The Visibility Industrial Complex - What Solopreneurs Need To Understand About the Attention Game
What Solopreneurs Need To Understand About the Attention Game
What is the Visibility Industrial Complex?
The Visibility Industrial Complex is a system where solopreneurs are pressured to remain constantly visible in order to be seen as credible, relevant, or legitimate — even when that visibility no longer leads to connection or meaningful work.
Why does marketing feel exhausting for solopreneurs?
Because visibility practices have become a requirement rather than a tool, turning self-promotion into ongoing emotional labor.
Why doesn’t more visibility lead to more buying?
Repeated exposure without relevance creates noise, not trust, and buyers disengage.
Is this a personal branding failure?
No. It’s a system problem driven by incentives that reward attention over alignment.
This episode is cultural critique exposing how the visibility-industrial complex has convinced an entire generation that being seen is survival. This conversation reveals the lore and accompanying machinery behind the pressure to be visible all the time, in order to be successful. The Visibility Industrial Complex is profitable, but not for many of the actual participants.
Take a look behind the curtain to notice who's profiting while business owners scramble for attention, validation, and relevance on platforms designed to extract, not serve.
#attention economy #visibility culture #solopreneur #personal branding fatigue
Transcript
This is not an episode about marketing tactics or social media strategy.
Speaker:It's about what happens to people when visibility and attracting
Speaker:attention become a prerequisite for your financial survival.
Speaker:Hey Del Wong, and welcome to the podcast where we're exploring all the
Speaker:things that go into surviving as a human in this rapidly changing world.
Speaker:I'm talking today to business owners, especially if you are a solopreneur.
Speaker:Maybe you're a coach, a consultant maybe you serve this community.
Speaker:These are typically solopreneurs with small teams that run a business
Speaker:that depends on a personal brand.
Speaker:And if you are in this group, you probably already know how important
Speaker:it is to get visibility and attention.
Speaker:So what I'm covering today is what I have coined, the visibility industrial complex.
Speaker:Yes, this is the visibility Industrial contracts con complex because it is
Speaker:its own ecosystem that works in a weird way, and if you don't quite
Speaker:understand it, it can get the best of you and leave you feeling depleted,
Speaker:frustrated, and disappointed.
Speaker:So what is the visibility ecosystem?
Speaker:It is a. Perception.
Speaker:It is a school of thought that says the more exposure you get, the more
Speaker:authority you'll get, and that everything is about being seen in the right rooms.
Speaker:That if you can do that as a solopreneur, you will be seen by decision makers.
Speaker:You'll get noticed, and therefore you can attract some clients.
Speaker:You will see this if you are considering opportunities to speak
Speaker:on women business leaders, events.
Speaker:These are everywhere.
Speaker:They're usually very brightly colored pages.
Speaker:They very upbeat energy positive vibes, and it's for women business
Speaker:owners, which is like massive.
Speaker:Or maybe it's a podcast talking about things like inspiration, mindset.
Speaker:It's all about keeping your focus.
Speaker:There's a certain canon of thought.
Speaker:It's a type of media.
Speaker:And just notice though.
Speaker:There's a whole system in how these visibility, industrial
Speaker:complex machines work.
Speaker:They are really looking for people to participate and speak in their events.
Speaker:So they're looking for speakers, and if you're a consultant or a
Speaker:coach, you're looking to speak and it would seem like a great fit.
Speaker:Sometimes there's a little bit of a pay to play.
Speaker:Hey, if you wanna speak on our stage, 'cause we have 70,000 or a hundred
Speaker:thousand viewers and listeners, we just need you to pay X amount and pro
Speaker:promise to promote to your list three solo emails, and we all work together
Speaker:to make this a fantastic event.
Speaker:Take a step back.
Speaker:And just notice for a moment how undefined these audiences are.
Speaker:Women business owners who want to stop playing small and achieve their
Speaker:full potential and find their voice and step into abundance mindset.
Speaker:All that is wonderful.
Speaker:The audience is very undefined.
Speaker:And what do you get after participating in a Visibility Industrial complex event,
Speaker:whether it's a podcast or a summit?
Speaker:Notice that the outcomes are implied.
Speaker:They're not specified and it's usually something around building your list.
Speaker:These events are usually list building events, not necessarily leads.
Speaker:They can work great if you keep a very clear eye on how these machines
Speaker:work so that you can decide if if whether something is right for you.
Speaker:And the key thing that's being sold is that visibility itself
Speaker:is the self-evident value without specifying to whom or for what.
Speaker:So when you speak to these organizers, they might tell you they have an email
Speaker:list of a hundred thousand or whatever, or they're anticipating X billions
Speaker:of folks participating in the summit.
Speaker:It's very difficult for them to prove that.
Speaker:And often the larger the list size, the smaller and lower the open rate.
Speaker:This is a big change from how things were say maybe even 10 years ago
Speaker:where the whole thing was about the bigger the list, the better.
Speaker:We are now moving into an era where people are exhausted with spam emails
Speaker:that don't really speak to them.
Speaker:And in order to develop a following that really resonates with you.
Speaker:Sometimes the smaller the list size, the better.
Speaker:So if you're participating in these groups, just notice the pattern that they
Speaker:might tell you how big the audience is.
Speaker:There's no proof.
Speaker:Sometimes it's a pay to play.
Speaker:Everyone is a speaker.
Speaker:Everyone is selling.
Speaker:But no one is buying.
Speaker:That's the pattern at these events.
Speaker:These events are often very disorganized, meaning the branding looks good,
Speaker:the landing page looks great, but much of the content is the same.
Speaker:Be noticed.
Speaker:Find your voice.
Speaker:Stop playing small.
Speaker:This is your year to truly break out six figures or whatever it is.
Speaker:And what inevitably happens if you don't know about these things upfront,
Speaker:you may experience a lot of what I call emotional letdown after the event.
Speaker:That's what it feels like.
Speaker:You expected a hundred thousand people to open your email or see your
Speaker:talk or whatnot, and inevitably the only people that really benefit from
Speaker:these events are the organizers who get everybody's lists and all these
Speaker:speakers paying X amount to participate.
Speaker:Because the organizers often aren't really vested with how many views or downloads
Speaker:of people's freebies actually occur.
Speaker:They're making money off of the speakers themselves.
Speaker:That means the quality of the speakers is of lesser importance.
Speaker:They're more interested in you doing your share to send out an email,
Speaker:three separate emails to your list, whatnot, because that goes to them.
Speaker:And after that, we don't know.
Speaker:So it can feel like, wow, I expected an onslaught of people reaching out to
Speaker:me or getting my lead, Jen, my gift, and maybe it was a fraction of that.
Speaker:So it's good to adjust your expectations so that you don't end up disappointed.
Speaker:Because often the larger the events, the more speakers are in an event,
Speaker:the smaller result everyone gets.
Speaker:So if you are thinking more is better, like my goodness, I'll be
Speaker:on a summit with 20 other people and we're all emailing our lists.
Speaker:And yes, technically it should end up to be a monstrous size of
Speaker:people getting emails and opting in.
Speaker:The reality of consumer behavior is actually the opposite.
Speaker:So it's just something to keep in mind.
Speaker:So you might wanna ask yourself who this type of ecosystem actually serves.
Speaker:Well, it serves the organizers because they get consistent revenue.
Speaker:It serves coaches who serve this group.
Speaker:So if you are a business coach and you serve solopreneurs, coaches, consultants,
Speaker:this type of group, this is great because they are your ideal customer.
Speaker:So just like you are a solopreneur and they're a solopreneur, it turns
Speaker:out that they are your clients.
Speaker:So naturally you would wanna participate.
Speaker:So anybody who's selling to other solo per solopreneurs, these summits can be useful.
Speaker:You might wanna contrast this, however, that if you are a consultant
Speaker:selling complex services, this model might not work for you.
Speaker:For example, in my world, I am a, an advisor to a lot of leaders in the AI
Speaker:space, but I already know that these women in business events don't fit me as well.
Speaker:Maybe at one time they did, but not at this point because I'm
Speaker:offering something that's complex.
Speaker:It's not a quick automagic.
Speaker:Get my legion.
Speaker:This model doesn't work for people trying to reach real business leaders.
Speaker:It's for reaching other solopreneur business owners.
Speaker:This model also doesn't really work If you, if your work is a long cycle,
Speaker:trust-based work, it's quick, it's fast.
Speaker:Yes, you can get attention and it might feel a little transactional.
Speaker:So for example, if you're just wanting to sell a course for $97.
Speaker:And of course, we hope that it fills your pipeline for the next level.
Speaker:These can be useful if your customer is in this target audience.
