TJ WALKER - THE HABIT INFLUENCER - Personal Development | LIVE STREAM

Speaking with TJ Walker, dissecting the communication.

Skills and practices of world class leaders. Once upon a time when a major corporation wanted to really get its message out to the whole world, it was relatively easy. You spend a bunch of money, make a slick sort of fake news release, video news release, and you send it out through a video news service and Voila, it's on 80, 90 broadcast stations as news. Unfortunately, those days don't exist anymore. Our special guest today is an expert on video communication. The firm where he's the director of content and media strategy was at the forefront of video news releases way back in the day. Now they're experts on media tours, satellite media tours, blogging media tours, and a lot of other ways of connecting with the media. Mike Baco, thank you for being our guest today.

Thank you for having me.

What exactly is a satellite media tour? Most of our audience members know, but for those who don't, walk us through the ins and outs.

So for your audience members that know and for your audience members that don't know, but have probably seen a satellite media tour, whether it be on their local news station or whether they're watching Entertainment Tonight or their local Good day Toledo, which satellite media tour is a spokesperson? Whether it be an internal communications person, an advocate for a brand, in some cases a celebrity, a sports celebrity or an entertainment celebrity is in a studio or on location and basically they do 25 to 30, sometimes even 50 TV or radio interviews across the country. So you could have one celebrity sitting in a studio like we have here at our New York City headquarters and studio and they go around the country. So from 6am Till 1pm Eastern time, they are hitting basically every major and minor station and geographic zone across the country.

And what makes something like that work? Is it just a celebrity spokesperson? Is it a slow news day? Is it the strength of the story? How does someone pull this off?

It's all of those things you really need to be diagnostic. When you think about why you want to do a satellite media tour, you can't think about it from the oh well, you know what, October is usually a slow news month. Well, you know what, October is not a slow news month this year because the election are coming up. You can't do it based on just having a celebrity because you know what, there are other celebrities that are out there doing these same things, whether they're promoting a movie or whether they're getting a big fee to promote a cologne or some sort of new beverage. So you need to think about what the story is and you need to think about what the messaging is associated with that story and who your actual audience is, who's going to be buying what you're trying to promote, who's going to go to the event that you're trying to promote. So it's all about taking the story, taking the messaging, and finding the right audience that you're trying to hit. And sometimes that's a TV audience, sometimes that's a radio audience, or as you mentioned in your introduction, increasingly it's becoming an online audience.

And how do you measure these audience? I know that was one of the flaws with the old video news release service is, yeah, you may be in 60 markets, but a TV station, a newscast that was willing to take a video news release, often was the last rated station with an audience of almost nothing. How else do you help your clients really figure out how many real people are we hitting? As opposed to the old metric of we were in this many households.

Right. So when it comes to a media tour, there are some variables that are in play. As you mentioned, sometimes a media tour, we may do an interview in Media Market 110, Lincoln, Nebraska. And you know, on the surface you think, ah, that might have 15,000 viewers for their Good Morning Lincoln broadcast. But you know what, that interview may be four or five minutes long. You have a 15,000 audience, a captive audience watching that. And you may do an interview then on local station in Boston who only has 90 seconds, and they basically blow through the interview, 30 seconds for an introduction, one question, messaging, and then they're out. So when you look at the efficacy of a media tour, it's about hitting the big markets, hitting the small markets and everything in between, and then repurposing those interviews. Take those interviews and put them on your social channels, tweet them out. So you're not just getting the audience associated with, with a particular market, you're building on that audience by tweeting, by interacting with people that are interested in that content, basically creating a secondary afterlife. So after a media tour, yes, we provide the 25 to 30 markets, we provide all the audience numbers, but then after that, we also provide an extended reach for all the other distribution methods that we use to get that content out.

And my perception may be wrong, but I always had the perception that stations that took the video news releases had little audience. Whereas a station that will take the time to schedule an interview in advance, do a satellite hookup, do a live interview, almost by definition, they are, if not the top rated station in a market, one of the top ones because they are not just doing the simplest, easiest thing of whoever's walking through their door. So you're reaching a bigger audience, aren't you?

You are reaching a bigger audience. There are technical factors that are involved because there are some stations that quite frankly aren't even set up to do a satellite interview. It's not the same as just getting the satellite feed from the local reporter who's at a fire or God forbid, some sort of shooting or local breaking news story. This is. You're talking about different technology. You're talking about, as you mentioned, a higher end station is going to be taking this. And generally speaking, a higher end station that has that technology is having a producer that's a little bit more in tune with what's going on in terms of creating not just a local broadcast, but bringing in some national story ideas. And then certainly if you have something that you can localize, even if you're doing something very, very niche, say September is Prostate Cancer Awareness Month. If we're doing a satellite media tour, we're not just pitching Charlotte, North Carolina and saying, hey, do you want to do this interview? It's, hey, do you know Charlotte, North Carolina has the fourth most cases of prostate cancer in the last 10 years? You know, why is that? You provide something local for them with a local angle and a local hook that is interesting and appealing to their audience.

