Do you ever wonder if you're just kidding yourself about being in business as a coach, speaker or consultant?

Are you one of the many who talk a good game but don't deliver the goods or one of the people who get stuck in overthinking things to the point of inaction?

Do you have realistic expectations and are they based on the action you're going to take to achieve the outcomes or... are you just kidding yourself?

This week I wanted to try out a somewhat more freeform style of episode, more like a fireside chat. Let me know if you like it or think it was a mess. Next week I'm bringing you my chat with The Queen. No, not Camilla, Christine Ammerman, the Queen of Podcast guesting. Don't miss it.

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Welcome to Podfluence, the show for business coaches and speakers

who are looking to build influence and authority through podcasting.

In this episode of the show, I wanted to discuss something that I

hear come up a lot with clients.

And it comes into a few different issues.

One of the main ones just being insecurity and things that stop us from being

able to achieve success in our lives.

And part of it is that thing of, are you just kidding yourself?

Can you really make this happen?

And I think it's reasonable to ask ourselves this question, and I want to

spend some time examining it because it does come up for people a lot.

This episode is perhaps, perhaps gonna be a little more free form than

some of the other episodes that I'm doing, but my aim is gonna be to share

with you some of my own insights and experience in terms of dealing with

this thing of, with this insecurity of wondering if we're just kidding

ourselves about whether we can have any level of success in life or business,

or if we're just kidding ourselves.

With that said, if you are not already subscribed to the Podfluence podcast,

then I invite you to do that Now, if you have your device in your hand, please

make sure that you open up the player that you're listening to this on, and

click the plus button if you're on Apple or Spotify or whatever it is, you

need to press on your device to make sure that you are following the show.

For more episodes with me, by myself, and certainly more so with my amazing guests

who are coming up on the show very soon.

In fact, we will be speaking with the Queen of Podcast Guesting very soon, and

if you wanna find out more about who she is and what she does and the amazing value

that she shares in her episode, then you do want to make sure you're subscribed.

So, Let's get into this episode of Pod Fluence.

So welcome to the show, and as I said, this is gonna be a little bit more of a

freeform episode, but I want to really take a look at the whole concept of

whether we're just kidding ourselves.

That thing that comes up in our head this part of ourselves, maybe

our inner saboteur, we could call it.

That sometimes seems like it's laughing at us, that we don't

really have what we said we want.

We're not really as far as far along with things as we expected or hoped to be, and

we wonder if we're just kidding ourselves.

If we can ever really have any kind of success, if we're

ever gonna break through.

If you're ever gonna be anyone of note as a coach or a speaker or a podcast,

or whatever it is that you are looking to do, maybe all of these and more.

A quick update on me professionally, , because if you have been listening

to the show, you'll know that

for a while I was working with the team at Grow The Show.

Unfortunately, things just didn't work out there and ended up moving

on, but I'm now working with the team at the Speaker lab with Grant Baldwin

and his team, and it is an amazing group of people to be working with.

Where I get to on a daily basis, fulfill part of my mission of helping people

to build influence on authority, on the path of becoming professional speakers.

I'm loving the work.

I get to do that.

and thank you to Grant and the team.

In fact, I was listening to Grant's book, the successful speaker, something I, I

put it when it came out and decided to re-listen to the audio book just recently.

And one of the things that came up was an interview at the end of the

audio book, and I'm not sure if this is in the actual hardback book.

I haven't checked it.

I should go and take a look.

But, Grant was asked whether he still has any insecurities about his success and

about, about the longevity of his career and things, and he said very much so.

Like all the time, still has fears or, you know, still has that imposter syndrome

still has those insecurities about

who is he to be doing all of this?

All this questions come up, but it doesn't stop him from taking action.

That was very powerful for me to hear that.

And you know, I've spoken to Grant a few times.

He's been a guest on this show back in February, 2022,

you can go and take a listen.

It was a great chat with him and now I'm working with him.

It's great.

But he's such a down to earth person, very natural, very normal.

And I can understand why we feel like we sometimes have to be these larger than

live celebrity peop type people with X factor to star quality and all this

all the time, those things are great to have, but they're not essential.

We still have plenty of great qualities that we can turn up and

enhance to get ourselves out there, to be noticed, to be valuable, to be

interesting to people, and engaging, growing our authority and our status.

But are you just kidding yourself that you can make it happen for you?

What?

What are the reasons why it wouldn't?

