Why T-Shaped marketers will win the future of Google Ads (w/ Miles McNair) | S3 EP6

Speaker A: An optimizer is someone who has his or her account and they're just constantly thinking, okay, what can I tweak? Where are the 10, 20, 30% gains? Then you have the maximizers. They're constantly thinking, what is it outside that gives me the outsized returns? Uh, for maybe 100%, 200%, 300% return.

Speaker B: Hello, and welcome to the Paid Media Lab.

Speaker C: My name is James. I'm the content lead here at Lunio, and in this sixth and final episode of season three, I'm speaking with Miles McNair, co founder of PPC Mastery. I'm sure many of you already know Miles. He's one of the most popular and trusted voices on LinkedIn when it comes to Google Ads. And through his commitment to openly sharing the learnings from his own experiments, he's built a following of more than 65,000 on LinkedIn. And his weekly newsletter, the PPC Edge, has more than 20,000 readers. He also hosts the PPC Mastery podcast. And together with his co founder Bob, he runs the PPC Hub, um, one of the largest online communities of Google Ads specialists. Personally, I've recorded several webinars with Miles in the past. We've worked together on reports we've published here at Lunio, but this was his first time on the podcast and I

Speaker B: was very glad to have him, um, on.

Speaker C: And in this interview, Miles lays out his framework for how to become a

Speaker B: T shaped Google Ads specialist.

Speaker C: Basically, that means combining deep expertise in Google Ads with a much broader understanding of business fundamentals and consumer psychology. And we really get into the details of what that actually looks like in practice. Expect to learn why narrow specialization is becoming a career dead end in the age of AI. How to develop stackable skills that sit on top of your Google Ads expertise. How you can identify and hone in on your unique strengths to help stand

Speaker B: out in the job market.

Speaker C: Miles shares some of his favorite business books that have helped him learn and

Speaker A: grow over the years.

Speaker C: And we also get into whether Zuckerberg's vision of a fully automated, ah, ad platform where AI handles absolutely everything is actually viable by the end of 2026. I really enjoyed this one. Miles is always a great guest. So with all that said, let's get into the conversation.

Speaker B: Miles M. Welcome to the Paid Media Lab. It's great to have you on.

Speaker A: Thanks, man. It's good to be back. Or at least first time on Paid Media Lab. But not the first time we're talking.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So we've recorded multiple webinars together. Uh, you've contributed to reports we published here at Lunio. And, uh, I'm sure most people listening to this will already be following you on LinkedIn. And today we're going to move quickly into the topic of how to become a T shaped Google Ad specialist. But I also just wanted to say first of all, congrats to both you and Bob for what you guys have built at PPC Mastery and the PPC Hub. I remember when we first spoke, uh, it was in preparation for the first webinar we did together on PMAX back in 2022 when it was relatively new. Um, Bob is still traveling throughout Europe in his van. At the time, uh, I don't think you guys had even met in person yet. You just connected online. True. Um, so to see the journey you guys have been on from then till now, uh, where you've undoubtedly got one of the biggest and most active communities of Google Ads specialists, uh, in the form of the PPC hub, it's been really inspiring. And as we were talking before we switched on the mics, I really love all the in person meetups and events that you guys are doing and also shout out to the videographer that you've hired for those events because they always do a sick job and make me jealous that I'm not there when I see the recap videos.

Speaker A: Nice, man. Well, we need to get you on the next one, but we'll talk after. But I appreciate it, man. It's been an awesome ride and it's definitely been cool to uh, be on this together with you guys. As you said, we've done many webinars, podcasts and things things together. So, yeah, excited for whatever, uh, else will come for us.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I think, um, it's clear that I think you guys have got to where you are today because you have a commitment to sharing the advice and insights that actually work well for you. And that's why I'm so glad to have you on the podcast because I know when it comes to you and Bob, there's never any fluff, there's never any bs. It's always kind of straightforward, practical advice based on firsthand experience, which is what this show is all about. So, um, really looking forward to getting into it today. But for anyone listening, Miles, um, is there anything that you'd advise, uh, them to check out? So one thing I will say is we're going to drop a few links in the episode description. So you'll find a link to Miles's LinkedIn profile. You'll also find a link to the PPC Edge newsletter which we publish every Monday and Friday. Uh, and if you are interested in checking out the PPC Hub, uh, there'll be a link in the description for that as well. Um, but is there anything else that you guys have coming up over the next few months that you'd like to let people know about?

