People Process Interviews: Jacob Baddsgaard

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the people processes podcast. I’m your host, Rhamy Alejeal and I am excited today to welcome Jake Baddsgaard.

He is an amazing entrepreneur. After growing one of his first pay-per-click clients from 25 to 250 employees, Jake realized that he had a gift for using Pay-per-Click marketing to drive dramatic business results. To help more companies succeed online. Jake found a disrupted IV advertising, PPC and CRO management agency that has helped hundreds of companies realize unprecedented growth and profitability from online advertising.

Of course, as an HR channel, though we’re more interested in that. In the last six years since its founding, disruptive advertising has grown from two employees working in Jake’s basement to a flourishing agency with more than 160 employees and a run rate of over 20 million, puts it at number 145 on the 2017 inc 500 list and is listed as one of USA today’s best places to work in Salt Lake City in 2019. So we’re ecstatic to have you here, Jake. Thanks for coming on.

Thanks for having me, Rhamy.

Well Jake, on a lot of kids don’t necessarily dress up as marketing guys and business owners when they’re eight years old, you got to tell me, how did you wind up getting into this industry?

You know, you’re right. I never did dress up as a marketing agent, right? Well, and how many of our businesses were even around when we were kids, right? Like, this is a whole new world. It’s interesting that you asked that question because there’s probably a trillion things that happened that ultimately led to where I’m at today. And I look back from the first job I had when I was eight years old. The first business idea I tried to execute on at a young age. Ultimately I would probably almost pin it down to the moment that I experienced in my corporate career. Before going down this entrepreneurial path, which I kind of just had realized, that moment in an annual performance review where I realized I will no longer have the growth as a person. Professionally or financially that I’m looking for from here. It was my moment of either choosing to settle or choosing to move on and, and to create that environment for myself. I would say, that was probably more of the real moment that kind of catapulted me down the path that I’m on. I was realizing that I wasn’t gonna find the fulfillment I was looking for in life if I didn’t take that chance. Unfortunately, my wife was supportive in that decision.

Yup. A good partner is everything, isn’t it? Yeah. Well, you’ve been in business a while and of course you’ve grown to a very successful company with a great revenue and good employees. But a lot of our listeners are in an earlier phase of their company. They’re still about maybe bridging out on their own or they’re part of a larger organization. I think a lot of them kind of get caught up in thinking about what success looks like. But it’s the failures along the way that teach us the most. So I always ask my guests to share with us their largest entrepreneurial mistake, failure, really, really, really bad day. And tell us that actual story, like what happened and how’d you feel and how did it come about? And then we’ll talk a little bit about what our listeners can learn from it.

Yeah. Well, you know, when you asked that question, I imagined myself holding a scroll with all of the failures that I’ve had as an entrepreneur and like opening that up, letting it drop to the floor, and it just keeps rolling. Right? It’s the hardest thing for every entrepreneur I ask. Yeah. It’s hard. It’s a journey of ups and downs, but, I want you to think of your worst one.

Well, let’s just go ahead and get personal on this one. A lot of this becomes more in focus with a little bit of hindsight in perspective. And what I realized at what probably the biggest failure that I had, and I’ll relate this to a specific experience that I went through. The illusion that finding success as an entrepreneur would fill my cup. Filling self value, build my esteem, giving me the success and fulfillment that I was looking for in life that would help me get to some level of easy street with lots of money and would solve all my problems. And finding success with meaning. Yeah. And so when I saw that turned into a failure and how that manifested in my relationship with my wife and with my kids as well, but primarily with my wife. It wasn’t until two to three years into the business where we were just at a sink. It felt harder than it needed to be. We found a good marriage counselor that we were working with, because of course, Rhamy, this wasn’t my problem. This was my wife’s problem.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ll see a counselor if you’re all right. Yeah.

And you know, it was really interesting. I’ll never forget that moment where we were sitting down together and we’d had some productive sessions and read some good books together and we’re making some progress. But, I didn’t have that epiphany moment. Until one day we were sitting there and he was asking something about the business and it was doing well and kind of asking some questions and saying, Oh, that’s great. Like, what is your business partner? I think about that. I said it wrong and I answered it wrong. And I said, what do you mean? I don’t have a business partner. And, and he said, Oh, you don’t? And he looked at my wife and he looked back at me and then he just continued on.

