breakthrough the visibility barrier: two messaging"blindspots" that keep healthcare professionals hidden online
How to stop being “tragically under-visible” and start attracting the right clients to your coaching business
Tragically under-visible.
That’s the phrase that came to me when I was sitting with this topic. I know it sounds a little dramatic, but hey, I’m a Scorpio. I feel things deeply.
When I say tragically under-visible, I mean it. Because here’s what’s actually tragic: you are spending real time, real energy, real emotional bandwidth putting yourself and your work out there, and it’s not landing. It’s not converting.
Which, yes, is frustrating af for YOU, but it gets worse.
Somewhere out there, there are people who would genuinely benefit from what you do, who simply aren’t finding you.
As a healthcare professional building a coaching business, you are ridiculously over qualified to help people. That’s never been the question (at least not in my mind!).
The real question is: why you can’t REACH your people. And the answer, almost always, is messaging.
That’s what we’re getting into today.
Two major messaging blind spots that quietly kill visibility — and what to do about each of them.
But first, let’s clear up some things we’re getting completely wrong about visibility in the first place.
What We’ve Been Taught About Visibility Is Mostly Wrong
Misconception #1: You need a massive audience.
You don’t. I promise you, you don’t.
I’ve never had the audience size I wanted. My email list is small. My podcast downloads are modest. My follower counts are not the stuff of influencer dreams. And by almost every conventional metric, I don’t have much “visibility”
But turns out, its enough visibility to build a six figure business. 4 years in a row.
What that has taught me, the goal with visibility doesn’t have to be volume. It’s the right people finding you. Quality first. Then we can work on quantity.
The reason this misconception sticks around is pure ego. We are terrified of not being “validated” once we put ourselves out there. On some level we think if we had more engagement, more likes, more followers, more downloads, we would feel safer, more successful. But its pure vanity metrics.
Misconception #2: We don’t know how to evaluate if our content is working.
A post goes out. Nobody comments. A launch happens. Nobody buys. And immediately the story becomes: this isn’t working. I need to fix my messaging. Or change my niche. Or find a different platform.
Then we start shape-shifting. New Instagram bio. New niche name. New brand direction. Every few weeks, we tweak something. Instead of giving our message time to work.
I watched one of my clients do something remarkable this year. She started posting twice a week with a very clear, consistent brand association.
The same core message, the same core identity, week after week. She wasn’t getting thousands of likes. She wasn’t going viral. But she kept going.
Then, at a wedding, someone she she didn’t know walked up to her and said
”I recognize you from instagram”
And they proceeded to have an hr long conversation about burnout recovery, witchiness, wellness (aka her brand association topics!)
She got fangirled. At a wedding. Because through her repetition,her messaging had been quietly doing its work.
She had been building recognition and trust in people’s minds, even when the vanity metrics didn’t show it.
That’s the thing we miss. Visibility might be working even when it doesn’t feel like it. We just don’t know what to look for.
Misconception #3: more levers = more visibility aka (spray and pray)
I was staying at a co-live in Morocco in 2023, and a “marketing bro” was giving me advice for increasing my visibility.
His advice was something along the lines of: have you thought about… doing more?
You have a podcast — put it on YouTube.
Start doing cold outreach on LinkedIn
What about running ads?
I get the logic. If you have a marketing team and a budget, maybe that approach makes sense. But for most of us, especially those still working clinical jobs while building a coaching practice on the side- that advice is not helpful.
It’s exhausting just to hear it.
I’ve heard this called the “spray and pray” approach. And that’s what it feels like- just throwing so many things out there, hoping it will end up with clients.
That’s not it. More levers isn’t the answer. The right lever, pulled in the right order, is the answer.
Misconception #4: I need to do everything all at once.
In business sequence is everything. You could be doing the right thing, at the wrong time- and it’s the wrong thing.
Launching before you have an audience, doesn’t make sense. Who are you launching to?
Running ads before you’ve nailed your messaging. Its just putting money in the paper shredder (unless you are specifically using ads as a way to message test- but you need a foundation)
Worrying about dos and don’ts of the algorithms before you’ve figured out what you actually want to say.
Most of us are focusing on things in the WRONG order.
The right messaging does more heavy lifting than any of these other tactics. It pierces through the algorithm. It works without requiring you to have thousands of followers or high engagement. It’s the first lever we need to master not the fifth or the tenth.
So before you get a professional logo, before you worry about a content calendar, before you invest in ads or hire a PR team: I’m begging you to do your messaging.
Everything else, honestly, is diluting your focus and wasting your energy
you’ve got blindspots in your messaging
Ok so now you’ve got the memo. We need to focus on messaging. But why does it feel so difficult?
It’s because we have blindspots about our messaging.
I’ve been doing dozens of messaging audits and I keep noticing the same two “blind spots” blocking people from honing in on their messaging.
Blind Spot #1: the unworthy messenger
what is it?
This is an internal blindspot, where on some level you don’t feel worthy of being the messenger of your true message.
It can show up in a few different ways:
You know what you want to say, but are hesitant to really claim it. So instead of saying the real thing, you say a safer, smaller, more acceptable version of it.
