Dave Sturgeon: The Truth About Radio

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  0:02  
Announcer, the sound off podcast, the show about podcast and broadcast starts now.

Matt Cundill  0:13  
This week, I'm joined by a true veteran of the radio business who's been on the air online, bought, sold and managed radio stations all over North America. Dave sturgeon has spent over 40 years in radio, most of it helping 1000s of clients grow their business through the power of audio. I like to look back with a lot of my guests, because I think it's fun to hear the backstory of where people have traveled in broadcasting. But Dave's not about looking back. He's pushing the industry forward with this brand new book, The Truth About radio, a myth busting guide for today's media buyers and sellers. In it, he takes aim at the Digital First narrative, and reminds us why radio still matters with data stories and a whole lot of passion. So today, yes, we'll talk about Dave's career, his time working in both Canada and the United States, and why now more than ever, is the time to stop chasing clicks and start building brands again. His book, by the way, comes at a very affordable price. It's on the episode page and in the show notes of this podcast. Episode, optimism is infectious, and once you get to the end of this episode, you'll know what I mean. And now Dave sturgeon joins me from Joshua Tree California. You know, I had many, many sort of thoughts and ways and wish to handle this interview today, and I was really dying to ask this first question, what makes you qualified to tell the truth about radio?

Dave Sturgeon  1:39  
It's the Gladwell thing. It's the 10,000 hours. That's it.

Matt Cundill  1:43  
You started way back in Ontario, in a small town at 16 in the early 80s. I think you are more than qualified to do this. I should really be tossing out this first question, right?

Dave Sturgeon  1:54  
And I think the other difference is, right. Like most guys who start in radio and have a career in radio, stay in radio through the entire deal. I was on the air. And let me back up, most guys start in sales, stay in sales, move into sales management, management. I don't know that there are a lot of guys who start on the air and do mornings for 30 years, and then move into vice president, market manager for stations in the US, after having lived in Canada, and then at a certain point, after managing stations for 910, years, move over to the agency side and start buying radio in hundreds of markets around the continent. And all of that just provides a broader spectrum of understanding when it comes to both sides, or all three sides of presenting entertainment through a microphone, selling it to advertisers and then buying it for clients. I

Matt Cundill  2:50  
remember you from Q 92 in Sudbury. I mean, you did that for, you know, six years, and, you know, successful show, successful time there, and a unique time in radio, especially rock radio, in the 90s, with grunge and all that. What did morning radio teach you about the big picture of radio?

Dave Sturgeon  3:10  
Well, I was raised on radio, so my dad was a real you know, my parents were really religious. There's no TV in the house. Little did they know that listening to Stephen Gary and John records land, Decker and those guys booming into Northern Ontario from Chicago was like the worst worldly influence I could get, way worse than anything I was seeing on TV. But anyway, from just such a young age, I wanted so badly to be doing what those guys were doing, making people listening feel like they made me feel right, and it wasn't. It didn't take long to figure out that as go morning, so will the rest of the day. It's like prime time on radio. I think that trajectory for me was pretty quick. I started early 16 in new Lister to cjtt, and I was assistant manager in the automotive department at Kmart. At 16, I'd go up there after school work over there. And of course, I just loved the radio on the station. By the way, the station cjt was a block away from the high school, so I would get up, you know, at three o'clock when when school ended, I would go down to the station and hang out there. And eventually, Tom bassinet, the program director, because I was begging him to just let me get on the air. Somehow, I finally offered to pay the station the 265 an hour I was getting from Kmart just to let me go on the air. I was so rabid about the whole idea, and at that point, he just kind of laughed and brought me on to do cleaning and pulled the wire, the news wire, and help out in the newsroom and those kind of things, but I got on the air there swing evenings, afternoons, got hired to go to North Bay, where I did afternoon drive in North Bay, ended up doing evenings in Midland After a stint in Lindsay. And all this is happening over the course of two or three years, and while I was in Midland. And which was my hometown. So my dad had been a cop when I was kid, so the name was kind of known there that little town, sturgeon and Gary Greer, dear friend and program director with Telemedia at that station, came in one day, and the morning guy had been fired, masked, you know, said, we'd like to give you a shot at mornings. I didn't think I was ready. I wasn't at that point, thinking that that was an option, I thought it'd be like evenings, you know, swing afternoons, mid, you know, and work my way there. So it was a baptism by fire. And it's one of those things where you go into it not knowing what you don't know. But I lived a block away from the station, and I would just get over there at three o'clock in the morning. And, you know, to answer your question, what did it teach me about radio. There's this magic thing that happens when you're up at that hour and watching a town wake up and lights come on, and getting the image of people pouring their first coffee in their underwear, you know, at the radio on in the fridge, because this is 81 right? So they'd have a probably have a radio by their bedside and the radio on the fridge. In the kitchen, they turned it on, they'd listen. There's something very magical and emotional for me to be the voice that was resonating in those kitchens and bedrooms across a community like that. I was always very reverential about that whole process. And the word is connection, right? It's what radio is all about it's if there's one word that is important to define what radio does for humans, is connection. And morning radio taught me the power of that connection. And then you start to realize what that feels like by interacting with clients or sorry with listeners at remotes, or they call in, or however that connection happens to kind of reinforce what you're feeling. It provided a very, very strong foundation for me in terms of the power radio.

Matt Cundill  6:48  
So I'm curious to know this one, because it's something that not everybody can do. But this is going to speak to you know, all the things that happened to you later, and tell me about that transition from going from rock radio to talk, because you did a talk stint on a great radio station, 570 in Kitchener you did mornings, but that's, you know, it's am and it's talk radio, and so tell me about making that transition from playing Ozzy Osbourne in the morning to what you were doing, like the full service 570 Kitchener thing.

