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.

Zach Heyde

Up until February of 2023, most of my career as a composer centered around additional music, arranging, and orchestration. What I REALLY wanted was to be working with clients of my own, composing exclusively for projects I loved, and leaving enough time to create videos on YouTube. Read more>>

Elisa Guidelli

At a certain point in my life, I took a risk and made an uncomfortable choice: I quit my job to devote myself only to writing. I felt that I could not give my best in what I love, so I made this decision. It was painful, in a way, because leaving a safe path creates uncertainty and precariousness. But I told myself that I had to try, I had to give myself a chance, at least one, to try, and maybe fail, but I would not have the regret later that I did not try. It happened right at the beginning of the pandemic: like so many others, I preferred to seize the moment to try a path that would make me happy, rather than hold on to one that took away my joy in life. Read more>>

Jo-Ná Williams

Taking the risk to be a full-time entrepreneur is a big one. Especially when all you have is the ability to bet on yourself. When I started my firm back in 2011 there weren’t many virtual law firms (only a handful, it was a new way of practicing law) and oftentimes people had no idea what to expect. However, I had an idea that running businesses online would be the next big wave of entrepreneurship. Read more>>

Janna Hockenjos

Well, what good timing to share “taking a risk.” I feel like I’m living that right this very moment, and I have no idea how this story is going to end. I can only tell you how it begins. Just last week, I walked away from the yoga business I’ve built and been a part of and I decided to stop teaching yoga. I’ve been a yoga teacher since my late twenties (I’m 40), and I’ve owned yoga studios and written a book on the subject of yoga. I’ve held trainings and hosted retreats. I’ve only taken breaks to have my two children. Read more>>

Cherith Pruitt

When I bought Tough Lotus – it was May of 2020. That’s right – directly in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. Everything had reopened here in Arizona and we reopened under our ownership on June 1, 2020. 3 weeks later, we were forced to shut down again. Read more>>

Matt Mahjoub

About 2 years I ago I left a 6 figure job doing redundant work that I knew I was good at, but didn’t feel satisfied with the feeling it gave me every time I clocked in. I definitely didn’t enjoy my job. Since then, I started making music, became an artist and created my own business in the music industry. I haven’t had a job and have spent close to 6 figures turning this passion into something that I can stand on, and it’s been the riskiest route ever. Read more>>

Christina Dennis

At 41, I decided to leave my 20-year career in tax and accounting to go back to school and pursue my passion of becoming certified in health coaching and functional nutrition. As an introvert it was extremely daunting to put myself out there in a fully client facing career and give up my old job and steady stream of income for a new unknown journey. Read more>>

John Chery

Overall being creative is the most rewarding experience I can imagine. The reward is knowing that I’ve taken a risk with my heart and my time. I can possibly never see a profit from podcasting, but I know that my voice is valuable and that I am bringing value in other ways that supersede a money Read more>>

Laine Allen

I took a big risk & left my career in a very secure government run not-for-profit because I had evolved so much in my values that working there no longer aligned to who I was. Which sounds banana bonkers considering how many people stay at jobs they don’t love for the security, for the status, or for the money. Read more>>

Bill Marmor

Careers are about taking risks. You decide what you want to do and then pursue it. I wanted to be in filmmaking, and as I learned more about the process, I honed my interest in editing. I liked that the position held a lot of power behind the scenes. You can make or break any project. And you get to be highly creative in how you tell a story. Read more>>

Diandria Wright

I am a full-time RN. My job can sometimes be very stressful. Creating has always been a method of relaxation for me. I loved making items but I never thought anyone would be interested in anything I created. A friend challenged me to take the risk and try to share the items I created with people. She encouraged me to take a risk and put myself out there. Read more>>

Karen Christians

It started with a fire. In 1989 while attending a Halloween party, a drunk partier decided to flick a Bic lighter and set my costume on fire. I landed in the hospital for a month with 30% 3rd-degree burns and skin grafts. Six months later, I took my first jewelry class and was horrified to learn that I needed to torch to solder to join my ring. With help from my teacher, Read more>>

