Transcript
Hi everyone, and welcome to episode two of the Lovable Business Podcast. My name is Mercy Barake, and I am your host. Today the topic I would like to talk about is imposter syndrome. If you haven't seen my recent YouTube video on this topic, I. Highly recommend you go check it out, but as usual, the YouTube video is a little bit more crisp and precise, and the podcast episode that's following the topic is a bit more personal, intimate, and much, much less edited.
But without further ado, I would like to jump into the topic and the, basically the thesis that I have, for imposter syndrome. And that is that, it is something that we are all familiar with. But I feel we highly misunderstand what imposter syndrome is. So the basic thesis of my research or my findings on this topic is that there's basically two types of, imposter syndrome.
I probably also should talk about this a little bit. Imposter syndromes. I think the naming is pretty wrong 'cause it makes you feel like it's a medical term. While it's a completely natural phenomena that's happening.
So basically it makes you feel like you are a medical case just for feeling this way, but it's just like a way of trying to fit in and you know, the way humans are trying to belong to a tribe and. It generates the exact same feelings in most of us, so I would prefer to actually call it imposter phenomena or something like that.
I stick to imposter syndrome because I assume that people who were interested in learning more about this topic or typing imposter syndrome into their search bars. I truly believe that there's two different types that we should, differentiate between. One of them is based on a knowledge gap and the other one's based on misalignment.
Imposter syndrome is very much a fundamental fear. We want to belong to a tribe. And because we feel we might not live up to certain standards or the role we are assigned to, or the things we are promising when we are running our own business makes us feel like we're trying to fake it till we make it right.
So I think this, saying is very handy in understanding what I actually mean. It's that you are trying, you know, your knowledge, your skills, your competence is not there yet, not where you want it to be, at least. But there's no possible way to, to benchmark things. So it's all just a mental fixation basically.
But the more you learn about the topic, the more you go into the details and the more experience you have. This feeling of being an imposter is completely vanishing. I can give you a quick example I started my own business. I co-founded a business that built a tech solution to manage partnerships, to manage, B2B business to business.
Partnerships and measure things that we thought were very important to look at, and other companies or other solutions didn't necessarily address these. When we started, I had a lot of experience with partnerships, but at the same time, because this was never a title that I had, or it was never a full-time job.
It was constantly part of my job, but it was never my full-time job before I started the business. So I felt like not coming to the business as a newbie or someone who's. Very inexperienced compared to the big names who were dominating this space. But at the same time, I just felt, you know, the more I learn, the more I start copying their vocabulary, the more I'm gonna fit in.
The more people I know in the space, the more well connected I. The more I grow my network, the more I'm gonna be able to live up to the standards where I want it to be. Because let's be honest, we we're always starting things that we're new at, right?
You are so inexperienced and you're so new at it that you have an idea of where you wanna be and just constantly feel like you're pretending that you're there, but you know, deep inside that you're not. This is me with YouTube videos or the podcast. I have a very high standard of where I would like to be, but I know that the skills I have, the concept that I have in my mind is not mature enough to reflect the standard that I want to present to the world.
So that's why I feel like a total imposter, like sitting here talking to the camera because it's very unnatural for me and because I have a couple of people in my mind whose standards I wanna live up to, and I'm really not there yet, i've been doing this for a couple of months now, and I can tell you that it is gradually getting easier and it is gradually becoming something that I know I'm constantly working on.
Over time with trials, even this episode, like as much as I wanna be natural and unfiltered and unedited, I have a couple of notes in my hands, and this is the second time
i'm recording the whole episode from the beginning. Because I just simply want to get better, and these are things that are completely fine to do, but the problem starts when you start over obsessing with perfection,
if you are constantly trying to be perfect at everything you're doing, you really take away the importance of the learning experience. And there's one thing that I read recently, I really don't know where, but it was basically saying that things are only interesting. For as long as you are in the mastering it face.
Once you become a master of something, people tend to shift. People tend to quit the thing, not quitting as like out of failure, but it's like. I'm done with it. I mastered the skill. I know the craft. I feel that there's not much more I can explore within this space. Lemme look for the next thing. And isn't it really interesting that the very thing that makes us so uncomfortable, AKA being new at something or starting something from the beginning?
Is also the thing that actually attracts us. It's the thing that signals that we still have something to do in that space that gives us some sense of purpose, and I think that is so fricking beautiful. I've had a talk with a client recently who is running a very, very successful business. But she started another, business model within her business, and she wants to double down on investing in making that new business model, basically her primary business
her secondary and we were talking the other day, and it was such a beautiful moment where she, admitted that she feels so bad because even though she's been working on her business for the past five years, and it's been her only income, so she's running a business that is, at least sustaining her, life, if not more.
That she feels like now she's back to the drawing board and she feels like such a newbie and she feels like, you know, she's gonna have to start facing the failures again. Like try error, tryer error, and then figuring things out until she manages to find the sweet spot on how to really. Recover the investments she's made into this new business model and I think that this is what us humans are doing.
