The Three Layers of Visibility Every Business Owner Needs to Master

Speaker A: Foreign. Welcome back to the RBL Media Podcast. I'm your host Pua, and today we are talking about your inevitable fame. I mean truly, if you are a business owner and you are marketing your business in any fashion, and I will say this is more geared towards small to medium businesses where you may have a brand and a product and a service, but you are also very much involved in the day to day operations. Perhaps you are sort of the star of the show in terms of your marketing efforts. Even if you have models or employees or people who are helping to alleviate some of the weight of promoting your product or service, it's still more or less you, whether you're either in front of the camera or behind it. And even if you know it's very much a brand centered marketing effort, there is going to be a time, hopefully eventually, if not already, where your brand and or hate to say it, maybe I don't hate to say it, but your face or whoever's face is representing your company is going to be known by people that you don't know, AKA recognized on the street by strangers, AKA fame. Personally, the thought of that kind of fame makes me a little bit uncomfortable. Like I have yet to be approached by someone that I don't know and have them say like, oh, hey, I saw you on Instagram, or I listened to your podcast. I don't think that that's happened yet. It's not necessarily a goal of mine for that to happen. But at the same time I am, um, hoping that my business and my brand is out there enough for people who don't know me to have still heard about the business and the brand and potentially also me. And that is a concept that one of my mentors, Pia Silva, refers to as Omni af. It's this feeling that like, you know, when you discover a new brand and you go to their website, you find them on social media and all of a sudden they just kind of start appearing like a lot. There is a kind of like a paid way for this to happen. It's called a retargeting campaign. And you can actually send paid ads targeting people who have recently visited your website or engaged with you in some way. Even if, even if I didn't give you my information directly. So it used to be right, if I give you my email because you have this pop up on your website, or if I send you a message on social media, then I'm sort of consenting to you contacting me in some fashion after that. Now you sort of have to opt out of that it's kind of like when you talk about something with your friend and then it shows up on social media an hour later, your phone actually is listening to you. And it used to be really creepy. And we've all started to accept it. I don't want to accept it. I still think it's creepy. But it's the world we live in. So a, um, conversation for another day. If you want to talk through some options for opting out of that, you can turn that off. But by default, your social media and your phone settings, it's on. So just so you're aware. But it's not an accident is my point. Like, it's not a coincidence. It's not because it's not because they've decided through, uh, the various screens that you've engaged on that like, you know you've won and they like you and so they want to be in front of you. No, this is, this is a system. It's very specific, it's very intentional, and it's very repeatable. And I want to break that down a little bit for you today because unfortunately, we live in a world where your business will not grow if nobody knows it exists. So let's get into it. This will combine many things that we've talked about recently in a, uh, hopefully a tangible and actionable way. So the last podcast we talked a little bit about my rebrand and I actually used a tagline in my old website that I want to make sure is carried into some of the new things that we're creating. And that tagline, it doesn't really roll off the tongue. Super great. So if you guys have any thoughts on how I might streamline this a little bit. But the tagline is get visible, be memorable, stay profitable. These three commands actually are in an intentional order because that's the order in which businesses are built. And last week, you know, I talked a little bit about branding and how branding creates almost a, like a mark, like a memorable mark in somebody's mind if they see a brand after they're exposed to it and they continue to get exposed to starts to literally. I mean, branding is what. Branding is actually a horrific thing where a mark is burned into the flesh of an animal. So it's literally like we kind of literally want to burn our brand into people's brains. The animal lover in me actually hates that that's where this comes from. But, you know, here we are. But I do want to frame this episode around that in that visibility is a three layer framework and most people only work on one of those three layers at a time, which might be why your efforts feel a little bit disproportionate to your results. Those three layers are what you say, where you say it and how often you show up. The what, the where and the how much. So we're going to dig into each one of those today. The what is your storytelling, it's your story and it's also your clients stories. A lot of times we see this in the form of testimonials, but we're going to kind of expand, expand on that and how your clients