Delete everything you heard about Experts before in your life. Destroy your memories, your influencers, and mentors because you need to be clean to understand this article completely. Ok, good that I have your full attention. Well, as an Entrepreneur I can assure you that the so called Experts are not that much of a big deal, once you stop to walk the same walk and live what they preach, living the same process yourself.
We all when in early stages in life, think those guys we used to call Experts were like Superheroes, something similar to superhumans for all the amazing qualities and skills they now exhibit to us. But that’s not entirely true. Yes, they ALL have their merits for sure, but the truth is that they are just like us, normal human beings who do a few things differently to get to where they are. But yet, just people. Really smart, hard working people, but still people.
The goal here is revealing that you are also a potential expert yourself and wake you up to the real game. But not to show off to other people, not to invoke glory upon yourself for no reason or something like that, but to help you walk faster in life, business, sports and every other thing you may want to dominate in your life.
So here’s what I’ll show next:
OK, let’s jump straight to the content.
THE EXPERT MINDSET
Someone who is now recognized by his/her community as an expert in his field was obviously an amateur once in his life. This is reality folks. Seriously. Yet, I see MANY people dropping comments on blogs, websites, and social media all the time, worshiping successful sportsmen, businessmen and entrepreneurs assuming they are like some sort of super humans or magicians who figured everything out without hitting the wall several times in the past.
Delete this from your mind or you’ll never evolve.
Because the very first thing a wannabe expert has to have is simply this:
That’s the key mindset of a true Expert. An absurd amount of knowledge doesn’t actually define him and I’ll show you why in a few minutes. But first, you need to notice that everybody you may quote TODAY as an expert was once a loser, a weak-minded person, a nobody, an amateur. The reason someone becomes an expert is because one day he got the GUTS to start something, he made the DECISION to ignore everyone else, he changed his strategies despite what established authorities were saying and did it things on his own way, anyway.
Because true experts want to MASTER something. They enjoy the process of trial and error, digging in the dirt night and day just to discover something brand new. Totally different from 95% of people.
Because many want to master something just to make money (like Social Media for example) but they don’t have the COURAGE to try something ENTIRELY NEW and invest time in finding new solutions that will help others. Why? Because they fear other people and what they’ll say about them. They fear people will be watching and posting their failures. But real experts are not afraid of such confrontation.
Because true experts are doing what they do because the end goal is to dominate something at the most highest level possible, just to help lots of people in the future, whether that’s in business, sports or just for personal achievement. That’s what experts focus on. That’s what they were all focusing on even when they were nothing to the world, anonymous people.
Experts use failures over and over as a learning experience.
Here’s how true Experts think:
Failure is only feedback for Experts. Only feedback.
All of them when in early stages, mostly had thoughts like this:
“Well, let me truly learn this by trying this new idea I just had, so my book can be the next NY Times Best Seller . Let’s TEST THINGS a little bit, regardless of the negative feedback.”
But those who think like the guy below will never become true experts:
“Hmmm….I don’t think I’ll try this. That other expert/mentor said it would work to do THIS instead of THAT. So I might follow his advice. He’s so smart and I’m just a beginner. Maybe I just had a stupid idea.”
The last type above will only become a follower. Always. He may evolve by following an expert’s or mentor’s advice but the truth is that he’ll NEVER be on the top of the chain. Not a chance. Because he’s too afraid to think outside of the box and start something of his own, because of the negative feedback he might get from ignoring the worshiped established authorities.
Is that you?
Another misconception from my perspective is the definition of Experts. People think experts are those with lots of knowledge. Wrong. Experts think differently. They have a great amount of knowledge for sure, but they MUST think differently. They’re not just “academic” guys. They take crazy action. They are pioneers. All to help other people in the end.
Totally different from a follower.
Because the follower will always care more about his own “reputation” than with actual people he could help if he followed his own “stupid idea” that may have landed him a special discovery in his field. That idea, that new strategy, that thing no one has ever tried before could have been the next breakthrough in his business/sports/industry but yet, he chooses to believe he’s no good and he shuts down his inner voice of an expert, killing his chances to succeed faster.
The majority of the world lives like this.
I ask again: Is this you?
