Like Dr Martin Luther King, Jr., I had a dream, but it was never to start a business. It was to find security. But I have since learned that my pursuit was an illusion.
The people who raised me encouraged me to find a job, work hard and take my pension at the end of my career. As the first person in my family to graduate from college, I had more opportunities than my parents and grandparents, but I inherited their caution.
But over the years, I’ve come to believe that true security comes not from playing it safe, but from taking chances. As an aspiring entrepreneur, I found guidance from a superstar of Black history: Madam C.J. Walker, the daughter of slaves born one year after the Emancipation Proclamation who went on to become the nation’s first female self-made millionaire, and who once said, “Don’t sit down and wait for opportunities to come. Get up and make them!”
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