Tl;dr: I’m afraid of starting anything that could have a true impact, because of fears of gaining bad reputation or bad first impressions. Help.
I’m 26 years old, have a bit above 3 years of work experience, and I want to start some businesses and other ideas. I work in R&D for a very niche field in FinTech, and I’m a subject matter expert despite my modest years of experience. (I have knowledge in it non-professionally for a decade)
Due to my position, I’ve been able to connect on LinkedIn with a lot of different and highly impactful people around the world. I know a lot would think linkedin is a meme, but I landed this career out of linkedin, and I’ve had many interesting conversations with interesting people over it too where I got invaluable insights.
Now, there are some stuff I want to launch, and will only gain traction if I leverage my name/experience in its marketing. However, I don’t think I’d be able to launch it solo, in a totally professional manner, without mistakes, that could ruin the first impressions I could have with the people (who could make it or break it) whom I’m connected with on LinkedIn.
I’m not talking about spamming them, but just appearing in their feed as low-quality, or perhaps needing to get in touch with someone for a partnership and look like I don’t know what I’m doing.
There is definitely some cognitive errors I’m making here that I need help with sorting out. Any idea on how to go from here?
You may make mistakes, and that’s okay. You may say the wrong thing. You might look low quality. You might appear to not know what you’re doing. That’s all fine. Just get started. Imposter Syndrome is SUPER common for us founders and entrepreneurs, and sometimes gets worse before it gets better.