Brittany grew up in a family with a history of entrepreneurship. Both grandfather and father were small business owners, but, after witnessing the instability and uncertainty of self-employment firsthand, Brittany shied away from entrepreneurship, at least at first.  

Over time, and by allowing herself to follow her curiosity and pivoting in response to changing market conditions, Brittany was able to create a business that is as unique as she is, forming authentic connections in the often impersonal online world. 

Brittany has not been diagnosed, but in this conversation,  we highlight several of her traits that are very ADHD-ish. Listen for how many you identify with, too. 

5  Things You'll Learn in This Episode:

1. Ikigai + Market Demand: It's not enough to just be passionate! Learn why it's crucial to align your passion with market demand for true success.
2. Optimizing Instead of Creating: Discover how tweaking and optimizing your existing digital profiles can be more beneficial—and less exhausting—than constantly creating new content.
3. SEO as an Ecosystem: Britney deconstructs SEO into simple, actionable steps, turning what many consider a daunting task into a fun and easy process.
4. Using Case Studies to Build Trust: Understand the power of testimonials in building trust and expediting your clients' decision-making process.
5. Managing ADHD-ish Tendencies for Business Success: Learn strategies for managing the flood of ideas and maintaining focus, a must-know for anyone entrepreneurial with ADHD-ish tendencies. 

Relatable Fact From Brittany’s Journey:

Did you know it took a persistent nudge from a retired businessman client to kick start Brittany on her entrepreneurial journey?

Mentioned in this Episode:

• Ikigai in Business 
• Wicked Peloton ride
• Strengths Finder 

Want More Brittany? 

• The Basic B Podcast with Brittany Herzberg
• SEO & Grow, a Private Podcast 
• The Business Owners Guide to Blogging 

If you’ve noticed that you remember things better when you hear them and read them,  Did you know you can sign up for the ADHD-ish LinkedIn newsletter and get episode highlights in writing?  Just click here and they’re all yours.  

© 2025 ADHD-ish Podcast. Intro music by Ishan Dincer / Melody Loops  / Outro music by Vladimir /  Bobi Music / All rights reserved. 

H: As it turns out, neither one of us could remember exactly how we first got connected, but we have quite a few delightful people in common. And, you have done some work for me in the past by doing an SEO audit. And one of the things that I think is most delightful about you, Britney, is how much you really embrace your curiosity as a business asset. And what I mean by that is that, you know, we all think we're supposed to niche. We all think we're supposed to focus. We all think we're supposed to choose a lane and stick with it so that we're easier to find and easier to refer to. But as I've watched your business develop over the last few years, you've been kind of following your own unique path, which tell me I'm wrong, but I think it's dictated by following your curiosity and just seeing where it leads you.

G: The more I've thought about it in the last few years, the more I realized how many entrepreneurs have been in my family. For example, my mom's dad, so one of my grandpas, had his own barbershop and it was in a small little town in Indiana. And then, you know, fast forward a few years, my parents get married. My dad is in sales and he was an employee some of the time. He had some businesses, but it very much made me see how volatile that being an entrepreneur could be and being a business owner could be. And so for someone like me who all I was craving was stability and certainty and security, those things made entrepreneurship seem just like something I never wanted to touch.

I didn't wanna look at it. I didn't wanna think about it. But I ended up going to school to become a massage therapist. And one of my clients, very early on in my career, was a retired businessman, and he was bored. And he was always giving advice, and he just kinda kept poking. And he was like, when are you gonna open your practice? When are you gonna do a solo thing? When are you gonna be your own boss and I'm like, I don't know. His son had a yoga studio with an open room, he was looking to rent the room.

H: Okay. So I have to ask you a couple of questions about that because, you know, it's so interesting to me, Britney, how often people see entrepreneurial traits in us or recognize that we would be successful as an entrepreneur well ahead of when we see it. And I think especially given your family background, you also saw the dark side. You also saw the scary side, the financially, you know, unpredictable and unstable side. But this man who should have just been quiet, kept his mouth shut, enjoyed his service, was like, hey. By the way, while you're, you know, loosening my muscles, I would like to free up your mind about some possibilities for you. I'm that client too.

