Ep #9 How to connect with your inner self to find your voice

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

Transcript

0:29

Hey, welcome back to this episode today where I am talking about how you can't build a visible brand without actually meeting the voice that you have inside you yet. And this is a topic that's close to my heart because the most important thing for female founders isn't so much about, what you are speaking about, it's actually about hearing yourself first so that your voice is deeper, your insights are richer. The way you communicate your message is more involved. And that involves actually connecting with your inner self to find out. What your voice even is. And so in this episode today, I'm actually gonna be firstly breaking down. The barriers to accessing your voice and, um, the real tug of war between performative visibility, which is kind of, you know, the container in which most, uh, visibility programs are designed, which is about checking a checkbox of all of the things that you have to do and then, uh, doing the things that you have to do. And it's all the same cookie cutter advice. So I'm gonna be breaking down. And really helping you to understand what is actually stopping you from finding your inner voice. And then I'm gonna be talking about, the actual methodology, which is, what you really need to do in order to get that in a connection with yourself. And then I'm gonna be going through the three layers of visibility, how to find, activate, and then amplify your voice for true impact. And then some practical tools that you can take away and implement right away, as well as how you don't have to be fully healed to speak your truth, and then finding the courage to actually expand into the voice that's. Calling you or the calling that you may have that has remained unexpressed and giving you some visibility tools that you can start with straight away in a bit to then get to the performative visibility, which is then about how you, how do you capture, connect, and then convert your ideal audience. So let's kick off this fantastic sizzling episode that I am really, really excited to talk about today. And so let's kick off with the very first thing, which is. Why is there a disconnection in the first place? Now, I see this as we are in a setting where, as I've said before, there is a lot of pressure from the outside to do certain things. You know, I when, if you think about female founders and our connection to business, so much of what is, promoted in business, say if you're working with a business coach, a lot of the work that is involved is about, firstly, putting yourself out there. It's about, following a framework, whatever that framework might be for that specific business coach, and then essentially taking the steps towards. Amplifying your business, with in a container of like your revenue and how much you're making, and it's very dimensionalized into the actual outputs that you are needing to do in order to get the inputs, which is generally in the form of revenue. In your business. Right? And so there is firstly the constant output. And if you think about it from the lens of female founders, that output doesn't really honor the stage and phase of every business owner. And I think what has happened is that in a social media context where everything is open and kind of there for algorithms to serve, you will sometimes be served with. A hundred messages all saying a different version of the same thing. Um, and it's no wonder that you're being pulled in many different directions because at the end of the day, the social media platforms, the algorithms, all of that are actually 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 you might, be able to do to pull back away from things like maybe having an app and this and that, to control your time on screen at the end of the day. Yeah. As a business owner, you are in search mode. You are constantly searching for something that's going to make your life easier, and this is where it starts unraveling and the constant output pressure. Is what's causing you to actually disconnect from your own voice in the first place. Because what's happening is that you are quite often clutching onto different strategies and connecting together little bits of everybody else's strategy and making it your own, whereas what you really need is a design strategy to meet your own lifestyle, to meet your. Your own self, where you are at. And so that is really the first thing. The second thing is professional masks. Now professional masks are ones that are really difficult to dismantle, and I think I've heard this quite a lot, which is, you know, I have different parts to myself. Which part do I put out? I have got a professional side and I've got my personal side. Does the business. Side come first, or do I need to speak on behalf of my business? And if I'm speaking on behalf of my business, is it really my personality that's coming out? So I just wanna, I just want you to take a step back firstly and just kind of inspect it from the angle of where. You know, you are by businesses at currently. Now, let's say you are a professional services business owner, let's say. Just for the sake of, convenience, I'm gonna use, a legal service as an example. One of my clients has been in the legal profession in the past, and so I'm gonna use that as an example now, the first things first is, as a female founder, you are always going to have founder-led content, which is how can you differentiate your content, which is the voice that you embody for your business? In an effort to draw in people from an, uh, from both an offense and a defense perspective. So what I mean by offense is. Uh, offense is an attraction mechanism. So an attraction mechanism is when you are drawing people in based on your voice, based on your visibility, based on your methodology, based on your ip, based on the way you do things, which may be a little bit unformed at this point. It just find it may be fully formed or it might be somewhere sort of in between. And so if you are in any of those three phases, you've just gotta understand that people are going to be drawn to other people. At the end of the day, even if you are B2B or what I call business to business, you