Working at Media Relations for the last two years has given me great wisdom and has been character building.  We are working daily to strive for the  greater good of our company and for our team.  The communication between our team is vital in assuring our company wide success.  We are in constant communication with each other on what contacts (for print, television, & radio) to look out for in certain markets and where we are at in our dialogue in relation to tours for our spokespeople and our clients. 

Media Relations is all about setting us up to succeed.  We take great pride in seeing new publicists get great placements and even our more seasoned publicists getting placements they never thought possible.  The power of positivity reigns through each one of us as we deal with rejection daily, but see the best in situations and how to position are clients successfully.   Mike Danielson and Heather Champine work very hard for us and we in turn are tireless workers and leave no stone unturned because we value their leadership.  They are excellent communicators and great people to work for and with.  Seeing Mike scurry around is a constant reminder of hard work paying off.  He is a big role model in my continued advancement with my career and a big reason for our success at Media Relations.  Heather is always willing to share her expertise and she is valiantly working with the publicists to ensure we have successful months with our placements and adding her unique clarity on the media we work with.

Media Relations is a joy to come and work for each day.  We never know what is going to happen.  Even with the best laid plans, your day is sure to throw you a few curveballs.  With the leadership we have, we have been prepared thoroughly to deal with these curveballs and use them and thrive on our failures, so we can learn from them and turn them into positives.  Media Relations has taught me a lot of things:  professionalism, work ethic, communication and resourcefulness.  Working with our team is the biggest benefit of joining such a rich and diversified company.  We pull for each other, cheer for each other, and work with each other so we can contribute to a greater good.  The continued growth of such a unique and fun company.

As an accountant, I am aware that most people think accounting is just adding here, subtracting there, making people’s paychecks, collecting the money and paying the bills. Well for the most part it was for me … until now.

Since I have had my “Now, Discover Your Strengths” chart posted by my door, others have realized what my strengths are including the owners Lonny and Robin Kocina.  The strength they all seem to relate with me is “analysis”.  They have had me analyze more things for them lately and I think they like the results. Even though I like accounting a lot, I probably like analyzing situations more.

I am also a very strategic person, which fits very well with analysis, since my analysis will be used to develop future strategies.  Analysis, in simple terms, is taking a situation and thinking of all the factors that affect it. A person then uses their experience in probability, people’s desires, supply and demand, profitability, the situation’s environment, common sense and ANY number of other factors important to the situation. I find myself doing this in my head every day for the weirdest things, but now I will do it for something that is productive for the company.

At Kocina Marketing we are starting a new group of services to go with our current product line designed by my boss, President Lonny Kocina.  Since the pricing and the costs involved are new to Kocina Marketing, proper analysis needs to be done to accomplish bottom line success. I am looking forward to helping in the analysis of the ‘how much, how many and other numbers, costs and revenue impacts’ of the development of Lonny’s strong group of new marketing services that we are adding to the Kocina Marketing product mix. 

The unique size of Kocina Marketing gives me the opportunity to be involved in a process like this. At a big company the Finance department and not the Accounting department would normally handle this analysis. It is a unique opportunity that I look forward to participating in using my top strength.

My analysis already has told me that these new services will be complementary to Kocina Marketing Companies’ family of core products, add great marketing services for our clients and help the employees see future growth in our company. These new services will be better for the “Company, Client, and Employee”. These are the three things all company actions strive to improve/achieve.

When I first began my career at Kocina Marketing Companies four years ago, I had the opportunity to participate in our company book club to discuss Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton and take the on-line assessment.  My top five strengths are Focus, Achiever, Responsibility, Maximizer and Relator.  At the time, I was an Administrative Assistant for our company.  When I was offered a position in Human Resources, my first thought was “Will this opportunity be a match for my strengths?”  Well, it was and I absolutely LOVE what I do!  Just ask anyone that I work with or my family! 

