The chapters in our stories are often marked by wins and losses. Getting a new job, getting fired. Getting a life-threatening medical diagnosis, beating it and getting a clean bill of health. Too often, due to a societal expectation of modesty and humility we are discouraged from talking about the risks we’ve taken that led to those ups and downs – because often those risks draw attention to how we are responsible for the outcomes – positive or negative. But those risks matter. Those stories matter. We asked some brilliant entrepreneurs, artists, creatives, and leaders to tell us those stories – the stories of the risks they’ve taken, and we’ve shared them with you below.
Sevahna Anderson
For the last seventeen years I have worked in the Beauty and Fragrance Industry. I have worked for brands like Jo Malone London and stores like Nordstrom for ten of them. I’m 2019 after talking and researching the art of candle making and fragrances, I decided to give it a shot. I poured my first candles and they were terribly done. They cracked, the wax to oil ratio was off, the wicks were not great. I thought, come on….. you can do this. And if you are good at it, maybe this is your path? Read more>>
Megan Blasdel
About 5 years ago I would have described myself as a successful photographer with a flexible schedule and two kids under the age of 3. I would have also described myself as tired- both from raising tiny humans and from being overworked. And if I was hoenst with myself, my “flexible schedule” meant being chained to my desk for 12-14 hours a day, and any deviation from that meant putting in 3am all-nighters. Read more>>
Elle Weberg
In October of 2021 I moved my referral based business across country from South Florida to Los Angeles. I had no clients. I literally had to start from the ground up. It was an extremely uncomfortable process. It nearly broke me, and brought my issues around basic security and identity up for review. At the time, this process felt excruciating – but in review, It offered me the greatest gift – a complete ego breakdown. Leading up to the move, my goal for nearly a decade was to be based in LA where I could have access to work with artists in the entertainment industry. Read more>>
Bri Long
One of the biggest risk I have taken was packing everything into a U-Haul and moving to Colorado to a town I had never visited. Moving to Fort Collins Colorado in 2013 was a huge move driven by my desire to work in the entertainment industry. I had spent the summer traveling to and working different music festivals coast to coast. Along my travels I meant many friends and some of them just felt like lifelong friends, those friends lived in Fort Collins Colorado. They shared with me the cities passion for music and creating culture. Read more>>
Kori Martz
Over the course of my life, I’ve been known to follow my heart which often can be interchangeable with taking risk. How do I jump into something new? I follow my heart and intuition. My mind tells me to think logically, look before you leap, read the fine print. My heart asks, are you happy where you are? Is this all you want to experience in this life? If you stay in this space, will you feel a sense of fulfillment? Or do you want more?” Read more>>
Heather Crank
Many years ago I began my journey into motion and design… I had no idea where it would lead, I just wanted a creative career that would support me financially. I started off in startups and the corporate world aiming for stability full of innocence and hope. The startup bro culture beat me up and spit me out. I spent a long time reevaluating my purpose in the tech field. As a humanitarian, my impact small and large matters to me. Read more>>
Karyn Hendricksen
When the world shut down I had just quit a stable job as a life coach and decided to refocus my efforts on my passion and my business. I had clients lined up and everyone cancelled and did not want to receive in-person sessions. My dream was to create content so that anyone in the world could access and benefit from my technique. I decided to create my On Demand Video Program and start teaching classes online even though I knew it could take me a while to build up the amount of members I wanted for stability. Read more>>
Brynne Goldberg
I’ve been somewhat of an unintentional “risk-taker” my entire life. I tend to fixate on a goal and dive in headfirst. You could say I throw caution to the wind, but someone has to be aware of the risk in order for it to be thrown. Most of the significant decisions I’ve made for my life haven’t required much calculation. I’ve gone for what felt right. So, while opening up my own private practice during a pandemic certainly qualifies as a pretty significant risk, I saw no other options when it came down to it. Read more>>
Jennifer Ludwig
One of the biggest, and most rewarding, risks I have taken was moving to Thailand to teach English. I am from a small country town in the Midwest and the idea of traveling to a foreign third-world country was something that never crossed my mind, but I knew I LOVED to travel, and staying in the Midwest was not the path meant for me. I started to venture out by moving to Hawaii. I graduated college a year early, packed my bags, and made beach and ocean life for me. The travel and exploring bug were still there though, so after three years, I decided to move again. This time by myself in a foreign country where I did not know the language, culture, or anyone else. Read more>>
Franco Stanzione
The risk that I took was starting a restaurant at 23 years old. I had recently finished college in New York moved back to Miami and was looking for job. I did not have much success in my job hunt and was really searching for what to do with my life. I decided that I would take a risk, I knew how to make pizza and I studied finance in college and believed I had what it took. I made the decision to lease a space in an up and coming neighborhood and try my hand in the restaurant business. Read more>>
Alice Lussiana Parente
