One of Dana Perino’s favorite questions to ask her friends, family, mentors and mentees is: “What’s the best advice you ever got?”

Perino, 52 — a longtime Fox News anchor, and White House press secretary under former President George W. Bush — tapped into her wide network, from fellow anchor Bret Baier to country music artist Dierks Bentley to Andrea Aragon, a nonprofit leader and Perino’s college roommate.

Perino took their best advice, her own best advice and wrapped it all into a book out next week, “I Wish Someone Had Told Me…”

“I do not pretend that I have all the answers, and I feel like I am so blessed to have so many great friends who were willing to share their advice,” she says.

Zoom in: The book is chock-full of Perino’s and her contacts’ tips on life and work. Some are super-specific and situational.

Perino says: “Always double the tip at breakfast — morning customers are so demanding with their eggs this way and their coffee just so, and on and on. These people deserve more for putting up with us!”
“If you use an AI program to generate a first draft, go back through it carefully and make it read like it came from an actual human.”

Others are broad, philosophical — and applicable to anyone in any phase of their career or life.

Martha MacCallum, also a Fox News anchor, tells Perino the best advice she’s received: “Read and learn … I encourage people to never stop growing. Life is too short. Always ‘want to know.'”
Baier says: “Don’t let anyone tell you what you can or can’t do. If you believe you can do something, trust yourself over anyone else.”
Bentley says: “Do what you love to do, and let success come find you.”

Dana Perino takes questions during her first day as White House press secretary — Sept. 17, 2007. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Between the lines: Perino, who’s written other mentoring books, tells Axios: “I felt that the mentoring advice that I love to give needed a refresh in the post-COVID work environment and life environment.”

Her big takeaway for recent graduates who’ve come of age during COVID is to reject remote life.

“I understand that it is easier and more comfortable to enclose yourself, but we are social animals,” she told us.

“You have to deal with the butterflies in your stomach and the dread of going out. Once you do that, you’re in it. This is true for mentoring and for dating.”

Bonus: Perino says the best piece of advice she ever received was actually not about work. It was about relationships.

When she was weighing whether to leave her Capitol Hill job and move to England to be with her now-husband, Peter McMahon, a friend told her: “Do not pass up the chance to be loved.”