Random Surfer – When to hire a Digital Consultant

Chris Barnard: Paul. Hi. Would you like to tell our listeners a little bit about you and your background and what led to the creation of your business, Random Surfer, please?

Paul Lanham: Absolutely. I’ve been working on Random Surfer full time for about 11 years now. Uh, previously worked for two different marketing agencies here in Nottingham. Uh, primarily working with small medium-sized businesses. More often than not, the owner of, uh, the owner-operated businesses. So that’s the director, the person in charge is doing more or less everything in the business. Um. I found that these businesses are often underserved. A lot of agencies don’t work with people, uh, companies that small, typically one to five employees. So that was, um, a big driver to, uh, to set up Random Surfer, and that’s where we focus on today. Uh, I’ve had work with a variety of companies, service businesses, tradesmen, e-commerce businesses in a wide variety of sectors. Might be a roofer. It could be an appliance retailer, could be a law firm, anything in between. So a big mix.

Chris Barnard: And what made you decide you wanted to start up your own business? Are you one of those people who always wanted to run their own business or was it a collective of experiences you’d had at other workplaces that made you think, right, actually I wanna do it myself now?

Paul Lanham: A bit of both. I have always wanted to have a business, uh, ever since I was young. Never really had anything in particular in mind. Um, so I kind of put it on the back burner for a few years where I had a proper career. Um. But after a few years working for agencies, uh, I kind of got the itch that I could do this myself. Um, there really wasn’t much standing in my way to get clients, um, and just go for it. And it took a while to build some business in the background and quite a lot of encouragement from my wife to, uh, make the jump. But, um, yeah, so 11 years ago I made the jump and, uh. Here I am today. Still relatively successful.

Chris Barnard: Yeah, I love that and I think a lot of people, a lot of the listeners as well who’ve started their own business have also got to that point. I certainly felt that myself, where I thought I’d never had a big ambition to run my own business, but it got to a point where I was like, I’m sure I could do this better if I did it by myself. And so that kind of, for the last two years when I was in employment, that was kind of my driving force really. And then it was kind of a matter of, okay, when am I gonna start up my own business? So, uh, I’m sure a lot of people are gonna relate to that. And so now you’re a digital consultant and you’re offering it under Random Surfer. I think, uh, one of the challenges businesses find is that they, um, come to a digital consultant too late. They might come too early before they’re necessary. When would be the right time for a business to engage with a digital consultant such as yourself? If I am, say Bob, the builder, um, what problems should I just start to be scratching the itch of that would mean that I should actually probably have a conversation with Paul now about this?

Paul Lanham: Well, I think a lot of small businesses kind of get a general sense that either they’re missing out on something if they’re not doing any, or they’re in little dis marketing activity. Uh, currently, they want to engage someone to find out what they could be doing, what could they be doing better? Or if they’re already working with an agency, um, they’re not clear on what the agency’s doing for them. If they’re getting good value for money, and they may, some just want a second opinion just to show someone that this is what I, it’s been done for me. Can you take a look, see, is this working out? What do you do differently? Or just have a casual chat, which is also fine, that that’s quite common. But I think, uh, especially compared to 10, 15 years ago, digital marketing is. It’s a much more complex and bigger landscape of all the kind of platforms that you can appear on. Um, so I think most businesses would probably benefit from at least having a consultation with someone like myself just to see, just to get some ideas of what they could be doing, even if they ultimately end up doing it themselves.

Chris Barnard: And how common would you say that is, sort of businesses who come to you, um, do you actively recommend they do sort of aspects for themselves and there’s bits that you manage or would you take on sort of the management of all their digital properties? What sort of spread of business do you see in terms of that?

Paul Lanham: Hmm, well I specialize in pay-per-click, so that side of it definitely is beneficial for myself to manage in its entirety. I think the social side of it, I’ve seen agencies attempt to, um, manage the posts for companies and usually that ends up not looking great. It’s, um, either the posts are too infrequent or they’re not particularly relevant. Um. And it’s not so much their fault, it’s when it comes to social media, it is hard for an external agency to actually get from the client what’s going on in the business, what’s new, um, what should they talk about. So that side of it, I tend to think, of course, unless it’s a large corporation, we probably do have teams managing the social media. But if it’s an individual or those home business, they’re normally best managing that themselves. I find.

