# How Jacob Baadsgaard Built an $18M Agency

Channel: Seven Figure Agency | Josh Nelson
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fi50W3ZpJF0
Duration: 48 min
Language: English
Words: 10460
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/Fi50W3ZpJF0

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[0:00] All right. Hello and welcome to the Seven Figure Agency podcast where we're interviewing highly successful digital marketing agencies across the country on how they've grown and scaled their agencies. And today we have a legend, Jacob Bascard from Disruptive Advertising. Um that's right. A legend in this space really like I've been kind of looking at his work from afar. Has grown to over $18 million per year. Served hundreds and hundreds of clients. Jacob, thank you so much for joining us today. Josh, I have I don't know if I've been introduced as a legend before, but I kind of like the feeling

[0:30] of that. So, thank you. Uh, so for for our listeners, kind of give us give us a quick lay of the land in terms of the agency, number of clients, some of the lessons learned at a high level. Yeah, I started disruptive as a side hustle freelance 14 years ago and then it has been a wild ride in those 14 years. Our peak years we were doing about 24 to 25 million. We got we got a good COVID bump and we had a huge client that was about $4 million a year for us

[0:58] as well. Wow. And we're currently doing about 18 million a year and we actually we actually moved on from we had 650 clients at the time. We made the strategic move to actually let go 450 of our clients which was 30% of our revenue because we wanted to get more dialed in on who we really want to work with and serve. And I was at the point at our peak where I'm like, if we scale this anymore, I might die. And we've got to make some hard decisions so that this is sustainable and scalable. And so we've been making some of those changes, getting a little bit more picky about

[1:31] how we work with. And then it's been fun to get some of that stabilizing and ready to start growing. So good. Yeah. Exciting. I can only imagine. What What got you into the agency game in the first place? Yeah. I I might now that I'm in my 40s, I probably age myself out with some of these comments, but I worked at Omnature, which is was a web analytics software company out of college that was later bought by Adobe, which is now part of the Adobe Marketing Cloud. And my whole job was web analytics implementation and integration from their website to their CRM or ERP or whatever that was. And I was the data

[2:05] guy behind it. install the code, capture all the information, visualize it into actionable insights and I was doing that for the top brands in the entire world and kept and I didn't have a marketing degree. I did information systems in college and the data is what kept pointing me to, hey, this is what the insights are telling you to do and then they'd go do it and it would make their marketing way more effective. And I thought, well, sheesh, if the big companies don't know how to do this, what are the small mediumsiz businesses doing? So that's where the business idea sprouted from. I thought my agency would be an analytics

[2:37] consulting agency, but the answer every single time, Josh, was, "Thank you for sharing those insights with us. We don't have the bandwidth or expertise to implement what you're asking us to do. Will you just do that for us?" And because it was the most trackable and actionable on the paid media side of things, that's where I turned from an analytics consultant to a performance marketing agency that was an analytics first primarily on the performance

[3:04] channels that we could better track. And so that's how the business got off the ground. And yeah, I mean that was the genesis. I love it. So very data driven from the beginning. Um, correct me if I'm wrong, but you didn't go niche. And that's something we we typically say, choose a vertical, become the expert, but it seemed like you started service specific

[3:22] in the in the pay-per-click realm. Correct me if I'm wrong. Talk me through that journey, what the deliverables look like at the beginning, what they look like today. Yeah. Well, there's a lot of ways to niche. And the way that I niched was, hey, I'm a data guy, and if I don't have enough data, there's no statistical significance behind what I'm

[3:38] recommending. Mhm. And the easiest place to do that was on the paid side, primarily with paid search. And so what I was known for for the first a long time at disruptive was if you have a larger budget on Google at the time, Adwords, Disruptive and Jake are like the guy to work with on this front. So we were product specialized,

[4:00] not necessarily industry specialized. Yeah. And I I will say product specialization a couple of years ago was when I'm like with the way everything's evolving and changing, I don't think product specialization is going to survive as well as industry specialization. Um but at that time we had actually grown sufficiently large that have actually categorized and now broken down my team. So I do have a B2B focused only team. I do have a a a DTOC ecom team that only works with those clients. you know I have my localbased team or I so we actually have started making sure our solution has gone a little bit broader

[4:36] and then the teams are now verticalizing as well. So that's kind of the evolution of going from product specialization to now you know I'd call it kind of almost like four different franchises of disruptive that are yeah they are more niche and and specific and what they do and that's actually part of our growth strategy is probably acquiring a couple of specialty shops as well over the

[4:57] coming years. Love it. So in your case it was the specialization is in paid ads and then as you grew it was like okay let's pick the verticals within paid ads and really specialize and position ourselves as the experts combining what we do in paid ads with that particular industry and it seems like that that formula has worked really well for you. How has the the deliverable evolved? We fast forward to today. What what does the the

[5:19] deliverable look like at at Disruptive? Yeah. So, everything that we do and provide to our clients is in this book that I've got here behind me because I don't believe that product specialization is going to stay super viable or will shift so much along the way. And I even think that being industry specialized is going to shift quite a bit as well. What I'm taking is a is an approach where the disconnect that is happening between most business owners and marketing is that they haven't clarified the business goals and objectives sufficiently clear to then align a marketing strategy that can mathematically back into the business goals. And so when you say well

