This is a post related to the PostADay2011 Challenge: Describe the biggest risk you’ve ever taken
The biggest risk that I ever took in my life was the most difficult choice I’ve ever made, possibly the most painful. It’s when I decided that I didn’t want to do real estate after six years and tell my father that I would not be the one to carry on the legacy and take over the company someday.
When I was in high school and someone asked me what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, I said that I didn’t know, but I would NOT work for my father. At the age of 20, within 2 weeks of finishing high school I moved out. Two months later, I took a full time position at a women’s clothing store. Talk about painful! My father said that his assistant needed a back up and asked if I wanted to join his real estate consulting firm. I asked until Sunday dinner to make up my mind. The next day, I had a run-in with my manager and thought during her 30 minute long speech that neither she, I or my assistant manager had to endure, “I don’t have to put up with this.” After she had finished raking me over the coals unnecessarily, I informed her that she should consider this my two week notice as I was joining my father’s firm. I saw her jaw drop and the smile creep across the assistant manager’s face. I’d won.
I started with my father’s firm two weeks later and stayed there for six years. I started realizing that instead of filling out the tenant reports for the Boards of Director’s I was fixing the internet connection that had recently been installed in the office. I enrolled in a private college and began my career in IT. The rest is history…
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