There are experts and there are outliers.
Experts spend years learning a trade or skill. They follow processes and procedures taught to them by previous experts. This became their industry-accepted, well-worn path. They know what they know. They know what works and what doesn’t.
However, outliers almost always start out as non-experts. They don’t know what they don’t know. They are not bound by accepted theories, processes, or dogmas accepted by experts. As a result, they pursue paths that experts would never pursue—paths that experts consider to be dead ends. This causes outliers to wander and take reverse paths. In wandering, outliers are those who find solutions to problems that experts can never find because experts rarely wander or take reverse paths.
That’s why almost every revolutionary discovery is made by some outsider.
After my radio interview with Dave Ramsey, CNN wrote a great article about my research. Many “research experts” and “experts” who had never seen my research or discussed it with me were involved. Almost every “expert” laughed at my research because I was an academic outlier who dared to do it. Since then, my research data has been verified by various third parties, such as Wealth X and Chris Hogan.
But I’ve learned that I’m not alone. There are many outliers who are also ridiculed by “experts”.
- Leonardo da Vinci was an outlier—a painter and sculptor who made many discoveries: hardening of the arteries, that the heart had four ventricles (instead of two as experts believed), and that blood swirled at the base of the aorta, forcing the aortic valve to close. Until 1968, some 450 years after his death, none of Leonardo’s discoveries had been confirmed.
- Benjamin Franklin was one of the Outliers—a printer and politician who discovered that lightning and electricity were one and the same.
- Charles Darwin was an outlier—a theologian who defied experts and the church by proposing a theory of evolution.
- Nikola Tesla was an outlier – Tesla discovered that electricity is everywhere – it’s all around us, and he built a large power receiver/transmitter in Colorado that allowed him to distribute power wirelessly. He called it free energy. When JPMorgan found out, he stopped all funding of Tesla because much of Morgan’s wealth was tied to petroleum products. Although Tesla’s free energy device designs have been suppressed by the U.S. government, six of his free energy devices are still operating in a small town in Switzerland, built by a mechanical engineer who followed Tesla’s designs.
- Thomas Edison was an outlier—he was the first to control the flow and distribution of electricity in a way that experts could not.
- Einstein was an outlier—he discovered his theory of relativity while daydreaming on a train, while working as a patent clerk.
- Henry Ford was an outlier—an upstart automaker who came up with the idea for the assembly line after visiting a Chicago slaughterhouse that forever changed the way cars were built.
- Richard Branson is an anomaly—Branson entered the music industry and changed the way the industry sells records and discovers new talent.
- Steve Jobs was an outlier—he and Steve Wozniak were the first to use icons and monitors in the original personal computers they built.
- Elon Musk is an anomaly – he had zero knowledge and expertise when he decided to become a rocket builder. Experts scoffed at Musk’s “reusable rocket” idea.
Not everyone can be an outlier. Outsiders have to be thick-skinned to withstand the arrows of the “experts” until they prove the “experts” wrong, and ultimately change the world in the process.
If you find these articles valuable, please share them with your inner circle and encourage them Subscribe to my daily tips/articles for Abundant Habits. No one can achieve success on their own. Thank you!
