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Multiple-Time Emmy Winner Vic Lombardi Launches New Denver-Focused Podcast

January 5, 2023 by Jon Leave a Comment

“Vic Lombardi’s Denver” features interviews with those make Denver the special place that it is

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: DENVER, CO (January 5, 2023) – As a Denver native, and as one of the city’s most recognizable personalities, Vic Lombardi is branching out from talking exclusively about sports and into the world of podcasting with his new show Vic Lombardi’s Denver. On it, Vic interviews a who’s who of guests from across the region who help to make Denver the special place that it is.

“I love this city. I was born here and I grew up on the north side,” says Lombardi. “This project is my love letter to Denver where I get to feature so many of the people who contribute to the fabric of what makes this place unique.”

The first episode of Vic Lombardi’s Denver features a conversation with Colorado Music Hall of Fame inductee Chuck Morris, former President & CEO of AEG Presents Rocky Mountains, former partner of both Bill Graham and Barry Fey, and manager of The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Big Head Todd & the Monsters, and many others. The conversation spans Morris’s incredible career and includes remarkable anecdotes about Phil Anschutz, U2, Willie Nelson and more.

The debut episode drops on Tuesday, January 10 on podcatchers everywhere.

Guests already confirmed and/or recorded for the podcast include Mayor Michael Hancock, 9News Meteorologist Kathy Sabine, Comedy Works Owner Wende Curtis, former Denver Bronco and entrepreneur Reggie Rivers, comedian Adam Cayton-Holland, former State Senate Minority Leader and consultant Josh Penry, and United States Representative Ed Perlmutter.

Vic Lombardi is a member of the Altitude Sports team with more than 25 years of experience in the sports industry and is a 32-time Emmy award winner, 16 for Best Sports Anchor and was voted 2018 Colorado Sportscaster of the year. He is also the co-host of the Altitude Sports Radio 92.5 morning show.

Jon Ekstrom, creator of the award-winning Jon of All Trades Podcast and co-creator of Happy Friday, will serve as producer for Vic Lombardi’s Denver.

The show joins Mile High Life, a new network that celebrates the people and stories that uniquely shape life in the Centennial State. Mile High Life is an extension of the successful Colorado sports media empire Mile High Sports.

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Filed Under: Uncategorized

Two Popular Denver Podcasts Join Forces to Launch “Happy Friday”

September 19, 2022 by Jon Leave a Comment

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Two Popular Denver Podcasts Join Forces to Launch “Happy Friday”
Jon Ekstrom of “Jon of All Trades” and Kevin Batstone and Arthur Rawe of “Discussion Combustion Podcast” join Mile High Life in new endeavor


DENVER, CO
(September 19, 2022) – Putting the spotlight on the city and the state they love, Jon Ekstrom of the award-winning Jon of All Trades Podcast is partnering with Kevin Batstone and Arthur Rawe of the wildly popular Discussion Combustion Podcast to create Happy Friday, a new weekly show focusing on cool stuff to do around Colorado, good vibes, and fun banter.

“The world can be a tough and ugly place,” said Ekstrom. “Our goal with this show is not to ignore, diminish, or obfuscate any of the very real challenges people experience in our city. We simply want our show to be a hearty dose of joy and fun as people dive headlong into the weekend.”

“Arthur and I have built Discussion Combustion into something we’re very proud of averaging more than 10,000 downloads per episode,” said Batstone. “Jon has given us some sage advice along the way, and look at what he’s built with Jon of All Trades. That’s a Denver institution at this point. We’d have to be fools to ignore advice he’s given us. We’ve been kicking around this collaboration for several months, and it’s finally time to make it real. We’re stoked.”

Happy Friday’s first episode will debut on Friday, September 23 on podcatchers everywhere and YouTube. The format sees the three hosts cover somewhere between five and 10 topics focusing on Colorado happenings, recent news, cool stuff they found on the internet, and good-natured arguments. The average runtime will be 30 minutes and features a custom theme song by Denver punk band The Frickashinas titled, appropriately, “Happy Friday.”

“Jon shines a spotlight on the fulfillment people get from the work they do. Kevin and I have a mission statement on our show to be critical, loving, and accepting. We welcome guests and provide a platform to be heard. Why not combine that shared energy into a fun new project and help everyone create a truly Happy Friday each week?” added Rawe. “It’s all about the love, baby.”

The show joins Mile High Life, a new network that celebrates the people and stories that uniquely shape life in the Centennial State. Mile High Life is an extension of the successful Colorado sports media empire Mile High Sports.

