From Surviving to Thriving: Reinventing a Magazine Empire in the Digital Age w/Seth Soloff
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As a business owner, they don't teach these things in school. These are things I've had to learn as an owner of a company. You've survived 19 years, right, in the magazine space and it's changed a lot in the last 20 years. So how did you constantly adapt and progress in that industry because

I feel a lot of magazine businesses have just gone at this point. We were like a plane that didn't have the luxury of landing. We had to be in the air and fix our business. And so what we've done now is we have built our business where majority of our income now is through events along with digital and social media. And then we've kind of pivoted where before we had like six, seven businesses

big clients in the jet business. Now we've launched our own jet business. I'm not going to lie to you. We've not figured it out. And anyone that says they figured it out, I think is misleading you. We're always learning. Yeah. I always say we've got a better handle on the beast. Wild animal is like, okay, we've got a firm grip now. It's still going to change and go crazy. My name's Rudy Moore, host of Living the Red Life podcast.

I'm here to change the way you see your life in your earpiece every single week. If you're ready to start living the red life, ditch the blue pill, take the red pill, join me in Wonderland and change your life. What's up guys? Welcome back to another episode of Living the Red Life. I'm here with my friend Seth, co-founder of Haute Living and a very successful entrepreneur and

And today we're going to talk about everything you've been up to, but most importantly, how he's consistently adapted to change.

and why that's so important in his business and most likely in your business. Seth, welcome to the show. Thank you so much. So I don't know where to begin, but I think it's great if you give a bit of context to the listeners if they don't know what you do. I would love for a one minute story on the businesses you've got and how your magazine works and everything else we've just been discussing. Thank you so much for inviting me to your office.

My name's Seth Semloff. I'm the co-founder of Hope Media Group. We started 19 years ago as a magazine in Miami, and then we grew to a magazine in Miami, New York, then a magazine in Miami, New York, LA, and then launched San Francisco. And then recently, about three years ago, we launched in Naples, Florida.

with a partner there. And we've evolved our brand outside of our media group. We do events about 60, 70 high-profile events a year, along with we launched a jet company under HoJets and a real estate brokerage called HL Real Estate Group.

And, you know, there's a lot to dive into that we were chatting offline. But now you're utilizing Facebook ads, AI, all of these fun social media tools in an industry that's been around for many decades. Right. And I think one thing I love about yourself and what we were talking about is your ability to change and adapt over time to stay ahead. So can you kind of explain that to the to the listeners? So as I discussed earlier, we are organic because four years ago I reached out to your company.

We were in COVID, our business was locked down as we do 60, 70 events a year and we were not able to do any events.

and our salespeople weren't able to come to the office. And so I spoke to somebody about looking at doing Facebook ads, targeting our clients and building landing pages and copywriting correct ads that are engaging. And they told me to reach out to your company. And I actually emailed you and inquired about your services, but you were too expensive at that time. So

Because I didn't really believe in the product. And so what I did was I studied your product and I hired different people through LinkedIn. And I went through a lot of growing pains as out of 10 people, eight people were not good. But it's three, four years later to kind of speed up the process. We have our own agency. We represent ourselves and a few clients.

And it's become a huge part of our business. And I really kind of studied you, what you've done. And that's why it's a full circle is when you moved to Miami and we reconnected. Yeah. And you told me earlier, you just got this week or whatever, a private jet booking from a Facebook ad, right? It's amazing because we are through our jet company. We do Facebook and Google ads targeted ads.

And literally yesterday, we got a lead come in from someone in Cincinnati that needed a fly to Buffalo.

And we spoke to the client at five, got them to send us money by seven, which they were not familiar with who we were, but they sent us about $40,000 to go on the flight. And we booked them and flew them this morning. And the client was very happy all through a Facebook ad. No relationship, didn't know who the client was. And we do that for now real estate and our jet business on a weekly basis. Yeah, crazy. And-

I think that's just full circle and that shows the power of social media if you come in and figure it out and props to you for going through those growing pains because having a lot of people sadly quit in that middle period, right? When you're figuring out the gaps. Well, I'm not going to lie to you. We've not figured it out. And anyone that says they figured it out, I think is misleading you. We're always learning. Yeah. And we're not good.

