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If you think posting on your social account a few times a week will land you high paying clients and speaking gigs, we’re here to break that bubble along with our guest Jemimah Ashleigh. A woman who literally went from having to hide from social and not get her picture taken to being one of the top-known entrepreneurs on her continent. It’s a big shift, and she shares how she did and you can too.

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Alyson Lex 0:03
We all know that getting our name out there is like the most important thing about our business, right? Because if we could just hang a shingle, or start a business and automatically have customers, that would be great. But we know that doesn't happen. So we have Jemima Ashley here today, and she is the founder of the visibility lab. She's a serial entrepreneur. Frankly, she's got this visibility thing down pat. And so I'm so excited that she's here with us today to talk about getting visible the right way in your business. So that you can impact more lives, make more money, and do all the good things. Thanks for being here with us today.

Jemimah Ashleigh 0:45
Oh, thank you so much for having me really grateful for getting to chat with you guys.

Alyson Lex 0:52
I am super excited to discover really what you know, because when we had like our, when we met when we had our pre conversation, you've got a lot of story, a lot of history. But can you give us just a quick overview of how you got to the point where you are now an expert in Visibility? Yeah, accidentally

Jemimah Ashleigh 1:15
is the best answer for that I started in government, which was a very big nightmare. I was in law enforcement for 14 years. And I loved my job in many ways. But one of the number one rules where you were you were not allowed to be seeing at all, and you had to be very, very quiet and you are not allowed to be photographed and interviewed or anything. So I in 2015, I sort of started my first business and my profile quietly grew in a very small community, I had a small jewelry business, and I wanted to help other people. So I started a podcast series, and then things really started escalating. So I built my profile within five years from complete obscurity to being named one of the top 10 entrepreneurs in Australia, international best seller, my podcast had 7 million of like, people had eyes on it, it was a little out of control. And we did that in like less than five years. And also there's a pandemic, somewhere in there, too, for a couple of years. So one of the things was, I learned how to do there, because I did it for myself. And now I want to teach other people how to do it. Okay, so

Jennie Wright 2:33
you, yeah, you definitely backed up that I'm a visibility expert. With a lot of chops. We talk to people all the time. And, you know, you've also heard those people like they they've done one thing one time, and now they're an expert in it. Yeah, you're you've you've literally got the backup to make it happen. So that's good. I gotta ask, though, what's the point of being visible in your business? How is it gonna matter? If you're, and I'm speaking not from my experience, I'm speaking from thinking about other people. You know, what if I, what if people get all their clients from referrals? What does it matter about visibility?

Jemimah Ashleigh 3:05
Well, and this is part of the reason we actually call it the lab was because what people want might be different things. There isn't a one size fits all approach. Yeah. If your business is on referral, and you don't need visibility to get clients, that's great. I love that fear. But there are a lot of business owners that need to get more visibility on what they're doing. What I found, and a lot of the conversations I was having was particularly with women who were doing really cool stuff, no one had any idea they existed. They sold a very clear problem that a lot of women had, or a lot of their clients had. And they were like then, in this really obscure place, great at what they do, can solve so many issues with so many people and no one had any idea they existed. They were already doing the work. My job was just to simply amplify what they're already doing. And just get them a little bit more visible. The visibility, you can be the best of what you do. But if no one knows about you, we aren't all doing this just for a paycheck. There are a lot of people who really want to do big changes. They want to help a community they want to bring up an amazing idea they want to they're really wanting to put an impact in the world. Visibility allows them to do that.

Jennie Wright 4:23
So when you said amplify, it kind of triggered something for me when you what's amplification mean in the context of like the online space.

Jemimah Ashleigh 4:35
So amplification when it comes to visibility is quite easy to do. It's very difficult to do it effectively. So where we get visibility and kind of amplification wrong is we do like one social media parties talking to one person rather than demonstrating expertise and showing people what you can do. It's great for me to say that I'm from the visibility lab and I can help you get visibility, you can even verify like, this is how I do it for myself, and this is how I'm going to do it. So it's that one person that one time it is that repetitive behavior. And then demonstrating your expertise. Tell us again, just who you are. Tell us what problem you solve. Tell us who your ideal client is, show us results of that. That's real amplification of your problem solving in, you know, in a very simple way. And that can look like social media posts, Facebook, live videos, doing a podcast, blogging, all of these are some of expertise, we do multiple things to get your voice heard where your ideal client already is.

