I’ve seen a lot of posts out there recently with people giving advice to their 18-year-old selves. One I liked featured some of the top college basketball seniors, including one of my favorites, Michigan State’s Denzel Valentine.

Tomorrow, my twins will turn 19. I don’t expect either of them to go into PPC – they’re not interested in it – but nonetheless, I was inspired to share PPC advice for my 18 year old self.

Don’t be afraid to fail.

I was an 18 year old hotshot. I did well in school and was good at a lot of things: sports, music, writing, and more. I thought I’d be a huge success right out the gate.

Not even close.

The very next year, when I was 19, I took accounting. It was the hardest class I had ever and would ever take – including grad school, and that’s saying something. I studied for hours every night just to get a 2.5 in the class.

A couple years later, my first job was a disaster. It wasn’t a good fit for me. I failed at it.

But failing is learning. I learn far more from failing than I do from succeeding. At 18, I was afraid to fail. I can’t say I love it now, but I’m not afraid to fail. 18 year olds, don’t be afraid to fail. It’ll teach you a great lesson.

Technology will evolve into something you can’t imagine right now.

Let’s face it – I’ll be 50 next month. I was 18 in 1984. Google wasn’t even a gleam in Larry and Sergey’s eyes – in fact, Larry Page was an 11 year old student right here in East Lansing. The internet itself didn’t exist, at least not publicly. Computers existed, but were not commonly used. We had a Commodore 64 at home, but I didn’t have one at college. No one did. We hand-wrote term papers and then typed them on a typewriter. DVDs and iPods didn’t exist either – we rented VHS tapes and listened to music on Walkmans.

Just the other day I was talking to my daughter about VHS tapes – she had watched the movie “Be Kind, Rewind”  in her film class at MSU and thought it was funny. Even at 18, she remembers using a portable CD player and watching kids shows like Veggie Tales on VHS. A ton has changed in her lifetime, not to mention mine.

My point is, the career you end up with may not even exist right now. Mine sure didn’t. Go with the flow. Learn skills that translate across jobs: writing, thinking, and analyzing will get you a long way in whatever career you choose.

Be curious and ask why.

PPC is like CSI – performance fluctuations are often a mystery begging to be solved. The answers are not going to be fed to you – you’ll need to dig them out. Learn how to research and ask questions. You should always be asking “why” – why isn’t this keyword performing? Why did that ad perform better? Why didn’t this feature work the way I thought it would?

Critical thinking is a crucial PPC skill as well. Don’t believe the hype and hyperbole in the blogosphere – read, understand, test, and think for yourself. Don’t fall for gimmicks like “great PPC hacks” and “this feature is a unicorn” and other hyperbole. Some things you read or hear might work great; others will be a disaster for the accounts you’re managing. Learn to spot the BS.

Find mentors and sponsors.

This advice goes whether you decide on a career in PPC or anything else. Find a mentor or teacher who will take you under their wing and show you the ropes. In every job I’ve ever held, I’ve tried to find someone to emulate. Sometimes it’s been a manager or boss. Sometimes it’s been a more senior coworker. In PPC, it’s often been colleagues I’ve met at conferences or online. The point is, find someone who is willing to answer your questions and give advice. Find someone whose actions you respect, and emulate them.

Also be on the lookout for what I call “reverse role models” – those who show you what not to do. We’ve all had bad bosses and coworkers over the years. Take note of the things that upset you and make sure you don’t do them!

My husband and I have always tried to teach our kids that there are good and bad people out there. You will not always get along with everyone. You’ll have bad teachers, bad classmates, bad sports coaches, and bad neighbors. Learn how to deal with these people in a mature and professional manner. We’ve never allowed our kids to quit or switch just because of a bad teacher or classmate. We’ve helped them learn to deal.

(Let me caveat this by saying we haven’t forced them to tolerate abuse of any kind. There is a time for parents to step in, too – and part of being a parent is knowing when to draw the line.)

