Overcoming Imposter Syndrome

It's by um , a good friend of mine up in maine who owns this marketing firm , and they market all over the world for these big time companies lots of large insurance companies and things like that and they did a podcast on imposter syndrome .

Well , it wasn't on imposter syndrome , but it was part of the podcast and it got me thinking of how much that actually affects large companies and people within those companies and their marketing and their business growth to the point where it was a big topic of their conversation .

So I talked with you , david , about how this affects us in the home inspection industry and it actually cut some deep roads into our industry and how we work as a business . So I'd like to read what imposter syndrome is . It says imposter syndrome is when you doubt your own skills and successes .

You feel you're not as talented or worthy as others believe and you're scared that one day people will realize that . Did you get the same kind of definition from that , david ?

Just a couple sentences on yourself , we'll expand it , we'll make it sound pretty and we invariably get . I'm not good about writing about myself , there's nothing special about me . And then we dig in and they're like well , I own two successful construction companies . I was a civil engineer , I did this and I did that .

I have three great kids that I raised and I'm an awesome grandfather . I'm like . I'm like , dude , this isn't imposter syndrome , you have things to build on . I do want to caveat this I am the king of imposter syndrome .

If there were , if , if imposter syndrome were a pair of sneakers a paradox that I'm the king of imposter syndrome , yeah exactly , it's a paradox , but if imposter syndrome were a pair of sneakers , I'd be the Michael Jordan wearing those sneakers . Just , I am the king of imposter syndrome . It limits us , though .

It limits how we can market our company and how we can grow our company , when we're always sitting there thinking , you know what this is ? Just , for lack of a better term , dumb luck where I got or what I'm doing ?

Yeah , when in reality , there is a measure of circumstance that happens Like you became a home inspector at the right time and the right place and had just the right marketing material , but ultimately there was another guy doing the same thing and he didn't make it so there's always a measure of circumstance , but in reality there's a lot of us involved .

What did you come up with of some things ? That imposter syndrome limits us on with our business , Talid ?

Not everything that we do is something that everyone can do . I guess that's that's the bulk of it . Um , you know , to a , to a child , everything an adult does is really impressive . Um , but then when we get up to a certain age , um , you know , we think that everything that we do is something that anyone else could do .

But in reality , you know , we might have training , we might have abilities that actually are , you know , special in their way . It's hard to recognize that sometimes .

I called somebody , they needed a website and I called them . I'm like , oh okay , I'll give them a call . Josh was busy . I called and they're like , whoa , you're the Ian .

We're going to need to stop and say , well , you know , this person could do it better than me , this person might know more than me , and we are . It's an old phrase , we are a student of all men . In other words , everybody out there , man or woman , can teach us something . They're better at us than something else and we can learn something for them .

And that's a great humble attitude that also takes a reality check of saying , hey , we're good at something too . So I talked about myself having imposter syndrome .

I was talking to a good friend of mine and I was just being like oh man , you know , it's just , it's just coincidence that things worked out this way and that way with business and Inspector Toolball is doing great , but it's just this or that .

And he goes just shut up , dude , he's like you're a successful contractor , you're a successful home inspector , you're a successful marketing company , and then you have a successful home inspection software . He's like , at some point point you just got to stop and that stuck with me . And then I listened to my other friend's podcast .

I'm like , oh , okay , there's a measure of humility , but there's also a measure of what am I good at , and I think that really applies .

Yeah , yeah , exactly , that really applies to a lot of our clients that are home inspectors who don't see their own value , who go on the side of too much humility , so they kind of what's it called self-deprecation or something like that . I think that's the expression where basically you think less and less of yourself and make yourself look less than others .

But it really does have an effect on our business . I thought of a couple um , first of all , marketing . You know it's dunning and kruger , the dunning kruger effect . If anybody wants to look that up , when we're really smart , we think we're dumb . When we're really dumb , we think we're smart , and so sometimes the wrong guy is aggressively marketing .

We might think , oh man , if I market , they might see how bad I am . Or what if somebody calls me back with a question that I can't answer , especially new guys just starting out ?