Dave Sturgeon  7:15  
Well, I don't know how deep you want to go into this. I was raised in a very strict religious household in a religion where being high profile in a community like I was was always frowned on. I was always sort of considered to be on the fringes in that congregation, but I loved it so much, and in my heart, I knew that this was what I was going to do, no matter what. I also was a firm believer in the teachings of that religion, and so I was conflicted in many ways by the fact that there were humans judging me for the career I'd chosen, but the deep love I had for that career path and for just being on the radio, that conflict was always there. Well, by the time I'm in Sudbury. And Q 92 is, I mean, I'm talking a 60 share, right? Because it was a mining town without a rock station, and the FM flipped from country to rock with a huge fanfare thanks to Bob Templeton, who was the president of the market at the time. It was a huge deal. And so sturgeon Mel that morning show. You know, it was a big deal in Sudbury and Northern Ontario. With that came a lot of attention, you know, without going into a whole lot of detail, it had a significant effect on my marriage and on my family. And at a certain point when I chose to address that, it was kind of waking up in the shower one morning and realizing is, you know, am I the man I want to be? I realized the greater desire at that point was to be the best husband and father I could be. And so I kind of lumped radio into that definition of what had made me, you know, the selfish person I had become, that whole process of being high profile and resigned at the peak of my career, we, my wife and I, working as hard as we could to keep our family together. Decided, like we really cognitively, decided that me getting out of radio would be would move us a very, very huge step in the direction of putting family first. So I was on the beach that was 96 and I was painting houses and, you know, repairing instruments and whatever I could do to make a living, because that's all I'd ever done, was radio and I was just trying to figure out how to pay the bills through that, you know, two or three year period. And at a certain point, I had kind of made the metamorphosis as a man that I had intended and hoped to make with a lot of help, and to my wife's credit, we made it through, and thanks to, you know, her patience and forgiveness and all the rest of it here, we were a very solid family, and much the wiser, much the richer in terms of life experience, for having gone through it. You. Really struggling financially that hadn't been a problem in the past. And as the clouds started to part, and as the fog started to lift off, that hurricane of a time in our family, she came to me, actually, and said, You know what? I really believe that you're meant to be on the radio. And as I look at our life here now, I don't think that that would be an impediment to us continuing to have a successful marriage and family. Well, I just couldn't believe it. You know, it was music to my ears, and we it was the most remarkable thing, because I hadn't sent a tape, I hadn't called a program director, I hadn't done a thing, and out of the blue, I get a message from Arnie celsi, who was with bond B O N N Bond consultants at the time, just asking, Dave, would you be open to the idea of talk radio? And during that time, that's what I had listened to. When I was not on the radio. I was listening to talk radio wherever I could get it, a lot of CBC, and had really fallen in love with the spoken word format. So imagine that. I mean, the timing of receiving that call, it was unbelievable. And so I got a call from Wolfgang Von racefeld and George Gordon, who were running the station for Rogers in Kitchener Waterloo, and asked if they could drive up and meet me and talk about doing the morning show on talk radio for Jeff Hutchison, who was leaving to go work at CTV. In answer to the question, how difficult was it to make that leap? You mean? You can't even imagine, to their credit, and I love them and thank them to this day, but they gave me a whole month. So they brought me on, started paying us, and gave me a whole month of doing live shows, just tripping and falling and burping and farting my way through to try to figure this deal out overnight. So at midnight, I'd go on the air and I would interview guys in, you know, South Africa and New Zealand or wherever somebody was awake, and just really try to get my feet under me. But that whole process of having to keep talking for five minutes, seven minutes, eight minutes, then hit, you know, where the log wanted spots to play, and then hit where you're supposed to go to traffic and weather, and then hit where you're supposed to go to news, and then, you know, jump on and segue news to sports, all that whole thing was, it's a completely different ball game than having all the time associated with a four minute song to think of what you're going to say next. But I was probably just horrible, like for months. But they were patient. The listeners were patient. And, you know, eventually I kind of got my feet under me, and I think back now, and it's amazing the difference between when that started and how I was feeling 234, years in. And then, of course, 911 happened. I had to learn how to be a more serious journalist type morning guy through that time. So there were a lot of things that I learned through that transition from rock radio to talk radio, for sure.

Matt Cundill  12:58  
Now the next transition, which is an even bigger jump, and this is wild. A lot of people try to make it, and so many people fail at the rock to talk one. But what about the transition going from behind the microphone

