From Stress To Flexibility - How Sarah Stemen Did It

welcome to this episode of Bad Decisions with Jim Banks.

We've had a summer break to get rid of all the, emotions from

schools and stuff like that.

but now that we're getting to darker nights at home to, bring the podcast back.

And I'm delighted to have Sarah and I'm going to butcher your last name.

Is it Steeman or Stayman?

No, Stemen exactly

what

Stemen, there we go.

I always look when people have names, Smith or Jones.

I'm like, great.

I can do that.

So Sarah Stemen, who, is a business owner who has set up her own

business coming up to a year ago.

and we're going to talk a little bit about that today, but Sarah, it's great

to have you as a guest on the show.

Thank you.

Glad to be here.

Yeah.

of, I always say, let's talk a little bit about your hero story.

How did you get into the industry in the first place?

you've been doing it quite a while, I believe, and maybe just tell

us a little bit about how you got into the industry and where you

progressed to where you are now.

No, that's a great question.

I rarely talk about how I got into the industry, but don't forget the

industry wasn't really invented when I started in the current form.

So actually I, was in IT.

So I was in technology to begin with, and I wanted to go into marketing.

I was working on my master's degree, and I had a recruiter that was

recruiting for a marketing analytics position, and I took that job.

I was working on analytics, so like reporting on nationwide.

com.

I worked in a big corporation at the heyday of marketing.

I was working on actually like Taking the customer satisfaction survey that

they posted on their website and taking the data and interpreting it for the

usability teams and the content team.

And again, keep in mind, this is a huge organization.

Digital marketing is brand new.

It was in flux.

And what happened was the analytics team was moving under another manager.

And my manager was like, I like you, I want to keep you.

So guess what you do now?

SEO and PPC.

And there I landed and have not looked

back.

Yeah, I always say you can date people as to whether they were pre

or post IPO Google, So, It sounds like you were probably a little bit

pre, just a little bit pre, in terms of the your entry into the market.

Yeah.

So 2007?

I'm trying to think, no, I think Google IPO'd at that point.

So your post, post YouTube, because I think, again, YouTube, I think

was 2005 or something like that.

or around YouTube, so YouTube cat videos, and YouTube, like, I don't know

if you remember the brand channels, so like, there was a, Big amount of money

you could pay for a brand channel, we did that, but I was YouTube where two

young people like myself and an intern could set up Nationwide's YouTube

channel in a cafe downtown with no one

even caring.

And it's, it's funny, you look at it now, and it's like a

multi billion dollar industry.

But it still has those almost like single points of failure, You hear

of all these stories of people forgetting to renew domains because

the person who set it up has left the company and they canned their email

yes, yes,

and their domain like just lapses,

Because nobody's actually paying any attention to it.

Yes, yes, I came from that generation of marketers.

I always say when I talk about PPC and Google Ads and everything, They, they

always say to me, so what's it been like?

And I'm like, well, the one thing you can guarantee is that

there's always going to be change,

Change is the only inevitable that we have.

There's going to be change.

It's going to be rapid, Always been rapid.

And usually the deck is loaded against us, So again, I run an

agency, you're obviously running a training consulting business now,

So which we'll talk about that.

But what would you say has been the sort of change?

How has that kind of impacted your love of the industry?

So I would say there's, um, and I don't know if it's a chicken or egg thing,

but I would say like the industry has become a lot more transactional.

than it used to be.

So when I, and again, I don't know if it's agencies training clients

or clients training agencies, but there is a go get this result.

That is the result that I want.

I'm going to point at it and you're just going to do it.

And that comes from the client to the agency and the

agency has this wait, timeout.

We need to look at the entire business model.

We need to look at the landing page.

We need to look at the conversions.

We need to look at these like, 50 other factors that go into that.

And I, but I also blame the industry too because there's a performance marketing,

get this ROAS, it almost feels like when you're trying to market yourself

as a paid search professional, you're trying to sell them on Google Ads.

And so it's this chicken and egg thing.

That it's a bit of a shame because I believe that when you work

tightly with the client and you look at all these factors, you can

actually deliver astronomically

better performance.

Yeah, it's funny you touch on that.

I always remember back in the very, very early days when I first

started, I started my first agency in 2000 and I always remember like

the sort of finding new clients.

It was like shooting fish in a barrel.

There was so many people that Wanted help,

And and I think the beauty of digital marketing back then is it

was such a trackable point of entry to point of exit solution, You can

pinpoint exactly how much money you spend, how much money you get.

And historically, marketing has never worked that way.

You've always like, I've spent a million dollars.

I've made some money, but I don't really know how much of it has come

from, that marketing campaign versus other stuff that's gone on, Whereas

we were able to say, if you spent, 50, 000 and you made 500, 000, you

could say you made 10x your spend.

And I always feel like the way we've gone, and certainly in the last few

years, we've almost like gone back to the, We don't really know what's happening,

There's so much more that's in the ether with influencer marketing.

