Tom Hostage, Fdr of Bespoke History, Bespoke Reunion Publishing, Ptr of Hostage Brothers Printing

0:00 The topics and opinions express in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests, and not those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements radio show, programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability, explicit or implied shall be extended to W four CY Radio or it's employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W FOURCY Radio. Churchill said, those who failed to learn from history are condemned to repeat it. Kevin helen n believes that certainly applies to business. Welcome to Winning Business Radio here at W four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com and now your host, Kevin Helena. Thanks everybody for joining in today. I'm Kevin Hallan, and welcome back to Winning Business TV and Radio on w f C why dot com, streaming live on talkfo tv dot com, in addition to Facebook and that's at Winning Business Radio, as well as available in podcasts after the live show on lots of platforms including YouTube, iHeart, iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple, pretty much wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. The mission of Winning Business Radio and TV, as regular viewers and listeners now, is to offer insights and advice to help people avoid the mistakes of others, to learn best practices, the how tos, the

1:32 what too's, the what not tos. You know, to be challenged and hopefully to be inspired by the successes of others. But you know, virtually every successful person I've ever had a chance to talk to has had some form of failure in their lives and careers. So while we all have to get our knees skinned once in a while, I'm driven to keep those scrapes from needing major surgery. Let's endeavor to learn from history so we don't repeat it today. My guest is Tom Hostage, founder and president of Bespoke History, Bespoke Bok Reunion Publishing, and partner of Hostage Brothers Printing. Here's his bio. As one of ten children, Tom Hostage first wrote a book about his own large and lively family as a gift to his parents and their descendants.

2:12 That book became the foundation for his second business, Bespoke History. After graduating with a BS and Communications from Cornell eighty nine, Tom spent six years in corporate media sales prior to founding Hostage Brothers Printing, a Massachusetts based commercial printing and design firm, in nineteen ninety five. Tom founded Bespoke History in two thousand and six after writing and producing his first privately commissioned family history. He and his core team have produced over thirty Bespoke History books since their founding as a member of the association or excuse me, he is a member of the Association of Professional Personal Historians and affiliated with the Association of Professional Genealogists. That's kind of a mouthful. Bespoke has worked with captains of finance and industry, including two NFL families, producing privately commission and books to capture family and institutional legacies. Bespoke History produces privately commissioned memoirs and comprehensive family, corporate, and institutional histories. Bespoke History's goal is to help families and organizations preserve and celebrate their history and memories for the enrichment and enjoyment of future generations. Additionally, he refined the genre of college reunion books after founding Bespoke Reunion Publishing in twenty eleven, working with top universities, including Holy Cross, Fordham, Lehigh, and Providence College for more than a decade. He's a resident of Northborough, Massachusetts and a native of Bethesda, Maryland. Tom, Welcome to Winning Business Radio. Thanks for being here. Good to be here. I know you're

3:43 busy. I appreciate you taking the time, so tell people who may not be familiar with Bethesda tell us a little about the city and what it was like to grow up there. So bezzda. Maryland is right in the hub of Washington, DC metro area. It happens to be where the Marriott corporate was located, and my dad was a Marriott executive growing up. I'm the like I said, the eighth of his ten kids, and we were all raised in Bethesda. Anybody in Bethesda knows one of the hostages, most likely, but very you know, right in the heart of I grew up right around the DC monuments, going into Washington, d C. On a regular basis for any reason. I very spoiled in that regard. We left Bethesda when I was about eleven years old and relocated up to Boston, and I spent my formative years up in Boston, and that's where I've made my my business ever since. But so what were this grow up? That's awesome, that's that's awesome. What were your early interests during that time period. Well, you know, I was a sports guy. I was an athlete.

4:55 You know, I played football and lacrosse growing up. When I when I got in the college, I got hurt playing football, and my dad told me. I told him when I told my dad, Pop, I don't think I'm gonna you know, this is my last injury. Nobody's going to pay me to play football when I get out of here. And he said, well, then you better get a job then while I was at school. So I went to the local radio station in fact and and got some experience, and that's how I ended up in sports marketing and media sales when I got out of college, when I gravitated towards the only way to make money at the college radio station was to sell advertising, so I wasn't interested in being on the air. I went and sold advertising, made a little money, and figured out how to do that for a living for the first five or six years of my professional life. And it was at that point.

