91: Steps to Take if you Feel Invisible

I unpack how to move from feeling invisible to building steady visibility through clarity, consistency, and confidence. The goal: narrow focus to one channel, and rebuild trust with clear offers, simple paths, and calm brand authority.

• why comparison skews perception and stalls action
• the shift from vanity metrics to bookings
• the three C’s and being findable, understandable, believable
• one-channel focus with a six-week runway
• rebuilding trust signals with clear offers and process
• low-energy routines that sustain momentum
• when to change strategy vs when to be patient
• updates on classes, membership, and resources

Snag your one-on-one
If you join the marketing membership, I can add you to watch the replay of Design Your Year.
If you want marketing support for 2026, join the membership, $35 a month

My Instagram + My Membership

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Feeling Behind And Invisible

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, everybody. Okay, so this episode is kind of a what to do if you feel behind or invisible. And I think this is a really common theme for a lot of family photographers because they've just felt like they don't know what they're doing, honestly. Um, and who really does? It's a complicated world, it's a complicated time, um, everything is changing, everybody feels unsure. Like I was just having this conversation with my husband about we're in this crazy stage where you know, Elle's 16, Bryn's 14, and I know how how fast the past four years went. It was like a flash. Um, so I'm trying to think, okay, where what is what does life look like in essentially two and a half years, you know, when they launch out into the world, and are they even gonna be able to do that? Um, when we met when I was 16 and he was 17, even at those ages, we were aware that if we both got jobs, we would be able to afford to buy house. We had actually friends in high school who had an older um sibling, and they got married kind of young, which is something that we wanted to do, and they were able to buy a house just with their normal jobs. Um, and so we have to reframe that whole thing. Like our experience cannot be their experience, unfortunately. I think it's a huge bummer because I think, sorry, rant, right off the bat, here you go. I think that a pillar of a good society, I I know I've talked about this before, is like how we treat mothers, because how we treat mothers helps everyone, including women who do not want to be mothers, because it involves more flexible work schedules, it involves more affordable life, it involves uh subsidized child care so that everyone is able to contribute to the workforce or not, it just opens up the gates to freedom for everyone, more choice, more affordability. Um, and if we view it through the the lens of mothers, making sure that mothers are supported and able to work or stay home, um, everybody benefits. And that trickles down to kids launching into the world at 18. If we have a world where you have wages that are high enough for them to be able to afford to live and have housing and food, that helps everyone. And so sometimes that's what makes me feel like I'm living

Society, Mothers, And Market Reality

SPEAKER_00 2:30

in a crazy, crazy world because I'm like, why is that not everyone's focus? I'm sure a lot of us feel that way too, politics aside, just like why don't we, why aren't we all pushing towards a world where everyone can afford to feel like they have a life? Um, so kind of feels like that with those monumental changes with marketing as well. Like, why can't it, you know, sometimes I feel that way towards all these algorithms? And like like with Instagram, I stan to go to their headquarters and be like, you know what you could do that would make everyone love your app? You could just show everybody if you follow someone, you always see their content. That one change alone, everyone would enjoy the app. People would enjoy posting because they would actually see po the people that follow them would actually see their work, and you would enjoy consuming because you would actually see the posts from the accounts that you actively chose to follow. So these are like some of the mind-blowing things that I'm always trying to wrap my head around. So, because I'm a person who again has a lot of conversations every single day with family photographers, pet photographers, branding, just photographers all over the place, I'm always talking to them. So I feel like I have a really good insight. And if you feel behind or invisible, you are not alone. So I want you to know that right off the bat. If you feel like everybody has it together

