World-Class Agency Insight with Ed Leake, Part 1

In today's episode, we have the digital marketing legend Ed Leake with us. It’s a story of how a nerdy kid obsessed with Quake grew up to become the mastermind behind God Tier Ads.

Ed spills all about his journey from building computers in his parents' house to running multiple successful agencies. You will get to know unfiltered insights about this unique approach to business. 

For a dose of inspiration and practical wisdom, listen now!

Show Highlights:

• The art of authentic self-marketing [02:03]
• Technological struggles of the late 90s [06:35]
• Navigating the lack of support from parents [08:27]
• A time when we were not chained to our phones [13:07]
• The challenges of transitioning to IT [18:32]
• Do you want to do something more than your daily job? [20:57]
• When you feel like you have made a mistake [24:07]

For more updates and my weekly newsletter, hop over to https://betterquestions.co/.

To learn more about Ed Leake and his work, check out the below websites:

https://www.godtierads.com/

https://www.agencyforge.com/

https://edleake.com/ 

Transcript:

0:10  All right, what is up everyone this is Dan Barrett, and this is the Dan Barrett podcast, where, every week, we talk about what you need to know to build awesome businesses and live an awesome life. This week, I have one of my favorite interviews of all time, because I'm interviewing one of my heroes in the online marketing space, and that is Ed, leak, leak being spelled L, E, A, k, e, for when you go and google him, because you should google Ed. Ed is the founder of program called god tier ads, one of the better Google Ads courses that have ever been created. He is the founder of the forge, which is an absolutely wonderful community for high level Google Ads agency owners. He is agency owner himself, a wildly successful one, just a truly incredible master of his craft. One of the things, though, and really the reason that Ed is a hero of mine, it's not because of his bona fides in the agency space. Of course, he has those, and he's one of the better teachers of that material you're ever going to find. But the reason that I look up to Ed, and I love Ed, and I've been a happy customer and client of Ed's in pretty much everything he's done except his agency, the reason that he's a hero of mine is how he treats his marketing, not like the marketing he does for clients, but the marketing he does for himself, which is delightfully bull free, and pardon my French, Ed's marketing is straightforward.

It is refreshing, it is funny. It is him. It is his personality. He does not hide himself. He doesn't pretend to be someone that he's not. He is running his business and his life exactly the way that he wants, and he doesn't care what everyone else is doing. And if you are going to learn from someone about marketing or about growing a business, that is the kind of person you want to learn from. The goal is not to be Ed. The goal is not to mimic ed or copy what he's doing. The goal is to do something that truly expresses who you are the way that Ed expresses himself in his business. So you are going to get a ton out of this conversation. I had an absolute blast talking to Ed, who is just, you know, such a charmer, such a pleasant person to hang out with. So without any further ado, let's get into my conversation with Google ads, Master and agency, coach, Ed.

2:57  Leak. All right, what's up, everybody? This is Daniel Barrett, and I am here with Ed leak, the founder of god tier, ads, the forge, many agencies, many other things. An incredible, incredible human Ed leak, welcome to the show, my friend. Thanks for being here. Thank you for the introduction. We're gonna live up to it now was, yeah, that you gotta, you gotta show up on this, this podcast now, we were just talking about, like, what we're actually going to talk about, because you and I have more of a relationship, I think, than most of my podcast guests have with me. So I've gotten to see you work over the course of, I think, several years now, and a lot of stuff has occurred to me that I'm curious about. So that's mostly what I'm going to ask you about. But I am I want to ask first if we were going to go back in time and we were going to see young Ed leak. Let's say Ed leak is 13. What is young Ed leak like? Like, I'm I'm curious about your nerd origin story. I noticed on your LinkedIn, I think you have the quake logo on your profile. So I really am curious about what your entry ramp was onto the internet and what young Ed leak was up to. Okay,

4:08  so 1319, 95 What would I have been doing? I would have been hating school and thinking about getting home so I can essentially play Quake, build computers. Started building websites in the mid 90s, 96 Yeah, I used to. So in the mid 90s, when I was 14, it might have been 13, I put an advert in the local newspaper and I sold computers. When computers were like three grand, not 300 like they are today. So yeah, I started out as a bit of a nerd building computers. Then people would turn up at my parents house and expect to be speaking to my father, and he would wheel out young Ted who would take money from them, and they would be like, What the hell? And I would do them give them some IT support with their new computer, and I sold probably half a day. Dollars in in a year, not a lot, but as a kid, that was a lot, yeah, that's a lot, yeah. And that was just to fuel me buying the very best graphics card, oh God, in 1995 what that would have been righteous voodoo, 3d FX, probably back in the day, that would have been hundreds of pounds, like $400 or whatever for a kid in the 90s, ridiculous. But I essentially built computers to be able to build to sell them, to be able to build my own computer, yeah, to play Quake and Quake two and then quake three, and pay for the internet the Yeah. And so that's an era before there's not real. I was gonna say, Were you competitive? But there's not really competitive quake play at the time, or is there, right? It's it's networked mostly.

