Last night I had the pleasure of seeing Yana Fry from YanaTV speak at our monthly networking event. Whilst her story, Zero to Hero – about the rise of her TV channel – was inspiring, it got me thinking about one of the concepts we play with at Key Person of Influence (KPI): What are the implications if you add ‘& media company’ to your business name?

Ostensibly, KPI is a business accelerator or training company, but by adding ‘& media’ it is a constant reminder that we should be sharing the stories and the content with a wider audience.

By sharing the lessons from our mentors or by sharing the success stories of our clients, we have the opportunity to positively impact many more people than the select few who are lucky enough to go through the program.

What would the implications be for your business? Could you build trust faster with your prospects if they viewed your media as a destination to answer their questions? Would building a library of media assets within your business serve other goals? Onboarding new team members quicker? Increasing the value of your business?


Whilst this might seem like yet another 'nice to have' that detracts from the main business, I think we are increasingly living in a world that demands stories from the brands we trust with our money. Another way to think about this is: how would you compete if your competitor added media to the mix?

If you're looking for a case study to help promote this idea internally, Gary Vaynerchuck took over his father’s $3million wine business and grew it to $60million by putting out short wine-tasting videos on YouTube. The first year, no one watched but he soon learnt what worked, what didn't and today he has leveraged that learning into VaynerMedia, one of the most sought-after companies by top brands.

Yana serves her audience by going to business leaders and helping them to share their lessons with a wider audience.

How could you serve your market better by adding '& media' to your business?

*EDIT* - A colleague of mine attended an event with Gary Vaynerchuck in Australia a couple of days ago and Gary said: "You are now a media company first, and you sell product second."