You’re working hard, things are going well, piece by piece you’ve built a life you are proud of, you’ve overcome obstacles and challenges, beat the odds and then you find yourself at the center of an unexpected dilemma – do you risk it all to keep growing? What if growing means leaving the job you worked so hard to get or the industry you worked so hard to break into? How we approach risk often has a huge bearing on our journey and so we’ve asked some of the brightest folks we know to share stories of risks they’ve taken.
Pamela Davi
I feel like I lived “risk adverse” for most of my life..lol. I’ve always been the person to play within the boundaries that were set out for me. But, I would find a way to add my flair to it (e.g. Buying a car before I had a license”). However, as I’ve matured. I learned that the greatest risks that I would need to take, would be in relation to how I see myself. It would also be in regards to how I see “my vision”. Read more>>
Joely Hackmann
The biggest risk I have taken is building this business. Slowly learning in the business world, that not all business take off into something big. The back story of how I got into photography was when we were talking about what different type of classes that you can take in high-school. One of them was Photo 1 and it talked about photography. Then later that summer I started researching camera, different editing programs, all the things about photography. Then 4 months later I started is what know my dream job. Read more>>
Lauren Robertshaw
I became a Registered Nurse in 2017 while my boyfriend (now husband) traveled around the country to chase his dream playing professional baseball. We didn’t have a ton of money at the time, but I had the heart of a creator and knew I wanted to do something different than my nursing job. I saved up any extra that we had, quit my job and bought a 1963 vintage travel trailer in hopes to turn it into something magical! I created my first LLC at age 24. An entrepreneur at heart, I designed and renovated the trailer, named her “Sweet Cheeks” and owned the most adorable, PINK spray tanning business on sorority row in Austin, Texas. Read more>>
Par.
Biggest Risk? Earlier this year, I decided to quit my engineering job to pursue music full-time. The risk of losing a very cushy job and stable income reminds me of a quote by Richard Nixon on the purpose of life. It was recorded during The Nixon Interviews between him and David Frost. “Isn’t it just great to have enough money to afford to live in a nice house and to be able to be able to play golf and to have nice parties and to wear good clothes and shoes and suits… or to travel if you want to? If you don’t have those things, then they can mean a great deal to you. When you do have them, they mean nothing to you…. What makes life mean something is purpose; a goal; the battle; the struggle; even if you don’t win it.” Read more>>
Gregory Stringz EMB” Bowdry”
At this point, it’s kinda like “Risk” is my middle name. Ever single mission, job, and opportunity involves a certain level of risk, but these days, it seems as though the risks are becoming more and more extreme. In the back of my mind, I really hope that’s a sign that I’m getting closer to my destination lol. I truly believe that God gives us a vision that our accounts, sometimes, can’t handle. That’s how we prove our faithfulness. It’s been sooooo many dates, shows, and events that I’ve set up and/or pursued and the necessary funding wasn’t planned out. At that moment, you have a choice: Continue on and hope for the best, or pull back and wait for the perfect timing. Read more>>
Miranda Heitz
I had always wanted to be a Dance studio owner, but financially it seemed impossible with the start up costs. I was a full-time dance teacher but I was splitting my week at 4 different studios which was very frustrating. My husband got laid off and recieved severance pay but quickly found a new and better job. We decided to use the money to open MZ Dance Company! I had built up a good following and reputation in the dance community so we took the leap. Read more>>
Tirrell Johnson
The ultimate risk has been betting on myself. It’s not often that I hear about the mental tenacity that it takes to boldly build a business, risking it all and betting on oneself. When God planted the seed in my heart to start Lael Events I released a sigh of relief. This relief was immediately followed with emotions of self-doubt and fear. Relief because I’d been seeking God for purpose. I remember distinctly petitioning God to reveal to me my “it,” my “thing,” my purpose in life. I found myself in a season where there was a deep desire for more. I don’t think that this feeling is foreign to most at some stage in their lives, but for me, this feeling was quite heavy, especially as I approached my 30’s. Read more>>
Chanda Austin
