Episode 3

full
Published on:

27th Oct 2022

Optimise Your SEO Career: Understanding Motivation with Stephan Bajaio

Tazmin chats with Stephan about motivation, how to understand your own, and why it is important to understand others' motivation.

About Stephan:

From building SEO teams to evangelizing SEO directly to clients and marketing leaders, Stephan shows organizations how to translate “SEO” into a source of transformative intelligence that helps every facet of a business tap directly into the needs of its customers.

Where to find Stephan:

@stephanbajaio on Twitter

Stephan 's Website

About 'The SEO Mindset' Podcast

Build your inner confidence and thrive.

The SEO Mindset is a weekly podcast that will give you actionable tips, guidance and advice to help you not only build your inner confidence but to also thrive in your career.

Each week we will cover topics specific to careers in the SEO industry but also broader topics too including professional and personal development.

Your hosts are Life Coach Tazmin Suleman and SEO Manager Sarah McDowell, who between them have over 20 years of experience working in the industry.

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Transcript
Tazmin:

Welcome to another episode of the SEO Mindset podcast, where we aim to share tips and strategies to help you optimize your SEO career and life. My name is Tazmin Suleman and I help with our I love helping individuals, through coaching and training, build lives that they love and life where they can grow and thrive. And today's topic is really important. Really integral to all of it is motivation. How to understand your own motivation and why it's beneficial in your career and in your life, and also understanding other people's motivation, because how is that then going to help you again in your career? Not just why it's important, but how do you do it? We want you to leave this episode with real tips in making all of this information actionable to yourself. Another reason I'm really, really excited is because I get to share this topic with my special guest, Stephan Bajaio. Stephan and I, we've never met. He's been supportive of me ever since I spoke first at Brighton SEO. He's encouraged me, being generous with his time and his advice, especially as I've got into coaching. And I'm so excited to be talking to him today on this podcast. I'm going to hand it over to you now to talk more about what you're doing in your life.

Stephan:

Absolutely. Thanks so much, Taz. I'm really thrilled to be here with you and your listeners. As Taz said, I'm Stephan Bajaio in the SEO space. You may know me previously from my role for 14 years as co founder and Chief Evangelist at Conductor, which is an enterprise SEO platform. And I have since, which is fairly new and in the news by now by the time you're listening to this. Moved on to become CMO of a company called Turnover BNB, which is geared towards helping hosts for airbnb find cleaners via their extensive marketplace, global marketplace of over 200 cleaners and automate the process of going back and forth with service providers to ensure that they can kind of automate their airbnb properties. So excited to be moving into that space, real estate space and so forth. Had a little babble of that when we were bought by WeWork for a minute and then exited WeWork. So that was interesting. But I'm really excited to be talking about motivation, especially as it pertains to people's lives and the career of SEO, because you need a lot of it to do this job. So there's a lot we can get into today about motivation. And I think in all fairness, my previous experience as evangelists really was all about building motivation among others. So how to motivate people, how to bring people together, how to find the tie that binds in order to move the initiative forward. And I think that can be done both professionally and personally. And we'll dabble and dive into both those things today. And pertaz her new name, by the way, per Taz, we will also give some actionable insights that you can use or try to apply to your own life in order to get the most out of this. Because it's one thing for us to just talk about how great motivation is and how important it is. It's another thing to actually put it into practice.

Tazmin:

Yeah. And I think the whole definition of motivation means different things to different people. What's your definition?

Stephan:

So it's funny, I was thinking about this a lot pre this conversation, right? And so at first I thought about motivation as, you know, what makes you do something. But then I realized that it's not necessarily that because motivation makes you think it has to be an action. But in fact, if you stay in bed and don't do anything, is that a lack of motivation or is it potentially your motive? Your reason is just doesn't it's not a question, doesn't existing. Maybe there's a force that allows you to stay there instead. Maybe that in fact, is your motivation. So I see motivation deriving from the keyword motive. And it's reason, right? It's our reason. It's our why. So when I think about why we do something, why we don't do something is just as important, why others choose to do something or not do something. So I kind of see it as there is a binary aspect of do and don't. Right. But it is not ones and zeros. There's still a gray area. Right. What motivates and why you're motivated to do what you do is another thing in itself. So you have your motivation and you have the drivers that create that motivation. And I think you need to look at those two things together in order to understand truly what we call motivation. Some other words for it could be passion, some other ways that it expresses itself. Right. But essentially it's your reason and the driving factors for that reason and the driving factors can be gray area. The on or off is really is it on or is it off? Right?

