52 Cups of Coffee: 417 Edition - Cup 39/52 - Logan Aguirre

Here's the weekly boilerplate intro if you've already read anything from past cups of coffee skip ahead to the cup of coffee below the name!

After hearing about the book 52 Cups of Coffee on a Podcast, I thought it sounded like a great opportunity to connect to people in my community. Initially, my plan was to just have coffee once a week with someone I know. I was thinking of friends, family members, or colleagues with whom I could spend some quality time. But the opportunity to engage with my community is always in the back of my mind. So I thought it might be interesting to ask the same set of questions to a diverse cast of influential and interesting people in the 417 area and share them here on my LinkedIn page. At the end of the year, who knows what we'll have... at the very least it's 52 interesting conversations. It's a loose plan. I don't have any real intentions and I think that's the beauty of it. Curiosity. Community. And a chance to learn a little bit from each person. A big thanks to the folks at Travellers House Coffee & Tea for being willing to provide a place to chat and several cups of coffee throughout the year!

**I don't like taking notes while having coffee and conversation so I've trusted Otter to do the transcribing. Any editing issues are my own. I'm not a professional. :) I've included a list of books we discuss throughout the conversation at the bottom.

Logan Aguirre - 39/52

Logan Aguirre is the President and Publisher of 417 Magazine after buying it from her parents in 2020. I interviewed her father, Gary Whitaker earlier in the year and it was one of my favorite and most insightful interviews of the year. Due to interviewing Gary and having mutual friends with Logan, I was really looking forward to getting to talk to her and put her through the process. She had some great stuff to add to this project and, like her father, shared some hard moments that led her to the place she is today. I know how people talk about her that know her and work with her and she certainly lived up to that. I got to visit her at her 417 Magazine office, which is the best decorated office I've done one of these in so far! It has personality, so does Logan and I really enjoyed getting to hear her story. The community is better because of her dedication to her craft and I was grateful to spend some time talking through that. Enjoy!

Rhett Roberson 

What is the CliffsNotes version of the story of Logan? 

Logan Aguirre 

I guess the CliffsNotes version is that I grew up moving around the country for my dad's job in TV news. My mom was always in marketing, so we got to live a lot of places.

Rhett Roberson 

There's a full list of those places in Gary's interview.

 Logan Aguirre 

Yes, you talked to my dad too.

Rhett Roberson 

Yeah, I'll link the interview from your father. They can go through the list of places. 

Logan Aguirre 

That meant that we got to experience lots of different cultures and places. My parents always made it an adventure wherever we lived. We always just made the most of it. If we're living in upstate New York, we're learning how to ski. If we're living in St Louis, we're doing a road trip out west. Whatever came along with all of those places, came with really cool experiences. But our dinner time conversation was always fascinating because it was either about the newsroom or a cool event my mom had done. So, I knew I wanted to go into something similar. I started in journalism school at Mizzou, thinking I wanted to pursue broadcast journalism because I really loved that part of it. Once I got further in, I just started reflecting on my life and being the new kid all the time. While that comes with a lot of great life lessons, I didn't really want that to be how the rest of my life looked for me or my future family, so I switched to the advertising sequence, and I started my career in New York City.

I got a job at a PR firm right away that was in the Empire State Building. My first job out of school was walking into that building every day and I got to work on fashion clients. I got to work New York Fashion Week. Ultimately, I was working in the Empire State Building on 9/11 and that threw my world upside down. Although obviously nothing happened at the Empire State Building, that was the next suspected target. The interesting thing about being in New York on 9/11 is that we were the last to know anything was happening, because we were at work. We weren't watching the Today Show like everybody here. That was before smartphones and Twitter and all this stuff. My parents actually called the office where I was working at the Empire State Building to say something's going on. The people I worked with were like, your parents from Missouri think something's happening. Then they evacuated us, and I was like, "Okay, I guess something is happening."