5:46  So yeah, quent two was the first online experience. I did go to lands. I did take my get my mother to cart me around with my massive CRT 19 inch monitor, which, at the time was massive, my big beige box. And then quake two was internet, which I think was 97 and we had ISDN, not just a dial up, we had ISDN a whole 128k, so instead of, you know, poor people's dial up, we actually had a digital connection, so I used to get really low pings. So yeah, essentially all my pocket money, my paper round money, my building computers money, went into having a stable internet connection in the, I don't know, probably late 90s, but mid ish, because yes, you could buy it competitively, yeah, there were clans, there were teams. It was, it was fledgling, but by the late 90s, there were proper leader boards, websites for this stuff, dedicated servers, the whole lot it was, it was a cottage industry, and I did, all right. I did all right. I was quite a good quake player. In fact, I beat the UK's number one, one on one. Sue Joy Roy, he went on the big breakfast, which is, if you're a kid, when I was a kid in the UK, was on in the morning with Johnny Vaughan. And I can't remember the lady's name, but anyway, nostalgia. So yeah, I, I was a ranked player. I'll have you know, Dan, so I didn't win any money, but, but this was before it was sponsored. And, well, there were some sponsors, but this is right, really, really early. It wasn't even e gaming. It was just nerds game, right?

7:28  Exactly. It was just that's people playing the game. Kind of game? What was your online name, slash handle, Mr. Pink with a exclamation mark for the eye. So Mr. P, exclamation mark. NK, I played for a clan called the Mr. Men, and that was from Reservoir Dogs, because I couldn't think of a better name, to be honest. I didn't realize how I was gonna say there's a cool Tarantino reference in there that's pretty cool. That is also very of the time, yes, yeah, yeah. That was, like, the, also a movie that, like, my friends and I referenced a lot, I think mostly because of the way they dress in the movies seem really cool, you know what I mean? Because it doesn't work out for, like, any of those guys, like, it doesn't turn out great. So your parents sound super supportive. Were they like, were they into what you were doing in the sense of, like, Am I allowed to swear on this? Yes, you're allowed to. I don't know. I don't know if you are. I'll play you. Yeah,

8:33  I they was right. Don't get me wrong. My My dad owned his own business, hard worker, but quite my parents are very conservative, and they didn't like the fact that I sat on a computer for eight hours in the evening playing games. They liked the fact that I was building stuff and making money. That's good, but the other bit of it No. So they weren't supported when we got our very first phone bill, because before the ISDN, oh, sorry, no, ISDN was a phone bill you still had to pay per minute back in the day. And I think I'm, I'm dragging this from memory, but I know it was a lot of money. I think it was like 500 quid.So back in the 90s, that would have been $1,000 nearly for a monthly phone bill. Because I literally was on the computer all the time, and I was downloading stuff, you know, and playing games, and, yeah, absolute Well, put it this way, hell broke loose in the household, and I threatened to jump off a bridge if the internet was canceled, which is why we had to come up with a solution, which was me making some money to essentially pay for it. And then AOL, bless them, yeah, came out with an oh 800 which in the UK is free phone. They came out with the very first oh 800 dial up. So free internet. Yeah, I think it was like 20 quid a month. So you literally could be on the internet, 24/7 for free. It was like people are going to listen to this who are 10 years younger than you and I? Yeah, I don't even know how old you are. Dan thinking, What the hell is he on about having to pay per minute for the internet? Well, yeah, that's what growing up in the 90s was like, yeah, there's lots of lots of memories flooding back now, but my parents are very supportive. They just did not understand it. And ironically, now my mum's 70 something, she's like, Oh, isn't it good that you spent all that time on that computer when you were younger, because you wouldn't be doing what you're doing now. And I'm like, you didn't say that at the time? Well, yeah, I

