IAM1340 – Visibility Expert Helps Established Entrepreneurs Skyrocket Their Visibility

Michelle Lewis, founder of Visibility Vixen® is a Visibility Expert who specializes in helping established entrepreneurs skyrocket their visibility, launch their unique show strategy, and start landing press for their brand through her programs and membership in The Visibility Lounge. She is the host of “The Visible Entrepreneur” podcast and Facebook group and has been featured on Entrepreneur On Fire, The Huffington Post, LadyBossBlogger, and JustLuxe.

• CEO Story: Michelle left the film and TV and thought of becoming a health coach, but used all the stuff she does in Hollywood inside an online business to help get that visibility in the online space.
• Business Service: Video University, showing people how to make videos, then live-streaming and visibility training lounge.
• Secret Sauce: “My transparency” Recycling content.
• CEO Hack: Mindset–mindset, journaling at a coffee shop, and eating healthily.
• CEO Nugget: Tap into your zone of genius and promote it.
• CEO Defined: We are thought leaders and how we facilitate change on the planet.

Website: visibilityvixen.com
Book: publicityjumpstart.com / Book on Amazon
Instagram: visibility vixen
Podcast: visibleentrepreneur.com/
Facebook Group: visible entrepreneur

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Transcription

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00:20 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

00:28 – Gresham Harkless

Hello, Hello, Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Michelle Lewis of Visibility Vixen. Michelle, it is awesome to have you on the show.

00:39 – Michelle Lewis

Thanks so much for having me. This is going to be such a blast.

00:42 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, I'm super excited about this because we get the opportunity to learn a little bit more about Michelle and all the awesome things that she's doing for entrepreneurs and business owners. So what I wanted to do was read a little bit more about you so people can get a little bit of a glimpse into all the awesome things that you're doing.

00:55 – Michelle Lewis

Go for it.

00:57 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. So Michelle Lewis is the founder of Visibility Vixen. She is a visibility expert who specializes in helping established entrepreneurs skyrocket their visibility, launch their unique show strategy, and start landing press for their brand through her programs and membership in the Visibility Lounge. She is the host of the Visible Entrepreneur podcast and a Facebook group and has been featured on Entrepreneur on Fire, the Huffington Post, Lady Boss Blogger, and Just Lux. Michelle, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:27 – Michelle Lewis

I'm so ready, let's do let's do it,

01:29 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, awesome, Awesome. So the first question that I wanted to have was to learn a little bit more about your CEO story and what exactly led you to start your business.

01:37 – Michelle Lewis

Oh my goodness. It's kind of embarrassing because in some ways I think I came into entrepreneurship thinking that it was going to be easier than working in film and television. I was so wrong, right? Surprise. Oh, my goodness. But in all honesty, it came from working 14-hour film days and being exhausted and feeling like my… Nothing against it, like, the shows that I worked for, but I felt like my worth wasn't being recognized and that I wasn't helping anybody.

I was showing up and standing on a mark and assisting my actor and all that stuff, and then I was going home. So as much as I loved the film and television process, I just felt like there was so much more that I could be doing. I'd had a history of some health issues that I was able to overcome, and that put a burden on my heart too. There's a lot of people struggling out there.

So in all honesty, I left film and TV thinking I was going to become some kind of a health coach and I put together a 30-day course called Life Reboot so people can help get themselves back on track. That's where I thought my life was going, but it snowballed into using the stuff I had been doing every day in Hollywood inside of an online business to help other people get that same visibility but in the online space instead of here.

02:56 -Gresham Harkless

Yeah, in Hollywood. That makes perfect sense. Yeah. But obviously, that's very, very important to be able to learn a lot of those principles and that kind of practices that people have in Hollywood and be able to kind of translate them into their business. So I guess could you delve a little bit deeper about exactly how you do that and what kind of services you provide for people like that?

03:13 – Michelle Lewis

Sure. Well, it all came to fruition when someone said, why don't you teach people how to do video? And I went, well, everyone knows that. And they're like, no, they don't. So that's what started everything. Me and my husband put together a course called Video University, where we showed people how to make their own videos and professional lighting and sound and all that for a very affordable price. And then that started snowballing into live streaming because I kept getting messages saying, how are you so confident on camera what equipment do you use and what's your strategy so that you don't babble and all that stuff?

So it's been discovery and answering questions. It has helped me formulate my training, like the visibility lounge and the visibility vault, where people can go through and figure out the mixture of, like, specifically, I love how I see color I see it in 2 ways. 1, how it affects the body because of my health training. And number 2, how people view color on screen for my film training.

