Confidence & Resilience for Search Marketers

Hello again and welcome to a new, very special edition of Rolling Mondays with a completely different type of topic: confidence and resilience. I do know as an SEO myself that is something that we suffer from potentially because of all the stress that the SEO sector especially has. So I wanted to invite a couple of people who besides having very long in-depth experience in the sector, they are now also coaches and mentors in this sector too. So on one hand I have Kirsty Hulse, founder of Roar Training, who's a confidence coach. Hello Kirsty, how are you?

I'm good, thanks Aleyda. How are you?

Very good, thank you. Thank you for joining today. And hello Hannah, how are you? Hannah Butcher is director of Belonging Digital and mentor and coach too. How are you Hannah?

I'm good, how are you?

Very good, very good. Based on your experience, have you seen if search marketers, SEOs, PPC people in general that you work with, do we suffer more from confidence and resilience issues? Do you think that these are struggles that end up negatively affecting us more than others in our professional evolution?

I think for me at least, so when I first got into this space probably about 2 and a half years ago, I did some research and I spoke to over 1,800 people across lots of different sectors, and I asked them the question, What was it now? Have you ever said no to something that you wanted to do because of fear? 96%?

94%.

94% said yes. And so this is a universal consideration. And I definitely think there's things within search, certainly things within agencies that can make this even more so. But this notion of not feeling good enough, of feeling afraid of ridicule, of holding ourselves back because of a fear of judgment, it's kind of how we're built as humans. So I definitely think this is something that so, so many people experience, and I've definitely found in my work that a lot of people internalize this, and it can feel very isolating, like it's only me, it's only me that feels this way. But it really isn't. Like, all of us, to greater or lesser extents, are scared about something at some point. That's my experience.

Yeah, so I think like more and more people are starting to have the discussion now, which is great. So I think everyone's been like silently struggling by themselves with a lot of these feelings for quite a while. And we're only starting to really normalize it now in digital marketing where we feel like, okay, it's okay, we can talk about these things. And actually, as I said, lots of people are experiencing these things and 94% of people, you know, and you can relate to other people and have that discussion with them. At the moment, I have taken on a batch of new mentees in my mentorship program. And literally the same themes are coming up over and over again in terms of imposter syndrome and feeling like they're not good enough and dealing with difficult managers. And that's another huge thing as well. I think in digital marketing, so many people come into it. You work in a position for a couple of years, you get promoted, you're suddenly a manager, and then you've got to look after all these people in your team. but you've never had this management training in the first place. So there's like teams built of these like poor management structures by no fault of anyone. You know, it's just the fact that we haven't really traditionally built this into an agency structure where we're actually giving people management support so they can help people as they move through a company.

Makes sense. Even me who have been already doing this for quite a while, right, like that you always feel that you need to be catching up. Because the search landscape is always changing, the pace on one hand, and then on the other hand, I also think especially with social media, that I know that in general has an impact on well-being and how we see ourselves, etc. SEOs and search marketers search a lot of our journey in Twitter and of course we tend to share the positives and not necessarily our struggles. So a lot of people say, oh my God, like I am the only one suffering from these issues and all of these people are implementing everything in a particularly successful way, I am the only struggling, right? But realistically, it's like that is only the peak of a big, big, big iceberg that we cannot see.

Absolutely.

So I wanted to go a little bit more in depth into these particular scenarios. Which are those particular issues that you see SEOs have, that you see that we do suffer from Which are those ways, easy-to-follow guidelines or tips that you will give to search marketers?

From my side, it's kind of just like doing your time, I think, is probably one of the biggest tips I would give to someone. Obviously, your rate of knowledge can grow at an exponential rate. There's no set time for how quickly you can gain knowledge, but in terms of experience, that's a completely different thing. Like, as you go through time and you accrue experience and you deal with different people, you deal with different projects and problems and how to overcome those. And people as well, because people, you know, we're all different. We come in lots of different forms. And whilst you may really gel with one person, you might not with another. And sometimes that's where the issues can start. So I think just getting that experience under your belt and not wishing away your career too early. So you don't necessarily need to have that promotion that you think that you really need. you know, just because it's going to get you like an extra couple of grand or euros, whatever it is, onto your own pay packet. But just really like honing in on that experience and feeling really confident with what you're doing is probably more important in the long run and will probably make you less resentful against the work that you're doing as well. So just really like owning what you're doing. And yeah, just trying to not rush, basically, because that's the thing that I'm seeing quite a lot is people just wanting to get to that next step and not really focusing on what they're doing at the here and Yeah, I love that.

