How to deal with stress in PPC

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00:00the first couple of months when I when I hit my first big client I was really really really anxious because it was new to me being responsible for 100 of thousands of Euros per month in terms of spend yeah and it felt so responsible for allocating and spending those budgets and right now it feels like the same as an account that is doing 1000 Euros per month in terms of spend all right it's GM GM everybody welcome back to the PPC Mastery podcast this one is a little bit different if you're watching on YouTube we're not together in the office today but luckily for us there's a lot of tech out there that can help us record this online so in today's episode we are going to talk about a question that we got from Thomas Eccel so Thomas Thanks for your question we have a podcast page on our website Now ppcmastery.com podcast where you can find a link where you can ask questions so if you have a question for us some podcasts we will try to answer some of them and today we're going to be talking about a question from Thomas Eccel and he asked how do you cope with the typical campaign performance stress what impact has in your opinion a sane mental health State for the campaign performance so in other words what do we do to maintain good mental health how do we cope and deal with stress in PPC because I do think that ppcs a challenging and stressful landscape wouldn't you say so working it could be stressful so if you're sensitive to these kinds of

01:37stress levels then I think BBC can be a stressful job yeah especially if you're running High budgets and have a lot of stakeholders that you're responsible for yeah absolutely so yeah let's just let's just dissect that yeah so let me ask you the first question miles so let's begin with how your freelancing days look look like so you have done full-time freelancing in the past right now your week is somewhat split between freelancing for clients and working for pipsy Mastery of course to build Kick-Ass knowledge products but how that your freelance full-time freelance week look like a couple of months ago so can you tell me a little bit more about that yeah absolutely what kind of day-to-day tasks and responsibilities that you have as a Google specialist yeah so yeah as you said now my week is a little bit different because I for the majority of my week let's say 80 or so I'm focused on PPC Mastery and then 20 for working for for freelance clients but when I was still working full-time at agency and also full-time freelancing my entire day was structured around working for for my clients so I usually split my days up in my morning sessions my morning morning deep work session and in this morning session I find out for myself that in the morning I have really good Focus I have high energy and if I can work undistracted on a few tasks and I can get a lot done in the first few hours of my day but when I was working at an agency I had calls in the morning and other people were sort of dictating my my work week and that's

03:16not only because I worked at an agency that's not necessarily their fault but it was also because I was starting out and I just wasn't proactive with my with my week so what then happened was maybe to jump a jump ahead a little bit in the morning I was working for a really big client and on Monday morning we had to deliver a report for the last week so that was like I think around 10 in the morning we had to deliver this this report yeah all together what an amazing amazing thing to start of the week yeah exactly that's what I would recommend now not to do like do a report that needs to be done on Monday morning that's crazy because then we were all set up for for stress already instantly because always something goes wrong or you need a little bit of extra time or maybe you woke up and and you just didn't feel like it today and you need a few hours to get going I mean it's after the weekend after all so that really taught me like okay if I'm working for myself then I want to have a bit more structure and control in my day in how I work so now in the mornings I I tend to do a lot of deep work on bigger tasks and Analysis and things that I need to use my brain for and then I have the afternoons in which I do more like calls and easy tasks and smaller optimizations those kinds of things and then they use the mornings to really focus on the bigger tasks that I have for my clients so whatever that is it depends per client but let's say we need to restructure an entire account that usually takes a lot of focus and and deep work because you need to be thinking about okay how do we structure the campaigns the ad groups the the keywords Etc and this is then something that I would typically do in the morning whereas in

04:53the afternoon I will just maybe like go through the search term reports those kinds of like smaller optimizations and then in between I have break where I go to the gym and I have lunch so usually my break is around two hours I know everybody that is working not as a freelancer but working in-house or an agency or something I know that this is sometimes maybe a little bit tricky and harder to do but if you can work remotely on the days that you work from home maybe it's a bit easier to do these kinds of things but I noticed that for me working out in between my work shift so to speak has really helped me yeah maintain my focus throughout the day because I noticed that after the morning session that my brain is fried because I've done so much of the deep work which uses a lot of my my brain capacity then I go to the gym and I'm sort of recharged instantly and then I have energy again to to to go back at it and uh in the afternoon how how did you find out about your optimal daily routine because this is something that is completely different for every single person some people like to do deep work in the afternoon or even in the evenings so how did you find out what your ideal day looks like yeah that's that was a lot of trial and error just trying trying I used a lot of productivity sort of tools and Frameworks and plannings and nothing really stuck in the end and now now I know that okay after trying so many different things I just noticed that okay in the morning I'm mostly productive and I'm not a morning person at all so it's kind of weird for me but I do notice that my brain is still at