So, yeah, I have a hard time shutting up even when I'm there to relax. But what do you think it was about you that made him think? Because clearly I mean, I would guess he probably doesn't say that to every massage therapist he's ever been to. There was something about you and, yes, okay, I get it. He was maybe retired too soon. He was bored. He had more to give you know? But I also think he was picking up on something. Do you have any thoughts about that, what that might have been?

G: The thing that's coming to mind and the reason I even ended up sticking with being my own boss is because I love taking care of people, and I wanna do it in the way that I wanna do it. There's no other way that I can say it. So I take great care of the people around me, and I do think he probably saw that and was like, oh, you've got attention to detail. You're paying attention to people and the needs and you're checking in with them. And yeah so I think probably that was what stood out to him. But I've never had anybody ask me that so it's kind of cool to reflect on that.

H: Well, I'm thinking back to myself. You know, I was a psychotherapist for many years and I worked in a publicly funded, mental health and, health care services for years. And over time, I had so many people say, do you have a private practice? Or, like, do you also have a private practice? Or and many would just say, you have a private practice on the side right? Like, this isn't all you're doing and I'm like, no. And first couple of times it happened, I thought, I don't know why they're asking. But then I started thinking, no, really? Why are they asking? And I finally asked somebody, why do you want to know? And I think they said something like, I don't know, you just seem like you would. Or you just seem like the type and I'm like, the type?

It was years before I realized what they were picking up on is this entrepreneurial tendency to want to do things your way as opposed to the way the organization does it, the way your colleagues do it, the way your peers do it, the way you've been taught to do it. Like people who are entrepreneurial, whether they are self employed or working for someone else, are often people who take great pride in their craft, whatever it is, and in their ability to do the job, the role, the task, the function according to their standards, according to what fulfills them.

And so I think he did you a real service. He gave you a gift by recognizing that, encouraging it. It kind of makes me wonder, I'm always thinking about the sliding doors effect. Like, if you hadn't had that client, do you think you've probably thought about this a million times or maybe a couple of times. No, not at all? Oh, well, I'm that person who asks those questions, I guess. It's like, do you think you would have figured it out and sort of ventured out on your own sooner or later even if you hadn't had that encouragement?

G: I may have, but it truly I mean, being my own boss, being an entrepreneur really did scare the crap out of me. So maybe, but it is interesting to think about the fact that just that that repeated conversation It, like, changed the trajectory, really, of my life.

H: And stimulated your curiosity because whether you thought to yourself, I wonder what he sees in me. You thought, well, I wonder what would happen if I did that. And while I know you do not have a diagnosis of ADHD, we've talked privately that you like, I kind of identify with these traits and tendencies. What I am now referring to as ADHD-ish and one of the hallmarks, one of the most prominent traits is curiosity. So it's kind of like, you know, some people would think of it as a fuck around and find out. I think of it more as, I wonder what would happen if I try this? I wonder what would happen if I do this.

Like, what's or even what's if you're more risk averse, well, what's the worst thing that can happen? The worst thing that can happen is I try this. I spend a few months. I waste a few dollars. It isn't all that it's cracked up to be or I just don't freaking like it. I'll just go back to what I was already happily doing before this thought came into my mind. So but yet it did work out and you did stick with it. So tell me about how you transitioned from that business into the current one, or was there another one in between?

G: No. It was massage therapy into SEO copywriting and strategy. So, really, what it boils down to is the pandemic. I was home. I couldn't actually go work on my clients, and a few things stacked on each other. So I was missing my clients. I was also you know, I was staying in touch with them. I was learning about this whole online world of webinars and workshops and master classes and I attended several because I love learning and, again, you know, the curiosity piece.

And one of the things I was hearing about at that time was you need to have social proof on your website. You need to have testimonials from clients, and I noticed I didn't have any. So while I was talking with my clients, I thought, oh, this would be a productive thing to do because I'm also all about efficiency. So I was like, let me create this form. Let me send it out to all my clients and anyone who's willing to respond, great. Well, that led into me just completely revamping my website, working on the copy, attending a webinar where I learned that I was a pretty darn good copywriter and that people would actually pay me to do something like this.

And I thought, oh, let me investigate this skill and investigate this thing. And so I started pitching it on the side. I went back to my massage practice. I pitched the copywriting on the side. And at that point, it was just copywriting and I was taking on a variety of tasks. So, like, email copywriting or a few friends had flyers they wanted me to write or website copy. And this was, at the time, all health care, health and wellness, healthpreneur, however you wanna say it, Business owners and so that was like my first niche.