Speaker A: Uh, well, thanks for the opportunity anyways, but uh, not really. Um, there's always a lot going on PPC Hub. Um, it's always on, it's never ending. Uh, but we don't have a big. Well actually in December we're launching our new T shaped ads which is uh, I guess an extension of what we're going to be talking about today. M but I don't want to make it a commercial pitch or a promotion or anything. Um, and next year in September we're back with our second PPC Summit event, uh, live, like live conference this time, two days instead of one and it's going to be in beautiful Lisbon, Portugal. So that's something that we're really looking forward to. Yeah, awesome. We have an awesome location at LX Factory. Um, so that's probably the biggest thing that we're going to be working on in the next couple of months. Uh, but there's always things that we're dropping in the PPC Hub. New workshops, new courses, stuff like that, but nothing major. Like the last time we or the first time we spoke when we were working on the Google Ads Masterclass, that was crazy as well.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, intense. We're going to be talking about becoming a T shaped Google Ad specialist. Uh, so we'll get straight into it here and uh, you have said in the past that being a T shaped Google Ad specialist is the ultimate way to future proof your career. So could you start off by explaining why you think that is and what you think the problems are with the kind of traditional PPC specialist model?

Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. I think uh, maybe I can explain the model first. Like what is it actually to be T shaped? Because uh, we didn't invent the framework of a T shaped specialist but we applied it to T shaped Google Ads and I guess coined the term T shaped Google Ad specialist or at least I hadn't heard it anywhere before. But if you look on the web you can find anything from T shaped marketers or um, people with other, in other industries with T shaped skills and if you have at all, um, explain why that is relevant in the PPC industry today. In uh, in a second after sort of giving the definition, um, traditional regular specialists, they have one core specialism which is in our case Google Ads. But if you're doing, you know, you guys are, this is the podcast for paid media. So it uh, could also be you're doing meta ads or, or display or whatever it is that is your core specialization, um, and you don't really have any other skills on top of that because you're responsible for managing your campaigns. Google Ads, meta ads, et cetera, et cetera. Um, and T shape specialists, they have uh, it's in the shape of a T because their core ah, specialization, that's something that they have deep skills in. Uh, so for us for example Google Ads, you know all about it, deep specialization, uh, from tracking to targeting, uh, ads keywords, like everything that goes into managing Google Ads campaigns. But then on top of that you stack broad knowledge of a lot of skills that are complementary to your core specialization. And so um, I think why T shaped Google Ad specialists are m. So yeah, are just so great at their work is because they not only look at themselves like okay, I need to manage Google Ads campaigns, I need to know all there is about it. But I'm also going to be looking at other complementary skills like for example landing page optimization, uh, creating irresistible offers, uh, positioning, uh, auditor channel expertise and having broad knowledge to understand it well enough to be able to spot the opportunities and bottlenecks that you might not see when you're only focusing on your core specialization. And um, I think why this matters now especially is because well everyone knows AI is just disrupting everything. It's been going on for a while with automation, especially in Google Ads. It's been going on for a long time. And what we've seen as a result of that is that um, more and more of the things that we used to do manually as specialists are now being done by the AI, by automation, by Google and the controls that we are used to having are just disappearing. So just as an example, for example, uh, when I started my career in 2018 it was all about managing or uh, creating a lot of different campaigns. Like your campaign structures would be super granular. Um, you would almost have one uh, campaign for well all the different product categories and then even multiply by location, maybe even devices. If you grew up in that time, you know how big like your account setups were. Now with AI, uh, and with automation, smart bidding, all that stuff, um, it's become much more simplified. So as a result, um, and this is just one of the examples how automation has taken over a lot of the manual work as a result now it's much more about consolidation. How can we combine data within a few campaigns so that the algorithm smart bidding has more data to work with, because that's how it thrives, is that if it has more data then it's likely that your results are going to be better. Um, and so as a result of all this automation and the controls that are being taken away, um, you can ask yourself like, okay, what is still my edge as a, as a specialist? How am I, um, how am I going to continue to deliver value to my clients if the things that I was used to doing that delivered value to my clients are now being done by Google or by the AI or automation or whatever? And so because all those things are being taken away now and are disappearing, uh, I think that your edge as a specialist which used to come from in platform work inside the uh, ad interface, it's just kind of disappearing. And as a result of that you need to broaden your horizon and look at, okay, what are the other things that I can help my clients with now that the majority of the things inside the ad platform are being automated. And so you can start to look into for example uh, landing page optimization as I said, which is ultimately one of the biggest levers for, for your results, which it has always been. But we have um, um, traditionally been super busy inside the ad interface because it just asks for our attention, you know, manual ad testing procedures, uh, all the campaign structure, things like I said, like granular, ah, targeting or even with search terms making sure that you're targeting all the right search terms as keywords. But now even with broad match AI Max, um, pmax, all those things are being done automatically to a certain degree. So um, we think that you still have your core specialization as a specialist. Um, and I'm just going to say Google Ad specialist because that's what, what I am, what we focus on. But you can layer this on top of any other specialization that you have. Um, and so for T Shape, Google Ad specialists, they still have their core specialization in Google Ads that they know all about, that you need to know all about because that is the, the foundation for your entire career. But then on top of that you start to layer those complementary skills like I said, to become more well rounded so that it becomes easier for you to see opportunities for your clients. Um, but there's one misconception that a lot of people have and they think that you need to become sort of, this makes you sort of a generalist because you're now next to Google Ads, you're learning about other channels, about landing pages, about offers, but unit economics, stuff like that. Um, but it's actually the opposite because you still have your core specialization, but by layering all those other things on top, that is how you find your unique skill set. Um, that's I guess the essence of the T shape Google Ad specialist. Still having the core specialization in Google Ads, but then making sure that you broaden your skill set beyond that, um, to be able to drive better results because the majority of the results are now driven outside the ad account instead of inside.

