The Indispensable Marketer

Jacob Baadsgaard and Chad de Lisle
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  • Marketing
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Become the marketer your CEO can't run the business without.You bring the CEO a plan. The numbers aren't bad. You're still explaining yourself instead of leading.That's the Trust Gap. The work comes back wrong, results stall, and neither of you can say why. It's why talented marketers get treated like a vending machine instead of the architect of growth.The Indispensable Marketer is hosted by Disruptive Advertising for marketing leaders at $3M-$50M scale-ups done managing perception and ready to build real authority. Every episode runs on VSET: Vision, Strategy, Execution, Team, the framework behind the Indispensable Marketer book and Assessment. Closing the Trust Gap is a skill you can learn, prove, and measure.Some weeks it's a solo teaching on extracting real Vision. Other weeks it's a conversation with a leader who closed their own Trust Gap and can tell you what it cost.We turn away most prospective clients and 96% of marketers who apply. Selectivity protects the standard.If you've wondered whether you're the right person for the job, start here.

Episodes

  1. 21h ago

    "This Isn't Us." My CEO Rejected My Copy for Months.

    FREE: the tools and templates to become an indispensable marketer:indispensablemarketer.com/free/For months Chad wrote copy and Jacob sent it back with three words: "This isn't us." That was the entire feedback. Chad thought it was a taste problem. It wasn't.What was actually happening was that Jacob had stopped knowing what he believed in. He describes feeling like a drug dealer running a marketing agency, clients lining up for their next hit of performance, and what a brand consultant pulled out of him that changed how Disruptive positions itself. Then the two of them get into the fix: the five differentiators every business has to define, operational, philosophical, talent, outcome, and access, with Disruptive's own as the worked example. They also sort out the questions people actually ask, like how a differentiator differs from a core value, whether all five have to be unique, and who owns defining them versus marketing them. This is the Vision pillar of VSET.--------------------------------------------CHAPTERS0:00 "This isn't us." The only feedback Chad could get for months0:38 "The worst part of my job is when I meet with you"1:14 Why Jacob felt like a drug dealer running a marketing agency2:00 The consultant conversation that changed what Disruptive stands for4:48 The traps businesses fall into when naming their differentiators5:28 Why "we care more" isn't a differentiator without evidence5:51 The five differentiators, with Disruptive's own as the example12:12 Values vs differentiators: what's the actual difference?13:15 Do you need all five, and do they have to be truly unique?16:05 If the feedback is vague, it's probably not youTen chapters on a sixteen-minute conversation, which is more than I'd normally run, but the back third is a genuine Q&A and each question is its own search intent. Worth the density here.--------------------------------------------WHO'S TALKINGJacob Baadsgaard is the founder and CEO of Disruptive Advertising and the author of The Indispensable Marketer. He's sat in every seat at the table: data analyst, marketing director at a publicly traded company, and now the CEO on the other side of it asking marketing for a number.Chad de Lisle has been in marketing for nearly twenty years, half of that at Disruptive working directly with Jacob. He's the one who kept getting the copy sent back.--------------------------------------------ABOUT THE SHOWThe Indispensable Marketer is Disruptive Advertising's podcast. We're a performance marketing agency, and our mission is to connect great marketers with the brands they believe in. The goal of this show is simpler than that: we want marketing leaders to win. Not just hit the number, but earn the trust and the seat that comes with it.For anyone who has no reason to trust us yet, some things you can check:We've done over $150 million in revenue and managed over $3 billion in ad spend for thousands of businesses.When we studied more than 2,000 of those accounts, we found that on average 76% of ad budget had no attributable revenue impact. Not low impact. No impact. That's the problem we exist to solve. We reject 96% of applicants, because the wrong person in the wrong seat costs everyone.We publish around 8 videos a month. We want these to be the episodes you forward to your CEO or drop in your team's channel, because you're both better on the other side of it.--------------------------------------------FREE RESOURCES: ⁠indispensablemarketer.com/free/⁠⁠Disruptive Advertising: disruptiveadvertising.comThe Indispensable Marketer (book): https://www.indispensablemarketer.com/book/Connect with Jacob on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakebaadsgaard/Connect with Chad on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chad-de-lisle/NEXT EPISODE: the client who slammed his fist on Jacob's desk over a $40,000invoice, and the three numbers that turn marketers into partners.

    "This Isn't Us." My CEO Rejected My Copy for Months.

