I’m a Fraud

There is a whole movement out there which promotes feeling good about ourselves. Mantras like ‘Know your worth’ are all over social media. When you speak with a friend, they always respond with positivity, and sayings like ‘You are great! They just don’t see it.’ But what if we look in the mirror and truly become self-aware about our skills, and ask ourselves an honest question, ‘Am I great at what I do?’ The answer requires both strength and a willingness to feel exposed.

In the past couple of weeks, I have felt and thought I am a fraud. I believe I’m inadequate and I’ve been lying to myself about my skills.

It started last month, when I bought a membership to an academy with various courses: writing better creative briefs, how to find consumer insights, how to create a better strategy and others about advertising, marketing, and creativity.

Doing a few classes, I realised that I was making some huge mistakes at the agency with our creative process. And I mean basic mistakes! As I was going further, and learning more, I realised that I’m not that good at what I do. This is when I started questioning my skill set.

Do you know the feeling when you want something done and somebody suggests your buddy Tom to do the job, but you know that Tom is not that great? Let’s say that Tom is a locksmith, and you are locked out. Tom is such a great guy, but when it comes to work, he might open the door, he might not, it might take him longer or something might happen and it will be a bit complicated for him. You like Tom, but you want somebody who can get the job done. You might pay more, but you know that your job will be done. There is another guy, James: he is a locksmith that knows all the locks outside out, he can open doors with his eyes closed, he knows the origins of every lock and he could even rob a freaking bank if he wanted to.

You would choose James because he knows what he is doing. He is reliable. He is the kind of guy that you want to get the job done. Tom is a great guy, but best for a chat and a beer at the pub.

Today, my eyes become red — not from the cold, but from the tears pouring doing my face. What prompted it were the thoughts that I’m a fraud and I’m not as good as I think I am.

I was feeling sorry for myself, creating a pity party in my head.

There is a difference between ‘knowing your worth’, ‘believing in yourself’ and understanding how good you are. There is a difference between motivating ourselves and being honest, and saying ‘Shit, I don’t know this topic on a deeper level.’

I believe that every problem has a root cause. Yet we are experts at solving problems by placing Band-Aids — we like a temporary fix because working on the root cause is hard.

On my morning run, I remembered that as a young kid I was pushed by a strict Russian mother. When I was seven, I moved to Cyprus, not knowing the language, and I had to learn Greek really fast because kids at school were making fun of me. Within a year, I changed school and went to American academy. My English wasn’t that great at the time, so I had to learn English really fast — which I did (the challenge made slightly easier because my stepfather was British). During my childhood years, my mum’s expectations of me were high, and I didn’t always live up to them. I learned to learn everything on a surface level, so I could just get away — pass the test and move on.

As I grew, my insecurities grew, and my habit of ‘not going deep’ stayed. Perhaps that is why, today, I’m a generalist — I don’t specialise in one thing. For example, my agency does content marketing, website design and development, storytelling, videos, design, strategy. I don’t do them all of them, because I’m fortunate to work with talented people, but I never sat and said, ‘I’m going to master this topic and become the best at this.’

I look at my social media and see that my numbers are not going up much; I post a video on LinkedIn and I don’t get much engagement; I send a newsletter I don’t get any responses. I look at the clients I worked with and where they come from and realise most of them are because I did sales. I know that likes and comments don’t determine my self worth, but I can’t help but ask if there is a connection between my social media engagement and me.

Then I look at some case studies of ours: I look at the numbers and I see that we’ve helped some clients achieve great results (increased sales by 1500% for one client, increased social media following by 350%, designed some amazing websites and blogs, and so on).

You see, from a young kid I always needed to be fast. I always wanted a quick solution. Today, with the agency, I rush things because we need to finish this project and get paid as expenses are running.

Even looking at topics, I’m all over the place. You go to my personal content on Instagram and Facebook, and it’s mostly about personal development; things I learn, books I read, and other things about becoming a better human. Then you look at the agency’s content, and it’s about storytelling and content. Content that engages needs to be consistent. I’m not consistent on any platform; I post on social whenever I feel like it. I do have a podcast, the Stay Stupid Podcast, and I’m consistent there, I do it weekly.