Algorithms, Instagram, And Reach

SPEAKER_00 3:50

and everybody knows what they're doing and everybody's doing a good job, um, just know that that's actually not the case. So I want you to think about when you're when you're observing your own feelings of invisibility or behindness, I don't want you to think about quick fixes because quick fixes are just gonna make you feel better in the short term, but they're not actually going to fix the quote unquote problem. I want you to think about steady motion. So invisibility is just a signal that something with your marketing is off, and it may be that your entire marketing is off, right? Maybe you are truly not doing a single thing. Maybe you're frozen, and no one would blame you. It's a time to be frozen. There's a lot going on coming at you. You're thinking about multiple things, you your marketing channels are changing. I just sent an email, I redid my email list because I didn't redo it, but I redid the focus of it. So, what it was before, I put all this effort into building it, which almost 2,000 people last year, and then I was like, what am I saying to this email list? I do not want my email list to be noise, I don't want it to be annoying. Um, and so I'm basically gonna turn it into a bi-monthly um check-in, like a marketing tips and tricks trends, what's changing within all these different marketing channels that we need to keep on top of, some stories that may be relevant, just want it to be really helpful. And so even within researching those changes, I was like, oh my gosh, everything is is turning up on its head, right? Search, uh, social media, email is changed because now people do have more email fatigue than they ever had. Reaching people is simultaneously easier because you can just do things and try things and there aren't as many rules. I feel like the hardest point that we were at was actually when everyone wanted Instagram to still look perfect. Uh, so they would put a ton of time and energy into content, but then the algorithm was changing and that content wouldn't be seen. So then you felt double resentment because you had spent all this time crafting something perfect for no one to see it. So now we have entered the realm of imperfectness, which is hard for us because we produce really beautiful imagery. So you want it to be showcased in a way that feels like it's at the same level, um, but the public is actually expecting and consuming imperfect content. So there's good and bad on both sides, but things are changing and it can make us freeze, and that is okay. It's not, it's normal. But again, we have to go back to what are the goals? What are we trying to do here? If you are invisible, invisible, then you have no visibility, and then you have no one looking at your brand, and then you don't book, and then of course you don't hit your income goals if that's something that you have. So obviously it's something that we want to address. So the main issue, the main thing to do, the main steady motion forward that you need to do, the like the first change

Invisibility As A Marketing Signal

SPEAKER_00 6:50

is how you are actually operating within these marketing channels. So you're distorted, your reality is distorted because of your own algorithm, and it's probably showing you the most beautiful family photography sessions that are happening because those are the ones that zoom to the top. So then you're like, oh my gosh, okay, right off the bat I just suck. So that's gonna make you not want to do anything. So you do, and I say this all the time, but you you have to stop consuming other photographers' work on Instagram. Just you have to figure out how to stop that. Um, because it will open, it will give your mind space to think about your own business in a unique way. So you it would be a shame for you to become invisible because you are comparing against something that's not even real. Like it's not even the truth. The truth is that across the landscape of all family photographers, very few of them are consistently producing showstopping, jaw-dropping images that go viral. But that's what you see every time you open the app. So you have to fix how you're viewing that marketing channel because think about it like this you arrive at a pool, you haven't swum in a couple years, everyone in the pool is an Olympic swimmer. That's how it feels. You're are you gonna get in there and flip-flop around in there and and look like you're drowning? No. So the actual real pool is full of people of all walks of life doing all kinds of things. We can't see it because the dumb algorithm is only serving us the people who just happen to shoot the most beautiful session. I know you're thinking of one you just saw, the most beautiful session, perfectly styled people, amazing light, emotion off the chain, dad smiling so big, his whole mouth might explode. Like that's what you're thinking of. And so it's stopping you before you even start. So I'm gonna keep saying till I'm dead, and then probably even then be at my funeral, and the little finger will pop up, and you'll be like, Oh, she has one more thing to say, and I'll say, Stop comparing with people on Instagram, and then I'll actually die. So that's like how much I care about this. So, what happens when you feel invisible or behind? You when you do launch back onto marketing, you're posting randomly because you're just like trying things and then you're switching strategies way too fast. So you're like, holy poo, I'm invisible, no one's booking, I'm freaking out, I'm gonna be try this, I'm gonna try this, I'm gonna try this, I'm gonna try this. And that just makes you feel even worse because every single one of those tries that doesn't have enough runway and enough data just feels like failures piling on top of your back. And then what happens is you just pull back again and disappear. This is like a very common trend that I see when I look at people's marketing strategy. So, what happens is this increases your exhaustion and reduces the trust in yourself that marketing is even a good idea at all. So, I want you guys to think about steady motion, not quick fixes. Anything that you try with social media, let's say that's your marketing plan, we're just gonna use that because that's the easiest, even though I think moving into 2026, you definitely need to have booking paths that are off social media. But let's use social media as an example. If you choose to do something on social media, it should have a six-week runway, whatever the thing is. The thing cannot be just random. It has to be whatever the systematic