Or do you know someone like this? Who’s always ensuring that others stay playing secure, following EVERYTHING by the book or preaching whatever an expert says? Well, I do. Lots of them. And it’s exactly this type of person who will never become a true expert. Why? Because they’re worshiping men. They put experts on a pedestal.
They automatically invalidate themselves as new authorities the world is needing and choose to keep their eyes on others 100% of the time. But here’s the funny part: The experts they admire got to that level of authority by THINKING FOR THEMSELVES.
Contradictory, isn’t?
I don’t understand people sometimes. Seriously. Because it’s like following just half of an advice.
You follow everything an expert in business, marketing or any other area says and yet when you ask how he started you admire his/her courage, without applying it to your own life. The “follow your gut” part gets ignored. The “do it anyway regardless of what other people say” part is thrown away. The MOST IMPORTANT piece of becoming an expert, which is to believe in your own ideas and execute them, people throw in the trash.
But the reality is that Experts execute “stupid ideas” all the time, not just when they were unknown. They’re like kids. They wanna try to figure out new paths to achieve the same results or even better results. After all, isn’t like this how new science comes to life? Years ago an expert thought the Earth was square. A few years later, and another expert said otherwise, stating that the Earth is round.
What do I mean with the Expert Mindset then?
That a true expert DO NOT care about others. He doesn’t care if people will say bad things about him or not, because he’s too immersed in his own world trying to figure out if something inside his head, haunting him in his sleep will work or not.
Makes sense?
Because if someone is having TRUE success today, a great part of it is due to the fact they believed in their own vision, followed their gut and didn’t care about some random mediocre guys’ concept.
The best of the best are always playing in stupid mode, trying to figure out new things without caring about the audience watching them. They choose to follow their inner voice that everybody has inside. Because, after all, why should you put another human being on a pedestal?
Why assume all their knowledge is the Ultimate Truth on a certain topic? Could they be 100% right on everything? Of course not. Never. So true experts just assume others might be wrong, regardless of their current reputation. They have the guts to try new things for themselves, fight the established and proven ideas other authorities have set, just to have fun and to learn something entirely new in the process.
This is how Experts think.
No authority is the ultimate authority. No one is 100% right. The opinions of others don’t matter much. And you can discover new stuff for something that already exists like new ways of achieving the same thing.
Experts think for themselves, even when nobody knows them.
Now is time to open your mind completely. Here’s why YOU must explore the expert inside of you.
THE EXPERT VOICE THAT LIVES INSIDE OF YOU
I’ll reinforce this part because it is important: YOU have an expert inside of you. Period. You have original ideas that today you might be too afraid to implement because you’ll confront many who are already established in the field. Right?
But as I said before, a TRUE expert is just someone who’s willing to go through the BS by doing his work while ignoring what other experts have said, just to try to achieve his own personal breakthrough. You may choose whatever example alive and I’ll show you that what he says is not 100% right. Always.
Your heroes are not 100% right, and sometimes it’s YOU who is right and it’s YOU who can provide a unique perspective to life/business/marketing/coaching/whatever. There are different views and styles for saying the same thing, and also complementary ones. Or sometimes you have the style/message/principle/whatever that fixes a part where all experts are making a mistake, or where some of them are making a mistake. The fact is that there’s room left for your uniqueness in business/life IF you believe you’re an expert yourself.
But let me put this in a simple example:
Tony Robbins
precision: 78%
Henry Ford
precision: 81%
Eric Thomas
precision: 70%
Grant Cardone
precision: 75%
Mark Cuban
precision: 75%
Steve Jobs
precision: 72%
Gary Vaynerchuck
precision: 63%
Elon Musk
precision: 76%
YOU !!!!!!!!
address the missing %
People can be wrong. They can miss the target. They can screw things up. Right? People are limited, therefore, experts are limited. So start from there. ASSUME you’re the new expert. Look, let me tell you a personal business experience: I was coaching a customer two months ago on how to become an Entrepreneur and I said to him exactly this:
“Look, what you’ve to understand is that I WILL NOT be 100% right. I’ll tell you what to do based on my own personal experiences and my own personality and my own personal beliefs, but you’re a different human being. You need to absorb AND FILTER what I’m saying to you and choose to take action on what FEELS right to you. Think for yourself. But neither I nor anyone else is 100% right. There’s no such thing. I’ll coach you but you’ll have to make decisions totally opposite of what I said sometimes because you need to learn how to think for yourself.”
