If you have an email address, you are a bona fide expert at…. everthing!

What? You mean you didn’t know? Just ask!

It seems that everyone you ask these days is an expert at everything! It’s as if the internet is this one dimensional item… where if you can design a webpage, it means you are a social media “guru”… where if you can write articles it means you can write compelling salescopy… where if you can generate traffic, it means that you can also increase conversions.

Welcome to the “expert at everything” syndrome, the latest pandemic to affect the business world.

Since the deepening of the recession and the famous purse-string tightening of 2010, it’s only becoming more and more commonplace for gullible business owners to be lured by the “i can do it all” promise so easily given by those that can’t even do properly the job they were hired to do.

There are no real, long term, shortcuts.

• Do you really think that the person in Pakistan or Indonesia (no offense to the people living there!) willing to write articles for $1 apiece would deliver an article on the quality of a native speaker?
• Do you really expect software to accomplish the job of getting you white-hat, bona fide backlinks?

Yes, there are many talented people that have expertise in more then one area…..and those people are charging an additional fee for each of those areas in which they will work for you. Anyone that can do “SEO, graphic design, article writing, link building, video, and increased conversions”, all for the super, duper low price of just (insert low ball price here) in total, is scamming you- and your greed is stopping you from realizing that you are being taken for a ride.

Come on, folks. was what I just typed not all that obvious to you?

I see people hiring all sorts of gurus… that use subcontractors… who use subcontractors… who use  sub-subcontractors… who use sub-sub-sub contractors… and while the guy on top thinks they got a steal of a deal, all that was really done to increase traffic was an addition to Google local search for a non competitive keyword.

Don’t believe all the promises you hear, ok? And make sure you have a satisfaction guarantee before you deal with someone new…. Or be willing to consider the payment you have made essentially a bet that you would be thrilled to win, but not upset if you lost. (Think fiverr.com, where you pay $5 for a job. That’s a risk anyone entrepreneur can live with!)

When people call me, they know what they want: Business Advice and Strategy. when they want PR, I recommend them to someone that does PR. When people want backlinks,  Facebook fans, or twitter followers, I connect them with people I know and trust that can deliver. I even suggested to a client during a consultation last week that with their unique project and budget they should concentrate solely on PR at this time and not do anything else until they got some media attention…

Can I do those things? yes, I can. (After all, I don’t have a publicist and still managed to get much national media attention, right?)  But, I don’t bill myself as an expert in those topics…

the old adage stands. “Jack of all trades, master of none.”