Everybody talks about intelligence like it's this rare resource that's the silver bullet to everything. (There are countless situation you can't outsmart but that's not the subject here).
The true state of intelligence in our society is that there are smart people everywhere. Many are hard to find because they aren't given equal opportunity to demonstrate, aren't helped in understanding how their intelligence expresses itself, and/or lack the guidance to improve.
If you are to accept this as fact though, you can start being on the lookout for the next lesson these 'hidden' people can teach you. To over simplify, I often say 'Even the stupidest person has something to teach you.'
Understanding this also helps demystifying the borderline dogmatic status of the source of the knowledge. Still to this day, there is a persisting hierarchy of where knowledge is acquired from. For instance, books are regarded higher than videos and schools higher than self-taught.
There is nothing wrong with institutionalized teaching, but if you are letting yourself believe it's the only way, you're missing out on a lot. That's usually one of the first lesson graduates learn when they start in their first job: they weren't really prepared for a lot of what's expected, and they'll have to get that knowledge somewhere else.
As some of the smart people who aren't institutionalized or fitting in this structure move on with their lives, they find their way to acquire and express their knowledge. And there's never been more ways to do so. It's truly wonderful, and I hope you're appreciating as I do the many ways there is to learn today. Games, videos (long and short; amateur and pro), blogs, social media, etc. All of these of common source of knowledge you should look into. Most of which are built by smart people.
I use countless movie quotes because of how relatable it is. There is one moment that's relevant for the next chapter, so let's use it.
In the movie 'Revolver', there is a scene when Ray Liotta rant about the concept of "What's in it for me". In that rant, he says - and by this, you should understand, the intelligent screenplay writer/team says - "What's in it for me? The more the man invest in that question, the more powerful the man becomes".
It is easy to brush this off because of the theatrics, but when you've come to appreciate there are smart people everywhere, you can look beyond the show, and see the knowledge. In the next chapter, I'll use this precise example in a way that should show you how much knowledge there is in this line.
In another instance, while attending MakerFaire in the SF Bay Area, I walked by a panel of youtubers and listened to one I follow - Steve Ramsey. He runs a woodworking channel for the average joe. At one point he said "Inspiration without action is entertainment". I don't know Steve personally, but I would guess he's read most of the time as the epitome of the normal guy, and glanced over. Yet, here he was disseminating a key element of one of the most important lesson of my career. Something that became a pillar of my leadership style. Something that has stumped most people I passed this piece of knowledge on.
The list goes on and on and on, and I can't cover it all here, it would need a whole book. Actually, most of the chapters I wrote could easily be expanded into individual books as there is so much to talk about and so many examples to illustrate, so I tend to only cover the tip of the iceberg. Regardless, I hope that I did enough here to convince you that knowledge is everywhere, and you should be on the lookout for it.
You just need to find your own balance between the confidence you need to execute and keeping an open mind about your own 'ignorance'. Don't forget we usually don't know what we don't know.