The Expert Syndrome Paradox

The Expert Syndrome Paradox
[00:00:00] MATT (2): Hello, how we doing? 
[00:00:02] FAWN (2): I don't know, Matt. I'm so sorry. I was in my booth for an hour and a half or something that should have taken five minutes, 
[00:00:07] MATT (2): two hours, maybe three. No, 
[00:00:09] FAWN (2): it was not three hours. 
[00:00:11] MATT (2): And here's the problem. So like, you know, I'm kind of sitting on our couch. I have a little laptop computer, which I was gifted to by one job I had.
[00:00:20] God bless them. I can browse the web for 20 minutes and then I'm done. I'm done. I'm not a doom scroller. I'm not a Instagram y. I'm not a You 
[00:00:35] FAWN (2): don't get tempted by stuff? 
[00:00:37] MATT (2): Very rarely. 
[00:00:38] FAWN (2): Or is it because they don't know you? Because you're super stealthy on the internet? 
[00:00:42] MATT (2): I am super stealthy, but I also, like 
[00:00:45] FAWN (2): Do you know what I'm saying?
[00:00:46] Like, they don't know you, so you don't get sent stuff. Right. Or the, the, what do you call it? The algorithm doesn't know you, so the algorithm, you don't get as many, theoretically doesn't know me. You don't get stories, don't turn off 
[00:00:55] MATT (2): ads. I, and I go to the [00:01:00] same like seven sites and that's it. So sometimes I worry that you know, how culturally relevant am I truly, because every.
[00:01:10] It seems like most trends I find out about, maybe, I don't even know what a trend is. Never mind. 
[00:01:17] FAWN (2): Nobody knows what a trend is. What do you mean? It's what people say it is. So you can, you know, we've talked about this before. You can say this is a trend and make it a trend and, then it becomes a trend.
[00:01:30] It's kind of stupid. It's someone that just claims something. It's kind of like, it reminds me of like, The United States, how people would just go and claim land. Like they would run and race and like claim, put a stick down and go, This is my territory. Isn't that what they did? 
[00:01:49] MATT (2): I seem to remember seeing some kind of a trailer that looked like that, yes.
[00:01:52] You know, 
[00:01:53] FAWN (2): yeah, I think I'm getting it from a movie. Was it, was it Europe or Australia? 
[00:01:57] MATT (2): I don't know, but I want to say it was the Tom [00:02:00] Cruise, Nicole Kidman 
[00:02:00] FAWN (2): movie. It was, I think I remember Nicole Kidman. Like far and 
[00:02:04] MATT (2): away or something ridiculous. I never saw the movie, but. 
[00:02:06] FAWN (2): Whatever the case, it's kind of that kind of mentality, right?
[00:02:10] It's whenever you put a stake in the ground and say, this is me, this is what I say, this is what happens. I, you know, it's kind of like your own personal fashion or your own personal way of living. Just do it, and I think there's so many imposters out there, and there's so many, not imposters, all, okay, there are imposters, but there are also people who are claiming now more than ever, I think, remind, remind me if I'm wrong, or like, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't it feel like everyone is an expert, and just looking at the fields I'm in, so let's take podcasting as one.
[00:02:51] But also, I've, I've also been experiencing it in the medical field, not that I'm a doctor, but I am a woman, and I'm, I've been experiencing [00:03:00] life, and I've been experiencing the fact that doctors, I've seen a lot of doctors, nobody knows what the hell they're talking about. And then, and then also, like, they don't know women's bodies that well, there hasn't been that much research on women's bodies, and that.
[00:03:20] You know once in a while someone will come up like a doctor will come up and say you know We're not trained at all for this, but I have it I'm now the expert and I was listening to them and I'm like, okay When are they gonna get to the expertise like when are they gonna tell me what I need to do for this?
[00:03:38] What I need to do with obviously you're saying oh my god It's much like how people talk about the loneliness epidemic You know, you have, you have all these people coming up and they're experts, right? They're psychologists, maybe, or whatever it is, but they're experts on friendship and loneliness. But all they give you is the doom and gloom of how [00:04:00] loneliness is going to get you.
[00:04:01] It's going to kill you. It's smoking 10 packs a day. It's going to cause a heart attack, Alzheimer's, all this stuff. I'm not even exaggerating. Am I right, Matt? 
