Sales Spotlight: Emily Grillo, Bold Gold Media

Emily Grillo is General Manager & Director of Sales at Bold Gold Media Group, operating in the Pocono Lake Region of Pennsylvania. A 2023 Radio Wayne Award finalist and a 2024 Best Managers in Radio honoree, Emily is a graduate of Scranton University who joined Bold Gold Media Group in 2012.

What motivated you to enter the radio industry?

Emily Grillo: I worked in publishing for 11 years after college. I knew of Bold Gold Media: It has a great reputation, and I knew some of the folks who were some of its major players. It was the company’s reputation and its leadership team that was the real draw for me.

What are some of the biggest challenges you have faced in this industry? How did you overcome them?

Emily Grillo: The workforce has been a challenge, and salespeople especially have been a huge challenge. I finally have a full team, which has taken me five years to perfect. I have many gray hairs now, and I attribute every single one to the search for the perfect team.

It’s so hard to find reliable people who want to work for commission or partial commission, and I think you start selling the position so much that you’re taking people who don’t truly want to be here and do this right.

You want people who want to be here, make money, and work for commission because they know the value of what they can do for themselves and your company. For me, it’s changing the hiring mindset, which has become tedious. I was replacing a salesperson every single year.

I finally have a full team. They’re wonderful. They love to be here. Even some of the newer staff are getting it, and they’re getting it quicker than anybody I’ve hired in that period.

Challenge number two is changing the thought process on radio. We have all these emerging technologies, like social media, and everyone thinks they are the best new thing, the place to put all their money.

It’s challenging to keep the dollars we have and then grow them. We’re doing our best to capture digital dollars and educate our listeners and the public about what a great resource radio is, how localized it is, and that our Nielsen and streaming numbers are not waning. They are absolutely staying the same or even gaining, depending on the time of year.

We must continue to preach the good word. Legacy media has been so effective for our advertisers and a great resource for all our listeners. We’ve not been great at singing our own praises, but I think we’ve had to learn to do that, and we’ve been effective.

We’re always strategizing on how to continue growing listenership and engaging with younger audiences. One of our cool initiatives, which is still in its infancy, is working with local schools to get a student reporter for our news. We have three local schools with reporters who send us news stories.

We’re seeing some superstars. We had a wonderful intern this past summer, and we’re meeting really cool kids who have different interests and can report on different things. This is also sparking interest not only in the students but also in their friends.

What is the role that your stations have in their respective communities?

Emily Grillo: There is no daily newspaper in our neck of the woods because my stations are in a rural area. So we serve as the daily news source for so many people. My DJs are community members, and they’re going to and talking about events. They have relationships with advertisers and nonprofits. They’re the catalyst for getting the word out in the community about things that are going on, like the electronic recycling that the YMCA is doing and the soup kitchen at the local church.

We also excel at communicating all the wonderful things going on in the community that might not necessarily have a voice. I think that’s also been beneficial to our listeners because where else are you going to find it? You’re going to find it on your local stations.

Local news is so critical, particularly during times of disaster. There is also the matter of trust.

Emily Grillo: Absolutely. We have that relationship with our listeners. I certainly am lucky to have DJs and people in our news department who are from the community and have good relationships with our listeners. They’re not traveling here from far-off places or broadcasting from California. They are local people who participate in local things and know the local area.

Local is what we do best. It’s really important for people who don’t know about the area: If you want to find out what’s happening, listen to the radio.

What advice would you give to young women interested in pursuing careers in radio, particularly in positions similar to yours?

Emily Grillo: Work hard, believe in yourself, do your best, and believe in yourself. That really goes a long way.

When I started in radio almost 13 years ago, there were no women in management positions. Now, our group has three managers, two of whom are women.

Radio is a difficult industry: You’re dealing with salespeople and talent, and you’re walking a fine line. You must always be forward-moving in all your decisions; you can’t go back. We’re in media, and we have this challenge of staying relevant all the time. You can’t overthink things, but you must also make decisions that will help the company move forward.

Where are things headed for women in radio sales over the next five to ten years?

Emily Grillo: The most successful people on my sales team are women. Women are good at what they do. They are multi-taskers. They are consistent. They show up. I had this conversation with one of our advertisers. She runs a farm and garden store, and her women [employees] always show up. They’re on time, they always look neat and clean, and they’re ready to work. They hit the ground running. Women are hard workers; success can be at your fingertips when you work hard. My top salesperson is a woman, and she’s crushing it. She always crushes it because she always shows up on time. She always puts in the effort. She always does the homework: She is great at doing CNAs. Effort pays off.

What are your current short- and long-term goals?

Emily Grillo: There’s always the process of growing revenue: Digital and radio. We also have to ensure that we continue to engage listeners, which is super important, and because we are smaller local stations in an unrated market, we have to do our best to do so all the time.

So, my short-term goal is to continue to grow our products and listenership; I would also say that that’s a long-term goal because those are crucial elements of this job and media.

We’re always trying to devise creative ways to reach different demographics, not just for listenership but also for advertising. We are doing, for the first time this year, a breast cancer walk, and my cousin has been diagnosed with breast cancer. The company does many wonderful things where they raise money, but we haven’t done anything specifically for women who are afflicted with breast cancer. I know that men also can have breast cancer, but it’s important for me as a woman to make sure that we’re also doing something for women.