Don’t Be Good At Anything

Being an expert is for old people who smell like menthol tea and wear green sweaters with corduroy blazers.

Sadly, many people mistakenly believe that if you do something, you should know how to do it.

You should definitely not do this.

It’s 2024, you don’t have to know anything. There’s a bottomless amount of totally not boonswoggle hashtag#data tools, unquakery hashtag#algorithms, non-dupewinking hashtag#AI subscriptions, and completely not sham-flam “how to” hashtag#coaching videos.

Your success is determined by how well you can avoid knowing anything.

For example, let’s say you’re in charge of hashtag#advertising; actually knowing anything about advertising is not only unnecessary, it makes you seem completely untrustworthy. Being an expert means being an expert at something no one wants to hear.

And besides, why bother learning stuff when there's ample instructional video content, with very self-assured man-hosts, wearing tight-fitting shirts, speaking from behind $700 hashtag#podcast mics, all revealing the always applicable secret formula for advertising hashtag#success that the cabal of mean, old, lazy, old, slow, old, wasteful, and old, advertising hashtag#gatekeepers don’t want you to know.

And let me be clear, so that there is no confusing confusions:
The man wearing the tight shirt on the internet selling instructional videos is 100% right.

There is nothing that the right data subscriptions and reporting can’t do. And if you follow the seven, or possibly eighteen, easy steps from the strapping man with the very nice chest muscles, you too are guaranteed (not a legal guarantee) success.

Or at least enough lack of failure to avoid being fired.

This is also how you can avoid bothersome expert questions you should not ask like “How do I develop brand preference and long-term sales sustainability?” Which, let’s face it has way too many syllables to be a legit business concern.

The people who are really good at advertising are so off-puttingly dim that they don't just want short term sales. They want the untrackable or attributable goal of sales months (or years) in the future. These miscreants are bizarrely interested in trying to create a relationship of continuous sales, often requiring less (over all) advertising.

These are not the people you want to have around you. They will insist on blatantly unpopular facts like “The people who want you to run hashtag#digital hashtag#socail ads all the time know they can only generate hashtag#sales as long as you run your ads. Once the ads stop so do the sales."

Or they tout equally annoying blather like, "You know, if you're expertise can be easily replaced by a Kantar subscription and a Google ads certification, how valuable is your expertise?"

Which is as offensively true as it is insensitively honest.

So please, don't do something stupid like becoming an expert.

Especially not at advertising.

It's hashtag#notworthit