TThe biggest risk I’ve ever taken in my life was definitely when I moved to New York City From Italy. I was very young and I had no connections in the United Sates. Sometimes I still look back with great admiration at that young girl that left anything she knew behind just to follow her dreams. After I graduated at the University of Turin in Cinema and New Media I got admitted to the summer conservatory at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting. During the program one of my teachers suggested that I’d auditioned for the 2 or 3 year Conservatory and that their were happy to support me with a recommendation letter. Read more>>
Lael AnnMarie
Opening any busy is a huge risk. I opened my first hair dressing business 16 years ago. After 9 years I took a big risk and left the security of a solid business to move to San Diego to start all over, knowing no one. Two years later I had 3x my income and opened a private hairdressing studio. The risk payed off tenfold. I have experienced business success and also business losses. I lost a business due to the recent pandemic, opened a new one, pivoted another one. Being an entrepreneur is definitely not a linear road. It all takes risk, but the reward always finds you in a better position then where you were. Fail forward – learn from your failures. Take risks and grow! These are words I live by. Read more>>
Anthony Denaro
I feel like my life as an artist is a continuous series of risks. I’ve embraced the idea of risk as a lifestyle so to speak. So I’d rather speak more generally here because I have too many stories of risks to tell. I choose risk mainly because of a fear of staying in the same place. I have wants, needs and desires as an artist. I always want to learn or to progress in some aspect in my life at all times. So I need to consistently break. Breaking allows the chance to build a new. It also says that I am not attached to this moment or these things, there’s always something greater to achieve. Read more>>
Laurie Hudgins
There are always growing pains with starting a business. You keep thinking to yourself, “Once we grow and make that next leap up we won’t have to worry about our *insert growing pains*.” And, of course, it’s not long after taking your leap that you begin to encounter growing pains of a different kind. It’s all part of growth and expansion. That’s what led us to take a huge leap ……….to open a storefront………during the first year of Covid. Read more>>
Heather Fenwick
When I first moved to San Diego in 2001, it took about a year to “land a job” at a small business brokering for Costco. My two bosses were super awesome SoCal dudes – they taught me to surf, had beach picnics in the summer, and let me take two hour lunch breaks so I could go to yoga downtown. I was pleased as punch at this office, and in the meantime I was getting more and more fascinated (ok, addicted) to yoga. Read more>>
Amanda bUTLER
Three years ago I left a steady, stable union job with all the bells and whistles to start my own business. I worked at the public library for eight years and I had decent seniority which meant ample sick time and holidays, not to mention a steady paycheck and pension. It is a job that many vie for in our community and there was always stiff competition whenever the library hired. When I firsts started working there it seemed to tick a lot of boxes for me; working with the public, being of service in my community not to mention being surrounded by books, I was in heaven. Read more>>
Anya Kotler
There are many instances in our lives when we are faced with a consequential decision, where we make a choice between a great, but uncertain benefit, accompanied by the possibility of a significant loss, OR the continuance of the current state, the known state. However, risk is also an integral part of daily life, accumulated from the multitude of miniscule choices we make every moment. Making art today is an activity that is permeated with a vast freedom – anything can be done, in any way, nothing is prescribed. Read more>>
Lorena Tomasini
My mom and I work together and we had worked from 2006 to 2013 by visiting our clients in their homes or offices. In 2014 our business had expanded so much that we decided to open an office for our clients to visit us for their life insurance and health insurance needs. That was a big risk as it was going to increase our overhead and also have to hire employees for the front office. All new things for us but we decided to jump in and do it! Our clients enjoyed it and we also saw that we were capable of taking such a risk. A few years later we decided to take an even bigger risk. Read more>>
Die’Stancia Roberts
So happy Canvas Rebel reached out, I’m Die’Stancia Roberts Owner of World Wide Hustling and Miracles By Die’Stancia. Born and raise in Houston, Texas Graduated from Paul Mitchell The School Houston cosmetology school. I study hair color, hair cuts, and also makeup. After graduating from cosmetology school I got hired at Tune Up Manly Salon within two months of being an receptionist the owner promoted me to assistant manger. With learning everything I can about the business I fell in love with the company, great company and great pay. Every job has its flaws I started to fall out of love with working at the company. Read more>>
Lisa E
I am an adrenaline seeking adventurist! The biggest, most life changing risk has been as a U.S. Coast Guard search and rescue helicopter pilot. While my 26-year career as a pilot does not necessarily translate to becoming an artist, it certainly adds to how I see the world as an abstract painter. As early as I can remember I have been fascinated with aviation. Read more>>
Michael McCann
Let’s paint a picture. It’s summer of 202o, you are a restaurant owner who is sitting in his empty shut down restaurant after having to lay off his entire staff. The full state of shock and awe has yet to set in. On the brink of not only financial ruin but who knows what else, tragic illness? No one knows. Prior to the COVID-19 Economic Disaster I ran my own successful wine bar and restaurant and was ready to open another restaurant and expand. But now, we are in a whole new world. Read more>>