stories deserve much more than one little section on your website. The where is your placement strategy. And I have a really fun metaphor that I will share for that one. And the how much is the omni um AF principle that I learned from my mentor, Pia Silva. So before we get into that, I do want to talk about why visibility is actually the hardest part. It's, you know, this, this is a very underestimated piece of this strategy. When you start a business, you think the hardest part is going to be the work, the actual business, the actual deliverables, the actual product. And if you can just get really good at that, then the clients will come and it'll speak for itself. Now that has to be good. That has to be very, very good. Because if it's not, all of the rest of this work will crumble. Like your business will fail. But if your product and your service is actually very, very strong, then you can sort of lean on what we're about to talk about to support the growth of your business. And what I want to share with you is you have to have them both. You really do. If you think about any business that you've engaged with, that you have, you know, given your money to, and they are a reputable large company, they probably have a great service and they probably have a strong marketing machine. Again, I'll talk about Nike. Nike has great, great products. You know, they have reliable shoes and clothing and all of that. But they also spend a ton of money on marketing. It is a huge part of that business. People don't just show up. Even though Nike is one of the most recognizable brands in the whole wide world, the other piece of this is the marketplace is very, very loud. So even if you have a product, even if you're Nike and you know that people are very loyal to your brand and people who tend to wear, uh, Nike shoes tend to continue to wear them and repeatedly buy them throughout their lifetime, if another brand is louder, if reebok comes in and they're like, hey, we have this brand new shoe that came out and it is revolutionizing the running shoe. Just because Reebok was a little bit louder than Nike in that moment, some die hard Nike fans might just make the switch. You have to be able to compete in a loud marketplace, period. Hard stop. And, uh, it's not ever going to be because your product or your service isn't good enough. I want you to really, really understand that. And there's good news. The thing that makes a marketplace loud also makes it sortable. Okay? Because most of the noise is generic, it's undifferentiated, it's kind of soulless, especially with AI. That means that if you are clear, if you are specific, if your content is well placed, if your voice is consistent, that cuts through the noise so beautifully. So you don't necessarily have to be louder than everyone, you just have to be clearer than the majority. And you can actually do that. You can do that with zero marketing budget. You can do it with exactly the tools that you already have at your disposal, most of which are free. So let's from there dive into the first layer. The what? Which is storytelling. This is the content itself. This is the actual words, the actual posts, the actual emails. This is everything that you put into the world. And I will argue that this is the most important form of content for a business. It's not the tips, it's not the list, it's not the frameworks. And those have a place. I think that you should definitely consider those. But the most important piece of content is going to be your stories. And we've talked about this so much. There are two kinds of stories. So I know you're probably like, yeah, I get it. My story. I need to share my story. Blah, blah, blah. You talk about this all the time. Yes, you need to share your story. You also need to share the stories of your clients or your, your customers. Your story is the origin. Uh, like people literally say that. What is your origin story? What is your why? What is your journey been? Why do you do this work? What did you see? What did you experience that drew you to this space, this industry, this, this thing that you created for yourself and you've dedicated your life to? What did you walk away from to get here? What did you learn? Who have you become? And maybe you're hearing this at a point in time when it's time to revisit your story. Maybe let's say you've put a campaign together, you put your website Together about a year ago, you. You're like, yeah, I know my story. Here it is. I'm very clear. I've shared my story. I love my story. Well, guess What? You have 12 more months of your story now. Most likely, your story has changed. Your business has evolved. You've tried things. You've succeeded, you've failed. You have lessons that you can share. You must continue to not rewrite your story, but add to it as long as you're alive. As long as your business exists, chapters continue to be written. So if it's been a while, consider this your sign. Revisit your story and see what you can, you know, uh, pull out from it. And what about your story? And perhaps reflecting on your story that you've already shared, but you're somehow recognizing other components of it that you didn't realize before that are worth sharing. Or in the last few months, maybe some things have happened where you actually feel like you weren't ready to share that part