Fast forward a few more months, my boyfriend and I decided we want to live in New England. We knew we wanted to be up here, but we just didn't know when or where. So we started exploring and we went to a state where it didn't pan out, but we were there for 4 months. My I tried to settle a another massage practice. It was not working. I was making, like, next to no money. And I was the primary earner at that point. So it was pretty terrifying that I wasn't making money. And one day, I was, like, crying in the bedroom and I was like, what can I do? What can I do? And I realized, well, I've been nurturing this little side business. I could just, you know, run that more fully, really lean into it, so I did.

And around that time Clubhouse was out, and I was in one room that was talking about SEO. And so, you know, that's how I ended up following the SEO rabbit hole. And then I'm the kind of person that once I see one thing benefits something else. So SEO benefiting copywriting, I cannot pull the 2 apart. Just like with my massage practice, I would offer cupping along with, you know, my elbow and my hand or whatever else I was using. And so it was it's now just this thing that they're inextricably tied and it both of them go into pretty much everything I do. So that is the windy road that led us here, but it was fun every step of the way. And I was really just, like you said, following my curiosity.

H: You know, that you definitely are ADHD ish. Because, even though you had some reasons to think being self employed was scary, you were willing to take the risk. You were willing to experiment and see what happened. And then when circumstances made it impossible for you to continue to do that, it's not like you were just gonna sit around doing nothing. The need to be learning, the need to be stimulating your mind, the need to be doing something that feels intrinsically satisfying and productive even though you're stuck at home. I mean, you could have been making bread. You could have been quilting. Like but you got curious in a way that your mind needed to be stimulated.

And I'm sure at the time you're thinking, well, once I can open my practice back up again, this will just make my website more effective because I haven't been getting testimonials. I didn't even know that was the thing I needed to do. And then once I learned about that, I learned about this other thing. So it's kind of like the need for your mind to be stimulated and curiosity being a driver, but also how you just sort of allowed yourself to realize, well, this is important and this is important and now that I know, I can't uncheck that box. Now that I know that both social proof and, SEO are important, I can't go back to a time when I didn't know that, but I also can't pull those apart.

I don't really know what the word for it is, but I kind of think about it as, like, how I think about my brain is like a satellite dish. And stuff is always streaming in and streaming out. And then once it's in there, it becomes part of the matrix. So I'm not very good at I'm not very good at, like, pulling the taffy apart. It's like once it's part of the taffy, it's part of the mix. It's in there, and I can't really remove it. So your story about how you've acquired these different skills and how it's not just your curiosity has been the driver, it's that your mind sort of amalgamated that information, and you realize, oh, no, this is important too.

So I all need to do this but I think, the storytelling piece, I'm not sure that I got a full idea of how that part factored in. I think you seem to be a naturally good storyteller from listening to your podcast and having conversations with you and seeing you present, to groups that I'm a part of. But would you say that that's accurate, that you've always been a good storyteller?

G: I have not always felt like a good storyteller, which is why I'm over here smiling because the reason I worked so hard to be a better storyteller is because I felt like a crap one. And I didn't want to feel so bad. I knew I needed to be able to articulate things better. I've always felt really good with writing, but speaking has been a very different ball game. I mean, even when I first started doing podcast interviews, I would have been bright red. I would have been shaking over here like it was just and I also laugh about how I used to I swear I used to, like, blackout on podcast interviews. I don't know what I said, but I was like, hopefully, that sounded good.

And then I'd listened back and I was like, oh, okay, that wasn't too bad. But, no, I haven't always felt like a great storyteller. But what I found was in my massage practice, you of course, you can't and you understand this too with your background. You can't say, like, I'm making up names. Bob, like, Sarah is going through the same thing that you are. But I had 2 clients and there's this, like, one very clear storyline that I remember. I had 2 clients, They both had severe neck stuff going on. Both of them needed surgery. They were, at the time, I was living in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Really good, I mean, like, Durham is the city of medicine, so we have lots and lots of medical facilities, really great professionals. But there's still something about finding that right person that you click with, especially, like, if they're gonna have a scalpel and be near very sensitive things. So I was telling person a what person b was going through, and then person b felt very, you know, reassured. They felt like they weren't going through this alone. Even though they never crossed paths or knew each other, it gave them that sense of storytelling gave them a sense of not being alone, and that's been a huge thing in my life ever since I was, like, really, really little. It's just like I don't want people to feel alone. So storytelling really helped me to help them and that warmed my heart.