That's not comforting. I'm from Charlotte, North Carolina, so let's hope that's not the case. Now, Mike, a lot of our audience members, they're either PR firms, they are people in communications for major companies, small companies, governments, UN organizations. Some of them are thinking, well, that sounds great, I should just do this myself. And certainly some of this can be done. Walk us through the ins and outs of putting together a satellite media tour. What's the value of going with a big firm like yours that does this routinely? Because I'm going to assume that the technology is a part of it, but perhaps not the most important part.

Well, it really depends. If you're talking about doing a blogger media tour, let's say, you know what, you may be able to do that from your Skype computer or a radio media tour, but there's a lot of legwork that's required to go into that. And then if you're really looking to take it to the next level, and really the optimal way of conducting a media tour, mixing in TV and radio, the benefits of going with a firm like ours with DS Simon, aside from the fact that we've got our own studio. We've got our own media relations team, our own production team. We have 30 years of experience behind us. So we've basically seen every variable that can happen. And out in the field, if you're doing a satellite media tour from, say, a museum opening or an amusement park or hotel opening or from our studio here in New York, we're able to provide a comfortable environment. But also from a technical standpoint, everything is internal in terms of our communication means. We have all of our satellite hookups from here. So when you're dealing with stations that might not do satellite media tour interviews as often as we do, we. We're able to walk them through the process. What sort of connectivity do they need? What sort of satellite are they able to get? Can they even see the satellite? People just think of satellites as these things that are up and out there, and we use them on a daily basis. But there's a lot of intricacy that's involved in terms of where geographically you could see certain satellites. So there are a lot of real technical issues that go into it. And especially if you're doing something on location, you're at the whims of Mother Nature. To a certain degree, weather affects a sa, all of those variables that go involved. So if you're looking to do it by yourself, you really.

Unfortunately, I don't mean to make light of a sad situation. Whether the satellite blows up on the launching pad at Cape Canaveral is very.

That is true, and I'm sure Facebook can attest to that. We're not doing a satellite media tour with Mark Zuckerberg or Facebook anytime. But those are all the things that go into. When you're just watching at home, you think, oh, this is seamless. But you know what? How many times are you watching even your local newscast? And they throw to a reporter and the reporter can't hear in the earpiece. There are all these variables that are involved in conducting a satellite media tour. Any sort of live media opportunity.

Our special guest is Mike Baco. He's a director at DS Simon. That's three ws.dssimon.com they are a video communication firm. They specialize, among other things, in satellite media tours for corporate, nonprofit individuals, authors, experts all over the country and all over the world. You're listening to Speaking with TJ Walker. If you haven't already subscribed, please subscribe. Please share the link of this show on Facebook. Mike, a recent client of yours. I've never heard of them. I don't know what they are it seems obscure to me, but I'm just an old man. Apparently everyone else in the world is very familiar with this product. Pokemon. What did you do for them?

Indeed. So everyone probably is looking around right now and seeing if they have any Pokemon Go characters that they could capture from their iPhone. But what we did with Pokemon and the Nintendo brand was an Internet blogger media tour mixed with a satellite media tour. So we did a traditional media tour where we hit a couple of major news outlets with the announcement of the new Pokemon game. So those were great. But when you're doing a media tour, you really need to think about your audience. As I mentioned earlier, and the audience for this was people that were going to buy the game. They didn't need brand awareness for Pokemon. People know about Pokemon TJ within a certain age demographic.

They didn't need me.

So you may be watching from your house in the morning, watching the Today show or Good Day New York or whatever you may be watching in the morning, you're going to be watching that. That Pokemon segment might get totally over your head. You may just continue making your coffee and not even paying any attention to the segment. And that's one of the drawbacks of doing a media tour. If you're not interested in a segment, you may not pay attention to it on your local news. But what we did was supplement with a blogger Internet media tour going directly to the people that were going to buy the game and in this case, mothers. So we did a mom blog media tour where we had a brand ambassador from Pokemon, literally the person who comes up with the characters, the character traits of the characters that are in the game. And we couple that with an opportunity for the children of the mom bloggers to ask questions. So we had this amazing interactive segment where mom bloggers on Skype or from their own webcam with their children in tow right next to them were able to ask the Pokemon brand ambassador questions. Now when you think about, and I'm.

Sorry, I may be older and more clueless than most people, but I can't be the only one out there. Give us a 30 second summary. What exactly is Pokemon for someone who's just landed from Mars and has never heard of it?

So Pokemon is a video game, it's a character, it's a show. Nintendo was able to co opt the Pokemon brand and basically create an entire universe around it. So there's Pokemon Go, which is an app for iPhones, and people go around to different locations. But what we were focused on was the actual Pokemon game. So it's A traditional video game that you're able to play on your Nintendo game system handheld or through the tv. And it is an absolute rage. And it's a game that moms and parents are okay with their kids playing because there's very little violence, teaches some life lessons, and it's just wholesome entertainment. If you're into letting your kid play.

