Greater visibility with Kelly Sinclair

Welcome to This Daring Adventure podcast, where we work on bridging the gap between where we are and where we want to be in order to live a bigger and bolder life. In this podcast, we will provide inspiration, tips, and skills you need to make your life the adventure you want it to be. Here's your host, mindset mentor and life coach, Trista G Hi everybody. Welcome back to This Daring Adventure podcast. Today, I have a very special guest. I have not had a guest in a long time and I thought I would get back into it because there are a lot of really amazing women out there doing work that I thought would be really interesting for all of us. to hear and to learn from. So today we have a fellow Canadian, Kelly Sinclair. Welcome, Kelly. Hi, Trista. I'm so honoured to be one of your first guests back on the show. I really appreciate you being here. And I'm just going to tell people you are the CEO of KS& Co, a visibility coaching and brand strategy company dedicated to helping Entrepreneurs build impactful, sustainable businesses, and you also have your own podcast, The Entrepreneur School. Helping ambitious women in starting and growing their business and basically helping entrepreneurs. With the tools, the confidence and the clarity to attract their audience and grow their businesses on their own terms. I like that. That's really important. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey. I think you were in corporate and then you started your own business. Yeah, fill us in. Oh, yes. The journey is isn't that always the case? Life is a journey. And where do the like puzzle pieces all come together? My, my professional background is communications and public relations. And I worked for a long time in corporate PR and I worked in an agency, mostly again with corporate clients. And I was checking all of the boxes in my life. I was. I was married at 23. I was a homeowner. We had a dog and then we had two kids all by the time I was 30. I had a boss at one time who gave out these like joke awards as part of like our Christmas party. And he gave me this award for most life events in one year. And I was like, yeah, that is me. Isn't it like just goal complete. I remember being like, after we had our second daughter, I said to my husband, can we just like. Not do a big thing this year. I like to just chill out and pretty much right around that time. My mom got really sick with cancer and I started to see the. Like whole, I was feeling between, needing to spend time with her, wanting to spend time with her and have my kids have a relationship with her. And also I've already been on this track, right? I'm trying to build my career and do something that is meaningful to me and that started to be like a tension point and eventually I was like, I need to leave my job. My mom had a seizure and it sent her into the hospital. And I was like, Nope, I can't do anymore. Work. I have to take a leave of absence. And then, unfortunately, only eight days after I made that decision, we lost her. And I had a, anybody who has experienced loss that personally understands that phrase, life is short. And it's weird how I felt like in reflection, I didn't really get gravity of that until it happened to me. And I experienced it and I thought, I cannot continue doing what I have been doing for the last, especially since becoming a mom, the time with my kids, I was getting up at before 5am, which I will tell you. I am not a morning person. We're still like I, to this day, I am like, pull me outta bed at seven and I'm still a bit like, ugh. Yeah. But we were driving into Calgary from like this bedroom community I live in, basically. And I was drinking all the coffee. Like I took a thermos to refill my coffee so I could just like purely stream like. Caffeine into my system to be at work at seven. My kids were at daycare at 6 AM. I was picking them up at 5 30 and something, nothing. There was nothing there that said that there was anything wrong with that. For some reason I was justifying it. I was like, Oh yeah. It's hard to have little kids and have a job. And, but this is what I think is important and all of that kind of stuff. And then my mom died and I was like. No, this is not important. This is not how I want my life to be. I don't want to be a parent who only sees her kid for 30 minutes a day and has to put them to bed and deal with them during the witching hour. There's no quality time there. So I started thinking about like, how do I want to move forward? I know that it's important for me, like I am the kind of woman who wants To have an active brain, like I need an outlet for my brain. I need to feel like I am contributing to society in a bigger way. I need to feel my purpose from work that I do. I don't entirely feel a purpose from being a mother. That's a piece of my puzzle that's, I just knew I was not gonna be a stay, stay-at-home mom. So I decided to start my own business and I wanted to work specifically with entrepreneurs because. I feel like if an entrepreneur who is passionate about what they do is able to be successful, then the world is going to be a happier place. Like we're going to see more people doing what they love. And the ripple effect of that is going to be amazing. And that's. Like my bigger picture mission and what I wanted to contribute to. So I just took my PR experience and communications and marketing, mixed it all up and started applying that to small businesses. And what it's