Dave Sturgeon  13:13  
to sales? How hard is that? Right? Well, I think for me, I had always been a sales guy, in my mind because I was one of those unusual guys. And I know that I was unusual because I've managed so many talk guys, like so many on air guys right from back in the time when I was listening to those guys in Chicago laying in my bed in new Lister, like, 12 years old, 14 years old, I was always deeply intrigued by the commercials, and I was wondering, I was always very curious, like, is this working? Is this actually like, you know, making the phones ring and the cash register ring, and darkening the doors these advertisers? I was just curious about that and very, very concerned about it. Once I get into doing morning radio and being on the radio, connecting with those people, I always had a real deep, I guess, concern for whether or not it was working for the advertiser. So I would go on many times, like two or three days a week. I'd go out with the sales guys and go on calls, meet the clients, have those conversations, and I'd have ideas for how to merge programming with advertising that I would bring to program directors and get shut down time after time after time. And so there was some frustration there with not having the authority in the station to be able to do that, to bring programming and sales together, to do new and different, novel things. So in October of 2006 2005 570, news made the move from news talk to all news, like 680 in Toronto. And you know, I got called into the office one morning, and they bought out my contract. And you know, they were not going to any longer need sturgeon in the morning. There was going to, it was going to be a news wheel, and they were able to hire three or four, have many reporters. And. For what they were paying me. And anyway, yeah, they weren't gonna make you part of the wheel. I'm on the beach again, yeah. So the first thing I did was just kind of lay around, feel sorry for myself and revel in all of the comments that were showing up on the station's website from disgruntled listeners who were unhappy about me being gone, and I kind of loved that for a while, but I was out in my driveway shoveling in November, mid November, a month, about a month later, and as I was shoveling, I'm thinking, you know, for me, thinking happens when I go for a bike ride or shovel or do something mundane, I realized there's this B license FM station in the market that I know struggles, and it's community radio, not for profit, but you know, from six A to 6p It's kind of mainstream, and maybe there's something there. So I stuck my shovel in the snow bank, went in, back into my office, pulled the station up on the internet, and found a contact email for the president the board of directors. Sent him an email, you know, sort of, hey, why don't we get together? I'm on the beach, and maybe I can help you guys, and you can help me, but why don't we have a chat? Went out, finished shoveling the driveway, and by the time I got back, there was a response. And he was like, Let's get together for coffee this afternoon. So we did that. My idea for the thing was they had no money. They said, we'd love to hire you. We have We can't pay you. Well, okay, I said, Let's noodle on it. Let's go away and get back together tomorrow afternoon for coffee. So I went and I thought about it, and I thought, if I could sell the thing, if I could go out and sell advertising into my show, I know there's an appetite for me being on the air in the community. It's just a month after I disappeared off the station, and, you know, listeners were disgruntled by that. If I could go out. I know there were also advertisers, like advertisers kind of almost held a coup with the radio station through that time, which just made my day, right? But they were getting together to say, hey, the show is gone. You're changing the format. And, you know, they were up in arms. And so I knew there was some some energy out there that was kind of leaned in my direction, if I could harness it. So the next day, we got together, and I said, here's my idea. Let me go out and sell annual packages to sponsor the show. I'll do the show. I'll sell the show, and I want half the money. Whatever I bring in, just give me half the money. You can have the other half. It's all found money for you guys. He's like, before I even finish, he's like, let's do it. I know that. You know, we can make this work. So that's mid November. By the end of the year, I had 13 signed annual contracts for 20,000 a year. I was the whole process was me on the morning show doing live 62nd first and break endorsements in a talk show on this FM station. And it was enough money for us to hire an operator, a producer, Bernie settleck, who came on and was my producer. We launched the show, and that was how I made my leap into sales. It was just out of necessity. That's incredible. Yeah, eventually the station was making hundreds of 1000s of dollars, and I was getting half so, like, not very long into it, they decided this guy's making way too much money and got way too much power, and I was probably a bit of a jackass too. So anyway, they they hired a manager to try and wrangle me and figure the thing out, and ended up letting me go. So then the next day, all those advertisers canceled. So that was just kind of a weird deal, but I could have handled things differently, too, just the way I tried to ramrod that whole process. But anyway, live and learn. So now I'm on the beach again, and we were living in Wasaga beach. We had sold our home. We were renting a house in Wasaga beach, and there was this station coming out of Toronto in Newmark at the jewel, and I was listening to it there, but there were no advertisements from Central Ontario. So I called up Kai Joseph, you know, and said, Hey, there's, there's all kinds of businesses with the jewel on here, but nobody's, there's nobody up here. She's like, wow, yeah. She said, Go out. You know, we can give you a little base and go sell your brands out. And so it's kind of like the next step in sales. Now, I'm not on the radio, I'm not selling me. So can I figure this out? And I when I remember the first I walked, the first thing I did, I walked into Paul sadland motors on a Friday afternoon. I got in about two o'clock he was I could see him in the office at the back. Was so intimidating, thinking about going in there and pitching radio. But here, lo and behold, the jewel was playing in the dealership. So I go in, introduce myself, and he's very kind and gives me some time I kind of lay out. Here's my thoughts for an annual and get you on the you'd be the first advertiser and Barry, that's on the jewel. He says, Okay, give me an hour. So I went out, had a coffee, came back, got together, and I walked out after that first meeting, walked out with an annual contract signed for that guy, and then it was just like, everywhere I went, people were like, yeah, how much of the rates? And so that was another very kind of. Of reinforcing experience for me to kind of go, Yeah, okay, yeah, you can do this without being on the air, without selling yourself. You can actually sell radio. I mean, I still probably didn't have a clue what I didn't know, but I was learning quickly. And I think sometimes that helps, right? I think sometimes what holds people back is they're trying to fit a mold, whereas I was just in there throwing everything at the wall and using my creativity. Listen as a morning guy, you're a seller, right? Every day you're on the radio talking, you're selling. So you just use those skills of communication in a different format. And I had great success

Matt Cundill  20:38  
doing it. And I know the, you know the pattern of that radio station that you're selling, and it's no, I think the target in that building was, let's see what we can get in Mississauga. Let's see what we can get in Brampton. Let's see what we can get in Toronto. Does it go? There's so many businesses there, but they have so many options in which to purchase radio. And beyond, it could be billboard, it could be so many other things, and then here you are up north central Ontario, and you just have a bigger playing field. Yeah, I totally see like it's something I would not think of if I were in that building, and I've been in Kai Joseph's office at the time. And yeah, it's not something you think of,

Dave Sturgeon  21:16  
right? It wasn't a priority. But here the signal was coming in, loud and strong, right? Really, really powerful signal coming in, because North York, or whatever, that whole new market area, right? So it wasn't that far I was selling right up into Muskoka before it was over. So during that time, both of our daughters married Americans, 10 months apart in Florida, in 2007 I mean, how do I pay for that?

Matt Cundill  21:43  
Well, you have to start earning American money, and you're going to have to find your way down to the US. And it really doesn't matter where in the US you need to go. But for some reason it was Mankato, Minnesota.

Dave Sturgeon  21:55  
Well, and imagine right now, here's the next leap. So I kind of figure out sales. And now, just the way I'm built, I'm like, I'm not going to sell, I'm not going to be on the air. I want to manage stations now. Now I've had a little bit of a taste of the sales side. I know what to do on. On the programming side, I was dying to bring it together. Well, I probably could have figured something out in Canada, but, oh, by the way, we have to move to the US as well. So I had the good luck and the great privilege of having connected with a guy at the R, A, B in Dallas, Mark Levy, and he was a guy who was in contact with radio stations all over the US. We kind of communicated a few times, had a few laughs. And I said, Mark, here's the deal. My daughters are getting married. I gotta move to the US. I really, you know, that's our whole life, and I'm ready to manage stations. So if you know any operators out there who are looking for a GM, please let me know. Well, within a week, I was driving around selling the jewel in Wasaga beach. I remember exactly where I was when my phone rang and it was Gary Buchanan, the president of three Eagles communications based in Lincoln, Nebraska, calling to say, hey, we we heard from Mark Levy, and we're looking for a manager of our number two market in Mankato, Minnesota. Let's talk. So my wife and I had planned a trip to Toronto. We were staying at a hotel in Toronto, and we planned that call, that conference call between me, the company sales manager, guy named Roger and Gary Buchanan, and me, conference call I ended up taking in that hotel. Remember, my wife was sitting on the bed, and I was on the call with these guys. And in retrospect, after the call was over, it became evident that, like, they hadn't had time to ask me a question. I was so intrigued by what that market needed, right? So it's, again, it's a lesson, right? Like this was not about me finding a job. It really wasn't. It was the minute I started talking to those guys, I was so intrigued by what that cluster of stations needed to be successful. It was just one question after another. And I think it was that that made them, that was, that was kind of a different approach in terms of them talking to candidates that they were, they called back like later that day and said, Yeah, Joy Patton is going to call and get you guys figured out for flights to Mankato. We're going to get you down here, and we want to see you in person, bring your wife, look around, see if this is a good fit. And so we met. It was a great connection. You know, we were, we had a deep, visceral, sort of similar view of what radio is and what that market needed, that we were finishing each other's sentences through that entire conversation, and before we flew back, they were like, Yeah, we're going to make you an offer. So they made me a fantastic offer, not only to pay me well come and manage that three station cluster, but to take care of everything associated with the visa. You can't even imagine how much is involved when once the immigration lawyers start to get involved, and there's a company wants to hire me and I want to go work for them. Them, but this big process stands in the way. And they saw it through. They paid for that whole thing. They paid for the move. And lo and behold, 2008 June, 2008 we end up driving down to Mankato, Minnesota, got our visa at the border in Kingston, and show up in June of 2008 just as the world economy goes to hell in a hand basket, I

