My Personal Story

Why I decided to create ROAS PPC - AKA - the ‘Anti-Agency’

I was 27 when I first ventured into digital marketing. I still remember my title and salary: Online Marketing Specialist, earning a base salary of $37,500 per year. I began my journey at an old software company in Ottawa, Ontario, where my primary responsibility was driving new bookings for various software products with annual renewal subscriptions (B2C & B2B SaaS).

I was fortunate to have a fantastic boss, the kind of mentor every novice in digital marketing hopes for. He instilled in me a crucial principle: always ask if I would use the same strategies if it were my own money. He also encouraged me to read extensively on marketing, introducing me to the insights of great PPC minds like Perry Marshall and the 80/20 rule.

Over the years, I climbed the ranks, growing the business from $10M in annual recurring revenue (ARR) to $100M. Our success was so significant that it eventually led to acquisition talks. A year later, we were bought by a large private equity firm, KKR.

That's when my life went to hell. Within six months of the purchase, the entire executive team was replaced by new appointees chosen by the private equity firm. I had to say goodbye to colleagues I had built strong relationships with and whose trust I had earned. It felt like starting from scratch again.

Then the new CEO came in. One of her first major decisions was to eliminate all in-house marketing and consolidate it under one agency she had a relationship with from her previous job. My role was downgraded to being a middleman between the executives and the agency.

The new agency came with fancy slide decks but little substance. They made long-term promises, claiming it would take six months to see results. However, by the end of the year, their results were far worse than what we had achieved in-house.

During this time, I was tasked with approving their invoices and was shocked to see how much they were earning per month compared to my salary when I was doing a far better job. That’s when I thought, "I can do this too!"

I started taking on side jobs as a freelancer and soon I was making more from my hustle than from my full-time job. I faced a tough decision: stay with the company I had been with for years or venture out on my own as an entrepreneur.

I chose the latter and started ROAS PPC with the mindset of being the anti-agency. This meant learning a client's business inside out and treating their ad spend as if it were my own. It also meant being honest in my reporting, avoiding vanity metrics like clicks and impressions, and focusing instead on genuine, impactful results.