206 – You can’t keep a good dog down: Tom interviews Adam Katz

Episode 206 – Adam Katz
[00:00:09] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey, everybody, it's Tom here with Episode 206 of Screw the Commute podcast. We've got Adam Katz here. It's kind of funny. His name is Katz because he does a lot of work with dogs. We'll explain that to you later. But what I love about this guy is he won't let anything, including pain, stop him. Wait till you hear his inspiring story. I hope you didn't miss episode 205 on Ecourses. It was one of my Monday trainings where I gave you something that's either made me a load of money or saved me a load of money. So it talked about email E courses. Of course, on Wednesdays and Fridays we do interviews with successful entrepreneurs like Adam. Now I got a quick announcement make sure you grab a copy of our podcast app. It's in the app store. You can do lots of cool stuff conveniently right from your mobile device. You can download it from there or you can go to screwthecommute.com/app and we have complete instructions and screenshots and everything to teach you how to use all the fancy features. So make sure you grab that. And as a thank you for listening. Make sure you grab a copy of our e-book, How to Automate Your Business. Just one of the tips in this book has saved me. Listen to this. Over seven and a half million keystrokes and that's really close to be an accurate and it's allowed me to handle up to 150000 subscribers and 40000 customers without pulling my hair out. And we sell this book for 27 bucks, but it's yours. Free for thanks for listening to this podcast. And while you're at the download page. Grab a copy of my What I learned over 120 quality podcasts. Now we're on 200 and some. But some people are charging at four or five and six thousand bucks for this. So when you're on the download page, grab a copy of that, too. And that's at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. And of course, everything today will be in the show notes, including all Adam's great stuff. All right, our sponsor's the Internet Marketing Training Center of Virginia Distance Learning School, which teaches legitimate techniques to make a great living, either working for someone else or starting your own online business, or both. Why not do both? I've been living this lifestyle since the commercial internet started in 1994, and it's the best business I've ever been in. I tell you that. So check it out at IMTCVA.org. And if you know anybody in the military, we have big scholarships for military, law enforcement and first responders. So just put a slash military after the Web site. Of course, that will be in the show notes, too. And we are approved by the Department of Defense for a military spouse extra scholarship. So we really take care of our people to take care of us.

[00:03:25] All right, let's get to the main event. Adam G. Katz is a University of California at Berkeley. I think that's the Golden Bears, if I'm not mistaken. He's a graduate of that school and he's a serial entrepreneur who has spent the past 20 years. Listen to this. Crippled by debilitating chronic migraines. You know, I've had a lot of those, too, except they came from my customers. He didn't let that stop him. He's owned more than 10 businesses and has self-published over listen this 30 books, including four novels. So learn his strategies for picking the right business model to maximize your time and minimize your headaches again. So, Adam, are you ready to screw. The commute?

[00:04:30] The commute. Only the commute Tom.

[00:04:36] So great meeting you, sir. And we met through our mutual friend Nicole and Stefon Ηubert there. OK. They're my dog trainers. And you've helped them tremendously. And they just can't say enough great things about you. So tell everybody what you're doing now and then we'll take you back to see how you came up through the ranks.

[00:04:56] Sure. I founded Google Ads Management Services and 100 percent done for you ad service, what they used to call it, management service. We take care of basically everything from soup to nuts. All you have to worry about is picking up the phone and talking, you know, closing your clients when they call. And predominantly we focus on the pet industry, but not exclusively. And I get into why, if I own three dog training businesses over the years, as well as a subscription online subscription based Web site in the dog training industry that went on to make us over six million dollars, it did really well. I had to add one full time employee and his wife who worked for his part time handling customer service. And we were able to help a lot of dog owners. We had a free weekly dog training chip subscription. So we called back new weekly newsletter to over 70000 dog owners. Was widely read. And it really gave us a chance to not only help a lot of dog owners and save a lot of dogs, but also make a really good living without having to, you know, go into an office somewhere and sell our time.

[00:06:11] You screw the commute.

[00:06:12] Screw the commute. Exactly. So I ended up becoming a millionaire by age 40. I'm forty nine now. And that's not counting the house, which we paid off free and clear. And my choice of business models has really allowed me to live abroad for several years, including two years in Costa Rica where I met my my wife who's actually Colombian. And then we spent a year in Panama and a year in the Republic of Colombia. And we actually just got back this past February, spending a month in Medellin. So all because of, you know, learning some very basic skills that relate to online marketing.

[00:06:55] Well, they might be basic, but they're not necessarily easy, especially in the Google ad world. I mean, every time I check in, you do it all the time. But every time I check in, the interface is different. Yeah, it's figured that again.