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Filed Under: Announcements

Self-Promotion

April 21, 2022 by Jon Leave a Comment

In the course of running a business, it’s often easy to forget to treat yourself as a client. That explains how derelict this blog looks with its sporadic postings and gaping chasms between post dates. The truth is I remain extremely busy with a slate of terrific clients and several in the pipeline. Business *knock on wood* is good.

Sometimes it’s nice to pause and recognize when someone else makes time and effort to talk about you, so here are two opportunities I’m pleased to point you to.

The first: I was recently interviewed by Canvas Rebel about my life and work as an entrepreneur. I talk about how I earn new clients, how I turned my little podcasting side hustle into an actual business, and a bunch more. But probably the money quote is where I cite something said by professional wrestler D-Von Dudley. Sometimes I’m even too weird for myself. Check it out right here if you’re interested.

The second: Brandy Whalen hosts a podcast called Hosted where she interviews other podcast hosts where she “gets to know what it is that makes a host put on those over-the-ear headphones, scoot in close to that mic and press record.” It’s some real through-the-looking-glass type shit, but enormous fun if you’re into this type of wonky stuff. I had a great time as the guest on Episode 4, which you can find here.

Wherever you are, take care of yourself, and if you need anything, hit me up at jon [at] deftcom (dot) us.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Happy Rex Manning Day on Deft’s 6th Anniversary

April 8, 2021 by Jon Leave a Comment

This is the longest job I’ve ever had.

I have no idea whether to be proud of this, ashamed, or feel weird about it. I’m 39 years old, I’ve been on my own consulting for 6 years as of today, and my next closest job in terms of duration was my corporate gig clocking in at four years and five months. In some ways, I suspect being on my own will never not feel at least a little bit weird, and as a weird guy, I’m very much okay with that.

It certainly beats the alternative where a gnawing sense of greater fulfillment seemed to exist beyond the walls of my offices tantalizing me, but always just out of reach. I used to feel like I was wasting my time when I worked for others, which wasn’t exactly wrong, but imprecise. I understand the value of teamwork, almost always recognize my role on a team immediately, embrace it and work my ass off to maximize my contributions to that team. It’s just that I almost always felt like the institutions I represented had no idea how to properly maximize the value of their teams and frequently got in their own way due to misdirected energy, untenable size, plain incompetence, arrogance, or some unholy combination of the previous. Live with those feelings long enough, and resentment grows inside you like an unchecked virus, which was destroying me from within.

As a consultant, I work lean. I work hungry. I work unorthodox. I know that I can be dropped in an instant, which means I wake up every single day thinking about how I ensure that I bring value to the people who hire me. I suppose it’s true enough that any company you work for can choose to drop you at any moment as well, but there’s something about the immediacy of working as a consultant that throws the fears into sharper relief.

Some consultants aren’t wired this way. I’ve met many of them and I’m always agog they keep getting hired. And, it bears mention, I hate their fucking guts. Getting anyone to hire you for anything is always an exercise in trust, and when consultants – particularly communications and PR consultants who have a knack for slinging meaningless bullshit – waste a client’s money, the walk uphill becomes longer for folks like me. This business is frequently a hall of mirrors and finding people you trust isn’t always easy.

***

I didn’t plan to launch my company on Rex Manning Day, but sometimes life has its little artistic flourishes. I had wanted to leave my corporate gig for 14 months before it actually happened. For a multitude of reasons that I feel like I’ve covered extensively elsewhere, I stuck it out during that time and slogged my way to the finish line. I was finally (and gratefully) laid off on April 7, 2015.

In the months prior, I had worked in the background setting myself up to launch my new venture as soon as that interminable Sword of Damocles fell. On April 8 I woke up slightly hungover, switched my website from dark to live, and sent out a press release announcing Deft Communications. I got it picked up by the Denver Business Journal and a handful of other places which meant it would show up in my old company’s media monitoring, which was exactly the thumb to the eye I intended it to be. Damn the man.

Symbolically and thematically, launching on Rex Manning Day ended up meaning a lot to me. For those of you wondering what in the hell I’m referring to, Rex Manning Day is the backdrop against which the entire plot of the movie Empire Records takes place. In short, Empire Records tells the story of an independent record store that’s threatened to be bought out by the big corporate chain which will sandblast off all the charm, quirk, and ephemera that make this place special. The employees – kids in their late teens and early 20s – contrive a way to save it through resourcefulness, unconventional thinking, and pure scrap. Why yes, this movie did take place in the 1990s before the internet shoved the heads of brick-and-mortar stores of all stripes into the toilet. How did you guess?

I’ve always adored this movie because it effortlessly transports me to one of my happiest times – working for the radio station in college. I was surrounded by people who cared deeply about their shows, the station, and the music we played. Problems that arose there almost always were as a direct result of two or more people’s passions putting them at odds with each other.

I fucking missed that.

