Stop Outsourcing Your Becoming
The spiritual path to unshakeable expertise that transforms both you and everyone you serve (while your AI-dependent competitors fade into irrelevance)
The Water That Never Boils
There's an ancient principle about learning that many people in the transformation space today are unknowingly violating. It's the principle of the foundation - and it's being compromised unwittingly by our relationship with artificial intelligence.
Think about water boiling. You can't turn on the heat for two seconds, then turn it off and expect tea. The water hasn't changed yet. The kettle isn't whistling. You need sustained heat over time for transformation to occur.
The same is true for developing expertise. Yet in our AI-powered world, we're constantly turning off the heat just when the real transformation was about to begin. We mistake the quick bubbling for the deep change that comes only through sustained engagement with the work itself.
The Great Robbery in Progress
Here's what's happening right now in the expert economy: New coaches, consultants, and service providers are using AI to generate their content ideas, create their frameworks, and even develop their methodology. They think they're being efficient. In reality, they're robbing themselves of the most valuable thing they could possess - genuine expertise.
But this robbery goes deeper than efficiency. It's a robbery of the very process that transforms someone from a person who knows about something into someone who truly embodies it.
Consider this scenario: A new coach asks AI to suggest content topics instead of drawing from their own experience, passion, and deep study of their field. On the surface, this seems smart. They get ideas quickly and can start creating content faster.
But here's what they're actually losing:
The process of becoming an expert. When you wrestle with ideas yourself, when you struggle to articulate your thoughts, when you dig deep into research and competitive analysis - you're not just gathering information. You're transforming into someone who truly understands their field at a cellular level. This struggle is not a bug in the system; it's the feature that creates genuine expertise.
The development of intellectual property. Your unique perspective, your specific way of seeing problems and solutions, your personal frameworks - these come from hours of thinking, reflecting, and connecting dots. AI can't give you this. It can only remix what already exists. Your breakthrough insights emerge not from accessing more information, but from allowing existing information to work on you over time.
The confidence that comes from earned knowledge. There's a different quality of certainty when you know something because you've lived it, studied it, and integrated it versus when you know it because you asked a chatbot. This confidence isn't arrogance - it's the quiet assurance that comes from having done the work.
Paying Not to Go First: The True Value of Expertise
captures this perfectly in his recent story about choosing a surgeon. When he needed throat surgery, he chose the most experienced surgeon over cheaper options. When friends questioned why he paid more than twice the cost for a 45-minute procedure, Fields realized:"I wasn't paying for his time, I was paying not to go first. I was paying to be the 10,000th patient... I was paying for the 40 years of practice."
This is exactly what new experts are robbing themselves of when they lean on AI from the beginning. They're trying to skip the decades of practice, the thousands of iterations, the deep pattern recognition that comes only from doing the work. They want to be the experienced surgeon without ever having held the scalpel with trembling hands.
The surgeon's confidence didn't come from reading about surgery or even watching surgery. It came from the accumulated wisdom of having navigated thousands of unique situations, each one teaching him something new about his craft.
I bet when you hear this, you want to be THAT surgeon. But the truth, is this is only earned with time in the game.
The Time Machine Solution
But here's where it gets interesting. There's actually a way to accelerate your expertise development without sacrificing the foundation - and it's not AI. It's working with someone who has already done the decades of work.
Think of it as stepping into a time machine. When you work with an expert coach or consultant who has built genuine expertise in your field, you're not just getting their current knowledge. You're getting access to all the mistakes they made, the lessons they learned, the patterns they discovered over years or decades of practice. Their ways of thinking through problems and arriving at powerful solutions.
This is fundamentally different from AI because a human mentor doesn't replace your thinking - they accelerate it. They help you avoid the pitfalls they fell into, point you toward the resources that matter most, and guide you through the foundation-building process more efficiently. Most importantly, they help you develop beginner's mind - the capacity to approach familiar concepts with fresh eyes, even when your intellect thinks it already understands.
You still have to do the work. You still have to think original thoughts, develop your perspective, and build your expertise. But you can compress what might have taken you 10 years into 2-3 years by learning from someone who has already walked the path. The water still needs to boil, but you're starting with warmer water.
Where Shortcuts Do Work (And Where They Don't)
After close to a decade of personally working with experts and supporting powerful creators, I've learned there are places where shortcuts work and places where they absolutely don't.
