I Stopped Chasing Visibility And My Business Grew Faster | EP 547

🔗 Mentioned on this Episode: Show Notes 👈

There’s a belief circulating in the entrepreneurial world that “visibility is everything.” The louder you are online, the more valuable you are. The more present you are on every platform, the more successful you’ll become. And if you’ve been feeling the pressure to be everywhere and to produce more just to stay relevant, you’re not imagining it. It’s real. I lived it too.

In this solo chat, I’m sharing the moment when that belief cracked open for me and why everything in my business became more profitable, more sustainable, and more enjoyable when I stopped performing visibility and started embodying it. Not by doing more, but by getting radically clear on what I’m here to be known for.

If your visibility feels heavy, chaotic, or disconnected from who you are, this conversation will help you see why you’re not behind, you’re not losing momentum, and you’re not missing anything. You don’t need to be everywhere. You need to be exactly where you’re meant to be — with a message aligned with your truth.

If you’re ready for visibility to feel like coming home instead of playing catch-up with the algorithm, download your Vision Map here.

🧭 Clarify your next season of growth: Start your Vision Map here

🎁 Get the Seasons Success Method & Meditation

🎧 Listen, Subscribe & Rate this podcast

📲 Follow me for more insights: Instagram | LinkedIn

Chapters

• 0:00 From Visibility Pressure To Clarity
• 0:38 The Rise Of Attention As Currency
• 2:09 Personal Brand Era And Its Costs
• 3:29 Travel Pause And Unexpected Insights
• 5:14 Clarity Beats Volume
• 6:31 Pivot To Embodied Visibility
• 7:45 Defining The Transformation You Stand For
• 9:02 Wrong Vs Right Visibility ROI
• 10:01 Creating Your Own Algorithm
• 11:28 Practical Next Steps And Invitation

