BMP213 Holly Worton ~ How to Face the Shadow Side of Visibility With Confidence

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I’m back again, with another solo episode! Today, I talk a little bit more about how to redefine visibility and being open to the shadow side of visibility. This is a topic that I’ve been talking about a lot lately (Jo Casey and I explore other aspects of this issue in episode 219, which is on resilience), and I think it’s really important to address.

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What You’ll Learn

What’s the shadow side of visibility and why do we need to look it in the face
Why it’s so important to be open to negative feedback and reviews
Why we shouldn’t ignore the reviews we get online
How to identify safe spots and scary spots online
How to take baby steps outside our comfort zone and into the wider arenas of visibility

Things I Discussed

Connect With Holly

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Transcript

The transcript for this episode can also be downloaded here (no opt-in required).

Holly: Hello and welcome to the Business Mindset Podcast, episode 213. This is your host Holly Worton and I am back with another solo episode.

Today, I am going to talk more about visibility. This is a big topic for me and it is something that I have been thinking about lately and talking about lately with friends. It was the subject of episode 211, which you may have tuned into; if you haven’t do take a look at it. That’s where I talk about how to redefine visibility and create deeper connections online. So, I talked about: why I think we need to redefine how we choose to show up online; how you can start creating deeper connections online; I mentioned specific tips and ideas and how to go deeper with our marketing; how to figure out what you like, and what you don’t like, and what you might want to change about how you are doing things; and new ways that you can start getting visible by having deeper conversations online.

So, today, I want to talk about the shadow side of visibility; the side that shows up as a big block for a lot of people; and that is when you show up in a bigger way, and when you get visible in a bigger way, you are opening yourself up to criticism, to comments, to negative feedback, to bad reviews; because you are getting out there to a bigger audience of people who may or may not be your ideal client, reader, follower, whatever. And I think that this is something that a lot of people that are new to business, and new to online marketing, are really scared of. And I think this is something that stops a lot of people from getting visible early on in their business because they are so scared of getting negative feedback, of getting the criticism, of getting the haters.

So, this is something that I really want to address with you, and something that I want to talk to you about today. So, this is in part sparked by a recent one-star review that I got for my first walking book on Amazon. I’ve had mixed reviews for this book; so, I have got a couple of five-star reviews and then I have got two one-star reviews. And when I got the first one-star review, it was a shock but I thought: oh well, this person wasn’t really my ideal reader, but then I got a second one-star review and I really freaked out, it really hurt. And, I addressed this in a blog post that I wrote a couple of weeks after the fact, which I called: ‘The Unexpected Power of One-Star Reviews’. So, as I said in this blog post, when I read it I felt sick to my stomach, I felt like my book was a piece of crap, I felt like I was wrong, like I had written this horrible thing and that everything that I had done was just really horrible. This person hated the book, hated it. And, it wasn’t until several days later that I could actually come back and read it again, and realise that it was just not what this person was expecting and, interestingly, I went back to the review because I wanted to rewrite the description of the book to make sure that it accurately represented the book so that I could market it to the right people, and make sure that the people who didn’t want that kind of book wouldn’t get it. But then when I re-read the review and I re-read my description of the book, I realised that there was nothing in my description that should have led that person to buy the book, because she was not looking for the inner journey of walking a long-distance trail; she was looking for something very much about the cultural and historical information of the area covered by that book, because she was moving to that area and wanted to learn more. Again, there was nothing in my description of that book that should have led her to think that book would give her that information and it didn’t, and she didn’t like it because she didn’t get what she wanted. But, I was able to see that after I think it was a week or ten days. In the moment when I read that review it felt…it was about the time I was getting ready to send out my files for my new walking book: On the Ridgeway, and it almost made me stop, it almost made me reconsider releasing it and going through and reading it again.

