The One Thing You Can Do To Stick In People’s Minds In the last blog, I bust some myths around networking – the theme being that you don’t need to make it about you, and in fact, you should make it all about the person you are speaking to. In fact, there is ONE thing you can do that means you can make sure people know how you can help them. The most classic question you will get at a networking event or in any new meeting is: “what do you do?” Most people answer with their job title. “I am an account manager”, “I am a coach”, “I am a sales rep”, “I’m an artist”, “I’m a Managing Director”… You might know what that means. The person you are speaking to has no idea what that means, or how it impacts them. Start telling people what it is you do and the impact you have. In the last blog, it was clear that impactful networking means you are getting people to understand how what you do can help them. Not only do you have to listen to them, but you also need to be clear about what it is you do. So you need to have what I call an “Action Impact Liner”. To do that you need to explain what you do, what is your action: I help people manage their money… I run a company that creates handwritten letters on mass… I teach kids at primary school… I sell artworks… And then explain the impact it has: So that they can rest easy when they get to bed at night So that you can guarantee to get someone’s attention with a personal touch. So that the future is a better place. So that people feel good about their house. Mine is: “I help people get confident and comfortable speaking in public so that when someone sees you speak they think “I want to work with you”:” What is your “Action Impact Liner”? You can still give your job title “I’m a Presenter Coach – I help people….etc…” Try writing your Action “Impact Liner” below I help / make / create / run * insert verb _____________________________
So that _______________________________________________________________________ When people know what you do, and how you are passionate about helping people, they will then know to call on you when the issue you can help with arises.
This week as Global Radio in the UK consolidated their local breakfast and drive shows. Industry press juggernaut Radio Today estimates that 250 presenters could be affected by the changes in the UK. And it’s all kicking in, in a month’s time. There are households across the country now wondering “what now?”.
As a radio presenter, your career is built on rejection: The number of demos and conversations that lead to nothing. The number of times a new boss comes in and you have to hold tight to find out if you still have a job. The time the station decides to refresh the lineup and you get offered a weekend show from your daily one. The time another radio group buys your station. Or as we have seen this week: The time Ofcom rules change and the “business” end of things get in the way of your dreams.
The difficulties are that it all gets played out in public and when your product is “you”, it’s very difficult to not take it personally.
I’ve been through redundancy twice, and left my role as Content Controller at Key 103 because of a “restructure”. I’ve also had to let people go: there’s a BBC National presenter who was on the receiving end of me “not renewing their contract” at a local commercial station some years ago, who I am sure (quite rightly) is and will be dining out on it for years to come. Mr C lost his beloved Xfm Manchester Breakfast show, when Radio X (another Global Station) was launched and it was announced that Chris Moyles was going to be networked from London.
Long story short the outcomes were – Tim got his gig on Virgin Radio and BT Sport and launched Hive Content. I launched The Presenter Coach which has gone from strength to strength. And the presenter I let go: well you see it say “BBC National Presenter” right?
Most stories of losing jobs, end with the protagonist saying “it was probably one of the best things that happened to me”. The thing is, in the moment, no matter how well you are compensated, you can’t help but feel utterly rejected when your boss tells you that you are no longer needed in your current role.
Here are a few of things that got me and Mr C through it the last time (and will get us through it next time):
Permission to Grieve
When you are in the eye of the storm of rejection – it’s not a calm, reflective experience. It’s clunky, difficult and sad. It’s really sad. So allow yourself space to grieve.
The reality is that you are experiencing loss. Rejection in this way isn’t just about feeling unwanted – you will have lost a part of your life you love, and even base your identity on. It’s not easy. I found that once I recognised what I was experiencing was grief, it was a lot easier to cut myself some slack.
It’s easy to put pressure on dusting yourself off and picking yourself back up and to “man up”, but the best use of your time is going along with your emotions as they come and allow them to become part of you.
