Black All Year - The Queen of Being Seen

[Steph Edusei] (0:08 - 1:41)

Hi everyone, I'm Steph Edusei and this week on Black All Year we're turning up the spotlight with none other than the queen of being seen, Jenny Kovacs. Jenny is a powerhouse speaker, mentor, coach and businesswoman. She is a visibility specialist on a mission to help professionals show up and shine.

She's appeared regularly on the BBC, spoken to audiences across the globe and is the creator of the Visibility Activator system, which is a game-changing framework built on five powerful pillars that help you raise your profile without selling your soul. So, whether you're tired of being the best kept secret in your industry or want to step into the spotlight without feeling like a show-off, Jenny's here to show you how. So, let's talk mindset, visibility and how to make your mark.

Unapologetically. Hi, welcome to Black Hole Year, Jenny. It's really lovely to be able to actually talk to you because we've been connected online for quite a while and we met, it's pre-pandemic I think, when we met face to face, which now is five years ago easily, if not more.

So lovely to meet you online. And Jenny, you are, I knew, I could remember you had a title. What's the title?

And then I spotted it. The Queen of Being Seen. So, tell us about what makes you the Queen of Being Seen and about you and what you do.

[Jenny Kovacs] (1:41 - 6:30)

So, this is interesting. I often, even after like nearly 15 years, I still feel like I have to explain the Queen of Being Seen. So let me talk about how that came about.

When I started doing this officially in 2010, I was working with clients to help them really with their presentation skills and if they were nervous about that kind of stuff. And very quickly afterwards, a lot of them would contact me and say, yeah, I'm definitely more confident and I'm doing A, B and C now. And then they said what felt like really random things.

One of them said, oh, but I've just done this thing for Channel 4. Thought, really? And, oh, I've just been called into Parliament to do this thing.

I was like, really? And it turned out that the confidence that they were kind of gaining, I guess, was having them being seen in lots of places. So, I was in a mastermind group and a coaching group and we were talking about this and somebody said, oh, it's always good to have a name or something you're known for.

And I said, but I haven't got one. And we were talking in our group and I told them some stories of some of my clients and they said, oh, so you're like the Queen of Being Seen. Now, I'd love to tell you that I went, yeah, that's brilliant.

That's excellent. But what I actually said was, this group was based in America and I said, that might work in America. But if I go back to the UK and go into corporate settings or go into business settings and say, I'm the Queen of Being Seen, they're going to think that I'm really arrogant.

So, I don't know. But I sat with it. So, in the same way that someone says, oh, I'm the Queen of doing A, B and C.

That's how that came about. And the first time I remember being at a conference, it was a very kind of proper conference, and they introduced me as Jenny Kovacs, the Queen of Being Seen. I've never had so many like, you know, heads of banks and pinstripe suit wearing men come up to me and say, I really like the fact that you're the Queen of Being Seen.

That's excellent. So, then I thought, well, I'm going to embrace it. And that's how it came about.

So, your listeners and your viewers might be thinking, but what do you do? So essentially, I specialize in visibility. I have to say that very specially, because for those of you watching on captions, it sometimes captures as invisible, which you don't want.

So, I somehow and I think it might unfold as we have this conversation, but somehow it doesn't matter who the person is, who the brand is, what the product or service is. People can come to me and say, I really want it to be seen. And it's like something clicks in my brain like a little Rubik's Cube.

And I'm like, OK, for you speaking, for you writing, for you, have you tried this? Have you tried that? It's like I can extract these kind of this combination of the best way.

Sometimes it's the people, but sometimes it's their product, service or value. I can create that to be seen. So, after helping people with their visibility, I realized that, well, how can I help more and more people to do this, like at scale?

So, I again was working with a coach and worked with a mentor. And I thought that I had to hear every single person's individual story so I could bespoke something for them, which to a point is true. But what I also realized, and I'll happily share this with your audience as well, what I realized was that if I had thousands of people lined up in front of me, even though they're all unique and offer something very different, there were five really key steps, five really key pillars, if you like, of things that I would repeatedly ask them about, tell them to do that was easy for them to repeat.

In fact, the visibility vibe system, as it's now known, is so easy and so doable. I think people think that's too easy. I need to go and find the algebra of it, the harder way to do it.

