Entrepreneur Continued from page 51
Conclusion Look back on your life and extract from your own experiences insights that can help you as an entrepreneur.
I used to be a goalie in high school and college soccer. In a soccer game, there is no script. You don’ t know what will happen from one moment to the next. I was never a very good goalie, but it was a great preparation for being an entrepreneur. You prepare as well as you can, and then you learn from every moment of every situation that you find yourself in. Even though engineering was never going to be my life’ s work, I learned from my engineering classes the importance of taking what you are given and working with it to find a solution to the next problem you are facing. That’ s essentially what entrepreneurs do every day. Two things that appear to have nothing to do with running a business – playing soccer and engineering classes – turned out to be very helpful for me.
Being an entrepreneur has been the wild adventure of my lifetime. I’ ve spoken in Budapest and learned to never let a stranger offer to buy me a dinner. Fortunately, I learned that before people started offering. I gave a seminar in New York City a few weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, and everyone was super friendly and helpful as I walked around looking for the hotel where the meeting was. I’ ve had a chance to teach and facilitate discussions on leadership and communication and management and culture and strategy and branding and teamwork for Anheuser-Busch, McDonald’ s, Coca- Cola, Marriott, Traffix, RE / MAX, Toyota, Shell, GSD & M Idea
City, Stryker, Emerson and more than 200 other organizations. None of that would have ever happened if I had not stepped into the wonderland of entrepreneurship.
Recently I watched the film,“ The Fabelmans,” which is about Steven Spielberg’ s life from the age of 5 to 19. It spurred me to realize that our earliest passions can find their place in our life’ s work. As a 9-year-old kid, I had a dream of creating something like a YMCA where people could come together and learn and then take what they learned and use it in the real world. In essence, that’ s what I’ ve tried to do for my clients on an individual and group basis for the past 25 years.
What is your story?
How have you used your passions before you graduated from high school as an adult? Trust me, it is never too late to allow those passions to course through your veins at work every day. G
Dan Coughlin is president of The Coughlin Company Inc., a management consulting firm focused on improving executive effectiveness and significance. He serves as a thinking partner for executives, managers and business owners toward improving their most important desired business outcomes. He does this through executive coaching for individuals and small groups.
2025 Issue 3 | GearedUp
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