Coaching the Coach and How I Bought some Google Ads

by Sarah Lee Parker | Oct 28, 2022 | Coaching the Coach

Oh my goooooooosh what have I done?

So I work in social media and digital stuff. Like, really, that’s probably the best description I can come up with. If it’s digital, I’ve probable had a quick play with it, or an older version of it, and now I am throwing myself head first into the deep end.

With my new role, I am filling in some of the blanks of online stuff, and colouring in between the lines where previously I was just sketching. Which leads me to today.

I’m boning up on SEO and websites and Google analytics and keywords and my brain is asplodey!

However, the best way to learn these sorts of things is to actually get off ya butt and actually do them.

So, ah, being the delicate fragile soul that I am, I stuck a toe in… Ok, I lied. I put money on the line and signed up for google ads for the next month as an experiment, and now I have to fix all the minor issues that weren’t fixed on my website.

OMG I hadn’t realised how much fiddling and fixing I had done on my old site. So much fixing. So much desire to pay someone else to do it. Gods.

But…I have an unreasoning emotional bundle with Google Ads. And this is where I really wanted to explore today – how did I work my way through the instant feelings of annoyance and frustration I get as soon as I think of logging in.

Coaching the Coach – What I did to resolve my emotional issues around Google Ads.

To start with, I took a deep breath and made sure I was ready to look into this little bundle.

My emotional responses to Google Ads has come about with three main themes – overwhelm every time I have tried use it for my own business, overwhelm and frustration when I also tried to use it for the social media campaigns I was doing for the social club I was part of, and then stress and frustration when Google Ads kept shutting down the club’s account and it was a really bad time and it was just all too much.

Theme one – general layer of overwhelm. Now Google have tried very hard to make it easy these days (remember, my experiences are from years ago, and everything has changed a lot, which may also be a factor.) So today I logged in, and let it use the beginner’s wizard on me, and I obediently stepped through each step without care or worry.

Again, I’m fibbing like there’s no tomorrow. Ok, so I went through each step mentally gritting my teeth, took three days to go through it, changed my mind on everything about four times, grumped that I couldn’t do anything (like, seriously, so streamlined it annoyed me?) and then just bit the bullet, handed over my credit card details and now I am updating my website.

And then I went back and switched it to Expert Mode.

Theme two – overwhelm and frustration when trying to use it for the social club. There was a lot of deep breathing around this one too! But to take the steam out of these emotions, I focused on what we had accomplished at the time (ads went live, yay!) and how much more I have learned now. I basically was repatterning my emotional response, accepting my frustration and letting it go. With this situation, the account had been used previously and so was already in Expert Mode, which had added to my frustration and overwhelm. Looking back at my memories, I don’t think not using Expert Mode would have made a difference. Knowing me, I would have been equally frustrated at spending money on something i didn’t fully understand.

That’s a deep realisation there – and I can feel the sudden release in my body at the realisation that the stress was because i was spending the club’s money and probably didn’t feel like I was doing the best I could by that spend.

Theme three – stress and frustration when Google Ads kept shutting down the club’s account. It was in the week before the event was happening, and they shut down our account because our website was doing something they didn’t like. The website was having troubles at the time as well, so … I guess it was all part and parcel. My issues in this area are mostly ones about control – I didn’t feel I had any control, contacting google to fix this took days we didn’t have, and the website was also fluctuating and was out of my control too.

Yay, now I am one with the Universe!

Well, no, I’m not. I’m still grinding my teeth a little at the Google Suite of stuff. And if you think the point of coaching is to release all emotions and become perfect, I’m afraid that’s not quite what it’s like. Good coaching can be messy, like the above. It can have great results, but it’s a way of opening your mind up to the possibilities of doing something differently. Talking to someone about doing something differently. It’s a whole pile of work and sometimes it’s little wins, like today, and other times it’s a massive cascade that makes me feel sick for days like I’ve cleared out some psychic gunk in my thought processes. And the best times, it can be absolutely exhilarating.