EP325 - I Accidentally Spent a Client's Entire Year Budget in One Week ft Inderpaul Rai

Anu Adegbola (00:05.142)
Hello and welcome to PPC Live, The Podcast formerly known as PPC Chat Roundup. My name is Anu, the founder of PPC Live. And if you're used to hearing advice from PPC experts about how to ensure that we are keeping up with the ever changing landscape, don't worry, you are still in the right place. But instead of relaying what the PPC experts are saying, I'm bringing the PPC experts to you. Every week I'm going to be speaking to a different PPC expert. 

Anu Adegbola (00:31.634)
about an f up they've made, but also how they've turned things around and, you know, they continue to be the trusted marketer that they are today in our industry and amongst their clients. Today, I have the delight of bringing one of our PPC Lives ambassadors and multiple speakers, Inderpaul Rai, to talk about an f up that he's made several years ago and something that even affected his team and even how that, you know, 

Anu Adegbola (01:00.63)
made for even a better experience for everyone involved. How there was a surprising response from, from different members. Um, yeah, I don't want to spoil, spoil it there because I think it was a really great one. And well, the kind of things that you think that would happen, the responses that you think that will happen based on previous behaviors didn't happen and kind of the opposite happens. And we talk about, you know, his experience with AI, his predictions as to how we use it. And, um, some really great tips as well for managers, people who manage teams that are, it was such a great. 

Anu Adegbola (01:30.505)
So, yes, let's go and speak to Indi. 

Anu Adegbola (01:35.303)
Hello Indi, how are you? 

Indi (01:37.555)
Hey there, very well, thank you, how are you? 

Anu Adegbola (01:39.497)
I am I good. good. I am so, so delighted. I, I, unashamedly Indi is one of my favorite people in our industry. I I I w w w I I w w w w w w w w I w 

Anu Adegbola (02:09.203)
how you get ahead by hearing from some of the amazing folks in our industry. like when, especially when like HeroConf came from the US, they brought that to the UK. And even when it paused, we were going through all the events and always bumping into each other at the events, always bumping into each other, like at even like communities that were all about sharing ideas together. So very delighted for that. 

Anu Adegbola (02:36.009)
Oh my God, I can't thank you enough, honestly, for the support you've given PPC Live Um, and just before this call, you know, Indi was telling me about how his team WeDiscover, they've had an influx of graduates. And one of their, now their main things is to bring them to a PPC Live event. Like that's, that's, those are the kind of people you need in your corner need in your corner, not just want So thank you Indi for all the support that you've given. Um, so yeah, you guys might be like, Anu 

Anu Adegbola (03:02.791)
you're talking to us about someone we have no idea who is here So let's get to who Indi is all about. I call him Indi because we've been friends for quite a while, but he's will be on, you'll see on LinkedIn is Inderpaul Rai. He's got over a decade of experience spanning AdTech, Martech, multilingual paid search, SEO, analytics, social media. Yeah, no wonder he's a group account director at WeDiscover, right? He's like got a very wide. 

Anu Adegbola (03:27.801)
and holistic approach to performance marketing, which I always banging on that. It's so important with what's affecting your channel is not just going to be your channel. Like outdoor will affect it. TV will affect it. Email will affect it. So knowing how they holistically work is how to become the best in our industry. he's spoken at many events, course, PPC Live, also hero conf Brighton SEO, the marketing meetup, Sheffield DM. 

Anu Adegbola (03:56.937)
And he's doing another one on October 29th. I remember that date specifically. Why? Cause it's my birthday. So I'm going to miss it. I'm sorry. So yeah, that is going to be in Edinburgh. Am I right? Yes. Yes. There's a conference going on in Edinburgh. So check Indi's profile for that. Yeah. So he's got a wide range of expertise, course, the platform, whether it's Google or Microsoft or, know, the tech tools like. 

Indi (04:04.085)
Bye. 

Indi (04:10.421)
That's right, 

Anu Adegbola (04:24.009)
Aquisio Marin Kenshu. So really, really great insights onto all the tech tools in our industry. Fun fact, I love this fun fact and you will be getting a link about this. So, he's shaking it that, sorry, we're gonna do this. You'll do it for me. me, maybe no one else, but for me, sure you will. So Indie was actually in a previous life, he started a blog. 

Anu Adegbola (04:53.037)
music blog and you know you got your interest into digital advertising because you're like how do we promote this blog but more interestingly before he became famous Indi had the great opportunity of interviewing Ed Sheeran yeah so don't run off to check that link out just yet wait until we had share his great story and then go check out that week that great great great interview with Ed Sheeran I've never I've never even seen it yet so I'm very eager 

Anu Adegbola (05:22.269)
to go check it out. Indi, welcome. Thank you for bearing with that long intro. But like, how did that whole, how did you actually get to Ed Sheeran's people to interview him? 

Indi (05:25.877)
What an intro. 

Indi (05:36.445)
Yeah, so this was like six months before his debut album and he had a mixtape that he was promoting, which he did with a load of grime artists. Our music blog was mostly focused on like hip hop and grime and that sort of thing, but it was about promoting artists that weren't famous yet. So yeah, his manager reached out said, we've got this mixtape, would you like to review it? And then they liked the review and said, we're actually doing an interview run at the moment. Do you want to get involved? And it's like, yeah, absolutely. We have no equipment whatsoever, so I borrowed a 

Anu Adegbola (05:50.697)
Mm. 

Anu Adegbola (06:01.96)
Wow. 

Indi (06:05.429)
really dodgy camera from someone and as I was saying to you before it wasn't even HD quality, was very grainy footage so I've always been embarrassed to send people the links to it but yeah, 

Indi (06:16.249)
I will do it, I'll do this. 

