David Chapman: How to Unf*ck your Paid Ads

Disclaimer: Transcripts were generated automatically and may contain inaccuracies and errors.

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David Chapman. Thanks for joining, learning from others. How are you doing? I’m doing great. I’m doing great. Thanks, Damon. Yeah, you and I will get into our background a little bit how we know each other, but I can tell you are doing good lately. You got, you got an extra glow on you today. The, I mean, the listeners can’t see it, but I’m feeling the optimism.

You got to get things going on. Absolutely. Uh, last night I just set up a date, my dream girl, I’ve known her. We’ve been friends for two years and, uh, so yeah, she’s actually in another country. And so it’s been and hard for us to see each other this year, but it looks like it might turn into something more.

So I’m going to see her in December. There you go. Super cool. There. There’s the go. We got to figure it out. So, alright. I have a lot of questions. Talk to you about, um, you and I go, um, we’ve been working together for awhile now. Um, you’re in the paid ad space, which will give you the opportunity to explain her in a moment.

Um, me being an SEO space, did you know that you and I are mortal enemies?

uh, no, it’s, it’s funny. I want to talk about that about SEO versus PPC and, and the advantages of what you offer. But before I get into some of those topics, I want to ask you the usual two questions. Question number one is David, can you elaborate on what your expertise is and what are we going to learn from you today?

Sure. So my expertise is in paid search. So Google ads management, and then of course, Microsoft advertising as well. And so for the clients that are running, uh, Google ads, but they have an agency that’s running it for them, or they have an employee that’s running it and they just don’t know the right questions to ask because most people don’t, I’ve never had one client call me and know exactly.

What they should ask to get to the bottom of what the problems are and where the issues are with, with the account. So I’m going to, to talk about a video on my website so that you can very quickly audit your own account. And for those who are just starting, I’m going to give some tips on the. Campaigns with the highest return on investment.

And it’s important to start with those, especially if you’ve had a bad experience in the past, let’s just start from scratch on those. And the last thing would be some HR chips, uh, you know, something a little bit apart from PPC, but a little bonus for the business owners out there. Yeah. Awesome. So it sounds like we’re going to have some actionable items, which are always good.

Uh, before that, though, question number two is. What do you suck at? So I’m really not very good at sales. So, uh, and that’s such an important, um, key skill as a business owner and, um, So my, my close ratio, it’s really not that great. Cause I’m just not a great sales person. There’s a lot of other people, I swear, you know, the number one skill that most people in this industry is selling, but then they can’t deliver.

Yeah. And, um, and I’m glad in my case, it’s, it’s the reverse because you don’t want to be like everyone else where you have a revolving door of clients and you just have to lie to everyone that calls. I actually purposely scare away a lot of people. Yeah. The call, because they’re not a good fit and it’s not going to be.

Yes. And so you look at my, uh, if you search for web pages, studios, Reno, You’ll find our 15 or so Google reviews. And some of them have people that called and I just told them this is not a good fit, but let me help you out. Let me spend, since you took the time yeah. To call me and research web pages, let me take a few minutes to help you out and steer you in the right direction, even though I can’t help you.

And we’ve gotten a lot of good reviews from that. So that’s my promise that people call, if we can’t help you, we’ll tell you we’ll steer you in the right direction. You know what though? Um, and I already knew this going in the conversation, you and I are going to have a lot of overlapping qualities that I respect in what you do and the approach that you take, because that’s what I admire and try to pursue on our end.

Obviously, you know, that we work in the SEO space, but what I’ve found is I’m the same as you. I think it’s amazing how many people have revolving door. I, I use the phrase turn and burn and. That it is totally a sales thing. And it’s fascinating because when we talk to other people, at least when I talk to other people in my space and I’m willing to bet it’s somewhere near space that they say, you know, what’s your average life, client life retention, you know?

And it’s like, Oh, nobody renews after a year. And I’m like, w and then they asked me and I say, I still have clients from day, one, 14 years ago. And I imagine you have the majority of your clients are several years long too, because yeah. You might lose that short term dollar, but you build a relationship and build good referrals to, to grow that longterm foundation.

That am I, am I. Yeah, out of turn and making that assumption, that’s spot on, you know, if I couldn’t keep clients okay. I would start off. I would be home, you know, I just don’t, I don’t sign up that many clients each year. I’ll sign up like, you know, two, three, four clients in a year. And that’s, that’s in a good year that I’ll set a sign up three or four.

So I have this one client who started in 2008. He’s a divorce attorney. And after about a year and a half, he let us go and he got great results and you know, that, that carried on for another few months and then the next guy messed it up. And so he called us back a year later and I said, yeah, sure. We’ll take you back.

No problem. And I don’t know why he was only around for a year. And then he left again and I didn’t hear from him for about three years and he was getting two or three clients a month. I was like, David, I got to hire you again. I only got one client in the past six months. And, you know, as a divorce attorney, that’s pretty, that’s pretty lean, you know, I mean, what is the case?

