Getting Visible When You’re Not a Content Creator

The key to pushing through the fear is simply to take an action. Because when you take an action, you're going to get some kind of result almost immediately.

This is the Entrepreneur School Podcast where we believe you can run a thriving business and still make your family a priority. This show is all about supporting you the emerging or early stage Entrepreneur on your journey from solopreneur. To CEO, while wearing all of the other hats in your life. My name is Kelly Sinclair and I'm a brand and marketing strategist who started a business with two kids under 3am, a corporate PR girl turned entrepreneur after I learned the hard way that life is too short to waste doing things that burn you out. On this show, you'll hear inspiring stories from other business owners on their journey, and learn strategies to help you grow a profitable business, while making it all fit into the life that you want. Welcome to Entrepreneur School.

Hello, hello, we're doing something super fun on the show today. And that is a reverse interview. Yes, I have a recording from an interview where I was the guest expert on an event earlier this year, hosted by Wendy Collier. And the event was called ticket to freedom. And this was a conversation all about my favorite things, of course, which are visibility, how to put yourself out there, how to get out of your own way, how to get over the fears, and the strategies that you can actually use that don't rely on social media. So I am on the other side of the microphone today for this conversation. So tune in, I hope you enjoy I also have a special gift at the end of this conversation, which was available for the audience listening to that and so I have extended that to my podcast listeners. So you'll find the link in the show notes. And make sure you stay tuned into the end of the episode. I hope you enjoy it.

Hello there I'm here with Kelly Sinclair. She is the podcast host and founder of entrepreneur, school and education hub for ambitious moms who want to start and grow their brands. She's an award winning marketer and brand strategist, Visibility Coach and girl mom of two constantly juggling hockey practices and marketing plans. She's your fairy brand mother waving the magic wand to give you the confidence, guidance and support you need to get to your next level of success. Welcome, Kelly.

Hi, Wendy, thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to have this conversation today.

Me too, especially because you also believe that you can grow a business without being fully on social media 24/7 365. So we're gonna find out how you can be visible and grow your business without relying and being dependent on social media. And so first, I want to ask what inspired you to go into this particular area of business and really talk about visibility and brand? And even, you know, strategies that don't rely on social media? What inspired that for you?

Yeah, so I actually have a background a degree in Public Relations, which I think a lot of the times small business owners might think PR is just about getting Media and Publicity, and maybe crisis communications a little bit. But it has so much more breadth than that. And it's really all about building relationships, and creating a positive image for your organization with whatever stakeholders that you have. So be it your employees, your potential customers, or other partners or people that you want to reach and connect with. So this is my degree where, you know, went to school, did the thing, got the job, and started working, working in my career, and it was working at a big PR agency up here in Canada, when all of a sudden, my mom who had breast cancer got incredibly sick and the journey was starting to look like this. This is getting real. And I was at and I remember being at work. And I was in a team meeting and I got a call from my dad, which I just had that you know that feeling in your gut, you're like, I have to take this call. So I stepped out into the hallway and he was like, Mom had a seizure. She's going to the hospital and I was like, oh, okay, this is this is not just a thing that's in the background. It's real. So, so I decided then that I was going to leave my job and spend more time with her because I had two kids, they were both under four years old at that time, and I was like, the only thing that matters is spending time with my mom. And sadly, only eight days after making that choice, she was gone. Hmm. So you have that experience of losing someone that you love. And it's, it's truly the cliche of understanding that life is really short. And I was like, Okay, well, I'm not going to do things that don't bring me joy. So you start evaluating, what are you doing in your life? Right? How are you spending your time, and I was looking back and going, Wait a minute. So in order to get to this job that I thought was the thing that I needed to do, because you know, following all the checkboxes of life, climb the corporate ladder, being one of them. I was commuting like an hour to an hour and a half each way to my job, with my husband dropping her kids off at childcare at six in the morning. And literally drinking all the coffee. Like I had a thermos to refill my go mug on the way so that I was like I could have just used in the Hi Fi of caffeine. Wow. You said I didn't think that that was not normal. I was like, Oh, I just kind of came back from maternity leave I live in Canada, we I was off for a year, it's a pretty big transition to go from Baby Brain mom to like, for a whole year to going back to work. So in all of that mess, I was reevaluating what I wanted to do with my life. And I decided that I wanted to work from home, I wanted to support my local community. And I wanted to support entrepreneurs in particular, because what I see is that entrepreneurs are so passionate about what they do, they're dedicated, like you need to be right, because put up with a lot, it's really challenging to put yourself out there and to grow your business. And so I wanted to bring those skills from the PR world and bring that to the small business world, to show people really how to create engagement and build awareness and get visible, because that is a necessity. Not an option, you have to put yours you have to talk about your business. Right? If you talk about your business, you won't have a business.