I mean, we're not at that level, but we're getting better. And it's crazy because I look at what I was doing six months ago to today and our process is becoming more efficient. And so and so, you know, you're obviously the teacher. You're amazing at what you do. Like even when I look at your landing pages and what you create, you guys have a great formula.

yeah and um and and it's obviously a formula it's very important to to be successful or to adapt or kill you know to be successful or be out of business for sure and talking of that i mean you've you've survived 19 years right in the magazine space and as we were talking it's changed a lot in the last 20 years right people changed completely yeah so how did you constantly adapt and progress in that industry because

I feel a lot of magazine businesses have just gone at this point. Yeah, I mean, we're in a print media business. And so that is an area where 19 years ago I would have, you know, 200 pages of ads. Now the magazine is much smaller.

But what we have in our content is we're not news driven. So in today's day, everyone's on the phone. And before when I started in the business, you would run to go get a People magazine to learn about the gossip that happened this week. Now you're in your phone. It's real time. TMZ comes out and it comes out by the second. So our business is not news related or time really related. What we talk about is the new cars, cars.

And we curate wines, do interviews with a lot of the people that people want to hear from. A lot of people know the brand Richard Mille, but do they actually know who Richard Mille is? So we'll interview Richard Mille.

and talk about his story of how he built the brand, which is something that people will still want to read about. And so what we've done now is we have built our business where majority of our income now is through events, along with digital and social media. And then we've kind of pivoted where before we had like six, seven big clients in the jet business. Now we've launched our own jet business. Yeah. And what was...

a couple of like old crap moments we gotta change something did you have those along the way uh i mean when when a large luxury brand company that was a big advertiser cut advertising and i asked them why and they said because of you know like we don't want to um commit to like killing trees you know through paper they're you know so i was like that's a problem um

When a client is like cutting advertising, not because you dropped the ball or you didn't do a good job when they're really cutting advertising because of just, you know, being, you know, being eco. And, you know, what happened is a lot of my clients would, I'll give you an example. There's a brand called Lora Piana.

It's one of the most amazing brands out there for luxury. And I'll never forget, I met with them and I put something on my Instagram and I got called by the marketing lady, like, "You gotta take it off. L'Oreal Piana is a private brand. They don't wanna have that type of exposure. They don't want people to see it out there." And I said, "No problem," and so forth. And now, 10 years later, they're huge in social media. So the brands have changed. And because of that,

We had to change to where luxury brands were going. And what we've done is similar in our magazine. We built an amazing audience on our Instagram where we have a very high...

celebrity following. And so we give brands now choices like, hey, you know what? If you want your brand to be in front of people like Kevin Hart or Conor McGregor, they follow us. And we do a lot of covers where they're always promoting us in the covers. So we've given a different option to these luxury brands. Yeah. I love that. And what about COVID and AI? What caused during that

Like I always talk, my agency used to grow through me speaking at events and traveling and COVID shut down and boom. So luckily for me, I was already moving on to this whole red company and I had a CEO in that company at the time because I'd already planned to transition out. But like a lot of companies like yours, event companies, right? What happened when you, the day of lockdown or the week of lockdown, what did you say and do?

I mean, for us, we were in Florida, so it was a little bit easier. Yeah. Um, so, you know, we saw it and, you know, um, I still went to the office and, you know, when we were working, but it was just like, we were doing a lot of events and our events were getting, um, cut daily. So like we would have an event in New York in a month and the brand would be like, our, our last event was actually in New York and it was like with 50 cent and, um,

And we all wore masks and masks were taken off. And then we were like, maybe this isn't a good look if we're doing events when people, you know, with COVID, you know, because we thought, you know, everyone, people could be dying. It was a very scary time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So a lot of the brands just shut it down and didn't think it would be politically correct to be doing events during that time. And what did you...

due to pivot. I learned from people that we looked up to that was doing these Zoom webinars. And so we went on, like we did 60, 70 Zoom webinars with people like Francis Ford Coppola to Drew Bloodso talking about his wine. And we did with the president of like all these real estate companies.

