EP332 - 10K Down the Drain ft Boris Beceric

Anu Adegbola (00:06)
Hello and welcome to PPC Live the podcast. I'm your host Anu, the founder of PPC Live. And if you're used to hearing 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 me relaying what the PPC experts are saying, I'm bringing the PPC experts to you. Every week I speak to a different PPC expert about their biggest F-up and also how they turn things around. We never leave things on a defeated note. We'll share what has been disappointing,

you know, who was inspiring to us, how our managers, you know, took the error that we made, how they guided us to the solution, how our clients dealt with the solutions and just different learnings as to how to avoid making future mistakes. So this week, I'm very excited to speak to a good friend, Boris Beceric of PPC Live. He's been an ambassador of PPC Live, in many years, work in Google ads, advertising, helping

⁓ clients, you know, find the solutions to their issues when you know, all else has failed. So yeah, I really, really delighted to have Boris on the podcast again to share a couple of the F-ups he's made and the journey that he had with those F-ups and what guardrails he now puts in place to avoid making those F-ups again. So yeah, let's go speak to Boris.

Anu Adegbola (01:27)
Hello Boris, welcome to PPC Live the podcast. Thanks for having me again. My pleasure. Yes. Yes. It's so nice that you say, ⁓ again, because Boris has been on the podcast before. ⁓ thing was, it wouldn't have been this year, but maybe like late last year, ⁓ about a year ago, Boris came on the podcast to just talk about the industry in general, just talking about, know, how we're doing things, you know, especially for lead gen like, you PMAX and automation, kind of stuff. So definitely watch that, ⁓ that episode, but yeah, this is the first time Boris is going to be talking to us about.

Boris (01:30)
Thanks for having me again.

Anu Adegbola (01:57)
a mistake that he's made, how he navigated that, how he still kept on good terms with his client. But yeah, before I start off with, yeah, we say we know Boris. Anyone that has been part of the PPC live chat, especially our WhatsApp group, Boris is the person that keeps people in line for me. I'm not the bad guy. It's like between Boris and I, I play good call and Boris is bad call.

Boris (02:17)
you

I'm sort of the enforcer, I feel, at times.

Anu Adegbola (02:24)
He is. He is. And I love it.

He saves me from having to do it. Whatever rules Boris has done. Anyone's listening is thinking, but I knew I used, I do. Are you aware what Boris is doing? Yes. I'm aware of what Boris is doing. I approve it. So whatever. Don't start coming to me thinking you're going to get let back in because Boris kicked you out. so yeah, Boris, thank you so much for joining me today, especially on very short notice. For those who don't know Boris has been

in the industry for like close to 15 years, helping people with the Google ads accounts. most, on his profile especially, he goes, most Google ads accounts don't need more campaigns, they need clarity. And that's what Boris is helping people with. And he's the person who, where you feel like you've tried everything, you've hired too many freelancers, you've burned through a lot of money, work through different agencies and different strategies.

and still don't know why your Google Ads ⁓ account is working. He's the one that is really good at finding out, removing complexities, finding out what the issue is, fixing what matters, building systems that will help you scale And he's great with audits, strategic resets, hands-on implementation, senior consulting, whatever it takes to get your account out of chaos and into control.

I feel like that's first time you're hearing someone reading out what you wrote. I hope you're impressed. You did a great job. You really did a great job of. Yeah. I'm glad. Yeah. All right. No, no, no. Stick around. Stick around. Fun fact. I love this. Even when I was asking Boris, my brain was like, my God, I know you did this. So, Boris actually recorded an EP. like a track record about.

Boris (03:46)
Yeah.

That's a nice sales pitch. Thanks, Anu. And on that note, we'll be seeing you next week.

Anu Adegbola (04:07)
you know, Google ads called shaking the cushions. Um, I don't know. At some point, I don't know if you remember, like there was, there was someone, it wasn't you. was like, so it was even Google themselves that said that they're trying to shake the cushions for our budget for the budgets kind of thing. How did that term actually come about?

