OLD Media Moves

How Chatzky stuck to her strengths and became successful

February 26, 2019

Posted by Chris Roush

Jean Chatzky

Adam Mendler of Thrive Global spoke with Jean Chatzky, financial editor of NBC’s “Today” and a longtime personal finance journalist, about the hurdles in her career.

Here is an excerpt:

Adam: How did you get here? What failures, setbacks or challenges have been most instrumental to your growth?

Jean: I got here, in part, by sticking to my knitting – i.e. my subject matter of personal finance – and in part by allowing it to take me where it wanted to go.  My intention was to be a print journalist, but when I landed at Smart Money magazine and they needed people to go on television to talk about our stories and promote our magazine, I raised my hand.  Once I landed on Today, opportunities came to me – to write books, give speeches – and I forced myself to say yes to those things, even when I was frightened or uncomfortable because I thought they might lead somewhere exciting.

As for failures, setbacks and challenges, I’ve had many but here are two – one from early in my career, one from more recently.

The early one: When I left my first job at Working Woman, I wanted to get a job at a big business or personal finance magazine.  I applied to them all. None would hire me. Some wouldn’t even grant me an interview. They didn’t think Working Woman had given me the chops I needed to work for them.  Eventually, I got an interview at Forbes and the chief of reporters told me I needed an MBA in order to get the job. Going back to school wasn’t appealing, but I thought about what he said and realized he didn’t really care about the piece of paper, he cared I had the skills an MBA would bring like being able to analyze financial statements.  I knew that when I reported business stories, I’d often interview Wall Street equity research analysts who covered the companies I was writing about and wrote reports on them. If I worked in equity research, I figured I could be useful in helping to write those reports and learn the analytical skills I needed while I was there. That led me to Dean Witter where I worked for two years before being hired at, yes, Forbes.  To this day, when I’m mentoring or advising others I tell them to think about other ways they could put their skill set to use.

The more recent one: I got fired from Money Magazine.  They were going through a round of cost-cutting, I had gotten expensive, and though they tried to soft-pedal it by allowing me to keep my column as a freelancer there was no doubt what had just happened.  Initially, I looked for another job to replace the one that I’d lost. But magazine salaries had shrunk and I couldn’t replace it. I was already managing a number of side jobs – including working for NBC, writing books, giving speeches and I decided that instead of going back to work for someone else, I’d build my own business.  That was more than 10 years ago.

Read more here.

Subscribe to TBN

Receive updates about new stories in the industry daily or weekly.

Subscribe to TBN

Receive updates about new stories in the industry.