IAM785- Specialist Helps in Digital Advertising Campaigns

As a veteran PPC advertising specialist, Ameet has helped clients achieve as high as a 500% increased ROI from their digital advertising campaigns. Her work has included managing over $4 million in ad spend for a single client, as well as providing meaningful and measurable results for startups and small businesses.

Her company (Hop Skip Media formerly Ameet Khabra Marketing Inc) has carved out a position as a highly effective PPC campaign management solution provider. HSM takes accounts from zero to hero, working from scratch as well as taking over from other firms to get results for their clients.

• CEO Hack: My team helps me a lot
• CEO Nugget: Trusting your guts and knowing you can do it
• CEO Defined: Someone taking control of their future

Website: https://www.ameetkhabra.com

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/adwordsgirl
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adwordsgirl

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[00:00:02.20] – Intro 

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you’ve come to the right place, Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you’re in search of. This is the I am CEO podcast.

[00:00:29.80] – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast, and I had a very special guest on the show today. I have Amit Tabra of HopSkip Media. Amit, it's awesome to have you on the show.

[00:00:39.29] – Ameet Khabra

Hi. Thank you for having me.

[00:00:41.10] – Gresham Harkless

No problem. Super excited to have you on. And before we, got started with the podcast and jumped into the questions, I want to read a little bit more about Amit so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. As a veteran PPC advertising specialist, Amit has helped clients achieve as high as five hundred percent increased ROI from their digital advertising campaigns. Her work has included managing over four million dollars in ad spend for a single client as well as providing meaningful and measurable results for start-ups and small businesses. Her company Hop Skip Media formerly Ameet Khabra Marketing Inc. has carved out a position as a highly effective PPC campaign management solution provider. HSM takes accounts from zero to hero, working from scratch as well as taking over from other firms to get results for their clients. Ameet are you ready to speak with the I AM CEO community?

[restrict paid=”true”]

[00:01:27.09] – Ameet Khabra

I am. I've never been more excited.

[00:01:29.09] – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Let's do it then. So, they kick everything off. I wanted to kind of rewind the clock a little bit and hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story. What led you to start with your business?

[00:01:38.09] – Ameet Khabra

Oh, gosh. Where do I begin? It's been a little, like, it's been a bit of a convoluted story, I guess. I started my first business when I was nineteen. I used to volunteer a lot with, like, event planning and stuff like that. Mhmm. And then eventually one day I woke up and went, I could do this on my own. And the person who was running the other organization kinda turned around and was like, I don't think you have it in you. And I was like, okay. Well, the challenge was accepted. And I actually did it almost single-handedly which was kind of wild to think about now, because I was like, holy like, that was a lot of work that was done, over top of actually working part-time and then going to school full time too.

So that was kind of really interesting. So, basically, it was, our main event was this massive dance competition at the end of it. I have like zero dancing experience. Like, I don't even know how to explain how I even started volunteering for stuff like that. And we had viewership across the globe, and within the first year, we were credited for the reason why my competitor stopped doing their main event. Which was probably my most shining moment. Like, I've accomplished relatively a lot in my career, but that's still the one moment where I was like, I got credited. Like, they actually put my name in there. It was kind of cool. Nice. And then, three years later after that had all started, I, decided that I well, not decided.

I realized that I hated event planning. It was just too much. I didn't wanna manage, you know, that many volunteers and that many staff, and then have to deal with all the teams. And those teams generally had about ten to twenty people in them. So I was like, oh my gosh. That's just so many people. I don't wanna do it anymore. So I stopped and then realized that I was running ads for the events and that I was actually relatively okay with those ads. So I went, let's maybe try to do that, because I love numbers. My mom says she was supposed to be an accountant, and I feel like I just kind of got it from her that I just love numbers.

Yeah. So I ended up moving, twelve hours away driving-wise from my parents, and essentially started a career in pay-per-click advertising. So how I even got my first job, I do not know. It's one of those moments where you're like, why did you do this? Because I went from, like, spending maybe 03:50 a month to three hundred and twenty thousand, very, very quickly. Like, it was overnight, essentially. And then within that, I was able to kinda do a couple of cool things with Google and stuff like that and went off to an agency for a little bit just to round up my skills. And then eventually, I went, I could do this better if I just do it on my own. And that's essentially the origin story.