Well, I can think for my, from my own experience, one of the things that has

caused me to ask myself that question more than any other has been because

of not taking action of overthinking things, really getting caught up in

planning and trying to make things perfect before even getting started.

And it's an issue that came up in my last episode with Angela Henderson and, and

it was great to revisit that and I wrote a little about it in my blog as well.

If you're not already following Podfluencer Weekly, please do.

I mean it's free to follow on LinkedIn.

And you can also follow it Through Convert Kit.

You'll find the links in the show notes.

And I like to write about this stuff because it's stuff that I've been

through myself and I don't always want to just talk about my own experience.

I wanna talk about experiences that clients I have worked with as well.

Because it's important that we get that it's not just one

person's perspective on the world.

These are commonalities that many of us share.

And we want to make sure that we understand that we can

move past these things.

We can grow, we can develop, we can change.

They don't have to hold us back.

But I will say this, I've seen people with such great potential, such great

knowledge who probably do deserve to be really well known for what they do.

But they're not.

And the reason why they're not is because they just don't take enough action.

They don't actually generally have the belief in themselves to be able to get up

on, on the stage and get past that voice inside of them, the inner saboteur that's

telling them they're not good enough.

That's telling them they're not entertaining enough.

That's telling them that they're not influential enough.

They don't have the status or, or the following or whatever it is,

but that voice will come up and it will take you out every single time.

Someone else who I've worked with a great deal over the years is

T Harv Eker and Harv calls this mind freak, Mental Friction.

It's the stuff that comes up when we start trying to do good things in

our lives and to make things better.

Your brain starts to throw out all the reasons why you can't do that, why

it's not for you, and we'll try and take you out of the game if you let it.

And that really is what this episode is about, how to not let that kind

of thing take you out the game.

There's an old adage that some of you may have heard.

I don't like it and I don't necessarily agree with it, but the

thing of those who can do and those who can't teach is not really true.

But there is an element to which there's far more value, in my personal opinion,

in somebody who has experiential knowledge than someone who just has.

Informational knowledge that just has book knowledge.

There's a very big difference that when book knowledge meets

reality, it doesn't always match up.

And that's not, oh, of course sometimes it does, but quite often it doesn't.

And, and so people who've been through the experience and know the kind of stuff

that does actually come up, the challenges that arise in these kinds of situations,

have a very different understanding in the application of knowledge than

people who just have the knowledge without the application and experience.

And that's really what I'm talking about here as well, because we don't know until

we try and very often we don't really try or we half try because we think we

probably will fail or we think we're not really good enough so we don't commit.

We have commit because if we're not fully committed then we

haven't really lost anything.

If we don't go all in, then it's not quite so embarrasing.

It's, oh, I wasn't, I wasn't, you know, if when it fails then and

I wasn't really all in on it, I wasn't really fully committed to it.

You have your excuse already to go, but that is probably

the reason why you did fail.

The reason why it didn't work out or go as well as you wanted, or another one

that I've been guilty of as well is that success doesn't happen quick enough.

The following doesn't build quick enough and take podcasting.

And I, my goodness, if I had known how long it takes to build an

audience through podcasting or through blogging or things like that, I might

never have started these things.

But yet I'm so glad that I did because I get to talk about stuff like this

and uh, and I do know from people who come on the show and from people who do

feed back to me from articles and from episodes, value that they've taken away

and things that they've learned from it.

So I keep doing it and hopefully keep improving at it as well and worry less

about what people are thinking about me or, or whether I really am good

enough, because I would much rather get stuff out there that might just

inspire someone or make a difference or give them that piece of knowledge

or understanding that allows them to get to the goals and objectives that

are looking to be, do, have, or create.

I would say if, if you are one of these people who just talks a good

game and doesn't really take action or you know, you just want to, I impress

people and look good, but you don't really care about the substance to

that, it's gonna be very difficult.

And you might actually just be kidding yourself.

If you are one of those people who just goes from project to project, business

to business, New thing to new thing, which I've been guilty of as well.

you may be be kidding yourself if you're just not seeing things through,

if you're really just not prepared to stick with stuff long enough to get to

a point at which it might have success.

And what tends to happen for many others, and I, I actually this particularly in,

in people who do not network marketing kinds of businesses, initial enthusiasm.

Always fades.

It just doesn't last.

It doesn't matter how excited you are about something and how motivated

you are when it gets started.

Once the rubber hits the road, life will throw up curve balls, things will happen.

