Why Thoughtful People Struggle With Visibility

[00:09] Can I tell you something I resisted for a very long time? Visibility. And honestly, for years, I could get away with it. See, I had a strong repeat and referral-based business. Longtime clients kept me busy doing work I loved, everything from event marketing and design to franchise conferences and luxury incentive travel programs.

[00:28] The business was working. I wasn't scrambling for clients, and I definitely wasn't sitting around thinking, "I need Instagram to save me." It wasn't like that. But at some point, I realized the business I had built could keep working exactly as it was and still not take me where I wanted to go next.

[00:45] And I realized the next version of my work required something my old business model never had, me being more visible. And that made me very uncomfortable. I'm not someone who craves a lot of attention, and I've never been very active on social media, even personally. But there was now a business reason visibility was becoming more important.

[01:08] For much of my career, I've worked in two very different worlds at the same time. I have longtime corporate and event clients with the budgets to support the level of work I want to provide, and I've also worked with nonprofits, small businesses, Christian ministries, authors, speakers, leaders, personal brands, work I care deeply about, but where budgets are often much tighter.

[01:33] Because I cared about the work and because excellence matters so much to me, I had a habit of often giving far more than those budgets could realistically support. Let's just say that and ask me how sustainable that is. But still, I felt a real pull toward that side of my work. I loved helping people whose work was tied to a mission, a message, something they genuinely believed mattered.

[01:58] And I had a bigger vision. I wanted to help more Christian entrepreneurs, experts, and leaders show up in the marketplace with a level of excellence that matched the importance of what they felt called to do. So for a while, I became pretty convinced that maybe the next version of my business was supposed to go all in on serving that audience.

[02:17] But I also had real evidence that meaning and sustainability weren't automatically the same thing. And there was another question underneath all of this. What happens to my corporate business if I plant that flag publicly? Would it confuse people? Would it close doors? Would longtime clients see me differently? So you see, my resistance to visibility wasn't just, "Oh, no, what if somebody judges my LinkedIn post?" No, I was trying to answer some legitimate questions like, what exactly am I positioning?

[02:51] Who is it really for? Can I build a sustainable business around it? And how does it coexist with a corporate business that's already working that I'm not wanting, wanting to walk away from? And eventually, something else clicked. I had been treating two different questions like they had to have the same answer.

[03:10] One is what shapes how I work, and two is who is this work for? Well, my faith absolutely shapes how I work, but the problems I help people solve are not uniquely Christian problems. So I didn't have to hide my faith, but people didn't have to share it to benefit from the work. That was part of the clarity too.

[03:33] I didn't have to choose one world and abandon the other. What I needed to do was finally become more intentional about building something public around the work I wanted to become known for. And I think that distinction is important. I wasn't forced into visibility because my business was failing. I eventually had to choose visibility because I'd came-- I became convinced that there was something I was responsible for making visible, and that changed everything.

[04:01] If we haven't met, I'm Terri Podlinski. I'm a clarity catalyst, brand architect, and founder of Brand With Bravery. This is Brand Potential Unlocked, where who you've become meets how the world sees you. And today, I wanna talk about something I've come to believe. Some of the people who are most reluctant to become visible are precisely the people we need to hear from.

[04:25] But I also think we've been a little too quick to diagnose why they're hiding. When someone is reluctant to become more visible, we tend to assume it's a confidence problem, right? And people have all sorts of opinions and advice for us about this, you know, even if we don't ask for it. Things like, "You're, you're afraid of judgment.

[04:46] You're afraid of rejection. You have imposter syndrome. You need to get out of your comfort zone. You just need to start posting. Just hit publish. Come on. Just put yourself out there." And sure, sometimes that's exactly what we need to hear. But I think sometimes our resistance to visibility might be telling us something.

[05:07] And instead of immediately trying to just overcome it, maybe we should investigate it a little. That's what happened to me. When I finally got curious about why I was resisting it, I discovered something I hadn't expected. I wasn't only afraid of being seen, I was afraid of being seen inaccurately. And there was another problem, an obvious problem.

