Martha Garduno

When you start a woman-owned business, it's not easy sometimes. Things that have made me successful are recognizing that one has to be knowledgeable, exposed, and most importantly, one needs to work in many ways to be able to welcome success into your life. You need to prove not to others, but to yourself that you can solve problems, because that is what sales is all about. You need to have integrity, compromise with your objectives sometimes, and be able to make every sacrifice you are willing to take to solve issues within delivery, planning, and deciding in sales. You need to create opportunities for yourself, definitely build strong business relationships, and put yourself out there with networking while maintaining a real structure and integrity in your business. Put all your effort. It's a step by step process, nothing comes by itself. Focus on what exactly you want and identify how many holes, how many needs are in the industry.

Successful doesn't come by itself, it doesn't walk through your front door unsolicited, nor does it come knocking at your door. It doesn't come through any kind of approval. You need to create values for yourself and continue to make the action to keep making progress. Keep moving forward.

Successful doesn't come "in general", it comes for people who have the vision in what ever they are working on. If you are persistent, if you have the ability to change or to turn the change in major opportunities, then you will be successful. It's not about being a woman or a man, success doesn't pick genders nor races. Success chooses between the people who want a reward vs the people who want to work towards a goal. It's about you having the vision to work, to love working hard towards a desired goal you have. Always be persistent. Have the ability to turn the challenge into opportunity. Don't say "why me?" say "try me" and follow up with it through your actions. Develop discipline, pursue the vision, and be willing to change your perceptions, then you will be successful even if you thought it was never possible.

Challenges: Tariffs affect telecommunications. They change prices, delivery decisions, and more from one day to another. And they affect projects I've prospected or worked on for a long time.

My language barrier has also been and is still a big challenge for me since English is not my first language, and I never went to school for it, nor did I go to school for business.

Opportunities: Working with SBDC as government contractor. Always growing, gaining more opportunities in technology and networking. Even though I did not have the opportunity to go to college, I never had the opportunity to finish my basic education, I've always been juggling a family and work, I found a way to make it work and I found the door that led to success. A lot of my support came from people and even clients who saw how hard I worked. They saw my potential in action, they saw my integrity, and it was clear that even if someone doesn't have all the knowledge, anyone can get anywhere if they work hard enough, optimizing their work ethics everyday. SBDC has provided me with so many important opportunities, Cal State Fullerton has helped fund my support, and many people support me through the genuine love I have to give the best customer support, and through that I have gained my most important connections. There are so many niches in the industry that one can succeed in, you just need to find one that you love.

Ethics is one of the main values. Everything in your life and your work has to have some ethics. Having and applying ethics means you practice honesty and you are responsible. True integrity, accountability, and respect is what matters most. Doing the right thing when no one is watching. Being forward as much as you can.