Before I got into public relations professionally, I had been telling stories for quite a while. In fact, as an engineering student at the university, my favourite courses were those that had to do with communications and relationships. I still remember scoring as high as the 95 percentile in courses such as “Engineering Communication” and “Engineers In The Society” and the shock on my coursemates’ faces when those results were released. I would laugh when anyone came to ask how I did it and reply with a cheeky “it’s in the blood.”
But if there’s anything working as a professional image maker has taught me, it is the simple truth that actually, it is not in the blood. Okay, maybe just a little bit of it is in the blood. There’s that whole conversation about nature vs nurture regarding creative endeavours but that’s not a conversation for today. If I had to pick a side though, I would settle for nurture but I digress. Back to this discourse on PR, why I am loving my journey so far and what I am learning.
Working as a journalist for quite a while, I was quite sure it wouldn’t be all that different switching to a career in PR. But when I got the “You’re The One” email from BHM informing me my application to work for one of Africa’s most respected and admired communications firms was successful, I froze (and I never freeze). And then the doubts started to creep in: Are you sure about this, you have something going well for you on the radio, your work is starting to go viral and so on.
The first week of joining BHM confirmed some of my doubts with emails flying back and forth that I found it difficult to keep up and by my third week, I was slammed with my first brief along with a very interesting deadline. “Hey God, na who send me message bayii?” Looking back at those first few weeks, I honestly wonder how I survived. For the most part, I felt like a swan on a lake, graceful and elegant on the surface but paddling furiously underwater with both feet to stay afloat. I can’t say I have gotten the hang of it yet but I’m learning to go with the flow.
A valuable piece of advice that has helped me along the way is one I gleaned while eavesdropping on a conversation between two colleagues (blame the eavesdropping on the curiosity you need as a PR professional). The conversation went something like this: “you should work on your first campaign, that’s the best way to learn, you need to do something so you can measure yourself against. Take it one step at a time, give yourself time to grow, you will make mistakes, just pick yourself up and learn from them, that’s how you can grow in this career. Fail forward”
And that’s what I’ve resolved to do, take it one step at a time, give myself time to grow until I learn to do it like a ‘Boss’. But even bosses grow and allow themselves room for improvement, so I guess this advice will continue to save me for a long time. Here’s to failing forward and getting better one step at a time.