My entire professional existence – minus a few bright spots like working with nonprofits or creating the Employee Ambassador Program – had turned into a game of run out the clock. I couldn’t wait until the end of each day, each week, and each second I was no longer obligated to think about work. In the words of Peter Gibbons, “You can only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.” That’s no way to live.

At the radio station I once called up my Program Director on a Friday night to yell at him when I found out my show was pre-empted so the station could broadcast a live volleyball game. (Possibly interesting sidenote: That Program Director is now anchor on cable news channel Cheddar.) I came into the station when I didn’t have to. I worked on my show extensively. I cared about it. I labored over it. I adored it. At my corporate gig, by the end I spent not one second longer than was absolutely necessary to accomplish the absolute minimum required of me.

I had to save the empire.

***

Even if they didn’t lay me off, I had to leave anyway or drown in mediocrity. So on the morning of April 8, I was free. At first, I didn’t know what to do with myself, but I slowly figured out my new rhythms. I was energized. I was brimming with creativity. I was ready to take on the fucking world, not just for me but for my wife who watched me joylessly play out the string and for my then 6-month-old daughter. This gamble had to pay off.

And in 6 years, I can tell you there have been far more highs than lows. My biggest client was Vital for Colorado, and I dedicated more brainpower to them than anyone else for nearly four years. I miss them dearly, and still have nothing but loathing for the fat skidmark who torpedoed their funding in favor of lining his own pockets. They’re not all like that, though.

Some clients I’ll do literally one thing for. I once wrote one op-ed about non-prescription hearing aids for a client that paid me more than $1,000. I recently spent one hour of my time offering guidance to a client thinking of starting their own podcast for $100. For four months I subcontracted at an ad agency that required me to be in their offices for 30 hours a week. They come in all shapes and sizes, and that’s my favorite part.

I never know what’s coming, but I know that I, and I alone, have the agency to accept or reject whatever it is. When you work for someone else, you don’t get that luxury. And my own choices create the reality in which I exist. Do I work with cool, passionate, good-hearted, creative people? Or do I work with pricks? If you’ve never worked with them before, sometimes it’s impossible to know, but my bullshit detector is pretty good (notwithstanding the asswipe who dicked me out of $14,000 to close out an absolutely miserable 2019, of course).

I have no idea how long I’ll be at this, but I can tell you that after 6 years it still feels like I’m getting away with something I shouldn’t be. Waking up everyday with that feeling is one I’ll never take for granted. I don’t have to trudge into an office. I don’t have to answer people I don’t like and/or don’t respect. And I know that my rewards are pretty much always directly tied to my efforts.

Damn the man. Save the empire. Happy Rex Manning Day. And always ask, “What with today, today?” Thanks for being a part of the Deft story, wherever you are.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Panels

September 17, 2018 by Jon 1 Comment

Sometimes when hosting the Jon of All Trades Podcast, I’ll approach a potential guest and tell them I want to feature their work on the show. And sometimes they turn me down. This is always vexing to me, especially if it’s someone who doesn’t have the media banging down their door day after day.

It’s an opportunity! A gift! Someone thinks enough of your work to invite you to feature in a venue where previously you had no access! Amazing!

Suffice to say, when I was approached to participate in two recent panels, I jumped at the chance.

Last month as part of Seattle Fish Company’s 100-Year Anniversary called “The 100 Years More: Sustainability and Thought Leadership Symposium,” I was asked to moderate a panel called “The Sustainable Message: Communicating Between Consumers, Restaurants, Suppliers, and Distributors.” The talent on this panel was unbelievable, featuring Gin Walker, a sustainability copywriter; Oliver Luckett and Thor Gestsson of Niceland Seafood (Oliver also brand managed Pixar for a number of years); Derek Figueroa, CEO of Seattle Fish Co.; and John Imbergano, Founder of The Imbergano Group.

It’s a murderers’ row of talent, and there was little old me keeping the conversation moving, offering prompts for the panelists to respond to, and keeping them on their toes with references to Koko the Gorilla (the one who learned sign language) and other off-kilter nonsense I’m noted for. The event was tremendous, it was a thrill meeting this exceptional talent, and I’m grateful to Ginna Santy for asking me to do this.

(left to right): Jon Ekstrom, Gin Walker, Thor Gestsson, Oliver Luckett, Derek Figueroa, John Imbergano.
(left to right): Jon Ekstrom, Gin Walker, Thor Gestsson, Oliver Luckett, Derek Figueroa, John Imbergano.

Last Saturday I was invited by the Colorado Independent Publishers Association to be a panelist and talk about the hows and whys of being a guest on a podcast. I’ve had authors on my show, but since I cover so many different types of jobs, I knew my insight would be a bit different than from my fellow panelists.