So that's how all of this visibility work kind of came about. And there's another story behind how I realized that visibility was kind of my thing. But that's how it came about.

And it's normally delivered through the visibility vibe system. So, five key pillars that have you to be seen. Have you been heard?

Have you been paid attention to? So, you're able to sell yourself or your product or service, your brand or what you stand for quite easily. So that's a long answer to a short question.

[Steph Edusei] (6:31 - 6:50)

Yeah, that's great. And I think it's interesting because I understand that initial reaction that you had to the Queen of being seen. And yes, in Britain, we are a bit more reserved and things.

But there's something I wonder, was it predominantly men that came up to you, just from the way you were describing them?

[Jenny Kovacs] (6:51 - 7:07)

At that particular conference, it was. But in honesty, it was there were about 400 people in the audience. And at that time, and I've spoken for this organization multiple times now, at that time, I reckon there were six women in the room.

Right. Which was quite telling.

[Steph Edusei] (7:08 - 7:55)

Because there's something to me that's almost synonymous about visibility and confidence, even if that's not the reality in people's brains. It's that visibility and confidence. So being bold enough to say the Queen of being seen kind of says, yeah, I'm there and I'm comfortable with that.

And so, it makes sense whilst that initial, ooh, that you might have felt because it was a label that was being applied to you. I completely understand. And I'm really curious about this thing about visibility and why it's so important, because some people just say, well, I've got a product, the product will sell itself.

Or, you know, I've got a service that should sell itself. So why is visibility important in the first place?

[Jenny Kovacs] (7:55 - 13:11)

It's interesting because it actually connects back to what you were just saying about visibility and confidence. So, let's just bust a myth here. A lot of people think that in order to take on a visibility specialist like me, that they have to be nervous about being visible, that they're not confident.

And in fact, a high percentage of people I work with are men. So, I'm not a, I work with women who, I work with women too. They are all really confident.

But what happens is we all have a kind of crisis of confidence and sometimes it can stop us and sometimes it doesn't. So, my own crisis of confidence at the beginning was, I can't say that in England, surely it won't fly. But it didn't stop me from using it.

I still went on and did it. So, there is a very, kind of a big synergy between visibility and confidence and how they marry together. But how did I, how did I kind of make this connection, I guess?

Before I started this business in 2010, I worked in financial services and before that I worked in travel. So, I did something that I think thousands, millions of people across the world do. I was working for, at the time actually it was the Abbey National as it was, I was working for them and I just wanted career progression.

But a big part of my role there was working in a mortgage unit, Sexy Mortgages, I know. And a lot of it included sales and there were times where I would smash my sales target and they would give me other people's sales targets and I would smash those. And then there were other times where there were kind of different skill sets to be applied and somebody noticed that I was good at teaching people things.

I never really thought about it, but that's what they noticed. So, then there was this kind of joining the dots moment. Years like, fast forward years, I worked for a commercial mortgage company.

And while I was there, I quadrupled my salary and I got promoted rapidly three times within the space of just two years. But I thought it was because I'd said to myself, well, I just want career progression now and I want to do it. What I didn't realise was all the things that I was kind of doing behind the scenes to make that happen would form, later on form, at least parts of this visibility vibes thing that I would talk about.

And if I'm honest, whilst it's great to say, oh, you know, I quadrupled my salary or I, you know, got promoted rapidly, the actual piece that made this piece work was the things that I didn't do or the crisis of confidence that not only I had, but I noticed people around me behind the scenes would have, the so-called glass ceilings that people will hit. And I'm not about to gaslight anyone and say there isn't such a thing because for many of us there are, you know, they just are. It's how we find ways to navigate those and kind of get past those too.

So, my crisis of confidence happened after I did that. I went to go for another job and my crisis of confidence actually meant that I took a 60% reduction in salary. Like think about this logically, that's a lot to kind of, you know, dismiss or push to one side.

And I think deep down my crisis of confidence caused me to think it was a fluke, it was lucky, I can't do this again, I won't be able to do this again. So, I have a really strong empathy with anyone I meet and I've worked with some really successful people and brands. I don't kiss and tell Stephen to this day, but I've worked with some really cool people doing brilliant things.

