17 tips for a wildly successful PR career
One communicator distilled his wisdom from three decades into a cheat sheet. The insights include being kind, trusting people, cultivating your mind, generously giving and more.
For younger communicators and graduates embarking on a career in the PR industry, these insights can help you navigate the sometimes-bumpy road of media relations, campaigns and networking events.
Make sure your seatbelts are fastened and your seat backs and tray tables are in their full upright position. Prepare yourself for takeoff: Here are 17 chunks of wisdom I’ve learned over 30 years in the PR industry.
1. Make enough mistakes to succeed. If you don’t make mistakes, you’re not taking enough foolish risks. There is no shame in making mistakes if you learn from them.
Fortune reported that workers in the space shuttle program “not only learned more from failure than from success, but also retained the lessons longer.”
2. Don’t make the same mistakes twice . Are you making the same mistakes over and over? Feh, you’re a schlemiel (it’s Yiddish; look it up).
3. Learn from other people’s mistakes. Apply them to your own career. Bridge player Alfred Sheinwold said, “Learn all you can from the mistakes of others. You won’t have time to make them all yourself.”
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