[5:57] what does the deliverable look like? There are six fundamental questions that we have to have quality answers to at the business level before we can then even build a marketing strategy that clarifies the math, the target customer, the journey and the measurement strategy. And until those two pieces are in place, we can't move into execution and know what to prioritize. And then once we do know, once we have vision, then the strategy, then we've

[6:19] prioritized what needs to be executed. Then we make sure we've got the right people taking the right actions that are working on the account. And that's true for both my internal marketing team for disruptive as well as my agency team and how they service and work with our customers. So the deliverables are it kind of goes on that onboarding cadence of clarify the vision and the strategy where we're both signed off and partnered together on that and then review and adapt quarterly and take a big step back once a year to make sure that we're still aligned and moving

[6:47] towards the same north star. Love it. So it's more a growth partner. You're meeting with the client. You're understanding what their goal is. [clears throat] you're coming alongside them mapping out the strategy and the plan that leads to mutual benefit like everyone's rolling in the same direction and I would imagine better retention better wins for both sides. Yeah. And so a lot of our specialty is knowing how do we architect this strategy and funnel to produce the business outcomes that you're looking for but you don't have the bandwidth or budget to pay for us to build it all at once for you. So where are we going to

[7:19] start? And I always recommend starting at the bottom of the funnel because if you don't have a high converting website, if you go drive more traffic, that's not going to help you. So we go start at the bottom. Hey, are your paid ads performing well? Are there high converting pages on the website? Then we move up the funnel and say, "Hey, let's go drive some more traffic or let's go drive some new subscribers or whatever that is." And then so our scope actually adjusts per quarter where when we were a product specialistonly company, well, you can only get a paid campaign to per perform so much better on its own, but

[7:51] if you can't get the website converting it better, you're limited on how you can grow paid ads. If you don't nurture and get a repeat purchase, you're limited on how much you can be effective in scaling paid ads. And so, that's more of how we're approaching it right now. And so, really, our account managers are more fractional marketing directors on the performance side of things to help them make sure that the funnel is actually architected, being tracked correctly, and being built and optimized

[8:15] accordingly. So, good. And that's one of the main reasons I wanted to have you on the show. Obviously, you've built a successful 18-25 million agency. You've been through this, but you've just published this amazing new book called The Indispensable Marketer. It's it's already a bestseller on Amazon, and it it teaches agencies and business owners how to think in this way. U guys, if you're listening to this and you run an agency and you know, like you want to be more CMO level with how you approach your clients, you've got to grab a copy of the book. Where would be the best place for for people to get a copy? And

[8:47] we'll we'll get right back to it here in a second. Yeah, Amazon and Audible. Let's not over complicate this. Yep. There you go. Amazon dispensable. Yeah, you can listen to yours truly on the Audible. But what makes it fun, Josh, is while I wrote the book, I have my head of marketing chime in on each chapter to give the marketer's perspective in working with the CEO, not

[9:08] just my perspective on that. So good. So, I think there's two things I really want to drill down on. Number one is how you and your and your director of marketing work together. I think that's mission critical for the agencies looking to break through the plateau. But I think the at the base level for our listeners, the agency owner that's serving a niche, whatever it is, plumbing companies, roofing companies, dentists, and trying to figure out well AI is here, you know,

[9:31] it's becoming harder to remain relevant. How do the frameworks in this book and how does your approach help them develop strategic relationships that are going to improve retention, improve probably what they can charge those clients? Just any nuggets you can share on on that front. Yeah. Well, there are quite a few directions that we could take that Josh. I think what I'll start with is my own relationship with my head of marketing and then let's let's translate that to

[9:57] uh client relationships as well. Yeah. Okay. So when I come to Chad and there are six questions that the CEO has to ask and answer in order for the marketer to be set up for success. Okay? And a couple of those include things like what's my why for doing this beyond making money? Because if there's not a strong why behind things when things get hard just things don't work out and if you're only doing it for the money I am telling you running an agencies may not be worth it if that's the only thing you care about. It's like it's not easy work. there might be easier ways to make

[10:28] money, but you and I both understand that when you help a client break through and like transform their life and their business, and you are a big part of that, it's like that's why I do this and my mission statement's always been to see and activate greatness and that's why we moved on from 450 clients cuz we weren't doing that for them. So, we had to get more clear about who are we doing that for. So, when I come back to Chad and say, I only want to work with clients where we can see and activate greatness. For example, here's five examples of clients that we've done

[10:56] that for. In the garage door repair company I've worked with, Carrie, she we've worked with her for 12 years. She went from working out of her home to multiple exits later and the regional powerhouse that everyone wants to be when they grow up. Like, and we can spend a lot in marketing dollars to acquire that type of customer. And so, I look at that and the LTV on a on a

[11:14] customer like that is through the roof. And so Chad, who's my head of marketing, instead of trying to drive a cost-effective lead for the sales team to work and close the deal, what if you could spend 10 to $20,000 to get an awesome client? How would you do marketing differently? Right? And for me, I spend about 8.5% of my total revenue on marketing. A lot of agencies, I think, underinvest in their market marketing of themselves. But that was the that was one of the questions that changed his the way that he thought about his marketing and the way that he was doing business. Dude, I don't care

