Why PR?

12th March 2009

People often ask me, “Why did you choose PR?”

Essentially, it’s the same reason why first I became a teacher: I like people and I like passing on new information. In fact, I like it so much that I’ll share my information, in whichever way they find it easiest to digest. If you don’t want to listen to me banging on about why a BC108 transistor is cool, I’ll draw you a picture, or come up with a crazy analogy so that you can enjoy the information as much as I do.

In that sense, Public Relations is exactly like teaching. You’re telling people something that you feel excited about, or concerned about, and that you think they would benefit from knowing too.

PR also allows me to indulge my other passion for meeting new people, listening to their stories, learning from them and finding similar points that link into other stories from the folks I already know.

Just as I used to love doing jigsaws as a child and still remember the delight of finding that missing piece in the chaos of the living room carpet (those 1970’s patterns played havoc with identifying autumnal lakeland scenery pieces), I still get a major buzz out of finding the right people that can benefit from meeting the people that I already know.

Last year I bought “Bootstrapping Your Business” By Greg Gianforte, CEO of RightNow Technologies. This was a book co-authored with UK journalist Marcus Gibson, whom I found through researching authors on Lexus Nexis. Although I haven’t had the pleasure of working for him for some years now, I have a lot of respect for Mr Gianforte and learnt a huge amount from him that I’m still putting into good use today. So it was extremely gratifying to pick up that book and start reading all those familiar names and learning more of Greg’s entrepreneurial tips. Of course the book would have been written anyway had I not introduced him to Marcus Gibson, but it would have been a different book. And this is why I love networking, because putting the right people together changes the outcomes.