105. Imposter syndrome and your inevitable $10k meltdown

In this episode, we're going to talk about what the gurus will not tell you about imposter syndrome.

Hi, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach.

And welcome to a genecast squirrel.

There's a saying I use with my clients, new level, new devil.

When a client will go from $0 a month to $5,000 a month in their business, you'd be shocked how quickly it becomes not a big deal.

You'd be shocked how quickly that massive success of building a $60,000 a year business becomes completely unimpressive against their new goal of $10,000 a month.

Right.

And once they hit $10,000 a month, they'll be happier for, you know, about five minutes, and then they'll have a complete meltdown.

And this has happened more times than I can count.

I call it the ten k meltdown because they hit $10,000 a month and then they completely melt down over the fact that that is now the standard for being successful.

They have to recreate it every single month, which usually doesn't happen.

Usually it takes another, like, handful of months to build up to a solid, consistent $10,000 a month.

But it doesn't matter what level of your career, what level of success you reach in your business, you're always going to feel like you're an imposter.

And this hits particularly hard for those of us with ADHD, because if you think about how we've lived our lives, we've constantly lived our lives trying to pretend we're just like everyone else, and we do this without even consciously thinking of it, you know, how good are you at appearing to be very attentive in a meeting?

How good are you at looking super interested on a Zoom call?

I bet you're also pretty good at appearing busy when you have a big project that you're procrastinating doing.

We all know that feeling where your boss, or like, someone who has some kind of stake in what you're doing, comes by.

Oh, are you working on that thing?

Yeah, absolutely.

Mm hmm.

Yeah, totally.

Absolutely.

Not going down a Wikipedia wormhole about Henry VIII and his wives.

No, never.

Not me.

There's this great story about the author, Neil Gaiman, who, by the way, is one of my favorite writers of all time.

He wrote good omens, american gods, the graveyard book, so many incredible books.

And if you have not checked out good omens on prime, I urge you to.

It's so good.

If you don't like it, then we can't be friends.

I've honestly watched it probably about 85 times.

It's just always on in my house.

It's just on in the background.

It's one of those, like, really familiar stories because we like having, like, that background noise so that we can kind of focus on something, but nothing.

Get distracted.

Kind of, like, takes up that extra 20% of attention span that is dangerous.

That could lead us, like, to try to clean out our closet.

Squirrel.

You know, go through all of our makeup, and then all of a sudden, like, we've given ourselves a complete makeover, and we've made a mess, and then we don't want to clean it up anyway.

Squirrel.

Squirrel.

Neil Gaiman, he is an incredibly successful author.

He's written bestsellers.

A lot of those bestsellers have been turned into movies and tv shows.

And he's in high, high demand.

So he tells this story about being invited to this party.

And this party has, like, Hollywood elite.

It has people who are so successful in their given careers.

And he's standing there feeling super awkward because he's thinking, like, why am I here?

Why did they invite me?

You know, here's a famous actor and, like, an incredibly successful, award winning director, and here's this person and that person.

They all were just leading in their fields, and he's standing there just kind of, like, nursing his drink, feeling completely out of place.

His imposter syndrome had just completely taken over.

And he sees someone, this other guy, who also kind of looks out of place.

And so they strike up a conversation.

This guy also happens to be named Neil.

And he's talking to this guy, and the guy at one point says, you know, I don't know why they invited me.

I'm not as impressive as everyone else here.

And it turns out he was talking to Neil Armstrong, who's walked on the f moon.

Apollo Eleven.

Still looking mighty fine from here.

You're cleared for landing.

And I share this story because I have good news and bad news for you.

Having imposter syndrome will not stop you from being successful.

You can be massively successful and still experience imposter syndrome.

Most people do.

Most people who are successful still experience imposter syndrome.

But the bad news is that, yes, while we're all looking for a cure for imposter syndrome and that self doubt, it's never going away.

So imposter syndrome happens when you feel like you've been faking it.

You feel like people have been fooled into thinking that you're competent and that sometime, like, at some point, they're gonna figure out that you're faking it, that you don't know what you're doing, that you are an imposter.

