Tapping Your Contacts

We're fairly confident that we are taken seriously when we present clients as they are screened as carefully as if they were being introduced to the investment community or to strategic partners. It didn't take us long to learn this lesson, for having been a startup entrepreneur myself a while back, I knew the value of professionals who have been there and done that. Take it from one who knows, choose professionals who are well experienced in the startup world and you'll increase your chances of success exponentially.

The first venture that we have started involves a new way to use radio as a bridge to new media, or the internet. There is no astonishing technology involved, but just plain old talent in connecting the new with the old. The idea came about from my need to relive a part of my youth. With the advent of the MP3 world and the revolution caused by iTunes, I understand that radio has been become a relic to many. Radio broadcasting remains a vibrant local medium, despite the fact that some of the voices you hear in Seattle are really based in New York. In any event, without revealing the plot, suffice to say, I corralled a private equity friend whose firm owned a bunch of radio properties and told him of my desire to be the successor to Al Franken as he left to start his political career. With the appropriate analogy of me seeking a radio career akin to those pursuing their athletic careers at one of those fantasy sports camps. My buddy happily obliged me with an introduction to a fabulous fellow who had been a former President of a larger radio group. Now a consultant, having taken his buyout package with him to the Poconos, Bill, as he will now be referred to, was currently in the business of creating radio formats and new radio personalities to expose to the unsuspecting public.

Well, one thing leads to another after our chats and we start talking inevitably about how to make money in this business. For the time being, much to my chagrin, we have not yet started the arduous process to make me a radio personality. With all the new media opportunities on the social net works, I am confident that  stardom awaits me, or eludes me, as the case may be. For sure, however, the best advice he had was to tell me that I had to have a "shtick" or a theme, like conservative Rush or the outrageous Howard or the forgiven Imus. I shelved the idea of playing off my "Jewish kid stuck inside a Chinese body" persona as I wasn't sure how it would play in a syndicated format in Iowa.

With the much-needed help of my dear lawyer buddy who is a FDA authority and radio personality in his own right, I settled on the subject of drugs and healthcare since reform was soon in the making and I probably was not far from needing both myself. For sure, as a baby boomer with all the attending ailments, I could certainly relate and boy, given the success of Dr. Oz and others, who doesn't like to complain about all that plagues them both physically and mentally?

Thus, the idea of making me a radio celeb morphed into the creation of the Local Health Networks. As of the time of this writing, the signs of the venture appear to be, at least, don't stop, but I will recount both the challenges that we have faced, as well as those that we still need to overcome in order to make this venture viable. As they say, "let's get it started."