I Said a Sentence on the Radio

I talked on the radio. I talked on AM radio on a finance show called Street Talk Live. (Read here to find out how this came about.)

I got there fifty-five minutes early because I was so panicked about being late. I do that a lot if I’m nervous about an event. Once, in college, I showed up so early for an exam that the building wasn’t even open and there were still homeless people asleep in the parking garage stairwells.

I passed the time by practicing what I’d say if they let me talk on the radio. I called my husband and was like, “Okay, how’s this? ‘I’m Christina Ledbetter and I write a blog called Just the Assistant dot com.’” That’s really all I had. My husband said it was great. For the rest of the time I tuned in to 700 AM to prepare for my big break. It was a different show than the one I’d be sitting in on. Mostly, I heard people call in and complain about the government, and then the host would make a joke and the caller would laugh and say he hates liberals.

Finally, it was time to go in. David Zugheri (the founder of Envoy Mortgage), sat waiting in the lobby. Dude was so intimidating. I’m kidding. I seriously thought he was going to hug me when we met. He kind of did a start toward one but I stuck out my hand to show that I’m super professional (and I didn’t want to mistakenly start to hug him back and realize he wasn’t going to hug me after all). Then we sat down and I grilled him with my Just the Assistant interview tactics. More on that later this week (I know, you’re dying; just hold your horses).

Ten minutes later one of the radio guys came out. His name is Lance and I think he does important stuff with other people’s money. He was really friendly. I thought it would be a huge deal that I was showing up for this radio show but David was all, “This is Christina and she’s going to sit in on the show today,” and everybody else was all, “Cool!” I thought they’d have to background check me or something.

The next thing I knew, they’re all, “Okay, we’ve got about four minutes until we’re on,” and we all rush into this fancy radio room with microphones and buttons and gadgets and screens and the radio producer has me sit down at a mic and asks, “So are you going to be talking? What are we doing here?”

I literally go, “I was invited to just sit in a chair.” Then I started to sweat. After that, this other man comes in and hands me a set of earphones and they’re all like, “We’re live!” and telling callers the number to call.

These are the hosts telling the callers that they have to pay taxes.

Oh my gosh, they’re live. I’m breathing on the radio. Can they hear me breathing? IPO price – something per share. Gold prices down. Tesla a good car? What the heck are we talking about? Oh no – my stomach just made a noise. Do I have to toot? Please say I don’t have to toot.

And then they introduced me. And I said a sentence! I said, “That’s right.” I was so excited I texted my husband.

This is it. This is when I go viral. While the host and David tried to calm a caller who wanted to know if he could stop paying taxes, I wondered about my blog stats. The host had said the name of my blog like three times. I’m telling you, this is how people go viral. I decided to do a quick check. It looked something like this:

The single hit was from the radio host clicking on my blog so he could read from it. I guess I’ll go viral later this week.

Alright folk(s), stay tuned Thursday to read my interview with the founder of Envoy Mortgage. I promise it won’t be lame (my first question was whether he’s going to let me go on our company’s Circle of Excellence trip next year).

Also, my ole Boss Chad Helmcamp is trying to hijack my blog again. You know what I need to do? I need to give him his own blog so he’ll leave mine alone. Until then, keep reading here (and subscribe on the right if you so fancy). Off to see if NPR needs any help.