"Being a CEO is primarily a process of acquiring and then solving various problems"
Daniel Barrett Tweet
Meet Daniel Barrett, CEO of Adwords Nerds – helping real estate investors and agents get more deals online. Google Premiere Partner, manager of over 5 million dollars in investor ad spend, founder of the REI Marketing Nerds Facebook group and the REI Marketing Nerds Podcast.
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Table of Contents
Let’s start with a brief introduction first. Introduce yourself to our readers.
Daniel Barrett: My name is Daniel Barrett. I am the CEO of Adwords Nerds. We’re an online marketing agency that helps real estate investors find more leads and quality deals online. I also write the weekly newsletter for Better Questions, a platform that helps to improve communication and live a productive and thoughtful life. I’m also a musician in my spare time.
Our audience is interested to know about how you got started in the first place. Did you always want to become a CEO or was it something you were led to? Our readers would love to know your story!
Daniel Barrett: I did not want to be a CEO. I never thought of myself as a business person. I wanted to be a rock and roll musician. So I started in business primarily because I got involved in running bands. I needed to learn how to design t-shirts, build the website, handle the money, sell the merch, promote shows, and get shows booked. I never knew it was all shaping a businessman inside me. Then, during my university years, I started freelancing in web design and marketing for local businesses. That’s where my journey as an entrepreneur began.
“Selfmade” is a myth. We all received help, no doubt you love to show appreciation to those who supported you when the going got tough, who has been your most important professional inspiration?
Daniel Barrett: We have all heard the phrase, “There is a woman behind every successful man.” I had two women who supported me from the beginning: my mother and my wife. My mom bought me my first computer, which became the foundation of my passion for the digital world. My wife has been the one who supported my idea of becoming an entrepreneur and ran with it. She always backed me up when things were not going well and believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself. We are a team now. When I look back at all the challenges that I’ve had to face, they would not have seemed possible without her support.
How did your journey lead you to become a CEO? What difficulties did you face along the way and what did you learn from them?
Daniel Barrett: Being a CEO is primarily a process of acquiring and then solving various problems. So I always say, “If you want to be a good CEO, learn how to solve problems.”
To me, that means not just solving the obvious and immediate problem in front of you but thinking about the system and process that created the situation in the first place. Problems will never stop coming; what matters is how you deal with them. I treat every problem as a puzzle and develop a solution that will make things better and make sense. That’s how you grow: good problems lead to good people, better products, and smarter business.
I have my team; that is my most important asset. We create an environment for each other to grow and learn. We work as a team, we laugh as a family, and we focus on what’s important – our clients. However, as a business owner, I have also made the most difficult decisions: letting go of people who were not performing or not belonging in our culture and cutting off negative relationships. I learned to be ruthless about eliminating distractions to get back to our core values and focus on what we do best—serving clients.
Tell us about your company. What does your business do and what are your responsibilities as a CEO?
Daniel Barrett: Adwords is an online marketing company. We specialize in Google ads, Facebook ads, Microsoft ads, SEO, mobile marketing, content strategies, and traffic generation—all things digital. We specifically help real estate investors find more leads and deals online. We help them find motivated sellers by handling their digital marketing campaigns. We help them find potential buyers for their listings by running ads on Facebook and Google, creating websites, digital content, etc.
As an entrepreneur, I have learned that the three primary roles of the CEO are to set the vision, build the team, and don’t run out of cash. And that’s what I do at my company, Adwords. I’m responsible for turning our vision into reality by building a great team in-house and outsourcing when necessary. I foresee the real estate market, come up with out-of-the-box strategies to keep us in business for the long term.
And most importantly, I handle the finances, from incoming payments to outgoing expenses. I make sure things are always moving forward, and I am constantly on the lookout for new opportunities. I’m the company’s face—the Chief Marketing Officer for Adwords. I also handle our digital marketing campaigns, social media, YouTube content, and SEO.
When you first became a CEO, how was it different from what you expected? What surprised you?
Daniel Barrett: It was a different experience—my idea of business was more of a mathematical and a tech thing. And today, I’m so much more focused on the creative side of things than ever before – marketing, strategy, public relations, understanding the psychology of clients, what they like, and why, forecasting for the long-term vision of my company. I’m constantly studying and learning more about business and how it works. It’s really a wonderful experience to learn something new every day.