Speaker B: Nice. I think just that point about, um, conversion optimization. I think you shared a newsletter today where you were talking about a member of the PPC hub who kind of applied these principles and delivered something like a 82% increase in conversion rates when he, when he tweaked the client's landing page. Um, um, and I think, yeah, there's a lot of other, as you mentioned in your answer there, there's a lot of other different skills that you can tap into there to really, to really make a difference. Um, but thinking about your own career personally, um, were you always interested in other areas or did you go through a process where you felt like, oh, I'm very all in on Google Ads and I really kind of need to broaden things out a bit? Like, how did that work for you personally?

Speaker A: Yeah, I guess it's somewhere in the middle because I started my career in 2018, as I said, with the traineeship at an agency. And of course the first year or so it was all Google Ads because it's a tough game to learn, it's a tough skill, uh, set to master. So the first year was all about just in platform Google Ads. And even at that time, um, uh, we had more controls than we have now, so I guess it was necessary. But it wasn't that. I saw it from the beginning how important uh, external factors are to your results. So no, I definitely worked on my core specialization which is Google Ads. In the beginning I didn't do anything else like display ads or meta or other channels. No SEO. I, uh, was trained as a trainee in just doing Google Ads and so I continued to do that. Um, but I guess as I started to become more, um, um, more experienced and more mature in my skill set, I definitely started to see that. Okay, but this is still only just one piece of the puzzle. Um, and I guess I'm just naturally a super curious person. Um, I have my, my bookshelf here. Uh, so many, so many books on all kinds of different topics. Uh, I guess I'm also a T shaped sort of person like that. Um, and I like to learn not only about marketing. I have a lot of marketing sales books, but there's also productivity or mindset relationships or, but even copywriting or well, other, other types of, uh, other types of skills are in there as well. Um, and because I was always so curious about other things, I started to, I started to see like, wait, there's much more than just Google Ads. And even um, uh, as when I started to learn um, about uh, or when I started to create my content on LinkedIn, which is, I don't know, maybe 20, 20 ish, I started with that. There was also one of the things like I started to notice, uh, because I was working on my own content writing. Uh, I wanted to develop my writing habit, my writing skill, and also because of that, that had nothing to do with Google Ads at all. But I noticed like, wait, if for myself as a freelancer, I'm uh, starting to drive inbound leads for myself through LinkedIn. Why am I sort of devaluing organic content for my clients? You know, it just started to open my, my eyes on. But there's so much more than just your own channel and your own channel expertise. Um, so I don't really know if there was one sort of epiphany moment, but I guess it just grew over time. And um, definitely one of the um, bigger turning points for me was when I started to work together with Bob, um, because I always was confident in my own, in my own ability. But then I saw Bob and he's just always operating on a, on a, on an entirely different level. So super perfectionistic. He will never deliver anything that is not like 10 out of 10. Um, and that is his strong suit. And one of the things that he has always done and he was more active in Legion, was always active in Ecom, um, but he was always doing landing pages for his client because he knew like, okay, if I can take control of that, um, that's where the biggest gains are to be made, especially in simple automated account structures. Um, so that also opened my eyes from seeing what he was doing to like, yeah, I definitely see the value of those external, um, external factors. And then, yeah, um, I don't know, it was probably around that time when I started to read Alex Ramosi's $100 million offers book. And that also opened my eyes once again to how the first step always is the offer. Um, and I just started to think about all the clients that I had worked, uh, with in the past that were just having trouble scaling and retroactively, I could see like, yeah, it was probably an offer issue or pricing issue or landing page issue, positioning issue much more than it was that we weren't targeting the right keywords or anything like that, you know.

Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. Um, it's very easy to get lost in the, the weeds, so to speak, of the Google Ads interface. And that's what you're paying close attention to and that's what you're optimizing towards. And you kind of have blinkers on that, become blind to, as you said, all these other things, which in many cases are the limiting factor, uh, rather than the campaign structure.

