Transforming a Career Setback

Anita Brick: Hi, this is Anita Brick, and welcome to CareerCast at the Chicago GSB to help you advance in your career. Today we're delighted to be meeting with Bill Boggs. He's had a long and illustrious career. As host of the New York–based Midday Live with Bill Boggs, Weekend Today in New York, and the long-running Food Network hit Bill Boggs Corner Table, he has interviewed many of the most notable personalities of our time, including business leaders, cultural icons, presidents, and international leaders in a variety of fields.

Bill has learned a tremendous amount about life and success, which he shares in his book Got What It Takes. Good morning, Bill.

Bill Boggs: Hey, good morning to you. Thank you very much for having me on the cast.

Anita Brick: Oh, it's really great. You know, when you think of all the really mega successful people you've met and interviewed over the years, roughly what percentage would you say have had career setbacks?

Bill Boggs: Everybody. I mean, I think that anybody listening to us right now, from this point forward in their life, they've got to be facing some form of career adversity or personal adversity. There's no question about that. Nobody goes in a straight line all the way up. The nature of the misfortune, of the setback, can vary, but for me, in my life, some of the setbacks I've had, have been the things that really molded me and given me the most fire.

Anita Brick: So what kinds of setbacks have you seen in the people that you've interviewed that you thought were kind of remarkable that they eventually transformed?

Bill Boggs: Diane von Furstenberg really oversold her business and really became marginalized by her own company and came back 10, 15 years later and did it again for the second time. And she's really a fashion icon.

James Blake, who's in Got What It Takes, came down with a broken neck, a case of shingles, and his father died—all at once. And really, people felt, and he felt, that that was the end of his tennis career. And that was a few years ago. And we now know that, you know, James Blake has been back for a few years and has without question emerged as one of the top American players.

I think that Joe Torre, fired from three jobs, unsuccessful manager, was really, truly doubting himself on the eve of his interview with the New York Yankees, thinking, you know, I've got to go in there and tell them I'm going to operate in a different way. I’ve got to change my system; my beliefs as a player, as a manager. And ironically, he's in the gym the day before the interview, and he just happens to be between sets of weightlifting, he picks up a self-help book written by Bill Parcells. The coach just turns to a page, is leafing along, and there's a whole thing there in the book saying, if you have a system, even if you're losing, stick to it.

And Torre sees this sort of like as an epiphany. He takes it as an important sign, goes into the Yankees interview and says, look, I know what I'm doing. I know I've had a losing record. I believe my system will work here, and goes forward. Matt Lauer, who is known internationally now as host of the Today Show, lost four shows in a row, canceled.

I mean, you know, one is bad enough. Four in a row canceled. Down to his last couple hundred bucks. Seriously underemployed, as he would put it. People are saying, you know, maybe you ought to get out of the business. He decides to take a job as a tree trimmer, wearing a helmet in a tree so that people don't see him.

Can't be a waiter, right? Thinks, my God, if they see me as a waiter, I think I'm totally out of the business, but has had the foresight to put together a tape of his very best work. Happily, a television executive named Bill Bolster sees that tape, sees something no one else has seen in Matt Lauer, gives Lauer a call, and Lauer thinks it's the tree-trimming company calling about something, and it's Bill Bolster inviting him to a dinner at 21 to talk about something.

Lauer goes to the dinner, is not desperate, does not try to be something he's never been before. He's never been a news anchor, is totally himself, wins the man over just by being himself. Gets a job at 5 a.m. in the morning being a news anchor, and from that point forward builds on it and becomes the anchor of the Today Show.

So, I mean, there's a few examples of setbacks that are turned around. And, you know, in the book, Dr. Judith Rodin, the former president of my school, the University of Pennsylvania, and now president of the Rockefeller Foundation, says people who don't fail can essentially be successful in life. But usually failures are the fuel that leads to the greatest success.

Something I learned along the way while interviewing people for Got What It Takes.

Anita Brick: Well, one of the things you talk about … sort of the mega business success of Richard Branson. Can you tell us a little bit about the career adversity he had?

Bill Boggs: Well, you know, I'm not an expert on his career. I know that he's had some terrific setbacks in his adventures—in ballooning and failing. He says, you know, I really don't mind if I fail. I expect to fail. And failure is just part of life. It's … part of success is failing.

Anita Brick: Well, what do you think are some specific things that you've seen—though not everybody creates victory out of defeat; we know that. So what are some specific things that you have observed in other people that help them make that transformation?

Bill Boggs: I think that one of the key things that I have felt in my life, I mean, I obviously when I wrote … Got What It Takes was based on interviewing people. I interviewed 44 people for the book, and there were certain key points that I felt needed to be stressed, that I was hoping to get out of some of the interviews with people, and one of them that came out loud and clear is something I've been saying for years: that attitude is a matter of choice, that the way you think about something is within your willpower and your ability to control your thoughts.

