What We've Learned About Effective Client Management

[00:00:00] it's carson with the daily google news and uh today today is going to be uh an interesting episode i'm going to eat a little crow um which you know probably should be a fairly regular experience for me but i'm i'm joined uh uh by steve liberati of steve's paleo good steve thank you so much for being here i'm very glad to be here very excited well i'm grateful because um uh the the the circumstances under which you know we decided to shoot this video i think are interesting and i'm gonna give our our listeners and viewers a little bit of context um we screwed up solutions eight screwed up i'd say on multiple levels of analysis like there wasn't one mistake because i think that that's generally speaking pretty forgivable it's like oh hey man i'm so sorry i forgot to do the thing like all right we all make mistakes let's move on it it was more of a um it was a collection of errors that led up to

[00:00:56] uh i think a very defensibly frustrated customer steve who's here on the call with me and here's the reason i wanted to shoot this video and and um i reached out to steve after everything was all said and done i was like man i feel like this is such a valuable lesson for me i'd really appreciate it if you'd help me kind of you know immortalize my my failure and steve was gracious enough to say yes um half of my audience uh half of them are agencies and the other half or customers looking to run google ads and so i think everybody can learn from this and as much as i learned from this because we're all going to make mistakes um and addressing those mistakes i think ends up being one of the most important things and so um we had a couple of fail points on steve's accounts and campaigns that i was unaware of and um i ended up finding out about them kind of on the prefaces you know just sort of heard something

[00:01:52] about you know steve maybe not being really happy with um the way that things ended up and that was it was surprising to me because steve you actually you sent us clients you know you you'd say waited some really nice emails for me in the very beginning so you at one point you were super happy with solutions eight and then it kind of went off the rails a little bit yeah i guess just to give a little context um you know just looking back i guess you know first i have to say i'm a huge fan of you of the business that you built all the information that you put out there um i really got interested in just learning about google ads and you guys are the go-to resource um so that i i first have to say thank you and i kind of that's how i first started um then you know as you know we decide to hire solely and i think and this is no knock to you guys but i think you guys have set the bar so high no i really do and i'm not this is you

[00:02:46] know this is genuine just you know coming from a very honest place um so i guess the expectations were very high going into it sure and you guys are the number one google ad agency in the world so that that's a big title you know um but with that said you know i i don't think i was unrealistic with my you know with the results um i do think that your team did a good job at you know for the most part in the beginning explaining the process you know it takes at least three months it's not it doesn't happen overnight it's you don't just drop it in and you know on the other side it comes out and it's like okay this is too easy we're just making money hannah or fist here so it's a process um but i guess just along the way i mean i wouldn't say that i was like extremely disappointed by any by any stretch of imagination um i mean i think in looking back it was just there was there was some things

[00:03:40] that could have been done differently in the account i just don't know if it was managed you know very tightly and then just you know learning more about google ads um there's you know like i said i think there's just some things that a could have been maybe communicated a little better um just with the direction of where it was going um and you know just i guess to manage my level of expectation um i guess it was more just like a hands-off like hey here's the check-in things are we're on we're on the right path um yeah so maybe it's you know it's just a combination of like you know the communication side of it hey i was looking for more uh where are we going with this how we're gonna scale it um that sort of thing as opposed to hey can we just increase budget we're ready to go off to races so i guess like you know overall it's you know just a summary i wouldn't say that i mean i still still very much uh you know respect the

[00:04:34] the company you build i'm a big fan of everything um that you guys you know put out there and um i just think overall um it happens i run my own business and you know sometimes it's tough to manage every every process along the way and it's a it's a challenge it's a big challenge to maintain that quality i mean when you scale anything it's it's difficult and i think you guys have done a tremendous job um i think it says a lot about you that you took the time i mean after i expressed my frustration uh you're quick to jump on a phone call we talk through it you explain the the reasoning behind it um then you went a step further and then you offered a deep dive and you kind of explained the time that was put into it and you kind of showed the behind the scenes you know it's it's easy to from from the outside customer's perspective it's like oh what are they doing [Laughter] yeah you just take my money and throw it

