SEO Cash Flow Work Life Balance
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[00:00:00] Hi everyone, it's Olga Zarr from SEO Sly. This is SEO Cashflow with me and Miriam Gessier. Miriam, how are you doing today? Hello, hello, bonjour. Um, it's 2024. I'm busy, I have plans, I'm plotting, I'm planning. Yeah, it is. It is like 2024 started to me quite different than usually. So I took almost like almost three weeks off, , to be able to rethink a lot of things, stuff.
[00:00:34] And, uh, this is, I think the topic of our today's conversation. So we want to talk about work life, work life, and SEO balance. How Are we able to balance the two things and to be able to thrive as an, as SEOs and in our personal lives, which shouldn't be, hopefully aren't only about SEO. So maybe a quick intro of why I am coming up with this topic.
[00:01:04] So, um, there is a separate video about that on my YouTube channel, where I talk in more detail, but generally. I've been working very hard, too hard for the past three, four years to the point that at the end of 2023, I started feeling, I simply, my energy levels were getting worse and worse. And I also started to get a lot of symptoms of different things in my body.
[00:01:30] And I wasn't really sure what it is, whether this is post COVID, whether this is ADHD or something else. And I started to. Look for ways to kind of change that even though I thought I had like perfect Perfect processes perfect balance. I really didn't because I was working like basically entire days from from morning till Evening and I didn't really take a lot of free days Even though I was quite assertive when it comes to SEO calls having calls with clients But even though I had fewer calls, I was still working too much And even though I was working a lot of hours, I wasn't, I think, that productive, as productive as I wanted to be.
[00:02:16] So, a lot of changes I am introducing this year, after reading a bunch of books, including one, one book I liked especially was to the Desk, which is exactly about workaholism and how you fight that, how you get more balance, and how you get a happier life. So With that intro, uh, I want to learn from you, how, Miriam, how do you balance work and life in SEO?
[00:02:46] What's your recipe? And maybe there is something you will, you would like to improve. Maybe you are also struggling with low energy levels. Tell me all about it. So, I think that, um, post COVID, long COVID issues are real, just for the record. Uh huh. I think that we will uncover in the coming years that a lot of us have been hit.
[00:03:11] And it is a problem, but at the end of the day, it's not the problem we think it is. Let me explain. We all have this notion that we have to be as efficient as possible and that we should be doing more, more, more, more. And when you talk about workaholism, oh, I've been there. I've been there. Sometimes I'm still there.
[00:03:34] And for me, what this looked like was, well, I would start maybe at like five or six in the morning, start working, maybe like take an hour walk in the summer to have like de stress and continue working until 1 a. m. I mean, that's, that's not an, yeah, that's not an acceptable, acceptable way of living. Like I used to do the content for the company blog.
[00:03:57] I used to. I used to do, um, trainings like preparing the decks. I used to renew my decks all the time. I always had extra audits. I always had trainings. I, all of the things, and it led to a burnout of epic proportions. Let me explain. When you talk about burnout. I believe you, and I believe that you are way more, uh, centered regarding your health than I am because I had a breakdown in the style of like, um, Julia Roberts and like all the Hollywood ladies that had the live laugh love types of romances, so, you know, they all go off in Italy to find themselves.
[00:04:40] Well, here I was. In Rome, having a romantic vacation, and I had a full bomb. When was it? Sorry. Oh, 20 Because I, I had two meltdowns in Italy, not just one. Um, it was before COVID, so probably like 2018, maybe 2019? And I mean like, full, snot nosed, crying, screaming, hysterical, like, in the middle, like, of the street.
[00:05:11] The tourists were staring at me. And my partner was just like, yeah, this is, this is, this is not okay. Like this is not working. And I was like, I know it's not, and you're not helping. And he's like, yeah, but how do I even begin to help this? And the problem is that we all assume that the stress and. The, the work life balance problem is coming from the outside.
[00:05:42] It's not. It's coming from the inside. And the thing about this is that you have to be okay with not being okay. You have to be okay with not doing all the things. With not doing, uh, Everything that, you know, your fear of missing out is dictating you should be doing. You have to come to a point where you can't be forced, internally or externally, to give a fuck.