[00:04:09] You are 
[00:04:09] FAWN (2): right. And it's like They don't offer you anything concrete 
[00:04:14] MATT (2): on what to do. Correction, I was, I was at my, uh, I was at my doctor's office and they had that little video screen that pops up.
[00:04:21] And over there on the right it said, basically, if you're feeling lonely, it's not good for you. What you should do is find a group of friends. Peace out. 
[00:04:32] FAWN (2): Okay. That's as far as they go, right? Whereas what we're talking about is, what do you do when you find a group of friends? There's so much involved. It's complicated.
[00:04:42] You have to deal with really understanding yourself. All this stuff we've been talking about nonstop for four years now, we've never missed an episode, knock on wood, and we've never repeated a show. ever. And there's still a lot to talk about. It's, it's, there's more to it than [00:05:00] find yourself a group to go to.
[00:05:02] Well, gee, thanks, buddy. Thank you. Yeah, okay. Okay. You know, it just makes me mad. But like going back to what you were saying about not feeling relevant, or, you know, you're not a part of things. It's like everybody is now an expert. And I don't know, you're not, I don't think you're missing out on anything by not Seeing all the stuff that's out there like even taking podcasting for example Before we started our podcast best believe I went to the best people the most educated people on equipment on sound So I could learn how to edit 
[00:05:42] MATT (2): properly.
[00:05:43] And you have no idea how much this show is edited. My goodness. It's 
[00:05:46] FAWN (2): not, don't say that. That's not true. No, but there's editing involved. I'm not talking about like, you know, like. Photoshopping, like in photography, where the person looks totally different. We don't do that, but [00:06:00] there is a lot to working with the software, working with audio.
[00:06:04] There's a lot to learn. And, and then, you know, there's so many aspects to it, from marketing, to um, editing to writing, you know, coming up with show ideas, to figuring out how to do the transcripts and figuring there's a lot involved. You guys, it's a, it's, it's legit a full time job to do a podcast thing, to do a podcast.
[00:06:29] But what I'm saying is, I studied for a while. I studied and I spent a lot of money learning how to do it. And then now that it seems like everybody else has access to it much easier now. You know, like it's, the equipment is easier, it's not like how it used to be years ago. And, and we were not in it years ago, but years ago, I mean, my goodness, you totally needed to be like a genius to, to run a studio to be able to do what we're doing now.[00:07:00] 
[00:07:00] But I just find that there are some, people, not just with podcasters, I'm just giving you examples of podcasters and doctors, but as soon as they learn something and as soon as they learn, whoa, this is hard work and it's a full time job, it requires hours of work. And that you can't necessarily monetize it the way all these people are saying, You can monetize and make money!
[00:07:28] It's not that easy, it's not like that, you know? Most people I don't think, are actually making a living off of purely podcasting.
[00:07:38] But I find that perhaps, I could be wrong, but some of these people that see, Oh, okay, the grass is not greener on this side. They're like, well, let me try to figure out a way to make money off of it. And then they teach courses. I've even seen this in VO work, in voiceover work. People that are just starting out and all of a sudden they're teaching.
[00:07:59] I don't know. How [00:08:00] to be a voiceover actor and they're saying, Oh, I can also do your demos. Oh, it's terrible because some of these demos sound terrible and they charge people thousands of dollars, you know, I'm sorry, I'm digressing. 
[00:08:17] MATT (2): Well, you are digressing, but we have seen this actually, I think, as a society happening more and more.
[00:08:23] Are you aware that if I was a PhD student in physics, Like, there's no physics discoveries to be made as an undergrad. You don't, you haven't learned enough yet. There's not enough. You haven't learned enough. When you go an additional two years in college and get your master's degree, you still haven't gotten to the areas that people don't know anything about.
[00:08:44] You're still walking on this ground other people have carried, and even into your PhD, you are still there unless you're so far gone that, normal rules don't apply to you. But. This has been happening for quite some time, and so, on [00:09:00] some level, the experts are the people who came before you, but, our egos being fragile, we have to then become the experts, and I think that's trickled down.
[00:09:10] I think it's really hard to find a true expert researcher in most fields, because They just haven't learned they haven't done enough groundwork yet. It's really twisted. 