to luxury brands, to watch CEOs. So we went and did 60, 70 Zooms. So we were continuing as people were home, we were continuing in front of our audience. We made no money out of it. It was not anything that we could generate revenues, but it was about us not losing our relationships with our end users.

which people like our brand to have access to learning from luxury brands. Yeah, I love that. And I think that's so important because I know a lot of entrepreneurs, right? And during COVID, I think half the entrepreneurs totally changed business, went out of business, really collapsed. And then the other half, it might've still been tough, but they adapted. They

did live webinars or they sold courses or they adapted. And I think that's always the way of entrepreneurship. If you're listening is you're going to have these things, whether it's COVID, whether it's, you know, the FTC come in and change a rule or the SEC or an industry totally transforms or AI technology comes in, that ability to adapt is so important, right? And

And I think one thing that I also love about conversations with you is you seem really good at like, hey, I've got this audience and this avatar. What are other ways to monetize it? Right. Well, that's that's yes, that's our biggest asset. Can you can you talk about that extra like kind of what I call is scaling horizontally where it's like, OK, I got this. Now I can add this and I can add this. So I think with us, we have built a trustworthy brand because we've been doing business for 19 years.

So, why we launched a jet company is majority of the jet companies out there, they make you pay a membership fee or get a jet card. And what happens is the consumer, it's misleading to the consumer because A, it's just funding another business. There's no real reason to get a jet card unless you actually own the jet. And so for us, we're on demand. So we say, "Hey, if you want to fly, for example, from Miami to New York,

You don't need a jet card. We have access to the best planes in Miami. So your pricing is the most affordable because if you have a jet card, um,

and you're in Miami and there's no jet to Miami, you actually will have to pay to get the jet from Dallas to Miami. And so we work with a lot of our clients that are celebrity clients and CEOs that have been burnt by past companies. And they say, hey, for tax purposes, can we just prepay? And we said, no, this is what we do. And our business is, we're not the cheapest because we're not going to tell you what you want to hear. We're going to tell you what you have to hear, what the price of the plane is going to be.

So there's no issues with that because a lot of times people will tell you, oh, the plane is at a price point. They get you in and then and then they do it's called a bait and switch. And then the day before they're like, oh, that plane is not available. You need to take this plane now. And that's a big problem in the jet industry. And then with our real estate business, we've held all these brands launch in the last 20 years. Developers from 1000 Museum to Paramount to pretty much almost all these buildings.

And during COVID happened, a lot of our friends were saying, hey, I want to move here. Where do you recommend to move? And we're like, oh, call this developer as they have these penthouses available. And then the developers were telling us, look, we're paying you in advertising, but if you got your broker license, we can pay you a lot more money and you're offering a real service to your clients. So why don't you get a brokerage license? And that's what we did. And then if you guys are listening and don't know those...

you know, complexes or apartments or buildings that are mentioned here, like the one, for example, David Beckham lives on the top. Yeah, I mean, those units go up to $30 million. So it became one of our clients bought a unit in Coconut Grove for like $12 million. But what we offered is access to the developer because when you buy these complex properties, you have, you know, complex, you know, goals, like you want different, you know, kitchens, you want things to be changed.

So it's important that you have access to the developer to get those things changed. Yeah. And you've created all these bolt-on services, right? It's like, I've got the audience, I've got the trust, I've got the authority. Now I'm going to have the jets and the real estate brokerage for high-end. Yeah. We have about 20 agents that work for our company. Yeah. And now we're licensed here in Orlando. I got licensed myself during COVID.

And then I got my broker license. So I have my salesperson and broker license and we're based in Orlando and South Florida. And then our jet company, we have three, three,

Charter specialists have been doing this for a long time and they just wanted to work at a reputable firm like ours that they can just build their business and scale up using our technology because we do a lot of lead generation. Facebook and Google Ads is a huge part of our business. Yeah. And we were talking offline that we nearly worked together and then you started learning it from me and other people.

