Over the past four years, the rock band Phish has generated over $120 million in ticket sales, handily surpassing more well known artists like Radiohead, The Black Keys, and One Direction. Since their start 30 years ago, Phish has consistently been one of the most popular and lucrative touring acts in America, generating well over a quarter billion dollars in ticket sales.

Yet, by other measures, the band isn’t popular at all. Only one of their original albums has ever made the Billboard top 10 rankings. None of their 883 songs has ever become a popular hit on the radio. They’ve made only one music video to promote a song, and it was mocked mercilessly by Beavis and Butthead on MTV.

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A popular theory these days for explaining “genius” is Malcolm Gladwell’s theory of 10,000 hours. In his book Outliers, Gladwell posits that natural talent is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for achieving greatness in a given field. What is also required is putting in thousands of hours of “deliberate practice” to achieve virtuoso status in fields ranging from software development (Bill Gates) to physics (Robert Oppenheimer).

bgood79 and b_b thought you guys might enjoy this article. Pretty amazing what they've been able to do.