It takes a particular kind of courage to cold-call someone who doesn't want to hear from you, and to do it while standing in your backyard, unprepared for the person to actually pick up. That's the moment Welcome Magazine was born.

It was 2019, and Fawn Clark had spent 25 years waiting for the right conditions to launch a magazine. She had already built a career in publishing, worked for the Daily Herald, and produced multiple magazines over the years. But a regional publication for Snohomish County had never quite come together. The county, she felt, was too rich and varied to reduce to a single city, each with its own personality.

"I wanted to represent all of it," she says. "The voice of who we are and the vision of where we're going."

Then Paine Field's gleaming new passenger terminal opened, developed and operated by Brett Smith, CEO of Propeller Airports, who invested roughly $40 million in the facility. Clark walked through the airy, upscale space and immediately recognized that it deserved an exclusive magazine - one that matched the terminal's luxurious tone and could accompany travelers in and out of the county. She just needed to convince Smith.

Weeks passed. His assistant deflected every call. Clark tracked his public appearances, tried to intercept him, left messages that went unanswered. Then one afternoon, his assistant went on vacation. Clark called the front desk, asked for Smith's direct line, and remarkably, was given it. She stepped outside into her backyard, dialed, and he picked up.

"I wasn't prepared for him to answer the phone," she recalls. "I thought I was going to leave another message."

Smith, who had apparently heard from her enough times to recognize the name, cut straight to it: What do you want? Clark made her pitch. Then, in a moment of audacity she still marvels at, she told him she was making her decision that week - implying she had other options, other paths forward. She asked for five minutes the next day. He said yes.

She arrived without business cards, without a polished deck - just a collection of magazines she'd previously published, showing the quality and expertise she was capable of. They talked for five, maybe ten minutes. Smith looked everything over and said simply, I don't see why not. Let's do it.

"I can't believe those words came out of my mouth," Clark says of her ultimatum. "As much as I wanted to meet with him, I was taking a risk."

Seven years later, Welcome Magazine prints 30,000 copies per issue, reaching an estimated 120,000 readers across Snohomish County and beyond. It remains the only magazine distributed at Paine Field's passenger terminal, and can be found throughout the region in hotels, resorts, wineries, fine restaurants, banks, and investment firms. It is, by any measure, Snohomish County's flagship publication.

Getting from that backyard phone call to a thriving regional publication required more than a good idea and a handshake deal. It required money, community buy-in, and the willingness to show people a vision before there was anything to show them.

Clark's early fundraising strategy was as unconventional as the rest of her origin story. She had a 98-page blank book made - a physical mock-up of what the magazine would feel like, every page empty. She took that book to potential advertisers and watched something interesting happen: when she handed it over and asked them to imagine, they did.

"When they open up a blank magazine, they kind of get their vision," she says. "I saw them go, 'well, this could be ...' and opening and touching the pages."

Her first advertiser was Willows Lodge in Woodinville, who signed on after Clark made her case about exclusive placement at Paine Field. With a 50 percent deposit in hand, Clark set a target: gather enough advance commitments to launch within three to six months. The early advertisers who followed helped establish the magazine's tone. She was deliberate about keeping the mix curated, turning down opportunities that didn't fit the vision even when the money would have been easy.

Building community representation was equally intentional. At a tribal fundraiser and fashion show, Clark introduced herself to the event's organizers - and was redirected, politely but firmly, to sit with the staff running the event. She went, sat down, and started talking to the young man beside her. He was a writer. His name was Michael Rios, and he became Welcome Magazine's voice for the Tulalip Tribes - covering the community from its rich history through to its contemporary vision and ambitions.

"I feel very lucky," Clark says. "I've met the right people at the right time, in the most wonderful way. And that's how I know I'm on the right track."

Welcome Magazine launched in October 2019. Six months later, the world shut down. The pandemic arrived in early 2020 just as the magazine's second issue was hitting distribution. Paine Field, the entire anchor of Clark's business model, went dark. Tourism evaporated. The luxury lifestyle publication found itself in a county where no one was going anywhere.

