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I Stopped Fighting My Imposter Syndrome And This Happened · Voices for Voices®

• 0:01
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Hi everyone, it's just here, Voices for Voices.
• 0:04
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Thank you so much for joining us.
• 0:07
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  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: We greatly appreciate that.
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  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: They're free to do, and it helps us grow our reach to one day for us to reach and help at least three billion people over the course of my lifetime and beyond.
• 0:44
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: So let's get started.
• 0:46
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I stopped fighting my imposter syndrome, and then this happened.
• 0:52
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: You've been told to crush yourself doubt.
• 0:55
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: For years I gave that advice, and it was the worst thing I ever did for my business.
• 1:02
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I used to read the articles, listen to the gurus, and repeat the affirmations.
• 1:08
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Every morning I'd stand in the mirror and try to force feed myself a confidence I just didn't have.
• 1:19
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: You are capable.
• 1:21
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: You are a success.
• 1:23
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: You belong here.
• 1:25
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: But every time I said it, a voice in the back of my head will get a little bit louder, a little snarkier.
• 1:34
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Are you though?
• 1:36
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Are you really?
• 1:37
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: This feeling, this persistent nagging sense that you're a fraud and it's only a matter of time before everyone finds you out.
• 1:50
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: That's imposter syndrome.
• 1:52
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It's the secret fear that haunts high achievers.
• 1:58
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I belong there.
• 1:59
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: That's where I'm at.
• 2:00
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: That's why we're doing this show.
• 2:02
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And for entrepreneurs, it's practically part of the job description.
• 2:08
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The accepted wisdom is that this feeling is a weakness.
• 2:13
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It's a bug in your mental health and mental software.
• 2:18
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: You have to patch, delete, or destroy.
• 2:22
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: We're told to build a fortress of self-belief and never ever let the enemy doubt through the gates.
• 2:33
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I tried that for years.
• 2:36
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I built the fortress, I fought the battle every single day, and it left me exhausted, anxious, and ironically feeling like more of an imposter than ever before.
• 2:52
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Because the harder I fought the doubt, the bigger and more powerful it seemed to become.
• 3:00
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The battle was unwinnable.
• 3:04
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: But then I did something radical.
• 3:06
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Something that goes against almost every piece of motivational advice you've ever heard.
• 3:14
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I stopped fighting.
• 3:16
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I surrendered.
• 3:18
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I just let the doubt exist.
• 3:22
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And what happened next is why my business is more successful today than I ever thought possible?
• 3:32
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: What if the secret to success isn't eliminating doubt but embracing it?
• 3:40
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: What if that nagging feeling of being an imposter isn't a weakness to be crushed, but a superpower in disguise?
• 3:51
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The universal lie and exhausting battle for most of my entrepreneurial journey.
• 3:59
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I believed in a simple, dangerous equation.
• 4:04
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Doubt equals weakness.
• 4:08
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Confidence equals success.
• 4:11
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The goal, therefore, was to achieve a state of unshakable, absolute confidence.
• 4:21
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I thought that's what a real CEO looked like.
• 4:25
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I'd look at the titans of industry, the founders on magazine covers, and I'd project them this image of flawless certainty.
• 4:39
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: They didn't have any doubts, I told myself.
• 4:42
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: They just knew.
• 4:45
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: So I set out to become one of them.
• 4:48
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I waged a full-scale war on my own mind.
• 4:54
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Every time a thought like, is this the right strategy?
• 5:00
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Or am I really qualified to lead this team?
• 5:05
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Popped in my head.
• 5:07
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I treated it like an enemy invader.
• 5:11
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I immediately tried to shut it down.
• 5:16
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I'd use thought stopping techniques.
• 5:20
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I'd counter it with a forced, hollow affirmation.
• 5:26
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I was actively trying to suppress a part of my own thinking.
• 5:33
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: What I didn't know then is that our minds don't work that way.
• 5:40
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Trying to deliberately suppress a thought often has the exact opposite effect.
