Rasmus Ankersen - The Gold Mine Effect: Crack the Secrets of High Performance

Printed edition published in the UK in 2012 by

Icon Books Ltd, Omnibus Business Centre,

3941 North Road, London N7 9DP

email:

www.iconbooks.co.uk

This electronic edition published in the UK in 2012 by

Icon Books Ltd

ISBN: 978-184831-423-8 (epub format)

ISBN: 978-184831-482-5 (Adobe ebook format)

Sold in the UK, Europe, South Africa and Asia

by Faber & Faber Ltd, Bloomsbury House,

7477 Great Russell Street,

London WC1B 3DA or their agents

Distributed in the UK, Europe, South Africa and Asia

by TBS Ltd, TBS Distribution Centre, Colchester Road,

Frating Green, Colchester CO7 7DW

Published in Australia in 2012 by Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd,

PO Box 8500, 83 Alexander Street,

Crows Nest, NSW 2065

Text copyright 2012 Rasmus Ankersen

The author has asserted his moral rights.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Typeset by Marie Doherty

Contents

About the author

Rasmus Ankersen is a bestselling author, a motivational speaker on performance development and a trusted advisor to businesses and athletes around the world. He wrote his first book The DNA of a Winner at the age of 22. A year later he published his second, Leader DNA , based on field studies of 25 high-profile leaders, including the Secretary of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, and the CEO of LEGO Group, Jorgen Vig Knudstorp. Leader DNA has been the best-selling leadership book in Denmark for the last five years. In his home country Rasmus has also won a Berlingske Business Magazine award, being named one of the three biggest business talents in Denmark, and the Danish prime minister recently invited him to contribute a chapter to his new book The Danish Dream .

With The Gold Mine Effect Rasmus has taken another step into the secrets of high performance, becoming the only expert on the subject who has literally lived and trained with the best athletes on the planet. Now back in London, Rasmus is teaching organisations how to build their own Gold Mines of world-class performance, through real-life examples and result-driven insights.

You can find out more about Rasmus at www.rasmusankersen.com .

Henrik Hyldgaard is the co-author of The Gold Mine Effect and has been working as Rasmuss personal sparring partner for the last three years. Henrik is a brand strategist and master of business creativity. In late 2012 he will be publishing his book Hotel Creativity Check in and Change the Destiny of Your Company . Check him out at www.hotelcreativity.com

Acknowledgments

Expeditions are rarely the kind of thing you can manage on your own, and creating this book has certainly not been a one-man show. I would like to thank all those who have helped me along the way any over-simplifications or mistakes are my responsibility, and mine alone.

I would like first and foremost to offer my sincere thanks to all the athletes, coaches and parents in the six Gold Mines. They opened their doors to me, allowing me to become part of their daily lives and to follow them closely.

I would also like to thank all the people who established contacts for me along the way and who moved some of the obstacles in my path, opening my way to the hearts of the Gold Mines.

Not least, I would like to offer the enormous thanks to my co-author Henrik Hyldgaard for his indispensable efforts and world-class sparring. Without his invaluable advice the book would never have become what it is.

Finally, the biggest thank yous of all go to my mother Joan and father Sren for giving me the roots to grow, the wings to fly and the freedom to make mistakes.

The Simon Kjaer problem

I shall start with an admission: if everything in my life had gone as I hoped and believed it would, this book would never have been written.

I spent my boyhood in rural western Denmark, in a little town in the middle of nowhere. It had a population of 35,000 and its only claim to fame was as a hotspot of the Danish textile industry.

With the focus of that industry rapidly moving away to Eastern Europe and China, there seemed little sense in dreaming of a future as a textile magnate. Instead, I fantasised about being a footballer and playing on famous pitches across the world. The walls of my room were covered in posters of great players. After school every day I played on the street with the other boys in the neighbourhood. I even promised my dad I would buy him a Mercedes once my professional career took off. And at the age of eighteen I was made captain of one of Denmarks best youth teams. Life was good.

But just one year later, my dream was over. I smashed up my knee so badly in my first league match at the age of nineteen that I would never be able to play professionally again. A promising career ended before it had even begun.

I have to admit that as a footballer I am now nothing but an injured-then-forgotten has-been. Like many other injured and forgotten players, I ended up working as a coach. The best coaches are often frustrated players with pent-up ambitions.

In 2004 I helped establish Scandinavias first football academy. In those days we didnt have much more than a couple of grass pitches with cows grazing on the other side of the fence and a primitive building where we could put the players up for the night. Our ambition of creating world-class players at this desolate location in western Denmark must have seemed naive. I still remember how we had to struggle to attract players for the academys first intake. As newcomers to the business we were unable to entice those players considered to be the most talented in the country we simply had to take what we could get. It was rather reminiscent of the way kids pick their teams at school. We were the last to pick and had to take what was left over when the other clubs had made their choices.

Eventually we had signed contracts with fifteen or sixteen boys and were only short of one player. One of the candidates was a fifteen-year-old boy from a town 50 kilometres from the academy. His name was Simon Kjaer. He belonged to the anonymous majority the Danish club scouts had no record of in their archives. In fact, we had already decided that we didnt want him. Several of the academys coaches had seen him play, myself included, and all were agreed: He hasnt made a mark and he never will.

But the season was about to start. We didnt have much time, and we didnt really have any other options, so we decided to give Simon Kjaer the last place anyway. He was the quickest solution, and his father had a job as materials manager at the club (read: he was good at his job and we were willing to go a long way to keep him). Simon Kjaer was accepted on the condition that he paid for his own keep. As Simon remembers it himself: My impression was that they only accepted me because they couldnt hire players who were better than me. The best of them had turned the opportunity down.