Chris Barnard: Yeah, it’s a great point on social media. I think it’s very easy to spot the sort of people who are outsourcing the social media, but it’s an important part of your brand as a business, particularly as a small business. I’d even go as far to say that your social media presence, if you can manage it yourself and maybe have some input, some strategic input of what you should maybe do in this space, you are definitely best managing it yourself, Paul. ‘Cause it, it’s so authentic, right? It builds trust. If you are there, the business owner on social media.

Paul Lanham: Yeah, exactly. It really looks authentic if it’s being posted by someone who is external, doesn’t understand the business, doesn’t know what’s happening. Um, so yeah, that generally is best come from someone, either business owner or somebody at least employed by them.

Chris Barnard: And I’m pleased you mentioned pay per click. So businesses often get confused with the difference between, uh, because we use it interchangeably, I suppose, in the business space, in the marketing space. Some of this terminology, they might know it as PPC, might know it as pay per click. They might know it as Google Ads, Bing Ads. People get confused between that and search engine optimization, which is also referred to as SEO. Do you wanna just tell us a little bit about those differences between those two forms of marketing, um, and how, uh, businesses should sort of think about those two aspects as they are, you need a different approach on both. Paul, don’t you?

Paul Lanham: Yeah, that’s right. So just as a quick recap, pay-per-click or PPC, uh, it can deliver immediate traffic to your website or to your social profile and say if that’s where you’re sending people. Uh, when it comes to Google and Bing, they are the top results and also the bottom of the page. Um, depending on what you’re searching for, if it’s a product you most commonly see as a product ad, um, it can be hard to differentiate the paid ads from an organic non-paid result as they tend to blend in a lot more than they used to. Many years ago, they actually had a shaded background, so they really stood out from the organic, um, search results. But now it’s blended to a high degree. So pay-per-click gives you immediate results. It’s very quick to set up, typically suitable for most businesses, I find, especially businesses that want to drive leads or sales from the website, um, as opposed to SEO, Search Engine Optimization. It’s a long-term play. It’s a long-term investment. You may not see much in the way of returns for weeks, months, to even years. Um, but the two work well together. And if you want, um, if you want a complete approach to getting results from search, then ideally you should look at both if you can, if you have the time and the budget.

Chris Barnard: Yeah, it’s a great point. I like to see searches, uh, particularly in the initial stages with the business as sort of look at the combined audience from search. ‘Cause of course they’re searching for a certain thing. Um, you might be targeting different types of searches. You might be doing it in the ads, you might be doing it through your SEO work, but they’re still searching for the same thing, aren’t they? And then, like you say, there’s that difference where Google Ads can get you into those positions, the higher positions early, ’cause you are paying for that. Whereas, uh, on the long-term front, if you are ranking your pages and building your pages in a way that Google thinks that they have authority on those sorts of searches, you’re also going to, well, I mean, I suppose the ideal in that situation is covering multiple parts of the search engine with both your, uh, naturally ranked SEO pages and your Google Ads. Paul, would you say that?

Paul Lanham: Yeah, that’s a good point. The fact, um, a lot of people may not know that if you run ads in Google, you can have one or two ads appear on the page, and you may have one or two organic listings, so you may end up covering 20-30 percent of the actual page just with your links to your website or to your social profile. So, um, the two really, if you want as much dominance as possible, and, uh, using both is, um, is the best strategy.

Chris Barnard: Yeah, and I was speaking as Paul and I were just speaking beforehand, before the recording, we were talking about how you choose your marketing mix as a business. ‘Cause actually, I think it’s, uh, something that’s not spoken enough in business circles. I mean, we talk about it on a strategic aspect with clients in terms of, okay, you have a marketing spend you are allocating that marketing spend. Is that something that you would look at in a consultation initially with a client, would you say, right, what is the budget we think you should spend this amount on SEO, this amount on paid search? Is that how you approach sort of creating a marketing mix for your clients?

Paul Lanham: Hmm, absolutely. Um, I think, uh, it’s fair to say most businesses want, uh, pretty much instant results. So, um, it’s rare that I wouldn’t suggest pay-per-click, uh, UN unless perhaps, uh, if they were looking to do some marketing themselves and couldn’t at that point afford, um, an external consultant, perhaps they would benefit from just, um, a one-off SEO plan, maybe optimization of the website until they are able to, um, invest in pay-per-click.

