The Trust Factor: Why Visibility Without Credibility Falls Flat

You know that person, always visible, impossible to ignore. But when they speak? Everyone shuts down. In this episode, Lemon breaks down why visibility without trust is just noise. Discover what actually builds credibility and women's leadership influence, and how to show up in a way that opens doors you never knocked on. This is the foundation every woman leader needs.

We're talking about how credibility compounds like interest, why your reputation enters the room before you do, and what trusted leadership actually looks and sounds like (hint: it's quieter than you think).

If you've been chasing visibility, this episode will shift your whole strategy.

In this episode:

• Why being seen and being trusted are two very different things
• How small, consistent deposits build compounding credibility
• Why reputation is currency — and how fast the wrong behavior spends it
• What happens when people start talking about you in rooms you're not in

The Well Lived Society is for women who want board seats, civic influence, and real community impact — and are ready to lead with substance, not just presence.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Let me tell you about one of the most visible people in our community meeting. This man shows up everywhere. He is very loud. He is a very consistent person. He has zero influence in our community. Because every time he shows up to a public meeting, he spouts the most racist and hateful commentary that I've probably ever heard. And so when he opens his mouth, people shut down, they tune out. Like he has visibility. Let's say that he has visibility, but he has zero influence. And that distinction is going to be the whole episode. Hi, I'm Lemon Price. Welcome back to the Well Lived Society, where we talk about leadership for women who really want to make an impact in their community. They want board seats. They want to run their PTA. They want to maybe run for office someday. We're really here to help you cultivate your leadership skills and not just in a public or you know community-focused way, but also at home. How are you leading at home? How are you leading yourself? And so I really treat leadership holistically here. And so today I want to talk about visible ambition and trusted leadership and how they're not necessarily the same. And so I think that visibility is really easy. And I hate visibility metrics. I hate when people tell me visibility is their goal. I don't think that visibility is a big achievement. I just don't, I think visibility can be easy. You could be like the loud guy at our community meetings who is very visible and he gets nothing accomplished. He gets nothing accomplished. To me, showing up is the floor. It is the ground level. I don't think it's an achievement. And so, like this guy at the meetings, you can occupy space without holding any weight. I'm gonna say that again. You can occupy space without holding any weight. You can be in the room where decisions are made and have zero influence over those rooms. Loud and frequent and present do not automatically equal respected, sought after, or followed. And so what I'm hoping with this episode is that we dive into not just like do people see you, but do people lean in when you speak? Do people come to you for advice? Do people trust your opinion? Do people believe that you are the woman who can get the job done? Because those are two very different things. The guy I mentioned three minutes ago, everybody knows him in town. He has name recognition. People recognize him when he goes out. People know, but he holds no influence. And I don't want you to be that guy. And I highly doubt if you're listening to this that you're out at community meetings saying hateful rhetoric, you know, hateful and racist rhetoric. You're not doing that. I mean, uh obviously this man is an extreme example. Maybe not. Maybe you guys have somebody like that at your community meetings, and you would know that if you're going to community meetings, but I really want to encourage you to know that visibility is bare minimum. It is, it is the ground floor. Like, I really don't think if you have some visibility in your community, I really, I truly think that is just a starting level. And so I want to talk about how credibility compounds like interest. And so if you know anything about compound interest, this is something I think about all the time. It's just like compound interest or like, yeah, like people live off of the dividends, right? So what you put in is going to multiply, your credibility will compound, and then people can pull off of the dividends of that. And so here's the thing every time you do what you said you were going to do, that is like a small deposit into your investment portfolio, right? It is just every time you follow through on what you say you're going to do, it is a small deposit into whatever your investment account is, whether it's a local women's organization, whether it's for your actual like city council. And here's the thing here's what I want to say about this too. This doesn't apply just in formal situations. This applies with your friends, this applies with your coworkers, this applies in everything. Because who you are in private, I say this all the time, who you are in private is who you are in