Ep. 178 - Ai won't Replace Bad Strategy - Chad de Lisle

And so when you're able to get aligned, not only are you finding that your efforts are amplified with the employees and coworkers that you're working with, you know, it's not one plus one equals two anymore. It's one plus one equals three or more. When you're in that same level of alignment with AI saying, no, we have to be aligned, you know, chat or Gemini or Claude or whatever, we have to be aligned and you have to understand me so that you're not just amplifying noise and just pulling whatever general information you have.

You're actually pulling from sources of truth that are meaningful and clarified. When you have all of those things aligned, you know, that alignment again, it just creates massive explosive momentum for brands. It creates growth that's astronomical and puts them in a position of really achieving that impact that they're looking to make in the world. Welcome to Future Fuzz, the digital marketing podcast.

All right. Welcome in. I am Vince Quinn. And today we're talking about building a client base you believe in.

And joining us for this conversation is Chad DeLisle. He is the VP of Marketing at Disruptive. And Chad, welcome to Future Fuzz. Hey, I'm happy to be here.

Thanks for having me. Yeah, I'm happy to have you as well. Doing some podcasting. We'll see if we touch on your podcast later.

It's a fun side tangent, but it's great to have you on this podcast. And before we get really deep into it of just the approach of Disruptive, give people an overview of really what Disruptive is and how you help people. Yeah, absolutely. So Disruptive Advertising is a performance marketing agency.

We've been around since 2012. And I've been with the company personally for over 10 years now. I'm the VP of marketing over there. But I think one of the things that just makes us unique, and I think it's what put me on the podcasting couch in front of you, Vince, was just this idea that we only work with the people and brands that we believe in.

and where that philosophy originates is just the idea that marketing is either the best job in the world or the worst job in the world, depending on if you believe in the product of marketing, you know? So, so I mean, what's it like to make that kind of switch? Cause for the 10 years that you've been there then, like, were you a part of that switch? What was that like culturally to go through something like that?

Yeah, no, it, it actually was a huge paradigm shift for the company and I'll describe it a little bit in during COVID, right? We were in lockdown. It was actually during a time where our business was the most big and chaotic it had ever been. And what I mean by that is we were creeping up on 700 or so active clients, asking the question of, do we want to just keep adding and adding and adding every client, every group that comes to us and wants marketing?

And at the same time, we were redlining with our employees. They were feeling overwhelmed, overworked, sometimes misaligned with the clients that they were working on. And I'll never forget our founder, our owner and CEO, Jake Badsgard, he had asked the question, what would it feel like if we only had 200 clients, but they were clients that we just absolutely believed in? And that was just, I remember us all in that meeting thinking like, whoa, okay, well, that would make my time, I could spend way more time as a marketer on individual clients, getting them the results that matter.

I also would probably enjoy my job more because I'd be working on clients that I actually want to work with. And I wouldn't feel this massive burnout that I'm feeling working with so many of these different varying brands of all types. Yeah. I mean, what an inspiring thing, right?

Like if you look at business in that altruistic sense in that positive way, which some people ascribe to, but not everybody is that idea of like, I genuinely want to help people solve a problem. And I am here and creating this business or doing this role to facilitate that, right? I actually want things to be better for people. And when you go into it with that kind of mentality, like it's inspiring when you have that.

But then there's times where, I mean, I've been in these situations where you're doing certain kinds of work and you're like, what am I doing any of this for? I mean, what kind of mistakes did I make to get into this scenario? You know what I mean? It's just, it's such a nightmare.

And honestly, I can see it on you as you were describing the shift, like an actual change in like how excited you are just for the idea of it. Because, yeah, I mean, what a thrill it must be to work with people you genuinely like, support and believe in every day. That's got to be such a gift. Yeah, it's a different kind of, I mean, energy.

You get up in the morning excited for work. Sunday night, you're not feeling like, oh, man, you know, the Sunday night scaries, as we used to call it. I think that those are real and people feel them, but it's amazing when you have that alignment, really is what it is, alignment with the brands that you're working for. Because then it feels like in your off time, you know, I'll share how it shown up for me in the shower or on a hike or, you know, while I'm at, you know, one of my kids' sporting events.

I'll have ideas about, oh, I could, I could implement that for that client. Like, oh, I could do this thing. And it's because like, I'm excited about what I'm doing for that client. I'm not dreading the work or trying to hide from it because it's not.

Yeah. Like times where I've been sitting on the couch and I'm like, supposed to be watching a movie with my wife and what's going through my head. Instead. It's like, oh my God, if I don't come up with an answer for this thing, everything is going to go so bad on Tuesday.

