549 Sydney Witt:

Today is Election Day in the United States, and much is at stake, including our democracy. The Trump years have been a… challenge for many moms as we’ve witnessed behaviors from the Oval Office diametrically opposed to the values of honesty, kindness, and responsibility we try to instill in our children.

MELINDA

I’m Melinda Wittstock and today on Wings of Inspired Business we have a very special guest. She’s not an entrepreneur but she grew up watching all my ups and downs as I built a series of businesses. She’s only 17, she’s a singer-songwriter, she wants to change the world, and she’s my daughter.

Today Sydney Witt shares her music, her perspective on the future she wants to see for her generation, her growing consciousness, and what she’s learned along the way as a daughter of a single mom who launched one of her businesses when Sydney was just 6 weeks old.

I can’t wait to introduce you to this inspiring young woman, who wishes she was 18 start music under my voice and could vote today. First…

Record numbers of young people are making their voices heard today as Americans go to the polls. My daughter, Sydney Witt, is still too young to vote. So during Coronavirus lockdown, she wrote the music and lyrics for a whole album … and here today is her message for President Trump.

Today I’m so proud to introduce you to Sydney, who is doing exactly what we so often talk about on this podcast: Stepping into the light by doubling down on her true love, and her purpose – music. For years, I would hear Sydney singing for hours and hours as she did her homework. Back in March when her school stopped in-person teaching, Sydney was stressing about colleges and the pressure she felt to follow her friends on well-worn path to a high-paying career as a lawyer or doctor. Nervously she asked me if she could be a singer-songwriter instead, probably expecting the answer most parents give: Some variation of you can’t make money at that, or you have to have a plan B. My answer surprised her, because I believe we all succeed when we do – and master – what brings us joy, when we understand and align with our true purpose in life. So I challenged her to start writing.

She took me up on that with a joyful zeal, and today we hear more of her music, her process, and what’s next for her with a new single coming out November 11, and her album “Intention” debuting early next year.

Please grab your phone, download Podopolo, and join the conversation about entrepreneurial moms and their kids – and share your own insights.

Sydney Witt says her music is all about the inner voices inside our heads – voices that torment us, tell us we’re not enough. She says she’s using her voice to empower herself and other young women like her to find their joy, their purpose, their confidence. Sydney describes herself as an “artivist” passionate about equal rights for all – women, LGBTQ+, and the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as the environment and climate change. She believes her generation will heal what’s wrong with the world and I agree. That’s why I’m so excited to introduce you to my daughter.

Let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Sydney Witt.

Melinda Wittstock:        Sydney, welcome to Wings.

Sydney Witt:                     Hi.

Melinda Wittstock:        I’m so excited to be speaking to my daughter.

Sydney Witt:                     I’m excited too. This is fun.

Melinda Wittstock:        Yeah, me too. You’re 17. You can’t vote today but you’ve chosen to use your voice in a different way, as a singer-songwriter. We heard your song, Mr. President, what is your message today for young women like you?

Sydney Witt:                     I just think it’s, I mean, I think it’s super important as we’ve seen through past elections how important it is to vote and to use your voice. If you can’t vote like me, only six months away, unfortunately, I think it’s super important to encourage other people to vote if they can and to talk about what’s important to them because your voice is influential no matter what you think, no matter how many followers you have or whatever. I think it’s super important. I mean, I’ve convinced a lot of my friends who are over 18 to vote. I think, just by doing that, I’ve made a pretty positive impact on politics in the election.

Melinda Wittstock:        It’s so important. I think a lot of people struggle to find their voice. On this podcast, I interview so many accomplished women who are much older than you and who have spent their lives as entrepreneurs, struggling to have the confidence to just go out and say and do what they really believe, whether it’s politics or whether it’s in business or whether it’s just making a video and putting it on social media.

Sydney Witt:                     Which can be hard to do. It’s a lot to put yourself out there, I guess.

