By Shana Lynn Yao

*** Part of the "Your Best Badass Business & Life Series

Can you see me now?

Visibility. It's a word that boggles the mind of most online business owners. It leaves them joining "visibility challenges", spending countless hours on Facebook trying to "get seen and be heard" and sometime paying tens of thousands of dollars just to understand how to make money.

vis·i·bil·i·ty /vizəˈbilədē/ noun - the state of being able to see or be seen.

In the "real" world, being visible for the small business owner with a retail store comes down to location, location, location. Being "visible" is a real problem for little known stores that were located in a UNvisible location in the mall. Or is it?

The truth is, being visible is NOT as complicated as people seem to make it. Today we are going to dive into a little known visibility "hack" that can transform your business, your bank account, AND your confidence.

Wherever You Go There You Are

Yup. The whole visibility "game" is just that - it's a game people in the online world play. While you may not be conscious that you are playing this game, you literally are thrown into it the moment you choose to believe that someone else's answers are better than your own.

In the world of new online business owners, many are exposed to business for the first time. You've shopped at stores all of your life, but suddenly, when the tables are turned and you decide to BE a business owner, very few people actually understand the core essentials of what makes a successful business. So you fall into the world of Facebook, podcasts, and YouTube, and you start to learn what you think is necessary to build and run a successful business.

Unfortunately, what usually happens is that you learn from other people who built their business not knowing what the core essentials of business were about. They possibly "hacked" their now successful business together and then start teaching those hacks to others, thus becoming MORE successful after others start believing that they have a system that works. Which is great for them.

But if you're struggling to "get seen", it's not so great for you. Because what you DON'T see is what happens behind the scenes. Behind the scenes of any business owner that has hacked their own success is a lot of failed attempts. A lot of life lessons. And A LOT of self confidence. Confidence in who they are and the ability to fail, get back up, fail again, get back up and eventually succeed.

Most people that struggle with visibility, in actuality, struggle so much with it that it actually may not have been the problem in the first place but it BECOMES the problem with believing that it is.

The real culprit of your lack of visibility is actually not seeing yourself.

WHOA. What?

Getting Personal With Personal Branding

What it really comes down to is understanding the basics of having a successful business - online or offline. The truth is, business is business. It requires very few and very simple pieces that can turn any entrepreneur into a successful business owner. The reality is, while social media has expanded our possibilities of reaching more possible customers, it's created a INvisibility to the core essentials of business as a whole.

The core essentials of business have been around for THOUSANDS of years. They require:
1. YOU the business owner
2. Identifying what skill or talent you have to solve an urgent problem for someone else that you are passionate about solving
3. Putting it into a business model
4. Marketing it to the RIGHT people
5. Producing value - the right kind of value consistently to the right people

“You are always winning the game you are playing.”

So what game are you playing?

Changing The Game

Have you ever had a time in your life where things went RIGHT? When it seemed to just flow, you worked out a system, you decided to "do your own thing", only to be surprised when it actually worked?

If you want to get seen, if you want to be visible in your business to attract the right clients, you are going to have to stop playing the visibility game.

It's called "The Blue Ocean" theory. The Blue Ocean was a book written many years ago. The theory of the book is that instead of trying to beat the competition, companies can actually surpass the competition by creating a "blue ocean" - creating high product and business differentiation, thereby making competition irrelevant.

Different Is Better

If you are following what other people are doing, and have fallen into the visibility game, chances are you are greatly limiting and possibly preventing people from seeing you or finding you. What you are really doing is trying to BE AVERAGE.

:o

Where are you? Who are you and why are you here?

“DIFFERENT IS BETTER. ”

Yes, in fact, if you are doing what everyone else is doing, you want to "be like someone else", achieve "their success" - the problem (and actually the solution!) is that YOU ARE NOT THEM.

Therefore, every time you try to copy what they are doing - you are going against who you actually are. Don't get me wrong - learning TACTICS - like email strategies, funnels, operations - those are business tactics and they DO WORK - but they may to work for you. And if you are not standing in your value, BEING YOU in the way you do those tactics, or even doing the RIGHT marketing for your brand, your ideal clients, and your personality - it WILL NOT work.

If you tried to learn a sales script but you are a shy, introverted person - there is a DIFFERENT strategy you need to apply. STRATEGY is how you (or if you) implement certain TACTICS. It's the KEY to ensuring your business success.

So how does this apply to you?

The key to getting your business, your marketing, and your bank account to work, is to first develop your personal brand. Your personal brand is what you will be known for. Jeff Bezos, the CEO and Founder of Amazon says,

““Your Personal Brand is what people say about you when you leave the room.” ”

— Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon

It's the "buzz" you create by (drumroll please)... BEING YOU!!!

Yes, all of that knowledge you know, your life, your internal guidance system - it creates your strong personal brand. In order to STAND OUT from your competition and BE VISIBLE - to create your own blue ocean - you need to STAND OUT. It's about being self aware of what makes you tick, what your strengths, talents, and life experience is, and then infusing that into your business.

Your personal brand establishes your positioning which is essential to help you stand out from your competition, to get the attention of your ideal clients (and actually know who your ideal clients are), and what marketing strategies you will implement which dictates which tactics you should use.

Change the game. Stop following the crowds. Stop trying to be average.

You are possible and your successful business is possible, the moment you decide you and it is. Decide. Go look in the mirror. Ask yourself:

What do you REALLY want?
What can YOU do to move things forward today?
What is the value you can deliver to show you care more and are making the world a better place? What is your personal mission?
Who are you?
What do you need to showcase In your brand?
How can you inspire to help people want what you have?
What is the feeling emotion?
How can you convey that in your message in your marketing
What is the emotional connection you have? To yourself? To your business?

Be You. Be Different. Be proud and claim back your best badass business and life.