Kasim Aslam — Google Ad Success: Lessons from Solutions Eight Agency

what's your dream what's your goal what's your motivation what's important to you what's your passion what can you do to change the world this is what's involved conversations with thought leaders and change makers from around the world hear stories of hope and inspiration to help motivate people like you to live your life find your passion passion and live your dream together we can all bring positive change to our world now here's your host David Watts and once again it is what's involved great to have you along with us I got a special guest tonight and I've been having I've been looking forward to having a chat him for a while now because hopefully he's going to be able to answer all sorts of digital marketing questions that I have who is he he is none other than awesome aslam and well he's done a lot okay but I suppose most importantly he is the founder and and visionary that is solutions eight and it's a Google ads agency he does a lot of other things as well and we'll get into those but first and foremost let me say welcome to you of course of how good to have you with us thanks for having me I'm excited to chat with you today fantastic now when we when we get into this whole thing what I like to ask my guest generally is just to give me a little bit of background because I see on one of the on your webpage I believe it was that in 2006 the seed of solutions eight was planted and then underneath that it says before promptly burned to the ground in the financial collapse a year later so that sounds fascinating talk to me who is awesome I'm a failed entrepreneur that's failed it just about everything twice and I think that's what makes me a good marketer I think the best marketers are really good failures and I'd actually challenge anybody listening anytime you meet a digital marketer if you dig into their past even just a little bit you'll find out that they've probably failed epically two or three times at other things and then digital marketing is where they landed and nobody ever sets out to do this job so whatever that says about our industry that that has proven to be true in my experience anyway fantastic now you've had quite a journey though yourself and and you talk about landing up in this this industry give me some history I mean you know what is what is your background and how did you end up with one of the top Google ad agencies in the world yeah I had a business called kpo global kpo stands for knowledge process outsourcing when I was a kid I wanted to be an actor and I still needed to you know pay rent and eat and so I thought I'd started business that I could do from anywhere and I started kpo global with the idea that I would just take work and outsource it to Pakistan I have family in Pakistan and labor there is cheap and I tried a bunch of different things I tried medical transcription legal transcription they failed to make any money software development that was tough web development and for a while there we ended up being a solid little software firm mostly because a friend of my dad's introduced me to a gentleman that that was a pretty high-level banker and so just you know thanks to nepotism I ended up having the opportunity to build some banking software and I was off icing out of first National Bank of Arizona they were my largest client and I don't know if you've seen the movie the big short but that that's the bank the movies about they never say the name of the bank but it's the bank that brought down Lehman Brothers I was there on bank failure Friday when the FDIC pulled in with their big black SUVs and started kicking down doors and it was interesting to see I was I was on the literal ground floor of the financial collapse and none of us knew at least I didn't know what that meant at the time but it was the very first domino to fall and my business immediately went under on the heels of that so I ended up you know broke I lived in an apartment building that I could only afford to get into because they're offering three months free if you send an 18-month lease I was trolling Costco for free trials on the weekends to eat it was it was pretty bad it was pretty rough but that might have been the best thing that's ever happened to me as an entrepreneur because I learned a lot of really important lessons the first and most important one I think is that if you're gonna be an entrepreneur you have to get really good at the game of money and you know you can play money for optics or you can play money for proficiency and when I was a kid I was playing money for optics I had you know the the house on the hill and the idiots car and I always picked up the check and that all goes away really quickly so having a second try is something I'm super grateful for and I've learned a lot from it yeah it is it's amazing and then as you were talking I was thinking a little bit about some of my journey as well and yeah it's amazing when you've when you've got the cash and you define yourself by the price of your toys etc etc you've got lots of friends lots of people think you're fantastic and when that goes away and you find what sticks tends to be real so on that note though how why digital marketing why Google Google ads because to me and and I am primarily a broadcaster and a podcaster and we do a lot of work in the educational side of things where we run a website for a company that creates and publishes all of these schoolbooks etc etc and to me this this entire world and let me lay cards on the table here in a sense I may be way too old for this because I'm in my 50s already and to me it is I don't know I'm lost I'm totally lost I mean I've tried to Google adwords before and it just came back and bit me in the back Google was happy to take my money though yeah they're they're always happy to take your money digital marketing wasn't anything that I got into by intention when I was originally building software one of the questions people ask when you're done building a big software