EP20: Do You Have Imposter Syndrome?

You're a pro at being an imposter.

I think a lot of people, I think more people than what would admit suffer from imposter syndrome. And they may not know that that's what it's called. You know, they may not have a no that has a name or a label. But I guarantee you that most contractors, if not all of them at some point in their business, have suffered from imposter syndrome.

I mean, there's times early in my business where, you know, it's like, what am I doing wrong? Like, I know this works. I know this business model works because there's other companies out there that are successful doing the same thing I'm doing. And so I start looking at it and saying, am I not smart enough? Do I not have enough experience? Am I not working hard enough? What is going on? Something is wrong. I'm doing something wrong that's preventing me from getting to where I want to go. And so you start to feel like I'm not good enough to do this. Maybe I shouldn't be doing this. Maybe I need to go get a job and stop trying to run my own business. All those things have gone through my head. hundreds and hundreds of times over the years, especially early on when I just couldn't figure out how to do stuff.

Absolutely. I mean, I think at the core, what it is, is doubt, right? When doubt enters your mind, then your mind takes over and is like, oh, you doubt that you're smart enough? Okay, I'll show you 18 reasons why you're not smart enough. You know what I mean? Oh, you doubt that you're not, you're not, you don't have enough experience. Okay. I'll show you 47 reasons why you don't have enough experience.

Well, there's, I mean, this can go down a whole rabbit hole of, you know, affirmations and goal statements and all kinds of things that you should be doing in your business. But from an imposter syndrome side of it, that is what it is. It's doubt. But the question is, where does the doubt come from? Where does imposter syndrome, what creates it? What causes it to happen? I mean, there's times where I'm like rocking and rolling in my business thinking, oh man, this is awesome. We're kicking butt and doing this. And then something happens. And the next thing you know, it could be an hour later. After saying how awesome I am, it could be the next day, a week later, whatever. And then it's like, man, I don't know what the hell I'm doing. Like I shouldn't even be doing this. Something happened. Something triggered that to cause that anxiety, to cause that doubt to come in.

Yeah. I mean, well, I mean, you can. You can use it to get better. But I mean, other people get crippled by imposter syndrome. You know, they get to the point and they're like, I shouldn't be doing this. I'm, you know, I'm an imposter. I'm like living in somebody's body. Like I'm a totally different person living in a totally different body and they can't get past that. You know what I mean? So it's not like something that everybody can just use as fuel to move to the next level. I mean, some people are crippled by it.

Well, I think everyone would agree, you know, if something tragic happens, a loss of life, family member, whatever, I mean, those are certainly going to... trigger some depression or some anxiety and things like that. I mean, in my mind, that's kind of a given, right? I think what I'm more concerned with in terms of imposter syndrome is when there's really no reason to have imposter syndrome and it just comes out of nowhere. And then, you know, you just kind of, it's like, what's going on here? I mean, I've come to the, in my business, in my life, I've come to, The understanding that if I'm having a really, really, really bad day in my business, and we've joked on here about I quit my business like 167,000 times. When I have those kind of days and I'm like, that's it, I'm done. I'm not going to do it anymore. I just make a rule of like, dude, just go to sleep, go home, go to sleep. Not them, but finish the day out, sleep on it, wake up tomorrow, and then think about whether or not you need to make this action. And 100% of the time, it's different, right? A lot of times it's an hour later, it's different. Two hours later, end of the night, it's totally different. It's just in that moment, and I get those thoughts of, you know, oh, well, this is, I'm an imposter. I don't know what I'm doing. And I'm having all these, you know, racing thoughts going through my head. It's just take a breath, sit on it, come back and revisit it tomorrow. And then for me, that's how I can kind of get through those times. I mean, sometimes, I mean, I've had weeks, you know, where it's just like every day something bad's going on and you're like, why am I doing this? This sucks. And then, you know, the next week something awesome happens and it just kind of erases all of those bad feelings.

