It's easy to be "everywhere" when your idea is strong enough

Most advice about visibility tells you to just do more. Show up more and do all of the things!

Don't sleep on Substack. YouTube is king of content. Threads is having its moment.

You get the picture.

But consultants and coaches aren't playing the volume game. We do not need hundreds of thousands of followers to reach our goals. We like going deep with our clients and working with probably 20-40 per year in a really meaningful way.

But closing 40 clients a year, to take the top number, might need 120 sales calls. And 120 sales calls might need 1200 people to consider hopping on a call with you.

So, to take that top number, we still need a decent amount of volume for those outcomes to happen.

But being "everywhere" isn't your answer.

Instead you need to be better. And that is about being great at your craft aka the Doing, so other people will refer you, and clients will leave testimonials saying how happy they are, or stay with you longer.

But the idea behind your work actually has to be strong.

If you have a One Big Idea that's memorable, repeatable and referable you don't have to show up absolutely everywhere, because, as TED has told us: ideas spread.

Selena found this out this year.

She runs BUILD, a network for founders working on causes that matter. When she came to me, she was certainly not short of ideas. But finding the cohesive and clear idea behind her work, she'd been struggling to articulate solo.

"I knew there was something there. I knew there was traction, but just being able to explain it in a really succinct way, I was struggling with."

And before we fixed that, constantly "putting herself out there" was costing her a lot of time and energy.

"I was spending tons of time trying to close a smaller workshop, but it didn't actually lead to anything."

That looks like a lot of effort propped up with very little compounding beneath it.

Perhaps your business needs something similar to Selena.

We took her offers which existed, separately, doing their own thing, and put them under one umbrella, so they built on each other instead of competing. Then we found the one idea underneath all of it: networks will fund the future.

That idea then became her Hero Piece. A piece of writing built to carry the argument on its own, without her needing to explain it in every room or platform. And then something happened that she didn't engineer, post for, or chase…

Watch Selena describe the impact of our work together:

"I feel like I've just put out my Hero Piece, and people are using the language I put out, back. Seeing it written in other people's posts, or tagging me in it, saying 'I've seen BUILD everywhere and I really want to talk to you now'... that feeling that what I'm building is almost taking on its own life beyond me. That is what feels really, really exciting."

Selena didn't get everywhere by trying to be everywhere. We just worked on her LinkedIn and that core essay aka her Hero Piece. You can check it out here, it’s truly been transformative for her business and, is a very strong essay and well worth your time!

The difference? She became clear enough that other people started saying it for her. She felt confident in her idea, and her offers, enough to keep repeating them. To build the systems around them. Not keep adding new things into the mix.

And my role in all of this? Clarity, sharpening, suggestions, editing, accountability, momentum and challenge. Selena did some of this work alongside peers in a group setting too (a supper layer that matters as much as the 1-1 time).

But often there’s resistance. Something I warn clients about, that Selena called out too: "It can feel like you're going backwards. You've been building your business for two or three years, wanting to forge ahead — but this slowing down, making sure your positioning is right, building your authority thoughtfully... it can feel like it's taking a while to click into place. And then once it clicks, there's this 'oh, this is it' moment."

Alan had the same experience from a different angle when working with me.

Ten years of not being able to say, simply, what he did. Business kept coming thanks to the depth of his craft but not in a predictable, repeatable way. Then, after being inside Authority Club, he reached out to let me know some good news last December.

He was starting 2026 at £30k revenue locked in for Q1. This level of predictability hadn't happened in a decade. And you'll see with Alan's work, he's not showing up everywhere or all of the time. But his One Big Idea has opened doors in private networks and circles that are now doing heavy lifting for him.

Natalia had been a writer for one industry, a designer for another, and a social media manager for a third. Good at all of it, but none compounding.

She said: "The difference has been night and day. For the first time in years, I found saying what I did easy, and found myself finally understanding my own business without caveats for any of its variants. I had a lot of ideas and a lot of skills, but my professional narrative was scattered”

She's since worked on the dream creative and editorial projects that had been the goal all along, inside the film industry, thanks to her Body of Work opening doors previously unimaginable before her time inside my programme.

None of this happened because Selena, Alan or Natalia are more ‘disciplined’ ‘consistent’ or ‘extroverted’.

It happened because they had somewhere to do this work with structure around it, not another course to work through alone.

That's the true design of The Practice.

A quarterly 1-1 with me to set your direction, so you're not guessing what to focus on. A weekly drop-in to talk through the decision you're stuck on right now. Depth Days, so the thinking and writing actually gets protected time instead of getting bumped by whichever client emails first. And editorial feedback on the real thing you're building, not generic advice. My feedback has been described as game-changing, and honestly, I'm underselling how powerful this part is … I've seen version one of many Hero Pieces before they came to me, and the final version after.

So if you're already doing good work, already getting results, but fed up of the "just post more" advice and you suspect your gap is clarity and cohesion of what you already know, not new stuff, or more volume… then this is exactly what The Practice is built for.

I help you make your brilliance sharper. Your business clearer. Pathways to working with you stronger. More profitable, more structured. Your Body of Work will start to do the heavy lifting for you.

Applications close tonight. Founding member spots are limited to this intake only.

Or for full details of whats inside and how things go, check out this page.

Until next time,

Ellen

Ellen from The Ask is brought to you by Ellen Donnelly, Founder of The Ask, offering strategic business coaching & mentorship to Authority Entrepreneurs ready to grow a profitable business in a way that feels true to them.