This month I launched IconicMan, an international online magazine for men, written in English. The tagline is simple: “The Man. The Iconic Man.” Our motto, slightly playful, is “Mansified – Man Intensified”. I know, it sounds like a cologne ad. But behind it is an idea I have been thinking about for a long time: men need a place where they can get practical, free and positive advice on how to become better and more successful.
So far I have built online stores, an online flower shop, a marketing automation platform and a positive-news website. A men’s magazine might look like a change of direction. It isn’t, really. It is still about content, trust and audience, except this time the subject is the reader himself.
Why a men’s magazine, in 2019
Look at what gets published for men today and you will mostly see two things. On one side, celebrity media: who is dating whom, which footballer bought which car. On the other side, the extremes: either content that treats men as caricatures, or aggressive talk about how to “dominate” everyone around you. In between there is a big gap.
That gap is practical, positive, aspirational content. A man of 25 or 45 has real questions: how do I negotiate a raise, how do I build a budget, how do I dress for an interview, how do I look after my health when I work 12-hour days, how do I make a long-term relationship work. Men rarely talk about many of these things, even with their friends. Not because they don’t care, but because they were never taught to ask for help.
Running Știri de Bine taught me that people look for more than drama. I wrote about it in my lessons from positive journalism, and the conclusion holds here too: an optimistic tone isn’t naivety, it is respect for the reader.
What “iconic” means to me
The word “iconic” is easy to misread. It doesn’t mean the man who makes the most noise in the room, or the one who thinks he is better than everyone else. To me, an iconic man is defined by a few things:
- Character. He keeps his word, when it is convenient and when it isn’t.
- Responsibility. For his family, for the people he works with, for the decisions he makes.
- Style. Not expensive clothes, but care for how he looks and how he behaves.
- Ambition. He wants to grow, to build something, to leave things better than he found them.
What it doesn’t mean: arrogance, contempt, or the need to make others smaller so you look bigger. A confident man has nothing to prove to anyone. And, very important to me, IconicMan isn’t a magazine “against” anybody. Respect for women is part of the definition of an iconic man, not a footnote. The men I admire most are the ones who celebrate the success of their partners, colleagues and daughters.
What you’ll find in IconicMan
We picked a handful of big themes that cover the life of a man who wants to keep growing: lifestyle, career, money, style, films and TV series, technology and crypto. Some are obvious. Others, like films and series, are there because downtime is part of a balanced life too. As for crypto, after writing about Bitcoin, bubbles and the new economy, I believe it deserves calm explanations, without get-rich-overnight promises.
The advice is free. That is a deliberate choice. I want a young man who is just starting out to have access to the same ideas as someone who can afford an expensive coach.
Why English, and international from day one
This was a conscious decision. The needs I am talking about aren’t Romanian, they are universal. A man in London, Sydney or Bucharest runs into roughly the same questions about career, money and confidence. If you start local and only later try to translate, you spend your whole life fighting a product that was designed small.
I have written before about how to build a global product from Romania, and the lesson applies to media as well: your market is the one you choose at the start. Living in Cyprus now, where English is used everywhere in business and daily life, made the decision even more natural.
Publishing is a business, not a hobby
Many people think an online magazine means writing nice articles and waiting for readers to show up. It doesn’t work like that. Everything I have done online has taught me that publishing is a business like any other, with processes, numbers and a lot of patience. For IconicMan, three things matter most:
- SEO. Every article has to answer a question people actually search for. If Google can’t find you, you don’t exist.
- Social media. Good content has to be taken to where people are, in the right format for each network.
- Consistency. One brilliant article a month is worth less than good articles published steadily, month after month.
The intention is for the magazine to support itself over time through advertising and partnerships with brands that fit its values. But that isn’t step one. Step one is building an audience that trusts us. Without trust, any ad is just noise.
What IconicMan won’t be
To be clear from the start: we won’t publish celebrity gossip, we won’t promote toxic ideas about what it means to be a “real man”, and we won’t sell illusions. There is no five-step recipe for success. There is discipline, curiosity, and people who help you along the way. We want to be one of them.
An invitation
IconicMan has only just started. It will grow with every article, but also with every reader who tells us what interests him, what helped and what is missing. If you are a man who wants to become a better version of himself, or a woman who would like to recommend the magazine to someone she cares about, I would love to hear your suggestions.
And a question for you: what topic do you wish someone had given you good advice on when you were 20?