Marketing - The Bold Approach Method

Malcolm Gladwell Explains How Long It Takes To Become A Genius Level Expert In Your Field In His New Book Outliers

I've often quoted an ivy league study that says you need to invest about 1000 hours of practice to develop expert level skill in most any endeavor.

As it turns out new research says that may not be true. Malcolm Gladwell's newest book called Outliers looks at the research done in the early 90s, by psychologist K Anders Ericsson and two colleagues. They studied students at Berlin's elite Academy of Music. With the help of the academy's professors, they divided the school's violinists into three groups. The first group were the stars, the students with the potential to become world-class soloists. The second were those judged to be merely "good". The third were students who were unlikely ever to play professionally, and intended to be music teachers in the school system.

Not unsurprisingly everyone from all three groups started practicing about the same time, around age five. In the first two or three years they all practiced about the same amount of time, about 2 - 3 hours a week. But then changes started to occur. "Students who would end up as the best in their class began to practice more than everyone else: six hours a week by age nine, eight by age 12, 16 a week by age 14, and up and up, until by the age of 20 they were practicing well over 30 hours a week. By the age of 20, the elite performers had all totalled 10,000 hours of practice over the course of their lives. The merely good students had totalled, by contrast, 8,000 hours, and the future music teachers just over 4,000 hours."

So as it turns out, to develop what we would consider genius level ability in certain areas takes about 10,000 hours of dedicated practice. Chess grandmasters take about ten years or 10,000 hours of practice, only Bobby Fischer did it faster in nine years. Sometimes people will tell me that I have a natural gift for influence . . . and I'd suggest that from the time I was 16 until now that I've put in well over 10,000 hours of diligent study and practice of the art of influence and that well may explain my ability.

So what does that mean to you if you want to totally reinvent yourself and become a recognized expert? Well, I'll hold that at about 1000 hours of practice you'll be very efficient but if you want to be the standout in your field, the person who excels above everyone else, you need to get busy now and buckle down . . . or maybe you just need to look at the hours you've already put it, you well may be there if you've turned your past experience and career into a new business. But here is the caveat, if you've spent 10,000 hours perfecting your craft, you've likely not spent the requisite amount of time to become expert at running a business so your time may be well spent learning and practicing the nuances of running a business if you intend to do both well or simply hire someone who has already done the hard work of learning how to run and grow a business.

I'd like you to ponder this question today, where will I put the next 10,000 hours of my time and to what outcome?

If you'd like to read an excerpt from Malcolm Gladwell's new book Outliers you'll find it here and if you'd like to listen to Malcolm explain the idea of Outliers, watch this video:

The Recession and Small Business

Warning, rant coming and this post will piss a lot of people off. But if you listen and take action, it might just transform your business.

I just heard a well known speaker say "The recession is a joke, the recession is a mindset."

What a load of BS!

It is just this kind of thinking that got us to the place we are today. The implication is that if you just ignore it, it will go away. But it won't. It does sound nice if you are selling a product that will temporarily help you feel better but that too is what got us here.

The economy is a story and one that we tell to each other over and over and to that extent it becomes even more real because we've all seen a friend or family member lose a job (my brother lost his job after 16 years with the same company). But the only way to create a different story is to take actions that change what we are seeing around us, that means running better businesses, creating more profit so we can afford to hire more employees, and thinking differently than we have in the past about where are next dollars are coming from . . . the government isn't going to bail out your business so you can forget about that.

Many small business owners, particularly those in micro-businesses where they are their only employee buy into this kind of mindset. They believe that if they just ignore what is happening around them, put on a happy face and say that what is going on around them isn't real, then it won't impact them.

Small business works because the people in them work. They work because people create products or services that serve a real purpose, that makes someone's life better in a tangible way or that facilitates business.

Looking at our current economic condition and saying it isn't real is as negligent as the large corporations and government that got us here. It is our responsibility to think strategically and long term to create solutions that withstand future economic downturns. Listening to people spit out platitudes like "The recession is a joke, the recession is a mindset" and taking that advice will do one thing and one thing only. Make the person spitting it out secure and you less so.

I'm a big fan of mindset and an even bigger fan of positive thinking . . . but correct positive thinking. Correct positive thinking is looking at what is real and occurring around you right now, building a strategy to navigate the condition and then ruthlessly implementing it with every expectation that it will work unless evidence proves otherwise. This is a time for resilience and backbone not touch-feely "positivity and hope" is my strategy.

