There’s a place on our websites, often under the heading “team” or some other title where we present or march in our backgrounds, resumes, experience, hopefully in an impressive way that tells why we’re worth the fees we charge.
So, do we just list or give a litany of our past positions, titles worn, achievements secured, recognitions and awards we’ve won?
Boring!
How about trying to make it not only insightful about ourselves, but present our backgrounds in a more narrative style? Better yet, present it more on the fun side to read. In so doing we reduce the self-congratulatory aspect and give our introductions a more instructive, more readable, cleverer context, making it fun.
Trying not to sound too self-congratulatory, I introduce myself on my PR firm’s website by listing my various credits all under this one whimsical umbrella . . .
the harder you work, the luckier you get!
WHAT ROLE DOES LUCK PLAY IN YOUR CAREER?
First, I would like to introduce myself, but without sounding too self-promotional, which isn’t easy as I’ve had a somewhat lucky career. Some would call it luck, but I’ve always found if you work hard enough and non-stop until you achieve your goals, luck will find you and people will pat you on the back as one lucky guy.
I started out along the luck road when I became a newspaper reporter, working at small newspapers until one day I was lucky to be offered a job as reporter at one or the largest papers in the country, The Philadelphia Inquirer, in the city where I was born. I was lucky to cover and write many front-page stories from interviewing media stars like Muhammad Ali to President Nixon. Then I was lucky to land a job with a top PR firm in Manhattan and was assigned their largest client, Kellogg Company, for whose chairman I wrote speeches that luckily were reprinted in The New York Times.
Then the luckiest thing happened, American Broadcasting Companies asked me to go to work for them as Director of PR Planning, where I was lucky to meet the genius TV programmer Fred Silverman who luckily liked the way I wrote his speeches and press releases, so when he became CEO of NBC, I hit the luck jackpot when he brought me with him as his Vice President, Assistant to the President. What amazing luck to zoom right up to the #2-ranked executive position at 30 Rock. At least that’s how it looked, for on the executive chart I was parked right under Silverman and I was proud as a Peacock.
After a couple years there, I decided to really test my luck and started my own PR firm in Manhattan, TransMedia Group. And as luck would have it, I landed at the time what was the largest company in America as a client, AT&T. I also got The City of New York as a client for whom I promoted fair housing in the city, a campaign for which I was lucky enough to win the Bronze Anvil Award, one of the most prestigious honors awarded by the Public Relations Society of America.
What luck! Forty years later, I’m still lucky to be alive and kicking as CEO of TransMedia Group now serving clients worldwide under the direction of my super productive daughter, Adrienne Mazzone.
Yes, I’m reproductively lucky too!
Besides an inveterate blogger, Tom Madden is an author of countless published articles and five books, including his latest, WORDSHINE MAN, available now on Amazon. He also creates TV series like his latest Xtra Terresla whose main character is modeled after Tesla founder Leon Musk, soon to own Twitter.
Madden is the founder and CEO of TransMedia Group, an award-winning public relations firm serving clients worldwide since 1981 and has conducted remarkably successful media campaigns and crisis management for America’s largest companies and organizations.