And it's almost like if I can see them on the way to a crisis of confidence or if I think they're kind of, they're there or they express that to me, it's almost like I know how to reach in and help them out of it again. When I realised that this, it almost felt like a life purpose thing, when I look back in my life and join the dots to even when I was a child, I started to see it almost like my life prepared me for this. So, if I was in a boardroom and I was the only woman and woman of colour in there, that actually made me stand out.

So how could I use that for the benefit of me, for the benefit of them, for the benefit of the company or the industry? So, I became curious in that and somehow found my way. So, I think working with the coach and mentor back in 2010, it almost helped me to pull everything out of my brain and line it up so that it made sense, not just to me, but to other people too.

So, I could pick out this piece and be like, OK, here's what's going to work really well for you. Let's dive deeper into pillar five or let's dive deeper into pillar one. So, it feels like a happy accident, actually, but that's kind of how it all kind of came about.

[Steph Edusei] (13:11 - 14:27)

Something that you said there, figures was something that I, a moment that I had. So, when you were saying when, you know, when you're the only woman or the only person of colour in a room, you do stand out. And for me, when I was, it was the start of me dealing with imposter syndrome.

And and it was the that thing of I think differently. I look different. Quite often I'm a different gender and and I always stand out.

And then I suddenly realised if you stand out, you're outstanding. I love that. And that little thing that clicked in my brain and I thought, well, if I'm going to be outstanding, I'm going to be outstanding.

So, I think there's there is something about that because you're right. Quite often when you are and particularly somebody who is black or brown, you are going to be seen. And you then have a choice about what you do about that, because some people will see that negatively and some people will see that neutrally.

And a few will see that positively. But you have a choice over what you choose to do with that being seen. Hmm.

But I think quite a few of us try to hide away because we're uncomfortable with being seen.

[Jenny Kovacs] (14:28 - 18:20)

Yeah, I so resonate with with that because the point and this is going to sound really late in my life, but the point that it really hit me was 2020 George Floyd, very publicly murdered, in my opinion, very publicly murdered and the world changed. It did something to me. And I didn't actually ever watch the video.

I've almost felt like if I watch this, I'll be traumatized beyond belief. It made me question who I was, why I did things, what I was doing, how it benefited people. And one of the things I mean, listen to how I speak.

A lot of them, especially black women, but a lot of black people will tell me that in very professional settings, people will say, oh, yeah, but you're not black, black, are you? As a compliment, meant as a compliment, and you're like, oh, and it's funny because I choose not to work in diversity, equity and inclusion, always like kind of pointing people out in in the right direction, because there are people out there that do it with far more grace, I think, than I do. But, you know, and you just think, did you really just say that?

I was confronted after George Floyd's murder of how I sound, how I sound is a product of me trying to fit in. It's taken me decades to sound like this. You know, somebody commented that, oh, my gosh, without a camera on, you couldn't tell what colour you are.

You know, and these things are all kind of, I guess, well meant, but it really made me look deeper within myself. In a way, what masks am I wearing? How do I change my behaviour?

How do I code switch? What do I do to do all of that? And it's funny, because I come at you with kind of straightened extension hair with pink at the bottom of it, which people often think, and what you really go into boardrooms and you work with execs and things like that, and they all accept it.

But there was a lot of almost derobing of myself to realize the person I'd become, what I wanted to keep, what I wanted to throw away, what I wanted to incorporate moving forward, and in a way, what I wanted to make a stand for. And the thing that I will make a stand for all day every day is that whoever I'm speaking to, it's your voice matters. Even if you've been in places where people will kind of poo-poo you, I always talk about the look when people start at your feet and very slowly look up to your face, and you're like, oh, okay, that's what we're going to do today.

I think people's voices matter, and the thing that I find is that different people have different scales of being told that they don't matter, verbally or non-verbally, and this is why I talk about ceilings and things. There are glass ceilings, there are gender pay gaps, there are injustices done against people with brown and black skin. Just because somebody doesn't see life that way or see it doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

So, I like to share with whoever is in front of me, I love to share how they can almost overcome that, overstep that. But the thing is, in order to be able to do that, we have to talk about the things that are really difficult sometimes and really uncomfortable to say, even when somebody very well-meaning might say, but I don't see colour, I really don't see it. They need to understand what that means and unpack how that can even be dismissive to the person that hears it too.