The moment where I’ve got to tell you, it just hit my, my heart, my mind and my soul, like a ton of bricks in realizing that I didn’t see my wife as a partner, right. Like not only in the business but in most aspects of life. And it actually had nothing to do with her. It had to do with the insecurities that I had and that I needed to over-inflate the value that I was providing from the business success to justify being controlling or manipulative or not being the type of partner that I needed to be and using the business as any sort of justification to feel better about that. You know. No good story doesn’t have some resolution or outcome on that. So that was probably what I wanted to say three years ago.

 I remember driving home from that session and just saying, do you feel like I see you and treat you like an equal and having verbalized the answer that I already knew was true. Just really deciding that I needed to make some personal changes there. And what I will tell you Rhamy is, for our 13th anniversary which was this year, we were just having a weekend getaway. And on the drive up I asked her the same question and said, how do you feel in our relationship? Do you feel like I see you and treat you like an equal? And to have that answer come back and say, yeah, I do. I do feel that way now. And this is by far the best year of our marriage so far. Not a little bit, but like a lot of it. Right. So that was probably the one that I would point to in terms of a failure that became very prominent to me. It helped me to learn and grow as a person and a professional.

Well, I appreciate you sharing that. I’ve done about 150 interviews and you know, the stories that always touch us are the personal ones. They’re the ones that really do matter. My biggest failure is that time, I lost that one account and then I turned around and got it back. It’s a story I get every now and again. And I’m like, ah, well you haven’t been in business long enough yet. It must be the, you know, the big hit. But man, I appreciate you sharing that. For guys and gals who are out there starting up, what would you think maybe they can learn from your story that they could put in place earlier? It’s not later. It’s not big. It’s able to be headed off, right. An ounce of prevention versus a pound of cure.

Yeah. I think really that comes down to whether as an entrepreneur or in whatever relationships that we have. No one or nothing can fill our cups for us. We can only do that for ourselves. The way that I’ve found more success is liking who I am and feeling that inner confidence. Independent of how my marriage or business or things are going is identifying those daily routines that helped me to be my best self, which are simple things like, silence, visualizations, affirmations, exercise, reading, and doing religiously. Doing those things on a daily basis that allow me to be the person I want to be each day and to fill my own cup so that I don’t show up and have unhealthy expectations in my relationship or from the business or really stretched to have things or people fill my cup for me, which is just they can’t do. And it’s actually pretty unhealthy to expect that. So I would say that , if we can get our head right there and place the focus and energy that can really get us where we want to go and not go down the path that I did, which was trying to solve it in a way that was never really gonna fix it.

Makes total sense. Well, I appreciate you sharing that. So now that you’ve been through some of those harder times, your wife is happy with you. Again, your company’s kicking butt. What’s got you most excited in the next six months or so? What are you doing in your company or personally that’s got you getting out of bed and super excited?

Well, let’s see. Let’s do one of each person. Personally, I am training to run a Boston qualifying time for a marathon 90. So that gets me up early. And so that’s going well. As a family, we’re actually having our fourth child and our first boy, in November. So that’s coming up sooner than I think we realized and then as far as the business is concerned, I am just so passionate about some of the programs that we have put together to focus on helping ourselves. Myself included and people in the company with optional programs to help people develop some of the same skills that we just talked about. And so I’ve actually put together courses around personal leadership and financial development to teach the skills and to create the accountability systems for people and myself to just be great in those areas. And I have just found so much passion in doing that as a company. We’ve actually had about 65 already go through the first course of personal leadership development and they have graduated from that one to then go through the financial development course. And it’s just so exciting to feel like, Hey, we’re here to win at life and business together. And so that’s what I’m the most excited about right now.

