Do you find yourself procrastinating on putting up that blog post, recording a Facebook Live video or sharing your expertise on social media?
Maybe you post occasionally, but you don’t post boldly and position yourself as an expert.
In this video and blog post, I share with you how to overcome your fear of being visible online.
What do I mean by being visible online?
I mean posting boldly and authentically – on social media, on your website, on all the different platforms that you can be out there in the online world.
Stepping up and owning your space.
Taking authority in your area, in your niche.
Positioning yourself as an expert.
I know that a lot of people have fear around this. I definitely did.
I knew I needed to post more … but I had so much fear coming up.
Thoughts like…
“Who do I think I am?”
“Why would people listen to me?”
“I don’t know enough yet”
“What if people don’t like what I share?”
‘People are gonna find out that I don’t know everything about this topic and therefore what’s the point?
“I can’t put myself out there until I know more”
Impostor syndrome. It’s a killer of dreams!
So, why is it so important to be visible online?
Well, if you’re a small business owner, if you’re wanting to increase your clients, if you wanted to grow your business, if you’re wanting to have a real impact in the world and help more people, you really need to master the ability to put yourself out there to be visible.
That genius zone that you have the gifts that you have. You really need to step up and be out there regularly, consistently and not hiding behind your laptop.
I was talking to a friend today and we were discussing how we used to hide behind our laptop. We used to stay in our comfort zone and we just thought there was something wrong with people not signing up with us.
We thought we were doing all we could.
We were creating content but actually, we weren’t really putting ourselves out there in a way that our full potential called for.
You can kind of dabble a little bit, post a little here and there, put up a motivation quote now and then… but when I’m saying being visible – I mean stepping up, owning a space.
I mean having an opinion, having a voice, sharing your message and not hiding behind things that aren’t really your full essence of what you’re here to do on the planet.
What you’re here to actually achieve and the purpose of why you’ve been born.
I struggled with fearing being visible for years and I learned some really cool strategies that have helped me to be able to just consistently get out there despite the fear.
So, I’m going to go through 3 strategies that you can use to be more visible to show up in a big way. To do what you know you’re here on this planet to do and make the impact that you’re here to make.
1. Identify the belief that’s causing the fear
The first thing that you want to do is identify the belief that’s actually causing the fear. Identify the belief that’s causing the fear.
There’s some kind of belief that you have that’s driving this fear of not wanting to play full out. Not wanting to say everything that you wanted to say. Not wanting to fully own the whole message. You might just be bringing parts of yourself to the world. You’re just showing a little bit.
I’m not saying show everything about your whole life, but about your message. You’ve got to know what’s effective – what’s going to be the best outcome to the people that are following you.
There’s a belief that’s driving to fear us so, whenever we have a belief, A belief is basically every thought that we accept as truth. Every thought that we accept as truth is a belief.
You don’t have to believe every thought that you think. Just because a thought pops into your mind, we don’t have to believe it. We don’t have to play to it.
We can choose whether we want actually believe that thought.
So, if you have fear, it’s coming from a thought and you want to identify what is actually the belief.
So once you’ve identified the, you might think “I know what’s causing the fear. I’m actually scared that someone is gonna see me online who knows that in my past I’ve done things incongruent to actually what I’m sharing, the message that I’m sharing now.”
I’m saying this as an example because I was talking to a client today and it’s exactly what she said.
And the truth is that is true for all of us because where this life there is mess, when there’s humanity, there’s imperfection.
All of us live out of alignment with what we’re teaching at some point in time, because we’re human.
So if you put this bar on yourself that you have to be perfect all the time, it waters down your message. That’s gonna keep you really small. That’s gonna stop you from being visible.
So you’ve got to find the belief.
Maybe it’s that you feel like you don’t know enough, that you’re not smart enough. Maybe you feel like you aren’t pretty enough to get on camera. Or that you don’t know enough about technology.
Maybe the belief is that you need to go into another course.
Maybe you think you need to have 5 successful clients and have testimonials before you can actually say that you are an expert in this space.
The truth is, you can start helping people right away. You don’t need to have a certain amount of people in your email list or a certain amount of facebook followers.
You can literally start helping people now.
I used to have a belief that I had to have a certain amount of followers, and a certain size of email list before I could start teaching other people. That’s not true. I can help my clients right now, because I know how to teach them what I’ve learned and applied myself.
Sometimes we wait until we’ve got things all perfectly together. And the cost of that is, people miss out on your genius. They miss out on what you can bring out to the world to help them because you’re letting this fear hold you back.