Like five grand, eight grand, 25, if you’re really, really, really lucky. And so we took him, took him on for a third time and then two years later we thought grass would be greener on the other side and he left and, um, and now it came back a fourth time. He could, every time he hired someone else. And, you know, eventually over the course of six to 12 months and optimizations, cause you gotta do something, they eventually screw it up and then it comes running back to me and I, at this point, I don’t think he’s there.

He won’t dare leave at this point. I have, I have one client, the exact same thing. And, and why don’t you elaborate on your client? Like, what is it, what is it you, you bring to the table or that the other guys screw up, or maybe, you know, or the other guys, does it tie into them doing like you focus on, um, If you’re a lower volume, but you’re higher quality relationships with your clients.

And then the other guys are high volume, lower quality turn and burn. Why do they turn and burn people so much versus why do people stick with you? And, you know, maybe help us explain the difference between agency, you know, the quote unquote agency and how many accounts they work with. Versus I imagine a more personal touch that you bring.

Sure. So the average agency, uh, and account manager is going to have to manage probably around 80 accounts. Now there’s only 40 hours in the workweek, so that’s 30 minutes a week. But that’s before you factor in bathroom breaks, uh, team meetings, phone calls with clients where you’re not really making a lot of changes to the account, sending out reports, answering emails.

So after all that, you know, you subtract all of that. How many minutes can someone actually dig into your account? And actually make a big difference. What do you have? What’s left 10 minutes, but then we’ve got those new clients, the four new clients or 10 new clients that came on board that month that they need to onboard, which takes way more time.

So what are they really doing on your account? They might not be doing anything so, you know, check the change history, log into your account. Okay. Do a search. There’s a search bar at the top under, um, in, within Google ads. Go to change history, look for the past 30 days, have they actually changed anything?

A lot of agencies don’t and if there’s a million change changes in there, you have to wonder, is it on autopilot with a automatic bidding system that makes a million worthless changes for you? They might be taking it in the wrong direction. So, uh, that’s, that’s one thing. And plus a lot of those people, you know, a, they’re not that bright B they’re managing, um, What was my point on that?

Uh, you know, they only have two or three years experience, so they don’t really know what to do. There’s certain. Strategic changes in certain situations that you need to make. And you only learn those tricks. If you’ve got a brain and you’ve been doing this for five or 10 years or more, uh, like if you’re going to get a budget in two hours every day, a brain dead account manager will not pick up on that.

But someone who’s really on the ball, they’re either going to limit the radius or they’re going to start to pair back on the keywords to focus on the ones that had the highest, highest ROI. But if you don’t pick up on that, you can’t take advantage of, you know, what is a very basic, uh, account optimization strategy that, you know, probably 80% of the account managers have no clue about.

And you know, the other thing is I went to Brown university. I have a degree in mechanical engineering with aerospace applications. So the technical side managing, um, A Google ads account for me is not that hard. And so I looked at the analytical side and the optimization side in a way that, you know, someone who has a lukewarm IQ probably is not capable of doing.

Yeah. I imagine that you’re more analytical and data driven in your decisions than others. Just kind of. Pushing and pulling levers until they, they figure out and hope that one AB change was the more monetizeable one than the other. Yeah. And, and I’m not going to lie. I mean, sometimes you have to do, um, make some educated guesses.

And then the question is, is, are you going to do too many at once and then not know what worked and, you know, usually, um, And I think for a lot of clients, you know, you just have to realize that the industry has a number of problems and you’ve seen it. I’ve seen it, you get the turn and burn people who just don’t do anything.

Yeah. And they’re amazing salespeople. So you can’t tell when you’ve got them on the phone, it’s whoever makes you feel warm and fuzzy, who might have absolutely no clue how to manage your account and anyone can do, you know, a quasi account audit and, and, and tear it apart. Right. And so they’re not doing this right.

And not doing that right. Um, and the question is, have they actually picked up on anything that’s important and have they gotten to the heart of the matter? Um, you know, a lot of the time we’re going to make a big difference in month one or two or three, we’ve had two accounts where it took us nine months to two years to really turn it around.

And I’ll tell you, one of those guys was that, um, that divorce attorney who came back for the fourth time, this time it’s so much more competitive in 2020, that it took us. Nine months to hit our stride. And I just kept trying and trying and trying, and I tried one thing after another, after another. I mean, I probably would have fired myself after nine months, but I mean, it was still a little bit better than it had been before for him.

And finally, we just hit our stride. He hired us in November. I mean, this is not the typical case. Right. I mean, if it takes three months, um, you know, please just fire us and go find someone else. But, you know, he knew because I I’d done it three times before at this time. Yeah. And it was so hard, but I finally, you wrote it out and I never quit on him.

And I wasn’t just willing to make three changes this month or do nothing and just, you know, sit on it and hope he keeps paying me for another two years. I kept trying, and then we had another client that. He, um, he was a really difficult client that, um, I had some real questions about whether I wanted to continue working with the guy, but he was paying us a lot of money.

And so I put up with it and, uh, and he begged us for two years to take his other account on, but the guy was such a pain. I just told him, you know, I’m sorry, w w we’re busy and finally had a bad year. So I took it on and said, you know, let me say, let, let me take this on and see what I can do. Literally 10 agencies before us tried and failed.

