Imposter Syndrome for the Entrepreneur
We are three years into our business, and every so often we are invited to come speak to a group of people about entrepreneurship (students, aspiring entrepreneurs, business folks, randos, etc). This is always funny to me.
The first reason this type of presentation is laughable is that people expect us to walk in and say things like, “series A”, “$1.something million dollar investment”, “total addressable market”, and other entrepreneur-y things you see on Shark Tank, and then I guess they expect us to hop into Teslas and drive off into the sunset. We aren’t able to do or say any of those things which is a topic for a different post.
The second reason this type of presentation is hilarious is because I know that I have no idea what I am doing. None of this went according to plan. None of this will ever go according to plan. Every day presents a new set of unprecedented problems that I have never experienced before and I am equipped with little to no formal education for how to solve any of them. I am literally making every day up as I go along.
At this point in my life I feel comfortable saying that the thing I have the most experience in is failure. I know that I have tried many different things and failed in many different ways. I also expect that I will continue to fail…like…a lot. And I’m cool with that.
I think the differentiator for the successful entrepreneurs I have met is their willingness to take the failure in stride and learn from it. However, it is a very awkward experience along the way to hear people talk about your business as a success when you feel like you are white-knuckling it for most of the week.
I wonder what the tipping point is where someone who starts a business feels like they know what they are doing. 🤔
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Alex Sejdinaj is a cofounder of South Bend Code School, GiveGrove, and Code Works. He loves building cool stuff that helps people.