Anu Adegbola (06:17.097)

Anu Adegbola (06:17.377)
Please do. mean it was was a while ago. There's those kind of things I think yeah really interesting really interesting to to see of like yeah the The the stars before they became famous, so you know, so yeah, I'm very excited to see that But yeah without further ado, let's let's get into like, you know the talk about paid search We're not here to talk about music. Unfortunately, that'll be another podcast. yeah We're here to talk about f-ups and triumphs and how we turn that 

Indi (06:20.967)
It was very long time ago. 

Anu Adegbola (06:46.363)
around and yeah i'm really grateful for people who come in this podcast and are unashamed they're you know open to to share how they turn things around maybe one person since i've been asking people to come on has said i don't know i'm not ready for that yet because you know yeah it's a bit of a everyone on the linkedin especially wants to go yeah made that 

Anu Adegbola (07:07.899)
that target, we've closed that client, we've done that million pounds in revenue, CPA is the lowest it's ever been, it's all good, good, good, good, good. Like if that's how you gain success and I'm sure you know, Indi, that's really not. Before this call, I was talking about my imposter syndrome of still thinking, what am I doing here? Should I, I should have been a bit more for success. I've probably done X, Y, Z wrong and you know, across my career, but. 

Anu Adegbola (07:34.887)
Still going, still have faith in yourself and keep on going regardless of the pitfalls. So yes, let's take it over to you, Indi. What f-up would you like to share with us today? 

Indi (07:45.909)
Just to choose one is tough. I think the worst mistake I ever made on an account was back in just over 10 years ago now, it's probably about 11 years ago. I was managing a search team at an agency called Greenlight and we managed activity for a client. It's probably one of our biggest clients across Europe, APAC, US. 

Indi (08:13.665)
But UK was bread and butter in terms of performance. That's where most of the performance lied, but they were really keen to scale up in other markets. And they were one of the first clients we onboarded onto what's now known as Search Ads 360, but it known as DoubleClick for Search back then. we're always like throughout my career, I've always looked at automation and like data and where are the areas we can really like gain an advantage over other agencies and other advertisers who aren't utilizing these tools to the fullest. So whenever 

Indi (08:42.645)
SA360 would come out with a new feature, like straight away, they'd be like, yep, get us on that beat, so let's try it out. And we were using, I can't remember exactly what it was, it was like an automated budget feature where it's like you give it a budget for the month and it would automatically optimize the account in terms of budget spend to make sure that you don't overspend on that amount, but also make sure you do spend that amount for the month. We were trialing that versus the, whatever the existing bid strategy we were using for 

Indi (09:10.799)
The US because they wanted to scale up in the US and they had some extra budget. They had some underspent. Okay, let's let's spend about 30k this month on the US versus what they would usually spend on it Let's say 3-4k. So huge scale up and spend to see what happens That all went really well, there was no issues with that now it comes to the end of the month Bank holiday so it's going into the yeah, it's probably the end of August It's probably the August bank holiday which fell on a weekend obviously Monday being the bank holiday 

Anu Adegbola (09:39.635)
Yeah. 

Indi (09:39.911)
I 

Indi (09:40.041)
was off on holiday as well for the two weeks. Right. Brilliant handover. All great. Thought everything was in hand with the team. and I get back probably at the end of the week or the beginning of the following week and find out that we had forgotten to switch that automation off. So it continued to spend like the account was going to spend 30 K the following month. And it basically blew more or less like the year spend for the U S what it would normally spend on that. 

Anu Adegbola (09:42.067)
Yes, sure. 

Indi (10:09.621)
but just that week alone actually. So pretty big, pretty big f up for this client. They're not the sort of client that goes into the account every day to see what's going on. And they didn't have necessarily strict budgets as a business in terms of you can only spend X amount in this market. Add like an overall pot of money and you kind of choose ways to put the money where the performance is, which is a blessing in disguise in that sense. So yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (10:11.847)
Yeah. Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (10:20.659)
Okay? 

Anu Adegbola (10:27.155)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (10:31.369)
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. 

Indi (10:37.201)
Obviously had to explain that to the client. you know, it was a big mess up and there are reasons for it. And these are the things we're to put in place to make sure that something like that doesn't happen again. 

Anu Adegbola (10:39.015)
Yeah. Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (10:48.903)
today yeah 

Indi (10:50.773)
But yeah, the way we kind of, they helped us brush it under the carpet as well internally. And I was like, okay, we have underspend in other markets, we can eat this up and we can just say that we carry the test on for the next month, which is great. But historically they were probably quite a difficult client in terms of like how on it they are in terms of like performance and all this sort of stuff. So I was quite surprised by their reaction. I think they recognized it as an honest mistake. They recognized it's not something we often did. Like as I say, that's. 

Anu Adegbola (10:54.717)
Okay. 

Anu Adegbola (10:58.697)
Bye. 

Anu Adegbola (11:06.246)
Mmm. 

Anu Adegbola (11:11.657)
Mm-hmm. 

Indi (11:19.475)
That's the one thing that comes to mind when people say, what's the worst thing? What's the biggest mistake you've ever made? that one always comes to mind just because of how bad I felt afterwards. 

Anu Adegbola (11:24.303)
Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. 

Indi (11:28.008)
I'm so used to like having a tight lid on everything. And it's just one little thing that slipped the net whilst like hurrying up with my hand over to go on holiday. It caused a big issue as a result of that. yeah, my team were quite a junior team as well. So they're having to deal with that while I was away and waiting for me to come back to try and clean it up as well. 

Anu Adegbola (11:32.574)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (11:37.937)
Yeah... Yeah... 

Anu Adegbola (11:46.313)
my gosh. Okay. 

Anu Adegbola (11:49.154)
Okay. Okay. gosh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You live and you learn. That's really, it's really important. Those handover notes, those like making sure you're not rushing in those few days, which is, which is easy. It can be easy to do unfortunately, cause you're like, your brain is just on the beach already. You're like, okay, let's quickly just get through this. You're to get out of there. 

