You can have the perfect offer and a message that connects every time. But if nobody knows you exist, you’re a secret, not a business.
Visibility has become one of the biggest buzzwords in marketing, leaving many business owners believing they have to become influencers, post constantly, or perform on social media just to grow. In this episode, Lori cuts through the noise and redefines visibility for what it really is: being known by the right people for the right reasons.
You’ll learn why consistency beats intensity, why relationships are still your most valuable marketing channel, and how to choose a visibility strategy that fits your personality instead of someone else’s playbook. If you’ve been hiding behind great work and hoping clients will eventually find you, this episode will change the way you think about growing your business.
What You’ll Learn
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Why visibility isn’t vanity but one of the most important opportunities to grow your business.
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How to choose a visibility strategy you can consistently maintain without burning out.
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The simple visibility channels that build trust and attract the right clients over time.
Ready to build a business that gives you more freedom and more profit? Schedule your Dream Business Design Session at TalkWithLori.com and let’s create a business that works for your life, not the other way around.
Resources:
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Chapters
0:00 – The Secret vs. The Business 1:16 – Welcome to the Midlife Business Academy 1:33 – Defining Visibility 2:53 – Being Known, Not Just Visible 3:38 – Lori’s Invisible Years 7:05 – Visibility Isn’t Vanity, It’s Opportunity 8:32 – Visibility Doesn’t Mean Becoming an Influencer 10:39 – Consistency Over Intensity 12:12 – What Social Media’s Job Actually Is 14:23 – Networking (or “Connecting”) 16:16 – Connecting vs. Performing 17:12 – Relationships: The Most Underrated Visibility Channel 18:53 – Your Email List Is the One Channel You Own 22:47 – Long-Form Content: Why Lori Podcasts 24:37 – This Week’s Action: Pick the Channel You’re Avoiding 25:41 – This Week’s Worksheet: The Visibility Assessment 26:32 – Closing Question and Next Steps
The Secret vs. The Business
You can have the cleanest offer in the world and a message that lands every single time. But if nobody knows you exist, you are a secret, not a business.
Most of us get completely paralyzed by the word visibility because we think it means dancing on camera, filming our morning coffee, or acting like a 20-something influencer. Today, we’re throwing out the performative social media noise and building a way to get known by the right people on your terms. Let’s get started.
Welcome to the Midlife Business Academy
I’m Lori Lyons, and welcome to the Midlife Business Academy. If you’ve ever felt like your business is running your life instead of supporting it, you’re in the right place.
Around here, I believe a dream business isn’t measured by its size. It’s measured by the freedom and life it makes possible.
Defining Visibility
So we’re five episodes into the Dream Business Blueprint series. You’ve got your business model figured out. You’ve got your point of view, the philosophy your business is built on. You’ve got a message that actually makes sense to someone hearing it for the first time. And today we’re going into the piece that probably trips more of us up than just about anything else on the list: visibility.
It’s the kind of hot business word right now. It’s trending. Everybody wants to be visible. Everybody’s telling you that you need it. But what does it really mean? Because “be more visible” isn’t a strategy. It’s a feeling. And I want to give you something more useful to take away today.
So let’s actually define it. Visibility means the right people can consistently find evidence that you exist — evidence of what you believe and what problems you solve. That’s it. That’s the whole definition.
Being Known, Not Just Visible
And honestly, I’d rather we didn’t even use the word visibility for the rest of the episode — it’s that trendy, and it’s a little cold, a little marketing-speak. Let’s call it what it really is: being known.
I read a really good book by one of my favorite marketing authors, Mark Schaefer, called Known. If you haven’t read it, go read it, because it’s very, very good. Being known is really the goal here, not visibility for visibility’s sake.
It’s being known by the right people for the right thing. And some of you just felt your stomach drop a little when I said that — and that’s okay, because that’s exactly why we’re talking about it.
Lori’s Invisible Years
When I ran my website design agency, I was out there a lot. When I sold jewelry, I was out there a lot. But I wasn’t visible in a way that actually mattered to the people who mattered, because they weren’t my ideal clients. From my website design perspective, they didn’t control their own marketing. From a jewelry perspective, everybody was trying to sell their own stuff. So it really wasn’t reaching my ideal client.
