This is exactly right, and I had written a comment ripping into Godin's post for that reason. But then I checked Gladwell's book and he argues that 10,000 hour

This is exactly right, and I had written a comment ripping into Godin's post for that reason. But then I checked Gladwell's book and he argues that 10,000 hours is the rule for "successful" people rather than the exception (that is, "successful" -> 10K, not 10K -> "successful"), and now I'm wondering if that's really true. Of course, he never really defines what he means by "successful", but by picking Bill Gates and The Beatles, he's probably got his sights set a little higher than The Doors and Miley Cyrus. Also, quotes from at least one of the researchers who advocate the 10K theory assume that you need 10K to be a "world-class expert" in any discipline. That's a claim that probably needs to be heavily qualified to retain validity, since some of Godin's examples would seem to refute that.