On Monday, July 3rd, 2023 I sent this tweet

After 50 yrs as a pro communicator, plan to begin my 3rd lifetime on July 4,2023 w 3 podcasts. With Ryan Jespersen @RealTalkRJ in the am. Launching my own podcast "Unplugged with @CharlesAdler" early pm & then with @ItsDeanBlundell late afternoon. Thx for the motivation @Arnold pic.twitter.com/q5ysIUQkjI

— Charles Adler (@charlesadler) July 3, 2023

A friend of mine has been urging me to watch the Netflix series about the three lives of Arnold Schwarzenegger. The three lives refer to his years as a competitive athlete, followed by his time as an actor, and then finally his public life in politics and motivational speaking. I am not here to review the series, except to say it’s very very well done. You don’t have to be a fan of the man, and I never really was, to get some important life lessons from the series. Lesson #1. If you can believe strongly in a vision for your future, you can have a good shot at having it.

I don’t remember the precise moment in my early childhood years when I first started believing in my future as a Radio voice. I might have been 7 or 8 or 9 or 10. But I do remember it felt like many years before I hit the road with an audio edition in a box of reel-to-reel-to-tape that I carried with me and guarded scrupulously the way a special courier guards an organ that is designated for transplant. As soon as I graduated from West Hill High School in Montreal, I carried my future in a box asking radio station managers to give this boy a break. I travelled up and down the roads of Ontario, Cornwall, Brockville, Lindsay, Peterborough, Belleville, Smiths Falls, and others presenting my reel and asking for a break. But nobody would hire me. I made the assumption that there was something wrong with my presentation or with me. But it was in Smiths Falls, Ontario that a Radio Station Manager named Hal Botham levelled with me. He told me that no small market radio station would hire me because, within weeks or 6 months at most, I would be plucked by a much larger market. Mr. Botham looked me in the eye and said, Kid, you sound far too large to work in a town this small.

Eventually, I took his advice and stopped trying to break into broadcasting through the small market door. I’ll have much more to say about all of this in my podcast that launches today.

It will be my third life as a communicator. The first began on Canada Day 1973 when I got my first job, as a producer in Montreal. Six months later I got my first on-air shot as an evening rock n’roll deejay in Calgary at CKXL.

In 1990, my second life began in Calgary as well. in that very same radio station on 16th Avenue Southwest. It was the launch of my talk radio career. That expired more than 30 years later in Vancouver.

And now on July 4, 2023, 50 years and 3 days after the beginning of my professional career, it’s time to start my third life – as a podcaster. I’m launching this one from this desk in my little house on the prairie – in my adopted hometown of Winnipeg.

Ironically the first pod “Unplugged with Charles Adler” is launching on July 4th – Independence Day in the USA.

Happy Birthday to a neighbour. And happy listening to anyone who cares to join us. We’ll be all the platforms where you are used to getting your podcasts.

Thanks to Dean Blundell and Crier Media for helping me launch my 3rd life. And thanks to podcast listeners worldwide for supporting a half-century of a fascinating public life. Here’s to the future.

Email: [email protected]