It's like, somebody puts stuff out there, there's no trackable, outcome, So you have

to throw in a lot more fuzzy logic to the kind of the way in which you interpret

the results, You can say, yes, they have happened, but I think that's where, having

a good marketing mix and understanding all of the component channels that

make up that marketing mix, which.

For me, in some respects, that's one of the things that I'm struggling

with some of the AI solutions that Meta have got, that Google have got,

Microsoft have got, because they're all working on their own platforms.

They're not platform agnostic like most agencies or consultants are,

Or in house, In house obviously manages all the channels,

Whereas Google just does Google.

hmm.

just does

Microsoft.

Meta just does meta.

So again, I'd love to know what your thoughts were as to,

whether that's something that, because they say, Oh, it's great.

It's fantastic.

our results are going to be phenomenal, but they're not really

understanding the full, requirements of the business to be able to say

that with some degree of confidence.

I think there's probably an element of bullshit in there, really.

All of the above.

and I think that's the hard part, I almost would argue, I hate saying

this as a independent freelancer.

That in some ways, clients can be better served by an agency at this point,

because it really has to be everywhere.

You have to be fluid among meta Google, frankly, organic social, which I

think is highly underutilized still.

and it's not necessarily underutilized.

I also think it's underutilized and undervalued.

I have a lot of theories there.

I think one of the theories is that.

It is a typical women dominated industry and industries that are women owned and or

dominated tend to be seen as lesser than.

I always remember I was doing some consulting for a company back in the day

that's, that sold magnetic eyelashes.

And, during the pandemic, I think they sold like four or 5 million worth

of magnetic eyelashes in one month.

And I'm like, wow.

What the hell is going on,

I actually want those.

But, but obviously people were sitting at home and watching social media

posts that, people kind of going, and this is how you attach them.

And they're like, wow, that's amazing, so again, lots of user generated content.

But again, I think when you look at it, so much of the user generated content.

To me, user generated content is, it should be, you know, user as in the end

user, the proper, a proper customer.

But so much of it is like, influencers that don't clue what

the product is, they just get sent it, they get told to film it,

And they go, here's this person using the product.

But you've got these, 22 year old beautiful women putting on the skin cream.

You don't need to put anything on their skin at all.

Beautiful.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I mean, I think that that goes into like what we used to always

talk about in the good old days of marketing, the halo effect, So you see

something on Tik Tok, if you're not buying it through Tik Tok shops or if

you're seeing it on, Meta, wherever.

You think about it later and then Google and are they going

to have a presence on Google?

Do they do SEO in any way, shape or form?

Do they have paid ads that are right there to capture you with

the beautiful landing page?

Like too much of that has been lost, especially in small and

mid sized businesses that need

it the most.

Yeah, so, so one of my guests on last season's kind of,

podcast episodes was Boris,

Yeah, I love, him.

Yes.

guy, right.

Um,

He does consulting for clients rather than doesn't call

himself an agency, just works.

freelance solo.

but what was really interesting is that the kind of the way he has leveraged,

social media, so LinkedIn and places like that to help put him himself out there.

And I know that you're, I would guess I would call you quite prolific in

that regard to putting content out.

Across the board.

So you've got YouTube, you've got Instagram, you've got, TikTok,

you've got, where else are you?

Uh, yeah.

YouTube, YouTube Shorts.

I am on Instagram.

That makes me a little bit tired.

TikTok.

I mean, pretty much everywhere.

Um, and I go against the grain.

I believe you have to be omni channel at this point.

and I don't even try moving people to a primary, but my primary is LinkedIn for

sure.

I know that your most recent post on your YouTube channel, which will be in the

show notes, I'll put all of the links to all your stuff in there so people can go

and follow you because yeah, and I love the fact that you're Very opinionated.

You talk from the heart, which I love.

but, one of the most recent videos that you posted was talking about

the size of your channels and, and obviously the money that you make.

And I think there's, there's sometimes people just assume that there's a

correlation between the two, but quite often the kind of correlation is not

as direct as, that's the money I make from, Size audience, because obviously,

some of that audience will be people that are looking for consulting help,

So clearly the, the return for you is going to be driven by the

value of the, the, um, the client that you can bring on board.

So how do you actually find most of the clients that you work with now?

So I would say 99% come through LinkedIn, uh, for sure, uh, with occasional tire

kickers through the other platforms.

And then how I look at the other platforms, um, is almost

a practice type of place.

So like certain things that work.

Phenomenally well on LinkedIn, I got from TikTok.

So like on TikTok, it's just, and I'll go with each channel here.

TikTok is very superficial.

So it's like hot girl summer, hot girl walks.

Like it's just, it's a fun place.

Um, so I took that over to LinkedIn and said, well, here's my hot girl PPC

summer, that post did really, really well.

And just, I will only take consulting clients.

So I tie it back into my offer, but I sort of practiced.

Yes.

Also, other things are, the hooks are very, very important

on TikTok, YouTube Shorts.

And so just making sure that you've got those locked in helps you become that

much better on your primary platform.

So sometimes I'm not always using it as like an actual formal get clients method.

Um, and then another thing, and I hate saying this out loud because I wish

that people didn't know, or I don't like to share it, but if people don't

make on TikTok their profile private, I can actually see who's looking at it.