 I saw on your bio of course you’ve grown this company hugely and it seems like a lot of that has been from these, perhaps a more personal focus on your employees in that manner by investing or training in the personal development or leadership development as you called it, of your employees. What does that actually look like for your employees? What are they participating in that you feel like and what’s from a purely pragmatic standpoint, what’s the benefit to the company itself for doing that?

Yeah, so it’s a 10 week course and it actually has a $500 enrollment cost. So it costs money optional. It’s early at 7:00 AM on Monday mornings. If they graduate the class, they get their $500 back as well as a $500 bonus. If they fail to meet the very strict requirements of the class, they have the opportunity to lose their bonus opportunity and their investments. So one big mistake can cost someone 1000 bucks. So there’s just some really strong accountability and skin in the game. Interesting. Have you had anybody fail? Yes.

Oh man. All right. Keep rocking. Yeah.

Many, not many but certainly some people have lost their money or their bonus. Unfortunately, a situation or two where people have not been able to make it through the course but very like one or two out of 16 or something at this point. The first portion of the class is purely based on the book called the miracle morning and just developing those good daily habits.

When you earlier said it’s those daily, you know, I could hear you saying savers, I was like, I feel like he’s saying lifesavers.

Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Everyone agrees to start doing that. We also agree to how we can use our phones for the 10-week period, which is for nothing other than GPS texts and phone calls. Then everyone has to show their screen time every week to prove how they did demonstrate with their journal and the readings and quizzes and completing the assignments. The next portion of the class is to change the world by changing yourself, not trying to change other people. And we read the book leadership and self-deception by the Arbinger Institute and work and practice on those principles and everyone gets to choose someone in their life to work on that with. And then the third section of the course is developing a life map and getting a better understanding of where they’re at and where they’d like to go to with an action plan of creating what’s more commonly referred to as a vision board. But I refer to it as a painted picture and creating, Hey, this is how I see myself three years from now and here’s what is a part of my present or past that would hold me back from being that person and then getting after it. Right. And so that’s how the course works. And then there’s a follow up on accountability group for people that want that ongoing accountability. Where about a third to half the people continue to participate in that just ongoing forever after that.

So how do you get any push-back from employees who are saying, look, this is my business. I mean, I guess you’re not requiring enrollment in this year. You’re actually optional. Do you feel like there are people who maybe don’t participate in that? Who would feel somewhat negative or resentful of it or if you’ve not really seen that? Let me just ask him. We’ve got a bunch of people out here.

I’m pondering that I haven’t gotten that feedback specifically. I mean clearly there’s a lot of people that haven’t taken it. That’s a good question. I don’t even have the answer to that and I should probably look into it.

Yeah. We’re often involved in wellness programs. Whether that means mental or counseling kind of wellness programs similar to what you’re talking about life skills and development or even physical. Let’s get you guys to stop smoking or can we help you? Can we pay for six months of Weight Watchers or something? And there are many people who took advantage of those and probably half are people who were already fit or already mentally exploring those ideas. And half of the people who take advantage of really excited about the opportunity, some fail. So I’ll make it through and it does move the needle but then, there’s up some portion of most populations who probably need it most, but choose not to participate and they feel somewhat cut out of something like right in the right. Like even as simple as a wellness program, you don’t have to participate. If you do, we’ll give you Amazon gift cards, something like that. And then they say, well, I’m a working mother or I’ve got no time to do any workouts. I’m never going to go for a walk. This is ridiculous. Something, you know, there’s always an excuse, but there’s some push-back to it. You haven’t seen that in your company,

With these programs specifically? I did get a little bit of push-back because we have a financial course that at the end of it, they put together a six month budget and if they stick to it, we actually contribute an amount to their goal. But, you have to graduate from the class first. I actually did get some push-back from saying, how can we have to take this class first to do that. And I said, well, because I don’t trust people that don’t have good daily habits to follow through with a budget. So I want to make sure that we’re building, you know, step on step. So I got some push-back there. But with context, it felt like it sun-settled relatively quickly. Aaron liner. So I’ll have to look into that a little bit. One of our core values here is extreme ownership.

