Imposter Syndrome & Online Business

Every day people are searching for answers to their questions. They want to live a better life, learn a new skill, build their online business, get in better shape, build a relationship that lasts a lifetime, etc., etc. And that's where you come in, teaching them those things. But what if you feel like you are a fraud? What if you feel like you don't have the abilities to really deliver or that you have the experience to back you up to be an authority in your space? Well, I can 100% relate to this. I am not a 7-figure business owner. I'm not a multi-6-figure business owner yet. You can quote me on it. I'm fine with that. But I've had a lot of successes in my life. I've built an online business and I've done things that most people are not willing to do. And I've also been able to help my clients achieve awesome results as well. So I'm still considered an expert in my field. And the reason I share that is because you can do the same thing. This little thing about you feeling like a fraud, that's imposter syndrome, and it's way more common than you think. Everybody's got it. So today we are going to crush your imposter syndrome. I'm going to show you 3 things that you can do to build expertise. And really, it just comes down to you studying this episode and putting in the work. Ready? Let's dive in. Welcome to episode number Episode 1 of the Profit Your Knowledge podcast. I'm your host, James Allen, here to help you turn your knowledge, passions, and skills into an online business and build a life of freedom. I'm super excited to have you here today. Super excited to dive into today's episode and to introduce this new format that I'll be doing moving forward in terms of my content and why I'm doing it so that you have a better understanding yourself. But before we get into that, I do want to share with you that if you are new to this podcast or channel, welcome. If you've been around for a while, I've been following for a while and you haven't done it yet, why haven't you done this yet? I have a special resource for you. If you feel like you want to start an online business, you don't really know what to do first, second, third, fourth, fifth. And it could also be that if you have maybe started an online business or you've been going into coaching or consulting or building expertise and sharing what you know, online and you want to turn that into a business, but you don't really know what to do next. Maybe you want to try just a different way of doing online business because there's so many different ways that you can do it. Then I have a resource for you. It's a 5-step guide that I created. It's about 8 pages long and it'll probably take you about 10 minutes just to read through it. But this is an action-packed guide. It's literally no fluff. I know it's only 8 pages. It, it, it's not that long, but it's still powerful because it's concise and there's videos that I link to inside some of the steps or each of the steps for you to click on that, go over, get a bit, some additional training on those different topics. And like step 1, there's a little video, step 2, there's a little video and you can run through that, click on it, watch the video. But most importantly, you'll have action steps. You'll have a better understanding of what to do first, second, third, fourth. And fifth, so that you can start building your online business today. You don't need to wait any longer. All right. Action-packed, no-fluff guide. It's totally free. It's my gift to you to really just help you on top of this content that I'm creating to build a life of freedom and build an online business teaching what you know. To get your guide, just go to profityourknowledge.com/guide, or there is a link in the description as well. So before we get into the official content of today and building expertise, overcoming imposter syndrome, I do just want to kind of share that I'm starting this podcast. It's going to be a bit of a different format compared to what I've been doing with my YouTube videos. I'm still keeping YouTube videos up. They're still good content, good resources. But I wanted to start a podcast because of a couple of things. Some, some, some selfish, some not so selfish. Number one is that for me as a creator, I got kind of tired of editing and I know I could hire an editor. But I was just kind of editing myself and I thought, what are my other options? And I love listening to podcasts. I get so much value from them, from good podcasts anyway, from my mentors that I have. And what this does is it allows me to be more authentic, to be more transparent with you. And that's really what I care about more than anything, because the world doesn't need more information. I think the world needs more connection. And by you and I being able to connect with each other, this is like a one-on-one coaching session that we can have every single week. And a selfish reason for me is that I get to work on my communication skills. So if you catch me doing a bunch of ums and ahs and so and things like that, feel free to call me out inside the comments section if you're on YouTube or if you're on the podcast. I guess you can't— there's not really comment sections on the podcast. So those are a couple of reasons. Another reason is that I get to add more value to you because I get to go deeper on these topics and doing all the editing and the different stuff before with my older videos. I would keep episodes to about a 10-minute timeframe or so. These will go much longer because I'll be able to go a lot deeper. And it's honestly just more fun for me to do this. I mean, this is like a one-take. I literally just hit record and I'm challenging myself. And I hope that that can inspire you as well as a creator that I want to challenge myself to do this in one take. Because it's going to make editing way faster for me. But also, if I go on to speak on a stage or something like that, if you went to go speak on a stage or you went on somebody else's podcast, which you should do to help grow your business, then you don't get to stop and do editing and all that stuff. Maybe some people's podcasts do, but for the most part, there's no editing. You just got to show up, run with it, talk, be a great communicator. And that takes practice. and I work at getting better at it every single day. So this is how it's going to be from now on, whether you like it or not. But yeah, consider