And I'm going to really be sad and hate myself. And I going to drag myself through the mud Like it like real inspiration from joy and thought and so like let let talk a little bit about the sense of alignment though i mean because because for everybody on the outside I sort of like that sounds amazing Give me a hit of that But like what does that mean I mean when you talk about alignment in that way what is it? How do you evaluate it? Well, I will tell you it's incredibly elusive.

It's easier to talk about than it is to actually nail down. So I'll tell you, alignment is fascinating because it really comes down to understanding how well does the brand understand themselves and what they want to achieve and where they're going and what actually is beating in their heart. You know, like a lot of times, you know, I'll give you an example that I think everybody's guilty of and disruptive has been guilty of this too at times. You know, the most important goal that we're setting is just a financial goal, right?

We just need to hit this number. Let's hit this number by this time and everybody get excited and we're going hit this number by this time. The thing that's so funny about that is that 99% of employees don't get motivated by that. It doesn't resonate for them to put another zero in the stockholders bank account or whatever, you know what I mean?

That's just not exciting. And so getting really clear and alignment actually starts from, do you have a deeper why and purpose that we can rally behind, that we feel excited by and inspired by and called to be better by, you know, and it's those types of brand mission statements that really get us fired up and excited is the ones that feel like it's not just about, you know, achieving a certain financial goal. It's not to say that we don't have financial goals. We do.

But the bigger goal is more meaningful than that. And I'll get I'll share the example of disruptives disrupt disruptives deeper why is to see and activate greatness that sounds very simple but it's actually very powerful to those who feel aligned to it which is when i'm working with a client and a brand i actually feel really aligned with seeing and activating the greatness of them right i want to bring them to a place when i i know that they have it in there, right? To go into a bigger, a bigger pond, make a bigger impact, those types of things.

And I love that because I know what you mean in that way. I mean, I just tend to like people, like, I just like people, I get along with people, I root for people. And I think the complication with it is, there's times where I, I can see it for them almost more than they can see it from themselves. And it's like, I would have driven myself crazy at times and almost overworked to to support that because they have that vision.

And I guess that's the other side of it, right? Is like when you like these people, you understand it and you see it, you want to support it. It's a beautiful thing. And when it works, it's great.

But how do you, how do you balance that at times? Like, you know, you guys might have a better grip than they do occasionally. Yeah. Well, and it's, it is hard to balance and it's always a thing to, to be working towards.

Cause like I mentioned before, it's elusive. So when a, when a business comes through the door off of the street and is evaluating whether they can or should work with disruptive, we have what's called, you know, internally we call it the V set. And what that stands for is vision, strategy, execution, and team. Okay.

And so we basically go through each of those areas and say, okay, well, do they have a clear vision? Do they understand who they are, what their unique differentiators are, their core values, their deeper why, you know, The strategy section is saying, okay, well, do you have marketing math that backs up what your numbers are? Like, does it actually make sense on the napkin, right? And you understand your buyer journey.

Do you understand your data and how the data is going to be visualized, right? Execution is then saying, okay, do you have the systems in place that are going to make turning this strategy into actual, you know, rubber meeting the road, making it work? And is it not going to burn out people? You know, sometimes you create a system that's just a grinder and it just grinds employees through.

Right. And then the last with team alignment is saying, do you have the right people in the right seats? Do you have the right leaders, leaders to guide them? And is everyone rowing in the same direction?

Do they all rally around the same pivot point? Or is it going to be like herding cats, you know, to get things done? And so we have found like with our V set approach that when you have all of those things aligned, you know, that alignment again, it just creates massive explosive momentum for brands. It creates growth that's astronomical and puts them in a position of really achieving that impact that they're looking to make.

Yeah. Okay. I've even seen that at times where some clients I've worked with, they're two person teams, right? But the idea that they are locked in on every word of all the advice of, okay, we're going to do A, B and C and here's why we're doing that.

and they're like, yep, and taking notes. And then they're immediately starting to interact, all of these things. And the progress, the mileage that you cover really it's, I mean, exponential is the actual word, right? Like you, you really can see that explosion where it might take some people six months to get somewhere where another person got in a month just because they, they were really hungry for it and they are motivated and they, you know, and on some level, they see that with me, right?

They're like, oh, I trust this guy and where he's taking us. And I, I think that's a lot of it, right? Just like being in the, in the marketing space, there's always this kind of level of, am I telling these people what to do or do they know what they're doing? And like, right.

