EP367 - The Cost of Doing Everything Yourself ft. Teo Yordanov

Anu Adegbola (00:02.52)
Hello, tier. Welcome to P PC Live the podcast.

Teo (00:05.916)
Hello, Anu. Thank you for having me.

Anu Adegbola (00:08.298)
It's such a pleasure. Now Tier is someone that we met in person for the first time like last year when you came to a PPC live event, right? Was it last year or the beginning of this year?

Teo (00:17.208)
I mean time flies so fast, it was only February, but I honestly feel like I've known you for years already. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (00:22.966)
Yeah, it feels like we you know, it's one of those you communicate with people online so much and you see what Tio has been doing and amazing stuff where he lives in Edinburgh in Scotland. And yeah, this year I had to in person go and check that out as well. It's been in on my list of

like the like just back to back trips. Like I would did Edinburgh, then I did Portugal the next week. And I had a wedding and then this week I'm at SMX in the US. And then I'm like in a few weeks later I'm in Nigeria. And then in between that there are weddings. I'm like, I don't know. I yeah, I know, I know. It'd be great if like I should I have an air tag that does like public like public view where people are like, Anu is inside this is where Anu is around the world. That would be hilarious.

Teo (00:44.36)
Yeah.

Teo (00:55.508)
So hard to track where you are.

Teo (01:04.062)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Anu Adegbola (01:09.986)
No, that'll be creepy. Let's not do that. But anyway, you guys might be like, again, my listeners, like I go on all excitedly because I'm all excited with my guests got coming on. Sometimes I forget to introduce them. So let's get to that. So Teo, Teodore even, Yordanov, is the founder of SEM Stories and more. Yeah, so the fantastic event that I went to in Edinburgh in May, it was May that we that we did that. Yeah. Just a few weeks ago. Lori feels like too long ago already.

Teo (01:34.472)
Just a few weeks ago. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Anu Adegbola (01:39.288)
So it's Scotland's only dedicated performance marketing conference. And he's also the managing director of BYLT or Bylt media. And he's got a background at Densu and you know has over 100 million pounds in managing ad spend, and he has also helped some of the UK's biggest brands grow through paid media. Today, Teo works with retailers and hotels to drive sustainable growth, increase their direct bookings.

And the reduce the reliance on third-party platforms. He's also the driving force behind SEM stories, as we've we've mentioned earlier on. And he's always very excited and eager and bringing together leading voices from across the search and performance marketing industry. I just loved your lineup. It wasn't even just people like local to Edinburgh. There were people from the US, from London, from Amsterdam and Netherlands.

Teo (02:32.158)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (02:32.809)
It was such like a brilliant show of like, yeah, international attendance for that one. So really well done again to you on putting that together. Now amazing.

Teo (02:40.756)
Thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you so much for coming as well, Anu. I think it's been great having you and experiencing experiencing the lovely Edinburgh and the beauty of Scotland. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (02:45.974)
My pesca. Yeah, I

Anu Adegbola (02:52.47)
It was great. You guys had good food. I enjoyed the food very much. That's that's what I when I go to a new city or go new place, I'm like the big biggest test for me for them is like, how's your food? And yeah, Edinburgh rank.

Teo (02:57.084)
Yeah.

Teo (03:04.926)
Did you try anything any anything Scottish? Like did you go for Haggis? Did you go for a deep fried marsbar? What?

Anu Adegbola (03:10.008)
I heard of Haggis but no I didn't I actually went for Mexican food. Sorry. I know embarrassment.

Teo (03:16.66)
I mean, yes, you can class it Scottish because it's made in Scotland, you know, for now. Yeah, yeah.

Anu Adegbola (03:23.138)
Exactly, right? And they had the thing, they had most amazing spicy margaritas. my god. So the basement, if you go to Edinburgh, go to this place called the basement. They did not ask me to promote this. This is just free for them. They are so good. They are so good, guys. I still remember that spicy margarita. And I was like, I just kept add the first one I drank, as soon as it came, I was like, I'm gonna need another one. Like, cause I'm gonna by the time it comes, I'll have finished this.

Teo (03:30.099)
Yeah.

Teo (03:36.636)
Are you sure?

Teo (03:48.777)
Mm-hmm.

Anu Adegbola (03:52.962)
And then I got a third one. Sorry. I'm just going on about spicy margaritas. yeah, check Edinburgh out, guys, for that. But yeah, before we get into our chat about mistakes, fun fact from Teo Go ahead, Teo

Teo (03:53.629)
Yeah.

Teo (04:05.036)
we're getting to that point now, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think well not many people know this, but I've been a breakdancer. So for many, many for many years. now the thing if I try any of the moves that I had before, I will probably break something. That's without a doubt. But for over 10 years, it's probably one of the sports that I've done the longest was breakdancing, because I can call it a sport, you know.

Anu Adegbola (04:07.125)
Of course, already. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (04:25.142)
god.

Wow.

Teo (04:32.338)
It was even part of the Olympics just a couple of years ago.

