Greetings and salutations. My name is Jay and At the end of this episode I have a FREE Bonus for you…you could just leave the room and come back at the end and you’d still get it but you’d feel so bad you’d probably donate time at a soup kitchen to offset the guilt.

So don’t do that.

Me and my partner Brian Elder sat in our office after the show staring at a stack of birthday cards. These were cards that would be mailed to our listeners. But, we first had to sign them all.

We had their contact information and date of birth because they had to fill that out when they picked up concert tickets or a cd they won on the radio.

Our program director told us we had to sign 100 birthday cards after each show before we went home. Talk about writer's cramp.

We decided to take a little initiative and take it a step further. Since we had the listener's phone numbers my partner and I decided we would just start calling 25 listeners after each show to thank them for listening to our show. We told them about upcoming promotions and how they could win.

It was another way we were able to endear ourselves to our fans.

I’m pretty sure not another morning radio air talent was spending hours each day after their show calling and talking one on one with their listeners. This turned out to be HUGE.

Back when faxing was still a thing, we decided to create a weekly newsletter.

We went on the air and solicited for people to call in and give us their fax numbers. In return they would get access to one of Captain Pat’s (he was our traffic reporter) recipes, a “word of the day” that would make them eligible for a major prize, and a stupid joke like this one:

A guy walks into a bar and says, "I just heard a great redneck joke!" A HUGE guy stands up off a barstool and says, "Just a minute, buddy. Before you tell that joke, I'm Jake. I'm six-three and weigh two-eighty all muscle. And I'm a redneck. That guy over there is a professional wrestler, and he's a redneck. And the guy behind the bar has a pistol next to the cash register and he's a redneck, too. Now, you really want to tell that joke?" And the fellow thinks and says, "Nah. I don't want to have to explain it three different times."

We got thousands of fax numbers from our listeners. It was my job to send those faxes on Sunday night. Keep in mind this was 1996.

I had the WinFax program on my old desktop computer. I had a dial-up modem. I had to crawl under my desk and unplug my phone then plug in my modem cord.

If someone called our home phone while I was faxing it would screw up everything. It took almost 8 hours to send out all the faxes. I can still hear the chirp and shrill of that dial-up modem in my head.

I also created a very primitive website. We had a MySpace account and when Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram came along we were there too.

I even set up a podcast that played the “Best of Young & Elder”. (Young & Elder was the name of our radio show)

If there was another way to stay top of mind with our fans...we used it.

We did it for purely selfish reasons. I had a few addictions I’d picked up over the years like eating, having a place to sleep, and transportation. Getting those big rating bonuses helped to satisfy those addictions.

Even though I worked for a radio station, our radio show was our business. At every live remote broadcast at the local car dealer, I made sure I didn’t act like the stuck-up snobby DJ.

I went out of my way to hug, talk with, and dance with (if need be) every person who drove to the event to see us.

When my partner and I introduced artists on stage we made sure that we got down and mingled with the fans. We even signed an autograph or two.

As business owner, we knew that super-serving our fans was the key to our livelihood.