I'm like , listen , it takes a lot of skill to be able to walk into a house that you've likely never seen before and , in two to three hours , figure out everything that's ever happened to this house , know everything about the building standards from the time period it was built , what's going on in the house , control the situation with agents and people and lots

of questions , and then half predict the future of what's going to happen with this house , while identifying defects and complex situations . Dude , if you can do that , have some confidence , because you're doing it Like these guys call me . I've only done five inspections .

I'm like you've done five of the most complex situations that a human being can be asked to do . That that should engender some confidence , don't you think ?

Um , that they like , if you have imposter syndrome , you feel like you have to be very well prepared for everything that you do , and if you don't prepare , you feel like , okay , now people are gonna realize that I don't know what I'm talking about because I didn't spend all this time beforehand researching it .

So you know , going into a home inspection and you haven't done all this research beforehand about the house , looking up all the paperwork , you know , someone might feel okay , um , they're gonna catch me in something that's wrong and think that I'm just lying to them .

In fact , the other , the other person who doesn't have imposter syndrome , they , they may walk in and they're like , oh , I've never seen that before . And everybody goes . Really , they're like , yeah , let's look it up together . Everybody's like , okay , in reality , nobody really cares . They care about how we handle it .

Now , if we go down there , we're all like sheepish , we're like , oh , I've never seen this before , I don't know what to do . Or they get that impression from us man , now , now it's a self-fulfilling yeah , yeah , it's a self-fulfilling prophecy , like I knew they would know .

Um , we never you know , unless , unless you're very cocky , you're not going to go in there saying , I know everything , I don't have to ever look anything up , because I mean , I've seen , on the international forums too , like there's a constant conversation . You know , I saw this for the first time . What is it ? You know what ? How should I describe this ?

What is the practice that I should look at ? Of course , you hear always some people . They say you should know this , but there's a lot of back and forth where they help out , because it's just a matter of fact , you can't possibly know everything there is about any subject .

But I see a lot of the imposter syndrome and the facebook groups and I think that's really where , where it comes to the Like guys are like they ask a question , they're like oh hey guys , I'm new , I don't really know , you know this or that and you know somebody is going to figure out that I don't know what I'm doing .

And everybody gets on them and they're like you should know what you're doing , when in reality it's like listen , if you've done construction for 15 years or whatever , and you've taken all of these courses , you have your license and you've passed the National Home Inspector exam , it's like you know more than the average guy .

It's just our own insecurity about what we think other people know compared to ourselves . That kind of gets in the way , but that blocks us from so much . Going back to marketing , I see guys that'll market really hard because they're confident and they do really really well .

But if we're going to be sheepish and be like , oh , people are going to figure it out , we're going to hold back . We're not going to aggressively , in a nice way , hand out our business card to everybody , we see we're not going to walk into the event and be like , hey , I'm Ian , I'm this , I'm that and and really market ourselves hard .

It's a mental block more than anything else , and I find that with the websites and I'll bring that up again because I hate it when a guy tells me I can't sell myself and I have to beg them for anything , I'm like just tell me where you grew up , Are you certified , Are you licensed ? Just give me something I can expand on it .

And then , after I expand on it , they're like oh wow , you made me sound awesome . I'm like even just a couple of things made you more qualified than everybody else around you to do a home inspection . The average teacher , engineer , doctor is not going to know as much about a home as you .

I didn't add anything to what you told me , I just expanded on it .

You know we , you know it was just kind of wussy , it wasn't , it didn't sound very confident and it was like they had imposter syndrome , like it's a new doctor or something . They went into the other one . They're like hey , we're a fantastic doctor , we're XYZ certified . Here's a picture of where we do our eye exams .

I called them and they're like hey , we have you covered . Nowhere in there did I say I bet you they're an imposter . But the first one I did because it was a self-fulfilling prophecy . If we have that mentality , the average human being is going to smell that all over us if we have imposter syndrome .

So if we have imposter syndrome , it really hard to grow our business because we're always worried about it failing . Have you ever met any inspectors that are kind of like that , like they ? They at the point where they could grow their business but they're so worried about it failing that they don't push forward .