[00:06:11] And that is complicated, right? Because there's a lot of people that want you to give a fuck because they don't want to give a fuck, they're passing the fuck to someone else. And it's hard to realize that at the end of the day, it doesn't matter how many people stress you out, you get the final I say yes or I say no and you need to get familiar with what is that going to cost me if I say yes Because if I say yes to you i'm saying no to myself for something else right and It it's coming from different angles because you're stressed that you're going to disappoint people you're stressed that you're going to lose Um, credibility, you're stressed that you're not going to deliver on time.
[00:06:54] You're stressed that it's not going to be high quality. You're stressed, you're stressed, you're stressed. And here we are dealing with AI. And notice how a lot of employers are now just like letting people go when originally the promise of artificial intelligence is that it's going to be handling a lot more stuff for us.
[00:07:13] So we have what? More free time. It was never about making, um, investors rich. At the end of the day, we're We are an apex predator like we're the top of the food chain, right? So do you think that um, Lions are behind a desk like waiting around that, you know making things happen No, they preserve their energy.
[00:07:43] They chill out and they wait for the right moment To go hunting, the end, okay? The right opportunities. But here we are, just working ourselves to the bone, which means that sometimes you don't even have the energy or the foresight to go, Hey, this would be a great opportunity. I should go for it. I should make the time for it.
[00:08:05] Because you're stressed. So Can you believe that it took me two full blown, like, breakdowns in public. The second one was next to Pompeii, you know, like the, the famous city that got buried by the volcano. Yes, I was there, once again, ugly crying, it's been my dream to go there, okay? And that's when I realized.
[00:08:29] Yeah, something really has to change. Like, yeah, really bad. And I have to ask you now, before I go on, like, did you have a full blown ugly crying, or did you go, Hey, my health is not okay, I need to fix something. Maybe it wasn't like that full blown, but like my My mental health and physical health at some point started deteriorating like very rapidly.
[00:08:56] And I simply realized that I'm not able to work as productively and even to do, to do SEO in the way I used to do like a couple of years ago. So it was like a more of a red flag with a little bit of. depressive mood that something is wrong. I don't know what I have to figure this out. So I think maybe I started figuring this out, uh, early enough before such thing happened.
[00:09:30] So that's my hope. So congratulations. Because you were smarter than I was. You understood this better than I did. I had no clue what was going on, and I spent an entire year last year being so sick, and I suspect strongly there's something wrong with my health, probably tied to overworking or getting older, but I slept so much, but so much, well, so much that I, I was wondering where my life was going, but it felt good, and now I'm slowly, like, starting to feel better.
[00:10:03] Same as you. To feel more productive to have moments where I'm like, this is awesome. And I want to talk about this. I'm going to give myself the time to explore this. And that sadly comes from a place of privilege too, because the more experience you have, and the more you build your business up, the more you can afford to make these decisions.
[00:10:27] I love it. I love it when these like productivity gurus and like, you know, like the, the, the entrepreneurs. I'm sorry, I'm French. It's entrepreneur. I don't understand what the British did with this. I don't understand what the Americans did with that word, but okay. But these folks forget that the reason why they decided to launch something was to never deal with this stress again.
[00:10:49] And they're like, Oh, but it's easy. All you have to do is like me. No, you have to like build up a foundation where you can actually have work life balance because it entails working on yourself and going, Hey, if I don't do this. What is the cost? What is going to happen to me? And some of us can't afford to say no right away.
[00:11:12] Some of us have to be stuck with the wrong clients for a little bit. So, I want to highlight that whatever we're going to be discussing right now, maybe you're not quite in the position. Where you can afford to do this, and maybe that's why Olga, for quite a few years you did this, it yielded results, and then you saw the diminishing return on investment, and you were like, hey, I have to take some time to figure out how to improve it, but that's because you've got a good business going, you've got people willing to wait for you, you've got clients lined up, that's not everyone, so if you're in this position where, um, If you have too many clients and you're too exhausted, then you can either increase your prices and that will get you more time, right?
[00:12:02] Like for me, the first time I spoke to my friend Samer Lavoie, an amazing technical SEO over in Canada, he's like, he's listening to my problems. I'm like, how do you manage? He's like, um, Hey, my share, it sounds like it's time for you to, uh, increase your prices that will solve your problem. The end. You're, you're laughing because you learned that one too, right?
[00:12:24] Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Totally. Totally. This is like 100 percent true. And I cannot like, uh, agree more on this one. So one, one of the issues is that you, we all come to this conclusion when it comes to work life balance. You can keep working. forever. But if you want more time, then your price has to go up because you value your hours more and you want people to value them more as well.
