[on-hold music] There's a thousand million different versions of other, but a lot of folks who have grown up in this region have felt like, "I am not like these people, and I gotta get out of here."
Well, when they started to hear The Bitter Southerner's voice, it was like a reflex, and they were like, "Oh, my gosh, there are people publishing stories and talking about music and social justice, and I recognize these people."
It's just been incredible. [on-hold music] Welcome to the Rebooting show, where each week I speak to someone who is building a sustainable media business.
I'm Brian Morrissey, and I write the Rebooting Newsletter and host this podcast. And this week I spoke to Kyle Tibbs Jones, co-founder of The Bitter Southerner, a decade-old publication that chronicles the modern South.
The Bitter Southerner began as a passion project for a group of natives to the South who were, well, a bit bitter about how it was often caricatured or reduced to its historical legacy as the birthplace of American slavery.
Now, that's a past that is unfortunately still alive and is an indelible part of the American story. The Bitter Southerner confronts those issues head-on.
At the same time, it wants to tell a more nuanced and expansive story of this unique and complicated part of the world and this country. This week's episode is presented by Impact.com.
Impact.com recently sponsored a research report with Digiday, I know that place, focusing on the state of commerce content.
The research surveyed 60 premium media publishers globally over the course of January and February of this year. You can read the full findings on Digiday's website, but a few data points that stood out to me.
Eighty-one percent of respondents said that commerce content plays an important role in their media portfolio, which totally tracks with what I hear.
Now, 40% of respondents expect to dedicate more than 20% of their budgets to commerce content in 2023, and that is up from 26% in 2022.
That is a lot of numbers, but I think the most important one to take away from that is that more money is going into commerce content.
The report also features insights from the likes of Reviewed.com's Chris Lloyd and Forbes SVP of E-commerce Emily Jackson.
So if you wanna learn more about these insights and also about how Impact.com can help you, reach out directly to my friend Jared Grimm at Impact. He is at jared@impact.com. That is J-E-R-R-I-D@impact.com.
And tell him you came from the Rebooting Show podcast. This will prove to Jared that podcast advertising works, at least if you do it with the Rebooting Show.
But in all seriousness, Impact has been great supporters of the Rebooting, and if you have a commerce or a content studio business, you should talk to them about how they can make these operations more efficient and effective.
So send Jared a note. That is J-E-R-R-I-D@impact.com. Thank you, Jared and Impact. Now on to my conversation with Kyle from The Bitter Southerner.
[on-hold music] Kyle, thank you so much for taking the time to, to chat about The Bitter Southerner. Brian, I'm really happy to be here. Yeah. I'm a, I'm a big fan of you. Okay.
[chuckles] That's mostly why I invited you on. [laughs] Okay. Let's be real. [laughs] We are. We're big fans. I mean, every time I listen, I think it's like I'm in graduate school. I learn so much from every episode.
I mean- No. That's great. I love to hear that. I'm a big, big fan. So let's talk about The Bitter Southerner. I mean, you're coming up on a big anniversary.
Anything, like, lasting 10 years [chuckles] at any- It's funny... anything in life is a long time, but I feel like in media it's, like, even, like, longer.
And so for those who don't know The Bitter Southerner, 'cause I do, I do think it's a really interesting brand, what's the mission? The mission?
Well, we're 10 years old, so it's evolved a bit over the years, but the mission is making this region better through storytelling and journalism and all the things that we do. We started in 2013.
We're celebrating our 10th birthday. And when we started, we looked at the media landscape, and we saw this big white space in the middle.
There was fancy Southern, silver tea services, and bespoke shotguns over at Garden & Gun.
And then on the other end of the spectrum was Honey Boo Boo, and if anyone's listening that remembers that, there was nothing in the middle. Wait, what's Honey Boo Boo? Do you remember that?
I don't remember Honey Boo Boo. It sounds vaguely familiar, but- That tiny tornado is a force to be reckoned with politically.