[00:05:32] under the mattress and now you know it's like you know liz it's like is this set and forget it yeah the pellet smoker where you hit the button and you come back and the ribs are done yeah um which is you know and then once you understand more about google ads and what's involved there's a lot of work that goes into it there's a lot of there's so many different strategies um it's not as simple as you know running a facebook ad where you just throw up a picture and you're kind of off to the races you know at risk of over simplifying it google is a lot more complex there's a lot of different directions you can go so yeah you then you you went as far as you we set up a call you went on loom you set up you went into the account you gave a lot of feedback um you accepted or not accepted you acknowledged that you would have done things differently and that says a lot i mean i sell i sell gluten-free paleo snacks

[00:06:29] and with every sometimes you get complaints and not everybody's happy sometimes you gotta refund a customer you gotta put your towel between your legs i'm sorry we screwed up so i i commend you and uh you know i think i think it's a great valuable lesson for a lot of people so i appreciate your time because i think a lot of people on your end would hey just why would you waste time helping coach me on how to run my business and then b tell me to pound sand so you hopping on give me the feedback you gave me was invaluable i want to dive into my failures specifically because again i want to i want to help with our audience maybe save them a little bit dude and i'm so frustrated by this one too when i think about how stupid i am because like we work so hard to make sure that we're doing all the things right the right ways and then we don't tell the customer about it you know what i mean so like behind the scenes you know and

[00:07:20] and speaking to the audience again steve came in frustrated like dude what the hell were you guys doing and so i'm thinking like oh god we took our eye off the ball you know we let spend we didn't make the changes we didn't follow the sops and i dive into our management processes we track everything inside of teamwork um and i'm looking like all the tasks are completed everything that i would want to happen inside of the account has happened i'm looking at the chatter between my team the strategist the cm the specialist like they're all talking and going back and forth and like oh we need to increase budget here for this reason brand is restricted blah blah blah and and i'm like god everything's happening the way that it should happen in the account and then i realized like we didn't really tell steve like any of you know what i mean so you were on and the other the other tactical error we

[00:08:03] made was i think that we we didn't really take into consideration how sophisticated you are as an entrepreneur like most business owners don't know google ads well enough to to and god maybe i shouldn't even say those words out loud because how do i why would i say most dude i don't know but i think the assumption was well steve doesn't know google ads so we're not we're not going to explain the depth as to hey we need to boost the brand campaign because it's smart shopping and there's hundreds of thousands of brand impressions out there and if brand is restricted by budget then ours is restricted we just came to you and said hey we need more budget and you hear that and you're like dude why are you guys pumping me for money when you charge me a percentage of ad spend like this so i think like just the lack of communication is to and this is what i want to say to agencies you spend so much time

[00:08:49] working in the account you have to self-advocate you have to tell the client this is why we're doing what we're doing and and tell them to a point to where a dude people are smart entrepreneurs are smart business owners are smart like you can teach them all the way this is exactly why we're doing what we're doing and we didn't say any of that to you steve we're just like hey man we need more budget here and then you were like well you know thanks for not just pumping me for money basically well let me add to that i mean i guess between i mean you're doing a video today all the information between the master class um i mean just i mean there's just endless amount of knowledge out there and information you can spend millions of hours on this stuff and it can get as we said very very complex and it's i guess that's the the challenge and that's the balance i guess of an agency and i'm not an agency

[00:09:37] um but i can understand as a business owner i guess it's like how much do you relay to the customer like you ultimately want to give the customer uh here's the results and that's all that matters yeah you also don't want to like you know overcome you don't want to overwhelm them with information and show them how much you know that doesn't really impress a customer right it's like i ran a fitness business and i mean i could break down the muscle group and this that and ultimately a lady is just like i just want to get stronger i didn't want a physiology lesson i'm not a triple phd yeah exactly so it's like the angel is saying nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care and i think that's the case you know it's like i guess it's like yeah maybe i was getting a little more geeky about the technical side of it um but that's the artistry i think the artistry is figuring out where your customer is and

