069: Optimizing Minds: Psychology of SEO, Cognitive Bias, & Neurodivergent Inclusion

Danny Gavin Host

00:05

Hello everyone, I’m Danny Gavin, founder of Optidge, a marketing professor and the host of the Digital Marketing Mentor.Today we are talking with Sarah Presch to discuss her experience and Dragon Metrics, a really cool software for SEOs, and more. They’re dedicated to creating the best SEO software tools in the world to save customers time while delivering valuable insights to help them rank higher in organic search.

00:51

When Sarah’s not touring the world or presenting at conferences in Croatia or her native England or the US, for example, she’s busy as the co-founder of NeuroDivergence and SEO, an online forum for professionals to come together and support each other, and we’re going to talk more about that later. Some of her accolades include European Search Awards finalist, think Global finalist, silver winner for the Irish National Startup Awards, and many others. Today, we’re going to talk about SEO and the psychology of marketing and, of course, mentorship. How are you doing, Sarah?

Sarah Presch Guest

01:21

I’m good. Thank you for having me. How are you?

Danny Gavin Host

01:29

I’m doing well. I just came back from a conference in New Jersey. It was a non-profit out of everything, so I can relate to traveling and the conferences.

Sarah Presch Guest

01:35

Yeah, no, I’m off tomorrow, so I should be packing and I’m here.

Danny Gavin Host

01:40

Well, I appreciate you making time. We met in San Diego and it was so nice to meet and because of you I’ve been able to introduce Dragon Metrics to my students, which has been so cool, and obviously get to know you better and all that you stand for and do. So I’m really excited for the chat today.

Sarah Presch Guest

01:55

Oh, that’s amazing. No, me too. It was lovely meeting you there as well.

Danny Gavin Host

01:59

All right, so let’s jump right in. Where did you go to school and what did you study?

Sarah Presch Guest

02:02

So I went to university in Dublin, at Dublin City University, to study psychology. That’s how I kind of ended up, you know, specializing in psychology and SEO. Before that I actually studied digital marketing but actually went back to study psychology what? Four years ago? Because I had a bit of a crisis of confidence in the marketing world and decided that you know, I was going to give it all up, I was going to become a clinical psychologist. I was not going to touch marketing again. But after a good few years I kind of rethought that, because it takes a long time to study to become a clinical psychologist and you know what. I can just mix psychology and marketing and you know it might be a bit easier.

Danny Gavin Host

02:40

Yeah, and psychology is definitely the cousin to marketing, so I always think that’s a really good degree to have. Yeah, definitely. So when you look back at your formal education, are there certain things that stand out to you, like any moments or classes that have been impactful?

Sarah Presch Guest

02:57

I think it has to be kind of when I studied social psychology, I think that’s kind of where I fell in love with it and realized, right, I don’t want to do kind of the abnormal side of psychology and specialize in clinical psychology. I absolutely love the way people think and I love the way you can deep dive into kind of why people do what they do and how it impacts society as a whole. Being a marketer, you know, being a marketer is all about, you know, understanding what makes people tick and that kind of stuff. So I just had this click moment. I was like, oh my gosh, yes, this is what I want to do.

Danny Gavin Host

03:29

And you also have a really nice accent. Do you just want to let people know, like, where you come from originally?

Sarah Presch Guest

03:33

Oh my gosh, my accent is so messed up. So I have lived in Ireland, I have lived in the Czech Republic and I lived in England for a bit when I was a kid. So my accent’s just, you know, a massive mess. No one has me.

Danny Gavin Host

03:48

Well, I think it’s pretty cool, so it’s a nice conglomeration of all the places that you’ve been. So, Sarah, how would you define a mentor?

Sarah Presch Guest

03:55

There’s so many different things that go into it, but I think for me, the most important thing about being a mentor is supporting someone and helping someone reach their full potential, because I see lots of people out there like come across people who talk about you know, being mentors, but kind of don’t go all in. My biggest success that I’ve had as a mentor for other people is where you go full in you, deep dive into, kind of you know what they need, what they’re looking to achieve, and then you literally have to be there for them every single step of the way, otherwise, you don’t get such great results, or that’s what I found anyway.