06:31Max Capacity in the morning because I haven't checked my phone yet haven't seen social media I haven't been yeah I haven't seen anything from anybody else yet so that that helps but naturally I am a night owl an evening even evening person so and that's when you that's when you're doing no work at all right because during the evenings you are chilling with your girlfriend yeah and maybe play some games exactly family time right yeah yeah because if I work in the evening sometimes I do if we have like a deadline coming up or something that I want to get get finished but generally I don't do it because then I don't sleep well and this is something that I want to share something about as well as we go through the through this podcast but I think living a healthy lifestyle is really important if you work in PPC because then naturally you are much more able to deal with the stress that comes your way so if you eat eat healthy sleep sleep well and I know that if I work until late at night then my head is just spinning of all the input and all the ideas and then it's really hard for me to to fall asleep and then if I sleep if my sleep is not good then the next morning I cannot wake up because it's already hard for me to wake up not being a morning person and then it's just a downward spiral yeah so that that brings me to the second question because we all have emotional issues I think to some degree and well it can be quite challenging for us as Google as Specialists to handle all of the pressure of managing the Google Ads campaigns especially when you have clients or stakeholders with a lot

08:08of high expectations so how do you handle the emotional ups and downs that come with campaigns performing above or below expectations can you share a little bit more about that that you did already but yeah yeah absolutely yeah I think I think this this comes with experience like you need to go through it in order to build up systems to be able to deal with it I think if you're if you're if you have someone that is starting out in in PPC or or in in the work field in general you need to go through it and you need to experience those stressors and you need to know okay this works for me this doesn't work for me I don't like for me personally I know that I don't like too many calls in my week but when I was not freelancing yet then I had no no say in that at all so then I knew okay this is something that I want to change as I as I move towards freelancing and it's just it's coming from experience also the example that I give gave with the with the report on Monday morning now I know that if a client asks me for that then I will I will push it back and I say no is it also okay if we deliver on Monday afternoon or or Tuesday or whatever it is but I wasn't able to do that when I was working or when I was just starting out because I didn't build up that strength yet in myself to say no to to dare to say no and then yeah I just think it comes with experience that's one side I think then on the other hand as I said like live a healthy lifestyle outside of work because then you are much more effective at dealing with the stressors so as I said eat well sleep well train well all of this helps in in not taking

09:47everything too seriously yeah and a lot comes with experience as well right because I still know the moments when I started to become responsible for a lot of big monthly budgets that slipped that went through my fingers basically yeah so the first couple of months when I when I hit my first big client I was really really really anxious because it was new to me being responsible for 100 of thousands of Euros per month in terms of spend yeah and it felt so responsible same as an account that is doing 1 000 because basically in essence it doesn't really matter because it's still data of course it's still a lot of spent that you have to that you have to take care of and you're that you're responsible for but during the years and during well the years of experience you start to you start to become less anxious be around those kinds of things is that something that you experience as well yeah you cannot really train for but it just comes by doing exactly by doing performing the the work yeah and I think you can always follow like mental Frameworks in order to reduce stress and all those things like you can meditate and there's a lot of things that you can do to mitigate the stress levels but I agree with you it a lot of it comes from experience and and you just need to go through it in order to build it up just like when you go to the gym when you go on day one you can probably you you recently you told me you went back into the gym and you couldn't move your arm like at all right

11:24no no no no no and now a few weeks later it's easier for you to do those reps and then your body builds up the strength to be able to deal with the stress from the gym yeah and it's kind of the same work I feel like like one big Bruce the next day I was like what's what's happening and then they came back the second time to the gym and I saw this guys hanging out next to me lifting the 40 kilogram dumbbells I was like I can't even I cannot even move them from the from the from the you know the racks Yeah Yeah Yeah from the Rex thank you yeah yeah it's it's yeah the same applies to Google Ads yeah absolutely absolutely yeah so you have to repeat do it over and over again until it becomes normal and just a way of life in essence yeah so when doing the work Miles because you've been freelancing for quite quite a while right now I think that you have endured high levels of stress during the same amount of time did you ever felt like you were burning out or well almost burning out and what were the signs or moments when you realized realized you were approaching a burnout or feeling overly stressed can you tell me a little bit more about that yeah for sure and I'm curious to hear your perspective as well but um yeah I don't know if I have reached the limit of almost burning out but I have it I've seen it happen around me a lot and that's why I was always conscious of that I don't want to get a burnout because if you really get a burnout like there's different levels to it you know there's like a first you feel a little bit of stress and then as

