Banishing Imposter Syndrome

Ever secretly worry you're a total fraud? Like you're not really qualified to charge for what you do, or that everyone else in your industry is somehow lightyears ahead of you? That’s imposter syndrome, my friend. And here’s the wildest part: you probably think career milestones will cure it-- they won't.

In this episode, I’m walking you through:

✔️ A behind-the-scenes story from my time at Sundance Film Festival—how a VIP guest ended up in the same cold, wet shoes situation as me (literally) aka: an unexpected moment that made me realize we’re all on the same playing field

 ✔️ How imposter syndrome actually shows up (before you even realize that’s what it is)

✔️ The truth about how the experts, business owners, and creators you admire also doubt themselves—and why that should be the proof you need to just keep going

🎧 Listen in to learn how to move through imposter syndrome 

💡 Want help getting your business seen on social media? Check out Magic Marketing Machine! Click here to learn more: www.magicmarketingmachine.com

✨ Join me on Instagram (@jennaspaige) and let me know if this episode hit home for you! DMs are open.

🎙 Love this podcast? If this resonated, drop a review or share it with a friend who needs the reminder that they can do this.

✨Tap here to watch a FREE masterclass on “How To Get Clients From Instagram (without wasting hours glued to your phone)"

https://parkdale-republic.lpages.co/evergreen-webinar-registration/

Tap here to get your free Posts That Sell Template (This caption got us 10 sales calls in 3 hours)

https://parkdale-republic.lpages.co/10-sales-calls-new

🎉 Tap here to work with Jenna inside Magic Marketing Machine (or MMM+)!

https://www.magicmarketingmachine.com

Music by Jordan Wood

Hosted by Jenna Harding (Warriner), Creator of Magic Marketing Machine

Transcript

The funny thing about imposter syndrome is nobody calls it that when they first have it, right? When you first have it, what imposter syndrome looks like is, Oh my goodness, I suck. I'm never going to make this business thing work..

Who am I to charge hundreds of dollars for somebody to work with me? Can I really even get these people results? Other people know so much more about this than I do. Everything in my expertise has already been said by other people in my field. That's what it feels like.

And it's the people around you, outside of you that can easily name it and go. You must have imposter syndrome because I am looking at you and I see someone who knows what they're doing. I see someone who is highly capable. , I have full faith in the person before me

and I know that they're going to rock this thing. So this must be what they call imposter syndrome because you feel like you're an imposter and I see.

A freaking legend.

But I get it, man. And when we're feeling down on ourselves, and we're feeling like we can't grow this business,

we're feeling like, , just straight up that we aren't good enough, that's imposter syndrome. 



And when you feel this way, there's no outside metric that can fix it, okay? If you're like, well, if I have 100, 000 followers, then I'll feel different. Or if I have 100, 000 in the bank, then I'll feel different.  You know, you probably won't, because this is an inside job.  We've got to fix this from the inside out.

Because if you have this feeling with like 10 followers, you're going to have it when you have 100, 000 followers. Believe me. So,

 A lot of people  have said some very wise things about how to move through it. I'm not even going to say get over it. I'm going to say how to move through it. And one thing that I think might help is realizing that you are already the people that you admire.

All right, you're the same as them. You're already it.

an example of a time when I very much realized we were all on the same playing field.

Years ago, I worked as a publicist,  and I worked under this, like, amazing publicist out of L. A., and her main thing is helping new and emerging.  international filmmakers. So all of the PR we did was for like films and series going to festivals and all of the films, it's like not, it's not A list or films like you might be imagining.

It's new and emerging directors, so like people, it's their first or second feature, and it was always international. I'm Canadian and she's American, so sometimes our international, I'm doing air quotes right now, international films were Canadian, which was really cool for me when they were like other Canadians we were representing, but usually they were from all over the globe.

And I was with her at Sundance Film Festival, and Actually, you know, the thing about big festivals like that is small towns like Park City, Utah, where Sundance takes place, does not have enough rooms, does not have enough beds and rooms and lodging for the amount of people that come into the city  for the festival. For reference, Park City has just over 8, 000 residents. Just over 8, 000 people live there. And during the two weeks of Sundance Film Festival, 100, 000 people go to Park City. 100, 000. Like, are you seeing this? The streets are packed.

