Magnus Greaves on The Rise, Fall and Rise of His Media Career - Page 3

by Kiara Ashanti

America does not have a royal line.  We have no kings and queens, but that does not stop us from collectively anointing people to that status.  We do it to sports stars, Hollywood actors, and actresses – we even give the status to CEOs and business leaders.  As the DOW moved up to historic heights not seen even during the Internet bubble, Marcus Greaves began showcasing traders and business dealmakers in his magazines, Trader Monthly and Dealmaker (along with two other titles) under his media company, Doubledown Media, which  targeted luxury consumers. His magazines focused on the life, money, and business of persons often given Demigod status in America—WallStreet moneymakers and Gordon Gecko wannabes.  Both publications were popular, but like the P&L statements of the traders they followed, crashed after the market meltdown.  He wasn’t down for long though. Earlier this year, he co-founded MyMag, an unusual take on magazines. We talked with Greaves about his company’s sudden rise, and fall, and why he thinks he’s got a better mousetrap for the magazine industry.

I wanted to start off with your background. You started off as a trader. Is that correct?

I did. I grew up in Canada, but I moved to London when I was 19 because I wanted to work as a futures trader in the open outcry pits. So I ended up on the London Futures Exchange when I was 20, and I traded for UBS initially and then I left and started my own company with a couple of other friends. That company was called MAC Futures. We started that company in 1998, and then we built it up to over ten offices around the world; 500 traders and we sold it to Refco in 2003.

Many people believe trading is exciting and with the money that comes with trading I mean, why would you leave the industry?

I loved the world of trading and I was fascinated by the world of media so I wanted to find a way to combine the two. You know, I traveled around the world. I met thousands and thousands of traders, and I realized there were common denominators among them and so it would be interesting to have a piece of media that brought the trading world together.

Then as I investigated, I understood that it was an advertising based business. There is no group of people on the planet that makes more money and spends more money than traders. [It was a] dream as far as the advertising side of it goes. And so that is kind of how I made the jump. So although I entered the world of media it was within a community that I felt very, very comfortable in. There was no singular piece of media for that community and so I wanted to be the person that created it.

But, how did you go about setting up in a new industry where no one knew you? In particular, how did you talk to traders who are notorious for not wanting to talk about how much money they are actually making?

Right, the money side of it was only one part of the editorial angle. I think that is the one that is the most exciting, and some people sensationalize it but we were talking about what it was like to be a trader and the ups and downs with that and the psychology and how people deal with people being a trader. So it came from a very genuine place.
Having been in the trading community for a long time, getting the traders to talk was not difficult.  Also, we weren’t packaging it to sell it outside the trading community so with those things in place people felt comfortable talking to us and sharing their stories.

You know, as far as having successfully run one business and trying to apply that to another, there are two sides to it. I learned a lot from my first company and I could apply many lessons to setting up the magazine company, but on the other hand I had to appreciate that it was a completely new industry.  Therefore, I went and hired a tutor from The London College of Printing. I read every book that I could about how you start a magazine. I went and bought thousands of magazines and just studied them. I went and met people. I went online. I had to find a partner who was experienced in the publishing industry and have him help me work to build up the team so that we could actually start to create magazines. It took time, but I was thirsty for a new challenge and I like research. I like getting information so it was really a lot of fun.

One of the first lessons people may share is don’t be afraid to bring in a partner or get help in the industry so you don’t have to try to do it all yourself.

If you’re going to go to a new area you need to find a partner who is experienced, but you just can’t rely on that person to know everything for you. You still have to do the hard work and get up to speed. Partnering is definitely a great strategy for entering a new industry.

Okay, so you had Trader Monthly, you had Dealmaker and a few other magazines as well; they all seemed to come out at relatively the same time. Did that cause problems doing 3-4 different magazines all at once?

We had a central model, which was basically a sort of a Business Lifestyle and the controlled circulation model we had proved to be really successful. We were talking to advertisers about high end market opportunities anyhow. So we had one side of Wall Street which was the traders, and then we went to the other side of Wall Street which was the deal makers. So, you know, it made a lot of sense.

