Are you winning the game of best kept secret status? Do you try to be consistently visible but find it's never enough? We'll have good news and bad news for you today. The good news is you do not have to be everywhere to get all the clients you need. But the bad news is if you're like most consultants, you're not nearly as visible as you need to be for those clients to begin to recognize your brand and for you to transcend know, like, and trust status.

In today's episode, we're talking about strategic visibility, how to stop hiding, be brave, and go big. So that exactly who is searching for you right now can find you. And even better news, it's probably much easier than you're making it right now.

Today's episode is the final of my four-part retrospective series, revisiting past episodes on specific topics. Today I'm going to play you clips from seven episodes highlighting the topic of strategic visibility. If you hear something you'd like to take a deeper dive into, just check the show notes for links to all the previous episodes.

And be sure to stay to the end today, 'cause I'm going to give you a link to a special resource that I created for you. And I'm also sharing some fun exercises that I hope will inspire you to become more visible. These are the same exercises I give to my clients to help them be bigger and bolder so they achieve what they want in their businesses.

Years ago, I was in a BNI meeting and a colleague came in and he was all cranky because a woman had come into his shop over the weekend and said, Oh my God, I didn't know you were here. How long have you been here? And he said, 25 years. So that's the experience that so many women consultants have with their own visibility. They're like, I'm here. I'm here. I've been here. How come nobody knows I'm here? You know, they'll have a colleague come up just out of the woodwork and be like, I didn't know you were consulting now. Or they'll have potential new clients, bring them in for a conversation and say, we've been looking for someone who does what you do for so long, but we had no idea you were out there. It's the feeling of being a best kept secret, which none of us wants to be, but how come we end up feeling like we're putting ourselves out there and yet no one knows we exist?

So isn't strategic visibility just another way to say marketing? It is, but I like to use it to emphasize that I'm not being in my workshop, working on my brand, and I'm not crafting my message, and I'm not trying to figure out conversion strategies or looking at my stats or SEO. Strategic visibility is specifically about getting seen, and what is key about it is the intention of making your audience aware of you, like staying on their radar screen so that you're getting known for something specific, so that when they need your help, that you are the one who is in front of them, literally in front of them, or that you've been around so long that even in your absence, your brand comes to mind.

That's the goal. So the first piece of strategic visibility is really the strategic part. I had a dedicated episode called strategic visibility, and one of the things I mentioned there is the concept of being ubiquitous. When I worked at the Coca-Cola company, like that's the brand word. We want that brand to be ubiquitous. It means everywhere. You want Coca-Cola to be everywhere. The logo, the product, the trucks, the merchandise everywhere. Consumers can encounter that brand anywhere. But for us though, as consultants, we don't need to be everywhere. We don't need to be ubiquitous. We only need to be there, where being seen by our potential client or referral partner or by a brand constituent, meaning a fan, follower, colleague. We only want to be there where they can see us. So that's the strategic part of it. Invisible, well, it can be us, our message, our content, our logos, our imagery. So it can even be like a button that they can click to your website or a post they can respond to on social media or an email that's in their inbox that they can respond to. Visibility means that you and your presence are teaching them what you can do and why they would need you.

That's strategic visibility. So if we're honest, and I will be today, most women consultants are only like 10% as visible as they should be, and I'm being really generous with that because most women consultants are actually invisible, invisible. Nobody even knows you're out there. And we end up invisible for a few reasons.

The first one is we aren't sure where we need to be and we don't know what to do once we're there. I am hoping today you get some ideas and resources for that. Another reason that we end up invisible is 'cause sometimes you know you're just down or feeling small, and that can happen for any number of reasons; an unhappy client or a slow growth in your business or a negative review. Sometimes you just have a low self-esteem day. You just don't feel like putting yourself out there and like tooting your horn and living up to your brand promise. And another reason is sometimes my clients will get so busy with client work, with actual delivery, that they go dark, they go invisible. They're shooting themselves in the foot by being a victim of their own success.

