The third and final characteristic I’m going to mention from the article The Making of an Expert, is the essential need to find the right coaches and mentors to guide you in your pursuit to expert status. Having a mentor and coach to guide you is absolutely essential. Borrowing a quote from the article from Ivan Galamain, one of the most famous violin teachers of all time, said

“if we analyze the development of the well-known artists, we see that in almost every case the success of the their entire career was dependant on the quality of their practicing. In practically every case, the practicing was constantly supervised either by the teacher or an assistant to the teacher.”

The most obvious reason is that teachers accelerate the learning process, as they give constructive and painful feedback, and elite performers know when a coaches feedback and advice is or isn’t working.

One of the most famous teacher/student combinations in history is that of Warren Buffet and Ben Graham. Graham is the author of the most influential finance book in history, Security Analysis, which demonstrated that a stock had an intrinsic worth independent of the market price. Graham was Buffet’s finance professor at Columbia and the only student to every get an A+ in his class. Initially Buffet was crushed when his mentor refused to let him work at his firm on Wall Street, but eventually gave in and he headed to New York. Although their investment philosophies differed, and Buffet eventually moved back to Omaha, he would credit Graham as being his reason for entering into the business.