So I can see my clients or like a lead looking at my TikTok profile.

So I'm like, I know that I'm talking to them because they're visiting my

profile and then they'll reach out on LinkedIn or someplace like that.

Email later on.

when I talk to people about running my agency, we have way more inquiries

that people who want to work with us than we want to work with them.

yeah, for sure.

Perfect.

that's typically a very unusual sort of scenario.

Most agencies are scratching around.

here in the UK, I know lots of agency owners are really struggling, some

have shut down, it's really impacting their mental health and everything.

And for me, again, I don't know what, what you do, and I'd be interested

to know, but what I've done is I've, I've deliberately gone and, been

very specific about the types of companies that I want to work with,

And the companies by default there that I don't want to work with, So again, I

always say on my, all my profiles say, I like to work with businesses that e

commerce businesses that run on Shopify that are doing between one and five.

million dollars a year in revenue, looking to grow to between five and 50, right?

Because I know by, by default, they're going to be a fairly

well established business.

So that means I don't work with startups, Cause I found quite often

startups can be quite arrogant and they don't vibe with me.

I don't work with massive e commerce businesses that are doing,

a hundred million, 200 million, 500 million, we're just a small,

P in a, in a, in a stew, right?

and I'd much rather be a more significant, contributor to the overall success of

that business, And help have my fingers in lots of different pies rather than,

well, you just do the Google and this guy does the Microsoft and this guy does this

and this guy's, you can have more value that you can, can bring to the table.

Um, but that doesn't mean that we don't work with businesses that are not Shopify.

doing 1 to 5 million, right?

But I think a lot of it then, it becomes a, do I like them as a person,

Yes.

Rather than, do I like them as a business, Because for me, it's, it's

all again, it sounds blasé, but I'm not doing it for the money, I do it

for the value I can bring to the table.

And I've always said, I'll put far more money on the table than

I will ever take off the table.

And the people that start, querying how much money I make are not

looking at it in the right way.

They should be looking at what they make, not what I make, because what I

make is a byproduct of what they make.

Yeah.

Yep.

I'm not saying it's a percentage, but it's like it's a, it's a

definite, correlation between I make money because they make money,

That makes

How do you do that in terms of the kind of the same selection process

for your clients that you work with?

Well, since I'm new, um, a lot of like throwing flies against the wall,

um, but I will definitely say I take an approach, um, and it's a bit of

a mindset where it's like what I put out there is what I'll attract.

And I tend to believe that.

So I believe because I'm so, so content driven.

I attract a certain type of person that wants to learn,

that cares about, especially the content side of their business.

Because for me, when I talk to clients, I actually train them to get them

to not rely on Google Ads as much.

I want them to build up that content side so that they can eventually flux

down a little bit on the ads front.

So I think that's one aspect is because I push so much content, I tend to get that

type, but then also on LinkedIn, I have a really, really good discovery form.

And so my discovery form, the first question I ask, and I make them required

as I say, what is your fee for management?

Even though I'm not doing management anymore, I haven't changed this

form because it still works.

And I say 3, 500 a month, 5, 000 a month, 7, And so they forced

them to make that selection.

And so then when they come to me, I'm like, okay, well, I'm already not going to

be quoting you less than what you've said.

You can afford right off the bat, but then I have that conversation with them

and realize, can I bucket them as a training client or a management client?

And like we said, I don't do management anymore, but I always keep

management in the back of my mind if it's like this perfect, perfect fit.

Uh, so,

you don't do it, it's just like, you're very selective about.

selective.

So, like, where I've been able to make the biggest impact, which is shocking,

because I don't consider myself a lead gen specialist, I'm actually a e com

specialist, but I make the biggest impact with small budget B2B clients.

And that's because a lot of times they value the most from, like,

organized strategy and structure, and a lot of times they don't have it.

Because when you're spending 3, 500 a month, You can't necessarily

afford a high quality agency.

You've gone either someplace that's holding you hostage and you have

to build from scratch or you've been a victim of unfortunately

the snake oil in our industry.

And so I tend to do really well with those types of clients and it's a hybrid.

So I'll build out the account for them and then I will put on a loom.

And I will videotape myself building their account for them.

And I'll talk them through every single piece of it.

Like, this is why I chose this keyword.

This is why I chose these ad groups.

And then the goal is for me to like fire myself,

To get them to manage it

always.

Yeah, because I think a lot of the time, again, if you're good at what

you do, I always said like the kind of the best PPC experts, broadly speaking,

once they're going to get things dialed in, don't have to do that much.

Right.

And, and, you know, and, and, you know, you might say, well, at that

point in time, they don't need us.

Right.

They definitely do.

Because like I said earlier, right, change is the one thing we're guaranteed to have.

Right.

