Stephanie Guyton

I work really hard, and that's really important to me. We didn't have a ton growing up, and so I wanted to have a different life for myself. I wanted to have the ability to make different decisions and choices when I could, so I was just going to work really hard and make sure I could have the ability to live a different way when I grow up. That was always a real motivator for me, a real driving force, so I just always kind of worked my butt off and made sure that I could do that. I've always been very curious as well. I love learning, so I think those two together are quite the dangerous combo. Even in eighth grade math class, I won the award for asking most questions. I just had an inquiring mind, and I wanted to know why, and I wanted to understand. That, in combination with the desire and willingness to work hard, has really gotten me pretty far.

The best advice I ever received was 'go for it.' When I was looking to go to graduate school, I was between two programs - the executive program and the fully employed program. The executive program was really more for the more tenured person, and I had a mentor at the time who said, 'Steph, of course, you're the more senior person, do the more executive program.' It was really about who else was going to be in the classroom, and he could see that. I thought, no way, I'm too small a fish, I'm gonna drown in that pool. And he was like, you're absolutely not. I was terrified, but of course I got there and I did quite well. They even gave me a fellowship to go to the program because they wanted me in it. I graduated at the top of the class and was grateful for the peer group I got from that program. I'm still very close now, 10 years later, with a lot of executives I went to school with, even though I was a good 10-plus years younger than a lot of them. They saw me as a peer, just as he thought they would, because I was operating at their level. That advice - just go for it - can follow into a lot of other places. If you're not sure if you can do it, you're never gonna find out. You just gotta go for it. That's how a lot of these women get to where they are. And if it didn't work out, well, you can go for it again. If you don't do it, you're never gonna know.

I would definitely suggest that they seek out mentorship and ask a lot of questions. I've had a lot of mentors along the way, and asking a lot of questions has been very helpful to understand the business. When I first started, I thought I wanted to do wealth management right out of undergrad, but at that age, I thought, who's gonna give me their millions of dollars? Maybe I was right, I don't know, but I thought that could be setting myself up to fail. So I thought, let me come back to that. I set up what I thought would be credibility and other experience, and then came back to it. There's certainly young people that come straight out of school undergrad into this industry, but they tend to not look like me, and they tend to have relatives in the office. It is a challenging industry and a really challenging business. When they were asking me to work with them, I asked a lot of questions - what is a day in the life? Walk me through what it is. Every job I've had before, I did a lot of informational interviews with people and said, what do you do all day? It might not be what you think it is, and you're never gonna know until you try. Maybe be an assistant first, maybe work as the analyst first, or join a team so you can get that experience without having the challenge of people going, you're a little green, call me in 5 years. But you're not going to be there in 5 years if no one chooses to work with you in the meantime. It is a hard business, but there are pathways to get around those challenges.

They haven't quite worked out the whole gender imbalance thing just yet. That's still quite alive and well, and that's a real bummer. When I joined the Laguna Niguel office in 2019, I was the only female advisor in that office. We had some other women, but I was the only female advisor. One day I was working out of the Fashion Island office, and I was in a cube because I was newer. One of the other assistants assumed I was an assistant because I was a woman, even though advisors have cubicles too when they first start. When wholesalers would come and want to sell us stuff, they would walk right past me and ask whom I'm an assistant, but they would stop at the guys' office cubicles, even though they were newer associates than me. And I'm wearing a suit! That's not amazing. So I would say that's still very much a challenge. Even when I was in M&A, I was leading the mergers and acquisitions projects, and I was the only woman in a 30-person call. I was leading the call because I was running the due diligence. On the phone, the guys always had to say who they were, but I never had to say who I was because I was obviously the only woman on the phone. That's not new, that's not novel, but unfortunately it is still a thing. I wish that was not anymore, but it is still very much a challenge and something that I hope gets improved in my lifetime. Part of my goal is that you can't make change from the outside, so the further up I go, the more influence I get, the more I can change.

Trust is very important to me. Trust and transparency, honesty - all three go together. That's a value that I hold personally as very important. In my work, it's also something that is just paramount. Someone's gonna write me a check for $5 million and say, can I trust you with my money? That's a big deal, and I'm always so honored that somebody would, and that people do. That's something I don't take lightly. I know that they only do that if they trust me. So if they're going to trust me with that, I need to be deserving of that trust, and continue to deserve that trust, and earn that trust. I need to act with the integrity to keep that trust. I'm always very transparent with them. Clients ask me all the time, oh, can you do this or do that? I'm like, I can, but it would just benefit me and not you, so I'm not going to recommend it. I will just straight tell them, that would be a bad decision for you, great for me, bad for you, so I think we should not do that. I know that they appreciate that, because at the end of the day, that's my job.