Alyson Lex 5:44
Okay, so I've I have questions.

Jemimah Ashleigh 5:48
That's why I'm here. And I was gonna say it's kind of

Alyson Lex 5:50
the point of this whole thing. But if I'm demonstrating my expertise, let's pretend on Instagram. Great, but I only have maybe a couple 100 followers, and my follower count isn't really growing, and I'm not. Is that really visibility? If I'm not, how do I? And I know this isn't like a social media strategy. conversation. So I'm not like, how do I grow my followers? But how do I then look at that as amplifying my visibility, if I'm just still reaching a very small number of people?

Jemimah Ashleigh 6:29
Yeah, it's a great question. And this is one of the reasons that we do so many things. It's not just about Instagram. So the question you need to be asking, is really simple. Why using Instagram. And most people say, because everyone told me to do it. When I started my business, everyone was like, be on Instagram, we come back to a very fundamental level. First of all, 300 people, let's say that's what's following you. That's a lot of people. It's not a heap on Instagram. But if 300 People had eyes on your business everyday or walking your front door right now, that's a lot like cats, 300 people that have access to buying stuff, right now.

Jennie Wright 7:14
It's more about the quality versus the quantity, obviously. 100%.

Jemimah Ashleigh 7:19
So that's, that's a lot of people. The question is, are they your ideal client? And now they're gonna buy what product you're selling?

Jennie Wright 7:29
Yes. Yes. That's the big, the big opportunity.

Jemimah Ashleigh 7:32
Yeah, so the question is, what problem do you solve? And who do you solve that problem for? That's kind of the first part of the question. The second part is, where is your ideal clients spending time? And sorry, in this case, you want it to be Instagram, but isn't Instagram, maybe it's Facebook, maybe it's LinkedIn, maybe they're not really on the social media platforms. Maybe they've been envelops, like the rest of us into Tik Tok. And that's okay. But we need to know what where's your ideal client spending time? Is what we're fed was attention economy, looking through the foreign is attention economy? And where are they already spending money? So if they're putting money right now, and then the one of the shoppers on Instagram, and like they say the thing and they have to get it? Or they're on Etsy, or they are already working with another coach, so you can collaborate with them? Where are they spending time? Where are they spending money? So it's almost irrelevant? How many people have eyes on you? It's way more relevant about where those eyes off? And if those are the right eyes. So we come back to basics because people go, Oh, I need to go my following. Do you? Oh, do we need to find shame, where we're trying to have these conversations?

Alyson Lex 8:51
And I am totally 100% on that train. And I love it. Because it allows me to forget about a couple platforms that don't work for me. Yeah. So let's pretend that my ideal client is on Instagram. And I'm on Instagram. And they're proven to find and by off of Instagram, either with competitors, collaborators, other people, right, yeah. We know that. Then we know that's where they are. So now what? Now? How do I grow that visibility? I, you know, I'm trying to get basically to the point where I feel like when we're trying to start to put ourselves out there and speaking on behalf of the listeners and what have you. It can feel really daunting to start from what feels like zero. So how do we move forward with that?

Jemimah Ashleigh 9:46
I love this because it's something I say all the time. Everyone starts from zero. And we have to be so mindful of that like I'm starting from zero we older there was a time where you guys had you guys planned a podcast. You had a conversation about maybe we should do a podcast. This didn't exist a while ago. This is amazing. We'll start with zero followers, everyone, Sheryl Sandberg GaryVee. All of these people, they start with zero.

Jennie Wright 10:18
Yes. I love that I talked about that in this building, because clients are like, but why would one of these people want to, you know, why should I do this? Or why should I do that? Well, everybody starts at the same spot. They're just a little a little bit further down on their journey. That's how I usually explained it. They're just, they're just a couple steps ahead. Yeah.

