[searchbar]

#36 How businesses serve their communities ft. Michael Curran

From early entrepreneurship in the media industry to leading the Ottawa Business Journal (OBJ) for the past 23 years, Michael Curran is passionate about authentic, ethical, and professional reporting. He’s also a strong advocate for the positive impacts businesses can have on society. Championing entrepreneurship as a force for good, Michael has led the charge in recognizing and reporting on big achievements within the Ottawa business community. For instance, he helped establish awards such as CEO of the Year and Forty Under 40

In this episode of the Unsubscribed! Podcast, Michael takes a look back at his career to date, exploring how creating and distributing business news has changed over time, and the benefits that local businesses bring to our community. You’ll learn:

1) What content marketers and journalists have in common (quite a lot, as it turns out).

2) About the value of regular short form pieces alongside less frequent long form content.

3) How technology has impacted business news and reporting since the late nineties.

Driving impact in the Ottawa business community

After starting out in the nineties with aspirations of becoming a political journalist, Michael looked beyond the negative headlines to see the positive impact of entrepreneurship at a grassroots level. Job creation, wealth creation, and community support helped Michael realize the tangible social impacts of business and the need for quality reporting that advocated authentically for entrepreneurs.  

After founding and selling his own community newspaper in the mid-nineties, Michael got a taste for entrepreneurship and journalism to become the backbone of OBJ for over 20 years. He truly believes business is at the core of our communities, and he’s passionate about reporting from the inside to provide a platform and a stronger sense of community for the people of Ottawa. 

With a very clear niche — the local business community — the OBJ drills down deep into different sectors to deliver hard news every hour, alongside broader analytical content, enterprise reporting, delivered quarterly in print and digital formats. Being part of a periodical with the longevity of OBJ, Michael has first-hand experience how news, and the consumption of news, evolves alongside technology, and for him two concepts are key: niche and community. 

Listen to the full podcast for all this and more, including Michael’s fascinating insights into some common traits of next-level leaders. 

Follow Michael Curran on LinkedIn.

Subscribe

Thanks for listening to Unsubscribed! – a podcast created by Knak. If you enjoyed this episode, please do subscribe and leave a review on your favorite podcast player. 

Join the conversation

If you have any feedback, or want to chat, feel free to reach out to Pierce on LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter @marketing_101.

Pierce Ujjainwalla has decades of experience as a CEO, entrepreneur, and career marketing leader. He has lived in the marketing trenches at companies like IBM, SAP, NVIDIA, and Marketo. He founded Revenue Pulse and then launched Knak in 2015 as a platform designed to help Marketers simplify email and landing page creation. Visit his personal blog, Unsubscribed, or his Twitter for more of the insight he’s gained as founder and CEO of Knak. Marketing is his jam; doing it better with technology is his passion.

Latest Episodes

#51 From Startups to Google - Marketing Ops with Meghan Mayday

Meghan Mayday is the head of Marketing Infrastructure and Automation at Google Cloud where she manages the production of thousands of global Marketing programs a year. Listen to her story of moving to San Francisco…

#50 Professional Soccer Player Turned Entrepreneur: How Cody Ruberto created a ride-sharing company with $3,000 that competes against the giants

This week I had Cody Ruberto, CEO & Founder of U-Ride on the show. He’s got an amazing story about being a professional soccer player and then starting U-Ride, which is a ridesharing company that…

#49 How to build a Customer-Centric Company with Rod Cherkas

In this episode of Unsubscribed! hear from Rod Cherkas, Founder and CEO of HelloCCO and Author of the Chief Customer Officer Playbook. Learn about: You can also follow Rod on LinkedIn. Thanks for listening to Unsubscribed! –…