I finally feel like I can talk about this now that it's all said and done, so let me tell you the story of how a TV producer randomly contacted me one day...
A couple months ago, on October 1st, I received a message through my Youtube channel that said:
"Hi Debbie! My name is ______ I am a producer with the Dr. Oz show. I watched your nurse song video and loved it! I would love to talk to you about a segment that I am working on. Can you please call me at your earliest convenience?" She then left me with her number.
HUH??
My first thought was that this was a scam. This was NOT real. So I googled her name and looked her up on twitter. Turns out she truly was a Dr. Oz producer who had previously worked on other major television productions. This was the real deal. Meanwhile, she also found me on twitter and sent me another message to contact her.
Ah!!!
So unsure of what was happening I called the number she had left me in the first message. And this is what she told me.
The Dr. Oz show was doing a "Nurse Search" competition where they were searching the nation for a nurse to join their team of core experts. Apparently, they had received thousands of video entry submissions from nurses all over the country and so far, they hadn't found what they were looking for yet. So, they took to Youtube to see if they could discover any interesting nurses there.
Well, she told me on her first search of "funny nurses", she came upon my youtube video of a song I wrote in college and performed with my roommate like 7 years ago, and checked out my Youtube channel with my other songs. She told me she thought I would be a great candidate for the nurse search competition and that she wanted me to submit a video singing a song on my guitar about why I would be a great candidate for one of the core experts on the show.
Ok. Wow. ...Well hey! Why the heck not!? So, long story short, I ended up writing a whole new little jingle about being a nurse and emailed it to her.
A couple days later, I got another call telling me I was going to be on the show that coming Tuesday! They were going to pay my way up to New York City and my hotel room in Manhattan. They told me they were probably going to have me sing a whole new song that I would come up with on my guitar - that I would sing on NATIONAL TELEVISION as one of the nurse search candidates. AH!! Wait, What?!
Ok, breathe. Juuuuust breathe. My thoughts were this: Terrified, excited, and honestly perplexed as to how I got myself into this situation! I didn't ask for this and to be perfectly honest, I probably never would have applied to nurse search on my own. But because I was ASKED to do it, I felt like this was a once in a lifetime opportunity that I couldn't pass up! Why not just see what happens, and take things one step at a time? I said to myself.
So immediately I went to work on another song and came up with something for the show.
Well, spoiler alert! This is where the story gets pretty anti-climactic...
I got another call a few days before I was going to go in for the show. They apparently needed more time to prep for it. I was told there wasn't enough turn around time from the last show. So they said they would re-schedule me for a couple more weeks.
Well, sadly, that never happened! Of course I could never know exactly what went wrong, but in the end, other candidates and ultimately another nurse core expert was chosen. And that's the end of the story, haha.
Now that it's all said and done, I have to say, I really am grateful for the experience, even with how it all turned out! I learned and gained some good things, and like I said, it's not something I ever asked for or even wanted - it was just kind of an amazing opportunity that fell on my lap one day. Which is just crazy!
One thing I did find incredible that I wanted to pass on to you was that if you have your work out there in the universe, you just NEVER know who might see it. So for all you who have a passion for your craft - if you are doing it anyway, you might as well get it out there!! Submit your writings to agents and publishers, Sell your artwork on Etsy or wherever you can, put your videos on Youtube (as long as they aren't embarrassing Ok (:), share your talents with others! Because who knows? You just might have a producer randomly contact you one day, and give you an opportunity you never would have had otherwise. :)