My journey as an author happened about 6 years ago. The storyline was so heavy that many nights I would wake up and write! I knew what I wanted to say and who I wanted the story to reach. I started this journey with little to no money to invest but, had done my research on what it would take from start to finish. I was able to secure an illustrator who allowed me to put a deposit down and pay him as pictures were complete. The illustrations were just the beginning of this process. Next, I needed an editor, For up and coming authors, please invest in a good, vetted one. Read more>>
Cameron Mahner
Being an artist you always have the thought of what if nobody likes what I create. It took me a long time to allow people to see what I come up with. I would sit there and have a great idea for a short film but be too scared to make it thinking it would be hated. When I got my first camera I decided I would take the risk and make videos. What I never expected by taking the risk was building a stronger relationship with my friends who would act with me, my parents encouraging me by being my audience, and me loving what I made and not caring if someone else hated it. I am happy I took the risk to create because I gained confidence to keep creating content. I now have a full time job making content for a school district, doing what I love to do everyday. Read more>>
Carmelle Hasan
Throughout my lifetime, I have taken many risks. Some were small. Some were big. But all were in some way life-changing. I look at taking risks as stepping out on faith & testing my ability to trust that everything will always work out for my greater good. Our success is directly linked to our ability to step out of our comfort zone into the unknown. That’s what having faith is all about. A big, life-changing risk that I took was when I decided to relocate with my 10-year old son, who is now 18 years old, from Atlanta, GA to San Diego, CA without any support, no pending opportunities, no place to live and very little money. Read more>>
Ramon Lyons
The biggest risk I’ve taken (so far) would definitely be starting my own company straight out of college. To bet on myself and hold on to the belief that I will eventually make something out of this was, at the time, something that a lot of people my age weren’t doing. Over the last three years, I have couch surfed, lived in friends basements, and even moved back in with my parents because I believed in my dream. My company’s cornerstone business venture is filmmaking so I completely did a 180 upon graduation and immersed myself into a world in which I knew absolutely nothing about. Read more>>
Jane Ware
The biggest risk I’ve ever taken was moving to a new state with my family and opening my own business with zero clients. We moved to a new city and state that we had never even visited and I then decided to open my own spa with no business experience or clientele. It was a giant leap of faith but Denton has been so welcoming and we absolutely love it here and already feel so apart of the community here. Read more>>
Jacqueline Wiener
I am a partner in two small businesses. Leaving corporate America to start the UpScapers business was a giant risk but was always the goal. I was making a six-figure salary and left it with absolutely no cushion and 6 kids. My husband also left his government job to share in leadershihp of our dream of being our own bos. We pushed hard. It really is just like most business owner’s say, there were hard days in the beginning, we didn’t know if we were going to make it, we launched right before COVID hit. We had some legal battles early on when my old company thought my business was too close to theirs and our children’s play place business was closed for many months during COVID. Read more>>
Jonathan Prather
I think my biggest risk taken so far was fully investing into myself and my business/artistic career. After going and getting my Bachelor of Science in Media Entertainment in 2021, I assumed that I’d have no other choice but to go get a regular 9-5 like most do right after graduation. In an effort to make a name for myself and not conform to these expectations of society, I started my own record label. Now, owning 3 businesses in total, i work for myself full -time and I get to control whether or not I have to go into work everyday. The only thing that was uncertain along the way, was where revenue would come from. Sure there were downtimes (like any other new business) but it’s the consistency that keeps you afloat. Read more>>
Angela Sheree Conde
The best thing about taking risk it’s about not being fearful learning how to trust yourself and the process we all fear the worse but give yourself a chance to learn and grow from any risk that didn’t manifest how you thought it would. Read more>>
Sharrelle Baker
The Biggest risk I’ve taken on my journey is when I left my $80k a year Corporate Job to work on my business full time back in 2016. My last job there was no work-life balance and I left work feeling drained and no energy to do anything else let alone having to print T-Shirt orders I had received . Growing up I always wanted to be my own Boss I started selling candy in the 6th grade all the way up to my senior year of High School and I must say it was very lucrative ! Once I graduated High School I went to attend Thee Fort Valley State University where I would then major in Business Management & Marketing. While attending FVSU I had been printing shirts and selling them on the yard. Read more>>