13:01it builds up it builds up then you can overworked and then the end stage is sort of the burnout where you just can't handle anything anymore and I've seen that my in my family my friends co-workers and if you get a really like tough burnout then you can be out of it for a year plus if it's really bad and I actually looked up the the definition for for Burnout it's from MD health or something like that burnout is a special type of work related stress a state a physical or emotional exhaustion that also involves a sense of reduced accomplishment and loss of personal identity whatever the cause burnout can affect your physical and mental health and I've seen cases of people where it was just too much they couldn't get out of bed and you you try to give them advice like I just go on a wall go to the gym but nothing nothing works and and I always wanted to prevent that as much as much as possible but I definitely have had moments where I've I've felt the stress building up and it was usually when you reach like a state of when you're moving towards burnouts it's usually when there's too many things going on all at once at the same time so work stress and then stress at home maybe your relationship you have some issues or maybe something's going on in family like those things they build up on each other actually my old manager at my agency agency agency job he he switched jobs he moved and then he got a kid all in like three months or so yeah and then burnt out and hadn't seen in in a long time by then so that's something that I always want to want to prevent what

14:39about you so so how did you how did you prevent burning out yeah so I I usually I I'm really good at observing other people and then backtracking okay what what went wrong or what went well for these for these people and what can I learn and Implement from that and I just noticed that there's a lot of different reasons for burnouts I also looked that up like reclaim.ai also has definition and there's some of my own experience in here as well I will mention a few like for example long work days for for management like having a bad manager people say oh there's a saying that goes people don't quit jobs they quit their manager where you have just poor management not thinking with you not caring about your development and not getting paid enough lack of work life balance having too many meetings that's definitely a big one for me not taking enough time off I see that in the US a lot like it's crazy they have like 10 vacation days per year or so and then something yeah it's crazy and and sick days you have to pay and it's crazy crazy stuff you have to you might have too many things to respond to for working conditions overwhelmed by pressure to perform so a lot of these things I can I can relate to to these and then I just see okay if I already know that I get stressed from having too many meetings in my week or after consecutively on the day then I will just try and okay how can I reduce the amount of of meetings now I can I reduce the things that cause me stress and then on the flip side also do a lot of things that actually bring me joy and this is I think when it comes to burnout people I'll often talk about okay you should do less of this or or take away

16:18this stressor but if you do something that you 100 enjoy doing like we do with PPC Mastery now then you just want to go for it like 110 every single day and that can also burn you out because you might be running sprinting too long for too for too fast too fast for too long but generally speaking if you do something that you really enjoy then it's harder to get burnt out and that's what I noticed now in my business especially when I went freelancing I instantly felt a lot of the stress like falling away already and then now with PPC Master it's it's even on another level it Sparks Joy yeah for sure absolutely and what about you have you had those moments where you were getting close to to maybe burning out yeah yeah I haven't luckily I haven't burned out yeah once and I try to keep keep that like like like that but I definitely felt like I was burning out a couple of a couple of moments in the past few years so basically when I feel like I'm burning out my body is giving me signs yeah so I really really start start to have problems with my with my shoulders and with my neck they all get stuck yeah so when I wake up and when I go for a walk during the days then when my neck is starting to hurt and it becomes really really really stiff then I know hey something is going on on because all of the stress that builds up in my in my body basically consolidates around my shoulders and my neck so that's the first sign that I have too much stress going on and then I obviously try to look for the source so where where does

17:58it come from and a lot of times it is work related so what I've done in the past is to keep a lot of keep three main pillars in Balance that's the way I how I look look at things so I have my work pillar I have my family and friends pillar and I have my health pillar and basically you cannot have it all um I personally find it even difficult to to keep two of these three pillars imbalance at the same time but right now I finally found the balance to work on all of all of the three combined and I was a few years back oh yeah a few years back I I really really went went all in on work and I really had to drop off the two pillars family friends and health related stuff so I didn't work out I didn't I didn't really move during the day I didn't spend enough time at family and friends I was always always working always busy and that was essentially how I how I didn't burn out because if I were to add up friends and family and the health factor and I wanted to combine that with work I was definitely definitely going to burn out because I was so focused on work I was so focused on well performing making money making my clients happy that I really didn't have time to work on the other things yeah and now now I know you in the last month or so I've noticed a big shift for you you also investing more in your health where did that come from now because you as you mentioned you cannot have all of them time yeah time yeah so I look I locked myself up during the

