Back in 1983, and having been fired from seven previous jobs, Rush Limbaugh was a public relations man for the Kansas City Royals baseball team. He was admittedly scraping by on $18,000 a year…buying convenience store snacks on a credit card that was near its limit.

Only ten years later Limbaugh’s talk radio audience was the largest in the world. To transform himself from local radio host to national star, Limbaugh had to disprove conventional wisdom over and over again.

He was looking to host a national show, but the powerful ABC radio network had just launched nationally syndicated talk shows that had flopped. So no one wanted to try again with this unknown guy from Missouri.

Limbaugh had no studio, no satellite, no sales force, and no staff. But believing his message and style were unstoppable, he made an irresistible barter offer to a local station in New York.

He would do a one-hour local show for zero salary in return for the use of their facilities for his dreamed of national show. They agreed, and he subsequently built an audience of 16 million listeners–making him the number one listened-to radio personality in the USA.

In October, 2001, Limbaugh signed an 8-year contract for $250 million. Moral of the story: You never know how far your barter efforts will take you!

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This entry was posted on Monday, April 14th, 2008 at 12:30 pm and is filed under Best & Brightest Barter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.