Transcript

Sheila: 0:01

You already know how to be visible online. You've posted, you've launched, you've shown up even when it stretched you. You've built something real. The next level isn't about being everywhere. It's about being known for the thing only you can do. In this episode, I'm going to show you what happens when your visibility comes from clarity instead of pressure, so that you can create more impact by doing less and feeling the confidence of being sought out instead of chasing attention. If visibility has started to feel like a treadmill you can't get off, this conversation is going to feel like an exhale. Hi, welcome to the podcast. I'm Sheila Botelho, and I believe true success is built from the inside out. There's a phrase floating around the online space right now that I want to unpack today. And it's the idea that visibility is everything. Because if you've spent any amount of time in the digital business world over the last few years, you've probably noticed this shift. Marketing used to be about expertise, then strategy. And now it's become a race for attention. It's not enough to have something meaningful to offer. You're told you have to be everywhere, all the time, in every format, on every platform. And now with AI supercharging content output, the pressure to be omnipresent is louder than it's ever been. And so many leaders have internalized this message as truth that visibility equals worth, visibility equals success, and visibility equals impact. And I get it because I've lived that belief too. And while it's partially true, I will say that there's more to the story. When social media became the way to market your business, personal brand stopped being this cute little optional thing and became the entire business model. It was like the expectation shifted overnight. Not only did you need expertise, you now needed a persona, a vibe, a visual aesthetic, a behind-the-scenes pass to your life in some cases. And suddenly visibility became currency. The comparisons were unavoidable. The leaderboard of likes, the followers, the launches. And even if you had deep confidence in your work, you could walk online and instantly feel like you were behind. So of course, the subconscious conclusion was if I'm more visible, I'll be more valuable. But here's what I've learned, and what I want to share today. Visibility doesn't create clarity. Clarity creates visibility that converts. And if we don't understand the difference, we burn ourselves out trying to be everywhere instead of being effective in the spaces that matter. So I want you to hear this. I'm not saying visibility is not important. What I'm saying is we need to be very, very clear before we get visible and then also know there are options with how visible we want to be and where we want to be visible. I want to take you into a moment in my own life when this belief system cracked open for me. Several years ago, I was traveling with my loves. And for the first time in a long time, I stepped off the content treadmill. I had batched everything before we left: podcast episodes, social media, emails to my community, things for my private clients. So my online presence stayed active while I was away, which I still believe is a good strategy. And when I returned, I noticed something I didn't expect. Because honestly, I love creating content. I love being on different platforms. I love being visible. It's just part of my blueprint, if you will. But I noticed when I came back, I didn't want to hit the ground running again. And again, it's not because I didn't love showing up for my business, because I absolutely do. And it wasn't because I didn't believe in my work, but it was because I felt something I hadn't felt in a while when I was away. Presence. It's built through connection. And while I'd been gone, something else happened too. My existing online content, content I didn't even remember posting, frankly, started taking on a life of its own. I got new messages from people who had just found my podcast. I got DMs referencing a post I'd written months before. I got responses from someone who binge watched all my YouTube shorts during their morning walk. And what they resonated with consistently were the signature methodologies I'd been teaching privately to my clients. It wasn't the volume of my content that was moving people, it was the clarity of it. So many entrepreneurs are unknowingly building visibility on top of fog instead of being really, really clear. This fog is then multiplied into more fog. When I took that breath after traveling, and I had so much grace on myself when I did that, because I knew the feeling of being disconnected and I knew the feeling of doing business before social media for many years. It felt so good. It was like a reclamation. That pause that I took before jumping back into the online swirl, I realized something had changed inside of me. I realized that my business didn't grow because I was everywhere. My business grew because I was aligned with what I wanted to be known for. And that moment became a pivot point. Not the kind of chaotic pivot that people are in the fear mode for, but the kind where something inside of you quietly says, it's time to stop performing visibility and start embodying it. Because here's the truth, I notice I'm not hearing much of these days. Real visibility is the natural byproduct of clarity, resonance, and leadership, not just volume. So let's break this down through a few reflections that I have to share with you today so that you can apply this to your own business. First of all, when I was in the personal brand era and when it took over the industry, it felt like overnight, success looked like it was being the most seen. And that pressure shaped how I showed up. I was producing and posting and really performing, but not necessarily connecting initially. And I know I'm not alone in that. Creative entrepreneurs especially feel this so deeply because our work comes from our hearts. Putting it out there can feel like putting ourselves out there, putting our souls out there. And it did work, but it did cost me also because it wasn't sustainable. It cost me a lot of energy. I didn't find it nourishing. And it wasn't the frequency that created the best results for me. It did great for other people. Although, interestingly, those people who said it was going really well for, I noticed after a while the truth came out about them needing to step away from social media. You may have witnessed that yourself over the years, where you've seen certain people who are online influencers and living the breath's life. And then all of a sudden they're like, Yeah, I'm closing it down because it took such a toll on their mental health. Because proving energy creates momentum, but it doesn't create peace. Not for everyone, anyway. And so what shifted when I got clear on what I truly wanted to be known for, well, everything shifted. When I got clear on my core message, not my brand aesthetic, not my content pillars, not my niche or anything like that, but truly the transformation that I stand for, several things happened. My schedule became more spacious. The work that I do now is the work I'm meant to be doing. Client results deepened, revenue increased with less input. Higher level opportunities found me literally falling in my lap. I did not chase them. Content became so much more sustainable for me. And as a result of all of that, the magnetism increased without more effort. Not because I spread wider, but because I went deeper. What is the energetic and financial cost of the wrong visibility versus the ROI of aligned visibility? Well, let me tell you, this is what I've found anyway. The wrong visibility costs are peace, joy, confidence, intuition, time, money, energy, boundaries, and creativity. And the right visibility returns truly are having more energy, having more clarity, more authority, the ideal clients you want to be working with, making an impact, more scalable revenue, and more ease. And so, what conversations unlocked my next season of visibility and continue to, they were the honest ones. First of all, the conversations I had with myself, with my team, and with my audience, where I said out loud what I'd been avoiding. I am not here to be everywhere. I'm here to be effective. I literally remember a post that I had put out saying I'm creating my own algorithm because really we are human, we are not robots. And we all like our systems and our structures, and we certainly thrive with those, but we get to also create them. And when I said that, everything began to work. It was a beautiful thing. Content became amplification instead of feeling like obligation. And I was leaning more deeply into delegation as support, I was feeling less pressure. And AI became leverage instead of something that I was dependent on. But none of that happened until I named what I wanted to be known for. So if you're listening to this and feeling the visibility fog, like you're posting a lot, but not feeling seen. If you're exhausted by the treadmill of keep going, keep going, keep going, just keep moving. Or if you secretly fear that pausing will make you disappear, I want to tell you something from the deepest place of knowing in my soul. You do not need to be everywhere. You simply need to be exactly where you are meant to be with a message that's aligned with who you truly are. Because when you do that, that is when you become even more magnetic because you are calmer, you are dialed in on the work that is meant for you, and the right people will come to work with you or to purchase your products. And now, if you're ready for visibility to feel lighter, to feel clearer and more profitable instead of chaotic, pressured, and loud, this is your next step. Go to the show notes and pick up your vision map. The link is there showing the exact clarity process that helps you decide what you want to be known for, who you're really speaking to, and which visibility pathways actually matter for your next season. There are so many places you can be, and you need to be in some of them, absolutely, because that's how people will find you. But will they be the aligned ones? Only when you get clear. Visibility should feel like coming home to yourself, not like performing for the algorithm. And when clarity leads the way, visibility doesn't become the thing you chase, it becomes the thing that finds you. Thank you so much for listening. If this resonated for you and you feel like someone in your life might be feeling like they're on the hamster wheel of content creation and visibility pathways, send it to them. Text it, DM it, whatever the case. Because we all need to be able to do this work in a way that is resonant for each of us individually. Thank you so much for listening, and I will see you on another episode.