Thank you. I think, I think for me, I think what you mentioned, Aleyda, is there's so much temptation, natural temptation, for comparison. You know, comparing ourselves to others, comparing ourselves to what other people are doing. And so one of the things that I always say to people is you can't fix self-doubt with self-doubt. And that tends to be our strategy. So we'll kind of feel as though other people are doing better than us. We'll look at what other people are doing. We'll say, well, they're doing that and I'm not doing this. And that's a very normal, natural tendency. You know, as I talk about this, this is never a statement of judgment. This is a statement of confirmation. You know, if you're one of those people who naturally is like, well, you know, they've built all the links or they've got this promotion and I'm not there yet, I'm not that person yet, kind of echo Hannah's point. So I think for me, I think there's 2 maybe like practical things I can share now that might help people. So the first one is ask yourself the question, and do this all the time, what do I need to do to stay in my lane? Because I always say to people, you know, imagine— and maybe the people watching this now can do this— imagine for a second, picture a world in which you're focused on your work, you're focused on yourself, you're focused on getting to where you want to go, you're focused on what you're doing. You've stopped investing that time, energy, and effort comparing yourself to others. What would be different? And people nearly always go, oh, I think I'd get more done. I think I'd do more work. And we tend to think that these comparisons, these self-comparisons, like, keep us in check, but they don't. They're cognitively and emotionally exhausting. We need to know what our competitors are doing, but perhaps as a source of inspiration, not as a way to self-flagellate and judge ourselves. Yeah, so that kind of notion of what we need to do to stay in our lane so we can avoid the very normal human natural tendency to go, well, they're doing that, and compare ourselves to others. Because it doesn't— it's normal, but it doesn't serve us. So I think that's one of the things. I was going to share something else, but I've totally forgot what it is. I'm sure it'll come up later in the call.

Don't worry at all. That is an amazing point, because I have to say, it is indeed very human and very natural to do that. So at the end of the day, if you start following what everybody else is already doing and excelling at is because probably they have put like first they like that particular area and they are particularly good in that area, which might not necessarily be your case. I mean, for example, if I see someone building 1 million links, whatever— sorry, I'm more of a technical, strategical SEO, so I, I— it's not an area that I necessarily am good at or I like to do that. So it wouldn't serve me if I obsess about that and try to follow just because other people are doing it. You need to be aware, you need to know what you actually enjoy doing and want to pursue and focus on that. You be you. I mean, so you need to know yourself and know what you actually like and pursue. Double down on that and focus on that instead of trying to see what other people necessarily are doing in many spectrums and areas because this is the thing, at the end SEO or search marketing is so broad. You cannot be the best in everything or whatever. And also it's not a zero-sum game. If someone is already good or doing amazing at that, it's not like you need to beat someone else, right? You can all shine together and be good in different types of ways. Even if you end up doing something very similar in technical SEO or whatever, there are so many ways to approach things in SEO. There's never only a single way to do things. So it's not about obsessing, it's like, I need to follow that exact path faster or something like that.

Actually, I had a mentee yesterday where we had a session pretty much about this, and she's working in content. And from her perspective of everything that was going on on social media was that content is a fluffy thing. So she came to see herself as doing a fluffy job role. Which is not the case because frankly we need the content on websites or otherwise they wouldn't exist. And everything that she was seeing externally to that was talking, you know, people like arguing about technical SEO and she was starting to believe that maybe she was fluffy and actually she needed to get into technical SEO to be validated and to have some sort of, you know, feeling like she was doing something worthwhile in her career. And we sort of drilled back to everything that she was passionate about and that she was good at. And by the end of the session, we kind of managed to adapt her mindset to realizing that she was really, really great at what she was doing and she didn't necessarily need to worry about trying to become a technical SEO. As long as she understood how it worked together and she could understand what people were talking about to a basic extent, there was no need to worry her mind every single day with thinking, oh my God, I need to learn this. It's too scary. I can't do it. So it's just like, yeah, as we were saying, Just like really owning what you do and believing in what you do and realizing that actually your career is valid regardless of what area of SEO or marketing you work in.

