In this episode Kris Kelso and Joshua Maddux talk about the struggled of Impostor Syndrome. This really hits home as a small business owner and launching this podcast. This episode is packed full of awesome notes and takeaways.

Get a free sample chapter of his book at: https://overcomingtheimpostor.com/resources

Our episode highlights:

• Change the definition of failure
• Vulnerability - you have to open up to overcome Imposter syndrome.
• Humble confidence - Be aware of your limitations, but know that you can learn and grow.

Bio: Kris Kelso is a keynote speaker, entrepreneur, and is the author of “Overcoming The Impostor: Silence Your Inner Critic and Lead with Confidence“.

Trained and certified as an executive coach, Kris has worked with hundreds of entrepreneurs, business owners, and their leadership teams. He is a faculty instructor at the Professional Christian Coaching Institute, an advisor and instructor at the Nashville Entrepreneur Center, a Facilitator / Coach with The Alternative Board, and is a contributing writer for publications including Fast Company Magazine, Yahoo Finance, and The Nashville Business Journal.

Kris has founded multiple companies and has served on the boards of directors of several non-profit organizations. He is an active member of Cornerstone Nashville, where he serves, teaches, and coaches other leaders. He lives with his wife and three teenaged sons in a suburb of Nashville, Tennessee.

Links:

• LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/kriskelso
• Website: https://www.kriskelso.com
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/thekriskelso
• IG: https://www.instagram.com/thekriskelso

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Welcome back.

In the bunker.

Today's episode is going to be a little different.

Um, in the sense of, this is a challenge that.

I myself has struggled with.

In starting this podcast in the bunker.

I was faced with the issue of imposter syndrome, myself.

I planned on launching in the bunker back in January of 2022.

After prerecording, a handful of episodes.

However.

After I had gone through and edited some.

I just didn't feel like everything was fully polished.

And wasn't as good as it could be.

I felt like an imposter.

And.

I just, I didn't.

I didn't hit go.

I didn't launch.

And.

January became February, February became March.

And then you can't launch a podcast the first week of April.

And so I just kept pushing the deadline.

And it wasn't until I started editing this episode.

I need to put a date on when I'm launching the podcast.

And so.

This is a challenge that I, myself struggle with.

And I think so many other business owners do as well.

I'm super excited to jump into this episode.

And have Chris unpack.

What imposter syndrome looks like.

How it can hurt business owners.

And some things that we can do to sort of combat that as well.

I really do want to thank everyone who has listened.

As business owners, there are so many things that we

battle with on a daily basis.

And.

Knowing that.

There are other people out there that struggle with the same challenges as us.

Is just super relieving.

Um, and knowing that you have someone else.

Who you can rely on both for.

Resources, but also just the aspect of them being there,

sort of as a sounding wall.

So I appreciate Chris and everything he talks about in this episode.

I appreciate you as a listener.

And I really am excited to jump in.

So.

Thanks for being here this week

Today, we have Chris Kelso on the show with us.

Chris was faced with a challenge of imposter syndrome.

So many small businesses feel this, that fake it till you make it type aspect.

And really, we all go through that in starting a business.

Chris felt that his success was more accidental than earned and

he wasn't legit as an honorary.

There's so much here to learn and to unpack, I'm excited to jump

in and have Chris on the show.

Welcome to the show, Chris.

Thank you.

Josh is going to be

here.

Awesome.

So let's get to know you a little bit better.

Let's go ahead and unpack who are you and how'd you get here?

What do you.

My career has been a sort of twisty turny road, driven a lot by

my curiosity and passions and interests.

I had a short stint in the music industry in my late teens, early twenties.

And then I.

Sort of pivoted into technology and spent several years as a software developer,

working with some large healthcare firms.

And for years I said, I never wanted to own a business.

I had no interest in being an entrepreneur.

I didn't want the risk and the headaches and everything that I saw

that business owners seem to have to deal with just was not appealing to me.

And then.

It was as if one day I woke up and nothing else made sense to me

except starting my own company, like somewhere a switch flipped.

And I just knew that I had to go into business for myself and come

to find out, years later I looked back and realize that I always had

entrepreneurship in my blood, if you will.

I was always trying different things and launching little side

ventures and figuring out what yeah.

Make money.

And and even some of my family history, there's some entrepreneurship there

and maybe that's just what I was running from for a period of time.

Even my wife knew she later told me that she always knew I

would own a business one day.

