What Expertise Is (aka, X-Ray Vision)

While I was listening to an investor named Elad Gil explain what he looks for in founders and startups, the thought struck me: “This is what expertise is.” Being a recognized expert is more important than ever for freelancers, consultants, and other solopreneurs, so this brief analysis will zero in on one ingredient of expertise, x-ray vision.

Let’s start with a working definition of “expert”: An expert is someone who recognize patterns, uses them to reach conclusions and make decisions, and gets better results than other people.

Once you’ve seen something before, and often enough, that regular exposure to patterns gels into intuition, or snap judgments, a phenomenon that Malcolm Gladwell illustrates at the beginning of Blink when he tells a story about an art expert. The expert spotted a fake Greek statue in seconds, a statue that a museum was about to buy for $10 million. Pattern recognition becomes intuition, which in turn saves the expert from common mistakes.

Based on their environment, skills, and even preferences, different people home in on different types of patterns. An auto mechanic recognizes a particular screech as the sign that the timing belt is about to snap. A boxer knows what punch to expect when his opponent shifts weight from one hip to the other. A pitmaster knows a brisket is done by touch alone, no thermometer required.

An investor like Elad Gil analyzes a lot of markets and talks to a lot of founders, and can eventually develop a keen, penetrating point of view that holds up new opportunities next to established patterns and sorts them according to key factors and attributes that are present, absent, or inconclusive. We’ll call this “x-ray vision.”

Gil was an early investor in Airbnb and Stripe when both teams had less than ten people. Coinbase was already a billion-dollar unicorn, but he decided that the company still had plenty of upside. What did Gil see in these companies?What distinguished them from other startups we’ve never heard of because they failed and what can Gil’s x-ray vision tell us about expertise in general?

When vetting startups, Gil looks for “two dimensions that really matter”:

1. Product-Market Fit. Is there strong demand for what they’re building? Is there a real need? How is what they’re building differentiated?
2. Team. Are these people exceptional? How will they grow over time? What are some of the characteristics of how they do things?

A company needs to be strong in both areas because it’s easy for less capable founders and operators to look smart in a good market. “I’ve seen reasonably mediocre teams do extremely well in what are very good markets,” Gil said. Only true experts like Gil can recognize false positives for what they are and steer clear of them. Wise investors know that markets change, and when they do, strong leaders and teams adapt while weak ones flounder.

Gil goes on to explain what he looks for in a team. A startup needs two key players at the start:

1. Salesperson who can win over investors, employees, customers, and suppliers.
2. Builder who can create excellent products, services, and experiences.

Without the first person, a startup will remain undercapitalized and unknown, its market’s best-kept secret. Without the second, a startup is all flash and no substance. Even a visionary CEO who is a master of persuasion can only stay ahead of a mediocre product for so long. Just ask Elizabeth Holmes.

Experts like Gil develop x-ray vision that turns complex scenarios (investing in startups) into relatively simple frameworks and rules of thumb (e.g., two dimensions that matter, two key players at the start).

Perhaps you have shared a meal with someone who has a discriminating palate, someone who can take one bite and say, “Too much cumin and needs more salt.” An expert tastes the right or wrong ingredients.

But it’s not enough to have the taste, that is, to know the frameworks, principles, and rules. You have to actually follow them. You have to exercise good judgment, too.

Here’s a working definition of “good judgment”: Good judgment is following the frameworks, principles, and rules that make you right 80% of the time. No one can be right every time, so good judgment is more about how wrong you are when you’re wrong.

Outliers always come along and seem to prove that some key ingredient wasn’t absolutely essential. For example, Elad mentioned a few founders who hadn’t gone to the three “best” schools for startups (Stanford, Harvard, or MIT) and yet had still built iconic companies. Making the wrong call about the occasional outlier is fine so long as your taste and judgment steer you right most of the time. A quote often attributed to Warren Buffett comes to mind: "You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don't do too many things wrong.”

Depending on the domain you’re in, you can win barely half the time and still be one of the greatest ever. Roger Federer played 276,000 points in his tennis career and won “only” 54%.

You might be wondering what x-ray vision and good judgment have to do with running a freelance or consulting business. We may not be venture capitalist or pro athletes, but we do need expertise and good judgment. Value-conscious clients are shopping for both. Rather than spell out all the ways that expertise enhances creativity and problem-solving, I’ll end with a simple observation.

Many of us have enough expertise to know what to do, and we still don’t do it.

I coach freelancers and consultants one on one and talk to dozens more weekly inside of the Freelance Cake Community, and what ultimately separates the folks who thrive from the folks who don’t is a bias toward action. Once your x-ray vision notices the fracture, you must do something about it. Let untreated, a limp can become permanent.

Here are several common fractures, as well as what good judgment and a bias toward action dictates you do about it:

• Not enough leads → Develop a Morning Marketing Habit
• Inefficiency → Create well-defined systems and processes
• Getting too many no’s → Fix your prices, positioning, and offers
• Never enough hours in the day → Delegate $10 an hour tasks to a VA
• Burned out → Do the mindset work and start saying no so you can recover

Your expertise ain’t worth a can of moldy beans if you do nothing about the problems you already know you have. On the other hand, if you combine x-ray vision, good judgment, and a bias toward action, you’ll still find ways to thrive in a “bad” market.

When you’re ready, here are ways I can help you:

1. Free Money. A pricing and money mindset guide for freelance creatives. If you’re unsure about your freelance pricing, this is the book for you.
2. Morning Marketing Habit. This course will help you build an “always be marketing” practice, become less dependent on referrals, and proactively build the business you want with the clients you want. My own morning marketing habit has enabled me to consistently make 6 figures as a freelancer.
3. 1:1 Coaching. Gain clarity, confidence, and momentum in your freelance or consulting business.
4. Business Redesign (Group Coaching). Raise your effective hourly rate, delegate with confidence, and free up 40 hours a month.
5. Clarity Session. It’s hard to read the label when you’re inside the bottle. I've done well over 100 of these 1:1 sessions with founders, solopreneurs, and freelancers who wanted guidance, a second opinion, or help creating a plan.