I thought I had already overcome imposter syndrome. I was like, yep,
I dealt with that earlier on in my business. I'm all good now.
But what I realized was that it's something that keeps showing up over and over
again. As you get a new level. It shows up in a different
shape and a different size as your business grows. Welcome to imperfect Action.
I'm Steph Taylor. For years, I read all the books, downloaded all
the freebies, and did all the courses, but it wasn't until I started
taking imperfect action that my business had its first million dollar yere. Imperfect action
is about doing things before you're ready, prioritizing consistent action over perfect action,
and moving forward even when you're not sure you're doing it right. On this
show, you can expect mindset advice, actionable marketing tips and strategies to build
a business that brings you more profit, more freedom, and even more joy.
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DBB, or at the link in the show notes, Hey, welcome back
to Imperfect Action. This is episode seven hundred and eighty four. Today we're
talking about imposter syndrome, something that I know affects pretty much every business owner
at some stage in their business, and for most of us, it actually
shows up in different ways different stages of business. I think back to twenty
twenty when my business grew really quickly and I knew that I wanted to invest
in pitching for media. I wanted to pitch some podcasts for interviews. But
I was holding myself back from pitching and I couldn't figure out why. And
it wasn't until I started working with a coach, Selen da Costa, helped
me to really figure out what it was that was holding me back from sending
these pitches out. Like I had, I'd outlined all the angles, I'd
drafted all the pitches, I just never quite got around to actually sending them.
And what it turned out in the end was that there was a subconscious
feeling of not being good enough, the subconscious impulse syndrome going on behind the
scenes that was holding me back from sending these things out. Stories like no,
oh, who would care about what I have to say, my story
isn't very interesting, all of those little things that we have about ourselves in
the back of our minds. That was going on for me, and I
had actually, up until that point, I thought I had already overcome impulse
syndrome. I was like, yep, I dealt with that early on in
my business. I'm all good now. But what I realized was that it's
something that keeps showing up over and over again. As you get to each
new level. It shows up in a different shape and a different size.
As your business grows, kind of grows with you, as they say,
new level, new devil. So what is imposter syndrome really now? I
googled this because I was curious because I kind of had an understanding of what
it is, but I was wondering what the official definitions were, and some
of them they're quite different. So the Oxford definition of imposter syndrome is the
persistent inability to believe that one's success is deserved or has been legitimately achieved as
a result of one's own efforts or skills. I think this definition only really
captures one tiny little part of imposter syndrome, the part where when something goes
wrong, you blame yourself for it, and when something goes right, you're
like, oh, that was lucky, or you say that it was because
of somebody else's work, or that it just none of it attributes back to
your expertise and your work. Another definition I came across was from a website
called very Well Mined, and their definition of imposter syndrome was it's the internal
psychological experience of feeling like a forge in some area of your life despite any
success that you have achieved in that area. I think this definition will resonate
with more of you than the Oxford definition. You know that feeling that someone
is gonna come out of the woodwork and say, who are you to be
talking about that? You're not qualified enough, You're an imposter. Even though
you might have all of the qualifications and the experience and the client results,
you still have that lingering feeling at the back of your mind. Now.
The third definition I came across is actually the one that resonated the most with
me, and this is from a website called Better Up. They say,
imposter syndrome is the condition of feeling anxious and not experiencing success internally despite being
high performing in external objective ways. This condition often results in people feeling like
a fraud or a phony and doubting their abilities. Oh that one resonated with
me so much because it's like this endless success that we are chasing, this
endless feeling of I will be successful when or if, and we never get
there because the goalpost keeps on moving. So I want to talk today about
some ways that imposter syndrome might show up in your business without you realizing it,
because it's not necessarily just going to show up in the one way that
we all, like stereotypically think that it is, you know, us holding
ourselves back because we're doubting our ability and we're worried somebody's gonna call us an
imposter. That is like the traditional sense of it. But there are a
bunch of other ways that it might still show up. Now, all of
these ones that I am sharing, I'm speaking to these from my own experience.