Indi (11:49.299)
So yeah, pretty horrible situation for the team in general, but living in them. 

Anu Adegbola (12:16.201)
And like, and you've even answered several of the questions and you know, I really love that, but like just a few things I want to point out and pick out is like, so one of the members in your team was the ones that picked up on it. They saw, they saw the overspend. So good team on one end, they were stressed, so it wasn't the client. It didn't wait till the client, were the internally, they were the ones that, and what was like, 

Anu Adegbola (12:45.769)
I mean, you said it would be, you know, poor, they're like, how was that feeling in terms of like, they've just seen something that was not the right thing. Did they know straight away this is not what should have been done? 

Indi (12:58.111)
They knew straight away something was wrong because the amount of spend that was going through, they didn't really necessarily know why it happened because they weren't as familiar with the automation as I was. So I can't remember exactly if it got resolved before I came back or if it was when I got back, switched it off, but it would have taken them some time to try and understand actually why they're spending so much compared to what they should have been. 

Anu Adegbola (13:03.803)
yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (13:06.567)
Yeah, yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (13:14.45)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (13:18.887)
Yeah, yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (13:21.238)
So what actually happened was that, you know, the automation had been set in it to do, to spend like a certain amount and it should have been turned off. Is that right? At some point, but it wasn't and it's like kept on spending. 

Indi (13:31.487)
Yeah. 

Indi (13:35.667)
Yeah, 

Indi (13:36.238)
as the month changed over to the new month, should have, it should have been either switched off or the budget drastically reduced down to what the new budget should have been. But the team weren't, they didn't even know where this feature was in SA360 at being a beta. They were just using their standard Excel budget trackers at the time to, and then manually changing campaign budgets in the account. then this piece of automation was overriding their changes and all sorts. 

Anu Adegbola (13:44.179)
Good bye now. 

Anu Adegbola (14:00.295)
Yeah. Yeah. So would you say that most of that error was down to the handover kind of thing? Or could there have been more skillset in that should have been available like for the team or let's say platform being a bit easier to use to 

Indi (14:18.965)
Yeah, no, 

Indi (14:19.625)
I wouldn't blame the platform for this. I'd say it's two things. One is it should have been in the handover to say, make sure you change this budget or turn this off while I'm away on this date. And even better still, a calendar reminder about it because people can forget. then secondly, like reflecting back, I probably at that time, especially being like, I'd only been a manager for not even a year at that point. Probably did too much myself a lot of the time. 

Anu Adegbola (14:33.193)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (14:43.945)
Mm. 

Indi (14:47.477)
and didn't bring other people on along the journey with me. like when it comes to things like automation, just cause I was very passionate about it, I'll always get involved in it. But you know, if I was to do that now, I wouldn't even execute on that myself. I would always make sure that whoever is the most appropriate person, like the lead for the account essentially is like, this is what we're to work on together. And, you know, I think this is a really good idea. You might disagree. And if you disagree, you know, we can talk about that and do something else, but having a great plan of how, what we're doing, what we're testing and 

Anu Adegbola (14:47.986)
right. 

Anu Adegbola (15:06.888)
Yes. 

Anu Adegbola (15:11.304)
Yeah. 

Indi (15:17.333)
they're the ones responsible for it. They're gonna action on it. And then you've got two pairs of eyes on the thing that's happening, rather than just one person. It's like a single point of failure and all that sort of stuff. yeah, they're the two things I'd do definitely for sure, going back. 

Anu Adegbola (15:24.241)
yeah. yeah. yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (15:30.781)
For 

Anu Adegbola (15:30.971)
sure. I look, I delegating tasks is such a pain. I feel it. I'm so bad at it. I recently hired like a virtual assistant and she's doing great. But like our first week, you know, I kept on like looking at everything and sometimes she will like, Anu you're in the same Canva templates I'm in right now. Get out. I'm sorry. Cause it's just sometimes I'm like, she's not done that. 

Anu Adegbola (15:56.391)
But yeah, and it's always yet because you're just like, patient. And I'm like, she will get to it. She never missed any deadline. so I'm like, Anu just be calm. It can be hard to like release that control, especially like, yeah, with the automation side of things. Cause sometimes, And I think that bit is important to really understand how things work because we tend to do the whole, let's just throw everything to automation. We'll get to that part of the conversations because yeah, definitely. So let me not 

Indi (15:57.661)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (16:22.963)
preempt that because I love getting guests' opinion as to what we're getting wrong in terms of how we use AI on automation. You've done some great talks about this 

Anu Adegbola (16:32.756)
at PPC Live. So yeah, it's actually still our most viewed video of the, PPC Live video,s your talk on AI. So yeah, it's it's a popular one and people should still be watching that. So after this episode, yeah. 

Indi (16:37.511)
Okay. Wow. I'd actually be interested to rewatch that because AI had 

Indi (16:47.819)
been around for like not even six months when I did that talk. a lot has changed since then as well. So yeah, you could see if I hit the mark or completely missed the mark on someone I predicted. 

Anu Adegbola (16:51.24)
Right. 

Anu Adegbola (16:53.777)
Yeah, yeah, sure. 

Anu Adegbola (16:58.305)
Interesting. Yeah, 

Anu Adegbola (16:59.395)
exactly. Right. We're interested to know, it'd be interesting now to hear what your, predictions might be different lead to that. We'll get to that. So going back to, know, our interesting story about overspend you something I also caught my attention. That was very interesting. The client were on your side. They actually helped you, you know, cover that up now to talk to what kind of relationship you guys had and was 

Anu Adegbola (17:28.049)
You know, you were surprised by that even. 

