April 2008 Disconnect

Happy Birthday Business Connect!

Happy Birthday Business Connect!

As the publisher of Connect, it gives me great pleasure to announce the fifth anniversary of our magazine. Can you believe it? Five years!

Some of you have heard the story. A little over five years ago, after a magazine buyout left our core publishing team unemployed, we decided to start Lumin Publishing. On a Monday morning after we had all lost our jobs, we met at the McDonalds on the corner of 2nd West and 5th South, and decided to take the chance. I distributed the first week’s pay from an envelope filled with $4,700 in cash that my sister-in-law loaned me the night before, and we went to work.

Later that day, Niky Marsden, our enthusiastic salesperson recounted to me her first sales call for the new company. It went something like this:

 
Niky:   “Hello, this is Niky Marsden. I’d like to let you know about advertising opportunities in a new local business publication we have just started.”
 
Client: “What is the name of the new magazine?”
 
Niky:   “Well…we have not yet chosen a name for the publication.”
 
Client: “And what company are you with?”
 
Niky:   “I’m not sure about that either. You know what? Why don’t I give you a call back?”
 
Needless to say, Niky informed me that we would need to name the company and the publication before she could be effective as a salesperson. I can still remember the chaos of that first week. Each day we would meet up in someone’s basement or apartment. One morning we had blueberry pancakes as we discussed what to name our magazine and our company.

Now, as we celebrate the fifth anniversary of the magazine, you may have noticed a change on the cover. After ongoing meetings and input from our readers and our advertisers we have decided to adjust the name of our magazine to better reflect our vision for the publication — Business Connect.

For those of you that have supported our magazine over the years, you will quickly see that the content of the magazine has not changed, but for those that are becoming familiar with our magazine for the first time, we believe this adjustment to our name will help them more easily recognize our commitment to become Utah’s leading business publication.
 
Happy birthday Business Connect!