Risk is the most common topic that comes up in our conversations with entrepreneurs and so each week we ask entrepreneurs to talk to us on the record about how they think about risk.

Soukaina Alaoui El Hassani | Filmmaker, Producer, Director, Writer

Being a filmmaker is all about taking risks. It’s really about putting yourself out there in such a raw and vulnerable way. I mean being good at anything takes a lot of practice and audiences are extremely critical nowadays. To be able to put out work means exposing this vulnerable self to the world for judgment, and if that’s not a risk I don’t know what is. Read more>>

Nichole Whelan | CQC LA Founder & Creative Director

Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “Do something that scares you every day,” I think it’s important to step out of your comfort zone semi-regularly! When making a stressful decision, I often ask myself, “what is the risk of not doing it?” We often think about risk as it relates to failure, but rarely do we think about the risk of missing a great opportunity or experience that will enrich our lives. Read more>>

Maria Hedrick | Photographer & Business Owner

I find risk to be a very necessary part of the journey throughout life and career building. You can’t grow or learn from your mistakes and successes without allowing yourself to take risks. I will be honest, I haven’t always welcomed risk taking with open arms. At times it can be terrifying to hop into the unknown. Read more>>

Christina Ko | Founder & Owner

Personally, the only things I consider actual risks are life and death (or health related) situations. What remains are decisions having to be made that are either 1) scary & exciting (fear of the unknown, but something new) or 2) easy & comfortable (familiar, and confident of the outcome). I’ve always been up for a challenge as a kid, which helped build my self-esteem but I actually got a little too addicted to “the thrill.” Read more>>

Malebona Maphutse | Multimedia artist & Filmmaker

I think risk taking is crucial to starting and maintaining a business. I have applied risk taking to the entire scope of my life. I think being a full time artist and entrepreneur requires a level of risk taking that makes most people uncomfortable. It also means the risks are high with high rewards but the lessons are equally as grandiose. I have travelled to parts of the world in pursuit of my career and it has meant that stability has been scarce within the last 7 years of my 20’s. Read more>>

Yancyabril | Singer – Songwriter/Instrumental

I think taking risks is where some of the most marvelous things happen in someones career especially in music. You grow professionally and as a person from doing what seemed really scary and unachievable and in a way, you show the universe how much you really want to succeed in something and by taking that risk, the universe rewards you with something great out of it; at least in my experience! Read more>>

Emily McAllister | Lifestyle and Family Photographer

The way I see it there are 2 types of risks; the risk of going after what you want and potentially failing, and the risk of sitting on the sidelines and watching someone else chase your dream. The latter has always been much scarier to me than the potential of trying and falling on my face. I have tried many, many things that I later would find out were not for me, but it all led me one step closer to where I wanted to be. Read more>>

LOUXS VXLLA | Hip Hop | Rap | Latin Artist | Owner & Founder of VXLLA HOUSE ENTERTAINMENT

For me taking risks has been a major part of everything I do and what has gotten me this far. It is vital for growth in my opinion. If I didn’t put myself out there at 13 freestyling or battling in my middle school cafeteria, or performed at Quinceneras only to get my set cut short and booed off stage, or record and press my own music and flood the streets with my albums and mixtapes in the Midwest, Read more>> 

Gabriel Garofano | Writer & Teacher

Risk is, conceptually, a very interesting and complicated idea because it holds in distinction the notion of safety or security against some ominous uncertainty and unknown. Which, if you really break it down, is in essence an ethical or aesthetic dilemma. It’s a mater of judgement. At the end of the day, it’s a very classic problem that is often represented as a scale: a balancing of ostensibly opposing elements, of good or bad, right or wrong. Read more>>

Kurt Patino | Talent Manager, TEDx Speaker & President/Festival Director of the Burbank International Film Festival

Risk taking really means living life to the fullest. You cannot reach or exceed your greatest potential as a human both personally & professionally without taking risks. However, there is a difference between calculated risks & foolish risks. Calculated risks involve studying a situation from all angles and determining if making that choice creates the greatest possible reward with the lowest downside. Read more>>

Nevan Doyle | Artist

I think a lot of times feelings of risk come from our inner clash with societal expectations. To really make it in this world chasing our dreams we have to follow our intuition without pause. From the outside a lot of those moves look like big risks. However, when listening to ourselves and trusting our guts, we make those leaps on a timeline that aligns with the end goal. I fully believe that things come to us when we are TRULY ready, not necessarily when we THINK we are. Read more>>

Ashley Batz | Photographer & Motion Director

As someone who runs her own business, it’s inherently a risk to be the purveyor of your own income. It’s taught me to be confident in my work and in the service that I offer. Though it may be scary, it’s always a risk to your own mental health to reach out to people to introduce yourself, and in running my own business, I’ve been able to take those risks in the hopes that the right people will respond and be interested in meeting with me. Read more>>

Brianna Terry | Founder of Scarred Not Broken

I think that taking risks can be one of the scariest, yet most necessary things to do. It’s scary because you don’t know what may come of it. It’s fear of the unknown. Simply stepping out in faith to start my organization was a huge risk. I didn’t know whether I would be good at overseeing an organization or not. But I decided to go for it. Two years in, I am nowhere near where I want to be, but I am so much further along than where I thought I would be. Read more>>