There is a reason why people like me who have figured out the key on how to grow in their respective careers. Start playing the game by those rules and realizing this is not even an interesting game to play anymore. And as soon as you figure out the exact recipe, as soon as you crack the code, the game stops being interesting.
Another example I just thought of is that when I was a kid, I loved playing sims. I had a very, very strict, daily time that I could allocate to playing games. And that was one hour. Those of you who have built, any type of virtual world, you know, that I'm just passes differently when you are in it.
So I was playing Sims and I didn't speak English at all. Let's just put it this way. I could read the words and I could understand a couple of things, but it wasn't enough to get by. But I somehow ended up on forums, where people were sharing cheat codes. And I remember the cheat code mother load, which gave you like, 50,000 Sims dollars.
And that was a lot of money. And the funny thing was that you could apply this cheat code as many times as you want. So basically I had unlimited money and I think I. Robbed myself of the beauty of the game because one of the reasons why Sims is so addictive is because you. Try to earn money and then spend money on your home or your activities as if you were living life.
That's the sort of, the simulation is supposed to mimic real life, and as soon as I figured out the cheat code on how to get like basically unlimited amounts of money. I spent a couple of weeks building the most elaborate mentions and having the fanciest possible life for my sims, and then the game got really boring.
There was no point really in repeating the same thing with New Sims or in new setups because money was unlimited. And
because I eliminated one of the like, basic sort of scarcity equations, it felt like it wasn't an interesting game anymore. The same happened in my, professional life as well. As soon as I started earning significantly more money per month than what I needed for my expenses or some luxuries, money stopped making sense.
Money stopped giving me the same feeling as it is giving me now. Now because I've been living off of my savings for the past couple of years, the majority of the expenses are covered by my savings.
Money has
money, has regained its meaning and its significance in my life. So when I was a student, I was from a relatively poor family in Hungarian terms, very well off family, but put that income into the context of Scandinavia and, you quickly become one of the, poorest people around. But I remember spending my student years constantly, obsessing over how much money I spend.
I usually tell this story to others as well, that even if I bought a cup of coffee for five Swedish grono, which is, I wanna say 50 cents, yeah, it is 50 cents. Even a 50 cent expense went into my expense tracker that I had in a book form or like a journal form. Because it was so important to make sure that I know exactly how much money I spend on coffee, how much money I spend in general, and how much money do I have left roughly.
And how much money do I have left by the end of the month? This was a little bit of an over obsession with expenses, but it was necessary for me to nourish the trust in myself because that was the first time I ever had to rely on a fixed amount of money that my parents could send me on a monthly basis.
And that was the first time where I had to, you know. Figure out what are the parts in my expenses that could be optimized a little bit? What are the things that I can maybe splurge a little bit more? It was a game, and I played that game in the beginning of my career where I was so ridiculously underpaid.
Thank you, you know, big enterprises and FMCG companies for, being so nice to young talent. My salary in my first job didn't like it. I was not able to rent anything, on my own, even in a city outside of the capital. So I lived with my parents or that. Sort of financial constraint allowed me to appreciate money or appreciate the power of money more or, or think twice really on what I'm spending on.
As soon as I started earning more, my salary increased rapidly, my lifestyle inflated with that. And I didn't think about what I'm spending on. I always made sure that I save money, but I didn't put a lot of mental effort into, deciding what I'm buying. And I bought a lot of luxury items.
I bought a lot of luxury goods, and I felt like, you know, I figured out the game and I am on top of the world. But that wasn't fun for too long. I always tell the story of how I was sitting in my brand new, a MG Mercedes. I remember buying my first pair of very fancy Gucci sunglasses. I was sitting in a boss suit my Louis Vuitton bag next to me.
You know, like everything that you can imagine and you want having like Dior makeup on, and I was so miserable. I was crying behind those sunglasses so miserably. I had everything I ever wanted. I had all the lifestyle elements that I thought was needed for a happy life, and I was at my most miserable,
I was in a serious mental crisis.
Not to depress anyone, but fast forward to today. Here I am a, let's call it for what it is, a struggling business owner who is driven by a purpose that she believes in, who's driven by a vision that she has. In her mind, the money aspect is not there. I seriously have to consider every single Corona, every single dollar I spend both in my private life and in my business.
But the point is that.
I don't feel like I'm playing a character anymore. I do have a lot of areas, as I said, with podcasting or YouTube videos where I feel like I'm an imposter, but at the same time, I have this clarity and this confidence that I am going to get there. Like. There's really no way I can put this much effort into showing up online and that not having a payoff eventually.
I just want to attract a. Core community, a core tribe around me who gets value out of my content and who enjoys listening to me with strange accent, with, you know, mixing up my words or whatever every now and then, and can seriously find some comfort in my authenticity.
That's, that's kind of the vision.
