Laying Lemons - Snappy radio interviews and lessons learned

The Missed Opportunity

We’ve all been there.

You get a call on Wednesday asking if you’re available to do a radio interview with a great business-focused program on the following Saturday.

Of course, you say yes.

Great opportunity to talk about the forthcoming book… A Groundhog Career.

It’s early Austin, TX time. You’ve just flown back from California. You have to rush to Houston later in the day. But it works. It has to work.

On Friday night… you realize you haven’t really prepared. So, you speed-read the book for the 100th time. You make some notes. You rehearse two or three snappy comments. When you get asked “So what’s the new book about?” you know what to say.

The morning arrives. You set up on your laptop. There is a whole thing about syncing headphones to ensure no echo. You feel really professional.

Then the interview starts… it goes on… it finishes.

At the end you realize that you didn’t use any of your snappy comments. You didn’t even summarize the book. Sure, you had a great conversation about careers, AI, and 2025 resolutions. But… but… what a missed opportunity to plug the book. And your general commentary on careers doesn’t really underscore the years of research and findings you have captured brilliantly… in the book… You forgot. It was all a blur.

As I drove to Houston (2.5 hours in the rain which captured my increasingly despondent mood), my top advisor and number one creative collaborator asked me what was bugging me.

“I had this great opportunity to talk about A Groundhog Career. But I flubbed it. I feel foolish. The thing is, I had rehearsed the answer to the question ‘What’s the book about?’ But I didn’t get asked that question. So, I just didn’t deliver the witty, insightful, substantive answer.”

“Well… that’s the problem right there. You rehearsed an answer to a question. Instead, you need to think about having an answer to any question!”

More evidence if you ever needed it that the real brains around here are not with me. What wisdom!

Sharpening the Message

So, over the past 24 hours, we developed a little story/narrative/answer that perfectly captures A Groundhog Career, while being appropriate as an answer to hundreds of questions:

“Well… here is what we found…. Self-determination requires self-awareness. It’s that simple… and yet at the same time hard to achieve.

- If you feel trapped in your career
- You need to take a Matrix-like RED pill
- The first step is to be clear-eyed about your career and strip away the artificial forces that have distorted your view
- Once you’ve done that you can look inside and start to build a career that maximizes what you find joyful, fulfilling, and compelling.

Our book A Groundhog Career helps our readers work through how to do this. How to recognize the artificial forces and find the sources of your own unique hopes, dreams, and aspirations.”

I may be exaggerating slightly. Bobby Kerr is a great interviewer. He has personality enough to share. His extraordinary enthusiasm carried the 10 minutes of our discussion. There is reason to tune in to listen to Bobby regardless of who he is interviewing.

And, in the spirit of “failing fast and often,” of “breaking eggs to make omelets,” and “learning more from your mistakes than successes,” you have to conclude two things:

1. The outcome was a much better, sharper frame for the next interview.
2. Given my cumulative failures over the years… well… I should be bloody brilliant at something by now.

December Update

We’ve been busy again this month. The main activity has been around launching the publicity for the forthcoming launch of A Groundhog Career.

We’ve worked again with our friend Sally Percy on a forthcoming FORBES article. We have also written pieces for The Sun’s careers section, Entrepreneur, iNews, and Startup Magazine.

We will share the links in next month’s newsletter.

A big theme this month is New Year’s career resolutions. However, the Entrepreneur piece was about what we can learn from Gen Z’s distinctive approach to work.

Of course, David did the Newstalk radio interview which you may have heard about. We hear he is no longer on the window ledge but has been talked down with the help of a lightsabre and the promise of a complex Lego kit.

The best way to keep up to date with Drs. Schuster & Oxley in the news is to follow our website link. We keep this page up to date as new articles are published. We also post this content to our LinkedIn page.

A Look Back on A Career Carol

Talking of our LinkedIn page, throughout December we have been running a series of blogs reminiscing on our writing of A Career Carol. These blogs capture a conversation between Helmut and David where they discuss key moments in A Career Carol’s journey. There are six in total, and the first four are out now:

• Reflections on the A Career Carol project (Post 1)
• A Career Carol – The very first attempt to describe it
• Story... story... story
• Superpowers

Since this is our last newsletter of 2024, let us also take the opportunity to wish you all a great festive month and a happy, healthy, and professionally fulfilling New Year!

