Founders making $1-5 million often excel at sales but struggle with delivery. Instead of hiding this weakness, owning it builds credibility and positions you to help others with the opposite problem. Your honesty becomes your strongest selling point.
I have this conversation sometimes with entrepreneurs, even at $1 million a year, $5 million a year. And they're like, I just feel this imposter syndrome with my business. And I'll say, are you stating anything that's not true? And then they'll kind of look at me and they're like, well, you know, I teach agencies how to grow their customer base. And I'm like, okay. And why do you feel like an imposter? They're like, well, you know, I had an agency and it just really wasn't that successful. And I'm like, okay, are your clients successful? And they're like, no, the clients are successful. I'm like, okay, so what do you teach them? That you were not able to do for yourself? And they're like, well, I was actually just really good at the sales side. I was really bad at the delivery side. I said, if you just say, hey, I had an agency, I was really good at selling customers, really bad at delivering on them. But if you're good at delivering on them and you need a sales process, I can help you. I was like, would you feel like you're being an imposter? And he was like, no. I was like, and believe it or not, that's actually more compelling because you have a damaging admission, which actually makes you, it's one of the components of persuasion, right? Like you just tell people all the things that are not good because when you tell them the good things, they'll actually believe them more.
