October 28, 2025 • 29 mins
Finding Your Inner Voice: A Guide for Female Founders to Achieve Authentic Visibility
In this episode, Radhika Lucas delves into the importance of discovering and connecting with your inner voice as a foundation for building a visible and authentic brand, especially for female founders.
The discussion covers overcoming barriers to accessing your voice, the pitfalls of performative visibility, and the three essential layers of visibility: self-awareness, self-expression, and self-leadership.
Practical tools and strategies are provided for maintaining internal visibility to ensure external visibility is genuine and impactful. Special attention is given to maintaining self-trust and avoiding the traps of people-pleasing and professional masks. Listeners are encouraged to adopt customized strategies for both business and personal life to achieve sustainable success.
To get the five part training that will help you find, activate and amplify your voice, comment with the word 'PRE VISIBILITY' on any of my social channels listed below.
00:00 Introduction: Finding Your Inner Voice
00:48 Barriers to Accessing Your Voice
01:21 The Methodology for Inner Connection
01:30 Three Layers of Visibility
01:38 Practical Tools for Visibility
02:23 Understanding the Disconnection
04:56 Professional Masks and People Pleasing
10:28 Fear of Being Judged
11:35 Reframing the Narrative
13:36 Self-Awareness, Self-Expression, and Self-Leadership
20:28 Practical Tools for Self-Expression
24:56 Closing Thoughts and Call to Action
Hey there, and welcome to the Visibility for Female Founders Podcast. I'm your host, Ika Lucas, and this podcast is for you if you're an impact driven, founder, coach, or consultant who wants to find your own voice to speak, present, and amplify your message Online.
We explore how to get past the visibility roadblocks and grow your capacity to be seen so you can attract then chase your perfect audience, while staying connected to the most important things by building a business th
You're invited to my free 3-day workshop just for coaches and consultants who want to stand out online using their unique voice than creating content.
I'll walk you through the three things to focus on for 2025 and beyond, and how to find, activate and amplify your own voice. If you’re ready to turn your voice into visibility, sign up now—it’s completely free!
Solve your inner narrative with reframes to share your story without oversharing.
head to https://www.contenthalo.com/story/
Let's connect beyond this episode.
Follow me on either Instagram, LinkedIn or Facebook.
https://www.instagram.com/radhikalucas
https://www.facebook.com/radhikalucas https://www.linkedin.com/in/radhikalucas
Or on my website: https://www.contenthalo.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Hey, welcome back to thisepisode today where I am talking
about how you can't build avisible brand without actually
meeting the voice that you haveinside you yet.
And this is a topic that's closeto my heart because the most
important thing for femalefounders isn't so much about,
(00:21):
what you are speaking about,it's actually about hearing
yourself first so that yourvoice is deeper, your insights
are richer.
The way you communicate yourmessage is more involved.
And that involves actuallyconnecting with your inner self
to find out.
What your voice even is.
(00:42):
And so in this episode today,I'm actually gonna be firstly
breaking down.
The barriers to accessing yourvoice and, um, the real tug of
war between performativevisibility, which is kind of,
you know, the container in whichmost, uh, visibility programs
(01:02):
are designed, which is aboutchecking a checkbox of all of
the things that you have to doand then, uh, doing the things
that you have to do.
And it's all the same cookiecutter advice.
So I'm gonna be breaking down.
And really helping you tounderstand what is actually
stopping you from finding yourinner voice.
And then I'm gonna be talkingabout, the actual methodology,
(01:25):
which is, what you really needto do in order to get that in a
connection with yourself.
And then I'm gonna be goingthrough the three layers of
visibility, how to find,activate, and then amplify your
voice for true impact.
And then some practical toolsthat you can take away and
implement right away, as well ashow you don't have to be fully
(01:47):
healed to speak your truth, andthen finding the courage to
actually expand into the voicethat's.
Calling you or the calling thatyou may have that has remained
unexpressed and giving you somevisibility tools that you can
start with straight away in abit to then get to the
performative visibility, whichis then about how you, how do
(02:08):
you capture, connect, and thenconvert your ideal audience.
So let's kick off this fantasticsizzling episode that I am
really, really excited to talkabout today.
And so let's kick off with thevery first thing, which is.
Why is there a disconnection inthe first place?
Now, I see this as we are in asetting where, as I've said
(02:32):
before, there is a lot ofpressure from the outside to do
certain things.
You know, I when, if you thinkabout female founders and our
connection to business, so muchof what is, promoted in
business, say if you're workingwith a business coach, a lot of
the work that is involved isabout, firstly, putting yourself
out there.
It's about, following aframework, whatever that
(02:53):
framework might be for thatspecific business coach, and
then essentially taking thesteps towards.
Amplifying your business, within a container of like your
revenue and how much you'remaking, and it's very
dimensionalized into the actualoutputs that you are needing to
do in order to get the inputs,which is generally in the form
(03:14):
of revenue.
In your business.
Right?
And so there is firstly theconstant output.
And if you think about it fromthe lens of female founders,
that output doesn't really honorthe stage and phase of every
business owner.
And I think what has happened isthat in a social media context
(03:34):
where everything is open andkind of there for algorithms to
serve, you will sometimes beserved with.
A hundred messages all saying adifferent version of the same
thing.
Um, and it's no wonder thatyou're being pulled in many
different directions because atthe end of the day, the social
media platforms, the algorithms,all of that are actually
(03:56):
designed to keep your attention.
And it's a psychological thing,so it's not as though you are
fully in control of it anyway,even though.
There might be things that youmight, be able to do to pull
back away from things like maybehaving an app and this and that,
to control your time on screenat the end of the day.
Yeah.
As a business owner, you are insearch mode.
