Pay for one hour of an expert’s time – not 15 hours of someone who means well

Yes Maam, he does indeed look like a pilot, I'm just not sure if he can fly yet.

Expertise is important. An expert is somebody who has accumulated sufficient experience on a subject matter to sell themselves as being able to provide you a shortcut through your own learning curve.

I have learned that it is better to pay for an hour of a Senior Law Partner’s time and ask a bunch of hypotheticals about commercial and legal matters, than to pay for a junior lawyer to go on a voyage of discovery for a few weeks.

An experienced tax partner at an accounting firm will let you know your main choices and advise on the due diligence and fact checking required for your actions.

An experienced engineer will be able to tell you the known issues with your technology or scale up ambitions.

A good commercialisation expert will be able to point out the known paths that you could take.

The key thing about actual experts is that they will usually couch their language with terms such as ‘could’, ‘might’, and ‘possibly’. This is for two reasons. First, nothing is certain. Secondly, they are taught to do so by their legal departments as many firms have been caught out by vexatious lawsuits from clients who thought that they were getting a 100% accurate prediction of the future.

To help sort out your own business go and make contact with some genuine experts and use your interactions with them to set the vision and strategy of your company. Then use your employees or less experienced contractors deal with the day to day work.