18 Years Ago...

It was 18 years ago today, well almost, more like 18 years, 3 weeks and 4 days when I took a gamble to remotely send news to radio stations and not try to get another corporate gig. This was before COVID, so it was not a necessity, but the name made sense. I was living in Montana where finding a job was a challenge because of the amount of people who just wanted to live there and would literally take any job, professional, trade, hospitality, or otherwise, you name it. I had my dream job there, and then poof, just like radio, it was over. I was obviously devastated to lose my job after moving my family from California. But it was what it was. So, I had to get creative. It was mentioned that maybe I should email news to a group. But said group had just laid me off my dream job, so working for them didn’t seem like something to rely on. I heard about some radio folks working from home voice tracking, and I’d been podcasting way back then, so why not try to turn that into a business? It was risky, but being unemployed with no prospects made it seem like an easy choice. Around mid-February 2007 I found a web designer to make me a simple landing page, but with the ability to upload .mp3’s for clients to download. And that was that. The idea was to only cover small markets across Montana, where I lived, but my first client was in Maine, for temp work, and the second, for regular work, was in California. Best laid plans, as they say. After about one year, I was anchoring 40 newscasts a day. That meant I had to start hiring people to help so I could market and grow the company. 18 years, 23 anchors and nearly 100 stations later, I think it’s clicking, but it’s radio, so who knows?? Get full access to Remote News - The Weekly Earful at lesleylotto.substack.com/subscribe