Here's the key distinction: There are wise shortcuts and foolish shortcuts.
Foolish shortcuts involve using AI to replace the foundational thinking and expertise development that can only come from direct human experience and mentorship. This happens when people use AI to generate their core ideas, develop their methodology, or create their intellectual property without first building a solid foundation of understanding in their field. These shortcuts feel efficient in the moment but rob you of the deep transformation that creates genuine expertise.
Wise shortcuts involve working with human experts who have already done the decades of work in their respective fields, while also using AI strategically to amplify and scale what you've already learned and developed through direct experience.
Let me be clear: AI is an incredible tool. I use it regularly. But there's wisdom in the when and how of AI usage that makes all the difference.
When you've built a foundation through human mentorship and real direct experience, AI becomes incredibly powerful for tasks like:
Researching areas you already understand
Helping express ideas you've already developed
Scaling content production around frameworks you've already created
Administrative tasks that don't require expert judgment
But when you're in the foundation-building phase of your expertise, AI can actually slow your development by preventing you from doing the deep thinking work that transforms you into a genuine expert. It's like using a calculator before you understand mathematics - you get answers, but you never develop the mental patterns that allow you to do math in your head.
Whether you're developing expertise in your core field or accelerating your business growth through better marketing and sales, the principle remains the same: Build your foundation through direct experience first, then use AI to amplify what you've learned.
Working with a mentor is absolutely a shortcut - but it's the right kind. You're not bypassing the learning process; you're accelerating it through proximity to genuine expertise. The difference is that a human expert helps you develop your thinking, while premature AI usage can replace your thinking entirely.
The Science of Seeking Proximity to Greatness
This approach isn't theory - it's a proven strategy I've used across multiple industries to build genuine expertise from the ground up. Each time, I had to resist the temptation to think I was "above" starting at the beginning.
When I had a passionate desire to work in the music business, one of the first things I did was seek out an unpaid mentorship with someone operating at a high level in concert promotion. I worked for an entire summer for free, probably 60-80 hour weeks.
Could I have thought "I'm better than that" and tried to shortcut the process? Absolutely. But the gift I received from seeing how they operated at a high level was invaluable. I witnessed what was working, what wasn't working, the mistakes they made, and how they built and maintained relationships. The network access alone was transformative. More importantly, I was absorbing patterns of thinking and decision-making that I couldn't have learned any other way.
When I decided to step into the technology space, I took a similar approach. I got a job at one of the world's leading software companies - but I started at the bottom. I took a low-paying, low-rank customer service position because I wanted to get in the door and experience greatness in that space. Through that foundation, I was eventually able to rise into a senior product management role. But I couldn't start there - I had to earn it through direct experience.
The same pattern repeated when I entered the online business space. I quickly sought out mentors by joining masterminds, attending events, and putting myself in proximity to people who clearly understood this game and were succeeding at the highest levels. That decision directly propelled me to the position where I could offer what I've brought to life with Carolina and Sacred Business Flow.
There's a science to this approach. This success wasn't by chance - it was by design. Each time, I had to cultivate what many spiritual traditions call "beginner's mind" - approaching each new field as if I knew nothing, even when my intellect wanted to draw quick conclusions.
Getting Into Close Proximity to Greatness
If you're building expertise in any specific field, seek out someone who has mastered that exact space. Not someone who's good at marketing to that space, but someone who truly understands the art and science of transformation in your field.
This requires humility - the willingness to be a beginner again, to not know, to ask questions that might seem obvious. But this humility is what creates the space for real learning to occur.
This might mean:
Paid mentorship or coaching programs
Unpaid apprenticeships or internships
Working for someone for free for a period of time
Finding ways to get into close proximity to greatness, however you can arrange it
The key is finding someone who has built genuine expertise in your specific field and learning from their process, their mistakes, their insights. This is different from learning general business or marketing principles - this is about mastering the craft of transformation in your particular area of focus.
The Pre-AI Advantage
Experts who developed their expertise before AI have a massive advantage. They know who they are. They've done the deep work. They've sat with difficult concepts until they understood them. They've made mistakes, learned from them, and developed wisdom through experience.
When these experts use AI, they're bringing it to support and amplify what they already know. They're using it as a tool, not as a replacement for thinking. They have the discernment that comes from having developed genuine expertise.
But new experts don't have this foundation. They don't yet know who they are in their field. They haven't developed their unique perspective. So when they lean on AI from the beginning, they're building their expertise on quicksand.
