We’ve all said it at least once in our lives.

It usually happens when we’re watching TV and a talk show host is stumbling over their words or simply not being articulate, and we say either out loud or to ourselves, “I could do better than that.”

In my business, I get a lot of people who are of that belief, and many of them genuinely can do better than that. The disconnect is they believe that because they can be good on the air, it automatically means if they hire a PR agency to attract attention, they’ll have their own talk show and be a national celebrity.

If that were truly the case, the airwaves would be crowded to the point of bursting. Unfortunately, it’s a little more difficult than that to become the next talk show star. Keep in mind, even the current stars didn’t become stars overnight. Keith Olbermann started as a sports anchor. Bill O’Reilly hosted a tabloid TV show called A Current Affair. Rachel Ray started by doing cooking advice segments on a local TV station. Erma Bombeck, one of the pioneers of punditry, began her career writing satirical columns for a local newspaper for just a few bucks per column. She parlayed that into a career as an author, columnist, speaker and veteran talk show guest, commenting on just about everything.

Today, experts from all realms have segued into prime jobs in the media. George Stephanopoulos hosts Good Morning America, a far cry from being a political consultant for former President Bill Clinton. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow started her career by winning a contest staged by a radio station looking for a morning radio personality. One of her first gigs was doing a morning radio “zoo” style show with Rapper Chuck D and comedienne Lizz Winstead. Her colleague Lawrence O’Donnell, host of the networks The Last Word, started as a novelist, then worked as an aide to Senator Patrick Moynihan, and then wound up in Hollywood as a writer and producer (and sometimes actor) on NBC’s The West Wing, before he entered the punditry in 2004.

The way to start is by getting booked on your local talk shows. Local TV shows tend to want fluffier, lighter content, so if your expertise is personal finance, for instance, you probably don’t want to pitch yourself to them to comment on the Wall Street collapse. Instead, something lighter, like “five tips to help make ends meet.” Local TV is imperative, because national shows typically don’t book a guest unless they can see from a local clip that the guest is articulate and good on camera. After a few local appearances, you can start pitching yourself to national shows using more newsy angles that are attached to breaking stories. The national media is a slave to the immediate news cycle, so the earlier you can jump on a national story, the better.

At the same time, you also want to be pushing yourself and your expertise to the print media and as a guest on radio shows to more firmly establish yourself as an expert in your field. It helps tremendously to have a book based on your expertise, but it’s not necessary if you have a strong Web presence and are head and shoulders above some of the other guests making the rounds on your topic.

When do you become the next big thing? Sometimes, as evidenced by the examples above, it takes years. Most overnight sensations have an “overnight” that lasted as long as a decade before they broke onto the national media scene. So, it’s not just about looking good on camera. It’s about the unique, perfect storm combination of talent, perseverance, elbow grease and opportunity.

A simpler way to launch your career in the media is buying air time to host your own radio show.  All that’s required is a high degree of talent and cash.  For example, you can have a weekly one-hour national show on Sirius XM for approximately $1,500 to $2,000 per hour.  Or, you can buy time on a local station for a local show.  The costs can range as little as $200 per hour on a small wattage station or in a smaller market.  Or, you can spend upwards of $6,000 or more for a one-hour weekly show on a top station in New York City.

This approach is known as “brokered time,” and unbeknownst to most listeners, most of the weekend radio shows you hear nowadays are shows of this nature.

For instance, Dave Ramsey, the well-known financial guru, built his empire by buying air time for his show on radio stations around the country.  And, because he had a message with mass appeal and was very effective at building an audience, he had no problem finding sponsors who wanted to advertise on his show. So, for him this model not only built his platform as a financial expert, but it became another huge source of revenue.

It’s key to understand that the format and content of your show must follow the form of any successful talk radio show.  It can’t be an hour-long advertisement about why people should hire you or buy from you; otherwise listeners will tune you out or change the station. Instead, you can motivate people by informing and entertaining them and being seen as the smartest and most articulate expert in your field who is on the air.

Of course, you’d have to market the show once it’s on the air, because a radio show without listeners is just a guy talking into a microphone. Marketing your show can be done via public relations and social media. In fact, social media can be used to drive the majority of your audience, and then keep that audience interested in your show on a weekly basis. Hosting your own radio or TV talk show is a terrific marketing vehicle for generating new business.