[00:04:06.40] – Gresham Harkless

Nice. Absolutely love that. And I think so many times, you always kinda see that I don't know if it's an infographic or what, where people say, you know, success. I think success is often a straight line, but, obviously, oftentimes, if it's there it's never hardly ever that, it seems. But I love, you know, you being able to kinda obviously be successful and kind of, sounds like, pursue those things that were really helping you to kinda build the organization you first started out with, and then it just started to kinda snowball from there.

[00:04:32.60] – Ameet Khabra

Yeah. I did. I'm very grateful for the time that I had at the agency because that was the time that I really, started investing more in doing more education. So I started a blog that was getting pretty decent traffic, and I really wish I kept it up because it probably would have been huge by now, but whatever. And, yeah, and after that point, I became the Google person in my city. So then when I went off to freelance, it was an easy transition to kind of well, actually, it wasn't an easy transition. The first year was complete. It was a complete and utter nightmare. But after that point, it was really easy to get more clients because everyone was like, oh, we've worked with you at the agency, or we've heard about you from x, y, z person. And that was basically how we've been able to grow up until now.

[00:05:13.89] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Absolutely. And was the first year just kinda planning those seeds, just kinda getting things set up? And then once it was set up, you were able to kinda take it to another level?

[00:05:21.10] – Ameet Khabra

No. I've got a horror story for you. It was Y'all have Twenty Twenty-six was literally the worst year of my life. And it was, basically, I ended up signing my first freelance client that didn't necessarily come from, like, like, an agency like, somebody that I knew from an agency. Mhmm. It was just a referral from somebody who just knew me in passing, which I thought was so cool. So I went and signed this this client, and, this was around Christmas of twenty fifteen. So within eighteen days, he canceled the Google Ads, contract because he was like, I'm not getting leads. I'm losing leads. And I'm like, but it's Christmas. Like, nobody's looking for an accountant right now. Like, that's not a thing. And I had told him that he was gonna see, like, that nothing was gonna happen during the winter because that's just generally how things work.

[00:06:07.50] – Gresham Harkless

Right.

[00:06:08.10] – Ameet Khabra

And he just didn't quite understand it. And at that time, I was trying to do full service. So we had, like, a website with him and some social media stuff too. And at the end of it all, I think the whole relationship was maybe about forty-five days. Yeah. At the end of it all, he basically said, you know what? I'm not gonna pay you. And, thankfully, I was listening to him during the like, I probably should have listened more intently because he had talked about how he had caused such a fuss with the other agency that they ended up doing work for him for free, so he wouldn't, like, go sue them and stuff like that.

And I just kinda took it as, like, he's just telling me, like, a, you know, like, some kind of joke or something. Like, I didn't really think about it. Yeah. So I got an email back going, oh, well, I'll see you in court. And I'm like, Fine. So that minute, I knew a civil a civil claims agent. And that night I called him, and then the next day, that client was slapped with a lawsuit. And I'm like, I'm not the like, I'm like, I get it. Like, I'm a small timid girl. At that point, I was. But I'm like, it's if you piss me off, I'm like, it's a completely different ballgame. Right? So, I was like, you just messed with the wrong person. So at that point, he got, like, flipped where he was like, what the hell?

Like, she sued me. So he went back and actually tried to sue me for the max amount, which was fifty thousand dollars, and claimed that it was lost in revenue, which was complete bull. But at that time, like, when it happens to you, you don't realize like, I mean, you realize it, but then you kind of internalize it to a certain degree where you go, oh, am I the problem? And that kinda just spiraled into me just not being able to sell myself properly. And then a couple of health issues kinda came up in between all of that. So I ended up taking, like, eight months off in our first year of business because I just couldn't handle it.

[00:07:37.39] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah.

[00:07:41.50] – Ameet Khabra

Yeah. It was a good time.

[00:07:42.80] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. I'm I'm super sorry that happened, but, I think anybody, it seems like, who's been in business longer than a day, you know, you have those clients. And I think the good thing, at least, I always try to look at the price side of everything, even with, nightmare clients that I've had is that I'm happy it happened early. So then now, as you talked about that radar, those tentacles kinda go up, and when you start to see those signs that how to kinda avoid them later on in your business. But, I know I appreciate you for for for talking about that because I think so many times you don't see all of those aspects of business, but I think it happens. And it happens to just about every business and, you know, there's not enough kind of information about that or at least, knowledge about some of those pitfalls and how to get past those pitfalls, which I think is even more important.

