Ep 112 Transcript: Why You’re Still Invisible in Business Even If You’re Showing Up

This transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors in spelling or inaccuracies in the spoken words.

Shauna Lynn Simon (01:51.16)

Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Real Women Real Business podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon. And today we're talking about visibility and about some of the assumptions that we make around this and some of the simple tweaks that we can make in both our mindset as well as our actions that can make a really big difference. So first, let me start by telling you a little story. I was driving to my run the other morning for those of you who have been here for a while.

you know that I'm one of those crazy runners who runs at around five o'clock in the morning. And I actually oversee a women's running group because of course at 5 a.m. it's dark out and we, know, safety and numbers and all. And so we meet at different locations around the city, depending on what day of the week it is. So it's around five o'clock in the morning and I am driving to the run meetup spot. Completely dark out of course. And as I'm sitting at a light, I watch this cyclist come just flying off the sidewalk.

and straight through the intersection. Now, technically it's a green light for him, but he came off the sidewalk. So he kind of came out of nowhere. He's got no reflectors on, he's got dark clothing. There's nothing that lights up. Like he doesn't have like a headlamp or a bike light or anything like that. And a car almost hit him. Like it was really close. I legit thought I was going to end up being late for my run because I'm going to witness.

the cyclist getting hit by a car. Fortunately, the car did see him at the very last second and stopped. But the wild part is that I think the cyclist thought he was going to be totally fine crossing this intersection. And again, I've talked about my running group. And one of the things that we do with the running group is we have some very strict things that we have enforced in order to be a part of the running group. And so I'm looking at this cyclist, I'm thinking, wow, like.

I would not even allow someone on our running group who is dark clothing, no lights, nothing. Like we've got our LED vests that light up. We've got flashing lights. We've got our, even our dogs are lit up like Christmas trees. And in fact, it's absolutely mandatory for any women or dogs who join our group that they need to be able to be seen and be able to see them, their feet in front of them as well. We run on trails sometimes we run in different areas, but even with all of that, we still don't assume that

Shauna Lynn Simon (04:08.928)

anyone sees us because again, let's be real. This is five o'clock in the morning. If you've ever driven anywhere at five o'clock in the morning and especially if you're not a morning person, it's easy to go on to autopilot to not really pay close attention to your surroundings. And the last thing you're expecting is for a bunch of people just to run in front of your car. And so we slow down at intersections. We make eye contact with the drivers. We double check before crossing the street at all times because it doesn't matter.

If we technically have the right of way, if someone doesn't see you, you're still at risk. And let's face it, if I'm going up against a car, the car is going to likely win that battle. So I don't make any assumptions. Now that's not to say that I don't sometimes cross at a non-intersection place. Please don't send the cops out on me, but we are very, very careful about it. And in fact, we don't even cut it close. If there is a car that's even in the distance, we do not cross

the road because we don't want to startle them. Even though we're well lit up, we don't want to startle them. So going back to the cyclist, I'm watching the cyclist. I'm thinking like this guy thinks he's visible again. He's in dark clothing, no reflectors, no lights, but he assumed that the driver was going to see him and he really didn't give it a second thought. That is exactly what's happening in business in your business. Even in my business, I see it all the time just because you're there.

you're putting things out there doesn't mean that people are actually seeing you. And more importantly, it's not enough to assume that people should see you. We've got to make it really, really easy for that because I see this all the time. People think, you know, I posted about what it is I do. It's on my website. I talked about it last month. So in their mind, they're visible. But the reality is that people are busy. They're distracted. They're scrolling quickly through things and they're not necessarily sitting there trying to figure out what you do and

I think I've mentioned this before, we've got the attention span of, I mean, a squirrel really, like we get very distracted very easily. And so we can't assume that someone is going to take the time to read through our entire post to the end where we actually talk about what it is that we're doing. Or have you ever listened to a radio commercial? I know not everyone listens to the radio anymore. I still do. And I hear these commercials sometimes where

Shauna Lynn Simon (06:28.354)

