Mark O’Donnell

After launching his first business in 2007 with his brother, Mark quickly found himself hooked on the excitement of entrepreneurship. “My brother had been pushing me for years to start a business with him,” he says. “When I began to feel bored in my engineering job, I decided it was time to take the plunge. Unsurprisingly, jumping into entrepreneurship was an exciting change, especially with how fast we were growing—from just the two of us to over 25 people in the first six months.” 

However, as time went on, Mark and his brother found themselves stuck in the “loop of entrepreneurial ambition,” the stress of which eventually landed his brother in the hospital. As Mark explains, “Eventually, we hit a ceiling. We were working all the time and were surprised to realize we were lonely, distanced from our friends and family, and unable to find others who were going through the same things we were.

“And though the business was growing, the constant stress of running it and managing our cash flow with so many new employees was wearing us down. 

“In short, we wanted more from our team and business, but we also craved freedom.” 

Despite the challenges, Mark stayed true to his path of “entrepreneurial ambition,” eventually expanding his initial company into nine separate companies with over 175 employees in total. 

It was around this time that Mark came across Strategic Coach^® and realized it was time for a change.   

Mark found that Strategic Coach quickly became his go-to space for reflecting, reevaluating, and determining what he really wanted in life and business. In his words, “Every single important business decision I’ve made over the last eight years has come out of attending a Strategic Coach workshop. 

In fact, it was during a Strategic Coach workshop that I made the decision to exit the day-to-day operations of my companies [and later sell them to a private equity group] and instead pursue my real passion of becoming an EOS Implementer so I could help entrepreneurs live their ideal lives.” 

Since making this life-changing decision, Mark hasn’t looked back. “If I hadn’t joined Strategic Coach,” he says, “I think I would have stayed stuck in that ‘loop of entrepreneurial ambition’ forever. But by becoming a member, I was finally given the space to think about what I really wanted. 

“And thanks to these decisions I’ve made and the support I’ve received through Strategic Coach, my net worth has gone up at least eight times. I get to spend my days in my Unique Ability (in other words, within my natural talents rather than just daily business operations). And I’m totally free to explore, test, and really focus on the impact we want to have on the world.”

As the current CEO of EOS Worldwide, Mark is passionate about the power of the Entrepreneurial Operating System to transform businesses and lives. However, he’s equally passionate about Strategic Coach’s power to do the same, believing they make the perfect complementary pair. “My dream is that one day every business out there has access to both EOS and Strategic Coach. 

“After all, for my team and me, Strategic Coach has always been critical in helping us get crystal clear on where we want our business to go, develop our vision, work through challenges (i.e. whenever we come to a Strategic Coach workshop with a problem, we always leave knowing exactly how to solve it!), set up our strategy, and access the tools we need to really understand our own thinking. 

“And then, with the help of EOS’s execution, discipline, and accountability, we’re able to take the crystal-clear direction we’ve developed in Strategic Coach and make it real.” 

Above all else, Mark values Strategic Coach for giving him the space to realize—and then act on—exactly what he wanted to do. “I think it’s almost impossible to go into a Strategic Coach workshop and not learn something that’ll change your life,” he says. “In my experience, anything you put into Strategic Coach, you get back exponentially. 

“To finish, in many ways, Strategic Coach is there to give you the permission to discover, do, and be what you’ve always wanted to.”