And also, I think that it is possible to be willfully optimistic, to literally try to create a mindset that is optimistic and to will yourself to think optimistically. And I think that those characteristics are characteristic of many of the people I interviewed in depth.

Anita Brick: I mean, I understand that, and yet sometimes it's really difficult to muster up even the focus when you feel like you've been beaten down.

Bill Boggs: That's true. You know, there's no question about it that defeat is not a pleasant situation. Adversity is bad. But if you see it as an opportunity for growth, at least you're seeing something positive in it at its lowest point. I had a year, I think it was 1991, where everything seemed to go wrong. I had a job I was working on, I got fired from. Another project fell through. And I was going through my savings—you know, I live in Manhattan; it's expensive to live here. You know, I was just forking over thousands of dollars of savings a month.

And I met this guy whom I had known for a long time, hadn't seen me for … What are you doing? I told him that this ... I mean, you, Bill, are having all these problems?

I said yes, and I'll tell you something. I'm going to look back on this year. I'm going to say this is my finest hour because of the way I dealt with it. And as I look back on it, it was … it wasn't happy a lot of the time, but the fact that I just continued to try to surge forward, and I came out of that situation and reinvented myself, which, as the late cabaret genius Bobby Short said, diversity is crucial for any long and successful career.

Anita Brick: Well, we certainly believe that at the GSB. I mean, diversity in portfolios of any kind are really key. So what was the greatest upside that you experienced from that year of obstacles?

Bill Boggs: Belief in myself. The woman I was living with at that time said to me, you quote, you did that by sheer force of will. She saw me go down, hit the bottom, and come back up within the course of a year and a half. And she said, you did that by sheer force of will. That feels good.

Anita Brick: So are you saying that the greatest upside you experienced was a strengthening and a focusing of your will?

Bill Boggs: The greatest upside I experienced … I would say that having been down a couple of times and then coming back and needing to reinvent myself on my own terms—and by that I mean I, you know, and besides this view of myself here, but I wanted to stick to my guns and follow a certain path of my passion in my life rather than just take a job so I could earn a living, which is quite a luxury.

But we live in a country where potentially one can do that. So I didn't really compromise. I just said, no, I'm staying the course. I'm going to stay in show business; I'm willing to just find another way to use the talent and the gifts that I have. Which—and in fact, the book Got What It Takes is essentially for me personally—and I'd much rather talk about the people in the book than me—is another reinvention of myself.

Anita Brick: How did you have the courage to do that on your own terms, though? Because a lot of people make compromises because they're just scared.

Bill Boggs: I was more scared of doing something that I wouldn't like, and being bored and failing, than sticking to my guns and finding something that would be meaningful to me. I've done things in my life that have been a major effort that have been totally meaningful to me, that have brought me virtually no financial reward. I have a play called Talk Show Confidential, which I opened in March of 2003, and it's still running, although I take the summer off now, at the Triad Theater in New York City.

And Talk Show Confidential—I only do it once a month; for two years I did it once a week—it's really a one-man story. It's a Spalding Gray storytelling story. I really believe in the value of storytelling as a way to get things across to people, and I've not made a dime from this play. In fact, it's cost me money.

But the value of doing it and waking up the next morning saying, whoa, I just did my show. I was on stage for 85 minutes, a one-man show with music, and then there's one other person who does one bit with me in the show, and the letters that I've gotten, the contacts I've made, simply because I've done something artistically interesting to me and very demanding to me—that's a wonderful result.

Anita Brick: So it sounds like you continually stretch.

Bill Boggs: Yeah, I think that's important, I really do. I have a modicum of a gift given to me as a public speaker that was evident to me when I was a child. I was one of the kids who would get up in front of the fourth-grade class and keep everybody's attention by talking to them. At the same time, I was interested in being on television as an interviewer.

My mother said I used to walk around the house with a pencil, pretending it was a microphone, holding it in front of me and interviewing them, you know, so I was able to put a gift together with that childhood ambition and make my dreams come true. And I tried to stick to the basic path of my passion, which has been quite broad; let's say a 32-year career, for 22 of those years I've been on television; other times I've been executive producer of shows.

Now I'm not on television very much, but I'm still interviewing people, which is what I really profoundly love doing. I hope to do a sequel to Got What It Takes. The premise of the book is interviewing a wide range of highly successful people. I mean, we've mentioned some of them. Some of the others, like Tom Perkins, Mark Burnett, Renee Zellweger, Bill O'Reilly … You mentioned Branson, Trump, Bobbie Brown, the makeup woman, Bobby Flay, the chef, Craig Newmark from Craigslist, Bill Bratton, the police commissioner, and on and on and on.

And what I tried to do was to use my interviewing skills, which were developed over many years on television, to probe why these people thought they had been successful. And to organize the book not around the people, but around the wisdom that I got from the people.