Video games, just don't be staring at your phone as you walk out into a busy street looking for. Exactly. I guess. So walk us through more, how you set this up. How do you entice producers who perhaps were not as familiar with Pokemon? How do you make sure the moms, the kids and others are camera ready and are comfortable doing interviews like this?

So that when you think about doing a blog or tour, you have to think about the fact that these are moms, these are not professional media personalities. And that was part of the draw that we wanted to present to our client to Nintendo 2 page. We wanted to sell them on this idea that you know what, the efficacy of going on Good Day Toledo is great and we wanted to get you on that, but we want to get you into this ecosystem of moms that share information, that have audiences, that people go to them for advice. So we targeted mom blogs with significant audience, whether it be social media reach on Twitter and Facebook or just through general audience that goes to their blogs. And these are moms that when they do say, hey, hey ladies, hey moms. Families out there, we really love this new yogurt. Moms flock to that. They take their advice. So they have a built in following and they have a built in ability to recommend products and basically give endorsements for things that they like. So when we targeted them, we said, hey, we're going to set you up with this brand ambassador. We're going to give you a how to step by step on how your camera is supposed to look, what the lighting is supposed to look like. If you need a cheap microphone, we could send you a $20 microphone that you could plug into your computer. So all of these things we thought beforehand what is going to make the best segment. And then we basically provided them with all of the technical requirements that they would need. And then we basically just let them and their personality come through in the interviews.

Beyond Pokeyman, tell us about two things. I want to know what's been the most successful satellite media tour and what's the least successful. And you don't have to name names. I just know that anytime I talk about my failures, my blunders, earpiece sticking out of my ear getting booed off stage. That's what my audience enjoys more than anything, whether it's YouTube or on the podcast here at Speaking with TJ Walker. So if you could share the success story. But equal time about a failure.

So let's talk about a success story. This is a best case scenario. We did something recently with U.S. olympian and World cup champion Abby Wambach. So what we were able to do with her, she was promoting a new video game that was tied into the Olympics. So it was Olympic promotion. So we looked at Abby Wambach and we said, okay, here's this female athlete. We have the Olympics coming up. She's a former Olympian. We have all this name recognition. She was branching out to do more than just her sports background. She was launching a new company for herself that is empowering female athletes and young athletes. So we looked at three different tiers that we wanted to hit. We wanted to hit national media, wanted to hit local media, and then we wanted to hit some parenting blogs that would have this message and be able to communicate it to their mom audience to empower the younger female athletes. So we took a business angle for national media and we were able to get her because she was launching a this company, we were able to get her national placements on sportsillustrated.com and CNBC during their lunch power hour. So she was talking about the business aspect of her background on that and getting in the messaging for the video game. Then from the local standpoint, we wanted to sell the video game. So we were able to target markets that had high interest in soccer. We wanted to target major outlets that were able to get her message out. So this was higher end targets and the local market. So we were able to hit everything from New York to Boston to Hartford to Seattle and Detroit. And that was her her adventure into selling the video game. So the brand was happy with that. And then finally we wanted to get this empowerment of young female athletes out. So we were targeting mom bloggers and we were able to get her cross platform on the mom blog. So when you look at a campaign that you have a celebrity like that anytime you're able to get messaging on CNBC to a mom blog, that's a very successful tour. And that basically hits all quadrants of what not only the talent but the brand wanted to do.

Now that sounds like a great success. That's the best case now for the opposing view.

The opposing view. So one instance where we really just had very little to work with in terms of a story was a Drug company wanted to get out the new release of a drug. Unfortunately it was also tied to the death of a famous musician. So recently Prince OD'd on opioids. And you know, that was in the news, right? Excuse me. Right around the same time that this drug company was about to conduct a satellite media tour. They had a brand spokesperson that only had a limited opportunity to do the satellite media tour, did not want to cancel. We advised them that the majority of the questions were going to be tied to recent news. And you might not be able to get the announcement of your new drug out there because everyone would be asking you about the recent death of print and other things that were in the news. They went against our advice to push back and get a little bit past the news cycle. They did 22 interviews. 20 of the 22 started off with questions about the recent death of Prince. The spokesperson answered those questions, got very little messaging in about the new drug launch. Basically was just able to get in a website mention and it was very, very pressed. So they were not able to get. They basically did a news media tour discussing the death of Prince, not the reaction to their new drug. So they did which, which might be.

Interesting and fun, but it's hard to see how that creates much of a return on investment.

Exactly. So that's when you're at the whim somewhat of the, of the news cycle. But you're also, you have.

I'm just curious, did the client blame you?

