Giovanna McBryde

I truly hold myself to a high standard and I'm willing to put in the work. Half the battle is showing up and really grinding. I think nowadays it's very easy to see something glamorous on social media and think it came easy, and maybe for some people it does, but for me, it's about that hustle mentality, that hard work, that determination, and being willing to do what it takes, even when it's not fun, even when it's not pretty. So it's really not a glamorous answer - it's about the grind at the end of the day. As you get further along in your career, you have to balance that grind with deploying it to other people, deploying strategy to other people, because you can't do it all. Grind doesn't necessarily work at the higher levels, the higher up you go. When I'm dealing with 20 accounts that have 100 locations, I can't possibly be in all of them, so I have to be able to delegate, deploy, and coordinate those resources strategically through others and have others do the work for me. But at the end of the day, I'm doing my part, I'm carrying more than my own fair share and leading by example.

I hold myself to a very high standard, but I can't always do it all, so sometimes you just have to be okay with not being able to do it all. I can't completely deplete myself because I try to do everything. I have to just do the best I can and know that that's enough sometimes. That's hard to do, because I want everything to be perfect, but sometimes good enough is good enough.

Where you're born, how you're born, doesn't really impact where you can go. The starting point doesn't determine the destination. If you're willing to work hard enough, if you're willing to overcome the odds with just sheer grit and determination, you can do it. We're blessed in this country that we can literally do whatever it is we set our minds to, and people in other countries don't have that luxury. I've lived in many other countries as a child, so I've seen it. I'm not saying it's easy, but there is opportunity. My parents struggled near the poverty line my entire childhood, and I definitely had the opportunity to go work my butt off at a state school. Nothing - it wasn't Ivy League. I only took the SATs once because I couldn't afford to take work off on that Saturday to take it again, and I also couldn't afford the registration fee. But you can still go to a school that gives you the opportunity to do what you need to do. My story can be inspiring to other women that are coming up. I came from absolutely nowhere, and I'm not saying I'm exactly where I want to be or will end up, but I think that my journey can be inspiring to other women. It's great for younger women to have people to look up to and feel that there's hope, that even if maybe they're in a difficult time now, they can get to a place where whatever it is that they're trying to accomplish - just to know they have role models they can look up to.