Go Design Go - How to become the next TV design star 2

 
 11 May 2016
 
 
 Want to break into the TV design-star business? Well, you can—Stephen Viscusi is sure of it.
 
 During the DCH Spring Market (http://godesigngo.com/events/dch-spring-market-2016-keynotes/), Stephen—a TV personality, author and headhunter—shared his secrets to becoming the next design celebrity. Special guests Nina Magon and Bill Stubbs (William W. Stubbs & Associates (http://www.wwstubbs.com/)) also shared their wisdom and experiences.

Stephen started off the afternoon keynote by describing how easy it is to tap into social media. “Social media is equal to television,” he said. And it’s easier: Just create a YouTube channel and enlist your intern (or your son or daughter) to make the videos.
 
 Aside from getting yourself known, it’s essential to know what is actually driving your mission to get on TV. “Why do you want the exposure? Why are you doing this?” he asked. “You could just be an egomaniac like me—who always wanted to be on TV—or you could really want to extend your brand and business.” Stephen, not a designer himself, pointed out: “Everyone wants the designer who has been on TV.”
 
 In order to get to the design-star level, you have to be comfortable with things not always working out. “Sometimes I’ll tape a segment or be on a show and it will never air,” he mentioned. “You can’t go away from the situation annoyed, because [producers] will remember that nice guy who wasted five hours in makeup, and they’ll call you back: It’s all about attitude.”

Unlike Stephen, Nina, a designer, hadn’t always wanted to be on TV. It wasn’t until her second child was three months old that she woke up thinking: I want to be on TV. I want to be a movie star. So she drove to Austin to try out for HGTV Design Star. She made it through rounds of auditions before being eliminated. “Then three months later, I got a call from another production company to try out for an NBC  show because my sizzle reel had been floating around from the first auditions,” she recalled. “So I went to Austin with these dreary memories of being eliminated, but on the spot, I was told I would 100 percent be on the show.”
 
 For two years following that promise, Nina was back and forth on the phone with the network—sending information and photos of her work—until she got a call telling her that she would be flown to Los Angeles to film American Dream Builders. Nina was a semi-finalist on the show, and now gets one call per month asking her if she’s interested in taping a new show.

Bill was most interested in being a well-known designer, and he knew getting media exposure was the route to take. “I was always looking for some way to promote my business, and it turns out that I was good at that,” he said. “Every day, all of these editors and producers are looking for stories, so if you deliver one and set it on their lap, they are going to use it.”
 
 “If you want to be on Great Day Houston, watch it a few times so you understand the DNA of what they do,” Bill urged. Stephen agreed, “You have to watch a lot of television, and then you’ll really see what makes people celebrities.”
 
 “You may be the fascinating person at a dinner party, but if you cannot get on a moving train with your speech—that’s what television is,” Bill said. “You have to get on a train that’s only three or four minutes long, so the energy has to already be there from the first word.”
 
 Bottom line? Create a captivating promo reel to get yourself—as a brand—out there, and if you hit a bump in the road...keep going!
 
 Check out our recap of DCH Spring Market’s morning keynote: Barry Dixon on converting your surroundings into design.