Last Monday "Iceland" was trending on social media. Over 1 million searches in Germany alone. It was like the whole world was surprised that Iceland could beat England. We are of course talking about the men's European Championships. Icelanders were surprised too, actually that is not correct, they were ecstatic and still are. The Icelandic football shirts are sold out and thousands of Icelanders are flying to Paris to see Iceland play against France on Sunday.

That Iceland qualified was already a sensation. It was the first time the Icelandic men's football team has ever qualified for a major tournament and Iceland is the smallest country ever to qualify for the European Championships. Thousands of Icelandic families planned their summer holidays around the first games so that 10% of the Icelandic population showed up for the first game against Portugal. Very few believed that Iceland would go any further and Ronaldo certainly didn't, this is what he had to say after Iceland achieved a tie against Portugal:

"Iceland celebrated as if they had won the whole Euro. That's a small country mentality, they'll never amount to anything."

It was already a great underdog story that Iceland made it through to the knockout round. Everybody assumed that England would win, they were on paper the better team, but Iceland won, against all odds. For some betting companies it was the largest payout ever. Since then all kinds of theories have emerged on why the Icelanders could make it so far in the European Championships. Although it looks like an overnight success we all know that is never the case, neither in business nor in sports. There is always a backstory and it is from those backstories that we can learn and also apply some principles to business.

8 Principles Part I

1.)Size doesn't matter

Iceland has only 330.000 inhabitants but they still manage to win against nations with millions of inhabitants.

Being small doesn't necessarily mean weak, key is having the courage to stand up against bigger opponents and not giving into hierarchy, reputation or size.

2) Practice practice practice

Children in Iceland start to practice football when they are six years old and some even earlier. The summer school holiday is 10 weeks long and since parents work full time (side note: Iceland is nr. 1 in gender equality and best place in the world to be a working mother), children attend all kinds of summer courses during this time. Football courses are the least expensive and also the most popular summer courses.

• According to Malcolm Gladwell (author of Outliers) it takes 10'000 hours to be really good at something. If you practice one hour a day it will take you 27 years to reach 10'000 hours but if you train additionally six hours a day for 10 weeks then you've halved the time to become really good at whatever you want to become good at.

3) Invest to scale

About 15 years ago Iceland and UEFA started to invest into Icelandic football. The bulk of the investment went into building indoor football domes so that football could be played also in winter. Today there are 30 full size all-weather football pitches and 7 of them are indoors. They also invested into training the football coaches so that here are now 1 UEFA licensed coach per 450 inhabitants.

• In order to become better and bigger and beat the competition you need to invest. You need to invest in the right tools but even more importantly into professional and personal development for the people.

4) Seek professionalism

There is no professional football league in Iceland, only a semi-professional league where everybody has to have a second job to support themselves. Therefore all of the players on the Icelandic national team play outside Iceland to be professionals, many of them leaving the country as early as 17 or 18 years old.

• There is no substitute for the right experience and good mentors. Make an effort to get the best education and experience you can get.

8 Principles Part II