19:38full-time freelance period where I essentially worked 50 60 hours a week maybe even more so I didn't really had the time to to spend my time on other pillars or categories so to say but since we are since we shifted our Focus towards PPC Mastery we are both able or we're both able to to to say goodbye to a couple of freelance clients right so right now I have drastically decreased the amount of freelance work that I currently do I only work for the the biggest clients that give me a lot of freedom and really want to keep me keep me on board where I can do whatever I want to to bring the accounts to a higher level so it's really fun to work on those accounts and basically by by saying goodbye to a lot of clients I've freed up a lot of free time to spend on PPC Mastery and we're still working hard we're still delivering products but it is a different way of working so we are really our own stakeholders so to say so we are responsible for the the own products that we are currently delivering and the quality and the speed that we want to to create the products for and you're not you're not longer you do no longer have like stakeholders that are expecting a lot of things from you expecting you to be there every single Wednesday for a video call or expecting you to have a fully worked out optimization roadmap and that times 15 or times 20 the amount of clients you have so that basically enables me to

21:18free up a lot of time to spend on the other two pillars as well health family and friends so right now yeah I'm really really starting to work on myself again and I haven't been doing that for five plus years yeah because I was so deep in work do you notice any yeah differences now that you also invest in those other pillars yes I experience way way more rest so if you do what you like most if you keep your work week in check yeah the amount of hours you have to work in check you really start to experience a lot of well relief and a lot of rest so to say I do not feel stressed at all unless we have a big deadline coming up and we have to push ourselves in order to finalize the last couple of details inside of the products but during the work week I feel like the calmest I've ever been yes and I have time to to to think about work related stuff think about family related stuff spend my time towards invest my time more happily in friends relationships that I really really enjoy spending time for I have to I have the time to go to the gym every single day now that I haven't been doing for five years at all so yeah I feel like I feel like a new person yeah already already I think it will become even better in there in your future I would even say that investing in your health is probably the most important thing out of those three pillars because everything falls falls or stands and falls with with your health the level of

22:55your health so I notice it for myself if I I go to the gym now every day as well and sometimes I mix it up go on go for for a run if I'm really sore or I need some rest and I might take a rest day of course but generally speaking now if I don't go for three days in a row or so my focus is instantly down my energy is down my my yeah excitement to get to work is down so eating healthy working out sleeping well those are the the key ingredients to at least like have the energy to do what you need to be doing and there's a quote I got it from Brandon Bashar he said your body is like a power plant and in in terms of energy so a power plant doesn't have energy it generates energy so if you have something that generates electricity it builds up the power because it is actually generating it's not like the energy is stored inside it's because it's moving it's getting the energy it's the same with your body like the more that you move it the more you train it to be active the more energy that you have at the end of the day and now some people might think this is crazy but I wake up today I woke up at 6 15 went for a little walk and then boom 6 45 I was already working and deep work focused work now we are recording these these podcasts after this I will go to the gym and then I have my my afternoon block of work and then around five or so it's done and I had a really productive day where I was feeling the energy I was feeling productive I was feeling proactive because I'm doing the things that I want to be doing and then at the end of the day it's really hard to feel stressed because you've already done so much yeah

24:34you won the day exactly and I think that's really important if you talk about stressing PPC like of course we have the clients that we're dealing with and you you I wrote it just down keyword you said yeah some clients they expect to report they expect the big roadmap blah blah but it's also how you manage those expectations and sometimes the client says yeah we need it tomorrow and then you just ask them okay but but why or is it also okay if we do it next week or or in two days three days and often they will just say yeah okay it's fine like they will just demand things of you and then you push it back a little bit and then it's okay or or the worst the worst that can happen is they say yeah we need this report tomorrow and then you send it and then crickets you don't hear anything and then one week later you ask them and they haven't even checked it yet so always like push back on those right you move your meetings for for the day and you you didn't hang out for sure with your family or girlfriend that evening [ __ ] yeah you're stressed yeah yeah that's terrible so we will do a separate episode about how to prioritize work and how to communicate communicate this with with clients so it could be interesting to zoom in on that particular part as well because it's all about privatization and communicating this with your stakeholders yeah yeah I have to I had to learn this the hard way myself yeah that's just the experience yeah this experience you need yeah so Miles as a freelancer or in-house specialist how do you set boundaries boundaries with clients or colleagues to ensure that you have the personal time and space that you need to win the day a

