The origin story of our free Discord community

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00:00then we got Aran I always have to shout him out because he was the first one in the first week or so to reach out to me like cool Discord Community but it sucks he didn't really say like that but sort of he's been a Deen himself I think he knew he knew about every single Discord feature that you could build in we now have a bot that basically tracks a lot of stuff that also tracks the amount of GMS people say every single week so we have a GM Leaderboard on the back end it's GM GM GM welcome back to the PPC Mastery podcast and today we have another exciting episode because we're going to be talking about the origin story of our Discord community and origin story of the PPC Hub and that's how it was called up until a few weeks ago yeah we decided to Rebrand everything decided to Rebrand everything and why and how we'll get to that but in this episode we're going to be talking about yeah how it all came about and yeah it started last year in June right before we were launching PPC Mastery or before we even started to work together we didn't even do our webinar yet so that was before you reached out to me I launched Discord Community for Google ad Specialists because I was in a lot of nft crypto communities and they were all in Discord so a lot of there were a lot of a lot of smaller communities on LinkedIn Facebook Facebook groups LinkedIn groups but most of it was quite scattered and quite inactive inactive as well and hard to manage and some groups had a lot of members like let's say

01:38100,000 or so but then yeah there was no activity because those groups are hard to find when you're on LinkedIn and no notifications and whatever so then I thought okay I'm in these nft communities in Discord and it's it's really fun why don't I just try and create something like that for Google Ads so I created a post on LinkedIn and I think a lot of around 250 people or so already wanted to join from from that moment so then I thought okay maybe maybe we're on to something here it's a nice nft launch nice nft launch yeah geted wanted to scam with my nft launch no no no and then I I thought okay I'm going to build this Discord and you were actually one of the first people first people to join in those first days most of those guys that joined then are still really active now like let's say one of the top contributors yeah absolutely so how how was it called oh yeah back then back then it was called miles PPC Hub kind of similar we just removed miles yeah cuz I I I didn't really have inspiration but I liked PPC Hub as sort of the central place for everything PPC and then I just put my name on it sort of to Brand it that way yeah it was great personal branding yeah and you were one of the first to join and you introduced the meme culture that we that we have now and that everybody loves so yeah maybe I can ask you already like why did you want to join the the Discord and why were you so active in the beginning because that was for everybody listening that was before PPC Mastery that was before we even thought about working together you were already like on it quickly yeah yeah I think I I really I really had the urge to to start

03:17something similar or at least join something like the miles PPC Hub back then uh because yeah the all of the the groups that were that were live in inside of Facebook inside of LinkedIn they all were quite inactive or it wasn't really possible to to join them because you you had this sense of like like there was some kind of barrier and not really it was wasn't really welcoming at all and since this was a new thing and we already knew each other and we we already had some people floating around in our in both of our spaces I thought like hey if we can do this together right from the start we can create something real real great and real nice M and I really hadn't the the ID to the idea to to to create it together I just wanted to be part of it from the first moment so I've been freelancing for eight plus years already you've been freelancing as well for quite some years and the thing you miss when freelancing is well our like-minded people entrepreneurs doing the same thing and they are hard to find especially in the region we grew we grew up in the eastern part of of the Netherlands and and by joining a community like the one you had created you had the feeling that you actually had some some like-minded colleagues almost colleagues sitting next to you that you were able to connect with to to discuss ideas with strategies tactics so that really really intrigued me so that's when I decided to join yeah that's really cool because that was the the main goal as well the idea was not

