Black Girls Consult TOO!
The Black Girls Consult Too! podcast provides a business resource for women in consulting, especially women of color, to successfully navigate a hyper-masculine, highly competitive industry. It demystifies how to start and grow a thriving consulting business by simplifying the process and helping to avoid common pitfalls that can derail even the best ideas. Each episode is crafted to dive deep into consulting practice, business strategy, mindset, and more. For more information, visit www.excelatconsulting.com/podcast.
Black Girls Consult TOO!
Episode 138: How Playing Small is Costing You Clients, Sales, and Authority
Send me a text message and get your questions answered on the podcast! I'd love to hear from you!
Stop waiting for someone to discover your genius.
The painful truth many brilliant women consultants face is that mastering your craft isn't enough when nobody beyond your immediate circle knows about your expertise. You've built a solid reputation, yet somehow the biggest opportunities continue to go to others with half your experience.
This visibility gap exists because many of us have been conditioned to play small. Through years of corporate training or societal expectations, we've learned that safety comes from blending in rather than standing out, and breaking through requires strategic discomfort.
The modern consulting landscape rewards those who are willing to be visible. Your expertise deserves recognition, your business deserves growth, and your bank account deserves the revenue that comes from claiming your rightful space. What risk will you take this week to increase your visibility?
*********
Do you want to know Why Don't They See Your Genius? TAKE THE QUIZ to find out!
For more information, visit www.excelatconsulting.com
Stop waiting for someone to discover your genius, because they won't. Well, today we're talking about the visibility gap that's keeping brilliant women consultants like you stuck in referral mode, and why being brilliant in private is actually keeping you broke in public. Now, I know that may sound a little bit harsh, but we're going to go there today because I see this pattern everywhere Brilliant women consultants who master their craft, but somehow the biggest opportunities keep going to someone else. And if you've ever felt that you've done everything right, you've built your reputation, you've delivered excellent work, you've stayed true to your craft, but somehow the bigger contracts, the better clients, they still pass you by. You know, I had this conversation recently with a client who put it perfectly she's a brilliant consultant that has been in the game for years and she's built her business mainly based on referrals. That's not any surprise to many of us. That's how most of us will get started, and her start was actually pretty solid because she had a rock solid network. But what she's found is that outside of that network, outside of that inner circle, she was struggling to be known and to be respected. And here's what she told me, and I'm just repeating what she said. You know, I've got a solid reputation inside of my circles, but outside of them I'm still a stranger and I keep watching people with half the experience landing high-level contracts that I know I can knock out of the park and, let's be honest, that hits hard. I mean it hit me hard because that's a quiet frustration, but it's real and a lot of us feel it, but we rarely say that out loud. So today I'm gonna break down the exact mindset shifts and moves to help you break out of this referral only mode and become the go-to consultant in your space.
Speaker 1:Now, if you're new here, hi, my name is Dr Angelina and this podcast is where we have real conversations and begin to shift our way of thinking about visibility and sales and sustainable growth, so your business can thrive without you burning out. Now let's talk about why playing small might be your comfort zone but also, honestly speaking, it is your biggest block. You've built a body of work, you've got the track record, but you're still hoping that the right client or the right stakeholder I would say gatekeeper or opportunity just stumbles across your path. And, to be honest with you, that's not strategy, it's more so survival mode. And here's what happens when we begin to wait for those discovery moments.
Speaker 1:One is that we start to outsource our visibility to proximity, meaning that we assume that being excellent within our circles will automatically translate to the outside. And, in all honesty, just because someone knows the great work that you do within a specific network or within an inner circle doesn't mean that they are going to mention your name. Usually, when we are thinking about growth this way, we're relying on the goodness of others and, yes, they can be our advocate, there can be our supporters, and they can share our information or a name or pass on the referral when the opportunity presents or when they actually think about it. But in their defense, it's not their job, and so if we are relying on that, then we're already setting ourselves up to be a little bit behind the eight ball. So we want to have a way to reach beyond them.