These are ones that have shown up in my own business or my own
life multiple times, and some of them I have worked through. Others still
do show up from time to time, and sometimes they'll show up in a
completely new way and it's like, huh, there you go, there's imposter
syndrome again. How nice, how interesting that you're over there popping up in
this new shape. So the first way that it might show up without you
realizing it, if you are overworking and constantly putting pressure on yourself to do
more, that might be imposter syndrome showing up in your business. When you
don't feel like you are successful or good enough, You're naturally gonna just want
to keep doing more, keep putting more pressure on yourself, working harder,
trying to achieve more and more and more to get to this point where you
do feel good enough. Except the goalpost just keeps on moving, and it
shifts as you reach each new level in your business. It never fully goes
away until you intentionally work on it with a coach or with a therapist.
So unless you go and work through it instead, you might just keep working
more, keep doing more, hoping that one day you will hit this goalpost
of success. And it's exhausting, and it might lead you to burn out.
It might lead you to want to close your business down, no longer
love it, so you're done, You throw it in and you go and
get a job. I've seen people who've done that no. Second way,
if you are not valuing your expertise, that could also be imposter syndrome showing
up in your business. Maybe you're looking at others around you in your industry
and you're comparing yourself, comparing how much you know next to somebody who's been
in the industry longer than you. So you don't share your expertise with anyone
because you don't think you know enough. Or maybe you're not charging enough for
what you do because you don't fully value your expertise and you don't think anyone
would pay anything more to work with you. Maybe you're not putting your hand
up for speaking engagements or podcast interviews because you don't think that you have anything
worthwhile to share. And all the while, you have something that is so
unique and so valuable, and that is your own blend of your personality,
experiences, perspectives, insides, expertise that nobody else has. Now. The
third way that it might be showing up in your business is letting others step
into the spotlight while you hold yourself. This comes up when maybe you're thinking
about doing a webinar, you're doing your first ever launch, and you're like,
oh, hey, everybody else is doing webinars, but I could never
teach a webinar because what if somebody asked me a question that I can't answer
live. Or I want to start a podcast, but I'm not really that
much of an expert. Other people in my industry know so much more than
me. This is where your imposter syndrome's really holding your business back from success.
And I've felt this one a lot earlier on in my business. Back
at my first legit speaking gig back in twenty eighteen, which was at a
podcasting conference, I was by far the most inexperienced, the youngest speaker there,
and at the speaker retreat afterwards, I noticed myself holding myself back from
speaking up and contributing anything to the group because I felt like I had nothing
to add. They'd all been in business, some of them for ten years,
and here I was, like in a few years into my business,
a few years into podcasting, or not even I'd been less than a year
into podcasting actually, and I was at this retreat with all these speakers who
had been podcasting for so long, so I thought I had nothing to say,
and I held myself back. Now, this limited the connections I could
build the networks, the relationships, all of that because I was the person
who was just sitting there quietly listening and observing. And in other areas of
your business, you know, if you're not doing that podcast because you want
to because you're worried you're not an expert enough, or you're not doing a
live webinar because you don't think you know enough, the only result of this
is that everybody else gets ahead and you don't. You're holding yourself back so
that the other people who say are ahead of you just get further ahead.
And it's only it's not you know, they don't even know about that.
It's really only hurting you now. If you are over teaching over delivering in
your courses webinars, if you are trying to prove to others that you know
enough about your area of expertise that it leads you to overteach and over deliver,
you're actually doing your students and your clients a disservice. Right. This
is super common with course creators. You know, the webinar that they're teaching
for free becomes this big thing of if I can just show my viewers how
much I know about this topic. Then they'll trust me and buy from you,
and then their course becomes this mammoth thing with every piece of their expertise
bundled into it. And then they go and overdeliver, like way over deliver
because they're worried that people won't see the value in it, because they don't
see the value in themselves. Maybe you've been there, I've been there.