[00:07:11] Yeah. It's it's really a talk about migraines. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's really something you know, people think it's a set it and forget it kind of deal where they could just set it up and check it once a month and maybe if you're in a small market with without a lot of competition, but in any somewhat competitive market, if you don't know what you're doing, you can blow through a lot of cash really, really quickly. But if you do know what you're doing, it can literally change your life. Now, Gary Halbert, the famous copywriter, cooperating is the art of using persuasive text to get people to take action. And Gary Halbert was a master at that. He'd write these is long form, low cost sales letters and magazine ads that would just get people salivating and saying, take my money. Or Gary had this expression that was along the lines of of your only one sales letter away from changing your life. And in my experience, you really. That's true. But in addition, you're really only one ad campaign away from changing your life, because if you hit on the right ad campaign and you can scale it, the sky's the limit.

[00:08:20] That's that's for sure. But you're absolutely right about if you can blow a lot of money, too, because. And I've been doing this a long time, clear since when the pay per click started. And what I teach people now is they must if they're going to try to do this themselves. And it's not easy. They must obsess on it because I put an ad in on Friday one time and got too busy. Came back Monday, owed Google eight thousand dollars. And then another time I thought I'm never going to let that happen again. So so I paused an ad and then I came back and I still owed him a bunch of money. And I called him up like mad at him. And I said, I paused this thing. They said, No, you didn't. You just paused one part of it so I had to pay them again. So it's it's really good to have somebody that really knows what they're doing and does this all the time. So those mistakes don't happen.

[00:09:15] Yeah, I know. I messed around with that. Pretty much every type of online advertising there is. My email marketing and video marketing to Facebook to all kinds of different PPC. Still, I believe that for my money the Google ad stuff gives you that the best return on investment just gives you the best quality of lead. I think the reason for that is because it's more of a pull medium than a push medium in what I mean specifically they go to Google and they're actively searching for what it is that you have to offer. So they're there proactively trying to find you. And so once they're doing that, you're simply just bringing them into your funnel because you're you're pulling them into your funnel. Whereas a push medium would be something like TV ads or YouTube ads where they're going to YouTube to be entertained and to watch videos and not necessarily because they want your service and then you're pushing your message to them. So in my experience, one of the strengths of Google ads is that you're pulling rather than pushing. Does that make sense?

[00:10:24] Yeah, it's totally true. Now the other end of that spectrum I have been teaching that I feel like one of the best bargains to start out with, that you can keep your cost really low and get your feet wet are in-stream ads on YouTube because, you know, people can skip them. You can get a lot of branding for free if they hit the skip button and things that would cost me a buck and a half to four bucks on a keyword on straight Google. I'm getting views for four to seven, eight cents. It's a good way to get your feet wet. And yes. It doesn't have the exact what you call. Which one is it? Push your pull.

[00:11:09] You're pulling with Google ads and you're pushing with. You know, any type of scenario where they're not going to that medium to find you. So you're having to kind of push your message and interrupt them.

[00:11:22] Yeah, you're interrupting them.

[00:11:24] Right. But I mean, but the bottom line is, is all of marketing comes down to testing different advertising mediums and finding out what works best for you. Because even even with the same service in the same industry, we will frequently find like one market just kills it with the same kind of had the same kind of offer, the same kind of everything. And then going to a different market that you would think would have similar demographics. And it just doesn't work. So, yes, if you're finding success with whatever it is you're doing. Definitely keep doing it. I'm not knocking any of that.

[00:11:58] You know, that's the whole thing is people you have to test because as soon as somebody tells you absolutely this is the way to do it, that's when you run the other way. You just never know. People as experienced as you and me always get surprised on stuff that you thought would work. And it just didn't work. Some things you didn't even consider all started working.

[00:12:21] Yeah. Yeah. Specifically like with your copy cutting and cutting persuasive text. I mean you can you can write up an ad that you just think is gonna kill it and then it bombs and then you can try something really stupid and you think there is no way in or maybe tweak just one word. And suddenly, an ad campaign goes from not working to working. So it's just it's just you really don't know until you test this stuff.

[00:12:46] Yeah, I had a eulogy book. I've got about 18 books to my credit. And it was I tried everything under the sun for probably over a month where I was getting ready to quit. And then and I wish I could remember this a long time ago. What I changed. And it went to forty two thousand dollars a year for nine years straight. So that's why no matter how experienced you are, you've got to get that out of your head. The arrogant side of your head that you know what's going on, the customer or the market will tell you what's work. You do a lot of split testing.

