If You Think Everyone Else Has It Figured Out

By Tricia Scott. 

A couple of weeks ago, I went to London to record an episode of the excellent Lead Human podcast with Media Powerhouses Jack Myers and Tim Spengler, and one of the (many) things we talked about was something I think so many women in business carry: the belief that everyone else knows what they’re doing, and somehow we missed the memo.

You know the feeling.

You open LinkedIn, and apparently, everyone is scaling.
Everyone has a framework.
Everyone has a funnel.
Everyone has a six-step thought leadership methodology named after someone we’ve never heard of.

Meanwhile, we’re over here wondering whether sending that well invoice counts as CEO behaviour.

I know this already, of course, if you’ve been here a while, you’ll know this is actually how The Female CEO began. But in that conversation, I was really reminded that even the people we think have it all mapped out…are still working things out. We just don’t get to hear about it on Social Media.

Then, after patting myself on the back (of my new jacket for the occasion) and treating myself to a glass of champagne at St Pancras, I got stuck on a train home for eleven hours.

Eleven.

Hours.

Enough time to:

• question every life decision since 2009
• mentally (because everyone on that train was using the Wi-Fi to watch Netflix during the delay), redesign The Female CEO website for the hundredth time
• consider whether I could survive as a woman who bakes artisanal focaccia in southern Italy

But do you know what long delays and crappy WiFi are surprisingly good for?

Thinking.

The kind you don’t do when you’re flying from task to task, reacting to notifications and mistaking movement for progress. And what I kept coming back to was this: Maybe the women we admire most aren’t the ones who have it all figured out.

Maybe they’re the ones willing to keep moving without having it all figured out.

Because if I’ve learned anything after years of building, rebuilding, pivoting, overthinking, underpricing, launching things too early, launching things too late, and having more than one full existential crisis in Costa…It’s this:

Nobody is “there.”

There is no mystical moment when we receive a ‘This Is Your Life’ (remember that?) red-velvet folder marked ‘Congratulations, You Now Know Everything.’

There is only learning.

Adjusting.

Trying.

Asking questions.

Asking better questions.

Having awkward first, second and third drafts.

And continuing anyway.

That’s the work.

And don’t you think that's comforting? Because it means you are not behind. You are in process.

So if you’ve been assuming everyone else is more certain, polished, qualified or ready than you, allow me to save you the Neurofen. Some people are simply better at hiding the wobble.

That’s all.

And maybe, just maybe, the women worth listening to are the ones honest enough to admit the wobble exists because that’s where the real conversation lives.

Not in pretending, but in telling the truth, even if occasionally that truth is: “I have no idea what I’m doing, but I’m doing it from a tiny seat on a train stuck between two platforms with a £6 sandwich.”

You know what, I think that might just be peak entrepreneurship.

I believe in you (always).