.png)
Small Lake City
Small Talk, Big City
Join host Erik Nilsson as he interviews the entrepreneurs, creators, and builders making Salt Lake City the best place it can be. Covering topics such as business, politics, art, food, and more you will get to know the amazing people behind the scenes investing their time and money to improve the place we call home.
Follow along for more!
Small Lake City
S1, E88: Disruptive Advertising/ Authenticity Wins - Jacob Baadsgaard
What happens when you confront your deepest fears and step into authentic living? Jacob Baadsgaard's journey reveals the transformative power of radical self-honesty.
After building a successful marketing agency, Jacob found himself questioning everything when his marriage began failing. Through therapy, he discovered he wasn't showing up as a true partner because of his own self-judgment and inability to be present. This revelation sparked a profound personal transformation that not only saved his marriage but completely changed his approach to business and life.
Jacob shares how his realization that "it's not an adventure until you don't know what's next" became his guiding philosophy. His fourth child, born after reconciling with his wife, stands as a daily reminder of the beautiful possibilities waiting on the other side of fear. This experience taught him that life's richest rewards often come from embracing uncertainty rather than avoiding it.
We explore the fascinating phenomenon of midlife crises happening earlier than ever – now striking people in their 20s and 30s who've followed all the prescribed steps but still feel empty. Jacob explains how authentic living requires distinguishing between the stories we tell ourselves and the truth of who we are. His upcoming book "Authenticity Wins" distills years of personal growth into practical wisdom for others facing similar challenges.
The conversation dives deep into the paradox of being versus doing, the importance of present-moment awareness, and the fundamental questions that changed everything for Jacob: "Do I believe I'm enough to deal with whatever life brings? And do I believe everyone else is enough too?"
Whether you're struggling with relationships, questioning your career path, or simply feeling stuck, this episode offers powerful insights on finding your authentic self and embracing life's adventures with an open heart.
Head to www.smalllakepod.com/merchandise for Small Lake City Gear!
Join Erik as he supports Fork Cancer, a night of food, drinks, and live music—all for a great cause. Grab your tickets at utah.acscanforkcancer.org and enter Erik Nilsson to help him hit his $12,000 fundraising goal!
Please be sure to like, review, follow, subscribe and share the podcast with your friends and family! See you next time
Join Small Lake City: https://www.smalllakepod.com/subscribe
Instagram: @smalllakepod
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@SmallLakeCityPodcast
TikTok: @smalllakepod
And now I feel like people are hitting midlife crises in like their 20s and 30s, yes, and the mind can't predict what's on the other side of that big feeling. The thing that I always say is it's not an adventure until you don't know what's next, because until your mind can't anticipate what's next, are you really living? My wife and I were really struggling in our marriage, assumed it was kind of to the point where we kind of assumed it wasn't going to work out. You know of assumed it wasn't going to work out. We started with marriage counseling. That ultimately led to my realization of I'm not showing up like a partner in this relationship. And I'm not showing up as a partner because I have a lot of self-judgment and things I'm struggling with. Where I challenge myself and all of us, is do I believe I'm enough to deal with whatever life brings? And I think the answer is I am. And the next question is do I believe everyone else is enough?
Speaker 2:What is up everybody and welcome back to another episode of the Small Lake City Podcast. I'm your host, eric Nilsen, and this week's guest is, honestly, someone who caught me completely off guard in the best way possible. Now, jacob Badsguard is someone who's had a very successful career working in marketing in corporate America, taking a risk and starting his own marketing agency called Disruptive Advertising. But life has a way of throwing curveballs at you to teach the lesson that you need to learn the most Now with Jacob, his marriage was being tested, his business was being tested and he was being tested to the point where he realized he wasn't being his authentic self. He wasn't being present in the moment and it got in the way of a lot of his relationships. Now, after therapy, a lot of self-discovery it has completely changed his life, the way he thinks about all of his relationships, and has also turned around and written his own book called Authenticity Wins, where he talks about a lot of these key themes and topics.
Speaker 2:I had an amazing conversation with him. I hope you all enjoy this one. It's a lot of vulnerability from both of us in talking about all of the trials that we've gone through and the lessons that we've been able to learn through it all, so I'll let you listen from here. It's a great episode, but I'll see you on the other side and hope that you enjoy it as much as I did. There we go. When I first started, I was pretty hyper-conscious about like.
Speaker 2:I mean especially like I bought all the hardware and everything. I was like I got to get the best everything. I've got to do this. But now, like if I were to go spend $1,000 on microphones and headphones and everything, I'm still running it through the same AI audio regulator that comes out the exact same and so like not the place I would spend money on. And so people always talk to me it's funny when you have a podcast because people be like oh, there's idea for a podcast. I'm like, tell me about it. Um, it'll be like I think I like what should? What do you think I should get? What do you think I should do?
Speaker 1:I'm like keep it simple, keep it simple like you don't need to over complicate this.
Speaker 2:No, like it's not that complicated. Like even one of my friends named johnny dinkle. He owns a company called launch pod media it's like podcast services and I got introduced to him because he guest wrote on a newsletter that my other friend does and the thing was titled like your mic's good enough and being like listen, if you're so worried about all the hardware and like all of this, you're not focusing enough on like what your actual core product is, who your customer is, what your niche is, what I mean, what I mean the product is itself. Yeah, and so so many people be like oh, I was looking at this mic. Is this mic better than that mic? I'm like, if you want to burn money, sure get that one. If not, like there's people that record it on apple airpods and it works fine. And people record over zoom on their macbook speaker and mic like it's fine. Yeah, but I mean most people yeah, I mean most people like start to complicate things before it ever needs to get complicated. That's like just get started.
Speaker 1:You'll. You'll learn what matters. It's just a protection mechanism to not act.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, yeah, and that's it was like me to a T and like something I'm still working on is I've always been that like over thinker and there's a point in my life like I'm the thinker person, Like that's where I add value. And and then years into my career I was like nobody cares about how much you think about something, they only care if you do something.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:So everyone's on a journey and we slowly get there, little by little. Also, how do you pronounce your last name? Give it a shot. I'm going to have to look at my phone, it's just Badzgard. Badzgard. Okay, there's a lot of A's. That intimidates people but there's no other way to stop. There was an en at the end like was bad's garden. All right, that makes a lot more sense if you want to say that I'd be okay with it you're like, I won't stop you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm grateful that jacob of bad's guard, jacob, there we go anyway. Where's the? It's danish, danish, okay, yeah because I'm a swede okay so and it's.
Speaker 2:I was talking to someone about this because, like I mean one thing that I think about Salt Lake and Utah in general. It's like a pretty culturalist place and then you look at people's last names and there's a lot of sins and sons, and I mean just a lot of Scandinavian people in general. But I was talking to a friend who's from Sweden and she's like, oh, like where's like the Swedes? Like I know there's a lot of Swedes here, like how do I find them?