Lemons Are Sour – Chirimoyas Are Sweet!

The Dr. Schuster Column

A dear friend has this unwavering ritual of drinking the juice of two lemons with hot water, first thing every morning. The lemons must be freshly squeezed to maintain high levels of vitamin C.

I, meanwhile, prefer the sweet seduction of ripe chirimoyas, with their deliciously soft texture. They can be difficult to get in the UK but are easily found in Spain or Latin America.

In 2020, the BBC reported a scientific study that listed the chirimoya as the most nutritious fruit in the world—high in vitamins A, C, B1, B2 and potassium.

I am not a very binary person and, therefore, like to try new things. However, I am quick to decide what I do or don’t like.

After trying lemon with hot water in my morning routine, I decided that this was not so bad after all. It has proved quite effective at keeping my appetite down, though definitely not as enjoyable as my chirimoyas, which are probably higher in sugar but more indulgent.

As I write, I’m picturing the image—just cut open the chirimoya and scoop the custardy inside with a spoon. However, most of the time now, when I am in Vienna, where lemon and water is on most menus, I include the sour lemon ritual in my morning.

I stick with my principle that most things in moderation are okay; exploring new things and mixing things up is good, and that life is not about either/or, but about enjoying the variety of what life and our planet have to offer.

An Ode to the Power of And

Why do I tell this story and why at Christmas time?

First, my writing partner, Dr. David Oxley, started the newsletter with the lemons. Second, he is of a slightly more binary, more structured disposition than me, which I sometimes love and sometimes hate. This complementary nature of our partnership makes us better writers.

This season sees some of the most polarised months: December is full of spoils, abundance, and little moderation; followed by January, a month of New Year’s Resolutions (dry January, a new fitness membership, better sleep routine, more frugal lifestyle, losing weight, being a better person), many of which don’t even survive to February.

Let me make this final column of the year an ode to a non-binary way of thinking and living—and an ode to the power of AND!

Good solutions to problems are rarely either/or, decisions are often not wholly right or wrong, and people are hardly ever entirely good or bad. Yet, from early on we are forced to take very binary and two-dimensional decisions.

Early in life, most children are educated in a very black-and-white context, without colourful nuances. Parents and guardians tell their children what is good and bad, what is right and wrong. Most schools have a pass-or-fail system, testing pupils with questions that are true or false/right or wrong (and when they’re lucky, they get multiple choice).

College admission processes have strict cut-offs, and normally only good grades on a CV lead to a respectable first job out of university. A person’s upbringing and education supposedly prepares them for a career and the “real world”; however, this is rarely the case.

I was fortunate enough to be raised and educated in a very autonomous and non-binary way and very lucky that my employers have invested a lot in my personal development.

I vividly remember a series of development experiences I was exposed to in the early 2000s, where I internalised four principles that provided so much insight into non-linear and non-binary thinking. More than 20 years later, I still find these immensely useful in my work and personal life, and I hope you find value in them too.

Four Principles

1. Don’t judge
   What we must recognise is that in many instances, there is no absolute truth! This is why having an inclusive approach and diversity of thought in a room, and in your life, is so important for a balanced view of the world and better choices.
2. Don’t make assumptions
   I have found that whenever I catch myself making assumptions that start becoming my “truths and reality,” I challenge these by checking the facts and having a conversation. I find that things normally only go wrong when the right conversation was missed with the right person at the right time.
3. Apply common sense or “Hausverstand” as we say in Austria
   Hausverstand celebrates logic and simplicity above all else. It is the ability to see the simplest possible solution and behave in a reasonable way to make good decisions. Logic matters. Science ought to be taken seriously. Look beyond the complexities and check what is plausible. Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink: The Power of Thinking has a lot to say about this!
4. Learn and move on!
   In life we will consistently make mistakes—there is no getting around it. What’s important is to not let these mistakes unnecessarily hold us back or bring us down. I’ve set a rule of thumb for myself where, if I make a disappointing mistake, I give myself 24 hours and then commit to moving on.

In short, life is not binary. We can have lemons AND chirimoyas.

And in this spirit—have a wonderful Christmas and a happy New Year (and forget about New Year’s resolutions).