Contemplating Risk Taking
“Awakening and owning the dreams that God has placed in our hearts isn't about getting stuff or attaining something. It's about embracing who we are and who he has created us to be. In him. He is our dream come true, and the one true love of our life. But we can't love him with our whole hearts when our hearts are asleep. To love Jesus means to risk coming awake, to risk wanting and desiring.”
― Stasi Eldredge, Becoming Myself: Embracing God's Dream of You
Four years ago, I founded a company with my long time best friend. At the time, it wasn't particularly a goal of mine to start my own company. I have always understood the benefits of business ownership, at least in the academic sense. Still, I don't score high on the "risk taker" scale, and I would have been perfectly happy to stay in the job I had for the remainder of my working life.
As fate would have it, the company where I worked was sold, and my position eliminated. I had the opportunity to start my own company, with the former employer as my first client. I reached out to my friend, because we do the same type of work, she was working independently as a consultant, two people are always better than one, and I recognize my limitations when it comes to working by myself.
And so we began. Some people start out with enormous visions of what their company will be and do. For us, it was an exercise in providing a good income for the 2 of us, and not much more. I set specific revenue goals for year 1, year 2, and year 3. We hit the goals in year 1 and 2, and in year 3, we grew by 300%. As we have finished year 4 this month, we have grown another 100%. From year 2 to year 4, 400% growth sounds amazing and wonderful...and it is; but that isn't the whole story.
The other part of the story isn't always so wonderful. It's full of challenges, expected and unexpected. It's full of learning by trial and error, disagreements and sometimes hurt feelings. There have been moments when our friendship has been sorely tried by our roles as business partners and managers of this growing organization. We have made fantastic hiring decisions, and not so great hiring decisions.
Woven into this wild tapestry is the inescapable necessity of taking risks. We are taking risks that affect the 2 of us and our income, but as we grow, we take risks that affect our clients, and more importantly, the people who have come to work with us.
Risks are an integral part of our lives, and all the more so when we venture into the world of business ownership. The only way to truly avoid risk is to stay in bed all day, and I suppose you probably know what happens to you if you stay in bed all day, right? If you don't know, I'll tell you: you die.
That's right. We are not made to stay in bed. Literally. Our bodies are made to move. We are designed to be engaged in the wild rough and tumble of life. To get involved, to go out on a limb, to risk loving, moving, playing, competing...and when we risk, we get hurt, we win, we lose, we experience new things, we experience love and we experience rejection. When our risk taking ends badly for us, we are required to dust ourselves off, get back up, learn from the experience, and then jump right back in to the process of taking more risks.
I chose the picture of folks climbing an 8 foot fence as my visual illustration because it represents a risk I took a few years back in a mud run. I worked for several months in advance of this race to get ready for it, but when the day came and I came face-to-face with the fence, I was petrified. No one was there to "make me" climb and jump over the fence, but I knew the feeling of walking around it would be a sad pit in my stomach. So, I took the first step up, got a toe-hold, and kept going. The top is the worst part - the moment when you have to throw your leg over and trust you won't lose your grip and fall straight to the ground and break a leg.
I froze for a moment at the top - knowing that going back wasn't an option, but going forward was petrifying on an even higher level - I was only able to make the next move because of the folks around me who encouraged me forward. People who I knew, and people who were complete strangers. All of them together urged me forward. And so it was that I scaled the 8 foot fence, threw my leg over the top, and safely climbed over and jumped to the ground.
But I could have fallen. Absolutely, I could have. It was a risk - to my mind, a very big risk. If I had fallen, I would have been hurt. I don't know how badly hurt, but an 8 foot fall would hurt, undoubtedly so. Landing on the ground safely was a huge moment for me - a monumental accomplishment in my mind. I suppose it wasn't the most amazing physical accomplishment in the world, but more important than the physical accomplishment was the accomplishment of overcoming fear and taking the risk.
