Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers was released in 2008. His insight that you need to put in “10,000 hours” of work to get good at something unleashed a decade of hyper-specialization: in sports, at work, in music or whatever skill one was trying to get good at. I understand this idea, and Gladwell is great at simplifying concepts into catchy soundbites. His books Blink and The Tipping Point both did this successfully.

While I find his books enjoyable to read, the 10,000 hours thing, right or wrong, did not resonate with me. I understand the need to spend years or even…

In the wake of the George Floyd murder last year, my client Canyon Bicycles came out with an ambitious action plan built to increase diversity in cycling. Part of the plan was to sponsor the groundbreaking St Augustine’s University cycling team in Raleigh, North Carolina. This was the nation’s first Black college bike racing program, and I was excited about the possibilities.

As a lifelong cyclist, I knew how badly the sport needed diversity. I imagined what the bike ecosystem could look like if it more accurately reflected the racial mix of our entire country. …

I’ve been a cycling fan since I started racing bikes in high school and picking up VeloNews in bike shops back in the ’80s. I’ve always loved the colors, the kits, the huge European pelotons and the sponsors. I find all that fascinating. In fact, my interest in this stuff was probably an early warning indicator that I’d spend most of my professional career in marketing and advertising.

At the same time, I’ve always wondered why professional cycling teams have a hard time creating lifelong fans. How is it that the Dallas Cowboys, for example, or Manchester United, have decades…

Great interview. Thanks for sharing.

During the pandemic, I’ve been thinking a lot about the future of bike racing. What we’ve seen over the past year is that only the highest level of racing (UCI World Tour, Elite European Cyclocross, a few other top European races) has continued. The rest of the sport, around the world, has been completely shut down for what looks like about a year and a half. The comparison would be if basketball only happened at the NBA level in the USA. …

Since the pandemic and its associated lockdown began 10 months ago, a lot has happened in the world. That’s an understatement, and I think many people would say the same sentence applies to their own lives. That includes me. Since April, I’ve been interviewing friends and colleagues to see how they’re coping and posting their answers here on my blog. I called the series Life During Lockdown. To each person, I asked basically the same four questions. The diversity and eloquence in their answers was amazing; everyone has a unique set of challenges, from family tragedy to losing a job…

Carl and I got to know each other through the running community back when I worked at the LA Marathon, and we both trained with Track Club LA. Carl is a teacher at the Animo-Jefferson Charter Middle School near downtown LA. He’s also been a teacher/leader/coach with the amazing Students Run LA program, where I once served on the board. That group trains about 3,000 middle and high school students every year to run the full LA Marathon. Over 70% of the SRLA participants are from below the poverty line, and training for the marathon is like Goalsetting 101; over…

Mikael plays keyboards in the band Wilco. In 2002 I produced a film, I am Trying to Break Your Heart, about them, but Mike joined the group just as we finished the movie. While we may have met briefly backstage after a show, it was not until we both spoke at TEDxUCLA in 2016 that we got to know each other. With Wilco as a common thread, we now keep in touch often. What I like about Mikael, in addition to his musical skills, is his prolific and creative approach to all kinds of projects when he’s not touring. For…