3 Gifts
Beyond the paycheck.
Three years ago I posted this. Almost nobody read it.
Three years later, every word still holds. With one update I want to be honest about.
A couple of weeks ago a college student from Texas asked me a question almost nobody his age asks.
“What has this industry given you that isn’t the paycheck?”
Below are the three answers I gave him.
1. People you would not meet in any other job.
I am from a small rural town in Costa Rica. The kind of place where the bus comes when it comes and the field gets wet when it rains.
The people I have worked alongside since I left that town are the highlight of this entire career. Camera ops who can read a stadium crowd before the producer sees it on monitor. Engineers who hear a problem in a truck before it shows up on the meters. Directors who carry the entire rundown in their head and still ask how your kids are doing in the elevator.
I am not going to pretend every other profession does not have amazing people in it. Every profession does. But the people this industry put in front of me are a group of friends close to my heart. I would not have met any of them without this job.
When I close my eyes and think about what I will miss most when I am done with this, the gear is not first. The shows are not first. The hotel rooms are not first.
The people are first.
2. Places you would never have seen.
I have worked in more than 75 countries. Every continent except Antarctica.
The kid in that small Costa Rican town did not have a passport until I was 18 years old. The man writing this newsletter has stamps from places he had only ever heard about on the news.
This job took me to my new home in the United States. It took me to live in Switzerland. It took me to live in the Cayman Islands. It put me on flights to cities I would not have spent my own money to visit, and then handed me a free day in the middle of every one of them.
It is not the airports. The airports are mostly the same airport. It is the people you meet inside the gigs, the small markets you eat in after wrap, the corner of the city the production manager warned you not to go to and the local fixer walked you through anyway.
A broadcasting career is one of the only careers I know where the world is the side benefit of the job, not the reward at the end of it.
If your only way out of your hometown is your own pocket, this industry is one of the few that hands you a passport with the paycheck.
3. Tools you used to need to be a millionaire to touch.
This is the one where the 2023 tweet does not hold without an update.
In 2023 I wrote that this industry gives you tools nobody else gets to touch. State of the art trucks. Switchers. Replay machines. Graphics rigs that cost more than the houses I grew up around.
Three years later, that one needs editing.
The tools have been democratized. The trucks did not get cheaper, but the software did. A cloud switcher costs a license fee. A laptop with vMix runs a show. A consumer grade camera, the right encoder, and a monthly streaming subscription give a one person team the kind of multi camera production that used to require a satellite uplink truck and a crew of fifteen.
Yes, a thousand dollars is still a lot of money in many countries. But compare it to the millions the truck used to cost, and the gap closes to almost zero.
So here is the update to the 2023 tweet:
You used to get to touch tools nobody else got to touch. Now you get access to the tools you need to build your career easier than at any point in history.
That second version is better than the first. It is not a flex anymore. It is an invitation.
What I told the student in Texas
I told him the same three things I just told you. People. Places. Tools.
I told him the first two have not changed in twenty years and will not change in the next twenty. The third has changed, and the change is in his favor, not against him.
I told him the loudest voice in our industry right now is telling kids to run. I wrote about that loud voice in TMB #156.
I told him the loud voice is not lying about what is being taken away. But the loud voice is forgetting to mention what is still being given.
The paycheck is one column on the ledger. The people, the places, the tools are the other column. The other column does not show up on the W 2 or the invoice. It shows up everywhere else.
One line I keep coming back to
The paycheck is one column on the ledger. The people, the places, the tools are the other column.
You will not see the second column on the contract. You will see it the rest of your life.
One question for you this week: what is the one person, place, or tool this industry put in your life that you would never have crossed paths with otherwise? Reply and tell me. I am collecting answers for a future edition.
See you next week.
Oscar S.
"You will not see the second column on the contract. You will see it the rest of your life."
Oh, how I love this line. SO true! You are a good writer, Oscar.
"What is the one person, place, or tool this industry put in your life that you would never have crossed paths with otherwise?" The one person is you, Oscar. You are a divine appointment in my life. Crossing paths with you gave me the hope I needed to continue in this industry. You were a man who took time to call me to see how I felt about a job I had taken. You gave me an ear and heard me. These are the type of things you have done for me that no one else did. You always encourage me and counsel me in a way that I feel valued. I thank God for you everyday.
Let me say thank you here, as well.
"People will forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel." — Maya Angelou