this like a one-on-one coaching session that you and I get to have with each other every single week, even though I know it's one way, it's just me talking to you. But if you are on YouTube, leave comments, let me know, because I will answer them to the best of my ability. Okay, but let's dive in today to building expertise and overcoming this freaking imposter syndrome. Okay, I've dealt with it for so long, especially going into online business and teaching this kind of stuff. Because I mean, I was so hesitant. I wanted to teach this for so long. And I didn't because I thought, what do I know? I haven't built this massive business in a different niche or anything like that. And I mean, I was in construction work, I despised my job. I did couldn't stand going to work. It sucked. And as you listen to the podcast more and more, I'll share more and more of those, those kind of stories. But when I got into coaching, I originally got into life coaching, and I wanted to teach people how to find a great career. I didn't want to be like a career consultant or something working for a company. I wanted to do my own thing and be an online business owner, be my own boss, and live a life of freedom. And over, over the years, I started learning more about online business and I was teaching life coaching, but I felt more like a therapist. It wasn't really my thing. I wanted to teach people something to do with career, with wealth building, and doing work that you love. And long story short, I ended up going into like productivity coaching. So I'm really big on like working less. All that stuff still spills into this. But when it comes to teaching online business, yeah, I was hesitant for a really long time because I was thinking, what do I know? I haven't done this before. But the 3 steps that I'm about to share with you today are the 3 things that I do. Consistently, and what helped me get to the point where I said, screw it, I'm just going to start teaching it, teaching the things that I do know. Okay, because imposter syndrome is not going to leave you. Full disclosure, my coaches and mentors that I follow and that I learn from that are doing 7 figures, 8 figures, some of them, they're doing huge numbers. They still deal with imposter syndrome. And it's something that I don't think is ever going to leave us. And I think it's something that almost is a benefit because it shows that you care. You care about your message, you care about showing up, you want to do it right. Um, and you feel like, well, I don't really know enough, I need to, I need to learn more. These 3 steps are really going to help you. Okay, so let's dive into the 3 steps. Number 1 is to learn from people who've done what you want to do really well, or at least who've done what you want to do, who are further down the road than you, even if they're a couple rungs higher than on the ladder than you, or even one rung higher on the ladder than you, that's fine. But ideally, if you can learn from the people who have really achieved the thing that you want to achieve, those are your quote unquote mentors, the gurus, if you will, and really learn from those people. That is the first thing to do, because as an expert, I think what really separates an expert from just kind of, you know, an average kind of looky-loo sort of person or someone who's surface level is an expert really goes deep. An expert studies— excuse me— an expert studies way more than the average person. And that's what we want to do. We want to find the people who've done the things that we want to do really well, that have the kind of character traits that we want to express in our content or in our work. And we have to learn from those people. There's no getting around it. Because I think what a lot of people do is like, if you're like me, I didn't want to copy people, but we also learn from copying. And one of the coolest quotes or phrases, I guess, that I heard when I was at an event one time, this guy went on the stage and he said, Dance the dance you were taught until you can dance your own dance. Dance the dance you were taught until you can dance your own dance. And that's just how we learn. But I think a lot of people want to just kind of like barely learn a little bit and then start getting out there, which is going to lead me to my next point. But we have to learn from people that are doing the thing that we want to do either way better than us and doing it well, ideally, or the people are at least just better than us. But the bottom line is that you need to study. You need to study more than other people. I am always studying. I'm studying online business. I'm studying copywriting. I'm studying creating online courses, doing one-on-one coaching, becoming a better coach. Everything that relates to me growing my knowledge business, my knowledge, expertise, the passions that I have of helping other people create work that they love. I am obsessed with it, and I think that as an expert, we need to be obsessed with it. It's— so this relates to imposter syndrome because you're feeling like a fraud. Get out there and study, but most importantly, you have to take action on it, which is what we're going to get into in the next point. Um, but in terms of this, like, learning from people that do things well, don't— please, like, invest in yourself. I think that a lot of people hold back. They don't want to pay a bunch of money, especially if you're kind of just starting out. But the sooner that you can start investing in yourself and learning or investing yourself doesn't need to just be monetarily. It can also be with your time. I spend a lot of my leisure time reading. I read blog posts, I watch YouTube videos, I read books, I listen to books, I listen to podcasts. Et cetera, et cetera. I am just always learning every single day. And that's me investing time, not just money, but I also buy courses. I also pay people for their coaching programs and I go into these coaching programs and I work with them. Okay. But I think that what makes the expert is someone that can learn from people, dance the dance that you were taught, that these people taught you until you can dance your own dance. So that's, that's number one. Learn from people who've done it well. Study your tail off. Okay. Number two, implement everything that you learn. A lot of people just study. They just kind of like check things out surface level, read a blog post or one article