Anu Adegbola (04:35.458)
Yes, it was. I mean, it was a bit questionable whether it should have been based on what some people were doing, but hey I saw some of the videos. I was like, really? This is going to be a c Olympics? it was a bit anyway. and were you you you you did you participate in it in like competitively? Did you go for competitions? Did you did you did you win any big awards?

Teo (04:42.958)
I know, right?

Teo (04:56.52)
I have, yes, I did I did compete competitively. I mean awards ask because we worked as a team as well, we did a lot of shows and competitions as a team. Yes, we've won, but I haven't done the one to once myself. I've always done it as a team as a team sport.

Anu Adegbola (05:10.848)
No. That is great. That is a great idea. I mean, look, life is about teamwork. That's the best way to get get things done. And yeah, you can't really be doing too much breakdancing as as well. You've got a a lovely daughter. How old is she now?

Teo (05:15.399)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Teo (05:26.29)
He's three months now. Three months? Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (05:27.884)
She's only three months. that's so cute. She's three months. So yeah, we need your bones, you know, strong too for all the carrying and the feeding and everything. So no breakdancing for you. amazing. So look, let's get in straight into this chat. We've done a lot more, a lot of preamble already. but yeah, thank you so much, Teo, again, for being like the latest on a long line of fantastic experts who are willing to share.

Teo (05:35.054)
Yes, absolutely.

Let's do it.

Anu Adegbola (05:56.63)
mistakes that have happened because it's what makes us better marketers from the learnings that we've the learnings that we've taken out from those things. And, you know, we share them here so that you don't make the same mistakes to I know of our listeners. So take it away to you. What's the F up you'd like to share with us today?

Teo (05:57.725)
Okay.

Teo (06:14.926)
I mean, I that was a very hard question to come up with, the answer to, right? But I think before I answer this directly to you, okay, I want to give a bit of context because in PPC, as you know it yourself, when you work agency site or you manage an agency, you're outside, you've got a lot of large accounts and a lot of pressure to deal with because responsibility sis would you sits with you, right? So the clients.

Anu Adegbola (06:40.002)
Yeah. Yeah.

Teo (06:44.54)
And everyone else, they see the campaign results, the reporting, the strategy decks, the budget numbers, and all that, but we've got so many moving parts. What does many moving parts mean? Search terms, campaign structure, bidding, tracking, landing pages, feeds, stakeholders, meetings. You know how many how much client expectation that means when it comes to taking care and burdening all the stress on you. So when you're managing.

Anu Adegbola (07:09.069)
Yeah.

Teo (07:11.688)
The six, seven-figure client accounts, and when you have a few of them as a marketeer, if you are really into the side of being the perfectionist, which I've always tried to do, this puts a lot of pressure and a lot of stress on you, a lot of mental exhaustion, right? So you have obviously in big, big teams, you've got a team of people that takes care of a specific part of the account because a lot of these.

Anu Adegbola (07:23.534)
Mm.

Anu Adegbola (07:32.397)
Yeah.

Teo (07:41.192)
Businesses they they do run accounts in many different countries. Okay. So yeah, yeah, intern international. So your team looks after specific countries. But what happens at the end of the day when you really, really, really want to drive the best results for your clients, you sometimes forget to delegate properly. Yeah? Because you've got all the pressure, you want to make sure that.

Anu Adegbola (07:48.14)
Yeah, yeah, with international stuff, yeah.

Anu Adegbola (07:55.96)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (08:06.606)
Mm, mm.

Teo (08:10.545)
everything is perfect and when you try and do that you sometimes burn up

Anu Adegbola (08:12.748)
Mm-hmm.

Anu Adegbola (08:16.62)
Yeah, yeah. So this happened to you?

Teo (08:18.43)
So the big this has happened to me in the early career. In the early career, when you know you you manage the team for the first time, you're starting to learn how to do your leadership, finding your feet to because when you are a solo and you work on a specific part of the account, and when you look at maybe 20% of the account, that's easy. But when you have the responsibility of a hundred percent of the account,

That's when you start to realize that it's not about doing the stuff for yourself, but it's more about relying on the team of people that you have. And this is the same in business. You have to rely on the people and the team to help you drive and grow and scale. You cannot do it yourself.

Anu Adegbola (09:00.138)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm gonna edit this part out. I'm just giving you a note too. I think it'll be really nicer if you spoke about it in the first person. Because you keep saying you it'll be I want you to be like make it clear that you're talking about yourself.

Teo (09:20.668)
Okay. I like I. Yes. Okay. Okay.

Anu Adegbola (09:21.474)
You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. So I when I say like, tell me this happened to you, I want you to be like, yeah, there was this time like I was managing 10 accounts and I was trying to do everything myself. And then, you know, I had a team of three, and they just felt like they were not being giving to, you know. Try to talk from this from the first person. All right. All right. That's fine.

Teo (09:38.749)
Mm-hmm.

