Five Things to Understand Before Running Google Ads

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There are five things that I want you to understand before you run

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Google Ads, this is important from a client perspective, but it's also

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important from an agency perspective.

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If you're an agency, a freelancer, a provider, if you're an in-house

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employee, Working for an organization, using Google Ads, these five things are

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going to save your life, I promise you.

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One of the things I tell people all the time is we're one of the top

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Google ads agencies on the planet.

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part of that proficiency, of course, we're good at what we do, but the

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other part of that is the fact that we've done a really good job with

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expectation management, with letting people know this is what's possible.

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This is what isn't.

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This is what you need to be concerned with, afraid of.

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Here are the risks.

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We do nothing but negative selling all the time.

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And people like it because it's honest, it's truthful.

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what I'd ask of you and for you is you do the exact same thing

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regardless of where your position is.

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And that's what these five things are really going to center on.

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So number one, numeral uno.

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There are zero performance guarantees.

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There are no performance guarantees.

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According to Google's own data, 50% of all Google ad campaigns

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fill in the first many days.

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Quick disclaimer, by the way.

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Somebody on Twitter called me out in a very, very friendly way.

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They're like, Hey man, where is the citation for this data point?

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And what's so infuriating to me is I can't find it.

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It was a note that I took when I went through Google certification.

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Way before it was even inside of Skillshare.

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I don't know if y'all remember that, but I got my Google certification and in my

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notebook I wrote down half of all Google ad campaigns fill in the first 90 days.

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I didn't take a screenshot.

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I didn't write it down.

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So really, I have no citation whatsoever.

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might as well just be making this up.

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The reason that I'm being as aggressive with it is because even if that's not

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true, the point behind it still stands.

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It's a solid articulation of the argument.

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The other data point that Google sterilized from the web that I thought

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was really interesting was the 72 million demographic and psychographic profiling

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factors on every human on the planet.

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That used to be on YouTube adss homepage.

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When you were looking at YouTube ads, specifically Google's like,

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we have 72 million factors.

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And then all of a sudden, right around the time of like the

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congressional hearings and Cambridge Analytica, that stuff just went away.

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And I wish I grabbed screenshots of it.

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So, note for you, if you see something that's really compelling from a

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data perspective, screenshot it.

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Because if it goes away, you don't have the ability to offer citations,

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and then you just sound like an idiot when you tell people what you know.

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So regardless of how many Google ad campaigns fill in the first 90

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days, it's a tax relevant number and there's no way for you to know that

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a campaign is gonna be successful.

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I don't care if you've run the exact same type of campaign in the

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exact same industry, in the exact same geography, it's too dynamic.

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So if an agency is offering you a performance guarantees, they're

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either desperate or they don't understand what they're saying, and

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that tends to happen more often than.

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I care to admit, to be honest with you, I just see people and I'm like, you

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can't say the words that you just said.

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there's no way that you could know that.

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No performance guarantees, period.

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Full stop.

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If you're the agency offering performance guarantees, stop that.

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Now.

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You can say things like, if it doesn't work, I'll give you your money back.

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Fine.

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That's not a performance guarantee.

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That's risk assumption.

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But you can't guarantee someone that a Google ad campaign will function

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the day that you can guarantee that.

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Stop selling Google ads and go start buying businesses

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cuz you can just mint money.

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Which by the way, that's a really good note.

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If somebody really could guarantee performance, they

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wouldn't be giving it to you.

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If you had a magic metal detector that found gold, you wouldn't go try

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to sell the metal detector, right?

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You just go mine gold.

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number one, zero guarantees.

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Stop offering guarantees.

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Stop believing in guarantees.

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Stop asking for guarantees.

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I'm on calls still to this day.

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It's actually getting worse now that we're nerd famous.

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People are like, all right, so this is gonna work, right?

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And I'm like, your guess is as good as mine at this point, man, you know, some of

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you know more about this stuff than I do.

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So it's a test, it's an experiment, and we're gonna do it the right way And we're

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vested, but there's no way to promise it.

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All right?

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I beat that horse to death.

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Google Ads can only be as successful as your business model.

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This is one of the things that gets really frustrating really quickly.

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For the ad manager.

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I don't know.

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Your industry.

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I don't know your model.

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I don't know your, what you offer.

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I don't know how competitive it is.

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I don't know how well you're priced and I will never really know, right?

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Unless I invest with you or I end up with equity in your

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business, or I open a new business.

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in so many ways, I'm just trusting you.

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You're like, yeah, people are gonna buy this for this amount of

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money on these terms in this way.

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and, you know, for us it's like, cool, bro, I, believe you, I assume that

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you've done some level of, market test, anecdotal study, proof of concept.

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But if your business model is flawed, there's a great quote by Bill Gates.

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He says that Automation applied to an inefficient process only

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amplifies the inefficiency.

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That's it.

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Google Ads is the same way.

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Google Ads applied to an inefficient business model only amplifies the

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inefficiencies of that business.

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So if, your sales cycle, let's say, is, is flawed or too long or

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broken, Google Ads isn't gonna fix that, it's just gonna show you that.

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And that, by the way, is a huge value proposition.

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Like Google Ads can really help improve the efficacy of your

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business if you're willing to pay attention to what it teaches you.

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But, Your business model needs to be sound.

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And here's what's really interesting coming from the Google guy, I

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don't think Google Ads is a great place to go test a business model.

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Unless you have a ton of money and a ton of time.