And I mean, it's kind of funny how a lot of people in your industry, like those sort of industries, they don't believe social and ads will work for them. Well, it's two things is because, you know, we built an agency, too, for a lot of our clients because they'd say,

How do you do it? It's not a get rich quick scheme. So I think a lot of them come in and they want immediate results, but they don't understand. You have to build the backend. You have to build a CRM. You have to build funnels. Now I have a client. I have a client on our jets that we've had in six months. We've reached out to him through automations 10 times. And the 11th time they finally book a jet. So a lot of people don't invest in that infrastructure.

So that's where we've gotten better. As I was speaking to you earlier and you were talking about how automations and these triggers, that's the key. And it's a science. They don't teach it to you in school.

So even as a business owner, you want to hire people. There's thousands of people that pitch that product. And I hired about 10 different agencies as I launched my business. And I would say I fired all 10. Yeah. Yeah. And I realized, you know, if I would have probably paid you at the beginning, I would have...

I would have been, you know, I would have probably spent the same amount of money and had a lot more success out of it. But it's a wild, wild west where I think there's a lot of people that are misleading the clients. So that's why I think people are skeptical, too, because they'll you can buy your own ads on Facebook, you know, through Facebook or Instagram boost and it doesn't work.

Sure. And it's not like you're going to just do an Instagram boost and someone's going to call you to buy a million dollar house. Yeah. And that's why, you know, why our agency, you know, that I've had for six, seven years now is expensive is we learn over time that ads weren't enough, right? Like we ended up charging a much higher premium because we had to rebuild the landing page, recraft the offer, the lead gen, help connect the CRM and follow up emails, follow up texts, get it linked to a sales rep and

I think you've kind of saw all those pieces come together and now you've built that great system. But a lot of people do get, you know, they throw up an ad, expect it to work. And then when it doesn't work, they say ads don't work for my business. Right. Yeah. And then they say I wasted money. They don't know what they're doing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I mean, even like you say with the Jets, there's a lot of agencies out there where they'll sell you on this thing for a couple of grand.

But then you don't have all these other pieces. And then when it doesn't work, they upsell you. Well, when I started my jet company, I was doing Facebook ads and I didn't have a good back end system. So the agents were getting leads and the jet people were always complaining about the leads. And then I realized when I started doing more tracking system that a lot of the people weren't calling the leads. Yeah.

And so it's very important if you're investing money in leads and salespeople, you have a way to track that the leads are actually being worked in a timely manner. Yeah, every day for us, we know how many calls were booked, how many calls were taken, show rate, and we even track it by rep. So if one reps, not.

got a lower show rate, we then track, did they send all their reminders? Did they follow up? Did they follow the SOP there? Because yeah, you know, I've spent tens of millions on lead gem for our own business or at least millions. And the worst thing out of everything is you get the leads and then the reps don't. So not to interrupt you, but you hear what Rudy just said. And even like for me, like I just am taking notes because that's at a different level. Like you're at a level now where you're basically knowing on a,

It's almost like you have AI within your company because you know, okay, this person's producing at this level. This person's producing at this level. There's no reason just this person's more efficient with their time. Yeah, and it's,

Nextdoor is a bomb site right now, as you saw, because we were filming a TV show, but it's normally even on the monitors in there. We have three big monitors in there. So every day you can look and see where the reps are at, revenue, revenue per call. And then, yeah, we try and create what I call parameters around everything. Because as you scale, I scaled up to 120 employees. And without parameters, everything just becomes a total mess. So having parameters around

the reps and the leads. And like, I get a day, I get an hourly text on my ad spend, my CPA and my CPL. So every hour of every day, like if something breaks, I instantly know because I know what it should be at. And if it's way higher off, I'm

I'm straight on with my tech team and my head of marketing gets it and my head of tech. So now, and I learned this the hard way after we'd spend 20 grand in a day and time for an afternoon, it's broke. It's like, oh, you lost $6,000 by the time. But people don't realize it happened to me too where my sales manager of the real estate company was like, hey, did we shut the leads off? And I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, we haven't got a lead in like five days. And then I go to my guy and they're like, oh, the Zapier disconnected. Yeah.

