Amateurs and Professionals, Gurus and Experts: a Bull Caca Detector

Let me start by saying that I love amateurs, love being an amateur at ninety-eight of the top one-hundred or so most enjoyable things in life, and frankly I wonder where all the amateurs of the world have gone.

I miss them enormously.

Let me further say that I am not a world-class expert on experts. I haven’t put in enough time thinking about them or working with them. Nor am I an expert about amateurs either for that matter – which makes me an interested amateurs about amateurs. I do have an informed opinion on them both, supported by facts, formal education and life’s experiences rather than by the mere emotions of today’s mania for “Building the Personal Brand.” I just like studying human behavior and getting innovative about what it means, then what to do about it.

 

For some people, they find that a very valuable activity, and even pay me for it, but truth be told, I probably do far more “free” than paid. That’s okay. I love helping.

I had this sudden, uneasy realization the other day, which felt a bit like a bad dream. It was like waking up in the zombie film, 28 Days Later: humanity as we knew it has disappeared, and in its place has appeared, overnight, a veritable zombie army - a globe-spanning race of number-one, best-selling, award-winning Gurus who will “literally transform your life in 24 hours, cause you to lose forty pounds in three days, find the love of your life in seven days, be wealthy beyond your wildest dreams in ten days, and also prevent impotence, acne, and diarrhea.”

Tired of reading claims like that? If you’re like me - “fatigued” by the mountain of internet chatter, yet still find fascination at the potential power of the web - then read on.

 

We can truly cut through the noise and still appreciate the internet as a tool for learning, growth, help, service, and opportunity.

It’s time to learn for once and for all Three Easy, Iron-Clad Rules for knowing for once and for all how to spot:

 

·      A Professional (anyone paid to profess an opinion)

·      An Expert (which you do often want and need)

·      A Guru (which you almost never want and never need)

·      An Amateur (which is a wonderful person to befriend and not pay for friendship with – and what most of us, happily, are, in fact.)

 

Best of all you will be able to use these rules instantly, and effectively, accurately, and with confidence that you will be able to make solid friendship, financial, business and personal decisions with the results as a basis!

 

In other words, whether deciding on getting the opinion of a contractor to build you a house, or a potential business partner, or sizing up what a boss will be like to work for, or an employee to hire will be of value to the company, whether a friend will always be a source of learning and growth, or your drycleaner is the one you want to stick with – this three-part test is something I think very well could serve you all your life.

 

That’s a big statement, but it comes from at least a little expertise on my part. Take it for what it is – an informed opinion. Don’t take it as gospel.

 

It’s based on the model of the mind I developed long ago, called MindOS Mastery, at http://www.womenshappiness.com/mindos.

 

 

THE NATURE OF AMATEURS AND PROFESSIONALS,

GURUS AND EXPERTS

Let’s start with our grandfathers. These days we tend to care less and less about the wisdom of the old, as opposed to the loudest, and they have been waiting too long to be honored of late.

Mine was an electrician, and I have never met him or any other electrician. He died before I was born.  I often wonder what he was like, and my mother enjoys telling me stories about his life and work.

I’m noticing that nearly everyone who has facebook friended or twitter followed me recently appears to be a “Self-help Guru,” and apparently the whole world has just become an instantly brilliant and the number-one, best-selling this or that.

Meanwhile, I have never met or found a plumber, cobbler, or heard stories about what electricians do other than those about my grandfather. I also only know a handful of mechanics.

Those all happen to be Experts, and we sorely need them.

 

At least I do. I don’t know how to wire a house, fix a nice shoe to avoid buying a new one, unclog a toilet except for the use of Drano, or for that matter, do anything to a car except jumpstart it with someone else’s cables.

For that, I am grateful to my mechanic.  I value my mechanic, and he is well-worth paying for in exchange for a very real service I cannot do, don’t have the time to do or learn how to do, even if I am intelligent enough to learn how to do it. You see - his skill is a RARE one. Customer service is nice, but that’s not what I want to buy in and of itself. That needs to come alongside the real, tangible deliverables of the Expert. If they coach me at how to use the results of their service, I appreciate them all the more, but I won’t pay for the coaching if they didn’t first actually do anything for me out of real expertise, thank you.

I will never be a mechanic, a plumber, a cobbler or an electrician. I am certain of it. Apologies to my grandfather, but I don’t have need to be one of those. I can hire one.

I’ll also never call myself a coach or consultant, and I’m sick of people who call themselves that offering me their “services.”  This is of course not true of all coaches. Many Experts and Professionals have been pushed to call themselves “coaches” these days – such as degreed, licensed clinical social workers, a profession with frequent expertise - for fear that they’ll get left behind in the enthusiasm of the internet marketing economy that makes all the world an award-winning set of coaches. Where I come from, coaching means the courteous, motivational, inspiring customer service one does AFTER delivering some real expertise.

 

Sorry if you don’t like that. Read on, and you might come to like it too.

My mechanic and my grandfather both had opinions to be sure – they could cheerlead and coach you to feel good about how your day is going when your car breaks down or the power was out - but what was behind their confident, reassuring way with people was informed by long years of either education, LEARNING, hands-on training at a craft, or all the above.

