pic

The radio waves and wires of AT&T span my life like uncut umbilical cords.

I feel like Ma Bell raised me.

To this day I'1000 nonetheless grateful and steadfastly obedient to my Ma, loyally subscribing to her unseen land lines and ubiquitous prison cell phones.  Anoint her heart, she was my first client in New York after I climbed down from my perilous perch at 30 Rock to start my own PR house, Transmedia Grouping, in New York Urban center.

The valuable lesson I learned from MA is e'er do favors for people considering they'll pay you back in spades.  And any poles yous have to climb in life, climb difficult every bit you can to the top.

While I was however in my perilous perch equally a Vice President of NBC, one busy 24-hour interval a frustrated AT&T executive called me and said he was getting an exhausting run effectually and needed to speak to the right person about our phones.  I looked up our acme exec in charge of telecommunications and gave him the name and his new extension.  He reacted as if he were lost in a desert and I had simply given him compass and a canteen of fresh water.

A couple of years later I had just put my shingle up and I was looking badly for my outset customer.  Then I remembered the AT&T guy and called him equally the company was in turmoil later having to divest its operating companies in settlement of a landmark anti-trust lawsuit.

I told him that as a crisis management expert with lots of fresh contacts at NBC and ABC, I could help AT&T through the firestorm.

Thanks to that AT&T exec I had helped, it wasn't too long before I was invited to lunch nigh AT&T's spectacular, sprawling headquarters in Bedminster, NJ, the urban center where fifty-fifty back then robots delivered the mail and where today President Trump'southward palatial golf order has become a hub of presidential activity.

On that balmy jump twenty-four hours, information technology became the mother of all lunches.  I was lunching with the and then Director of PR at AT&T and his boss, a senior VP of Advertising.  They had heard about me from the guy I had washed the favor for.  They also had read my swan vocal article in TV GUIDE , which mentioned I had started my own PR business firm.

Beautiful Bedminster was the habitation of the mighty AT&T Long Altitude network, the telecommunications nerve center of the world.  They asked me a lot of questions about the inner workings of TV networks where I had been a superlative executive and particularly about my ex-boss, NBC's then CEO, Fred Silverman, whose right hand man I was for several tumultuous years before deciding I'd live a lot longer being my ain boss.

There I was at that momentous lunch having but climbed down from that precipice at thirty Rock.  I had no function still, no assistants, no clients.  I had surrendered my most treasured asset, my NBC credit menu that I used to accuse flights from Paris on the Concorde, and to my children's greatest dismay, I had turned in my supply of VIP passes to Saturday Night Life .  Now having reached the most humiliating phase of my professional person career, waiting for my showtime unemployment check to tide me over until I landed my showtime customer, I was asked how much I wanted to represent . . . the mother of all clients.

I took a long sip of my dry out Martini and blurted out six figures.

Okay, the top guy said, merely could I start right away booking then AT&T chairman Charley Brown on network TV.  That's right, Charley Dark-brown was the name of the top guy who literally started as a pole climber who climbed right upwards to the telecom meridian.

Sure, I said managing somehow not to falter.

Skillful, then nosotros'll send you over a contract on Monday.

That night I told Angela and the kids we were going to sell our Long Island home, motility into the city and open up an function.  Nosotros had landed the mother of all clients–a full-yr contract with AT&T, which it would renew four wonderful times.

And while I got Charley Brown on The Today Evidence, CBS Morning time and lots of other network shows, nosotros added a slew of new clients to our expanding roster, including the City of New York.

I continued to get Charley Brown all the media bookings he wanted.  And then some.

So cheers Ma!  And thanks to that AT&T exec who was lost and wandering the media desert . . . until I did him a favor!

                                                                                                                                                TM