8-1-13
Matt Wesolowski is one of Radio Ink's 2013 Rising Stars. He's one of 30 of radio's up-and-coming stars, all under the age of 40, featured in our August 26 issue. Fresh out of college, Wesolowski decided he wanted to own a radio station. He dabbled in play-by-play, but quickly decided that lifestyle wouldn't allow him to have a family. In 2002, Wesolowski was reading R&R when he saw that WMGO-FM (Yazoo City) was being advertised for sale on eBay. Although he lived in Atlanta, Wesolowski decided that was the station he wanted to purchase. In 2002 banks were not too interested in radio and Wesolowski had his business plan rejected by 25 banks before turning to plan B. He asked the owner to hold the note. Along with his business partner, Mike Adkins, SSR Communications - Shoe String Communications - was born. When they arrived the station was billing $300 a month. Now, Wesolowski has the billing up to $300,000 a year.
RI: Most kids just graduating from college are trying to figure out how to pay their dues, not buying a radio station.
Wesolowski: I think I had enough experience doing play-by-play for Georgia Tech to realize it really wasn't for me. I still liked the industry, but it just came down to if you wanted to go be the play-by-play announcer for the Atlanta Braves, you could do that, or you could have a family. You couldn't really do both.
I learned within a year of doing it. But I still wanted to be in the industry. My business partner and I talked about it practically every night for a couple of semesters. We started talking about ownership. We decided to start an FM station out of the broadcast auction #37. That kept getting delayed. That's when we turned to plan B, trying to find a struggling radio station where we wouldn't lose everything if it turned into a bust. That's when prices were crazy for radio stations, so there weren't a heck of a lot of opportunities.
We really lucked out here. The owner of the FM owned an AM station in a nearby town of Canton, MS. He devoted all of his efforts to the AM. It's usually the other way around. There was no one to take care of it. I had this naive notion that if you moved to the town and got in really well with the people here, they would respect that, even as an outsider. That did work to an extent, that's for sure. I am not going to lie, the first three years were hell. It's the kind of thing that I guess builds character. If I had to do it all over again, I would probably do everything the exact same way. It made me really appreciate what we have right now.
RI: When you went to the banks and got rejected 25 times, did you ever think, "This just isn't going to work"?
Wesolowski: Oh, sure. I was getting frustrated. I think between the initial contact with the owner of the radio station here and the time we ended up closing was a solid year. He saw the problems we were going through. It wasn't like there were a heck of other people that were interested in buying the station. He certainly wanted to unload it, because it was just a horrible drain on him. Eventually, he acquiesced and said, "If you up the purchase price by $5,000, I will finance it." He wanted a nice healthy interest rate too. We didn't disappoint. I think it was about two years later, we were able to go through a traditional bank after we had proven ourselves. Even that wasn't particularly easy. I never really wavered because I think the alternative to somebody in their early 20s was a dull life spent in cubicles. I thought, I can certainly contact a few more banks to avoid a lifetime of that.
RI: So now you had the keys to your new kingdom.
Wesolowski: Right. The first order of business was getting the station on the air properly. There was literally a piece of aluminum foil that was part of the RF chain. They had a piece of foil that was getting the signal out to the antenna. It was in deplorable shape. The business on the books was advertised as $600 a month of recurring business. I came to find out that only half of that was good. There was only about $300 a month in business. It was pretty rough. I think we lost $10,000 in our first month. And this was my first commercial radio job. In the beginning, after about two months or so, I really started to question why we had moved out here. There was a learning curve involved. Thank God we didn't go out of business, trying to learn the industry. The first radio ad I ever sold was here. I had no sales experience. That is something I probably would've done differently -- go out and get as much radio sales experience as possible. I think that would've solved a lot of our problems at the beginning.
RI: So here you are, 10 years later now.
Wesolowski: We are not billing the most, that's for sure. Nor are we the highest-rated. We do have a pretty lean operation. Right now, the station comfortably bills $300,000 a year, which for a single-station operator in a town this size, with the kind of overhead that we have, that's plenty to live on. There are several people working with me. I certainly couldn't do it without them. None of them are starving to death. We try to take care of our employees here. I am most certainly grateful for what I have now. I've spent a lot of money over the years, moving towers. We've had five different antenna locations. Seems like every couple of years, the FCC changes the rules, and we can move just a little closer to the population center. We're going to be paying off towers for quite a while. The station has probably been self-sufficient for the last five or six years.
RI: That's a huge difference from billing $300 a month.
