The Secrets to Staying Relevant in Media & Luxury | Christopher Gialanella’s Playbook

0:00Christopher Gialanella:In December, we had Billie Eilish on our cover, and that opened the doors to a Barnes & Noble national distribution. I still do that, Mara. I still knock on doors, because I love to do it.

0:30Hi, and welcome back to the Build Pod, where authenticity trumps authority. I am really excited. I'm always excited about the guests that we have on. But for those of you tuning in for the first time, my name is Mara Dorn.

0:43Christopher Gialanella:Hi, Mara. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here on this rainy day. Yeah, it's good. Which is why I'm wearing a sweater and a hat. You look good. I like your outfit. Because it's a little rainy here. You're debating. My fun shoes. I love your shoes, but you were debating I like the no socks thing. That's like hip and cool. Yeah, I do the no socks. Yeah, I think it looks good. Thank you. You look good. So amongst everything now, you're like a fashion guru. Exactly. So it's so cool. So tell me, I know that you're not from the West Coast. I know that you're from New Jersey. I'm a Jersey boy.

1:11Yes, my family is from Hackensack. Oh, fun. Okay. My grandmother had a store in Hackensack, a shoe store.

1:16Christopher Gialanella:They did? Yeah. Frank Sinatra is from Hackensack. Really? Yeah. I wonder why my grandma loved Frank Sinatra. Yeah, we all love Frank Sinatra from New Jersey. And Bruce. And Jon Bon Jovi. But anyway, it's fun. I've been out in LA for 30 years. So I'm more of an Angeleno now than a Jersey boy. So how did you, okay, so I know that you started in sales. Yes. Door to door, knocking. I don't know if you know. I still do that, Mara. I still knock on doors because I love to do it. Yes, that's where I started. Anybody that has done sales, it's like a high that you get. Yeah. Right? Like I love sales. If I could still sell insurance, I would do it.

1:47I loved it because when I would make that sale, it was like, got them. It's such a good feeling. So I also started out in sales door to door, business to business, selling health insurance. I'm still, well, now I'm the senior regional sales leader. But you, my dear, have elevated to the top of the game. So what was that? So you started, okay, then I know you had a mentor that really got you into the whole idea of publishing. So how did you, just give me your whole background.

2:16Christopher Gialanella:I'll give you the quick elevator pitch because I don't have all day, right? Or do we? I don't know. I mean, whatever you want. I moved out here in 94 with a company based in New York. It was called PIMS. and I was an account executive and had a choice between Chicago and LA. If you're given that choice, you say, I'm going to LA. Yeah, for sure. So I moved to LA and hadn't been here. I actually came to visit during the OJ chase. That was like the first time I came to LA. I'm like, this place is nuts, but I want to be here. So I moved here and worked for this company for six years. And I met my wife, who was my girlfriend at the time, who's now my wife.

2:48Christopher Gialanella:And she brought a copy of this magazine home and said, you would be really good in sales. I'm like, what do you mean? She goes, well, you know so many people, you talk to everybody. So I decided to call the person who was running that magazine. It was called Angeleno Magazine, which is still out today, Michael Kong. And I said, I have no experience whatsoever, but I hear salespeople get paid commission. So you kind of have nothing to lose by bringing me on board. Let's see what I can do. I love that. So he immediately brought me on board. And the best thing was they just launched and I shared an office with him.

3:20Christopher Gialanella:So I literally got to know every single thing about publishing, the magazine world, how to dress, what to say on a sales call from Michael Kong, who was the founder of Modern Luxury. So he was sort of the first person that kind of took a chance on me that got me where I sort of am today. Yeah. You know, you said some really, just pulling out some really important tidbits that you said. I love how you said that you knew every facet of what you were doing. And that's really important when you are in business in general is knowing that you're not too good because you've already done every tier, everything possible in the industry, and it makes you well-versed.

3:57So I call it in my industry a multifaceted agent or a multifaceted leader. And that makes you a lot more relatable. But I love that you said that because it's so true. Working every tier, knowing how to dress, knowing every single intricate detail of what you're doing is so important. And I'm sure that's exactly why you are so successful.

