The Dream Weekend

On January 29-31, I went to Tucson, Arizona with two of my best friends, Jeff Hutchison and Mike Feder, for our 15th Annual Dream Weekend. This is the most important weekend of the year for accelerating my critical outcomes. On day one, we share what went well over the past year. On day two, we discuss what did not go well over the past year. On the night of day two, we isolate ourselves and clarify what we want to achieve over the next twelve months. Then on day three, we share our dreams with each other.

Such a simple formula and we have done it year after year after for fifteen straight years. I can trace virtually every major achievement in my adult life to a conversation at Dream Weekend. I can clearly identify changes in my life's course and the moment at Dream Weekend when the change was initiated.

The three of us grew up in roughly the same area, went to the same high school and stayed in touch all these years (23 if you're counting) even though we live in three different cities and have eight children between us. Hutch and Feds are enormously successful. One sells medical equipment and the other runs an emergency room for a major hospital as a doctor and business partner. However, Dream Weekend is about much more than just our careers. Our personal development, our development as husbands and fathers and sons and brothers, our spiritual development and so on are all up for debate and discussion. It's all there out in the open to be supported and challenged and pushed back on.

Each year we do this discussing while immersed in some activity. We've gone to Vegas and Ft. Lauderdale and small towns in Illinois and Missouri and now there's talk of stalking big fish on the west coast. This year we hiked eight hours over two days while we talked. The metaphors were powerful. You can't just climb a mountain in a straightforward leap (even the small mountains we were hiking up). You have take the indirect approach, you have to be patient and you have to keep moving. The key is progress, little by little. Essentially, that's what each of us has done over the past 15 years. Little progress, year after year, and suddenly we find ourselves living the lives we've always wanted to live both personally and professionally.

If I could only give you one suggestion in 2004, it would be to create your own Dream Weekend. Find a few really close friends and step off of life's treadmill for a few days and really dig into what is happening in your life. Is it what you want it to be? What is going well? What is not going well? What would make it better? What do you need to stop doing? What do you need to start doing? What do you need to keep doing? What is your number one dream for your personal life, your family life and your professional life in 2004? Surround yourself with a few people who are willing to dig into the guts of your story and give you real feedback and real support.

Trust me, Dream Weekend is not just about dreaming and escapism. It's about accelerating your life and your impact on other people. It's about challenging yourself to be more than you ever thought possible. It's about stating what you will accomplish and making yourself accountable to other people.

Go ahead, dream. But then back up those dreams with real actions! And then do it year after year after year!

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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