That's so funny, Hannah. That was me. So I like 100% when I first started speaking at SEO events in like 2010-ish, it was all technical. I remember I did a talk at Brighton in like 2012 maybe, and it was like injecting JSON-LD using Google Tag Manager. Like, I didn't know that shit.

Like, I just saw that session.

Yeah. I just felt as though I would only be serious, I would only be worthwhile, I'd only be validated if I was doing this really heavy-duty technical stuff. And I think for me, I really got to the point where I was doing something I love and I was in flow and I was very fulfilled when I was like, okay, so what actually do I add? Like, what value do I add? Like, what good things can I do? And then you follow that. But yeah, so I definitely had exactly the same as your mentee, and I think it's very common. feel as though unless we're being very serious, then we're not going to be taken seriously. But certainly throughout my career, I've found that character, softness, humility is not mutually exclusive with performance. But that reminded me of one of the things that I was going to share that might be really helpful for people watching this who maybe are experiencing some similar things that Hannah's sharing. One of the kind of frameworks I share with my, my coaching clients is called the Thoughts, Feelings, Actions framework. And that is basically that research shows that our thoughts impact our feelings. Sometimes it can go the other way around, but broadly, our thoughts impact our feelings, our feelings impact our actions, and our actions impact our results. So typically, if we're feeling, like, stuck, if we're feeling not very confident, if we're feeling not very empowered, people will come to me and say, hey, Kirsty, can you teach me some skills to be confident? And I'm like, yeah, I can. There's tips and things where we can project as confident, but really the more powerful thing to do is fix the original thought. Because if we have thinking that we're not as good as others, if we have thinking that if we stand on a stage we'll be ridiculed, if we have thinking that we don't deserve to be here, then that in turn, those thoughts will bring about feelings, and those feelings will be things like fear, pain, anxiety, apprehension. Those feelings will bring about results of, well, avoidance, stress, not doing it. And so then we get those actions. And actually, so it's— that's a really useful framework that people can use to go, okay, so what results am I getting that I'm not happy with? And what's my original thinking on that? And it can be a really powerful way to, like, shift perceptions of ourselves and how we feel about situations and scenarios. So I use that a lot. So I'd recommend anybody to have a go of the thoughts, feelings, actions framework. It can be super illuminating, especially when we have beliefs that don't necessarily serve us.

Excellent. Actually, you just mentioned something that in particular I see asked again and again in general, right? And a few people even ask me because I have a bit of experience of that— speaking, right? For me, speaking is about sharing. Sharing my journey, sharing what I have found particularly useful or not, and sharing it on a stage rather than in a writing format, right? Like, you can share in different formats— as a blog post, in a video, and on a stage. However, I do know that for some people, speaking on a stage is some of the most scary ever things that you can probably do. It would be great to hear from you if you have particular advice to control those fears, to manage that, because I also understand that maybe some people, they are not just necessarily interested in doing that, and that is completely okay too. That is important to say. And you won't be less successful just because you don't enjoy doing it. If you don't enjoy it, then okay. But if you think that you might enjoy it, and it's about controlling those fears, it would be great to hear your advice now.

