I was at a very large networking event recently and I meet dozens of professional and competent people. Two however stuck out in my mind.

The first one was a very young woman who claimed to be a SEO (Search Engine Optimization) expert. Initially I was surprised that a person so young could be an expert at anything much less SEO, although she was quite professional and articulate, I just couldn’t see her being an expert. I asked her to have cup of coffee with me and discuss SEO and a possible referral relationship.

During our talk it became readily apparent that she did know something about SEO but was no expert. She could take a well developed site with a huge amount of content and upgrade it’s ranking, but when I pressed her she had no idea how to optimize a lesser quality site nor could she offer suggestions to improve the site.

I ask her how many hours, days, weeks, months, years she had been specializing in this craft and she replied that she had been working for a web development company for two years and drilling further down I found that SEO was about 20% of their business.

The second person was a middle aged engineer that claimed to be a systemization (and Lean Manufacturing) expert. Both of these are favorite topics of mine so we arranged to meeting the next week to talk.

Again this man was no expert. He had been on teams (not a team leader) that did two systemization implementations and had been interested in Lean for many years but had no installation expertise or practical knowledge.

My point to all of this is that it takes:
     1,000 hours to become competent in a craft
     5,000 hours to become a master of your craft and
     20,000 hours to become a virtuoso

I would consider an expert to be a “master of their craft” not merely competent. Neither of these people were competent, much less masters of their craft. Be careful of “Experts”. Drill down on their experience and qualifications, ask the relevant questions, and ask the “dumb” questions. It should become apparent whether they can walk the walk or just talk the talk. There are many people out there that claim to be experts and either through purposeful misrepresentation or foolish inexperience are nothing of the kind.

These charlatans can cause your business irreparable harm and drain your cash. BE CAREFUL.