About This Episode
In this episode, Adrijana Vujadin, SEO Manager and Coach for SEO professionals, joins us. She helps people in SEO handle the challenges their lives and careers bring with a more resilient nervous system, ease, and grace. Adrijana is the founder of SEO Happy Hours, where she connects powerful women from the SEO industry to share their journey and empower each other.
She’s been working in the digital space since 2015. As a non-native English speaker from a developing country, she struggled greatly with confidence, imposter syndrome, and self-sabotage at work. Through a mindset program, she became a confident SEO Manager who enjoys her job but, more importantly, her life.
“I was struggling a lot in my job with imposter syndrome, with confidence. I’m not a native English speaker, so my English was terrible. And I was having struggles with that. – On struggling with imposter syndrome and confidence issues.” – Adrijana Vujadin
This episode is for you if you’re curious about the following:
- What imposter syndrome is and how you can overcome it.
- How you can control stressful thoughts and situations
- To consistently feel good about yourself.
- How to come from a place of true confidence.
Tune in for an insightful conversation with Adrijana Vujadin!
Connect With Adrijana
- Check out her website
- Follow her on Twitter @adrijanavujadin
- Connect with her on LinkedIn
- Check out the SEO Happy Hour podcast
- Subscribe to the SEO Therapy Newsletter
- Her brightonSEO 2023 deck
Resources
- (BOOK) Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now
- The Work of Byron Katie
Check out all of the resources mentioned across our other episodes.
Other episodes you’ll enjoy:
- S2E05: Fostering Growth Through Mentoring with Silvia Martin
- S1E19: How to Communicate Negative News and Become a Better Listener to be a More Effective Marketer with Dana Theus
- S1E20: Emotional Intelligence and Its Role in Digital Marketing Success: An Interview with Jo Juliana Turnbull
- S1E17: How to Advance Your SEO Career – Morgan Petrov
Loved this episode?
Leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. Tweet and tag us @dmvictories!
Episode Transcript
➡️ [Download episode transcript]
[00:00:00] Katherine Watier Ong: Welcome to the Digital Marketing Victories podcast, a monthly show where we celebrate and learn from the changemakers in digital marketing. Great digital marketers understand that people are the most challenging part of doing their jobs. And this show focuses on the people part of digital marketing wins what tactics or skills the guests use to align people with their marketing strategy.
I’m your host, Katherine Watier Ong, the owner of WO Strategies, LLC. We focus on increasing organic discovery for enterprise-sized, science-focused clients. Thank you for joining me. Let’s get into it and celebrate our victories. Today, we’re joined by Adrijana Vujadin. She’s an SEO manager at Affirma. And on the side, she coaches SEOs to build their confidence.
So this show is going to be perfect for you. If you want to learn more about imposter syndrome, whether or not you potentially have it, and how you might be able to overcome it. And how you could use other strategies to build your SEO confidence. So, Adriana, welcome to the show.
[00:01:01] Adrijana Vujadin: Yeah, thank you so much for inviting me.
[00:01:03] Katherine Watier Ong: . All right, so I’m very curious about, you know, your background in general because I love how SEOs find SEO because there are always different stories there. And how you got into digital marketing, but particularly, can you also tell our listeners how you got interested in imposter syndrome and the side coaching you’re doing?
[00:01:18] Adrijana Vujadin: Yeah, that’s definitely my story about entering the SEO and PPC. It’s kind of boring because nothing is too much. I had some internships while I was doing my master’s programs. Then, I realized that I like BPC and SEO. Then I did some different courses, but actually, what is interesting about entering these kinds of mindset things is that I was struggling a lot in my job with imposter syndrome, with confidence.
I’m not a native English speaker, so my English was terrible. And, like, I was having struggles with that. After two years, I will be in my current SEO job. I realized that I can’t do it anymore. I was so exhausted, tired of everything, tired of sitting here and sitting every day.
And I wanted to quit my job and just like go to Bosnia because I live in Dublin now because I tried everything. I was learning SEO. I was doing different courses. But I realized that every day I’m so nervous. I’m so stressed. I’m frustrated by all these, like Google updates. Google things, whatever.
I don’t know like everything was like kind of stressful for me. And at first glance, I was thinking like, yeah, you know, like I’m entering the adult world. That’s probably the way it is. And everybody is stressed. So probably, I also should be stressed like there is no other way because you will not hear that actually someone is not stressed.
