0:02 hello and welcome to people making money I'm your host Kevin bemel and we are here every Wednesday at 10: a. Pacific time to talk about Business and Professional success and wealth building and so today excuse me I'm going to be talking about one of my all-time favorite books um because I think it it so speaks to um a a the the philosophy that that I believe number one but I think it also speaks to a very empowering philosophy and the
0:38 name of the book is Talent is overrated it's by a fellow by the name of Jeff cvin so Talent is overrated what really um separates worldclass uh performance from everybody else and I read this book now uh quite a number of years ago it was published orig in uh let me let me find this real quickly here yeah 2008 so the book was the book is 16 years old and I think I read it um not long after it was
1:15 published and it really opened up my perspective on this whole as this whole question of how we can be successful so that's why I I titled this episode um it's what you build not are that counts and that really comes down to it because uh I've really I've really be I've really come to dislike the word talent because it makes it sound like if we
1:51 weren't born with some kind of innate ability we're stuck wherever we are and and Jeff culvin really I think debunks that idea and shows how even some of some of the quote unquote most talented people in in all of history uh it wasn't Talent they didn't have talent per se it's there were other things that they did that enabled them to become these
2:28 these worldclass perform formers and so I'm going to go through um those those items and and and these are kind of the Salient points of the book having said that uh I I still encourage you to get the book and read the book I will put um a link to it in the show notes like links I often put in it'll be an affiliate link so um if you click through I think I get like five cents or something if you buy the book um but my my main reason for putting the link there is is to encourage you to
3:03 read this really outstanding book so the main idea that that Jeff culvin brings out in tallent is overrated is this idea of deliberate practice versus Talent so we have this idea that worldclass performers are born with these these inborn traits that guarantee their success and he makes the case that that's really a myth and that in fact
3:40 the reason they are so successful is because they engage in deliberate practice typically from a very young age when I say a very young age three four five years old they start and because because they start so young and practice so deliberately by the time they become a teenager or young adult they have so much experience doing what they do that their greatness becomes appears
4:20 inevitable but only because of how long they've been involved in the particular Pursuit so to of the people that he examines most closely are Mozart and Tiger Woods Mozart of course being the great composer and Tiger Woods being I I I think considered the greatest golfer of all time I I don't think anyone has has eclipsed him so one and and these he puts them both as as
4:55 archetypes of not people who are talented did and therefore predestined to be great but but people who engaged in this process that he describes that that basically built themselves into absolutely worldclass performers so the First Quality that Mozart and Tiger Woods have is they engaged in deliberate practice now I want to digress here for just a minute
5:30 and and say that um from what I understand about Tiger Woods um his like his height and the length of his arms or his legs there they were such that he could make he he could get the maximum benefit from the deliberate practice okay but his physical body is not not a matter of talent it it is a matter of how you know fortunate he was
6:06 to have the the the the skeletal structure the muscular structure that he had okay so I I would say that you know not being as tall as Tiger Woods being somewhat more long-waisted I know whatever you know whatever the differences are even if I had engaged in the same amount of deliberate practice and the other the other um issues that I'm going to discuss I personally would probably not have been as great a golfer as Tiger Woods having said that I would probably be an
6:41 outstanding golfer I may not have been you know the top golfer of all time but I probably could have been a very credible golfer you know perhaps even in in in the PGA or uh whatever the new one is that the new golf league is that you that was formed in Saudi Arabia okay so so there are um physical qualities that someone may have that allows them to take better advantage of these different um
7:18 practices I'll call them okay so you know to take another even Wilder example right um Kareem Abdul Jabar who I think you know when I was a kid was probably the greatest basketball player of of all time at that time I I know he's no longer considered that I just don't know who the current basketball players are right um Kareem Abdul Jabar much taller than me much more you know um graceful than I am you know his physicality would always mean he was always going to be a vastly superior
7:53 athlete than I ever would because I'm short okay um when I left the Navy they told me I wasn't even 5 foot eight anymore which was you know very disappointing to me okay so so what what Jeff culvin is really talking about is these um and the reason I go like this is because I I as is my practice I write out notes to make sure that I you know cover all my points so these these behaviors if you will that he describes they will maximize your potential no matter matter
