Larry Weidel explains why you shouldn't accept expert advice you don't understand. Real experts can simplify complex information. He covers contexts from parenting to finances where people blindly trust without comprehension.
In life, you're going to be doing a lot of things that you don't know anything about or maybe a little about, and you're going to have to bring in the experts. But there's a huge mistake, a big danger zone when you work with experts because you tend to trust them. And so save yourself the big mistake that hauled the rest of us have done in doing that, and we'll talk about what that is. And in line with that is a similar thing of how to tell if an expert really is an expert or if they aren't an expert, they're really phony. And we'll get into that right now. When you work with an expert, what you do is you take a question, I have a question, you're sitting there and what we do. And so you take your sack of questions to the expert. Now, the expert considers it now, and they're going to give you what? They're going to give you advice, a recommended solution. Now, the thing is that once you take the advice now this, in other words, this is their advice. But the deal is if you take the, no harm has been done now because they're just giving that to you. But now what happens is if you take their advice now it becomes yours. Their starts out of theirs. Now it becomes your solution. Your answer. This is they're giving you a game plan, they're giving you a path to follow, but then once you take it, it's a different ball game. So the reason you don't want to avoid any mistakes is this critical point here. If you don't know how to be sure. And again, you can't be 100% sure of anything in life, but you pretty much be sure if you have something to go on. But what happens is the mistake is most of us just blindly trust the expert. And this is wrong. Do not blindly trust the expert. The guideline is this. You, in dealing with them, you, you never take any advice that you don't understand. Now this could be in any area of your life. It could be, you go in and let's just say it could be something from a parenting standpoint, a parenting problem, something to do with your kid. You get advice for that. It could be a mechanic giving you advice about what to do to fix that car. Another thing could be like with your house, you have, you have a construction issue, maybe a leaky roof or something to do with the pipes and the plumbing and this construction. And then you can have things. It's the same thing like with, of course, education, you have professors the big thing that can really cost you a lot of money is your finances. Getting your wills in place, your estate planning, this is a real one, because you got to have money and, and you work hard for it. And if you get expert advice in your finances, you want it to be valid. Let's look exactly at what we're talking about again. Like, we start in the front. You got a problem, you go to the expert, and now the expert gives you their advice. At exactly this point, the moment of truth, do you take it or not? Because once you take it, it becomes yours. You're now the owner of this thing. The expert can always say, oh, you misunderstood. That's what the CPA experts are going to tell irs. If IRS comes in and disallows some kind of thing, the experts put you in. CPA experts put you into, oh, I don't know why he did that. We washed our hands of that. He misunderstood. We told him not to. Now it's your names on it. This is yours. It's your plan. So what you got to do is you got to make sure you understand, make sure, make them explain it. You've got to be totally clear. There can't be any gray areas. They've got to totally convince you that this is the right way. Now, how will they do that? That gets us back to our other. One other thing is how to tell if an expert is really an expert. How do you tell if an expert is really an expert? If they can make things simple. If they can make it simple, they can explain it to you in a way so you have something that's confusing you. The whole idea is that to an expert, this, they need to look at that and they say, that's not confusing. That is something that is, that is a triangle or that is a square, that is a ball. That is a situation. They're totally familiar with it. They know how to unravel it. They know how to. How it goes wrong because they've dealt with it over and over again. They know the quickest, shortest, quickest way to solve that problem. And when they explain it to you, if they could make it simple, if they can make it simple, then they understand it. They've got to be able to make it simple so you can understand what they're suggesting, so you can evaluate it on your own terms. Because experts sometimes make bad recommendations just because they understand it. Just because they're an expert doesn't mean they're going to make the right suggestion, give you the right advice every time. But if, if they are experts and they can make it simple to you. You'll understand it enough to know whether it's right or wrong for you. But if they give you a fuzzy explanation, then you're going to be sitting there saying, sounds right. I'm just going to trust them. And that's how people go down the drain. See, if people cannot explain, if an expert cannot explain it to you, you in a simple way, they don't understand it. You look at something and you see it clearly, the confusion is gone for you. You know exactly how it lines up. You know what the words mean, you know the way out. And if they can explain that simply to you. Because everything, every complicated scientific concept at its basic core is simple. Computers are very complex, but it's just stacks of simple concepts and simple steps one on top of the other. The whole thing is ones and zeros. If an expert can't make it simple, they don't understand it. And you cannot take their advice because you don't really know what you're getting because you really don't understand it. And from that point on, you're going to have to live with the consequences. So number one mistake when avoid working with experts is make sure you understand totally, completely clearly what they recommend so you can evaluate, you know exactly what they're recommending so you can evaluate it. If this is good advice for you. Because once you buy it, once you agree, once you launch it, it is yours to live with, right or wrong. And we all make mistakes. But at least you'd like to have the odds in your favor of making an intelligent decision from the beginning and put the odds in your favor. And if you're talking to somebody supposed to be an expert and all you get is more confused, you're not dealing with an expert. You're dealing with a fake expert. You're dealing with a phony. All right, hope that helps.