Do what you love.

This is perhaps the most important advice I can give. When I was 18, I wanted to be the next Jane Pauley. I loved television and everything about it. I was a telecommunications major at Michigan State and was convinced I had the smarts and the skills. I’d wanted to do this for as long as I could remember.

Obviously, that didn’t happen. I’m not the anchor of NBC Nightly News. By the middle of my junior year of college, I realized I needed to be more realistic. But I didn’t give up on what I loved. My first job was in broadcast – selling advertising for a local radio station.

I learned that I hated selling, but I loved advertising. I eventually got into marketing for a local company. It was there that I got into search when Adwords launched their CPC program in 2002. I’m doing what I love, even though my job now is something I couldn’t even have dreamed of at 18 in 1984.

The moral of the story is, don’t give up on your dreams – but find something practical to pay the bills in the meantime. And be open to new directions.

The Final Word

So much has changed since I was 18 – it’s literally a different world. What was once the stuff of Star Trek fantasy is now a reality. It’s amazing. So to all the 18 year olds out there, enjoy the ride.

What would you tell your 18 year old self? Share in the comments!

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On Sunday, February 23, I was in the midst of a mundane task: putting away laundry. A loose piece of blanket binding on the bed had gotten looped around my leg without my realizing it. As I started to walk toward my dresser, the loop basically pulled the rug out from under me. I took a header into the dresser.

My first thought was, “That’s the hardest I’ve ever hit my head.” And then the pain kicked in.

To make a long story short, my husband took me to the ER, where I was diagnosed with a concussion. In a lifetime of playing sports, including risky ones like skiing, I get a concussion in my own bedroom.

The doctor ordered a week of complete brain rest. I was not to watch TV, check email, play video games, or do anything but rest, really. I was dismayed at this news.

As it turned out, though, I really couldn’t do these things anyway. Even forming a complete sentence was challenging those first few days. If someone was talking to me, I had to literally shut my eyes to be able to process what they were saying – any visual stimulus made it impossible to focus on the spoken words.

As the days progressed, things got easier. I was able to read by Friday – thank goodness, as I’d gotten bored with sleeping all the time! By Monday, I was cleared to return to work.

I thought I was in good shape mentally. And yet, I found that doing simple, routine tasks like preparing a report or reviewing Adwords or Google Analytics data was painstakingly slow and difficult. I made a few silly mistakes, too – I caught them before it was too late, but they were mistakes I normally wouldn’t have made.

In short, my brain wasn’t 100%. While I was fine with physical activities like showering and making dinner, I struggled with mental tasks like focusing on PPC.

At that point I realized how dependent we are on brain power in PPC. I knew that my brain was one of my most reliable tools for PPC, and yet I took it for granted.

I know many of you agree. When I polled my Twitter friends about their must-have PPC tools, several of you said “my brain.” (That post is coming, I promise! I’ll update this post with a link when it goes live.) We rely on our ability to think, analyze, reason, and create successful PPC campaigns. And we don’t realize how powerful that brain power is until it’s lost.

Thankfully, after just one day things got better. On Tuesday, my brain worked faster, and I made fewer mistakes. I didn’t get as tired. My brain “muscle” was getting stronger. It came back fast once I was ready. Today, I feel like myself again.

The moral of the story here is that we all need to take a moment and be thankful for our brains. In this profession, they’re our most crucial tool. We don’t use hammers, saws, stethoscopes, or chemistry labs. We rely on our brains. Respect the PPC brain, my friends.

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It’s been a tough week. On Monday, April 15, the woes we all feel on Tax Day were set to be tempered by the annual excitement of the Boston Marathon. In a split second, the exhilaration of the day turned to horror when bombs exploded near the finish line.

As a walking distance racer myself, these events stunned me. It was a similar yet different feeling to September 11. While of course 9/11 was horrific beyond belief, it wasn’t as personal to me. I never worked in the World Trade Center. I’d been there, but only as a tourist.

