You might have thought unradio DJ Gareth Cliff was arrogant, but did you know that he thinks he has been arrogant in the past? As it turns out, he is not so arrogant that he doesn’t take time to reflect on himself and his shortcomings ā and how to up his game. In this candid interview with another broadcast personality, Ruda Landman, Cliff goes back to his days as a prime-time radio host and explains what went through his mind when he decided to take the plunge into his own business venture. It’s hard not to like Cliff, even if he does reveal that he had let the laziness coefficient get the better of him when we thought he was working hard at keeping us entertained on our way to work. – JC
By Ruda Landman*Ā
Watch the video, listen to the podcast or read the transcript below:
GARETH: Alright, its just after nine, and I know I should be getting out of here, and you may be bored with me, but Iāll tell you what: youāre not bored with Ruda Landman. Ruda is here to interview me this morning about all kinds of things to do with careers, and the different paths that weāve walked, and perhaps at the same time we can shed some light on things that may be interesting to you in your own career, or perhaps, if youāre deciding on a career, what you might like to do.
RUDA: Thereās a new website called Change Exchange.
GARETH: Okay. What is it?
RUDA: Itās all about the changes in our lives. You know? When you grow up, you leave whatever education youāre going to do, and then you have to find a job. Itās a huge thing. Then you might get hitched, you might get childrenā¦Your life shifts and changes. And finding your feet in a career, in a job, more than one, one after the other, or at the same time, all of those are huge life changes and thatās what this is all about.
GARETH: Right.
RUDA: So what youāve just done, what youāve created in your life isā¦
GARETH: Destruction.
RUDA: Such a momentā¦ (Both laugh)ā¦ well, I hope its creative destruction. Iām sure it’s creative destruction.
GARETH: No, no it is. Sure.
RUDA: Letās start before it happened.
GARETH: Okay
RUDA: When did you start thinking, and not so much when, but what were the circumstances that made you think the time may be coming? Because you were comfortable in what you were doing; you were riding high.
GARETH: Well, isnāt that part of the problem? When you get comfortable? You know all about that. What happens is that you find yourself in a comfort zone where you know exactly whatās happening around you. You start cutting back on all the extraneous stuff, and you just know how absolutely little you have to do to achieve the desired result. Itās the ālaziness coefficientā I call it.
Because at school I would know if I did two hours of studying before an exam I would get 60% to 70% and that would be sufficient. I was never one of those people who wanted to work to those upper eighties and nineties. I thought āWell, itās a waste of time, I could rather spend that time laughing, spending time with friends, watching TV, masturbating furiouslyā¦ whatever it was, but I didnāt have to spend the majority of that time outside of what was necessary doing anything extraā.
Itās a bit of a problem if you find you have the capacity to do something that maybe other people did find a bit difficult, because I know there were people at school with me who were probably cleverer than I was. But they struggled with exams, and they found it very nervous and tense, and it put them in an anxious mood and they probably couldnāt deliver the results they did. Iād just walk in and do the thing, and if I didnāt know anything Iād write somethingā¦
RUDA: Vaguely sensibleā¦
GARETH: Some wise crack or, ja, or I’d say something about… Iād turn in an essay on history for example, because I remembered the important facts, and Iām a fan of history, its something Iāve loved all along, so its something like Iād have this backlog of general knowledge, and Iād just spew it out onto the page, and it would look more or less sensible enough, and the lazy marker would go: āEeehhh, uuuhhh, yeah, this guyās sort ofā¦ Heās coherent. He seems to know at least a minority of the facts that were applicable, give him a sixty.ā
RUDA: Ja. But itās quite difficult tooā¦ In the first place you have to be aware that that is happening in your job situation. Because its like the frog in the hot water, except that the water is not getting boiling hot, its getting easier and easier. Soā¦
GARETH: Yes. It is. Because you know more about what you do through experience.
RUDA: Do you remember a moment when you thought: āMmmmā¦. I should beā¦.ā
GARETH: Yes. I was driving in to work and my show started 15 minutes before Iād got there, and I thought: āIām lazyā.
RUDA: This is not good!