And so this could be a good segue into the second type of imposter syndrome that I, again, this is my theory, not perfect, but I think it helps us understand it a little bit more. And the other type of imposter syndrome is. Based on misalignment or lack of alignment in where you are or what you're doing?
Again, let me go back to my startup, which was I think the most like.
The experience in my life that taught me the most, I would say about myself and about the world that we live in. I was really the business that made me super disillusioned and forced me to try to find myself. And there, even though I mentioned we built a business on something that was one of my skills, something that I had experienced with before.
But the context was very wrong, and I was very misguided and naive for thinking that the problem was with me. And today I stand here and I tell you that I believe that the startup environment is probably the most toxic. Most unforgiving and craziest environment. Everyone is a liar.
Here it is. I said it. Everyone lies. We lied a lot. We didn't straight up lie, but you learn how to package information in a way that you can manipulate others. You learn how to sell yourself, your experience, your product, your vision and your traction.
You learn how to tell the story in a way to convince the person you're talking to that what you're doing is actually really cool. It's gonna be really profitable. It's doing really well, and you are the perfect person for it. I think that's just outright lying basically because you leave no room for questions.
You have to be super defensive from the get go. You have to. Be prepared for all kinds of questions and inputs coming in, and you constantly have to prove yourself. You constantly have to come up with excuses and I think that is so freaking unnatural.
That's not how humans are. That's not how businesses are. Everyone can see through the lies. Everyone can see through the exaggerations more or less. And yet we're still doing it. So I really feel that if I was able to continue in the venture capital backed.
I would've been a psychopath or sociopath or someone with very serious mental issues. If that was okay for me, I think I would've had a lot of,
issues with my values. And that's the thing I thought that, you know, I can convince myself that this is okay and I can reason and rationalize, being in the environment. But what ended up happening is that I realized that, my imposter syndrome is not coming from me not being able to form this in a way that is acceptable for me,
but more that my imposter syndrome is there because it's trying to tell me something.
It's trying to show me that this is not where I'm supposed to be. It's coming up with, all these red flags. I didn't listen to it for the longest time. I was pushing it away. I was like, Nope, this is fine. The problem is me. I have to toughen up. I have to do this, I have to do that. I just, bought into the b******t that this is something that can be learned and this is something that you can do.
And I didn't realize that I was already fine. It was just not the right environment for me, or it wasn't the right values that actually were represented industry-wise, not specifically within my company. I mean, we had some issues there as well that I would never justify anymore, but. Past Mercy was a little bit more gullible, a little bit more forgiving.
But today I have some hardcore values that I'm not willing to compromise on. And the people I worked with in that business, most of them I would never work with again, simply because.
I also feel ashamed of myself for enabling that type of behavior I feel like I should have gotten out sooner, but I also understand that there's a reason why, hadn't I stayed in that role for as long as I did.
I would've never been able to move cities and, change houses. I think that was very important for my, wellbeing and my development to move to a quieter area, to have more space and to have more distance from, the bus of a city.
So later I managed to reframe this as it was just purely misalignment and no amount of knowledge, practice experience can fix that. Because if something's misaligned, it means that it is contradicting some of your core values. And I've done a lot of, assessment in myself from an energetic point of view.
Some of you might know that I work with, something called human design, which is not a system. It has been extremely helpful in my self-development work and just simply pointing out that, certain human qualities have very different energetics, connected to them
thinking of human emotions and thinking of very typical human behaviors from an energetic point of view, not just a psychological point of view, but an energetic point of view has been tremendously beneficial to my understanding of how humans work because. At the end of the day, that's what I'm most interested in.
That's why I built lovable business because I feel that the energy you bring into your business will eventually define how you feel in that business. So I want to guide people back to love. I think that is the most underrated. Human emotion or human feeling, and we tend to discredit the importance of love.
And I, if you're still listening to me, well thank you. I love you. Do you wanna build a lovable business? Maybe you already have an idea that what you wanna do. Maybe you're at a stage where you have no idea, but it sounds cool. Or maybe you're at a stage where you have a business but you wouldn't mind loving it a little bit more.
Then reach out to me. We can have a chat, if you have any questions. I would love to have some engagement and if you're a woman, no disrespect to any other genders or identities, but I love, building based on my experiences and I think a big chunk of. What I experienced is connected to being a woman in this very male dominated, very hyper-masculine world.
So if you're a woman listening to me, you can also join my community. It's free. I intend to keep it free for as long as it makes sense and I. It's just bringing together women who want to build a business that they can either fall in love with or fall back in love with.
So we help each other in that. And if there's one thing that maybe you could do. Is share this video or podcast episode with a girlfriend, someone who you feel needs to hear these words. Someone who you feel could enjoy the vibes here. I would love that for me and for them, of course.
So thank you so much for listening today, and I think I will be back in about two weeks time with the next episode. Until then, take care and I'll see you.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit girlbossedtoohard.substack.com