So I was thinking like, that’s, that’s normal. But honestly, after two years, like, I couldn’t do more than in that time. I didn’t know, but I was in the burnout. I found that afterward, but I took two weeks of vacation just like to. Take some, like, mind thinking and, like, see, like, what I will do after, like, how I will approach my manager to say that I really can’t handle, like, all these, like, SEO clients.
Then, a very weird situation happened on that vacation because I started to read a book, Eckhart Tolle The Power of Now. And I read that, actually, you can control your thoughts. And I was like, no, you can’t because, like, when I’m frustrated, when I’m stressed, like it’s the way how it is. I can’t. I can’t control my stressful situations.
And then, I was talking with my best friend, who introduced me to some life coaches. Then I started reading about this. I did mindset coaching with my coach. After a few months, I was completely like blown away by the power when you are working on your mindset. Because before that, I heard people are mentioning the right mindset, a successful mindset, but I didn’t know like what that means.
After I did some kind of mindset and exercises, I became familiar with myself, how to actually handle all these feelings, how to handle stressful situations, and, in the end, how to reduce stressful situations. Then I was able to actually kind of breathe and then, like on my current job.
And the job has been the same for almost three years, but now how I’m handling all these things is that. Even like I’m having like more responsibilities are actually, I can’t say that they are stressful. Definitely, I have some stressful situations, but with the mindset things that I did with these mindset coaches, like I’m able to now clearly see the situation and kind of like divide myself from the situation and then make better decisions.
And then you know, that. When your work is not impacting your health, your mental health, and your personal life. It was at that moment that I saw how powerful all these things are. And then, last year, I decided that all SEOs really need to know that because I really want to share all the knowledge that I have learned with these people.
So basically, that’s what I’m doing now. I’m a full-time SEO manager, but I also have my clients where we are working one-on-one, and I’m teaching them all these mindset things that I have learned.
[00:05:45] Katherine Watier Ong: No, that’s great. So, your work background, though, was it in-house or just an agency? It sounds like it was an agency.
[00:05:51] Adrijana Vujadin: Just agency. Yeah. Yeah. All the time agency.
[00:05:54] Katherine Watier Ong: How many clients were you trying to handle?
[00:05:57] Adrijana Vujadin: Currently 10, around 10, like nine times.
[00:05:59] Katherine Watier Ong: That’s a lot. I mean, this is a lot. Anyway, as I started my consultancy, I realized that if I got over six, I’d forget one. That was my limit. I was like, I can’t do more than six.
Because I want to make sure everybody’s top of mind and, you know, I would sit there and do the list and be like, shoot, which one am I forgetting?
[00:06:18] Adrijana Vujadin: Yeah. The interesting thing is that before, I definitely had fewer clients between five and six, and especially when I started, I was handling a few of them.
The interesting part was that back then, it was harder for me to handle five or six clients than now when I’m handling about ten clients. It is kind of blow mind, mind-blowing thing because I’m, that is always, I’m saying like, my clients, basically, I’m three years in the same company, less you, you know, when you are starting the new job, like you don’t have like huge responsibilities.
You have like your own lead on the project. So basically, you are not, or you are not. So it’s possible. EE, even though it seems that you are only responsible for time. Right. But that’s the thing, like when you are having like. With the proper mindset, then I think I would. I can handle like even more because they are not stressing me.
They are stressful situations, but they are not stressing me like my body. And, like, that’s the key.
[00:07:22] Katherine Watier Ong: So when I was younger, I definitely had similar problems with getting overly stressed by work situations. Then, I worked at the Points of Light Foundation. And part of what I did was help.
People who are recovering from natural disasters, like a piece of it, were folks who were helping with hurricane recovery, and it just gave me a unique perspective. And so after that, I was like, okay, people are not dying.
[00:07:49] Adrijana Vujadin: Yeah, we are not doctors.
[00:07:51] Katherine Watier Ong: They all have their houses. They’re not dying. They’re not like high levels of water, you know, anyway. It gave me a little bit more perspective.
So your coaching clients, though, are all I’m curious about whether or not the stress level is equal between them. I mean, In-house and agency, do you see more agency folks are in-house folks.