Well, I'm a natural introvert. So speaking for me was never anything that was going to be in my journey. Like when I was in school, all of my report cards from my teachers were like, Hannah never puts her hand up in class. Hannah never volunteers an answer. Hannah's very quiet. Like I'd do my work, I'd get on with it. It was fine. Then I joined an agency where in my job role it was built into it that I needed to do some speaking on stages. And I was like, great. And so I did my very first one. I remember sitting in a Starbucks and just like smelling the coffee around me, feeling like sick to my stomach and thinking, there's no way I'm going to do this. And I was like, I think I was second on in the morning and I was like sat backstage. like pumping metal music into my ears and I was like, just gotta get through this 20 minutes. And like the feeling when you go on stage and your throat goes dry and you're just like, ugh. But as soon as you start speaking, you know what, like all of those feelings disappeared for me. And I was finally, after all of that worrying, it was almost like therapeutic. I was like getting it out of my system. Every word that I delivered was like another word that was getting me closer to the end of the presentation. And I felt at the end of it like All the adrenaline. I'm never going to do that ever again. And then a few months later, I was like, you know what? You know, I am going to do that again. And like, I've done quite a few speaking opportunities on stages since. And actually, like last September, I went to Toronto for Shine Bootcamp, of which Kirsty was one of the coaches at. So she saw me like quivering away in my little British accent to a load of Americans and Canadians who were doing their presentation there. But all of these things, there's so many workshops and classes and places you can go to try and hone those confidence skills and also just the speaking part of it as well. So there's so much out there that if people are interested in, there is plenty you can learn and there's plenty of people out there who are willing to help. But it is scary, there's no doubt about that. But if you can start delivering those first few words like I did, then you're kind of like on your way into your speaking journey.

Yeah, that's so true. Thank you. And you did great at Shine, by the way. I still reference your presentation now. Genuinely, I referenced it to someone yesterday. And I think for me, a lot of people will come to me because I think my space— and this happened by accident. So my kind of journey is I was running an SEO agency and then 2017, a long time ago, I was speaking at an event with Sistrix who are brilliant and they've been very brilliant in supporting this since. But it was me and 25 white guys. So I started giving free presentation training to women to help level the playing field. And I have to stress, Cistrix have been amazing at supporting that since. And so I started giving free presentation training to women to do my bit to kind of level it. And one of the things that I really found was it's not about learning how to present. It's actually really understanding that you can. And so many people now— I've probably helped hundreds of people get on stages, and one thing that I've always found to be the case with, like, in fact, probably thousands of people, they'll come up to me and they'll go, I'm really, really nervous about public speaking. And my response is always like, yeah.

Yeah.

Like, that's it. That's it. It's scary. And people tend to come to me and go, like, with an expectation of the eradication of nerves. But my job is not to eradicate nerves. My job is to help us accept them. And to just be like, oh, there's some nerves, okay, and not see— so many of us, we're taught as children to avoid pain, to avoid fear. And so when we feel these nerves, we'll avoid doing things because we don't want to feel them. It's unpleasant. And neurologically speaking, it is akin to threatening our survival. Like, our body's like, danger, danger, danger, we're going to die. Like, that's what our primitive brain is telling us. So it's so normal that if we're getting on a stage, if we're exposing ourselves, to ridicule and judgment, which is par for the course when we're speaking. Like, I'd be lying if I said I haven't had moments when I've gotten on stage and I've been trolled. Like, SEO industry, it's kind of what happens. But the key thing is to understand that there's nothing unique. The nerves themselves aren't telling you anything about your abilities. The nerves are just part of it. The nerves is just your normal, natural human response to protect yourself from danger. So there's lots of techniques we can do to diminish those nerves and soften them in the moment. But the first thing I always say, always, is your nerves, your nerves are there to help you. I, when I was doing loads of speaking, maybe 2017, I had like a spate where I was doing like one a week, and you will have had this, Aleyda, where it's just constant. And over that time, my speaker ratings went down. And it's because I'd lost my nerves. It was like another day at the office. And when we don't have— all nerves mean is you give a shit about the outcome. So those nerves are good. Nerves are your friend. And sometimes they can be debilitating and get to a point where we don't perform. And maybe we can talk about that later on the webinar. But I think the main thing I want to say is nerves themselves aren't a big deal. We all have nerves. It's— there's nothing new or unique about it at all.

Yeah, but I think that in my case, instead of seeing it as nerves, it's like I feel excitement. It's the adrenaline. And at some point, like, people ask me nowadays, like, Oh my God, you should be like, what about not speaking or not traveling enough? And I say, like, I miss the adrenaline, right? I understand that potentially even for my body or my brain, potentially being at home right now working because of COVID whatever it might be, healthier even. But yes, I do miss that. I'm maybe an adrenaline junkie, right? I need the stress before going on the big stage. Makes you feel a little bit alive, right?