Matt Cundill  25:23  
was going to ask that question next, which is, how did you as a manager steer through

Dave Sturgeon  25:30  
that crisis? The biggest advantage I had was I'd never managed. So it was all I knew, and I always worked hard. I always felt, I always thought you had to work really hard to be successful. I always thought you had to kind of jump through hoops and do somersaults and back flips to be able to get money anyway. That's kind of how I was raised. So I didn't know any different. I had no bar to measure against. So that team of sellers were seasoned. I had a really good team of sellers that I walked into, and I I really just had to love them and be there for them, sort of like a DR PHIL on a daily basis. It wasn't so much coming up with great sales ideas as nurturing that team through a very difficult time. Now, I also was at lunch with clients every day. I was at every chamber. Breakfast. I was at every chamber after hours. I love doing that stuff. I love going out, meeting the clients. And then I got very involved in the creative. I realized that our competitors, family, you know, a local, family owned company, it was pretty much for all your plumbing needs. I mean, their creative was pretty simple, and I devised a plan where on Wednesday mornings, at 11 o'clock, the entire programming staff would meet in the conference room with the sales staff, and I would run that meeting. And my idea was I got all these right brain people and all these left brain people, if I could help them help each other, we might be able to come up with some really great creative and that could be our edge in this market. And lo and behold, that's what happened. Two, three voices, spots, lots of sounds, really strong specs that we were able to take out to clients, and we were able to close more business, and our ads were really entertaining and effective for our clients, and that started to become buzz around town. These guys make better commercials than the other guys.

Matt Cundill  27:27  
So one of the things that I found out happened during the recession of 2008 was a lot of radio stations would cut the copy department and encourage sales people to write the spot themselves, was that something that ever crossed your mind or came up, or you noticed that maybe other stations did, because I think it was so detrimental to the end product that I think it was sort of like a real stake through the user experience for radio

Dave Sturgeon  27:56  
in America anyway. Well, here's an interesting thing. I've been in the US 17 years now. I've never worked with a station that had a copywriting department. They

Matt Cundill  28:06  
don't exist when I went to the Conclave in 2016 2017, and I mean, you know this because you were in Mankato, there it was, there was a lot of people had no copy department. And I'm in Canada, and we had copy departments. We still have copy department. They might be amalgamated now into into smaller areas in different cities, but there's a copy department

Dave Sturgeon  28:25  
Exactly, yeah, down here, there aren't so the sales people write their own copy, and that's why we had an advantage, because if we focused on that and brought the programming people in, so the sales guys would show up at Wednesday meeting with their wish list. You know, here are the clients on the air that need new spots. Here are the here's the new business. I'm trying to go get spec spots that we need. And we just would brainstorm an idea with the programming people there, who were the creative minds. I had some really creative like morning and afternoon teams and a mid day person. And they would say, Okay, we'll take this one and we'll take this one, and then they go away. They'd sit down, write it, go into the production studio, come out and refine it, and we'd end up with really, really creative spots. So our copywriting department was a team effort between programming and sales.

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  29:16  
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Dave Sturgeon  29:49  
your experience like at Odyssey in Vegas? So it was CBS at the time, and the way I got there was I had great success, by the way, over the course of those three years, eight, 910, In in Mankato, we were one of 13 markets in that company, three Eagles communications, and in 2010 there was a competition for the market managers to hit goal, and whoever could hit goal would get an all expenses paid trip to Washington, DC for them and their wife. And anyway, I ended up winning that and we, we ended up surpassing the corporate expectations during the recession. And again, I attribute that to just not having a template to work by, and not knowing how bad it was, and then just being creative and working with really good people. Never laid one person off through the whole thing. Small three market cluster, we had 27 staff. Three station cluster, and never let anybody go. So during that time, I also was tapped by the company to help roll out a web presence, because it's 2007 2008 nine, and there was some pretty primitive websites. And my wife's a graphic artist, so she came in, came up with a design we worked with a Canadian company. We rolled out a really nice web presence for all 56 stations across the Midwest. And during that time, I was working with a consultant named Jim tazerik out of Phoenix. And Jim very well connected around the US. At the time, our daughters had moved with their husbands from Florida to Silicon Valley. Those guys worked in the tech industry over there, and we're in Mankato, and I'm just like, I'm not satisfied just being in the US. I want. We still would love to be closer to the girls. And Jim tazerik says to me one day, he says, now you've been in Mankato three years. Would you be interested in making a move? I said, well, to the right place, and he knew about our girls and us wanting to go west. He said, Well, I think you should talk to Jerry McKenna in Las Vegas, because they're looking for a general manager for their news talk station there. And Jim knew my background, so having been on the radio as a news talk guy and having managed stations been in sales, that they thought that might work. Well, that's how I got that job. Jerry and Laurie hearin, who was the DOS for the CBS cluster, flew me into Las Vegas, and we met and got offered that job. It was just a fantastic opportunity. The most amazing thing to me was how beautiful Vegas is from the air coming in, I didn't know there were mountains and all this beautiful sort of desert around it. Obviously, managing in Las Vegas is a whole different animal. That's a different animal than anywhere in the world. Everybody is a player. I mean, everybody who's buying media is, you know, you don't know what to believe and who's got what agenda going and pulling a fast one and the rest of it. So that was baptism by fire again, but it was very corporate, and that was not something I enjoyed. I always say you can tell how you feel about your job. You can tell if it's the right position for you, the right fit, by the way you feel Sunday night about going to work Monday morning, right? My guts would be churning, and it was just the Friday calls with corporate in New York, it was, it really wasn't radio for me. It was like, it was like a factory, and I really didn't enjoy that as as much as I thought I would. I love Vegas, but I wasn't as keen on the corporate approach to doing radio.