But is there something else at play with the invisibility? Let's check back with the original episode on strategic visibility. When I talked about why we might be sabotaging ourselves, I wanted to share a few specific ways I've seen this show up. You know, I have a client who worked for a year on a book, but then when it came time to promote it, she got shy. All that effort that went into writing it, she felt that sense of mission about the message that her work needed to get out in the world.

But when it came time to do the work to get it in front of the eyeballs, she lost her nerve. Everything we do, we have to then promote. And I've seen the same thing happen with workshops and events. A ton of effort is put into creating an amazing experience, but the actual marketing to get people to attend, it doesn't happen.

And no marketing means you're invisible. But isn't the hard work of writing the book hard enough? Like why do I have to then push a boulder up a hill to get people to read it? Because believe it or not, writing the book is the easy part, and we can resent those salesy type personalities or look sideways at somebody who has that big self-promoter energy, but they're the ones getting their stuff seen. And if you feel like your stuff is better, then you gotta get over yourself and get visible. The big thing to do here is to make sure your why is big enough.

Episode 18: Strategic Visibility

So I've talked a little bit about limiting beliefs before. We'll keep talking about those and definitely, we talked about self-sabotage and I do think, not being as visible as you need to be is a sabotage strategy. 'cause you do a lot of work and you have tons of value to share. And then not putting that out there for people to discover is sabotaging you. It's not allowing you to be as big as you can be, because, you know, our audience doesn't have psychic powers. They're not going to just find you, stumble across you one day and be like, oh, how wonderful that we have to put ourselves on that path for them to stumble upon. We have to put ourselves out there. So shy don't we? Well, obviously if it's fears and limiting beliefs. There's a lot of work to be done on that, but I think among the easiest things that you can do is click into, hook into every single day your why.

Why are you doing this? Why is it important for you to be visible? Why do you want to be seen? Tap into that world-changing piece of you. I sometimes have it on a world changing level, but a lot of times I will connect to my why on an individual level. I'll think about one individual that I worked with being in her home with her family and how important it was for her to grow her business. And I think if I can just do that one more time with one more person, it really helps me to get myself out of me and my concerns. And onto those like Amy that I can help. I want to find other Amys, I want to find other Cheryls. They're out there for me. And so, when I'm feeling like, Ah, this is a really scary thing to do, I think, Amy needs you. Cheryl can't find you if you are hiding out. So think about ways that you can hook into your audience and those inspiring clients who pull you out of yourself.

Knowing why you're out there and doing what you're doing can help you to be brave and bold and big. One of the crazy, unexpectedly-effective visibility strategies I talk about in that episode is giving testimonials, especially video testimonials. One of my most recent clients came to me from a video testimonial that I gave to another business coach.

So when you give testimonials, you come across as a winner, a success, and possibly just happy, lucky, and generous. So think about it. Who gives to others, and what kind of clients will that bring to you?

At its heart, strategic visibility is marketing. So I wanted to take a minute to go back to one of the fundamentals that I taught on the show. It's also one of my most popular episodes on YouTube. Three Marketing Strategies for Consultants. In this short clip, I'm asking an essential question talking about the importance of having a simple three part marketing system.

Episode 39: Marketing Strategies for Consultants

Today specifically, I wanted to talk about your three part client attraction system. Now, I define a system as a repeatable process you do that gets predictable results. Rinse and repeat, right? So as often as you do it, it's going to generate results that are predictable that you can expect. And I find that most people don't have systems in their marketing, that a lot of consultants have wing it, or they market as needed, and things like that. Those things make me nervous. And so I really want to impart to you the importance of putting in place a system, and it can be super simple. It does not need to be complicated.

So it's just three kinds of strategies that you can have in place. And I'm going to go through what those are today. The way that this originated was many years ago, I polled my audience and one of the questions I asked was, do you have at least one marketing technique that attracts clients to you? And way too many people answered no, no, they didn't have a single go-to marketing technique that always worked for them.