[11:45] what your cost per lead is. I want to know, are you getting us customers we can actually confidently drive an impact for? And you can actually spend quite a bit of money to get one of those customers and I'm going to feel great about it. And so when he comes back with his plan and says, "Okay, here's some things we're going to test and try and if we want to hit your goals for the year," which is one of the other questions we've got to answer 10, 3, 1 years from

[12:05] now, here's where I want to be and why. He then comes back with it means this many customers at this value and here's my budget and I've got to hit those numbers. And he comes back and says I can hit your goal or I need more budget to hit your goal or I need more time to hit the goal. [laughter] And now all of a sudden he's taking my vision coming back with a strategy and saying and then we sign off together on the risks we're willing to take the investments we're willing to make those types of things as well. And so again, I'm asking my vision related questions,

[12:36] which are the first six in the book. He then comes back with his four strategy on, okay, here's how I'm going to do that. And then we both mutually sign off before he goes and executes. Because where AI is killing everybody right now, is if you execute faster on the wrong things, which is what most people are doing with AI, it doesn't move the needle. It actually just devalues the work that you're doing because now you've demonstrated I'll produce a lot of output but it's not improving performance. Like that's a bad situation to put yourself in. And so when with the AI disruption, I'm working with Chad to create business clarity. We

[13:11] both sign off on the strategy. Then he's using AI to execute the hell out of it really fast and turning things around in days and weeks that used to take months and quarters to do. So good. So if you can if you can take that logic and apply it to your client relationships as opposed to a lot of agencies unfortunately they come up with their package website SEO pay-per-click it's five grand a month and hopefully you'll sign up for it and stay you know 6 months 12 months whatever the time frame is that is going to become less and less effective with all of the changes in the marketplace and being

[13:44] able to have that strategic conversation connect with the client understand their goals understand their reason for doing it you make self indispensable, which is the whole concept of the of the book. Anything you want to add there or or add some color to? So, here's where it was killing my agency. If you're product focused with AI right now, like I said before, if I'm running a lot of PPC campaigns and there's only so much you can polish and optimize those things, you're going to get 80% of the value you can provide as an agency in the first 3 to 6 months and then spend all your time convincing them

[14:16] why continuing to optimize it makes sense to keep going with a retainer. And clients just aren't tolerating that. So now when we come back and say, "We've done everything we can do on this to get performance where it needs to be. Now we need to shift scope and priority to the next unlock. And that's why the scope either increases or stays the same in order for us to provide that while the rest of this can go on to maintenance mode. Most agencies and I just want to call myself out and the rest of us agency owners there there is a little bit of this approach that

[14:47] get some good results and then hopefully they become low maintenance and keep paying us the same amount. And I would just say I'm not okay with that in the agency space anymore. I think that's not how you make an impactful difference for a business. You still need to scope it correctly. You still need to build correctly. You still need to have a sustainable business model. But that's where I'm looking at it and saying, "No, you've got to do what's going to move the needle for the client, not what makes this easy for me to charge the most ongoing. It's what's going to move the needle for the client and how do we

[15:15] prioritize the right things." And that's what keeps scope high. That's what keeps retainers higher and it keeps the value proportionate to it as well. So no justification is needed. So good. It's such an important paradigm shift. You know, it's like at if your true intent, I think most of us started these businesses because we want to help our clients grow, right? That's at the end of the day, you don't deserve to exist if you're not growing your clients that are paying you a monthly fee or whatever it is to move them forward. So you have to be crafting growth strategies and plans that are actually moving the needle and not just set it

[15:49] and forget it. Yeah. If that's your model, which has been a lot of the agency models to date, I you're not going to make it. [laughter] Yeah. Yeah. You're just not going to make it. Yeah. And so it'll like and I think that to to your point, it's not just about the like it used to be you could say I'm I specialize in Facebook ads or I specialize in pay-per-click or I do SEO and I'm going to that's my thing. It that's not the objective, right? like we all have to position ourselves as growth partners that are helping client go from point A to point B and that's going to

[16:20] be an iterative process and the program deliverables have to change and and modify over time as that as that client grows. 100%. So good. So I I'd love to talk specifically and for those of you like if you're listening to this you're like I need this skill set. I need to understand how this works. Your biggest shortcut right now is to go get the book. It was just released on Amazon indispensable marketer. Lots of great insights and takeaways. if you want to grab a copy of this right away. Would love to talk a little bit about now the the actual agency, right? And I know you

[16:48] made some tough decisions and you kind of grew it and then you brought it down intentionally to be able to serve and be at that level of impact. Talk to me about the the structure of the team. I know you've got an office in Utah somewhere. Talk to me about the structure of the team and how you how you have scaled up or scaled back account management now positioning them almost as fractional chief marketing

[17:08] officers. Yeah. Well, there's there's a few things that I'll point to. I had a fractional, we'll say, CFO early on in the business. And what he did is he helped me architect the business in a way where I allocated budget as a percentage of revenue. And so, hey, for my ops, you know, my COGS, this is the percent of revenue that I invest in that. For marketing and sales, this is the percentage of revenue that I invest in that for GNA and for all of these other things. And one of the things that that did for me is it removed a lot of anxiety to say, "Hey, I run mid to high