Wesolowski: We had to be willing to do things other radio stations wouldn't really touch. I know high school sports is pretty common in small markets but I think at one time we were doing five high schools. It was an easy sell. A lot of people wanted to support the teams. We relied on that very heavily for a good, long while. In 2004, my current sports director came to work for me. He has a passion like no other for high school sports. Not only does he do the play-by-play, but he can sell it. That's been fantastic. Again, I've had the help of a lot of people over the years. Certainly, my business partner, Mike, and my wife, Danielle, we have all been in this together. As I have alluded to, the FCC has changed the rules so many times, we started to do consulting for other broadcasters. That has certainly helped in the lean times. We really got to know the FCC rules. We've been able to help a lot of others get upgrades. We are always trying to help our neighbors out with upgrades.
RI: What advice would you give others that are crazy enough to think they can do what you did?
Wesolowski: I wish I would have gotten some sales experience. Having sales experience will solve all other ills. It doesn't matter what kind of ratings you have if you're not selling the station. I didn't possess one ounce of sales ability. I do believe that sales can be taught. It's not necessarily a God-given thing. With enough work and practice, I think anyone can do it. I firmly believe that. So, yes. Definitely go out and get the sales experience. We always have people applying for positions here at the radio station who say, "I can do it all in radio." For some reason they never seem to have sales on their resume. That's always what we're looking for. Everyone who works here has to be a salesperson first. They can have other functions secondly. Even our news director, when he came to work for us in 2009, I told him that there is an absolute sales component to this. He had never sold a radio ad. He didn't particularly like sales. Now he is one of our top guys. Everyone that does anything here at the radio station, there is a sales component to it. As long as you're selling, you're not really going to have any problems. If you are not bringing revenue in, then it is not really going to matter what kind of product you have.
If you do get into this position and have employees, be sure to treat them with respect. I'm a lot younger than a lot of the people who work here, so I have had to treat everyone like an adult. I certainly let them do their job and I don't treat them like children. As a result, we have a lot of people here with good, long tenures. We don't have a lot of turnover. I let them know everything about the operation. If they want to know what an outstanding loan balance is on a tower, I tell them to the penny. I don't really believe in secrets. I don't have anything to hide. I keep the doors unlocked all the time. We definitely treat people with respect around here. And a little bit of prayer, too. That also doesn't hurt. I need to stick that in there as well. That can work wonders.
RI: You mentioned you are helping others improve their signal.
Wesolowski : That's something near and dear to me. We are really trying to level the playing field. We are really trying to provide opportunities for a lot of smaller broadcasters with some of the proposals that we've made. There are some very simple changes to the FM rules that could be made, without affecting the engineering and integrity of the band. There wouldn't be any new interference caused. We have a couple of proposals with the FCC right now that would enable hundreds, if not thousands of stations to upgrade, a lot of them being smaller class A's like my station, and a lot of mom-and-pop operations that happen to own some of the lower-powered commercial FMs. That could really help a lot of people. I will take any publicity that I can get on that, good or bad, just to get awareness.
Wesolowski has filed a petition with the FCC to change FM rules. You can read that filing HERE.
Reach out to Matt to congratulate him on his ten years of ownership and being a Radio Ink Rising Star matt@wyab.com
To order your digital subscription of Radio Ink magazine in time to read all 30 Rising Star stories GO HERE
(8/2/2013 11:21:34 AM)
Matt is exactly who we need in this biz. One day I will have own my radio station. Now to obtain sales experience. Your story hits it home. Best of luck. Here's to 10 more.
(8/2/2013 6:48:01 AM)
Great story. You really need to take care of your employees in any business. Reliable people are hard to find, especially in radio.
Randy Howard: Why didn't you help out the woman? She erred in keeping you on. Like I said, reliable people are hard to find.
God bless Matt and his success.
Way to go! Here's proof that if you believe in your station, you can project that belief to potential clients. A 250 Watt peanut whistle in South Overshoe can make a go of it if it fills the comminity needs. And an owner who recognizes that will do fine. More local (H.S. Sports, local personalities, etc.) will result in more local interest. Local interest results in listened to commercials, and word gets to people who 'aren't interested in radio. We do fine with the newspaper.'
Respect for your peopleis also a must. I personally say a station that billed $30,000.00 in January drop to $6,000.00 in February, about $3,000.00 in March. A new owner took over and decided that everyone there was stealing from her. She fired everyone but me and one other person. We both quit later. All she knew about radio was what she learned 10 years before at WABC in N.Y., when she INTERNED for 6 months, but SHE was going to 'Show Tucson'. She did. NOT!
He is who is needed to recharge our lackluster radio business. I am amazed how he has been able to transform a total dirt clog into a stunning billing success with just plenty of hard work and getting out there and getting it done. Hats off to him and his entire crew. May many more Matts come out of the radio woodwork to keep our business in a viable mode...
Matt is what American is all about...Congrats guy!
Matt. Great article. Congrats.
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