Key Takeaway: By creating a personal philosophy, Pete Carroll was able to turn his career around and become a national championship- and Super Bowl-winning coach.

While I was a grad student at USC, Pete Carroll was a surprise guest speaker for my Business Plan class. It was an amazing talk, and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to Coach Carroll talk about his experience as a coach in the NFL and at USC.  

But what really stuck with me was his discussion about the importance of developing your own philosophy.  

While Coach Carroll had some tremendous success at USC as a college football coach, he was actually a pretty average NFL coach before that. After he got fired by the New England Patriots in 1999, he did some soul-searching.  

He read a book written by legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden and found that it took Coach Wooden sixteen years to develop his personal philosophy, but once he did, his teams went on to win ten of the next twelve national championships.

Coach Carroll figured out that he needed to develop his own personal philosophy and create a game plan to execute it. And he did.

Once he created his “Win Forever” philosophy of “doing things better than they’ve ever been done before” and to “always compete,” he went on to win the head coaching job at USC and revitalize one of the most storied programs in college football.

His teams at USC went on to win back-to-back National Championships, and USC was, arguably, the team of the decade in college football. And he attributed much of his success to his philosophy, which not only guided him but also the entire football program at USC.

Since then, he’s continued to attain even more success by leading the Seattle Seahawks to a Super Bowl victory in 2014.

Creating a philosophy - and sticking to it - helped Coach Carroll reach new heights of success. Want to learn how to create your own personal philosophy? Stay tuned.

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(Photo Credit: Anthony Quintano via photopin cc)