Her reality show, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo on TLC, actually got higher ratings than the Republican National Convention and tied in the ratings with the Democratic National Convention- Oh...
the night that former President Clinton spoke. Yeah. It was just like... It was the modern-day version of Beverly Hillbillies. There was- Oh, okay...
two ends of the spectrum, and we didn't see anyone telling the story straight down the middle about people like us, creatives, more progressive than our parents, people that wanted better for this region.
But also the writers, the scientists, the environmentalists, all those things, we weren't seeing much of that, so we started telling one story a week.
And at the beginning, we were telling stories in order to, A, set the record straight because we had all, like, moved away. Like, I'd lived in New York City, and people...
Someone literally said to me one time, "You're so smart- [laughs]... for the South?" I was just like, "What?" Anyway, so- People are always like, "Oh, I love your accent." Yes.
So yeah, so to set the, some of the record straight, but also to authentically stare down the problems of the past and present, right? So to be really truth tellers about what it really is like here. So we did that.
And then if you follow the evolution of our world in the last 10 years, around 2016, we elected he who shall not be named as president, and following that, there was Me Too, and then you roll up into the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement and an attempted coup and an election and, and then some good stuff.
Georgia turned blue. Like, there's been so much- Yeah...
that our mission now, we tag everything with a better South and a better world because I think around 2016 we all kinda figured out that a lot of these problems were a national thing- Yeah...
not so much a regional thing. Yeah. So we're more of a national or sometimes an international magazine now with a Southern accent.I like that. No, because I think the South is like a...
It's an interesting, 'cause I think regional and also, like, city and publications too, like, really need to be rethought.
And I think the South is, I would put it in quotes, it's an interesting region because it's like, its history is American history, right? Right. It's complicated.
And we love to caricaturize everything as, like, shorthand, but I don't think any region [laughs] has been caricaturized so much as the South, right? Yeah.
Like, I mean, I grew up watching Dukes of Hazzard, so that was sort of [laughs] my touchstone- Right... in suburban Philadelphia. That's right.
And I lived my whole life in the Northeast, but then, like, I lived for two years, I think, in the South, 'cause I lived in Miami, Florida. And, like- Really?...
when people would be like, "Oh, Miami's not the South," I'm like, "Wait, why?" [laughs] It is. The South is such a mashup, right? You can be in South Beach, you can go to New Orleans and you're in a...
It's almost like you're in a different country. There's a big spectrum of what the South is, and that's so- Yeah, so what holds it together then, right?
Like, 'cause I mean, I, like, wonder that way because I would always hear that. Because, I mean, yes, it's true, like, Miami is many things. It's, like, part- Mm-hmm... of, like, Latin America.
It's part, like, everything. Mm-hmm. Like, you go to Hialeah, there's chickens running around. It's a whole mashup of different things. But, like, how do you define the South in general?
I mean, there's a geographical element to it, right? But then there's, like, I'm not sure if Texas is or not. They've got their own culture. Well, we claim Austin and, you know, we do- [laughs] Just Austin?
[laughs] No, no, we, we claim Texas. But what I was gonna say is- Do you take Dallas too or no? Geographically, we always say there's a y'all line. There's a y'all line. Yeah.
So but actually, the South, it's a very old metaphor but, that we've used for 10 years, but it's gumbo, right? It's everything. So much started here. So much music, so, so much of America's culture began in this region.
And some of the oldest American treasured ideals come from this region. And so it's not easily defined, I guess is what I'm trying to say. Right.
Obviously, embedded in that is, like, a progressive vision of what the South is.
Not running away from, obviously, any time people from outside the South probably there, like, think about, like, the South, like, it has all of the contradictions of this country, like, embedded within it.
And that's part of the story, without a doubt, right? 100%. And you don't, like, run away from that.
'Cause I feel like if you're gonna do a commercial endeavor, right, like, I don't know, what is the Gar- Gardens and- It's- What is it? There's a magazine called Garden & Gun. Garden & Gun, right? Yeah.
I don't know it exactly. But my guess is they probably shy away [laughs] from this stuff. I don't know. Well, I don't know. They're... I think they cover a good... They do a good job.