8:30 you know who you are okay and and if we're talking about something athletic or something that requires some kind of physical manipulation so Mozart played the keyboard right and and his fingers um may very well or or the spread of his hand or whatever may very well have been much you know better for for the instruments he played than mine might have been I I I don't know I don't I don't recall that detail um being discussed in in Jeff coven's book all
9:05 I'm saying is or the not all I'm saying is the the point I want to make is the fact that we each of us as an individual may not have the physical form that would allow us to be you know the absolute number one or in the top 10 people in the world does not negate what Jeff culvin is seeking to teach us in his book Talent is overrated okay so um I I wanted to deal with that point UPF front because uh you know as we talk about these uh if you're
9:42 like me you're going yeah but what about this what about that right and and he addresses those uh you know in in the book and and so I I wanted to make sure that that I brought those to the four as well okay so again the first the first quality is is deliberate practice is what makes someone Superior uh as opposed to Talent the second is the role of just plain old hard work now if you if you caught my show on Monday I did a
10:18 special edition for Labor Day and I read a speech that Martin Luther King Dr Martin Luther King Jr had given at a junior high school in Phil Philadelphia and one of one aspect of the speech that I that resonated with me most deeply and and if if you watch the episode you'll see I after I finish reading a speech I'm I'm I'm emotional because it's so the words are so powerful is you know he says to these these young people you know if if if all you end up being is a janitor
10:55 nonetheless be the best janitor that that ever ever lived that you know of of those who were born are currently living and are yet to be born he actually uses uh that that language I think he actually says unborn but but in any event means the same thing so what he's really saying I think the essence of of that is is to work hard at what we do to dedicate ourselves to hard work the idea that we are going to be successful or we're going to achieve Excellence or
11:32 greatness without hard work it it just it it never happens even people who are so-called you know overnight successes and we we hear about these people from time to time what I found if we look kind of behind you know the you know the the overnight success is they worked for a typically years and then all of a sudden they got a big break and now you know they're they you know they break they break through so to speak so I don't think we should be fooled by these
12:07 TV shows where you know someone comes on and and and they sing a song on uh whatever it is America's Got Talent OR I I don't know I don't watch the shows but and then you know suddenly they're they're a big big star um their appearance on that show is unlikely to have been the first time you know they ever performed they probably started performing as a child and because that's what it takes in order to become a skilled performer whether it's a singer a dancer whatever so if you read stories about um so I I couple months ago I read
12:45 a book about Peggy Lee one of the greatest singers of all time Peggy Lee started singing when she was a child okay and by the time she was a teenager she'd been singing for years and years and Performing and all that kind of stuff the same is true of Judy Garland um the same is true of um Jean Kelly one of the great dancers of all time same is true of um Fred aair Frank Sinatra okay all these people started doing what they did when they were very very young um
13:21 and yet with the case in the case of I'll take Jean Jean Kelly because I I I know his career pretty well so um Jean Kelly nobody knew who he was really he he he actually ran a dance studio he was a dance teacher came to Hollywood he um was given a part in a movie with Judy Garland called for me and my gal it's a movie said in World War I and all of a sudden like blammo he was he was a star right and and it's overnight success
13:56 well an overnight success that you know he worked at it for 20 some odd years right um and then finally got that breakthrough role and and then he became you know a huge star okay and if you look at almost anyone whether it's Hollywood whether it's in sports um whether it's in science um these P these people worked hard year after year after year my friend Dell Del Roy B okay he was uh he is he is a a physicist and and chemist and he's you know world renowned
14:31 but he didn't start out that way he he was he was born in Jamaica very you know you know very modest beginnings and he he he and his family came to the United States and he worked hard and he got uh into USC and he studied extremely hard there I know because that's where we met in college and and he show he showed that he was willing to work hard and really dig in like hour after hour after hour in the lab and all of that and so he attracted the attention of his a man
15:06 who became his mentor and and and hence started his rise to you know World prominence right so no matter where you find greatness rarely if ever do you find a lack of hard work okay we just have to resign ourselves to that and and we can't be fooled by all the sort of media stuff we we see around us that you know it's so easy to become successful just do these five steps and and you're going to break through that's that's just complete nonsense uh there there is
15:41 no substitute for hard work okay next is the importance of feedback so while we can work very hard okay just because we're working hard doesn't necessarily mean that we're improving okay that's why we have to have deliberate practice coupled with hard work and sound feedback okay and and really it's
16:17 it's those three qualities together any one of them alone is not going to help us break through okay we can practice deliberately but if we only do it occasionally who cares okay if we work hard but we're very scatterbrained about it and we don't get good feedback the hard work probably isn't going to help us achieve Excellence okay and if we get a lot of feedback but we don't do anything about
