The Most Dangerous Word in Entrepreneurship is “Try”

Image credit: Courtesy of Carla Ondrasik

If you want to build a business, there’s one word you need to eliminate from your vocabulary: It’s the word try.

Sometimes, we aren’t even given the option to try. For example, when the airline issues your boarding pass, the message isn’t “try to be at the gate by 9:30 because we’d sure like to try and take off by 10:00!” When the utility company sends your monthly bill, the payment stub doesn’t read, “Please try to make your payment so we can try to keep your lights on.” When your car is on empty, your dashboard doesn’t whisper, “Hey, love, please try and fill me up when you can, cheers!” Instead, it lights up with a gas pump icon, sounds alarms, and might even start blinking. It’s basically yelling, “I’m starving and going to stall if you don’t fuel me up right now!”

Well, all joking aside, there’s a reason “trying” isn’t an option in such cases. For many of us, these are non-negotiable events with big consequences if we fail to follow through. Pay your bills or be ready for cancellation of services, legal action, losing your credit rating, or damage to relationships with the people you live with. Arrive at the airport on time or risk missing your flight, which can incur all kinds of repercussions, from having to spend a fortune on another ticket to being late to your best friend’s wedding. When there is no option to try, we have no choice but to do.

Somewhere in the back of our minds, we know that trying isn’t the best possible option if we need to get something done. Entrepreneurs know this. Big corporations too. They are geared toward success. They know that half-hearting their way to success is a dead-end route. By introducing the option to try, they are opening the door to failure, along with a myriad of complications. So they eliminate any room for the pitfalls of trying.

Airlines, for example, could never operate by allowing its customers to try and arrive on time and take off only whenever everyone is on board; thousands of flights take off daily and therefore strict policy and schedules are mandatory to ensure efficiency and safety. Your boss doesn’t allow for you to try to show up for work each day and to try to do your job. As an employee, you are expected to work your scheduled hours and do the work that is assigned to you.

Can you think like a business? If you are the CEO, the Commander In Chief, and the Captain in charge of your life—which, ahem, you are!—wouldn’t you be better served by eliminating the option to try in your own life

When We Don’t Allow for Trying

Would you try or would you do? What if I told you that right now, there is a suitcase filled with five million dollars cash, tax-free, just waiting for you in a hotel room across the country. It could be yours, with no strings attached, and all you had to do was go get that money within 12 hours and you’d be able to spend, save, or share it however you wish. Sounds like a pretty sweet deal, right?

So, tell me: would you try to get the money? As in, “Oh, I’ll see if I can try to make that happen,” or “I’ll try to find a babysitter for the kids,” or “I’ll try to get permission to take the day off of work.” In other words, would you drag your feet over this opportunity, or would you go get that money?!

I’m betting you’d have a private jet booked before you could finish reading the next sentence. There would be no trying to get that cashola. The only question in your mind would be whether to sip celebratory champagne or 50-year-old scotch as a newly minted millionaire while you soar through the clouds on your way home.

Sure, this is an outrageous example that would likely never happen… but can you for a minute connect to the inherent wisdom of your gut reaction? There was no trying in this scenario, just pure doing. Knowing when to do is deep in our subconscious mind. We have an awareness that doing is mandatory in some cases.

But what about most cases? What if five million dollars isn’t on the line, but your health or family is. What then? Can you instead tap into your inner knowledge, where deep down inside you know that trying allows for failure and is a weakened half-hearted effort and that doing allows for success?

Here are some questions to ponder:

• Would you hire the surgeon who promises to “try and remember which leg to amputate?”

• Would you hire a skydive instructor that pledges to “try and remember the best time to pull the rip cord” on your first skydive ever?

• Would you send your child down the driveway on their first solo drive (in your car) suggesting that they, “try to drive safely, try not to speed, and try to stop at all of the stop signs”?

Personally, as a mother and a businesswoman, I find that when I eliminate the option to try with my kids or associates, everything seems to run much smoother. Chores get completed more often than not, meetings run on time, and I know I can count on the people in my life to show up for me, to be accountable, and not have to be subjected to excuses or blame when the work doesn’t get done.

So, let me ask you, When the stakes are high enough and you don’t allow for trying, why do you welcome it in other parts of your life? Will you continue to try and lose weight, try and quit smoking, try and be a better parent or try and have a healthy relationship? I fully realize that some goals or opportunities may not feel as sexy as the gift of five million dollars in tax-free cash (tax free!) that I mentioned earlier, but don’t underestimate how rich you’ll feel when you finally achieve the happiness you’re after. Your hopes and dreams matter, and they deserve every whole-hearted effort you can throw at them.

This essay is adapted from Stop Trying! The Life Transforming Power of Trying Less and Doing More by Carla Ondrasik