Next week you are meeting the founders of a regional firm you have wanted in front of for two years. Your company is smaller than your deck suggests. The title on your card is two steps ahead of your payroll, and the story you have rehearsed about “our team” describes where you are headed more than where you are. The advice you keep getting is to look the part.
I have watched where that advice leads. One owner I worked with sent emails from an executive assistant who did not exist, so the operation would look staffed. Others bought the vehicles, the offices and the props of scale. Each believed the people upstairs would be impressed by the production.
Why do rooms at the top see through the act?
They can afford to verify, and they have had a lifetime of practice.
A person with a high level of resources can run a thorough background check and learn most of what there is to know about you before the second meeting. Most of the people who approach them want their money, power, position or fame, so they have heard just about every story. Your act is not new to them, and they have seen better productions of it.
There is a name for putting on the symbols of a group you hope will advance you, and the name is cosplay. A room that has been together for twenty years can tell where your symbols came from. Real ones are issued from the inside, so wearing the look earns no admission.
This is arithmetic, and the market runs on it. The people in that dining room hold assets, place capital, and choose who to do business with by who checks out. The deals that land in that room go to people who are verified and useful. Dressing as if you already belong spends the one asset you walked in with, which is being exactly who you say you are.
What do you do instead?
Enter at the true bottom of the group, as who you are, and say what is true.
“I’m not there yet, and here’s what I’m building” buys more trust in these rooms than any inflation will. I have walked into rooms full of real money in gym clothes, out of a car with two hundred thousand miles on it, and been taken more seriously than the person in the rented suit. In my experience, real money spots the imposter from across the room, and spots the real thing too. Be the part and skip the costume.
A saying of mine belongs here. It is better to be at the very bottom of the top than at the very top of the bottom.
Picture two pilots. One is the chief pilot of a small flying club, with the most hours on the roster, flying the same trainer in the same practice area for years. The other is the newest first officer at a regional airline, last on the seniority list, seated beside captains with ten times her hours and checked in the simulator every six months. The first pilot is comfortable and learns little. The second is stretched, and the comparison stings. Two years on, the first flies as he did, and the second flies like a captain. Her logbook is checked against FAA records, so every hour in it is real, which is how she earned the seat.
That is your meeting. They will check, the seat at the bottom costs some comfort, and the standards around you sit above your current level. Every room pulls its members toward its average. At the top of the bottom the average sits below where you want to be. At the bottom of the top it sits above, and the gravity of the room works for you.
A word on imposter syndrome, since it sits under all of this. In my experience, a lot of what gets called imposter syndrome in business rooms is a preparation gap between what you think you should know and who you are saying it to. Prepare, ask, say what you don’t know, or change the room.
What is true about you that you are not using?
More than you think, and four axes will show you.
The tool is from Chapter 19. You can use it freely. Weigh yourself on four axes, in the order people take you in.
- Perceived. How people see you through reflection. Appearance lands first.
- Positioned. How others read your relationship to power, influence and wealth, and whether that reading holds up.
- Possessions. What they think you could share, in any form: borrow, discount, give or connect.
- Passion. The drive that drives others, your dedication to something that closes the gap between their current state and their desired state.
Score each from one to five with a line of evidence. Without evidence, there is no score. Circle the strongest axis and lead with it, in front of peers who recognize and value it. Many people grind on their weakest axis and ignore a real advantage.
What can you do this week?
Run a verification pass on whatever you hand to a room.
- Pull up your bio, your website, your deck and your LinkedIn summary.
- Read each claim and ask whether it would survive a thorough background check. Strike each one that would not.
- Replace each with something you can document: a real number, a real project, a real stage.
- Write your true sentence for the next room up, with your real figures in it.
- Score the four axes with evidence, circle the strongest, and pick one room to enter at its bottom in the next ninety days.
If the meeting is next week, bring your real numbers and your true sentence.
The bottom of the top is a good seat to hold.
Chapter 19. Keep It Real at the Top of The Method Trap, by John “Jonyprofit” Whaley. One idea, one story, one assignment. About the book
The people in this story are composites drawn from nearly forty years across the table from owners, executives and professionals. Names, industries and numbers are changed.