In order to develop a career that really suits you, it’s important to have a basic knowledge of your key strengths.  Unlike skills or knowledge you can acquire through education, your strengths are more basic talents.  For the most part you were born with them.  You can certainly continue to develop new talents, but in the area of your strengths you have an almost unfair advantage. Your strengths are things that come naturally and easily to you.  Your brain is just wired to be good at them.  You’ll be happiest working in a career that allows you to take advantage of your strengths on a daily basis.  Working from your strengths will help you (1) be far more productive, (2) get better results, (3) contribute more value, (4) attract higher compensation, (5) enjoy your work, and (6) experience greater fulfillment. No matter where you are at in your career right now please, oh please figure out your strengths! Look for what you’re passionate about and DO THAT. Think about what excites you; why you’re on this earth; where you can achieve your greatest successes; what will make you grin when you think, “…and I get PAID for doing this?”

Just that word alone sounds cold and cruel. We’ve all had to deal with it at one time or another in our lives, whether it was for a job, a date, a loan or any of a million other things when someone else is answering our request.

Never once was that rejection fun. It can make you feel underappreciated, unaccepted and unwanted. Of course, we get over it, but it’s not a daily occurrence we have had to deal with – until now.

As publicists, we speak with scores of producers, editors, hosts and reporters every day offering them opportunities to interview our spokespeople about topics and stories we believe in. Unfortunately, not all of these people we pitch to are going to be as passionate about these stories as we are. The nature of our job is such that some of the people we talk to are not going pick up the story or interview we offer them. Some of the calls we put out are going to end in a ‘no.’ This, of course, means we have to learn to deal with rejection .

How do we do that? How can we take anything positive out of someone telling us no?

As a former baseball player, I like to compare the rejection we encounter every day with sport.

When it comes to results, baseball players are just like publicists. The best hitters in the world ‘fail’ more than they succeed. The historically recognized standard for a ‘great’ hitter is a .300 batting average, which means he ‘fails’ 7 times for every 3 times he succeeds.

The same is true with publicists – even the best of the best have days when they receive a considerably higher number of ‘no’ answers than ‘yes’ answers. And just like Kirby Puckett had games, stretches of games even, where he went hitless, publicists are going to have days where they don’t get any bookings.

It’s those stretches that I believe separate great baseball players (and great publicists) from merely good or average ones. Any ball player can thrive off the success of a hard-hit liner one-hopping the fence for a stand-up double, but how does he react when he hits a ball just as hard the next time – only the centerfielder races over to make a spectacular catch? Or, for the publicist, how does he react when a certain approach works brilliantly with one reporter, but that exact same approach fails miserably with another?

To me, it’s about putting everything into perspective and making the appropriate adjustments, in both baseball and in my job. As a ball player, I never allowed myself to get caught up in what my batting average or slugging percentage was – I was always more concerned about the productivity of my at-bat and whether or not I swung at good pitches, watched the bad ones go by, and made solid contact when I swung the bat. Obviously, my goal was to reach base by any means possible. However, for the sake of becoming as good a player as possible, I always focused on how my results came to be.

Was I ripping the stitches out of the ball consistently, working the pitch count, and putting the ball in play hard? If I was doing all those things and getting out because the other team was making good plays and balls were being hit right at guys, I didn’t worry about it – I knew if I continued to do all the right things, balls would start falling and my productivity as a hitter would take care of itself.

Or, was I swinging at terrible pitches, letting the pitcher off easy and hitting the balls off my knuckles? I could be doing all that and still finding my way on base through a little good fortune – but I would know that good fortune would not last forever, and eventually at-bats like that would start to negatively impact my productivity. It’s at those times, I would go back to the dugout, talk with my coaches about my at-bat, what I did wrong, and what I could do to correct it.

It’s no different as a publicist. When I’ve got a perfect pitch and I’m saying all the right things to a media contact, I know there are going to be times that person is still going to tell me no. Does that mean I did something wrong? Not necessarily – I may just need to keep after it until those bookings start coming and my productivity evens itself out.

The bottom line is, it’s all about attitude and perspective. If you have an optimistic attitude (I did well, the hit just didn’t fall for me), you put each event into its proper perspective and make the necessary adjustments, you’ll be able to fight through the slumps of the job and be a productive member of the team. If you have a pessimistic attitude (What more can I do to get a hit?) and take everything at face value, the pressure will continue to mount and you’ll bury yourself beneath the weight of your own expectations.