One of the greatest enemies to success is feeling like you don’t belong.
When I started writing as a journalist seven years ago this maimed my work. I felt like I had no business interviewing mayors, congressman, and NFL players. But the more people I met, the more I discovered no one had it all together.
I discovered you miss every shot you don’t take—whether that’s reaching out to another high-profile source or covering events such as Vice President Mike Pence at the National Prayer Breakfast in D.C.
The more I experienced, the more I learned how far you can get by wearing a suit and acting as if you belonged. “Fake it until you make it” rings true in many situations (barring legal and medical work).
You must put in painful reps to become better at anything you do. Acknowledging how much you don’t know displays self-awareness and avoids the trap of overconfidence. The most ignorant people believe they are omniscient.
Even knowing this, I still faced imposter syndrome when I accepted a position as a financial analyst. What did I know about creating reports covering a five-state business that led C-level executives to make informed decisions?
More than I thought. Most of my work was creating spreadsheets. I read a business book per week and mastered excel and the other programs I used regularly. My first project was to audit over 8,000 vending machines, 4,000 which were at lower prices than standard.
Within three weeks I solved this problem by working with 11 remote depots, route managers, and customers to solve this problem hemorrhaging our finances.
The first projects are the hardest. After you gain momentum, it’s easier to power through any problems rather than stop. I headed our cold food section and found 40% of the items we bought monthly weren’t being sold. After three months, I helped slash the unsold percentage to 20%, saving half a million dollars over the next year.
After a few projects, I took more responsibilities and the company management test. I scored in the 99th percentile—not because of my intelligence— I’m far from a straight A student. What I lacked in experience I gained through intensive reading.
I knew nothing about managing others, except for a few editor positions in college and books. I once again heard the voice inside my head (I hear it as Peter Griffin’s voice) saying “You can barely divide your clothes into color categories before you wash them, what do you know about management?) and labeled it: the imposter syndrome.
When I introduced myself to the 50 people I started managing, I acknowledged my inexperience (already evident since I was 20-30 years younger than most in the room). I ensured I always placed empathy and respect over my position.
I would make up what I lacked in experience for my people skills and treating others how I would want to be treated. It’s incredible how much better workers perform when you give them freedom in their decisions instead of micromanaging their every move. There was a significant disconnect between our route salesman and C-suite executives.
When one of my coworkers quit, I discovered no one else knew how to run our company website. I had minimal website experience, other than building my website. But with the help of Google and several excruciating hours of trial and error, I optimized our website and started running social media accounts. I slashed our average page load time from 11 seconds to 4.7, our bounce rate from 39% to 9%, and redesigned our career page to make it user-friendly.
The progress wasn’t pretty; at one point, I broke our entire website. I reached out to our Information Systems department and learned that what they did had nothing to do with websites (that shows how much I know about programming). I was on my own. Thankfully, I fixed it within 30 minutes.
If I had shrugged off our website problems and excused myself from learning because I didn’t know how to code, I would have missed incredible opportunities. I’m currently building a website for a concert featuring Lady Antebellum and four other country stars. I’ll even get to meet them, which wouldn’t have happened if I feared failure.
You’ll always make mistakes when you’re young. But the hunger to learn and hustle overcomes the reputation that you’re “just a kid.” College and advanced degrees are no longer a barricade to success. You don’t have to drop $150,000 on an MBA to learn how to run a business (spend $10 on The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman) or take a coding class to run a website. It’s 2019; the only cost of learning is your time.
So what are you waiting for? You’ll never get any younger, and the sooner you start, the more experience you gain. Go get it.