So it's been such a blessing to be able to come alongside people and be that kind of one-stop shop when it comes to visibility so that they don't have to work so hard building everything and then not know what to do because no one's coming to their website. No one's investing in their services.

04:26 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And I always say like a lot of times the name of the game is visibility because a lot of times entrepreneurs and business owners build businesses. They understand that there is kind of a missing piece that they're fulfilling, but a lot of times nobody knows exactly who they are and where they are, how to contact them.

04:42 – Michelle Lewis

So they have to kind of fill in that gap. Exactly. Exactly.

04:46 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I wanted to delve a little bit deeper into what I call like your secret sauce or essentially your unique selling proposition. What do you think makes you unique and what is your secret sauce?

04:56 – Michelle Lewis

That's a really good question. And I think that there are so many entrepreneurs out there that would be like, oh, well, I'm an organic marketing unicorn and all this kind of stuff. And I have to tell you, marketing has been a huge learning experience for me because in Hollywood, you get an agent and wrap parties and that's how you get your next job and that's not how it works here. You know everything's online so it's been a huge discovery process for me. I think what's unique about me probably is just my transparency. I'm never gonna tell you that I have it all together.

I'm never gonna tell you that I've mastered any process but I can tell you that what's worked best for me is I love recycling content. So that's why I think people, you know, find out about my show. Like I'm sure they find out about this 1 is that I use it and I bleed it dry, right? And I'm very transparent about my story and I think that's what lands me the different press articles and stuff. But just to show you a little something, which I think would be so good for anyone watching to learn, like you have to constantly be a student.

So literally I'm in my RV coming back from Idaho and decided, oh, I'm going to mix things up in my lounge and just started sketching things out, right? Like this, the gold here is being able to constantly change things and grow and learn. And I think that's why my tribe enjoys learning from me because I'm always learning.

06:17 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And I think you end up being 1 of the best learners or best teachers because you're using it and you're experiencing it. And of course, you have that background in Hollywood. And then you're translating and helping out those entrepreneurs and business owners that need it as well, too.

06:29 – Michelle Lewis

Yeah, exactly.

06:31 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, awesome, awesome. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I wanted to ask you, which I'm super excited to ask you for, which is a CEO hack. This might be an app a book a habit or something that you do on a regular everyday basis that you feel makes you more effective and efficient as a business owner.

06:47 – Michelle Lewis

There are so many answers to that question, right? I think that the number 1 thing is, of course, mindset, and your work is always going to reflect where your mind is at. So for me, I can tell a huge difference when I am in my zone and I'm doing my daily power exercise in terms of I love going to the coffee shop and journaling and you know going through and getting my mindset on the plane. I also am a firm believer in meditation because it helps your brain be in more of an alpha state than a high-frequency beta state.

So I think that's huge too. And I think last but not least is fueling properly. So for example, I'm doing a site transfer, course transfer, everything transfer, Gresham, I know you feel my pain right now. And so I'm making sure I'm staying hydrated. I have high electrolytes. I'm eating cashews. I'm putting lemon in my water, everything that's meant to boost brain function, just so that I can get it done and stay healthy while I'm doing it. There's no reason to sacrifice your health to build your business. And I think that's something that happens to a lot of people, unfortunately.

07:53 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And I think a lot of times people forget that you kind of have to refill your cup and you have to take care of yourself. You're so busy, you know, working with clients and giving yourself, giving of yourself for clients that a lot of times you forget that you also have to make sure that your cup is filled as well. So I, I think that those are phenomenal kindkindshacks that people can kind of take in to learn and be more effective and efficient. So I appreciate that.

08:15 – Michelle Lewis

Yeah. Health is number 1. You, You know, it's the only, we're only given this 1 body. So it's something that we need to treasure.

08:22 – Gresham Harkless

Right. Exactly. Exactly. So that brings me to what I would call a CEO nugget. That might be a piece of advice or a word of wisdom or maybe something that you wish that you had known when you started your business, but do you have a CEO nugget or 2 that you can kind of give to us to help us out as business owners?

08:38 – Michelle Lewis

Totally. So my biggest mistake, and I know a lot of people listening probably struggle with this, is that when I started my business, I went into creativity mode for a solid year. It was just creating content. And I didn't stop and take the time to take that beautiful piece of content and distribute it, market it, get it seen. So I didn't make a profit as quickly because I was so focused on creating and not building up the audience. I think a lot of us have that.