[00:08:07] Adrijana Vujadin: Yeah. I would say, hmm, maybe more agency, but I think the stress is just different. Yeah. Even it seems that definitely like when people are handling more clients, they are, they are having different kinds of stress, but also in the house, the pressure from the in house and like it’s just like the, the stress, but in a different format.
Because people usually tend not to have resources. They can do a lot of things on their website. They can’t implement a lot of SEO strategies, but the stress of pressure that they need to provide results is, is huge because, you know, like when you are handling like different clients, clients are there for a few months, for a few years, they are leaving, you’re getting new ones.
You are getting like new, new kind of like vibration, like new energy. But once you are in the house, you are always in the same energy. And sometimes it can be even like more kind of like tricker, trickier to go out because people are in the, in the same company for three to four years, the same energy and everything.
Once you have a client, you are at least like you’re breathing a little bit like in different ways. So. But we also know what consulting is, and when you’re having agency work, how much stress that brings. So I wouldn’t say, like, it’s just like, it’s different, but everybody’s stressed.
[00:09:39] Katherine Watier Ong: Yeah. All right. So then, I have another question because this is my personal theory on things. So, I was reading that More female executives experience imposter syndrome than men. So, 75 percent of female executives have imposter syndrome. So why do you think more women are having trouble with imposter syndrome?
[00:09:59] Adrijana Vujadin: I think that’s the most common question I’m getting. Firstly, people don’t know that they have imposter syndrome. So if you know that you are, you, you have imposter, then at least like you are on the level two, because a lot of feelings, kind of like I’m calling that symptoms of the imposter, like self-doubts, feeling that you are not good enough, feeling that you need to over-deliver, feeling that you need to overwork, feeling that you need to do like everything at once as soon as possible.
Those are the symptoms of the imposter syndrome. So, and people, they don’t know that, actually, that is something that you can fix. You don’t need to feel that way. So I would say, like, when it comes to men and women, even I have like basically the same percentage of like people. And a very interesting thing is that, in the first few months, only men were coming to me.
So I was like, Oh, interesting. So that was interesting. I think the females are just in that kind of like nature that firstly, they are even like more aware of the things because like they have kind of like a bigger impact and like highlights their feelings. So it’s easier to detect that you have imposter syndrome.
On the other hand, like men, they have like different kind of like expectations of them. And they, they are, they are handling like in different ways. And all these things are coming from early childhood, because you know, like parents are telling boys like, you don’t need to cry. You can’t cry.
They are playing like different games. They are fighting with each other, and just like with the nature of like, as it is like, they are kind of. They are becoming more and more like, I can’t say, stronger, but they are just more exposed. So they kind of overcome in different ways.
And then, like imposter syndrome for women, like that, that’s kind of our core belief from young, from young childhood, from when our parents are comparing us to others, from boys to, and then it’s just like growing and growing.
[00:12:15] Katherine Watier Ong: Hmm. Yeah. That’s systematic female suppression. So, so as so I’m, I’m the weird one that I had a unique upbringing and had confidence at an early age, partially genetic.
My dad and my mom had a lot of confidence, but then they also set me up to build the confidence. I’m always thinking about it. I have two daughters, and I want to make sure that they. Don’t have this problem with confidence, and mind you, it helps that they’re homeschooled because they’re not running into stuff in the outside world at an early age that kind of knocks their confidence back.
But anyway, this is why I’m obsessed with it: I don’t have a confidence problem. And I’m always trying to figure out, “What is that piece?” Why don’t I have a confidence problem, and how do I make sure my girls also don’t have that confidence problem?
[00:13:02] Adrijana Vujadin: Yeah, usually the biggest impact has been made by our parents.
If your parents encouraged you to test different things when you fail, they didn’t like arguing with you. They didn’t kind of like being noisy. Like, why did you make a mistake? Don’t, if they don’t like. If they put you like encouraged, like in the, in the winds, like, yeah, you can do whatever you want.
Then definitely, it is not likely that you will get so many kinds of problems with confidence, but also a lot of other factors are impacting that. And yeah, as you know, like. You, you, you don’t have a problem with confidence, but then you have other problems. So I’m always saying we, we are all screwed up.
Cause it’s just like in the way, like in different ways. But like.
[00:13:51] Katherine Watier Ong: Well, and I think you could be confident, but you go into the workplace, and it depends on your workplace experience. Some of them could definitely cause you to question things. So, and I don’t, everybody’s got a different workplace experience too.