And I said, Xavier disconnected? What about the leads? Oh, here's the leads. And there was like 62 leads. Yeah. So those are things that as a business owner, they don't teach these things in school. And as an entrepreneur, to go back to even the beginning of the conversation, these are things I've had to learn as an owner of a company. And I tell people,

that, um, how they compare my business. I'm like blockbuster video. If you come to me, a lot of people know us as a traditional print magazine. So they're like, we feel bad. How are you doing? Um, and so we were like a plane that didn't have the luxury of landing kind of reconfiguring. Um, we had to be in air and, and fix our business. And so what's exciting now is

We've built kind of businesses that all kind of match through everything. And now we're evolving our business to our next platform because I talked to you about the communities that we built in the trust and these high profile events. So now we're launching a members app. It's

It's going to be on your phone. It's going to be $10,000 a year. And it's going to give you access to the events. So, for example, we do 60, 70 events a year. As the events come in, you'll see the events that are available and you can reserve your seats to come to those events. So that's where we're going to be launching in the next two weeks. So we're very excited about that because a lot of people...

We don't want to be selling seats to events. That's not our business model. What we want to do is deal with high net worth individuals and then they have access to our event. Well, it creates a great, like our masterminds, you know, a 20, 50 or 100K. Yeah. Just by the price itself, it creates a great filtration system. And then obviously you can interview, we, you know, speak to all of our members before we let them in and you can create that.

kind of good community, right? Yeah. Just to, just reminds me, talking of Zapier, I also get a text if the Zapier thing breaks. Well, I mean, right now, I'm going back to my, I'm coming back to my office and I can't wait to get the interview. I need to get all these things. I want to get the text so they know what wants to happen. And then the Zapier link, if it breaks, it also goes in the tech Slack channel as an automation saying Zapier

connection failed because we've been through all of those. Well, as I said from the beginning, Rudy's a man ahead of his time as you've been very passionate about this category. And I just look to you as I was involved in a foundation and the lady said, this guy's the best.

And I was like, wow, your landing pages were like so much better than what my website people were building out. It was an art to it. And so when I saw you in Miami, um,

And then I saw you again about two weeks ago. It's great to be able to see your business and see where we have gone. But I'm very humble where I think in this business, as you learn every day, there's so many new technologies that are coming out. So if you're not going to keep studying and willing to adapt, if you think, okay, now I have a good...

niche on this, you're gonna be out of the game because the technology is moving at very fast speeds rate. Even for me, my landing pages in the last year for my real estate companies

have changed three different companies. Yeah, there's never ending, never ending. Like you said, it's, I don't mean you can ever figure it out. You just, maybe a better way is you've got a bit more, I always say we've got a better handle on the beast, right? So yeah, wild animal is like, okay, we've got a firm grip now. It's still going to change and go crazy, but that's the, that's the world we live in. So,

Just to wrap that, if people want to learn more about you, if people are listening in Miami, LA, New York, maybe you want to join. Our media company is Hote Living. It's H-A-U-T-E-L-I-V-I-N-G. And then if you like watches, we have... What's nice about our company is we have different niche communities. So if you like watches, we have Hote Time. And then our jets is Fly Hote Jets. But that's mainly on-demand charter. Yeah.

and then our real estate companies, HL Real Estate Group. But our core companies, Holt Living, and just great to be able to be in the studio. And if anyone listening doesn't believe it, Rudy is 100% ride or die red. The whole office is, he really practices what he preaches. But it's great to be able to meet with you because I'm speaking to you as if I didn't go into your direction,

I would definitely have been out of business. You know, I would have been involved in another area of business. And because we've done that, we've been able to use technology and all these amazing new things helping our business out considerably. I love it. It's why I do what I do. And thanks for coming in. No problem. Excited to hang out some more in Miami. All right. Guys, check him out. If you need anything basically luxury, fancy, if you want to hang out with more successful people, then this is the place to be, especially Miami, New York, LA.

LA and all those places mentioned. That's a wrap for another episode on living the red life. I'll see you guys soon. Take care.