Here’s something no one tells you about scaling a service-based business: imposter syndrome doesn’t go away when you get better clients. It actually gets worse.
When you’re just starting out, you’re wondering if you’re good enough at your skill. But when you start going after premium clients? Now you’re wondering who the heck you are to work with someone more successful than you.
That little mean girl voice in your head will tell you every possible stinking reason why you’re not qualified, why you should lower your price, why you should stay in your lane, why you’re not prepared or ready enough to take on that client.
Today, I’m gonna show you how to take that mean girl voice and tell her to get the heck outta Dodge. Because you are more ready than you think, and the only way you’re gonna be able to move into working with better clients is if we fix how we think about ourselves.
Why Premium Client Imposter Syndrome Hits Different
Let’s call out the elephant in the room and actually give a name to this type of imposter syndrome. There’s regular imposter syndrome (the “am I actually good at my job” kind that most of us deal with at some point), and then there’s premium client imposter syndrome.
This version sounds a little bit more like this:
“Who am I to charge $5K when half my clients don’t even spend $5K a month on ads?”
“How can I help them scale to seven figures when I don’t even know what that looks like for myself?”
“They have a team of 10 people. I’m trying to manage dinners and laundry between client work.”
“They’ve worked with big-name ad managers everyone knows, and I’m just me. No one knows my name.”
“What if I’m not good enough? What if their other ad manager did better?”
Does anyone else feel seen right now?
Here’s why this version hits different than the regular “am I good at my job” imposter syndrome: It’s not just about your skill anymore. It’s about your worth. It’s about how you view yourself. It’s about your permission slip.
It’s the voice in your head saying, “Stay in your lane. Work with people at your level. Don’t get too big for your britches.”
And the lie underneath all of that? You need to be at their level to serve them.
The Lie We Tell Ourselves About Premium Clients
I don’t know why we get stuck in our heads that to work with a million-dollar business, we also have to be doing a million-dollar business ourselves.
Most of the execs at Coca-Cola don’t make the same amount Coca-Cola does. But for some reason in the online space, we feel like we have to be at a certain level in order to work with clients at that same level.
There’s this underlying lie that you need to be at a certain level to serve them, or you need to have worked with certain clients in order to serve them, or you need to be spending X amount on ad spend per month to serve them.
Let me tell you the truth, though: They don’t need you to match their tax bracket. They need you to solve their specific problem and get them ridiculously good results.
A marriage therapist doesn’t need to be married. The football coach for the Super Bowl team doesn’t need to be playing football. The business coach doesn’t need to run your type of business. The ad manager doesn’t need to be running ads and posting on social media.
You’re not hired to be their peer. You’re hired to be their expert.
But your brain does not care about logic. When you’re sitting on that sales call with someone making $100K-$200K months, shouting out all these big numbers, you’re thinking, “Oh my gosh, I am so out of my league.”
So let’s talk about why this happens and what to do about it.
The Truth About Why Imposter Syndrome Gets Worse When You Scale
Here’s what I need you to understand: If you’re feeling this premium client imposter syndrome, it means you’re growing.
Your brain is literally trying to keep you in safe, familiar territory because familiar feels safe, even when familiar means playing small.
When you start positioning yourself for bigger clients, your brain goes into overdrive, collecting evidence against you:
“You haven’t had a million-dollar year. How can you help someone get there?”
“You don’t have a team. How can you help manage theirs?”
“You still have money stress. What makes you think you can charge premium prices?”
And listen, I get it. This hit me like a ton of bricks back in 2019.
My Story: When the Ad Guru Asked Me to Run His Ads
The ad guru that everyone knew, the person who literally taught me how to run ads, asked me to run his ads.
Y’all. I was like, what the actual heck?
This person taught me how to run ads, and now he wants me to run HIS ads. I had all the feels. Every single imposter syndrome thought you could imagine just flooded in.
“Who the heck am I to do this? I’m not gonna be as good as he is. Like, he taught me. What if I royally mess this up and he never talks to me again? I don’t have enough experience. He has so much more experience than me, and this is gonna be big budget, the biggest budgets I’ve ever worked with.”
I got so in my head. And at the same time, I was excited, but SO in my head. I never got so in my head working with a client before.
Spoiler alert: I said yes, of course. I’m not gonna give up that opportunity, even though I was terrified.
But it affected my work because I was so stressed that I was gonna mess up. I was second-guessing everything I was doing.
But you know what? Even with all that, I did the dang thing anyway. And I was so good at it. Like, really, really good results. Y’all, better results than I could imagine.
And then he referred me to his friends, and then I got even bigger clients, and a whole new world of doors opened up to me because I took a chance on myself.
But I almost said no because that little mean girl in my head was telling me I wasn’t ready.
