3 Lessons on Imposter Syndrome From Actual Imposters
If you love a great crime thriller, you’ve probably already heard of Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes, the Silicon Valley wunderkind called the ‘female Steve Jobs.’ Holmes became the youngest self-made (contested term, Kylie Jenner is NOT self-made, TYVM) female billionaire at 31, with a net worth of $4.5 billion. But her game-changing technology to make blood testing cheaper, faster, and easier, was revealed to be a fraud, and the fall-out that resulted included suicide, FBI investigations, and a trial by grand jury, resulting in her and her partner being charged with two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, nine counts of wire fraud and if convicted, they could each be in for 20 years and $250,000 in fines for each count!
Side note- The book released by the investigator who first published the story has already been sold for a movie adaptation with a screenplay by “The Shape of Water” co-writer Vanessa Taylor. Boom. Box office magic. I CANNOT WAIT. “The Shape of Water” includes one of the best female heist scenes in recent memory. Having also watched “Oceans 8” (disappointing), I am finding the uptick in female masterminds so exciting!
Forbes writer Matthew Herper describes Elizabeth Holmes as having a “grifter’s confidence.” When the product she had already sold to investors failed to materialize, she used what was commercially available on the market and sold it as her technology while she continued to try to build what she had sold them. When this was revealed by a reporter from the WSJ, his sources were stalked and intimidated by Theranos’s lawyers and private investigators.
Those of us who suffer from Imposter Syndrome are plagued by the idea that we don’t belong, that we’re not good enough, and that if anyone finds out, we’ll be ruined. Elizabeth Holmes seemed to experience none of this. It’s actually quite incredible. So what can we learn about Imposter Syndrome from Elizabeth Holmes, an actual imposter? What’s her secret? “I think she absolutely has sociopathic tendencies. One of those tendencies is pathological lying,” says John Carreyrou, author of Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup. “I think she’s someone that got used to telling lies so often, and the lies got so much bigger, that eventually the line between the lies and reality blurred for her.” So maybe your imposter syndrome just means that you’re not a sociopath and that you live in reality? I think that’s pretty good news!
Holmes is far from the only fraudster on the scene right now. Recently an Instagram post tagged from Riker’s Island was sent out from Anna Delvey’s now defunct account. Devley is the New York socialite-turned-entrepreneur that scammed friends and colleagues out of $275,000+ in the process of trying to raise money for an ‘art club.’ While the dollar amount pales in comparison to Holmes, what is so insidious about Delvey’s fraud was that she stole from people who really cared about her personally and were invested in her as a human, not just a company in an equity portfolio. (Whether she will be penalized for posting from prison is yet to be seen.)
Delvey had set out to build an art club inspired by ‘SoHo House,’ a group of private members’ clubs catering to wealthy investors and their groupies in the arts, fashion, and media. In 2012, a 60% share in the company was sold for around $330M, to give you an idea of its worth. Delvey’s club would have had locations in L.A., London, Hong Kong, and Dubai, with the flagship club in NYC, where she was trying to raise money. The opening was to include having the building wrapped by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, who she claimed, had already agreed. To open the first club, she was looking to raise $50M, as she told a Silicon Valley publicist. “If you think this is something you could help us with and have anyone in mind who would be a good cultural fit for this project…”
While she was working the scene to find investors for her club, she was traveling the globe, eating in some of the most posh restaurants, staying in expensive boutique hotels and throwing parties for her celebrity acquaintances. Doing it all with no money. She told people that she had a trust fund, she told them that she had access to massive amounts of cash, and slyly, she was able to look like she did. She would ‘borrow’ money from one friend to pay back another, sometimes in the range of tens of thousands of dollars. She convinced people to charter planes for her, throw her parties, send her to the Venice Biennale, and more. She was extremely generous in return, buying meals and clothes for friends, tipping with $100 bills. She was good.
