Radio Man: Bud Stiker

Today it is my great pleasure to have with me Bud Stiker, who is very well known actually internationally within the radio community, and he's here to explore creativity and the human spirit as we do every week for all of our listeners. True. Your mother and father, especially now at Blueberry Cove, and putting the two together with you is just brilliant. And seeing your nieces and nephews and all the family at the pool, they simply take over the pool. So it's the Belisle pool. It's no longer just the community pool. It's good fun. Yes. Well, so I should back up and say we have for the first time on the Radio Maine set, we have a bird house in here with us. Yes, we do. So this was the initial way that you and I met is that you are at a breakfast that one of our artists Paige was at, and she happens to be a friend and neighbor of yours. And I would love to hear the story about this birdhouse. I was working in Dallas for four years, and when I left, one of the things I brought with me was a KTXQ license plate, having no idea what to do with it. I just brought it, I thought it was kind of cool and realized when I got to New England, Maine, that a lot of people took license plates and used them as a roof on a bird house. So I did that, but the bird house was just wood. And after having met Paige, I thought maybe she could do something with it. So I gave it to her and she created what I think is a simple masterpiece. It's obviously a Texas theme, and in the back is the antenna of the radio station. She I think had a good time doing it. And I won't allow birds to live in it because it's kind of a treasure. So it's sitting on my bookshelf at home. And I love that when you were talking at the artist dinner or at the artist breakfast, I should say at the Cumberland Club that you said it was your regret that you hadn't actually brought this with you, that you had this treasure that was at home and that you are now making all the world to see externalizing the art. Well, as I mentioned, I could auction it off for a charity for starting at a thousand dollars and we'll go from there. Oh, please do not start at a thousand dollars. This is worth far more than that should you ever want to give it to somebody else. But I think I'm interested in, you've had this long and storied career in radio. And what I loved hearing about when you were describing all of the transitions you had been through, is that despite the fact that things were a certain way when you started and were a very different way or are a very different way now. You kept showing up, you kept figuring it out, you kept making accommodations, you kept dealing with what was in front of you. I think I used the term reinvented myself often during my career from a disc jockey. That's how I got started and realizing, and I wasn't the only one realizing it that I was not a terrific disc jockey. So I used to sell advertising at the radio stations that I worked for to support my habit as a disc jockey. And that's how I kept going for a long time. And then you get married and you realize you really need to make more money. So that's again, I started as salesperson then sales manager and general manager of radio stations around the country. It was a great gig. And then internationally, I was lucky enough in 1996 to move to Budapest Hungary and put our first radio station in Europe that was privately or in Hungary that it was privately owned. And then Moscow for a little over a year and then traveling around the country teaching sales marketing for radio stations. And somebody asked me about my life and I said, I've just been lucky. I have been extremely lucky. I'm lucky I lost my first wife to cancer, but I was lucky to have married her. I was lucky. I am lucky to be married to Susan. So just you're looking and talking with a guy who has been extremely lucky in his life and very grateful for it. I think so much of what you're describing has to do with the framing. I mean, the idea that you are finding yourself to be lucky despite having had to go through some pretty significant difficulties. It has everything to do with the way that you have looked at it. And it has everything to do with the way that you've approached it because people can take different directions. They can choose to deal with things in a way that's not as positive perhaps, and not feel fortunate. And that is certainly their right. But that's not the way you handled it. No, I think one of the best pieces of advice I ever got, Lisa, was from a priest at Niagara University where I went to college and I wanted to be a disc jockey. And I was talking to him about it one day and he really liked me for whatever reason. We got along well. And when he said, well, why don't you just go be a disc jockey? I said, father, they really don't make any money on top of that, you've got to have experience. They're not going to hire you without experience. So he said, well, what if you were independently wealthy and you didn't need the money? Why don't you just start looking? And so I did. I drew a map around Buffalo, a 50 mile radius around Buffalo and called on every radio station and knocked on every door. And the door that opened was in Wellsville, New York, a little tiny town, 8,000 people. They had just had their daytime guy leave. And I walked in the door that day and they hired me on the spot. I wasn't very good, but it was a job and it was my first job in radio. And I think since then when I've really fallen on tough times financially, I've tried to think of myself as being independently wealthy because employers can smell somebody who is desperate for a job. But if you're independently wealthy, and my kids abuse me about this all the time, if you're independently wealthy, you don't have to worry about the money. So if you have that kind of a positive attitude, it gets you a long way. It's goofy. I think it's great. I mean, I think it's absolutely right. I mean, if you're trying to sell yourself, but mostly because you're selling it out of a desire to escape not having