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00:00:01
Why They Win
27 Plays4 days ago
In this episode, Rustam Irani sits down with Chris Shepard to unpack what it really takes to build performance-driven marketing systems that create trust, align teams, and generate measurable results. Chris shares his path from early email marketing and agency ownership to leading digital strategy in higher education, along with the lessons he’s learned about vendor collaboration, data visibility, and the practical role AI can play in modern marketing.
Resources Mentioned
- The Prompt — Chris Shepard’s weekly AI-focused newsletter for higher education marketers - https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/the-prompt-7432956494280683520/
Timestamps
- 0:01 - 2:43 — Intro and Chris’s marketing background
Rustam introduces Chris Shepard and previews a conversation on digital marketing, leadership, and AI. - 2:44 - 8:10 — From record-label email marketing to building an agency
Chris shares how he got started in digital marketing, taught himself website building and SEO, and grew an agency serving home-service businesses. - 8:11 - 13:44 — Selling the agency and moving into higher education
Chris reflects on selling WebRocket after COVID, what he learned from building trust at scale, and why Tricoci felt like the right next chapter. - 13:45 - 20:07 — Why alignment and data matter more than marketing activity
The conversation shifts to silos in higher ed, why marketing is too often treated as a cost center, and how lead, enrollment, and start data drive smarter decisions. - 20:08 - 29:12 — Breaking down vendor silos and building collaborative systems
Chris explains how he manages multiple agency partners through weekly calls, biweekly strategy sessions, and annual summits that include leadership and admissions. - 29:13 - 35:36 — AI dashboards, automation, and the purpose behind The Prompt
Chris describes building his own live dashboard, using AI for summaries and forecasting, and launching a newsletter to help higher ed marketers keep up with AI change. - 35:37 - 40:56 — Career advice for modern marketers
Chris closes with advice on growth: show up consistently, know your numbers, deeply understand your audience, and stay curious as the industry keeps evolving.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Background of Chris Shepard
00:00:01
Rustam Irani
Okay, so you guys have heard me say this before, but I'm a true believer in your vibe is your tribe. And today on ROI University Podcast, I'm joined by Chris Shepard, who actually was introduced to me from a close friend of both of ours and a colleague that we've known for many years. And I was at a conference and we were talking and he said, you know, one person you need to meet It's this guy named Chris. He's with Tricoshi.
00:00:33
Rustam Irani
And I said, no, I don't think I've ever met Chris. I've seen him, but I don't think I've ever met him. And so he introduced us. And right off the bat, we started talking about data. We started talking about marketing. We started talking about your background. And Chris, right off the bat, we hit it off. And I really appreciate you even pulled me aside, I think, at that conference where we had a little bit of an opportunity to talk a little bit more about your background, my background, and ways to work together. And I think that was really, really cool to be able to do that pretty quickly.
00:01:05
Rustam Irani
But today, you spent over 20 years in digital marketing. So you've definitely been down that path. You've built campaigns, you've built teams.
00:01:15
Rustam Irani
You've even built a digital marketing agency and you ran one, which is really cool. So to me, that was really fascinating to learn. And you eventually grew that and you sold it, which is exciting. Again, to me, being a part of a growth marketing agency, hearing that and learning a little bit more about your story.
00:01:35
Rustam Irani
So really appreciate that. And today you serve as a VP of digital marketing at Tricoshi University of Beauty Culture. You're also on the advisory board of Career Education Review, which is pretty cool.
00:01:47
Rustam Irani
And I know you speak at many different events like LeedsCon, C-SPAN and others. And so today we're going to dig into a little bit of AI.
00:02:01
Chris
Yeah.
00:02:07
Rustam Irani
We'll talk a little bit about your journey to where you come to. And then also I'd love to kind of hear a little bit about your growth over the years as a marketer in leadership and team
Journey into Digital Marketing
00:02:17
Rustam Irani
development.