(04:16):
You are constantly searching forsomething that's going to make
your life easier, and this iswhere it starts unraveling and
the constant output pressure.
Is what's causing you toactually disconnect from your
own voice in the first place.
Because what's happening is thatyou are quite often clutching
(04:38):
onto different strategies andconnecting together little bits
of everybody else's strategy andmaking it your own, whereas what
you really need is a designstrategy to meet your own
lifestyle, to meet your.
Your own self, where you are at.
And so that is really the firstthing.
The second thing is professionalmasks.
(04:59):
Now professional masks are onesthat are really difficult to
dismantle, and I think I'veheard this quite a lot, which
is, you know, I have differentparts to myself.
Which part do I put out?
I have got a professional sideand I've got my personal side.
Does the business.
Side come first, or do I need tospeak on behalf of my business?
(05:19):
And if I'm speaking on behalf ofmy business, is it really my
personality that's coming out?
So I just wanna, I just want youto take a step back firstly and
just kind of inspect it from theangle of where.
You know, you are by businessesat currently.
Now, let's say you are aprofessional services business
owner, let's say.
Just for the sake of,convenience, I'm gonna use, a
(05:42):
legal service as an example.
One of my clients has been inthe legal profession in the
past, and so I'm gonna use thatas an example now, the first
things first is, as a femalefounder, you are always going to
have founder-led content, whichis how can you differentiate
your content, which is the voicethat you embody for your
(06:03):
business?
In an effort to draw in peoplefrom an, uh, from both an
offense and a defenseperspective.
So what I mean by offense is.
Uh, offense is an attractionmechanism.
So an attraction mechanism iswhen you are drawing people in
based on your voice, based onyour visibility, based on your
methodology, based on your ip,based on the way you do things,
(06:26):
which may be a little bitunformed at this point.
It just find it may be fullyformed or it might be somewhere
sort of in between.
And so if you are in any ofthose three phases, you've just
gotta understand that people aregoing to be drawn to other
people.
At the end of the day, even ifyou are B2B or what I call
business to business, you arestill in the business of
(06:49):
connecting with people andpeople connect with people.
So that's first things first.
So coming back to the example ofthe legal professional.
Now this legal professionalmight have the pressure of
performance masks that they haveto put on in order to feel like
the.
The league that they're in.
(07:10):
So the legalese that they haveto have in their content versus,
the professionals that theymight belong to who are already
in the legal space.
They might have this tug of waror this tussle between, I want
to be this, but I actually feellike I have to be this.
And so if you are following acookie cutter visibility
(07:30):
strategy, which is.
Always about constant outputs.
It's no wonder that you're gonnabe going on a platform like
LinkedIn and then wanting toshrink away because your founder
voice may not lend itself fully.
To say a platform like LinkedInin a way in which you want to,
because of that professionalmask that you feel like you have
to wear and which is where thevisibility strategy does need to
(07:54):
come in place, which is veryunique and bespoke to you.
It's very important that peopleunderstand that the marketing
lens and the information thatyou're being given, it needs to
be highly customized to you.
And so that leads to the third.
Issue, which you then end upwith people pleasing as a result
(08:17):
of the conditioning.
Now, if you are in.
A business now from havingtransitioned from corporate or
if you've been in an a, any kindof leadership role in the past,
whether it was leading your ownbusiness that you walked away
from and then now startingsomething of your own or such
as, one of my clients has, shehad a big, thriving business,
uh, with offices in multiplecountries and doing all the
(08:41):
things, but then she walked awayfrom that towards a more
aligned.
Business that was aligned withwhere she was at in her business
journey.
And so you've gotta understandthat, that people pleasing will
follow you based on what youhave been exposed to in the
past.
In the first example, I canthink of one person who used to
be in a senior leadership role.
(09:02):
And so therefore, speaking aboutwhat she does from a spiritual
perspective is very, mismatched.
To the audience that currentlyis on her social accounts as one
example, but the second is thatshe would need to then structure
her content in a way that stillhelps her to be visible in
(09:25):
certain places whilst adaptingher approach so that she can
still speak her truth.
She can still have her voicewithout necessarily having a
performative view.
Towards, the entire ecosystem offollowing the step-by-step
framework for, say, a LinkedInmarketing strategy or if you're
following a LinkedIn influenceras an example.
(09:46):
So that's one example.
The second one that I mentioned,which is for the person who, uh,
was already on a, in aleadership role within her own
business and walked away fromthat after, after managing
offices in multiple countries,after having, many.
Staff members as part of herprevious business.
She walked away from that andshe's actually surrounded by a
(10:07):
whole bunch of experts.
These are very smart people whoare hired the likes of
universities, for instance, thathave a whole bunch of expertise
tied to them.
And so she needs to navigatethrough that, uh, as well as now
to talking about what she doesnow.
So there, there is that peoplepleasing aspect that gets in the
(10:28):
way.
And then the fourth one is,really the fear of being too
much, or the fear of beingjudged.
Who does she think she is?
Here we go again.
Here she is on her bandwagon,it's too emotional, it's too
whatever.
Like, fill in the blanks, right?
So it really is aboutdistinguishing, and really
coming to terms with what arethe pieces of, what are the
(10:52):
things that are in your way thatcould serve as amplifying the
disconnection in the firstplace.
Because once you identify what'scausing that disconnection, and
perhaps you might be saying,well, yes to the constant
outputs, yes.
That's causing me, pressure.
Maybe it's the professionalmass, maybe it's the people
pleasing, or maybe it's the fearof either being too much, being
(11:14):
judged or whatever.
Right.
Or scared of putting yourselfout there because, making a or
taking a stand for what youbelieve in sometimes has
consequences as we have learnedin recent times.
