What started as a creative outlet for Colin Balfe, Founder and Chief Content Officer, turned into a global content brand reaching over 10 million pageviews per month, 114,000+ YouTube subscribers, 520,000+ followers on Instagram, 250,000+ email subscribers and over 8 million followers on Facebook. We sat down with Colin to learn more about how Love What Matters came to be.

Note: Responses may have been edited for clarity.

What motivated you to start Love What Matters?

My mom – she passed away from ovarian cancer and was the inspiration behind Love What Matters. During my last few visits with her, despite her situation, she still put her children first and was worried about how her death would impact me. She knew that when she died, it would be hard on me. She kept reminding me that as her most sensitive and creative child, I should find a way to use her death and my grief to create something beautiful. She had no idea what it would be and neither did I. Everytime I would see her, she would reiterate this. I was a mess when she passed. 

When you lose your mom, you lose your North Star. I was craving meaning. As a result, I paid more attention to life and realized that other people must be dealing with similar emotions and situations of grief, loss, heartache, etc. I started building and experimenting on social media. I had a Facebook page where deeply meaningful stories were shared and with those stories, I started gaining 50,000 to 100,000 followers a day. 

What’s the story behind Love What Matters?

When Love What Matters started growing, my brothers were shocked by the level of growth I was experiencing and were a great resource for me to go to. They own and operate Red Seat Ventures which partners with talent, brands, and influencers to fund, build, and operate unique businesses. They’ve been incredible when it comes to helping me with the business side of things and making sure we’re monetizing everything effectively and efficiently. With their help, I’ve been able to focus on the creative side and work on the content and storytelling.

For the first two years of Love What Matters, I was focused entirely on building the social media platforms of the business (Instagram and Facebook) because I knew I was going to be relying on those to push traffic. I knew that this was going to be painful because there isn’t going to be a lot of money coming in but it’s going to be worth it in the long run. Thankfully, we had brand partners coming to us even with just our social platforms because we were breaking all these news stories and other publishers started to pick us up like Good Morning America. Once we had the website launched, I went out and hired our first editor and it was just her and I for the first year and started growing the team from there. 

What vision did you have for Love What Matters when you first started and how does it compare to what it is now?

I thought it was going to go on a non-stop upward trajectory that never ended. I had never been an entrepreneur or started a business before so I think that was a naive assumption. It’s been a rollercoaster starting Love What Matters – experiencing the lows makes you appreciate the highs even more. We’ve come across many challenges like going from our popular social media platforms to figuring out how we translate what’s worked to our website.

We started sharing stories on our social media platforms and what really resonated so well with our followers was that it was first-person storytelling – not everyone was doing that. When we launched the website, we weren’t sure how it was going to work. Are we going to be a traditional news publisher (i.e. NBC News) or double down on our niche of first-person storytelling?

We went forward with the first-person style and it’s worked really well for us. The viral success we had in the beginning of social media, we hoped would translate to the website as well. We didn’t know what to expect and hoped for what it is now. To credit my editorial team, it goes back to the storytelling. It’s the stories that we share that keep users wanting to read more. We’ve done a lot of things I wanted us to accomplish like publishing a book and starting a few podcasts. 

I’m proudest of the communities we’ve built, strangers united by powerful and impactful experiences, underserved people connecting around mutual challenges, hopes and dreams. These communities include Adoption, Mental Health, Infertility, Addiction, Grief, Special Needs Parenting, LGBTQ+ and many more. 

We just launched a new podcast about the transformative power of kindness. 

I’d love to eventually launch a streaming television channel whether that’s through YouTube or Pluto. We haven’t gotten there yet but we’re going to invest more time in our YouTube channel and figure out how to take our storytelling to video. I see a massive opportunity there.

Who were the people who have been the most helpful in getting you to where you are today? 

Our first editor, Eliza Murphy, put us on the map. One of the most read stories of the year, we had in our first year which is incredible to be ranked with legacy publishers! In fact, we had two stories on the Chartbeat List of Most Engaging Stories that year.

