Boost Your Confidence to Boost Your Visibility – Webinar

Julie Brown & Mia Scharphie

This week I want to talk about a “Boost Your Confidence to Boost Your Visibility” webinar I attended live on September 18, 2019 with Mia Scharphie and Julie Brown. These are two great women I have discovered over the last six months. Julie Brown is a business development strategist, networking coach, and does public speaking on business development. She runs workshops and even have 1-minute pro-tips on her website. I highly recommend checking out her pro-tips to help you build your confidence with networking and business development. And connect with her on linkedin.

I first found her through the EntreArchitect Podcast episode 271, “How to Build Your Network by Creating Meaningful, Lasting Relationships.” I’d recommend listening to that podcast as well. Many Architects obtain work from networking and having repeat clients. Learning how to properly build your network with meaningful connections is more effective than trying to have as many connections as possible.

Mia Scharphie, I discovered through this webinar that was set up from an email from Julie Brown. (See you will never know where connections will lead you) She has a masters in landscape architecture at Harvard, trained in women empowerment facilitation, and currently runs Build Yourself Workshop. She specializes in career coaching women at mid level of their career in creative fields. (architecture, interior, landscape, engineering, and so on) These are women trying to move on to the next level and looking to make sure they are not the ones holding themselves back. 

The webinar was focused on confidence and how it related to visibility in your career. Confidence as a whole makes your marketable from a personal and company level. Future potential coworkers, connections, consultants, and clients. Take a moment to google yourself. What comes up? Some things may be outliers but most things you are in complete control over.

For instance, in the professional world I typically go by my full name, Katelyn Rossier. The first image that comes up for me is a congratulations image when I was a recipient of the Paula Maynes AIA Pennsylvania A.R.E. Grant. This is something I applied for, won, and am still very proud of. This is a personal achievement but it is also a spotlight to my employer at the time. Your achievements not only help your personal branding but also helps a company grow and network. I will also note that photo would never be there if the company I was working for didn’t post about it. I’m forever thankful they posted that announcement.

Building confidence is not a simple step by step task. Confidence itself varies based on your own traits and personality. What works for you may not work for someone else. But if you try a variety of approaches you can discover what works best for you. Mia notes that a good way to get started is understanding how your own self doubt and identifying your own inner critic. Knowing where you are coming from will help you be able to know which battle your facing and leverage that to grow your confidence. Below is a screen shot of the 31 flavors of the inner critic. Which one(s) do you have occur?

The Confidence Code by Katty Kay & Claire Shipman goes over that confidence is not a state of being it is the willingness to act. To gain confidence you need to start acting, risking, and failing. You need to stop mumbling, apologizing and prevaricating. Everything is a learned process. Things are never perfect when you first start out. I highly recommend checking out this book! 

There are two common misconceptions regarding confidence. 

1. Confidence helps you do important things. Helps you fast forward your career.
2. It can be LEARNED

3 Strategies to Build Confidence

Mia lists 3 strategies to help build confidence. The important part to understand is that you need to pick the one that fits best for you. It’s not about trying to do all three strategies but more about pick the one way that works best for you so you can master it. 

1. Practice in Public
   • All of the rehearsals in the world didn’t add up to that one performance.Being witnessed being out there in the world. Practicing you craft can help you practice while also boosting your visibility. 
   • Take the time to practice! Julie Brown explains that when she has a new talk she goes to her husband’s office of architects and practices the speech in front of them, asks for feedback. What is working. What is not. Being witnessed out there in the world makes you practice with more focus and attention. If you don’t have people, what about your PETS!
   • A lot of people hide and not put you out there to create that state of being. A big avoidance strategy is email instead of picking up the phone and putting yourself out there. Fun Fact: Only 11% of email actually gets open.
2. Act as IF
   • This talks about the importance of body language and how you act in regards to leaving a positive first impression. First impressions are based on when you walk into a space, and not when you approach someone to have a conversation.  
   • Mia describes the doorway exercise to work on body language and first impression. When you walk around the office every time you walk through a doorway, stand up straight, look up, and smile. I have given it a try and it is definitely weird when you first start out. It is starting to become more of a habit for myself.
   • Another example of a way to practice is to think of someone that you admire and ACT like them. It could be a friend, mentor, whoever. For the moments that you really need to own it step into their shoes and ACT like you are that person. What would they do? This can help you tap into borrowed confidence by borrowing their way of being or acting like they would. 
3. Don’t Strive, Ritualize!
   • This is about making consistent habits and rituals out of doing the things that scare you. The repeated action can help to make it more of a numbers game. 

The best part is you can listen to the full webinar on Mia Scharphie’s youtube channel “Build Yourself Workshop”. She also has some other collaborative videos, book reviews, and other inspirational videos focus on women in the design industry. Check out her youtube channel and the build yourself website!

I’d love to have Mia Scharphie to Pittsburgh to give a workshop and do a speaking engagement. Comment below if you’d like me to look into that!

Written by Katelyn Rossier