2 ways to use Past Experience to challenge Imposter Syndrome and win in business
Being a Freelancer or Small Business owner can be a scary road to walk at times. Often there are potholes of doubt and detours to self-sabotage and sidewalks painted with imposter syndrome. Your Past Experience can be a powerful tool to use to challenge these doubts and fill up those potholes
I’m going to break down how you can use your past experience to break the self-sabotage chains and grow your revenue.
Before we get into how you can use your past experience to turn down the negativity of imposter syndrome if you haven’t already read my previous post about the 4 ways you can grow your network as a way to also fight Imposter Syndrome then check that out after this post. The summary of those methods are:
- Connect with Varsity Friends (or ex-colleagues)
- Social Media Networks (like LinkedIn)
- Podcasts and YouTube (and digging into the comments)
- Should you join a Paid Network?
Building a Network is a great way to get feedback from other professionals that you respect to guide you and challenge your ideas.
Okay, let’s get into why your past experiences will help you win against Imposter Syndrome
Make a list of your past achievements
This list will be something like,
- Started with nothing 3 years ago → now make R100k a year now.
- Did not know how to do this thing → Have written/built 10 products using this skill.
- Had Zero clients → Now I have 15 active clients throughout the year
For each point that you right down in this list, try and go back to it and see if there were many growth points. For example, if you are making R100k a year, try and remember what the first year was, was it only R20k and then how did it grow over time? This double-reflection will start to peel away the layers and help you see even deeper into the progress that you’ve made.
This list will remind you that you have made progress and that at the beginning you probably had doubts as well, but with enough time, you’ve made great progress
That last point takes us to how we can turn those experiences into Revenue.
Make another list of past clients
Making a list of your clients is such a useful exercise. For a long time, I never did this and I’d kinda have these names in my head, but once I started listing my clients, a shortlist in the first few years, it gave me new confidence. Just reviewing the existing clients that you have worked with can open up your mind as to the amount of effort it took to get those clients.
For me, I’ve had the privilege of serving clients like Woolworths, Clicks, Vodacom, and Sun International. Now for a small business that’s a pretty impressive list of clients. None of them were easy to win and none of them easy to maintain, but I did it and it’s a great feeling to reflect back on that.
The list of clients can also help you when you are marketing your small business or freelance services to new customers so they can get a sense of who you’ve worked within the past, and if you can help those customers, then it is possible that you can help this customer.
Possible Revenue
Now a secret that you may not know. It’s easier to sell to someone that’s already bought from you than it is to sell to someone new. I’ve used this list to do follow up calls to existing clients and just check in on how things are and if they are still happy. 50% of the time they’d respond with “I’ve been meaning to call you”. There’s magic in reaching out.
Just by making this list can remind you of the clients that you’ve worked with and reaching out to them can create new opportunities to do business.
Conclusion
Using these lists will continue to reignite the passion and fire that you have for your business or freelance gig.
Reflect on just how much you have already achieved and that you are not where you were just a few months before. With more time comes more progress – keep going
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