Terry Kozlowski.com

Local boy made good today, and it’s an inspiring lesson for all of us.


Many years ago, Michael wrote a three line newspaper ad to sell his used computer and spent $3 to do it. From that common experience he saw an opportunity and started a business from his kitchen table in Glenview, IL. Over the years the company grew. Today, the company that he started as Computer Discount Warehouse (that became more widely known as CDW) announced today that it was being sold for $7.3 billion.


Now that’s a good return on investment starting just from a hunch.


What I found most fascinating about the story was what the founder said about their beginnings on their website:


“I never imagined that I could build such a successful company, just by doing what I love to do,” said Krasny. “I didn’t start CDW with a business plan - I started with one customer and a passion for technology.”


He didn’t have a Harvard MBA, but he saw a need that coincided with an area he loved and he just got started and figured the rest out as he went along.


What are some of your passions that you could match to something others desire? Your fortune could be waiting for you. And you could get started on your kitchen table. Call me if you want me to get you going on finally doing this for yourself and your family.

Over the weekend I took myself off to see the latest Pirates of the Caribbean movie and was surprised to hear a career transition tip right in the middle of the movie.

There’s a scene where they’re trying to get to a place that doesn’t show on any map — and someone says something very dispiritedly about being lost. And the upbeat response is something about “You have to be lost to find something that isn’t there . . . After all, if it was easy to get to everyone would go there!”

And it reminded me of how making a career transition includes that very uncomfortable “lost” period. There are many ways of being lost. (Trust me, if you ever drive somewhere with me you’ll discover that I can sometimes find more than one way to get lost even on the same trip!) Here’s what being lost in a career sense might be for you or someone you care about:

Being lost includes not knowing where you really are

Being lost includes knowing that you’re not where you want to be

Being lost includes wanting to be somewhere else, but not knowing exactly what that is

Being lost includes not knowing how to get to where you want to be from where you are

That state of suspension and being without the certainty of forward momentum or direction is more uncomfortable for many of my clients to face than their hardest business challenge or most difficult person. The willingness to be courageous and acknowledge your personal “lost” status, even if only to yourself, is a necessary step to finding what it is you’re really looking to find.

Because that’s when you can step away from the path that everyone else is taking and begin to look for the uncharted course that will take you to the treasure of your career destination that’s right for you alone.

Just listen to the pirates.

Sylvester Stallone is in the news again. And it reminded me of another one of the best bits of career advice given in a movie. This is a quick one that’s in an early scene in a bar.

Saw it again today when I was watching Rocky for the umpteenth time and he’s in a Philadelphia bar and the bartender makes some disparaging remark on Apollo Creed, the Boxing World Champion who’s on TV in a press conference. (This is before Rocky gets his underdog shot at the title.)

Can’t remember exactly what the bartender says, but Rocky looks at him and says “He took his best shot at becoming champion. What shot did you ever take?”

So what about you - are you taking your shot at your ideal career and going for the life through the right world of work that you really want?

If you’re not now, when will you?

Sylvester Stallone’s real life holds a career tip as well. When he had only $106 in the bank, Hollywood offered him hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy the screenplay he wrote and give the part of Rocky to a big name star. But he held out and insisted that the only way Rocky would be made as a movie was if he played Rocky Balboa himself.

They finally gave in, despite the fact that he was an unknown. And when the movie was made and released in 1976 it won the Academy Award for Best Picture and launched his career as a movie star. You can read the rest of his story on his official website.

And by the way, he wrote the script in three and a half days — so it doesn’t have to take a long time to create a new life once you figure out how to draw upon your own unique gifts and talents and even limitations. If he had gotten more initial work as a young actor, he wouldn’t have been driven to write the script that made him a star.

What is your greatest limitation that you could turn into your biggest advantage in the marketplace to help you get what’s most important to you?

So Paul Newman has closed the door to any future acting projects. But in so doing he’s a great model for the rest of us and given us some new ways to think about our own working careers.

First of all, this retirement is coming at the age of 82. He’s been a working actor for over 50 years. Are you doing something today that you would be happy to keep doing into your 80’s?