application or a big website is you know what do I do now how do I market it and in the beginning Lance was always I don't know you know best of luck to you and it I only had to hear that question a couple of times until I saw the opportunity and so we bolted on almost as a side gig the marketing facet or marketing piece and what's interesting about it though is I was chasing great big software projects you know six and seven figure projects but those come at intervals and sometimes those intervals aren't as regular as you would like the thing that I liked about marketing was you know somebody's paying me it's a thousand bucks a month which you know that's not necessarily tax relevant but I get that every single month and it just it just keeps landing and I got to the point to where I'd rather have a client pay me a thousand dollars a month than a 30 grand software build because the 30 grand software build was a great big headache and you know 30 days later you were out hunting for the next software build and your your cogs narrowed down your margin anyway and so the the transition was just really I think based off of laziness more than anything and I didn't want to niche down into Google I brought in a business partner with my agency's called solutions eight because we had a core service offerings because I'm an idiot and we thought we could be good at everything so we were doing you know web and software and content and SEO and video production I had a videographer on staff made a green screen studio and I brought in a gentleman who's now my business partner at the time he was an employee and he's the one that identified everybody that's successful long-term is successful with Google Ads first and the reason for that is pretty obvious when you run Google Ads we're throwing you into the Coliseum with all of your competitors and seeing whether or not you survive so Google Ads helps to see is your message something that will resonate with your market are you charging enough money to actually pay for the traffic is what you're billing reasonable can you be competitive does your sales team work is your website functional etc etc etc it's just a great big litmus test and it happens very quickly and so my now business partner said everybody who's successful is successful with this with Google Ads we should start with Google so we didn't set out to niche down into a Google Ads only agency instead we used Google to decide which clients to invest in ourselves and over time we realized gosh we're just really damn good at this Google thing and so I was dragged along kicking and screaming but we ended up niching down into Google specifically and we're now the number one ranked Google Ads agency on the planet at the time of this recording if you search for Google Ads agency anywhere in the world I come up before Google which is something I'm pretty proud of I think that's brilliant I want to dive a little bit more into this so if we can just have a quick break and that we'll be back with cosm and chatting a little bit more about this weird and wonderful thing called Google and Google Ads this is what's involved it's an absolute pleasure to have you with us we'll be back in just a bit hey like what you're hearing share the podcast with your family and friends and spread the word this is what's involved and we're back my special guest cause some aslam and we're talking Google and Google Ads and digital marketing I think in general although you've you've said already now that Google Ads is the way to go we based and I'm based in in South Africa so you know Google Ads isn't always the the easiest thing for us in terms of money and etc etc etc but over the last while I deal a lot with with entrepreneurs and small to medium companies not necessarily the big global ones and multinationals and something that consistently comes back to me is we lost we don't we don't understand because one person will say Google Ad words the other says SEO and then yet another one says don't don't waste your time with that tick-tock is the way to go how do we begin to navigate as a small or a medium business how do we navigate this this minefield my dad's from Pakistan and he's got a bunch of old folksy Pakistani sayings that don't make any sense unless you want to spend some time thinking about him but one of my favorite and I'm gonna butcher it but he says something like the lamb should never ask the lion what's for dinner and what I think that means is if you're asking somebody who runs Google Ads what you should do for marketing that person's gonna say Google Ads and then you're gonna go ask the SEO and they're gonna say SEO and what's interesting is they're all right they're all wrong my very strong advice to everybody especially small businesses big businesses that have a budget or have some time the advice changes a little bit we can get into that but for small businesses I wouldn't spend any money on marketing at all period in the very beginning I think the the most important thing you can do for marketing when you're and when I'm saying small I'm saying you know let's say sub 1 million in gross revenue which I'm speaking in US terms so whatever that that transition would be or whatever the analogous size business would be but for us that usually means hey you don't really have a marketing budget and the most important thing you can do for yourself is community building and it's value first feet on the street you know it's the equivalent of door knocking but just digital and you'll find there are unbelievable opportunities to provide value to your customer without spending any money and you know it could be as simple as responding to reddit threads or core or finding a Facebook group of you know like you might say oh I help I'm a medical device salesperson and you know I help chiropractors with specific medical devices well how many frickin Facebook and LinkedIn groups are there with chiropractors that you could jump into those groups and now don't go be you know a sleazy salesperson provide value and provide