[gentle music] Yeah.
Wow. 'Cause I mean, I can see, like, even when you're doing these regional publications, a lot of times you get pushed into, and some of them, it's the name, it's like, okay, cocktails, food, and stuff like this.
Right, right. The stuff that's very, like, safe area. Mm-hmm. It's a very commercially viable area. And I'm very interested in cocktails and food too, so I like that stuff too, right?
But, like, you're looking to tell a bigger cultural story. That's right. I mean, you can read our stories about food, about music, about the environment, about social justice, about lots of topics.
And inside almost every story, there's something that's a little bit deeper. I mean, you're not just reading about tomatoes. You're not just reading about our coast.
Everything is told through a lens of making the region better. That's right.
For instance, one wonderful example is Shane Mitchell, who's written for years for Saveur and Travel + Leisure, and I met her when I was working in New York in PR, so we've been friends for a long time, and she started writing for us.
She does a series for us called The Crop Cycle Series, and every year she takes a different food from the South and writes a very long form story. Shane is long form. These are 7,000, 8,000-word pieces.
And she's written about vidalia onions, tomatoes, grits, rice, okra, and there's a lot to learn about who we are and what is happening in our region, what has happened over the years if you dig down into these crops.
So you think you're reading about peaches, and you get to the end of it and you're like, "I think I just learned a few things." It's good. It's very good. Yeah.
She's won a couple of James Beards for her work in this Crop Cycle Series. She's amazing. But that's across all subject matter. There's always something in there. Yeah.
And I notice, like, the work you guys do, there's high production value. I feel like we're in this, like, very scrappy era, and I'm part of it.
Like, and you take away all of the trappings that used to exist with, like, media and making it glossy and stuff. And some of that is just by necessity.
There's not a lot of money around for original photography and great design and stuff. But, like, you guys have clearly emphasized that. Talk about that decision. We have.
From the very beginning, when we started, we had no money. We started with no investment, no anything. We kept our day jobs and started The Bitter Southerner.
And for a year, writers and photographers, and I'm talking about the best writers and photographers, gave us their work for free. And we, during that year, figured out how to make money and start paying people.
But that's how much people wanted to be, to be part of this mission, a part of this w- almost a movement, right? So we, from the get-go, have been working with the best of the best.
And my partner, Dave Whitling, who is our editorial director and creative director, is brilliant. He's the most brilliant designer I've ever met, and I get to work with him every day. It's just incredible.
I count my lucky stars every single day. But the reason it's beautiful is because of Dave Whitling, and our stories have always been known for their photography. This year we have No Place Like Home.
It's our new photography anthology, 10 years of photography at The Bitter Southerner, and it's gonna blow people away. I mean, people talk about the design. And what's so funny, Brian, is that- Mm...
we're six peopleYeah We have just the tiniest team, and the product looks like we have legions of reporters, writers, and photographers and illustrators, but the team at The Bitter Southerner is six strong.
So it's remarkable how beautiful it is. Okay, so it's a website. You do podcasts. You also do a print product? We do. And you have a shop. And we have a shop. That's how we, that's how we keep this thing rolling.
We publish online stories, one story a week. We publish a Bitter Southerner magazine, a big, beautiful, gorgeous magazine that we've been...
We're, we just published our fifth issue, the birthday issue, with big Frida on the front. It's pretty cool. So twice a year, the magazine. We have a podcast. We're a book publisher.
We have four to six new titles coming this year. We now are wholesaling our products in the general store, which we can talk about 'cause we're- Mm-hmm... we laugh. We're like a rock band with a merch table.
That's how we fund our business. Yeah. Go buy some T-shirts. I was checking out the flags. Yeah, yeah. We're very proud of all that. So we have the general store, and then now we've just dipped our toes into wholesale.
So we're in places like Heath Ceramics in San Francisco and Kitchen Arts & Letters on the Upper East Side in New York. We're all over the country in bookstores and gift shops and things like that.
