Meet Radio’s Goal Smasher

1

Cox Media Group’s Bill Hendrich could write a how-to book on what it takes to set goals, work toward them, and achieve them. In some cases, as he points out in our August 14 cover story, he achieved them too quickly. It all worked out in the end as Hendrich climbed his way to the top of the Cox Media Group radio management ladder and, since July of 2015, he’s been CMG’s EVP of Radio and CMG Research. Not bad for a guy who was running a travel agency in his 20s.

Here’s an excerpt from our interview with Radio’s Goal Smasher, Bill Hendrich.

Bill Hendrich didn’t plan to be in radio when he started his career. In his early 20s, he was running a travel agency in Mobile, AL, and the local radio stations would call on him to sell him advertising. He got to know the program director at WKSJ in Mobile, which led to Hendrich’s working with the station on listener trips. He would accompany the morning show host, the GM, and listeners and act as the tour guide in places like Las Vegas and Mexico.

One day Hendrich stopped by the station’s new offices to take the boss to lunch, and the boss said to him, “This is where the new promotions director will be. We’re hiring someone new this afternoon.” Hendrich wanted that job. They went to have lunch, he was offered the job, and he took it. In that sense, his getting into radio was a fluke; Hendrich says, “My start in radio came by total timing.” After only eight months, Hendrich moved into sales.

“At the time it was the most natural thing to do,” he says. “I can think in 60-second commercials. I can think in promotions, and I could connect everything.” After a year, he was the sales manager. Hendrich says that job went very well, but also led to a real mistake: He put himself on a career path that wasn’t right for him. “I let my ego get ahead of myself, of what I thought I needed to do,” he says. “I was modeling a boss I had at the time who was a GM by 28. I decided I was going to do the same.” So, at 28 years of age, Hendrich convinced Pat Shaughnessy, who owned WAVH-FM in Mobile,
that he was the right person to run the station. At the time, WAVH was in need of a format flip, new studios, new space for those new studios, and a new sales team.

Shaughnessy tells us why he chose Hendrich for the job: “Because he was a native of Mobile, had success in the market as a sales manager, made a great first impression, was intelligent, and had a good sense of humor. He was also married to a lovely woman, Helen, and was a family man.” Hendrich says getting that job was probably the greatest sale he ever made — and the worst. He was in over his head, and the job didn’t last long. But Shaughnessy says it ended well between the two of them. “WAVH was for all intents and purposes a startup,” he says. “Bill had a multitude of priorities that extended far beyond the normal duties of running a radio station. So while sales were way up, I had a bank loan that was two points above prime, or 16 percent, and I needed more revenue, which frustrated both of us, and we regretfully parted company. Bill and I have remained good friends because we’ve always liked and respected each other, and I’m very proud of his accomplishments and rise to one of the best in the industry.”

Hendrich was lucky enough to get his old job back as GSM at WKSJ, where he stayed for three more years — and learned to pace himself. After he sent out his resume and got a call from Dick Ferguson, NewCity Communications in Orlando was his next stop. “When we recruited Bill to the NewCity team in 1989, we were highly confident we’d made a smart move,” Ferguson says. “He didn’t disappoint, exceeding our expectations at K92FM as local sales manager, then heading up sales at all our high-performing Orlando radio stations, and eventually running the cluster as VP/GM. His solid track record of hard work, great people skills, and knowing and loving the radio business is the reason he’s running one of the best radio groups anywhere today. He gets the simple truth that finding the best people, supporting and nurturing them, and celebrating their success brings the greatest rewards.”

Bill Hendrich

Bill Hendrich is very much into goal-setting. After arriving in Orlando as the local sales manager, he set a goal to be the GSM by the end of 1989. He accomplished that, and had his eyes on the GM chair next. “I knew I wanted to be a GM,” he says. “I try to convince my kids that you have to set goals. You’ll find with today’s new generation, many are gun-shy about setting goals. I have copies of my written goals back to 1991. It was always ‘I am going to be a GM.’ I understood who my competitors were internally and externally, but I wanted to know what I had to do to be a no-brainer to be a GM.” Hendrich got close to resigning from NewCity when it seemed clear there were no opportunities to advance. He was talked out of resigning by one of NewCity’s founders, who told him he had a great future. “I really respected him,” Hendrich says, “and I guess at that point, you are just looking for affirmation that there is a future.”

A few months later, Cox bought NewCity and Hendrich was made the GM of WDBO and K92FM. He says, “Somebody stuck their nose into my life and helped me make a decision that kept me moving down a good path.” Orlando was a booming market in 1989, and Hendrich was loving life. He says that when he got to Orlando, Miller Kaplan reported the market’s revenue at $48 million. When he left, the figure was $130 million. He stayed in that position for nearly 10 years. Then it was on to Jacksonville, where he would run the Cox properties for about nine years before getting the call to run all of radio in 2015.

Radio Ink: Tell us about the call you got to run the radio division.
Hendrich: We have this service called TelePresence that does video phone calls. I had a meeting set with Kim to follow up on a document on a leadership meeting a couple of weeks before. It was my observations from that meeting, and everything I thought we ought to do in the radio division to adapt, grow, evolve, and move forward. I sent it to her and set up a conference call to talk about it, and basically tell my boss what she ought to do.

