Have you ever felt like a fake and not qualified for the job?

Before starting our office technology business, I worked for a global IT and business process outsourcing company, called Electronic Data Systems (EDS).

My role was to meet with company directors of medium and large organisations to explain how outsourcing their IT department or a certain business processing function, would save the organisation a substantial amount of cash over time, whilst also improve the service.

For a young man (at the time) from Haslingden, meeting these very experienced senior executives on their own turf, and explaining we could do a better job than them, was daunting.

It wasn’t because I didn’t know what I was talking about, it was because I was always much younger than the company executives I was meeting and felt rather inadequate.

Do you know what I did to help?

I created an alter ego and pretended I was Richard Branson, who has oodles of experience starting, building, and buying businesses. Doing this elevated me to their level in my own mind.

Obviously, the executives still saw me as Darren, but inside I was Richard and brimmed confidence.

I’ve since found many other people do the same to help them deal with similar situations.

Did you know Beyonce started signing at church and was so good she quickly attracted the attention of music producers, but she struggled with the transition required to become a pop icon.

The force you see strutting her stuff on stage and in music videos is her alter ego, Sasha Fierce. “Sasha doesn’t do interviews,” Beyoncé said in an Oprah interview. “She only performs.”

Beyoncé crafted her stage persona to help her overcome these transition challenges.

“When you put on the wig and put on the clothes, you walk different,” she explained to Oprah. “It’s no different from anyone else. I feel like we all kind of have that thing that takes over.”

“When I hear the chords and put on my stilettos (the moment right before you’re nervous) then Sasha Fierce appears, and my posture and the way I speak, and everything is different.”

Even though we’ve operated our office technology and supplies business for 18 years, I still sometimes feel inadequate in certain situations, and I simply say, what would Richard Branson do.

…if you were to choose an alter ego who would it be and why?