Katrina Canfield

I had a great mentor who was my boss, a woman who was always there to make me feel confident when I wasn't. When I left a specific job, she would always help guide me back into the right path and help guide me through that process. She was just there for me, and she helped me gain confidence because I trusted her and I knew I could rely on her. I think that's such a huge part of being a mentor - having somebody that young people graduating college can rely on to give them confidence, especially since it's getting more and more difficult to get jobs out there.

Be prepared to accept rejection as part of your daily life. I think that was the hardest thing for me. I'm responsible for calling on clients, getting new business, hitting my budgets, so rejection is very much a part of what I do. Don't look at rejection as necessarily a bad thing, but think about how you can pivot and move on from rejection and make yourself better. I'm just very persistent - if you're rejected multiple times, you have to get the picture and move on to the next thing, but you also have to be intuitive about how you're being rejected. If I'm rejected multiple times from an organization I'm trying to bring on as a client, I'm just extremely persistent and I have a lot of hope and a great attitude about it. It's not you that they're rejecting, necessarily. I put myself in their shoes and say, maybe this isn't the right time for them, maybe they already have a media company they're working with. So instead of personally taking it as a rejection, I try to have empathy and see it from where they're coming from.

The biggest opportunity I've had currently is with a client called Indy Sports Corp. Most people don't realize this, but if you want a big tournament in your city, like the Final Four which Indy has this year, our city has to bid in order to get anything here, so we have to pay for it. Indy Sports Corp was not a client at all when I came onto this desk, but I've grown that relationship massively. Now, anything that comes into our city, I get the marketing budget for it. We had the Olympic swimming trials here two years ago, and I got the entire marketing budget for that. I'm doing all the Final Four marketing. That relationship and growing that opportunity has given me the ability to handle so many of the big sporting events now that are coming into our city entirely on my own, and normally those would go to a big advertising agency, but I usually do that with my team.

Integrity is the biggest thing. Integrity is so important in my daily life. When I say something to somebody, I'm gonna follow through. There's a lot of not-good people out there, and making sure that when I promise my clients something, I'm following through and I'm being honest about it, setting expectations properly, not over-promising. I think, ultimately, if you have integrity, you're gonna build trust with your clients, and all of the relationships in your life will be healthy. Anything I can do to empower women is a huge part of who I am, and I have two daughters myself. It's really important to me that we help other women, and if I can help mentor anybody, I would love to do that.