CannaLife Presents, A MISFIT Manifesto: WHO GETS TO BE an EXPERT?
The Consultant Industrial Complex
What Happened to You? Trauma-Informed Care, Cannabis & Psychedelic Medicine | CannaLife MISFITS
A title is not a credential — and expertise without curiosity isn’t very useful.
Someone recently reached out to me and asked whether I was happy with my supplement manufacturer.
There is just one problem.
I don’t manufacture supplements or hire people that do.
I’m interested in nutraceuticals. I’ve worked around regulated science, health, commercialization and product development for decades. I talk about cannabinoids, plant-based medicine, integrated health and consumer education and empowerment.
But I don’t manufacture supplements.
It wasn’t offensive. It wasn’t some grand professional crime.
It was simply revealing.
Because the person approaching me was presenting himself as someone who could help my business before taking the time to understand what my business actually is.
And that got me thinking about one of the stranger features of modern professional life:
We have created an enormous economy around people telling other people what they should do.
Consultants.
Strategists.
Coaches.
Advisors.
Experts.
Growth specialists.
Thought leaders.
Fractional executives.
Business development gurus.
Optimization wizards.
Some are exceptional.
Some have decades of experience and can save a company enormous amounts of money, time and pain.
Some have extraordinary expertise in a very narrow area and know exactly when that expertise applies.
And some appear to have acquired a Calendly account and declared themselves ready to improve your life.
The title alone tells us almost nothing.
Consultant is a job description. It is not proof of competence.
There are professions where society has created fairly obvious gates.
Physicians must complete medical training and licensure.
Nurses have education and licensing requirements.
Attorneys have law degrees and bar admission.
Engineers may require specific professional credentials depending on what they do.
But in much of business consulting, there is no universal gatekeeper standing at the door asking:
Excuse me. Before you advise strangers how to run their companies, could we see some evidence that you know what the hell you’re talking about?
Anyone can call themselves a consultant.
That does not make consulting illegitimate.
It makes evaluation more important.
The better question is not:
Are you a consultant?
It is:
What, specifically, have you developed enough knowledge, experience and judgment about that I should reasonably value your guidance?
What actually creates expertise?
There isn’t one answer.
Education matters.
Experience matters.
Repeated exposure matters.
Research matters.
Evidence literacy matters.
Judgment matters.
Pattern recognition matters.
Learning from mistakes matters enormously.
Research on expertise has long examined how sustained, purposeful practice contributes to high-level performance. Expertise is generally not something conferred by adopting a title. It develops through prolonged interaction, execution, feedback, refinement and increasingly sophisticated judgment.
But even expertise has limits.
You can spend twenty years becoming extraordinarily good at one thing and still know remarkably little about something immediately adjacent to it.
That is not a defect.
That is reality.
Which brings us to an attribute I increasingly value as much as expertise itself:
Humility.
You do not have to know everything.
I certainly don’t.
Neither does the person advising me.
In fact, one of the fastest ways to lose my confidence is to behave as though you do.
I would much rather hear:
“I don’t know enough about that yet. Tell me more.”
That sentence tells me several useful things.
You recognize a boundary.
You are curious.
You are listening.
You are willing to collect information before manufacturing an answer.
These are valuable professional qualities.
Sometimes the most useful person in the room is not the person who already knows the answer.
It is the person capable of asking the question that gets everyone closer to it.
Good questions are a professional skill.
This isn't just something pleasant humans do.
Question-asking changes conversations.
Research in interpersonal psychology has found that people who ask more questions — particularly thoughtful follow-up questions — are perceived more favorably because those questions communicate responsiveness and genuine interest in the other person.
That should matter enormously in business.
Because before you can solve somebody's problem, you have to understand it.
Before you recommend a strategy, you have to understand the goal.
Before you pitch the service, you should probably determine whether the service solves anything the person actually needs solved.
It sounds obvious.
Yet a remarkable amount of modern selling works backward.
Here is what I sell. Now let me discover a problem you have that allows me to sell it to you.
That is not consulting.
That is prospecting wearing a nicer jacket.
Diagnose before prescribing.
A useful business conversation should sound something like:
What are you trying to accomplish?
Where are you getting stuck?
What has changed?
What have you already tried?
Who is the audience?
What does the audience actually care about?
Who makes the decision?
What does success look like?
What happens if you do nothing?
What are you assuming that we haven't actually established yet?
And my personal favorite:
Are we sure this is actually the problem?
Because sometimes it isn't.
The website may not be the problem.
The CRM may not be the problem.
The salespeople may not be the problem.
The marketing may not be the problem.
The product may not even be the problem.
Sometimes the company has diagnosed itself incorrectly and has spent three years buying solutions for a symptom.
A good consultant does not arrive determined to prove that the thing they sell is the answer.
They help determine what question actually needs answering.
Problem solve. Don’t just sell.
