Feeling Like a Best Kept Secret? Simple Strategies to Stand Out in a Noisy World with Amy Traugh
- Amy Traugh
- 4 days ago
- 11 min read
🎧 The Metrics Maven: Data Driven Business Growth Strategy for Solopreneurs is streaming on all platforms. Listen here. Also streaming on YouTube.
Stop Being Afraid to Sell: Why Selling is Serving
If you believe in the value of what you offer, selling isn’t pushy — it’s an act of service.
Too many solopreneurs shy away from making offers because they’re worried about coming across as “salesy.” But if you don’t tell people how you can help them, you’re actually keeping them stuck in the very problem they’re trying to solve.
Why Selling is Serving
When you hold back from selling, you’re not just avoiding discomfort — you’re withholding a solution. Your audience is actively looking for ways to solve their challenges, and if you believe your offer will help, it’s your responsibility to let them know about it.
Think of it this way:When you go to a restaurant, you expect a menu. You don’t see it as pushy — you see it as part of the experience. Your audience feels the same way when you clearly present your offers.
Why Sales Feel Hard
If selling feels uncomfortable, it often comes down to one of two reasons:
You’re not fully confident in the offer itself.
You’re not sold on your own ability to deliver the promised results.
When you address both, selling stops feeling like convincing and starts feeling like serving.
How to Build Sales Confidence
Refine your offer. Make sure it’s crystal clear who it’s for and what problem it solves.
Clarify the results. People buy outcomes, not just features.
Own your expertise. Trust that your skills and experience can deliver what you promise.
Confidence is contagious — when you believe in what you’re selling, your audience will feel it too.
Final Thought
Selling isn’t about pushing people into something they don’t want. It’s about showing up with confidence, presenting your offer clearly, and letting people make an informed choice. The more you believe in the value you provide, the easier selling becomes.
If you're ready to finally ditch the data drama and create a simple, repeatable process for growth, this is exactly what we do inside Metrics Mastery.
Get started for free at amytraugh.com and let’s build a business that’s backed by strategy, not stress.
Until next time, stop guessing and start growing.
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Transcript for Episode 430. Feeling Like a Best Kept Secret? Simple Strategies to Stand Out in a Noisy World
@0:00 - Amy Traugh (Amy Traugh)
So we were just talking about Fathom. It's to fall into the trap of thinking you just need to be louder, you need to be everywhere, or you need to be constantly reinventing your offers just to stay up with all the trends and get noticed.
But I know that since you are here listening to this podcast, you are not sitting back on the sidelines hoping that things will magically change.
You're actually doing the work, posting consistently with intention, and putting offers out there. You're working so flipping hard, and yet you still feel like a best-kept secret.
It feels like no one's really seeing you, and you know that you are really good at what you do.
You know that you can help people, but when you see others get the engagement, get the sales, and maybe even the success that you really are craving, it stings, right?
It's frustrating, discouraging, and maybe it's even making you start to question everything because you've tried being louder. You've tried niching down.
You've tried to be more polished, more visible, more valuable. So then why does it still feel like nothing's working?
Today, I want to offer a different perspective, one that I don't think is talked about often enough because this is something I even went through a while back, and...
I encourage you to reflect on this question. What if it isn't actually a visibility problem that you have? What if you're subconsciously limiting yourself, not because you're afraid of failing, but because you're afraid of what happens if it actually works?
Standing out doesn't actually mean being the loudest. It means being clear. And in today's scroll happy world, standing out doesn't require loud gimmicks or you to dance on reels.
I mean, unless you love that, then dance away. Like no judgment. I'm not a dancer, but that's okay. But what it really takes is clarity, consistency, and connection.
So in this episode, we're going to dig into why standing out feels so hard, even when you say that you want it and tactics you can.
Start implementing today to make it so much more simple, strategic, and a whole lot less overwhelming. I realize this may sound backwards.
Why on earth would you be afraid of the very thing you say that you want? More visibility, more clients, more income, more impact.
Isn't that the whole point of this? But success, sustainable success brings change. And with change comes pressure, expectation, visibility, identity shifts, all the things that can really quietly start to freak you out without you even realizing it.