Maybe you’re believing that you’re believing something that’s keeping you small. It’s keeping you invisible. It’s stopping you from stepping up. You need to identify what I need to believe in order to take action.
I’ve talked to many people who feel like they have to have all these steps in place before they go out on social media and share their message or own their niche.
It’s stopping them putting that first authentic message out, or that first Facebook Live, that first post actually teaching on your area of expertise or your topic.
That belief doesn’t serve you or your tribe.
Also, sometimes, it’s about getting out there – even though you still feel the fear.
When you can actually really learn how to control your mindset around it, that actually reduces the fear.
I’m not gonna try and pretend that the fear completely goes away, because it actually doesn’t.
The fear is there every time we push it out of comfort zone, every time we go and up that level.
That fear is gonna try and keep us safe. And that’s a good thing, you know, it’s just part of our brain that wants to keep us safe. So actually, it’s good to accept that the fear’s never gonna go away.
You just have to learn to take action despite the fear.
Remember the fear is driven by a belief. Identify the belief, write it down.
2. Identify the belief needed to take action
What belief do you need to believe in order to take action?
Maybe you need to believe that perfection doesn’t exist.
That it’s all about progress, not perfection.
That there are people out there benefit from what I’m sharing even if I don’t have 10 clients. Even if I’m not perfect.
Let’s say you’re a Health Coach and you think “I need to lose weight and I need to be at my perfect size before I can be a health coach because people are going to judge me otherwise”.
You need to know that your approach to someone has nothing to do with your own personal results. That is making it about you.
Yes, some people might judge the material, of course, there are gonna be some people out there who judge.
But if you think about all the examples of coaches who are helping people and they are not as good as the player.
So, for example, Tiger Woods, his coach is not as good a golfer as Tiger Woods, but he’s an excellent coach.
There are multiple examples in Sport where the actual coach is not better than the player but they’re just excellent at coaching.
So just because you haven’t reached a certain level doesn’t mean you can’t coach people in it, cause you absolutely can!
If you make it all about your results and you haven’t to achieve perfection before you can help others, you’ll be waiting a long time and people will be missing out.
It’s just something that you gotta decide “What belief do I need to have to get myself out there and be visible?”
For example “I need to believe that what I say is valuable and worthy of people listening to it and responding to it”.
If you don’t believe that, people pick up that energy because you’re not owning the worth. Build your self-worth.
You may need to write out a list of reasons why you deserve it to do that. Write then reasons why what you have to offer is valuable.
I recommend 80 minimum reasons (100 is better) WHY – you really need to live out of the belief you need to take action.
For example, I need to believe that it’s not about perfection, it’s about being visible. That someone is going to get helped with what I have to share in the world.
That simple belief I need to operate from and that fuel that drives you, that’s gonna be such a more powerful fuel than operating out of fear.
Think – “What do I actually need to believe in order to get visible?”
Well, first of all, I need to believe that if people judge me or not, that’s none of my business.
I need to believe that if people think I’m not good enough, it’s none of my business. I’m not gonna let that person who might judge me, stop me from all these people getting benefit from.
For me, I was really worried about what my ex-boss might think. So all these people that could benefit from what I offered missed out because of this one person who wasn’t even my ideal client that I don’t even see anymore – that’s actually quite ridiculous.
When you figure out who’s the SPECIFIC person that you’re most afraid of, you can do practical things like not share it to them.
You can customise your Facebook, so you’re actually not showing it to these certain people that make you feel like that.
Or you can say, this is me. It’s too hard to pretend to be someone else and all these people are missing out if I don’t do it.
3. Strengthen your why
If you’ve done any kind of reading about leadership, about business, so many of them come back to this “why” and what is your ‘why’? Simon Sinek talks a lot about it. Many great successful people talk about it.
Sometimes we lose track of our why. If we are thinking about ourselves and thinking about what we are gonna get out of it, we probably won’t be motivated at all or inspired to take action and actually be out there and be visible.
But if we are thinking about our why, about the stronger, bigger reason, the reason that is beyond us or bigger than us, that is gonna motivate us.
That is gonna fuel us and drive us to actually take action and do hard things, do uncomfortable things.
I used to hate, doing Facebook Lives. I felt so awkward. I was judging myself so much. So fearful of other people judging me. You know if I said um’s and uh’s. And if I didn’t get it all perfect.
I’ve never done a perfect Facebook Live, ever! Always had some kind of stumble, always had some kind of, I haven’t expressed myself so eloquently as I wanted to.
But people still get help from my Facebook Live and I get messages all the time saying that “It was really helpful” or “I’ve applied that” or “This was exactly what I needed to hear”.
