Unconventional Career Advice with Fred Cook

​​”In your career and your life, it’s about the experiences you have, not about the promotions and salaries you earn.”

Fred Cook, the CEO of global PR firm, Golin, in his book “Improvise: Unconventional Career Advice from an Unlikely CEO” relates lessons from his lifetime of uncommon experiences to inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs. Bold and wildly, entertaining, Cook reveals truths that prove the path to the corner office isn’t always the obvious one.

The book is an inspiring story of how Cook followed an unusual yet fascinating path from young adulthood to the corner office. Improvise combines Cook’s lifetime of uncommon experiences with his insights from a successful corporate career, as a means to help recent graduates and young entrepreneurs uncover the professional skills that exist outside any traditional office.

Following college, Cook was initiated into the business world through a dozen lackluster yet enlightening jobs, including pool hustler, chauffeur for drunks, cabin boy, doorman, and Italian leather salesman. Now he provides counsel to blue-chip companies like Nintendo, McDonald’s, Wal-Mart, BP, and Toyota, and has worked personally with Jeff Bezos, Michael Eisner, and Steve Jobs. Filled with colorful anecdotes and hilarious yet poignant moments, Improvise delivers practical tips on how people can change their perspectives, using unique life experiences as means to an end.

Here are 10 Unconventional Career Tips from Fred Cook.