And even when I was saying that I'd never wanted to do that, she was going, yeah.

Yeah, we'll see.

So I I started my first company about 15 years ago.

It was an it consulting firm focused on working with pretty large

companies that had dysfunctional and underperforming it departments.

And I started that business on my own with just me at the beginning.

I had no real business education, but I went and bought a stack of books at

a bookstore on everything I thought I needed to know to run a business and

I read them all and, and just figured out how to learn what I needed to learn

along the way, very much in real time.

But eventually I grew that company to millions in revenue and had a team

of mostly former CIOs and VP level people that worked together to help our

clients really improve their IT work.

And over the years, I, it I co-founded a second company, a cloud computing

platform ran that a CEO for a couple of years raised a little bit of money

from some investors for that one.

Got it to profitability.

And then for the last five or so years, I have been working independently.

As an executive coach and doing leadership development work primarily with

entrepreneurs and their leadership teams.

So I do one-on-one coaching.

I do some group and team sessions strategic planning and goal

setting and leadership training.

And I do a bit of public speaking and last year or in 2020, I wrote a book

and published it in January of 2021.

It's always interesting to hear the the story of what

that journey has looked like.

And, it's always so different for so many people, but I think it's funny

because I think one of the common things for entrepreneurs that say I'm

never going to start my own business.

Like I think that's the number one telltale sign that you

will be starting a business.

You may be starting.

Yes.

Yeah.

Always so good.

Obviously through this whole path and the journey that you've been on,

there's been some challenges over the years, what businesses without them.

I know one of the challenges and obviously the main one that you wrote

a book on was that imposter syndrome.

Yeah.

Would love to dive into that a little bit

and talk through some of that.

You mentioned how you started an it consulting firm by literally grabbing a

few books off a shelf and reading them.

But then the company had multiple different, high level executives

doing millions of dollars a year.

So obviously there's a point where.

You realize oh, we've made it or, Hey, we aren't an imposter anymore.

So what did that journey look like?

What is that overcoming the imposter sort of syndrome look like?

As I said, I started my business with no real business education.

In fact, I never even went to college.

I don't have a degree.

And that's a whole, another long story of the history of how I got to where I was.

But at the time I had no real business training, but I knew

there were things I didn't know.

And I I bought a stack of books, as I mentioned I read them all

and and every time I encountered something that I didn't know.

I figured out a way to learn it.

And sometimes in real time, as I was doing it just as the need arose, but

because of that, I always carried this persistent fear, this nagging.

Voice in the back of my head that would tell me that at some point you're going

to encounter something that you don't know that you should know, and you're

going to be exposed as a fraud because you didn't go to business school and you

don't actually know what you're doing.

You just read a few books and you started a company and you've landed your first

client because of a relationship with a former boss that you used to work to.

And he just was throwing you a bone.

And if it wasn't for that, you never would have got this off the ground.

And.

And no matter what I achieved that voice would always come up with

some other milestone that I hadn't hit or some other criteria, right?

You're you're not a real business until you have employees.

You're not a real business until you have a million dollars in revenue.

You're not a real business until you have a physical office space.

You're not a real business until you have a full C-suite of leaders.

And anything that I would accomplish and figure out there was always some voice of

doubt saying there's something else that, that you're missing that you don't know.

And that feeling of, I don't know, what I don't know is this perpetual never ending

fear if you allow it to overtake you.

And it wasn't until years later probably 10 years into my

entrepreneurial journey that.

Learned about imposter syndrome and it was actually with an executive coach that

I was talking to that explained it to me.

And I started to do some real research and reading about it and, oh my goodness.

It was such a relief.

When I learned that not only is this a thing that psychologists have

recognized and that, they've put a label on it because it's a phenomenon

that's common to a lot of people.

It is also something that is more prevalent among high achievers.

It's actually statistically more likely that you have

those feelings of self doubt.

If you're a driven intentional very ambitious and aggressive person people

that just coast through life don't suffer from imposter syndrome because

they don't really aspire to much, but the people that are trying to grow and

stretch themselves, Are often finding themselves in a place of being in over

their head or out of their comfort zone or, feeling like maybe they've

out kicked their coverage, so to speak.

And that's a sign that you're doing great things, but the fear

that comes with it, the worry and the anxiety can be debilitating.

If you let it control you.

And so learning about it was the first big hurdle and it was a big relief, but

then I had to figure out how to manage it, how to master it, how to overcome it.

