Excellence is a talent or quality which is unusually good and so surpasses ordinary standards. It is also an aimed for standard of performance.

The Ancient Greeks had a concept of arete which meant an outstanding fitness for purpose. This occurs in the works of Aristotle and Homer. Aristotle once said. "We are what we repeatedly do . . . excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." Another related concept was eudaimonia which was the happiness which resulted from a life well-lived, being prosperous and fulfilled. The equivalent concept in Muslim philosophy is ihsan.

Studies have shown that the most important way to achieve excellent performance in fields such as sport, music, professions and scholarship is to practice. Achievement of excellence in such fields commonly requires approximately 10 years of dedication, comprising about 10,000 hours of effort.

Thomas J. "Tom" Peters (born November 7, 1942) is an American writer on business management practices, best known for In Search of Excellence (co-authored with Robert H. Waterman, Jr).

Peters was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He went to Severn School for High School and attended Cornell University, receiving a bachelor's degree in civil engineering in 1965, and a master's degree in 1966. He later studied business at Stanford Business School, receiving an M.B.A. and Ph.D.. In 2004, he also received an honorary doctorate from the State University of Management in Moscow.

From 1966 to 1970, he served in the United States Navy, making two deployments to Vietnam as a Navy Seabee, then later working in the Pentagon. From 1973 to 1974, he worked in the White House as a senior drug-abuse advisor, during the Nixon administration. Peters has acknowledged the influence of military strategist Colonel John Boyd on his later writing.

From 1974 to 1981, Peters worked as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, becoming a partner and Organization Effectiveness practice leader in 1979. In 1981, he left McKinsey to become an independent consultant.

Joseph James "Joe" Rogan (born August 11, 1967) is an American martial artist, stand-up comedian, actor, writer and color commentator. He is best known for playing Joe Garrelli on the NBC sitcom NewsRadio, commentating for the Ultimate Fighting Championship, hosting the NBC reality show Fear Factor and The Joe Rogan Experience podcast.

Rogan was born in Newark, New Jersey. His paternal grandfather was Irish and the remainder of his ancestry is Italian.

In 1981, at age fourteen, he became a practitioner of Kenpo Karate before transitioning to Taekwondo. He eventually gained a 2nd dan black belt. A four-time state champion in Massachusetts, in 1987 he was the USA Taekwondo U.S. Open Champion. In 1996, he began training in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu under Jean Jacques Machado, eventually earning his brown belt. In addition, he holds a brown belt in 10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu under Eddie Bravo.

He also practiced and competed in kickboxing.

In 1994, he co-starred on the Fox comedy Hardball as Frank Valente, the young, ego-centric star player on a fictional professional baseball team. From 1995 to 1999, he co-starred on the comedy NewsRadio. He portrayed Joe Garrelli, the electrician at WNYX, a news radio station in New York City. In 2002, he appeared on the episode "A Beautiful Mind" of Just Shoot Me as Chris, Maya Gallo's boyfriend. In 2011, Rogan played his first major character in a movie in the Kevin James movie Zookeeper. He is slated to play himself in an upcoming action-comedy starring Kevin James called Here Comes the Boom, set to be released in the summer of 2012.

Earl Nightingale (March 12, 1921 – March 28, 1989) was an American motivational speaker and author, known as the "Dean of Personal Development." He was the voice in the early 1950s of Sky King, the hero of a radio adventure series, and was a WGN radio show host from 1950 to 1956. Nightingale was the author of the Strangest Secret, which economist Terry Savage has called “…One of the great motivational books of all time“.

When Nightingale was seventeen he joined the United States Marines. He was on the USS Arizona during the attack on Pearl Harbor and was one of twelve surviving Marines on board that day. Before being mustered, Nightingale was an instructor at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.

After the war Nightingale began work in the radio industry, which eventually led to work as a motivational speaker. In the fall of 1949, Nightingale was inspired while reading Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. Quoting from the Earl Nightingale official website: "When he was 29, Earl's enlightenment had come to him as a bolt out of the blue while reading, 'Think and Grow Rich'. It came when he realized that the six words he read were the answer to the question he had been looking for! That, 'we become what we think about'. He realized that he had been reading the same truth over and over again, from the New Testament...to the works of Emerson. 'We become what we think about.' 'As ye sow, so shall ye reap...'" In 1956 he produced a spoken word record, The Strangest Secret, which sold over a million copies, making it the first spoken-word recording to achieve Gold Record status. In 1960, a condensed audio version of Think and Grow Rich was narrated by Nightingale. It was titled Think and Grow Rich: The Essence Of The Immortal Book By Napoleon Hill, Narrated by Earl Nightingale, produced by Success Motivation Institute. Also in 1960, he cofounded the Nightingale-Conant corporation with Lloyd Conant.

Kanye Omari West ( /ˈkɑːnjeɪ/; born June 8, 1977) is an American musician, film director and fashion designer. West first rose to fame as a producer for Roc-A-Fella Records, where he eventually achieved recognition for his work on Jay-Z's album The Blueprint, as well as hit singles for musical artists including Alicia Keys, Ludacris, and Janet Jackson. His style of production originally used pitched-up vocal samples from soul songs incorporated with his own drums and instruments. However, subsequent productions saw him broadening his musical palette and expressing influences encompassing '70s R&B, baroque pop, trip hop, arena rock, folk, alternative, electronica, synthpop, and classical music.

West released his debut album The College Dropout in 2004, his second album Late Registration in 2005, his third album Graduation in 2007, his fourth album 808s & Heartbreak in 2008, and his fifth album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy in 2010. West released a collaborative album, Watch the Throne with Jay-Z in 2011, which is the duo's first collaborative album. His five solo albums, all of which have gone platinum, have received numerous awards and critical acclaim. As of 2012, West has won a total of eighteen Grammy Awards, making him one of the most awarded artists of all-time. All albums have been very commercially successful, with My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy becoming his fourth consecutive No. 1 album in the U.S. upon release. West has had 5 songs exceed 3 million in digital sales as of July 2011, with "Gold Digger" selling 3,086,000, "Stronger" selling 4,402,000, "Heartless" selling 3,742,000, "E.T." selling over 4,000,000 and "Love Lockdown" selling over 3,000,000 placing him third in overall digital sales of the past decade. He has sold over 30 million digital songs in the United States making him one of the best-selling digital artists of all-time.