16:52 it we never practice we don't work hard okay so we're getting feedback but we're not putting that feedback to work and so it's it's it you know the person might as well save their breath because we're not taking advantage of it so it's it's these three together that create the opportunity for greatness so what is what is uh feedback or what makes it what makes it crucial first of all it needs to be continuous okay so getting feedback once in a while isn't going to help us we
17:28 need to have have great coaches great mentors um in our lives and in many ways they have to work as hard at our success as we do ourselves and this is where the examples of Mozart and Tiger Woods I think are so crucial um so I'm gonna I'm gonna go through both of their stories a little bit so you can see how these three pieces come together so I'll start with mozzart the great composer amadas Mozart so he started playing musical
18:05 instruments when he was about three years old if you can imagine I mean I when I was three years old I think I was trying to figure out how to use my Toy Telephone okay but whatever so he started at a very young age to practice the various instruments that he eventually mastered that's number one number two he practiced a lot so by the time he was a teenager he had practiced more than most people ever practice in an entire lifetime even a lifetime at
18:40 that time which you know we we think of people dying in their 40s and 50s back then I mean some did but people lived into their 60s that was still a normal age to live to the reason the median age was so low is because um uh there were a lot of uh a a lot of children died and so that skews the median age uh downward okay but but like I said by his you know mid- teens he he had just practiced so much he was so far ahead of everybody else because he worked so hard and number three he
19:18 had one of if not the greatest teachers that he could possibly have who was absolutely dedicated to his success now that person was his father so his father was a a very good musician and composer himself nothing near what Mozart was but what his father really was was an absolutely outstanding coach and mentor and so he was from a very early age able to take Mozart Amadeus Mozart under his
19:56 wing and give him the kind of continuous feedback he need his son needed in order to achieve absolute World EXC world class Excellence okay so um and and and by the way you you may have heard you know Mozart wrote his first uh Symphony when he was like five years old or something like that okay so you're saying well well that obviously he was a genius that's that's talent well not really because his early Works were were derivative of other composers Works he
20:32 really didn't do anything that was original until his very very very late teens or early 20s the things he wrote before that there's a very it's very likely that his father was heavily involved in helping him write those compositions and like I said they were based on other very um very uh high quality compositions so I I'm not I'm not saying he plagiarized per se it was very common in those times to to do riffs on other people's work just like it is today okay but but that's
21:09 different than the his his actual works of Genius that that came out of Mozart as already a young man um the things we know like uh Dr Fess and um I'm trying to think of some of his other famous works um all you know the the Symphonies he wrote the concertos ETC uh all of these all of the all of his truly great work really started like I said kind of late teens early 20s okay the the the what what is really the genius about him
21:45 so there was nothing genius about the stuff he was writing as as a child it was it was pretty pedestrian stuff um and and and and that's because he he hadn't mat Ted yet he didn't have enough deliberate pra deliberate practice matched with hard work and the kind of continuous feedback that his father gave him but after roughly you know 15 years of working that that that three-part system Mozart
22:20 became the genius that he's known to be okay but but it wasn't innate talent that that did it it was those three factors now for for Tiger Woods as well it was very much the same thing so he started playing golf I believe it again Jeff cven talks about this in his book I think he started playing playing golf when he was like five years old right I mean he had special you know kid-sized clubs um that that his father got him and he played a lot of golf and like
22:58 most art Tiger Woods had an absolute outstanding coach and Mentor his father who was who was absolutely dedicated to his son being a worldclass golfer and giving him the kind of continuous feedback continuous mentorship that Tiger Woods needed and so by again by the time Tiger Woods was a teenager he had played far more golf than most people ever do in their lifetimes you know let alone by the time they're whatever he was 14 15 years old
23:35 and so this is what helped Propel him to be the absolutely quintessential golfer of of all time okay now again that's not to Discount again you know the the fact that his his the form of his physical body was was such that he could you know make the absolute best use of the deliberate practice that he he did the hard work that he exercised and the continuous feedback that he got all of all of that made him who had you know
24:12 who who whose physicality was you know absolutely right for an outstanding golfer okay but just because you know you have the right body shape to be an outstanding golfer that that doesn't mean anything without the without these three qualities deliberate practice um um hard work and um continuous feedback so so those are the three qualities that really are behind what we call talent and and it's it's why I I
