About Connect Media

About Connect Media

We’re Cindy and George — two friends who left corporate America after long, successful careers because we reached a point where that life simply didn’t fit us anymore.

 

We both learned a tremendous amount and worked with many wonderful people over the years. Cindy spent decades as a general manager in the direct mail industry, and George built a reputation as a top-performing salesperson. We were proud of the work we did and grateful for the opportunities we had.

 

But after many years, we both found ourselves feeling the same thing: much of corporate life had become exhausting, frustrating, and increasingly disconnected from the work that actually drives success.

 

Too much time was spent documenting activity instead of creating results. When sales were down, the answer was usually more meetings, more reporting, and more micromanagement — not more time with customers. Decisions were often being made far away by people who had never sat across the table from a client, and many of those decisions made it harder to do what we believed mattered most: building relationships and helping customers succeed.

 

After decades of working within that system, we were simply done.

 

But we knew one thing for certain: if we were going to spend our energy building something, we wanted it to be something we truly believed in.

 

So we took the leap.

 

Our Story — From Cindy

For me, the turning point came after becoming a mom later in life. After too many nights white-knuckling it down 35W in brutal traffic — always the last parent at daycare — I realized something had to change. I left corporate life and began teaching myself graphic design, and one day I created a mock cover for a magazine I believed would work in the Rochester market.

 

Not long after that, George called. He was ready to make a change too. Sitting in front of a computer all day just wasn’t how he wanted to spend the rest of his life. We met for lunch, I showed him the mockup, and the rest is history. Within weeks — in the middle of one of the coldest Februaries on record — George packed up his life and moved to Rochester, leaving behind his daughters, grandkids, and his incredible 105-year-old mother, Hootie.

 

At that point we didn’t know a single person in Rochester, we had both quit our jobs, and we had absolutely no safety net. It was officially go time.

 

We handed out paper bags to local families and asked them to save everything they received in their mailboxes for three months so we could truly understand what Rochester residents were seeing and what they weren’t.

 

That’s how Shop Rochester was born.

 

Every dream we ever had for Shop Rochester came true. We had pages filled with art galleries, theatre, music, and dance, plus amazing home improvement and dining. We had built an incredible customer base of people we cherished that worked in their businesses every single day. We absolutely loved every minute of building our business. Along the way we met and partnered with so many wonderful people like Gregory from the Civic Theatre, Michael from Michael’s, Judy from the Chamber, Ron from Luxury Bath, Jeanne and Wendy from The Mouse and, Carol from Counterpoint. When we worked in the cities, many of the owners did not actually work in their businesses. You could see them for example on the first Wednesday of every month at 2 o’clock. It is so different in Rochester, when you walk in a business, you are likely to be meeting the owner.

 

 

How Connect Media Grew

As Shop Rochester grew, so did our relationships and opportunities. In 2018, we acquired the Rochester Area Visitor magazine — a publication with a long history and incredible distribution throughout the city. In 2019, we added the Rochester Area Wedding Magazine, the region’s only dedicated wedding publication. Along the way, we also continued developing the Downtown Rochester Easy Map, which became its own standalone product in 2020.

 

What started as one little magazine grew into a family of publications — all built the same way we started: by showing up, building relationships, and working hard every day to help local businesses succeed.

 

What We Do Today

Everything we do is designed with one goal in mind: to outperform everything else in the mailbox, on the rack or on the screen.

 

None of this happens by accident. Every decision — from ad design to distribution location — is very intentional, because we know our clients are investing real money, and we treat that money like it’s our own.

 

When you work with us, you’re not dealing with an employee who is just doing a job. You’re working directly with the owners of the company. That means we have skin in the game, and we care deeply about whether your advertising actually works.

 

One of the biggest things that sets us apart is how seriously we take the covers of our magazines. The cover is everything. If someone doesn’t see it, pick it up, and feel compelled to open it, nothing inside the magazine matters — including the ads. That’s why we obsess over our covers, sometimes it feels like to the point of insanity.

 

Once the magazine is opened, that’s where the ads come in — and we’re just as intense about those. We dig deep into what makes each business unique and why someone should choose them over their competitors. We focus heavily on the unique selling proposition and believe strongly in keeping the main thing the main thing.

 

Why Businesses Trust Us

We still show up in person. We still hand-deliver to new clients. We stay connected to what’s happening in the community because we’re out there every day visiting businesses, listening, and learning.

 

For most owners, their business isn’t just a job — it’s a huge part of their life. We understand that because we feel the same way about ours.

 

In Closing

At the end of the day, Connect Media was built the same way our clients build their businesses — by showing up every day, working hard, taking risks, and caring deeply about the results.

 

We know what it feels like to invest your own time, money, and energy into something you believe in, because we’ve done it ourselves. That’s why we take our responsibility to the businesses we work with so seriously.

 

We’re proud of what we’ve built, proud of the relationships we’ve formed along the way, and incredibly grateful to be part of the Rochester community.

 

Serious about growing your business?
 We are.