You cannot get an Uber. You've got to take shuttles. You go to a coffee shop and people are sitting on the arms of chairs and steps and leaning against walls. Like, every restaurant is packed. Every coffee shop is packed. The entire city is just absolutely rammed with filmmakers. It's wild.

So you might be thinking, oh wow, these like fancy filmmakers finally making it and going to Sundance. Dude, they're sleeping on peop in people's pantries. Like one time when I went to Sundance, my bed was a couch in a common area and people would come and take meetings beside me while I slept on my couch.

Not everything is as glamorous as it seems. Although that was very fun. So, I'm at Sundance, and this must have been my first year there, because I had no idea what the weather was like in the mountains. And Kathleen had told me that people don't dress up super fancy at this festival like they might at, like, other festivals in the world, like Toronto International Film Festival, and people get super dolled up.

She said it's not like that, it's very casual, you see a lot of people in, like, jeans, a sweater, and nice winter boots because of all the snow. But of course, I wanted to look cute. And I packed cute clothes and I packed cute shoes. And within a couple of days of being there, there was a huge snowstorm 

and I got out of the house at like, 7. 30, 8 to catch the shuttle. And I was up to my knee in snow. And I was in cute shoes. So, this was not going to do. My feet were drenched. I was freezing. We work hard at these festivals. You're doing like, you know, 12, 14 hour days. Taking our clients to screenings and Q& As and, photo shoots and all of this.



 I head downtown and I had a colleague with me and I'm like, I need shoes. I cannot wear these shoes. I can't have wet feet all day. I'm literally going to die.

 She covered for me and I went and found the one outdoors store that was open and I remember because the city is so packed, there was a lineup for a film that went all the way across the store and I had to like break through the line to get into this store and I was like, boots, and they're like at the back and I go to the back.

And I'm looking for boots and oh my gosh, they were all so expensive. And I was like, I am about to eat it on these winter boots, but I need them. And there were a couple other people. There wasn't very many people in the store, but there were a couple other people at the back with me also frantically looking for boots.

And I look over at this woman and she pulls her feet out of her cute shoes. And she literally has. sandwich bags on her feet inside her shoes because she also did not pack accordingly. And as I'm looking at her and I don't know, we probably shared a few words of oops, you know,  I realized that her badge hanging around her neck because everyone at Sundance has to have a badge.

Like I had one that said my name and publicist on it. You have to have a title and it gets you into everywhere you're going. This woman's literally wearing a VIP  badge. Like she's a VIP  as far as the festival goes, whoever this woman is, she mattered quite a lot.  There's a lot of important people at these things.

And yet  here we are unified in the wrong shoe club, both with wet, cold feet,

both about to spend way more money than we wish to on winter boots. 

 Not only that, but the next thing I needed to go to was a photo shoot for our clients. And, uh, what we call, we call this a step and repeat. You know, when you see those big backdrops and they've got  branding all over them and then celebrities stand in front of them on a carpet and get their photos taken.

That's called a step and repeat. So there's like this big branded backdrop and I'm hiding behind it, hiding from our clients. Taking my cute shoes off and switching into socks and boots. I needed to buy socks too, and they were 50. The only socks they had at this place were these 50 wool socks, 50 USD.

That was so much money for me at the time. You know what? No. All the time. That's too much money for socks, but they were the best socks I've ever owned and I still have them. So there's that. 

We're all the same man, everybody poops, everybody packs the wrong shoes, Everybody doubts themselves.

Everybody has a client where they go, man, I could have done better. Or, man, I wish that person would have hired me because I know I could have changed their life. And then also, simultaneously, a thought in your head going, would I have changed their life? Wait, can I do this? Yes, you can. You can. 

Keep moving forward, one step in front of the other.

Imposter syndrome, be damned.

Believe in yourself because nobody's going to do it for you. All right. I hope this helps. If it doesn't, I hope I made you laugh. I'll see you in the next one.