There is nothing inherently wrong with selling.
Businesses have to sell things.
Researchers have to sell ideas.
Scientists have to persuade funders that their work deserves investment.
Nonprofits have to persuade donors.
Job seekers have to persuade employers.
Every one of us sells something.
But good business development begins with understanding.
The difference is subtle and enormous.
One person is thinking:
How do I get them to buy this?
The other is thinking:
What are they trying to solve and can I genuinely help?
Sometimes the answer to that second question is no.
That should be an acceptable answer.
If what I need is outside your expertise, tell me.
If somebody else is better equipped to help, introduce me.
If I don’t need what you sell, don’t manufacture urgency hoping I will think I do.
This behavior does something far more valuable than producing one transaction.
It creates trust.
Because you are always selling yourself first.
Before the PowerPoint.
Before the proposal.
Before the software.
Before the CRO.
Before the advertising campaign.
Before the service package.
Before whatever magnificent proprietary process has been assigned a trademark symbol this week.
There is a human being evaluating another human being.
And somewhere underneath the formal procurement criteria, the questions are much simpler:
Do I believe you?
Do you understand what I'm telling you?
Are you listening or waiting for your turn to pitch?
Will you tell me when you don't know something?
Will you admit when your solution isn't the right one?
Will you still answer the phone when something goes wrong?
Do I want to work with you?
People love saying business isn't personal.
Business is profoundly personal.
Companies do not communicate.
People do.
Organizations do not trust one another.
People inside organizations decide whom they trust.
Contracts may formalize relationships.
Humans create them.
This is where the soft skills stop being soft.
Curiosity.
Listening.
Empathy.
Observation.
Communication.
Humility.
Pattern recognition.
Reading a room.
Understanding culture.
Recognizing when someone becomes uncomfortable.
Noticing that the customer keeps describing the problem differently than your company describes it.
Hearing what somebody did not say.
Seeing the same hesitation appear across five different conversations.
These things are sometimes dismissed as personality traits while spreadsheets, credentials and software certifications are treated as the serious business skills.
This is backwards.
They are inputs into judgment.
And judgment is often what people are actually paying a good consultant for.
Expertise is useful. Intellectual flexibility is better.
The dangerous consultant isn't necessarily the inexperienced one.
Sometimes it is the highly experienced person who became so certain of what they already know that they stopped looking for information that might prove them wrong.
Experience can sharpen pattern recognition.
It can also create assumptions.
The point of experience should not be:
I've seen everything.
It should be:
I've seen enough to know which questions become expensive when nobody asks them.
That's a very different kind of confidence.
So how do you evaluate someone offering advice?
Before handing someone your business, reputation, money or strategy, ask a few questions.
What exactly is their expertise?
Not their title. Their actual domain.
How was that expertise developed?
Education? Work? Repeated experience? Research? Results?
Have they taken time to understand you?
Or are they giving you the same prescription they give everybody?
Do they ask good questions?
Especially questions that require them to listen to the answer.
Can they explain what they don't know?
This one matters.
Are they solving your problem or looking for somewhere to put their product?
And perhaps most importantly:
Do you trust the way this person thinks?
Because ultimately, that is what you're buying.
Not omniscience.
Not certainty.
Not a fancy title.
Judgment.
Curiosity.
Experience where it matters.
Humility where it doesn't.
And the ability to help move a problem forward.
You don't have to be the smartest person in the room to be the most useful person in it.
Sometimes you just have to be the person willing to ask:
Are we even solving the right problem? Are we even in the right room having the right conversation?
I don't expect you'll agree with everything you read here.
But I do expect you'll at least think about it.
That's enough.
If this article made you think...
Share it.
Quote it.
Debate it.
Teach it.
Email it.
Text it to someone who needs to read it.
If you found value here, help someone else find it too.
Please keep my name attached and link back to the original article whenever you share it.
Because good ideas don't belong in echo chambers.
They belong in conversations.
Jessica Humphreys, BSN
Founder | CannaLife® | CannaLife MISFITS™ | MC Jazzi O™ | CannaLife Press™ | CannaRx™
Sources & Further Reading
Ericsson KA, Krampe RT, Tesch-Römer C. The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance. Psychological Review. 1993;100(3):363–406. DOI: 10.1037/0033-295X.100.3.363. Foundational work examining prolonged deliberate practice and the development of expert performance.
Huang K, Yeomans M, Brooks AW, Minson J, Gino F. It Doesn't Hurt to Ask: Question-Asking Increases Liking. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2017;113(3):430–452. DOI: 10.1037/pspi0000097. Research examining how question-asking, particularly follow-up questions, affects interpersonal responsiveness and liking.
Yeomans M, Brooks AW, Huang K, Minson J, Gino F. It Helps to Ask: The Cumulative Benefits of Asking Follow-Up Questions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Research demonstrating the interpersonal value of responsive follow-up questions.
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