But eventually she ran out of people from whom to borrow and those she owed, came knocking. She wrote two bad checks for $8,200 and deposited them in her account. She used the funds to take a trip to LA, where she was finally arrested in Malibu and brought back to New York facing six counts of grand larceny and attempted grand larceny, as well as theft of services. “During the course of my reporting, people kept asking: Why this girl? She wasn’t superhot, they pointed out, or super-charming; she wasn’t even very nice. How did she manage to convince an enormous amount of cool, successful people that she was something she clearly was not?” wrote journalist Jessica Pressler.
Judge Diane Kiesel rejected Delvey’s plea noting that she showed “little remorse” for her victims and seemed mostly to be concerned with the publicity rather than the damage she’d done. She’s got up to 15 years. Shonda Rhimes has purchased the rights to the piece and Delvey wants either Jennifer Lawrence and Margot Robbie to play her. Which will be better- Delvey’s movie or Holmes’s?!?
Psychologists Pauline Rose Clance & Suzanne Imes were the first to recognize Imposter Syndrome in their 1978 paper, “The Imposter Phenomenon in High Achieving Women: Dynamics and Therapeutic Intervention.” While Imposter Syndrome is not new, in the age of social media, it has certainly been elevated. Delvey’s fraud was greatly aided by her Instagram, where she constantly posted pictures of herself in exclusive locations with expensive meals and celebrity pals. “Anna did seem to be a popular ‘woman about town’ who knew everyone. Even though I was nationally known, I felt like a computer geek next to her,” wrote Martin Shkreli, from his prison cell, which I hope is in the movie. (Read Pressler’s piece in The Cut. So good!)
What lessons can we take away from imposter Anna Delvey? Pressler reports that Delvey never admitted any guilt and instead continues to paint herself as a victim. “I had what I thought was a great team around me, and I was having fun,” said Delvey. “I had dinners, but they were work dinners. I wanted to be taken seriously.” Your Imposter Syndrome may be a sign that you have a conscience and that you take responsibility for the impact your behaviour has on others. I don’t think that sounds like such a bad thing.
Yesterday’s tools are about as useful for today’s crimes as a paperclip is for password protection. And while Holmes and Delvey were able to carry off major fraud, mini huckster are everywhere these days. Especially on social media. A few of my favorite recent stories are the ‘Wolves of Instagram,’ which I found again by googling ‘instagram pyramid scheme for millennial millionaires.’ Pretty much sums it up, but the article is a good one. And my other big favorite, ‘Instagram Influencers are Ruining Everything.’ Journalist Megan Reynolds writes, “As embedded as we are in the age of scammers — where regular people use their cunning, wit, and verve to smoothly shimmy their way into shit for free — it is no surprise that Instagram influencers are thriving in this new economy, grifting their way to an empty sort of fame, built on nothing.” Reynolds details the influencers who have managed to secure free stays in some of the most luxurious resort locations around the world, only to trash the places, leaving nothing but selfies, if that. These opportunities were provided by small hotels in remote destinations who thought they were getting publicity and access to the influencer’s vast following. And that’s where the problem lies- the vast following is often just as fake as that ‘candid’ photo.
Last year blogger Sara Melotti pulled back the curtain on Instagram Influencers, revealing the tips and tricks that many ‘professionals’ have used to grow their following. An admitted former fraud herself, Melotti shared not only what influencers were doing to grow their numbers, but also what ‘marketing professionals’ were doing to capitalize on the naiveté of small business owners trying to reach audiences in social media. “Things in the platform changed dramatically over the past year and today’s instagram world is a very very scary scenario: fake influencers, black markets, scams, an epidemic of fake likes and comments and inflated engagement. The degree of trickery reached a point where nothing is believable anymore and with millions of dollars invested in Influencer marketing the word FRAUD is not an exaggeration anymore but an urgent matter that needs to be addressed,” demands Melotti.