 

Being nice to people, or courteous, cordial, supportive or kind is beside the point of what their professions evolved for. Having a friendly personality, and being good to people is just a matter of character and friendship anyway, and those would be atrocious things to try to sell to people…

 

…which is what “Gurus” do.

People like my grandfather and my mechanic also have one more thing – they have “their way” – not just nice customer service or friendliness with people, but an actual innovation based on their training - one unlike that of everyone else in their field - not just “modeled” or copycatted, and not just resume padding, popularity, or fluffy stuff.

There are many Professionals, but innovation is part of what makes someone both a Professional AND an Expert.

 

Innovators build on the past – they don’t cut and paste from it. They produce a deliverable and an ACTION in service, and not just a borrowed opinion.

An Expert, a Professional, a “Guru-coach” or “Marketing-guru” and an Amateur are not at all the same thing, nor will they ever be in this simple taxonomy guide to these wild animals:

 

 ·      An Amateur has an interest and an opinion, regardless of whether they ever express it to others, and is not paid for it.

 

 ·      A Professional professes an opinion, and IS paid for it.

 

 ·      A Guru professes an opinion, is paid for it – so they are indeed “professionals,” - but will cease to exist if they don’t pursue finding followers. The followers don’t “own” the Guru’s opinions, or “Personal Brand.” They just pay to experience it, like at a carnival. Which means that Gurus have to be marketers and branders. Paris Hilton, Tony Robbins, and quite a few Reality Stars, authors, commentators, coaches, and consultants are Gurus. Some are not well-known, and they won’t last as Professionals unless they STAY well-known. In a sense, what they sell depends on something external – kinship with the followers they have already acquired.

 

 ·      An Expert may or may not profess an opinion, but has devoted years of patient discipline to an interest, actively learned a rare skill, and actively produces a deliverable – something tangible and real that is then owned by those seeking it. Experts don’t seek followers, and often are unpaid, but they do usually teach, if asked to. They themselves are devotees to the rare discipline of study, and others might take interest too – wanting to join in the learning process entirely out of interest in the FIELD OF STUDY, not in the teacher’s Personal Brand.

 

Your local artist, teachers, lawyers, surgeons, and accountants might be Experts. They do not go on to become well-known through purposely seeking out followers, but through excellence at a mutual interest with the public. Tiger Woods, James Franco, Sanjay Gupta and Anderson Cooper are Experts who also happen to be well-known.

 

To come up with our rules, our Bull-Detection Device for cutting the noise, we first need to understand a jungle of words that get twisted and turned into something they’re not by marketers. Detecting Bull is about getting razor sharp precision about what words mean.

 

If only we can learn the difference between an opinion, a belief and a fact, and between the maturity of what has been called “true self,” the narcissism of what has been called “false self,” and the insidious creep of marketing and marketers into our lives.

 

Let’s build a quick guide together - a Bull Detector to detect whom to befriend, associate with in business, buy from, or none of the above.

Really.
 

OPINIONS, BELIEFS, AND FACTS

 

There is a scientific nature to facts, in that science is designed based on real, hands-on experience, not just thinking, or proposing fanciful scenarios, not just storytelling, or testimonials, or anecdotes of how something affected you personally.

 

It submits us all to “do the experiment,” and with mathematics, nearly perfectly predicts what we ALL will – like it or not – come to conclude. Not just once, but EVERY time we “do the experiment” so long as the weather and other conditions around us do not change.

In other words, in the world of facts, science and mathematics, we are all FORCED to arrive at the SAME opinion.  What could be better? What could be more unifying?

The distaste for some comes because in a sort of way, it is “undemocratic” as author Matthew Keen would say, in his incredible book, The Cult of the Amateur.

 

I once gave a talk on the science behind dating and romance at a local event in Chicago. A young woman stood up without raising her hand, and spouted, “I disagree with your science.”

 

I looked at her glazed-over eyes and really couldn’t think of a thing to say. There was nothing to say because it would be fruitless to follow on that kind of comment – on how the rationality of science is something none of us has a democratic “vote” about. We are all forced to arrive at the same facts when we do the same experiment with the same variables and conditions.

 

There is no such thing as “my” science. There’s just “science.” This woman was completely confused about the difference between facts and opinions, and that confusion is always caused by problems with one’s boundary.

 

 ·      An Opinion is a very personal reality contained in your boundary (if you have a solid sense of boundary maturity.) You don’t dispense it impulsively, foolishly, or to those who likely won’t agree or understand a perspective other than their own.

 

 ·      A Fact is something that is repeatable and reliable like science and mathematics, and all those who test it will find the same results over 90-95% of the time.

 

 ·      A Belief is like an opinion, only more. It’s an opinion – data – that is also tied to emotion.

 

 ·      Expertise is an informed opinion, based first and foremost on facts, not emotional appeal. What makes it unique and individual is a lengthy process of learning, patience, discipline, trial and error, education and experience. It is also often guided in growth by another Expert who accepts that the guidance will lead to something new, based on, but evolved differently from their own expertise.