Boris (04:24)
was, I think, that was revealed when Google had to turn over a lot of emails during the antitrust case, one of the antitrust cases. I think Jared Dishler actually mentioned that in one of his emails that they were behind and they were going to be punished by Wall Street if they didn't meet targets and they were going to shake all the cushions they could find in order to meet expectations. So that's where that came from.

Anu Adegbola (04:30)
Right.

Mm.

Right,

right. Interesting. So yeah, in his brilliant mind and his music studio, yeah, Boris created an EP from that and also has three other tracks that you've recorded just in terms of your music lifestyle. And he also said, I should mention that his office is in his gym, like, know, cause why have two separate, why not have them separate? Just have them in one so that whenever you're bored of work, you can go lift some weights and... ⁓

Boris (05:13)
Yeah. Or

if I get really riled up, I can just throw some weights around, be like, ⁓ and then be good again.

Anu Adegbola (05:18)
right right right all right how often

does that happen in terms of

Boris (05:25)
⁓ I've gotten more chill over the years.

Anu Adegbola (05:27)
Okay.

Well, don't be chill today. Bring out all your stress in terms of like, let's speak out so that our audience really listens, hears about the stress of managing accounts and dealing with clients so that we know the things that we should or we shouldn't and we shouldn't stress about. This is not do or die. You've been in this industry long enough to know that mistakes happen. You know, we all survive them. The best of us make mistakes.

Boris (05:39)
see.

Anu Adegbola (05:54)
⁓ but we don't leave things on a defeated note. we turn things around, you we still get, get clients who trust us. because like, yeah, the, industry is so shifting so much, especially of late in the past year updates every week. It's easy, much more easy right now than when we started to make mistakes. So yeah, it's really great to have these kinds of conversations to just keep people's mind at ease with what they're doing. but yeah, without further ado, Boris.

What is the f-up you'd want to share with us today?

Boris (06:24)
So it's not a recent one, actually. It happened, I think, 10 years ago or so when I made this was actually a tiny mistake that then snowballed into something much bigger. I set up value track parameters, and I did a copy paste mistake. So after the URL, instead of starting with a question mark, I accidentally put an ampersand (&). Is that what you call it? Yeah, yeah. So then as a result,

Anu Adegbola (06:31)
Okay.

Mmm.

Okay, Yes. Yes

Boris (06:53)
All traffic from that campaign got directed to 404 pages for a couple of days. So that actually amounted to, I think, 10K in wasted ad spend. So that wasn't good at all. Not good at all. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (07:02)
⁓ no, no, no. So was

this pretty much something that the buck landed with you? You are the consultant or were you working in an agency?

Boris (07:15)
I was actually working in-house at that time for a company. So huge ad spend. So we're talking like high six to seven figures per month. So I mean, it wasn't like a big costly mistake, but it still, it was one of the core products that we had. it was noticeable that we were missing revenue from that product line. So people started digging around and eventually they found out.

Anu Adegbola (07:19)
Alright.

Yeah.

Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. So who, who, who found out the mistake? Who was the one that was like, yeah, Boris, you did not, you put the wrong URL.

Boris (07:51)
It's, yeah,

so this is one of those situations you don't really want to get into because it wasn't me. I was totally oblivious to everything. was like, Hey, I'm rocking this thing. Like, this is fine. Like this is easy, easy mode. ⁓ was actually my manager, the guy who hired me was like, Hey Boris, like you done really messed up here. Like, look at this. And it's been going on for the last five days. Like, do you have anything to say about that? And I was like, it's first time I'm hearing about that.

Anu Adegbola (07:57)
Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Boris (08:20)
Yeah, yeah.

Anu Adegbola (08:22)
But did he, how do you feel that manager handled it? Was it, was it kind of like, okay, you're like, okay, there's another kind of manager I want to work with anymore. Or do you feel like he was actually had, had good head on his shoulders and how he took it?

Boris (08:30)
⁓

He had a good head on his shoulder for sure. actually that happened within like the first three months of my employment there. I was always, you know, I was still in probation period and I had, yeah, I wasn't really sure how to read this guy or like I had, you know, I respected him because he was like a grumpy dude who'd been with the company forever and he knew his stuff and he...