And when you have been legitimately faking it for a very long time, it's really easy to convince yourself that you're doing that here as well.

And at the heart of imposter syndrome, we're really talking about confidence and self esteem and how we've been taught to gauge what our confidence level and our self esteem steam levels should be.

Is completely broken.

It does not work.

It's not healthy, and it doesn't actually lead to having people with high self esteem or high confidence levels, because what we're trained to do is to look for outside reassurance that we're good, to look for feedback.

And I want you to think back to school.

You know what happened when you handed in your homework?

You were given, like, a star, or work harder.

You had that terrible, like, pain inducing red pen marks all over it.

Or you had the blue pen.

The blue pen was like, what you wanted to see on your paper.

The blue pen was like, great job, amazing point.

When you walked into the lunchroom at school, how many people invited you to their table?

This is another method that we use to gauge what our worth is, to gauge how confident we should be.

So I used to do improv classes when I lived in San Francisco, and it was so much fun.

If you have a fear of public speaking, that's why I initially did it.

Go and take improv classes, because what it does, it makes you unafraid of making mistakes, because you're constantly making mistakes, because there's no way to prepare.

But there was this one exercise they had us do that I think about all the time.

We were all given a little card that had a number on it, but we weren't allowed to look and see what our number was, and we had to literally tape it to our forehead and walk around.

And based on how everyone else treated us, we gauged what our status was.

So if you were a one, you were basically the scum of the earth.

No one wanted to talk to you.

If people came to you and treated you with respect, probably meant that you were mid tier and you had to just walk around like a normal human.

If people were reverent to you, if they bowed down to you, that meant you were a ten.

That meant you were a king amongst people, an emperor, empress.

And it was amazing how accurately people figured out what their own number was based on how everyone else treated them.

Like this was just a game in an improv class.

But this is what we do in our normal lives.

We look to everyone else to help us gauge how important am I, how qualified am I, how good am I at what I do?

But the problem with the grown up world is that people around us aren't giving us grades all the time.

We don't necessarily have a lunchroom, especially if you work from home, either for yourself or for a company.

Sure, my dog wants me to sit with her when I have lunch, but mainly because she wants my lunch.

Not a good gauge of what my self esteem should be.

So if you're a business owner and you have ADHD, and your brain has been conditioned to look at the world to tell you what your self esteem should be, how confident you should be, are you an imposter or not an imposter?

You're set up for failure on every front because, bad news, it's not your client's job to tell you how good you are at what you do.

It's not their job to give you feedback on every front when they do amazing.

It helps you do more of what you're good at, or it helps you get better at areas where you need to up your game.

But if you're waiting for your self esteem and your confidence to go up based on external feedback, you're never going to have it.

Because confidence and self esteem is an inside game.

You get to decide what the number is on your own forehead and how we communicate.

This is in how we dress.

It's in how we carry ourselves.

It's in how willing we are to put ourselves out there and take up space and be loud.

The funny thing about being a business strategist.

Ooh, what am I going to say next?

Well, you'll have to keep listening to find out.

But first, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel.

The funny thing about being a business strategist for just humans who wanna start a business, who are solopreneurs, they even wanna start an agency.

Sometimes my clients make dramatically more money than I do.

And as their business coach and strategist, sometimes that can kick off some imposter syndrome with me, because here I am telling them how to make more money when they're making more money than I am.

At the end of the day, that's the metric that matters for me.

If my client's making more money than me, then that means that I'm really good at what I do.

But our brains are not that smart.

Sometimes our brains tend to go to comparitis of, well, how much money are you making.

How much money are they making?

They must be better than you.

Not always the case.

You know, doctors.

You know, a general physician can make anywhere from, like $100 to $250,000 a year, depending on where they live and what kind of demographic they serve, versus a brain surgeon who can make anywhere from 700,000 to 2 million a year, depending on where they live and how much demand there is.

They're both working the same amount of hours.

They can both be equally good in their own sphere, but it's hard to compare the two to each other just based on how much money they're making.

And the crazy thing about this is when we get this feedback from the world that we're not good enough, what our mind and what our subconscious actually wants us to do is to get smaller.

Don't be noticed.