money, then people aren't going to hire you just because you need them. And if they're thinking about hiring you, they know they can push the price down. They don't have to pay what you want to be paid because you're desperate. So if you don't appear desperate, if you appear like you're looking at this job, you're considering it. The attitude, as Lisa, both of us know, if you've got a positive attitude in life, and somehow I've always been able to maintain a fairly positive attitude, you've come a long way with that kind of a attitude. I have a lot of respect for the work that you did in sales. And part of the reason that I have a lot of respect for this is because when we first were on the air, and I believe we were called the Dr. Lisa Radio hour and podcast, and we were with WLOB, we actually bought airtime. So that meant I bought airtime, which meant I sold ads. And it's not easy to sell ads for a radio show. I'm glad that you're laughing because you are absolutely probably thinking, wow, that's pretty ridiculous. And how did she do that? No, it is, it's a bear. It's very hard. It's really tough. A lot of people don't survive it. I remember, oh, that's a terrible story. I was married to Debbie, my first wife. We went on a honeymoon. We came back from the honeymoon. I was a disc jockey at WNDR in Syracuse, and I got back from my honeymoon and the owner of the radio station was at the radio station when I was there to do my shift. And I was surprised. And we talked about the honeymoon, went to New York, saw plays, all of that. And he said, but I have some bad news for you. And I said, what could that be? He said, you're not a very good disc jockey, and today was your last day. You're not going back on the air. I had to go home. My wife of one week is putting together the apartment, putting dishes away and everything and what are you doing home? I thought you were going to be on the air. And I said, Debbie, I've just been fired. And honest to God, I can't imagine what went through her mind. We never talked about it afterwards, she was the daughter of a physician, two uncles and were physicians. Another one was a lawyer, was a very solid family, not used to a son-in-law having been a disc jockey and just got fired. So she said, what are you going to do? And I said, I'll apply for a job as a salesperson at the station. And that's what I did. And the day I applied for the job, Leo Rosen, the sales manager, said, I'll give you 13 weeks and if you haven't sold anything in 13 weeks, I'll fire you too. That's a lot of pressure. But again, I was lucky and I started to sell. The problem was I just wanted to sell to get stuff on the air. I didn't care whether it worked or not, I just needed to get it on the air. And that's one of the problems facing, I think any creative in broadcasting, newspapers, advertising, is to make sure that the commercial works for the advertiser. It's a big step. Anyway, that's a lot of life. I love hearing that you were prompted to figure this out because you had to. Oh yeah. I mean, you have a new wife, you don't have something else to bring the money in. So you figured it out because there was that imperative to do so, and there was not necessarily a clear path. I'm not sure imperative is the word. Desperation is the word, I mean, okay. Yes. I mean, I think my husband being a small business owner as well, this is what he tells me about. He tells me about getting to a place in his life where he literally had a jar of pennies and sat on his, I dunno, his folding chair in the middle of his dining room and had no money at all. And so the way that he made it from point A to point B was to just keep showing up, keep knocking on doors, keep figuring things out. And there wasn't a magic to it. It wasn't like somebody's giving you a degree and how to do this. It is, I have this thing and I need to figure out the path forward. So when you say you're lucky, it actually, I think you do make your own luck. Yeah. A lot of hard work goes into being lucky, I think. So I also like the idea that you are trying to, you move from a place where you are trying to meet the need of the radio station, where you're trying to actually meet the need of the people that you're selling airtime to. And I think that actually really is important because they need to feel like there's a value on both sides. I think one of the things that I missed about radio is the creative side. A lot of radio salespeople write their own commercials and they're not talented enough to do that. It takes a lot of talent, a lot of creative talent to write a good radio commercial, frankly, television's easier because the picture says a thousand words. But radio, you've really got to get into the heads of the people. And that's done by creative. So I've usually at radio stations, I've always gone out to try to hire comedians just to come up with some creative commercials that are funny, but also get the point across that this guy's got a sale going at whatever it is. You try to be as creative as possible. And there's program directors, there's sales managers, and I think most radio stations should have a creative director helping salespeople create great, strong ads. I think doesn't it come down to understanding people and understanding what people want and need? I mean, I am pretty sure you wouldn't have become an international consultant just by virtue of some sort of formula on how to do sales. I mean, you have to understand people and the need and where you're trying to get to. One of the joys of my international stuff, Lisa, was the fact that many of the broadcasters there all over Europe had come to the United States and listened to radio here and copied it for there, which was fine, and their programs sounded good, but they had no clue of how to sell it, how to market it so that they had these radio stations that were targeted for 18 to 24 and they're going out and calling on banks, et cetera, and that's not the target. So they never figure it out. This is what you have to do. And I came in and it was fun being able to show