Imposter

I guess I was waiting for it to hit me; I’d noticed it bubbling up a few times over Christmas and managed to suppress it. But Imposter Syndrome came at me with full force last weekend. Oddly, it came at the end of a pretty successful week. I’d enjoyed presenting my work to a client who’d asked me to do more. I’d hacked together my first product for Familiarize. I’d got a side hustle with McKinsey and I’d managed to get through another week of home-schooling. And yet, by Sunday evening, I was asking myself “Who was I kidding?”, “I’m no entrepreneur”, “I can’t build a tech business”, “This is just a game.” By Monday at 4am, I had written myself off.

By 7am I was running (away). On very thin ice after a dump of snow. And I was doing what my wonderful coach Miffa Salter taught me to do – “Observe, Acknowledge and Use the self-doubt”. It made me think I should write about this, because just maybe it might help some of you on the same journey.

We all suffer from Imposter Syndrome at some time in our lives. I often experienced it at bp, so going solo hasn’t created something new. Each promotion, every new role, the more impressive people I met, the more I agonised that I would be found out – and kicked out.

It’s no longer about limited technical qualifications or commercial experience or the fact I’m not in some big bod’s clique. I’ve heard enough stories of Founders who had none of these advantages; in fact, they never sought out these things. No, the Imposter in me is screaming “You haven’t got the instinct of an entrepreneur” – it’s actually much worse, because instinct feels like something you have or don’t have – something you can’t train for, read a book on, or ingratiate yourself with someone to get. It’s like my journey as a Founder is predetermined. And it inevitably ends jumping back into a corporate career (i.e. failure).

I suspect the main reason (or rather ammunition) for my Imposter Syndrome blasting me this week is because I shared a really hacky version of my Familiarize product to some of the Mentors I mentioned last week. I’d read the lines saying if you’re not ashamed of your first product you’ve shipped too late. And so I spent just a few nights on it, built it in PowerPoint and I did the voiceover. It was pretty awful, but it was the first time I’d laid out the workflow, allowing me to spot the gaps and issues.

The feedback I got was lukewarm. And whilst I couldn’t disagree with any of it. I was actually hoping for better. Hoping for at least one of them to scream “The world needs this”, “You’re a real entrepreneur.” Pathetic I know. And given all of them subscribe to #CorporateEscapologist they’ll all now know that was what I was hoping for.

But the truth is it’s not pathetic. Nor does it need much explanation.

Especially when there’s no rule book. Especially when we genuinely aren’t sure whether we are going to be a huge success or a giant failure (learning doesn’t seem to matter when you’re in this frame of mind).

But the Imposter, just like Success and Failure is in our heads. We define them. We are their judge.  Just as the wonderfully sensible Eleanor Roosevelt wrote:

So here’s a few tips to manage your Imposter Syndrome, and by manage I mean use it, not suppress it.

1. Notice Imposter Syndrome when it comes, like you might once have noticed that annoying guy from Finance sidle up to you to ask if you’d had that budget approved. He won’t go away even if you pretend to be engrossed in something else, and nor will Imposter Syndrome. In fact it’s likely to build up in the background and hit you harder (e.g. the Finance guy’s boss will show up next – or your Boss).

2. Spell out specifically what you’re supposed to be impostering. For me it’s this idea of the entrepreneur (younger, more confident, coder for fun, grown up with other founders, bowls over investors etc). Just writing that down made it seem silly. Try it. I am learning to be an entrepreneur and that’s just fine.

3. Invert Imposter Syndrome. This morning on my run I tried a simple visualisation picturing Familiarize as a Huge Success. I let myself bask in it a few minutes and then I asked myself how I had got there. And funnily enough it wasn’t because I was young, particularly confident, coding every night until 4am, only had founders in my network or routinely dropped investors’ jaws. It was because I built something to solve a problem I really cared about (i.e. I had purpose).

4. Talk to someone. Last week’s blog was about Mentors and I practised what I preached last week by dropping a bunch of whiney messages in Slack to my friend John. I needed someone who wouldn’t let me wallow. He had two points: 1) this is normal 2) don’t do this for anyone else but you, because it’s your passion.  In my case that passion makes me feel I have no choice but to try this, it’s starting to be “in me”, starting to feel instinctive…oh wait…

It’s funny, last week I thought I need to be a bit more personal in this blog – and share more. Rather than spout what a decent entrepreneurs handbook might say. And right there, who comes along to help me? Imposter Syndrome...just what I needed.

I’m starting to believe it might actually be.

If you think someone else might find this helpful, please share it!