A resentful reader responded to my last article with this…
“Coach Bru, I resent your remarks about only listening to one type of expert. I’ve studied and reported on so many other people in several industries that while I haven’t performed the actual work, I have an enormous amount of knowledge as a result. Which qualifies me as an expert.” – Joshua
Thanks Joshua. I’m SO not surprised by this response.
It’s commonly said that there are essentially two types of experts: reporter experts and results experts.
In my humble but highly accurate opinion, that is complete and utter bull$h!t. Reporters are not experts, they’re simply reporters. Only the person who has gotten the bonafide real life results is the actual expert.
You’re gonna want to listen to this like your life and business depend on it, because they do…
Case in point: In his book Think and Grow Rich, all Napolean Hill (reporter) did was allegedly interview people who grew rich (results experts) and he reported on those insights by assembling that information in a book which became famous.
The irony, Hill really should be best known for failure. As evidenced in The Biography of Napolean Hill, the man left behind a string of broken businesses. Which involved not paying creditors, forgery, mail fraud, auto theft, creating a fraudulent college, the sale of unlicensed stock and bankruptcy. Hill was also involved in a cult and even embezzled money from his own charity.
He also treated his first wife (he was married 5 times) and their children shabbily. They married in 1910 but didn’t honeymoon until 1919 due to a lack of finances. He pawned her engagement ring, borrowed money from her and then left her with the kids while he ran from his creditors changing his name from Oliver N. Hill to Napolean Hill.
“Napolean” claimed a lot of things that proved to be untrue, like being an attorney, helping President Wilson negotiate the German’s surrender in World War 1 and writing FDR’s Fireside Chats.
There’s also no proof that he actually met Andrew Carnegie or Ford, Bell, Edison, Rockefeller and the rest of the subjects he reported on in Think & Grow Rich. Hill claimed the interview notes were all destroyed in a warehouse fire.
This is just one of many examples and precisely why I don’t listen to “reporter ex-spurts”. And you shouldn’t either.
Simply put: Who would you want rescuing you from a hostage situation?
The person who wrote a book about Navy SEALS or an actual member of Seal Team 6 ?
I make it a point to expose the fraud in my industry as often as possible and make it the first topic of conversation with prospective coaching clients because the longer I’m in business the more I see this epidemic of not only unsolicited advice but UNQUALIFIED advice from ex-spurts passing themselves off as experts. I run into these posers all the time…
- The “life coach” in his early 20’s who has no meaningful life experience in the real world. But has interviewed a few successful entrepreneurs on his podcast.
- The business coach whose niche is helping people “Ditch Their 9-5 Job” and start a life changing business. Yet she is an employee for someone else’s company working you guessed it… 9-5. And my favorite…
- The “mental toughness goo-roo” who has no professional training or credentials in the psychology of human performance. But hired a ghost writer to pen several books under his name. And paid Result Source Marketing to get “his” books placed on best-seller lists in order to be seen as a subject matter expert.
(I’ve withheld names but sadly each scenario is 100% true.)
The incongruence in each of these cases is alarming at best and really down right fraudulent.
Which is precisely why I only take advice from one kind of person:
Results Experts… People who are already where I want to be or at least significantly further down the same road I’m traveling. And have the battle scars, bumps and bruises to prove they got themselves there.
The Takeaway:
Don’t listen to someone who tries to tell you how to accomplish something they haven’t done themselves. And sure as hell don’t pay them for god’s sake.
If you’re uncertain about someone’s credibility, take a good look at their body of work.
The fact of the matter is that people will never truly understand something until it happens to them.
In the case of Your’s Bruly’s body of work (or at least part of it)…
- I understand being fired… it happened to me. And as a result, I understand navigating career transitions because I’ve made several.
- I understand building a brand… because I’ve built one.
- I understand sales because I’ve built a book of business multiple times over in various industries.
If you’ve experienced it and come out the other side of it successfully THEN you’re qualified to give advice on it.
My Stadium Status system is results expert subject matter. And you’ll see that in the: “Them, Bru and You” format of each chapter of the book. I share stories of how I, my clients and other brands have applied the strategies to achieve real world, battle tested results. And most importantly how YOU can do the same.
Want results like that, click here.