167 | Using Imposter Syndrome to Your Advantage and Embracing Confident Humility as and Entrepreneur
Danielle explores the impact of feeling inadequate despite success and shares valuable insights on leveraging imposter syndrome to your advantage.
LISTEN TO THE EPISODE HERE:
Today, Danielle answers a listener question from Kara Priebe of @orkagems - it’s a great episode!
Kara's question was: "How do you overcome imposter syndrome that can come when running a business?"
If you would like your question featured on the podcast you can submit a question here: www.businessbabescollective.com/ask
Discover how to overcome imposter syndrome and thrive as an entrepreneur! Danielle explores the impact of feeling inadequate despite success and shares valuable insights on leveraging imposter syndrome to your advantage. Learn the power of confident humility, practical tips for overcoming self-doubt, and strategies for personal and business growth. Don't let imposter syndrome hold you back—embrace confidence, celebrate achievements, focus on progress, seek feedback, invest in learning, and foster a supportive community. Tune in now!
WHAT IS IMPOSTER SYNDROME?
So many entrepreneurs deal with impostor Syndrome as they start to launch, grow and scale their business. Ironically, it is often most seen in those who have experienced significant levels of success in their life or business already.
Impostor Syndrome is when you don’t feel good enough, even though you are actually really talented. Often when you are experiencing Impostor Syndrome, you feel like a fake or a fraud, and worry that others will discover that you don’t know what you are talking about.It's a common feeling that can make people doubt their own abilities.
Often this shows up tangibly as questioning yourself “Who am I to do this?” or “there are so many people that are more talented or more qualified than me.”
YOU CAN USE IMPOSTER SYNDROME TO YOUR ADVANTAGE
It's important to recognize that feeling like an imposter and struggling with self-doubt is completely normal and there is nothing wrong with you! In fact, feeling this way proves that you care about the work you are doing and are always looking to improve and bring more value to your clients.
Self Awareness
Actual “Impostors” don’t see themselves as “impostors” When you have a higher level of self awareness it helps you to make smarter decisions.
Compassionate and Empathetic
Often those who struggle with impostor syndrome are also more focused on others and more compassionate and empathetic, which allows you to connect better with others and ultimately be more of a likeable person.
Confident Humility
You can be assertive bout what you know and what you don’t know. You are open to new information because you understand that you don’t know “everything” and there is always room to grow. The art of expressing confidence while being humble can help you build meaningful relationships with others - collaborators and clients/customers.
Don’t let imposter syndrome hold you back from amazing opportunities!
Embracing Confident Humility
Write down your achievements and celebrate small wins
When you write down your accomplishments and regularly celebrate small wins and victories that you have in growing your business, it helps to grow your confidence. Remind yourself of your capabilities and progress. This practice can help silence those negative voices and counteract feeling like a fraud.
Focus on progress over perfection
You WILL make mistakes, you will experience failure and often this will contribute to you feeling like an impostor. Focus on continuous improvement and focus on what you are learning from each mistake or failure along the way and how that is actually making you MORE qualified to do what you do!
Collect and save feedback and testimonials
Ask for feedback and testimonials from you customers, clients and colleagues, make sure you also save positive emails or messages you get in a folder and if you are ever feeling discouraged, go into that folder and read some of the testimonials and positive messages you’ve received. Having tangible proof of your impact can help counteract feelings of being an imposter.
Invest in Learning
Being an entrepreneur means that you will always be needing to learn new skills. The quicker you can embrace this, the more likely you are to succeed! Invest in online workshops and courses, attend conferences or hire experts to continue to level up your skills, confidence and leadership.
Invest in Community
Entrepreneurship is lonely, and, on our own, we will often compare ourselves to others and question our own abilities. One of the best ways to overcome impostor syndrome is to get support and encouragement from others. It’s so important to get this outside validation from others. Check out our Mastermind to experience this for yourself!
Remember, overcoming imposter syndrome is an ongoing process. Be patient with yourself, practice self-care, and keep pushing through self-doubt. With time and consistent effort, you can build a resilient mindset and thrive as a successful business owner.
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transcript
[00:00:00] Danielle Wiebe: Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Today, I want to talk about something that really affects a lot of people within the entrepreneurial space. And this comes up not only in our community, in our mastermind, but also in one on one coaching clients that I work with. And this is the topic of imposter syndrome.
[00:00:23] Danielle Wiebe: Many entrepreneurs deal with imposter syndrome as they start to launch and grow and scale their businesses. And ironically, it's often most seen in those who have actually experienced significant levels of success in their life and in their business already. So if you don't know what imposter syndrome is, it's when you don't feel good enough, even though you are actually really talented at what you do.