We take a lot of risks in our daily lives, and some of them end badly. The lessons I think, are to support one another when the risks seem overwhelming, and accept that the results will sometimes be painful. We have to trust the bigger picture of what's coming next when things end badly, and know the lessons learned from the experiences will strengthen us for what comes next.
― Stasi Eldredge, Becoming Myself: Embracing God's Dream of You
Four years ago, I founded a company with my long time best friend. At the time, it wasn't particularly a goal of mine to start my own company. I have always understood the benefits of business ownership, at least in the academic sense. Still, I don't score high on the "risk taker" scale, and I would have been perfectly happy to stay in the job I had for the remainder of my working life.
As fate would have it, the company where I worked was sold, and my position eliminated. I had the opportunity to start my own company, with the former employer as my first client. I reached out to my friend, because we do the same type of work, she was working independently as a consultant, two people are always better than one, and I recognize my limitations when it comes to working by myself.
And so we began. Some people start out with enormous visions of what their company will be and do. For us, it was an exercise in providing a good income for the 2 of us, and not much more. I set specific revenue goals for year 1, year 2, and year 3. We hit the goals in year 1 and 2, and in year 3, we grew by 300%. As we have finished year 4 this month, we have grown another 100%. From year 2 to year 4, 400% growth sounds amazing and wonderful...and it is; but that isn't the whole story.
The other part of the story isn't always so wonderful. It's full of challenges, expected and unexpected. It's full of learning by trial and error, disagreements and sometimes hurt feelings. There have been moments when our friendship has been sorely tried by our roles as business partners and managers of this growing organization. We have made fantastic hiring decisions, and not so great hiring decisions.
Woven into this wild tapestry is the inescapable necessity of taking risks. We are taking risks that affect the 2 of us and our income, but as we grow, we take risks that affect our clients, and more importantly, the people who have come to work with us.
Risks are an integral part of our lives, and all the more so when we venture into the world of business ownership. The only way to truly avoid risk is to stay in bed all day, and I suppose you probably know what happens to you if you stay in bed all day, right? If you don't know, I'll tell you: you die.
That's right. We are not made to stay in bed. Literally. Our bodies are made to move. We are designed to be engaged in the wild rough and tumble of life. To get involved, to go out on a limb, to risk loving, moving, playing, competing...and when we risk, we get hurt, we win, we lose, we experience new things, we experience love and we experience rejection. When our risk taking ends badly for us, we are required to dust ourselves off, get back up, learn from the experience, and then jump right back in to the process of taking more risks.
I chose the picture of folks climbing an 8 foot fence as my visual illustration because it represents a risk I took a few years back in a mud run. I worked for several months in advance of this race to get ready for it, but when the day came and I came face-to-face with the fence, I was petrified. No one was there to "make me" climb and jump over the fence, but I knew the feeling of walking around it would be a sad pit in my stomach. So, I took the first step up, got a toe-hold, and kept going. The top is the worst part - the moment when you have to throw your leg over and trust you won't lose your grip and fall straight to the ground and break a leg.
I froze for a moment at the top - knowing that going back wasn't an option, but going forward was petrifying on an even higher level - I was only able to make the next move because of the folks around me who encouraged me forward. People who I knew, and people who were complete strangers. All of them together urged me forward. And so it was that I scaled the 8 foot fence, threw my leg over the top, and safely climbed over and jumped to the ground.
But I could have fallen. Absolutely, I could have. It was a risk - to my mind, a very big risk. If I had fallen, I would have been hurt. I don't know how badly hurt, but an 8 foot fall would hurt, undoubtedly so. Landing on the ground safely was a huge moment for me - a monumental accomplishment in my mind. I suppose it wasn't the most amazing physical accomplishment in the world, but more important than the physical accomplishment was the accomplishment of overcoming fear and taking the risk.
We take a lot of risks in our daily lives, and some of them end badly. The lessons I think, are to support one another when the risks seem overwhelming, and accept that the results will sometimes be painful. We have to trust the bigger picture of what's coming next when things end badly, and know the lessons learned from the experiences will strengthen us for what comes next.
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