We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Bianca Dukesherer a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Bianca, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
It’s funny to answer this question, looking back on everything I’ve overcome. I’m smiling to myself as I write this because whether it be personal, professional or spiritual, I feel I’ve been through some tough sh*t. One of the first things I hear from people (and also feel energetically) is the surprise that I’ve dealt with anything.
There’s a reason for that… I project that onto the world, because no one else needs that energy from me.
I’m not going to list it all here for you to read out, but I am going to tell you it hasn’t been easy for me. There are many nights I’ve spent in agony over life events, lack of clients, business and money struggles and much more I’m sure. I think at some point I realized that I had to believe in myself more than anyone else. No one else is going to do that part for me 24/7 or the way I expect them to at least. People are going to show up the way they were taught to for the most part. I would get upset at my friend or my boyfriend or my dad for saying something along the lines of “maybe you should try ___ instead” (insert job of choice with more hours, less pay, and an unhappy Bianca) or “maybe it won’t work out, you’ll find something else.” When what I wanted to hear was that I’ll somehow work through it and be stronger and better than ever. That failure is normal, don’t get discouraged. But people will show up how they were taught, and I had to believe in myself, even when I failed. God, that was hard. And still can be sometimes. But you build yourself up, look at everything you’ve been through. There’s the evidence right there, that you can do more than you thought. That our minds only really know the bare minimum of what we’re capable of. Cause we can always go further.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I grew up in Honolulu, Hawai’i and in 2013, decided to go off to college in Washington State (WSU) and never looked back, really. I started traveling in 2016 when I went abroad on Semester at Sea (if you haven’t heard of this I highly recommend looking it up). 14 countries later, I moved to Bali, Indonesia for a couple of years. Where I learned more about myself and built up my spiritual self, and made an incredible network for myself. When Covid-19 hit, I applied for graduate school and decided to just go for it. If I was going to be stuck inside, might as well be learning and improving myself. So I moved to Paris, France. Studied Global Communications and Development, learned more about documentary filmmaking and storytelling & felt incredibly inspired.
Since then, I’ve been building my photography and videography portfolio with clients. This artistic creation is something I’d always kind of known and had this eye for when I created brand content for clients in the past, but now it’s just highlighted in different ways. I’m creative directing, detailing stories and seeing the follow through with my camera, all the way to the final product when I edit everything. There is something incredibly beautiful about that for me and I’m excited to see where it takes me.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Three skills that have helped me most on this insane journey would be
1. Confidence in myself – even when it feels like no one does. I would get called delusional, people would often put me in their boxes but I just wouldn’t care. And still don’t. At the end of the day it’s my life and I get to choose how I wake up, what I want to do, and there’s something special about that.
2. Trusting my gut – energy doesn’t lie and I know sometimes I went through hard times where I let go of a client cause it didn’t feel right or wasn’t intentional etc. and I would doubt like “ug, did I do the right thing?” Yes. Always yes. If it was bringing in weird energy, I have to remind myself a lot that it was for a reason, and trusting my gut has only ever worked well for me. This also ties into number 1, because the more you trust your gut, the more you believe in yourself and know your worth.
3. Let yourself fail, and try and try again. I’m more of a throw me in and I’ll figure it out type person, and it can be tough when I put in effort and end up failing at something, its rough on the ego. And the ego is a sore loser honestly. But failing is the best thing because without it I never would have discovered photography as part of my career, I never would’ve found certain clients I loved working with. Never would’ve appreciated the success as much. It says that you’re working toward something, so feel proud of the failures, of the bad and the good. The balance of it all.
Okay, so before we go we always love to ask if you are looking for folks to partner or collaborate with?
I’m always looking for creative projects, people to collaborate with, and partner with and think it’s only ever benefitted my creativity. Even if you just want to create a network.
Website: backpackingbee.com
Instagram: @backpackingbee | @bpbeesfilm
Email: [email protected]
Contact Info:
- Website: www.backpackingbee.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/backpackingbee?igshid=OGQ5ZDc2ODk2ZA%3D%3D&utm_source=qr
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61552755118316
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bianca-dukesherer/
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/backpacking-bee-honolulu?osq=backpacking+bee