5:46 I have five brothers. There's four of us that could be called Irish twins were born like you know, right in a row and basically you know, and they were all working in the printing business up in Boston. And I was doing very well in media sales, but I really very close with my family, and there was an opportunity to take over another printing business, and my younger brother was graduating right behind me at Cornell, so I decided to pick it up and move up to Boston. After this is after I spent five years in New York after college, right went up to Boston, started a smoke, took over a really a dying little printing company and kind of turned it around with my brother, both of us having learned the business through working with our older brothers and vacations in summers and things like that.

6:42 I was going to ask and I ran that business starting in nineteen ninety five with my younger brother, and we you know, we grew one business, sold, got a bigger shop, had more employees, grew that And my story is very similar to a lot of stories I now write, which is two thousand and eight came along and the printing industry changed dramatically. It was you know, it had impacts on every industry but in the printing industry, obviously people were going right to their budgets to figure out where they could trim down and slice down. And also you have to remember we're into the digital age, where so many of the things that we used to produce, print products we used to produce are now pdfiles and whatnot. So on a number of levels that industry changed to a degree that I looked at my brother and to put a pin in that. By two thousand and eight, I had written my first book as a side game, just as something I was interested in doing. I wrote the history of our family, the Hostage Family, which I had to figure out how going to be a long book with ten kids? Yeah, well you know, and I traced our ancestry back to the fourteen hundreds in England and literally produced a very comprehensive family history. I was the white whale was trying to figure out how we got the name Hostage, but I wasn't able to necessarily answer that question. But I produced a really comprehensive book that detailed our family history. And in the process of doing that, I learned a lot and I really enjoyed it. So when two

8:13 thousand and eight came along to the printing industry. My brother came to me and said, listen, we got to stop taking paychecks for about six months so we can pay off these notes. Because at the bank we had a lot of big equipment that we had les is on. So the bank calls in our note, we're in trouble. So I decided you do this. I'm going to write books for a while. And I haven't looked back. That's thirty one books ago, and I still co owned Hostage Brothers Printing with my brother, and I still have a presence there. I was the outside man, he was the inside man, so I do have a connection there. And frankly, I looked at Bespoke as a way of helping my printing company because we designed and produce all of my books. And I started Bespoke re Union because when you do a family or a corporate history, it's a one off job. You do one book. It's not like continual renewable business, right right, right, Whereas I've just fatted the Reunion Company, which produces fiftieth college and reunion yearbooks for colleges like Holy Cross, Providence College, Fordham University, and that business is renewable. There's a new reunion every year.

9:24 So and I looked at that as a way to help my printing companies to stay around because there's been tremendous attrition in that industry. And that, you know, Hostage Brothers is still kicking and we're still in business and doing very well. And I'm now full been full time writing books now for a dozen years. Well tell me just stick on the printing company for just a second, just two minutes there, maybe not even two minutes. Who are your clients and what are your specialties in the printing company? So in printing, like in anything, we we found ourselves in a niche of the restaurant industry. And it really only happened that way because when I we made an acquisition of another we moved our business from Newton, Mass To Framingham, Mass.

10:15 Bought another company where the owner wanted to retire. He had a book of business. One of those clients was Legal Seafoods. Oh, the restaurant chain at the time. Today it's a great restaurant, great chain now. When this was nineteen ninety eight, and Legals only had seven restaurants back then, and they were a very local, preventional, little company family owned and we grew with Legal Seafoods. Basically, I went down there, made relationships with the key people there, and they said, listen, we're about to go on a huge growth expansion. They expanded the thirty five restaurants in the space of five years from that point, and they gave us a has to grow with them, and we did. You know, we kept adding equipment, adding people to facilitate their growth, and we became their primary vendor for men us back a house front of house marketing materials. I mean, the great part about it was a huge piece of business. The bad part about it is that it was too much of a ratio of our overall business.

11:22 Right, you lose an account like that and suddenly there's a giant hole. Fortunately we never lost Legal Seafoods, so that's the good thing. Until COVID came along, and then COVID changed everything in the restaurant industry. But for Hostage Brothers Printing, we developed this, you know, because of Legal Seafoods. We were able to attract brands like Bertucciese and Margarita, you know restaurants and add other similar regional change to our network of restaurant groups. That we did work with so that that kind of we worked that niche really well. We have other corporate clients. Obviously we're a business. We were business to business printers. So we're not looking for people walking in off the street saying, you know, I need to do a funeral brochure or something like that.