I have no idea what they're trying to sell or who the company is. The last thing they mentioned maybe is the company name. And by that time I've kind of lost interest in everything. And so this is something that's pretty common that's happening in business. Have you ever received an email from a vendor of yours, a connection of yours, someone who you're already connected with that maybe you've already got a decent relationship with and they're telling you about a new service or offering that they have. And in the moment you're thinking to yourself, wow,

That sounds great. That will definitely come in handy for me someday. But you weren't ready to buy whatever it was they were trying to sell you or that offer or that new service, whatever it was that they came out with at that time. Well, now fast forward a few months and imagine that they've never mentioned it again to you. You got that one email. You're like, wow, that's a cool idea. I'll definitely remember this. It's about how I feel when I put something in that super safe place where I'm like, this is going to be a great place. I'll remember exactly where I put this. And of course, three days later, I'm searching high and low for it.

This is the same idea. You see that email. You're like, this is a great idea, but then they never mentioned it again. So now you find yourself in need of what they offered and you think to yourself, I remember that someone said that they were doing that. Who was that? Or worse yet, you don't even remember that you ever got that email and you think like, I don't even know anyone who offers this. It doesn't even register as a memory. Here's the thing. You can be doing incredible work.

and still be almost invisible. It's not necessarily that you're not doing work in marketing, that you're getting your word out there, but you're not obvious. We need to make things as obvious as possible. Don't make other people do the work to figure things out. Listen, I come from a staging background. For anyone who knows me, if you've been here for a while, my entrepreneurial journey started with being a stager. I had a whole corporate career and everything else before then. I'm not going to get into that because what

really matters here is the staging element of things. So in staging, we stage empty rooms, especially. Like there's different forms of staging. I'm not going to get into all that today. That's not what this episode is about. But one of the things that we do is we stage vacant rooms. This means that it's a completely empty room. And we then go in and define that space by bringing in the furniture and the artwork and the accessories. And we create a whole experience of that space. One of the reasons that we do that is that in order to sell a house,

Shauna Lynn Simon (08:51.522)

we need to try to make it as easy as possible for the buyers to be able to envision themselves in the space. And not only are we showing the full lifestyle and here's where you will put your sofa, but we're taking away the work that it takes to try to figure that out yourself. So when someone walks into a blank space, and there's actually a statistic out there that only 10 % of people can actually visualize a space beyond what they see. So 90 % of the people come in into that room.

can't see what's in front of them. So 90 % of the people walking into that room now need to put work in and effort in order to figure out first, what is this room supposed to be? What type of room is this? What type of furniture am I going to put in here? Then where should I put that furniture? Will my furniture actually fit? Will it look good? Is this enough space for me? Is it too much space for me? They're doing a lot of the heavy lifting that we could have done simply by staging that space. The same thing applies

when it comes to your clients and your message, because we want to make it so that the people who are listening and seeing our messages don't have to do that much work. What happens is that we end up hiding a little bit, not meaning to, but we hide behind the messaging and the posts and the, you know, our website and the things that we're putting out there. So sometimes we're hiding behind messaging that sounds nice, but doesn't actually say anything. And trust me, I've caught myself on this before, and this is, you know,

I am a big advocate of using AI as a tool, but sometimes, and this is not entirely AI's fault, it's our fault in how we prompt it, it's our fault in how we educate AI on who we are what we do, but sometimes they come up with these super vague, generic type of things that could work for anyone else in our field. And those are not really gonna resonate with someone. So we get that messaging that sounds really flowery and we're talking about, you know,

the boutique style of our business and the curated things that we're doing and the quality customer service and how we put people at the forefront of the things that we're doing. That all sounds really nice, but it's not tangible for anyone. Another way that we hide behind our messaging is trying to be clever instead of clear. And that cleverness doesn't always land. I hosted a bootcamp earlier this year. got another one coming out in the fall to help home stagers to

