How Professional Pestering™ Helped Me Become a Channel 7 Presenter

It has been a year and a half since my last confession.

Sorry, I mean blog post.

And golly gosh do I have some news.

The biggest update? I signed on with Channel 7 as a lifestyle presenter across Weekender and Creek to Coast.

Guys.

It happened.

I set out to achieve a ridiculously big goal and somehow, against all odds and several moments of questioning my own sanity, I actually did it.

I've always been a goal-setter. I love a vision board. I love a spreadsheet. I love dramatically declaring what I'm going to achieve and then immediately wondering why I've made life so difficult for myself.

But this one felt different.

This was theeeeee goal.

The scary one.

The one that felt just far enough out of reach that it almost seemed irresponsible to say out loud.

Yet here we are.

So how did it happen?

I call it Professional Pestering™.

Professionally speaking, the formula was pretty simple.

I asked the question: "Hey, can I join the show as a presenter?"

Then I made sure I stayed vaguely front of mind. Not annoyingly front of mind. Not sending-follow-up-emails-every-Tuesday-at-9:02am front of mind.

Just enough.

I sent my presenter reel each year to the people making casting decisions. Once a year. That's it.

There's a line between persistence and becoming a nuisance and I was very determined not to discover where that line was.

Then I made sure that if an opportunity ever did appear, I'd be ready for it.

That meant continuing to develop my skills, improve my reel, gain more experience and keep showing up for myself long before anyone else was showing up for me.

But there's a part to all this I don't think people talk about enough.

The human part. Stay with me here...

Everyone hates networking. Or at least they think they do.

Personally, I think networking has a branding problem.

When people hear the word networking, they picture awkward conversations, forced small talk and people desperately trying to collect business cards they'll never look at again. Yuck.

What if we called it something else?

What if we called it making friends?

Because that's genuinely how I've approached most of my career.

Not "Who can help me?"

Not "What can I get from this person?"

Just genuine curiosity about other people.

Building relationships, being kind, keeping in touch, cheering people on, being someone others enjoy having around... and most of all, just being authentically me.

It sounds almost too simple, but I honestly believe being a good human will take you much further than trying to strategically manoeuvre your way into someone's orbit.

And if I'm being completely honest, that's probably the real reason this opportunity happened.

Yes, I asked the question. Yes, I stayed visible. Yes, I worked on my skills.

But I also spent years building genuine relationships with people I genuinely liked.

The professional strategy opened the door.

The human strategy made people want to open it.

So what's the takeaway?

Ask the question, send the email, make the phone call.

I know there's someone you've been thinking about contacting.

I know there's an opportunity you've convinced yourself is probably out of reach.

Do it anyway.

The worst thing that can happen is they say no.

The best thing that can happen?

Well...

Sometimes you end up writing a blog post about joining Channel 7.

Jackie xx