When you’re a minimum wage call center worker, you feel stupid.
That’s what I was for a big chunk of my career. I earned $32,237 USD a year. Once I paid bills I had about $100 leftover each week if I was lucky.
I answered customer service calls in a bank and redirected people who’d called the wrong department.
When my mentor Joel suggested over a hot chocolate in Perth, Australia that I should write online, I burst out laughing.
“I’m not an expert in anything!”
To make matters worse, I had no university qualifications. I dreamed of being Jordan Belfort from Wolf of Wall Street but I was 10,000 steps away from that goal. Fairly sure he didn’t start out in customer service.
Then everything changed because of one silly podcast…
Steal your credibility from someone who has it
Joel told me you don’t need credibility.
You can steal it from someone else. I had no idea what to write about. He told me to record podcasts with people I admired, then write articles from the transcription of each call.
I felt sneaky and asked, “Can I mention your name when I reach out to successful people for interviews?”
He said yes. Not out of kindness but because his website would get free content from my hard work.
It was a win-win, the 101 rule of the internet.
The calls went terribly. I couldn’t get a clear sentence out and my snowball USB mic sounded terrible. Because I had to do these calls from work to align with the U.S. timezone, it made it 10x harder.
Every few minutes someone would knock on the meeting room door.
“We booked this room. You need to leave.”
Or my favorite: “I know you’ve booked the room, but a General Manager needs to use it last minute, so you must leave now.”
Getting outranked is the reason I hated working in banking. Even though the calls sucked and the articles sucked even harder, it got me writing. I started to get a rhythm going after that first podcast changed everything.
One cheeky thing I did was tell these guests they had to share the finished article on their social media. My following was zero but their following was enormous.
When choosing people to interview I purposely chose those who had audiences already.
Within a few months I had some credibility. People thought I must have been an expert because I was doing all these interviews.
No one knew the truth: I was a low-life loser who walked away from an eCommerce business and millions of dollars.
There are two types of experts. One type is dying.
First type:
Theory Experts. They became an expert through memorization. They were rich enough to pay $100K for a degree and give up 4 years of their life.
The world is tired of this type of expert. They want letters after their name to mean more than they do. They played the game by the old rules, but in a world full of AI, speed is now the ultimate leveler.
Anything an expert learns through theory and memorization, you can find out much faster through the internet and AI.
The traditional expert often has a huge ego. They think they’re owed something for their years of listening to professors and getting a tick in the box for class attendance. But the world is caring less about them.
“For many people ’20 years of experience’ is really one year of experience repeated 20 times” ― Reid Hoffman
Second type:
Practical Experience Experts. This is the category I accidentally joined. It’s where you do more research than is normal about a particular topic and write about it. It’s where you take information and try it out.
- You build a social media following.
- You run real Facebook ads.
- You ghostwrite for someone.
- You run the Boston marathon.
- You try out 10 different beds.
- You eat 100 hamburgers.
The key: you try something so other people don’t need to.
You’re an experimenter. You’re an average human who lives your life and does stuff people can then read about.
Practical experience experts win because they can present real evidence on their topic that is relatable to normal people.
I’ve learned people like reading normal writers more than they like reading pompous a-hole experts who think the sun shines out of their butt.
Being 10,000 steps ahead on a topic is unnecessary
A true expert is often 10,000 steps ahead on their topic.
I used to think I needed to be like that too or I wasn’t qualified to write about a topic. But can we relate to someone who’s 10,000 steps ahead?
If I rang up YOLO Elon and asked him for business advice, it’d go way over my head. The guy sends rockets to Mars and is a billionaire. I’m just a loner from Australia with a business 1/1000th the size of his.
Takeaway: it’s easier to learn from someone who’s 10 steps ahead.
That’s why the new dawn of writers is crushing it. We’re not experts but we’re 10 steps ahead of the readers who consume our work — that’s enough.
A key benefit of non-fiction writing is saving people time, and being 10 steps ahead delivers that outcome.
10 steps ahead, not 10,000.
Your social media bios are overrated
People get h0rny over their bio, especially on LinkedIn.
They fuss over every word like readers are giving up their entire day to read THEIR career history. LOL.
Readers read your name and one-sentence headline. Only a small percentage of them ever waste their time clicking through to read your full bio. I get millions of people reading my LinkedIn writing every month. Only a few thousand click my bio, according to my analytics.
A bio is you bragging about yourself. Most people know it’s B.S. What gives you credibility are the ideas you publish online.
There’s no avoiding imposter syndrome
I have it right now as I write this essay.
It never leaves you. There will always be someone who knows more than you or writes better. That’s fine and to be expected.
The best writers know they’re imposters and they don’t give a f*ck.
Become a curator of ideas & add in your average life
The best ideas are borrowed.
99% of us are not coming up with original ideas unless we’re Einstein or Leonardo Di Vinci.
Becoming an outlier in any field is stupid. You have a better chance of winning the lottery.
Instead, curate other people’s ideas in your writing. If you just do this, though, it’s boring as hell.
The second step is to add three things:
- Your ideas
- Your stories
- Your writer’s voice
- Your cultural heritage
It’s why when I write about a cliche person like Steve Jobs people still read it. It’s because it reads like Skippy the Bush Kangaroo who threw one too many shrimps on the barbie wrote it.
Chuck in a break-up, failed business, mental illness, bulimia, drugs and a few stories from my days working in a strip club, and you’ve got something people will read (and even pay for).
Closing Thought
Expert status is for people with big egos and hairy backs.
Most of us are average. Readers are average too. Write from where you are right now. Steal credibility. Borrow ideas and stories.
This writing thing is easier than you’re making it out to be in your head. I’m an imposter, you’re an imposter, so let’s all be imposters together.
Life is short and then you die. What have ya got to lose by writing?