are still in the business of connecting with people and people connect with people. So that's first things first. So coming back to the example of the legal professional. Now this legal professional might have the pressure of performance masks that they have to put on in order to feel like the. The league that they're in. So the legalese that they have to have in their content versus, the professionals that they might belong to who are already in the legal space. They might have this tug of war or this tussle between, I want to be this, but I actually feel like I have to be this. And so if you are following a cookie cutter visibility strategy, which is. Always about constant outputs. It's no wonder that you're gonna be going on a platform like LinkedIn and then wanting to shrink away because your founder voice may not lend itself fully. To say a platform like LinkedIn in a way in which you want to, because of that professional mask that you feel like you have to wear and which is where the visibility strategy does need to come in place, which is very unique and bespoke to you. It's very important that people understand that the marketing lens and the information that you're being given, it needs to be highly customized to you. And so that leads to the third. Issue, which you then end up with people pleasing as a result of the conditioning. Now, if you are in. A business now from having transitioned from corporate or if you've been in an a, any kind of leadership role in the past, whether it was leading your own business that you walked away from and then now starting something of your own or such as, one of my clients has, she had a big, thriving business, uh, with offices in multiple countries and doing all the things, but then she walked away from that towards a more aligned. Business that was aligned with where she was at in her business journey. And so you've gotta understand that, that people pleasing will follow you based on what you have been exposed to in the past. In the first example, I can think of one person who used to be in a senior leadership role. And so therefore, speaking about what she does from a spiritual perspective is very, mismatched. To the audience that currently is on her social accounts as one example, but the second is that she would need to then structure her content in a way that still helps her to be visible in certain places whilst adapting her approach so that she can still speak her truth. She can still have her voice without necessarily having a performative view. Towards, the entire ecosystem of following the step-by-step framework for, say, a LinkedIn marketing strategy or if you're following a LinkedIn influencer as an example. So that's one example. The second one that I mentioned, which is for the person who, uh, was already on a, in a leadership role within her own business and walked away from that after, after managing offices in multiple countries, after having, many. Staff members as part of her previous business. She walked away from that and she's actually surrounded by a whole bunch of experts. These are very smart people who are hired the likes of universities, for instance, that have a whole bunch of expertise tied to them. And so she needs to navigate through that, uh, as well as now to talking about what she does now. So there, there is that people pleasing aspect that gets in the way. And then the fourth one is, really the fear of being too much, or the fear of being judged. 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 about distinguishing, and really coming to terms with what are the pieces of, what are the things that are in your way that could serve as amplifying the disconnection in the first place. Because once you identify what's causing that disconnection, and perhaps you might be saying, well, yes to the constant outputs, yes. That's causing me, pressure. Maybe it's the professional mass, maybe it's the people pleasing, or maybe it's the fear of either being too much, being judged or whatever. Right. Or scared of putting yourself out there because, making a or taking a stand for what you believe in sometimes has consequences as we have learned in recent times. And so it's about then coming to terms with, firstly that before going into the outputs, which is, what do I need to put out there? Right? So let's bring, the attention back to where we need to be in terms of finding our voice through the inner connection. Because your inner voice typically hasn't disappeared. It's probably just buried under the weight of expectations that weren't, your choice in the first place. So understanding that is crucial to then reframing that narrative that you might have or the stories that you might be telling yourself. Some of which are truths, some of them are half truths and some of them are falsities. And so really recognizing which one is a truth, which one's a half truth, which one's a falsity, is also really important as a segue to real. Finding that inner voice that you have and really then being able to take a step back. And this morning I had a conversation with a client of mine who said that, she was really struggling with being visible in a way that. Was that performative visibility, which was again, optimizing towards consistency. And I say, if you're optimizing towards consistency, you are letting go of clarity. And so if you're letting go of clarity. It's going to be a self-fulfilling cycle where you are constantly feeling bad about putting yourself out there. And then, because the longer you do it, the further away you get from being visible. And so I said to her this morning, which is, how can we reframe what you are doing from a visibility perspective? How are you being internally visible to yourself because your. Expression becomes natural, and your message really sharpens the closer you get with your inner voice. Because confidence really comes from that self-trust. It's not necessarily from perfection. And if you are, listening to this and you're thinking about, how can you reframe all of those four factors that I've talked about earlier, towards a more aligned approach that honors that internal visibility? So if confidence comes from self-trust and not perfection, then I want you to really consider the three layers of