• 5:49
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: There's a classical psychological experiment from the eighties, nineteen eighties, that illustrates this perfectly.
• 5:59
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Participants were told for the next five minutes, do not under any circumstances, think about a white bear.
• 6:10
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: You can guess what happened.
• 6:12
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The white bear became an obsession.
• 6:16
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The more they tried to push it away, the more it roared back into their consciousness.
• 6:24
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: This is known as the rebound effect, and it's a robust finding in psychology.
• 6:32
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: When you tell your brain, don't think this, you inadvertently make that thought more important, more active, and more likely to intrude.
• 6:46
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: This is precisely what I was doing to myself.
• 6:51
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Every time I said, Don't doubt the business plan, my brain heard, the business plan is something worth doubting.
• 7:01
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I was shining a giant mental spotlight on the very thing I wanted to ignore.
• 7:09
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: This constant internal battle was profoundly draining.
• 7:15
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It created a state of cognitive dissonance, which is a split between the perfect, confident founder I was pretending to be, and the anxious, uncertain person I actually was.
• 7:34
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Think about the sheer amount of energy that goes into maintaining a facade.
• 7:41
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It's like holding up a beach ball underwater.
• 7:46
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It takes constant, focused pressure.
• 7:51
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The moment your intention slips, that ball shoots right to the surface.
• 7:58
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: For an entrepreneur, that energy is your most valuable resource.
• 8:04
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: You need it for strategy, for sales, for product development, for leading your team.
• 8:12
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: But I was squandering a huge portion of my daily energy on this pointless internal civil war.
• 8:21
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It wrecked my decision making.
• 8:24
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Instead of calmly evaluating risks, I would either freeze, terrified of making a wrong move that would prove I was a fraud, or I would overcorrect and make impulsive decisions just to appear decisive and confident.
• 8:46
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I was so focused on winning the battle against doubt that I wasn't listening to what the doubt might have been trying to tell me.
• 8:59
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And here's the most damaging part.
• 9:01
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It isolated me.
• 9:03
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: How can you have an honest, vulnerable conversation with a mentor, a co-founder, or your team when you're desperately trying to hide that you don't have all the answers?
• 9:18
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I felt like I was on a lonely island projecting an image of calm control while a storm of uncertainty was raging inside.
• 9:33
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I know now, I know now that so many other founders feel this way.
• 9:41
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: One 2020 study of entrepreneurs and small business owners found that 84% experience imposter syndrome.
• 9:53
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It's a silent epidemic in the startup world, fueled by the myth that we must be fearless warriors of certainty.
• 10:04
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: But this war on doubt is a lie.
• 10:08
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It doesn't lead to strength, it leads to burnout, it doesn't create confidence, it creates a fragile ego, terrified of the slightest crack.
• 10:20
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The fight itself is the problem.
• 10:25
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Then we get to the red flag of zero doubt.
• 10:30
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: After years of this exhausting struggle, something started to shift.
• 10:36
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It wasn't a single lightning bolt moment, but a slow dawning realization.
• 10:44
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I started paying attention to other founders, not the polished versions on stage, but the ones I met in private masterminds or late night conversations.
• 10:59
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And I noticed a strange pattern.
• 11:03
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The most successful, resilient, and respected founders I knew weren't the ones who had zero doubt.
• 11:12
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: They were the ones who had a healthy relationship with their doubt.
• 11:18
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Conversely, I started to see the real danger.
• 11:23
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The entrepreneur with no doubt at all, the person who is one hundred percent convinced of their own brilliance, who believes their plan is infallible, and who dismisses all criticism as noise from the haters.
• 11:44
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: This, I realized, is far more dangerous than imposter syndrome.
• 11:51
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: This is the Dunning Kruger effect in action.
• 11:56
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The Dunning Kruger effect is a cognitive bias where people with low ability in an area tend to overestimate their competence.
• 12:10
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: In simple terms, they don't know enough to even recognize their own ignorance.