and then deem themselves as an expert. An expert is someone who's very knowledgeable about a specific topic. So me with online business, I'm not the best in the world, but I've learned a ton. And what ultimately led me to teaching this stuff and really helped me overcome that imposter syndrome because I wanted to teach it was the fact that I was working with people anyway and they would ask me, James, how do you do that? How are you doing this in your business? What is this thing? You know, those are the kind of questions that people would ask me and I just kind of started teaching the online business stuff that I had to learn because I just wanted to have a good business. I wanted to have an ethical online business as well because I've been screwed in the past, which, um, could be a topic for a different day about my stories of getting, uh, yeah, just screwed basically financially and put me in like a really deep debt hole or a hole of debt. Okay. But when you invest in these courses and you invest in a book and you pick it up, or into a coach, a lot of people— and I, I see this in my own clients, I'm not going to name drop anyone, and I have seen it with people— is that they don't implement everything that I'm teaching. And it's common. I've done— I'm totally guilty of this too. I've paid for a coach and I started being like, well, I'm gonna go do something else. Like, no, follow what they say to a T, I feel, because what that does is that it allows you to get inside, inside of their mind. And I kind of like, I do this when I'm drumming because I love playing drums. In case you didn't know, it's a hobby of mine. But what I like to do is learn the style of someone that I really like, of a drummer. Let's say like Travis Barker, for example, drummer of Blink-182, or Chad Smith, drummer of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I want to learn exactly how they're playing. And listen to what they're playing and play it as close as I can to ideally hit it exactly how they're playing, because then I get a feel for their style. Okay? And that's what we're doing when we're learning from people in online business. You're learning from these experts, you're learning their style, and then from there you can start to take bits and pieces from those different styles that you have developed or that you're learning. Okay? But you have to follow it to a T. That's just what I recommend. I know a lot of people are like, well, I'm just going to kind of do this. Like, no, follow their exact style, learn the style, and you're going to learn way more a lot faster, I feel. So when you buy these courses, you invest in yourself the time and the money and the energy into coaching courses, books, YouTube videos, blogs, all of it. Finish the thing 100%. I would say become a completer, quote unquote, and make being a completer part of your identity. It's just who you are from now on because you will learn so much more instead of doing what most people do. And again, the old version of me is very guilty of this. I've gotten way better at being a completer. They start jumping around, getting small fragments of bits and pieces rather than learning the style and from a lot of different people and then taking that and implementing everything and actually getting out there doing the work. Okay. A lot of people don't do it. They just want to get in this habit and this roller coaster of study, never implement anything, try and deem themselves as an expert, and then they feel like an imposter. They feel like a fraud because they're kind of being one. Okay. So the more people that you can learn from, um, the better. A great book on this is Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon. And in an upcoming episode, I want to really go into and do more of like a book review of this because it's so, so powerful. Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon. I'm not going to go too deep into it because I could literally talk about it all day. It's such a good book, especially if you feel that you really deal with imposter syndrome. Uh, I was looking up imposter syndrome. I found out about that book when I was making the transition to starting Profit Your Knowledge. And when I read the book and just reading through like the quotes of the book online, I was like, dang, this is amazing. And it really just helped me relax and say, I'm just going to do it anyway. I'm just going to get out there and start teaching it anyway. All right. Which leads me to my third point, the third trait of building expertise. Just to recap, um, number one, learn from people who've done it well and study your tail off. Study like crazy, study more than the average person. Number 2, implement everything that you learn. Be the person that completes something. That's what's going to help you build expertise. And it's going to give you confidence that if and when that imposter syndrome rears its ugly head, you're going to feel like, hey, you have, you have so much social proof to back you up and to back up your, um, defense systems, if you will, against your imposter syndrome. And you'll say, well, I've done this. I've studied my tail off. I've implemented everything. I think I'm pretty qualified to teach this, but now we have to start teaching. And here's the thing, don't just start teaching random things. Teach from your own experience. That's number 3. We want to be able to help people. I mean, you can't really help people with something that you haven't fully done yourself or that you're not knowledgeable about on your own. Because an expert is someone who either has done a lot, they've put in like the 10,000 hours or more, or it's someone who's also just very knowledgeable. But typically someone who's done it has also accumulated a lot of knowledge on the subject. I've accumulated a lot of knowledge in online business in the last 3 years of doing this, 3 and a half years. Maybe even 4. Actually, has it been that long? Anyway, I've accumulated a lot of knowledge and a lot of failure, so I have a sense of expertise, but maybe not as much as someone who's put in just as much work that's been doing it for 20 years. Obviously, they're going to have more expertise than me. Same goes for you, okay? This isn't just about me. I say these things for me to help you kind of get an idea of what I mean. And use myself as an example. But if you have tracked the path further than someone, you can help people behind