00:02:18
Rustam Irani
And I think those things are going to be pretty exciting to talk about. So with that, Chris, welcome to the show. Excited to have you on. And if you don't mind maybe just giving us little bit about your background and your journey to where you're at today, I appreciate it.
00:02:35
Chris
Yeah, well, thanks for having me on the show. appreciate that. It's good to be here. And yeah, I mean, I kind of started in digital marketing or yeah, it was digital marketing almost back in about 2003 or four, five-ish, right in there. And actually I lived in Chicago I I actually had some connections to a record label and they needed some help with their email marketing.
00:02:58
Rustam Irani
Thank you.
00:03:03
Chris
And so they had a big list and of course that was the day of CDs. And so you'd try to sell your CDs. And I actually didn't know a lot, but I was technically savvy.
00:03:14
Chris
And so I've always been into technology, you know, from the early days, I used to tear apart all my stereos and try to rebuild them with little success.
00:03:22
Rustam Irani
That was the best.
00:03:24
Rustam Irani
I used to do the same exact thing. If you enter my garage, dad would...
00:03:24
Chris
You know, yeah.
00:03:26
Chris
It's all
00:03:29
Rustam Irani
You know, he would actually bring, sorry, I didn't mean to jump in here, Chris, it really resonated because my dad was an electrician, and he would work in people's homes, and they would give him like old electronics and stuff.
00:03:32
Chris
good. Yep.
00:03:42
Rustam Irani
And he would bring it home for me, and I would just take them apart.
00:03:45
Rustam Irani
That was always so much fun. I have to tell me I didn't know what resistors went where a Y capacitors and all that. But it was just so much fun.
00:03:53
Chris
Yep.
00:03:54
Rustam Irani
Sorry, I didn't know that about That's really cool.
00:03:56
Chris
Yeah, I mean, I've always been the go-to tech guy, you know, and luckily my son is now, so that's good. But yeah, you know, I was just kind that guy and they hey, you want to help? I'm like, sure. And so I really, that was the day where you would kind of like build emails with, you know, HTML, obviously. It was really just raw HTML and JavaScript.
00:04:19
Chris
and trying to figure all that out. And eventually we got all that working and started getting some results in regards to selling CDs. And I thought, well, this cool. And I love the whole kind of design thing, like kind of not necessarily the design, but just building the thing, you know, and kind of like watching it come to fruition and sending it
Building and Selling a Marketing Agency
00:04:38
Chris
out and watch people react. And it's kind of like the old school direct response. You know, you'd send it out and start seeing orders come in. And that really excited me. And by the way, I've always been into entrepreneurship too and all that. And so sales. And so I think just all that coupled together, I realized, wow, this is something that I really enjoy.
00:04:57
Chris
What else can I do with it? And so I started learning some like basic HTML website building skills and whatnot. kind of kept doing what I did there. I did some other technology related stuff early in my early twenties, some bigger, uh, marketing agencies, kind of helping them do some things, uh, in the motion graphics world. But, but kind of came back to the digital marketing and started just building some websites for some friends. And, uh, one thing came to the other and, uh,
00:05:26
Chris
One of my friends had a big friend who had a business and the business asked me if I could help them. And it was more than just building a website.
00:05:45
Rustam Irani
Oh yeah.
00:05:46
Chris
and building all, uh, before everyone knew about, you know, building out all the location pages and all the things I mean. And so, uh, I just went for it and learned all I could. And, and before you knew it, I was getting leads for this guy and, uh, really blowing up his business.
00:05:56
Rustam Irani
Hmm.
00:06:02
Chris
You know, in fact, he was a carpet cleaning company. And in fact, he went from one truck, two trucks to 12 trucks in a couple of years, you know, just from the growth. And he eventually, he eventually introduced me the franchise he was involved in and kind of started getting more clients there. And I said, well, look, I'm going to, I'm just going to put together agency here. And it was just me at the time, put together agency, offer some services. I'll kind learn as I go and figure some things out. And my real bread and butter was just that website and SEO.