Danny Gavin Host

04:29

What it kind of reminds me of it’s kind of like when someone asks someone so how are you doing today, right, and then when they, when a person actually opens up, like well, I’m not really you know, it’s like when you actually like approach it and ask the question, gotta be be willing to actually be there for someone oh, definitely, and it’s the little things as well, things that you don’t think make such a difference, but to them they might be, you know, mulling over an email for the last day and not really sure what to put in that email, or even something simple, as you know, choosing a keyword or something.

Sarah Presch Guest

04:55

They might be mulling over for ages, and you can just, you know it takes two seconds of your day just to reply to their text and be like do it that way and it makes such a difference to them.

Danny Gavin Host

05:05

And I know you’ve spoken about some, like mentorship, sort of tips or keys to being a mentor. Let’s talk about them a little bit. So one of them that you’ve mentioned is never go into mentoring thinking that you’re better than the other person because you’re higher up. Anything to add?

Sarah Presch Guest

05:19

To be honest, I think when I got into mentoring, I probably understood mentoring from kind of the whole LinkedIn vibe-y thing that you go into it as you’re here to help the other person be as good as you, when actually you know it’s something that I’ve been learning kind of all throughout my life the amount of different people that you meet, no matter how old they are, what background they come from. You can learn so much from different people, so even though you might be going in to help them, they can help you learn lots of different things from their side of things as well.

Danny Gavin Host

05:55

It’s funny but it’s sort of like when we give, we often get more right. So it’s kind of like you might be thinking you’re there to help someone else, but really there’s a lot that’s coming to help you.

Sarah Presch Guest

06:00

Definitely, and I think even just from being rewarding and you know I absolutely love mentoring because it’s probably one of the most rewarding things that I can do and just seeing people grow and seeing people achieve their goals is special.

Danny Gavin Host

06:13

Yeah, it is, and to be a part of that, you also mentioned making a success plan with regular check-ins, follow-ups and goals.

Sarah Presch Guest

06:19

Yes, I think, especially when the mentor mentee that you’re working with is, say, more junior and they’re just coming into learning a skill like SEO, you really have to put together a kind of learning plan. So I’m an ex-university lecturer so I’m quite used to putting together, you know, different plans for people and lesson plans and all that kind of curriculum and stuff like that. I do that for my mentees. I make them a lesson plan, I make them a roadmap and they’re going to do X each week and we’re going to go through this by the end of it. You know the aim is to get them to where they want to be, be it you know a promotion at work, or they want to land their first SEO job, something like that. But the more you can create something like them, the better they’re going to succeed.

Danny Gavin Host

07:02

Yeah, and that structure really helps, right, it’s like it’s like just any, it’s like for a regular meeting that you have, having an agenda really, really helps, because then you actually can get somewhere. So having that agenda or having that plan what’s the goals we’re trying to accomplish I think is key to that success. So I love that point. So let’s talk about some of your most influential mentors. You know why you consider them mentors and how they’ve helped you. Let’s start with Simon.

Sarah Presch Guest

07:30

Yeah. So I’m going to sound like I’m probably sucking up to my boss right now by saying this, but when I started working as Dragon Metrics I’ve been working in international SEO for gosh 12 years or so, so I got pretty much up to kind of as high as I could be within organizations that I worked in and I didn’t really have anybody, you know, higher than me. That could, you know, help me grow even more. So when I went into the software world, it was like going right down to the bottom again and, honestly, I have never had such culture shock, as you know, going from right at the top to right at the bottom as I did about a year ago.

08:03

I have been so grateful for Simon’s guidance that he’s given me throughout, because I am not a good IT person. I know that that’s completely my weak side, but he kind of believed in me and I’ve had this horrible mindset that I’m really bad at math, I’m really bad at technical stuff, I can’t do it. He’s like, no, you can, you just need to believe in yourself again. He’s put together all of these different kinds of study plans for me of things that I can learn, even when it comes to coding and stuff. I had to learn that, which is completely out of my comfort zone, but he’s helped me and he’s believed in me and he’s pushed me to do things that I never thought I would be able to do, and I think that is key.

Danny Gavin Host

08:43

Yeah, to me that doesn’t sound like sucking up. It’s just like you hit the jackpot on having a boss who’s not just a boss but is literally a mentor right Wow.

Sarah Presch Guest

08:52

Yeah, and the guy’s a genius as well, so like I genuinely couldn’t think of anybody better to learn from than him, I’m so lucky.