[Steph Edusei] (18:20 - 20:13)

Yeah, and I think that whole thing of you don't sound black is really interesting, because what they're saying is that all black people sound a certain way, and I think being somebody whose father is West African, there is a very different culture. I think people immediately think of the Caribbean culture and way of speaking, very, very different. I mean, if I think about my code switching, it's Geordie, because I was broad, I was really broad as a kid, and my mum called me a fishwife, I was so broad.

But actually, I was taught to speak the Queen's English, because that was what my father had learned in Ghana, he learned English in a very regimented way in which we in this country would never learn it like that. But there's this perception of there is a way that black people speak, there is a way that black people dress, there is a way that black people wear the hair, there is a way... It's just a nonsense.

But people say it to you, and they're trying to say, I've discussed this before, it's this thing of you're accepted, you're included, but they say it in a way that's kind of like you're accepted and included despite the colour of your skin, because you're not like them, you're like us. And yeah, it's a really difficult thing. And I think acknowledging that that happens, and that for people who are black and brown, that that is something that we have to deal with.

I think for me, it's that. But if you then allow that to stop you being visible and stop you achieving what you need to achieve, even though you probably have to fight harder to get there, then that's a real shame, because you're letting other people win and control you.

[Jenny Kovacs] (20:14 - 23:30)

That's so true. And it's not the easiest of things to do. It's almost like some of the people that I speak to say, well, I almost need to pick my battles.

Isn't it sad to think that for many of us, we go through life having to button it, or feeling like we have to button it and not say something, feeling like we have to change our accent. I always say to people, if you are aware, and this to me is a good antidote to imposter syndrome, if somebody writes down all of the reasons why they think they shouldn't be doing the thing, those reasons actually become the reasons to do the thing. Right.

Because I don't fit in, because my accent's different, because I haven't learned enough, because it's normally one gender or another gender, because, because, you know. And I think if we can see it and see what stops us, it does actually help. And for some people, like I say, it doesn't stop, it pauses them.

Some people, it makes them determine. And in terms of this assumption that all Black people look at, speak a certain way, I mean, think of how many continents and how many different people there are around the world. You know, my parents are Caribbean.

They both come from Barbados and met over here. But even as a child, you know, we weren't allowed to say water, you know, the Queen's English, you know. And even then, the whole kind of colonialism from back in whichever island or country comes into play.

And then the other thing that I think is really sad is I do speak to people who are of mixed heritage. And this feeling like, you know, I heard one woman say to me, but I'm too Black for the Black community and too white for the, sorry, too Black for the white community, too white for the Black community. So, there was this feeling of no man's land.

And although both my parents are Black, one of the things that I think I really struggled with as a teenager was this sense of identity, because I was born and bred here in the UK. I'd hear all about the Caribbean from my parents. I didn't feel like I could be patriotic.

I didn't feel like I 100% fitted in in the UK, even though that's all I knew. And then when I remember going to Barbados first time as a kid, when I was seven, my cousins laughing and going, but you sound funny. You sound like a newsreader.

You know, you don't sound like a Bajan. So, there was this always this kind of feeling of no man's land. And I think what landed after the George Floyd was, OK, I need to, I need to sit with who I am like 150%.

And although I'd started to process that in kind of the years coming up, I think the conversations were the piece that played the most important part. Difficult or not, actually just starting to have the conversations and people realising what happened on a global scale is an important part of our identity, which therefore makes it easier for us to be even more visible. It's so important and it's not something that people always connect the dots with.

[Steph Edusei] (23:30 - 25:11)

Yeah, yeah. And it was just such a, it was a pivotal moment. I think, you know, if I look back, I just started or was just about to start a new job in May 2020.

I just started the beginning of May and I'd started working with a coach. And one of the things that I'd said to my coach was that I was going to be far more visible and prominent in this role and therefore as a black woman in the area that I live and in the charity sector. And one of the things I wanted to work through was what did that mean and how much of that did I need to bring to my ethnicity?

Did I need to bring to my role and my kind of profile and things? And then George Floyd was murdered and it was almost like I just almost went, I haven't got a choice. I do not have a choice in this at all.