And, I think this is something that…it is kind of a perfectionism trap that a lot of us can fall into, we are so scared of getting negative reviews, we are so scared of getting criticism, negative feedback, that we just don’t release our stuff, and we just keep going and reviewing, and we review the draft, and then we review another draft, and then we review it again and we make sure it’s perfect; but of course it is never going to be perfect, because nothing’s perfect. And so, for me, it has been a massive exercise in putting myself out there; by releasing these books, not just my business books, but my walking books as well. Walking books are such an inner journey of my experience: the good and the bad; the ups and the downs, and I am really baring my soul when I put those books out there. So, I feel very vulnerable, and I feel very tender when I am criticised for them. But, I think this is something that we need to be willing to accept; we need to be willing to open up to receive not just the good feedback, but also the negative feedback. Because, if we stay small, if we stay within our comfort zone, if we stay within the safe zone of our friends and family when we release our blog posts and our stuff that we create, we can’t run a business that way. We really do need to get out of that comfort zone, out of that safe zone, and into to the bigger world, if you want to build your business and attract the right clients for you. And you can’t do that if you are staying in the comfort zone; if you are staying in the safety zone.

But, like I said at the beginning, when you open yourself up to that wider audience, you are opening yourself up to be found by people who aren’t right for you, who weren’t looking for that kind of book; who weren’t expecting that kind of video; who didn’t want to hear that kind of podcast. And people don’t always read descriptions, people do things quickly, they want to just buy the thing and move on; or click on the thing and read it and listen to it or watch it. So, even if we do, as I tried to do, perfect our description of what it is that we are offering, we are always going to get someone that’s not quite right, and that’s okay. It is so much better to put ourselves out there and be seen, and be criticised by people who weren’t right for us, than it is to stay small. And like I said, this is kind of the shadow side of visibility and it is a big, big, block that I see entrepreneurs experiencing, because it’s scary, it hurts, it hurt physically…my stomach hurt like somebody kicked me in the gut when I read that review. It hurts, but then you get over it, and it’s not that big a deal and you realise it is not that big a deal, even if you are sharing your personal story, and you are baring your soul and if you are being vulnerable, it is still okay and you still will get over it, and it is still worth doing.

And I always revert back to something that Denise Duffield Thomas said the second time she was on the show, which was: new level, old devil. That as we grow, oftentimes new facets of the same mindset crap comes up and bites us again. And I see this over and over with myself; I see it over and over again with clients. The same stuff is coming up, but it is a new facet of the same old stuff; so it is like: we clear the mindset blocks, we get the mindset that we need to take a step forward, move up that ladder, up that spiral staircase of business, we grow up to that new level and then boom we are hit with another facet of the same old stuff again. And it can be frustrating, because we have got to keep clearing and keep doing the work; and keep clearing and doing the work; but that’s how we grow. So in terms of visibility, in terms of getting ourselves out there and being visible and being open to the criticism, and to the bad reviews, and to the negative comments, the more we get out there to bigger and bigger and bigger audience; the stuff, if this is an issue for us, it is going to come back and hit us again. Unless we do the work, and get over it; and do the work and get over it and grow. It is a cycle. And I talk about this so much; on my webinar, on this podcast, I talk about it all the time. You have got to do the work, and keep doing the work, keep clearing – every time that you feel like you are stuck, every time you feel like you are frustrated because things aren’t happening, that is the time to do the mindset work again. Figure out what’s going on, journal, pull out your journal and have some quiet time for yourself, identify the mind crap that’s holding you back, and then do it. Do the work, work on it.

But, I think we need to come from a place of being open to receiving, as I said, the criticism, the bad reviews; because if we are not open to receiving that stuff, it means that we will stay stuck, we will stay small, we will stay within that safe comfort zone of our friends and our family reading our stuff, and your business can’t really grow that way. So, we need to be open to receive, and we need…this is something that you could specifically work on if you are working on mindset stuff. So, what do you need to believe in order to actually be open to receiving bad criticism or the negative stuff. Do you need to believe that it is safe for you to receive negative feedback, do you need to believe that it’s okay, that it is safe and appropriate; what is the language that you need? What is the concept that you need to embed in your subconscious and in your energy field, that you can have the courage to speak up, to get out there, to put your stuff out there, and to be open to receive both the positive feedback and the critical feedback. What do you need to believe? What do you need to believe about yourself, what do you need to believe about your abilities? Who do you need to be as an entrepreneur in order to get your stuff out there and be visible in a way…opening yourself up to a wider audience and opening yourself up to accepting and receiving all ranges of feedback. Who do you need to be in order to do that and to receive it and move on?