12:11 We are looking for businesses that have you know, value needs for and design needs. You know. In the printing business, it's so competitive, it's so price sensitive, turnaround sensitive, quality sensitive that it became a The price became the driving force, and the only way to overcome to make any money, frankly, was to find other ways to make money besides the printing parts. So we became a design company that happens to print. Right. How big is the team? We had a dozen people at our at our peak. You know that that has shrunk a bit with digital printing. We don't run presses anymore, right, so I don't need pressmen and I don't need a lot of the other people that I need. So we're doing similar numbers with sick people that we used to do with. It doesn't so it's not a huge company. Was a it was a regional business. Uh, we did well with it. And quite honestly it I went into that business to be self employed. I didn't go into that business because I was I was. I dreamed of being a printer right right, and and and I the the mental exercise of taking this business and figuring out how to make a living at it was stimulating for about five six years, and then between that between it's a tough business. It's a real grind of a business, just expressed. You know, price sensitive, quality sensitive, turnaround sensitive, you

13:41 name it, it's sensitive. And so for a lot of reasons, uh, you know, we decided that we need to evolve a bit. We became a design you know, graphic design company that happens to print, and printing became a lot less of the ratio of what we do. And when you when you control it clients design and branding, you're designing all their materials, you're designing their signage. It's just easier to do work with the guy that's designing it than go to another vendor to go get it produced. So because they can do the way to embed with our clients in essence, So that was and I, you know, I always say, I tell my daughter, who's twenty two and I'm trying to advise her on a career now she's out of college. I said to her, Listen, I never I never wanted to run a printing company, but I wanted to be self employed.

14:30 And frankly, I never really dreamed about writing books for a living either, Right but bye, where by where by running a printing company. I decided to write my first book because I had the infrastructure to produce beautiful printed products. I have designers, I have all the you know, print infrastructure. I happened to have a degree in history and communication for Cornell that I wasn't putting too much use. So I was like, well, I actually, you know, stretch my legs a little bit, and I really conceptualized a family history book project product that really was just a gift to my family. Right but the reaction that book got from people really put an idea in my head to put a shingle out and see if I see if somebody would pay me to do that for them. Right hould that thought right there?

15:22 We're going to come right back to that thought. We're going to take our first commercial break. We'll be back in about one minute with Tom Hostage, founder and president of Bespoke History, Bespoke Reunion Publishing and partner of Hostage Brothers Printing. Will be right back. You're listening to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helena on W four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com. Don't go away. More helpful information is coming right up right here on Winning Business Radio. Hi Christmas, Roger McGlenn, and you're listening to a company your Fury Radio. Have you ever dreamt of being on the radio, Well, now it's your chance be a radio show guest on the number one ranked internet radio station and promote you and your business for free. Yes you heard it, Free business advertising right here on W four cy dot com. Call five six one five zero six four zero three to one now to get booked on one of our shows. That's five six one five zero six four zero three to one. Get your free advertising now. And now back to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helene, presenting exciting topics and expert guests with one goal in

16:52 mind to help you succeed in business. Here once again, it's Kevin Helena. Welcome back with Tom Hostage. Tom tell us about the reactions from whom and what did they sound like? That's with regard to that first book. Yeah, so obviously the family, anybody's family history is interesting to that family. I found that there were a lot of people outside of our family that were interested in the historical components of what we do. I mean, our family lived through a lot of history in both American and even over in England.

17:38 So the reaction that I would get, the most commonly heard phrase was I would love to have something like this about my family, right. And it only took somebody. It only took hearing that for a year I think before I decided maybe there's something here. And but like anything else, I had to give some get somebody to give me my first break, right. So, because the fact is I worked for a year and a half on that book, and it was a lay and night, I mean, really a lot of research. I interviewed probably thirty forty people, my family members, other people, gathered genealogical research to really understand that, you know, the true underpinnings the framework of our family history, and then add detail and you know content, you know, color and onto that all of that.

18:32 So you know, that reaction, like I said, was I said, well, well, if people everybody would want something like this, for their family? How am I? How can I craft a business that could possibly do that for them? But then the hard part is how do you how do you charge for something like this? Right? I always said to people, if I ever added up the man hours I spent on that book, I probably, you know, curl up into a ball and I so that it's there's no automated way to do this. It's a man now. It's hardcore research, writing, editing, design work. And so how do you quantify that? How do you put a number on that and then make a proposal to somebody? So? And then how do I get somebody that?