I did. I could have sat and hidden away, but I kind of didn't. And whether that was my personal values and ethics or whatever, or whether it was because people were pulling me into that, I don't know.

But it was just that was that changing point to me that I remember sitting down with my coach and she said, so do you want to explore this? And I kind of went, well, I think the do I want to bit is gone, but it's the what do I want to do with that now? That's the important bit.

So, yeah, really. And I've heard quite a few people talking recently with Kamala Harris's nomination about that being a changing point for a lot of people. So, I don't think we've quite seen the whole repercussions of that yet.

[Jenny Kovacs] (25:12 - 27:54)

No, we haven't. And it is a really important piece because I think that moment in time, first of all, for me, I experienced so much trauma and I couldn't understand it. I thought, but I haven't seen the video.

I was bursting into tears and I was checking in with my predominantly black friends and saying, is everything OK? You know, are you OK? It felt really weird to me.

I didn't know whether it was like the pandemic or anything else like that. And I thought, I'm not going to make excuses for how I feel. But I think what it did collectively for a lot of us or people who identify as our allies, it may just say enough.

Now, on a global stage, you can see something that's happening that can't be denied. Are you going to speak up about it or not? Yes, it was exhausting for many of us.

I remember running a program just after that. For the first time ever in my career, I had to say this is for white people only. Oh, my gosh, I remember writing the page, but I really felt it in my body.

It felt so alien to me having to kind of segment it in this way. But it was visibility for difficult conversations and it talked about race. And it was just things that I was sharing.

I had to make it, ironically, a really safe space because I needed people to say what they really thought and what they really felt and then kind of unpack that for them. But things like sharing, imagine that for all of your life, you look in a shop window and you see the shop dummy and the colour of their skin isn't the same colour as yours. These are kind of very silent, unspoken ways that people are told you're not enough, you're not included.

It was like, and it sounds a funny thing to say, the light bulb moments that went off for so many people in that time were just amazing. So, explaining things like flesh coloured plasters and, you know, ballets, ballerinas, you know, things for ballerinas, skirts and things like that. Not that I ever did ballet.

It was just, it almost seemed like this should be obvious. But I think the most important thing that came out of that period was our ability to speak about it because without having conversations about it, like how on earth can we even start to tackle this, dismantle this or change it? So one of the things that I loved, if I can say that about after that period, were there were people that said, you know what, I didn't realize I was racist or I did realize I was racist, but I've actually changed my mind.

I mean, that's change, right?

[Steph Edusei] (27:55 - 28:30)

Exactly, exactly. I'm going to have to have you on another show because one of the things that I'm really, that I'm coming more to is that what you did there, that leaning into some of those conversations and really getting curious about why people hold those views and where they come from. Because I don't think, whilst you've got to call it out, the combative way is not bringing about change.

It's actually bringing about further division. So yeah, I'm sure we'll get onto that. But I want to know about this visibility system.

So, what did you call it again?

[Jenny Kovacs] (28:30 - 29:00)

It's the visibility vibe system. So, here's what it means for people. Basically, it's called the vibe system because the five key pillars, vibes is actually an acronym for it.

And what's really strange about it was I had to unpack what those pillars were first. And then when we laid it out with lots of post-it notes and scribbles and all that kind of stuff, I realized that for each pillar, I think it's spelled V-I-E-B-S, but that's really hard.

[Steph Edusei] (29:02 - 29:05)

It would have stayed like that for me because I'm rubbish at anagrams.

[Jenny Kovacs] (29:06 - 29:59)

It was like, oh my gosh, this spells the word. If we change it, it spells the word vibe. So, note to anybody who has got a tried and tested system, you might see people use words as acronyms.

Don't be tempted, like if you want your work to be visible and your work to be known or you to be known, don't be tempted to find a fancy word and then fit your work into it because it kind of won't work for people. It won't work for you. Look at actually what you're doing and name it.

And if it doesn't have a fancy name, don't worry about it. Let it be of ultimate service to other people. And I think in some way or some form, even from the days of the promotion and everything else like that, that's what people remember about me, whether it's in a boardroom or not.

So, without any further ado, if you...

 This file is longer than 30 minutes.

 Go Unlimited at TurboScribe.ai to transcribe files up to 10 hours long.