And I think it also can kind of stem from a deeply rooted fear of no one's going to like this. This isn't going to reach anyone, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I think that the best thing you can do is tap into your zone of genius, create that beautiful offering product video, whatever it is, then take the time to work on promotion. And that's something that I struggled with. So it took me more of that catch-up time. And I wish I would have known that earlier.

09:30 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And I like you probably touched on before, like your Hollywood background, probably you had somebody that would do that and fulfill that for you. But understanding that not only creating is a big part of it, but also making sure that people see it and understand it as well, too.

09:45 – Michelle Lewis

Absolutely. You just kind of do the whole red carpet thing or the movies all shot like you're done and everyone else is promoting it and putting on buses and stuff and so you don't have to worry about it but when you're a one-man operation it's just you but it can be done. I was just chatting with someone over at Tailwind and talking about Pinterest, and I wish I had dove into Pinterest when I first got started. You know, I'm like playing the catch-up game now, but there are friends of mine who started at the same time and blew up just because of Pinterest.

So there are so many different resources out there that are at our disposal, but a lot of us don't take that action because we're really afraid that we either aren't qualified or we don't have the tech kind of brain to handle it. But I think it's really important to focus on it and just slowly but steadily build that skill.

10:35 – Gresham Harkless

It's like a muscle. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. That makes perfect sense. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I wanted to ask you for now the definition of what being a CEO means. And we're hoping to have different types of CEOs on the podcast so we can kind of peel back the onion and see exactly what everybody thinks the CEO is. So I want to ask you very specifically, what does being a CEO mean to you?

10:53 – Michelle Lewis

I think I'm still discovering what it means for me, but I think that when we're blessed to be able to build our own business, our empire, our team. It means that we have a specific mission in our hearts that we were born with, whatever that may be. So I think that that means that we are thought leaders. The online business, the world of entrepreneurship is revolutionizing the planet. And it's a wonderful thing and we can say, oh, I've made this much in our monthly income report, but it's bigger than that.

I see being a CEO as how am I helping to facilitate change on the planet. So I think whatever touches our heart in terms of bringing people water or helping people who are homeless or whatever we can do to take a percentage of what we earn to help other people is really what being a CEO is all about.

11:43 – Gresham Harkless

I love it, I love it. It's all about paying it forward. You reach a certain level or a certain stage and then you're able to kind of give back and make the world a better place. So I love that definition. I truly appreciate that. And Michelle, I thank you so much for taking some time out of your schedule. I wanted to pass you the mic, so to speak, to see if there's anything additional that you wanted to let our readers and our listeners know and then how best people can get out of you.

12:05 – Michelle Lewis

Awesome. Well, I think what I have to say just as parting hugs to everyone who's listening is that my friend and co-author Kristen Marquet wrote a book called Publicity Jumpstart, which you can reserve. It's just publicityjumpstart.com. But what I want to say about that is we think that until we're making millions, we don't have the voice, we don't have the leadership, we don't have the income to justify getting press and publicity. And that's something that I thought until I met Kristen.

So I wanna encourage everyone listening that even if you're just starting, work on getting your story down on paper, work on writing out how you wanna impact the planet, different things that you've learned as a business owner, or whatever it is and start figuring out how to implement applying for publicity into your schedule now because I'm telling you, this is a muscle that you have to develop, but you absolutely can do it.

And I think there are so many entrepreneurs out there who are probably listening who haven't gotten press yet and are going, I have no clue. It seems like this big hairy monster and I know it did for me too, but it's so important for you in terms of establishing your credibility, getting your voice out there and it's a hundred percent possible. So if you're listening today know that that is something that you can get for your brand that you deserve to have that and you deserve your voice to be heard. So that would be my parting love for everyone today.

13:28 – Gresham Harkless

I love it, I love it, I love it and if people are listening to this, what's the best, or watching this, what's the best way for them to get ahold of you?

13:35 – Michelle Lewis

They can absolutely grab our book, publicityjumpstart.com, and you can come and hang out with me anywhere. Visibility Vixen works for websites, Instagram, and everything. So come on over, say hello. Let me know that you heard me on I am CEO. I'd love to know and I just really encourage you guys, don't give up, put your mindset practices in place, and then just take that daily action, and that snowball effect does happen.

14:00 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, well thank you so much, Michelle. I truly appreciate everything that you're doing and all the gifts that you have and kind of sharing it with us so that we can learn to be better entrepreneurs and CEOs. So I want to give you a virtual high 5 and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

14:14 – Michelle Lewis

Thanks, Gresham. You

14:15 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Please tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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