And what was getting in the way was, was the client himself. And he’s like, no, no, no. Don’t pull back on this. Don’t pull back on that. We’ve got to sell something. I’m like, no. So many times what I have to do is go in and cut to get us to a positive ROI. And it’s scary for the client, you know? Um, You want to cut our budget by, you know, 90% I’m like, yeah, I do.

I just want to get down to the core of what’s working and then we can build from there. I want to actually see if this makes a difference. And so it took two years of trying to get him out of the way and, and say, no, no, no, no, we need rules on. If it’s not working. If you know, you’re spending more money than you’re getting back in revenues.

Well, I mean, it’s such common sense. I mean, why couldn’t he agree to this day one? And we kept on trying and he kept resisting. And finally, after two years he agreed. And everything took off. Yeah. Um, and, uh, you know, it, it took a long time and, and, and, and then he was paying us so much money. He got upset about that and left anyway.

Uh, I, why don’t we talk about, um, you know, some of the sexy things of paid ads where like, what’s the highlight reel? What, what can people expect? What type of return can they get? Like, like sell us on paid ads. So it’s 2020. Thanks for competitive. It’s not like it’s 2010 or 2008 where you’re shooting fish in a barrel and anyone can make money.

And so the reality is, is sometimes it’s just so hyper competitive, especially if you have competitors coast to coast and you have, you know, a hundred or a thousand or 10,000 competitors, everyone’s beaten. It only takes three or four people to sign up. And start throwing money at it for the cost per click to just.

Get jacked up to where, you know, the only one that makes money as Google. Okay. And now that scenario happens. Yeah. And maybe if you’ve got the perfect website and the perfect sales staff, you’re the one that can actually eat out a little bit of money. Okay. So that’s what I try to do is introduce a dose of reality, LD to clients that are in that situation, say, you know, this, this might not be right for you.

Like credit card processing is ridiculously expensive. Anyone can open up a business, right. So, you know, it may be very, very difficult, you know, in our case, for example, a lot of our clients are attorneys. So in certain areas, we, you know, we know what the ROI is going to be. We know in bankruptcy we can kill it for clients.

Uh, and those guys are making money, hand over fist, and that’s only gonna get, you know, unfortunately for the economy, then they say, it’s only gonna get, uh, become a better ROI in the next two years, all day for those guys. But, um, I think for everyone, there’s a few areas that, um, you can count on to almost for sure have a solid ROI.

And that would be first branding. Okay. And so if your business name is, um, you know, XYZ, motor wheels, inc. Right? Um, just or XYZ tires incorporated. You’re going to have a lot of people there and it’s just, they’re there. They’re going to show up because they’re bidding on the, on the word tires. And so you can have competitors there just so that even when you people search for your brand name, they get to see three or four paid ads above you.

You want to be number one on paid for your brand. End of story. You have to do that. Otherwise you lose people who are your existing clients searching for you and they click on a competitor. Ed, poof, they’re gone, but what’s happening now. What I’m seeing, you know, when I searched for web pages, um, half or so of the time, it’s just.

My one paid ad and then natural results for web pages. But half the time, all of a sudden I start seeing three or four competitors who are usually below my paid ad. Um, for the first time I saw someone above me, so I gotta increase my bids. I just, I just noticed that yesterday. And, and so. Uh, that’s frustrating that that never happened before.

It was only because that one was specifically bidding on my brand name. So that’s coming there. I think what Google you take that as a compliment in some ways. Yeah. No, but you see what’s happening. I mean, you should in a way, but what’s actually happening is Google. I believe, I don’t know this for sure, but because some days I see three or four people and the next day, none.

I don’t think that they’ve specifically targeted where bridges, I believe it’s because of broad match that Google is showing other ads when people search for web pages and I’m seeing that more and more. So it’s something you need to do is every month we will your own brands name and see if there’s a bunch of people showing up above your ad and you need to start showing branding ads.

W why don’t you briefly touch on what broad match is for whispers that might not be familiar with the different match types? Sure. So broad match is the most expansive term and, and, and the most expensive, uh, match type. So if you’re doing exact match and you are bidding on red shoes, then if someone searches for expensive red shoes, You don’t show up, you need phrase match for that.

So with phrase match, which is in between broad and exact, then if someone searches, if you’re, if you are bidding on it, uh, red shoes and someone types in expensive. Yeah. Red shoes, then you can show up. Okay. But then with a broad match, there’s a lot of other terms that you could show up for. Uh, what about red sandals?

You might show up for that. Now there’s a lot of nitty gritty and ins and outs. And so you want to look up a broad match and, and see exactly what the definition is, but, you know, it changes, uh, every few months it changes and it tends to become a little bit more expansive over time. And I think that’s an area where, you know, by default, if you just add 20 keywords to your campaign, By default it’s broad match.

And so your ROI may not be, does it work sometimes, yet? Does kind of work great. Yeah, it does. Can it fail miserably? Yes, it can. So, um, I can’t give a blanket answer of yeah, no, you should never use broad match or yes, you should try me. Try it. See if it works, but you’ve got to measure. Your ROI, your cost per conversion, and look at it.

