How To Make Impostor Syndrome Your Friend

The six figure home studio. Episode 72

the six figure home studio podcast, the number one resource for running a profitable home recording studio. Now your host, Brian and Chris Brand. Hey guys, welcome to the six figure

your home studio podcast. I'm Chris Graham. Brian is on his honeymoon traveling Europe. He'll be home soon. I miss him more than you guys do. I assure you today though, I am going to try something a little new. I am going to try to do a solo podcast. I have something I want to share with you guys. I have a thought that's been on my mind that I think would be healthy for us as a community to work through, to think about and to ponder, and that's this idea that imposter syndrome can actually be our friend. So you're working on a project, you're making something and you're mixing something. You're recording something, you're writing a song, and all of a sudden this nasty little voice in the back of your head says one of three things. You're not a real fill in. The blank. Could be songwriter, mix engineer, mastering engineer, producer, whatever.

Number two might be you don't measure up. And number three, the third possible lie that I typically see and experience myself is you don't belong, you're not one of them. These are the three lies of imposter syndrome. These are interesting to me because I believe they're a false premise and a false premise is a statement that you make where the very underlying logic just completely makes it irrelevant. And let me explain that a little bit. Imposter Syndrome is kind of like a middle school bully for most of us. I'm sure all of us. Audio nerds. Middle School was a weird time. Middle School is rough because bullies love to make themselves feel bigger by making other people feel smaller. And in my middle school there was a particular insult. They got really popular with the bullies and they just loved to level kids with this. It was a false premise insult and I'm going to deliver it for you guys.

I'm not comfortable saying this on the mic because it's disgusting, but I think for us to understand how insidious and toxic and evil imposter syndrome is, I think we need a good illustration of what a false premise and salt is. So here it goes. So the middle school bully walks up to the other kid, typically smaller than him, and he says this nasty thing. He says, Hey, have you told your mom you're gay? The kid that's being picked on with typically respond by saying no and then the bully will come back and retort, oh my gosh, you're gay. You just haven't told your mom yet. I wish I could go back in time and smack these bullies across the face for at least two reasons. The first is one of my best friends is gay and I've known him for a very, very, very long time and to hear more about his story from when he was young, from when he was in this middle school with me, it's really frustrating to imagine someone talking like that to him.

The second reason is for a kid who's not gay, to hear this type of insult and to be pressured to respond either yes or no to a false premise is really frustrating. It's challenging for this kid because the false premise is based on a false dichotomy. A false dichotomy is when you say, hey, you can either choose between option a or option B, there is no option C so this entire insult is based on a trick and the trick is getting the victim to believe that it's a yes or no question, that it's either option a or option B and that there is no option c the right come back to that. And it was so rare, but so satisfying to see a kid come back and say, actually if you told your mom that no one likes you at our school cause you're an asshole or something like that, not many kids were fast enough to come up with that sort of insult to give back to the bully and less, they had hardly heard this false premise bully tactic in the first place.

So I know this was kind of uncomfortable. I don't like talking like that on the podcast, but I think it's a really healthy thing for us to consider what a false premise and salt is so that we can understand the false premise insults that imposter syndrome put in our mind. And like I said before, there's several false premise and salts that imposter syndrome will deliver. They are, you're not a real mastering engineer. You don't measure up to other mix engineers or you don't belong with other producers. You don't fit in. You're not one of the cool crowd. And all of these are very interesting because they're not trying to crush you, they're trying to trick you and they're trying to get you to believe a false premise. Because let's talk about this. What does the insult, you are not a real fill in the blank actually mean it makes an assumption about what a real mix engineer or what a real producer or what it real recordings to do on her is.

So let's have that question. What is a real fill in the blank. If you take a moment and you think about who your favorite bands are. As an example, Adele, Mumford and sons, youtue, ACDC, led Zeppelin, the Beatles, okay. All of these artists, and some of you might want to argue with me on this, thank God it's a podcast, so I'm the only one with a Mike right now. All of these artists were unlike anyone who had ever come before them. They were all completely singular. There's never been anyone like them in the past that it will never be anyone like them in the future. And it's because they were so unique that they really got popular. And it's not that different from photographers, from movie directors, from producers, you name it. Anyone in the creative arts that blows up. It has a lot of success.

Did so because they were singular. No one had ever been like them before. So the false premise insult, if you're not a real producer, is problematic because what the heck is a real producer? A real producer is somebody who has figured out who they are, how they're gifted, and has written their own ticket. They have forged their own path and have decided, I am me, I am the best version of myself and that's what I'm trying to do, not imitate other people and do a cheap, crappy imitation of some other hero of mine. That's the issue with imposter syndrome. It's a false premise. The idea that you don't measure up, measure up to what? What are you talking about? Every single person that's ever been successful has done so by being completely unique and being unmeasurable against other people. This idea of you don't belong, don't belong to what.