Speaker A: So for sure, maybe one thing to add there is that, um, because I'm talking a lot about external factors, sometimes people think that I'm saying that your core specialization and what you're doing inside of Google Ads is not important, but that is definitely still super important. You know, you need to have the right conversion tracking, um, having, uh, make sure that your hygiene is in order, your targeting is in place, uh, your ads are written correctly, and all the things that go in the account structure needs to be good. All those things are really, really important. Um, but there's only still so much that you can do these days. You don't want to over tweak, over optimize there. Um, and sometimes you can get a few percent, a few percent increase in performance from uh, you know, for example, excluding more search terms. Or you can think like, okay, what is the, um. Um, I got this from Bob because he sent me a podcast from Alex Ramosi a couple of weeks ago in which he spoke about the difference between optimizers and maximizers. An optimizer is someone who is just constantly in Google Ads. I, uh, started to think about what does that look like in Google Ads? I guess an optimizer is someone who has his or her account and they're just constantly thinking, okay, what can I tweak? Where are the 10, 20, 30% gains? Then you have the maximizers and maximizers. They're constantly thinking, not like, what is the only thing that I can tweak inside my account for 10, 20, 30% gains. But what is it outside that gives me the outsized returns, uh, for maybe 100%, 200%, 300% return, which, um, sounds uh, like a lot. But it's not. When you start to optimize landing pages and offers and positioning and better copywriting, more persuasive copywriting, uh, layering human psychology into those things um, then it's not um, uh, uncommon to increase your conversion rates by 3x by 300% just by doing that on uh, your landing page. So I guess T shaped Google Ad specialists, they definitely make sure that they optimize but they're also maximizers 100%. That's I guess the biggest um, mindset shift as a T shape specialist because you're now looking beyond just Google Ads and you're out, you're sort of leaving the bubble or the tunnel vision that you have. You start to broaden your horizon to what else is possible and where are the really like the big gains to be made.

Speaker B: So for anyone that is in that position where they do have that kind of deep knowledge and specialism in Google Ads and they're thinking about branching out. Um, you know, you've touched on a lot of different areas that you've explored yourself from copywriting to landing page optimization to thinking about offers. Um, there's a lot of different avenues to go down here. And how would you advise someone on figuring out, okay, what's the first steps that I can take given my own unique background and skill set to kind of start broadening my um, my value proposition to clients.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. So, um, I guess the, a good starting point would be, and I'll repeat, like first and foremost you have your own expertise, your own specialization which in our case is Google Ads. But you could also being doing meta ads or other channels. Then you start to look at okay, that's my core, what can I layer on top so that together it becomes a. In the middle you have your sort of your unique skill set of the combination of those two or three or Google Ads plus other skills. Um, I guess a good place to start. I can give some examples of where we think that the value is in the market uh, these days. But I think a good starting point would just be two things. What are you good at and what do you enjoy? Because I've given some examples of the things that I enjoy uh, diving into like for example again landing pages, uh, offers positioning, uh, persuasive, uh, copywriting. That's just personally the types of things that I find interesting and find joy in learning about and applying. But uh, I know a lot of other people that are not into those things and you have others who are much more technical or they are into AI and into creating workflows and simplifying things with systems or other people who really want, who really enjoy making sure that the data is in place. So there's all kinds of different Routes uh, that you can take and there's no right or wrong here. And that's I think also the beauty of the framework of the T shaped Google Ad specialist because there's so many different uh, skill sets that you can layer on top of your existing Google Ads skill set. Um, but we have identified uh, five um, sort of T shaped profiles that we are also expanding upon in the PPC hub. Um, and the first one is um, the profile of the media buyer which is basically a uh, specialist who combines Google Ads with meta ads or other performance channels to make sure that you can scale with an integrated full funnel uh, advertising strategy which I'm sure that a lot of people who are listening to this podcast are also either doing or interested in. And it's one of the easier uh, profiles to develop because um, well it's easy to demonstrate your value because you're not just managing Google Ads but you're helping your clients. And a lot of clients these days they want to work with one specialist or one agency who can do everything for them. Um, um and so your value as the, the media buyer T shaped profile is basically making sure that you um, well drive results across the entire marketing funnel. That's one. Then another one could be for example the, the search specialists where you combine Google uh, ads and SEO or, or even geo these days with all the AI search um, I, it's, it just baffles me how many companies are still working in silos, uh have their, their, their search teams working in silos, not talking to each other, uh, only having their own KPIs. So for the Google Ads guys they're only looking at roas but they're not considering anything on the organic side, um, and constantly competing with each other. If you can become the bridge between those two that's definitely something that is um, well a lot of added value as a specialist. Um, and thirdly the conversion booster T shaped uh, specialist profile which is Google Ads plus CRO or landing pages. Um, which is basically the thing that I've explained what I enjoy doing. Um, and it's also again super easy pitch because you can just go to your clients and say hey um, would you be interested? Or maybe even not even a client could also be a prospect. You just say would you be interested in running a few a B tests and if it's success for free and if it's successful we can start to talk business and if it's not then uh, well now you know that at least your control variant is already pretty good. Um, and Then it's not uncommon to see 10, 20, 30% increase in conversion rate uplifts by just tweaking a few small tweaks in the hero section only on landing page or um, optimizing the forms or the checkout process or something like that. And if you can get those uh, small wins initially, then you can start to um, upsell this service to, to your clients. Um, that's, that's another one that, you know, I think personally, uh, maybe I'm biased because I enjoy it, but uh, maybe it's uh. I think that is one of the areas where you can drive the most amount of value for your clients because there's just so many landing pages are just totally like crap, say lightly.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, then the fourth profile is the um, we uh, have the data expert and just combining Google Ads with advanced tracking, making sure that all the tracking systems are in order. Good dashboards, good visualizations, making sure that you feed the right systems, uh, the feed the right data into the systems, um, making sure that you understand attribution holistically, uh, and all kinds of other things. And then there's the fifth one, which I kind of forgot. So maybe we'll get to that later. But uh, that's at least it doesn't really matter what the profiles are. It's just to get you thinking like, um, what skill sets are in demand right now and what are clients asking for. Um, and maybe that is something that's not enough supply for in the market right now. Just. And it doesn't have to be something that is commercially attractive. It can also be something you just enjoy doing if you really enjoy, um. Oh, the other one was automated with AI. Yeah, I was going to say if you really enjoy simplifying things with AI or building your own tools, like you see with geert God on LinkedIn or uh, Alfred Simon or uh, Kuda. Other um, guys, they're just building cool things to make it easier for themselves to drive results for their clients. That could also be something that you really enjoy. And um, yeah, just start with what are you good at naturally? What do you enjoy? Start to layer those things on top of your Google Ad skill set. And having curiosity, of course, like that's I guess one of the most important things, uh, at all, uh, ever. Uh, because the more curious you are, it's just like you want to learn more and the more you learn then the better you get.