Chris Barnard: Yeah, it’s a great point on pay-per-click. I think the only accounts I’ve seen where it’s, um, not been, uh, a go-to marketing channel has been where the cost per click is actually too high, which I think you do see in some sectors, some industries. Um, a lot of the accounts we work on at the moment, and I suppose there’s a rule of thumb if you are kind of under maybe two pound a click for most industries, that is great. Uh, I come from our background in financial services. Where actually you would see cost per clicks go as high as sort of 17, 18, 19 pound, just for someone to click on your ads and even, uh, higher than that. Now, of course, if you are selling a high-value product, and I suppose this is probably how the listeners need to think about it. If you are selling a, um, a product with a big ticket value or a big margin, then I suppose you can stretch to those extremes, Paul, but if you’re just selling sort of pens or something like that or caps, then you’re probably not gonna wanna spend sort of 20 pound a click. Is that, is that your point of view as well?

Paul Lanham: Exactly. It’s easy to look at those kind of costs and think, oh, that’s crazy. Who would ever pay 20 pounds for a click from Google? But you’ve gotta look at the overall picture. Zoom out and look at what is my, the nature of my business? What is the value of a lead? Um, what is the, the lifetime value of a lead? So, yeah, I, I’ve definitely seen businesses who are paying 10 pounds, 50 pounds a click, and it can work. If that turned into, um, a new piece of business that’s worth, you know, 10, 20,000 pounds or some kind of recurring revenue, it can easily, uh, easily be worthwhile. Absolutely.

Chris Barnard: And do you have a particular approach in the way that you structure your accounts? ‘Cause there’s, um, something in our digital marketing circles where certain different people like to structure accounts in different ways. Um, there used to be something called single keyword ad group SKAGS that Paul and I were talking about earlier, which was a very common way to structure an account. I think there’s a few, few people who still say that is the way to structure an account. Right. But I think you and I share the same sort of philosophy and how we go about structuring a pay-per-click account. Do you want to just tell the listeners a little bit about how you go about that using sort of phrase and exact match as you were saying?

Paul Lanham: Yeah, that’s right. I think the approach has changed a lot over the recent years. Um. So now that Google is trying to move people towards, uh, broad match keywords, regardless of whether, whether you actually select broad match keywords or whether you try and keep it exact, it doesn’t seem to matter so much anymore. It’s more about the intent and themes behind the keywords. So I would group campaigns by the product or service, or in case of many of my clients by the service area, and then subdivide that by the service, by the products, um, but focusing less so on the match type, I think that that definitely is losing, uh, losing importance as Google, as I said, moves towards, um, a more broad match style.

Chris Barnard: Yeah, and I’ve got a bone to pick with Google here in terms of, um. I think that these, these changes that you are mentioning, that the changes where they’ve been blurring match types. And so for the, for the less nerdy listeners, the way we would describe that is, um, there used to be a way to sort of tell Google that, uh, I want people who are searching for red shoes to see my ad. Now, Google has been playing a game over the years, and I suppose part of it is because they think, uh, well some of the people running these campaigns don’t fully understand it, and so we are helping them out. That would be the view they would love to push on us, Paul. Right? Whereas, uh, the people who’ve been doing this for a while would say they’ve been making it, uh, hazier so that maybe blue shoes would match or something like that. ‘Cause it is still someone who wants shoes. Hey, because of course Google still get paid for that click then. Um, but for the people who used to run very specific nuanced campaigns, it became very frustrating very quickly over the last few years, hasn’t it, Paul, in that you can’t actually an exact match keyword if you say, I only want people searching for this to see our ad. That is not the case anymore, is it?

Paul Lanham: That’s a hundred percent right. Yeah. Um, over time Google has eroded the ability for you to target exactly. Um, to the point now where if I’m starting a new account, I will only start with exact match keywords and if that is successful, slowly over time add phrase match keywords, which to anyone who’s been using pay-per-click for a while will know that phrase match works much like broad match used to. So there rarely is much use of using broad match keywords anymore. Um, but of course someone who doesn’t work somewhat like myself, who’s trying to do, trying to manage themselves, um. Google encourages you to add keywords that you think describe business, but it doesn’t really adequately say that unless you set the match type, um, you could get searches which are irrelevant. Um, and a lot of people won’t know that, won’t know how to check their search term reports, so they definitely will find wasted spend.

