How to Overcome Imposter Syndrome and Lead with Confidence | Matt Mosich

If you’ve ever felt like you don’t belong in your leadership role — or that you’re just “faking it” — you’re not alone.
 This episode will show you how to stop letting imposter syndrome run the show and start leading with presence and authority.

Matt, an executive communication and storytelling coach, shares how he went from hiding behind self-doubt to helping CEOs and founders find their voice — and how you can do the same.

By the time you finish listening, you’ll discover:

• How to identify the stories holding you back and rewrite them
• What confidence actually is and how to access it before any meeting
• A simple storytelling framework to build trust fast with your team

Key Takeaways

• Confidence isn’t a feeling — it’s a choice you practice daily.
• Your story shapes how you lead. Rewrite it to reflect the leader you’re becoming.
• Storytelling builds trust faster than authority alone ever could.

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Transcript

Desiree (00:01.582)
All right, friends, welcome back to You're the Boss, Now What? And I have my friend Matt here. Now, Matt has helped me. If you attended the Intentional Leader Summit and heard my keynote, Matt was one of the people that so graciously helped me through some blocking points that I had, some of the internal work that I needed to do to get over some of my own blocks when it came to the stories that I needed to tell. So I have utilized his knowledge when it comes to stories, and now I'm excited to bring his knowledge to you as a new

an emerging leader as a manager for however long it is that you've been managing. So welcome, Adam. So excited to have you here.

Matt Mosich (00:36.252)
well that's so kind of you and I'm so excited to be here.

Desiree (00:38.806)
Awesome. So I read your bio in the intro. So I told you I laughed multiple times. The reason that I say that is because although it wasn't necessarily funny, right, you were shackled in your own identity, things like that. It's not funny, but it's it is. It's kind of like you have to chuckle because it's so relatable. It's honestly, especially for new leaders who are in a realm that they've never been in before and don't really know how to work their way out of.

Matt Mosich (00:52.146)
hilarious. I know, I know. Yeah.

Desiree (01:08.226)
the place of fear or into a place of confidence. So the way that you answered your questions, I'm really excited about. But one of the things that you said, you mentioned not even being able and confident enough to correct people on how to say your last name. I dive into that story a little bit more because again, so relatable.

Matt Mosich (01:25.65)
Gosh, I have so many memories of this and the one that comes most to mind is really young, but it stuck with me because it just made me think that like that's the level of confidence I had when I was in sixth grade. Yeah, we're going way back. I was in this music class. I didn't want to do choir so I decided to do saxophone and I found myself in this this music class beautiful

group of people, wonderful teacher, but the whole entire semester, she called me Mossage Mossage and I didn't say a thing about it. I was like whatever. It's okay. It's okay. The last day of class, the last day of class, someone else speaks up and goes actually it's most.

And I was just sitting back there and what made it so I don't even know if I would remember it if it weren't for the fact that it had to be someone else to speak up and to say it on my behalf. But I, you know, when I, when I sit back and I think about who I was then and who I am now, I, I just never wanted to inconvenience anybody. and I think what was really behind that was this, this desire to be liked. And I didn't want ever to upset anyone that

just stood in my way for quite some time and there was a massive moment where a huge identity shift happened. That was just one of them.

Desiree (02:57.248)
As someone with the last name, Petrick, that's spelled like Petrich, like I said, I can totally relate to what you're saying. But I think it goes even a little bit deeper into, especially around a conference room table, I see this all the time, people's wheels are turning, like what they're saying isn't right, what they're saying needs to be edified, and yet we don't have the confidence to speak up or we feel like, again, we're inconveniencing someone or we're gonna make someone feel bad or we're gonna make them.

Matt Mosich (02:59.462)
Yeah.

Matt Mosich (03:14.994)
Mm.

Matt Mosich (03:25.234)
Yeah.

Desiree (03:26.174)
look a certain way. And so it's almost like a fear of hurting anyone else just as much as it is a fear of overcoming our own limitations. So specifically, I would love to hear more about this concept around the stories that we tell ourselves. Because when I read your profile, right, you help executives and keynote speakers to tell better stories, to communicate better. But how specifically can that apply to a leadership role?

Matt Mosich (03:35.718)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Mosich (03:51.41)
Mm-hmm.

