{"id":2713,"date":"2026-06-15T04:12:43","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T04:12:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commsnews.com\/?p=2713"},"modified":"2026-06-15T04:12:43","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T04:12:43","slug":"practise-what-you-preach-why-pr-professionals-make-the-worst-clients-of-themselves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commsnews.com\/?p=2713","title":{"rendered":"Practise What You Preach: Why PR Professionals Make the Worst Clients of Themselves"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Here is an industry irony that never gets talked about enough: the professionals who make their living building other people’s reputations and personal brands are, almost universally, terrible at building their own.<\/p>\n

I am not exempt from this observation. For the first decade of my career, I was the consummate invisible hand. I wrote bylines for CEOs. I crafted LinkedIn posts for founders. I built thought leadership programmes for executives who could barely articulate why their company existed. And my own LinkedIn profile sat largely untouched, my own story untold, my own expertise undemonstrated.<\/p>\n

The psychology behind this is understandable. We are trained to be client-first, always. Our conditioning is to make the principal character visible, not ourselves. And there is a genuine professional humility in that \u2014 a real commitment to service that I actually admire in good PR people. But taken too far, it becomes professional invisibility. And professional invisibility has a cost.<\/p>\n

The cost is business development. In a relationship-driven profession, your visibility is your pipeline. The clients who find you without a referral find you because of something they read, heard, or watched. If you have produced nothing, they find someone else. I learned this the expensive way, several years into running my own practice.<\/p>\n

The second cost is industry influence. The people shaping the direction of our profession are the ones willing to share their perspective publicly \u2014 in publications, at events, on social platforms. If we leave that space to others, we cede the conversation about our industry’s future to voices that may not represent our values or experience.<\/p>\n

PR professionals: build your own brand with the same rigour and consistency you apply to your clients. Write the column. Speak at the conference. Post the perspective that makes you nervous. You understand reputation better than almost anyone. It is long past time to invest that understanding in yourself.<\/p>\n

__________________________________________________________________________________<\/p>\n

The views and opinions published here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the publisher.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here is an industry irony that never gets talked about enough: the professionals who make their living building other people’s reputations and personal brands are, almost universally, terrible at building their own. I am not exempt from this observation. For the first decade of my career, I was the consummate invisible hand. I wrote bylines for CEOs. I crafted LinkedIn posts for founders. I built thought leadership programmes for executives who could barely articulate why their company existed. And my own LinkedIn profile sat largely untouched, my own story untold, my own expertise undemonstrated. The psychology behind this is understandable. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2715,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-elevate-excellence-rt-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commsnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commsnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commsnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commsnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commsnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2713"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/commsnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2713\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2716,"href":"https:\/\/commsnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2713\/revisions\/2716"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commsnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commsnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commsnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commsnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}