5 Simple Steps To Success

Here are five concrete things you can do to have a better shot at hitting the goals that define success for your station:

1. Challenge your own thinking, or hire and empower someone who will.

If no one on your team ever disagrees with you, or the top people in your company, you're in trouble and don't even know it.

2. Invest in your product first.

The best way to increase revenue is to increase ratings, and the best way to increase ratings is to make your listening experience unique and valuable. That rarely ends with music alone.

3. Add the smartest people you can find to your team.

If you need a list of names, call me, then call them. Yes, you have budgets, but that doesn't mean you can't afford to start a relationship with at least one person on the list.

4. Remember, fundamentally our business is about marketing, so make marketing an untouchable part of your budget.

It should be as unthinkable to slash your marketing budget when times get tough as it would be to slash your inventory. Each depends on the other.

5. Hire the smartest web design and content team you can find, make them an independent department, and empower them to create a website that people would visit every day whether they want to listen to you online or not.

Too many radio station websites are repositories for crap you don't want on the air or bonus spots to justify your rate, coupled with pictures of your jocks and tabs for your promotions. That's a web strategy?

These steps are simple ... just not easy.

But then, success rarely is easy. That's what makes it special.