Shauna Lynn Simon (11:15.342)

plan their exit strategy and start preparing their businesses for sale long before they actually have to sell it. And given that it's specifically for home staging businesses, I thought it would be super clever to call this bootcamp, it's an eight week bootcamp, I thought it'd be super clever to call it "Stage Your Business For Sale". Because you know, play on words, right? Because we have to set up our business and trust me, like I use a ton of analogies

throughout this boot camp that really relate to what we do for our clients who are selling their houses and relate that to how we would sell our business. Because let's face it, we're still selling a pretty big asset. So there's a lot of correlations to it. And those analogies land well within the training. But if I just try to title something, "Stage Your Business To Sell", that's not really going to land with it. It's not going to hit as hard as I want it to because again, it's clever. It makes sense to me.

but it's not super clear. You want to know what I call the bootcamp instead? "Sell Your Staging Business Bootcamp." It doesn't get much more clear than that. As a side note, if you are interested in that bootcamp, please feel free to connect with me at @shaunalynnsimon on Instagram, and I will send you the details about when we have our next one coming up. But this is not intended to be a sales pitch. This is simply telling you about the fact that I was trying to be clever.

and realize, thankfully before I launched the course, that this was not going to land with most people and I need to make it as clear as possible what it is that I'm selling. Another way that we hide behind our messaging and the things that we're putting out there is actually by jumping onto those trends that have nothing to do with our business. I have spoken about this previously on podcast episodes about virility. We wanna go viral with our posts. We wanna go viral with our video.

And I've had several guests on here who have talked about how viral did not bring in more business for them. Unless that that viral post is super related to what it is that you're doing and it's going to actually land with your target audience. Don't waste your time jumping onto a trend. The other thing that we often do and I kind of touched on this a little bit earlier is we assume people will connect the dots. This is making things work.

Shauna Lynn Simon (13:33.26)

like making people work for us. That is not the intention of what we should be trying to do here. We want to try to make this as clear as we possibly can. So we don't want to make them have to connect the dots and put things together because they can make up new narratives. They can change the story. We want the story to be authentic. We want it to be real. We want it to really land with people. So it's like you're technically showing up.

You're showing up online, whether it's on your website, on your social media, in your emails, whatever it that you are showing up, but you're dressed in all black at 5 a.m. with no lights. OK, and you're hoping that someone will notice you. So please hear me when I say this. This is not to say that you need to be posting on socials multiple times every single day. But I'm going to share with you some ways that we can reframe visibility. And we're going to do that.

right after this short break. We'll be right back after this quick message.

Alright, welcome back to the Real Women Real Business Podcast where we are talking about visibility, but honestly in the way that most people think. I'm not gonna give you the specific tips for here's what to post on social media to make sure that your messaging lands.

Shauna Lynn Simon (15:55.426)

What we're talking about though is the fact that if you are cloaked in black at 5 a.m. in the dark and you're not wearing any reflective gear, no one's going to see you. Now I don't necessarily say that you need to be like jumping up and down, waving your hands, screaming at the top of your lungs, but you need to make sure that when you provide your message that it lands, that people are going to understand exactly what it is that you're saying. And we need to make sure that we're not just saying something once and then hoping for the best.

Visibility isn't necessarily about doing more. So I'm not going to tell you to post on social media every day or multiple times every day. It's not about doing more. It's not about being on more platforms or posting more content. It's about being clear enough. And this is the key, consistent enough that people don't have to work to understand you. Visibility is about being obvious. If you start feeling like you are repeating yourself, you are doing the right work.

If you want to check this for yourself, want you to ask if someone landed on my page today, my website, my Instagram, whatever, would they know what I do in three seconds? Not 30 seconds, not after scrolling, but in three seconds, would they actually know what is it you do? if the answer is no, that's not a visibility problem. It's a clarity problem. Okay. You see where we're going with this? Here's the other piece of this is the repetition.