Indi (17:30.262)
I was 

Indi (17:30.492)
surprised by it because they were a very difficult client from the very beginning. And the reason why things are so difficult at the beginning was when we won the pitch, none of the people working on their accounts were involved in the pitching process. And the classic, so many things got promised to them that were just not even possible or certainly not possible in the time scales that were said. so straight off the bat, we were just completely like on the back foot. Like we had to restructure. 

Anu Adegbola (17:53.437)
Yeah, yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (17:57.874)
Yeah. 

Indi (17:59.765)
10 different markets just to a SKAG structure from something that was quite broad. And it had to be done by a certain day because, know, holiday season, all that sort of stuff in terms of promotions and everything. And then we were just like struggling to hit deadlines straight away. So things were quite difficult and it was quite a nervous client in the sense that, which is such a big change. they kind of like, they're the ones that are on the line for it internally, right? Isn't it? So they're the ones that are going to get the pressure internally about why things are not being done. 

Anu Adegbola (18:01.138)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (18:04.327)
oooohhh yeah 

Anu Adegbola (18:09.533)
Yeah, yeah. 

Indi (18:29.781)
why it's performance this way and that way and all that sort of stuff. So they naturally, they would put that pressure onto the agency. having it been client side, I've seen the other side of it as well. Whereas at the time I just, I probably could empathize with their situation. So I was just like, oh, this is horrible client, blah, blah. It was not necessarily the case. So I think when this happened and actually we worked together to figure it out and, you know, make sure things like that don't happen again, surprised me. Whereas I thought they would just throw us under the bus and... 

Anu Adegbola (18:35.677)
Yes. 

Anu Adegbola (18:41.545)
I don't 

Anu Adegbola (18:46.217)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (18:58.185)
Mmm. 

Anu Adegbola (18:58.809)
Mmm. 

Indi (18:58.825)
they must look really bad 

Indi (19:00.686)
to the business. But no, I guess it just shows that they did rate us and enjoyed working with us and all the value in working with us. Had they thrown us under the bus, they might have fired us just for that one mistake, right? Certainly as a business, they'd have lost confidence in us as an agency. was such a big overspend for them. yeah, it just shows that their partnership was valued on their side, hence they were willing to work together to make sure that it didn't cause any... 

Anu Adegbola (19:07.827)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (19:13.481)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (19:17.161)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (19:24.147)
Absolutely, yeah. 

Indi (19:28.295)
longer term issues with the partnership. 

Anu Adegbola (19:30.673)
Yeah, absolutely. think, it's another big lesson of, no, even if you're on the back foot, it's still important to try hard. And even though that they might not respond, it just look like they're responding to it. They are. And cause everyone knows that people are human beings and you know, with agency life and when you just set that whole, the people that they promise weren't, weren't who that I was just like, I know been there, done that. have been. 

Indi (19:58.815)
We've all been for now. 

Indi (20:00.413)

Anu Adegbola (20:00.531)
They've been to that agency and it's, you 

Anu Adegbola (20:03.213)
know, you're seeing as they're putting the page together and you're like, the person you've put there has already handed in their notice. They're literally not even going to be in the company in two weeks. What are you doing? I'm not going to name any names of people who have done this or we have seen this, but yeah, agencies, if you're listening to this, please stop doing that. That, that, that doesn't work well for your team. but yeah, it's, it's really good to have like a team who didn't. 

Anu Adegbola (20:30.387)
get frustrated by all that because obviously you will have had your team go early going, look, it wasn't our fault, but we're trying our best kind of thing. you, but 

Indi (20:38.345)
Yeah, and to be fair, 

Indi (20:40.379)
it might have gone differently had they spotted it and then after that's what's going on, we didn't know. If it had been that way around, it would have probably been 10 times worse to be honest with you. 

Anu Adegbola (20:43.497)
Sure. Yeah! 

Anu Adegbola (20:48.891)
as well. 

Anu Adegbola (20:49.542)
Yeah. Yeah. So another good point that it was that it was the team that that found it that communicated about it. Did they call you on your holiday? Did they like let you know? Did they wait for you to come back? Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. That's kind. That's very, that's a very kind, kind team Sounds like a fantastic thing. 

Indi (21:01.001)
don't remember so I assume not because I feel like I would remember something like that like being up there and seeing a message about that so yeah I know that I did and I think waited for me come back. 

Anu Adegbola (21:15.709)
But we're in that team. did, they did a great job. I think that's a lesson, not just about what you did, but when you're in a team where your manager has, you know, did not take, go through the right steps, you know, communicate to the, who's around, communicate to the client so that the client knows and not doesn't panic. Even if you're not sure what 

Anu Adegbola (21:38.596)
the plan should be, tell them how your plan to get the plan. 

Anu Adegbola (21:43.567)
of what you're gonna happen of like, look, our managers on holiday, we will try to do this, know, start a process on what your basic knowledge is. Basic knowledge can also be very effective knowledge. So bring that to the table, don't underestimate what you can bring to the table. So let's say someone is going through this issue right now. They've done that automation, they've just come back from holiday. 

Anu Adegbola (22:10.653)
They seem that their team is in a panic. What's your advice to them? 

Indi (22:17.557)
It's a good question. It's, as you know, I'm a naturally a very chill person. So even in that situation, even though internally I was probably like crying and panicking, I probably didn't show it externally. And I think that's really important, especially when you're a leader in a, in a team and things are going bad. Like it's, it's important you don't panic because everyone panics then, because if you see the people above you panicking, that's the first thing you think, oh, this is like Defcon five issue. 

Anu Adegbola (22:23.08)
Yes. 

Anu Adegbola (22:46.483)
Yeah. 

