What did I get myself into?

Recently I was asked the question: “Why did you get into radio marketing?”

At least once a week I find myself with my head on my desk asking myself a similar question: “What did I get myself into?”

I don’t think there are many people out there that say “I want to sell radio advertising when I grow up!” If they do then it’s a safe bet they were dropped on their head, or held too close to a microwave as a small child. It’s a “accidental career” for many.

As a child I was the bomb at selling Girl Scout Cookies. I didn’t think twice when it came to selling ad space for school newsprint pieces. It was just another goal to hit, a “prize” to win.

Sometimes you even get to meet “celebrities”!

Did it look like fun? Well hell I have no clue! I was on the “other side of the building” so to speak. I was on the broadcasting side. I had spent most of my life behind a microphone or on a stage, and talking had never been a issue for me. Stage fright I wasn’t prone to suffer (unless it involved playing a piano) and the other side of the business never occurred to me. Seriously. I was very early in my media days, and already had a background in fundraising. Somehow the two got mixed together and the right person heard of this combo and the next think I know is “sponsorships” are being explained to me.

Once upon a time I was on the air full time, I loved what I did. Then my boss asked me if I could go see a local business who did business with us. A “shake their hand and make them feel good about what we do” thing. This local business owner handed me a check at the end of our visit and I went back to my boss a little bewildered. My first annual contract. It was so easy! All it took was me getting out from behind the microphone, going into a local business, talking to the owner for a bit and bam! They’d write me a check for an annual right? Yeah I’m still laughing my ass off over that one.

What I had seen amazed me. I could sell the “space” on the air where my voice went. What a novel idea!

I had applied for a on-air spot with a local radio group, soon after sending over my resume I got a call for a interview. The guy on the other end of the phone told me it wasn’t for the on-air spot I sought, but for a sales job. After seeing my resume the “powers that be” wanted to exploit my background to make their stations money. The nerve! Oh wait I’d be making a good hunk more money than the on-air spot. I wasn’t totally naive, I knew that it was easy to tell who drove what in the station parking lot. The management drove the brand new luxury cars, the sales staff drove the older luxury cars, the programing directors drove a station car, and the DJ’s drove what they had driven in college.

Having my diverse background and education are two of my biggest assets. Right up there with the fact my balls are bigger than most guys, I’m a excellent actress, and oh I have boobs.

It’s easy for me to draw on years of experience in media to help a client market their business in a way that is going to give them a strong ROI. (return on investment) I have been known to wake up from a sound sleep with a promotions idea or a commercial script. You don’t want me in charge of the radio on a road trip because I will drive everyone in the car nuts listening to commercials in other markets.

Selling radio is hard work, harder than selling Girl Scout cookies. See everyone wants cookies, and deep down they need the yummy goodness known as Thin Mints. Not everyone knows that deep down their business would attract more qualified customers if they just advertised properly on the right radio station. Key word being “properly”.

With the proper education, good training, a supportive management staff, and a proven product it’s going to work. I love the seeing a clients business do well and thrive, and knowing I help craft the campaign that led them down a successful path.

It’s HARD work. One of the hardest jobs I’ve ever had in my life, it’s also the most FUN and rewarding in multiple ways. It’s similar to pregnancy and motherhood. Only in radio sales if you are smart about your diet you’ll avoid the stretch marks.

It’s a blessing in life to be able to find something that enables you to do so many of the things that you love. I’ve also been very blessed to have some of the best clients, and great bosses.  I came into my career in radio sales by way of many other routes, and I just wish selling annuals was as easy as the first one! 😉

-“Big Money Red”

Reflections: “tightrope highwire”

Tags

Deep Thoughts, Love, reflections, relations

Is it possible to fall in love again?

The kind of emotions that take your breath away when you realize they still exist.

When do you realize there is a possibility?

Is it when that first kiss makes the world around you stop, and four minutes later you both realize it’s just the first date?

Is it when you realize you not only opened the restaurant for dinner, but closed the bar, the whole time wrapped up in each other like newlyweds?

Or perhaps when you watch him show off his various works of art and points of professional achievement, puffing up like a proud peacock, and rightfully so. You are anything but bored, and are fascinated by the working of this other persons brain.

Maybe when you look across the room at him and realize that the ache deep down inside that has been hurting for so long is starting to subside. Not because of someone else but because you look down and see that the wounds of the past are faded to scars.

There are many things we look for in love. Not just a long term relationship, but a forever future. A couple needs to be compatible on multiple levels and really be someone you can grow and grow old with. Someone to share all the incidentals of life with. Your lover. Your confidant. Your honeybunchsugarplum. Your best friend. The person who will be honest with you no matter what, even if you are having fat day and your hair looks like crap.

We give people chances to be that person in our lives and ourselves in theirs. Sometimes you realize a week in that it’s just better to cut bait quick before it gets anymore tangled, or you give it a few months and work out some bumps. Either way each party knows their deal breakers and it’s best to knock those suckers out quick in my humble opinion before you waste a year of your life on what will just end up being a shoe box of memories.

When my last marriage died I lost my husband, one of my best friends, my comic relief, my sunshine, my hero, my love.  It was excruciating. I missed having that connection and I wanted it back so badly. I had a lot of healing to go through both mentally, emotionally and physically, and a lot of growing up I had to do. I stupidly tried everything I could think of while the wreckage of what was the fairy tale was burning all around me. Nothing could or even would be able to fix it. There comes a point in life when you just have to survey the wreckage, take notes and move on. Staring at the flames of the plane crash isn’t going to do anything but dry out your skin and make your eyes itchy.