So we're really growing. Over the last three years, we've grown 30% each year. Okay. In revenue? Revenue. Okay. Depends on the base, but it's good. No. [laughs] It's going in the right direction. That's all I'm saying.
Yeah. Uh-huh. Right. But that i- actually brings up the question. It's a regional publication, but the South is a global brand. It's like Brooklyn.
A friend of mine and who I used to work with is the editor of Brooklyn Magazine. Brooklyn's like an international brand. It's not like a- It is. Brooklyn is a vibe.
Yeah, and you're creating the content for people who want a better South, but it's attracting people from outside. That's right. Right? Our largest city, when you look at our analytics, is Atlanta.
Our second-largest city is New York City. LA is number three. Chicago's always up there. Nashville, Charlotte. It's incredible. The truth of it is that Southerners live everywhere. We get out of here.
A lot of people get the heck out of Dodge- Yeah... and they're, like, living all over the country and all over the world.
So the stories I could tell you that would make me cry, maybe wouldn't make you cry, Brian, but make me cry. It's, over the years- [laughs]... we, we hear from... We actually hear from- I might weep a little bit, Kyle.
You don't know that. You might cry. Depends on the story. Well, we hear from people all over the world who say, "You guys have given me the faith that I might could move home." That's amazing to me.
I haven't come in contact with any media that is making me feel that way about Fort Washington, Pennsylvania. [laughs] You never know. You never know.
I've had lots of friends in New York City who have come from small towns in Georgia and stuff like this. Right.
And there's a nostalgia there and, like, a pride that, like, those of us from Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, probably don't feel, [laughs] to be honest with you. Give it time, Brian. You might feel it.
Nothing against Fort Washington. It has a Friendly's. It's a lovely place. Well, I'll say this. I think people also live all over the world, and they're conflicted about home. And also- Yeah... we...
It's really fun for people- Yeah... who live in, like, Portland, Oregon, to have friends who go, "What is this town you're from?"
And they give them a copy of The Bitter Southerner magazine, and they're like, "Just read this. These are the people I know at home. This is why I still love home." Yeah.
And that's what I wanna talk about the business model because it's a lifestyle brand, right? And it's a cultural brand, and I think there's a lot of flexibility in that.
It's not like local news or something like that because it affords a bunch of different potential avenues for growth. There could be, like, live events, and you could have festivals. Yeah. You can do books.
You could do merch and stuff like this. Mm-hmm. So talk to me about how you guys are constructing a business model, how you have constructed a business model. Right.
Well, over the years, it's evolved, but currently, the general store is, like, 75% of our income, and that is T-shirts and flags and prints and books. And a lot of our T-shirts are protest T-shirts. Yeah.
"Read Banned Books" is the biggest seller. We cannot keep them. Yeah. You've got, like, manifestos up there, too. Right. When all the rollback of Roe v.
Wade started to happen two years ago, we created a T-shirt, "Hell Hath No Fury," and we sell that. So through the general store, 70% of our income.
Membership, about 25%, and 5% is partner stories, which we have just embarked on in the last year or so, and we tell stories with partners who are perfectly aligned with us.
We would not do it unless these are stories that we would tell anyway.
So for instance, last year, we did partner stories with the SELC, the Southern Environmental Law Center, and they do amazing work actually all over the country. And we told six stories. We told them online.
We made a batch of podcasts a- about all those. There was an episode for each story. It was really powerful. So that's a small percentage of our income, and then there's also wholesale now.
So the membership, that part's interesting because- Yeah... it ties people to the brand. I mean, it's not a big part of our income. It's not the biggest part, rather, but it's important.
People want to be able to be a part of it. How are you thinking of membership? What do you get to be a, as a member? I mean, you get the print.
We do a membership drive once a year, and the print magazine is part of the membership drive now. So you get that first, and then- Mm...
there's some swag, and then all year long in the general store, you get free shipping. So it's bigger than what you get for our members, I think. They just wanna support. Yeah.
Do you think of going beyond, like, merch with the general store? Oh, yeah. I mean, it is beyond merch, but you know what I mean. Beyond merch, but yes.
