Zenaida Smith Brayton

I attribute my success to my desire to be self-sufficient. I'm on a fixed income, so it's just not enough on its own. I've had to branch out to be able to sustain my lifestyle. You know, I have champagne tastes and beer money, so I've learned to create multiple streams of income and do what I need to do to support myself and live the life I want to live.

The best career advice I've ever received is to be passionate about what you like and what you do, and to be persistent and consistent. Those three things - passion, persistence, and consistency - have guided me throughout my career and helped me succeed in everything I've done.

I would definitely tell them to market themselves and make sure they're ready to take the orders and be prepared. In the drinks and food industry, it's very sporadic - one minute you get a lot of sales, the next minute it's just nothing. So I feel that you should have another income and not depend on just your business. This is a side business for me, because if I was to depend on it solely, it wouldn't work. The costs can be very high, especially when you do food like I do that's mostly catered to vegetarian and vegan - it becomes very costly. You only get a certain type of people interested in that. I mean, I will cook for different people and cater with meats and stuff because I still do whatever you want, but when I'm cooking and doing lunch for people, it's mostly in the vegetarian field. So my advice is to be prepared for the ups and downs and have multiple income streams.

The biggest challenge in my field right now is that it's very competitive. What I do is unique because I'm so passionate about using natural ingredients, but that makes it a little bit costly. I don't deviate from my standards - I use alkaline water for my food and certain things that no one else does because I have a machine on site. I use all alkaline water - I drink it, I cook with it, I clean with it, everything. The challenge is maintaining those high standards with natural ingredients while keeping the business viable in a competitive market, especially when the costs are higher than what others might charge.

Honesty is the most important value to me in both my work and personal life. We have so many people who aren't honest these days. Right now, I'm fighting with a man who took $100 from me for cutting my yard and never came and did anything, and I'm still fighting to get my $100 back. That kind of dishonesty really bothers me, and it's why I value honesty so much in everything I do.