ItsFestive.com

Ten Years Later, Two Years Ago & The Present

Posted on 22. Dec, 2008 by Dave in Fire & EMS, Friends & Family, Random Musings

So this month marks quite a few anniversaries of sorts, highs and lows … but proof that life just has those highs and lows and it’s all about taking them as they come and moving forward.

Ten years ago this week, Chris Hebert and I launched Firehouse.com from the friendly confines of my little spare bedroom on Indian Lane in College Park. The Firehouse Magazine people were not thrilled. Hate is perhaps too a strong word, but they sure as hell didn’t want a bunch of punk kids in their early 20’s taking their brand and doing who knows what with it online. Luckily for us (and the Firehouse brand), the leadership of parent company Cygnus (at the time) was comprised of two dynamic former Turner executives in Gerry Hogan and Blair Schmidt-Fellner.

I’ve relayed many times over the years how Chris and I walked into that conference room at the offices of Firehouse Magazine in the Fall of 1998 with this CRAZY idea for a Web site under the Firehouse.com brand. We talked about news, photos, training … all stuff Firehouse Magazine was infamous for. This was THE magazine we’d grown up reading as firefighters. I’d been to the Firehouse Expo a bunch of times by this point. And although I’d somehow managed to have a cover shot on Firehouse Magazine a bit before this, being in the ‘hub’ of the Firehouse brand was quite a bit imposing.

So needless to say, when the wise ole’ publisher of Firehouse Magazine at the time looked at us kids like we were crazy talking about making MONEY online (suggesting a few hundred grand a year in revenue … perhaps) followed by the long standing editors reminding us that photos and news is what the MAGAZINE did, so why replicate (or beat it) on the Web, well … we were about six feet under the table about to cry.

That’s when this guy at the end of the table asked us what research we had done to possibly prove this was a viable concept. I dramatically pulled this pile of printed-out surveys that we had lugged up to Long Island from Hyattsville where a few hundred users had happily indicated all the fun things they’d love to see on a Firehouse Web site. Ya know … news, photos, training — sound familiar?

This “guy” turned out to be the President of the company, Blair. He had to get a flight back to Atlanta shortly, but he basically said “OK, let’s be partners.”  And that was that. A bit of shock and disbelief on both sides of the table I can assure you.

A few months later, on Christmas Day 1998, Firehouse.com was born. A year later, the site was at the forefront of coverage from the Worcester Six tragedy in Massachusetts. The Emergency! Fest at the HVFD (sponsored by Firehouse.com) followed in 1999. Fire Grants and 9/11 followed, then Ladder 49 and just about every other cool thing in between — including a tornado hitting the office. The site was at the forefront of fire service information delivery online. (Check out this story about FH.com’s 5th Anniversary)

This was before blogs, before ‘competition’  … and really was one of the first models of a successful ‘magazine brand’ portal in B2B media. We didn’t quite get all the “stock options” we were originally assured of, and I made some dumb contractual decisions here and there … but really at the end of the day all those things helped us survive the “dot com” crash and thrive after it. We had fun, we made great friends and had some awesome people work for us. Our first nine full time employees stayed for the first five years. We met celebrities, we walked the red carpet — and we helped raise $50M for families of fallen 9/11 heroes.

So that gets us up to December 2006. That was when I managed to break up (putting it mildly) with my ex-wife (is that how you word that? was she technically the ex then?) AND stop working for Cygnus the same WEEK. Mildly life altering. I say “stop working” because that’s the P.C. way to say it. By that point in 2006, I was Vice President of Interactive and responsible for quite a bit more than Firehouse.com. And after Cygnus failed to sell in 2006, the new regime found a slew of new execs to run the place. And as Forrest Gump would say, “That’s about all I have to say about that.” Wait, has Cygnus sold yet? Anyway….

Needless to say the next few months that followed, well…sucked. You don’t really think about having to pay your mortgage until you don’t actually have a job. (You also don’t think about having a house in Baltimore for absolutely no reason until you don’t have a wife in Baltimore … and I’ve still got it if you know someone looking for an overpriced row house that won’t actually sell until 2011 … I digress.)

My old CEO at Cygnus and I toyed around with some new business ideas, but mostly I sat around in my pajama pants (or something) eating take out for a few months. To this day, I thank the movie Borat (and a few good friends) for getting me through that time. Hard to believe THAT was only two years ago.

By Spring of 2007, I was on my way to working at Red 7 … whose CEO is a firefighter. Coincidence or Karma, either way, things were turning back in the right direction. The divorce was no big thing and I even managed to find myself a nice lass along the way.  I launched FirefighterNation.com that Summer, exactly six months and a day after leaving Cygnus … and, well that gets us on the path back into public safety online.