Winfred Julmeus

Starting this business was definitely a risk for me because I didn’t know what the outcome would be. But I took a chance and I’m glad I did I have the best support team which is my parents and my sister they have really had my back threw it all. Read more>>

Reggie Jennings

Coming to Texas was a HUGE risk. I was 26 years old, no health insurance with a dollar and a dream in my hand. I turned down a 2nd round interview at a University in the midwest to come and be an intern for a premier institution in the DFW metroplex. I had to stay with my friend and his family for about 2-3 weeks as my apartment was getting ready. I’ll never forget. Read more>>

Chef Rera

The biggest risk I’ve ever taken was quitting my job as a scientist at one of the country’s top hospitals and becoming a chef. I started my catering business in 2014 while I was a full-time scientist, so I worked full-time at the hospital and full-time in my catering business. I wasn’t sure what direction my life was headed at that time. Read more>>

Annette Weeks

Nine years ago, I took a risk and left a job to go to MWSU to create a Center for Entrepreneurship. In that time period I was able to assist over 800 people wanting to start or improve their business. Starting a business is all about risk. My goal was to help them think things through enough that it is a risk that you are prepared for. It was amazing to help people through the overwhelming aspects of launching a business. Read more>>

blucone

A risk we’ve taken and continue to take is the pursuit of being professional creatives in a world where that life is undervalued and labeled as a “hobby”. We have no hesitations about what we do. We all have day jobs, but our music and will to succeed sustains us. No risk, no reward. We’ve seen the benefits of this risk through the positive response to our music, and through the amazing connections we’ve made within our first year of playing live together. Read more>>

Ahmya Rivera

I always knew I wanted to create a project that would provide representation to young girls who lacked accessible STEAM role models — as statistically, a lack of accessible role models is what hinders young girls from wanting to pursue a STEAM career. I wanted to create something that would inspire them to believe in themselves and their abilities. But I knew that this was a lofty goal, and I didn’t have the resources to accomplish it on my own. That’s when I decided to take a risk and start a Kickstarter campaign to fund my project. Read more>>

Victoria Raigorodsky Mora

I grew up in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and when I started college I thought I would be a Philosophy professor. I attended Buenos Aires University for two years and was relatively happy doing it, I loved reading and analyzing about ethics and justice and life’s biggest questions – but there was something missing. See, I had been taking voice lessons since I was nine years old, because I absolutely loved to sing, but that was it. Nothing more. Read more>>

Thomas Coselli

Taking risks is absolutely essential in business and life in general. They should be calculated and well executed but if there is no risk there is no growth. No risk means you are not trying new things, collaborating with new people, or innovating in your field of business. The biggest risks I have taken when it comes to my career have centered around taking the plunge to change my surroundings, whether that was the place, the people, or both. Read more>>

Brionnie

There were many times in my career where I would find myself in most stressful situations having to choose between one thing or an opportunity that could further my career. In most cases I always chose to risk it all and just go with the flow. Read more>>

Béatrice Beer

• Appreciate you joining 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. Great question, thanks for asking!! Typically, I’m not a risk-taking type person, if I can, I like to stick to my comfort zone!! lol But somehow, life seems to have pushed me more often than not in the other direction!! Read more>>

Laticia Munford

I can definitely say that introducing my natural hair care brand was one of the biggest risks I’ve ever taken simply because there are a lot of unknowns. You don’t know how customers are going to perceive or respond to what you’ve created. What if they don’t like it? Could it hurt the credibility of my already existing brand? You don’t know the financial weight that curating a product line will bare… I mean, you really don’t know how any of this will play out. You just take a leap of faith. Read more>>

