This week I'm pleased to welcome to the show author & keynote speaker, Kris Kelso.
He recently released his book, Overcoming The Impostor: Silence Your Inner Critic and Lead With Confidence, an excellent resource for anyone, but especially high achievers.
Kris & I were both featured on The B2B Hour in March, followed by a panel discussion on entrepreneurship & the internal dialogue. It's a discussion worthy of many hours of attention, and this week we'll add a few more drops into the bucket towards success.
Tune in for this energetic conversation at TalkRadio.nyc or watch the Facebook Livestream by clicking here.
Jeremiah introduces his message of the week, and the topic of the week how to strengthen one’s mindset, as well as today’s guest Kris Kelso, the author of the book Overcoming The Imposter: Silence Your Inner Critic and Lead With Confidence. Kris explains what imposter syndrome is, that it is when someone overvalues the accomplishments and success of other people, and undervalues their own accomplishments and success. Jeremiah and Kris talks about how imposter syndrome is much more common than people believe it to be, and many people who suffer from imposter syndrome are high achievers who push themselves beyond their limits to achieve success. Jeremiah connects this to his own martial arts training and how he has learned through training that you have to become your own personal cheerleader, and even if you are not at the level you want to be and fail, with continued practice and training you will succeed and reach that level. Jeremiah also explains her personal experience with imposter syndrome and how it has manifested for him through small battles on the day to day that even though they seem small, are constant battles. Kris explains how many confident entrepreneurs, like Jeremiah, don't realize they have imposter syndrome often because it manifests itself through small battles instead of full on self doubt. Kris explains how imposter syndrome is not a syndrome in a clinical sense, but rather a pattern of thinking that can hold you back unless you don’t let it control and dominate your thinking.
Jeremiah and Kris discuss how in short doses of imposter syndrome as a positive sign, as a sign to lean into a situation causing the imposter syndrome, and that the situation can be an opportunity if used correctly to gain confidence in the situation. The two discuss how Kris recognized a pattern whenever he felt the effects of imposter syndrome the most, it was during a pivotal moment of his career, and that feeling is a sign that something really awesome is happening. Kris continues to explain how whenever he gets that feeling of imposter syndrome gets him excited now, because it means that something good is on the horizon. Jeremiah and Kris discuss Kris’ journey and process to writing his book, and how Kris originally wasn’t a fan of writing, but after writing an article on the same topic that gained a lot of traction, he realized that this is a topic that he could write and talk about that continuously positively impacts his audiences. Kris continues to explain how the book was a bit of the pandemic project, how even though he signed the contract for the book before the Covid-19 pandemic, he was able to utilize the time he gained through the lockdown to complete the book in a timely manner.
The two talk about the book writing process, and how even though Jeremiah is interested in it, he realizes the amount of work that needs to go into making one. They continue to talk about Kris’ personal experience with Imposter Syndrome, and when he first learned about it, from an executive coach who was sharing an anecdote. Kris explains how hearing about Imposter Syndrome really resonated with him, after he completed some research on it, he realized how much he was suffering from it. Jeremiah and Kris continue on to discuss how Kris ended up in Nashville, Jeremiah’s hometown, and how Kris first moved to Nashville because of the music industry and that he wanted to get into record production there. The two reminisce about Nashville, and the environment of Nashville in the past, and how it is currently a hub for entrepreneurship. They continue to talk about the term “entrepreneur” itself, and how when they first started as entrepreneurs they didn’t understand what that word actually meant, and originally thought of it as an insult, even though it was quite the opposite. Jeremiah explains how for him, being a creative has always been helpful for him in starting his own businesses, and Kris agrees saying that being creative in an art sense is a similar skill for being creative in business, that it is just in a different domain.
The two discuss how publishing the book is almost the same as running a business, and how that is how Kris has been viewing the publishing process recently, specifically through marketing. Kris explains how he has a group coaching session and online course that he is developing related to the book, and how the book has become his third business. Jeremiah and Kris discuss hybrid publishing, and how that is the option that Kris decided to go with to publish his book. Kris explains that in traditional publishing, the publisher puts up the cost to print and distribute the book, as you sell the rights to the book to them and receive a royalty based off of the sales. He also explains how self publishing is the opposite end of the spectrum, where you do everything in the publishing process by yourself. But, in hybrid publishing is the inversion of traditional publishing as Kris hired a publishing company to produce the book, while he still retains the rights to the book. Kris endorses hybrid publishing for anyone who wants to publish a book but isn’t very knowledgeable on the producing process of publishing a book. The two also discuss the different mediums of books, and which medium sells the most in Kris’ case, as physical books sell the most for him, as the digital avenues are highly controlled and difficult to break into, even though he does make many sales off of digital copies of the book. He also explains how in the future he is aiming to create an audiobook version of the book.