[00:09:22] FAWN (2): Why do you think that is because is it because there's way too much information now that getting your PhD is not enough 
[00:09:29] MATT (2): There's a lot of information. There's been a lot of discoveries We haven't forgotten the things that we've learned in the past 
[00:09:35] FAWN (2): and some of those things are wrong 
[00:09:37] MATT (2): And some of those things are wrong.
[00:09:38] Yes, 
[00:09:38] FAWN (2): some of the things that were taught have now been proven as incorrect 
[00:09:43] MATT (2): That is, that is true. If you take a look at what we consider like the really basic things that people know, like the earth revolves around the sun, well, we only figured that out, Ptolemy figured that out, I think ancient Greek, but that was only a few [00:10:00] thousand years ago.
[00:10:00] And so how do we get to the point where we're actually now, Figuring out how to determine what planets are out there in the solar system. Well, we have to go through every single way we've done it before that maybe hasn't worked very well, and then maybe figure out, technology wise, how we're gonna do it.
[00:10:16] And there's talk lately about curving light around the sun. Oh my goodness, I don't even want to think about what, how many geniuses it took to come up with that. But there's just been, there's been so much, and so much that we haven't forgotten, so we're just in that state of
[00:10:34] rediscovering the things that we've already, found. 
[00:10:37] It's like if you think about it, it's like calculus was developed by, , Geis, who's a German mathematician, and, oh god, I'm gonna butcher it, I don't remember who did it in England, but they both decided it at the same time, and this is, three years of math can take you into calculus, and the formula is necessary, but now we have calculus, and so [00:11:00] you've got to go five, you've got to go six, you've got to go, and it's just, you know, As far as really developing different maths.
[00:11:07] And we can't do it all. So like in computers, if I had stayed on track A, then I would have mastered a given subject. And maybe that subject is not even usable or used, but I would be a master of it, but we leapfrog around. And so also then with the quote unquote experts in any other field, how long have they been spending doing it?
[00:11:32] Are they trotting other people's ground? I worked for a company that did dating advice and it's like, well, okay, well, that's great. But there's been an awful lot of philosophers who've been an awful lot focused on, love and romance and all the rest of it. Have you read all of these things before you proclaim yourself an expert? 
[00:11:52] FAWN (2): I think it goes back to what we were talking about, staking your claim on ground, which no one should own anyway.
[00:11:57] Do you know what I'm saying? It's the earth [00:12:00] and I feel like it's going to happen with the air. Didn't we hear that in a few years we won't have cars on the ground anymore, that we'll use airspace? I don't know 
[00:12:09] MATT (2): how long they've been promising that one though. 
[00:12:11] FAWN (2): But even like the ocean, how they're now mining under the ocean.
[00:12:15] Mm hmm. It's like Well, are there territories in the middle of the ocean? Like, who does it actually belong to? And it belongs, it's planet Earth. It shouldn't belong to anyone with a particular one interest, you know what I'm saying? It should be the collective because it's, it's our planet. But anyway, I digress.
[00:12:34] Again, But what was I saying? 
[00:12:36] MATT (2): Staking our claim 
[00:12:38] FAWN (2): It's kind of like staking your claim you learn something and just to make a buck And to create a following it just seems like everybody's rushing to stake their claim as the expert then it of course involves social media including podcasts everybody's saying I'm the expert.
[00:12:56] Let me tell you You 
[00:12:58] So 
[00:12:58] FAWN (2): I don't think you're missing [00:13:00] anything, Matt. I think it goes back to what we were saying on our last episode about being yourself. Just mind your own business. 
[00:13:06] MATT (2): And, and I, I get that. But then, like, our youngest will say, Oh, but that person has Riz. And it's like, well, what, what does that mean?
[00:13:16] So, I keep forgetting what that is, by the way. I keep forgetting. Charisma. 
[00:13:19] FAWN (2): Ugh. But 
[00:13:21] MATT (2): that'll be outdated and, It's probably already outdated because I learned about it a whole month ago. 
[00:13:27] FAWN (2): But that's just it, you know? Like, if we try to keep up with that, that's a lot of energy. It is. If you're trying to keep up all the time, this is still the same as keeping up with the Joneses.
[00:13:36] MATT (2): Yes. 
