Yesterday, I wrote about feeling like I wasn’t expert enough to be writing this blog. I reminded myself that while I may not know everything, my strength is that I am good at learning new things and finding the solutions to new and interesting problems. My strength is less what I know, and more about how quickly I can learn and apply it to the problem at hand.

What I had fallen into was an expertise trap. I’ve been letting my blog become about this content strategy, so I can prove some expertise, instead of being about my unique value. My unique value in the WordPress world is that I connect people to solutions and translate complex ideas to terms anyone from novice to advanced developer can understand.

The Expertise Trap

In a recent column for the New York Time, Tom Friedman, writes about what Laszlo Bock, the senior vice president of people operations for Google, says about expertise in regards to what they look for in potential employees at Google.

The least important attribute they look for is “expertise.” Said Bock: “If you take somebody who has high cognitive ability, is innately curious, willing to learn and has emergent leadership skills.. Most of the time the nonexpert will come up with the same answer [as the expert], “because most of the time it’s not that hard.” Sure, once in a while they will mess it up, he said, but once in a while they’ll also come up with an answer that is totally new. And there is huge value in that.

Everyone on the internet, myself included, will tell you that the point of your personal blog should be to establish yourself as an expert in whatever field it is that you want to sell yourself as an expert in. But what if expertise is over rated?

When I started this series, I said I was going to define what my unique value is and redesign my blog around that. I haven’t, until now, been able to clearly define my own unique value, and that’s why I’ve fallen into the expertise trap–The idea that everyone should define themselves by the thing they do best. That they may be all well and good for some people, but I excel at pulling all of the many things I do together.

Solving Your Problems

It’s liberating to have found my way out of the trap. Instead of trying to prove I know everything, by narrowing my focus on one thing, I can embrace who I am. That is someone who knows enough about enough things to solve any problem and I’d like to help solve yours.

I recently started offering my services via Clarity.fm. Are you a DIY WordPress developer, or a new to managing a WordPress site? Have a big idea that you’re not sure what’s the best way to accomplish with WordPress? Let me walk you throw learning a new development skill, learning an important WordPress feature or help connect you to the right solutions–be it a content strategy, plugin, or service–to meet the goals you’ve set for your site.