19:19 And what I came back to is that this is going to cost tens of thousands of dollars per book, Right, this isn't something I can do for five grand or something like that I need. So therefore that has everything to do with the name be spoke. Right. I had a dear friend at the time who actually helped me write my business plan. He had gone to Yale, then he went to Oxford, and then he went to Harvard, and while he was in Oxford obviously spent a year in England. He's like, you know, you really have to consider the name be spoke, because what you do is really tailored, right, custom customized to that family, to that organization that you're writing for. And it's a word that the people who can afford your product will understand. And so let me pause you on that because I'm smiling because we just came back, my wife and I from two weeks ago in England and I learned the word be spoke and it's, you know, something you do for someone specifically, and we were in Oxford, it's an amazing city, but go ahead, go ahead. Well yeah, it was really I think, originally associated with tailoring, right, you want to be spoke to suit, right, But then somebody, you know, I created bespoke in two thousand and six. It's quite annoying to me, frankly that about five or ten years later I see them you spoke somewhere along the way. It was in a movie or was in something, and it became the popular name. Now there's a bunch of bespoke businesses out there, right. But the idea was to create to brand. It was in

20:52 a way that it appealed, It targeted a specific and at the time I started be spoke to write family histories, right, and you've done a lot more. We'll get into that, but you've done companies that I looked at the handcock of You Go Right in Maine. That's the actually the book I'm currently writing. So you were seeing work in progress. But the fact is I wanted, you know, I I'm very passionate about my family. You know, the story of Bespoke is that I was sitting around the family dinner table one day and one of my brother I was the kid of the of the ten kids who asked all the questions about where we come from, right. Nobody else seemed to care. And one of my brothers asked the question of my father. That told me, I can't even remember what the question was, but it told me that he knows absolutely nothing about our history, about our family, right. And that was the idea for writing the book.

21:42 I said, you know what you don't It really bothered me that he didn't know. You know that my mom's family came from a dairy farm, and they were German and Irish, and my father's family had come from England and this and that. So that was the that was the motivation to write the first book, and it was purely out of a gift to my family. Then that turned into recognizing that other people might like this. So I founded a business to write family histories. And like I said, somebody had to give me my first break. This gentleman, who I actually who met I met who advised me to give the name be Spoke, is a dear friend of mine named Michael Danziger. He passed away a few years ago.

22:26 Michael had founded a foundation in Boston called Stepping Stone Foundation, and it helps inner city kids who are good students in low performing schools get into some of the top prep schools in the New Region and you know, get a leg up in their life and just a fantastic human being. And so Mike said, well, Michael's the one who said, you know, you know, he suggested he spoke, and then he said, I'd like to be your first customer. And of course that's what I needed. I needed that first break, you know, because other than writing your own family story, how are you going to ask somebody to pay you fifty grand to write a book when you've you've really got only one book in your history. How are you gonna how you gonna yet, There's no way to do that job for you?

23:15 Know, depending on the on the book, you know, the range of the books goes quite a bit. We can talk about that. Yeah, you've also learned to scale, right of course. Yes, yeah, so, I mean but at the time, all I knew knew how to do was this incredibly constant, comprehensive history. And that's all I was thinking this business would be. And I learned over time that there's there's a whole number of books, you know. I usually have one or two massive major book projects and left the little ones piled up on top of it typically. But yeah, so family business eventually, no family stories eventually brought me to my first family business story, right, And that's I think part of why I am here. But enough, what is the process for capturing history?

24:07 Talk about interviewing people and doing genealogical research. Tell us about that. Yeah, so that's part of the bespoke aspect of it, is that every book project has its very unique requirements to get it done right some families, most families want to know at a minimum, when did our ancestors come to the US, right, maybe a little bit of the why and the how, right, and then mostly tracking that family family. However, many generations since they came to the US, right, and being in New England, I've met a lot of families that go quite a ways back, right, So that was sort of the initial thrust. And so therefore genealogy sort of like when you're building a house, you build a foundation. Well, genealogy is your foundation when you're doing it family history. So before you know, so the process is, first of all, you talk to your client enough times to understand what the perfect book for that client is, right. So I don't go into a project knowing what the book is going to be. I go in and have conversations with the client about why they even reached out to me in the first place, you know, and learn enough about their story to understand what the what they know and what they don't know, what they want to know. So it's so unique to each situation that there is no cookie cutter, you know, process or menu or price sheet. Every project is very unique in its challenges. Uh. Some families want to know the