Right. And so, as a marketer, mine, I think this is average. I was in- house for a long time, and a lot of them was relatively short, especially since I worked at nonprofits. So nonprofits have a lot of turnover. So to marketing people, cause you’re trying to make more money and you can, if you stay, you know, and so like I had these short moments, but they were all different.
So I had variety. It was kind of like an agency. Right. So I had all this variety. And so, yeah, I had a couple that were crappy. But I could look back to the one that was good, be like, they loved me. I rocked it. This place doesn’t love me. I’m not rocking it. Maybe it’s not me. Right?
[00:14:39] Adrijana Vujadin: Because 95 percent will think that actually it’s, it’s that it’s on them.
It’s not the environment. It’s on them. And then kind of like it’s a core problem because you’re not doing anything about it because you’re trying to even like prove yourself even more, more, you’re working even more, but then like another, another side is just not providing you what you need.
Right?
[00:15:02] Katherine Watier Ong: Yeah, I think the workplace culture part is huge. You could be a top performer, but if you end up in a place where you don’t vibe with the workplace, you could fail, and it’s not you. It’s the workplace, right? It could be your manager. It could be a lot of other things that were set. For instance, I ended up in places that always needed a big pivot.
I was the disruptor person. And sometimes if you go in and they’re willing to like pivot from old school, whatever the digital marketing and they’re ready, and you have good marketing, you have a good manager that’s supporting you. You could possibly make that happen, but it’s a high-failure kind of situation generally across the board.
And so I had a couple where I’d walk in, and they want to do digital marketing and they say they want to, they don’t actually really want to. And then you fail. And, I had enough perspective to realize, mind you, this was after a little bit of time on this one failure one. So I got let go, or I left about the same time.
Right. And then it was. I want to say it was months later. There were two of these instances where somebody who worked there or who had history of the organization knew I was upset about the fact that I lost the job and reached out to me and gave me the background so that I would feel better. So, like, in one instance, they’re like, you realize that you were the sixth person with that title they hired.
Oh, okay. Then maybe it’s not me. Right. And they were all short-tenure. You’re like, Oh, they weren’t ready. It wasn’t me. Anyway, I just think that sometimes top performers get worried about that kind of stuff. And it’s just not you sometimes.
[00:16:34] Adrijana Vujadin: Yeah. That’s the thing with our brain patterns. Because, like, even like people who are struggling with these, at the end of the day, when you When they sit with me and when we are like, we have some kind of like checklist and like when we are analyzing their situation, at the end of the day, they know that it’s not about them.
Hmm. Interesting. But it’s just like people don’t take a few moments and analyze the situation. What is really happening? Because, like, you know, we are, we are sometimes angry about something that is not real because we make some assumptions like we don’t want to have more information.
And, like, we are angry about something that, like, it’s not even accurate in the like 100%. So basically, because like. Especially in the SEO community, everyone is encouraging, just like learning more networking, reading testing, and different things. People are not putting themselves in the first play. Let’s see what is really happening here.
They will likely read more or learn more to prove some of their work. It’s valuable then just to take one hour and see, is this what is happening in my current company? Toxic, for me, it is about them. It’s not about me. Like I’m valuable. I’m proving my work. I don’t need to work like 10 hours or something like that because they just like.
And many as well as the last time when you sit with yourself, like with one hour journal or something like that. So people are just like with this crazy, like, I don’t know what is happening in the world. Like people don’t have time for themselves, everyone else and every project, every client is more important than ourselves.
[00:18:17] Katherine Watier Ong: So I wonder we’re going to be releasing an episode. I’m not actually sure whether it’s before yours or after yours, but I’m going to be talking to somebody about mentoring. So stay tuned for that episode. But I wonder if the folks you’ve got that are helping that you’re helping, do they have mentors?
So that was the key to my perspective. Sometimes, with some of my issues in my career, I was interacting with my mentor, and she gave me perspective.
[00:18:42] Adrijana Vujadin: Yeah, usually they don’t, usually they don’t. So, also, there is a difference between a technical mentor and a mentor helping you with your attitude, soft skills, or something like that.