Influencers spend money to buy followers and marketing professionals create classes, eBooks, webinars, and workshops to teach people how to grow their following (and charge for these lessons, while not mentioning the fact that influencers are buying their following), which then keeps honest people engaged in the fruitless work of trying to grow organically. “This is the incredibly sad and devastating truth about IG today: YOU CAN’T GROW *ORGANICALLY ANYMORE. (*and let’s be clear organically means that people spontaneously follow you and engage with you because they are fans of your work or your voice and want nothing in return.)”
You can see from the bolds and caps, which are her own, how passionate Melotti is about the topic. What I appreciate most about Melotti’s big reveal is that, while she has come out as a fake herself and is calling out the wanna be influencers around her, she places the blame exactly where it should be — the platform. While Facebook has been doing all it can something to tackle ‘fake news,’ IG has done nothing to address the problem of fake influencers, besides shutting down a couple of ‘follow farms,’ and it’s their algorithm that is catalyzing the growth in influencer marketing.
I couldn’t resist following up on Melotti’s explanations (which she admits she knows we’ll do) and looked up a couple of the businesses that claim to grow your following. There are a broad range of services these folks offer, and while I wanted to get down and dirty, I also wasn’t willing to risk my young, organic account’s health and safety to do it, so I went with what felt like the safest solution — Kicksta. After having Kicksta for a week and my account grew by a whopping 20 followers. In other words, I was doing fine growing by myself. Here’s how Kicksta works: you give them a list of 8–12 target accounts, accounts with followings in your target audience. Then they have their bots go to those target accounts and find the people liking and commenting on their posts. The bots follow up by going to those accounts and liking their posts. No comments, just likes. 1,000 a day. And apparently simply liking someone’s post inspires them to add me? That doesn’t seem likely, as only about 25 of my followers are people I follow back, mostly friends with joke accounts that I enjoy seeing in my feed. Cardi B and Erykah Badu still aren’t following me. Whatever. Would I feel like a fraud if my account started growing by 20 people per day? What about 100? If none of those people cared about my products or services, would that matter to me? Why?
What can we learn from influencer imposter turned bare-all blogger Sara Melotti? “I understand why people out of desperation turn to the dark side and start cheating. I understand small businesses struggling to get the word out. I understand hardworking talented established creators made invisible by the algorithm. But what I don’t understand and have no sympathy nor tolerance for are all the other people. The ones who have nothing to offer, nothing of value or of service…” So according to Melotti, you can assuage your imposter syndrome with authenticity and accountability by having something of value and service to offer. That’s what most of us are here for anyway. Right?
For all of Melotti’s Insta-rage, I think it’s important to keep it in context. Instagram is a place for fakes and phonies. But I think it would be a mistake to say that Holmes and Delvey, who are operating IRL, live in a different, more real, world. According to Eileen Carery at Glassbreakers, Larry Ellison gave Theranos $100M just six months ago. (The Theranos scandal broke two years ago!) By doing so, Ellison provided investor credibility and the impression that due diligence was being done. Smoke and mirrors. How different are Silicon Valley hucksters from those on Instagram, except by the number of dollar signs in their eyes? And what of NYC? Pressler says, “Anna looked at the soul of New York and recognized that if you distract people with shiny objects, with large wads of cash, with the indicia of wealth, if you show them the money, they will be virtually unable to see anything else. And the thing was: It was so easy.”
Our world is full of imposters. Some of them are extremely dangerous, like selling faulty blood tests to medical facilities. Some of them seem rather benign in comparison, like putting your $62K hotel bill on a friend’s business credit card without the ability to ever pay it back. And some of them are totally harmless, as #likeforlike. At the end of the day, who wouldn’t have Imposter Syndrome? What I’ve learned from these actual imposters is that Imposter Syndrome is a sign of our desire to live our truth, recognizing that we live in a world of lies. The only people without Imposter Syndrome seem to be sociopaths and compulsive liars. With that in mind, I’m proud to be plagued by Imposter Syndrome!
Reach out at www.zerogravityagency.us #authenticity