So that's how it first started and then with copywriting, I woke up one day kid you not. Woke up one day, had a dream, and I was like, I'm gonna write case studies with SEO. I had never heard anyone talk about this. I just, like, came up with this idea and or I thought I came up with that idea. And I was like, I'm gonna write this and I can optimize it for SEO, and it'll merge storytelling and social proof in SEO, and it'll be the ultimate way to sell and way to connect with people and way to let them try before they buy because it's really hard to do with a service. But that's how storytelling started with my world and then how it came into the copywriting part of things.

H: I think you probably have to become a good storyteller when you're ADHD ish because this tendency to, like, merge things. You know, the way my brain works, like, I perceive things, it's like, oh, when someone explains something, I'm like, oh, that's kind of like this. Because I'm always thinking in analogies and metaphors. Because once I hear about something, my brain just sort of connects it to all the other things that I connect to it, but other people may not get those connections. So I often get that weird look like I'm saying, oh, so you're telling me that. I said that, oh, that's kind of like this.

And then I make I wish I had a practical example at the top of my head. But, like, I'm thinking, oh, that reminds me of something in a completely unrelated field, a completely unrelated experience, a completely unrelated example, but my brain is like, duh. Like, this is obvious tight? And I'm getting this weird ass look like, what is wrong with you? So I think I've had to learn how to be a storyteller so I could connect those dots for other people whose brains don't connect them for them.

G: Yeah and I think I've done something very similar in the way I've the way I thought about it or the way that it happened for me was because I wanted to articulate things for other people. You can see the look of confusion, even like what you're telling what you're saying with your story. And so when you see that look of confusion, you're like, alright. Let me try explaining it this way. Alright, let me try explaining it this way. And, again, back to that not wanting people to feel alone, I it's something I've always done in my life.

Like, even in school, I was the kid that, sure, copy my homework, but I'm gonna tell you how I got the answer so you actually learn how to do this thing so when the test comes around, you know how to do it. And so, like, there's always been this, here's how I got this answer, here's how things connect, here's how the dots connect, and let me just share that with you so that you understand it too.

H: That's gotta be an inborn trait for you right? That it's because, you know, I'm just thinking. I'm a huge Wicked fan, and I've already seen the movie twice. I saw the musical 3 times, I’ve done the Peloton Wicked ride, like, no lie, probably a 100 times, it's embarrassing. But one of the things that's most striking to me about Wicked is that how much one character just would literally do anything in order to be popular and the other one was the opposite.

And I think for somebody like you, like, it really matters to you that other people understand that cause you could just impress the hell out of them by saying, oh, sure. And you just say, here's what I did and they're like, wow. But that doesn't really help them. They're impressed with you. Then you want them to be impressed with them. So by telling them this is how you do it, you're meeting their needs. But it also sounds like it's meeting a very personal need of your own, and you've probably always been this way. And I'm gonna guess, have you ever done Strength Finder?

G: No. I haven't. I should. I haven't.

H: It's one of the assessments that I like the most, but I'm hearing that you have a lot of, empathy. That empathy is probably one of your superpowers or one of your strengths or one of your drivers that you need to help people and help them feel better, help them function better, help them figure things out easier, help them get further faster. Like, you know, yes, that's a really important thing to be able to do as a business owner, but it sounds like for you, it's also a personal driver.

G: Oh, it totally is and even hearing you say some of this stuff, I didn't always feel understood. I didn't always feel heard. And so it's I didn't always feel like I could ask for help or like I had help available. So it's definitely even in just the last year, that's something I've realized is innate to me and something I've realized that I that I do almost in a way project, but also make sure that I'm filling that void before it becomes a void. So yeah oh, we could go down a whole rabbit hole with that.

H: I think we already have but it's my responsibility as the host to reel us back into my retractable Chihuahua dog leash. You know what because I know how you work because I have worked with you, I think it's important that we also acknowledge that I think someone with a lot of empathy and someone who really has natural gifts and interest in helping others, a lot of people would market their business through social media because they think, oh, it's easy to connect with people there. It's easy to be visible. It's, I mean, all you have to do is click a button and you can possibly be connected with someone.