So it was a little too haphazard the way that their results were. So if you needed, and I've asked this question before too, if you needed to get a client today or this week or this month, would you know what to do to generate a new client? That's the kind of thing that I want you to be able to have access to is to generate clients when you want them, when you need them, and to feel like you have some control over your fate. You're not just like, I hope, I wonder, whatever. I want you to have systems in place to where, you know, you know, sometimes the timing isn't always in our control, but you know, when I do these things consistently, that's the repeatable process part. When I do this process consistently, I get predictable results, meaning I do generate clients.

Now those three strategies are lead generation, follow up and keep in touch. For more about each of them, click through and enjoy that whole short episode. Content marketing is indispensable for consultants. We want to be known for our leadership and our ability to solve clients' problems. And probably one of the most surprising aspects of business ownership in general in this century is the amount of content creation that we are all obliged to do. Did you know that you were going to be constantly having to write short articles or make videos or audio recordings or presentations and speeches?

I cannot tell you the number of times that I have felt so grateful to have a liberal arts degree where we had to write so much, so many papers, or that I have a theater background so that standing up in front of a room or making video wasn't scary for me, or that I competed in improv and extemporaneous speaking, which made doing presentations and even podcasting or getting startled by a question from someone in an audience all easier for me. But I know that that's not everybody's experience. In this one, I talk about the benefits of content marketing in general, and I want to be clear that it's not just video or writing, it's all kinds of content.

Episode 42: Content Marketing Strategy

There are three really good things that content marketing can do for you. And the first one is to build your brand. It teaches your perfect clients who you are. And it does it in kind of a mosaic way. If you think about a mosaic, it's made up of little individual tiles. So you have all of these multicolored different tiles that you use and you put them together and they form a larger picture from these little teeny pieces. And that's really what's happening in content marketing relative to your brand, is people are consuming all over social media and your website, all of these pieces of content, whether it's articles, posts, videos, images, graphics, they're consuming all of this content. And then what happens is they begin to build, in their minds, an identity for who you are as someone that they need, or maybe they don't need. And when they learn about your value, those perfect clients, and this is my favorite thing about it, they kind of self-identify because they enjoy your content. They receive value from it, and anyone who doesn't, they kind of peel off.

So content marketing is an incredible way to cultivate an audience for yourself, because those people who are a fit for you continue to consume it. You'll almost always be able to tell who has consumed a lot of your content 'cause they arrive in conversation with you knowing about your brand, knowing more about you than the average potential client would. You have probably been communicating to them and they've probably learned things like who you help, how you help them, and things like that. So they have a feel for your brand identity.

And that's something that content marketing uniquely can do. Instead of just sending out messages of like, here's who we are and here's what we can do, as most ads would do, content marketing is really doing in-depth teaching of that and building your brand. So that's one of my favorite things about what content marketing can do for you. The important thing, and the reason as a business that we do it, is because it generates leads and as I mentioned, it's generating qualified leads. People who are consuming your content are self-identifying self-selecting, they are choosing to participate in the marketing process with you by consuming that content. And content is really just the value you bring packaged for easy consumption.

That part about self-identifying, the self-selecting nature of content marketing is my favorite. You know, I use the bird seed analogy so often. If you want to attract birds, you put bird seed out, right? But if I only want finches, then I'm going to only have finch food out there. If I want to accommodate morning dose and cardinals who feed on flat surfaces, then I'm putting out my tray feeders. If I want to attract woodpeckers, but exclude squirrels, I'll put out caged seit. This is the beauty of content marketing. I can intentionally polarize my audience, bringing in the ones who are a fit for me and driving away those that I choose not to work with.

You have to be courageous to be willing to drive someone away, but if you think about only working with perfect clients, it's worth the risk. The interesting thing is that part of what can attract or drive potential clients away is who you are, like your identity, which we share in both personal and professional posts when we share personal stuff about ourselves, when we write stuff from a business point of view.

Nowadays, most social media experts agree that a large part of our content should be personal. And as Mari Mari Smith, my guest says in this episode, it's not B2B anymore, or B2C. It's P2P: people to people. It can be super stressful to identify what kind of personal content to share. Mari is known as the Queen of Facebook. She's a relationship marketing expert and she's been in this game a long time. This is from the episode called Social Media Marketing with Mari Smith.

