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Writer's pictureBill Petrie

I Am a Fraud

We all are - until we aren’t.


If you follow me on social media, then you know I love spending my Saturdays in my backyard smoking all manner of meat, veggies, eggs, and, on occasion, ice for smoked cocktails. Yes, I smoke ice for cocktails, but I digress.


Affectionally called “the Back Forty,” my backyard is my happy place to relax, refresh, and recharge. However,  when I started smoking meat, it was damn awful as it was often over-smoked and almost always tough as a stray piece of leather. Frankly, it was inedible, and while I enjoyed the process, I was an absolute hack as a cook. However, I learned from each wretched piece of pork, beef, and chicken, and over time, I got better. After over a decade of trying to perfect being a pitmaster, friends, and family now ask me to cook for them. While I still have so much to improve on when cooking low and slow, I feel I’m pretty good at the art of barbecue. Even so, I still remember how much I felt like a phony when I started smoking food for the first time in 2014.


When starting any new venture – a job, landing a new client, or even a business – it’s simultaneously exciting and terrifying. If you’ve ever been bold enough to start a business, launch a new product, or build a website, you already know that creating something from, quite literally, nothing is one of the most challenging things to undertake. It’s at this point of inception that we feel our most fraudulent. Often, the mantra of “fake it until you make it” is derided as something to be ashamed of, and, to me anyway, that’s flat-out wrong.


There’s a boldness in “faking it until you make it.” When doing anything for the first, it’s almost a guarantee it won’t be good, let alone great. It takes time, effort, and learning from the inevitable mistakes. Candidly, faking it until making it is a theme that has permeated my career:


  • How did I get good at formulating marketing strategy? I developed a lot of terrible campaigns, but I kept working on my craft.

  • How did I get good at branding and graphic design? I made some genuinely cringe-worthy projects, but I learned how to translate the visions I had in my head into something tangible.

  • How did I get good at speaking in front of people? I stumbled through more speeches than I can recall, but I kept talking in public.

  • How did I get good at writing? I wrote some pedestrian and dull blogs, but I kept writing and sharing.

  • How did I get good at podcasting? I recorded some awful podcasts – complete with both “speed talk” and “high voice,” but I continued to record until I was truly comfortable with the medium.


The key to the above is that I didn’t stop when I was a fraud. I kept going, learned from every failure, and pushed forward until I was good at those things. We all have some semblance of “imposter syndrome.” Hell, to this day, I still have it in the moments before I give a keynote – it’s part of the human condition. The only way to find success, however, is to push past that feeling of being a fraud so you have the opportunity to become more.


When I undertake something new, I know that I'm a bit of a fraud. However, I remember that no one else knows what they’re doing either.

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