I was joined by Jerry Fabyanic, who hosts a podcast called Writers Talk that also appears on KYGT fm in Idaho Springs, and Analisa Parent, who hosts The Writing Gym Podcast. The questions were lively from the attendees, my fellow panelists had terrific insight, and it was a fun way to spend a Saturday. Big thanks to Jen Kolic for the invitation!

(left to right): Jerry Fabyanic, Annalisa Parent, and Jon of All Trades
(left to right): Jerry Fabyanic, Annalisa Parent, and Jon of All Trades

Sorry that photo is cropped weird, but the event took place at the Church of Scientology downtown, and they don’t allow you to post photos of the emblem (which would be above and left) nor the bust of L. Ron Hubbard (to the right) for whatever reason. Who knew Scientology could be weird, arbitrary and secretive?

If you’d like me to participate on a panel, just hit me up at jon [at] deftcom (dot) us.

Filed Under: Jon of All Trades, Speaking Opportunities

Connect & Collaborate

April 12, 2018 by Jon Leave a Comment

Just a quick note… I am the new permanent on-air producer for Vital for Colorado‘s twice monthly radio show which is part of Connect & Collaborate with ICOSA and the Colorado Business Roundtable. On the first and third Fridays of each month at 4 pm on 1690 KDMT, you can hear me talking with Vital’s Chairman & CEO and a rotating slate of guests.

Vital for Colorado has been a client of Deft Communications since nearly the inception of my company, and while I’ve been producing this show behind the scenes for 2+ years, transitioning fully into an on-air role is exciting and scratches that radio itch I can’t seem to get rid of.

Thanks to Vital for Colorado and the Colorado Business Roundtable for this opportunity. It’s a pleasure to facilitate conversations that cover issues that matter in Colorado.

Filed Under: Announcements, Media

Bi-Polar

March 20, 2018 by Jon Leave a Comment

Jon working at KCSU.

Jon working at KCSU.We cleaned out our storage room last weekend – being an adult is glamorous! – and in an old box I haven’t looked inside of in probably a decade were bunch of old cassette tapes I forgot I had.

Holy shit, these are my old college radio show tapes! And not just the ones you pop into a recorder at the station that capture your breaks so you can do an aircheck with the station bosses to gauge the quality of your show so you can get better (Sidenote: I never once did this with my bosses, partially because I was punk rock and fuck you, you can’t tell me how to do my show! but mostly because I was afraid of their feedback), but the shows in their entirety! Music, promos, breaks, the whole thing!

I used to have either my roommate or my girlfriend record these things because the whole reason I started my show was because I was fed up with commercial radio and wanted to create a show that I’d like to listen to. And with these shows I recorded, I now could. Narcissism fully charged to 100% power!

My favorite, and the longest iteration of my show, was The Bi-Polar Show co-hosted by my good friend Kaycee. I did this show for four years, always on Friday nights. We played punk, ska, emo, and hardcore. We had bits and recurring segments we cultivated over the years, production specifically created for the show, and generally had a great time doing it. Kaycee used to have this giant old-school suitcase filled with CDs she used to bring into the show that, along with a couple of giant Case Logic binders filled with discs that I had, comprised our weekly playlists. Kaycee’s suitcase also made for the perfect smuggling mule for beer that we brought into the studio to drink while we cranked up the monitor and rocked out to some tunes. We were shockingly never caught drinking in the studio, which would have seen us promptly fired, so I call that a punk rock victory. (KCSU’s studio is now at the front of student media with a huge window that looks out into a main hallway rendering drinking nigh impossible these days, which is probably for the good, but also makes part of me weep.)

Before joining The Bi-Polar Show, my very first shift at KCSU was Wednesday mornings between midnight and 2:00 am for The Jonny X Show. When I think back on that, it amazes me how much energy and free time I had because I’d get geeked for my show all Tuesday night, go to the station for two hours, and then come home and drink ‘til 4:00 am or so. Thinking of doing this now makes me want to have a panic attack.

It’s now 12 years after my very last show, and my 2007 Acura inexplicably has a tape player in it, so let’s see how awful these things really were!

In terms of Bi-Polar, surprisingly not terrible! Kaycee and I had really fun banter, the music kicked fucking ass, and since we were both at least three years into our tenure at KCSU, we had pretty good technical mastery over the board which made the show sound semi-professional. As a bonus, I got to think about bands I hadn’t thought of in years like Guns ‘N Wankers, 30 Foot Fall, and terrific local band Dr. Neptune.