At the end of the day, the American Dream ain’t cheap. If you aren’t willing to work hard and persevere – whether you work your way in or buy your way in – it’s not likely you’ll go far. But if you are willing to put in the hours and the effort, who knows? Maybe I’ll be booking a guest on your show sometime soon.

We’re all experts on something. In my case, my passion was always the inner workings of the media and the crafting of a message. The fun for me isn’t always when I have a client who is a ready-made for the media, but rather someone who has a unique message that may not seem on the surface to be compatible with generating media. That’s what drives me and those are the challenges I truly enjoy. When I can connect the dots in a creative fashion for a client who may never have thought they had a good enough story for the media, I’m thrilled!

One of the tools that helps in this process is when clients have a book. In my own book, Celebritize Yourself: The Three Step Method to Increase Your Visibility and Explode Your Business, I explain how a book – or more specifically, YOUR book – can be your new business card. It’s a model I not only recommend to clients, but also one that I use for the promotion of my own business.

Here’s how the formula works:

• Passion: The first step is to ask yourself about your passion as this will guide the message of your book. When you achieve what you believe to be a high level of proficiency in your field or profession, it is usually a representation of your passion. So, think about it. What gets you up in the morning? What are the elements of your profession that stir your emotions and make you happy to work in your field? Those elements are the cross section of your passion and your expertise. When you write about those ideas, concepts and realities, it will show the reader that they are dealing with a consummate professional who knows his or her stuff!
• Execution: Here’s a tough question, and it truly doesn’t matter how you answer. Are you a good writer? I don’t mean, can you craft a story and develop characters and plotlines. We’re not talking about fiction here. What I mean is, can you write about your field convincingly and articulately? Can you take the elements of your profession that drive your passion and business, and use the written word to inform, educate and inspire someone with your message? The good news is that it doesn’t matter if you are not a writer. There is no shame in hiring a ghostwriter whose skill is communicating via the written word to get your thoughts and feelings down on paper and write the text in “your voice.” The book is solely your ideas and your knowledge – it is YOUR book – but the quality of the communication will be key to its success.
• Publication: Here’s the part that makes it all work. First, remember the goal in writing the book is to have a representation of your passion and expertise that builds your platform as a credentialed expert in your field and that you can use like a business card. With the various self-publishing services available today, you don’t need (or want) a traditional publisher to accept your idea. It’s far more advantageous to self-publish because you retain all rights to your work, you control your message and most importantly, you control the timeline. Moreover, with the quality of “print on demand” today, you also control your publishing costs and can simply print copies as needed to align with your marketing budget and strategies.
• Promotion: Your book opens the door to the media as well as your customers, both directly and indirectly. When you reach out to the press with your message, they are going to take you far more seriously if you’ve written a book about it. The media, in turn, opens the door to new customers. And that’s really the way the book pays for itself and helps you generate revenue – through branding you as an expert in your field. After it’s published, that book will play a part in just about every piece of business you close for your company, whether it helps drive media that drives your business or it is simply a better opening line to a new customer besides “Let me give you my card.” In the sea of business cards executives get from vendors at trade shows and on airplanes, a book is like the cream that rises to the top (even if they don’t read it!). And when you’re pitching the media or speaking with a prospective client, a book says, “I’m such an expert in my field, I literally wrote the book on it.”

Having been in business for over 20 years, I can attest that after writing my book, Celebritize Yourself, my revenue has grown annually, even through the recession. And, soon I’ll be working on my second one. So if you feel like your business has reached a plateau or is creeping in growth, and you want to inject new life and energy into your enterprise, a book is one of the most valuable marketing tools you’ll ever have.

I heartily encourage those who haven’t started yet to get busy. Collect your thoughts; make a decision; commit to it unwaveringly and I promise you will reap the rewards personally and professionally.

The slogan was a nod to the fact that Avis was the second largest rental car company behind Hertz, and that as a result, they would always make an extra effort in a desire to overcome the competition. It’s a reasonably universal sentiment, as small corporations around the world employ the same tactic to provide better service or more flexibility than the market leaders. And the same can be said of talk radio.

