How to Build a Successful Career in PPC

Episode Description

There’s only one way your PPC career will go with advice from this all-star cast: up.

What do the most successful PPC pros do that everyone else doesn’t? The ones who constantly get promotions and raises, who grow their or their clients’ businesses – they always find ways to get better. Whether you’re a PPC beginner or a veteran, there’s always a new trick you can learn.

Episode Takeaways

Transitioning to Agency Ownership:

• Risk Tolerance: Essential for those considering starting an agency; be prepared for financial ups and downs.
• Diverse Skills: Agency owners need to handle multiple aspects of business beyond PPC, like HR and finance.
• Networking: Building strong professional networks is crucial for attracting clients and opportunities.

Corporate Career Pathways:

• Visibility: Achieve visibility in the industry through networking and thought leadership to open opportunities in large corporations.
• Role Diversification: Diversifying roles within a company can lead to more significant opportunities and job security.

General Career Advice:

• Specialization vs. Generalization: Both specializing in a specific PPC area and maintaining broad digital marketing knowledge are beneficial.
• Community Engagement: Active engagement in the PPC community can enhance learning and open up career opportunities.
• Work-Life Balance: Aligning personal and professional goals is essential for long-term career satisfaction.

Episode Transcript

Frederick Vallaeys: Hello and welcome to another episode of PPC Town Hall. My name is Fred Vallaeys. I’m your host. I’m also the co founder of Optmyzr. And today we brought together our biggest panel ever. We’ve got four guests today. And we’re going to talk about something that’s near and dear to everybody watching. How do you build a career in PPC?

Personally, I’ve written a lot of stuff about the future of PPC and is there even a role for humans in that space with so much automation coming from the engines? But I think the answer is definitely yes, there is a place for humans. So if we’re going to be in this field, how do we get ahead? How do we keep our jobs interesting?

Obviously there’s no lack of change thanks to the ad engines like Microsoft and Google. So so that certainly keeps things exciting for all of us, but how do we also build our careers in the direction that we want and not always be just responsive to what the ad engines are doing? So for that, we’ve got some some people, some panelists on the call here today who are really experts.

They’ve been in PPC for 20 plus years. They’ve gone through in house, they’ve gone through agency. Some of them work for the ad platforms. So I think we’re going to be able to learn quite a bit here today. So I wanted to welcome all of you to PPC Town Hall number.

All right. So welcome to my guests. And before we introduce all of them, I also want to remind people that we are live streaming on YouTube, on LinkedIn, on Facebook. So you can use all of those platforms to chat in the comments. Some of those comments we might show on the screen, but the first thing we like to like to ask everyone is where are you joining us from today?

So put your location, say hello to our panelists. We’ll pop that up on the screen. Okay. And then as the conversation starts to flow, you have questions, you want to point it in a certain direction, go ahead and use those comments for that as well. So welcome to our guests. I’m going to go in the order that I have you on my screen.

So John Lee from Microsoft. Hello, everybody. I could certainly give great introductions for all of you, but I’m going to miss stuff. So John, who are you and why are you a PPC expert?

John Lee: Yeah, well you use the word expert, not me. So let’s start there. So hi, I’m John Lee, head of evangelism at Microsoft advertising.

Prior to that, I was in learning and development. So creating training, facilitating training for both sellers at Microsoft advertising, but also for many of you clients, Microsoft advertising. But I, I’ve been in this space, in this industry for 15 years and agency side co owned an agency you know, and so a lot of hands on work there working with clients.

In the platforms, but then now taking that knowledge and putting all of that together in context and bringing that to the market, to all of you. And so I owe many people debts of gratitude for how I got here. But I think we’ll probably touch on that through the conversation today.

Frederick Vallaeys: Exactly. And so Hennepin, WordStream, FlixMarketing, all some really well known names in the industry.

And now at Microsoft, of course, one of the very best known. So thanks for joining us.

John Lee: Thank you. Thanks. All right.

Frederick Vallaeys: Let’s let’s get Microsoft for a second and come back to you, Christi, in a minute. But let’s say hello to Julie.

Julie Bacchini: Hello, everybody. I am the president of Neptune Moon, and I feel like I don’t know if I’ve been doing this the longest.

Neptune Moon is 22 years old now, and I’ve been working in paid search since literally the beginning. So I have seen it, you know, from when it was just, Starting to become a platform and, and everything that’s happened and all of, you know, all of the various incarnations and, you know, before social and all of that.

So I, I’ve been doing this for a very, very long time. I’ve been through a lot of change cycles, which I think with everything that we’ve been going through lately is probably pretty important. I had a bit of a non traditional career path prior to this. So I’m sure we’re going to get into that. And of course I’m also the manager and the host of PPC chat on Twitter.

So you may know me from there as well.

Frederick Vallaeys: Nice. Yeah. And at conferences, it’s always like, Hey, there’s Brad. There’s Fred. They’ve been doing PPC the longest, but they seem to forget about you, Julie. So let’s start correcting that. Okay. So welcome and thank you for joining us. So let’s go to Christie from Microsoft next.

Christi Olson: Hello. So I am Christi Olson. I am currently the global head of paid search within Microsoft’s global media team. So we are essentially the internal agency managing all search on behalf of Microsoft across the globe. A small team of five. If you imagine all the products and services, it is a bit crazy. I have had a interesting career path where I’ve jumped around to different companies, in house agency, across Microsoft, multiple different teams, different roles.

I was the previous evangelist before John, before deciding to come back over and manage paid search across the board. And I’ve pretty much done a little bit of everything in search, including SEO, which I don’t know if anybody else on the, I think Julie, you might have.

Frederick Vallaeys: There’s a, maybe your hands, if you’ve done SEO, you were just People can see that.

Kirk, who are these people?

Kirk Williams: Absolutely not. All

Frederick Vallaeys: right, Christi, good to have you on the show. Kirk, the best voice in PPC. Yeah. Or maybe it’s just the best microphone, I don’t know, but Welcome back. Yeah.

Kirk Williams: Yeah. No, thanks. Kirk Williams. I own Zato. We’re just a little agency. We just focus on paid search. So Google ads and Microsoft ads.

So I, I, I think of myself still as like a fairly. Young book in PPC, right? And I started in like 2010. So I guess once you get past the decade mark, I guess at some point in tech, you probably start to get to where you’re no longer like the noob, but I still feel like the new blot. I started in house.

