Katie Fay

I attribute my success to luck, planning, happenstance, community, and love - but honestly, out of all of that, it's just passion. We have a passion for life, we have a passion for what we do, and we hire people based on that passion too. You have to love what you do, or what else are you doing? We love what we do, and we didn't like what other people were doing with the thing that we would love to do, so we loved it so much that we wanted to build it ourselves. Like Mr. Beast says all the time, he wakes up with passion, he thinks about it constantly - it's something he's obsessed with. If you want to go big, you need to be obsessed with what you're doing. People just hate their lives, they hate everything they do, they feel forced into it, but you can literally change it all. You just need love - love for what you do, love for human beings, and passion for all of it. People will try to cut it down from their own fears, but you just gotta keep going, just gotta keep doing it.

The best piece of advice I've ever received is the count to 10 rule - give yourself ten seconds to think through something before responding. Allow yourself the moment to take a step back and think. You don't have to answer right away. Everyone wants to talk so fast that they interrupt each other, and then we judge each other based on whether we're listening well enough. But the 10-second rule gives you that moment to think, that time to process, and that's okay. If people look down on you for taking a moment to think, and you're not quick enough for them, they're just gonna judge you anyway. So just take that time, and table it. 10-second table it. You don't have to respond to a question immediately - you can tell them, let me think on that one, let me get back to you. It's about controlling the situation in a way that takes you out of the in-the-moment reactions.

Be 100% you. Find the passion that you love. If you love it, do it - just keep doing it, do it until you love it. If you start to get a panic attack, stop, take a break. You're just overthinking, and panic attacks come from passion too. So take a step back, you've got this. And use AI - protect your assets, but also don't be afraid of being transparent at the same time. Don't lead with fear. Lead with love first - love for yourself, love for what you're doing, and love for other people around you. Then take a step back if you need a moment, but you've got it. Don't lead with fear, don't lead with hate, especially toward men, but definitely have love for other women too, because it's just 100% love. Every single day. And it can break your heart, but you have to think about it with empathy first. There's gonna be men and women who are gonna treat you poorly, but just be successful and keep going. Don't let anyone cut down your ideas before they even happen - find people who will indulge in your ideas and help build the structure around them.

The biggest challenge in my field right now is fear. Fear of losing their jobs, fear of not performing well, fear of not meeting numbers, fear of disappointing - and it all goes right down to fear of losing their jobs. They use fear in my industry to move people, to make them speak the way they want them to speak and things like that. A lot of these agencies are losing everyone and realizing that the revolving door is because of them. You shouldn't have to make people run on fear, and I think that's a direct line of what's happening in our country right now - fear creates chaos, and fear does not create good business. It doesn't create good community. It doesn't really create good anything. Now, there's healthy fear, like looking both ways before you cross the street, or having insurance before you go skydiving. But the kind of fear that's being used to control workers and manipulate them - that's what's destroying the industry.

The value that is most important to me is honesty. Even when it hurts, honesty is the best thing ever, and it's actually the easiest thing ever, because you know when someone's not being honest, and it tears everything apart. When you're not honest, then you have to cover up for your lies. My mom and my boyfriend are people I can be 100% fully open with, and it doesn't mean you have to share everything, but being honest about where you're coming from is important. It is scary, especially in a business format, because then they can use that against you, but if you're in a court of law, honesty's on your side anyway. I tell all of my brands when they sign up that if a host or moderator is having bad mental health, physical wellness, or an emergency, live streams can be moved, because emergencies cannot be moved, and it would affect the stream anyway. I'm gonna honestly tell them what's happening without sharing all the personal details. In my personal life, with family, if I didn't like the way someone talked to me, I'll sit down and talk about it. In business, if someone's going through a lot and it's affecting the business, I need to sit down with them and figure out how we're going to manage this going forward. I'm glad when they're honest with me, because I need to be honest with them. We need to make sure that the entire work environment is functioning and healthy. Honesty is 100% the most important value - you don't have to tell all the nitty gritty details, but you need to be honest about where you're coming from.