Yeah. And what's interesting is there's a lot of blocks to that right to being visible to articulating what you do. And for women in particular, what do you think that's about?

Yeah, absolutely. And, and I'm gonna say like, even as somebody who's professionally trained, and communications, and all of this is still hard for me to put myself out there. Because when you want, it's one thing for it to be my clients, like, let's do that all day. But to get yourself to put yourself out there, you have to go through all of those. Basically, all the things that you're told, as you're growing up, like, you know, it's not nice, it's not polite to brag and good where I are itself and all of this stuff. And the truth is, you have to be your hype girl, you have to be your number one cheerleader, that right job, and that you are the best person to do that for yourself. So, you know, we all face that imposter syndrome. And I heard something really great. Wendy, I heard somebody say, if you don't have impostor syndrome, you're not trying anything new. Right? And if we know that the pathway to growth is through new experiences, then impostor syndrome is actually a requirement.

Yeah, that's interesting perspective. I haven't heard that one before. It's evidence that you're outside your comfort zone. Because you feel like you're not good enough to do it yet. Mm hmm. Yeah. So you mentioned a few beliefs that most women are socialized or conditioned to, to feel and think around, you know, not not being too loud. Right? Don't Don't draw attention to yourself. Those are some of the messages we received. And, you know, don't brag, for sure. Even downplay your accomplishments so that others don't feel insecure around you. So all of that contributes for for I think, you know, in adulthood, a lot of women who go into business, they face those beliefs that are rooted in childhood. Yeah. So what has helped you or what helps you on a daily basis even to break through any hesitancy to be visible?

Yeah, so I feel like the first step is that we can all acknowledge that those are real like it, that it will feel a little bit scary and uncomfortable to put yourself out there and to put yourself into situations where you're having those thoughts of, what if I get rejected or what if I make a fool of myself or say the wrong thing or, or whatever is running through your mind and you know that that's how happening. But if we are all kind of saying, Well, we're all on the same playing field here, because we all feel this way, how do we get ourselves to actually do it. And I have come to realize that the key to pushing through the fear is simply to take an action. Because when you take an action, you're going to get some kind of result, almost immediately, because that result might look like, like the feeling of pride that you did the thing. Actually, I want to give an example here, because from you, because I, your team found me, and I'm so happy that we were connected through me having done something somewhere, some other point in time, right. And when we had a conversation, and we like agreed that this was going to be a great fit for both of us to be part of that, having this conversation. And then I was like, I'm proud of myself that I landed that. And so I was like, I'm going to do another hard thing. How do I take this momentum from having done something that was a success? In my mind, and even though that hadn't happened yet, you know, like, the actual like, acknowledging the winds, you get into math of that, and then you can go do another thing. Well, what else do I need to apply for? Where else do I need to go? Right? And, and, and it actually helps you to build momentum. So really, a lot of the time, we can get bogged down in worrying about like, what is our strategy? And what's the big plan? And how's it all gonna work? And then this happens. And then that happens? Well, we actually just need to start doing something right. You've heard the phrase, messy action. Yeah, start before you're ready. All of that is really true. And it is what is going to help you to get through, like, building momentum, everything is hard. When you haven't started yet, right? The first time you do anything can be challenging, and it can feel like a bigger step than if you're already in motion. Right?

Yeah, momentum cannot be like, emphasized enough, you know, it's much harder to start momentum than to keep it. And it just, you just got to push through that initial piece. So how do you suggest people get out of their own way to take that action? Is there some mental shift? Is there? Is it or is it just to do that? The thing?