[00:13:23] Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

[00:13:24] Tell them about that.

[00:13:25] So split testing in its most simple term or way of explaining it is what we call a/b testing. And there's other words. I think the expression is Tamagotchi. I may be mistaking that for a child's game. I'm not sure. But basically you have an A in a B in your A is your champion and your B is your challenger. And so you. Like, for example, if you're using a menu page software or service, like onbounce or clickfunnels or any of the big lead pages, what they'll do is let's say you send one hundred one hundred visitors to your Web site. It'll show one page to the first visitor and then a second page to the second visitor, and then the original first page to the third visitor. So on and so forth. And so it splits. It splits in half what your visitors are saying. So 50 percent of your visitors will see the A challenge the champion and 50 percent will see the B. And then you're going to track that over a period of time to see which of the two wins. And so if you're challenger, say, converts at 3 percent in your champion converts at 2 percent, then now you have a new new champion. So that becomes your A. And then you write a new B and you keep testing like that until you just can't beat it anymore. And so we do that with with with our landing page copy. We do it with the ad copy. We do it with basically anything that we can because that's how you get a really good response rate of conversion.

[00:15:00] Yeah. And I find that the mistake people make is that they they don't track people all the way through to the money. They might get one sales letter that gets a higher conversion on the on the number of click throughs. But those people don't buy anything. So, if they just stopped right there. They're gonna throw away the good sales letter that's bringing buyers and keep the other one just because it's getting more clicks. You have to be careful and follow them all the way through.

[00:15:32] One of the things that we do call our service a 100 percent done for you Google ads, management service. And one of the things that we do want to make is that we don't do is that I don't co-manage the campaigns with the client. In fact, I jealously guard how we run the campaigns from the keywords.

[00:15:50] You don't want them to screw it up.

[00:15:51] Yes. All due respect. But, you know, typically, you know, a client might be really good at running a dog kennel. They might be great at training a dog, but they don't have anywhere near the experience or the education or any of it to be able to interpret the data. So they ask, you know, questions like, well, how many clicks are we getting? And we we look at and think, well, how many clicks is really important, you know? I know I've got you looking over my shoulder or a manager knows that he's got the client looking over his shoulder and the client says, well, how many clicks are we getting? That means clicks are important to the client. And I will tweak things to get you tens of thousands of clicks. Clicks do not equal sales with Google ads. It's all about the quality rather than the quantity. So I'd I'd be much more happy getting three clicks a day. And all three of those are clients with money in hand ready to spend two thousand dollars apiece, then getting a thousand clicks a day and none of them want to spend any money. So it's really about the quality, not the quantity.

[00:16:58] You thy to explain that to them upfront.

[00:17:00] Yeah, I have a whole funnel. So by the time I get on the phone with them, they already know how I work and they know what a pain in the butt I am and how I'm quirky about this than the other. And it's just, you know, leave me alone. Let me do what I do best, which is running these campaigns. I've got to stop and I've got to explain all that. The intricacies of, you know, why this click through rates better than that click through rate and what search impressions share means and all this kind of I've got to stop and educate you. That basically means I've got to hire somebody else to do that job. And that means that the price is going to go up. And if you want that, that's fine. Go get that. But, you know, typically you're not going to get it at a budget price. And so what I've tried to do is I've tried to focus on just what's important, which is offering a superior Google ad management experience where we're you know, what we're putting in is comparable to what you might normally pay upwards of fifteen hundred dollars for doing it for typically around 499 dollars a month rather than fifteen hundred dollars a month. But you're not getting the hand-holding and you're not getting that co-management and all those other things that some people want.

[00:18:05] So I know that the people I know are just thrilled with what you're doing for them, because you know and I know them personally, they're never in a million years going to figure out what you do and which just spend a lot of money for nothing.

[00:18:18] And nor should they. You know, they're great dog trainers. They're great at running a dog training business. They shouldn't be messing around with, you know, why is this click through rate different than that click through rate. You know, that kind of stuff. So there's really there's really, in my opinion, three metrics that are really most important, which is how much am I spending on the campaigns, which is two things. Both the ad spend budget and a management fee. How much am I spending and then how many leads are we getting specifically from from this ad campaign? And then once we know how many leads from that, we want to we want to extract how many are we actually selling? And really, those are the only three metrics when it comes to AdWords campaign that you that most clients really only need to know. You know, we'll deal with all the other hundreds of thousands of stuff that keeps you up at night and is the reason I don't have any hair left anymore. And that's what you're paying me for. So, yeah, that's tough.

