5 Ways To Know You’re Actually An Expert At Something
“Expert” is just like the term “viral.”
It gets thrown around way too much these days.
That writer’s an expert. That other writer’s an expert. That one writer will teach you HOW to be an expert (with his 14-step Morning Routine that has nothing do with actually gaining any knowledge at all).
What does “expert” even mean? Here’s a definition:
ex·pert
1. a person who has a comprehensive and authoritative knowledge of or skill in a particular area.
“Comprehensive knowledge” is kind of hard to quantify, we get that, so how the blazes can we know for certain we’re an expert at something?
When is it right to start attaching our name to it in blog posts, Twitter bios, and LinkedIn status updates?
I have a few ideas for you..
1. When You Start Getting Invited Onto Podcasts
I don’t care if the podcast literally just started. I don’t care if the host has interviewed their brothers/sisters for the first three shows. I don’t care if they have the crappiest artwork of all time on iTunes..
If you get invited onto a podcast show/show of any sort for an interview, then congratulations, you can call yourself an expert.
“How do you quantify this, Tom?”
I can hear the questions coming now.
Ready for my response?
Ya can’t.
But you also can’t really quantify real knowledge either unless you take a test — which hasn’t happened to much of anyone since college.
Here’s the foundation I base my argument on..
Podcast hosts don’t invite random people onto their shows to fill episodes. They want their new venture to go well. They want hella downloads. They want to present their podcast in the best light possible.
If you’re really beginning to make noise in any area of expertise, then getting invited onto a podcast show/show of any kind is sort of telling you that you got the juice.
For anybody that doesn’t listen to Hip-Hop, that means you got the cache to back up your claims.
Podcasts are great because both parties have something to gain. One person gets exposure and the other gets great content.
In a game that’s as laser focused on exceptional content as podcasts are, it’s quite a statement for someone to invite you on. That means they think of you as an expert, and when one person thinks of you as an expert — you kind of are.
2. When You Start Getting Emails From Random People
The first email you ever get from somebody should be printed out and framed on your wall.
Congratulations, you’re onto something.
Getting comments on an article is one thing, but when you move someone so much that they actually find your email and send you a thoughtful question/message, you can be sure you’re an expert.
Here’s why I think that..
It takes a lot of knowledge to move someone to do that. It takes a deep understanding of your subject matter to prompt a response that’s that thoughtful.
Understand one thing guys: Expertise doesn’t mean fame/fortune.
Being an “expert” just means you have a thorough amount of knowledge on a particular subject.
In time, if you’re doing it right, you’ll gain a following around your expertise, but that doesn’t always happen immediately.
Just yesterday I hit Nicolas Cole on Twitter and he responded. I told him I loved his content. What I didn’t know was I was actually telling him I thought of him as an expert, too, with that message.
3. When The Internet Trolls Arrive
Ahh, the trolls. You should honestly love them.
Why? I’ll give you a quick couple bullet points..
- They think so highly of you that they ACTUALLY believe a comment on YOUR article will bring some attention to themselves. This means they think you got the juice. This is the most indirect compliment ever.
- True knowledge of a topic doesn’t always go softly into that dark night. True knowledge sometimes goes hand-in-hand with alienating others.
Vultures don’t circle overhead when there’s nothing of value for them on the ground.
Congratulations, you have haters!
4. When You Get Your First 1,000 Email Subscribers
I’ll tell you one thing..
You can fool maybe 10–20 people into opting in for your mailing list if you’re good at marketing yourself, but you won’t get 1,000 people to opt-in unless you really got the juice.
That phrase keeps coming up and I love it.
1,000 opt-ins basically comes after 6–12 months of solid posting.
When you’re writing that much about an area of expertise, you can bet you’ve mustered up enough knowledge to call yourself an expert.
Side Note: 1,000 email opt-ins is such a large accomplishment. If you have 1,000 subscribers, highlight this and hit me in the comments section because you deserve 50 claps.
If you’re near 1,000, still highlight this and hit me in the comments because you’ve been grinding for a while and deserve some attention from someone other than an internet troll ;).
5. When You Start Having ‘Dr. Strange’ Moments
What do I mean by ‘Dr. Strange’ moments?
Remember that moment in Dr. Strange where Benedict Cumberbatch rapidly catapults through 5,000 different dimensions in a matter of three minutes?
It’s awesome, right?
RAPID intellectual progress ensues for our protagonist as he finally sees the inner-workings of a world that previously made zero sense to him.
I’m not saying this has happened to me before (if it did I’d wake up with a full diaper), but I’ve almost felt like it’s happened to me a few times.
The other day I was driving somewhere when all of a sudden my brain rattled off into oblivion. I started connecting things in my mind that I’d never connected before about content, headlines, platforms, and blogging.
It was so intense that about thirty seconds later I realized, “Hey, you’re actually driving and you need to pay attention.”
When you understand something so deeply that you lose track of reality for 30 seconds to a minute contemplating new possibilities, then yeah..it’s a good sign you’re an expert — or starting to be one.
“If a new result is to have any value, it must unite elements long since known, but till then scattered and seemingly foreign to each other, and suddenly introduce order where the appearance of disorder reigned.”
— Wilfred Bion
You see, there’s an important aspect of expertise we haven’t talked about yet..
Originality.
I believe you can have expertise without it for a time, but I also believe that if you’re truly an expert about something then an original thought will rear its head at some point in time.
Original thoughts are sometimes born from these “entering the Matrix” moments where our minds fly about through the stratosphere unhinged until we land on the brink of a massive discovery.
Now, you CAN be an expert without astral-projecting and screaming like Dr. Strange for three straight minutes — but it’s a good sign if you have a moment that’s even remotely similar to this one.
There’s Billions Of Tell-Tale Signs You’re An Expert
This short list of five points isn’t all you need to know about being an expert. There’s so many ways to find that out for yourself, but to help you out even more if none of the above have ever happened to you..
You’re well on your way to becoming an expert if you spend copious amounts of time being a practitioner.
I listen to everything Gary Vee says about social media because he’s out on the battlefield actually TWEETING and hash-tagging the crap out of his Instagram posts.
When you spend a lot of your time being a practitioner first, you’ll turn into an expert without even knowing it.
I firmly believe everyone who’s truly an expert becomes one before anybody knows who they are.
Keep that in mind, and keep the faith.
Guys, the one thing I’m an expert on is Medium.
If you’re interested in making money blogging here, I have a free 5-day email course called “Your First 1,000 Medium Followers” that will teach you how to build an audience here on Medium! Sign up for it right here.
