Jay Young

I’d like to tell you that being relieved from my duties as a morning radio host was the best thing that ever happened to me, but it sucked pretty bad.
For 31 years I made a living trying to get a few laughs from our listeners.
There I was, a fired radio air talent right before Christmas! (only an evil person fires someone at Christmas time) I was trying to think of what marketable skills a former radio show host could offer.

After a lot of sleepless nights, a lot of prayers, and a lot of tears, I began to develop a plan. One of the things I was good at as a radio host was connecting with my fans (listeners).
I built the Young & Elder website. (that was the name of our radio show) When social media came on the scene we started the Young & Elder Facebook page. (still active) Again, this gave us another opportunity to connect and stay close with our fans. All of those things helped us to have success in the RATINGS and earn thousands in ratings bonuses.

If these strategies helped us generate thousands of raving hot fans as radio hosts, wouldn't they also help business owners have success by creating raving hot fans/customers without feeling spammy or just creepy?
As a radio host, the goal was to be "known, liked, and trusted". It seemed like the same should be true for business owners.
Instantly it became crystal clear to me. I could help business owners with the same strategies.

IN THE BEGINNING ...

Me and my morning radio partner Brian Elder sat in our office after the show staring at a stack of birthday cards. These were cards that would be mailed to our listeners. But, we first had to sign them all.
We had their contact information and date of birth because they had to fill that out when they picked up concert tickets or a cd they won on the radio.
Our program director told us we had to sign 100 birthday cards after each show before we went home. Talk about writer's cramp.
We decided to take a little initiative and take it a step further. Since we had the listener's phone numbers my partner and I decided we would just start calling 25 listeners after each show to thank them for listening to our show. We told them about upcoming promotions and how they could win.
It was another way we were able to endear ourselves to our fans.

I’m pretty sure not another morning radio air talent was spending hours each day after their show calling and talking one on one with their listeners. This turned out to be HUGE.

AND THEN ...

I realized that if these strategies helped us to generate thousands of raving hot fans as radio hosts, wouldn't they also help business owners have success by creating raving hot fans/customers without feeling spammy or just creepy?
As a radio host, the goal was to be "known, liked, and trusted". It seemed like the same should be true for business owners.

MY BREAKTHROUGH ...

I had discovered a "secret" that I could share with business owners to help them find brand new customers... but to also create "sticky" customers... the kind of loyal customers, who tell others about you and become repeat customers.
Bottom line: I was able to help business owners get their current customers to eagerly buy more of their services; without wasting tons of money on ads that don’t work as promised.
I was also able to help them fill up their calendar with tons of new appointments and turn them into repeat customers.
Being an On-Air Radio Host for 31 years gave me skills that I could never have learned in some traditional marketing classes.
I learned in Radio "Closest To The Fan Wins Every Time". That's ultimately the strategy I help business owners implement.

LOCAL UNLEASHED WAS CREATED ...

Instantly it became crystal clear to me. I could help business owners with the same strategies.
I reached out to some friends that owned businesses and revealed my ideas to them. I then implemented some of these strategies as a test and sure enough, they worked!

Local business always overestimate what they can accomplish in a day, a week or a month. The main obstacle that we have seen in Local Unleashed after working with thousands of local business owners is first convincing them that YES they have the solutions that can create enough value to attain financial success. I do a lot of coaching and showing that if they simply set a target, start moving, and simply use simple but specific strategies it can be done. The next obstacle that we generally face is the false belief that their is some "magic tool or gizmo" that if they only had their problems would be over. This again is FALSE: I simply teach, coach and lead them through the principles and actions that are necessary to leverage the most powerful asset they already have to their advantage. And finally we educate them on the power of being known, liked, and trusted. Then, show them that 93% of what they are doing is wrong or ineffective and frankly way to costly, and then lead them through the 3% that actually works.

There is nothing about achieving success as a local business owner that is not attainable by anyone who is simply willing to UNLEASH the assets already in place. There is no secret sauce, there is no hack. There is only principles, concepts and system that are simply hiding and plain sight. Jay did not learn this over-night . He simply found himself stuck and started asking questions, started moving forward. Granted every step forward came with mistakes and failure and more and more learning but eventually he was able to create Local Unleashed.