Escape Comparison And Reclaim Focus

SPEAKER_00 10:20

marketing booking path that you're trying on social media needs a six-week runway, and you need to stick to that. Otherwise, you're just hurting your own ego, which is going to silence you yet again. So let's talk about the real goal to get you from feeling invisible and behind to not behind and visible. It's not what the goal is not is viral content, totally unhelpful. The things we're not going to think about anymore because it's just stupid are follower count, literally irrelevant, like count, literally relevant. I have so many posts where my share and save numbers are so much higher than my like numbers. Um, but the those the like numbers are what are forward-facing, so that's what you compare about. Don't worry about those two metrics. Do not worry about going viral. I still see people trying to teach other people how to go viral. It is such a hard animal to control and it rarely does anything positive. So that's not the goal. Um, we are not trying to become someone brand new unless you have a massive business shift. Instead, your goal is re-establishing the three C's clarity, consistency, confidence. That's what we're going for. And it's it's just a slow moving train through the valley, not a bullet train through paradise. It's slow moving through the ugly parts and then up into the pretty parts and then down into the valleys again where you have no visibility, and then you're back up at the mountain, but you're just staying on the train. You're just doing the thing you said you were gonna do. So you want to focus on being these things. One, findable. SEO is huge in every element of marketing, unless you're talking to your email list, which even then you want your paths that you take people off your email list to be extremely clear. You want to be understandable and you want to be believable. So these are all things that you want to come across as. That's how you want to be. That's who you're going to embody. So you're trying to establish clarity, consistency, and confidence, and you're trying to be findable, understandable, and believable. So you're emphasizing your calm, bold brand authority over loud, shouty marketing. That's we're going for, I'm the expert of this brand. This is why it matters. I'm showing up consistently in this marketing channel for six weeks to gather data and see how this is gonna work. Okay, so next thing we're gonna do is shrink the marketing window down. So you do not need, you will never, it'll never happen, it'll never launch out and change things around for you if you're trying to fix everything all at once. You need to choose one channel to focus on, whether that's your SEO on your website, your Instagram, email, whatever it is, you need to focus on one channel and kind of get an idea of how you best work, what systems you can put in place, what habits can contribute to you actually being consistent and narrowing that focus will help you create momentum because you're not trying to think about too many things at once, which for our creative-driven brains can shut them down and make them not want to think at all. You're overwhelming your brain by being like, this is what a lot of you are doing. You're looking at 2026 and you're

Stop Random Posting And Panic Pivots

SPEAKER_00 13:40

like, okay, I don't have enough booked, I'm freaking out, so I need to, I need to redo everything. I need to become, I need to start marketing on TikTok, and I need to start running ads, and I need to start with a better social media plan. And your brain is just like, I'm not gonna do any of that because I'm too overwhelmed to even think about one thing at a time. So it needs to be sorry, my papers are wrestling around. It needs to be good enough. It doesn't need to be perfect, it needs to be you're pouring into one channel, one small step at a time, one little moment of consistency every single day on one or two, one or two places, and that's it, and you're not thinking about anything else. Okay, the next thing you need to do is rebuild your trust signals. So, trust signals are these clear offers. You would not believe the amount of time when I review a photographer's website and I'm completely unclear on what they're even offering. And this is just another plug. I'm so excited for the people who've signed up for the one-on-ones. Snag your one-on-one. They are so they are so much fun for me. They're so helpful. I am literally the I feel like the one-on-one paired with the ongoing support in the membership, it's gonna be hard for you to feel like you have no idea what you're doing for marketing. Okay, so clear offers, consistent messaging, real client stories, and confidence. Confidence slash excitement. Those two things are really going to help rebuild trust if you've been really quiet, put everything on the back burner, and you feel kind of invisible. So if you're looking at your website and you're like, how do I know? These are the questions to ask. Is it obvious who you serve? And is it obvious what that person is supposed to do next? Those are the two questions to ask. And then furthermore, you can say, Do I explain the experience slash process? And do I answer common questions? So these things are the questions that you can ask as you're going through your site. And even yesterday I was filming um some updated rules for or updated best practices for the Facebook ads course. And even I going through my own website, because I was going through like an info page, because my idea with ads is like you should link to an info page, not just your home page, and it should be a streamlined booking path. And your ads should be very specific because that's going to serve what Andromeda, this new meta update, is trying to get us to do is be very, very specific in our copy and our imagery so we can get much better results on our ads if we just follow the best practices of that machine learning update. And even going through my own website that I have a lot of pride in, I was like, oh my gosh, I could I could totally be more clear. I could be more, I could, I could show up more as the brand authority here. I'm being too vanilla about the whole thing. I could really stand on what my beliefs are, even when it comes to maternity sessions, when it comes to newborn sessions, when it comes to family sessions, all of us have a lot of thoughts and a