So again, if you look in the last 12 months, we had Performance Max,

we've had Demand Gen, there's been all sorts of things that have come

in, lots of things that have gone out,

And unless you understand what's changed in the landscape, the strategies that

may have worked today, might work today, might not work in 12 months time and the

stuff that worked 12 months ago won't work now, So it's you don't know what, what

buttons to press or what things to change,

You could end up being like in desperate need for help, Constantly, So, so

again, I always think in some respects, it's better for them to just, have

you on a sort of retainer, right?

where you're there, you can offer support advice, the over the shoulder,

And again, I have a lot of the clients that I work with where they are doing

a lot of the work and we're just like there to go, what about this?

What about this?

I'm playing devil's advocate with them.

Why did you do that?

Why'd you do that?

and then that way, they're able to be more self sufficient.

They don't need to worry about, if I got run over by a bus yesterday,

I would agree.

And I think you know, that was, so I have another thing.

And again, these are just things that I developed.

So like if a client doesn't, Go with me, I don't follow up, so I don't chase

clients, uh, if they don't respond back after a discovery call, I'm not

going to follow up with them, I just, because I never want to start out that

relationship where I'm looking to sell them on something, I want them to come

to me because they felt that connection.

Does that mean, potentially, I lose business to someone who chases, and

they're looking at three other people, potentially, but it's not something

that, I still want to do, and then to your point on that retainer, and I think

this is something I battled with, so I have one of my very first clients who I

set the entire campaign up for them, uh, it's working beautifully, I'm still in

their ads, but they haven't paid me, I'm not part of their retainer, but I still

see them in the MCC, which is common, campaign's going well, but I know that,

like, if that goes off the rails, Just through, like, Google changing, to your

point, or there's been no negative hygiene put on the account, so it could start

slowly going in the wrong direction.

They're kind of up a creek, speaking of bad decisions, right?

And it's like, do I proactively reach out to them and be like, hey, you

should have paid my 3, 500 retainer.

And I know your campaigns are working now, but you're just

paying that in case they aren't.

You know, I don't know, so, but I also kind of look at it where I'm like, you're,

you're a big person, you're a CMO, you can make that decision for your own.

Good.

Again, this might sound, I'm giving you this advice, but really it's anyone

that's listening in that runs an agency.

If you stop working with a client, but you still have access to their account

through the MCC, The best thing you can do for yourself is to take yourself out

of that account because it is horrible to sit there and as you say, whether it's

another agency they brought in to replace you or whatever, like to sit and watch

the carnage of things falling apart.

And as you say, like you see things happening, you're going, well,

you're not paying me any money.

Why should I volunteer to, to

Right.

All problem for them, So I, again, I used to do the same thing.

I had like access to a whole bunch of accounts, right?

But they don't take you out of the MCC or they don't take you out analytics.

I mean again, sometimes it's hard for you to do that, right?

It's hard to extricate yourself from this sort of

yeah, you care.

right?

so now it's like, as soon as if we, we've lost clients, I lost one fairly recently

because they were working, we were working with one part of their business.

They had another business that they had acquired or that had

acquired them who were working with their own partner, So it's weren't

going to work with two agencies.

They said, we're going to go with that guy.

And I'm like, cool, that's fine.

literally the minute we, we came and came off the last call,

I just went.

You know, remove myself, remove myself, remove myself, I just didn't want to see,

Yeah, it's like stalking an

ex.

Because every single month we'd hit the numbers that they

wanted without fail for three

years.

Religiously, without fail, hit the number every month, And it was always

changing, changeable number up and down, really tight, really stretching

target CPA and everything else.

But we hit it, whatever they asked us for, we hit it.

and again, they would, the people I was working with were really upset

to lose the relationship that we'd built up over those three years.

But they understood the new CEO had his own vision about what they were

going to do and, and that was fine.

that happens.

Yes.

myself.

I don't want to be, uh, just don't want to see it.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

you're, you're running your own business.

You set it up about 11 months ago, something like that.

So how, how have you found that?

Cause it's obviously a fairly, big step, big change to go from working for

other people, to working for yourself.

How did you make that decision?

And how have you found it?

Yeah.

So I made the decision, to put it nicely, I was unhappy at the

agency that I was working at.

Um, I loved, loved the clients.

But the expectation was that the work be done on the weekends.

It was nonstop meetings.

It was a lot and I have three kids.

Um, so I think when it got emotionally painful enough, I just had to go.

Um, and my daughter is a competitive dancer, which if anyone knows

anything about competitive dance, it's beyond expensive.

It's what we thought gymnastics would be.

Dance is like quadruple that, I think.

The bill keeps going up and up, but we're now up to like 1, 500 a month.

Um, and that doesn't include her costumes, which she's going to do a custom

costume and it could just go on and on.

But in any case, my kid's also talented, uh, which I've never had a talented kid.

So you never want to say no.

So now I'm in a position where I have to have some type of income.

So it was leave my job and

do something.

So

the flexibility to be able to kind of, again, with Boris, he

runs his own business, so he can take the summer off and spend it

with his wife and his daughter.

And again, he's got nobody to answer to for that, right?

So,

you know, and I'm guessing you're all in the same boat, right?

You

same, same, yeah, my husband was like, just make 3, 000 a month, I'm like, okay,

that's not, that's not hard, so that's where we're at, and, uh, I made, you know,

way, way more than that, but he set a, a goal that I found was achievable, um,

but it's exactly what you said, like, I.