[17:41] teens profit margin for my business." Okay. So, you know, for for most years, we've been between 15 and 20 on average. And for some agencies, that's low. For some agencies, that's high. Whatever, right? Like you you got to do you on those ones. Because I'm the sole owner of the business, I've always said, "Hey, when we're hitting 20, we're typically running a little hot and people are burning out. And then if we're getting below 15%, it's it's not feeling worth it from a cash flow perspective, risk, those kind of things. That's where I bounce

[18:08] bounce between. And what's really cool about that is then it actually gives your department leaders more P&L ownership. And then if the business is growing, then marketing and sales instantly has more dollars to expand their team and make things happen. Fulfillment can make it higher and do all of those types of things. And so that's where I just architected my business and budget allocation as a percentage of revenue. And then the only piece that I keep for myself is hey do I want this to be profitability and how much of that profitability am I willing to invest in R&D to test new solutions build new build

[18:41] things invest in scaling in an area where it's outside of their budget or those types of things and I typically do that with 0 to 5% as well depending on where it's needed at the time. Okay. So that's the first thing I do from a budget management which then gives P&L responsibility to my leaders and it's like it is your job to stay in your percentage. If we're shrinking that means you're making the decisions you need to. If we're growing that means you need to stay caught up. And so I've just found that to be really helpful in

[19:08] growing or scaling down as a business. And what I found that that my leaders have learned through that process are the key roles they need as fixed costs. And then they've started to understand what variable costs they can use in each of those departments so that they can flex with it as we go along the way to

[19:23] stay in budget. Love it. So specifically like through thinking about like your account management team. Talk to me about how you structure that like how many account managers or client success I'm not sure what you refer to in your agency per you know per client. I know that some of the clients pay a lot of money some pay less. Can you talk a little bit even

[19:40] high level on that? Yeah you bet. So, uh, like I mentioned before, it's not technically a franchise, but I almost think of it as like its own business unit. So, we'll use my my B2B example. My team that works with B2B companies, primarily SAS companies in that, but some other ones as well. And so, again, they have their percentage of revenue. And within that, I actually give some autonomy to that business unit leader to say, how do you want to scope your playbook and your product offering and what ratio does that look like on the account management or strategy side? How much of that's on the execution side? What do you want

[20:14] in-house versus outsourced to fulfill on those types of things? And so, it's actually a little different by design because I want them to feel ownership over their playbook and their team architecture to get there. Okay, that makes sense. know and then we just because everything's mathematically derived. They know how they make more money and their teams know how they make more money. If they are able to produce under budget, they get the rest to to invest in in hiring more, bonusing their people, doing those types of things as well. But for most of those, it depends on the contract size, which is why it's hard to give a specific number. So my

[20:50] more junior account managers might have 15 to 20 clients where my most senior ones might have the largest book of business in the company and only have three or four accounts that they're working on. And so that's that's why it's kind of more revenue derived rather than number of clients derived from that standpoint. That makes that makes a lot of sense. I I don't know if you could think back this far because I I know that we all have growths and spurts and we hit these plateaus. If you could think back to maybe your first 5 million, what were some of the shifts that you made

[21:20] operationally that helped you break through because I feel a lot of agencies get stuck at the first million and then at 3 to five they get stuck again? If you could think back to that point like what what were some of the key positions you put in place or shifts that helped you break through the the eight figure level? Yeah, I think every founder or partners, if you have multiple partners in the business, bring a natural skill set to the table. And mine has always been more of a I like the marketing and sales side of growing a business. And then the operational follow through has

[21:49] been the part I've always been very competent at, but don't love the ongoing handholding, support, follow-th through details type thing. So, the first thing that I actually looked to replace was who can really manage client relationships really well. And that's more of like a project minded project managerminded leader that makes sure here's what we do here's when we do it here's how we do it here it is in ASA which is what we're currently using we used to use a different platform but that was the that was like some of the first key hires that I made because that was the part I

[22:20] wanted to let go of the fastest. Okay. And that's that's probably what got us to 5 million because then I could put all of my energy into growth and sales. Mhm. So get got out of operations, got out of client services. You were in your natural seed of genius, which is marketing, business development, straight to 5 million. Let's talk about

[22:40] some of the shifts there. Yeah. Now, I would say for some people it will be the opposite. They'll want to they'll want to hire that sales and and growth market minded individual leader in their business sooner. Um, so you just got to know thyself in this situation, right? So the next thing that I did was, okay, how do I actually scale

[22:55] sales outside of myself? Mhm. And I tried three heavy hitters that I paid a lot of money and brought them on board and they came from different situations to like show me how it was done. But then they set poor expectations cuz they didn't understand the product very well. And so I I yada yada yada. I went through three different people I paid a lot of money that I thought would just come and solve

[23:15] it for me. And there's a million ways to solve everything. But how I solved it was I actually just ended up with someone that was really young and hungry. But I said, "Basically, you're going to be my sales assistant to do all of the follow-through admin work, make sure that we're getting these deals closed across the finish line and handing them off to the team so I can be just doing more of what I do." And they just worked side by side with me for a year and just took more and more and more off my plate to the point where it's like, "Hey, you're now handling all of the small

[23:43] business deals. Hey, you're now handling the mid-market deals. Awesome. you're now handling the large deals and let's hire an assistant for you type thing. And so every time I tried the shortcut on the sales side, it didn't work because I cared that they understood the product and how I sold. Doesn't mean they couldn't adapt it a little bit to make it more repeatable. But that was like, hey, it it worked better for me to hire someone younger that was humble enough to learn how I did it, adapt themselves, and I could just give them more and more over time. It probably took 18 months. And as business owners,