[05:32] My own brand house wasn't in order. Actually, it was kind of a mess for years, and I knew it. I was helping other people clarify their brands, articulate their value, improve their messaging, and position them well and h-- show up professionally, but not doing the same for myself. I used to joke that people hired me in spite of my website, and it's true.

[05:58] And honestly, referrals are what made that possible. It's not that my site was terribly unattractive or super outdated. It was just minimal and much more generic and safe than it should have been, because I hadn't fully decided what I wanted to build the public-facing side of my business around, and I hadn't publicly positioned the deeper work at all.

[06:21] I was trying to speak to too many different kinds of clients and offering too many different things. I had become a little bit of a jack of all trades, quite honestly. And here's a little side note. Just because you're capable of doing a lot of things doesn't mean you should, because it takes you away from the more valuable things that you could be doing.

[06:40] I also hadn't settled on the offer itself. I was still trying to make the deeper strategic work part of something much bigger than it really needed to be. So I knew I'd grown beyond the way I was presenting myself, but I also wasn't completely clear yet about what I wanted to replace it yet with, which meant referrals could keep sending me work without forcing me to answer a really important question: What do I want to become known for now?

[07:09] So imagine someone saying, "Terry, you just need to become more visible." Okay. Visible for what exactly? Where am I sending everybody? To the website I don't believe represents me well anymore? To messaging I've outgrown? To an offer I'm not even convinced I want to build? What am I actually planting my flag around?

[07:30] And that's when I realized something important. More visibility would not have solved my problem. It just would've amplified it. We talk all the time about amplifying your message, but before you turn up the volume, you'd better be sure you're amplifying the right message. And that helped me understand something else.

[07:50] Sometimes reluctance to become visible isn't simply fear. Sometimes it's information. Something inside you knows I'm not ready to turn up the volume on this, because this isn't what I want amplified. So there was another layer to this for me. I hadn't planted my flag yet. I wasn't trying to abandon one audience for another.

[08:13] I was trying to figure out what part of my work I wanted to bring forward, how to package it sustainably, and who actually needed it. That's what I mean when I say I hadn't planted my flag. What I mean when I say I hadn't planted my flag yet. Planting a flag wasn't simply posting more often. It meant deciding some things, some key things.

[08:32] This is what I believe. This is the work I want to be known for. This is who it's for, and this is the value I believe I can create. And importantly for me, this is something I can actually promise and deliver with conviction. I wasn't there yet. And I knew I couldn't market something at 100% when I wasn't yet 100% convinced of what I was marketing.

[08:56] I needed clarity. I needed clarity before I needed courage. And there was another uncomfortable part of that clarity. I couldn't keep asking clients to faithfully represent the value of their work while I was still under-representing my own. If I was going to plant my flag around this work, I had to be willing to be seen doing it.

[09:18] So I became my own client, something I really should have done a lot sooner. I finally took the time to dive deep into my business, not just my clients' businesses. I did the discovery work and asked myself the questions I'd been asking clients for years, like, "What do I believe? What do I want to be known for?

[09:38] What am I uniquely equipped to help with? What's worth building around?" That process eventually became Brand with Bravery. More importantly, it gave me something I could finally stand behind with conviction. And once I had that conviction, the idea of visibility changed for me. When it comes to visibility, people often think they need to post because they need attention, you know, more eyeballs on their stuff, and that can certainly be the outcome.

[10:08] But after becoming my own client, I became compelled to be visible because my belief had changed. I realized this for me is not about posting just to get attention. I need to speak because I have something worth saying that can help people. Those two thoughts might produce exactly the same behavior. I might write the same post, publish the same article, record the same podcast, or walk onto the same stage, but internally, they're completely different.

[10:39] To say I need attention makes visibility feel self-promotional. But to say I have something worth saying that can help people makes visibility feel more like stewardship. And I realized I didn't need to become more comfortable with attention. I just needed to become more convicted about my contribution. That's courageous visibility.