Last month I started my own company, bringing Chris back into the fold and enticing Paul Andrews, our ole’ sales guru (I mean that as former, not old…) Paul back into the frey. We’re working with what used to be “the competition” with the JEMS and FireRescue brands. There’s great opportunity to create some cool things for first responders.

Plus, Red 7 Media is growing fast and my former CEO and CFO’s new company, HMP,  is in the frey keeping us on our toes in varying verticals. It’s publishing and event markets one minute (if you’re in magazine media, be sure to come to the FOLIO Growth Summit in Chicago this March, especially the eMedia Strategist Summit I helped program!), cardiology and dermatology the next (check out the CathLabLive.com beta site) … with public safety wrapping up the day (thankfully, Elseiver’s West Coast hours help keep us sane.) And we’re only in the first two months!

We’re doing the same types of things we did 10 years ago at Firehouse.com — helping turn great magazine (i.e. print) brands and transforming them into multi-platform offerings for dynamic markets. Only now we can do it faster, cheaper and a heck of a lot more efficiently in an environment that is complimentary and cooperatively — not competitively. BIG difference.

Not that I want to paint a picture that it was all about being competitive with print, but that WAS the culture at publishing companies in the 90’s and early this decade — everywhere, not just at the former company. Print and the Web would have separate staffs, openly compete for the same dollar and eyeball. Now, it’s all about the brand and deliverying content, community and commerce WHERE the user wants it — and letting that drive everything else. It’s super duper better. (I was a journalist….so that’s intentionally bad yet humorous English.)

So, 10 years later … I celebrate the 10th anniversary of Firehouse.com on the sidelines with Chris here too. It IS a bit odd. But at the same time, would I rather still be there doing what I had been doing those eight years? Not that there wasn’t more work to do, but … it would have always just been more of the same. Nothing new and certainly not our own company where we can choose great companies and partners to work with — and we’ve been blessed going into 2009 with both.

There are a few folks left who were there at Firehouse.com in the beginning — well, at least one anyway. Plus all of our peeps there who joined us over the years and have hung on and even tolerated us now as we’ve become competitors. (Well, at least for a few months … until we truly compete..lol). But here’s a tip of the hat (or helmet as the case may be) to that initial team who launched Firehouse.com and joined us in the first years after — Mike, Jenni, Heather, Tim, Brian, Pete M, Lon, Pete P … I’m forgetting some I’m sure.

We built something great that made a difference. And even as we’re all somewhere else doing all sorts of things, I think it’s definitely appropriate to take some time now to reflect on what, at the time, was truly one of a kind. We could no’t have done it without you guys (and gals). Firehouse.com was only a success because of a team of dedicated people, many of whom grew up around the fire service — which certainly didn’t hurt.

In an opening commentary on Christmas Day in 1998 by Firehouse Contributing Editor Charles Werner (now Chief of the Charlottesville, Va. FD), he quoted me saying: “Firehouse.com promises to be the most comprehensive website dedicated to the emergency service community.” And I hope we truly accomplished that — at the same time I hope to do it again!

Somewhere in between I’m managing to have a bit more of a personal life than I had those first few years at Firehouse. No sleeping at the office these days … ah, the dot com memories. I enjoy the weekends more, I don’t sweat the small stuff or get quite as carried away with things as I did in my younger years. I’m 34 and feel like I’ve lived a lifetime — with a few lifetimes to go thankfully (maybe more if I can lose like 30 pounds). Plus I’ve got time (and the resources) to take care of my ailing mother and her husband the way a good son should.

Life is all about moving forward. That’s a pretty good phrase when you have started a company called “Go Forward“  … because ain’t no one going to work with a company named “Go Backwards” unless you make back up alarms for ambulances. Life has ups and downs — it isn’t how you got as high as you could — or ended up at the absolute bottom. It’s all about how you react to both, and especially how you take the downturns in stride, learn your lessons and recover to be better than before.

And isn’t that what going forward is all about?

Anyway, my next blog may be of my last true Emergency! experiences. On my way from L.A. to Disneyland next weekend I’m planning to stop by L.A. County Station 127 in Carson — the firehouse that served as ‘Station 51′ in the TV series. Maybe then I’ll finally burn myself out again from the show … I would have met the cast, drove in Squad 51 and been in Station 51. The only other thing I could do at this point is write a remake of the show. And believe me, I’ve already gotten shot down there by an exec from the Weinstein Company, so … doubtful.

So to sum up … always Go Forward and Have a Great Holiday!