Why I Share My Business Secrets Publicly (And Why Stealing Them Still Won't Work)
Let me tell you about the content that almost broke my brain when I first started building my business.
You know exactly the type. Some guru or guy on LinkedIn posts:
"I built a six-figure business. Here's how I did it."
And then he tells you he wakes up at 10am, walks with his or her spouse and dog for 10,000 steps, posts on LinkedIn once, and clients just… appear.
The whole thing is aesthetically perfect and completely useless. But it sucks me in every single time
And the worst part? I wanted to believe it. I wanted to be that person so deeply. I would look down and think man, I must just not me that funny because I would post and get zilch.
However, that desire — to have a clean, repeatable story that is real and aspirational and to just post one liners is probably part of every business owner's journey at some point. We think wow, “if only…” and then insert whatever internet dream the algorithm is feeding us that is bypassing our logic..
Instead, I'm here.
Writing actual posts on my blog.
Doing actual work in the Google Ads coaching space.
A quick note on who I wrote this for:
If you’ve ever hesitated to share your best ideas online because you’re worried a competitor will swipe them, or if you’ve ever stared at a rival’s Google Ads account wondering what "magic formula" they have that you don't, this post is for you.
Whether you're building a service business or managing paid search, we’re talking about why surface-level copycats always fail and how your actual, messy thinking is your biggest competitive moat.
I have my hands on the keyboard, a brain that won't shut off, and I am grinding through the real messy process of building something — and feeling, some days, like I'm doing it wrong because I can't make it look that simple and it is hard and slow work.
But here's the thing I've finally started to understand in this time that I have spend floundering and trying to show the world more of the incredible marketer that I am: that messiness is the actual product. And no one can steal it.
No one can take what I have learned.
The Fear That Lives Underneath the Sharing
I've been building my Google Ads consulting business for almost four years now.
And in that time, I've always had this pull toward teaching. Mostly because I wanted to be a teacher growing up, and that instinct never fully left my soul.
I genuinely want to share what's working when it comes to Google Ads and marketing. I want to be open and share all my secrets.
I want to be honest about the real stuff in life like making dinner, and getting in my workouts and not just what keywords to add to a campaign (if Google even respects keywords anymore, I digress)
But every time I get close to being truly transparent, something tightens in my chest.
Because I've seen the other side of it online.
I know what it looks like and feels like when someone takes what you built and feeds it into an AI tool and spins it out at scale. Or even takes a video and uses it in a caption or takes a conclusion I reached and just says it better.
I've watched ideas get laundered through content farms until the original is unrecognizable and I have felt mad about it.
And so even in my blog posts, even in in-person conversations, I find myself being more careful. More measureded in what I share and sometimes feeling jaded and just holding something back when I share what’s working.
For a while, I told myself I was protected doing SEO only.
I thought Google's duplicate content rules created a kind of moat and that if I published something first on my bloh, no one could replicate it without getting penalized.
I was half right, but for the wrong reasons that I will explain a bit more here.
What Actually Can't Be Copied
Here's the correction I had to make in my own head: Google's duplicate content rules protect your words. They do not protect your thinking but your thinking is the hard part.
Someone can read every post I write, extract every insight, and rewrite it without a single copied sentence.
This would be technically clean and not result in an online SEO issue. That's real, and I'm not going to pretend it isn't something that happens
But here's what they cannot do when they steal my content: they cannot replicate the way I think.
And if I am being real sometimes I can't even fully explain my own thinking patterns. I was looking at an old Google Ads account the other day and I had to bring myself back to what I was thinking at the time I structured the campaigns and the information I had at the time.
What I do in Google Ads and in marketing and the knowlege I have is made up of 17 years of consulting calls, coporate meetings, working in house, working at agencies, and years and years of watching campaigns succeed and fail in ways that don't show up in any course or YouTube video.
I also started my career in IT and worked in SEO, I also worked in finance.
I found my way to paid search in odd ways where the universe alligned.
The skills I have to day are specific, weird, and a hard-won combination of experience that I try to articulate as much as I can as I write.
And what I love is that no one can copy that side of me.
The reality of the modern internet is that content is not the product.
The thinking behind the content is the product.
And clients for me, and clients for you, (the one worth having), they want to hire the thinking.
They can read my blog and want to pay me, and that is why I continue to post on here whenever I can these day.
When I finally internalized my business started to expand and feel better.
