I’m almost 30 years old and took a leave of absence from my consulting job October 1 for 12 months. One major focus is golf with an ultimate goal to play professionally in the future.

The first thing most people say is “I didn’t know you were that good.”

Well, I’m not. Not yet, at least. And the more I think about the statement, “I didn’t know you were that good,” the more it puzzles me.

If I was already that good, I would already be playing!

My handicap is 8.6. Pros, on the other hand, are MUCH better than scratch (which is 0 for you non-golfers out there). I’m lightyears away from that.

Oh, and I forgot to mention:

• I’ve never shot par on 18 holes
• I’ve never broken 80
• I 3-putt A LOT

So you probably think I’m crazy to consider going pro.

Those aren’t good statistics for an avid golfer, and definitely not a PRO, but they wouldn’t be bad for an aspiring 9 year old who might one day become pro. In fact, they were probably true at some point for all pros. So why not for a 29 year old who might one day become pro?

The Evidence

Malcolm Gladwell makes a valuable point in Outliers about how there is a disproportionate amount of hockey players in the NHL who were born in the first few months of the year. The cutoff for youth hockey leagues in Canada is January 1, so the children born in January are an entire year older than those born in December, and at young ages that makes a huge physical difference (and about 66% of all NHL players are from Canada). The older children are bigger, stronger, and faster, so they were viewed as having the most talent and potential. This caused them to get more attention, have greater personal expectations, and receive better training, and now we have data to suggest that it is the practice, devotion, and work that causes success, not innate ability.

The same pattern can be seen in baseball, but with the cutoff for little league on August 1 (see additional details in Additional Information section).

If innate ability was the driving factor of ultimate success, the percentage of players would be about the same for all months, but that is clearly not the case. The oldest children received more practice, and they developed the most.

This effect is even evident outside of sports! Intellectual ability, which is directly related to academics, and often to the business world, shows that the youngest, least developed children are the least likely to become CEOs (see additional details in More Additional Information)! This again suggests that training, attention, and higher expectations are a significant driving force for success down the road.

So how do you succeed?

Jerry Seinfeld said he wasn’t the funniest guy, but he wrote the most jokes and some of those were extremely funny. David Blaine’s early Youtube videos have such low quality that you can see how he does some of his tricks, and now he’s blowing Will Smith’s and Jamie Foxx’s minds on Netflix specials. Richard Branson didn’t know what he was doing when he started Virgin Records, but his resilience and work ethic allowed him to succeed.

And YOU probably didn’t know how to create a valuable pivot table, write a clear and concise memo, or give a great toast until you practiced a few times.

Nobody is born successful. At the highest levels comes from sweat, effort, and extreme personal expectations.

Yes, I am starting VERY late. But better late than never. And just because you don’t know how to do something or aren’t an expert in it right now, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to do it anyway. #yolo

Additional Information

Back to the similar story for players in Major League Baseball.  The difference is that little league cutoff was August 1. The graph below shows the percentage of players born in each month above or below the expected number in that month, based on the number of days in the month. The data is for players born after 1950, when organized little league had its start.

The same pattern does not hold true for NBA or NFL players, but the likely explanation is that size, strength, and speed at maturity are more important in basketball and football. No matter what month a child is born in, if he grows up to be 7 feet tall, someone is going to try to turn him into a basketball player even if he never played before. Same goes for football. If someone turns out to be 6’6″ and 325 lbs, someone is going to try to make him into a football player even if he was the smallest child in his grade growing up. You can’t teach size.

More Additional Information

According to a study by Maurice Levi, a professor at the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia, children born in June and July make up only 12% of CEOs, but June and July make up 17% of total births. That’s about 30% lower than expected!

In the US most schools have a cutoff of September 1, so children born in the summer are typically the youngest and least developed. As a result, they do not get the same attention and encouragement to have elevated expectations as the older, more developed students.

FYI – the study didn’t look at August birthdays because some parents hold children with August birthdays back a year so that they are the oldest in the grade, and the data did not contain this level of detail.