IAM989- Author Makes Headlines Shine

Tom Madden is the quintessential “PR man.” Telling him to stop publicizing, inventing products like his Knife and Forklift™ that helps you to exercise while eating, and writing articles, blogs, and books is like telling the government to stop spending money—pointless. His popular blog is called MaddenMischief. Madden’s rise in the world of media started at The Philadelphia Inquirer before he served as Vice President of NBC under then-CEO Fred Silverman. After departing NBC, Madden launched his own award-winning public relations firm, TransMedia Group, in 1981 which is now celebrating its 40th year in business in 2021. The firm is now based in Boca Raton, Florida, and has offices worldwide.

• CEO Hack: Avoiding mistakes other people make
• CEO Nugget: Listen and see where someone is coming from and their feelings so you can help them effectively
• CEO Defined: Father of the organization

Website: https://maddenmischief.com/

https://www.transmediagroup.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TransMediaGroup/

Books on Amazon: Love Boat 78 Paperback – March 3, 2020

Enough Brady in Trump Paperback – January 1, 2017

Full Interview:

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Transcription

 

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00:11 – Intro

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gretch values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I Am CEO podcast.

00:39 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast, and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Tom Madden of Transmedia Group. Tom, it's awesome to have you on the show.

00:48 – Tom Madden

Hey. It's great to be here. Great to talk to you.

00:50 – Gresham Harkless

Definitely. Super excited to have you on. And before we jump in, I want to read a little bit more about Tom so you hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. Tom Matt is the quintessential PR man, telling him to stop publicizing and inventing products like his knife and forklift that help you to exercise while eating and writing articles, blogs, and and books is like telling the government to stop spending money. Pointless. His popular blog is Madden Mischief, and Madden's rise in the world of media started at the Philadelphia Inquirer before he served as vice president of NBC under the then CEO Fred Silverman.

After departing NBC, Tom launched his own award-winning public relations firm, Transmedia Group, in nineteen eighty-one that is now celebrating its fortieth year in business in twenty twenty-one. Congratulations. The firm is now based in Boca Raton, Florida and is and has offices worldwide. He is the author of the new book, Worldshine Man as well. Tom, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:45 – Tom Madden

I sure am.

01:47 – Gresham Harkless

Well, let's do it. Let's do it. Way. So, to kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit here. A little bit more on how you got started and how you started doing all the awesome work you're doing now.

01:57- Tom Madden

Well, I started in, PR actually, when I left the newspaper world. I was a reporter at the Philadelphia Inquirer for several years. And, then I got greedy and I wanted to get, make more money. So I went into, network television and I worked myself up to number two at NBC in New York and, had those adventures and they were fun and, very scary, but, very, lucrative and so forth. But then I left there and started this business Transmedia Group. Our first clients were some of the largest companies in America at the time, like AT and T. I did work for the city of New York, and all kinds of other clients Kellogg's in Battle Creek, Michigan, the serial maker and I coach the CEOs of those companies, to get up in front of cameras and be very, very effective.

And I and I arranged them for them to have a lot of media appearances and so forth. But then they were difficult times for these companies because AT and T at the time were going through a divestiture. They were being forced by the Federal Trade Commission to, give up their operating companies and become smaller companies. And, so I helped them through that very difficult time, got them on a lot of television shows and, and, and, and took them, and took the CEO at the time whose name was Charlie Brown, believe it or not, Charlie Brown. That was his name. And I helped Charlie Brown, make a strong case that AT and T are going to be better than they ever were and so forth. Although it was a, it was a crushing blow for AT and T.

So, we put a good spin on it and that's what the business is all about. Putting these good spins on sometimes even bad news. It's called crisis management. And I do a lot of that and I've helped a lot of businesses through some very difficult times through the crisis management. So, PR is the, is what I have been doing all these years successfully making a lot of people very wealthy because there's nothing like exposure. I mean, if you don't know about somebody or their products, how are you going to buy them?