Varand Toros-Adami
The risks I had to take cannot be summed up in few sentences. However, the best way to provide you with a perspective of what they were like, at least for the first 22 years of my life, I must urge you to watch two movies, if you haven’t already. The Pianist, and Argo. That Being said, here are few of the timelines of risks I had to endure so far to reach where I am, and of course there will be many more to come. Read more>>
Laura Perkes
The biggest risk I’ve taken is going from a stable, full-time job to taking a leap of faith and setting up my own business. Back in 2012 I was really close to leaving my full-time role as a Senior Account Manager at a PR Agency in London. The clients we were working with weren’t setting my soul on fire and I could clearly see a huge gap in the market for a small independent PR agency to offer PR support to start-up brands within the health, fitness and wellness industry. Read more>>
Victor Vonico Johnson
In 2012, I was living in Atlanta with my wife and teenage kids. I had a position as an Operations Manager for a Call Center. It was brought to my attention that the company would be closing within 1 year and we all needed to prepare to find another company to work for. I began exploring opportunities within the Atlanta market but did not rush as I knew I had a few months before it was getting critical. Read more>>
Joshua Thorson
I grew up in a small town of 250 people in the middle of nowhere, Illinois. Before pursuing a college degree, I noticed a similarity in the way people lived. This similarity was approaching life with minimal change and living a fairly simple life. I have always seen myself as an oddity. Whether you take that positively or negatively, it has been something that I wanted to build a brand off of. And an odd person can’t simply live a “normal” life. Read more>>
Dr Bek Jarzombek, DC
The story of taking a risk with a rogue path to success. I am a doctor of chiropractic. My first year in practice I moved to a new state to work as an associate doctor with a head doctor I wanted to learn from. Within the first month of moving there I felt I made a mistake and that the job would not be a long term desire of mine. The weather was rainy, the head doctor was a great person but style of mentorship was not ideal for me, and I realized I had no friends or family near me. Read more>>
Jessica Oldham
After struggling with my own postpartum mental health I observed first hand the lack of resources available for people planning to become pregnant, pregnant, or postpartum with mental health issues. This situation fueled my natural tendencies to advance my education and help this vulnerable population. At the time there were only a handful of psychiatric prescribers in the Denver Metro area working in the area of perinatal mental health and I planned on basing my entire practice around helping this group of people. It was a risk as I had never owned a business let alone one that specialized in an area that was unique in psychiatry. Read more>>
Kimberly Michelle Vaughn
After writing and performing for half a decade in an institution that sweeps misogyny and racism under the rug, I decided to leave and eventually establish my own company that helps artists (like myself) to create their own work without the bias and hate. In 2020, I decided to take a hiatus from performing on stage and work behind the camera. I directed and produced mine and close colleague’s (who would eventually become my clients, but also close friends) art; they took a chance on me, having known that I was fairly green to those roles. Read more>>
Precious Williams
I have a life full of taking risks. I risked everything to start my first business, Curvy Girlz Lingerie in 2011. I was an attorney at the time and fell in love with a man who made me look at my then 327-pound body so differently. I wanted all women with a little bit more meat on their bones to celebrate themselves as much as I wanted my company to do. So, I left my legal career behind to go all in. With -$400 in my bank account, I took a chance and pitched to the producers of MSNBC and a major event (that I could not afford) and that pitch landed me on national television where, in 54 seconds I walked away with a multi hundred thousand dollar investment. Read more>>
Ciara Castagno
I think starting STAGHP was the biggest risk I ever decided to take. I had been frustrated with working and managing everyone else’s gym and teams – the fitness industry was starting to seem like more of a trap instead of a calling. My husband was the encouraging force behind all of STAG. He gave me the idea and confidence to pursue developing our own system and company and never look back. The decision was a lot of work – but didn’t feel like as much work as working for someone else. Read more>>
Raguel Gabriel
I’ll take you to the year 2014. I’d gone through some pretty turbulent times from 2006 onwards and it seemed life would not let up at trying me. My heart was completely broken and I was hurting really badly on the inside. This even affected me physically the more time went on. One night I went to a bench in a park, looked up at the stars and thought the only way I’m going to get past this is to get far away as I could. Go off into the world. Leave the old behind. Read more>>
Ezerd Land
Risks. Take them. Take them all the time. Whether it’s something as small as trying a new medium or method in my art making to something large like moving to New York City knowing no one and with no money – just a place offered up for me to sleep, I take many risks. The thing about risks is – it’s something that you want to do, but that voice in your head does all its mountain of calculations and incessant listing of all the potential failures, failings, wrongs, obstacles, and hazards to keep you in the same place. Read more>>
Britten LaRue