Desiree (03:54.708)
in the stories that we tell ourselves.

Matt Mosich (04:00.444)
There's a couple of, a couple of different angles. can take this, but I'm going to take it to the specific moment where, I just changed fundamentally as a human about three and a half years ago, I woke up on a Saturday morning. Early, early per usual sun's just beginning to crack out. And I look over my wife thinking that maybe we'll have a morning together and we can sip our coffee together.

per usual on Saturday before we had a kid, she looked at me and she's like, no chance. So I walk out into the room. make a coffee for myself and I sit down on the couch and I pick up a book that I had just ordered expecting it to be some light reading while I waited for her. And three hours later, I finished that book and I was, it was an odd moment where I knew I would never be the same. And that book was the four agreements.

And was while reading that book that I finally, was crazy how quickly the process happened. It asked me to.

to think about the agreements I had made with myself, those underlying pins, the stories I was telling myself about myself. And it was crazy how quick all three came up. There were more that came up after, but there three that came up that day. I could not sell. I was not a salesman. I was not a storyteller and I was not an entrepreneur. And now confronted with the fact that those stories had guided my decisions.

It was immediately apparent their impact on my life. So how does this impact a leader? Well, let's say you tell yourself you're not a leader. Then what does that mean? How are you going to show up in one of those meetings? You're probably not going to speak up. You're probably not going be confident in your voice. You're probably going to think, well, I'm going to leave that to them because they're the leader. It's a, it's a decision that we make about ourselves is who we tell ourselves that we are. And ultimately that decision impacts whether or not we speak up in conversations.

Matt Mosich (06:08.155)
whether or we have the trust in ourselves to dive into something unknown, there's a certain friction that it creates and where we go from there is largely dependent on it.

Desiree (06:20.046)
I will never stop being just mystified by the changes that books can have on us. But what I find really interesting, Matt, is that I have read the Four Agreements. I struggled to get through it. I did not get anything from that book. So it's so interesting to me. There's books that have changed my life and I could tell you the same. And if you've read it, it may or may not have affected you. But this is why I tell people it's so important to pick up the things and to be able to set down the things that

Matt Mosich (06:27.207)
Yeah.

Matt Mosich (06:33.198)
No way. Yeah. Yeah.

Desiree (06:49.43)
maybe aren't affecting you in the same way that you want them to and just to keep trying new things. But I love hearing that it had that impact on you, especially when it comes to the word confidence. I think that's one of the number one things that new leaders say to themselves is, I'm not confident enough to be in this position. I'm not experienced enough. I'm not fill in the blank. But you have said that storytelling, being able to tell your story, whether with confidence or not, is a way to reclaim your identity.

Matt Mosich (06:52.646)
Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Mosich (07:09.062)
Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Mosich (07:17.788)
Yeah. Yeah.

Desiree (07:19.776)
What does that mean? If I'm lacking confidence, if I'm lacking that experience, does that mean that I'm not claiming my identity? Break that down a little bit for me.

Matt Mosich (07:34.556)
you say one more time for me real quick. I'm just trying to think of where to take this.

Desiree (07:37.614)
Yeah. So I need to know this reclaiming your identity. What does that mean? If I currently feel like I'm not claiming my identity, what might that feel like? How can I come out of that? How does storytelling help?

Matt Mosich (07:45.81)
Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Okay. Beautiful. So a on the four agreements, it's super funny because I just think it was right place, right time for me. I've actually looked for the passage that I so vividly remember reading that told me to write down the agreements I'd made to myself. Can't find it. So I don't know. It's, hard to say, but that was the action that I took, but what happened that day? What happened that day? That was really powerful.

Desiree (08:10.158)
You made it up. That's all it is.

Matt Mosich (08:20.698)
There's this metaphor, this idea that a goldfish can only grow to as big as as, as where it swims. If you place a goldfish in a bowl, it'll be a small little goldfish that you see at the fair. If you place it in a pond, it can grow double its size. Lake three times, four times. can keep growing based on the confines of where it is. And on that day, what happened was my life wasn't

It was changed by that moment, but it was what happened after that that ultimately changed it. But what that moment allowed me to do was to see the glass. It was to see that I was swimming within this bowl. It was to see that the identities that I had assigned to myself, the stories that I was telling myself about myself were not stories that were allowing me to grow. So when you reclaim your identity, ultimately, we're all going to have identities. I see myself now as a storyteller.

someone that can sell, someone that is an entrepreneur. But I chose those identities. I chose those stories. So reclaiming isn't saying that I am stripped from identity. I don't have stories I tell myself about myself. It is being intentional about what those stories are and then taking action based off of those to reinforce them.