Real Results: What Happens When You Push Through
I see this happen all the time in Strategist Society. They have one-on-one Voxer access to me, so I get the nitty gritty, the raw and real moments of what’s going on.
We have a student (we’ll call her E) who took on a big client recently, and she was so in her head because the ad manager she was replacing was well known in the industry.
Someone even told her, “Good luck doing better than him.”
What the what? So now, not only do you have imposter syndrome, you have outward validation of that little mean girl in your head. Can you imagine? Thanks for the vote of confidence, friend.
But you know what she’s doing? She took on the client, and she’s totally crushing it. She’s getting better results than he did. The client’s blown away, so happy. She’s looking more confident in her skills every day, and it’s opening up doors for bigger and better clients because now she’s become a referral machine.
But if she had listened to that voice in her head that said, “You’re not ready for this. You can’t do better than this other ad manager,” she would’ve missed all of it.
So here’s the reframe I need you to hear: Imposter syndrome is not a sign that you’re not ready. It’s a sign that you’re stretching. It’s a sign that you’re growing into the next version of yourself.
And you don’t have to wait until the feeling goes away to do the thing. You do the dang thing, then the confidence comes.
6 Practical Strategies to Overcome Premium Client Imposter Syndrome
Alright, you got my pep talk. Let’s get practical, though, because you can’t just positive-affirm your way out of imposter syndrome. You need actual strategies.
1. Collect Evidence of Your Expertise
I’m talking testimonials, case study results you’ve gotten for clients. Put them somewhere you can see them.
When the voice tells you you’re not qualified, you need the receipts that say otherwise.
We keep a whole Slack channel where I’m always screenshotting wins. We have Strategist Society and Conversions for Clients channels, and whenever someone is posting their wins and saying, “Oh my gosh, Brandi, I couldn’t have done this without you,” we drop them in there.
So when I have a student who comes and says, “I purchased this, and it wasn’t worth it” (because we all have that when we’re enrolling hundreds of people), I can go back to that evidence.
You may have all these clients with great results, and then one client comes, and they’re unhappy, and you think everyone’s unhappy, and then you start doubting your skills.
We need to have that evidence of our expertise.
I like to keep mine in Slack. Maybe you keep yours on your desktop in a folder. We have one Strategist Society member who keeps everything in actual physical folders (she knows who she is if she’s listening).
Whenever you’re feeling those doubts or before you get on a sales call, read through it. It’s a confidence booster, and it will help you so much on those days when you’re feeling down.
Because we could have a hundred testimonials and one negative comment, we will focus on that one negative comment rather than the hundred good testimonials.
2. Study Your Dream Client’s Language and Problems
Not to fake it, but to genuinely understand their world.
Join communities where they hang out. Follow them on social media. Read their content. Listen to their podcasts.
The more you understand their actual problems, the less you’ll feel like an outsider trying to break in. You’ll understand what their business is, what they’re doing. You’ll have more knowledge.
While you’re on your walking pad, while you’re outside walking, while you’re lifting weights, put some of their podcasts in your ears. Listen to what they’re talking about. What are the pain points their clients are having?
The more you can understand the audience you wanna reach and what they’re doing, the less that imposter syndrome voice kicks in.
If you’re looking for tactical strategies on attracting premium clients as a service provider, check out conversionsforclients.com, where I break down my exact framework.
3. Start Before You’re Ready
I know, I know, I know. It’s terrifying.
But the confidence doesn’t show up first. The action shows up first, then the confidence follows.
Update your website to speak to premium clients even if you haven’t landed that premium client yet. Set your prices for the clients you WANT to work with, not the clients you have. Pitch yourself for opportunities that feel slightly out of reach.
We’re done playing small. We’re gonna position for where you’re going, not where you’ve been.
Just like I was telling you about E, her confidence is there now because she’s getting the results with that premium client. If she didn’t have that premium client, she wouldn’t have realized how freaking awesome she is. She had to get that client in order to see that.
4. Get in Rooms with People Ahead of You
Masterminds, group coaching programs, communities, in-person networking, live events. Wherever your dream clients are hanging out.
When you’re around people at that level regularly, they stop feeling like such a misalignment with who you’re working with. You start seeing them as humans with problems instead of these people we give guru status to or put on pedestals.
They become not so untouchable. They’re like, now you’re friends.
Some of my best clients I’ve landed from being on podcasts, in rooms, masterminds, and live events. Because they get to know you, they see you’re a real person, and then you see they’re a real person. It takes away all the scaries that we have when we get on those sales calls because we’ve interacted with them.
We know they put their pants on the same way as we do.
5. Separate Your Skill from Your Story
You can be broke and brilliant. You can be building your own business and still be an expert at your craft.
Your skill is your skill. It exists independently from your bank account, from your business revenue, from your business model, or from how many Instagram followers you have.
An ad manager who gets 3X ROAS is an ad manager who gets 3X ROAS, whether you’re making $5K a month or $50K a month.