And so it's about then coming toterms with, firstly that before
going into the outputs, whichis, what do I need to put out
(11:34):
there?
Right?
So let's bring, the attentionback to where we need to be in
terms of finding our voicethrough the inner connection.
Because your inner voicetypically hasn't disappeared.
It's probably just buried underthe weight of expectations that
weren't, your choice in thefirst place.
So understanding that is crucialto then reframing that narrative
(12:00):
that you might have or thestories that you might be
telling yourself.
Some of which are truths, someof them are half truths and some
of them are falsities.
And so really recognizing whichone is a truth, which one's a
half truth, which one's afalsity, is also really
important as a segue to real.
Finding that inner voice thatyou have and really then being
(12:23):
able to take a step back.
And this morning I had aconversation with a client of
mine who said that, she wasreally struggling with being
visible in a way that.
Was that performativevisibility, which was again,
optimizing towards consistency.
And I say, if you're optimizingtowards consistency, you are
letting go of clarity.
And so if you're letting go ofclarity.
(12:45):
It's going to be aself-fulfilling cycle where you
are constantly feeling bad aboutputting yourself out there.
And then, because the longer youdo it, the further away you get
from being visible.
And so I said to her thismorning, which is, how can we
reframe what you are doing froma visibility perspective?
(13:06):
How are you being internallyvisible to yourself because
your.
Expression becomes natural, andyour message really sharpens the
closer you get with your innervoice.
Because confidence really comesfrom that self-trust.
It's not necessarily fromperfection.
And if you are, listening tothis and you're thinking about,
how can you reframe all of thosefour factors that I've talked
(13:30):
about earlier, towards a morealigned approach that honors
that internal visibility?
So if confidence comes fromself-trust and not perfection,
then I want you to reallyconsider the three layers of
developing that innervisibility.
The first layer of that isself-awareness.
The second is.
Self-expression.
(13:50):
And then the third isself-leadership, so that you can
then find, activate, and amplifyyour voice based on developing
those core skills of innervisibility for yourself first
before you decide to then takethat next step to towards a
more, aware form of visibility.
(14:12):
So what does self-awareness looklike?
I think I can say that formyself is self-awareness for me
has really meant a really good,hard look at where I was
creating boundaries, what youknow were my own needs and
desires, so that.
I was putting my own mask onbefore I was ready to help
(14:35):
anybody else.
Because a business owner or afemale founder, running on empty
is never the recipe for success.
So that's where thatself-awareness comes in, as
where is your inner visibilityin.
In within the context of yourexternal visibility.
So what tools can you giveyourself in the journey to being
(14:56):
externally visible that willhelp your journey?
And it doesn't always have to belinear, which means it's, this
is not as though you have a sixmonth window where you are
creating all these boundaries,assessing your needs and
whatnot.
You can actually be doing thissimultaneously, or you give
yourself permission to say,well, actually, you know what?
Maybe I do need to do this.
(15:17):
Step, one step at a time.
Maybe I do need to take this,with creating the boundaries
right now based on my equitablesurroundings or, realities of my
life right now.
So you then go, okay, I'll giveyou an example of my own, which
was I made a decision between,the difference between caring
and carrying a previous versionof my business really looked
(15:40):
like carrying what I thought wasthat I was responsible for the
success of whoever took myservices.
However.
The container in which you areoffering your services needs to
be sustainable in order forthere to be continuum.
So what I mean by that is thatwhatever it is that you are
(16:02):
offering, yes, offer that inthat instance, but also then
understand that creating thoseboundaries for yourself will
make you a more effectivebusiness owner.
So that is one example from abusiness perspective.
So that's caring versuscarrying.
From a business perspective, butthen as a female founder, you
are not just all about yourbusiness, you actually have a
(16:23):
life to lead.
And that's part of the reasonwhy just performative visibility
isn't really a one size fitsall.
You've really gotta look at itfrom a holistic perspective,
which is, what are you carryingin your life right now?
What feels heavy?
And then conversely, if thatfeels heavy.
Then whatever it is that yourcontainer is right now in terms
(16:45):
of your offering, is that alsoheavy?
Because if you have got a heavyload of doing whatever it is
that you're doing, you betterbelieve that you're gonna have
to put some masks on foryourself in order to then carry
on.
So whether if you are in the,psychology space, for instance,
and building a course onself-love as an example, which
is like one of my clients did afew years ago, versus say
(17:08):
somebody who, was obviouslytrained in that she's built
internal, capacity withinherself to actually carry that
for her clients.
But at the same time, if youare, if you are just starting
out and if you've got young kidsand you're managing a full
household, are you really gonnahave the capacity?
So what's gonna be easy breezyso that there is that
(17:29):
self-awareness piece that comesin, creating those boundaries
and needs and desires.
For yourself, and then thattranslates into self-expression.
What truth needs to surfacetoday?
Where are you in your emotionalstate?
If you are in a place wherethings feel heavy, if you are
teary, if you are in the middleof perimenopause, if you are
(17:50):
doing all of those things, thoseheavy, hard life things, what
are your insights from that?
How can you take self-expressionfor yourself as the ultimate
form of inner visibility, notingthat this, again, is not a
linear process.
You might have days when you arefully in service to yourself,
(18:14):
and then you might have dayswhere you are ready to be more
externally visible.
Because let's face it, we arenot all, as female founders, we
are not in a bubble kind ofjust.
Rocking in a corner going, Ineed to be internally visible.
Yes, of course there needs to bean external visibility attached
to it, but what I'm saying isthat external visibility doesn't
come without first internalvisibility first, because you
(18:37):
can't be magnetic if youhaven't.
Anchored yourself with him.