Typically, people engaging in talk radio-based PR campaigns will use market size and wattage of the stations they choose to pitch as a benchmark for a successful campaign. That’s usually a safe bet, but that being said, it’s important not to overlook some of the smaller market, smaller wattage stations. There are a lot of diamonds in that rough to be found.

While big market, big wattage stations offer you reach, many smaller stations offer better quality interviews. Many small market hosts want to be big market hosts, so they are always trying to play a better game. When I embarked on my own talk radio campaign to promote my book Celebritize Yourself – shameless plug acknowledged – I discovered that some of the more in-depth interviews I gave were in smaller markets. In some cases, the hosts actually read the book cover to cover, and were able to engage me in a more specific and thought-provoking discussion.

Some took the time to truly research the material before putting me on the air, and as a result, I truly felt like I had the opportunity to get my message out in a substantial manner. And some of these stations, while small, have more loyal followings. Because the station may be in a smaller market, listeners may not have as many choices as they have in a big city market, so they listen more often and are more loyal. Moreover, the hosts tend to have more sway over their listeners because they are local celebrities themselves, or community leaders.

For example, in Los Angeles, you could stay extremely busy surfing all the talk shows on the AM dial because they have so many stations competing with each other. Conversely, in Gainesville, Florida (the number 83 market in terms of audience size), the same number of people may be listening to a top rated show there. But that’s not all – you’ll also find the listeners are loyal and dedicated fans of that talk show because they don’t have the variety of stations and shows to pick and choose from.

I chose Gainesville, Florida as an example for a reason. We work with one of the top shows in that market – it’s typically a 20 to 30 minute interview with a host and co-host who’ve been on the air for many years and have a dedicated following. The interesting thing that’s happened is that nearly every single one of our clients has contacted us after that interview to tell us how much they enjoyed it, how the hosts had done their homework and were so informed and interested about their topic – and how it was absolutely the best interview.

In that sense, some of these smaller stations can deliver more qualified listeners who are more receptive to your message and more likely to take action after the show – look you up on the Internet, go to your site, or even become a customer.

Now, not ALL smaller stations are like that, and not all hosts in small towns carry that kind of punch. That’s why it’s important to discriminate. There is such a thing as too small, or too insignificant.

One of the key things to look at is whether the show has been around a while. A show with a 10 or 20 year history is more likely to be hosted by a local celebrity who is able to drive consumer opinion in your favor.

To sum it all up, the most important thing you need to know is that when you’re launching a campaign on talk radio, market size isn’t everything. You’ll need to consider the other factors we’ve just discussed when evaluating what’s the best fit for you. Then you can find a PR firm to tailor a campaign that suits your needs.

Since then, Michael has been the co-executive producer (along with partner Benjamin Melnicker) of the Batman franchise of films, including the recent blockbusters Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. He has also been involved in other films, such as Constantine, National Treasure and upcoming film versions of The Shadow and Shazam.

Yet, few people know Michael’s name. So we set out to change that. We started in July 2009, with more than 70 radio interviews and a solo panel at Comic Con International, arranged by EMSI. That panel drew 1,000 people, despite being scheduled at the same time as the panel which would show the first footage from James Cameron’s future hit Avatar.

Our goal is to make Michael the go-to guy for top tier media when it comes to topics or stories concerning movies or popular culture, and make him recognizable as not only the initiator of the Batman movie franchise, but also as an entertainment guru with industry knowledge and experience that’s helpful and interesting to consumers, as well as those in Hollywood. Towards that end, EMSI has steadily booked Michael in electronic media such as Fox Business News, CNBC, Bloomberg TV and BBC Worldwide, as well as print articles including The New York Times, Forbes, The Christian Science Monitor, USA Today and many others.

Sure, it’s great to have a client walk in the door who has a unique product or service, solid credentials and a compelling angle. It makes the work easier, certainly, but it sometimes is more satisfying to solve what a client thinks is an unsolvable problem in a creative way.

One such client was (and still is, by the way) Darlene Quinn, author of the novel Webs of Power. She had been handled by another PR agency previously and spent quite a bit of money to get very limited coverage. She came to us needing new representation, but very skeptical about how we would handle her pitch. Our method, as many regular readers know, is to approach the client as an expert in their field, and then promote their expertise as a way of getting media interest for them and their message.

