Imposter Syndrome and the Small Business Owner
You’ve built something from nothing. Clients trust you, the work is coming in and by every measure you’re doing well. So why does it still feel like someone is about to tap you on the shoulder and say “we’ve figured you out”? Jane Hodgson, experienced trainer and recent NCF guest speaker, asked us just that question. Luckily, she also had some answers!
As small business owners, we all agreed that feeling can be familiar, but we were clearly in very good company. Imposter syndrome – broadly defined as a persistent inability to believe you are where you are on your own merit – is fair more common than most people think, from small business owners and entrepreneurs to high-flying execs. And the more responsibility you carry, the worse it can get.
What Does It Actually Feel Like?
Imposter syndrome can show up in ways you might not immediately recognise. It might look like over-preparing for a client meeting, dismissing your own successes as “just luck” or feeling quietly uncomfortable every time someone pays you a compliment. We rarely stop to reflect on what we’ve done well – because as human beings, we’re wired with a natural bias towards the negative. The wins slip by; the stumbles stick around.
Where Does It Come From?
There’s no single cause. For some small business owners, it traces back to upbringing – perhaps parents who weren’t encouraging or constantly being compared to others. For others, it comes simply from feeling different, from stepping into a room where you don’t see many people who look or sound like you. General anxiety plays a role too. Interestingly, imposter syndrome tends to increase at higher levels of success, not decrease, so if it’s getting louder as your business grows, that’s not a sign something is wrong with you.
Four Things That Actually Help
- Talk about it. You don’t necessarily need a specialist (though that can help). Simply connecting with other small business owners – people who understand the particular pressures of running your own show – can be enormously reassuring. Knowing that what you’re feeling isn’t unusual is often the first step to quietening it.
- Separate fact from feeling. When something goes wrong, we instinctively fill the gaps in our knowledge with a story and because of our negative bias, it’s usually not a kind one. Try asking yourself: what’s the best that could happen here? Challenging the narrative you’ve created, rather than accepting it, is a powerful habit to build.
- Learn to accept a compliment. There’s a very British tendency to brush praise off as modesty. But when someone takes the time to tell you that you’ve done a great job, dismissing it is actually dismissing their judgement. Research suggests it takes somewhere between three and six positive comments to outweigh a single negative one, so we need to let the good ones really register.
- Log your wins. As a small business owner, nobody schedules your annual appraisal. So do it yourself. Keep a record of your successes – a notebook, a folder of kind emails, even a physical “happy jar” of compliments and proud moments. There’s a genuine dopamine release in capturing a win and another one every time you revisit it. The more you train your focus towards what’s going well, the more naturally it becomes your default – sometimes called the Tetris Effect.
Imposter syndrome thrives in silence and isolation. The antidote is connection, self-compassion and the conscious decision to be as fair to yourself as you would be to a valued client. As Jane says, “There is only one of you — and you are more capable than you think.”