  2. 21h ago

    This Is Why Your CEO Keeps Rejecting Your Copy

    FREE: the tools and templates to become an indispensable marketer:indispensablemarketer.com/free/Everyone in the company has an opinion about your copy, your headline, your colors.Nobody can tell you what would be better. That's not a taste problem, it's adifferentiator problem.If a competitor was cheaper, why would a customer still choose you? Until you and your CEO can answer that in concrete terms, you're doing commoditized marketing and competing on price. In this episode Jacob breaks down the five differentiators every business has to define: operational, cultural, philosophical, outcome, and access.Once they're documented you can point at the specific differentiator a piece of copy is built on, which turns "I don't love it" into an actual conversation. You can also load them into your AI project so every draft stays on message. This is the Vision pillar of VSET.--------------------------------------------CHAPTERS0:00 Why everyone in the company has an opinion about your marketing1:04 If a competitor was cheaper, why would they choose you?3:06 Differentiator 1: operational, or the "Amazon way" test3:54 Differentiator 2: cultural, and what your hiring bar actually proves4:39 Differentiator 3: philosophical, or the revenue you'd turn down5:24 Differentiator 4: outcome, and getting there faster than the competition6:06 Differentiator 5: access your customer can't get on their own6:35 How to use all five to end the copy debates for good--------------------------------------------WHO'S TALKINGJacob Baadsgaard is the founder and CEO of Disruptive Advertising and the author of The Indispensable Marketer. He's sat in every seat at the table: data analyst, marketing director at a publicly traded company, and now the CEO on the other side of it asking marketing for a number.--------------------------------------------ABOUT THE SHOWThe Indispensable Marketer is Disruptive Advertising's podcast. We're a performance marketing agency, and our mission is to connect great marketers with the brands they believe in. The goal of this show is simpler than that: we want marketing leaders to win. Not just hit the number, but earn the trust and the seat that comes with it.For anyone who has no reason to trust us yet, some things you can check:We've done over $150 million in revenue and managed over $3 billion in ad spend for thousands of businesses.When we studied more than 2,000 of those accounts, we found that on average 76% of ad budget had no attributable revenue impact. Not low impact. No impact. That's the problem we exist to solve. We reject 96% of applicants, because the wrong person in the wrong seat costseveryone.We publish around 8 videos a month. We want these to be the episodes you forward to your CEO or drop in your team's channel, because you're both better on the other side of it.--------------------------------------------FREE RESOURCES: https://www.indispensablemarketer.com/free/Disruptive Advertising: https://disruptiveadvertising.com/The Indispensable Marketer (book): https://www.indispensablemarketer.com/book/Connect with Jacob on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakebaadsgaard/Connect with Chad on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chad-de-lisle/

    This Is Why Your CEO Keeps Rejecting Your Copy

  3. 21h ago

    Growth at All Costs Is Costing You the Right Customers

    Chad's dashboard was green. Volume up, cost per lead down, every target hit. Then sales pulled him aside and said the leads weren't closing, fulfillment made a face at the water cooler, and Jacob walked in asking why revenue was flat. He had won the quarter and lost the year. This is the episode about the volume trap. Jacob starts with his first real win as a data analyst, telling one of the largest agricultural equipment companies in the world that it was burning money chasing the cheapest clicks. Then Chad turns it on himself. They get to the question that changed how Chad ran every campaign after it, why the CEO's honest answer is usually "I don't know either," and why bringing your CEO a finished customer profile is the fastest way to get it thrown in the trash. This is the Vision pillar of VSET. ------------------------ CHAPTERS 0:00 You can hit every marketing number and still get fired  1:02 The Fortune 100 campaigns nobody wanted to spend money on  4:39 What chasing volume does to profit, customers, and your sales team  5:22 Why AI and the algorithms made this problem worse  7:16 Little Adventures: a brand that knows exactly who it serves  8:48 How to find your real ideal customer, then validate it with the numbers  11:32 Why we say no to 80% of the leads that come through the door  13:40 Getting sales, marketing, and comp plans pointed at the same customer  14:59 The courage to hold the line when the transition gets rocky ------------------------ WHO'S TALKING Jacob Baadsgaard is the founder and CEO of Disruptive Advertising and the author of The Indispensable Marketer. He's sat on both sides of this table: marketing director at a public company, and now the CEO asking marketing for a number. Chad de Lisle has been in marketing for nearly twenty years, half of that at Disruptive working directly with Jacob. He's the marketer whose dashboard was green while the business was bleeding. -------------------------------------------- ABOUT THE SHOW The Indispensable Marketer is Disruptive Advertising's podcast. We're a performance marketing agency, and our mission is to connect great marketers with the brands they believe in. The goal of this show is simpler than that: we want marketing leaders to win. Not just hit the number, but earn the trust and the seat that comes with it. For anyone who has no reason to trust us yet, some things you can check: We've managed marketing for more than 2,000 client accounts. When we studied those accounts, we found that on average 76% of ad budget had no attributable revenue impact. Not low impact. No impact. That's the problem we exist to solve. We reject 96% of applicants, because the wrong person in the wrong seat costs everyone. We publish around 8 videos a month. We want these to be the episodes you forward to your CEO or drop in your team's channel, because you're both better on the -------------------------------------------- FREE RESOURCES: https://www.indispensablemarketer.com/free/ Disruptive Advertising: https://disruptiveadvertising.com/ The Indispensable Marketer (book): https://www.indispensablemarketer.com/book/ Connect with Jacob on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakebaadsgaard/ Connect with Chad on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chad-de-lisle/other side of it. -------------------------------------------- NEXT EPISODE: why anyone should choose you when your competition is cheaper.