Melinda Wittstock:        It is, yeah. As a musician, you have to do that. That’s hard. What’s scary about it?

Sydney Witt:                     Everything. It’s honestly the biggest thing that I struggle with, in the industry that I’m trying to put myself into because I don’t know, especially in today’s world, everything seems to be very not judgmental, but your whole online presence is a lot more important than it obviously used to be. It’s hard. Whenever you put something online, you always have that thing in the back of your head that’s like, “What if people hate it? What if people think I’m annoying or don’t like it?” There’s always that and it’s difficult but you have to really realize that the reason why you’re putting it out is for you if it makes you happy and you shouldn’t really care what other people think. I know that I say that. I don’t really do much in practice. It’s something that I’m working on but it’s important.

Melinda Wittstock:        Well, you’re not alone in that. A lot of really successful women have that same fear. In the context of our current politics, where President Trump, I mean, it is challenging for a mom watching him over the last four years where, as a mom to you and your younger brother, Finn, is to instill values of being in integrity, being honest, being kind, being grateful. This particular president is the, just to be polite, the exact opposite of those things, right? How does that influence you and your friends?

Sydney Witt:                     I think, I mean, I’ve always been pretty interested in politics, but I know, definitely, for my friends, a lot of them didn’t really care and care much to know about that kind of thing or educate themselves but I think a lot of people have seen how dangerous a president like this can be. I think a lot of people have used it as a way to start educated themselves and start caring more and seeing how much politics really affects people’s lives.

Because for a lot of people I know used to before Trump, a lot of people didn’t vote in the 2016 election, especially younger people my age and older didn’t vote because they didn’t think it was important. I think that’s fair because a lot of the time when young people try and speak out on politics or try and educate themselves, older people are kind of telling us that what do you know about politics? Why are you like just like shut up because you’re not old enough to know or whatever, but I think young people do know. I think we’ve been forced to educate ourselves, as I said, because of this president.

Melinda Wittstock:        Yeah. Well, I think that is a silver lining. I mean, I approach it and I look at you and Finn, I look at your friends, your generation as a whole and I’m hopeful, I think, “Gosh, it’s not like my generation did a good job.” I mean, look around. We have so many structural problems in our society that perhaps Coronavirus kind of shed a light on. I know because I know you. I know all these problems inspired you to write and to write music, to write lyrics and to use your voice to really make a difference in the world. What was the spark or can you remember the day where you said, “That’s it? I’ve got to go write songs and get them out into the world?”

Sydney Witt:                     I’ve always loved singing and I’ve always wanted to learn how to write music but I never really did because I never thought that I was good enough. I always was afraid of what people would think. I honestly didn’t think that it was practical, which is not the best outlook to have but I’m here now.

Initially, the first spark was really realizing that music was truly the only thing that I really cared enough about to want to make it my career because I could have gone to law school, I could have become a lawyer or whatever but I’d probably would have never been truly happy. I probably would have been what if I had pursued music, but writing about social issues and the President of the United States probably came from a place of just being so frustrated because I remember feeling when he was impeached and then not fired, I remember feeling powerless, why don’t we have control over the people that represent us in government and it was so frustrating not being able to vote and seeing this man who was so obviously not in the place to be running the country continue to run the country. That’s why I wrote Mr. President.

Melinda Wittstock:        It’s a very [crosstalk 00:10:17].

Sydney Witt:                     Yeah, I felt like it was the only way to truly have my voice heard, if that makes sense.

Melinda Wittstock:        Yeah, it does. It absolutely does.

Melinda Wittstock:        Sydney, it’s really interesting that you were talking about all the things that you thought that you were supposed to do like be a lawyer and whatnot. There’s so much pressure on seniors in high school to pick some sort of career that’s safe or the path that you’re supposed to do or should do.