Anu Adegbola (08:45)
wow, okay.

Yeah.

Christ.

Boris (09:02)
He

was very tech savvy. So he wasn't just a marketer. He had his hands in the product. He did tracking, everything, Self-taught as well. And first, I was really worried that I was going to at least get written up or something. And he got stern with me. like, yo, Boris, I need you to step this up a whole notch, because this is not like...

Anu Adegbola (09:06)
Yeah.

Mm.

Boris (09:27)
agency lifestyle where you just put one hour into each client and then you move on like I need you to be thorough here. So yeah, he was stern but then after it was done, it was done and then we, you he put guardrails in place and then it never happened again. So that was, yeah, lesson learned I want to say and I still have good contact to that guy to this very day, even though we've both moved on.

Anu Adegbola (09:46)
Love it. Yeah.

nice

yeah yeah that's good the relationship survived he dealt with it well i like that stern but once you know once the thing was done it was done lesson put guardrails in place that's the that's the important takeaway from how a manager really should deal with it

Boris (09:58)
Whoa.

Yep.

Yeah.

I think he's one of those people who's like, you you mess up once, it's fine. But if you do the same mistake twice, then I'm going to ask, like, can't you do it? Or do you not want to do it properly? Right? So then we're talking about something else entirely. But if it, I mean, even though it was costly, was, at the end of the day, was fine. And in the grand scheme of things, I mean, that was back in the time when, you know, you could have

Anu Adegbola (10:25)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Boris (10:40)
a five, six, seven ROAS on search alone. It wasn't as competitive as it is today. So we printed big money, big money. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, was in-house, so I mean, I was working for them. So that was it. That was it.

Anu Adegbola (10:47)
Yeah.

Nice, nice, nice, nice. And how did the client take it? Do you know?

Of course, of course. Yes. Yes. Client.

Yeah. It's different. That's not two different questions. So it's literally, it was your brand, but did you know, cause that's your manager talking, but as your department, you know, this is a department, there any, so was it literally, it started and ended with the manager themselves. There was no other person that would have cared about that. Yeah.

Boris (11:08)
exactly.

No, it was. it wasn't

that, you know, had it been a bigger issue or had it been negligence or had it been more wasted spent like in the tens of thousands or something, then maybe he would have taken it to management. I don't know. ⁓ But in this instant, was inside of our immediate team. So there were three other people on the team and, you know, we shared everything openly and that was the...

Anu Adegbola (11:37)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Boris (11:49)
the end of it.

Anu Adegbola (11:50)
Yeah. Yeah.

So that's an in-house issue. Do you have an example that could give us on where it was an agency issue and a client needed to be informed about a mess up?

Boris (12:02)
from the top of my head, mean, once I set up a display campaign and I forgot to unselect or deselect ⁓ optimized targeting. So that wasn't fun. And the whole thing went like six, seven times over budget in the first two, three days. Yup. And that's when I needed to inform the client. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (12:13)
Okay.

Ooh, okay. Okay.

Yeah, yeah.

And in that situation, how did the client take it?

Boris (12:30)
honestly was appreciative of me taking that step to inform them because had they found out and what is this part? yeah, this is when I did this and that, but I never told you. ⁓ That would have been a bigger issue. ⁓ if you make an honest mistake, but you at least you stand up to it, ⁓ stand up for it and say, I made this mistake.

Anu Adegbola (12:34)
Mm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm.

Boris (12:54)
this is what I'm gonna do moving forward in order to not make the same mistake again, then usually clients are fine with that. They're just very allergic to finding out after the fact without anyone telling them. ⁓ That's the worst kind of situation to be in.

Anu Adegbola (12:57)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

yeah. yeah.

Yeah, no, absolutely, When these mistakes happen, like for yourself, what have you felt in terms of yourself? Like are you the kind of person who beats yourself up when you make a mistake or do you just go, whatever, whether it's not your day.

Boris (13:28)
⁓

no, no.

mean, I think I've gotten better at it over the years. I mean, let's face it, mistakes are always going to happen. ⁓ You don't get paid to not make mistakes. Or maybe you get paid to make mistakes and find out about them a lot quicker than you used to. But yeah, usually for me, it's kind of a physical reaction. It's almost like soul leaving body sometimes. It's like, ⁓ shoot. This is bad.