[24:16] we all want the silver bullet that solves it like right now. But it was very fulfilling. And that was the piece that I was able to that's how I handled it on the sales side. And that's frankly what allowed us to scale from like 5 to 20 million between the operational leadership and then the sales

[24:32] leadership. Was it just one salesperson or did you wind up building a whole sales team with outbound and inbound and the whole combination? Josh, the thing that we've never really figured out that I'm in the trying to figure out right now is how do we do more effective outreach? I'm pretty good at it, but that's not really what I

[24:46] spend my time doing anymore. Mhm. So, that's actually the piece I'm trying to figure out. We actually just scaled inbound marketing and then we have a sales team of five or six that just screen the inbound leads, make sure that they're a good quality fib for us, hand them to a closer, the account executive closer works with them, gets them closed and onboarded to our client team. But we've had a fairly small sales organization and have invested more in our inbound marketing with our content, with our own ads, with the things that we claim to do for our clients doing it for ourselves. And that's what helped us

[25:16] scale to where we're at today. And I I've I've run the math and you obviously I've made some business decisions, but it caps out around 25 to 30 million for us, which is why I've actually been interviewing and and researching where do I find someone that can come and help me build the outreach motion where we've got a little bit more of a hunter mentality inside because I haven't

[25:33] figured that part out yet in a sales. I mean, that's great. You were able to grow to $20 million with, you know, eating your own dog food, right? putting out great content, doing good advertising, getting prospects to raise their hand, and then a small, you know, agile five or six people on the sales team, closing the deals. That That's huge. Let's talk about the marketing because I I I know that like kind of the crux of this is getting a marketer in place because as agency owners, we're good at marketing. Usually, we're good at sales. And usually our superpower becomes our Achilles heel because we can't let it go. And it sounds like you

[26:06] had eight different people that you said, "Okay, you're going to lead marketing for for the agency and they dropped the ball and and and you had to figure this out." Talk us through that and some of the lessons learned. Yeah, that's the fun dialogue that I have in the book is I had gone through five different marketing leaders in 8 years and I now found myself with my sixth marketing leader and I'd be nine

[26:25] years in and making another change. Okay? So, at some point I said, "Well, maybe I'm the problem here, right? Like there's only one common denominator. either I'm really bad at hiring or I'm not setting these people up for success. Either way, it kind of points back to this guy, you know? And so, and and here's the challenge. Being the marketer, like the marketer at a marketing agency, might be one of the trickiest jobs out there because everyone, including the CEO, thinks they know how to do your job better than you

[26:52] do. And so, Chad was my sixth marketer. He had struggled to perform the the first six months. And I was asking him some pretty hard questions. and he raised his hand and said, "Hey, I might not be the right guy for the job because clearly I've been unable to move the needle and you kind of want to have a specific thing in mind." And it's funny because this is the exact dynamic that plays out with our customers playing out in my own

[27:15] business. And for anyone that's written a book or that plans to write a book, one thing I can promise you is it will ask you to bleed with it if you're going to be authentic. Otherwise, you'll just speak to it theoretically. So this book is actually that very process of how could I get clear enough on my business vision so that he could come back with how to execute against that in his strategy then execute and hire the right team around him to do so. And I said well let's figure this out because if we can nail it for ourselves it will also update our offering and how we service

[27:44] our clients. So let's go all in on this and if I can give you the clarity and I can sign off on your strategy if you're still not performing six from months from now. I think we can both just agree it's the wrong fit and feel like we gave it our all. And the cool thing is he went from saying I don't think I'm the right guy for the job to a year later saying I know I'm the right guy for the job and now I have the clarity and the support to go and make it happen. And that literally is the the story of that process is what

[28:10] the book is. But it's also the dynamic that plays out in every client and agency relationship, every in-house marketing leader and CEO relationship. I've seen it play out thousands of times. I had to live it myself before I could write the book on it and and realize [clears throat] what most of the time the CEO is the problem. And are you the marketer that's going to wait around to help for them to figure their out or are you going to be the indispensable marketer that comes to the table and knows how to ask the right questions, how to support the right way, how to how to do those things. And

[28:40] that's what the book is about is don't wait for your CEO to solve this for you. Here's how you can actually extract that from them and create the clarity you need for yourself. So good. I I love it. I I I can't wait to read the entire thing end to end because it just came out. But I I I know the cliff notes of it. It looks like it's going to be a gamecher. I know we've got about 20 on on live. So if you guys have questions, drop them in. It's not every day you get access to somebody at this level. Like anything's on the

[29:05] table. So go ahead and ask your questions. I'd love to just talk a little bit about team structure because you've got you've got a big office. I've seen the pictures of the big team. Is it all inhouse there in Utah or is it like a dispersed team? talk to us about how you structured the team and or why you

[29:20] structured it that way. Yeah, I think like for most of us, CO blew things up. And so we were we were all local until co Okay. And I had a couple of A players that moved remote after being local that I'm like, hey, I'd rather work with the right person in the wrong location. So, we made an exception for them to be remote. We're now about 50/50 of people in Utah versus people out of Utah. But even other people in Utah, there's probably still only 10 to 15 that will come in on a weekly basis and it's only