Speaker B: Yeah, man, that's. It's so key. Like that enjoyment aspect is like really crucial. Like that's ultimately what drives you to become excellent at whatever it is that you do. And it applies to so many different areas of life, like even thinking about like exercise or whatever. It's like you need to find the thing that you enjoy doing because if it's not the thing that you enjoy doing, you're not going to stick with it and you're not going to become good at that thing. And everyone is different in that regard. So it's not trying to fit a, uh, square peg into a round hole. You need to think like, what is it that I enjoy? So I think that's pretty, pretty solid overview of like the different options that are there on the table. And as you said, there is like quite a diverse range of different avenues that you can go down there. Um, but to think about the challenges that lay ahead for marketers, um, I'm not trying to be all doom and gloom, ah, just trying to be pragmatic and honest about what the realities of AI and automation mean for marketers, but also just for, for you know, the job market broadly. But, um, if someone, you know, is listening to this podcast and they don't start kind of making moves towards becoming a more T shaped Google Ad specialist, what is the actual risk here? Like what could potentially happen in the next couple of years? Um, and why can't they just keep trucking along like they have been doing up till now?

Speaker A: I guess the biggest risk is that your edge is just going to disappear. And with your edge, I mean like you're differentiating, uh, your competitive edge compared to other specialists. Um, if you're, what you're doing right now, if the added value you bring to your clients only comes from what you do inside the ad platform, then I think within a couple of years it's going to be really hard for you to convince clients that you are the specialist that they should be working with. And again, as you said, I don't want to be doom and gloom either. Um, yeah, but we need to be honest. Um, and I think more and more is going to become simplified and automated within Google Ads. I don't think it's going to be like the ultimate AI picture, uh, as people have painted it, it's just like, okay, you enter your URL and that's it. I don't think we're going to see that anytime soon, but I do think more and more of the controls that we were used to having are going to disappear if they haven't been, if they haven't disappeared, uh, already. So I think that's probably the biggest Risk is just relying too much on a skill set that is losing its value. Um, and it's a, yeah, it's, it's a, it's a shift in how you, how you look at yourself as a specialist and what you think your responsibilities are. Um, also another book that I enjoyed, I don't have the physical one. I read it. It's um, Jocko, um, Willink.

Speaker B: Um, what's that, 4:00am every morning?

Speaker A: That's another one, I think. But, um, what's the name? Uh, that everything is your responsibility. Uh, extreme ownership.

Speaker B: Oh, yes.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So taking ownership for your client's results, even if it lies outside of the things that is sort of expected from you as a specialist. I think that's the biggest mindset shift that you need to go through because a lot of specialists are kind of stuck in. But my job is doing Google Ads and that's it. And that is, I guess, true to a certain degree. But if you really want to over deliver and continue to deliver value to your clients, then in my opinion, the only solution becomes broadening your skillset and going beyond the ad platform. Um, because otherwise, in a few years, there's just not enough for you to justify making hours for your clients and sending them a retainer every single month.

Speaker B: Nice. Yeah, I like that you've, um, referenced that Jocko Willink book. And you know, you've got your bookshelf there beside you. And I know you, um, often share about the kind of the best business books that you've read. Um, and yeah, you touched on ones that are helpful. But one that I saw, a book that I really like and really resonated with me was, uh, the Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday. And I think you mentioned about, you know, thinking about mindset and how you approach certain things. And this book is basically saying that like, you know, it's a book about stoicism, but you can't control what goes on in the world, but you can control how you respond to, um, the things that you're presented with. Um, stoicism, it's not about no emotion at all. It's kind of maximizing positive emotion and minimizing the bad. Um, I like that book a lot. And to what you were saying there about, ah, a lot of people have this mindset of, okay, well, I do Google Ads and I'm comfortable doing this and I like doing this and this is the way that I want to continue in that sense. The obstacle is kind of the effort and time that is required to go and do the hard work to ultimately broaden your skill set. And a lot of people might have resistance about that. Um, that book is helpful for reframing, uh, your mindset. But is there anything else that you'd say either about the Obstacle is the Way or any other books that you might reference that are helpful for people, uh, who might be wanting to kind of learn and grow?

