Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign.
[00:00:06] Hi there and welcome back to the Confessions in the Home Office podcast. I'm Wendy Hill. I'm a marketing strategist. I own a business. Check out my business at MarketMomentum Biz Biz.
[00:00:19] And I'm someone who's built a sustainable business through working from home for over 20 years.
[00:00:24] So today's episode, I'm calling this confidently quiet.
[00:00:29] And it's especially for the women out there who feel like they have something valuable to say, but they don't want to shout to be heard. If you've ever been told to speak up, you need to post more, you need to brag a little more, you need to put yourself out there a little more. And you felt a knot in your stomach because that just really wasn't for you. You're in good company.
[00:00:51] So let's be real.
[00:00:53] We are swimming in so much noise these days. I make the mistake of getting up and pulling up social media a lot of times in the morning, and after scrolling for just a few minutes, I just want to turn off the phone, throw it away, because there's just so much. I mean, the feed that I get is all this course creation and marketing and webinars and all this. And it's just, I don't know, I feel like everyone's just shouting online.
[00:01:21] I'll hear things like, here's how I made $100,000 in 30 days. Or I grew my business to seven figures in marketing consulting in just two years, but I only work 10 hours a week. Yeah, right.
[00:01:32] You should be going live three times a week online. You need to post six reels a day. You need to be loud, or nobody's going to know what you're doing.
[00:01:40] And it's just exhausting to me. And usually to get away from that, I will turn on the news, which, you know, it's bad if I do that.
[00:01:49] But the messaging is also really flawed because success doesn't always have to be shouting and loud. I mean, it's good to take up space and to be confident, but you don't have to be yelling at everybody. So I've been in the business a long time and I've seen a lot of loud launches kind of crash and burn.
[00:02:07] And I've watched quiet professionals build really great, profitable businesses with a lot of strategy, planning, being consistent, which I talk about all the time and being really intentional, but they don't use a lot of noise.
[00:02:23] So I want to take you back to when I started my business in 2005. I didn't have a brand I mean, I had a logo. A friend's wife created a logo for me. I think I paid her $200. I didn't have any type of following.
[00:02:35] We didn't even have in my space, might have been around back then. We didn't even have Facebook.
[00:02:41] I had really slow Internet at home and I had a two year old at home with me most of the time who was sick and I was always running him to specialist. So I was just doing the work. I wasn't really building a brand or building a following.
[00:02:56] But what I did have is I had good marketing skills and I really believed in building client trust with what I did at agencies. I had to have that. And I have a really good work ethic.
[00:03:09] I wasn't networking a lot in loud rooms.
[00:03:12] I wasn't the life of the party.
[00:03:14] I was a tired new mother just trying to figure it out.
[00:03:19] But I was listening. I do a lot of listening and I was learning as much as I could. I would ask you questions, I pay attention to just about everything.
[00:03:28] And I started seeing what people actually needed and then I would find ways to help them look really good to their audience.
[00:03:37] I didn't need to be loud, I needed to be effective. So people wanted me to stick around and would tell others so I would get even more work.
[00:03:45] And that's how I built a business that's lasted 20 years. By showing up consistently, listening more than I talked and letting my work speak for itself. You know that phrase two ears, one mouth? That's kind of how I roll.
[00:03:58] So I met a client when I was brought into a strategy session maybe six or seven years ago.
[00:04:03] She was always over caffeinated and kind of always looking for a crisis.
[00:04:09] And we went through and asked a ton of questions and then brainstorming for two or three hours. There were a couple of us in there and when we finished, she said, I don't want to leave here feeling calm and good about things today, but I do.
[00:04:20] So as frustrated as that makes me, because the way I'm wired, I'm grateful we met and I want you to keep working with me.
[00:04:29] So being calm, asking the questions, figuring things out and not jumping on the drama train or raising your voice or being the first one to have the anxiety attack, you know, you just.
[00:04:42] People, people look for calm people. They may be looking for loud people, but I feel like clients are looking for calm people who are hard to rattle, who get things done and understand their business.