Redefine Goals: The Three C’s

SPEAKER_00 16:40

lot of beliefs about how those sessions are going to run best for us as artists. And oftentimes those are not coming through in our messaging and our copy. Okay, so the next thing we can do is create a low energy marketing routine. So for the average person, if you've been invisible and quiet, you're probably feeling kind of low about yourself in general. You may be feeling like low self-esteem about your photography. You may be feeling like you're never gonna be able to get going. So the idea is not to be like, okay, well, what we expect from you is in two weeks you're gonna be a viral TikTok star. No, what we expect is a low energy marketing routine. So you need to figure out within your own life how much time you have to put forth towards your one marketing channel that you're going to try to not perfect, but just get a routine going where you are consistently showing up. That part is going to be so important. Every single one of you who's listening is going to have different time parameters. You may have 10 kids and all of them are home and jumping all over you. You may have no kids, but you may have a full-time job. So everybody's gonna have a different, different availability for this marketing task. So first you need to figure out what that is, then you need to pick your channel, and then you need to create the plan working backwards. Okay, so what changes to make versus when to keep doing what you're doing? So signs that you need to make your strategic change. Some of you may not need to do any foundational changes to your website, to your copy, to your to how you're presenting your offers or your expertise. You may just be really quiet. So here's how you know you need to make a strategic change if there's confusion about your offers, if you have no clear booking path, if your messaging is mismatching with your ideal session, meaning you're not being clear enough. So if your ideal session is a family that shows up in um snuggly clothes to play at the beach midday, but your messaging is not telling people that's exactly what you want. That's that's mismatched on your messaging, and people are gonna be confused and you're gonna have sessions that feel non-ideal because there's going to be people are gonna be like, I don't understand exactly what she wants. You can be very, very clear about what you want. Right now I'm doing some model calls in my studio for maternity,

Pick One Channel And Shrink Scope

SPEAKER_00 19:00

and I've been extremely clear. It's funny because sometimes I'm more clear on my model calls about what I what I want, and it makes sense because they're my model calls and the person's not paying. So their needs and wants really don't enter the chat at all. It's just what I'm talking about. Um, but if I look at these model calls, there's like five of them, I want them all to have a very similar vibe, not the same person. They're they're different, it's different uh stages of pregnancy. I want, I wanted a pregnant mom and then like I an under two child to come in. So if I look at all the people, they're all very different, but the elements of the session that matter to me, mainly styling, everyone is meeting that requirement because I was very clear about it. So that's an example of like you can even be that clear because you have to know that if someone falls in love with your consistent work, they want you to tell them how to achieve a similar look. That's basically how the there are not the I think another misconception that we have is there's all these extremely Trendy creative families running around who are just waiting for someone to do something amazing with them that's never been seen before. That is really not what people are doing. People are like, I want to feel, look, act like that, even if it's a little bit of a show. There's families who may be like a little bit chaotic at home, but they just really want images that feel snugly and connected and that everyone's dressed really cute as an example. And they want you to be the facilitator of that. So you can be really clear about how you achieve your ideal session. How do you do that? You can tell people and stand on it boldly. Okay, signs that you need patience, but not reinvention necessarily. You're in you're posting inconsistently and in too short of bursts, and you have emotional burnout. So you don't necessarily need to reinvent the wheel if those things are happening. If your offers are still clear, your booking path is still clear, your messaging is matched with your how you want people to show up for your sessions, but you are inconsistent, burning out, and feel comparison, fear, or just emotional burnout. That's signs that you just need patience with yourself, not to reinvent the wheel. So I hope this kind of helps you to think about your invisibility in a way that's maybe less overwhelming because I know it can be really overwhelming when maybe you haven't posted in a few months or weeks or you don't know what to say. Give yourself a little bit of grace, focus on one thing at a time and start building slowly through consistency while making sure that the place you're asking that visibility to land is clear, concise, bold, and excited. So hope this helps. Um, we just had the design your year class, which is really fun. I talked for two hours. I almost lost my voice. Um, it was free for marketing students and then $35 for anyone who wasn't in the marketing um membership. If you join the marketing membership, I can add you can watch, I'll add you to watch the replay of that class. That's gonna be part of what's offered for marketing member students. And the other thing I think I'm gonna do this year is integrate the Pinterest class into the membership just because I want to focus. I really loved going live in the ads course. I do feel

Rebuild Trust: Offers And Messaging

SPEAKER_00 22:20

very sure that I want to keep the ads course separate just because it's such a meaty topic and I want people to be able to just hyper focus on that one topic. Um, but the Pinterest course I feel like is is small enough that I can just move it into the membership. So if you want marketing support for 2026, join the membership, $35 a month. Um, we where people are adding in their vision boards for the year. It's literally so fun to see them. We did business focus vision boards. So it talks about it's like a snapshot of exactly how they want their business session life to look, feel, and be. Um, and I think it's really gonna help people stay on track throughout the year. Okay, so I will see you guys next Tuesday. Tuesday is my day now for recording podcasts. If you want to join the new buy monthly marketing, I need to come up with a cute name for it that I haven't been able to think of like a like a cute name for the email that I'm sending out. So once I have that figured out, but if you want to join it, it's gonna be twice a month. I'm just gonna be talking about tips, tricks, trends, changes in the industry, um, anything to do with marketing that helps you feel like you are staying on top of that aspect of your business. Because unfortunately, and fortunately, we can think about it fortunately. It's a creative way. We all have to get visibility. So why not have a little bit of fun and support doing it? All right, have a good week.