Having a mentor is a great thing, and that is something that I had when I started SEO. The best thing ever is that you are willing to learn much faster, and you are acquiring many new perspectives from your mentor. But sometimes, when you are entering your own kind of world, then definitely I’m always encouraged to have a different kind of mentor that is not just technical and is helping you with these soft skills.
[00:19:30] Katherine Watier Ong: Mine was more career-oriented and focused on soft skills. She helped me as I moved through my journey. I met her at one job, and then as I moved to different jobs, and then as I moved from working for someone else to working for myself, she gave me many tips. It was great.
So, let’s talk a little bit about confidence because I also feel like it’s a double bind when it comes to confidence in the workplace. So, I’ve particularly experienced this. So, male leaders are usually. Rewarded by having confidence, even if it’s misplaced, they could be totally incompetent.
If they’re confident, they get rewarded, but women often do not often have issues demonstrating work confidence in the workplace in a way that gets rewarded. Often, if you’re too confident, it backfires on you. So, what kind of experience have you seen with that?
[00:20:29] Adrijana Vujadin: Yeah. So firstly, females are just, in general, like they are struggling to take new opportunities and new big projects because like they think they are not good enough for even new kinds of leaderships positions.
Also, you know, like when there is a funny story, like when women want to. Apply for a job, they are just finding, like, why they can’t enroll that job, and then they’ll, like, they are not waiting, they will just, like, apply and, like, that’s it. Of course, there are differences, but there is a general sense around that.
So For me and, my personal experience, I didn’t experience anything like this. I was able to make progress in my leadership positions. Once, I was acquiring all these soft skills and making jokes, like when I put all this money in my head to work on my mindset, and I could progress with my career and everything.
Women are just struggling with taking these kinds of new opportunities. We need to add a lot of things that one female needs to handle besides the work and all these. Things are not just project-related. So I think generational and cultural things are putting that maybe more in advantage for males and like disadvantages for females.
[00:22:10] Katherine Watier Ong: Yeah. Do you coach your genders differently? I do think that there needs to be a different approach for women to assert themselves in the workplace so that it does not backfire.
[00:22:22] Adrijana Vujadin: Yeah, I’m coaching them on the way they would like to get, and definitely, like, our base is working on their feelings.
For example, fulfillment for male and female. It’s not just like gender-related because I have some male people who want to feel just like fulfillment. They don’t want to progress in their career. Are not dreaming about some director’s roles. It’s just like, depending on the personality.
What I see is that doesn’t mean that males will need and will want to kind of progress in their careers so aggressively. Or just like a female. Also, I think my target audience is very specific. So I’m just attracting all these people who are firstly looking for that kind of success and fulfillment in the work.
Definitely like high achievers who are just looking for success without any kind of awareness about their feelings will not come to me because like it’s just like energy that, we are kind of like getting and like, what they are getting from me. So I, I think my, my, my probably metrics will be biased because it’s a very specific audience that that is coming to work with me
[00:23:42] Katherine Watier On.g: If you think SEO is unique in that.
There’s this individual contributor path, right? You keep getting to do the work, which is my bias. It’s what I ended up doing. But you can also have a path where you started as doing the job but then decide instead you’d manage, which means you’re doing the work less and managing more.
And I had that opportunity. I remember talking to my boss about it, and I didn’t want to do that. I like the work. That’s why I’m doing it. You know? But, yeah, that distinct difference might be stronger than others. Well, I don’t know. I suppose if you’re doing website development, maybe it’s the same thing.
Like people really jam and want to keep coding versus managing.
[00:24:27] Adrijana Vujadin: Yeah. Yeah. My people are usually SEOs and like interesting thing is actually, they are, for example, in the first few years. Definitely, regarding different backgrounds, but they would like to just do the work. And then after three to four, five years, then they would like to even like a little bit manage people.
And then after more years, they would like to even like enroll in the world of independent SEO consultants. But every every period has different struggles.
[00:24:56] Katherine Watier Ong: Right. This is very true. It’s very, very true — especially when you decide to run off and do your own thing. There are totally other things you’re going to be worried about.
[00:25:02] Adrijana Vujadin: Yeah. Even if you are confident in the full-time or doesn’t matter, like agency or the in-house, when you are moving for that, like an independent SEO consultant role, then again, a new way of confidence is on your way when you are struggling with imposter syndrome, like how you will do that.
Like, will you be able to find new clients to run the business? Once you’re moving from full-time to a business owner and SEO consultant.
