Even Small Changes Can Make a Big Difference

Scott T. Janney here. I’m a passionate entrepreneur with 20 years of experience spanning industries. Welcome to my newsletter!

In my newsletters you’ll find:?

• Tips on what I think it takes to succeed as an entrepreneur based on experience gained, lessons learned, and things I’ve read over the years.
• Takes on business, industry news, entrepreneurship, and anything else relevant to my experience/knowledge.?
• Stories about my current work as CEO of Magazine Jukebox that I hope will be useful for budding entrepreneurs and interesting for others.
• Valuable content that’s also entertaining. As my newsletter name suggests, I’ll aim to offer a good mix of business and entertainment.

In today’s newsletter, I’ll talk about some changes at Magazine Jukebox that have made a big difference (and how similar changes could help your business). Finally, I’ll end with this month’s tips and takes.

Valuable Changes at Magazine Jukebox

Magazine Jukebox was born in a time of uncertainty, constantly evolving and redesigning to stay on top. As I’ve mentioned before, you have to be willing to make changes to evolve. Changes that will benefit your business. Some big, some small… I’ll share a few big changes we’ve undergone recently. I hope you find a few words of wisdom that can help you in your own business.?

Launch of Games and Trivia

As many of you know, our platform has grown from offering digital magazines to now also offering games and trivia. Many of our partners told us that not everyone likes reading magazines (which is surprising to me ??). Games really speak to younger generations, trivia really speaks to older generations… Updating our offerings has allowed us to reach a larger audience and increase our engagement with end users.?

We’ve had nothing but good feedback. Introducing games and trivia has translated to more sales because these additions have enticed more people to buy, especially those buyers that don’t necessarily like magazines. It has also provided an opportunity for us to reengage our current partners who have not been very active. It’s been a chance for us to remind our partners about the value that our product brings their business and highlight these new additions.?

Introduction of our Free Package

We launched a Free Package for MJB about 6 months ago to initiate product led sales. I read a book on product led growth and sales in the past - the author talked about being so confident in your product that you let it sell itself. That’s what we’re doing with Magazine Jukebox through our Free Package. We believe in our product so much that we can offer it for free because we know that it translates to being used when it’s deployed properly. We’re confident that by allowing it to be free and limited in scope, it will ultimately lead more people to us. The Free Package in many ways validates our Premium Package, and Premium validates Free.?

When someone says, ‘well I don’t know if I would like your product or not’ we can tell them to try it for free. Offering a demo didn’t always work for us in the past because it often wasn’t deployed properly during the demo. With our Free Package, we make sure that businesses deploy properly so they can really try out our product and see what it can do for them.?

Honestly, it takes a lot of the work out of it for us. We don’t have to keep selling it ourselves. We continue to provide guidance, but it does all the work for us. If you have a good product, it becomes a salesperson for you. ?? It’s the twelfth man. The product can sell itself.?

Launch of an Affiliate Program

Affiliate programs are such a great way to get your product out there more easily. If you don’t have the financial means to deploy a ton of sales reps and you’re confident in your product, then an affiliate program might be a good fit for your company. If you’re able to hire affiliates that have already massed their following and you can tap into that, then why not? Everybody wins - you, your customers, the affiliates… Affiliates look good by offering a deal to their customers and are making money. It’s a good payoff for both parties.?

Magazine Jukebox has recently launched an Affiliate Program to get our product out there to more relevant audiences. We partnered with Dave "Laundromat Millionaire" Menz and Carla Menz. The partnership is going really well so far. I found them on LinkedIn and it’s been great working with them. They genuinely care about other peoples’ success and it’s really refreshing. Side note: it’s also really nice to see other married couples working together and in unison (like me and my wife Lauren K. Janney ). I believe more married couples should work together. A husband and wife truly have each other’s backs. But I digress…?

This partnership has led to over a dozen new locations for Magazine Jukebox and new markets that we would not have landed ourselves. ?? Definitely a win, win, win.

New Integration Features

Another big change at MJB - we’re now offering SMS/Text Message integration and App Integration. So our platform will no longer only be able to be accessed via QR Code. This feature has helped us capture the attention of many new partners.

The impact of Magazine Jukebox is now recognized not only by companies earning $200K, $1M, or even $10M a year, but also by giants with Billions (yes, with a "B") in annual revenue. Not just the cozy mom and pop stores… also those in the billion-dollar club. We've passed not only the business owner's sniff test, but also gained approval from countless decision-makers and attorneys, affirming our value to their operations!?

So excited for the possibilities this feature will bring! More updates on this to come soon…

My Monthly Tip

Never let failure go to your heart and don’t let success go to your mind. I’ve gone after my dreams - I’ve been successful in some and not so successful in others. I use those times of failure to help me be better at what I’m doing today. I want to teach my kids that it’s okay to fail. It’s okay to fail, fail often. Be proud of your failures. Be proud of your successes. Be humble. Encourage others and be encouraged by others.?

My Monthly Take

The rollercoaster ride a startup company goes through is surreal. ?? The highs/lows, the unexpected, the expected, and the expected of the unexpected.

As a founder, I have to constantly be okay with learning new things even when I have NO DESIRE to learn them, but it's out of necessity. I have to do things others are unwilling to do and ultimately do everything so I never ask a member of my team to do something I’m unwilling to do. Even when things aren’t my strong suit (*cough cough* like with projections and spreadsheets), I gotta learn. Ain’t no time to wait around at a startup. ?? ?? ????

What’s Next??

Keep an eye out for next month’s newsletter to discover more about my experience with Magazine Jukebox , along with new entrepreneurial tips and takes. I hope you found this newsletter to be valuable and entertaining.?

Please subscribe and share my newsletter if you enjoyed it. Also, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn or comment below with any feedback - tell me what you liked, what you didn’t like, and what you’d like to see more of.?

By the way, we prepare a monthly newsletter for Magazine Jukebox. Feel free to subscribe to the Magazine Jukebox newsletter if you’re interested!

Thanks for reading!?

Interested in investing in Magazine Jukebox? Feel free to email me at [email protected].

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