[00:19:11] And it's not really your fault if you send them good leads and they don't close them because this is a whole holistic process. You could send them the best people in the world. And if they screw up the sales presentation and that's really not your fault.

[00:19:25] Yeah. My problem is just getting getting these clients to answer the phone. If you make the phone ring. But if you don't answer it, you're not going to sell in the advertising campaigns not going to be successful. So.

[00:19:37] All right. So let's take you back a little bit. Did you ever have a job?

[00:19:40] Yeah, I worked for my parents, had a sign in rubber-stamp company when I was in high school. And so I worked for them making rubber stamps and helping them a little bit with the marketing. When I was in high school, in college, I worked for Bookstar, which was one of the predecessors to Barnes Noble's. I also worked for the Mark Twain project at Cal Berkeley. I worked for an advertising agency as a creative coordinator, which was basically a copywriter. And I also worked for a marketing firm in it in the real estate marketing firm as well at a sales firm. And that was through college. And that was enough to make me realize that if I have any choice in the matter, I really didn't want a job.

[00:20:23] Right. And so how did you how did you get started in a business of your own?

[00:20:28] Well, I was a student at. Like I mentioned, at UC Berkeley, the Golden Bears.

[00:20:33] I got to tell you a story about that. I went to college on a football scholarship. At West by God Virginia, you've got to say by God. For both Virginia and so a bunch of hicks, basically. And so we go out to play the Golden Bears university, California, Berkeley. And we were the West Virginia Mountaineers. And so we get no respect at all. Going out to the university California, Berkeley. So they have on the marquee and the scoreboard, it says the western Virginia coal miners. Wasn't even the name of our team.

[00:21:12] They couldn't even get the name right?

[00:21:14] No. And we won.

[00:21:18] I don't know what that says about Berkeley, but I don't associate so much for that institution anymore. And I'll be one of the few who went into University of California, Berkeley, slightly left of center and and then came out slightly right of center. If you and your listeners know anything about Berkeley, it's certainly it's one of the communist centers of the nation.

[00:21:40] We've seen that. The antifa stuff over and over again.

[00:21:45] Yeah. Talk about anti-business. So while I was at Berkeley, I became friends with the woman who ran a business, a pro-Israel advocacy group. And I got very involved with that. Her husband. We were meeting one evening at their at their little condo that they rented. And the husband had this huge Rottweiler and a huge pit bull mix type dog. And they were holding what we call in the dog training business downstairs. And I just that was amazing. And then what does this guy do? And he was this is ready, Farmboy. He'd come to America. He could barely speak English. And he had this dog training business where he'd meet clients out at the local park, get a little Nissan truck that he'd run the local auction business out of. And again, this was Friday, 1992. But this this Israeli fellow. He was charging a thousand dollars a dog and he had more clients than he. He knew how to do it. He was turning people away. I thought, this is amazing, this guy. He doesn't have to go into some office and wear a tie, doesn't need a degree. He meets his clients at a local park. So he's outside breathing fresh air. They come to him and see him as as the expert. Right. They pay him to help with their problem and he fixes their problem.

[00:23:13] And he doesn't need any employees. He doesn't need a facility. He doesn't really need anything. The guy could barely speak English. And I thought, wow, that's you know, not that I necessarily wanted to be involved with dogs for the rest of my life, but I thought, OK, this is something that I can oh, if I learn it, I can always fall back on. So and that's kind of what got me started in in the dog training. I apprenticed with him for about a year and he taught me. 80 to 90, but 80 to 90 percent of what I needed to know. He went back to Israel and he's doing he's doing other things now. But really nice guy. But I didn't feel like I was getting like 100 percent in. So he had a book on a shelf by Tom Rose, who had a school for dog trainers. And and I read that book and I said, is this guy. What do you think of this guy's any good? He's a yes. He's a really good dog trainer. And so I ended up after I graduated from from Cal Berkeley, I went to the Tom Rose School of Professional Dog Trainers and spent a couple of months out there kind of getting, you know, the rest of what I felt I needed at the time, and then returned to California, went back to the Los Angeles area and started up my first of three dog training businesses. So that's kind of that's kind of how I got I got into it.

[00:24:42] How did you transition that into running Google ad?