Anu Adegbola (13:34)
Okay.

Yes.

Yeah, yes.

⁓ okay.

Yeah.

Boris (13:58)
you know,

like adrenaline rush and everything's like, okay. So that's always been for me, the thing when I, when I find out something went sideways, like I have usually physical reactions more, more so than, than, so what I not tend to do is I, I don't go back to that over and over again. So I don't, I don't dwell on that. That's, think what I wanted to say.

Anu Adegbola (14:05)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Good.

Yeah.

Boris (14:20)
but I

have this immediate physical reaction like, shoot, like this is, like, just doesn't feel well for me.

Anu Adegbola (14:26)
No,

no, no, no, absolutely. I'm like, what's, what are the guardrails that you've put in place in terms of these issues? Even like either of them, the one with the URL and then the value tracking. What are guardrails people should think of to ensure to not avoid these kind of mistakes?

Boris (14:30)
Yep.

Yeah.

I mean,

I'm not sure if I should go into specifics on that one. I I can tell you, I set up a report. Basically what we did, we analyzed the server logs for any 404 and 500 HTTP responses. And we sent an email to the team each week. And everyone had the task of looking at some pages of that to find out if anything unexpected came up.

Anu Adegbola (15:11)
Nice.

Boris (15:11)
So that

was our way of squashing these issues or similar issues in the future. Could always be, no, it doesn't have to be your fault. It could just be the website team changing the URL or something, right? It doesn't have to be the paid ads manager's fault all the times. just when things happen, set up a process that's...

Anu Adegbola (15:16)
Yeah.

yeah. yeah.

Boris (15:33)
will help you avoid that same mistake again. In the other example I gave you, it's as simple as an account or a campaign launch checklist each time you set up a YouTube or a display campaign. Please make sure this setting is deselected before publishing the thing. Right?

Anu Adegbola (15:51)
Yeah,

absolutely. And looking back, what are some, are there like some things that could have been, well, I guess, yeah, you've just said that in terms of like doing the checklist beforehand, but like even like mindset of, you know, something like maybe like, you said your manager has even said like, you know, told you like, you know, Boris, put your mind in the game. This is this, no, it's our money kind of thing.

Boris (16:14)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Anu Adegbola (16:17)
Is

there like a mindset that, you know, those kind of things that you feel that you did miss, or was it just an honest error that you made in terms of that landing page? Is there a mindset that you advise people, if you see managers to have to try and avoid those kinds of things that, you know, that maybe you missed before?

Boris (16:35)
mean, that was an honest mistake. So I don't think that has to do anything with the mindset. think, I mean, that was also a product of a much younger Boris, to be honest with you. Like I was just so cocksure of the things I was doing. like, yo, I've been in this, I've been doing this for five years. I got this. This is easy. Like I came from the agency, like, you know, I'm running 20 accounts at any given point in time. I'm like, how hard can it be, right? ⁓

Anu Adegbola (16:45)
Right? Right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

yeeeeaaaah

Boris (17:04)
Well, you know, and I think that is when some of the worst mistakes happen is when you're overly sure of your own ability. ⁓ I mean, I've since fully learned that there is never too much knowledge and you can't, you never stop learning and you always have to be diligent and you always have to double check everything.

Anu Adegbola (17:11)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Boris (17:27)
Never assume anything. Never assume the client has done certain things. Never assume that you would have done certain things, even if you're the one setting up the campaigns. Like always double check. I think that's the main takeaway that I had from all of this.

Anu Adegbola (17:42)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Don't rely on your cocksure nature of like, you've been doing this for a few years now. And especially with automation, we'll get things done anyway. We'll talk, we'll get to the version of automation, but like, yeah. How hard can it be? And people even now think it's easier because of AI. you're like, ⁓ dude, dude, dude, beware, beware. Yeah, yeah, absolutely right.

Boris (17:48)
It's difficult.

It's only Google Ads. How hard can it be?

