Which One Are You? (There are 5 types)

Here’s the thing about impostor syndrome that nobody tells you: it doesn’t go away when you get more successful. Sometimes it gets louder.

I know this because I’ve been coaching for over 15 years. Most days, that experience is exactly what it should be, solid ground. I know what I’m doing with my clients.

But put me in front of a room, all eyes on me, and something else shows up.

It’s suspicion.

Do I actually know what I’m talking about?
Am I the right person for this?
That voice doesn’t care about my track record. It doesn’t care about my experience, my results, or the people whose lives I’ve genuinely changed. It just keeps moving the goalpost.

And it turns out, this is everywhere. I see it in nearly every client who sits across from me.

Angie and I were thinking about what topic would actually serve our clients right now. What book, what conversation, what kind of deep dive would be worth doing together? And we kept coming back to the same thing: impostor syndrome. Not because it’s trendy. Because it quietly runs underneath so much of what holds capable people back. (It even came up in our recent masterclass with Bower Himes where we talk about coaches using AI.)

That’s what led us to Dr. Valerie Young’s book, The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women: And Men. Full disclosure: this book’s been out for over a decade. Young has basically built an institute around this work and we’re only just now getting to it.

• The Perfectionist
• The Superwoman/Man
• The Expert
• The Soloist
• The Natural Genius

Which one stopped you?

Dr. Young calls these “competence types” the unconscious rules each of us has internalized for what it actually means to be good enough. Reading the descriptions alone had us itching to start. I read the list expecting to recognize one.

I recognized four.

The fifth – the Superwoman – I couldn’t even claim. (Get the book, read the description, you’ll see what I mean.) Apparently my impostor syndrome has impostor syndrome.

But looking at the other four, I noticed something. They all trace back to the same place for me:

I have to be perfect to be considered an expert. And since I’m never perfect, I’m never really an expert.

Of course this doesn’t apply to every area of my life or my whole coaching practice. Just the moments where I think I’m supposed to have every answer. Put me on a stage like I said earlier, with all eyes on me, and there’s the ‘impostor’.

If you’ve ever downplayed a win, avoided raising your hand, or stayed quiet in a room where you absolutely had something to say, I’d bet that belief is familiar to you too. The good news: this is a thinking pattern, not a personality trait. It can be interrupted. It can change. But first you have to see it clearly.

Which is exactly why Angie and I are kicking off our FREE SEAR Book Club and we want you with us.

Our first read is The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women: And Men by Dr. Valerie Young. We’re going into this one not just as coaches recommending a book to clients, but as two people who want to go deep on this topic so we can serve you and our clients better. And we know we will learn somethings about ourselves personally along the way! Because we believe you can only take someone as far as you’ve been willing to go yourself.

Start here: grab the book and start reading. We’ll be going live on our YouTube channel in September to discuss it together – sign up here for a reading guide and nudges along the way. Read along and join us live, or catch the recording whenever you’re ready. Either way, you’re in.

We’ll share the exact date soon. This is just the beginning. We're planning to do this quarterly, so there’s always going to be something worth reading and someone to read it with.

We’re not just recommending this book. We’re doing the work alongside you. And we can’t wait to see what shifts when we look at this together.