epic amounts of value or start a YouTube channel or start your own Instagram page so I don't think that the conduit matters at all I don't think that you know Google is the end-all be all or you know Facebook is better than tik-tok I think it depends on your goal and your customer and your audience if your audience is on tik-tok then go to tik-tok if your audience is on Facebook then go to Facebook I can pretty much guarantee your audience is on Google because it's so ubiquitous but Google is one of the most expensive marketing channels in existence and it's one of the most expensive because it works and you know work flows to the competent money flows to the competent and the market sets the rate so Google is I did an evaluation yesterday for a gentleman that does appliance repair and he told me our cost per customer needs to be $30 and then I looked at the available data that Google provides us and the cost per click in his industry could be $80 $90 and he was in and he had an inefficient model and it's because all he was doing was was repairing appliances and when I go look at people that are bidding on appliance repair they'll repair the appliance sure but what they really want to do is they want to sell you a new appliance and they know if I sell you a fridge I'm probably gonna sell you a stove and a microwave in a dishwasher too so what's really important before you run traffic is go out get your feet wet do it the hard way and then learn your market and when you learn your market where to advertise becomes pretty obvious my favorite story is out of Airbnb the guy who started Airbnb went to Silicon Valley and was doing what you do in Silicon Valley and you know rubbing elbows and shaking hands and trying to raise money for his little startup here this little teeny tiny startup and he was only running out of New York City out of Manhattan and an investor that he was at dinner with or so goes the story started asking all these questions about his market the guy couldn't answer and the guy realized I don't know anything about my business and so he left Silicon Valley went to New York and started staying in the airbnbs he started staying with his customer because his customer at the time you would think that your customers the person renting there being bees but for Airbnb their customers the person rent letting out their their lot and he was staying in all these you know homes or sleeping on people's couches and just getting on just asking questions and that's what really allowed him to put a finger to the pulse and get a sense as to who his market was and what his business was so don't discount things like posting the Craigslist or going out on a you know Facebook groups or or honestly God forbid me saying this but go knock on a door go cold call somebody do the the organic gorilla marketing first and that should yield results as to where you should go next but not spending money on traffic is the very last thing I would tell anybody to do and I own a paid traffic agency which is one of the amazing things because one of the things that I've often been told is you know just buy traffic you've got you've got a product or whatever buy traffic you know build it and they will come kind of thing and now you're saying no not so much you know it's sad as it used to be true so if you think about you know 2011 or 2012 whenever Facebook put ads in their newsfeed the the traffic was so inexpensive and it was so targeted that hey if you knew what you were doing if you had any idea what was going on you truly could mint money and I saw it happened firsthand I saw people just I mean like hand over fist it was unbelievable and let's say you didn't know you're doing there was so much margin for error it was so forgiving because traffic was so cheap and targeting was so good well that that narrative has survived but it's not true it's markets are too efficient and you know I mean that was ten years ago in that time every single industry with very few exceptions has commoditized its it's traffic its audience and you now kind of have to you have to be good at this or you at a minimum have to work with somebody who's good at this who knows what they're doing and there are so many industries that you know for whatever reason I think paying for traffic is actually a flawed model I won't take residential realtors for instance anywhere in North America there are more realtors in Los Angeles than there are houses for sale right now like it's insane I also won't take general dentists because general dentistry especially here in the States there's a there's a dentist on every single corner you can have three or four dentists at one intersection no joke and they're all offering you know your first cleaning in x-rays is free so it's well how on earth could a person make money in that environment there's a bunch of industries that I look at I'm like you're just a snake eating its own tail so you know you have to make sure that the industry that you're in is is viable and going back to the appliance repair folks if you're if you're if you're repairing appliances but the money is in selling appliances then need modify your model one another really good example is I had a gentleman come to me who only sold life insurance that was it well the cost per click on life insurance was more than he would make for the life of the policy and it's because all these larger insurance companies know if I get your life insurance I'm also probably gonna get your car your home your health your umbrella etc etc etc so they're using life insurance as a loss leader so you've got to make sure that the business that you're in is is actually viable from a digital perspective now the life insurance guy does really good at like BNI you know go into events speaking maybe so there's ways to make it work but it's just like the stock market the the online traffic market sets the rate based off of what your competitors are willing to pay and if your competitor is willing to pay more than you because they have a better monetization