Chris Barnard: Yeah. And all of these changes and sort of the way that these accounts are managed has made that negative keywords have become far more important in your account. Having an active negative keyword list in your account. Do you want to just explain to the listeners a little bit about what a negative keyword is, what a negative keyword list is, and why it is now so important in this blurred match type environment where you don’t really always know what someone has searched for and triggered your ad?

Paul Lanham: Right. So I have a go-to list of negative keywords that I tend to use for most accounts. It will have, um, for example, if you were, if you’re a roofing service, you probably don’t want to, you don’t want your house to appear for someone searching who wants to become a roofer, who wants to become qualified as a roofer. Who’s looking for a roofing course. So these are all the kind of words that will include a negative list, course, university training, um, to make sure that we exclude these types of searches. Um, as we just mentioned about the broad match keywords will often unless you control them, match on these more irrelevant terms that definitely aren’t relevant to your business. So a strong negative list is definitely essential for most businesses.

Chris Barnard: Yeah. And it’s saving you from spending those budget on those irrelevant keywords. Right. I’ve got a particular challenge with an account I manage at the moment, which is actually a property management company, but a property management company as in, um, we manage the big blocks for landowners. Right. Not an estate agency, but of course Google sees that term sort of interchangeable in terms of, oh, actually, so they, they, they’re an estate agency, but actually they’re estate management and we have to build out an insanely long negative keyword list, which of course is never exhaustive ’cause there’s always different ways people are searching for things. But we’ve found that recently as a, as a real problem in Google’s kind of search context, in that, uh, it is trying to rank this business for estate agency queries, um, when it is not an estate agency. And that there’s also something there, which is unhelpful, which is there is a similar name business who are an estate agency. So I can totally understand why it is doing what it is. Um, but it’s kind of, sometimes you do find those edge cases, and I would say thankfully that is still an edge case, right? Where it, um, you have to manage an account in a certain intensive way because of, um, certain nuances around the name or the type of industry that business is in. Yeah, I dunno if you’ve come, have you come across anything like that or is there any, um, examples you’ve got when you are, uh, running accounts, say builders or roofers or people like that in terms of the type of searches that you go for?

Paul Lanham: I think you mentioned sort of anything with sort of commercial intent before you aiming for those searches.

Chris Barnard: Yeah, exactly. So just one example that came to mind. Um, I have an air conditioning client. Um. But they exclusively do air conditioning for houses and, uh, commercial and industrial properties. However, especially this time of year, a lot of people want to get their car air conditioning fixed or regas, uh, recharged. So for anyone not paying close attention to their search term reports, you’ll definitely find, um, people searching for car conditioning might be searching for their brand of the car, plus the words air conditioning. So to Google it looks basically close enough. It’s air conditioning, but as someone actually who does that work would know it’s, it may be a similar system, but as someone who installs air conditioning in house, isn’t the same person who would do that in a car. So you need someone overseeing this regularly to make sure that you’ve got a good set of negative setup. Get rid of that traffic. I cut the waste.

Chris Barnard: Yeah. Do you know what Snap Paul, I have seen exactly an air conditioning account with exactly that issue. Thankfully it wasn’t my account. So I could go back and say, make sure you’re getting as many negatives on car terms as possible. So again, it’s one of those things that I suppose people wouldn’t think about when they’re setting up the account. But very quickly, if you are studying the data, I suppose you make a great point there about the importance of active management, right? And how it’s gonna save you money. ‘Cause if someone wasn’t there to spot that and make that a negative keyword list full of the car brands for example, then you are wasting money, aren’t you? You are losing money and I mean, that one’s even so far away. You know, if you’re looking to regas your car, you’re probably not looking. I, it’d be a fast stretch, wouldn’t it? I wouldn’t put it past Google to think that, but it would be a far stretch to think that they’re actually gonna buy air conditioning for the house then.

Paul Lanham: Yeah, I, I don’t see there being much overlap in someone looking to, uh, fix or get air conditioning in the car and air conditioning in the house, but it’s possible, but unlikely.