They'll be gone in a couple of years.

Anu Adegbola (18:07)
If someone's going through something like this, what's your advice to them? they said, their manager has just come to them and gone, you messed up the landing page, setting up the landing page and it's gone wrong. What's, what's your advice to them?

Boris (18:19)
Well, first of all, take ownership of like, you know, take responsibility for, for your own actions and for your own mistake. I think that's something that applies to everything in life. Like ain't no one coming to save you or like, you know, put the flames out for you. Like it's, stops with you essentially. ⁓ so that's one thing, but the other is, you know, leaving aside maybe the gravity of certain situations, but this is not a life and death kind of scenario, right?

Anu Adegbola (18:29)
Yeah.

Mm. Mm.

Boris (18:49)
What is it? I I always think it's so funny. Like we're sitting behind screens and pushing buttons. At the end of the day, I'm just a click dealer, really.

Right?

Anu Adegbola (19:01)
There's money involved, so maybe not, it's not just as simple as click dealer.

Boris (19:04)
It is. is.

Yes, but what it can be, if you're being brutally honest, it's we're selling clicks. Right. And yes, is it our responsibility to deliver the highest quality, high intent most of the time, depending on the strategy? Yes. But it's not open heart surgery. you cut yourself some slack, give yourself some grace. Like I said before, mistakes are going to happen regardless.

Anu Adegbola (19:10)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

No. ⁓

Yeah.

Boris (19:34)
Right. And that's how you learn. If you never make a mistake, you're not trying hard enough. Like for real, like if you never, if you never messed up a test, if you never overspent tenfold, like what's the point? You're just playing it safe. Like, I just know for a fact that there is so much untapped potential in an account that's never, that's like, that's never made a mistake.

Anu Adegbola (19:42)
Mmm.

Mmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Boris (20:04)
⁓

that I almost can't take too seriously.

Anu Adegbola (20:07)
Yeah. But you know what, I'm actually going to do a jump and a bit of a, people will be like, I know you usually don't ask this question yet, but this is a perfect time to ask it. Now that you say this about, especially when you mentioned that, you know, our job is to be, to push the boundaries and to, know, you've never made a mistake. will question how much, but how, you know, yeah, we're in an industry or in the, in the, in the work career field of

Boris (20:15)
Yeah, do it.

Anu Adegbola (20:34)
We should be testing things. So many new things are coming around. We should be testing things. But how do you ensure that you're not being cocksure with your testing and you're not being irresponsible with your testing, but you're still bold enough to test? ⁓ What are some tips to ensure that you actually do it with a good head on your shoulders?

Boris (20:37)
Yeah.

I mean, see, that's where like good old budget allocation comes in. So if you have X budget for the month or the year or whatever, then I just make sure to use 90, 80 % for what's proven to be working or what you have agreed on with the client or with your boss, whatever. And then if you can, I realize it's not always possible. Like if you're talking about small budgets and everything.

Anu Adegbola (20:58)
Mm-hmm,

You can.

Mm-hmm.

Boris (21:23)
But if you can, like set aside the other 20 % and test strategically, test performance max, test AI max, test broad match, test smart bidding exploration, whatever you need to test, like, you know, run a little YouTube campaign, do the thing. I think that's the most sensible thing I can suggest to you. And then that way it's not just.

Anu Adegbola (21:36)
Yeah.

Yeah

Boris (21:50)
It's not just, you know, inside of a campaign that's been running great, just, you know, enable AI max and suddenly it goes off the rails. but yeah, test that outside of your like bread and butter campaigns or outside of the budget that, that you need to spend profitably, I think.

Anu Adegbola (22:07)
I'm pushing back, I apologize, it's almost like I'm coming at you even though I invited you on this podcast. It's like a little bit of a push back. When people go, because you know, with Google accounts, you know, and we clearly see that the more budget you give an account, a campaign, the better it'll do, right? So how can you justify giving only 10 % when actually when you put the 10 % in the performance it will give?

Boris (22:15)
No, that's fine.

Anu Adegbola (22:34)
with very difference if you actually then put a lot more and the whole difference was just a volume thing.

