🎲 How to take strategic risks

Strategic risks are critically important to your success, both as a person and as a business.

You have probably already taken some strategic risks before - strategic risks are the difference between people who merely talk about starting businesses vs people who actually successfully start businesses.

But for some reason, entrepreneurs either forget how important it is to take a chance - or worse, they forget to make the most of their wins.

To get around this problem I like to intentionally allocate 10% of my time to rolling the dice, and I often recommend to my clients that they do the same.

Here’s the rule of thumb I live by (and teach):

• 90% of your time goes to what’s already working.

• 10% of your time goes to testing things that might work.

If you ignore this ratio, you run into one of two major problems:

1. You fail to roll the dice, you stay in the 90% loop forever

   1. 🧱 doing the same lead gen

   2. 🕰️ same client experience

   3. 📦 same packages

   4. 😕 wondering why your business feels boring and stuck

      
      

2. You roll the dice too much, you live in chaos chasing the 10%

   1. ✨ chasing shiny ideas but none seem to work as you lack focus

   2. 🧩 never building systems, so everything always feels chaotic and confused

   3. 📊 never mastering the boring stuff that actually drives revenue

      
      

The sweet spot is doing BOTH intentionally.

90% of your week should be dedicated to repeatable process

• 🎯 sending proven warm outreach messages

• 🏆 delivering your core offer with excellence

• 📊 tracking your key data to spot improvements and trends

10% should be reserved for experiments

• 🧪 testing a new lead source

• 🧠 crating a new “bridge” offer

• ✍️ rewriting your onboarding flow

• 🤏 niching your messaging for an offer

• 🙋 creating a loom video for a dream client

• 🎁 adding a limited-time bonus to your current offer

• 🔥 optimising how you share proof of results with clients

That’s what creates sustainable growth.

Not a rebrand.

Not a shiny new name for your offer.

Not a new website you’ll spend 3 weeks perfecting.

Small, intentional risks.

That’s how innovation happens in a service business: while the engine runs, you keep improving it.

When I want to grow faster I know not to try to do the 90% even harder, instead I go out to collect better data and make smarter bets.

I stay focused on delivering the core business, but I’m always making small, intentional, bets to fuel growth and improvement.

What are you testing right now?

Jen’s business is stable so let’s roll the dice (45 seconds)

This point came from my newsletter Work Smart Wednesday, if you would like to read the other related points I made in that email you can find it here: https://worksmartwednesday.substack.com/p/work-smart-wednesday-april-23-2025

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