Matt Cundill  33:15  
Did you find something less corporate for your next outing?

Dave Sturgeon  33:19  
Yeah, I went right back to market manager in Yuma, Arizona, hired by an owner in Los Angeles who is not a radio guy, but a really good guy who invested in radio and TV stations. And then my superior, the guy who ran the radio operation, guy named Ron Roy, who's no longer with us, but Ron was a fantastic radio guy, and so he was the regional manager, and I was tapped by that company to move from Vegas to Yuma, which isn't that far. And again, we're in the desert, which we'd fallen in love with. We just fell in love with the desert and had a really I loved Yuma. That's a great little market, about 140,000 people right on the California border, two operators. We had three stations. They had two stations. A lot of business out there, and a very small sales staff, very small staff there. But again, it was lunches with the city movers and shakers every day. There's a little back room at a place called Papasan, where the mayor and the, you know, the business leaders would meet every day, and I got invited to that very exclusive lunch, and had lunch there every day. And that was very helpful in terms of being able to get stuff done, what came after that. So I'm, I'm in Yuma managing there for coming up on a year, and I got a call from an agency one day asking if I knew any real estate agents that they could bring on as clients. It was a really weird call, but it was interesting, because I thought we don't have any real estate clients on the air, and these guys. An agency that just does they're like a boutique agency for real estate agents around the country, and they had some exclusive endorsement deals with Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and I realized this was the agency that had managed my client back in Las Vegas, who was endorsed by Sean Hannity on our news talk station. And we got talking. Turns out the owner of that agency lived less than an hour up the road in El Centro, California, and here I am in Yuma, and the guy, the guy who worked for that agency, said, I think the owner is going to want to meet you. And so we got together, and lo and behold, I was still associated with that religion that I spoke about earlier. He was also a very high profile elder in that community, and we met, and we're both radio guys. He's a radio agency guy and I'm a Career radio guy, and again, very smart, very creative radio agency owner. And so he ended up hiring me to do a consulting gig to help expand the business in Canada. He was having a hard time breaking down walls in Canada, so I started that. But we were talking every day, and in very short order, it was like, I just want he's I just want you to come and run my company. At the time, our oldest daughter's husband had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and they're in Silicon Valley, and my wife is flying up there and helping out and being there. And there were a couple of things. I love the idea of helping grow that agency. But I also knew that if I could do that remotely, which the job would be, there was no bricks and mortar. I would I would run the company remotely. It would allow us to be there and support our daughter and her husband through that difficult time. So a few things came together, and that's what I did. I went and I became the vice president of sales for that agency, and had incredibly, tremendous success over the next seven years, growing it from 90 clients to 210 from seven staff to 32 staff. But among the different advantages that we had for our advertisers were these celebrity endorsements, and that was instrumental in helping to sign Barbara Corcoran when I got there, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck, who are political talk guys down here were already exclusively endorsing our agents, and so that gave us a real edge. We didn't have an endorser for TV, and we had discovered together over time that for the real estate category, it's a very, very unique category, right? Whereas most advertisers are selling a product or a service that people use every day or every week, the process of buying or selling a home is something people only do maybe 345, times in their life, and it's a completely different approach. We also learned that advertising that targeted buyers was completely meaningless and a waste of money. Buyers don't look for an agent. Buyers look for a house, and they don't care about the agent until they need to somebody to come and unlock the door and walk them through, but a seller is absolutely invested in the qualifications of that agent, because it's that agent who is going to personally get them the most money, get their home sold quickly, provide a stress free experience. So just simply focusing the message on sellers, that was the magic sauce for the real estate industry now, to have a personality on the station, well, let me back up, just to have a generic voice do a 32nd spot targeting sellers wasn't working either. But when we realized that here's the answer to a question that you get from every real estate agent in the world, when you ask them, what's your number one lead source for seller listings, that is listings from people who own a home and want it sold. The number one answer you'll get from every agent you ever talk to is a referral. It's somebody we've worked with in the past who had a great experience telling another seller, and that seller calls us, okay, well, we figured out if we could get a radio personality who's known and loved and trusted to refer the agent to their listeners in the form of a 62nd first in break live endorsement ad, that might make the difference. Well, it just made us the most famous boutique agency in the real estate world, and agents couldn't wait to sign up. I'm just so fascinated

Matt Cundill  39:23  
with, you know, real estate agents, because it's like, how do you do your marketing? And so this is one of the rare businesses where people put their picture on their business card, where the picture is on the sign. You know, where your face you know, you put your face up there. Not every business does that. And I had an experience where I saw, I think, on my local TV station, that Barbara Corcoran was promoting the Judy Lindsay team. And I said, Well, how'd that come together? How'd that happen,

Dave Sturgeon  39:53  
right? Yeah, for Alan Asplund. So what we realized was, okay, we're having all the success on radio. Oh, and it's because we have a personality who's native to the platform, able to deliver that message to the viewer in a way that it feels like a referral. So TV ads weren't working as well where it was just the agent on screen saying, Hey, I'm great at this, come and hire me and I'll take care of selling your house. Just wasn't cutting through. We needed an endorser. Well, what are you going to do? The local news team isn't going to be able to endorse you. They're not going to allow that to happen. Maybe the weather guy. But we called a meeting with Barbara Corcoran and her management in LA and started that conversation. The challenge was to be able to afford it. No one agent could afford that. Well, what we had was a network of trusted agents, and they were agents who had already been endorsed by Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck, who were willing to say to Barbara, you can trust these guys. In other words, you want to make sure that when you say they're the best, that they're going to go out there and keep that promise on your behalf. Right? It's about credibility. So we already had evidence that that was the case. She came to one of our events, met our agents, and said, Okay, I'm interested. Let's figure out a way to do this. Our challenge, and I led the charge, was we needed 100 agents to sign on to be able to afford it, and so that next three months took about 10 years off my life, but it was every day on the phone, making that presentation and getting enough people to believe. And within three months, we had 100 agents who had committed financially and long term to that endorsement. Well, now the next thing was, how do we shoot 100 commercials? Because we can't just do one generic spot. It has to be agent market specific. So then we figured out who to hire. Hired a great TV production team in New York, found a space where we could put that together and do two or three shots, wrote the script so that we could do all the scenes, shoot the scenes and bring together 100 different 32nd spots over the course of a three day shooting period and then about a month of editing. But it was an enormous undertaking, and it put us on the map for TV and action. And then TV worked because we had a relevant referral on TV. And again, Barbara is a real estate mogul, so the connection was fantastic. And Alan Aspen was one of those 100 guys in Winnipeg, Frank Leo in Toronto, and Justin haver in Calgary, and 100 agents around the US and Canada that made that possible.

