We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Sarah Salvatoriello. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Sarah below.

Sarah, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Was there an experience or lesson you learned at a previous job that’s benefited your career afterwards?

Nurture your network. It’s something that I am constantly working to do better, and it is so critical that you nurture your network. As I’ve navigated through different jobs, the relationships have been the most valuable thing I have taken with me.

Nurturing your network doesn’t mean being friends with everyone, it means identifying the relationships that push you and give you as much as you contribute. It also doesn’t mean cocktails and mixers. I’ve found that genuinely connecting with people and bringing them some value (whether it’s information, an invitation, or an introduction) has consistently helped me with any success I’ve found.

Like most folks working career jobs in late-stage capitalism, I’ve been laid off a few times. The first time I was laid off, I struggled to come to terms with the fact that it was not performance-based; it was a real blow to my ego, and I was lucky enough to have built a network over the prior years by being a reliable co-worker. I was able to tap into that network and get instant help. Even though I felt nervous and ashamed, as soon as I shared my need, people rallied to help me land on my feet.

That consideration for my success, regardless of where I was employed, gave me a model to emulate. As a business owner, nurturing my network of creatives is important. Whether I employ them or someone else does, I try to maintain relationships and help them achieve their own definitions of success. It’s a lesson that is reinforced time and time again.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

We rebranded from Short Girl Long Name to Ampersand & Ampersand in 2020, right when the world was shutting down. After 18+ years in the creative sphere, where I honed my craft with global media titans like Condé Nast, Tripadvisor, and The Knot, I wanted to create a branding studio uniquely tailored to empower medium-sized businesses through moments of pivot. I envisioned a haven where businesses would find branding expertise and a partnership to evolve their narratives and help align their vision, voice, and visuals.

Sometimes, our work supports an entrepreneur who knows their business inside and out but needs help explaining it to someone else. Sometimes, clients have a clear vision, and I can “yes! and…” to give an outside perspective that builds on their foundation. Sometimes, what I do in sessions like the Soundboard Session is almost akin to business therapy, lending a sympathetic ear and then reflecting back to them through an entrepreneurial lens.

Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.

Short Girl Long Name was a side hustle that began with wedding stationery and sizzle videos. My business partner and I set up an LLC as an umbrella for our side projects as we found ourselves designing websites or producing and editing video content for TV and the web. For the first few years, it was a nice little extra source of income and a chance to stay fresh and change gears creatively. As my day jobs were increasingly focused on reorganizing corporate structures or learning and development, I was fascinated by the business side of subjective endeavors and how creative contributions impacted financial outcomes. I felt excited by the hybrid work that used both sides of my brain – sales, marketing, branding, corporate strategy, and understanding what the big picture is at some pretty large organizations. As people in my network grew and found success, they would ask for my help. The focus of my freelance kept changing. A natural evolution was happening, and as the projects scaled up, so did the network of creatives working on the projects.

It became increasingly clear that more than a short girl with a long name was working on these projects. I was submitting invoices to turn around and pay other creatives, which began to feel like it didn’t do justice to their work. It was more interesting to me to celebrate and surface the voices of those creators than white-label the work as my own, so we evolved into Ampersand & Ampersand.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

My goal, in a word, is clarity. Clarity of purpose, clarity of communication — I reflect on this a lot in my own life and creative practice. Clarity is a key to good design, good governance, and being a good neighbor. When people are trying to establish or re-establish a brand, it can be a struggle to explain what they’re hoping to do. Evolving nebulous half-thoughts into concrete, communicable ideas and statements brings order to the chaos, enforces a sense of purpose, and sets a clear path for the journey ahead.

Even the & symbol offers clarity. It indicates the connection between two scriptwriters. According to the Writers Guild, if two writers are listed and their names are connected by the word “and,” it means they worked on the script separately. If an ampersand connects their names, they wrote the script as a team. This distinction of working as a team is so important and is a throughline across our offerings. We think our best work is collaborative between our partners, and our team and that collaboration only works when there is clarity among contributors.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.yesandandand.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ampersand.ampersand/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ampersandampersand/

Image Credits
Image 1: Jahmar Chance | @quasifoto_ Image 2: Becca Mathias | @beccamathiasphoto