WHAT'S A CAREER?

A career is a medium for exchanging value. Value is anything that increases the chances that other people will achieve what they want to achieve. Whatever you do for a living, you are essentially exchanging value. You provide value to someone and in return you receive compensation.

A career is much more than a title and a salary. A career is an opportunity to do meaningful work, to make a difference in the lives of other people, to learn new skills, to challenge your beliefs and values, to gain new experiences, to create wealth for yourself and others, to engage in compelling conversations, to broaden your understanding of the world, to meet interesting and thought-provoking people and a myriad of other things. Increasing the velocity of your career does not mean increasing the number of hours you work, the number of e-mails and voicemails you exchange, or the number of activities that you do. It does mean increasing the rate at which you get what you want from what you do for a living. In a nutshell, that's what this newsletter is about: accelerating the achievement of what you want from your career. Careers come in thousands of different names and millions of different price points. The first step to accelerating your career is to decide what you want from your career.

Write down your answers to these questions:

1. What do I think is meaningful work?

2. What types of people do I want to work with?

3. What skills do I want to develop?

4. What experiences do I want?

5. What challenges and opportunities do I want to encounter?

6. What strengths of mine do I want to apply?

   (Add any questions you want to add.)

What constitutes an ideal career for you would be a nightmare for some other people and visa-versa. The question is not, "What is an ideal career?" The question is, "What is an ideal career for you?" For me, working with business executives to accelerate their results and careers fits very nicely with my vision of an ideal career. I have no desire to do their jobs. The key is to figure out what trips your trigger, not someone else's. Once I sat in a huge audience and had an opportunity to ask Bill Gates what he felt was the key to becoming world-class in any particular field. He said, "I think the first thing is you have to love what you do. I have always loved writing software." What do you love to do? Does it add value to other people? Will people pay you for it? If you known the answer to the first question and you can say yes to the last two questions, you have the makings of a very successful career.

Take care and have a great month!

Dan Coughlin

Accelerate Update This section is always current to the current month

I suppose every book changes an author's life to a certain degree. My first book, which was self-published in 1995, was called Inside Out: A Catalyst for Conscious Living. It's out of print now for a number of good reasons. The layout, which yours truly did, looks like something a first grader could do today. And the ideas are very theoretical, which doesn't fit my approach anymore. However, I read the book a few months ago, and I was pleased by how clearly I had explained my early thoughts on improving performance.

My second book, Corporate Catalysts: How to Make Your Company More Successful, Whatever Your Title, Income, or Authority was published in 2005 by Career Press. That book was a step forward in clarifying my ideas on improving performance and understanding how to write a whole book. It's one thing to dream about getting a book contract and another thing to write a 70,000 word manuscript.

My third book, ACCELERATE: 20 Practical Lessons to Boost Momentum, which was published in May 2007 by Kaplan Publishing, has changed my business dramatically. Up until that book was published, I mostly did projects for four companies: McDonald's, Marriott, GSD&M, and Toyota. In the past 12 months, I've worked with business owners, executives, and managers within dozens of small, medium, and massive organizations in more than 20 industries ranging from boats to banks to software to financial services to trucking to lighting to home healthcare to hospitals to optometrists. It's been an exciting adventure.

If you want to see my speaking calendar for 2008, which we'll try to update every two weeks, please click here.

Currently, I have 66 speeches scheduled for 2008. If you would like for me to speak at one of your events in 2008 or 2009, feel free to contact me at dan@thecoughlincompany.com and I will be glad to see if we can make it work.

If you want to see my speaking topics and a video of footage from some of my keynote speeches, please click here.

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