Well, I mean, as much as I want to, in my like, Enneagram, eight style, say, just like, we'll just go do it. Go do Yeah, I realized that that is sometimes easier said than done, right? We all really know that we usually know what we should do or what we need to do. And we just can't get ourselves to do it. And we haven't really like connected the dots between why this needs to be a priority right now. But one thing that I I'm really leaning into. And as I continue to be really intentional about my own visibility for my business, and I'm seeing how, you know, the actions that I've taken months ago have led to the things that are happening for me now, you know, if you can connect the dots back to well, if I didn't do this, then that wouldn't have happened. And then that wouldn't have happened. It's like the idea of doing it for future you. Right, like current, you might not want to send that email, or make that post or go to that event. But future you who's in the room who makes the connection, who lands a new client, or a really great collaboration opportunity, because you actually went there, future is going to be like, grateful to previous me. Thanks so much. I'm so glad I did this, right. Like, so I'm calling it the future you mindset, where if you think about like, Can I do it for future? Me? Right? How proud will I be of myself? How, like, how great do you feel when you actually like, wash, dry and put away your laundry all on the same day, and you get into your bed and you have fresh sheets on your bed? Because you did that already? Like it's that same level of satisfaction and pride that you can have and then you you're in a different energy level to when you're starting to see the results of the previous actions. Yeah, I have a story actually, that I can share where it's been like it's still continuing to unravel, which is really interesting. So last summer I had, I was home with my kids, I decided not to put them into too many summer camps are getting a bit older, they can do a little more independently. And I was like Okay, so I'm not going to work as much as I normally would. And I'm just coming off the transition of like, you know, still trying to help them get down from like being in a corporate nine to five mentality around running my business. So I was like, I want to be able to play more with my kids. I want to be able to hang out. I need to make sure that I'm really intentional about what I'm doing on a daily basis so that I mean to Gaining my presence, I am still building relationships. I'm creating opportunities because I know September is going to come around. And I don't want to be starting from nowhere. Like I want to have stuff in the calendar. I want to have collaborations I want to have, like speaking opportunities for me. I like to do podcasts and such. I wanted to have that loaded up. Yeah. And so that would mean doing stuff during the summer not just like posting around be like, cool. I love entrepreneur life. Here's me on board peloton.

Yeah.

So I decided to take myself I call it a visibility tour, like this is what I'm doing. Every single day, I'm making sure that I'm doing at least one action that includes somebody else, it's a reach out to somebody else. It's not the behind the scenes stuff is not consuming information. It's building relationships and making connections. And so being the PR girl that I am, one of the first things I decided to do was pitch my podcast story to local media, like, have a podcast at six months old. And I could have told myself everything that you would tell yourself like, oh, it's not that old yet. I don't have any downloads like it hasn't been that many episodes. You know, I should wait. No, this is a success story. I'm going to share it. So I did that. I reached out and I got amazing coverage. I had two online articles featuring me a radio interview a and I even made half a page in the local print paper. on the front page. So

Wow. Oh, way to go.

Yes, nothing to lose. You know, I will not think that that

is the other thing, Wendy? I think sometimes we get so caught up in fear around what's going to happen if we try that the reality is none of this is life threatening. Now, it's not you're not going to die from sending a pitch to write exactly your message.

Even though your body might think otherwise your heart might be racing, it might feel like you're terrorized. It's just your your mind trick.

Right. And that's because like, physiologically, your brain does think that it's exactly the same. I had a postcard I used to keep on my desk that said, my fear and excitement are the same.

Mm hmm. Yeah, very similar emotions, actually. So your when you went to pitch media, that's a visibility strategy that doesn't rely on social media. Do you have others that you employ?

Yeah, absolutely. So kind of going back to my whole, like, where did this idea come from? And how do we even think about visibility differently? It's that it's about building relationships, right? So building relationships and creating connections, it gives you the opportunity then to find ways to leverage other people's audiences. So the media has an audience of very big audience. Sometimes it's your geographic location, audience, if they're traditional media, sometimes it's a particular industry, right publication, even Podcasts can be looked at as media and they have a specific audience. So audience alignment is really like the core in determining what visibility strategies to use. And I'm I'm being kind of broad about this, because it's important to know that one, your visibility strategy for your business, and what you choose to do, is going to be different than any other person in any other business in 15 years for me in communications and marketing, I've never written the same plan twice for any clients, right? Your goals are different, your audience is different, your message is different. And that's how you choose the tools that you're going to use in order to reach those people. And the other thing to know is that you can choose your visibility strategies based on your strength. Right. So I hope that's a relief. And I know people are like, Oh, I just really don't want to use social media anymore. I'm right. I can't I don't want to be there. Do I have to? When I say no, you don't have to, like you certainly don't have to look at social media is your Primary Visibility strategy. Because I don't want to fully shame social media, there's a lot of great things about it, yeah, allows us to reach more people, it allows us to make connections all over the world, people can discover you there, it's a great place to build again, relationships. And that's how I prefer to use it. And we're going to integrate that into a strategy. And if I'm going to recommend that to a client, it's going to be about using social media to make connections and build relationships with people who you potentially want to collaborate with. Maybe you want to do some of those kind of collaboration strategies, or speaking, you want to be on a podcast, you want to speak on a summit, you want to speak in a person at a real live event, or you want to do a list building opportunity, like a bundle, or a gift giveaway, or a list swap where you're sharing freebies with each other. All of these are other ways to do visibility. And really, what underscores all of it is that it's relationship based visibility, rather than algorithm, right handed visibility in a digital space.