I remember you coming to me one day, honestly, a little bit stressed about, “Oh, God, I got to apply to all these schools and I don’t really want to do these things. Can I be a singer? Can I be a singer-songwriter?” I honestly think most parents would have said, “Oh, yeah, that’s really nice. You need to do that as a side hobby, you’ll never make money from it,” or something like that. “Go to school. That’s your safety.” But I didn’t do that. Were you surprised?

Sydney Witt:                     No. You’ve been taking me to trips and things and working on myself and teaching me about spirituality and all this, I mean, you’re a very progressive mother. I mean, I feel so, I’m going to, I feel so grateful to have you as my mom and it’s going to sound so [crosstalk 00:13:39] but I definitely would not be where I am today without you. Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:        Well, thank you Syd. I mean, that means the world to me. I think a lot of entrepreneurial moms struggle a bit, in the sense that we’re so focused on our businesses but we’re also moms. We have so many demands on us. Sometimes I’m working on my business and I feel like I should be with you and Finn or when I’m with you and Finn, there’s something at the back of my mind where I’m thinking, “Oh, man, I got to get that thing done,” But I think kids learn more from what we do rather than…

Sydney Witt:                     Oh, definitely. I mean-

Melinda Wittstock:        … what we say. Is there anything you’ve learned watching the entrepreneurship journey?

Sydney Witt:                     A 100%. I mean, I feel I’ve learned so much but I just want to make it 100% clear though, because I feel obviously you probably have a lot of entrepreneurs listening who may be parents, I just want to say from the child’s perspective I, especially for parents of younger kids, your kids probably you may think that they think that you’re ignoring them or whatever, but they truly only see the strength because watching my mom build businesses as a small younger child, all I could really see was like, “Wow, my mom is so smart and hardworking. She’s like my hero.” That’s all I saw.

Melinda Wittstock:        I’m going to cry.

Sydney Witt:                     No. I’m being completely honest. I had an amazing childhood. Obviously, I had to have like babysitters and stuff, but I never felt you ignored me or anything like that. It felt more like she’s such a strong woman and it was more of a thing I could look up to you in that sense that I could be that one day. I wanted to be as smart as you and I want it to be is, I don’t know. Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:        I remember, and this is impossible for an entrepreneur not to do, I remember sort of encouraging you to be kind of entrepreneurial…

Sydney Witt:                     Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:        … even at a young age, right? I remember you saying, “No, I will never ever, ever be an entrepreneur.” I remember saying something similar to my dad, right? Because he identified very early on that I’d be really good at business and I was like, “No, no, no. I’m never going to do that,” and yet, there are so many skills about entrepreneurship, even if you’re not an entrepreneur, that you need in any career, right?

Sydney Witt:                     I think-

Melinda Wittstock:        Just the confidence to do, create something. There’s so many skills of entrepreneurship that you really need in life or to succeed in any career. I’m thinking, especially in a music career…

Sydney Witt:                     Yeah, definitely.

Melinda Wittstock:        … because you’re literally inventing your own music. You’re like creating a product like an entrepreneur.

Sydney Witt:                     There’s so much stuff behind it too like all the branding, but yeah, I was going to say I definitely, when I was younger, I said, “Oh, I don’t want to be an entrepreneur,” because I only really saw it in the sense of building a technology company. That’s what I thought being an entrepreneur was, obviously, in the mind of an eight-year-old but now I definitely see it like as a musician and as an independent artist, especially, how much of an entrepreneur you need to be for that, I guess because there’s so much that stuff I’m learning about now that goes into it besides just writing and singing.

Melinda Wittstock:        You mentioned a little while ago that you had started to be on a spiritual journey and I’ve watched that as you’ve come in music with consciousness and with intention setting and I’ve watched you manifest things. I mean, it’s truly amazing and inspiring to watch. Yet, a lot of your music is very much about what’s going on inside our own heads that can stand in the way and I’m thinking of a song like Intrusive, your first single.

Sydney Witt:                     Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:        Let’s just play it now and then we’ll talk about it on the other side.

Intrusive Song

Melinda Wittstock:        Sydney, this is such a good song.