24:50 rare when you'll hear me sometimes say the person was very tal and I'll start to say tal in and I I don't use that word I'll say you know the person worked very hard to take advantage of whatever natural gifts they they may have had that's that's a more accurate description of a successful person okay now there are other things that that Jeff culvin talks about in his book and one of them is the role of motivation now this is the difficult one and one of
25:26 the reasons why I so love this book is because uh Jeff culvin he acknowledges where there are difficulties with with his ideas and the role of motivation is is one of those um because you know one of the questions he asked was well where did the motivation for Mozart and Tiger Woods to to engage in the deliberate practice deliberate practice and hard work and and to absorb
26:02 the continuous feedback where did that motivation come from is motivation intrinsic or was it something that their their respective coaches and mentors brought to them is it a combination of the two that's an area that he um that that that Colin acknowledges needs more investigation to figure out where that comes from and and look I I'll be the first one to acknowledge um I I am not as motivated as Mozart or Tiger Wood so
26:38 I I you know I've been over the over the years teaching myself to play the ukulele and I went through a period when I practiced pretty much every day sometimes for as much as an hour a day okay and you say wow that that that sounds like a lot well I mean it was for me but it's nowhere near what I would have needed to do um to become you know good at playing the ukulele number one and number two I didn't start playing the ukulele until I was uh 57 right so you know anyone who started
27:13 earlier would would would definitely have the advantage on me this is what I will tell you in three years of deliberate practice and hard work and probably frankly inadequate feedback that was the one area that I wasn't I wasn't getting well enough although a friend of mine from high school did teach me for a while um you know I I learned to play it you know pretty well I mean I could I could bang out some songs and and I enjoyed it and and um
27:49 you know if if you heard me do um you know let your love grow you know the song made famous by the Bellamy brothers um you might have thought hey this guy's not bad right so you know so even just you know following Jeff Jeff cvan's advice we can become not bad the the difference between you know becoming not bad and becoming world class comes down at least in part to motivation and and again he acknowledges where that comes from is it intrinsic is it something outside that
28:24 that's that's something that you know hasn't you know he hadn't figured out at the time he read the book I I'm not sure if that is something that'll ever be figured out it is something that I I I look for for ideas and thoughts on periodically and and you know people say well you know goals give you motivation well I mean yes I think there there is sometimes it does um but the but the fact of the matter is um to do the kind of hard work and deliberate practice
28:59 that that Mozart and Tiger Woods engaged in goals I I'm not sure that that goals are enough their motivation was somehow greater than that having having said that um we can set goals for ourselves with rewards for Meeting those goals and that can improve our motivation okay um and and and so that's not to say that goals are useless is quite the contrary and in fact if you look behind me at this document right here right this is my conditions of
29:35 satisfaction and goals and and I read them every day every morning uh for a few minutes to to remind myself of what they are and that is one of the ways that I build my motivation um I you know I engage in if you will almost a little bit of self shaming so as I read them I say you know are you really doing this and and that helps me red double my effort to to achieve these uh conditions of satisfaction and goals so so goals can become part of your motivation
30:10 system coaches can be part of your motivation system obviously the the greater the coach the greater their ability to motivate their their players or or the people they're coaching um is that enough um I I I don't know I was not Mozart or or Tiger Woods right so uh and I've never well I'm never going to have a chance to talk to Mozart but i' I've never met Tiger Woods I would love to and and talk to him about that um and and and and get his thoughts on that because obviously if if there if there is a genius to Tiger if there's an
30:46 unknowable genius to Tiger Woods it's how were you motivated from five years old to work so hard to become a great golfer okay next one is there is no shortcut I alluded to this earlier okay there if you want to achieve success greatness it's a long-term commitment it's not something that you're going to gain in a month or six months or a year even it's a multi-year uh function so this is a a
31:21 conversation I had many many times with my daughter and and it kind of mystified me because she she wants to become a a a a great writer okay um and yet she um her her motivation slides um and and yet she is an absolutely outstanding artist she draws incredibly well with fluidity of of of hand motion
31:56 that is is really a ising and one of the reasons she's able to do that is she started drawing from I think the time she was three years old and has in many ways engaged in deliberate practice and hard work and she got continuous feedback now not from me because I'm a wash out um as as an artist not from her mother either um it really came through either teachers or she had different drawing programs um on an iPad