The keywords you’re actually showing up for an and start to add negatives because this is okay. Never ending game of Whac-A-Mole to kill all those weird searches that you show up for. Uh, you know, broad match bankruptcy actually works well for some of my bankruptcy attorney clients, but then this year has been really tricky because.

All of a sudden, all of these companies are filing for bankruptcy and people are Googling it and then they show up. Then they see the ad for my clients. So every, every week I gotta be in there looking at search terms and saying, what are they showing up for now? Oh, that’s in such company. I just filed for bankruptcy.

And that is a negative at another endless game of whack-a-mole. And so you just have to be very, very careful. So one example, I agree with you because, you know, I stayed in my lane in SEO, but long before that, we’ll say 15 years ago, when I dabbled in paid ads, primarily for myself, not as a service, but I always thought broad match was like you said, there can be circumstances, work and work.

But the example I would always give is like comparative to your red shoes example. I would always say, what if you’re selling. Beds, but you also don’t realize that somebody searched dog beds. And so like your adult human mattress product has nothing to do with your little dog’s mattress. And so you can, you can literally burn money on people that have absolutely no interest in what you offer.

Absolutely. And the default settings out of the box, Um, are really not so good. Um, yeah, you may, if you set up a new campaign by default, um, be set up to show worldwide. If you don’t add the location and you forget to do that by default, you may be set up to include the display network, which, uh, can eat up lots and lots of money.

And that’s when your ad show up outside of Google. Right? It’s when it shows up on people who are using, um, the display network. So they have a website for whatever. Maybe there’s just a random blog and that blog is about dog beds. And then your ad for human beds shows up and everyone clicks on it. And you wonder where your budget went and you didn’t get any sales.

So there’s all these ways where if you don’t know where to look. To stop the waste. You could spend endless sums of money, whether it be through, you know, by using broad match and having your, uh, all of these other searches, eat up all your budget and five minutes each day, you know, whenever I’m in another country, I’ll just do a search just out of curiosity, I’ll type in divorce attorney.

At about once a month, you’ll see someone from Duluth and their ad is showing up in Bogota, Colombia for divorce attorney that’s because they tried to set it up themselves or their agency sucks and they didn’t add, they forgot to add their location, you know, very easy mistake to make. But if you don’t set it up, right, if you don’t know any better, you’re showing up worldwide.

Anytime anyone searches for divorce attorney and. This is my assumption, is that because it’s just free money for Google, right? Like that’s why there’s these defaults because it, and neither of us could put words in Google’s mouth, but it seems like the more broad this, the ads default to then the more people that can show up to the more money they can make.

So is that why these are defaults is just because it’s a broader reach, you know, as it is, how it’s positioned. I really don’t know. I think that it would be in Google’s best interest too, you know, who really wants to show up worldwide. Does anyone really want to show up worldwide? I mean, what is that one 10th of 1%.

So wouldn’t they want to show an alert that pops up and says, Hey, make sure before you turn this on, that you choose your location because it’s it’s, um, it’s predictable at that point. Person’s not going to get any good results. And they’re going to turn it off and they’re going to say, this is a disaster.

Uh, and then they’ve lost a client. So, and, and it’s been that way since the beginning. And so many people have made that mistake, maybe only 1% or 1,110,000, who knows, but why would you want to let your clients, uh, make that mistake? Yeah. Um, I would think they should have a checklist. Have you set up.

Conversion tracking. Um, are you sure you want to use the display network? You might not because it doesn’t work for everyone. And, and so that’s what I would do if I worked for Google to allow, um, to, to perhaps some guard rails up and prevent these things from happening. And because those guard rails, aren’t always in place, uh, that’s where a good agency comes in to save you money.

And many times, you know, there’s a minimum management fee and, you know, in our case we charge, you know, a minimum or the, you know, it’s this, or the greater of 15% of click charges or 20%, or it depends on, you know, at the time of the year. And, um, and a few other factors and how hard that account is to manage and whether it’s e-commerce slash you know, feeds and shopping, which was.

Harder in which case we charge a little bit more, but you know, in many cases, uh, I mean almost all the time and account that we take agree to take, we know that we’re going to be able to cover that management fee so that there is a return on investment for that client. Yeah. Speaking of international worldwide, you, before we hit record, you had talked about a client in Japan.

Um, can, can you share that story with us? Absolutely. So we had a client that was targeting, uh, customers in 30 different countries and about 20 different languages. And so. We set it up, right. They wanted to use just one translation agency, where they had people who were native English speakers who happen to speak Japanese.

And we went out, we did that’s the hard way. And we found not just native. Translators who, you know, for them, English was a second language, but people who were in, in the marketing space so that they would write the tech stack. So it would be appealing and not just a proper translation, but that didn’t encourage people to click or didn’t say the right thing.

And so, you know, we had to put up these ads on, you know, guru or whatever the think it was Lance at the time. And find translators in 20 different countries. It took a long time to set this up. Yeah. And, and so they did very, very well with us, but the, the client was, uh, at one point upset, he said, David, you know, I know we can do better in Japan.

I know we can better do better in Japan. And you know, we finally just said, I want to turn this over to an, uh, an ad agency in Tokyo. I said, that’s no problem. We’ll, we’ll, we’ll help you turn it over. And they had questions for us for months. On that the agency did, the agency kept on coming back to us with, well, what about this?

