Imposter syndrome

By dan - On

I used to think imposter syndrome wasn’t a real thing. I thought if people were especially nervous about sharing content or educating others because they weren’t good enough, it was probably a sign that they weren’t and they probably should wait till they do have some more experience and expertise before proclaiming to be an expert.

Last night on my podcast I was chatting to my co-host Hendo about his Youtube channel and learned that he was nervous about fully putting himself out there as an expert and full time educator / creator.

This really surprised me. Hendo is one of the OG’s of the craft beer industry in Australia, one of the most respected and recognised brewers in the game. He created one of the first and best craft beer brands and some of the best beers in the country. He’s won all the awards, he teaches the local brewing course. He has hundreds of hours of brewing content on his YouTube, thousands of subscribers, and over a quarter of a million views across his videos.

If Imposter Syndrome can hit someone like Hendo, it can hit anyone.

In that moment with Hendo, I realised, it’s hit me.

These days I struggle to write a blog post (this one included). It seems crazy to me that I’m the same person that’s written 6 books and hundreds of articles. I feel like these days I have less to give than I did a decade ago, which makes no sense. A decade ago I wrote a book teaching people how to create a startup, and now with multiple 6, 7 and 8 figure businesses under my belt, I feel less qualified than ever to give business advice. 8 years ago I wrote a book on Content Marketing that was number 1 in the category when it launched, and now I look at content and feel like I don’t understand it and I’m no position to teach it.

Confidence is low. It ebbs and flows. My approach in situations like this is to create more content, even if it’s hard and it feels wrong. At the end of the day, everything I’ve ever done business wise I can trace back to a piece of content that I’ve written. Sometimes full of confidence, sometimes hit hard by imposter syndrome.

This week was no different, I got a message from a well known investor about my new startup Jessop. They had read about my startup journey for the first time because of an article I wrote a few weeks ago.

I hope AI doesn’t replace all of us content creators, because that might just be the solution to Imposter Syndrome and the vehicle for getting back on track.

dan
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