Shit... I should be doing that.

Hello, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and leadership coach. And I'm coming to you late night this Monday evening to talk about a very special form of imposter syndrome. And this is the form of imposter syndrome that basically, you have this expertise and you can help other people with it, but you don't actually do it for yourself. And so whenever you find yourself in a situation where you're helping another person, you're either giving them advice or you're consulting with them, or you might be doing it for them, you have this voice in your head that says, well, shit, like I should do that too for myself. Why aren't I? And it continues to go down this conversation thread of, okay, well, if I'm not doing this for myself, then I must not be credible. There must be something about me that is actually not good at this. Because if I can do it for them, but not for myself, that's not true mastery. And if I can't do it for myself, like, who the hell am I to say that I can do it for other people? Okay, now I can tell you. I work as a business strategist and coach. I have lots of clients. I have a group program that I run. I have these moments all the time. I have these moments all the time. If you're. If you have some kind of expertise in your brain that you offer to other humans, I guarantee you have these moments. Now, that's fine. We all have them. But you don't want those moments to stop you in your tracks from actually making this business real. And in my experience, this is where a lot of new business owners get held up, is that they see themselves as having this expertise, but it's not good enough yet because they haven't been able to perfect it in their own life. Now, we've all heard of the shoemaker, right? The shoemaker's kids never had shoes because the shoemaker was so busy making shoes for other people. This shows up in so many industries. So let me just share with you what I see in my work with my clients, my life coaching clients. I don't care what they specialize in, be it dating, be it career change, be it executive presence, okay? Across the board, whatever you are a specialist in, you're gonna hold yourself to the highest standard, right? So you're gonna hold yourself. Hi, Chris. Welcome. So you're gonna hold yourself to the highest standard of that, and you're gonna think, okay, well, say you're a dating coach. You're like, well, my dating Life is crap. Or maybe I'm single, or maybe I, you know, I'm dating this guy and I don't know where it's going. You know, if you let that hold you back from starting your practice, your business as being a dating coach, it's not going to serve anyone, okay? It's absolutely not going to serve anyone if you are. And I just want to, like, pause on this for a second. The reason that you pick a specialty, the reason that you do anything is because it is something that you overcame. You overcame or something that you struggled with exceptionally hard, right? And so you've done all the work. You've done all the things to make sure that you are, like, the expert in this area now. You don't have to have it perfect, right? You don't have to have your life perfectly sorted out. Like, that's. It's not all in your control. You could. But you can know the things and still have it. Be valuable, right? So let's talk about doctors, okay? Because I know we all know a doctor out there who doesn't eat salads. We know a doctor out there who smokes. We know doctors out there who drink. We know doctors out there who should really exercise more. We know doctors out there who need to sleep, sleep more. I think every doctor in the world needs to sleep more. There are therapists out there who still need to go to therapy for their trauma that they are healing from, okay? It doesn't make them any less credible. Like, a doctor smoking on his. On his break or her break does not mean. Does not negate any of the learning that they did in med school, okay? It's just. They're making a bad choice in that moment, all right? They're. They're just ignoring all the things that they know about the human body and health in favor of something that they really enjoy, okay? They're human, in other words. Now, I know this from personal experience because my dad is a carpenter, contractor. And growing up, I mean, he does the most beautiful work. He's exceptional. You know, I always loved going to see his job sites and seeing, you know, what he was up to and what he was doing for other people. But if you came to our house, you know, like, I would always want to redo my room, and so I'd paint, and I'd take the little covers off of the light switch and the. And the electrical plugs. You know, those little cases, like, you walk into our house, and those were just missing from most of the rooms that he had touched. Okay? I'm sorry, dad. I'm outing you on this. Okay. There were just, like, finished details that never quite made it to completion. Lighting projects that were, you know, still in the works and are still today, recently. Like, there were squirrels in the attic for a couple years. I think we're dealing. They're dealing with it now. He is so meticulous and so good for all of his clients, and yet at home, he's a little tapped out. Okay, we all know. We all know house cleaners, you know, who go and clean houses all day long, and yet, for the life of them, they cannot bring themselves to actually clean their own home and keep it to the same standard of their clients. Okay? Now, part of this is just. You're maxed out from doing it from the work, right? You're just maxed out. You can't do it for yourself. And part of it is, you know, maybe I. I don't know, maybe there's something that you can't see it for yourself. I know. So I'm really good at helping other people pack when they move. I'm really, really good at that. I can break it all down. I can figure out how to organize everything. But when it comes to organizing my own stuff, it is really hard because I just. I'm too close to it. It's too familiar to me, you know? You know, when you go to organize and you take everything out of a closet, and instead of actually organizing it, you kind of go down memory lane and you're like, oh, yeah, this. This reminds me of that one time. And then you start trying on clothes and then shoes, and then before you know it, you just have a massive mess. You have no idea where to