Danny Gavin Host

08:59

Let’s talk about Tazmin, who I believe is your coach.

Sarah Presch Guest

09:02

I was one of these people that didn’t really believe that coaches could do that much, because you know typical psychologist therapies where it’s at and that side of things. But when I met Tazmin I was just like, oh my gosh, she makes sense, she can help me, and we started working together and she has seriously pushed me further with different things that I never would have done without her. I wouldn’t have been on the main stage at Brighton SEO a couple of months ago when it was in Brighton if it wasn’t for her being like me. And I remember on a Sunday morning texting her like I’ve had this idea, but I think it’s going to be a bit pants. And she was like don’t pitch it, do it. And here we go.

Danny Gavin Host

09:41

So cool. So having that in a way like that coach, that cheerleader in your corner is, gives you that extra step. I mean because you are, because you have the psychology background, how would you compare a coach versus a therapist and like, maybe if someone needed to make a decision on who to have, which way would they go?

Sarah Presch Guest

09:58

I think therapy definitely looks at the past and how the past impacts you, um, in the present, whereas coaches tend not to look so far at looking to the past and do that kind of like healing therapy side of things, whereas they just look at you know, your goals into the future and kind of like pull you forward if that makes sense. So if you did have any sort of trauma that you wanted to deal with, definitely go to a psychologist rather than a coach. However, if you want somebody who will, definitely go to a psychologist rather than a coach. However, if you wanted somebody who would, you know, help you meet your career goals, that sort of thing, that’s where you’d go to a coach, because therapists aren’t really trained in that side of things.

Danny Gavin Host

10:34

Yeah, that’s a great explanation, Thank you. So finally, let’s talk about Miriam Jessier, who’s been instrumental throughout your career.

Sarah Presch Guest

10:45

I met Miriam on LinkedIn. Actually, I remember listening to one of her podcasts with Maudie from Wake. She was just having a rant about inclusive language in French and I was like oh my gosh, she’s awesome. So I added her on LinkedIn, wrote her a message about oh, I really liked your podcast. We kind of stayed in touch and for the last how long has it been? Like two years, three years she has just been, you know, helping me get into different things, teaching me how to do different stuff. You know, she’s just been helping me every single step of the way and I would not be where I would be in my career now in the SEO industry if she didn’t give me that kind of, you know, newbie advice to take me under her wing and then help me really thrive.

Danny Gavin Host

11:30

And I love these three sorts, three mentors that you’ve chosen to portray. It’s awesome because you have your boss, you have a coach and then you have a friend. And I feel like I don’t know if we say everyone needs this trio, but I mean, I think it’s perfect, right? Having those mentors in your life in all stages, right? Someone on the side, someone at work, someone who’s more of a friend, I think that’s such an awesome combination and how lucky you are to have that with you.

Sarah Presch Guest

11:49

I know, like looking back at it, and even like the people that I didn’t mention, there have been so many people that have been instrumental in helping me get to where I am that it just inspires me more to try and give that to other people who haven’t had that, or say haven’t had that on their journey yet, just so that I can give back because it is something special that you can do.

Danny Gavin Host

12:11

And one of the ways that you’ve given back and I’m sure part of it is mentorship is the Neurodivergence in SEO group that you’ve co-founded. Do you want to tell everyone a little bit more about it?

Sarah Presch Guest

12:20

This was probably one of the most ADHD ideas that me and the co-founder Jack ever had. We were at Brighton SEO. You can see this as becoming a common theme. We were at Brighton SEO and we were thinking that you know, there’s all of these different communities within SEO, but there’s no space for neurodivergent folks like us. So we’re like, let’s make one In true ADHD fashion. We set up a Google form, we made a LinkedIn page and we went live. We were thinking that maybe one or two people would sign up and then we’d be like yay, we have some friends, um, and that would be it.

12:53

But it’s kind of grown and now we have well over 200 members in. I think it’s like 30 different countries around the world. Now We’ve provided opportunities for people to go to conferences, to do training courses and stuff, because unfortunately, using autism as a statistic I can’t remember off the top of my head . I think 73% of autistic adults are unemployed, even though they want to be unemployed. You can see that within the neurodivergent community, within SEO as well, that you’ve got all of these really, really talented SEOs, but for folks that aren’t their own, interviewing processes are not set up for them. So we’ve done like interview training courses for like a four week course and stuff like that. Training courses are not so accessible and if you’re unemployed you can’t afford to pay, you know, a thousand dollars for a training course and stuff like that. So it’s just trying to break down those obstacles and just help neurodivergent SEOs, you know, do their best in their career.