Speaker A: Absolutely. Man. Um, I like that you pointed that out. I have it here. I see it. Uh, it's a nice. The purple one. I like the COVID with the things on the front, the golden, um, like Julius Caesar, uh, type things.

Speaker B: Roman vibes. I don't know what they're called, but yeah, yeah, it's so cool.

Speaker A: So cool. Um, but yeah, I have that, um. Let's see. I can just pick one. One that um, really meant a lot for. For me personally, I guess. Um, the four hour work week is where it all started for me. Um, and yes, shout out to Tim Ferriss. Um, it's. It's not about working only four hours per week and then laying on the, on. On the beach and drinking your, your, Your cocktail pina colada. You're drinking your pina colada and that's it. Or working on your laptop on the beach. Like that's. You don't want to do that. Sand and sun everywhere. It sucks. It's the worst. You don't want to do that ever. Um, but what I liked about it is just, um, learning, uh, to challenge yourself to do things smarter. Uh, creating systems for yourself, uh, maybe in your work, but also your daily life. Um, and that book really opened my eyes to, um, just new possibilities because I had never. When I read it, I don't know when this book was published, but, uh, he was one of the first people to write about creating Systems and hiring VAs. And um, yeah, he's done all kinds of epic things by sort of hacking. Um, his approach to things that stuck out to me. Um, maybe Ikigai. I don't know if you know this book.

Speaker B: No, no.

Speaker A: Let me just. One sec. Yeah, yeah. 100% recommend this. Uh, the Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life by Hector Garcia. Ah. And Francesc Miraes. Um, this one. And the premise is. Yeah, the premise of Ikigai.

Speaker B: Oh yeah.

Speaker A: Here on the back you see it. It's like um, the Japanese Secret to Long and Happy Life with um, uh, ikigai. It's the intersection of slightly out of focus.

Speaker B: It just wants to stay on you.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's out of focus. I'll just read it um, the ikigai is the intersection of what you love, what the world needs, what you can be paid for and what you're good at. So your passion, your mission, your vocation or your profession. Um, and this, this book, um, I guess now that I look at it now I didn't think of this before but as a T shape specialist, what I said like find something that you enjoy and something that you're good at. Maybe you can layer on top of that is find uh, something what the world needs. So what are you good at, what do you enjoy, what what does the world need and what can you be paid for? It's basically the icky guy. Um, again I'm going to create an ikigai framework for T shape Google Ad specialist now because I think that's actually pretty, it's pretty neat. Um, because in the intersection of that you find your sort of what you're born for, what is your thing that is going to give you joy because you're doing something that you love. You're doing something that you're good at, which is always nice if you're good at something as you mentioned, if you're interested in it. But if you're good at it as well, you just want to keep going. Uh, if you can be paid for it because the world needs it, then you know, it's a skill set that is um, in demand. Then yeah, um, the sky really becomes the limit. So I guess that's a really solid book to pick up. Highly recommend it.

Speaker B: I just want to think about broader. So there's a lot of media attention these days. Like I'm getting bombarded on YouTube with endless videos about the AI apocalypse and all these jobs are going to disappear and you know, they publish these things because they know the, those types of headlines get clicks and people are interested in reading them. And I know there were some big AI first experiments at some companies like Duolingo and Klarna where they were like we're not hiring any people, we're going to just use chatbots to uh, replace our customer service team. And those things didn't go too well. Um, and they've actually admitted that they're going back to hiring real humans again when it comes to customer service. But you know, after that then we have seen recently the quite large scale layoffs at ah, tech giants like Amazon and Microsoft. And I think Amazon have said something like they want to cut 30,000 or 35,000. I can't remember the exact number but it's a lot of corporate jobs that they're looking to get rid of. And not just thinking about paid media and performance marketing specifically. But what's your take when it comes to AI and the job market? Like, is there any truth to these kind of almost sensationalist headlines that we're seeing? A lot.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's tough. Um, I guess it's, I'm m. A little bit in the middle because on one hand I do see why companies would want to do that. But on the other hand when I look at what AI is doing now or what people are doing with AI, I think there's a lot of BS online, a lot of fluff. Like you mentioned, like the headlines that are scoring clicks and on YouTube and blogs I see a lot of things like, uh, I built this AI tool in 24 hours and it's doing 50k mrr within the first week or so, something like that. Even if that is true, if your marketing is that good, then the product is probably just trash and all those people are going to churn after the first month because the product is just not good enough. Um, but that said, I do see that in the PPC hub. For example, I mentioned the examples of Alfred Simon, Geert Roth, uh, Kuda, Marconelius. I see all Mike Rhodes. Um, I see all kinds of different people that are leveraging AI for themselves. Um, and they're building their own tools and they're not building them to sell, but they're building them to manage their own time more efficiently. So I think, for example, take Geert, uh, or I'm pronouncing his way in the name, in the Dutch way. Gert. Gert Groot. That's how the English community calls him.

