Almost everyone who runs a small business knows they should be more visible. Most aren’t, and it’s rarely because they don’t know how.
It’s because it feels excruciating. Posting about your own work, talking about what you’ve achieved, recording yourself on video — there’s a specific wince that comes with it, and most people will do almost anything to avoid it.
That feeling is worth understanding properly, because most of it is misleading you.
Other people aren’t watching nearly as closely
In a well-known study published in 2000, psychologists Thomas Gilovich, Victoria Medvec and Kenneth Savitsky asked students to walk into a room wearing a conspicuous, mildly embarrassing T-shirt, then estimate how many people had noticed it.
They substantially overestimated. Far fewer people noticed than they assumed.
The researchers called it the spotlight effect: we believe others pay much more attention to us than they do, because we’re at the centre of our own experience and assume we’re at the centre of theirs.
That’s the first thing wrong with the cringe. The post you agonised over was scrolled past in a second by most people who saw it. The minor stumble in your video went unnoticed. Everyone else is preoccupied with their own spotlight.
The wince is often your taste, not your work
The broadcaster Ira Glass has described something every beginner runs into: you get into creative work because you have good taste, but for a long while what you produce isn’t as good as your taste. That gap is painful, and it’s why so many people quit early.
Much of the cringe of visibility is exactly that gap. You know what good looks like, and your early posts or videos don’t meet it yet.
Which is actually encouraging. The discomfort is evidence that you can tell the difference — and the only way the work catches up with your taste is by making a lot of it. In my own experience it takes hundreds of posts before the gap starts to close.
For women, some of it is real
It would be dishonest to say the whole feeling is imaginary.
Psychologist Laurie Rudman published research in 1998 showing that women who self-promoted were judged as more competent but also less likeable — a trade-off men mostly didn’t face. The discomfort many women feel about talking up their achievements isn’t only anxiety. It’s partly an accurate reading of how that behaviour is received.
That doesn’t mean staying quiet. It means choosing forms of visibility that don’t trigger the penalty — which, conveniently, are also the most effective ones.
Be useful instead of impressive
This is the whole technique, and it removes most of the cringe at once.
Self-promotion is about you. Teaching is about them. A post saying “I’m excellent at pricing” makes you wince to write and makes readers wince to read. A post explaining the three mistakes people make when pricing a service, drawn from your experience, does the same job with none of the discomfort.
It demonstrates exactly the same expertise. People conclude that you know what you’re talking about. And it gives them something rather than asking them to admire you.
Giving away what you know is the lowest-cringe form of visibility there is, and in most businesses it’s also the most effective.
Other ways to lower the discomfort
Tell what happened rather than how good you are. “A client came to us with this problem, here’s what we tried, here’s what worked” is a story. “We deliver outstanding results” is a claim. Stories are easier to write and far more convincing.
Share the mistakes. What went wrong and what you learned is the most relatable content there is, and it’s impossible to read as boasting.
Credit other people generously. Talking about a client’s success or a colleague’s contribution is visibility that reflects well on you without being about you.
Pick the format that suits you. If video makes you miserable, write. If writing is agony, talk. There are plenty of routes to being seen and none of them is compulsory.
And make it small. One post a week you’ll actually sustain beats a burst of enthusiasm abandoned in a month. Volume is what closes the gap between your taste and your work, and volume only comes from something you can keep doing.
What happens if you don’t
The alternative to feeling cringe is invisibility, and invisibility has a cost that’s easy to miss because it’s made of things that never happened. The client who didn’t know you existed. The referral that went to someone they’d heard of. The opportunity offered to the person who’d been visible.
Being known changes almost everything about how a business grows, and the only way to be known is to put up with some discomfort first.
The short version
Most people aren’t watching as closely as you think. The wince is often your own good taste. For women, some of the penalty is real — and teaching rather than self-promoting sidesteps most of it.
Start by being useful. Keep it small enough to sustain. Expect it to feel awkward for a while, and notice that it gets easier, because it does.