And that's what I ended up writing this book about.

As you're talking, I'm thinking through.

Looking at the aspect of, I think so many companies face that because there's

always another thing as a business owner.

When we've been in business 13 years, now, my company has, and going back,

I don't know, maybe eight or 10 years ago, I'm sitting with a prospect and

the guy goes you don't have an office.

Yeah

no, we don't.

And he was like I'd be more comfortable with, hiring you

guys if you had an office.

And for me it was like, oh, we're not a legitimate company, but at

the same point, if I was to get an office, then I would have to

increase, my costs by 20, 30, 40, 50%.

And so I'm like, okay is that client then willing to pay?

One and a half to two times what I'm estimating their costs are

going to be, and that client's not.

So then they either need to be okay with us not having an office because that's not

the type of business we are or we need to be okay with not having them as a client.

I think sometimes that's where the fear gets exponential because not

only is it the fear of, oh, we're not a real business because we don't

have an office but if we don't have an office, then we lose this project.

If we lose this project, then we aren't making money.

If we're not making money, we're not in business.

So if I don't have an office and there's this spiral

effect, I think we can go into.

The whole, thing unravels in your mind even before

the first domino has fallen.

You see it all coming apart.

Yeah.

And, owning a digital agency.

We've had clients over the years, come to us and, Hey, we need to look like

this other company or we need to look like we're five times bigger and we need

to fake it till we make it or whatever.

And in reality, Online.

Yes, you can do that to a point,

But at the same point, if you're

looking like another company and you're trying to be that other

thing, then why are you in business?

Because if you're trying to be exactly like someone else, then your prospect

is just going to hire that other person.

You're trying to.

Because they're the actual one and you're the imposter.

So I think there's, for me personally, like that was an element that I had

to realize with my business of no, we're not going to, be the imposter

of this other business because we're just being a crappier version really.

And that's not going to be great for anything.

Yeah, we need to be our own and be okay with that.

So what does that look like?

Obviously there's a whole process to really overcoming this from

a business perspective, but what is, what does that look like?

Maybe going back to the, it consulting firm or, something in

that realm, what did that look like of, working through that or over.

Dealing with imposter syndrome and overcoming imposter syndrome.

The, as I mentioned that the awareness of it is the first big step, and

it really does get you halfway because suddenly that persistent

fear you recognize is a mind game.

And now you can start to play the game.

You can start to figure out the moves to counteract it.

And so when I talk to people about imposter syndrome, just

learning about it often is a huge relief but that's not enough.

Just being aware.

Now you have to start to.

Understand the tactics and to make the right moves.

And so there are two main fears that come along with imposter

syndrome, or really there are the underpinnings of imposter syndrome.

And the first is the fear of failure.

And more specifically the fear of failure in public and the fear of failure

in public, that's gonna destroy you.

That's going to be your undoing, right?

So when you struggle with imposter syndrome, when you feel like maybe I'm

not legitimate, or I'm not what everyone thinks that I am, you worry that any

mistake you make or any admission of a fault is going to erode your credibility

is going to be your undoing and.

So the temptation then is to try to cover up for any mistakes that you make

to try to play it safe and not take risks, which of course business is full

of risk-taking there's risk reward.

And you have to be able to take risks and you have to be able to

make bets when you're not certain of what the outcome is going to be.

But that fear of failure will prevent you from doing that.

And you stay in, in what I call the tour guide zone, where you just make

the same loop over and over again, you stick to where you're comfortable.

You.

You only go where there's a clearly laid out path and a script and

a plan, and you're not willing to cross those boundaries and

get outside of your element.

But if you can change your mindset about failure and you can begin

to see failure as learning.

Then suddenly failure is not something to be avoided.

Failure is something to lean into to embrace.

Not that we want to fail, not that the goal is to fail, but

recognizing that failure is part of the process of success, because

it's the primary way that we learn.

One example and I've got dozens of examples in the book.

One example is a guy named babe Ruth.

You probably heard of babe Ruth.

He was the, one of the greatest baseball players of all time.

And he was known as the Sultan of SWAT because his he held the record for

home runs and slugging percentage and RBI's and a bunch of other records.

Some of, many of them still stand today, years after he's

gone, but he also had a nickname.

That was the king of strikeouts and his record, his career total of 1,330

strikeouts was a major league baseball record for 30 years until it was

beaten by a guy named Mickey mantle.