We say something once and we feel like we've said it a hundred times. But for the person on the other side, they might not have heard it at all. If you have children, if you have a spouse or a partner or significant other of some sort, how many times have they actually heard and acted on something that you said the first time you said it? Now, this is someone who's close to you in very close proximity who theoretically should be listening to you on a regular basis, who might actually

care about what is that you're saying because you you've got an already built connection and how many times do you have to repeat yourself with them? So if you have said something online, that person might not even remember that they've heard it that one time or they heard it once and then they forgot it or they just weren't ready to hear it. And this is the big thing. Sometimes we're not always getting people at the right time. So we can't be afraid to repeat ourselves because at the end of the day doesn't matter if you have

Shauna Lynn Simon (18:18.094)

the right of way, like you're on your cyclist with the right of way or pedestrian with the right of way. It doesn't matter if your work is incredible. If people don't see you, they can't choose you. So I want you to start repeating yourself often like a broken record. This is also one of the reasons why we talk about niching down. And yes, it's niche, not niche. But for those of you who pronounce it niche, that's what I'm talking about is that that is your specialty.

It doesn't mean that you can't offer other services, but those other services can be more of a conversation, more of something in your back pocket. But if someone lands on your website and you've got 16 different services listed for them, chances are they're not going to buy. This isn't like going to the Bath and Body Works site. You know you're going to buy some sort of skincare type products or a candle or lotion or hand soap or whatever. Like again, all kind of related things and they're listing all the products for you.

because you went to that site, they've got enough brand recognition that you went there looking for certain things. But I will tell you, if I go into the Bath and Body Works site, I am not thinking, for example, that they might be selling clothing. I don't actually even know if they do sell clothing. But the point is that that's not what I'm expecting Bath and Body Works to sell. So if they decide they're suddenly going to have a clothing line here, I'm to need to hear that from them multiple times before it's going to resonate. Now, for you and your services, when it comes to any service provider, less really is more. Focus on what are your core services.

Ideally that is one, maybe two, if you absolutely have to, it's three services. Again, it doesn't mean you don't offer the other things. And those other things can be, I don't wanna say buried on the website, but tucked into the website within other context of things. They can be something you can have in your back pocket as a conversation. They can be a part of another service, like an add-on. Oh, if you're already looking at this service,

You may wish to add on this, this and this, but hey, let's have a conversation about it or whatever your sales process is. But if you are trying to sell 12 different things, how many times do you need to post for each one of those things to resonate? We need to make sure that we are saying the same thing like a broken record over and over and over again. We should find different ways to say it. Yes, absolutely. But at the end of the day, we should be promoting the same thing multiple times.

Shauna Lynn Simon (20:43.518)

over. So for me, the main thing that I'm promoting, of course, is my business coaching. And the core program is my 12 month Real Women Real Business Mastery Program. Now, that's not to say that I don't offer one on one coaching, but I can only take on a couple of one on one clients at a time. And to be honest, I'm usually on a wait list every once in while. If you're on my email list, you might see me put on email saying like, hey, I've got a one on one spot opening that will normally get filled up

pretty quickly, which is one of the reasons why I don't tend to do a ton of advertising for it. Now, I also have some smaller offerings like I've got my Money Momentum Call, for example, or my Profits, Passion and Progress Alignment sessions. Those are a couple of things that I will send out specific emails or do specific posts just for those items, and I'll maybe run them for like a week or so. And those are great little one off ways for people to get to know me if they think maybe the 12 month program is a little bit too big. But most of the time,

I am talking about the expertise that I bring, my authority, my background, and in addition to that, the value of what it is that I offer, the benefits you're going to get out of it. And it's usually all connecting back to my 12 month Real Women Real Business Mastery program. And I'm not afraid to say it multiple times. I feel you can never say it quite enough. So I've got an interior design business as well.

And my interior design business, honestly, I can do pretty much anything anyone wants me to do. But there are a few specific areas that I focus on. One of them is accessibility. That's probably one of the biggest things is accessibility and space planning. So that's the main highlight. I'm actually working on making some changes to the website to make it even more clear because even I find myself looking at things and saying, no, is this as clear as it can be? No, I can definitely smooth this out. So those are the main things that I'm focused on. Every once in a while, though, I'm going to have a post about investment properties and the value of that or

full renovation planning and the value of that. But for the most part, I am talking about the conceptual planning, the space planning, and a lot of it is aligned around accessibility. Now that works because I am saying the same message over and over again, just finding different ways to say it. So I want you to take a look at your messaging. Are you trying to do too many things? Are you trying to be too clever? Are you trying to be too trendy? I don't want you to be boring online, of course, because we want people to notice us, but...