Episode 26: Social Media Marketing with Mari Smith

I heard you speak, I think it was over 10 years ago, very early in social media in general, and my awareness of social media. And I am a very private person, and so when social media first came out, I was like, I don't really feel the need to share anything on social media. It was a big learning curve for me. And one of the things that you said at your keynote that was so impactful for me was the difference between personal and private. What I'd love for you to do is unpack that as it relates to consultants building their business brand on social media.

Mari: I love this. Building your business brand, I mean, no matter what, everybody has a brand. If you are a solopreneur, I mean the brand is you, even if it's called a different name but it's you, it's your voice, it's your face. We're often on video these days, so everything you do online pertains to your brand. It's a component of it. And so that distinction that I made all those years ago, I'd say these three categories of life experience, public, private and personal, personal and private. So for example, I mean, Facebook is called a personal profile and they want us to share personal updates and it's usually around, family, kids, pets, hobbies, travel.

Those are the top five that people love to see in their news feeds. You know, who doesn't like a cat video or vacation pictures? But where the line gets drawn for me is I have this three part filter. Before I ever hit that publish, that update, or that send or that share button, just including for text, for emails, for private messages, I say to myself, would I be comfortable with this found in a Google search in years to come? Would I be comfortable with this blown up in major font on a billboard? And would I be proud for my own mom to see this? And if I can't answer resounding yes to all three, it doesn't go anywhere. And I like you, Samantha, there's aspects of my life. I'm very private about it.

Nobody knows about them because they're private and I think that, that you have permission. You don't have to live in a glass bowl and share everything because I think what happens is some people don't even understand like the etiquette, if you will, or the best practices if you like overshare. And even if it's to friends only and people don't know you that well and they see that post and it's like out of context, and so now they're making opinions about you and they were maybe thinking about referring you someone, but then they changed their mind 'cause they saw this weird post. You know?

Samantha: Yes, I've seen it a lot. I've seen things on people's about pages and definitely things on social media. And you and I share the same beliefs around politics and religion. There's no place for that on social media from a professional standpoint. , Well, there is a place for it if that's part of your brand. So I think that's an important thing to, a distinction to make. But what about for, it's important though for individual brands to share a little bit of personal stuff, right? That is very endearing to people. It builds affinity for the brand. So you, you kind of listed the areas that are acceptable to help people to kind of figure out what kind of things those can be.

Mari: I like to think of a ratio. So my personal profile, I'm going to share about 80% personal and 20% business. On my business page, flip the ratio, 80% business, 20% personal. But really, actually probably my business page, my fan page is like a hundred percent business. .

I hear different ratios all the time. Now, some people think 80% personal and 20% business on LinkedIn is a good amount. Maybe 50-50 works better for you. Of course, this is going to depend on your type of business, your personal brand and experimentation. But we know we need to be sharing content. We know we have to be on LinkedIn at a minimum and maybe other social channels.

And the other half too, for consultants is, I'm just going to say it video. I think less than 10% of my clients are doing video and almost none are doing video consistently. So if you're wondering if you're behind in this area, you're not. But the sooner you get started, the better you're going to be at it, and the more results you're going to start seeing from it sooner.

Video isn't going anywhere. In this early episode called Video Marketing is Hot that's from three years ago. Yes, it was hot then and it's hotter now. In this episode, I shared advice that I keep repeating about how to make video easy for yourself. I get all the obstacles as women, you know, we have to be camera ready. There's an appearance hurdle. There's the content, what am I going to say? hurdle. There's the performance hurdle. Was I stiff and weird? You know, it's all hurdles. So let's start with making video happen at all.

Episode 23: Video Marketing is Hot

The third thing that I hear is that there's never enough time to make videos, like how do I fit this in my week? If making videos is a habit that you want to cultivate, then let's do this as we cultivate all habits. I've learned from BJ Fogg is if you want to cultivate a habit, then the first thing that you need to do is you need to, my number one tip here, make it easy. Make it easy. So you set out your workout clothes the night before so that when you get up first thing in the morning, you can put them on and just go work out. If you want to form a habit, you want to make it easy for yourself. And the easiest way to make making video easy for you is to remove the friction from doing it.