Danny Gavin Host

13:50

Are there only SEOs or other digital marketing specialists in the group?

Sarah Presch Guest

13:52

Oh, we’ve got quite a lot actually. So we’ve got digital PR people, we’ve got PPC people, we’ve got translators who specialize in SEO translation, and content writers as long as they work in digital marketing and they have something to do with SEO. That’s kind of like oh, that matters really, even if you just want to learn SEO and you’re not quite there yet, you know, come and join us.

Danny Gavin Host

14:13

How’s the feedback been, just from the members, has it been very positive?

Sarah Presch Guest

14:17

It has been and you know, from my point of view, I feel like I finally found a community where we can kind of just be ourselves and we can be our kind of unmasked selves. Um, because I don’t think you know as much as people say they’re open. I don’t think I’m quite ready for a bunch of autistic people to network in a very autistic way. You know it’s been perfect and you know we’ve had people who have sent us messages saying we actually landed our first job in SEO because of the training course that you provided and things like that. So you know, it’s really cool.

Danny Gavin Host

14:51

Very special. Well, thank you for providing that service to our digital marketing community. I wouldn’t necessarily call it just a service, because I think it’s more than that. Right, it’s really a group, it’s a support system, so it’s awesome, thank you. Let’s pivot more into the psychology side of things. So I believe you worked in SEO for almost 10 years before returning to school and getting a psychology degree. What motivated you to do that?

Sarah Presch Guest

15:16

Honestly, I was so sick of making money for rich people to get them even richer that I was like I want to give back, I don’t want to do this anymore. So I kind of had my end of 20s crisis and had a bit of a hissy fit that lasted quite a while. So I was like, no, I’m not doing this anymore. I’m going to go back and become a clinical psychologist, which in Ireland takes six years, and a doctorate which, no, it’s longer than six years gosh, but anyway, it’s a really really long time. So, yeah, I kind of saw sense before I got to the doctorate stage. Yeah, I decided to stick out the marketing thing and just combine the two. And it’s so interesting and it goes really well together.

Danny Gavin Host

15:54

So you present extensively at conferences worldwide and have mentioned that your presentations are informed by ethical considerations. What are those considerations and why are they important to address?

Sarah Presch Guest

16:04

To be honest, this is going to sound a little bit like a rant against the marketing world, but I think when it comes to marketing, and especially when it comes to SEO, we get a bit of a bad rep because, you know, we just want to rank at all costs. We don’t think about the users, we don’t think about the ethical side of what we’re doing, we just want to get content out there. And now, with AI, it’s just gotten a little bit mad with all of that, whereas, seeing it from a psychology point of view, seeing how it impacts, the way you know people’s brain works, how society works as a whole, sometimes we really need to sit back and just be like, no, this is not for the greater good, we should not be doing this.

Danny Gavin Host

16:40

So with the recent Google leak, I know you’ve been out a little bit, but I’m sure you’ve been hearing things going on from an ethical perspective. You know it’s a lot of people saying, hey, Google is kind of lying to us, They’ve said one thing to the other. Any thoughts on that?

Sarah Presch Guest

16:57

Oh, I have so many thoughts on this. This is where a psychology degree is really good, because critical thinking teaches us that we’re not allowed to go in and openly support anything without, you know, considering all of the evidence first. So the Scrooge in me. The first time that I heard about this leak I was like I don’t like this. I want to read it, I need to find out what’s going on and, of course, you’ve got people jumping on the bandwagon. It’s exactly the same as you had.

17:26

You know when the Yandex leak happened a while back, that all of a sudden everybody, even people who don’t speak Russian, even people who have never done Yandex, were suddenly Yandex experts. Now, all of a sudden, they’re Google leak experts. So with my critical thinking lens, this is an API leak. These are not ranking factors leaks, first of all. Secondly, it’s from quite a while ago, so SEO has evolved since then. Thirdly, as SEO, surely it’s not our job to kind of experiment and find out what works for our clients? If we know what works, why should a leak document, you know, make us change our minds about stuff that we have actual physical evidence for?