I looked at the list of books I have read and thought to myself ‘I don’t understand what am I trying to achieve.’ I read Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, The Accidental Creative by Todd Henry, Sell with a Story by Paul Smith, The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout, and then books like Selfie: How We Become Self Obsessed and What It’s Doing to Us by Will Storr, The Way To Superior Man by David Deida, The Wim Hof Method and 28 other books. I did not see a direction where ‘this reader’ was going. What is he trying to master?

There are two books that made me think about my expertise. Mastery by Robert Greene and Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield. I went back and reread them to truly grasp the concept of mastery.

The world is full of mediocre people, average people. Average doctors, average developers, average designers, average copywriters, average people. I’m part of that, an average marketer. But the problem is that I don’t want to be average, I want to become a master at my skill, at my craft.

When I was consuming content from Gary Vee and Grant Cardone I got obsessed with hustle, yes, the ‘hustle all day’ mentality. But the problem is that if you suck at what you do, and you hustle for 20 hours a day, you will not really see the desired results. A lot of content on social is about ‘making it’ — ‘hustle’ this, ‘start this business’ and on it goes. But I think we don’t have enough content about working on our craft.

I even started an e-commerce business last year, but did I achieve the desired results? No. Do you know how many sales I had? Zero. The reason was because when I launched it, nobody knew about it except myself, the designer and the developer. I didn’t promote it because I prioritised our clients work at my agency IQD, and business development. This is my biggest weakness: I get excited, I start doing and then I stop because the work is hard. Being disciplined and working on the right things is hard.

The idea that I’m inadequate kills me but, like I said, it’s not a pity party. I just want to face reality, be really honest with myself, strip all the BS that I have in my head and put my head down and just immerse myself in my skill, and becoming the freaking best. So that when people speak about building a brand with purpose, my name comes up. I don’t want to be known ‘that guy that runs a marketing agency’. F*ck that. That’s mediocre.

I don’t want to wake up in a year, look in the mirror and have similar results to what I have now. It’s not about fame, or being famous, or an influencer, or making money. (Well, no, I take back the money thing — I do want to make money! But meaningful money.) And money, actually, is the result of how good we are and, to be quite frank, I don’t like what I see in my bank account because it may mean I’m not that great at what I do.

A great example of somebody who knows his stuff is my brain coach, Jim Kwik. I decided I wanted to enhance my memory and read faster. On ‘day one’ of my speed-reading course, I read at 115 words per minute (wpm); ten days later my wpm was 310! You do the math. Within ten days I increased my reading speed and my comprehension! The guy is fantastic. He is the guy that I will recommend to anyone who wants a brain coach course.

When we want to achieve something that is important to us, we look for the best. I signed up for a 100KM ultra marathon run from London to Brighton next year, so I decided to find a coach. Did I find an average running coach? No, I wanted the best. So I found Kristian, who has run 130 official ultra-marathons and is in the top ten ultra runners globally.

I made a decision that I will sacrifice everything in pursuit of greatness, in pursuit of becoming the best, in pursuit of adding more value to the people I work with and people that I encounter. Will I ever become the best? Of course not, but the goal is to do the work to become one of the greatest, and never stop moving forward.

I might not be great right now — I might be a fraud today — but I realise that I don’t want to be here, in the same position a year from now, and I will do whatever it takes to move forward, to truly master what it is I’m doing.

I went through my notes from the Tony Robbins Unleash the Power Within event I attended in London. I stumbled across the following, ‘The difference in people is their standards. Raise your standards. Change your “should do this” to “must do this”’. What changes people is when they change their ‘should’ to ‘must’. I guess it took me a long time to truly understand it, but better late than never.

I wanted to share these thoughts with you, and hope that it will help you, in some way, to look at yourself objectively and make a decision about your life, because the world needs and rewards people that are truly great. Look at Picasso, Thomas Edison, Elon Musk, Steve Jos and many others.