4:15Christopher Gialanella:And even like when coming here today, I think we were talking about this, I don't like to be late ever. I think it's a sign of like selfishness in a way where even when I interview people like for a job, if they're like 10 minutes late, I'm like, I'm kind of not really interested. I just literally had this conversation in the car on the way over here. I think being late is so rude because it's disrespectful to somebody else's time. So I'm always, I have such bad anxiety about being late because I don't ever want to disrespect your time. Exactly. And if you're running late, call or text. I get it.

4:46Christopher Gialanella:Sometimes you are late. But not two hours late. Two hours late is a little obnoxious. I totally agree. I get it. Things happen in LA. If you've never been here, you don't know the traffic. Half hour, okay. But an hour to two hours, that's excessive. I'm not with that. So first impressions are everything. That's the other thing too that I always learned in my early days, in my 20s. What do you mean by that? The way somebody looks? Because you only have one chance. I think either how you present yourself on the outside and also how you present yourself on the inside. saying, hello, how are you? Simple things, you know?

5:17Christopher Gialanella:I always feel like sales is like a first date. You always want to ask so many questions to see if it makes sense to continue the relationship. Because our world, as you know, Mara, it's all relationships. Yes, 100%. People buy from people that they trust. Yes, I agree with you. I mean, you kind of said it better. It's so true in sales. The best advice I ever got from my ex-husband, bless his heart, and I love him. I will, I do, I actually really like him. The best thing he told me is that you have to know a little bit about everybody. So anybody that you meet, you're relatable, whether it's one word in their language, whether it's something, it doesn't matter what it is, something about their cultural food.

5:55And I literally think I know something about every culture, every person that I meet. And I do it intentionally because you're right. It's about building relationships. And when you're in sales, you have to build that relationship. from i think it's anything not even just sales right business in general and i'm assuming just from talking to you that you probably run a very thriving um business within an amazing culture i see your energy and your energy is like infectious you can feel it you come in like i already saw you come hey how are you you don't even know who we are oh hey but is this like what you do in your business like same type of culture you're having everybody engaged people are laughing i i just

6:34Christopher Gialanella:think your energy is you know it's so funny mar you say that like when everybody was home during the pandemic and worked from i was like the person who did not enjoy working from home because it was so hard for me because i was i kind of like work off other people's energy so like not being in office was really tough because i feel like in our line of work and media you want to be around everybody you want to come up with ideas and oh this client wants that does anyone think we should do this or so it was always harder for me but now that we're kind of back you know we're back in the office. Our office is actually in downtown LA.

7:06Christopher Gialanella:So it's kind of fun to be back in that environment because you want to learn off everybody else. And one thing that I always learn, like, yeah, I am the leader and the president publisher, but I'm learning something new every day from my team. Yeah. And even like the younger people who, you know, they know so much about social media and like things that I don't really know that much about. So we're always learning from each other, which is really kind of nice. Are you intimidated by the younger people? Because I'm going to be honest with you i i used to be the hottest i want to be clear i was the hottest youngest uh right i was and one of the few females in my business you're not 24 mar you look i love you i love you you're my new best what i love you but as but as i've gotten more seasoned um there's new people that come in and i i don't know that i don't i don't think that i feel intimidated by them i think i'm intimidated by the new ideas that they're bringing in yeah from technology and knowing social media and just their world.

7:59So how do you feel about it in yours?

8:00Christopher Gialanella:I mean, it's important because our world, obviously, when I first started in the magazine world, it was just the magazine, right? Now we're the magazine, we're digital, we're events, we're social media. So it kind of all mixes together. So I feel like that group who do our social media, I learned so much from. And interestingly enough, I mean, we could talk about the fires in LA, but our Instagram just kind of blew up because LA Magazine is a new source. People come to us for current event news, politics, sports, and luxury, and with the best places to eat, the best places to go on a hike. So it was interesting during the fires, we did a lot and we got a lot of coverage and a lot of people started following LA Magazine more than ever.