My parents had, at that point bought 417 Magazine. Springfield is not my hometown, they moved here after I'd graduated high school. I came back and worked for them for about a month while I got my bearings. Then I moved to St Louis and worked in PR and marketing and met my husband. As the magazine grew and stabilized, because they really rescued it from going out of business, they asked if I would come join the business. At first that wasn't very appealing because my husband's not from Springfield, I'm not from Springfield, and we had a great life in St Louis. He worked at Boeing on unmanned stealth aircraft. The more we thought about it, the more we decided that it was a good opportunity. That was 18 years ago. At that time, we had a product called Go Magazine, which was a downtown alt weekly. That was the product they brought me in on. They asked me to do the sales and marketing and to grow that product. That was my first assignment when I got here. Slowly, they just threw new things at me. Eventually, I was just taking things off my dad's plate and serving in kind of an associate publisher role. Managing the sales team, managing the brand and marketing, but with my journalism background, always understanding that line, the editorial integrity and being able to work with the editorial team and be trusted. It's not all about sales for me. I see how those two things have to work together and how we can't violate anything on the ethical side when it comes to that. It's really important to us and our journey. Our editor has been here the longest. Longer than me. She's has the utmost editorial integrity. So, we work really well together. We've worked together a long time at this point. My brother was here too. He had been here since they bought it. We were working together day-to-day, running it for my parents. We had different things that we were in charge of, but ultimately, he left and moved with his family to Kansas City. Then all of a sudden, I was the president, which I was not prepared for. That was really hard, but I figured that out after a couple years, and I purchased it from them four years ago, September of 2020. I don't know how CliffsNote-y that was but there you go! 

Rhett Roberson 

Covered it top to bottom! That gets us to where we are today. What brings you joy? 

Logan Aguirre 

That's a great question. I'm a pretty happy person. I really love having a new idea and a vision for it, putting pieces in place to make it come to life, and then watching other people get to experience and appreciate this thing that we've brought to market. That would be like Ladies Who Launch or Think Summit. Those are some of our things that I work on, even the magazine. But knowing that I helped make that happen. Obviously, being with my family brings me joy. As far as downtime, I love hot yoga and anything on Table Rock Lake. Those are sort of my restorative activities. 

Rhett Roberson 

Cool. Well, you have led right into the third question. I'm sure there is a lot of stress associated with running 417 and you have a lot of events going on all the time. I see you at literally everything! So, I'm sure there are times that stress builds up. What do you do to recharge? 

Logan Aguirre 

I've been practicing hot yoga for 11 years, and that has definitely been the biggest contributor to just keeping me grounded. A lot of hot yoga for me, although it's an amazing workout, there's also a lot of meditation that comes with that. It helps me work out a lot of problems, or just kind of calm down about things. So, the practice of yoga, and I'm just a very disciplined person, so that is a non-negotiable. I'm there at 5:30am. I don't miss it if I'm in town, doesn't matter. Even if I'm sick, I'm like, "I'll probably feel better." I've never left there feeling worse. And then having our place at the lake has been amazing. Just 45 minutes away, and I feel like I'm in my own little bubble. I don't have to go very far. I like to paddleboard. My golden retriever paddle boards with me. We go out together and it's peaceful. Or reading on my screened in porch there. Those are the times where my blood pressure can kind of go down a little bit. Otherwise, if I'm in town, I'm pretty much on. 

Rhett Roberson 

Yeah, it's hard not to be in your particular role. How would your colleagues describe you? 

Logan Aguirre 

Actually, we just had this exercise so I know they said, passionate, authentic, determined, visionary, caring. I guess, what you see is what you get. I'm just a very authentic person. 

Rhett Roberson 

Can you describe the work that you do now as the President and Publisher? 

Logan Aguirre 

Well, I have a lot of different responsibilities, but I would say overall, I'm focused on the brand more than anything. Above all, is everything we're putting out of the utmost excellence? Is it energetic? Is it forward looking? Is it hopeful? Is it positive? That's multi-platform. It's social, it's the magazine, it's an event, that sort of thing. That would be outward facing. Internally, I'm in charge of the sales team, so I'm very focused on revenue. We play the Great Game of Business here, so I'm very passionate about that. And then, the employee experience and what it feels like to be here. I'm making sure that we have an intentional work culture. 

Rhett Roberson 

The next question is, how did you get into this line of work? You kind of led into that as part of the CliffsNotes. That tends to happen. But maybe more specifically, if you wouldn't mind, what made you decide that Springfield was the place, ultimately? 

