Edition # 8 I Rising Star

Feeling like there’s too much on your plate? Deadlines piling up, meetings multiplying, and that to-do list that just won’t quit? If you’ve been waiting for a sign to slow down, take a breath, and reset—this is it.

Here’s the truth: burnout is real. But what gets me through—every single time—is idiotic optimism. It's the belief that no matter how unrealistic it seems, things can get better. Even when you’re running on fumes, sometimes all you need is a little reset to see things differently.

So, if you’re hitting that wall, here are three practical ways to bust through the burnout:

1. Take mini-breaks to recharge – You don’t need a vacation, but a 5-minute reset can do wonders. Step away, get some fresh air, and come back stronger.

2. Say no more often – Not everything deserves your time. Be brutal with your schedule and cancel that one meeting that could’ve been an email (seriously).

3. Celebrate small wins – We’re always focused on the big picture, but those tiny victories along the way are what keep you going. Recognize them.

This week, we’re diving into how idiotic optimism keeps you moving, even when you're on the edge of burnout. Plus, I’ve got some unfiltered stories from the agency (involving a gold BMW, no less), a powerful Google Ads hack that only the pros use, and a challenge to finally cancel that pointless meeting. You’re welcome.

Let’s shake off the burnout and keep pushing forward. Ready? Let’s go.

“We cannot solve problems with the kind of thinking we employed when we came up with them.” 

- Albert Einstein

Unfiltered Stories From the Heart of the Agency: Chapter 8

Rising Star

When PPC Hero released their “25 Most Influential Experts” in 2018, I wasn’t on it. But my name did appear in a teeny-weeny footnote beneath the winners. I was the #1 rising star. In other words, I was the best of the losers who couldn’t win. I wanted to sue Hannapin Markin for tarnishing my character. But then something interesting happened.

A gold BMW screeched to a halt in our parking lot a few months later. Out came Reed and Robin, dressed in three-piece suits worth more than the combined value of all the equipment AdVenture owned. It was only five yards from the car to our office, but Reed and Robin put on their aviators (flicking those Ray Bans open single-handedly) anyway. These guys weren’t rising stars—they were stars. They were friggin supernovas.

They represented a multi-billion dollar cloud software company similar to Adobe. We were pitching two accounts of theirs—both of which were big-league pieces of business for us. At some point during the meeting, we had this ridiculously and unnecessarily complex model pulled up on the screen. Reed had barely been paying attention, responding to emails on his iPad. He glances at the screen, taps me on the shoulder, and says, “You see cell B41? That calculation is off by 5.” I almost peed in my pants. I can barely add two single-digit numbers together in my head, so I had no idea if he was right—but even if he wasn’t, he was. Because he was a star.

The following morning, Reed Overfelt sent Ari the following email:
“Ari: Please give the entire team a gigantic thank you from us for all the work they put into today’s presentation! The level of effort was VERY obvious. Great job!”

In the end, they awarded us one of the accounts and gave the other to another agency. That agency had 150 employees at the time. We had fewer than 10. Robin and Reed said it would be a test.

Three months later, Reed emailed me late on a Friday afternoon saying their other agency wasn’t working out. Our results, communication, and capabilities far outpaced what they were getting there. They gave us the other account the following week.

Nechama, Ronnie, Ari, and Patrick were absolutely spectacular—what they did, and how hard they worked on this account—is another story for another time, but it was inspirational. These were not easy clients, or easy people to deal with. Our point of contact had a ghoulish scar running across his entire scalp from a surfboarding accident—or so he said.

Sometime later that year, we had a meeting with their  team in NYC. I bought Robin a fountain pen to show my appreciation for trusting and staying loyal to us. His eyes lit up when I gave it to him. Or maybe it was just a trick of my overactive imagination.

Anyway, 1,389 days later, on June 9th, 2022, I get an email from someone named Holly. She’s a VP at Corning. Corning did $14 billion in revenue last year. They’re no small potatoes, and Corning has no shortage of glitzy agencies on their roster—but they were looking for a team who’d move fast and  bring an uncommon level of intelligence and thought to the campaign objectives (which indeed are quite strange).