Tazmin:

And sometimes it's interesting. So for me, it's the purpose, what's the purpose of doing what I'm doing. And along the journey from a developer to date to an SEO, and now into coaching, there were clues along the lines. Because no matter what role I was in, I always found myself driven or pulled into either managerial roles where I was helping other people grow, or into learning and development initiatives. So though my job was not learning and development, there was always a drive towards those areas. And in that it gave me fulfillment, it gave me purpose.

Stephan:

Yeah, but I think when we think about that, and Taz sorry to use you as the example, that you serve yourself up as the example. So let's do it. So I think we need to dig deeper as to why. Right? So the why behind that, those were the things you did, but why did you do them? So was there a part of you that wanted to serve others, for example? Seems to be that if you look at your career, you do a lot of career coaching, helping others. So why what is the motivating factor? What drives you to want to provide that to other people? Is where I think the individual needs to dig and really spend time understanding the output is the output, but the input is often subconscious. And I'll get into this in a minute where I can do it now if you want. I mean, you want to go because.

Tazmin:

We were going to talk about how do you understand your own motivation, then.

Stephan:

We can absolutely do that now if you want. But first, let's get into without psychoanalyzing. You said, what do you think the reasons behind the why in your career? Like, why are you motivated to do what you do? Why in helping others, what does it do for you? Because ultimately, it has to do something. You have to get some form of dopamine or something that gives you reason to want to continue to do it. Right?

Tazmin:

Yeah. I think in my case, it was quite a simple realization, because until a certain point, I had a job, I went to work, I did my thing, I came home. And this was even when I was working as a developer, it was only when I was coached myself and I was managed by this wonderful woman, Steph, who said, you're good at your job, but I think there's more to it. So would you agree to be coached? And at that time, that organization had trained all of the directors and to be a coach. And I say this, and I don't say it in a flippant manner. That period of my life changed my life because suddenly I had a career. Suddenly I understood that I was capable of more. I understood that I could achieve different things. I could speak publicly, I could run meetings, I could run projects. I'd never thought I could have done those things before. And then the impact it had on the rest of my life was huge. And for me, along the lines, and definitely more formally now, if my life could change through somebody helping, guiding, nurturing, helping me grow, and it impacted so much, my personal relationships, relationships, my children, my quality of life, I get a real buzz out of helping other people. And now in this stage flow, I almost see it as a responsibility that, if I know what can help, why am I keeping it to myself?

Stephan:

Yeah. So your history becomes a motivating factor in this case. Right. And so what I think is interesting when we think about motivation right, is I like to contextualize it in CBT cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Right. And for anyone who knows kind of some of the aspects of cognitive behavioral therapy, I want you to picture for a second, since we're doing this audio and there's no visual for you. I want you to think of four squares, right? A grid essentially. And on the top left of the grid is what we call unconscious incompetence. This is the incompetence you have that you don't know about, okay? Then there's conscious incompetence and the box below that, when you go across from that box to the bottom right box of that grid, you're going to find conscious competence. And then on the top right of the grid, you're going to see unconscious competence. The goal that you should have is to move things from unconscious incompetence. Meaning what are the things that I feel about myself that are stopping me from moving forward, right? How do I bring those things into the conscious incompetence? So, for example, I'll give everyone an example of me deploying this in a real life scenario and actually recognizing kind of how it works. So I often feel stressed when I receive an email. Why? It's another to do in my mind, oh my god, I have to do something with this. I can either let it go, so just wait, but then it's up to my memory to remember I have to respond to that email, right. I don't have a wonderful process to kind of put in place and ensure that I get back to that person like I really do. Keep everything in my mind. This will come back to motivation, I promise you all. When you think of it, it's unconscious incompetence. And then I recognize that incompetence or that issue consciously. I've now recognized that these emails create stress in my life. Now when I go and respond to that email, immediately I create conscious competence. Meaning I recognize much like if you've ever done inbox zero or one of these other methodologies where they say if it can take less than 2 minutes, do it immediately, get it off your list and don't let it sit there, right? Or if it can be, I think in 30 seconds or whatever, do it quickly and move on, right, which is essentially trying to move you to unconscious competence right now. I was only able to get that to conscious competence if I do it enough times. That's a habit. And once you build a habit, unconscious confidence is built. So the question is if you can apply that now in context of your motivations, right, and start saying what motivates me? What stops me from being motivated? What is the unconscious right now that now make it unconscious, move the unconscious incompetence down to that square beneath it and turn it into conscious incompetence. So what is my incompetence? And I know the word incompetence is kind of loaded, so take it for what it's worth, but what is sitting in that bottom corner right now that makes me not motivated, that stops me from taking an action? When you cross the chasm to conscious confidence, that's an action. That's why it's called cognitive behavioral therapy. You need to take a behavior, right? You have to build a behavior. You need to take an action. Motivation requires action in order to have an outcome, right? So we have intention, but we need to lead to action. So when you cross the chasm, take an action. If you do that enough times, you build the behavior they have, it that ultimately becomes part of your neurons and becomes built into your system, much like any system. And I do love this, by the way, if you all haven't read Taz's article recently published on Moz. What was the article title? I forgot.

Tazmin:

Optimizing your career.

Stephan:

Which makes sense. Optimizing your career. But in it she talks a lot about Tony Robbins process of belief and belief leading to behaviors and so forth. And kind of there's a grid there itself that you should take a look at. But it's this idea, really, that you need to take action and action with a root theme within there. And that really is the key, right? Motivation is great, but motivation doesn't mean anything without an action associated to it.

Tazmin:

I suppose you could also flip it on its head, saying all that you've talked about. We said to the listeners that we would give some advice and strategies and action points. And what you've been talking about is noticing your own behavior. Self reflection, we had a podcast on self reflection is so critical because once you understand where your struggles are and equally where you find that you are taking action without anyone asking you to, what is it that you end up doing? Enjoying a bit like with the learning and development. Myself, also noticing that is so important to your career because once you understand what your drivers are, you're then able to communicate those if you're managed by someone to your manager when you're having your reviews because they'll want to know what your drivers are. They'll want to know what your motivation is in order to build those great teams that perform really well, you'd be a godsend if you could say to your manager, actually, you know what? I really enjoy doing this, that you end up wanting to do. And for the things that you find difficult, you can say, I'm struggling with this because then it makes their life easier.

Stephan:

Yeah, I mean, we've always believed that. It's funny. We structure ourselves in a way that we believe that we have to be a flow around an individual that has all of these smooth edges and so forth. But the reality is we're not built that way. There are things that motivate and things that don't. Not all of motivation is good either, right. Some people can be motivated to want to gamble. That's not necessarily a good thing all the time, right. Risk taking can be a bad thing depending on if it becomes a possession or things like that. But in reality, when you think about your Motivators. And you know what's? Why it's also so root in the case of an SEO is you're a marketer at heart. That's what you're doing, your market. Now, we can talk about code, we can talk about the technical side of SEO and so forth. But the intention is to make content show up in meaningful ways in the terms and ways in which people are looking for things. So, intent, you say content is king. I now say intent is king. Content is the derivative. But you need intent. So if you understand intent, you have to understand motivation. Why are people searching for what they do? Why and what do they intend to do? What are the problems they're trying to solve? This is the way to look at it as a marketer, right? When you think about it internally as an SEO, it's kind of funny. You need to be the internal marketer also, right? When has the SEO been able to make all the changes they want on the website without anyone else getting involved? Maybe if you're your own webmaster, on your own site, perhaps you have no one to report to. However, in the real world, where no offense, that's not the real world, but in companies that are large and you have to deal with other people, the fact is, everyone's got a motivation. Now. Some people are going to work because they need to make money, and their motivation begins and ends there. Other people are going to work and using their time because they want to grow, or they want to expand their knowledge, or they have different reasons. And if you don't know the reasons why they're doing what they're doing, you might bump into a problem in asking them to do something you need them to do. So I'll give you a prime example of this real world SEO. You need a writer to go back and edit some aspects and optimize a previous article that was published six months ago. The problem is that editor or writer is motivated by the business as to what makes this person get a promotion, meet their goals, do these things. Let's say the business is structured, that the writer has a quantitative goal, not a qualitative goal. They have to produce a certain amount of blog posts a week, a month, a year, or a quarter a year in order to achieve their goals. By you asking them to go back to a previous article, you're not actually matching up with their goals and their intentions. So their motivation, if it is straight, I am looking to meet my goals. Anything that gets in the way of that is an obstacle. You've now shown up with a request which will ultimately help the website ultimately be good for the business, but isn't aligned with the motivation of that individual. So you need to get back to, well, why do they write in the first place? Okay, they write probably because they want their content seen, or maybe they want to help people. Or what is it that drives that person to get up every morning beyond just getting a paycheck and actually go and write for a living? Get to the root of that. If you do, then explaining to them that the changes you're asking for could actually have their meaningful content be shown in more meaningful ways to individuals and help more people. You've now framed it in the context of their motivation. The odds of seeing that actually come to fruition has just increased exponentially because you put it in their framework, not your own. Oftentimes we come with our own framework of our motivation. My motivation is to increase the SEO number. So I come in and tell you all the things you should do to make SEO good, and then I get super frustrated because nobody wants to follow the best practices I'm putting in front of them, and I get very annoyed. And I am every SEO under the sun, right? But what we didn't do is we didn't market it, we didn't frame it in the context of what they needed. It doesn't help them move forward with their career. It's just another to do. You just added more to their list, so of course they're not motivated to help you. This is not what gets them up in the morning. This is not what makes them happy. They don't get dopamine out of that process. You're just a task. So reframe the way you position what you're asking for. Reframe the joint project we work on together. Put them in the context of learning if the person cares about learning, of how they get promoted, if they can get better results to their content, how more people will ultimately see what they write and the meaningful product they produce. Put it in context of motivating factors. We do that all the time for our clients externally, but yet we never think about doing that as marketers internally. Because at the end of the day, a good SEO is one thing, a great SEO is another. A good SEO can have all the answers, but none of them get fulfilled. A great SEO gets some of their stuff fulfilled, but when they ask for them, it tends to always be fulfilled. Meaning when they have the right people in place, they're actually able to get more accomplished than a good SEO. A good SEO is fine to have all the answers, but if no one's executing on it, it's kind of meaningless, right?

Tazmin:

Yeah, but now you're getting so when we were talking about understanding our own motivation, there was this emotional intelligence tied to it of self reflection and self awareness. And here again, we are saying this is what we should be doing. But it requires emotional intelligence. It requires the ability to empathize with other people.

Stephan:

You're right. And it requires you. And to your point, Taz, as a practitioner of this. This is the warning do not try this at home message of our podcast here, which is don't go try to influence others with motivation until you figure it out your own. Because you might find out along the way that when you're trying to understand their motivations, your motivations end up being at odds with them. So until you know what you're coming to the table with, which are your motivations, don't ask or try to get involved with other motivations. It's almost like that old adage, right? You need to love yourself before someone else can love you. Same thing here. You need to understand yourselves and your motivations for why you do what you do so that you can be open and honest in the way you approach the situation. When someone is real, people feel that they know that what they're saying is coming from the heart. So when they say, oh, I'm trying to accomplish this because of this and you share that very openly. You share your motivations, you're not trying to hide them. That's a person that usually draws more people to them than someone who holds their motivation close to their best. And you're kind of like, why is this person playing poker with me? I'm not really sure what their motivations are. You're not as willing to join their team, be a part of their initiatives, make things happen for them, right? That's not the kind of person you tend to engage with. So first figure your own motivations out and then you're opening yourself up to understanding others motivations contextualizing and saying, how can I align my motivations, their motivation, so that we get a really good outcome together.