[00:12:54] Okay. So for example, let's take it out of the, you know, usual money discussion. The first time as a young couple in Canada, that we had to repaint the house, like, brand new apartment, we can choose, da da da, great. My partner was like, we're gonna paint, and I'm like, absolutely the fuck not, we're not painting.
[00:13:22] And he's staring at me, and I'm like, absolutely not. What he didn't know is that I spent most of my childhood painting houses because my mother was renting out units. Guess who had to paint every time the tenants left? . Okay. So I know, I know how hard it is. I know how much material, like you have to buy the furniture where the, the, the paint brushes you have to clean up.
[00:13:43] It gets messy. You have to have like cloth, you paint painter, tape everything. And I, I looked at him and I went. That door right there is dark brown. We want it to be white. And he's like, yeah, I'm like, that's going to take at least three coats of primer. I don't care what anybody else says. And that paint, you're going to have to cover up stuff, paint your stape, the ceiling needs to be painted.
[00:14:05] Do you want to spend your time getting like a drip on the forehead? Because I don't, my weekend is not going to be spent on this. And I was like, okay, so how about this? Instead of us arguing, I texted the painter that was proposed to us. I'm like, how long will it take? And was like, oh, uh, probably two weekends.
[00:14:23] Okay, how much is it gonna cost? He gave the amount. I looked at my partner, I'm like How much do you make an hour? It's like this. I'm like, that's how much I make. Okay. I count. I'm like, so two weekends like this, plus here's all the equipment we need to buy. You do realize you would be working for minimum wage.
[00:14:44] Are you comfortable with that? Or are you comfortable paying someone? Yeah. I did a very similar calculation. I have a very similar story, but with something different. Maybe I can share it. So both me and my partner, we use, catering basically. So we don't cook our own food.
[00:15:01] Catering just brings us food every day for the entire day. At some point, uh, people were our friends or even we were thinking like how can you afford that this is like Double the price of what you would pay for the food if you were to buy it and prepare And then I did simple calculation how much time it takes me to Buy the food to prepare it and then to do the dish washing and stuff like that And the calculation was very simple.
[00:15:31] It is two times cheaper for me to have this catering come to my house if I were to do it myself. So very simple thing. And, and it's the thing that people don't talk about when, when we talk about the rich, the 1%. They will pay, because there's two types of economies, the time economy and the financial one.
[00:15:54] So, when you are young, you can take bus trips that will take 13 hours, because you have two months of vacation, university, great. You have time, but you don't have money. The older you get, the more money you have, the less time you have. So you are ready to pay much more money, but to have a flight that is two hours instead of the 13 hour bus ride.
[00:16:20] So this is what's complicated when you're on the cusp or in between, switching from one economy to the other one, you are going to get burned out. But then! there's an extra step. So this is something that I talk about with, um, uh, another SEO that I really enjoy. So hi, Chris Green. Uh, Chris is coming to the same conclusion that most of us are.
[00:16:44] So what if you now cost a lot of money per hour, but you still don't have work life balance. You still feel like you tire yourself out a lot. You bring a lot of value. So it's no longer that you value your time. You already value your time. That's done, but then you see the value you bring other people and you're like, I want to decouple my time from my value.
[00:17:13] I want to remove the hours from the value. And this is super complicated in SEO because unlike Google ads, for example, unlike some social media stuff. We cannot project or promise, well we can, we can do some like forecasting, but we cannot say we will deliver this, you see what I mean? A lot of industries are based on the fact that we deliver an outcome.
[00:17:45] So if you're a plastic surgeon, you deliver bigger boobs, you deliver smaller noses, you deliver. Okay. There's, there's like an outcome when you do SEO. Yes, you are tied to deliverables, but at the end of the day, the outcome is kind of complicated, right? It's out of your hands. So, so ultimately, if you have an outcome mindset, like you want things to happen, you cannot estimate how much time it could take.
[00:18:12] Very little could take very big. You get better at figuring this out. You realize you're no longer selling hours. You're no longer selling deliverables, you're selling an outcome. So this is where it gets really complicated, and this is why a lot of SEOs end up building tools, or they end up training people.
[00:18:33] It's because these are two great ways to decouple your time from the value you bring people. And it's not as easy as one thinks. So most of us, the way we do things when this happens is You will hire someone that is cheaper than you, train them, and have them do the work. That's your way of decoupling your time from the value, right?