Matt Cundill  42:35  
So now I'm beginning to see you're an expert in TV and buying TV. You've already got the radio sort of buying side. You've understood it from the transactional side of it. And this is sort of where you plant your stake,

Dave Sturgeon  42:50  
right in 2020 I launched my own company, Radio TV agents, and just went on to do the very same thing myself for my clients. And have done that since 2020 21 the next phase of that was to figure out digital right. And of course, we had toyed with digital leading up to that. We were doing radio TV and cable TV right, broadcast TV and cable TV. But now digital was emerging OTV or CTV, the wide world of podcasts and the audience that that would deliver programmatic, SEO, SEM, all those things, so I just did what I needed to do, and hired a partner, and went through the weeks of training and figuring it out and learning how to have that conversation to Be able to eloquently present the advantages of that lower in the funnel digital advertising process. It's interesting, though, I make more money as an agency. I make more money selling digital than I do radio because of this, the way that it's sold. But I can't get digital to work on its own anywhere near as well as it works with radio as the foundational top funnel lead generator. This

Matt Cundill  44:05  
makes you completely qualified, by the way, now to write a book about the truth about radio. And so what are the conversations that you're having with ad buyers? You know, we say, Hey, have you ever considered radio for this? No, just put it on the Facebook, or just give me the YouTube, or give me the digital, or give me the board, just give me the leaderboard. What are these conversations like that I'm not hearing?

Dave Sturgeon  44:29  
Yeah. So it's interesting with real estate agents, if they are in any way related to an agent who is currently a client, they want radio, because they've just heard how well it works, right? So what happened about a year and a half, two years ago, when the interest rates went through the roof, the real estate market started to dry up, right? It was great through covid, and for about a year after covid, and then the interest rates went higher up into that seven and eight range. All of a sudden, buyers disappeared. Nobody wanted to move for. A two and a half or 3% mortgage into 678, percent, and all of a sudden, just the volume started to dry up. And for me, being the luxury real estate advertising guy, radio and TV are the most expensive things that they can buy. They're the most effective, but they're also expensive. I started to see pauses and cancelations one after the other, as have many radio stations and TV stations when it comes to their real estate agents, there are a few who are very fearless and continue to take market share at a time when a lot of other agents are heading for the hills. But it caused me to realize, okay, I'm not sure when this is all going to come back around, when the interest rates are going to fall. So I launched another agency called giant rock media, which was positioned for any and all of the categories. And that's when I started to find out how many myths there are about radio, because I would have meetings with clients who are, you know, a furniture store or an HVAC company or renovator or a dentist, hearing aid place, all these other categories for which radio works well, as does digital marketing, and went out there as the guy from giant rock media to start cold calling and building that business up. And everybody I talked to, the first thing they would say is, does anybody even listen to the radio anymore? Like, at first I'm like, Okay, that's a reasonable question, and I can answer it, and we can move on, but all of my energy was spent answering that one question with those eight dreaded words, does anybody even listen to the radio anymore? So obviously it became evident to me that radio hasn't done a very good job of marketing off radio to keep up with the competition that has been like a tsunami over the past 10 years in terms of just taking people's attention. Meanwhile, the reality is 88 to 91% of Americans and Canadians are listening to radio every week, and the evidence for me is that my clients aren't having success unless they have radio as the foundation, even better than TV. When we put radio in the mix, it makes everything else work better. And agency guys all over the country agree with me, so I just started every day posting on LinkedIn. Here's another myth that I heard today, and here's the truth. And over the course of six months or so, I started to have people say, Hey, you should put this in a book. These are really interesting and kind of quick little conversations and arguments and words associated with the truth about radio that we'd like to be able to have at the ready, you know, as we're heading into a call or on the phone with an existing client or talking to a new business development client, it'd be great to have all this in one place. And so that's how the book came about.

Matt Cundill  47:51  
So I really love this conversation, because we'll go around here a little bit. But that question that was asked, Does anyone listen to the radio anymore? And so what if I were to rephrase the question to you and say, Does anybody remember listening to the radio anymore? Because largely, that's how the measurement is written down. It's largely how the word of mouth spreads. Did you hear so and so in the morning doing something funny on the radio and is part of the problem the user experience, and we're not giving people enough reason to remember having listened to the radio this morning or this evening or whenever.

Dave Sturgeon  48:26  
It's like any big thing in life that's really important, but you just don't know it, or you just don't recognize it, or you don't actively revere it. It's the things. It's one of the great big, really effective things in life that gets taken for granted. And so, okay, what happened? Why did that happen when there was no other way to hear intelligent, entertaining conversation and curated music? It was all there was, Okay? Well, somewhere along the way, radio, you know, which, by the way, has been phenomenally successful financially and in every other way. And I don't blame anybody. It's like Who could have known that we needed to somehow evangelize for radio off the radio, and one thing radio doesn't like to do is spend money in other media to advertise radio. But it's something that has to happen. We need to create big events and listen radio. There are hard costs associated with digital, but radio has access to a digital inventory that they could use to intelligently and wittily make radio cool again, and that's what has to happen. You can't just rely on radio to tell people that radio is cool, right? People who are listening are going to believe it. The people who have drifted over to podcasts and and other digital entertainment for audio need to be reminded of it in a way that isn't goofy and isn't overly obvious. We need to find ways to do that that ends up, you know, kind of quietly. Bringing back the coolness that radio represents. The thing is, it's it's not any less effective in terms of reach, but when you're on a call with a client who doesn't get that right, there's a lot of energy that gets spent and a lot of discouragement that sets in for account executives who don't have it as easy as we had it back in up to about the 2000 10s.