  4. 21h ago

    You Can't Market to a Demographic

    FREE: the tools and templates to become an indispensable marketer: indispensablemarketer.com/free/ "Moms 25 to 45" is a targeting parameter. It is not a customer. And if that is what your profile looks like, every campaign you build on top of it is guesswork your CEO gets to second-guess. Jacob Baadsgaard walks through the costume company that thought it sold dress-up clothes and discovered it sold a mom's freedom to say yes. He gives you the three questions that pull your real customer out of your CEO's head, the anti-customer exercise most companies are too scared to run, and the reason Disruptive refers away roughly 80 percent of the companies that come asking. This is the Vision pillar of VSET, and it is the conversation you cannot have alone. ------------------------ CHAPTERS 0:00 Do you actually know who you're marketing to? 0:59 John Deere was spending millions on leads that never converted 1:44 The $7 million they saved by marketing to fewer people 3:14 Your best customers are most of your revenue. Most of your budget isn't on them. 3:58 The three questions to ask your CEO about who you serve 5:20 Why the "who" belongs to the CEO and the "how" belongs to you 6:34 What to do when the data says you've been wasting budget ------------------------ WHO'S TALKING Jacob Baadsgaard is the founder and CEO of Disruptive Advertising and the author of The Indispensable Marketer. He started as a data analyst, became a marketing director at a publicly traded company, and now sits in the CEO's chair asking marketing for a number. He built Disruptive from scratch to over $150 million in lifetime revenue. -------------------------------------------- ABOUT THE SHOW The Indispensable Marketer is Disruptive Advertising's podcast. We're a performance marketing agency, and our mission is to connect great marketers with the brands they believe in. The goal of this show is simpler than that: we want marketing leaders to win. Not just hit the number, but earn the trust and the seat that comes with it. For anyone who has no reason to trust us yet, some things you can check: We've managed marketing for more than 2,000 client accounts. When we studied those accounts, we found that on average 76% of ad budget had no attributable revenue impact. Not low impact. No impact. That's the problem we exist to solve. We reject 96% of applicants, because the wrong person in the wrong seat costs everyone. We publish around 8 videos a month. We want these to be the episodes you forward to your CEO or drop in your team's channel, because you're both better on the other side of it. -------------------------------------------- FREE RESOURCES: https://www.indispensablemarketer.com/free/ Disruptive Advertising: https://disruptiveadvertising.com/ The Indispensable Marketer (book): https://www.indispensablemarketer.com/book/ Connect with Jacob on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakebaadsgaard/ Connect with Chad on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chad-de-lisle/