• 12:16
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Entrepreneurship is a perfect breeding ground for this.
• 12:22
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It's a field where initial luck can be easily mistaken for genius.
• 12:29
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: A founder might get some early traction, raise a small round of funding, or get some positive press, and they climb to the top of what the researchers call Mount Stupid.
• 12:44
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: They're standing there full of unheard and unearned confidence, completely blind to the vast, complex landscape of challenges that lies ahead.
• 13:00
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: This kind of founder doesn't listen.
• 13:03
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Why would they?
• 13:05
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: They think they already have all the answers.
• 13:08
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: They dismiss negative feedback from customers, ignore cautionary advice from experienced mentors, and alienate talented team members who dare to question their vision.
• 13:24
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Their overconfidence can lead to them making unrealistic projections and skip crucial market research all because they're convinced they know what the market wants.
• 13:39
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It's a massive blind spot, and it's one of the single biggest killers of startups.
• 13:47
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: In fact, a famous analysis by CB Insights found that the number one reason startups fail, cited in 42 of cases, is no market need.
• 14:04
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: That's a textbook example of what happens when a founder is so certain they've built the right thing.
• 14:13
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: They do not stop to listen.
• 14:15
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: When I understood this, it was like turning a key, a key turning and a lock.
• 14:24
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: My perspective on doubt flipped entirely.
• 14:28
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: What if my imposter syndrome, this feeling of I don't know enough, wasn't a curse?
• 14:36
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: What if it was an antidote to the Dunning Kruger effect?
• 14:42
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: What if that nagging doubt was actually a sign of self-awareness?
• 14:49
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: True expertise isn't the absence of doubt.
• 14:53
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It's understanding the limits of your own knowledge.
• 14:58
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The most brilliant people in history were often plagued by self-doubt.
• 15:04
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Albert Einstein reportedly called himself an involuntary swindler, feeling the praise he received was undeserved.
• 15:15
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: After writing eleven books, Maya Angelo said, Uh oh, they're gonna find out now.
• 15:24
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I've run a game on everybody and they're gonna find me out.
• 15:29
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And Michelle Obama has spoken openly about how imposter syndrome doesn't go away, even after reaching the highest echelons of power.
• 15:42
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: These aren't people suffering from a weakness.
• 15:46
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: These are people whose intelligence and self-awareness are so high that they can accurately perceive the vastness of what they don't know.
• 15:59
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Their doubt wasn't a bug, it was a feature of their intellect.
• 16:04
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It kept them humble, it kept them curious, and it kept them learning.
• 16:12
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And that's when I saw the truth.
• 16:17
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: A complete lack of doubt isn't confidence, it's arrogance, it's a red flag.
• 16:24
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Doubt, on the other hand, can be a sign that you're pushing yourself, that you're entering new territory, and that you're smart enough to know you don't have it all figured out.
• 16:39
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It's a natural, even productive part of progress.
• 16:44
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The goal then shouldn't be to get rid of doubt, the goal should be to learn how to dance with it.
• 16:53
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Now my turning point, doubt as a feature, not a bug.
• 16:59
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: My own turning point wasn't glamorous.
• 17:03
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: There was no single cinematic epiphany.
• 17:08
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It was a quiet collapse.
• 17:10
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: My business had been running for about three years.
• 17:14
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: We're doing okay, but we'd hit a plateau.
• 17:18
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I was working 80 hour weeks, fueled by caffeine and fear, all while projecting an aura of calm, confident leadership to my small team.
• 17:31
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: We were about to launch a major new product that I had personally championed.
• 17:38
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I had pushed the idea through, overriding some valid concerns for my team because in my mind, a strong leader had to be decisive and unwavering.
• 17:53
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: My fear of looking like an imposter made me arrogant.
• 17:59
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The launch was a disaster, not a fury or fiery explosion, but a deafening silence.
• 18:07
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The customers we were sure would love it were indifferent.
• 18:12
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The sales forecast I'd built was such bravado looked like a fantasy.