04:54to build something that I could monetize because it was free everybody can free join for free not not even email optin and then inside I just created a few different channels where people can just hang out ask questions help each other out and I created it from that perspective for everybody to just learn from each other but then you came and the first thing you told me is okay miles where's the meme Channel we got to have memes where's the memes so then I thought okay let's let's build a memes Channel and you dropped the first Meme and since then I think that's one of the most popular channels next to the GM channel it's been it's been a bit quiet lately but yeah I haven't created any meme in the past couple of weeks but during the first couple of weeks I had this Mission I have to create at least three kickass memes for for Mouse PPC channel to to to get to give it some traction and that worked because other people started to double in as well um create fancy memes yeah I really really enjoyed that that time yeah and I think it it translates also to outside of the PPC Hub back then in Discord because you see a lot of PBC memes on LinkedIn now as well no as you can see Max minus yeah a lot of guys are are posting memes now and they're really funny like Custom Custom PBC m not the ones you find online in reposting like people are actually trying their best to to create good memes Max even even films himself pretending to be like a Teleperformance rep the first the first couple of videos really I I I lost my ass off they were so funny yeah absolutely and that really built the culture of of the The Hub back then in this and that attracted a lot of other people because I think in the

06:32beginning a lot of Freelancers joined because as you said Freelancers are looking for people around them to learn from and and get inspired and bounce an idea off of because if you're working by yourself then yeah that can become really hard because you if you work at agency you can ask five people maybe if you're encountering a problem but then after after that the Freelancers were there and we had the culture with the memes Etc and then the word started to spread and got more people in mhm people were working inhouse people were working at agencies so it was not only a freelance Community it was like people from all over from all over the world as well so so yeah and then we got Aran I always have to shout him out because he was the first one in the first week or so to reach out to me like cool Discord Community but it sort of he's been a DJ himself I think back end yeah in case you in case we are going to share the amount of GMS you you you have shared in the past sometimes it's a lot it's a lot it's really a lot but yeah Arian introduced the question Forum function a lot of pro protective measures around fraudulent activities we sometimes still have scammers around that pretend to be crypto scamers crypto scammers so we try to to ban them ASAP and these kind of these kinds of bots and the automation Aran build in

08:09actually help prevent those kind of things and make it safer for all of the members yeah absolutely and he was running Minecraft communities back in the day I think and managing them so he already had the experience and he he off just basically offered me okay I can I have some ideas he didn't want anything in return He said I'll do it for free and then he built out a new template for the Discord community and that's something that we still use now like you said the questions Forum that made it a lot more easier to see the questions answer the questions we I don't know how many questions we get per day I think it's like 20 or 30 questions each each day so that's like thousand plus per month yeah because there's in the first year we built it to more than 7,000 people right now so that's that's really crazy but yeah Arion really helped us a lot in the in the early days but now yeah it's it's it's grown like like crazy and you can see a lot of connections are being built up by community members um we we have a lot of people that that actually found each other through the community community and actually became friends a lot of people yeah Partners have become Partners they're sharing business opportunities so we have I think Arian found Flores through the community we have Nick for Marin I think he received a lot of gf4 GTM taging work out of the community just by helping out people so not asking anything in return but these these guys actually build a brand a personal brand and show their expertise and people people noticed and now they know hey if I have a GTM gf4 related problem then I have to DM this guy and maybe ask if he can help me out for some pesos yeah so that's amazing to see yeah

09:48yeah same thing with for example uh so most people call him gir Groot uh it is he position himself as the the the local small count Legion guy we have Adrian deer with with his news updates and like a lot of share sharing pepc newsletters inside of the community every single week so he he doesn't skip a day it's so amazing to see all the contributions absolutely and then you of course the meme Lord yeah yeah once again I'm I'm cooling off so I have to have to redo some mem again we have we have other stuff to to do right now yeah no but I think that we got a lot of highlights in the in the first year as I said built it to more than 7,000 people but that also means that there's some problems or challenges that are that we're facing with the Discord Community because one it's free anybody can join there's no opin there's no screening there is a yeah Discord can be anonymous so it's you're open to trolling you're open to bots you're open to scammers which we have like you said people coming in if you want to make 80k in the next 30 days send me message like guaranteed blah blah blah ban yeah Perma ban kicked them out but also the questions Channel even though a lot of guys like if yatar for example I have to shout him out too because he's so active in helping people find the answers to their such a legend but the questions channel is also being flooded with more beginner questions or people that are maybe not reading really well and and dropping the questions in the wrong

