Category: goal setting

The truth about visibility if you want your business to flourish

You’ve got to post 12 times a day. 

You have to live stream

You need to post daily pictures on Instagram and Snapchat

 

The list of must-dos and must not when it comes to visibility online is endless and exhausting and yet without it, you have no business. 

 

Visibility has become the new online buzzword.

 

But knowing where to begin, what to say and do is often a huge stumbling block for women. Fear takes over and inaction sets it. 

 

We all know the benefits of being visible:

  • Makes you stand out in a sea of sameness
  • Enables you to make connections
  • Build relationships both with clients and peers
  • Allows you to spread your message far and wide
  • Helps you bring inspiration to others
  • You ultimately will sign more clients

 

If people don’t know you exist, how can you help them?

 

But a lot of women struggle with being visible for one core reason – FEAR.

 

What will people think?

Am I good enough?

I am going to look stupid

I can’t say that

I don’t know what to say

 

I felt the same. 

 

Added to that I felt a lot of personal shame from being in debt, I used that as a barrier to stop people getting close to me and knowing who I am. I would hide behind my laptop, censoring my posts if I posted at all and withheld my true self from my community. The result – not a very impactful business.

 

It wasn’t until I became a coach that I had to work through my own visibility issues (they say we teach what we need to learn ourselves!) and address those fears. 

 

What fears come up for you when you think about being more visible in your business?

 

Are those fears justified? Are they truth? 

 

I had to challenge each and every fear I had with truth.

 

I quickly realised that if I want to see real success in my business, I needed to “come out of hiding” and be me. Open myself up to be vulnerable and use my journey as a way to encourage and inspire others coming up behind me. It was okay to remove the mask.

 

I reconnected with my WHY, the reason why I do the powerful work I do and chose to believe that my message was bigger than my ego. People need to hear from you, the real you, not the Instagram filtered you. 

 

We have to get over ourselves.

 

Decide and make a commitment to show up consistently. 

 

If you are not being as visible as you would like right now in your business, why? What is the fear?

 

As soulful creatives with big messages to share, but more importantly, lives to live, we don’t want to be online for the sake of it. Every interaction we have, we want it to be meaningful and impactful and so it is important to define what visibility means for YOU.

 

I teach my clients to work from a place of strength, leveraging the things that they are good at and what feels good. So whether it is writing and blogging or speaking and video and use that in that their visibility plan. Just because you see me on video doesn’t mean that you should make that your primary platform if you hate live stream. (I encourage you to try it at least once, but you are under no obligation). Choose what feels good and then commit to it. 

When I got serious about my own visibility, one of the questions I continually asked myself was “why was being visible important to me?” What impact would it have on my business, clients and community, if I was able to address my fears and show up for them”? 

The answers I came back were astounding and I also realised that I was actually being selfish by not showing up.

I committed to daily consistency whether it was through my videos, writing and speaking. 

This consistency allowed me to grow my business quickly and eventually make the leap out of my 9-5 a few months later. 

Like an onion, your visibility has layers and as you address one fear, reach another level, new things will appear but keep working on it because the world needs to hear from you. 

True visibility starts by being visible with yourself. 

Time to remove the mask.

Lessons from 2020 - Chichi Eruchalu

Lessons from 2020

It can be so easy to write off this year.

It started very normally and then evolved into something nobody could have predicted.

I have been at home since March like most people. Spent 5 months homeschooling my two children while working in a new role. My team grew 10x in size as I learnt how to manage remotely. I faced my feelings as I navigated the ups and downs of this new normal. I learnt the best time to go to the supermarket so I could get my essentials 🙂 and I built a huge amount of resilience.

Other things I have learnt this year:

👉🏿 How to slow down
When everything is removed you are forced to stop. Saturday mornings became this new thing, no more ferrying the kids about to activities, but actually, we could have a lie-in, eat breakfast together and watch a Saturday afternoon movie. Equally those things I had been avoiding because with busyness you can place them in a box and ignore, become front and centre and I was faced with no option than to deal with them. #nomoreexcuses

👉🏿 How to prioritise and set boundaries
BIG one for me. Lockdown at home with kids meant less time to work. I had to figure out the important things and focus on them early. I quickly learned that I need to raise up leaders in my team and empower them quickly. In my personal life, I learnt this year that I needed to have better boundaries and stop tolerated things that don’t align with my values. I ignored my own needs for other people’s and this led to resentment but also me losing touch with who I am, what I like, my hobbies my passions. I learnt this year that I am THE expert on me.

