A DAY AT THE BEACH BY COLIN SULLIVAN

Sitting on a beach in Cape Cod, Massachusetts in 2013, I was thinking of new games to play at the beach. I was sick of playing Frisbee, throwing the football, and playing normal beach games. I wanted something different, something new, something fun. I remembered a game called Saucer King that I saw a few kids playing in a YouTube video. They had mini hockey nets on a pond and placed a cone in the middle as an obstacle. The object of the game was to pass the puck over the cone and into your opponent’s net. I thought, “this looks awesome, but how can I play this at the beach?” At my Cape house, I have no mini nets, the beach no ice (obviously), and no cone to serve as an obstacle. How was I going to make this game a reality?

My friend and I began searching the house for anything we could find to help us. After several test runs using different items, we found out the perfect set of gear for our new beach game. Pictured above is the final product. A couple recycle bins as goals, the bottom side of a boogie board for a slippery surface to slide the puck, and two coolers stacked on top of each other for the obstacles. 
Looking back at this event, I came to realize that I was following the steps of the creative diamond without even realizing it. By getting outside of our own heads, my friend and I strayed from an area of familiarity into an area of discovery. We did not have the perfect set of items to complete this project, but we used what we had at our disposal to make it work. We can apply lessons learned through this event to entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs cannot simply give up because of a lack of resources. They must be resilient and use the tools they have at their disposal to make things happen. Looking back, it’s funny how one day at the beach taught me one of the most important lessons I will learn in entrepreneurship.