We had the good fortune of connecting with Deborah Slobin and we’ve shared our conversation below.
Hi Deborah, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking
I think about risk as a necessary facet of both life and business. While the common sentiment, “big risk, big reward” is rather cliché, as with most cliches, it contains quite a bit of truth. Risk has played a huge part in my life and career.
When I was in my early 20’s I moved cross-country from Michigan to Florida on my own to start a new life. I made my way up through the food distribution business until I was one of the top salespeople in the state, selling high-quality meats to luxury hotels and Michelin-star restaurants. After working in that business for nearly 25 years, I moved back to Michigan to be closer to my aging parents and started over yet again. In 2013 I co-signed a lease on a 3,000-square-foot commercial building to start a resale business from scratch with a few friends. In less than a year we knew we had something and haven’t stopped growing since. In 2015 we partnered with an established estate sale company to open a much larger showroom, and started our auction house, expanding our one business into three.
It was a risk for me to move away from my friends and family at such a young age, it was a risk for me to move back and transition careers so many years later, it was a risk for me to break into a new industry with so little experience in that industry, and it was a risk for me to grow and expand our business beyond what I knew we could handle, and yet we have found success. You could say that the major ebbs and flows of my life have been defined by the risks that I’ve taken, but I couldn’t imagine it any other way.