And what are your top keywords? And I just couldn’t understand why they’re asking these questions. I’m the account was set up really, really well. And I knew that they probably couldn’t do a lot better. And, you know, we were, we played nice. We answered all their questions for months and we could tell that they were in over their head and the client finally came back to us and said, we’d really like it.

If you take over. A Japanese account again. And I just couldn’t stop laughing because, you know, no one here speaks a word of Japanese and we were crushing it for years over what an agency could do in Tokyo and they, and they completely screwed it up. And we had, we had everything back and running smoothly within a week or two.

So it sounds like transparency and trust is a big part of your value propositions. Is that fair to say? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it takes years to really build up that trust and that relationship with a client and, you know, any number of times, you know, you have a client that. The market shifts, um, and things become more difficult because of the, a lot more competitors or, you know, who knows what there could be just a strategic shift in the market for whatever, you know, if you’re selling toilet paper this year, things are great.

If you owned a restaurant. You’ve probably had a rough spot for a few months. I’ve got a client that does tours to Japan. And, um, I had to tell him, you know, back in March, I said, look, we need to stop advertising right now. And he kept on toughing it out. I’m like, You’re making a mistake. We need to turn it off.

No one is going to come and it was wishful thinking and it was, Oh my God, this can’t be happening. And I kept telling it to him and he was upset. He didn’t, you know, I’m like, Hey, don’t shoot the messenger, but you know, no one wants to jump on a plane and go to Japan. He came back on board, you know, in may or June and wanted to try it again and see, no, I’m not sure.

Sure. This is going to happen, but let’s try it. Let’s start with the campaigns with the best ROI. Let’s start with branding and retargeting and it didn’t work. And it flopped. Then I just came back to him. I told him, you know, when you turn this off, wait, I know that the client is spending on. I had two clients who were spending a hundred grand a month at different times, and I told him, you need to drop your budget in half.

And it’s an agency where you’re earning 15% of that. You’re cutting off your right arm. And it’s painful. Tell people that, but you’ve got to put the client first. That’s how you build that level of trust, where when things get rough, when they’ve had a bad year, that’s why they don’t fire you because you’ve been, and therefore them telling them something that they know they’re not going to hear from anyone else.

And they know that you’ve got their back. And sometimes it’s so shocking. I’ve actually had clients upset with me when I told her the one to turn it off. And he’s like, Oh, you just want to, you know, focus on our high spending campaigns. No, I’m like, I mean, I was, I was kind of offended. I’m like, no, I mean, I really, I have your best it’s interest at heart.

It’s not working. Can we please turn it off? And the guy was really angry. But this is how you build trust is you just tell people the right thing. And once in a while you’ve upset someone, but you know, the average client is going to get it and realize over time. And that’s what I did for a number of these clients.

Uh, one of them, you know, one client, when we told him he got in at 50 grand, he went with initially, but then, you know, he hired someone else who said, no, no, no, no. You need to double your budget to 200 grand. And predictably it flopped, and then he came back and he hired us again. And he’s now back for the third time and he’s doing awesome.

Yeah. I imagine that some of the people that, that get upset with the transparency that you bring to them, they eventually kind of see the light and come back around and say, okay, I get it now. Uh, a lot of them do it, especially the large accounts, you know, with a large account, there’s nowhere to run.

There’s nowhere to hide. You either have an ROI and a good ROI, or you don’t, sometimes it’s a smaller accounts. Um, you know, you can kind of hide because maybe you, your direct traffic or referrals or something else popped. And so your $2,000 a month account, you know, sometimes they don’t notice it and they don’t come back.

So we typically like to pose a minimum of at least five grand a month, which is where they have a chance of, um, you know, seeing a huge difference when we make a difference. Uh, attorneys will take them on at two grand. They’ll notice. I love working with attorneys. Most people, most people don’t. Everyone has their attorney job.

I love working with them. I mean, I make them so much money. They get so busy that they just leave me alone to do my thing. Yeah. Mind writing out a check and they’re not going to nickel and dime me and say, Oh, I can save $200 a month than someone else I love. I like working with them. They’re smart, smart people.

And, um, and they’re very thankful when I am able to make them a lot of money. Yeah. Well, earlier you talked about kind of in your intro, you had talked about that you work in the space of Google ads and Microsoft. Can you talk about the pros and cons or the differences between those two platforms? I mean it’s night and day.

Uh, Google ads is always improving. It’s always getting better. They’re always adding new features. And, and, and there’s fewer bugs in it. I do not like working on the Microsoft advertising platform formerly knows it known as Bing. Um, I’ve had a lot of troubles with it and I think that. You know, I, I set up earlier this year, I set up bang slash Microsoft ads for a lot of our clients.

And, you know, we have clients spending 10 grand a month and we will in all, we set it up same way on being in a span, like 200 a month. Like, what’s the point, you know, just increase your budget on Google. If you’re spending 50 or a hundred grand a month, maybe it’s worthwhile. And for some clients that occasionally speak people see a higher ROI on being, but in most, for most of the time, in my opinion, It is not worth your time.

