growth, not because print is dead, but because print now has competition from online.
With that extra competition comes a reshuffling of all the power structures and it takes old publishers time to figure out the new paradigm.
Well, this new paradigm doesn’t need to be stuck in the ink on paper era. It can go beyond that and it has gone beyond that.
Like he mentioned, the Eco Village that Mother Earth News used to do. Already had a live place that people can go to and be able to get the three dimensional aspect of what they’re talking about in the magazine.
All they did was they took this and put it on the road, included a whole bunch more people.
So you have all these authors and experts and entrepreneurs that are working in this marketplace all coming together.
At one place, all different political persuasions and perspectives all mixing together in a giant melting pot. It’s a beautiful thing.
I can’t wait to go and it brings an aspect of reality.
There’s one thing to read about something. Even if you’re reading about it online, you can read about it, you can see the pictures of it.
There’s something completely different to getting your hands in it, to meeting the people that wrote the articles and so to get back to your business, how many senses are you activating in the person?
Let’s say you have a podcast, maybe you’re getting to them audibly. Maybe they’re able to see a blog posts so they can see pictures.
They can listen to you?
How else are you activating the other senses?
Do people have a chance to be able to meet you one on one?
Do people get to tour your facilities?
I’m just coming up with random ideas. How can you make this fit your business if you don’t put on an event?
Do you attend events?
Do you put yourself out there and make yourself real for your customer?
That’s the real question. There’s a reason why publications like Mother Earth News are going to survive and it’s because they’re thinking outside the box.
They’re not stuck in their medium. They’re willing to go beyond that.
They have a podcast, they have events like the Mother Earth News Fair and many other things that they’re doing to be able to get out there and reach the market and deliver the same product in a different way.
Social media can’t take that away from them.
They no longer have to worry about the competition from online marketing. They can be their own thing.
Andrew was basically referring to this engagement environment and you’ll hear that discussed over and over in the other conversations that we’ve already had.
You’ll be able to hear them as we broadcast them out there.
For example, Frank Hyman who wrote the book Hentopia, talks about how he has these workshops where he shows people how to build water systems for chickens and he brings people up on stage to actually try the process.
Deborah Niemann talks about it being Disneyworld for homesteaders.
This is an engaging environment. This is an experience, not just a display, to go look at how are you providing an experience for your customers.
And if you’re not, what ways can you come up with that experiential treatment?
We can go on and on and I’m sure we’ll have Andrew on in a further episode, but for now, make sure you subscribe to this podcast. Go to offthegridbiz.com and subscribe.
If you’re interested in learning more about events, go to BrianJPombo.com/secrets.
I’ll catch you in the next episode.
Outro: Join us again on the next off the grid is podcast brought to you by the team at BrianJPombo.com, helping successful but overworked entrepreneurs, transform their companies into dream assets.
That’s BrianJPombo.com.
If you or someone you know would like to be a guest on The Off The Grid Biz Podcast, offthegridbiz.com/contact.
Those who appear on the show do not necessarily endorse my beliefs, suggestions, or advice or any of the services provided by our sponsor. Our theme music is Cold Sun by Dell.
Our executive producer and head researcher is Sean E Douglas. I’m Brian Pombo and until next time, I wish you peace, freedom, and success.