Celestina Benn

I attribute my success to persistence, integrity, and never giving up. If you retire, you die - you just have to keep going forward. My education played a huge role, as did watching family members build successful small businesses. I've been fortunate to have good role models along the way, people who just don't give up. Two mentors who really influenced me were Jen Bonet, the founder of Startup Chicks in Atlanta, and Gloria Allred, the attorney who represented my daughter's case against a pedophile school teacher. Gloria is this tiny woman, maybe four feet tall, but when she walks into a room, she just commands it - she's got the panache. It's amazing. My daughter Zoe is also someone I admire tremendously because of her courage. She was only 14 when the incident happened, and she didn't put up with what she was dealt. She's a very courageous young lady. She worked at Disney as a character until they let the entertainment people go, and now she works in event programming for the elderly at a Community Edison Center, and they adore her. The most important thing is to be persistent and tenacious. You have to put an honest day's work in, and when you go home from your job and go to bed that night, you need to know that you did the best you could possibly be. Some days are harder than others, but at least you gave it a good try. You can't sell a crappy product to somebody knowing it's crappy - you just can't do that. Get a new job if that's the case, or quit while you're ahead.

The best career advice I ever received came from a man many years ago who taught me about the power of a handshake. He said if you can shake someone's hand and deliver what you were going to sell, any contract will be void and null. In other words, you don't need a contract to keep both sides honest if you're an honest person. If you can shake someone's hand, that's it - you don't need the contract to sign. I was a little hesitant at first because that was not something I'd ever experienced before, and of course I had pushback from the bosses, but he was right. So honesty and integrity is what is most important. Being a good team player is important too. But the best advice I can ever say is just be your authentic self. Be honest. Have integrity. And here's the one I really love: be part of the solution, not part of the problem. That's the best advice I've ever gotten in my life.

In any industry, not just mine, I would say be careful of promises made but not kept by supervisors and company heads. Be alert. If the hairs in the back of your neck go up, listen to it. If you get a feeling in your gut, listen to it. That's the most important thing you can do. And be supportive of other women, because the biggest problem we have as women is we don't support each other. People will say they do, but they really don't - they're always cutthroat about it. It's interesting. Somebody said to me just the other day that I am not a typical woman in work, in business, because I don't try to crawl my way over other women, and I'm not threatened by people. I'm just not threatened. If you come with sincerity and you come with an open mind, I'm not threatened. Other women are threatened by me many times because they're always trying to be one up on women so that they look better for the male contingency in the group. So my advice is: trust your instincts, support other women genuinely, and don't be threatened by other women's success.

Right now, since I have a position but I'm looking for work closer to home, the biggest challenge is that I do a lot of traveling. I'm usually traveling all the time between Northern and Southern California, where the majority of my clients are, and I'm trying to find something closer to home so I'm not traveling continually. But the biggest challenge I see in the field overall is this whole ghosting thing - having positions that companies really don't have openings for, and they're just stacking resumes. I think that is the worst thing they could do because they're giving false hope to people who may not have the depth and the breadth to see it through. I notice a lot, men and women both, get very discouraged and very sad. They're looking for a position, or they've been let go, and they have the ability for the first couple of months, but then they no longer have the ability for the long haul of finding the right position. I think that's a pretty terrible thing to do to people, and it just makes me angry. It happens all the time. I think it's important that companies should be better with future hires, and they're not.

I think when you get up in the morning, you do the best job you can do - put in an honest day's work. And you go home from your job and go to bed that night knowing that this is the best that you could possibly do, and be the best that you could possibly be. It's not an everyday thing - some days are harder than others - but I know that at least you gave it a good try. Being tenacious and persistent is important. You know, if you're a woman, being persistent used to be referred to as being a certain word, but I think you have to put a good face forward. You have to be able to look at yourself at the end of the day. You can't sell a product, you can't sell something to somebody knowing that's a crappy product. You just can't do that. Get a new job if that's the case, or quit while you're ahead. Today, a lot of people can't do that because we have all these additional expenses that have come into play, so a lot of people are living day-to-day just to save money. Someone once told me, if you can take 10% of everything you make out of your paycheck and just put it to the side in savings and don't touch it, that is the best solution to having a good life later on in life. Honesty and integrity are what matter most.