Jemimah Ashleigh 10:35
And it's really, really like, we have to get really clear on that. Because when people start talking about visibility, they're like, but you've done so many interviews. Yeah, because I started doing interviews five years ago. And Time Magazine didn't call first New York Journal. That was great. But that wasn't in the first two years, we have to be really clear on like, where we're starting. So the first thing that I urge everyone to do first thing is across every platform, you need to cultivate and be authentically who you are and build your personal brand. So if you were to see someone like we'll use Tony Robbins as an example, and I'm not going to go down too many rabbit holes on that. But if you saw him in a full tuxedo on stage, is that in line with who he is? Absolutely not. He is not that person. He is, you know, super fit. We think of him, we think of him as being motivational, that he's time driven, that he's goal focused, we think of these things because that's his brand. We also think of human like, I think he really is like slacks and T shirts. He isn't a big kind of like big suit guy. Gary Vee, same thing. You saw him in a suit, you'd be confused by that Brene Brown talks openly in her book into the wilderness, that on her first, one of her first gigs that she ever did on authenticity. She put on a business suit was like this is ridiculous, went and got changed and put her cowgirl boots back on. She's like, I'm not, I'm not living like this. I'm not living how you want me to live. She swears on stage for a reason. It's authentically her brand. When we are truly who we are. And sitting in that and presenting as that person. It's a lot easier to get clients, they see that as the real year. And also you're bringing in the right people at that point. You're having conversations with things you truly believe. And when we're out of alignment with that people can see that really clearly.

Jennie Wright 12:31
Thanks for sharing that because that's there's an important message in there that I don't think everybody understands you know, that authenticity and things like that. I can definitely relate to having left like a corporate job, you know, wearing pantyhose every day. Don't mind me, but I actually did. I was like that you

Jemimah Ashleigh 12:47
deserve a medal honestly. And yeah, but enjoying that.

Jennie Wright 12:51
Oh, it was it was pantyhose and Spanx

Jemimah Ashleighr 12:57
every day, and like we consider this normal for a very long time.

Jennie Wright 13:02
And now I'm lucky. I'm like, I mean, I look presentable from the waist up right now. But trust me, there's, there's a party going on down below. Like there's like, you know, there's some track pants and you know, I was painting earlier. So there's like a swatch of pain on the

Jemimah Ashleigh 13:18
lead. If it wasn't this is the comment like, this is a you are in it. Like what I'm wearing is almost irrelevant. It shouldn't be distracting. Don't get me wrong. If I turned up in a clown suit, we've got a big art conversation, right? Yeah, right now for those who listening to audio, I mean, a t shirt and shorts. It's summer here in Australia, very early, it's been hot overnight. What I'm saying doesn't have any less or more value cracked, because of the things that I'm wearing. Correct. I'm turning up as me if you saw me on any other platform, and the same with you guys who I've had a chance to connect with a couple of times and see some of your videos as well. We are authentically who we are. That's almost a magic draw card. We shouldn't be changing that.

Jennie Wright 14:02
Right? You said something earlier that really caught my attention. And it was about this attention economy. How can we take advantage of it? What is it? How can we take advantage of the attention economy?

Jemimah Ashleigh 14:13
Yeah, so kind of like the next part. Once you kind of get your brand, you've got to figure out, you know, coming back to real fundamentals to where do you have to be seen? Again, like where's your ideal client? Where are they spending time and where are they spending money? We refer to these? Where are they spending time and where are they spending money as the attention economy? Over the last 10 years, we've seen our attention split in 4000 different ways without us realizing. So a really good example of that is your mobile phone. Wherever you are right now and some of you are listening on a foreign. You have your phone within an arm's reach probably or you can at very minimum see it. offerings have become the new media TV Bill boards, radio people. Yeah, you see people in cars now. Um, you know, a couple driving in a car, the passengers on their farm. We are looking at the billboards on the side of the road anymore. We are looking at them on our phone. We also didn't have to be at that exact moment in exact time to see that exact angle of that billboard. When I can be retargeting with pixels and with, with targeted ads with really great algorithms, to your mobile offering 24 hours a day, no matter where you are, whenever you find out. So this is attention economy. Where are you spending? Where's your where's your time? Where, what podcasts are they listening to? Where am I willingly giving up my headspace my time and my energy to be in that moment.

Alyson Lex 15:51
I was gonna say my husband is I'm the driver because I get carsick but, um, my husband is the one that will be on his phone for the entirety of a three hour drive. And it drives me crazy. Yeah, because I have to do nothing. So I now have started taking my phone. And I put one earbud in at a low volume, so I can still hear, but I listen to a podcast. So I'm on essentially on my phone, even though listening, he's on his phone, sometimes we've got my kid on a tablet playing little educational games. That's just how it is.