So that's the other message thatI wanna put out there, is that
you might be following peoplewho.
Talking about magneticvisibility.
But if you haven't actuallyanchored yourself within, then
ask the question to yourself iswhether you are actually gonna
be in a place to be magnetic Ifyou can't do that for yourself,
and which is where thatself-expression, the
(19:00):
self-awareness comes in, yourself-expression to yourself
really needs to be, um, rootedin truth for you to then be able
to talk about those in a waythat gives people insights based
on.
Giving yourself that oxygen maskfirst.
And then it transitions into thethird layer, which is the
self-leadership.
So self-leadership then movesthrough into, well, what choices
(19:23):
am I making for myself?
You know, what clarity can Igive?
Or what sort of journaling can Ido for that identity expansion?
What work do I need to do onmyself to then move through from
whatever you, wherever you mightbe at?
Whether it's the first fourfigures, whether it's five
figures, whether it's sixfigures, whatever that might be.
Every level really needs thatidentity expansion.
(19:44):
Which you won't have if youhaven't followed the three step
process that I'm talking abouthere.
Now, if you are consideringlooking at how you can build
that inner capacity to be theleader that you know you are,
then message me, DME, onInstagram, using the handle in
my show notes below, and I cansend you the free pre visibility
(20:07):
training.
It's a five part training seriesthat will take you from the.
Essentially finding your voiceright through to activating your
voice and then amplifying yourvoice so that you can have an
external performativeexpression.
Of your visibility that is inline with the needs of your
business, which is essentiallyrevenue collection.
(20:28):
So that brings me into thepractical tools.
So some of the practical toolsthat I've used on myself in the
journey of visibility is voicenotes.
Now I'm a person.
That has a myriad ideas.
I'm constantly an ideas person.
The issue has always been thetime for the amplification of
(20:49):
all of those ideas, andsometimes it has been about how
I feel or where I might be at.
Whether I'm, in a, monthly cyclewhere I'm not feeling my best,
and as I've come in into my midforties, I've come to realize
that these things affect me morethan what they used to.
And so this is where voice notesdo come in.
(21:11):
If you are someone for whom,self-expression is.
The ultimate form of healingyourself.
It's really about unbundling.
It's about dismantling.
It's about.
Really getting rid of thoseinner narratives so that when
you are sharing your stories,you're not oversharing them, you
are actually sharing them withyourself.
(21:32):
And so you don't end up havingthis sort of adverse reaction to
visibility where you feel likethe spotlight syndrome, where,
all of a sudden you've sharedsomething and then you feel
like, oh my goodness, what haveI shared?
I can't believe I shared that.
Now I feel terrible about it.
And so it's really importantthat you resolve those.
Stories for yourself.
Just resolve those narrativesfor yourself before you tell
(21:52):
those stories.
So that is one then isreflective prompting.
That's another tool.
And you can use if you are anApple, iPhone user.
There is a new app.
Now, I don't know when you'relistening to this, but there's a
new app as of now in 2025 calledJournal that I've really been
using that as one of myjournaling techniques because of
course I have my phone on me,nine times outta 10.
(22:14):
And so.
Having that reflective, weeklyor daily, practice of writing
really helps and I don't really,um, subscribe to any one way of
doing things.
There are times when I feel likevoice, like voice journaling.
There, there are times when Ifeel like praying.
There are times when I doreflective journaling.
I use.
(22:34):
A variety of methodologies, andso that's why I don't believe in
giving like this one size fitsall approach, which is just
based on what I necessarily do.
I do all manner of differentthings, and so it's about
finding the thing that is goingto work for you and a
combination of things that aregonna work for you.
Lately I've been doing morereflective writing, and that is
(22:54):
something that works for me.
I am an early morning person, Irise early, and when I'm rising
early, I tend to write down mythoughts.
Early things come to me and I'musually by 7:00 AM I am buzzed
because I have been able todownload all my thoughts in onto
paper.
And then the third thing isusing your body as a compass for
(23:16):
showing you what's aligning withyou and what's not.
Uh, one of my clients, uh, saidto me just recently that she
ended up going and doing thisamazing exercise.
With, young children, she has atheater and performance
background.
And so she went and did thistraining with, with these
children and she felt really litup.
(23:38):
And that really gave her a clueabout what it is that she needed
to do.
And funnily enough, it was.
In perfect alignment with hervoice themes, which is part of
the work that I do within myprogram, activate.
And so if you haven't yetdownloaded the program guide,
you can go to contenthalo.com/activate waitlist to
download the full program guide,see if it's a good fit for you.
(24:01):
And so this is what she did,which was bringing, activities
that were bringing.
Her joy, where do things feelexpansive?
Where the shoulds that we havereally start overriding the
desires because we have made thespace internally to have that
self-awareness, develop thatself-expression for ourselves,
(24:22):
and then go through and movethrough self-leadership before
we are ready to take on andbecome leaders of our own
businesses and become leaders.
With a view to an externalvisibility approach, because I
always say that, you know,finding your voice before
finding your visibility is akinto self-leadership before
leadership.
(24:42):
And so that's the bit that wehave to nail as female founders
first, so that the performativevisibility that you see.
And here in the online space canbecome a reality for you.
So here's this.
Um, on a closing note, if youare here because you would like
to know how to speak andpresent, market your business
(25:02):
online with confidence.
You don't need to be fullyhealed to speak.
Your audience does not expectyour perfect story.
They actually want a relatablestory.
But in order for there to be arelatable story, it doesn't
always have to come from, placeof, grief.
It doesn't always have to comefrom like this deep inner, woe
(25:24):
begone story about, your life'schallenges.
There are business owners,including me for, that have
created businesses based out ofthings that have brought us joy
things where life, has taken onanother.