[00:13:37] FAWN (2): What do you say, how do you say that in other languages? Does it translate? I don't know. Describe keeping up with the joneses keeping 
[00:13:44] MATT (2): up with the joneses is like this whole suburban mystique So your next door neighbor buys a new car So you have to buy a new car your next door neighbor gets storm windows You have to get storm windows your next door neighbor paints their house remodeled doesn't matter Got it you [00:14:00] just Keep on keeping on and and you just try and keep up with these folks and if they make more than you guess what?
[00:14:05] You're gonna lose 
[00:14:06] FAWN (2): we were even talking about that this morning just Because we were just having our meanderings over coffee this morning together about my favorite show. One of my favorite shows right now, or the past couple years, has been Emily in Paris, and I was telling you how much joy I get from watching this show.
[00:14:24] Like, pure joy. Everything about it. The lighting. Brings my eyes joy, and it lifts my spirits the fashion. Uh Brings me joy You know the the opportunities the scenery the country the food Like the music everything brings me joy and I've been re watching over and over and over and over again and like I I'm trying to dissect everything and go and look at this one detail again and I use it as inspiration, but what I was telling you this morning is I'm finding myself [00:15:00] just as joyful as I am watching it a little bit of sadness and depression is creeping in from watching it because I'm like, wow, I wish my legs looked like that.
[00:15:11] I wish I was skinny like Emily. Look at that, like, is she wearing pantyhose? No, those are her legs in those shorts, walking around Rome, so effortless, so, non sweaty, so perfect, so poised, and so like, you know, like, constant perfection. And I'm like, well, gee. I'm none of those things sometimes. You know what I'm saying?
[00:15:36] Like, I start going down. 
[00:15:38] MATT (2): Yeah, but everybody gets a bad haircut. Everybody makes, everybody is fond of a piece, an article of clothing which is not good for them. 
[00:15:47] FAWN (2): But what we were saying, what you said was, what did you say to me that reminded me? It's like something I knew anyway, but to hear it helped a lot.
[00:15:58] You said, nobody looks like that. [00:16:00] And granted, no matter how thin she is. Probably, she's been told to keep a certain weight, right? To look that way. Yes. Right? And then, but, but then our conversation went towards, um, I was saying, when you look at something like that, it's a way to change your own way of being.
[00:16:22] And I was telling you how it felt when I lived in Santa Monica and I had a studio It wasn't, I mean, yes, I mean, now looking back on it, and even then I knew what a special area that was, if you look at our, if you listen to our very, very, very first episode, I tell you my mentor for the Art of Friendship was Santa Monica, the city of Santa Monica in LA, you guys, out of all places, that's the place that became my A mentor for me on relationships, on the proper way of being a friend.
[00:16:58] The art of friendship [00:17:00] came out of Santa Monica for me. I heard whisperings for a few years. I was only supposed to be there for three months. I grew up around there, I kept getting sucked back, and finally I was like, I don't know what you want from me, L. A. But you drag me back every time.
[00:17:18] Fine. You've got me but you've got me for three months. That's it So three months led to like what over ten years, honey something and that's where I met you finally like I I came to a point where everything started to transform and in a way it transformed much like how I'm watching something like Emily in Paris is transforming my life my psyche The way I see things it's a chance for me to remember how I want my life to be. How I want to feel How I want to affect the world, you know what I'm saying?
[00:17:58] And so one day in [00:18:00] my studio, this is before we met I was sitting on the ground going this place is a dump The landlord doesn't care, you know, it's not like they're gonna take over and like Fix the stuff that needs to be fixed unless it's a total emergency and I was like, this is terrible. I'm poor I'm struggling with a career.
[00:18:24] This place is falling apart Ugh, and then I told myself but wait a minute when you photograph things Usually it's not in its optimal way I focus on energy, I know I sound so stupid right now, but I do, it's energetic. I focus on something and then I get a feel for it and that's when I take the picture.
[00:18:49] So this is going back to Emily in Paris because what you focus on and how you choose to focus on it and how you choose to see it will transform your [00:19:00] entire life. And so this is, you're probably saying, what does this have to do with friendship? It does, it's how we see ourselves, it's how we see other people, it's how we see our society, it's how we see our neighborhoods.