The client. The client did not blame us. They, they knew what they were getting into, but they thought that their messaging would be bigger than the news cycle. And it may be in certain circumstances but when you have a major celebrity, an all timer like Prince, who passes away, that's going to be what people want to discuss. And you're basically at the whims of what the news media wants to ask you. So they went against our judgment and as you mentioned, the return on investment was very, very small even though they went against our judgment. So you really have to know what's going on in the news cycle. You have to know who your spokespeople are. And going back to thinking about Abby Wambach. Abby Wambach. About two or three weeks after we did the satellite media tour, talking about being at the whims of not only, you know, what other celebrities are doing, your own spokesperson. Two or three weeks after we did the satellite media tour, Abby Wambach was arrested for drunk driving. And during that time she admitted that she had done cocaine and other drugs in the past. So the timing of that could have made that story one of our worst satellite media tour. So just a few week window, one way or another in the news cycle is the difference between our best media tour and one of our worst media tours.

And this does show the classic difference between marketing versus media relations and PR. With marketing, you can just say, okay, 90 days from today, our new TV ads are going to hit and you can just plan it and roll it out. When you're talking to the news media, you do have to keep your ears and eyes open for something bigger, more distracting. I don't care if you're President of the United States, if you're the president giving a major speech and all of a sudden there's a typhoon somewhere that kills a thousand people, you've got to change, you've got to be flexible. I remember early in my career, 30 years ago, I was working at the state capitol in Tallahassee. Florida Governor Bob Graham at the time, very popular governor, about to announce his bid for the US Senate to go after a very popular incumbent Republican senator. He had a big plan to tour the whole state, announced in every media market, I think did it in one city, about to go to the next, and the Challenger exploded. The astronauts were dead. He had to scrap it. It doesn't matter how popular, how big, how much of a newsmaker he is, you cannot compete with the Challenger explosion because that wasn't like a Facebook satellite where no one was on it, real people were on it.

Absolutely.

And it was a huge, huge story. You just, you can't compete. You have to be flexible.

And one other thing to think about, if you are an organization going out there and you think that you may have the market cornered because you're doing something tied to something that's seasonal or something that's coming up, we're right on the cusp of the national football season starting. So I'm sure every brand that may have a football related celebrity spokesperson may think, oh well, let's just tie our media tour around the idea that the NFL season is starting. Well, you know what, you're not the only one that has that idea. There are other activations that are going on. So yes, it's great to think about newsworthy hooks that you could tie your media tour to or any sort of activation that you're doing. But you also have to keep in mind what's going to make it original. There are other brands, there are other organizations out there trying to capitalize on the same news hooks as you are. So you need to think about not only what the news hook is, what's the seasonal hook, but also what makes it different from everyone else out there trying to capitalize on those same ideas.

And time frames and competing and pitching. Because we all have competitors. I love to think of myself as one of the foremost experts on how to use a teleprompter. I have video courses on how to use a teleprompter. I have chapters and books on how to use a teleprompter. I have dozens and dozens of videos on how to use a teleprompter. I have videos critiquing Donald Trump on how he uses teleprompter. But what happens? I wake up today, check my RSS feed. What do I see? A big prominent article in the Huffington Post analyzing Donald Trump's use of the teleprompter, quoting a public speaking expert. Guess what? It wasn't me. We all have competitors. We like to think we are the biggest or the best. But there's always someone hustling another media angle. Speaking of hustle, some of our listeners are saying, mike Bakel, I've heard that name before. We live in a modern age where all of us have to have a lot of different titles and hats. Mike, you are the director of content and media strategy at DS Simon, but you're also the executive editor of the Daily national, an online news site. In that capacity, people see you everywhere. You've been on Megyn Kelly and Primetime on Fox. You're routinely seen on satellite news shows all over the world. So unlike a lot of PR people who just talk about how to do an interview or be on camera, you're on both sides of it all the time. How has that given you a different perspective when working with clients?

Well, I think just in your question, it has given me a different perspective. Perspective. I am able to give insight and feedback into what a major news outlet would be interested in, what a major international outlet will be interested in, and what a major local news outlet would be interested in from some of my appearances on wpix. So I'm able to bring not only the marketing PR hat to my thinking, but I'm also able to bring the newsroom thinking to any sort of client interactions or strategy that we come up with. So, yes, for my own brand, it's great to be out there and to get publicity for the Daily national and for myself as a sports analyst. But it also brings a secondary layer of intelligence in terms of coming up with strategy when I am dealing with my clients in my More formal role with DS Simon Media and with Daily National.

We should point out, while it's been around for quite a while, it's not Sports Illustrated yet, and it's not, you know, it's not espn. And yet there are months where you have dozens of hits in major national tv, local tv, in New York City, radio. How do you leverage a blog, a blog post, a position with one Internet media company, and get into a lot more national media coverage? Because a lot of our listeners are frankly envious.

