A big part of my job is being out in the community, meeting people, and building relationships. While I do digital marketing for a living, anything online will never be as powerful as real relationships that you develop with people over time.

I am at a business networking event at a new local business, and the speaker, a super great Top Golf Employee, asks us to guess what the acronym stands for. For the moment, I am very confused because I didn’t even know TOP in Top Golf stood for anything. No clue at all. I never even thought about where the name came from. She looks at the room, and once I figured out that TOP was actually an acronym, I yelled out a guess at the first letter. TECHNOLOGY!!! Guess what guys? Technology was not even close to correct. I guessed only one letter, and didn’t even get it correct. Nobody else in the room even tried. I still can’t tell you what TOP means, but I do know that the T stands for Target NOT technology so at least I learned something!

So how does this relate to being an entrepreneur?

I tried something. I yelled it out in front of a large crowd. I did it and took a risk at being wrong. And I got a prize for trying, in my great new Top Golf wine tumbler which will be great to take with me to the pool. I missed my mark, but I was the only one who put forth effort and so I got a reward.

It doesn’t always end up this way, where you get something when you’re wrong, no matter how small, but being an entrepreneur is not knowing if you’re right or if it is going to work and taking that risk anyway, taking the risk that you will fail with everyone watching you, taking that risk to try and win and succeed and being the first person to shout out that idea, even if you are wrong.

That’s what I did to get my wine tumbler, and that’s what I had to do to start my company.