3 areas of self-doubt I had to push through to build my business and personal brand

Today, we're talking about self-doubt. It is so easy to look at the big brands, the thought leaders, the personal brands, the influencers in the online world; and think that it must be easy for them, they don't deal with self-doubt. And that's something that as my brand and my online presence grows, I want others to realize that I too have battled with self-doubt along the way.

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I personally can't speak for the Marie Forleos and the Tony Robbinses of the world, but I suspect that many of the big names that we know of in the business space have struggled with it too. And even the people outside of the business space, the bigger brands out there that we see on social media and on the internet, I suspect that a lot of them have dealt with self-doubt too, even if they aren't openly and outwardly talking about it.

 

How I push through insecurity when building a personal brand

I'm going to share three areas of self-doubt and insecurity that I've had to push through while building my business and personal brand.

 

1. Self doubt around whether I knew enough to be teaching others

The first one which is super common with my students and those of you in my audience, I noticed this question or worry comes up a lot. And that one is self-doubt around whether I know enough to be teaching others. So, am I enough of an expert?

And I guess the biggest realization for me was that it's not so much about being the expert as it is about being able to help people, because I've been in their shoes. And because I'm genuinely passionate about learning and being able to share the things that I've learned, so that other people don't make the same mistakes, so that other people can get faster results. So, it's not so much about being the expert as it is about helping.

The other thing that I was worried about is, am I teaching people the right thing? There's a lot of pressure to make sure that I'm teaching good stuff, not just rubbish. There are a lot of people teaching rubbish out there on the internet. It's really sad, but typically the people who are questioning whether they know enough, are the ones who are teaching rubbish. So, that's an interesting one.

And obviously, the other bit of self doubt around whether I knew enough was, I've only been in the marketing space for maybe five years. So, plus a few years of blogging and that kind of thing beforehand, but who was I to be doing this? That was a big insecurity that came up. And actually, that's what drove me ultimately to go and do my masters in advertising, was not because I really wanted to do a masters in advertising. It was the insecurity of, I felt like I knew so much less than everyone else.

So, I needed a piece of paper so that I felt worthy of the work that I was doing.

 

2. Insecurity about my age

The other area of self-doubt in my business is insecurity about my age. So, I'm at 28 now, but when I first started out in business, I was 23. And I felt so insecure about how young I was, and I thought that people wouldn't take me seriously, that people would be like, “How could you know anything? How could the advice that you're giving be worthwhile?

So, for a while there, I was very… I didn't lie about my age, but I definitely pretended to be a little bit older than I was. But I didn't straight up tell anyone that I was older than I was. I just didn't tell anyone how old I was.

 

3. Self-doubt when it came to being a leader

The third area of self-doubt in my business was self-doubt when it came to being a leader. And this is something that I'm still working on, especially since in the last year, my business has grown so much.

And my personal brand has obviously, as a result, grown so much. I still doubt my leadership skills. And, yes, I know I have a lot of work to do here. There've been a lot of moments where I've just wanted to hide away from people and do my own thing; not lead a team, not lead my students, not show up for my audience because if I'm not in the right head space, I don't know what to say. And then I get very in my head about it, and I just want to hide in my introvert cave and do my own thing.

So, there's obviously a lot of self-doubt around that as well. And that was something that really only started surfacing this year in my business, but it's a big enough area of self-doubt that it's like, “Okay, this is something I need to be working on now to keep moving forward.”

If nothing else, I hope it's helped you feel less alone in your self-doubt, in knowing that we all deal with it.

I don't know anyone in my personal business network that hasn't and doesn't deal with some form of self-doubt. So, if you're dealing with it, there's nothing wrong with you.

 

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