Episode 402: 5 tactics to move through the fear of being seen in business
In this episode, Fiona talks about the common fear of being seen in business. From understanding the root of your apprehensions to taking small steps towards visibility. Tune in!
You'll Learn How To:
How to shift focus from worry to value creation
Identifying and questioning the root causes of fear around visibility in business.
Manageable steps towards overcoming the fear of being seen
Recognizing and exercising control over the narrative
Shifting focus towards the value you offer to your audience and potential customers
Embracing the realization that you have the resilience to navigate through challenges
Practical insights and encouragement for listeners to step out of their comfort zones
Get in touch with My Daily Business
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Think about the value you are offering over the victimization, I guess, that you have around people who are going to come for you or you are going to get cancelled or something else. I don't know the things that can go on in people's minds. what I mean by that is focus more on what you are offering and giving to people by showing up and being seen than this worrisome, anxious stuff that is possibly not going to happen.
Welcome to episode 402 of the My Daily Business podcast. Today is a coaching episode and I have coached at least a thousand people by this stage in this business. Thousands if I think about those outsides of one-on-one or group coaching, so people in masterclasses workshops, all those sorts of things, it would be in the thousands. I have to say that today's episode touches on something so common regardless of what type of business you have, how long you've been in business, or how financially successful your business is or isn't. Stick around for that. Before we get stuck in, I want to acknowledge where I'm coming from and acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians on the lands on which I record this podcast. And that is the Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. And I pay my respect to the elders, past, and present, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. Let's get into today's coaching episode.
As I said at the start, I have now coached probably more than a thousand people in terms of one-on-one coaching, or people who have come through group coaching. If I think about workshops and masterclasses and all sorts of different programs that have run over the time that I've been in business, it will be in the thousands. That is crazy. If I think about this actual podcast in terms of people being like, you are my business coach, but I just listened to your podcast, it's nearing a million downloads. That's crazy. Suffice to say, I have talked to and seen and looked at the behind-the-scenes of so many different businesses and business owners, and I've been able to see some common fears that people go through regardless of where they're in business, regardless of how outwardly successful they seem, they still have these fears.
Today I thought I would highlight one of these and give you ideas as to how to move through that fear. It's not that you can overcome it completely because there'll be peaks and troughs in your business. There'll be different things, external factors you can't control, or other things that come into your life as well as your business that then mean this fear comes back. It's not like, you just do these things and you're finished with it forever, but hopefully today, if this fear resonates with you, some of these tactics will help you move through that fear. I also want to remind you that we do have the full show notes for all of our podcast episodes. If you're listening to this and you are driving or doing something else and you can't take notes and you want to come back to this in text format, you can find that at mydailybusiness.com/podcast.
For this particular episode, you just do another slash 402. But if you go to mydailybusiness.com/podcast, you can find all of our podcasts right the way back to episode one in text format. You can also find our How to Start a Podcast course if you are keen to start a podcast. We've had so many people go through that course and now they have their podcast. I've been a guest on some of these, which is just so cool to hear people being like, I just had an idea for a podcast and then I did your course. And now I've not only launched, but I'm continuing to show up week after week because I've got my processes and systems down. You can find that as well at mydailybusiness.com/podcast.
The episode today is all about the fear of being seen. I know this is something that comes up a lot when people have to level up. That might be looking at applying for an award for the first time looking at grant applications. It could be an investment in getting seed rounds. It could also be when they are choosing to create a new marketing channel such as a podcast or YouTube or showing up more on TikTok or whatever it is. Often, it'll come up as this procrastination, which when we dive into it more in coaching is I don't want anyone to see me. I just want to run this business and be behind the scenes and do well, but I don't want to have to market to do that. We have a course Marketing for Your Small Business and we have people go through that all the time. We do it twice a year. We do like a coaching component.
That's also interesting to see when people start getting feedback from the group about, have you tried this? You can see people be like, but I don't want to have to do that. I don't want to have to be seen a bit more. It's not even about necessarily selfies or your physical self being seen, it's also what I care about, what elements of humanity am I bringing to my business and do I want to show that stuff. Also confronting their passion and their purpose and their beliefs and their why and their values. Do I want to put that out there because I don't want to be judged? Or maybe they've got friends or family who follow them and they're like, what will they think if I start doing this?
