I was having a great lunch with my friend, Peter Shankman and he said something to the effect of “which magazine do you want to be?” It was brilliant, so naturally, I stole it for a blog post. It’s okay. I gave him a quote for a blog post, or at least something off-color to say at a party.
Which Magazine Are you?
The idea is this: to better understand what you want to focus on in your business, in your life, etc, answer the question of which magazine you’d be/run. For instance, if you’re into successful women, maybe you’re Oprah Winfrey’s “O” magazine. If you’re into investing and businesses, maybe you’re “Fortune.” If you’re a painter, maybe you’re “Southwest Art.”
I’m at Barnes & Noble as I write this, and behind me is a huge newsstand. Thankfully, I can use this to decide how I want to answer this question. The magazines I subscribe to might give me the answer. I get Esquire, Wired, Entrepreneur, Inc, FastCompany, Sports Illustrated, and Success magazine sent to my home. I plan on subscribing to The Economist (reminder: steal a blow-in card to do that) later this month. Am I any of those magazines? Maybe Entrepreneur, but I’m not sure (as they don’t cover the “off time” when people aren’t building their empires).
The Question Opens Your Mind Very Well
If you can answer which magazine you are, you can answer where you would prefer to spend your time. You can also answer which kinds of blog topics would keep you satisfied. You can answer who your audience is. There’s a lot in that one answer, isn’t there?
The thing is, can you be just one magazine? I mean, I know that there can be only one, but usually we’re multi-faceted. People in the magazine business launch more than one magazine. So, maybe you could limit yourself to two for the purposes of this experiment, but really, I think there’s a lot to think about with this answer.
What say you? And which magazine are you?