And I built a beautiful, polished, front-and-center website for other people all day long. I made other people’s businesses look established, incredible, and easy to find. I was in the room at every client meeting, every launch, every project. I was busy. I was active. And we all know what busy, busy, busy means. There was plenty of activity you could point to, but none of it was actually about me. My own visibility strategy was — a logo. That was it. A logo, and maybe a website nobody was really going to. And that was the trap. I was trying to be visible for visibility’s sake, and that isn’t really visibility. Go figure that one out. Being busy and out there is not the same as being known. I was surrounded by activity, and I was still invisible as the person behind it.
I told myself I was busy doing the work to market the work. I’d chuckle and say, “you know, cobbler’s shoes” — I’ll get my stuff done someday. And sometimes that was even true. But underneath that, if I’m really being honest, putting myself out there — my face, my opinions — felt riskier than doing my client’s business, because it was personal. It’s about me. If their website flopped, that was their business. If mine flopped, that was on me.
So I hid behind the work, and the work was good. But good work you’re hiding doesn’t pay your bills. I learned that the slow, expensive way — riding the referral wave instead of building something I could actually count on month to month. And it took me a long time to realize this: visibility isn’t the reward you get after you’ve built a business. It’s part of how you build one.
Visibility Isn’t Vanity, It’s Opportunity
All right, let me explain why visibility isn’t vanity. It’s opportunity. Somewhere along the way, a lot of us bought into that Field of Dreams version of business — I say this to my clients all the time. It’s not Field of Dreams. You can’t just build it and they will come, do the work quietly behind the scenes, and somehow the right people will find you. That’s a movie. It’s not a business strategy.
Nobody’s going to stumble into your business by accident and hire you. You have to tell people that you exist. I think a lot of us grew up believing the work should speak for itself — that talking about yourself and promoting yourself was braggy, maybe a little distasteful, something people did when they had more confidence than substance.
But take away the discomfort and look at what visibility actually does. It puts an opportunity in front of somebody who needed exactly what you offer and didn’t know you were out there. People can’t hire you if they don’t know you exist. Not because your work isn’t good enough, not because your message isn’t clear, but because you were never in the room.
Visibility Doesn’t Mean Becoming an Influencer
So let’s talk about being in the room. But before I get into some specific channels, I want to clear something up, because this is where a lot of my clients stop before they even start. Visibility doesn’t mean you’re an influencer. It doesn’t mean daily selfie videos, TikTok dances, or building a personal brand around your morning coffee routine. If that’s genuinely you, go for it, have fun with it. But if that picture makes you want to close your laptop and go do your taxes instead, that’s not the only way to be visible.
Visibility just means the right people can consistently find you. It means there’s evidence that you exist, it says what you believe, and it talks about how you serve people and the problems you solve. How loud, how public, or how performative you want to be — that’s entirely up to you and what you’re comfortable with.
Some of you will build visibility through one long thing you pour yourself into, like I do with my podcast. Some of you will build it quietly, one relationship and one referral conversation at a time. Both count. Both are equally legitimate. The goal isn’t to become someone you’re not in front of an audience. The goal is to stop being invisible to people who are looking for exactly what you have to offer.
Consistency Over Intensity
So let’s start with showing up consistently, because this quietly stalls more visibility efforts than any strategy mistake ever will. Consistency beats intensity every single time. I’d rather you show up in one place a little imperfectly every single week than disappear for two months and come back with something beautifully produced — cinematic soundtrack, the whole bit. The market doesn’t know you yet. Trust gets built by showing up again and again, not by one great post.
Pick the one channel you can actually sustain for the next year without hating your life. Not the trendiest one, not the one your friend swears by — the one you’ll still be doing after month eight, after the initial excitement has worn off and it’s just become part of how you run your business. Pick one you actually want to work with, one you’ve already spent time with, and use it to show your work and what you believe consistently, not perfectly.
I’m not going to tell you that you need to be on every platform posting daily, chasing an algorithm that changes every six weeks or six hours. That’s the way to burnout, not visibility.
What Social Media’s Job Actually Is
I want to be clear about what social media’s job really is, at least for most of us. If you’re selling a physical product at scale, that’s a different game with different numbers. But for most of us — coaches, consultants, service providers — social media isn’t there to move product directly. That’s a big mistake a lot of people make. Its job is to give a potential client a taste of who you are. They’re not deciding whether to buy. They’re deciding: do I want to know more about this person? Does this sound like someone I’d want to do business with? Do we speak the same language? Does it seem like they could actually solve my problem? That’s the whole job. It’s not to go viral.
