A few times a month, I find myself sharing the same podcast episode with creators, industry friends, or really anyone remotely curious about what we are building with the Slow Creator Fund. Given this, you’d expect this episode to offer hard-hitting wisdom on digital entrepreneurship from the likes of Gary Vee or Neal Mohan. And while this episode delivers on that promise, it comes from an unexpected source. The podcast is an interview with print media entrepreneur Adam Sandow on Patrick O’Shaughnessy’s show, Invest Like The Best. Turns out you can learn a lot from archaic print media.
Adam is masterful at building ecosystems of brands and businesses, anchored by high-end print magazines like NewBeauty, Interior Design, and Curator, that target valuable, niche communities. His real innovation hasn’t been in growing subscription numbers or expanding advertising revenue, but in leveraging his readership to create highly profitable businesses worth exponentially more than their media origins.
The reason I am so inspired by Adam and his philosophy is that it closely mirrors creator entrepreneurship and the way our creators go about building businesses. While swapping “digital creator” for “print magazine” is an oversimplification, the underlying principles are remarkably relevant.
Adam’s story is exceptional and the full podcast is worth a listen, but I’ll offer a few highlights that are especially applicable for this audience:
Relentless focus on quality > quantity. Adam prioritizes high-quality readership over mass circulation, focusing on valuable segments and leveraging strategic distribution channels (like private airports) to reach them. At the time, his prioritization of quality and influence rather than mere scale defied conventional wisdom.
Build an ecosystem of businesses. Adam doesn’t stop at magazines; his media platforms serve as launch pads for higher-value, complementary ventures. The media provides credibility, facilitates efficient customer acquisition, grants industry access, and most importantly, yields valuable insights to blueprint transformative companies. Which leads us to the next and most important point…
Identify problems and solve pain points. Adam uncovers critical pain points experienced by customers and industry stakeholders, and uses them as inspiration for any business he builds. Deeply understanding and addressing these friction points has been foundational to his successes. And to be clear, these are not qualms related to advertising, but rather problems related to their business or niche. For example, NewBeauty readers struggled with driving product trials, leading him to launch one of the first beauty subscription services. For Interior Design readers, the cumbersome process of acquiring material samples inspired Adam to found Material Bank, a sampling marketplace now valued at over $2 billion.
Today, it’s increasingly common for creators to launch products purely because they have large followings. However, this approach overlooks the true advantage of content, audience, and distribution, which aren’t just means of selling — they’re the most powerful market research and go-to-market tools a creator can have.
So, assuming a creator has deep credibility and trust within a valuable niche, how can they replicate Adam’s approach to build their own ecosystem of businesses?
Identify your most engaged super-fans: Focus on the audience segment most deeply engaged with your content, those who genuinely care about what you represent and produce
Uncover their real problems: Go beyond the obvious. Don’t limit questions to your immediate content or product. Explore broader operational, personal, or industry pain points
Innovate the solution: Create tools, products, or services that directly address these areas of friction, leveraging your established trust and distribution advantage to drive adoption
Iterate and scale: Constantly seek feedback, iterate on the offering, and strategically expand your market from your initial niche to adjacent areas, maintaining authenticity and trust
To state the obvious, executing this strategy is challenging. However, if you're a creator entrepreneur aiming to build a business with 100x potential, this playbook is as strong a starting point as you’ll find.
See you next week.
— Megan
P.S. Read more from the archive here