[00:19:12] Everything can change by your focus. So I remember sitting there, looking at this one corner of the apartment where the wall was literally falling apart, right? I'm like, this is terrible. And then I looked at it and then I kept looking at it and I shifted my understanding of what terrible is. I'm like, Oh, look, if this was a movie,
[00:19:35] this would be a beautiful studio by the beach in Santa Monica, you know It's a world famous and now that we've lived away from there for so long every time we turn on the TV We see our neighborhood And I'm screaming to the kids, We used to live right there! That was our neighborhood! Yeah, they're 
[00:19:51] MATT (2): already tired of that.
[00:19:52] FAWN (2): I don't blame them. But, you know, It's such, uh, nostalgia. Right. So the whole point was, I realized I have to, I [00:20:00] had to have nostalgia for that moment in the present moment. Nostalgia for The friends I had. In that moment, feeling it, so nostalgia not something from the past, from another time period, but exactly where you are in that precise moment, and then everything started to transform, all of a sudden, I had energy to fix the apartment, even though I had no skills, right?
[00:20:29] We're not handy people, Matt, you and I, but once in a while, miraculously, I make things happen. Right, because I don't care. Right. I'm like, well, this place is falling apart. Anyway, I don't think I'm gonna make it worse so I fixed up and then I painted stuff and then all of a sudden it transformed and then Life seemed so much better and then shortly after that you and I met
[00:20:51] yes, and then everything else kind of not kind of but everything else clicked into place. That's when I [00:21:00] understood
[00:21:00] All these years we've been here all these years I've been here This is what's been happening and I realized what was happening. That's when everything made sense. Why am I telling you this? I think I digressed but not really. I had a point and the point was what
[00:21:17] just you know Just remembering what we said last week about being yourself. You are the You are the expert of where you stand in this moment And I think we're living in a time where we're seeing that There is no true expert because truly everything has become so fragmented and And specialized. How can anyone be an expert?
[00:21:40] And especially like if you take women for example, like going back to women's health They've never really concentrated on women's health. We're I mean our science Western medicine is so young, comparing it to Ayurvedic medicine, Chinese medicine, so young. [00:22:00] We're talking about what, honey, 200 years? 200 years ago they didn't even know what a virus was, or a bacteria was, right?
[00:22:07] MATT (2): Basically, yes. 
[00:22:09] FAWN (2): And yet, three, four thousand years ago, they knew the entire system of the body spiritually physically you're talking emotionally ayurvedic and chinese, you know, 
[00:22:20] MATT (2): right? I got you 
[00:22:21] FAWN (2): and actually like going back to the torah. Is it that the talmud or I don't know. I'm just learning but to the Kabbalah the jewish religion.
[00:22:32] They also talk about Medicine, and I just I don't know
[00:22:37] I'm realizing that In your own sphere you are the expert, mostly. 
[00:22:43] MATT (2): And there you go, you are the expert of you. I mean, can you, can you even fathom, let's say 15 years ago you got a degree in marketing? Well, yeah, okay. So you understand supply demand, maybe, although that's more economics, [00:23:00] you understand what possibly can get a person to buy, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.
[00:23:05] There are no hard and fast rules in marketing in the same way that scarily enough, there's no real hard and fast rules in, um, developing software. The rules are constantly shifting. I read something recently that, oh God, it was like, it was a GoFundMe page. It was a. page promoting how to get GoFundMe's to work.
[00:23:28] You have to now ping someone with an email on average of five times before they'll make a commitment. 
[00:23:35] FAWN (2): I heard the same thing in a different area that it takes seven up to seven times for someone to recognize your name. They were saying when you, for example, in my career, right, voiceovers, when you, when you call someone, when you call an agent that you're trying to get, for example, right, you call them and you're like, Hey, here's my demo and you don't hear back.
[00:23:58] You need to call back. You need [00:24:00] to, you need to keep pursuing it, 
[00:24:04] MATT (2): right? 
[00:24:04] FAWN (2): There's so many reasons why you don't get a call back. It's not what you think all the time, right? So it takes about seven, I think average was seven. I don't know if it was six to twelve or seven. But 
[00:24:17] MATT (2): again, that number is irrelevant because it's going to be different by next year.
[00:24:22] FAWN (2): But still, it takes a certain amount of time to have that recognition. 
[00:24:26] MATT (2): Right. It's it's about the intention. It's not about any of the specifics. So welcome to. Expert? Hmm. You are the expert on you. There is no one who can, who knows the things I know, who can do the things that I can do. The way I would do them.