The Boston Marathon is a race like many I’ve participated in myself. As a walker, I’ll never qualify for Boston, but I’ve crossed many a finish line and cooled down in the finish line area – just like the runners and spectators who were hurt and killed on Monday. The images that emerged on Monday and the days to follow were all the more upsetting because I could easily picture myself there.

This morning, I awoke to the news that the manhunt for the perpetrators of this terrible attack has taken on Hollywood-esque proportions. If the attacks themselves were hard to believe, this is nearly impossible for my traumatized brain to process. How does this happen in America?

But we’re a resilient sort. On 9/11, we bent, but didn’t break. A couple of weeks ago I visited the 9/11 memorial. It’s a stunning example of turning tragedy into something beautiful.

And we’ll do it again. On Sunday, I’m participating in the Lansing Marathon Half, along with my husband and son. I’ve been training since January and I’m not about to give up. Giving up lets the bad guys win. And we’re not about to let that happen.

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No, this isn’t me, but I wish it was.

During the last couple months, I’ve been doing a lot of stretching. I’ve been literally stretching my tired muscles as I train to walk my second half marathon. I’ve been stretching mentally at work, too.

I’m a month into a 3-month project where I’m covering for a coworker who’s on maternity leave. It’s been a great experience so far – I’m not one to shy away from new challenges, and this has definitely been a challenge for me.

One of the great things about stretching is you learn how far you can really go. Walking a half marathon teaches you that you can walk farther and faster than you ever thought possible. In my project role, I’ve learned a few things too.

Rushing the job never works.

If you’re doing a 10-mile training walk, you need to allot enough time to complete the distance. I know I can’t cover 10 miles in an hour, so I don’t even try. Sure, you can (and should) push the pace a little, but I know my limits. If I don’t have 2 ½ hours free, I know I can’t do 10 miles.

The same thing goes for work. As with any new project or set of responsibilities, the sheer length of the to-do list tends to create a sense of urgency. It’s easy to fall into the trap of hurrying through a task to pare down the list.

I’ve always known that a rush job is never your best job, but this project has been a big refresher course in slowing down. It’s better to make sure everything is right than it is to race through everything as fast as you can. Luckily, I avoided major stumbles, but I was perilously close a couple times and it wasn’t fun.

Love what you do – or fake it till you make it.

Last year I walked my first half marathon. I had 2 goals: finish the race, and not come in last place. I’m proud to say I accomplished both goals! When I started training for this year’s race, I set some more aggressive goals that required some heavy-duty training. I’m not gonna lie – there were times that I really wanted to slow down or cut the distance short. But I kept going. And eventually, I found that I enjoyed pushing myself!

When it comes to PPC, I’m the luckiest person on earth because I get to do work that I love and get paid for it. It doesn’t feel like work. In this project, though, there’s a lot more client contact than I had before. While I love talking to clients, it can be challenging to be in meetings for 6-7 hours a day.

So, I took the same approach as I did with the marathon: faked it until I made it. It didn’t take long – maybe a week tops – to feel comfortable, but I’m sure if I’d copped a poor attitude, I’d still be struggling.

And really, it’s easy to talk to people. If you treat everyone as though they’re just the person you wanted to talk to, the conversation will be smooth and pleasant. If you take 5 seconds to confirm receipt of an email, you’ll ease worries. Simple things, to be sure, but they work.

The half marathon is a week from Sunday, and I know I’m ready. And I’ve hit my stride on my new project, too. It’s always good to stretch.

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Where were you on the morning of September 11, 2001? I was right here in my office, just like every other work day. It was a beautiful day – one of those where it’s hard to be at work, it’s so nice out. My twins, then 4, had just started preschool the week before, and were still adjusting to it. I had logged on to my computer and had my browser pointed to MSN’s home page, which, at 8 a.m. when I got here, had your everyday run-of-the-mill stuff on it.

