10. Tackling Self-Doubt And Impostor Syndrome as a CEO

And I'm standing there at the bar with one of my closest friends, and I tell him that I've got this idea to start a fractional CFO firm, and I'm sharing my vision and my dream with him. And he kind of takes a sip of his beer and pauses for a second, and he says, are you sure you're qualified to do that? I don't know if you have enough experience to start a fractional CFO firm. And it was crushing. And in that moment, his voice seared into my head and. And it haunted me for years.

Hey, my friends. Welcome back to the Connected Accountant. My name is Michael King. Today I want to share with you some things that I tell myself. I tell myself that I don't belong here. I tell myself that I'm not far enough along. I tell myself that I don't have enough experience. I tell myself that there's no way that somebody would ever pay me that much money to provide that kind of service. And I still have those voices today, despite being in business for six years now and having arguably a really good level of success. But what I found is that the difference between where I'm at today versus where I was at when I got started is when I first got started, those voices, those things that I would tell myself, paralyze me. They would prevent me from taking action and moving forward. And what I've learned is, like today, I still have a lot of those voices. They're not as loud as they used to be, but they're still there. And I have found that I have to find ways to move forward and take action despite those voices. And as I say that out loud, it sounds kind of creepy. But what I want to share with you today is some best practices that I've learned on how I can still move forward despite. Despite that self talk, or what we often call imposter syndrome. And I want to give a little bit of a asterisk. These are a collection of best practices that I've learned from some of my coaches, like Brendan Burchard or Stephen Covey and some other really influential people that I've had in my life. I didn't just sit down one day and have this light bulb moment of inspiration where I came up with these. These are a collection of things that I've learned from people that I've surrounded myself with. The first thing that I learned is, ask myself is, instead of do I belong? Instead, ask myself, am I being of service? And that one came to me from Brendan Burchard. And what that talks about is, we spend so much time saying, do I belong here? Am I good enough to do this? No, no, no, no. Instead, when you find yourself asking those questions, just say, am I being of service? Am I delivering and showing up and just creating tremendous value for this client? And when you start to ask yourself, am I being of service? You'll find that your attention starts to focus on just getting the job done. And it'll allow you and kind of give you permission, almost give you necessity to move forward and just work. Next thing that I realized is that I used to have this idea that I had to be like the world's foremost expert on a topic in order to be able to offer that service to my clients. And what I've learned is you just have to be better than where your clients are or where those that you're trying to serve are in order to create value for them. You just have to be better than them at doing the thing. And so an example might be, I don't have to be the world's best expert on QuickBooks conversions, but the people that I'm working with, they have no idea what they're doing. And so as long as I can do a better job than them and get the job done, that's great. I don't have to be the world's foremost expert on cash flow forecasting. I just have to be better enough than my clients are at doing it that, that it creates value for them and that they're able to use it to move their business forward. So what I wanna do right now is give you permission to get in the game, despite the fact that you may not think that you're enough of an expert. You've just gotta be good enough to create value for your clients and do a better job than they could do or than they want to do. And finally, this one's so important for two big reasons, and that is track and celebrate your successes. And the first reason that tracking and celebrating successes is so important is because a of lot, a lot of times your clients forget all the great things that you've done for them, all the value you've created for them, the services that you've provided. And so if you kind of are deliberate about tracking those along the way, and every so often, like maybe once a quarter or twice a year, you're going back to your client and you're finding ways to kind of, on the DL, celebrate those things, to kind of like market yourself in a lot of ways to say, hey, wow, I can't believe all the amazing things we've done together this quarter. We got your QuickBooks totally buttoned up and cleaned up for the first time ever in your business. And we've got cash flow forecasting in place for your business for six months into the future. I remember that when I first met you, Mary, you had never had a cash flow forecast before. Or you might say, you know, I was looking back at your P and L from six months ago, and by those savings that we identified, you are 30% more profitable than you've ever been. Isn't that so exciting, Mary? And just kind of use that as a tool to remind them of all the great work you've done together. The second reason that celebrating and tracking those successes is so important is it reminds you of the important work that you're doing. It's a great way to kind of check those voices that you have in your head and remind yourself that, yeah, I am good enough. I do belong here. I am creating value for my clients. And a lot of times that's enough to get you some great momentum and to continue pushing you forward to work with more clients and to serve them in bigger and better and more impactful ways. So what I want to share with you today is if you don't take anything else away, away from this episode, it's that for you, as it was for me, those voices inside may never go away. And I think that there's. In a lot of ways, it's really healthy because when you've got those voices saying you're not good enough, you aren't far enough along, you don't have enough expertise. It keeps us humble and it keeps us hungry. But I think your job is to instead lean into those voices and decide and commit to making progress, into moving forward despite them. If you found this episode helpful today, it would mean the world to me if you would hit the subscribe button and share it with a friend. In the meantime, I will see you next week right here on the Connected Accountant. See you then.