[00:25:34] Katherine Watier Ong: So let’s rewind just a second and talk a little bit more about this imposter syndrome. So, I was doing a little bit of reading, it seems like maybe there are five types of imposter syndrome.
Are you seeing different variations of it, or is it all sort of the same, and do you approach it the same?
[00:25:49] Adrijana Vujadin: Yeah. Yeah. The different and interesting thing about imposter syndrome is the location. So, I’m always taking examples, for example, imposter syndrome from third world countries, for example, from Bosnia, then imposter syndrome from, I don’t know, the UK.
Then, there is imposter syndrome from the States. So, all three of us will have imposter syndrome, but the background that that imposter syndrome is coming from is different. For example, in third-world countries, we have to face a kind of survival mode, just like getting a job, getting money, and all these things.
For example, in the UK, it’s a little bit like different imposter syndrome, just like they are getting feeling that they are not good enough because the market is like saturated with so many kinds of like SEOs, and then like states, people like they have a different kind of like mindset first about the money.
Then, they would also like to start something new. They are more likely to start even their own SEO agency. But again, like imposter syndrome, it is different because –it’s like location, parents, family, background, all these things. But the same thing is in Boston Syndrome, but the background is totally different.
So it’s so interesting to see.
[00:27:13] Katherine Watier Ong: So do you, I’m assuming that you provide different processes to help folks from those different backgrounds?
[00:27:19] Adrijana Vujadin: Actually, processes are the same. Because we are processing feelings, we are discovering why you are feeling that. So it doesn’t matter where you are coming from, the kind of like the process will be the same.
And that is kind of like finding your core value, why you are thinking. So also you can come from the States, and you are, your background is, I don’t know, something that you are feeling more for survival mode. So, I’m calling those feelings core beliefs, like, “Why you are thinking in that way?”. Is that what we are discovering?
Once we discover the core belief behind their imposter syndrome, then we work on checking that core belief because, as I mentioned before, we have some just kind of like beliefs that are generic. Beliefs are not questioning themselves. Once we discover that core belief and analyze it, we start the process of moving people from feeling that they are not good enough to stage an event and getting the confidence that definitely like all these external factors.
Like work or something like that, it is stressing them out, and they will be impacted by their imposter syndrome and the feeling that they are not good enough. So, in the end, it’s very simple, but just like people are not talking about these things. Coaches and life coaches are having like.
Especially in Europe, more kind of a negative tendency. I know that in the States, the space is definitely a little bit different. But again, here is kind of like culture that, you know, is just like work, work, work, work. Don’t do anything about your feelings, people. It’s just the way, the way how it is.
[00:29:16] Katherine Watier Ong: How are you helping people overcome these deeply hidden beliefs? Are you giving them a mantra and breathing and visualization, and are you practicing it? I mean, ’cause if it’s, if it’s really deep. I just kind of wonder how you’re helping that behavior?
[00:29:35] Adrijana Vujadin: So with me, no affirmations, no mantras, no, no anything.
It’s like kind of like therapy. And I’m calling that like SEO therapy because it’s in the conversation. I’m asking questions, and then we are together discovering because, like, you know, I can’t say something that’s happened like in their past. So, but I will, I’m able, and I have that skills that I have, I have learned that we.
Are questioning all this situation. And then we get that usually what is coming to the surface is some situations in the past from their childhood, when they were disappointed, like when they, their parents did, for example, some, and like, it doesn’t need to be like too hard, but like in that specific moment, it impact inner child and like small child that we were 20, 30 years ago, in the different that.
They will change the way they see the world.
[00:30:37] Katherine Watier Ong: Hmm. I see. So, have you discovered that for some folks with imposter syndrome, there’s also a correlation between that and having the right mix of soft skills to be successful?
[00:30:53] Adrijana Vujadin: It’s, it’s not so much correlated because we know a lot of successful people who have great soft skills, great leadership skills, but they are not on their mindset in terms of Discovering their feelings, why they are feeling like that or something like that.
So, working on your mindset will help you with your soft skills because you will be aware of yourself and why you are doing something in a specific way. Again, if you are struggling with doing something, reach out or ask for help; also, you will be aware of why. And we are changing that, but it doesn’t need to be connected.