Small businesses right now need to be looking at things like:

• Do I have adequate cash flow currently and (realistically) projected to support my business for the coming 18 months?
• Which of my current customers are likely to fail or not be able to meet their obligations to me and how will I handle them differently based on those projections?
• Am I aggressively building a cash reserve for the business and for myself personally?
• Is my customer acquisition strategy effective for the market?
• Do I have adequate credit to withstand a medium to significant change in income?
• What can I do to deepen my relationship with my existing clients and how can we work together to make each other's business stronger?
• What do I need to understand about the economy and how it might impact my business that I don't understand now. What would inflation for example do to my business? What would even tighter credit markets do? What risk will I have to assume to get credit I need?
• What strategy changes do I need to make to navigate these times?
• What economic indicators should I pay attention to in order to know when to make the next changes in my business?
• What cost cutting or bottom line revenue generating activities can I take internally to maximize profits?
• Who should I really be studying and listening to in order to maximize my opportunity and grow my business in this economy?
• If 20% of your sales staff is responsible for 80-90% of your income, should you still support your lowest performing salesperson? Same for manufacturing staff, same for admin staff etc.
• What am I doing to make my brand stronger and extend it into appropriate new markets?
• Do my advertising and marketing efforts have a strong ROI?
• Am I understanding and embracing new technologies that will allow me to extend my message to the place where the audience is? 
• What can I do to get more competitive and more visible?
• What is the most important story I can tell in this economy?
• What can I do to improve my customer service and make it memorable?
• How can I create an unforgettable experience for my clients?
• Create process maps and document systems that can be replicated and learned.
• Practice Fearsome Focus and the 45/15 process I describe in The Power of an Hour.

The stronger you build your business now the faster and stronger it will grow coming out of the recession. This is a time for vigilance and tough decisions so that you come back faster, harder and better . . . and most importantly that you survive.

This is a time for small businesses to return to the basics of good business. I'm not suggesting you shouldn't go to events or seminars to learn, this is a better and more important time for learning than ever. You simply need to resist the idea that learning from  vacuous talking heads will make your business better.

If you want to practice a positive thinking mindset, then get up every day and think about finding one way you can increase your sales or one way you can reduce your costs and implement it. If you want to practice positive thinking, acknowledge what is happening around you and look deeply into it to find advantage or opportunity that you can turn to your favor.

And, I want to point you to this post of Seth Godin's about things that are too good to be true, it is very good.

I know some people will say that Seth might be talking about me too and I'll accept that if you see my business building systems as get rich quick schemes rather than teaching core business skills as I believe they do. In fact, if that is the conclusion you come to I'll applaud it because at least you are taking the time to think and draw your own conclusion and not just letting hyperbole infect your mind.

Finally, if you are a consumer, and we all are. Support small businesses when you can and when it makes sense. Go to a local restaurant instead of a chain when you eat out one more time than you normally would. Shop at a Farmer's Market for your vegetables, choose a local small business to do your taxes this year. I'm not saying avoid spending at chains or big corporations, simply make a slightly different choice when you can. The more you support people like you the more they can support you. Spend money that you can afford to spend after you've built your reserve. More of us who can afford to spend spending a little more freely will help us move out of the recession faster.

I'd love your thoughts in the comments and if you agree with this, digg this and pass it on to your friends so that we can work together to create the fastest possible change for you, for me and for all of our businesses.

End of rant, back to your regularly scheduled programming.

I asked that question on Twitter yesterday and got some interesting responses and some very concerned email and direct messages. Let me start by saying this: I'm fine, my ego is intact, I'm not on the brink, and I'm not having an existential crisis,]. I really do appreciate the thoughts and concerns though, it is touching. So here's the deal. Yesterday I was thinking about relevancy. What makes me relevant? Am I relevant to my readers, to my clients, to listeners in my audience. I could have asked the question Why am I relevant but I thought asking Why do I matter would get to a deeper answer and the public responses were very interesting.

What It Takes To Be A Great Marketer Or Entrepreneur

Seth Godin is wicked smart and he's demonstrated it again in a post called The Marketer's Attitude. I'd only add one thing to the title, The Marketer's or Entrepreneur's attitude . . . now I'll admit I'd add a few things to the Entrepreneur's attitude as I'm sure Seth would too, but this serves as a good starting point.

If you don't read Seth's blog daily you are leaving money on the table. And, if you want to listen to a great interview with Seth, Dave Lakhani and John Jantsch (Duct Tape Marketing Author) you'll find it here.

Dave Lakhani and Ben Mack Discuss Persuasion, Manipulation, Media, Advertising, Marketing, Public Relations, Reality and Super Balls

I deconstructed Ben Mack here, he asked to be able to ask me one question that I would respond to without editing myself, the conversation took on a direction and life of its own, enjoy. I apologize in advance for the video quality, I'm working on getting it clearer, this is the first time I've used Viddler.

If you like Ben and I doing occasional videos like this let me know in the comments, if you don't let me know that too. And of course, if you have something to add to the discussion add it in the comments and trackback or link back to this post. If you have particular questions you'd like to hear our commentary around, ask those in the comments section below as well. Don't want to watch the video, just want the audio? Right Click this link and Choose Save Target As.

And, be sure you check this out: Renegades of Persuasion