Chapter 65: The Expert Trap

I was on a call this week with a new client. She's been running a branding consultancy for years, gets her clients exceptional results, and has built her entire business on referrals.

She knew content was the next step, but every time she sat down to create something, she froze.

When I asked her what was getting in the way, her answer was something I've heard more times than I can count.

"Everything I know feels too basic to be worth sharing."

The Expert Trap

This is what happens when you get really good at something.

You spend years developing your craft. You study, you practice, you fail, you adjust. Eventually, things that used to be hard become second nature. Problems that would have stumped you five years ago now take you twenty minutes to solve.

And then a strange thing happens.

You stop being able to see what you know.

It becomes invisible to you, absorbed so completely into how you think that it no longer feels like knowledge. It just feels like common sense.

So when you sit down to create content, you draw a blank. Everything that comes to mind feels too simple, too obvious, or too basic to be worth putting out into the world. You assume everyone already knows this stuff.

They don't.

The person you were five years ago didn't know it. And there are thousands of people right now who are exactly where you were then, looking for exactly what you now take for granted.

That's the expert trap. The better you get, the harder it becomes to see the value of what you know.

Simplicity Is A Skill

Simplicity is the hardest part of communication, and the most underrated skill in any expert's toolkit.

The ability to take something complex and make it clear, to translate years of hard-won experience into something a potential client can immediately understand and apply, is a rare skill. Most experts don't have it because they've never had to develop it.

The people building the biggest audiences and businesses online have learned to make their knowledge accessible.

Alex Hormozi has built one of the largest business audiences on the internet. What he does better than almost anyone is strip away the complexity and explain things in a way that makes people actually understand the idea. That's what creates trust. Making people feel like they understand something they didn't before.

All the best creators do the same thing. They take what they know, strip out the jargon, and explain it in a way that makes someone think: “Ahhh now I get it”

Where To Start

The ideas you're sitting on aren't too basic. They're exactly what someone earlier in the journey needs to hear.

Most experts draw a blank when they sit down to create content, and the reason is usually the same: they're looking in the wrong direction.

They want to say something that sounds impressive. But the content that builds trust and attracts clients usually just answers a question they've been sitting with for months.

Think about the last conversation you had with someone where something clicked for them. Where you explained something and watched them immediately understand it in a new way.

That moment, that explanation, that reframe, that simple way of seeing it, is a piece of content.

The consultant I spoke with has years of those moments. She just didn't see them as content.

By the end of our call, she had ten ideas. Not because she learned something new, but because she finally saw the value in what she already knew.

You probably have ten ideas too. You just haven't looked at them that way yet.

— Dodds

P.S. In March I'm opening a few spots to work 1:1 with me over the next 3-6 months. If you're a founder, consultant, agency owner, or service provider who wants to use content to grow your business, we'll get clear on your narrative and build a repeatable system that brings the right people to you. You can apply here.