If you're not good enough for this tribe, you don't want anyone to notice.

You don't want people to look at you and think, oh, you're actually draining our resources and you're not worth it.

You better make yourself super, super small, and no one will notice you.

And then you'll just be able to skate on by being this resource, drag on the rest of the tribe, praying and hoping that no one will notice and try to kick you out.

Our brains, unfortunately, have not evolved as quickly as our society has.

You know, our fight, flight, freeze fawn response still gets kicked in, even when it's not relevant.

Just because you're not posting on LinkedIn for a week doesn't mean you're gonna get kicked out of society and have to go forge for berries in the woods all by yourself.

And, of course, what happens when you're running a business and you start playing smaller?

You stop attracting clients, you stop getting feedback that people want what you have, because people stop knowing that you have it to sell.

And it becomes this vicious cycle where you're never able to break out of it.

So what do you do about this?

How do you break out of this?

I mean, here's the basis of what I work on with my clients to help them break out of the cycle of imposter syndrome, where they think they're never good enough is they have to stop being such a fucking weenie.

Seriously.

We don't talk about this enough on the Weenie cast, which is totally my fault because it's my podcast and I decide what we talk about.

But letting your fears drive your business is not a good strategy.

And getting over a fear doesn't happen by thinking about it a lot.

If youre terrified of spiders.

Just thinking about spiders a lot is not going to help you get over the fear.

You have to expose yourself to it.

You have to show yourself, oh, I can be in the same room as a spider and not die.

And you have to do it over and over and over and over again until the fear abates.

If youre afraid of public speaking, you have to just get up and speak publicly.

Now, there are a lot of ways you can do it.

You can take improv classes like I did, and then go to toastmasters and then take, like, an elite public speaking class.

That is absolutely an option, but none of that stuff is going to work if you're not also public speaking and showing yourself.

I can get up in front of a group of people and speak to them and make mistakes and make my point and be charming and be awful and nothing die.

You have to just go and do it.

In starting a business, you're not going to be able to build up the tolerance to the fear of putting yourself out there until you just put yourself out there.

You know, the first time I went live, I did a live video on Facebook.

I was terrified.

I think I lasted like three minutes.

That's what he said.

I'm actually not a 36 year old woman.

I'm actually a 14 year old boy.

So the first time I went live, it didn't go so well, but I didn't die.

And the second time I went live, it also didn't go so well.

But I didn't die.

And the third time, and the fourth time, and the fifth time, and the 6th time, and so on until it started getting a little better.

The only point you can start improving and doing well is when you've stopped thinking you're gonna die.

And the only way to stop thinking that you're gonna die is to do it before you're ready.

Do it afraid.

You're never gonna be good at something that scares the crap out of you on the first try.

It's never gonna happen.

And the cool thing about this is, actually, it doesn't really matter if you're good or bad in the beginning because you're taking up space.

You're daring to put something out there, be it a live video, a post to getting up on stage, speaking at a networking event, whatever.

You're daring to be big.

You're daring to command the room, to command attention, to be loud, and people pay attention to that.

That's when you start getting the feedback loop.

That's when you start getting people who want to invite you to their lunch table.

That's when you start getting feedback on your homework.

The red marks and the blue marks.

Do you know how many people create content and put it out in the world?

And the content doesn't actually say anything, doesn't have a point.

It just sounds kind of smart because you're using big words.

There are full ass politicians who get elected to represent full ass states and countries that never actually say anything of any substance.

They just get up on stage, taking up space and say it really loudly and say it again and again and again and they command attention.

The most dangerous thing for our world is that we continue to let imbeciles and people who are not qualified to help other people to continue to command attention like this.

You and I both know that what you do for your clients is an incredible help.

It's something that they desperately need.

And if you're too chicken to actually get out there and command their attention and make sure that they know that you're here to help them, you're setting them up to fall for whatever bull someone else is selling who is not as good as you.

And here's the kicker, and this is what a lot of people struggle with, especially those of us with ADHD who've spent most of our life masking.

Trying to fit in with everyone else is the only way you're going to be able to take up space and be loud and command attention and actually have it impact your confidence and kick imposter syndrome's butt is by being you, by being authentic.