26:13to spend time with your girlfriend to spend time with your family to think about yourself so can you give me a little bit more information about how you set boundaries yourself for sure so the the first boundary that I actually set for myself is that I don't want to work with people that I don't enjoy working with and that's a luxury that we can afford ourselves with freelancing especially in this market still the market is still good for Freelancers um I decide if I if if I meet someone for the first time and they request an audit or they want to work with me then the first thing that I will check is just the energy from this person like do they do they have positive vibes that's kind of already the first boundary that I said because if I don't focus on that then and I just say okay not it it pays it pays well generates a lot of of revenue for me but and they know that in the end maybe it's going to be way too stressful it's just not they're not going to be good so that's the first check that I do already like okay if if I'm feeling that the energy is off is bad vibes then I'm not gonna do it because now that's the most important one of all of the ones that you're going to mention I think that's definitely definitely the most important one yes because I have had clients that brought in a lot of cash a lot of monthly Revenue a couple of thousand Euros a month but some of them were horrible to work with they didn't give you a sense of trust you had to explain everything within really really really depth or really detailed before they were going to trust you with the proposals you're basically you were doing so if you do not fight with your stakeholders it could be a client could

27:52be a manager I think you're in for a bad bad time yeah for sure you can bring in loads of money but if you have to work for toxic people so to say or people that you know you do not fight with I think that's a red flag you have to stay away for sure and you can gauge that by checking okay is are our values aligned personally but also in work but also how they treat their co-workers so if you are on a call with the business owner or with the manager and they just treat their their staff like [ __ ] I've seen that and now that I say that it's like nah who Nobody Does that first time you meet someone but you will actually notice by the way that they will treat other people that's ultimately how they're going to treat you as well so be be careful with that quote from from Alex or MOSI look at the way our people treat service workers in order to see what kind of people they are yeah so if they're shitty towards waiters or winners yeah cleaners whatever then you can instantly tell what kind of person it is yeah yeah true everybody yeah yeah because everybody deserves the respect no matter what you do it doesn't doesn't matter then the next one is yeah saying no often not only to business but also when you're working with someone train yourself to say no often and I've I've I think I've gotten pretty good at this now like my my default reaction to everything is a no and then I think again and okay if I can sell it to myself if if I see that the idea is good or it needs to happen then yeah okay I will do it but now like in people for PPC Mastery for example we're getting a lot of requests from people that want to

29:29work with us they want to partner with us and I'm just saying no to everything right now because we're so focused on building the PPC Hub and building our products that it's all just a distraction but also in freelance business when I work with my clients and they ask for something and I think it's generally not a good idea then I will just say say no and then direct them towards another solution I I rarely just say no I'm not going to do it I will always explain like no and I think this is why we shouldn't do it or this is why we should prioritize something else I'm toxic yeah I'm toxic freelancer no but I think saying no also can give you a lot of respect because if you say yes to everything you become a pleaser and people will walk over you and if you say no then people will respect your boundaries and and because also here's an example and this one gets me fired up is when I was working at agency I had a client and it was actually this wild story this is this is a client that was really really really demanding and I was I think I was working there for one year so I wasn't experienced yet and I didn't really know how to deal with these things I was really Junior I had my vacation I was going to I think I was going to Bali and it was Friday and it was my last work day before my holiday and I think we were flying on Sunday and on Friday I did all my handovers to the clients and said okay this colleague is going to take over yada yada and I heard nothing from the client like the entire week I was emailing calling nothing and then on Friday afternoon something happened in