8:42Christopher Gialanella:And I even started, and you'll appreciate this being an East Coaster, when the fires came out, everybody thought the entire city was on fire, the way the news presented it. So like I was getting phone calls from my cousins, my friends from college, like, what is going on? Are you okay? I'm like, I'm in Marina Del Rey. I'm fine. So I decided to do my own daily updates where I was saying what was happening. And a lot of people really appreciated that because everyone was worried. But I was out of harm's way. Obviously, it was so devastating to see what was happening in our city. But it was in areas that weren't around where I currently was living.

9:16Christopher Gialanella:So it was kind of like good that we were able to have the platform of social media to showcase that. Well, you actually led into one of the questions I have for you. So with the world evolving and going into, you know, social media and digital, you still have print. Yeah. So I know for me, like, I prefer to have something that I can read in my hand. Maybe it's my, maybe that's what ages me. But I prefer, even when I read a book, I can't read it off a Kindle or an iPad. I have to have the physical, same thing with magazines. I love magazines. I'm just not going to, it's not, I don't like that. So you've been able to keep that alive, which magazines have been around for decades.

9:54Yeah. So are you ever planning to fully take out the print world, or do you think it brings a specific component to the business that should never die?

10:02Christopher Gialanella:Yeah, good question. I think print is so important because I feel especially regional print because we're able to, obviously we do so much local content. So let's say you're a store in Rodeo Drive, right? You want to get people into your store. We have a bigger circulation of people who are reading the print magazine that might fit that demographic. so that demographic of like the 40 60 70 those people still enjoy print but even when i go to like the pool at a hotel and i see people on their phones and the glare and they can't see because like you have a magazine you know also the beauty of what we do is that the magazine you're not interrupted by a text message or an alert or something so your mind is constantly on what you're focusing on yeah so it's important and i think i like that's always going to be around Yeah, I like that.

10:49And then just taking it back to the fires, you know, one thing I've spoken to Derek about, we were talking about, because I had texted him and I said to him, listen, I really want to get involved. How can I help with the community? And he was saying that, you know, one thing about LA that's really impressive is that all of a sudden, LA, people think that they don't have a community here. All of a sudden, the community of LA really came together. But your magazine was pretty instrumental. Oh, yeah. You know, it was interesting because February is Arts Month in L.A.

11:18Christopher Gialanella:So we were always doing an artist cover for February. But we decided, let's take it to another level where we asked artists to create sort of this L.A. strong cover. So we had three artists. We had Garen Swing. We had Mr. Brainwash, who is a well-known artist in L.A., and Robert Vargas create three special covers. One was, you know, a cover of the city with fire firemen on there and all that. another fireman and a daughter and then we had another fireman picture so it was really great that we were able to capture art in in what was happening we also took it to another level and interviewed the fire department in the palisades and what was happening in altadena so the whole issue was really revolved around the fire so it's kind of like giving back to what we went through and then la magazine we also did a a clothing drive where i took a space in marina del rey far away from where the fires were.

12:10Christopher Gialanella:We had donations and we had about 150 families come and we clothed them all. And hearing the stories of like, there was one gentleman who was a school teacher in Beverly Hills for 40 years. And I looked over and he was like in tears. And I said, can I help you? And he said, you know, I can't believe I'm 85 and I'm in a clothing relief place looking for clothing. So it's just, you know, we were all in tears, but it's, you're right. We all came together and then next week we're doing a obviously la magazine we're in the engine 28 building which was in the oldest fire stations in la so we're actually turning it into a comedy night so we feel like we want to do something kind of let's get people laughing a little bit right so you could buy a ticket it's called angels of comedy and we have 10 comics coming and we're doing chili we're doing um cornbread and we're doing comedy i'm assuming this is probably not the first time you've given back to the community.

13:05So is that a part of your platform with the magazine is servitude? And because that's a big part of what I believe in is that to whom much is given, much is expected and required. Like that's a big thing for me is to give back. So what else have you guys done and why is giving back to the community so important?