Then we went out, and we created a magazine called, Corporate Leader, which was about the top executives. We purchased and relaunched a magazine called Private Air. A lot of our readers were private aviation users, so that seemed to make a lot of sense as well. Then we launched another title, which was Cigar Report. Many of our guys smoked cigars, so again it all made sense and then we expanded into the UK.

London is the financial center of Europe and perhaps the world so that made a lot of sense and things were starting to heat up in Dubai. Then we went out and formed a partnership out in Dubai as well. The growth that we did geographically and within the different high end financial communities made much sense.

You sold the properties and most of the magazines have ceased publishing, correct?

Unfortunately, we actually ended up shutting the company down when the financial crisis hit. A couple of things happened. The advertising, obviously, dried up very quickly. The luxury market looked as if it wasn’t the best place to be with some people and then just the idea of celebrating the extensive earnings of Wall Street [didn’t seem ppropriate]. It wasn’t fun anymore.

Now was that surprising to you, because typically the luxury market is composed of people who can afford luxury goods. They buy despite what is going on in the economy.

There are luxury goods, and then there are super luxury goods. You know what I mean? You’re still going to wear suits, and you’re going to buy nice ones, but you know what? You might not take a G5 to Vegas for the weekend. So, we were kind of at the luxury and ultra luxury level. There was a time where people didn’t really want to be showing designer brands and indulging in luxuries publicly.

Was it difficult to shut the company down after putting so much time and effort into this adventure?

You know what? You just had to step back and take a look at it and ask ‘can this be fixed?’ ‘Can we ride it through?’ At that time you just didn’t know what the outlook was for the world. They were having emergency banking meetings and setting up  trillion dollar stimulus packages over the weekend, so I didn’t know what could be done, who would step up and stand beside us. I think that is another lesson. When it’s over you have to say, “It’s over.”
Why didn’t you go back to trading?

Well, you know what? I moved on. I had a phenomenal run as a trader and as an owner of a trading business. I took some time. I was a couple of years removed from that, and I was really into the world of media and had ideas I wanted to keep pursuing.

New York Times described MyMag as a company you co-founded to “produce single-issue magazines that, instead of being dependent on advertising, were essentially marketing vehicles for celebrities with strong fan bases.” Describe how you came up with the MyMag concept.

I was working in the world of magazines and as an outsider I had a really different way of looking at the economic model of creating income in a magazine and it seemed really inefficient to me.  The economics was kind of bazaar, but most of the industry accepted it because that is just the way that it was. What were they going to do about it? So, I was always trying to think,  “How you could create a magazine and sell it and have it be a more profitable model?”

One day, I read the book about Google and all of a sudden it just hit me: there are all these amazing trends that are happening, and Google is sort of at the forefront of these digital trends;  personalization, aggregation, targeted advertising. I just said to myself, “If I could bring those to the world of print magazines that would be a pretty amazing concept.” So I started to explore it, initially, from that point of view and then I realized that if people could choose their own content,  it [wold allow] you to look inside that persons mind. That is when the real soul of MyMag came about and that’s really what MyMag is today.

We are really a company that is able to attract interesting taste-makers and work with them to extract interesting information in order for them to share that with their fans. Also, the magazine format is a good platform for us to do that because you can take content from other magazines, you can reprint text and images and create a story.  Looking at digital trends and looking at the economic model of the magazine business led to it.

What do you think is specifically wrong with the profit model of magazines vs. what it is you’re trying to do with MyMag?

You have to remember; my perspective of the magazine industry was as an independent.  But, if you were to look at Condé Nast, I mean, they have so much momentum and are such a big machine with such big brands in their umbrella and it’s still working for them. So, what I am about to say comes from the viewpoint of an independent, but if you were to go to the newsstand you’re supposed to print ten magazines and hope to sell three.  But, you have to pay a wholesaler, retailer, and a distributor from that money and you wouldn’t see your little bit until 6 months later. That to me was just crazy. You know the idea that subscriptions had to be deeply discounted in order to try to build up a good audience was amazing. You’re paying for paper, and you’re essentially giving it away for free. You have to lose money in order to hope and pray that you’re going to get advertisers to cover that cost. I mean, there was nothing solid about it. When you really stop and look at it, you’re dependent on many factors. You’re really losing money, hoping to make money. When the advertising market became quite fickle to me, the writing was on the wall as an independent publisher.