Experts are experts because theyre not the ones who are confused. The only way you can continue to be an expert is to make sure that youre always one step ahead of your targets. If you lose that edge, then they are the experts and theyll have no reason to come back to you, let alone seek you out. Since the shelf-life of your expertise is dependent on repeat visits, its important to have just the right amount of confusion in your presentation to keep people wondering and asking for more. There are lots of ways to do this. One is to tell the targets that there are Ten Simple Concepts and, instead of naming them clearly (running the risk that someone will just read the steps and say, Thats all I needthanks! and then go to the next web page or book), they title each step so obscurely that the target must read on to get a glimmer of understanding. The important thing is that the people keep relating to whatever it is youre offering in the belief that youve got what they dont. With just the right distribution of confusion, you can keep the target feeling like she is actually learning something or even better still, bring her to the conclusion that she will never be the expert and needs to pay you to show her how. If you say it directly, your audience will say, Of course I already knew that! But if you obscure the obvious just a little, your targets feel like they actually discovered something valuable through you, of course and thats the most important part, besides the CC#. Remember, youre not in the business of offering something tangible, youre in the business of being an expert. Because you are an expert, you are privy to information that is beyond the scope of most of the people who turn to you for your expertise. As such, its important to refer to information that you know is just a little beyond their ability to grasp. Maybe even your own. Thats the beauty of it. You dont have to really know, it just has to look like it! One of the most effective ways to do this is to quote from a source that has absolutely nothing to do with your subject. If you present it as a metaphor for your subject, your targets will assume that you, since youre the expert, can grasp the obvious connotation, whereas they cannot. What that does is make them turn to you for an even more exhaustive explanation. Oddly enough, this usually costs them money. Take the whole idea of being an expert. Its about ideas. Let me quote an expert on an amazing amount of things. On page 163 of Confessions of a Dangerous Mind Chuck Barris explains, in dialogue quoting his future wife, If theyre big enough to fill a champagne glass, theyre adequate. And mine fill a champagne glass easily. If I had a champagne glass, Id show you. Fear not. That doesnt mean you actually have to be able to explain yourself. It just means you have to provide them with enough information to keep them in the loop until you present them with another piece of confusion that will then shift their attention off the previously unanswered question and prompt them to take out their credit card. And rememberciting the book and page and author is important. That ensures no one will check you for accuracy. But the most important part of this art is to be able to arm yourself with just enough information to keep them in the game. Is this all clear? |