Turn, in my case, my voice goteroded over a period of time and
I've returned and using that asa container for self-expression
(25:45):
with a way towards healing andthen expressing your self fully.
And so if you are wanting thathonest truth for yourself, I
just want you to firstly reflecton how.
Visibility can expand throughyou to through taking per
imperfect action, by creatingthat internal visibility for
(26:06):
yourself, then bringing thatlens of self-compassion so that
when you are ready to find,activate and amplify your voice
towards greater visibility, youdo so knowing that your voice is
rooted in truth, that you'respeaking from a place of
presence.
Rather than performance and thatyour life journey and, the,
(26:29):
message that you really wannadeliver about why your business
is as unique as you are withfounder led content is going to
be that container for taking youfrom finding right through to
the amplification of your voice.
So if you would like to find outmore about.
How to find, activate andamplify your voice.
(26:49):
Message me with the word previsibility and I'll send you
that free five part training foryou to consume in your own time.
And so in bringing this podcastto a close, if you have loved
listening in and tuning intothis podcast I would really
appreciate it if you could giveme a five star review on any of
the podcast channels that youare listening or tuning in on.
(27:11):
Thanks so much for listening,and I'll see you in the next
episode.
Hey, welcome back to thisepisode today where I am talking
about how you can't build avisible brand without actually
meeting the voice that you haveinside you yet.
And this is a topic that's closeto my heart because the most
important thing for femalefounders isn't so much about,
(00:21):
what you are speaking about,it's actually about hearing
yourself first so that yourvoice is deeper, your insights
are richer.
The way you communicate yourmessage is more involved.
And that involves actuallyconnecting with your inner self
to find out.
What your voice even is.
(00:42):
And so in this episode today,I'm actually gonna be firstly
breaking down.
The barriers to accessing yourvoice and, um, the real tug of
war between performativevisibility, which is kind of,
you know, the container in whichmost, uh, visibility programs
(01:02):
are designed, which is aboutchecking a checkbox of all of
the things that you have to doand then, uh, doing the things
that you have to do.
And it's all the same cookiecutter advice.
So I'm gonna be breaking down.
And really helping you tounderstand what is actually
stopping you from finding yourinner voice.
And then I'm gonna be talkingabout, the actual methodology,
(01:25):
which is, what you really needto do in order to get that in a
connection with yourself.
And then I'm gonna be goingthrough the three layers of
visibility, how to find,activate, and then amplify your
voice for true impact.
And then some practical toolsthat you can take away and
implement right away, as well ashow you don't have to be fully
(01:47):
healed to speak your truth, andthen finding the courage to
actually expand into the voicethat's.
Calling you or the calling thatyou may have that has remained
unexpressed and giving you somevisibility tools that you can
start with straight away in abit to then get to the
performative visibility, whichis then about how you, how do
(02:08):
you capture, connect, and thenconvert your ideal audience.
So let's kick off this fantasticsizzling episode that I am
really, really excited to talkabout today.
And so let's kick off with thevery first thing, which is.
Why is there a disconnection inthe first place?
Now, I see this as we are in asetting where, as I've said
(02:32):
before, there is a lot ofpressure from the outside to do
certain things.
You know, I when, if you thinkabout female founders and our
connection to business, so muchof what is, promoted in
business, say if you're workingwith a business coach, a lot of
the work that is involved isabout, firstly, putting yourself
out there.
It's about, following aframework, whatever that
(02:53):
framework might be for thatspecific business coach, and
then essentially taking thesteps towards.
Amplifying your business, within a container of like your
revenue and how much you'remaking, and it's very
dimensionalized into the actualoutputs that you are needing to
do in order to get the inputs,which is generally in the form
(03:14):
of revenue.
In your business.
Right?
And so there is firstly theconstant output.
And if you think about it fromthe lens of female founders,
that output doesn't really honorthe stage and phase of every
business owner.
And I think what has happened isthat in a social media context
(03:34):
where everything is open andkind of there for algorithms to
serve, you will sometimes beserved with.
A hundred messages all saying adifferent version of the same
thing.
Um, and it's no wonder thatyou're being pulled in many
different directions because atthe end of the day, the social
media platforms, the algorithms,all of that are actually
(03:56):
designed to keep your attention.
And it's a psychological thing,so it's not as though you are
fully in control of it anyway,even though.
There might be things that youmight, be able to do to pull
back away from things like maybehaving an app and this and that,
to control your time on screenat the end of the day.
Yeah.
As a business owner, you are insearch mode.
(04:16):
You are constantly searching forsomething that's going to make
your life easier, and this iswhere it starts unraveling and
the constant output pressure.
Is what's causing you toactually disconnect from your
own voice in the first place.
Because what's happening is thatyou are quite often clutching
(04:38):
onto different strategies andconnecting together little bits
of everybody else's strategy andmaking it your own, whereas what
you really need is a designstrategy to meet your own
lifestyle, to meet your.
Your own self, where you are at.
And so that is really the firstthing.
The second thing is professionalmasks.
(04:59):
Now professional masks are onesthat are really difficult to
dismantle, and I think I'veheard this quite a lot, which
is, you know, I have differentparts to myself.
Which part do I put out?
I have got a professional sideand I've got my personal side.
Does the business.
Side come first, or do I need tospeak on behalf of my business?
(05:19):
And if I'm speaking on behalf ofmy business, is it really my
personality that's coming out?
So I just wanna, I just want youto take a step back firstly and
just kind of inspect it from theangle of where.
You know, you are by businessesat currently.
Now, let's say you are aprofessional services business
owner, let's say.
Just for the sake of,convenience, I'm gonna use, a
(05:42):
legal service as an example.