[00:08:24.19] – Ameet Khabra

It is. And I was, I was actually teaching at the start of this year before obviously COVID ruined our lives. And, I had, like, my students, I was like, okay. Well, what do you guys wanna do? And there were about five of them. It was a small class. And almost every single one of them was like, I'm gonna start my own business. And I just turned around, just started laughing. Like, I almost fell on the floor. And I was like, okay. Like, you do that. And they're like, why not? And I'm like, are you prepared to be your own lawyer to a certain degree?

[00:08:47.89] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah.

[00:08:48.29] – Ameet Khabra

Your own accountant. If you get sued, what are you gonna do? You have to do admin stuff. You have all you're your HR person if you're gonna start hiring contractors and all this nonsense. And then they just kinda sat there by the end of the semester. They're like, we're gonna look for a job. And I'm like, that's probably the best way to get started. Like

[00:09:04.00] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah.

[00:09:04.70] – Ameet Khabra

You need that experience before you can actually go out on your own. And especially with people who didn't have any experience in the field in general, like, you're setting yourself up for lawsuits at this point. So, yeah. I'm glad that they went the other route. And Yeah. Hopefully, in a year or two, they might do their own thing.

[00:09:18.70] – Gresham Harkless

I definitely appreciate that. And I think that, again, you know, a lot of times in business, your true passion or what you're hoping to accomplish will, you know, definitely get challenged. So, you have to kinda, like, make sure that you definitely wanna do that. So I definitely appreciate you for for moving forward with your agency. And I know you kinda spoke about it a little bit. Could you take us through exactly what you're doing to kinda help support the clients and how exactly you execute those kinds of PPP strategies?

[00:09:42.50] – Ameet Khabra

Yeah. So, we're exclusive, like, pay-per-click. That's the only thing that we do. Eventually, at one point, I kinda wanna see if we might go into conversion rate optimization, but, that's a ways away. So, essentially, what ends up happening is that clients will come with either a new account or an existing account. And if I'm being entirely honest, I love existing accounts because there's data in there, so then at least we can figure out what was working, and what wasn't. So it kinda gives us a leg up on all of it. And, for us, our main focus is trying to cut the fat really at this point. So looking at what, what's been sucking the money out of the campaigns and what hasn't been.

Because sometimes, especially if we're talking about Google Ads, it's, it can get pretty deceitful to a certain degree where, you'll sit there and be like, oh, I made one conversion, and it cost us, let's say, twenty-five dollars or something along those lines. But what ends up happening is that, like, if you actually do the math, it might actually cost you ten bucks for that one conversion. And a lot of agencies don't tend to do that where they just go, oh, you got a conversion. That's the end of it. And I mean, it's great. Like, you can confuse clients pretty easily on that front, but for me, I just didn't like that life at the agency where I'm like, I don't wanna just run through hours just for the sake of running through hours Sure. Or making changes in the account just to make myself feel like I did something for them, I guess.

So then we came up with, like, a retainer base where we're, like, regardless of how many hours we work, like, this is it. And then eventually throughout the year, obviously, that would just even itself out, which is essentially the theory for us. So yeah. So for us, it's just trying to make sure that we can, prove our value within hopefully within the first month. But, yeah, sometimes it takes a little bit longer, which is unfortunate, but it depends on the business. So we'll take a look at what the competitors are doing. We'll take a look at, like, who actually visits your website because I think that's where a big misconception is, is that a lot of us assume we know who's on our website, but in reality, it might be completely different. So we'll actually sit there and try to see figure out if there are any discrepancies in between from the client to the website as well, and then figure out where they are online really at that point and then try to target them as much as we possibly can, or as narrowly as much as we can.

[00:11:47.10] – Gresham Harkless

I wanted to ask you now for what I call your secret sauce. And it could be for yourself or for your agency or a combination of both. What do you feel kinda sets you apart and makes you unique?