[gentle music]I can imagine you could easily curate a lot of authentic products [chuckles] of, like, the Better South, and that travels.
I'm just, like, I'm really interested in how people are grasping for a lot of, like, authenticity in a lot of ways. Right.
And you see this a lot with brands that are developing that have a story behind them, because we're in this, like, very commoditized age, and people want to, like, support enterprises that align with whatever values they have, and, and they need somebody to guide them in that way, and I think that is the best case when you marry commerce with media models.
I think a lot of times when people talk about commerce, they're really just talking about some sort of, like, SEO brand arbitrage play with affiliate. [chuckles] Right. But I think this could be real commerce.
It really actually already is. What I always think about is growth patterns. Like, where do you see them? Well, in the general store.
If we weren't just six people, and we're solid, and we are self-funded, and because we're financially independent, we can be innovative, but you can only be so innovative.
It just takes more to be more innovative, so we're working on it. We've had great growth over the last three years. It, it would be nice to juice all of it, juice the general store, juice the podcast, create a network.
Yeah. And we're gonna do four to six books this year, but how many could we do? I mean, we have so much in front of us and so many opportunities. We can't do them all. Yeah. But we see a lot of good ideas.
I can't believe I'm gonna say this, but it ki- it kinda reminds me of, like, Monocle in some ways. Like, I mean, 'cause, like, making money in this kind of model, like through advertising, is like a fool's errand.
Like, you're just not gonna make enough money. Never. The Ms are not there. It's just not gonna work. Right? Right. And so you can have, like agency services are good and, like, it's harder when you have to align brands.
It's hard to get anyone to pay you money, [chuckles] much, much less when you, when you have to align on a mission basis. But there are so many different other opportunities.
Have you done anything with events, with doing, like, festivals or anything like that? We've been part of festivals. We have been sponsors, but we haven't created our own. Yes, that's a dream. Yeah.
But, like, we do partner. In fact, tomorrow we are driving to Nashville, and we're partnering with Ima Gene and Willy.
Ima Gene and Willy and The Bitter Southerner are throwing a party tomorrow night for Mom's Demand because of everything that's happened in Nashville in the last two weeks. It's gonna be amazing. Jesse Balen's playing.
Everybody has reached out. I think it's gonna be star-studded. So we do bring a lot of power to these kind of events and to brands. That's where I kind of dream.
We know our audience really, really well, so we're planning this thing at Ima Gene and Willy's, and they're like, "We're planning for like 100 people." I'm like, "Oh, no. No. It's going to be bigger than that."
And now it's going to be really big. So we can bring a lot of power because we are so aligned with our readers and followers and customers. It's kind of miraculous. I've been in the media industry my entire career.
I've never seen anything like what we have now. I've never seen it anywhere.
I've never seen any media brand where people are dying to wear the merch, like dying to wear the merch, and love each other when they see each other on the street because they see each other at the Great Wall of China and high-five each other because they've both got a Bitter Southerner T-shirt on.
I mean, these are the stories we hear. I crossed the street to hug this kid 'cause I saw him in Taiwan. Yeah. It's crazy. I do the same when I see someone in a Philadelphia Eagles jersey. You do? Yeah.
I go up and hug them. Is there a rebooting T-shirt I could wear? [laughs] No, but it's a good brand. I think it's a good, it's a good brand name. How did... What is the story behind the name? I gotta ask.
The name is tongue-in-cheek, but in the beginning, like I said, we had all lived elsewhere, and people had all these wonky ideas about who we were and where we were from, and we did see the South not getting its due on lists
and at awards and, and film and in all kinds of things. And so we called it The Bitter Southerner. But immediately it was about a better South. We have a Better South initiative.
1% of all of our proceeds go to organizations out there working on the issues we care about.
Part of our Better South initiative is a program where we collab with rockers, and we do T-shirts for them, and we raise money for something. So we've worked with Jason Isbell, John Prine, The Drive-By Truckers, St.
Paul and The Broken Bones. We're currently working with SG Goodman, she's amazing, to raise money.