model then you're you're priced out entirely yeah yeah again you know this this this marketing and and the way to market digitally is amazing but you've given some incredibly sound advice and one of the things I'd like to chat about when we come back is if somebody's listening they're a small business a medium business maybe even a mom-and-pop business and they want to generate more business we are avenues that that we can start and what do we look at so we'll talk about that when we come back my special guest Qosm Aslam and he is from a company called solutions 8 and it is because I did google it the top Google ad agency in the world so it's great to have him along with us this is what's involved we'll be back in just a bit we'll be right back with more what's involved David would love to hear from you to leave a voice message visit what's involved calm and click drop me a voice note and we're back what's involved it is my special guest is Qosm Aslam and we're talking as I mentioned just before the break like if people need to know this because and the whole world I think in general has been hit incredibly hard by the pandemic South Africa is no exception a lot of people have have had some really really tough times and now they're looking for a way forward we're all told depending on who you listen to it's either the fourth Industrial Revolution or the fifth and they don't know where to start where would be a good place to start to learn about this kind of stuff digital marketing Google etc etc I'm gonna say something that might be a little petulant David so I hope you'll forgive me but but I actually don't think that business owners should learn how to do this if I go to a mechanic I drop my car off I don't sit over his shoulder and watch him change my old or you know modify the transmission I have no idea how any of that stuff is done I'd go find an expert and make sure that that expert is incentivized in a way that allows their profitability to be tied to your campaign's performance now that doesn't mean they're getting a percentage of profits I don't work for a percentage of profits I never have but our billing is structured in a way to where I only make money if you spend more and you're not gonna spend more unless your campaigns are performing so you want to be able to tie campaign performance to the agency's profitability in some way I also believe really strongly in strategic partnerships so you don't need to reinvent the wheel by any means but there's so many chances for you to go out there and find an audience find a network find a strategic partner that already has the eyes and ears that you want an example I'll provide you is I own as something of a side hustle it's it's kind of a passion project I'm obsessed with Montessori schools and so me and my business partner created an agency specifically for Montessori schools called needle marketing but it was difficult to go out to Montessori school owners because they're not exceptionally tech savvy there wasn't a unified list so we partnered with a gentleman named Matt Hillis who's basically Montessori royalty his mom started the school in the 70s he owns four schools he was on the board of ma which is Montessori administrators Association etc etc and Matt just opened up his Rolex to us and you know there's 4,500 accredited Montessori schools in North America I've got 4,300 of them on my list and most of them are customers so ask yourself those questions like what's the easy button who can I partner with where can I go to make this you know not difficult and then if you really want to dig down into a specific strategy let's say that you decided like oh Google ads is for me or Facebook ads or whatever it ends up being it's a meritocratic ecosystem just like everything else and there's generally two or three names at the very top that know what the hell they're doing and then everybody else is just schlepping courses and so if you are gonna go learn this against my better advice what I'd recommend doing is go learn it from people that are that are actually doing it so you know I've got a YouTube channel where we publish everything we do for free because it's my best lead generation source but we don't even sell the courses there's a guy named Ed leek and out of he's out of the UK and that's one of the best Google Ads people that I know he's my direct competitor but he's he's brilliant super high you know integrity and Ed doesn't take clients on anymore but he still runs Google Ads regularly there's a guy out of the UK Uzair Karwala same thing but they're doing it they're doing it day-to-day so contrast them to hundreds if not thousands of these charlatans that are just schlepping courses do not buy any courses any digital marketing anything from people that don't do it day-to-day I don't care if they did it a year ago it changes Google changes on a daily basis so does Facebook so does Instagram so does SEO so does content marketing so if you're going to go learn from somebody learn from somebody that's actually doing it and what's really counterintuitive about that is the people that are doing it tend not to be the best course creators their courses aren't as polished you know their presentation probably isn't a good they don't have the ivory tower whatever beautiful kajabi site but their contents gonna be way way way way way better so the bar that you need to set is do you do this actively now and are you successful at it and if so then their education is probably worth it and generally speaking by the way their education is less I give all my stuff away for free Ed's membership is like it's unreal how inexpensive it is but then you've got people that want you know $50,000 to join their mastermind and have run Google Ads in years you know let's not even get me started on that because when I started years ago and I was I was looking to learn so that I could understand how this this all worked and I got sucked into that deep dark underbelly of online marketing and I cannot tell you how much of my hard earned money