Get your free personalized podcast brief
We scan new podcasts and send you the top 5 insights daily.
To become an expert in a developing area like social media, one must be a practitioner actively doing the work. Many people read, talk, and form opinions without any hands-on experience, which is like reading about push-ups instead of doing them to get strong.
Related Insights
Rather than trying to start a new venture from scratch, ambitious young people should find a master in their field and make themselves useful. By helping with menial tasks and demonstrating value over time, they can earn a place on the team and gain invaluable experience that is impossible to acquire alone.
To capitalize on emerging opportunities like NFTs or LinkedIn ads, passive understanding isn't enough. Vaynerchuk advocates for actively dedicating a significant block of time—at least 25 hours—to deeply learn the mechanics and nuances. This focused effort separates dabblers from experts who reap rewards.
The actual measure of learning isn't how many podcasts you listen to or books you read, but whether your actions change in a given situation. If you consume content but your daily behavior remains the same, you haven't truly learned anything. This shifts the focus from passive intake to active application.
Identifying market shifts isn't just about intuition. You must fully immerse yourself in the new platform or technology by actively using and creating with it. True understanding and foresight only come from being a practitioner, not a theorist who simply observes from the sidelines.
You can accelerate your path to expertise by focusing on emerging domains like AI coding. In a new field, there are no 20-year veterans, allowing you to reach the frontier of knowledge much faster by simply putting in the hours.
Even when scaling an agency, leaders must remain hands-on with the core craft (e.g., live streaming). Getting too far from the day-to-day work makes you vulnerable as the landscape rapidly changes and your advice becomes outdated.
To stay current in a fast-moving field like AI, passive learning through articles and videos is insufficient. The key is active engagement: experimenting with new platforms, trying new features as they launch, and even building small applications to truly understand their capabilities and limitations.
Reading books or watching videos without applying the lessons is merely entertainment, not education. True learning is demonstrated only by a change in behavior under the same conditions. Until you act, you have not learned anything.
To become an expert at webinars, Amy Porterfield performed hundreds of them for affiliates. By committing to 3-4 presentations a week for anyone who said 'yes,' she accumulated the practical experience necessary for mastery. True skill development requires putting in the repetitions.
You don't need formal degrees or credentials to build an audience. Instead, focus on gaining and documenting real-world experience, even if you're learning in public. This approach of 'doing cool stuff' publicly builds trust and attracts a following simultaneously.