Speaker 1:And another way that this often happens is that we can confuse reputation with recognition. Your reputation is built based upon the work that you've done and what people know of the quality that you offer and the excellence that you present. But because that's your reputation, it doesn't mean that that reputation is known widely. You have to share that, you have to market that you have to really get out there and let other people know the reputation that you have and build your brand on that reputation. So just because you have a great reputation doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be a reputation that many people are aware of or know about. And, lastly, we tend to burn energy on proving our worth and trying to prove that we deserve a certain job or a certain client and, honestly, oftentimes we're proving that to rooms and people that we've outgrown. You are doing so much more and capable of doing so much more, but you're still trying to prove to people who have yet to see the value in what you do. So in those instances, instead of architecting a way of building your business outside of these confined spaces that have people with narrow mindsets, you're stuck in this cycle of just constantly trying to prove yourself, instead of trying to show others who already know and believe that you can offer that level of excellence and capability, showing them what you have to offer and why you're the best fit. These are all ways that we make things difficult for ourselves without doing so intentionally, and meanwhile, many of these other people with the louder brands but maybe the shallower roots in their practice are actually shaping their narrative, because oftentimes, when it comes to marketing and sales in particular and this is true even in the consulting space it's driven by a narrative, by a story that we're telling, and they are telling the right story. They're sharing what people need to hear and the things that are going to make their brand and their business grow.
Speaker 1:So listen, influence is not awarded. Someone is not going to give that to you. It has to be built. You need to build that influence and authority, and so I'm not just here to be built. You need to build that influence and authority, and so I'm not just here to inspire you. I want to walk you through what you need to do to build that type of architecture in your business, because I want you to be able to do this, and so just keep listening and keep going along with me, and I'll show you how these different strategic shifts can actually bring you a whole new level of visibility, because that new level of visibility is what you need in order to sell your business without selling your soul, and I know that that is what you actually want to do Now, when it comes to what's keeping you invisible, I want to break down what's really happening here?
Speaker 1:So many of us, as women consultants especially those from underestimated or maybe even marginalized backgrounds and communities we've learned to survive, and often that survival has come from somewhat being invisible. We played by the rules. We've been the worker bee, we've been the one that's able to keep our heads down and to deliver excellence and not make any waves, not make too many people upset, to really be that team player and to show up the way that, at least in the corporate environment, our higher level administrators and bosses and managers may have wanted us to display ourselves. And even if you were in that leadership role, you showed up that way too, because you were always trying to be an example, especially in that more rigid traditional model. But the thing about safety and what we've been always taught to do in playing by these rules that we were handed this safety was designed to keep us from being seen, and so it looks like offering very generalized services, trying to be very accessible, but never really owning the high value that you know you can offer, not specializing and getting really, really deep, because we're afraid to not be someone who's there for everyone.
Speaker 1:And when you talk about working in your industry, many times this leads us to follow this traditional, I would say, kind of professional quote unquote model that helps us to look like everyone else and to sound smart, but in all honesty, we're not creating any level of emotional resonance. And it doesn't matter if you are trying to work with consumers or corporate clients, it doesn't really matter if it's a B2B or B2C space. At the end of the day, we still need to be able to speak to people's deepest desires, the things that they really want and they care about, and that has an emotional pull to it. So when we avoid doing that, then what we're doing is we are actually avoiding being seen. We're keeping ourselves invisible unintentionally and then saying yes to a lot of low lift and low risk projects and efforts and opportunities. We do that because it's familiar. We have been taught to avoid risk because risk is that scary word. We're so scared to take risk because risk is that scary word. We're so scared to take risk because it means that we're not being as safe as we could be Right, and that feels uncomfortable. But when we don't take risk, then we are keeping ourselves invisible, we're holding ourselves back and we're keeping our business from being truly aligned with who we are.
Speaker 1:If you are building a business that looks like everyone else, then how do you stand out in a very crowded and noisy market? It's going to be really, really difficult and it requires us to push back on a lot of the corporate conditioning we've had over time, because we've been trained this way. And if you've worked in a corporate space, or in your nine to five for years or decades, think of how long you've been really succeeding and being rewarded in an environment that wants you to blend in. That's hard to break through and, if we're all honest with ourselves, we have to work on this every day. It's not something that's easy to erase, but it's something that we can work on, and the more that we work on it, the more that we get more comfortable with it, the more that we can actually break away from the things that are keeping us invisible and that are holding us back, because real visibility requires something that safety can't guarantee. It's going to require you to risk being misunderstood.