Indi (22:47.879)
And it was a big issue, but it's important to like not focus on the mistake itself, but focus on, as you said, what is the plan to resolve this? What is the communication plan? What is the result? How do we make this better? How do we fix it? And then how do we make sure it doesn't happen again? And how does a client know for sure this isn't going to happen again? Yeah, there's definitely a balancing act between 

Anu Adegbola (22:53.565)
Yeah. 

Indi (23:12.831)
being chilled out about something and showing that you care. it's like, not like don't show that you don't care. Obviously I cared and people knew that. But it's just how you like make it a priority to fix it 

Anu Adegbola (23:15.633)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

Indi (23:24.0)
and show people that you care about it whilst not panicking and running around crying. 

Anu Adegbola (23:24.177)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (23:28.923)
Yeah, so it's like be can now even more consistent than ever on the communications, but don't necessarily put like, you know, all caps in every email and exclamation marks every email and start threatening people in all emails. Let's get to the point of like, okay, what's what's the solution guys? Are we on top of it? We don't do the yeah. Yeah. So basically, are you sad that makes a lot of sense? and what is like, and this finally like, 

Anu Adegbola (23:58.385)
And I know you've probably mentioned like a few things across there, but just in this one compact question, you just answered the answer. I'm gonna edit a lot of that out. I rattle. So last question to round off this story. What is, like, would you say now is the process that you do differently 

Indi (24:10.598)
you 

Anu Adegbola (24:21.442)
that's now, that you'd say based, that mistake taught you and you need to. 

Anu Adegbola (24:26.227)
to make sure you know that you'll never do that again. 

Indi (24:31.029)
probably a few different things. I think kind of what I spoke about before, but making sure that like not all the information is just in my head. I'm very, I get carried away by certain things, certain projects, and I will go at a million miles an hour. And then because all that information is in my head, if the handover is not 100 % perfect, things are going to fall by the wayside. And you hope the things that do fall by the wayside are things that are not that important, but sometimes they are important. And as this mistake was big evidence for that. So 

Indi (25:01.205)
One is making sure that that information is available widely. People are involved. Even if they're not actively working on something, they know what's going on. that communication internally is super important. The other thing is like, I mean, this was, as I say, this was like 10, 11 years ago. So I don't remember the exact details behind why that wasn't in the handover, but I imagine... 

Anu Adegbola (25:13.661)
Mm. 

Indi (25:25.686)
your point, like I imagine I was super busy trying to get everything in order across all the different clients and I seen all my responsibilities in one handover. Probably left it for the last minute as most people do and I still do to this day. And yeah, as I say, you want to make sure the things you forget to put into that handover and the stuff that it doesn't matter if it doesn't happen, but like the key things, the key important things that if they get missed, it's going to cause a big issue. Like you need to make sure you have the time and headspace to make that. 

Anu Adegbola (25:33.107)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (25:53.565)
Yeah. 

Indi (25:56.005)
seen like with the people that are there covering for you. So they're the two biggest things. I wouldn't change anything about like the test itself. Like the test was a great thing to do, even if it worked, even if it didn't, they're the sort of things that, you know, can make that difference between like just showing growth and, and, and growing clients. I think if you're not utilizing data and all the different tools, you're just doing the same thing day in, day out. 

Anu Adegbola (26:04.627)
Okay. 

Anu Adegbola (26:19.197)
Yeah. Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (26:20.218)

Indi (26:20.532)
There's only, you're only going down from, from a performance perspective. So, 

Indi (26:25.075)
Yeah, I wouldn't change anything about that. yeah, certainly in terms of making sure the team were fully aware of what we were doing and what we're trying to do and that handover piece as well, also important. 

Anu Adegbola (26:31.71)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (26:35.581)
Yeah, amazing. mean, think two of my, like my, favorite lessons from that story is definitely when, when dealing with like automation, just make sure you do detail what the automation should be. Cause Hey, we're in the world of automation. There's going to be some kind of automation in the account now these days, even if you, you're the one that manually put it or you didn't put it. So, you know, yeah, look out for that. 

Indi (26:56.403)
Yeah, exactly. And putting the daily 

Indi (26:58.555)
check, like for example, as I said before, they had their own budget checkers that had nothing to do with this piece of automation. just cause you look at one, it wouldn't show you what's going on with the others and making sure they're aware of that to check this other thing area of the platform as well as part of the daily checks would have, it wouldn't have been an issue if had made that clear. yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (27:03.527)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (27:07.326)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (27:12.147)
yeah. yeah. yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (27:19.207)
Yeah, absolutely. And also a red flag client might not be a red flag kind because at some point it sounded, it looked like they were really difficult. It looked like it was an uphill battle with this kind of client. then, but from the hard work your team had put in, they actually decided to be on your side. yeah, you know, when it comes to errors, don't necessarily look at what the client is like and make that make you panic and think to myself, God, that's it. We're going to lose this client because they've been difficult. You know, that actually. 

Anu Adegbola (27:48.947)
turn things around. love these kinds of stories. You never know what kind of client is going to be the one that's difficult because several of my previous guests as well have talked about red flags to get from clients, the clients that can be difficult, the clients that just don't want to share their data. They don't want to do this. So yeah, it's very, very interesting. Thank you so much for that, Indi. 

Indi (28:05.557)
What? 

Anu Adegbola (28:10.077)
We are now going to steer a little bit away from talking about your... 

Anu Adegbola (28:14.981)
experience that hopefully wasn't too painful to recount. Now going to like some of the errors that you see being like an account director, seen going to several events, you must have heard like different ways that people are like testing AI that you might not agree with or you just think, Lord guys, that's not what AI is for. Yeah. So do you have any examples of any F-ups that you've seen people make when it comes to like automation and AI? 

Indi (28:44.757)
not necessarily like big F-ups or anything like that, but like, it really, really gets to me when people just put in like a really basic prompt and expect it to be what comes out of it, like the complete answer to what they're trying to do. Like that's just not going to work. And if you live by that and you see it sometimes in the work that people do is it's just like, yeah, that's 

Anu Adegbola (29:01.437)
Yeah. Yeah. 