public. And so if I, if there's somebody personally in my life who is like reliable, dependable, and they're just like a friend of mine, but they're very reliable, very dependable. They always follow through on things. And guess what? When something comes up publicly that they might be a good fit for, I can trust them and I can recommend them for that because they've made those small deposits into that investment account, right? Which could be our relationship. Every time you tell a hard truth with some integrity, that's another small deposit. Can I trust you to be honest? Even when it's difficult, even when it sucks, can you have hard conversations? And maybe we'll do a whole episode around having hard conversations because a lot of times people think, first of all, if I used to dread hard conversations, they would eat at me and I would have all this anxiety. And then when I had them, they were literally so much easier and I'd waste all this time being anxious about them. And I think we do that a lot. Or now the new you know thing is words are violence. And if you disagree with something or you have a hard conversation, then it's violent. And I can't, I really cannot with that like grow up unless like the words are actually inciting violence, words are not violence. So having a hard conversation again is another small deposit, as long as you're doing it with integrity, right? We we're not in a shouting match, we're not, you know, we're not degrading each other, we're not doing any of those things. So as long as you are doing it with grace and candor and just some just some poise, like that's another small deposit that compounds another one. Every time you show up for someone and not just in front of someone. So every time you show up, even if it's to take a backseat, every time that you show up, again, it's another small deposit. And again, over time, that account pays dividends that you didn't ask for, which are referrals. It's endorsement. It is you being recommended for something or an introduction to somebody else. That is what that is. Credibility compound. So when you show up, when you're honest, when you are helpful, the dividends are the referrals, the it is you being introduced to people who can help your career. It is new opportunities. It's you getting invited into spaces where decisions happen. And then here's the thing when I think about that guy who is loud and abrasive, that's a withdrawal. He's in the negative. Okay. You want to be in the positive. You want your account to be building interest. This guy, every time he shows up, because of his behavior, he is withdrawing from his account. He is in the negatives. He, the bank is calling him, asking him to put some deposits in, and he doesn't have any to give. Because here's the thing it comes from the inside, it comes from the heart. If your heart is hateful and angry and bitter and you're negative, then guess what is going to spew out? Hateful, angry, bitter rhetoric. When you are just an honest and good person and you've done work on yourself, then that's what comes out. Okay, then the bank is saying, hey, guess what? You can live off the interest. And that's what you want. You want to live off the interest of your reputation. And I do think that reputation is currency. And so you want to spend it wisely. The thing is, is that your reputation will be in the room before you do. If people are talking about opportunities who know you or know your reputation, then guess what? Your reputation was there before you ever were, before you ever knew the opportunity was available. Again, this just happened to me this past week. I got an email from the department head of my graduate. The email was about a women's leadership conference that the college hosts, and it's with alumni all over the world who fly in for this event. And I was nominated again by my department to attend the event. And they were like, we're paying for you to go. This was not on my radar. I did not apply for it. I did not ask for it. But because of the reputation I've managed to cultivate, now, mind you, I only started graduate school in January. So from January to the end of March, I've built up a such a reputation. I have delivered in such a way that I have now been nominated for a board that did not exist. I was asked to be on the board. I was asked to develop a leadership training for the college. And now I am attending a women's leadership conference that the college is paying for. Was not on my radar. And yet here we are because my reputation was in the room before I was. People are already deciding how much weight to give your words based on your history. They are deciding how they want to interact with you. They're deciding what opportunities to give. They are deciding what type of person you are based on your history. Is this person somebody we want representing us? And the guy who is hateful and divisive, right? He doesn't just fail to build, but he destroys his currency fast. And here's the thing about a burned reputation: it is so slow to build and it is impossible to hide. Like people will know if you have screwed up in the past, especially if you live in a small town like I do. My town population is like 3,000 people. Okay. And I have major cities all around me. Like there's one 10 minutes away, there's another one like 45 minutes away. There's another