2. Do Not Get Confused Between MERIT and TASTE*
You were and are good enough to be there in the first place (this is merit), but the new boss wants their station product to sound like a Twix and you are a glorious Mars Bar (this is taste). Or the new boss wants to run a more streamlined business (I’m going to call this taste too!).
“You” are the presenting product, and that means that sometimes your product isn’t right for the station product. It feels personal, but the decision is very rarely personal. (It’s worth remembering this when you are the one delivering the news too.)
Trust you will find your new product “fit”.
3. Put Your Audience First
When your audience finds out you are leaving, be gracious. Remember without them you are just a person talking in a box on your own. A beloved mentor of mine said to me, at the time I was leaving: “if you are comfortable with it, others will be comfortable too”. The minute you become snarky or awkward, your audience will begin to doubt your intentions and feel discomfort. Remember you need them with you, in whatever you do next.
4. “Don’t Make Any Decisions For 10 Weeks”
I have to credit the same mentor with this one and it was excellent advice.
Tim and I held off making any decisions and allowed ourselves time to think (we lost our gigs at the same time). I explored options, tried things out and allowed the thing I wanted the most to rise to the top. Before setting up The Presenter Coach, I thought I was ready to go down a different path. But by holding off for the 10 weeks it allowed me to set my mind and get what I really wanted.
It also meant that Tim and I had time to redecorate the kitchen! Ha!
5. The Rejectee Becomes The Rejector…
Post-rejection is the perfect time for reflection, but you are likely to be vulnerable to making decisions out of financial or spiritual necessity, rather than personal choice.
Sort out your finances and make it so that they will last you as long as possible without work. Establish what time you have* – how many hours a day are spent on sleeping, eating, exercising, netflix. Set some goals and commitments. Think about your habits. Read, learn, eat well, exercise, sleep, find joy.
Do whatever you need to do to be in a position to choose when an opportunity comes your way. Feeling like you can say “nope” to the ideas and jobs that aren’t quite right is important in choosing the “right” thing for you next.
Of course, when 250 presenters lose their seat at the ever-shrinking radio presenter table it starts to look bleak. My observation is that now more than ever, the presenters that will be secure are the ones with the “portfolio” career: write the book, make the podcast, own the production company, do the voiceovers, set up a kids club, run an events company – all the while presenting too. And when it comes to changing careers and sectors all together; Lisa Kerr did a talk at Next Radio a few years ago about the invaluable transferable skills you get from radio.
In the same week the radio industry felt a sack full of rejection, I went to PechaKucha Manchester – a spoken word night with 10 speakers, each talk is 20 slides and they have 20 seconds per slide. This week’s theme: “Rejection”. (Anywhere you see an * in this blog is credit to this night). From those 10 talks I was reminded:
Rejection is a yukky thing but…
it helps you focus on you
it sets you on the right path
it helps you reassess and rebuild
it should be felt in everything you do, because then you know you’re doing it right.
The word is enough to send shudders through many people I meet.
Whether you like it or not, networking is key to building the relationships that will propel your career.
No one will work with you without some level of familiarity and trust, and that can only be achieved through meeting with someone face to face.
The biggest things I hear are that; networking feels forced, people never know what to say, and they find the whole thing uncomfortable.
On the other hand I quite like networking, I always have, but I didn’t know what I was doing was networking when I started talking to people – because that’s all it is. This list will help you to shift your mindset around networking.
Networking Events Are Brilliant
So I need to caveat that even though I like speaking to people, I still struggle with networking events. I am still nervous before making contact. I still hate that uncomfortable moment of approaching someone and saying hello.
The reason I think they are brilliant is that those moments are SUPPOSED to be uncomfortable and “awks” but at an event titled “Networking Event” then the whole thing is expected. In fact, by approaching someone at a networking event where you are expected to talk to someone, you are more than likely to be met with the pure relief that they didn’t have to do it. You saved them from the initial awkward moment.
So networking events are brilliant because you’re supposed to be having the awkward moment and everyone feels the same. The “awks” moment is forgiven and the chat begins!