Our current managing editor, Sophia San Filippo, does an incredible job making sure everything is running and we’re optimized for Search, our team is trained, etc. She’s done an extraordinary job at keeping this massive organization going. 

If you had to do it all over again, what would you do differently?

If I had to do it over again, I think we would work on video from infancy. It’s hard because you can’t do and be everything to everyone as a product and person. I think the reason we’ve been so successful is because we’ve been hyper-focused on incredible written word storytelling and I think had we tried to do video alongside it we may have fumbled the website storytelling more. 

Clearly, there was a reason why we didn’t do it from the beginning.

What’s the one thing you’d tell your younger self? 

If I was talking to myself in my twenties, I’d tell him to relax. Your twenties are meant to try as many different things as you can. Try as many things as possible and continue to learn as many things as possible – you’ll figure it out. 

You can fail as many times as you want in your twenties because it’s a great opportunity to learn from it all. 

Interested in reading real stories by real people? You can explore countless stories filled with hope, support, kindness and compassion at lovewhatmatters.com.

The post Meet Colin Balfe: The Creator Behind the First-Person Storytelling Platform, Love What Matters, Touching the Hearts of Millions first appeared on Freestar.

Glenn has over 15+ years of experience in business development, strategic partnerships, and sales in the ad tech and digital publishing space. He’s responsible for developing innovative video solutions with publishers globally and driving video revenue growth. Glenn works closely with digital publishers, video content owners, and demand partners to generate monetizable video views and revenue.

We had the opportunity to sit down with Glenn so you can get to know more about him!

Note: Responses may have been edited for clarity.

You’ve been working in Ad Tech for years. Tell us about your experience and what’s changed over the years.

I started working in Ad Tech for a company called Alloy Digital. It was before programmatic advertising even existed. I started in the sales planning side of the business but as the business really started to grow, we naturally needed more publishers and inventory to monetize so I jumped at the opportunity to start managing and developing new relationships with publishers. 

Over the years, as video started to grow exponentially, I gravitated towards the business development side of it. That’s what I’ve focused on in the last 10 years or so of my career. I’ve enjoyed working with entrepreneurs and publishers to scale video in unique ways that are specific to their site/app. I want to work with them to figure out how we, as an ad monetization solution, weave video into that experience that best serves our publishers’ audience. 

What led you to this career?

Actually, I went to school for Finance but even in high school and college, all of my summer jobs and what I was focused on outside of school was making money on the internet. It was a bit different back then than it is now, but I was laying the groundwork. 

The ability to monetize an audience was more challenging back then and we didn’t have search (it was still in its infancy) or social media to attract an audience. Making money on the internet was more focused on selling something or adding banner ads to your website or building web experiences for companies. I was very passionate about this space. It was only natural that I tried to get into a role that encompassed this so  I figured out how I can make money doing something I love.

As the whole internet advertising space evolved, I naturally gravitated towards areas that have interested me the most. I’m curious to learn about new ad technologies, learn how to engage an audience and monetize that experience  and video fits right into that. I really enjoy unlocking complex problems and video offers that also help publishers make money with new video solutions.

What behavior or personality trait do you most attribute your success to, and why?

There’s probably two elements of my personality/work ethic that I have benefitted from:

1. My desire to dig into the data. I am willing to roll up my sleeves and personally find the root cause and dig into the numbers for myself rather than have someone else figure it out. I believe it’s important to be able to analyze the information and have my own take away from it. 
2. I really enjoy meeting entrepreneurs and independent publishers to build relationships. I’ve been able to build a lot of trust and help educate them about various solutions that they should consider. On the other hand, I’ve learned alot from them as well from learning to respect their audience and finding solutions that respect the relationship with their audience.
   
   We’ve all experienced certain video ads that feel like they’re too much and there’s a line you don’t want to cross. There are certain solutions and products I choose to present to publishers that can be a balance between revenue and the publisher’s audience/loyal users. I wouldn’t know exactly what that is if it wasn’t for building rapport with them.

What energizes you at work?