Right in his face.
Why? Because I’m not God. I make mistakes.
Just because someone is successful, doesn’t mean he’s always right.
And here’s another important point: True Experts knows that several mentors are necessary for achieving maximum performance, which is why I recommend it to my customers. Find several mentors. Why? Because having many mentors easily teaches you that contradictions are present, forcing the person to think for himself. While some mentors say “learn to read daily even if you don’t like it” others might say “do not force yourself on something you don’t like to do. Do what you like only”. The problem? Both are right. Both are successful. Now what?
So what does it teaches you?
It teaches you that experts are not an ABSOLUTE reliable source for someone’s individual path. It shows you that you cannot trust 100% and follow 100% what other successful people say.
I have spiritual mentors, warrior-like mentors, marketing mentors, business mentors and more. Why? Because I need to be EXPOSED to everything that’s out there, filter it, mix it with my own ideas, personality, and craziness and create MY OWN VERSION of my work.
Because we all have an Expert voice inside of us. Fail to believe this, and you’ll fail in life. You may be a newbie today, but the difference between who you are right now and another person you admire is purely time invested on EXPERIENCE + EXECUTION + FAITH in your path. That’s it.
The difference between you and an Expert is simply this:
1. He has the guts of taking stupid actions to find new breakthroughs.
2. He learns and works and tries new things like crazy.
3. He has more experiences than you.
But if you don’t start thinking for yourself then you can’t really win nor become an expert. You can gather experiences and knowledge, but without the “think outside of the box” factor, without crushing the fear of trying something entirely new, you’ll just be another player (with lots of knowledge) who is actually just another follower. Get it?
QUESTION: Which expert would you follow?
The one who explore his own ideas and discover new ways of doing things or the one who just reads a lot about what other people have discovered? Who’s THE TRUE expert?
The first one.
The second guy is no expert, he’s just a follower. A follower with knowledge. The real guys are not caring about criticism or being embarrassed. They just dominate. They explore. They represent this idea of “test everything and implement crazy ideas” to the world. They have the mental toughness to endure people throwing bad words at them while they’re trying something entirely new.
But at the same time, you cannot put experts on a pedestal.
Because well, they’re people. And people make mistakes.
But what would happen if you have put up the necessary time and go through the hard path? Well, you too will become an expert yourself. The sentence that many like to speak “that guy is unique” is a pure MYTH.
Because if I execute my own ideas…
If I read more books than the expert has read in 2 years…
And if I execute most of these books following my inner voice…..
Then who will become a new expert?
You will. You. But in order to take that path you have to:
Let’s take Digital Marketing because it’s one of the best areas to use for this subject. Now look, assume that some expert said to you: “Hey, only 20% of your posts should promote your own brand on Social Media”. Right. But pay attention for a moment. Here, there are several factors to consider:
Want a real life example?
Take Grant Cardone for instance. I show you below one of his videos where he says something VERY contradictory from all pieces of advice Social Media Experts give and preach, about massively spamming social channels for getting attention. And yet, although going totally in the opposite direction he still has this amount of facebook fans.
VIDEO – Stop Selling Start Closing
THE KEY PART: up until 29:40min
So a social media expert — just like he mentioned — would NOT recommend anyone to massively spam its social channels because it bothers people, forcing them to only see your brand and not the other feeds. Alright. Logical. But on the other hand, what Grant says works TOO. THAT’S what I want you to understand. You must be free to become a true expert. You must execute YOUR PERSONALITY regardless of what other people are saying.
Imagine if you had the fame of thinking for yourself among companies. Now imagine that things completely changed overnight because Facebook or Twitter decided to change its own algorithms, messing with everyone’s marketing strategies almost overnight. Now think. WHO will those big companies search for to solve the new problems that arose with such changes?
Answer: The stupid guys (i.e the Experts). Those who were brave enough to ignore all criticism just to try to figure out how things REALLY WORK, without faking anything to look cool. The now known “Experts”.
You see? To have the fame of an Expert, first, you had to go through the phase where your fame was just “stupid”. Because mediocre people consider those who think outside of the box, stupid. While the truth is that they’re just scared of other people’s opinions.
Now the final thing.
Here’s WHY you should also hear your inner voice:
Have you noted this?