So what I recommend is doing it at your work desk. Just as I'm doing here, this is my actual work desk. This is where I do Zoom videos, and so for me to do a new video, I'm still at my desk. I move a few things around and we're good. So I would say if, when you're camera ready at your desk, this is the time to be making videos.

What I'm always looking for in this is something that's sustainable. So I've had a lot of people talk to me about having a video shoot or a production team come, or having equipment out. I can't have equipment out in my house because of my dogs. Maybe you have children or maybe it's just not convenient for you. I don't want to have anything that's not sustainable.

And the last thing that I hear that overwhelms people is the equipment and the technology and all of the editing and the production and all of that kind of stuff. So my number one advice here is get support. Don't be the expert in this. You are going to be the one who's delivering the content. What you need to be great at is doing that, making the connection to the camera. You're going to practice that and get a team who can help you with the rest. What does a team mean? If you're going to be recording your videos on a webcam or on the phone, then find someone on Upwork who can edit your videos and add subtitles to them.

You don't have to share them with anyone, but at least start making practice videos today. Make one a day for 30 days and you will learn a ton. That's how I got started and it makes all the difference.

Next we turn to email marketing with newsletters. Most of my clients are doing newsletters, which means not everyone is and everyone really does need to. Here's why.

Episode 41: Email Marketing with Newsletters

So let's start first with when we are posting on social media or when we have our groups out there, they're usually on platforms that we don't own. And so if something were to happen, we would lose access to those group members. So an email, subscriber community, I don't refer to them as a list. A subscriber community is on our CMS. It's in a place that we own that list. and in offline businesses, it's very often known that all of the value in something like an insurance business or one of those kind of service businesses is in the customer list, financial services. That individual agent's list is where the money is. And so in our businesses as consultants, this list, or this subscriber community, that's so much of the value in our business is the potential in this community. So what I especially like about having a subscriber community that we can email is, if you'll remember back to the episode I did about the three kinds of marketing strategies you need to have in your business, we talked about lead generation, keep in touch and follow up, An email newsletter is actually all three of those. If it gets forwarded to someone and the right person sees it, you can generate new leads from it. If you have somebody who is interested in something but they haven't bought yet, it's nurturing them. So that's doing follow up. And if you have, let's say, a past client who has been around for four years but didn't really implement, that is keep in touch, so it keeps you on their radar screen. So it's just a little bit of work that you do on a regular basis that generates such a powerful return.

I do love that multipurpose quality of newsletters. And newsflash, if you haven't seen it yet, there's now a custom link that can show up on your posts under your name if you have premium LinkedIn, it's subscribe to newsletter. This is a fantastic lead generation opportunity, so get going with your newsletter or link it to your newsletter now.

Okay, so before I leave that episode, and I do highly encourage you to go back and watch that whole thing, It's called Email Marketing with Newsletters the other thing that I love, love, love about them is this.

Email newsletters are an intimate medium. Email comes into my inbox. My inbox, for most people, comes to their phone or right here to their work desk. So what I love about that is you're creating a relationship with an individual. If it's a Facebook or a LinkedIn group or a social media post, you know, they're kind of out there in the public square and you're saying, you're saying, and yeah, you're interacting with individuals in the comments and things like that but it's still kind of a public medium. Yes, DMs and PMs and things like that, that kind of chat is when you get a little more intimate. But what's beautiful about email marketing is it's at scale, right? So it's not a one-on-one, DM conversation. But it feels like it's a personal conversation that happens in the inbox. So I really like writing high value articles that go into someone's inbox and creating that relationship and sharing your personality, like people really bond to you.

If you think about newsletters that you read consistently, you have a relationship to the person sending them. Like you probably know a few things about them personally. You have expectations about what they're going to send, you know what you're going to learn from them. You know that when you open their emails, it will be valuable for you. So that's the kind of thing I want you to create as a relationship with your own subscribers.