25:41 history in the old country, right, So I've I've hired researchers, and I learned early on, right that I'm not a genealogist. I can do genealogical research. All of us can go on ancestry and do all that, and there's a really real genealogy is much more boots on the ground type of stuff, and you got to know what you're doing, and it's it takes a certain type of person to do it well right, And I realized I'm not that guy, so so I you know, that's why I joined the Association of Genealogists, so that I could tap into a network of researchers who are all more than happy to you know, there's not a lot of guys knocking on their door to hire them to do stuff, so it's fairly easy to hire people. And I look for researchers who have an expertise in the very specific you know, whether it's a geographical region or a type of business, whatever you know it is. I hire researchers, both genealogical and other types of researchers to help me gather the content I need to turn and assimilate it into a story, right sou So the process, like I said, first things first is to spend enough time with your client to understand to turn around and be able to show them a book plan for exactly the book that they would want, right and and only when we agree on what that is

27:11 do I then start making a plan to create that book. Right. I learned that are you able to set a budget earlier? Is that over time? Yeah? So I learned the hard way. So my first few books, my strategy was get them to commit as much money as I could possibly get them to commit. That was the strategy. And you know, feel them out enough and know enough about them and feel them out to know what range would work for them, because and depending on the book. In most cases, I was pitching books that were you know, year two year type projects, right right, So, and so what would happen is I go in and agree on a number with them, which was a wild wag, as they say, a wild ass guess, right, But you know, based on how much time I thought this and that would take. It was purely learning by experience. So what I learned is you have no idea what you're getting into until you start working on it and get deeper into the story.

28:14 So if you try to say, somebody, I'll do this book, I'll tell the story of five generations of your family for sixty thousand dollars and it'll have this it'll cover all these things and it'll have whatever genealogical research, research on your whatever whatever it is called for in the book. That line I would get commit to a number up front and then just go work on the book and end up probably over delivering by many times. Right. And I learned that I need to change my strategy for how I'm going to pitch these projects if I'm going to make it not a bleeding experience for me. So I learned to go in and sign phase one agreements. Right, So phase one allows me, is it relative to the total cost of the project?

29:03 Phase one is probably ten to fifteen percent? Right, Whatever I think the total project's number is going to be, this is probably ten to fifteen percent. So if I get them to commit to a Phase one number, it's typically in the ten to fifteen to twenty grand range, maybe you know, maybe less on a smaller book. That allows and for phase one, we agree what we're going to do in phase one and phase one, I'm going to interview this many people. They may give me a list of people they want to interview. I may put together that list. Whatever it is. We agree on a number of interviews, interview subjects, people to be interviewed. We agree on parameters of research that we're going to do right, very specific, like you want to know where your family came from in the old country and you want to know details, or you want the story to start here in the US from the point they came whatever that is, we define what those parameters of research are. So Phase one covers interview research and the third item is image sourcing. Right, our books are very visual, a lot of a lot of pictures, a lot of I like. I like that. I liken it to the ken Burns approach to family history books, where it's lots of pictures and cool memorabilia, letters and documents and stuff that brings the story to life. Right. I always said that with my uh, with my nine siblings, it's like I got some siblings that are voracious readers, and I got a couple that move their lips when they read.

30:30 So how do I get how do I write the book that this sibling can appreciate all the content and information there, and this sibling might be tricked into reading it by all the pictures an interesting visual component that that's how he knows he's been reading this book. Right. So, so again Phase one is is interviews research image sourcing, and so image sourcing really means we're going to come. You're going to give us access to the family. In a case of a family, they're going to give us access to old pictures, albums, basements, addicts, where boxes of whatever, an attic once in a while, Oh hell yeah, absolutely, and we you know, a lot of times I'll have to show up with a laptop and scanner and scan on site, or I'll send somebody to do that if it's going to be you know, days worth of scanning. But where possible, we get clients to let us bring boxes and crates some material back to our facility, scan everything and catalog and organize it so that at the end of phase one, I've recorded a number of interviews, I have transcripts from those interviews. I've done whatever research we agreed that we would do as part of phase one, and I've gathered hundreds of images that would potentially be used eventually in the layout of the book someday. And at the end of all that, I have a much better you know, the image sourcing aside from the interview in research, I have a much better understanding of the story that's to be told here,

32:04 and how hard it is going to be to do that, because some stories are easier than others. Right. I did an Icelandic family that was hard. You know, their whole naming patterns are very different. Obviously I don't speak the language. I had to hire translators and hire a researcher in Iceland to gather material, translate it and send it to me. So some projects are harder than others, and there's degrees of difficulties, right, And sometimes it's obvious, and sometimes you don't know until you get you've done your research and interviews to know like, oh wait, this is a way more complicated story than we were. You know, we were thrown around at the lunch the other day. You know, this is this is growing and expanding, and so that that conversation can be had within phase one and at the end of phase one, the deliverable from phase one as a book plan.

