Snappy radio interviews and lessons learned
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 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 1 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!
So, over the past 24 hours, we developed a little story/narrative/question answer that perfectly captures A Groundhog Career, while being appropriate as an answer to 100s 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 maximizing 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 it 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.
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