• 18:19
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: All that work, all that money, all that pressure for nothing.
• 18:25
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: That night I sat in my silent office, staring at a sales dashboard with a flat line.
• 18:36
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I felt the familiar wave of shame and fraudulence wash over me.
• 18:43
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: See, the voice said, I told you you're a fake.
• 18:48
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: You have no idea what you're doing, and now everyone knows.
• 18:52
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: For years my response would have been to fight.
• 18:56
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I would have started scheming, planning a comeback, figuring out how to spin the narrative, all to prove the voice wrong.
• 19:06
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: But that night, I was too tired to fight.
• 19:10
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: For the first time, I just let the feeling be.
• 19:15
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I didn't resist it.
• 19:17
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I just sat there and thought, okay, maybe you're right.
• 19:22
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Maybe I am a fraud.
• 19:25
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Maybe I don't know what I'm doing.
• 19:27
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: So what now?
• 19:29
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: In that moment of surrender, something unexpected happened.
• 19:36
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The crushing weight on my chest lifted just a little.
• 19:41
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: By accepting the responsibility and possibility that the doubt was valid, I had taken away its power.
• 19:50
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It was no longer a monster to be slain.
• 19:54
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It was just a piece of information, a very painful piece of information, but information nonetheless.
• 20:02
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: This was the beginning of my paradigm shift.
• 20:06
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I started to wonder, what if this feeling isn't a verdict on my worth, but a signal?
• 20:14
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: What if imposter syndrome isn't a bug in the system, but a feature, a diagnostic tool designed to keep me grounded and growing?
• 20:28
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: This idea is echoed in fascinating research on entrepreneurial psychology.
• 20:37
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Studies have found that how founders respond to doubt is a key predictor of success.
• 20:46
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: When entrepreneurs treat setbacks as the final verdict on their personal ability, they get stuck in self-doubt and their progress stalls.
• 21:00
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: But when they treat setbacks as a signal that they need to learn, invest more, or refine their ideas, the doubt becomes generative.
• 21:14
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It fuels progress.
• 21:16
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It makes them more resilient.
• 21:19
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: This resonated so deeply with my experience.
• 21:25
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: My doubt about the product launch wasn't a personal failing.
• 21:30
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It wasn't a personal failing.
• 21:32
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It was a blaring alarm bell telling me I failed to listen to my team and my customers.
• 21:40
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It wasn't an enemy.
• 21:42
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It was a brutally honest, unpaid consultant.
• 21:47
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: From that day forward, I began to build a framework for my relationship with doubt.
• 21:56
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Wow.
• 21:58
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: First, I refrained.
• 22:00
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Framed doubt as a catalyst for preparation.
• 22:05
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: That feeling of being an imposter often comes when we're stretching into a new role.
• 22:12
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Instead of letting that feeling paralyze me, I started to see it as a signal to overprepare.
• 22:22
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: If I felt like an imposter before a big presentation, it meant I needed to do one more rehearsal.
• 22:31
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: If I doubted my knowledge, it was a prompt to do more research.
• 22:37
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The doubt wasn't telling me to quit, it was telling me to do the work, which in turn leads to a better performance.
• 22:48
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Second, I reframe doubt as a tool for humility.
• 22:56
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Zero doubt leads to arrogance.
• 22:59
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Healthy doubt keeps you open to feedback.
• 23:03
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It makes you a better listener.
• 23:06
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: When I stopped believing, I had to have all the answers.
• 23:11
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I started asking better questions.
• 23:14
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I listened more intently to my team, my customers, and my mentors.
• 23:21
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: My leadership style shifted from follow me to let's figure this out together.
• 23:29
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: This not only led to better decisions, but it also created a stronger, more collaborative team culture.
• 23:38
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Third, I reframe doubt as a diagnostic signal.
• 23:44
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I learned to distinguish between two types of doubt self-doubt, I'm not good enough, and idea doubt.