Sydney Witt:                     Thank you.

Melinda Wittstock:        Sydney, I love the lyrics of this song because I think everybody on Earth is tormented by that inner bully voice, the one that treats you worse than your own worst enemy and convinces you that, you’re terrible or bad or not good enough, or whatever it is, what was it that prompted you to write that song?

Sydney Witt:                     Well, it’s actually not that deep but it kind of became that deep. I wrote the song about embarrassing things happening to you. Then, you’re trying to fall asleep the night after and you can’t fall asleep because you keep thinking about the embarrassing thing that you did, whatever it was. It was about, specifically, the time that I was sitting in my AP psychology class one day and I dropped a piece of paper over the edge of the desk and I was reaching over for it and it’s one of those super old flimsy like desk things with the chair connected to the table, I reached over and the whole chair just fell with me in it on the side and made the loudest bang and the room was quiet and my friend sitting next to me just started laughing at me. It was like the most mortifying thing that’s ever happened to me in my life but yeah. Then, later while writing the song, I started thinking more about, how much it actually affects people, how much these little things people overthink, how much I overthink. Yeah, that’s pretty much what this one is about.

Melinda Wittstock:        They’re so universal because they really get right into the human experience. I mean, you have another song that I want to share with everybody called Eggshells. This song hasn’t been released yet. Everybody, this is the first time to hear this song, which is on Sydney’s album, Intention, which is going to be debuting soon. Eggshells is literally about walking on eggshells when you’re in a relationship or a friendship with somebody who’s not treating you well, but has say, narcissistic tendencies.

Eggshells

Sydney, this song to me, is so moving and everybody that I know who’s listened to it has had an experience like that, where they’ve been with somebody or had a friendship or a relationship or a marriage that’s just sucks the energy right out of them and has really struggled or has been in a relationship with someone who’s gaslighting them or something like that. It’s such an insightful, universal song. How did a girl who literally had just turned 17 write such an incredible song?

Sydney Witt:                     Wow, my ego just like went through there. I don’t know. I think, I mean, it was an experience that I had. In all honesty, my goal when writing songs is to write lyrics that are relatable for the music to be dope. Basically, I feel like with teenagers and people my age, and I hate to be exposing our secrets to the older people listening, but when looking for music, truly, the first thing we care about is the dope beat. That’s fair. That’s valid, but I think it’s really important to have lyrics that younger kids when listening to good music can actually hear and learn from or relate to. Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:        You had a friend though, in your life, who had made you feel ‘less than’ and wrote about it in a way that was very universal. When you’re writing a song, like Eggshells or Intrusive or all the other songs that you have, are these deeply personal in a way? Are they a way of kind of healing from things that are going on in your own life? What inspires the lyrics? Are they all personal?

Sydney Witt:                     Yeah, pretty much. I mean, I’ve written only a few songs that are based on other people’s experiences because I thought they were good content but yeah, most of my songs I do write in the middle of the night. I have either a strike of inspiration and it like wakes me up or it’s just something that I’m dealing with that I need to get out of my system and I feel like writing for me is just a really good, once it’s on that piece of paper or my notes app in my phone, that it’s gone and I don’t have to deal with it anymore. That’s why it can be difficult for me to listen to my own songs especially Eggshells when they are that personal but the more I listen to it, the more that it actually tends to help get it out of my system even more. Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:        I love it because it’s therapeutic.

Melinda Wittstock:        Even in an entrepreneurial marketing sense, the more authentic that we are and the more deeply personal, the more universal it becomes. The more vulnerability there is in something, the more other people can connect to us and in a musical sense, sort of vibe with us but it does require courage to just be yourself.

Melinda Wittstock:        Sydney, I want you to share one of your favorite songs. It hasn’t been released yet. It’s called Selfish and before we listen to it, why is it one of your favorites?