I bought a pool membership this summer.

I spent like, I mean, I probably worked like on average eight hours a week.

Like I just really took the summer to, uh, just work kind of more on the business.

And then the clients that I had were on that consulting route.

So I would have these, I'm going to call them like short

retainers, so training consulting.

So they'd be three to four month engagements where I'd

build and coach the team.

And so I knew my income, and I could, I could do that.

Um, and then I build into the contract what works for both of us.

So, the contracts a lot of times were no before work, no after work, but I'll

teach you absolutely everything I know.

And,

Yeah, and I always say that, a good agency or a good consultant, they need to train

their customers to work the way they want them to work, I went to Brighton SEO at

the end of last year, and there's, do you know Crystal Carter who works for Wix?

yeah, yeah, yeah.

amazing lady,

But she was like doing some stuff for TikTok and she interviewed me

and she was, cause I, I was attending a round table for agency owners.

And I said, Whenever I have a new client that I land, I always say to

them, look, is the conversation I have.

I said, look, I'm really good at running paid search campaigns.

I'm really crap at chasing people for money.

If I ever have to make a call chasing you for money, we are done, And I do

that before we even started working with them, And every single client I've

ever had since I had that conversation, it's never ever been an issue because

they know we've had the conversation,

If they're going to have a problem, they'll pick up the

phone and talk to me about it.

So it's not going to hit me as a, wow, this is unexpected.

I should, I don't know.

I was expecting money and I didn't get it.

if you set the expectations if you say, I'm married, I've got three kids, the

kids are my life, I have the summers off,

But again, when we're working, I'm a hundred percent with you and we're

going to get stuff done, but just expect a lot less from me in the

summer one of the reasons why I chose working with e commerce businesses

that run on Shopify is, generally speaking, most e commerce businesses

have a bit of a lull in the summer,

right, Yeah.

completely with what I'm looking for.

I'm looking for businesses that maybe are much busier in the fourth

quarter of the year in the first quarter of the year, but maybe quieter

in the second and third quarters.

So,

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, that makes sense.

um, so you, you posted on LinkedIn, uh, I think about a week ago, you had a poll

that was running and you were talking about is PPC dying, So you, you kind of,

you had a poll, I think there's about 380 people on LinkedIn, gave you a response.

And I think the response was like, 78 percent said no and 28 percent said

yes, but you said you had some opinions and you were going to share them.

So I read through the comments.

I couldn't really see like a full, this is kind of like you, you got, you

wanted to get stuff off your chest.

Maybe this is a good venue for you to get stuff off your chest

in terms of what you thought.

Yeah.

So I, I will say, I think it's dying.

I do.

Um, and I think someone in the comments made a joke like, Oh yeah, the

internet's, dying and blah, blah, blah.

I get it.

I think big companies are still going to spend a ton of money in Google ads.

Um, I do think for the average business owner, it's unfortunately

a dying death of a thousand cuts.

Um, I.

I believe that it's, we're back to the holistic marketing.

Uh, I think I had mentioned organic social getting, the younger generation

is just less attracted to the ads.

Uh, so it is as a business owner, picking up your face and

being like, this is my business.

It's human to human authentic content.

I think that's where it's at right now.

And so, yes, I think it's dying.

If I had to summarize what I think, I think it was in that comment.

Somebody said the management of it is dying.

Um, and it simply is because these small businesses, they can't afford to pay for

ads and then pay someone like an agency,

a huge retainer

Yeah, but again, if you, if you look at it, I always used to say to people,

it is incredibly easy to set up a Google ads account and to spend money.

Yes.

Tons.

again, if you're a, if you're a small local business, they made it super,

super easy with AdWords Express.

Yes.

Yes.

Smart campaigns

now.

Yes.

Yeah, you just come in, give us your credit card, and we'll do everything,

And, you know, again, like it's, it's only when you switch to the advanced mode

and you see all the things that they've stripped away to make that environment for

you, you realize just how bad, uh, kind of

AdWords Express, smart campaigns, whatever, really is, But, but I think,

the challenge is, I mean, Google's objective has always been, they want

to make as much money for themselves,

hmm,

which means that advertisers have to make a certain amount of money in order for

them to keep the lights on and keep the businesses going and everything else,

So, but they need to give you just enough, They're never going to go,

I could deliver you, I could deliver you clicks at like 10 cents a throw.

but I'm going to charge you 14 a click, Because that's what the auctions

mm hmm,

they're going to charge what they can afford to get away with,

That's, that's the way they've always done it, And they say,

well, it's all smart auctions

yeah,

AI and just leave it to us and we'll do everything.

Again, the kind of skeptics, and I consider myself to be probably one

of the biggest skeptics going, Will always be Actually, you know what?

I don't think that that's actually true, And, I think sometimes again, I

think, when you look at the, um, kind of the legal stuff that's going on

in the background now, When you read through some of that, I spend time,

loads of time reading through, 10Qs quarterly returns to see what's going

on, because they have to be very truthful in those, otherwise they go to jail,

But they've also like all the sort of transcripts from these,

hearings that took place.