  

Many people are most thrilled about the Internet because it “democratizes” everything: Everyone has an equal shot at getting rich, finding love, running for office, and being a “star.” Well for better or worse, expertise cannot be democratized. Stars may be “born,” but Experts are “forged” … over a very long time. The kind of time that keyboard jockeys don’t like to deal in.

 

It has to be earned, through real work, effort, patience, time and discipline – perhaps the last remaining advantage of the old in a youth-obsessed culture.

In his book, Keen also quotes British Prime Minister Callaghan as saying, “A lie spreads throughout all the world before the truth can even get its boots on.”

This principle doesn’t make the “opinions” of Guru-coaches or consultants “lies” – we are all entitled to opinions as part of our “personal reality.”

 

We just need to not pay others for their personal reality or for experiencing their Personal Brand. We need to pay to improve our own.

 

Marketers most often DO deal in what Callaghan described to be the social process of a lie – to secretly influence and encourage mass purchases in the way Gurus pursue followers. But the effect on those of us who buy services is similar to paying the most popular kids in school for the right to be seen with them. What’s really changed about your insides if you were to do that?

 

The job of a marketer then is to get you to believe in them, not to lead you to truth or facts.

 

Expert in Keen’s view, are pretty much doomed to not be able to catch the public up with the truth. Marketers have already been there, converting the confused or undecided to the faithful.

After all, Experts are too busy helping you to be marketing or building a following - with the same patient look on their face as the honest mechanic has gazing at my car engine or my grandfather likely had at an old-time appliance socket.

After long-considered thought, they might say, “I believe this will fix it.” In doing so, they were really meaning that they have an informed opinion, based in facts, learning, labor, and thoughtful, wise, mature consideration.

 

Not “I believe just because I believe…”

…but from the years of labor, time-tested trial and error and learning, in which they developed a confidence – a positive emotion that arises out of experience, not wishful thinking, false-self bravado, or their potential, with its desire “to be right.”

It was real. An instrument of their trades, this gut feeling of confidence.

 

We’re all imperfect - even Experts - so the best they can have is an informed opinion, based on facts. To have a fact you have to test it with many, many, many people. That’s expertise. It’s not flawless, but it is worlds better than mere thoughtless opinions or beliefs - no matter how emotional they are - in its practical everyday value to your life.

Our emotions can be notoriously unreliable when it comes to opinions and beliefs. Emotion can overshadow facts very easily, and become the driving force that steers us to hold onto our beliefs even in the face of total irrationality, foolishness or even danger. This is narcissistic.

 

The emotionality of beliefs can lock us in a psychological jail of not being open to change, or at least not giving the time of day to those who differ with us. This is narcissistic.

 

This is likely also what causes us to also have a drive to “always be right,” or to “be more interested in being right than being happy” that we often see in those who also have poor boundaries. This is narcissistic.

 

You can then sniff out a Guru whose livelihood is so dependent on followers in agreement with them – like a cult leader – as they cling to the only thing they have for sale – those opinions and beliefs. This is narcissistic.

 

Experts don’t mind being wrong. They don’t need followers, just the devotion to learning and teaching their well-loved profession, when asked. That’s where their emotions make themselves known.

 

Experts can also sniff out impassioned Amateurs with highly emotional beliefs, yet poor boundaries. They might avoid them for the reason that boundaries are often paired with impatience, a distaste for work and discipline, and a fanciful dislike of facts, science and rationality. Much like the narcissistic girl at the talk. There is nothing to learn from or teach to such a person.

 

Gurus have bad boundaries because they have to tear down the boundaries of others in order to find followers, followers, followers, and to sell, sell, sell…

 

…which is also narcissistic.

 

 

BOUNDARIES AND NARCISSISM

The opposite of the narcissistic is the mature, high-character people with good boundaries. They can have opinions, but so can immature people with poor boundaries. The difference is that a mature person recognizes that in the world of opinion – and only because of boundaries - we are “all right, in our own way” - and because we all have different opinions that come from different life’s experiences.

Which is why on the intellectual side, FACTS are so important. We can learn them in formal education, or we can learn them by rote memorization, or in an auto mechanics manual, or an electrician’s manual, or online – but only if the source online is a bona fide Expert.

If you, like me, always want to be growing more mature character, working on boundaries is one of the best ways. It is the very thing which lets us diplomatically reject the opinions of others without starting to dislike them or stopping communication with those we will have to, or want to still have relations with (like a brother, sister or mother.)

 

When someone has poor boundaries, they are interested in the externals of life – trying to control others, and finding themselves easily controlled BY the environment – their moods are irritable and confidence easily shaken. To fill up the hole inside, the sieve of a boundary through which their energies, time, and money drain, they pursue more and more of the externals of life, including followers and their money.

Experts work with informed opinions – expertise - more than beliefs alone, and when they have a belief, it is equally valued for its data – its intellectual, learned content – than from its emotional tone alone. When confident emotion does arise for them, it is only because the data is so very supportive, repeatable, and reliable.

Everyone has an opinion, and it takes no work whatsoever to have one – no patience, no discipline, no effort or investment of the self to have one. And while there are numerous weekend courses promising expertise, that’s not expertise. It’s one of those physical laws of the universe that even in the day of the instantaneous availability of information on the internet, my grandfather’s view that good things take time is still true, and always will be. Expertise takes time, and always will, because it is stored INSIDE the limited-speed harddrive called your brain, and the limited abilities of being human. Expertise is not EXTERNAL to who we are.