Also, at the end of the day, nerves and excitement are the same physiological response. The only thing that changes is our perceptions.

That is the same feeling—

tightness in the chest, like butterflies in the stomach. It's the same physiological response. And what research shows, one of the best ways to improve performance is to reappraise your nerves as excitement. So you've got it, you're doing it, you're doing all the things.

You know what, another thing that potentially has worked for me that might be useful for for others is that I think that also a few people are nervous and scared to speak because they are afraid of the questions that will come afterwards and that they won't know how to answer. What happens if I am asked something that I don't know? And my answer is like, you don't need to know everything. I mean, you're there because you're sharing your journey, particularly something that you have found particularly useful. to share with others, not because you're 100% the absolute expert in that area, and for that matter, nobody is in SEO. So nobody will know everything completely about a particular topic, right? And if someone asks you about something that you might not know at that point, it's like, oh, that is a great question. It's something that I will definitely take as an input in the future, investigate more, or to take into consideration in my tests. Or as a potential tactic or strategy that I want to verify or validate. Thank you for the question.

Yeah, I think like that's it. Sometimes SEO Twitter comes offline, particularly at conferences where there's a Q&A section after the sessions. And there will be someone in the audience without doubt who isn't really asking a question because they want to find the answer to it. They're asking the question because they feel like they have you know, a better understanding of the topic, or they're just trying to show off and, you know, fluff their feathers a bit and, you know, kind of show off to the crowd. That's totally normal. And to be honest, most of the time people do that, everyone else in the audience kind of recognizes that's the case and they're not really asking like a valid question. So you're kind of just like, ugh. But, you know, if that does happen, then obviously, as you say, you can just say like, well, take it offline. Like, come and talk to me after the presentation. Come and grab me in the foyer. You know, here's my Twitter handle. Grab me an email, whatever it is. So you can actually take that conversation off if you realize it's going to be like a little bit of a difficult one and it's someone trying to, you know, be a little bit more complicated than just asking a valid question. But yeah, either way you can just, you can sort of just delay tactics and answer them later. And for me personally, because it takes me a little longer than like a normal person to process information when people are talking, because I'm autistic, it takes me— yeah, I have to like really think about an answer before I actually present it to someone. So the Q&A sessions can be more terrifying for me than the actual presentation section itself. But I think you just kind of just handle it and you just get through it and don't feel like you need to answer everything perfectly.

It makes complete sense for me and hopefully after this to more people too. So to start wrapping up a little bit, I don't know if there's anything else that you think that would be interesting and critical to point out, to share any tip, any aspect, any last advice before finishing today's session so the search marketer out there takes that into consideration in their journey?

I think for me, I think as humans we have 2 types of motivation. We have push motivation and pull motivation. And push motivation is when we are avoiding danger, avoiding threat. And that is along the lines of I don't want to be seen as stupid. I don't want to get it wrong. I don't want to be caught out in these questions. I don't want, I don't want. And for us as humans, it's actually quite difficult for us to stop or change our behavior. So I want to stop feeling nervous. I want to stop saying no. I want to stop being afraid. What's a lot easier for us as humans is to start. And so we have pull motivations, which is where we are excited by the future, where it's opportunity-based. And so much research has shown that it's like Considerably more motivating to focus on the positives rather than the negatives. So for those people who are perhaps watching this, and the framework and the thinking is something along the lines of, I really want to stop being scared, or I really want to stop saying no to these opportunities, I really want to stop comparing myself to others, that's really good. Write those down. And then figure out what you want to start in order to do that. And make the motivation, make the goals be about starting rather than stopping. So if you want to stop being scared, what do you need to start? Well, I need to start breathing more. I need to start meditating. I need to start doing more exercise. Like, whatever it is, and focus on the start, focus on the opportunity, because it's just much more motivating. Much, much more motivating and much more sustainable. So I think that's maybe my final thought.