👉🏿 How to be a more empathetic leader both at home and at work
I learnt how to asked better questions and became more vulnerable, both inside and outside of work.  I became okay with my feelings, I embraced my emotions and stopped pushing them away. “How are you?” became “what’s on your mind?” and I recognise the importance of having rhythms and routines for the things I could control so that I knew what to expect.

👉🏿 You only have one life
COVID really highlighted the fragility of life and how nothing is guaranteed. This year I was encouraged to stop procrastinating on life, to stop settling and to step into God’s purpose for my life. I learnt that everything that has happened so far, has happened for a reason and it has made me the woman I am today. Rather than hide in embarrassment and shame for past mistakes I can be proud of my story and openly share it.

👉🏿 Gratitude
To be thankful for the small things and appreciate people, experiences and opportunities all the more. There is always someone you can help, encourage and support and in the midst of things not panning out how you would want them to be, there is always a place for gratitude.

What lessons have you learnt this year, I would love to hear.

Do you have the C.E.O. Mindset?

Today I want to talk to you about whether you have the C.E.O. mindset. You might be thinking CEO as in business CEO, leader of the company. There is that and that’s really important because as a business owner I really do encourage you to think like a CEO, somebody who has a strategic view of their business.

A CEO doesn’t try to do everything themselves, they like to keep learning and developing themselves, but that’s not the CEO I’m talking about today.

The C.E.O. mindset is something that I came up with as I built my own framework for my business and my clients, and it stands for Consistency, Execution and Opportunity.

Consistency

One big thing that prevents us from being successful in our business or life, in general, is a lack of consistency.

It’s often not lack of knowledge or talent, but it’s the fact that we don’t continue what we’ve started. We have a microwave mentality where we expect to see the results straight away, and if we don’t, we give up.

You’ll find that if you become a consistent person you will out-perform pretty much most of the people in the marketplace that you’re hanging out with. People just quit and move onto something else, and they don’t give things a chance to marinade and to see results.

Consistency is really fundamental. It’s about showing up every day, it’s about communicating with your tribe and being visible on a regular basis. It’s about following through on the things that you say you’re going to do and it’s about building integrity and trust because showing up regularly is what builds that trust factor.

Execution

I remember one of my mentors telling me how there is no ROI (return on investment) of ideas. We like to consume information, and if you’re somebody who likes to take a lot of courses, but not actually take any action, then you will find that you’re not going to make any progress. You have to take action, you have to execute, and so the second part of this CEO mindset is about execution.

It’s about taking that knowledge that you’ve built and doing something with it. If you have an idea, test it and see what happens. Everything’s an experiment until we actually put it out there, and I really see business and life like that, it’s just one big experiment.

If I try something and it doesn’t work out, that’s great, I’ve learned something, but if I do something and it works, brilliant!

The same thing happened when I decided to do my mastermind years ago. Initially, I was really afraid of it, but I really wanted to do it and support women, so I decided to see what happened, and it was an amazing three month experience.

If you’re not executing and if you’re not implementing what you’re learning and you’re not taking action every single day, you need to start doing that if you want to see movement and growth in your business.

Opportunity

The saying goes success is when opportunity meets preparation or preparation meets opportunity. This essentially means that you are able to become successful when you’re able to see opportunities and take them.

You’re not going to be able to do that if you’re not clear on what it is that you want. For example, if you know that you want to interview a certain person for a podcast and then that opportunity presents itself, you can jump on it because you know that’s what you want to do. Being able to spot opportunities and being able to make quick decisions is key and it goes back to being clear on what you want.

So to recap, my CEO mindset is consistency, execution and opportunity.

Are you doing those three things? I’d love to hear from you, and you can tell me which one you struggle with the most.