Ever felt like a fraud in a world that constantly demands more? Let's unravel that tangled web of imposter syndrome together, especially that pesky shadow that follows us around in the SEO landscape. Our latest chat dives into the pressures of nail-biting expectations and those stealthy comparisons that sneak into our professional lives. With a light-hearted touch, we reveal why it's vital to celebrate every single milestone—imagine laying bricks for a sturdy house, one at a time, with your own hands. That's the kind of patience and recognition of progress we're unpacking here, and trust us, it's a foundational talk you won't want to miss.
KEY POINTS [2:08] Setting and Achieving Goals [3:00] How Expectations Lead to Frustration [5:50] Brick House SEO [6:45] The Danger of Focusing on Competitors [7:40] The #1 Way to Stop Feeling Like an SEO Failure [8:28] The SEO Cocktail Party
Ever felt like a fraud in a world that constantly demands more? Let's unravel that tangled web of imposter syndrome together, especially that pesky shadow that follows us around in the SEO landscape. Our latest chat dives into the pressures of nail-biting expectations and those stealthy comparisons that sneak into our professional lives. With a light-hearted touch, we reveal why it's vital to celebrate every single milestone—imagine laying bricks for a sturdy house, one at a time, with your own hands. That's the kind of patience and recognition of progress we're unpacking here, and trust us, it's a foundational talk you won't want to miss.
KEY POINTS [2:08] Setting and Achieving Goals [3:00] How Expectations Lead to Frustration [5:50] Brick House SEO [6:45] The Danger of Focusing on Competitors [7:40] The #1 Way to Stop Feeling Like an SEO Failure [8:28] The SEO Cocktail Party
Why do I feel like such a failure? What If I could answer that question? Why do I feel like a failure? I feel like, literally, doors would open. Do you ever have that feeling?
Speaker 2:
If you feel like a failure, you feel that doors would open.
Speaker 1:
No, if I could figure out what makes me feel like a failure and I could just stop doing that, then I feel like doors would open.
Speaker 2:
Is it imposter syndrome? Because I suffer from that all the time, I always have my whole life. I think we all do to some extent, unless we're slightly psychopathic or sociopathic.
Speaker 1:
I think that we all feel that. I don't personally call it imposter syndrome. I just feel like a failure, no matter what I do. I just feel like a failure?
Speaker 2:
Why do you feel like a failure?
Speaker 1:
You've done incredible things, Like you just said. I think we all feel like that.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
I just label it as feeling like a failure. You label it as imposter syndrome.
Speaker 2:
Oh no, I feel like a failure.
Speaker 1:
I bet even Jeff Bezos, if you asked him, says he feels like a failure.
Speaker 2:
I don't think he would admit to that.
Speaker 1:
Maybe not, I don't know. Jeff also wrote in and said that he does feel like a failure. That's just in. He said yeah, meredith's husband, you're right, you're right, yes, yeah, yeah, he wrote in right after Jake.
Speaker 2:
Jake. Jake wrote in too.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, well, he just texted, he texted me.
Speaker 2:
Okay, wait, I thought Connor. Connor was the one that reached out.
Speaker 1:
Oh right, yeah, Sorry, did I mess that up.
Speaker 2:
No, no, yes.
Speaker 1:
I think that, regardless of what you accomplish in your life, I think it's pretty common to feel like you haven't accomplished what you could, or what you should, or once you have either neared it or achieved it.
Speaker 2:
You're then faced with okay, well now what? Like? All the billionaires are comparing themselves to other billionaires.
Speaker 1:
Other billionaires, yeah, yeah, that also, people tend to look upward, of course. Or, you know, as you accomplish more things you get to enter let's call it different rooms of success in life. And then you measure yourself against the other people in that room, forgetting that you just you pass through 10 rooms to get to this one At least, and how lucky you are to even be in that room.
Speaker 1:
Shocking news. I can't help with this question, but I can help you feel better about why you feel like a failure in terms of SEO. Oh, okay, because so many people have this. Like I would say, 95% of people probably are discouraged by SEO.
Speaker 2:
By everything.
Speaker 1:
For the same reason. It's a pretty common reason why it happens in SEO.
Speaker 2:
Why it's expectations. Yeah, people come in with the wrong expectations.
Speaker 1:
common reason why it happens in seo, why it's expectations? Uh yeah, it's expect people come in with the wrong expectations and also we're trained by society.
Speaker 2:
the whole rags to ridges, overnight success, american dream, not being cognizant that things take time. You know, nine months to make a baby.
Speaker 1:
Yes, but the way that capitalism works is people make money off of promising quicker paths and promising quicker stuff.
