Outside the Jar: The Value of Broader Perspectives

Discovering the transformative power of looking beyond the familiar in business and personal growth.

Have you heard the old saying, “You Can’t Read the Label from Inside the Jar?”  It’s been around for a long time, and you can readily find it quoted in articles and speeches, but have you ever stopped to think about how it applies to you in your business or life?   

When you look back at jobs or situations with a critical eye, the gift of perspective is a very healthy exercise and a great learning tool as you move forward.   The more I think about this and look back at over 30+ years in business, the more I see things differently.  And the more I do, the more I wonder, “Why didn’t I see that then?”

The answer has become evident; I was stuck “inside the jar.”  

So, what does it mean to be ‘stuck inside a jar?’   Metaphorically visualize you (or your company) in a jar, only thinking about what is essential to the business, and everything that is happening in your world is narrowly confined to only existing inside that jar.  By staying in that jar, you lose the critical attribute of perspective.  In other words, in the simplest of explanations, it leads to confirmation bias on decisions, stifles creativity, and is the kryptonite for innovation.  Not challenging the internal points of view and how companies and cultures need to drive, reach new markets, and break out of ‘old thinking’ are all symptoms of being in the jar.  

My best friend of over three decades, Scott Borchetta, has one of the greatest track records in music, specifically country music, where he has led, created, worked, or promoted over 254 #1 singles in his career since 1985.  Scott and I often talk about music and where the culture is going.  And given that track record, he has a few points of view.  

One of his core tenets is a perfect example of “Getting out of the Jar.”   When looking to sign acts, Scott often points to what other labels are doing: signing musicians that reflect where popular music is today.  Many music executives look at what is working at that moment, sign acts to jump on that fad, that trend, and make more of that music because that’s what is working (copycat acts), but not Scott.  He obsesses about finding what’s on the bleeding edge of any musical genre and signing artists that can drive culture to a new place, or in other words, trying to see where music is going and getting there first.    When it comes to signing acts, Scott is living outside the jar.

Having at least one #1 song annually for almost three decades is a perfect way to highlight this innovative thinking.  Of course, there are times Scott misses.  He’s, nor is anyone, ever 100%.  So what do you do when you have a miss?  Stay out or return to the jar?  Scott’s answer is very straightforward, and he gets further away from the jar, doubles down, and keeps looking for what is next.  

People often talk about innovation, leading, and taking chances, and I, like most others, have found more failure than success.  And when times get tough, the comfort and safety of returning to the jar feels like the right option.   I have made this mistake many times.  In almost every case, I have seen that if you try something and don’t stick to your conviction that innovation is the path forward, it hinders and stifles culture, kills creativity, and ultimately permeates the entire company with those feelings.

One example of taking action outside the jar in my career was when I was hired to turn around one of the biggest country stations in America, based in Chicago, IL. WUSN-FM was once the #1 station for country music in the U.S. and has since fallen from grace.  I moved to Chicago after a successful four years in Tampa Bay, FL, and from the moment I moved, I knew the stakes of this turnaround were at an all-time high.  The company, Infinity Broadcasting, had such high expectations for this once-great country station, and they moved me there to chart a new course.    I knew one thing: Failure here could end badly for the company and myself professionally. 

Country Radio in the early 2000s always just played country artists and whatever current singles were serviced to the stations by the record companies.  When I took the job at WUSN in 2002, it was a time of healing and pride in the US.  9/11 was still fresh on everyone’s mind, and there was a sense of togetherness. Musically, country music was having a renaissance in sales, and country stations across the US were seeing rating gains - except for this station in Chicago.  

Chicago is one of America’s biggest small towns.  It mixes country, rural, cosmopolitan, urban, and everything all together.  You could see it on Michigan Ave, and then just a 15-minute drive outside the city, you are in the country experiencing everything in between.  It's such an amazing city.  However, despite these waves of patriotism, a vibrant town, and booming sales for country music, WUSN wasn’t working.  I had to do something radically different.

 I thought this station had an opportunity to reflect the feelings about the city and country.  I ditched all the old branding and renamed WSUN “America’s Country Station.”   I remember telling my staff and the company we had to lean into this moment.  

The renaming didn’t go over well at all.  When I told my staff in the kickoff meeting, they thought I was joking.  There was constant pushback from everyone: staff, advertisers, fans, and everybody was against it.  “We have always had Chicago in the title of the station-it has to be there,”  was a common pushback. People also told me, because I was new, “Hey, this is not how it's done here.”   Those statements alone taught me two crucial things:  The first was that we were charting something new, and the second, I had found my way out of the jar!   