The Foundation Metaphor Applied
Remember this teaching about foundations:
"One inch at the beginning is a mile at the end."
When you're building a house, if you don't put great care into the foundation, you'll have problems later. The same applies to building expertise.
But here's what's subtle about this: the mind's tendency to think it understands something before it actually does. When we first encounter a concept, the intellect quickly draws conclusions about what it means. This knowing becomes a filter that blocks deeper understanding. We stop being curious because we think we already know.
If you shortcut the foundation-building process of expertise development, you'll find yourself six months or two years later wondering why you don't feel confident in your field. Why you struggle to have original thoughts. Why everything feels heavy instead of joyful.
You'll be shocked to discover that you're not the expert you thought you were becoming. The foundation was off from the beginning, and like a house built on sand, the whole structure becomes unstable under pressure.
The Heavy Feeling Is Your Guide
When developing expertise feels heavy, that's not a signal to find shortcuts. That's your inner wisdom telling you that real transformation is happening. The discomfort you feel when diving deep into your field, when struggling with complex concepts, when doing the hard work of original thinking - that's the heat that boils the water.
This heaviness is sacred. It's the feeling of your consciousness expanding, of new neural pathways forming, of your being reorganizing itself around deeper understanding. Most people feel this heaviness and immediately look for relief. And now one of the ways they do that is by turning to AI to make it easier. But this is exactly when you need to lean in deeper.
Think of it this way: the teachings and principles you're working with continue their alchemy even when you're not consciously thinking about them. While you're sleeping, while you're walking, while you're in conversation - the deep work continues. But only if you've given it the sustained heat it needs to transform you.
Ask yourself: If this is your passion, if this is your devotion to serve people, why does it feel heavy? What would it be like to experience yourself as an expert guide where learning doesn't feel heavy, but feels like joy? Where spending time going deeper on your topic feels like a privilege, not a burden?
The answer often lies in releasing the urgency to "get somewhere" and instead finding joy in the process of becoming.
The Path Forward
This doesn't mean you should never use AI. It means you should be extremely careful about how and when you use it, especially in your early stages of development.
First, become - through action. This is crucial to understand: Spending months or years developing your perspective doesn't mean you delay taking action or starting your business. You become an expert through doing, not through endless intellectual preparation.
Start having conversations with potential clients. Begin offering your services as a beginner. Stumble through your own mistakes as a new service provider and own that experience. It's through this real-world action - the messy, imperfect process of being new at something - that you actually develop expertise.
The key is maintaining your commitment to building genuine understanding while you're in action. Read voraciously while you're working with clients. Study competitors while you're refining your own approach. Develop your frameworks through the experience of solving real problems for real people.
Don't hide in intellectual study mode for years thinking you need to have it all figured out before you start. The foundation-building happens through action, through mistakes, through the iterative process of serving people and getting better at it. But approach each interaction with beginner's mind - curious about what you don't yet know, open to being surprised by what emerges.
Find your time machine - while you're in motion. Seek out someone who has already built the expertise you're developing. Learn from their process, their mistakes, their insights while you're actively building your own practice. Let them help you navigate the challenges you're actually facing, not theoretical ones you might face someday.
This is where wise investment pays exponential dividends. The right mentor can help you avoid years of costly mistakes while still requiring you to do the essential work of developing your own thinking and approach.
Then, amplify strategically. Once you have a solid foundation of genuine expertise - built through real experience, real mistakes, and real client work - AI becomes an incredible tool for scaling your impact. You can use it to help express ideas you've developed through practice, to research areas you've already worked in, or to handle tasks that don't require your hard-earned expert judgment.
The key is knowing the difference between AI as a tool to amplify your experience-based expertise and AI as a replacement for the thinking and experiencing that creates expertise in the first place.
The water boils through sustained heat and action working together - not through heat alone, and certainly not through waiting until conditions are perfect to turn on the stove.
The Coming Separation: A Choice Between Two Paths
As AI becomes more prevalent, we're witnessing a fundamental choice point in the expert economy. This isn't just about technology - it's about two completely different approaches to building a professional life.
On one path are those who use AI to replace the foundational work of becoming. They generate content without developing genuine insights. They create frameworks without understanding the underlying principles. They offer solutions without having wrestled with the problems themselves. This path feels efficient in the short term but leads to a hollow form of expertise that crumbles under pressure.
