THIS IS NOT ROCKET SURGERY, IT'S RADIO!
Radio is Live, Local, and packed to the diodes with I M A G I N A T I O N!
Warm, friendly people having fun; that's what wins in the morning!
Seize the mornings and you seize the day!
Great Radio is not verbal foreplay; telling the listener how great the next ten minutes will be if they'll just keep listening. That's like a center fielder telling the ball park how great the next inning's gonna be! You stay in your seat when you can't wait to see what will happen next. You play the inning you're in. You deliver great radio minute to minute. The best quarter hour extender is a great quarter hour of radio!
Programming is made of imagination, experience and instincts. Marketing should tell us who our best customers are and help us super-serve them. Marketing is NOT programming. Corporate radio is fine for stockholders but your radio doesn't wear a tie! Your radio is shuffling around the kitchen in bunny slippers. You radio is trying to merge into heavy traffic, late for work, and hates what it does for a living. Your radio needs to have a cup of coffee and start to feel good by being surrounded by friends who make him and her feel good.
Old School means: Fundamentals, Discipline, and Respect for the Game. The fundamentals of great radio are: Live, Local and Imaginative! Discipline comes into play when you present a consistent product, day after day -- you cannot have an bad day in radio. Respect for the game is recognizing your place in the lives of your listeners, your place in the community, it's history, and your place in the history of radio.
Everybody wants the big money but nobody wants to work for it. If you think "imaging" will get you better ratings then you think Ford would sell more cars if they paint F O R D in bigger letters on the side of the car. If Ford made better cars they'd sell more than Toyota.
Make better radio, get bigger audiences.
Now, if what you've just read excites you and makes you want to make great radio then we should talk.
Thank you,
Mr. Coburn
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Monday, November 1, 2010
WHEN TIMES GET TOUGH, AMERICANS INNOVATE!
In the early 1970's the S.S.T. program at Boeing, the U.S. version of the Concorde, was killed by congress. Tens of thousands lost their jobs and the impact on the Seattle economy was near devastation. There were billboards on the highways leading out of town that read, "Will The Last Person Leaving Seattle Please Turn Out The Lights?
Hundreds of highly skilled engineers found themselves at home with nothing but time on their hands and garages full of tools.
They did what Americans do when times get tough, they began to solve problems and innovate. Many scores of small businesses sprang up that solved problems from aerospace and satellite technology to food processing. Your GPS is an innovation between satellites and a microchip.
Innovation, stated simply, is connecting two or more disparate things in a way that solves a problem. Case in point; all the components for the personal computer had existed long before the operating system required to make them work together. Everyone agreed that whoever innovated an operating system would get all the money. DOS was an innovation.
Given our current economic culture it's important to recognize our strengths and turn them into skills. Said another way, if empathy is one of your strengths you can turn that into a skill in negotiating. So, if the times have hit you hard, cultivate your strengths and innovate. Once you have a clear image of what is possible and can see a way to monetize your skill sets it's time to start your own business.
Small business is the bedrock of the American economy and the American dream. Innovation is the thing that Americans seem to be able to do better than anyone else, to the extent that the Japanese and Germans have spent millions studying American Innovation in attempt to learn how we do it. Innovation isn't merely survival these days, it's patriotic.
So, if one of your strengths is communication and you turn that into a skill in teaching, how do you start a school? You innovate. You have a valuable skill for which people will pay and you need money to start. You need money for an advertising campaign, you need money for a brick and mortar classroom, you need money for chairs and a chalkboard, you need money for an internet presence.
Fortunately, the path to starting a small business is clearly marked and well-worn. You need OPM, Other People's Money, and a concrete plan for repaying that money.
In this first installment toward finding and establishing your niche in a small business economy we'll ask an experienced business partner, a CPA, for the strongest advice possible in getting OPM to start.
In later installments we'll look at solutions in sales, marketing, taxes, and payroll but every new business has to start up. We'll look at start up first.
Over the years I have conducted initial interviews with scores, or even hundreds, of people considering going into business for themselves, which I did myself. Those interviews tend to follow a pattern that usually opens with something like this:
I have a well developed idea and have worked through a business plan, so now I'm ready to take the next step. My first question is "should I take on a partner?".
What for???
First, a partnership is very much like a marriage in its dynamic, except there's no sex. In the early days of the Women's Movement I used to see bumper stickers or T-shirts that said "A women needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle" and that's pretty much how I feel about partners, even though I had two myself.
Let's explore a few of the reasons that you might be considering a partner.
You need their money - beg, borrow or steal it somewhere else. Do not give away equity, even currently worthless equity, unless you absolutely have to. If you borrow, particularly from friends and family, make it an airtight business arrangement, as if you were negotiating with someone you just met last week. My Dad used to say that when it came to his money, he had no friends or family. I thought that was pretty cold until I came to understand that he meant that when you do financial transactions with friends and family, you risk losing both your money and your friend.
You need their expertise - Hire them. Employee or independent contractor, it doesn't matter. Pay them well. Include realistic and worthwhile incentive elements in their compensation arrangement, even a share of profits or "phantom" stock. But don't get into bed with them.
