There’s a story about a fake expert I think you’ll enjoy. There was this fancy pants scientist who was known for being quite the asshat to his assistant. The assistant hated him, but needed a job. Day in and day out the assistant was ridiculed, made fun of and talked down to.
The scientist also made the assistant do all of the leg work. Over time, the scientist became lazy and stop learning. He had put all of his work on the assistant. At the same time, the assistant was becoming prolific at science experiments and became an expert in his own rite.
One day the scientists gave the assistant a seemingly impossible job to do. Each day the task was not complete, the scientist would ridicule and berate the assistant. In due time, the assistant solved the problem and completed the job. When the scientist asked the assistant how he did it, the assistant gave him the wrong information. He kept the process to himself, and told the lazy, mean scientist the wrong way to it.
There was a big press event scheduled for the announcement of the new study and findings. The day of the press meeting, the scientist takes the stand and makes the announcement. When it came time for the audience to ask questions, one of the fellow scientists in the audience asked what the formula and process was.
The scientist started telling them, what his assistant had taught him. The fellow scientists in the crowd stood there, dumbfounded. The process he was sharing with them had been tested, tried, and failed by almost all of the other scientists. In complete skepticism, they asked the scientist to do a live demonstration in front of them, so they could see how it worked.
The day came where the scientist was to do the experiment. As you can guess, he failed. Miserably and was ridiculed and ran out of the scientific community. The fake expert had been exposed.
Meanwhile, jut a few days later, the assistant scheduled a meeting with the same scientists that ran off his boss. The assistant showed them what he had discovered and blew all of their minds. He went on to win a Nobel prize.
This story highlights the fact that there are no shortcuts to expertise. The scientist tried to be lazy and out-source his experiments. Meanwhile the assistant, did the experiments to gain the expertise.
You can’t fake being an expert. At least not for very long. We’ve all seen false experts disappear faster than they arrived on the scene. Our world loves an expert. At the same time, they hate fraudsters. There’s no shortcut to gaining experience.
To become an expert you have to have conducted the experiments and gained the experience it takes to be an expert. Some say it’s 10,000 hours. Others say there’s not exact number, but when you know, you know. Experts don’t get second guessed.
I’m an expert at sales and marketing. You can’t fake what I’ve got. The ONLY way I got here was from doing the work. Running the tests. Making the funnels. Testing the theories instead of theorizing them. I recorded this video in a hotel room, after an event I was a part of in Boise with Russell Brunson. Share it with someone you care about!