 

Being a Guru is all about external appearances, and external resources they must acquire to remain what they are.

 

If you didn’t much like school, don’t worry. You can still be an Expert.

 

Yes, I have degrees, but those pieces of paper and their external appearance are not what feel so good about having them. There’s much to medical training that has a very, very long tradition to it that is passed down in a very organized way, a tested way, from Expert to new Professional. It makes you intellectually competent on the inside, not just emotionally confident like a cheerleader.

 

However the “belonging to” experience is not about “being smart” as in “look at me.” It’s more like the guild systems of medieval times – like being a Blacksmith, or Leather-worker and the like. Anything you put time and devotion into will lead toward expertise. All good things take time for humans, and are INTERNAL.

So it’s true you don’t need a Ph.D. to be an Expert. Marketers LOVE saying that, but it still does not make them experts at anything, except in some cases, marketing. The problem is that LACKING A PHD DOESN’T MAKE A PERSON AN EXPERT EITHER.

It’s the maturity of boundaries, discipline, investment, patience and devotion that do. Not get-rich-quick weekend courses in how to “motivate,” cheerlead, consult or “coach.”

 

You are not excluded from this. It is already inside you what that is that you feel devoted to enough - to invest enough time in, to have the discipline for - to slowly, slowly bring out that expertise potential in you.

 

If you don’t have any passions or interests, perhaps you can discover one, becoming an Amateur with an interest and an opinion.

 

Once you are an Amateur, you could easily become a Professional if your passion is high enough, but to do well at that, you will have to add expertise if you want to be of real value to society, and receive rewards equal to that value. This will take time and effort.

 

As a Professional, we can see how very possible it is to become an Expert, and to do so, that’s also the only kind of teacher to go to, or to receive services from yourself.

 

Because of boundaries, it’s up to you if you are entertained by a Guru, like their personality or customer service, or motivational energy, but I also consider it a matter of public service, not customer service – to offer up some easy ways to cut through to the truth. You can take those or reject them of course.

 

My offering would simply be this: If you want to receive an impact, or make an impact on society, seek out and seek to be an Expert, not a Guru. The character and boundaries you grow through discipline will serve you in every other area of your life, including self-esteem, friendship, and romance – the very things sold by Gurus that have always been, rightfully, free.

Now then, let’s learn more about these four kinds of animal: the Amateur, the Professional, the Guru and the Expert…
 

AMATEURS AND PROFESSIONALS

I suppose one of the things about Amateurs is that they love doing something or thinking about something, though I think DOING something shows quite a bit more commitment, discipline, patience and mature seriousness about it.

Perhaps the reason George Bernard Shaw said, “Those who can’t do, teach,” might have been that doing things as an Amateur is so much closer to reaching one’s potential as a possible future Expert than just having an opinion about it – “armchair quarterbacking” as they say.

I never see people put the category called “Hobbies” down on resumes they submit anymore, like the years I was in college. Instead they put down “Acclaim,” or “Awards” or “Achievements,” usually filled with the Self-Brand of “number-one” or “best-selling” like the marketing Gurus do.

Why is it so bad to be an Amateur these days?  I like them, I miss them, and I AM them at most things. It feels so much more stress relieving to be an Amateur than it does to rise to the bar of being a number-one, best-selling Guru at things.

Being an Expert does not have to be stressful either, but it does take the W-word – WORK – and patience and time.  Not stress per se.

Being a Guru is stressful because you have to live up to an image or perfection without the patience, discipline, trial and error learning that is condoned, expected, and forgiven in a real, educational, vocational, or skilled learning program taught by current and real Experts.

It’s built on “false-self” the narcissistic core dynamic of marketing – puffery and “resume padding” and the like. Which is by definition – as explained in KWML Mastery at http://www.womenshappiness.com/kwml - immature.

As test pilot Chuck Yeager once wrote: “It ain’t braggin’ if you can do the thing.”

This is healthy pride in real accomplishment, and there are things you can lay claim to in that way. You ought to not be subject to jealousy, gossip or destructive criticism just for having the “healthy pride” of a “true self” built from real work, experience, education and learning.

But unhealthy pride, “false self” and the puffery of an “Instant Guru” is the type of wishful comment that really only amounts only to your “potential.”

 

It’s like a little boy talking to his Daddy has when he says, “Look! I’m a fighter pilot!” Or when a little girl says to her Mommy, “Look! I’m a princess!”

The boy is NOT in fact a pilot and the girl is NOT in fact a princess. They would have to go through years of work, experience and the like to really BE those things. It’s cute and charming because it’s a child’s belief, full of positive emotion – self-esteem-building confidence – that has us let the delusion go on. For many kids, we will slowly teach them about the real world and real limitations, real work, discipline and effort.

Boundaries in other words, but only if we already have them ourselves.


GURUS

Gurus are the ultimate Professionals true to the word: they are paid for something, and they profess an opinion.

 

So what.

 

The matter of where the opinion comes from is immaterial to them – it could be cut and pasted from somewhere on the internet - but the paid part is achieved through the skill called marketing.