11:26chats or asking about meta instead of of bpc or Google Google Ads and it's becoming a little bit messy not to say that it's not good because we're still in there and it's still a lot of fun and it's nice to see everybody in there but it is challenging because it's a free thing it's open and it yeah just means there's challenges we do not want to screen at all we do not want to say to a beginner hey this this community isn't for you if you're just starting out you need at least 6 months of experience before we let you in we do not want that in a free community abolutely but that means that we we definitely see an increase in beginner related questions inside of the question Channel and for the advanced more seasoned PPC professionals that's starting to deteriorate the community a little bit so that's why we have come up with a different idea yeah that's exactly so it was called the PPC Hub in Discord and the reason why is because we wanted to build the main area the main hub for everything related to PPC so courses and and community events and just have that Central place for if you have something that just stuck on a PBC just boom you go to the PPC Hub but because of those challenges that we just discussed that you get when you grow maybe to Beyond a certain point when especially when it's free then yeah we decided that we wanted to go a different direction and we rebranded the Discord Community which is going to stay the same we're not going to close it or anything we love it it's it's great it's also great for PPC mastery we rebranded that to the PPC Mastery Discord and now we've created a new platform called the PPC Hub because

13:06we we were going back and forth a lot about the name for the new platform right yeah we've been discussing the name part for I think at least two months yeah going back and forth yeah we should do this oh no we should do this instead so that's been been quite quite challenging for sure and we always came back to or at least I did always yeah you as well came back to the PPC Hub or the inner or the Inner Circle exactly it was a great name as well Mastery the Inner Circle but yeah it didn't say anything about the community at all what's inside what's inside the Inner Circle so yeah and yeah that's when we when we decided to okay we're going to Rebrand the Discord and maybe in the beginning that can be a little bit vague to people they don't understand what's going on but didn't really get too many questions about it people don't care like it's the PPC Mastery it's the Discord as long as they have access to all of the free stuff then yeah exactly and inside nothing changed it's completely the same and then we just took that name the PPC Hub and used that for our new membership our new platform which is going to launch somewhere in September end of September and this new membership is is basically solving that issue that we had with the Discord that we can now create a platform where we have all of our courses all of our trainings all of our programs live workshops a lot of we've had guest workshops now from ProfitMetrics we have one with channal product Heroes on the list true clicks on the list so getting a lot of external knowledge as well but we're also doing community events like round taes where we sat with four or five members and then just discussed different strategies and tactics and then yeah the vision with that is to create a community or

14:47maybe not Community is maybe not even the right word but a membership with really high level Google ad Specialists that all want to be the best in the field and all want to help each other and they want to infest in themselves to become the best version of themselves yeah so it's it's not going to be free it's it's a me it's a membership Community with a lot of extra perks so it's an sort of an all access pass to all of the products we are selling right now and all of the future products we're going to release so if you decide to become a member you have access to all of our stuff from courses to resources but also not only the courses but Al also all the additional stuff yeah like the guest Workshops the roundtables the monthly Advanced workshops that are live that we that we give but also yeah external knowledge that we are bringing in so it's going to be a great platform for everyone that wants to well increase their skill set yeah and you see the level of the questions in there is really high like we had a Q&A and we went really deep on poas for example a question from ymer that those are the things that we really enjoy you know the questions that we get and we try to find the answers to every question and it's not only us people are also helping each other out and it's just yeah it's it's really cool and I think it's quite interesting to talk about how we launched that as well because that in there there's some marketing lessons as well I think cuz we launched it on the back of our last Google Ads masterclass which was ended in middle of June mhm and then we said okay we're going to launch this new platform new membership with 50 members the capping it at 50 we

16:26call it 50 founding members and then although members got exclusive perks so dis 50% discount on the on the regular price small community at small community exactly so a lot of extra support from us one-on-one call with me everybody to to on board and all that stuff so a lot of extra additional perks for those people and then we said okay we're we're locking it for with 50 people and then we took I think it's probably around 3 months or so before we even open the doors again for the weit list for the for the weit list exactly exactly so because we wanted to learn first we wanted to build out the ideal platform in terms of channels resources concept and we are actually asking all of the founding members to help us out by creating the best possible Google Ads membership that is out there so they have come they they have brought us so many great ideas already so yeah that's one of the perks as well they are essentially creating their own ideal per product so yeah yeah we're building it with them together yeah instead of us just building what we think is is best we're really incorporate the feedback of all the founding members yeah we are even prioritizing our product launches based on the the priorities or the yeah the priorities the members are giving us so hey okay here's a list of all the things that we can create the coming 12 months please vote please sort the list based on what you think is the most helpful for you or the most impactful so that's why we launched a search Mastery last week that's that's why we are

18:03prioritizing a shopping Mastery right now and after that optimization Mastery reporting Mastery all of these highly specific courses and they have been prioritized mainly by the founding members yeah yeah and we also noticed that a lot of members were interested in strategies to get clients and then we had some stuff for for those things so it's really cool to to build that up together with with with with all the with all of the members and that's kind of the future of the PPC Hub so the Discord PPC Master Discord is definitely going to stay stay the same as it is we're going to continue to keep growing that but as a result yeah you're you're going to see people leave because they think maybe the levels is is getting dragged down even though the questions are still are still fine but some people will think okay at first it was really nice because it was smaller we had uh grip on high level of questions now they're leaving those are exactly the people that that is great for the new PPC Hub membership because then we can maintain that that high level but the Discord is always going to be there it's it's like the backbone of how we of how we grew and it's much more for posting and all of our degenerate stuff and the the GMS and and everything but then for the Google ad specialist that really want to take it to the next level with us we're launching the the PPC Hub yeah in in a few weeks yeah and and in terms of well the the product lettering inside of PPC Mastery this will be our hero product right yeah absolutely yeah so everything that we do will be mainly focused on building out the membership Community The PPC Hub and constantly refining the the membership constantly

19:41adding new products resources there will be additional separate products that we are going to sell but like the search Mastery that we just launched right now is just for the PPC Hub members only we're not selling it as a separate product so so yeah that's what you can expect as well yeah that's why that's how we want to create unique value for that membership so then people have more reason more reason to join to join and I think that's also in in in marketing you also want to uh give exclusive benefits for for people to either get get an offer or especially on on Black Friday like that that also creates a little bit of of scarcity and and urgency and and uniqueness which is which is really really important so so back to the marketing you you launched the PPC Hub for just 50 founding members during our last master class in May or June how have you been doing the marketing from there because right now we are having a wait list can you tell something more about that specific strategy or tactic yeah it's interesting cuz Alex Hormozi just released this new hundred million leads book so for everybody that doesn't know Alex Hormozi you're missing out you're missing out for sure yeah big time this guy is the modern day yeah I don't even know what you would call him but he's the the bu marketing genius business guy right now who actually has a proven track record of building businesses and now he's much more of an investor and he's giving away a lot of value for free and his first book $100 million offers really solid in getting the idea in how to build offers that are so good people feel stupid saying no that's what we got got from him and the

21:19second book is $100 million leads and in this leads book he has a framework and it's called I I have to look it up but it's whisper I think something like say or I don't I don't know what the second part is yeah the book hasn't been shipped yet yeah exactly we ordered it so it's it's coming soon but I remember the I know what the framework is I just don't know the name but it's either it's whisper something like say and then shout so it's a three-step framework to launching something and the first part is just whispering and that means like you're being really quiet about it and here and there you're just dropping like oh by the way we're doing this we're we're launching a new a new product and how we did that is for example Le just underneath our our post on LinkedIn in the comments like oh by the way we're launching a new product this is what it is here's the you can join the weight list and then no making no noise at all nothing just whisper and then we got some people on the weit list and then the next stage is where we are basically sort of right now we're explaining what the product is and we're being a bit more vocal about it and we're teasing a bit more maybe it's tease the middle part I will look it up after this and we're teasing a bit more and and more actively sharing about what's coming and then we have about four or five weeks now until it's going to be launched and then it's the last part is shout just bye now by now but then that's the the part when you actually launch it yeah of course you want to create as much noise as you can around the launch and that's going to be yeah in in a few weeks time we will up our communication about the product but we're we're never going to be aggressive in our marketing like I think how we did our marketing up until

22:57now is really really like organic it's all inbound inbound we haven't infested at all maybe we we experimented with just one branded search campaign inside of Google Ads true that we bed yeah I think after the the first week yeah right yeah we we haven't we haven't spent $1 at LinkedIn advertising meta ads nothing all is inbound no and I don't really intend to do that either because we're building our personal Brands and inbound as you said is the best because then if we have a newslet for example we always put underneath like oh whenever you're ready here's how we can help you and then there's three offers and maybe 0.1% clicks and buy something perfect but people will see it every time they open a newsletter exactly if they tend to scroll down yeah to read the the whole and if they don't it's also fine then maybe maybe another day like I'm not going to be pushing anyone no we're not aggressive until we're going to shout until we're going to shout until we shout so during product launches we we tend to monetize on the the well the data base that we have the Emil list that we have created but yeah that's how that's how we we we shout that's how we that's how we Market our products yeah and that's I mean that's that's just a product launch so we're not going to DM people and say you need to buy now and if we send an email then it's okay this is the offer maybe on the last day like uh 24 hours left and then that's it like no no crazy tactics just just fits our personality no no no no and if you don't want to that's also fine not going to force you to to do anything there's plenty of free stuff on our newsletter on YouTube like this podcast so yeah if if you do not want to

24:36pay or you do not have the budget to pay then we're sharing as much as free stuff already so yeah we're not forcing our products upon people definitely not yeah yeah I think that's kind of the the story of of the PPC Hub how it came together and where we're where we're going do do you have an idea actually maybe like what do you foresee for this in let's say the upcoming year year or so what do you cuz you're the Builder Bob the Builder what do you foresee like what do you actually want to create you know I know we have our our road map and everything and we're shifting it based on what people are saying but what's your vision for for the product side yeah so we have a lot a lot a lot to ship so we're building stuff together but sometimes even since we're almost doing this full-time now we sometimes feel that there's not not enough hours inside of a week and things are not shipping as soon as we we hoped to ship all of the products but the the the main thing that we always want is to maintain a specific quality level so everything we ship I think is of great quality so we have updo quality game we are really spending a lot of energy and time inside of our decks or resources that we're launching right now recording quality recording quality so it yeah basically it make that results in the planning being a little bit longer yeah but I think for the for the next couple of 12 months we will still be shipping Google Ads related mini courses so we have shipped performance Max Mastery right now search Mastery conversion tracking Mastery but we still have a lot a lot to

26:14do we want to ship creative Mastery where where we're going to zoom in on all of the asset types that you can possibly create inside of Google Ads rsas rdas rvas HTML 5 banners utilizing third party tools to create really fancy banners AI generated or not whatever besides that strategy goal setting upper funnel Mastery YouTube Discovery is going away so YouTube demand gen display then we have some then we have a a Mastery course about bidding bidding strategies just really being Niche and specific zooming in on bidding strategies and how to set your targets how to optimize your targets during the optimization phase and then we have one of the biggest bigger Parts the optimization Mastery so that's where we're going to touch on everything that we haven't been discussing during the foundational courses like the ones I just mentioned so in that course we're going to zoom in on all of the optimization tactics that you as an Advertiser can use to increase your Roi inside of your Google Ads campaigns from search to shopping to display to YouTube to demand gen so it's going to be a very very very extensive course with a lot of resources I think that will I think that will take at least two maybe 3 months to complete since it's so big it's going to be so valuable I already know that optimization templates schedules stuff like that and then I think we are already in May June of the next year and on that point we can start to think

27:52about well adding in some some other courses as well so think about landing page Mastery offer refining offer creation so everything that is outside of Google Ads because that part is so so so freaking important and I think a lot of people are talking about that specific part but no one is actually doing anything about it so they're saying oh yeah you need to have a great landing page with a lot of social proof and a lot of urgency and some great above the Vault headlines and call to actions but no one is actually teaching that inside of a really specific course so that's on our list as well and once we have finalized all of that it's going to be refinement after refinement after refinement because yeah Google Ads updates like crazy nowadays so we have to re reccord everything that we have recorded in the past we have to rewrite resources and we have to optimize the courses based on feedback that we that came that came in so there's so much to do so much busy for years to come yeah yeah we are so it's it's almost impossible if you want to do this besides your your freelancing gig or at all or at all you need to be really dedicated in order to push all of these products yeah and and which we are still doing like freelance clients but now it's obviously much smaller than before but we now the clients also that we work with we still help them grow as much as we can but it's also a function for us to get insights and then share that with the community share that with everybody build those are the clients that we have

29:30like a card blanch for that we can do whatever we want clients are happy with us experimenting inside of the accounts and we need that in order to produce the latest content that actually works because we do not want to sound like a broken record or like a Google Google replica of everything they push everything we push is basically based on everything that works for us or have not worked for us so we want to be independent and in order to be independent we need to have our own our own accounts so that's still an important part of the week yeah but yeah we had to to scale it down in order to push the products because you you cannot do both you cannot do both yeah yeah cuz I think people often underestimate how much time it costs I also underestimate it still how much you just updated pmax yeah I just yeah we just relaunched performance Max Mastery and yeah and it it takes so much time to do do the decks redo the filming the editing uploading even you also forget like some you need a day to upload everything and make sure that it's all the the text is in there as well you don't forget a video so yeah takes a lot of time and brain power as well you you you have that with your voice like if you're recording for four five six hours then your voice is just dead yeah yeah we've been recording a podcast for six hours this is number eight for today no yeah yeah it's exhausting it's exhausting so it's really doable but you have to find a great balance in your working week uh and I think we have found that balance right now and now

31:07it's a matter of well pushing products as soon as possible while creating free content while staying inside of the PPC Hub to answer Advanced questions while still doing work for our own clients so it's it's it's it's a little bit of juggling here and there but I think we found a great balance where we can actually maintain everything and still manage to grow and push ship new products basically yeah all right so yeah I think that's a pretty cool origin story of the Discord community of the Hub the new PPC Hub where we're we're moving towards so when is this episode actually actually launching next week next week no two weeks two weeks right so that is beginning of September which means that by the time that this launches it's about three more weeks we will be shouting we'll be shouting yeah if you hear us shouting then you know where we are but yeah for now we're still Whispering we're still like teasing so if you want to join the wait list maybe maybe we will put the link in the description maybe we won't I tend to forget those things yeah we'll see by the time this podcast is live we have a landing page I guess yeah if not you can go to ppcmastery.com you will find it yeah maybe we'll we'll add it maybe we won't but yeah I think this was pretty cool episode any closing closing remarks from you nope NOP that's it all good so thank you all foren listening viewing don't forget to like subscribe obviously always and yeah if you found this valuable please do share it with yeah colleague or or friend or or give us a rating on Spotify or apple podcast so it shows up a little bit more yeah me pleas R me rate me please all right so that was it for this episode and we'll see

32:44you in the next one peace ciao