Logan Aguirre 

My parents got a place at Table Rock Lake, so that started to become very appealing. When we would come down, we'd go there for the weekend. I don't know that it was really Springfield, because I didn't know anything about Springfield. My grandparents lived in Springfield, so it was a place I came one time a year, and we went to Andy's. That was about all I knew. Bass Pro. But I didn't know much else. Are there cool people? Are there young people? I knew no one except my parents, my husband, my brother and his girlfriend at the time, who he married. I would say the move was more because of the opportunity to work for my family and do something that aligned with my skillset and what I'm passionate about. I had worked for some crazy, crazy people and I thought, "It would be nice to work for people that I know are ethical and kind." I just had some really bad bosses, and so the chance to come and be a part of something different.

Honestly, I don't think we really thought about how long we might be here or how long this might last. You're 26, you say yes to things. I don't know if I realized then that I was going to be here as long as I've ever lived anywhere, but once we got here and we started meeting people, it became really clear how welcoming everyone was here. I mean, in St Louis, it's very much like, "Who are your grade school friends?" That's who you stay friends with. Gosh, my grade school friends, they're still in Atlanta. I don't know. (Laughs) So, it's hard to break in even though I went to high school there. My husband was born and raised there. It's not a very welcoming community. Here it was at every turn. My very first day of work, my sister-in-law took me to a Tupperware party. I went with her just because she was scared to go by herself. The girls that I met that night are still some of my very closest friends. Then the next week, I went to Rotaract, and those girls were at Rotaract. Then somebody I met that day at Rotaract was having a toga party that weekend, and we went to the toga party. And I'm like, "This never would have happened in St Louis." No one would have met us for the first time and then invited us to their home. So, once we started making friends, and getting plugged in, and seeing that there really was an energy and a young professional community, and now those are the people I've grown up with. Like, Dan Reiter , he and I were on the Chamber board together. We would always kind of laugh, like, "Can you believe that they think we're grown up enough to be at this table?" 

Rhett Roberson 

(Laughs) 

Logan Aguirre 

So, it just grew on us. I would say.

Rhett Roberson 

Who's the best boss or leader you've had the opportunity to work with and what made them so good? 

Logan Aguirre 

I would definitely say my parents. I learned different things from each of them, but I've been here so long, I haven't had that many bosses or leaders. I've had a lot of mentors and community connections, that kind of thing. My dad was always really focused on "Praise in public, criticize in private." I think that there are a lot of bosses that don't know how to do that, and they call people out. That was something I always watched him do. He was really intentional about it. If someone's being let go, they should never be surprised. That should be a conversation you're having with them to help them and coach them to get better or letting them know that it might be time to look for something else. Then my mom, marketing-wise, she's brilliant. She has such a great brain for that and really isn't afraid to ask for things. She did a lot of sales while she was here. So, just watching her put packages together or partnerships together, she was really good at that.

Rhett Roberson

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Logan Aguirre

I really have no idea. My brother and I would make radio shows a lot, and I did a lot of pretending like I was on TV. So, probably a reporter, newscaster. 

Rhett Roberson 

Did you spend a lot of time in the newsroom growing up? 

Logan Aguirre 

Yeah. I remember one time I did a book report, but I did it from the news desk, and I got an A. 

Rhett Roberson 

Well, I mean... 

Logan Aguirre 

Kind of next level. (Laughs)

Rhett Roberson 

Yeah, you're kind of trumping all the other kids pretty hard. 

Logan Aguirre 

It was pretty cool. When I was in college, my dad and my mom both worked at KSPR, and in the summers, I worked there rolling tape, working in the newsroom. Rolling tape is the most stressful job I've ever had in my whole life. They don't have to do that anymore because it's all digital, but that was... it still makes me kind of short of breath thinking about having to get all those tapes queued up and switching them out during the newscast and trying to get it all timed correctly. 

Rhett Roberson 

Yeah, you could really put a put a halt to the progress there, just by missing a little something. Do you have any horror stories?

Logan Aguirre 

No, luckily, I never had anything go terribly wrong, but there was always that fear with tape or running the teleprompter for somebody.

Rhett Roberson 

What book has had the most significant impact on your life?

Logan Aguirre 

Later, I'll probably think of a much better answer, but the one that comes to mind most recently is when I read this book called Build Like a Woman, by Kathleen Griffith (https://a.co/d/doWXJJJ). It's really about building the business and the life that you want, and some of the truths that you have to accept in order to get there.

About a year ago, a little more than a year ago, I'd really kind of just hit a wall creatively, mentally, emotionally and really just broke down. I was like, "Somebody else can come do this." I took a four week sabbatical, thinking that would help. I could do a whole thing on sabbaticals, they're tough. I went through a process, and I got back to the other side, and her book was such a reflection of everything I had been through and all the steps I had taken. Steps that I didn't even realize I was taking. I could have never ever illustrated how I got from A to Z, because when you're going through it, you don't really realize that you're making progress.