Indi (29:08.644)
chatty, pretty wrote that or the general I wrote that or like, what do you think? 

Anu Adegbola (29:09.895)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (29:13.587)
Yeah. 

Indi (29:14.132)
I think, right? So yeah, I think people in terms of the day to day usage, people should use it as an assistant, not as a, it's doing my work for me. And I think people still today are still probably veering towards doing the work for me more so than, as an assistant. So that's probably the biggest mistake I see with it. 

Anu Adegbola (29:23.399)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (29:35.357)
Yeah. 

Indi (29:37.653)
The other part of it, more of sort of advanced and technical level is kind of like the use cases for AI on certain projects where, you know, for instance, we in the previous job of mine, we were using AI to rewrite product descriptions on a website for products. Like we're a comparison website for products. So we were bringing information from all the different retailers, but the information they gave us was pretty crap. So as a great use case for you, this is probably about 

Anu Adegbola (29:53.32)
Okay. 

Anu Adegbola (30:01.181)
Yeah. 

Indi (30:04.197)
years ago, but great use case for AI initially was like, okay, maybe this could rewrite all the product descriptions for us and it will help this issue that we're having. And then through a lot of the testing that we were doing, and we were quite rigorous with the testing because we were a bit skeptical about whether AI would be the answer for it or not. It would rewrite tens of thousands of products and its descriptions and it would be like 90 % for every product, the same thing in terms of what it was saying with slight differences. 

Anu Adegbola (30:11.656)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (30:19.977)
Mm. 

Anu Adegbola (30:29.072)
okay. 

Indi (30:31.125)
using the same words like elevate your whatever and all the classic chat, GVT words that you see. Like, is this really gonna, is this really a better experience than what we were doing before? And probably not on the testing show that it wasn't. So yeah, not blindly trusting even in the more advanced use cases, not blindly trusting what you're getting back from AI. We're actually testing it. Like you probably expect about 80 % of it to be valuable and there's probably about 20 % of it not. And that 20 % actually could be a bigger. 

Anu Adegbola (30:33.735)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (30:41.691)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (30:51.166)
Yeah. 

Indi (31:00.455)
issue than you realise, particularly when it comes to hallucinations and things like that. So yeah, that's still definitely a concern of mine. 

Anu Adegbola (31:01.65)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (31:04.295)
Yeah. Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (31:09.597)
Yeah, absolutely. I think like, something that someone said about AI that I was like, that is bang on is that you should know what the correct answer is. Like, sure. Like AI should do the heavy lifting, but if you can't just be like, AI, you know, grab me some information from somewhere that you don't know what the answer should be. And then you just look at it you're like, okay, yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna use that. Cause someone will call you out on that. Someone more intelligent would be like, 

Indi (31:21.076)
Yes. 

Indi (31:34.735)
interesting yeah 

Anu Adegbola (31:37.191)
Totally, totally wrong. Totally wrong. We should not be doing what you said. it's, yeah. 

Indi (31:39.026)
yeah and to be honest you probably see it yourself right and when it's a subject you know a lot about and you use AI you're actually well actually this is pretty crap crap answer but it's something you don't know and you see the answer in AI like wow this is amazing this has told me everything I need to know about the thing and you become overly confident there's actually if you're a subject to matter expert you can pick the holes 

Anu Adegbola (31:46.247)
Anyway. 

Anu Adegbola (31:49.127)
Yes. Yes. 

Anu Adegbola (31:57.885)
Yes. 

Anu Adegbola (32:01.129)
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. 

Indi (32:01.299)
Like you can see whether it's gone deep enough or not. And you can see whether it's loosening or not, because you know, already know enough about the subject itself. yeah, 

Indi (32:09.24)
especially, yeah, it's really good point, especially when you don't know what the subject 

Indi (32:12.926)
matter is. Don't blindly do your research on top of what AI is giving back to you as well, for sure. 

Anu Adegbola (32:17.863)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (32:18.474)
Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. okay. Now going on to like, let's talk about why it's important for us to talk about, you know, like F up some mistakes. Cause I think it was at the beginning or maybe when we were chatting about how like nobody really talks about their mistakes and, things that have gone wrong. And I really loved like your, your, your, your story that you shared there. Cause it really, it involved not just you involved. 

Anu Adegbola (32:45.487)
a team involved, the client and you know, and everybody really trying to work together to turn that around. So what would you say, why is it important for us to actually talk about when white things have gone wrong? 

Indi (32:59.349)
It's important because you don't necessarily, until things go wrong, you don't know necessarily what to do in that situation. So actually going through that experience and then understanding what went well. Sorry if you heard that. Yeah, going through that experience and understanding what went well in the response and what didn't, what could have landed better. That type of experience shapes you for the next time something happens. Like no one has a flawless career in what you do. No one's on a team where someone's flawless. 

Anu Adegbola (33:04.488)
Mm. 

Anu Adegbola (33:23.761)
Yeah. 

Indi (33:27.314)
everyone can make mistakes at some point. You just hope that the processes you have in place ensure that the mistakes that happen are more on a smaller scale than the one I had. And you learn from it and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. You only learn from the experience and you learn how to respond to something and you learn to be better from that. Yeah, if you go through, it's a cliche, but if you go through your life without making a mistake, it's actually a bad thing. 

Anu Adegbola (33:52.893)
Have you 

Indi (33:55.413)
Even 

Indi (33:55.673)
if that was true and that was possible, it's a bad thing because then you don't actually have the experience to deal with a setback. At all. 

