Shelby Barron

I attribute my success to my dad and my husband. My dad has always pushed me to be the best that I can be and the best version of myself. My husband has always supported me, no matter how outlandish my journey might seem that I'm doing, because I've done many different things, and he's always been there on every adventure with me. Even the Mrs. Texas United States Agriculture pageant - I've never done a pageant before, but I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna do this just to say I could, I've done it, check the box, get the t-shirt, literally, move on. And he's always there. When he married me, I told him, I'm not boring, I’ll keep you on your toes.

The best career advice I ever received was from my dad. He told me, don't let your peers try to limit your abilities. He said, you're going to have people out there that are going to be mean and rude to you because they're afraid of how well you are doing, and that you're going to do their job better than them. So you're always going to face those challenges, but you prove to them by being the bigger person by overcoming those challenges and showing that you can do your job 10 times more than what they could have. And if you end up getting let go, it's because you were doing your job better than they intended you to do. He also always told me to look at the bigger picture instead of just hyper-focusing on the small one. Look at the bigger picture to see where you're headed.

The advice I would give to them is don't let the naysayers determine your outcome. My quote that I live by is don't tell anybody your plans. Let your success speak for itself, so move in silence , and let your success speak for itself. Because if you tell somebody your plans, then you jinxed it. If you move in silence and not tell anybody your plans, and your success and your actions speak for themselves, then that is probably the biggest thing that you can do, because there's always going to be somebody doubting you. And you're always going to want to have to prove yourself. If you don't tell them that, and they don't know your next move, then you will prove yourself, because they won't see what your next move is. It's kind of like a chess game - never let your opponent know your next move. You limit the number of hoops you have to jump through just by not telling someone your plans.

Some of the obstacles that I might be encountering is looking where to start first, and getting your projects done to show what you are capable of, and finding the right avenue to enhance my education, like whether I need to do a technology boot camp, like a coding bootcamp, or actually go get a master's certificate from an accredited university. It's just trying to find the right starting point that's not going to cost a whole lot of money, because some of the technology bootcamps that are out there might seem legit, but then they cost an outlandish amount of money. I need to do more research on them - what's the return gonna be? Are they gonna help me get an internship that I need? Are they gonna give me the projects that I need to add to my portfolio? Some of them don't even offer those extra incentives, so paying $10,000 for this program's not going to be worth it, move on to the next one. So it's really finding where the starting point is, because I already have all of this extensional knowledge, I need to fine-tune it to one category and start there, and then add on my extras later. Yes, I can build websites, but I also know how to do AI, I know how to do graphic design, I know how to do marketing, so it's like integrating everything that I know how to do in one, but finding the starting point is usually the hardest part.

The values that are most important to me in my work and my personal life are that I always put family first before my career, because I don't want my life to be consumed by work that I forget to enjoy the little things, like time with my family, enjoy time for myself. The values that I live by is family first, work will always be there, but your family won't always be there, so enjoy them while you have them. When I go out and take care of my girls and collect their eggs and give them their treats, that's like decompressing when I get home from work. I call it my therapy.