Guy Reams (00:00.942)
Today is day 163, pain for clarity is a worthy.
So, it never ceases to amaze me how, and this isn't everybody, but a lot of people I know will go through tons of consternation to learn something. Like they know they have a weakness or something they need to understand better, so they'll spend hours and days researching, trying to figure it out, and they will just spin their wheels.
because they're just a resistant to actually hire anybody to pay them to give them advice. So they're just resistant to go get advice. So they'll go do figure it out all on their own and they'll spend months and days and years or whatever to try to figure it out and they'd never make much progress. And the problem's getting worse because when you go out on the internet and you start Googling around searching, you're basically using a search engine.
where the search engine's entire purpose is to link your searches with people that specialize in trying to sell you a product for that particular search.
So what you're actually doing is putting out there that you have a lack of knowledge in a certain topic and you become fodder for all of the companies and organizations out there that are trying to sell you something. So what ends up happening is you go down various diverse paths. You end up going down all these different paths to try to figure out this knowledge and you get attracted by all these software tools, subscription tools, AI tools. I mean, the explosion is crazy.
Guy Reams (01:43.118)
Like any topic that you lack knowledge in, go search for it and you will find no less than 30 or 40 subscriptions that you can buy that supposedly solve your problem. Well, none of them really will solve the problem because you don't understand the problem yet. You have zero clarity because you have no domain expertise. So I don't understand why you would not want to hire somebody for a few hours even if they have a high hourly rate. It doesn't matter.
because they could cut down all the noise for you very quickly because they have experience. Somebody who's done it before, gone through it over and over again, learned through the refiner's fire, gone through the school of hard knocks, they kind of understand what works and what doesn't work in the particular domain you're interested in. This is invaluable experience. So I would rather pay to have the direct experience
give me the clarity, then stumble around for days and months. Now, I have to admit, guilty as charged. When I was younger, I was too arrogant, or worse, I didn't want people to find out that I did not know, so I would do all the research myself. Now, when I was younger, there was no internet, or the internet was in its infant stages, so you could not Google around and figure stuff out.
My figuring stuff out was a lot more brutal. Nowadays, you think it's easier to figure stuff out because there's all this information at your fingertips. But in reality, it's much more difficult because there's a sea of charlatans, a sea of people wanting your money. So it's much more difficult to discern what is right and what is wrong. This is why paying for expertise is so important.
You can gain clarity through expertise. Now, expertise can also teach you what you should buy. They can teach you what process you should follow. They can give you guidance on a lot of things. All that's valuable too, but the most important thing is they give you clarity on what path to take. This is a tremendous amount of efficiency. Spending a little bit of time with a paid expert will make you tremendously more efficient because you will not be spending all your time.
Guy Reams (04:07.218)
researching new tools, investigating new shortcuts, or looking at what somebody else's opinion is that is just trying to sell you a product. Nowadays, it's really easy to find experts. There are expert networks out there. There are software. There are websites you can go to where you can hire an expert. There's hundreds of them now, and they're all pretty good. It's really easy to find a rapid acquisition of experts. And most of them are willing to go, you know,
do a consultation with you for an hour or two, and you will gain a lot of information. Most of them are thrilled to have somebody that will pay them for their knowledge and time. This is the new economy. You have creator, it's called the creator economy, solopreneur economy. And there's a wealth of knowledge out there that is right there at your fingertips so that you can understand and know a path that you should take. To me, this is a worthy investment.
So I don't know why there's this hesitancy. I think it's starting to break a little bit. I think the younger generations are more willing to pay people for expertise than older generations were. I think it's because there's probably a few reasons, but I think it's primarily because when I was growing up, I didn't want to be found out by the older generation. I didn't want them to know how inexperienced I was.
But now we are born into a society where it's more acceptable to be uninformed and you're simply trying to get informed. So I think that's a lesson in humility of being willing to accept that you don't know everything and willing to accept help. Now, you still got to overcome the barrier. It is okay and very acceptable to make an investment of a few hundred dollars to learn from an expert.
The challenges is when we're trying to avoid paying the expert. If somebody's giving you free advice, I mean, that's good. If you can find a mentor that will give you free advice, great. Lucky day. But if somebody's giving you free advice, you need to understand their motivation. What is the motivation? So I would always rather pay somebody for their advice, because then I know their motivation is to make an hourly wage rate for me.
Guy Reams (06:32.686)
which is perfectly okay. So in my opinion,
If you were trying to figure something out, then invest a couple hundred bucks, maybe more, to get the right expertise. Now, finally, I wouldn't just accept one. Nowadays, you can go out and get three or four. So I would go get four, three to five people all in the same domain and interview them all and get their collective experience. And you will see themes and patterns that they all seem to share. And that'll be a really good clue as to what...
you should take to solve your particular problem. So there you go. And by the way, this is what I do now. I have lots of things I'm trying to figure out. And so I've given up on this idea that I can figure it out all on myself. And so I hire experts to help me. Now, I eventually end up doing it myself, right? Because I want to. I want to figure this out myself. But I definitely lean on expertise to help me shortcut the process. Because I have learned that me researching a problem,
doesn't go very well. I end up spending way too much time on it and taking all these real crazy paths and coming up with new ideas that are not related to my original problem. So I would highly recommend hiring out the talent. Thank you.