And then began getting some clients on my own. And actually, I don’t know if anyone else on the panel knows this, but John and I began working together. So John helped me get started. Thanks, Melissa. I see that I am but John helped me get started actually kind of breaking away because so when he was at clicks I started freelancing with clicks and that was kind of part of what helped me get my own clients as well as, you know, cover some of, of that income that we needed.

So thanks again, John. And then, and then kind of just filled out Zato here and that’s where I’ve been now for, for I think I’ve been at Zato 10 years now, so yeah, loving it. Trying to keep learning, keep making lots of mistakes try to overthink everything to the point where my team tells me to stop overthinking it and we do our thing.

John Lee: And the fun fact to add to that is. You know, better than anyone is how hard I tried to hire you full time. And in retrospect, right, you know, hindsight’s 2020 best decision you ever made, right? You know, you’re, you’re a rock star and Zeta was amazing, but. Man, I so, so, so wanted to add you to the team.

Kirk Williams: Well, it was a fun team to be with, but yeah, I kinda, I kinda like being on my own.

So

Frederick Vallaeys: yeah, I have a ton of questions lined up here and I was going to start with how did you get your starts in PPC? But John, I think you teed up a great topic, which is. Sort of how do you weigh opportunities? Right. And Kirk what was it about the next step in running your own agency? Was it a lifestyle decision?

Did you just want to be your own manager? Like, how did you decide to go that path?

Kirk Williams: Yeah, I find that a lot of times I’ll, I’ll make changes because I recently told some of this. Sometimes I feel like I’m like being dragged behind a speedboat, you know, when you’re supposed to like water ski and yet you fall.

And if they haven’t seen that and stop the speedboat yet and you’re still hanging on, you’re just kind of getting dragged along. That’s like, that’s my career path. All right. I’ve just kind of like, I’m hanging on for the ride and as stuff happens, I’m like, Oh, maybe we should try this. And and, and I think that’s a bit of what happened when it was time to go out on my own is a lot of things kind of worked out really well.

There, like the math really made sense. I was, I was at a place that I just was not being paid much and there wasn’t really an option for that to increase. So, so that was kind of making me look like, well, hey, maybe if I get some clients. Like maybe I can just make the math make a little more sense.

Right. So that kind of forced me to start down that path of maybe I should look into other clients. Then, like I said, different opportunities that kind of came out with with clicks and freelancing. And it just, and I think there was some things going on there too. I’m trying to remember, cause. 10 years ago was a long time ago, especially when the last year has been a pandemic.

Right. But I, but I think there were stuff with some of our personal lives as well. I was, I was in the middle of my master’s and that shifted from needing to be so a lot of that stuff kind of clicked for me at the same time and just kind of made the decision at my time in my life right at that time.

It just kind of made sense to do that.

Frederick Vallaeys: Okay. So a long time ago in the galaxy far, far away, we all decided to go into PPC. So Christi, let me give this one to you. But how did you get started?

Christi Olson: Mine is very random. So I was actually in sales and I was doing online dating and I met a gentleman who has had a company, visible technologies, and they were having a hard time selling search.

And so he brought me into some of the sales calls to help. Close the deals. And I was like, this is really interesting. I think I could do this. And I joined the company and started actually doing paid and organic search at that company and really learned the ropes. And then I was really fortunate that it was early on.

Like, I, I don’t think if, if I were to look at how I got in Microsoft had an opening for their first full time paid employee to run paid search. Back then, they were looking for somebody with one to two years of search experience. This is in the 2006 2007 time frame, and I, I had only had six months but I was able to show enough proficiency of understanding the platforms, how search works, how digital worked, that they were able to consider me, even though I didn’t meet any of the qualifications in the job description, other than the fact I had actually been in some of the platforms.

And from there, the rest is history, because I’ve, Stuck with it and have never gone back to sales. I thought I was going to be in pharmaceuticals I really was aiming to be a pharmaceutical sales rep at some point in my

Frederick Vallaeys: life And yeah here pharma is like one of the hardest things to advertise in ppc because of all the rules and regulations So you’ve gone as far away as you can.

Yeah, I’m gonna say thanks to jason for doing dishes right now

John Lee: Jason

Christi Olson: No, he’s making coffee. I think

Frederick Vallaeys: oh good

Christi Olson: And he can’t hear you

Frederick Vallaeys: Oh, that’s too bad. Julie, what was your start in PPC?

Julie Bacchini: So I started Neptune Moon. I was working full time actually as a marketing person and a graphic designer back in the late 90s.

I was working for a health system and I had been doing, starting to learn a little bit about web. This is like when websites first started, right? It’s hard to believe that when you think about it really was only 20, you know, a little over 20 years ago. Yeah. When websites didn’t even really exist in the way that they do now.

So I was starting to kind of learn about that. And I had some clients on the side. And I, but, you know, giving up that full time job is hard, especially, you know, when you need health insurance and, and everything else. So it’s a, it’s a really. It’s hard to know when to make that leap, I think. And that may be an experience that other people can, can relate to.

So I was really kind of going back and forth for a while as to what to do. And then my whole department got eliminated and I thought, well, I guess today’s the day I was like, Oh, okay. I mean, and I sort of figured at that point, like, what’s the worst thing will happen? I’ll have to go find another job.

Well, I’d already have to go find another job cause I didn’t have one anymore. So I just sort of, you know, took what I had and decided to, you know, keep going. And from there, you know, I was doing graphic design, starting to do websites, you know, PPC didn’t exist yet. So then I got into SEO because being a.

Like a big picture kind of marketing person, SEO made so much sense to me. And honestly, SEO was so easy back then. Now it’s incredibly difficult and I wouldn’t want any, I I’m so happy that I don’t do it. But in those days it was super easy. And then of course, like paid started to, to exist. And it felt like a natural extension of what I was already doing.

And, and I like being at sort of the forefront of putting clients in places where perhaps not everybody else is. And I like the challenge of figuring new things out. And then once I started to see that you had more data available to you when you’re working in paid search for me, it was like, that’s it.

Like, this is, this is the direction that I want to go in. Like, this speaks to me. Because it feeds both my creative side, but it also feeds the data nerd in me. And I thought like, this is, this is the perfect marriage of the types of things that I like to do. And, and I just have kept moving it in that direction ever since.