Teo (09:44.188)
Okay. Okay.

Anu Adegbola (09:50.314)
What's the next question? So yeah, so give me like a like a the that practical time. Ha at what point like did you then did you feel what did burnout feel like for you?

Teo (10:02.28)
What did Burnout feel?

Anu Adegbola (10:03.896)
Feel like for you, yeah.

Teo (10:06.676)
Burnout is very, very serious. burnout means that you tend to forget. For me, I tend to forget how. Let's cut this part, sorry, because I keep confusing you and I. Yeah, I'm I'm used to Turking and used to speaking in third person. for me, burnout meant that you stop enjoying the stuff that you do. That I do, right? Because

Anu Adegbola (10:22.774)
That's fine. That's fine. That's again.

Anu Adegbola (10:32.62)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Teo (10:36.104)
Because you start and I start dreading the things that are happening every day in the account management. Because I'm not I wasn't looking forward to the next call, I wasn't looking forward to the next meeting, I wasn't looking forward to delegating things to the team. So you start to feel that burnout is really taking a toll. And when it comes to outside your work as well, your life gets an impact.

Anu Adegbola (10:44.48)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (10:54.412)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (11:04.887)
Yeah.

Teo (11:04.946)
Because you're exhausted at the end of the day, your partner wants your presence, your partner wants you to be there, right? But when you have the blank stare in your eyes because you've spent 10 hours digging in the performance in the account and making sure that everything is perfect, especially when it comes to high pressure periods like sale periods, Black Friday, or any of the Amazon Prime days, any long period sales that you want to make sure that everything is top-notch in the account.

Anu Adegbola (11:32.588)
Yeah. Yeah.

Teo (11:34.184)
Then you really start to think, okay, am I doing the right thing here? Am I approaching it in the best way that I can when you have the resources available to you?

Anu Adegbola (11:38.006)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (11:45.866)
Okay. Yeah. So when this happened to you, d did anyone notice?

Teo (11:53.768)
I think one of my colleagues noticed yes.

Anu Adegbola (11:56.832)
Okay. And how did they how did they approach you with it?

Teo (12:01.15)
I mean they they told me that I'm taking in too much on my plate and that if I need help, I can always ask for help rather than rather than doing it myself. And I've always asked for help, but the problem is that before I realized all of this, right, I didn't ask for enough help. Let's put it this way, right? Because I was always trying to lead by example, and leaning by example meant for me.

Anu Adegbola (12:04.502)
Okay.

Anu Adegbola (12:22.946)
Yeah. Yeah.

Teo (12:30.6)
at that time do more than everyone else. But that doesn't mean that it's always the right thing.

Anu Adegbola (12:34.604)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (12:40.181)
Mm. Mm.

Teo (12:41.886)
For yourself, but also for your team. Right? Because if you're trying to do everything yourself and you're not delegating enough, that means that you're depriving someone from being able to learn a new skill.

Because you always say, I'm gonna do it quicker than I'm gonna teach someone. That's always the wrong mentality. But we live and learn. And it all comes with experience.

Anu Adegbola (12:58.902)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. You learn from that. So now looking back, what would you say the signs that you missed? Like you know, cause I think like that's that's really burnout is like a big thing, and people have written about it as to, you know, the things that they've done. Like what when yeah, what are s what are signs that you feel that you missed in that that led to burnout that if you had paid attention?

Better you would have

Teo (13:35.028)
I mean the obvious sign, the obvious sign is when someone told me, Teo, if you need help, tell me. But I always I always thought when I asked for more help, is the is the wrong thing. Because people would be like, you know, Teo, can you do it yourself? That's what I thought people would say. But in fact, people were like, No, actually, tell me what would you like me to do? So I ignored this fact and I kept going for years until I came to the

Anu Adegbola (13:39.766)
Sure. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (13:47.328)
Yeah, yeah. You're doing lift.

Anu Adegbola (13:56.909)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (14:01.292)
Yeah. Yeah.

Teo (14:03.9)
kinda the point where I realized okay that is not good for my own well being that's not good for my health. Taking all the stress and responsibility here I need to get additional support when I can. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (14:09.496)
But it is.

Anu Adegbola (14:13.336)
Hmm. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (14:18.316)
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And yeah, and and I'm glad that even like at the beginning you gave that context of the fact that with agencies, international accounts and that kind of stuff. And when you you especially like the first time you you know, you get into a position of leadership, you kind of feel like you have a responsibility to keep the performance at a high level and you're not, you know, you're not sure of your team yet and you're the expert. So you're all trying to do everything yourself because you know I

Teo (14:40.2)
Yes, yeah.

Anu Adegbola (14:46.23)
my my brain was start starting to think like where does that come from? And yeah, it's some people just have that whole idea of being a perfectionist, right? You're a bit of a perfectionist, aren't you?