really come out to is all about visibility. It's all about how do you get yourself out there? How do you find an audience of people who you can support and serve with what you do? What is the messaging? How do you find them? And where do you find them? And what do you say? So all of that kind of in, is integrated in what I do now. And I specifically focus on that, like getting yourself out there, because that is the first step in the sales cycle. Like we're like, okay I want to have a business. It's going to, make money. But how do I find the people to sell the thing to that I can actually help and serve? We need to build an audience. Those people need to become leads that we then nurture into sales and clients. But if you don't have an audience to begin with, you don't start there, then none of the rest of it matters. And so that's why I wanted to have this conversation with you today, because I've coached a lot of clients who have expressed an interest. Either they are coaches or they want to become coaches or they want to start some sort of their own business. Not necessarily anything to do with coaching or, even artists Whomever that are interested in, in, in becoming an entrepreneur or, building that business for themselves But are just completely, I don't want to say terrified, but just Completely put off and afraid. There is some fear, right? Let's be honest about putting themselves out there and they don't know how to go about it. They imagine that it's like on social media, just, making the posts and speaking and all the horrible things that people are going to say to them or whatnot. And so I've met people that just don't do it because of that reason. Yeah. Yes, it's absolutely, it is a hard thing to do. I'm not going to sugar coat that. But it's also the necessity. Everything in life is hard and, staying healthy is hard and eating, making a, having a salad instead of a burger is hard sometimes. And actually going to bed on time is hard and choose your hard, right? And so I always remind myself anytime I feel this is going to be a challenging thing that I'm about to do. What is the why behind it, right? If the bigger picture purpose in the why of your life is clear. Then figuring out the steps to get there, you're always going to be able to convince yourself to do it. If you care enough about the end game, that bigger picture that you're contributing to, then you will take those actions. And when it comes to specifically visibility and talking about how to get your business out there or your passion in whatever way that looks like. Absolutely. All of those little gremlins are coming up in your head. What if I sound too salesy? What if I'm too much or people don't like me or somebody says something negative, like what if, and yes, it's true. All of those things are going to come up. And there's a thing about confidence. I one time heard actually first, before I go there, I'm going to say, this is a phrase that I heard and it was, if you don't have imposter syndrome, you're not trying anything new. So therefore, it's actually a requirement for you to have imposter syndrome in order to grow in any way. Of course the first time you climb a mountain, that might, that You might be like scared and nervous, but then the next time I even find that sometimes like driving down a road I've never been down and feeling a little anxious about, how many curbs are in this road or the deer going to jump out at me. And then when you've driven the road enough, you just feel more confident about it. And confidence is something that is built over time and it comes from your belief in your ability to figure things out. Confidence is not the initiator. Confidence is actually the results. You have to take an action to be confident. You can't wait for confidence in order for you to take an action. And so when I Think about visibility as being like a very core first step in how you grow and how you create the business that you're trying to create and like to build out your passion, it's really about action taking and momentum. And so I have this model that I use that, that I trick myself with, to be honest, whereas if you're frozen and you can't take an action, then you have to lean into the why. To get yourself to take an action, you take that action, you're going to see results. Okay, and so those results aren't necessarily, Oh my gosh, I got on that podcast, or I got that client, or whatever tangible thing. Sometimes it's Oh, I learned that didn't work. And that's also really helpful and really beneficial to you. So whatever the result is, it helps you create momentum. It's like that snowball effect where you can connect the dots to every single thing that you've ever done and the outcome that's happened as a result of it. But for for an example, like the momentum can make you do something else hard. I always feel like if I do something hard, I can do something else hard. Especially if yeah. I remember last year specifically, I I was invited to be part of this online event and I looked up some of the speakers and some of them were like authors of books that I had read. I thought, Ooh, wow. Like I want to be in this team, I want to be in this like space. And I had to have an interview with the person who who was running it because we didn't know each other. We went to make sure we're on the same page and aligned and that's all good. And once we had that conversation and she said, she wanted me to be part of it. I was like, wow, that's so