Episode Summary

Jenna offers three bite-sized tips on owning your secret sauce and overcoming imposter syndrome.

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As Black History Month approaches, I would love to invite someone from our community who is a Black entrepreneur to host an episode. You would have the opportunity to share tactical, mindset and energetics tips. If you are interested in this opportunity, please feel free to contact me through Instagram or by email. I know so many people would benefit from this share, including me!

Show Notes

Do you aspire to move forward in your business, but struggle with imposter syndrome? Do you find yourself thinking that others are doing this much better than you? Even if you are succeeding in your field, imposter syndrome can cause you to invest a lot of energy into redirecting attention from it.

In this week’s episode, I provide tactical mindset and energetics tips to help you confidently embrace your secret sauce and overcome imposter syndrome. I also share some thoughts you can think when you doubt that your secret sauce is good enough.

Tune in to learn how to build trust that your secret sauce is worth investing in and is worthy of your price tag. These bite-sized yet impactful tips will empower you to overcome imposter syndrome and own your secret sauce.

What You’ll Learn From This Episode:

• Three tips for owning your secret sauce.

• The positive impact overcoming imposter syndrome has on yourself and your business.

• The difference owning what you do and not being sorry makes.

• Empowering experiences from other listeners.

• How to trust that your secret sauce is worth your price tag.

Listen to the Full Episode:

Featured on the Show:

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• Click here to learn more about the Clarity Accelerator.

• Ep #47: Safeguarding Against Burnout with Rachel Hale

• Ep #80: How to Find Your Secret Sauce: Tactics, Mindset and Beyond

Full Episode Transcript:

When you think about moving forward in your business, is imposter syndrome the number one thing keeping your mind spinning? That voice saying, “Who do you think you're kidding? There are people much better than you at this.”

Or maybe you're doing really well in business, some would even say ‘killing it,’ but you feel like you're constantly juggling balls and spinning pinwheels in order to divert attention from your true imposter status? Both of those are exhausting, my friend. I've been there. So, today I have got three bite-sized tips to help you own your secret sauce and feel head-tossing confidence.

You're listening to The Uncommon Way Business and Life Coaching Podcast, the only podcast that helps you unlock your next level in business and life by prioritizing your clarity and your own Uncommon Way. You will learn to maximize your mindset, mission, messaging, and strategy in order to create a true legacy. Here's your host, top-ranked business coach and reformed over-analyzer turned queen of clarity, Jenna Harrison.

Hi there, welcome back to The Uncommon Way. Today, we are continuing our miniseries on the secret sauce. In our last episode, Episode 80, we talked about finding your secret sauce. But now we're going to go a step further, and we're going to talk about owning your secret sauce.

This really goes hand in hand with impostor syndrome, which keeps so many women from playing full out. But also, it's important because it can sneak up on you at any time. Maybe you think you're past it, and you set your sights on some new goal and boom! there you are all over again questioning everything.

I was talking to a woman the other day who had founded a software company that was extremely successful. But when she thought about growing it even more, she couldn't help thinking, “Maybe I've reached my limit. Maybe this is The Peter Principle and I'm just done. Here's where I stop.” When we talked about potentially selling the company, she was saying, “I just don't think I'm the kind of person that could go out there and sell it.”

So, this comes up at all levels, my friends. Whatever is going on for you, wherever you are, I want to help you overcome that, like yesterday, because you've got big things to do.

Today, as always, you'll get three super useful and actionable tips. I'll give you one tactical to-do, one mindset related tip, and one about the energetics of the situation. By the time we're done, you will know how using one specific hashtag, or at least the principle behind it, can overhaul the way you feel in just 30 days.

And why, in many cases, what many people are actually paying you for most is not results. Yes, I said it - not results. You'll see what I mean. You'll also know what should be at the root of every sales interaction, and client interaction, that you have, bar none.

Before we get started, I have an invitation for one of you out there. Now, next month is Black History Month, and I would love to invite someone from our community who is a Black entrepreneur to host an episode for us during that month. You would simply be giving one tactical tip, one mindset tip, and one tip for energetics to our audience, and anyone else out there who would benefit from this share.

I know there would be so many people who would be grateful, including me, and I invite you to get in contact with me through any means that you want. I'm on all the socials at The Uncommon Way, you can DM me, or you can drop us an email.

Okay, let's get down to the good stuff. My tactical tip for you today, is that you have got to desensitize yourself to talking about it, to owning it. You are going to need baby steps here. It's like when my son Dylan decides that all of a sudden he wants to change where his hair is parted. But his hair, of course, is used to parting to where I've always parted it. Now that he's doing his own hair, of course he wants it to go the other way, because he is after all my son and wants to do his own uncommon way.