Speaker 2:I'm swedes, we're just kind of born from there. We're not really like culturally relevant from there. Right, I don't really eat that much fish, or not? Blonde and blue-eyed, but here we are, yeah, so, but the greeks, the greeks have held it together on the cultural side, but I could talk about that all day, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So when you say culturalist, what does that mean?
Speaker 2:um, I mean, it's no secret that utah is pretty monocultural in general, just because of its roots and predominant population, and I mean part of that organization's teaching is like one-ish way, one way to go about things, and so whenever there is like one path and everybody kind of molds to that path and kind of gets, a word for being on it.
Speaker 2:but there's been also, like I mean just in general in the world and it's kind of cascaded into Salt Lake right now where people do want more community, and community is a buzzword that a lot of people don't know what they mean by it but and a lot of that can be cultural, relevant and like one thing I've seen is like there's been this emergence of more people that want like an Italian experience, like there's like one or two italian festivals that have popped up, yeah, and just people doing that, which I'm grateful for. Like I would never like be able to say anything about the stereotypical new jersey or like new york or philly italian. I'm like I don't have any of those friends um, never experienced until I went to those places. But I think there's slowly these kind of cultures popping up and I'm all for it and think the more that we can kind of get that culture back and get people together, then I'm all in.
Speaker 1:Well, I think it's um when we think of there's like conformity, and I think that's more of what you're describing of subgroup yes right and and that that goes back to even like childhood friends. There's like this draw to like fit in yes and to be like other people, and what I hear you describing from a community standpoint is what makes us unique, is what makes a more enhanced and collective community when we celebrate each other's differences, not try to get each other to be like each other. Yeah, yeah, and so which is?
Speaker 2:such like a secondary way of thinking, because I mean you look at like the I. I don't want to say mentally weak, but maybe like the mentally less conscious or mature. It's like, oh, like, what's your validation of me? Like, what do you think of me?
Speaker 2:me happy, Like what do I want to do? And I think that that then creates a lot of decisions and like well, who do I want to spend time with? What are the activities I want to do? What people bring together? You know, I was talking to someone earlier this week about like just run clubs. Like run clubs have popped up everywhere because it's people being like oh, I want to meet people. Here's this thing that I like to do. So if I can find other people that like to do that, let's get people together. And that's just like one example of so I mean dinner clubs and like I've just heard so many different things that bring people together. And the more that people bring together based on aligned hobbies, values, interests, activities. I don't know if I'm more than fine with that yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So I think that's where, when it stays as an invite, um, versus feeling compelled to conform to the group, right, like it wouldn't make sense to go hang out with a running club if you aren't going to run, yeah, and to show up and say everyone else needs to not be a runner. For me to feel comfortable in this group would be like weird.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it would also be Can we walk today?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah so it's always kind of interesting finding that balance because we appreciate and value like commonalities, but then every runner is a little different and brings a different life experience and different things as well, and so I don't know.
Speaker 2:I just think the idea of community as a melding of uniqueness rather than conformity is, I think, what contributes to those kinds of environments don't know your audience, if you don't know your customer, if you don't know your icp, if you don't know where they are, where they're spending time or want to interact with totally, um, an ad or whatever it might be, then you probably don't know it well enough, which could then I mean in the parallel of yourself, and you don't know yourself well enough.
Speaker 1:So spend some time thinking and go from there well, that's my, because my world has been marketers and entrepreneurship for so long and the marketers and entrepreneurs that I see being highly successful. There's two steps that they have to cross. The first one is developing self-clarity and confidence, and I think that's just a maturing process, that you grow up and I see the world one way because of how I was raised, and then you take that into the world on your own and see how does this work outside of my family, outside of my known friend groups, outside of my known community? And that's where that narrative that we tell ourselves of like, okay, this is what life's supposed to be and how I'm supposed to be in it, well, it's interesting to see how life responds to that. Um, whether that's in college or in getting married or your new friend circles, or at school or at work or in starting a business. And you start to identify like, what are the parts that, like army versus the learned cultural things or the nurtured things that I'm bringing with me?
Speaker 1:And I think one of the funniest ones is just like Santa Claus, like we we we grew up thinking Santa Claus is real and it makes, it makes Christmas time fun, and then you realize, oh, it's just a story and he's not real. Sorry if I'm blowing anyone's mind right now, but it's like oh well, what? What is it that I love about Christmas? I love the generosity, I love coming together, I love good food, I love family. You're like oh, that's what I was connecting with and the story that I was telling myself about. It is now evolving in. Why I appreciate this time of year and I feel like that's part of adult development is the stories that we told ourselves inevitably are just stories and they will be confronted and they will be torn down.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And that's the good news, right confronted, and they will be torn down. Yeah, and that's the good, that's the good news, right, that's what keeps us open to a new experience, new relationships, because what caused me to marry my wife in the first place is not what keeps me choosing her today.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right, that evolves and thank goodness it does Um. Same with my kids, same with my business, same with marketing. And I think on the journey of a marketer they have to kind of figure those things out. And in my marketing career I ended up marketing for a lot of things that I didn't believe in, but I was so hungry to do it, to just get the experience of it right to. What did I like, what did I value, what was the unique skill set that I was bringing? Because I didn't really know yet. And it's through experience, experiential living, that you learn those things.
Speaker 2:Otherwise it's just a hypothesis.
Speaker 1:Right, um, and all of a sudden you start to understand well, what. What are my core motivations? What are the strengths that I bring to the table that allow me to serve other people? What are the weaknesses that I bring to the table that I can ask for help with and allow others to serve me? What are my values that drive my beliefs and decision-making?
Speaker 1:Um, I love the inefficiencies that I think marketers and entrepreneurs are like. The are like the liver of capitalism, that we spot inefficiencies in the marketplace and then we solve those inefficiencies with, create creative marketing and businesses that solve those inefficiencies, and when we do it in a way where it actually helps the target customer, it actually gives them value. That's of a positive impact for them. It's like that's all of a sudden when I feel like there's um. Identity is maybe not the right word, but it's like I'm living more in my authenticity. I understand who I am, who I'm not.
Speaker 1:Um, I I have conviction in my values for how I show up and I seek to serve and add value. And all of a sudden, it's like opportunities just start showing up to take advantage of, whether as a marketer or as an entrepreneur, and where I see a lot of them get stuck and I just see too many not make this leap and I and I feel some passion about this is which is why I developed disruptive university is um, making that leap from trying to be what everyone else expects me to be and conform to the community, like we were talking about earlier, to going through the fire of fear of what if I show up more as me vulnerable and my weaknesses showing up in my strengths, living these things, and when an individual make crosses that bridge, it's pretty powerful and it is. Every person has something unique to offer this world and when they start to lean into that, it's beautiful because no one else can do it.