The LinkedIn Bro Couldn't Copy This Either
Here's the other thing about that polished LinkedIn content when I look at it with a more critical eye. This type of content has no real texture it it.
It's frictionless in a way that is ultimately forgettable and can be posted by any guru.
It doesn't make you feel anything except maybe briefly inspired to hit the like button and then you are left feeling vaguely empty and looking for more. This is how the social platforms work.
There's no scar tissue in any of it and it lacks a moment the person said "I was wrong about this" or "this scared me" or "I'm not totally sure but here's what I think."
It is kind of just tossed into the world as a fact.
That friction and the honest, slightly uncomfortable friction of someone like me working through a real idea in public is what builds trust.
And I can see in my own analytics this type of content makes my reader feel like they found something real in a sea of performance and garbage and AI slop
I can't manufacture this reality we are in and I am glad I leaned in this direction.
Now Bring This to Google Ads Because It's the Same Problem Here Too
Here's where I want to challenge you if you're running paid search for your business.
This is true if you want to run ads at your own company but you have it outsourced and someone else is going the work in the ads account.
Sometimes I will see my Google Ads coaching clients pull their competitors' ads, study the copy, obsess over the angles, panic about the budget gap, and come to me convinced that their competitor has some secret edge or more money.
They think they're missing something the competition has that they don’t. The good news is this isn’t a true feeling.
Every brand has a unique DNA. It's made up of the owner's instincts, the team's culture, the specific way they solve problems, the texture of how they communicate and the audience they attract though their content.
It's not visible on the surface, but it runs through everything including the ads that actually convert.
For example one client I am working with has a “cozy office”, we capitalized on that in their ads.
When you copy a competitor's ad angle, you're copying the surface without the signal underneath it. Are you truly “giving cozy vibes” or are you just saying it because you think it works.
If you are just copying you are putting on someone else's uniform and wondering why the outfit won’t work for your body type.
It is the same reason we see companies built though a founder tank when the person behind the brand exits.
The brands that win in paid search long-term aren't the ones who out-spend or out-ad copy their competitors.
They're the ones who figure out how to translate their own DNA into ad copy and landing pages and the product or service and then test relentlessly until they find the version that resonates. And they aren’t married to a “right and wrong”
Google Ads is often described as an amplifier. It just magnifies what already exists.
You're not creating demand from nothing; you're meeting demand that already is there. But ultimately what you're amplifying matters. If you're amplifying a diluted, competitor-copied version of your brand, you will always be chasing someone else's results and not your own.
So my message in all of this is to…
Amplify your actual thinking which is your edge. That's what converts and what will draw people in to your business.
The Harder Truth
I'm still working through this myself.
I want to be honest about that. When I sit down to my keyboard I am trying to figure out what to say. Do I write something that is fact based or technical?
I can go online and see a post about match types or AI Max or the New AI Brief but how do I talk about my thoughts with it experience with it?
Then I can see in my own website data how well that content works. And to a certain extent it is so easy for me to write Google Ads content like that all day.
But my clients aren’t looking for me to regurgitate the latest features in Google Ads. They want to know, “did another therapist office see success here or there?”
There's also a version of me that would still rather hold back at times and keep the best stuff private, protect the methods, maintain some competitive distance.
That instinct doesn't go away overnight just because I’ve intellectually convinced myself it's rooted in scarcity.
But I keep coming back to this real life that I am living: the business owners who have influenced me most are the ones who wrote the real stuff. The messy stuff with the truth in it.
I can respect the "here's what I actually did and here's what actually happened" content the most.
That's the kind of business I want to build and that I am building on the daily. And I've slowly come to believe that the act of sharing as much as I can will attract the perfect clients.
And I always will tell my clients the same advice, your marketing should work to attract exactly the right people and repels everyone else.
That's not a vulnerability it by design and on purpose and for me it ends up being the most efficient targeting I've ever found.
No ad budget required.
The Bottom Line
I cannot be copied at the level that matters.
My content? Yes, technically. My tone? Someone could try. My angles? They're not as proprietary as I would like to think and hope.
But the specific, accumulated, only Sarah Stemen way that I approach problems? The way my brain connects ideas that other people keep separate? The combination of experiences and failures and convictions that makes my thinking mine?
That is not replicable at all.
So day by day right here I am slowly refraining from protecting my words and I have started to trust my thinking more each day I have decided to show up here.
Want to talk through what your brand's actual DNA looks like — and how to translate it into Google Ads that convert?