Teo (14:55.846)
I always try to be a perfectionist, even this day. even to this day, you've been at the event, you've seen that we wanted to try and hit every single point for from the moment that people walk into the event to the moment that they leave. So yes, I'm trying to do everything perfect. Is it stressful? Still stressful, but I've taken my learnings from years ago and now I try and rely a little bit more on the team behind me.

Anu Adegbola (15:19.98)
Yeah, yeah, fantastic.

Teo (15:21.714)
And that's the more that's when you realize you're growing. Yeah. Yes. So you're growing. You're not just stagnating there. You're not just trying to do everything yourself and you're turning into this guy that everyone hates because you know you you just taking all the tasks or you're trying to micromanage. I've always avoided micromanagement. That is a completely different thing when it comes to micromanagement.

Anu Adegbola (15:26.592)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (15:43.394)
Good.

Yes.

Teo (15:46.92)
But the other thing is that maybe some people could have confused micromanagement with trying to see that everything's been executed perfectly.

Anu Adegbola (15:55.884)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. and another th another point that you make that I'm like you're really interested in like, you know, digging into is like in in in these kind of situations where we feel like even like as consultants, because you talked about like agencies, specific agency like people. How about like when you have a consultant? So you have Bylt media, you've got one co founder there. Tech it's just it's pretty much just the two of you, right?

Teo (16:25.522)
Yeah, but I'm a partner at Marketize Me, which is one thing that you've missed. you probably didn't know, but you didn't miss. Yeah, I'm a partner in Marketize Me, which is our European agency. We're a team of 16 people, 15 people. So so we've got we've got performance marketeers and we've got a creative team. So we won't build media in partnership with Marketize Me. So we have a team, 15, 16 people behind us to help us facilitate. So yeah.

Anu Adegbola (16:31.299)
Sorry.

Anu Adegbola (16:36.172)
Okay, nice, okay.

Anu Adegbola (16:44.321)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (16:50.104)
Great.

Amazing. Yeah, because I was going to say that you can't have you can't have learned too much if you went from you you know you burnt out and then now you're a team of two and meaning you're probably doing a lot more. But it's actually good to hear that no, you've got an international team and people who support your team moving forward. Fantastic. So now so it's so now what is like a good process to to for for listeners to take away in terms of

Teo (17:04.7)
Yeah, no.

Yes.

Anu Adegbola (17:21.716)
Making sure they do not get to that stage. What's your advice of what people should do specifically to make sure they don't get to that stage of burnout? They don't get to that stage of micromanaging or doing everything themselves. What's your advice to like managers, especially, to ensure that, yeah, they build a good culture?

Teo (17:41.256)
I I get I get I get the question, yeah. And I think one listening to this podcast should should should give you some red flags if you have been feeling what I've just said about being burned out, right? If you can sympathize with that. But keep your eyes open. If people offer you help, try and take the help. Don't just think that you're bothering people, because everyone

Anu Adegbola (17:47.816)
Mm, fantastic.

Anu Adegbola (17:56.056)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (18:04.226)
Yeah.

Teo (18:09.768)
wants to learn. Everyone wants to feel like they're living an impact. By trying and doing everything yourself, you're making depriving people from learning something new, taking ownership. Yeah? So the the main thing is that don't reach the point of burnout before you realize you need to do something.

Anu Adegbola (18:30.444)
Yes.

Teo (18:32.2)
Try and be proactive on that. If you're listening to this podcast, try and question yourself and your leadership and management style at the moment. Are you giving enough responsibility to everyone that you work with? Or are you trying to do everything yourself? If you are trying to do everything yourself, then you might be very close to the point of burnout. Especially if you run an agency. Yeah. And especially when you run an agency, you probably even feel a lot more stressed.

Anu Adegbola (18:46.743)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (18:53.399)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (19:01.698)
Yeah.

Teo (19:02.056)
When you work for a company, you probably still feel stressed because your career is on the line. With your own agency, what happens is that you feel like you're the full responsibility of the clients because that would impact your salary or whatever you're taking every month. When you are at an agency, you probably have the safer net that yes, if something goes south, which you obviously don't want to, right? Yeah. you may be thinking, maybe that's you know my salary is still there.

Anu Adegbola (19:06.136)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (19:15.894)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Teo (19:31.112)
But the pressure is still the same. If you really want to drive your career forward, right, you always need to deliver good results. But that doesn't mean taking all the stress with you when you're going.

Anu Adegbola (19:31.203)
Mm-hmm.

Anu Adegbola (19:40.672)
Absolutely. Absolutely. You shouldn't take up. Absolutely. No, you're absolutely right. Another thing though, like, you know, this is a question that's just just come out of my head based on what you're saying. what's your advice to consultants or like freelancers who, you know, they've gone and they've they've gone on their own. Are you just are you are you particularly like would you say you're not a fan of being a freelancer at all? Or is there a way that freelancers can still make sure that they're not doing everything on their own?

Teo (19:42.356)
It's one of you.

Teo (19:51.356)
Yeah.