I enjoy uncovering opportunities to make more revenue for our publishers. Our core value at Freestar is Publisher First so if we can work together to find the right way to weave video into their property, it can be extremely lucrative for our publishers.

What’s one thing you’re learning now, and why is it important?

I’m personally learning how to get various groups to work together to achieve a common goal. It might sound like a simple concept, but put into practice, it can be quite difficult. The question is “how do we help publishers make money with video and have all the various groups that are not necessarily focused on video to align on what we need them to do to execute on our video products?”

We want to create a robust menu of video solutions that our publishers can take advantage of. We want our products to be vetted and have our publishers know they can trust it’ll have the results they’re looking for. 

In this new role, what are you looking forward to the most?

I’m looking forward to working with publishers to identify video products or experiences on their site that naturally make sense. We want to be respectful of their users and loyal fans while simultaneously generating meaningful revenue for the publisher. In some cases, they have multiple streams of revenue (subscription, e-commerce, etc.) but for a vast majority of sites, they are reliant on digital advertising and video is a lucrative form of digital advertising. It can be 2-5X CPMs from what they generate on their display inventory.

Lastly, for anyone looking to get into Ad Tech or grow in their career, what tips would you give?

I would say find a company and/or manager/mentor who is going to invest in you. You need someone who is going to help you learn and give candid feedback. 

I do see this being especially challenging since Covid made remote work more common. If you’re early in your career, there’s nothing you can benefit from more than a manager/mentor that you can meet with on a regular basis to ask questions (even the dumb ones) and learn aspects of your career/role that would be helpful for you to understand. You don’t get that water cooler talk or coffee/drink after work in the remote work life. I know for myself, I was surrounded by constant opportunities for networking, absorbing information and growing in the career field. Find at least one person who will be your sounding board. 

We’re hiring! If you or someone you know is interested in joining a team of smart, innovative thinkers, check out our Careers page.

The post Meet Tim: Freestar’s VP of Video first appeared on Freestar.

Our VP of Business Development and Customer Success, Christina Fiasconaro, knows how difficult it can be for a team member to learn the ropes. “The ad tech industry can be hard to navigate, especially if you are brand new to it. We’re creating a role that gives up-and-coming Ad Tech experts the opportunity to learn the ins and outs of the business and give them a chance to understand the different aspects it has to offer before they pick the path they want to go down,” shares Fiasconaro. 

We’ve designed this role so they can learn the ins and outs of Freestar and how ad tech works. This role has the opportunity to work with each department including:

• Business Development – This role will conduct prospecting and generate qualified publisher leads to understanding who publishers are and how we can fit their needs.
• Account Management – They’ll work day-to-day with publishers and internal teams to provide service and support.
• Yield Management – This role will work with our Yield team to take a deeper dive into our publisher’s revenue trends and look for ways to optimize revenue.
• Revenue Operations – They’ll work with our Freestar demand partners to see how we manage those relationships, and monitor discrepancies and troubleshooting. 
• Publisher Operations – Lastly, this role will be able to implement digital advertising solutions to meet publisher requirements and troubleshoot digital advertising campaigns.

To be clear, this role will not be working in each department simultaneously, but rather will spend several weeks in each department to get a better understanding and really learn the department’s function. This allows the successful candidate a chance to see which department is the best fit for them before choosing a niche they want to specialize in. Working within these different teams includes learning to work within our systems including Salesforce, Looker, and Google Ad Manager. We hope this new role will provide a strong foundation for an individual looking to grow within ad tech and at Freestar.

Christina shares that this opportunity is something she wishes was offered to her when she was first starting out. 

“We have a whole company that is excited to talk about their work and share their knowledge with people who are new to the industry. When you love your day-to-day and what you do, it’s even better to be able to teach that to the next group of leaders,” adds Fiasconaro. 

If you or someone you know may be interested in this role, don’t hesitate to reach out for more questions or apply. This role is open to anyone, whether or not you have ad tech experience. You can learn more about the role here. Check out our other open roles at freestar.com/careers. 

The post Calling All Aspiring Ad Tech Professionals first appeared on Freestar.