Tazmin:

We were going to talk about why is it critical for your career to understand other people's motivations. And you said that we don't work as a single unit. We work in a network of individuals that collectively make the organization. And we are going to come across situations where we need to get that work done through other people and vice versa. And we've talked about empathy is so critical in understanding. I'd say also build those relationships before you need to ask for something. Listen to them and really hear what they're saying. Ask questions to be able to understand them. So if I was going to give any tips for our listeners on understanding yourself, it is reflect and observe yourself. What is it that you are running towards? What is it that you are staying in bed about and really be curious about yourself. It's okay. But this isn't about beating yourself up or making yourself feel small. Just be curious. Okay, this email popped up. I don't like it. Why don't I like it?

Stephan:

Yes.

Tazmin:

And likewise I am running to do and volunteering for that task. Why is it but for understanding others, I would say listening skills, relationships, building and empathy. And I think it's harder sometimes for this side of it because these sort of things are taught. When you, for example, become a manager, it will be part of a managerial course. But often individuals are having to build these relationships without having become the manager or even not wanting to be the manager. So what advice would you give to those individuals?

Stephan:

So two amazing points that you just made, I want to make sure I follow up on. So the first, just so we have them written down, I'll get back to the individual versus the managerial aspects. I think that's fundamental also, and where you kind of learn these concepts, but also the statement you made about the empathy as well as, like, don't show up and ask to figure out someone's motivation at the same time as you ask for something. Right. It's disingenuous. Not only that, but think of it as a skill. Right. And I don't mean this is in, like, being coy or trying to manipulate. This is the problem that a lot of people will have when they think about motivation. As soon as I try to understand someone else's motivation, I'm manipulating or I'm no, hold on. You're gaining a basis of understanding of which you can create a relationship, whether that's a friendship, a professional working relationship. As you understand where you may not share the same opinions, the same worldviews, the same concepts, you just understand the person. You've contextualized. You understand what is the reason they do what they do, what makes them want to do what they do. As you understand that, don't mix, that you have to be a black belt in this to kind of, like, have one conversation, understand someone's motivation and then get them to take an action based on it, right? Because if you do it incorrectly, you're going to kick yourself in the face. It's just you're going to look stupid doing it, right? And it's not going to feel right to the other person. So unless you master this art, which I've seen some people do in their lives where they can just get in a room, I think there are famous people. I think Tony Robbins is probably one of those. I think Bill Clinton is another person like that. I think Michelle Obama is another person like that. These are all individuals that can get into a room and within one conversation make you sharing your motivation with them and taking action off that motivation immediately and not seem disingenuous and doing it. So leave that to, I want to say, like, the expert level. You're just getting into this. To your point. Where do you learn this and how does this become a skill? Well, just to finish that point real quick, the period on that point was do not ask while you learn about the motivation. Those need to be two separate conversations. Keep them separate, church and state for now. Right. You don't ask when you're learning if you're becoming friends with someone. You don't ask them to do something right away. It actually makes you a disingenuous person they don't want to be friends with. So we didn't learn this getting to learning. We learned this on the playground. We learned these things in reality, in our lives every day. You've made friends, you've interacted. You've understood that when someone likes something you like, you have a shared I won't say purpose, but you have a shared intention and potential motivation. You both like to collect something. Well, you know what? We both take action that's similar to one another. Therefore, we both may have similar motivations. Right. We may have similar likes. And these are things that draw people together. They want to find people that have similarities and look for those aspects. Right. So when you think about and I think this is the biggest kind of misnomer that in careers, you need to be a manager to be the top of your field. Right. It took me a long time to figure that out. In fact, I had to become an individual contributor in my own company to then realize that an individual contributor can be a highly paid, highly skilled, incredible individual. I don't mean that for me. I mean, literally, I watched others around me who were not who were what I call aces. They would not be the one who was trying to build the motivation. They were still trying to build motivation, don't get me wrong, but their job wasn't implicitly. I need to motivate other people to do exactly what I'm doing on a constant basis as a manager. Right. Whereas managerial aspects of that, yes, you get taught those types of things, but in reality, there are good managers and bad managers. Good managers, I feel, are the ones who understand the motivation of their folks. Yeah. And you know the thing I've always said in interviews, I always ask someone, what's their passion? I literally ask them what gets them up out of bed in the morning. And the reason I want to know that is because I can teach someone just about anything in my field that I know. If I don't know what, I can probably learn it and then teach it if I need to. But I can't teach passion. It's a skill that's not a skill. It's implicit in the individual, and it's tied to their motivation. If they don't have motivation, they won't show passion. If they don't show passion, then what do you have? Well, you have someone going through the motions. Going through the motions is not fun for them. It's not fun for you to watch people do their job passionately. Why do people get on YouTube and watch artists paint? Why do they get on YouTube and watch people do things that seem very just even put together a piece of furniture, a carpenter? Why do they do that? Because they see the person's passion. They feel it. It's actually visualized in a way, That people care about, right. It's their motivation.