awesome. And then I like went and did a really hard workout right away. Cause I was like, I'm going to take that energy and I'm going to put it over here. So that momentum can propel you forward. And the actions that you're taking really lead to more things happening and more bigger things. And if I could play this out for you, an example, specifically with visibility I teach a visibility, like 10 minutes a day or less. This needs to be a habit in your life. This needs to be something that you do all the time because that's how you're going to get used to it. It's not going to be so scary anymore. And these things can be little bite sized things, right? So first of all, visibility means somebody else knows that it happened. Okay. Okay, so it's not rewriting your course material or like taking, listening to a podcast. It's like you reached out, you made a connection, you went to an event or you registered for one. Like it's starting, it's involving other people. Sometimes it's as simple as, and I know everybody listening, you've got something on your to do list. That you just have been pushing. It's for some reason, I can't send that email to that person, or whatever it is, it's challenging. So that's the thing I'm talking about. And we're doing something like that on a daily basis, and recording it. In the summer of 2023, I didn't put my kids in summer camp. And it was the first time, and I was like, oh my gosh, what's gonna happen? They're gonna be interrupting me all the time, I'm not gonna be very focused, and I know. that if I let that happen all summer without some intentional effort in building things up, September is going to come and I'm going to be like, feeling like I'm starting from scratch, oh, you have to have a little bit of foresight. I call this the future you mindset. This is also this is how I make myself meal plan every week because I don't like doing that either, but I want to eat like healthy food and I don't want to get to Thursday and be like ordering pizza. Yeah. So future Kelly is so happy when Sunday Kelly writes out the meal plan, so this is that's how you trick yourself to do it. You're like, Hey, if I really want to be where I want to be in two months or three months or five years or whatever, then I'm going to have to start. moving this ball forward right now. And for visibility, it can be as simple as that 10 minutes a day. So I was like, okay, of course I have a PR degree. So I'm going to start with something a little bit bigger. I'm like, I want to tell the media about my podcast. Cause I just had launched the podcast that year. And I thought, it's a great resource and people should know about it. And I'm going to. Even though it's something I'd done for my clients all the time, I do lots of media, but when I'm the one in the spotlight, all of a sudden it feels harder, right? It feels Ooh, I had to get chat GPT to help me write the release so I could make myself sound as good as it would. Object subjectively, objectively make me sound. And so I got, I put the media release out there that was part of my challenge to myself that I was going to do something every day and it started with this media release. And I got amazing coverage like radio. Interviews two online articles. I was on the front page of our physical newspaper here in Cochrane, and it was like, wow, okay. So that was a big deal. And since it was about my podcast, I saw the podcast, like stats spike. And then I got this. Guest pitched to me, who I was like, checking out and I see this person is just on this big event, like 6, 000 people at a stadium at my lap was part of it. And I was like, I will talk to you. Also. He like owns a helicopter. So he's probably figured something out financially. And so then I have the like podcast interview with him and he's going, Oh yeah. I'm just going to be on the Joe Rogan show next. And I'm like, cause this is like the Joe Rogan show. For whatever reason, he ends up on my podcast and I have this really great conversation with a multimillionaire about business and about success and what it means and all of this stuff. And it was fabulous. Go back in the archives of entrepreneur school and you'll find that. Yeah. I'll take a look. But that just led to like momentum. I just feeling so jacked up after having that conversation. I was like, what else can I do? And then I saw a friend was part of this event in Nashville. She was just advertising this event was coming up in Nashville. It was for podcasters. And I thought I'm going to apply to speak at that. I pitched myself as speaking about PR for your podcast and this whole case study of everything that's like momentum that's built out of it, and I got myself on stage in Nashville last year because of that, and and that, like the ripple still going, like the people I met in the room there, the relationships, the collaborations, the future other podcast interviews and everything that came out of going there, like it really is all connected. So if you think about the power and sometimes this is the great thing, Trista, we are like, what's going to be the best ROI, what's going to be the most strategic thing to do. And I hate to say it, but in marketing, it's really hard to know, and sometimes you can't even track it necessarily back to what it actually was like, but in this case, that momentum builds. And I think part of the benefit, not just the, did I get on a podcast, did I get email subscribers or whatever the tangible things are that you can