Right. This is exhausting, and it is doing your students a disservice because
they don't want to learn every single thing about your area of expertise. Otherwise
they would go and study it, they'd go and get the qualification or do
the certification. They are buying your course because they want to get a very
particular outcome. They don't want to have the knowledge. They want to have
the outcome, and by teaching everything that you know, you're actually slowing them
down from getting that outcome. The fifth way that Imposster syndrome shows up in
your business is saying yes when you want to say no, and just a
general lack of boundaries when it comes to client relationships. You don't want to
disappoint them because you're really worried that maybe they don't see the value in your
services, So you go ahead and you add that extra service in even though
it's way outside of the original scope and they're not paying you more. Maybe
you're logging in on a Sunday night to make that sales page edit that they
messaged you about because they said it was urgent. Or you're getting up at
four am for that phone call because that's the only time that you can make
work for them in their calendar. Man, this was me like a few
years ago, when I was working with a lot of one on one clients.
I was so afraid to push back and set boundaries because I was worried
that they would just not see the value and they'd be like, okay,
cool, just going to go to somebody else. And what ended up was
I ended up presenting them and I ended up not doing my best work as
a result, because I was feeling resentful as I was jumping in to make
those sales page edits. When you know, if I had just spoken up,
they probably would have respected my boundaries and we all would have been happy.
But no, instead I resented them because I couldn't speak up for myself.
If you are self sabotaging, this is the next one. Self sabotaging
any opportunities or any projects that are a little bit scary. Maybe for a
client, like a dream client, you're self sabotaging them. That is another
way that imposter syndrome shows up in your business. For example, maybe you
are procrastinating, procrastinating replying to that inquiry from a dream client because you are
so worried that they're going to say no. Or maybe you're procrastinating preparing that
presentation for the speaking event that you're really afraid about, or you're procrastinating that
client project because you're worried it's not going to be good enough. When we
do this, we actually turn it into a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy.
Right when we procrastinate replying to that dream client, we're doing it because
we think, oh, they're not going to want to work with someone like
me, And then you're late to reply because you procrastinated it. That makes
them not want to work with you, and it confirms what you already thought
was true, even though it wasn't true. You thought that to be true.
It's confirming your belief. Right, same with the presentation. If you're
putting it off and then you're going to rush to create it. It's not
gonna end up being your best work, so then you can tell yourself,
oh, well, it wasn't that good anyway, I knew it wasn't going
to be good enough for me. How I've started to overcome this. This
is still something I deal with ongoing, but a big shift for me was
noticing when I want to procrastinate something, asking myself, is this something I'm
procrastinating because I'm worried it's not going to be good enough? And then catching
myself out there and trying to make some kind of forward momentum, even if
it's just like outlining the very first step to getting it done. Just getting
that done so that it doesn't feel like as much of a scary mountain to
climb. And then number seven, the seventh way that imposter syndrome shows up
in your business is perfectionism. Who would have thought right? Perfectionism is actually
another form of self sabotage, but it doesn't really feel like it, because
it feels like you are just doing your best work. You care about the
work, so you want to make it perfect. But it comes from wanting
it to be perfect because you don't think that it's good enough, or you
want to prove that it's good enough. If I can just make it perfect,
then it'll be good enough. But of course it's never going to ever
feel perfect enough for you, right, And I see, I know,
creatives, designers, writers, you guys struggle with this one a lot,
I know, because you want everything that you're creating to be like your best
piece of work. But being a perfectionist about it is a waste of time.
It's exhausting, and it stops you from having the impact that you could
have with the work that is simply good enough. Right if you think that
it is seventy percent good enough, chances are somebody else is like, oh
my goodness, this is amazing. But if you're sitting there refining it forever
and never ever putting it out into the world, then it doesn't get to
impact anybody, all right. So there we have it. Seven ways that
poster syndrome might be showing up in your business without you realizing it. Firstly,
overworking and constantly putting pressure on yourself to do more. Next, not
valuing your expertise, letting others step into the spotlight, and holding yourself back.
Over teaching and way over delivering in all of your courses, programs and
webinars, saying yes when you want to say no, and not having boundaries
with clients, self sabotaging any good opportunities that come your way. And then
lastly, perfectionism. All right, I don't know if you can resonate with
any of those. If you can, yet you're not alone. And if
you have any friends who think might be dealing with some of these things,
hit the share button pop this episode over to them because it's how I get
to help more people. And if you haven't already subscribed to the show,
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for listening. Catch you next time.