Speaker B: People like me who cannot speak properly.

Speaker A: Exactly. Um, he is managing upwards of 100 plus clients, small, small businesses. Uh, so he built his own uh, tool to be able to uh, talk to Claude or other uh, other AI tools and they help them. Uh, with AI, he can really easily create campaigns. He showed, showed us in the PPC hub can easily create campaigns, keywords, uh, exclude things, ads, all that stuff. And because of that he can manage way more clients in way less time, which he otherwise would not have been able to do. So for him his productivity really went up. So I guess, um, uh, something like he's m. He's really a maximizer in that sense. Um, so I guess if, if more people in the corporate workspaces would start to work like a guy like Gert, then okay, you can make a case for, you can start laying people off potentially because the productivity of the team is going up. But if you're just using ChatGPT a little bit here and there, then that definitely doesn't cut it. So I guess it all depends on the average output level of the team at that time. Initially before AI and with AI, um, but I think we're way, way, way off from sort of a AI apocalypse or, um, I don't know what they call it, but like sort of super intelligence from AI, where it's going to do everything for everyone, um, instantly and at no cost. I think that's really far away. And I really like the example that you gave from customer service because actually today we, um, applied for a new credit card for PPC Mastery. I won't mention the company, I guess it wouldn't be fair. But, um, we ordered it and I wanted to know the status of the application. So what did I do? I called them, I called the number. They said, if you have any questions, just call the number here. So I call. I got into this AI Chatbot menu. So it's picking up. Okay, if you're calling for 1, 2, 3 options, just say, say what you want to call for. So I go like, uh, status application. And then he's like repeating the same message. So you can, uh, choose these three options and then, okay, I have to do it in another way. Just type 2, go to Applications. Then at the end, uh, he asked, uh, something like, okay, are you calling to see the, to see the status of your application? Say yes or no. So I say yes and silent for five seconds or something. And he repeats it again. So I get stuck in this AI loop. And at the end I wasn't helped, and I just hung up, was super frustrated. So it sounds really nice, like, yeah, we can replace all our customer service, uh, or at least 80% of it with AI tools. But then the AI tool itself is just pure trash. So it doesn't work in practice. So I guess in theory. And the headlines, they score, of course, um, because it sounds intriguing, but I don't, man, I have yet to see big companies that are actually leveraging AI in that way where it makes sense. And I think even one more thing, I think people are going to start, become start. Are going to start becoming really tired of AI and being held by AI and reading AI content that I think, uh, we're going to see a big resurgence of how happy we are when we're actually interacting with a real human, which is sort of, um, yeah. Which is crucial for the future of the Internet. 100% because it's so. Well, that's what you guys are all. You know this more than I do at Lunio. You know how much the Internet traffic

Speaker B: is going crazy at the minute.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's just bots interacting with bots. So I think, uh, more and more people are going to become much more happier when they're actually talking to a real human, especially on customer service or other things. Tonight, I don't think, um, we're going to see. Even if we're going to see mass layoffs, I think that's all going to be corrected. Or maybe those mass layoffs were already a correction in some way that they maybe had hired too many people for too many roles, which would make sense and they'd have to get rid of some departments or some, some parts of the departments. Um, but it would be too easy, in my opinion, to say, like, yeah, we're just going to do that because we can now do it with AI Doesn't. I don't, I don't think it works like that in most cases.

Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. Um, and I think like the point that you made about like, we are quite far away from super intelligence, despite what the, you know, the headlines might say. And the other thing is like, you know, LLMs and AI is based on the sum total of human knowledge and understanding and outputs, and therefore it cannot be truly original or truly creative or come up with a new scientific theory or stuff that doesn't already exist in the real world. So for that reason, there is still immense value in human creativity and human ideas and coming up with fresh concepts and ideas that haven't existed before, because that's something that AI can't currently do. It can look at what already exists and spit out something that is an approximation of what's out there. But I do agree that human creativity and uh, input is going to be important. Um, just in terms of one other thing that was in the headline and it's interesting to me was just Zuckerberg releasing this vision for this kind of fully automated future of advertising where essentially all your creative is designed by AI, the campaign is run by AI and it's like, uh, as he's pitching the vision of, it's like anyone can go on and hit go and run a successful campaign. I know at the time when he announced that the meta stock price did jump and there seemed to be people excited out there about, oh, well, this means that we can make massive efficiency improvements in terms of the number of people that are required to run these campaigns. But do you think that there is any truth to that or is that something that is just hype?