The happy medium here , you know , just being just enough assertive that you can really bring out what you bring to the table yeah .

That's what we think when we could be charging $550 , but now we're like now I have to live up to that $550 . How do I do that ? And imposter syndrome really , really pokes its ugly head through when it comes to our pricing . So whenever we mention pricing on this show , I almost invariably get an anonymous angry message or post on Facebook or something .

But I'm going to call it what it is . If we didn't , if we have that level of confidence tempered with humility , we're going to charge what we're worth . And if we're not , are we afraid of failure because of imposter syndrome ? Well , I'll fail .

I'm worried about failing because I feel like I didn't do this , I feel like it was just circumstance and I don't want to rock the boat . I have a perfect little temperature here .

We're doing inspections because we're good at it , and our price is not the only variable , because even an agent who's looking for price is still not going to refer us if we do a terrible inspection . So obviously we're doing a good inspection and we're probably worth a lot more than we're giving ourselves credit for .

So it's a nice little study to look up imposter syndrome . It's more complicated than we're making it out to be , but it really inhibits business growth . It inhibits price increases , it inhibits growing our team or if we have a team I've met some inspectors that kind of have imposter syndrome like me that have a team .

It's like oh man , everybody's going to figure out that I'm an idiot . It's like , no , your team likely likes you , not my team , not you . David , I know you already don't like me , you've told me that , but imposter syndrome is basically an insidious form of insecurity .

So what's a way that we can get over imposter syndrome , knowing that it's basically hurting our business ? What do you think ?

Yeah , um , if they always tell you you know about your failures , I would take on you for what you're not doing as well as they think you should .

I remember preston kincaid being on the show and he's like there's a lot of reasons why a lot of us work hard in business and sometimes it comes down to insecurity , like maybe we were told we would never amount to anything as a kid . Yeah , um , maybe we had a hard time growing up and we don't feel like we deserve any more than what we have .

Um , there's some deep issues there . I mean , I'm not a psychologist , I so I'm not going to pretend to be . Yeah , we need a couch . But whatever the reasons are , I think what you just said is important Surround ourselves with people who have a real objective view of us . You know they're like , you know what . You are a fantastic home inspector .

You know what you're not really good at is answering the phones . Oh well , I can outsource that . Okay , cool . Have a real objective source of information , positive feedback Positive , and we do need some negative . We don't want all positive . Well , I mean .

You're like is that was that really great ?

We trust all the time with our insecurities , but you say , you know , like I just just told you a friend of mine telling me , oh , just shut up . You were successful at xyz and this is just another pattern of of that . It's like , oh , okay , you know , who reminds me of that is , uh , nick ramico .

A couple times on the show he always talks about , he's like I could never do this or that because I'm too insecure . And he's like that's why I have 14 businesses . And and then , after the 14th business , I'm like , hey , I'm good at this .

He got over his imposter syndrome over a very long period of time , but at the same time , it also led to some successes . The process of overcoming his imposter syndrome has led to successes , so it's actually good the more we kind of feed ourselves . Okay , what am I actually good at ? Okay , you know what I can do ? A full home inspection .

And people are like , oh , wow , this is fantastic , I can charge more .

We don't need something external to do that . We can internally say you know what ? Okay , I'm good , yeah , I'm comfortable with this and overcome that imposter syndrome , because we're not imposters . Listen , everybody listening .

We don't want this to be a a ted talk , but if you can get through a whole home inspection , you know more and can do more than the average person you will ever meet . Compare yourself to other home inspectors that's one story , but 99.99 of the population . If you can do a full home inspection , congratulations . You're not an imposter .

You're doing an important work that most people cannot do . That that's a skill .

I thought it was important , though , because it comes up so much the uh , I'm people are going to figure out that I'm not as good as a home inspector as I advertise I am , or whatever yeah , and I thought it'd be a good subject aren't you worried that people are going to find out ?

If you get us for a website or whatever , send us a real bio . Have confidence . You do an important work that not a lot of people can do . But , david , thank you for being on and everybody thank you for listening in . Thank you .