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In this episode, Rustam Irani shares a leadership lesson that fundamentally changed how he approaches trust, relationships, and marketing. Through a personal story of working first as a higher education marketing leader and later from the agency side, he explores what happens when relationships turn out to be transactional rather than genuine. Rustam breaks down five lessons he's learned about building authentic professional relationships, protecting generosity without becoming cynical, and why the same principles of trust apply directly to higher education marketing. Ultimately, he argues that lasting enrollment success begins with becoming the kind of person—and organization—that people genuinely want to trust.
Timestamps
- 00:00 – A personal story about trust, leadership, and seeing both sides of the vendor-client relationship
- 03:18 – The tables turn: experiencing rejection after moving to the agency side
- 04:45 – Why genuine relationships reveal themselves over time
- 06:01 – Lesson 1 & 2: Recognizing transactional relationships while protecting your generosity
- 08:44 – Lesson 3: Doing due diligence before extending trust
- 09:20 – Lesson 4: Why deep relationships outperform large networks
- 11:06 – Lesson 5: Applying trust-building principles to higher education marketing
- 12:05 – Final recap: The five trust tests every leader should remember
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Transcript
Introduction to Leadership Lessons
00:00:01
Rustam Irani
There are many lessons that you learn, I guess, along the way in being leadership, working with many different people and being on both sides of the table.
00:00:14
Rustam Irani
One of my most incredible learning experiences started number of years ago when I was at a school and I was in a position where we were working with vendors, we're working with partners and I had somebody who came to me, seemed very genuine, very interested in getting to learn about me, not just pitching their product or their service.
00:00:37
Rustam Irani
I opened the door and when things switched and I was on the other side, It's amazing how the tables turn.
Building Trust in Careers
00:00:48
Rustam Irani
Hi, I'm Ristam Urani. Welcome back to another episode of ROI University. I'm a former higher ed marketer, CMO, as well as recovering engineer.
00:00:59
Rustam Irani
And in this episode, going to tell you a little bit about building trust and You know, really just doing some of the basics as you move in your career about treating others like you'd like to be treated and not forgetting kind of your positions over the years the roles you had and, you know, who's on the other side.
00:01:23
Rustam Irani
Are they genuine? Are they not? And so there are some lessons I learned in this experience.
Vendor Collaboration Experience
00:01:30
Rustam Irani
Basically, this person had an agency, they were working at a marketing company, they had a lot of sites that they had, potential students that look like good fits for us, for our school. And so I decided after multiple times of him getting seemed like he was getting to know me, building a relationship.
00:01:52
Rustam Irani
I said, Yeah, you know, let's let's figure out a way to work together. And at that time, you know, we were kind of pushing back on these types of opportunities. But I felt there was a genuine connection there. I felt like he was genuinely interested in working together and doing something and building a relationship.
00:02:11
Rustam Irani
So I opened the door, we worked together. Of course, not always what it seemed. The quality of the traffic, the inquiries, the students leads that we received, they were just not very high intent or really the type of student that we were looking for. They may have been good fits for other schools, which was a bit of my concern. But again,
00:02:40
Rustam Irani
because we had built a little bit of a relationship and trust. I thought he got to know about a little bit about us, what we were looking for. And I opened those doors and I trusted that A, he cared and B, he understood what we were looking for.
00:02:54
Rustam Irani
Of course that didn't happen. wasn't upset. We just kind of broke off the contract. We decided we're not gonna be using that service or that product anymore.
00:03:05
Rustam Irani
and things are great. That's fine. We kind of went our ways and really didn't keep in touch much.
Reconnecting and the Importance of Genuine Relationships
00:03:13
Rustam Irani
I'd say probably four or five years later, here I am on the other side of the table now, where actually I was working at an agency and a marketing company.
00:03:24
Rustam Irani
And was believing in our product. I thought we had a great product. We had a couple of sites as well that I thought could be, you know, great opportunities for schools looking for certain types of students. So I had reached back out to him. First, I sent him an email, no response. And then I sent,
00:03:42
Rustam Irani
a couple follow-up LinkedIn connections because we were actually years ago we had connected through LinkedIn and kept in touch no response then finally the third response that came to me and it said If this is trying to get me to buy something, am not interested.
00:04:03
Rustam Irani
don't want to be sold. And quite frankly, I'm not interested in anything right now. That was pretty much the extent of the response that I got back from somebody years later that I was never in touch with, you know, through those years. And the last time we worked together, had opened those doors for them.
00:04:28
Rustam Irani
that was honestly shocking to me. And it just got me thinking a little bit more about who you're building your relationships with, how you're doing that.
00:04:39
Rustam Irani
You know, And is it a genuine relationship? Are people going to truly want to help you when there's nothing in it for them? Right.
00:04:49
Rustam Irani
So I've kind of come up with five, you know, basically lessons or things I look out for, you know, in the future when I'm building these relationships and working with others and especially now having a marketing agency or a company, you know,
00:05:08
Rustam Irani
I believe in reciprocity and giver's gain and all of those things. And I can tell you the years I've recruited multiple people for positions, haven't got paid a penny for it.