Jemimah Ashleigh 16:28
So this is where we are. So you have to play in that arena. We can, you know, Billboard companies for the last 10 years who tried to spend the same amount of money and charge the same amount of money for that that primary will stay billboard, the passengers on looking at the looking at the window. Even sometimes the drive is not looking at the road and they're on their phone, right? Like this is a very real kind of example of attention economy, we aren't paying attention to where we used to be, how many times have you laid on the couch of light, and flipped three firing? You're not really looking fine, because you kind of half watching TV. We also have watching TV, so you're not really on your phone. So it's like dedicate where are we putting dedicated time? Social media is a really great place to do that. But what again, like looking for visibility, what podcasts are your ideal clients listening to? What YouTube channels? Are they already looking at? What what pages are very engaging with?

Alyson Lex 17:28
I want to back up to when you talked about how, within five years you went from literally not being allowed to be visible to being one of the top entrepreneurs. I was gonna say in the country in Australia, but it's also the continent. So let's let's say that because that sounds bigger. Job. That

Jemimah Ashleigh 17:50
sounds amazing. Right?

Alyson Lex 17:52
I copywriter law major for a reason? Right? I am one of the top 10 entrepreneurs on my continent. Thank you so much. Um, what are some of the steps that you took in the very beginning? to I know it all builds on each other? But what are some of the first things that you did?

Jemimah Ashleigh 18:11
Yeah. So the first thing was I got really, really clear on my personal brand, I got really clear on like, who I was what I was happy talking about. I refer to it as my 10 things. So one of the things I want to talk about and being known for women was one of them being visible was one of them, being an authority in talking about things was one of them. The next thing I did was I built a very, very high level network of people around me. So I made a decision very early on, I read a couple of Jim Rohn books, and one of them was you are the sum of the five people. I made a decision, which I'm so proud of now, to never be the smartest person in the room. And if I was the smartest person in the room, or I felt like I could do the thing that the teacher was doing, or the coach knew as much as I did. I was in the wrong room. And I needed to change quickly. I built my five people, I built five real life people and five online people. So for those who have followed my career, nor that I like I've had a very long love affair with Gary Vee. And when I met him, I told him that and he laughed and he's like, Well, thank you and we you know, we had a cuddle and it was it was just everything I wanted today.

Jennie Wright 19:29
I just love the fact that you had a cuddle with Gary Vee I mean

Jemimah Ashleigh 19:31
that's good any like held my face? Oh, God even Oh my God, that's a whole moment. Yeah, energy. He could feel my energy in the audience like, you know remove 2000 people my like, like my husband which I refer to him as

Jemimah Ashleigh 20:00
I've referred to him as my husband so many times, and in an audience of 2000 people, he found me. Okay, so that's cool. Yeah. Uh huh. And I was like being ambassadors like, yes, you're doing it. Thank you. You're doing what you said you're gonna do.

Jennie Wright 20:17
Yeah. Well, Alison, and I just kind of like looked at each other when you were talking about being not being the smartest person in the room and making sure you have people who are more, like, more smart than you in the room. We just kind of looked at each other over zoom, like, Aha.

Alyson Lex 20:31
Yeah, I really liked when you were like, yeah, if I can do with the coach in the room can do that. I'm in the wrong room. And it immediately called me out. I thought about all the Facebook groups that I'm in and I'm like, I can now go into too. Yeah, like, and that's not It's not ego, it's just

Jemimah Ashleigh 20:53
back to back to go back. And it's not about not saying like, cut yourself off from people and be like, I have to get into the men's room and just be there. You know, we owe it as women to help other women. Oh, yeah. 100% There are women, we are only where we on now. And in the position where we are now. Of I am a divorced woman. I am I have more money than I've had in my entire life. I'm not going to apologize for that I do really good things with that. I have an orphanage response. I do good things with my my success. And my you know, not in my, my privilege, a really, really there are basis for doing good in the world. No gonna apologize for that. But the only reason I can do that is because my mother and my grandmother and my great grandmother, and my great great grandmother fought for me to have rights.