Secondly, even though he acknowledges that he’s not able to work at the level that he wants to in the realm of movies, he’s not retiring from life. He has other projects that he’s turning his attention to instead. This includes a new organic restaurant in Westport, CT and the camps that he runs for critically ill children. I’m not sure how much of his personal attention he’s still devoting to his food venture with the proceeds to charity and education that puts his spaghetti sauces and salad dressings onto grocery shelves and then into my kitchen.

But the lesson I see as a baby boomer that’s too young to retire is that he started a lot of these ventures first as a side or part time project. They began and were running alongside what he’s known for professionally in the world.

Now that he doesn’t have the stamina for the rigors of a starring role, these other ventures are more matured and ready for him to more fully step into.

What are you doing now or interested in starting up on the side?

Is this a side business to bring in some extra money?

Is this a side business that could become your “retirement” business?

Or do you want to more personally contribute to your local or global community through engagement of your time and energy?

What do you see around you that needs doing?

According to the label on the bottle on my kitchen counter, his Newman’s Own brand has raised more than $175 million for charity since it was founded in 1982. What cause would you like to see benefiting from your own civic engagement?

I heard a story once about people in a foreign land trying to communicate, one spoke English and the other didn’t. And the English person just kept talking louder and louder and making bigger gestures with their hands — even though the two people communicating didn’t have a language in common. That’s what I thought looking at the replay of the Rosie O’Donnell and Elizabeth Hasselbeck encounter today.

I had to call it an encounter, I certainly couldn’t call it a conversation. It was pretty ugly. Not that they weren’t entitled to disagree with each other, but they weren’t even listening to each other. It reminded me of all the times when I was so excited about something that I would jump in before the other person had finished speaking. Or finish a sentence when the other person had paused too long. Or talk over someone to get my own point of view across. I’m not proud of my tendencies to do this.

Now I’ve been watching The View from time to time from the time that it first appeared on daytime television. (Sometimes I’m writing at my desk and have it on as background.) As the participants at the table have changed over the years, one of the things that’s been a constant has been the consistent talking over each other. This show has actually been a terrible model for conversation. We tend to subliminally absorb what we see and assume that’s all right.

And in the competitive world of business, I personally learned that sometimes I had to put the manners I’d learned aside and force my way into the conversation during a meeting or a conference call. When others won’t wait or ask for the silent participant’s opinions, I learned to jump in and join the fray. That’s probably why I still do that, even when the professional communicator in me knows that’s not the best way to build relationships with people.

So where are you on this continuum? Do you wait to be asked to contribute and lean more to the silent side of the scale or are you constantly talking over and on top of other people?

And if you’re in a leadership role, when you run a meeting, are you conscious of being alert and managing for this human dynamic?

Sometimes just being conscious and aware is all you need to make a better choice in a specific situation.

Unless of course, someone has pushed our buttons, like Rosie and Elisabeth did to each other, and all conscious control goes out the window.

Discovered a great second career tip from an interview I read recently with Masi Oka, who plays Hiro Nakamura on Heroes on NBC-TV. He had been discouraged and thinking about leaving acting. Then the casting request for Heroes went out, and they were looking for three things in a young actor: comedic flair, experience in television and fluent in Japanese!

That unlikely combo was his ticket to stardom and financial success. And acting is his second career!

After he graduated with some sort of degree in mathematics or computer science, he went to work behind the scenes at Industrial Light and Magic and was very successful there. But that didn’t mean that was the only path he could take.

In my work with executives and professionals who are trying to figure out what they want to do next in their career, often it’s the unusual combo of lifelong interests and passions that give us the clue to an unusual and exciting second career that they are uniquely qualified to create.

So what about you? If you were to pull together an unusual combo of 3 of your interests and skills, what does that suggest about a potential new opportunity for a new job or a new business for you?

You can do this if you’re in your twenties and already ready for something different or if you’re close to the time for retirement, but too young to retire and not wanting to stop working completely — and ready for work to be on your own terms.

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