Because the moment you start standing out, people start watching. You feel like all of the spotlight is on you.
And suddenly, you're not just building your business behind the scenes anymore. And you might... We feel pressure to keep performing at a certain level and the stakes feel even higher.
And subconsciously, we start thinking to ourselves, what if I can't keep up? What if people disagree with me? What if I outgrow the relationships or routines that feel safe?
So instead of risking, you hold back. And it's not intentional. It shows up in these sneaky, like business sounding ways like, oh, I just need to clarify my message a little bit more before I really show up.
I'm going to rework this offer again before I promote it. I don't know what I really need to post today.
And what happens is you get stuck in this cycle of perfectionism. And instead of standing out and promoting your offers, you avoid showing up altogether.
You're procrastinating doing the things that you know you need to do. And it feels like strategy. Doing all of these things are the things that all the experts are telling us to do, right?
But it's not. It's actually self-protection. It's your brain trying to keep you safe from what it sees as a threat.
Because standing out means being seen. And being seen opens you up to opinions, criticism, more responsibility, and change. And change, even the good kind of change, is a threat.
To our brains. Because when you succeed, our brain is thinking, oh my gosh, people are watching. Expectations are higher.
I'm outgrowing these parts of me. It's literally a threat to your nervous system and your identity. And with visibility comes these expectations, these subconscious fears.
And this is what the fear of success looks like in disguise. It is so real. But it doesn't have to run the show.
It's so much safer to our brain to almost succeed than to actually fully show up and to have to manage what comes next.
But you don't have to be fearless in order to succeed. You just have to notice the fear, acknowledge it, and keep going anyway.
And you can move through it with small strategic decisions that compound over time. And if this is sounding uncomfortably familiar, I promise you there is nothing wrong with you.
You are not broken. You are a human being running a business. And this is so much more common than you think.
There's actually a term to describe this. It's like this mental mind trap that keeps us stuck. And it's called the spotlight effect.
And it's really a psychological bias. That convinces us that everyone is paying so much attention to us, when in reality, they're not.
So this shows up like, okay, you stumbled in a reel, and so you're re-recording it. Or even on the podcast here, I mess up my words all the time.
But what the spotlight does is it would be like, well, you think everybody notices. Maybe they do, but most people aren't going to.
Or if you change your offer, you're making assumptions. Like, my audience thinks I'm all over the place. Or if you skip a week of posting, you're convinced your audience thinks that you've ghosted them.
So you start trying to hold yourself back. Again, trying to be perfect. Getting stuck in this endless cycle of overthinking and waiting until everything is beautifully perfect before showing up again.
But in the process, you become invisible. The spotlight effect lies to you, but it feels so real. So the key is reminding yourself.
That no one really even noticed. Not because they don't care, but because they're busy in their own life. They're juggling their kids.
They're dealing with an overflowing inbox. They're jumping on client calls. And they're trying to remember what they needed from Target.
They're not actually dissecting your Instagram caption or analyzing your email subject line. They're skimming. They're scrolling. They're half distracted, which means that you need to show up and repeat your message more than once.
Show up more than you think is enough and stop holding yourself back until it's perfect. But the thing that really builds that deep connection is when you show up authentically.
And this allows you to give yourself permission to show up messy, human, and honest with yourself, just being you.
So if you've been holding... yourself back. Like, guess what? You're normal. This is totally normal. But the first step to change is awareness.
And waiting until everything's perfect is holding you back. Fear doesn't have to be totally gone for you to take action.
It never will be. You just need to stop letting it call the shots. Because every time you're hiding, you're playing small, you're second-guessing yourself.
You are keeping the solution from someone that is out there right now, actively searching for you, your solution to solve the problem that they have.
And this doesn't even just delay your own growth. You're delaying their breakthrough too. So knowing all of this, how do we shift out of it?
Well, it's through my favorite thing. It's curiosity. Asking yourself, well, what will I actually, what am I actually afraid of will happen if this works out?
Who do I need to become? And what part of me isn't sure that I can actually handle that version of success that I say that I want?