So Mickey mantle took the strikeout record away from babe Ruth.

And these are guys that we think of as great athletes, incredible

players hall of Famers, but they knew they understand that.

Striking out that failing at the plate was not something to be avoided.

It was part of the process.

You have to take big swings to hit the ball out of the park, and you're going to

take some risks and you're going to miss some, but I guarantee you, every time they

struck out, they were learning something, they were learning about the pitcher.

They were learning about his tendencies.

They were learning about how that ball was going to come across the plate.

And they were applying that to the next at bat.

Just understanding that failure is not fatal, that there's no failure.

That's going to be the end of your career, the end of your

life, the end of your work.

That failure is a learning process that change in mindset.

When I approach a new situation, now I look at it and say, one of

two outcomes is going to happen.

I'm either going to succeed or I'm going to learn.

Those are the two options.

And as long as I do one of those things, I'm going to get something

great out of this experience.

So don't have to be afraid of that uncertainty.

So that's the first big mindset shift that you've got to adopt to, to

start to overcome imposter syndrome.

The second one is a similar mindset shift about vulnerability.

See imposter syndrome.

Fear of being vulnerable.

It's the fear of opening up.

It's the fear of letting people see who and what you really are.

You mentioned the phrase, fake it till you make it.

And I really disliked that phrase and that idea because there's inherent

dishonesty there, but it also can, it actually will feed your imposter syndrome

when you're portraying something of yourself that you know is not real.

You will feel like.

Because in some ways you are, if you're faking it until you make it.

But instead you can have something that I refer to as humble confidence,

where you recognize and are honest with your limitations and the boundaries of

your knowledge and experience, but you also have the confidence to believe.

You can figure it out.

That learning is an important part of the process and that you're

going to learn your way to success.

You don't have to have every experience already behind you.

One of the things that I realized as I was writing this book, I was

doing a a deep dive on my career, looking backwards at the successes and

failures and the lessons I've learned.

And I suddenly realized.

The times when I was the most insecure, when I was feeling the most in

over my head, those were often the most pivotal moments of my career.

Those are the times when you really great things were happening.

And if I chose to pull back and to shirk away from those situations,

I'd miss out on great opportunities.

But when I leaned into those that's when really big moves.

Happened.

And so you've got to go into those experiences with a humility to not think

that you can just fake it till you make it or that you can do anything at any time,

but also with the confidence to believe that, everything I've ever accomplished

in life every first time accomplishment I've ever had has been proceeded by the

same thing, which is a lack of experience.

Every time you do something great.

You've, hadn't done it before that, and you didn't have the experience

until you leaned in and did it.

And so that humble confidence and changing the definition of failure,

and then being willing to be open about where I have strengths and

weaknesses, where I have experiences.

And I have some lack of experience.

The combination of those things will allow you to go into these new

situations or to take on new clients with a humble confidence that.

Sure.

I may not have done this specific thing that you're asking me to do before, but

look at all the other things I've done for the first time before, and I've

been able to be successful at that.

And I'm confident that I can take this on, or I can hire the right

people with the expertise that's needed to do this job, by the way.

That was one of the secrets to my success in my consulting firm is

for the first, probably six or seven years of that company, I was the

youngest and least educated and least experienced person in that company.

I always hired upgrade.

For myself.

And that gave me the ability to go into a situation and say, I

may not be the expert on this, but I do have an expert on my team.

And if I don't, I'll get one.

And so I'm not faking it till I make it.

I'm saying very openly.

And honestly, this is what we are capable of.

And I believe in the quality and the capabilities of the team

that I've assembled around me.

And that helps me to have that humble conflict.

That's really good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Hiring cure weaknesses is always something that yes, benefits,

benefits companies dramatically.

And when I see a business owner, that's trying to run every department in

their company, or they're trying to do be the point person for everything.

It just, it's not the best scenario.

I know when it comes to the aspect of fail, in the startup space, there's this

aspect of failing often failing fast.

Yes.

And it's, it goes back into exactly what you just talked about with, the baseball

analogy aspect, for a venture capitalist.

If they look at one startup and say, oh, this looks like a great idea.

I'll just dump a hundred million dollars into it.

And that's all they dump money into.

They're in trouble.

If they find, 10 different startups to dump money into,

one of them will be the next.

Uber or, whatever that service is now three or four of them are going

to just crash and burn immediately.