But that's not going to happen overnight. It's going to take consistent, repeated action to coax the hair in another direction. Whenever you are having thoughts of being an imposter or not being good enough, I guarantee it is not the first time you've ever thought that. That is not part of your higher self and your natural essence, saying, “You know what? Maybe I'm an imposter.”

No, that is conditioned thinking, something that's been given to you, and that your brain has thought over and over again, and it's become a pattern. It's become a pattern that jumps up every time you're moving into a new level.

So, I am going to challenge you to talk about your secret sauce, or what you do so well, once a day. And each time you do, I want you to think in your head that you're using a hashtag, #notsorry. #notsorry. “I'm not sorry for just speaking truth about what I do so well. I'm not sorry for owning this.”

I first tried this for myself when I was doing something a bit unrelated. I was taking my son, for the first time, for a month in Greece. This is when he was not even two years old. It was something I dreamed about and saved for. Yet, when the time came, I noticed myself feeling really bad about sharing it on social media.

When I started investigating that, I just questioned, “Why exactly am I ashamed about this?” It coincided with a lot of inner work that I had been doing, and I realized how much resistance I had to being perceived as too braggy, in owning accomplishments, and owning an uncommon lifestyle.

So, I decided to go the other way, to actually start a series of posts about my trip to Greece where I wouldn't be checking myself. I'd kick it off with a post with #notsorry, just listing 10 things about myself that I no longer wanted to be sorry about. Well, it really struck a nerve, and caught on. So many women started joining with me in this.

Somewhere, for instance, in their post you would see, “…and I went to Oxford #notsorry.” It felt amazing. It was like in the Barbie movie when the Pulitzer Prize winner says, “Wait a minute, I did write a book.” Through consistent repetition, and especially if you're lucky enough to have others join you in this, so you're not alone, it will start to feel like you're waking up out of a fog.

I really recommend that you try this for 30 days to see what a difference it makes. And just to let you know what's on the other side, here I am years later, I've made these month-long trips part of our yearly routine, and we are now moving to Spain because I did so. Many women have told me how much that inspires them.

When you say ‘the proof is in the pudding,’ you all, my new website, that will be launching soon, is going to be plastered with pictures of me living the good life in Majorca and really owning the life that I've built. So, I do hope you'll help me celebrate that in month and a half or so when it goes live. I'll let you know.

Now, when I was talking about #notsorry, I was using that on social media. But you do not have to do this 30-day practice on social media. You might choose to do it on social media, in which case, you could just be dropping one line into your post that has to do with you owning your secret sauce just in passing.

“Oh, this is something I do. This is something that clients love. This is something that I've just always been good at.” Or you could choose to do it as an entire post, maybe resurrecting a moment from the past where this has just been so innate for you. Or how you've cultivated it, or how you've used it in service of your clients, or even getting real about how it can be challenging to recognize and own our own gifts.

But if you've been with me for any amount of time, you probably know that I'm not tied to social media. I don't even think you need to be on social media. So, some of you may prefer to not use social media at all, or to sprinkle in your 30-day practice with other places. Even just mentioning it to your family is a step forward. Even just saying it in passing to an acquaintance or a stranger.

There are so many opportunities and venues for you to just express it. That is all we're talking about here. It's where you become comfortable with taking something that is inside you and expressing it out into the world to be received.

Okay, let's talk mindset, shall we? The mindset that you want to maintain, comes through parsing out all of the different things you do that add value. In whatever situation, your brain might be telling you that you don't add enough value. But not only are these things valuable, specifically, your secret sauce is so valuable that it might be worth paying you, regardless of whether it brings the specific result that the person wanted.

Now, stay with me here, because some of you might be freaking out thinking, “Oh, no, that is just bringing up all of my worst fears about being salesy, and not having integrity if I'm not actually going to get these results to people that I promised.” What I mean, is that those results could just be the cherry on top.

It's worth you doing the inner work to really think through this, and to stretch your mind into how it might be true that just your secret sauce alone is worth an investment with you, is worth your price tag, or is worth your entire price tag. You can think through what you do. You can think through the way you do it. And you can think through how you are. All of those are entry points for you to begin this little exercise.

Maybe your people didn't really know that thing existed, and that that alone is going to be so life changing over the course of their life. Or being surrounded by it will be so helpful for them to believe in it. Or it will just be so reassuring for them to have it.

I'm thinking of two examples here. One is, once I was talking to one of my first coaches about this new client I was bringing on. She had this amazing new concept that had just never been done anywhere before. I was so lit up and excited.