One of my clients has been inthe legal profession in the
past, and so I'm gonna use thatas an example now, the first
things first is, as a femalefounder, you are always going to
have founder-led content, whichis how can you differentiate
your content, which is the voicethat you embody for your
(06:03):
business?
In an effort to draw in peoplefrom an, uh, from both an
offense and a defenseperspective.
So what I mean by offense is.
Uh, offense is an attractionmechanism.
So an attraction mechanism iswhen you are drawing people in
based on your voice, based onyour visibility, based on your
methodology, based on your ip,based on the way you do things,
(06:26):
which may be a little bitunformed at this point.
It just find it may be fullyformed or it might be somewhere
sort of in between.
And so if you are in any ofthose three phases, you've just
gotta understand that people aregoing to be drawn to other
people.
At the end of the day, even ifyou are B2B or what I call
business to business, you arestill in the business of
(06:49):
connecting with people andpeople connect with people.
So that's first things first.
So coming back to the example ofthe legal professional.
Now this legal professionalmight have the pressure of
performance masks that they haveto put on in order to feel like
the.
The league that they're in.
(07:10):
So the legalese that they haveto have in their content versus,
the professionals that theymight belong to who are already
in the legal space.
They might have this tug of waror this tussle between, I want
to be this, but I actually feellike I have to be this.
And so if you are following acookie cutter visibility
(07:30):
strategy, which is.
Always about constant outputs.
It's no wonder that you're gonnabe going on a platform like
LinkedIn and then wanting toshrink away because your founder
voice may not lend itself fully.
To say a platform like LinkedInin a way in which you want to,
because of that professionalmask that you feel like you have
to wear and which is where thevisibility strategy does need to
(07:54):
come in place, which is veryunique and bespoke to you.
It's very important that peopleunderstand that the marketing
lens and the information thatyou're being given, it needs to
be highly customized to you.
And so that leads to the third.
Issue, which you then end upwith people pleasing as a result
(08:17):
of the conditioning.
Now, if you are in.
A business now from havingtransitioned from corporate or
if you've been in an a, any kindof leadership role in the past,
whether it was leading your ownbusiness that you walked away
from and then now startingsomething of your own or such
as, one of my clients has, shehad a big, thriving business,
uh, with offices in multiplecountries and doing all the
(08:41):
things, but then she walked awayfrom that towards a more
aligned.
Business that was aligned withwhere she was at in her business
journey.
And so you've gotta understandthat, that people pleasing will
follow you based on what youhave been exposed to in the
past.
In the first example, I canthink of one person who used to
be in a senior leadership role.
(09:02):
And so therefore, speaking aboutwhat she does from a spiritual
perspective is very, mismatched.
To the audience that currentlyis on her social accounts as one
example, but the second is thatshe would need to then structure
her content in a way that stillhelps her to be visible in
(09:25):
certain places whilst adaptingher approach so that she can
still speak her truth.
She can still have her voicewithout necessarily having a
performative view.
Towards, the entire ecosystem offollowing the step-by-step
framework for, say, a LinkedInmarketing strategy or if you're
following a LinkedIn influenceras an example.
(09:46):
So that's one example.
The second one that I mentioned,which is for the person who, uh,
was already on a, in aleadership role within her own
business and walked away fromthat after, after managing
offices in multiple countries,after having, many.
Staff members as part of herprevious business.
She walked away from that andshe's actually surrounded by a
(10:07):
whole bunch of experts.
These are very smart people whoare hired the likes of
universities, for instance, thathave a whole bunch of expertise
tied to them.
And so she needs to navigatethrough that, uh, as well as now
to talking about what she doesnow.
So there, there is that peoplepleasing aspect that gets in the
(10:28):
way.
And then the fourth one is,really the fear of being too
much, or the fear of beingjudged.
Who does she think she is?
Here we go again.
Here she is on her bandwagon,it's too emotional, it's too
whatever.
Like, fill in the blanks, right?
So it really is aboutdistinguishing, and really
coming to terms with what arethe pieces of, what are the
(10:52):
things that are in your way thatcould serve as amplifying the
disconnection in the firstplace.
Because once you identify what'scausing that disconnection, and
perhaps you might be saying,well, yes to the constant
outputs, yes.
That's causing me, pressure.
Maybe it's the professionalmass, maybe it's the people
pleasing, or maybe it's the fearof either being too much, being
(11:14):
judged or whatever.
Right.
Or scared of putting yourselfout there because, making a or
taking a stand for what youbelieve in sometimes has
consequences as we have learnedin recent times.
And so it's about then coming toterms with, firstly that before
going into the outputs, whichis, what do I need to put out
(11:34):
there?
Right?
So let's bring, the attentionback to where we need to be in
terms of finding our voicethrough the inner connection.
Because your inner voicetypically hasn't disappeared.
It's probably just buried underthe weight of expectations that
weren't, your choice in thefirst place.
So understanding that is crucialto then reframing that narrative
(12:00):
that you might have or thestories that you might be
telling yourself.
Some of which are truths, someof them are half truths and some
of them are falsities.
And so really recognizing whichone is a truth, which one's a
half truth, which one's afalsity, is also really
important as a segue to real.
Finding that inner voice thatyou have and really then being
(12:23):
able to take a step back.
And this morning I had aconversation with a client of
mine who said that, she wasreally struggling with being
visible in a way that.
Was that performativevisibility, which was again,
optimizing towards consistency.
And I say, if you're optimizingtowards consistency, you are
letting go of clarity.
And so if you're letting go ofclarity.
(12:45):
It's going to be aself-fulfilling cycle where you
are constantly feeling bad aboutputting yourself out there.
And then, because the longer youdo it, the further away you get
from being visible.
