Chad de Lisle

At Disruptive Advertising I've found truly fertile soil for my personal, professional, and financial growth. And it's continued to be fertile, it's why I stay. I know that I tend to be still waters without people around me to trouble them and spur my growth. I've found that here, and I'm so grateful I get to market for the best damn marketing agency on the planet. I love my job!! I've been playing Dungeons and Dragons with the same group of friends since 1997, and that's where I learned to be freaking awesome at collaboration, problem solving, improvisation, leadership, and conflict resolution. I also blame the game for giving me this incessant need to turn every work activity into play! If I'm not having fun, I'm bummed. I've got an ear for music as well, and one of my first adult jobs was teaching guitar lessons at a place called The Music School in American Fork, Ut. I'm not naturally talented at the guitar, but its one of the places where I learned that if I put in the work and seek out good teachers, I can get good at something. The same principle has helped me in dozens of areas in my life. My mom taught me when I was afraid to learn to rollerblade that you've got to be willing to look dumb at something for a while before you can get good. So you'll find me out here being a doofus in the name of figuring stuff out all the time :) I got started in digital marketing in 2007 as a customer service agent taking calls from angry clients all day. Turns out I'm really good at helping people who are furious ha ha ha -- it led to my managers teaching me more skills and turning me into a tech support agent and eventually an internet coach in the days when the ecommerce space could still be won with a clever niche and a dropshipper (before the days of Amazon's dominance). Eventually, I grew into an account management role where I learned some hard lessons about being too cocky and making promises. Some of my first victories were in the dental, real estate, and small business loan space. I found that I could be tenacious and creative in thinking through marketing strategy. I also found that I really loved getting to know people and their businesses and working to see them succeed. All of these roles were simply a means to the end of finishing my undergrad and going on to become an English professor, but by the time I graduated I was making more money in marketing than I ever would as a professor, and I didn't want to uproot my family and take on the debt necessary to fulfill my selfish vanity of being called "doctor" lol-- best decision I've ever made.