of your story, and now you are. Okay, I do want to be very clear that when I say sharing your story, I do not mean sharing your resume. I do not mean sharing your bio. I do not mean a chronological list of your accomplishments. I mean the actual narrative arc of why you exist as a business. For example, my story is not where I went to high school, even though people here in Hawaii put a lot of value on that. It's not the degrees I got. It's not the jobs that I had before. It's why the experiences that I had in those places helped me to create this company. Your story is about creating things that people can relate to. Not creating, but identifying things that people can relate to and sharing them so that they can feel like, oh, my gosh, that's exactly what I did, or that's very similar to one of the experiences that I had. Or, wow, that's exactly what I hope to be. Or, oh, my gosh, I'm not really a tech person, so I don't think I can do my own website. And I just love the way that you approach this because of this experience that you had or because of, uh, you know, this is the reason why you feel so strongly about storytelling. And I want someone like you to build my website. Here's the other part of that. Your story is a filter. Perhaps part of your story will tell somebody why they do not want to work with you, and that is equally as important. Someone who comes to you that is not aligned as an ideal client will also probably see you as not aligned as an ideal provider, and that is so important. They need to filter themselves out. And it's a lot less painful if they filter themselves out before you ever meet them. Right. How many times? Yeah, maybe this is just a personal problem, but probably not. You have an email list and you look at the unsubscribes and you get sad. I won't look at it anymore because I get sad. And, uh, sometimes there are people that I know, but what it tells me is that they're not my ideal client, they're not my ideal target audience. So it's a positive thing when somebody opts out. Ideally, they opt out because you have content out there where they can know that you're not the right fit for them before they ever engage with you. The worst case is they become your client because you haven't done a good job either way of identifying whether or not you guys are a good fit to work with each other. And then the project is a nightmare from start to finish. Right. Maybe they request a refund. Like, it's like, just let's, let's avoid that by being authentic at the start. So, uh, that's a great reason to tell your story. There is also so, so, so much power in telling transformation stories of the people that have worked with you or the people that have bought and use your products. And we see this all the time in testimonials and case studies, and people look for that. I mean, it's Amazon reviews, right? If I am looking to buy a product on Amazon and I read the reviews, I can see 25 star reviews. And if I see one one star review, that could be enough to get me to not buy the product. Now, I'm not saying that you're not going to get one star reviews like you might because somebody had a bad day. I used to work at Yelp, and I actually deeply disliked the way that people had total freedom to write reviews of any kind, whether or not the product or the service was good. Maybe that person had a bad day, maybe their server had like a bad 30 minutes. And that window just so happened to overlap with the, the time that you were at the restaurant. And so you get a bad review and it's like people's whole livelihoods. And we're not talking about reviews right now, but I'm just saying, like, customer stories can be very, very influential. And when you write them, you know, you, you can highlight the good ones. And I do think getting reviews is a really great way for people to see genuinely how your service or products were received. So don't, um, shy away from reviews. I know they can be scary. The bigger your business gets, the more likely that you're gonna get a variety of reviews for whatever reason. And bad reviews may not mean that you have a bad product or service. It may just mean that that person was not aligned or again, had a bad day. Right. Like, it could happen and it might happen, and it probably will happen eventually. So I do want you to sort of, you know, make your peace with that and figure out your system. Something that we would tell business owners at Yelp is, you know, they'd get a bad review. And a lot of times I would hear about it because I was the one Yelp employee that they could actually, like, speak with face to face, even though I was just an intern. And we would go to markets and we'd have like a booth set up, or, you know, there were food truck rallies and we'd set up a booth. So a lot of these food truck vendors and owners would come over and they would just be so upset. Or, you know, we would get emails from M after the fact, oh, my God, I got this bad review. It's not true. Like, this is actually what happened and. Or like the customer was really rude or we were out of something, like, we couldn't help it. And so we'd always tell them, it's very, very important that you give yourself at least 24 hours before you do anything. Don't do anything, sleep on it. You're very emotional right now. I know your business is your baby. It's like all