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

Alright, Calonda thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Risk taking is something we’re really interested in and we’d love to hear the story of a risk you’ve taken.

“If you push through that feeling of being scared, that feeling of taking risk, really amazing things can happen.” – Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo, Inc.

Life in itself is a journey of risks. I often replay the quote “If you play small, you stay small.” in my mind on a daily basis. The decision to become a full-time entrepreneur has most definitely been the biggest risk I’ve taken. From full-time job security to a series of uncertain events. Sounds miraculous right? Not quite. This decision to become a full-time entrepreneur was at the height of a pandemic and amongst the new journey of becoming a first time mother. What a time to be alive! Quitting your job when you have a family whose well-being is dependent upon your success and decisions. There you have it, risk number 1. If I’m being completely honest at that time my risk taking decision was not precisely calculated, and I had no earthly idea of what I was doing. I began to learn more about taking calculated risks to help optimize and grow my business. Sounds a lot like “What if you fail, but darling what if you fly.” In my mind, failing was not an option since I had a family to provide for. Of course there were many people who tried to deter me from my dreams and project their fears onto me. For a while, I believed them. I stayed attached to what was familiar and comfortable. The truth is no one can grow from a place of comfort. It is within moments of discomfort that we can operate in our optimal potential. Taking risks within my business has allowed me to fail and within those failures I quickly learned how to correct those errors. These risks often resulted from putting my hard earned money into the wrong places, people, and things. This helped to teach me the importance of making strategic and educated risks to limit the room for potential failure. From that moment on, I began to seek out opportunities to allow me to make more informed and calculated risks by learning from trustworthy sources. In doing so, risk-taking became my “Big Leap”. It has now resulted into growing a team of employees, opening a full office suite, and contracting with agencies. This risk has been a pivotal point in my career and I’m sure it is on merely touching the surface for what’s to come in the journey of entrepreneurship.

Calonda, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am a licensed and board certified Speech Language Pathologist in addition to being the CEO and Founder of Broad Horizons Speech Therapy (est. 2019). Over the past 10 years of my career, I’ve had the opportunity to work amongst the pediatric population within private practice and schools. Broad Horizons Speech Therapy’s mission is to provide culturally responsive therapy practices to ensure that all children with unique needs gain access to services that will enhance their overall quality of life. Our ambitions are simple and often referred to amongst our team as the “3 C’s”: Compassionate, Collaborative, & Can-Do. We suspend judgement so that we can appreciate others’ perspectives or situations when they are different from our own. We are genuinely concerned about the other person and people’s needs. We listen and evolve together while helping and supporting each other for the sake of a collective goal; reciprocity. Our “can-do” attitude carries an intrinsic value of positivity. We are positive people and focus on success. We tackle mental roadblocks, aim high, and are not afraid to stretch ourselves when needed. It is amongst these principles that BHST serves its community to a level that is unmatched by its competitors as evidenced by the work we do within and outside of the therapy room.

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

My side hustle of seeing clients in their homes after my full-time job hours turned into a brick and mortar private practice. I decided one day to finally say yes to parents who asked me about working with their children over the summer. As a school based clinician there are many conflicts of interest that arise making it difficult to decide who you can and can not work with. I started to gain outside clients who were not affiliated with my job at the time. Later, I connected with my local early intervention agency to begin acquiring clients within my ideal zone of genius. Finally, I initiated a contract with a local charter school through my expertise of school therapy practices. These three steps turned a side-hustle into a full-time business by developing business to business revenue as well as implementation of service based options.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Networking and education. You don’t know what you don’t know is the truest statement in terms of entrepreneurship. There is so much to learn and it’s impossible to do it alone. You must be willing to connect with others and take courses to learn more information that will help to grow within your market. Networking is one of the most important aspects you can do to help build your reputation within the community and various markets.

Contact Info:

• Website: broadhorizonsspeech.com
• Instagram: www.instragram.com/broadhorizonsspeech
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/bhspeechtherapy
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/broad-horizons-speech-therapy/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6-q_g2Gag6GIPiYaFGxThg

Image Credits
Kimberley Maxine Photography
Michael Townsend Photography