Jennie Wright 21:51
Absolutely, and some woman that you've never met before, and you never will, you know, 100 years ago stood up and put a frickin suffragette ribbon on and march

Jemimah Ashleigh 22:00
Yeah, 100% like they fought for my right to do this, I owe it to the future generations to step up, I will be your Sage, I will be a person that they can come to I will give wisdom, I will do podcast, I will give you more help, than you will ask for I will suffocate you with advice on love if I need to, to help

Jennie Wright 22:20
you get that. Yes, please.

Jemimah Ashleigh 22:22
I love the stuff. Willingly, obviously. But at the same time, if I'm learning from people, and I'm trying to grow as a human, if I'm listening to something, or I'm engaging with someone who's like, oh, yeah, I kind of need this. I don't finish books anymore that aren't speaking to me. I'm not giving my attention economy to things that don't deserve it. And that's a really curated like we have to it's, again, what the podcasts that you guys are listening to aren't necessarily ones I'd be listening to. And probably vice versa. You may not both be listening to the same podcasts, you might be watching the same shows. And that's great. It's great for you. It's not for me, and I think we need to really adapt, like adopt this for women. Oh, great. You you're working mom with four kids. You're a stay at home mom with one child. You're a single lady with a cat. Great Fear not for me. There's no judgment, we just need to kind of ease up on that. But really knowing your empower. And I think women have been told to doubt that for a long time. I have real opinions on this. And I could really go down a rabbit hole. And I'm willing to do that with you guys. Today, but women are just told a lot of the time. We doubt ourselves. Yeah, because we were taught to doubt ourselves.

Jennie Wright 23:40
We were and that does play into visibility though there really does because oh, we fear that we fear the visibility because we worried that somebody is going to judge or we you know, we have those preconceived notions and we could go down that rabbit hole. I'd love to go down that rabbit hole. I don't think it's for today's episode, but I mean, there's a rabbit hole to go down. Trust me, I am just as passionate. I know Alyson is two, we've had whole conversations about this whole thing. And thank you for like bringing that around. Because I think it's really really important. So, major, major, major points to be made about visibility, you know, being transparent being yourself own your own your crap, like insert bleep your own your bleep, right. So cool stuff. And so I want to ask, we're gonna have to wrap this up, but I want to make sure that people can find you connect with you. You know, where do people find you? What's the best place that people can get in touch?

Jemimah Ashleigh 24:33
Yeah, sorry, Best Places my website Jemima Ashley calm. I'm on Instagram. I'm in Facebook on all the things by me that please send me a message. It's just me responding to that stuff. I love new social media is a big platform for me. I love social media. I just think it's a great tool to connect people.

Jennie Wright 24:50
It is it's a great tool, but it's also Yeah, I have opinions on that as well. But I like

Alyson Lex 24:57
alright, you needed Yes. Yeah, just

Jemimah Ashleigh 25:01
tons of like freebies over my website to about these visibility stuff and nor awards lists, how to win awards, speakers, agencies you should be applying for for entrepreneurs. So lots of freebies go grab them.

Alyson Lex 25:14
Awesome. And what we'll do is go ahead and put all of that information on our show notes page, so you can just do a click through and grab whatever it is that you want. I can't thank you for being here with us enough. I really just enjoyed our time together.

Jemimah Ashleigh 25:31
Thank you. i It's been amazing to get to like to have good technology. I love it.

Jennie Wright 25:38
I love the fact that in the future, it's like hey, yah, yah, yah, yah, I have snow on the ground. Just FYI. Okay, okay, we might

Jemimah Ashleigh 25:47
be in different features. So it's 730 in the morning here last night. I think it got to like, Celsius. I think 22 Sorry. I mean, like a warm night and great and love that love that for me. Someone's kind of starting, but we're having our Nina at the moment, which means it's gonna rain for all of summer. So sorry. Yeah, me too. So hot is locked down in the world. And the rain was on I was like, What is the point

Jennie Wright 26:15
of malt the time that we're recording this. It's a whole thing. So, though, just want to take a second say thank you. Thanks so much for doing this with us. Thanks. Thanks so much for being here. Check out the show notes. Everybody go to system to thrive.com. Find this episode. You don't want to miss everything that Jim is talking about. She's awesome. Go find my Ashley on all of our social media and connect with her there and make sure you're following or liking this podcast wherever you're listening, because we have lots more coming out that you're really going to enjoy. So thanks so much for being here, everybody. We'll be back again soon.

Jemimah Ashleigh 26:43
Take care