13:23Christopher Gialanella:Yeah. I mean, obviously it's so important, especially with all the charities that are in town. So, you know, Orange County, we have Orange Coast Magazine and there's so many great charity events from CASA to JDRF. We cover them in our magazine. You know, we also do fundraisers for all these different charities as well. The LA Magazine food event is one of our biggest events of the year. We have always have a charity component. So you purchase a ticket, proceeds go back to charity. So we're constantly also working with like right now, we work with different like charities where they may have a photographer who's like, maybe it's like someone who, you know, was abused they want to be a photographer so we'll sometimes utilize them hey come to one of our events take some shots i love that giving people a chance just yeah i love that i absolutely i absolutely love that so let's switch gears for a second let's talk a little bit about the magazine your magazine now if somebody never read your magazine before what does it focus on yeah is there like something specific and what's the demographic so los angeles magazine we're 65 years years so we're like a staple in LA we started on Rodeo Drive a guy named Jeff Miller was the original publisher and back then it was about you know luxury and shopping and restaurants so we really still do to this day talk about shopping dining the best places to hike but we also added a component of news you know like who's running for mayor what's happening with the climate with city council we talk about you know a good crime story in LA magazine which is kind of interesting.

14:51Christopher Gialanella:Well, what's that? Now you have to say what it is. Well, we've had, we've done a lot of different crime stories. So like one in particular that I will mention, there was a woman, it's a little negative, but there was a woman who ran over two boys in the valley and took off. She was, she was drunk. So, you know, we did a story on that where it was sort of like, you know, what's happening there? The Menendez brothers, we've done things on the Menendez brothers, you know, very LA focused stories of people that are in LA that may have done bad things. We're always on the forefront. It works really well with digital.

15:24Christopher Gialanella:So our digital numbers are always up when we're doing, you know, I think there's another story that came out today about a gentleman who dropped off two women. He drugged them at a party, dropped them off at two hospitals, one at one hospital, one in the other, and he's being sentenced today. So that's an online story that we're doing. Oh my God. So we're constantly like, and we get a lot of views and there's a lot of interest that way. We also do a segment on the news too. We did a segment with Fox 11 every week on what to do for the weekend. So we're kind of the experts on like the best places to go and see whether it's free, a free event or a paid event.

15:59Christopher Gialanella:So we want to be something for everybody. Yeah, you really, you're like a one-stop shop. So what's the demographic? So the demographic, you know, it's, we're aspirational too, but we have 85 ,000 copies of LA Magazine a month. Where do you find them? We have, well, we have subscribers. We have people who pay money and we think there's a lot of value in that. When you pay to subscribe to a magazine, you're going to read it. So about half of that goes to different homes across LA from 25 to 80 years old, I'll say. We also have a big hotel distribution, but this is really the best part. In December, we had Billie Eilish on our cover and that opened the doors to a Barnes and Noble national distribution.

16:37Christopher Gialanella:So we're in Barnes and Noble across the country. So now LA Magazine, we kind of toed ourselves of like the Vanity Fair of the West. You could get LA Magazine in Miami and Orlando and New York and Chicago. So we're kind of like a national, have a national kind of footprint from being a regional magazine. So from an advertiser point of view, and I always say to an advertiser, your message is being seen in Chicago and Virginia and all these other cities. I love that. I mean, kudos to you. That's pretty, I mean, that's a huge accolade. Yeah, we're pretty excited. So you're not just like a local, like the Orlando Sentinel, for instance, but literally all over.

17:13I mean, that's huge. That is huge. And I'm sure you get to meet a lot of cool people. So let's talk about the celebrity. Let's dish. I would say who would be the most influential person that you've met and why?

17:29Christopher Gialanella:Well, influential, maybe this isn't like a celebrity, but maybe like a politician. Like Karen Bass, right? Met her a couple of times and she's the mayor of LA. Or Rick Caruso. Those are very influential, powerful people. Gavin Newsom, you know, people like that. But celebrity-wise, I mean, we always do a lot of fun stuff with celebrities. Last year, we had our LA woman at luncheon. We had Kris Jenner, who was so interesting. I love her. And, you know, building that empire with her family, you know, years ago with reality TV and her husband being, you know, one of the OJ attorneys. You know, so that was kind of an interesting person.