So if you’re recruiting the right view from the beginning, then you won’t have that issue. Very interesting. I mean, I don’t want to use the word paternalistic because it has a negative connotation, but it’s a true involvement in your employee’s lives that I think a lot of it happens in 5 men, 10 men, 20 men companies, very few hundred men. Companies really have that level of development and involvement in their employees lives. It’s very interesting. So what sort of results have you seen? I mean, how’s it gone for the 65 people who’ve gone through there?

Yeah. You know, it’s interesting. I think that it’s pretty clear that when people develop these types of traits and habits in their life, that it spills very quickly into business success as well as you might imagine that people that have gone through and graduated from the course and now doing the financial courses. I look in the room and I’m like, these are all my performers in the company. It’s pretty natural to see that occurring. Here’s the thing, I do it because I love the people I work with and I care about them, but I’m also selfish and I do it for myself because I am not the teacher that has it all figured out. I am the facilitator and a participant of those classes. Everything that we review, I am doing myself. I am being accountable to the class, because I want that accountability in my life and I want those things as well. I do it as much for myself as I do for anyone else and I’m okay with that. I think that also helps it to feel a little bit more authentic because I’m not there to teach something that I figured out. I want, Hey, I’ve got some experiences I’m going to share and let’s figure this out together.

Very interesting. I want to transition a little bit. A lot of our listeners and many of my clients, even in the HR space, are in a position where they’ve grown an operation or service team, a delivery team, but they’re still stuck in the owner as the salesperson. And I know that you have had success in transitioning from that model and I’m wondering what sort of insights you can give us on how to actually make transitioning from that founder or owner based sales team to having a sales team.

 Yeah. A high level response and then we’ll get into the specifics. Yeah. It is way harder than I wish it was and way worth it. Specifically the way that I initially approached, it did not work very well, which had nothing to do with the people that I worked with. It had to do with my approach, which was, Hey, I’m going to hire some experienced people and assume that they can just take sales off my plate. Tried that and failed multiple times. Of course I wasn’t the problem. Right. It was clearly as they’re brokering the wrong guys, bad luck, clearly. You know, in hindsight, I’m like an idiot. And I did not set these people up for success.

I’ve told that I have an employee who worked for me about six years ago. She worked for me for two years. She’s great, we’re still great friends. But she moved on to another job and at that time, that was devastating. And I just remember telling her like six months ago, like, man, I’m glad you came to work for me, but gosh, you got to admit at times, look, we made some mistakes here. Really didn’t give you a road-map to run on. Well, yeah, so simplistically what I ended up doing that, has paid big dividends down the road. I hired someone that was more multiple, still good at sales, but a little younger in their career and just said, Hey, I don’t know exactly how I’m gonna help you be successful. So how about I just close deals for you and you like to participate and I’ll even pay you the commission on them. And like, let’s just tag team this for a while and then as you know, let’s start to wean off that and allow you to become more independent and do that for yourself. So I invested in more like a 12 to 18 month process in developing two individuals. One of which has ended up becoming my head of sales and building a 15 person team that’s now regularly hitting and exceeding their quotas and those types of things.

I was really just taking the time to say, let’s do this together. I’m not going to just toss this over the fence and hope you figure it out. It is really important that you understand my vision, how I sell, what works, what doesn’t work, what are the right type of accounts, the wrong ones, the things that I’m thinking about when I go through this process. And I invested in seeing this through. And that was quite the process. You know. You’re kind of paying money for not getting a lot of output for a while. What happens if you put in all that time and energy and it didn’t work out with those people. And so it was, but it paid off and ultimately allowed us both to grow and progress beyond that. And so now I’m very rarely involved in the sales process, you know, occasionally on a very large or strategic feel. But that’s just kinda because I want to, not because they need me to. So it’s been great to see that transition happen.

Can I ask a couple of questions just about how you’ve structured some of that please. So did you bring on two people at once or did you just bring on one guy and then another guy later?

