I’m going to start this post by telling you a little story…

My first ever paid job was babysitting my neighbour’s kids. She and her husband had 3 girls and added a 4^th a few months after I started looking after them. I was 13 years old. “Me in 2025” looks back and thinks “what in the absolute horse puckie was everyone thinking to leave young kids in the care of another kid”. Granted, it was the 80s and the neighbourhood was young, and everything had an aura of safety. I quickly became very popular and started babysitting for 5 or 6 families in the area on a fairly regular basis. Eventually, I got a “real job” in a pet store. I think I was about 18 by that time, and I remember being the one to close up the store at the end of a shift by myself. Again, who trusts a kid with that much responsibility? Closing out the register, taking the money to the bank, locking up … seems like a lot of responsibility!  

I did that job and a few other retail jobs for the next few years as I attended college, and then got my first office job helping to manage youth ESL summer camps for the tour operator that ran them. I always wondered how I was qualified to do that as someone who was still so new to the business, but they let me and I managed not to lose anyone in the process.

Eventually, I ended up in my first proposal coordinator position. I had literally never heard of the job until the day it was offered to me but since I wasn’t really loving my job at the time, I said yes. And so began my somewhat illustrious career as a Proposal Manager with 2 certifications, 4 companies, and 20 years of experience. I still sometimes feel new to the business as things like AI expand and change how I am expected to do my job every year.

3 paragraphs in, you are probably wondering why I am telling you all this. I mean, this is supposed to be a post about storytelling in business, right? Well, if you look back, I have tried to illustrate what imposter syndrome feels like. It’s a completely ethereal concept that unless you have experienced it, you may not understand what it feels like. I may have been 13, but clearly someone saw that I was responsible and clearheaded enough to handle looking after a few kids for a few hours. And my store manager saw that she could trust me enough not to burn the store down or steal the contents of the register. Why didn’t I just say that I know what imposter syndrome feels like? Because that means nothing to you, the reader. There is no connection to those words. By sharing my experience and making it real, I have better explained the concept to you without ever mentioning the term.

That is what I try to do as I am writing content for a response. Small businesses are often in a place where they are trying to sell something that is new to an organization and have to explain not just why to buy from you, but sometimes why your company itself is a good fit.

Take this example: the Region of Durham has to buy new horseshoes. (Pretend they acquired a petting zoo with a mini horse – humour me.) It is something they have never had to purchase before, so they put out an RFP with some vague requirements given to them by the person they purchased the animals from. Since they don’t have a farrier on staff yet, they are doing their best. You run a small farrier business that sells horseshoes. What luck that you come upon the RFP! Your job is now to explain to the Region what they need (since clearly the RFP missed that the nails are separate from the shoes and there are more than one kind) and why they should buy it from you (which can’t just be based on how long you have been doing something). Since farriers use highly specific jargon understood only by other farriers and people who are frequently around horses, it is a good bet that the RFP evaluation team would not understand what you are talking about if you just stated what needs to be done (just like I never understand what my mechanic is saying, but I always understand the video they send me). The ability to weave a story and explain your abilities, value, and discriminators is essential to explaining your solution and eventually winning the business.

Not sure how to do that? That’s part of my job. After 20+ years of responding to RFPs, I can now confidently say that I am good at what I do – no imposter syndrome found.