the feels, all the emotions. And yes, a lot of times it was a, uh, really, really unfair review. Give yourself a day, even two, if you need it, and then write a public response. A balanced, compassionate, but you can be firm but kind. Write a response that shows anybody that reads that review, one, that you've responded. So that's why we want it to be public. And two, if it calls for it, that you tried to make it right, or, you know, that you, without being super defensive or accusatory, you've sort of explained your side and that you, you know, up to you. But if you want to be apologetic. But I would say the same for any business, right? If you get a Google review, if you get a Trip Advisor review that you are not super stoked on, give yourself 24 hours and write a public response. That being said, we are not talking about reviews. We are talking about case studies and testimonials and how that can be a very, very, very powerful thing. To, uh, include in your marketing, I would do this in your social media. Send emails of case studies of clients that were very successful when working with you. Maybe you can do an interview, maybe they would do a video testimonial. Maybe you can, you know, find other ways to, um, to highlight them. And yes, it is about you and your business, but when you do that, you also get to promote them and talk about them and their business or, you know, whatever it is that that they do. So sometimes that can be a really great win win. And when people see real transformational stories, that is another way that they can relate with not just you and your business, but also, you know, they can find similarities between themselves and your clients. So something that you want to make sure you do when you share client transformation stories is one, get permission. That is a huge and very important piece of this. You must have permission to share. And if you don't like, you need to change names, you need to change details, I mean, not details. And you need to be upfront that this is based on a true story, but details have been changed to protect the identity of who this is. The other piece of that is you really need to be very clear and descriptive of where they started, because that is what's going to relate with any future potential client that's reading this. They are still in the pain. They are still without the solution. So they need to be able to understand that your clients also started in the pain, also started without the solution. They need to clearly understand the starting point of this client in the story so that the transformation actually means something to them. Now here's the catch, and this is the part I really want you to hear. You cannot tell a transformation story until you have transformed a client. Which means if you're new to business, you do not have these stories yet. And that's totally fine and it's normal, but you have to be honest about it. Where you are in your business determines which kind of story you should be leaning on. Brand new, first year or two, you have no portfolio of results yet. Lean on your story hard. Tell the why, tell the journey, tell the values. Let people fall in love with your perspective, because that's what you have right now. If you're established, if you have results, if you have clients who've gotten somewhere because of you, shift the weight onto their stories. Your story still matters, but it becomes sort of a background foundational story that you can lean on in between sharing your client stories. Their transformations kind of become the main event, right? Because remember, you're not the hero, you're the guide. The trap that I see is established business owners who are still leading with your own story, as if you're brand new. That actually makes you look less polished. Your story and the clarity around your story is still very important. But it needs to be clear that people have actually worked with you or they've actually bought your products and they have succeeded, they have transformed, they have liked the products. And something to mention, when you are brand new and you need to get those client stories, this is a great opportunity for you to test the waters in many ways. Right? Let's say, you know, when I first started my I, I sold websites for $500. And looking back, I wish that I had leaned more on asking the people who got full websites for $500 to sort of make up for the gap in that. Like, that's a deal. That is a steal. And it would have been totally fair of me to ask for, you know, kind of detailed testimonials and feedback rather than just, you know, using it to build my static portfolio. I didn't do that a whole lot. And I think that would have been a really great way for me to get some early client stories to be able to leverage in this way. So just think about that if that's the place that you're in right now. All right, so the where. This is the second layer, right? You know what you're saying now you have to figure out where to say it. And this is a metaphor that I've talked about before, but I kind of want to reintroduce it. So imagine that your business is a physical store. Maybe you actually do have a physical store, but a lot of us don't. You have to decide where to put it. And you basically have two options. You have a busy street or an alleyway. The busy street is exactly how it