Does small business success come from a magic number?

We have become obsessed with what makes a success. A small genre of books have waddled onto the book shelves of retailers expressing the successful virtues of several people who the publishers and authors perceive have made it to the ‘top.’ Richard Branson, Anita Roddick and Jack Welch are just a few who have been scrutinised down to their small toenail in an attempt to identify the common factors that led to their entrepreneurial success.

However, a recent book has revealed success could be down to one or two activities. Malcolm Gladwell in his book ‘Outliers’ asks the question, do people rise from nothing, or are there pre-conditions to success? Gladwell’s other books ‘The Tipping Point’ and ‘Blink’ have been intriguing, challenging, offering a different perspective and throwing some light on the obvious. ‘Outliers’ is no different.

The book considers many ideas but, for entrepreneurs, there are two main points. The first is that of the 10 000 hour rule. Much published and discussed, his philosophy is “achievement is talent plus preparation.” Advocating that most successful people like The Beatles and Tiger Woods put in years of practice before they accomplished their ultimate goals. They did not appear from nowhere. Rebecca Adlington, the 19 year old from the UK who won two swimming gold’s at the Beijing Olympics had put in around 8800 hours of training since the age of 12 whilst most of us were climbing trees, sledging or pull our siblings hair at that age.

Seth Godin debates that some sectors do not require 10 000 hours and some require substantially more. He quotes “In some mature markets, it takes 10 000 hours of preparation to win because most people gave up after 5000 hours.” Fair point, well made.

The 10 000 hours also seems to contradict the popular idea that due to increasingly highly motivated and intelligent competition, we must just ‘launch and learn.’ Get your product/service to market as quickly as possible and learn whilst you are there. Okay if you have a lot of cash. Perhaps, what this suggests is that we do not have time for 10 000 hours anymore?

The magical figure has become a little provocative. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that practice can make the different between good and brilliant, assuming you are doing the right practice in the first place! I do not suspect either that everyone who puts in 10 000 hours becomes extremely successful.

Whatever the figure, and it will differ simply because each of us humans is different, what Gladwell has achieved (perhaps this is his genius moment) is to rid the idea that an amateur can develop skills quickly and become a success overnight, coupled with the fact that people with talent have to spend some significant time developing it.

That’s why its rare for small businesses to ‘make it’ in their first five years. Assuming that the business is being set up with some world class talent (nothing less will do,) most new business owners fail to appreciate fully the need to practice their business skills just as much as their talent skills. Particularly the aspects they have little experience in; sales, marketing, finance, business strategy. All of which takes time. Relating Gladwell’s concept, to a small business owner, you work a minimum of 260 days a year all told. You put in an average of 8 hours a day which totals 2080 hours per year and that’s possibly a good indicator of why it takes a small business around 5 years to achieve some state of stability, or, at least have an idea of what it is doing. Those five years are spent refining, shaping, honing and developing your reputation and credibility.

It does not take 10 000 hours to realise he has struck on something blindly obvious. A simple notation if you like, put the work in, practice the right skills and you might have a small chance of success in 5 years.

This naturally leads to the issue; do not set up a business where you have neither the talent nor the experience. It’s career suicide. Not to mention financial recklessness. Having copious amounts of talent in your particular field is critical and not optional, whether its baking bread, creating hand crafted furniture, running a bed and breakfast or, designing the next computer game. However, 50% of your time must be spent on the business aspects of your company and you need to practice these incessantly. Failing to do so can end in going round in circles, remaining static, or worse still, just surviving day in day out.

‘Outliers’ also considers that there are some pre-conditions for success other than talent and the number of hours you put in. Gladwell points out rather succinctly that they go way back to before our behaviours are captured in the workplace. He argues that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs just happened to be born at the right time and in the right place. Both were born in the mid fifties and at the right age in the early seventies when computer programming was in its infancy. By the nineties they had bagged more than 10 000 hours on computer programming when computers were becoming mainstream. Interesting.

He also intimates that being born at a certain time of the year “The Matthew Effect” January, February, March and April gives you an advantage (mmm I was born in July.) This apparently has a profound effect when we are children and it reflects cut off dates for education and sports. He debates that because we do this, we prematurely at a young age, already write people off because we believe success is a result of individual merit when actually it’s the rules we impose on society. He has a point.

Its too easy and damn naïve to believe that immensely successful people are lucky or terribly cleverer than us. We know it’s often not the most intelligent at school or university that sets a high achieving business up. Quite the reverse actually. We get so hung up, especially in the media, about individual success and how people did it all on their own but, consider Steve Jobs and Tim Cook, Howard Schultz and Orin Smith, Anita and Gordon Roddick.

Lone success in small business is balderdash, codswallop and absurd! The point is that success does not depend solely on an individual. There are rarely solo heroes and those who we uphold as successful would be the first to admit that. Indeed it is the ability of successful people to build a team around them that makes them more of a success.

Success is not random; it is not produced out of thin air. There are many factors that make a contribution. It is also ridiculous to measure us against the successful behaviours of other people when the market conditions, economy, culture and principles may have changed. What happens if you don’t have the pre conditions for success that the media portrays, give up?

Gladwell has expressly reminded us of three far more enlightened ideas for starting and growing a small business. Have unsurpassed talent in your field and practice it over a sustained period. Never forget that the business skills are just as important and practice them with equal vigour. The difference between being average and being brilliant maybe your ability to build a team around you that works well with you. Oh and another thought, when planning your next child, think about when they will be born!