Be true to yourself. If you have what I call fiber, fire in the belly for research, if you have fiber be true to yourself, persevere; you will succeed. Probably the most important thing that you can do to help yourself is a good mentor. The literature is very clear about this. The single most important correlate or predictor of success and of future dedicated status as an academic researcher in medicine is having had a good mentoring experience coupled with at least a two year post-doctoral fellowship.

Learn how to write. Peer reviewed publications are still the coin of the realm. Develop a thematically focused set of peer reviewed publications. You will be judged, your professorial advancement will depend upon a corpus of first authored peer reviewed publications that tell a coherent story. That I would say is a critical strategy to pay attention to.

The other one is collect pilot data. Collect feasibility data. Your grant application will not be taken seriously in the absence of good feasibility data. As my good friend and older brother, David Kupfer, likes to say there are few of your questions to which the answers don't involve either more peer reviewed publications and/or pilot data.