When I read her book, I was like, "Oh my God, I did all those things, and I didn't even really realize that." That's how I got to the other side, where then you have like breakthroughs, and you have creative vision again and the energy to keep going. I built a whole talk around that for our women's leadership event. So, I would say, probably just seeing myself reflected in that book, and thinking, "Where was this last year? It would have been super helpful." (Laughs) Then knowing that actually, I was doing a lot of the right things. Just, in the moment, I didn't realize that that was part of the process, because it just felt really hard. 

Rhett Roberson 

Yeah, hard to go it alone. 

Logan Aguirre 

Yeah. 

Rhett Roberson 

That's a super tough spot to be in. I'm easily invigorated by newness, but after I've done it and done it and done it, to your point, I'm like "What else is there to do to keep me engaged and to keep me growing?" Finding your way from that space back to that creative side is huge. 

Logan Aguirre 

I think most people, when they hit that, they think, "I'll just go find a new job. It's time for the next thing." I felt very trapped. I don't have that option. I don't have an exit row. Kathleen Griffith's book has a quote that says, "The best time to figure out what you do want is when you're right in the middle of what you don't want." There are some internal things you have to face. Like, "I'm the problem. It's me." kind of thing. If you're the business owner, peacing out isn't the best option for anyone involved, right? So that radical accountability of "Okay, what are the things I can control, what are the things I'm no longer willing to accept, and what am I willing to do about it?" I had a mentor say, "Are you waiting on permission from someone? You're actually the boss and the owner, and you can do those things that you're saying you want to do." And I think sometimes we do want someone else to tell us it's okay. You can do that.  And once he said that, I was like "Yeah, okay, I'm just going to start." I said, "I'm going to start blowing shit up." 

Rhett Roberson 

Sure.  You just continue to lead me into my next question. 

Logan Aguirre 

Okay. (Laughs) Sorry! 

Rhett Roberson 

You're great at this. (Laughs) The next question is, what is the most important lesson you've learned so far in life? That you don't need to wait for permission to be the boss is probably a pretty good one. 

Logan Aguirre 

Yeah, probably a pretty good one. I think, yes, you don't have to wait for someone else to tell you it's okay, but that takes so much courage. 

Rhett Roberson 

Sure. 

Logan Aguirre 

And a lot of faith. "Okay, I guess. Hopefully I'm not going to screw this up." And if I screw it up, what's the worst case scenario? Then build back from there. What's the worst thing that could happen? Can I live with that? Okay, sure. Then, you know, you can work your way into it. 

Rhett Roberson 

What advice do you have for young professionals entering the workforce? 

Logan Aguirre 

I think just knowing that it takes time, I think it's really hard, especially if you're really ambitious. You want to get there really fast, and you see people in positions and think, "Oh, that must be nice," but you have no idea about what it took to get there. You do have to get your reps in, and sometimes you have to do stuff you don't really like doing, but that's part of learning and evolving. Then when an opportunity comes along, even if you don't think you're quite ready, you take it. But you really have to put in the work and get your reps in and it's okay. For your first six or seven years you're probably going to feel like you're not there, and it gets frustrating, and it feels defeating, but if you work hard and you keep showing up, eventually you'll get to those spots. People will recognize that. I think people, I don't want to say entitlement, but there is a feeling like they deserve something sooner than they've really worked for it. Then they get frustrated! 

Rhett Roberson 

Yeah, I met with another person this morning for 52 Cups. We went through this same thing. He did say entitlement! It's the theme of the day. But it is also that patience and being engaged in the spot that you're in now. That's a reoccurring theme that I'm seeing. It's going to be one of the more regularly reoccurring themes, and it's so true. I love that you added that. It's especially difficult for ambitious people who have big goals for themselves. It's hard to say, "It might be 15 years before you're in the job that you want to see yourself in." 

Logan Aguirre 

Yeah, the good news is, you haven't peaked! 

Rhett Roberson 

Yeah, so much room to grow. (Laughs) 

Logan Aguirre 

You didn't peak in high school. Never want to peak in high school. (Laughs) 

Rhett Roberson 

We won't name names. 