Anu Adegbola (34:00.669)
Yeah, 

Anu Adegbola (34:01.75)
absolutely. I mean, it's the whole, you know, that why parents should say no to their kids. I think I could, you know, often because the world will and you've got to prepare them for when the world does so 

Indi (34:16.083)
Yes. 

Anu Adegbola (34:17.478)
that they are like, okay, I know what to do. I know what to do now. I've not gotten what I wanted, you know, out of this situation. Yeah. 

Indi (34:22.069)
Yeah, having a 

Indi (34:24.269)
six-year-old definitely brings out more to life. He's great and he's got a bundle of energy, but me and my wife are definitely a double act in terms of where she's very overprotective about what he does and doesn't do. Whereas I'm like, just let him do it and let him experience it and find out what the situation is like. You hope, obviously, you make sure he doesn't break his arm jumping off a big tall wall or something like that. 

Anu Adegbola (34:38.323)
You'll find out. 

Anu Adegbola (34:43.82)
god. Duh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

Indi (34:50.951)
against that but like you know if he's 

Anu Adegbola (34:51.886)
Yeah. 

Indi (34:53.535)
just walking across a little bench like fine let do that. Exactly. 

Anu Adegbola (34:57.745)
Yeah, let it figure and under your watchful eye, at least, it's better for him to do it in that environment 

Anu Adegbola (35:03.467)
while you're aware than he does it where you're in the world where, yeah, people don't care as much. Yeah, that is the fact of life. And also, I'm also like, know, very much about your stories about that whole, that point that you made from managers, don't come in, don't panic. 

Anu Adegbola (35:25.905)
Is that, would you say that that is something you'd already instilled, you know, with your team because, they have like an overrated kind of level of panic when you felt like, or did you, was it just about the right amount where they're like, okay, they know that you're back and things will be sorted out. Like how do you, as a manager, ensure your team don't overreact when something's going wrong? 

Indi (35:50.485)
Good question. think, yeah, I think it's as I say, like, as long as your own response is very calm and measured, and you just stick to the facts, like forget about the emotion of the situation, like, we all feel bad about what's going on here. And we all want to do a good job. And we're all trying to do a good job. So okay, how do we make it better? Just be really clear, very, very clear in terms of, okay, this is what's happened. I might not have all the information coming back from holiday. So asking the right questions like 

Anu Adegbola (36:03.783)
Yeah. 

Indi (36:17.653)
what have you guys looked into? Have you done this? Have you done that? Yeah, and then just helping them, if they haven't already put a plan in place, helping them formulate that plan and reassuring them, it's not the end of the world. I mean, it was my mistake to begin with anyway. So it was the end of the world for anybody. It would be for me, not for you guys. 

Anu Adegbola (36:27.175)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (36:34.843)
for you. 

Anu Adegbola (36:36.814)
Yeah, yeah, no, that's good. That's, that's a very great way to, feel to come in with a team because I think what one, one bad, would say pattern that I saw in several agencies is that something goes wrong. There's a blame game that starts and it might even the person my who might actually be the one who did the error starts going, well, if you hadn't done that, if you had reminded me of this and you're like, nice, fix the issue. Let's just. 

Indi (37:03.997)
It doesn't matter. 

Indi (37:04.607)
It doesn't matter. 

Anu Adegbola (37:05.301)
Let's put together 

Anu Adegbola (37:07.883)
and fix the issue have the plan communicate and fix the issue. So yeah, yeah, make sure, make sure it doesn't happen again. So we've come near into the end of our this fantastic chat. But before we go, I like leaving people off with like one of my favorite questions to ask. If your PPC career were a 

Indi (37:10.549)
Exactly. Make sure there's an app again to simplify that, really. 

Anu Adegbola (37:26.816)
movie, what would the title be? 

Indi (37:31.783)
as in what movie would it be or what title would I make up? 

Anu Adegbola (37:39.089)
Either, either. you're 

Anu Adegbola (37:41.351)
thinking, you know, someone has come with me as they like the breakfast club, the matrix, or someone has come with me, you know, the crossover from coaching to clicks kind of thing. Dave, Dave Alexander did that, that was good one. So it can be a brand new title or it can be like one of your favorite movies that you feel that movie really relates to how your career has gone along the way. 

Indi (37:49.813)
No, I'm 

Indi (37:53.813)
Bye bye. 

Indi (38:02.419)
I think the movie that most relates to my career and a lot of what we talked about today is probably Rocky, I would say. So Rocky is one of my favourite films and just like all of them essentially. there's a brilliant quote in, can't remember which one it is, I think it's one of the later ones, but it's not about how hard you can hit, it's how hard you get hit and you get up and go forwards. It's so true in life and it's so true in our careers. 

Anu Adegbola (38:09.015)
okay. 

Anu Adegbola (38:14.364)
Okay. 

Anu Adegbola (38:24.903)
Yeah, I'm coming. 

Indi (38:31.497)
as well. As he said about imposter syndrome, I'm not X, Y and Z in my point. We all feel that way. I don't feel like I've achieved anywhere near as much as I should have by now. But I think about all the setbacks I've had. When I started my career, during my career, setbacks I still have weekly. And I think about how I respond to it and how does it make me better? And can I be proud of the way I've reacted to things and the way I've improved? 

Anu Adegbola (38:48.861)
Yeah. Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (38:58.921)
with it. 

Indi (39:01.027)
And I'll say yes, and I think that's all we can do really. 

Anu Adegbola (39:05.297)
Amazing. I think that's a perfect way to leave things off. Don't, don't be bogged down on where you think you should be. Just how are you, are you, are you moving ahead? Are you moving ahead? And one thing I also, also I would say is like, keep track of all the positives. Like don't forget the wins you had because it happened two years ago. It doesn't mean that you don't go back to it and be like, actually I did something great then I did something great and I'm still doing something great. So keep. 

