Professionally one of my main reflections of the lockdown of 2020 as a result of Covid-19 will be how people threw themselves so cheaply and so freely to give their time and their expertise away.
As I write this I’m reminded of a wonderful scene in The Simpsons where Selma (one of Marge’s twin sisters) is about to go on a date with Principal Skinner.
As she’s leaving the house Homer shouts “Take it to the hoop Selma” to which Selma replies “Time to give away my love like so much cheap wine”.
Expertise is valuable because it’s valuable and non-commoditised.
When you try to commoditise it you reduce it’s value to almost or in fact entirely zero.
If you gave free stuff away as much as possible and cheapened your expertise, you can’t expect to sell it now.
Tough to be brave, I know, but expertise is valuable and while almost all people in the population are prepared to spend extraordinary amounts of money on takeaway food and even more available takeaway entertainment, you shouldn’t forget where you sit in the hierarchy of expertise and value.
The other thing to remember is that practical skills are practical, and skill based.
One of the side effects of the webinar warriors was to produce a group of people who now think they’re better skilled than they were when they went into Covid-19 from a practical point of view.
That’s basically impossible.
You can’t learn the skills required to make a banjo from a tree by watching a YouTube video.
You can learn the process but the skills have to be practised.
Your first ‘tree banjo’ is likely to be a sh*t show.
Maybe when you get to your hundredth or your five hundredth will you be good at it and the value of watching the free YouTube video in the first place will pay dividends.
People forget about the cost of the five hundred banjo’s made until you get good at it.
Blog Post Number - 2452
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