Share your experiences about being afraid or a fraud in the comments below.
Your heart is racing, your mouth gets dry, your hands shake uncontrollably, and all you want to do is flee the scene – This my friends is fear – it’s your fight or flight mechanism at work. It’s meant to keep you safe and out of harm’s way yet sometimes fear stops us or rather we LET fear stop us from moving forward in our businesses.
Welcome to episode #236 of the In a Weekend Podcast. I’m your host, Yong Pratt, and this podcast is for you – my fellow dreamers, my fellow podcasters, to make your podcasting journey easier and faster than you thought possible.
Before we dive in, I want to give a great big shoutout to my accountability partner and biz besties, Nicole Thompson.
Nicole is the host of the Build Your Wealth Podcast and an expert at Print on Demand and teaching others how to start their own Print on Demand businesses. In one of our weekly accountability sessions, she shared an idea for an episode called are you afraid or are you a fraud.
As soon as she said it, I immediately thought YES! This is a topic I need to record as well because it’s just sooo good. So with Nicole’s blessing, here we are.
Tune into previous episodes featuring Nicole:
How to become a designer in a day
Episode # 217: A podcasting success story
Fear.
It’s a 4 letter word that stops so many of us in our tracks. It consumes us. It taunts us. It often defeats us squashing our big hopes and dreams. But it doesn’t have to…
Have you ever stopped to think about the reasons you may experience fear?
I’m going to use myself as an example to illustrate a point.
Last fall, I was challenged by Kim White, another biz bestie, to create some sort of podcasting class that took newbies from 0 to podcast FAST. She wanted a podcast like NOW. She bluntly said she didn’t have time and wasn’t interested in the 8-week class I already had. She wanted something faster…
Couple this with another conversation I had with Ann Colin, a fellow performing arts studio owner, that made a comment that it would be cool to give families, my target audience at the time, the opportunity to experience the world of podcasting over a couple of days – like a weekend.
Voila – a couple of conversations with friends that saw my gifts and talents, knew my desires and passions, and my Podcast is a Weekend was born…
Fast forward a year and we now helped dozens of graduates create and launch their own Podcasts in just a Weekend. Looking back, it seems silly to think that I had a ton of fear when launching the class.
Why? Because it turns out my fear was based on the fact that I felt like a total fraud.
Even though I had been podcasting since 2013, had been teaching for over 2 decades, and had systems and processes to simplify and automate my own podcast, I felt unworthy.
I let myself go to Comparison Island.
If this is the first time you’re hearing me talk about Comparison Island, you can listen here.
Basically I was comparing myself to the biggest names and teachers in podcasting – names you’ve likely seen in your feed or when you’ve followed links on Google.
- I didn’t have millions of downloads on my podcast.
- I didn’t have millions of followers across social media.
- I didn’t have thousands of people on my email list.
I totally felt like a fraud compared to these “gurus.”
The little voice in my head kept me in fear mode:
- Who am I to teach podcasting?
- How could I possibly charge people to learn to podcast?
- Who would want to learn from me?
When I say these things out loud now, I can hear how ridiculous it all sounds.
The self-deprecating tone, the fear, the feeling like a fraud…
And it turns out, it WAS all in my head.
During the first round of Podcast in a Weekend, we graduated 8 new podcasters with a 100% success rate!!! By the end of the weekend, all 8 had live podcasts.
These 8 women changed my life in ways I can barely put into words. They helped me to own my abilities. They helped me validate my class. They led me to believe in myself so I no longer felt like the fraud I *thought* I was.
I learned it was possible to go from idea to launch in mere weeks.
It didn’t need to take months or years and I certainly didn’t need to earn another degree to feel worthy of launching and teaching a class.
What about you?
Can you relate to my story? I know so many women who stop themselves from doing big things because it turns out their fear of doing that thing is based in feeling like a fraud and I don’ t want that to happen to you. Or if it has happened to you, I wanna help.
Today’s Action Steps
I have 3 action steps for you today to dive into whether your fears are based on feeling like a fraud. I really want you to take action on these steps today or at least in the next 7. Deal?
- Write down something that’s happening in your biz right now that has you feeling afraid or maybe like a fraud
- Reach out to 3 friends or clients. hop on the phone or meet face to face, in person or with the help of some technology like facetime or messenger. Start by asking them what they see are your special gifts and talents. Then share with them your feelings of being afraid or feeling like a fraud. Let them lift you up and demonstrate that who you are and what you know has immense value to them and to the world.
- Comment below and share what you discover from these conversations.
Let’s have compassion for one another, my friends. let’s support one another. and let’s help one another reach those big goals and dreams, together! I cannot wait to hear from you!
And that’s a wrap for this episode.
Next week, we’re diving into the question: Are you pod-crastinating?
Until then my friends, lean into the fear and don’t let feelings of fraud get in the way of you accomplishing those big dreams!