Right now we're raising money for Healing Hope in the Hills, and it's Healing Appalachia, working with people recovering from opioid addiction.
So we immediately concentrated on the better part of it, but The Bitter Southerner- Mm... has been our name all along, but it's tongue-in-cheek. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it works.
I do get grief about it at cocktail parties occasionally. And it's usually some- When you get grief? Well, it's usually some older white gentleman who's like, "I just don't think I like your name."
I'm like, "Well, I'm sorry, sir." Is that when you do the, is that when you do the bless your heart thing? I do. I do. [chuckles] 'Cause I've heard that can go both ways. If I- It can...
if you're told, "Bless your heart," it can mean lots of things. That's what I've heard. It can. It runs the gamut. That's right. [laughs] It's an all-purpose... Sir, let me tell you what it will mean. Yes. Cool.
So it's, like, six people right now. I mean, what's the ambition? I mean, how do you think...
I mean, 'cause, like, I think a l- we're in this era where, I mean, to me, like, there's lots of opportunities to have, like, small media brands and stuff, and I think people get too obsessed with having big media companies.
They're a different animal, and- Mm... this could scale. But how are you thinking about... Because it's mission focused, right, too?
And it seems like something you guys all enjoy doing, and growing something very large is, one, it's extraordinarily difficult, but, like, it comes with a set of headaches and compromises- Right... ultimately.
So true, Brian. You g- there's a headache in being large, and there's a headache in being-Tiny and scrappy forever Oh, yeah. There's a lot of headaches in that. Yeah.
There's some happy medium, and we look at, at that all the time. I mean, right now we are self-funded. There's no benevolent billionaire in sight. [laughs] We have no investors.
We're all very happy doing the work we do, but are we ambitious, and do we wanna grow? Yes. Do we wanna be huge? We have no interest in scale. I mean, we love our niche.
What I mean is we have no interest in being ginormous. We would like to be able to do more with the things that we have already been proven to be very positive and successful. I think we can do more.
[upbeat music] Yeah. Scale, like, it comes in many different forms. I mean, i- if you- Right... have a mission, you wanna scale impact. Right.
And the reality is to have the greatest impact, a lot of times you, you need to be just, like, bigger. United States is a big country, it's a big world, and stuff like this.
So scale, I think it's easy to be like, "Oh, scale's, like, over," and stuff like this, but the reality is there's upsides to being bigger, and one of the upsides is you can have greater impact.
Doesn't mean you can't have impact on a smaller level, but you can have greater impact at a larger one. 100%. That's exactly what's in my heart and mind. And our- Yeah... whole team is...
That's what we think about all the time. And also, in 10 years, there's a lot to work on these days. There's a lot of upsetting things going on in this world, in our region and beyond.
And so through storytelling, through our magazines, through our T-shirt, all of the things that we work on, through our special collaborations with organizations out there working to make things better, I can only imagine what that would be like if we had more power.
So every day we're working toward it. Yeah. The weight of the business, it sounds like it's moving towards really the commerce side, and this is, like, very normal.
I think in, like, 10 years, a lot of publishers are not gonna derive the majority of their revenue through typical publishing revenue streams.
And commerce is a very attractive revenue stream, but it could change the company. I mean, do you still think of The Bitter Southerner as a publisher? Yes. I mean, we are journalists.
We are working on story all the time, and whether it's for online, podcast, in our magazines, yeah, first and foremost, that's really what we are. All of this other is byproduct.
We started with that mission of telling those stories to correct some misperceptions and to also celebrate and spread the word about some things that no one knew about. We started and...
with that and made up the business as we went along. We didn't have a business plan that looks like what we're doing right now. Yeah. We started very differently. But that's normal. That's totally normal.
That's why I was always like- I'm glad to hear that... I know when I was starting to do this, like, people were like, "What's the business plan and stuff?" I'm like- Oh... I can write...
I wrote one up, but I'm like, it's gonna change. So, like, I mean, it's the old saying, it's like the planning, not the plan. I don't know. Maybe other people are different, but... I know.
