Overcoming The “I’m Not An Expert” Hurdle
One of the hurdles many people new to Internet Marketing experience is the notion that they are not an expert.
They look to the Internet having an idea that it could help them to make some money.
Then almost immediately, they become overwhelmed by all of the knowledge that they feel they need to learn to become an expert.
Maybe they decide that they would like to teach or coach other people but need to become an expert first.
Maybe their “well-meaning” family and friends criticize them with the common “how can you teach anybody something when you’re not an expert in it yourself?”
That’s certainly happened to me in the past.
In his book entitled “The Outliers” Malcolm Gladwell talks about it taking 10,000 hours to become an expert at a new skill. ( If you haven’t read his book it’s well worth it ).
That theory received a lot of news interest when it was first made public and maybe, at least in part, that’s where this general view of it taking a long time to become an expert has come from.
While it certainly is true that many ‘experts’ did put in that level of time honing their skills, they got better over time. They didn’t suddenly become expert immediately at the 10,000 hour level.
One thing about them is true though and it applies to Internet Marketing as it does to anything else.
They all have one thing in common and that one thing is that they focused on one skill.
The Beatles (who Malcolm quotes in his book) focused on music. Eric Clapton was never seen without a guitar when he was growing up. Playing guitar is all he’s ever done.
The same holds true for top athletes, footballers, baseball stars … you name it, they all focused.
But I question whether it takes 10,000 hours to learn a new skill well enough to be able to teach it to others.
Check out this TED Talk by Josh Kaufman for a different perspective on this.
So you see that it looks like it only takes 20 hours to get good enough at something to be able to sound really “expert”.
Has the idea of not being an expert been holding you back from moving your business forward?
Have you been listening to your “well-meaning” friends and delaying your online progress?
Follow Josh’s advice;
Focus on one skill
Practice it as often as you can, preferably everyday
Ramp up your 20 hours
And go for it
All it takes is 20 hours and belief.
Until next time,
