How to have a career in the expert industry

Written by admin. Posted in Kolumnis

Don’t tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do, and let them surprise you with their results. - George S Patton, US general and World War II hero

I don’t get it. The recent proliferation on the internet of financial and economic “experts” following the ringgit’s recent fall in value has surprised me and many of my fellow economists.

We were unaware that these know-it-alls resided among us and that if their expert advice and opinions were adhered to in the first place, we would not be in such a terrible mess! Too bad we did not listen to them. Heck, even my pimply 16-year-old neighbour has something to add to the just-concluded Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) trade talks. “Uncle, it is disguised economic colonialism by the US,” she whispered to me, nodding knowingly.

 So, who are these self-proclaimed experts? I put it to you that they are mostly anonymous cut-and-pasters with personalities so big that they want to weigh in online whenever discussions du jour are conducted at the virtual roundtable. While a few of them have got some understanding of the issues at hand, many sensationalise their “half-baked’ contributions with spurious half-truths and statistics, relying on the ignorance and gullibility of the great unwashed to embellish their claims to expertise.

 This, dear readers, is a ghastly slur on the community of real life “life experts” whom I admire greatly.

 For the uninitiated, there really is an “expert industry” supporting the global economy – a community of people who share their advice and knowledge with the world and get paid for it. I know this from experience­­– I was stumped by an “expert” for a few thousand ringgit recently because I needed advice on a new business that I was considering, but was not confident I knew all the curves and bends involved. He obviously did not put “expert” on his business card (he preferred the more humble “consultant” as his title) but it’s all the same.

 Curious, I began to look into this expert industry and this was what I found.

 Experts are people you see in boardrooms and on television and even online, sharing advice on how to improve your life or grow your business. They are ordinary people who have synthesised their life experience and have created products and programmes for sale to the public. They have articles, blogs, podcasts, videos and more, all of which are extremely easy and cheap to create, thanks to the internet. In many cases, they have become well known or famous simply for sharing their advice and how-to content.

 This point has been proven by the enduring and powerfully influential careers of certain personalities who are now household names around the world. When an expert finds his or her real message and delivers it with care, compassion and consistency, the world takes note.

 Tony Robins, for instance, has been inspiring people to find their personal power for over 30 years, and he has reached millions of people worldwide and built a multi-million-dollar empire under his brand in the process. His latest work, Money, is as good a book on financial advice as you can find on the bookshelves.

 Steven Covey took seven simple habits for being effective and built a billion-dollar company while keeping The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People on the bestseller list for almost 30 years.

 John Gray took a simple idea – that men and women often seem to be from different planets – and turned it into a three-decade phenomenon of books, speeches, workshops, coaching and online videos under the Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus empire.

 Oh, did I forget the big O, Oprah Winfrey? She is an eminent member of this august club.

 I mention them here because they have name recognition and can give a “face” to the expert industry. They also illustrate the diversity of expertise that they have all mastered and monetised.

 And they have made millions doing it. In effect, they have monetised their message, and they get paid more than you could ever fathom. They are the entrepreneurial experts of the information age.

 What I am talking about is not about your becoming an expert in order to become a “knowledge worker” for some drone-creating global company. The knowledge worker is a long-dead concept, and in the new creative age –fuelled by content, authenticity, trust, search engines and social media – the new class of creatives and experts will work for themselves and create real relationships with people based on valuable advice and information.

Have you read Napoleon Hill’s famous Think and Grow Rich? If you haven’t, you must. The book is about how to build a wealthy, fulfilling life and has been called one of the most influential wealth and achievement books in history. Generations have called it one of the most pivotal books of their lives, and it has sold millions of copies in many languages worldwide.

 What is fascinating about this book is that by all accounts, Napoleon Hill was never financially rich and never a wild success himself (certainly before he wrote the book). So, how could he have become one of the most influential experts and authors in the history of the expert industry?

The answer is simple: he researched and reported on his topic.

 The story behind Think and Grow Rich is that Hill interviewed rich people like Andrew Carnegie and his wealthy friends. From these interviews, Hill simply synthesised what they were saying-finding the common threads or their conversations and distilling the lessons they learnt – and best practices into useful chunks of information that help ordinary people understand the topic.

 People paid and continue to pay for this book because it can improve their lives and take years off their learning curve.

 That is the process of being a research expert. Choose a topic that people find valuable, research it, interview others on it, synthesise what you learn and offer your findings for sale, so others can learn and improve their lives.

 Luckily, because of the great democratisation of content and distribution that the internet has brought us, every one of us can create and distribute valuable, researched how-to content that helps other people.

 In this new economy, we can all be influencers and we can  all be paid for our knowledge without having to work for someone else. If you have a message and an internet connection, you can have a career in the expert industry and get paid for what you know. Becoming an experts is simply a matter of positioning and packaging who you are and what you do so that you can help the greatest number of people in your target audience.

 In the current fragile economy, when so many people are looking for their next step and desperately seeking advice, success strategies and how-to information, we need more real life experts. Cut-and-pasters need not apply.