I think one really useful exercise is for you to sit down and look at which areas online feel the safest. So, maybe make a list from safest to scariest and then things like if you have a podcast, so my podcast is really safe because I am broadcasting; yeah, you can email and give me negative feedback, but I am not going to get it live, as I am recording this episode, so that’s super safe to me. My private Facebook group is safe, because it is all people who have asked to join and they mostly know who I am. My email list is safe, because I am sending an email out, again, to people who have opted into the list and if they write back they are just writing back and contacting me privately, so it is not scary in any way. My Facebook personal profile, if I am sharing to friends, that’s a list of people that I have curated, I don’t accept everyone on my Facebook profile, so that’s pretty safe. Then you are getting out to the more public stuff: so you can share stuff on your Facebook profile to public, and that means that it gets out to a much bigger audience; sharing stuff on LinkedIn, again, you have chosen who to connect with there. Google+ – is anyone using that anymore, I don’t know, but I guess that’s more public? Facebook lives might be a bit scarier – so that’s a live video; periscope same kind of thing, video; you can get instant feedback as you are doing the video, and that can really put you off course, if people are being negative or critical in the moment. Twitter is very open, I don’t really see people being too nasty on Twitter, at least not in my circles. And then Amazon reviews, Goodreads reviews, that’s where you are getting your work, if you are writing books, out to a much larger audience. And that’s where it can start to get scary, because people that don’t know you are buying your books. Amazon has a fantastic search engine, so if you have optimised the description of your book you will be getting people searching for things that you know your book is about, and finding your book – people who have never heard of you before – and that’s putting you out to a wider audience and opening you up to negative and positive feedback. YouTube, another excellent search engine. And YouTube videos are notorious for getting weird comments from people who just don’t know you and just don’t care. Reddit, is probably not a place where most entrepreneurs hang out, at least not for business purposes, but that’s another place where people can really be quite nasty.

So I think that is more or less my range of safe to scary online; and so my suggestion for you is to write that out, and write out your list of: what are the safest places? What are the scariest places? And start making yourself visible in the safe places, then be sure to gradually start stepping it up and being more visible in the scarier places. And find ways to be visible on those platforms that work for you. So, that’s a really good way to gradually stretch yourself, and take baby steps into getting visible in some of the scarier, and more open, platforms; that would be my suggestion of what to do. And stretch yourself, do be sure to stretch yourself outside of your comfort zone.

And in the same way that you look at which places online feel safer, which ones feel scarier, what types of content feel safe to you? What types of content feel scary to you? So, maybe you are confident about writing blog posts but you are scared of doing a podcast? Or maybe you are okay with doing YouTube videos, but not Facebook live videos? Have a think about what types of content feel the safest, what types of content feel the scariest; and then make that list and start pushing yourself out of your comfort zone and trying new things, because again, if you stay within your comfort zone, if you stay within what’s safe, you are not going to get out there to those wider audiences that you need, in order for people to find out about you. And I keep repeating myself here, but I cannot stress that enough. You have got to get out there to bigger audiences, you have got to get out there in ways that people will find you, and you have got to be open to receiving that criticism or negative feedback.