Boris (22:40)
all pushback from my side. You know damn well, that a campaign wouldn't scale linear if you just put more budget on there, right? And so I think that that question is almost a bit flawed. ⁓ Sure. So yeah, I stand by what I said. you need to test things, you need to test things in a controlled manner.

Anu Adegbola (22:46)
No.

sure.

Okay.

Boris (23:02)
And yes, I mean, if there's a scenario where you can, you you have 80 % lost of budget, but you're like hitting all your targets, then by all means, just turn it up, right? That's not something I'll ever advise against. Right?

Anu Adegbola (23:15)
Yeah, no, absolutely. You see

even Boris even corrects me when even on my podcast show. So guys take Boris's corrections. It's all for good. But no, I like that. I like that you stood by stood by that answer because yeah, that that doesn't that that means anyone listening, they shouldn't stop you from saying that I'm not going to test because it's still worth testing. Even if you have a small budget, you know, use it to test, see what the mistake is going to be. Make this mistake on a

Boris (23:33)
Hmm.

Anu Adegbola (23:43)
on a small scale before you go large scale on it so that you know what not to do on the large scale. So no, I absolutely, definitely appreciate that answer. Okay, so shifting the spotlight to mistakes that you see, mean, we could have a whole one hour to hour podcast episode and talk about the mistakes that you've seen in audits, but especially like the ones related to automation, can you just, you know,

Boris (23:45)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (24:12)
give us highlights a couple that you've seen that is just a persistent mistake that you see people making that your shocks is still happening in 2025.

Boris (24:26)
The thing for me is always the blind acceptance of everything Google says. So all the recommendations, you should increase your budget, you should use Broadmatch, you should look at optimization score, you should do all these things. No, you shouldn't do anything if your bank account says otherwise, you shouldn't be doing anything.

Anu Adegbola (24:33)
Mmm.

No.

Boris (24:50)
You

shouldn't pull bold moves. Only if you feel you can scale a bit further, then you can look at recommendations and see what applies to your specific business. I think that's the one that's constantly driving me nuts is whenever I'd look at low budget lead gen accounts and then the top recommendation always because it's an AI essential, set up a performance max campaign.

It's like, no, I'm hitting all the KPIs I need to hit. Why would I set up a performance max? Why would I do AI max? Why would I switch everything over to broad and max conversion value when it's working the way it is now? I think that's still the biggest gripe I have to this day. I don't think it'll ever go away, to be honest with you. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (25:25)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay?

Right. So

I mean, I know it's not necessarily what I'm saying, but I want to clarify what it is that you're saying is that like with, ad campaigns, if you're hitting your targets, don't test anything new. No, I know that's what you're not saying. I know you're not.

Boris (25:51)
That's not what I'm saying. That's not what I'm

saying. You can always test things. What I don't want you to test is apply all recommendations and then throw your hands up and be like, all right, I did all I can do. Now let's pray and see how next month is going to look for us. That's hardly ever the best way to go about this.

Anu Adegbola (25:59)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. So it's still actually, yeah. So all your recommendations actually fit together nicely. So your, previous recommendation of like, you know, test small and then, you know, so if you test small and you don't know the rest of your campaigns are hitting their targets. Yes. Let those rest of them. And if you, you test small and that small one is still is continues to hit the target, maybe add it to the strategy.

Boris (26:37)
Yeah, probably. maybe we should, I know this isn't directly relevant to the whole theme of the podcast, but if I say test small, mean, there's also contradictory.

So see, I'm losing my word here. So I've also seen differently. some of the biggest gains you can make is when you do radical tests. But those radical tests usually don't happen inside the Google account. So some of the biggest levers you have is like.

Anu Adegbola (27:06)
Okay.

Okay.

Boris (27:16)
a radically different landing page. ⁓ You know, a new offer, something, right? So something that would benefit the user and that would then reflect in the Google Ads account. ⁓ So, you know, you are not confined to only be testing in the Google Ads account. If you can, of course, if you have the say in, you know, with the client or if you have direct influence on...

Anu Adegbola (27:18)
Right? Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah.