Stephanie Keith
I was in the corporate sales world for 12 years, and while I didn’t love it, it paid well compared to other jobs, so I sucked it up and stayed with it through all the stress, layoffs, and fear based leadership styles. It wasn’t until my 30th birthday that I made the decision to make a drastic change in my life. As I looked back on my twenties, I realized that my entire identity was centered around my job. I had spent the last decade on auto-pilot going through the motions lost in the sea of emails and pointless meetings. Read more>>
Kayla Keller
The biggest risk I’ve taken to date was starting my own business. I had been encouraged by others for roughly 3 years, but truly let fear of failure hold me back. When the world turned into arguably one of the most unstable times with Covid, I was laid off and forced to re-evaluate what I truly valued in my life and what I wanted for my future. I gave more thought into what would develop should I go off on my own. A few months into the pandemic, I had another unexpected, life-changing occurrence that ended up pushing me head first into the deep end – no floaties! I put my trust in God that this was the next stage of my life He was calling me into and immediately got to work. I contacted all of my mentors just to make sure that what I visualized for my business was doable. Read more>>
Jazzmyne Taylor
When asking me “what is the biggest risk you have ever taken” ; a lot of examples pop into my head. I could tell you about the risk I took moving to Florida with a new born in a failed attempt to fall in love, I can talk about how after that I enrolled back in school to pursue a degree I actually wanted, as opposed to settling for the degree I had. I can most certainly talk about my independent decision to move again on my own to Texas for a fresh start at life, but all those stories are rooted in sorrow and I am no longer a “sob story”. Don’t get me wrong, all of those tales contributed to my present day character , and I wouldn’t replace those experiences for anything. Read more>>
Christopher Kendrick
When I was 23-24 years old, I made the decision to move to Atlanta and go to film school. At the time I was a local music producer, rapper, engineer etc.; in my hometown. Me and my friends started shooting our own music videos and a few other rappers took notice. They offered to pay me to shoot their videos. That led to me falling in love with film making. I had finally realized what God put me hear to do. So i wouldn’t really call it a risk. I think it’s more like destiny. Read more>>
SLIKKMOUTH WAYNE
I think the reason who I am today is because Ive been taking risk at a young age and I think because of the circumstances based around me everything happens for a reason. After high school me and a couple of friends quit our jobs to travel the country. We left Texas and went to Flagstaff, Arizona and that to me was a really really big move but because of the things I went through on my journey I had a strong mentality and I knew that it was all or nothing, I hated where I was at, I felt like I was hindered from the world and so many more opportunities and I had nothing more to lose. Read more>>
Bessie Lee-Cappell
Many who know me, know that my new journey as a full-time entrepreneur is one of the biggest risks I have taken in my life thus far. I left my full-time position as a social worker for the city of Philadelphia to fulfill my journey as an entrepreneur. Many would think that I am crazy to leave such a great job, with great pay and city benefits, for a journey that has uncertainty. I would agree with those who think that I am crazy for the risk. However, I am a true believer that without great risk, you can not experience a great reward. The reward in the risk will not always result in a financial reward; but can result in a lesson learned. The lesson can be one of the greatest lessons that you will ever learn in life. Many people fear the unknown, whereas, I welcome the unknown. When my life comes to an end, I do not want any regrets, thinking to myself “what if I did that..” Read more>>
David Franklin
Entrepreneurship is a risk and there are various levels in ones journey based on the type of business you have. I left corporate after participating in two IPO’s and initially leaned into my professional skillsets, application and business process design. My first three startups were service based which really was an extension of my own experience and expertise. Here I was able to mentor, train or contract others to essentially follow my outline for success and expand on joint knowledge share. My current startup, knowRX Health, is a platform subscription and product so the characteristics are very different. Read more>>
Dr. McDaniels