I spent initially on absolute crap and I was I was looking for the quick fix I have come to the conclusion there isn't one it's there's no template you've actually just got to got to get out there and and learn now I find it amazing that you say a lot of your stuff is available on your YouTube channel do we do we just look up course of my slam yeah look up solutions aid on YouTube you look me up my name as well if you can't find me don't listen anything that I'm saying because that means that I'm not very good at what I'm doing speaking of which and let's move on there a little a little bit as well you've also got a book out and I must be honest I only found out about the book once I got talking to your guys about maybe having you as a guest on my show and it's it looks absolutely fantastic I haven't had a chance to dive into it yet but it is the seven critical principles of effective digital marketing so why why the book I just wanted to say that I was an author I have the sad pathetic passion that the personality trait that likes attention and so I like speaking I like podcasts I like interviews and you don't get good speaking gigs unless you're an author so I I woke up early every morning and I wrote a thousand words a day and I did that for 90 days and then 90,000 words became 60 after editing and that was my book but I really you know I didn't I didn't phone it in it was the best I could have done at the time I was pretty proud of it I think if somebody were to read the book they only really need to read the first half the second half is written more to the agency owner but the first half is written to to anybody a business owner otherwise and it's it's distilled in a way that I hope is timeless so I didn't go into tactics you know hacks it was more principle-centered I took a note out of Stephen Covey's Seven Habits which you'll notice is also where I stole my title and it's it's I think pretty linear you know pretty pretty accessible I guess is maybe a better word the the first three principles are the most important principle one is empathize if you don't empathize with your prospect when I tell people I actually prefer the word love to be honest with you but love turns a lot of people off because it has so many you know neuro associative conditioning but if you don't love the person that you're marketing to you don't deserve to serve them you have to get to know these people to a point to where you truly fall in love with them and you've seen businesses and agencies and marketers that that have a disdain for their clientele and sometimes it can be successful in the short term but I think that it's it's a violently flawed model so principle number one is empathy principle number two is give value first and it's actually it expands in subsequent chapters it's give first give last last give more and you just want to give as much as you possibly can give to where people are overwhelmed and then principle three is learn apply and innovate because everything changes you know everybody wants to know like oh how do I how do I do the thing it's like well if it was easy enough for me to tell you I wouldn't tell you I would just go do it and make money you know like if there were an easy button we'd all be hitting it so be used to being an ongoing student and if you can get really comfortable there I think you're gonna be successful as a marketer and successful as an entrepreneur but if you're not comfortable there then then then take a long hard look at what it is that you're doing because this is probably not the place for you you could have been an entrepreneur 50 years ago without being a perpetual student that's not the case any longer it's it's an absolute complete and total prerequisite yeah I'm just you know what I and I hope when I get to read this book that you're writing in the book is similar to what you've got on your Amazon page where you've got a note from the author and it starts off by saying oh look you're reading the synopsis that means I've got another sentence or two before you get bored and jump ship and so it goes and I just I thought that was amazing because at the best at times I have 80 days at the best of times you know I can I can start off wanting to write an article and end up watching a video on the mating habits of the lesser spotted wombat or something so love that love what you do over there the other thing though is not only do you you do this and I'm going to ask you in just a bit how you fit it all in but podcasting you mentioned you love talking and you love podcasting and I've got to say one of the things that I think I'm incredibly privileged to do is to be on radio and to have a podcast and you know people said we are so great and yes you know what my aim every single time I get a guest I talked to a guest is how can I add value to my listener but there's also an element of selfishness in there because I learn and I love learning so we'll get on to the podcast but when we come back my special guest cause him Islam and man it's great talking to you what a man love it we'll be back in just a bit this is what's involved this is what's involved don't forget to subscribe and leave a review more next and we're back with what's involved in my special guest cause him Islam and he is amongst other things you know best-selling author speak Google ad agency solutions 80 owns that where do you find the time to do all of it and where do podcasts fit in I've got two podcasts actually I'm the the co-host for perpetual traffic which is why I think we're in the top half a percent of podcasts worldwide so we're pretty big as far as podcasts are concerned 300,000 downloads a month it's not my property though it's this digital marketers property and they just asked me to to be a part of it the main host over there is Ralph Burns and the joke that I like to say is he's Conan O'Brien and I'm a little fat guy that sits on Conan's couch and I make jokes every now and again and then I've got our own podcast that solutions eight is just called the Google