“Wanna Make an Omellette? You Gotta Crack a Few Eggs!”
A very successful Australian Brad Cooper told me once…”Wanna make an omelette? You gotta crack a few eggs!”
Last week I wove a story of a degree of success with my previous business, Take One Productions. Today I want to reveal what happened after that!
You see, in the same year that I won the NSW Tourism Award I went bust! A recession hit Australia, not with the same severity as the current one but big enough. Businesses stopped advertising and they stopped making promotional videos. I, like many others in a town of 400 businesses was not doing very well.
Ever the ideas person, I was fretting away, pondering my own plight and that of the other businesses. I asked myself many times what would create a shift in all our circumstances? And then an answer came. The notion of shared TV advertising through this tight period crossed my mind and so a new venture was born!
Firstly I approached the three television networks with my idea of creating shared advertising, with five businesses sharing a 30 second ad each and with each ad featuring a short highlight of a local event. The idea I had was to place all these ads out of town, and run at strategic times this would bring people that weren’t local into our area during these peak event times. I envisaged 700 ads placed with each network over a 6 month period. That was a total of 2100 ads.
The networks were not optimistic. They said you will never get that many people to co-operate. The local Chamber of Commerce said it will never happen. The local radio station said “What do you think you will achieve by that Pat?” …… ( I actually did not have the level of self-assuredness that I do now and these comments knocked me off my perch… but only for a very short time! I really get now if people start making a lot of noise about what you are up to and you can bet you are very likely onto a good thing! )
The next step I took was to approach a local musician to write a jingle for the town, which he did. Then I took that jingle and the package and by foot visited every business in town, playing the jingle and extolling the virtues of the campaign. Once the first 50 people were signed up the rest just followed suit. Within two months the campaign was rolling out and ran for the 6 months, boosting the profile of the town…which now had a jingle!!!
Businesses that could not afford to work independently found a way forward in collaboration with others.
I loved that business.!! It provided for me full creative expression across the areas of journalism, filming, graphic design, make up, direction, production, editing and business management. And, equally important I was mixing with up to 100 people a day across all walks of life and delivering solutions to their problems. I found a way to be a contribution to my community, volunteering on hospital boards and other charities and using these talents to prosper their organisations. I had at that time the best business monitoring system I have ever used, enabling me at any time to track my stock, sales and financials. I created a number of documentaries on my own volition. My best seller sold 5000 copies in under 6 weeks !!! But I will tell you that story next time….
Dear reader…. I made a commitment today to support this magazine to achieve its 100,000 subscribers in the next 12 months. I get that we have never before in history been called upon to collaborate in a way unprecedented for our time! To foster the notion of good news, goodwill and good humour. To generate a renewed interest in that which is working can only serve and prosper us all. Why don’t you join me ?
New Zealand’s leader in the Science of Positive Psychology and Humour in the Workplace, she has 
a CV that’s not to be laughed at! Included in her giggliography are some ground breaking achievements, testimony to her ability to successfully combine her business acumen, creativity, and wit. Pat has presented over 15,000 hours of keynotes, workshops, seminars and lectures reaching an astounding 55,000 people throughout Australasia. She was President of the National Speakers Association NZ 2001, The Most Awarded Speaker at the 2000 NSANZ Convention and 2002 NZ Speaker of the Year. She has coached many people through adversity, is an author, columnist, radio producer and film director.
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Way to go Pat…you are an inspiration…life is what you make it and you have most certainly proven that…I am so glad to have met you..
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