And so I said to her thismorning, which is, how can we
reframe what you are doing froma visibility perspective?
(13:06):
How are you being internallyvisible to yourself because
your.
Expression becomes natural, andyour message really sharpens the
closer you get with your innervoice.
Because confidence really comesfrom that self-trust.
It's not necessarily fromperfection.
And if you are, listening tothis and you're thinking about,
how can you reframe all of thosefour factors that I've talked
(13:30):
about earlier, towards a morealigned approach that honors
that internal visibility?
So if confidence comes fromself-trust and not perfection,
then I want you to reallyconsider the three layers of
developing that innervisibility.
The first layer of that isself-awareness.
The second is.
Self-expression.
(13:50):
And then the third isself-leadership, so that you can
then find, activate, and amplifyyour voice based on developing
those core skills of innervisibility for yourself first
before you decide to then takethat next step to towards a
more, aware form of visibility.
(14:12):
So what does self-awareness looklike?
I think I can say that formyself is self-awareness for me
has really meant a really good,hard look at where I was
creating boundaries, what youknow were my own needs and
desires, so that.
I was putting my own mask onbefore I was ready to help
(14:35):
anybody else.
Because a business owner or afemale founder, running on empty
is never the recipe for success.
So that's where thatself-awareness comes in, as
where is your inner visibilityin.
In within the context of yourexternal visibility.
So what tools can you giveyourself in the journey to being
(14:56):
externally visible that willhelp your journey?
And it doesn't always have to belinear, which means it's, this
is not as though you have a sixmonth window where you are
creating all these boundaries,assessing your needs and
whatnot.
You can actually be doing thissimultaneously, or you give
yourself permission to say,well, actually, you know what?
Maybe I do need to do this.
(15:17):
Step, one step at a time.
Maybe I do need to take this,with creating the boundaries
right now based on my equitablesurroundings or, realities of my
life right now.
So you then go, okay, I'll giveyou an example of my own, which
was I made a decision between,the difference between caring
and carrying a previous versionof my business really looked
(15:40):
like carrying what I thought wasthat I was responsible for the
success of whoever took myservices.
However.
The container in which you areoffering your services needs to
be sustainable in order forthere to be continuum.
So what I mean by that is thatwhatever it is that you are
(16:02):
offering, yes, offer that inthat instance, but also then
understand that creating thoseboundaries for yourself will
make you a more effectivebusiness owner.
So that is one example from abusiness perspective.
So that's caring versuscarrying.
From a business perspective, butthen as a female founder, you
are not just all about yourbusiness, you actually have a
(16:23):
life to lead.
And that's part of the reasonwhy just performative visibility
isn't really a one size fitsall.
You've really gotta look at itfrom a holistic perspective,
which is, what are you carryingin your life right now?
What feels heavy?
And then conversely, if thatfeels heavy.
Then whatever it is that yourcontainer is right now in terms
(16:45):
of your offering, is that alsoheavy?
Because if you have got a heavyload of doing whatever it is
that you're doing, you betterbelieve that you're gonna have
to put some masks on foryourself in order to then carry
on.
So whether if you are in the,psychology space, for instance,
and building a course onself-love as an example, which
is like one of my clients did afew years ago, versus say
(17:08):
somebody who, was obviouslytrained in that she's built
internal, capacity withinherself to actually carry that
for her clients.
But at the same time, if youare, if you are just starting
out and if you've got young kidsand you're managing a full
household, are you really gonnahave the capacity?
So what's gonna be easy breezyso that there is that
(17:29):
self-awareness piece that comesin, creating those boundaries
and needs and desires.
For yourself, and then thattranslates into self-expression.
What truth needs to surfacetoday?
Where are you in your emotionalstate?
If you are in a place wherethings feel heavy, if you are
teary, if you are in the middleof perimenopause, if you are
(17:50):
doing all of those things, thoseheavy, hard life things, what
are your insights from that?
How can you take self-expressionfor yourself as the ultimate
form of inner visibility, notingthat this, again, is not a
linear process.
You might have days when you arefully in service to yourself,
(18:14):
and then you might have dayswhere you are ready to be more
externally visible.
Because let's face it, we arenot all, as female founders, we
are not in a bubble kind ofjust.
Rocking in a corner going, Ineed to be internally visible.
Yes, of course there needs to bean external visibility attached
to it, but what I'm saying isthat external visibility doesn't
come without first internalvisibility first, because you
(18:37):
can't be magnetic if youhaven't.
Anchored yourself with him.
So that's the other message thatI wanna put out there, is that
you might be following peoplewho.
Talking about magneticvisibility.
But if you haven't actuallyanchored yourself within, then
ask the question to yourself iswhether you are actually gonna
be in a place to be magnetic Ifyou can't do that for yourself,
and which is where thatself-expression, the
(19:00):
self-awareness comes in, yourself-expression to yourself
really needs to be, um, rootedin truth for you to then be able
to talk about those in a waythat gives people insights based
on.
Giving yourself that oxygen maskfirst.
And then it transitions into thethird layer, which is the
self-leadership.
So self-leadership then movesthrough into, well, what choices
(19:23):
am I making for myself?
You know, what clarity can Igive?
Or what sort of journaling can Ido for that identity expansion?
What work do I need to do onmyself to then move through from
whatever you, wherever you mightbe at?
Whether it's the first fourfigures, whether it's five
figures, whether it's sixfigures, whatever that might be.
Every level really needs thatidentity expansion.
(19:44):
Which you won't have if youhaven't followed the three step
process that I'm talking abouthere.
Now, if you are consideringlooking at how you can build
that inner capacity to be theleader that you know you are,
then message me, DME, onInstagram, using the handle in
my show notes below, and I cansend you the free pre visibility
(20:07):
training.