We're long time friends - This is the worst one of all. See comments under money, above. My experience has been that businesses in partnership form that fail, usually do so fairly quickly and the partners are able to lick their wounds and remain friends. It is when the business is successful that trouble begins. Look at Microsoft, Apple, etc. If a partnership is like a marriage without sex, that means that, regardless of the true nature of the problem, the only thing there really is to fight about is the money. A great many times the death knell of the partnership can be heard when one partner walks into the office of the other and proclaims "You bastard, you take as much money out of this thing as I do but you're never here and I can't figure out what it is that you do". Scratch another friendship.
I feel more comfortable if I have a peer to talk to - Okay, but why give away equity (read that as money AND control)? Set up an office sharing arrangement. Hire them as a part-time consultant. Invite them to sit on your advisory board. But, don't marry them.
Hundreds of highly skilled engineers found themselves at home with nothing but time on their hands and garages full of tools.
They did what Americans do when times get tough, they began to solve problems and innovate. Many scores of small businesses sprang up that solved problems from aerospace and satellite technology to food processing. Your GPS is an innovation between satellites and a microchip.
Innovation, stated simply, is connecting two or more disparate things in a way that solves a problem. Case in point; all the components for the personal computer had existed long before the operating system required to make them work together. Everyone agreed that whoever innovated an operating system would get all the money. DOS was an innovation.
Given our current economic culture it's important to recognize our strengths and turn them into skills. Said another way, if empathy is one of your strengths you can turn that into a skill in negotiating. So, if the times have hit you hard, cultivate your strengths and innovate. Once you have a clear image of what is possible and can see a way to monetize your skill sets it's time to start your own business.
Small business is the bedrock of the American economy and the American dream. Innovation is the thing that Americans seem to be able to do better than anyone else, to the extent that the Japanese and Germans have spent millions studying American Innovation in attempt to learn how we do it. Innovation isn't merely survival these days, it's patriotic.
So, if one of your strengths is communication and you turn that into a skill in teaching, how do you start a school? You innovate. You have a valuable skill for which people will pay and you need money to start. You need money for an advertising campaign, you need money for a brick and mortar classroom, you need money for chairs and a chalkboard, you need money for an internet presence.
Fortunately, the path to starting a small business is clearly marked and well-worn. You need OPM, Other People's Money, and a concrete plan for repaying that money.
In this first installment toward finding and establishing your niche in a small business economy we'll ask an experienced business partner, a CPA, for the strongest advice possible in getting OPM to start.
In later installments we'll look at solutions in sales, marketing, taxes, and payroll but every new business has to start up. We'll look at start up first.
Britt Smith has been a CPA focusing on tax issues of small businesses and their owners for 40 years. He holds a graduate degree in Taxation and an undergraduate degree in Accounting. He started and built a successful accounting practice which he operated for 26 years. Since selling his practice to his partners he has continued to consult in the area of estate planning/succession planning for families who own and operate successful family owned business, as well as teaching accounting and tax in an MBA program.
He says that one thing, of many, that he has learned working with this sort of client is this: "Starting and operating a closely held small business amounts to getting your MBA at The School of Hard Knocks. The tuition is higher and the program is longer, but what you learn will never leave you."
Britt Smith
Over the years I have conducted initial interviews with scores, or even hundreds, of people considering going into business for themselves, which I did myself. Those interviews tend to follow a pattern that usually opens with something like this:
I have a well developed idea and have worked through a business plan, so now I'm ready to take the next step. My first question is "should I take on a partner?".
What for???
First, a partnership is very much like a marriage in its dynamic, except there's no sex. In the early days of the Women's Movement I used to see bumper stickers or T-shirts that said "A women needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle" and that's pretty much how I feel about partners, even though I had two myself.
Let's explore a few of the reasons that you might be considering a partner.
You need their money - beg, borrow or steal it somewhere else. Do not give away equity, even currently worthless equity, unless you absolutely have to. If you borrow, particularly from friends and family, make it an airtight business arrangement, as if you were negotiating with someone you just met last week. My Dad used to say that when it came to his money, he had no friends or family. I thought that was pretty cold until I came to understand that he meant that when you do financial transactions with friends and family, you risk losing both your money and your friend.
You need their expertise - Hire them. Employee or independent contractor, it doesn't matter. Pay them well. Include realistic and worthwhile incentive elements in their compensation arrangement, even a share of profits or "phantom" stock. But don't get into bed with them.
We're long time friends - This is the worst one of all. See comments under money, above. My experience has been that businesses in partnership form that fail, usually do so fairly quickly and the partners are able to lick their wounds and remain friends. It is when the business is successful that trouble begins. Look at Microsoft, Apple, etc. If a partnership is like a marriage without sex, that means that, regardless of the true nature of the problem, the only thing there really is to fight about is the money. A great many times the death knell of the partnership can be heard when one partner walks into the office of the other and proclaims "You bastard, you take as much money out of this thing as I do but you're never here and I can't figure out what it is that you do". Scratch another friendship.
I feel more comfortable if I have a peer to talk to - Okay, but why give away equity (read that as money AND control)? Set up an office sharing arrangement. Hire them as a part-time consultant. Invite them to sit on your advisory board. But, don't marry them.
- Now that you're pretty clear on who you don't need, who do you need, really? We'll look at that next time.
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