Speaker 1:No, yeah, and basic economics are like supply and demand. If you're unique, you are the only one that sees the world the way you see it, and and if you don't show up as you, you are robbing the world of the only person that can serve it and see it the way that you do. And it's the same thing with business. I see a lot of entrepreneurs we get caught up in what is what should the product be? What should the service be? Versus like, what makes us unique? Cause if we're not unique, it's hard to market. And now you're just one of many, and that's not fun.
Speaker 1:Running a business where you're just one of many, you want to kind of have some haters. You want to have some people that are diehard, like cause it actually shows that you're differentiated and unique and not trying to get everyone to conform to what you have as well, and so I love. I love how you let in with community. I think that exists at the individual level and at the collective level, and I always feel inspired when people have the confidence to be authentic and to be unique and to just step into that. It's like a really cool transition that happens for a lot of people. I feel like that used to happen. This is like total uh, maybe not data or research, but I just have noticed that the older generations I feel like we're hitting that in their midlife crisis and like they're like 50 yeah and then I feel like it turned into 40 and now I.
Speaker 1:Now I feel like people are hitting midlife crisis. Isn't like their 20s and 30s. Yes, because they're exposed to so much experience and information that prior generations it took decades to be exposed to that much. And now, all of a sudden, we've got people in their twenties and thirties like already having kind of this existential. Are the stories I'm telling myself even valid and true, and do I have the courage to step into what makes me more authentic and unique?
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And so I just feel like it's happening younger and younger, and to me that's exciting.
Speaker 2:Oh, totally. And it's like it dictates the right person for that to be exciting for because there's some people who could look at this their entire world's crumbling around and be like who am I, what do I do? I've been living a lie. I don't even know what I am anymore. But then there's what's like time to finally wake up and be myself.
Speaker 2:And I was actually at it I mean recorded earlier this week with someone who said the same thing like our midlife crisis crises used to have in our late forties and fifties, and now it's so much earlier and that's I mean cause I'm 34 and that's the conversation I have with pretty much I mean so many people right now, but I'd say plus or minus five years from my age sees people coming being like listen, I did what everybody told me to do. I went to school, I took the job, I got the promotion, I married the girl, I had the kids, but I don't like the like, I'm not happy and I don't know why, and I don't even know who I am. It's like that can either be a super again, like dark, like detrimental, pessimistic, or you can look at it as this way to like find who you truly are, because that's been one thing that I've, I mean, gotten ahead of with, like the podcast, like I would never look at him and be like, hey, the way to find yourself is to broadcast you weekly for multiple hours and have a hundred plus hours on YouTube of you talking to people. But it's been fun to be where. Now I am in my life is like I only have one person, like I am me, in my life. Now I don't have my family version of me, I don't have my friend version of me, I don't have my family version of me, I don't have my friend version of me. I don't have the work version of me.
Speaker 2:I'm just me and if you take it, great, if not, I know people well and to your point of it is such a unique asset that. But once you realize that and realize those strengths, values, motivations, values, then you start to live them. The more you live them, you get better at them, because it's what you're meant to do. And the more that you spend time on things that you like and time on anything in general, you get better at it. And then the more that you can realize that, set those boundaries, realize who you are and who you aren't, then the right people start to come in, then the right opportunities come in, and, all of a sudden, you create this fly wheel that you've done yourself with your own personal, authentic self.
Speaker 2:that then will, in turn, create the life that you're always meant to have, because you're finally living your truth yeah and so it's, but it's daunting, like I have friends right now and but again, it takes people to have this leap of faith when it's easy to do what you've done, stay on the path, do whatever, and, like I actually recorded with earlier this week, I mean he said like, yeah, you can have a great career and listen to how everybody did have followed the path, but if you don't have a great life, sometimes you have to listen to no one and I'm like, yeah, it's scary, but the reward is there. It just takes a little bit of trust. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, what I've found? We have these transition points, and sometimes I have found that I can convince myself that I'm being authentic when I'm not. And there's a couple of things that I've started learning to notice, and the first one is judgment right. So these moments of awareness where it's like, oh, this isn't the way I thought it was the mind, which is an anticipation machine and wants to keep us safe and comfortable, immediately wants to come up with a narrative to keep us, to protect us cognitive dissonance, uh-huh and so what I've noticed is that it starts to judge the way that I did.
Speaker 1:It was wrong. I can't believe you've been doing it this way the whole time yeah right, I'll keep using the.
Speaker 1:I can't believe you thought santa claus was real. That's so silly, right? Um? To me, authenticity is saying I'm now aware of something new, and the only thing I'm aware of is that it would no longer be authentic to do it the way I was doing it. I don't have to judge it, I don't have to demonize it, I don't have to cling to it if I loved what it was, cause sometimes it's hard to let go, sometimes we want to push it away cause it feels icky or hard. Um, but what I?
Speaker 1:What I'm learning is that when I find my mind judging that I've been doing it wrong, it's actually that's not true. It's just saying I am now aware that, moving forward, it wouldn't feel good to do it that way and now I can just do it that way moving forward. Where I see a lot of people get stuck is they judged that they did it the wrong way and then they want to convince everyone else that's doing it that way, that they're now doing it wrong as well, versus saying I'm just aware that for me, that wouldn't be the right way to do it anymore. And a silly example that I like to share is I have three daughters and a son, and my son's the youngest and it wasn't until my fourth child that my wife noticed I was doing a conditioner and then shampoo. Okay, I'm in my mid thirties, a fourth child, the boy come through three girls of bath time, right, and she's like what are you doing? And I'm like I'm, I'm bathing your son, you're welcome.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And she's like no, no, no, no, no, like, or you'll just wash out all the conditioner and I'm like, are you serious? You're still kind of dumb in those moments and so I could sit there and beat myself up or shame everyone else that does it the same way too, right? Or just say like I'm so glad that I know that now and I can have a good little laugh that that's what made I'm just like a three in one guy. You know what I mean. Like I've always had short hair. I didn't know, but now I know.
Speaker 1:And that would be weird to keep doing it that way, moving forward, and whether that's with one's religion and spiritual convictions, whether that's with someone's career and professional ambitions, whether that's in a relationship, we arrive at these moments where we say you know, I was in corporate America and I actually learned a lot from that experience when I was at Omniture and Adobe and the time came where I knew that wasn't for me anymore. That doesn't mean I did it wrong or the people that are in corporate America are doing it wrong. It just meant I realized it was time for me to move on Right, or in a relationship or, like I said, with spiritual, spiritual and religious convictions, I feel like a lot of people. Oh, I now see that there's a more authentic way for me to move forward, and once I find that I'm judging it or needing to justify it to everyone else, I haven't yet accepted what I learned from doing it that way.
Speaker 2:Yeah no, I like that because so many people it's kind of in the. The rudimentary way of thinking it historically is just so binary good, bad, black, white, up down. And in reality it's like I mean, let's use, uh, santa claus in his example. It's like, okay, like I can respect that's what I knew with what I had access to at the time. It doesn't mean everything about it was bad. Like they still have a lot of great family memories and elf on the shelf and advent, kind of like all these things.