Sydney Witt:                     Well, for a lot of reasons. Musically, I really love it for its original kind of the way that the minor key with a kind of dark kind of feel to the song mixed with the electronic upbeat vibe as well. It’s super cool. You can thank my producer, Flight Boy for that one, but yeah, he’s super cool but also the lyrics are also very personal similar to Eggshells, about a relationship with a friend that I had. Those are the hardest songs for me to write for sure because I’m always worried about what if they hear the song and they know that it’s about them?

Melinda Wittstock:        Let’s listen to Selfish.

Selfish

Melinda Wittstock:        You mentioned Flight Boy and Flight Boy is an amazing young man. He’s your studio engineer and you’ve collaborated a lot. I was the mom driving you to the recording studio and getting there at 5:00 like in Flight’s basement, in his house and we’d leave like midnight, I love this process so much watching a song build all the different parts of it but what I also really enjoyed more than anything was watching your confidence grow in the recording studio from the very first time to now, where you’re just so much more articulate in saying exactly what you want or holding your ground in terms of the production and the production value of it and what you want from your own song. What was that process like over the summer from the very first time you went into the studio and you didn’t really know Flight until now?

Sydney Witt:                     Well, the first section was definitely nerve-racking and I have anxiety. That was pretty bad but also I had only met him once at a party for someone else’s single release. He had seemed super nice and we talked at the party we bonded over Panic! At The Disco, which is one of my favorite bands. Yeah, it was scary at the studio but also Emma G. was there and she was sort of the connector between us two. She was super helpful. She’s a very upbeat, outgoing personality so she can kind of make any room very comfortable. [crosstalk 00:29:44].

Melinda Wittstock:        Emma is your vocal empowerment coach?

Sydney Witt:                     Mm-hmm (affirmative). She’s just, she’s basically like my mentor. You should check her music out. It’s very good too, shout out Emma. Emma G on Spotify, Apple Music.

Melinda Wittstock:        While we’re talking about Emma, her podcast is on Podopolo, my podcasting app and social podcast player. Definitely go check out Emma G. there. Yeah, so I watched you collaborate with all these people in the studio and it really is about finding your voice, feeling getting over the shyness or stage fright or any of those things, is there anything that you did in particular that helps you grow in that confidence?

Sydney Witt:                     Definitely. I feel like, obviously, as you talked about how personal my songs are, singing them can be difficult for me but the more I sing, the more I get used to it, the easier it gets. One of the best ways that I’ve started to become more comfortable in the studio is just like singing anything, anyone else’s songs that I don’t really have that emotional connection too first so I can kind of like warm up to it. The more that I’ve gotten to know Flight also, the more comfortable I’ve become and the easier it’s become for me to have other people in the studio like Dice or anybody else.

Melinda Wittstock:        Yeah, there’s a whole lot of rappers coming by.

Sydney Witt:                     Oh yeah. There’s a whole lot of rappers, yeah. No, but they’re so cool. It’s actually really funny because you hear their songs that Flight’s working on for them and they’re all like explicit and then you meet them in person and they’re just the nicest people you’ve ever met in your entire life and they’re so genuine and it’s really funny.

Melinda Wittstock:        Kind of understated too.

Sydney Witt:                     Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:        I mean, this is so funny, there was such a big gap between the musical sound and how they are just like regular people. I think you said something really important though just a minute ago about when it’s personal, when it’s your own stuff, it’s harder in a way to perform it than when you’re singing something that’s not personal. I mean, I hear you upstairs when you’re doing your homework, belting out Ariana Grande or like Mariah Carey or Beyonce, and you’re singing. You’re really projecting. For your own stuff, it was kind of there was this little shyness thing that you had to get past in the beginning. That’s really true, because we get attached and this is true in business as well, we get attached to our own product or own thing and it can sometimes be harder to say, in an entrepreneurial context, even harder to sell your own product than to sell somebody else’s product. It’s the same thing.

