Sydney Salvat

I definitely attribute my success to my family. When I was growing up, there were a lot of scenarios and events that came up that pushed me to want to do better and bigger things, and not just be complacent and be happy where I was. My mom would always try to give me cash on the weekends or something like that, and in my head, I would always be like, nope, I don't want to take your money, I want to work, I want to earn my own money. My grandparents always asked me what do I want to be, what do I want to do when I'm older, and that at least got me to really think about what I was gonna do and how I was gonna get started instead of waiting till the last minute to kind of figure things out. There were certain situations and events that happened when I was younger too, so it kind of gave me a very hard drive to want to do bigger and better things, so that I can have a better life and work for a better life. Yeah, definitely my family's been the biggest impact.

I've received so much great career advice over the years. One piece that really stuck with me was when someone said, when you're young, try everything to make sure you miss out on nothing. Another important one is that even though whether you're doing great or poor in your job, it doesn't define you. I also learned to make sure you find a company you want to work at that you can see yourself being the top position there, and if you can't, it's not a good fit. These are so important, because especially when you're younger and you're trying to find your path, everybody's like, oh, you have to find a job for life, you have to be in it 20, 40 years, get great at it, be an expertise in that technique or that field. But you can work somewhere and be exceptional and still not meet that particular business owner's standards, and then you feel like you're not as good, when you can quickly go to a different company and be top performer, bring the most value to the company. Another one is to never be complacent, to always give as much value to the business and the business owner as you can, so that you can seem like a very important person there that they wouldn't want to lose.

My industry is definitely a man's world. I work with maybe a handful of women, and the rest are tens and twenties of guys, of men. So my advice is: don't be intimidated. Be yourself. And don't have a ceiling for where you want to go or what you want to do, because there's no cap. That's a boundaries idea that people get in their heads, that there is not plentiful of everything, and there really is.

I've definitely faced challenges throughout my career. I've had setbacks and business owners where our personalities didn't match and they didn't like me. When I was young, when I first started in my career, it was hard for me to understand expectations of what some business owners wanted from me, so it was hard to meet those, and when I didn't meet them, consequences would happen. That really made me self-reflect and bounce back and become better - do my own research and understand the process and become even better, and learn and grow. As far as opportunities, there's moving up in the corporate ladder. And then also, just as far as being a consultant in the finance industry, the more practice, the more learning I do, the better, the closer I am, the more people I'm able to help, so those are definitely huge opportunities.

Some values that are definitely important to me are growth - always growing, never being complacent. Another one is honesty, just being open and straightforward. That one is really good because, you know, coming from the business owner or the employee, you never want to be misled or thinking they're on the right track when you're on two separate pages. Like a straight shooter. Those would be probably my top two. And then, you always want to be able to have some fun. I've never worked at a company where they don't take a little time off, or they don't add some work event or employee appreciation things. You know, real time, real fun, not like, oh, Appreciation Week, let's wear green - that doesn't count. That's definitely important too, especially when you work so hard.