By Bessie King

Sylvia Warot has been a go-getter since childhood.

Growing up in a Polish family made the middler accounting and finance major value the principles of respect, support and responsibility; her first language was Polish and in kindergarten she began to learn English, which she speaks today with an accent. She practiced traditional Polish dance with a company, giving performances across the States, as well as in England, Poland, Canada and other countries. Today Warot continues her dancings and is a pionierka, or head guide of a troop, for the Polish Scouts.

Dancing is not the only thing Warot is involved in. Thanks to her family values, and her personal experiences with a nutritional product, she now has her own business and expects to retire by the age of 30 with a minimum monthly income of $5,000.

Warot first got involved with Reliv nutritional products when she was growing up. Her brother suffered serious asthma attacks as a child and until a family friend introduced Reliv to Warot’s mother, who then started giving the product to her son, almost miraculously the asthma problems stopped.

The entire family began taking the nutritional supplement and Warot assures that for more than 10 years she has never been sick or suffered from a headache. Warot could have continued to take the supplement as a means to remaining healthy, but instead she chose to invest in the product her family had so much success with.

“Because of the results it gave me I started learning more about the product and the business and one night my mom took me to a presentation in 2004,” Warot says. “I attended a conference and decided to invest in the highest level of the business; I took the chance at once and charged $3,700 to my credit card because I knew I could sell the product.”

Reliv International is a worldwide company that sells a nutritional supplement which claims to eliminate and alleviate health problems. In the business one sells the product individually, obtaining referrals from friends or at special Reliv presentations. Over time, a seller obtains affiliates who sell under their guidance and help create higher revenues for the director and the team.

Within her first month, Warot made $1,400 in revenue, selling out her starting order after her second month. She was not preoccupied with losing her investment or getting in trouble with her parents for making such a big decision on the spot. She says she trusted herself and her business abilities explaining that after providing her personal stories, people trusted Reliv. Now she has a client base and two affiliates that are in turn obtaining more customers.

“She’s very passionate about her business and she wants to help people with the product because she cares and just wants to help others be healthy,” said Kristina Tamirova, a middler criminology and corrections major and Warot’s best friend for over seven years.

“When I say I am going to do something and people are like, ‘Yeah right, you probably won’t,’ I say ‘Oh yeah? Just watch me,'” she said.

At first glance, Warot appears to be a fashionable and nonchalant girl. Walking calmly, she sports a fitted forest green tailored suit with a trendy white dress shirt with ruffled cuffs and collar accompanied by a beautiful silver and green stone necklace to accent her outfit. As she gives a warm hello with a hug, her long red hair sways to one side and falls back into place after the embrace ends.

Beginning a chat on the first floor of the Curry Student Center, the breezy appearance she made with her entrance quickly faded away as she began to tell stories from her past that revealed her motivation to take her eagerness to grab hold of her opportunities in life.

At 16, she volunteered with Summer Search, an organization focused on developing young leaders, and was dropped off in the middle of Colorado, along with five strangers, left to find a way of working together and reaching their specified safety location within 23 days.

As part of the Summer Search experience Warot also traveled to Alaska to help an Athabascan Indian village recovering from a flood.

Warot slept outdoors, drank water from nearby rivers, and walked or hiked three or more miles each day without much care to her manicure or pedicure. Fast forward to when she was 20 and decided to go to Rome for the Pope’s funeral.

Friends, colleagues and family doubted she would make the trip after deciding to travel the day of Pope John Paul II’s death but, sure enough, she went to the airport the next day and got a flight to Italy.

In high school, she also got involved with ROTC. She was promoted to lieutenant commander at 17 – a rare feat, she says. She was in charge of the administrative department overlooking 285 cadets on a daily basis.

But when she looks at her accomplishments now, Warot sees the influence of the past on them.

“I think every single thing I did in my past has impacted my life today, I never think of excuses for not doing something because you can always learn or meet someone along the way,” Warot says.

She is currently on co-op, not because she likes to work for others but because, as she explains, she wants to better understand the typical mentality of some people who think that going to college, graduating, getting a job and a family and continuing to work for others is the “right” way to do things. She explains that she doesn’t actually enjoy having to work certain hours or be someone’s worker. Because of her co-op experience, she says, she is reassured of how she wants to be her own boss and live according to her desired lifestyle.

As the conversation grows closer to an end Warot’s emotions have been a mix of happiness and reminiscing, hope and inspiration, and wonder for what is yet to come. Warot expects to immerse herself into her Reliv business again as co-op ends and she has time to invest during the summer.

But for some, her stock can only continue rising.

“What to say about Sylvia? There’s no words to describe her, she just has a great heart,” said Anita Jedwabski, one of Warot’s colleagues at Reliv.