Teo (20:11.484)
So I tend to see, I don't know, when I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn and speaking to people, freelancers can definitely feel very, very, very exhausted because they don't have a team that they can lean on. So what they try to do is they need to win the clients themselves, they need to service the clients themselves, right? They need to raise the invoices at the end of the month, they to do the accounting. there's a lot, a lot of things. So my advice to consultants is maybe they're in a better position right now. We all are.

Anu Adegbola (20:21.443)
Yeah.

Teo (20:40.852)
We've got AI. We can take all the processes, the mundane, the boring stuff, and put them in a process, in a system that we don't need to execute every single month ourselves, but we can minimize the time that we invest. Of course, you still need to raise your invoices, but it's not going to take you an hour or half an hour. It can take you a minute. So instead of using AI to take on more tasks, which everyone is doing a lot more with AI, because it didn't save us the time.

Try and use it actually to save us a bit of time. Don't try and think and take in the next project. Think how you can do your work-life balance. I think that's it's all about balance here. I'm guilty of that. Maybe I'm saying the advice that I don't follow right now because I've been I've been I've been doing so many things at once. But yes, I'm aiming towards that direction. Maybe there are periods which we all feel busy. You always need to, you always need to service your clients, you always need to.

Anu Adegbola (21:12.333)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (21:24.558)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (21:33.196)
Yeah.

Teo (21:37.17)
Maybe win two or three more clients to facilitate the lifestyle that you want. But once you reach the goal, don't be greedy. You know, I always talk about great because human psychology is so interesting. The moment we say, okay, this is our goal, we're gonna achieve it, we're gonna get 5k monthly income, 10k monthly income. The moment you reach it, you probably want more after that because you like hey, yeah.

Anu Adegbola (21:44.354)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Anu Adegbola (21:59.47)
You're like, actually, how about 20? How about 30? How about 50? Yeah. But the thing is that what I'd argue is that, like, and based on what you've done, what I you know, is that there is a way of continuing to reach that goal but bringing more people in. It's not about being selfish of like, you know, I want that 50k just for me. You know, maybe you can even do that, but that means you need to win a hundred K and have a big team, and then your income can be higher.

But it's all about, yeah, once you start having a bigger goals for bigger revenue, you need more people to help you with that.

Teo (22:34.696)
You need yes, you need more people to lean on. You cannot scale stuff on your own. It's impossible. So you need you need to be able to delegate and let people handle the stress for you because we all get paid at the end of the day. And that's your res yeah, they have their own responsibility. So if something goes wrong, it's not just yourself. You've done everything you can.

Anu Adegbola (22:50.423)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (22:57.504)
No. Yeah. Yeah. It's about time. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Teo (23:01.416)
Right. You've provided the processes, you've provided the training. If you try and go behind a team of even five people, right? Alongside everything that you have to do, strategy wise, if you're managing your client, if you're the client point of contact, that's a lot.

Anu Adegbola (23:17.868)
Yeah, yeah, it's a long. It's a long. And so we're gonna we're gonna move on to because I have I want us to talk and we've yeah, we've gone over 20 minutes here already. And I'd like us to talk about other things and you know put the spotlight on other people. but like let's talk about other things. But before we do that, to just wrap up this first segment of of this episode, like what's what's like your your f you want people's takeaway to be about that story you've just shared?

Teo (23:26.44)
Yeah.

Teo (23:30.27)
Film it, yeah. I'd like to talk about other things as well.

Anu Adegbola (23:45.772)
The biggest takeaway. If people were distracted and doing st other things listening to this episode, what's one thing like you're going to be like, okay, this is the most important thing you need to take away from what you've said.

Teo (23:59.22)
I mean, if the listener, the viewer, hasn't picked up what I've just said for the last 20 minutes, I'll summarize it here. Think about your well-being. Don't leave things too late. Okay? Because sometimes things can become irreversible. Okay? And what I mean by that is that if you try and do everything in a business and you don't give people the opportunity to showcase the creativity.

Anu Adegbola (24:14.828)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Teo (24:29.896)
They can leave. You know, you can burn some bridges. You don't want to do that. Not only with the people, but with your with your team, with your clients and yourself. Do yourself a favor and be proactive in managing your workload because life is too short.

Anu Adegbola (24:31.149)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (24:47.404)
Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Agree. All right. Let's leave that. And now going on and shifting the spotlight to, you know, accounts that you've won and you know, and maybe like audits that, you know, that that's like the clients of Bylt media have have have won over. And you're looking at some of these audits that other agencies and things that other agencies have done and you're like, these are fixes that you guys have to fix because of a mistake other agencies have done.

Teo (24:49.555)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (25:16.286)
What are some of the popular you know mistakes or the most shocking for you mistakes that you think people are still doing, that you're just very surprised that people are still doing, that you think it's very bad. You that it's there's there's no good practice, there's bad practice.

Teo (25:28.403)
Yeah.

Yes, taking your client's money without putting in the work. And what I mean by that, what I mean by that, if you go into the change history of an account, that can show a lot. Yeah. If you have one budget increase and a target role of change and one SQR done in a month, and you're taking in a K, 2K, 3K from a client, you know? So I think that.