It was upon listening to Dr. Neptune that I remembered how I learned to open a pry-off beer cap with a lighter. I was in an elevator at the Gold Coast Hotel in Las Vegas for Punk Rock Bowling when Ross from Dr. Neptune got in. He offered me a beer from his backpack (it was a Beck’s, if memory serves), but we had no bottle opener. He asked me, “Do you have a lighter?” I did, I gave it to him, and he showed me how to use your finger as a fulcrum while wedging the butt of the lighter under the cap, and then just pull. Pop! The cap flies off, and you’ve got cold beer to drink. Score!

The Jonny X Show, on the other hand, is pretty embarrassingly amateurish and hard to listen to. I talked after nearly every song, and in some cases front sold and back sold the song you heard. Example: “Coming up next, ‘Gainesville Rock City’ by Less Than Jake!” [Gainesville Rock City plays] “That was Less Than Jake with ‘Gainesville Rock City!’ Coming up next off the request line…” I had clumsy control over the board and I tried really, really hard to be funny. It takes some at-bats to get comfortable talking to yourself in front of a microphone, and listening to dorky try-hard Jonny X from 16 years ago is cringe-inducing.

What also struck me was just how aggressive the Jonny X persona was. As I listened, I kept thinking, “Who is this angry young man shouting at me through the radio? Calm down.”

I can’t remember if I’ve told this story before (probably), but it reminded me of a conversation I recently had with Kristin, the context for which now escapes me. But I asserted, “I think I’m pretty high strung.” She looks me incredulously and says, “You’re just now realizing this?”

Yes? No? I mean it makes sense now that I’ve said it out loud, but yeah, I suppose I am just now realizing this.

This realization only enhances my belief that it’s a fallacy that we know ourselves well at all. I always fancied myself a pretty mellow and low-key guy (which is ridiculous as I type it now), but listening to these shows is a nice reminder that I’ve always been incredibly ambitious, pursued what I did with passion, and been pretty aggressive in achieving my goals. I think I confused myself in terms of self-assessment because so many of the other Type-A people I came across felt so disorganized. They were always running behind, flustered, and complained of being over-committed.

I need organization, structure. I crave it. I’m able to deliver the things I want and need to do on-time and on-budget because I can set the process fairly efficiently in my head. Having a shitload to do never really bothers me. It’s the idea that there’s not a good roadmap for getting it done that stresses me out.

Listening to these shows is also a reminder of something my dad said on Episode 146 of my podcast. One of his biggest regrets of his professional career was his need to give his superiors “the full compliment of [his] emotions when he was upset or unhappy about something.” I very much identify with that, and, as my therapist pointed out to me, when I feel my feelings, I tend to really feel my feelings and I’ve worked very hard to be more considerate of others as I espouse those feelings. And that lack of restraint, at times outright arrogance, comes across very starkly in listening to the old Jonny X persona on the radio.

When you record yourself talking into a microphone every week, and are forced to then listen to it back, you have no choice but to learn a lot about yourself. Radio is in my blood, and probably always will be. My podcast is now 4-years old. I produce a radio program twice a month for one of my clients that’s now in its third year. I love creating consumable audio for others.

The by-product of all this creation is having a living almanac of your past selves, which is both fun and cool, and also sort of harrowing in terms of understanding yourself.

I’m reminded of a line from The Bouncing Souls song “Kids and Heroes” that goes like this: “There are only a few things that really belong to me: who I am, who I was, and who I wanna be.”

The Bi-Polar Show and The Jonny X Show are who I was, the Jon of All Trades Podcast is who I am, and the shows I’m working to create that haven’t even been conceptualized yet are who I wanna be.

Filed Under: Good stuff, Jon of All Trades

The Meeting Cut-Up (or Reason #158 I’m a Bad Employee)

August 4, 2017 by Jon 3 Comments

Of the things I miss least about working for others, perhaps the biggest is the staff meeting. God, how I loathed the staff meeting! And it’s not because I wasn’t interested in pertinent news from our leadership about where we were headed in the near, medium and long term – I was! And it’s not because I didn’t want to hear about what my colleagues were working on and where we might have opportunity to collaborate – I did!

It’s because so frequently those ostensible reasons for a staff meeting to exist in the first place took a backseat to the meeting’s real purpose – providing a forum for a frustrated amateur comic to unleash his or her (but let’s face it, 99% of the time we’re talking about his) shopworn jokes and blisteringly unfunny zingers on a captive audience. Worse, the perpetrator of this eye roll-inducing ad hoc open mic night holding everyone hostage was often whomever led the meeting. There must be something irresistible about the power of knowing people cannot leave until you tell them to, a power even then more irresistible to abuse.