And the thing about receiving negative feedback, and getting used to it, it builds resilience – and Jo Casey and I are going to talk about this in a few weeks, which is quite a bit into the future, so it is episode 219 that we talk about resilience in – but resilience, it is an important part of business, you have got to be willing to get knocked down and pick yourself back up, and get knocked down and pick yourself back up, and trip and fall and pick yourself back up. It is just a part of business, you have got the highs; you have got the lows; we have got the dips, you have just got to get used to picking yourself back up. And if you are not willing to fall, you are probably not going to build a successful business, because you have got to be willing to receive the trips, the falls, the so-called failures, so you can pick yourself back up and move on and try something new. NLP says there is no failure, only feedback, and I truly and deeply believe that, which is why after the initial shock of the one-star review, I was able to think about it and say: what’s the feedback here, what can I do better; how could I write the book better? How could I write my next book better? How could I write my description for the book better, so that the right people find it? Go back and review, when you get negative feedback, when you get bad reviews. What could you do better next time? Because I find that really important. Some people are just shits and they are in a bad mood and they don’t give a shit, and they don’t care about you, and so they write things in reviews that they would never, ever, say to your face. Or would never ever say to a friend, because they are an anonymous internet person, and you are an anonymous internet person to them; and they just feel okay saying whatever the hell they want to say. And that’s just part of the online world.

So, you’ve got to be open to receiving that stuff, and that’s why I recommend baby steps outside of your comfort zone, but know where you are, know where you are now, know where you feel safe, know what feels scary and start working on taking baby steps towards that scary zone, because that’s going to help you stretch your comfort zone and grow as an entrepreneur, as an individual. It will help you develop that resilience that you need to become a successful entrepreneur and get yourself out there in a much bigger way. Because I know so many people that dream of being a motivational speaker, of speaking on a big stage, of having a really successful podcast, YouTube channel, blog, whatever. But, in order to get there you need to be open to receiving criticism; you may take it on board, you may not take it on board, but you need to open to receiving it; because if you are not open to receiving it, you are blocking yourself, you are staying safe, you are staying within your comfort zone.

And visibility is such an important part of your business, you might call it marketing, you might call it visibility, but it is so important that it has its own category in my Business Beliefs book, in my Business Blocks book, and then I wrote a whole book called: Business Visibility. So, that is such a main focus to me, because if you are not visible then people don’t know who you are, they can’t find you and you won’t find your ideal clients; and you won’t be able to build your business. So, again, figure out what you need to believe about yourself in order to be more visible and be open to receiving negative criticism and negative feedback and negative reviews. What do you need to believe about yourself? Who do you need to be to stand up and open yourself up in this way? And what blocks do you have that are keeping you stuck? And keeping you stuck, or keeping you invisible, or keeping you hiding? Or keeping you closed at the thought of receiving negative feedback, or negative reviews? Figure this stuff out, really get clear on it, and do the mindset work in order to shift your beliefs and shift your mindset at the deeper levels; at the subconscious level; at the energetic level; and if you have any questions about this, please get in touch. You probably know by now, my email address is: [email protected], pop me an email if you have any questions, if you don’t understand this, whatever…if you need help let me know. Just send me an email and say, “I want to talk about this”, because this is my thing; it is my thing to help see people, to help see their potential, to help see how they are playing small and to help them figure out what they need to believe in order to make their dreams a reality. And I do that by helping them shift their subconscious beliefs, and release any energy blocks that are keeping them stuck. As you now. I am now working with the Heart-Centered Energy Work Process™ which is the process that I channeled last year; I am still seeing Psych-K clients, because some people do like working with very specific belief statements, as opposed to working on the overall goal. So, I can work with you however you like. Or, if you have another thing that you prefer, whether it is tapping, hypnotherapy; whatever your preferred method of working at these deeper levels, do it. But be sure that you do the mindset work at these deep levels.