[29:48] a couple of days that they're coming in. And so I actually have this beautiful class A office space I go work out of most days. Today just happens to not be one of those days and and that just works better for me and my wife prefers I not work from home so she doesn't have to worry about keeping things quiet and you know whatever when I'm doing a podcast with Josh or something like that. Um but so we are we are hybrid. I I am a in-person emotional relationship kind of guy. So, we still bring people in occasionally, try to do fun things. I do miss having us all in the office, but

[30:20] I don't know that we're going back to that. So, it just kind of is what it is. And and then I really do try to empower my leaders to own their culture and to move those types of things forward. So, I have my department leaders and my business unit leaders again where that's structured and they're kind of making some of those decisions on their own on how they want to structure their department and move those things forward

[30:38] as well. Awesome. Yeah, I I think we did we did the same. We had a big a big office in Miami. Didn't ever figure out the the virtual team setup and then co forced it and it was like, okay, actually this isn't so bad, right? This is kind of nice. That that's great. I want to talk a little bit about marketing, right? So, like you you you've got a lot of client

[30:56] flow obviously mostly through inbound. Can you talk a little bit about what's working best? Like what are some of the plays that you use again and again to get new clients coming into the fold? Yeah, I I uh just think always the most important thing to do to get new clients is to get great results from your existing clients, which then keeps those clients and then they typically want to do more business with you. So, I think that's always the best way, get great results for your clients. The second thing is document those results. And so, um I see documenting results as two things. Number one, leave us a review

[31:29] that verifies that we drove great results for you. M and two, let's publish a case study that allows us to demonstrate how we did that. Sometimes we have to anonymize because they don't want their name on it, you know, or whatever. But those are that is the foundation for all marketing because the mo in agency land which has no barriers to entry is

[31:47] credibility. Credibility to what? Credibility to drive results for someone like you predictably and consistently type thing. So that's where I'm always focused. And then because we have I I I don't want to overspeak. we may be the top reviewed agency in the country cuz I've taken that so seriously for 14 years that we've got a thousand plus of them out there now and that really becomes the foundation cuz now when I advertise on Google or promote for extra visibility on a on a listing site or those types of things we just the differentiator in that advertising is five star as reviewed by this many people like it just adds that

[32:22] credibility so all of the things that I do are amplified because we do great works we publish it we ask for reviews in an effective way And then that becomes the foundation for any paid campaigns we run, any content that we're producing. It's not theoretical. It's here's how this was the problem. Here's how we solved it. This is the result that it drove for someone like you in this situation. And the things that we've leaned on is again, great work, retain, grow the existing clients that we have, ask for referrals, and then to keep inbounds cuz that's a little inconsistent in how that produces growth for the company. And then I've got, like

[32:58] I said, 8 and a half% of my budget is with a marketing team that's doing great content. We have a YouTube channel with about 20,000 subscribers on it. I post a lot for my LinkedIn account. And then we run paid advertising as well in the right places to the right audience and make sure that we're ranked high on the best agencies and specific categories on different ranking sites as well. So

[33:18] that's kind of what we do. So So it sounds like it's predominantly a flywheel approach, right? get the clients, deliver world-class results, document the results, get them to post about it, like create case studies from it, and because you did such good work, now they're happy to refer you. It brings in more client growth without having to spend as much to to acquire even though you do have a marketing budget and you are doing all the standard marketing stuff, but you really believe that it's the the focus on delivering and documenting the delivering that has kept the momentum

[33:47] going. Yeah. Well, to me, that's the brass tax. That's that's what every potential customer wants to wants to know is do you know my specific pain point and have you solved it for someone like me before successfully and if you can answer that question for me I'm interested in working with you. So then it's m making sure you document it and knowing where to put that in front of where they go to

[34:05] ask and answer those questions. So good. I is there a business process around that like tactically speaking like where the account managers are incentivized to create the case study or is there a separate team that comes in behind that and documents it like what is the business proc if you can speak to that

[34:21] at all? Yeah. So again, what you measure is what you improve. And so because my marketing leader Chad, like he needs those things to do great marketing, right? So we have targets for the year of just like, hey, this is this is just the expectation and here's the reward for people that meet those criteria and it's enough of an individual and team

[34:41] reward that they're motivated to do it. And um it's a great way to highlight them and help them build career resume builders as well. And so that's one of the things is it's not just about getting the agency what it needs. It's like, did you know that getting reviews from your clients and getting case studies developed is what builds your resume, marketability, and the wages

[34:59] that you can command in the industry. So, you you really want to do this and we'll make it fun. We'll make it easy. We've got templates. A lot of the times once once the once it's checked, our marketing team is actually typically the one writing the case study to take it off the teams like, "Hey, here's high level what's going on. Yes, the client's willing to talk to you." then my marketing team actually does a lot of

[35:20] the leg work on that for them. Got it. So, so it's really an incentivized process that you got the at the base of the culture is you want to deliver world-class results and and develop those next level case studies and then you've incentivized the account management team or client success to create the experience to understand why it's valuable for the company, but why why it's valuable for them both in terms of their own compensation and their future growth. And then you tag the marketing team in with those clients that are winning and and develop it into a full-fledged case study because it's the it's it's my marketing