So, I would say that working on your mindset will help you. But again, like there is a difference, like working on your mindset and working on your imposter syndrome. Part of working on your mindset is imposter syndrome, but it will help you to gain soft skills more easily because you are becoming aware of why all these things are happening to you. It doesn’t mean that you will be a great leader or anything like that if you just fix your imposter syndrome; it means you will feel more.
Good about yourself, and then you, if you decide that you really want to increase your leadership skills, perfect, but also it doesn’t need to be connected so much.
[00:32:29] Katherine Watier Ong: Yeah, I was totally thinking of this the other day because I’m reading Never Split the Difference along with the Women in Tech SEO book club, and particularly that he was talking about 1 of the critical successes to negotiation is making sure you can control your emotions.
That’s the part I was connecting. I was like, Hmm, I wonder if people are working on controlling our emotions in the heat of the moment. Right? Let’s, that’s, as I’m sort of discovering all the soft skills out there, I just put a pin in it. I was like, that’s the soft skill, too. Anyway, and I don’t know if people are it’s emotional, right?
I don’t know. I was working on it.
[00:33:03] Adrijana Vujadin: Yeah, because in the end it’s emotional. It’s just like the level of emotion you are, and you want to be. Also, people are struggling to work on their emotions because it can be very painful, and you need to overcome all these emotions. But definitely what I’m seeing, like, if you are, yeah.
If you know how to control your emotions, but in the way that you’re not ignoring them, you know, like a lot of people are just like ignoring their emotions and just like continuing to work, work, work, work, work, work Maybe you will survive. Definitely, you will survive, but kind of like with the consequences. I, I can’t know, like, what kind of consequence you will handle, like just ignoring your emotions.
What I can see controlling your emotions that you are discovering them and you are aware of them will actually help you to overcome some, for example, stressful situations, like reducing the pressure on your work. And that is the,, power at that moment, not just ignoring them and moving forward.
[00:34:10] Katherine Watier Ong: Hmm. That makes tons of sense to me. So, how do your clients know when they’ve successfully tackled their imposter syndrome?
[00:34:19] Adrijana Vujadin: It’s in the feeling. And I would say like, there is no day when you are saying, yeah, I overcome imposter syndrome because like all these clients that are working on their imposter syndrome and on their mindset, they are also very successful.
Every month, every week, like they are a new level. So, with a new level, you are getting new kinds of situations. So it’s just like overcoming new situations and growing because if you are just not doing anything about your imposter syndrome or not doing anything about your mindset, you are kind of in, in this one, in the one stage.
So there is you can. Reach your kind of confidence that when you’re feeling good enough, you will not stop. You will not stop because once you are on that level, you want next level. So we are always working on your growth,
[00:35:20] Katherine Watier Ong: Particularly in our industry. I’m always like, I’ll. Read something by Mike King and be like, Oh my Lord, I’m, I have so much more stuff to do.
[00:35:28] Adrijana Vujadin: Yeah. Right. Yeah. Because with every learning, like we are discovering some new things that we don’t know. Yeah. But that, I would say that is a difference when you know that you. You don’t know something, and you want to know, but not from the feeling that you are not good enough because you want to feel that you are curious and that you want to learn more.
And then when you feel this difference, then you can say let, you kind of like practice your brain, you train your brain to actually to switch the focus from one thing to another thing and move forward. And you are feeling that, like, after any session, like my clients are feeling different. They are aware we are constantly learning about these brain patterns that are happening in our heads.
And like, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s so interesting to say, but actually the results are visible in your body. You’re feeling different.
[00:36:27] Katherine Watier Ong: So let’s just pause for a second and dig into that a little bit more since the, bloody industry changes so quickly and especially this last fall. It feels. Overwhelming, and I remember I was watching, I don’t know, it was an SMX next, maybe presentation or something, and the presenter was like, they, they’d run a survey and like, listen, all of us are feeling that way.
Right? Which obviously gives you some perspective. You’re like, okay, my friends in the industry feel like I do. It’s a common thing. Nobody feels like we’re on top of it. Okay. That helps a little. But in general, how do you help your SEO folks? Thanks. Be okay with the pace, and know that there’s always new stuff. What do you coach them to say if a client asks them about something that’s brand new?
[00:37:09] Adrijana Vujadin: Yeah, overwhelming can come from different perspectives. People just like trying context switching, like doing different things on your day, putting like so many. different activities. So yeah, overwhelm is not something that only people with imposter syndrome are experiencing.