31:07the account but it was like five or five thirty but I was already I already emailed okay I'm logging off now I'm done because I had the Friday afternoon off and now it's my holiday for three weeks and I'll see you later this is the person that you need to go to and then this client was calling me so I picked up I said no I'm sorry I'm on my vacation now I don't have my laptop yeah it's a personal number yes yeah personal number yeah yeah because we didn't have work work phones so yeah that's yeah that's [ __ ] up already oh that was terrible but it's getting worse so then I just directed it to my colleague and then okay have a nice holiday blah blah then that friend it after the Friday evening I was going out to a club to a party and it was 2 30 in the morning and then my client sent me a WhatsApp message like we need to fix this now it was 2 30 in the morning of Friday Friday night and then I blocked yeah and it was also my holiday and Friday afternoon 2 30 what the [ __ ] or Friday at night and then I blocked blocked the number until I until I came back from a holiday because I was like I don't want this to ruin my nice holiday with my girlfriend and then after I came back then yeah no no problems it just took took over the account again and there was just one of those typical clients that is just I need this now and blah blah blah and yeah that's that's the worst so you need to be careful with those things terrible so how do you how do you train your clients in order to prevent this from happening yeah well definitely open the conversation about when you are available for them and I'm I'm definitely I'm never strict at all with

32:44my clients that I work with now also I tell them all the time if there's something on the weekend of course I will help if there's something in the evenings of course I will jump in if it's necessary but if it's not like really burning and it needs yeah if it's not urgent and doesn't need attention right now then we can also do it tomorrow in the regular workout wait you can wait so that's something that you need to communicate to your to your client like regularly if they do call you outside of the hours that you have said that you are available tell them and why now this is I'm not working right now I'm with my family and with my with my kid I see this often and this is something that I would never want is if I have a kid and I'm and I'm on my on my daddy day and I'm out I'm I'm out with my kid and I get a call from a client then I'm not gonna take that call I will tell them I'm with my kid right I will call you back tomorrow but I see it so many times like people they will just they're slave to their to their clients basically and they say okay I will do whatever you say but if you tell them I mean with my kid right now let's figure it out tomorrow or later at night when whatever then it's usually is usually fine but if you don't tell them then they will just continue to rush over you yeah so true so true so I I've had some clients and I right now I have one of one relatively new client that tries to Whatsapp me now and then and when that happens right now the first thing that I say is please do not WhatsApp me this is my personal number yeah it is not work related please use my email so I can prioritize my emails and well check in during the times that I check my email

34:22and only call me if something broke down or you read you need my help right now but you do not you do not want to sit on the couch during the eve evenings checking your WhatsApp your whatsapps yeah and you see like client Messengers coming in for hey how is this optimization going how is this experiment running I just check check the results and I think something broke and we have to zoom in that is giving you instant stress levels instant so that's something you want to teach your clients or teachers stakeholders not to do so right from the first moment if you let them do that or let them cross your borders and you do not say anything about it they will continue continuously go over that bound boundary and you will have a really hard time yeah yeah absolutely and yes you said it's the worst the worst thing that you can have is that you have your phone and you're just well checking some WhatsApp from friends and then you see the client even just seeing the name of the client will already bump up your stress level because you know something is probably up and that's yeah that's really annoying and also with these direct messaging apps like WhatsApp but also like slack and Discord yeah true people people think or have the they really think that you will be responding in a matter of seconds minutes or even within two hours because it's a channel where it is normally happening that way so if you if you receive WhatsApp it is generally a fact that you will respond within two three hours but that's what I despise about slack as well people think that is it that it is an instant messaging platform and you will respond within the

36:00within a matter of seconds yeah so you really have to you really have to to to explain this towards your stakeholders hey these are working hours I'm checking my my slack my Discord my email two three times a day if it's really urgent call me if you if you just message me in all of the other platforms I will come back with you within just 24 hours yeah that's something that you have to communicate within the first moments of well signing a contract for example so you're set expectations yeah man I totally agree and I also I don't have slack on my phone when I work with clients in slack I do have Discord but that's a different story like for our Discord deep sea Mastery Discord and our own deck Discord for us like I don't care if you send a message at 11 at night then then it's totally fine but I don't want to see slack messages from clients that that late at night and and I'm work in my working hours I'm with my laptop so I just check it on my laptop always same with email although I also try to limit the conversations in email with my clients and just say let's take this to slack or bigger updates we can do email but I also hate just emailing back and forth and that also definitely helps with reducing stress like having less time that you need to be spending on those platforms like email Etc through so zoom in on on on support systems and tools do you use specific support systems tools to keep you in check so let's say you're planning your week you're prioritizing your work what kind of tools apps or Technologies do you use or recommend that help you