That was the essential, defining moment, because I thought, well, I'll do a book and I'll have Jim Cramer, then I'll have Clive Davis, and I'll have Maria Bartiromo, and I'll just follow their story. And after writing, say, the first 40 pages of the book like that and putting it away for a week, because I remember when I went to graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania Annenberg School, and one of the things that was so evident was, you know, in the creative process, objectivity is so difficult to have.

Oh, yeah, put it down for a week. Came back, read it, and I thought, this is boring. I was so filled with doubt, I knew that the concept of talking to and interviewing successful people about their lives would yield great wisdom, but the way I was writing the book was for … and the middle of the night epiphany was, wait a second, you've got great material.

Organize the material, the book around the material, like, so. Have chapters on developing self-confidence, define category, face adversity, use what you've got, how to get hired, the various mindsets of success that people displayed—and to make the book also more like a magazine. Put a lot of things in boxes in bold print, so it's more like … Got What It Takes is more like a cross between a self-help book and a pop culture book.

Anita Brick: Oh, true. You're right, you're right.

Bill Boggs: It's never been a book with celebrities and successful people talking on the record about why they've been successful. Renee Zellweger, for example. I've given her multiple copies of this book. She sent it to all kinds of people. She just loves being in the book, and she never really thought much about some of the things she said to me during the interview.

Anita Brick: Well, I think it's really cool. Well, if you were going to kind of draw on all that wisdom and think of someone who maybe is struggling, maybe he's even been out of work for a year or more and just feels like they keep hitting wall after wall after wall. What are some key things that you would suggest that they do?

Bill Boggs: Without question, some of the specific advice in the book. One thing would be from Phil Lombardo, a native of Chicago, he did not go to the University of Chicago: Get up, get dressed in the morning, and get out of the house. If you're totally unemployed, make things happen. Meet people, go places, don't hang around. Get out. A general sense of tenacity, I think, is crucial.

You have to really be tenacious and you have to recognize virtually everybody goes through situations like this. And self-belief. It is so difficult to maintain a high level of self-confidence when you're not getting validation from your work. And this is one of the problems I've had all my life. But even right now, with the success of Got What It Takes, I am waiting for the major radio program and a major television program to give me either the green light to come on or the red light, and every day is like waiting for the shoe to drop.

When the day goes by and I haven't gotten that validation, I feel empty. To recognize that you're in a difficult position, get out of the house, use everything you've got, every contact you've got. Consider reinventing yourself in some way. Meaning, OK, if this isn't working, are you banging your head against the wall? If I had said to myself two years ago, I'm only going to work on television. That's it.

As I'm 60 years old, very difficult to continue when you've been around as long as I've been without any home. Because I left the Food Network after 10 years in 2003. Difficult to find a place where you could work at this stage in life. I think I'd be banging my head against the wall. Instead, I thought, what do I like to do?

I like to interview people. I've got all kinds of contacts. I can call Mario Cuomo on the phone and get him to sit down with me. I can call Matt Lauer, I can call Christie Hefner, I can call Norman Lear. They're all people in the book. I can call Bill Brett.

Anita Brick: What if someone doesn't have that? I mean, that's an incredibly powerful network.

Bill Boggs: But that was drawing on what I've done. You have to look at what you've done. I also think that self-confidence … OK, suppose you're 35 years old, and you're flat on your face. My theme song, by the way, is the Frank Sinatra hit. That's like one of the lyrics: “Each time I find myself flat on my face, I pick myself up and get back in the race.”

You've got to have that attitude. And attitude is a matter of choice. I'm not saying it's a magic wand that you can wave, but at least going through the course of the day, you'll feel better if you feel that way about yourself, in that way, about what you're approaching.

Anita Brick: Well, it sounds like you live that.

Bill Boggs: Yes. I also like the part about riding high in April, shot down in May, but I know I'm going to change that tune when I'm back on top. Back on top in June, and I hear I'm in June. What? My life is following the song. That's not a bad thing.

Anita Brick: This is a good thing. You know, it's interesting. In an earlier CareerCast, we interviewed this CEO. He quit his company. He had gotten his company funded. It was VC backed; the VCs wanted him to do something he thought was wrong, and he quit. But he also was determined to get back. Four months later—and they all laughed at him; called him a big loser—four months later, he bought the company at a percentage of the … per dollar, I think, … per dollar. And he was back. And it was such a transforming experience for him. So I think that's … that it's out there. We really appreciate the time. Bill. It was great. The book is …

Bill Boggs: Anita, it's my pleasure. If people read the book, if one sentence in the book helps somebody move forward in their life, then I did my job in the interviews for Got What It Takes.

Anita Brick: It's good content, and it's also a fun read. And it's fun. Yeah, it was really good. Thank you for writing it. If you want to learn more about Bill and his book, Got What It Takes, you can go to BillBoggs.com or GotWhatItTakes.net, and thank you all for listening. This is Anita Brick with CareerCast at the Chicago GSB. Keep advancing.