them how to go about marketing their radio stations and targeting their audience and targeting their commercial content. I have had a joyous life and my kids, some of them have been very envious that at age 15 I knew what I wanted to do and did it. And they said not very many people can do that or say that I've been lucky enough to be able to do it and say it. So when you were 15, you knew you wanted to work in radio? I loved big band music and I had a Glen Miller collection and my sister and I were doing dishes one afternoon and I was listening to a radio show and the guy was playing Glen Miller songs, but they were only standards. So I said, I called him up and I said, I've got this five set album of Miller and playing songs that you never hear on the radio. He said, well, why don't you come out at the station next Sunday and we'll play. So I did. Honest to God, there he is sitting behind glass in front just like we are talking just like we are. There's an engineer playing the records and all he's doing is talking and there are girls out in the lobby waiting for him to get off the air. And I'm thinking, wow, this has got to be a job for me. And at age 15, that's exactly what I wanted to do and never wavered. My mother's family was in the plumbing business and she always wanted me to be a plumber. And there is some element of what you're describing of just being open to the opportunity. I mean, you talked about when you needed to sell or when you wanted to enter into radio, you knocked on doors until one opened, and then you're in this situation when you're 15 and somebody says, okay, I have this opportunity. And you say, okay, I'll go. And I think there's a little bit of a needing to have, I guess, willingness to take a risk but also have a little faith and that you're moving towards something that maybe you don't really understand, but you have to keep showing up to put yourself in the position to take advantage of an opportunity like that. That's right. You want me to comment on that? I would love to have you comment on that. I think one of the things that I think about as far as my career is concerned and looking at other men and women who have had similar careers, as much as I would like to say it was relatively easy, some of it was not relatively easy. There was a point in time in Baltimore, Maryland, I had just been at the radio station nine months. Our youngest child, Samantha, was six months old when the station was sold. And I was out of a job and with five kids, two mortgages because we had not yet sold our house in New York. It was scary. I mean, it was frightening. But somehow through the enormous help of my wife supporting me, encouraged me. And again, going back to being independently wealthy, taking the train to New York City and knocking on doors there and not trying to give them the clue that I was scared to death, I guess I developed that talent. Speaking of being scared to death, one of the ways, and this is a little bit of a strange segue, so bear with me here. One of the ways that you said that you have interacted with my mother is through a car fire. You have a car that actually caught on fire. My mother called 9 1 1. I don't want to tell the story for you, but I think it's pretty dramatic. Along with the license plate from KTXQ in Dallas, my going away present was my car. The stations always give the manager or the station a car to drive. And they gave me this car, and it was a 1979 Volkswagen convertible. It's a red, it's parked outside now with a white top, just gorgeous. And I've had it ever since, and I've taken good care of it. It's now an antique, and it is in my mind, priceless car. So one day, two Junes ago, I was turning a corner on Spring Street and there was smoke, and then a fire in the back of my car just was in flames. Obviously there wasn't anything I could do, but fortunately your mother was there. She called 9 1 1, and those people came very quickly, put it out, and I've had it restored. So it is in mint condition again, and I drove it by your mom's place this past what day is today, Sunday, I think, and had her come out and take a look at it because it meant a lot to me that she was the one that called 9 1 1, and I wanted her to see it. And I think that that story just describes to me the kind of strange and interesting way that people intersect. I mean, you and I were talking for a while about many things before we realized that you actually live not that far away from my parents. And not only that, but I knew your adopted children because your wife, Susan, her kids had gone to school with my family in Yarmouth and had gone through their own set of tragedy with her first husband. So her first husband passed away, her daughter passed away. And it's always so interesting to me that these sort of strange and serendipitous events happening, how would it possibly occur that you're sitting next to me in this breakfast? And yet we've already kind of connected multiple ways before Then, and yet at the same time, it indicates some of my lack of awareness in that. And I think I mentioned this to you, I've listened to your show, I've listened to it and enjoyed it a lot. I love the doctor addiction person you had on. And yet I never connected your last name to Charlie and your mother. I just simply didn't. I don't know why. And then now we're sitting together at that breakfast and Oh, how stupid could you be? Of course, and not only you, but your brothers and your sisters, everybody. It's just knocked me out. Good connection. Lots of good connections and an even better one. And actually one of the reasons why I finally tipped the balance, and I said, well, I need to have Bud on the show that you work as a standardized patient. I do. I mean, so you have even that healthcare connection, and it's something that's really fascinating to me. Tell me how that happened. Sometimes people will ask you, what do you do in retirement? And I said, I teach doctors. Really? A friend of mine, you might even know him, Dr. Steve Larner was a friend and he asked, what are you