Taking Risks

I’m often asked about at what point I made the decision to leave my full-time job to work on ScriptEd full-time.  Unlike many entrepreneurs, I was pretty risk adverse at that point -- we had secured funding, won a ton of awards, got a lot of media attention, had started to build a great group of stakeholders who were (and still are) champions of ScriptEd, and our team had even been invited to the White House. Even with all this early success, I was still very gun shy about leaving my job to pursue ScriptEd full-time. I was leaving a secure job that I loved and paid me well, and my closest friends and family thought I was crazy for taking the risk and discouraged me from doing it.  And then I did it anyway.

At this point, it’s abundantly clear to me that I made the right decision. But it still might not have been -- we might not have been able to secure additional funding, or we might not have been able to recruit volunteers.

Taking risks is a lot easier now than it was then. Here are my general guidelines for taking risks now:

1. If most people are telling you that you’re “crazy if you do”, try to find people in your life who will tell you you’re “crazy if you don’t.” It's important to surround yourself with people who believe in you and understand that "fortune favors the bold."
2. Most things are not as risky as they seem.  
3. Make decisions from your heart (or your gut), and then use your head to make it work.
4. Always be confident.
5. Always give it your all once you’ve made a decision.