It's a five part training seriesthat will take you from the.
Essentially finding your voiceright through to activating your
voice and then amplifying yourvoice so that you can have an
external performativeexpression.
Of your visibility that is inline with the needs of your
business, which is essentiallyrevenue collection.
(20:28):
So that brings me into thepractical tools.
So some of the practical toolsthat I've used on myself in the
journey of visibility is voicenotes.
Now I'm a person.
That has a myriad ideas.
I'm constantly an ideas person.
The issue has always been thetime for the amplification of
(20:49):
all of those ideas, andsometimes it has been about how
I feel or where I might be at.
Whether I'm, in a, monthly cyclewhere I'm not feeling my best,
and as I've come in into my midforties, I've come to realize
that these things affect me morethan what they used to.
And so this is where voice notesdo come in.
(21:11):
If you are someone for whom,self-expression is.
The ultimate form of healingyourself.
It's really about unbundling.
It's about dismantling.
It's about.
Really getting rid of thoseinner narratives so that when
you are sharing your stories,you're not oversharing them, you
are actually sharing them withyourself.
(21:32):
And so you don't end up havingthis sort of adverse reaction to
visibility where you feel likethe spotlight syndrome, where,
all of a sudden you've sharedsomething and then you feel
like, oh my goodness, what haveI shared?
I can't believe I shared that.
Now I feel terrible about it.
And so it's really importantthat you resolve those.
Stories for yourself.
Just resolve those narrativesfor yourself before you tell
(21:52):
those stories.
So that is one then isreflective prompting.
That's another tool.
And you can use if you are anApple, iPhone user.
There is a new app.
Now, I don't know when you'relistening to this, but there's a
new app as of now in 2025 calledJournal that I've really been
using that as one of myjournaling techniques because of
course I have my phone on me,nine times outta 10.
(22:14):
And so.
Having that reflective, weeklyor daily, practice of writing
really helps and I don't really,um, subscribe to any one way of
doing things.
There are times when I feel likevoice, like voice journaling.
There, there are times when Ifeel like praying.
There are times when I doreflective journaling.
I use.
(22:34):
A variety of methodologies, andso that's why I don't believe in
giving like this one size fitsall approach, which is just
based on what I necessarily do.
I do all manner of differentthings, and so it's about
finding the thing that is goingto work for you and a
combination of things that aregonna work for you.
Lately I've been doing morereflective writing, and that is
(22:54):
something that works for me.
I am an early morning person, Irise early, and when I'm rising
early, I tend to write down mythoughts.
Early things come to me and I'musually by 7:00 AM I am buzzed
because I have been able todownload all my thoughts in onto
paper.
And then the third thing isusing your body as a compass for
(23:16):
showing you what's aligning withyou and what's not.
Uh, one of my clients, uh, saidto me just recently that she
ended up going and doing thisamazing exercise.
With, young children, she has atheater and performance
background.
And so she went and did thistraining with, with these
children and she felt really litup.
(23:38):
And that really gave her a clueabout what it is that she needed
to do.
And funnily enough, it was.
In perfect alignment with hervoice themes, which is part of
the work that I do within myprogram, activate.
And so if you haven't yetdownloaded the program guide,
you can go to contenthalo.com/activate waitlist to
download the full program guide,see if it's a good fit for you.
(24:01):
And so this is what she did,which was bringing, activities
that were bringing.
Her joy, where do things feelexpansive?
Where the shoulds that we havereally start overriding the
desires because we have made thespace internally to have that
self-awareness, develop thatself-expression for ourselves,
(24:22):
and then go through and movethrough self-leadership before
we are ready to take on andbecome leaders of our own
businesses and become leaders.
With a view to an externalvisibility approach, because I
always say that, you know,finding your voice before
finding your visibility is akinto self-leadership before
leadership.
(24:42):
And so that's the bit that wehave to nail as female founders
first, so that the performativevisibility that you see.
And here in the online space canbecome a reality for you.
So here's this.
Um, on a closing note, if youare here because you would like
to know how to speak andpresent, market your business
(25:02):
online with confidence.
You don't need to be fullyhealed to speak.
Your audience does not expectyour perfect story.
They actually want a relatablestory.
But in order for there to be arelatable story, it doesn't
always have to come from, placeof, grief.
It doesn't always have to comefrom like this deep inner, woe
(25:24):
begone story about, your life'schallenges.
There are business owners,including me for, that have
created businesses based out ofthings that have brought us joy
things where life, has taken onanother.
Turn, in my case, my voice goteroded over a period of time and
I've returned and using that asa container for self-expression
(25:45):
with a way towards healing andthen expressing your self fully.
And so if you are wanting thathonest truth for yourself, I
just want you to firstly reflecton how.
Visibility can expand throughyou to through taking per
imperfect action, by creatingthat internal visibility for
(26:06):
yourself, then bringing thatlens of self-compassion so that
when you are ready to find,activate and amplify your voice
towards greater visibility, youdo so knowing that your voice is
rooted in truth, that you'respeaking from a place of
presence.
Rather than performance and thatyour life journey and, the,
(26:29):
message that you really wannadeliver about why your business
is as unique as you are withfounder led content is going to
be that container for taking youfrom finding right through to
the amplification of your voice.
So if you would like to find outmore about.
How to find, activate andamplify your voice.
(26:49):
Message me with the word previsibility and I'll send you
that free five part training foryou to consume in your own time.
And so in bringing this podcastto a close, if you have loved
listening in and tuning intothis podcast I would really
appreciate it if you could giveme a five star review on any of
the podcast channels that youare listening or tuning in on.
(27:11):
Thanks so much for listening,and I'll see you in the next
episode.
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