Frederick Vallaeys: And I want to hear from John too on this because he’s also done SEO, but so being at the forefront of stuff, right? So you’ve done the agency now for an amazingly long time, 22 years, and you started in SEO and then like you wanted to nerd out on PPC and data. Like what’s that next frontier? Is that something you’re looking at?

And like, if you, if you were you 22 years ago, would you still jump into PPC now? Or would you maybe go somewhere else?

Julie Bacchini: I think so. I mean, I think there’s a lot about it that I really like. It’s, it’s interesting having been in it as long as I have with the, the magnitude of change that’s happening now with automation and with the way things work and the role that we play.

So I feel like even though there are aspects about PPC, they’re really, that are really changing. There’s a lot that’s not. And there’s a lot about like what clients need from us, that how we’re able to deliver it or, or the methods that we’re using or, or how we’re going to deliver that, that might all be shifting.

But I feel like the core of what a really good PPC person or agency brings to a client. That hasn’t really changed. And those are the pieces that really, that really appealed to me, getting to know somebody’s business, getting, having that, that two way communication where you’re, you’re getting information from them and you’re feeding that into what you’re doing.

Like all of that, I find really exciting. So I, I, I do feel like I would probably still stumble into this, even if I were starting today.

Frederick Vallaeys: Still go to PPC. Hey, and I want to hear from everybody watching today. So to put in the comments, how long have you been doing PPC? Anyone. be Julie there on that 22 years ago.

I’ve been doing it since 1998. But that was not professionally. That was just as a side gig in college. And then I briefly did a stint at a, an engineering company sapiens. And then much like Julia, I actually got pushed out in like the third wave of layoffs they were doing in the, after the. com bubble burst.

It was the best thing that ever happened to me because then it forced me to go and make a short list of companies that I thought were exciting. And I put Google on that list. The next thing you knew, I worked at this company of about like 400 people. I got to do some really, really cool stuff along the way.

All right. So looking in the comments PPC since 2010, Dan has been doing it for 20 years. Nice. Dan, were you advertising in the days of a go to? We got some people, three months, Niklas, 22 years. Nice. We have some an amazing mix then of rookies and really expert people that we should probably have as panelists on the next show.

Hey, John so you’ve, Been between different agencies. Now you work for the the ad platform. Like, well, what’s your take on, on PPC and like the, the evolution of it? I mean, PPC is no longer that simple thing that Julie was describing where you, or SEO was simple. Like when we talk about PPC now, it’s, it’s really many things, right?

It could be social PPC. It could be search engine PPC. It could be shopping ads, could be search ads, could be display ads. How, how do you think about specialization? Or being a specialist versus a generalist and relative benefits of those as to building a career.

John Lee: So I’ll answer that with kind of a, you know, my own history.

And that was, you know, I went to college to teach music. I don’t teach music. You know, I, I was a, a, a manager for a movie theater chain, good experiences there. In all facets of things and then work for a self publishing company and then You know through the grace of fate, met joe kirschbaum Who’s kind of like my my bromance partner in in the history of ppc, right?

And so All that is to say like when I got into This industry working at hannifin marketing. I was the the third hire. So patty started the company Joe Kirschbaum was the second hire. Joe had been my manager at the previous company and then they put up a job listing. I’m like, well, I don’t know exactly what this is, but I know what it is.

In, in, in essence, I studied up on it and I just put myself out there saying, Hey, this seems like. Something hot, something to chase for me personally. I think what helped me out early on was that I had just a wide variety of experiences, you know, I, I have a mind for tech and, and I’m, I’m an early adopter of technology, software, all of these things, and have been for, for many, many years.

And I think just my ability to process like what’s happening and then think about where, where is this going next? Right. See that big picture really, really was monumental for me, one, getting into the industry, but having a voice in the industry through PPC hero, but then onward, you know, in speaking, writing, et cetera, and so.

That’s the long winded answer to say, I still feel strongly that people need to have a wide set of skills. So, you know, whether that’s understanding what it takes to make a solid image ad or a video, maybe you’re not the one doing the work, but understanding what goes into that work will be elemental in you being able to instruct.

Others on here’s what I need for my native ads or my display ads or what’s happening on social. Being able to be creative in writing does not come with, you know, doesn’t come to everybody on day one, understanding the data, right? It’s such a multifaceted space. That if you are just one track and you’re not paying attention to what else is going on, you’re going to get left behind.

So my, my view is, is okay, sure. You can’t focus on everything all at once, but you have to have a baseline understanding and a certain level of knowledge to just be flexible and to be fluid within the industry to either get your, your job done today or to have a meaningful conversation with somebody tomorrow.

Frederick Vallaeys: No, I want to pass this on to Kirk. Because I think there’s similarities there for you as well, right? So leading a team at an agency again, generalist versus specialist, but then also like how hands on do you remain and what’s the importance of doing some of that work yourself versus training up the team to do it?

And how does that put you in the right position to to kind of move up? And I think, well, what I’m kind of going towards is that you have a path, a managerial path, which is maybe more hands off. And you become the person who organizes teams, who handles, you know, HR, or you got that the senior specialist.

And it’s interesting too, because in engineering organizations, they really reward specialism. Right. Because you can become a staff engineer at a company and that’s highly paid. That’s a highly respected position, but it seems like in the PPC world and marketing and customer support, oftentimes that next level in your career.

Is managing people as opposed to just doing your job better the thing that you chose to do ppc and so kind of curious kirk, what thoughts you have on that very broad question that I just put out there

Kirk Williams: Yeah I have thoughts let me start by saying I I actually disagree. I I agree with you. I disagree with the mentality that I I see Like you that the primary way to grow in your ppc career is eventually by Eventually becoming a people manager.

I really think like for the health of PPC, that that’s probably an area that our industry needs to continue to kind of figure out so someone can really develop. Like if someone is really good, I have a lot of engineer friends. So it’s funny cause it’s very, very similar. Like we’ll talk about this, right?

My, one of my best engineering friends jokes about that. He’s like us engineers make horrible people managers. And and, and I do think there’s something about. Taking someone who’s really good at this specific specialist job and then saying, okay, now that you’ve spent years and maybe even schooling and like you’ve honed this, now we’re going to take you and we’re going to put you over here.

A completely different skill set, completely different everything. Good luck. Oh, and that, yeah, that’s the only ways you’re only way you’re going to get a raise title change, all of that. So first of all, you are kind of putting them in this difficult position of kind of needing to choose between like what they actually would want to do and what they’re skilled at.