Well, I take this tact to my media appearances and the growth of different relationships that I've had. Someone once told me, never turn down any media opportunity. And that's really the philosophy that I've had. And what that has enabled me to do is build up a resume of appearances that are almost proof of concept in a certain way for other media outlets. The way that I got started doing media was by taking any radio interview I could possibly do, whether it be the smallest overnight radio interview in a small Ohio town, just to get that experience and just to get that repetition to doing online radio networks that are just on the Internet. And what happened with that? One of the radio producers moved on to work at Al Jazeera tv. So I did a small radio Internet show with that producer, who then moved on to bigger and better things, recommended me for a segment. I was sitting in the green room at Al Jazeera about to go on, when the host looked at my name and said, I don't know who Mike Baco is. I don't know what the Daily national is. But the producer said, listen, I've worked with this guy before. He could pull it off. Up until two minutes before they put that earpiece in my ear, I did not know if I was going to go on and do that Al Jazeera interview. Well, they couldn't find another guest, so I went on and did the interview. Afterwards, the host said, that guy was pretty good. We should have him on again. Two days later, after obtaining that clip, another producer from Fox was interested in having someone come on talk about sports. I had that proof of concept clip, went on Fox News, and the rest is kind of history. One thing builds upon the other. So you're able to basically leverage any sort of relationship you have, any sort of media opportunity that you have, and then those things grow upon each other. It doesn't work for everyone. There are certainly times when I pitch myself to these outlets and they have a bigger name from a Sports Illustrated or from an ESPN that go on instead of me But I've built up enough of a resume of on air appearances and enough of a Rolodex of producers who bounce around from media outlet to media outlet that I've been able to build up this resume of international, local and major news outlet appearances.

To me, the interesting thing there that I think some of our audience members need to think about a little differently is first of all, you were even interested in going into Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera is a well respected news brand around the world. In the United States, not so much. And I've been on the network and wouldn't turn them down. But you took the time to pitch. They frankly doesn't sound like they were that respectful of you. But you, you stayed, you didn't storm out when they said I don't know who this guy is. More important, you took the time to get the clip, leveraged it and you've since been on Fox News, which is, even though a lot of people don't like it, the number one rated news channel in the United States. You've been on that dozens, if not hundreds of times now. It wouldn't have happened or certainly not as easily without saying yes to a TV network. A lot of people would have looked down their noses at this is true.

And you know what? You do need to have standards. If your brand is that you are left leaning or very liberal or you don't want to be associated with a Fox News that that may hurt your business interest, then by all means don't go on that network. If you think it's going to put you in a dis disadvantage in terms of bigger and better things. If it's going to work against your brand, don't do those media appearances. But just keep in mind that exposure is exposure and you really, if you're trying to build your brand, you never really want to turn down any sort of media opportunity. And even if you do do something that may be against brand, you need to be able to leverage it. So get the clip, put it on social media, show that proof of concept and even though it may be only one appearance, you may be able to leverage that to get on MSNBC or Rachel Maddow or any other show.

Our special guest today is Mike Baco. He is the executive editor of the Daily National, a news website with a sports focus. You can reach him on Twitter ikebay Bako. That's spelled B A K O. We'll link to that in the show notes as well. You're listening to Speaking with TJ Walker. The show where we analyze the communication skills, tactics and tricks of world class communicators and how they use communication to succeed in what they're doing. Now, Mike, when I invite you to be on this show, you didn't even ask what it was about, you just said yes. I think that is a general positive principle of anyone I know who's really successful. Unless you're the President of the United States, because you could do 10,000 interviews a day, there would be more requests. But when I look at so many wildly successful people over the years, Alan DERSHOWITZ in law, Dr. Joyce Brothers is no longer with us. The one thing that you would hear from the smallest town talk radio producer is that you call these people, they'll call you back. They don't ask your audience size, they don't ask how big your city is. They just call back and they do the interview. Maybe only for two minutes, but they have an attitude of yes. Whereas a lot of people, especially in the corporate arena, they want to know, is this person going to be 100% friendly? How big is their audience? They spend so much time talking themselves out of an interview, they don't see how these things do fit together in a bigger picture. Any thoughts on that?

I think it just goes back to that principle of not turning things down. Obviously, if I didn't have an hour commitment today to speak to you and to speak to your audience, I would have thought twice about it. But I know what your audience is. I know what the basic scope of the interview was going to be. So I thought it was a great opportunity to get my messaging out. I'm getting messaging out for my corporate brand, but also for my own personal brand. One of the things that your audience may want to think about in terms of doing some of these interviews is, is it a low threshold in terms of getting your spokesperson repetitions and getting them just beyond media trained? You could do as much media training you want. And great media trainers like yourself, when you leave a day of training, that person's going to feel great before they go onto a media interview. But it's not until they're actually on the line, listening to the questions, doing the actual interview, and then hearing themselves back in an actual show format that you really get the true understanding of what you sound like during an interview. So in terms of the efficacy of doing any sort of interview, think about how much exposure you want to get. If it's small or big, you know what that you have to make that time commitment and understand what the audience might be. But then you also just need to think about how many repetitions you want to get under your belt. And for me, one of the reasons, aside from wanting to speak to you, is I've not done many long form, one hour interviews. I've not been able to speak to an audience and tell the sort of breadth of my experience and touch on both roles that I have from a professional standpoint. So I looked at this interview as saying, wow, it's going to be with a great interviewer, it's going to be with an engaged audience, and it's really something that I've not done before. So also think about it from that.

