Jen Gottlieb

And so I do my Britney Spears impersonation.

They're all laughing hysterically.

It's like an uproar.

Everyone finally is alive after being kind of bored with me because I didn't know what I was talking about.

They call me two weeks later and they're like, we want you to be Miss Box of Junk on that metal show.

And I'm like, really?

They're like, yes, you made everyone laugh.

Your Britney Spears imitation got you the role.

That was the first moment in time when I learned that being my most authentic self is always what's going to get people to lean in and pay attention.

It wasn't that I knew everything about heavy metal music.

It was when I finally let myself shine that actually got me the gig.

I get this gig by being myself, ironically, but I immediately reverted to, I have to play this version of myself that wasn't me.

I had to become heavy metal Jen.

I wore super tight spandex pants and I cut up all these rocker shirts and I pretended I like heavy metal music, even though I didn't.

And before I knew it, I had this big audience of all these metal guys that thought I was like this metal girl.

I had built this brand that was a lie.

I got to meet all these huge rock stars.

One thing that I learned about people from this experience is that everybody, even the biggest rock stars in the world have imposter syndrome because even the biggest people that perform for years and years in front of millions of people would come backstage and they would be so nervous to go on and be interviewed.

And they would come backstage and they would say to me, did I do okay?

Was that good enough?