Anu Adegbola (25:36.054)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (25:44.214)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Anu Adegbola (25:56.726)
Yeah.

Teo (25:59.974)
I've seen this quite a few times with businesses. So yeah, performance is all right. Client knows that there's the potential to expand, but the agency on the other side has decided that they want to take the easy money because the client has been very, very, very compliant with the performance so far. and they don't question. So they don't question. I think that even though the client doesn't tell you.

Anu Adegbola (26:02.711)
wow. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (26:22.221)
Yeah.

Teo (26:29.192)
Let's increase the budget. Let's increase the revenue. Let's let's see ways to improve the account. We are being hired and paid for to do that job. We need to become an extension of the client's teams. So that we can proactively suggest what they need to do, how we can drive them more business. One, that's gonna really make the client happy and happier, right? Maybe they're very compliant right now, complacent, complacent with the real yeah.

Anu Adegbola (26:37.602)
Yeah. To improve that.

Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (26:57.069)
Yeah.

Teo (26:58.484)
with the the results that they have, but that doesn't mean that you need to stop. If that's the case, why don't you stop your monthly payments coming in? You know? So I feel I feel very strong about being as proactive as you can with everything you do for your clients.

Anu Adegbola (27:02.936)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (27:07.318)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Anu Adegbola (27:18.092)
Yeah. Yeah. It's about being proactive. And that's like a very great, like top level, like what agency founders should be doing. But like from a practitioner level, do you go into Google accounts yourself? Google Ads Account is that what's your role?

Teo (27:31.932)
I like to stay close, yes, absolutely. even marketized me, every one of us, even our managing director there, has an account. And we manage and we actively manage those accounts because we I personally also feel strongly about this, that we don't want to

Anu Adegbola (27:39.606)
Yeah. Okay.

Teo (27:51.24)
forget what people doing the day to day job feel like because it's very easy to forget.

Anu Adegbola (27:55.288)
Okay. Yes, it's very easy to forget and then it you're not really close to the tactics of what it's important to doing. What's a tactic that people are fussing over at the moment that you think peop that is not as important as people are making it out to be?

Teo (28:01.918)
Direct.

Anu Adegbola (28:15.086)
Like in terms of like maybe using AI Max or how performance Max is using. Okay, AI Max, go on.

Teo (28:15.269)
was i was going to say that yeah i was literally just going into that i was maybe thinking to formulate my answer but you did just jump i'm thinking ai max is one of the the kind of the the tactics that people are overthinking and we're also being forced to use it because i still have i s we still have accounts that use dsa what's gonna happen with the dSAs if they're gonna they're gonna get moved they're going away they're disappearing they're like

Anu Adegbola (28:27.16)
Sorry.

Anu Adegbola (28:37.614)
So pretty much. Okay. Yeah, but that's going away. That's going away in September.

Teo (28:47.636)
Straight ahead. So I think I I think that there's been quite a a few mixed opinions on AI Max. people people saying and people obsessing with AI Max because literally in the few months that's gonna become the reality, right? But I still don't like it. I still I I still don't like AI Max. I don't know. To me, everywhere that we've tested it, even

Anu Adegbola (28:49.143)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (28:56.6)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (29:07.627)
Okay? Why d why don't you like it?

Teo (29:16.242)
The accounts that are mature have not performed in the way that we expected it will perform. So I still feel like instead of an adding AI Max to a very mature account, I would look to explore a new channel. I don't know. This is my thought. This is this is what we've seen. We've never seen really, really good incremental results coming out of AI Max.

Anu Adegbola (29:24.289)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (29:31.022)
Mm.

Yeah. Okay.

Anu Adegbola (29:40.748)
Yeah. Okay. interesting. Yeah. Yeah. So sorry, say that again?

Teo (29:43.924)
I'll try to explore a new channel.

Аудраде експлора ню чана.

Anu Adegbola (29:51.49)
You would rather explore a new channel. Okay. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Teo (29:53.638)
Yes. Maybe I could even add Microsoft ads. But I feel like that's gonna be a good addition. And a lot of a lot of accounts are missing Microsoft ads. And I've seen times and times again, although very low spend levels, not very low compared compared to Google is low, right? You won't be able to spend the same amount that you would spend on on Google or Meta. But it's still incremental revenue that you can drive that you can drive to the business. It's the same thing that you would put

Anu Adegbola (30:07.832)
Mm.

Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (30:15.605)
No.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Teo (30:23.368)
maybe three hundred pounds a day into AI Max or three hundred or three hundred pounds a day into Microsoft ads. You know? I feel like that's gonna be better results. Increment incremental wise. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (30:27.382)
Mm.

Anu Adegbola (30:32.267)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. And in terms of images in general, how people are using AI, are there any ways that annoy you in the way people are using AI to with their workflows and their workflows and how they're doing it?