18:02Christopher Gialanella:Right now, we're doing our 2025 LA woman. We have Paris Hilton, who we're shooting tomorrow. And she is done. I mean, here's a woman who lost her home, and the next day she was out collecting clothing for people in Altadena. I love that. So she does so much. So for us, those are the inspirational people to meet. But, you know, and also, like, one of my favorite celebrities was Laura Dern. She's, like, super nice. And part of how it works is, like, the celebrity will do some sort of experiential event with us, whether it's a dinner or a cocktail party. and we just had um sebastian stan um john david washington and coleman domingo all coleman and sebastian nominated for oscars we did a big men's event with them in beverly hills at the mayborn and they came they were everyone to meet them and then we have sponsors come so liquor sponsors automotive sponsors and that's kind of how our business works too so we have our advertising sales in print and digital.

19:02Christopher Gialanella:And then we also have sponsorship sales for events. That's a great, so sorry, that's where I wanted to go with that. So you have sponsors. So that's really how the magazine, that's another part of how it thrives is through sponsorship. Exactly. Are you looking for specific sponsors or it can be anybody that really wants to? I mean, obviously, you know, we find a place for everything. We do the beauty awards, which is something I brought to LA magazine when I came. We have different beauty products. We do a big event. We do experiences with the beauty products. So they might pay money to be a part of the beauty event.

19:33Christopher Gialanella:We bring influencers to that event. So that's like a fun event where you can actually get a lot of people seeing your products firsthand. We cover it online on lamag.com. We cover it in print. So that's something that is a big revenue generating event for us. Our food event as well with liquor sponsors and automotive. Or we may be asked to be a part of an event where I might say, okay, we'd love to be a part of like the LA food and wine event happening in May. can we bring a sponsor in or we do sort of a rev share so sometimes it's even easier when it's not really our tentpole event but somebody else's where they're like doing all the work but we get to come in and kind of be a part of it so it sounds like i mean your job and obviously it appears because i know when you were walking in here you were telling me that you were booking cars and you were doing this i mean that doesn't seem like that's part of your job title but it does seem like you are fully immersed in what you're doing yeah i mean my job i mean honestly it was funny because is we're doing a luncheon out in Palm Springs for Modernism, and I brought my client out there who we're doing the event with, and she spent the day with me in the car and couldn't believe the conversations that she was hearing because she's like, I thought, you know, I just like to get involved, and you're probably the same way, Mara.

20:43Christopher Gialanella:We're East Coasters. We want to get it done. I'm all in the mix all the time. I just want to get things done right away. I can't wait, and maybe it's like the AD, whatever it is, ADD in me, but I just like to get it done. Yeah, it's compulsiveness, too. So I'm kind of involved in a lot of the stuff that we do. And it's important because you also want to make sure we're falling within a budget. Yeah, of course. I want to make sure that the revenue makes sense for what we're doing. And if your name is on it, you want to make sure that the event comes to fruition the way that you see it. You're not going to put something together half-assed.

21:10You're not going to do that. So you want it nice. So being involved like this, there's a lot of components. And I know for me, I'm also a parent. I have three kids. I told you only about one, but I have three. I have a 17-year-old daughter. I have a 14-year-old son. and I have, I say the baby, he's seven years old. And I don't know if you travel a lot, but I'm assuming that you probably do travel, right? Whether it's throughout California or whatever. I'm literally on a plane every eight to 10 days. And it's oftentimes a struggle because I say I'm a full-time mom, but you know, I'm on a plane.

21:43So how do you, how do you do the work-life balancing or is that not even a real thing for you?

21:48Christopher Gialanella:I mean, it's hard. I think in our world today, especially with these phones that we have i kind of tell my dad this all the time i'm like god i wish like how did you do it in like 1976 like you went to an office from nine to five you came home you had your briefcase but the day was over that was it you know what i mean like that was it no there weren't like maybe you do some paperwork but like for us we're like on our so i feel like it never ends you know and it was funny i took a trip to dubai of all places over the holidays with my son. My wife got the flu, so she couldn't come. But I actually felt like, wow, this is like seven days of, I literally don't have to do anything like work-wise because kind of, there's really nothing going on during the holidays.