When you brought them on, you mentioned they basically got the commission. Did you pay them salaries and a commission or was it, when I close deals you get paid. You did both. Did both. So you’re putting a lot of money on, you’re putting in a salary. And then on top of that, when you close deals with them especially their first few, it’s just like, here’s the commission. Yep. For your sales team, have you ever considered, or do you currently do any sort of like transition to full commission or is it always salary and commission?

We do not do a full commission. Oftentimes, when we have new people joining the sales team, we do have a ramp down to a low. So they start with just a higher base and then ramp down to a lower base as their commissions should catch up in their ramp up time period. But for per industry averages, we do have a lower base and higher upside and commissions. So we skewed a little bit more that way. But I do like to keep a base involved there as well.

I think that’s very reasonable. We get that question a lot from people when consulting us about compensation. The pure commission move is fairly very, let’s just say difficult. I don’t recommend that. So, all right, so you brought on two guys and then you didn’t know necessarily have a formalized sales training program. You basically had them shadow you and go on you with meetings and close with you. I’m assuming just on easier accounts, you slowly move to where they’re taking the lead. Yep, yep. Just went through that natural progression. And then as you did that, were you developing sales training materials? Are you still following that kind of shadow or mentorship of you are bringing people on or is it much more structured and classroom style now?

Both. So I definitely built some of that out along the way in terms of, you know, with a lead, how we reach out, how frequency of touch, depth of touch and how we’re going through each of these stages. And we used a sales methodology that was by a local group here. So definitely a decent process that has gotten better over time and a lot of shadowing as well to get up to speed. So kind of use a hybrid. Yeah. Very cool.

When you were developing this and having them shadow you, I mean as the CEO, you’re not able to sell 40 hours a week unfortunately, right? As the founder. Right. So in the beginning, I’m assuming in their first few weeks they probably had many hours where you were trying to find things for them to do. Did you get into that or were they always pretty slant?

Sometimes, but that usually wasn’t the issue. I mean A, B, C because we’re actually good at what we do for our clients. We do it for ourselves and leads have not ever really been the issue.

Of course. So your organization, that of course is splitting the sales and marketing role. You have marketers that are working internally. It’s really at the lead generation stage that these are the lead on a discovery phase at that qualification phase that you’re bringing in your sales team. Awesome.

As far as the marketing to generate those leads, that’s all. That’s very much in your wheelhouse. That’s what you do. So, yeah. You know, that’s our jam. We actually have about over a thousand businesses a month that reach out to us now. That’s a lot of leads. Yeah.

Wow. Well, I think that’s an awesome kind of road-map for a company who wants to get into it. To check out, what would you recommend? Do you have any resources you might recommend them checkout if they are trying to make that transition themselves?

On the sales side or on the marketing side, I’m sure we’re going to get to where your website is in just a minute. Sure. You know, that’s funny. I have not read a lot of sales books. Okay. All right.

I was just curious if you had great luck, you had great book recommendations on life coaching, wasn’t sure if you’d done the sales book side of it yet and not so awesome. Well in your company, then you obviously have many different processes from sales to your actual operations in terms of generating marketing for your clients, internal HR procedures. If you could identify one that maybe has changed in the last 12 months that you’ve seen have an outsized impact, what do you think would be a process that you guys have implemented that it’s really kind of moved the needle for you?

Yeah, so our strategic initiatives this year were really to improve the employee and client on-boarding experience to make sure that it was just fantastic. And we kind of took that one level further. Obviously we don’t bet a thousand, not everyone that works here is going to work here for life and not every client that we work with we’re going to work with for life. As we kind of started, to better understand what was the vital behavior that was ultimately contributing to employees or clients not working out, it kinda came down to if they don’t see a clear path of growth, then they move on. Some simple things that we’ve put in place is just a 90 day on-boarding program that we make sure as 100% followed through on to create that experience and set clients and employees up for success.

So move the toe to maintain the adherence to the systems. You move the sign off to the end user, right? So kinda like in HR one-on-one, you have your employees sign off their time-cards, right? You did work these hours. We’re not just making it up, you’re saying that. But with your performance management systems, your client’s systems make the end user say, yeah, that’s what I want.