Like how nice is it to then, and how much easier has it been for you when it is built on this fundamental agreement and understanding of each other how much easier is it to then operate and really execute all of this stuff Oh yeah Well and the thought that was coming up for me while you asking that question and thinking about it is like in this uh very AI driven world now right We have all this very cool, uh, technology and AI is in the forefront of all of it. Uh, AI is a noise amplifier.

If you're not aligned for, for businesses that aren't aligned and you have a team of two, four, six, 10 people all going to AI and saying, help us write social posts, help us write content, help us analyze these things without getting really clear first on all of those things that I said, you're actually just going to use AI to pull you in a thousand directions and to develop a thousand different brand voices and messages and to just create noise, right? Almost just slop is another term that we call it.

And so when you're able to get aligned, not only are you finding that your efforts are amplified with the employees and co-workers that you're working with, you know, it's not one plus one equals two anymore. It's one plus one equals three or more. When you're doing that same level of alignment with AI saying, no, we have to be aligned, you know, chat or Gemini or Claude or whatever, we have to be aligned and you have to understand me so that you're not just amplifying noise and just pulling whatever general information you have, you're actually pulling from sources of truth that are meaningful and clarified with our team.

Okay. Yeah. Now, give us more on that, right? Having an AI that is actually systematically aligned with you.

I mean, what, what does that look like? Yeah, well, it's, it's actually not as crazy as it sounds or hard as it sounds, right? Most of these AIs, they allow you the opportunity to go in the backend and sort of edit the brain and say like, Hey, you need to not just pull from any information source out there. We want you to use these sources.

So saying, you know, when we're talking about brand, use these visuals, use these, uh, standards and guidelines, use these, uh, words and verbiage. Stop using the MDash everywhere. Stop using emojis all over the place. Stop using that same formula of sentence and all that stuff.

You basically go in and you're training AI like a coworker, like an employee. And you can't expect it, even though AI is very smart, right? You can't expect it to just know you and know your brand right out of the gate. You've got to be able to train it and give it some guidelines.

And once you do that, I mean, it starts to be an amplifier of your brand. It starts to really pull things together. You can start to feed it things and say, hey, is this on brand or not? And why?

And start to get things even more refined so that when you're showing up in the marketplace, you know, beating your brand's drum, it's very crystal clear exactly who you are and what you're doing. And AI can help with that. but it can also really hurt you if you're not taking the time to get. Well, I just want to throw stuff in it, Chad, and it comes out perfect.

And that's it. I don't want to think about anything. I don't want to put in any work though. So, I mean, that sounds like a nightmare, but no, it is true though.

Like how much you can, even though the M dash is less prevalent than it used to be. And it's still out there. And that is a clear indicator. When you read things, you can just feel it like that.

It is AI. It's hard to describe, but everything has a - it's not this. It's that. And like there's these other tells where you start to - I've always thought - this is a totally stupid side tangent.

I've always thought it's funny at hotels in the sense that everybody is essentially using the same soap and shampoo. They all smell the same, right? Like everybody in the hotel smells the same. So from that standpoint, like that's what it feels like going on LinkedIn sometimes is just everybody is putting like the slightest variation on the same AI stuff.

And even if it's totally different verticals and perspectives and all, it's like it's the same thing. And to put some time in and really like the really custom things, the value is immeasurable. I don't care what scale you're on, how big your team is, internal, external, whatever. I mean, yeah, please customize.

Yeah, yeah, do it. And part of, you know, I like what you're talking about. Everyone smells the same. I call it AI breath.

That's what I call it. I feel like I can see a post when I read it. I'm like, oh, this has AI breath. Like I can just, I can smell it.

It's that it definitely is noticeable, especially to those of us who are interacting with AI as much as we are, right? I think that maybe it's less noticeable than we think, you know? So there are places it's passing, but I do think that there's a strong element of customization needed alignment needed because you don't want your AI, uh, support to just sound and deliver like everyone else's. You have the opportunity to make it yours, uniquely yours.

That's one of the funnest things about AI, in my opinion, is how adaptable, malleable it is to your specific needs, because then it just really becomes an amplifier of your brand, like I said, and a clear message rather than an amplifier of noise and chaos. And so I want to change gears a little bit, just in the sense that we've talked a bit about the clarity and alignment between, you know, disruptive and clients and how that simplifies thing. And there is a clear voice and vision and the synergy in the non corny way, but like actual cohesion and growth And you get all of that And then from the team side I know you mentioned things like not having burnout and stuff like that But I mean really what has it been like?