actually track is every single time you take an action, you build your confidence. You get more confident. You get more clarity. You're able to do things that you never thought you would ever possibly do. And it all started with one little thing. And you just let it build up. And build up. And amazing things come out of it. And I think, I always had the fear of, what are other people gonna think? What are other people gonna say? You know what? You hear so much about Haters and you get the the comments and all of that and I think there's also the unknown, right? Like you're just putting yourself out there and you just it puts us into this fight or flight Response. Right? Our brain just if we especially if we've never done that before. Our brain just can't Handle that but I think What I've learned, because I remember this very clearly with my first Instagram post or Facebook post or doing my podcast like this, is it's never as bad as you think it is, right? And most of the time people are very, probably most of the time people aren't going to really notice too much especially when you're first starting out, it goes out into the void, but then, people are, Usually very supportive and very kind, and I think, we go to this worst case scenario, but it doesn't necessarily happen like that. A couple of comments about that. First of all, yes, everybody is just Everybody is selfish in the world, so nobody's actually paying attention. So on one hand you could say, what would be the point of putting myself out there if nobody's paying attention? And then when I first started trying to really put myself out there years and years ago, I committed to doing a live video on Facebook every single week. And I did it for two years. Wow. I made a hundred live videos. Wow. And did I ever have more than seven people show up to one of those videos? No. It was not about going viral. It was not about even growth. It was about clarity, confidence, practice, taking action, committing to myself, following through on that commitment to myself. All of those things were so valuable, if not more valuable than the outcome of actually doing the video. Which it eventually, that, that specific practice got me to a point where I can now create my own podcasts and just do full like stream of consciousness, create a podcast or have this conversation with you with very little preparation. And so that in and of itself is very valuable. And the other thing you're saying about what are other people going to say? I will never forget. So I used to work in corporate PR in Calgary. So oil sands, pipelines, energy, all the things that are contentious. If you start talking about public opinion, right? And we're trying to figure out how do we like, what conversations do we need to have? What messaging do we need to figure out? We had a Canada wide survey done by like a Leger, big research company, talking about like public perception on pipelines and they broke it down into four categories. It's the people who are like strongly supportive. People who are somewhat supportive, somewhat against, and then strongly against, right? And you would think, based on the media and what you hear, that there's, how, what percentage would you say is in that strongly against category? you live in Canada, you understand this industry a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I think it would be quite high, no? Like 50%? I don't know. It was 12. Oh, wow. 12 percent and I thought that is mind blowing to me, like the 12 percent people who are strongly against something, they're just the loudest and they're the ones that chain themselves to gates and they're the ones that do all these things and the people who are strongly supportive of things tend to not bother. It's not hurting them. It's only people who have like issues or challenges or are against something that actually take an action to stand up for it. And so if you think about contributing your own commentary into whatever it is that you're talking about mindsets, about business growth, about those kinds of who's even going to say something bad. And if they do, that's their own thing, right? We don't need to listen to the loud people. We are here for the people who we are here for. And that's another really important part of understanding, like communication is that you're not for everybody, And we have to just really accept that we're not here to put something out and hopefully everybody likes it. It's no, it's actually beneficial for people to go, Oh, that's not for me. And then they go away and you don't have to have that conversation trying to convince them that they should join your program or believe what you believe or whatever. That's not what it's about. Like you believe what you believe and you're going to step into that with confidence. You're going to attract the right people into your world. That's the magic. Yes, that's true. I always think I always think my stuff is so good, why don't people want it, and every time I send out an email, I get unsubscribers, I'm like, that email was really good, but you're right, not everybody, and that's a good thing too, right? You just want those people that are going to be really interested. And definitely don't look at your unsubscribes that's just a, that's just a hole you don't need to go down. Okay, so let's go back to the 10 minutes a day idea, and I guess, I think I've especially one of the things I find for myself is that I don't know if it's a shiny object