We All Feel Like Impostors

Hello Predictable Revenue community,

Pre-order update: I created the LinkedIn mini-course I mentioned a few weeks ago and have added it to the pre-sale benefits doc. If that sounds great, you can pre-order here, send me a screenshot, and I’ll add you to the doc.

Next up pre-order benefit: I’m going to leave this one up to you all, here are two ideas I had that might be useful, vote by sending me a screenshot of your pre-order receipt.

1. I’ll build you a list of 25 podcasts you’d be a fit to go on

2. I’ll create a baby board book version of The Terrifying Art of Finding Customers and donate the profit to Children’s Hospital (see PS for example)

Now onto the newsletter.

I almost didn't write this book.

We've got over 180 presales already, which blows me away — and it almost never happened. Not because I couldn't afford the $37K to publish it, or because I was too busy, or because I didn't know the process.

The real blocker was confidence.

The Voice in Our Heads

For months, I sat with this nagging voice: "Do I even have the right to write this book?"

I'd built Predictable Revenue for 13 years. Had 10 engineers at one point. Generated millions in revenue. But when it came time to share what I'd learned, that voice got loud: "Is my experience even valid, or am I just milking one story?"

Sound familiar?

I had a call with my friend Kenny last week. He's been sitting on a book idea for years — has all this theory around product-market fit that I've seen work in practice. But he won't write it yet.

"I feel like I got a lot of theory," he told me. "It's only been in the last month where I feel like, okay yeah, it's working. I'm applying the theory, and it's working."

He's founded multiple startups, helped dozens of founders, and regularly posts essays on Hacker News that founders thank him for months later. But he's waiting until he feels "qualified enough."

The Universal Question

I found myself asking Kenny: "Is my experience even valid?"

And then I realized it connected to something bigger. I’ve bootstrapped all of my startups using services to get them off the ground or the revenue from our services business to fund their development. This puts me one foot in the agency founder space and one foot in the tech startup founder space. 

I feel like every founder in my situation is asking themselves the same question: "Am I a real startup founder? Or am I just a guy who wasted millions of dollars of services profit on developers?" 

I’ve started multiple software companies, at peak Carb.io had 10 engineers and $1m in ARR. And I’m still asking myself, “am I really a software startup founder?”

That's the question, isn't it? The one we all ask but rarely say out loud.

Am I really qualified for this? Do I actually know what I'm doing? What if everyone finds out I'm just figuring it out as I go?

I see this everywhere. The founder with 30 customers wondering if they're "real" yet. The CEO who just raised Series A asking if they deserve to be in the room. The consultant with years of experience second-guessing whether their advice is worth anything.

We're all walking around carrying this secret fear that we're frauds about to be exposed.

The You-Shaped Curve (it’s a pun, you’ll get it later)

Here's what's wild: the more qualified you actually are, the more impostor syndrome hits you.

Kenny talked about this during our call. He's spent years studying what makes companies succeed or fail. He’s a true mad scientist of product-market fit → he called the fact that AI would eat our SDR agency in ~2019, well before the ChatGPT moment made it truly obvious.

But he won't write about it yet because he wants more "proof."

Meanwhile, there are people pumping out courses and books with a fraction of his experience, making bank off theories they've never tested. They don't suffer from impostor syndrome because they don't know enough to question themselves.

The Dunning-Kruger effect: the more you know, the more you realize you don't know, and the less confident you feel.

Kenny put it perfectly: "We learn way more from failure. People who succeed too quick and too fast get arrogant, and that can blow up in a bad way. Whereas people who struggle and fail for a long time... I suspect I'm actually more competent than it feels like I am."

The cruel irony is that impostor feelings often show up precisely when you're most qualified to help.

You feel like a fraud because you remember all your mistakes. You know how much you struggled. You can see the gap between where you are and where you want to be.

But that struggling? Those mistakes? That gap? They're exactly what makes your perspective valuable.

Kenny talked about feeling like he was in "the valley of despair" for years — that phase where your confidence crashes as you realize how much you don't know. But now he's coming out the other side: "I feel like I'm starting to hit that other side of the Dunning-Kruger, where my confidence is catching up with my competence."

The people who need your help are still in that valley. They need someone who remembers what it was like to be there.

What Success Actually Looks Like

I used to think successful people were the ones who never doubted themselves. Turns out, the opposite is true.

Kenny shared something that stuck with me. He said even now, with his current company taking off, he feels terrified about the next phase: "I feel like I've got the first part figured out. But then there's this problem of building a machine that scales. And I haven't done that yet. So I feel like I'm gonna be stumbling through the dark, bumping my face, stubbing my toe again."

This from a guy who's about to speak at a conference where the entire audience is his ideal customer profile. Who has 30+ customers already using his product. Who's getting the kind of gushing feedback every founder dreams of.

Success doesn't eliminate impostor feelings. It just changes what you feel like an impostor about.

The Only Way Is Through

I wrote the book anyway. Despite the voice telling me I wasn't qualified. Despite wondering if my experience with one company was enough to help other founders.

Not because I conquered my impostor feelings, but because I decided to act despite them.

The response has been better than I imagined. Not just the presales — but the notes from you all saying it's exactly what you needed to hear or saying you’ve forwarded it to a family member so they can better understand what you’re going through. 

The only way through impostor feelings is to act anyway. Share your story. Test your ideas. Put yourself out there.

Your experience matters. Your struggles taught you something. Someone needs to hear what you learned.

The results — over 180 presales for a book that almost never existed — validate what fear told you to hide.

What's something you've been holding back on because you don't feel "qualified" enough? Hit reply and tell me — I'd love to hear.

Collin 

PS - If you want to grab one of those 180+ presales, you can order the book here. It officially launches next month and I have some extras for folks who pre-order.

PPS - here’s roughly what I’m thinking for the baby board book: