Steffie Solomon

I attribute my success to my son Maximus, who is [AGE] years old. He keeps me on my toes and he's the reason I do everything. He's a [AGE] boy, so I have to find the fine line between being cool mom and being cringey mom. I'm really trying to find ways to keep his spirits alive. Other than that, I would really just say my faith in God keeps me on my straight path, it keeps me focused, and it just reminds me of what I'm doing everything for. Those are my two biggest contributors to my success today and who I am today. I wouldn't be who I am without either of them.

The best career advice I've ever received is that you have to fail so many times before you can get your big win. There's always that fear of failing, or fear of looking like a loser, or fear of what other people think, and that needs to be gone like yesterday. The biggest advice, much easier said than done, is just keep on trying, keep on failing, and if you fail a bunch of times, who cares? You never want to take advice from somebody that you wouldn't want to trade lives with, and that helps me with not caring about what other people will think. Just do everything that you do, just keep going, because it just makes your story that much better. Success wouldn't feel as good if you didn't have all those times that you failed, and all those times that you prayed for that are happening now.

In a field that feels like you're taking a risk every single time, I would say your voice matters, and your ideas matter, and nobody else is made like you, nobody else is gonna think like you, so use that to your advantage and just be totally unique in what you're bringing to the table. But above all else, know your worth. Never let anybody else kind of put you in a corner or try to label you as something that you're not. Nobody else is made like you, so don't view that as a weakness, use it as your power.

The biggest challenge in my field is making sure that the client's voice and authenticity isn't lost, because it's hard to try to reinvent the wheel all the time. It's awesome to come up with original ideas, but sometimes you also have to take a step back and be like, what is already working? Who's already doing this better than I'm doing this? The hardest part is being on top of everything, needing to beat everyone else and be the quickest about something, but then also being vulnerable with your information and the work that you're putting out there. Trying to sell someone on something that you think is funny is very hard, especially if it's a joke you're writing yourself. If you're putting any of your work out there, it's always in its most raw, vulnerable form. So just seeing if other people can also connect with that is probably the hardest part.

The value that is most important to me is integrity. Now that I get to work completely remote, which is such a blessing, I think it's so important to be the same person as you are when somebody's watching over you and micromanaging you, and also the same person you are when you're totally free to just be creative and be free and be loose. Integrity when it comes to always bringing quality work, whether or not someone's on you like that, has to come from within. This is what I bring to the table, and this is the level of quality I bring with me. There are a lot of times, especially now with AI, where you can cut the corners and almost nobody would know, but I think integrity means knowing that you have made your own work, and you are proud in what you do. This is the level that you're gonna elevate yourself to every single time when others are maybe getting paid more for using a shortcut. It comes from you knowing your worth and knowing who you are and what you bring to the table.