Unexpected stuff, things you could never have planned for.

It nearly always takes longer than you think it's going to take, and it gets

frustrating or the results don't come in

anything like you were expecting or the responses you get are

very different to what you were imagining and people get put off.

I'll tell you a story.

When I, when I very first, when I very first started creating video content,

back in early days of YouTube, I decided to post up some marketing videos and,

uh, oh my goodness, it didn't go well.

And this is in a time where now, now if you post a video on YouTube and you don't

really have a following or anyone's, no, no one's really gonna pay attention to

it, you might not get any views at all.

And, and that's pretty normal now.

It takes a while to build that following.

It takes a while to get attention.

You need the optimization plans and stuff, but in the early days of

YouTube, you didn't really need that.

Like if you were posting videos, you were one of a handful of

people really, who were posting videos and making content there.

You would get seen, you would get watched, and my videos got watched,

not necess, I'm not talking hundreds or thousands or anything like that, but

they got watched and they got criticized.

In fact, they got pulled apart.

I personally got rinsed from my videos because they were so bad, they're so

inauthentic and I couldn't deal with it.

I couldn't deal with the feedback, the negativity.

I was just get, trying to get started out trying to do something good, really

trying to step, put myself in that sort of discomfort zone of doing something

that I was scared about doing, and the feedback I got was so negative generally

that it stopped me from doing anything for a couple more years.

It was a, a good long time before I put anything else out on YouTube.

I care far less about that stuff now.

I care far less about that on podcasting as well.

It's like negative criticism is always gonna come from somewhere and

some one and if there's something valid there and if there's something

to take away from that, then great.

But very often that negativity, that negative criticism is really all about.

Someone else's negativity, someone else seeing you out there doing your thing and

thinking, oh, and they may be thinking, I could do it better, but guess what?

They're not.

They're not out there doing it better.

They're just there criticizing you, imagining that they could do a better job.

And that sucks just tearing other people down because you

are not where you want to be.

Look, to be honest, if they, if they were, if, if they were anywhere near

where they wanted to be, they probably wouldn't be having time to watch your

stuff on YouTube or where whatever channels they may be watching it on,

they'd be too busy getting on with it.

And, They would hopefully be of a mind that they understand that

a rising tide raises all ships.

That we should be helping to build each other up, not tear each other down.

You gain nothing from that.

You might feel better about it in a moment.

You might even feel that it gives you that little bit of power to make someone

feel like crap for, um, however long that might do that, that you might just, you

know, really hit someone where it hurts and then punch them in the emotions.

And you might, you might well achieve that cuz a lot of people are very sensitive

and do take that stuff very personally.

I certainly used to and don't so much now, but we are not prepared,

we're not prepared for that.

To have the mental resilience that we need to have to put ourselves out onto stages.

Whether that's public speaking stages, virtual stages, podcasts,

books, um, other online content.

These are all stages.

These are all platforms in which we present ourselves.

And there is a level to which we must accept that if we're gonna do that, if

we have a message to share, if we have an audience to serve, if we've decided

that we have a purpose, a mission, a vision for what we want to create, to

help people to make a difference and to do something positive in the world, then

that is worth putting yourself in the way of some negative criticism to get that.

In fact, it's also worth going through the levels of sucking at it, until

you get good or at least get better, or to get to the point where people

will be happy to listen to you for a while, or you may even start to get

noticed for what you're doing or saying.

It takes time to get there, and most people are not prepared to suck.

They're not prepared to go through what we call the level of conscious competence

where you're having to learn all the stuff that makes you better at what you do.

We do have this ridiculous idea that we're supposed to be naturally good at stuff

from the start, and it is ridiculous.

Nobody is born being naturally good.

Some people do have, dispositions that make things easier for them.

They maybe have a great level of confidence.

They may be very attractive people and have a genetic advice of genetic

advantages, and that's all good.

But one thing I'll say is

this.

Will, determination, commitment, persistence, driving forward with this

will nearly always outdo natural talent, inability in the long run because unless

the people with their natural gifts do realize and recognize that they need to

train too, that they need to grow beyond just what they can naturally, easily do.

And keep that growth going.

That growth should be a never ending thing for any of us, like we

should always be looking for ways to keep growing and developing.

If you don't realize that you will start to regress at some point.

Natural ability will only get you so far.

You will be watching other people overtake you at some point, and

that is not going to be fun.

So here's the thing.

