You can happily recommend someone else. You can tell people how brilliant a client is, explain an idea you care about or talk for hours about the work itself. But the moment you have to say, 'I’m really good at this. This is what I do. This is how I can help you', everything gets a bit uncomfortable.
If you’ve ever written a post about your business and then watered it down because it sounded too boastful, avoided sharing a win because you didn’t want to look full of yourself, or known you needed to be more visible but found yourself putting it off, this episode is for you.
In this episode of the Good Girl Rebellion Podcast, Anna is joined by copywriter and messaging strategist Abi Sea to explore why visibility can feel so tangled up with arrogance, showing off and the fear of what other people might think.
For many women, the problem isn’t that we secretly believe we have nothing to offer. We know we have experience, expertise and valuable work. The discomfort often comes up when we have to say that out loud. Suddenly, we’re worrying about sounding salesy, being too big for our boots or coming across as full of ourselves.
Anna and Abi look at where some of that comes from, including the messages many women grew up with about not showing off and why “she loves herself” was once such a powerful insult. They explore the possibility that being liked has often felt safer than being seen, and what that means when we build businesses that require us to talk about what we do, share our ideas and allow other people to recognise our expertise.
They also talk about why visibility doesn’t have to mean becoming louder, more performative or turning yourself into someone you don’t want to be. Abi shares her Hollywood Sign exercise, which helps shift the focus away from 'How do I talk about myself?' and towards the bigger change your work is trying to create and the people who genuinely need to hear from you.
The conversation explores why being excellent and being discoverable are different jobs, how to choose a form of visibility that actually suits you, and why setting a realistic bare-minimum visibility rhythm can be far more useful than constantly feeling as though you should be posting more.
And you don’t have to wait until you feel completely confident before you begin. As Abi puts it, practice makes comfy. The more you allow yourself to be seen in a way that feels like you, the less significant each post, email or conversation begins to feel.
Listen to Why Being Seen Feels So Uncomfortable: How to Talk About What You Do Without Cringing.
It’s time.
About Abi Sea
Abi Sea is a copywriter and messaging strategist with more than 30 years’ experience in communication, sales and marketing. She helps solo business owners, coaches and experts attract brilliant clients through clear, authentic messaging, and is a passionate advocate for using positive psychology in marketing. Abi is also co-director of the Big Green Market CIC, co-host of The Marketing Meetup in Fife and co-founder of Adventures in Marketing.
https://abisea.co.uk/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/abisea/