• 23:55
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Is this idea good enough?
• 23:58
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The first type is often just noise, an echo of old fears.
• 24:04
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: But the second type, idea doubt, is incredibly valuable.
• 24:11
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It's the voice that pushes you to pressure test your assumptions, validate your market, and build a better product.
• 24:21
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: By befriending my doubt, I could use it to sift through my strategies and find the weaknesses before the market did.
• 24:33
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It turned doubt from a source of corrosion into an engine of generation.
• 24:42
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: This was not an overnight fix, it was a practice.
• 24:46
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: But slowly the energy I had once spent fighting my own mind was freed up to actually build my business.
• 24:57
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The goal was no longer to become fearless, it was to become better at acting in the presence of fear.
• 25:08
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: So here's three tools for your doubt toolkit.
• 25:13
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Shifting your mindset from lightning and fighting doubt to befriending it is a powerful first step.
• 25:22
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: But how do you actually put that into practice when the feeling of being a fraud is screaming in your ear?
• 25:30
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It takes concrete tools and daily habits.
• 25:35
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: This isn't abstract philosophy, it isn't.
• 25:40
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It's about building a practical toolkit you can deploy when you need it most.
• 25:46
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Here are the three most effective tools that I integrated into my entrepreneurial life.
• 25:54
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The Doubt Journal.
• 25:57
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: First tool is deceptively simple, a journal.
• 26:02
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: But this isn't for your wins or your gratitude, although those are valuable too.
• 26:09
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: This is a journal specifically for your doubts.
• 26:12
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The purpose is to get the to get the swirling, vague, and emotionally charged feelings out of your head onto paper where you can look at them objectively.
• 26:27
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Here's how it works.
• 26:28
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Every time you feel that spike of imposter syndrome, whether it's in a meeting, while you're looking at financials, or just lying awake at 3 a.m., you take out your doubt journal, you write down the exact thought.
• 26:45
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Not the sanitized version, but the raw, unfiltered doubt.
• 26:51
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I'm going to bankrupt this company.
• 26:54
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: My team thinks I'm an idiot.
• 26:57
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: That other founder is so much smarter than me, I'll never catch up.
• 27:02
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Then, underneath that raw thought, you perform you perform a kind of cognitive forensics.
• 27:11
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: You ask a series of structured questions.
• 27:15
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: One, what triggered this feeling?
• 27:18
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Was it a specific event?
• 27:20
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: A conversation, a post on social media?
• 27:24
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Getting specific helps you identify your patterns.
• 27:28
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Two, what is the core fear behind this doubt?
• 27:34
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Are you afraid of failure?
• 27:36
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Of looking stupid?
• 27:38
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Of disappointing others?
• 27:40
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Naming the deeper fear shrinks the power.
• 27:45
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Three, is this self doubt or idea doubt?
• 27:51
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: This is a crucial distinction.
• 27:53
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Self doubt is often an unproductive emotional story.
• 27:59
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I'm not enough.
• 28:02
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Idea doubt is a potentially productive critique.
• 28:06
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Is this market channel viable?
• 28:10
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Labeling it helps you know whether to soothe it or use it.
• 28:18
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Four, what is one piece of objective evidence that contradicts this feeling?
• 28:26
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Your feelings are not facts.
• 28:28
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Your brain will scream that you're a fraud.
• 28:32
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: But you need to act like a lawyer and present counter evidence.
• 28:37
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: My team thinks I'm an idiot.
• 28:39
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Counter evidence.
• 28:41
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: My lead engineer thanked me for my clear direction yesterday.
• 28:47
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I'm going to bankrupt this company.
• 28:50
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Counter evidence.
• 28:52
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: We've increased revenue ten percent for three straight quarters.
• 28:57
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: You must actively search for this proof.
• 29:01
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Doing this consistently does two things.
• 29:05
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: First, it externalizes the thought.
• 29:09
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: A thought inside your head feels like an undeniable truth.