Desiree (09:44.472)
So claiming an identity is a choice, is what I just heard you say. So how I am a new leader, I'm feeling a lack of confidence, I need to walk into my workplace every day knowing that if nothing else I get to choose how I show up. What does that process look like? What is that internal battle that someone is likely fighting? How can you kind of overcome that through the stories I'm telling myself?

Matt Mosich (10:10.78)
So one of those identities that I was telling myself, the one that was like most embedded, I guess they all were pretty well, but the one that I had the most vivid memory of was that I wasn't a storyteller. And I have this vivid memory of being in high school at a pool party surrounded by all the kids that I wanted to be friends with thinking that at this, this bonfire that eventually grew while people were sharing stories, maybe I could share a story that might have an impact on people.

When I began sharing that story, everyone lost attention. I cut out mid-sentence, then followed up by someone sharing a fantastic story that trumped mine and made me just believe, yeah, this isn't my thing. The crazy part about that though, is it took 11 years to think about that. And I had so much contrary evidence that I actually was a good storyteller, but I didn't believe it because of that.

So let's say that you are, you're, finding yourself trying to make the choice to be confident when you show up at work, but you might have a story that you're telling yourself about a moment like that. A moment where you try to speak up in a meeting where you try to own yourself, where you try to ask for a raise, whatever it may, where you try to go out and start something new for yourself and it just didn't go to plan. So you're, you might have that vivid memory of you not being confident, but there might be plenty of other evidence that you're discounting.

that's just as loud or just not giving it the priority. So if you are making that choice, but you're overwhelmed by this moment or these moments that speak to the contrary, look for the other ones. Look for the moments where you were confident, you did, where something actually did go right. Start to building the library that will fuel you or at least allow you to give it one more chance and start to build upon that.

Desiree (12:09.792)
Mm-hmm. One thing, and this is one of the biggest things that I talk about, especially when I'm working with teams, is stories are the best way to connect with others. Like actual literal storytelling, the vulnerability that comes with saying, this is the story I was telling myself, and here's why feel this way. Here's the new story that I'm telling myself. It helps people to connect with you. Like showing up and being at a 10 out of 10 confidence level, that can backfire really quick. People cannot relate to that.

Matt Mosich (12:20.518)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Desiree (12:39.478)
in the same way as showing up and saying, I now have this level of confidence, but here's all that it took to get here. You can get here too. And especially as a leader, I think that's such an important quality to be able to say that in the way of a story where you are going to hold someone's attention. And it doesn't look the same for everyone.

Matt Mosich (12:46.118)
Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Mosich (12:57.51)
Yeah, by all means. One of my first clients was a good friend of mine. And I never expected to work with him because I saw him as this immovable force. The guy is confident and he has a lot of backing to say why. It's not fake, it's not false.

So he was, he came to me and he was speaking at this conference and he wanted help and ultimately just becoming more engaging, kind of getting to that like top tier level speaker. So I sat back, I accepted it with a whole lot of self doubt thinking, I don't know how I'm to be able to help this guy. I, after two hours of reviewing him on podcasts and presentations that he had, I just couldn't figure it out. The presence was unbelievable. The confidence was there, but in the midst of this one podcast that he was on,

He was telling the story about how he went from all in on division one soccer thinking he was going to go pro to overnight realizing it just wasn't going to happen. And he went all in on business and the host helped me out. The host was like, huh, doesn't seem like it was that hard for you. And he's like, yeah, it was. And then just proceeded to roll on his way. And it's exactly what you're speaking to right there. And I went, I talked to him. I was like, was it really not that hard for you? He's like, no, it was a really hard process.

really deal with. mean, that was my identity. That was who I saw myself as, but I just had to make that decision that it wasn't going to be the case. And in that moment, I realized that had been always, that had always been my perception of him, that nothing was hard for him. He just bulldozed through things. And that was exactly what we worked on is showing the human within it. I, this is going to be a trigger for me to remember this quote, but I'm reading this fantasy series right now. And there's so much that I can take away from it, but I remember

one of the leaders in it saying that when he was a kid, he always had this vision that the leaders always knew what they wanted. And now that he was the leader, he realized just how he was a kid in an adult body. And, uh, I think the more that we. Excel in this world and find our own success and, keep on moving on. realized that we are still full of doubt and uncertainty no matter where we get. And it's humanizing and humbling.