Speaker A: Probably a lot of hype. But I guess from the marketer perspective, because if you, if you look at it from the SMB perspective, like small medium businesses, um, like for example, if you look at what did pmax do for small businesses in terms of giving um, them the feeling that they can actually set up and run their own Google Ads campaigns, even though when uh, a business owner would launch their own pmax campaigns, it's probably not set up correctly or managed correctly, they can still do it. So for them the perception, especially if they're talking to reps, uh, instead of actual specialists, um, they will probably think that they're doing something, really doing something. Right. But then once you start to dive into the actual uh, creative um, uh, reports and you see the PMAX videos, the auto generated assets, they're like crazy. Like that's what I made when I was 12 in PowerPoint, you know, it's even worse than that. So um, I guess with Meta, if they actually launch something like that for themselves, I guess for Meta, it's going to be uh, beneficial because a lot of businesses are just going to be able to launch their own campaigns. And I'm sure with all the developments in AI, how fast it's going, I'm sure that the creatives will at least be somewhat good to a certain degree after a while. In the beginning you usually see it's like not good and then it becomes better and that's just the nature of how AI tools develop. Um, but then there's always the expertise from the marketer that can see that it's actually not that good and we can tweak it and make it better like this. I guess I think that's all that's always going to be needed. Um, so yeah, uh, there's two perspectives that I look at it from and the first one is from the marketers and I say like not this, it doesn't make sense at all. But then from Meta and their perspective of helping uh, businesses or at least making money from businesses, um, getting more business to advertise, then it would make sense for them as a play to um, just make more money. But if it's going to be good, I don't, I don't think so.

Speaker B: Yeah, that was a great comparison you made to pmax in terms of, yes, the perception might be that, oh, look, I'm, I'm doing this myself and I'm like doing an okay job. And I think the key thing Is that is like you're doing an okay, okay job. And doing an okay job in, in this space means that you inevitably waste a lot of money and the amount of money that's wasted starts to scale up as you grow as a company. But yeah, to your point, great for shareholders at uh, Meta if there's more advertisers, um, running campaigns. So I'm conscious of time here and I just want to wrap things up with a final question. Um, so if there's one piece of advice you could give to a marketer out there who's worried about these headlines and about this idea that AI might take my job, what um, would you say to them to help reframe the situation and kind of take action?

Speaker A: Yeah, um, I guess. Well, if we go back to what we're actually talking about today, I think the biggest thing that you can do is start to diversify your skill set. Still have the core specialization in your core expertise, Google Ads, meta ads, etc. But start layering other skills on top of that. Start learning about other skills you don't have to learn. You don't have to know everything about, for example landing pages or offers or positioning. Um, you just want to have broad enough understanding so that you can see where the opportunities and the bottlenecks are for clients. And then you can always work together with other specialists, uh, who have their core specialization in that specific field. Um, but I think the more broad skills you can stack on top of your core expertise, I think the more, uh, diversified and unique your skill set is going to be and the more, um, future proof against AI you will be as a, as a specialist. But if you don't do that and you stick to only having your core channel expertise, then I think in the upcoming years it's going to be, it's going to be difficult for you. I won't say you're going to be replaced, but I think it's going to be difficult for you to, to justify the hours that you make for clients because they are going to start asking those questions like, yeah, but what did you actually do? And I'm sure that you have, if you're listening to this, if you're a specialist, you have had that question from a client before or it is in the back of your mind somewhere. So, uh, just diversifying your skill set, working on your T shaped skill set, I think that is the best thing that you can do for your career moving forward.

Speaker B: Nice. Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Miles. It's been great, um, catching up and a lot for marketers there to think about for sure. The one thing that's guaranteed next year is there's going to be a whole lot of change. I think it's only a matter of time before DSA or dynamic search ad campaigns get replaced with Aimax. Uh, I bet that's coming next year, but who knows what other surprises Google have in store? Um, so, yeah, really important to think about how you position yourself and deliver value in the new era that we're moving into. Uh, before we close, Miles, is there anything else you'd like to mention or let people know about?

Speaker A: Um, not really, man. You can follow me on LinkedIn. We do a lot of cool stuff, physical, uh, meetups, um, for BPC Hub members, but we also want to do more for the wider community. So just connect with me on LinkedIn. If you listen to this and we haven't connected yet, just send me a, um, line, uh, that you came through the podcast and then, uh, yeah, that's all, man. Thank you so much for having me. Really enjoyed this.

Speaker B: Nice. Perfect. Yeah, all the links to the things that Miles mentioned will be in the episode description. But yeah, thanks again. Been a pleasure.

Speaker C: That's it for this episode of the Paid Media Lab. Thanks for tuning in. If you found it helpful, hit the subscribe button. Um, to get the next episode as soon as it's released. Subscribing costs nothing and it helps us bring you the best possible guests in the next season. And if you want more advice on how to boost your return on ad spend, head to Lunio AI, where you'll find loads more free tools, resources and guides. Lastly, if you know any other marketers who benefit from the tips in this episode, you can do them and us a favor by sending them the link to the show. That's all for this one and I'll see you in the next episode.