Danny Gavin Host

18:02

Those are all great points. Um, it’s funny because there are some really big people in our industry who’ve come out and said, like we should be changing what we’re doing and things like that. So how do you feel when you hear that?

Sarah Presch Guest

18:15

honestly, again, just a common theme. The psychologist in me is just like the bandwagon effect. What are you doing? You know just why. Why are you behaving like this? Why? Why are you not looking over the evidence? You know what they are. You know a psychological phenomenon that goes on, that makes people behave in a certain way. So I just put it down to that.

18:38

But it surprises me that in this industry there does seem to kind of be a little bit of a lack of critical thinking in certain things and everybody is very quick to jump on the bandwagon and so on. And I think we need to slow down. We need to, you know, look at the evidence first, look at what works, and then we can decide what to do. Otherwise you risk it kind of blowing up into probably what it shouldn’t be. And especially when you have a lot of followers as well, you have a responsibility to not mislead people and not put, you know, fake findings out there, because there’s going to be people who are following that, there’s going to be clients who are following that, and then you can impact their rankings and you can impact their business.

Danny Gavin Host

19:18

Yeah, and I think part of the problem is the social media age that we live in and having to produce that sort of content that’s going to go viral and people are going to follow. So it kind of pushes people to maybe make some statements or, you know, jump to conclusions a lot quicker because, man, I got to get it out quickly.

Sarah Presch Guest

19:37

Oh, I think so, definitely, definitely. I think, in a way, social media is kind of our worst enemy, even though we need it to get our personal brands out there, I think it encourages us to do things that we probably wouldn’t do in the non-social media world. So I know that, for example, with my social media, I try to be more careful and not jump on the bandwagon. So, yeah, I miss all of these opportunities because I’m not featured with any kind of thought leaders on the topic or anything, but at least I can sleep well at night knowing that you know I haven’t said anything silly that could mislead people.

Danny Gavin Host

20:08

I respect that. So this might be an oversimplification, but is it fair to say the more you understand about your audience, the greater your chance of successfully marketing to them? Can you add to that statement?

Sarah Presch Guest

20:18

One of my recent talks and the talks that I’m going to be doing in Croatia on Thursday, we’d look into, you know, cognitive biases and, as much as we like to think that we’re not, every single human in the world is biased. I’m biased, you’re biased, everybody’s biased, and there’s nothing that we can really do about it. But by understanding the way people think and what’s actually going on behind the scenes, it can help us do a much better job. Like I’m probably gonna go a little bit off on the tangent now, so I apologize no, it’s good.

20:50

One of the things I’m going to be talking about that I haven’t actually talked about before is something called cyberchondria, and that is a mix of cyber and hypochondria and it’s an actual. It basically means that when people are obsessed with looking up symptoms online, you know a worst case scenario and then panic about it. You’d call it the Munchausen effect If it wasn’t online. You know the people who panic about you getting sick and do it for attention and stuff like that. But online information and online medical content is not helping the situation whatsoever, and having access to forums is not helping whatsoever. And then you have to go and see you know all of the serps, reddit’s at the top, quora’s at the top, and it’s.

21:35

It’s kind of unbelievable because you’re thinking this is going to make things like this so much worse and the more seos just create content without thinking about these kind of things and just bulk upload things because I know there are seos out there who work on medical content without being medical experts themselves. It just makes it so much worse and you actually like it’s been linked to um, excess health care, deaths and stuff like that, so it’s got really, really serious consequences and yet we should be doing something about it, or at least understanding it yeah, that’s very important, especially like now with, like google’s generative ai right at the top, and I know like that just compounded it because I you know I don’t have any examples offhand, but some of the stuff that was coming out there, specifically with with health care, medical, is pretty bad.

22:20

The other side effect of it as well is I don’t know how common they are in the US, but I know, for example, the NHS in the UK has these AI-driven symptom checkers that they use and, instead of encouraging people just to talk about the symptoms of their cold that they’re having or the not-so-ser so serious illness that they’re suffering from, it actually puts symptoms inside people’s heads and then people start to worry more. And you see that online when, for example, they get a featured snippet with something more serious in that they didn’t necessarily go in thinking that they had this serious disease, but they came out thinking of it and came out worrying about it and then just people’s anxiety goes overload. People go to the doctors. It takes more healthcare resources. You know it’s pretty crazy.

