I Feel Like A Fraud

The most difficult part of a business is often the beginning. Overcoming the fear of failure, the naysayers, the hurdles and just cracking on. Then once you’ve started, you have to stay alive long enough to build something meaningful.

Once you’ve managed to stay alive long enough this really strange thing starts to happen; You arrive at a point where your business is actually succeeding. It’s paying your expenses, breaking even and actually even growing.

At this point most people have a very similar reaction:

This won’t last.

The incredible thing that I’ve noticed is that this feeling is pretty universal when it comes to entrepreneus. From people running tiny businesses all the way through to people running hundred million dollar businesses, they all feel the same at one point or another. It’s a feeling that almost never goes away and I’ve always thought of it as a good feeling.

I can sum up this feeling in a single word that should resonate with you immediately: Imposter.

Everyday I wake up and feel like an imposter. I feel like I don’t deserve what I have. I feel like I’m not smart enough to be running the company I’m running. I feel like I don’t have a clue about what I’m doing and that my competitors probably know more and that it’s all over for me in a few months. I feel like it’s all just about to end because this success is inevitably going to end, it has to.

This is called the Imposter Phenomenon.

Remember these two words. Learn them well. Burn them into your brain because if you don’t know what I’m talking about, you will someday.

The term was first used by Pauline Rose Clance & Suzanne Imes in an article they wrote in 1978 while studying high achieving women. Turns out it’s something that anyone can suffer from, not just high achieving women.

Some people like to call it the Imposter Syndrome but I prefer Imposter Phenomenon. Simply put, I think it’s a positive attribute that if you can get to grips with, can drive you to push harder and further with your goals. It becomes a syndrome when it damages people. For those who can handle the ups and downs and overcome the feeling of despair and doubt, the results can be phenomenal.

The point I’m trying to make here is a simple one.

Everyone doubts their success when it arrives. It’s important to question any level of success, large or small. Analyse it and anguish over it because that keeps you on your toes.

If you take success for granted it’ll disappear and then you’ll be proving your Imposter feelings to be true.