While it’s inspiring to read high level summaries of success stories, we think it’s just as important to learn about what drove the success and made it possible. We’ve asked some of the brightest folks we know to open up about what they believe was the most important factor behind their success.

Elena Gully | Salon Owner, Stylist, Photographer, Hair Product Designer, Model, Entrepreneur

The most important factor in my success has been to be brave. In the beginning, this was being brave enough to start my journey to my dream job. Brave enough to become highly educated in the skillset, trusting that you can not only do it but that you are making the world a better place, making people happy. Brave enough to learn a new language to move my business to a new country. When I came to America, I had to learn an entirely new system. My determination to bring clients a standard of service and cutting edge techniques that they couldn’t find elsewhere pushed me on. Read more>>

Martin Avitia | Chef/owner – Sitios Aluxe’s Table

I think the most important factor behind being successful in anything, is being able to acknowledge criticism and work at making what you want, what others want. Sometimes your vision is very one sided and doesn’t fit with the community but you can’t see it when you are trying so hard to do what you want. Its also helps to know that it is ok to be scared. If your not scared, your not going 100% and you’ll probably fail. When your scared, you have to keep going to stay afloat. Like when your falling and you have to run as fast as you can to get back up Read more>>

Christopher and Christopher J. Barbara | Founders and Owners of Dos Chris’

The most important factor behind our success/the success of our brand with Dos Chris’ is kindness. Kindness is the foundation of our company; it is innate in our branding and who are as people. Kindness can be lacking at times in this post-COVID-19 world we are living in, including customer service. Thus, it is our mission that we treat every customer with kindness and what customers can expect every time they interact with Dos Chris’. It is our goal to make the world a kinder place. After all, our company slogan is, “Leave a little sparkle wherever you go!”. Read more>>