And like, Really the only option for them to grow. So I think there’s a disconnect there that probably we need to figure out. One thing in the PPC world, which I can speak to, I can’t as much with everything else, but even just generalist versus specialist, I, I see generalist being important, like we should have generalized skills.

The more that we can communicate with others, the more we can hone our ability to take data and analyze it. Well, that sort of thing, like we’re just going to be better overall, no matter where we are in PPC world. That being said, I personally think in the PPC world, and especially for those more starting out, I think specializing is really where you’re going to leap forward in terms of your own personal value, knowledge, and probably pay, to be honest, because what I find is that.

Like, like for me, kind of my career path, which solo consultant adding on some freelancing, that sort of thing. One of the ways that I’ve been able to. Have some level of branding or, you know, people even referring clients to me is that I’ve been able to carve out these paths of like, I’m known as the person who knows this.

And that doesn’t even mean that I know more than that, than like all other people out there. It’s just, they know me as that person who knows that. And like, that’s the key, right? So like, because I chose to specialize in this, I’m the one that they send Google shopping clients to, right? And so there’s actually like a financial value, like basically.

Tied to that specialist thing that I think is also part of it. And so like my advice to someone, especially starting out in career and PPC would be hone all of your general skills as much as possible. But honestly, I would, I do think I would try to find something that specialize in. So like you’re the person like.

You’re the YouTube person that everyone has those YouTube questions for. You’re the person that they always have CRO questions for whatever it might be. And I think that’s probably gonna, gonna open some doors that wouldn’t, if you’re just like partially really good and a solid person at just a lot of things, but not really known for anything.

So that’s, that’s my take on it.

Frederick Vallaeys: Yeah. And that makes a ton of sense. And I want to hear from anyone who wants to chime in, but basically all of us on the call today, we built our brands in some manner. Exactly the way that you explained it. And then it’s funny too, because we’re in PPC and it’s like, Hey, like we want to reach out to be like at the moment of relevance we want to be the ones who are picked.

There’s so much competition when somebody’s picking an ad agency or a PPC specialist. And so what is it that sets you apart from all those others? It’s like, Oh, this is not just an agency. This is Julie’s agency. Isn’t Julie the person who runs a PPC chat? Huh? Well, she probably knows a lot. At least we’ve seen her speak.

Like we trust her, we know the face and that really moves the needle on the business. So and I think all of us having been at agency. So, I mean, obviously again, let’s bring it back to Christie maybe, but you. At an agency and you were speaking for them, do you think that was part of you moving on to Microsoft and those doors opening for you?

Christi Olson: So actually no. So I had been I’d been speaking at smaller, more local events across the Puget Sound area before going into Point it. And so I’d actually, I’m trying to think, I started actually speaking when I was at Expedia. And I’d started getting the speaking gigs, but not because of the work at Expedia.

So I started, I knew I wanted to go down a path of education and teaching others because I saw that there was a gap in the speaker circuit. There were a lot of, no offense, there were a lot of males in there. They talked about very specific things and there were some very broad gaps that I just saw when we were talking about paid search.

Like how do you do paid search? How do you. think about mass scale, because that was what I had been focusing on at Microsoft in my first stint was literally supporting a line of business where we had 200 million products that would have 25 million products churn on a monthly basis. How do you create campaigns to support that?

No one was talking about that in the industry and space, and it came down to automation, which now everybody knows, but we’re talking, you know, 12 years ago, no one was talking to automation at that scale. And so I saw some openings and areas to really specialize and started pitching for those conferences.

And it took several times of talking to others who had been accepted to speak, to learn, how do you hone a pitch? How do you write something that is coherent and makes sense and explains what you will be doing? And so I just say I was really fortunate to, to be able to find that niche. Similar to what you’re saying on the generalist versus specialist, I would actually say I, I agree and disagree at the same time.

So I think specializing in paid search makes sense, but you also want to have some other foundation within digital marketing at the same time, whether it’s data and analytics, whether it is like they said, ad creative, something of another component, because it will only make you stronger for me. I focused on the data and analytics piece early on of data.

implementation, which then really parlayed into search. I’m trying to think what else to say. And the only other one I’d say is on Kirk’s comment on management the quote, I was talking to someone and it sort of came up in the conversation of the thing that made you successful as a PPC manager is not what is going to make you successful as a PPC.

people manager. And I think that’s one of the biggest things that have stuck with me for career. And as you think about that career growth, so I’ve been in house and agency, I’ve managed people, the skills that I had as a PPC manager, that has not perlayed to make me successful manager, it is a complete mindset shift of moving from being that tactical doer to then understanding process, relationships.

Education and empowering the people that are doing that work so that they can be successful as the ones who are the, the voice and the ones going out and executing on the search side. And then I’ll be quiet.

Kirk Williams: There’s a great book Christie, you may have read it. What got you here won’t get you there. I think it’s Marshall Goldsmith maybe, but he’s basically speaking to like people, managers, CEOs, and kind of, kind of communicating those same things.

Frederick Vallaeys: Yeah, well said Christi okay, so I wanted to have some audience questions because they’ve been starting to come in here so we’re going to start with yuki and before I pose her question. So word of thanks to yuki She’s actually the one who came to me on linkedin and said hey, we should do a ppc town hall on This exact topic how to grow a career and she also Specifically asked for the four panelists we have on so yuki’s a fan of all of you so thank you for bringing us all together to talk about this but yeah, so your question what advice would you give to anyone who’s unsure if that person should start their own agency?

You Or just remain at a full time job with I guess a little bit more job security. I’ll

Julie Bacchini: take this one. I’ll start off. So when I was trying to decide, you know, when I still had my full time job and I was trying to decide whether or not to go out on my own, watching the screen, just like move in front of me, I met with someone else who was running at that time a design agency.

But I think the lessons are similar, right? Going out on your own and having clients and having to do that type of thing. And what she said to me is something that I’ve repeated to other people a lot over the years. And that is, If you want to go out on your own, you have to be okay with the fact that you are pretty much always, you know, six months away from having no work.

And that’s something that you, your, your, your constitution of yourself, like you can either handle that or you can’t, and it doesn’t make you a bad or weak person if you can’t, but you really. have to, I think, have some, some introspection and really think about yourself and your personalities and, and you and your personality singular, singular, and your, your tolerance for risk and your ability to kind of roll with things when they can be like very up and very down there.