And, I think they're fluffing the cushions or checking the back of the cushions.

I've always been cynical of, of the way in which they've run their business.

But at the same time, it's like I've made a very good living

off the back of working in

collaboration with Google, So I've always said, I've got a

hate, hate relationship with them.

but it's been it's been very beneficial for all of us, the

clients I've worked with them and me,

We've all done really well on the back of it.

just think at the moment, the amount of restrictions that they're trying to

apply with AI has made the creativity that I think a lot of people that were

really good at it, So we used to be able to get YouTube, GDN, all that

sort of stuff dialed in really well.

It took a bit of effort, but we eventually got to the point

where we knew exactly what to do.

We knew what to exclude, we knew what to add, and all that sort of stuff.

Whereas now it's almost because they come up with PMAX, all of a sudden it's

like, well, that just does everything.

And again, I think they're, what they're trying to do is

they're trying to capitalize.

They see the money Facebook, Metra making on the back of some of their,

Yeah,

I mean, search has always been, you type in a search term because people are

looking specifically for something that is of interest now, rather than it being

contextual and it's a bit more ethereal,

So, I think with with some of the stuff that goes on in Facebook, people are

not going to Facebook looking for one thing in particular, they might be

interrupted by something, And they might see an ad and go, well, actually, yeah,

I'm looking for magnetic eye lashes.

Great.

Fine.

But, um, but it's not something that they were actively thinking of

and searching out going seeking it.

Right.

So, um, yeah, I, I just, I, you know, I just, I just think it's, it's sort

of, there will always be a place for consultants, for good agencies.

I think the challenge is the barrier for entry for agencies is super low, you

could probably set up an agency for like a hundred bucks, domain name, Email,

email account, Website on WordPress, bang!

I'm an agency, There's nothing to say you've got any experience of doing it,

And to your point about the, the kind of managing a kind of an omni channel

or multi channel market Strategy, That's typically not something that most agencies

that are brand spanking new can actually do anything near what they need to,

And that's always one of the challenges.

Sometimes you pick up a client that's had five or five or six really bad

experiences with agencies, Because they made bad decisions, In hiring

agencies, because they got sucked in by the promises that were made to

them that were completely unrealistic,

I always say to people, to clients if they go, well, I'm going to give you 1, 000

and I need you to get me like 500 leads a day, every day for a month for 1, 000.

And some agencies will go, yeah, sure, I can do that.

And then they don't,

hundred.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

back and I'm going to go, you know what?

It's not even going to be close to anywhere near that you're not competitive.

You need to be much more, proactive.

Again, if their site sucks, I'll say your site sucks, your landing pages

suck, Because I'm not, as much as I'm, I say I'm good at PPC, I'm not a

magician, I can't make a really crappy landing page into, into a silk purse.

It just doesn't work, So, you really have to be brutal with your feedback when it

comes to doing those sorts of things.

The interesting part is more and more, I'm actually getting claims from

large agencies paying large retainers that are also in a bad predicament.

So I thought it was only the cheap agencies, um, but these larger

agencies and what it is, is they'll have somebody that's fairly junior

that has been put on an account, or if it's not someone junior, it's somebody

that has 40 accounts on their plate.

So it's like, there's this.

This is the lack of what the client needs, which is like the conversational

part being like, Hey, this is what I'm seeing in your account.

What does this mean to you?

I mean, there've been times, especially in B2B where I'll see

search terms and they're like, actually, yes, that's very helpful.

Let's make a campaign about that.

there's a lot of data and insights, and keep in mind, old school

us, we used to say PPC is about performance, but PPC is about learning.

And that has been a lost craft.

And when you're loading people up, it's almost like you're treating paid

search management as a light switch.

And it's not, it's an insight and an open door into your business.

And so I feel like that is why the consulting route works so much better for

me than, um, cause I can say this is what I see and I'm not tied to the fact that.

You're spending 30, 000, now you need to spend 10, 000, and let's look at

this.

yeah, I've always said that people hire an agency.

or a consultant for one of two things, They either hire them for expertise

or they hire them for utility,

Mm

And if they're utility, then yeah, by all means, go to your Philippines, your kind

of India's, your Pakistan's or whatever.

Again, I want nothing against, I've got some really amazing people that

work in all those countries who are fantastic at doing what they do, But

it's again, you know, it's not just about what you do with the accounts,

you also need to manage the relationship and everything else, And it's.

Again, it's very, very difficult to kind of have all of those components

handled by one individual or whatever it might, whatever you might be.

but it is one of those things.

I think a lot of people hire you for expertise, but then

don't lean on your expertise.

They just want you to kind of do this, do this, do this.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

That's not what you hired me for,

Yeah.

Yeah.

and I've actually resigned accounts.

I've said, look, you want me to do all this stuff, but really, in all

honesty, I'm way too expensive for you to pay me to do that when you

could hire some monkey to do that like easy, It'll be much cheaper than me,

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because you're not relying on my expertise.

You're just going to

Right.

you're going to tell me what to do.

