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.

Karl Nelson

It was 2015. I was living at home in Baltimore with my family. This was about two years after I had graduated from college, and I was full of ambition. I knew that journalism was my second love, next to basketball, and I was determined to continue pursuing my career as a journalist and media professional. Nothing was going to get in my way. Read more>>

Andy Volk

In November 2021 I packed up my car with my entire life and took a two-week road trip from Seattle, WA to Austin, TX. In the year prior, I had been sharing with all my friends that I wanted to move to New York or Los Angeles to pursue more opportunity in film. In Seattle, I quit my service job in October 2020 to freelance on set full time. Read more>>

Katrina Broten

I graduated from Bemidji State University with a degree in Design with an emphasis in Exhibit Design, multi-media design, graphic design & design marketing. I was in a mentor/mentee program that connected me with a company in Oregon called Classic Exhibits; they specialized in trade show manufacturing and had a small design department. My mentors name was Kevin and he was a co-owner of this company. Read more>>

Kyla Denault

20 years. Two decades. That is a long time! It was April 2019 and I couldn’t believe it had been 20 years since I had graduated college. It had been a fantastic career with an abundance of variety of work in recruitment, coordination, and many years in events management. Working mostly in crown corporations of the government of Canada, I had a pension, great benefits, PTO and some awesome perks. But during those years, I never felt complete or satisfied. I always had a side hustle. Read more>>

Kandice Moss

Married in May of 2011, pregnant December 2011, accepted to my dream Graduate School in January 2012. Although time was moving along and beautiful life changes were happening, I hadn’t forgotten about some personal goals of my own. The decision to pursue and complete a graduate school experience at Columbia College Chicago was facing me. I decided to go for it and take the risk on myself. Read more>>

Anita Peters

I never considered myself a risk taker until one day, in November of 2021, I woke in my Florida home to the sweetest sounds of my newborn niece laughing; in the bedroom next door—at 6AM, might I add. Read more>>

Monte Moore

As the owner of a nonprofit organization and fitness business, I recently took a HUGE risk with something NEW. I created an ONLY FANS account mostly to make a statement, to expand my ministry, and also my income. Read more>>

Lionel Samy

An empowering home birth was the catalyst for taking risks I‘d been fearfully avoiding. Everything I needed to succeed was ingrained in me, I just needed to trust myself. If I was confident enough to literally birth a human being on my bedroom floor, anything else should be a breeze. I put my anxiety and doubt to the side, and started my ascension into entrepreneurship. People describe as a leap, but you can lose you footing jumping. Read more>>

Mairin Van Shura

After an unfulfilling decade+ practicing law and experiencing worsening chronic health conditions as a result, I left the corporate rat race in pursuit of a more rewarding, free, purposeful life. Over the span of several months, I quit my law firm job that was destroying my soul, sold my house and 99% of my belongings, moved abroad, and started an online business to help other entrepreneurs. Leaving the comfort of a well-paying job, a town I knew and loved, friends, family, everything that was familiar…was a huge risk. Read more>>

Elizabeth Quiroz

A risk I have taken despite my fears is going for my master’s degree in Social Justice and Human Rights at Arizona State University. Coming from a background of unspeakable trauma and horrific abuse, I truly believed with every fiber of my being that I was going to die a prostitute, a drug dealer and a dope fiend. So for me to be in the master’s program with a mindset of growth, imagination, elevation and expansion, is truly a MIRACLE. Read more>>

Monica & Silvia Sanchez

“I was born and raised in Lima, Peru. After what seemed like an idyllic childhood, I was ready to advance my studies. I entered in first place to the Toulouse-Lautrec institute to study graphic design -even when my father wanted me to be an architect. I succeeded and won national and international awards. This was the career I dreamed of. But when my mother died in 2006, I decided to focus on my personal life. I met my American husband in 2007, left my entire family, friends, culture and started my new life in the United States in 2009. Read more>>

Kathleen Ward

The pandemic pushed so many creatives to pursue their career dreams and being a business owner for 8 years while working three jobs, it felt like a now or never moment to focus primarily on my business. Read more>>