[35:51] team's job to market that information. It's my fulfillment team's job to capture and create the outcome and the results. And so just want to make sure they're both doing the part that they're great at. So good. I love it. You mentioned focus on retention, right? Deliver great results and retention. Obviously results is the base of all retention. Are there any other things you guys have learned or deployed that you feel like help with

[36:16] client retention long term? Yeah, the uh Well, when you say learn, I'm going to say and continue to relearn like 30 times at different ways. But what I've learned is you just don't really know what you're getting into with a client because you you both posture a little bit in the sales process. Anything you say anything different than that and I think that's posturing about posturing. We guarantee results in the first 90 days. We both have opt outs in the first 90 days. We just got to get in there, get our hands dirty, understand your data, understand your business, run some of our marketing, see if we can get the

[36:49] traction, and we're okay with some churn up front. It just happens. It just is. The playbook that works 80 to 90% of the time didn't work here. Um, they've got other business issues that marketing isn't going to solve, you know, etc., etc., etc., you know, and so I actually think sometimes it's just okay to have insurance as long as you executed well and you delivered on what you promised and you're willing to feel some pain short term. But then, you know, and we typically feel like we can figure that out in the first 90 days 95% of the time. So, we're actually pretty flexible on that. But then moving

[37:23] forward, we feel like that really gets us into that quarterly cadence that I just talked to you about. Okay, cool. We now optimize this part of your funnel. Now, we need to optimize this part of your funnel. And then we that's where the the strategic partnership and growth opportunities emanate from those types of meetings. And getting through the first 90 days is like that's where most of our process exists because we know if we nail that our chances of retaining long-term are very high. So I have very little process. It's uh beyond 90 days and trust the team to just follow that QBR cadence update scope as necessary

[37:55] expand and grow the relationship. But we have we're highly processed in the first 90 days from how it's closed to how it's onboarded and how we get to initial results and value. That's very documented and highly processed in that stage. So, so really engineering the the onboarding process, the initial 90 days experientially results like knocking it out of the park for the client and then you call a QBR quarterly business review where it's like how did we do what's the next goal? And in your case, it sounds like like intentionally engineered, not you signed up for five grand a month or

[38:31] three grand a month or whatever it is. It's we're going to expand the revenue because that's what's required for you to get to that next goal that you've set in this business relationship. Is that is that right? Yes. And I think in those first 90 days, it's about lowhanging fruit and demonstrating value as quickly as

[38:47] possible. Okay. What retains beyond 90 Yeah. It's the quick whims. And frankly, that's just what's needed. And within that 90 days, we should be coming back with now to hit your goals for the next 12 months. Here's how we're going to get there. And that's what shifts the focus from, you know, they're not reaching out to us if they don't have a pain point. So, let's solve the pain. You know, my hair's on fire. Let's put the hair out of fire first. And then it's really coming back and saying, "Okay, for the next 12 months to accomplish your business goals and objective, here's what it's going to

[39:15] take, what we're going to prioritize, and how we're going to systematically work through that." Because you're going to say you want it all right now, but then when I tell you the budget I need to pull that off, you're going to say, "Oh, actually, maybe I don't want it all right now." And I we go to our clients and say, "This is the percentage of your budget you probably should be spending on marketing. This is the percentage that should be going to media and to the team or agencies like us, and this is what needs to be done over the next 12 months to hit your goal. And of course,

[39:39] we're going to frontload it with what will move the needle the most." But that's what gets us thinking from trying each other out to long-term focused. And that's what retains and grows those accounts. And it's fun. We've got clients we've had for like over 12 years at this point. And you know, but we, you know, still have a healthy, you know, churn in that first 90 days or 6 months, but then a lot of them stick around for

[40:00] a long time because of that approach. Love it. And guys, if you're listening, if you have questions, feel free to drop them in. Obviously, Jacob has learned a lot, right? And he says he relearns a lot and he's he's taken, you know, all of this experience and put it into the book Indispensable Marketer. you know, definitely grab a copy, definitely check it out. Would love to talk about metrics and and are there any key metrics that you really manage within your business that you found to be super important that should be looked at either on a

[40:28] monthly or quarterly basis? Yeah. So, we have our weekly scorecard that we look at as an executive team and every department has a couple of leading indicators of, hey, did the most important things happen and then this is the metric that shows us how we're doing. So, just a couple of quick examples on the marketing side. Did we grow our first party audience and how many MQLs did we drive? Okay, if the audience didn't grow and we didn't hit our MQL targets, we might need to dive into that side of the business. On the sales side, it's hey, how many SQLs did we get and how much pipeline was

[40:58] generated this week? Of course, I want to know how much you close, but if you generated no pipeline this week, well, four weeks from now, we're not going to have closes either. So, yeah, what did you close this week? But I also want to know how many SQLs did you generate? How much pipeline did that create? and what did you close? And then we like to look at our top accounts. And so in most agencies, you're going to have a higher concentration of revenue in your in your key accounts. So every week we say, how many of our key accounts are in code red? So all of our clients fall into

[41:29] code gold, which means growth opportunity, green, which means solid, yellow, which means, and red means, hey, we might lose them in the next 60 days. And so we proactively look at how many clients are in those stages. So we know where to spend our energy with an emphasis on key accounts in the business as well. And then Josh, I really care