Speaker 2:But then, uh, like another, like stepping back and saying like, well, why does this matter to me? Why would I want to keep doing this? Is finding out the santa claus isn't real make me want to just burn it all to the ground and never do it again? Or is it like, oh, but this is also a time where I can be grateful for things. This is a time where I can spend time with family. It's a time I can show appreciation towards friends and like get into, like the real, why behind it?
Speaker 2:Because, again, like if you are going along with something for the sake of going along with something, and like because I'm someone who, if I'm doing something, I like to be able to say this is why I'm doing something, if I'm spending time with someone. This is why I like to spend time with someone and not put so much of my life on autopilot, because we live in this world where it's like oh hey, here I'm, spotify here, listen to this. Here is Instagram, follow this here. Gps, do this. And the more that you can kind of like zoom out, like those tools are all great and have helped in so many ways, but the more that you can intentionally be like no, no, no, this is I want to spend time with these people, I want to spend my time doing this. I want to spend my time or I want to have access to this or this. Cut that out a little bit more.
Speaker 1:And what if? Are you open to being challenged on that a little bit, Of course? What if it's just fully engaging with the moment in front of you?
Speaker 2:And that's the biggest, then that is the most important part of it all, because if you can't be present in a moment, then you're not actually in that moment, nor do you actually want to be in that moment. Because the more that you focus ahead and worry about that, that's anxiety. The more you think about the past and resent or beat yourself about that, that's depression. But the more that you can be focused in the moment, then you don't worry about any, which are neither real.
Speaker 2:And the more that you can be in the moment. That's the only thing that's really happening.
Speaker 1:Because I find that my mind does a lot of the same things where it's like constantly evaluating, constantly anticipating, and do I like this? Am I showing up, kind of just falling out of the present moment and over intellectualizing everything? And that doesn't mean that there's not a time and place to plan, to schedule, to do those types of things, but I've found that more often than not my thoughts are actually just pulling me away from the moment that I'm in, rather than just going to be here now and I'm interested what life brings me next and then I'll be with that too.
Speaker 2:Yeah totally no. I could talk about this all day.
Speaker 2:This is like where my brain goes A lot of the time. My therapist once upon a time told me, um, intimidatingly introspective, uh, cause I think a lot about thinking like there was. It reminded me of a moment where I mean it was when, like my childhood home, which we moved out of when I was 10, so I had to been somewhere between, like maybe like six and eight we were going through this cabinet that had all of our like school projects that we had, I mean, in elementary school, and I pulled one out and I'll never forget it, because it was this uh, it was a picture of like a person with a brain and I had it broken up. It's like, oh, put what the things you think about are, and on mine, one of them was breathing. And the teachers know, just like question mark, like what do you mean breathing?
Speaker 2:I'm like, yeah, just sometimes I just sit there and think about how I like constantly just inhale and exhale, and if I think about it then I have to like consciously think about it, but if I'm thinking about something else, then I just am going about my day and I was like yeah, you were that kid, but it's but the more that you can at least pull yourself and separate that like me versus I and be present like this that's because, again, so many people are so focused on other things they can't enjoy whatever's in front of them, no matter what it is. They could be at Disneyland with the kids, or, and they're still just their mind somewhere else.
Speaker 1:So how do you, how have you found that you can get out of your head and back into your heart?
Speaker 2:What are? What are things that you've noticed that maybe help you get out of those thought spirals? Um, I mean, I'm someone who generally has above average anxiety than most, and a healthy dose of ADHD.
Speaker 2:And so I've realized like I have certain things in my life that I have to do on a regular basis is like just like my own maintenance in life, like I go to the gym every morning, I know that's part of what I have to do and if I don't do it enough, then my brain starts to not working as well as it used to. I've learned that because of so much of my life is so pragmatic, numerical, measurable, that, like painting, is something I've done in the last two and a half years, that was completely.
Speaker 1:What types of painting have you experimented?
Speaker 2:I mean painting. I usually gravitate towards like landscape and flowers specifically, but uh, that's been a fun one and also like a thing that's challenged myself, because, like I mean again, like if I go talk to general people like, oh, I'm not creative, I'm not artistic, I'm like, yeah, because that was in like a elementary school or middle school class, the story you were telling yourself exactly, and so as soon as I got to a point in life I'm like I'm going to challenge the things that I think I am, and there were some some like nope, I'm right, that is definitely me.
Speaker 2:But I'm like actually I am more of this person, and which again helped me find out who I am and what my strengths are, what my weaknesses are and like settle into myself and also realize how much social time I need to have, because I have an extroverted person and I need to be around my people and have the right people to talk to about things, and that usually sets me up for the right success.
Speaker 2:But then also just realizing, kind of the signs of like oh, there's something you need to process a little better, there's a feeling that you really haven't like felt or really, um, uh, fleshed out completely, because so many people I mean the things that we use to mask are the things that are usually keeping us from things we don't want to face. I mean that's why people, I mean that's why drug and alcohol addiction is soific, but then also people that just can't have a moment of silence alone. They always have to have an AirPod, listening to a song, watching a show or something. It's like hey, if I turn that off right now and just put you in a room, what happens? Like, oh, I could never, that could never be a load of my thoughts.
Speaker 1:I'm like, maybe think about that're all like a mind, body, spirit complex. I think we can all agree that there's thoughts happening, that there's a body and that there's something that's observing both of those going on. Whatever you ascribe that to, whatever Right, um, but I feel like it's uh, we go and hide in the mind and, uh, life is to be experienced and I think the mind is an awesome sidekick but a pretty poor driver, master.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But it's a place to hide because we can come up with a narrative to convince ourselves of anything about what's going on, when usually the truth is there's an experience that the universe life brought to you and you keep avoiding it and it cares enough that it keeps coming back until you decide to just allow yourself to experience it, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And, um, you know, one of my narratives is I need to be the strong one, um, that I'm always serving, helping everybody else. And when you kind of get to the root of that, especially as a business owner like I put, I have, um, put an immense amount of pressure on myself of, like, I have to perform because everyone's depending on me and I and I can't let them down. And well, what am I communicating subconsciously when I show up and say I don't think you can handle hard things, so I have to work really hard so you don't have to deal with hard things in your life, right? Um, and that was something that I was bringing into my relationships and bringing into my business for a long time, and what I've realized is that's not true. Um, everyone, life is good for everybody and I don't need to protect anyone from it, and the only one I was really trying to protect in the end was myself.
Speaker 2:Right, it's usually what it comes down to, yeah.
Speaker 1:And so everything that I feared the most on an entrepreneurial journey has happened. I've dealt with a multi-year expensive lawsuit. I've had a lot of people. I've, I've, I feel like you've made it. When you develop, you get some haters. You get, you know, I've had to let people go. Even last week I let 12 people go in my business and that was just an emotional. It was. It was the right thing for the business and the direction that we're going, but it was. It was like a rough week, you know, just a lot of feelings and easy to get stuck into like self-judgment or justification, but the reality is it's felt sad, you know, because these are people that we're not working together every day. You just don't see each other that much anymore.
