By: Kendall Wheeler
Your pencil is sharpened, a blank page is blinding you, and you have a bottle of water ready in case a coughing attack hits you in the middle of the interview. Everything is set, but why is it so hard to dial the number of your interviewee?
Danette Baker, associate director/development and “Pulse” editor for the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, says her scariest career moments are picking up the phone to make an interview call.
“I’ve learned the worst thing they can do is say no,” Danette, an AWC member since 1996 said. “A ‘no’ is really not that bad, though. I’ll just thank them for their time and contact someone else.”
Danette Baker
She says other frightening moments throughout her career have led to opportunities she might have missed. Her husband took a group of students on a field trip to NASA in Houston and Danette joined the group because all schools were required to travel with a journalist to document the experience. The group was scheduled to ride in a reduced gravity aircraft, which is designed to create a near-weightless experience and is a portion of astronaut training.
Not Danette’s family, but a similar experience. (Source)
“The plane went straight up and down about 40 times,” she said. “My cheeks felt like they were stretched back to my ears and one of the students actually turned green. I would do it again, though, and I might even consider skydiving now, which I would’ve never even thought about before.”
Danette says she gains more than she loses by stepping out of her comfort zone, and Anna Woodlock, SocialSite Media Founder and Chief Strategist, agrees.
Anna, an AWC member since 2009, jumped off the corporate payroll and into self employment at the beginning of 2012. Anna says the most frightening part of the move was not having the security of a guaranteed paycheck.
Anna Woodlock
“At the end of the day you’re responsible for your own income,” she says. “This can be a great thing but can also be very scary when you’re just starting out.”
Being 25 and owning her own business was overwhelming at times, but her supportive family and friends urged her to fight through the fear.
“One of my favorite quotes is ‘…try to make the one decision that scares you a little bit, because those are normally the right ones,’” Anna says. “When setting out a journey of self employment, anyone is bound to have tough days and days where you question what you’re doing. I’ve found that it’s so important for me to surround myself with people that support my career decisions and believe in my efforts. I have some amazing friends who always remind me that there is nothing else in the world I should be doing.”
Anna says she is grateful that the communication industry is full of entrepreneurs that have paved the way for her to own her own business, but she wishes more credit would be given to those who face their fears as entrepreneurs.