#davesdailychallenge (142): Fake It ‘Til You Make It. You’ve heard this before haven’t you? I know I certainly have. I’ve joked about it with friends and colleagues many times and I think there certainly are times where getting in over your head is a good thing. It can serve to force growth upon you because you’re in a situation where you either rise to the occasion or you fail. The problem comes when you sacrifice your authenticity and your brand to falsely represent yourself. Let me put this another way, and I thank Gary Vaynerchuk for recently putting this so eloquently; you are representing yourself as an expert and no one believes you. The sad truth is that this is everywhere isn’t it? Contemporary technology allows the spread of opinions and ideas into every corner of our lives and at a pace never before seen in history. Anyone can start a blog, a website, or a business and sell themselves as an expert. Some most certainly are experts and this technology serves to set those people free to enjoy a profound level of professional freedom and career fulfillment. Others are not experts. Others want the end result of hard work and the expert’s journey now. I don’t look down on people trying to realize their dreams. Far from it. In fact, I applaud those folks for having the guts to go for it. All I will say is this…”fake it ’til you make it” might have worked once but in today’s world it has never been easier to call BS on someone. It has never been easier to lose the trust that takes years to build surrounding your brand. Consumers of your brand have never been less willing to accept these breaches in trust. It’s ok not to know something but saying you know something when you don’t will, as it always has, have consequences. The good news is that you can shorten the time it takes to become a recognized expert in something by leaps and bounds with the aforementioned technology and modern access to influencers and experiences. This is one of the reasons I’m always saying that challenges early on in your career are so important. Challenge is always important for growth but if you allow yourself to seek ease too early it’s very difficult to crawl out of that. There are so many opportunities to learn new skills in your free time or build businesses in non-traditional ways. You can couple these efforts with documenting your journey. Good luck.