Maia Feruzi

I attribute my success to my dedication to myself and investing in myself. During all of those really late nights or really early mornings where I've got nothing left in the tank and I just really don't want to do the thing that I have to do, I remind myself that it's for me, it's not for anybody else. I tell myself that myself tomorrow is going to thank me for it - just pouring into myself and reminding myself who I'm doing it all for has really helped me get through those really tough moments. Especially when you do everything quote-unquote right and put so much time and effort into it and it doesn't turn out how you want it to be, it's at those times that you really have to let go of the results and focus more on the process, and making sure that the process always feels good and that you are fulfilled. Because if you always focus on results, it's just not gonna be as sustainable, it's not gonna feel as great.

The best career advice I've ever received boils down to fake it till you make it, move first and think later, and remember that the worst somebody can say is no. It's all about not leading an anxiously driven life, and starting to practice the life you want instead of the life that you have - dress for the job you want instead of the job you have. Try to incorporate your dream into small, daily habits and let that take over instead of trying to tackle everything all at once. If it just means you talk to yourself in the mirror and give some daily affirmations, or you just walk with your shoulders back when you're outside and your head up instead of looking at the ground, just making small changes to lead a more confident life so that you can get the things that you want instead of being too scared to ever approach them.

Don't let the men scare you. We love to enter male-dominated fields, but don't let them scare you. They also don't know what they're doing, they just like to pretend that they do. Make sure you find at least the person that you want to be and try to befriend them - that's kind of how I did it. I went and I found a photographer who had work exactly like how I wanted to do it, and I just kind of modeled myself after them for a while, looked at their daily habits, looked at how they made community and connection, and then I reframed it in what was feasible for me. That really helped a lot in order to build consistency and my own community and clientele base.

One of the biggest challenges I face is that because I'm still trying to freelance and not sign to anybody, I'm doing everything myself, and keeping the balance of work and life and all the moving pieces at once gets hard. It took a lot for me to learn to lean on community, because I really hate asking for help and don't like having anyone else have to do anything for me - I just do it myself, which is not sustainable and doesn't work. I understand that it's not weakness to ask for help when it comes to other people and I'll give this advice to other people, but learning to take it myself has been interesting. Letting go and allowing people to show up for me has been something I've been working on in the last two years. On the opportunity side, people just surprise you. When you allow people to have a chance to show up, they can really surprise you in the way that they do, and you can wind up making something even better than you ever imagined, just because you opened up the floor for connection and creativity. AI has also affected social media content creation - it's a part of most social media managers' toolkits now, so learning that, learning to not be afraid of it, accepting that it's here, and just learning regulation and proper ways to use it has been important. On the photography side, the problem is that people are now using AI to generate images rather than hire photographers, or they'll steal your images from online and use AI to alter them slightly and use in campaigns for free, so now you have to put hidden watermarks in all of your images if you put them online, which has been a little bit frustrating.

The values most important to me in my work and personal life are authenticity, honesty, creativity, open-mindedness, and lack of judgment - so lack of prejudice and lack of discrimination. These are my top values.