I keep hearing Chris Best say his plan is destiny, and now we've got a good one th- about- Well, he said business model is destiny. I know. Which I think is- Oh, that's right.
I think business model is destiny on this stuff, right? I think the... This is why it matters so much. I like that, like, as a phrase. I actually do too. Although it's like a yes, but.
It's like, yes, that's true, because your business plan is going to shape the product that you make- Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm... a lot of times, and that's just reality. Right.
But the other reality, and probably bigger than that, is this is a tough business, and you have to be flexible to some degree about how you build the business part.
Like, you can be very, like, ideological as far as mission goes and, and which opportunities you take and which ones you don't.
But as far as to, like, you know, how you get there on the, like, business side, I think it's pretty good to be flexible on that. Right. And I mean, so, like, when we were starting this 10 years ago, there was...
I don't even know. Like, Stripe was probably just a small thing these boys from Ireland were doing. But now, like, you probably didn't think you're gonna be, like, having a, a general store, right?
[laughs] Well, we developed that general store pretty quickly. Yeah, you did, huh? Our first T-shirt was a dirt to shirt T-shirt, like, all made in North Carolina. I mean, Brian, we mailed out, like, 150.
I tied each one up with a twine bow, wrote a note to every single person. Now we send out tens of thousands. That doesn't scale. Yeah, right. That did not scale.
So now we send out tens of thousands of T-shirts a year, but when we started, we were just a handful of creatives. Dave and I are both co-founders.
About four years later, Eric Neesmith, our publisher, joined us, and he's like, "Dudes, we've got to become stable.
And when we become stable and financially independent, stable, profitable, and once we are that, then we can be creative and go for it." So it was really wonderful.
So the three partners who own this business are myself, Dave Whitling, who I talked about earlier- Yeah... and Eric Neesmith, our publisher, and he is that third leg of the stool that we needed so desperately.
And so, yeah, so that's why we have, in the last three years, really done well. So wait, you guys lost one of the founders though, right? I wanna talk about that. Not lost like he's, like, deceased.
[laughs] There was another founder, and we parted ways- You split up, right... with him in 2020. We did, right. Yeah. When you're doing these things, it's like a long... It's long. 10 years is a long freaking time.
It's a slog, yeah. It's a slog. It's a real long time, and you gotta, like, go through different, like, periods and like- Right... I don't know, how hard was that experience though?
I mean, just because it, like, changes. That's always hard. Yeah. But it was actually about three years ago, and the last three years have been the best years of our lives.
With everything that seems like a change or like something that you wouldn't want to happen, there's always good that comes out of the... I mean, that sounds cliché, but actually this...
that's exactly what has happened, and we're in a really great place, and we executed our dream and, and continue to do so, and that's all I can really say about that.Yeah.
Are you still as into it now as you were 10 years ago? More so. That's great. Okay. I, I had no idea I was this much of an entrepreneur when we started this.
Let's talk to me about that, 'cause I, I have, like, strong feelings about the entrepreneur myth. Well, here's the way I, I think about that. I've always worked in television, advertising, PR. I have a work ethic.
I got that from my sweet father. But I never knew what it was like to be the owner of a business and be responsible for everything, to be responsible- Yeah...
for people you're paying, and be responsible for the outcome of your product, and to put your heart into something, and, and get to make all the decisions, and have a seat at the table.
And I had no idea how much I would love it. And- Yeah... it's been incredible. I mean, it's not all easy. We are small, we are scrappy, we are all those things, but it has been and continues to be a great joy. Yeah.
I can't believe it. And I will say this, I want every young woman out there listening to hear this. I started The Bitter Southerner when I was 50 years old, and we're 10 years old, so- Yeah...
and it's the best years of my life. Right. But I think that's exactly the p- Like, I, I just turned 50, and I don't think that, like, entrepreneur or whatever are, like, born.
There's this myth out there that there's a certain type, and it's always coming from the- these Silicon Valley people. And it's a certain type, and it's always, by the way, just like them, and looks like them.