32:57 Right, Yes, it's also the archive of images we've gathered and it's research, you know, the interview transcripts we've gathered. But that's all just raw materials, right that we're going to use to put the meal. So so again, so at the end of phase one, I have I'm much better informed to tell them to put forward to phase two proposal. Phase two is the writing, editing and design of the book. Right at the end of phase two, you have a digital file for a book that's ready to go to press. Right fase, please pull that thought. Between phase two and phase three, we got to take one more commercial that'll take us to the end of the show. We'll be right back with Tom Hostage in about one minute. You're listening to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helene on W four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com. Don't go away. More helpful information is coming right up right here on Winning Business Radio. Hey, this is Elliot Lewis of Holland Oates and you're listening to W four CY Radio.

34:07 Whatever. The yp dot com website is your local search engine. If you're looking for a good restaurant, it can help you find the right one nearby with ratings and reviews. Or if your car breaks down, you can use the yp app to find the closest repair shop. Or maybe you're just looking for something to do on a Friday night. While it has great local coupons for all sorts of things in your area, no matter what, when or where, if you're looking for something, yp Local Search can help you find it, So go to yp dot com or download the app to search local, find local, and save local. And now back to Winning Business Radio with Kevin helenan presenting exciting topics and expert guests with one goal in mind to help you succeed in business. Here once again, it's Kevin Helena. We're back with Tom Hostage, founder at president of Bespoke History and Bespoke Reunion Publishing.

35:10 Take us now into phase three. We've got phase one, Phase two. What's phase three? So Phase two is writing and designing the book, right, that is by far the most lengthy and expensive component of the whole project. You know, at the end of phase two, we delivered We've been delivering chapters for the client to read and bet and feedback. So at the end of phase two, the book has been approved by the client, the client has read drafts, we've made revisions, we've made design changes, and the book file is ready to go to print. And then phase three is pre production. And phase three is obviously that feeds back into my original printing company and that helps that business, right, But obviously printing is a variable cost, so it's never part of the package up front, camera here and getting in the sun. So yeah, so that's that's really where the rubber hits the road in phase two. That's that's the big price point of the project. And and it's you know, phase one is pretty easy to quantify what it's going to take to get done. Phase two is is the is much more unknown. And you've got to do phase one before you even try to price and outline phase two. And these are limited publications, correct, Yeah, we produce you know, as I think I put in the name, you know, we privately commissioned histories. Right now. Having said that, I've had a couple of clients I've done I've done memoirs for for

36:44 individuals, interesting personal you know. A lot of the clients, a couple of CEOs along the way, have wanted me to write their personal story or help them write their personal story. I've actually been the ghostwriter writing and the first person voice for this person, right And I've had one guy who who decided that book was so he got such great feedback from all his friends and family that this book should go on Amazon. And so we've had a number of those, but they're really not produced with that in mind that you know, for instance, Hancock Lumber is a pretty good example. This company in Maine that's hired me to write their one hundred and seventy five year history. One of the first read questions I have for a client like that is, what are you going to do with the book? You know, why are you hiring me? Right? They want to obviously celebrate their one hundred and seventy five year anniversary. But right, so, who's going to read this book? Who's my audience that I'm writing to, right, And typically that audience in a family, it's I'm writing to the descendants. I'm writing not just to the family that's here, but to this future generation. Right, I'm speaking of that when I write those books. When I'm writing a corporate history, I find that I'm writing to an audience of people who work in the business, or who do business with the company, or obviously you know, board members or our books in the business sphere are used as public relations.

38:10 Uh, They're used as to establish, you know, obviously the story of the company and the culture. I would say corporate culture is the biggest reason companies hire me to write their history. They want to capture the essence of who they are. It's just you know this out here just like I just as I said to my brother, you know, you don't even know who we are, you know, as a family, if you don't know where we come from. Right, same thing with the business, you know, if you if you want, if you have a great corporate culture that's been in place for four or five generations of a family business, how do you sustain that? How do you keep the same value system and you know, uh culture that you work so hard to create? And this these books really drill down on establishing what that corporate culture is, but that value system is, and how it can be you know, sustained into future generations of the company. So give the audience, Uh he can name names if you want, you don't have to, but just describe the different projects you've done.