32:32 that all helped her uh you know learn to do it better she watched videos on it so she found her feedback sources from you know sources that engaged her basically and and she continues to be an absolutely outstanding artist to this day so what's interesting is having seen this system work for her um she's she struggled to apply it to her writing and and maybe that's because I I I'm just
33:07 speculating now maybe it's because she didn't start writing until she was older um she was already uh you know in grade school um kind of I I think it was she was already fifth sixth grade when she really started to want to get into writing and and so at that point she was already what 9 10 years old 11 years old something like that and and I don't know maybe that was too late for her to start on something that takes such dedication I I I I don't know I'm throwing these ideas out for for us to ponder but there is
33:42 no question that there is no shortcutting this process so um one of the things that Jeff culvin talks about is the 10,000 hour rule this is not something he that that he uh created this is a concept that Malcolm Gladwell um popularized the idea that it takes 10,000 hours of doing something in order to master it uh and and and and going back to you know Mozart and and tiger wood so if you think about it uh
34:19 you know if you practice let's say five hours a day um let's say five days a week okay so that's uh that's 250 days a year times 5 that's 12 thou 1250 hours of practice a year so in order to get 10,000 hours it'll take you eight years okay that's practicing five hours a day now that's a lot of practice right but how many of us practice anything even five hours a day let alone you know an hour a day so if we're only going to
34:55 practice an hour a day right we don't need eight hours to master something we need I mean sorry we don't need eight years to master something we need 40 years to master something do you see how this works so this is why starting so young is really necessary for world class Mastery because if you're going to get better than most people at an age where where you can especially in something athletic where age you know and and the you know the
35:30 agility and such that comes with youth is important you're going to have to start very very young otherwise you know if you start when you're already 15 and you practice maybe two hours a day then you know you're going to reach Mastery when you're 35 which is already that's getting on the older side for an athlete if if you see what I'm saying and yet you know how many of us you know who you know as children could have devoted more than a would have not could have would have devoted more than a couple of hours
36:05 a day to an athletic activity only if we were highly highly motivated and we see who those people are right we saw them in the Summer Olympics right they're the the the the you know outstanding athletes of the world believe me the you know these you know teenagers and and young adults they didn't only practice two hours a day five days AEK week probably more like three four five hours a day five to seven days a week right and that's how they were able to reach Mastery at such a young age so there is
36:40 no there is no shortcut and and it it appears that Malcolm gladwell's 10,000 hour rule is is a a pretty good Benchmark for understanding what it takes to reach Mastery uh finally or not finally but next they they organizations play a role in helping us achieve uh achieve success achieve even Mastery right so um when you when you
37:16 look at the outstanding gymnasts for example um or the outstanding skaters often times they are part of clubs or organizations that have a a history of helping young people develop the level of Mastery that it takes to become an Olympic level athlete okay and one of the reasons is I think that being around other people who are similarly motivated and have similar goals and and and and
37:51 are engaged in a similar level level in terms of amount and quality of act ity it you know that raises the tide all together so that that organizational structure supports all these other aspects that that help us create what you know eventually comes to be called talent but was what is really something that we've built not something we were born with so so I think you know and and this applies I think to all of us so if
38:27 you if you run a business or you have a professional practice and you have other people involved with it I think it's it's imperative that we create a culture of learning a culture of supporting professional growth a a culture of supporting intellectual growth in our organization so while you know if if we start our professional careers in our 20s um we're we may not you know have the time to become the absolute you know World Masters in you
39:02 know whatever our chosen profession is fine but that doesn't mean we won't benefit from being part of an organization that supports are working toward an Ever higher level of of achievement working toward Excellence toward Mastery those are all for our benefits and and as we help each member of our organization benefit so then the organization benefits as well so there's nothing sadder I think than being part
39:39 of an organization where the message from the top down seems to be that they don't you know the the senior people don't want to be eclipsed by the more Junior people I I just think I I do not want I would never want to be a part of an organization like that and and by the way when I was in the the Navy um there were I I I I did um I did work in a unit one time where the commanding officer of the unit made it clear that he was going to be the top person always and he would
