Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #568: The “Me Too” thing for Radio

Years ago, when I was riding my Brontosaurus to work, I was paired with a partner named Rick “The Beamer” Robertson to do a morning team show in Dallas. I drove there from Louisiana to talk to the P. D. about the gig, and met Rick for the first time when he arrived about a half-hour later. The first thing he did was to stick out his to shake, and say, “Hi, I’m Rick, your mail-order bride.”
I knew we were going to get along.

The station, sadly, wasn’t that great, but we worked hard to have a great morning show, and did well. It was a lot of fun.

But here’s where you get something to think about…

There was a galvanizing moment a couple of weeks into the job, when Rick and I had breakfast together after the show. (We did this regularly, and it’s something I recommend.) We were going over some stuff that worked well that morning, and Rick pointed out that when I talked about something personal, we got a lot of “Me, too” reactions. (And those listeners’ stories.)

Beamer was laugh-out-loud hilarious, but more performative. Over the next few weeks, we used his lightning-fast wit and a couple of performance bits, but we made a point of diving into his personal life quite a bit.

Frankly, he didn’t like this at first, but I explained it to him this way:

(1) My family and friends all knew that if they didn’t want something on the air, they shouldn’t let me know about it. Everything, every day, was fair game for Content on the air.

(2) The show couldn’t be just about us. It needed to be about ALL of us. To get people to reveal things about themselves, we talked about what we felt.

It worked really well for him, and brought out things in Rick that made him more familiar and three-dimensional.

That’s the lesson: The reaction that you want is “Me, too. That’s how I feel.”

Note: there’s a trick to this. If you just come across as always talking about yourself, that’s not good. So how do you avoid that, but still share? Specific techniques that, once you master them, lead easily to a “reveal” is a big part of my coaching. If you read these tips regularly, you’ll spot the Easter eggs.