And if there’s a problem, then you identify it there. I think that’s an excellent process. Yeah. Rather than letting things faster. And that’s usually what leads to not only a failed relationship, but one that didn’t need the end the way it ends. Right? Like if it’s not the right fit, let’s come there together.

Right. It’s not a failure or is going to happen. It’s those ones that you could have done. Right. It’s just that we just didn’t know. Or same with an employee’s needs. Like this employee could have been great. We had something wrong here.

We didn’t quite see it lineup.

This removes that word or at least mitigates it hugely by giving them the opportunity to speak up. Do you do your one-on-ones each month? Is that your kind of, is it a monthly one-on-one thing?

Yeah, it’s kinda like a quarterly deep dive. Monthly check in and action items for the month to work on with one’s manager in each of those areas. And then the side by side time comes to. Here’s what we’re working on, here’s the progress we’ve made this month, here’s how we’re going to work together this month as we get together to make progress in each of these areas.

And your organization, what’s your kind of manager to employee ratio, your team size, a scope of work, scope of scope of team? Some companies, you know, say a manager should never have more than five direct reports. Some say 15. I’m just curious where you’re at.

Yeah. And you know, it depends on the world, depends on the role of the department. I would say if I were to just stick a number that I don’t like to go beyond is, six to eight max for a senior manager in the right situation. And prefer to be more in the three to six range actually.

 So with three to six, do you have a pretty flat organization, lots of small teams or do you have a kind of a, you know, super team, lead manager, assistant manager, manager kind of stacks. How vertical would you say your organization is?

You know, it’s been relatively flat today. We do have a lot of small teams, but it does now roll out through, you know, team leads, directors and then VPs. Some of that more traditional hierarchy has introduced itself over time.

It gets a bad rap in today’s, I don’t know, Google a Google centric world to have a hierarchy.

Okay.

But it gives people places to grow too. It’s an intuitive way of organizing the company. We recently did an interview where someone was working on, it’s a very interesting company. It’s actually a game design company and they wound up, they had around 35 to seven man teams per manager. So it’s like each, there are 30 teams with a C with a S with a manager of five to seven people. And then this one guy has 30 teams reporting to them and it’s very, very flat. They wind up in competition.

It’s very interesting. Thanks. I’m looking for feedback and interesting ideas as we just talked with more of our experts on the podcast. So I appreciate you giving me that well, Jake. You of course work in the P P P pay-per-click in this world of online marketing. If our listeners have been hearing you talk and they go, man, this sounds like a great organization work with, I’d like to learn more. What should be the thing that triggers in their mind that says, you know, I should reach out to Jake and his team to see if we can work together. What’s a scenario they’re in that maybe would be a good reason to reach out to you?

Yeah. We’re struggling to figure out how to get it to grow or be a little more profitable, but it’s a viable model and we lack the bandwidth or expertise in a digital marketing perspective to accomplish that. And so that’s where people reach out to us. Like I said, we have a lot of companies reach out to us and we actually tell like 80% of them that we are not the right fit for their stage, for their industry, for what they’re trying to accomplish or that they just don’t have realistic expectations.

Right. I have $300 a quarter to spend. Can you set up a PVC?

Yeah. And we’re still glad to have those conversations because we can point people in the right direction. We have a blog where we publish, we have no secrets. Feel free to follow that on disruptiveadvertising.com we shared that we spilled the beans on everything that we do and companies that are in that stage of, Hey, we either lack the bandwidth or expertise to effectively advertise on Google, Facebook and Instagram. That’s where they hire us to do it for them or support them in that process. And that’s why companies reach out to us. That’s where we help them. We’ve actually now got thousands of companies under our belt and done research that shows 76% of ad dollars spent on Google. Facebook and Instagram are wasted because they lack the bandwidth or expertise to do it right. And that’s where we step in, help get a better bang for the buck and improve output and growth for the company.

