Today’s our 22nd anniversary! Our Copper Anniversary.  Copper may not sound like a great gift, but it appropriately describes our journey. Copper is malleable and conductive – and to succeed as an agency, we’ve had to be malleable – flexible, changing, adaptive to the world, our clients, the changing communications landscape, and more – and conductive as we are liaisons and conduits between our clients and their key stakeholders and communities.

I’m proud to say that as we celebrate our 22^nd anniversary, we’re poised to have our best year ever. The journey has been a rollercoaster, full of highs and lows, twists and turns, excitement and chills, and lots of learning. Here are 22 things that I learned along this road:

1. Have a direction – know what you want to achieve.
2. Ask for directions – don’t be afraid to ask for counsel from others who do what you do and who don’t do what you do; you can learn from their insights, successes and mistakes.
3. Patience – My mother used to say “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” Neither was my business, but I must admit patience has never been my strongest suit and that has been challenging.
4. Be ethical.
5. Be honest – to your clients, your colleagues, and to yourself.
6. I was well connected in the PR industry, but that proved not a strong source of potential business. I then turned to networking with others who do not do what we do, but either could use our services or be referrals to those who could.
7. Listen – PR people love to talk, but listening is key. You can hear opportunities if you listen.
8. Do great work. It creates happy clients and referrals.
9. If something’s not working, try again. If it’s still not working, change it/adapt it (like copper) or move in a completely different direction to the ultimate goal.
10. Don’t be afraid to try something new. I’ve certainly tried many new things, approaches, strategies during the past 22 years, and I’m thankful I did. It’s why we are still here.
11. Patience! I’ve been in many networking groups over the years where I liked the people a lot and referred much to others, but never seemed to get much in return. Sometimes the group was the wrong fit, but often, I had to make deeper relationships and be patient. For me, timing is everything. 
12. Stay positive and keep networking.
13. Make new connections.
14. Stay connected to those you meet. Find ways to touch base on a regular basis
15. Be a resource. It is the foundation to relationships and demonstrates your thinking.
16. Promote your work. I must admit to being like the shoemaker’s child. I do great public relations for our clients, but promoting our work always took a back seat. I’m committed to now treating our agency as a client and servicing that client as we do all our others.
17. Passion! It’s contagious – to clients, prospects, colleagues, and yourself.
18. Align yourself with good strategic partners. As an entrepreneurial agency, strategic partners are the internal departments that large agencies have, but in a more flexible, cost-effective manner, and they are primarily experienced, senior people instead of junior staff found in large agencies.
19. Use your strategic partners. Brainstorm with them, co-pitch business with them, handle accounts with them.
20. Don’t be afraid of making a mistake or admitting you did and asking for help.
21. Patience! (Yes, again!) But I’m happy to say that we just landed a large new client, as a result of networking. Someone I’ve known for 4+years brought us in on a joint pitch (strategic partners) and we jointly won the business, which will help propel us to our best year to date.
22. HAVE FUN!

I want to say a giant THANK YOU to the fabulous clients, amazing colleagues, strong strategic partners, supportive media, fabulous industry folks, and great people who have hired us, supported us, referred us, and helped us succeed. We couldn’t done it without you.

So, join us for the ride, work with us, watch what we do, and recommend us, if you can. We know our best times are yet to come.