37:38streamline your work and therefore reduce stress and or manage your time better yeah I I I've tried a lot of different things like I said I really I built a nice custom Excel template when I was working with 10 plus clients and then at Excel I would have different colors for the clients and look at this hour I'm doing that for the but I I noticed that I'm way too chaotic to stick to it so now I just uh I'm old school I have pen and paper that I use I use notion for to keep track of the tasks that I need to do and that's just about it when it comes to productivity systems because Dicky Bush also said like productivity systems are often just distractions or ways to keep you away from the thing that you actually want to or need to be doing and yeah I just it now it helps like when I start my day I just think about okay what do I need to do today and then I write it down on my on my piece of paper and then when I'm done with it I just strike through and then I know it's it's done and then I keep track of that like the bigger tasks in in notion but you can make that as as simple or complex as you want but I try to try to keep it really simple uh something you you you work out for yourself every single morning or do you do it in the evenings prior to the day what I like to do now on Sundays if I have time if I if I'm just busy doing other stuff on Sunday then I will do it a Monday morning but usually on Sunday I will just map out my week I look I start first by looking at my calendar let me just pull it up see what it says now then I see I have my gym blogs planned out so gym plus plus break that's

39:17actually the first thing that I that I make sure that I plan because otherwise I there's a chance that I don't do it then I check okay what meetings do I have and then around that what is the what are the project that I need to do right now for my clients for PPC Mastery and then I yeah sometimes I schedule them on the days depends sometimes I don't and then I just look at day per day what is the most important thing right now and then every morning before I start I just write it down on my in my in my note notebook that I have like piece of paper the top three are top five things that I want to do that day and then work from there so basically sounds really simple basically super simple yep how about you anything else yeah so I like to use notion as well to prioritize my work so I've created a specific notion kanban board for every single client that basically keeps track of all of all of the things that are in a backlog that are in progress that are blocked that are completed and yeah some some other customer related questions coming in that I have to come back at so that's how I like to keep track of everything that needs to be done then I like to work in calendar blocks so I have a really structured day and a really systematic way of working and planning so that's something that I learned at my last agency that I worked with we had a great great project manager and she she actually planned the work for us in blocks of at least two hours within a day so some clients had a block of two hours some had a block of four hours well and it was basically

40:56decided on the amount of hours they were they paid for so obviously so then she planned those blocks for you yeah she Blended she Blended for all of the Google ad Specialists so basically we didn't we didn't have to plan at all we just started our days and we we knew what clients to work on and within those blocks of course we had our own prioritization and we had to decide where to work on but we knew what client to work on and during the blocks we we could not be distracted by the sales team by incoming calls she picked up the phone and she said okay Bob is working for a different client right now but he has you planned over two days is it urgent yes then I will I will redirect you to to Bob Newhall answer phone if not he will call you back in two days so that was the the best work week I ever had working for a business and everyone was basically happy so right now I still use that the system so when a new client comes on board I instantly tell when I'm going to work for the account and when I am reachable so for example right now I have a bigger client that I'm working every single Monday afternoon for for about two or three hours they know that I'm working on the account every single Monday afternoon so if they want to go with me if they want to sit down if they want to discuss results if there's something urgent they know they can they can reach me on Monday afternoon between 1 and 1 and 4 so to say if an email with a

42:37request is coming in on a Wednesday or Thursday they know that I will pick up the mail or the request the next Monday yeah and that's something that I made really really clear during the onboarding phase and by implementing that inside of my work week that gave me so so so much rest and basically set the boundaries for for all of the clients that I work with and then so let's say they have a request on Wednesday and then you say okay I I will do it on Monday then you you said you made that really clear in the onboarding process of how you work and they were just fine with it they understood yes yeah yeah and if not they have a problem and they have to find someone else that's just how it works yeah it's just setting the expectations then and then it's okay because if you didn't to be real clear yeah if you didn't do that then they will send you something on Wednesday and you will say I will pick it up on Monday and they're like what do you mean on Monday I need it now I need it this week but now you already have the agreements you have the expectations in place and then that's that's really nice man that's actually right and it's easy to explain because I always explain it like hey I have other clients as well other stuff to do I want to give everyone the attention it needs so if I'm working for a different client and then a request from you is coming in then you as a client wouldn't wouldn't wouldn't be happy if you were to switch accounts and were to work for a different client ins inside of a blocked calendar meeting that meant to be allocated towards different clients so by explaining it that way almost