In my last corporate gig, I grew to harbor remarkable disdain for one of the company’s leaders who, in general, was extremely disorganized, and, worse, treated every meeting he ran like we were on the couch at a frat house ballbusting each other. The first 30 minutes of every meeting were spent grabassing, carousing, and generally holding forth like a juvenile jackass. Certainly, there were those who enjoyed this approach, but I cannot imagine I was alone in grinding my molars wishing I was anywhere else, or, failing that, for a meteor strike that would end life on this planet just so I wouldn’t have to fake laugh and pretend to smile in a way that I feared might make my head split open and my brains to fall out.

I know it sounds like I’m exaggerating, but it’s hard to convey properly the depth of my annoyance with this. I remember reading an interview with Bill Murray in Esquire a few years ago where he was sort of obliquely addressing his reputation of being tough to work with. He said:

“When I work, my first relationship with people is professional. There are people who want to be your friend right away. I say, ‘We’re not gonna be friends until we get this done. If we don’t get this done, we’re never going to be friends, because if we don’t get the job done, then the one thing we did together that we had to do together we failed.’ People confuse friendship and relaxation. It’s incredibly important to be relaxed — you don’t have a chance if you’re not relaxed. So I try very hard to relax any kind of tension. But friendship is different.”

I identify with that probably a little too much. If we’re working together, I’m not going to be your friend right away. Can’t we just do the fucking work? And once we’re successful, then maybe we can be friends. But the fucking meeting cut-up wants to confuse the order in which I believe these relationships are supposed to happen, which in my mind sets us all up not only for project failure, but for hurt feelings and a misplaced sense of a broken friendship. Fuck that. We’ve all got a job to do, so let’s cut the bullshit and do the fucking job before we all start smacking each other on the ass.

On a less existential level, my annoyance with the meeting cut-up is two-fold: 1) You’re undermining the efficiency of this meeting; and 2) Your shit ain’t funny.

On point the first, assuming you’re working in at least a semi-functional organization, we’ve probably all got plenty of irons in the fire, so let’s group together as quickly as possible so we can return to the tasks associated with the presumable reason we all get paid. This meeting where we’re all stopping whatever we’re doing better have a strong purpose, otherwise we’re just pushing the time where we can just finally go home even further away.

In the case of the PR firm where I worked, our leadership gave each of us the opportunity to lead a staff meeting any way we saw fit. Having grown frustrated with the state of things as they were, when my turn came, I made the staff meeting standing only. I took all the chairs out of the conference room, moved the tables to the back, and made everyone stand.

Then to further facilitate efficiency, I went to each member of the staff beforehand and asked them for their updates. Each meeting had a number of topic areas, and I made sure to hit them all with each member of the staff – Client updates, clients in/out of the office, staff in/out of the office, business development updates, personal news and notes, news from management/organizational updates. Then I wrote them on the whiteboard in the conference room so everyone knew the agenda before and during the meeting as I checked them off one by one.

The staff seemed into it, and standing in a circle in an interior conference room on the 18th floor will short circuit anyone’s designs on turning into Henny Youngman, but it had the unfortunate side effect of alienating me further from my management. I think they appreciated my balls, but disliked the implicit commentary I was making on their leadership style. Reflecting on it now – I was 27 when I did this – they’re probably right on both counts. I made my point, and while I probably could have been less of a shit about it, I’d still do it again. Most efficient meeting ever.

On point the second, I’m not opposed to a well-crafted and well-placed zinger, but if you recognize the personality type I’m bitching about in this piece at all, you know these are folks not noted for their restraint. It’s always some dusty old cliché they blast out in response to every fifth sentence they hear from a colleague. “Wow, Pam, why don’t you tell us how you REALLY feel?” Har har har! “Hey Chuck, at least buy the client dinner first before you give him a frisking like that!” Hee haw!

I first recognized this way back during my time in college radio at KCSU where we’d have mandatory monthly staff meetings (you could get suspended from your show if you didn’t attend at least two per semester) populated by insecure college kids all elbowing for time slots, and evidently a disproportionate number of them thought being “hilarious” during routine staff meetings would earn them additional kudos. I grew to despise this behavior so much I started to make up shit to get out of going to the meetings. Usually I was outright lying, but I earned my excused absences and saved everyone from my angry glowering face sucking the “fun” out of the room.

I’m not a tough laugh, but at least come correct with some freshness if you’re venturing into the waters of comedy. I realize at this point 1200 words in, and especially after the previous sentence, I’m probably alone (or nearly alone) in my irritation with this type of thing, and that’s fine. Kristin explained my personality to me once when she said, “You’re not happy unless you’re explaining your Halloween costume to everyone.”

I found that incredibly insightful because it hits me in so many of the places I live. I’m a bit pretentious. I have esoteric and unusual taste. I’m ludicrously self-aware. I have high standards for the people I interact with. I strain for real connection. And, at heart, I’m probably a complete pain in the ass. Of those traits, one that has great utility is my high level of self-awareness.