Matt Mosich (15:22.214)
when someone who you look up to shares that.

Desiree (15:26.158)
It's really interesting to me that you are bringing this in from a fantasy series. was watching, so I was sick over the weekend. I sat down, watched a movie, which I very rarely do and actually like watch the movie and listen. And this movie had one of the dumbest plots I've ever seen. And it was like a train wreck. I couldn't walk away. The actors were terrible. My husband sat down. He's like, who casted this? But there was a quote from the movie that I have been thinking about nonstop. And it was, when you sit,

Matt Mosich (15:41.477)
Hey

Yeah.

Desiree (15:55.862)
In the question, the answer will find you. And I think this kind of speaks to what we're talking about too. It's like if we spend too much time trying to force an outcome, if we spend too much time trying to force our way through the actual hard piece of something or the learning process in something, it's like we might get to a conclusion, but it might not be the right one. We might have to start all over again because we forced it. And so I keep thinking to myself, how can I sit in the question of the things that are hard? How can I sit and

Matt Mosich (16:13.349)
Yeah.

Desiree (16:25.912)
whether it's literally sit with the question and journal on it or talk to someone about it so that I'm not forcing it. And that's kind of what I'm hearing you say too is if we jump right to the conclusion in our story without the human piece of the trials that we went through and the hard thoughts that we went through and all the different pieces, that isn't the story that people need to hear. That's the one that's going to make us an untouchable leader that people can't relate to.

Matt Mosich (16:25.916)
Yeah.

Matt Mosich (16:30.354)
Yeah.

Desiree (16:52.546)
If we can sit in the question, if we can share that with people, that's what's gonna make us a relatable leader who people can actually look up to.

Matt Mosich (17:00.818)
100%. I

All of the most challenging moments of my life are now the most formative. The year and a half, two year about with crippling anxiety where I would wake up and think that this is what it means to be worried sick is one of the experiences I have the most gratitude for. But in the moment, I just couldn't imagine living like this. The moments that I stumble in my business,

the uncertainty around even starting this thing and all of the anguish that I had to go through to ultimately sit here today and have a lot of perspective. I have a lot of gratitude for it. And I never thought about that too, because there is this balance of me here now where I have been through these things and I'm still going through challenge every single day. But I have this perspective of those toughest moments.

being the most formative and it kind of levels out the emotion of it. And maybe there's a little bit of it where you're sitting back and saying, no, just embrace it, feel it, don't just move through it because you can learn from it, but like, it doesn't have to just be this meticulous process too. You can just allow yourself to experience through it as well.

Desiree (18:31.342)
Yeah, that's going to be the piece that, again, you can then teach, which is what leadership is. It's leading by example. And allowing, it also creates a lot of empathy, right? Because if we have allowed ourselves to go through the hard times, we can have a lot more empathy for those that we're leading who are also experiencing those things. Not only do we have insight on how to help, but we also have that maybe a little bit more patience than if we're constantly pushing ourselves through it.

Matt Mosich (18:49.958)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Mosich (18:56.006)
Yeah. Yep. A hundred percent when, before I started this business, I worked in wealth management and my track was the slow track. didn't like a lot of people who come out of college just go straight into being an advisor. And as much as I was gung ho and wanted to begin making as much money as humanly possible, I remember someone saying something interesting.

Well, A, I saw that a lot of people failed if they did that. B, I remember someone saying that the advisors who actually rose through the ranks rather than the ones that just went straight into it were so much better leaders because they understood what it was like to be at every single level. They knew the pain, the process, and the challenge that came with it and can empathize at such a deeper level about it. And I could just see within those teams.

the teams like that were so much more bonded because of that experience. I hadn't thought about it through the lens though of that.