GARETH: And I donāt care. I donāt care about this, Iām not working hard anymore. This is too easy for me and I donāt care about what management say to me, and the audience will forgive meā¦ And it was just arrogance, it was very, very bad. And I just suddenly realized that this is not good enough.
RUDA: So? What did you do?
GARETH: Well, you have two options. You either try carrying on to improve the product youāre already engaged in, or you force yourself to go up a level and do something a lot harder. Which is going to give you no option. Because I donāt have the option for failure here.
If Iād had failed at the SABC they wouldāve moved me to afternoons or evenings; then they wouldāve put me on weekends, then I wouldāve been picked up by some horrible adult contemporary station and I wouldāve been one of those DJs just sitting there goin: (in a rip-off accent) āWell thereās the Doobie Brothers with Michael McDonald. My name is Gareth Cliff, what song would you like to hear? Email me at Garethā¦ā whatever the stationās name is.
RUDA: And you would still get the salary.
GARETH: I wouldāve got paid. So if I were just after the money and security, perhaps that wouldāve been a better option. But also I think you have to, thereās a point in everybodyās life where you decide to take control of your own destiny. And in most respects my life was my own design anyway. I live the way I want to live, Iām with the people I want to be with, I enjoy reading, I enjoy drawing floor plans of buildings, I enjoy doing chemical experiments, itās a messā¦ This was the thing that was missing.
RUDA: But youāre in the middle of your career, and you do have responsibilities like any grown up person, and here you were letting go of all of that, of that whole safety net… Ā Ā Ā .
GARETH:Ā But you said it.
RUDA: Didnāt that make youā¦ Wellā¦ It mustāve made you nervous.
GARETH:Ā You said it earlier. You said you didnāt have any regrets afterwards. Before the decision youāre racked with all theā¦ You look at it from 360 degrees. You walk right around the problem, and you check it out from every angle and you say: āOkay, well if this happens, what will happen there, if that happens, what will happen there?ā
Then you start figuring in: āOkay, Iāve got this bond to pay, Iāve got these bills at the end of every monthā. You really analyse your life, you get down to the bare bones of it and you go: āIs that what I want, and can I carry on doing what Iām doing, and sustain this current lifestyle? Is that all I need to do, or do I need to do more?
RUDA: So it isnāt an irresponsibleā¦ You donāt just jump?
GARETH: Oh no no no no noā¦ā¦ Iām not like that.
RUDA: You do it very carefully.
GARETH: I may give the impression that Iām a loose canon and do ridiculous, stupid things, but a lot of the time Iā¦
RUDA: You try hard to give that impression. You donāt really.
GARETH: Mmmmmā¦ Do you think I try hard? Do you? Thatās interesting.
RUDA: Are you not trying hard? It just happens?
GARETH: Noā¦ I give the impression that Iām careless. Because a lot of the time I am careless, but when it comes to things like my career, radio, my audience, Iām not careless, Iām very careful about that. Those are not things you take for granted. People will just as quickly as they listen and they enjoy it, tomorrow theyāll forget about me.
RUDA: Gareth, but in this case, you stepped out into completely uncharted territory. Whatās that like?
GARETH: Well, there were a lot of things around it that had convinced me it was an interesting thing to do, and it would be worth trying. The current climate, the economy at the moment, the fact that the media business is changing as it is. These all gave me reason to be positive.
Umā¦ And the fact that Iāve got this creative bug where I need to be able to do āmy thingā. Itās almost childish, and a little bit of a brat attitude. But I need to do it my way, and I couldnāt do that working for any other radio station or being on television.
You know how hard that work is, its lighting and cameras and rehearsals and scripts. I donāt want to do that. I want to do everything live like weāre doing this interview live now. Because itās real. South African audiences deserved something new, radio has become very stale, itās become over-commercialized. I got bored as a listener. And I thought: āIf Iām a listener and Iām bored, I can only imagine how people who sit in traffic for two, three hours a day have to put up with so much more boredom, let me fix that for them. Thereās a value in that.
RUDA: But how could you be sure that you could actually pay your bond?
