Another point of view from yesterday—you also don’t need to be a True Expert. Remember, you’re not trying to market or talk or appeal to your direct peers, the other business consultants or software developers or leadership coaches. They don’t need you. And that’s a good thing.
You’re talking to the people who can benefit from what you know and how you do your work. These aren’t other experts; these are either people who have none of the skillset you do, or have some of the skills but are a few steps behind and looking to you for guidance.
Example time: I design airplanes. A lot of the things that I find dead simple—like the steps to evaluate an existing aircraft design to see if there’s anything that needs to be fixed—other people have no idea how to go about doing. I’ve literally put together quick lists of the items I want to look into, given it to a mechanical engineer who’s been in this business longer than I have so he can integrate it into his project planning, and heard back “oh this is so helpful, I’d have no idea where to start.”
To him, I am absolutely an expert, because he literally just doesn’t have the knowledge and experience that I do. Not an imposter.
For other folks, they have enough knowledge to kind of putter along, but then they see me come in with codes and tools to make things easier and quicker and they’re impressed. Or they see me solve a problem in a way they wouldn’t think to, when it’s almost pure instinct to me. To them I am also an expert, because they have some of the fundamentals down, but they can see I’m well ahead of them in experience and knowledge.
And the fun part is, with enough mentorship they’ll be experts one day too! And mentorship is something I can definitely provide. Not an imposter.
And guess what? Even some of those True Experts that you look up to can be your customers too. One of my current clients has twice as many years of UAV design experience as I do. He’s not paying me to know everything he knows. He’s paying me for my different set of experiences, my different brain, and the different way I approach problems.
And also? He’s paying me because he literally doesn’t have the time to dig deep into the work, and he needs someone else who does, and can do it well. Not an imposter (…I repeat to myself daily).
So where am I going with this? At the start, I just kind of liked the way the last email happened to end and wanted to leave it. But really, here’s a good takeaway for both of us—because yes, I’m working on this too:
Feeling like an imposter just means you know your blind spots.
You can see exactly where the gaps in your knowledge and experience lie, you can admit you have those gaps, and you know exactly what to do to work on filling them in.
Maybe you can help someone more experienced to fill in their gaps.
And you can help those following behind you to see their own.