one an hour away. So like I'm surrounded by big cities. But when I want to make an impact in like small local government, guess what? It's the reputation that I have that matters. And so here's the thing: trusted leadership, I'm gonna tell you, is a lot, it's a lot less loud. People will come to you. You're not, you don't have to chase the opportunity that has happened to me consistently in school. I have had opportunity after after opportunity that I did not ask for. People talk about you in rooms that you are not in, which is what is happening to me. It's exactly what's happening to me. And that's exactly how this happened. I'm just seeing it happen at graduate school, but it's happened before. It's happened in other rooms, it's happened in other spaces. And then you get to become the person that people will use as a reference point. You know, remember, oh my gosh, there was like that trend. It was like, what would Jesus do? People will be asking, well, what would she do in this situation? Not that I'm equating you with Jesus, but like if you're used to running an event, if you're used to being the go-to person, if you have created a reputation for yourself as somebody who gets things done, who thinks innovatively and brings fresh ideas and perspectives and is open and willing and kind, then when people are in a situation, they're gonna start asking, well, like what would Lemon do in this situation? What would Susie do in this situation? How would she handle it? Try to think like her. And so, what I want you to take from this episode is not to perform visibility. I want you to build trust with people around you, and that is personally and professionally. And the goal is not for everyone to know you, right? It is for the right people to believe in you. And so if you've been thinking about leadership development, if you've been thinking about wanting to get on a board, or you know, you want some more civic engagement in your life, then here's what I'm gonna tell you. I've had a lot of DMs on Instagram asking for help about with this because this is my skill set. Networking, all those kind of fun things are my skill set. So I am putting together, I'm gonna start in June. Um, I'm putting together like a six-week fellowship. It's going to be really intimate where we learn like how to how to really end up in these spots of influence. So I'm gonna talk to you about how nonprofit boards and civic bodies actually operate, how the appointments and nominations happen, not just like in, you know, in theory, but like I'm literally in the middle of doing this for a nonprofit right now. We're gonna talk about positioning, we're gonna build relational equity, we're gonna navigate governance rooms and maybe go over some rules of governance because that is really important. And then I want you to create like a 90-day strategy to secure your first or your next board seat, something like that. And so if you are interested, there's an there's a bigger description in the show notes for you. It's the only place to get it right now, and there's an application to it, and it's not expensive. I just want you to know like I didn't make this expensive because I think that if you have a heart to serve, like then you should do that. And I don't want cost to be like a big barrier, so just know if you're like, oh, this sounds great, but it's gonna there's not even a comma, okay, in the in the price point. I'll just tell you that. Like, it's like less than a hundred dollars a week to do this, and so it'll be small, it'll be intimate. We'll start in June because I just wanted to give myself a little time to get through finals and then kick this off, which is crazy when this comes out. I think I'll only have like two weeks of school left. So I wanted to get through school and then give myself time to decompress and then roll right into it. So, anyway, so this is for you. If you're like, I really would like a board seat, I would really like some help, I'd really like to be in that position. Then there is there's an a bigger document, it's like three pages long, explaining everything, what you're getting, what we're doing, structure, all that kind of fun stuff, and then an application. All the application is is I just want to know why you want to serve, where you want to serve, what your experience has been like, so that I can help you figure out your place in the community. That's really all it's for. So if you're interested, like I said, it's in the show notes. And if you have questions, just DM me on Instagram and be like, hey, I have a question about this. That's fine. My Instagram, it's just the lemon price, but it's in the show notes too. If you just want to reach out and connect and ask some questions, that's in there for you too. So I am so excited. Also, I've been having incredible conversations with some really incredible people. So the show will have guests again soon who are in the spaces that you want to be in, who are PR strategists and helping just do really incredible things. So I'm excited for that. So stay tuned. Those will start coming probably mid May to June also. Again, just wanted to give myself time to get through finals and all those kind of fun things because our finals are intense in this school. It's very intense. So, anyway, so I will be doing that and I will see you all next time. Tootoloop.