[00:10:27] making sure you meet them there and you know like so we had a campaign for you that had a great row as i can't say great let me back up that was unfair that had an acceptable roads but it was capitalizing on the brand campaign and you were like dude why am i paying for brand and and what we should have done was explain smart shopping massive impressions brand growth this is why we're investing in brands and we didn't do that and so then you walk away with you know thinking like oh solutions eight just just went and poached my brand where one really solid session of you know of of us going back and explaining the strategy would have would have hurtled and i realized that there were other issues but we would have jumped that hurdle well i think and also to one of the points i think you made in a previous um i think was a youtube video that you did one drives the other so like if you turn off the campaign

[00:11:19] all sudden the brand terms drop you know so so it's almost as if they do work contain them right so yeah i guess it's just you know fully understand that i guess from the from the surface it's like yeah i mean we're just basically am i just paying for the customers already had this is just a pure you know defense play and then what you know in my acquiring new customers if i'm not then it's not worth it's not worth it and we do we've had customers too where we're like just turn this off and if you just turn ads off you actually make more money because at least then you're not spending on ads and i didn't want to get too nuanced but i did want to explain like you know the the my specific fill points i think as an entrepreneur and then i also want to jump to um fixing things because i you know i i i understood that you weren't happy but it also wasn't it was an easy thing for me to ignore and i gotta be honest

[00:12:11] man it was tempting you know like i'm like okay so i hear steve's like whatever but i'm like hey this i don't know what we screwed up it'd be great to just brush this under the rug leave the skeleton in the closet move on there's more fish in the sea etc etc um but it's also just the wrong thing to do so the again speaking to the agencies and honestly speaking to the customers like if you feel some type of way as my brother would say um raise your hand you know and just be like hey this is which is exactly what you did man i really appreciate that our three core values are truth responsibility and heart and the truth is the first and the most important without the truth we can't take action so you raising your hand i thought was was was uh that was the catalytic moment and then for the agencies out there like do the uncomfortable thing take your whipping you know what i mean like get out in front of them and be like hey and

[00:12:58] don't try to justify anything you know get out there and be like hey man i'm sure i probably screwed this up because if somebody feels or hears defensiveness they're not gonna they're not gonna give you and steve you gave me such great feedback coaching insight like a bunch of stuff that i just wouldn't have gotten without it so that was such a valuable conversation for me i really appreciate it well honestly i mean absolutely and i think it's more just coming from a place of respect like i said you have shared a tremendous amount of knowledge with everyone um i've learned a lot more it got me really interested and curious you know about google ads um so i just i you know i guess my approach my i was you know obviously frustrated and i could have you know approached it differently um but like i said it just came from a place of respect like otherwise if i really didn't care about so aid and i was not really

[00:13:46] um i would have just moved on and just been like uh screwed those guys so same you know same thing you said about you know losing a customer um so that's just you know i think that's a reflection of of you as a company i mean you guys you care that that's that's like you know that's the secret sauce it's not just about again who could run who's the smartest guy and who's the most who's who's the best technician with these google ads it's it's it's just there's a lot to it you know i think and i guess like that was my other point i would just want to bring up and you know whether this helps anyone just from my personal experience it's not just as simple as turning campaigns on but there's a lot to make this thing work and there's so many layers so i recognize that there's a lot of challenges in explaining everything you know with like a lot of things have to be work in sync for the whole thing to work

[00:14:33] it's like you you know going back to this is what i know but like a fitness analogy you can't just train your legs and expect to get the results like the marketing the the website um the product itself you know that's that's still extremely important you know you can get the clicks and you can run it the best campaign but it all has to work holistically um and that that has that has nothing to do with you know i guess our my experience but i guess i would just you know using this as an opportunity just to bring that up no that's great when you're a veteran entrepreneur too so i think your advice is it's welcome um and and i'm grateful for it what other advice do you have for the business owner i've been talking to the agency because that's my context for like business owners that are you know they've they've got something they want to get the word out maybe they're looking at an agency maybe now here's