Speaker 1:You know yeah and uh. So anyway, and in my experiences I usually go into my mind to hide from the experience that was custom delivered by life just for me yeah and that life cares enough for that feeling, for that emotion, to stick around until I'm ready for it.
Speaker 1:And sometimes that's with a good laugh, sometimes that's with a good cry, whatever that might be. But it's like there's no way around these experiences. You just gotta go through them and and? And the mind can't predict what's on the other side of that big feeling. It can't, and so that's why the thing that I always say is it's not an adventure until you don't know what's next, Because until your mind can't anticipate what's next, are you really living, Are you present? And that's the adventure right. Once you don't know what happens.
Speaker 1:If I have this conversation that I know needs to be had in my relationship, if I address this thing at work, if I do this over here or whatever, if I try this thing that I could fail at right, the mind doesn't know what's on the other side of that and that's why it prevents us from doing it. But it isn't until we work through that. On the other side it's like the thing we couldn't have planned for, and my reminder of that every day is my fourth child. My wife and I were really struggling in our marriage, assumed it was kind of to the point where we kind of assumed it wasn't going to work out, for which we were for sure done having kids. You don't keep having kids. You know what I mean. And um, we, you know we started with marriage counseling that ultimately led to my realization of I'm not showing up like a partner in this relationship and I'm not showing up as a partner because I I'm still have a lot of self judgment and things I'm struggling with and I've just been projecting that on her the last 10 years and um, working through that. I spent like a year convincing a therapist that I wasn't that bad. Yeah, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Like, bless his heart, Um, but on the other side of confronting my fears of self-doubt, self-criticism, all of those types of things, uh, that led to, uh, a renewal in our relationship and we did end up with um a number four, and he's my little reminder that it's not an adventure until you don't know what's next and the thing that could be on the other side of that fear, that's my Xander. Like he's not here. If I didn't work through that fear, right, Um, the business. If I didn't work through the fear of what if this doesn't work and go for it? Um, and so I think that that's the, that's a fulfilling life Doesn't mean you don't. There's still planning, there's still structure, there's still a lot of things that the mind is useful for. But, man, if you don't have a few things going on that you don't know what's on the other side of it's like. That's to me, that's what keeps life alive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it reminds me of the quote from Night at the Museum, where, near the end of the movie, have, at that, start to build that confidence because, like the first time you have to go walk into the darkness and you don't know what's going to happen, you're like, oh, I made this worse than it ever was.
Speaker 2:And then you have that five or six times, like, actually I can, I can get used to this, and then you have confidence in yourself, what you're doing, no matter if you know what the outcome is, because you know, worst case scenario, I fail and I failed before and that wasn't so bad and I learned something from it and I keep moving on. Yeah, so it's, it's. It's fascinating at life, especially at the point where you can start to be present, aware and intentional because, like, I mean, I know people in my life that I mean I've been going to therapy for years and they just keep banging their head of the wall like, no, it's not me, it's it's them everybody, it's all up here it's like even just hearing about you and your experience with your wife and being able to say like, yeah, I was showing up wrong.
Speaker 2:I see why I was and I can change it. I can be that person. And because I want to do this not just for you but for me too because it's not like that relationship's the only place that that feeling's going to happen- it no longer felt authentic for me to show up as a superior in that relationship.
Speaker 1:And I was showing up as a superior in that relationship because I had a lot of guilt, shame, frustration, and so I was just projecting. You know what I mean. And um, cause it's not about being the same, but there is. Equality is not the same as sameness, right? And um, we've been working on cool projects together, cause we are pretty unique. Um and uh, I think that's again. I just think that's what, that's what makes life fun.
Speaker 1:But there is this, I call it the practice. Um, cause you work through the fear and life surprises and delights you with an experience your mind never could have anticipated or planned for. And then it happens again. We think that once we've worked through one fear, the mind then wants to say well, we've already put ourselves out there, we've already gone through the hard thing once before, we've already put ourselves out there, We've already gone through the hard thing once before.
Speaker 1:And um, my, my favorite example of this is in is in Forrest Gump, where his heart gets broken from from this girl and he starts running and then he runs and he runs and he runs and almost develops like a cult following. They're like clearly he has it all figured out. That's why he's running all the time. And then until one day he's like I done, I'm done running, and then he moves on to the next stage of his life and, um, that's what I think is beautiful about adult and human development is you're going to work through one fear that's going to give you a surprise and delight of a life experience, and then you're going to get another one and that's the good news. A lot of the times, the mind goes back to I already did the hard, why do I need to do the hard thing again? Um, cause you. Cause. That means you're still living, it means you still have an adventure to go on. It means like that's the good news, that's not the bad news, and, um, so that's the only other thing I'd say there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's, we can pivot after this, or else I could talk about this for hours. Um is like the. The traditional definition of hinduism is, I mean sorry, of karma, and hinduism is very different than what we interpret is as a western culture. I mean, we see, uh, karma is, oh, bad things happen to bad people, good things happen to good people. But in reality, karma is the cyclical process that you find yourself before you can learn the lesson to overcome it, to then reach your life purpose, your dharma.
Speaker 2:And so so many people find themselves in these cycles of beating their head against the wall, not knowing what's there, not knowing what's going on, until they can learn a lesson. And then, in your experience of like, once you've learned this lesson, now you feel like you have this responsibility because it's not your authentic self anymore, and then you can take action and change because, like, knowledge without action is torment but doesn't mean it's easy, you know. And so I'm in a similar, similar ways, and I mean I'm always in a cycle of it, of like trying to go, what am I trying? Like, if it's first, I find myself banging my head, I'm like, all right, step back. Like, what am I trying to learn? Like what do I? What's the universe trying to teach me?
Speaker 1:Yeah, if I created this for myself, what was I hoping to learn from it?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, I agree, but jager bazagran, I'm uh, I want to talk a little more about you now. I mean we've talked a lot about you but want to talk more about uh, I mean kind of you, your background, um, and everything that you've done, because I'm born and raised in utah, from spanish for now moved a little bit more north in provo. Uh been a marketing guy since I mean forever, starting an amateur going to Adobe. But I mean maybe give a little summary of uh kind of early life and led you to starting your own business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I'm number six of 10 children.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So one of those and um developed this, the story in my head of the way that I went at life and get what I want is be a good boy, do do good things, go on the mission, get the degree, get the job, get married, have the kids, get the house like check, check, check, check, check, kind of working through all of those things. And um, and I did all that and I actually loved all of it, but it never, it never satisfied the way I thought it was going to satisfy. Uh, going through that, and so I'm like, well, clearly it's the next thing, clearly it's the next thing, clearly it's the next thing. And um, and so, yeah, I started my career at Omniture and I learned how to uh deploy web analytics and uh marry that data with customer back-end customer data so that marketers could make data informed decisions to spend their marketing dollars smart where they would get the best ROI. That's what I, that's the hard skill that I developed early in my career, and my degree was in information systems, and so I got introduced to marketing through data, not through the practice of marketing itself. Yet the science, not the art, yeah. And then, inevitably, and what they would all say was. This is great. You've given us all the information we need to make great decisions, but we don't have the bandwidth or expertise to implement what you're recommending.