And I say this over and over again because I really need to drive home how important it is, this is how I got to where I am today, it is by clearing my mind crap. I used to be terrified of putting my stuff out there, I was terrified of putting videos on YouTube, in fact with the first videos I put on YouTube, I disabled the comments because I was so terrified. And then I got some crappy (I eventually got to the point where I enabled comments again) got to the point where I got comments, I was fine, I moved on. I used those comments to adjust and alter the descriptions of those videos to make it clear what it was, what it wasn’t. I get some negative comments from time to time, but I do have this one video on how to use muscle testing in your business that has got 52,000 views or something; that means it has gotten out to a much, much, much wider audience than most of my YouTube videos, and it has gotten out to people who, I don’t know how they arriver at the video, but a lot of people think that it’s a load of BS. And that’s fine. So, I have adapted the description in that video to say: look, this is intended to help you, if you like muscle testing, great; if you don’t like it and don’t agree with it, great. Do what works for you. And I clearly say now in the description of that video: I am not willing to debate how this works, why it works, whether it works, I am not debating that; so, if you find this useful great; if you don’t don’t; if I can help let me know. I have used those negative comments and the weird feedback that you get on YouTube to really definite what the video is about; what it’s meant to do and that kind of thing. So, negative feedback, negative reviews can hurt, but you have got to get over them.

And when I first saw that one-star review, I kind of freaked out and put something in my Facebook profile and said: oh why do I check negative reviews on Amazon. And a lot of people said: don’t read them, just don’t. And, at the time I thought: they are so right, I shouldn’t read them, but like I said, after a week or ten days, I have realised that there is great value in reading those negative reviews. Some people are just negative and they will say anything, and you can tell which ones to disregard, but some of them do have really useful feedback, even if it is negative, it can help you hone your descriptions of your content, and really get clear on who your audience is; who your audience isn’t; and how to put your stuff out there.

So this, kind of, is leading on into something that I am running very soon, between 28 August and 5 September; it is something that I cam calling: Redefining Visibility, A Seven Day Adventure. So, we are going to be exploring deep visibility, how to really create deep connections online, how to quit just ticking the box and doing your daily Facebook live video or YouTube video, and create deeper connections with people online, to have deep conversation. And, it is going to be something really, really simple; you are going to get a daily email with a specific topic to think about and on action step for you to take. We are going to have sharing and conversation in my Facebook group and one live call at the end to evaluate how it went for everyone and how you can take that forward. And you have got two days in the middle there to have a break or to catch up, so it will be seven-days over the course of nine days; so it is not too overwhelming. So, if you are interested in this, I would love to have you join me on this journey: https://www.hollyworton.com/RV and you will be redirected to the sign-up page where you can learn more about this adventure and join me; I would love to see you on it, it is something that has grown out of the conversations I have had with friends, conversations that I have had with my coaches, conversations in my Facebook group, and it is something that I think is really needed. So, I really look forward to playing with you on this and seeing what comes up, I am really, really excited about this. So, Redefining Visibility, that’s: https://www.hollyworton.com/RV. If you have any questions about that or about anything else in this episode or if you want to give me feedback on this episode you can write to: [email protected]. And if you would like I can give you a shout out on the next episode if you want me to share your feedback; so, please drop me a line, let me know what you thought about what we talked about today, the shadow side of visibility. Again you can email me at [email protected] or your can find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and get in touch. Like I said, I would love to give you a shout out on the show, and if you are interested in being a special guest, on the Business Mindset podcast, I would love to chat with one of my listeners on a future episode. I would love to hear about who you are, what you do and how the podcast has helped you and your business; what are your favourite episodes and how doing this mindset work, and changing your mindset, has changed your life and business. If this sounds good to you, head over to https://www.hollyworton.com/guest and fill out the form. I would also as always love for you to join me in my private Facebook group: Business Mindset Alchemists so we can continue the conversation there. Podcasting is like I said, such a one-way conversation, I am really just talking at you and I am so sorry, so I would love to get some feedback from you in the group, Business Mindset Alchemists, a group dedicated to exploring business mindset and how you can get the mindset you need to achieve your dreams. I would love to see you in there. So, if you head over to https://www.hollyworton.com/group you will be redirected to the Facebook group.

And, as always thank you so much for listening, if you enjoyed this episode please leave a quick review on iTunes, it would mean the world to me. And remember to visit: hollyworton.com/213 for the show notes on this episode. Thank you.