I am a high intimacy brand, which means that I love to have that deep personal connection with my clients, and it's just done so well with email newsletters. When I glance at my subscriber list and see who has been reading, I realize what a privilege it has been to have gotten a moment of their attention. And I have had so many clients, not just me, but my clients, reactivate past clients or sign up new ones from their newsletters. It's a permission-based marketing technique, which means that the reader is inviting you. They opt in and they invite you into their inbox, and then she's reading your email by choice, and when she reaches out, it's because she wanted this connection. It's not you pushing anything. It's all them inviting it to themselves. It's just unique and powerful.

And imagine her scrolling through her inbox. Yeah, the one thumb scrolling on the phone and then your name appears. So even if she doesn't read every single issue of your newsletter, she sees your name and is reminded of your brand. It's like, it's just big. It's just great visibility.

Okay, in this last episode, I wanted to share with you for our retrospective, we're talking about executive presence and visibility with my fabulous client, Bofta Yiman. Now, Bofta was a TV news anchor. She's an Emmy Award winner. She won an Edward R Murrow Award. She's also a highly sought-after speaker, an expert in visibility.

Visibility is what separates those who have a serious commitment from those who get overwhelmed and are always going to struggle to grow their businesses. I don't want that to be you. I want you to thrive in your business. And the way that we do that is by being visible. And here Bofta talks about the importance of doing that consistently. Consistency. I know it's a dreadful word. It's hard to have to be visible. Now you want me to do so consistently?

Episode 172: Executive Presence and Visibility

You referenced consistency and showing up. And so I really do want to talk for this last section about visibility because it is so important. I think most professional women are hiding out. I think most consultants are about 10% as visible as they ought to be. My clients, including you who are visible, are still, I would say, only 25% as visible as we should be. Like we should be so, so, so much more visible. So, what's the importance of visibility online? And I know you're doing a lot of offline visibility as well, so talk to me about where your clients come from and what you notice when you are consistently visible.

Bofta: Oh my goodness. So when I'm consistently visible, 1. I just notice that overall interest in who I am, what I bring, kind of just skyrockets very different from when I'm not as visible. And we all have had our seasons. And so I totally get if somebody's in that season right now, but if you are able to get out of that season, you will see that it's a game changer for yourself and for your business.

And then, you know, when I think about what else it does for you is that I just think it brings about this brand awareness that's really hard to get sometimes just from your website, right? Because personal branding is knowing your tone and your voice. A lot of people know your journey and all of these themes and things, and they just may not get that from your website, nor will they ever go to the website. But guess what? They may just follow you on a platform like LinkedIn and start, Hey, lemme just DM her and see if she's available for this kind of thing. So really important, I think that you're, yes, you're out there and you're consistent. But also you're very, very clear on the message you're working to send, and you are maximizing the platform.

So if you're focusing on TikTok or you're focusing on ID, maximize it. What do I mean? Make sure that you are what you're saying in your header. Make sure that the photo, make sure that the banner behind you on LinkedIn is saying something maybe about your business that you have the right contact information.

So going back to the details and then the energy, of course, is really great through video. So if you want to exude a certain type of energy, go on video as much as you can, if not just to get the practice of being on camera. So when you do podcasts, you're showing up just a bit more natural because you're used to doing that thing. You're used to ad-libbing and kind of just showing up and being able to do the thing. Networking, you talked about offline, this has probably been my busiest networking season, I would think, in a while because of course we had, in-person stuff during Covid, right? So I say for the past four months I probably have attended a virtual or in-person networking event every week or every other week.

So, what that has done is it has not only just increased the brand or what I do and that kind of thing, but it's allowed me to connect with the right people who I want to connect with, build relationships. And guess what? I usually see them at the next big thing too, you know? 'cause they're at the same conferences that I'm at.

And so you're just reaffirming that relationship that you, you know, Hey, I met you three months ago. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And so you already know each other. You've had the virtual coffee. So guess what? It's easier to do business with someone you know, you like, you trust.

