The Expert Podcast

So I'm sure I'm not the only one that's noticed it's almost impossible to get any kind of good answers from anywhere anymore — from companies, from government agencies, from experts. You know, try to get a hold of somebody at the airline, try to get somebody on the phone that's a builder or a repair person or the Department of Motor Vehicles or really anybody that has answers. So I'm sure you've been frustrated like we all have. And there's an opportunity in that. Here's a story.

About a guy who's making ten thousand dollars a month answering questions about RVs. He used to own an RV business, and so he has expertise, he has knowledge, and he's using that knowledge to give answers to people who need advice. And you can't get free information anymore from a company. If you call up an RV company, they don't have extra people that are just sitting around that can answer the phone and tell you what to do. You either hire them to do it or that's it. You don't have the availability to call up and just chit chat on the phone with somebody that can give you free advice.

Labor market doesn't let that happen. Inflation makes things cost too much, so people who are experts have to work on projects for people. So at the same time it's created something that's annoying or a pain point for consumers, it's also created an opportunity for experts. Well, who could be an expert? Aren't we all experts at something? You probably have some knowledge in an industry or profession that you could use to help people.

Now the question is, how do you get that in front of them, and are people willing to pay just to talk to somebody? You can get answers to pretty much anything nowadays on YouTube. You can watch YouTube videos, you can read online websites, there's usually forums where you can ask questions of really just anybody. But you don't know how good that information is. On forums, there's a lot of urban legends out there — people say, "Yeah, you can do this," but it's really not true. Sometimes on YouTube videos it's hard to get to good, solid, accurate answers by filtering and weeding through all the kind of lame videos that are out there.

So sometimes that may not be the best way to go. Plus, you have to spend a lot of time doing it and it's a one-way conversation. You can't ask a YouTube video a question; you can't ask the person a question. Now, if you post a comment on a video, sometimes you'll get people answering questions. But the people answering the questions in the comments — do you know if really their answers are accurate? Do they even know what they're talking about? And a lot of times the person on the video is not going to be able to give you an answer because they probably have a job too and they probably can't answer every comment or every question.

That's where these opportunities come in. So just in that one niche business, this guy answers 10,000 questions a year and he spends about 10 to 12 hours a day answering questions. It's not non-stop. He doesn't have to sit there continually. He gets a list of questions and can choose what to answer, and he can decline them sometimes too. Also, it's not one and done — sometimes someone asks one question and it leads to something else. So it's something where your knowledge can help other people. And the fact that there's not as much good customer service out there anymore creates an opportunity. And so for this guy, it's quite an opportunity. If he doesn't make $500 on a day, he thinks he had a day off. So it's quite a big opportunity to answer questions that you know something about that can help a consumer.

Here's the question: As a consumer, how do you feel about having to pay money to get somebody to answer a question? Do you feel like companies should have free customer service that just answers your questions? For example, shouldn't there be RV places that you call up and they give you that information? Is it offensive for a company to charge you just to talk to somebody? Getting that feedback from the consumer base is important to us, so in the comments let us know what you think.

What about paying money to have somebody answer your questions — is that the wave of the future? Is that the way things are going to be from now on? Because of the lack of funding, even in government agencies, a lot of agencies now don't even have anybody who answers the phone. It goes right to voicemail or they have chatbots. Try to call the DMV — you're not going to get anybody on the phone. Try to call permit offices at a government agency — they don't have people to answer the phone.

So this may be something that's required to fill in that gap from the public sector, to have a private sector, company-type solution that will get people the answers they want and get them in front of qualified, licensed, or certified experts to be able to get the answers to the questions that you can't find on YouTube or if you just want to have somebody's undivided attention one-on-one.