My coach looked at me and she said, “Jenna, I would never take on that client. The fact that you get so jazzed up about uncommon businesses, are willing to be a champion for those of people, and to do the extra work of having to understand industries that you don't already know, that's going to be life changing for those people. Because up until now, they haven't fully believed that it can work. And here you are, as a business coach, saying, ‘I can't wait to work on that with you.’”

Do you see how over the course of that person's life, of potentially going off in some other direction rather than that business that they really wanted, they then meet me, and through that interaction plant their stake in the ground and say, “Yes, I'm doing this,” how that is so worthwhile? That alone.

I'm thinking of a landscape architect I worked with, who was just a genius at making people feel comfortable. Really managing all the different personalities, and all the different priorities of all the teams that have to come together, in order to create the kinds of magnificent backyards that her clients wanted.

Her clients could feel that right away. It was so worthwhile for them to move forward with her because it was a load off their plate, a load off their mind, that they weren't going to have to be coordinating between different companies, or worrying about personality dynamics.

They just knew that it would be done smoothly and handled, and felt so reassured. Even if they had had to hire a separate landscape architect, that job alone was worth so much, over the course of the four months or six months, whatever it was, that this project was being completed.

In the Clarity Accelerator, we have an exercise where we really pull this apart and give ourselves the opportunity to ground into how this is true for us and our specific people. And once you've really, really taken this in and accepted it, it makes it so much easier to sell with integrity. Because you know the value you're giving people is so much heavier than they're even really recognizing at that moment.

If we had time right now, I could go through client by client, every single one of my clients, and tell you exactly why their secret sauce is so fundamentally important for their precise people. I know I believe that 100%, and I know they do too, because they've worked on this.

Speaking of clients, I know in the last episode I shared a few things that people had said that I just found so inspiring, when they were talking about why they were choosing to go forward and invest. I heard back from a few of you that you loved hearing that. So, I'm going to share some more.

Because these gets so good, I get shivers every time I read these. There was one woman who said,

“I want to be a woman who plays big, and is financially successful. I feel so strongly that more women in power, and earning more, is better for everyone. Studies back that up, and I want to be a part of it. I was brought up by a feminist with money issues, so I'd like to take the next steps in that and be a feminist with money. I can see so many options and opportunities that open up with more money, and I feel ready to step into that.”

She went on to say, “I want to run a company that is a good company. I want to make money doing good things. I want to help and empower more people through it. And I just need some clarity on how to move forward with the business ideas, and the team that I have already, so that they feel fulfilled, fairly compensated, and really part of that mission as well.”

Oh, I love these. It's like when you get to that point of ‘here's why I'm doing it,’ the most beautiful things come through. And as you're feeling that energy, this is the perfect time to talk about the energetics. Now, the energetics of really overcoming impostor syndrome, and owning your secret sauce, is about shifting into your welcome energy.

Let me tell you a story about Rachel, who was a client that tended to be really overworking and doing everything for her clients, but was plagued with a bit of imposter syndrome. That they wouldn't really recognize and appreciate all of it.

As you could imagine, that could lead her to compromise on her price, and on what she would and wouldn't do for them. Sometimes they would say things like, “Well, could you only do this instead of doing all of the things? Could we just get this one little piece from you.”

I told her, “Rachel, you have gone through so many things in this journey. You've spent so much time learning the ropes. You can keep them away from so many pitfalls...” she does luxury brand consulting… “That every time you are interacting with a new client, or a current client, you need to show up like, ‘You're welcome. You are welcome that I've done all of this for you, been through all of this, and learned the hard way, so that you don't have to. You're welcome, but I'm here to help you.’”

Sometimes you can completely change a dynamic just by you remembering who you really are and deciding to shift into that energetic.

Now, I don't think that requires too much information; I know that you love these episodes to be bite-sized and digestible, so I'm going to stop here. But if you want to hear more, you can go back and listen to my podcast episode with Rachel; it's Episode #47.

All right, my friends, get out there and own your shit. You know who you are, and each day you are stepping further into what you are here to create. Talk to you next time.

Hey, if you want true clarity about your secret sauce, your people, your best way of doing business, and how you talk about your offer, then I invite you to join us in the Clarity Accelerator. I'll teach you to connect all the dots, the dots that have always been there for you, so that you can show up like you were born for exactly this.

Come join us and supercharge every other tool or tactic you'll ever learn, from Facebook ads to manifestation. Just go to TheUncommonWay.com/schedule and set up a time to talk. I can't wait to be your coach.

Thanks for joining us here at The Uncommon Way. If you want more tips and resources for developing clarity in your business and life, including the Clarity First strategy for growing and scaling your business, visit TheUncommonWay.com. See you next time.

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