• 29:14
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: A thought written on paper looks like what it is, a collection of words you can choose to engage with or not.
• 29:24
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Second, it builds a data set on your own psychology.
• 29:29
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: You'll start to see your triggers clearly, allowing you to anticipate the feeling and prepare for it, rather than being ambushed.
• 29:42
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Tool two the proof ledger.
• 29:47
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The Doubt Journal is for dissecting the negative, the proof ledger is for systematically compiling the positive.
• 29:56
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Imposter syndrome thrives by making you forget your own accomplishments.
• 30:02
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Wow.
• 30:05
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Wow.
• 30:06
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It has an incredible talent for spotlighting your one recent failure while completely ignoring a past ignoring a hundred past successes.
• 30:20
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: So let's say that again.
• 30:22
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It has an incredible talent for spotlighting your one recent failure while completely ignoring a hundred past successes.
• 30:33
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The proof ledger is your defense against this.
• 30:37
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It's more than just a win list.
• 30:40
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It's a living, evidence-based case file for your own competence.
• 30:46
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Get a physical notebook or a dedicated digital document.
• 30:51
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I recommend dividing it into a few categories.
• 30:56
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Testimonies and praise.
• 30:58
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Every time a client sends a positive email, a customer leaves, a glowing review, or a colleague gives you a compliment, don't just feel good for a second and move on.
• 31:11
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Screenshot it, copy and paste it into your proof ledger.
• 31:17
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Be meticulous.
• 31:18
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: This is hard evidence.
• 31:21
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Two, milestones and metrics.
• 31:24
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Did you hit a revenue target, finish a difficult project, successfully hire a key employee?
• 31:33
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Write it down with the date.
• 31:36
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: We often dismiss these as just doing our job, but they're objective markers of progress.
• 31:46
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Skills acquired and problems solved.
• 31:50
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Think back to a problem a year ago that seemed insurmountable.
• 31:55
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: How did you solve it?
• 31:57
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: What skills did you have to learn?
• 32:00
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Document it.
• 32:02
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Learn how to build a financial model.
• 32:06
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Negotiated a complex partnership deal.
• 32:10
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: This reminds you that you are a learning machine.
• 32:14
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Acts of courage.
• 32:16
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: This one is crucial.
• 32:18
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Vog the times you did something even when you were terrified.
• 32:23
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Speaking on that stage, firing an underperforming employee, making that cold call.
• 32:31
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: These are proof points not of your competence, but of your resilience.
• 32:37
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: You are someone who can act despite feeling doubt.
• 32:43
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The key is to make updating and reviewing the proof ledger a habit.
• 32:50
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Schedule fifteen minutes every Friday to update it.
• 32:54
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And more importantly, schedule time to read it, especially when doubt is loud.
• 33:00
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: When you're feeling like a fraud, don't argue with the feeling.
• 33:06
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Open the ledger, read the evidence.
• 33:10
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The entrepreneur Alex Hormozy put it perfectly.
• 33:16
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: You don't become confident by shouting affirmations in the mirror, but by having a stack of undeniable proof that you are who you say you are.
• 33:28
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The proof ledger is your stack of undeniable proof.
• 33:34
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Tool three The What if It's Right Protocol.
• 33:40
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: This last tool is the most advanced and mo most advanced and in many ways the most powerful.
• 33:47
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It's from engaging with that valuable idea doubt.
• 33:52
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Instead of pushing it away, you lean in and treat it like a hypothesis to be tested.
• 34:00
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Let's say you have a nagging doubt.
• 34:02
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I don't think our current marketing strategy is going to scale.
• 34:07
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The old me would have suppressed that thought because it felt like admitting failure.
• 34:14
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The new me runs the protocol.
• 34:17
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: You take the doubt and you ask, okay, what if this is 100% true?
• 34:24
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Let's assume for a moment that this doubt is a friendly, brilliant advisor trying to save me.
• 34:31
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: What would that advisor tell me to do?
• 34:39
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: This reframes the entire dynamic.