The morning of the call, I saw in my e-mail that Bill Hoffman had accepted the invitation to be on the call and I thought, “Why is he on this call?” I dial in, and it’s Bill Hoffman, with Kim sitting right behind him, and he starts talking about different changes we’re going to make in the company. He spends five minutes talking about a change we made with our national rep firm and that [CoxReps President] Jim Monahan was retiring. He goes on and on about the rep firm in New York City. I’m thinking, “Helen will never go to NYC, please don’t tell me I’m going to NYC.” And I don’t know how to run a rep firm. Then he said, “Kim is going to New York to run the rep firm, and we want you to run the radio group.” A look of relief came across my face, and I’m trying to make eye contact with Kim. It was a cool thing; I was given the opportunity to run the radio group.

Radio Ink: Was that on your goal sheet?
Hendrich: No — that is a great question. The way CMG was set up, there were a lot of regional vice presidents, and I was not one of them. Kim Guthrie was one, Rich Reis, Ben Reed, and Jay O’Connor. All of them were in radio, and they were all regional VPs, and with the exception of Rich, they were all younger than me. I thought there wouldn’t be an opportunity for me. The job I had in Jacksonville was a great job. I loved the job and the city. Helen and I talked about where we would retire and we thought, “Why not Neptune Beach?” so we bought a lot there. If I had stayed in that job for the next
several years of my career, I would have been happy. Jay moved to TV in Seattle, and I thought that was interesting. Things shifted, and the job came out of nowhere. I didn’t

Bill Hendrich and his CMG team

expect that to happen and was pleased that it did. I thought Kim was going to be in the job running radio for a long time. Then Bill Hoffman decided to promote Kim Guthrie, and that created an opening here for me.

Radio Ink: What is your definition of the perfect market manager?
Hendrich: This person has to be committed and believe in the value of talent. When you talk to anyone at CMG, you will hear talent come up over and over again as a critical part of our success. They can’t just fill seats; they have to find the absolute best people they can. The great leaders love to be around talent, and seek it out. They have to care passionately about helping the team members grow to the highest potential they can achieve. It’s one thing to have talent, but if you don’t nurture it and coach it, then it’s wasted.

The greatest market managers help people grow to levels they didn’t believe possible for themselves, and through that, their team members love working for them. The quality of the work environment is important, and you’ll hear that from the top down. There is a vibe of excitement in the building that’s there because the market manager knows how to get people passionate about what they do. One of the great parts of my job is that I get to visit the markets. When you walk in, you can feel that excitement, a buzz running through the building.

They also have the discipline to plan and execute on their priorities. They help sales managers, programming, the business office establish priorities for their job. They have the discipline to do that themselves, but also hold others accountable.

And you can’t ignore that the great market managers deliver results. It’s very important to them. We have managers that I have to talk down sometimes when things aren’t going the way they want them. They are passionate about their drive to deliver results, and you have to love that. You don’t have to worry about that individual. If they have talented people, and the discipline to plan and execute, a great environment, and driving results is important to them, you don’t lay awake at night wondering what are they going to do. You know they will get it done.

Finally, they have to have fun and be willing to laugh and enjoy themselves. We don’t want stiffs running things, because you can’t have a great work environment. We are in a fun business. I would contend great managers in any industry like to laugh and have fun. Just because you’re having fun does not mean you’re not holding people accountable and driving for success. A stern face is not the requirement to have success. If you put all those things together, you have a great leader.

Radio Ink: What goals have you set for yourself and CMG for the next few years?
Hendrich: My Jacksonville office has no windows, so I can put stuff on the wall. I’m looking at it now. For my goals: How do I understand listener data, big data, and how to use it to impact our advertising buys? Big data has finally found its way into radio advertising sales. I know it’s possible now to take your digital audience and what you know from them and map it onto your over-the-air audience and truly provide addressable audiences for clients, and really understanding that — it’s a game-changer.

If I can take our company there, in a year from now it’s a completely different sale. Ultimately, you are truly selling integrated campaigns. I try to understand video. You hear that’s where the highest CPMs are. Radio has not figured out how to capitalize on video yet. And yet our stations do a lot of video, like at concerts, events, and performances. Podcasting is another area that fascinates me. I went to the podcasting summit in New York to listen to what’s going on in that space.

I’m going to Podcast Movement. There’s something there. More and more, those people are becoming stars, and it’s similar to radio: There are a few superstars and a whole lot of mid-level players, and then there are some bad ones in each. But audiences are getting there, and once they figure out how to track listening to commercials in downloaded podcasts so that it can become attributable, and they can understand it, I think more money will flow into podcasting. I believe there are a lot of people trying to figure that out. When they do, I want us to be there. We are in a learning phase. We are trying to figure it out and decide how we navigate there.

Congratulate Bill Hendrich for setting goals and hitting them out of the park to become one of Radio’s 40 Most Powerful people in the entire industry at [email protected]

1 COMMENT

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here