Blaire Fujimoto

The biggest risk I’ve ever taken was leaving my pharmacy career and starting over. I spent 6 years in college to get a doctor of pharmacy degree, 1 year in a pediatric pharmacy residency program, and then 6 years working at a pediatric hospital. My job at the hospital was demanding physically, mentally, and emotionally. Being a pharmacist required a lot of critical thinking, decision making, and multitasking. Read more>>

Kelly Cummings

Growing up, the narrative was always that we were to work hard in school to be able to go to college to then begin a lifelong career. Not everyone in my family had the option to go to college or at least go right after high school, so it was embedded in me from a young age that doing everything I could to make that privilege a possibility was what I should always work toward. Read more>>

Nathan Ricks

The biggest risk I could’ve made in my career was being a full-time musician. Just think about it. I wanted to take the nonsafe route in the world and work based on what I’m able to book for myself. through the busy seasons and dry seasons. I decided to do what most don’t consider a “Real Job” and make it my full-time career, while not taking the route of a 9-5 music job or contracted wedding band to do it. of course no shade to those other areas of the industry. Read more>>

Monique Wenhold

Chasing your dreams sometimes is a huge risk, you can feel like an imposter, and it can be super easy to let your mind wonder and question if you will be accepted and successful when you do chase your dreams. Read more>>

J.L. Hancock

I spent over twenty years in the military, fought in over 100 combat operations with some of the most elite warriors in the US military, but having to face cancer forced me to confront a question I refused to ask: was it all worth it? Read more>>

Chandler Tomayko

The most recent risk I have taken was deciding to invest in myself. I had a business idea and decided to find a way to make it a reality. It started with zoom happy hours during the pandemic, followed by a ton of notes on legal pads. I came up with a game design and found a company that could make it tangible. I didn’t have enough money to get started. Read more>>

Jamie Day

In 1997, I was sure I was going to be on Broadway. I got close. I also got my heart broken by a big show where I was supposed to be the lead and then was asked to understudy a ‘name’ in the title role. Something had to change. At the time, I didn’t realize it, but I was beginning to follow my intuition. In 2005, I left the entertainment industry and found myself on a Spiritual Pilgrimage to Egypt. Read more>>

Robin Garrett

I grew up without much money, always understanding you must work hard for what you want out of life. As I navigated single motherhood and positioning myself to keep improving my income through better jobs, I still was always working for somebody else. It wasn’t until my late forties, with absolutely no education or background in retail business, Read more>>

TERACE GARNIER

The biggest risk I’ve ever taken, and will continue to take, is on myself. My hopes, my desires, my dreams. My goals. Every social construct in our world has a list of what we should do, who we should be, where we should go, as people, as professionals, well into our later years – even how we should die. But I don’t follow that. That doesn’t track with my life. Read more>>

Arthur Woo

When I first started my career in NYC, one of my first clients gave me some tips over the course of our working relationship. He mentioned that for his clients, he always tries to bring something new to the table, or give them options, vs. doing the same thing for them. Sometimes, he said, they don’t even know they need something new. Read more>>

Jessica Alejandro

Starting my private practice has been one of the biggest risks I’ve taken in my life. I did not start my private practice as I had envisioned in my two year plan. The same plan that I had communicated to my director during a performance review (which was stellar BTW) at my last job two years prior. Little did I know that I would be promoted to middle management at this job, absolutely hate it and then get fired. Read more>>

Ali Hval

My entire mural career started as a complete accident. In my first year of graduate school in 2017, I was approached by a fellow grad student about working alongside her on a mural project. I agreed, never having painted a mural before, and took it as an opportunity to learn a new skill. Weeks later, she had to drop the mural project, and a difficult decision loomed over me: either I would take on the project by myself, Read more>>

Erika Thomas

I’ve took the risk of becoming a resume writer once loosing my partnership with one of the biggest tech companies ever just after 4 weeks. I went from my life is complete to what do I do now ? I was certain to get a job ASAP but that wasn’t the case. I received more rejections and stalled opportunities than ever before. I was so confused and concerned what would be my future. I went months with no consistency of income but the few resumes I did hoping one day it would expand into something great. Read more>>

