The Fear of Being Seen: Why So Many of Us Stay Small

Claude: “Most urgent issue. YOUR WEBSITE IS INVISIBLE”

So Claude told me when I asked it questions about SEO and GEO. A year after publishing The Balanced Man website, I hadn’t looked into SEO and, in Claude’s words, ‘search engines and AI are blind to the website’.

I run a coaching and retreat business where I support men to fulfil their vision, achieve their goals and live without fear …… so often that involves ‘fearlessly putting themselves out there’.

And yet?!

How did I get into this situation?

Most generous explanation:

‘I want the business to grow organically’

‘I want to create clients through meeting them not through searches’

‘I don’t want to get into a sales funnel rat race because it’s the opposite of how I like to work, which is by building relationships and using intuition’

‘Well, I’ve never done this before and just don’t have the time’

Explanations closer to the truth, in ascending order:

‘SEO feels out of my wheelhouse, so I’ll hide my head in the sand’;

‘This involves me appearing online beside other coaches and retreat providers and they know what they are doing (as opposed to me)’;

‘I’ll have to publicise and stand-by my opinions which will get shot down by everybody on the internet’

‘I don’t think I can really do this, and everybody else will think the same, so I’ll just stay small.’

You get the drift………

Most of us are doing a version of this ALL THE TIME. Creating stories about what we can and can’t do, about how other people will receive what we do, actually caring about that, and altering our actions to stay safe.

In my case I could have doubled the number of people fortunate enough to have benefitted from my coaching and my retreats.

--> Think what those additional people could have done in the last twelve months.

--> Think what downstream impact THAT could have had.

--> And that.

--> And that.

There is so much untapped potential that is sitting, pent up in nearly all of us because of these stories that we tell ourselves.

These are protection mechanisms that worked really well for us, probably once and probably under the age of 10.

We should be grateful that they were there then and ask those protection mechanisms to step aside now.

If you recognise your own version of this story — the one keeping you smaller than you could be — that's exactly the work I do with the men I coach. Get in touch and let's talk about what yours might be costing you: Contact The Balanced Man | Men's Retreats Devon.

What's your version of my SEO? I'd genuinely like to know — drop it in the comments below.