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For Subscribers

How to Take the Right Risks Be bold. Be daring. Be out there. But first, be sure it's the right bet to take.

By Jason Feifer

This story appears in the November 2017 issue of Entrepreneur. Subscribe »

Nigel Parry

I have this job because I took a risk in 2007.

I was a small-town newspaper reporter in Massachusetts then, writing about minor crimes and mayoral races, and the road ahead depressed me. That gig would only lead to a similar one at a slightly larger paper, in another random town. And then another. And another. What I really wanted was to be a magazine editor in a big city, a role nobody in the industry would consider me qualified for. So I started pitching freelance stories to magazines, hoping to prove myself. Whenever one was accepted, I'd stay up late after my day job to meet the deadline. Eventually I got some steady work in Boston magazine, met some of the staff and saw that an editor was leaving and they'd be hiring a replacement. I wanted it to be me.

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