[00:15:20] the here's the truth too that i think is really interesting i offered to run your campaigns for free on the heels of my mistake and you said actually dude i'm going to take this and i'm going to do it myself which i really respect because you've got obviously the knowledge and the wherewithal to do it and for a lot of business owners and this is a weird thing for me to say because i run a google ads agency i think that that can be a good look especially in the short term because you you now you're in it and you can really keep your finger to the pulse so if you have if you have what you've got which is the technical proficiency and the know-how there's a lot of reasons to do that even if you're going to outsource it later because now you really can manage who you know whatever agency or person or freelancer that's doing it so where is where do you think that line is when do you do it yourself

[00:16:00] when you outsource it if they're going to outsource it what advice do you have etc yeah i think i mean great question i really think it depends on it comes down to the business owner their skill set their time i mean right i spend a lot of time just learning about google ads probably worse time than i should um the question is is my better is my time spent you know better elsewhere should i be making phone calls pick up the phone making sales you know getting my team together building out the team so i guess as a business owner is that time better spent elsewhere i mean it depends on i guess where you're at you know where your goals are how big you are as a company how many employees there's a lot that goes into it i don't know if most ceos or most uh business owners i can't say i don't know if they they had that much time in their day to spend learning about google ads um i would probably venture to say most of them are

[00:16:54] it's in their best interest to find a good agency to to seek out a soul eight um and have them as an extended team i mean that that probably makes most sense um it just so happens we know where we're at right now it made sense it makes sense for me um and i you know i i changed around uh my my structure and kind of my workload um to kind of i like to do things that i get excited about so yeah i like to do that too i build my whole business around me doing what i like to do which is not like the most efficient most profitable but it's where i do i get a kick out of waking up in the morning you know so yeah i'm gonna go do the thing that i want to do or that i like to do and then i'll just keep me engaged yeah i mean i probably should be making phone calls all day and calling on you know retail stores and all that but i don't know i just it this is it's challenging this stuff you know it's it's there's a lot to it

[00:17:46] yeah it's like just once you think you have an understanding of something you're like ah oh my god there's many different ways you could skin this dude and then google keeps changing you know i i released my very first course you versus google yeah i released that course and then google made a string of like insane changes that it didn't nullify the course but it it it deluded it enough to where i was like crap man like that's it's almost unfair and then i released my second course which is ecommerce masterclass and i'm like alright well this one this is the updated version we went back reconciled that gave everybody who bought you versus google free access to the econ master class so that they felt like okay we're updating things and then google releases performance max and i'm like what are you doing like every time i put out a piece of content google basically nullifies the value of it so

[00:18:30] i'm i'm done with course creation for now because i'm just i'm beat down but well it seems like it was a step ahead google i mean this is they they truly have the smartest people uh in the world on their side so yeah i'm so impressed before have you played with before i know you have how's it how is it looking so again credit to you you recommended performance max on i think it was march 11th um where are we at now what's today's date we're already at the 23rd yeah 12 days later how's it look knock home wood it's kicking ass in 12 days that's unbelievable i know so i don't want to you know go out and celebrate but yeah it's doing really well so far um just to touch on it like you know it seems like from the offset it's like oh google does everything um and there's not a whole lot of i guess control from a brand standpoint but i guess you know learning getting really learning more about it

[00:19:30] it seems like there's still there's still a lot of opportunity to you know i guess to to steer the boat on it you know it really it seems like it comes the lockdown to your assets and you know your assets audiences the insights yeah so it's not as simple as just you know again you you know you just set it and forget it there's maybe three times as much control over performance max as there was over smart shopping yes like smart shopping was very black boxy and we just had to kind of live outside of the black box and performance max you can really get in there um i mean i get that you know i'm i'm partial too because they extended the life of the lifetime of an agency by another 10 years maybe but i love the damn thing i'm so excited about it well it's funny that shopping campaign was doing you know fairly well and then all of a sudden performance max comes shopping campaign stop spending yeah

