Why I Stopped Caring About Imposter Syndrome

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The past 18 months have been a tumultuous exercise in becoming.

From standing on stages where my company was hosting a major event with some of the most powerful women in business in the country, to having people question whether I was really the founder when they met me, to sitting in rooms with founders and investors and quietly wondering if I was “tech founder” enough to be building Executiv.

Even the surprise people expressed at how much Executiv had grown in a short time started to mess with my head.

Why wouldn’t it grow?

All of it fed a familiar spiral that I knew too well. Doubt. Imposter syndrome.

To be honest, I got quite sick of that little voice in my head as it surfaced often and got louder and louder.

So, late last year I decided that imposter syndrome isn’t something I am going to carry into 2026.

The term itself is dated and needs a rebrand. It was coined in the late 1970s after psychologists studied high-achieving women who felt like frauds despite clear successes.

This was not because they lacked competence, but because they learned to attribute success to luck.

Research still shows that women in high-stakes environments experience these doubts because of the environment, not their ability.

Read that again. It is because of the environment, and not their ability.

That was the unlock for me.

I’m not an imposter. It is the environments I often I find myself in.

So, my head is playing games with me.

It was time to give my brain a new story.

I’m an experienced business leader leading a new business.

I have spent my entire career taking ideas from zero to one. I have led some of the most successful and iconic marketing campaigns in the country, won multiple national awards for my work, launched over 600 new products in Canada and the U.S. I have worked in every area of marketing from innovation, category, brand, social media, to performance and growth marketing, in B2C and B2B. The whole nine yards. I have even led e-commerce teams and businesses, owned P&Ls north of $500M, and carried KPIs tied to revenue, margin, and growth.

I am no imposter at building something from nothing and being accountable for lofty business goals with major constraints.

This time, I’m doing it without the safety net of a big company or an eight figure marketing budget behind me.

Okay, the challenge is a little tougher.

My skills didn’t disappear.
My experience didn’t reset.
My standards didn’t change. 

If you work with me, you know it is very much the same high standards as always.

What changed is that the risk is mine and so is the conviction.
I know how to build demand in the marketplace for something that is new and capture it.
I know how to create something people want and are willing to pay for.

I have done it on repeat. I have plenty of wins under my belt and a few failures as well that I learned from.

Yes, I have gaps in skills such sales, HR, and technical product development. But, many of the founders of some of the world’s most respected companies did as well.

So, moving forward, here’s what I am doing about my so-called imposter syndrome.

1. I renamed it.
I don’t call it imposter syndrome anymore. I call that feeling discomfort from growth. I am not an imposter. I am expanding and reaching for new goals that often put me in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people.

2. I anchor to evidence, not emotion.
This is key. I spent the last several weeks brainwashing myself (literally). I remind myself of the work I have done and the results I have delivered. Feelings fluctuate. Facts don’t.

Every degree, pivot, promotion, and chapter of my career led me here. Executiv is the culmination of all my skills, successes, failures, passions, and ambition finally coming together in the work I was meant to do.

I belong in the rooms I’m in. So do you. 😉 

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“Calling it imposter syndrome hides the fact that oppressive systems teach many of us to actively suppress and hate ourselves.

It is not imposter syndrome. It’s the consequences of oppression.”

Blair Imani