Risk Is the
Rate of Growth
Zach Roy — April 2026At the end of the day, most frustrations about progress come down to one thing: your rate of growth. Are you becoming a better version of yourself? Are you stepping into the identity you want? Are you taking the actions necessary to become who you want to be?
I think a lot of that — more than most people want to admit — comes down to risk.
Two People.
Two Trajectories.
Person A takes less risk → less surface contact with the marketplace → less data → worse-informed decisions → slower iteration. The feedback loop is long.
Person B takes more risk → more reps → more feedback → better data → faster and smarter decisions → compound learning. The feedback loop is tight.
"You want to be Person B. Take risk, learn fast, fail fast, iterate fast — and get to the next thing."
You can't build a house if you never place a brick down. So place a brick down. Put another one down. And another one. Pretty soon, you'll have a wall.
If you're too scared to put the first brick down, the second, the third — because you're afraid you're not on the right foundation — you're never going to find the perfect foundation. But the beauty of it is, if you go brick by brick, you can learn, iterate, and course-correct. You can fix broken things from the past.
What you can't do is fix something in the future if you never put a brick down. There's nothing to fix. Nothing to learn. Nothing to improve upon.
Take as much risk as you can possibly handle. You'll progress much faster, learn much more, and you'll feel way more alive doing it.