Clark spent roughly forty-eight hours in panic mode. Then she started thinking. She had six months before the next issue was due. People were home, locked in, looking for things to do. She pivoted the editorial focus from visitor to local: the next issue was built around recipes, indoor cooking, home improvement, and health. It also covered public art, still accessible on the street, available to anyone walking outside.

"It was an opportunity - luck, really - to serve the local community and not just the tourist community," she reflects. "That's how I started thinking about it, which helped me expand my vision."

That expansion proved lasting. Welcome today serves both audiences fluidly: the traveler arriving at Paine Field and the Everett resident who's lived here thirty years. The magazine covers local industry and the deep-water Port of Everett alongside profiles of Indigenous cultural traditions, restoration ecology, waterfront dining, and local artists. It has featured aviation history and the women who built it, entrepreneurs working out of restored dairy barns, chefs cooking with foraged ingredients, and the quiet work of environmental cleanup that has transformed the county's relationship with its own waterways.

That environmental story is one Clark feels particularly strongly about. Everett, she notes, wasn't always easy to love from a distance. The old pulp mill that once anchored the waterfront gave the city an odor - and a reputation. The mill site was contaminated, the riverways degraded, the waterfront inaccessible.

The transformation since then has been remarkable, and Welcome has helped document and celebrate it: the cleanup of contaminated industrial land, the return of salmon to local rivers through dam removal and habitat restoration, the reimagining of the waterfront as a destination. The Port of Everett, operating through the kind of public-private partnership model that Clark finds deeply compelling, has become one of the county's most celebrated assets, a draw not just for residents but for visitors from across the Puget Sound region.

"Our waterways, rivers, and dams are being cleaned for salmon to come back," Clark says. "Our future here in Snohomish County is tourism, and sustainability has to be a part of that. People come here because of the beauty of it. If we don't take care of it, it won't be here for businesses, or tourists, or locals."

"We can be used as an example for cities and towns nationwide."

That civic sense of responsibility runs through everything Clark publishes. Welcome isn't just a lifestyle magazine in the decorative sense - it's an argument, made twice a year, that Snohomish County is a place worth paying attention to, investing in, and taking care of.

The magazine's current issue doubles down on that argument at an international scale: timed around FIFA World Cup watch parties in Everett, it's built to greet visitors passing through on their way between Seattle and Vancouver and convince them to stop, look around, and stay a while. It covers Edmonds, Woodinville, the Port, the arts scene - the full county, not just the I-5 corridor.

"You don't just drive through Snohomish County," Clark says. "Pull over. Look at everything you can do here."

Looking ahead, Clark is as energized about Welcome's future as she has been at any point in its seven-year run. A health and wellness issue is in development, which she describes as holistic in the truest sense, covering physical, spiritual, and financial wellbeing together. She's preparing to introduce a fashion section helmed by a stylist based in downtown Everett, bringing what she calls "clean fashion" to the magazine's pages. Her son is launching a humor publication of his own, a comedy magazine called The Comedy Rag, which Clark mentions with obvious delight.

For Welcome itself, her philosophy is refreshingly untroubled by the disruptions that have upended print media nationally: if it isn't broken, she says, don't fix it. The magazine's model is working and its readership is growing. Its placement at Paine Field puts it in front of an estimated 1.4 million passengers annually, a captive audience of exactly the kind of affluent, curious, mobile readers that advertisers want to reach.

When asked what legacy she hopes to leave? "Clean energy, clean air, clean water," she says simply. "If I can contribute to those for future generations, that's the legacy I want." That sentiment extends to the magazine itself: Welcome is printed entirely on 100% recycled matte paper and is fully recyclable.

Seven years in, Fawn Clark has built something more than a successful magazine. She has built a publication that uplifts the county, celebrates its people generously, and tells those stories with confidence.