After a quarter century in one technology company as a writer, speaker, and marketer, I sometimes feel less like an expert and more like someone very convincingly impersonating an expert. I’ve spent years working with a great team to turn chaos, half-baked product ideas, and conflicting opinions into engaging campaigns, dynamic events, compelling emails, and eye-catching advertisements. There are moments when I wonder if my true superpower isn’t strategy but rather writing about strategy so well that everyone assumes there must be a solid plan hiding under all those bullet points.

On paper, 25 years in one place looks admirable: loyalty, resilience, deep institutional knowledge, and a profound commitment to an organization’s long-term success. It also translates to “I don’t just know where the bodies are buried; I can tell you who ordered the shovel and in what photo directory the images will be found.”

But in my more anxious moments, it feels like I’ve trained to be world champion of one strangely specific environment. I knew how to navigate this company’s quirks, this tech ecosystem, and its this blend of skepticism and occasional indifference toward marketing. When I imagine stepping into a new company, maybe even a new industry, impostor syndrome immediately pipes up: “That’s adorable. Do you really think your tricks work anywhere else?” My experience shifts, in my head, from “broad expertise” to “highly specialized creature who may not survive outside its native habitat.”

Staying where I am hasn’t helped with the self-doubt either. I worked for a technology company that had an…interesting…relationship with marketing over the years. On good days, I tell myself this makes me tough and resourceful. If I can build campaigns, shape messaging, and support sales in a place where marketing is often an afterthought, imagine what I could do somewhere that actually believes in it. On bad days, I wonder if the lack of appreciation was a verdict. Maybe what I do isn’t that important. Maybe I’ve spent 25 years crafting beautifully worded stories for decisions nobody really cared about in the first place.

Impostor syndrome thrives in that ambiguity. It tells me I’m not an experienced leader; I’m just very good at sounding like one in white papers and at international conferences. It insists I’m not a seasoned strategist; I’m someone who writes a convincing narrative around half-formed ideas and hopes the metrics are kind. It whispers that my years of experience are less about skill and more about being slightly quicker with words than everyone else in the room. Some days, I half-believe it. I catch myself thinking, “I’m not leading. I’m just narrating convincingly.”

I argue internally. I try to reassure myself by imagining all the other writers and marketing leaders who probably feel the same way but never show it publicly. I know you’re out there.

The current job market doesn’t exactly dim that voice. Postings often sound like organizations seeking an SVP of Marketing or a CMO who is part data scientist, part creative oracle, part AI whisperer, part therapist, and available to go viral twice a week. Meanwhile, I’m over here with 25 years of actual experience, wondering if “Highly skilled at calming panicked sales teams before launches” qualifies as a strategic pillar.

And yet, there’s another part of me that refuses to buy that version of the story. I didn’t accidentally last 25 years in a demanding tech company that hasn’t always valued marketing, at least not the way that we marketers secretly wish companies would. I’ve navigated reorganizations, shifting priorities, new technologies, changing markets, and more than a few “We need this by tomorrow” emergencies. I’ve helped sales win deals, clarified muddled ideas, created messaging where none existed, and somehow managed to keep things moving when the ground was constantly shifting. Yes, I’ve improvised. Yes, I’ve made things up as I went along. But that’s also what experimentation, adaptation, and actual leadership often look like up close.

So now, I’m stuck in a tug-of-war between two internal narrators. One says, “You’re a fraud who lucked into longevity.” The other says, “You’ve been playing the game on Hard Mode for a long time; imagine what you could do in a place that values what you bring.” The truth is probably somewhere in between: I am a little bit of an improviser, a little bit of an impersonator, and a lot more capable than my inner critic wants to admit.

When a new organization does take a chance on me, they won’t just be getting an “executive-level marketing leader.” They’ll be getting a survivor of one tech company’s long, weird relationship with marketing, a person who’s part strategist, part writer, part translator, and part improv artist. And if it turns out I am still making it up as I go along, at least I know one thing: I can always write the story well enough to keep people turning the pages.