Uh, it’s a, it’s just a clunky platform, which, you know, there’s just a lot of problems with it. I don’t, I don’t like it. Yeah. And I imagine that part of, um, the reason why it doesn’t drive as big as a return is because just the market isn’t there. I mean, so many more people use Google. So even if you have a killer ROI on being, you, you have a market cap, right.

Right. Of course. And you know, people all the time say, well, just Google it. Have you ever heard someone say bang it? I have one client. One is the guy that’s come back four times. Every time he calls, he’s asking about being, and I’ve told them, I say, why I go. And it’s been such a reoccurring thing that now he says, now I’ll preface it.

He’ll say, I know you tell me that other people don’t do this, but then they’ll go in to talking about how it uses being. But he’s, he’s my attorney. He’s the guy that w w you know, attorneys, you have to. Show your value and then they leave you alone. So he he’s my exact attorney. Right. And you know that there are certain personas you have, and that’s the persona I get on the phone on a sales call.

They’re asking all these wing nut questions. And I don’t even, I mean, if they want to sign up great, but I’m not going to follow up with them because you know which way it’s going, you know, they’re going to be a pain. They’re going to always ask those stupid questions, even if you get everything perfect.

And so, you know, you just can’t run fast enough away from a client like that. Right. Am I right now? You’re telling me, right. It’s it’s funny how many parallels we have? You know, I joked at the beginning that we’re mortal enemies because it seems like people in internet marketing space are so polarizing that it’s it’s funnels are the only answer.

Paid ads are the only answer. SEO is the only answer. And I’ve never understood that position because I think that there’s a time and a place for any of them. And, and if, if all of them are profitable, why not do all of them? If, if only one of them is profitable, then just do the one. But it’s funny how, um, the fence of some people are in our spaces between us and I was super excited when you and I started working together.

Because, because just the fact that you were willing to blend the two worlds. I knew that you were somebody that we could grow with and, you know, we can experiment and you’re open minded to how we proceed. And, uh, yeah. You know, it’s, it’s, I think it’s a lot of opportunities when you can take the, the pros and understand the cons of.

Different marketing opportunities and then embrace what works. Sure. And I think that, you know, the people that are like that get up on stage and they’re puff their chest, you know, and they have these strong opinions. That’s what, you know, the person, the client who doesn’t know any better, they’re like, Oh, wow, it makes sense.

Cause they’ve got all this confidence and these strong opinions and this doesn’t work and that doesn’t work. And so people are attracted to that confidence. And, and so that’s what you need to do. If you’re going to go speak at a conference in a lot of cases, you know, and, and actually get clients. And you’ve got people that actually do that, and they actually know what they’re talking about.

And sometimes they actually. R are right. You know, you look at a Neil Patel, he knows what he’s talking about, or you look at, um, Oh, who’s the a, there’s another, the guy that that’s, uh, uh, sell swimming pools, uh, in the great recession. Um, now Marcus shared yeah, up there, he has these strong opinions and he actually is right.

And he knows what he’s talking about and I can believe what he says, but a lot of these fools they’ll stand up there and it works and that’s all they can do is get up there, have a strong opinion. And they pawn you off on these peons that they’ve hired, who know nothing, do nothing. And then it’s a revolving door.

And the only way it works is because they know sales and they know marketing and they get up on stage and they pop their chest and they get a new, get a lot of new clients. I know a lot of people that take that position intentionally just for the benefit of cells that they are intentionally polarizing and intentionally throw rocks and, and.

I can understand it from a sales position, but like you, I just don’t feel comfortable bringing myself to that position. Yeah, no, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, we’ve talked a lot about paid ads. Um, you also mentioned that you’ve kind of traveled the world. So as we kinda get closer to wrapping up, I want to share some of these, these stories you got.

Um, I want to visit the whitewater rafting story, um, because I’m, I’m, I’m interested in the outcome. How, how, uh, Confident, you still stand by your decision in what happened. So can you share the whitewater rafting story? Sure. So, you know, when I was in high school, I, um, I really didn’t know how to swim and I went to the class and I still didn’t know how to swim.

So I went back and took some more lessons and finally, you know, sort of, I mean, I I’ve always been able to doggy paddle. It’s not like you throw me in the pool and I’m going to sink to the bottom, but you know, I got out at a high school and I was, you know, okay. I mean, I could. I wasn’t afraid of the water anymore, but I was not by no means a strong swimmer.

And I like to conquer my fears. That’s why I became a pilot right. Soon as I started the engine, my knees were shaking and, you know, I threw up like three times first of mine and, you know, somehow I managed to get my pilot’s license. Um, crazy, crazy. And so, you know, so I’m a little afraid of water. I’m not a strong swimmer.

I mean, who in their right mind? And I think there’s a screw loose somewhere. I know there’s a screw there. There’s multiple, there’s multiple screws loose. And so I decided to become a raft guide. Right. And I promised myself after college, I was going to take off one year and have fun and then go get a real job.

So I did that and I became a, you know, a bartender in Vail. And I got to ski every day when it was great. And I got to, man, I was just not ready to go back. And I heard about raft guide school. You pay for two weeks of rafting for $300. And, uh, I mean, I, I was like, wow. I mean, this is going to be one of the fun and.