syndrome, where, somebody says, Oh, you should be on LinkedIn, or you should do this, you should do this and do this. It's really difficult to focus and do we need to just focus on one or two or what's your recommendation for people starting out? So that's a great question and it's definitely a lot of people's question and shiny object syndrome is 100 percent the enemy of like progress, and like I said before, marketing it's hard to tell what the best ROI is going to be. and I just don't subscribe to any kind of cookie cutter plan for every one of my clients, we create a customized visibility strategy that's going to work for you. And part of what's going to work for you is one, we know who your audience is. So we know where to find them and the best methods for that. There are some definite connections between, don't be on Instagram if your target market is 70 years old, just don't do that. But the other piece is what are, what's your strengths? What are your personal strengths? Are you into speaking. Do you like podcasting? Do you like networking? Are you so introverted that you would throw up if I made you go to a room, I'm not gonna send you a plan that says you need to go like to 35 networking events a year, if that is just not where you vibe. So the best plan is the one that you will actually follow, and that's the only way that it's gonna be successful, right? So as far as what are the tactics that is the issue. It's should I be on Instagram? Should I, now there's a new thing or now there's threads or now I should be on podcasts. And I get about 15 emails a day from people telling me that I need to fix my YouTube SEO. And I'm like, that is just not what I'm doing right now. You need to put your own blinders on and move forward with a couple of things that you can actually be consistent with and then track the results. So does, for me it's in person. Anything in person is going to get me 10x movement than anything else. I don't know what that is about me, maybe my energy, like something extra is happening when you're in the room with people. Okay. For sure. Because it's all about relationship building and relationships can progress so much better. So much quicker when you can feel that chemistry between people, right? That is a, I think a huge thing. The biggest, most impactful thing I did in the last two years for visibility was attend an event in the audience. I wasn't even on the stage. As I was in the audience, I met the person who was on the stage and now it's been three months and we are actually going into a business partnership together. Nice. And did I think that was going to happen that day? Definitely not. I did not see it coming. It wasn't like that was my intention. I just thought I'll go we'll connect with these people. And she hired me and then now we're like figuring out what working together on a business partnership would look like. And so I think that's the exciting thing too, like on one hand, I know that you want a recipe. I know that you want the formula and the exact blueprint to say this is exactly what you should do. But sometimes it's the little, it's the surprise result that comes from the little thing that you didn't even know was going to happen. And that's what's magical about it, You have a goal. You have a focus. You have an intention. It's all contributing towards your overall visibility, your overall audience building, but it might just be that one thing or it's the combination of everything that's happened up until that one moment that's led to what, why this is happening now. And I can't explain that right now. Just have to take the risk and have faith and I guess it's a long game too, right? it's a marathon, not a sprint. It definitely is. It's something you always have to be doing. Like even for businesses that are fully booked out, they're too busy, like there's a huge risk if you don't continue your visibility, your marketing, because where's your next client coming from if all of them just disappear one day. And then this isn't to put like fear into the factor, but it's just to like really demonstrate that visibility is like it is a revenue generating activity. First of all, it needs to be a habit that you do on a daily basis, and it can be as simple as under 10 minutes a day. Okay. And yeah, you don't always know what the thing is, it's going to flip the switch, but it's the whole continuous movement, continuous momentum, confidence building, everything that's happening, all coming together. And then the magic, I would say that telling you exactly what to do is not even as beneficial as telling you that you just have to be doing something. Okay. I recently received an invite to speak. It's a virtual speaking engagement. And it's actually quite exciting. And it was something, it's not something I was looking for, and it's a fantastic opportunity. And I was thinking maybe I should have been doing this all along. Like maybe I should have been putting myself out there and whatnot, but just, just allowing myself this is where I am now, and probably, all of these things that I've been doing over the past few years has brought me to this space where now I am ready to take on that sort of speaking engagement I can build from there and, not beat myself up or second guess or have any regrets about what I wasn't doing before, but focus on what I can do today and going forward. Oh yeah, that hindsight, that's 2020, right? Yeah. Yeah. But but that's true as well, because that one of the outcomes