Yeah,

they'll go, well, the previous agency did that.

I'm like, yeah, but you fired the previous agency because they

didn't get you good results.

Right.

So

I've had that too.

I had, I've had, business owners that enjoy just telling me what

to do when it's not working.

And I'm like, it's not working.

And then you're just to the point where you're like, I don't even want

my name anywhere near this account.

Like, You know, I've had, and it's always sad when you get, like, a

business owner that used to run ads.

I think Julie gave me the term, like, it's a, I would do it

myself if I had time client.

And, like, they're just like, it worked in 2011 like this.

You know, I had a, a client that had duplicated the entire ads

account from something that had worked, you know, 10 years prior.

And I'm like, just unwilling to maybe, there's like some cognitive

dissonance going on there.

I'm You try.

You try your best.

yeah, absolutely.

And

sometimes You can't

just because something worked then doesn't mean it'll work even

remotely close to now, right?

So, cause the world is different.

Exactly.

Exactly.

So I see that you're, you're speaking at HeroConf in,

Yes.

that in November?

Yes.

At, uh, in San

Diego.

So, I mean, have you done a lot of speaking over the years or,

Yeah.

So, um, I mean, I guess I'm always speaking to clients.

So when I was at a big agency, I was always speaking to clients.

It was more time in decks almost, probably 50 50 with the ads platform,

but like speaking at conferences, I spoke at Brighton and then just

a lot of online speaking too.

I never say no to podcasts.

Um, I think making my own TikToks, like I just, I'm always putting myself out there.

Um, and it's actually one of the ways that I've gotten clients.

I also lead the paid search association webinars.

I'm the host.

And I try to tell people, like, there are great ways to get clients

because clients will take the time to listen to podcasts more than

they will listen to like a TikTok.

It's a, it's a, you're spending 30 minutes, 40 minutes with a person

versus, you know, 20 seconds.

There's a more of an investment there.

So I'll do that.

Um, yeah.

And then I write too for search engine land.

so when you actually speak at a conference, do you have a specific,

because again, I know that the, the whole subject of speaking at conferences, right.

And whether you should be paid or you shouldn't be paid and whether

they should cover your travel costs or not and everything else.

like most of the, the kind of the speaking I do now, right.

It's because the person who runs the conference is a good friend of mine and

I'm trying to help them out, so for me, again, it's like, historically, I used

to get, again, like shooting fish in a barrel, you stand up on stage, presented

a conference, like PubCon, I mean, I'm doing PubCon with Fred Vallaeys and

Steve Hammer we're doing a workshop.

And I'm also doing like an advanced PPC session.

it used to be historically, you'd stand up at a conference like that, it'd be.

Tons and tons of people in the crowd that were decision makers, budget

holders, You'd finish speaking, say, if anyone needs any help,

I'll be at the back of the room.

There'd be like a queue of people that wouldn't want to come and work with you,

Because again, I've always maintained that, however much the tickets cost,

you probably double that in terms of the travel costs for the individual.

Uh, they may have brought team members with them and everything else.

So it's a fairly significant investment of their time and money to come along.

And I don't want to stand there and just give them, really basic crap that they

could watch five YouTube videos and get the same information that I'm giving them.

I want to give them the good stuff, let's say they've spent five grand

to come to the conference with the ticket cost, the hotel, the flight,

incidentals, beers in the bar.

or whatever it might be.

Um, I want them to get five grand's worth of value out of my presentation alone,

And then everything else that they see at the event is Just gravy,

I think a lot of it is there has definitely been a challenge, With,

uh, event organizers.

I had clients that were event organizers and it was to see things from the

background, like in terms of, do you provide food or do you not provide

Mm

Do you have,

All panels, again, like there's some industries where the industries

are heavily, heavily white male dominated, So you'll have a

panel with four white men on it.

And a lot of women quite rightly say, that's not right.

That's not representative of the industry, so again, a lot of conferences

now are trying to go down the route of having, equality between, 50%.

Men, 50 percent women,

yeah, yeah,

Which again, I think is great,

yes,

but for me, the challenge has always been going back to the, you want to

have subject matter experts on stage, So it's like, if I can have four

women that are the subject matter experts, if it's four men and they're

the best that I, that I can get.

Great, I'm not picking them because of their gender or the color of their skin.

I'm picking them because they know what they're talking about, Because I don't

want to have, one person that's really good, three people that they're just

to make up a quota, To make it good for the kind of the event organizer.

And then people complain about the content wasn't that great, Because three, three

people that are not, it just becomes a, a messy, messy situation at that point,

To try and balance everything out.

And again, it's almost like a tread treading on eggshells

trying to run, run an event.

I can't imagine how anyone would want to run an event, but

hats off to anyone that does.

Right.

Right.

Yeah.

No, I, I mean, I love it.

And I mean, I found, so I guess that we hadn't been doing

conferences since before 2020.

And it was funny.

I remember Brighton, it was Brighton that now they purchased the PPC Hero brand.

I remember sitting and just being just absolutely riveted by the content and

thinking, Oh, I actually don't have ADHD.

