How One PR Manager Transformed Their Career by Mastering Investor Relations

So, I would say, um, investor relations is not, is not my um area of expertise. Uh, but what I did do was I, um, I attended a, um, Actually an in-person seminar in Boston for um

I know. Well, it was a, it, it was a training session, like a seminar for, um, you know, investor relations professionals, um, and I convinced my, my boss at the time that it'd be, you know, this would be good for my, um, My career and, and also for the company. Um, but anyway, it was a, it was a full-day session with uh buy side and sell-side analysts coming in and, and talking to us about, about, you know, about their roles, and we talked about, um, you know, S1s and, and, uh, and financial statements, um, how to read financial statements. Um, and so, so since then, um, I've used that experience to, when, when HPE has its quarterly earnings, And uh my PR colleagues and, and AR colleagues don't really fully understand um the financial lingo. I'm, I'm able to actually um explain it to them. And actually, so I actually set up 30 minutes uh post every earnings to, to walk them through some of the, some of the statements, and then a summary of, of results.

Well, I Most PR people are, um, are pretty adept at writing and, um, at, at putting together, putting together plans, um, converting techno technical topics and, and subjects into easy to understand language for the for the, um, you know, the average C-level executive, and, but most are not great at, um, reviewing financial documents, analyzing the documents, and then explaining it. Yeah. So I wanted, that was one of my weak areas that I wanted to, um, I wanted to improve.

Um, let's see. We've had, um, we've had, uh, virtual meetups, um, over Zoom with, with some of the folks who attended the, the seminar. And then, um, I've been following, you know, some of my colleagues who I attended with. I've been following some of their, um, Financial or their company's financial earnings and, and some of their company's financial statements. So it's, it's built up my, my acumen. To be able to understand some of those documents, um, and increased my, increase my level of interest. I never used to be interested in that kind of stuff. Um, and now I follow analysts buy side, sell side recommendations. Um, and, um, and like I said, I've created a whole network of investor relations professionals, cause most of them, actually, almost all of them, were working in IR whereas I'm working in In overall comms and IRS separate at HPE, but it helps me have, um, I guess, smarter conversations when I'm talking to finance.