Sydney Witt:                     Yeah, well, it’s that fear of, “Oh, what are people going to think? It’s my own thing. I wrote it. I’m singing it.” It’s a whole lot more pressure versus like singing a Lady Gaga song. It’s no big deal because people know the song. It’s Lady Gaga, duh. It’s like, I don’t know but it’s definitely something I’m working on for sure.

Melinda Wittstock:        Well, we’re going to listen to one more song. It’s called Tell me and it’s your next single coming out November 11th.

Sydney Witt:                     Eleven, eleven.

Tell Me

Melinda Wittstock:        Tell Me sounds very different from Eggshells or Intrusive or some of the other songs you’ve done, there’s amazing guitar on that song.

Sydney Witt:                     Shout out Andrew.

Melinda Wittstock:        Yeah, Andrew is amazing on that… I love this song.

Sydney Witt:                     It’s your favorite.

Melinda Wittstock:        I play it in the car. I just like belt it.

Sydney Witt:                     It’s her favorite. Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:        It is one of them. I have some other favorites. I really like Polite and there’s a whole bunch of songs that I really like of yours but what was the story behind Tell Me?

Sydney Witt:                     This one’s like, this is an example of embellishing the truth. This song was originally written because I was mad at my brother, my little brother, Finn. I brought it to Emma and she was like, “This is cool. I get the message. It’s very angry, angsty. I like that but I don’t think a lot of people can relate to your sibling issues.” I was like, “That’s fair.” We spun it to be more of a kind of romantic connotation kind of thing, a breakup song, I guess.

Melinda Wittstock:        Yeah, it’s got a little bit of Alanis Morissette feel to it.

Sydney Witt:                     Yeah, I love that and I take it, I mean, I think a lot of my, you are saying how different it is from a lot of my other songs and I think I don’t, I was having a lot of trouble at the beginning of this project, thinking about what I wanted my sound to be like because I listened to so many different genres and kinds of music and I love them all. It was really hard for me to pick one until I realized I don’t have to pick one. I feel like pop music is just popular music it’s not its own genre. It’s whatever. It’s popular. It can really be rock, electronic. I decided to kind of like mix the two. I guess you could say, my music is like pretty pop, rock, electronic. I don’t know, like alternative?

Melinda Wittstock:        Well, it’s your first album Syd and being 17, there’s so many ways that you’re going to grow and stretch as an artist and I know you’ve already started writing your second album.

Sydney Witt:                     Which has a song called 11-11.

Melinda Wittstock:        I love that, portals and all. What’s the sound of that going to be? How is your music growing and developing and changing? What can we expect from that?

Sydney Witt:                     I definitely feel like the first one is definitely a lot darker because it’s the sound with a lot of minor key electronic beats mix with kind of darker connotations of like being in your own head and stuff. I feel like the next one, I definitely want it to be a lot lighter, have a lot more happier kind of poppy themes. I feel that’d be pretty cool. Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:        This is wonderful. Where do you see yourself going ultimately? I know you’re busy applying for college and to art schools, which is wonderful. You have all these opportunities, so many, in fact. Where do you see yourself in five years’ time? Does that seem impossibly long to you? I mean, where are you taking your music ultimately?

Sydney Witt:                     I mean, it’s definitely a long term thing. Definitely career thing for me. I mean, I definitely see myself going to music school, continuing to write and create music that I love and learning from people. I feel like I have so much to learn. There’s so many people that I want to meet that I look up to and I feel like I have so much to learn from them but after I graduate art school, wherever I may be in London or LA or New York or whatever, I definitely see myself winning a Grammy or two.

Melinda Wittstock:        I love that. You see, if you can see that, you can have it. We’ve talked so much about visualization. On this podcast and also just you and me personally and for everybody listening, I mean Sydney knows how to manifest. She really does.