And I know that word gets thrown around a lot and it's completely overused, but it's never going to work if you're trying to be someone else, if you're trying to dress the way someone else dresses.

Not going to work.

You're never going to feel at home in your own skin.

If you're trying to speak the way someone else speaks, it's not going to work.

You're going to constantly feel like you're fooling people into thinking you're credible, which, yeah, I mean, essentially you are.

You're fooling them into thinking that you're someone that you're not when actually, let me just, let me just clear this up.

You're not fooling them.

People will subconsciously know, don't trust this person.

There's something not trustworthy here.

There's something fake.

I can sense it.

I'm not sure what it is, but there's something not real here.

You might sign clients, but those clients will always hold back because they won't really know.

Is this someone I can trust?

Overcoming imposter syndrome is an inside job.

The first person who has to give you feedback that you are just fine just the way you are.

With all your quirks and faults and strengths and gifts.

The feedback that matters the most is you.

And the key to this is to stop trying to be the idealized version of yourself, because that person will never exist.

It's a perfectionist dream.

Perfect doesn't exist.

What you have to do is really understand who is your favorite self.

And I talked about this in episode 100, how to get in touch with that favorite self.

But your favorite self is never going to be perfect because that's not what matters.

Your favorite self is the person that you most enjoy being in every moment of the day.

You know, your favorite self might not wear stilettos.

Your favorite self might wear cool sneakers.

Your favorite self might not wear a designer suit jacket.

Your favorite self might wear a hot dog costume because it makes them giggle.

And it proves a business point that you can stop being a weenie.

And for folks with ADHD, a big part of this is accepting how your brain works differently from everyone else.

Not just accepting it.

It's celebrating all the strengths that you have, all the gifts that you have as someone with ADHD.

And practicing, you don't have to out yourself right away, but practicing sharing this about yourself and doing so with pride.

So, in short, if you want to get over imposter syndrome, you just have to stop being a weenie and go for it.

And I say that like it's easy.

It's not.

It's going to be one of the hardest things you ever do.

It's going to be a whole ass personal journey.

It might require some therapy, some coaching, a whole bunch of support.

But I do know one thing, and it's this.

You can do this.

You have it in you.

You wouldn't want to start a business if you didn't have it in you, if this wasn't meant to be the journey that you're supposed to be on.

So go do it.

So my uncle Darrell, who lives in Idaho and he owns the farm, used to raise miniature ponies or miniature horses.

He's very involved in the rodeo scene and goes around cooking pigs over spits for events.

It's really cool.

And a rustic, like, rural guy, right?

And he came to San Francisco when I was, like, 25, and I lived out there and I was working out there.

I took him to the Museum of Science in San Francisco.

You know, he's this big guy, and he's wearing farm gear like his fenders and a big belt buckle.

He looks like the cowboy, right?

And we go in and it's like a Tuesday.

Cause I worked in restaurants at the time.

That was my day off.

We go in and there's all these school groups of kids in this exhibit where you have to, like, travel up this winding up exhibit to the top where they have this butterfly garden.

There are all these kids staring at him.

And you could tell he was getting really self conscious.

Cause he sticks out.

He doesn't look like everyone else, has his handlebar mustache, and he just is not dressed like everyone else.

This little girl, who had to be about eight years old, has probably never been outside of the urban San Francisco Bay Area.

Her friends shoved her forward, and she was like, oh, God.

She walks up to him and she's like, sir, sir, are you a cowboy?

And he looks at her and he's like, well, I'm not a cowboy, but I drive the horses and I deal with the carriages.

And he starts saying all this farm talk that I don't even understand.

She's standing there wide eyed and nodding like she understands every word.

She's like, okay.

And she runs back to her friend.

She's like, yeah, guys, he's definitely a cowboy.

And he didn't realize it, but for them, that made their day.

They got to meet an actual cowboy.

And I was like, daryl, do you realize they are so excited they got to meet you because you're like this magical being to them?

And he's like, oh.

It completely changed his demeanor for the rest of the day.

He didn't feel like he stuck out in a bad way.

He was like, oh, the school children thought it was cool.

Squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel.