MBA2650 Extended Interview: Aaron Young - How The #1 Google Ads YouTuber Runs His Google Ads

25:21And that's how you'll drive the traffic through to those blog ones. Then also as well from there, like I said before, if you are running search ads, remember how I said that bottom up funnel? That's where it becomes important. So you're running your video and your display ads at the top. So what you're hoping and that you've seen your ads a lot, that they are then searching either your term that you're giving them, like a product knowledge term, like a little niche word that's around your unique selling point, or they're searching your brand. And that's how you're going to survive. So you're going to have to hit people a lot earlier.

25:53Historically, especially for SaaS businesses, they could have got away with maybe search and display. Now I'm saying you probably need search display, video, and potentially like a performance max campaign as well. So you're basically running everything through there. And that's becoming what we're calling the metaverse ACNL search. Incredible. So I just want to shift gears just a little bit. You've had a lot of success on YouTube. We have well over 100 ,000 subscribers on your channel, which I think is a feat in its own just because of your subject matter. You're doing Google ads. You're not doing trendy topics or movie reviews or anything like that.

26:32So typically, this is a dry topic. Why does anybody who's listening right now need to jump on YouTube and start creating videos? Yeah. Now, put this in context. So I've got a Google ads only channel. So like 99 % of my content is Google ads. Now, there's larger channels that have Google, they have digital marketing. But in terms of Google ads only, the next largest channel, apart from Google ads, is our new channel is I think 40 ,000. The average is, you know, and some of these guys have been going for years and years and years. So the reason for why I think, regardless of your niche, of why you should get involved inside of a Google, sort of YouTube, is the ability to connect with your audience.

27:12Now, some people think because my core sales and coaching business has grown so quickly, it happened off the back of a Google Ads campaign. I didn't start Google Ads until, on this business, until we were already doing$80 ,000 a month in revenue. And at that time as well, we hit our first 100K month when we had a YouTube channel that was under 20 ,000. I think it was 19 ,700. We hit our first$5 ,000 a month with 1 ,700 subscribers. We hit our first$10 ,000 a month with 2 ,700 subscribers. So the thing I love about YouTube is that you don't need a lot of views. If you do it right, you can connect directly with your audience.

27:54And the way I like to think about it is this, is that if you go to the method of you're just wanting to help your audience, you know there's a need, you're wanting to help them, they just start to reach out to you. And there's some mechanics, you've got to do it in the right way. You've got to be strategic about it. Like all of my videos from day one have always had a call to action. So they can download a free. And then it was just a matter of just me emailing and having starting conversations with people who had downloaded some of my free resources. So the thing I love about Google Ads is that you don't need a big audience to have a big business.

28:25I like that. So by running videos on YouTube, you can obviously take those videos, run ads. So those videos show on YouTube as an ad to grow your channel, but grow your presence, but also just grow your awareness of what you do. I don't recommend you running ads to grow your YouTube channel. And the reason for that is because if you think about the YouTube algorithm, it wants people to stay on that video for a long time. Yes, YouTube is search-based. People throw out the stat that it's the second biggest search-based platform in the world, which is true. That is a fact. I'm not denying that. But what they miss in that is that 70 % of all views don't come from YouTube search.

29:11They come from recommendations and they come from home screen placements. So if you're going to grow your YouTube channel, after the first four or five months, I no longer worried about SEO on my YouTube channel. For me, it's all about creating engaging content that I can link people up to watch not just one video of mine, but two or three videos of mine in the same session. Now, where that also gets to, and this is the thing that, especially if you're selling like an educational type product or even if you're serving a software as a service, if you can help someone with their first four or five problems and they apply your teaching or they apply your recommendations and it gets them along the road, they're not looking anywhere else to buy.

29:55They're coming to you. On top of that as well is they're willing to pay a higher price because there's a level of trust there. you've already helped them. So they're not looking at any, so you're not getting into price wars with other people. So I would go, if you're running a SaaS product and you can, if you're willing to like give away your, you know, your knowledge and give away into truly, truly help people, growth is, growth will happen. Some of my first videos that still rank, absolutely terrible in terms of production, audio, all of those things. But they're still in my top ranking videos because Google just because people engage them.

30:33So I've got this kind of saying is that high value content covers over a lot of flaws. And if you can truly help people, that comes back to your motivation as well. Remember how I said, for me, I knew my market and I felt so connected to them because I was them 15 years ago. When I was first launching my first business in 2010, we had put on other agencies. I had money down, invested in my business that I was going to lose if we didn't generate had enough. So I had a high level of, I just need to make this work. So that's where I went, they're my people that I want to serve. The people who are starting their business, launching the product, bootstrapping a brand or whatever they're doing together.

31:09I know how you feel. We may be in a different industry, but I know how you feel. And I want to give you the knowledge and people are happy to pay for that knowledge. I'm going to share a couple of pieces of ROI, return on investment. I would say since starting with YouTube, we just started YouTube in August of 2024. And I would love to hear a little bit about your ROIs as well. So my first ROI actually was when I did the math, you know, like when I was starting out, we were not getting a lot of views. I mean, at a month we'd get like 10 ,000 views or something like that. But then I did the math, how much would it cost me to get 10 ,000 views if I paid for it?

31:42You know, it costs you something like$3 a view or something like that, which is, you know,$30 ,000. Like, oh, wow. Okay. This is actually worth doing. Number one. The other thing is that by doing YouTube, by having full-length videos on YouTube, and we do it for the podcast, we then have so much content that we can then take those pieces of content, break them up, put them on Instagram, put them on TikTok, find the best moments, but not just to whatever, grow your audience in those platforms, but just to know what will resonate with your audience so that you can create more content like that. I'm incredibly surprised always when I see what actually blows up.

32:24Like I have a video on TikTok that got 134 ,000 views in three days and it's the most basic thing ever. It's like, it's not even mind blowing. It's like the, I would rank it as like one of the worst, worst pieces of information I shared. But people love it. People are just like, yes, amen, 100%. All this, you know, like so much engagement, so much, you know, so much sharing. I'm like, what? And it just makes me think, okay, maybe I need to understand who my audience, what really resonates with my audience. Maybe bring it down a couple of levels and just go a little deeper rather than going so wide.

32:58And I wouldn't be able to do that and find that out if I didn't actually create the videos in the first place for YouTube. So those are the ROIs for me, yeah. Yeah, and the thing I love about YouTube is that if you go into like YouTube studio, you can see the drop-offs and you can see the dips. So you can see where people, in an eight or 10 minute, however long your video is, you can go, people are dropping out here. You can also see where people scrub back to. So if you see the line going down and then you see it go up, you know that people are coming back and watching that time and time again.

33:28So that way you just start going, well, these are the – and that's why as well you can get so much data about what hooks are working, what introductions are working, things that I do in a video that people just don't like that and drop off. Yeah, no, it gives you so much more information that you can do. The other thing I love about YouTube as well is that it is truly evergreen content in that I get caught in this all the time where I see a funny reel or something like that. I won't pretend that it's deep. It's literally something stupid, but I can't find it again because when you're searching through all of Instagram to try and find it, and you search it, you can't do it.

34:01YouTube, you don't have that problem. There's an easier way for people to connect on YouTube with you. I'm always astonished how bad search is on social media. I personally don't consider YouTube social media because it's so good at search. it's so good at not only searching for other videos that like say for example i saw a funny stand-up comedian give a little bit and i know a few words that he said yeah i don't remember the person's name but i just search you know like funny a comedian talking about his in-laws over christmas and it'll come the first thing on the on the list of of search results is that video i can never do that with instagram i can never do that with tiktok it just doesn't it doesn't work the same way and that alone i think is a huge superpower yeah yeah i mean i even go with the social media platforms even if they had have had a filter on what you've watched previously to easily be able to access it but yeah you're exactly right and that's that's why now it also too like i'm not dogmatic about any of these platforms in the sense of i'm not going to be a you know uh you only do this or you only do that but you just got to be aware of the pros and cons of each one and that is a definite pro for youtube okay let's say somebody's listening right now they're like, okay, I want to go all in on YouTube.

35:12I want to start a YouTube channel. What are some resources that they can dive into? Where do they start? Like, do they do a video a week? What's your advice to them? Yeah. Okay. So a couple of things. I always like to look at it in the longterm where you go, you know, YouTube isn't a one month investment. You're not going to, it's not like, and this isn't me saying it, you know, Mr. Beast, the largest YouTuber, he says, you know, I think it was, there was a stat or something like, I can't remember how many videos is until he went viral. Yeah, something like 150 or something. Yeah, it was huge.

35:40But he was basically, no one's going to watch your first video. No one's going to care who you are. There's always people who blow up faster. But any channel that has reached a level of success, I've always seen growth is basically like flatline, flatline, flatline, flatline, flatline, flatline, you know, skyrocket. I think when I was at a conference last year, Colin and Samir, I don't know if you're aware of that. Great channel. Five and a half years before their current channel went off. Yeah. I believe it. I believe it. Yeah. Because they're so good at what they do. I feel like they probably were undiscovered for a very long time.

36:21Yeah. Now, someone like me, they're a much, much larger channel and a much, much larger niche. But I got that skyrocket in nine months. And I think what it comes down to is this, is that first step of you've got to have a real, real clear, defined need of who are you talking to and who you're reaching out to. Now, the good thing about it is people go, well, I'm in a really, really small niche. A lot of the times it's actually easier to get cut through in that smaller niche. Now, the rebound probably isn't as high, like once you get there. But if you can start really going, and I always come back to, I go, for me, it was with Google Ads.

36:59If I was starting my first Google Ads campaign, what are the core elements of education that I need to know to be able to run my first Google Ads campaign? So for whoever's listening, if you go, whatever it is that you want to start teaching on, whatever it is you want to do, you know, what are the five core bits of information that you need to be able to complete that task? One thing I would say just for longevity, I do think you need to do at least one video a week. I started with two videos a week. But the more thing I look at, what would be worse for you to start three videos a week and then burn out after three months.

37:29So I kind of go, what's the right cadence that works for you, where you go, I can do this for the next two to three years before this before I see the investment on it. So I generally go for most people, that's gonna be one or two videos a week. The other thing I go about it too, unless you're doing podcasting, like long, long form, if you're doing more educational style videos, you really want to be hitting it at about eight to 12 minutes. And I'll break down to why that is the case as well. But one of the main reasons as well is if you've got like a three-step process, rather than releasing it all in one 30 minute video, you're better off releasing it in three 10 minute videos.

38:01So then you've got three weeks of content as opposed to one week of content. And then there are actually some real other clear algorithmic, I think that's the right word, or I think that's a word, algorithmic, we made it up, benefits for it. And that is that you need to be having a minimum watch time of a video of four minutes. That's kind of like a golden, like an initial marker that YouTube gives. If you can have a watch time of four minutes, they go, yep, that's a pretty good video that they're watching. The other core metric on that is an average duration or an average duration of the total length of video of 50%.

38:35You can get away with 35%, but 50%. So now you start thinking about if you're a new YouTuber, what's going to be easier for you to release an eight minute video so if you can get 50 that's the four minute mark that you need is it going to be easier for you to keep someone's attention for 50 of your video on an eight minute video or a 30 minute video and and then from there the other flip side from that is as well as rather than you having one video you've got three videos and what you can even do from there is you can link up those videos at the end remember how I was saying it's all about watch time right you can so generally what a big hack that it wasn't from from me I picked it up from another youtuber that you basically release in the, especially in the teaching space, you release once to part of the journey, and then you go now to watch the next step, go through and watch this video.

39:19And I physically say at the end of my videos, so let's just say, for example, Google ads, we do a video on keyword research, we go, okay, the next step is ad copy, go through and watch this video right here. And I literally say it at the end of the video, because I'm wanting to link people up to watch not just one of my videos, but multiple videos, because then that's basically what the algorithm wants. It wants you to start on the platform. So I'd say start with at least one video a week. Practically as well, there's some great tools like TubeBuddy, which is only available within YouTube. If you're not on YouTube, there's also Answer the Public, where you can go and write your topic and it spits out all the different questions that people are searching and people asking.

39:55They're great to cheap or free resources that can really help you launch it out. For anyone who's wanting to start, what I'd say is get a Google Sheet open and come up with your first 50 videos. The other thing I'd say too is don't think, like I release my core elements, teaching videos. I release like, so for example, a core teaching on how to set up a Google search campaign. I release three videos of that every year. So don't be afraid to release the same video over and over again, just with a slightly different topic, slightly different angle, and you can do it time and time and time again.

40:29Should anybody worry about if they should focus on long form? When I say long form, I mean, like the normal YouTube videos, like the eight to 10 minutes, or should they be doing shorts as well? Should they focus only on shorts? Is shorts something that they should be worrying about or does it depend on their business? It depends on their business. So I would say if you've got a really good Instagram or TikTok profile, you're crazy not to bring that over to the shorts platform on YouTube and just start seeing what sticks. If you're coming from the podcasting type platform like you, it makes sense to go straight into long form podcasting on YouTube.

41:04You know, if you're really, really like what I did with Google Ads, you really want to teach people, I think a better way of doing that is through that 8 to 12 minute, you know, what we would still call long form, but long form educational style teaching on YouTube. And the reason for that is because, you know, especially if you're taking people through advanced steps on what they need to do, that's really, really hard to do in a, you know, one to three minute video. So that's why I think that's sweet spot. So it just comes back to, once again, like I started with 8 to 10 minute videos. I've now just started, I've done the reverse.

41:36Rather than starting a podcast, I've just started an interview series on YouTube, which I'll then release to a podcast later down the track. That's great. So I want you to put on your therapist hat or maybe a coach hat or whatever you got. I'm going to share with you a challenge. Maybe it's a more of a personal challenge that I'm having on YouTube, something that I've discussed in depth with my team, maybe even had some pretty lively discussions. about it. I have a visceral, you know, effect or reaction to this Mr. Beastification of YouTube. Everybody looking like the same. Everybody in my niches, thumbnails look exactly alike.

42:17They got the title with the blue background and the big face on the left. And, you know, and I have a hard time with just doing something just because it works. Oh, it's working for them. Let's just do the same thing. And then we're both and you just become vanilla. I just don't want to do that. and I know it's probably hurting my channel. I don't want to also just kind of look like a caricature of myself. I want to elevate my brand. I want to make sure that I'm not just doing things for the sake of, you know, that's what the algorithm wants or whatever it might be. Am I mistaken? Am I, and for me, I feel like YouTube is more of a branding exercise, as much a branding exercise as it is a search or traffic or views type of thing or content marketing exercise.

43:01am I wrong to not want to do that? The underlying principle of all this is that you just have to be yourself. So I'd speak to that straight the same way. If you're not that type of person, don't do it because you're going to end up burning out. And ultimately, after a time, people see whether it's real or whether it's fake. And it comes through. However, having saying that as well, I think the core principle, everyone's just kind of thought Mr. Beast is this, you know, his thumbnails are stupid and all of those things. Just because he's kind of created the caricature. What he actually created was that is actually data-driven for him.

43:36So he went through, I think at the number was something like him and four other creators spent a whole summer. They went through like 1 ,000 different thumbnails and broke out. So it was very much data-driven. So that's where people just kind of, you know, you get the creators and then you get the copiers. Yeah. All right. Let me bring it back to me and my – so one of the things in my niche, I'm kind of known as the guy who's got the silly thumbnails. Now, let me sort of break that down as to why I did that. I just lean into the fact that I'm a, you know, daggy dad jokes that unfortunately I got that gene.

44:10This is true, guys. I hung out with them a few days. So unfortunately that is me and that works. Now, the other thing I would say from there as well is that in my niche, in the Google Ads niche, before I came through, all of the thumbnails were super, super boring. you know, same background, you know, different, all of those things. So I went, there's actually one that kind of fits my personality. I don't mind being a little bit of an idiot. My actual goal was to try and make Google Ads a little bit more exciting. So you can kind of see that it fits within the actual scope and the brand of what I do.

44:47Now, when you break through that, if that's not you, you shouldn't do that. Now, so what I look at, and I've actually broken and sort of broken down, I did my own review of all of my thumbnails and to work on the highest clicks ratio. And what I actually found was, I call it my rule of three when it comes to YouTube thumbnails. The first thing is you want to have some level of contrast. And what I mean by that is that you either have a dark background and a light foreground. Or if you've got a dark background, you want to have bright fonts. If you have a light background, you want to have dark fonts.

45:20But also what you want to do before I release a thumbnail, I do a YouTube search on what other videos are in that theme. And if all the other thumbnails are black, I'll do a yellow or red or green Interesting You do something different Yes, do something different So I'm always looking at I did it yesterday When I was releasing a thumbnail So I've got to give my thumbnail Or I go Do a Google search Look at what the other ranking videos are Our thumbnail needs to be different So when you think about it You don't then need to do the silly face Because if you're using colour as a differentiation It's just that contrast So it's not only the contrast Within your individual thumbnail But it's the contrast of your thumbnails Versus other people's thumbnails Yeah, definitely.

45:58Okay. I like that a lot. And the reason why I say that is because in my niche business education, more and more everybody's just trying to look like Hormozy, Alex Hormozy. Yeah, yeah. You know, I've met Hormozy, a good person, but be your own person. Like I just feel like this, yeah. It works for him. I'm seeing other people now wearing the black nose things and all those things. Yeah, yeah. So that's the first thing. The second thing I'd say too is this is a big mistake that I see with thumbnails is that people put too many words. So I try very, very rarely do I have more than three words on my thumbnails.

46:35Now, there are – people will go after this channel and go, oh, he's lying. Look, this one has – yes, there are always sometimes where I have four or five and, you know. But as a general rule, I like to have no more than three words on my thumbnail. The other thing is the thumbnail text needs to be different to the title, but they need to be related. Big mistake that people do is especially in the educational space is that they repeat it. So you're missing an opportunity. And also the other thing I want to do on my thumbnail. So that's the first one's contrast. Second one is the three words. The third one is you need to build some level of emotion or some level of reaction.

47:08And you can do this in two ways. You can do this with the stupid face or you can do this with the text. Yeah. So, you know, some of my best related thumbnails have one word on it. and it's literally like keywords with a question mark or those type of things. So what I look at is I go, the easy option out is to just do a stupid face and create emotion there. But if that's not your personality, you go, well, how else can I create emotion in my thumbnail? And the best way of doing that is with the words. So I think about if you take a topic, can you make a controversial statement or ask a question which goes against the common thought, the common theme on this topic.

47:52And if you can do that, look, the one thing I do say, there is something definitely powerful about the eyes and having your eyes being able to see it on the thumbnail just for that connection. That definitely does make a difference, I've found. But yeah, you don't have to do silly faces. I love this advice. It echoes the advice I got from an old friend of mine, an old OG, Brian Dean from Backlinko. he gave me a piece of advice that really unlocked this idea of thumbnails on on youtube or any videos in general even if you're posting on wistia and you have a thumbnail is treat it like a facebook ad and i was like what he's like yeah if you created a facebook ad and you were going to put some text on the on the image and you're going to create you know a description and a title just like on an ad what would you do to get somebody to click or to learn more on that facebook ad i was like oh that's a good way to look at it yeah so i love the fact that you don't have to do what everybody else is doing, you know your audience, just do something to get them curious.

48:47And it's funny now that, you know, because I've got the largest channel on my niche, people are now copying what I'm doing and doing. So I'm basically seeing, and it's over time, I wish I'd taken more screenshots of where that thumbnails used to be. Yeah, yeah. I don't know if that works on YouTube, we'll have to see. But where thumbnails used to be in my niche to what they are now and i've spoken to other creators in the space and i go you know i've actually because i'm pretty open with my knowledge like i i don't really you know because i know knowledge is one thing but if you're not going to enact it the knowledge is is useless so i tell them i said look why are you doing that and they go because i saw you do it and you got a good click-through ratio but i went but you've got to you know does that match who you are have you gone through all those things so yeah just i'm a big believer be yourself the other thing i'd want to say as well Think of your thumbnail against nine other thumbnails.

49:38So three, three, three, all other different creators. If you weren't you and you were doing a search, which thumbnail would you click on? Now, I learned this very, very early in my... That's why I think Google Ads, running Google Ads for 15 years before gave me a really, really good head start to YouTube. Because click-through ratio is super, super important in Google Ads. and it's also super, super important in YouTube. And one of the earliest things I learned about ad copy was we had a villa resort over in Bali and we used to always joke that our advertising budget wouldn't even match the coffee budget of some of our competitors.

50:19Because on the same street, we had hotels like the Sofitel, the Sheraton, the Marriott, and a whole range of brands. And in Bali, there's this big thing of one-bedroom pool villas. So everyone had in their ad copy, one-bedroom pool villas. You know, some would even range out to private pool villa. So I went, how can I say the same thing in a different way? Because I don't have the budget to match them. So every time an ad gets shown, I need to get that click. Because if I can start getting that click, that increases my ad rank. So then I get that unfair advantage of getting, you know. So we phrased this ad word copy of rather than saying one bedroom pool villa, we actually phrased it to skinny dip in your own pool.

50:59Saying the same thing. And I knew this ad copy was working because we were getting emails back of people asking us how high is the wall to make sure that they could actually skinny dip in their own private pool. It's two meters in case anyone's wondering. But yeah, so it's high enough. And that's what I took over to the thumbnails. I go, okay, so in my text, how can I say something that no one else is saying or no one else is prepared to say that's going to drive that click? Right. And the good thing in YouTube now is you can actually split test three different thumbnails on the same video. So run three different things of text and see which one works.

51:34And what I love about this is you're going to be up against big players, and a lot of people feel like that's a disadvantage. But your advantage is that you're willing to run an ad like that. I don't know if the Sovatel is going to get approval for that. No, right. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I got that from – did you ever read Malcolm Gladwell's book, David and Goliath? Yes, I love Malcolm Gladwell. Great. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and the old biblical story of David and Goliath, people think it was like this big miracle that David beat Goliath, but it's basically like it was a sniper going up against, of course he's going to win.

52:06So he just said exactly what you're saying is you want to look at your weaknesses and go, how can my weaknesses be a strength? As you said, I had movability in my marketing message that other brands don't have. I love it. Well, I know that I'm taking a lot of your time, but I want to kind of squeeze in a few quick questions. Yeah, go for it. you've run a lot of ads, a lot of ads only for you, but for your clients. What was one of your best performing ads and what was one of your worst? Okay, so the best performing one is the one that I just said. Yes. Was the skinny dip in your own pool. The other top performing ad is that we had a, and this is something that everyone can apply.

52:42It runs off that same theme of say something that your competitors can't say or won't say. One of my pet peeves with ad copy is people saying generic terms like we're number one or we're the best or even things like save money or save time. I'm always on, you've got to be able to put facts in your ad copy. So rather than saying you save money, how much money do you save? And we've run test after test after test of rather than saying save money, save 20%, save 17%. And we got this from a e-commerce brand we were working with at the time. Competitors came in, tried to undersell their market because they're the first people in the market.

53:23But they had this unique selling point that no one else had. They're the only brand that had safety tests for both the EU and the USA market. We put that in the ad copy, absolute killer. So the key thing I'd be looking at is in your ad copy, what can you say that no one else can say? So it's either an actual subjective fact that you've got proof behind it. So I'm now happy to say I'm the largest YouTube educator on my ads because I am. so I'm the largest Google Ads educator because I am on YouTube so that's a fact that you can say if you are ranked the number one SaaS product in your niche by all means go through and say it but you've got to be able to back it up we did that with Webinar Ninja because we had this wizard that allowed them to create their webinar really quickly and that ad killed we absolutely crushed when we ran an ad that had the headline of create your next webinar in less than 60 seconds which was something that was it was actually 30 seconds but 60 seconds seems more reasonable.

54:20So the mistake would be people would go create a fast website. Yeah. Whereas if you put, so I'm always going, what percentage can I put on it? What dollar value can I put on it? And what time can I put on it? So get really, really specific what your core offering is. So they're the best examples. And the worst examples is just the opposite of that in that just wet messaging, weak messaging. The other thing I would say from that is the way that you need to think about a Google Ads successful campaign is think about it like a chain. Right. And if one of the loops of the chain fall down, your campaign falls down.

54:55So the first loop is you want to get the click. So your ad copy needs to get the click. The second loop of the chain is when you get them on your website, it's not to get a conversion. People think it goes click conversion. No. It's your headline. You just want them to engage them in the headline so that they're then scrolling down the page. Yep. So that other bad example is basically a mismatch between the ad copy and the landing page. So if you could think that through is that because we all know, regardless of what your product is, the longer that you can keep someone on your website. The better your chances, yeah.

55:27Exactly. So if you can think about the headline, people go, I want my headline to convert them. No, I want my headline to engage them to read the next section of my website. And then I want that next section of the website to get them to read my authority markers, to read my case studies and then come down to my price. Right. Love it. What do you think is the biggest or most underrated skill in 2025? In regards to business. For me, it's very much coming down to, I think at the moment, it's very, very real in my niche in Google Ads at the moment. With AI, if you're not actively working AI into your workflows, I think you're going to get left behind pretty quickly.

56:09internally, I've done this intentionally. We have, I've got a, I had a great employee. She's been amazing. She's still on team with us, but we've reduced our hours by 50%. Now, I just didn't do that overnight. Like there was a long six month journey because we wanted to keep, you know, and she, it also fit with her as well because she wanted to start branching out into picking up some more clients. But we've replaced her with AI processes. So for me, I think the biggest thing is being a willing to adapt and to change. And then I bring that, that down into the Google Ads sphere as well, is that looking at the way that I run Google Ads campaigns now is very, very different to how I did it three years ago.

56:46So for me, I think the biggest theme for any business is now is a big time of adaption and a change that you need to be looking at all of, not only your processes of how you manage your time, especially if you're a one-man team or a one-woman team or a one-person team, but also to how does that reflect in the strategy at work that you're doing. I would echo that. I would say that it's so important for you to constantly have your finger on the pulse when this comes to AI, be using it daily. There's something new happening every day, whether it's deep research or chat GPT. I think chat GPT 5 is coming out in months, and it's going to change all the ways you choose the different types of models and all that kind of stuff.

57:26So just by using it every day in any shape or form, whether it's with copy or whether it's with research or just getting some advice if you're going to the doctors or something, it's actually great just to use it and get used to it. The thing I'd say there too is don't be afraid of it and don't be weary of it. I listened to a – I think it was a five-hour podcast from Lex Ferdman. If you don't want to listen to all of it. Yeah, that's a huge – yeah, I've seen it. I don't know if you listen to the same one. Yeah, and he was very much on – he was very much – it's still a long way away before actually replacing all of us.

58:00But what he did say, though, is that any person with individual knowledge, like industry knowledge, that isn't leveraging AI right now is going to get behind. And the example that I look at within my niche of Google Ads, and I speak a lot with agencies, is that AI is allowing people to – so now agencies that used to be teams of 50 could probably run just as effectively on teams of 10. and freelancers that could only manage 50 clients could potentially now manage 150, 200 clients if they fully leverage into AI. And that's where the, I guess the damage is going to be for businesses or individuals who don't leverage into AI.

58:40Their cost model isn't going to work or their cost model in terms of their product servicing and what people expect, or they're overstaffed for what they need. So then because they're overstaffed, They have to charge higher prices. That's so they have to charge higher prices and then they get priced out of the market. Love it. Aaron, for my final question, I like to ask this question to my friends, people that have been doing business for a long time. And that question is, what's the end game for you? Why are you doing all this? What are you working towards? What does winning look like for you?

59:15I would actually even say I'm probably partly in my end game at the moment. It's good to recognize it. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, I'm mid 40, so I'm 45. So I'm not, you know, I still see myself working for many decades to come. I started this up as my actual plan when I was starting the YouTube channel and Define Digital Academy. The goal was essentially for me to go, if I could just supplement my income, I'll keep freelancing out, you know, 30, 40 hours a week, throw this on the side. And then hopefully 10 years from now, it'll be at a level where I can step out of that. My 10 year plan happened in about 18 months, actually, which was, you know, which was a good Which was a good thing.

59:51Good problem to have, yeah. Yeah, so I mean at the moment, but as part of that, I've already gone down from working five days a week to four days a week. I see within the next two years, sorry, three years, by 2029, that'll be down to three days a week. And we'll be traveling a lot. I've unashamedly, you know, been married for 22 years, got three daughters. So I've very much, I've had the blessing to be able to work from home since 2010. So I've been home for my whole daughter's, you know, lives growing up. And you've got to grow up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I guess part of the end game for me, when I look at 10, 15 years from now, I always like to think about it in a perfect week.

1:00:31As opposed to, because money and finance and all those things are important, but I've come back to if they don't allow you to achieve your perfect week. But you need that money to be able to achieve your perfect week. So you can kind of see their hand in hand. So I don't really have a dollar value. I more have a, like a perfect week for me would be out on the water fishing once a week, you know, exercising three to four times a week, traveling at least probably being out of the country at least for three months of the year. And, you know, and having at least, you know, one good meal with my wife.

1:01:02But I mean, you know, we're out for a nice restaurant, you know, once or twice a week. And that's, I guess, essentially my end game. A little level down from that, I definitely want to continue to help more people. I definitely want to, you know, get involved more. Or as I see, I'll probably be less hands-on and get more into speaking in those type of areas just because of the reach that you've got from there. And being able to incorporate travel into that would be, I guess, the main goal. But I don't really see myself ever sort of retiring and never working again. I definitely don't want to be doing the amount of hours I'm doing now when I'm 65, 70.

1:01:31But I think my more thing is looking at how can I more mentor more people as opposed to physically doing the work myself. Yeah, I definitely think that if you don't use it, you lose it. I think the late Charlie Munger is a good example of that. Super sharp at 99. Warren is still going strong. But yeah, having to say no to a lot of things so that you could say yes to the important things is part of the challenge as we get older. I love what you said there and that's actually been a bit of a motto of my life. And it's something that me and my wife have always spoken to is that whatever I say yes to, it means I'm saying no to other things.

1:02:08And I've always truly known that whatever I say yes to my business, it generally means a no for my family. So if I, if, but then if there's a follow-up yes to my family, then it makes sense. So you kind of go, yes, I'm taking on this client. It's going to mean that I'm going to be having to add an extra five, six hours work to my week. But that's allowing us to take the girls over to a European holiday at the end of the year. I'm happy for that payoff. But if you always just think that a yes means a no. I like that. Aaron, it's been a pleasure. So glad that I got to know you over the last few months.

1:02:37And it was great to get you on the show and help our audience. And we've talked about so many things, but I really appreciate your time. I appreciate your willingness to share. It's been an absolute pleasure. And thank you so much for having me on, Omar. What a information-rich episode. Aaron, thanks so much for your time. If you want to learn more, if you want to optimize your Google Ads and you want an easy checklist to do so, Aaron was generous enough to share that with our crowd. So just go to Define Digital Academy. that's definedigitalacademy.com slash optimize. And of course, the links will be in the show notes so you can just scroll down on whatever podcast app you're listening to or in the description if you're watching on YouTube.

1:03:16You can also check out Aaron's YouTube channel to learn more about Google Ads and continue your learning beyond this episode. Just go to at Aaron Young Google Ads over on YouTube. Again, it's at Aaron Young Google Ads. One of the other things I love about Aaron is he's just a down-to-earth Aussie guy explaining complex things and an easy way to understand. And that's one of the takeaways I got is that just keep things simple. Simplify it for people. If you're teaching people anything, make it easy, make it down to earth, make it relatable, have a little fun. Thanks again, Aaron, and thank you for tuning into the$100 MBA show.

1:03:51If you wanna continue your learning, sign up for our Three Things newsletter so that you can continue to grow week after week. It's absolutely free. Every week I send you three things to help you grow as an entrepreneur. All you gotta do is go to 100mba.net, sign up for any of our freebies, any of our guides, and you get added to our newsletter automatically. Thanks again, and I'll check you in the next episode.