 

Gurus are not born, but they are not made either.  They are self-appointed, and have a Personal Brand. They have learned some amount of marketing at some point, or become associated with someone who does.

From Wikipedia: ‘A Guru is one who is regarded as having great knowledge, wisdom and authority in a certain area, and who uses it to guide others (teacher). Other forms of manifestation of this principle also include parents, school-teachers, non-human objects (books) and even one's own intellectual discipline. In the religious sense the term is commonly used in Hinduism, as well as in other Indian religions and new religious movements. Finding a true guru is often held to be a prerequisite for attaining self-realization. In contemporary India, the word "guru" is widely used with the general meaning of "teacher".’

 

In Sanskrit, “Gu” means “darkness,” and “Ru” means “destroyer.” Yet if the marketing required of a Guru – and especially an “Instant Guru” – of necessity involves influencing others to buy something, rather than just stating the price outright, or taking donations, then there is most certainly an irony blasphemous to the original word: marketers spread darkness and need darkness – the psychological darkness of stage names, anonymous testimonials and padded resumes – in order to sell something that is not even expertise, but opinion.

 

From Wikipedia: ‘In Western usage, the meaning of Guru has been extended to cover anyone who acquires followers, though not necessarily in an established school of philosophy or religion. In a further Western extension, guru is used, or even misused from the original religious meaning, to refer to a person who has authority because of his or her perceived secular knowledge or skills, such as in business.’

 

It’s dark, which is to say fake, which is to say coming from “false self,” which is to psychological parlance called “narcissism.” They say as Narcissus, “Join me in gazing at the reflection of my face in the water, and become my follower.”

 

The narcissism on the bumper stickers of the last twenty to thirty years come to mind: “Baby on Board” (as if others don’t have, can’t have, or hate babies) or “My Child is an Honor Student at Po Dunk High” (as if others and their offspring are uneducated dolts.)

Maybe these caused today’s narcissism, and its marketers and Gurus, and get rich quick schemes, and weekend seminars at How to Be an Instant Expert.

There is no such thing as an INSTANT Expert.

As Professionals, Gurus have opinions, and likely, some beliefs too, especially in their own abilities and value, but their wares are often in the areas that any everyday human being already has knowledge or experience (dating, food and weight, exercise, love, thinking or pondering), or lay a claim to fame regarding an experience that is often passive but didn’t involve work, learning or skill (being in an accident, receiving surgery, receiving advice from another guru, or having a mystical or religious experience.)

Chances are, they didn’t even spend much time at the story line of their claim to fame. It may have been in an instant or a day, or if even mentioning specific training, it was for hours, days, or at most, a week, the patience is so short.

I once read the entire, several page chapter in Timothy Ferriss’ “book” called The 4 Hour Work Week, a missive dangerously close to encouraging stone age regression of the public’s intellectual life, if not downright ethically questionable.

The reason why is this: his “method” of teaching people to become “experts” is to have you learn about something briefly, give one talk at a university, then parlay that into one talk for a corporation, marketing yourself thereafter as an expert who has spoken at said university and consulted to corporations. The ultimate in web-based resume padding.

That’s a Guru, not an expert.

One Guru I’ve heard of claims to be a relationship expert based on having been in a 20 year marriage. Well what person who’s been in the everyday human experience for 20 years CAN’T lay claim to it. That’s not being an expert, and it’s downright insulting even to Amateurs, let alone Experts.

Another Guru I have heard of was driving, possibly drunk, wrecked, bled, saw the moon through the window, and had wistful thoughts of what his life was worth.

Awesome. Very inspirational, and yet oh so passive, vague, and human to have contemplated one’s own demise and worth.

Please. This is laziness, and avoidance of getting your butt to school to learn a real trade done in the light of day. Or forget school. Just go learn something REAL.

Don’t worry, you can be an Expert. And you don’t even need a Ph.D. But it’s going to take real learning, real patience, and real w-o-r-k. The four letter word so despised by Gen Y, and marketers who love Timothy Ferriss’ book,  The 4 Hour Work Week and its false promise of “passive income.”

 

There is no such thing as passive income that’s earned honestly, in the light of day. (As a point of possible interest, through our Membership program – www.womenshappiness.com/forum - which is free with every disc program for the first month, I PERSONALLY write back and forth with you in the forums and PERSONALLY get on the phone with you once a week for two hours. You see, it never goes passive, and there’s never “passive income.” It’s WORK. Good, honest work.)

There IS no INSTANT EXPERT. When someone has an instant anything, they are now called an Amateur with an interest in the subject, and an opinion on it, emotions, and possibly the beginnings of some beliefs about the subject.  They may make a good friend, interesting conversationalist, but they are not someone you ought to even think for a moment of paying for friendship with.

Gurus and those who follow them or pay for them confuse “beliefs” that are very emotional with expertise that is not based in emotion. They confuse opinions with facts, Amateurs with Gurus and Gurus with Experts.

You know this if you need brain surgery, and turn down your mechanic’s offer to perform the surgery, even if he has a hundred testimonials about how great he is at fixing things with his hands. He has an Amateur interest in fixing things with his hands and he knows nothing of surgical technique.