It's something that can come up a lot. I think the first thing when it comes to if you have this fear of being seen in your business, and I would say the majority of people have it to some degree, even if they push through it and then get used to being seen in their business, whether physically being seen or their personality or their humanity is coming through, or their values or beliefs or whatever. This is also just as prevalent, I would say in some of my clients who have 50 or 60 staff than in people who I'm working with who are just a solo business operator. The first thing is to question yourself. If you are procrastinating on things like sending out an email that has a bit more personality than just a sales email or a blast for a new product launch, why are you sitting on that?
Why have you not sent it out? Likewise, if you've got all these content ideas, but you don't execute any of those and you are telling yourself, it's just I don't have the time to do this. But then you think about other things that you've got the time for, such as, I'm putting my hand up here, reality TV, or something else that is, that is not as important to you as your business and yet you still procrastinate on those other things. Ask yourself, am I procrastinating purely because of the time I'm procrastinating because it's not perfect yet? Or could there be an element in there that I'm procrastinating because I don't want to show up and be seen, whether that's in my email in a podcast, it could also show up as people asking you onto a podcast or asking you to be in their blog.
I remember when I started my business, I had a wonderful client and they reached out and they were doing these creative women on their blog, and it's a big business. I remember specifically saying, I'm just busy at the moment. And later when I thought about that, I questioned myself because I didn't know how I wanted to position myself at that point. I just started this business and I didn't know if I could talk about what I wanted to do because I wasn't doing that yet. I was doing a lot of corporate consulting I didn't know if I could show up with integrity and talk about it like this is what I'm doing when I wasn't making a lot of money in that realm. I didn't want to be seen.
Instead of talking about that with my client, which would've been great, I came across like I was snubbing them when it was nothing like that. It was purely, I don't feel comfortable with how I have my business right now and I don't want to be seen in any way and especially don't want to be seen on a blog that's global and has a huge audience. I would ask you to think about that in terms of if you're procrastinating and also things like awards, applying for awards, being nominated for things, and then not following through with those nominations. Again, there is a big award here in Australia with one of our telco companies and every year since I started my business, somebody has nominated me. I'm not sure who that is, but thank you very much. If it's you and you're listening, but I've never gone through further with that award.
Everyone has their hangups about certain things that want to not be seen can come in and out of your business. You might have a couple of years where you're doing well and everything's great and you feel amazing and also you feel amazing in your personal life. Maybe something in your personal life happens. Maybe you go through a divorce or a health challenge or a mental health challenge. And yet that has such an impact on how you feel about yourself and therefore what you'll say yes and no to in your business when it comes to being seen. If this is you and you are going, I'm nodding along, that's me. Some of the things that you might want to do, I'm just going to list out five. There are so many other things you could do including following the tail.
That's the first thing. Let's imagine that you have this fear of being seen and you've got this string in front of you and you're like, if I pull that, what is going to happen? If I do start getting seen, what is going to happen? You follow that string along and what it can look like is just journaling or writing down some points to the endpoint. Let's imagine that you are nominated for an award and you get notified that you've been nominated for an award and your first reaction is, nope. Not going any further with this. Not going to fill in what I need to fill in, not going to add a photo or whatever they need. what following the string is to pull on that and be like, let's imagine that I go forward with this and I put, put all the details in that this award company needs to know then what?
You may need to show up and be questioned about this. You may need to go to an event and be there on the awards night and then go through all the way through. Maybe it's the fact that you don't want to be part of it because you'll show up and then you won't win. Or maybe it's a fact that you'll show up and then you'll win. Maybe you think then people will think, well she shouldn't win or he shouldn't win or they shouldn't win because this other person is, is better. It's like following that tale to like, what is it that I'm worried about here? Likewise, let's say you start a podcast and you're like, “Oh my God.” But what if people listen and then what if they say this or what if they say that?
I know that I didn't start my podcast for years because I was so worried that people would say, I have a nasally voice because I have sinus issues, I've had like operations to deal with this. I was convinced that I would get all this feedback, that my voice was nasally. And yet all I've ever had since I started this podcast is the feedback that like, I love your podcast and I've had lots of different people say, you could have, you could be on the radio. Which is surprising to me because I always didn't like the way that my voice sounded. I'm just used to it. But that string, if I'd pulled it was, I'm going to be rejected. I'm going to do this, it's not going to work. No one's going to listen. If they do listen, they're going to somehow give me all this criticism, which was interesting to then dissect.