Holly is Robin’s wife.

Robin had suggested she reach out to us. Holly even mentioned that Robin was so happy with the work we did for the insurance startup he’s now CEO of. We didn’t do any work for Robin’s insurance startup. In 2020, Robin emailed me about how performance media might be applied to D2C insurance products, and I took the time to write him a thoughtful response. I gave him some ideas and some insight. It was a good email (a really good email) but it certainly wasn’t “work”.

But he appreciated it—and remembered it. Or maybe it was the pen. Or it was the indefatigable effort the AdVenture team showed up with through our tenure. It was likely all three.

We closed Corning Glass. Corning wasn't just a win just for me—it was a win for the entire team involved with the daily slog of managing those software accounts in 2018. When I say good decisions and good work and outsized effort ripples outwards in unexpected ways—this is exactly what I’m talking about.

What's Going On at AdVenture Academy

In typical die-hard Mets fashion, I dragged a few of the AdVenture Media crew—and of course, my daughter Toby—to last night’s game. Miraculously, the Mets actually won. While I was losing my voice from screaming, Toby sat there with her usual smug expression, like the win was entirely thanks to her. Maybe it was...

Is it time to have a meeting about having so many meetings?

I’ve been feeling this a lot lately. You know the drill: we sit down, go over the same points, and walk out wondering if we really needed to meet at all. So, here’s my challenge for you—pick one meeting this week and cancel it. Seriously. Just send an email instead.

Let’s break the cycle and reclaim some time. Because, let’s be honest, some meetings? They’re just calendar fillers in disguise. What could you do with an extra 30 minutes? Maybe solve a problem, brainstorm, or—wild idea—grab a coffee and actually think.

Your calendar will thank you.

The Google Ads Lever Only the Pros Know How to Use

There’s a lever in Google Ads that most people overlook—even a lot of advanced advertisers don’t fully get it. It’s called seasonality bid adjustments, and it’s one of those tools we use at our agency when we really need to control the system.

Let’s start with the original, intended use case for seasonality bid adjustments.

Typically, you’d use it for short-term events—like a 3-day sale—where you expect a big spike in conversion rates. Smart Bidding is great at adjusting over time, but it’s not psychic. You can’t just sit around and wait for Google’s algorithms to realize what’s happening. So, seasonality adjustments let you give Smart Bidding a heads-up, telling it, “Hey, we’re expecting a 50% bump in conversions during this event—adjust accordingly.” After the sale ends, the system goes back to normal without skipping a beat.

That’s the standard use case. But here’s how we hack and hijack it.

Think about how you use ChatGPT. Sometimes it gets pigeonholed, and you don’t get the exact answer you need, right? So what do you do? You tweak your input, give better feedback, and help it along. Seasonality bid adjustments work kind of the same way. You’re helping Smart Bidding see the situation more clearly when it’s stuck or not performing optimally.

Sometimes we need to “talk to the machine” in ways that go beyond just accounting for a sale. 

For example, there are times when Google just isn’t scaling the way it should, even when your campaigns are crushing their ROAS targets. This happens when the system lacks confidence in conversion rates. That’s when we step in, adding a small seasonality adjustment to give Google a nudge, effectively telling it, “Hey, trust us—there’s more room to push here.” This helps boost spend without sacrificing efficiency.

On the flip side, after major events like Black Friday, Google might overestimate how long those high conversion rates will last. By adjusting for an expected drop in conversions, we avoid overspending as the frenzy winds down.

Another example, during holiday closures when a business is offline, we don’t want to pause campaigns and lose all the progress we’ve made in Smart Bidding’s learning phase. Instead, we use a seasonality adjustment to tell Google, “Expect a 90% drop in conversions,” so spend decreases naturally without damaging performance when things ramp back up.

In short, seasonality bid adjustments let us manipulate Smart Bidding in ways that most people don’t even realize are possible. Want to dive deeper into how we do this? I break it all down in our new Modern Google Ads Profit Playbook course. Trust me, you’ll want to check it out before the holiday season kicks in—because this tool could be the key to maximizing your Black Friday strategy.

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