developing that inner visibility. The first layer of that is self-awareness. The second is. Self-expression. And then the third is self-leadership, so that you can then find, activate, and amplify your voice based on developing those core skills of inner visibility for yourself first before you decide to then take that next step to towards a more, aware form of visibility. So what does self-awareness look like? I think I can say that for myself is self-awareness for me has really meant a really good, hard look at where I was creating boundaries, what you know were my own needs and desires, so that. I was putting my own mask on before I was ready to help anybody else. Because a business owner or a female founder, running on empty is never the recipe for success. So that's where that self-awareness comes in, as where is your inner visibility in. In within the context of your external visibility. So what tools can you give yourself in the journey to being externally visible that will help your journey? And it doesn't always have to be linear, which means it's, this is not as though you have a six month window where you are creating all these boundaries, assessing your needs and whatnot. You can actually be doing this simultaneously, or you give yourself permission to say, well, actually, you know what? Maybe I do need to do this. Step, one step at a time. Maybe I do need to take this, with creating the boundaries right now based on my equitable surroundings or, realities of my life right now. So you then go, okay, I'll give you an example of my own, which was I made a decision between, the difference between caring and carrying a previous version of my business really looked like carrying what I thought was that I was responsible for the success of whoever took my services. However. The container in which you are offering your services needs to be sustainable in order for there to be continuum. So what I mean by that is that whatever it is that you are offering, yes, offer that in that instance, but also then understand that creating those boundaries for yourself will make you a more effective business owner. So that is one example from a business perspective. So that's caring versus carrying. From a business perspective, but then as a female founder, you are not just all about your business, you actually have a life to lead. And that's part of the reason why just performative visibility isn't really a one size fits all. You've really gotta look at it from a holistic perspective, which is, what are you carrying in your life right now? What feels heavy? And then conversely, if that feels heavy. Then whatever it is that your container is right now in terms of your offering, is that also heavy? Because if you have got a heavy load of doing whatever it is that you're doing, you better believe that you're gonna have to put some masks on for yourself in order to then carry on. So whether if you are in the, psychology space, for instance, and building a course on self-love as an example, which is like one of my clients did a few years ago, versus say somebody who, was obviously trained in that she's built internal, capacity within herself to actually carry that for her clients. But at the same time, if you are, if you are just starting out and if you've got young kids and you're managing a full household, are you really gonna have the capacity? So what's gonna be easy breezy so that there is that self-awareness piece that comes in, creating those boundaries and needs and desires. For yourself, and then that translates into self-expression. What truth needs to surface today? Where are you in your emotional state? If you are in a place where things feel heavy, if you are teary, if you are in the middle of perimenopause, if you are doing all of those things, those heavy, hard life things, what are your insights from that? How can you take self-expression for yourself as the ultimate form of inner visibility, noting that this, again, is not a linear process. You might have days when you are fully in service to yourself, and then you might have days where you are ready to be more externally visible. Because let's face it, we are not all, as female founders, we are not in a bubble kind of just. Rocking in a corner going, I need to be internally visible. Yes, of course there needs to be an external visibility attached to it, but what I'm saying is that external visibility doesn't come without first internal visibility first, because you can't be magnetic if you haven't. Anchored yourself with him. So that's the other message that I wanna put out there, is that you might be following people who. Talking about magnetic visibility. But if you haven't actually anchored yourself within, then ask the question to yourself is whether you are actually gonna be in a place to be magnetic If you can't do that for yourself, and which is where that self-expression, the self-awareness comes in, your self-expression to yourself really needs to be, um, rooted in truth for you to then be able to talk about those in a way that gives people insights based on. Giving yourself that oxygen mask first. And then it transitions into the third layer, which is the self-leadership. So self-leadership then moves through into, well, what choices am I making for myself? You know, what clarity can I give? Or what sort of journaling can I do for that identity expansion? What work do I need to do on myself to then move through from whatever you, wherever you might be at? Whether it's the first four figures, whether it's five figures, whether it's six figures, whatever that might be. Every level really needs that identity expansion. Which you won't have if you haven't followed the three step process that I'm talking about here. Now, if you are considering looking at how you can build that inner capacity to be the leader that you know you are, then message me, DME, on Instagram, using the handle in my show notes below, and I can send you the free pre visibility training. It's a five part training series that will take you from the. Essentially finding your voice right through to activating your voice and then amplifying your voice so that you can have an external performative expression. Of your visibility that is in line with the needs of your business, which