What do you do when
[2023-03-04 07:59:19 PM] : What do you do when your audience thinks they are already experts? I was a little nervous about my audience because they can have very strong opinions, but today I noticed some folks giving advice that was downright dangerous and continued to do so after someone corrected them. Is that just a bad watering hole? Or a bad audience? Does anyone else experience this with their audience?
1 Reply
[2023-03-04 11:16:09 PM] : I see what I find to be bad or useless advice in my watering holes all the time. For me, I see it as a strong indicator of an opportunity. My advice will stand out from the usual stuff.
[2023-03-05 04:19:11 AM] : I don’t have a solution, but I just wanted to say that this is a great question.
[2023-03-05 05:39:22 AM] : My experience is that it can be very watering-hole dependant, especially if it's anonymous vs not
[2023-03-05 07:57:39 PM] : One of the Q&A videos in 30x500 talks about “what if the question has already been answered”, I feel like you might get some answers there.
Also, I generally just focus on helping the OP. Other comments are less relevant.
[2023-03-06 09:12:39 AM] : Paige Willey I have this audience dynamic. Its a tough one to balance - as some people have very strong beliefs. I recently launch a course and had a surprising amount of people who are already very confident on the subject sign up. I've no solution as such but I think being aware of this is actually a positive for you - as you won't be drawn. My experience has been to stick to sharing my experiences rather than calling anyone out. I try to focus on the OP and share "this is what worked for me, hope that helps you". When in discussions directly with people I try and really make sure I understand their perspective first - so lots of clarifying questions in a positive way. Then work through that with them to see what they are actually saying. I tend to find people first want to be understood and many initially combative sounding commenters can often soften if I'm genuinely interested. I had one guy on my podcast as it happens and whilst he came off still convinced about his perspective, the feedback I had from people listening was that they were able to make their own minds up. Tough one though but as mentioned, if your audience is hanging out there then its probably worth getting involved.
[2023-03-06 02:20:10 PM] : Great stuff in here, well said everyone.
[2023-03-06 02:25:18 PM] : I'll add one more thing to the mix: strong opinions and bad advice are often linked to worldviews. and for you, that's a huge opportunity to be an anchoring voice for the people who are a better match for your worldview than those other voices!
I've never seen an audience where there weren't loud people with strong opinions! 99% of the time, you're not going to get far "correcting" them.
Instead, the power (as others have said) is to stay clear and focused on what YOUR advice is and let people make their own decisions. I'd be willing to bet that you'll find there's a quiet majority who are happy to have your perspective esp if you do a better job of listening and meeting them where they are than the people who are focused on being the first or loudest.