The Ambitious Bookkeeper Podcast

192 | How to Combat Imposter Syndrome

• Episode 192

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In this episode I’m tackling a listener ‘struggle’: Imposter Syndrome.

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A couple of weeks ago in my email to you, all my wonderful listeners and readers, I asked people to respond back with their top struggle. So this week I'm tackling one that I don't think anyone hasn't dealt with at some point in business, whether you're brand new, thinking about starting a bookkeeping business or years into it. Lord knows I still have days when I'm feeling this and that is imposter syndrome. If you've ever attended the Bookkeeping Biz Workshops, you may have heard me talk about imposter syndrome. Usually the workshops happen a couple times a year, except this year we're only going to be hosting them once later this fall. So if you're interested in learning what I teach in these workshops, you can either hop on the wait list for that by going to ambitious bookkeeper.com/workshops. Or you can jump into my free training, which is on demand, where I cover a lot of the same stuff in a more condensed manner. To attend to that, just go to ambitious bookkeeper.com/training. I'll also drop the link in the show notes. Anyway, on the first day of the workshops, I talk about what it actually takes to start and run a successful accounting business, and I talk about imposter syndrome because like I said in the intro, I haven't met anyone. Who has gotten away with this not creeping in at some point. Some people are just better at dealing with it, and for some of you lucky ones, you may only feel a little tinge of it. But when I cover this topic in the workshops, I talk about it right after I've shown everyone the possibilities of what services they could offer. Just another plug for the training. I give you that list in there too. And sometimes seeing all of these possibilities freaks people out and they start to feel the imposter syndrome thinking they have to offer all of these different services. So let's talk about what imposter syndrome is. It is a psychological pattern of doubting your accomplishments or talents and having a persistent, internalized fear of being exposed as a fraud. Despite external evidence of your competence, and when you experience this phenomenon, you remain convinced that you are a fraud and do not deserve all that you've achieved. It's more likely to affect women, but it also affects men. So I'm going to pause here and ask this because this is where I also pause during the workshops and ask everyone, does any of this resonate with you? And on a scale of one to 10, one being the least, how much of an imposter do you feel starting a business? Or advising other businesses. And right here is also where I point back to the slide where I had all the services people could offer in their business. And I ask everyone to identify at least one thing on the screen that they feel comfortable with or understand the concepts behind. So I ask you, listener to pause here and write down three things or just one that you are really good at in your business and helping clients with. And when you're feeling a little, "imposter-y". Look at that list and remember what a badass you are at those things. But you don't have to know everything about accounting services or topics. If you can conceptually get something on that list that I give in the workshops, you do have what it takes to do the work. To learn the rest. If you take one thing away from today, let it be that you don't have to wait until you've mastered it all or know every possible scenario. I still get stumped by my clients frequently. I have to look up rules and regulations. I have to say, I'll have to look into that more often than I'd like, but we just can't know everything. I sometimes even refer them to other professionals. It's about knowing your limitations and having the integrity to learn or refer the things that you don't know. If you have imposter syndrome, congratulations. You're human and you care, and caring is one of the highest values that you can offer your clients. So even if you're at the beginning of your journey, maybe you're just thinking about starting your bookkeeping business or accounting business, but you keep feeling this ping of imposter syndrome, like, who am I to help businesses with their finances, or who am I to educate business owners on how they should manage their business? And fear that you'll just royally screw something up. This is actually how I know you have something to offer and that you actually will care for your clients and the work that you do. Bookkeeping isn't some small thing. We can actually change lives and we need more bookkeepers with heart and Soul to be out there helping clients. So how do you get rid of imposter syndrome? Well, I hate to break it to you, but honestly, I don't know if it ever really goes away. It'll go away for a while, but then something else will come up in your business that brings it up again. Like maybe you face a new scenario with a client that you've never faced before, and you're like, oh man. I didn't know I was gonna have to deal with this like a hard conversation. Or maybe one of your clients is really struggling in their business and you know you need to talk them through it in order to help them save their business, but you're just not quite sure what to do next. You might feel a little bit of imposter syndrome. So unfortunately I can't really tell you that it's gonna go away. Eventually, I think. It gets less and less the more experience you have with clients and the more experience you have doing what you're doing. But there are ways that I've been able to deal with imposter syndrome and one of the best ways, honestly, is to. Go back through like old testimonials from clients or emails from clients where they've given me praise. Like it's just really nice to read a testimonial from a client or read something that like really made a client's day. And then it's like, okay, now I, I know I'm here for a reason. I'm doing well. I do know what I'm doing. I'm not an imposter. So that's one of the things that I do when I'm starting to feel kind of low and like maybe I'm in over my head. The next thing that I do, and I kind of alluded to this earlier, is having the integrity to learn or refer the rest of the things that you don't know. So having a network of other people that support businesses in different capacities than you can is really key. And the other thing is to actually just dive into studying the things that you don't know. So if one of the things that you're struggling with and you feel like an imposter about is because of one of your clients really struggling in their business and they're, maybe they're cash flow is tight or they're not profitable, like really diving into their numbers and studying everything to see what's going on And doing the work to figure out how you can help them. If you figure things out on your own, instead of relying on someone else to feed you the information, it's going to stick better. For one, it's like hands-on learning, right? But for two, and the bigger benefit of that is that you won't feel as much of an imposter when you're the one that has figured it out. Alright, I hope this little pep talk was good for you today. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure you subscribe so you don't miss future episodes or subscribe to the YouTube channel. A lot of these episodes are on video now, so if you haven't subscribed to the YouTube. Go do that now if you're on YouTube. Hello and thank you for watching. if you have other topics that you would like me to tackle here on the podcast or on the YouTube channel, drop it below in the comments or write in at support@ambitiousbookkeeper.com and stay tuned for future episodes where I'm tackling some other things that people wrote in that they were struggling with. So. Thank you so much for tuning in this week. I will talk to you at the same time next week. Until then, be ambitious.

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