What was interesting about that, when I went through that back in 2016, I bought the track for this podcast and I paid this company in the US to do the intro for me. I ended up not using that, but I didn't launch this podcast for four years later. What I did at that time was to start listening to different voices and different people's podcasts. I'd look through the reviews and it was like I went through that tale and being like, no one is saying anything and this person is doing well and they have a nasal voice or they have a high pitched voice or they have a monotone voice and yet they're getting a lot of downloads, they're getting a lot of listens.
It was pulling on that string to be like, what am I afraid of? And realizing that that's probably not going to happen. The first thing is to pull on that string and question yourself as to what is that journey that I'm worried about showing up in. What is this thing that I'm scared about? Because chances are it's probably not going to happen and it's not factually correct. That was the first thing. The second is to start taking small steps to be seen. When I started doing video content for my business on social media, the very first thing that I did, I remember exactly where I was and what I did and how it happened that I did an Instagram story when Instagram stories had just launched and it was 5:00 AM or 6:00 AM.
I was going to a workshop in the country. It was a long drive and I'd got up early, I'd done my hair and makeup, I had a nice dress on and I thought, I'm going to do the story now whilst I feel okay and then I'm going to turn my phone off for the entirety of this drive to the country, which was a couple of hours. I remember I did it and I turned it off and I just didn't look at my phone for ages. I had a workshop all day to run, so I didn't look at my phone all day. That was a very small step. It was like a ten-second video or 20 seconds. And that was it. 15 seconds, I think that was the max at the time. That was it.
I turned it off. It wasn't like, I'm scared of being seen, but I'm going to show up and do a talk in front of a thousand people. It was, I'm going to do a 15-second video in the privacy of my own home and then I'm going to turn my phone off. I'm not worried about whether people liked it or hearted it or whatever. That is the next step to just take a small step. If you want to have a podcast and you're scared about being seen as a podcast host and all of that and what it entails, you may start with just being on somebody else's podcast and even just being on somebody's podcast for like a short interview or even further, you could start with a friend of yours just interviewing you just casually and just recording that and seeing how it feels and how it felt to be in that conversation.
Getting onto a podcast, your first podcast and maybe a first podcast can be a small podcast. Maybe you don't go after a podcast that is popular or ranks or has a lot of downloads or has had lots of different big people on it. You go after one that maybe has just started so that they're starting as well. That could be amazing because if that podcast then blows up, you were there at the very beginning. But also if they don't have this huge audience just now, that's a great place for you to start because you're just starting small. That's the second point. The third point is that you have to remember that you are, you have agency over what you put out into the world. Yes, you may have like, I'm going to be seen.
But you can also control the narrative quite a lot. I often think of Beyonce and I utilize Beyonce in a lot of different workshops and things that I do as an example of a brand that is incredibly curated and incredibly tailored to what she wants us to see. We don't see everything as much as she might be like, “Look, I'm sharing my life.” She's not. She's sharing a very tiny pinprick of her life and sharing it in a way that she wants to be sharing it. You can control what it is that you share so that then that worry about showing up and being seen is like, well I'm showing up in these different parts, but I'm not going to necessarily show up every single part of my life. whenever I talk to people about their marketing, a lot of the things that come up at the end when we talk about humanizing is them saying, well how much of myself do I show?
It's always, how much do you want to show and which topics do you want to be known for? What stuff are you not that keen to be known for? You don't have to show that we live in a world where there's a lot of pseudo vulnerability where people are like, I have to share every little thing that's going on in my life. You don't have to be that person. You don't have to. If that doesn't feel right for you share to a point that you are comfortable with, you get to control that. Also, a lot of the time people are worried about sharing online. You can delete stuff, you can edit things. I worked in print magazines for a long time and well before social media came out and the scary thing with print magazines or print books, we've just put our book, the second book off to print, is that it can't be changed.
It can't be changed for a while until the reprint. With a magazine, It's not going to be reprinted. You have that opportunity and it's gone and it's off with most things that most small business owners are putting themselves out on, whether it's a podcast or an Instagram reel or a TikTok or a YouTube video or whatever it is. It can be edited, it can be edited after the fact. Even in this podcast, we will always tell all our guests we hope that you're happy with the interview, but if there's anything that you want changed, we can edit it afterwards. And we just re-upload it and it goes out again to all the different channels and nobody's the wiser. That is another thing to think about when you're worried about being seen, is that you control what you share, you control a large part of what it is that you share and you can control and cultivate that boundary for what it is that you share. That's 0.3.