Ileana Tavarez

I knew I wanted to be in real estate since I was 15. My mother was a Realtor for many years and I followed her around for a week after school to document her day-to-day for a school project. I was privy to the business’s good, bad, and ugly. From there, my mother hired me as her part-time assistant. My goal was to become a licensed agent by the time I was 18. Unfortunately, life had other plans. Read more>>

Jason Michaels

My most recent risk was creating and submitting a slightly risque magic trick to the television show Penn & Teller: Fool Us. In addition to the trick being risque, it also was very personal to me since it drew attention to the neurological disorder Tourette Syndrome – which I have. Read more>>

Hailey Merlo

Growing up, I was always the girl with a camera. I can remember my parents buying me my first “professional” grade camera in middle school. I have always been fascinated with capturing moments in life, no matter how big or small. In 2020, I quit my full time 8-5 with a guaranteed income to follow my passion of being a full time photographer/videographer. Unknown to anyone, the Covid-19 pandemic would hit two weeks later. Read more>>

Nicole Rose

I have taken a lot of risks throughout the course of my life, some not the best. The biggest and most significant was when I hit my rock bottom in 2020, and decided to change my life completely. To forge my new identity. I had spent a decade thinking that I was just in a phase, that I would grow out of hiding and numbing my pain and the feelings. I knew deep down that I was meant for so much more than that. Read more>>

Keith Goldstein

The biggest risk I ever took was becoming an entrepreneur. When you start a business from nothing, you have no idea if it will be successful or not. I started my first business STYLE Fitness Apparel 6 years ago. It is a women’s activewear company. STYLE stands for STRONGER THAN YOUR LAST EXCUSE. I started it because I wanted to create a motivational clothing brand. Read more>>

Georgii Speakman

The risk I’ve taken has involved writing and completing my book, @myamericandreambook, which took approximately a decade to complete, but close to nine months of full time writing in 2022 to finally complete it. The risk has been financial and taking that time off to push other business opportunities to the side to finish the book. The risk is in having to believe in yourself – even when you’re experiencing imposter syndrome; when you’re feeling demotivated and truly wondering what the point of it all is – if people will ever end up reading, or listening to it and so forth. It’s a deeply personal risk you have to quietly face alone. Read more>>

Shelbie Pittman

During the pandemic, I started creating videos of myself singing and harmonizing. I got a lot of positive feedback and support from these videos. I then decided to record a Christmas song, (Winter Wonderland/ Don’t Worry Be Happy by the Pentatonix ft. Tori Kelly). The video was viewed by thousands on Facebook and gave me more exposure. I received a call from William Edwards asking me to be a featured performer for the Midsouth Black Film Festival. The festival was virtual. I recorded a mini concert and decided to stream it live on Facebook. Read more>>

Victoria Kuhns

It’s been a little over a year since I took a leap of faith in starting my own official photography business. I had dabbled in it for years going all the way back to early high school. It was always something that I enjoyed doing because I loved to document everything in scrapbooks at a young age. Read more>>

Michael Schultz

Walking past the door to my home office every morning and getting ready for the commute to my employer’s office, always gave me a strange feeling. I wished I could just open the door to my home office every morning and do my thing. Since going to school for design I always felt being self employed was the ultimate dream. I didn’t know if that would ever happen for me, but that was what I really longed for. Read more>>

Courtney O’Neal-Allen

One of the biggest risks I have taken was choosing to become an entrepreneur. When I first decided to become an entrepreneur, I not only did not have a clue about what will be needed to pursue such a dream. Read more>>

Grecia Valencia

Grecia Swim became an idea in August 2019 while I was in Costa Rica. At that time, like a lot of creatives I felt stuck in the 9-5 routine but knew I wanted to start a brand and bring my designs to life. I was back and forth mostly because I feared putting myself out there and failing, but I was reminded that I had done this before and could do it again. Backtracking to 2009, when I moved to San Antonio, I had a tiny eBay shop called “Chaos Pixie,” where I would sell “vintage style” swimwear that I would find in our local Goodwill or Salvation Army. Read more>>