There’s a lot of. inconsistency, I think when it comes to, to running your own thing. And, and some people do fine with that and thrive in it. And other people, it’s like the most agita inducing, you know, you’re, you’re just going to, you know, die from stress for the way that it is. And it doesn’t make one, you know, one white, right.

And one wrong. But I think that you have to sort of have that inherent ability to a be able to roll with a lot of stuff because things happen that you expect. And so many things happen that you don’t. So you want to be able to have, to have that ability. If you need, if uncertainty is going to like, stop you, stress, really, really stressed you out.

It may not be the best, best path for you. You may do better in an environment where somebody else is taking on that piece. And then you’re a very you’re, you’re contributing to that. So a lot of it, I think comes down to really asking yourself some tough, some tough questions of how, how much can you, how much uncertainty can you really, can you really handle?

Cause I’ve been doing this for 22 years and it hasn’t gotten any more certain really in a lot of ways. So, I think that’s a really, really important talk to have with yourself when you’re thinking about it.

Frederick Vallaeys: And John, I see you wanna, yeah.

John Lee: Yeah, yeah, so, and, and I put something in the private chat just for this group, but I think it’s actually appropriate to bring up, and that is, so, You know, going from a job where you have security, you know, you know what to expect all those things versus going out on your own.

I think it’s really important to understand that you, you have to be prepared to wear all the hats. And so that is understanding. You know, medical benefits, HR, right? All of those things. It’s understanding what’s the difference between an IRA, IRA and a 401k. And like, how do I actually get those for myself?

But if you hire people, how do I manage it for them? Taxes. Is way more complex than you have any idea until you’ve had to do it for yourself, owning a business. And so like you, you need to go into these things, eyes wide open. And you know, for me, having been working for other entrepreneurs and then while I didn’t start clicks, I ran clicks and co owned it for a period of time.

Like, look, I mean, there’s a lot there, right? And, and, and Julie, to your point, You know, one of the reasons why I was like, well, what else is there for me? Career wise was like, even though clicks had had best year ever, best year ever continued growth, it, it always hung very heavy on me of, I have 10 people who are depending on me for their paycheck, for their insurance, all of these things.

And. Because of some of the volatility, right? Clients come, we all know this, but when you’re the one where the buck stops there, they can really weigh on a person. So again, having that expectation of there’s a certain level of stress. And if you’re okay with that. And you want to go into, I mean, great, but just know it’s there.

Christi Olson: Well, and I would say, John, like for me, I actually went at agency side and the reason my husband and I, we both went at agencies, we both were in non agency space. He went to one local Seattle agency. I went to the other cause we were trying to decide. Would we want to start our own agency? So he was operations and he does the day to

Frederick Vallaeys: day

Christi Olson: agencies.

One of them, we’d heard an inkling from some people that they might be willing to sell the agency at some point in time, like, is that a path we’d want to go down is potentially start our own or buy out a local agency from an owner who is looking to get out. So we both went to separate agencies and where we came back as we were at the point of our lives, we were trying to start a family and it goes back to what Julie said, the uncertainty level of.

Going into like if I was supposed to be the face of and I knew I was going to have a baby in the near future. Is that a level of risk I was willing to take? And I ended up going back corporate because we decided financially if we wanted to stay in Seattle, cause that’s a whole other topic. It’s a little expensive here.

Like we, we weren’t ready, ready to take that risk. Do I think I’m going to do it? Probably at some point I’ll go back and go agency side start an agency to have the ownership of like the company. I love the aspect of it, but it’s, At that point in time, we just weren’t ready to take that leap. And so I love the advice, Julie, and I completely agree with it, the uncertainty and just knowing for yourself, are you ready to take that risk where you need to have maybe a year plus of savings in your bank account so that if clients don’t pay and during COVID, I’m sure Julie and Kirk and maybe even you, Fred, can tell you about clients who have deferred billing, like how do you manage and how do you survive?

Frederick Vallaeys: Yeah. And for me, so when I quit Google and I started an agency. I mean, I basically didn’t know what I was going to do when I quit Google, but then it was like, okay, it’d be nice to have money again. And what’s the easiest way for me to make money? Well, I know PPC, so let me just sell some services in PPC.

So I basically started up a small agency. But it was certainly a big part of the decision to have my wife still working at Google and to have the health insurance because God, that’s like. Huge cost if you have to pay for it yourself. And so, like, putting those pieces in place to the degree that you can.

And I think the advice of having a year’s worth of savings, amazing advice. But then the thing that kind of dawned on me was I was spending. All my days talking to clients on the phone and talking about these great strategies. But then I had to go and do them, right? And it was like, oh my God, like the tools are just not that good or they’re really expensive.

And that’s when I shifted into a mindset of like, hey, I’ve got an engineering background. Let me go and build a few scripts. But the idea of helping myself actually delivered the work that I had promised to my clients. And I was like, well, it, There might actually be more to this, right? Maybe some other people want to use these scripts, and I’d probably have more fun building scripts and building tools than actually you know, working on accounts 24 7.

And one thing and Kirk, I want to hear from you on that. The one thing I’d never realized until I worked for myself was that I no longer had one manager. I no longer had one boss, but every client was my boss and they all behaved like my boss. They were like, well, you got to work on this now because, you know, I want you to.

And then you got 20 other people and it’s like, well, sorry, like I only have this many hours of the day. Right? So Kirk, how do you, how do you deal with that? Having so many bosses as a, as an agency?

Kirk Williams: Yeah. That’s funny you say that. Cause that was something I learned after I started the idea of, Hey, I’m my own boss.

No, you’re not. You just have lots of bosses. Now they’re called clients. Right. I think that, let me, let me hit kind of the risk analysis thing and let me push back just a little bit on a mentality that I hear a lot, which is basically that when like the huge, huge, huge, huge risk to your career is like stepping away from your, your corporate full time job and going out on your own.

Like there is truth to that. So I’m not saying there’s truth to that. I just, I think that it’s not fairly assessing the risk of like, Hey, you’re in some like, Mega corporate scenario here where you’re like a cog in the wheel. Like how much, like, do you not think that you have some risks there and someone wipe, you know, some bookkeeper somewhere saying, Hey, the math’s not making sense and like wiping out a section of your company.

