Plant-based Press
When Maggie began sharing her vegan food finds online, she had no idea that what started as a free time blog would soon turn into a nation-wide vegan media company. In this week’s episode we chat to the VegOut Magazine founder about the journey so far, and what it was like making the transition out of the corporate world and into that of entrepreneurship. We also spoke about what Maggie believed was the driver of VegOut’s initial growth and their bottom-up approach to expansion, as well as the future of print plus more.
Maggie was 12 years old when she became a vegetarian and 20 when she transitioned to a vegan diet. It wasn’t until she was working for a corporate when she found herself starting a blog in her free time, showing people the best places people could grab vegan food around Los Angeles.
Maggie: “In the beginning it was really just an Instagram page ... I would post a couple of times a month, nobody was really reading it and I was doing it in my spare time.”
This carried on for about 3 years until Maggie realised that her and her mother, who was helping her editorially, could begin to make money, get sponsorships and grow. But in order to do so Maggie had to make a choice: to stay or leave her full-time job.
Maggie: “I left my job at the accounting firm I was working for, and that’s really where it took off and turned into a business.”
Maggie went on to mention how the transition period, despite in hindsight being an amazing decision that has never brought regret, was difficult for her.
Maggie: “It was something I thought I’d never be able to do. I grew up very much with the belief that I had to go to University, I had to get a full-time job and work for that steady pay-check… the idea of having my own business didn’t really cross my mind”
Maggie: “It was really scary. I remember my last day at the accounting firm I kept thinking ‘I’m making a big mistake’ ‘I’m going to regret this’ ‘what am I doing? this is crazy’, and then I never looked back.”
Maggie: “There’s no right time for anyone to take the leap, but you just have to really believe in yourself and believe in what you’re doing.”
Since then VegOut as a platform has continued to grow and garnered thousands of followers across the States and beyond. We wanted to hear about what Maggie thought drove that growth.
Maggie: “We were pretty early on the Instagram wagon, and so I think it was the right timing and doing something other people weren’t doing … there were a lot of influencers in Los Angeles at the time, and there were some vegan influencers … but there wasn’t really a media company … so I think that definitely set us apart.”
Maggie: “Also just putting out the content that we were putting out … you can only post so much about a product until you have to start getting creative; with this, with having a food guide, we could post a different restaurant every day.”
The CEO then went on to say that this meant they could also repost restaurant customer’s pictures that they had taken, giving them a cool way to interact with their audience.
Maggie: “I just spent countless hours on Instagram - going through, following hashtags, interacting with people. That’s really how I built the LA page in the beginning.”
But the goal for Maggie isn’t held within the platform.
Maggie: “The thing about social media is that they’re constantly changing things, and they could shut down… we’ve seen that in the past with social media platforms where they come and go, so I knew I didn’t want my company to rely on revenue just from Instagram or an Instagram business model.”
Maggie: “I had the blog online and I put in a lot of work to building a bigger website with articles, to really get people not just going from Instagram to the website and reading the articles, but also organically when they’re searching google … we’d pop up.”
The company has also started working with a web agency since January to develop an SEO strategy; in addition, they cover content in all of the big cities such as Chicago, New York and San Francisco. The process for getting the coverage comes, Maggie says, from a bottom-up approach where people reach out from across the country offering to write content.
Maggie: “We’ll also take in contributors here and there, so we’ll have someone write in from Denver or Detroit.”
This contrasts from other media companies which have taken a more user-generated approach. VegOut used to have an app, but Maggie says that’s not currently on the brand’s agenda.
Maggie: “I was working with a developer and that relationship ended … and with that we dissolved the app and I started working with a new web agency, launched a new website, and we decided at the time that it wouldn’t make sense to create an app until we were ready to release more features.”
Maggie: “We used to have 2 print magazines, and they were quarterly. We had one in LA and one in NY, but it was really stretching the team thin.”
Maggie: “We were putting out two magazines every quarter around the same timeline, and we just didn’t have enough resources. I think we had two designers at the time and a handful of writers so we’re a small team.”
Maggie: “I was faced with the decision of do we continue to expand city-to-city and put out a magazine for each city, or do we just combine forces and put out one nation-wide United States magazine?”
The latter is the decision Maggie went with, not only because producing two quarterly magazines was stretching the team thin, but because they’d be able to get wider distribution.
Maggie: “At the time when we had the LA and NY magazine, we were really limited to distributing in California and New York … but now we have the one magazine and we’re in almost every state, tonnes of retailers across the country, and so we’re just able to have a larger distribution plan for the magazine, than if we had the two smaller ones.”
Being a media company advertising is also a huge part of the business model. We asked Maggie what the process of finding people to collaborate has been like.
Maggie: “In the beginning it was all cold emails and cold calls, we were reaching out to brands, restaurants, people to partner with, and now we have people emailing us as well. Then we’d had partners we’d worked with for a long time, so it’s just repeat business, but we don’t work with a middle man.”
Maggie mentioned that they don’t work with Google Ads or other platforms, due to the fact that they cannot control the advertisements that pop up on their websites and this has led to complaints from readers. Despite popularity, influencer marketing also hasn’t been a core component of the strategy.
Maggie: “I’ve been on the receiving end of people blowing up our inboxes, wanting to send us a product if we post about them for free, and so I know how that feels … I think people should be compensated for the work and marketing that they do, and the content they’re producing.”
Maggie: “If they genuinely like the magazine and want to support us then I love that and usually that happens where if we feature someone in the magazine we’ll send them a copy and they naturally post about it, but we don’t have our own influencers or ambassadors.”
One thing that sets VegOut Magazine from other vegan media companies is the fact that they have their own editorial. With headlines claiming print is in decline, we were curious to hear more behind the decision for a physical copy.
Maggie: “We started the print magazine after the digital magazine, and usually it’s the other way around.”
Maggie: “I just felt like we could reach an entirely different demographic; typically people who read magazines are a little older, not necessarily on the internet or their phones all the time… and then with the younger generations people are so over-stimulated by social media that sometimes they just want a break … and have something physical to read.”
The third reason for Maggie boiled down to a physical magazine likely to have a greater impact than sending somebody a link about veganism or a plant-based lifestyle that they may or may not look at.
Maggie: “Handing them something physical is a lot more meaningful and maybe they will look at it, and even if they don’t and they throw it on their table, it’s still sitting in their apartment, sitting in their house, and it’s a conversation starter when someone walks in.”
Maggie: “I thought that by having something tangible that could be passed around, that could have more of an impact on people in their plant-based journey.”
But despite their success, the journey of VegOut has not been without challenges.
Maggie: “One of the biggest challenges is the financial aspect. You can’t get advertisers, you can’t bring in revenue, if you don’t have a community to advertise products to.”
Maggie: “In the beginning of starting a media company you don’t have any readers, you don’t have any Instagram followers - you’re just working for free and doing that until somebody believes in what you’re doing and sees the value in advertising with you.”
Clearly a lot of people do believe in what Maggie and her team are doing, supporting them and helping the business grow. The future for the media company?
Maggie: “We’re going to continue to grow and expand. I not only want to expand to other US cities, but also hopefully expand to the UK, Canada, maybe Australia and some other countries as well. Maybe a Spanish version, we’ll see, but I definitely just want to continue to grow and reach as many people as we can because that’s our mission: to help people go plant-based and to help people in their transition.”
To learn more you can head to VegOut Magazine’s website, or follow them on social media.