Speaker 1:Okay, and so I experimented with a company that I worked at in college doing tech support, to see what does this work for a small business as well, going from like 25 employees to over 250 employees, because we figured out their marketing for them in a way that was reverse engineerable, with just the math mathed right, and it gave them what they needed to grow. And I said, okay, while I was working with them and got them all the data, they're like we don't know how to implement this, and so I said, okay, let me figure out how to do that. I'm a scrappy guy, so that's what I did. Is I thought I would be doing. I thought I would be a data and analytics consultant for Mike. When I broke off and did my own thing, the name of my first business was found ROI Cause I hope you find the ROI in your data. Everyone, everyone's like what's found Roy and like some off brand. Where's Waldo?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Um, so I changed it to disruptive advertising, which is out outsmart your competition, don't outspend them. Um, and that and that led to me starting. You know, I broke off officially in 2013 is when I no longer had a full-time job and, um, so now I'm 12 years into that journey and it's it's been awesome. It started in my basement, uh, we have about 120 employees now, um, and we're like literally one of. We are the top rated performance marketing agency in the country, and because we figured that out and we went for it, and so that's kind of like professionally, just quick snapshot of what I've done there. But I will tell you, life and entrepreneurship is the fast track to being confronted with your fears, and then what happens is you start using business as a way to cope with and avoid them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, I get the dopamine hits all the time at work. People listen to me, people think I'm cool, I'm making money, I feel kind of like a big shot. And then I go home and it doesn't feel that way at all.
Speaker 2:Diapers need to be changed. The house is dirty. Garbage needs to come though.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so that's the. That's a little bit more of the journey that I've been on totally and then a couple of years ago, um, do I?
Speaker 1:do I sell my business? Do I like, what do I do now? Because I just checked most of the boxes that I was looking to and the vision that I had for the business had been realized. And without a vision, the people perish. If you don't have something, something, an intention, you kind of just start meandering for a little while and I didn't know what I wanted, but I didn't feel right to sell it and so I. So I kind of took a step back to kind of well, what's next for me, what's in this next stage of life?
Speaker 1:And, um, part of what was feeling uncomfortable is that all of these businesses I was doing marketing for, um, this is, this is gonna be an extreme statement, but it felt kind of true. It's like am I a drug dealer or a marketer? Because for a lot of these businesses they say I'll be happy when you help me hit this business goal. And then we would hit the business goal and they still weren't happy. And I'm like I'm doing the thing and they're doing the same thing. And we keep telling ourselves we'll be happy when we accomplish this business thing. And then we accomplish that business thing and we still feel the same. So what's going on? And and that's where I again this was call it my professional midlife crisis of like, what does this mean? Because it doesn't feel good to just keep showing up and doing this, and that's what led me to developing Disruptive University, and that is helping a business understand what makes it unique. It's why, beyond making money, it's true differentiators, the values that drive it, the inefficiency it solves in the marketplace, the value that it provides to their customers. There is like a unique vision that this business needs to find, because without it, it is just about making money. Okay, but the right vision, paradoxically enough, helps you generally grow it better and make more money. And then their strategy, which is who is your customer that you're really serving? Have you translated the business goals into marketing goals and are you really serving this customer at each step in their life journey, and how you're serving them with your products or services? And then, ultimately, you got to execute that right. And so I've, I've, I've redefined how we help businesses win from a marketing standpoint, because we were mostly just doing strong execution for them. Now we get more involved with what's your vision, what's the strategy to accomplish that vision and now let's go execute against that, and then that's the disruptive marketer. That's the course that I've put together in the program that I train my own people with and that when people reach out to us, we say we can help you in two ways. We can either do it for you or we can train you how to do this for yourself as well. Now, and then I do the same thing for just humans.
Speaker 1:I call it Authenticity Wins. I've got a book that's releasing later this year and helping an individual do that for themselves. What makes you unique? What's your why, beyond making money, what are your unique strengths and weaknesses that allow you to serve the world and be served by the world? What are your values that drive? Uh, what's going on in your life? What's the inefficiencies that you see that you can help other people with? What's the value that that's contributing? And we, we kind of find that clarity and that's the authenticity wins book and some of the courses and things that I've put together, cause I feel like without that it's easy to just kind of devolve into pure capitalism, to just make money and it just, and I don't. I don't think that that's good or bad, I just think it's not satisfying after a little while.
Speaker 1:It's very hollow After a while. I think it's actually quite fulfilling for a little bit yeah totally yeah, and sometimes you kind of need to make some money before you realize it doesn't matter as much as you thought it did. So I, so I honor that path, that anyone.
Speaker 2:That's the path I had to go on wasn't being scratched, no matter how much I kept scratching at it. And because, again, like when you have these moments that you define, if I can hit this much revenue, if I can hit this much head count, if I can do, I mean, whatever the outcome might be, I mean the outcome happens in a flash and it's gone. But if you can change your brain from going from, I mean it's always good to have goals and plans, and I like to think of it similar to the way I think about like. I mean, a podcast interview is like it's a walk in the woods. I generally know where I'm going to start. I generally know where I'm going to go and how I'm going to end, but doesn't mean I'm not going to see like a fun detour and try to see what that looks like. Maybe come back if I need to, or maybe there's another path I don't even know about.
Speaker 2:And so the people that you wanted to be with, or were you just all about this one goal and so beholden to this goal that you were going to do that you didn't like doing it, and then, once you get there, you don't even know where to go next because you're so fixed on this one goal to have, and money is one that most people fix their way to, and I've been lucky enough to talk to so many people who have been and had financial success for them to get to the point like, yeah, it reached a point where it didn't really matter anymore, but I wanted to find my own fulfillment in other things, and it can be so many different things. And that goes back to kind of like the hindu principle of dharma is everybody has a purpose that they need to find the joy in their life. They're calling their life meaning and it's unique to everybody, like even even using like a relationship as an example. Like you and your wife each have their own dharma and you can support them in it. You can help that like well, not help.
Speaker 2:You can champion them to do it, but at the end of the day, it is their thing to do and you can't do it for them. Theirs can't be yours. You can't tag team it, tag team it. One can be massive, one can be smaller, but at the end of the day, it's you that has to get to go through this journey. And once you find yourself in the journey and get yourself away from the destinations, then that's when a lot of the magic moments start to happen and that that that itch that you wanted to scratch is slowly starts feeling scratched.