I was definitely scared. The swimming test was interesting, cause this was both guide school and a job interview. The swim test was you had to swim from one side of the raft to the other with your life jacket on. Am I okay? No big deal. You know, walked your hands underneath the boat, got to the side, came up, got back in the boat, big deal.

And then you had to jump in a rapid with your life vest on it. It wasn’t that big of a rapid and they threw you a throw rope and you catch it. Hold it over your shoulder and you swing to shore. And if you hold it this way with your hands out in front of you, then you wind up facing upstream and you’re like a fish.

And then you inhale a lot of water and you drown and you die. So you don’t do that. You have to hold it over your back and then you get swung like a pendulum to shore. It’s kind of cool. So I pass those two tests with flying colors and they didn’t know that it wasn’t that strong swimmer. And so I got hired at another company and we were training through a rapid calls called hell’s half acre and, um, a hell’s half acre.

I mean, what’s the big deal. It’s not that bad. And finally, I, I fell out training and I’m like, okay, I’ll get back in the boat, but both got farther and farther away. And, uh, and I well went over this rock and do this research  hole. And I got stuck in there and it dragged me down to the bottom of the river for 30 seconds.

And I, I mean, I was scared. I’m like, am I ever coming up? I mean, and some people, you know, I mean, it’s very rare, but some people never do two. And you, you drank. Yeah. And I got, I got spat out 50 yards downstream. I’m like, wow, thank God. That’s over. I’m looking around. And I’m like, I’m not going anywhere. I’m like, I’m just here in the middle of the river and I’m not going downstream.

I’m not going upstream. This is a very bizarre. Thing. And all of a sudden I’m like, wow, I’m going very slowly upstream. Why am I going upstairs? Well, it was a pretty big hole and that’s what happens to fast forward. It goes around and then back up and also straight down, which is what I did. So you get this water, that’s pulling you back upstream.

And I’m looking at my boss, who is a, a partner in the company. He managed to get the boat to shore and he had a throw line there. Ready? And I’m getting closer and closer to this whole, and I know what’s going to happen. I’m gonna get sucked down to the bottom again. So I get sucked down on the bottom for another 30 seconds and I, I was just worked.

I was worked and. I got spat out again and I’m like, wow, I’m not going anywhere again. And then I’m slowly, I’m like, Oh my God, not this again. And it shows like a minute. I’m very slowly getting back up to the top. And I finally, I remembered after it sucked me down to the bottom again, I was the only person in guide school.

Cause they were telling these horror stories of like dead cow, rapid where a cow got surfed in this hole for like three days. Hmm. And I was the only one that raised my hand and said, well, what do you do? If you get stuck in a hole, it’s like, Oh, you curl up in a ball and then you get spat out with the fast water.

Then you go down further instead of floating back up. Cause I’m finally, I remembered it backed me out a little. Otherwise I would’ve, I probably would have drowned. And my raft, my, uh, the owner threw me the lifeline. And I swung to shore and somehow I stuck with it. I mean, I have no idea why. I mean, I spent the rest of that day flaked out on my car.

So you did, you got sucked down the third time. Okay. So after that I became, I called up 10 companies in Costa Rica. Uh, I called the operator. I said, give me the number of 10 companies. And this is my broken Spanish. And they gave me the number and I called nine nine. The first nine said, forget about it. We don’t want to hire you.

Gringo go home, whatever. And the 10th one actually hired me as a man. Sure. And, um, after the second week, and I was really nice to everyone there after like two weeks of trail, I’m like, you know, this is just not for me. I’m going home. But you know, you guys put me up in your house for two weeks and let me take you guys all out to a really nice restaurant.

And they hung out with me like that whole night. And they brought me to this, uh, the foot of a vault of an active volcano to see that. And like, David, look, we, we really want you to stay. I mean, you’re such a nice guy. I mean, no one else would have paid for dinner for like 10 or 15 guys, but I did and they talked me into staying.

I said, try this other location. You’re going to love it. And I mean, it changed my life. I was there for nine months and I got really good at guiding. I almost drowned another few times and I got really good at swimming

and I got deported from the country and all this, and nearly banned from the country that immigration came and then maybe sign this thing saying you’re going to be. You know, banned from the council for 10 years. And I just played with played nice with those guys too. And they’re like, look, we just need to give this paper to the owner of where you were staying, who would destroyed my place to get money from me.

And then he called the police and four army guards came with machine guns and there’s a guard literally guarding the front gate with a four foot machete. And my boss comes he’s like, did the police tell you to stay? No, they didn’t tell me anything. He’s like, get in your car. We’re going, he goes to the gate, he goes, open the door now.

And he actually opened it and let us go. And so we drove off, but then, and I haven’t done any damage to this guy’s place. He just wanted to ah, get some money. Yeah. So anyway, Uh, immigration needed to prove to him that they were doing their job. And I got booted from the country and I came back three days later and I continued working there and, and, and like I said, there’s a screw loose somewhere.