Tazmin:

There's an energy that comes even from a YouTube video. So for me, it's cookery. You watch some of these street vendors in India, and they make the same thing day in, day out. But the love that they put into those is amazing.

Stephan:

Yeah. And that's the idea that person may be doing the same thing every day, but there's a passion there. There's a motivation. And getting to the heart of that motivation, again, it may be subconscious. We don't know. Right. And in this case, I called it incompetence. It doesn't have to be incompetence. Apply that same grit I just told you and put motivation in there. What motivates you? Do you know, unconsciously, it's happening no matter what. You are motivated, right? You get out of bed, hopefully every day. You shower, you go places, you do things. Now, you could be motivated by the simple thing of, like, I need to put a roof over my head and I need food. Right. Or you could be motivated by a love for what you do every day, or helping people, as has talked about. But the point is, you're going to have motivation in your life. The question is, are you bringing it to the conscious forefront where you can now analyze it, make it into actions that are a habit, and even look at the actions that already are conscious? Right. What actions do you take today that work towards your motivation? Do any of those needs change?

Tazmin:

Yeah.

Stephan:

And then if they do, how do you change them in order to make them a subconscious aspect of your programming? So that when you are being motivated, you're motivated by the right things, not by the wrong ones. You don't have to necessarily continue to have your motivations be what they are just because that's the way it is. Right. We've kind of accepted that because it's part of your programming. Right. But if you want to reprogram that, just like we reprogram websites, in all honesty, just like we optimize that's. What I love about SEO in general, in this field and this industry, is this idea that we never settle. We don't settle for the status quo. The status quo tends to show up, by the way, miss shaping and needing a lot of help, in all fairness and what we see come across our desks. But it's this idea that the more I can realize that I can change and I can put in place motivations for myself. When you go through that process that internalization as you talk about taz and taking those steps for yourself, you're going to realize and see in others things they're not seeing in themselves. Right. You're going to see some of the subconscious stuff that's going on with them through their actions, and you're going to be able to pick up on their motivations much better, which is going to make for a much easier conversation with them, about their motivations.

Tazmin:

Being observant about yourself, about others. And if I was to leave this topic with the listeners, with anything, it would be ask yourself questions. Be observant about your actions. Be observant about other people's actions. Be curious. There's a joy in that. We make it sound like it's a task. There's a joy. If you look carefully, you'll see so much more of that individual than just that person who works in that department and does that job.