[00:24:48] I mean, take a long story and make it really, really short, cause then we're pressed for time. So I got really burnt out of training dogs. So dogs are great. But the people were driving me nuts, you know? And you kind of get to a point where you kind of figure out the pet dog training stuff and you figure out the best way to explain it. And so I started to go back. So I was having a lot of success. This was before dog training became like an actual career that most people realized they could actually make a living doing. And out of the back of my truck. I was I was averaging eight to nine thousand dollars a month just working at the local park, which I thought was amazing. My best month been better than I was. Right. And I was. Yeah. Now dog trainers charge a thousand to three thousand dollars or more per dog. And most of my programs actually average about six hundred bucks per dog. And so it was it was a lot of work. I got really burned out. And so I started setting a course to teach other dog trainers how they can make money training dogs with the dog training skill. And that did really well. The course sold for five hundred to fifteen hundred dollars, depending on what what package you chose. You know, some had more consultations and stuff, so it had less and helped a lot of dog trainers get off the ground with their business.

[00:26:10] But what I realized was that there was a cap, at least at the time, because they're just there simply weren't enough professional dog. So I was making maybe I don't remember a thousand or fifteen hundred dollars a month, maybe two thousand dollars a month selling these these courses. It was like a three ring binder. And it dawned on me that, you know, I kept getting questions even from the other dog trainers on, you know, how do I train this dog with all I do? And it dawned on me that, you know, there's a much bigger market helping dog owners rather than helping dog trainers. So I started originally publishing a monthly newsletter and that did fairly well. And then after a year, I took all of those newsletter issues and put them into a book and started selling that book. And then the book, which was about one hundred and eleven pages, became a three hundred sixteen page book. And I was selling that for I think like 15 bucks and doing all the shipping and was selling three or four of them a day. So making 30 and 40 bucks a day and then wanted to bump up the perceived value or the actual value for that much of the product. So I recorded five audio audio interviews, kind of like what we're doing now on various subjects of training a dog. And I package those five.

[00:27:25] Back in the day when we had cassette tapes with the book and I included also a little floppy disk of links that was back, you know, back in the day when could sell them links to dog training resources and dog supplies and all kinds of stuff. So that bumped up the value and a little card that they could put on the refrigerator. That was like a reminder for puppy training and stuff. And so I went from selling the book for I think fourteen ninety five to selling that whole package for fifty dollars. And but but my costs didn't really go up that much. Right. So I had maybe a I don't remember a buck or two in the book and then after that five cassette tapes and the floppy disk maybe I had four or five bucks in costs but now I was able to sell it for 50 bucks. And this is back in the day where you could you could take out an ad in the joke of the day email that was going out to like a three hundred thousand people. And the ad with costs you like 60 bucks. You know, it's just the beginning of the Internet. So to my amazement, I started selling, you know, I kept selling the same volume, probably three to four, maybe five a day. So I was making about 200 bucks, about six thousand bucks a month, almost as much as I was making in dog training. And so from there, I recorded five different dog training videos and offered that is an upsell.

[00:28:40] So instead of just the $50 book with the audiotapes, you can also get my my five VHS tapes as well, and that cost one hundred and fifty bucks. So now I had a package where if I sold just two a day, I would be making 300 bucks a day, which translates into about, you know, nine thousand bucks a month. But, you know, some days I'd sell five or six. And so I ended up pretty consistently making about twelve to fifteen thousand dollars a month with that business model. In 2006, the Internet started to change and I was already starting to kind of transition into more wanting to sell digital products, because with digital, you don't have to deal with the shipping and you don't have to deal with. I didn't get my product and all these are the problems or, you know, all these different stuff and just selling basically 1s and 0s. So we started doing that. And also I had been having problems with my fulfillment house. It was kind of before Amazon and so it made the switch to selling digital products. And then in 2006, don't ask me why. But I had a friend of mine named Bill Myers who had developed this piece of software called MemberGate. And it was a piece of software that allowed you to run a subscription Web site.

[00:29:59] I still have two or three of them.

[00:30:02] Oh, really? OK. Bill is a great guy. So I transitioned and I took all of that, the videos, the audio lectures and the book. And at this point I'd written like three or four hundred different articles or came on how many articles and stuff and and started doing the subscription website. And the cool thing about that business model is that you have recurring billing. So you don't just sell them something once you sell them something again and again and again until they cancel. So we were charging different price points over the year, but ultimately we're charging thirty seven dollars a month. And they get access to all of the digital products and and the the videos and all that stuff, plus access to a discussion forum where they can ask questions and get answers from myself and other professional dog trainers.

[00:30:59] If they wanted to maintain their membership, they just let it ride and so we'd have people that would stay members for years. And so by. I want to say two thousand things by two thousand eight. Make sure I'm remembering my name. My number is here. I think 2008 we did eighty one thousand dollars in one month. And in March of two two thousand. Yeah. March of 2008, we did, I think, eighty three thousand in it. Those were our best months. Most months were somewhere between sixty seventy five or.

[00:31:37] But I know you're slacking in those months.