2. Small Talk Is ACE (Secret: It’s All About The Follow Up Question)
If we continue on the theme of “it’s supposed to be awkward”. And that everyone accepts that small talk is a step to a deeper chat. Then small talk is ace. It leads into the next thing.
The small talk question: “What do you do?” Or “what’s keeping you busy at the moment?”. Or “how was your day?”. Is a vehicle into the follow-up question – which is when the conversation actually begins:
You: How was your day?
Them: It was good
You: What was good about it? / What was the best thing that happened?
Conversation begins
You: What do you do?
Them: I am a barrister
You: Oh whereabouts? / What does that entail?
Conversation begins
You: So what’s keeping you busy at the moment?
Them: Actually my kids are a real focus at the moment
You: Oh how many do you have?
Conversation begins
3. Newsflash: You Don’t Have To Go To An Event
There is an assumption that to network you have to go to events, meet new people or people above you in your career status. Well yes, this is a good assumption. But. In my career, the opportunities have come from those people I have been working with over the years. My peers, my colleagues and my friends.
You are actually networking all the time.
I network in many ways. I have got work from joining a netball team. I will often ask people to go for a coffee just me and them. I will meet someone through a client and that will lead to more work. One of the benefits of my podcast is that I get to meet more people. I met one client after she replied to an Instagram post, and I followed it up while I was on a beach in Greece.
Networking can take on the form you choose – which means you are in control of how it happens and you can do it on your terms. The key outcome of networking is to create trusting connections, that form business relationships. Not every conversation will end there, you don’t know the outcome of the conversations. But. You do know the outcome if you avoid meeting people.
Reviews used to solely be the rulers of the Theatre, Movies and Restaurants, with the “reviewers” in the newspapers given the credit of expert holding the success of their reviewees in the tip of their pens. In the 90s characters like actor Joey Tribbiani (yes, from Friends) were seen marching the streets of New York at 1 am, desperate to read the review of his play except: “Joey Tribbiani was able to achieve brilliant new levels of…. Sucking!”
These days everyone can review anything. And in the podcast world, those reviews are (currently) vital to the algorithm that helps the new audience find your podcast.
The issue is that to get people to review your podcast you have to ask them to. And that feels weird. It’s not in our nature to demand things for ourselves. It turns out though, you really can be quite demanding before someone will get mad at you! So after 4 months of asking nay BEGGING for reviews, I managed to learn and observe a few things to get it to work better:
Don’t Be Afraid To Ask – And Keep Asking
When you work in commercial radio you become accustomed to repeating your message – especially the more sales type ones. The idea being that not everyone is listening all the time to the linear broadcast format, and repetition means your audience remembers what they have heard. As a programmer I often winced at the number of times we would run premium text competitions in one day – but the audience would never fail to take part and the more we said it… the more money we would make (I know, makes you want to puke right?!)
So how often should you ask for reviews?
The answer – every episode. Oh, wait no, that’s not true.
Everyday Positivity is daily, and it usually only runs for up to 2 minutes. We recognised that we needed more reviews to get the Flash Briefing in front of more people. Every day asking for reviews, with a sell that sometimes ran to 60 seconds worth of instructions. The reviews went rocketing up and we started to grow the audience.
Then the inevitable happened:
Through reading the reviews I discovered that the repetition and lengthy way of asking for the reviews was not going down well with the audience:
“This is about 50% positivity and 50% fishing for reviews. Annoying.”
The solution has been to drop to 1 review request every 4 days and to keep it sharp. This means we are getting a steady flow of reviews, and (when I just checked while writing this) the number of irritated reviews has dropped off.
So context matters – if you do a weekly 30-minute podcast, a 1-minute review request is pretty harmless every episode. Every day for 2 minutes – a lighter less frequent review request works better.
