I’ve seen a number of different articles regarding decentralized authority lately.

Mark Joyner recently put out a report called, “Rise of the Author”. It’s about how you’re automatically an expert if you publish a traditional book. He says you ought to do it soon because books are going out of style. But only do it if you want to be famous (probably not at all his point - that’s just what I got out of it).

Doctor Douglas wrote an article about how doctors are firing patients who do their own research and have concerns about diagnosis or prescribed medications.

When asked about his opinion regarding Neuro-linguistic Programming, Harlan Kilstein said it’s dead. He feels no advances have been made recently so that’s that.

Ryan Healy thinks any hypnotist you work with ought to have at least as much training as is required of barbers. No doubt the thinking is that the inside of your head is much more important than the outside.

And by now, many people have heard of Michel Fortin’s report on the death of the salesletter.

You may be wondering where this is going? What does this mean? It’s the death of the layman.

Here’s what I mean by that.

We use the word, “layman” because we divide people into two categories: the expert or the layman. The assumption is that if you’re not an expert, your effort or contribution is less valuable. In the academia, you only have a valid opinion with a PhD.

What I see in all of this is that the internet is bringing down the walls between expert and layman… at least for the layman. I recently met a financial planner who routinely uses NLP to get his clients to take action in their best interest. Where did he learn NLP? From reading books. I guess he didn’t know he needed an expert to bless his efforts.

This isn’t to say that there is no place for the wise and experienced among us to practice our crafts. And there’s no question that all the different establishments held together by experts will continue on for some time yet. It simply means that if one person can do something, another can too. You don’t have to be an expert. NLP modeling can expedite that process but someone way back in the day had to figure out how to light a fire on their own too the first time.

In training to be a medic we finished our EMT basic certification the first 6 weeks of the training. Even so, our senior drill sergeant became famous for constantly telling us we weren’t medics yet. We were only about 40% a medic. And then about 75% a medic. And on and on. At graduation he said we were 100% a medic and competent enough in our skills to go out there and do something.

The good news is that you can get going now. The caveat is that the next generation of buyers and don’t recognize the same marks of authority as previous generations. Keep in mind that Generation Y might as well mean, “Why?” as in, “Why should I listen to you even if some people say you are an expert?” Credentials don’t go as far as they used to.

As for me, I’m glad. It just means there’s more opportunity for us non-experts.

Let’s celebrate the death of the layman.

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