Are you just killing yourself or are you serious about this?

So here's what I'll say.

If you really want to make a difference, if you have a, a mission and a

message to share with people, then you have to be prepared to take some

of the shit that comes along with it.

And if you're not, if you're too sensitive to that, if you're not really willing, To

get feedback, to grow from that feedback and to recognize you don't have to be

good at stuff right from the start.

It's all about improving.

If you can't do that, then you are kidding yourself.

You're not gonna get anywhere.

You are gonna keep yourself at a level to which you're comfortable,

and you may talk a great game.

You may have great ideas, you may have some natural gifts.

You may have your little group who love what you do, but it's

never really gonna go beyond that.

And so, yeah, you would be kidding yourself in that kind of situation.

If all you ever do is come up with great ideas and spend all your time thinking

about them, or you have these sort of plans of what you want to be, do, have,

or create in your life and all you do is go and meditate on it or write about it,

put it in your journal, or visualize it.

But nothing ever really happens.

That's why you are kidding yourself.

Action is the key, is the secret to all of this, and is the thing that

will get you past all of those fears and all of the stuff that comes up.

When your mind frick starts to take you out, you tell

yourself, I'm gonna, that's okay.

Oh, one thing

harv says, thank you for sharing.

I love that.

Tell your unsupportive mind when it is unsupportive, thank you for sharing.

You acknowledge it's there.

You're not trying to suppress it.

You acknowledge it's there and you accept that that is reality of a thought that's

come up in your head, but it is just that.

It's just a thought.

So thank your mind for sharing and then remind yourself.

You don't have to listen to that.

You've acknowledged it.

It's there, the thought's there, but yeah.

Okay.

Whatever.

Thanks for sharing.

I'm gonna take action anyway.

And that's the decision we have to make.

And that's how we start developing some mental resilience because

it's, uh, it's not just about us.

And when it becomes about something more than just about us and what we want for

ourselves or, about us looking good, or us looking cool, it's not about that.

It's about service.

It's about who you can help.

It's about the difference that you can make.

And if that's what you are about, you will weather whatever comes your way.

Because it's worth it for the people who you want to serve.

You will stand in the way of the slings and arrows that people may throw at

you, at least metaphorically, hopefully not physically, because it's worth it

to make that difference and to help the people who you want to help to share

the message that you want to share.

This is your purpose, and if you are not prepared to put yourself in some

discomfort, To feel those sometimes horrible feelings of not being very good

at something or having a presentation not go very well, or a podcast interview

that you sounded awful on or you said the wrong thing on, or that you feel like

you looked like a fool in a particular situation, or you wrote an article

with something that got misinterpreted.

All that stuff's gonna happen, but it's all part of the process.

And that's how you get to where you wanna get.

So if you can push through and keep taking action, then I would say

that you're not kidding yourself.

You will get there.

But accept that the road may be longer than you wish it was, but

it will all be worth it when you start seeing the results from it.

And that's it.

That's this episode of Podfluence.

Really just to share with you that you can do this.

But get out your head, get out of your mind frick.

Get out of whatever it is that is allowing you to think that you don't have to

take the action, or that you can just keep talking about taking action and

not actually doing it, because that is never going to create real world results.

And I want you to have real world results.

I want you to make a difference that this whole podcast is about

giving you some of the tools and resources to be able to do that.

And that's why I hope you'll first of all come back and listen to us

again, especially when I have my interview with Christine Ammerman,

who's the queen of podcast guesting.

I'm very much looking forward to bringing that interview for you.

She shared so much wonderful information and she's such a nice person as well.

Hope you'll come back and join me for that.

I hope this episode has been some value for you as well and I will appreciate

any feedback on what you think of this

somewhat more free form style of the show, right?

I knew what I wanted to talk about.

I knew I had something to share today and I just wanted to try this out.

Did it work?

Did it not?

I'd love to hear from you.

I'm ready for that feedback and I'm ready to take those chances

that what I put out in this episode may not be to the quality that you

expect from Podfluence or from me.

Or it might be, ah, we'd like a bit more of this.

We'd like to hear a bit more I wanna hear you talking directly to me.

You want to hear you.

want to have that, that conversation as if I was there to join in with

you, cuz I love this and, uh, I would love to do more of it.

So lemme know what you think.

Join us again next time for Podfluence and I will very much look forward

, to connecting with you there.

Wherever you're going, wherever you're doing, have an amazing rest of your day.