Meliza Bañales

One of the biggest risks I took was leaving the comfort and community of the San Francisco Bay Area in 2011. While I am originally from Los Angeles, I built the first 15 years of my career in the Spoken-Word, Slam Poetry, and Queer artist communities of the SF Bay Area. I came to San Francisco when I was 18 on a Greyhound bus with only $500, a backpack, and a Smith-Corona electric typewriter in 1996. Read more>>

Shaman Tiers

Currently Working on my Comic Strip PsychoTherapy an independent yet ambitious endeavor, I’ve so far not seen much success but I have gotten praise for it mainly the artwork in some of the commentary in it which for a comic is the entire appeal, the artwork and writing. At the time of writing this I was rejected by Andrews McMeel Publishing a day ago, who’s editing department, liked the concept of my series and wished me luck in the future despite my work not currently aligning with there line-up of books. Read more>>

Tiffany Tate

In 2020 I was working as a full-time Creative Director for a global wellness company. Like many businesses, the company was hit hard and many staff members were dropped to half-time, including myself. I had always dreamed of owning my studio and thought now’s my chance – with so many unknowns ahead, when will there be a better time to take this risk? Any creative knows that there’s nothing that quite compares to commanding your own ship and seeing your own vision through, no matter how pleasurable your creative work is for other people. Read more>>

Olivia Scott

As an actress, I have always loved performing and being in front of the camera but I also have a passion for other aspects of the film industry and producing and writing have always interested me too. Just under eight months ago, my friend from an acting class and I came up with the idea for our own show, ‘Back of House,’ we then co-wrote, co-produced, self-funded and co-starred in the pilot for it. Read more>>

Marcus Flemmings

Imagine being 15 and still not knowing what you want to do with your life. At school, especially high school, you are programmed by the age of 12 to know exactly what it is you want to do with you’re 35. A pressure I always found overwhelming. So when you hit 17 and you’ve failed your first year of Business Studies (due to a lack of cohesive direction) your friends have all departed to college and are gearing up to hit university, life is, to put it mildly, tricky. Read more>>

Shane Stanley

I would say a big risk we took was making the film, “Double Threat.” Crazy story there, as we had all been locked up during the pandemic, at this point for five or six months and I was getting cabin fever. We had two films get shelved because of COVID and at the point when Hollywood allowed filming again, (Sept 2020) under very strict guidelines, Read more>>

Charles Chan Massey

At the end of December 1994, I took what was potentially a big risk – I quit my job as Director of Sales and Marketing at a little boutique hotel in West Hollywood and decided to make a go of it on my own, something I’d been thinking about for the past several years. I had been working on the side as a freelance conference and event planning assistant, helping friends here and there with their own projects, and had one solid client who was the executive director of an association of physicians and allied health professionals. Read more>>

danielle jones kristine saldana

The biggest risk we have taken is deciding that we wanted to write and self publish a children’s book without fully realizing what that entails. We didn’t know how to write a book, how much it would cost to self publish a book, and we had no idea how to draw readers to us. All we knew was that we had a cute idea about a broken little orange crayon that travels the world. The idea came from Kristine’s daughter seeing a broken orange crayon on the sidewalk. Her daughter declared, “Watch out for Old Man Crayon!” Read more>>

Johnny Wokhart

I believe the risk of doing anything uncomfortable is the biggest thing that keeps individuals from chasing their dreams and reaching their unlimited potential. I was born and raised in San Diego, my parents had split when I was young so all I’ve ever seen is their hustle to make life work for them – my pops was an immigrant from Mexico so his upbringing really pushed him to be creative with how he got money from his mechanical skills to artistic abilities I was able to see how to put it together but he was young and dumb at one point in life and found himself immersed in the so-cal gang culture back in the 90s which caught up to him in 2010. Read more>>