We asked rising stars from the community one of our favorite questions: other than deciding to work for yourself, what was the single most important decision you made that contributed to your success?

David Enloe | Family Photographer

Stepping away from social media. I started my photography business four and a half years ago, and was convinced by everyone around me that social media would be instrumental to my success. It never felt great. Sometimes I felt like I was doing too little, other times too much. Read more>>

Jessica Cage | USA Today Bestselling Author

I would say its the fact that I never tried to compartmentalize my life. A lot of people I see try to split their time to have a perfect balance. I realized early on, as a single mother, that wasn’t going to work. So I adapted a flow style of life balance giving my energy to things that felt most deserving at the time and not beating myself up for things that had to take the back seat. Read more>>

Nadine Kolodziey | XR ( extended reality artist )

The best decision I made in my first year of being a self employed artist: I heard of the Adobe creative residency program two days before the deadline and I just went all in to apply with a simple idea: transitioning from illustration and installation, I wanted to learn augmented reality from scratch- unbelievable but true: Read more>>

Melody Cohn | Facilitator for Chakradance, Sound baths, Drum Circle Meditations and Reiki Healing

Holding space for others to participate and experience my meditations, art, music and more while meeting in my studio gallery & garden in point happy, La Quinta, CA Read more>>