2.What’s In It For Them
I have heard some podcasts give random prizes for reviews and I’ve seen articles about how that doesn’t work for the audience. Again I think it depends on your podcast and your audience as to whether this type of incentivisation works.
What is essential is that your “why” should be clear. Communicate your intent. I want everyone to know about Everyday Positivity because I want to help as many people as I can. So I say that when I talk about the reviews. “Leave a review and together we can make the world more positive”
Why should they review your podcast? Are they part of something if they do? What is the impact of their review?
3. Read Some Out
This week I started reading out reviews. It’s the social proof that your listeners need to know that this is what other people do too. They aren’t “weird” for doing it
I recently sampled The Property Podcast who did their review request about two thirds in. In reading the reviews they not only told other listeners that their podcast was great, they also sounded like they were talking to their audience by answering any questions that came up.
Oh and their line which I thought was nice: “Thanks to your reviews, we remain the most popular property podcast”
4. Give a strong call to action
Reviews aren’t easy to do. They may be easy to click through, but your listener is only going to want to go through it if they have absolutely nothing better to do. (See “Why”)
So make it as clear and easy as possible, and from time to time put the directions on how to review in there too.
5. Make It Fun
The Eggchasers Rugby Podcast (highly popular Rugby Podcast) will use their reviews as an opportunity for their listeners to be funny. They read out and encourage the listeners that leave a 5-star review and tongue in cheek joke about how awful the podcast is! This causes fun and hilarity all-round.
I’ve not worked out how to do this for my short form pod yet but I always think about how creative it is and think about how I can make the reviews read more fun.
In Summary
My favourite thing about getting reviews is that you can really hone your podcast. It encourages you to try and so you do a bit, and then get some feedback, and if you use that feedback wisely you can streamline your podcast into a really bright, marvellous programme with a growing active audience.
“I am not good enough at this,” is what usually goes through your mind at a certain point of any creative project.
Usually right before the deadline.
When I am recording my Everyday Positivity links and I think “ugh why on earth is anyone going to like these?!”, or when I am halfway through a painting commission and I think “gah this isn’t how I wanted it to look! Why can’t I do it like Picasso?”, or most likely when I get to rehearsing my presentation so many times and I think “this just does not feel new enough – no one is going to like it!”
Inevitably on all counts, I make the piece, I show it to the audience and the feedback is great. I had nothing to worry about.
The problem: You get too close, and you get too saturated in it
In her book “Running Like A Girl” Alex Hemingsly recounts a dinner where her friends are asking her about the running she is doing for the book (for which the deadline is looming) and she loses it, having a massive strop about how she never wants to run again.
She got too close. She got too saturated.
Countless podcaster friends and event organiser friends and writer friends and broadcaster friends all tell of the moment where they think “I never ever want to do this again”!
They get too close. They get too saturated.
Inevitably they push through the feeling, and they create something wonderful with a huge adrenaline surge that makes them want to do it again (rather like giving birth where you forget the pain so you do it again – big THANKS hormones!)
An artist friend of mine once gave me some great advice about this feeling. She told me whenever I created a piece of art that I shouldn’t look at it for 6 weeks. “Art gets better in the drawers,” she said. Funnily enough writer Stephen King says something similar about the art of writing, in his book ‘On Writing’
If what you are doing feels like it’s rubbish, then it’s time to put some space and time between it. I record my Everyday Positivity a little in advance so when I hear it go out it could be a week since I recorded it. I am always pleasantly surprised by it – that it is much better than I thought it would be. Mostly because I have forgotten what I’ve said during the recording!
Space and time allow you to give yourself some useful feedback. Use it to get confident in your ability, to get self-aware, and improve your self-belief. Nine times out of ten a speaking client will watch themselves back and say “oh that’s not as bad as I thought it was going to be”. Space and time provide objectivity, it helps you to forget the nerves you felt in the cock-up, and look at how you could have dealt with it better.
So, if it’s not got better in the drawers, then you know you can work on the craft some more. If it has, you can stop berating yourself in the process.