0.4 when it comes to dealing with and moving through, the fear of being seen is to think about the value you are offering over the victimization I guess, that you have around people are going to come for you or you are going to get cancelled or something else. The things that can go on in people's minds. What I mean by that is to focus more on what you are offering and giving to people by showing up and being seen than this worrisome, anxious stuff that is possibly not going to happen. I have to say with a caveat, that I'm not a mental health professional. If you are seriously, seriously getting anxiety through the idea of being seen, then of course go and speak to a professional, go and speak to your GP, go and speak to somebody who is a mental health professional.
But what I'm talking about is just this nervousness and like low-grade procrastination that people have around, what if I have to show up? They want to show up, but they have this fear around it. 0.4 is thinking about how much value you can offer to somebody if you show up because those people are watching. It could be your audience, it could be your social media audience, but it could also be people in your personal life who by seeing you show up are like, I could also do that too. You are giving that value rather than feeling like a victim when you haven't put yourself out there at all. Everything you're worried about may never come true. That's the fourth point to think about it.
If I had sat there worrying, I did let it pass my mind, but if I had sat there and just never started this podcast because I was so worried about my voice or the fact that somebody would say You're super nasally, can't listen to her, then imagine how much value I would have missed out on giving. As I said, we have had hundreds of thousands of downloads of this podcast and every time I look at the statistics, we are literally across the world. There's a map that I look at in Simple Cast, which is where we host this podcast and it has like yellow splotches where people are listening. It used to always just be New Zealand, shout out to New Zealand. because you have always listened to this podcast from day one. Thank you.
If you are listening in New Zealand, and it would be the east coast of Australia and even just like the lower East Coast of Australia for ages. It slowly became LA in America and then it would be New York, so it would be like the outer edges of the East Coast and West Coast of the US and it would be a little pockets of parts of Asia and a little bit in like London. And slowly these yellow spots have become all over the world. It is incredible to me. Like everywhere in the Middle East in India, in parts of Russia, and parts of Brazil, it's incredible to me that people are listening to this podcast everywhere and that we have so many people that send us messages. I'm not just saying that we have messages all the time, which is so nice from people saying, I listen to your podcast, I love this, I love that.
Or “Hey, I'm writing from New Jersey”, or “Hey, I'm in Toronto”, and it's incredible. None of that would've happened if I had given in to the idea that somebody was going to victimize me over my voice versus giving in and getting excited by the value that you are offering. Think about, I don't know, somebody that you learn from, whether it's an educational resource or it's somebody who's entertaining or just somebody that you're like, I should know her account, but there's a woman on TikTok, but I watch who is in New Zealand, she's hilarious and she makes these just funny stories about being a mom and she's like deadpan and just so funny. I get so much enjoyment out of her. TikTok went and found her because I thought, I can't keep talking about this woman and not give her a shout-out.
Her name is Lisa Perese-Cullen, I don't know if that's how you say it, but her TikTok is @lisaperese_. She has 25 million likes almost. But what would've happened if she didn't have the gumption to just show up as who she is and not worried about being seen or worried about everything has to be perfect because it's her relatively normal, funny, hilarious rants about normal Monday life that makes her so entertaining valuable. That is 0.4. think about the value that you can offer rather than getting caught up in what potentially might happen. That hasn't happened yet. Number five is just this idea that you can do hard things, you can do hard things. Yes, showing up and being seen is a hard thing and it's something that you have like a muscle that you have to work again and again to get comfortable with.
I don't know if anyone ever gets so unbelievably comfortable with it at all times, but when you think about this and you think about this is hard, what you want to do is then reflect on like five or six things you have done in life that have been hard, and that you have somehow got yourself through that could have been moving through grief or loss, it could be moving as in physically moving to another country, another city, another state. It could be going through a divorce, going through any breakup of a relationship, whether that's a friendship or a romantic relationship. It could be all sorts of things. All of us have faced hard things every life. There is no life out there that has not gone through hardship and difficulty. when you can reflect on those things sometimes it can then put stuff in perspective that, I can put a reel out into the world or I can send that email because I have done hard things before and yes, this is another hard thing and it's in front of me and I don't want to do it.
But if I try and I take, as I said in step two, those small steps, so I do something small, then maybe that's all I need to do to get the ball rolling and to get the momentum happening and to move through that fear of being seen. Just to recap the four methods you can use if you are listening to this and thinking, yes, that is me. I have a fear of being seen in whatever being seen means to you. The first is to pull on that string, pull on that worry, what is the worst thing that is going to happen and what's the best thing that's going to happen? Pull on that and be like, where is this leading me? What I've got this niggly like, I don't want to do it. Why? What is the next thing and the next thing?
