Entrepreneur Magazine’s editor-in-chief, Jason Feifer, joins Jillian to give practical advice on how the greatest entrepreneurs deal with imposter syndrome.

When your audience grows, so will your critics. Tori Dunlap shares how she stays bold and vulnerable for her community, even when the haters come with the territory.

Concluding their series on Jillian’s book, Fire the Haters, August and Jillian talk about overcoming struggles, trusting the process, and finding your identity in actions rather than outcomes.

With her book out in the world, Jillian moved from creating to managing her expectations for how it is received. We can’t control the outcomes of our work, but we can optimize for not being discouraged.

Trust the Process

Rather than being pulled into the hurricane of how people feel about your work, learn to pause and take a breath, regain your composure, and move forward. Trust in the process.

If your identity is attached to outcomes, it can be devastating when things don’t go as planned. However, when you have a broad definition of success rooted in the process, you find yourself winning more often without tanking your self-confidence.

Test and Scale

“Maybe you want those audacious goals – break that down into, “What is the process I need to get there?” …That allows us to detach from the outcomes.”

You don’t have to go big or go home. You can test and scale in a way that makes your work sustainable for the long run. There will never be enough time to create the perfect plan and have every detail is in place before starting something.

“You can’t know everything you need to know before you start.”

Don’t get stuck at the starting line. Instead, consider what you can do in 1-4 hours to move your project forward without sacrificing yourself. Rather than striving for perfection, take action towards progress.

Allow Yourself to be Fully Human

“I could funnel my energy into perfectionism, or I could funnel my energy into progress. But those two things could not happen simultaneously”.

Outcomes aren’t guaranteed, making them a dangerous place to anchor your identity. However, actions in the process can be helpful in reminding yourself who you are. If you are writing, you are a writer. If you are making art, you are an artist. Permit yourself to elevate progress over perfection on your journey.

If you have read Jillian’s book, help her reach her audacious goal by leaving an Amazon review. Still, need a copy? Find it here.

Pat Flynn knows what it’s like to be criticized online, but by persevering, he has learned a few rules of engagement to help guide creators and entrepreneurs.

For more information, visit the show notes at https://www.jillianjohnsrud.com/rules-of-engagement-with-pat-flynn/

Join Jillian, Joshua Becker, and The Hope Effect director Joe Darago to hear about how you can impact orphan care worldwide because every child deserves a family.

For more information, visit the show notes at https://www.jillianjohnsrud.com/the-hope-effect

Two years after starting a business and excited about the enormous growth opportunities on the horizon, Christine Wheatley had to shut everything down. Was it worth it?

Listen here at Libsyn, Apple, Castbox, Spotify, or your favorite player.

When Christine started, A Little Local Flavor in downtown Nashville she was like all new business owners, excited about her great idea but facing her own imposter syndrome in light of the 136 other tour companies in the area. Her superpower to bridge the confidence gap was knowing that this new endeavor didn’t have to be her sole source of income.

Success isn’t a straight line. It takes a lot of experimenting, and sorting through your personal finances helps. You don’t have to have complete financial freedom, but:

“Have some financial runway with your business so you can try different things.”

There will be growing pains. You can’t know the perfect plan before your start. But, you will learn while doing the work (Learn more about how confidence and clarity come in the doing in Jillian’s book, Fire the Haters).

Christine emphasizes that the growing pains are worth it! Learning to be flexible and to trust yourself to overcome challenges helps you grow into your identity.

This wisdom didn’t come without its own price. Having dealt with her business’s growing pains and ready to take on the next season, Christine was excited! Until the pandemic.

“I shut everything down. It was awful.

I had no income.

I had to furlough my team.”

There is no guidebook on watching your business crash because of a global pandemic. You can plan for a recession, but how do you prepare for an immediate loss of all your business?

However, Christine pushes back against the fear that might prevent someone from starting a business.

“Do not ever not start a business because of what you’ve seen happen to hundreds of thousands of small businesses during the pandemic.”

When faced with her own introspective question, “Was it worth it?” instead of seeing all the hard things, she was met with a montage of all the good: happy people, her fantastic team, and the person she had become through it all.

“Even if I never reopened, I would never trade that.”

She is reopening, A Little Local Flavor and has a new superpower she is bringing into her business: fearlessness. She knows she can weather the storm, and she knows it’s always worth the effort, growing pains, and learning that come with any good adventure and endeavor.

August and Jillian talk through part two of Fire the Haters.

Learn how to move past procrastination and give yourself permission to ship your best self - at this moment - into the world.

Ryan Nicodemus from The Minimalists stops by to talk about embracing imposter syndrome and failure as you put your work out into the world.

When Ryan was starting out as part of THE Minimalists, a lot of pressure came with that name. There is comfort in knowing that everyone, no matter how successful, has likely dealt with imposter syndrome. Learning to accept that one never truly “arrives” has allowed Ryan to keep growing and learning.

“There is a piece of me that hopes I never actually get there…I don’t think about being a master at something anymore. I think about being genuine.”

When it comes to the critical voices in your life, the ones that feed that imposter syndrome, none is more painful than those from friends and family.

Ryan points out that criticism projected at you and your work is usually not about you. It’s about the critic. There is a difference between criticism and feedback.

The voices in your life that can present a problem with kindness and even help you move towards a solution are valuable, but the critic merely wants to destroy or discredit your work.

We will all fail. We will have our work criticized. Unfortunately, it’s the rule rather than the exception.

“If you put work out there and it is not getting criticized, then your work is probably not that impactful.”

We want to make people feel something. So, embrace the journey.

“The longer you put off embracing failure, the longer you are going to put off being successful.”

Check out Jillian’s book Fire the Haters for more information on creating in a critical world.