Standpoint and we should put out full disclosure. Mike and I have known each other for years. He used to be one of our top trainers at Media training worldwide and is an all around good guy, which is one reason I wanted to share his wisdom with our audience here today. Mike, you, you came to work with us, I want to say like a decade ago and have since moved on to even greener pastures. But you grew up in the New York market, which is the media capital of the world. Who are some of the media icons that you really idolized as a child?

I think as someone who was very much interested in sports and obviously has followed that passion, the person who I most identified with was someone on a national level was Bob Costas. I mean, when I saw his hosting abilities not only from a sports perspective, but also the light bulb went off when I saw him hosting his own entertainment show. He used to do a show called later with Bob Costas. And when I saw his ability to one day speak with a Super bowl winning quarterback like Terry Bradshaw, and that made sense to me. Bob Costas, he's interviewing Terry Bradshaw. That makes sense. But then the next day he interviewed Gloria Steinem. The day after that, he interviewed Governor Mario Cuomo. After that, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, it was amazing to me that someone who identified as a sportscaster was able to interview all of those people. And what it made me realize is, hey, I need to know about sports, but I also need to know about politics, pop culture, geography, world history, any of those opportunities that will increase my awareness of the world around me, make me more well rounded, but also down the line. Even as a 14, 15 year old, know that that would make myself more marketable as a media entity down the line. So that's just something that stuck with me and that I've carried into my career where even though I'm a sports guy, I know about so many other things because it dawned on me that the media is ever changing and you can't just pigeon toe yourself to just one. One sector, if you will.

And Bob Costas is certainly someone who, and I'm not a huge sports fan, as you know, is almost universally respected. It's very rare to ever hear somebody say, well, I hate Bob Costas. I just never heard that he comes across as knowledgeable, but not arrogant, likable, but not smarmy or ingratiating. Interesting, but willing to listen to the person he's interviewing most. It's a great balance he has, but I don't think.

And one other thing.

Go ahead.

Oh, go ahead, Mike. One of the things that he was able to do is you could get a sense of his personality as well. So it wasn't just when you watch a newscast, when you watch certain interviewers. Wolf Blitzer is a great interviewer, but I don't really know what his personal personality is like. The thing that Costas was able to do was you knew that he had a sense of humor, you knew that he was self deprecating, you knew that he had a little bit of sarcasm to him, and you knew that he knew that. He knew that he was well informed, that he could sit there with Paul Simon without any cue cards or index cards and talk about an album from 1967 the same way that he would about, you know, certain musical influences that. That went all the way back to his childhood or present day. So he knew his subject, he knew where he wanted to go with the interview. But if it went off in a slightly different direction, you know what, he could go with the flow because he was very well versed in basically anything that may pertain to his guest.

Well rounded. We all know certain sports fanatics who can tell you the batting average of every single 1937 New York Yankees, but can't tell you the name of the sitting vice president. Bob Costa is not like that. He's obviously well rounded. He's not someone I think of as a New York sports personality because he's the St. Louis guy. Is there any. Are there any other voices, perhaps unique to New York you grew up listening to?

The thing that I realized about New York is that anchors come and go, but there are certain guys like Chuck Scarborough. Scarborough, who has been here for so many years. He's the local anchor on the NBC affiliate, and you just see the way. And I don't know if Chuck Scarborough is from New York or from Ohio or from California, but I know him as a New Yorker because he's been around for so long, you know, when you turn on the news, you're not going to get fluff, you're going to get the news, but you're also going to get someone who's a steady hand, who's been there for so long, so many years. So I grew up watching him. And when you could grow up watching someone when you're 10 years old and getting your first experience watching news to when you're in your 30s and about to have a child and it's the same newscaster, he's doing something right. So when, whenever I watch Chuck Scarborough on the WNBC affiliate here in New York, I'm watching him, I'm getting the news. But I'm also trying to pick up on, on certain things. Like what is he doing that he has been around for years, 30, 30 plus years, anchoring the 6 o' clock and the 11 o' clock news. That is a rarity to be able to stay around in the number one market for that long.