Right. And you’re part of it. So I do think that there is risk in. Both camps. And that was something that I kind of wrestled with in terms of determining like, Hey, there’s in some ways, like as you go out on your own and you start collecting clients, like you might lose some clients. So actually one of the biggest things that I’ve tried to do at our agency that I would also recommend to anyone listening, especially if they’re like, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not the one to listen to for, how can you take an agency to 200 million in three and a half months?

All right. So it’s just, I’m not, I’m not the let’s like push for growth, that sort of thing. But I am really trying to build an agency that I can check out at, at the end of the day. And my weekends that I can provide a great place. That’s like, there’s going to be always be some level of stress in that that we’ve talked about.

I’ve had ulcers from the agency and yet also like there’s some level of, I’m trying to build this thing that I can, I can enjoy and be at. And one of those things is like wisely bringing on clients and managing those. So you’re never like over, overbooked to, to one client as opposed to having a number of them.

That is actually one thing as a freelancer, if, if you have the ability where you have like four or five decent clients, you can lose one and still kind of be okay, especially as you have the savings that talked about. Your job, like you lose your job, your job’s done. Like you have to find another job.

Your income went to zero. Right? So again, let me just, I think, I think there’s some level of risk on both sides. Certainly, certainly there’s risk and it’s hard to jump out. On your own. So I, I think that’s there too. And then one other thing I’ll know admittedly, and I’m a little curious to hear what you all think about this, but I look at starting an agency.

Like starting a PPC agency in 2022, because that’s basically where we’re at. At this point, we’re going to blink the holidays are over. I think I could be wrong, but I kind of think that it’s probably harder to start an agency, a PPC agency in 2022, then. You know, when we all kind of are thinking of that back in 2010 or earlier, right?

I think there’s a lot more people doing it. I think there’s a lot more freelancers. I think there’s more agencies. The bigger agencies are, are even more branded. Sometimes I forget that like when I started, I mean, to me, you know, John, you talk about like Hennepin days of being small. That wasn’t that long ago.

I mean, Hennepin is a, is a force to be reckoned with. Now they have a brand, a recognized brand. And like the, it, it, it, The industry has matured. And I, I do think like, I’m not, I’m not trying to discourage people from going and starting something. I just am noting that even from what we’re saying, I think it’s a different atmosphere out there for someone to say, Hey, in 2022, I’m heading in, I’m going in to start PPC agency.

Cause in some ways there might’ve been, it might’ve been a little bit. I hesitate to use the word easier, but it might’ve been just a little bit easier for us in still an immature industry. And we were able to hop in there and kind of get scrappy and that sort of thing. It might be a little more complex now.

So I don’t know.

I think you’re on mute.

Frederick Vallaeys: Every single time. No, but I think as an agency, you’re always looking at scale, right? So how do we make this more efficient with the same people that we have? And, you know, basically as a risk reduction. Scheme. Where was I going with this? My phone rang and then you said I was muted. But so yeah, the thing is agencies, they did to be able to scale. You usually go after the things you’re already really good at, right? So Google ads, Microsoft ads, all the big ones, but then there’s all these little niches. And some of these niches are going to become the big players of the future.

And If you can figure out what those are and become that voice, then you’re basically hitting all the marks that we’ve talked about, right? You become that voice, you become the brand of that person who discovered it. By the way, the reason that people look to me for scripts is not because I’m the best engineer in the world, but it’s just that at one conference, I was like, hey, these scripts are interesting.

Nobody else is talking about them. Let me talk about them and now everybody wants to talk and now not anymore scripts are sort of like a couple generations ago but at the time that was the thing that was like That got me back into the conference circuit because i’d left google And when I was at Google, everybody wanted me to go and speak at their conference.

And then when I was just like Fred, they were like, well, I mean, what do you bring? And I was like, well, I know some script stuff and people like those sessions. And then they wanted to bring me back. So that reopened the conference speaking circuit. That reopened the door for branding for me. And so that’s what I would challenge people to do is take a look at what is that next skill set that you can bring that’s maybe small now, but that is going to be huge where you can be the leader, where you can actually set yourself apart.

Because like Kirk said, It is saturated and it’s not easy just starting an agency when all you offer is basically The same thing everyone else has been doing and then at that point the sad thing is your only pitch becomes i’m cheaper, right? But I mean, is that really what is that race to the bottom that we want to go for?

Probably not. Right. And then, and then the other thing you’ll find as an agency, you start billing cheaply and then you’re like, Hey, I can do this. I can sell someone that, you know, 2000 a month. Let me try 3000 a month. Ooh, people will pay me 3000. Let me try 4000. Okay. And you keep going up and now the client’s paying you 2000.

You’re kind of ignoring them because they’re not that important to you. So kind of burning bridges to some degree. And eventually you’re a low price point is no longer the thing that sets you apart, but it’s your expertise. It’s the results that you deliver.

Julie Bacchini: I have two thoughts I’d like to share. One is You don’t have to go into wanting to be on your own because you want to scale and be huge.

So I think that’s something, excuse me, that’s important to think about too. You can have, you can have a, a freelance or a consulting or an agency business that looks a whole lot of different ways. And so there’s not, you know, like, like most things in PPC, there’s not really just like one way to do it.

So I think that this industry offers a lot of flexibility in how you may wish to set things up for yourself being in charge of what’s happening. So you may decide that you want to just be a consultant and you don’t really want to deal with employees and management and all that stuff. And that’s fine.

You can make a great living doing that. I, I, I don’t have any employees at the moment. I work with some contract people. You know, I, it’s, it works very well for me. I’ve been doing this for a really, really long time. There, there are just a lot of different paths that are, that are open to you. And I think kind of figuring out which, which one makes the most sense for you in your life.

And, and that answer can also change. Again, I’ve been doing this for a long time. When I started doing this, I was a single, you know, person in my, in my twenties you know, I’m now married. I’m, I have a kid, you know, I’m 50, like, you know, things, things change, right? Like, so your, your goals and what you want from your, your business and from your practice can, can also change.

So I would also encourage you that like, you don’t have to make your forever decision. Today or six months from now, you have to make your decision for now, and you have to have that short term plan in mind, perhaps with like a longer term vision, but it’s totally fine to reevaluate your choices at any point in time.

