Laurel Touby discusses where she sees mediabistro in ten years and the future of online businesses.

Question: Where would you like to see mediabistroin the next ten years?

Laurel Touby:  If done right mediabistro could be a worldwide global brand. We already have cocktail parties around the world in different locales and we have members from around the world buying our classes and seminars online so I know that those customers are out there and I know that the model is valuable to more people than just Americans so I feel like it could be worldwide. I also feel like we could strengthen our reach into the advertising industry and the public relations and marketing industries. They’re tangential industries to the traditional creative media people, so I feel like there’s a lot of growth there in all these different ways, geographically and also vertically.

Question: What advice would you give to people starting new companies?

Laurel Touby:  People are always asking me how you did it and how they can do it, how they can start a business, and you really have to have an idea that you believe in. I hate to kind of regurgitate clichés but honestly I’ve found those clichés to be true. If you don’t believe in your idea more than anything in the world, if you don’t feel every day like you’re having the most fun you’ve ever had no matter how hard the chores are, no matter how tedious they are, if you don’t feel that it’s fun, this isn’t for you. You can’t be an entrepreneur because you’ll be taking out the garbage, cleaning up messes. You’ll be doing the most mundane, ridiculous tasks and that’s what it takes, perseverance year after year, month after month, to just keep going, and what keeps you going is your excitement and your passion and those little trickle-in results, the little results that just trickle in. Those are the things that keep you going. There’s no--  Sometimes there’s no external gratification. There’s no money in it. Sometimes people are complaining, sometimes people are angry at you, sometimes people are hostile towards you, but you have to keep going because you have an inner engine that just keeps you going.

Recorded on: 06/26/2008