How are you going to support them? So, it's the exposure that comes not from pounding on your chest advertising. It comes from third parties like the media, like something like we're doing right here. Like, I mean, you're interviewing me. I'm talking about my company. And, it was different than me putting an ad out there and just, you know, beating my ass saying how wonderful we are and so forth. So, I mean, this has more credibility, and it's more effective. And we've helped a lot of companies, prosper.

04:54 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. That makes so much sense. I appreciate you for sharing that because I think I often say the name of the game is all about being found, all about visibility, and to get that visibility, especially where other people are pounding your chest instead of you pounding your chest, that helps out as far as, like, building that that know, like, and trust and all those things that help people want to support businesses and organizations and continue to kinda frequent and patronize them?

05:18- Tom Madden

So, on the side, I write books. I, I've written, five books so far. My fifth is titled Wordshine Man. And that's coming out next month and it'll be on Amazon, in bookstores, and so forth. And, it's very close to my business book because I've become a word-chime man. And let me tell you what a word shine man does. We used to polish boots and shoes. They were called shoeshine men. And that was okay. Now what I'm discovering in my PR business, is that we bring in younger people who are bright as hell, and motivated as hell, but they don't have the facility for writing that a guy like me over the years has acquired.

So I look at their press releases and my daughter, Adrianne, says to me, Dad, can you polish this release? And the word polish became part of the things that I was all communication. So I became a polisher. Then I came up with the word shine, man. So that's what I do. I make words, sentences, paragraphs, headlines shine. So you wanna read them. You get involved in them. They interest you. They're effective. And that's what a lot of people have trouble doing these days. And that is written effectively. Yeah.

They could send a quick, text and they're very rapid with the thumbs, and boy, they're good with that kind of short message. But if you wanna come down to a compelling press release, that's gonna get the attention of editors, producers, and people like yourself, you're gonna get their attention. You better be able to shine a little bit. Shine that that first opening, you know, headline, that headline better grab. And that's what I do. I make headlines grab. Now I'll read you a very short thing. The book starts with a little poem.

07:31 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah.

07:31 – Tom Madden

And I wrote the lyrics to it and I go real fast here because I think it, it says sums up the book very well.

07:38 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah.

07:38 – Tom Madden

It says once shoes, now words need polish. Here comes the word shine, man. And here are the lyrics. It's gonna be a hit song one of these days. I don't have the music yet, but, maybe one of your audience, is good and write some music. Here are the lyrics I wrote. You want words to tell her you love her, but not so many that'll smother? Here's what I advise you, brother. Go see the word shine man. Once scuffed dirty shoes needed polish, nowadays it's words won't shine. So I tell you, bro, consult a word pro.

Go see the word shine, man. A magician with words is he. Reels him out with glee, not free. You slap some grease in his hand and he's yours, the word shine, man. The prose he comes up with will simulate. She'll know you're her number-one fan. Never too late for love to percolate. Go see the word shine, man. That's gonna be a big song one of these days.

08:48 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit. And, I wanted to ask you about what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

09:01 – Tom Madden

It comes down to the experience, and I've had all kinds of successes and disasters. I mean, you have to make mistakes if you're gonna learn. If you have, then you can avoid mistakes that others make. So, being in this business so long, being sending so many messages out, I've gotten to learn what kind of works and what is not gonna work. And I try to convey that to the staff and so forth. They look upon me as a very seasoned experienced guy and, and they're, they wanna know what I think of what they do and their what they how they write it. So it's good. And I think we make a lot of progress that way, and that's what the book is about. It's got a lot of before and afters. I dealt with real situations where somebody wrote a press release or a headline or something, and that was the before.

09:59- Gresham Harkless

Yeah.

09:59 – Tom Madden

And then I simply added some of my experience to it and made it an after. And then after and my staff, especially the interns, you know, we get these college interns and they are amazed at what can be done by just moving some words around, making things a little shorter, tighter, so many things you can do with words, keeping shorter words, active words, and, and you'd be surprised how you can improve, the effectiveness of writing.

