From Where I Sit TWO YEARS OF SATISFYING SERVICE
	OCTOBER 2005

by Richard Koscher, Publisher

Even the most cynical observer is beginning to believe that 110° Magazine – East County Living is here to stay. We’re celebrating our second anniversary and if you can succeed in this industry for two years, you can usually last for as long as you want.

Any start up business creates a lot of challenges and frustrations. We made some mistakes and learned a lot of lessons. The Editor In Chief, Don Huntington, and I have had a great run up to this point, however. Most especially, we are pleased that the magazine seems to be making a lot of friends!

In July we had a great time with our Cornfest booth — greeting people and passing out more than a thousand free copies of our July issue. Whenever people passing the booth seemed appreciative, we asked them to sign our book. We were gratified with the responses that we got. A woman named Barbara wrote, “This is the best magazine I have ever read.” This was a thought echoed by more than one appreciative person. Another couple wrote, “To the best magazine in the country! Thanks for all you do!” Someone else wrote more specifically, “110° is a magazine written just for me (or so it seems).”

We were a little dazzled by the comments of some people who said how much the magazine seemed to help them. One reader named Paul wrote, “Thanks for all your support with the article in your April issue. You helped me to help others change their lives.” A number of people told us they loved our magazine and several of them, who we had never met, wrote that they love us.

It is great to be doing something that people appreciate! Don always reminds me how blessed we are to be in a business that causes people who we have never met to throw their arms around us, sometimes, and tell us how grateful they are for what we are doing. Many of the jobs both he and I have had in the past demanded hard work simply so that we wouldn’t get fired. Nobody usually bothered to thank us for doing a good job. And for sure nobody ever told us they loved us because of the good job we were doing!

Don and I are both cautious about taking too much credit for the magazine. We center our attention upon things that are going on in East County — and especially upon the people who live, work, and play in this area. We are glad to admit that if the magazine is an interesting read, then a lot of the credit has to go to the fact that the people featured on our pages are such an interesting lot.

Many Brentwood people know that Ike Montanez is the Brentwood Man of the Year, for example. But how many people remember what his amazing Amigos program was about? How many know that as a teacher he used to personally visit the homes of every student before the first day of classes? How many of us wish we’d had a teacher like that? How does a person develop that kind of heroic concern for others?

All the articles in this issue are full of fascinating information and insights like Ike’s “Paying Forward” article. All the issues we publish are full of absorbing articles like the ones in this October issue.

Don and I also want to acknowledge the contribution of our photographer, Russell Byrne. Russell has an artist’s eye for the setting and composition of a picture. He pleases people with his artistry as well as with his friendly, unassuming attitude.

In particular, we’re thankful for our loyal advertisers. Special people like Patrick McCarran, Karen Casey, Sharon McCormick, Lisa Hultz, Rodney Jansen, Liz Cuccia, Marrianne Parker, and Cindy Ehling believed in us enough to publish ads in our very first issue, paying us for advertising space in a magazine that hadn’t even been published yet! As a sign of our gratitude we’ve comped them with a full page ad in this issue.

110° – 12 times a year
We’ve decided to expand the publication and to do what we do on a somewhat larger scale. We have been a ten-issue-a-year publication, publishing July/August and January/February double issues. However, we faced the problem in every issue of not having sufficient space for the great stories and articles that we wanted to run. Our “Lawrences of Antioch,” for example, sat in the queue for seven months before we finally could put this wonderful story into print.

Two years of never missing a deadline has provided satisfying opportunities of service to our community. And we’re just getting started! Wait until you see the things that are going to appear on the pages of 110° Magazine during the next 12 months!