Matt Cundill  50:22  
So I think there's a real takeaway here. I'm just going to tell it for people so they don't have to think of it themselves. But here you are. You're running an ad buying agency, and you just wrote a book advocating for radio. And you don't have to stick up for radio here, because you've got 1000s of different ways that you could market their products, but you know that your job is to make their cash register ring, and you know that radio does it best, and you know that all those clients will keep coming back if they buy radio

Dave Sturgeon  50:54  
right and listen, as I said, I make more money selling digital than I do radio, just by virtue of the way it's sold. Radio as an agency, I'm getting 15% commission with digital. I get 50% so there you are. If I could go out and sell digital, I'd make more money. But I know that if I do that, those clients are going to churn, because it just isn't going to work on its own. And I think, I think it's incumbent on agency owners who know that, who have living research associated with what's worked and what hasn't for their clients. It's incumbent on agencies to be honest about that, right? So it's just a 90 page book, but if I was out there selling and I am, I'll look at it before I have a call, because it's just, how can I word that? You know, it's not always what you say, it's how you say it. It's sometimes just the way you frame the argument. And that's what I worked really, really hard on, was, you know, every LinkedIn post I would take like, two or three days to really try and come up with putting those words in the right order so it could actually have an impact on minds and hearts of people who are buying advertising

Matt Cundill  52:05  
is the problem attribution. You get a lot of fancy numbers from digital, we get a lot of, oh, impressions. You got a million impressions here. You got a million impressions there. And then, for radio, we write it down, or it's a People Meter, and the sample rate's small, and it's a funny rating. I mean, all we're trying to come up with here is the currency and a number so that we can facilitate a transaction. And it feels harder, but I just know, oh, Facebook, yeah, I gotta get a million impressions. I'm gonna buy that. And I feel done with my day.

Dave Sturgeon  52:35  
Yeah, so you're absolutely right. And attribution is the second chapter in the book. You can't measure radio. That's the myth. You can't measure radio, then the truth is, that's adorable. You mean, you don't know how to measure radio. And I would say that attribution is the big heading, but the subheading to that is, it's the weight that an agency buyer puts against a dashboard, that dashboard which gives you real time numbers, and I'm able to see who clicked on this and who clicked on that, okay, but let's go all the way to the end of that spreadsheet. Okay, how many dollars did that turn into and that's where the reality is sitting, because clicks and view throughs don't equate numbers in terms of dollars. Now, when you put radio in the mix, it's real hard to track. I have a client in Houston right now, and we use vanity numbers for people to call, which I don't really like, because inevitably, people Google you and find a different phone number and phone that, and then radio doesn't get attribution. But I've coached him to not put too much weight behind the numbers themselves, those phone numbers, we're on three different radio stations in Houston. We have three different phone numbers. Okay, let's not just rely on those phone numbers. And I teach him, and I teach his staff, and coach them on the conversations that they need to have with all of those inbound calls, right? That's the other thing beautiful. How do you get digital to create inbound phone calls from real clients looking for your product or service? Doesn't happen. They click on a thing, and then you got to call them back. Radio produces inbound phone calls. It's like gold. But I coach them that when that call comes in, the first thing we say in the first or two or second sentence. This is the frontline person who's taken those calls from customers somewhere in there, very comfortably and without sounding weird, just throw in there. Thanks for calling. It's great to hear from you must have heard us on the radio. Now that's a lot different than saying, How did you hear about us? And how did you hear about us? Makes the customer feel like, well, what about me? Like, I'm not here to help you with your marketing. Subconsciously, a customer is thinking, this is not in my interest to tell you how I heard about you, but when you simply just use a kind of a proactive statement, you've probably heard us on the radio. That's very clear. Comfortable to me as a customer, that doesn't bother me at all. If I didn't hear it, I'll tell you, No, I don't listen to the radio. But if I did hear it on the radio, I'm going to say, actually, yeah, I did. I heard you on mix 96 okay? If they say no, right? Because there are going to be people who say no, I don't listen to the radio. Now we have an opportunity to have a conversation with a potential client. Well, isn't that what every business wants is more connection with prospective consumers? So the answer to that would be, oh, good to know. It's good for you to know that we put a lot of the marketing that we make back into marketing. Well, a lot of the money that we make from our business we put back into marketing, which makes your experience much better. One and one of the number one ways that we invest in marketing is on the radio. It's just a simple little conversation that gives my client, who, in this case, in Houston, is a cash home buyer. Because those people who want to sell their home aren't just calling my client. They're calling other service providers as well, but they're never going to hear that conversation, the one about the marketing that the company does and how that helps the consumer, because we're investing money back into the operation to give you a better experience. That sounds simple, but having that conversation produces attribution, and it also helps you close more business.

Matt Cundill  56:18  
So let's go back to getting people to remember having heard something on the radio. And I'll just do this from the ad side, and listen, I love 30s. I would love to buy so many 30s to brand myself. And, you know, I've got a company podcast. I'd just love to have a bank of them. It would be great. I could totally get my product branded. But, you know, 30s are, I don't know that we can get away in radio with seven minute ad blocks of 30s anymore. So what else in your mind is out there, or as an ad buyer that you would go looking for to really get people to remember a particular brand or product?

Dave Sturgeon  56:55  
Yeah, for me, I like clients who are service providers for high end homeowners. Just love that category. All those categories, products are a lot harder to sell, but I really love selling services to homeowners. So that's word of mouth. Radio's word of mouth on steroids. And if you can make it a referral, the number one way. And I'll give you the tiers right that I like to buy number one live first in break 62nd endorsed radio ad delivered without anything between content and that ad. So that's the number one on my wish list. I don't even want an imaging liner between the content, live content on the radio, and the ad. If I can get the radio personality to go from I don't know if we're ever going to see the the Epstein list. I doubt it. But if you're making a list of what you need to do to sell your house, let me start with a recommendation that's right at the top of that list, and that is who you're going to hire, right? A lot of money, your biggest investment. You don't want to guess, you don't want to, you know, play games. You want to hire somebody who's going to sell your home for the most money, get it sold quickly and relieve as much stress as possible in the process. Well, I can tell you, I've researched the market. There's only one agent in Houston that I would hire myself if I needed to sell my home that right there, seamless segue from content right into the live delivery of a 62nd ad at the top of the break. Nothing like it that just it's a money maker next to that. We go from content to an imaging liner to that live delivery. And it's true live. So the imaging liner is five seconds. It broke it up. It's okay. Nobody's gone away. My favorite personality is still here, and he's still talking next to that would be a live sounding 62nd ad that comes, and it'll probably come after the imaging liner, and it's live to tape, not quite as good, but it's better than a 30 next to that would be, if you can't afford 60s, I want a 30 that's live to tape. And again, I think one of the things that gets missed when we're building a budget for radio and strategizing how to use our inventory is that first and break position. I think a lot of guys just don't want to bother with it, and traffic doesn't want to bother with it. But that should be a premium spot that first and break but as we get down, I would want, ideally, for me, what I want my client to have would be those true, live pure segue first in break 60 spot that runs before the recorded spots. But then I want 30s and 50s to pad it so foundationally we have those live 60s, and then we have tonnage in the form of 30s and 50s to reinforce the live endorsement.

Matt Cundill  59:39  
How did we get here? How did radio let all this get away and let digital come in and sort of, you know, colonize our position?

Dave Sturgeon  59:47  
Yeah, it's like a parent, you know, they're on their deathbed before you realize how much you love them. Radio is always been there. They take it for granted. So how do parents create a connection with. Kids that helps produce that appreciation earlier in life. It's just attention time spent reinforcing. I mean, there's no way around it. There's no way to fake it. You have to actually do things to let people know you're special. And I think radio just hates to spend money off radio to remind people how important it is and how good it is and how cool it is. Listen. The other really, really big thing is voice tracking. You know, it's relying on relatively uninteresting people to carry the content, the spoken content of a station. I spent a lot of time thinking about this. And how many interesting people do you know, really interesting people? So how many on air people are there? There are 1000s and 1000s of them, right? They're just, it just is very, very difficult to make sure that every hire is somebody who's the most interesting person in the room, because those people need to be paid, but the most funny, witty, intelligent, interesting, compelling, poignant, Raconteurs out there are on news talk and sports talk radio, but music radio in those prime times, mornings, mid days and afternoons, they need to hire people who are interesting, entertaining life of the party, so that when people listen, they listen as much or more for what that person has to say as what they're going to play. Right? You need to listen for what that person's going to say more than for what the music they're going to play. Why? Because you can get music anywhere, and there's listen stations do a great job of curating music in different ways to attract different audiences and to give you that kind of aha, oh, geez, I forgot about that song. Moment music radio is the difference between you picking your own stuff on Spotify and somebody else picking cool songs, and you having that moment where you kind of go, Oh, I forgot about that song. That's great. It's a surprise, but we really need to get back to local, interesting, entertaining, funny, witty, engaging personalities in those prime spots talking about the music they're playing, not just on news and sports talk radio. And then get out there, get to every event, shake hands, become an integral part of the community, so that people get to meet you and see you, and then they tune in, you know, in answer to your question, how did we get here? Losing our emphasis on the quality of the people we hire is a big part of it.

Matt Cundill  1:02:34  
I'm going to give you the keys to every account executive in North America right now, because I know every single one of them are listening to this podcast episode. What is one thing you would like to tell North American Account Executives right now that they can change in the way they're doing business that will make cash registers ring?

Dave Sturgeon  1:02:54  
Well, it would be a question, and I would ask them, how important is it to you to be successful at what you do. And then, as a manager, you know, the best sellers out there have something to prove, right? They just are addicted to achievement. So if that isn't in the personality set, it's going to be really hard to say something to motivate that seller. They have to be personally invested with this incredible desire to achieve waking up every day with something to prove. Man, when you meet an account executive like that, I saw a guy in Palm Springs the other day. Went into a station. I was talking to the station. The guy comes in, he's like, 3840 years old. Great shape, beautiful suit. It's like 110 degrees outside. He's got a suit with the tie all the way to the top, and he's, like, their senior seller. Guys raving about this call. He just had loves radio. We had like, a 20 minute conversation about the absolute incredible thing that radio is. And this guy is just on eight cylinders all the time. Something to prove has to achieve. Loves radio, understands how it helps his client, and just there's no room in there to be discouraged. Now, you know that guy gets rejection. You know that guy's going through difficult times like and he's hearing does anybody ever listen to the radio anymore? He's hearing those things, but he has so much to prove and has such a desire to achieve that that just doesn't get them down. Now, if you don't have those two things, selling Radio In 2025 it's going to be impossible to stay motivated. Sorry to say this, this won't even do it. It'll help. I wrote it also to re inspire radio people to fall back in love with that thing that supports their family, that audio media, the world's original audio media, that they have the privilege of being a part of. And hopefully what inspires them is the desire to not be kind of languishing and to instead wake up and be successful. That's part of wanting to. Achieve right as an agency owner. One broad statement I would make to account executives all over North America is, Listen, I have sold it and I've bought it. I sell digital, I sell TV, I sell radio. Let me tell you something the hundreds of clients that I've had over the last 10 years on the agency side, I've tried every arrangement you can come up with, just OTV, just CTV, just TV, just podcasts, and none of them, TV included, have produced the kind of inbound calls and action and revenue for my clients. None of them have worked as well as radio. I make more money selling the digital but I can't, in good conscience, go out there and do that to make money when I know that without radio, it's just not going to be able to produce the same results in a market of 100,000 or more, right? So that's coming from a guy who is on the agency side. I'm an agency owner, and I'm like out here saying, This isn't about you trying to talk people into how many people are listening. It's just the truth. When advertisers want success, radio performs like nothing else.

Matt Cundill  1:06:14  
Dave, thanks so much for joining me on the podcast today. The truth about radio is available in an e book form. You can also get it as a paperback. It is very, very, very affordably priced, I might point out, and the link to buy it is in the show notes of this episode.

Dave Sturgeon  1:06:29  
Thank you, Matt. Great to meet you. Great to be on here. Thanks so much.

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  1:06:33  
The sound off podcast is written and hosted by Matt Cundill, produced by Evan Surminski, edited by Taylor McLean, social media by Aidan Glassey, another great creation from the sound off media company. There's always more at sound off podcast.com you.