Startup Founders, Do THIS to Beat Imposter Syndrome

0:00 you know that voice in your head that says you're not qualified to build a startup it's lying to you it tells you that you aren't ready that you're a fraud and you should just stick to your day job I remember that voice it's called impostor syndrome and I've seen it hold Founders back at all stages of the entrepreneurial Journey not just in the beginning I found a few practical actionable tactics that I used to help quiet that voice and they'll help you as well but before we get to those I want to talk about some of the stories that voice might be telling you as I've been in conversation with thousands if not tens of thousands of Founders at this point I've heard so much about impostor syndrome and it's interesting that it falls into four stages and at each stage it shows up in a different way so in the

0:47 pre-launch phase pre-revenue the impostor syndrome in your head is often who am I to build this will this even work can I make it happen as you get your first customers you're probably thinking what if they really realize I'm just figuring this out as I go and I don't actually know what I'm doing as you start growing you ask yourself do I really deserve this success and once you have success you ask yourself was it just luck and to be honest I think these thoughts are signs of self-awareness potentially progress and they're not an indication of inadequacy but an indication that you're human and that so much of Entrepreneurship is in figuring it out as you go along while in the rest of our lives you you might have a lot of certainty when you had a full-time day job when you were at University when you

1:33 were in school it was pretty certain that if you did certain work that you would get a certain grade or a certain salary raise or a certain career progression but entrepreneurship has so much less certainty and I think that's a big reason that so many of us feel like imposters one thing you can do to combat impostor syndrome is to look at the Milestones that actually matter along the way a lot of entrepreneurs think oh once I have success 10 20 Mr or once I've had an exit then I won't be an imposter anymore but realistically when you get your first paying customer when you get your first positive feedback from a customer when you hire your first team member when you get your first month of sustainable Revenue these matter a lot and potentially might matter more than an exit or hitting 100K

2:20 Mr because each of these is such a sign of personal growth what I found is in the early days it's often scarier to take little steps to get that first customer than it is to hit that 100K Mr Mark I found that the more things that I've done that were risky and felt dangerous at the time the further I got on the higher the stakes became but in fact the less impostor syndrome I felt so tracking these milestones and looking at them and celebrating them along the way I think can go a long way towards helping you with this another thing you can do is reframe questions in your mind so if you hear the question of when will I finally feel qualified maybe ask yourself what problem am I solving today put your head down look at what you're working on look at what you've accomplished to date and say I'm just

3:06 going to figure this one out I'm going to go left brain I'm going to go rational and I'm going to head into The Fray instead of hearing am I good enough to charge for this product maybe ask how can I deliver more value instead of asking what if someone builds something better ask how can I better serve my particular customers instead of asking do I deserve the success ask yourself how can I help others succeed so with all that in mind let's look at a few practical tools that you can use to have Forward Motion so the first is called the weekly wins system and this is something that I used at drip as we were bootstrapping we had a weekly team meeting over lunch this is when we were all in one location but the company would pay for lunch and it was in essence our staff meeting and that was when we talked about the wins from the week what are the awesome things that

3:52 happened the new customers the cool tweet or Reddit post that someone did about drip we also looked at things we need to work on I had customer success and sales talking to development it was only five or six of us so it was it was pretty nice and small but this was a way for us all to feel like we are succeeding and it reinforced it with the team it also reinforced it with me of like ah I know how to do this we're doing pretty well the growth is up we are growing by 5K mrr each month right now like that is a great milestone another way to do it is to have an Evidence Journal this is where you document positive customer feedback and you can record wins when you solve a hard problem I actually have an email folder in Gmail it's just called thanks and it's any positive feedback that I receive people will send emails to me or

4:39 to Startup to the rest of us sometimes they'll tweet it out and you know these can take the effect of hey I read your book it really helped me out it can be a long heartfelt story of how my content or my podcast episodes over the years have completely change someone's life maybe they sold their company for enough money they never have to work again one person said their parents were from Taiwan they always wanted to move back there but they were working a day job I think in Los Angeles and just by implementing the stairstep approach and then started for the rest of us in my books this person is now independent and they're living off of products and moved their whole family to Taiwan and we're just celebrating it as such a milestone and thanking me for that so these things take different forms but I have that

5:24 thanks email folder that I refer back to and it helps me think you know maybe I'm not an impostor anymore and frankly if I'm feeling down or if someone uh is lambasting my hair on YouTube which that actually doesn't bother me at all I think it's kind of funny but if someone's saying negative things about me I can always look back at that thanks folder and feel a little bit better about the day and the last thing I'll throw out before diving into building real confidence in yourself is the next step Focus so this is breaking big goals into daily actions and frankly doing this can be so much more impactful than trying to look out long term because you know that a big goal can feel insurmountable right eating the elephant as the expression goes but if you've gotten this far you've taking small tiny steps daily actions along the way you

6:11 probably can take more small daily actions along the way look you need a long-term plan right whether long term is 3 months in a startup or whether it's a month you need something to follow so you're not just flittering all over the place but breaking big goals down into daily actions can be super helpful for this in terms of building real confidence in yourself I will admit that I have impostor syndrome even man as as we were building drip and we couldn't find product Market fit for like 9 months after launching I was really asking myself can I do this like I know I've done it in the past but did I just get lucky that's the thing that kept entering my mind like I'm supposed to know how to do this and it wasn't until we really caught Lightning by the tail and you know drip was my fourth or fifth company and I had successes before that but it wasn't until we really started growing and then the exit and I was like

6:57 okay I now know that I can do this and I believe that I could do it again that was the point where I felt like impostor syndrome kind of maybe left for good I'm not saying I never feel it but I don't feel it like I used to and so this leads me to the thought that I think confidence comes from doing not necessarily achieving right it's just getting things done and that's why I talk so much about the power of small consistent winds that's what the stair step method is as you stair step your way up you have consistent wins that I think can build confidence in you in your spouse or significant other in those around you to where you start feeling like someone who can do this because you are doing it and I've got one last tip for you I think a big part of not succumbing to impostor syndrome is to have folks around you who you can

7:43 talk to about the topic when I've come up against serious bouts of impostor syndrome connecting with other Founders in my Mastermind groups has been one of the biggest unlocks I've talked a lot about the benefits of masterminds on this channel but finding the right Founders to join up with can be hard so to help Founders out with this we launched microcom Mastermind matching a few years ago to date we've successfully matched over a thousand Founders by looking at their revenue their team size strengths goals and a few other data points to make sure your peer group is the right fit once matched you'll also have access to our mentorship series a three-month program where you can connect with some great minds in sales Business Development marketing and more so if you're looking for a group of peers that can help you not only get over your impostor syndrome but also

8:30 give you honest feedback about your business as well as accountability head over to micron.com masterminds and apply today applications are only open until November 29th 2024 so make sure you sign up before then many people struggle with impostor syndrome as they try to build their Network and I get it it can be hard and a bit intimidating but it doesn't have to be check out this next video to learn how to build a worldclass network even if you're starting from scratch make sure sure to like And subscribe to this video and I'll see you next time