For three years, I didn’t release my podcast.
Not because I felt scared, but because I had standards. It needed to be filmed professionally, in a studio, with the right director.
This seemed perfectly reasonable. Except that the co-host lives hours away, the director lives somewhere else entirely, there were social distancing restrictions in place at the time, and so it just… didn’t happen. For three years.
Eventually I said ‘let’s just record’ and that’s what we did. No planning, no rehearsal, just truth. Now Dauntless PR Unfiltered has taken off. Three years later than it could have.
Here’s the thing to sit with – I was never telling myself I was scared. I was giving myself standards that seemed perfectly logical.
And that’s what visibility blocks usually look like in the real world among entrepreneurs, rather than paralysis, negative self-talk, or obvious self-sabotage. It’s a perfectly plausible, reasonable-sounding delay.
I’ve seen this play out over and over again in the 15 years I’ve been working with high-level individuals in PR.
Someone with a premium offer wondering why it isn’t converting who hasn’t actually made a direct pitch to anyone. Another pulling their website down immediately after a major press feature. An author suddenly wanting to scrap their entire book the day before launch. Someone turning down a brilliant opportunity because, they say, it’s not in alignment.
The most dangerous visibility blocks are the ones that sound like wisdom. And that last one has become an epidemic.
Sure, sometimes something may genuinely not be in alignment – but confusing discomfort with misalignment is costing entrepreneurs significant money and opportunity.
With real misalignment, there’s a lack of desire. You imagine not doing it and feel relief.
Fear dressed as misalignment feels different. It’s overcomplicated. It comes with conditions – I’m definitely doing this, but only once the website is ready, once the team is bigger, when I’m not as busy. The desire is still there; it’s just protected behind elaborate criteria.
The higher your intelligence, the more convincing your avoidance becomes. You don’t hear an internal voice saying don’t. You just find better reasons to wait.
Here’s a simple way to tell the difference. Start taking the action – messily and imperfectly. Then watch your energy. The discomfort that turns into momentum was fear. Discomfort that deepens into dread is probably genuine misalignment.
Visibility blocks don’t announce themselves as fear. They announce themselves as taste, timing, and standards. Which is precisely why so many sharp, capable entrepreneurs stay stuck behind work that is almost ready and opportunities that weren’t quite the right fit.
Three years is a long time to wait for permission you never even needed. I am proof of that.
The thing with visibility blocks is that you never know how much it’s costing you – the clients you didn’t pitch, the audience you didn’t build, the opportunities you talked yourself out of with language that sounded entirely reasonable at the time.
The good news is that once you can see the pattern, everything changes.