00:05:21
Rustam Irani
There's lots of other ways that I've helped others just because I'm grateful to be able to do so. And if I can find any opportunity to do that, I do it. On LinkedIn, I support every job opening that's out there because if I can do one little part and somebody sees that post, that's huge, right, for me.
Lessons on Relationship Authenticity and Investment
00:05:42
Rustam Irani
Anyways, the first thing is like not every relationship is genuine as it appears, right? This is definitely a hard position to learn, especially in your career as you take on leadership roles. You're going to figure that out, that sometimes you're going to be disappointed. People are to seem very genuine. They're going to seem like they truly care. And then as soon as there's nothing in it for them, they disappear. So really, character isn't revealed when someone needs something from you.
00:06:15
Rustam Irani
It's really real when they no longer lead something. So keep that in mind that, you know, not every relationship is going to be as genuine as it appears. Protect your generosity and don't lose it. Like I've been, you know, this is something I think about a lot. I try to give as much as possible. I'm trying to put others ahead.
00:06:39
Rustam Irani
And, you know, it's a strength, but I think, you know, you also need to use some level of wisdom. I've been on multiple calls, especially early in my business career when I started the company years ago, where I would jump on calls and I would just blurt out every thought, every strategy. And to the point where like,
00:07:03
Rustam Irani
you know, was basically an hour of pretty detailed, uh, you know, free consulting. didn't mind because I, I truly felt like there was maybe an opportunity there. you know, or, if they got benefit out of it, great.
00:07:20
Rustam Irani
And, you know, who knows what would happen, uh, you know, in the future, but if I had that knowledge and I can help somebody great. The interesting thing is a lot of those times when I did that silence afterwards. So somebody got what they wanted out of the conversation. They got what they wanted out of our conversation, out of the discussion and nothing.
00:07:44
Rustam Irani
Right. I would follow up with emails. Hey, any questions on anything I sent? Love to kind of get back in touch and Literally silence. And honestly, didn't realize some of the terms that were out there for this, but ghosting is definitely one of them that I learned, I guess, a little later in my career. You know, so guess in that, I would say don't stop helping people just because few people took advantage of you your kindness.
00:08:12
Rustam Irani
Just become more thoughtful about where you're investing your time. That's something that I'm thinking about a lot. Third, do your due diligence before building trust. Just try to get to know little bit about people, look at their backgrounds, look at what they're posting, know how somebody is kind of treating other people, look at some of the interactions and so on. All of that's out there and it's all out there. It's all on social. It's all on LinkedIn. It's all in your network as well. Like if you know other people who are there.
00:08:43
Rustam Irani
research, right? It's not just for vendors. It's also for relationships. So do your due diligence and do your research in your relationships. The fourth thing I would say is try to go deep and not wide. Initially, when I was starting out on LinkedIn and, you know, even in my early years as I was kind of moving up, you know, into management and leadership roles, you know, I was just trying to meet everybody, get to know everybody and build
00:09:15
Rustam Irani
you know, trust everybody. And, you know, one thing I realized was like, that's great. But when you go really wide like that, you tend to not really get to know people and not really have that true strength of a relationship. And, you know,
00:09:33
Rustam Irani
I've come back to kind of really understand like the strongest network isn't the biggest one, right? And you know, it's the one that would still answer questions or calls if there was nothing else involved. I can tell you, I have a number of those relationships now. If I text them, they'll text me back.
00:09:50
Rustam Irani
usually within an hour or two or that day at least where they'll just kind of either give me feedback or give me some, you know, give me some advice or share a link whatever it is. But like,
00:10:05
Rustam Irani
Literally, they'll get back to me. And when you can build those types of relationships, that's when there's nothing in it, right? For either party, you're just really caring and building that deep relationship with somebody where, you know, they will drop things to kind of help you.
Trust Building in Marketing
00:10:24
Rustam Irani
Lastly, I'll say that marketing, you know, it works the same way relationships do, right? Trust compounds, you know, so even in your marketing, like we tell this to our clients as well, and we also think about it, like how can you continue to build trust in your community, in your network, with your prospective students, building your professional relationship, you know, and that a lot of that's done with consistency, authenticity, and at the end of the day, genuine care, you know, more than any type of sales pitch, but like all of those things are really what matters. You know, great marketing doesn't just begin with a campaign. It begins with the kind of person I truly believe it begins with the kind of person and organization you know, people want
Conclusion: Key Lessons on Trust
00:11:15
Rustam Irani
to trust. And so at the end of the day, know, the five lessons, at least
00:11:22
Rustam Irani
on my end that I've learned over the years, you know, in my trust test is recognize transactional relationships as much as you can, protect your generosity, discern who owns your trust, you know, invest deeply in the right people and apply those principles to literally your marketing every day internally and externally.
00:11:47
Rustam Irani
That's all for this episode of ROI University, where the biggest ROI is personal.