Teo (30:56.528)
Yeah, I think that we're starting to lose the ability to question. We're heavily reliant on AI to tell us how to do something we don't know. I've spoken to people that have done vibe coding with you know the cloud code SEO. You don't know the craft, right? I don't know the craft myself. That's why we have a team that knows the craft.

Anu Adegbola (31:03.523)
Mm.

Anu Adegbola (31:07.425)
Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Anu Adegbola (31:14.986)
Yeah. Yeah.

No.

Anu Adegbola (31:26.082)
Yeah.

Teo (31:26.29)
Yeah. So if if the driver in the seat of using AI doesn't know how to use how what the end goal should be, should look like, you won't be able to guide AI to get to get the final result for you. So I think that's the wrong way that we use AI these days. So we're heavily reliant on the outcome that it tells us that it's going to achieve, and that's the right answer. If you keep questioning AI and be like, Are you sure? Are you sure? Are you sure?

Anu Adegbola (31:35.79)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (31:45.068)
Yeah.

Teo (31:54.78)
It will never say to you it I'm sure. It will always give you something else to improve.

Anu Adegbola (31:57.388)
Yeah. Difference. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Teo (32:02.012)
It will always tell you something else. So you never know whether you're sure or not, whether you've done the right technical SEO, whether you've done I don't know. I can I can't come come up with another example, but let's say SEO, because I I tend to see a lot of YouTube videos coming up. Herbis agent, SEO, AI agent, SEO. Everything AI SEO is on, but come on, where's your domain of authority here? Why does AI

Anu Adegbola (32:27.756)
Yeah.

Teo (32:29.24)
SEO not talk about domain authority. You'll never get up there if you if you keep spitting out wrong content. You know, without without adding your own experience and make and and making the content actually valuable for the reader. If AI will just summarize what it finds on the internet, which is just another rewritten article. You know what I mean? So

Anu Adegbola (32:35.5)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (32:40.811)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (32:46.584)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (32:53.26)
Yeah. I definitely feel AI is a bit lazy and takes shortcuts. And because like takes a lot of shortcuts and ways of like, you know, even when I was writing out like the GML articles for from from like last week, no, the week before, it was it was a bit like I was like, look, this is this is the document that Google has given me of all the different updates. Help me pick out what you know the main, you know, things are.

Teo (33:00.86)
Okay.

Anu Adegbola (33:23.406)
And it said that, okay, these are they here here are six updates. But because I looked at that original document, I had looked at it, and my brain was like, I've picked up eight. What do you mean that there's six? I was like, are you sure? Why didn't you mention this? Why didn't you mention this? And I was like, right, yes, there is eight. And I was like, like, you know, and I don't think people, there are different things that people have talked about, hallucinating, but yeah, one thing that is constantly.

Teo (33:31.39)
Yeah.

Teo (33:40.317)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (33:51.843)
Being done by all the chat Chat GPT, like you're like, look, summarize something from this, it will, it will miss stuff out. It will regularly miss stuff out. So yeah, that is a very strong point that you've made that absolutely agree with. That, you know, if you p keep questioning it, it will give you a different answer. It will.

Teo (34:07.668)
Mm-hmm.

Teo (34:12.55)
It will. So you never know. That's why people relying on AI to do a job that they don't know doesn't produce the best results.

Anu Adegbola (34:20.746)
No, no. Like yeah, and I've always been saying from the beginning that literally that we need to make sure that it's not juniors really that should be knowing using AI. We should we should train them on like what good should output should be like and what robust information actually looks like so that when they then use AI, they can recognize that the AI has done it right or wrong.

Teo (34:39.508)
Correct.

Teo (34:45.544)
That's exactly you took you took my words in summarizing that, basically. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (34:50.324)
I'm glad. Well, it's like we we think similarly. We think that this is why you're on the podcast. We although I'm not all just about bringing people on the podcast that only agree with me. I'd love I love getting people on here who's like, Anu, you're wrong. But no, no, we disagree. We disagree on some stuff. We're not just disagreeing today, but we definitely do have disagreed. It is. It is. Yeah, it's how we all learn.

Teo (35:01.926)
I disagree. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Teo (35:08.911)
I mean that's healthy. That's healthy. I absolutely love disagreeing with people sometimes. Yeah, you can't just be complaining.

Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (35:19.722)
Absolutely. No, absolutely. Look, that has been a fantastic chat chat to you. I really appreciate you coming on the podcast today. But before we leave, just one quick like, you know, non non PPC related, no no no no tactics of mistakes, but just a fun question. If your PPC career were a movie, what would the title be?

Teo (35:43.636)
А вот цей самфейлондаліс де сер квіри стриксбак.

Anu Adegbola (35:48.962)
The search query strikes back, so I'm guessing you're a Star Wars fan.

Teo (35:54.482)
watched it yeah I wouldn't call myself a dire fan but yes yeah it strikes back yeah search queries my god yeah because every you know do you know why do you know why you didn't ask me why which is the most important thing because every time you open the search query report there is another search term

Anu Adegbola (35:58.222)
But yeah, tell us more about that. What guy yeah. Why?