Speaker 1:The risk of owning a strong perspective, a risk of saying something that other people wouldn't say. Trying to share ideas that other people are afraid to speak out loud is going to mean risking raising your rates and being charged appropriately for the work that you do, instead of watching other people take those lucrative contracts. It's going to mean risking watching the wrong fit client fall away. But being safe may protect you from rejection, but it also shields you from real resonance. It keeps you from building meaningful momentum in your business. So you have to ask yourself are you trying to build something safe or are you trying to build something successful and scalable? Those are two different things. A safe business yeah, we'll bring in a little bit of money here and there. You know kind of keep things afloat. But that business that resonates, that is something that is scalable, that is going to build something much more. So if this is throwing something in you, then that's good. I want you to stick around, because what we're going to cover next is what is going to help you bridge from playing it safe to actually showing up with real strategy and, in all honesty, I would like to say, real self-respect and respect for your business.
Speaker 1:Now let's get strategic. You don't need to rebrand, you don't need to go through some massive realignment in order for all these things to fall into place. You just need to ask yourself what part of my business actually reflects an earlier version of me. Start there, because often this may look like you taking the time to codify your intellectual property into a specific framework instead of you customizing every offer. It may mean that you declare a bold and specific specialization instead of you trying to work with everyone and being more of a generalist. It actually may be you updating your visibility stack. I like to call, like your bio and your website and your content, information and your content to reflect who you are now and not who you used to be, because it's not a matter of a cosmetic shift. These are things that are more structural. It's how people will be able to change their perspective of you and how you're going to start showing up, representing the person who is ready to claim those opportunities and not just wait for that recognition. But when you make the shift, it's going to keep people from asking you know what do you do again, or what is it that you offer? Because they're going to need you. They're going to start seeking you out because you are going to have a business that is offering something far different and more helpful than others in your space.
Speaker 1:The key is that you have to step out and be able to do that you have to show up in your industry and offer that, and that's going to take really getting comfortable with being uncomfortable and I know we hear that often. We think about this level of comfort and safety as a way of showing up professionally. We always like to think about professionalism in our space, especially in consulting. We want to be very professional, but professional often for us means sticking with this traditional definition of what consulting is, showing up in a way that, in all honesty, does not fit where we are currently in our society. The world is changing, things are moving, and when you think about this new and modern era that's filled with things such as artificial intelligence and online businesses and different ways to market yourself without going through gatekeepers or having to have large financial budgets. People are playing a different game now and it's time for us to catch up with that. We cannot continue to fall behind because we're trying to fit this old school, traditional quote unquote professional model. So I want to really end with this.
Speaker 1:Playing small, limiting your risk and trying to be safe isn't just keeping you invisible or keeping you from being seen. It's limiting your revenue. It's disconnecting your business from the contributions that it needs to make today in our society, and I know that this is not why you started your business. You started your business with a goal of making an impact, a major impact. You have a lot to say, you have a lot to offer and it's time to build demand for everything that you bring to the table.
Speaker 1:So what that means is that you need to start showing up differently. You need to claim your space, and the more that you do that, the more that you become comfortable with taking those risks, with showing up in a way that makes you more visible. It is going to speak loudly and allow people to be drawn and attracted to you and your expertise. You're not trying to deliver services just to make another buck. You are building something that is meant to last. You're building a legacy. You're building for financial freedom, and that takes intentionality and it takes strategy and it takes being visible.
Speaker 1:So, as you're thinking about how you move forward, I want you to think about how you can show up in one way this week that helps you to stand out a little bit more.
Speaker 1:How can you share that one perspective that makes you a little bit uneasy when you get ready to type into LinkedIn? What can you pitch as an offer that makes you a little bit uneasy or nervous to say, maybe because the client is a little bit bigger than you thought you could land, or maybe because the project is so high level that it's something that you haven't tackled yet in your current business. Whatever it may be, think of that one thing that will stretch you this week, and the more that you stretch yourself from week to week, the bigger and bolder that you're going to grow, and I promise you the revenue is going to come right behind it. So if you enjoyed this episode, I want you to follow and subscribe, and also I want you to share this episode with a friend. You know that you are meant to do big things and I'm here to help support you through all of it. All right, guys, you got this. Talk to you soon.