I personally am not an Expert at abdominal surgery even though I have assisted as a trainee at surgery in medical school and internship.  No way.

I’d rather be an Amateur dabbler in watching surgery on TV, or just the passive recipient of it if I ever need it, from the capable hands of an expert.

I won’t ever be getting surgery from a Guru of it, no matter how slick their website is, how many “satisfied customers” filled out a form, or how many quotable quotes they have at the tops of their Surgical Self-help For Dummies book chapters. I won’t be doing my own surgery on myself in other words, and neither ought you do it. We aren’t Experts.

Amateurs love what they think about or do, and often, so do Gurus. But loving something is not the same thing as being an Expert in it. In fact, many Experts (the surgeon is an example) hate what they do but are still far superior to help you and be worth paying for than even the most wildly positive, confident, surgically-minded mechanic. This is a great lie spread round the world by the “motivational speakers” who cheerlead Amateur masses into “becoming overnight experts through the power of positive thining.”

Positivity is wonderful, but paired with ignorance it is dangerous.

Amateurs can slowly grow into Professionals, and from there, with time and patience, into Experts through long, disciplined training at a unique or rare skill, innovating, using science and facts, not beliefs and opinions, and then delivering the public a service with reliable results. Not rah rah emotion-pumping.

Amateurs can also grow into Gurus.  In fact they take the low road quickly there – instant payment for the very same opinions – professing – through the skill of marketing, the only skill going on, and one not in service to you, but to the Guru.

But Gurus rarely grow into Experts. They’ve lost the Amateur’s willingness to work, to practice, to make mistakes, to learn and the come from true self of the aficionado rather than the false self of the marketer.

We understand Amateurs, Professionals, Gurus and Experts now, and are ready for our Three Step Bull Detection System.

 

 

EXPERTS AND EXPERTISE

This is who to pursue, and who to be, and the best part is that they aren’t busting through your boundaries to get you to pursue them. They aren’t breaking into your boundaries to get at your wallet. They love what they do and that’s the reward. If money comes their way it’s entirely secondary, but ironically, often far greater than the earnings of the Guru.

What is an Expert then?

1.    An Expert has done 10000 hours of practice – active training, learning and doing.

2.    An Expert is educated, experienced and trained at something rare or outside typical human experience, then innovates with it.

3.    An Expert is an active learner, innovator and deliverer of a service, not the passive recipient of one, or of second-hand information or skill. They find satisfaction at a craft through their internal life, not the externals, and they deliver something to you that you then OWN – not just the experience of their Personal Brand. If psychological, the changes you make are then internal rather than external.


THE RULES OF EXPERTISE

1. Patience, WORK, training, learning, education, practice, and experience at a rare skill, which you then innovate on, deliver to the public with a reliable RESULT -unique and traceable to YOU - is what gives you EXPERTISE. Sometimes that’s unpaid activity because they love what they do, like an Amateur does, but that’s where comparisons end.

2. Expertise also cannot be something that every human does in the course of being human – being nice to others, eating, exercising, dating, marrying, breaking up, attracting, counting money, sleeping, or any other ordinary thing. For those things, go to a friend, and do not pay. Expertise carries innovation in it, and that’s not ordinary things for ordinary experiences.

3. Being an Expert cannot be something passively acquired even if it is unusual, like falling off a cliff or having an appendectomy done to you. These things are rare and somewhat uncommon, but they do not make you a cliff-diver or abdominal surgeon. Practice, work, labor, training and learning do, and these are not at all passive or instant overnight things to acquire. These factors of high character naturally serve the public. It’s not “all about me” like it is with Gurus.

Neither my grandfather nor my mechanic had a PHD, but they had all the above, and they were or are, mature people who have opinions, based on facts, education, experience, and an intuitive sense grown through more than just instinct, emotion or “beliefs.”

Part of what makes people mature, and with potential to become Experts, are the boundaries I always talk about regarding our maturity level, our character.

That’s covered in MindOS Mastery at http://www.womenshappiness.com/mindos.

Hypnosis and other “influence techniques” are greatly loved by marketers. When maturity is not assessed in a marketer, their underlying job in a primitive, instinctual sense, is to BREAK DOWN YOUR BOUNDARIES and get into your wallet. It is the opposite of that which can most help a person grow strong and mature – that’s the irony of the self-help field.

If a marketer were also a mature person, they’d say that here are all the great features of what they have to sell, let them know what you need, be sure to save your money before getting it, and that it works for you, and finally, that it is well worth the price you paid. It’s a Win/Win transaction, and that is a second thing besides boundaries that I describe in MindOS, makes for a mature, high character person.

Now to the meat of the matter.



PATIENT AND DISCIPLINED - THE 10000 HOUR RULE

In his remarkable book on excellence and expertise, Malcolm Gladwell, an Expert Author and Journalist, gives us actual research backing of expertise in his book, Outliers, in the form of “becoming World Class.”

This means that the false claims from the school of the 4 Hour Work Week fall flat. He means truly, World Class.

If you want or need an Expert to help you, it means you don’t want someone average in what they do, but Expert at what they do.  In “World Class,” there’s plenty of room for more than just a “number one” or a “best seller,” but instead, many of them.

