Ep. 210 - IMPOSTER SYNDROME - we ALL have it! (nobody has a clue!)🫤I hate when friends sell to friends (and ✨Bedazzling✨is horrible!) Jay’s SCOOP

0:08Welcome to Do This Not That, the podcast for marketers. You'll walk away from each episode with actionable tips you can test immediately. You'll hear from the best minds in marketing who will share tactics, quick wins, and pitfalls to avoid. We'll also dig into life, pop culture, and the chaos that is our everyday. I'm Jay Schwetelson. Let's do this, not that.

0:40we are back for the do this not that podcast presented by marigold and normally i rattle off some stats and some tips and you try to put those in your marketing campaigns you see how they do today i want to share something a little bit different i wanted to talk about imposter syndrome because it's driving me bananas listen nobody has a clue i don't have a clue and what's going on out there is two things number one you're being held back in your business in your career because maybe you think that you are not a fraud but kind of a fraud that you don't know enough about the thing that you want to try okay that you're just getting going in this thing and who am i to even try to do this because i don't know how to do it right or you're getting advice from people that are saying, oh, no, no, don't do that.

1:32Do this instead. And they've never actually done it themselves or they did it 45 million years ago. Right. So it's creating this imposter syndrome for you. And I want to tell you that nobody knows what's going on. I want to give you some specifics about how to deal with that. But when I say nobody knows, OK, Elon Musk doesn't know what he's talking about. He's making up everything. The guy who started ChatGPT doesn't know what he's talking about. The biggest business people in the world, I'm not saying anything negative about them. It's not about them specifically. It's about all of us. Nobody knows what they're talking about.

2:07We're trying stuff out. And if it works, great. We're going to double down. If it doesn't work, okay, we're going to pivot. And that is how it works. And you have to get really comfortable knowing that stuff is not going to work. Let's talk about, for example, Bill Gates. Bill Gates founded Microsoft. He's one of the richest dudes in the world. He's a genius, right but he didn't get it right right out of the gate it's not like he started microsoft and he just crushed it that's not what happened he had a company okay that he started with paul allen that's the other dude who started microsoft it was called trafo data trafo data and what that company did was you ever drive on the on the road and there's like a little rubber like black cord you drive over that and then you drive over another black cord and they're measuring whatever the hell it is that they're measuring.

2:55Well, he did and Paul Allen did. And they're like, wow, we could build a whole company around that data. And it was going to be called draft of data. And it was an epic failure. Okay. But coming out of that, they're like, oh, that's why this didn't work. Let's try this thing with Microsoft. And that's how that started. But even Bill Gates, you know, I'm not focused on Bill Gates, but it's a great example of you don't just listen to everybody because they're saying stuff. There's this, I watched this interview with Bill Gates from 2004 and they were talking about email marketing and email in 2004 and bill gates said this is in 2004 that two years from now so he was saying in 2006 spam would be solved he didn't know he just said i think this is what's going to happen and everyone's like oh he's bill gates he must know and that's like anybody in your life anybody that's like oh they must know they know what they're talking about.

3:50It's not true. How about Steve Ballmer? Okay, that's the dude who ran Microsoft forever. In 2007, okay, I was watching some other interview with him. They were talking about the iPhone had just come out. And he said, there's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. That's a quote by Steve Ballmer. Okay, why? Because they had their phone. It was called Zune or something like that. And they thought they were going to beat the iPhone. Nobody knows what they're talking about. And it's actually really important to understand that because what do we all do? We go into this trap of negative self-talk.

4:30I talk to people all the time. I tell them, don't do that. They'll be like, they'll start out a conversation. Hey, listen, I don't actually know any, I don't know what I'm talking about here, or I'm not really good at this. Can you help me out with this? Or, uh, I'm really, I'm uncomfortable about this because I've never done it. Don't do that. Don't start out with negative self-talk because here's the secret. Nobody actually knows. Nobody knows what's going on. And if you have negative self-talk, number one, that seeps into your body. And then all of a sudden you really think that you can't do it.

5:01And that's how the imposter syndrome stuff happens. And then the people around you have no confidence in you. Okay. You got to try stuff. That's the way it works. When you actually try to do anything, I've never put on a webinar. Do it. Here's what's going to happen after you do that webinar. It's not going to go perfectly. And you're like, wow, the next time I do a webinar, I'm going to do this. Instead, you're going to have the experience. How about you run a LinkedIn ad? It is very complicated for some reason to run a LinkedIn ad. You've never done it. Okay. Don't get advice from 75 different people that have never done it before, spend 50 bucks, run that LinkedIn ad, and then it's not going to go well.

5:42But the next time you run that LinkedIn ad, you're going to do better because you're going to know what to do. Maybe you never sold a digital course before, but you really want to be like, I'm not up to that. I'm not ready for that. I don't know how to do that. I'm not like all these other people that are crushing with that. But you do it, okay? And it goes horribly wrong, but then you do it again. And guess what? It goes better. How about Milton Hershey? Okay. Milton Hershey, the dude who started, you know, the Hershey company, all the, every candy that we eat, that guy opened up a candy store.

6:17And if somebody told you that Milton Hershey opened up a candy store, you're like, well, he must've crushed it because he knows what he's doing. He spent six years running this really bad candy store and it went out of business. Okay. It was not a success. He had credit issues. He had all these issues for six years. He tried to do this thing. And then what happened? He figured out stuff and then he started the Hershey company and that's what happens. And so it's like my own business. Um, I look back on the first guru conference that we did. That's one of our large, uh, email marketing, uh, virtual events that we do.