And I think most self employed people, especially people who identify as women in the last few years, have probably leaned most on social media to create content, to create visibility, to try to create connection, community, clients, you know, all the c's. But even though you do promote your business on social media, you also chose to lean more into SEO. And I kinda wish I had made that choice earlier than I did. I recently had my Facebook and Instagram accounts suspended.

It's now been 2 months, and they're probably never coming back. If I had spent, you know, the last few years really investing in SEO instead of social media, that couldn't have happened. So I think SEO, it does it's not sexy. People don't think it's I mean, it doesn't social media seems sexy, and many people think it's also necessary. Like, you have to be on social media. Why did you decide that SEO was really more important and how do you teach and, serve your clients differently with SEO?

Because I gotta be honest with you, I invested in SEO for a previous business. It was the most boring, tedious, fucking I mean, it was pure torture. I hated every and when I look back on the website that I had built with all that, I mean, it was horrible. It was traumatic for anybody to visit, I'm sure. And I really, I thought I'm never doing this again, but you do it differently. Can we talk about that?

G: Yes, please. I would love to.

H: Life is really very sweet. You're like, I insist.

G: I insist, we must talk about this. Well, the way I do it differently, I'll start there, is that I make it approachable. I make it fun. I make it simple. And so, you know, an SEO pro may see what I'm talking about. Another expert may see what I'm talking about or how I'm explaining things, and they may roll their eyes. That's cool, they're not my audience. I'm here to talk to people like the Dianns and the Britneys who need to hear this because I heard of SEO when I started my massage website. Do you think I installed that or, like, paid any attention to. Nope, I had no idea what it was. It seemed boring. It seemed complicated. It seemed costly. It seemed like there was coding involved, and I was like, oh, I'll leave that for down the road.

Look, absolute big red x not doing it. So, like, please don't think that I started there because I didn't, and I don't even think I really touched SEO until I had, you know, business number 2. And I was shifting my entire website from it because it was just my name, brittneyherzberg.com. Like, it was my name specifically because I knew I wanted to just have something that could grow and ebb and flow with me. So I'm glad that I had that foresight because it was a huge advantage. But it's still a giant pain in the tush to go from your entire website is all about massage therapy in the Raleigh area, and now you're gonna do SEO copywriting for anyone right.

And it doesn't have to be this techie complicated crapshoot that, you know, the boring stuff that we see most people talking about in the way they're talking about it. And I will say, I did start off by leaning into social media big time, especially Instagram. I think I had my website, and then maybe a year or 2 after that, I started my Instagram account that was for my business, which I started talking about massage therapy. And then I had this, like, oh, shit moment when I decided to go with SEO and copywriting. And I was like, I have to announce this on Instagram. I can't keep straddling the line of massage therapy and copyright because it makes no sense.

H: No. They're not our neighbors they are close cousins.

G: They're not. They're not even in, like, neighboring states. So I was like, alright, we've got to just, like, claim this, go down this path, speak to this. And that was a very, like, scared, shitless moment for me was that one. But you and I were talking even before we hit record. I'm so much about, like, the connections and the, like, let me help you. Let's be friends. I think what you're doing is really cool and it's from a genuine place, but I wasn't selling. I wasn't talking about my stuff. I wasn't sharing, you know, the testimonials from clients, so I wasn't even approaching it in the best way possible. But I did think that it was, quote unquote, necessary to have social media as my marketing, you know, channel.

H: When I think about why I finally realized SEO was necessary, and fortunately, it was a little bit earlier than, when my Instagram and Facebook accounts got shut down, is that somebody made the comment. And I think, again, it's this totally unrelated situation, but my ADHD brain grabbed a hold of it and went somebody said, you know, it's a lot easier to catch fish that are already swimming toward your boat and because I know right? And since I have no idea who I stole that from, it's yours for the taking as well. It just propagates. Because I realize, oh, wow when you think about it, when we're promoting our business on social media and listen.

Hey, I'd be the first one to admit there are people who do it really well, like, really well. I am not one of them and so I think, okay. People come to social media just for a pleasant interruption to their day. They go to alleviate boredom. They go to have a moment of levity. They go to see some funny cat or dog videos. They don't go because they're looking to hire someone to do something for them, generally speaking. So we're literally trying to interrupt people who are coming to this app for whatever purpose, probably not well thought out. It's probably just an impulse right?

