Option Five

What if fear isn’t the enemy of growth, but a compass pointing toward where you ought to go next? Aaron Nordyke, Head of Product at Drypowder, has built his career by leaning into discomfort rather than avoiding it. From engineering leadership to his first product role at a pre-seed startup, Aaron shares how emotions signal professional values, why balanced teams outperform individual expertise, and how trust is built through daily consistency rather than grand gestures. This is a testament for product leaders who see fear as information rather than an obstacle in the way.Fear as a kind of north starMost people run from fear, but Aaron Nordyke has learned to follow it. He’s learned, especially over the last couple of years, that emotions are our friends. They’re trying to tell us something, trying to tell us what we value.When his former boss offered him a product role despite having very little product experience, Aaron’s first instinct was panic. But he’s developed a different relationship with that discomf