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you're like, dude, I just got VC backed.

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You've got a bunch of money.

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We have to move fast, fast, fast.

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Great.

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Google Ads is the best place to be if you have more money than time.

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And that is some people, by the way, I've had people come to us saying exactly that.

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But if you got more time than money, Go make these mistakes in a far less

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expensive ecosystem cuz paying, paid traffic to make some of these mistakes.

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Like how are you articulating your value proposition?

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What is it that you need to say before somebody buys?

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Are you sure you're going after the right buyers?

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Are you sure this is the audience that resonates with this product or service?

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do you have your products and services bundled properly and appropriately?

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Are you describing them the way they need to be described?

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are you priced competitively?

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Are you priced too competitively?

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this happens as often as people being too expensive.

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They're too cheap, there's no meat left on the bone.

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they're selling products that are lost.

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Leaders and they don't realize that after the lost leader,

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there's nothing that follows.

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make sure your business model is sound.

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And I wouldn't, test that assumption inside of the paid traffic sphere.

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I'd find a way to do that a little bit more.

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Feet on the street.

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Number three, Google ads takes time and it takes money, y'all,

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it's just an x YIs, right?

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The more time you have, the less money it's gonna take.

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The more money you have, the less time it's gonna take.

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Usually it's somewhere in the middle, but if you have an excessive money,

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you can speed it up to a degree, know, you can't accelerate it past a certain

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point, but if you have an excessive time, then you can spend a little

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bit less, you know, if we had years.

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We could probably crack the code on Google ads for a dollar a day in some industries.

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Maybe not anymore though, with Google's minimum thresholds,

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which is a total scam, by the way.

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It's a total scam.

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I'm so mad at them for doing them, but have to have time and money, and

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those are the two things that a lot of businesses do not have by the way.

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Don't run Google Ads if you don't have an adequate ad spend.

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Trying to shoestring Google Ads it's an absolute flawed model.

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And don't spend money you don't have.

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I don't want your rent money.

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I don't want your rent money.

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only spend the money that you're willing to gamble.

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Cuz in the first 90 days, man is, it's educated guesswork.

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It's not gambling per se, but it's damn close sometimes.

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Google Ads is gonna change all the time, all the time.

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I think right now they're trying to kill standard shopping and I think that

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because standard shopping is working, and so why wouldn't they kill it?

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I think they're gonna take away manual cpc.

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I think we pretty much have confirmation of that from the rumor mill.

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You can't get romantic about the way that you're making your money.

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You can't get romantic about the way that you're running your ads.

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You can't get romantic about where your traffic is coming from.

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as soon as you crack the code inside of Google ads, it changes it's Murphy's Law.

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So you just have to know that going into it.

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It's why agencies exist cuz otherwise you could just hire us, wait until

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we crack the code and fire us.

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Which by the way, people do all the time.

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They hire us, we have the campaign perform.

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They're like, all right, good job boys, we'll take it from here.

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And then they take the campaign internally.

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the internal mantra, and maybe I shouldn't say this, but the soundbite

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internally is like, yeah, they'll be back.

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wait, just, first big algo chains.

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And then they come, tail tucked and they're like, Hey guys,

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we don't know what happened.

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And now it's like, but then they never leave again.

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Now they know, this is how, because, it's always way worse

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than had they stuck around.

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And, and there's a big reason for that too.

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I've got a hundred million dollars in ad spend.

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I get to see all sorts of multi-variate ways in different environments,

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how this is being impacted.

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And I'll probably see it before you do.

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So wow.

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I just sold you really hard on the agency.

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I don't necessarily.

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Think you have to be with an agency long term, by the way.

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You can have some really solid internal resources or do it yourself,

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but you know, for whatever it's worth, come hire, solution, take.

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And number five, and this is one I don't hit often.

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Google Ads is the most powerful advertising platform, period.

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Full stop.

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And I think that that's important to understand too.

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Here's why I think it's important to understand.

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You have to go into it knowing that it can work.

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I feel this way with so many things in life.

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You can't summit Kilimanjaro unless you believe it's possible.

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maybe it'd be a little less extreme, like you can't lose weight, Fitness,

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like, you just have to go in with the belief that something's possible.

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Google Ads is possible.

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Success is possible.

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You've seen it, over and over and over again.

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With, other businesses, competitors, et cetera.

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It's possible for you.

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You just gotta keep at it.

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so often the people that are most successful in any industry, they're

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not the best of the brightest or the smartest or the best funded.

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They're just the ones that were, obstinate enough to just stick around.

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and Anne, you start to kind of get that feeling too when you're around them.

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It's like, oh, you're just bullheaded.

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I see what happened here.

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Yeah.

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I'm writing a Twitter thread every day.

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Go follow me on Twitter.

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We're sending out a newsletter that's jam-packed full of all

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the content that we're creating.

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Go send it for our newsletter.

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And if I missed anything, what are the things that you think people should

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know before they run Google Ads?

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you know, I've got my five things.

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What are yours?

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Hit me in the comments.

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I think that's all I got.

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I really appreciate y'all, appreciate your time, appreciate your attention.

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Appreciate those of you that bought our book, wrote a review.

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Subscribe to our YouTube channel.

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Follow me on socials.

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This is getting pretty cool.

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It's getting pretty fun to experience the other end of all of this hard work.

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We've been a couple years into all this content creation, and then all of a

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sudden I woke up and I'm nerd famous.