Anu Adegbola (39:35.259)
remembering the wins. think I know like as human beings, we tend to remember more about where we've gone wrong and the mistakes and that person that annoyed us. Try to keep a record of it, like record of it, put it in a folder, put it somewhere that you can easily access. I think that's really, really important for us and our imposter syndrome and you know, working in digital advertising where everything is changing and you know, everybody just thinks, AI will fix everything. And you're like, no. And it's just... 

Anu Adegbola (40:04.541)
So fight with sometimes not just your clients, but with other advertisers. You're like, no. So yeah, no, think that's, that's a great way to leave things off and where, where online can, can people find you? 

Indi (40:17.557)
Yeah, you can find me mostly on LinkedIn, I'd say. So yeah, just search for Inderpaul Ryan, I'll be on there. I am still on expert, very much more of a lurker than an active participant these days, as many people are. So yeah, I'd say LinkedIn, probably the best place to get reach me. Or at PPC Live. 

Anu Adegbola (40:25.33)
Okay. 

Anu Adegbola (40:28.315)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (40:31.751)
Yeah. Amazing. 

Anu Adegbola (40:35.384)
Happy busy life. Yes. October 22nd. I don't usually do this. October 22nd is our next event. Yeah. You were able to see Indi in person. And I love that the last one, you won a bottle of champagne. I love that. And he gave it to his client. Isn't he so kind? No. 

Indi (40:48.725)
Thank 

Indi (40:52.659)
I tried to, they gave it back to me, they wouldn't let me give it 

Indi (40:54.892)
to them. So yeah, yeah, I ended up taking it in the end. But yeah, I do love a Kahoot quiz. 

Anu Adegbola (40:59.065)
yeah. Yeah. It was a really good, good one that Ayisha 

Anu Adegbola (41:03.925)
did. That was really lovely. And also give you an opportunity to tell us more about the talk that you're going to do in Edinburgh. 

Indi (41:11.709)
Yeah, sure. So I've actually got two talks coming up. So I've got one in Berlin, SMX at the beginning of October slash end of this month. I'm doing a very similar talk for both of them. Basically, I'm going to be talking about how you can use data to better inform what you're doing in PMAX essentially. 

Anu Adegbola (41:33.54)
Mm, 

Anu Adegbola (41:34.305)
yeah. 

Indi (41:34.665)
So how you can predict certain products before better than others, not just based on like Google ads performance, but based on business data and what's actually making money for the business versus auction dynamics versus competitors, all that sort of stuff. how you can, especially for businesses that have huge product feeds as we were talking about before this podcast, really important that you know exactly where to put the money behind because you can't spend huge amounts of money across all. 

Anu Adegbola (41:42.258)
Yes. 

Anu Adegbola (41:54.147)
Mm. Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (41:59.943)
Mm-hmm. 

Indi (42:02.485)
800,000 products for sure. So you need that almost like business intelligence outside of what you can see in Google ads to supercharge it. So my talk's going to be about that. And the one in Edinburgh at the end of October is a new conference in Edinburgh. It's going to be a really big deal. think it's like a whole day full of very, very good speakers. Some I've seen before, some I haven't. But yeah, it'll be looking like it's going to be the biggest event for. 

Anu Adegbola (42:07.069)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (42:16.913)
Mmm. 

Indi (42:29.183)
PPC and paid search and performance marketing in Scotland. So by all means get tickets. I'll be pricing on LinkedIn across the next few weeks as well. So yeah, looking forward to 

Anu Adegbola (42:32.838)
Nice. 

Anu Adegbola (42:36.145)
Yeah. Amazing. 

Anu Adegbola (42:39.407)
Amazing. If so, if you're around Scotland around the end of October, please don't miss it. Go check it out. I can honestly say that from first hand experience. Indi is one of those that gives very practical advice that advice that just makes sense. And, know, and yeah, when talking about how to use data and P max we'll never, we'll never run out of be tired of, you know, hearing about what needs to be done. That's always changing, especially with all the new updates 

Anu Adegbola (43:04.851)
We got recently this year. yeah, new things to be learning there. Anyway, On that nore thank you so much for joining us on this episode and yeah, hope to catch you soon. Cheers, bye. 

Indi (43:14.774)
Thanks for me. Take care. Bye. 

Anu Adegbola (43:17.995)
Thank you, Indi, for that fantastic story and relaying it to us how, yeah, we can be still surprised even by clients that might seem like they do not want us to succeed or to tell where with a client you start off on such a bad footing. yeah, such a great story to hear about how it's still just important to keep up with the hard work. Don't let those situations or how a client's bad mood, you know, make you feel like, yeah, you shouldn't 

Anu Adegbola (43:47.115)
put in the work because then a mistake could happen and they could actually be your best allies in the in the situation. So yeah, I hope you you get some, you know, good clients and good client relationships like you had with Indian like Indi had with his team and their client. So yeah, for full details and the link to his Ed Sheeran interview, please go to podcast.ppc.live And yeah, you get full details of the transcripts and show notes all on there. 

Anu Adegbola (44:16.555)
yeah, PPC Live event update. We've got, yeah, rounding up now we're in October or we just in October, excited for October because it's my birthday month. so yeah, go to podcast.ppc.live but also go to PPC.Live for our, the next event, October 22nd, which is coming up very soon. 

Anu Adegbola (44:37.367)
yeah, early break ticket sales have ended by now, but yeah, you definitely don't still want to spend, you know, that 45 pounds to ensure that you join this amazing, chat. before I leave you, I'm delighted to share that I am taking on coaching clients. yeah, the marketing, if you go to themarketing.annu.com to see what you can, get so that we can chat about the obstacles you're coming across in your industry. Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed that. 

Anu Adegbola (45:03.687)
And I look forward to bringing more PPC F-UPS and triumphs next week. Thank you. Bye.