And from me, I think it's to be in control and in charge of yourself. And to not let yourself fit into the thoughts or how someone else thinks that you should behave and who you should be and how you should act. And really define yourself rather than being defined by a current job role or what a manager thinks of you, what someone tells you, what someone's feedback is. That's just one opinion. And I think just look inside yourself and really define you know, what you're great at and what you want to be doing. And just hold on to that belief, like, as you move through your career, because ultimately you'll just be staying true to yourself. And like, we have this all the time. People tell us that we're wrong. People tell us that we shouldn't be doing things. They have this belief and they for some reason think it's more important than what we say ourselves. So yeah, just really hold on to like who you are and just, you know, if you're trying to grow in that area, just find people to support you and just give yourself a good, like, positive network. of people to lean on.

I love what you say, a couple of things. First one, oh my God, that is so important that we are not taken down by the environment that at some point, at some stages in our life we are going through, right? Because potentially we might have that, I don't know, really bad, abusive type of boss or environment or colleagues, whatever, so a negative toxic type of environments that might take us down in our self-worth, also what we believe what we can do. In my case, for example, if I would have left my environment that influenced me of what I could do, you know, I will pretty much be right now still in Nicaragua being potentially a housewife or whatever like that, right? Like what society in that very traditional country would have told me that they expected of me rather than the professional that I am right now, right? But it's important that you are able to identify that about yourself and know what you're capable of. And knowing that you don't need to be everything right now, but you should— it's normal to be able to evolve. And that takes me to the second point of something that you remind me of. I remember being at a conference in 2013, '14, something like that. and sharing something that was happening to me at the time or something like that, and then seeing these people again in 2016, 3 years later or something like that, 3, 4 years later, and these people saying something, oh yes, but Aleyda has this issue or whatever, and I was like, oh no, dude, that was 3, 4 years ago. That has been long gone. I already sorted this out in this way. And it shocked me, 2 things. First, that the reaction of the person saying it is like, oh my God, you have evolved. And I was like, duh, of course, we all evolve. You cannot expect me to be the same 4 years after, right? We all learn. That is expected. We all evolve. We all find out and sort out stuff that might be challenging us at some point on one hand. And then on the other hand, I loved it because it allowed me to see how I had evolved and without even realizing it. So potentially, you who are watching this video, you may want to think where you were 5 years ago or 3 years ago and potentially understand how you— those that looked at that point like big struggles are not necessarily that— are that much of a struggle anymore. That if we internalize and think more about those, we can be our best examples of growth and evolution at the end. So yes.

Yeah, I love that. And I always say to people— by the way, Aleyda, you are an absolute superhero— I will often say to people, like, we set the tone for how other people treat us.

Hmm.

Not always, and there are of course exceptions to this, but we set a tone. So if we're going out into the world believing in ourselves— easier said than done, there's lots of ways to get there— but if we go out into the world believing in ourselves, believing in our abilities, knowing we know our shit, If we know that, we create that tone and we create that expectation. And I think this is something I— so I've got loads of brothers, older brothers, and so I learned not to let them smell my fear. And so then if we can start to get to that point where we're like, no, I can do this, I can do this, then we can set that tone, we set that example. And if we're moving through the world going, I'm not very good, I'm not very good, I don't think I can do it, then that's the example we set for others. So set the tone for how you want to be treated, set the tone for how you want people to to respond to you and start, like you said, Aleyda, going back, thinking about what you've done. Start to feel proud of those achievements, because when we're so ambitious and we're so focused on moving forwards, we always forget to look back and think how far we've come.

100%. 100%. Well, I love that last message. Thank you very much. And so you have seen that, well, this is only a little bit of the highlights of the topic. There's much more to learn. And of course, if you want to dig much more into it, if you do, If you think that you need help, you have here 2 amazing coaches who can definitely help you. You should definitely first follow Kirstie and Hannah. You can see their handles here and their websites, and they also offer coaching services. So please do go to their websites to take a look at far more of different ways that they can help you. So thank you very much, Hannah and Kirstie, for joining me today. And if you like the video, like the video. Like the video. Subscribe to the channel because of course there's going to be much more awesomeness like this coming up. And leave your comments, your doubts. If you have any questions, feel free to leave them below and I'll make sure to ping Hannah and Kirstie so they can come back and answer to you. Thank you very much. Bye-bye. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.