The Problem with “Learning from the Best”
Why you should think twice about learning from the best in the field.
Common sense leads us to believe that the most successful people are the ones we should listen to for advice.
- Warren buffet should provide the best financial advice.
- The reigning Mr. Olympia should give the best fitness advice.
- The manager of the year in the MLB should give the best coaching advice for our little league team.
We favor the experts who have achieved unnatural levels of success.
We favor the experts who have been in the game the longest.
However, learning from these people isn’t always the best option.
Furthermore, taking everything that they say as the gospel truth can be downright dangerous.
In many cases, you’d be better off listening to someone who has far less success and has less time in the space.
- Warren buffet leveraged compound interest over a lifetime. He isn’t going to be the best person teach you how to get out of debt. A 35 year old YouTuber with 2,000 subscribers who recently got out of $100,000 in debt would probably be more helpful.
- The reigning Mr. Olympia probably hasn’t been out of shape for a day of his life. He doesn’t have the empathy needed to relate to most people looking to improve their fitness. A local trainer who has struggled with their own weight and fitness in the past is likely going to be more helpful.
- The manager of the year is working with professional adults, not little leaguers. It’s so different, it’s basically a different sport. Getting advice from your dad who coached all of your little league teams growing up could prove to me more insightful and relevant.
Here are the core reasons that listening to the best isn’t always … the best!
Reason #1 Lack of Relatability Due to Time and Scale
People who are at the top of their space rarely got there quickly or recently.
Their advice for beginners is often based on how things were when they started and not how they are.
Or worse, their advice might be based on how they “remember” things were when they started. The memory is highly selective and, to no fault of their own, many origin stories get hyperbolized or misrepresented over time.
Advice from someone at the top of their craft is also likely to be more relevant to their current state, which is by definition, not the same as everyone else’s.
One of the biggest examples of this Grant Cardone.
He’s notorious for saying things that most people can’t relate to (and frankly he probably doesn’t either).
Check out the YouTube short below to see what I mean.
Sidebar, if this method worked, why doesn’t he do it and become a billionaire?
Successful business owners talk about their morning routines when they only started them after grinding through years of disorganized but wildly meaningful and impactful work.
Bodybuilders make YouTube videos such as “4 exercises you need for a ripped back” but ignore the fact that they only started doing them after they were already shredded.
Or even worse, they promote workout supplements as if those were what got them their results to begin with.
These people make it look easy and for them, it IS easy. They are operating at scale and with unique knowledge they learned over the years that they probably don’t even notice is being leveraged.
The best in a field can lack relatability which can make their advice, ironically, less valuable than someone with less but more recent and relevant experience.
Reason #2 Great at Doing ≠ Great at Teaching
Those who know, do. Those that understand, teach. –Aristotle
Just because someone does something well doesn’t mean that they can teach it or articulate how it’s done properly.
We all do it. There’s probably something you do extremely well that you’ve never really given much thought about.
“How DO I win so much more often at Poker?”
The ability to explain things clearly, logically and in the correct order can be more difficult than doing the things themselves.
Reason #3 Authority Bias Can Prevent Us from Thinking Critically
Have you ever spitballed ideas with someone and said something that you thought about later and realized, “wow, that was really dumb…”
The biggest names in each space are often mic’d up and spitting advice nonstop. Gary V for instance creates hundreds of hours of content per month and frankly, not every piece is a home run. I’m sure even he would admit that.
When we follow the best, it’s easy to blindly accept everything they say. This is called the authority bias. When we follow less experienced people, we are less likely to blindly accept what they say.
The Takeaway
I’m not implying that you should ignore the advice of the best and most successful people. I just suggest that you take their advice with a grain of salt.
No one is perfect, many folks (myself included) don’t even realize that their advice isn’t applicable to everyone.
Don’t write off micro-influencers who are closer to the beginning than the end. Sure, they can also provide damaging advice and are susceptible to the Dunning Krueger Effect, but these folks can provide highly relatable, timely and valuable insights that others can’t.
Learn from a large spectrum of people and not blindly from just the cream of the crop and you’ll be just fine.
