Ahhh…..where to begin….


I recently received a golf book (shocking!) Golf’s Sacred Journey, Seven Days at the Links of Utopia by Dr. David Cook as a gift from one of my golf buddies named Dilly (oh yeah, we have names…Finny, Rascal, Cloud, Bees, The Bone, The Commish, Rockin’ Rod)! What struck me immediately is that while the canvas of the book is golf, the lessons are way more far reaching….


“Find what you do well and perfect it”!


Too often in business we take our people who are monsters at selling, they’ve perfected what they do so well and we make them the Sales Manager. The morning man on a leading radio station kills the competition and we figure he’s perfected that so let’s make him the Program Director.


In our lives and careers I’m certain each of us knows someone who has “taken what they do well, very well, and perfected it. For sports analogies we can look to Tom Brady, Tiger Woods, Pele, Sidney Crosby, Kobe and Mariano Rivera! In business, Bill Gates, the Google triumvirate, Steve Jobs, George Bodenheimer, Bob Iger…you get the picture…


Radio by its very nature, the core of its soul, creates great content that entertains and engages the listener. Because of a down economy I fear that we haven’t taken what we do better than anyone on the planet and continued t perfect it. We have more outlets than ever. Sadly, we’ve taken much of our talent and put them on the street and lost our local compass.


Find a dominate station and more than likely you’ll find a station that is part of the fabric of its city…it entertains…it informs…it is as we used to say in the old days…push-button one on the radio….


If we take our content perfection and update it to be the top favorite when folks boot up the internet…if it is the only app they need on their Smartphone’s to keep up with their community and to be entertained…they happily opt in to a compelling mobile marketing campaign from your top advertisers and the station (it really is okay to make money with mobile marketing, texting to many of you).


Try this today (or tomorrow, or next week, or)…take the roster of your team and think about what each does well….ask them what THEY think they do well…and then jointly work with them to perfect that skill! With smaller teams you can only , ONLY win with the right people in the right position…this may be the way to find out if you are maximizing everyone’s skill to what they do best…not what they were necessarily brought on to do…


Now some rambling musing to get caught up….


In the last year was there a more deserving Radio Ink Executive of the Year than Dan Mason? Congrats old friend…Glad I got Pete Dits of ESPN Radio in Dallas to buy me lunch recently…a great day, a great lunch with a great friend..now however, with what he paid for the Rangers deal I’m afraid I’ll be buying for awhile……is it just me or has all the hoopla surrounding the FM (sorry, radio) chip just disappeared from the trades?..great story on homeless Ted…proving it might just happen to you so make sure and join the Broadcasters Foundation of America because a reporter may not see you and turn you into a national phenom, $150 a year…sign-up here…..Bruce Gilbert has The Fan not sucking as much as it once did….working with Gino Torretta, former Heisman winner on his college football play-by-play network….brother-in-law Tony Belzer on the beach, Radio One’s loss can be your incredibly big gain…reach out to him here…..had such a great trip to NY and great visiting with Spencer and Julie and Dennis and Nick and John…a little like seeing the heads of the five families in network radio…the more time I send with Simon Cowell’s brother Tony the more I realize that the gene pool in that family is pure entertainment!.....the afternoon I had with dear friends Jim Thompson and Peter Doyle in NY was priceless..but isn’t it always?...great to catch-up with good friend from MLB Susanne Hilgefort..could talk to her for hours!....The NFL is a better place because Mike North works there!.....


Well, it’s just about Super Bowl Week in North Texas….I did my best to get this week’s weather to hang around but alas to no avail…it actually looks like crap next week so I’m thinking, rather than stay in town and pester my pals at ESPN (which I apparently did a great deal of in Miami!), I might head on over to the NM World HQ and skip the insanity!


Belated but heartfelt Happy New Year to all….here’s to a great 2011!