It’s been a long road. I’m at a point in my life where I have so much love to give. So much laughter and smiles to share. A passion for life and learning. I have identified things I need, things I want, and of course “panty droppers”. I’ve stepped out on that tightrope highwire of love a few times and been scared to death. It’s a long fall and it’s so easy to get hurt. If you want to have a relationship work you can’t just give it 90%, it’s going to take 110%+ and from both people. Just when you think you have identified a “low-risk” candidate something comes along and makes you realize it’s not the wisest investment even though it’s categorized as a “low risk”.  One goes running back to the safety of the platform, having your muscles shake in terror as you look down realize you could have fallen and there was no safety net to catch you.

Then leave it to me to have a “high risk” investment come by, and I being the hopeless romantic say “what the hell” and step on that highwire. My muscles shaking in terror and I hoping that the clowns in the ground crew put up a safety net just in case my partner on the other side of the tightrope isn’t able to meet me in the middle. I’m holding my breath… I don’t want to fall alone again.

Here’s the catch…. you don’t have to have a “safety net” or someone on the other side of the wire to catch you, you can catch yourself.

“Big Money Red”

She’s one of the fastest deal cutters on the street. There won’t be a dollar left on the table by the time she’s finished with you. Your advertising budget will actually work and you will have customers! “Big Money Red” is BACK!

Radio crept into my blood rather quickly from a very early age. It started off with broadcasting then I went to what is refered to as “the dark side” aka sales later on in my career. I’m proud to be back with Brewer Media Group and representing some amazing media products and results.

It’s taken me longer than I had planned to get my feet on the ground. I woke up on my first day back and thinking it would be just like where I had left off years before. Boy was I wrong.

Sales reps, let me give you a bit of advice. When you leave a sales job where you have clients that depend on you, take extra pains to make sure the next person that handles the account knows what in the world is going on. Be organized. Leave good notes. It’s not about not caring about your previous company anymore, it’s about truely caring about your client. If you care about your client and are truely a good account manager you will leave management with notes on each client and a one sheet break down in each folder as to details. That way the next person to take care of your client (it’s not just handling an account) can pick up more smoohtly where you left off and the client dosen’t get jolted too badly. It can be a high turnover industry and clients aren’t just a commission check, for anyone.

Ok I’m off my soapbox now.

As I was saying……

I have “retired” from the advertising agency business and am back marketing radio and non-traditonal print. I couldn’t be more excited and thrilled to be back with Brewer Media Group, truely a awsome company.

Making the transition from fulltime Mommy to working for someone else fulltime has been extremely difficult, both on myself and to a degree on Elle. We have been so used to being together so much of the time it’s heartbreaking to be apart. I worked when Meg was little, and she was raised to a degree in a radio station. It was my plan for things to be different with Elle as she is the last one, the last baby, to keep the baby a baby as long as possible. I’ve also missed having my extra afternoon time with Meg, there just isn’t enough time in an evening to get as much quality time in with your kids when you work fulltime as one would wish.

I’m planning on making some changes here on the site in the next month or so. A new design, some new topics (with a focus in sales tips / marketing agendas), and the struggle of a single mom trying to balance a full time career that she loves, in addition to squeezing in as much time as possible with my babies I love. 

Oh and did I mention adding in the additional pressure of more health issues? That’s another post.

Alas…. “Big Money Red” is back. 🙂

Tired and Blessed Redhead

Made a whirlwind trip to Nashville to work with one of my favorite photographers Oleg Volk. I’m sore as I always am after a Oleg shoot. (you try balancing / crouching / holding a pose in heels for many hours and see how you feel!) There will be more images posted soon.

I was thinking this evening about blessings, I am very blessed in many ways. One of the odd ways I count myself blessed is that I can continue modeling, one of the things I love to do, and I don’t have to be naked or wearing buttfloss to do it. It may not be something that everyone understands, but I’m following my bliss.

I’m also blessed with great photographers who respect my boundaries and are willing to work within them, something that is becoming increasingly rare, as is the photographers professional treatment before/during/after the shoot with the model. It’s a profession, not a “guys club”.

Off my soapbox now. Love the first two shots out of the gate.

http://olegvolk.net/blog/

 

 

 

In Reflection of My Past

You know you are Jewish. Not in practice, but your heritage tells you that you are. You are knowledgeable as to the hell rained down upon what we have all be taught are G-d’s chosen people since the time the Egyptians banished the Jews across the desert  and red sea to what is now Israel.   You studied  about World War II, and amongst the ignorant of today’s world, the Holocaust unable to tear yourself away from the horrors that would unfold in front of your eyes, knowing that you are only here today because of your ancestors survival. You tell yourself in your head that you would have used your wits and outsmarted the Nazis as if that would have eve been possible to do in the first place. That you would have escaped, that you have a Christmas tree, were raised in a Christian school, and sang in the church choir. You would not have been among the six million, that you have never professed your allegiance to Israel.

Image by Oleg Volk

Then you look in the mirror: and see your red hair, a larger nose (that is a typical sterootype) , your pronounced cheeks, and in general your lack of Goyishness. You too would have worn the Star of David, you too would have marched in under “Arbeit Marcht Frei”. You cannot escape your history, your DNA, you cannot escape your own reflection nor should you.

Image by Oleg Volk