An Expert's World

You’ve just been informed you’re being sued.  The transmission blows in your car.  You have mind-numbing pain in a tooth.  You’ve just been told you have a rare form of cancer.  Your child is suffering from autism.  

These are circumstances, of varying degrees of seriousness, which we all hope to avoid.  None are fun and a couple are downright scary.  But when these things occur (and they do to hundreds, perhaps thousands of people every day), who do people call?  Experts.  They want to find the person with the highest qualifications to help deal with the challenging circumstance in which they find themselves.  Most often people are more than willing to bare the higher cost of that expert care.  Think about it.  Much of our world is intricate and complicated and most of us have neither the knowledge or skills to deal with the challenges ourselves.  But we want the BEST results.  

So who do we call?  Oh, we have choices.  Lots of choices.  How many mechanics are out there?  How many dentists?  Doctors?  Do we turn to the internet for the answer, or the yellow pages?  DEFINITELY not the latter!  Typically we look to friends who we think will know who the “best” is, or we ask experts who should already know who the “best” is and where to find them.  We all tend to trust a reference because that person referring us already has some knowledge or, more importantly, the experience to know.  Because experience matters.  I guarantee that when you are told you have cancer, you won’t be looking for just anyone recently out of medical school.  You will look for someone with many years of expertise in your particular kind of cancer.

But this is an extreme example.  Every day we need help from others and we always hope we are getting a qualified expert, whether it is to repair the dishwasher or treat your sick dog.  And generally speaking, those with greater knowledge and skill charge higher fees, get more referrals and have more successful outcomes.  Where would you like to be on that scale?

The strange thing is, EVERYONE is an expert in something.  If nothing else, at least in themselves.  Nobody is more expert in you, than you.  But what you become expert in depends very much on what you spend your time doing.  An expert mechanic doesn’t get to be so from spending his days in front of the TV.  If he did, he’d be an “expert” in TV programming, not repairing cars or dishwashers.  (and last I checked, there’s not much call for experts in TV watching!)  Over the course of your life, you WILL become expert in something, maybe even several things, but you can CHOOSE in what area(s) you’ll become expert.  Choose something productive and rewarding.  Find something you enjoy doing that means something.  Become an expert by doing it a lot.  The more other people value your knowledge and skill, the better you will be compensated.  Do it better than ANYONE else, and you will be VERY well compensated.  Just remember, experts become so only through hard work, perseverance and incremental improvement over time, but they all started where you are today.

In what will you become expert?

Dan Scheerer, SmartGeorge