Your career can go in many different directions, sort of like a launching pad. Patricia Hammock knows that more than anyone. Hammock started her own business, Launching Pad, during the pandemic last year, and ever since then, she has been living in her purpose.
The Nashville, Tennessee native may be living in her purpose now, but this was not always the case for her. After moving to Davenport, Iowa when she was young and then coming back to the area after one year of college, Hammock was certain she had found what she wanted to do.
“My bachelor’s is in communications and journalism and in my mind, I was going to be the Black Connie Chung. That was the plan until I sat in the courtroom and had to cover a murder trial.”
This murder trial had a distinct effect on Patricia.
“I was the only Black member of the media that was in the courtroom and it was a trial of a young Black man who happened to kill his girlfriend’s uncle who was White. His girlfriend was allowing him to sneak into her bedroom each night and one night the uncle heard him, there was a confrontation and the uncle wound up dead. As you can imagine, in the courtroom, the young man’s family is on one side and the girlfriend and uncle’s family is on the other side, so it’s very starkly divided along racial lines in the courtroom. They found him guilty and when the judge polled the jury, jurors were crying and what that told me was they didn’t vote their conscience. They voted the way the community expected them to. When I had to go back to the station and write that story and read it objectively for broadcast news, I knew that news was not where I was supposed to be.”
After a year of working on the news, Patricia finally made her way out and was on to working on economic development and that is where she started to dip her toe into what she is currently doing now with Launching Pad, using one of her interview prep sessions on herself that she created.
“I was able to convince a room of white men that I was the best person for the job at 23 years old. There were more mature candidates; candidates with more experience in the field, but with my interview prep, I showed myself that my interview prep process can work. I was essentially my own first client before I started the business. I also taught homebuyer education courses for Bank of America and Employability Skills workshops too along the way.”
Along with the interview prep, Patricia was also able to develop and teach a whole nine-week career preparation course and that is where she really knew her calling, as she fell in love with designing and delivering training. In 2020, she started Launching Pad, which is a business designed to not only assist people in preparing for jobs but also offer up financial literacy. And for Hammock, Launching Pad is just the beginning.
“I would love to get to the point where I could employ another team member and where I could have a non-profit. I would like to be so busy helping so many people that my calendar is just jam-packed with people whose lives are going to be different because they have had the opportunity to engage with me. I am also working on my own professional development workbook that should be out this year and I am a licensed financial professional. That allows me to help people that look like me build legacies to change the narrative of scarcity in our communities and build generational wealth.”
Patricia may have had other plans to be the next Connie Chung, but what she is doing now with Launching Pad is truly impacting people’s lives, one customer at a time. With this combination of skill-building, resume and CV optimization, financial literacy, and interview preparedness, she is truly positioning herself to be truly one of the best at what she does. And along with that wide array of skills, the company also offers itself out as a “writer for hire”, as Hammock is a published author and writes cover letters, personal statements, magazines, and books by contract.
Launching Pad may be a young business but it will be an impactful one on the strength of the mission and attitude alone. For more information on Hammock’s life-changing business, please head to www.launchingpadonline.com.
