{"id":342,"date":"2010-08-03T10:31:42","date_gmt":"2010-08-03T16:31:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/louimbriano.com\/?p=342"},"modified":"2020-04-03T11:11:17","modified_gmt":"2020-04-03T17:11:17","slug":"how-hard-can-it-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/louimbriano.com\/?p=342","title":{"rendered":"How Hard Can It\u00a0Be?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>When I began my career in radio, I worked on the creative, rather than the business side of the industry. I was in the programming department and would write and produce for different shows. I would devour the newspapers every day looking for potential topics and comedy bits. It was fun, and my mind was thinking very differently from my later focus on how to build relationships and generate revenue. Although, I was still practicing the relationship aspect when booking guests for the show.<\/p>\n

I was fortunate to take to both the job and the industry, and I was promoted along the way within programming. However, at some point, I realized that I was working at the only sports radio station in Boston; I never wanted to leave Boston, but I thought that there had to be more for me for a career. At the time of this epiphany, the station manager was also running marketing \u2013 her name was Bev Tilden. Bev had a very creative radio mind and she understood how to get listeners to tune in and stay tuned. As always in radio, one GM left and another came in and Bev just didn\u2019t click with the new GM. So, Bev was off to another challenge.<\/p>\n

The GM came to me and said, \u201cLou, Bev is moving on. We love what you\u2019re doing in programming, so you\u2019re fine, but we will need to search for a new marketing director.\u201d I had a moment of clarity. It was like you\u2019d see on a TV show where everything stops around you, but you are still moving at full speed. In an all-out, overachiever, knee-jerk response I said, \u201cLet me do it.\u201d The new GM, John Maguire, gave me a smirk and said, \u201cLou, you\u2019re great at programming but what do you know about marketing?\u201d This was when I adopted my mantra that I still utter today when questioned or challenged: \u201cHow hard can it be?\u201d<\/p>\n

John chuckled and said that the station needed someone with marketing experience, because it had the potential to become #1 in the ratings. Again, with more balls than brains, I pushed on. I asked, \u201cHow long will it take you to find a new marketing director?\u201d He pondered and stated that it would be three months or so, which led me to a life changing moment. I said to him, \u201cLet me do it while you are searching so we don\u2019t lose any ground. You don\u2019t have to pay me anything extra, and if I\u2019m slacking in my primary function, you say the word and I will focus purely on programming.\u201d I\u2019m paraphrasing, of course, because that was almost 20 years ago \u2013 but that was the general conversation. I guess I made a valid pitch because he agreed. Once I got a hold of the opportunity I wasn\u2019t letting go.<\/p>\n

Three months turned into a couple of years, and this inexperienced, untrained marketing director was over-achieving and delivering beyond expectations. I\u2019d never had a marketing job; I\u2019d never taken a marketing class. Yet I was marketing this sports station onto the map. The funny thing was that at one point after achieving some marketing success, I remember giving a programming concept to an on-air talent, and he said to me, \u201cLou, you\u2019re great at marketing, but leave the programming to us.\u201d Ha, I\u2019d remade myself so much that I was now viewed not as a programming person with six years experience, but as a marketing guy.<\/p>\n

And there was no looking back. Because I had no preconceived notion on how to market, it allowed me to be open to and create different ways to engage with our consumers \u2013 listeners. The key to all of this was that I understood the programming of the station better than most. Because I was creating programming to engage and entertain the listeners, I had to know who the listeners were and what they liked. I was in-tune with our listeners and I knew how to interest them so they would check us out. I knew how reach our listeners because I talked with and listened to them.<\/p>\n

Later, when given the opportunity to run marketing for the New England Patriots, I stuck to my mantra of, \u201cHow hard can it be?\u201d And again, when asked to teach a marketing class at Boston College \u2013 \u201cHow hard can it be?\u201d If you get nothing else from this post, never let anyone tell you that it can\u2019t be done or that you are not qualified. You can do anything if you truly want to. And please note, if I can do it, anyone can. Besides, \u201cHow hard can it be?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I began my career in radio, I worked on the creative, rather than the business side of the industry. I was in the programming department and would write and produce for different shows. I would devour the newspapers every day looking for potential topics and comedy bits. It was fun, and my mind was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leadership"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/louimbriano.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/louimbriano.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/louimbriano.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/louimbriano.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/louimbriano.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=342"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/louimbriano.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2059,"href":"http:\/\/louimbriano.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342\/revisions\/2059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/louimbriano.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/louimbriano.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/louimbriano.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}