Chris Barnard: It is possible. The price points are so different, aren’t they? I suppose air conditioning at a sort of many thousand pounds as an entry point, whereas I think they’ll regas your aircon in your car for a few, few pounds, right? So, uh, it’s certainly different there. So I mean, it must be difficult these days for a business owner. Certainly the business we talk with, I mean, thankfully both your business and my business have been going long enough that we have referral clients, we have reviews. Um, I suppose we go in at a different level to, uh, newer digital consultants in that we’ve got the kind of the heritage, um, but challenging for a business if you are not, say, digital savvy or a particular digital native, maybe you’re in the older generations. Um, you’re getting a lot of spam at the minute from digital type companies, from agencies, from other places. Um. What sort of red flags would you say I should be looking for if I’m a business owner? Um, I I’ve liked what you’ve said. I’ve decided I want to engage with a digital consultant. I’m probably getting a few emails in saying, you’re not doing this on your SEO or that, or your website’s not doing this or that. What sort of red flags would you say are the things for business owners listening to watch out for when they’re engaging with a digital consultant? Paul?

Paul Lanham: Yeah, I’m sure you, I’m sure you like myself, get bombarded every day with emails for link building, for SEO for pay-per-click. It, it never ends. Um, firstly, I’d probably say that anyone who’s doing large scale mail shots, uh, probably isn’t all that concerned about the quality. Then they probably, um, they probably have a scattergun approach hoping for every maybe 1000, 10,000 emails they send out to get one client. Um, it’s not really the mark of a good consultant, but specifically in the email, look out for anyone who doesn’t have a website in their signature. If the email is from a Gmail Hotmail account, that’s, that’s a huge red flag. Um, if the email looks though generic, doesn’t mean say anything about your business other than the name of the business. Perhaps they don’t even know your name. Are there basic spelling grammar issues? Um, perhaps the email looks like it’s been written back by AI. So all those things add up and give you a general impression of, is this genuine? This is worth replying to.

Chris Barnard: Yeah, it’s a great point. There’s also something to do and never click on these links, but if you hover over links in these emails, you’ll often see that they’re going off to strange kind of web addresses, um, places that are gonna try and harvest your data. Or as I had a conversation with a client the other day, sometimes they’re just looking to see if your email address is active, right? Purchase this data list from somewhere. They’re looking for any indication that your email is active. And so often what these spammers are doing now is they’ll put in fake unsubscribe buttons, right? ‘Cause naturally you are saying, why have I got this? I don’t want this. I wanna unsubscribe from it. But actually, you’ll not be unsubscribing. Uh, they will just be putting you in a list that says that actually you are an active person, uh, to be contacted. Um. It’s not just the, um, the spammers and people like that. We actually see Google doing a lot of outreach as soon as they, um, set up an ad account, um, who will claim to be sort of ad account specialists. Um, you must come across this yourself, Paul, in terms of there are actually some spams who come from Google. Sometimes it’s a scam where it might look legitimately from Google. Um, but very rarely you find that that ad account person is works for Google? They usually work for an affiliate. Right? Have you come across many of those people?

Paul Lanham: Mm, many times unfortunately. Um. Yeah, so Google is very keen to talk to you if you have an account, if you’re setting up a new account. Um, they have outsourced teams that work on behalf of Google that, um, I’m sure in some cases do offer useful advice and have guided many people to successful accounts, but always be wary of Google’s agenda, of course, is to make money like, like all of us. Um, so if they can, if they can get some of their clients spending 10, 20% more, it’s great for them. If it happens to work for, for the business and get them more results, then that’s a bonus. But, uh, just be wary of, of Google’s goals. Um, and don’t be scared to, um, question their advice if you don’t think it sounds applicable to you? ‘Cause, um, the outsource, um, accounts strategists, I’m sure their books must be hundreds of thousands of clients. I don’t think they will have, um, a detailed knowledge of your business or your specific circumstances. So just bear in mind when you speak to them. And, um, of course if you want to speak to a consultant such as myself regarding the advice you received. I think that’s, uh, a good plan worth doing.