I believe risk are one of the few things in this earth that act as a chisel to a humans character. I want to say the biggest risk for me, which is ironic now that I look back, was dropping out is pursuing my career as a DJ. I am 28 years of age now, but i started to really fall in love with the art of mixing and scratching at 19. Around that time i was not in a place mentally where i felt i could fulfill a role to better someone’s company nor was i able to really adjust to new authority figures. Djing became a natural high for me, soo i took the risk. I dropped out of college with just my tables from my refund check and this old refurbished macbook. The hardest 3 years of my career. Read more>>
Adrian Chambliss
Be firm in taking the advice of yourself and not letting others dictate your next move. Before I started my Real Estate career, I reached out to those that I thought somewhat that I valued their opinions concerning my destiny. I was told all of the reasons as to not move forward in Real Estate, I was told how the market was upside down, & how others had no success in the market. But they wasn’t me! Read more>>
Donovan Patterson
What is a risk? We spend every day of our lives just following the norm. Anything out of the ordinary is seen as a risk and at one point it made life unbearable for me. I was afraid of failing in life but even more afraid of settling for a life I didn’t want. So I stood at the edge and I jumped… Here I am 3 years later alive and well about to drop an independent album that I invested everything into. I’ve dealt with rejection, lawsuits, and long nights not knowing what the next move would be, but now I’m crossing into the next phase of my life and I couldn’t be happier. Read more>>
Annette Mesa
For most of my life, I had a 9-5 Job. My mind was never open to the possibility to have the job that I have now. As a child, school was not easy for me and there were moments when the teachers gave up on me. Letting my parents know that I would only achieve a simple job. That I will never make anything of myself. However; some teachers did help me and took the time to help me after class. Read more>>
BYRON BRADLEY
We are currently taking a big risk with our most recent investments. For the past two years, we have been investing into agricultural product production in New Orleans and Clarendon Jamacia. Products we have invested into so far include ginger, coffee, chocolate and sugarcane. In New Orleans we have access to land intended to grow sugarcane and build a warehouse for production. In Jamacia we have access to over one hundred thousand acres of each product ready to be cultivated for processing and export. We are currently building a warehouse in Jamacia to house, fabricate and export our products. Read more>>
Davia Lassiter
In June of 2021, I walked away from a 15-year full-time career in communications. While I was very blessed to maintain employment at the height of the pandemic, I became increasingly frustrated with my professional life. While I achieved success through job offers, promotions, speaking opportunities, travel and awards, I was also suffering trauma in the workplace due to the intersection of racism and sexism. In the latter half of the 15-year period, I reached a turning point where I rejected the internalization of what was projected onto me and began to reclaim my time. I began to stand up for myself and hold people accountable. Read more>>
Miachel Pruett
I’m very into taking calculated risks. Stretching into a bigger version of yourself or your business requires it. I find that when I extend myself beyond my fears—whether those fears are warranted or not—my business can grow in a beautiful way. That said, leaping into risk without weighing and understanding the pros and cons is silly. It takes both acknowledgment and action of risk to be successful. Read more>>
Guta Louro
I’ve taken numerous life-changing risks in the past eight years. The first of them was in 2014, when I left a job, I loved with an architect I admired, to follow my own path and open my Studio in Brazil. Brazil was going through a recession and rolling cutoffs were the “new normal”. I had a few small projects I’d been working on the side and saw the recession as an opportunity to start my own business. This could’ve gone one of two ways, and I’m mighty glad it turned out the way it did. Read more>>
Shannan Conway
Working in the Corporate world for 22 years and having the opportunity to co-own and Director your own company comes with tons of risks. Having tons of unknowns and wearing multiple hats. I wanted to take that risk. I wanted to change the look of Senior Living. I wanted to be the voice and advocate for Senior aging adults. I know that my purpose and calling is this world is to love and serve others. I knew that I wanted to set the bar high and make sure our residents were not a dollar sign and room number. I didn’t want to wait until someone else made the decision for me. Read more>>
Martha Kester