10:37- Gresham Harkless

I guess I want to get a little bit more, I guess, from you or the book or a combination of both. Could you give us, like, what I call a CEO nugget, which is like a word of wisdom or piece of advice? It could be around words or something that we can take away so that we can be better wordsmiths or be something like the word John Mann.

10:54 – Tom Madden

One of the most important things is something that is a kind of a lost, or an art that's sort of ebbing away, and that is listening. And you, you want to help somebody, you better first listen to them and see where they're coming from and see what they're thinking and what their feelings are and so forth. Then you could be much more effective, I mean, you go to a doctor, and he doesn't start prescribing. He starts to check you out and listening is a way of starting a process and understanding where somebody has to come to, where they are starting from, and their starting point.

So, that's what I've gotten pretty good at over the years is kind of just listening to people. I listen to how they speak. I listen to what they're interested in. I listen to what excites them, and so forth. And this all goes into the equation of, prescribing, something for those, young people who want to be communicators. So that's a very important starting point. And then, of course, there's a delicacy here in terms of teaching without being destructive.

12:08- Gresham Harkless

Yeah.

12:08 – Tom Madden

That's an art too. I mean, you wanna be able to tell people they're way out of line with their words, and yet do it in a way that's not gonna discourage them and make them excited about progressing to a higher level. And that's, that's an art too. I mean, you gotta be able to teach without being destructive. So those are a couple of things, over the years I've picked up on, and I think that makes me a fairly effective, leader.

12:43 – Gresham Harkless

I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question. You work with so many CEOs, entrepreneurs, and business owners and and led so many. So I wanted to ask you, what does being a CEO mean to you?

12:53 – Tom Madden

There's a fatherly aspect to being a CEO. I mean, you, you become sort of like the father of an organization, and what do fathers do? I mean, yeah, they want their, their children, their young people to carry the ball and be in the sport and so forth. And you can coach them from the sideline and so forth. So I think that's, that's what it entails, that kind of leadership from the side and, let people feel that they're progressing and not just following a leader, I want to instill leadership in everybody so we can have a lot of leaders, within an organization. So I don't believe in just establishing a kind of authoritarian rule over an organization. I want everybody to aspire to leadership, you know, and that's, that's sort of the goal here. And if you could do that, well, you're gonna have a powerful company.

13:57 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I appreciate that. I'm a big believer, just as you said so well that true leaders create more leaders and empower the people on their team just as you said parents are doing and being on the sideline and cheering on, providing support, whatever it might be for those people, within the organization to be leaders. So, Tom, truly appreciate that definition. I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is just pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know, and, of course, how best they can get a hold of you, get a copy of the book, and find out about all the awesome things that you're working on.

14:30 – Tom Madden

I mean, the book, Word Chime Math, it's my fifth. It'll be out. You can get and find it on Amazon and in certain bookstores around the country. And, I hope you enjoy reading it and get something out of it because I put a lot into it and I think it's useful to read and even to share with the other others in your family and so forth. So that's coming out.

And, as far as, the business, well, we're finally passing through this pandemic and things are gonna get back to semi-normal again. And, but it's interesting how we have progressed in these zooms and this kind of virtual, world that we're in right now. And so it has brought us into another era. I think it's made us all, better communicators in a lot of respects. So we've learned something from this horror and, hopefully, we can use now more power in our communications.

15:36] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Absolutely. Well, no. I appreciate you for helping so many people do that. We will have the links and information in the show notes as well too, so that everybody can get a copy of the book, and hear about all the awesome things you're doing. And I appreciate you hopping on the show and providing so much wisdom because I think so many times we forget that to be successful, a lot of times we stand on the shoulders of giants, so to speak. And as you said, you put a lot into that book, but I know you put a lot into the work that you've done that led to that book. So I appreciate you for sharing so much of your knowledge and expertise and, of course, taking time out today, today, and I hope you have a great rest of the day.

16:08 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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