Speaker:I wanna take a moment to just explain why solopreneurs are especially
Speaker:vulnerable to what I call the visibility industrial complex.
Speaker:Solopreneurs have a lot of distribution anxiety, meaning they
Speaker:know they need to get out there.
Speaker:How many of you know that you need to get out there?
Speaker:And so the identity of a solopreneur is being tied to output.
Speaker:How much stuff can I get out there?
Speaker:How many people can see me?
Speaker:And I've been told that if I'm not visible.
Speaker:Well, I'm failing, right?
Speaker:Because if people don't know I exist, it's very difficult to sell.
Speaker:And this is not a personal thing.
Speaker:This is structural.
Speaker:It's incentive driven.
Speaker:It's not a moral thing, it's incentive driven.
Speaker:And I think it's important that we keep this empathy perspective.
Speaker:So, no, we're not dissing on these events.
Speaker:We understand the machinery and how it works so that you
Speaker:can use it to your advantage.
Speaker:So how can you spot when something might be part of the
Speaker:visibility industrial complex?
Speaker:You might notice that there is a big gap between the aesthetic
Speaker:promotion versus the operational gap.
Speaker:What I mean by that is the landing pages can look fabulous, beautifully
Speaker:designed gray colors, positive vibes.
Speaker:You just feel drawn in, right?
Speaker:But you might notice that there's low editorial standards.
Speaker:Maybe the copy, it looks good, but when you try to think what is it actually
Speaker:saying it, it's often repetitive.
Speaker:It's not really fresh.
Speaker:It's designed to speak to a lot of broad people at once, which
Speaker:means it's not really speaking to any one particular person.
Speaker:Get out there.
Speaker:This is your year to stop playing small, find your voice, make an
Speaker:impact in the world, all that.
Speaker:You'll also notice that from an operational point of view,
Speaker:there's no post-event integration.
Speaker:Meaning once the event's over, you're pretty much on your own.
Speaker:The host has done their job, you're on your own.
Speaker:In terms of follow-up, it also means you don't really know how
Speaker:the event did as far as stats, how many people actually tuned in?
Speaker:If it's a multi-day event, you'll notice that there's usually
Speaker:more people on the first day.
Speaker:It drops off sharply on the second day, and of course, numbers
Speaker:are quite low on the third day.
Speaker:So if you can try to be placed on the first day early, you'll notice
Speaker:that there's no outcome tracking.
Speaker:So if you participate in one of these events and you ask the host for the
Speaker:stats, oftentimes it's very vague.
Speaker:So you might say that they have learned how to brand sophistication.
Speaker:They can brand the sophistication without actually building it,
Speaker:and that's a powerful line.
Speaker:So I'm just gonna close because I have been through these events before
Speaker:and the question is, does it work?
Speaker:And here I want to acknowledge nuance because the answer is hands down, yes,
Speaker:for certain business models, no, for other types of businesses, especially
Speaker:if you do high trust consulting.
Speaker:I just wanna remind everybody that visibility does not equal trust.
Speaker:Exposure doesn't necessarily mean relevance and attention doesn't
Speaker:necessarily generate demand.
Speaker:So you might think for yourself some questions as you feel through this.
Speaker:You might ask yourself what kind of visibility actually
Speaker:creates trust in your world?
Speaker:You might look at a landing page and ask yourself, who is this really for?
Speaker:And you might even ask, what would it mean to opt out?
Speaker:Even partially.
Speaker:So just sit with this and feel through.
Speaker:You might at first be buzzing a bit like, oh my God, this is so excited.
Speaker:I'm gonna be part of this event and a hundred thousand people are gonna see me.
Speaker:Just as you sit there, drop a little bit deeper.
Speaker:And know that this is how the visibility industrial complex works, that people
Speaker:run businesses offering this service to solopreneurs, and their revenue is from
Speaker:you, not really the participants, right?
Speaker:So it's just food for thought.
Speaker:I thought I'd share this because earlier on I wish someone had told me back
Speaker:in the day when I was working a lot more with the one-on-one leadership,
Speaker:personal development, coaching, life coaching and things like that.
Speaker:I didn't know.
Speaker:And I participated in a lot of these events that never really panned out.
Speaker:So if this saves you some dollars and anxiety, I hope it's useful.
Speaker:And at the same time, if you know these are your peeps, then you know
Speaker:how to utilize it more effectively so that you get a good return on
Speaker:your time, energy and emotions.
Speaker:Hope this is helpful.