They're young men and all this stuff like this, and it's the Elon Musk, and sleeping under the desk, and stuff like this. Doing anything big is hard.
And in doing something, like, where you don't have a lot of resources is hard. Yes, it's hard.
But the idea that it takes some unique, like, person that, like, I don't know, that they were touched by God i- in the crib or something- No. [laughs]... is just a lie. Yeah. It's hard. You know what I mean?
[laughs] It's just hard. Yeah, it's hard. It's like running marathons. People are like, "Oh, well, it's a marathon, right?" I was like, "No." Like, you know what?
You just do the training, and that's why, like, millions of people now run marathons a year. These people were not, like, touched by God or something like this.
And so- Not touched by God, but I will say you have to really want it. You have to really- Yeah...
believe in what you're doing and really want it, and if those two things are there, it's the most fun you can have- Yeah... I think. Ups and downs. Yeah.
You can call it- Anytime anything's going well, something will collapse. Yeah. That's true, but we started this, and we spoke in our language.
I don't know how to describe this, but in the very beginning, I'm the voice of the company, so I write every Instagram post, every Facebook post, ev- every tweet. And so we were all from small towns.
I'm from the largest town, and I'm from Dalton, Georgia. Okay? So we understood each other. We understood how we grew up.
We understood the things that we were hard about growing up in the South, and the things that were exciting, and the way we feel as adult.
We just spoke this language, and when we put that language out into the world and floated these stories out, and talked to people in, like, on Instagram, there was this, like, light bulb for so many people across the country and across the world.
They were like, "Oh, my gosh. These are my people." Yeah. They had never heard this. Like, uh, w- there was nothing else like it.
And so everything that you see at The Bitter Southerner, whether it's our product in the store or our stories, working with all these incredible writers and photographers and contributors, it's a language.
People talk a lot in this popular culture about being other.
So you grow up in the South, and you have a more progressive brain, and you're not like the people at your parents' church, or at school you're a little bit arty or different, whatever.
There's a thousand million different versions of other. But a lot of folks who have grown up in this region have felt like, "I am not like these people, and I gotta get out of here."
Well, when they started to hear The Bitter Southerner's voice, it was like a reflex, and they were like, "Oh, my gosh.
There are people publishing stories and talking about music and social justice and whatever, and I recognize these people." It's just been incredible.
I've noticed that I think a lot of, and maybe media has always been this way, but I feel like particularly at a niche level, and even, like, when it's, like, on a personal level, is a lot of the sort of attachment comes from seeing a worldview that they share, and that's when things, like, sort of resonate and you're building, like, a brand in that people say, "Oh, the way you see this particular area of life or the world or identity, it sort of resonates with how I do."
Right. It's really cool when that happens. Yeah. It's just hard. I feel like that when I listen to your podcast. Okay. Well, see, that's what I'm going for. That's what I, like, when I...
I'm gonna make this about myself, 'cause that's what it's about.
Like, I met with someone the other day, and he was like, "Oh, we've never met before, but, like, I feel like the stuff you write and talk about, like, you see the media world, publishing, whatever, in a very similar way as I do."
And that was really cool, so- Yes. It's cool... I hope there's more of you out there. [laughs] 'Cause I wanna scale. There are a lot of us. What t- what's your T-shirt size? Uh, it depends.
When I was in Miami, I was working out more, so I was, like, a small. Now I'm a medium. Medium's good. Okay. Just checking. I've loved our time together. Thank you so much for having me on. This was so much fun.
Thank you, thank you, and I hope you check out The Bitter Southerner and- Yeah, everyone check out The Bitter Southerner. All right, let's leave it there. Kyle, thank you so much. Bye.
[upbeat music] Thank you so much for listening. Again, please do send me your feedback. My email is bmorrissey@therebooting.com. Thanks a lot to Jay Sparks, who is producing this podcast.
If you're thinking about doing your own podcast, and again, they're hard to grow, but the depth of engagement is amazing, so don't let that scare you off, get in touch. Jay can help you out. He is at podhelpus.
That is podhelp.us. [upbeat music]