We asked some of the city’s most brilliant and creative minds to tell us about the most difficult decision they’ve had to make.

Melinda Monfort | Accountant & Photographer

In the spring of 2019, I was working in the corporate world. For the previous 6 years, I knew the corporate world just wasn’t the right place for me. I loved accounting and taxes and have great work ethic but working for someone else just wasn’t it. After much thought and conversations with my husband, I decided to take a leap and turned in my notice. I was so scared I would fall face first and end up back in the same place. To this day, that was the BEST decision I have ever made in my career. I trusted God and my hard work and it has paid over ten fold. Read more>>

Allie Miller | Professional Violinist

For a hobby, I started taking violin lessons when I was six years old. When I was in seventh grade, though, my private teacher sat me down and told me that she saw in me the talent and the potential to actually “make it” as a violinist, but that it wasn’t going to require years of diligent practice, patience, and persistence. To that – she was right! I had to make the hard decision at a very young age to for-go the “music as a hobby” mentality and become career-minded, before I was even out of middle school! Read more>>

Kate Winsor | Event Production Guru

The importance of marching to my own beat. (Maybe pun intended?) The event production business is so non-traditional and I really have a hard time fitting the way we do things into most traditional ideas of business. We don’t have normal business hours, we work weekends and holidays, and the lifestyle comes with its own set of challenges. One of the highest compliments I got from a professional acquaintance was when she pointed out to me that I just tend to do things my own way without seeming to care much about what others think. Read more>>

Derrick Dumas | Professional Barber

I will have to say quitting my job enrolling in the barber college. At the time it was a scary thing stepping out on Faith, quitting my job, a means of supporting myself and family, but it was Something that needed to be done I was very unhappy with the 9 to 5 schedule Never having time for my family or myself, lack of passion for the work I was doing, On the other hand people being judge mental thinking I was crazy to be willing to let go of my job to go to school and chase my dreams it was very scary because I didn’t have no support Read more>>