Anyone who’s listened to the podcast for any length of time has probably heard me say I’ve had a problem with basically every boss I’ve ever had except for one, and that at some point I realized my problems with them weren’t actually their problems. The problem was me, and a hierarchical situation such as the one that, by necessity, governs the way virtually any organization is run internally, is probably not a good fit for me.

So, having removed myself from this structure, I’m much happier. Conversely, I’m sure most of the people I worked with who had to endure my sourpuss during these meetings are probably happier that I’m not there, too.

Occasionally I’m dragged back into regular ass meetings, and from time to time I get a pang of existential dread about them. But mostly I just sit quietly and smile politely when the poor man’s Shecky Greene shows up and farts out some trite joke knowing I don’t work there and I get to leave this place shortly.

And maybe that’s what it was all about in the first place. Not only did I feel I had no agency in terms of deciding how my time was spent; I was trapped there with unfunny, tryhard dingleberries, too. Yuck.

TL/DR: If you think you’re funny in a staff meeting, 99% of the time you’re not. Also, I’m better off not in a corporate environment, possibly a killjoy, and impossibly pretentious.

Filed Under: Annoyance

Ditch Digging

March 28, 2017 by Jon Leave a Comment

Although I haven’t done it in a while, one of my favorite things to do was to speak to students about how I applied my degree after college. When you earn a degree in a liberal arts discipline, this is a common question. And people will always tell you, especially people who have found success and had some longevity in their careers, “What’s great is that you can do just about anything!”

That’s true. And what sucks is that you can do just about anything. So where to start?

When I began my career, I started pounding the pavement and met with as many people as I possibly could and asked them about their jobs. I asked my parents to introduce me to their friends. I asked my friends’ parents to do the same. I leaned on my professors to introduce me to alumni they were still close with. I didn’t go into any single one of those meetings looking for a job directly from the person I had met. All I wanted was for them, after learning more about my skills, my interests, and my aspirations, to introduce me to more people who might be of interest.

I did this for two reasons. One, I didn’t know jackshit about the working world and figured I needed to learn more about it before I actually tried to dip my toe into it. And two, I figured if I met enough people, somewhere in the big, terrifying world would be an opportunity that was the right fit both in terms of my skills fulfilling the need of someone looking for help, and in terms of helping me find some degree of vocational satisfaction.

Sure enough, I landed a job within a few months, and while it wasn’t a perfect fit, the whole time I was there I had my eye on this PR firm I’d met through a contact of a contact and waited for a position to open there. Eight months later, I interviewed with six different team members and received an offer to come work for them. At the time, it was a dream gig, and I spent nearly four years there.

This experience, I didn’t realize until very recently, serves as metaphor for my entire career.

I can recall the effort of finding a job upon college graduation with remarkable clarity. I even left out the part where I thought I wanted to work for the Rockies, so I found a friend of a friend of a friend who worked there and dropped off a resume a week (each with a different cover letter!) for six weeks until he punted me to someone who would interview me. They ended up offering me a job that I somewhat surprisingly turned down. Life is weird.

Anyway, when I talk to college kids now, as someone who worked for a well-regarded PR agency on award-winning campaigns, managed all regional public relations for a Fortune 500 company including a $2+ million charitable giving budget, and have now started my own consulting practice – the message I convey to them is one of diligence and perseverance.

Many people have this charming notion that PR and government relations is a world of glamor. Talking to federal elected officials! Going to galas! Interfacing with the news media and coordinating big advertising campaigns! It’s like Mad Men! Or Samantha from Sex and the City! Or Thank You For Smoking! Sounds fun, right?

And sure, some of that exists. I’ve met and spent significant time with both of Colorado’s current senators, the current governor, the last two governors before him, the governor of Wyoming, his predecessor, the entirety of Wyoming’s congressional delegation, a shitload of reporters (some of whom I keep on speed dial to this day), and a bunch of other people of notoriety. Also, due to attending probably at least 20 charity galas a year (in my corporate days), I bought my own tux.

Here’s what people don’t understand about this work. You’re not doing these glamorous things instead of your regular job, you’re doing these things on top of your regular job. The job you go to every day, think about whatever level of stress that involves. Now picture not going home afterward, but going to schmooze and meet and compile additional contacts because it’s useful to whatever enterprise you’re serving. That’s life in PR and Government Relations.

It bears mention that I recognize how much of this sounds like gold-plated bellyaching. Oh, poor little rich girl… don’t like going to the Ball to eat prime rib and drink expensive vodka? Boo fucking hoo. So let’s change this up a bit.

