Preparation | Bigg Success

Category Archives: Preparation

It Takes More Than 10,000 Hours to Be a Success

Written on February 22, 2012 by George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster in Preparation

In his wonderful book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell popularized the 10,000 Hour Rule. World-class performers invest 10,000 hours or approximately 10 years honing their craft.

Now a lot of people tout the 10,000 hour rule. But there’s a problem: they don’t understand what it means.

People heard 10,000 hours and think it’s just about doing the time. You won’t go far if that’s your attitude.

Psychology Professor K. Anders Ericsson is part of the duo that brought us the 10,000 hour rule. He notes that it takes deliberate practice.
Growth

Deliberate practice involves activities specifically designed to improve specific aspects of your performance.

In other words, don’t work on those things you’ve already mastered. Focus on things you don’t know or can’t do.

Growth occurs where you push past what you know into the unknown. As humans, we tend to fall back to what we’re already good at.

If you want to be world-class, you have to push yourself to go to places you’ve never gone before. You have to get out of your comfort zone.

You have to reach the point of frustration if you want the thrill of realizing your full potential. You have to master all aspects of your craft, not just one.

The price of BIGG success

BIGG success is life on your own terms. A basic principle of negotiation goes like this: “You get to set the price or the terms, but not both.”

If you want to set the terms, you must be willing to pay the price. Ericsson’s studies show that the masters practice consistently and deliberately.

The best invest twice the effort as the also-rans. And they devote five times as much as the most serious amateurs.

But it leads to BIGG success!

Image in this post from stock.xchng

Tags: bigg success, deliberate practice, george krueger, k anders ericsson, malcolm gladwell, mary-lynn foster, negotiation, performance

1 Comment

A New Media Maverick

Written on September 18, 2009 by admin in Preparation

Walter-Cronkite There was a young man who jumped into new media. The established people in his industry didn’t want to do it. They thought it was beneath them.

They decided they didn’t want to play the game at all. They said it was just a fad. It didn’t have legs for the long term. No serious person would ever get involved in this silly stuff. It was child’s play.

___

Hear George & Mary-Lynn discuss today's topic on The Bigg Success Show! Click the purple player to listen while you read: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

___

But the young man didn’t listen. He saw his bigg opportunity. So he jumped in with both feet.

Something interesting happened. This new media had more impact than the old pros would have ever dreamed. By the time they realized it, the young man was established. The old pros never caught up.

The new media we’re talking about here is television. The young man was Walter Cronkite. He said he didn’t become who he was because he was better. He became the most trusted person in the United States because he was there early.

History repeats itself

You may have thought we were talking about social media. And you would be right to think so. We hear a lot of the same kind of things said about it. A lot of people think it is just a passing fancy.

Because they don’t get it. They don’t understand that the genie is out of the bottle. That business communications have changed forever again.

Social media’s impact on sales

There was a study released a while back that looked at large company performance. More specifically, it looked at social media activity and sales growth.

It was conducted by Wetpaint, a social media platform, and Altimeter Group, a digital consulting firm. They looked at the top brands in the world and rated their social media activities. Then they compared the level of activity to the change in sales over the last year.

On average, they found that the more active a company was in social media, the more likely they were to see an increase in sales. The most active companies increased sales by 18% while the least active saw sales decline by 6%.

Companies with dedicated teams performed the best. However, these teams take social media to the whole organization. They view social media as a tool they can’t live without. They are conversational, not promotional.

How does this apply to small businesses? We think the opportunity is even greater. But you, the owner, have to get it. You have to learn how to use these new tools to increase your sales.

Walter Cronkite found his bigg opportunity by jumping on the train early. You’ll find bigg success by integrating social media into your business communication strategies.

___