[00:31:39] Yeah. Right. Just roughing it. But you know, I had this business that basically I was able to run out of a laptop and we lived in Costa Rica and Panama and Republic of Colombia. Bogota.

[00:31:50] A Lifestyle business. That's what we call it.

[00:31:52] Right. Right. So. So. Yes. So that that that was great. In a big part of that was Google ads. And so eventually that the online landscape changed, just as things do in Google for the type of website that we had was really starting to cause a lot of problems for us. And the downside of Google is that they don't always apply their rules universally. So they were saying we couldn't do things. We can say things on our on our website. Like, for example, I had a legitimate testimonial from the Dr. Phil show. They had called me up and they said, you know, we have a guest who we want to get a personal protection dog for. Who do you recommend? And I was honored that the Dr. Phil Show came to me, you know, and decided, yes, as an expert. And so I put that testimonial up on the website. And one day Google said, nope, no celebrity Web sites. You have to you have to document the celebrity testimonial. And, you know, this was like 10 years later and like the producer of the show wasn't an enemy to work for. Know you remember me. That was like so that. And then they'd let our competition who would use obviously fake made up testimonials that were so painfully, stupidly obvious and they.

[00:33:08] No problem. Yeah. We were not going to give you a problem. We'll get around to you later and then they just never will. I don't know. So it just got to be a very, very complicated business model. The landscape shifted. More and more professional dog trainer started getting online and offering your services and things changed. So eventually that project, you know, sunsetted and also have a short attention span. So it really all businesses to run over the long run require a lot of passion. And if you don't have just the passion for it or the passion fades after several years, you got to know when to kind of call it quits and move on to the next thing. But I had acquired all these skills and one of those skills was, you know, how to run Google ads, how to track marketing, how to write copy all this stuff. And I decided, you know what, I've got these these local dog trainers asking me for help. And, you know, do you know anybody who can run a Google ad campaign? And when it comes to dog trainers, there's nobody who can win the dog training campaign better than I can. And so I kind of fell into it kind of after the last thing sunset. So that kind of leads me to where I am now.

[00:34:16] There you go. So tell us about this migrain stuff. I didn't know this about you, but I do know people that just can barely function when they have these. So tell us about that.

[00:34:28] It's terrible. So in 1999, I started having these these terrible migraine headaches that would just, you know, last from anywhere to from a day to to several days. And after years of trying both mainstream as well as alternative medicine, everything under the sun, you know, nothing really worked. Nothing really worked. And so one of things I had to do with my business was I had to make businesses and to make sure I was picking business models, that I wasn't trading time for money. I needed to be trading knowledge or skills or an outcome for money because I needed to be able to to work when I could work in and be able to, you know, do other things when I couldn't work because of the migraines. And so what what I've I've been fortunate enough to be really good about time management and making sure that I get done what I have to get done when I can and then when I can't either. Just having a business model where it doesn't matter or having, you know, bringing onboard staff that can kind of kind of carry the weight when you can't. So that still going on. Still going on. Yeah. There's no cure. There's no cure for for my kind of chronic migraines. So every time there's a there's a weather change, I'm in pain. Sometimes the pain and sometimes I can work through it. You know, sometimes I can even go out to dinner or whatever. I'm just not having a good time. But I could still function. But then there's other times, fortunately, much less frequently where it's just, you know, level 10 and you are on your back. So. So, yeah, it's it's it's been a curse, but it's also been a blessing because it's been it's been something that's been that has forced me to be very careful about the type of businesses that I involved myself in.

[00:36:24] Right. Right. Because you're. You know, nobody's going to know the difference if you know, if you're taking a nap one time with this kind of model.

[00:36:31] So, yeah, I mean, with the current business, I've got one primary fellow who's also an excellent ad words manager. I mean, he's like a top tier agency level ad words management guy. And in his Achilles heel is that he's he's someone say he's got a little bit of an abrasive personality. He doesn't work well with others. We work well great. And I don't I don't require him to come into the office. He doesn't have to put on a tie. If he wants to do his work in the middle of the night, he can do his work in the middle of the night. As long as the work gets done and we get along great. So because of that, I'm. I pay him well. But I don't. I don't pay him as well as he should be getting paid. But then if he were getting paid, those kind of levels, he would have to be going into an office and wearing a tie. And not be a night owl and have to work during the day. So it works really well. And because of that, I get somebody who's really excellent. Help me run these campaigns. And then a couple of support staff people to kind of crunch data and keep things organized for us.

[00:37:39] So we call that a they don't have a good Web site manner.