They talk about something that another expert approaches entirely differently. So if you follow several mentors and really study what each and everyone one of them says about a specific topic, you’ll get contradictory advice for the same thing.
Can you guess why?
Again, because they are PEOPLE.
And people are flawed, make mistakes, talk things based on personal experiences and other stuff, so you cannot take their word as something final. For example, I bet you disagreed with what one of your mentors said in the past. Something you just felt it could be done differently. Or maybe you just knew he was wrong but you didn’t have the authority to face him. Am I right?
But why is that?
Because there’s an expert voice inside of you as well.
That voice that keeps saying: “Hey, you can do this through this other way as well. Just believe. Try it. And execute. See what happens. Forget what he said”. That “voice” many entrepreneurs call “their gut” is God’s voice. The Ultimate Authority. The source of all knowledge.
And the truth is that you just KNOW it’s the right path to take, it makes you dream and trip in your ideas making people who you admire seem wrong, right? But sadly, you’re too afraid to believe in that inner voice.
But God’s logic is far superior to human’s logic my friend. Far superior. Because if you stop to think about, all humans have a small piece of God’s knowledge inside themselves, which they publish to the world to help each other. Which is why there are many ways to win in life. Look, you cannot read all the books in the world, but only by reading a small fraction of them, you can learn the necessary tricks to win in life. Right?
There are many ways to win, and one is yours.
But let’s take a practical example you’ll enjoy.
Think about Twitter for a moment.
CEO: “Hey, we will create a microblog where people will post 140 characters posts.”
INVESTOR: “So…what’s the business model?”
CEO: “Well….we don’t know”.
This is what I imagined about a Twitter pitch.
Now here’s the funny part.
I found THE EXACT same context in a video from Guy Kawasaki when he was giving a keynote on Berkeley University to some students and entrepreneurs.
I’m starting the video from near the end when he got the question that quotes what I said above about Twitter.
PS: But the question also involves Google and Youtube as well.
VIDEO – Guy Kawasaki: The Top 10 Mistakes of Entrepreneurs
THE KEY PARTS: 53:42min-53:46min AND 54:54min-56:26min
Have you realized how the expert concept works?
Guy Kawasaki himself said that someone in the room could do things entirely different and still be successful. Has Youtube, Twitter, and Google examples convinced you? Would you consider the CEOs of Google, Youtube, and Twitter……..experts in entrepreneurship?
Oh yes.
What did they differently?
They heard their inner voice. PERIOD! They went “stupid mode”. They didn’t care about other people’s opinions. After all, it was all really based on faith and dreams, which is something only God gives to you. Although I think all of them don’t believe in God, they listened to it, and the result of such bold move you can now visualize today.
Every area is the same.
If you want to be an expert in Marketing or Finances or Sports or whatever then you must think outside the box to become one of the best. Copying others won’t put you there.
You must challenge everyone. You must DARE to be stupid for once. Because that’s when you have a much higher chance of being successful.
QUESTION: Who do you think people pay more attention to in the end?
Those who have the guts to be stupid for a while and endure criticism, without caring to master something or accomplish something great or those who just follow others, worshiping them blindly? I have even shut down haters in the past by doing this because they realized that there’s no use fighting my mentality. Give me criticism. I love it. Because I always keep coming. I execute silly ideas just to see if they work or not.
And although I have done many stupid things just to test if things really work, one of my greatest actions was definitely writing about Personal Development in the blog of my Marketing Company. Why? Because that’s a “bit out of context” in certain terms, even if you asked me regarding a customer’s Content Marketing Strategy. Well, do I care? Hell no. I prefer to follow my inner voice (God’s logic) and decide to execute it. Now I see how it makes my company a lot more interesting and way more easily remembered.
And here lies another important point many can bring it up but don’t understand much:
Audience.
The expert will ask the question:
“But why do you need an audience?”
The follower will think:
“Ok. No audience, no success. That’s final.”
No real thinking was applied.
For example, here, in my company’s website, I do NOT need an audience. Why? Because I only need sales, not followers. That’s why my audience numbers are low. But on the other hand, I’m highly effective on converting those who come in to contact me to do business. And to support my statements, you can see that even Tim Ferriss himself spoke about the “Why you need an audience” subject a while ago:
VIDEO – How to Build A Large Audience from Scratch
So why am I saying this?
