Felicia Slattery: What I Learned From My TV Appearances in Knoxville

This summer, my family and I visited my wonderful in-laws in East Tennessee, just south of Knoxville. While I was there I was lucky enough to be a featured in-studio expert.

But luck had nothing to do with it.

For years it had been my dream to get on TV as a featured guest expert. I’d read articles, talked to PR folks, and thought a lot about what I wanted to do and how I might do it.

Whenever I’d see featured guest experts on TV segments, I’d think to myself, “That guy is on there doing it. Why can’t I?”

Here’s why… I wasn’t actually trying to get on TV.

Sure I wanted to get on TV.

I thought about it.

And I did all those things that felt like taking action to get on TV.

But it wasn’t until I took the *real,* meaningful, right actions that included actually writing a segment proposal, planning with my PR coach, Shannon Cherry, figuring out the name of the right person to send the proposal to at each station (no simple task, I tell you!), and picking up the phone to talk to a human being- several of them per station – to get myself scheduled, that things started to really happen for me.

The most interesting part of it all – with all that advance training and preparation, when it came down to rolling up my sleeves and getting booked, it was easy because I knew what to expect, what to say, and what to do once I arrived at the stations. It was easy. Once I took the right actions.

I got booked not just by one station – but by two and appeared two days in a row! That was also pretty cool. I was on the NBC/FOX affiliate and the CBS affiliate. They were both different experiences, too, which I’ll save for another post, but the main lesson I learned was even with all the preparation and ideas, if you don’t take the right actions you never achieve your goals or reach your dreams.

So many people tell me they wish they could be on stage more. It’s their dream to share their message with the world. They take courses and read books, learn on webinars and really think about being on stage. But now, ask yourself, what have you *really* done toward that end?

Do you have your speech ready?

Do you have the description of your speech together, along with the bullets of what your audience will discover?

Have you picked up the phone and spoken to or sent an email to someone who actually plans events and books speakers?

What’s your challenge to getting that together and making it happen for you? Please share in the comments below. I want to help, because I am SO excited to be able to share my TWO videos of the in-station TV interviews from my days on TV and I want YOU to feel just as excited to share your photos and video from your time on stage. Here are my videos now!