On a warm summer night in 2017 and I looked up and knew the full moon was talking to me. At the time I was uneasily married, finishing my PhD, and had been living on Maui (and waking up to my life) for a year. The moon was telling it was time for change, and that it would involve listening to the deepest parts of myself. Read more>>
Marcel van der Stroom
For almost twenty years I was part of the corporate world. A small cog in the corporate machine where everyone has their own role, follows processes, workflows, fills out approval requests. I made very decent money, which afforded me to live comfortably without thinking too much about what I spent my money on. Day in day out, I worked 10 to 12 hours a day and traveled the world doing ‘my job’ as a financial manager. Then slowly, things started changing in the way I saw myself. Read more>>
Maria Elena Sandovici
The biggest risk I’ve taken was quitting my job in order to be an artist and writer full-time. See, my job wasn’t just a good job that adequately paid the bills, provided benefits, etc. My job was a tenured Associate Professor position at a state university teaching mostly first-generation college students whom I adored. (And that I mean I loved my students, not the job itself. More on that later). Tenure meant I could not lose my job, and my position also came with the perks of a flexible schedule and very long breaks. It was tempting to stay and create art and write in my free time, which was more free time than the average working person enjoys. Read more>>
Angela K. Durden
This happened just as home PCs were becoming available in the early 1990s. There came a time when a customer asked if I could handle a quarterly newsletter for his car dealership. He would need someone to build his database, design and print the newsletter and coupon inserts, print/affix mailing labels, and handle the bulk mailing process. I said yes. He asked if I could be available in a week for a meeting with another vendor who wanted to supply the database services. Of course, I said. Read more>>
LeDay Grant
Imagine planning, plotting and prepping with excitement your First business opening. Woman owned, black owned, small local business. After long months of gather proper licenses, building, purchasing equipment, and using your whole savings to fund a DREAM! Grand opened March 1st of 2020 and With the spark of a flame (news) a fire (pandemic) had distorted my vision! What do I do from here? Limited education of being a business owner. Still learning rules and regulations of the line of business I started. Mommy! Full time personal banker! Read more>>
Jenna & Emily Spets
Prior to us starting our photography business together, we actually both worked at the same doctor’s office. We had been working there as receptionists/techs for several years and it was the main source of income for both of us. We would be working our office job during the week and then nights and weekends working on the photography side of things. When you’re at a job where you’ll know you’ll be getting the same amount of money every 2 weeks, it can be scary to jump into a new career where X amount of money isn’t a guarantee. Read more>>
Hilda Rueda
downs of emotional and financial instability. I started in this path about twenty years ago after a career in the oil industry, area in which, I had my university degree. The corporate world, in particular the oil and gas business were a profitable, stable, secure industry and although, at my time, a very misogynistic industry, you as an engineer, could progress and advance at a steady pace. A diploma to prove your knowledge and your experience were enough to keep you moving forward. Read more>>
Ennio Skoto
I was raised in the Dominican Republic where my journey with music started. After graduating from high-school, my mom knew how passionate I was for music and brought me to Miami with no set plan for my next venture. Leaving my family and friends behind was probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but with time I’ve realized how important it was for me to move and focus on my future. Read more>>
Sarah Mundy
When I was 18 years old I had just graduated cosmetology school and was trying to find my way. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to do hair or nails- so I tried both. I very quickly learned that hair didn’t fill me the way nails did, so I got a job at a nice higher end spa. I worked a full time job at the spa and loved it, but still knew I wanted more. One day while getting a pedicure from the woman who trained me for my job at the spa said to me, Read more>>
mark smith
Before I became a full-time professor I was working a corporate sales job. I was only an adjunct professor at that time teaching part-time. The company I was working for decided to do layoffs and I was a casualty of that. Faced with the decision to either pursue another corporate job I made the choice to try to go into academia full-time. The University I was working for didn’t have a full-time position available for me so I waited. I didn’t pursue another job or career I invested the time into being a better professor. Read more>>
Hannah Safari
I took a risk on myself, the person I love, my happiness, and ultimately his too. I made a spur of the moment decision to follow my heart for once instead of my head (obviously my head was involved too). I decided it was time to make a big change in my life. Complete 180. I was in a slower period with my business and in my life which meant I had extra time to go through all of my belongings. I purged my clothes and household items in one week and donated to friends the items I didn’t need. Read more>>
Suzanne Redmond
As an artist, I had friends in the Palm Beach County art world, but also artist friends all over the United States. Some I met at art workshops, some I knew only virtually. I loved their stories about how they developed their artistic style, and how they worked their art business. In 2017, I decided I wanted to collect and share their stories through an interview-based podcast. I researched how to do a podcast, from the equipment needed, to the programs needed to record, edit, and host a podcast. Read more>>