Danny Gavin Host

23:07

Yeah, definitely a topic we don’t talk about, but yeah, it’s really. It’s sort of like the dark side of SEO, right, and the problems that it can cause. Talking about cognitive biases which of the cognitive biases is the most difficult to work with or market to and why.

Sarah Presch Guest

23:21

I think confirmation bias because there’s no real way to kind of hack it per se, because I know when you talk about things like availability bias, there’s ways to you know, people work with the most recent information. So therefore, you have to make sure that your brand is the most recent thing that people hear of and you have to make sure that you know you’re always making a positive first impression, whereas confirmation bias is you know, people don’t realize that they’re doing it and when people search for something online, they’re actually looking for information that confirms their existing beliefs. So if you type in something like one of the examples I had was is ADHD caused by sugar? Google will actually feed you back featured snippets and stuff that proves the point that ADHD is caused by sugar.

24:06

As SEOs, people kind of look at these keywords and they’re like is ADHD caused by sugar? Perfect, let’s make a piece of content about it without thinking again is this a helpful keyword? Is this a good keyword that we want to write about? Is it going to cause danger in the future to anybody? But nobody knows about it? Nobody knows what confirmation bias is and it’s not part of you know training for SEOs or anything like that. So, yeah, I think that’s a tough one and it’s something you know. I’m hoping to spread the word about a little bit more and then hopefully more people would have heard of it and know what to do.

Danny Gavin Host

24:36

It’s interesting because in my classes I usually get you know, for example, like let’s take an industry or a situation which is not as bad, right, which would be like. You know, there’s two types of digging, like boring, or you know something else, and therefore you’re going to try to like you offer the better option, but you try to rank for the other option, to let people know like hey, this is that, but we can actually do better by trying something else. To me, ethically, I don’t think that’s a problem from that perspective, like in a business perspective, but that can distill itself, like you said, like in the medical world, and that could really be a big problem. So we have to be careful. I think it’s going to change how I answer that question moving forward, right.

25:17

I mean, I think confirmation bias takes. It takes the other perspective, where it’s like you’re creating a piece of content and not looking at all sides and letting people know like hey, there are some different perspectives, but a lot of this is it’s like. It’s just making me think a lot about like we need to have more intent on our content and you know, and if I allow it in one area, how could that affect right a strategy. If I allowed in one area, how could that affect in other areas, which could actually be very detrimental to people?

Sarah Presch Guest

25:41

yeah, I think so and I think as well with AI kind of world. Now people are kind of going, you know, automating keyword research, they’re automating kind of the writing process. So quite a lot of these keywords and stuff that people see it doesn’t actually go to a reviewer per se and that’s where these things can kind of creep in. Or if you don’t have a reviewer who say, is well-versed in certain um topics or actually is aware of certain ethical considerations, it’s so easy to get missed. And I can. I like I feel sorry for seo’s having to deal with this because it is complicated and I I bet the people who are just hearing about it like what are you on about? But yeah, no, the much bigger picture to SEOing than people probably first think.

Danny Gavin Host

26:24

I would say a tangential or similar topic which you’ve discussed in recent presentations is on the culture of psychological safety. Can you explain what that means and can you provide an example?

Sarah Presch Guest

26:34

Psychological safety is something you know in the workplace.

26:39

It’s quite a big buzzword at the moment.

26:40

A lot of people talk about oh, we need to be a psychologically safe workplace.

26:45

The problem is that I don’t think people quite understand how it’s done or they kind of see it as more of a tick box exercise.

26:52

That’s especially what I’m noticing with people in neurodivergence and SEO, that you have all of these companies that are talking about how we’re inclusive, how we’re psychologically safe, um company, but in reality, for the people who need it, like the autistic employees, the disabled employees, the people from you know ethnic minorities and stuff like that it’s actually not the case. So you need some kind of framework when you’re going in and coming up with all of these different phrases and actually getting people involved from these different communities. Because if you say apologies to middle-aged white men out there, but if you’re a middle-aged white man and you come in and create these processes without speaking to women, without speaking to you know people of color, without speaking to disabled people, you’re not going to have any idea of kind of the struggles that they’re facing because, like me, I would not be able to know. I should not be creating stuff or policies for people of color, because I haven’t walked in their shoes. I don’t know what it’s like, you know?