And we think that we are gonna be so clever that we're going to interrupt their scroll and go, hey, hello, you, yeah, you. You don't know me, but I am now gonna become the most important person in your day because here's what you're gonna do next. You're gonna notice me. You're gonna pay attention to me, and you're gonna give me some money, are we clear? Doesn't it make a whole hell of a lot more sense to put the words on your post, on your emails, on your website in particular, that are specifically coded to speak directly to the people who are already on the Internet looking for what you do. Don't. Like, search intention, it it's so logical. It makes so much sense.

Why wouldn't you put copy on your website for the people who are already looking for what you do? It's such a no brainer that I literally feel like, to use your expression, dum dum lollipop, for not thinking of it a whole lot sooner. And you're absolutely right. I think the vast majority of people who don't use SEO think it's boring, complicated, expensive, tedious, and takes for fuck ever to work. But I don't think you'd be doing it if all of that were true. You would have bounced. You're like, not for me.

G: No, and the thing is, like, I mean, you can optimize your social media profile to be more findable. But I love whoever came up with that line that is brilliant about, like, it's easier to catch fish that are swimming toward you.

H: Hello?

G: I mean but we don't know what we don't know. And things that feel simple often seem too simple, and we overlook them because they are simple.

Otherwise, it just the whole thing just seems so daunting. So I'm realizing with everything that you do, SEO, social proof, and, storytelling, is there a hierarchy? I know that they're all important and they're all necessary. And you use and teach and provide, you know, services to your clients that include all of them. Do you think that there is a hierarchy of importance or that you need to kind of do you need to sort of focus on one first because it's like a prerequisite for the other to be more effective or what do you think?

G: Yeah, so I started with social proof. If we go back to the massage therapy example, I started with social proof. I still start with social proof with my clients even if I I'm ever optimizing stuff for myself because I wanna know what your people are saying, how they're saying it. Because if we get that answer from them, that's cutting out a whole lot of the question marks that we have, a whole lot of the guesswork that we're doing when it comes to specifically keyword research. That's kind of the path that I follow.

So if we can figure out what your people are saying, how they're explaining all of that, and then do the keyword research based on those things that they're saying, plus who do you wanna help, how do you wanna help them, what do you wanna be known for, then the keyword research becomes a whole heck of a lot easier because we have that filter built in for us. So social proof, then SEO, which I kind of start off with keywords. The foundation of SEO, a lot of it is keywords. And then it's how you use it, how you're plugging things in, and then you can get techie and geeky from there, which is totally cool. But we start with keywords and then from there, you can tell the stories.

H: And also the case studies the way, clients give testimonials or give feedback, they're also storytelling. And I imagine because you have a whole format that you use, for storytelling and for case studies. And it's like asking your clients the right questions in the right order so in the right format so that the way they provide the answer is naturally in a storytelling format.

G: Yeah and the way that I break out those case studies is before, during, and after if we're looking high level. So what was going on before? What was your experience like working with you? Where are they at now because they worked with you and whatever that looks like. That could a product, that could be a service, that could be anything. So that's how I do the case studies. And like I said earlier, it's allowing them to try before they buy, which we were talking about this earlier as well. The buying process has gotten but they people need a longer runway. We've been screwed over so many times.

H: This is so practical.

G: I try.

H: Well, the thing is that, you know, with these ADHD-ish tendencies, being a curious human is a wonderful thing. It is an absolutely delightful thing. It's frankly one of the things I appreciate most about my brain and the way it works because I never get bored. I will always find something that stimulates my curiosity and go pursue it. So I don't need to be entertained. I find something that I'm curious about, and I go see what I can learn about it. But I know that there are some times that following our curiosity might not be in our best interest. In fact, one of the things that I help my clients with is decluttering and rightsizing their business.

What tends to happen when you have this ideation ability is you come up with another idea and another idea and another idea, and you've got all these wonderful sparkly ideas, which, of course, want to be developed into a program, product, or service immediately. And now, oh, shoot. I gotta market and sell all of these different things that I've created. This is getting kind of cluttered and complicated. And now I don't really know what to focus on and what I'm actually selling. And people don't really know what to refer me for because I do all these different things.