[00:19:00] But, I don't want to do that, because that's another work life problem for me. There's no balance if I'm stressed out on the quality that is going to come out, right? But this is one of the fundamental reasons why many agencies are not that great. It's because it's an imperfect solution from the founders trying to figure this out.
[00:19:22] And I'm not saying that all agencies are like that, by the way, because there are some that are smart and that found a model where employees own part of the decision making and, you know, they're rewarded on the outcomes as well. So that's awesome. But the traditional agency style is based on somebody going, well, people kept asking me, so I had to hire someone.
[00:19:45] And You see, the fundamental problem keeps changing the more you mature in the industry. It starts with, I work too many hours, and then it, it becomes, Okay, I work less hours, but then I'm realizing that my value is not in my hours. My value is elsewhere. So how do I price for outcomes for value? And this is something we all struggle with, by the way, because nobody in their right minds, when they work with an SEO consultant is willing to pay a lot of money for an outcome.
[00:20:24] So with developers, they will tell you, I will deliver you a website with an SEO. You're like, we will deliver. Oh, wait, there's been an update. So now you're penalized and you have to pay me some more. Of course, everybody hates us. It sucks. So where are you at on the spectrum? Like what's going on with your life currently?
[00:20:49] So the the biggest change I am now introducing is exactly what what you are talking about. So I am leaving clients as a 50 percent of my time, because this is like still the part I want to do, but the other 50 percent will be exactly doing something that is detached from my hours, which is what I'm doing now, which is growing my SEO newsletter, working finally on my SEO course and SEO community.
[00:21:24] So these are the two things I am launching this year, no matter what. So this is my recovery plan. What about you? So I, I operate differently lately. I've been trying different things and There's, there's, um, two types of evolutions for me, okay? Me personally, like, within my company. I'm not saying that every company is the same.
[00:21:52] You have pivots. So, one of my agency's, um, building blocks, like, one of the values is that We are small on purpose by design, where big companies are like large cargo ships that are hard to turn around. We are very small Viking boats that can like pivot wherever, whatever happens. So when the pandemic hit, for example, we lost a lot of our clients because they didn't know what was going on.
[00:22:22] But in the same way, we gained brand new clients, like same moment. Because you can switch fast. Yeah, exactly. And this is great, so you keep pivoting and navigating things. Okay. So we can see the writing on the wall with SGE, with a lot of stuff happening. Okay. So the smartest race car drivers, they're the ones that start negotiating the turn before they see the turn.
[00:22:53] You know there's going to be a turn, you adjust your vehicle. Okay, cool. But what if the vehicle you're driving is losing speed. What if the maintenance is costing more than, you know, it's, is worth your time? Like, okay, the value of maintaining this is not necessarily the best. What if what I'm describing kind of sounds like career burnout and like, maybe You're a bit bored and you are passionate about something in that case It's you can't you can't negotiate that term But if what drives you is your passion and your work life balance is important Then you could also go into what is called a moonshot a moonshot is this thing where?
[00:23:40] You can gradually increase things and keep going up, but they will also gradually keep going down sometimes. A moonshot is not gradual. A moonshot is like, you ramp up, you work really, really hard, and then it takes off. But you're going to the moon. So you don't quite know where you're gonna land, but it's gonna be cool.
[00:24:00] That's me with BigQuery. That's literally what I'm doing. I'm doing it this is what I'm doing as well, yeah. Yeah, and this, but the reason why you're doing it, you said it in the beginning. You read a lot of books, you tried already quite a few things. You're not at the beginning of your journey. So when you say you're launching your course and you're launching the community, for you, yes, you've wanted this for quite a while.
[00:24:28] You ramped up the stuff. You've been working at it and you're like, Listen, I'm not putting it off anymore. I go. I go. So the thing about moonshots is that it requires a lot of resources. It requires a lot of time. It requires a lot of like investment and it may or may not pay off. But what's interesting with moonshots is that this is what has been driving bigger companies.
[00:24:53] That's why they were excited to do things. And before we had, you know, like the crisis of like the lockdown, too many companies invested too much money in moonshots that were going nowhere. Google being a big one of them. And then those debts came in due and there was nothing to show for it. So If you're gonna go for a moonshot, you're a smaller company, but you can take some big risks and still negotiate some pivots at the same time.