you. And the more that you can study, the more that you can implement and practice the things that you want to be really good at, the more that you can help other people. Because there's always someone who's further behind you, and there's also always someone who's further ahead of you. I've worked with people who are far more successful than I am monetarily, but they may not know how to achieve a specific business model like the one that I teach, which you learn inside the 5-step guide. By the way, it's the entire business model that I teach is responsible for building 5, 6, or even 7-figure online businesses that run on autopilot and give you time freedom. It's awesome. It just takes time. Okay, that's in the guide. But there's people who I've worked with that way more successful than me in terms of money but not in terms of the timepiece or the knowledge on how to change up their business model into a more scalable model. Okay. So even if you are in like dating, we'll say if you were a dating coach and you— there was a bunch of dating coaches, there's tons of dating coaches, just like business coaches. It's the most saturated niche next to like health coaches as well. Like the three, the big three topics right there. But if you're a dating coach and you're someone who has just studied more than anyone, you've paid for coaching, you've paid for programs, you've read all the books, and you have implemented everything— you went out there and you started dating and implementing the things you learned, fell on your face over and over and over again until you found a rhythm and something that really worked, and you had the courage to actually get out there. And courage is just taking action in the face of fear. Now you can start teaching people from your experience. Maybe you're not like able to just walk into a room and exude confidence and get any person that you want, like any woman that you want or whatever. Or if you're a female teaching other females how to date, you know, whatever it is, maybe you're not like the best in the world, but you're better than a lot of people. You've achieved more than a lot of people. Those are the people that you can help. And that's why we teach from our own experience, because you don't need to be the most successful. You just need to be one rung higher than someone that you can help. That's it. And it doesn't need to be just like I said, with me helping people who are more financially successful than I am in terms of know-how and creating a scalable business. I was up the ladder a bit higher than them. Because they were just doing a ton of phone calls and things like that, and they were making good money, but they had no time. Okay, and I think the last point, or this is the last point, to teach from your own experience and just the whole piece of being an expertise and imposter syndrome in your online business: be willing to look like an amateur. Do it. Just look like you're freaking brand new. And I think a lot of people, they want to put on this act that they are some perfect Perfect person. I see this all the time. I've been guilty of all this stuff, by the way, every single piece that I've shared with you, I've been guilty of. And it's a big reason why I'm doing this podcast, because I want to just be able to speak to you and sit down as if it's just you and me, because that's all it is right now. It's just you and me. Let's slow down from all the craziness in the world. And I just want to be here with you and teach you the things that I have learned. So I don't know where you're at. You could be an ultra successful business owner, but if you feel like you're struggling with imposter syndrome, These are things that have helped me. Okay? I am a living, breathing example of this, and I am willing still to look like an amateur that maybe I'm not the best communicator in the world. Maybe I'm not the most successful business owner in the world, but I've learned a lot and I'm going to continue to learn more. And then I can share that knowledge with you. Okay? I'm more like a Renaissance entrepreneur, if you will. I teach as I go. But I hope that, I hope that this episode has helped you, um, to just, to just like get out there with my own life experience and me being me, um, teaching the online business piece because I really hesitated with it for a long time. I thought that I wasn't good enough, that you had to reach a certain level. You don't. If you care enough about the topic, you're going to go deeper than other people will. You're going to implement more than other people will because for me, I am damn passionate about creating work that you love and building a life of freedom because that's what I want. Because I didn't have that example when I grew up with my family. Parents were always working. And that's also just like the way that the world was. It's a bit different nowadays, but that's why I'm committed to making it happen. And that's why I study my tail off and I implement everything that I learn and I just teach from my experience. So I hope that that gives you a good understanding, a good idea that you don't need to be perfect. You can look like an amateur and just help the people that you can help and keep studying, keep implementing everything that you can all the time. Okay. Obviously take naps, rest, do whatever you need to so you feel fresh and you can get back out there and make an impact. All right. But that's all I got for you today. If you got value from today's episode, um, if you like this podcast, leave a comment, please. It helps. I mean, with like boosting the algorithm, of course, it's always awesome if you're on YouTube. If you're on the podcast, leave a review. Let me know what you thought of this episode, if it was valuable for you, uh, or even if it wasn't, it's okay. But let me know what you think about doing the podcast in this way, the video podcast, especially for YouTube, because I know it's very different than what a lot of people are putting out on YouTube. And yeah, if you, uh, if you really got value from this, just share it. And whether it's a podcast or a YouTube video, share it, please. Because if you did get value from this and you have a friend that you're like, man, maybe they're struggling with this, they could get value from this as well. Then please do. All right, but that's all I got for you today. I hope you have an awesome day, awesome week, and I will see you next week.