Just so you can know how experts truly think. They evaluate everything, consider every piece of information but they start taking action for themselves. What works for some won’t work for others, and vice-versa.
Tim Ferris thought differently.
That’s why he’s Tim Ferriss. Is he an expert? Oh yes. Many investors and startup owners now come to him whenever they have an opportunity to get advice on entrepreneurship, productivity and more. But you see how your mind starts to open up once you consider a reality where YOU can execute your “contradictory” ideas and still succeed?
You must have the guts to explore that inner voice you have so a whole new world can open to you. That’s how it works and how the world actually spins. Because maybe you’ll discover something. Maybe you’ll find out a new way or a new method to a procedure that has only 2 ways to do it. Maybe you’ll invent a new Marketing strategy.
YOU don’t know the potential you have.
So you must stop listening to what other people are saying for a while to listen to yourself instead. Have the guts to take some apparently stupid action for a certain amount of time, so later on you can be called a Genius by other people.
Would you call Twitter’s CEO a genius in his early days? Or Youtube’s CEO? Of course not. I see many people sharing “Think outside the box” imagery and quotes on social media and yet, they are too afraid to REALLY try new things and explore their own ideas. Such mental behavior will only maintain you as a follower. Permanently.
Now let me share some of my experiences.
There’s one single article that unfortunately I lost the print, but the person who shared it caught my attention because she said exactly what’s below:
The Rock Hard Mindset
Well, I’m happy to help someone like that so I’m definitely going to persevere in my craziness. Because I value people more than my own personal success. Business is about helping others succeed. So if you value more your bank account, then your success won’t reach the world. But if you put people first, if you want to interfere with good actions and if you trust your inner voice, then things will open up for you afterward.
That article which I mentioned above, I wrote it after taking a big financial hit in my Entrepreneurial journey back in the beginning of 2016. I lost almost all my energy, almost all my willpower and simply stopped working for almost a month. That was critical, which is why I wrote it. I LIVED it. Because true entrepreneurs know that you cannot stop working.
And after recovering REALLY fast, It CAME to me to write. Just “write”. It just came to me to write. So I did. Because I cannot measure if such article will help someone who is about to kill himself 3 years from now. And I don’t know if that was the cause of that woman. So would I put my content strategy first, above another person’s life?
Hell no. I rather take longer to succeed, do something good than letting other people fail and give up. If I have different kinds of power to put GOOD in the world, then why shouldn’t I? If I have a business that can also be a place where people come to be inspired, then why shouldn’t I?
The stupidity is the early stage of geniuses.
Check the facts. Check all true successes and you’ll validate what I’ve just said.
And from the Marketing perspective, I’m now starting to understand the logic behind following my gut. Because what will happen if I have an enormous repository of such evergreen content, which actually helps people regardless if they’re business owners or not, along with true marketing content?
In a few years, you’ll see my friend.
Because very few people are stupid enough to believe in such strategy. Even I was a bit skeptical at first. And if you stop to pay attention to where the world is going, you’ll realize that content marketing is already becoming a gigantic WAR with almost no ROI at all. Why? Because you must put MASSIVE content out there just to show as a player in the game. Think: How many articles are launched per day? And how many hours companies are putting into content marketing? How much money? That’s a very problematic scenario we all are about to enter.
Well, not to experts. Not to those who follow their gut.
The next expert move? Become truly INTERESTING. Become truly unique and different. That’s my strategy. Because in a few years, I do believe people will say:
“OH OK. Another Marketing blog/channel etc”
“OH OK. Another Entrepreneur blog etc”
“OH OK. Another Financial blog etc”
Being interesting is the new marketing in such crowded place.
So very soon, you’ll need to put a lot more personality and creativity than ever to connect with strangers faster, and to do that, you’ll have to explore more ideas than ever as well. The problem is that ONLY EXPERTS will be able to do that effectively because, well, they’re stupid enough to try new bold stuff many others will disapprove.
And they’ll be obviously very well paid as well since they had the guts to endure the doubts and criticism at first to prove themselves. And everybody else will try to start something, copying them when it is a bit too late.
Experts envision this kind of thing. Which is why experts don’t care about criticism. They test. They execute. They ignore their own reputations and assume no one is watching just to find out a new breakthrough that might help people and businesses. That’s it. There’s no myth.