It doesn’t mean you’re a failure. It doesn’t mean that you weren’t able to do X, Y or Z. It means that you’re a person who’s trying to figure out how to make the right choices. Best manager professional life, you know alongside of everything else that you’re that you’re doing. So that’s my little ppc mom Talk for everybody today

Frederick Vallaeys: But but yeah, then if you find something you love doing you do it for 22 years, right so

Julie Bacchini: exactly

Frederick Vallaeys: I do want to do a quick pivot here So we’ve gone pretty deep on people wanting to become agencies becoming freelancers but we have two people here from Microsoft.

I mean, that’s sort of the other end of the spectrum, the big corporation, the ones making decisions that impact us on a daily basis. What’s the advice that people want to go down that path? So like Christie and John how did you get into Microsoft and what was it that appealed to you wanting to work for Microsoft?

John Lee: I’ll start here. What I would say is that, you know, if, if the corporate world is something that doesn’t scare you in your interests, that there are jobs popping up. Often on the Microsoft side, on the Google side and elsewhere. And that could be, I mean, some of the, I mean, and Christie will tell you as well, like a lot of our peers have similar backgrounds, right?

They, they worked in agencies, some of them worked for themselves and then, you know, found a home within Microsoft advertising. And, you know,

it’s, it’s fascinating, right? Corporate culture. Like I, I will hit my five year mark in October of this year. And I still feel, I think Kirk, you were voicing this sentiment earlier. Like, I still feel like the new kid on the block and that’s weird to me. Right. Like it’s five years. But yet, but that’s because it’s corporate culture.

Like I went from co owning a company of 10 full time employees and, you know, like seven freelancers and managing that ecosystem to being a part of, you know, Microsoft that, you know, my head is still spinning a little bit five years on, but it’s, I don’t know, for me, it was, I believed in the brand. I believed in the work that they were doing.

I, you know, again, I had been, you know, a friend of Microsoft advertising you know, being ads for a long time. And so I knew a lot of the people and it just, it felt like home and it still does. And so, you know, If you did ask me, you know, six years ago, Hey, do you see yourself working at Microsoft advertising anytime in the near future?

No, I was in the right place at the right time knew the right people. And here I am right and so I’m happy I made that decision but like there’s all kinds of positions and potential upward mobility, but it’s the. I know it was in the chat. I know it was stated by Kirk that there’s risk there too, right?

There’s constant reorganizations and manager change and things like that. It’s part of corporate culture. And as long as you’re willing to roll with that and accept some of those risks, like there’s a lot of potential payoff and a lot of potential visibility for long term career, you know, planning and all of that.

Frederick Vallaeys: Cool. Hey, we’re going to announce the winners of the the three books in a, in a minute here. We’re also going to ask the panelists to answer some of the questions we’ve had about what is the book that you should read? What is the one conference you should attend? Only one per person. But Christi, what about your path to Microsoft?

Christi Olson: Yeah, so I’ve done Microsoft twice. So I was at Microsoft, I was there for five years, left for five years, came back, and I just hit my 10 year anniversary this year. So it is interesting what John says, like I, it does still, still somewhat feel like new kid on the block in a way because I have changed roles within Microsoft.

I am on my seventh, I believe, organization all in paid search, which I think is actually fairly rare. When you talk to people that have been in a big, Corporation. A lot of times they move roles, they move jobs. I have been very clear that I love paid search. I want to stay in paid search. I think that within Microsoft there, there’s the so much, as John said, there’s so much opportunity to change roles, but also grow within the role that when I first got in I sort of made my specialist area of understanding like, Hey, why are we not using any data?

data for what we are doing. Oh, we’re sending traffic to a website. That’s awesome. Let’s, let’s get into data. And so I’ve been able to really focus my career around search using data. And then over the last five years, it’s all been about thinking about the customer’s point of view and understanding the customer and how do we represent the customer within whatever line of business, whatever thing.

Whatever I am doing to be more customer centric and less product centric. What I would say on people who are looking to get into large corporations, reach out on LinkedIn, friend people. I have hired three people in the last six months and it was difficult because I, you would think with my job, I would have gotten a million resumes coming through.

I spent more time reaching out to people with search backgrounds on LinkedIn than you would expect for a company like Microsoft. Because I wasn’t getting, I was getting people with a lot of non paid search backgrounds, which is fine, except I was looking for someone like my senior, my, these most senior person on my team, I’d want them to have at least three or four years of paid search.

So, I would say like, how do you get in? Part of it is networking. John Lee can tell you there were times when I was trying to recruit him multiple times. Like, Hey John, is now a good time for us to have a conversation. I think there might be a couple of other panelists I’ve reached out to being like, Hey, I know you, you do your own thing, but any chance you’d be interested in coming over to Microsoft, where if you reach out, network with people in the roles so that when you see a job come open, you can then reach out through LinkedIn or through email or whatever I, I, one of the candidates I’ve hired reached out to me on Facebook and said, Hey, I saw that you posted, let’s set up time.

So having those conversations and networking is very important where it might not be your role right now, but it can be the conversation that helps you get an introduction or help you get to where you might want to go for the next roll down your career path.

Frederick Vallaeys: Makes sense. Again, networking just it’s branding, right?

Be top of mind for when that opportunity exists. All right. So people who registered for today’s session, we randomly picked three winners of three books. And so those books join or die by Patrick Gilbert. It’s a recent PPC book. Of course we have from Kirk Williams, ponderings of a PPC professional, what’s life like at an agency, and then got my own book, digital marketing in an AI world.

So we have. Peter from Impact Impact Extend. We have Luz from Cardiff Pinnacle and Mukesh from Leeds Dubai who will be getting those three books shipped to you in the mail. We’ll be reaching out over email to get your address. Besides these three awesome books any conferences or books that each of our panelists recommend?

We’re also gonna sort of wrap it up, so if you have any final thoughts who wants to start?

John Lee: I’ll go. I’m off mute. So Got a couple stacked back here, but has nothing to do with paid search and all about just mindset positive thinking and how that goes into happiness and wellbeing flourish. If you’ve not read it, check it out. It will help you in life and in work in terms of conferences.

I mean, goodness, there, there’s so much goodness at many of them. I know SMX next is coming up later this year. We’ve got a hero comp, hopefully in person after the turn of the year. I don’t know. They’re, they’re all good. And many great speakers at all of those shows.

Frederick Vallaeys: Yeah. And conferences, I mean, I’ll make a pitch for live conferences.

There’s only so much virtual networking that you can do. And for me, like when I virtually network with someone, it really doesn’t register. But when you see a person again and again at the conferences and they They ask great questions and they come up afterwards to say hello again. It just, you’re basically it’s impressions like in the PPC world.