He's definitely a Polish pro and I've been on his program as you have too and been interviewed by him. For those of you who aren't familiar with him, he is the main news anchor for the NBC affiliate based here in New York City but not known to most people around the country. And interesting note and hey, I'm a middle aged or an older than middle aged white man. Mike, you're a younger white man. Did get a lot of attention. This was, I don't know, five, seven years ago. Chuck Scarborough was, I guess turning 65 or 68. His co anchor was a woman who was exactly the same age, I think almost to the month. They had the number one rated newscast. She was fired for being too old. He was given like a new five or ten year contract. So it is an unfair world, I think when it comes to aging men, they do seem to be able to last longer on the air. Whether that's the sexism of media owners, managers or the audience, I don't know. We'll have to leave that one for another day. That might tell us about the best speaking appearance you've ever had, whether it's in person or on media. And tell us about the worst.

Well, the best and the worst are actually the same thing. I did a speech about six months or so ago, a little bit more than that actually at the IABC of New Jersey. So the International association of Business Communicators New Jersey. It was billed as a big audience of business communicators. It was going to be A nighttime speech at Rutgers University. Everything was lined up to have a great evening. It was going to be right in my wheelhouse of not only bringing in my de assignment experience, but my daily national experience. It was going to be about a speech about picking the right spokesperson and how to leverage your media brand. So everything lining up for a great speech. They were going to have about 205,300 of these business communicators coming for their monthly meeting two days before major snowstorm hits the New York, New Jersey area. So if it's a random Thursday night, do you really want to battle the slush and the ice to trudge out to hear someone speak about picking the right spokesperson? If it was a nice evening, maybe you go out, you network a little bit. But some of those other variables came into play and basically people were dropping left and right. So what I thought would be a couple hundred person speech turned out to be a speech in front of 13 people. Well, I still went ahead with the speech. I came down off the stage, basically stood in front of the front row of people and interacted. I changed my speech completely around and asked the audience members questions. I went off of what some of my scripting was and some of the PowerPoint and video examples, but I basically just got down in the trenches and didn't make the speech about what I was going to be discussing. I made it about them. Hey, Tom, you know, when was the last time you used an outside spokesperson for a media tour, for any sort of media appearances? Oh, you never have. Let me show you this video example. I basically took down whatever my speech was going to be and made it a lot more personal to the people that were listening. So that was the best and the worst speech because I went into it thinking that it was going to be a complete disaster. I turned out turned out being one of the best speeches I've ever given. And it's really informed me for other speeches that I will give in the future, whether it be in front of 13 people or 250 people.

I guess my question there is, if it works so well, personalizing it, being interactive, why couldn't you have done that? If there had been 300 people in.

The room, I probably still could have done that. I probably should have thought about doing that beforehand. I know certain speakers like to get to their events early and network and mingle with the people and have those interactions so they are able to say, hey Steve, you know what? Earlier when we were talking about X, Y and Z, you mentioned this. Well, what about this does anyone else in the audience have that same same experience? So those are all things that I've done in past speeches and certainly we'll do more so in the future, especially learning the lesson of how well this 13 person speech went.

And I appreciate you sharing that, but I'm not going to let you off the hook. That doesn't really classify as a blunder you made. And actually, there are times when I would have loved to have had 13 people in an audience. I once flew to Atlanta, Georgia for a political debate against Bloomberg News anchor Bob Bowden. And we had two people in the audience. But you know what? We did the whole thing as if we had 2,000 people. But I want to know about a time when you, when nobody's going to blame you for the weather, a time where you screwed up. Because I've certainly made mistakes. I've made blunders. I've been booed off stages. I've fallen off a stage. I've had people cursing at me. I've had people pull a gun on me on the air. Tell me about a time when you specifically made a mistake and what you might have learned from it.

Are you still there, T.J. yes.

Can you hear me?

I could hear you. Now I didn't.

Okay.

The last thing I heard from you was that you had a gun pulled on you during an interview. So that that makes for a good story.

I want to know specifically where you messed up in an interview or a speech, not that there was bad weather because no one's really going to blame you for the weather. Where is a time where you made a mistake. And I may have watched you.

Okay, go ahead. Oh, no, I'm right here. And this blunder goes back to knowing what you're comfortable with and knowing your brand. I was asked to go on a radio show. It was what you might call a more combative radio show. Imagine Fox News on steroids, but talking about sports. And I know for myself I'm more from. I come at my appearances more from an analyst standpoint, not from someone that's going to yell across a table. So I went on an NBC sports radio show. It was with two other guests and they. We were basically debating a topic and I knew that it was going to be a combative topic. And basically when I went on, they introduced me, I was not able to basically get a word in edgewise because both of these other guests were completely deviating and going completely off the top that I was not able to get in a word in edgewise to the point where the host has to actually ask if I was still on the line. So I knew that that was not a circumstance where, you know, where I would feel comfortable. I guess I didn't learn my lesson because about a month or so later, I went on a Fox News panel along with 10 other news analysts. So they basically had a free for all on the Sean Hannity show about a year or so ago where they were going to be talking about politics, pop culture, sports, music. They had one or two experts on from all the different fields. And basically within a minute and a half of going on the show and being in the second row of this panel, the cameras running around. You're on camera most of the time if you want to say something. I found myself in a situation where I said, you know what, I don't even want to contribute to this sort of discourse or this sort of discussion. So again, a situation where I was just a very passive audience member in a sense, even though I was the one that was on the panel. So from those two experiences, I've learned, you know what, I'm better suited as an analyst, as the cooler head going on a segment, than someone who's going to be up there basically throwing verbal venom across at the host and at the guest. That's not what I'm comfortable with, and that's not something that I do. So if there are speaking opportunities or media opportunities that come along that would require that. I know that that's not my cup of tea.