Danny Gavin Host

27:49

Yeah, it gives a lot to think about. So, but do you feel like, when you, when you include people, like, are they going to open up? Or do you feel like what’s the best way to get people’s opinions with, like, so that they actually open up and they actually, you know, talk about what they’re thinking?

Sarah Presch Guest

28:03

I think there’s a couple of ways of doing it. If people, if your company is not deemed psychologically safe, people will not open up to you because they’ll feel that you’ll use it against them. One way to do that is to say, maybe get somebody external, um to come and speak to them, who will kind of make everything completely anonymous, will you know, present these findings back to the bosses and then, if the bosses get angry because they don’t like what they hear, you know they’re going to get angry with that person rather than the actual employees. Whereas if you have kind of that sort of, you know, open culture, I’ll be honest, like if somebody asked me before at my previous workplaces, would I open up again about being, you know, autistic, adhd and stuff like that? I would not, because it kind of ruins my time there um per se. But at Dragon Metrics, you know, I went in there. They knew what they were getting.

28:53

Um, when I joined the company, the bosses asked questions to me, like Simon and Richard, the other co-founder. They asked me questions that like why are you wearing earplugs, why are you doing this? And I’m like okay, this is why. Okay, fine, there’s nothing weird about it. Um, so when the time comes that, for example, I have to turn around and be like, hey, don’t throw me out of the blue, um, and stuff like that. Um, they’re like yeah, okay, fine, and you feel safe around them. So, like, if you’re genuinely curious and you genuinely ask questions, you know, just to learn. I think that’s probably the biggest thing that you can do, because it will make a massive difference rather than just you know, assuming and also get to know the people behind the diagnosis, rather than panicking that you know if you have somebody who’s autistic on your team, they’re not going to be able to manage. You know different situations just because of something that you’ve read or something that you’ve seen on TV.

Danny Gavin Host

29:40

So kind of related. But you know, one of my core values at my company is about open communication and to me it’s been like you know, I’m trying to be as transparent as possible from, like, the leadership perspective, like we’re open and we’re telling you what’s going on and if we’re not having a good quarter, we want to let you know. So in my mind, it’s like I’m being really open and I’m communicating Interesting. In a recent quarterly business review well, actually, sorry, it was an APR, it was an annual review with one of my employees they actually said like Danny, they brought up a really big issue and I was like, how come you’re only bringing it up now? And because I’m like, isn’t our culture open communication? And they’re like, yeah, but sometimes I don’t want to be like, I don’t want to be connected to the idea.

30:27

And and I was like, oh my gosh, like well, you’re right. Like if I truly want open communication, you should be able to communicate to me in any way, even also, which means with your name not included, right? So it was like man, we need an anonymous form. And I know that sounds like so simple and silly, but we were actually missing it and it was like ooh, and I felt really bad about it, but it was like so simple. But it was like I was so glad that like that was brought up because I thought I was checking all the boxes but I wasn’t.

Sarah Presch Guest

30:55

So that was just, you know, similar concept where you know, got to speak to your people and truly stand, you know, if you really want to be open, if you really want to be psychological safe, you got to like push yourself to figure out what that actually means, because sometimes when you in your head feel like you’ve checked all the boxes, sometimes you’re, you know, you’re still missing oh yeah, like I’ve been ex-business owner myself I used to own my own um or founded my own digital marketing agency ages ago and I think when you’re at the top, you kind of, yes, I am open, yes, I am inclusive, yes, I do do all of these things, and sometimes you forget that maybe, especially when you grow, there’s somebody at the bottom might actually not have the same feelings as you, because maybe you know, know, you’re too busy with meetings to have a chat with them or something like that.

Danny Gavin Host

31:39

Yeah, that’s very fair. So we’ve got to be humble. We’ve always got to be open. During another presentation you discussed the importance of language and cultural identity and you gave the example of the Just Eat campaign in Belfast. Can you explain why that campaign was considered offensive?

Sarah Presch Guest

31:55

I’m not sure how well-versed people in the audience are going to be on Northern Irish history, but I’m sure that you’ve probably heard of the IRA, you’ve probably heard of the Orange Order and you’ve probably heard of the Troubles. So basically, to put it very simply, green is associated with people who would like a united Ireland, and then orange is more associated with, you know, people who would like a united Ireland, and then orange is more associated with people who want to remain part of the UK. I mean, of course there are people from, you know, catholic backgrounds who don’t see that side of you, or, you know, or people from Protestant backgrounds who you know don’t get involved with this kind of stuff, of course as well, but just genuinely, that’s kind of how you could put it. So those two colors are very kind of fueled up in belfast, especially with things like brexit still happening. It’s just, you know, causing some issues up there that maybe things should have been dealt a little bit better, or I don’t know.

