The president and publisher of an eastern Iowa media outlet is being named Iowa’s Small Business Person of the Year by the U-S Small Business Administration. Thirty-six-year-old John Lohman and his wife launched the Corridor Media Group in 2004.
"We started it just about five years ago in our basement in North Liberty and we had just a couple of employees at that time and we’re up to about 15 full-time equivalent employees right now," Lohman says. "We did get flooded out last year which was an unfortunate situation but we’re back in the office and business is going pretty well."
They had moved into the new offices in Coralville along the Iowa River just two months before the record floods hit last spring. Despite the flood, the business continued to publish its weekly Corridor Business Journal for the Cedar Rapids/Iowa City area without interruption.
Lohman attributes his company’s performance to two things, the first is being blessed with a staff of "tremendous employees." "The second thing is, we’re focused on niches. With the Corridor Business Journal, we’re focused on local business news and with CorridorBuzz.com, we’re focused on local arts and entertainment news," Lohman says. "If you can do those things really well, you’ll be successful."
The Corridor Business Journal now has a weekly circulation of ten-thousand. He says, "It’s a great honor to get this award during this inauspicious time in the economy but we’re very fortunate to have it and we’re thankful that we’re continuing to grow and look forward to continuing to grow for the near future."
As the Iowa Small Business Person of the Year, Lohman will represent Iowa at National Small Business Week ceremonies in Washington, D-C, during May, where he will compete for the national award.