By: Eric Reamer & Angel Tuccy Issue: Vision Section: Making Air Waves
And Why It Didn't Matter!
We can, and should be 'doing more'." Those are the words of Jan Mazotti, ICOSA Editor and former host of the Connect + Collaborate with ICOSA segment of the Experience Pros Radio Show. No small task, coming from the one whose company declared 2011 as the 'Year of the Do.' And boy, did we DO in 2011!
At Experience Pros, we are constantly amazed at the amount of milestones that accumulate on the road of forward progress—not because we are surprised to see them go by, but because in so many cases those accomplishments had been deemed impossible by those on the outside looking in. We should be very clear—'impossible' is not part of our vocabulary.
Early into our corporate development, we decided to focus our efforts on becoming a stand-out business consulting firm. We had the key elements of differentiation, but what we didn't have was a significant portfolio of businesses who had worked with us in the past. We didn't have a working knowledge of some of the corporate language, much of which had changed with the birth of Web 2.0. The influx of new information into the marketplace would have been daunting to many companies. However, we dug in and did the necessary due diligence, immersing ourselves into the worlds of our clients, learning their business as we simultaneously learned ours.
We had a vision of what we knew we could be, and were relentless in our pursuit of the goal. As a result, we developed a very successful business consulting practice with dozens of highly satisfied clients in our now-full portfolio. Little did we know that things were about to change yet again.
At about the same time that we launched Experience Pros University, tailored group training for small businesses, a friend approached us and suggested that we share our message with a larger audience, leading us to expand our vision to our next venture—the radio. It could be argued that we didn't exactly know how to do that either. But instead of tossing our hands in the air, we embraced what we did know, and set off to learn how to become talk radio hosts. We started our broadcasting careers in the Internet radio studio of a friend of a friend, and invested heavily in making the show sound as commercially viable as possible.
This strategy paid off, and within six months we were invited to move our show to AM 560 KLZ, the oldest radio station on the airwaves in Colorado. We faced some uphill challenges in those early days, but because we weren't 'radio people' we were blissfully unaware of the odds stacked against us in terms of contracts and air time. Instead of being paralyzed by fear of the unknown, we broadened our vision to include being the very best at what we do. In this case, we aspired to build our little 30-minute broadcast into a three-hour nationally syndicated radio show. ‘They’ said it couldn't be done. But, our vision simply didn’t know who 'they' were!
The Experience Pros Radio Show is unique. It's been called "the most positive business talk show in America." It features nothing but the best in business, from guests to topics. KLZ renewed our contract for another year, and then the improbable happened—a 90-minute segment of airtime opened up next to our already successful 30-minute show. We viewed this as the opportunity of a lifetime, and proposed to expand our show to a two-hour, daily format. There came the nay-sayers again, 'explaining' to us that just because we want the time, we were ever so ill-equipped to fill it with anything that anyone would want to hear. Fortunately, our vision was louder than their negativity.
From there, history has been kind to us. We did get the two-hour daily slot, and an extended contract with KLZ. We surrounded ourselves with equally visionary companies like ICOSA, The Growth Curve Institute, Boyer's Coffee and many others. We syndicated into markets across America including Phoenix, Birmingham, St. Louis, and Minneapolis/St. Paul. And, we are well on our way to that vision of a three-hour nationally syndicated show.
Our takeaway—never let what we didn't know get in the way of the pursuit of our vision. It has been said that there is a right way and a wrong way to do anything. And while this may be true, we are quick to recall all that we didn't know—and why it didn't matter.
The Experience Pros Radio Show, hosted by Angel Tuccy and Eric Reamer airs daily from 10:00 to Noon (MST) in Denver, Colorado. For more information, please visit www.ExperiencePros.com or www.Facebook.com/ExperiencePros.