In our experience, most folks, including ourselves don’t have enough of an understanding of risk and the role it plays in our lives and careers and so we have made a concerted effort as a team to have conversations about risk with our interviewees. We’ve shared some highlights below.

Anita Ivancevic | Founder & CEO

You have to be willing to take risks in order to succeed, period. But beyond just taking the risks, you have to be willing to pivot and adapt. There is no way of sugar coating the risks involved with starting your own company and managing it. No matter how much you believe you have researched your industry and how good your business plan is there will always be some mitigating factor or market conditions that you may not have accounted for and/or anticipated. 2020 has been a prime example of this as it’s left nearly every business, across every industry, including ours with the question of how do we adapt and still provide value to our clients in the midst of a global pandemic? Had it not been for the risks we as a company have learned to take and grow from early on, I don’t know how well we would have been able to adapt to this unprecedented climate. Read more>>

Heather Harbaugh | Spiritual Mentor, Sacred Body Language Translation Facilitator, Life Upgrade Coach & Intuitive Prophetic Artist

Five years ago, my husband and I agreed it was time for him to leave his corporate job and fully live his life he loves in his passions and dreams. Up until this point in our marriage, I had primarily stayed at home and taught our 6 kids which I loved and thrived in. His move to quit his job awakened in me my desire to create a business where I could serve my world with my gifts. My risks in the beginning involved attending business network meetings, something I had never done before, giving presentations, marketing my skills, building a website, finding clients, joining art shows and displaying my art publicly on social media as well as painting live in church services. I invested in trainings and workshops and certifications, not “knowing” for sure if they would lead to monetary reward and “knowing” in my heart that taking these steps were important for my growth and development. With each “yes” I gave to a risk my heart was leading me to take, more and more opportunities came to me to grow and flourish in my gifts and to be of greater service in my world. Read more>>

Katiana Serrano | Event Planner

I took a huge risk by quitting my 9 to 5 in Corporate America job. It has been the biggest blessing ever! I get to make a living from home doing what I love! I have fun and I spend more time with my children! That is important to me! Even though, they can drive me mad. Read more>>

Jessica Taylor | Founder & CEO

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far it is possible to go.” — T.S. Eliot I started Captivating Home Collection, LLC in 2014, as an online furniture and home accessories store in Dallas, TX. A lot of people thought it was a bad idea, because I also work full-time for a technology company and online furniture stores weren’t as popular then as it is now. Through hard work and my website developer, we have been able to create some awesome ecommerce websites. We have gone through three versions and are in the process of creating a new one for 2021. Our team is planning to launch www.chcdesigngroup.com next year, so stay tuned for more updates. My college degree is in Psychology and I never thought I would be owning a design company. My minor is fine art, so I love being able to express myself by helping create beautiful homes and offices. Read more>>

Patricia Daiker, RN, NC-BC | Nurse Coach, CEO & Business Owner

I have made three very big “leaps of faith” in my career that involved significant risk, but each time I felt confident it was the right move so it didn’t seem as risky. At age 21, I put all my belongings in a cattle trailer and moved from Illinois to Texas to venture out and see the world. I had become a registered nurse by the age of 20 and after 9 months of “just working” in a hospital back home, I knew there had to be more. I landed at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas and worked my way from floor nurse to ICU to Charge Nurse in a Level 1 Trauma Center. That big risk definitely paid off! My next leap was from the hospital to a healthcare IT startup company in 2000. After 15 years at the bedside, I wanted to revisit a career in computer science (something I had thought about before nursing, but it wasn’t a traditional career for women in the 80s). Read more>>

Anne Shackelford | Chrysalis Artist

“Stop waiting for a sign, for the right time, for everything to align. Even when you’re learning, hurting or aching: start choosing, start chasing, start creating. All it takes is one word, one dab of paint, one mistake, one-this-might-be-awful-but-I’ll-do-it-anyway. You may stumble and fall bruise and I know you’re asking but what if I lose? And I’m here to tell you of all the losses you could feel, nothing feels like losing quite as much as standing still.” -s.r.w. poetry This about sums it up! Read more>>

Brad Goldberg | Artist

I believe that as an artist, who works on large public projects, the entire endeavor is one of risk taking. I have always tried not to repeat myself, thus each new project is done with a sense of risk. Although the risks may fill me with a sense of fear at time, risks also provide a sense of joy in the doing, and satisfaction with the end product. Read more>>

Shelley Rogers | Cookie Baker Extraordinaire

Funny enough, I’m quite risk averse, but if you’d look at my adult life/career, you’d say otherwise. I am a strong follower of Jesus, and the older I get, the more open I am to following the path He puts before me versus trying to make what I WANT happen. I have had a passion for baking and cooking for almost 30 years now, and looking back, I wish I would have attended culinary school, but instead I received an excellent education from UT Austin, providing me the tools to properly market myself. In July of this year, I decided to finally follow my passion after my younger daughter requested to bake cookies over the summer. Because of her persistence and passion, I now get to spend my days in a commercial kitchen baking decadent cookies! Read more>>

Becca Graham | FIT4MOM Fort Worth Owner

I prefer a “let’s try it and see if it works” mentality when it comes to risk. Growth cannot come without taking risks. From a business perspective, I can always shift back to the baseline if a risk doesn’t go well. Whereas, if I never take a business risk, I am missing out on potential growth opportunities. There have been many times that we’ve tried adding different programs, class times, and locations that didn’t stick. I could look at those situations as “failures” but instead, I use them to reflect, re-evaluate, and make more informed decisions moving forward. In my personal life, taking risks has been life-changing. Marrying my husband at age 21 was the best risk I’ve ever taken. Signing up for foster care at age 24 while also raising our one-year-old son also felt like a huge risk. However, we now have the honor of raising our daughter who came to our home through foster care. Read more>>

Michael Gorton | Teladoc Founder, Serial Entrepreneur & Adventurer

I think every great entrepreneur MUST be a risk taker. Virtually every day in the life of an entrepreneur is defined by the risks they are taking. Read more>>

Hannah Lanai Fuller | Actress, Director, Theatre Technician & Student

Risk-taking is the foundation of moving forward. It has played a monumental role in building my career, as it has for anyone in the arts, I imagine. Without risk, I would have never majored in theatre. I’d be stuck in a far more “practical” course of study that didn’t have the loved ones in my life asking if I was sure it was a good idea over every holiday meal. Think about it, when was the last time someone was worried that a computer science major was “taking a chance” by going down that career path? I think all artists are inherent risk-takers. There’s risk in starting, risk in auditioning, in applying, in stepping on stage, in sharing designs. There’s risk in it all, Sometimes I feel that if I had a more practical career path, life would be easier. Read more>>

Holly Dempsey | Co-Founder

Risk is the basis of all decision making. Intentional or not, I believe it is human nature to weigh the risk/reward scale when making a decision. Even if we are not using that language in our internal dialogue, we view all decisions through this filter and when you can recognize it, name it, and put it to work, then you move past decisions based on fear and on to decisions based on possibilities. Read more>>

James Zamora | Artist

In the studio, risks are what drive my art practice. My realism paintings used to come with a lot of risks, for example, am I mixing color correctly? is my brushwork too busy? how do I make objects feel more realistic? After several years, I began to realize I was not longer asking myself those questions, and realized I had answered them. Once that is realized, the art needs to change in order to get better. Read more>>