Chris Barnard: Yeah, I agree. I think certainly reach out to an independent consultant if you are concerned or, or you are curious about it because I mean, it’s something that has been alleged before. Uh, I dunno how true this is or not, but I would, um, think it might be, would be that, uh, a lot of those outsourced, um. Third party working for Google. Uh, account strategists that come to you work on a commission-only basis and a commission-only basis that is based on you increasing your budget. So with that news, Paul, what I would like to put to you is that would you agree with me that with a lot of these changes we mention around, um, sort of fuzzy matching, always trying to take more budget using people to come and tell you you should spend more budget. Would you agree that Google are far more interested in using up your budget as a business than bringing you web traffic more than perhaps they’ve ever been in their lifetime as a business because they get, they make so much money from Google Ads?

Paul Lanham: Yeah, I think that’s, that’s a fair critique. If I can cynical for a moment, um. I think Google is struggling to, to increase their, um, their revenue from search. I think they’ve, they’ve peaked and probably peaked years ago, so they need to keep the profits going up. Of course they have shareholders to, to account to. Um, so yeah, I think when, when you look at the combination of the changes to match types uh with the aggressive calls from account managers and strategists, uh, I think it kind of points in that direction it’s hard to argue against that.

Chris Barnard: Do you have a particular portfolio strategy that you like to go through on your paid search? Obviously there’s kind of return on ad spends an option, often maximize clicks is an option. Um, maximize conversions is an option and there various different digital consultants will, um, sort of talk about the benefits of certain ones. I know, uh, ROAS at the moment is a very popular, uh, portfolio strategy to use. Do you, do you sort of favor one strategy over another or are you a big tester? What do you like to, how do you like to approach strategy for your paid search accounts?

Paul Lanham: Hmm. Well, I’m a big believer in tracking as much as you can that you get from, from your ads. So if you are tracking, uh, all your website phone calls or your contact form messages, um, then I believe as soon as you can, you should try and, uh. Use a maximized conversion strategy, which of course uses Google’s machine learning or AI as you might like to call it these days, um, to try and get as many to try and get actual results for what you’re putting into Google. So rather than just getting clicks, which is great, obviously clicks lead to sales, um, but we wanna focus on what actually works, what actually makes a difference in your business. So if we can base our bidding on conversions, then I think, uh, in most cases we should.

Chris Barnard: And you mentioned about AI and machine learning there, which leads me nicely onto my next question around how you see the future going in, sort of, I suppose, um, digital in smaller business and for digital consultants. What sort of trends do you see shaping the future of digital marketing for SMEs and local businesses?

Paul Lanham: Well, I think so far AI has been very helpful to, um, all of us in the marketing space from saving us time on small menu tasks to helping us copy the new copy or new creative, um, ideas how the future looks. Of course we, no one really knows, but I think for the time being, it’s really helping us to, uh, focus on the high-level strategy. Cutting out the smaller, yeah, like I said, like come up with, with copy, graphics, banners, all these day-to-day things that may have in the past we had to do ourselves or outsource, we may now be able to, um, use AI for, which has been really helpful for me at least.

Chris Barnard: Yeah, I’ve had clients who are reasonably tech phobic. I suppose they won’t mind me calling them reasonably tech phobic. Um, and they are adopting chat GPT in ways that I would never would’ve thought that they would. Uh. Um, get on board with using tech solutions in their business. And it is often for these sort of things like just to create, um, social media graphics or to, um, rephrase content they’ve written into more of their brand voice. I’m actually really impressed with how many clients are getting on board with AI. Paul, have you seen any of sort of signs of that, of certain clients coming to you and asking you about AI at this point in time?

Paul Lanham: Uh, not as much as actually as I, as I would’ve thought. I think, um, actually alluded to many of my clients are somewhat tech phobic, um, and are probably a bit behind the times when it comes to the latest technology. I’m sure. Given a few more years, they will get at speed and probably integrate more AI tools into the workflows. But for the moment, I haven’t actually had many questions about how they might leverage it, um, other than maybe making silly memes or, uh, things that probably aren’t really effective for their business. But, um, time will tell how, how they try and integrate this into their workday.