start, and you get super overwhelmed, and you're like, it. Just shove it all back in the closet. I can't deal with this right now. Okay? So there's often this element of, like, what we can do for others, we literally can't do for ourselves. You know, there's just this block because we're too close to ourselves. We're too close to what we offer. I also know I used to be. I am still a knitter, but I used to be a knitting instructor. And at one point this last winter, I was going through my closet. I'm like, this is insane. I have knitted probably close to a hundred hats in my life. Okay? I knit hats for days. I don't own a single one for myself. I've never knit a hat for myself. I only knit hats for other humans. Okay? Sometimes you're just the last person you think of to do the thing for you, right? You're the last person, you know, that you think of to do this. I know during the pandemic, okay, we had a lot of kids home from school. They're doing homeschooling or virtual learning, whatever you want to call it. The parents who had no teaching ability were struggling, but it was surprising to them when they heard that even the parents who have teaching ability, who got trained as teachers were struggling to teach their own kids in their own home in that virtual environment, okay? Because here we have a teacher who is also mom or dad to this kid. It's really hard to change gears, okay? Those teachers, like, I hope they weren't just questioning their ability to teach when they were trying to teach their kids. I hope they were aware that that's incredibly hard to change gears like that in a home setting. So why, how do you get over this? How do you get over this? Well, first and foremost, you just have to get some clients. That's, I mean, that's it. You have to just get the clients, okay? You have to show yourself that you who can't do it for yourself can absolutely do it for your clients, okay? Because you get to see, you get to be that third party. You get to be that outside perspective, okay? You have objectivity with them, whereas you don't have it with yourself, okay? So really, what this, what this boils down to is you need to learn how to start a business, okay? Now we get all hung up on, on all the particles that go into starting a business. Do I need business cards? Do I need a website? You know, how do I have to, like, sign up for a complicated credit card processing machine? And I understand how easy it is to get sucked into this imposter syndrome. Voice of well, if I, if I can't do it for myself, I shouldn't be able to do it for clients as well, instead of recognizing what the real problem is here. Because if you don't know how to ride a bike, and I tell you, well, just be confident riding a bike, is that going to help you ride a bike? If you're not a confident cook, like, you really just don't know you. Your anything in the kitchen, you know, you don't know how to boil an egg, you don't know how to make pasta, nothing. And I'm just like, oh, well, just be confident at it. Is that going to help you learn how to cook? I don't think so. So where a lot of business owners get hung up is in this imposter syndrome of like, well, I need to be perfect before I can go and do this. Where what they really need to do is they need to figure out, okay, well, what are the particles, how do I start this business, how do I market myself, how do I run a sales call, how do I set up my back end systems, all of that stuff. And let me tell you, if you're watching this and you're wanting to start a business and I'm saying these things and you're like, oh, yeah, I don't know that, I don't know that. And I kind of know that, but I'm not really sure, but I'm really hung up on website and all those other things. Here's what I need from you right now. I need you to send me a direct message and we're going to hop on the phone, we're going to make you a strategy to get out of this, okay? Because I don't want anyone that I'm connected to who possibly stumbles upon my content to ever, ever be stuck with that imposter syndrome voice keeping you from starting your business, okay? It's not a good excuse anymore. We're not taking it anymore, okay? If you're not confident in being able to do the thing, learning the steps, learning how to do it, learning how to ride the bike so you can actually be confident riding the bike is going to be the most helpful thing to you, okay? And I need you to remember, there are so many professions out there, so many where they don't follow their own advice, where they don't do the things they tell their clients to do. And it doesn't negate their experience, it doesn't negate their expertise, okay? They are still great at what they do. If they're running a business, though, and they don't know how to run a business, that becomes the problem. That is essentially the problem. Okay? So in summation, I'm going to keep this short because my house is kind of crazy. I have like a bunch of guests over the last two weeks and I'm exhausted. My house is a disaster. So I want to go clean. So I'm going to keep this short. Get over yourself. You're fine. You're absolutely fine. If you can't do the things that you advise other people to do for yourself, know that that's normal. Okay? Therapists have therapists, okay? Coaches have coaches. Accountants probably have accountants. Lawyers have lawyers. Doctors have doctors, on and on and on, okay? I don't know. Well, I know one hairdresser who has dabbled in cutting his own hair, but he still goes normally to someone else to cut his hair. Okay? He just doesn't have the same perspective, the same ability to see all the stuff that goes on in the back. And it's the same for you. Okay? So let yourself off the hook here, okay? You don't have to be perfect at what you do for other people in your own life. You just have to be good enough and it'll be fine. Anyway, if you want to get on the phone DM me or have any kind of conversation about how, like the step by step process of what you need to do and how you're supposed to do it to get this business up and running, then you need to DM me. And we'll figure out a time to talk, or we'll just message back and forth. Anyway, I gotta go clean. I hope you have a great night. Happy Monday, and you'll be seeing me all week. All right? So peace out. Have a. A great night. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and leadership coach. Good night.