Building community — one story at a time.
Tara Bové, publisher and owner of Boerne Lifestyle, on leaving a healthcare career, running a magazine from a hospital room, and what her clients in Boerne, Texas say about working with her.
Tara Bové is the publisher and owner of Boerne Lifestyle, the City Lifestyle magazine for Boerne, Texas, where she and her family have lived for 21 years. Before the magazine she spent her career in healthcare, most recently running a senior living community through COVID. If you are researching franchises and wondering whether a City Lifestyle magazine could work where you live, her story answers the questions most people bring to that search. The video is her telling it. Below it, the answers are in her words and her clients'.
Healthcare was all-consuming. "I worked for an organization that was operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week, caring for people in a pretty intense way." Then her family went through a loss. Her firstborn daughter died, and Tara and her husband took on the care of their granddaughter, six weeks old at the time. "That's what really made me stop and pause and pivot and say, I think I need to make a change." What she needed next was specific. "Knowing that we had a little one to take care of, I knew that I wanted to have the ability to be present for her, yet I still needed to work and help provide for our family."
City Lifestyle reached out to her on LinkedIn. "It was totally unexpected. My husband and I both looked at each other and wondered, wow, this sounds really interesting." The more she worked through it, the clearer it got. "I had desires in my heart that hadn't been fully articulated on paper. As I was thinking through the things that buying this franchise could afford me and my family, I realized that it was everything that I was seeking, but didn't have a word for."
No. Tara's background was healthcare operations, and it transferred. "When I look back on my career and all that I did, all of those skills come into play in my role with Boerne Lifestyle. But the beautiful part about it is I'm not working for someone else. I'm working for myself. I'm working for my family. I'm also working for our community." City Lifestyle publishers come from corporate careers, from other businesses and from community leadership. The framework, the design team and the training exist so a new publisher can launch without reinventing the wheel.
A publisher owns the local magazine and runs the part that cannot be done from a corporate office: the relationships with local businesses, the advertising partnerships that fund the magazine, and the choice of what the community sees in it. A dedicated corporate team handles the writing, design, printing and distribution. Tara puts the partnership side plainly. "We are really blessed to have so many wonderful business owners that we get to support. It's a partnership that is very important to us, and we are very grateful for them to entrust us with their brand being represented in our magazine."
Her clients describe it from the other side. Kimberly Verbeke, a traditional naturopath who owns Avita Wellness and Aesthetics: "They participate in our events. They help us get the word out about our events. Those are the kind of things that a great partner does, and you definitely don't get that from every media partner that you work with." Kevin Welborn, managing director of Joshua Creek Ranch: "To have Tara come in, promise what she could do for us, and then deliver on it, that has been the most exciting part." Dr. Elizabeth McRae of McRae MD Medical Laser Spa, on what new patients tell her: "It has often in the last 10 years been, I Googled you. Before that it was, I saw you on TV. Now it's, oh, I read about your special in the magazine. We're having several new patients a day."
Last January, Tara's youngest daughter, Annabella, was diagnosed with leukemia. "It was devastating to get that diagnosis, but I was overwhelmed with the support of people in and around the community." The magazine did not stop. "I had my laptop, and I had to keep running the magazine. None of the deadlines stopped, but I was afforded the ability to still keep things going from a hospital room. But how do families manage it when they don't have the flexibility?" This year Blood Cancer United asked Annabella, now five, to be one of its honored heroes. Her review of the family business is short. "My mommy running a magazine. It's fun."
Training before launch, a design team that produces the magazine, and operational backing on print, distribution and digital, so a publisher's time goes to growth and relationships, and publishers can generate revenue in as little as six months. In Boerne, the magazine has grown from 36 pages to 120, and its editor was named editor of the year at the most recent national conference. The other support is the publishers themselves. "There's an amazing community of publishers within this franchise who really are cheering for each other, and that's a great thing that you don't find everywhere." In Northern Colorado, four of them built a working network by referring people they knew.
Tara's answer: "I want to make sure that I'm serving God with the gifts he's given me through the outlet of the magazine. To me, that's something that is a privilege and an honor. So if you believe that you're in a position where you want to have that opportunity, I would say go for it."
Three places to go next: find out whether your market is open at future.citylifestyle.com, read What Does a City Lifestyle Publisher Actually Do? for a plain description of the role, and read Franchise vs. Starting a Business From Scratch for how the model compares with building on your own. If a City Lifestyle publisher sent you here, start at the publisher referral page.