[00:25:24] But, once again, work life balance problems. So, so, what I do is that on Mondays, I do not take meetings. Mondays are for my admin day to negotiate those turns to figure out what's going on. And on Fridays, I have my research and development meetings. No, no client meetings. I'm gonna meet up with some friends where, for example, I'm collaborating with Sarah Crook, Augustin Delporte and Chris Green on the BigQuery course project.
[00:25:54] We meet then and we talk. I have a chat GPT meets crochet because there's like, genuinely people that have businesses creating crochet patterns that Really want to help themselves with the marketing going I have the idea I know exactly what I'm doing, but I hate marketing. Fun time. It's a fun little project.
[00:26:14] Cool. Let me figure this out It's really fun. I have Alize Bode for that. I have like a series of projects That are cool and that in and of themselves may not necessarily like change my entire career or change my entire job There are different things that I can pivot into and have fun with but that's I laugh because people tell me, so you work five days a week and there's two days where you don't work.
[00:26:46] We agree Olga, there's a lot more to work than just pure SEO work, right? Yeah, totally, totally. And there's more to your personality than just being the SEO person. I know there's a lot of people in the industry where It's like, okay, but do you want to talk about something else in SEO? Like, are you a human being?
[00:27:06] What do you do the rest of your time? Oh, it's just SEO. Holy moly. You're boring. So yeah, I, I do take these two days, just like you, you said 50%. I want to get to 50%. I want that, but it takes a lot of preparation, a lot of like financial security, et cetera, to get there. But once you do. Don't burn out, please.
[00:27:31] And if you're with an employer, like you're an employee and you feel that burnout happening, find a way to negotiate. So for example, you could dedicate like two to three hours a week of investing in yourself, leveling up your skills instead of being stressed and doing it outside of work. And how do you think it's going to go this year with the 50%?
[00:27:57] Are you excited? I am very excited and I am determined to really make it this way because I cannot really postpone this anymore and I know that my recovery to feeling the way I want to feel will not be like, it won't happen overnight. So I have to work my way through that. And I know part of that will be getting those 50%.
[00:28:25] So Miriam, just maybe final tips. So your one tip for work life balance would be, tell me. My, my one tip. Oh, no, I have three. I'm sorry. So number one figure out where the pressure is coming from stop blaming other people Figure out what is triggering you To behave in the way these people want or what is triggering you to feel like you have to do something second tip is Hey, you're not gonna be at your best all the time.
[00:29:01] If you give 100 percent all the time, then What is the notion of best performance? You're just going to tire yourself out except that hey working at peak performance is not the way it should be at all times like give yourself some time to breathe and the third tip is Yeah, you're not getting any younger.
[00:29:25] So maybe COVID is gonna hit you in the face. Maybe it's a bus. Life is Unpredictable. You have to be okay with not being okay and just adjusting your Performance and the way you work to that reality. You're not a machine. Okay, and if you break down there's no replacing you so You really, really need to focus on that.
[00:29:49] Maybe it's not going to be perfect, but you're going to work with it instead of against it. Because working against it is a losing game. Yeah, totally, totally. So, thank you for your tips. Yours now! Okay, so I will share mine, because my tips are in the separate video, but Let's, let's share my three tips.
[00:30:08] So number one is have a schedule of where you work, of how much you want to work and stick to that. So let's say you don't work after 5 p. m. and 5 p. m. arrives, you stop working and . Get interested in meditation, mindfulness, and listening to your body.
[00:30:28] And, I would say sports, do sports, in any form, it can be walks, it can be running, , whatever, because it helps relieve that pressure. I have 10 more, but let's keep that episode relatively brief. So that would be my take. I feel you want to say something else, please do. I do. I do.
[00:30:53] Number one, I want to see that video. So I hope you like give a link in the description or something because I want to, and I really like your tips because they make sense to me. Like moving really helps me start thinking. So do not neglect. the hardware. You have a good software, but don't neglect it. And for me, when I decide to stop working, it's not that I just like get up and realize, no, it's with intention.
[00:31:20] So I will light up a candle, or you can play a song, or you can do that specific ritual that says to your body and your brain, I am done with work. Yeah, I have closed this. Totally, totally. Okay, Miriam. So thanks so much. I, I feel there should be a follow up to that, but we'll see. So again, thanks Eton, thanks everyone, and see you in the next episode of SEO Cashflow.
[00:31:47] Bye bye. See you soon, bye.