But what is your advice to a client who perhaps does have a product or service that is involved with some public controversy? Because if they say no to panels like that, that just leaves more time for people who don't like them trashing them. So I personally am not a fan of saying no, really to any media appearance, but certainly if I'm the subject of the controversy, it doesn't make sense. I have a particular strategy I advise to clients, but I want to hear from you. What do you do if the client has decided they're going to go on a panel and there's 10 people and it's going to be really hard to get a word in edgewise. And I should point out, I find it universally that is the least popular type of media appearance for my clients in all sectors. But I want to hear your advice.

So what I would say in that circumstance is you have to know what you're going into. If I were to do that panel again, if they said, you know what, this go around, we're going to, you know, we're going to give you another opportunity. I would go in versed in what I would say and I would get my message points out at the beginning of the show. So I could kind of get a little bit of momentum going in terms of interacting. Basically when I went on that FOX panel, I was basically shouted down or shouted over in the first two or three minutes and it basically defeated my media sensibility. So I just laid back. If I was advising a client or if you were advising a client in this situation, I would basically say, know what you're going into and have your media messages, your short, quick media messages that you want to get out and have the ability to say them very early in the interview because they may not come back to you. You may not have a. They're not going to say, hey Steve, tell us more about what your company is dealing with. You basically need to be at the ready, you need to know the medium and you need to have your messages right at your fingertips, right on the tip of your tongue so that if you do only get 30 seconds or 45 seconds in an hour long panel, that's going to be the 45 seconds that people are going to remember.

Here are my tips. And I don't do these shows as much as I used to, but there were, there have been weeks when I've done half a dozen, almost a dozen appearances on msnbc, Fox, cnn, Court tv and I was one of six, eight people. The tactic I used that worked is certainly if the host is talking over you or asking you to be quiet, I instantly shut up. But if I'm starting to say something and someone else is butting in, I keep talking. I don't yell over them, but I keep, keep talking. And the crosstalk makes it very difficult for the audience to understand. The host will have to pick you occasionally and you cannot wait for someone to call on you. You have to just seize the moment and you have to be able to make one specific point that doesn't have a lot of howevers, buts or therefores. You just inject your point. And, and if it's a five minute segment and it's two and a half minutes in, you're going to have to butt in. You don't like to be rude, but your time is valuable and a five minute TV clip somewhere, by the time you drove to the station, sat in makeup, talked to the producer, left. I mean, it's three hours out of your day so you deserve at least one or two hits. So my recommendation is different from how you're talking to family and friends, you're gonna have to interrupt at least once to get your point across. Like any other predictions you have, you've been a student of media your whole life. You've adapted to new media as it's coming along. You've seen certain institutions kind of wither away. Where do you see the future of media going and what medium are you most excited about today?

Well, I think the thing that people need to understand is that you need to build your own media brand, but you also have to realize that everyone else out there is building their own media brand. It's as easy as ever to become a blogger, to set up your own website, to set up your own home studio. So everyone is their own media company. So as much as it's important to build your own media brand, you have to realize that there are other people out there that are doing the same exact thing as you are. So what is going to set you apart? Whether it be your writing style, your on camera style, some of the production elements that you put into your videos, the niche that you find. Tj, you found an amazing niche for being the number one speaking expert and number one speaking communication producer of content. So what's going to be your niche? Whether it be something from a cooking standpoint or sports standpoint standpoint or interior design standpoint, what is going to be your niche? So it's very heartening for me to know that there are people out there that are building their own brand. I hope that there aren't too many sports competitors that are building their brand. I hope that producers still keep coming back to me, but I have to know that I have to keep evolving with the times myself. I have to keep creating my own content. I have to keep getting the content that I produce and the shows that I go on, keep getting that out into the social media stratosphere, keep interacting with the people that you mentioned. The earlier appearance I did with Megyn Kelly, I got a lot of negative social, social media commentary on my appearance about some of the things that I said, but I interacted with those people trying to turn them into my followers or fans or advocates. So you basically need to know that whatever you're doing, you need to be connecting with an audience. You, you need to be building your brand and you need to be evolving your brand.

And if you want to connect with Mike Baco, you can do so on Twitter Ikebaco B A K O. You can also reach him@dssimon.com or the Daily National. Mike Bako, thanks for being our guest today. Thanks for listening to Speaking with TJ.

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