It's a bit harder than I thought.

I thought imposter syndrome would go away

When I was a freelancer, I felt impostor syndrome; because I was an impostor. I barely knew what I was doing, and I'm very lucky people took a chance on me at all.

After 4 years at Springboard, running hundreds of campaigns, learning SEO, Social Media, Automation skills, and so many other things, I thought I had this figured out. I mean I do have this figured out. But I still feel like an imposter.

I recently reached out to someone who does consulting for agencies, just to ask about how he deals with it. He told me it never goes away. You just have to deal with it. Some days are easier than others.

I unexpectedly found that more comforting than him telling me it would go away at some point. If he had told me that, I would have worried about exactly when that point would come.

But no. It doesn't go away. Which means I can just know that, and move on with my life coping with it.

I feel it more this time

Maybe because I was naive, maybe because when you're new to something you don't realize how much you don't know. But DAMN, I feel imposter syndrome more this time.

I am cognizant of the illogical nature of imposter syndrome. Objectively,

• I know way more about automation than most people working in agencies.
• I am much more comfortable with things like code, servers, containerization, etc. than most people working in agencies.
• The people I'm talking to are largely going to be GMs, CEOs, and founders of agencies, which means I know WAY more than them about these things. I don't really mean they don't know what they're doing but 99% of them were promoted for things other than technical knowledge.
• I have a grasp of zooming out to see how things fit together.
• I am part of wonderful automation communities on the web where if I was faced with a problem I couldn't solve people would come out and help me.
• I have built up strong troubleshooting skills at my last job, including communicating about them.

I'm probably talking to myself mostly with the bullet points on this page (also because nobody knows I have a blog and I'm honestly not that great a writer anyway). Hey self, see!? You know this stuff. You got this! 加油！

What should I do about it?

I think my main imposter syndrome has to do not with the above technical items or abilities, but with things I'm currently not good at due to lack of practice.

• Cold outreach Loom videos ( I hate recording video, I get sweaty thinking about it).
• Sales calls (i'd probably be fine but I haven't had that many just yet to feel comfy)

I think that just means I need to practice these things and I won't feel it so strongly. Just do it until it becomes second nature.

It may help if I can find a way to reduce the 'importance' when practicing.

This might be difficult in practice. Obviously, I'm putting myself out there. I'm jumping in front of moving trucks hoping they'll stop. Actually that's inaccurate. They're not going to hit me. I'm hitchhiking, hoping to be picked up.

Maybe I just need to do some "roleplays" to get over my nervousness. Maybe I'll just need to remind myself daily that I'm qualified to 'be here'.