Eric Kapitulik was born and raised in Thompson, Connecticut, CT and attended the United States Naval Academy. While there, he was a 4-year Varsity Letter winner. He graduated in 1995 served as a Marine Infantry Officer and Special Operations Officer. Eric left active duty after eight years of service and graduated from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. He is also an ultra-endurance athlete and an avid high-altitude mountaineer. Eric is now the Founder and CEO of The Program, a leadership development and team building company that works with corporate teams and leading collegiate and professional athletic organizations around the United States.
Entrepreneurial Role Models:
- Eric’s Parents
- Rob Hale Co-Founder of Granite Telecommunications, LLC
When business started difficulties overcame:
“that lack of financial resources is it a difficulty? Well it depends on your mindset. How do you want to treat that? Do you want to look at it as a difficulty or do you want to look at it as a positive? I look at it as a positive in that that lack of financial resource boy I’ll tell you what it’s really easy as an entrepreneur to get up in the morning going to your 10 x 10 square-foot office with your computer and your phone and just pick up the phone and just start making 50, 60, 70 cold calls every single day, getting hung up on, not having anything or anybody to refer certain individuals to. If I knew that I had a safety net somehow I can’t tell you for sure that I would have done that for as long as I did it before the programme got momentum”…[Listen for More]
Favourite Books:
- Undaunted Courage: The Pioneering First Mission to Explore America’s Wild Frontier Book by Stephen E. Ambrose
- Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies Book by Jim Collins and Jerry I Porras
- Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t Book by Jim Collins
- Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action Book by Simon Sinek
- The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business Book by Patrick Lencioni
Favourite Quote:
I would rather be ashes than dust!
I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot.
I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.
The function of man is to live, not to exist.
I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them.
I shall use my time.” ― Jack London
the two most important days of your life are the day you are born and the day you figure out why” Mark Twain
Recommended Online Resources:
- Barnes and Noble’s online bookstore for books, NOOK ebooks magazines Shop music, movies, toys games
- Amazon is an American multinational technology company based in Seattle, Washington that focuses in e-commerce, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence. Amazon is the largest e-commerce marketplace and cloud computing platform in the world as measured by revenue and market capitalization.
- The Entrepreneur Way – Learn from successful Entrepreneurs with Free Daily podcast interviews that reveal their business success secrets
Best Advice to Other Entrepreneurs:
“everyone is going to tell you that right now is a bad time to start your business, don’t believe them. Number one in a recession or in a tough market it’s a great time to start a business because in a recession or in a tough market you will very quickly find out what your core business is because you won’t be able to sell anything else other than what you are the best in the world at because there is just not money out there being put towards it. Second on that same point though… And that it’s not the right time to start a business that is like is there a right time to get married, is there a right time to start a family? If you are waiting for the right time chances are you will wait forever. Instead if you think you want to do it then go and do it, just go and do it and then be prepared to work really hard in making that decision the right decision. Number one. Number two he told me don’t ever talk yourself into believing that you are worth less than what you are. Most people do… Things aren’t cheap or expensive it’s a question of value. Okay it cost a lot of money but I’m giving you that value that is signified by that price. Believe in it because what you are saying is you are believing in yourself. You are providing that value. Too many people talk their own personal value down. Don’t, don’t do it ”…[Listen for More]
More About Eric Kapitulik:
Neil’s Quote at the Beginning:
“The NBA is never just a business. It’s always business. It’s always personal. All good businesses are personal. The best businesses are very personal.” Mark Cuban
Other Quotes From the Chat with Eric Kapitulik:
- “when I look back at things, oh no I have made a thousand mistakes, but if I were to do it all over again look my thought process was solid it just turned out to be a mistake. So, you learn from it”
- “I think as an entrepreneur figuring out who you are, what do you stand for, what does it mean to be you? Because ultimately as an entrepreneur that ends up being your culture, that’s who you are, that’s who we all are. And figuring that out as early as possible that’s your culture”
- “you have to make certain revenue numbers but doing that allows us to be successful in the short-term, it’s our culture that is going to allow is to be successful in every term”
- “we should figure out what it means to be us because that’s your culture. What are your core values are what are your organisations core values are going to end up being. That’s who you are going to try to recruit to your organisation”
- “individuals and individual talent allows us to do well, it allows us to win games. But great team leaders and great teammates compete for championships on any battlefield. Individuals can win games but great teams compete for championships. Great teams achieve the greatest success. And on those teams, we fulfill one of two roles that of team leader and/or that of team mate at our companies, in our families, as coaches of teams. So, as individuals just make a commitment to being the best team leaders and the best teammates that we can be”
- “to be the best version of yourself reading certainly helps, I believe”
- “either getting better, we are growing or we are dying. There is no middle ground. And there is a number of different ways for us to grow, to get better. We can go and do things ourselves and we should but that typically takes time and money of which we have a limited resource of. We can listen to what other people did. Also, it’s impactful but there is set times that we do that. People have to be giving a presentation or whatever it might be that we listen to them. But reading, reading is something that cost very little money and it doesn’t take much time. To read a book you can just open it in two seconds, you don’t have to go somewhere and do something yourself, you don’t have to make the time, put plans on the calendar to go and listen to somebody about what they did. Reading all you have to do is just open the book”
- “most decisions in life are neither right nor wrong it’s just the choice we make when we wake up in the morning if we are going to make it the right choice”
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