In Darlene’s case, her novel was a marriage of Dynasty and Macy’s, a story of power and intrigue at the highest echelons of the retail fashion industry. When we asked her what inspired her to write it, she revealed she had been a top executive at the Bullocks Wilshire department store chain. Furthermore, she was friends with other top executives at some very upscale department stores, and had enough knowledge about the inside of the business that she could tell a few good stories (with the names changed to protect the guilty and the innocent, of course).

And that’s when we knew we had it. We knew that promoting her simply as a new author of a racy novel that reeked of money and power wasn’t going to get us very far. There are more than 370,000 new books published every year, and casting her as one of those numbers just meant that she’d be regarded as another can of beans on the shelf.

However, how many experts on the high-end retail industry are there in the media? Not many, because many top executives don’t want to offend anyone else in the business, even if it’s a competitor. They never know when they might have to ask them for a job. Not a problem for Darlene, however, who had made a commitment to being an author for the rest of her working days. While she would never overtly say anything to offend anyone – that’s just not her way – she did have the freedom to tell the truth about the retail business.

Soon, she was being booked on radio and television to talk about the retail industry and its struggles to get through the recession, which was just starting around that point in time. With tons of coverage in the print media, more than 120 radio interviews and several national TV interviews, Darlene is now the undisputed expert in the media on retail matters. In addition, she was able to expose her book to millions of readers, listeners and viewers. Coming full circle, we’re looking forward to her new campaign in the fall to promote her new book, Twisted Webs, the sequel to Webs of Power.

More than that, Darlene is branching out and becoming a commentator on the retail industry as a whole. Watch the Internet for her next interview, which is about how retail giant Wal-Mart is trying to fix a serious mistake which cost them many thousands of customers late last year. I’d tell you about it, but Darlene is really the expert on that!

There’s a lesson here that can be learned and applied by anyone with a consumer message, regardless of whether you are selling a book, a product or a service. The lesson is that if you’re interested in being in the news, or interviewed on radio and TV, there is a precise formula you must follow.

1. Follow the news and look for news items that are relevant to your topic and that you can comment on as an expert.
2. Develop your message around those news items that will provide valuable information to the public.
3. Identify the local or national media you feel is a good match. Read their column, watch their show on TV, or listen to their radio show. Before you approach them, know the format of their shows and types of topics that would interest them.
4. When contacting them, never, ever pitch your company, your product or service. Only pitch yourself as an expert with solutions to problems their audience is concerned about.
5. Understand who their audience is so you can engage the editor or host with your pitch and, make sure to give them all the information they need to make an immediate decision to interview you.

Of course, if you need some help, let us know…it’s what we do, day in and day out. And, we may be able to do it for you!

It all comes down to knowing who you are and what you have to offer others…what is that “unique something” that makes you and your message stand out? If you really are an expert in your field, it may be time to take it to the next level and become well-known as an expert celebrity.

The 17th century French philosopher Descartes summed it up with his immortal words, “I think, therefore I am,” and that is the viewpoint you need to adopt. It requires some soul searching to gain insight about your strengths and weaknesses, plus a strategy so that you can position yourself correctly as an expert, and finally, a willingness to embark on the journey.

The contestants on American Idol are a terrific example. The show starts out with a cattle call. Anyone and everyone who believes they have talent shows up to audition. As the weeks go on, the participants are given a chance to showcase, not just their talent, but themselves. They learn how to package themselves; they have to figure out how to stand out in the crowd.

The competitors who successfully navigate the first few weeks quickly learn how to use their strengths and minimize their weaknesses – they know the judges will expose those weaknesses and it won’t be pretty. They know they must work extra hard to strengthen any vulnerable areas before the next show or they are done for.

It takes some intestinal fortitude to admit what your weaknesses are and a lot of hard work to overcome them. That is where passion and drive come in. These contestants are passionate about their craft and driven to win the final prize – success, fortune and the celebrity that is their due.

Being an expert celebrity is not something that just happens. It takes courage, passion, sweat, drive and maybe even some tears. If you are sure of yourself, who you are, what you want and what it is going to take, you can make it to the top of your field, regardless of whether you are America’s next pop star or the next celebrity home renovation expert.

Time to do some soul searching.

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