[00:11:55.39] – Ameet Khabra

I think in, like, the city that we're in, there's not a lot of people who have specialized. So, I may be wrongfully crediting myself for this, but I'm still gonna do it anyway. Where, niche agencies weren't a big thing, for a very long time. And now we see, like, niche agencies coming in. I think I was I wanna say I was one of the first, but I can't say it confidently. So I think that was what helped us kind of create a name for ourselves. So it's being, the agency that did one thing, but we did it well versus being mediocre at everything. Mhmm. Because that was my thing where I was like, I just don't wanna be, because a lot of oh, gosh.

I'm gonna sound like a jerk. But a lot of the agencies in the city are full service, and a lot of them might do one thing really well, and then they don't really and that leaves a lot of clients kind of with, like, this mixed bag of emotions, and I didn't really wanna have that. I wanted people to either walk out and hate me or love me. Like and I'm very much an extremist when it comes to stuff like that. Even with people that I know, it's either I love them or I hate them. So I was like, well, I want people to feel the same way. Like, it needs to be one strong emotion. It can't be like this lukewarm, yeah, we're okay with it type of thing. So I think that's what helped us kind of, set ourselves apart. And then also, I did a little bit of work with Google.

So, like, I was part of their, their Google Partners Ambassador, Ambassador Program, I guess that's what it's called. And I did that for about two years. And I was one of five Canadians and one of twenty-five North Americans. And even with the five Canadians, like, two of us were in Western Canada, and we were both about, like, thirty minutes away from each other, which was funny. So I think just kind of having that experience and being able to sit on, like, a bunch of beta tests and be part of, like, that whole development process was cool. And I think when I was starting out, that was what helped, us grow,

[00:13:43.20] – Gresham Harkless

I guess. Absolutely love that. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple book or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

[00:13:53.39] – Ameet Khabra

Oh, gosh. I think this is gonna sound kinda cheesy, but honestly, my team now. I just honestly, I'd like to think about it pretty frequently where I'm just like, I do not know what I would do without them. So, like, they obviously help streamline everything. And then what I do is that Pomodoro technique. So I don't I mean, it's kinda widely known, I guess, in that sense. So, I'll do fifteen minutes on and then five minutes off, and I'll keep on just doing that. And that helps me kinda get laser-focused with a lot of work because, especially with now having to be home all the time and not being able to leave, it's really hard to kind of have that separation between work and home. Even if you have, like, a separate area, it's just I don't know. It's just kinda different for me.

[00:14:32.00] – Gresham Harkless

And so, I want to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget, and this could be like a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you would tell a client. Or if you have to do a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

[00:14:41.89] – Ameet Khabra

I feel like a lot of people would assume, but I would say don't sign that client from twenty-sixteen. But honestly, it was probably the biggest blessing for me just because I learned so much in that time frame. So, yeah, I don't I feel like it's more or less of just trusting your gut really and just trusting that you know what you do. Because obviously, this person's hiring you for that exact reason really at this point.

[00:15:03.29] – Gresham Harkless

I love that nugget. And, now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quotes, unquote CEOs on this show. So, Amit, what does being a CEO mean to you?

[00:15:14.60] – Ameet Khabra

I think it's a CEO is somebody who's taking charge of their own future really at this point.

[00:15:19.60] – Gresham Harkless

I love that perspective and that definition, and I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do was pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you want to let our readers and listeners know and, of course, how best they can get ahold of you and find out about all the awesome things you and your team are working on.

[00:15:34.50] – Ameet Khabra

In terms of, how best to get in touch with me, I would say social media is probably the best way just because it's easier to say online because my name can get a little a little finicky. So my social handle on every single social media platform is AdWords Girl. So, essentially Google AdWords, but just the AdWords side of it and then girl.

[00:15:53.89] – Gresham Harkless

I'm Okay. No. That's that's perfectly fine. And then to make it even easier, we'll have those links and information in the show notes just so that everybody can follow up with you. But I definitely appreciate you and me, and I appreciate all the awesome things you're doing, and the reminders as well too on, you know, being able to kinda continue on with, you know, the ups and downs that happen all all the time with business. And I think that's something we need to hear and we need to remind ourselves of so, we don't fall when we're punched in the face. At least don't stay down when we're punched in the face. But I appreciate that, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

[00:16:22.79] – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at IAMCEO.CO. I am CEO is not just a phrase, it’s a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, Google Play, and everywhere you listen to podcasts. Subscribe and leave us a five-star rating. Grab CEO gear a www.CEOgear.co This has been the I AM CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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