The Four Things I Learned from Malcolm Gladwell

When I heard that Malcolm Gladwell was speaking at the email marketing conference I was going to, I was really excited. I really love his books and was intrigued about what he would say to a crowd of 1,300 email marketers.

The ExactTarget conference tagline was “Success by Design,” which was perfect for Malcolm to speak about since his recent book is Outliers: The Story of Success.

Malcolm Gladwell is very unassuming, apart from his awesomely giant hair, but when he speaks you want to write down every word he says because it’s all so profound and impactful. Here are some of the things I learned from his speech:

1. It takes approximately 10,000 hours to become an expert at whatever it is you’re doing, which is about a 10-year rule. Now at first I was skeptical when he said this, but as he explained it I started to believe it! Here is one example:
   • “Rumors,” Fleetwood Mac’s best album, sky rocketed them to international fame. But it wasn’t their first album release, in fact, it was their 16th album. They spent 8 arduous years making albums and growing as a band.
2. No one is an “overnight success.”
   • The Beatles came to America in 1964 and suddenly Beatlemania erupted: they were suddenly the heartthrob of the nation. But who knew that they spent years in Hamburg Germany playing 8 to 9 hours a day polishing their skills?
3. Talent isn’t the name of the game. Success must be strategically planed out by putting in the necessary time and effort.
   • Sure Bill Gates is a billionaire and we think how successful he is, but I never knew his whole story. Apparently, ALL he did from when he was 13 to when he was 20 was computer programming. He even snuck out of his house to program between 2am and 5am when he was a teenager, because that’s the only time a computer was available to him at the local university.
4. Compensate for your weaknesses.
   • More than a third of successful American entrepreneurs were diagnosed with an overwhelming obstacle, such as a learning disorder. He argued that that particular obstacle is why they’re so successful; they refused to be defeated by their disorder. For example, there are a large amount of dyslexic entrepreneurs who had to learn to combat their adversity by becoming a problem solver, an oral communicator and a delegator to build a team of people to surround them to succeed in school and life.

Since I am relatively early on in my business career, I could be extremely defeated that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at email marketing. But instead, I really appreciate knowing this: I have a goal. Day by day I will continue to learn more about email marketing in this ever-changing digital media driven world, since there is nothing accidental in success.