39:10 Sure, and by the way, we haven't talked much about reunion yet. You can introject some of that as well. Absolutely on the business side. For instance, there's a company Herschel Hospitality in Philadelphia. I read on that one. Yeah, it was interesting. Yeah, And so I mean that's that's an immigrant story, that's an American you know dream story, right head to the title. You know, we call it an American story because that family is so proud of having come over here in the sixties with nothing and built their business from from one little, you know, dingy motel in the Harrisburg you know, on the outskirts of Harrisburg into a hotel empire of hundreds of high end you know, four and five star hotels. Right.

40:00 So that's that's an example of a company that hired me. Both from the family perspective, they wanted this is the second generation that hired me, but you know, the third generation was was maybe ten and you know, in their teens, and they wanted that generation to really appreciate where they come from and how we didn't just arrive here at this level, right, We got here by a lot of toil and hard work and sacrifice. And that's the story that they want to bring forward, you know, the line, you know, to celebrate, but also to inform future generations. Right. It's it's not just to capture the story to glorify the story. It's too so you learn something from it. You know, the next guy is going to learn something either he's about him or herself by by knowing your ancestors. You get to know yourself by knowing what they you know, the different characteristics of them and what they went through. It helps with you understanding yourself and understanding how your company was built and put together and what went into that story helps workers and you know, people in the company and people in its atmosphere understand you know who they are and why they do business. So other examples, I mean in terms of I've done a lot of real estate executives, it seems in the last couple of years all of them have a story about two thousand and eight, right, A lot of Homan, a lot of boom

41:30 and bus stories in the real estate industry, and even the Harsher story had had an element of that because that company changed entirely in two thousand and eight. They were positioned well to take advantage of the downpricing and the market position right. They were under flippers, right, and so they did acquisitions and they built their business. You know, they came out of that better than before. So so businesses I you know, obviously I tend to write for multi generational family businesses. That is another example, and that's a local company for those foods and yeah, that's Chelsea, Massachusetts, which is cam hot Dogs. I don't know if you're in New York, so, oh you're busting guy. Okay, So so you know, the brand and hot dogs I learned in doing that book are very provincial. Like they in Maine they eat certain brand of hot dogs. In this part of Connecticut they eate a certain brand of hot dogs. And they're very loyal to their brands, right, Hey, I am. Actually one of their growth strategy was to acquire those brands but keep their branding, you know. And so they were producing those brands, but you know, keeping the branding because of the community, the geography was so loyal to that branding. Keep well, as I learned the recipe for hot dogs, isn't that much difference, right, very little difference that Yeah, that's funny. Yeah. So uh so all manner of

43:01 companies. But you know, in the case of of of KM, that's a company that was celebrating it's it's Polish heritage. There's a huge Polish community in that in that Chelsea area that generations of families have worked in that business. Right. So again, why you know, when I talked to the guys that came, then why are you hiring me, what is the point? And and and for them, they literally wanted to to to preserve, capture and preserve their history in this city of Chelsea. And and and to make clear that, you know, they reinvested a lot. They could have moved that business a lot of places. Chelsea's you know, a tough, pretty tough part of the city. Right, So, but they stay loyal to that area. And and and you know there hopefully will be part of a resurgence in that area. But the point is they were they were driving home their roots in the community and not only just the business, but all the people all around who generations of those families have worked in the business.

44:07 So well, we're running against the clock. Tell us a couple of examples on the reunion side, the college university side. So I started with Holy Cross univers which is right in Worcester, right in my backyard. And I had gone to my college reunion, and a buddy of mine and got to his and he went to Harvard, of course. And so Harvard has their little Red Book that they do for all their classes every year. Right they I said, nice product allows the execution. Right. The Harvard Red Book is an annual a reunion book that is put out for that reunion class. It is very dry, you know, no pictures, a lot of cookies.

44:49 It looks like a dictionary, right. I said, let's take let's take that and do something much more compelling with it. So we have the full color version that has you know, people's pictures and pages. People get to upload their stories and pictures to their class. It's like an old fashioned version of a faithbook page right, But for a generation you know, fifty three d in classes are average about seventy two years old, right, And so this book I sell it to the college as listen, it's a way to do something really great for your alumni at a significant anniversary tranquily. And it's also a period of time when they're getting into their estate planning and you know, donating money to the institution. So it doesn't hurt to have a reminder that's sitting on their coffee table for the next five years of their ties to that. And it's brilliant, you know. So I pitch it to the alumni office as you're doing something greatful reunion. I pitch it to the advancement office as it's a trojan horse. I hate to call it that, but you know it is very much a trojan It is kind of it giving you intelligence on the people who are most likely to give you money from that institution. So it's a coffee table see if another you know there's reference.