10:28  didn't know how it was gonna work out. I get that. It's, uh, I definitely remember the first time i The when I started using the internet. It was like the mud era, so I had to dial into someone's computer, like a specific local person's computer, and they had a text based like role playing game or whatever. And I met a local girl on there and met her at the mall. And I remember that it didn't go well, but I still remember her online name, which was violet weep. It sure is a girl, and not like a 50 year old man or something. Well, I'm so I know it was a girl. Now, at the time, looking back at it, I was like, that was a real crap shoot, you know, like, whether that worked out, but I could have been the back of a van dropped off, and my mom being like, where did you Where did you meet this person? And I was like, on the computer, and she's like, like, in the word processor, like, where did you so very odd. But man, what an awesome time. And I do think, yes, I don't know if you feel this way, so we're flashing forward a little bit, but you are a business owner multiple times owner over. You've got you've worked with employees, and I'm sure your employees have been of a variety of different ages. But I think growing up in that time particularly seems to give people a real sense of if I don't know how to do it, I'll figure it out that I think that in my experience and this be totally wrong, but my experience working with people who grew up in an age where the internet was much more developed, you're much more likely to have people be like, Well, I don't know how to do that, or they kind of hit a wall much earlier than I would anticipate. I don't know if you've experienced that at all. Dan, you're being

12:21  too modest. We were pioneers. Yeah, we were pioneers of the internet. I don't know if it's nostalgia, and I don't know if everyone feels the same way, but I think I am the luckiest person to have grown up as an 80s boy, 82 but to grow up in the late 80s through the 90s, early 2000s was okay as well. I think that era was just the best of most things, like technology was not all encompassing, but it was good enough. It was exciting. It was new, novel, no social media crap, yeah, yeah. You could get addicted to playing quake. We'll gloss over that. It was just, yeah, refreshing. And there was still, we'd still go on our bikes. We'd still go and kick a football around. There was, you know, you weren't chained to the your phone. You didn't have one, but no such thing as a mobile phone. Yeah, it was, I'd say the films were better. TV was better. There was less of it. Higher quality kids programs were better. It was just, it was just a better era. It was, I think it was the most honest era we've had, the 90s. Yeah, and I don't remember any sort of political ideology or anything or being, you know, ever noticing anything that people have to deal with today, and social media and all the, oh God, the angst and the division and the corrosion of society. Christ was going on a bit of a rant. The 90s were good. Would you say that? I I'm biased, but

13:42  yeah, well, I am too. But there's definitely something to the idea of being a kid before the age of mass psychological and behavioral influence science. You know what I mean? Like the like, just the idea of gamifying and what that does to people, and, yeah, it's, uh, you know, I've noticed too, there's kind of a resurgence of, like, media focused on that time they think, like, Stranger Things is the one that that really comes to mind. But even, like in gaming, there's, there's a role playing game. Someone showed me, like, a tabletop role playing game. Someone showed me recently this called kids on bikes. And it's like, oh, even so, it's like, you're growing up in the 80s, and it's like, that's the fantasy game. There's like, oh, you you bike to your friend's house. You know what I mean? So it's, uh, it's a good it's a good time to have come to maturity. I'm curious. So to go back to selling the computers you seem, you seem pretty entrepreneurial off the jump. Is that the case? Or where you're like, Well, I was forced into it because that was the only thing was allowed to play Quake. Or was it like, you're like, No, I always kind of had a knack for doing my own thing.

14:57  Yeah. See, I think. Come I don't know. I have never been very compliant, so I didn't enjoy school because I felt restricted. Yeah, and it's not because I'm like, precocious or Einstein or anything, okay, I'm probably smarter than the average. But it's not because of that. It's because I didn't feel like this is what I wanted life to be. Even at a young age, I knew there's something this just didn't fit with me. Yeah, and not, not everyone has to go through the school systems. In fact, a lot of successful people didn't go to university, college, whatever. I left at 17. I tried, but I just I was a pain as well. And I'll hold my hands up, I was a pain to teach. I'd be the one laughing at the back of class. I was never nasty or, you know, rude, I was just annoying. And if I was a teacher back then I'd be like, yeah, he's annoying. God, get him out of my classroom. So I think I just found hobbies that were not atypical. So at the time, building computers was so random and weird, wasn't it? Today, lots, lots of people do it. It was really closet stuff. Playing games in the 90s was really nerdy stuff. You were, like, everyone's got a mobile phone with a, you know, mobile apps and games on now, most people play games back in the 90s, you were a nerd. I hid it from my friends because I didn't want to be discovered as a nerd, a geek, really? And, yeah, I just enjoyed doing having ideas and actually just applying them, you know, executing them. 