[00:37:44] Yes. Yes. Like bedside manner. Exactly. Exactly. And he's fine with that. He's like, you know, He'll help me run that. The back end stuff, you know, track the analytics and, you know, run the campaigns. And I do, too. But then he doesn't have anything to do with talking to clients or any of that. So I'm kind of that the upfront face of that.

[00:38:07] And this is the perfect I mean, online stuff is perfect. If you don't like people.

[00:38:13] Right. Especially the info products. Yeah.

[00:38:16] I mean you don't you if you I mean if you do you can accelerate things because people will love you and they love dealing with you and they'll spend more money with you. But you don't have to at all. Totally anonymous. There's an old. Speaking of dogs, there's a famous New Yorker cartoon where there's two dogs sitting in front of a computer and one dogs typing away. And the other dog says, hey, you know, what's up with that? And he said, well, hey, it's the computer. They can't tell him a dog. So. So tell people. How have they work with you? How does it how does it go?

[00:38:53] Well, really, my marketing funnel right now is primarily set up for people who want a pet industry type business, dog trainers, doggy daycare, boarding kennels. But really, we can run campaigns for anybody with basically a local business and or appointment driven business. So I even though in my background was e-commerce and selling it for products online. I'm not set up. I don't have the systems in place to do that. I have the systems in place to get local businesses, you know, clients, local appointment driven businesses.

[00:39:26] Because a lot of the same ideas are in place. But, you know, when you have a certain market that you dominate, everything is easier. You know, you've been through it a thousand times. So. So you don't get surprised.

[00:39:38] Yeah. Not only that, but like I was telling you off air, you know, one of the competitive advantages we have from, you know, servicing multiple clients in the same industry but in different markets is that we can learn something. It's called what was called a shared negative keyword list. So we see a certain search like, you know, we have a dog, a pet dog training client in Miami doesn't do police dog training. We're advertising for the word dog training. And we see somebody does a search for police dog training. And we know from experience that if your ad comes up, even though your ad doesn't say anything about police dog training, people click on anything and you might be paying four to six dollars or more per click. You want to add that to your your negative keyword list, right. And so what we do is we run a shared negative keyword list so that now know not only does it block it out for our client in Miami, but it immediately blocks it out for your friends in Virginia and my clients in Los Angeles and everywhere else in the United States and Canada, because we know from experience that if we see that type of search coming through in one market within a couple of weeks, it's going to come up in another market. And if it's already blocked out, then you're not wasting that four to six dollars on that click.

[00:40:48] Yeah, that's that's a big, big thing, because you don't want the ad, the show at all, even if they don't click on it. Right. Because that's an impression without a click which reduces your click through rate. So that's negative keywords, folks. Adam, we got to take a brief sponsor break. When we come back, we're going to ask Adam what's a typical day look like for him and how he stays motivated.

[00:41:15] So, folks, I'm down on my hands and knees begging you to check out a particular webinar or pass it on to somebody that could use it. I mean, has to do with higher education. And if you're. Considering getting retrained because you hate what you're doing or you want a better life for yourself or your family, or maybe you have kids or nephews, nieces or even neighbors who are wondering if they should burn up hundreds of thousands of bucks going to college or university and then end up broke with mountains of debt and no marketable skills. Well, you just may want to watch this webinar. It's it's not me, just hawking my school. It's some high level education. People showing you all the things that colleges and universities are doing to rip you. They're raising the tuitions and they're artificially inflating the grade point averages to make people think that they're smarter when the testing shows they're actually dumber. And I don't know if I'd want to mortgage my house for this to pay for this. And and they did studies over 2000 kids and a bunch of different universities. They're spending an average of 8 hours per week total. Preparing and going to class the rest of the time is eating, partying and shopping. Like I said, I don't know if I'd want to mortgage my house for that. So if we can help you with a fast skill that's in high demand, please get in touch with me. But watch that thing over it at screwthecommute.com/webinars or you can just screwthecommute.com and click on webinars. You can either download the audio or watch the actual webinar. And then if I can help you give us a call.

[00:42:58] Let's get back to our main event. Adam Katz is here. And Adam, what is a typical day look like for you and your lifestyle business?

[00:43:09] My my myself and my wife wake up at 5:30 a.m. every single morning. Every single morning. My wife is a dedicated, dedicated, devoted runner, and she has the discipline of a Japanese samurai. And so even if I didn't want to get up, we'd be getting up at 5:30 a.m.. Yeah. Get up. Have breakfast. You know, I try and run about three miles every every third day. And then the days that I'm not running, typically walking two miles with the dog in the morning.

[00:43:38] Even if you have your headache.

