#mix945

The power of saying ‘yes’

Disclaimer – don’t say yes to EVERYTHING, there are times in life where a no is perfectly fine, and I’ll tell you mine a little way down the track..

5 years ago I was offered my first ever breakfast gig at Mix 106.3 in Canberra off a blinder of my first ever personal survey result, my drive shift went up 5 whole points while the rest of the station was in decline. It may have been a JV in the middle of a paddock flanked by sheep, but hell I was doing radio, I was playing music and talking to people and giving away stuff instead of cutting and gutting fish.

Looking back on that gig now, I wasn’t ready for the trials of breakfast radio. I couldn’t tell a story, I didn’t know how to manage my time effectively, I was crap at interviews and underprepared, I couldn’t work out how to translate my ideas for contests into something that would work for radio, I was too young to relate to the audience, and all I was interested in were my girlfriend, my video games, eating and going to the gym.

Biggzy I can understand now why you would get so frustrated so often with me – I must’ve been annoying AF to work with.

Through all of the hell of that ordeal (many mornings I would spend in my car at 4:30 before leaving home for work, anxious and in tears asking myself why I was so shit all of a sudden?! I’d already started telling myself I couldn’t deliver before I’d got to work) there was one moment that stays with me to this very day.

It was the first week of starting ‘Pete & Biggzy for Breakfast’ and we’d lined up a heap of interviews with big media names to give us some advice, one of these was the ever charming Larry Emdur, someone I have grown up watching and idolizing for years, mum tells me stories of when I would point at the TV when I was a kid and say ‘I’m going to be like him one day’.

Larry was kind enough to give us some time and this advice:

“Say yes. Whatever you get asked to do in this industry, just say yes”

That stuck, and looking back on my time at Mix in Canberra, during success and failure I had been doing that anyway, I just hadn’t realized it at the time. I’d said yes to a move to Canberra in the first place with no idea of how I was going to make it work or where I was going to live. I had said yes to living out of home for the first time and figuring it out on my own. I said yes to the brekky gig when it was offered not knowing if I could do it, and even though I failed, it taught me many valuable lessons which I apply to the show I do now on Mix 94.5 in Perth – and that in particular taught me that even in failure there is potential to succeed, it just might not happen for a few years.

Yes is a great word, yes is used by people who succeed. Yes gives you an opportunity to learn things you didn’t know, including your limits. It gives you an opportunity to discover new limits. It creates environments of positivity and affirmation – especially when saying yes ends up in success in what you’ve said yes to.

Yes took me to Brisbane where I had 2 great years at b105. Yes gave me a week with Lisa on drive at Mix, which lead to the Lisa and Pete show. Yes set up a one off TV cook off on Ch 9 here in Perth which lead to a regular TV hosting gig with one of their local offerings. Yes gave us some of the best unique content Mix has been able to deliver to an audience which is thirsty for it.