That's why that offline should be treated as different from the online in the sense that you're just connecting the dots. You meet them at a conference, at a networking event, and guess what I'm doing? I'm adding you on LinkedIn now. That's another touch point. Then we have a virtual coffee, then I see you again then whatever it might be. But it's, it's like that. So it's more of a dance versus just this quick thing that I think everybody wants. The quick result, if you're looking for the quick, quick result, this is probably not your jam. You know, visibility takes time. It takes effort. In the networking network offline, which I think can be really fun if you treat it as really fun. It can be.

And then, if not experience a different venue, you know, whatever. Before I had a kid, I used to actually, when I did a speaking engagement, the next day I would book a spa at the same place because I just like had, I had the ability of the time. Take care of yourself because I was exhausted. I need those break points, and so kind of my reward to myself for landing gig. And then for, of course, you know, showing up and, you know, doing the things, the dress and all of those things and getting ready. So I would do something relaxing the next day. Make it fun for yourself.

So if you're like, this is going to be, in your mind, you keep telling yourself it's hard, guess what? It's going to be hard. How can I make this fun? Oh, okay. I can make it fun. Bring a friend. I can make it fun going to a networking thing by having a coffee thing before it in a cool venue nearby. I can make it fun by staying overnight at this beautiful hotel or staying at my friend’s who I haven't seen in two years. I think you have to figure out how am I going to make it fun? Because when we think it's hard, it's going to be hard. It's going to be really, really hard. And sometimes you don't even have to go to the whole thing, right? Yeah. Go for what you can go to do what you can.

Samantha: And I think that I get yourself the five person, the five touch thing where I'm like, go meet five good people and then you're allowed to leave. And so often, what am I doing? I'm having such a good time, I didn't even want to go.

Bofta: And that's why I think sometimes when you wear something fun, you know, I go back to, that's where I think the wardrobe helps is they're like, oh, I'm going to wear something fun. I'm going to look really good. I'm going to be, you know, my best dressed self. I'm going to show up fully. I think that's where it allows you to be like, I'm attending these things because I'm doing the other things behind the scenes that nobody sees to help me feel, like, okay, I'm going to do this thing. I'm going to do it for myself, not for anyone else, but for myself so I, you know, get the results I want, you know? A lot of people will be like, oh, but you love marketing. I love the results of the marketing, the impact. I love the revenue, the freedom. All of that though is from the work of the marketing.

If you think it's hard, it will be hard. How can you make it fun? Ahh I love that real talk from Bofta, who is a professional marketer. Even she wants to make it fun.

And speaking of fun, I wanted to share some fun examples from my clients and being visible. So I love personally in-person visibility. I love it even more than online. Even though online is fun 'cause you can do it from your house when you're in your jammies, you can be visible on LinkedIn, you can use photos of when you actually were camera ready. But in person is so powerful. So one of my past clients, I found out just recently, she gets a ton of her business from having a booth at a trade show like regularly, like ongoingly. She's part of an association and they do these trade shows and she has a booth at them. I could not believe that.

I was amazed 'cause I've done booths many times I find that usually the hallways are filled with tumbleweeds. But she's getting a ton of her clients that way. And what I love about that is it's an association, so it's all of her perfect client like in the building. And then your booth is an opportunity to give like a brand experience, so it's kind of like a mini Disney world, your booth, and that works for her.

It turns out that being visible at that kind of a trade show can get you clients. Another one of my clients, by the way, merely networks at those association meetings and she has gotten tons of clients there. And obviously speaking, I do have clients who speak for association meetings and, so do not sleep on the associations that are out there, they're a really good way to get in front of your audience.

So a different client, she's a member of some women's organizations, national and local women in business organizations. She attends those meetings regularly. Now, very often you're going to have a chapter meeting, a local one, and then you'll have a national one. So she would attend those. And then she got on some panels, and then from there she ended up getting asked to speak. Now she's keynoting for them. So that kind of visibility can often turn into more and more and more visibility. And what that means is that organizers of the events are seeing, Hey, wow, you're somebody who can command an audience. You show up, you're responsible, like right consistently showing up. You're a reliable speaker, and you end up making the meeting organizers look good. You end up delighting the audience. And what I think also happens is that from the universe's standpoint, you are showing up for yourself regularly and consistently, and the universe is giving you ever more impressive opportunities for you to grow bigger and bigger and bigger.