Ads podcast and that's that's truly repurpose content I shoot one video every single day for my YouTube channel and then my buddy Hector who's our podcast producer probably one of the best podcast producers ever known he takes the content on our YouTube channel finds what has had the highest engagement and then modifies the audio for podcasting and that's a pro tip that a lot for everybody is repurposing your content if you create one video that video can become snippets so I take the videos that we shoot and they become 60-second snippets for tik-tok Instagram LinkedIn Twitter then the video you can cut up into you know tweets Facebook posts it can become a blog it can become a podcast it can become a power page and we've got a whole team on our staff that you know people are dedicated to various endeavors but they're using the content we create for those endeavors and so creating content is the hardest part it by far you know ideation creativity all those things that that takes the most juice by far so once content is created then go invest in that content invest in repurposing it putting it in different in different mediums because people are going to want to engage with it differently and you want to make sure that you maximize the value of that content you know I'm turning a delicate shade of green as as I'm talking to you and you're talking about the team and what the guys do here I'm sitting on the dark continent of Africa it's a rather chilly winter's evening and I am it I am the ideas guy I am the voice I am the editor so yeah little little bit green but we're gonna get there we're gonna get there I'm looking forward to that awesome a question though in terms of podcasting and this is what I hope to achieve with this one and hopefully I am on the way to to achieving that in terms of being a business owner how valuable in your marketing mix our podcasts good question I don't have an I don't have a solid method of attribution for podcasting like I can tell you all of the leads that come from my YouTube channel or from our Google Ads account or from our Facebook or from our display remarketing because they're easily attributed with podcasts there for me more brand building and I know we get leads from podcasts because I'll have people say you know yeah I heard I heard this episode I heard what you said at this time but they're they're much more difficult to track what I do like though is I use them on both ends of the sales cycle it's not just about attracting new customers it's about taking you know prospects that come in through a different conduit and then helping to manage your expectations and so you know somebody comes in with an e-commerce site and they want me to run ads my sales team might send them a podcast that we've done recently on Google's new performance max product because it lets them know hey everything's changed and the way you think you want to run your ad is wrong and if you don't agree with this podcast maybe we're not the right fit so I really like I like the opportunity to educate the industry at large let's say because I feel like it puts me in a position of you know selling with integrity so if you're gonna launch a podcast I wouldn't do so with the intention of attracting new customers I think that's ancillary but I would I would launch a podcast with the intention of building a library of content that gives you gives you the ability to educate existing prospects and then the new customers will come by proxy yeah great point that I mean yeah I think that would be something I would say to people as well if you're wanting to start a podcast to become wealthy overnight rather go and do something else because podcasting I think in that that I think is what draws me to this medium as opposed to to radio I've been in radio for 30 odd years but this this particular medium of podcasting is just the fact that you're building up a library and if you do it properly a library of really valuable content and insights and information that will in my case at least hopefully it'll outlive me and and people will still find value along the way now we've talked about this and you've done you've done a lot where do you fit in in family because I noticed quite often you speak about the importance of family yeah I'm in a I'm in a mastermind called front-row dads actually and was one of the best things I've ever done for myself and that their their slogan is where we're family men with businesses not businessmen with families and that's been really important to me I've got two little boys they're five and seven I've got a beautiful wife I work from home I've never missed a soccer game I've never missed a piano recital I've you know spend most evenings with them I travel a little bit but even then I make sure that they're sort of at the forefront of everything and I don't feel like I've sacrificed a thing I don't feel like you know I mean maybe I could have made a little little money let's say but I've got some buddies that you know do the 80-hour a week thing I played that game in my 20s but as soon as I had kids man it was just it wasn't worth it and I don't believe that you're that you're truly any more efficient up to a certain point or at least I'm not I wouldn't be I think refilling your cup and giving yourself the opportunity to engage with you know a little person who doesn't give a shit how much how much money you make or the fact that you've got 70 employees or you've got a top podcast like my kids do not care and that's that's really helpful to to be around there's something about it that's really grounding so I like the I don't know who this quote should be attributed to but if you know he who has a why can endure any how I think that might be Viktor Frankl but it doesn't have to be kids but I think people need to really hunt down their why because entrepreneurial endeavors hard you know starting a business is hard employing people is hard and it can just be money you know like I mean if you get to the other end I've gotten I've gotten I've been on both