PR Masterclass: 'Anytime is a good time to be an entrepreneur'

Ashwani Singla, Founding Managing Partner, Astrum did an engaging masterclass with the media students on the topic ‘21^st century communicators’ at the e4m PR & Corp Comm PR Masterclass. 

Singla started the masterclass energetically and turned it into a conversation and asked the audience from each table to ask him one question. “Make it the most relevant question for you—the one you're dying to ask, the one that will be most useful for you to take back from this session. It can be about your career, work, skills, or anything else you're searching for an answer to,” he asserts. 

The first question came up from the audience, “If I have to design a campaign for Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, what kind of skills do one need”.

Singla answered, “For a public relations practitioner or a communicator, in the 21st century or any other century, the first and foremost skill that you need to acquire is the ability to understand the attitudes, beliefs and makeup of your audiences.” 

The next question came up, “What’s the best time to start your own agency?”

To this Singla answered, “Age is not a constraint to entrepreneurship. Anytime is a good time to start your own firm and be an entrepreneur. There is no age limit—it depends on your skills, what you want to market, and who will buy. There is no fundamental age restriction on entrepreneurship. If you have a valuable skill set, it could be highly relevant at any point in time.” He further supported his answer by explaining the three things that matter before starting an entrepreneurship journey, “People buy three things Creativity, Expertise, and Experience. You have to understand these three elements and determine in what combination you are selling them.” 

Moving forward, someone from the audience asked a very important and profound question, “How should we prepare for PR and how to enter the field and how to navigate it. If you were in our place, in your 20s again, how would you make that choice?”

Ashwani addressed her concern strategically, “You need to think about the general skills you possess that are relevant to your profession in a broader sense. At the same time, consider the deep specialization you want to build. Being a multidisciplinary professional is crucial in the 21st-century skill set, but having a core specialization serves as the foundation for your future career. Therefore, you must be a T-shaped professional. While possessing a set of general capabilities is important, you also need to develop a strong vertical expertise and long-stem capability.” 

Then the conversation shifted to discussing what skill set a teacher should have so that they can help students achieve their first jobs. 

Singla explained this by stating that teachers need to get education closer to employability, and that gap will only close if we integrate a lot more practical inputs into theory. For this, apprenticeships or internships are something that we should strongly encourage. 

Moving forward, he also encountered and addressed the answer to work life balance in professional life. “Think about life-work balance not in terms of time, but in terms of choices. There will be times when work takes priority at the cost of personal choices. Likewise, there will be times when personal choices take precedence over professional ones. When you develop the maturity and sensibility to make these choices, you will find balance—one where you ultimately choose yourself,” he advised.  

Lastly, Ashwani concluded his conversational masterclass by sharing an inspiring message with the audience that in life proportion is important. So, make the choices, not go by units of time but go by units of choices. When you make the smart choices, you will all be happy and you will be able to do all of these things.