And in your position as VP of marketing to have all these clients that are based on businesses you actually believe in and like our good structure, like how has that supported your team, their growth? What has that looked like? I think some of the things to keep in mind, And I think when we say burnout, sometimes it's associated with this idea of like, oh, well, maybe over at Disruptive, they're just not working very hard. Nobody has very many clients and they all just kind of relax.

They take a lot of time off. That's not it. We're actually like a highly competitive environment. People have asked me many times, what do you like about working at Disruptive?

Because I've been here for over 10 years and my answer is always the same. I say, oh, well, it's a growth environment. And then they ask, well, what don't you like about working at Disruptive? I say, well, it's a growth environment, you know, and it's that same like you have the tradeoffs.

Yes, I want to grow personally, professionally, financially at Disruptive, just like all the employees. And when you want to grow personally, professionally, financially, it causes uncomfortable things. You have to step into discomfort. You have to embrace growth mindset, which can be hard sometimes.

But coming back to how that impacts the team, it's allowing the team to not only work on clients that they believe in, but also to specialize vertically, which is really exciting as well and is so important to the future of marketing, right? I think that we are moving away from an era where any and every agency under the sun could just service every type of client that comes in and service them at a high level. It does feel like verticalization is very clearly the path to greater results for the customer and for the employee and by translation for the business bottom line.

And so that's another thing where when we first started as a business and back in those days, like I said, during COVID where we were getting up to 700 clients, we didn't have anything verticalized. We just said, you're either e-commerce or you're, you know, you're either e-commerce or you're lead gen. And that's how the company is split. You have 50% of the companies doing e-commerce, 50% of the companies doing lead gen, and that's it.

But now we're getting down into those very tight sub niches and verticals, which are really exciting because they're places where we were winning all along, but we didn't realize how uniquely we were good at those things. So like garage doors, for instance, you know, our oldest client is almost 12 years old with us. They went from literally working out of their garage as a garage door company to now being multi-state, you know, they're like a multi-state organization that's doing amazing.

And that's awesome. B2B SaaS is another big one where we just win. We know the formula, we know how to win. And anyway, I don't want to go through and name every vertical, but that's the point is like we get more specific and you're putting employees who know the playbooks, know how to win in those verticals and are feeling very aligned with those types of businesses.

And it's just like a really winning. Yeah, I mean, that tracks a lot because when you like it's hard to think about these things in the big picture because time moves so quickly and we're all expected to do more and more things. But yeah, when you step back from what a lot of agencies had to do before where it's really like TV ads and some web stuff in the 90s to now where it's like you're making all this specialized content and you have to do that on multiple different platforms and you are doing ads at the same time.

And there's just like the level of sophistication. It absolutely demands specialization. And when you don't have that and you don't understand anything about somebody's business, you're inherently at a disadvantage because you don't know the rails. they can't touch, right?

Like that's the biggest people don't want to have massive negative mistakes. And if they have to train you on those things, then I mean, good luck. It's, it's a nightmare. It's true.

It's true. And it doesn't feel good as a business owner to go in and feel like an agency is learning on your dollar, you know, like, Oh, they're going to figure out this vertical on my dime. I would rather they already knew it and were applying learnings from previous customers to me, not mine. Yeah.

You want the agency giving you the wisdom, right? Yeah. That's the value. So, okay.

Well, for Chad, you've given us so much wisdom for the people who want to keep up with Disruptive. What's the best way to do that? Oh yeah. So check us out, disruptiveadvertising.

com. It's easy to find us. We would love to chat with you. I think one of the things that, so I've worked at four different digital marketing agencies in my career, going back to 2007, But I've been at Disruptive for 10 years now.

And I love it. It feels to me, and I'm not casting shade on previous employees or employers, I mean, but it feels to me like an agency that truly is interested in helping you, whether we're the right fit for you or not. So if you want to come and just get somebody to look under the hood and give you our professional, honest opinion, regardless of if you sign up with us or pay us a dime, we will give you that value because we really feel like agencies need to be held to a higher standard.

So we are out there trying to elevate the game. And if that means giving away some, some knowledge so that you can take it and go run with it, we're happy. Well, the authenticity just is like so apparent. So that's why I'm glad to have you on the show, like fully see it, hear it, feel it.

It's awesome. So it's an absolute joy. Appreciate you taking the time and thanks for being on the show. Absolutely.

It was a pleasure, Vince. Thanks. Thanks for tuning in and making the choice to listen to this podcast. If you liked what you've heard today, please don't forget to subscribe.