[00:37:30] Katherine Watier Ong: Yeah. So, what do you do with confidence in particular?
So, how do you build somebody’s confidence? I have a few ideas I’ve attempted to try with mentees. But do you have any tips?
[00:37:43] Adrijana Vujadin: Yeah, confidence is a consequence of all these like mindset things that we are working on. You know, people would like to feel confident, but besides that, confidence is likely to feel good about themselves. So once you are feeling good about yourself, you don’t have like self-doubts, you don’t have kind of like misconceptions for the decisions, you know your core values, you know your core beliefs, you’re familiar with like what you want, how you want to achieve it, then even like when you are communicating, you are very clear about these things.
Once you feel good about yourself, you will say two extra things about anything like that. The result is confidence, but there are so many different factors you need to build to get and feel real confidence. I wouldn’t say like you know, like I will not say like, yeah, I’m confident.
I would say like, yeah, I’m, I’m feeling good. About myself, I’m feeling good enough, so,
[00:38:56] Katherine Watier Ong: Oh, that’s a perfect answer. I was trying to shortcut it with my mentee. So, it’s good to hear that it involves a lot of emotional work before you end up getting to that end state. So, just a final question I ask everybody: is there something, so as marketers, we’re constantly thinking about your audience, and have you recently had an aha moment about your audience that surprised you?
[00:39:22] Adrijana Vujadin: I did, I can’t, I can’t think about it because like my target audience, I would say like, it’s, it’s very specific as your professionals like I am with a. Between like three to 10 years of experience in the end, we are all the same. We are all the same. We are just having different companies, different projects, different clients, different managers, but our problems are the same.
So I didn’t had any aha moments recently. I think. Yeah.
[00:39:59] Katherine Watier Ong: And do you just support SEOs? I know you have a pay-per-click background, too.
[00:40:03] Adrijana Vujadin: Yeah. For now, just like SEOs. I’m feeling that since I’m an SEO manager myself, I’m feeling that just like. I can help most SEOs, and people from other backgrounds are welcome.
It’s like the way I targeted myself for SEOs, but like all the people who are watching my videos, they are saying, yeah, that is aligned with any other industry. So it is; it’s just the way I started. I wanted to start like small help my people, maybe in the, in the future, I will help like, even like PPC digital market marketers, because the process, the processes are the same and like, so,
[00:40:46] Katherine Watier Ong: okay.
And what, when, or resources do you have to share with our audience? Our listeners. Mm.
[00:40:52] Adrijana Vujadin: Resources regarding what? I have tons of resources.
[00:40:55] Katherine Watier Ong: Oh, imposter syndrome and confidence and mindset. All that.
[00:40:59] Adrijana Vujadin: Okay. Yeah. I think it’s imposter syndrome. Where I could have learned most of the processes for imposter syndrome is Byron Katie’s work.
Byron Katie, she wrote tons of books, but her approach to the work I took it like imposter syndrome. So, people who want to work on it, please. Watch her tons of videos. Also, you have fixed imposter syndrome free training on my YouTube channels. And I’m always saying, like, people don’t go broad.
Just like, take one approach and try and go with it because you’re just taking small steps from there, there, there, and then you will be confused. So, for imposter syndrome, Byron Katie is perfect.
[00:41:51] Katherine Watier Ong: Great. Cool. And how can people learn more about you?
[00:41:55] Adrijana Vujadin: Yeah, I’m on LinkedIn. I’m on LinkedIn every day.
Also, I have my YouTube channel. I just started last year. So I think these two platforms are the best. So, people who want to work with me or see what one coaching session looks like can find me on LinkedIn and send me a message.
[00:42:15] Katherine Watier Ong: Great, and we’ll have a link to her LinkedIn and YouTube channel in the show notes.
It was great having you on the show. Thank you so much for sharing your background and your experience.
[00:42:24] Adrijana Vujadin: Thank you so much for reminding me.
Thanks so much for listening. To find out more about the podcast and what we’re up to, go to digitalmarketingvictories.com. And if you like what you heard, subscribe to us on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Rate us, comment, and share the podcast, please. I’m always looking for new ideas, topics, and guests. Email us at admin@wostrategies.com or DM us on Twitter at @dmvictories.
Thanks for listening.
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