And then I decided after all that, I wanted to guide on the grand Canyon. And I called these companies for three years, begging to be a guide when they had someone cancel at the last minute. And so they finally call me back. They’re like, David, can you be here in three days? I said, yeah, sure, great. Let’s do it.

And so I’m getting a little more nervous as the date approaches and you know, I’m packing for the trip with the other. Guides. And they’re telling the horror stories of the guide who, you know, the, the, or hidden who’s dad, the guy who was, I was hit in the eye with the orange and they had to, you know, extract his eye during the trip.

And, and I mean, I’m just getting more and more nervous. And I couldn’t really sleep the night before the first, uh, the first day. And, um, I get on the trip. And, and I was really scared. I knew I was in over my head and I couldn’t, I couldn’t sleep the first night until like three eight. Yeah. And I talked to my, my, the, uh, one of the owners of the trip the next day was like, Oh, this happens to everyone.

David, just relax. Um, look, you have to do everything opposite of what you do in a normal river, because this is just, it’s just different. So this, this and this, and I nailed it and I got it as I was so excited. I couldn’t sleep until 3:00 AM. Any way you fast forward about, you know, seven days into the trip.

And finally the river is getting. Harder and harder, and the Rapids are bigger. And I realized I really am in over my head and I hit this one bad, big, bad, rapid. And I was all the other guides abandoned Bay in it. They just kept on going. And that wasn’t what they’re supposed to do. They’re supposed to the last other gear guide is supposed to stay there.

And I was, I was petrified. I got off the boat. I was shaking. My hands were white. My face was white. I just, I just told him about my boss. I’m like, can you find someone else? To take over tomorrow when we get to the midway point. And that was the only point where you could actually extract from the chip.

And so we got on the sat folk, this was 10 years ago, got it. On the sat phone. Um, and he got someone to be there the next day. And that was Phantom ranch at the halfway point. And I made like a fandom and, and, and, and, and, and advantaged, um, And I, and I hiked out, but if it had been like a day or two later and made that decision, that the only way out would have been to Paul, a massive, like a Huey size helicopter and evacuate the entire trip and give everyone their money back.

That would have been the only way out. And, uh, I mean, I’m embarrassed. I mean, it’s kind of, I’d love to tell some great story of bravery and Valor. And I chickened out I was in over him and I was doing great. Like the, the biggest rapid, we all pulled over to the side and we scouted it and they’re like, you gotta do this, this and this.

And I nailed it. Like the skills were there and I let fear get the best of me. So, yeah. But, but you stand by your decision and even though you wish you had a story of bravery, like you’re, you don’t regret it. You know, I should have signed up as an assistant, the first trip and seen it with someone else guiding and then would have been fine maybe, or what have just not come back.

But I looked, I got there. It was, it was a life goal. I made it happen. And the food was amazing. I’m not sure if that’s cause I was really exhausted and super hungry or because it was really, really good, but it was amazing food and I will I’ll I’ll I’ll never regret doing that. Yeah. Well, good for you.

Yeah. Uh, well sharing your stories. I appreciate you bringing your experience and wisdom on the paid ads side. Um, send you on your approach of honesty and trust and give you the last moment to tell our listeners how they can find out more about you. Or you had also mentioned something about maybe a free audit.

They can take advantage of. Yeah, absolutely. If you just go to  webrageous.com, it’s just like a outrageous web page. It’s w E B R a G E O U s.com go to any inner page, scroll down and you’ll see something that says how to audit your own Google ads account. And that walks you through step by step. If let’s say you have an agency or you have an employee, you just don’t know the right questions to ask.

Go through that and press pause a bunch of times and go through your own Google ads account. Hmm. And the last thing I’ll say this a little bit off target of Google ads, but is on target for anyone that owns their own business is go to  dot com slash link or where  dot com slash webinar. Any of those links to work at to bring you to a page that has a link to a webinar I did with call rail.

For how to grow your agency or your business. I give a really good talk on HR for small businesses, not just agencies, but really anyone. And there’s also too. Sources resources on there for small business owner. One is a stay interview. So you make sure your current employees are happy, which is really cool.

Most people have never heard of that. And then, uh, the other is a contract for employees or subcontractors, which is really well written and, uh, Can help any small business owner to stay safe and make sure we have a good contract. Super cool. Thanks for showing that out. We’ll put that in the show notes and uh, maybe down the road, we’ll have.

Guest appearance number two. And you can tell us about a bullring well, where they don’t kill the boat bowls for the record. But, uh, yeah, that’s, that’s another, uh, that’s another story. I mean, I guess that’s why I’m good as I, I just keep trying and I’ve got a few screws loose and so I just keep at it and keep coming up with new ideas for Google ads.

I don’t know why I’ve acquired this. This rare skill, but I have so, wow. I appreciate what you do. And you know, I know you a little bit more intimately than, than just the listeners as well from this one interview and I admire your approach to what you do and your passion behind it. So I want to say thanks for trying to learn from others.

David Chapman, webrageous.com. Thanks so much. Awesome. Thanks Damon. Oh, and by the way, for anyone who’s interested, we can do a free account audit. If people just give us a call. There you go. Eight five five two two five nine four seven. You got it. Thanks, Damon. Thank you.