So I want to start a new segment here, Eric. New segment in our podcast. Podcast called Real Talk. Real Talk with Brad Hebner. Real Talk with Brad and Eric. That sounds better. So listen, you know, and you know this because I've talked to you about it, but when we started Hammer and Grind and we decided we were going to do this and start our group and just the whole... the whole movement that we're trying to do, there were many, many times where I would message Eric and be like, hey, dude, we don't even know what the hell we're doing. I mean, like full on imposter syndrome. Who's going to listen to us on a podcast? Nobody knows who we are. Like all these thoughts and stuff going through our head. And here's what's crazy about it. It was never because someone said, you know, you guys suck or you guys don't know what you're talking about or you don't have enough experience. Like literally, as far as I know, Eric, and maybe you haven't, haven't shared with me, but we haven't had a single person to date, like reach out and say that you suck or don't know what you're doing or, you know, you shouldn't be doing that. Like not a single negative comment has come out of it. If any, I mean, all we've ever received is positive comments. And so those are the kind of the, you know, you have those thoughts of, man, we don't know what the hell we're talking about. We don't know what we're doing. And then the next day, someone's like, dude, I heard your podcast and it really fired me up. It motivated me to make this change in my business. And that's the best feeling in the world. Or we have one of our members in our profit club is like... wow, we've never knew what my numbers were until you sat down and figure that out with us. And now we actually know what kind of money we're making in our business and we can grow and do all these things. That stuff happens and it's awesome. And we love, I mean, Eric and I both love that. That's why we do this because we want to help other contractors. But man, there are days where Eric, and it's funny because I'll message Eric and say, hey, we don't know what the hell we're doing. And he'll be like, no, we know we do this, this, this, and this. And he's all positive. And then a week later, Erica messaged me like, man, we don't know what the hell we're doing. And then I'll be like, what are you talking about? We did this and we're doing this and blah. So it happens to everyone. This isn't something that, you know, it just happens whenever you're new. I mean, there's professional athletes, professional businessmen, like at all levels of life, imposter syndrome creeps in. And so... I just want to share that that happens to me probably more than Eric, but I know it's happened to both of us and it's real. I mean, and getting through that is the most important thing and thinking that you're alone in that. I mean, that's what I'm trying to share here is that you're not alone in those thoughts.

Oh, that feels good. Thanks, Eric. Yeah, you're welcome.

Well, I learned many years ago that, you know, there's kind of a stigma of in order to teach somebody else something, you have to be like the expert, the foremost expert, right? Like you have to be the guy that knows everything about said topic. And the reality of it is all you have to do is know something more than what the other person knows, right? And everyone's at different positions in their business. You know, are we going to be helping a contractor or builder or somebody who's been doing it for 30 years,40 years, second generation, third generation, you know, $50 million in business a year? Like, probably not. I mean, there's probably a few things they can learn. But we're not going to be helping every single person, right? But you've been doing this for over 20 years. I've been doing this for over 11 years. I'm pretty sure there's enough experience that we could help somebody who's only been in business for one year or five years or maybe even 10 years. Or maybe someone who's trying a different part of their business, like you said, a different division that they don't know much about. So the reality of it is when you're trying to... And this isn't about coaching. This is about also in your business. Right? All you have to do is know how to do one thing better than someone else in order to be able to help them in order to provide a service or a value that's worth it. Does that make sense? Or am I just like making up stuff here?

So I want to take a little different angle on this. We've talked about many times on the podcast. I do competitive pistol shooting. And when I first got started, I think it's been, what, five years now. I was watching tons of YouTube videos, like trying to learn as much as I could, right? Even though I was in the Marines and I knew how to shoot, I wasn't a competitive shooter and it's a totally different kind of type of shooting. So I was watching videos and there's guys like Jerry Michalak, who's, you know, he's one of the pioneers in competition. There's videos of him, all kinds of stuff. And so I found this one guy. who's a very, very well-known competitive shooter. I mean, multi, multi, multi, multi-time national world champion in several different disciplines. And so he was, you know, he was something that I kind of modeled after. Well, for my birthday a couple of years ago, my wife got me a private coaching session with him. It was a full day of... coaching with him at his house. He has a range behind his house. How cool is that, Eric? I mean, he's got like a full-size range. Amazing.

I mean, steel, moving targets, like the whole gamut of everything you would possibly need. And so, it was in Ohio. So we drive, it was a weekend getaway for my birthday. We go to Ohio. I spent all day Friday shooting with him. Two things about this. One, which is totally unrelated to the story, but we shot 800 rounds that day. That's how much I shot. 800 rounds of bullets. That's a good day. Anytime you can shoot 800 rounds, that's a good day of shooting. Amen. But I walk in this guy's house. It's a very modest ranch house. I'm sitting at his dining room table. We're having a conversation and talking. I had this kind of... I put him up on a pedestal. Because he, I mean, the guy's good. He is a very well-known shooter. He's very good. But by the end of the day, what came out of that, the thing that I learned the most from that day was not about techniques or stuff. It was the fact that he was just a normal guy like you and I. There was no difference between him and me other than he put more time in. He put thousands of reps in. And he dedicated his life to that being able to shoot well. That's the only difference. It wasn't because he was smarter or faster or more athletic or knew more. It wasn't any of that. It was just pure dedication to the sport and putting in the reps. And honestly, I almost felt bad for him when I left because he was a single guy because he travels all over the world and does classes. And he didn't have a family. He doesn't have a... Didn't have a wife. And so it kind of looked like a bachelor lonely lifestyle. And I almost felt bad for the guy. But eight hours prior to that, I was like worshiping him as a shooter. Like, oh my gosh, you know, starstruck. Like, oh, it's him. And I'm in his living room. And, you know, and then eight hours later, I was like, wow, I kind of feel bad for the guy. And so a lot of this stuff is, it is a mindset, but it's like a, it's an image. that we put in our heads and then we see other people. We compare ourselves to the guy down the road, the contractor down the road, who looks like he's got the nice truck and the trailers and all the toys and all the stuff going on. And we're like, man, I'll never be as good as him. And I'll never be able to measure up to him. And I'm just an imposter and blah, blah, blah. But what you don't realize is that guy down the road is in debt up to his eyeballs. He's one job away from losing everything. Because he maxed out his credit to get all that stuff. That's the stuff you don't know what's going on behind people and their businesses. And so if anything you can take away from this, for me, it's that we all have something to offer someone else. And whenever you have those seeds of doubt, go back and look at all your accomplishments. Go back and look at what all you did. It doesn't take long to realize that, oh, wow, I really do know what I'm doing. I do belong here.