This is really common with people with these tendencies. So I think sometimes scratching that itch is not in our best interest. Sometimes we need to curb our enthusiasm and not follow our curiosity. How do you decide in your business? Like, what you're gonna allow yourself to pursue and what you're gonna say, not today, Martha.

G: It's been an evolving process, so I'll say that. I have followed the shiny object many, many times, probably sooner than I, quote, unquote, should have. But what I do now is I give myself, like, almost like a brain dump of all my ideas, and I table it. So I let myself actually write it out, maybe dream it out a little bit, but I table it. And one thing I'm actually I've already got time built in. One thing I'm gonna do differently this year is do quarterly check ins with myself and with my offers because, like, you're talking about, we can get so excited and just build all the things, and then we end up with, like, a giant offer suite that you don't even know how to articulate.

There's just gonna be constant ideas and connecting dots and changing things and pivoting, and I it's something I've had to learn to accept as someone who doesn't really love change. But one thing I've also learned to look for is this outside like, other people start asking for the thing that I maybe put on my ideas list. So getting that external validation when I haven't said a word, just letting that be an idea on my list. I'm not sharing it with anyone. And then next thing you know, like, that that's what happened with the, blogging guide that I have. So I have a product that came about because I put it on my ideas list, and then the next week, 3 people were like, hey. Do you have this any kind of resource about blogging and SEO? And I was like, well, I will now that you said something to me so I do look for that.

H: Like you just intuitively figured this out for yourself. But this notion of I have this idea, and oftentimes when you're an ideator, like the whole idea comes like it's like a download. It just comes from wherever it comes from you know and it just it's a fully developed idea. And when it happens like that, it's like, I've gotta do something with this immediately. So there's like the impulsivity and just the excitement and, like, we just run into it. But if your business and life tend to be overcomplicated with things that you've created and now you don't have room to sell or service, or they're not even finished because once the novelty wore off, you're like, next.

Just being able to allow yourself to experience that download. Allow yourself to experience the brainstorm to play with the idea. Allow it to, you know, temporarily hijack you and be indulgent with it. And then hit the pause button before you go into implementation. Set it aside. Put it in, you know, I call it the idea parking lot. Put it in the parking lot. If I think it's really good and I'm really feeling like I wanna act on it now, but I know I don't have the bandwidth because I've got other commitments, I will share it with at least one other person so I can enjoy the excitement phase a little bit longer.

And then I'll set it aside and come back to it later. But your extra part about I will come back to it when I start getting requests for it. That's like, you know, the ikigai? I think I've got the name right. Where what you enjoy, what you want to be known for, what people are willing to pay you for, and, you know, it's like the concentric circles. Like, it's not enough to just to be able to do something because you're excited about it. There has to be a market for it. And when people start coming to you, when the fish are coming toward your boat, then you know it's going to be easy for you to sell as well.

And not just for websites, but websites, podcasts, and blogs. Because so many of us think only of our website, but really you have this whole ecosystem and SEO is like a stalker. It's out there online for you, with you, next to you, when you're sleeping. Like, it can be really great to lean on that. And like I was saying earlier, to optimize the Instagram profile, to optimize the podcast or the website or whatever it is, and you are even saying every little bit counts. It totally counts.

So even if someone comes to me and all they can afford to or all they want to do at that point, maybe just to build some trust with SEO and with me is to optimize their home page or something. I have stuff like that going on. So the focus is really SEO for websites, blogs, and podcasts this year so I'm really excited. I don't know everything that's gonna come through. I have left open space in my calendar for once to just give myself that that breathing room to let whatever wants to come through come through, and I can have different kinds of workshops and resources and who knows? So I'm really excited to just see what happens.

H: I love knowing that you're gonna be presenting how to bring SEO into your podcast, into your blog, and other things because so many of us have a extensive archive of content that probably hasn't been optimized for SEO. And it that's like that's leaving a lot on the table when that, with just a little bit of change, could be rewarding you, especially even for stuff that you've done years ago. I just love that.

G: Yeah and that's the thing that's so often overlooked is the o when it comes to SEO, which if you're not familiar with it, what that means, I should have said this earlier, but search engine optimization. The o is optimization and so many of us want to create and build and do and just, like, do more, and we think it has to be new and fresh and this goes for me too. And it's like, no, you have stuff. You can just optimize it.