44:15everyone understands it yeah yeah that's that's really solid yeah and for me also support systems in terms of community or people of course like every day I go for walks with my girlfriend girlfriend in the during breaks after work and that helps settle it down of course like family you can we can talk about anything that we the stresses that we go through and the community Discord community and the PPC Hub they are also nice because then sometimes if something happens you can just yeah rant a little bit and then like something stressful happens in your day you just tell people this happened stupid this stupid that blah blah and then you're you're then it's gone so that also helps to stress relief exactly so looking at the time miles let me ask you one final question yeah what would be your advice for newbies people just starting out in Google Ads working for for themselves or even in-house what would you advise them in a couple of top five points so the first one is definitely take care of your health so invest in good sleep well is probably the most important one eat well drink enough water work out go outside a lot like not not only go to the gym once but also throughout the day make sure that you go outside for walks because then that helps to keep your brain and your body fresh let's see more advice for newbies take time off frequently and that means on the macro level take holidays for some people this sounds so obvious but some people almost never do it so take your holidays on the micro level that means taking short breaks

45:51every day and do not bring your laptop on those holidays yeah yeah that is a game changer for sure you've noticed that right oh yeah yeah so my first holiday without laptop was essentially three months ago two months ago yeah so in the last couple of five six years I always had my laptop with me every single holiday it was last month it was in July oh yeah yeah six weeks or so it feels feels like it feels like two months already I know but then on the micro level like short breaks every day make sure that you don't sit behind your computer for eight hours straight but go outside do some stretching those kinds of things only do work you enjoy and I know that if you're starting out then this is sometimes you just have to swallow it swallow the pill in order to get where you want to be and then yeah sometimes you need to suck it up but also sometimes you should say no and and and and and and sort of fight back for what you what you want so at to give you an example from when I started at an agency of course they gave me my first couple of clients I had no say in what they what they were but I already knew that I wanted to get Ecom clients so from the first couple of one-on-ones that I had with my manager with my mentor I already said yeah my goal is to work with Ecom clients and then they said yeah now you have your portfolio we cannot give you extra e-com clients right now but maybe maybe later then the next one I will just after think out a weekly or a monthly meeting with my manager and every every meeting I was going to say call but then it was

47:29all physical still every meeting I would just say yeah it's still my goal to do Ecom if there's anything opening up let me know and then she would say no not right now but maybe later and then every time I would say it until they were became became so annoyed that they would just give me give give me e-com clients and then in the end I got I got g-star and all the other ones that I was working with back then so not because they thought I was annoying like okay we can shut them up but also because sometimes people need to know what your goals and Ambitions are and then they can help you once it starts to open up like sometimes of course it's not possible to to give you what you want straight away and you need to prove yourself as a junior but as I did that and then let's say one year one and a half years into my job at the agency I was having the portfolio that I wanted from the beginning with really like nice nice clients that I learned a lot from so and then after you get more experience you can start to focus more on the things that you actually want to do and that you actually do enjoy or for at least let's say 80 or so and don't take no for an answer just always keep pushing for for where you want to and for what you want and where you want to end up and [ __ ] everyone who tells you no yeah and if and if you and if you do not get what you want then their other employers as well yeah exactly you can go other directions so I think the last thing is just when it comes to dealing with stress in PPC it's like get the Reps in and I don't mean the Google reps but just the repetitions like you would in the gym because thriving in PPC is just a game of reps

49:08and the more things that you see more clients that you work with the more problems that you encounter The more stress that you will experience the better you will be at dealing with that with those things as you as you get more experience so great final takeaway cool so that's it I hope you you enjoyed the podcast I think you dropped a lot of knowledge bombs in this episode miles and so for everyone starting out I think this is a great podcast to to listen to so in the next episode or one of the future episodes we don't do not know when to when this will be scheduled we will zoom in on prioritizing your work and how to well plan your day how to plan your week what to prioritize what kinds of optimizations What kinds of work so I'm really looking forward to to discuss that as well so yeah any final words Mouse yes so thanks to Thomas for his great question if you have a question for us just head over to ppcmastery.com podcast and then there's a link where you can ask your submit your questions and yeah I'm sure that in some episodes we'll use some of those questions try to answer answer some of those for you guys and yeah that's it so thanks for watching if you're viewing on YouTube we appreciate it and don't forget to like And subscribe and we'll see you in the next episode see ya ciao