Becoming the "Expert"

[Kurt]

I'm old school in terms of defining a person as an expert, though I get what you mean, so I'll just call them "successful marketers" and they all have one thing in common which is the ability to "Reach out and touch someone" in ways that people will tend to market the "successful marketers" as so called experts.

I used to be old school too but have tried to break the habit because it was holding me back. I was introduced to levels of expertise. For example, #1 represents a certain level of knowledge and #10 represents mastery and the ability to help others. 

If I'm at level #1 at cleaning viruses out of PCs, designing websites, email marketing, etc. that means I know more than people at level #0 (no knowledge). So, I can legitimately go and help those folks with those tasks or teach them how to do it themselves.

Where the problem comes is when I'm at a low level but I claim to be at a higher level. That's fake it till you make it or lying. I may not be Peter Norton but I can get your PC secure better than billions of other people on the planet. Isn't that worth something?

Let's say you were stuck and sinking in quicksand. I happen to walk by and offer you a hand. Do you care about my emergency training or do you accept my hand? IOW can you help someone or not? Even if you can't help somone directly you can still offer them advice on what to look for just as I could run for help if I can't get you out of the quicksand myself.