46:04 It's a coffee table book in the shape of a coffee table. It's a hard yeah, right right. You know me tell you I really resisted calling it a coffee table book because of that Snifeild episode. But when I started to realize that, it was instant recognition. You know, in anything, you want people to figure out what it is you're selling as quickly as easily as possible. He spoke, history doesn't really tell you that automatically. But everybody knows what a coffee table book apparently is, thanks to Jerry Seinfeld. So it's there for a long time. It's it's consumable. This is what I see anyway. It's consumable. It's what's the word has longevity it again, I use the word embedding. You know, you're embedding your school's brand and your school's nostalgic connection too in the home, and it's designed to stick around. It's not a pamphlet, it's not a soft cover thing that's going to look all gear and I'll hold that up one more time. Absolutely, it's a hardcover book, will color, very comprehensive. We also for those on the radio, it is beautiful. It is full color, just gorgeous.

47:15 You know. We also interview, so we do something that's different. There's other companies that do reunion books. We took a big spoke history angle at it. We interview twenty thirty guys from that class, and we write this really comprehensive retrospective of what it was like to be at Holy Cross from nineteen sixty six to nineteen seventy and using their voices from the interviews to tell the stories, and we gather pictures from the archives and from the old yearbooks and present this twenty four page article called Flashback. That is the other component of their book besides all other pages. And that's something that only a be spoke history is going to do for you. Nobody else in our little niche of reunion yearbooks will go to that lane. And that's so go ahead, love that. I love that. Sorrt interrupt. We have time for just a couple of questions here. Who are in the listening and viewing audiences should reach out to you and one will put the crawl up your contact information up.

48:09 Now, sure who should reach out and why? Well, obviously multi you know, anybody who cares about their family history, who has a big family of future descendants that are inheriting a family name or a family business, they want to pass on that story. So everybody's got a family. So that's a pretty you know, broad group. Small to mid size family businesses fit very well for us, right, multi generation, three, four and five generation family businesses. Those are especially a good fit for us because they tend to be regional, you know, they tend to be of a scope and size that works well for us in terms of the number of people that would be involved in interviewing and research. So family businesses, families who want to preserve their history, and obviously in the in the bespoke reunion, realm small and medium colleges. This doesn't you know, I couldn't do this at Cornell where I would school. Right, it has to be a school that's of a medium size. Hol across his own is perfect, right, you know, class sizes of about six seven hundred as opposed to five thousand.

49:24 Right, that's that's so anybody who's interested in uh people with a lot of grandchildren and a lot of future generations who have a story, they want them to know that that that basically might inform them how to live their lives. You know, have some kind of a moral and ethical compass to their lives. That's important. Teach them a work ethic, teach them that we didn't just get here to this level of of you know, socio and economic status. It took something to get here, and it gives them a more of a respect for what they have, right, It's an awesome way to pass that on. That's what I said. Absolutely as well. For those that are on the radio, share your listening on the radio, share your phone number and email address. It's uh bespokehistory dot com, so b E s p o k ehistory dot com and the phone is five zero eight two five four five four four to two. Perfect. This has been fun for me.

50:30 It's it's kind of a different type of business and we've focused on in the past, and that's why I jumped at the opportunity. And so thank you for being here, and I really appreciate you making the time. Yeah me, you're happy. I'm happy to provide it and thanks to everybody for watching and listening. This is a show about business, uh sometimes business challenges. If you've got concerns about the growth of your company, feel free to reach out to me. You can find me on Facebook or LinkedIn at Winning Business Radio or drop me a note. One of my many email addresses is kevinat Winning Businessradio dot com. Our company is Winning Incorporated. We're part of Sandler Training. We develop sales teams into high achievers and sales leaders into true coaches and mentors. Listen, We're not right for everybody, but hey, maybe we should have a conversation. Thank you as always to produce or an engineer wan f another job well done. Thank you onan. Be sure to join us next week. That's Monday, October ninth, when my guests will be Rosa Sophia, managing editor of Mobile Electronics Magazine. She does a lot of other things too, but that's the context in which that interview will take place. Until then, thanks for being here. This is Kevin Hallanan.

51:37 You've been listening to Winning Business Radio with your host, Kevin Helenan. If you missed any part of this episode, the podcast is available on Talk for podcasting and iHeartRadio. For more information and questions, go to Winning Business Radio dot com or check us out on social media. Tune in again next week and every Monday at four pm Eastern Time to listen live to Winning Business Radio on W four CY Radio W four c y dot com. Until then, let's succeed where others have failed and win in business with Kevin Haleanan and Winning Business Radio