32:52

I’m not going to get into my personal views on the topic. Yeah, no need. But basically, just up in Belfast they went from red branding to orange branding and, as you can imagine, orange branding kind of has these political connotations with the colour orange. So, yeah, some people didn’t think that you know it represented, you know, a united Northern Ireland kind of front and maybe they should have stayed with their red branding. Another one that’s quite famous in Northern Ireland is Orange, the phone provider, and their slogan was the future’s bright, the future’s orange. And you can imagine how that went down in Northern Ireland, because people are like, yes, the future’s bright, the future’s Protestant, and that happened back in 1997, I think it was, and it’s still a running joke today, not in a good way.

Danny Gavin Host

33:44

No, not at all. That was definitely a miss. Exactly, it’s interesting. I wasn’t aware of the colors, but I am a bit of a Game of Thrones geek, so it’s just interesting. In Game of Thrones now we’ve got our green versus our blacks, and I’m sure that concept came from Northern Ireland.

Sarah Presch Guest

34:02

Possibly People don’t assume that colors can cause so much of an issue in branding. But you’ve got to know the country that you’re expanding into and there are some countries that are going to be more complex than others because of history stuff like that, and Northern Ireland happens to be one of them.

Danny Gavin Host

34:19

Well, I love that example. Thank you for sharing. So before we wrap up, I want to talk a little more on a personal level. I know you’re a musician, something that maybe you stopped a little bit but brought back up. We’d love to know how you incorporate music in your life.

Sarah Presch Guest

34:32

I think music is definitely my de-stressor. After a hard day’s work, you know, saving the world from SEO tool malfunctions and stuff like that, you know, or cognitive biases in the workplace or in the sets and things like that, you know, if I’m feeling stressed, playing the violin really, really helps. I used to actually play the electric guitar and I’m a big fan of metal music. Surprisingly, but after an accident, I haven’t actually play the electric guitar and I’m a big fan of metal music. Surprisingly, but after an accident, I haven’t actually been able to play the guitar ever since. So for me, kind of the violin is my only outlet that I kind of have. That I can do really easily and you know, I have it in my office and if I get stressed for five minutes, you can often like it’s a good thing I don’t have a webcam or something in the office all the time because you’ll see me just playing every now and again, just to, you know, decompress.

Danny Gavin Host

35:21

When you talk about metal and then violin, it makes me think of. There was a band I don’t know if you remember them in the late 90s, early 2000s called Yellow Card, kind of a punk band, but what was cool about them is that they have a violin together, so they’ve got a violin in all their songs, but then they’ve got heavy like it’s. It’s not heavy metal, but definitely something you should check out.

Sarah Presch Guest

35:42

I think you might appreciate the combination of both, which is pretty cool I definitely will do because, like I’ll be honest, for a violinist it’s gonna sound really weird, but I hate classical music. It’s so boring. So I normally play kind of irish trad or or Scottish trad and one thing I like doing is kind of making up my own little versions of, you know, violin covers and metal songs and doing things like that. So you know, I think I like them.

Danny Gavin Host

36:05

Well, Sarah, where can people learn more about you and Dragon Metrics?

Sarah Presch Guest

36:09

Dragonmetricscom Definitely, definitely recommend them because, like I used them before I started working with them and brilliant tool and brilliant employer as well. So you know, everything all works out well For me. I actually made myself a website two weeks ago, so, sarah Presch .

Danny Gavin Host

36:27

Lovely.

Sarah Presch Guest

36:28

I know sarahPresch com or LinkedIn. I’m, quite you know, active on LinkedIn. I do have Twitter, but I don’t use it.

Danny Gavin Host

36:35

Well, Sarah, this has been a really informative and just getting me to think a lot and I hope for our listeners or viewers to think a lot behind all the actions that we take in digital marketing. But it’s really been a pleasure. Thank you so much for being a guest on the Digital Marketing Mentor and thank you, listeners, for tuning into the Digital Marketing Mentor. We’ll speak with you next time.