Which relies on a huge amount of content. Yeah, right. Like putting out content constantly. Would the algorithms favor that? So that does get you into a cycle of a lot of content? Development?

Oh, right. Absolutely. And yeah, I think because, you know, the belief is out there that social media is a requirement. Actually, remember, when social media was becoming just was born. That's a dating myself a little bit. But so I remember that school, I went to PR school before social media existed. And then part of it was always like, you know, persuading organizations to have a presence on social media. And why did they need to do that? Well, a lot of the time it was because in a crisis, well, you just need to own your brand, right? in as many places as possible, it is important to like, you know, go grab your name on every platform, even if you don't use it, because you don't want somebody else to get it for you like depending on the kind of business you have, and how big you plan on getting, that can be really important. But having a presence on social media is different than using social media, for content creation, and like prioritizing content as your strategy.

Right. And typically, when people fear, you know, needing to be on social media constantly, that would be if you are creating and generating a lot of content. And that you you do want to feed that machine. And most people don't want to do that. So I love this distinction you've created between the use of social media for relationship building, and content. Because these are two different things. And you can do both, of course, but what I'm hearing from you on the strategies that don't rely on social media, they're about creating those partnerships and connections and doing collaborations and being on other people's podcasts, other people's events, leveraging audiences sharing audiences in that's also in my experience, an excellent way to grow your business.

Yeah, exactly. Because, ultimately, the way to grow your business and when we're looking at this through, even like a PR lens, it's about establishing yourself and building credibility and trust. Right. And this is a very common phrase that most people I've heard, you need to build your know, like, and trust factor and trust when it comes from somebody else's audience. So somebody's already cultivated an audience that trusts them. And they introduce you to their audience. You're getting that trust by extension, right? It's, it's right there. It's not as it's a totally different experience than how long it takes for someone to trust you when they just found you on the Explore feed on Instagram,

Yes, right. Or they have no roof Friends, no one's referring.

Hmm, yeah. So the Why should I trust you is almost, you know, I've I've paid like lots of money to be in really high level masterminds and the people who have come in and spoken as guest speakers, I've ended up working with most of them directly as well, because they were, you know, delivered to me in that setting, by somebody that I already trust and have invested in.

Yeah, yeah, that's so powerful. I mean, my entire business, the foundation of my business, the stability in my business is reliant on those connections and collaborations. It's really important. And it really helps to sort of you rise above the saturation and the noise in the industry, because you're getting connected through a group that's already formed. And that particular network, yeah,

plus, that is more fun.

It is so much more fun

To do it with other people. And like that helps you get over one of the steps. One of the parts of fear is the loneliness and the feeling like you know, you're doing it all by yourself.

Hmm. Yeah. So I'm curious what your take is on consistency. So you hear people say, you've got to be consistent, especially on social media, but also email marketing, right? Everywhere. So consistent. What do you consider to be consistent visibility?

Yeah. Isn't it interesting how people think consistent equals every single day?

Yes. thing or every hour? Possible?

Yeah. multiple jobs a day like I was. I've seen people make recommendations. I hear you were supposed to post on social three times a day plus, yeah, stories. I'm like, what?

Yes, I've heard the same thing. No, thank you. I have a life.

Yeah, exactly. So I think, you know, actually, I've interviewed multiple different professionals who, who speak about different strategies for visibility, and ask them all the same question about what is consistency mean? And ultimately, it is about what consistency means for you, it's creating an opportunity for your art like that your audience will know what to expect from you if you create the expectation, and then you also deliver on that expectation for yourself. So So you, you kind of learn it for yourself, Does it mean that every single day you're doing something you're connecting and making an outreach? Like, can you do that? Does that is that what you need, at least at first to build momentum, and then maybe you can start spreading it out a little bit. Maybe you want to start you know, some people like batching things, right. So maybe consistency looks like once a week you, you focus on visibility opportunities, and then you leave it alone, and you come back to it like every Monday or every Friday, it's about coming up with a rhythm that works for you. And I think it's just very subjective and important for you to determine what that is for yourself, and not feel obligated to a frequency that just stresses you out and makes you feel like you're failing all the time.