    You Can't Market to a Demographic

  5. 21h ago

    We Walked Away From a $1 Million Client

    FREE: the tools and templates to become an indispensable marketer: indispensablemarketer.com/free/ Disruptive walked away from a client paying over $1 million a year in management fees. At the time, that contract was the majority of the company's profitability. If you've ever needed a shower after writing ad copy, this episode is for you. Jacob walks through the account, the months spent trying to fix it, and the strategist who closed his office door and said it still wasn't working. Then Chad turns it into the part you can use: how a marketing leader gets a CEO's values into the open, why the CEO's personal values and the company's core values are two different lists, and the single test that separates a real value from a preference. This is the Vision pillar of VSET. -------------------------------------------- CHAPTERS 0:00 The $1 million client we walked away from 1:28 Before you invoke your values, ask how you're contributing to the problem 1:59 The strategist who closed the door 3:29 Values aren't values until they cost you something 5:23 The two questions that surface a CEO's values and their anti-values 7:38 The exercise to run with your leadership team 8:43 The hire-or-fire test that separates a value from a preference 10:45 Why Chad chose to work for a CEO who isn't easy to work with -------------------------------------------- WHO'S TALKING Jacob Baadsgaard is the founder and CEO of Disruptive Advertising and the author of The Indispensable Marketer. He's sat on both sides of this table: marketing director at a public company, and now the CEO asking marketing for a number. Chad de Lisle has been in marketing for nearly twenty years, half of that at Disruptive working directly with Jacob. He's worked at companies where the values were words on a wall, and he'll tell you the difference. -------------------------------------------- ABOUT THE SHOW The Indispensable Marketer is Disruptive Advertising's podcast. We're a performance marketing agency, and our mission is to connect great marketers with the brands they believe in. The goal of this show is simpler than that: we want marketing leaders to win. Not just hit the number, but earn the trust and the seat that comes with it. For anyone who has no reason to trust us yet, some things you can check: We've managed marketing for more than 2,000 client accounts. When we studied those accounts, we found that on average 76% of ad budget had no attributable revenue impact. Not low impact. No impact. That's the problem we exist to solve. We reject 96% of applicants, because the wrong person in the wrong seat costs everyone. We publish around 8 videos a month. We want these to be the episodes you forward to your CEO or drop in your team's channel, because you're both better on the other side of it. -------------------------------------------- FREE RESOURCES: indispensablemarketer.com/free/Disruptive Advertising: https://disruptiveadvertising.com/The Indispensable Marketer (book): https://www.indispensablemarketer.com/book/Connect with Jacob on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakebaadsgaard/ Connect with Chad on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chad-de-lisle/

    We Walked Away From a $1 Million Client

  6. 21h ago

    We Fired 450 Clients in One Year. It Saved the Business.

    FREE: the tools and templates to become an indispensable marketer: indispensablemarketer.com/free/ In 2020 Jacob fired 450 of Disruptive's 650 clients in a single year. The revenue math said don't. He did it anyway, and it's the best decision the business has ever made. This episode is about what made that decision possible: a CEO who could finally name why the business exists. Chad walks Jacob back through the Covid moment he quietly hoped it was all over, the screen he ran every client through, and how the company reacted when the directive came down. Then they get to the part that's your job as a marketing leader. Every CEO has a why in their head whether they've said it out loud or not, and extracting it is your work, not theirs. This is the Vision pillar of VSET. -------------------------------------------- CHAPTERS 0:00 The year we fired 450 clients, and why it saved the business 0:24 Brazil, 2020: the moment Jacob hoped his business was over 3:52 The screen Jacob ran every single client through 5:00 The math: 200 clients we believed in, 450 we didn't 6:04 How the company reacted, and why sales pushed back hardest 9:41 The two questions that pull a CEO's why into the open 13:40 The mistake almost every marketer makes with their CEO's why 14:55 The four founder stages, and how to meet your CEO where they actually are 17:50 What to do when your CEO seems closed off to this conversation -------------------------------------------- WHO'S TALKING Jacob Baadsgaard is the founder and CEO of Disruptive Advertising and the author of The Indispensable Marketer. He's sat on both sides of this table: marketing director at a public company, and now the CEO asking marketing for a number. Chad de Lisle has been in marketing for nearly twenty years, half of that at Disruptive working directly with Jacob. He was in the room when the 450-client decision came down. -------------------------------------------- ABOUT THE SHOW The Indispensable Marketer is Disruptive Advertising's podcast. We're a performance marketing agency, and our mission is to connect great marketers with the brands they believe in. The goal of this show is simpler than that: we want marketing leaders to win. Not just hit the number, but earn the trust and the seat that comes with it. For anyone who has no reason to trust us yet, some things you can check: We've managed marketing for more than 2,000 client accounts. When we studied those accounts, we found that on average 76% of ad budget had no attributable revenue impact. Not low impact. No impact. That's the problem we exist to solve. We reject 96% of applicants, because the wrong person in the wrong seat costs everyone. We publish around 8 videos a month. We want these to be the episodes you forward to your CEO or drop in your team's channel, because you're both better on the other side of it. -------------------------------------------- FREE RESOURCES: indispensablemarketer.com/free/Disruptive Advertising: https://disruptiveadvertising.com/The Indispensable Marketer (book): https://www.indispensablemarketer.com/book/Connect with Jacob on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakebaadsgaard/ Connect with Chad on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chad-de-lisle/ NEXT EPISODE: the multi-million dollar contract we walked away from because it conflicted with our values.

