One of my underrated skills has always been the ability to find people weirder and more wonderful than I am.
Recently, I’ve been sometimes chatting with a guy who used to train diplomats and military guys accelerated language learning.
That topic in itself is something for another day. Mostly because I’m still getting trying to get the information out of him because the weird and wonderful experience guys tend to be cranky about sitting down and typing out stuff they already know.
Anyway, it’s only really when I talk to other people that I realise finding weird and wonderful experts isn’t something other people do so well.
And because it’s Sunday and I’d frankly rather be outside doing something else, I’ll just quickly rustle up a list of things you need to bear in mind to get to the cranky experts of the world.
#1: You Can’t Be A Normie
Let’s get something straight right out of the box. The guys that have weird and esoteric knowledge in life aren’t that way because they read a blog post, did the bare minimum at whatever field they’re in and then routinely stopped doing it because the latest episode of The Walking Dead came on.
And they’re not likely to appreciate if you’re the same.
Most people who ask for advice aren’t serious about taking it. They ask stupid questions (more on that in a minute,) give stupid responses and want the world to fall at their feet because they had the “courage” to send a five word question on Twitter or something.
Most people who are legitimately interesting are so because they’re passionate about whatever they’re involved with. It’s a state of being as opposed to a shopping list.
If you pop into their life and treat what they’re passionate about as some mere curiosity or temporary relief from your boredom, that’s not a very nice thing to do.
So the first rule really is that if you’re going to approach someone passionate, you should mirror that interest or not waste their time.
#2: You Can’t Ask Stupid Questions
Some people say, “There’s no such thing as a stupid question.”
They are wrong.
99% of questions the average person asks of an expert are the most stupid things you’ve ever heard of.
They either fall into one of two categories:
- Stupid questions you could work out yourself (or Google)
- Weird questions that have nothing to do with anything
The former is just laziness seeping through and you shouldn’t ever be in the first camp. Imagine if you had a free consultation with a top bodybuilder guy and your questions were, “Should I lift weights or just do pushups?” or “Is it really true that if you take steroids you die?”
You just wasted your free hour and you wasted his time too.
Now, this isn’t a problem in the normie mind, because they don’t vaue anyone else’s attention. So a guy might work for ten years on a project and some guy on Twitter will think it’s his god given right to skip all the hard work and waste the guy’s time with dumb questions. This will never endear you to anyone.
The second type of stupid question is just attention-baiting. Again, it won’t ever endear you to someone who knows what they’re talking about.
I saw a good example of this the other day. I watched a live Q and A with Alexander Cortes where he was answering questions on natural testosterone optimisation (I think – he’d just had his blood work done.)
As is custom with all his Q and A’s, people tried to get his attention with stupid questions.
- “What are your thoughts on cereal?”
- “How do you get your chest hair so curly?”
- “What do you think about beaches?”
Don’t do this if you want to be taken seriously. You are wasting someone’s time.
#3: You MUST Follow Through And Be Willing To Do What You’re Told
This is the biggest killer of relationships between unofficial students and unofficial mentors.
People ask questions all the time.
Very few are ever thankful for any answers they get.
Even fewer ever take any action based on the advice they’re given.
But think from the point of view of a person giving you advice: You’re basically slapping them in the face if they condense years of work and knowledge acquisition into a digestible format for you, and then you just ignore the whole thing.
Do not approach someone for advice unless you’re willing to take it. Again, this all comes back to you wilfully wasting someone’s time and not appreciating what you’re given.
#4: You Must Recognise That You’re Talking To A Human
I touched quickly above on looking at it from the expert’s point of view.
This is an important thread.
Especially in the internet age, it’s easy to fire off an email asking a dozen (mostly stupid) questions and then never think about what happens on the other end.
Bear in mind I’m not really an especially expert person and I’m not an interesting person in the slightest. But I still get questions every day about stuff and I have some sort of a life to live.
And yet every so often some guy will email me over night, and I’ll wake up to two or three emails from them because I haven’t responded immediately.
Or I’ll ask them some questions and I won’t hear back for two weeks.
Or any myriad other things that are just irritating because it shows that other person doesn’t remotely care about my schedule or whether or not I get any benefit out of conversation with them.
Now I imagine if I were an expert. One guy I know (and consider a sort-of mentor) gets 400 emails a day from his various enterprises. Now, most of those things go through an admin girl, but I get the direct line to his personal inbox.
I don’t mess him around and use him like an entertainment toy.
People are people and you can’t just act like someone is at your beck-and-call because a) they’re not and b) you’ll get kicked out of their confidence quickly if you do.
#5: You Must Synthesise The Information for Yourself
I wrote above about using the information you’re given. This is absolutely the only first step you should take and, like I said above, if you’re not willing to use someone’s advice, don’t waste their time.
But let’s get on to why a person gives the information to you in the first place.
Most of them do it because they enjoy the subject, sure, but they also want to remake the world with more of what they love in it.
Go find an old man who has dedicated his life to gardening. Chances are if you show an interest in gardening, he’ll happily give you all the information you need and be happy to do so.
There are a ton of personal reasons for him doing this but among them is he loves gardening and loves beauty in the form of horticulture.
And so sure, you must take his advice and use it. But the next step is to give that guy what he wants.
You take the knowledge, use it and report back to him your findings. He’ll give you more information.
Eventually, you are adding things to the conversation he never knew himself. You’re helping him at this point. He’s still more of an expert, but there’s tangible value to your conversations for him.
Invite him to your garden. Let him know what you’re experimenting with. Internalise the head start you’ve been given.
This is where you become valuable to your mentors.
#6: Show Gratitude… You Don’t Have To, But You Should
Now I’d assume it goes without saying that if somebody has helped you along the way, you should pay them back in gratitude, kindness and the spoils of war.
But plenty of people don’t do this.
In fact, there are some really ungrateful people out there and it blows my mind the level to which people are entitled and then ungrateful.
Now, I’m not the conscience that sits on your shoulder, so by all means ignore this grandpa advice.
You don’t have to show gratitude, but you absolutely should.
It creates a positive feedback and all that from a pragmatic sense. From a moral sense stop being an ungrateful bastard.
Here’s the thing: weird and wonderful folks with expert knowledge are rare and in an era where everything is supposed to be disseminated into 280 character soundbites, expert knowledge is getting rarer.
And for every actual expert or someone remotely interesting, there are a million people who are zoned out on Netflix. More egregiously, for each eccentric genius there are a thousand fakers with their hyped up Instagram accounts and their totally not paid for Playboy photoshoots talking a big game with no substance behind it.
So when you get something valuable from someone authentic, you should be grateful, because it’s very much a limited resource and likely an endangered species.