Dear Radio Guy,

I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so.

You railed on me for over an hour telling me that radio was the ultimate answer to everything my client needed.  You said your stations owned the market, and there were 77,000 potential customers listening.  That I should put all of her advertising dollars into your station.

Good thing I wasn’t born yesterday.

I love radio, I really do.  My client just doesn’t have the money to drop 5k a month to get the exposure needed to make an impact.   But I don’t need to do that, said you, because if I just do 8 spots a week at your inflated rate, that’s all I’d need to start.

Get real.

I said we were doing a balanced marketing plan that hit web and social media channels as well as in-person events.

You told me I was nuts. You rolled your eyes and me and said whatever we did wasn’t going to work.  Whatever. I wouldn’t be writing this if not for the tunnel visioned, condescending expressions on your face.

So we settled on doing a 50/50 deal through your site.  I was skeptical, but it didn’t cost us anything.  You said you were going to drive tons of traffic to my site, although you had 0 web metrics from your site.   And about your site: you have two of the best knows personalities in your market -who don’t do crap for your website.  Take a lesson from the kings.

Anyway, one month later:

• Haven’t sold one coupon on your site. (Told you we were too far away)
• You have given me a total of 0.7 percent of my total web traffic
• Not a single call about the deal
• Nobody my client knows has heard our 15 second spots

Meanwhile, following our plan, we’ve created new customers, jumped our web traffic x10, and have our clients evangelizing our brand for us.

Radio isn’t dead.  But it’s not for everyone and it’s not for every business.  And it’s certainly not the only game in town.

Wonder how many people have given their money away to over zealous sales guys that don’t understand the complexity of the market and gotten similar underwhelming results.

Love,
Me

You want to make movies or films or videos or whatever you want to call it.

What’s stopping you?  Don’t have a “real camera”?  It doesn’t matter.  Use your still camera.  Or cell phone.  Or whatever you can scrape up.  Borrow one if you have to.

The point is getting up, finding a story, and then going out and creating it.

I’m getting up at 5:30 tomorrow to go shoot something for a cause I believe in.  No pay, no promises.  It’s a story I want to tell and I’m going to do it.  Decided on it 5 minutes ago.

I’ll be director, DP, camera operator, and audio guy.  Who cares?  It’s my story to tell.

What’s stopping you?

Until you quit contemplating it and get off the couch, it’s never going to happen and you’re going to wonder.

(You can also apply this to writing that story you talked about, or creating the podcast, starting the blog, or making any kind of art)