    We Fired 450 Clients in One Year. It Saved the Business.

  7. 21h ago

    I Interviewed the CEO Who Almost Fired Me

    FREE: the tools and templates to become an indispensable marketer: indispensablemarketer.com/free/ For ten years Chad ran marketing for Jacob. Then he told the executive team he wasn't sure he was the right guy for the job. Jacob told him he agreed. This is the conversation most marketing leaders never have with their CEO. Chad asks Jacob what was actually going through his head in that conference room, why he'd already burned through five marketing leaders in nine years, and what changed when he realized he might be the common denominator. If you feel the heat in every leadership meeting and can't name why the trust isn't there, start here. -------------------------------------------- CHAPTERS 0:00 The conversation every marketing leader avoids with their CEO 1:55 Inside the meeting where Chad said "I'm not the right guy for this job" 3:54 What Jacob was actually thinking, and why he didn't reassure him 4:56 Five marketing leaders in nine years, and the moment the CEO became the common denominator 6:49 The Trust Gap, named: why it isn't a skills gap or a budget gap 10:17 Why marketers who lead with execution are becoming dispensable 13:17 VSET explained: Vision, Strategy, Execution, Team, and who owns what 17:46 Why having the hard conversation is the less risky path 20:55 What to put on the table with your CEO this week -------------------------------------------- WHO'S TALKING Jacob Baadsgaard is the founder and CEO of Disruptive Advertising and the author of The Indispensable Marketer. He's sat on both sides of this table: marketing director at a public company, and now the CEO asking marketing for a number. Chad de Lisle has been in marketing for nearly twenty years, half of that at Disruptive working directly with Jacob. He spent years doing the smile and nod in executive meetings. Here he tells you what it cost him. -------------------------------------------- ABOUT THE SHOW The Indispensable Marketer is Disruptive Advertising's podcast. We're a performance marketing agency, and our mission is to connect great marketers with the brands they believe in. The goal of this show is simpler than that: we want marketing leaders to win. Not just hit the number, but earn the trust and the seat that comes with it. For anyone who has no reason to trust us yet, some things you can check: We've managed marketing for more than 2,000 client accounts. We reject 96% of applicants, because the wrong person in the wrong seat costs everyone. In 2020 we fired two-thirds of our client roster on purpose. Purpose without performance is a hobby. Performance without purpose is a trap. We publish around 8 videos a month. We want these to be the episodes you forward to your CEO or drop in your team's channel, because you're both better on the other side of it. -------------------------------------------- FREE RESOURCES: ⁠indispensablemarketer.com/free/⁠⁠ Disruptive Advertising: disruptiveadvertising.com The Indispensable Marketer (book): https://www.indispensablemarketer.com/book/ Connect with Jacob on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakebaadsgaard/ Connect with Chad on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chad-de-lisle/ NEXT EPISODE: Jacob fired 450 clients during Covid. It almost broke marketing, and it turned out to be the best decision we ever made.