[00:00:50] Danielle Wiebe: When you experience imposter syndrome, you feel like a fake or a fraud, or you worry that other people will discover that you don't actually know what you're talking about. [00:01:00] So this is a common feeling that can make people doubt their own abilities, and it holds people back in a lot of different scenarios.
[00:01:08] Danielle Wiebe: And so often this shows up as questioning yourself. So you might find yourself saying, Who am I to do this? To launch this business? To be an expert in this area? To start a podcast? To write a book? To start my Instagram account? Anything when it comes to doing something that's outside of your comfort zone.
[00:01:27] Danielle Wiebe: You think, Who am I to do this? Or you think, There are so many other people that are already doing this. That, are more talented or more qualified than I am. So this is one of the most common questions that I get asked is how do you overcome imposter syndrome? But in this episode, I actually want to talk about how you can use imposter syndrome to your advantage and how you can actually embrace a confident humility within your business because.
[00:01:58] Danielle Wiebe: Even though, yes, imposter [00:02:00] syndrome does hold us back from certain things in our business, I also think that there are some benefits to having imposter syndrome and how we can actually use it to our advantage and also how we can embrace this confident humility because in reality, the fact that we have this imposter syndrome means that we are focused on bringing value to others, bringing value to our clients.
[00:02:23] Danielle Wiebe: And so sometimes we question ourselves. So we want to find that balance, so to speak of, okay, using imposter syndrome. to our advantage, but then also embracing this confidence that we have in our business. That's going to help us to move forward and take action and actually scale our business to where we want it to be.
[00:02:42] Danielle Wiebe: Here are some of the benefits of actually having imposter syndrome. So I think one of the things is that this It allows us to have self awareness. So when people are actually impostors, they actually don't see themselves as impostors, right?
[00:02:58] Danielle Wiebe: When you have [00:03:00] a higher level of self awareness, it makes you question things, you are thinking deeper and you are able to make smarter decisions because you have That questioning of, am I able to do this? And so there's the self awareness and the heightened self awareness that is actually a benefit.
[00:03:21] Danielle Wiebe: Another benefit is compassion and empathy. So often people who struggle with imposter syndrome, also are more focused on others and they are more compassionate and empathetic which actually allows you to connect better with Others and ultimately be more of a likable person which when you are in business having that empathy and having that compassion for your community for your clients for other people that you're gonna work with is so so important because as We've talked about on the podcast so many times before relationships is one of the best things that you can invest in in order to grow.[00:04:00]
[00:04:00] Danielle Wiebe: And so if you are compassionate and empathetic, you are actually going to be able to build stronger relationships and it's going to come more naturally to you. Number three is confident humility. You can be assertive about what you know and be confident. in that and confident in the fact that you actually are qualified to talk about a specific topic or you are qualified to launch your business or create a product line or launch your podcast, your book whatever that is that you're working towards.
[00:04:33] Danielle Wiebe: But also you are open to new information and you understand that you actually don't know everything, right? So there's always room to grow. So the art of expressing that confidence while still being humble can help you build super meaningful and deep relationships with others. Whether that be, collaborators, people that you're working with, colleagues, or [00:05:00] your actual clients and customers.
[00:05:03] Danielle Wiebe: So I don't actually believe that we can ever fully overcome imposter syndrome because it's something that's going to show up at different levels depending on where we're at in our business. However, I do believe there's some ways that we can actually embrace this idea of being confidently humble and actually moving forward and not letting imposter syndrome hold us back.
[00:05:29] Danielle Wiebe: Because It can hold us back, whether it be potentially pitching ourselves for opportunities. We don't go for some of those things because maybe it's a speaking engagement or a podcast interview or even something like raising your prices or asking for testimonials from your clients. Those are all things that as business owners.
[00:05:51] Danielle Wiebe: in order to grow. Those are really great things to do. And often imposter syndrome ends up holding us back. So let's now [00:06:00] talk about how do we embrace this idea of being confidently humble in our businesses. So I have come up with five different ways that we can embrace this confident humility. Number one is write down your achievements and celebrate your small wins.
[00:06:16] Danielle Wiebe: This is something I am always encouraging my clients and my mastermind members to do. When you write down your accomplishments regularly and celebrate your small wins, you are growing your Confidence and reminding yourself of your capabilities and the progress that you have made. This practice can help you silence those negative voices and counteract those feelings of feeling like a fraud.