GARETH: I canāt! I canāt tell youā¦ Maybe a month from now they kick me out of my house. Who knows? I mean, Iām not earning anything here now. Weāre hopefully going to be in a short while, but you donāt know.
RUDA: How does one live with that? How do you live with that insecurity?
GARETH: Itās funny, I thought about it this morning. I walked into the kitchen, and I thought: āWhat can I grab out of this fridge for breakfast?ā Iāve got a little cooler box there with some yoghurt, with some muesli or something horrible in it. Then I though: āWhat do I do when the yoghurt and muesli runs out? And when I donāt have money in the wallet to buy more?ā You justā¦ You live! You carry on putting energy into what youāre building rather than worrying about what you already have. You have to do that.
RUDA: And planning for the fuā¦ā¦
GARETH: ā¦ Thatās what you did!
RUDA: (laughs)
GARETH: You left a job, and you didnāt know what you wouldā¦ You couldāve done a thousand different things, but you donāt know for sure.
RUDA: You donāt know.
GARETH: Because you havenāt already lined up the next job. And when you create your next job, which is what both of us have done, its even more difficult, because thereās no guarantee anywhere.
RUDA: Thereās no guarantee anywhere, and I went into a completely freelance environment, and for the next two, three years, every January, Iād have a week-long panic attack about: āWhereās the money going to come from?ā You see, Iām in a different situation because I am married to someone who earns well, so Iām notā¦
GARETH: Dependent.
RUDA: I do have a safety net.
GARETH: But you werenāt dependent on your money.
RUDA: Ja. But I am a partner in the partnership. I canāt just say: āOh darling, you will look after me, can I have another diamond ring please?ā
GARETH: You have to bring your value.
RUDA: So there were moments whereā¦ Whhooooā¦ I remember them, when it was really āWhat did I do? Was I out of my cotton-picking little mindā.
GARETH: Right. But I thought that; not after funnily enough. Iāve never had any regrets about not hanging on to that job.
RUDA: No, neither have I. Thereās always something you can do, we talked about it earlier as well, you canāt be too precious.
GARETH: You know what I really wanted to do? Hereās what I thought: Iād make a huge success of this, which Iām still hoping weāll get right. Or Iāll go andā¦ lecture history. Thatās what Iāll do. Thatās my back-up plan: Iāll go lecture in history. Bore some students to death. But that wouldnāt be so bad. And I thought: āIf thatās the worst that could happen, then thatās not a bad outcome.ā That would be cool. I could fulfil two things: I could try my hand at this own business, new-broadcast medium type environment, which really is the most exciting thing Iāve ever done, or I could go into teaching something that I really love, and filling other peopleās minds with the love that I have for history.
RUDA: But I think a part of a decision like that is to say: āOkay, what is the worst that can happenā, and face that fear. And say: āOkay, thatās gone wrongā¦.and now?ā
GARETH: Be homeless and sell myself for sex.
RUDA: (laughs)
GARETH: And no one would buy. And thatās the most scary part.
RUDA: Ja, the problem is always: is there a market?
GARETH: Thereās no market for me. Tell you what.
RUDA: Well, I can only say good luck.
GARETH: Thank you.
RUDA:Ā And may it go better and better.
GARETH:Ā Ā Thank you so much. And I that everybody whoās wondering, if thereās anyone listening to us now thinking āI deserve better than thisā, and you have a plan, and you take a long time to think it through because these are not the kind of decisions you make on the flip of a coin.
If youāve thought it through and you want to do something really badly and you believe it can have, most importantly, that it can have value for other people, because if youāre doing something for you all the time, that doesnāt necessarily mean youāre going to make a cent. You only make money if people are prepared to exchange that money for some value theyāre getting out of you. And if itās people that want to advertise here because weāve got listeners who like what weāre doing, thatās fantastic. Then I donāt even mind if itās a small amount of money. But it will all be mine, and Iād have earned it. And thatās better than taking it from a parastatal.
RUDA:Ā Ā Good for you.
GARETH:Ā Thank you.
RUDA:Ā All the best.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
This article first appeared on theĀ Change Exchange, an online platform by BrightRock, provider of the first-ever life insurance that changes as your life changes.