As difficult as keeping a schedule like the one I list above is – and make no mistake, it is – I grant that it’s still a marker of professional success. Very few get to parachute directly into the upscale world of professional elbow-rubbing with dignitaries. It takes a long track record of doing shit that no one else wants to do.

And that’s exactly what success means in my professional world. You’ve got to be willing to tackle the projects, work for the industries, swallow your pride, do the shit, about which people literally say, “You couldn’t pay me enough to do that.” To which I reply, “Oh yes, you could. And your price is lower than you think.” So what does this look like?

For one client at the PR firm, I drove out to Wheat Ridge on a night when the high temperature was 6, set up poster boards for the public to review in a side room of a rec center from 6-9 pm because the local government required us to update everyone on the dirt my client was moving around (seriously, it was a meeting about re-grading), and 8 people showed up.

One client wanted to buy ad space in a bunch of publications, so I learned how to buy media on the fly. For anyone who’s never bought media before, you have no idea how complicated this is and just how unpleasant media salespeople can be. These are people who LIVE to haggle with you and dick you around on cost, and I fucking hate haggling. Why did I do this? No one else would, and it needed to be done.

In my corporate gig, one time I drove to Sterling to give a presentation to their Rotary Club, hopped back in the car, went straight to the airport, flew to Houston, met with someone I needed to talk to for dinner, then went to my shitty hotel room next to the highway and prepped for a different presentation the next day at 7:30 am.

And more recently, it means lots and lots of cold calling. Without getting specific, there’s a project pertaining to public infrastructure in a Denver suburb I’m working on. My client wants support from the business community, so that means I go and I knock on doors of businesses, assure them I’m not selling anything, give them my pitch, and ask them to sign a letter of support that’s then submitted to City Council. I won’t tell you how many of these I’m tasked with delivering, but suffice to say it would probably make you gasp.

During this project, while most people are generally very nice, I’ve dealt with rudeness, outright hostility, coldness, disinterest, calls and emails ignored and more general unpleasantness than any one person would ever care to deal with in a day. And I’ve done it several hours a week for the last six months. It’s challenging, and I’ve now mapped this particular suburb in my head in greater detail than I ever had desire to. And there are days I don’t want to do it, but you look inside yourself, and just put your shovel in the ground and start turning over the earth.

Because that’s all success really is. A line from The Usual Suspects seems apropos here. As Verbal Kint is relating the origin myth of Keyser Soze, he says Soze “realized that to be in power, you didn’t need guns or money or even numbers. You just needed the will to do what the other guy wouldn’t.”

And that’s what I do. I’ll go where the other guy won’t. I will knock on the doors, make the calls, and do the work that no one else will. How do you get 100 entities to sign on to a letter to the Colorado congressional delegation to lift the oil export ban?  You pick up the fucking phone and start calling them one by one.

This is what PR is. This is what it is to be a self-employed consultant. This is how you earn the glamor parts of your job. This is success.

It’s ditch digging. That’s all it is.

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Filed Under: Deft Touch

Deft Adds Two Clients

March 13, 2017 by Jon Leave a Comment

DENVER (March 13, 2017) – Deft Communications, Denver-based communications consulting firm specializing in communications training, content creation, employee engagement and employee activation is proud to announce two new clients in consulting and agriculture.

“We are thrilled to work with these organizations to help them achieve their business and communications goals,” said Deft Communications Principal Jon Ekstrom.

Deft Communications is proud to add the Colorado Farm Bureau to its client roster.

Colorado Farm Bureau, a leading Colorado trade association that seeks to promote, protect and represent the business, economic, social and educational interests of farmer/rancher members and their communities; and to enhance the agricultural industry in Colorado, has hired Deft Communications to provide communications training for its group of young leaders.

Deft Communications has added PolicyWorks America to its list of clients.

PolicyWorks America, LLC, a Denver-based consultancy specializing in advocacy for conventional fuels and energy production, creation of winning political strategies and advancement of corporate communication objectives, has retained Deft Communications to provide communications, writing, and branding support.

About Deft Communications: Deft Communications is a Denver-based communications consulting firm specializing in communications training, content creation, employee engagement and employee activation. We call ourselves “Deft” because it guides our approach to every client we work with, and each project we do. Any communications project your business undertakes should be in service of helping to achieve your business goals. Being “Deft” means understanding those goals, and tailoring our approach to stay nimble in a constantly evolving environment, being resourceful, and maintaining a sureness of touch. We are savvy communicators with more than two decades experience in a variety of disciplines and across communications platforms.

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Contact: Jon [at] deftcom (dot) us

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Filed Under: Announcements Tagged With: Announcements, Client Additions, Colorado Farm Bureau, Deft Communications, Denver PR, PolicyWorks America

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