Lessons from Being an Apprentice

MontrieandDeB
Dr. DeBorah Thigpen and Montrie Rucker Adams

 

When I had “officially” made up my mind to start Visibility Marketing Inc., it was after being down-sized from a sales engineer career. I knew if I didn’t switch gears now, I may be forever beholden to the automotive industry.

I met my mentor, DeBorah Thigpen at a Toastmasters meeting. In her introductory speech, she mentioned she’d just moved to the area and was opening a public relations office. The light bulb immediately went off. We talked after the meeting and I started working for D. Thigpen & Adsociates a few weeks later.

That was my foray into the world of apprenticeships. This was the early ‘90s so the Internet was just starting, there was no Google, Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. I learned at lot about the public relations  industry by doing. It was all new territory for me.

Thanks to Donald Trump, there’s a new face to working as an apprentice. I read this blog on Forbes entitled, “The Apprentices: Learn-By-Doing Entrepreneurship At Enstitute” – http://www.forbes.com/sites/meghancasserly/2013/04/17/the-apprentices-learn-by-doing-entrepreneurship-at-enstitute-2.

Although it is long, it’s an interesting story about The Enstitute, “where 11 wannabe entrepreneurs, aged 18 to 25, are packed in a Lower Manhattan loft.”

If that opportunity was available to me years ago, I may have jumped at the chance to at least apply. As I mentioned before, you can watch someone swim, but you can’t do it unless you jump in.

I am forever grateful to Ms. Thigpen for opening her doors to a “wanna be” public relations professional. She wasn’t the first in the industry I’d approached. There were other public relations firms. However, she was the only one willing to assist me in my goals…while at the same time getting the help she needed.