Your skill and your story (or your numbers) are not related in any way. Don’t worry about how many Instagram followers you have, how much you’re making a month, how many clients you have, or how many big-name clients, none of that matters.
What matters is that you get your clients ridiculously good results.
Your skill and your story are separate.
6. Practice “Act As If” Positioning
You hear a lot of people talk about “fake it till you make it.” I don’t like that. I don’t think we should be faking anything.
So act as if. Your website, your pricing, your sales call, your email signature, how you show up at events: position yourself as if you already work with premium clients.
Not in a “fake it till you make it” type of way, but in a “this is who I’m becoming” way.
Because if your message says “beginner-friendly” and “affordable,” you are never gonna attract champagne clients, even if you’re talented enough to serve them.
We wanna act as if we’re already working with the clients we’re dreaming about.
What to Do When Imposter Syndrome Shows Up on Sales Calls
Here’s the thing nobody warns you about: You can do all the mindset work, collect all the evidence, update all your messaging, and imposter syndrome is still going to show up.
Especially on sales calls.
You’re gonna get on a Zoom, and someone’s gonna say, “I wanna spend $50K a month,” and your brain is going to scream, “ABORT, ABORT, ABORT. What are you thinking? This is not a client for you.”
And it’s gonna spiral: “They’re gonna find out I don’t know what I’m doing. I should lower my prices. Maybe I’m just not actually qualified for this.”
Here’s what you do: Pause. Breathe. And remember, they’re on this call because they have a problem you can solve. That’s it.
They didn’t hop on this call to audit your resume or your background or your life story. They hopped on this call to see if you can help them.
When you start spiraling, I want you to remember:
“I’m not being interviewed. I’m interviewing them. They already wanna work with me, and now I’m gonna show them what that process looks like. This is about finding out their problem and seeing if I can solve it.”
You don’t have to have worked with a client just like them in order to solve their problem. Chances are you have every skill you need, even if you don’t think you do.
Here’s the secret: At the end of the day, the only thing they care about is if you can get them results.
So stop trying to prove you’re successful enough to work with them on these calls. Start showing them you understand their problems and you have a process to fix them. That’s all they actually care about.
The Mindset Shift That Changes Everything
Stop asking yourself, “Am I good enough for them?”
Start asking, “Can I solve their specific problem?”
Because premium clients aren’t hiring you to be their peer. They’re hiring you to be the expert in one thing.
The doctor doesn’t need to have cancer to treat cancer patients, right? The Olympic coach doesn’t need to have gold medals to train a gold medalist.
You don’t have to have a perfect business to help someone run ads. You don’t need to be making seven figures to help someone build their systems for their seven-figure business.
You’re not selling your life experience. You’re selling your skill and your process.
Here’s Your Permission Slip
You can not have it all figured out and still be brilliant. Heck, you can be broke and brilliant. You can be building and still be an expert.
Where you are in your business journey does not determine your ability to serve someone in theirs.
You’re ready even when you don’t feel like it. And every single person who’s ever scaled past their comfort zone felt exactly what you’re feeling right now.
The only difference? They did it anyway.
If you’re still sitting here thinking, “Okay, Brandi, I hear you. I know I need to push through this, but I still don’t know how to position myself so that premium clients actually see me as the obvious choice. I don’t know what to say, where to show up, how to build the authority without a huge audience or a perfect business”…
That’s exactly why I created my From Chasing to Chosen workshop.
This is where I walk you through the exact framework for becoming the go-to expert in your space, the person premium clients seek out and are ready to pay well.
We’re covering:
- How to position yourself for the clients you actually want.
- How to build authority even when imposter syndrome is screaming at you.
- How to create messaging that makes champagne clients say, “Finally, someone gets me.”
Grab your spot at brandimowles.com/chasing. This workshop is available on demand.
If you know that imposter syndrome is the thing standing between you and the business you actually want, this is your invitation to work through it with support instead of white-knuckling it alone.
Listen, you’re more ready than you think you are.
That client who feels too big? You can serve them.
The price that feels too high? You’re worth it.
The opportunity that feels out of reach? It’s not.
The only difference between you and the version of you working with premium clients is that she decided to do it scared.
So go do the dang thing. I believe in you.
Want more strategies for scaling your service-based business without the hustle? DM me on Instagram @brandimowles with the word “PREMIUM” and let’s chat about your next steps.
This post was inspired by an episode of the Serve Scale Soar podcast. Want to dive deeper into strategies for service providers? Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.
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Meet Brandi
Brandi Mowles is the host of the Serve Scale Soar® podcast which is a podcast dedicated to helping service-based entrepreneurs scale their online business to five-figure months so they can soar into six-figure years. Brandi is a wife, mom and in less than one year, created a six-figure business. Now she is spilling all her secrets so you can too.
