Flor Escudero

I think it's my personality a little bit. My husband was saying he doesn't know how I do it because I'm not even like a salesperson, but people just like me. I think that it's because I'm genuinely nice, and I really actually care for people. Like, I really do, and sometimes that shows, right? When you genuinely want what's best for others, people will trust you and they'll confide in you. I just try to be as authentic as I can, and just be like, look, if I can help you, I'll help you. If I'm not able to help you, I'll find somebody that could help you. I just really try to be as authentic as I can be, and really genuinely care about others. I feel like that comes across to people, and they see that. I think a lot of it is about our relationships.

It's not really advice that I received, it's more examples that people have showed me in their careers. I worked at a public accounting firm where I worked with a lot of different directors, and they all have different personalities, but just the fact of how they each dealt with difficult situations and how they were able to find solutions and move forward, that really taught me a lot in my career. You just have to find a way, like a way through. There has to be a solution. Also, to be honest, my mom has been a very big influence in my life, and her way of dealing with situations was always very positive. Her way of thinking is so solution-oriented, like there has to be a solution for everyone. That's basically the way that I've seen my career. Things come, difficult things might come, but there has to be a way out. And actually, those things develop you into a better person and teach you a lot of skills that you didn't even know you had while going through these challenging situations. I like to pay attention to how certain people behave and how they act in certain difficult situations, because I like to learn from people. If you have a positive attitude and a mindset that there's always a solution for things, then I think that's just something that will really guide you through this whole journey.

I would say to just give yourself some grace. I know that women, we juggle a lot of things at the same time. If you have kids, or if you have a personal life, it's a lot of juggling and a lot of moving pieces. Sometimes you need to step back and give yourself some grace. When we step back and look at things from a different perspective, we're able to make better decisions. I think as women, we seem to be very perceptive of things and very intuitive. I really do think women are very good in business because of the fact that we're very perceptive, we're very intuitive. But we just have to kind of step back and look at things from afar for us to make the best decisions. Give yourself some grace, and take a break, and the things will come.

There's a lot of opportunity with AI right now. There's a lot you can do with AI in the sense where you can do a lot more than you were able to do before for clients. You're able to offer better services, and it kind of really puts you at a different level if you're able to use the tools correctly. That's something that we're currently working on, as to how do we incorporate AI to be able to provide better service to our clients. We work with real estate investors, some family offices, nonprofits, and we do see the need for a lot of reporting and high-level information that they need in order to run their businesses. There's a lot of opportunity there, and it's just a matter of seeing what works and focusing on those industries and how we can service them better.

One of the values that's really important to me is integrity. It's kind of like doing things with integrity, being authentic, and trying to do the right thing all the time. I really don't put the material things as a priority, because I think that at the end of the day, things will come to you. The value that I was always taught, and I always put in front of me is being authentic and doing things with integrity. That's the main one, and obviously being respectful and working as a team are also very important. But integrity to me, it's been one of the big ones, both personal and career.