• 34:43
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The doubt is no longer a personal attack.
• 34:46
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It's a strategic prompt.
• 34:49
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It transforms vague anxiety into a clear action plan.
• 34:55
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: So for I don't think our marketing strategy will scale, the protocol would generate questions like, what specific part of the strategy feels weak?
• 35:09
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: What data could I gather in the next 48 hours to either prove or disprove this?
• 35:16
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Could I run a small cheap experiment to test this channel's scalability?
• 35:23
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Who are three smart people I could talk to who have scaled marketing beyond this point?
• 35:32
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: What would an alternative strategy look like?
• 35:36
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Suddenly, the nebulous cloud of anxiety has been converted into a concrete to-do list.
• 35:44
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: This is the ultimate act of befriending doubt.
• 35:48
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: You're literally putting it to work.
• 35:51
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: You are making your doubt your co-stratist.
• 35:56
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: This approach turns doubt from a corrosive force that eats away at your confidence into a generative energy that sharpens your ideas.
• 36:10
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Stress testing your plans before you waste time and money is absolutely embodiment of using imposter syndrome as a superpower.
• 36:24
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: For years I believed the path to success was a relentless climb towards a peak of perfect.
• 36:34
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: For years I believed the path to success was a relentless climb towards a peak of perfect.
• 36:42
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Unshakable confidence.
• 36:44
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I thought the goal was to become a version of myself that was fearless and flawless.
• 36:50
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I was wrong.
• 36:52
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: That wasn't just the wrong goal, it was a destructive one.
• 36:57
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The energy I spent fighting my own mind was the very energy I needed to build my company.
• 37:06
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The battle was the poison.
• 37:09
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The great paradigm shift of my career was realizing that doubt isn't the enemy.
• 37:16
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Unquestioning certainty is.
• 37:19
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: That feeling of being an imposter, as uncontrollable as it is, is often a sign that you are growing, that you are challenging yourself, and that you are self-aware enough to know you don't have all the answers.
• 37:37
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It's a feature, not a bug.
• 37:41
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Embracing this doesn't mean letting doubt paralyze you.
• 37:46
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It means learning to distinguish the signal from the noise.
• 37:51
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It means using doubt as a catalyst to prepare more thoroughly, a tool to remain humble, and a diagnostic signal to pressure test your assumptions.
• 38:06
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It's about building a stack of undeniable proof to ground you when your feelings run wild.
• 38:14
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It's about learning to act with courage in the presence of doubt, not waiting for it to vanish.
• 38:22
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The goal isn't to never feel like an imposter again.
• 38:27
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I still have moments where that old voice creeps back in.
• 38:32
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The difference is that now.
• 39:27
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Not because you know everything, but because you've proven to yourself time and time again that you can learn anything.
• 39:37
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: So my question to you is this what is one doubt you've been fighting for?
• 39:43
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And what is one small step you could take this week to befriend it instead?
• 39:51
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Share your experience in the comments below.
• 39:54
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Reading each other's stories is how we remember that we are not alone in this feeling.
• 40:01
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Your story might be the evidence someone else needs to see today.
• 40:08
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Thank you so much for joining us on this episode of the show.
• 40:12
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Thumbs up, like, follow, subscribe, share, reshare, repost, uh, word of mouth.
• 40:20
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: If you don't have your phone now already, grab your phone, share the Voices for Voices podcast with 25, 50, 100, maybe 200 contacts, 200 connections.
• 40:33
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: We'd love that.
• 40:35
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: We have a big goal, and we can't do it without you.
• 40:39
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And we want to thank you for making Voices for Voices what it is today.
• 40:44
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: We would not be here today if it wasn't for you.
• 40:47
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Thank you very much.
• 40:49
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: So until next time, let's celebrate all the voices in the world and let's be a voice for not only ourselves, but maybe somebody else in need that could use a little bit of help sharing their voice.
• 41:05
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: We'll see you next time.
• 41:06
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Bye-bye for now.