[00:04:55] So what does it actually mean to be confidently quiet in your business? Here's A couple of examples that I brainstorm.
[00:05:04] So I would say one of them would be saying no to clients that are the wrong fit.
[00:05:10] Instead of saying, well, I'll take this client because it's a little more money for my business each month.
[00:05:16] Or it's a business that I don't really feel like I'm aligned with or I don't have any experience with.
[00:05:24] I think it's writing thoughtful post and copy that really connects instead of just posting to post and posting to stay relevant. And so you hit those numbers that other people say you need to do, how many times you need to post a day.
[00:05:37] And I think it's about creating boundaries that really protect kind of how you work, even if it means you're not available. 24, 7.
[00:05:47] Getting over scheduled and staying over scheduled and not making time for work and for business development. To keep growing your business and not having downtime will just lead to disaster and burnout and you'll just get angry.
[00:06:01] So another example is I think you need to think about growing a small but really good list of clients or customers who really like what you do.
[00:06:13] And instead of chasing vanity metrics on social media, have those people that are going to keep referring business to you. Maybe they're super quiet too, but they've got really good businesses and they're referring work to you off and on, and you're referring things back to them and you build this quiet network and you don't have to tell everybody about what you're doing.
[00:06:36] So let me break this down, why this approach works long term. So when you really get into quiet confidence, I feel like there's three things that happen.
[00:06:45] Number one, you attract people who value depth over all the hype.
[00:06:50] These are the people that are going to stay longer, they're going to pay you better, and they're going to refer you more.
[00:06:57] Number two, you're going to build trust.
[00:07:00] When you're not constantly switching lanes, chasing trends, changing your business model, people will rely on you.
[00:07:08] And number three, you protect your piece. This one's just really big. You're not constantly performing, you're just, you're not chasing the algorithm all the time.
[00:07:18] And you're trying to really build something sustainable, something that's going to work for you long term, as long as you need it to.
[00:07:26] Now, I want to be clear about one thing. Confidence. Quiet confidence doesn't mean being invisible.
[00:07:33] It just means being intentional. You still show up, you still sell, you still pitch, you still network.
[00:07:41] You make phone calls and follow up with people.
[00:07:44] You still focus on your personal branding. So if someone Googles you, they're still going to find great things about you. They're you do it with clarity and calm and you just stop the chaos.
[00:07:56] So if you're listening to this and you're thinking, okay, Wendy, this sounds like me, but I always feel like I need to do more to compete.
[00:08:04] I'm telling you, you can stop performing.
[00:08:07] You can choose strategy over being the loudest.
[00:08:12] You can say less, but mean more.
[00:08:14] And you can take up space in your own study way.
[00:08:18] Being confidently quiet is not about shrinking and pulling back. It's about standing tall and what you're good at, your area of expertise without feeling like you need to constantly perform for attention. Just stop all the tap dancing and stop the TikTok dancing and just be you.
[00:08:38] So attention's cheap, but it's rare that people really trust people.
[00:08:43] Quiet leaders.
[00:08:44] They build trust and that trust builds momentum.
[00:08:50] So here's what I want you to take away from today. You don't have to shout to be successful. You don't have to go viral to be considered valuable.
[00:08:59] You don't have to match someone else's energy just to make an impact.
[00:09:04] You just have to be you. You have to be thoughtful, consistent, strategic, and being quite quietly confident. That's really kind of your power move.
[00:09:19] So if today's episode resonated with you, please share it with another business owner or somebody who's thinking about going into business, who's quietly going about things. Or maybe it's somebody who's being really loud and they don't want to. They don't want to approach things like that anymore. They don't have to.
[00:09:40] And so if you will follow like Share Rate Comment this podcast, that would be fantastic. Share it with somebody that that needs it.
[00:09:51] So thanks for listening to Confessions in the Home Office.
[00:09:54] I'm Wendy Hill and I'll see you next week.