Veronika Electronika

While the world struggled with Covid-19 I struggled right along with it. Working a corporate retail job I did feel some immunity from joblessness because my company did keep us employed and paid. I was very grateful for this, but when we came back to the day to day life of working “for the man” I couldn’t help but feel that I wanted something more. I wanted to be my own boss. Could I risk everything and take the leap? I eventually came to the conclusion that yes, yes I could! Buying a legacy business of Nashville, Performance Studios, that Covid-19 itself took down I felt was a clear and pointed way to because a force in the small business world. Read more>>

Naomi Vladeck

In the speech my father gave on my wedding day, he remarked on what he described as my, “beginning of new ventures.” I was, he recalled, “A child who was very frighted by a new adventure.” Read more>>

Joy Brannan

From a small age to young adult hood, I’ve always had a passion to write stories and poetry. My mom saw this talent in me and start keeping all of my writings in a storage bin. We would occasionally take out that storage bin and read my writings. I amazed myself to see how talented I was as a young child. Of course we thought, it’s a no brainer I would be an author or a journalist right after college right? But sometimes life just doesn’t pan out the way you thought it would. Read more>>

Aatara Johnson

At the beginning of 2022 I started a new job as a remote sales rep with a really great pay! The first couple of months were a little stressful however, I chalked it up to the fact that it was a learning curve. Read more>>

Shaun Grant

In 2011, I left New Orleans to embark upon a journey to a greater life in Los Angeles. At the time I was filled with so much apprehensive and fearful energy, that I almost decided not to go through with it. I had lived my entire life in Southeast Louisiana, and had never left home to embark upon something of this magnitude. But the reality was, I knew my heart was urging me to grow and expand into a new environment. Read more>>

Paul Angelo Medina

In 2014, I took the risk of leaving as an employed employee of a training company after being attacked by the owner. I was engaged with little amount of money so in order to build revenue I had to keep expenses low. To build equity. I started with training clients in their homes. It wasn’t the attack that changed my perspective. It was time for me to go out on my own to establish a base for myself. Read more>>

Billie G

I think my first time realizing I would risk it all for my music and to be an artist is when I had the opportunity to open up for Burna Boy 3 years ago. I was working at some apartments and I told my manager what I had going on and she said I had to make a decision lol. I was nervous, anxious, and so scared but I chose to quit and I never looked back. I didn’t know how I would pay my bills or where my next dollar would come from but I didn’t care all I wanted to do was perform and let people hear my music. I’ve been risking it ALL ever since. I don’t regret it at all. Read more>>

charlotte richardson

I am a former fashion designer turned Costume Designer. I graduated from London Metropolitan University. Fresh out of Uni I had some success when I designed a red carpet gown for a Bollywood actress Sofia Hayat. I later went on to work as a PA for the late Isabella Blow and after as an intern at McQueen and Stella McCartney. I then returned home to Liverpool were I received the Princes Trust funding to start my own line with the relatively unknown Kim Kardashian even showing interest. Read more>>

Candi Cain

Taking a risk, so back in 2019, I was going through a really tough time after my mother passed away and I had to step away from my business. Then the world went on lock down. I had came up with a new game plan for my brand and decided with the help of my husband to sell my handmade hair growth oil. During the lock down, I took a really big risk to give away my hair growth oil for free to influencers to help me promote. Read more>>

Kelvin McTyre

Since I have began my entrepreneurial journey, taking risks has been a key component to my overall success. In November of 2019, right before the pandemic went into full affect, I quit my career to focus solely on entrepreneurship. Choosing to take that risk has been life changing. At first it was a little scary due to the fact of having a career already in place which means earning a guaranteed paycheck bi-weekly. As fore being a full-time entrepreneur, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Having a job is from 9-5 but I quickly found out being an business owner is 24/7. Read more>>

Tameka Jones

In 2002 I was managing a high end cosmetic company when we as employees were told that the store was going to close due to Covid-19. Although I was nervous about being out of work for an unknown period of time, I was a bit relieved because my work environment was becoming more and more toxic for me due to some racially motivated situations that were not being addressed. Read more>>