I didn't know at the time I was executing my ideas, but it's like, Oh, why don't I create a website about computer hardware? Because I really like computer hardware, because then I can get all the big manufacturers to send me their latest graphics cards. So it's only because I, as a kid, I was thinking, Well, I can win out of this. I want the latest processor, which I can't afford. I want the latest graphics card. I'm like, Well, how about I do a hardware review website? So I did maximum hardware, and I had, I remember, it was a company at the time called Cyrix, who were bought out by IBM. I believe they made processes and stuff, um, they sent me a box full of motherboards, processes, memory. I mean, at the time, it was probably worth, I don't know, six, seven grand. I was a child. They didn't know as a child, I was the editor. I was the editor in chief, yeah, of Max hardware.com and they sent me all this gear, and I reviewed some of it, and the rest of it went on on eBay or the auction site before that. I can't remember, so I made a few quid doing that. Yeah, so I think I've always my hobbies have always been a bit unconventional, and I am obviously unconventional, but then I went into a very conventional career. So not to drag this out too long, but my my parents didn't like the fact that I wasn't going through school, and I'm not blaming them, but they kind of forced me to get a job. So my first job as a puny little nerd was to labor as a builder's laborer, which is where I get some of my girth from. Now. I say because that stacked me quite I mean, my arms grew, my back room, my chest group, yeah, that's cool. So it was kind of kind of a good thing, I guess. But I did that for about nine months until I got a job in computers. I was getting paid 150 pounds a week, which is about, again, $250 back then a week for absolute child labor. It was, it was horrendous. It was, yeah, not a nice job anyway. Then I finally got a job in it, because I thought that's what I wanted to work with computers, because I like computers. But then I realized I don't actually want to work in it. I wanted to play games. So I then got stuck in the world of it for best part of a decade. Oh, wow. Until finally I I branched out to running my own thing. How early

18:42  did you know it was the wrong fit for you to be an it probably the first week, first week. So why? What kept you there for a decade? I think it's because it's you gotta remember, I was only 18. Yeah, you don't have any answers at that. You think you do, but you don't have any answers at that age. It's very difficult to know. I don't know what I want to be today, and I'm 41 years of age, yeah, to know what I wanted to be when I was 18, very difficult. I just thought, This is it. This is what you're meant to do. And I've got a job and I don't like it, they're paying me money, and I can see there's a trajectory that I could be on, yeah, if I apply myself. So perhaps this is what it's this is it. And it just, I remember that my entire career was friction, so I was all I was never punctual. Hate being punctual. I hate being told what to do. So I'm a nightmare employee, absolute nightmare. I'm good at the job, uh, cocksure, stubborn, and don't try and pin me down to you must be here at precisely 9am or five minutes before, because some mornings I might spend an extra 10 minutes on the toilet. So it's Yeah, on the plane in the backside. So the delivery was there. It was just the other bits that didn't fall in line. And I remember calling my in a group meeting. My head of department hit. 

And the literally, the room, the room falling silent, and I was like, Yeah, I should probably look for another job, which I did. Then I went into contracting, because I was like, Ah, so now I can be my own boss, working for other people. So our contract, because it pays better, it's more flexible. Okay, so you go in and you do short term contracts, like three to six months, or whatever. The first one I did was 18 months, because I did such a good job and they were paying me so well, but I hated it, so I couldn't leave because I was like, oh, but I'm getting paid. Well, yeah, so it's that mindset of, well, Better the devil, you know. I mean that happened that kept going on for years in between all of this. Not to bore you, I was still dabbling in technology, building websites. It. I was still doing stuff. I even built, built websites for people, like on the side and things like that. So I was still doing the bits on the side. So it was the spark was always there to do something more than a job. A nine to five. So, yeah, it all came to a head in the what year are we in? So 2010, 2009 2010 a job I was I felt stuck in. They all hated me there because, like I say, I was outspoken. I was good at the work, but I was outspoken. They didn't like it because I didn't toe the line, but they couldn't quite fire me because I delivered. So they just got this frustrating person called Ed, of which I knew I was and they were paying me a lot of money for my age and 10, you know, 15 years ago, it was a lot of money, yeah, so I felt like I couldn't leave that until one day. I was just like, You know what? Sold it. And I literally, I left. It was Christmas Eve, Eve, and I walked into the director's office and I said, I'm not coming back. There's a long story up to this point, but he essentially said he had an open door policy, apart from for me, because I would email him and ask him, and his door was never open for me. So I just like, you know what bollocks to these people? Yeah, and yeah, I walked in and said, I'm going for Christmas, and I won't be coming back because coming back. 