[00:20:21] performance max kills everything that's why everybody dude i talk to friends i'm like oh you're playing with performance actually like yeah i turned it off it stole from my other campaigns and i'm like let it you mean it it took all the the money you're spending your campaigns and made it more efficient like why on earth would you but yeah they don't like that because they're just so stuck in their ways yeah and then the response of that actually stopped too um that kind of took a little dive did it really interesting i don't know if that is if one is related to the other um but performance max seems like it's kicking ass and then the other thing is i also this might be some helpful advice i also so on a few days i went in and looked to see who the customer was and i obviously from the google side you can't see the customers but i look at the dollar amount and i said okay they made a 75 purchase i went on to my website to find

[00:21:09] who made that exact purchase then i put into shopify or the website and said did that customer ever buy before they didn't um new customer acquisition yes and that's that's the goal you know that's gold yeah so so performance max has a feature that's currently in beta we've it's been applied to a few of our customers now but it'll be available for everybody hopefully in q2 i think i i don't know why i just said that date range i'm not sure where i heard that so maybe nobody quote me on it but it's it's new customer acquisition specifically and you're going to be able to tell performance max only go after new customers that'll be absolute game changer yeah i don't think this is the right call for it and you went into it you talked about it i think when the performance max uh call that you did video but uh the the in-market affinity group i mean you're you're moving pretty fast but that seems like where there's a lot

[00:21:57] of uh you know it takes some assortment to figure all that all that out dude the audience targeting steve is so expansive i've never seen anything like it i the thing that that i like the most i just we just did a video on this with all of our strategists on one call um but we were all talking about the custom segments and how you can take what somebody searched for in the past in google and you can use that to build a segment like the power there it's insane yeah i didn't mean to turn this into a performance max trojan horse but i got excited because i knew you were running it that's great man 12 days into it and performance max is already killing it well i think you got molly excited too she was kind of a little hesitant or skeptical of the whole google you know going after yeah well she's the facebook goddess you know what i mean she's the one that talks taught us all facebook ads but what's cool is performance max functions

[00:22:42] a lot like facebook used to you know it's like oh i want to go after this audience yeah but like you said i think they're just careful of how they how they pursue it with you know the privacy stuff yeah yeah there's sneaky buggers over there at google yeah uh last words to you steve if you know uh anything else you want to say anything else we need to close out that we didn't touch on um i think we hit on on everything that we want to talk about um what's next for you entrepreneurially i know you've got i'm just you do a lot man that's really impressive what do you got going what are the irons in the fire um you know just continuing to try to optimize these campaigns uh learn from the best which is you know it's all eight you guys is the content that you're putting out i think it's very very valuable um trying to trying to continue to uh navigate my way through this uh these challenging times

[00:23:33] you know it's as a business owner it's it's tough now there's a million everybody in their mother has a online you know tom company so yeah it's nice are you having like supply chain issues and fulfillment and stuff unfortunately we are not no so we have like a yeah vertical integration so we mostly we we self manufacture uh most of our products um but yeah we haven't ran into too many supply chain issues we had a few but nothing major that's great i saw a lot of our ecom clients had to hit the pause button on certain product lines because it was like well we can't get that anymore yeah yeah no i know um definitely not going out there no i think uh you know i think just the digital advertising landscape you know continues to change and that that poses a lot of challenges to business owners when you rely on one channel then it's just it's constantly changing yeah that's you know i think that's that's

[00:24:25] the biggest thing is just how do you acquire new customers um you know before you used to be word-of-mouse and you rely on it somebody tells somebody else but you know it's ultimately comes down to awareness you have to get it out there and get it in front of people you know new people's eyes um so it's it's you know it's that's where google comes in yeah no joke have you do you do any community building do you have a podcast for a channel or any of those things i do not no you'd be good at that that's something not that i'm not trying to over insert myself in your business but i meant like building a community was the best thing i did around my business ever yeah now i know your advice was you know pick one channel twitter yeah and just open it and just own it yeah i'm more of a i don't know i guess uh this sounds like a weak statement but you know i'd like to roll my sleeves behind you know just

