Free advice is worth every penny

For those of you planning to be graduated and going off into the work force this coming spring, can you stand a piece of advice?

A news anchor who used to work in Baltimore and now presents the news up in Philadelphia mentioned on her social media that she hears from a lot of young people who want to get into broadcasting, and they ask how they can start off at a good station with a good job in a good-sized city.

And this would also apply to people seeking jobs as accountants, attorneys, engineers, or what-have-you:  You can't, and you shouldn't want to.

Just as baseball players have to go play in minor league towns like Medicine Hat or for teams with names like the Modesto Nuts, professionals in all fields should expect to start small and work their way up.

Case in point:  A buddy of mine lucked into a major-market radio job when we started out, and I went to work at a little peanut whistle of a station down in Southern Maryland. We got together a few months later, talking about our situations, and he envied me, because he was allowed to do announcing only - nothing at all in sales or engineering or production, whereas I had to do all of those things, plus sweep up the joint and the trash out to the dumpster every night at midnight, fending off hungry raccoons all the while.

What I'm saying is, you can't appreciate all the little things that make up the process of the machinery of business until you've actually done all the parts of the process yourself. 

So start off small and make something big of your life!