There are many schools of thought as to what a CEO’s core roles and responsibilities are. Based on your experience, what are the main things a CEO should focus on? Explain and please share examples or stories to illustrate your vision.
Daniel Barrett: I believe creating a vision and building a great team would be the core of all CEOs. Without a clear vision and leadership, the company will suffer and soon fail. A great CEO with a vision is the most important thing any company needs. I always focus on building a positive environment for teamwork and making sure my team feels they are a part of something great.
I’m against micromanaging and the nitty-gritty policies where managers toil with employees-it doesn’t really benefit anyone in the long run. I want my team to be happy, focused on the vision, and feel that they are working to make something great. If you build a great team, everything else falls into place—creating the vision, making it a reality, and all that.
Share with us one of the most difficult decisions you had to make for your company that benefited your employees or customers. What made this decision so difficult and what were the positive impacts?
Daniel Barrett: Recently, we decided to downsize the number of clients we work with to provide them with even better services. I believe It’s not about the number of clients, but knowing which ones are best suited to you and your company. That’s where people make the wrong decision: they bring in as many clients as possible and work with them. And soon they are overwhelmed with projects-some are not completed correctly, others are handled with minimum quality care, and all this leads to dissatisfied clients.
It was a hard decision, but it was the best one. The truth is that the real estate industry has evolved a lot in the last two years. The real estate market in 2021 was highly erratic. And in terms of the industry of our clients, real estate investing, there was more competition with more money and more budgets behind that competition. If we were going to hold our own and remain a strong market player, we had to streamline the number of clients and projects.
How would you define success? Does it mean generating a certain amount of wealth, gaining a certain level of popularity, or helping a certain number of people?
Daniel Barrett: I would say success is a state of mind. It’s how you feel about yourself and your life, what you have achieved so far, and the feelings you get from that. It might be a certain amount of wealth; for others, it might be popularity, but success is personal and can mean different things to everyone. For me, success has two levels. The first one is living with my family. Spending time with the kids, going out for dinner, watching movies—these are the things that make me happy. The other is success in my business—challenges, new opportunities, and problems to solve. What I get from such challenges is a sense of achievement, not only earning more money or gaining fame.
Some leadership skills are innate while others can be learned. What leadership skills do you possess innately and what skills have you cultivated over the years as a CEO?
Daniel Barrett: No, I didn’t have any practical leadership skills innately. I have learned everything about business and how to be a leader at work. As a leader, I believe my strength is in continuing to learn. I attend seminars, read books, listen to entrepreneur podcasts, and do whatever it takes to improve my leadership skills and business knowledge. I love to connect ideas and see the bigger picture, so I get inspired by everything around me. I’ve learned that leaders should be rational- not too emotional. It’s always important to listen to, help, and support the people you lead.
There is a saying: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” That’s my motivation, and that’s how I lead by motivating people and teaching them new things. I don’t try to control everyone; I give my team the freedom to make decisions and support their ideas. As a result, people like it and want to come to work for me.
How did your role as a CEO help your business overcome challenges caused by the pandemic? Explain with practical examples.
Daniel Barrett: The pandemic was a weird period for us. Ironically, looking back on it, it was not a particularly challenging time business-wise; real estate boomed during the pandemic, which was not what I expected. Uncertainty, lack of communication, and panic were my main challenges. I first knew to manage the finances and keep everything as calm as possible. In a crisis, people tend to panic, make wrong decisions, look for things that aren’t there, and lose their minds. During the pandemic, I studied how the housing market was behaving in those days and realized we needed to step out of fear and take the lead. Digitalization and constant communication between our clients and us helped us a lot.
Do you have any advice for aspiring CEOs and future leaders? What advice would you give a CEO that is just starting out on their journey?
Daniel Barrett: I would give the same advice to CEOs as I give to potential would-be parents, which is that there’s never a good time. People await a good time, more money, a better job, and until then, they won’t start working toward their dream. That never comes—the right time never comes, so you should just do it. Some people will tell you all the downsides of being a CEO-something like “it’s not worth it,” “you won’t be able to do this or that,” “you will be stressed out all the time”-but it’s better to try and see what you can do with your potential. It’s tough to do, but it’s also very rewarding, so you go ahead and take the lead.
Jed Morley, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Daniel Barrett for taking the time to do this interview and share his knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Daniel Barrett or his company, you can do it through his – Linkedin Page
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