Meet Claudia Lems

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Claudia Lems. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Claudia below.

Claudia, first a big thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and insights with us today. I’m sure many of our readers will benefit from your wisdom, and one of the areas where we think your insight might be most helpful is related to imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is holding so many people back from reaching their true and highest potential and so we’d love to hear about your journey and how you overcame imposter syndrome.

Imposter syndrome has played a huge part in my life. It started when I was in middle school playing volleyball. I played volleyball for 8 years, and for most of that time, I never felt like I deserved to be on the teams I played on. I had such a deep belief that I wasn’t actually that good at the sport, and I didn’t think I belonged on national-level teams. The belief that I wasn’t good enough started to bleed into other areas of my life as well. My imposter syndrome had me thinking I wasn’t actually a good person and I was just fooling everyone. I doubted a lot of the choices I made and the skills I had. So when I started my business, I had a million and one limiting beliefs about why I couldn’t be successful. I didn’t think I had enough experience for anyone to want to work with me, I didn’t know everything I thought I needed to know, I worried about what other people thought, and the list goes on. Around the time I made the shift to become a podcast manager, I started working with a mentor. Working with her is the reason I was able to overcome imposter syndrome and have a successful business. We worked through every limiting belief I had and proved them wrong. I focused a lot on gratitude and rewiring my brain. I worked with my mentor for nine months and I became a completely different person. I used to be afraid to leave my house and show up on social media. And now I go out to do things by myself, post videos of myself on socials, and put myself out there. I stopped trying to water myself down, stopped worrying about what other people think, and started living as my authentic, weird self. The confidence that I’ve gained since working with my mentor has done a complete 180, and I am so grateful to call my mentor a good friend now.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

From a young age, I knew I was meant for more than a corporate job. I loved helping people and seeing them thrive. However, as a teenager, I was a little lost and didn’t know what I could do besides a corporate job. When I was about 16, I watched a movie with a character who had their own successful fashion business. And that’s where the idea of starting my own business formed. Originally, I wanted to create a product business but after looking at the logistics, it didn’t feel quite as promising. I wanted my business to support my life, so I could travel, set my own hours, work from home (or anywhere), and not be so tied down to one location. After I graduated from high school, I went to a local community college for business, so I could figure out what exactly I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to start a business, but I didn’t feel confident in any of the ideas I had. One day, I was scrolling on Instagram and saw a reel about what virtual assistants do. I learned more and more about them and felt like it was what I needed to do. After I graduated from college, I finally took the leap to start an Instagram page for my business, Work With CML. I started as a social media manager because that’s what everyone else was doing. It never felt right and I didn’t sign any clients marketing myself as a SMM. And then I met someone who is a podcast manager. We talked a bit about what she does and I was hooked. After talking to her, I realized that my favorite class in high school was a video editing class and editing podcasts wouldn’t be much different. I made the shift in my business and it felt like the stars finally aligned. I was doing something that actually felt right and was making a difference. I went through a lot of growth in my first year in business, and I can now say that my purpose is to empower people who are struggling with something in their lives and make it ten times better. This year, I’ve worked with a lot of podcast hosts who want to take some podcast tasks/stress off their plate, so they can focus on what they love. Being able to help them with this is a dream come true. In September of this year, I launched a rebrand and some new services. It’s been so exciting to see it all come to fruition. My new branding really sets the tone for what’s to come in my business. In the near future, I will be offering a course and coaching services to those who want to start a podcast but aren’t sure where to start. I plan to create some digital products to help make podcast hosts’ lives easier.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

My business degree prepared me for not even 10% of running a business. You can have all the titles you want, but it really comes down to a few things. Some things that helped me with my journey are my stubbornness, my creativity, and my mindset. Being stubborn is the reason I’m here and writing this. If I wasn’t so stubborn and determined to make my business successful, I would’ve quit a year ago. I am so stubborn that I will do anything to succeed in my business. It will support my lifestyle because I refuse to accept the alternative. The only option is for me to succeed. It’s important to know when to call it quits, but I believe wholeheartedly in my business and it will be even more successful. My creativity has played a huge role in my business as well. And it goes beyond making cute graphics and using well-matched colors. Knowing when to switch it up and make changes is so important. If I notice I’m not generating as many leads as normal, I try a different selling tactic or a different approach. Business is not a one-size-fits-all situation, so I have to think outside the box for every aspect of business, like systems, selling, and more. The creativity that I’ve had helped me create the business of my dreams. I’ve talked about it before and I’ll talk about it forever; shifting my mindset is the reason I’ve been able to stay in business for so long. Working with someone as talented as my mentor allowed me to see the areas where I doubted myself and prove them wrong. Doing the work to get out of a scarcity mindset and into an abundance mindset was a huge part of my success. The work is hard, but shifting my mindset made me believe that people want to work with me and that I can genuinely help them with their podcasts.

How would you spend the next decade if you somehow knew that it was your last?

The week of my rebrand this September, I woke up to friends and family asking me about a link I had sent them on my business account. But I didn’t remember ever sending them a link, so I was very confused. I went to log in to my business Instagram account but somehow got logged out. I tried to get back in with no luck because a 2-factor authentication was turned on that I didn’t set. It turned out that someone hacked my account and was sending DMs to my followers asking them to “vote for me” using a link where they get your information. Unfortunately, I had fallen for the same scam when a friend of mine asked me to vote for her. The worst part of it all is that Instagram was the only platform my business was on. So my entire business was gone in a day. I felt stupid, silly, and defeated because how could I fall for a scam like this? I reached out to Instagram and tried logging back in every day for a week. After no luck with either of those, I decided to just start a whole new Instagram account. With my rebrand, it made sense anyway. So now I’m starting back at zero and building up my account again. I had to ask myself what the Universe is trying to teach me by putting me through this. I came to the conclusion that I need to be better about security and expand my business to more than one platform. All the hard work I’d put in over the last year or so was just gone because someone thought it would be fun to hack my account. So let this be your warning to always have a 2-factor authentication if possible and expand to multiple platforms for your business!

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workwith.cml/
• Other: TikTok: tiktok.com/@workwith.cml