Speaker 1:Well, and I think the the belief that I was confronted with, and you can probably relate to some degree, is that I only am enough when I do enough, and there is this paradox of being and doing that is part of the human experience right.
Speaker 1:Yes being all the time, then there's no context or container for it to mean anything Right. And so, at least where the belief that I was confronted with is am I enough? Innately, or do I do? I need to do some level of accomplishment to finally be enough, and I feel like that's, that's a belief that everyone will be confronted with, uh, throughout their life, and we will forget from time to time but I think especially kind of like in that 20s and 30s, we base most of our identity on what we do, not who we are.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, I actually think that's a beautiful part of the human lifetime, by the way, because when you're little being is enough. When you're old, being is enough, and there's this in in the body of the book, where you base all your earth on what you're doing. Just to remember, it was a sandcastle I was building the whole time anyway. Now it's gone, the tide came and took it and I was always enough the whole time. That was never in question. And then you can kind of take and run with that and almost land in nihilism, which is nothing matters. Then, right, which, sure, if that's what you want to believe, that's fine. Or it all does, right, both are just stories, right, but the reality is there's. It's a paradox. That's what life is. Life is a paradox of something and nothing being and doing and, um, both give each other meaning, because one without the other doesn't really work. And so I like to build sandcastles, and I know it's going to get knocked over, and then I get to build another one, yeah, right. And so that to me is like I think that's what makes life fun and enjoyable and that's where, with business, I try not to get overly attached to it, because this pivot that I've made for the business means that I actually ended up having way too many people focused on execution.
Speaker 1:And guess what AI is doing to a lot of the execution-based roles. They're just not needed the way that they used to be. Right Now I need marketers that understand vision and strategy and how to leverage the tools to get the execution done, and that's a pretty big pivot. Execution done and that's a pretty big pivot. And I could hold on to the agency and the business of old for as long as I can until it just gets ripped from my cold dead body Right, or I can adapt and evolve with that and um so, with the university, with the agency, disruptive advertising, it's like again, I'm like I already did the hard things and here's another opportunity to step into the unknown, and I think a lot of us are feeling that business wise right now. There's a lot of unknown in the economy, with AI, with all of these things, and at least one guy's perspective is that's the good news, because we don't know what's next and we get to experience what's on the other side of that, and I'm excited to be on that journey.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's. It's a lot of that perspective to you. Like that's one thing I've been thinking a lot about recently is the difference between like I mean joy and happiness, and like sadness and despair, cause, at the end of the day, like life isn't linear, there's going to be highs, there's going to be lows, and that's one of the few guarantees that we have. But once you get to the mentality of nothing lasts forever, everything is going to pass eventually can either be the best thing in the world or the worst thing in the world. Because if you look at that at the highs and you're like this isn't going to last forever, everything's going to come crashing, and then you come into the negatives and you're like this is going to last forever, it's never going to end. But if you can flip that script and instead, in the highs, be like I'm going to enjoy this Because it's not gonna last forever exactly and then, once you get to the negatives, instead of being tormented by, my life is over.
Speaker 2:This is never gonna end. You're like I just gotta get through this we're gonna learn.
Speaker 2:It's gonna just gonna feel it there's something to learn, yeah and so you can have this joy of life of realizing like, oh yeah, like the goods are here, the bads will go great. But then, on the despair side of saying the happiness isn't going to be here forever and the pain is going to be there forever, and it's just like this mental switch and I mean the same way with like. I mean, if you're a business owner, you're looking at well, how ai is going to impact my business, how are tariffs going to impact my business? What's the economy look like? There's a, there's a laundry list of questions that could stress you out forever.
Speaker 2:Or you could say or it's a good time to redefine the way I think about my sales and marketing plan, or it's going to be the different way to pivot my entire business strategy, or is there a new product that I need to do to think of this? Or how do I think about my head count? Do I really need this many people and if, do these people even want to do this anymore? I had to be upskill and up-train that and it's like, like you said, I like thinking of things more of the than the big scary beast behind the wall that's waiting to get me.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And then where I challenge myself and all of us, is do I believe I'm enough to deal with whatever life brings? And I think the answer is I am. And the next question is do I believe everyone else is enough to deal with what life brings them? And the answer is yes.
Speaker 1:I don't need to protect people from life, Right, and? And I don't need to protect myself from life. It's that that's actually what gets us stuck Um and so, whether that's in business or in a relationship. I've got four kids, it's. It's easy for me to want to try and protect people from life. Yeah, and cause, cause, that's known, that's again, I can anticipate that. And there is a level of responsibility. I'm not. I'm not saying that there's not a level of responsibility that we have for the relationships in our lives, but not to remove life and to unconsciously communicate lack of belief in their ability to deal with life, which is a projection of our unwillingness to think we can deal with life as it comes. And I believe that, come what may, all is well. I get to work through it. I don't get to control what the experience is of all of that, but I do get to control if I allow myself to experience it and do my best with it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you've survived everything so far.
Speaker 1:So far.
Speaker 2:And I mean it's so important because, like, there's one thing I think about a lot Like I don't have kids and I'm still on the fence if I want to. But I think a lot about like, what if I did? What would my theory be? What would my ethos be of child raising? And like, because everyone's always phrased it as like you don't have kids, so I'm like you mean, do I did? My whole theory would be like I want to prepare someone for the world that they are, someone who can give back, doesn't take from the general system that we live in, and be prepared to face hard things and have had gone through hard things so they're prepared for it, whereas me, we're in the age, or maybe at the tail end, of like the helicopter parents, of like, oh, I need to protect my kid from everything. Nothing bad can happen to them, and then they go out to the real world and and hard things happen yeah, and they don't know what to do about it.
Speaker 2:And so it's like, yeah, like, oh, my kid just like tripped and scuffed his knee and like, yeah, the needle healed, now he knows not to run downstairs. We're like something. Like something so trivial, um, but it's in the same way for all of us. Like we want to protect ourselves, and part of it is our own, I mean, brain and our mental capacity to say like, oh, like that's the big bad wolf can't go over there, which is like part of our wiring, as I mean these once neanderthalic creatures that needed that to survive. But now that's not necessarily the case. And like I mean I could talk about the book forever, but one of my favorite books I've read last year is a new earth by eckhart tolle, and he kind of it's a beautiful book, beautiful book, and I love how he prefaces it like there's there's never been a book that's had an intro. That's just like punched me in the face for like everything, because he essentially talks about how everything has a moment of enlightenment. At some point a flower had to bloom for the first time, and this is in me of like middle of me, just loving to paint flowers and finding fascination when I was like, how did you know that? That's the perfect example. And he's like the first time the carbon turned into a diamond yada, yada, yada. And then, even in the intro, he's like this book is either going to change your life or it's going to be a waste of time for you.
