17 Tips For Building a Kick-Butt, Successful Marketing Career
As we celebrate our Minneapolis PR agency’s 29th Anniversary, we’re ready to reveal the secrets that will contribute to your career success in marketing communications. Please keep your seatbelt fastened, make sure your seat backs and tray tables are in their full upright position, and prepare to take flight as we reveal 17 pearls of wisdom that we’ve learned (sometimes painfully) over nearly three decades as an agency.
1. MAKE ENOUGH MISTAKES TO SUCCEED.
If you’re not making mistakes in your career, you’re not taking enough calculated risks. Hey, there’s no shame in making mistakes as long as you learn from them. Research published by the Academy of Management Journal found that workers in the NASA space shuttle program, according to Fortune, “not only learned more from failure than from success but also retained the lessons longer.”
2. DON’T MAKE THE SAME MISTAKES TWICE.
However, if you make the same mistakes over and over without learning from your errors? Feh, you’re a schlemiel (it’s Yiddish, look it up).
3. LEARN FROM OTHER PEOPLE’S MISTAKES.
Apply them to your own career. As bridge player Alfred Sheinwold said: “Learn all you can from the mistakes of others. You won’t have time to make them all yourself.”
4. NEVER LIE.
No really, just do not lie. You know what lying feels like. Don’t lie to clients. Not to co-workers. Not (dear God) to journalists or bloggers. Promise yourself that you will never, ever make stuff up. Become legendary for your integrity.
5. GUARD YOUR REPUTATION. 
Fact: Your resume has become one of the least important documents in your career. Your LinkedIn profile? Quite a bit more important. But your reputation and character? What will people you’ve worked with say about you, in private and in confidence, when you’re not in the room? Nothing affects the arc of your career more as your reputation. How do you establish that reputation? See #4 above.
6. SUPPRESS YOUR EGO, CONTROL YOUR ID
Recognize the narcissist in you and fight it. Absolutely nothing is more corrosive to a career than being someone who is only out for him or herself. Be generous in sharing credit. Embrace humility. Let graciousness flourish. What could be more attractive in our business than a humble genius?
7. ALWAYS HELP YOUR CO-WORKER OR CLIENT IN CRISIS.
Make it clear you have their back. If a client or co-worker is laid off, be the first reassuring voice they hear and the first to take them out for coffee. Let them know that your network has just become their network. Marketing guru Don Peppers wrote in his memoir that he’d tell clients if they ever lost their jobs, his agency would have an empty office with a phone waiting to support their search for their next position. You’d be shocked how many people won’t even return the calls of someone who just lost their job. People never forget their guardian angels. Your wings are waiting.
8. MOURN WITH YOUR COLLEAGUES.
If a co-worker or client is grieving the loss of family member…be there. Few others will. When in doubt, attend the funeral of a client or co-worker’s loved one. ‘Swim With The Sharks’ author Harvey Mackay recalls standing outside the synagogue after the funeral of his father and imprinting in his memory the face of every person who cared enough to attend his father’s ceremony.
9. AVOID SIGNING NON-COMPETES.
Never sign an employment contract that contains a non-compete clause (Unless I ask you to).
10. RETURN PHONE CALLS AND EMAILS. FAST.
Incredibly, few do this – and if you do, I swear it’ll make a positive impression. Former Minneapolis Star Tribune business writer Neal Gendler told me the story about his attempt to reach Edina Realty’s then CEO Ron Peltier for an interview, only to be told by staff that Peltier was in an airplane en route to a distant business meeting. Minutes later, Gendler’s phone rings. Incredibly, it’s Peltier returning the journalist’s call from 30,000 feet. Decades later, Gendler still retells that story with reverence.
11. JUST…READ.
If you’re not reading 100+ pages a week (whether it’s blogs and books, substack posts, LinkedIn content or newspapers, and magazines) about new developments in our PR and digital marketing fields, you’re falling behind the smartest people around you. I’m finding Mashable, Social Media Today, Ragan’s and the HubSpot blog essential reading, but so is the “content” created by Hemingway, Conan Doyle, Shakespeare, Bradbury and Norman Mailer.
12. BE HAPPY FOR EVERYONE ELSE.
Find satisfaction in the success of your competitors. In fact, challenge yourself to be thankful for the success of your archrivals. A big-time theatrical producer once joked with me, “It’s not enough that I succeed. My friends, too, must fail.” I think he was joking. Instead, become a cheering squad for your peers. It will unsettle your enemies and will charm your competitors.
13. UNDERSTAND THE POWER OF NAMES.
Try hard not to misspell people’s names. It’s one of the only minor transgressions that people never forgive and forget. I’ve learned this the hard way.
14. DON’T FORGET TO SAY THANKS.
Master the exquisite art of individualized thank you’s – personal expressions of gratitude (not a mere email) to anyone who helps you on your career journey. When I was young and foolish, I innocently neglected to thank a prominent Twin Cities business executive who had been enormously helpful when I was networking – and he remembered that slight for more than five years. Be young, but don’t be foolish.
15. MIND THE DETAILS.
The shine of your shoes, the firmness of your handshake, the steadiness of your eye contact, the crispness of your shirt or blouse, your posture, your haircut – all the things that absolutely should not matter in business, matter enormously. As legendary magician Dai Vernon liked to say: “Details make perfection, but perfection is no detail.”
16. BE ENGAGED AND BE COMMITTED.
Don’t let yourself become an order-taker. Train yourself to be proactive. Become a bold initiator. Go three steps further than anyone expects you to go. Be committed. Lee Aase, former director of the Mayo Clinic Social Media Network, underwent a live broadcast on the Periscope app of his own colonoscopy – now that’s commitment!
17. CONNECT WITH NEW PEOPLE THE RIGHT WAY.
Finally, understand what networking really is. It’s not about mining business associates for leads to new clients, your next job, or any other prize that benefits you. Rather, networking is the process of getting to know another human being so that you can learn how to best help them out when they’re in need. The Universe will take care of the rest.