Yeah. I’m a very tech savvy guy. Built a lot of the tools we use here at the company. And all of my growth has come from pretty much traditional stuff podcasts as well. The book does well, that kind of stuff, but that leads to just very basic, you know, connections and referrals and that kind of thing. Every time I’ve tried to truly explore the world of online spend $1,000 here, $1,000 there, I don’t think I’ve ever really gotten a true, I mean, I may pick up a client for, you know, $17,000 in ad spend and then give up and say, I’m never touching social media again. So we post all the time. And then like every once in a while, I have a marketing person who really works on our referral channels and our partnership channels and that kind of stuff. And everyone’s while she’s like, Hey, we should run a, you know, this is a great podcast.

We should promote it for 200 bucks. Sure. Go for it. But we don’t actually expect that to turn any into any business. I think a lot of companies haven’t quite figured out that online game. What would you say the smaller size, what would be kind of the intro level size that someone should come contact you at? Yeah. So that will depend on the industry. In some industries we’re paying a couple of dollars per click on an ad and others we’re paying like $100 for a click on an ad. And so for some industries, you know, we’re operating with between management fee and budget, and like the $5,000 range is probably on the small end. Our average clients are usually spending between like 10 to $100,000 a month on those channels. And we just helped them get a lot better performance out of them. And of course we’ve always got a couple of dozen enterprises or 500 fortune, 100 type companies that we’re working with as well. And so, that’s probably a good summary of how we kind of fit in there.

Well, Jake, man, I sure appreciate you coming on the show. It’s outstanding to talk to a business owner like yourself, grown up. Everybody check out disruptiveadvertising.com link in the description below. Go on there, take a look, check out their blog. If you’re trying to start out on the marketing side yourself internally. I’m sure there’s a lot of great tips and tricks on there. If you’re one of our larger listeners who has an ad budget and wants to talk to maybe get an audit to have someone else take a look and see if you can get more bang out of your spend. Definitely reach out to Jake now. Jake, where can they find you? A disruptiveadvertising.com and where else?

That’d be the best place to reach out to us as a company. And I’d love to connect with you on social media at Jake bad’s garden on Twitter or throw in some A’s and you’ll find me on LinkedIn as well.

We’ll put the link below. I’m with you. It’s a hard name. We’ll make sure there are links below to connect on there. Reach out to Jake if you guys have any questions. Well Jake, thank you so much for coming on the show. I very much appreciate you coming out. Thanks. Appreciate it. Ladies and gentlemen, that’s it for today. Hope you enjoyed our interview with Jake. Bad’s guard over at disruptive advertising. I think you gave some great insights. It’s an interesting organization that he runs and one that’s deeply involved in his employee’s personal growth and development and it really, it’s unusual in a company of that size. Of course in the 10,000 man companies, there’s always some personal development focus. I find the idea of, you know, having them do buy in and then doubling their money.

What an intriguing idea. If you guys have questions about this or want us to explore it further, maybe do a white paper or bring Jake back on or his HR people to talk in more depth. Let us know. You can of course, find us on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter at Poplar financial. Check us out at peopleprocesses.com subscribe on there if you haven’t already. You can access some subscriber only content, and of course you can find us on whatever Podcatcher of your choice, whether that’s Stitcher radio, iTunes, Google podcasts, a subscribe on there for updates and upcoming episodes. Thank you so much for tuning in. Ladies and gentlemen. My name is Rhamy Alejeal and now it’s time for you to go out there. Have a great day, and get your work done.

Learn more about Jake here:

Website: www.disruptiveadvertising.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jakebaadsgaard/

Twitter: @jakebaadsgaard

Skype: jake.baadsgaard

About the author, Rhamy

Rhamy grew up watching and working with his mother and grandmother in the senior insurance market. This familiarity with the struggles faced by people trying to navigate the incredibly complicated and heavily regulated healthcare market led him to start Poplar Financial while working on his degree at the University of Memphis. After completing his MBA and Bachelors in Finance and Economics, Rhamy guided Poplar Financial through the disruptive opportunity that is the Affordable Care Act. Since then Poplar Financial has received numerous awards from major insurance carriers and has completed its fourth year in a row of doubling in size. Now his team focuses on the processes around human resources and specializes in providing companies with between 20 and 1000 employees with the payroll, benefits, and HR needs.

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