Anu Adegbola (36:13.964)
Yeah. Yeah.

Teo (36:15.572)
There's another another task for you to do the same day.

Anu Adegbola (36:18.634)
Yeah. Okay. But like how often should we be looking at our search query reports? Because I think sometimes we we we micromanage it. It's a weird way to say that. We I think, you know, yeah.

Teo (36:30.47)
It's a good question. If you have a client that spends a hundred quid a day and a client that spends ten thousand or a hundred thousand, that really depends on how often you should be looking at the search queries, right? Because with a lot of volume, you'll be getting a lot of queries coming in constantly. With a smaller volume, you won't be getting that much. So but again, it's very important to be proactive and maybe if you can.

Anu Adegbola (36:39.436)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (36:43.629)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (36:50.349)
Yeah.

That much, you will need to.

Teo (37:00.092)
Even Google Ads scripts, you know, if you don't have access to MCPs, anything that can help you flag any new queries coming in. I think that that that's very important. I think that before because you you can think from a small client point of view, if they have a hundred quid a day and their CPC is seven quid a day, a seven quid a click, yeah, you need to be as proactive because you need to protect your client's money. If you have a big client with a lot of volume,

Anu Adegbola (37:07.734)
Mm.

Anu Adegbola (37:23.17)
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Teo (37:28.072)
you still want to protect the money. So I think that you still need to be one of the big tasks for PPC. If you really want to care about your client's money and how it gets spent, make sure that you check regularly your SQRs. Regardless.

Anu Adegbola (37:41.706)
Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, that's fantastic advice. You kept on g you thrown in them. That was supposed to be like a nice final question, but then I made it a bit of a technical question for you. I'm sorry.

Teo (37:52.238)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. I love my technical side of things too.

Anu Adegbola (37:55.992)
I still got into the technical but so thank you so much here for joining us today and sharing all that fantastic advice. where can people find you if they want to connect with you, if they want to know more about SEM stories, if you know, and and and join you in Edinburgh, what well yeah, where can people find

Teo (38:13.076)
yes, I mean they can find me in Edinburgh, first of all. Well digit digitally they can find me on LinkedIn. So if you if you type Theodore Yordanov and you can share a link in the description somewhere, yeah, I'll be I'll be happy to connect.

Anu Adegbola (38:16.704)
Okay, you have it, yes.

Nice.

Anu Adegbola (38:27.402)
Absolutely. I'll share the the the link to that. Fantastic. Fantastic. And also, file, this is a new new question that I that I apologize. I didn't prepare you for, but you'll sure you'll have an answer for this. Like what's the next because PPC Live is about events and connecting with people in person? What's the next event we will see you at?

Teo (38:39.817)
What is?

Teo (38:43.731)
Yeah.

Teo (38:48.178)
The next event is gonna be Performance MCR at the end of June. Yes. So

Anu Adegbola (38:50.956)
Nice. Yeah. Yeah. That's end of June. That's happening in Manchester. I think on the 27th, might be on the Saturday. On the 24th. Yeah, no, it's yeah, she doesn't do it on a Saturday. And that's from Charlie Brennan. So yeah, if you want to connect with Chill in person and you're in the north in of England and near Manchester, check Performance C R L. That's another fantastic event that Charlie puts together. But yeah, with my

Teo (38:56.968)
Correct. No, I think it's on the twenty fourth, twenty-third. Yeah.

It's a

Anu Adegbola (39:20.194)
Busy touring of different things. Unfortunately, I'm missing it this year. Performance MCR this year, but I'll try my best for next year because it's definitely a great one for my northern community and the PPC Live Slack community. People will be like, Anu, come to the north, come to the north. I'm like, you guys have something great in the north. Check it out. Check it out in the north. So yeah, I'm glad. I'm glad fantastic events like that's happening in the north. So anyone listening, anyone from my audience listening, and you're like, I want something in the north. There's something in the north.

Teo (39:22.846)
Yes.

Teo (39:37.929)
Mm-hmm.

Anu Adegbola (39:49.858)
Check out Performance MCR Anyway, on Dan Yo.

Teo (39:52.326)
And if you want something in the true north with SEM stories.

Anu Adegbola (39:56.396)
True true no CM stories. When's our next date for that one? But that's gonna be next year, right? Yep. In May. Fantastic. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Look after yourself. Yes, yes, that's good. So yeah. Live by example to you. Have a great work life balance. Take care of yourself. And to our listeners too, take care of yourself. Make sure you don't reach the stage where you're burnt out before asking for help. Start now, start today.

Teo (40:02.28)
That's gonna be next year in May. Going back to the work-life balance that I talked about. I need to lead by example here.

Anu Adegbola (40:26.646)
All right. On that note, thank you so much, Teo And yeah, I'm sure we'll catch up soon.

Teo (40:27.816)
Thank you, Anu

Catch a person.