Let’s talk about viral for a second, because in truth, viral videos don’t grow and don’t drive business. They drive temporary followers. I used to be in a business group that met every week, and we had a social media person. Every meeting, she’d talk about one client of hers who’d gone viral — how many views, what were the shares. And every time — this was a little snarky on my part, I admit — I’d ask, “so what was the return on investment on that post? How much money did she make off of it?” And she never had an answer. Not once.
If viral was the goal and viral was making people money, great. But I’ve very rarely heard of somebody getting a million views and actually making money or selling product from it. It’s just noise. Your goal is not to be internet famous — it’s to be known by your potential clients.
Networking (or “Connecting”)
All right, so the next way you can be visible: networking — or I’m going to call it connecting. I think when I say networking, half of you want to change the subject. Networking, the way most people picture it, is a room full of strangers, a stack of business cards, small talk. That’s not the only version, and honestly, it’s not even a particularly effective one for a lot of us.
Here’s a small shift that changes this for a lot of my clients: don’t call it networking, call it connecting. “I’m going networking” sounds like a chore. “I’m going connecting” sounds like something fun, something you’d actually want to do.
When you walk into that room or event or meetup, let go of the pressure to work the room. You don’t need to meet everyone, and you don’t want to. Walk in with one goal: meet three really good people you’re genuinely interested in getting to know further. That’s it. Three real conversations beat 50 business cards you’ll never look at again.
I have a friend with a podcast called Meet Cool People. I love that — he talks about wanting to go meet cool people. That’s how he networks: three cool people this week, three cool people at his business function, whatever the goal is. And don’t you think that’s blasted his business wide open? Absolutely.
Connecting vs. Performing
Which conveniently takes us to the next one — and I’m going to step on my soapbox for a minute. I want to talk about the validation junkie. You know, that person who goes around the room taking a selfie with everybody and then leaves the event. Taking a bunch of selfies at an event and posting them with “look how visible I am, look at all the people I’m connecting with” — that’s not connecting. That’s performing.
The actual visibility happens in the conversation itself, not in the photo of it. Nobody’s ever hired somebody because of a good event selfie. They hired them because of what got said later, over coffee, or in a follow-up text conversation later in the week. Think about that for a second. Who do you know that’s a validation junkie?
Relationships: The Most Underrated Visibility Channel
All right, so now that we’re on the topic of networking and connecting, let’s talk about relationships, because this is what you want your connecting to build toward. It deserves its own section — it’s the most underrated visibility channel we have.
Every referral you’ve ever gotten came out of a relationship, not a marketing campaign. Every client who’s told you, “I’ve been following you for a while before I finally reached out” — that following happened inside a relationship, even a one-sided one, built over time because you were consistent and you showed up even though you weren’t perfect.
So ask yourself: who already knows you? Who already likes you? Who already trusts you? And when was the last time they actually heard what you’re working on right now? Not a pitch — just a little update. “Hey, this is what I’m working on right now.” That can be a really good reach-out. People can’t refer you to something they don’t know you’re doing.
So it can be as simple as a text to a past client: “Hey, just wanted you to know I opened up a few coaching spots this month.” Or a quick call to a friend from a previous industry: “I’m doing something different now, and I think you might know someone who could use it.” That’s it. That’s the whole ask.
Your Email List Is the One Channel You Own
So if social media is the front porch, email is the living room. It’s where the sofas are. It’s where the conversation actually happens.
I had a client once who really resisted sending emails. She didn’t want to be a bother to her people. So I asked her — being the smart aleck that I am — “do you have emails that bother you?” She said, yeah. “Okay, what do you do about those?” “I unsubscribe.” “Fair enough. Do you have emails you actually want to open and read?” “Oh yeah, lots of them.” “Are those a bother?” “No, not really — I want to read them, I enjoy them, or I learn something, or I’m really interested in them.” Okay, I rest my case. You’re not going to bother the right people. You’re going to either be an email they enjoy or an email they unsubscribe from. And either way, that’s fine — either they keep reading your stuff, or they unsubscribe. Both are equally fine and equally effective at building a really good email list. That’s how it’s supposed to work.
