Courtney McManus

I attribute my success to being intentional about everything I do and maintaining strong time management across all my endeavors. Success doesn't just happen - it requires putting in the work consistently, every single day, even on weekends. I wake up and show up with consistency, whether that's for my 9-to-5 team or for my entrepreneurial work, because nobody's going to just hand you the work when you're building your own business. You have to put in the work to get the work. I also think my ability to stay authentic in everything I do has been crucial. I've learned to leverage my emotions into my success rather than using them as excuses. Even on difficult days, like today which is the 12-year anniversary of my dad passing away, I get up and do what I'm passionate about because I know he'd be proud to see me fighting through whatever emotions I'm feeling to pursue what I really want to do. That mindset of not letting emotions take over, but instead channeling them productively, has been a huge part of my success. I also credit my career progression within one company over four years, which is a bit traditional but shows the value of consistency and sticking through the challenging days rather than job-hopping like many in my generation do.

The advice I give has a couple pieces. One thing I would say is always focus on outworking yourself from the day before, and always remember that collaboration with other women and other people in the industry is way better than competing with them. You're going to be more successful that way. Another piece of advice I'd say is that, especially as women, we are more emotionally driven, and I think trying to leverage those emotions into your success rather than leveraging them into excuses is a really big thing for me. Candidly speaking, today is the anniversary of my dad passing away, which happened 12 years ago, but that doesn't stop me from getting up and doing the responsibilities that I have. It's a mindset thing. Instead, it's like, okay, this is really cool - I can take some time today to celebrate my dad, but at the same time, I'm doing the things I'm passionate about that he'd be so much more proud to see me actively getting up and fighting whatever emotions it is to do the things that I actually really want to do, rather than letting the emotions kind of take over me.

One of my biggest challenges across all my fields is that you're dealing with people, and while I'm passionate about people and love understanding them, people have emotions and feelings and opinions. You can't always make everyone happy, so trying to keep the majority of people happy is the goal, but sometimes you have to be direct about what needs to happen without necessarily hurting someone's feelings. Time management is always a challenge too - I'm constantly looking to get better at it. Because I'm juggling so many things, I almost feel like I'm never quite doing enough for each area, but then when I reflect and look at it from an outsider's perspective, I realize I actually am doing enough. That perception internally versus externally is definitely something that's a challenge for me, because I just always want to be better. On the opportunities side, I really like supporting the community, especially local Black and Hispanic-owned businesses, local minority-owned businesses, and I'm in a field where I can do that. In the corporate cybersecurity world, the opportunity is that my job is really making a difference in people's lives even though they don't know it, and I think that's what makes it even more special. You're driving your car and you don't have to worry about if your water is safe, clean drinking water, because the cybersecurity measures we're putting in place are preventing people from being able to change that. In a world where technology and AI are getting even more advanced, which can be scary and overwhelming, it's a very cool opportunity to be able to actually help people. Help people is really the two words that describe something I do in each of my industries that I'm really passionate about.

Authenticity is a huge value for me - that's really one of my main ones. It means always being myself, whether it's in my personal life or in the way I push my brand. Community is another super important value, especially supporting women. I have Hispanic roots but I'm very white presenting, so it's very important for me to be able to support the culture in what I'm doing. When I can support local businesses that are Black-owned or Hispanic-owned in the area, I have even more passion behind supporting those. Work ethic would be my third big value, because there's always an excuse for why something can't be done. Unfortunately, when we have those excuses, the business on the other end that we've agreed to something with doesn't really care about that. Like I said to somebody the other day, if Amazon tells you your delivery's going to get there Friday but then it doesn't get there till Sunday because of any excuse, you don't really care about the excuse - you just care that you needed whatever that was on Saturday and it got there Sunday. So work ethic and not giving excuses, even though it's really easy to, is a huge value of mine.