Stephan:

Yes. As a humanity, you're adding a level of humanity to the individual. Right. And that's good marketing. Right. Remember, they're not numbers in Google Analytics. They're people. Right. And at the end of the day, we're influencing people. We're influencing yes, we influence search engines, but we do that with intent to influence people and to understand them. So the more we can humanize our approach towards things and recognize that motivations are the core and the basis of which people action, the more we introspect and learn about ourselves, the more we're able to contextualize that, understand others and bring people together, which is what we really do in our roles as SEO. Bring people together with a common goal and with an intention, and do it with motivation. That is the positive motivation towards accomplishing things.

Tazmin:

Gosh, it feels like we've talked about so much.

Stephan:

I don't know if any of it made sense. I blacked out when you said my name, and then I don't know what's happened since. So Taz, I hope the audience found some of that useful. I don't know if I took us down a very windy I'm sure it was a very windy add path, but hopefully there were some nuggets in there that are useful for folks.

Tazmin:

Do you want to leave any last thoughts or tips?

Stephan:

I guess I'll leave folks with this, right? You are at heart someone who is curious because you've chosen to get into a field when it comes to SEO. You've chosen to get into a field that's constantly changing. Right? There is never a finished to SEO, and there's never a finished, ultimately to understanding people's motivations personas, really getting into the heart of what we do everyday. So frame your motivation and understand what it is that makes you want to do what you do. Understand what others do and why they do it. Align those things so that you can have common shared goals that people can bring their passion to. And when you do that, you're literally unstoppable. There is no algorithm, there is no code, there is no content. There is no competitor that can beat that. Make that a reality and you'll succeed no matter what.

Tazmin:

Absolutely. And you'll have fun doing so.

Stephan:

Of course, that would be obvious that I keep forgetting. I keep giving everyone like, the tasks to do. Sorry for all the homework, folks, but again, marketing is a verb. Take action. So take some action. Don't be scared. You won't get it right the first time. It's perfectly fine. But it's a learning experience, right? And we all need to grow. So make this a part of your growth.

Tazmin:

That's been great. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Stephan:

Thank you, Taz. I really appreciate the time. And thank you all for listening.

Tazmin:

Thanks, everyone who's listening to this episode of the SEO Mindset podcast. It's been me, Tazmin Suleman, with my special guest, Stephan. It's a weekly podcast. New episodes go live every Thursday. Stephan, where can people reach you?

Stephan:

Sure. So LinkedIn tends to be one of the best. Stephan Bajaio. B-a-j-a-i-o on LinkedIn. The other one, obviously, is my own website, stephanbajaio.com

Tazmin:

Great. Thank you again.

Stephan:

Thanks so much.

Show artwork for The SEO Mindset Podcast

About the Podcast

The SEO Mindset Podcast
Personal growth tips to help you to optimise your SEO career and not just the algorithms!
The SEO Mindset is a weekly podcast that gives you actionable, personal growth and development tips, guidance and advice, to help you to optimise your SEO career and not just the algorithms.

The podcast is dedicated to talking about important topics that aren't often spoken about in the industry such as imposter syndrome, burnout, anxiety, self awareness etc. Sarah and Tazmin, along with their special guests highlight important topics, share own experiences as well as giving actionable solutions. Basically we have open, honest and frank conversations to help others in the industry.

Each week we cover topics specific to careers in the SEO industry but also broader topics. We will help you to not only build your inner confidence but to also thrive in your career.

Your hosts are Mindset Coach Tazmin Suleman and SEO Manager Sarah McDowell, who between them have over 20 years experience working in the industry.
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About your hosts

Sarah McDowell

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I've been in Digital Marketing and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) for around 10 years, currently working as the SEO Manager at Captivate (part of Global), the world's only growth-orientated podcast host. I am a self-confessed SEO nerd (I find the industry fascinated and love learning how search engines like Google work) and a bit of a podcast addict (with this being the fourth podcast I have hosted). I am also a speaker and trainer. I hope you enjoy this podcast!

Tazmin Suleman

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I am a Life Coach, helping people grow and thrive, however my background has included careers in Development, Data Integrity and SEO. Through coaching, mentoring and teaching I help people build happier more fulfilling professional and personal lives by changing their mindset and habits. I teach courses on these topics and have incorporated a lot of the teachings in this podcast. I hope you find it useful.