10,000 hours!!!

Have been working hard at getting the coaching company up and running and we recently secured a contract with BMW/MINI Oakville.

Our coaching company is always trying to set itself apart by reading, attending workshops, connecting with other successful coaches and entrepreneurs, and finding out what we can leverage to be preeminent in the industry. Well, according to Malcolm Gladwell, you just have to do the time; 10,000 hours or so!!!

In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell makes a compelling case and explains that it takes 10,000 hours of experience and practise before you can become exceptional at anything. Gladwell quotes neurologist Daniel Levitin: "The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert -- in anything."

The list of people Gladwell cites as examples to support this claim is impressive: Wayne Gretzky, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Bill Joy...and there are more but you really should read the book for yourself.

The good news from what I can gather is that you don't have to be THE BEST in order to be successful; you only have to be good enough and it's up to you to know your industry, market and business well enough to know what "good enough" means.

So, I know what I've been doing in my formal training to become an exceptional professional coach but my hunch is that I've already spent thousands of hours preparing for this role - it's just that the hours have felt so natural and effortless that I wasn't even aware that I was doing it.

Reminds me of what Captain "Sully" Sullenberger said about making the emergency landing in the Hudson River. "Everything I had done as a pilot had prepared me for that moment."

Buy Outliers and read it this summer. Also, read the part about keeping your children's minds active through the summer months and what Gladwell has to say about that!

With continued curiosity,

Ruth