No superheroes. Just normal, hard working, crazy people injecting hours and hours of work, testing things over and over and following their gut.
CONCLUSION
Just think outside the box. Explore. Become the stupid guy once in your life and try new things because only those who have the guts to face the world and endure criticism are the ones who actually become a respectful authority. The rest are followers.
Gather other people’s knowledge and bring something new to the table. Create a new version of something and not a weaker copy of someone else’s work. To really succeed in your area of expertise in life you must follow your inner voice that keeps telling you to try that weird, stupid but entirely NEW and creative idea. Otherwise, you’ll never be on top. You won’t be an A-player. Never. You’ll only be a follower with a lot of knowledge. If things fall down, you’ll be the first to run to the expert to see what he’s doing. You don’t make guarantees for yourself. That’s bad for business and for life.
The expert is not the guy who has a lot of knowledge and experience in one area. It’s the guy who has that PLUS the guts to try something entirely new. Those are the real experts. Those are the ones who write best sellers. Those are the ones that influence a whole industry.
And a final word.
Unfortunately, I see so many people mocking/attacking newbies just because they’re doing something for themselves, trying to explore new strategies when they’re thinking outside of the box. That’s ridiculous. Just let the guy do his thing. There’s an expert inside of him as well. You can’t possibly affirm what he may discover by following his new stupid marketing strategy or starting his own stupid company. But no, people choose to MASSIVELY HATE those who are beginning to take bold steps.
This is why our world is messed up.
Because instead of promoting those who are starting to think like champions, we instead have this culture of saying:
But as you can see in the videos I’ve shown you, that’s unrealistic. Makes no sense. Because if YOU persist for enough time on your “stupidity”, you’ll be called a genius afterward. You can CREATE a new method for an already established market. You can CREATE a new method of training. And once you do that, you’ll be called………..an Expert.
But doing things differently requires an enormous amount of courage, faith and obviously, hard work. But once you pass all those tests by persevering over and over, you’ll become “The Guy”. You’ll become “The Expert” everybody talks about. The guy others will use as an example to shut down the next newbies from the next generations, just like someone used your mentors to try to shut you down when you were just starting.
Interesting, isn’t?
People praise those who think differently after they’ve become successful, and yet, discourage those who BEGIN to think differently at an early stage in life. It’s like: “LET’S STOP ALL EXPERTS FROM BEING BORN!”. Then because of this lack of union, experts become rare, and therefore, expensive. Nice. Welcome to the messed up world.
But the good part of all this is that IT ALL comes down to how much you believe in your inner voice. Period.
We all know we hear it over and over again, telling us to choose that harder path. So choose it. Don’t just dominate your field and learn everything that’s out there, CREATE your own version of it. That’s the real domination. You CREATE things, you ADD things so people can have a bigger shelf to pick things.
Forget the authorities for a while.
Become the next guy people will quote.
Leave the little box 95% of people love so much.
Because no one really wins living other people’s lives and following 100% of what they say. I always like to say to customers that I’m not always right all the time. Tom Hopkins is not right all the time. Tony Robbins isn’t right all the time. Jack Ma isn’t right all the time. They’re all people. All flawed. All humans.
Sometimes it is YOU who’s right, my friend.
You who doesn’t know even the basics, but FEELS that you should do it that way anyway, contradicting all “experts” in the field. People need to stop worshiping human beings to start thinking for themselves.
Listen to God’s voice inside of you.
Become the next big hit. Others can’t define you.
Everything you hear from humans, mentors, successful people, it’s all just advice. Assume you’re already hearing it while being a billionaire. Take what you feel is right and what looks good to incorporate, but shape it in a way that it all becomes a version of you.
Remember, there’s too much noise in the world already.
If you play by trying to be someone else, you’ll lose. And lose big. Know why? Because the person you’re imitating IS that person, and he’s the best on being him. You need to be the best on being you.
Make yourself the expert. Explore the ideas and strategies only you have. Ignore the world. Study hard. Work harder. Do stupid things without caring, like a machine who doesn’t have any feelings. The world is a big lab of yours. Explore it. Because once you go through all criticism and the initial storm of negative pressure, you’ll become that genius. The guy people will quote on books and articles just to prove a point.
Become the expert.
And dominate your life.
Take care.