Logan Aguirre 

No. (Laughs) 

Rhett Roberson 

What are you most proud of? 

Logan Aguirre 

I haven't talked about my kids at all, but obviously I'm incredibly proud of my kids. My daughter is 16 and my son is 12, they're kind, and talented, and appreciative, and present, and a lot of things that kids these days aren't. They know how to talk to grownups and look them in the eye and hold conversations. They're not addicted to their phones. That's something my husband and I have worked really hard on. We expose them to things and get them out seeing the world so that their lens isn't just their school friends or their phone.

My husband left the corporate world. Moving here was really hard. Because of his resume, people didn't know what to do with him. Nobody understood what to do with someone who has had top secret clearances. So, he kind of had to undersell himself. He just kept telling me how much he wanted to do real estate. He just hated corporate America, but I didn't quite understand. "So, that means I'm the only one that has an income? I don't like that." But finally, he took the leap, and he really bootstrapped it together. It changed everything for our family. So, I'm really proud of him for going all in on what he really wanted to do. Now I'm like, "Man, I wish I would have just trusted a lot sooner," because he's so much happier. His time has been more flexible. He gets to work for himself and then he's available for our kids. As my job and role got more intense, all of a sudden, he had capacity. I'm proud of how we've been able to build our lives together where we both have a lot of autonomy and a lot of flexibility and a lot of control over our lives. As much control as you can have, but we're not depending on other people. We're not answering to anybody else.

Then here at 417, I'm really proud of everything that we've done with our rebrand, the redesign of the magazine, just kind of re reshaping everything after being here and owning it for four years. The first year we were coming out of covid and trying to figure that out. There's a lot to figure out about owning a business. Then hitting that wall and having that breakthrough where I said, "Okay, I'm going to do this. I'm going to set this out how I want it to be." It's been energizing for the team. It's been energizing to see it all come out, and for us to have a new identity and purpose. We haven't changed anything about the way we do things or what we write about, we just have a new vision and purpose around it that feels rooted. Lots of new things to bring to market. 

Rhett Roberson 

Did that correspond with your sabbatical? Your coming back to creativity? 

Logan Aguirre

Yeah. I mean, eventually, yeah. The sabbatical was mainly just a lot of feeling sorry for myself. (Laughs)

Rhett Roberson

Sounds like self-work. 

Logan Aguirre 

Yeah. David Cameron from city of Republic does a four-week sabbatical every year. My friend Brad Erwin at Paragon also takes a sabbatical. They had both encouraged me to take one. So, I went back and yelled at them. It's almost like childbirth. No one tells you how bad it is, because then no one would have children. So, I was like, "You guys acted like it was going to be like a four week vacation, and that shit is tough." And they're both like, "Oh yeah. No, you have to face a lot of things when you can't busy yourself with all this. You've got to face a lot of stuff." For me, I think I had to do that in order to ever come out the other side. It was absolutely part of the process, but it didn't solve anything in the moment. 

Rhett Roberson 

Yeah, that's an interesting observation. 

Logan Aguirre 

You have to do the work. 

Rhett Roberson 

Last question, final question. How do you hope the world is better for having you? 

Logan Aguirre 

I hope that in our little corner of the world, that our experiences and content have helped people experience the place they live, or feel invested in where they live, and want to be a part of it, and want to help grow it, and want to get out and discover it. That's what we're pointing people to all day long. I would hope that, because of the magazine, they tried a new experience with their family, or because of an event, they heard a speaker that clicked for them, that then made them take action in something in their lives. Everything we put out is inherently positive and actionable. So, I would hope that there's lots of little trickle effects from that. 

Rhett Roberson 

I truly believe, and I'm not just saying this because I'm in your office here, the magazine has created a more robust community, and maybe even a more cohesive community. We have a little more idea of what's going on around town that maybe you couldn't have had access to without signing up for certain newsletters or emails or whatever before. I think it's really become a calling card for the community, and people know more about what's available because of it. I think it has become a big part of the community, not just a thing that says what's going on in the community. It's been cool to watch that progress, because I've been here my whole life. 

Logan Aguirre 

Okay, so, you have good perspective and I appreciate that. When you're inside of it, it's hard to know what it looks like from out there. So, that's always good perspective! 

Rhett Roberson 

Thanks so much for making time today, I know it was a busy one! 

Logan Aguirre 

Of course, thanks for coming by!

Books:

Build Like a Woman - Kathleen Griffith