Asha Abryell Solis

I would definitely say my parents and my family. Honestly, all of my family is a big part of my success. I always say people should have a strong why every day - you need to know why you do what you do. And my why is always my family, and so that's what keeps me understanding my purpose whenever things may not go a certain way. They're the reason I push forward and stay motivated in everything I do.

I would say to make sure you figure out who you are. That is the most important thing. All this time before you left your family, moved out, before you became an adult, you were living under the rules of your family, and you had to follow those rules, which is how it is. But when you become an adult for the first time, you're going to discover who you are, and you may not quite know that yet. How you handle that is to make sure you spend quality time with yourself. Be disciplined - you can still have fun and do all those great things, but don't let people talk you out of who you are, because your authenticity matters so much. The sooner you know your authentic self, the sooner you're going to know exactly who you are and what you want to become, and not fall into these places where you think 'if I would have done this, I could have learned that.' Stay ahead of your peers by staying 10 steps ahead and being authentic.

As a woman in sales, I would say for us it's finding other women that do what we do with the grit and the mentality of confidence and grittiness. It's such a masculine position to be in - most males dominate in it. But I see more women starting to understand that we have such strong emotional intelligence, and when I see other women really know how to have that balance of the feminism but also stepping into her alphaness and making the most of herself by knowing how to say no and being strong in conversations, that's powerful. A lot of times people will try to think that women might let things be more lenient, but I look at a lot of the conversations I have with men as a good challenge. I understand the way men do business is different from how a woman would, but it's no different in how hard we will work and know how to find our way when it comes to people having skepticism or saying no to us. I think it's really about women knowing how to stick through the times where things may not go a certain way and knowing how to have a strong backbone.

For work, my values are most definitely knowing how to collaborate with people and knowing how to see that there's value everywhere - there's always something we can learn from each other. I really appreciate working with people who know how to keep that student mentality and also add value to each other and not live in the competition mentality, especially with sales environments. Most people do kind of start to bring that into the work environment, and I just appreciate when people know how to continue to have that mindset of 'we are all here to help one another,' and so that is very important to me - to have that genuine relationship. In my personal life, I would say knowing how to be somebody who's good at reaching out. I think a lot of times we get so caught up in our day-to-day routine that we think about texting someone and saying 'oh hey, I was thinking about you,' but we never do that. What really keeps me going, with my family being my why, is making sure I do communicate with my friends and family and tell them 'hey, I'm thinking about you, I hope life is good.' When you keep people in your corner, that is what fuels you. When you get up, you feel more confident, you feel more happy, because you have people in your life that know that you care about them and how they're doing.