40:17 do things purposely to be intimidating uh about his you know athletic prowess or whatever which and and and frankly the that that kind of behavior I found it to be absolutely repugnant um and and he was widely held to be an absolutely horrible leader even though he fancied himself quite quite you know the great the great leader um you didn't dare speak that if you were assigned to his unit because he he he would destroy you but um where on the base where his unit
40:53 was was located if you talk to people outside of his command they they thought the guy was just an idiot because of the way he he had to make everybody in the unit feel that he was the most talented or the most Superior person in the unit right what a horrible environment in which to work it was just it was it was the absolute worst uh job I I had in the Navy um and and to this day I absolutely frankly revile this person because look for for me I you know I was an older guy
41:30 whatever but for the young people who were in his unit he did not instill in those people the idea that they could become an even greater sailor and even greater leader than he was quite the contrary his goal was to stamp that out and and and what what a terrible thing to do um Bo both for these young people and for for our country right who we need people in our military who are encouraged to to excel
42:05 so so being in the kind of organization that supports the the the growth to Excellence is a a crucial factor in being able to engage in deliberate practice in being able to work hard and see that that hard work is rewarded and to get that continuous feedback right so a lot of people you know we we're very me too sometimes we're very sensitive criticism so to absorb critical continuous feedback I mean it can be a
42:41 difficult thing but if we're part of an organization where we see that that feedback is being given to us to help us improve and help us reach ever higher in our professional achievements and it's part of the culture and it's not being done to push us down but to help us move up so you can see how uh a growth-minded organization when I say growth-minded I mean personal growth-minded organization really becomes the environment in which the the so-called
43:18 Talent of people can be developed finally I and and this is this is kind of the conclusion that that Jeff culvin draws from from his book and and this is really the conclusion that that I draw and that I do my best to bring to my work especially um my shows especially this show people making money which is kind of a tongue-in Chic uh title as I've mentioned before and that is far more important than any innate quality that we may have innate
43:54 intelligence innate physicality whatever is the idea that we we need to pursue education we need to pursue skills we need to pursue experiences now when I say pursue education I mean that in a very broad sense I don't mean necessarily going to college um because for the fact of the matter is as we can see by the job market there are too many undergraduate college graduates at this point there may even be too many you know people with master's degrees coming
44:31 out of colleges so while it's fine to go to college uh I mean and and and and not H have the intention for that to be useful and helping you um get a job or whatever so fine I mean it the fact of the matter is um College used to be a place that people went to for intellectual growth uh not for job training it's it's in the last kind of half century that college has become much more focused on job training and you know with the raate with the rise of things like Ai and such um a lot of
45:08 those jobs that colleges train us for um you know they're they may not be what we thought they were going to be going forward so when I talk about education what I mean is learning new things the develop the ability to develop I'm sorry not to develop the ability to absorb new ideas figure out um what what is what is it about those ideas that it's good to know how can those ideas be applied to our lives okay and that can happen in
45:43 many environments it doesn't necessarily even have to happen in a classroom and if you look at some of the great military leaders of all time and I'm going to go to my my go-to favorite always uh General George Patton Jr uh he did not have a stellar School career ever uh what he what he did have was a desire to educate himself he be he taught himself to be to become a voracious reader and if you go to his
46:18 Library which I believe is maintained at the milit military academy at West Point and you look in in the books he owned you will see all kinds of notes he wrote in the margin as he explored the ideas that he was reading about so his schooling it did for him what he what it did and he eventually did graduate from West Point but it was really his lifelong reading and writing that was his his path to education by the way the same is true of of Dwight Eisenhower um
46:54 although I think he actually was much more successful uccessful in in school than than Patton was but but much of what made Dwight Eisenhower an educated man was he embarked on a on a lifelong journey of of reading and study uh and that was that was very that was a very common thing I think more common then than it is today nonetheless there are millions upon millions of learning opportunities on the internet whether it's videos on on YouTube um I hope I'm
47:30 making a you know small contribution to that whether it's other websites whether it's online courses um all of these things give us virtually unlimited opportunities to to to educate ourselves so that's number one number two the same is true of developing skills okay so you know some skills we may not like I I I would love to become uh you know A Gifted horse Horseman frankly I've always loved horses I've Loved riding horses um probably at this point in my