This is super fascinating to me because it gets at the false premise here of what is real mean, what is don't measure up mean what does you don't belong? All of these things are irrelevant to our industry as creatives. There's this great quote and one of my favorite books. This book is called Mere Christianity and it's by Cs Lewis and I don't mean to bring like religion or anything here. That's definitely not my intent. If that makes you feel weird, that's not my intent. I'm not trying to make this into some sort of weird evangelism episode. While Brian's gone, but the idea in this book that I love is there's a quote how monotonously alike. All the great tyrants and conquers have been how gloriously different all the saints. So the idea here is what cs Lewis is saying is that the Hitlers, the Mussolini's, the Stalin's have all basically been the same.

They've all been alike in many, many, many ways. But when you look at the saints, when you look at the Mother Teresa's and the Apostle Paul's and that people like this, they are all totally different. They all have swag. They all have this completely unique way of carrying themselves. They all have their own idiosyncrasies and it's these idiosyncrasies that set them apart and make them unique because cs Lewis has argument here is that these saints are trying to be the truest version of themselves, not a real leader, not someone who belongs to the club, not somebody who measures up to other leaders that have come before. When you get imposter syndrome, what's happening is imposter syndrome is trying to make you like everyone else. It wants to take what makes you unique, what makes you distinct, what makes you special and remove it and get you to just imitate everybody else.

There's a freaking so many problems with this. The first problem is we don't want to be like other people were musicians were audio engineer's we're creators. We got into it because we liked having something different and amazing to say that nobody had ever said before. That's our job as record makers is to help people say something that's never been said in a way that's never been said before. What is so awesome about this is that when you get imposter syndrome, it's an opportunity. It's a gift to remind you that you are unique. You've been created special. There's never been anyone like you. They will never be anyone like you ever again. You have unique gifts and the challenge of finding your niche is figuring out what makes you different, what makes you special and leaning all the way into that and that's how you fight imposter syndrome.

When Imposter Syndrome says you are not good enough, you don't measure up, you are not a real fill in the blank. You don't belong. When that happens, it should remind you, yeah, I'm different. I'm special. And because of that I'm going to be able to find a niche and do something nobody else is doing and build an amazing business. So when you have imposter syndrome, be grateful, be thankful and take a moment to pause and to not fight it by saying, yes I am or no, I'm not. Because it's a false premise. And the premise is that there's such a thing as a real producer, there's such a thing as a real mix engineer. All of us have made it up. Everyone who's ever been great at this as completely made up some weird way that they work and some weird aesthetic that they're into that eventually got popular.

So this is super interesting stuff and I think it's really liberating to think about, well, imposter syndrome is going to come at you again. And when it does, it's an opportunity to recenter yourself and to think about, man, I don't want to be like everyone else in my industry. I want to be gloriously different. I want people to come to me because they want to work with me, not because I do a pretty good impersonation of somebody else. Does that make sense? Guys? I'm freaking pumped about this and I don't want to go too long on this episode because I don't want to dilute what I'm saying here. I don't want to say a bunch of other stuff that makes the point that I'm trying to make your smaller. So the take home for you guys is when you get imposter syndrome, use it as an opportunity to recenter yourself and to say, I disagree with the premise of the insult, Mr Imposter Syndrome.

I really do think that most of the great art that could have come out that didn't, didn't come out because of imposter syndrome. There are so many artists that want to work with you right now. They want to make a record with you, but they have so much imposter syndrome that they can't even consider making a record. There are so many artists out there who have great songs, who have some great stuff to say, but who have not hired a producer or a mix engineer or recording studio because they struggle with imposter syndrome so much. If we as a community can get behind killing imposter syndrome, there's going to be more records that come out, more songs, more artists. You guys are going to have more projects to work on because imposter syndrome isn't just your enemy. It's musicians enemy as well. It's your customers enemy and recognizing that and having open dialogues about this stuff that, hey, sometimes I hear this weird voice in the back of my head and it tells me I'm not good enough.

This is weird and awkward. Do you feel that way too? Let's try to get some dialogue going about this imposter syndrome thing because there are so many great records that have never gotten made because an artist struggle with imposter syndrome. They started working on the songs and they heard that nasty little voice June. In a real song writer, you're not a real singer. You don't measure up to other musicians, eternal belong. You're not one of the cool kids. Musicians are struggling with the exact same thing and what we need to communicate to them as audio engineers, as the people who are facilitating making records, the change the world is that voice is full of crap man. It's a false premise. You as an artist are unique. There's never been someone who sounds just like you ever. There never will be ever again. There's never been anyone that's written the songs that you're writing and there never will be ever again.

That's exciting. And it's the big thing that holds artists back from hiring someone to help them make a record. So let's lift each other up. Let's focus on having an open dialogue about imposter syndrome and let's just recognize that we all struggle with it. And the craziest people among us are the ones who struggle with it the least. And it's something that we can use as inspiration. Something that we can experience and say, you know what? I hear you little mister imposter syndrome lie. I appreciate the reminder that my job is to become the truest version of myself. My job is to be

be singular. So last point here, guys, if you have friends who are audio engineers, who are musicians who struggle with imposter syndrome, would you share it

this episode with them? If you're in the apple podcast app, in the lower right hand corner, there's three little dots, click on that and there's a share episode link. Please share it with your friends and stay tuned for another episode next Tuesday. I love you guys. Have a great day. Bye Bye.

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