Every time you have an impression that person remembers you a little bit more. Right. When I worked at Google, there was this one product manager. He ended up being the product manager who bought urchin, which was, which then became Google analytics. I wanted to know that product manager. So I would go up the first time I introduced myself.

Next time I go up, he like doesn’t remember who I am and I’m so frustrated. And I reintroduced myself third time. Same thing still doesn’t remember me. And by the fourth time he knew who I was. And then he was like, Hey, we’re going to go buy this company urgently. You want to come along to San Diego? Right.

And so just be persistent, like be that person who comes to mind first when they actually have the need, because that’s how people operate. People, people care about stuff when they need it. And then they just remember who has the best brand, who they know, and that’s how you make these connections.

That’s what I fundamentally believe. But John advice, huh? Yeah.

Kirk Williams: Fred, every time I hear you talk about your time at Google, like another thing comes out that you somehow were like super involved in a core thing of Google, you’d be like, Oh yeah. When I was on the team where we created quality score. Yeah.

When I, when I went, when we bought what became Google analytics, what, how has that never come out before? You’re such a humble dude. I love it. Thank you.

Frederick Vallaeys: Hey Kirk, what besides your own book, of course, anything else people should be reading?

Kirk Williams: Yeah. Well, and not just totally to plug that, but I, the question before about making the switch from, from being on your own, a freelancer, I actually have a chapter in that.

That basically says exactly that tries to answer that question. Hey, here’s, here’s some things to consider. So it might be worth, at least you can burn the rest of it if you want, but at least read that chapter. No, one other thing I wanted to say, echoed echoed what Julie said, her PPC mom moment, which I love that hashtag PPC mom.

I think that this doesn’t, this isn’t just PPC, like this is all business, but I think especially PPC tech, like. We need to become as, as I’m thinking agency, so I’m thinking kind of business here, freelancers, agencies, that sort of thing. I think we need to be more and more happy with like making a great living, providing a great living for ourselves and for our employees and like doing really well for our clients.

And, and so like that needs to shift to become more important than growth. And, and I think that when you make that mindset, Like some, some, some core things change in how you run your business. And I, and I just think that you’re going to be, it sounds cliche, but I think you’re going to be happier when you’re not chasing growth, growth, growth.

Well, why? Well, growth. Well, okay. Why growth? Well, I mean, okay. Maybe someday that’s going to have this payoff, maybe, you know, in selling it and making lots of money, but also. What about all those years in the meantime, you know, that sort of thing. And so one of the things I’d suggest is what I’ve tried to do is like work really hard at, at like marketing your, your, yourself, your agency, like, like we’ve talked about today.

So you’re getting all those leads. And then as you’ve done that and you’ve done really well at sales and marketing, then you actually can start to be really kind of, I don’t, I don’t want to say picky, but maybe picky is the right word. You can really start to select like, here are the clients that we choose to work with.

And everything starts to become a little bit more organized and how you’re onboarding clients and the clients you have, you’re not getting as over leveraged. If there’s an issue you’re going to, you’re going to make it through a pandemic. Just dope. Oh, you’re going to just fine. I think there are lots of ways with that mentality shift that I’d love to see shift overall.

As well in our industry. So that’s my thing.

Frederick Vallaeys: Christi, we have about two minutes left. Choosing

Christi Olson: a favorite conference is like choosing a favorite child. So I’m going to, I, I, for my previous role when I was the search evangelist, I would hit about 80 conferences a year. Between 60 to 80 pretty consistently.

So it’s hard to choose a favorite. And so one of the things I would say is the Conferences that have very hardcore networking events are the ones that I tend to lean toward and are the ones that I get the most out of. I get the most out of the dinner sessions, going to the bar, going somewhere to talk to people, and you spend countless hours with those conversations.

So PPC Hero is one that has always registered for me because they are intentional with the networking. The other one, which is in a complete different realm, but the SEO Octoberfest where it’s 50 people that sit at a table and you are literally delving deep, although it’s called SEO, they do, we do talk PPC, we do talk social.

You delve deep into a topic. In terms of books, I’m going to do one that is not PPC themed as well. And If you’re thinking about making the swap from managing paid search and going to managing people, the Coaching Habits book, and I will find the name and figure out how to send it over to Fred for them to put in the chat window.

I am blanking on it. I’m like, I, I have a digital copy, but the way I’ve got my computer set up, I can’t search for it right now to have a camera going. So a Coaching Habits book was really instrumental in the last year of managing a large global team.

Frederick Vallaeys: Nice. And then, Julie, final thoughts from you?

Julie Bacchini: Yeah, I just wanted to also say, I know we hadn’t mentioned this, but I’ve been thinking about it over the last 10 minutes or so as we’ve been talking about things. And I’m going to plug PPC Chat as a way to do this, but networking with other people, the industry itself, the vast majority of people that I have encountered in this industry over the last nearly 20 years, They’re so generous and so willing to help and support and lift other people up.

I mean, I think it’s astonishing and spending time networking like conferences when they’re in person are a fantastic way to do this. And some of the folks, you know, all, all of you here actually on the panel, like we interacted on Twitter or other ways, but then, you know, we, we finally met in person and it changes the level of your relationship with somebody when you finally meet them in person.

So if you have that opportunity, that’s. That’s great, but there’s also a lot of opportunity that you can take advantage of to work with other consultants and other agencies. So I think keeping that in mind when you’re thinking about your own career path is in that the networking might not be for a full time job, but it may be an opportunity to do some work for, for another, you know, for another agency or, or, or another consultant.

So those are pathways I think that you want to try to keep, keep open and keep in your mind as well.

Frederick Vallaeys: Great advice. All right. Kirk, John, Julie, Christi, thank you so much for being here. Yuki, thank you for recommending that we do this panel. Everyone, thanks for watching. We’ll be back in two weeks on September 22nd.

We’ll have a session with Google that time. So look out for the announcement on the exact topic and please join us again. If you have a topic you’d want us to talk about, you see it’s possible, just contact us on, contact me on LinkedIn, on Twitter, and It’s @siliconvallaeys on Twitter or shoot an email to my, my team at support at Optmyzr.

com. So have a great rest of your day. Thanks for watching and we’ll see you at the next PPC Town Hall.

Julie Bacchini: Thank you. Thank you.