I was 14 years old when it happened to me…
I was in the studio audience at The Mike Douglas Show, one of the first talk shows on television, which was filmed in my hometown of Philadelphia. As I sat in the studio audience I spotted a girl on the set with a clipboard. I didn’t know what she did but, she was a woman, she was wearing a headset, she looked busy and in that moment I knew I wanted to do whatever it was she was doing.
I loved being in a TV studio. I loved the smell of the studio, the clicking sounds of the lights, seeing all the action, the feel of the camaraderie of the crew, and the taste of the excitement. I quickly learned that when an environment sucks you in and pleases all five of your senses to make a career out of it. And so that is exactly what I did. I became the Audience Producer for The Oprah Winfrey Show. I was the “Act Before Oprah.” I was the warm-up girl for the show. I had my clipboard, my headset and quickly became very busy! I was Clipboard Girl.
“I quickly learned that when an environment sucks you in and pleases all five of your senses to make a career out of it.”
When did it happen to you? When did something as simple as a smell, a sound or a taste bring you to your knees and make you say “This is IT! This is what I want to do! This is who I AM!” Our five senses are the five main tools we have to perceive the world. And research says that smell is closely linked to our memory and women have a better sense of smell than men do. By the time I had set my sights on what I wanted to be when I grew up, I must have relied on my womanly sense of smell to direct me because I kept finding myself in a TV studio.
As a college student I interned on Capitol Hill covering stories with a stringer service. Then I worked my way to NBC as an intern for one of their first evening magazine shows, NBC Monitor. When I found myself running camera for pledge drives at the local PBS station in my college town I knew I never wanted to leave a TV studio.
I ended up winning a coveted TV internship in Chicago when I graduated and was in a studio every day. And even though I was far from Philadelphia and family, I was home. That same year a woman named Oprah Winfrey was hired to replace the local ABC AM morning show anchor. Two years later, Oprah took her show national and the rest is history. I was lucky to be in the same city at the same time of Oprah’s historic launch and I was hired a year later. Oprah liked my interview suit, I liked her and that’s how it happened for me. The typewriter is a giveaway as to how long I’ve been at this!
“This is what I want to do! This is who I AM!”
Talent is a huge part of making sense of our careers. I could not have gotten my job with Oprah without talent. And I believe talent starts at the beginning. As a young girl I was really good at puzzles and I used to interview my sisters on my reel to reel tape recorder in my basement. As an Audience Producer, seating an audience is like one giant puzzle, a puzzle with people! One empty seat made me as crazy as a missing piece of a puzzle. Entertaining an audience is the interview show I created in my basement with my sisters. I combined my talents with an environment that pleases all five of my senses and VOILÀ – a celebrated career with Oprah!
Choosing your career just doesn’t have to be that complicated. Sometimes we make it complicated. So let’s uncomplicated it! Let’s rely on our senses to lead us to an environment we love where we can use our greatest talent.Put your own answers into the formula: your senses, your talents and your environment you love.This is the one time we don’t have to labor for what we love because the answers are always right there if we are willing to hear them.
It’s important to find your comfort zone. Everyone is different. For some reason I am most comfortable in front of hundreds or thousands of people with a microphone even though the #1 fear Americans have is speaking in public. I’m not normal. I am terrified of everything else, planes, trains, boats, open water, bridges, elevators, getting lost, and self park parking lots. Put me on an escalator with a microphone in front of a crowd and I’m good! I haven’t figured that gig out yet but I’m working on it.
And that’s the key to all of this – work on getting the gig that works for you! You are the only one with your talents, your skill set, your likes and dislikes. You are the only one with your distinct set of smell, sound, taste, sight and touch that pleases you! Don’t waste a second on trying to be anyone else but yourself. Just make sure you are ready with your answers when it’s time to make your career choice. Because if your career pleases your senses, your career will always make sense.