At about 8:40 a.m., I was at the drinking fountain down the hall, filling my water glass, when a co-worker came by and asked me if I’d heard the news. I said no, and he said an airplane had just crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers. Puzzled, I asked, “you mean, like, an accident?” He said “no – it’s a terrorist attack!” I ran back to my desk and tried to refresh MSN. The network was overloaded and I couldn’t get the page to load, which told me the news was true. I turned on my radio, and the music station I keep it tuned to was all news coverage. I spent the morning piecing the story together from the radio and the Internet, when I could actually get a news page to load (which was rarely). I listened to Peter Jennings on ABC News cover the events live. I remember that, when the first tower fell, there was dead silence on the air for a good 10-15 seconds. I have never heard a newscaster like Peter Jennings speechless during a broadcast, except for that day.

At around 9:30 that morning, our CEO sent an email to “all” about the attacks, saying there would be TV coverage in our break room for those who wished to see it. I chose to try to keep working and leave the radio on, but I did go watch some of the coverage later. I kept that email in my Inbox for 3 years before I could finally bring myself to file it.

I had a lunch date with a friend that day. I called her mid-morning and asked her if we should still have lunch. We agreed that we should – no reason to give those terrorists what they wanted and have our lives grind to a halt. We had planned to go to a sports bar, and all the big screens had news coverage of the horrific events. That was where I first saw the video of the towers falling. It was, like so many have said, like watching a bad movie. I likened it to “Independence Day” where the aliens blew up the White House. My brain wanted to believe this was fake, too; but I knew it was real.

During the day, I frantically emailed colleagues and friends who lived in New York. It took a couple of days, but miraculously, I heard back from all of them – no one was hurt. Physically, anyway. Their stories of the day were beyond horrifying.

Back at work that afternoon, I walked outside with coworkers, like I had done every day for the past 2 years. Our office is on several airline flight paths, and normally there are planes flying overhead all day. We remarked at the eerie silence in the sky, with all airline travel halted for the day.

It was shortly after 5 p.m. when I arrived at my twins’ preschool to pick them up. I could tell that the teachers had all they could do to keep it together emotionally, but they were doing their best not to let on to the young children what had happened. An Indian mother and father arrived at the same time I did, to pick up their daughter. Although they spoke almost no English, I remember the non-verbal communication we shared that day. I could tell that everyone, regardless of nationality, was as affected as I was.

My van’s gas tank was on Empty that day, and I had planned to stop on the way home for gas. The first station I passed had signs saying “Out Of Gas.” I was surprised – it reminded me of the oil embargo days back in the 1970s. A few blocks away, at the next station, the lines of cars waiting for gas were 10 deep and wound out into the road. I started to worry. Finally, when we got to the gas station a block from home, the line of cars was so long and traffic was so backed up that we couldn’t even get to our street to get home. I was on the verge of panic at this point, and my children sensed it and starting crying. So I drove cross-country, over the curb and through the right-of-way, to our street and on home. I put in a movie for the kids so they wouldn’t see anything on TV. My husband went back out later that night for gas. It took him an hour and he paid $1.89/gallon – a bargain now, but it was about 20-30 cents higher than gas prices were when I left for work that morning. We were afraid we were on the verge of war, so he went out again and bought stockpiles of water and canned food. We didn’t end up needing them, but you couldn’t tell for sure at the time. Nothing was certain any more. Our lives, our security, our peace, had been shattered.

It was a terrible, life-changing day on September 11, 2001. I had nightmares for weeks afterward, even though I wasn’t there personally. I had nightmares on the 1-year anniversary, too. It was heartening, though, to see the outpouring of concern and caring that emerged around the globe. There are a couple good posts about the online community’s response to the events, at SE Roundtable and the Online Spin blog. If there was any good to come of that day, it’s the demonstration of how quickly the Internet can disseminate information and begin relief efforts. We should be proud of that.

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