I talked about whether you're applying for an award or getting onto a podcast or starting your podcast, what is it that you're most worried about? Because chances are that's not going to happen. Have a look for evidence. Has it happened to other people when they've been doing it? Chances are it probably hasn't happened to other people. Maybe even talk to people. Like if you're starting a podcast and you've got worried about you've got worries about it. I mean there are millions of podcasts now you probably know somebody who has a podcast. Just ask them. And if you don't know anyone who has a podcast and you have worries about a podcast, come and ask me. You can DM @mydailybusiness_ on Instagram and @mydailybusiness on TikTok or email us at hello@mydailybusiness.com. Email us, ask your questions and I'm sure we will let you know that some of these fears are not warranted.
The second one is to start with small steps. If you're worried about something big, let's say you want to get out there and you want your brand to people to be aware of it and you want to build your brand authority, but you're worried about speaking on a stage. For example, you could start a lot smaller by being on a podcast and even asking the podcast host, do you mind if we don't do video? Can I just do a literally the audio only? That can help some people to feel comfortable. It could not even be being on a podcast, it could just be doing a question and answer with a friend and doing that over the phone. How does that feel? How do you feel talking about your business? Firstly, it could also be another small step in a medium that feels right for you.
I was a writer for a long time and a journalist and that feels very easy for me to write. For example, if somebody wanted to interview me when I was first starting, I would much prefer them to send their questions through email and I could write back because then I could get my thoughts in the right place as opposed to being on the spot and speaking. Start small with whatever it is, just start small. If you want to start on TikTok, go on TikTok and start looking at what is there. Start consuming, start questioning. Why am I interested in that? What am I interested in? something else. Start with a template. Use a template for real or a story or I dunno if you've got story templates, but you've got real templates and TikTok templates and all sorts of templates.
Just start with a template so you don't have to come up with the whole shebang at the start. Start small. The third point is to remember that you can control what is being out there to some degree the majority of the degree you can control. You can also edit things once they're online. You can take things down, you can move stuff around. Hopefully, you don't do that. Hopefully, you just let it go and enjoy the process. But if you have to, you know that you can control it. It's not completely outside of your control. Even if you're speaking on a stage, if you're at an event, you can always ask the organizers for whatever it is that you need. I know that when I have moderated panel events before, there have been some people that are, it's their very first time on a panel and they have said, is there any way you could tell me exactly what questions you're asking me so that I can prepare my answers?
On the day you would never know that these people are nervous at all. I will always do that. If somebody asks for more information about the podcast or asks to practice some of their answers before we hit record, we will always do that. You have to ask if you are worried about anything, just ask. Most people are willing to accommodate. The fourth thing is to remember that when you are showing up, you are providing value to people. If you don't do that, you are robbing them of that value. Instead of focusing so much on the negative and what potentially could happen and this whole victimization, you could also, maybe that's the wrong word to use, but instead of focusing so much on this negative outcome, you could focus on what is the best thing that could happen and what is the value that I'm bringing and how might that help people as opposed to getting caught up in it all just being a negative for you.
The fifth point is that you can do hard things. You've done them in the past, you've proven that it's a fact and you know that you can do other hard things, in which case showing up may just be one of those things that are hard and then it becomes difficult and then it becomes normal and then it becomes easy. You have to push through those different stages, but you can't get to the easy without going through the hard first. It's not even usually you realize that it's not that bad. I've had people who have either been on a panel that I've moderated or done their first keynote when I've been MCing the day or come onto a podcast for the first time and they're so nervous and then at the end they're like, that was fun.
That was fun and I wish I'd enjoyed it a little bit more from the very start. That is it for today's coaching episode. You can find all of this in text format at mydailybusiness.com/podcast/402. If you found this useful, if it's helped you maybe get out of a bit of a funk or maybe even get a bit excited about showing up and being seen, I would love to hear from you. You can always leave us a review, you can send us a DM, you can get in touch in all sorts of ways, but please leave a review if you do enjoy this because I love reading them and it just lights me up and makes all of this work and all of the background effort to put this podcast out twice a week, every week, all the worth it for those reviews. If you have a second and you do find this useful or any of these podcast episodes, please leave a review it helps us and it also helps other people find this podcast. Thank you so much for reading. I'll see you next time. Bye.