Now, there’s also a caveat to that, because I lived this recently — actually this week. I clicked on a Facebook post I was interested in, commented, and gave them my email address because I was genuinely interested in what they were offering. Then they started sending me emails. Then more emails. It got to the point where they were sending me two emails an hour. I was bothered. I unsubscribed within a day — and by then I’d already gotten 30 emails in the space of 15 hours.
Don’t be them. Showing up doesn’t mean flooding the inbox. It means showing up often enough to stay known, to keep your name top of mind, but not so often that you become the reason somebody hit “unsubscribe.” Don’t be a bother.
Because your email list is the one piece of visibility you actually own. I’ve said this many times: social media is rented real estate. An email list you own, and nobody can take that away from you. An algorithm can’t change it or take it away overnight. And it’s also your highest-trust channel, because someone gave you permission to land directly in their inbox. Don’t waste that by going quiet for months and only showing up when you’re selling something.
There’s somebody I’m on the list for that I do like and follow, but the only thing I’ll say is they only show up in my inbox when they’re selling something. Now, I happen to like what they’re selling — I watch and follow what they do to see what they’re offering. But I’ll notice a couple of months go by where they don’t email me, and then all of a sudden there they are. It’s like, “oh hey, yeah, I haven’t heard from them in a month.” So be consistent about it.
Long-Form Content: Why Lori Podcasts
I mentioned earlier about podcasting, and I’m probably a little biased, but long-form content like a podcast does something a quick post or an email can’t do. It puts you right in somebody’s ear — you’re literally in their head if they’re listening to you on audio. It lets them spend time with you week after week until they feel like they really know you before they ever get on a call with you.
That’s why I do my podcast. I love doing this. Do I occasionally think, “okay, this is getting a little tiring”? Sure — this is episode 346, 346 weeks of doing a podcast.. Actually, I’m recording this one with a bit of a rough voice today from Covid at 10:00 at night because I needed to get it done and couldn’t record earlier. So yes, it’s a commitment. But when you enjoy doing something, it doesn’t matter as much — you get it done.
But you don’t need a podcast to be visible. If your work benefits from going deep — and most coaching and service-based businesses do — then some form of long-form content, whether it’s a podcast or YouTube videos (one of my best friends is a YouTuber) or newsletters, is a great way to go deeper. It’s going to do more for you over time than 100 quick Facebook or Instagram posts ever will, because it’s long-form.
This Week’s Action: Pick the Channel You’re Avoiding
All right, so here’s what I want you to do this week. Look back over that list I just gave you: showing up consistently, networking, relationships, social media, email, podcasting. And I want you to be honest about one thing: which one of these are you avoiding because it makes you feel uncomfortable? That’s usually the answer. It’s not the trendiest channel — it’s the one you’ve been steering around.
So put one small, doable action inside that channel this week. It could be reintroducing yourself to your email list. It could be an Instagram post that does a little more than show you having coffee — share a piece of content, share a client win from this week. Small and done beats ambitious and abandoned. Write that one down. That’s a quote.
This Week’s Worksheet: The Visibility Assessment
All right, so this week’s piece of the Dream Business Blueprint is the visibility assessment. I want to give you a preview of it right here, because it opens with a question I want you to ask yourself: are enough of the right people consistently seeing your expertise? Because that’s the whole key to visibility.
In the workbook, I ask you to rate yourself one to ten, just like all the other worksheets, on five things: how consistently you show up, whether the right people actually know what you do, whether your visibility feels intentional or accidental, whether people regularly discover your business, and whether you stay top of mind with the audience you already have. Add it up and you’ll have your blueprint score out of 50.
Closing Question and Next Steps
But here’s the one question from the workbook I want to leave you with, before you go to the workbook: if you disappeared from your marketing for the next 90 days, would anyone notice? Think about that for a second. That’s not to scare you — it’s to show you where you stand.
Visibility isn’t about becoming famous. It’s about becoming known by the people who actually need what you offer. Visibility isn’t vanity. It’s opportunity. And the version of it that works for you doesn’t have to look like everybody else’s — because people can’t hire you if they don’t know you exist.
So grab the visibility assessment in the show notes, and find out exactly where you stand. And if you want to figure out which visibility channel actually fits your business and your personality, that’s exactly what we can work through in a Dream Business Design Session. Go to talkwithlori.com and let’s see if we’re a right fit.
So until next week — because it’s never too late to build a business of your dreams. We’ll see you next time.