[00:25:12] humbly get things done but you have to i mean you're doing it right you have to you have to put your name out there you have to put the information out there and that's how people find out about you yeah well especially your niche too like that's a highly educated consumer who's raving us for content and there's a ton of like misinformation so i feel like you could be you could be a real voice there the thing is in the in our in our in my business in the industry the fitness industry there's just so many influencers and i just feel like it's been beaten to death you know the podcast and i mean that's kind of like the positioning of kind of where we're at our company just with helping people eat healthy i don't know and i i just think it's been overdone you know you have just so many everybody and your mother has like they the best fitness program and you know the everybody's offering fitness and

[00:26:00] health advice it's like whatever what can i say no so i think you're i think fitness is burned to the ground i was thinking more like the paleo stuff like you know the the food products and maybe and and this you might tell me that's also saturated i don't have a finger to the pulse of the industry enough to know but i always i get intimidated by it so you know having a trusted resource who can say like this not that and here's why and you know grass finished is better than just grass-fed because and those things no customers so much like you said i think it is over-saturated and yeah i mean ultimately like i thought about coming out with you know you know just kind of putting out the message keeping it simple and just focusing on the the foundation the basics but it's like that's boring you know people love the shock value of uh i don't know if you follow liver king no i'm gonna google him everything oh he's

[00:26:48] an internet sensation man he i think he broke the internet on his videos i mean he's huge all jacked up he he pushes a um he sells like a supplement line oh yeah that dude is holy organic traffic i mean he's absolutely crushing it but i don't know i'm just not a i don't want the spotlight like that i i'll tell people the you know to avoid processed foods avoid sugar and then what i mean and then where do we go i struggle with that too you know in terms of creating content like yeah you just run out of stuff to say sometimes yeah um yeah that's i don't know that's why i i'm i'm clutching at straws so much that i'm like well i screwed up let's go tell people about that is this the uh is this the last one you're doing is this the final finale no but i did i think this is good like you know sometimes i get i get some questions like i can't believe that you said that um i can't believe you put

[00:27:47] that video out there and it's like man that's what people want they want the the raw the real the nitty-gritty like i can't sit here and pretend like i run a perfect business you know people would see through that like i'm clearly very i'm not the polished ivory tower agency guy i'm like the scrappy like i'm trying to figure this out absolutely and you're authentic i mean you're not sitting there claiming that you have all the answers and and i think anybody that's going to hire you realizes that it's changing and you don't say okay we'll work yesterday is going to work tomorrow yeah it shows that you're willing to change and adjust and constantly learning right it's that's what this game is yeah no joke well i really appreciate you man grateful for the time today i hope we get to stay friends and stay connected i appreciate the opportunity to improve and uh you're awesome man thank you you

[00:28:31] know thanks for giving the opportunity and i look forward to continuing uh to talk to you and work with you yeah likewise and if you're watching this i shoot a video every day like comment subscribe and i'll see you tomorrow wait before you go i'm constantly looking for amazing people to come join our team so if you're passionate about google ads and you're passionate about customer success please go to solate.com forward slash apply and we'd love to see you as a part of the solutions 18. also if you

[00:28:54] like this video give us a thumbs up it lets the youtube algorithm know that we actually know what we're doing and uh don't forget to subscribe we shoot a video every single day and i don't want you to miss out on any of it lastly if you have questions comments concerns confessions or you just hate my face my voice go ahead and hit us up in the comments we get very little human interaction and even the heckling is something that i kind of get a kick out so thank you so much for watching thank you for being subscribers if you're a subscriber don't forget to apply if you're interested in working at solutions8 otherwise i'll see you tomorrow