Right? I love that you mentioned you create the consistent see expectation. So if you tell your audience, you know that you're going to publish your podcast every Friday or something, you get to choose that if you choose that, and then deliver on it. And for you, that's going to be consistent with what the expectation you've set. But it's up to you to create your own expectations. And that's the power of being a CEO of your own company, rather than feeling like you're forced or pressured by the industry to do something else.

Yeah, I think that's a really good point to underscore that it is all your choice, you get to decide. And then you have to take ownership for your decision. So you can say I'm going to do this once a month. And then if you don't feel like that's building up momentum, well, then maybe you need to increase it. Right? Because you should get a feeling of like you're making progress. You should feel some wins, you should see some results along the way. It's and if you're not, you need to turn it up.

Yeah. Yeah, that's a good way to measure it. What's happening? Am I getting new clients through this strategy? Am I getting greater visibility? And really looking at that from an objective standpoint?

Yeah, because there's a whole other narrative out there that's like, you know, do lifestyle first CEO narrative. You know, we love this. We love that we can for me, I get to walk my kids to school and maybe you know, where my sweat pants to work every so often and whatever. But you still have to do staff like you do. Yeah, take action. It's not. It's not like you sit back, like, you know, everyone wants maybe passive income, then that can happen, but it happens because of efforts. Yes. And relationships and things that you've put in place. Mm hmm. Yeah.

Nothing's really entirely passive. You know, I mean, there are certain things in in your finances it can be but If there's an effort and an action taken in order to create that, yeah, yeah.

So I think we all just need to own that. Right. Like, there's, there's somewhere in between the like, I just make money while I'm on the beach all day. Right. And I'm hustling my buns off. Yes. Seven for my business.

It's a spectrum. There's all kinds of points. Hmm,

Yeah, you'll go through times when you're, you know, working a little harder or not. Yeah, focused on particular things more maybe visibility and making relationships. Sometimes you're focused on delivering on your clients.

Mm hmm. Yeah, a business's ebb and flow, and you have different seasons. And that's what's beautiful. Again, like we've said, you can create your own schedule, you can create your own rhythms, that based on your personal responsibilities and priorities and values. It's a beautiful thing. So amazing. Okay, well, you know, I love all these conversations about how to get more visible off of social media. And I know you have a free gift for my audience called The Ultimate roadmap to visibility off social, and it's an audio course. I'd love to hear about this. What's it about?

Yes, so I was really inspired to talk specifically about how you don't have to rely on social media and how you can move social media into sort of the passenger seat or even the back seat, depending on your personal choice and how you like to use it. And so I created this mini audio course, it's very bingeable, you can listen to all the sessions are kind of under 12 minutes long. And of course, you can put it on 1.5 speed, because we're still at it. And I don't sound like too much of a chipmunk at 1.5. So it's got different strategies that you can use that I talk about, you know, why they're effective, and why you might think about using these particular strategies for visibility. In inside of there, I also have an actual resource that I created called the visibility vaults, and it's the living document where I save the places where I find opportunities. So, you know, I like to do a lot of speaking and podcasts and things like that. And in email builders like bundles. And so I've got hot links in there to groups where they're sharing about this organizations, networking events, if you like networking, so all of that gold is included as part of the audio course as well.

Amazing. That sounds wonderful. Thank you so much. So if you'd like to grab the ultimate road map to visibility off social, click the link below this recording and get into Kelly's world. Grab that, and it's completely free. Thank you for that, Kelly. And do you have any final words of wisdom for us today?

No, my favorite. My favorite wisdom, which I say with love, and a big smile on my face, is just go do the thing. Like I actually would love to challenge the listeners today to take an action and you know what it is? Okay, it's the thing that's been on your to do list for weeks, and you just keep moving it to like the next week. And it's like, oh, I'm supposed to reach out to that person. But I haven't reached out to that person. Like you know, this person or you know, you want to connect with this person, you need to go and do that. Because that's relationship. And I've done this too. I had a person on my list, I think for three months before I finally emailed her. Like I have to do this. And it's been and you know, whatever excuses that you're having that are keeping you from doing it, like, it's not going to kill you, right, you're going to get a result, you're going to get that feeling of having taken an action and then you're going to take that feeling, you could do something else, and it's going to create something amazing for you. So go do the thing. And I would even love it if you would come over to Instagram where I am wide open in my DMs and tell me what you did. Because I want to cheer you on.

Yes. I love that. Thank you so much, Kelly. Just do it. Let's do the thing. All right. Well, thanks again for being here with us today. Kelly really loved this conversation. And to everyone listening. We so appreciate that you were here with us, too. All right, sending you lots of love, and we'll see you next time. Bye for now.

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