of intentional visibility on a consistent basis is that you eventually flip from having to do all the outreach and putting yourself out there to now just receiving invitations. Yeah. Yeah. Like you invited me onto this podcast. I have several other podcasts and speaking opportunity invitations to respond to, rather than always going out and looking for things. And I guess the one thing that I didn't necessarily say explicitly is that the core to visibility is relationship building. And you're, you are going to gain so much from strategically aligning yourself with the right people who will then support you. Like I have one person who on almost a weekly basis, I get somebody saying, Alison recommended that we connect. She's just my cheerleader, an amazing collab partner. We support each other in that way. And that's what creates all the opportunities rather than me, like filling out all these forms, pitching myself. I don't even know the last time I actually did that. It was definitely part of what I was doing to get going. Cause you got to get into all of the different circles and then you've built a reputation and now things are coming back to you. But as you said, it is a long game. You need to know that this is always part of what you do, but just like any habit change, it just needs to start small and grow from there. So I often recommend, even starting three times a week before you even try to get on a daily basis, right? And then you're building it in and then you're going to eventually be doing multiple things a day just because it's going to be easy. It makes it easier. Like it's hard now. So it was going to the gym. So is eating the salad, whatever it is that you're trying to do. But it will be easier because it's just going to be part of who you are. Yeah, and like you said at the beginning, definitely having your why and I always tell my clients that you have to remind yourself daily of why you're doing this. And I think I also read it, I think it was the success principles by Jack Canfield, but I could be wrong, but basically if we have something that can help people we have an obligation to get out there and to serve and to tell people about this and to offer that service and that value. And I feel that very strongly about coaching. I know that it changes lives. I know that this is really important work. Taking the focus off of me and, getting this message out here, letting people know. Giving them that, that value and offering my services is really important. So I think that goes across the board. No matter what you're doing, you're offering value. You have something important to contribute. So focus on that and keep your focus there. Yes, exactly. That is that sales hack, right? You're not selling, you're serving. How would you feel if somebody did what you did not as good as you do it? What's the outcome going to be for that person who's receiving that service just because you didn't show up and put yourself out there. Kelly, thank you so much for your time. You have any closing words of wisdom or anything you want to share with the audience before we wrap up? Yeah, I would just encourage everybody to remember that growth comes when you put yourself outside of your comfort zone, right? And anything that is meaningful and important is worth the short term pain. Or the long term opportunity and how that's going to help you to feel as a person, this happiness ripple effect that I was talking about, that if I can help you to be more successful in what you're passionate about, like the energy level goes up, the happiness goes up. I love that. And the same for when you're able to do what you're doing, those people are going to benefit. And then I will just keep continuing. And so I also will say for anyone who has a business, who's looking for just the thought starters, how to get started, what are the things that I could be doing? What, how do I do these 10 minutes a day? If you go to ksco. ca forward slash gift. You will see my toolkit of 30 plus proven visibility strategies in a calendar format that you can literally like just plug it out and make yourself do it. Just follow the steps like it's already there. Some of them are already there. Here's a prescription. You want to start here, figure it out and track it all and see what works for you. It's not all going to work for you. And that is the thing is right. Take what you need and leave the rest. Feel into what feels like the right thing for you to be doing and just stay really focused on it. Try to avoid the shiny objects that are coming your way if they're distracting you from actually doing what you're trying to do. Great. Thank you. And we'll put all that information in the show notes so people can find you easily. But thank you so much for your time, Kelly. I really appreciate that. And we talk about visibility and business strategy all day long on Entrepreneur School Podcast. Yes. Absolutely. I subscribe to that podcast and I highly recommend it. So thank you. Talk to you soon, Kelly. Thanks, Trista. Thank you for listening to This Daring Adventure podcast with your host Trista Guertin. We hope you enjoyed the tips and conversations on how to get excited about life again. As always, you can head to tristaguertin.com for additional resources and to book a one on one coaching session. You can also follow Trista on Instagram at tristavguertin. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts. Thanks again for tuning in and we'll see you next time.