6:53And we did a few years back, the first one, it's so cringe to me. I look at it, I'm like, oh my God, I can't believe we did these things. They were so bad. It was horrible. But then the ones I did after that got better because I learned all this stuff. Now, here's the stuff I can't stand as it relates to imposter syndrome and trying to overcome it. What do we all do? We go to people and we try to get advice. Say, okay, I'm thinking about doing this. And you go to somebody that you think is smart and you say, what do you think about this? Okay. And they'll give you advice. I do not like getting advice from people that have not actually done the thing, whatever it is, and they haven't done it in some sort of relatively a time period that is in the last few years.

7:41I don't want advice from 20 years ago. Okay. And I don't want advice from anybody who hasn't actually done it. And the only advice I really like is very, very specific advice. You know, somebody, oh, I want to put on a virtual conference. Oh, don't do that. Those aren't good. That is not specific advice. That is garbage advice. And so like, for example, I got this advice about one of our upcoming events. I was talking to different people and I said, well, what do you, here's the agenda for our event. There's a big virtual conference. What do you think? And they said, no, what you need to do on your agenda, you need to give everybody a lunch break where everything pauses for an hour because people need to have lunch and then they'll come back.

8:27And I was like, oh, okay. So in this person though, I'd never put on a virtual conference at all before. They just know they like to eat lunch. And honestly, that's the worst advice. I didn't do it because what I have learned is that if I give an hour break in the middle of a virtual conference, nobody comes back, right? But this dude had no experience and they could have hurt my business. Okay. And I can't stand that kind of advice. Now on the flip side, I reached out to somebody that does a lot of webinars and virtual events and things. I'm like, what's something that you do that's like a must do for you?

9:01They go, oh, you always want to have add to calendar in your emails after somebody registered. So when they say, thank you for registering, you put an add to calendar button in all of your emails to get it on their calendar. Cause if you don't get on their calendar, we've learned that they're not going to show up. I was like, Oh, that's really useful. You do this a lot. You've tried this. And when you didn't do it, it didn't work, but then you change something and you did this. I go, this type of specific advice is exactly what I care about. So everybody Everybody has imposter syndrome. I do. I think I'm a fraud at podcasting.

9:39I think I'm a fraud at doing events. I think I'm a fraud at everything. Not a fraud. But I think that I don't know what I'm doing. Nobody knows what they're doing. Just go and try it, and then you will get better. And I know this is a different kind of episode, but it just drives me bananas. People are just holding themselves back. All right. before we get into since you didn't ask which is the crazy part of this podcast i want to know this podcast is presented by marigold marigold is my email sending platform i feel it through the radio however you're listening to this on your head earphones earphones what are those you don't like your email sending platform marigold is better i promise you whether you're business or consumer their roll-up of sale through my emma live clicker cheetah digital and I asked them for a special offer and they hooked it up for the listeners of this show, you can get 50 % off of Emma.

10:37That's crazy. That's one of their best platforms. Or you can get your implementation fee waived. All you got to do is go to jschwedelson.com slash save, S-A-V-E, and you can get access to this offer. jschwedelson.com slash save. I am telling you, you don't have to have a bad email signing platform. Check them out. Check them out. All right. Let's get into since you didn't ask. Speaking of imposter syndrome and all this different type of stuff, this is so bad. This whole thing is like a rant. I don't know what's wrong with me. We need to stop. Everybody lies to each other. So a buddy of mine's wife started up this little clothing company, and that's great.

11:20I'm very supportive of everybody should go out there and do their thing or whatever. I don't know if this happens to you, but whenever somebody in like your universe outside of like your work or whatever, they start up a company of some kind, some little company, uh, somebody else was selling some sort of perfume thing, uh, all these different little companies. What happens is we all lie. So my buddy's wife starts his company where they're selling clothing to me. It's like, she's like bedazzling clothing. I don't really understand it. Whatever. Hopefully they're not listening. And then he's like, Hey dude, you got, can you support this thing?

11:55whatever. Can you buy a whatever? And I'm like, okay, fine. And then I see it online. Everyone's like, oh my God, way to go with your company. You're crushing it. And all the friends are buying the thing that she's selling. Okay. And she now thinks, whoa, I got a business over here because look at everybody buying this up. And they're telling me how great it is. Everyone's giving me the feedback. This is the greatest thing. Oh my God, you're doing this quality is so good. I'm going to tell all my friends. Everyone's full of it. All the friends are just buying the thing because they feel guilty, right?

12:31You know, like I got to buy the thing because she started it and he's my buddy. And what am I going to do? And of course, I'm going to say it's great. What am I going to do? Say it's garbage. That's not cool. And now she is running around thinking that she has a viable business that she's going to pour money into and do whatever we need to stop. We need to be honest. Okay. Because, um, I don't think we should Just instantly just buy this stuff and tell everybody it's great. What are we doing? I know that that's wrong. I know I'm a bad person. I know all of these things. But it's just like we're creating this fake stuff.

13:05Stop. Who needs stuff bedazzled anyway? We got to stop bedazzling. I don't understand. You have a shirt and then you put up thingamabobs that look a little shiny. And now you charge more. It looks terrible. It just looks terrible. Enough. Enough with bedazzling. Anyway. way. I don't know what I'm talking about. Please leave this thing a review if it's at all useful. Hit me up. Drop me a message at jschwedelson.com. Let me know what you're thinking about the show. Let's partner. Let's do stuff. You are awesome. Don't bedazzle anything. Later. You did it. You made it to the end. Nice. But the party's not over.

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