sounds. Big platform, lots of foot traffic. You have the street doing the marketing for you in large part. And people can kind of stumble into your store. So your most important space is going to be the front windows and the sign and what merchandise you have in the window. Right? People will pass by. Your job is just to get them to come in the door. Maybe they'll window shop. Maybe they'll walk in and they'll walk out. The customer experience for you is really important in terms of what happens once they pass that threshold and actually walk into your store. But again, you get to leverage the foot traffic and kind of the marketing, uh, that other stores are doing. Many times somebody will be walking down the street walking to a different store. But if something catches their eye in your store, they will come in. Now, if you choose the alleyway, the alley is a little bit more niche, right? It's probably cheaper, it's probably significantly cheaper. But you have to get people to kind of look you up. There was a famous coffee shop in Japan that my friends and I visited last time we were there, and we looked it up on Google and then we Google mapsed it from where we were and we got on the train. Like, we went out of our way to find this little shop and it was like, buried. It was in the middle of, like a residential area. You would never, ever, ever happen upon this place. And it was so, so tiny. It was like the size of a bathroom. The group that I was with was like, really? They were like really big coffee buffs. I love matcha. So it had like the best coffee and matcha. And it was like everybody would seek it out and there was crowds outside of it, but we had to know about it first. And so people just post about it all day long on social media. They have hundreds of reviews, and that's how they got people to their shop. They had to leverage other vehicles, other platforms, word of mouth. I don't know if they don't do any marketing. I'm. I'm not sure. But it really didn't seem like they did. I think they were just relying on the fact that people found them and loved them and referred them and talked about them. And that is a actual physical manifestation of the alleyway business. So depending on what your business is, right, and you kind of know, based on those two descriptions, where does your business fall and what decisions do you have to make based on whether you're, uh, you know, on a busy street or in an alleyway in terms of how you get people to the front door of your business, and how do you get people to walk in and what is the experience once they come inside, and what's the experience after? The alleyway is much more crucial for people to talk about what they did and what they bought and what their experience was after they leave than it is for the busy street business. So if we're talking about this as a metaphor, the bottom line is you kind of need to leverage a little bit of each strategy, right? The busy street. You kind of want to think of these as options if you're going to leverage some of the busy, uh, street strategies. In order to create a busy street for yourself, you have to put yourself in the pool where other busy street businesses are. That puts you on the busy street. You're. You're playing with the big fish. And how do you get there? Right? How do you get in front of people? Maybe at that point you're paying for ads. That's kind of how I see it. The busy street is more of the paid advertising world and the alleyway is kind of more of the organic marketing. And there again, you might need a little bit of both eventually, but depending on where you're at now, you'll need to lean a little bit heavier on one or the other. This strategy is your strategy for right now, but it is worth looking at your goals and seeing how things might change for you and what strategy you may start, uh, to shift into as your business grows. All right, layer three, the how much. This is where I'm going to bring in. I wish, I wish actually bring in, but just bring in the concept from Pia Silva. I just really loved her language around this. And she called this Omni af. So she runs a design agency called Worst of All Design and recently released a book called Scale Solo. And she does talk about this in her authority part of her course. And essentially it is like, um, Omni, where it's like you're everywhere, all the time, omnipresent. And essentially it's the same thing I described in the beginning. How do people who engage with you once start to see you everywhere else? If you're being Googled, the search results come up and you have a blog and you have a social media and you have reviews and you have a website. Like, you have all of these things out there that are connected to you, connected to your brand for people to research. Yes, reviews will be out there and perhaps you have a couple of reviews that you're like, oh, my gosh, I wish those could be taken down, but they can't. Where we can make up, uh, for that is creating incredible content very consistently so that when people Google you, all your content shows up. And this is stuff that you create and it's valuable. Right? It shows that you know what you're doing, it shows your expertise, it tells your story, it shows why you are good at what you do. You're telling your client stories, but you're telling them. So you get to