Boris (27:42)
landing page looks or how the messaging is, how the form looks, all that stuff. Some of the most pointless tests I've seen are just like change the button color or something like that. What are you doing? What are you doing? So yeah, so sometimes test small, sometimes like do radical stuff and see what that brings you.

Anu Adegbola (27:46)
Yeah.

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. That's some very great advice. I definitely really appreciate that advice. We've covered a lot of the questions. Second to last question I'd love to ask is, I always like having them taking a moment of us talking about mistakes and why it's important. You never see that on Google. Actually, you're one of the few people who will mention of like, guys, look at how this went wrong. I've seen some of your posts. Maybe you're the only one I see doing that.

Boris (28:28)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (28:32)
Why is it important? Why are those things important for you to actually share of like, ⁓ this went wrong.

Boris (28:39)
I don't know if it's important to me. just, I just think it's how I operate. And I think, I think for me personally, it's how I, the way I am on LinkedIn, especially is also pretty much the same way that I am in private. So it's just a reflection. think.

Anu Adegbola (28:45)
Yeah.

Boris (29:01)
No, can't all be just glory and wins all the time. no one, like if you look at LinkedIn, then we're all just living large and raking in millions each month, right? When in fact, when I'm having conversations with some of my friends, I realized that it's not the case at all. Like there's many companies that are struggling. are many agencies that are struggling. are many freelancers that are struggling. ⁓ But somehow we...

Anu Adegbola (29:04)
No.

Nah. Nah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Boris (29:30)
we always need to keep our armor up, which I think is wrong. It's only authentic and natural to share some of your shortcomings and mistakes. Yeah, I don't think anyone should have a problem with that.

Anu Adegbola (29:40)
Yes.

No, absolutely. Absolutely. I think that's that's that's that's very true. And sometimes I like sharing that I'll admit the amount of times I've been fired before the time where just something that just didn't go my way. And, you know, I thought I thought that was going to work out this way really did it. And I've got to say, ⁓ I'm happy with where I am now. So all of those mistakes led me to where I am now. And I'm not I'm not complaining. So yeah, the

Boris (30:05)
Same.

Yeah.

100%. I've

been fired more times than I care to admit, right? ⁓ I've also left companies in the probation period, you know, after a couple of weeks after I realized like, this place is nuts. Like I better be out of here or else like, I'm just not gonna be happy. So I did all of that. And yeah, I had a share amount of fuck ups. I've also had a fair amount of like giant.

Anu Adegbola (30:17)
yeah, me too. yeah? hmm? yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No.

Yeah.

Boris (30:41)
wins, of course, like otherwise I wouldn't be where I am today, for sure. But I think all of that, like the journey is, is almost the destination. Like there is no, I don't think there's an end goal to any of this, right? It's just like, I mean, I for, I for once, I'm just making things up as I go. Like I'm still learning life and Google and everything in between and you know, parenting and being a good husband and all that stuff.

Anu Adegbola (30:45)
Yeah, still.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Boris (31:10)
So I'd never want to pretend that I have it all figured out. Like, yeah, I don't. I don't.

Anu Adegbola (31:13)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well,

yeah, the destination is the journey. I love it. I love it. Boris, this has been such a great conversation. It's gone by too quickly. So yeah, maybe we make it a yearly thing and next year you come back again, right? Share another story.

Boris (31:19)
For sure, yeah.

I enjoyed that. Yeah, yeah.

Well, each time you fail in sending out the invite to the guest you wanted to have on, you just feel free to WhatsApp me, right?

Anu Adegbola (31:42)
I mean, I I will. I'm glad I thought to do that. Cause I literally

was like, my God, this guest has not responded. Boris! And I'm so grateful you made the time. I was so grateful you made the time for us. Before, before we leave my last question of the, of the show, I hope you caught this one. Cause my guests like specifically preparing for this question. ⁓ if your PPC career were removing, what would the title be?

Boris (31:55)
always.

Hmm

Anu Adegbola (32:08)
It could be a movie that you identify with. You can come up with a different totally different title. doesn't matter.