I was a school teacher before becoming a health coach. My first job was in Raleigh, NC, and it was wonderful. I ended up moving back home to Beaufort, SC, for personal reasons. I got a job at Port Royal Elementary in Port Royal, SC, a neighboring town of Beaufort. I was teaching second grade and living at home with my parents. A year later I bought my first home. Life was great. I was in my early 30’s. Over the years at Port Royal I became a very tired, stressed, and frustrated teacher. I was bloated every afternoon and always injured which kept me from running which was what I loved doing. A few years into my teaching career I developed a rash that was from my knees to my ankles. Read more>>
Janet Nwachukwu
Life is a gamble. Every step you take out of uncertainty is a risk, so we are constantly in a loop of risk taking. A risk I had taken a couple years back was starting my business. I had no idea where things will go or how exactly I was going to be able to navigate through all the obstacles starting your own business would entail but I went out on a limp of faith and trusted all things will fall into place. Till date I am still struggling to nurture and balance my business as a Full-time worker and a Social Media influencer, but I do not regret taking the risk and starting my business. Read more>>
Leo and Brittany Trevino
Being a small business owner is all about risks. Probably the biggest one of all is starting that small business. In 2012, Leo and I both had great jobs at an Apple store. Excellent benefits, great hourly pay, great hours. But we both knew we wanted to jump into the world of Weddings. At the time, Apple was a great company to work for, and they gave us flexibility and occasional weekends off to pursue this side hustle. And as the side hustle grew, we needed more and more time off. So Apple gave us an ultimatum. Follow our dream, which they fully supported, or stop asking for so many weekends off. After all, weekends were prime shopping days. Read more>>
P Butta
The day I decided to move to Florida was the biggest risk I’d ever taken in my life. See, Im from Illinois and I had never been away from home yet alone that far away. But one thing i knew loved was music. Hip hop to be exact. I listened to everything and recited their words like they were mine. I was never too shy or had stage fright. Shorty after that I became a hip hop artist. We would win the local talent shows in the area and started to gain recognition which would build my confidence. But I had just graduated high school and started community college. Read more>>
Jalen Harris
The reason why I am in sports is a risk. I was halfway through my sophomore year and I changed my major. I was a business major but I switched to a Kinesiology major. It was a significant risk for me because I was leaving the comfort of a business major to chase an unknown. I knew that I have a passion for sports and talking about it as a career. I decided to take the leap and go after something that interests me and makes me happy. I ended up changing my major and losing some credits. It has turned out great for me. I started getting internships, invited to conferences, and figuring out this career field was for me. Read more>>
RTX Peso
The biggest risk I’ve taken is dropping out of college to work and focus on my craft. I was a full-time student at the University of West Georgia and the timing of it all happened during my biggest period of dealing with the grieving process from losing two loved ones and having watch another loved one with one foot out the door. The pain became too much for me and I felt like if death was looming all around me then I might as well put my all into what I care about most and that’s my craft. After doing so I’ve built something that I couldn’t even imagine from when I first began. From multiple interviews with different outlets, creating bonds withs different creatives, and becoming the first remote performer in history for Encore, which is a company co-founded by my favorite artist, Kid Cudi. I’d say I’m on the right path for sure! Read more>>
Jamie R. Wright
I took a risk during the height of the the pandemic, in April 2020. When I woke up the morning of April 23rd, 2020, I never in a million years thought that later that same day, I’d be full of shame, broken, broke, hopeless and homeless. Unfortunately, that is where I found myself. In 2020, was either risk my children burying me as a result of domestic violence, or risk contracting COVID in a homeless shelter in order to escape my abusive relationship. Read more>>
Jennifer Hobbs
I recently bought a Wedding Chapel in Nashville Tennessee. I had been a corporate controller for years prior and lived in California since birth. I normally vacationed out of the country every year but Covid had put a hold on that life. So, instead I visited my sister in Tennessee. After that visit, I was hooked. My husband had been trying to get me to consider other states to relocate to but I was steadfast on staying in California……until I went to Tennessee. I then begin to imagine doing something I wanted to do for a living and not just looking for a job. I wanted to find something that inspired me as a person so I looked up wedding venue’s for sale in Nashville. Read more>>