So how did you get over that?

Are you telling me you haven't?

That's why it's called Real Talk, man. It's Real Talk with Brad and Eric.

Your skimmer is?

okay. You know, what was interesting about when I went to that, that coach and I was in his house on his wall, he had a shelf that had his, he had two world championship trophies and When I was looking at them, they were covered in dust.

At the end of the day, he's like, here, I'll show you something. And he goes back in his garage and he had a locked door and he unlocked it. My wife had come back to pick me up and we go in there. And it's a room, probably about eight foot by eight foot size. And every square inch of all four walls were covered in plaques. I'm not even exaggerating it. Every square inch. And then on the ground, there were rows and rows and rows and rows of plaques sitting in front of plaques, in front of plaques. I mean, he had probably 100 plus plaques in this room of wins. First place wins. You know, local matches, small matches, nationals, regionals, like everything. Because I even joked with him and I said, do you ever get so tired of winning that you just like start using the plaques for firewood? Because you have so many of them.

What did he say? He just kind of giggled it off, you know. But I don't really know why I want to share that other than sometimes, you know, what we see from the outside of who we think is an expert and who we look up to, you know. They have their own issues and their own things that they're dealing with. So it doesn't necessarily make them special.

Because he has his own form of imposter syndrome. I mean, he's dealing with his own things. If you have two world championships, don't you think you'd have them polished and on display where everybody can see it and take care of it?

Well, that's, that's my point is that he, he is winning in one of those buckets, but he may be losing in all the others.

My point is that everybody. has imposter syndrome at some point, to some degree. It's something that everybody deals with. Yeah, I agree with that. And so when you look at somebody who you think is better than you, who has more experience, who has a business that's better than you, again, you don't know what's going on behind the closed doors. You don't know all the stuff that's happening, right? And so you shouldn't have this ideology around If you're not doing, if I'm not doing as good as Eric Triplett, then I am an imposter and therefore I should just give up.

It's noted. Yeah. Okay.

I agree with that, except for one thing. You said there are 10 listeners, five like me and five like you. It's actually five people don't like me, but 10 out of 10 don't like you.

Let's get that right.

No, it's five and 10. Listen, I don't want to go down that rabbit hole, but I don't know if you were trying to convince me or convince our listeners. Either way, it sounded pretty good. But to bring this back to contracting, you're going to have days where you feel like an imposter. You feel like you don't know what you're doing. Your business, you're not making profit. You know, you don't. feel like you have a handle on your numbers, your marketing. There's always balls in the air that you're trying to juggle and they're constantly falling, right? You're constantly dropping them, picking them up. And so first thing I want to say is it's okay. It's okay to have imposter syndrome at times. Two, you're not alone. The three, and the most important thing is that you just have to keep pushing through it, right? There are people out there in less experience, less opportunities than you, and they're moving forward. And there are people out there that have way more experience and way more opportunities than you. And you're just somewhere in between. And it's not necessarily a destination. It's not your identity. Your identity is not in your accomplishments. If they are, you need to get that checked pretty quick. It's okay to have imposter syndrome, but continue to push through it. That's all I got to say.

I'll share this real quick story and then we'll get off here. And it just reminded me, and I think I may have shared this before. Whenever I decided to take up competitive shooting, I went to the very first match and I thought, oh, you know, former Marine marksmanship instructor, like I'm going to go out there and just kill everybody. Like just come in first place. And I got out there and I started shooting and I did not come in first place. I came in towards the end. So I walked into that range overly cocky and I left it with a whole crap load of imposter syndrome. So to your point, it's healthy sometimes to have that.

That's it. Take us out of here.