Kimberlyn McLaughlin, MBA

The best career advice is to… that Ive received is never be discouraged based off of someone elses opinion. If you feel like that, you know, you can do it, and nobody understands your past or your idea Dont get discouraged, you know, just keep doing your thing, and itll all make sense to you at the end, and then itll really make sense to the people that didnt believe in you, so never stop because someone looks at you weird, or feel like you're, like, delusional as far as your dreams go.

The best career advice that I've received is never be discouraged based off of someone else's opinion. If you feel like that, you know, you can do it, and nobody understands your path or your idea, don't get discouraged. You know, just keep doing your thing, and it'll all make sense to you at the end, and then it'll really make sense to the people that didn't believe in you. So never stop because someone looks at you weird, or feel like you're, like, delusional as far as your dreams go. There's gonna be people that look at you crazy, like, what is she doing now? Like, you know, like, she's been doing this for a minute, like, and nothing's going on. And people don't like to follow you until you get to that point where you are, you know, and so they're just like, you know, people wait until you blow up until they want to, you know, support you fully.

My best career advice is to, I don't want to be cliche, but to always keep going and, you know, keep your vision alive, so whatever that looks like to you, no matter if you have the support system, like the close-knit support system, because what I've noticed is that a lot of people that you don't even know, you know, support you more than the people that you do know. And that's common, and a lot of people have experienced that as far as being an entrepreneur. And I just feel like even during those times where you don't have support from people that you do know, and the ones that you don't know, just support yourself at the end of the day. If you feel like that you can do it, then just keep that vision alive, keep things, you know, keep things in order, and keep your mind going so you can always, you know, come up with new ideas. And I always, I'm very traditional, so write stuff down. I know there's a lot of technology and, you know, apps and stuff that we can do, but it's just something about writing your ideas and your dreams down, and you know, just like the vision board. You just have to be your best motivator, and no matter if you have the support or not, the customers are not, the clients are not, the clientele or not, or anything, you know, just keep going. I always keep going.

The biggest challenge is to try to stay motivated during those off-seasons. And sometimes, like I mentioned, you get discouraged when it comes to being an entrepreneur, because you just go through the ups and downs of having sales to, like, months of, like, nothing, to, like, crazy months, where it's just, like, back to back, so it just varies. And you just have to have that, you know, level-headed mindset of, you know, this is what it is right now, but no matter what it looks like right now, it could be a totally different outlook in a month or so, so you just gotta keep going and, you know, get through the rough patches.

I'm a God-fearing woman, of course, so a lot of my values come from just wanting to have that guidance through God. Family, of course, I have a really solid family support system that has supported me. You know, they might not always agree with what I do sometimes, but they support me at the end of the day. My friends are pretty solid for the most part. And, you know, I'm a supporter of myself, and I've always been the type of person that you can tell me one thing, and you can have your opinion, but at the end of the day, I'm gonna always do what I want to do.