[41:49] about cash flow. Mh. So I always make sure it's reported every week where our accounts receivable is because we, you know, we we're a pay upfront agency, not a net30 agency. And I've been burned by too many clients not paying uh in the past. And so we look at cash flow every week as well to say is accounts receivable expanding, contracting, whatever. And it's like we

[42:12] have a very stringent on that as well. So those are the, you know, that probably covers most of it on the metrics I look at every week. It's a little different on what I look at monthly and then it's a little bit, you know, a little deeper monthly and then quarterly we dive in to a lot more as

[42:25] well. Yeah. So for those of you that aren't familiar with the terminology, at least MQL is a marketing qualified lead, SQL is a sales qualified lead. And so you're looking at that on a very consistent basis. You've got a big team, right? And it's some of it is in office, some of it is external. Obviously, you've put leaders in place. Can you talk about the meeting rhythm for yourself and and like the the leadership team at large and

[42:48] kind of how that flows at your scale? Yeah. So, I meet with the executive team weekly, with the full leadership team monthly, with the full company quarterly, and then everyone on leadership submits a weekly update that keeps everyone apprised of what's going on in their department with their key projects, metrics, and responsibilities as well. So it sounds a little bit like an EOS style meeting rhythm. Do you do you follow EOS or some other operating system infrastructure? Have you kind of

[43:15] drafted your own over time? Yeah, I I would say it's EOS influenced. I love EOS and you know the framework what we call it is VSET which is what I teach in the book and so it just is to me it's just a little bit more detailed in the areas that matter to me and how I run an agency and how I run business but

[43:34] definitely EOS uh influenced. Love it. And so you unpack that that meeting rhythm in the in the book as well. It's all in there. Yeah. So good, guys. I hope you're as excited as I am to get into this book and check it out. Again, it's called The Indispensable Marketer. You can get it on Amazon. You can get it on Audible, which I'm a listener. I I I don't read, but I always listen, so I'll be

[43:54] listening to you read this one to me. Jacob, if you had one last piece of wisdom for the agency owner that's listening and is trying to get to the next level, what what would that be? Yeah, I I would just say what would you keep doing about what you're doing today even if you didn't get paid for it. And if the answer is none of it, you're on the path to burnout and you've got to reconnect with why you're doing this or call a spade a spade, make the decision, you know, but before I started disruptive, my first clients were people I deeply cared about that I wanted to

[44:23] leverage my skill set to help them win with their business and in their marketing role. So my first clients were people I just loved and cared about and used my skill set to help for free. I still do that today. I do marketing for a nonprofit that I am deeply passionate about and I and I donate to their organization. So I pay to do their marketing in essence, you know, and so I would just say just remember what are the elements of what you do that you would keep doing for free and make sure that there's some of that that fills up your calendar because that's why we

[44:54] stopped working with some of the businesses that we did and focused on the ones that we did because if I see my purpose as to see and activate greatness and we're working with businesses we can't do that for the my my life energy is drained out of me and I feel like a zombie and burning out. When I look at the clients that say, "I love my business again. We feel empowered to like make the hard decisions and marketing to back us up on where we want to grow next." I'm like, "Hell yeah, let's go." Like, "This is why I do what I do." Because I've had plenty of

[45:21] opportunities to sell, Josh. And at each time I have to ask myself, would I still do this for free? And the answer so far has been yes, I would because I actually love engaging and supporting those people people this way. And so I would hope that this is also helpful for the agency owners out there. Rip it all off. Read it. Implement these things. I I I am totally a blue ocean kind of guy. I you are too from everything that I've learned about you, Josh, is it it it's all there. It's all on my YouTube channel for free. It's on my newsletter that I post every week on LinkedIn for

[45:53] free. If you want to go deeper, that's where I've got the book. We've got our university that teaches some of those things as well, just like you do. But it's really more for the marketing leader and the relationship they have with the CEO. That's really the relationship that I'm passionate about. What happened with me and Chad from I don't think I'm the right guy to the job for the job to I know he's the right guy for the job. And the last two years of working with him have been a career

[46:16] highlight for me. So good, man. Such a such a great great piece of wisdom, guys. Get back to why you do this. Get back to what you would do for free. If you don't and you find yourself on a cash grab, you said you're going to you're going to burn out and it's not going to play out for you the way you expect. Either way, Jake, what like

[46:32] what's the best way other than the book? If somebody wanted to connect with you further, what would be the best way? LinkedIn or straight to your website? Like Yeah, I am very active on LinkedIn that I and I love being connected with people on there. I'm very active on there. Like I said, I post a weekly newsletter there and and post re regularly and love to engage. So, Jacob Adsgard, if you put 4

[46:50] A's in the last name, you'll find me. Well, Jacob, thanks so much for your time today. Congratulations on your success. Thanks for your willingness to come on and just share from your wisdom, share from your experience, you know, all of the all of the insights that you put into this book. Really appreciate you taking the time today and look

[47:06] forward to connecting with you further. Well, Josh, I've loved it and I love what you're up to and how you're helping agency owners succeed in the way that you do. So, it's a gift and thank you for sharing it with everybody. Amazing. Well, guys, thanks for joining us on today's episode. If you got value from this, if you enjoyed it, hit the like button, hit the subscribe button, be sure to connect with Jacob, grab a copy of his book. Let's make sure that it continues to hold bestseller status, the indispensable market marketer. And

[47:36] we're going to wrap it up there for now. Thanks everybody.

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