A sportscaster friend of mine recently shared his grand plan with me to launch a podcast.
He couldn’t have been more fired up. He was going to build a program that would draw tens of thousands of listeners each week, earn thousands of dollars of advertising and catapult him to a sports talk radio career. His enthusiasm was contagious. He had me really believing he was going to do it.
One month later, he quit. Only a handful of people had checked out his podcast. None of them listened for more than a few minutes and he wasn’t able to sell any advertising.
You can’t give birth to an adult. Whatever your sportscasting career goals, they aren’t going to happen overnight.
Success is a process.
Let’s stay with the example of my friend and his podcast.
Here are the steps he needed to take to achieve his dream:
- Learn what makes an entertaining podcast
- Identify a niche so he can stand out
- Build a website to host his podcast
- Produce podcasts on a consistent schedule
- Market his podcast
- Build listenership
- Continually refine the product
- Target advertisers once he has established a large audience
However, my friend wanted to skip all the intermediate steps. He wanted to give birth to a fully-grown podcast.
[Tweet “Success doesn’t happen overnight. It is a process.”]Maybe your career goals include some of the following:
- Getting your first job in sports broadcasting
- Putting together an Internet play-by-play package for a local school
- Transitioning from radio to TV play-by-play
- Advancing your career to a larger market
- Getting a job in minor league baseball
- Landing a network play-by-play gig
Whatever your goals might be, achieving them requires a process.
The folks who make it to the top in sports broadcasting aren’t always the most talented; they are the people who stick with it the longest.
All of your sports broadcasting career goals are attainable. Whether you achieve them or not will come down to how you respond to the inevitable challenges.
Will you throw your hands up in the air and quit like my podcasting friend? Or will you repeatedly invest the time and effort that are necessary to get you where you want to go?
