From NHL Broadcaster to Agency CEO

I spent a decade on camera before I ever ran a company.

NHL games. Radio shows. Television programs. The kind of work where you learn to connect with people fast—or you fail publicly.

Most people are surprised when they learn about my background. A marketing agency CEO with a broadcasting career? It doesn’t seem like an obvious path.

But almost everything I’m good at in business I learned on camera. I just didn’t realize it at the time.

What broadcasting teaches you

When you’re live on air, there’s no second take. No editing. No “let me think about that and get back to you.”

You say something wrong, a hundred thousand people hear it. You freeze up, everyone sees. You fail to connect with your guest or your co-host or your audience, there’s nowhere to hide.

It’s terrifying. And it’s the best training for business I could have asked for.

Here’s what I learned:

How to read people quickly. When you’re interviewing someone on live television, you have seconds to figure out who they are. Are they nervous? Confident? Do they need to be drawn out or reined in? What’s going to make them interesting?

That skill transfers directly to client work. Every first meeting, every sales call, every relationship—you’re reading the room. Figuring out what the other person needs. Adjusting your approach on the fly.

How to recover from mistakes. I’ve said dumb things on air. Mispronounced names. Asked questions that fell flat. Had technical failures at the worst possible moments.

You learn to keep going. To not let one bad moment destroy the whole segment. To recover gracefully and move forward.

That’s what running a business is. A series of mistakes that you recover from and keep moving.

How to make people feel comfortable. The best interviews happen when the guest forgets they’re on camera. When they relax into a real conversation instead of performing answers.

Creating that comfort is a skill. It’s about listening. About being genuinely curious. About making someone feel like what they’re saying matters.

Clients are the same way. The best work happens when they stop performing and start being honest about their challenges, their fears, their real goals. Creating space for that honesty is the job.

How to think on your feet. Live broadcasting means adapting constantly. The script falls apart. The guest goes off topic. The segment runs long. You have to solve problems in real-time, without showing stress.

Business is mostly improvisation. No matter how much you plan, things don’t go according to plan. The people who thrive are the ones who can adjust without panicking.

The skill I didn’t know I was learning

All of that is useful. But the biggest thing broadcasting taught me is harder to describe.

It’s the ability to make people feel seen.

When I was hosting, my job was to make every interview feel like a conversation. Not a performance. Not an interrogation. A real exchange between two humans.

That meant paying attention. Listening—actually listening—to what someone said. Responding to what they meant, not just what they literally said. Being present instead of just waiting for my turn to talk.

When I started my agency in 2013, everyone wanted to talk about digital strategy. Keywords. Conversion rates. The technical side of marketing.

And I understood that. I learned it. I got good at it.

But I kept coming back to a simpler question: Do our clients feel like we actually care about them?

Not do we deliver results (though that matters). Not do we hit our metrics (though we track those). Do they feel heard? Do they feel like we understand their business? Do they feel like we’re on their side?

That feeling is everything. Clients who feel seen become long-term clients. They refer other businesses. They give you grace when things go wrong. They become partners, not just accounts.

Why I left broadcasting

People ask why I walked away from a successful broadcasting career.

The honest answer is that I saw the future.

In 2013, traditional media was shrinking. Digital was exploding. I could see the trajectory—fewer jobs, more competition, declining budgets. The industry I loved was becoming harder to build a career in.

At the same time, I was watching businesses struggle online. They knew they needed a website. They’d heard of SEO. They saw their competitors on social media. But they had no idea how to put it together.

There was a gap. Businesses that needed help. A skill set I could learn. A market that was growing instead of shrinking.

So I learned. I found mentors. I studied SEO until I understood it. I started taking clients. And slowly, one project at a time, I built an agency.

The broadcasting career gave me the foundation. The digital skills I built on top. The combination became POP INC.

What didn’t transfer

I should be honest about what I had to unlearn too.

Broadcasting trained me to perform. To always be “on.” To project confidence even when I didn’t feel it.

That works on camera. It doesn’t work in leadership.

Running a team requires vulnerability. It requires admitting when you don’t know something. It requires asking for help. It requires letting people see the human behind the performance.

That was hard for me. For years, I led like I was still on camera—always polished, always certain, always in control. It was exhausting. And it kept my team at a distance.

The coaching work I did starting in 2016 was partly about unlearning the performance. Letting myself be uncertain. Being honest about struggles. Showing up as a person, not just a professional.

That shift changed everything.

The throughline

Looking back, there’s a throughline from the broadcasting years to where I am now.

It’s all about connection.

On camera, the job was to connect with an audience. To make people feel something. To hold attention in a world full of distractions.

In marketing, the job is to connect businesses with their customers. To cut through the noise. To make people pay attention long enough to take action.

In leadership, the job is to connect with a team. To create an environment where people do their best work. To build relationships that survive the hard times.

Different contexts. Same fundamental skill.

The tactics change. The platforms evolve. AI is reshaping everything about how people find businesses online.

But the human part? That’s constant.

Making people feel seen. Making them feel heard. Making them feel like they matter.

That’s what I learned in a decade of broadcasting. And it’s what I bring to every client relationship, every team meeting, every business decision.

The rest is just delivery.

Kimberly Biggs is the CEO of POP INC Digital. Before starting her agency, she hosted Ottawa Senators NHL games, worked at multiple radio stations, and created several TV shows. She now uses those communication skills to help businesses grow—and occasionally tells stories about the broadcasting years to anyone who’ll listen.