Tag / expertise

by Nathan Coumbe

Expertise must come before audience

We have the process backward for becoming well-known.

The current wisdom is to become famous (most likely on social media) to obtain a big audience. Once you have said audience, you can make a living off them by selling their attention or whatever random idea you decide to push.

However, the opposite approach is not only less sleazy but will also lead to lasting rather than fleeting success.

Imagine building a huge following on social media, then selling financial advice (or God forbid, products!) to that audience without knowing anything about the field. You’d quickly be labeled a fraud or scam artist. (Unfortunately, this happens every day.)

If, instead, you started by building your expertise in the field of finance, then built an audience who would benefit from your knowledge, you would have a group of people who trusted you. And trust is almost as good as currency in the modern economy.

by Nathan Coumbe

Experts can’t breach trust

The true expert knows more than you do.

The dentist knows whether you need a filling. You can’t possibly know what the shadow she’s showing you on the X-ray means. Not without years of specialized training, anyway.

But when the expert acts in bad faith—when the dentist gives you unnecessary dental work that breaks things enough another dentist has to fix it—that trust is broken. And it’s difficult to rebuild.

For many, it destroys trust in all experts. And we see where that gets us: conspiracy theories, denialism, and heterodoxy.

We must have faith in our experts, but they can’t exploit it. Not without serious social consequences.