is essentially revenue collection. So that brings me into the practical tools. So some of the practical tools that I've used on myself in the journey of visibility is voice notes. Now I'm a person. That has a myriad ideas. I'm constantly an ideas person. The issue has always been the time for the amplification of all of those ideas, and sometimes it has been about how I feel or where I might be at. Whether I'm, in a, monthly cycle where I'm not feeling my best, and as I've come in into my mid forties, I've come to realize that these things affect me more than what they used to. And so this is where voice notes do come in. If you are someone for whom, self-expression is. The ultimate form of healing yourself. It's really about unbundling. It's about dismantling. It's about. Really getting rid of those inner narratives so that when you are sharing your stories, you're not oversharing them, you are actually sharing them with yourself. And so you don't end up having this sort of adverse reaction to visibility where you feel like the spotlight syndrome, where, all of a sudden you've shared something and then you feel like, oh my goodness, what have I shared? I can't believe I shared that. Now I feel terrible about it. And so it's really important that you resolve those. Stories for yourself. Just resolve those narratives for yourself before you tell those stories. So that is one then is reflective prompting. That's another tool. And you can use if you are an Apple, iPhone user. There is a new app. Now, I don't know when you're listening to this, but there's a new app as of now in 2025 called Journal that I've really been using that as one of my journaling techniques because of course I have my phone on me, nine times outta 10. And so. Having that reflective, weekly or 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 like voice, like voice journaling. There, there are times when I feel like praying. There are times when I do reflective journaling. I use. A variety of methodologies, and so that's why I don't believe in giving like this one size fits all approach, which is just based on what I necessarily do. I do all manner of different things, and so it's about finding the thing that is going to work for you and a combination of things that are gonna work for you. Lately I've been doing more reflective writing, and that is something that works for me. I am an early morning person, I rise early, and when I'm rising early, I tend to write down my thoughts. Early things come to me and I'm usually by 7:00 AM I am buzzed because I have been able to download all my thoughts in onto paper. And then the third thing is using your body as a compass for showing you what's aligning with you and what's not. Uh, one of my clients, uh, said to me just recently that she ended up going and doing this amazing exercise. With, young children, she has a theater and performance background. And so she went and did this training with, with these children and she felt really lit up. And that really gave her a clue about what it is that she needed to do. And funnily enough, it was. In perfect alignment with her voice themes, which is part of the work that I do within my program, activate. And so if you haven't yet downloaded the program guide, you can go to content halo.com/activate waitlist to download the full program guide, see if it's a good fit for you. And so this is what she did, which was bringing, activities that were bringing. Her joy, where do things feel expansive? Where the shoulds that we have really start overriding the desires because we have made the space internally to have that self-awareness, develop that self-expression for ourselves, and then go through and move through self-leadership before we are ready to take on and become leaders of our own businesses and become leaders. With a view to an external visibility approach, because I always say that, you know, finding your voice before finding your visibility is akin to self-leadership before leadership. And so that's the bit that we have to nail as female founders first, so that the performative visibility that you see. And here in the online space can become a reality for you. So here's this. Um, on a closing note, if you are here because you would like to know how to speak and present, market your business online with confidence. You don't need to be fully healed to speak. Your audience does not expect your perfect story. They actually want a relatable story. But in order for there to be a relatable story, it doesn't always have to come from, place of, grief. It doesn't always have to come from like this deep inner, woe begone story about, your life's challenges. There are business owners, including me for, that have created businesses based out of things that have brought us joy things where life, has taken on another. Turn, in my case, my voice got eroded over a period of time and I've returned and using that as a container for self-expression with a way towards healing and then expressing your self fully. And so if you are wanting that honest truth for yourself, I just want you to firstly reflect on how. Visibility can expand through you to through taking per imperfect action, by creating that internal visibility for yourself, then bringing that lens of self-compassion so that when you are ready to find, activate and amplify your voice towards greater visibility, you do so knowing that your voice is rooted in truth, that you're speaking from a place of presence. Rather than performance and that your life journey and, the, message that you really wanna deliver about why your business is as unique as you are with founder led content is going to be that container for taking you from finding right through to the amplification of your voice. So if you would like to find out more about. How to find, activate and amplify your voice. Message me with the word pre visibility and I'll send you that free five part training for you to consume in your own time. And so in bringing this podcast to a close, if you have loved listening in and tuning into this podcast I would really appreciate it if you could give me a five star review on any of the podcast channels that you are listening or tuning in on. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode.