It’s midnight, so I’ll be talking on the radio and TV in less than six hours. There’s not enough time to sleep. There never is.
I have been waking up before 5am for 33 years – 18 as a trader and 15 as a radio guy. Before that, in high school, my dad would wake me up on Saturdays at 5am to work all day as a union construction Laborer. I’d make about a hundred bucks a Saturday, which was great money back then. In the winter, I would sometimes have to cut out early to play a high school basketball game.
I have been waking up before 5am for 33 years – 18 as a trader and 15 as a radio guy. Before that, in high school, my dad would wake me up on Saturdays at 5am to work all day as a union construction Laborer. I’d make about a hundred bucks a Saturday, which was great money back then. In the winter, I would sometimes have to cut out early to play a high school basketball game.
To do that now would require an amount of energy I can only dream of.
… We had a little staff Christmas party today… er, yesterday. We originally thought of having it at my sister and brother-in-law’s new bar – 313 in Munster – but then we realized that several people who work for us are under 21. You can probably tell that from the picture above.
Steve’s Catering in Hegewisch brought trays of:
Of course, we got the fried chicken from Strack & Van Til’s, which is the best in the world. After lunch, I went home and took a nap.
It’s a pretty cool group we’ve assembled, and in a moment of quiet like right now, I can tell you that I’m pretty proud of it. It’s a team. It took a long time to understand the importance of grouping competent people who like what they’re doing and are dedicated to the mission.
The two who have been most dedicated are sitting next to me in the photo. That’s Debbie Wargo and Ryan Walsh. They insist on a professionalism that WJOB and all of our advertisers and listeners deserve. I don’t know why they follow me down so many rabbit holes, but they do. It’s because of them that we have been able to survive some pretty tough times.
Are these tough times? Not really. We’re always hurting for money because every dollar we make I reinvest it in some new technology. That’s the deal. I learned this lesson as I got phased out as a floor trader at the Board of Trade – Invest in technology. It will eventually pay off. Have patience.
We still haven’t assembled a sales department. As a matter of fact, we barely do any sales prospecting at all. We’re full enough with advertisers to fund my explorations and a lot of people buy shows.
So what next? That’s what I’m gonna figure out over the break. I want to take off a full two weeks over Christmas, but Ryan, puppet master of the morning show, says that I have to come in on Monday the 23rd and Christmas Eve. He says he has a surprise guest for me on Monday and that it’s Christmas Eve and I should celebrate with listeners and viewers. Ryan knows best. No, Debbie knows best. Ryan’s my favorite. No, Debbie’s my favorite. They like to banter back and forth like that, and it’s funny when they do. When I try, it falls flat.
The truth is that I’m a little burned out. I am being pulled to a project that started to take hold in my brain in Matt Hanson’s Digital Marketing class, Yes, I’m still in B-school. The big idea has to do with self branding.
Am I a brand?
I guess so. It’s not something I set out to do, but now that it’s here we might as well make the best of it. When you think about it, I delve into:
and more. I want to create what we learned about in Hanson’s class – a self-branding website. The plan is to aggregate all of the shit I do into one toilet… er, depository. Put it all in one place and see what happens. If we do, then maybe we’ll find that what my high school Psychology teacher said is true –
“Jack of all Trades, you are, Mr. Dedelow – but master of none. Yet.”
She was an older woman with an Eastern European accent - Polish or Czechoslovakian. She knew a lot about Freud, whom she admired, and almost nothing about Dylan Thomas, whom she considered a smug, self-indulgent literary type . In the end, Mrs. I-forgot-her-name was right. I can do a lot of things, but I still have not defined my true calling…
Yet.
… We had a little staff Christmas party today… er, yesterday. We originally thought of having it at my sister and brother-in-law’s new bar – 313 in Munster – but then we realized that several people who work for us are under 21. You can probably tell that from the picture above.
Steve’s Catering in Hegewisch brought trays of:
- salad
- beef with gravy
- mashed potatoes
- sausage
- green beans
- cookies
Of course, we got the fried chicken from Strack & Van Til’s, which is the best in the world. After lunch, I went home and took a nap.
It’s a pretty cool group we’ve assembled, and in a moment of quiet like right now, I can tell you that I’m pretty proud of it. It’s a team. It took a long time to understand the importance of grouping competent people who like what they’re doing and are dedicated to the mission.
The two who have been most dedicated are sitting next to me in the photo. That’s Debbie Wargo and Ryan Walsh. They insist on a professionalism that WJOB and all of our advertisers and listeners deserve. I don’t know why they follow me down so many rabbit holes, but they do. It’s because of them that we have been able to survive some pretty tough times.
Are these tough times? Not really. We’re always hurting for money because every dollar we make I reinvest it in some new technology. That’s the deal. I learned this lesson as I got phased out as a floor trader at the Board of Trade – Invest in technology. It will eventually pay off. Have patience.
We still haven’t assembled a sales department. As a matter of fact, we barely do any sales prospecting at all. We’re full enough with advertisers to fund my explorations and a lot of people buy shows.
So what next? That’s what I’m gonna figure out over the break. I want to take off a full two weeks over Christmas, but Ryan, puppet master of the morning show, says that I have to come in on Monday the 23rd and Christmas Eve. He says he has a surprise guest for me on Monday and that it’s Christmas Eve and I should celebrate with listeners and viewers. Ryan knows best. No, Debbie knows best. Ryan’s my favorite. No, Debbie’s my favorite. They like to banter back and forth like that, and it’s funny when they do. When I try, it falls flat.
The truth is that I’m a little burned out. I am being pulled to a project that started to take hold in my brain in Matt Hanson’s Digital Marketing class, Yes, I’m still in B-school. The big idea has to do with self branding.
Am I a brand?
I guess so. It’s not something I set out to do, but now that it’s here we might as well make the best of it. When you think about it, I delve into:
- radio
- TV
- podcasts
- poems
- blogs
- photos
- apps
and more. I want to create what we learned about in Hanson’s class – a self-branding website. The plan is to aggregate all of the shit I do into one toilet… er, depository. Put it all in one place and see what happens. If we do, then maybe we’ll find that what my high school Psychology teacher said is true –
“Jack of all Trades, you are, Mr. Dedelow – but master of none. Yet.”
She was an older woman with an Eastern European accent - Polish or Czechoslovakian. She knew a lot about Freud, whom she admired, and almost nothing about Dylan Thomas, whom she considered a smug, self-indulgent literary type . In the end, Mrs. I-forgot-her-name was right. I can do a lot of things, but I still have not defined my true calling…
Yet.
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