ends of the spectrum I was raised by a blind single mother on Social Security in Albuquerque New Mexico we were welfare babies and you know the highest crime rate in the nation and I always thought like oh as soon as I get money I'm gonna be happy and and there's no threshold for that because first you're like oh I just need I need six figures you know here in the States especially that's what everybody's goal is I just want a six-figure income then you get a six-figure company like well I'm not really happy yet so it's like well I really like six figures but I need like ten grand a month and then I'm not happy and then it's like why I need a million dollars then I'm not happy and then it's like why I need and and and you know so on and so forth then you finally get to a point to where I think as soon as your basic needs are satiated because there's something to be said for that for sure and I'm not trying to dismiss people who who have that struggle but as soon as your basic needs are satiated I the goal can't be money and so for me my goals my kiddos and I think they make everything I do better and stronger yeah no listen it and it comes through and I love what you what you're just saying now because so many times and maybe you know in terms of cutting-edge technology or whatever the case may be South Africa is a bit behind the states but you know many many like some people say that if you're an entrepreneur you've got to suffer there's a there's a mate of mine is an incredibly successful real estate agent and he does property development and he says there's no such thing as work-life balance you got to work you got to put in the hours it's the sweat of your brown I'm certainly thinking yeah no but surely there's got to be some fun some passion some love involved somewhere in this equation so I think it's fantastic that you say that and you know as I mentioned before you I used to measure myself with by my toys and the price of my toys etc etc lost everything I'm now probably making less money than I have before but I am as happy as a lot I get up in the morning and I thoroughly love what I do and it sounds to me even though it's a Google ads it's you guys it sounds like you're happy as well yeah and you know what's funny is I speak negatively Google ads in some context just because the industry is so fraught with charlatans but I actually love what I do I love data-driven marketing I like making business I have 20 clients a little more than that now and and it's it's fun when I'm the reason that they're in business and that's happened a couple of times not every time but we've had a few people tell us like man we just wouldn't made it without you guys and even when we're not the reason they're in business it's fun when we you know we have a client yellow leaf hammocks and when you go look up yellow leaf hammocks I think they're on Shark Tank if memory serves but they take women in Thailand who are in horrible conditions and they teach them a trade they teach them how to how to sew these hammocks and they take these women out of you know working 12 hour days seven days a week they put them in a position to work a normal nine to five the kids get to go to school the moms are no longer stressed like they massively improve their quality of life and I think to date they've taken a couple hundred women out of poverty and out of extreme poverty too and what's cool about that is is it's our ad campaign that's feeding not all but a lot of their their customer acquisition so I you know I just think stuff like that is it's fun to be a part of I don't I don't take any any more credit than I think we're due which is probably a fraction of a percent you know that these are the folks that are doing all that all the good work but I think that there's an entrepreneurial solution to every problem I think that entrepreneurs are the unsung heroes of the world and it what I do for a living is fun because I get to serve entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs are my favorite people I think they're I think they're modern day superheroes and there's you know 199 other stories just like yellow leaf hammocks and I would agree with you there and you know that's one of the reasons that I do what I do why we do what we do is is eventually you get to a stage where it becomes about serving and about adding value so wonderful stuff course I'm about to wrap up now so one last question before I let you go what's next for course a Muslim start a business a coaching program called 3x freedom and I want to teach people how to achieve financial freedom time freedom location freedom and I don't know when I'm going to do this but I know that I'm gonna do it so that's you know at some point when I find the time that's my next endeavor well listen if if you need any sort of beta test is whatever I will sign up right away I'd love to to get involved in something like that and be able to pass it on to some of our listeners here in South Africa awesome thank you so much for taking the time out I know you're a busy man and I really really appreciate it don't forget that book it's available on I'm assuming most digital platforms are Amazon Kindle it's there it's called the seven critical principles of effective digital marketing and also if you want to find out a little bit more just check out solutions 8 they are the Google ads agency go check out some of the wonderful YouTube stuff that they've got as well I can see I've clearly used my quota of words for the day cause them thank you so much thanks for having me David appreciate you there we go that wraps up for what's involved this edition and to each and every one of you look after yourselves take care and thank you for listening thanks for listening to what's involved we hope this episode inspires you to find your passion and live your dream don't forget to rate review and share the podcast and to see what's happening what's going on and what's coming follow what's involved on Facebook and Twitter at what's involved thanks again for listening