[11:04] Courageous visibility doesn't begin with courage. It begins with conviction. And that's why I think we need to be careful when we tell thoughtful people to, you know, just put yourself out there because there are very different reasons someone may be hiding. Now, maybe you're in a different boat than I was.

[11:23] You already have clarity on what you stand for. You believe deeply in your work. Your brand represents you beautifully, and you know who you're here to serve. But still, you're afraid to hit publish for some reason. Well, maybe courage really is the next step for you. But resistance can come from somewhere else too.

[11:43] Your public presence may represent someone you've outgrown. You may be trying to market work that you're no longer even excited about, but not quite sure what you want the next chapter to look like. If that's the case, then telling yourself to just show up more may be solving the wrong problem. So instead of asking, "Why am I so, why am I so afraid to be visible?" Try asking, "What exactly am I afraid people will see?

[12:09] Am I afraid of being seen or being seen inaccurately? Do I believe in what I'm promoting? Does my public presence represent the person I've become? Am I clear about what I want to be known for? Have I actually planted my flag?" Your resistance may be fear, but it may also be information. So just listen to it before you diagnose it too quickly because here's the thing: clarity comes before courage.

[12:40] I couldn't skip straight to courage. I first had to get clear about what deserved to lead, what I wanted to become known for, what was worth building around, and what I was willing to bring forward publicly. Then I had to believe it deeply enough to stand behind it. That's conviction, because visibility is an amplifier, and I needed to be clear about what I wanted amplified.

[13:04] But once those pieces began coming together, I realized that my invisibility wasn't just hurting me. It was hurting people who needed my help but didn't know anything about me, and that left me with a pretty uncomfortable question. Because if I know something that could help someone, if I've spent years developing expertise, if I see a problem differently and I refuse to speak because I'm uncomfortable being seen, is that humility?

[13:33] Or am I still making the decision primarily about me? Am I worried about what people will think of me? Or if someone disagrees with me and says mean things? Will it look like I'm just promoting myself? Notice who appears in every one of those questions. Me. Courageous visibility asks a different question. Who might this help?

[13:56] That's the better question because it changes the motivation. It takes the focus off of me and onto the people I can help. And here's another thing that made visibility easier for me. I don't need everyone to see me. I don't need to become famous or have millions of followers or... And I'm certainly not, um, not in a place where I need everyone who encounters my work to agree with me or even like me.

[14:22] That's incredibly freeing. Because visibility isn't really about being seen by more people. It's about becoming recognizable to the right people, the people who need the work, the people who resonate with the perspective, the people I can actually help, the people who hear something I say and think, "Oh, she gets me.

[14:42] She's talking to me." That's enough. A strong brand isn't standing on a rooftop screaming, "Look at me," waving their arms everywhere. It's more like turning on the porch light. It says, "Here's who I am, here's what I believe, and here's what I can help you with. If you've been looking for this, you're welcome here.

[15:05] Come on in." It's a very different kind of visibility. So here's the thought I'd like to leave with you today. If visibility makes you uncomfortable, don't immediately assume that discomfort is something you need to overcome. Get curious about it. Ask yourself, "What exactly am I resisting? Do I need more courage or do I need more clarity?

[15:29] Does my public presence actually match who I've become, or is it telling the wrong story? Am I convinced of the value I'm offering?" Because if I'm not, that uncertainty is likely to show up in how I represent it. And perhaps the bigger question, what am I responsible for making visible? Maybe it's your expertise, your voice, a solution or an idea you have, or something you feel deeply called to contribute.

[16:01] Because you don't need to become someone who loves attention in order to be visible. I certainly haven't. You just need to believe in something deeply enough that staying invisible is no longer an acceptable option. That's what happened to me. My conviction finally became stronger than my preference for invisibility, and here I am recording a podcast.

[16:23] Who knew? So apparently things can change. Thanks for being here. I'm Terri Podlinski, and this is Brand Potential Unlocked, where who you've become meets how the world sees you. And remember, believe what's true and be brave enough to let it be seen.

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