And so if you think, wow, I mean like I can keynote at one of these things, maybe like don't start there. Just start by showing up consistently at your local chapter and then meeting the people and seeing if this is going to be the right thing for you.

Lastly, I have a client who got invited by a colleague to speak for his webinar. So he had like an organization of CMOs, which was great for her, like maybe tech CMOs. They had a meeting of them. It was eight o'clock East Coast, which means it was 5:00 AM for her in the Pacific. But no matter she showed up, wowed that audience, and then that was like a year ago, and the leads continue to come in from that.

So it wasn't like immediately 50 or 30 or however many people were there, reached out to her. She got a lot of positive feedback. But then from time to time, those leads have been reaching out to her and asking her about those services. So I'm generally a fan of saying yes to almost all visibility opportunities, as long as it's not something that's bad for your brand, you don't want to be seen alongside no matter how small it is. Even somebody's little affinity group

Now, affinity group is just like people who get together around a single topic. So whether that's like a networking meeting or women in tech or HR group or whatever, a little group or a big group they have, if you can get in front of them, you're going to be amazed at how those little kinds of things will turn into bigger opportunities over time.

So it's a big topic, strategic visibility. It's exciting, it's fun, it's daunting. If you'd like to hear more about it, I invite you to go to SamanthaHartley.com/super. There's a place where you can send a message to me. I really would love to hear what specific parts of strategic visibility you have questions about that you want to know more about.

And now as I promised, the free resource I have for you is an assessment of the 10 Drivers of Success for a consulting business. Strategic visibility is just one of the drivers. And so when you take this assessment, you're going to evaluate how you're doing with visibility, but then you're also going to be able to take a look at the other nine drivers that propel consulting businesses forward.

You can find this assessment also at samanthahartley.com/super.

And then I promised some fun exercises. These are the kinds of things that I ask my clients to do. I am really big on affirmations and I'm really big on journal prompts. Because I want us to know what is getting in our way, and then I want us to affirm what we want to be true.

The journal prompt that I want to offer you today is what fears or hesitations do I have about being more visible and how can I overcome them? So I would love for you to just sit with that and write what comes up for you. When you think about being more visible, what's scary? Does it take you back to that one time in grade school when you raised your hand and you were wrong and the teacher shamed you in front of everybody? Or is there a family belief, like a lot of us have? Fears from past lives or past family stories about that one family member who stood up and said the thing, or maybe somebody in our background who got burned at the stake or whatever. They don't have to be rational reasons.

Whatever fears or hesitations you have about being more visible, they're real and they're influencing, they're controlling you right now. So how can you overcome them?

I'm going to suggest some affirmations.I love affirmations. They help us to get used to an idea and to bring it closer and closer into our hearts and to being true. I'm going to give you three affirmations and you can use all three of them, or you can combine them to be one that is really inspiring and motivating for you. I like for them to be short enough that you can memorize it, so that you can say it constantly.

So the first one is, my visibility attracts my perfect clients effortlessly. My visibility attracts my perfect clients effortlessly. The second one is, I'm a magnetic presence drawing opportunities to me. I am a magnetic presence drawing opportunities to me. And for this third one, I want you to customize it for wherever you want your perfect clients to be looking for you. Here's how I would say it. My perfect clients are looking for me on LinkedIn, YouTube, and Spotify podcasts.

My perfect clients are looking for me on YouTube, LinkedIn, and in bookstores you might say, customize that to wherever you want your perfect clients to be looking for you.

We've covered a lot of topics about strategic visibility and I want to make sure that your takeaway is my number one intention for you and that you're convinced that your perfect clients are looking for you. That visibility can be fun and exciting, even if it's a little scary and vulnerable when you first start. I want you to remember that somewhere out there, your perfect client is wishing and hoping and praying that you would show up so you could help them with the biggest problems that are plaguing them right now. Don't make it hard for them to find you. It's in the highest good of all concerned that you and they are united as soon as possible. Remember that consistent strategic visibility means consistent lead flow, and consistent lead flow means you're able to be a more profitable and joyful consulting business owner.