Life's #1 Rule: Becoming The Expert Non-Expert

Life is filled with rules, and marketing your material is evidently no exception.

Writers and consultants I've read and heard suggest a myriad of rules to follow: Build a platform. Get a website. Blog. Expose yourself...

I think that means make your name and work known. At least, I hope it does.

A recurring suggestion states that the writer should become an expert in an area that makes him––and henceforth, his book––salable. 

The advice feels sound. Based on the evidence the advisers provide, it is sound. The problem for us marketing neophytes, however, is determining what that area could possibly be for us. 

I presented that issue to my wife one day as we emptied a trunkload of books into the garage. She said, “You have two bachelors degrees, went to graduate school, taught for 35 years, and have a library full of fiction, nonfiction, and reference books. You must be an expert on something!”

Sadly, no. 

That’s not false humility. I speak from experience. Every time in social and professional gatherings, whenever discussions veer into my favorite topics, someone knows more than I do. The problem, I have learned, is that despite my ego, it is quite obvious that there’s no subject where I know all there is to know.

Today I had a revelation: "Hey! That' s my area of expertise! I am the expert non-expert. In fact, that is my greatest asset."

I have absorbed life's greatest lesson: The more I learn, the more I know I need to learn. No time for resting on laurels. No time for medal/trophy polishing. No time to boast. Time to just shut up and learn.

A degree in history earned forty years ago? Times have changed. There's a little catching up to do.

A degree in English? Good chance I missed a few books written before 1976. There's an even better chance of having missed a few since.

Journalism? The practice and laws governing the practice have altered a tad. What was once only print and broadcast has morphed and now includes cyber pages, blogs, and Joe-Bob Wampeter forwarding fuzzy and creative “news” to anybody with an email account, a smartphone, and an IQ over 27.

Teaching experience? Every year at the front desk, one notices that techniques and students change. Science discovers more about how the brain works. Materials and delivery systems change. Technology improves. Subjects, programs, and entire professions disappear. As trends and appreciations transform, students teach as much as instructors do. 

Spiritual knowledge? Every truth leads to more questions. Every question leads to more answers and more truth, BUT more questions. The cycle continues ad infinitum. 

Here's the issue: Many of us find uncertainty and constant change frustrating.

If we are honest with ourselves, however, uncertainty and change are, in fact, liberating. Realizing how incomplete our learning is frees us to learn more. 

And that is the main problem we have accepting the title of expert. To accept the mantle of expert only confines us to what we already know, a position surely to be outpaced by events and discoveries. Only by realizing our inexpertise in EVERY area can we learn what we need to know.

Becoming an all-knowing expert is impossible. We cannot learn all there is to know about any subject.

What we can become––and be as long as we breathe––are authoritative learners, people knowledgeable on certain subjects, aware of our deficiencies, and willing to learn more about everything of which we were once so sure.

So how does one market being the authoritative learner, the non-expert? 

Learn all you can. Then, like all the world's "authorities," follow Life's #1 Rule: Fake it and fake it big.

With a few decades of practice, I'm kind of an expert on that.