 

Which means that there’s plenty of room for you.

One wonderful finding in Gladwell’s book is that IQ does not matter. You do not have to be smart. You simply have to be “good enough” to not be completely incompetent – which is not hard to do – then practice at it for a total of 10000 or more lifetime hours, while actively paying attention to it.

He gives the examples of violinists and economists.  World Class is actually hard to reach - not for lack of really nice feelings about yourself, or for money, brainpower, a good family, or even friends – but because that amount of practice takes about ten years of heavy commitment, discipline and learning.

 

Remember you don’t need a Ph.D.

 

There was a man named Greg Mortenson who wrote a book called Three Cups of Tea. He did not have a Ph.D. But he was not a Guru either.

 

He had climbed mountains many times, but on his last try at the Pakistani mountain, K2, a storm swept in and ruined the chances of summitting. Problem was – it costs about $100,000 for each attempt. In failure, he retreated to a village with frostbite, where the villagers brought him back to health over a number of weeks.

 

While convalescing, he noticed little girls running around too and fro in broad daylight, and when he asked why it was they were not in school, the response was that only boys go to school.

 

Mortenson suddenly realized that while his expertise as a climber had merely LED to the encounter. It was his other, less-flashy expertise happened to be in FUND-RAISING. After all, he had raised $100000 repeatedly in order to make those climbs.

 

He is an Expert without a Ph.D., and not just a Guru. Not only is fund-raising skill rare and not easy, and not only does it take years to learn through experience, but his specific application of it to the deep educational need of girls in the Middle East is what makes him a World Class Expert.

 

It’s not his marketing. It’s everything we’ve covered, plus the fact that he’s applied his expertise to such a unique need, serving society.

 

Gurus seek fame for fames sake, and for survival because they always need more followers. Greg Mortenson happened to become famous as a side effect – one expertise led to the discovery of a need, then another expertise led to an innovation for others with an unusual human problem.

 

Now THAT’S an Expert. But how’s fame for him? Meh. Sure, why not?

 

Society doesn’t need more blogs about what it’s like to be the passive recipient of mundane but important human experiences such as marriage, dating, dieting, weight loss, sex, money for money’s sake, or anything else already common to all humans.

 

Being a girl in Pakistan or Afghanistan and having the chance to go to school is very, very, very unique. In fact it may not have been seen before.

 

Marketers and Gurus love telling stories, but stories are not a substitute for a real service, real skill, and real expertise.

 

Mortenson’s stories are not his service. The girls of his stories having real books in their hands are. That’s work, labor, effort, real learning, real discipline and patience. Real character-building experience.

 

10000 hours takes a whole lot of maturity to accomplish – not intelligence, but maturity – because it takes boundaries to have the discipline, patience, commitment, and devotion over the long, delayed-gratification of getting there.

Which means that it’s unlikely that a 23 year old is a true Expert at anything involving the major professions, although there are certainly artists and Olympic athletes who are World Class Experts at that.

Everything actually works out fair. You don’t have to be smart to be an expert, and you don’t even have to be older than 30 to find expertise at something. I for example, will never, ever, ever ever be a professional athlete – my time is far past for that, and frankly, I also was not competent to even start to train at athletics. I’m far too clumsy physically.  But many 23 year olds definitely have a shot at winning the world. They will have had to start at age 13 most likely, to be World Class, and an Expert even so.

Bottom line, being an expert takes 10000 solid, disciplined, committed, active learning, practicing HOURS, about TEN SOLID YEARS at something.

For an example of the patience of Gurus, check out this letter just auto-sent me by a Marketing Guru:

“ One of the most important things you can do in your business is create "expert positioning" in
your market or niche.

I've been successful in four different markets, and each time I've built up my "expert" or
"authority" positioning... and it has allowed me to grow my business faster and bigger than my
competitors who didn't have that positioning.

The good news is that this type of "positioning" is something you that you can actually create or
engineer.

This is important... you don't sit around and wait for someone to anoint you with expert status. You go out and get it yourself.

One of my favorite ways to get instant expert status is through product launches (big surprise, right?)... but that's not the only way.

G. H. just put together a video called "The Branson Effect" that shows how to quickly build up
your expert status (and it's a topic that G. H. knows something about - a couple of years ago he
was able to convince the Dalai Lama to come and speak at his "Engaged Today" workshop).”

All I can say is that even the Dalai Lama can be fooled by Marketing Gurus - poor guy - and he is DEFINITELY an Expert.

 

RARE AND SKILLED - THERE ARE NO EXPERT PIZZA EATERS

Once, I was noticing all the flooding into the internet of hundreds, thousands even, of those calling themselves “Dating Gurus” or experts.

Curious, I looked at some of their “Secret formulas for success” with women, dating etc.

It was silly. The kind of thing one learns from a gossip column, or a casual friend shooting the breeze while girl-watching at a bar.  And these guys were trying to turn it into “technology.”

Rubbish.

The tone of the “courses” or “products” felt full of personal interest or love of the subject – sex and dating. And who in the world doesn’t love those things?