Shauna Lynn Simon (23:05.238)

And I want you think of this, not even just online as well. I also want to be clear about that. This means in your conversations with people, the way that you're presenting yourself, if you're going to networking groups, if you show up at networking and each week, let's say you're at part of a networking group that meets every week. And if you're meeting every week and every week you're talking about a different service that you offer, people are not necessarily going to remember all the things that you do. But if each week you're talking about the same service that you offer and reframing it.

So one week, let's say that you're a home stager. Let's face it, I've got a ton of background in home staging. So it's always an easy one for me to connect to because I spent so much time marketing my own home staging business for 15 years. So let's say we're talking about a staging business and we're talking about the fact that we do occupied staging. This means people are living in the house. So one week I might talk about just the value of a consultation. The next week I might talk about how I work with homeowners items.

Another week I might talk about how it can be uncomfortable living in a staged house and how I make that easier for my clients. Again, it's all the same services, but I'm highlighting different ways of value, different ways that it connects. I might even highlight different clients who really benefit from the services that we offer. I mean, I'll service any client, of course, but I actually really specialize in older clients who are looking to downsize. That's kind of my specialty, I really connect well with them or something along those lines, right?

whatever it is that you specialize in, I want you to talk about the same service, but just put some different spins on it each week. So doesn't have to sound stale. It doesn't have to sound like the exact same elevator pitch every single week at your networking event. And think about translating that online as well as offline, those conversations that you are having. And I know I've met people at times at different networking events and they've come up with this really clever phrasing about what it is that they do.

We always talk about, you know, be benefits driven. I'm a big advocate of this. I talk about this constantly. I don't want you to just talk about your features. I want you to talk about the benefits and how it supports people. But the problem is if you just talk about the benefits, it's hard for me to understand what it is that you do. I also volunteer at my small business center. And one of the things that I do is I sit on a committee that provides grants through the government to the different entrepreneurs.

Shauna Lynn Simon (25:25.464)

but they have to meet certain qualifications for that. So they have, it's about an eight minute pitch normally. So I sat on this committee a couple months ago and I believe there were about eight different people pitching, might've been more. In any case, one of the women who pitched gave her a whole pitch, eight minutes of a pitch. And when she was done, you want to know what my first question for her was? So what do you do? I did not understand what her company actually did.

And that is a problem. So I want you to look at things objectively. And in fact, go to someone maybe who doesn't really know what you do or talk to people who do know what you do and ask them to imagine that they've never met you before. Would they understand what it is that you do? Because visibility that we think. We think of visibility, we're like, I'm just going to post all the time. That doesn't make you visible. If your messaging isn't landing, if you're not saying things multiple times.

If you're trying too hard to be clever, you're not going to get the business. Because again, at the end of the day, doesn't matter if you have the right of way, doesn't matter if your work is incredible. If people don't see you, they can't choose you. So instead of asking yourself, how can I show up more? Try asking, how can I make it so that I'm easier to see? And this will help you to reframe visibility in a way that's actually going to help you to connect with your audience.

Alright, I hope that you have found this helpful today. I hope that you are looking at visibility through a whole different lens today. And if what we're saying here is resonating with you today, I hope that you will continue to tune in. Each week we drop new episodes every Tuesday morning at 7 a.m. Eastern time. Don't forget to subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. It really, really, really does help the algorithm. And I am truly grateful for every one of the reviews that I get. And also if

What I'm saying here is really helping you today. The best way that you can show your support, not only for myself, but for your fellow women entrepreneurs is to share this episode with someone that you know can really benefit from this message. Thank you so much for tuning in today and for allowing us to be a part of your entrepreneurial journey. Until next time, keep thriving.