Jim H. Houtz - Grow the Entrepreneurial Dream: The Ultimate Guide to Business Success

Dedicated to Coach Eugene Farrell

Spirit of Excellence

We all need heroes
who show leadership.
Their guiding hands
raise our spirits.

The boys at East Junior High first heard of Coach Farrell as young eighth graders. When discussing high school football, everyone talked about the new sophomore coach, Eugene Farrell, and how good the sophomores were going to be, or at least how good they thought they were going to be.

The first encounter with Coach Farrell was usually as freshman basketball players in games he was refereeing or overseeing. Anytime he would call a foul, Coach Farrell would go out of his way to explain why he thought the player broke the rules. He would actually coach while refereeing. Any young boys tutored on the courts by Coach Farrell surely felt WowIm special! Someone important cares about what I do.

When these boys entered East High School, Coach Farrell was right there in the registration line. He looked at everyones transcripts, commented about their grades and made sure they knew how their academic achievements would affect their athletic eligibilities. Right then, those boys knew that if their grades faltered, they would have two people to answer to: Coach Farrell and, in most cases, their fathers.

As football and basketball seasons ended, most of the boys were looking forward to spring and having some funthat is, until they ran into Coach Farrell. In order to compete effectively in basketball and football next year, he would say, you need to go out for track this year to improve your running ability. Check your equipment out on Monday. It never occurred to the boys to say no. On Monday most of these budding athletes went out for track and almost died running the 440. Most of them eventually learned to runnot fast, but fast enough.

Coach Farrell was so well respected by all the young men of East High that every boy strived to earn the coachs respect as well. During the three years of high school, these boys capabilities gradually improved in football and basketball, and, surprisingly, most of them remained on the track team.

During their senior year, an incident happened to these boys that none has ever forgotten and that, undoubtedly, frequently crosses their minds. The year was 1953 and they were playing their main football rival, Sioux City Central, the next day. Coach Farrell excused everyone at the end of practice except for the seven who played on the line. They walked together to the end zone, sat down between the goal posts and began to listen. Coach Farrell told them how important all the parts of the game were, but then he said, Whether we win or lose will depend on what you do. He really laid it on them.

There would be no excuses, no moral victories. The win or the loss depended on these seven boys and their individual actions. Fortunately, East High won 18 to 6. All those boys who sat and listened that day grew to live their lives recognizing that winning or losing depends on ones own actions.

On the 1953 Sioux City All City Football Team, there were six East High players: four seniors and two juniors, all products of Coach Farrell. Of the seven seniors on the East High School 1953 team, four went on to college with football scholarshipsscholarships they needed to financially make ends meet. Would those scholarships have been possible without Coach Farrells training and support? Maybe but probably not.

No doubt each one of these boys felt he had a special relationship with Coach Farrell, and they all went out of their way to stay in touch after graduation through occasional homecoming visits. They each felt they had a unique relationship with a man who cared about their lives and their futures. It wasnt until their 35th high school reunion that this class of 1954 discovered that their individual relationships with this remarkable man were not unique. As these now fifty-year-old men reminisced about something Coach Farrell had said or done, or a difficult situation he helped them through, it was touching to see more than one tear shed at the memory of someone who changed lives.

Little did they know Coach Farrell had helped them all in so many ways throughout their lives. He helped them with jobs, with difficult marriages, with children, with the perils of drug rehab, and many other real-life issues each lived out daily and discovered at their reunion.

They discovered that night that they themselves werent the special ones. It was Coach Farrell who was special. It was he who made this bunch of kids much better at sports and at life than they really were. Initially, everyone hoped Coach Farrell would select an all-classes allstar team, but as these boys became men they realized he never would. They realized he had instilled in all of them the belief that they were on his all-star team. And maybe they were.

Eugene Farrell died several years ago. On the day the family and the papers announced his death, several hundred men and all of East High wept. They wept for a man who made everyone special and who, above all else, was special himself. Special for the simple achievement of caring.

Eugene Farrell raised several daughters and several graduating classes of sons. Hell never be forgotten; he never forgot any of them.

Jim Houtz,
East High Lineman,
Class of 1954

The inspiration for this book came from Dominic Svorinic, a banker from Mutual of Omaha Bank. He suggested I run for a specific political office, which I did not think was a good idea. I told him I would prefer to write my second entrepreneurial book. The first was Seize the American Dream: 10 Entrepreneurial Success Strategies. That book was big picture; this book is about the strategies and tactics to take a business from start-up to world-class.

The proving ground for the concepts in this book come from a company called CyCare and a subsidiary called CyData. The employees of these two companies were instrumental in helping me seize my own entrepreneurial dream of building a corporation from the ground up. They then helped grow the company into a leader in the information systems business for medical group practices.