Boris (32:14)
I don't know. So I just looked at the questions shortly before I hopped on the call. But I think the perfect movie title for my PPC career would be Groundhog Day. Yeah, it's just, you know, because, you know, so often you just get up in the morning and be like, oh, it's accounts again. Oh, it's client calls again. Oh, it's acquisition again. Oh, it's content again. but yeah, it's just Google.

Anu Adegbola (32:25)
Groundhog Day, really.

And Cods again.

Yeah, yeah.

Google has done something again.

Boris (32:44)
Google done something. Yeah, that's a recurring theme.

Anu Adegbola (32:49)
of this Groundhog Day. Groundhog Day is what Boris's career would be if we were a movie. Interesting. I love it. Well, where can we find you to have some of your very honest approaches to how you do paid search? I know it's on LinkedIn, but anywhere else? The only place is LinkedIn.

Boris (32:51)
Yeah.

I think so,

The only place is LinkedIn. for

the longest time, I've always thought of doing the YouTube and I've dabbled with it occasionally, but like the only thing is LinkedIn. It's still, it's working for me. So I don't feel the need to go somewhere else. Maybe in the future I'll do a YouTube, but.

Anu Adegbola (33:12)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Great.

Yeah,

maybe test. Take your advice about testing. Small budget to test.

Boris (33:29)
Don't use my words

against me, Anu

Anu Adegbola (33:33)
right I'll try that's so cool well thank you so much for being on the show today Boris it's been such a pleasure as usual ⁓ pleasure

Boris (33:34)
I hate that. All right.

You're welcome. Thanks for having me.

Anu Adegbola (33:47)
Thank you so much, Boris, for sharing that very honest and transparent experience. And, know, I mean, what else are we going to get from you? You already show such an honest and transparent view of how you're going through the paid search journey on LinkedIn. And, you know, the mistakes that are happening, the errors that people are, are, are, are showing of themselves and audits. You take us through some really good, good audit tips. So yeah.

check out Boris's profile. He gives some really great auditing tips and you know, and just shows what was the big of like big mistake that he saw when he's about to audit a campaign, which is something that you can take away and make sure you don't do when you're auditing a campaign or when you're running your paid search campaigns anyway. Anyway, so remember to get the full information and the full transcript of that conversation. Please go to podcast.ppc.live

⁓ And so yeah, you'll get the full details and we'll also send you the band link for band stamp link is what's, bandstand link is the link that Boris said he will share with us so that you can see the music, his musical musings of how he wrote about his experience in paid search. PPC live event updates, so excited. We've got another event, exciting event coming to you.

on February the 5th, put that in your calendar. We've got the scripts master, Nils Rooijmans who is going to be talking to us about his favorite PPC scripts for e-commerce and just showing you how easy it is to implement them, even in our world of AI, so that you can automate safely and automate with taking your client's budget in mind and spend in mind and also automate confidently.

and get into the world of automation in a very easy way. Any scripts that you've actually taken on and written 90 % chance, has gone through Nil's eyes of actually creating it or editing it to make it better. So yeah, you want to be at PPC live for our first of 2026, that's February the 5th. So go to ppc.live for your tickets. It's early bird sale right now. I've automated the settings of when it goes from early bird, so full price.

that will go on automatically the next couple of weeks. So you don't want to miss out. There's not going to be like, it's going to end in a couple of weeks and then you'll have a couple of extra days. Once it ends, it ends. That's it. And it'll be full price. Although full price will still be only £49 So good way to, ⁓ good, good, good, good way to spend your Christmas money or your black Friday money, whichever one that you want to do. ⁓ before I leave you as well, I'm also delighted to share that I'm taking on coaching clients, anyone that just needs advice.

and direction in how to get into the paid search industry. Go to themarketinganu.com for that to figure out how to book my time. We'll have a free coaching session, a free discussion, free discovery call to ⁓ see what it is that you need and what you want out of me so that we ensure that the coaching sessions are tailored to your particular needs. So yeah, if you go to themarketinganu.com, you'll see how to do that.

So yeah, I hope you've enjoyed the show and I look forward to bringing more PPC F-ups and triumphs next week. Thank