The Worst Advice Ever

If you've ever offered someone your great career insight only to realize weeks (months, years) later how totally awful it was—welcome to the club.

This from Penelope Trunk:

The worst career advice I ever gave was to my brother's college roommate, Robert Buckley. He was one year out of college when he asked me if he should quit healthcare consulting to become an actor.

I said, 'No, that's the dumbest idea I ever heard.'

That Robert Buckley would be the Robert Buckley now starring in NBC's Lipstick Jungle.

So go praise Penelope for her mea culpa, and get her advice on defending your own dream career track from would-be advisers. Just remember, we're all lousy sages sometimes, and the bad advice you sometimes get is no doubt as bad as the advice you sometimes give. I should know. I tried to shake a close friend of his focus on a single, far-fetched dream job. Until he got it. He now splits his days between a Major League Baseball press box and dugout.

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