Something else was happening in the broader music landscape - a technology revolution was starting - the advent of MP3 Players and personal playlists.  Suddenly, people everywhere were curating their own playlists - and carrying them in their pockets!  

In 2001, when iTunes launched, consumers overnight became the ultimate DJ, curating together any music they liked, and what was born was the playlist generation.   Suddenly, going from Sugar Hill Gang to Beethoven to Garth Brooks was cool.   All the while this was happening, the radio industry ignored this movement, but the consumers loved it.  They were in complete control, and the power of choice in music was quickly shifted away from the stations to the consumer.  

People were sharing playlists, taking pride in mixing many types of music, and finding ways to express themselves with this variety.  Every station ignored this trend in the radio industry, only sticking to their ‘format’ and genre, or in other words, ‘stuck in the jar.’   If you listened to the radio and wanted rock, you had to go to a rock station.  If you wished to listen to pop music, you had to go to a pop station, etc.  

Then I had a thought.  

During this time, musical icon Bruce Springsteen had just released in July of that year his song “The Rising,” a tribute and his version of the American cultural comeback from 9/11.   The song was getting press, but not a lot of airplay.   It tapped into many of the feelings the country was going through, and given we have now rebranded the channel “America’s Country Station,” I thought we should play it.  However, it would be a massive deviation from what ‘country’ stations would ever do.  

Bruce's audience was also the same demographic as our country station was trying to attract (Persons 25-54, leaning Female), and music lovers liked him as much as they liked some of these country artists.  Also, ratings were the name of the game, and Bruce was huge – let’s try it; the station needed all the help we could get.

 The first day we had it scheduled to air, I got a call from my morning host, who said I had lost my mind, and they were not playing this song; the audience would hate it.  I said we don’t know, let’s see.  I made the call to play it and played it a lot.  (This song would later in 2003 go on to win multiple Grammy awards.)

Many complaints and arguments ensued.  People were convinced this young kid from Oklahoma had lost his mind.  Not only within the four walls of the station but the broader radio industry as well.  But then, just a few short weeks after all the pushback and negativity -  the market research showed that this song was testing #5 out of 40 other country records!  My hunch was correct; it worked.    

Over that same 2002 summer, the TV show American Idol was one of the biggest shows on the air, and the winner of that season was Kelly Clarkson.  She was an artistic supernova, and her song “A Moment Like This” was exploding everywhere, except on country radio, because - she was a pop star. I thought:  Kelly is on American Idol, She’s America’s sweetheart, and this is America’s Country Station, maybe we should try to play this too.  So we did.

 To no surprise, the criticism was fierce.  Not only the audience but also the employees and even other country stations were in disbelief about what we were doing.  However, we held firm and kept playing the song.  The song never felt odd or out of place on the air; in reality, it felt like what was happening in real life - people had downloaded this song on their playlists and were playing it right next to other songs, country included.   

Within weeks,  her record tested #1 with our country audience, and we kept playing the song.  That year, a few more country stations followed, and ultimately, that song peaked at #58 in the top 100 COUNTRY songs!  It was never released as a country single by a label.  

By the time the fall arrived, we had turned the station around from being ranked #15 in Chicago to Top 3 in every daypart in the ratings.  

As the station was hitting its stride, I got a call from Andy Schoun.  Andy was the new President of Programming at Infinity Broadcasting.  He was responsible for overseeing over 100 radio stations at a corporate level, and WUSN was one of them.  

Andy has many stories about breaking out of the jar, as he was vital in the success and ascension of one of my generation's most significant cultural brands and anyone who is a child of the 80s - MTV.  Andy’s vision, rooted in radio and programming stations such as KROQ in LA and others, drove him to take a channel playing music videos to one where culture was the biggest draw.  Shows such as TRL, MTV Springbreak, MTV News, and MTV VJ’s, just to name a few examples, are how Andy took an outside approach to MTV.  

One afternoon, Andy cold-called me when he saw the fast and rapidly rising ratings at WUSN.  He asked what I was doing; he loved the risk-taking innovation and quickly offered me a new job.  I left WUSN and moved to NYC as the VP of Programming for Infinity Broadcasting, working for Andy. This move propelled me further in my career and was one of the most significant moments where living out of the jar paid off.  

However, for every excellent out of the jar story, many others didn’t work.  I could write for days why things didn’t work, but the energy of success always brings more success; I believe focusing on Success Energy is more potent than dwelling on what you did wrong.  When I think about the mistakes, I try to get the lesson fast and move on, and when I’m looking for inspiration about a decision, I think about my out of the jar moments or others, such as Scott or others.

How about you?  What is your biggest out-of-the-jar story?  Unpack it, Relive it, and feel the energy flow of what is possible when you do.