And then I want you to take the next step. It can be the smallest step forward. Taking that step as if you already had what you wanted.
This is how momentum starts. You don't need to be loud. You don't need to be fearless. You just have to be brave and courageous and stop waiting until the fear disappears because confidence doesn't come first.
Clarity and consistent action do. So once we realize this and we take the fear and the pressure off of ourselves and realize what's really happening beneath the surface, we can talk strategy because, yes, there are some really practical ways to stand out in the world that we're living in.
But these strategies work best. So When you're not actually carrying around this subconscious fear and perfectionism on your back.
Because standing out is possible. And let's break this down into some ways that actually work and are sustainable because I know you're busy.
So first off, own your message and repeat it often. So if your audience can't clearly repeat back what you do or tell people about you in one sentence, that is your cue that you need to simplify.
And I know when you're doing this, you are going to feel like a broken record. But repetition builds recognition.
People need to hear your message multiple times in multiple ways before it lands. Think of when you're scrolling. When you're scrolling through social media, you're not looking with a magnifying glass at others.
It's like, okay, so-and-so is known for this. So-and-so is known for that. Like, it's that right. Number two, say something different, not just louder.
You don't have to be like shocking or stir up drama, but you do need to plant your flag in the sand and have a point of view.
If you disagree with the advice you keep seeing people in your niche say, then say it. If you have an easier way, say it.
This positions you as the go-to. This is making you stand out in a world full of noise because now people are viewing you as the authority.
Like, huh, I never really thought about it that way. And that then positions you as the trailblazer that you are.
Number three, we want to make sure it's ridiculously easy to buy from you because so many offers right now in the online space.
They... I like you need one of those little decoder rings to read it. So you really need to take the time to make sure that your offer is clear so that you know who it's for, what it does, and the problem that it solves so that people feel relief when they read your sales page because clear is what makes them feel confident in buying from you.
And we just talked about this in the last episode. So make sure you go back and listen to that.
Number four, show up consistently in one or two places, not all of them. Remember, simple is sustainable. Pick the platforms where your ideal client already is and commit to showing up there regularly.
You do not need to be everywhere despite what you think. You know, again, we get trapped in this cycle of comparison and we see these mega influencers in the online space.
And yeah, they're on TikTok. They're on Instagram, they're on Facebook, they're running ads like all over the place. But they started at ground zero.
And if you're trying to spread yourself thin, it's just going to hold you back even more. So really be intentional about putting yourself where your ideal client is.
Number five, let your personality out because your dry humor, the blunt honesty, that passionate raid, the rant that you didn't post because it felt like, I don't know, should I say this?
That's the stuff that people remember. That's what makes you relatable and real. I cannot even begin to tell you how many times when I was first starting out in the online space, I would DM my bestie, I'm like, I really want to say this, but I'm really scared.
And again, it's that fear of judgment that starts to bubble up. But think about the people. Why did you buy from them?
Well, chances are because it wasn't because they were the most polished, it's because you resonated with them, because you trusted them.
And people buy from people. And I know it's such a basic thing that we all realize, but we're like censoring the parts of us that actually make us stand out.
And number six, track what's working. You know I could not get through an episode without mentioning metrics. And visibility without any type of strategy behind it can be exhausting.
And this is why tracking your content, your conversion, your sales metrics matters, because when you know exactly what's working, you have the ability to double down on it and let go of what's not.
So if you have been stuck in the frustration, like you're doing everything right. And still not seeing the growth and visibility that you want, I want you to pause and check in with yourself.
Is this really a visibility issue? Or are you really holding yourself back because of a fear that you didn't realize was actually running the show behind the scenes?
You don't need to push any harder. You just need clarity. And you can stand out without burnout, without being louder, without changing who you are.
You don't need to be fearless. You just need to stop letting fear make decisions for you. It is about being clear, consistent, and you.
Because right now there is someone out there looking for you. They need the solution that you have to solve their problem.
They're not looking for perfect. They're looking for real. So if this episode resonated with you. This is exactly what I love helping clients with one-on-one inside of my signature program, Metrics Mastery.
Head on over to amytraugh.com and get started for free. And until next time, stop guessing and start growing.
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