I've just been watching these speakers, uh, actually online.

So like, do you know

Purna?

I think,

Oh yeah.

I'd, I'd turn her

phenomenal speaker.

I mean, she just like mesmerized me, you know?

And so it was like these people that have known online and just seen

their stage presence, they take it up like, you know, like five notches

and

funny.

I mean, I know Kelvin that, that runs Brighton SEO here, I mean, in the UK,

um, I, I try and go to Brighton UK,

yeah,

they have two events, one usually in the spring, one in the autumn

or the fall, as you guys call it.

Um, and I try and go to one or the other, I tend not to do both of them.

But it's again, it's really interesting, here in the UK, because it's a much more

well established, very, very popular conference, There is definitely a lot

more first time speakers, new speakers, like it again, like the, a lot of the

tickets that kind of put up there, they're put up in a sort of ballot, so people

get free tickets for the conference.

some of the people that speak have sponsored booths, and

they speak because they're.

company paid for a sponsorship that included a speaker slot.

Again, even if that's the case, you still want them to add value,

You don't want them to kind of

Oh, yeah,

you know, you don't want it to be a sales pitch.

And I've

Oh,

situations

where people stand up on stage and do that, they pitch.

And I'm like, Whoa, this is I made the mistake of sitting right

in the middle of a row, And I'm like, I want to get up and leave.

But this is like, it would look really, really awkward if I did,

So I was right in the front, in the middle.

And I just thought that wouldn't be right.

But yeah, I mean, I just think, but I think the Brighton SEO

that was held in San Diego.

I mean, I spoke to lots of friends who went, People Navah, again,

who's been a guest on the podcast.

Um, and they said that the speaker kind of quality was amazing,

And again, I think Kelvin pulled out all the stops, he kind of, he threw the

kind of, you know, I want a whole bunch of new people to one side, because he

wanted to make sure it was really cool.

He made the right splash when he launched in the U.

S.

And I definitely think that that's something that he achieved for

Yeah, no, it was phenomenal.

And I, we, I would definitely say a mix of, new speakers and old, but like the new

speakers, like we were new, but we've been around and we've been speaking so like the

people that are new speaking, but I didn't know they were new, like Menachem, uh,

it was his first time speaking.

It was, yeah,

he's, he's so knowledgeable about

So not right.

So it's like these people, it didn't matter if they were new, they

deserve to be there just like that.

People that are older and then as far as the pitching, I would

say like Navah does like when she plugs Optmyzr on the Optmyzr stage.

So let's be fair about it.

I love how she does it because.

It's at an appropriate time.

And then she laughs about it and it's like, well, I'm allowed to do

it because I'm on the Optmyzr stage.

So it never sounds like a pitch and it truly is a fantastically genuine tool

and they provide a lot for the industry.

So I do feel like there's,

again, to go back to Crystal from Wix, I mean,

yes.

Crystal the

they hammer the living daylights out of Wix, But it's like

done in such a nice, nice way,

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Love Crystal.

you know, so it's again, like, so although she's talking about Wix and,

and, uh, Morty's talking about Wix when he's presenting, it's kind of, you know,

Don't mind.

I mean, again, you want people to talk about the company that they're

representing if they're proud to represent the company and the company's

good, But don't make it a, an out and out sales pitch, You can kind

of, again, you're absolutely right.

Navah will do it in a much more subtle and diplomatic way,

Exactly.

I love Optmyzr.

I love, I love watching Fred present.

So the fact that he and I are presenting at PubCon, I'm just blown away

because I get, I get to sit there, and enjoy listening to him as well as.

he can sit and listen to me.

I mean, I'm sure he'll blow me away far more than I'll blow him away, I think I

have a different viewpoint on the topic and I think when you look at it, I mean,

we brought three white guys together, Steve, Fred, and me, and people could go,

well, you know, you shouldn't have that, but again, I think when you look at it,

you know, we are three very well, well

Yeah.

traveled, versed PPC people that know our stuff,

And I, I.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I feel like, um, You know, to your point, uh, and maybe, maybe the bar is

higher, among white men at this point.

And, I say, right back at you, cause I had to, take some time

after having kids, so too bad.

So, but I would also say like, There is a space for what I'm going to call,

like, white men that do, like, everything in their power to lift up women.

So, like, I would classify, like, Boris for sure as someone in that category.

Like, if he was on a white male panel, like, I would be really

remiss if someone said something because all he does is cheer for us.

So, I do think there's, like, it's very, very clear when it's, like, a

white man that doesn't support women versus a white man who just happens

to be a white man but supports women.

And like, I mean, think about all the women guests you've had, you're a

woman supporter.

And, and, and the thing is, I mean, I, I have, um, you know, like female members

of my family who worked in our industry.

And certainly when, when we first started, I mean, there

was so few women that did it.

But it's, it's a perfect, it's a perfect career for.

Females, Tim Ash when I had him on as a guest, he was talking about how women

are far better than men at digital marketing because it doesn't require

any physical kind of, you don't need to have big guns and everything else.

It's just, you just need to be smart and intelligent and,