Every overnight success we’ve seen has been years in the making. And those overnight successes are rarely because of an amazing idea or a stroke of luck. We asked some of our favorite folks from the community about what characteristics are at the heart of their success story?

Carrilee Fox | Carrilee Fox | Photographer | Elevating Imagery

There’s a quote by Author, James Clear that I live by: “If you never copy best practices, you’ll have to repeat all the mistakes yourself. If you only copy best practices, you’ll always be one step behind the leaders”. I am constantly placing myself in environments whereby I learn from who I believe are some of the best photographers in the industry. I have a great passion for learning and growing and I love meeting others who are extremely successful. My success is attributed to my mentors and my teachers and quite honestly, those who have graciously allowed me to photograph them….even when I barely knew what the settings on my camera meant. I joined a specific photography group on facebook last year. This group has highly successful photographers from all over the world sharing their knowledge and helping others to be just as successful as they are. I am blown away at their talent and their willingness to impart their factors behind their achievements as well as how they run their business and what tools they utilize. Read more>>

Zack Lyman | Stand Up Comedian & Podcaster

Understanding what I wanted out of my career in comedy and deciding what success truly looks like. Having a mixture of goals some that might seem easier to reach mixed with goals that might seem crazy. This has lead me to growing the Zack Lyman Podcast and growing my own stand up comedy career. Read more>>

Marian Mellen | Meditation & Mindfulness

I’ve been defining words lately and success is one I defined just the other day. I asked myself what does success mean to me? A life of meaning. So what has brought success (meaning) into business & life? Connection. Service. Community. Support. A heart centered approach has allowed this company, The Zen Bird, to evolve into greater meaning and a clear purpose ~ facilitating safe spaces of love, empathy, understanding and peace. Showing up vulnerably, messy and real (shaking hands and wobble feet) as this company grows has brought greater trust to those who I am helping (and really, we are helping each other.) It’s an interdependent and symbiotic relationship to learning through love and expanding the capacity to be WITH the human experience. Read more>>

Rachelle Friedman | EMDR and Brainspotting Therapist

The most important factor behind the success of my business and my brand is to be authentic to who I am. Through my years of experience as a therapist, I have found out that I am successful when I am authentic and when I do that work that I find to be rewarding. I also find that putting in the work becomes a lot easier when I believe in the brand, and in this case, I wholeheartedly believe in my brand. That is a simplistic answer, but I believe that it is true that it is easier to put in the work when we love what we do. I wouldn’t say that it is always easy to keep up with the pace of being a small business owner, but it is definitely rewarding. Read more>>

Onika Patel | Dentist & Owner of Minted Dental

I truly believe the most important factor in the success of my business, and the brand is understanding what my audience and patients want. All of my branding is grassroots level, me and my husband do everything on our own and have never hired an outside company. Everything from our social media content, captions, and published marketing is created by us, and surely that takes a lot of time and creativity. It’s hard work, but it shows our authenticity and who we really are and what is important to us, which is our patients and our team who work with us at Minted Dental. I have seen many accounts similar to ours or utilize what we do but I know from experience that true success comes from not recycling what someone else is doing, but knowing what your audience and patient/customer wants and giving it to them! I think authenticity is important but also having a vision for what you want to put out there as having people get to know you as a business owner, and most importantly, person. Read more>>

Taryn Luck | Entrepreneur

Recognizing a need and filling it. In my formative years I was raised by my loving grandparents in Mesa, Arizona, both who worked as teachers for most of their lives. My grandpa was also an avid outdoorsman and coach, who had many friends and local accolades to boot. I found him and his stories of football triumph and trophy bucks to be quite fascinating. He taught me that people and relationships were the greatest things in life, next to the great outdoors. Over the years I found myself in various professions and gathered quite a few friends along the way. However, as my friends and I got married, moved, had kids and the like, there seemed to be less and less availability for adventures together. Then in the summer of 2019 during an in-depth personal development program I made a goal to start my own business. In order to do so, I needed to identify a need that I could fill with my God-given gifts and some determination. Thus, Arizona Wild Adventures was born. Read more>>