Chris Barnard: And from a digital consultant perspective, I know I’ve certainly found it helpful in terms of analyzing greater data sets, transforming I suppose, and formatting different data sets into, um, something legible. Uh, particularly its ability to sort of summarize long documents as well, I found quite useful over time. Have you found any sort of processes that you’ve been using it for? I’ve seen in pay-per-click there is a lot of data to always be processing. Are you finding that sort of helping you come to decisions quicker? Is there anything on that sort of front that AI’s helped you with in your processes?

Paul Lanham: Uh, nothing specific comes to mind, but I’m sure anyone who uses pay-per-click has noticed a lot more AI summaries within Google itself, within the, um, Google Ads platform, um, summarizing data, helping to write ads. So those things have been mildly useful. Um. I haven’t had too much experience with uploading large data sets yet, but I’m sure when the need arises, I’m sure it can be really useful and time-saving for that.

Chris Barnard: And the question we ask everyone on Bear Business Paul, uh, the last question we come to can be any type of game, can be a board game, can be a drinking game, can be a game of dominoes, or a card game, or a video game. What would you say that your favorite game to play is? Uh, either in your spare time now or a game of the past you love to play.

Paul Lanham: Uh, Twister.

Chris Barnard: Mat Games, would we class Twister as a mat game? I suppose so.

Paul Lanham: Yes. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. We’ll go with video game. I think the audience probably knows that best. Um, so I’ve been playing Grand Theft Auto for a long time, starting with the very first version, I believe in the late nineties. Uh, and playing on the versions through well, GTA five and of course eagerly awaiting GTA 6 whenever that may decide to, uh, release. So, yeah. Big fan.

Chris Barnard: It felt an amazing game at the time. ‘Cause you felt like you had so much freedom, didn’t you? With GTA It was, uh, we were concerned in our household, me and my brother, whether we were able to get it. ‘Cause of course, I think it was a 18 minimum not even a 15, but, um, in our local game store, one of us would distract our mother whilst the other stuck a pricing sticker over the, uh, it must be 18 to play this game. So we used to manage to squirrel all these games back and play them, uh, much to the envy of some of our friends who, uh, weren’t able to play such pranks on their parents. But, I mean, these were great games, right? I mean, they were, they were trailblazing at the time, actually, Paul, weren’t they Grand Theft Autos?

Paul Lanham: They were visionary. Yeah. Agreed that, um, at the time they were mind-blowing. Absolutely. Uh, the fact that you could drive around what felt like a real city was unlike anything else. Of course still, it’s still not quite as fresh today, but, but I’m sure GTA six will push the boundaries of what’s possible.

Chris Barnard: Yeah, it’s a great point. Every sort of addition and chapter now, right, does break some sort of traditions, certainly is that the people who made it rockstar games moved into Red Dead. I think both of them were incredible for their time, but GTA obviously went 3D with the third version as well, which was another massive thing for the industry, wasn’t it? Was GTA three when the first time that you got to see it in 3D, was that a big moment for you?

Paul Lanham: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. That was, uh, that was a big deal. Very big deal at the time. Anyone, anyone younger listening might, uh, might struggle to understand, uh, how that felt. But yeah, it absolutely was.

Chris Barnard: Yeah, they would. But it shows the longevity, doesn’t it? I mean, they’re all still playing GTA five. So for a, for a small amount of time, I actually ran a GTA five role play server a few years ago, and that was fascinating in terms of getting into the development and sort of using my dusty scripting language to try and change things in the aspect, but still massive communities. People watch it on Twitch and, uh, on the gaming streaming platforms, people sort of role-playing in these games. So even the younger generation still have the respect and the love and I suppose they share as in our view of when will GTA six actually come? Right? When will it actually come, instead of just being announced or, uh, rumors of it coming right.

Paul Lanham: That is the big question. The big question.

Chris Barnard: Yeah, we’ll see.

Chris Barnard: Something we do know that is coming to an end is our podcast today, so thank you very much for joining me. If someone is interested in your services, Paul, how should they reach out to you? Are you on LinkedIn for example?

Paul Lanham: Well, thank you. Uh, I do have a sole presence on LinkedIn. I will admit that it’s not a platform I’m particularly active on. Um, so probably best off going to my website, very old school, which is, uh, simply randomsurfer.net, and you’ll find my contact details in there. Send me a message.

Chris Barnard: Excellent. Thank you, Paul. We’ll put that in the show notes so people can come to your website and get in contact with you. Thank you for joining us today.