    I Interviewed the CEO Who Almost Fired Me

  8. 21h ago

    Growth at All Costs Is Costing You the Right Customers

    FREE: the tools and templates to become an indispensable marketer:  indispensablemarketer.com/free/ A top strategist walked into Jacob's office, closed the door, and told him he hated logging into a client account worth over $1 million a year. Disruptive walked away from the contract. Most marketers have never asked how core values help them do better marketing, which is why for most companies they stay words on a wall that cost nothing. This episode fixes that. Jacob gives you two questions to ask your CEO that surface their real values and their anti-values, a third to run with your executive team, and the test that separates a value from a preference. Then you run the same exercise on yourself, because marketing is the best job in the world or the worst one depending on whether you believe in what you're marketing. This is the Vision pillar of VSET. -------------------------------------------- CHAPTERS 0:00 The $1 million contract we walked away from 1:21 If a value doesn't cost you something, it's just a preference 2:56 Why core values are a marketing tool, not an HR poster 4:15 Question 1: who inspires your CEO, and what that actually tells you 4:56 Question 2: the sassy one that surfaces their anti-values 5:46 The third question to run with your executive team 6:44 "It's not my job to set the values." Correct. It's your job to extract them. 7:08 Now run the same exercise on yourself -------------------------------------------- WHO'S TALKING Jacob Baadsgaard is the founder and CEO of Disruptive Advertising and the author of The Indispensable Marketer. He's sat in every seat at the table: marketing analyst, head of marketing at a publicly traded company, and now the CEO on the other side of it. He built Disruptive from scratch to over $150 million in lifetime revenue. -------------------------------------------- ABOUT THE SHOW The Indispensable Marketer is Disruptive Advertising's podcast. We're a performance marketing agency, and our mission is to connect great marketers with the brands they believe in. The goal of this show is simpler than that: we want marketing leaders to win. Not just hit the number, but earn the trust and the seat that comes with it. For anyone who has no reason to trust us yet, some things you can check: We've managed marketing for more than 2,000 client accounts. When we studied those accounts, we found that on average 76% of ad budget had no attributable revenue impact. Not low impact. No impact. That's the problem we exist to solve. We reject 96% of applicants, because the wrong person in the wrong seat costs everyone. We publish around 8 videos a month. We want these to be the episodes you forward to your CEO or drop in your team's channel, because you're both better on the other side of it. -------------------------------------------- FREE RESOURCES: indispensablemarketer.com/free/ Indispensable Marketer assessment: https://assessment.disruptiveuniversity.com/imaudit Disruptive Advertising: https://disruptiveadvertising.com/ The Indispensable Marketer (book): https://www.indispensablemarketer.com/book/ Connect with Jacob on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakebaadsgaard/

    Growth at All Costs Is Costing You the Right Customers

  9. 1d ago

    Your CEO Can’t Tell You Why The Company Exists

    FREE: the tools and templates to become an indispensable marketer: indispensablemarketer.com/free/ If you and your CEO can't say why the business exists beyond making money, no marketing plan will ever satisfy them. You'll throw spaghetti at the wall for your whole career and never know why. Jacob Baadsgaard has been on both sides of this. In this episode he gives you the three questions that pull a CEO's why into the open, the story of the moment he realized he'd fallen out of love with his own agency, and how to turn the answers into a why statement you can actually market against. He also breaks down the four founder stages, because the same question lands completely differently on a CEO who's still proving it than on one thinking about legacy. This is the Vision pillar of VSET. -------------------------------------------- CHAPTERS 0:00 Why "we exist to make money" guarantees you'll never satisfy your CEO 1:23 Brazil, 2020: when I realized I'd fallen out of love with my own business 3:19 Question 1: the founding story, and why nothing works without it 4:46 Question 2: the customer success story that reveals what they actually care about 5:31 Question 3: the employee outcome they're proud of 5:58 How to turn their answers into a three-part why statement 7:19 The four founder stages, and how to meet your CEO where they actually are 9:51 The question to ask yourself once you have their answer -------------------------------------------- WHO'S TALKING Jacob Baadsgaard is the founder and CEO of Disruptive Advertising and the author of The Indispensable Marketer. He started as a data analyst, became a marketing director at a publicly traded company, and now sits in the CEO's chair asking marketing for a number. He's had this conversation from both sides of the table, including badly. -------------------------------------------- ABOUT THE SHOW The Indispensable Marketer is Disruptive Advertising's podcast. We're a performance marketing agency, and our mission is to connect great marketers with the brands they believe in. The goal of this show is simpler than that: we want marketing leaders to win. Not just hit the number, but earn the trust and the seat that comes with it. For anyone who has no reason to trust us yet, some things you can check: We've managed marketing for more than 2,000 client accounts. When we studied those accounts, we found that on average 76% of ad budget had no attributable revenue impact. Not low impact. No impact. That's the problem we exist to solve. We reject 96% of applicants, because the wrong person in the wrong seat costs everyone. We publish around 8 videos a month. We want these to be the episodes you forward to your CEO or drop in your team's channel, because you're both better on the other side of it. -------------------------------------------- FREE RESOURCES: indispensablemarketer.com/free/ Indispensable Marketer assessment: https://assessment.disruptiveuniversity.com/imaudit Disruptive Advertising: https://disruptiveadvertising.com/ The Indispensable Marketer (book): https://www.indispensablemarketer.com/book/Connect with Jacob on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakebaadsgaard/

