Today we’d like to introduce you to Michael Satterfield.
Michael, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
How I got to Texas:
I was born and raised in Southern California, but my mother’s side of the family is originally from Texas, so I have a lot of families spread all around the state. I have been running my company Satterfield Group LLC, full time since 2007, we do media and marketing consulting, and it is the parent company of my publication The Gentleman Racer® (thegentlemanracer.com). In 2015, I took a contract job in Tokyo, but after I had returned to Southern California and was staying with family while I shopped for a house or apartment and I just wasn’t really liking my options, so took a cross-country motorcycle trip to figure out where I wanted to relocate (you can read about it here https://www.thegentlemanracer.com/2017/09/california-by-way-of-cleveland.html).
On that trip, I scouted several areas and settled on a top three, one of which was Central Texas. So after making it back to California, I set up an alert for a few key areas looking for an old commercial building to turn into a live/workspace. One popped up in the small town of Groesbeck, it was in really bad shape, but I could write a check for it, so I reached out and bought the building based on the pictures and I had never really been to Groesbeck except to pass through it once several years ago. But it didn’t really matter where I landed, I just knew I wanted an old building in a small town.
I made arrangements to get a storage unit in Groesbeck, loaded a truck, and headed east. (You can see the building and watch my video about moving to Texas from California here (https://www.thegentlemanracer.com/2018/05/the-building-project.html). Shortly after moving to Texas, I met Jennifer, we were married in 2020 and we now work together running Satterfield Group LLC.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle-free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
There have been a lot of stressful days, as any entrepreneur will tell you, it was a big shift from a corporate job where there were departments that handled everything like travel and accounts payable.
Suddenly, I am in every department and competing against established media companies in what, at the time, was the wild west of new media. You quickly find out that net-30 doesn’t mean net-30 to a lot of companies so, it was a major learning curve. But while I would have for sure made more money staying at my job, I wouldn’t change a thing.
There is also a personal cost, when you live outside of the normal 9-5 schedule you miss out on a lot of things your family and friends are doing. While everyone else is working for the weekend, you find yourself working on a weekend, but you just happen to be in a helicopter chasing trophy trucks through the desert so it doesn’t look like work.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Satterfield Group and The Gentleman Racer?
Please tell us more about your business or organization. What should we know? So I am the founder and editor of The Gentleman Racer, an award-winning men’s lifestyle publication based here in Texas.
I had always been interested in photography, I started winning local and state competitions and had my first cover photo published when I was 14. So, I was always taking pictures and was interested in cars so I naturally took a lot of pictures of cars. The first version of The Gentleman Racer was way back in 2002 when I still had to have 35mm film developed and scan photos in, but basically, I would share images from car shows and events.
I was working full time in the automotive industry and on the side starting writing and building out what would be the groundwork for TheGentlemanRacer.com today. In 2007, I also launched an apparel company that was doing licensed apparel production and we had two inhouse brands, it was at this time that I launched out on my own full time. It was scary for sure, and I worked more than ever before, but it gave me the flexibility to grow both companies.
The concept for the site and magazine was simple, tell the stories I found interesting and hope that other people would find them interesting as well. It has seemed to work pretty well, it turns out a lot of people like cars, travel, watches, etc. Over the years, we would do special editions in print, small runs, mainly because I enjoy the art of print magazines. 2010, is when the site really started to get traction and in 2011 social media really started to take off with Instagram fueling a lot of the site’s growth. The site has had several redesigns and logos over the years, we recently just refreshed for 2022 and the launch of the magazine.
In 2015, I launched the annual print magazine which has grown in popularity over the last 6 years, for 2022 we are going to a different format and going to a quarterly publication. It is more of a journal format with unique content, and it will be distributed through independent retailers and destinations. We want our readers to get out of their chairs and drive somewhere interesting to pick them up. It is a way to drive our readers into small businesses, car museums, and unique properties we love across the country.
Today, The Gentleman Racer reaches over 200,000 readers online and over 2 million social impressions a month and I get to work with some of the biggest brands in the world telling stories. The Gentleman Racer is a men’s lifestyle magazine and website, with a focus on cars, adventure, style, and culture. The most popular stories are on classic cars, history, road trips, and adventure travel.
I think it is a mix of content, so many publications for guys are single subjects, cars, fashion, or technology, but most men are interested in more than one thing. That is why there are so many categories in the site and magazine, you can scroll from reading the history of the Datsun 240Z and the next story will be about a motorcycle adventure in the Smokey Mountains, followed by a story about menswear.
That the platform has created opportunities to tell stories that might not make it on mainstream publications. We have a free weekly newsletter that features stories from the site (here https://www.thegentlemanracer.com/p/sign-up-for-print-magazine.html) if they would like to keep up to date with our stories and be entered to win a subscription to the print magazine.
What does success mean to you?
For me, I feel successful if those close to me are happy and I am helping them pursue their own goals. There has never been a dollar amount, a watch, or a supercar attached to success, for me, it’s about my ability to impact other people in a positive way.
Contact Info:
- Email: michael@thegentlemanracer.com
- Website: thegentlemanracer.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/thegentlemanracer
- Facebook: facebook.com/thegentlemanracer
- Twitter: twitter.com/thegentracer
- Youtube: youtube.com/thegentlemanracer
- Other: satterfieldgroup.com