Desiree (20:01.836)
Yeah, it's like when they say, you know, it's like the CEO relating to the brand new employees, like sometimes they're so far removed, they can't remember what it was like. But the more that you're willing to sit in those stories that you tell yourself, even if you've overcome them, the more you're willing to actually remember them and put your place yourself in that place again, the more you're going to be able to relate to those that are currently going through it. So I love that. I have two more questions for you that I can't leave this conversation without asking you.

Matt Mosich (20:12.561)
Yeah.

Matt Mosich (20:27.206)
Beautiful.

Matt Mosich (20:30.77)
Next.

Desiree (20:31.174)
One of them is the ultimate question. What is the one thing about confidence or storytelling that you want a new leader to understand? If you had no other message to give than this one right here, what would it be?

Matt Mosich (20:50.172)
Four or five, I would say five years ago, I had this inkling that I needed to make a change, but I had no idea what I wanted to do. So I looked for people that had kind of figured it out. Started talking to them, building friendships with them. And there was this one guy who let me in, who provided some mentorship and some guidance, but eventually just kind of let me go. And

I have a lot of thanks to give for that guy. It hurt a lot in the moment. It kind of just fell apart and I was, I was sad about it, but I realized what he was trying to teach me in that process. And basically what he kept trying to tell me was just do just start. He would give me recommended, like we'd be talking. He's like, okay, go do that. Okay, go do that. Okay. Good. And I just wouldn't do anything about it. And I think he grew tired. He grew tired of my inaction, my uncertainty, my

My trying to have it perfect. And the reality is it's not going to be perfect. I came across this acronym that I think speaks to this beautifully. Action builds competent confidence. A B C. Ultimately, you, if you're trying to make a change, if you're trying to become a more confident leader, you don't know where to start. Choose, choose something. It might not be right. When I decided to ultimately end up starting this business, I was on an entirely different path.

And then one day someone just said something to me that totally changed the entire trajectory of where I was going, but it only happened because I was already in motion. So start action builds confidence. You might not be right, but that's okay.

Desiree (22:37.464)
I love it. And it actually kind of bled right into the second question that I wanted to ask you. So I might just wrap it up there. But I will ask the second question just because there are a lot of managers that are doubting themselves right now. A lot of the questions that I get from new managers are in regards to how do I handle this negative Nellie on my team? How do I have better one-on-ones? They're very tactical in nature, very relationship-based. I think

Matt Mosich (22:41.404)
Thank

Matt Mosich (22:51.868)
Yeah.

Desiree (23:03.808)
A lot of the questions that managers don't ask, the ones they don't say out loud are the internal battles that they're having. And there are a lot of managers that are doubting themselves. been in this place. I'm still in this place. So what is your message to those that are doubting themselves specifically when it's they're about to walk into a hard situation? What is the story that they can start to tell themselves?

Matt Mosich (23:10.364)
Yeah.

Matt Mosich (23:27.826)
Yeah. So my favorite definition of confidence was by Mark Manson. Do you know I'm talking about the author? I don't know if I'm allowed to cuss on, on, on this podcast, but he wrote the book, the subtle art of not giving a fuck. That's his claim to fame, but he has this quote and he said that confidence is not a belief in success. It's a comfort with failure. If you're doubting yourself.

Desiree (23:36.504)
I don't know who that is, Roll for it.

yes.

Matt Mosich (23:55.728)
going into these moments, if you're not sure if it's gonna go right, it might not. The ultimate something, the ultimate turning point for me in feeling confident was when I began to trust myself. Not trust that I would get it right, but that I would learn if I got it wrong. So you're going to doubt yourself. Confidence isn't stoicism, it's not this removal of emotion.

Realizing that you're going to trusting that you'll be able to get back up if you do and trusting that you're going to learn if that's the case.

Desiree (24:34.732)
Amazing. Thank you so much for putting a bow on that conversation, Matt. I appreciate your vulnerability in it and your storytelling. You can tell just by the calm, cool approach that you have to storytelling that it is something that you're very passionate about. So thank you for that. Thank you for the help you've given me. Thank you for your wisdom for our listeners. And for those of you listening, just remember that leadership is a privilege and it is also a really big responsibility. But you're the boss now. So what are you going to do with it?