going to do when you retire? And I said, Steve, I have no idea. So he suggested that I talk to the people at Maine Medical Center on Brighton Avenue about becoming a standardized patient. And that's what I did. And we are people, men and women, young and old who get dressed in Johnny's are sitting in a room with a stomach ache or a pain in the back or a headache or an injured arm or whatever, injury or illness that we have. And the intern or whatever, third, fourth year student at Tufts comes in and tries to figure out what's going on with a series of questions. And then we are then given the opportunity, Lisa, to critique that person, not from a medical point of view, but from the point of view that when you entered the room, Lisa, you never looked at me and the eye contact was lacking during the whole interview. That's what I would concentrate on from now on. Think about that. Talk about the good things that you did, Lisa, but also talk about the things that you need to work on. That's the role that we play, and it's an important role. We always get compliments from these young students. Terrific stuff. You told me a great story about being with a woman and having the scenario be that you had lost a child. The scenario was that we were grandparents of a 4-year-old, a granddaughter, and we had just come back from shopping and both of us were getting grocery bags into the house, and our granddaughter got out of the car and walked in the street and was hit by a car. And of course the trauma of all of that. But we get to the hospital and now the intern, the student comes out and has to tell us bad news. Being a physician, that's probably one of the most difficult things you could do is give bad news about your husband has just died. But to give you the bad news, the kid you were responsible for 4-year-old granddaughter is now brain dead and there's no chance of survival. My wife looks at me and says, I told you, I told time and time again to put that fence up properly. And I go back and the doc is sitting there wondering how to navigate this horrible scenario. And truly, it lasts maybe 20 minutes, but they always learn something, and all three of us usually wind up in tears at the end of it because it's so believable after a while. And those are the kinds of things that you can do as a standardized patient, and the practice that they get from that experience is priceless. And that's what I love about this idea that you have an entire professional background around understanding people and around communicating. I do. And you're bringing this into a very different situation, but a very important situation. So when you are talking with somebody who is a learner in the medical field, you are coming at it both as the standardized patient, but also as somebody who has a long, long history in communications, in understanding people and some of the very basic things that maybe don't necessarily get focused on in medical school or in residency, like eye contact, smiling body language, Leaning forward. Leaning forward. Exactly. I mean, these things that maybe don't get the focus because we're so busy talking about biochemistry and pathology Using medical terms that I wouldn't understand in a million years. So you have to boil that down to terms that I understand and to be able to express that later. Whereas a normal patient, whatever that is, would never critique the doctor afterwards. And sometimes don't even say, wait a minute, I don't understand. Doctors can be intimidating and it's not a healthy situation for them to intimidate people. And so one of the roles I think is to make them a little more human, a little more conversational. What are some of the surprises that people have shared with you as an intern or a third or a fourth year student? What are some of the things that, I guess things that you are surprised by or things that they're surprised by that you would've thought, oh, well, that just makes sense. But then they bring it up to you and you're like, oh, that's interesting that they wouldn't have thought of that. I think one of the most challenging young doctors that I had was a young man who stuttered, and it was a serious stuttering that he was dealing with. And so we went through it and I was very patient, no alternative really. And at the end of it, the only thing I could think of is to say is doctor in the future, think about this. When you walk into the room, simply say, I stutter, but I am a very good doctor. You can trust me. And that sets the tone. Then you can sit back and relax and you don't have to think about the stuttering. And he had tears in his eyes. No one had ever suggested that to him before. That's so powerful, that idea that he still is very strong as a clinician, rather than looking at himself as somebody who comes in from a place of deficit, you're saying, I mean, I can listen. I can still be a good doctor, I am a good doctor, and in fact, maybe even a better doctor, because this is a person who truly understands not being understood. So have you noticed any changes over the last, you've been doing this 20 years now? So from the beginning of when you were doing this to now, and I know that they've obviously changed the different scenarios they give you with different ages, and as you've evolved as a human, you might not be as believable as a 20-year-old guy anymore. Lisa, I am now categorizing myself the demographic into those that are dying. So I have all sorts of issues that they've got to deal with. I've got six months to live or three months to live or whatever. This pancreatic cancer is not going to go away, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So that's my challenge. And my gigs are getting shorter and shorter because they don't have that many test cases where the patient is going to be 75 plus. I used to be able to get away with 60, 65, but I can't do that anymore. And 20 forget it. So have you noticed anything about the students over time? I mean the people who are, so you've clearly changed as a standardized patient, but I'm guessing that