Popular Articles

Sweet marketing music

Tanner Montague came to town from Seattle having never owned his own music venue before. He’s a musician himself, so he has a pretty good sense of good music, but he also wandered into a crowded music scene filled with concert venues large and small.But the owner of Green Room thinks he found a void in the market. It’s lacking, he says, in places serving between 200 and 500 people, a sweet spot he thinks could be a draw for both some national acts not quite big enough yet for arena gigs and local acts looking for a launching pad.“I felt that size would do well in the city to offer more options,” he says. “My goal was to A, bring another option for national acts but then, B, have a great spot for local bands to start.”Right or wrong, something seems to be working, he says. He’s got a full calendar of concerts booked out several months. How did he, as a newcomer to the market in an industry filled with competition, get the attention of the local concertgoer?

read more
by Andrew Tellijohn
November 2004

Related Article

Upsize Growth Challenge: Papa Lemon Enterprises

Read more

Marketing


Publisher hopes political
fever will boost
‘Believe Again’ sales

Phyllis Stenerson has long been active in Democratic politics in Minnesota. This year she emerged from the March caucuses inspired to write a book about patriotism.

“My main thing is good government. This division and hate and lies, it could be fatal,” she believes. So she compiled patriotic quotations from Isabel Allende, Noah Webster, Theodore Roosevelt and many more, and rushed her book into print. It’s called “Believe Again in America: Quotations from Diverse Voices.”

Because speed was important, Stenerson decided to self-publish the book. “I know I didn’t have time to find a publisher, because it’s months and months,” says Stenerson, who spent about $10,000 on the project. “I decided to dig the lint out of my pockets and go for it.”

Progress is slow on the sales front. She’s trying to get book distributors interested, and she’s gotten it into a couple of influential independent bookstores. She’s also gotten favorable comments from political luminaries Walter and Joan Mondale, and personally handed it to a John Edwards aide when he was in town over Labor Day.

“It’s going to take the Oprah show to make it big, big, big,” Stenerson says.

Stenerson’s company name is Paideia, an ancient Greek philosophy of educating for citizenship to create an ideal society. She also publishes lines of greeting cards with words of wisdom, the latest of which was purchased by the owner of the local Bibelot retail chain.

Stenerson says about the book: “It’s having influence. That’s what I want the most. It has set up conversations about the meaning of patriotism, so I’m thrilled with that.”

Phyllis Stenerson, Paideia: 612.331.1929; info@wisethoughts.com; www.wisethoughts.com