But for that venture capitalists, they need to get out quick.

They need to make sure they test it.

And if it doesn't work, shut it down or pivot.

And so I think that's something, for me is cool.

It did work.

It didn't.

Let's learn from it.

And that's, it's been the aspect of what can you take away from that failure?

And that's where when failure is looked at as a learning experience, I

think that's another critical element.

Like you can take so much away I've accidentally

underquoted projects before, or.

Yeah, we under quote a project because we didn't fully understand it.

Or we assumed that the client was going to do X, Y, and Z, and the

client assumed we were, and you get backwards in a project like that.

You obviously, it's a contractual obligation you follow through with that.

But then at the, yeah.

Back end.

It's what did we learn?

We learned that we need to better describe our process or better describe the

expectations that we have as a business on what the client is or isn't providing.

And all of those elements will really help not only the failing aspect,

but also, you continue to learn and the more you learn, the less,

you feel like you're an imposter.

Yeah, those mistakes are part of the cost of education.

And I've made some six-figure mistakes in my career, but I call those,

six-figure educations and I've got a lot of them that have added up to

success over a long period of time.

But they're painful when they happen.

But you've got to recognize that.

That's part of the entrepreneurial experience is learning

some of those lessons.

And often the more painful ones, the more costly ones are the ones that really stick

with you and benefit you in the long run, because you don't forget those lessons

as easily when they cost you something.

Yeah.

So true.

Awesome.

I really love the takeaways.

The, the changing the definition of failure, I think is a huge one.

Just like really.

Having that shift.

And then the vulnerability aspect, you have to be open to overcome the imposter

syndrome and the humble confidence being aware of your limitations but

know that you can grow and learn.

And I think that's so critical, like for my team, I say this,

probably once a quarter, at least like the day that we stop learning.

I own a digital agency.

We're in the web space.

That web changes daily.

The day we stop learning is the day we should close the business because

it's changed while we've been having this conversation.

Exactly.

And the web has changed and how people connect online has

changed so much, due to events.

The pandemic or the.com boom, or, there's so many different elements that

has changed, how global communications and all that type of stuff works.

And that goes for every line of business, you look at disruptors in

industries and all that type of stuff.

And being open to learning and growing and adapting and doing that, is always

something that's really good weather, it's imposter syndrome and not like just

learning and growing is always a positive.

There's been a ton that we walked through today and unpacked, and I feel

like there's probably a dozen more stories that you could share on this.

And there's so much more information, but I do want to walk through real

quick, like where is a good spot for people to find you online?

What is the best sort of number one, I'll have all the links to your

website, Instagram and LinkedIn, all that stuff in the show notes,

but what is that number one?

Yeah, the number one spot is probably my website, which

is just simply Chris kelso.com.

And I'm easy to find online if you remember that Chris starts with a

K

K R I S K E L.

So,

So yeah, Chris kelso.com there's information there on my coaching work

and some of the keynotes that I deliver.

And also the book is called overcoming the imposter.

And the website for the book is overcoming the imposter.com and it's

available anywhere that books are sold.

So you can find out more about the book there and more about

my specific work at my website.

And I'm also active on LinkedIn and many of the other social sites

that you mentioned and as you said, those will be in the show notes.

Awesome.

And then I know you had messaged me a link for overcoming the imposter.com.

That actually has a free chapter of the book.

And we were going to put that in the show notes as well.

So for those who are listening there's a chapter of that in the show notes that

you'll be able to download and be able to read through that and get a little

sample, a little more in depth sample.

On that as well.

And I'll say, I think the chapter that we chose to give away as a

free sample is one of the best chapters.

So you're not getting just a teaser.

That's, the first chapter in the book that all it does is set up the problem

and tell you that you need help.

But it's a really meaty chapter that we'll have some great, powerful takeaways.

So encourage people to go.

Even if you can't pick up the entire book, go get that chapter and read through it.

You'll get a lot out of it.

Cool.

It's been awesome having you on the show today.

I appreciate you coming on, I appreciate the time and your experience in

business and really opening up on that and just diving into that with us.

It's been really good to hear this and walk through it.

Yeah.

Thank you, Josh.

I really enjoyed the conversation.

I appreciate the opportunity.

Awesome.

Take care.

You too.

Thanks for listening to this episode of, in the bunker.

As always we can be found on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter

at, in the bunker podcast.

Be sure to share this episode and what you're going to apply from it.

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