the people that you are working with 20 years ago versus the people you're working with now, are there differences? I'll tell you the experience in my life, and I can go back to radio sales. When I started in radio sales, serious radio sales at serious radio stations, there were no female salespeople. None. Fast forward to today, the majority of sales departments are female. And when I grew up, I don't think I ever saw a female doctor, certainly never saw a woman of color. But today, that scenario has changed. And what I've noticed over the years working in radio, women make great salespeople. They simply do. And I think the reason for it is they're empathetic. They listen us, not so much them a lot. And the same goes for doctors. A woman doctor, I would much rather see a woman doctor than a male doctor. And that's my prejudice. That's tough, but baloney, if you can't handle that, and I go to a woman doctor now and she is priceless. So that's the big difference. That's the change that I have noticed in both industries over the years. Well, obviously I can't disagree with you being a woman doctor myself, and also having been in radio sales to some very minor extent. So I appreciate that level of empathy. And I also wonder if you have more people, no matter what their gender is, who are empathetic, who are in any given or listen better or communicate better, who are in any given role, can't that be the way for all the boats to rise? Oh, absolutely. And I think it comes with education because people go through an enormous amount of education, and I don't know how much education you get as far as actually having a conversation with a patient. And it's critical. It's not terribly healthy to sit down with a doctor and he or she is banging it out, relax. Let's talk. And I know there's a time constraint, and I know the insurance companies put enormous amount of pressure on physicians today, but it's still terribly important to have a conversation with your patient. I mean, I think that it's probably the most important thing because you can gather the information and the data bits that go into the computer that will satisfy maybe the people who are measuring things that need to be measured. But if you don't have a conversation and you don't trust, then there's really no point in getting together at all. Because as the patient, there's a very low likelihood that you're going to leave feeling satisfied and engaged in your health to the same extent. That's true. That was a sigh. My wife and one of my sons said, well, what are you going to talk about? I said, honestly, I have no idea. And normally you would prepare for an interview like this, and I decided that I've seen enough of your shows to see how you handle and how they handle you. And I thought, I'm just going to go in there and Lisa and I are going to wing 30 minutes or whatever. Have a good time, relax, enjoy it. Hopefully somebody will get something out of it. So how are we doing? I think we're doing well. I think I'd give us about a nine and a half out of 10. As somebody who likes to get the 10 out of 10, how can we do better? Keep practicing. Keep practicing. Yes, I love that. The old joke about how do you get to Carnegie Hall, you practice, practice, practice. It's true in your job and my job. And one of the things that in the radio industry, you would have case studies so that you would do something like you're at a cocktail party, Lisa, and you've just met somebody who has just moved into town and is opening up a furniture store, and you work at a radio station, Lisa, and he's invited you to come by his store tomorrow. What are the first things you start talking about? So then you role play that, and as soon as Lisa gets to meet this guy, she starts talking about the radio station wrong. And then you educate them, this is what you need to do. How did you get into the radio or the furniture business? Were your parents in it? Why did you move here? You know the conversation, you ask questions. It is so true, and you've probably run into this. You go to a cocktail party, Lisa, and you meet somebody and you ask that somebody questions. He or she leaves the cocktail party and says, I just met Bud Steiker. He's terrific. That person never asked me a question. That happens more times than not. I'm not terrific just because I ask questions, but very few people do that. And David Borders has a great book out and had the art of a conversation, and I've read it front to back, and it's important for all of our industries, for all people, all the time to get to know somebody, you got to ask a lot of questions. I don't think I've read that book, but now I feel like I need to. You handle conversations pretty well, I could always learn I've got that 0.5 that I'm going to work on. I do think that what you're describing, it reminds me of a recent conversation I had with a young medical with a person who wants to be a leader in medicine, and I want this for that person. And I was asking, well, how do you handle situations that feel uncomfortable and how do you build trust? And she described the way that she had been handling it, and I said, well, how do you handle situations that are outside of medicine and how do you build trust? And she said, well, I get to know people. That's the same. That is what you need to do and to understand them. And in order to do that, you need to have a conversation. And so I think there's sort of simultaneously, it's not so hard, but the hardest thing in the world to move beyond yourself and to ask the questions that you're talking about. Yeah, I agree with that wholeheartedly. You must know. I would agree with that wholeheartedly. I mean, I can usually tell a kindred spirit, let's be honest. So even before I knew you knew my mom and my dad and all of that. Your dad, Charlie is a trip. He really is. I love the guy to death and what he has gone through physically, health-wise and his attitude, he's got to be an inspiration to all of you kids and his grandchildren. Really. He is a trip and a half. I love the guy. Dr. Lisa Belisle