Sydney Witt:                     Kind of an accident sometimes, yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:        Yeah, it’s amazing though, because the very minute that you said, “You know what, I think I really want to be a singer,” and then we got invited to Angela Lauria’s party. Angela is a wonderful entrepreneur. She’s the founder of Author Incubator and her son, Jesse, was releasing a single and Angela invited us to the party. Then, we went to the party and there you met Flight. You met Emma. You met Kenny Kas, who’s your stylist.

Sydney Witt:                     He’s cool too.

Melinda Wittstock:        You shot your video for 17, turning 17 in quarantine in her house.

Seventeen

Sydney Witt:                     Oh my God. I hate that song.

Melinda Wittstock:        I know you don’t like that song. It’s such a good song, though. It’s really wonderful.

Sydney Witt:                     I know you think that. Honestly, I think it’s boring.

Melinda Wittstock:        Well, yeah, because I think what happened is that you extended musically far beyond, that was one of your first songs but it’s still a good song and it still resonates because how many people had their birthdays by themselves in the middle of coronavirus lockdown. The song really does resonate but I mean, it was amazing to me that you just think something or you visualize it and it happens.

When we’re in alignment, when we’re doing the thing that we’re really meant to do, things like that happen. We have synchronicities and serendipity is the right people show up at the right time and then it’s just up to you to follow through but I’ve seen you do that this year and I am the one that is so proud of you, Sydney.

Sydney Witt:                     Oh wow.

Melinda Wittstock:        It’s just been amazing, amazing to watch your career and I have no doubt there are some Grammys in your future.

Sydney Witt:                     Thanks, Mom. Yes. I don’t know, I think, it’s definitely interesting what you’re saying about manifestation and when you like to see something and it’s where you’re meant to be, it happens really easily. I think that’s super true because honestly, thinking back, that party was in February, so it hasn’t even been a whole year since I started. I have an album and a few singles out. It’s pretty crazy. It’s really cool.

Melinda Wittstock:        Also, I remember way, way back, I took you to an entrepreneurial event. I think you were only 14 or something. They asked you what you were going to be. You overcame your fear of public speaking…

Sydney Witt:                     Oh my God.

Melinda Wittstock:        … crippling fear, in fact, and you stood up there in front of all these accomplished entrepreneurs and you told them that you were going to be an influencer and that you were going to use your voice and at that time, you’re interested in acting, but you are going to use your career to really change the world. That’s a big motivation for you. I want you to come full circle here now where it’s Election Day here in the United States. There are so many issues that your generation has been honestly and I’m sorry, saddled with but I have such hope and excitement for what all of you can do and how you want to use your music and your voice to be an influencer. Say a little bit about that, what things you really want to see change in the world?

Sydney Witt:                     Yeah, I just, I mean, I think influencer now has a pretty negative connotation because of all these TikTokers and stuff but I definitely feel like having that platform as musician, it definitely benefit in the sense that it can really use your voice for good. I think that’s super important. I definitely love to encourage people to vote every election season. I definitely, love to promote things like climate change relief and educate people on stuff like that. I think, I mean, climate change is definitely something that’s very, very imminent. It’s important to me. There’s that and also, of course, Black Lives Matter. I think it’s super important for people to be educated on that and to educate their family members, just to be good people, that’s all.

Most importantly, though, I think, especially to be that a role model for younger girls because I know, there’s so many musicians that I’ve looked up to like Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande, Pink, they’re some of my biggest inspirations. I mean, I really don’t think I would be where I am musically or the person that I am without listening to their music and hearing their stories, but just to be that voice for younger girls, and to tell them that they also have a voice and that it’s really important for them to fully be confident in all of their abilities and all their beauty inside and out. I just think that that’s really important.

Melinda Wittstock:        It is. Sydney, I want to thank you so much for getting out of your comfort zone and coming on my podcast…

Sydney Witt:                     Thank you.

Melinda Wittstock:        … and sharing your journey and your music with us. Thank you for putting on your wings and flying with us.

Sydney Witt:                     All right. Thanks. I love you, mom.

Melinda Wittstock:        I love you too.