On the other path are those who use the sustained heat of direct experience, human mentorship, and genuine struggle to develop real expertise. They understand that true confidence comes not from having quick access to answers, but from having developed the capacity to think originally about complex problems. They know the difference between information and wisdom.
The market is already beginning to reward the second group exponentially more than the first. Clients can sense the difference between someone who knows because they've become and someone who knows because they asked a chatbot. This sensing will only become more acute as AI-generated advice floods the marketplace.
The question isn't whether you're smart enough to build genuine expertise - you are. The question is whether you're willing to embrace the process of not knowing, of being a beginner, of allowing the discomfort of real learning to transform you.
Which path calls to you?
Building Your Expert Foundation: A Practice of Becoming
If you're new to your field, commit to building your foundation through what spiritual traditions call "the way of direct experience":
Study relentlessly - but with beginner's mind. Read books, consume other experts' work, attend conferences. Not to copy, but to understand the landscape and develop your own perspective. Approach each new piece of information as if you've never encountered anything like it before, even when it seems familiar.
Practice original thinking. When you have a content idea, sit with it first. Think it through yourself before asking AI what it thinks. Let ideas percolate. Allow the uncomfortable space of not knowing what you think about something until you actually do.
Engage with your community. Join forums, Facebook groups, and professional associations. Listen to real conversations from real people dealing with real problems in your field. This is where you learn what textbooks and AI can't teach you - how theory meets reality.
Document your learning. Keep a journal of insights, connections, and questions that arise as you develop your expertise. Track not just what you learn, but how your thinking evolves over time.
Embrace the struggle. When learning feels difficult, remind yourself that this difficulty is what's creating your unique value in the marketplace. The struggle itself is the heat that transforms information into wisdom.
The water takes time to boil. But when it does, you'll have something AI could never give you - the confidence and expertise that comes from becoming who you're meant to be in your field.
Your future clients are counting on you to do this work. Don't rob them - or yourself - of the expert you're capable of becoming. As Jonathan shared, they want to pay not to go first. Make sure you've already gone first enough times to be worth that investment.
The path of genuine expertise is not just a business strategy - it's a way of honoring the work itself, the people you serve, and the part of you that knows the difference between knowing about something and truly understanding it.
The Diagnostic That Reveals Potential Cracks in Your Foundation
If you just read this essay and felt a deep recognition, you already know the truth: there's no substitute for building genuine expertise the hard way.
But here's something to consider - even when you are committed to doing the foundational work, something invisible can keep undermining your efforts.
You know you should be studying deeply, thinking originally, seeking mentors, and building real expertise. You want to do the work. But somehow you keep finding yourself reaching for shortcuts, feeling scattered, or losing steam just when the transformation was about to happen.
This isn't a willpower problem. It's an energetic imbalance problem.
Just like a master builder needs to diagnose potential cracks before they compromise the structure, you need to understand which energetic patterns might sabotage your commitment to genuine expertise development.
The Sacred Business Harmony Map Assessment is your diagnostic tool.
In 10 minutes, it reveals:
Which of the 9 fundamental energies is out of balance and could undermine your foundation-building efforts
Why you might keep choosing shortcuts even when you know better
The specific energetic pattern that's making the essential work feel heavy instead of joyful
Your personalized starting point for bringing that energy into balance so the real work can begin
This isn't about fixing you - you're not broken. This is about identifying which energy is calling for attention so you can do the deep work of becoming with clarity and sustainability.
Your expertise is built through experience, not assessment. But balance supports the stamina for that building.
The strongest foundations require both the commitment to do the work AND the energetic alignment to sustain it.
Take the Harmony Map Assessment
Because you can't build lasting expertise on unstable ground.
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What’s next?
Carolina and I are ready to support you in creating a business that aligns with your heart's calling. Here's how we can help:
Click to Find Your Hidden Business Pattern (Free): The Harmony Map Assessment reveals which version of you is running your business - the one stuck in old patterns or the one ready to emerge. Discover which frequencies are keeping you authentic to your past instead of your potential, and why no amount of strategy can fix what's actually a frequency problem. For entrepreneurs ready to transform both their energetic signature AND their business results.
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Thank you, thank you, thank you for this post Phil. This line gave me such a warm burst of joy - ‘They understand that true confidence comes not from having quick access to answers, but from having developed the capacity to think originally about complex problems.’