    Your CEO Can’t Tell You Why The Company Exists

  10. 2d ago

    This Is Why You Hate Your Marketing Job

    FREE: the tools and templates to become an indispensable marketer: ⁠indispensablemarketer.com/free/⁠ Being a marketer is either the best job in the world or the worst one, and it comes down to two things: whether you believe in what you're marketing, and whether you can actually get results. Most marketers right now have neither. If you're aligned with your CEO in the planning meeting and underwater a quarter later, this is the diagnosis. It isn't effort and it isn't your playbook. It's the trust gap between what the CEO holds in their head and what you're executing against. Jacob went through five marketing leaders in eight years before he admitted he was the common denominator, and then hit the same wall with the sixth, the one person he was certain he'd been clear with. What came out of fixing that is VSET: Vision, Strategy, Execution, Team. This video is the introduction to the framework and the place to start on this channel. -------------------------------------------- CHAPTERS 0:00 Why marketing is either the best or the worst job in the world 2:28 The cycle: aligned in the meeting, underwater a quarter later 3:43 The trust gap, and why executing harder won't close it 4:14 Five marketing leaders in eight years, and the moment I realized I was the common denominator 5:21 What happened with Chad, the one person I was sure I'd been clear with 7:33 VSET explained: Vision, Strategy, Execution, Team 8:32 Why most marketers start with execution, and why that breaks everything 9:00 You are not the problem. The system you're working in is. -------------------------------------------- WHO'S TALKING Jacob Baadsgaard is the founder and CEO of Disruptive Advertising and the author of The Indispensable Marketer. He's sat in every seat at the table: data analyst, marketing director at a publicly traded company, and now the CEO asking marketing for a number. Over 14 years he's built Disruptive to more than $150 million in lifetime revenue, employed over 500 marketers, and worked with thousands of businesses. He's also been the CEO he admits he'd have struggled to work for. -------------------------------------------- ABOUT THE SHOW The Indispensable Marketer is Disruptive Advertising's podcast. We're a performance marketing agency, and our mission is to connect great marketers with the brands they believe in. The goal of this show is simpler than that: we want marketing leaders to win. Not just hit the number, but earn the trust and the seat that comes with it. For anyone who has no reason to trust us yet, some things you can check: We've managed marketing for more than 2,000 client accounts. When we studied those accounts, we found that on average 76% of ad budget had no attributable revenue impact. Not low impact. No impact. That's the problem we exist to solve. We reject 96% of applicants, because the wrong person in the wrong seat costs everyone. We publish around 8 videos a month. We want these to be the episodes you forward to your CEO or drop in your team's channel, because you're both better on the other side of it. -------------------------------------------- FREE RESOURCES: indispensablemarketer.com/free/   Indispensable Marketer assessment: https://assessment.disruptiveuniversity.com/imaudit Disruptive Advertising: https://disruptiveadvertising.com/ The Indispensable Marketer (book): https://www.indispensablemarketer.com/book/ Connect with Jacob on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakebaadsgaard/

    This Is Why You Hate Your Marketing Job
  • 10 Episodes

About

Become the marketer your CEO can't run the business without.You bring the CEO a plan. The numbers aren't bad. You're still explaining yourself instead of leading.That's the Trust Gap. The work comes back wrong, results stall, and neither of you can say why. It's why talented marketers get treated like a vending machine instead of the architect of growth.The Indispensable Marketer is hosted by Disruptive Advertising for marketing leaders at $3M-$50M scale-ups done managing perception and ready to build real authority. Every episode runs on VSET: Vision, Strategy, Execution, Team, the framework behind the Indispensable Marketer book and Assessment. Closing the Trust Gap is a skill you can learn, prove, and measure.Some weeks it's a solo teaching on extracting real Vision. Other weeks it's a conversation with a leader who closed their own Trust Gap and can tell you what it cost.We turn away most prospective clients and 96% of marketers who apply. Selectivity protects the standard.If you've wondered whether you're the right person for the job, start here.

Information

  • Creator
    Jacob Baadsgaard and Chad de Lisle
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    10
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 The Indispensable Marketer
  • Show Website
    The Indispensable Marketer