48:06 life I'm not going to um riding horses can be an expensive thing to do unless you happen to live in an area where there are a lot of horses around or maybe you live on a ranch or something like that so you know there there there can be constraints on gaining some of the skills that we want but when it comes to technical skills when it comes to intellectual skills many of these can can be mastered um you know they're not let me uh take this back many of these are not
48:43 uh financially costly to be mastered number one and number two there are uh grants and scholarships and and funding mechanisms out there that can Avail us of the opportunity to develop these skills maybe the the organization we work for has a program well where of skill development and they'll support us in that so so number two is is skill development and number three is gaining experience and a lot of gaining experience means being willing to put
49:20 ourselves out there maybe bite off a little bit more than we can sh um and and risk uh you know not being 100% successful um so that we can get more experience we can learn from what we what we did wrong and again this is this gets back to the organization I know in the organizations that I build one of the values I Look to inculcate is the idea that uh I I take it for granted that people are going to make mistakes so that's just the way human beings are
49:57 um what what matters is not whether people make mistakes we do what matters is do we recognize our mistakes take responsibility for them and then figure out how do I fix you know what went wrong that's what matters I'm I'm and I'm not I'm not real big on the blame game in the sense of you know pointing fingers what when I say take responsibility for it really what I mean is say look something went wrong so now I've got to figure out how do I how do I fix this that's that's what I mean by um accepting responsibility um the sort of
50:34 you know self- flagellation is is is not very useful um I I've never found it to be so in my career and so when when you hear me talk about success you'll always hear me talk about it in terms of Education skills and experience because and and in large part I developed that philosophy or well I don't I shouldn't say develop it I I codify that philosophy through Reading Jeff coven's book Talent is is overrated and and coming to the conclusion that whatever success I have
51:12 I have achieved it really has been through this system that he describes and through developing myself intellectually developing my skills and and getting as many experiences I can taking risks um at times when uh um you know I just I didn't really know where I whether I could pull this off or not so um these are the kind of things that that really matter as opposed to some idea of of inade or inborn talent and so that's the me and that's really the
51:48 message that I want to bring to you today in wrapping things up and I think where this is most critical is with our children and young people so the idea that someone needs to be born with a talent or or only people who are born with a talent will become successful can become world class I think you know aside from this issue of motivation uh I think Jeff culvin really lays to rest this notion we all have the ability to
52:23 achieve to potentially achieve Excellence Maybe even to become world class okay there are some things that are not in our control as I mentioned before like our physicality um but more more things are in our control than are out of our control and if we can convey that message to young people then we are really giving them the most valuable gift we possibly can right and and it's hard I I'll I've I have had mixed success with that with respect to my daughter as I as I you know mentioned
52:59 earlier in the show nonetheless what I hope is I've given her a foundation that as she gets older she'll she'll come to realize hey you know what what Dad told me all those years actually it actually makes sense and it has it has some value and it has some Merit so once again Talent is overrated okay work on deliberate practice hard work and getting continuous feedback figure out what will motivate you realize there are no shortcuts it
53:37 probably is going to take 10,000 hours of deliver it practice to master a particular subject put yourself in an organization that that will support your goal of achieving excellence and finally defi define success by your education your skills and your experiences not by some you know other inherent Talent or something like that so thank you very much for joining
54:13 me today I I hope you got something valuable out of this show uh this this wraps things up for this week and so next week at on Monday at 10:00 a.m. Pacific time is my show trust and Estates weekly my guest is my very good friend Bill gross bill is going to be talking about the changes in the real estate industry as a result of the antitrust case against the National Association of National Association of Realtors and it's changing the way real estate agents represent their clients
54:50 bill is one of the most knowledgeable people on this subject um so I I I encourage you to tune in and hear how things are going to work going forward and then on Tuesday at 10:00 a.m. Pacific time is my show business lessons from the military and then one week from today will be the next edition of people making money and then next week on Thursday at 5:00 pm is my every other week show jigger's place this is an opportunity for us as the week is coming to a close to have a c cocktail relax
55:27 and talk about all those things in life not having to do with our businesses and profession so I invite you to to join me again next Thursday 5:00 pm Pacific time to to relax and and and talk about all the other aspects of life and and come back to uh in many ways the roots of the way to wow shows so thank you so much for joining me wishing you both a wonderful rest of the day and a wonderful rest of the week and signing off as I always do Marie darling I miss
56:02 you so so much you are my bell courage at all times