Russian Diver's Formula

A documentary crew filmed the year preceding Delhi’s Commonwealth Games for its 16 year old gold medal diver, Tom Daley.

Despite being more about the inter-personal dynamic between father and son, there was one juicy selling moment. It came from British Diving’s Performance Director, the highly qualified Russian, Alexei Evangulov. To paraphrase, he stated that,

success is a result of talent multiplied by hard work

His context was very much that talent alone will never reach the richest of rewards.

In Daley’s case, his undoubted natural ability was developed by up to six hours of training. Whilst a seemingly small amount for a professional sportsman it appeared tuned to the limits of his still-growing frame.

This kind of saying crops up in many a sales team meeting. If you know where your ‘talent’ lies, do you also know the ‘hard work’ required to make it shine and achieve all that it can?