Buy the 10,000 Hours
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- —
Kagan's stated cheat code: you cannot personally accumulate 10,000 hours in writing, marketing, coaching and every other domain your goal touches — so buy, copy or borrow someone else's. The method is to identify the specific bottleneck skill, trace the best existing work in that domain back to the person who actually produced it, cold email them, and pay their rate. The leverage comes from the fact that expertise is purchasable at an affordable price relative to the value it unlocks, and from a willingness to let the expert destroy your work rather than defend it. Kagan applied it across his book — proposal writer, co-author, publisher — and across his life, hiring a CEO coach, a marketing adviser, a relationship coach and a therapist for the domains he was worst at.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
Name the exact bottleneck skill
Kagan diagnosed himself precisely: a good blogger and Twitter writer, but not a real storyteller or author. The narrower the diagnosis, the easier the search.
Watch out 'I need help with the business' is too vague to hire against.
- 2
Trace the best work back to its author
He reviewed the best business books of the past decade, found one person who had written two of them, and found the specific writer behind James Clear's book proposal.
Pro tip Credits, acknowledgements and agent pages are where the real practitioners are named.
- 3
Cold email and ask directly
Kagan is explicit that he cold emailed Tahl Raz just like anyone else could. This step is where the asking practice from the coffee challenge pays off.
Pro tip Lead with the work you have already done, not with the request.
- 4
Pay the real rate
Kagan's framing is to find someone, pay them $1,000 an hour or whatever it takes, because the value returned is disproportionate to the fee.
Watch out Hiring cheap in your bottleneck domain reproduces the problem you were solving.
- 5
Let them destroy your draft
David ripped Kagan's proposal to shreds, laughed at it, deleted everything and redid it. Kagan let him — and then sold the book for a large advance.
Pro tip Judge the hire by whether the output improved, not by how it felt.
- 6
Repeat per domain, including personal ones
Kagan lists a business coach, a marketing adviser in Moody, a CEO coach, a therapist, dating coaches and relationship coach Stephanie Rigg. The pattern is domain-agnostic.
Pro tip Free versions exist too — an accountability partner or a friend can serve the same function.
In the wild
Kagan's first proposal was rejected outright by agent Lisa DiMona, who told him to come back when he was serious. Rather than iterating alone, he found the writer who had produced James Clear's book proposal, David, and hired him. David tore Kagan's draft to shreds, laughed at it, deleted everything and rewrote it. Kagan spent a year on the proposal in total and then sold the book for a large sum — an outcome he attributes directly to paying someone who had already logged the hours.
→ A laughed-at proposal became a book sold for a significant advance.
Knowing he was a blogger rather than an author, Kagan searched the best business books of the previous decade and found that one man, Tahl Raz, had written two of them — Never Split the Difference and Never Eat Alone. He cold emailed him, offered to work together whatever it took, and the two spent a week in the woods writing. Kagan admits he initially hoped Raz would simply write the book and save him, which forced him to confront his own fear of whether the book could really help anyone.
→ A cold email secured one of the strongest business-book co-authors available.
Common mistakes
Trying to log the hours yourself
Kagan's point is that you do not have 10,000 hours to become the best writer, doctor or YouTuber in the world. Insisting on doing it alone converts a purchasable advantage into a decade of delay.
Hiring an expert then defending your draft
The value is in letting them delete and rebuild. Paying for expertise and then protecting your original work buys you the invoice without the improvement.
From the transcript
“I think one of the cheat codes for anyone out there is how do you how do you buy or copy or steal the 10,000…”
“so then talk about cheat codes I started hiring 10,000 hour people”
“go find some one pay him $1,000 an hour or pay him whatever it takes and the amount of value you get is insane out…”
From the episode
How To Start Your First Business in 48 Hours - Noah Kagan
Noah Kagan