You can’t get to the heart of what you really want to say. Everything you’ve come up with so far feels close, but not quite it. The blindspot is so big, it keeps you from even having clarity about your message.
what this looks like
When I’ve done messaging audits with clients, I know this blindspot is showing up: when they start shrinking in response to the message feedback I give.
When I share: THIS is the powerful part of what you are saying. It’s THIS!
First, there’s a moment of “yes that’s its”, then immediately, a pulling back. A shrinking. Who me? I can’t say that.
my “unworthy messenger” blindspot
I used to have this blindspot when it came to talking about intuition. For a while, I was afraid to speak too much about “intuition”.
I thought it would make me seem too woo-woo and would undermine my credibility.
But the truth is: following my intuition is what helped me leave medicine. The transformation I had, was only made possible because of my connection to intuition.
Slowly, I started introducing “intuition” into my brand, and now it has became a cornerstone of my work.
But I spent months leaving the most important part of my story out of my message because of this exact blindspot.
I was scared to own it.
the sneaky part
It doesn’t always feel like fear. That’s what makes it hard to catch.
Sometimes it shows up as a completely logical marketing decision.
If I speak to a hyper specific group, I’ll alienate other and limit myself.
I need to sound more professional, more clinical, more credible.
These thoughts can feel rational. Like you are applying what you’ve learned about marketing to make your business work.
Underneath them, there’s usually something you really want to say that you’ve decided isn’t safe to say.
Something you believe deeply but are hedging around. Something that is the actual heart of your work, but you are tip toeing around it.
How to start correcting it
To correct this blind spot: we have to get to the HEART of what you truly want to say. We have to get out of your head with all fears, and marketing rules… and access the heart.
One question I use with my clients.
If you could shake someone by the shoulders-just grab them and shake them until they REALLLY understood this one thing, what would that be?
Don’t think about it. Just give the first answer that comes to your mind.
What is that thing you most want someone to really get? What would you say if you knew they would receive it fully, without judgment?
That’s one way to start getting to the heart of your message.
Blind Spot #2: the “I’m not listening” blind spot
What is it?
Not grounding your message in your people’s lived experience. You might have a clear, true, deeply felt message, but you’re delivering it purely in your language instead of theirs. When that happens, even the right, most heartfelt message doesn’t land. Not because it’s wrong, but because the people you’re trying to reach don’t recognize themselves in it.
What this looks like in real life
This is where we experience those painful communication gaps.
For me, recently it’s been: people coming to me with “I just need more clients.”
I say: great, once we build your six- figure offer, you’ll have more clients.
They think: no I already have an offer, I just need more clients.
From my perspective: fixing the offer is the path to more clients. But until I learn how to communicate that in their language… I don’t get anywhere.
We are both ultimately talking about the same thing. But because we’re using different words, the conversation goes in circles.
why this happens?
This blind spot happens when we don’t listen to our people. When we speak from inside our own understanding instead of meeting people inside theirs.
As healthcare professionals you’ve learned to translate complex medical lingo into “patient lingo”. How to break down disease progression in a way they understand. Now we just need to use this same skill for the online world. We have to take our words and translate it into theirs.
Your job as a coach and a business owner isn’t to “convince people” of anything. It’s to communicate in a way that makes people feel seen. And that requires speaking their language, not yours.
We need to have a committment to deeply understanding the world of our people and meeting them exactly there.
And to do that…. we need data
how to start:
Go back to the data.
By “data” I mean: direct messages you’ve exchanged with ideal clients, transcripts from sales calls, market research convos, onboarding calls with your clients, survey’s you’ve put out.
Data is : the exact words people use:in sales calls, in DMs, in comments, in the way they describe their problem when they think no one is really listening.
Every interaction you have with your audience is market research if you treat it that way.
This isn’t a one-time exercise. It’s an ongoing exercise of “collecting data, and going back to the data”.
The more you listen, the more precisely you can take the heart of what you want to say and deliver it in a way that makes someone feel like you reached through the screen and read their mind.
And that feeling? That’s what converts.
breaking through the blindspots
When you correct the internal blind spot: you get to the real juicy center of what you want to say and fully claim it. This gives your messaging potency and authenticity.
It stops sounding like copy paste AI, or generic “coach speak”, and starts sounding undeniably, uniquely you.
When you fix the external blind spot when you ground that message in the real, specific language of the people you serve: your messaging becomes relevant. It lands.
And when both are in place: the right people find you, convert, stay long term, and refer others.
You don’t need a massive audience for this to work. You don’t need to post seven times a week or spray and pray all over the internet. You need the right message, delivered consistently, to the right people.
If you’re a healthcare professional ready to stop being tragically under-visible- this is the work. This is the lever to focus on first.
If this resonated and you want to go deeper, I’ll be hosting Breakthrough Messaging a 5 wk group program to create messaging that does the heavy lifting for your business. Early bird pricing is coming soon drop your name on this interest list and you’ll be the first to know when enrollment opens.
to go deeper with this work…
1:1 Client Inflow Intensive: fill out this application to start the convo.
The Client Inflow Fix: learn the messaging framework that opens up the floodgates to clients.