I thought of how much I like Pizza, and could almost taste the delicious stuff in my mouth – the sensory metaphors of the marketer at the fore.  And I chuckled as I envisioned how it would not be surprising if their next “product” was “Secrets of Being a Master Pizza-eater.”

If all it took were enjoyment of a subject alone to make us Experts, well then we are all food, dating, sex, exercise, marriage, child, money and travel experts.  Every one of the billions of us who inhabit the Earth are then “experts” at those things.

And it may be, according to Keen in The Cult of the Amateur, what the internet has done to us. A cacophony of voices all praising the mundane joys of being human.

Nice.

Don’t pay for that.

So RULE TWO of detecting bull from a Guru is when what they sell or teach is too mundane, ordinary or something you could just learn from a friend, or from going out and living life instead.

Their expertise is not expertise unless it is a RARE or UNCOMMON human skill, one ACTIVELY learned, then INNOVATED ON (not merely cut and pasted, copied or modeled), and ACTIVELY delivered to you.

In other words, it’s not lame advice of a consultant on what you already know just by being a human being, and they SHOW you how to “do the thing,” as Chuck Yeager said.

No Pizza-eating Experts, Dating Experts or Gurus allowed.


ACTIVITY, CURIOSITY AND INNOVATION - EXPERTS AREN’T PASSIVE (HAVING AN APPENDECTOMY DOES NOT A SURGEON MAKE)

Finally, we have an exact measure of an Expert versus a Guru, and a Professional versus an Amateur.

The lady in the 20 year marriage is not an Expert even if she put 20 years into it. She’s wonderful at conversation, she’s fun, bright, sunny, friendly, but still not an Expert.

 

She passes the 10000 hour rule but utterly fails the second rule – people aren’t Experts at mundane, ordinary human functions. That’s just “selling a Personal Brand” like Paris Hilton does.

She’d also likely fail the third rule too: Gurus are passive dispensers of opinion, and passively – often impatiently – “acquire” their “status.” There’s not a real skill at a rare and needed service.  Gurus often teach what you can learn easily from chatting with a friend.

The Guru-marketer’s mind is always looking for the greatest area of need, and while Gurus like our marriage lady was on the right track with citing a longsuffering patience at marriage, it wasn’t simply BEING in one – even for a long time - that makes her an Expert.

 

It would have been actively training at a specific rare skill ABOUT marriage that can then be APPLIED through INNOVATION to a large market of those in need.

 

For example, if someone collects magazine articles about marriage, they have become an Amateur with a deep interest in marriage. They have an opinion now, and also spend time on this.

 

 

THE PATH FROM AMATEUR TO EXPERT

DOES NOT GO THROUGH SEEING OR BEING A GURU

 

·      If someone becomes a marriage counselor through a several year degree and now get paid, they have become a Professional.

 

·      If they go on to get a license, and spent five years actively seeing patients as a licensed marriage counselor they have moved a bit toward being an Expert.

 

·      If they spend ten more years staying active, attending some continuing education, they are even closer to an Expert.

 

If they then finish some research studies, discover new things, share with others, and the others agree, because they too, have repeated the experiments or used the new discoveries in hundreds or thousands of client encounters – for example, a scripted conversation that produces a 30 % reduction in divorce, similar to what renown marriage researcher John Gottman has done – that’s an Expert.

There is nothing rare about simply being in a marriage, and there are no innovations in a Guru’s words – just borrowed, cut and pasted opinions lifted from the real research of real experts, regurgitated and repeated.

 

The shared emotions, opinions and beliefs that join with the same marriage experiences of other women are a great conversation…

…that’s being a wonderful person and honest Amateur at marriage, the kind of person we all could enjoy socializing with, befriending, but NOT PAYING for opinions from.

Experts aren’t passive dispensers of opinion. They get dirty hands fixing your car, your shoes, your wiring, your pipes, your appendix or your mind with facts and skills that are deliverables not just emotional stories less compelling or personally intimate than those of your real life friends.

Maybe that’s why it’s so very attractive for marketers to tell nice stories full of emotions and beliefs, ending them with, “Hey, I’m just like you,” or “I was once as bad off as you,” or “I am what you could be.”

That’s a Guru.

An Amateur says, “Hey let’s have some fun exploring. Shoot me an email.”

And an Expert says, “I know what this is. I’ve seen it a thousand times. So what do you need and how can I help you with this?”
 

Through all this, another thing you are going to learn how to do is to notice all kinds of people and what they are in this easy system.

 

Celebrities, relatives, friends, coworkers, bosses, authors, coaches, consultants, employees, and random people on the street who talk your ear off.

 

Instantly you will now know whether they are a Professional Pizza-eater or an Amateur musician you want to befriend, a Guru of Abdominal Surgery just because they had an appendectomy, or an Expert at the subject of painting, the very same thing you just took up a class on.

 

You’ll know exactly where to spend your money, who to learn from, and most important of all, what to do with your time and attention.

 

Your friendships are really all you need in most of life, and they’re free.

 

But when you need something rare or out of the ordinary, there will always be Experts to rely on.

 

Upon request, Women’s Happiness is available for any and every deeper interest, concern or skill needed in the areas of romance, career, friendship conflict or personal growth.