Speaker 2:
Because we all Want a magic. My mom even just said, I wish there was a magic pill I could cram down your throat.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, it's the wrong impressions, whether you're listening to people who are promising certain things about SEO or just our culture in general, which is all like instantaneous, I want it now type mentality. I see that I see people struggle with this, with SEO and it. You know it hurts Like I don't like to see, I don't like to see people struggle with this, with SEO and it hurts.
Speaker 1:
Like I don't like to see people struggle and everybody comes to me and they, like I said, 95% of the time they have the same discouragement, or they look back on their efforts in terms of SEO. That's just, you had the wrong expectations.
Speaker 2:
And where are they getting these expectations?
Speaker 1:
Well, some of it is my industry, some of it is like SEOs. In general, I feel like we tend to try to pretend like we have secrets.
Speaker 2:
Like we can share this secret.
Speaker 1:
That's what everybody thinks, yeah, and also it's just if you're not informed, if you don't listen to this podcast, it's very common to do something and then you're going to go look at rankings and you're going to think, oh, that didn't work or that did work. You're guaranteed to feel like a failure if that's what you're doing.
Speaker 2:
And it's the same thing again. I know I always say this, but it's like if you look at the scale or a mirror daily, even though you're you change your diet for the better, you're working out. You're not going to see immediate progress, but you are working towards being more healthy.
Speaker 1:
And I would go farther and say you're even looking at the wrong scale, right Like you're not. You're looking at, like, the tip of the iceberg and figuring how to like. There's the tip of the iceberg and you don't even notice that you're looking at the wrong tip of the iceberg. There's a bigger tip on the like behind you and it's all the same iceberg. Yeah, so you're not even looking at the right thing.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I know, if I may enter a alternative visual, that you may be looking at how your clothes fit, rather at your blood pressure your internal numbers that are increasing that we can't see.
Speaker 1:
That's a good one. Thank you, meredith. I like to think of it as what I have called on this podcast many times a brick house, seo Gosh yeah. You're building a brick house. I know You're building a brick house and inevitably you put 10 bricks down and you go back and you say well, I want to see what my house looks like. It doesn't look like a house at all, it looks like just some bricks.
Speaker 1:
A line of bricks, but you've got to realize that at some point it is going to be a house. It's just going to take many bricks and there's not one single brick that is going to instantly, magically, make it a house. It's the fact that the bricks all rest on top of each other, but top of each other. But yeah, looking at rankings, you are literally holding yourself up to an impossible measurement. You're never going to feel like you're winning, even if you do, even if, by some chance, you catapult to page one, if that happens super quickly, you know what's going to happen. It's going to disappear super fast.
Speaker 1:
I see that happen over and over, and over and over.
Speaker 1:
More so in the past, but it still happens. In fact, I used to have clients. I had one client in particular who I remember pretty well say Pretty much the same thing every month. It's like oh, this other client is there all the time or not? Client, this other website is on the top of Google all the time. I just need to do what they do. I just want to. What are they doing right that I'm not doing? And they said the same thing month after month and they didn't even notice that the website that they were pointing to changed. Like the website that they were saying these guys are at the top all the time. They disappeared. They literally fell off the face of the earth and couldn't be found anymore. They might have gone out of business, I don't know. Like they totally disappeared and my client was still. They just the website that took their place and then was number one. They're like these guys are there all the time. And I'm like, wait, no, they're not.
Speaker 2:
These guys are brand new. What you do want to do.
Speaker 1:
Brick house.
Speaker 2:
Brick house.
Speaker 1:
So the number one way you can stop feeling like a failure in terms of SEO is stop looking at Google, because you're only going to see the people at the top at that particular moment. You're going to compare yourself to the people on top at that particular moment. You don't see the other thousand websites that are not on top.
Speaker 2:
Or on page or anywhere near page one.
Speaker 1:
There are a whole bunch of websites on page two, three, four, 10, 15, 20, 582. Yeah, don't do that. Number one, don't do that. Yeah, number two look at what you've done already, right, and think of it in terms of building your own brick house. You are, need I remind you, listening to a podcast about SEO. I can tell you for a fact that most people people on average are not listening to this podcast, so you have a little bit of an advantage. So the next time you go to a cocktail party and people start talking about SEO, Because it is the hot topic.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, oh, everywhere we go.
Speaker 1:
Once booze starts flowing, the straight to SEO.
Speaker 2:
SEO starts emanating from tongues.
Speaker 1:
And so when people start talking oh, you know what you should do for SEO, you should do this, you should do this. I heard this thing. You should do this. You can either inform them oh, you need to listen to Meredith's husband, which I hope you do.
Speaker 2:
Well, of course, you just show them your tattoo.
Speaker 1:
Or you can also just smile to yourself and think wow, I'm way ahead of these people. I know, I actually know what SEO is really about.
Speaker 2:
And I actually know the time involved, because if it came easy it wouldn't be worth it.
Speaker 1:
Anyway, my point. Actually, I had no point, Never mind.