Jennifer Vazquez

I attribute my success to not giving up - just persistence, breaking resistance, and continuing to move forward without losing focus. I stay laser-focused on my goals. I'm committed to learning and not quitting just because some strategy didn't work. I take calculated risks - there have been times where I've risked everything, all that I had. When the market crashed in 2007 and 2008, I lost it all. I lost everything, and I was providing for a young daughter on my own without financial help. Failure just wasn't an option. I was able to pivot and be extremely successful in another industry during 2010 and 2011, the toughest years of our economy. You also can't stop evolving. If you stop evolving, whatever you're doing or the service you're providing is not going to be needed at some point. Continuous evolution is very important.

The best career advice I ever received was from someone who told me that if you set a goal that is low, you're never going to exceed that. If you set a goal that is high, you'll work towards that. If you set a goal that is not so high, you're not going to ever exceed that because you don't work towards it. So the sky's the limit. You can achieve whatever you want, but you've got to work towards it. You've got to set up a plan and work towards it. If not, you'll never get there. It's not going to happen just by magic.

Nothing's impossible. As long as you really want it and you set your mind to it, it's not going to be easy, but there's nothing that's impossible to achieve. Don't turn away things or business opportunities or position opportunities. Don't turn away things that are of passion due to fear of inability to potentially be able to perform, or inability to potentially not be successful. Don't let fear be the driver. Let passion be the driver. Fear will show up, that's normal, but passion should lead the way.

I think AI is both the biggest challenge and opportunity. The challenge with AI is that the change is very rapid. Number one. Number two, it's very difficult to stay focused because there's just so many AI tools out there. But at the same time, I think that's also a great opportunity - a great opportunity to evolve, a great opportunity to use tools that are going to help you be more efficient in many areas. Don't be afraid of AI and don't be afraid of those tools or the technology. Yes, it's going to make a lot of jobs obsolete, but I also think that it's going to eliminate some positions, evolve other positions, and create others. Some organizations or leadership teams don't want to evolve because they don't like change, and there's companies that have experienced a lot of detriment because of that, such as Blockbuster and Kodak. When organizations or teams struggle with change, that's not a good thing in this age. Evolving is critical.

Integrity and passion are most important to me. When it comes to integrity, if you look a person in the eye and you shake their hand, that's a contract, and you've got to execute on that contract. If you don't, to me that's lack of integrity. It's about follow-through, doing what you say, loyalty, and doing the right thing. And passion - you've got to do what you love, you've got to love what you do. If not, it's going to be difficult to be successful. When I ask my clients what they like about working with me, they say I'm just so passionate. I don't even know why, it's just the way I am.