If I had let that desire for perfection hold me back and make me fearful of being visible and showing up online even when I didn’t feel like it. If I succumb to that fear, I would never have got better at it.
Competence builds confidence.
When you feel more comfortable with something, you feel more confident, right?
We have to show up and be visible and not get it perfect and let go of that fiction. And a really good way to do it is to make sure we understand why it’s so important.
You might know your why, logically know your why, but we need to strengthen the why.
With strength in it, through repetition, through reminding ourselves all the reasons why it’s so important.
What you can do with this strategy is literally write down as many reasons as you can think of why it’s important for you to show up and be visible.
That is gonna be the fuel, the emotional fuel that going to drive you to do it – even if you don’t feel like it.
Or it’s going to make you feel like doing it.
Sometimes it’s the case of showing up because you’ve committed.
I show up to do a Facebook Live video every week because I’ve committed to that. Even though I don’t always feel like it. But I have such a big reason for doing it. I’m so connected to my ‘why’ because I’m so passionate about helping entrepreneurs.
I want to help more people to help more people to help more people – because the ripple effect of leaders getting on purpose, the ripple effect of leaders stepping up and being brave and bold and being visible and out there is gonna impact families, impact communities.
So my WHY is so much bigger than me, right?
It’s not about me thinking “What I’m gonna get out of it”. It’s actually when I focus on the message that I’m sharing – when I focus on what’s coming through me as a message, I can get the download and I pour it out.
It’s like a songwriter that’s releasing the song into the world. And then that song becomes everyone’s song.
If the songwriter had held that in, and not been visible, not taken it to their band in its infant stage before it was developed and crafted, then the rest of the world would have missed out on those songs.
I know this because I used to write songs for a band. There was that level of vulnerability when you take your song idea to a band and say “Hey, this is my idea, it’s not fully formed, it’s not fully crafted.”
You’re presenting an idea and you’re throwing it out there for judgment.
Or that art piece, or whatever it is that people who have created it. There’s always an element of vulnerability when we get visible when we put ourselves out there.
There are 2 different things that we can focus on, we can focus on the limiting belief, the mindset, the root cause of what is driving us to feel not good enough, not smart enough, not whatever enough, it’s always about not being enough.
Work on that mindset and we need to chip away that mindset or we can just take action despite that mindset and let the belief catch up themselves.
And beliefs do start to change when we take action and give our brain evidence to prove it wrong.
We’ve got to give our brain evidence that would say it’s actually quite enjoyable to share our message.
If you think about it, you get a captive audience – probably not your friends and family (because they are bored of you talking about business!)
So you can put it into a group or into a business page when you know that people are gonna get helped by it. How much joy is it in that? You get to share your message!
This is probably a big part of why you’re in business – because you want to share your message and have a bigger impact. You want to help people to get inspired. Get on purpose and change their life.
Being visible allows you to do this.
So to strengthen that why you might think “How is my being visible going to get all of my highest values?”
And then you realise – being visible is going to help me help more people. Being visible is going to give me more income. To help me make more impact. It’s going to help me get better as a speaker. It’s going to help me craft my messages.
There are so many benefits. So I recommend that to strengthen that why that you write them out.
That is no match for fear. Love is stronger than fear.
Connect them with your why, with your heart, your passion, your reasons, and NOTHING will stop you from being out there.
So I’m going recap that three ways to overcome your fear of being visible:
1 – Identify the belief driving that fear
2 – Identify the belief that you need to get visible
3 – Strengthen your why
These are the exact steps I took to get myself (a self-confessed recovering people-pleaser, perfectionist, and introvert) out there and successfully running a profitable business.
They work!
Want to know how to attract your ideal clients?
Do you want to know the BEST way to get clients, EVEN IF you’re just starting out?
Do you want to know, with CERTAINTY, how to create a profitable business?
So you can make a deeper impact with your message…
Create the income you deserve…
And position yourself as the go-to expert in your niche?
If you know that deep inside you there’s a burning for more. ??
To help more people…
To make a bigger difference…
And you’re frustrated that time is ticking and it’s not happening at the rate you want it to… ⏳
Join me at my upcoming 1-Day Workshop on Saturday 24th October
‘How To Get New Clients With Online Events’
This event is for the people who are ready to roll up their sleeves and get stuck in to action…
You’ll learn the best tools to help you sign up paying clients with online events.
So if you are building a business or wanting to build a business – pop this date in your diary and join us at this event!
Learn More or grab your free ticket
See you soon!
Kat
Leave a Reply