highlight the awesome clients, you get to interview and share the stories of the clients that you feel had the best transformations. You have control over this. And the more content you can put out there, the more that people will say, like, oh, my gosh, this is amazing now, where you really start to Kind of shift into this place of like, wow, this person is incredible, is when you can get your content on other people's platforms. That's the linchpin. So if you start to pitch your content to publications, you start to get interviewed on other people's podcasts. That is where this becomes really, really powerful and quite frankly, really, uh, fun. I am not there yet in my business, so I'm not going to talk too much about this, because what I know about this is really just what I learned from pia's program. But I do want to expose you to this framework and this strategy so that if it's where you're at or if it's feels like something that you want to kind of create a goal around, I want you to know that it exists and it is a very, very powerful part of this process. Okay, before we wrap up, one thing that I do want to mention is something that I like to call the cringe ceiling. This, um, is what happens when most people try to do all of this. They get about four posts in a week. And like that, this little voice in their head goes, oh, my God, I'm too much. People are getting sick of me. Should I pull back? Maybe I'm being annoying. And that voice is the cringe ceiling. And it's the biggest reason most service businesses stay invisible. Here's the truth, though. You are, you are actually not being too much at all. Statistically, you are actually probably not being enough. This really is because of the algorithms, how most social platforms work. Your most loyal followers are probably seeing maybe 10 to 20% of what you post. So think about people who don't follow you. They're seeing less, if any at all. The other thing is, the people who are sick of your content are not your ideal clients. Your clients can't get enough of you. They want more. They are the ones DMing you. They're the ones engaging. They are in your circle for a reason. So if you feel that little like, oh, I don't know, I don't want to be too much. I don't want to show up like this, or, oh, I can't hear my own voice. I don't like how I look on camera. I don't want to be on video. Use this period of time where maybe your following is a little bit smaller. Put stuff out there and see what you like to do. See what lands, see what people engage with. Ask yourself, network, like, did you see my post? Did you like it? Was there anything you would change if you have a smaller audience right now it is the perfect time to do this, to get comfortable with it, to make adjustments so that you feel really good about what you're putting out there. So as your audience grows, the stuff that the bigger audience is seeing is the stuff that's more polished, but you can't get there if you don't start with something that feels cringy. It's just a part of it, I promise. I struggle with this constantly, so you're not alone. It's still a work in progress for me, but it's definitely worth doing, and we can hold each other accountable. So let's do a quick little recap. Visibility, very important. Three layers. The what, which is the storytelling, both yours and your clients. The where, the placement strategy, the balancing the busy street and the alleyway, and the how much the Omni AF being everywhere so your future clients can look. And they don't doubt that you're real. They don't doubt that your service is good. They don't doubt that you have provided a real transformation, because this stuff is just all over the place. When all three of those work together, it literally creates magic. It creates the, oh, my God, I see you everywhere. And for the right people, it removes the luck and the guesswork. And really, it just takes consistency. It's work. It will take work. You have to create the content. You have to put it out there. You have to be ready to create when you don't feel like creating, you have to put a system in place so that you can be consistent even if you are traveling or you're sick. And a lot of that comes from batching content, staying ahead of your content publishing schedule, all of the things that we've talked about before, all of the things that, again, I still very much struggle with. For me, I need external accountability. So this podcast goes out every other week, very consistently. Why? Because I have a phenomenal editor, Astronomic Audio. Alex and his team, Dasha is my editor, and Bean is the person at, ah, Astronomic Audio, who I am in touch with constantly. And she keeps me on track. And she'll remind me multiple times I have a recording, uh, due on this date. And then they'll edit it and they'll send it back to me. You know, so it's like, if I don't have them and I pay for them, right? It's kind of the same thing as a gym membership. I will go to the gym a lot more regularly if I'm paying for a membership, because I want to get my money's worth, right? And that's what motivates me personally. Find what motivates you, find how you stay accountable and leverage that. And again, I'll say it. Get visible, be memorable, and stay, uh, profitable. I cannot wait to be back in your earbuds again soon. And until then, keep crushing.