And he sort of smiled and laughed, and I just went, I'm serious. And then I walked off, and I never went back. And they paid me my three month severance. They didn't even question it, because I think they realized, Oh, he's a pain in the arse. But also we probably drove him to that as well. So yeah, yeah. And then, out of nowhere, started an agency in quotation marks. I've started, uh, building websites, and did a bit of marketing with my friend, yeah, oh my god. The first year, I made, I think, 6000 pounds. So essentially, I didn't make enough to even pay basic rent, right? I was nearly evicted, in fact. So I've had the rags to riches story. I had to go to the local council, and I don't think I've ever told anyone this, and I had to claim benefits for five weeks to pay my rent. And I remember ringing the guy five weeks later, and I rang him up and said, Oh, you can cancel my benefits now I've got a new contract. Came through, yeah, a new client, sorry. And he was like, What do you mean? He said, People don't just claim for five weeks and just he said, you can claim for three months or six months. And I'm like, no, no, I don't need the money. I've now I've got through this patch. And he was literally trying to tell me to keep taking the money. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, I'm not. My mind is not that way. It's like, I don't need the money from the government. I'm now self, self sufficient. And literally, from that day forward, was self sufficient. The first year was rough, though, in the agency, really, when you Okay, yeah, sorry, it

23:29  was a lot. No, no, no. I love that story, and I definitely so much of it corresponds to light my story, and I think most people store when you end up doing your own thing, a lot of it is, well, I'm impossible to work with in any other context. You know what I mean. So it's like a lot of that I really relate to. I'm curious, like in that, in that moment where the agency isn't doing well, and it's before you get that client that kind of rescues you, and you're going to get benefits and all that. Were you thinking that you had made a mistake? Or was it like, No, this is definitely gonna work. It's just a downturn. I think, I think I've always got that monkey on my shoulder telling me that I've made the mistake. I still, to this day, have dreams about my final job, and I'm in a I'm always with the same people in an awkward scenario where I'm trying to get out. And I think it's my subconscious reminding me that no matter how hard it gets, Ed you can't go back there, so you just got to wrestle your way through this, right? So yeah, I think every single day as a business only, or every other day, you think, Oh, my God, I've made a mistake, but I'm being a little bit facetious. Perhaps, in the first six or seven years, I thought that all the time, the past six or seven years have been very good, because I finally figured it out. I did have a mentor, and so I had to figure it out. So yeah, the first year, I don't know, I was naive. I was like, well, it'll come good. It'll come good. All I got to do is hard work. And to be fair, if you've got a. Natural capacity, then hard work. Can scrape you over the line and drag you over the line, and then, you know, build momentum. 

So, yeah, you can just apply yourself and work 20 hours a day, and the money will come eventually, but it doesn't always work out. And I think my mindset was just, oh, this is what I got to do. I can't expect a free lunch. No one's going to give me this stuff, so I will just battle through it. Fast forward about three years, I did actually collapse at the top of the stairs because I'd overwork myself. So I'm not suggesting that the hustle lifestyle is a good, good route, but I did, yeah, I went all in. I didn't take any training, I didn't get a coach, I didn't I didn't do any of that stuff. So I was literally just learning as I went. So I was putting myself under a lot of pressure in hindsight. But look, hindsight is a wonderful thing. I mean, if I had a time machine, crikey, I change everything, not one thing, everything, but that's life, isn't it? You just have to, yeah, I've got, you've I've always got that devil of the old job chasing me. So I've always got it cackling in my ear. So I know that. Look, if, even if you've had a hard week, it could be that. So keep, keep going. Yeah. Otherwise that devil's gonna catch you up and drag you back to a, J, O, B, you're gonna have to go back and be labor and get ripped again. That's what's gonna happen. We're gonna see ugly Hulk version come out.

26:17  Hey guys, hope you enjoyed part one of this episode. Is just too good to limit to one show. Join us next week to hear the rest you.