The Recipe

Three boring habits, and why they still work.

One of the most common questions I get about a career in our industry is some version of the same thing.

What’s the recipe? What has been the key for you?

For many years I thought this was a very complicated question. Hard to answer. Everybody is different, every path is different, and that part is still true.

But over the years I have noticed three ingredients. Three habits I have practiced myself and watched in people who built careers worth watching.

I am not telling you that if you nail these three you will be successful overnight. Success means different things to different people. But if you get these three right, you are already most of the way to a satisfying career in broadcasting. The lows will still come. The highs will still come too. These three just tilt the math in your favor.

Here they are.

1. Kindness, even with the jerks

You have to be kind.

The easy part is being kind to kind people. Anyone can do that. The hard part is being kind to the difficult ones.

You already know what I mean. Along the trip, you are never going to find only nice people. You will find a lot of difficult ones. They will be your teammates, your clients, your suppliers, your boss, the people working under you.

If you are kind to all of them, you are one step ahead of almost everyone in this business.

Kind does not mean you accept being mistreated. Kind means you treat everybody with respect, regardless of how they treat you.

It sounds like a cliché. I promise you it is not common.

2. Showing up when you do not feel like it

There will be days you do not want to go.

When you are young and starting out, you will ask yourself, why did I get into this, why didn’t I pick another path.

When you are older and deeper in the industry, you will think, I just want to stay home today, it is raining, I am a little sick, nothing important happens if I miss this one production.

Those are the days you have to show up. Especially those days.

Because if you get there on time, prepared, maybe a little earlier than expected, you are already ahead of many, many people who decided that day was the one they could skip.

And showing up is not only physical. Showing up is answering the question someone asked you. Finishing the task you said you would finish. Being present in the meeting. Talking about the things that did not go well, not only the things that did.

All of that is showing up.

3. Learning when you think you already know

It is so tempting, the longer you spend in this business, to feel that you already know.

The better the camera operator gets, the bigger the games they get called for. The more experienced the audio engineer, the more important the production. The more the commentator climbs, the more it feels like there is nothing left to learn.

That feeling is the trap.

No matter where you are in your career, keep learning. Keep the attitude of someone who has just started. That alone puts you ahead of the people who decided they had mastered their role and stopped.

There is always someone better than you. And even if you have truly mastered your role, there is always an adjacent skill, an area next to yours, something that complements what you already do well.

This matters more than ever in the era of AI. Tools today let you do things that used to require a specialist in the room. You are never going to be the editor, the colorist, the designer. But you can put things into practice now that, just a few years ago, were not possible without that specialist on the call sheet.

So keep the learning attitude. Especially when you think you do not need it anymore.

The boring secret

That is it. That is my recipe.

Kindness. Showing up when you do not feel like it. Learning when you think you already know.

For those of you who have been in this business a long time, this might sound like a self help book. And yes, it is. The recipe for a career in broadcasting is a boring secret. We all know it. Very few practice it.

The ones who do, consistently, are the ones who pull ahead.

I see it every week.

Which of the three do you find hardest to keep up, year after year? Reply and tell me, I read every one.

Take care out there.

Oscar S.