[00:43:40] Yep. I'll skip the running if I have a migraine, but I walk at least two miles a day every single day, even with the migraines. It's just that I think it's really important. It's important to keep your weight down.

[00:43:53] I'd be telling her. Oh, honey, I got my migraines today. Sorry, I have a headache.

[00:43:57] It's usually the wife that says I've got a headache. So but, you know, especially with an online based business where you're sitting in front of a computer all day long, know you're taking care of your health. Yeah. Getting, you know, getting some some activity, some movement is really important. And then spend spend entire morning pretty much just working on the business and then lunch. A quick nap. And then the rest of the day, just working on the business.

[00:44:26] You get a nap every day.

[00:44:28] And you get a. You know, it it's really important. Right. I mean, otherwise you might as well just go get a job. If you can't if you can't take a little nap. It's funny.

[00:44:39] Actually, a lot of employees I've seen are napping.

[00:44:43] Yeah. I went to I had a roommate in college who had one of these high priced. Lawyers, internships, right where she was getting paid like a thousand bucks a week as an intern. Right. And she told me like it was so boring that after lunch she'd come back into office and she'd climb under the desk and take a little nap. And we figured it out and that her 20 minute nap was like $120 twenty nap. Based on what they were paying her.

[00:45:10] That's a pretty good price for a nap.

[00:45:15] I never wanted to be in that position, you know? Well, like you're you're you're in some office and the fluorescent lights are burning off your vitamins. And you come back from lunch and you're a little bit sleeping, all you want is to just close your eyes for just ten minutes. But you can't because the boss man's, you know, right on top of you telling you, you have to do this. You have to do that.

[00:45:35] Yes. And the place is full of people that are sick and yes, germs everywhere.

[00:45:41] To be to be fair. The downside is that I also work a lot in the evenings and I work a lot on weekends, too. But that's more because of the migrant condition. I need to take advantage of the hours when I don't have migraines. To really maximize my efficiency.

[00:45:56] So how do you stay motivated?

[00:45:59] Fear, extreme fear of poverty. I'm paranoid that with worry that the economy is going to change and who knows, we're going to lose everything. And so for me, I'm on a constant mission to acquire more skills and improve my skills. Because you could lose everything tomorrow in some freak thing. Who knows? The IRS mistakes your name for somebody else. And next thing you know, your account's closed and things snowball. Who knows? And but, you know, if you have skills, especially if you have marketable skills and you know how to persuade people and you know how to get people to take action on those can't be taken away from you. And so I'm always on a journey to acquire more marketable skills and improve the skills that I have.

[00:46:48] Well, that's called kaizen. Continuous improvement, continuous learning.

[00:46:53] That was a book, right? Remember that book from the 80s?

[00:46:56] Yeah. I think it's also a principal in Japan I heard of that.

[00:47:01] Yeah. There was a lot Toyota and a lot of the Japanese companies that were really kicking butt in the 80s where they were saying was because of that.

[00:47:10] That's for sure. Well, thanks so much for sharing your story with us. Like like this is just the perfect example of how an online business can be a lifestyle, business and work around the debilitating affliction. I just never knew this about you. But again, you got the job done. And so how would I know? Like, you know, you're shirking your duties, but you've set up a business that you can get it done and and work around this this problem. So that's really applaud you for that because. Yeah, I heard wonderful things about your services.

[00:47:49] So thank you. Thank you. Very kind. And I think I think anytime you have somebody who has I hate using the word handicap and have as a condition, you know, it almost makes you want to work harder to make sure that you're you're doing a good job and you're pleasing customers and then you're getting them the quality of service that they're paying for. That's that's just really, really important to me.

[00:48:10] Well, you sure got it down. So thanks so much for coming on and and telling me how they get a hold of you if they if they need any of your services.

[00:48:19] Sure. Best thing to do would be get a dogtrainertoolbox.com. Even if you're not a dog trainer, you might want to take a look at the website. Just kind of see what we're doing. We have a number of different information products specifically to help dog training business owners. But I think even if you're not, you might get some ideas about how you can run your own information publishing business and specifically for the for the Google ad service. You can go to browningdirect.com/ads. Any local business really that gets gets clients from the local community.

[00:49:01] Awesome. Well, thanks so much, Adam.

[00:49:04] It's been an honor and a privilege, sir.

[00:49:10] Oh, my pleasure. All right. So everybody, that was Adam Katz. Make sure you check out if you want to listen to this again. Episode 206. So you go to screwthecommute.com/206 and we'll have the links to all his stuff in there and anything else we talked about. And I will catch you all on the next episode.

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