[00:06:44] Danielle Wiebe: And you might be tempted to skip over this one because you're like, I've heard this before. This is nothing new for me, but how many times have you actually implemented it? How many times have you actually sat down and written? out your list of accomplishments. This could be [00:07:00] anything from the education that you've done, formal education or even online education.
[00:07:05] Danielle Wiebe: This could be different sports that you've participated in, or maybe you have specific hobbies or skill sets that you've acquired over the years. What have you learned or what have you overcome? Maybe you are a new mom or maybe you have just recently launched a business or hired your first person or taken that step outside of your comfort zone.
[00:07:29] Danielle Wiebe: Like just think of both the large and the small accomplishments and write them down. Okay, number two. is focus on progress over perfection. There is absolutely no such thing as perfection, so there's no point in striving for perfection. However, to focus on excellence and to focus on progress is an amazing way to build your business.
[00:07:55] Danielle Wiebe: You will make mistakes, you will experience failure. And often this can [00:08:00] contribute to feeling like an imposter, but instead focusing on perfection, focus on continuous improvement and focus on what you are learning from each mistake or failure along the way, because this is actually making you more qualified to do what you do.
[00:08:15] Danielle Wiebe: When you experience failure, when you experience and you make mistakes, it actually qualifies you rather than. disqualifies you. So number three is collect and save feedback and testimonials. Actively ask for feedback and testimonials from your customers, from your clients, from your colleagues or collaborators, and make sure you actually.
[00:08:38] Danielle Wiebe: save those positive emails and messages that you get in a folder. I have one of these in my email. So anytime I receive a positive testimonial or message from a client or someone that I've worked with or collaborated with, I screenshot it or I save it and I put it into a folder. [00:09:00] And this is super helpful.
[00:09:01] Danielle Wiebe: Not only Because you can actually use these as testimonials for your website, obviously get confirmation from the person who shared it, whether you can use their name or use a photo of them, for your website. But also this is so helpful on days when you're feeling Like a fraud when on days when you're feeling that imposter syndrome bubble up, you can actually reread those emails or there's messages.
[00:09:28] Danielle Wiebe: And this is tangible proof of the impact that you can make in someone's life or in someone's day from your product or your service. And it can help counteract those feelings of being an imposter. Okay, number four is invest in learning. This is one of the best things you can do to actually create that confidence, that confident humility because being an entrepreneur means that you can always Improve.
[00:09:56] Danielle Wiebe: You're always learning new things, new skills, [00:10:00] and the quicker you embrace this, that you are going to be a continuous learner as an entrepreneur, the more likely you are to succeed. So invest in yourself, invest in online. courses or workshops, attend conferences or hire experts to continue to level up your skills and your confidence and your leadership.
[00:10:21] Danielle Wiebe: Number five is invest in community. If you are trying to run your business on your own, this is going to lead you to second guess yourself, feel imposter syndrome, and often what happens is we start to compare ourselves to other people, we start to question our own ability.
[00:10:38] Danielle Wiebe: So how we can best counteract this is to get support and encouragement from other people. So whether this be a group of friends that support you, a community of like minded. people or entrepreneurs, or being a part of a mastermind or having a coach who can remind you of what you've already been able to accomplish [00:11:00] and how capable you truly are so that you can get to the next level.
[00:11:04] Danielle Wiebe: Because it's so important to not only have that validation that comes from within reminding yourself of your accomplishments, but it honestly means so much more often to us when we can have that outside validation from others. And so we see this happening all the time within our mastermind. And I absolutely love when this happens because someone will come to their hot seat and they'll be feeling a certain way about how their business is going.
[00:11:32] Danielle Wiebe: Maybe they're feeling discouraged or they're feeling nervous about putting themselves out there. But then after. They share out loud some of those feelings that they're having. The group can rally around them and remind them of all of the things that they have already accomplished, how capable they truly are.
[00:11:52] Danielle Wiebe: And they get so much encouragement and confidence, that humble confidence from the group. So they [00:12:00] can feel great about taking their next steps to where they want to go. So those are my five tips for embracing this confident humility and to really use imposter syndrome to our advantage and overcome some of those feelings that tend to hold us back.
[00:12:16] Danielle Wiebe: So I hope this episode was helpful for you. I would love to hear from you. What is one of the ways that you feel that imposter syndrome has? been holding you back and what is some tangible ways that you are going to embrace this idea of confident humility. I can't wait to hear from you. Send me a DM on Instagram at dannylivinglife and otherwise I'll see you in the next episode of the podcast.