[00:24:44] But 
[00:24:44] FAWN (2): man, as we're saying this, I'm like, uh oh. It sounds like we're, we're promoting being a know it all. That's not what I'm saying. That's not what you're saying. No. Not even close. So what's the 
[00:24:55] MATT (2): difference? It's inner Popeye again, it's being confident in [00:25:00] my own shell, it's being confident in the things that I am an expert on.
[00:25:05] FAWN (2): And not trying to keep up with the Joneses, right? Right, 
[00:25:09] MATT (2): I'm not trying to follow any fads, I'm not trying to 
[00:25:12] FAWN (2): You're not trying to go outside of yourself? 
[00:25:14] MATT (2): Where it makes sense I'm learning, and where it doesn't make sense I'm not learning. And oh my lord did I have a moment this 
[00:25:22] FAWN (2): week, but that's beside the point.
[00:25:24] MATT (2): What happened? Ah, so, from 1977. Don't even ask how I get down these tangents, but this is Matt's rabbit hole, right? In 1977, this man named Chris Alexander and four or five other people, he was an architect, he wrote a book about a pattern language for communities. 1977. And I'm reading this 900 page tome and he is just throwing bombs.
[00:25:51] He is just so many truth bombs. It's frightening. So many things I hadn't considered or contemplate because I'd never looked into [00:26:00] architecture. However, I do look into software architecture I've looked into design patterns. I've 
[00:26:04] FAWN (2): looked into it in the beginning. I wanted our podcast to have a panel of architects to come on and it's because I was an architectural photographer Like high end architectural photographer, and I was like I want to bring in some Architects to explain why our society has been designed the way it has right because I feel like it's keeping us from Interacting with one another and why are you designing it this way?
[00:26:30] Why right? Who's benefiting? And why are we doing? That's 
[00:26:33] MATT (2): a whole other episode. I'm sorry. I just 
[00:26:35] FAWN (2): wanted to say hey, I've been looking into it But what's 
[00:26:37] MATT (2): what's so bizarre and this just takes you down to? Matt's expert, quote unquote, expertise rabbit hole. Um, then I, right before I started reading that book, I was reading a book by, it's called the gang of four, and these are design patterns for programming.
[00:26:52] And I was like. These things don't feel as dissimilar as they should. Well, it turns out, I finally got around [00:27:00] to Googling Chris Alexander. He was instrumental in helping software developers. SimCity is based on his concepts. 
[00:27:07] FAWN (2): Wait, is this the architect you're talking about? Yeah, this is the architect. Wow.
[00:27:10] He 
[00:27:10] MATT (2): is considered one of the first people to consider agile development, which is how we develop software now. Object oriented programming, all sorts of, like, And it's like, seriously? But yeah. 
[00:27:22] FAWN (2): I love when you find how interconnected everything is. 
[00:27:24] MATT (2): Well, or, or just how I, I seem to run down similar rabbit holes all the time.
[00:27:30] Right? But, wow, blew me away this week. 
[00:27:34] FAWN (2): Well, I mean, again, more stuff to ponder. Oh my goodness. Again, we're not saying we're experts, but we've been looking into this for a few decades. So, what do you think of our meanderings? What is your take? I'd like to know. And Virginia, thank you so much for reaching out to us and telling me what you think.
[00:27:56] I love it when I say, hey guys, what do you think? [00:28:00] And you actually tell me. I get so joyful. It's so awesome. Right, Matt? Yes, indeed. So, thanks Virginia. All right. Um, I don't know. Should we wrap it up? It's just tough. Not tough. It's just stuff to ponder. 
[00:28:17] MATT (2): Yes. Just be careful of experts folks 
[00:28:21] FAWN (2): Yeah, isn't it funny like again going back to biblical stuff.
[00:28:24] Don't they say be be careful of false prophets That is true. There's kind of showing up everywhere. Well, right. 
[00:28:32] MATT (2): There you go. All right. 
[00:28:33] FAWN (2): See you soon we'll talk to you in a few days if you need us, you know Just reach out to us go to the website and you can email us from there 
[00:28:40] MATT (2): Okay. Sounds good. 
[00:28:41] FAWN (2): Have a beautiful every day.
[00:28:43] MATT (2): Be well.