Meet August Luncheon Speaker, John Egan

Registration is now open for the August luncheon, Bringing Sexy Back: Every Company Has a Story. Leading our discussion is John Egan of SpareFoot, below is a sneak peak into John and his latest adventures in Austin. 

 

Q. What are your responsibilities as editor in chief at SpareFoot? 

A. At SpareFoot, I oversee three blogs. The SpareFoot Blog is our flagship blog covering storage, moving and home organization, as well as Austin, SpareFoot’s culture and the overall startup culture. The Storage Facilitator, hosted on SelfStorage.com (which we operate), helps storage owners, operators and managers run their businesses. The SpareFoot Storage Beat covers news from the self-storage industry, such as acquisitions and company earnings. I also oversee consumer content for our websites, and handle public relations in conjunction with our PR firm.

 

Q. How has your experience being editor and managing editor of the Austin Business Journal helped you most in your role with SpareFoot?

A. There are many ways that experience has helped me. For one thing, working at the ABJ gave me some solid grounding in recruiting and retaining freelance writers. For another, it gave me a great sense of what small businesses are interested in knowing about how to improve their businesses; this helps me in assigning content for our Storage Facilitator blog.

 

Q. What has been one of your biggest challenges in telling the story of SpareFoot to the media?

A. One of the biggest challenges is explaining the ins and outs of the storage industry. Most everyone knows about storage, but their impression of the business might be colored by what they see on “Storage Wars.” Reality TV does not depict the reality of self-storage.

 

Q. What is one thing you hope people attending the luncheon will walk away with?

A. One thing I hope people take away is that no matter what industry you’re in, you have great stories to tell. On the surface, self-storage may seem like a dull industry, but it’s actually full of interesting characters and happenings. As such, we’ve always got plenty of material for our blogs and our PR pitches.

 

Q. Is there anything else you would like our members to know?

A.  In my current role, I am a brand journalist, and as a brand journalist, I strive every day to uphold journalistic standards and to tell great stories. Brand journalism sometimes gets a bad rap from traditional journalists, but some of the criticism isn’t warranted.