Speaker 2:And, um, what was I saying with that? Oh, um, on the like narratives that we tell ourselves to keep ourselves, like that cognitive dissonance, like the brain is super powerful, like it wants to protect itself as much as possible and it likes to trick you. Like the one I think about a lot is. I mean when people like, oh, they're probably thinking this. Or like, oh, someone's watching me and doing that. Like, no, no, it's actually your brain just personifying your own insecurities, fears, whatever, on something else, so that you can look and be like, oh, they're probably thinking about how much I look weird doing this or how much they hate that I do that. Like, no, no, there's probably something inside of you that's not truly at peace with something and you need to, you need to think about that.
Speaker 2:So the book, I mean. What motivated you to want to put pen to paper? Cause, I mean, I'm like I'm someone who thinks a lot about these things, but at what point you're like either hey, I've got to get this out of my head, just to get it out on something, cause I I'm a big believer in like, when my brain's quiet, I need to read, or I need to take in information, and when my brain's really loud, I need to write it down. So I'm curious if you had similar that experience of just having all of these thoughts and growth and wanting to put it down, or being like this is what's helped me. I think this will help other people and obviously like not mutually exclusive and can both be part of it.
Speaker 1:You know, I don't know that I've thought about it quite that way. It's, um, I get the sense that you're an external processor and I am as well, right, and so some people think about things in their head and by the time they say something out loud, they've thought about it a lot of different ways. Um, for myself, I actually really enjoy processing out loud with someone to make sense of things. Cool, okay, and so I found that the creation process is I usually am pretty strong at getting the core concepts and outlines of things that I want to put together, and I actually put it into a course format first for the practice that I go through on an annual basis of annual renewal and practicing a lot of these principles that we're talking about in here. And I said I want to get this into something that is like my annual practice, and so I actually put that all together and that's what I go through once a year, and I share my takeaways from that with a group of entrepreneurs that I go on a trip with once a year, and I'm like I'm going to turn this into something that's a little easier for me to and simple for me to like work through all of this, and so it actually turned into an outline, a practice that I'd been doing for a while.
Speaker 1:And then I said this is really helpful for me. I'll put it in a course and make it available for people at my company, right? And then I'm like, okay, there's a lot of people getting cool benefit from the courses that they're going through in my company. I'll start sharing this outside of that, and people seem to be getting a lot of value from that. And then I'm like, okay, well, the course is a longer way, because it takes 10, 12 weeks to work through all of that. Um, your first time after that usually a weekend, you can work through all of it. Um, and I'm like, man, what would I have wished that I had had when I was a little younger to understand these things? I'm like, oh, a book that I could listen to in three hours, you know. And so then I just put it into a book format, and so for me it's more of a taking, something that I've learned, and I guess 10 years and a few hundred grand of, like, therapy, coaching, consultants, um, all of that yeah.
Speaker 1:Right, and I'm like it took me this long to figure all of these things out for myself. What if I wrote a book about it that, if I had read 10 years ago, would have just been really helpful for me at that time?
Speaker 2:Totally.
Speaker 1:In the midst of marital struggles, in the midst of business struggles, in the midst of doubting if I'm enough to deal with what life throws at me, or whatever. So I'm like, okay, well, let's put it into a book. And the length of book, I'm like I want one that I can kind of listen to in a day, on one and a half, 1.75. Yeah, and I'm like, great. And so anytime I record something, anytime I write something, anytime I post something, the only question I ask is does this inspire me? Do I get value from this?
Speaker 2:because if not, then what am I well like? Why?
Speaker 1:am I sharing it. It's just theory at that point, right, and so that's kind of the evolution of the steps that led to putting it in a book, and so I didn't ever quite think about it the way that you were, that you were talking about it just kind of was a natural progression yeah, which I mean it feels now like I see the logical progression through it all and I like that.
Speaker 2:I mean you've gone through the work where it's not. I mean you see people write some books like look how smart I am, everyone's gonna buy this, I'm gonna make a lot of money. It's like that's weird. But then once you get to the point where, like yo man, like this has helped me a lot, it's helping all these contexts, like I also kind of do just want to like write it down and then now when I do, my yeah, like this could help someone and if, like if it helps 5, 10, 500, 5 000, 5 million people start this journey to be their more authentic self, be present, be intentional about their life, then like yeah.
Speaker 1:My only criteria is does it help me? Yeah, and if the end? If the answer is yes, I don't care if anyone else does.
Speaker 2:Have you read the creative act by rick rubin? Okay, because that's what reminds that of me is like if you feel confident with something that you create and put out into the.
Speaker 2:I have dive into your brain more when that happens. Jacob, this has been great. I always I joke about it, but, like every time I record with someone, I always have like this idea of how everything's going to go and I always, like, the experience always trumps that. Like I always have a better conversation, get to know someone better and connect with someone better. So thank you for being another data point in that. But before we wrap up, I want to ask the two questions I always ask everybody before the episode is uh or sorry. Before ending, every episode is one. If you could have someone on the small lake city podcast and hear more about what they're up to in their story, who would you want to hear from?
Speaker 1:Oh well, the first. I mean you already mentioned his name. You should get Eckhart on here.
Speaker 2:Oh, like if I would, if I were to talk to him, I'd be like listen, I want a weekend, I want to just yeah record the entire thing like his brain, like that book alone was something that like and like. You know those books where, like you read a chapter, you're like, all right, put this book away for a minute. I need like a week to really just sit with this integrate and that was one like.
Speaker 2:I met a friend who read the book too and they're like yeah, I listened to it over a weekend. It it wasn't really my thing. I'm like and like, like, not saying you did it wrong, but like yeah probably didn't do it wrong.
Speaker 2:It probably might also like probably not even ready for it, but I would love to talk with him. He is probably one of like there's like my favorite people that I mean that card's probably more recent one, but um, atlas of the heart by bernie brown, like it's those sort of people that can look at a problem and think about it a little bit differently approach things from a different way, and I mean, I'm someone who could sit at a table and just sit and talk and well, I mean shocker, um, but no, that would be a fun one to have.
Speaker 2:And then, lastly, if you want to find out more information about Disruptive about you pre-order the book or get a notification when that's going to come out, where's the best place to find more information?
Speaker 1:So the agency we pair our marketers with brands they believe in. So if you need an agency, disruptiveadvertisingcom We've got a really cool vision strategy execution audit that we provide for free. That usually blows anyone's mind, whether they work with us or not. Cool Disruptive University is more of the personal growth development, marketing, entrepreneurship type trainings there, and then I'm most active on LinkedIn so you can follow me there, and then the book comes out later this year Authenticity Wins authenticitywinscom, and we have our episodes being recorded that we'll be launching with our podcast as well.
Speaker 2:So yeah, yeah, so definitely go follow along. I'm excited to read the book when it comes out. Yeah, I'll definitely keep an eye out for that. But, jacob, this has been great. Thanks so much for coming on Excited for all the things you're.