00:06:33
Chris
You know, that's what I was doing. And, started getting into like call tracking and form fill tracking. And course, Google ads and understanding what all that kind of stuff meant.
00:06:40
Rustam Irani
Thank you.
00:06:44
Chris
And so really I went from there and, uh, built an agency out of it, started hiring some folks. And we had a brick and mortar office out in the suburbs of Geneva, in Geneva.
00:06:58
Chris
And so we built an office out here and started employing folks and really going to town in the home service industry, particularly carpet cleaners, contractors, roofers, those sorts of businesses.
00:07:11
Chris
And was all very dependent on lead generation every single day, as you know. And It's a hyper-competitive market, which was exciting.
00:07:17
Rustam Irani
Yeah.
00:07:20
Chris
And it really taught me a lot. And, yeah, so that's kind of where I came from. And it was really just all, like, I threw myself into the fire and learned it all, you know. And, yeah.
00:07:32
Chris
I ended up relying on folks that worked for me to be specialist and lean on their skills and whatnot. But from everything from SEO to sales, to running a team, to running a business, I kind of learned all of that over about a 12-year span.
00:07:49
Rustam Irani
Yeah, that's pretty amazing. And I know, again, to me, it was interesting that you had been down that journey. And thought that was really cool that you had done that. You had built it. As you know, this business is...
00:08:06
Rustam Irani
know it's it's a lot right because you've got multiple clients and they're constantly on your mind and you know this uh digital marketing never sleeps right Folks are always kind of looking at odd hours, you know, for and for us, right? We're in education. So going back to school or whatever it is, right? And then even for your for your stuff, I don't know if you work with any 24 seven, know, companies, but I'm sure they were even getting inquiries right at three in the morning when their AC broke or their plumbing or whatever. So that's really interesting.
00:08:41
Rustam Irani
to kind of hear that. And so I'm curious, how do you feel like that experience?
00:08:43
Chris
Yep.
00:08:47
Rustam Irani
And then you sold, obviously, WebRock, Get Digital, kind of get out. Did you take a little bit of time or did you jump right into Tricoshi? Or maybe tell us a little bit of that transition.
00:08:59
Chris
Well, yeah, WebRocket
Joining Tricoshi University
00:09:02
Chris
went on for many years. I actually was approached by someone who wanted to buy it. And the first time I turned them down and thought, well, I like what I'm doing. And I finally, well, not finally, but I've got things rolling and I enjoy it. And then COVID actually happened, if everyone remembers that.
00:09:23
Chris
And here in Illinois, we had pretty strict rules around not being able to go into our office, all of that stuff. And so that really a halt on all of my plans and all the things we were doing.
00:09:37
Chris
Of course, we all had to go remote. Many of our clients
00:09:39
Rustam Irani
you
00:09:41
Chris
paused almost overnight, about 90% of them paused overnight, depending on what state they're in. And so it kind of, you know, it was draining, let's just say that. But we came out of it, you know, we came out of it fairly strong. And continued on for about another year, year and a half. And then the same group approached me. And the timing was right. And so I said, look, I'm ready to sell. So I sold But I learned so much out of that, like I was alluding to before.
00:10:10
Rustam Irani
Yeah.
00:10:10
Chris
I mean, not only how to do the things, how to do the SEO, how to build websites, how to operate and understand CRMs and lead flow and nurturing and all the things, but really big piece of it was building trust at scale, right?
00:10:25
Chris
Because you're really going out there and adding value to someone and ultimately growing their business and hopefully changing their life. And so the trust value is like every single day, you have to have them trust you. You have to build trust for all your new relationships because, you know, when you're working for someone else, it's easy to optimize a campaign, hit your KPIs and walk out the door.
00:10:46
Rustam Irani
Yeah. Sure.
00:10:47
Chris
When you own a business, it's your money, it's your time, it's everything.
00:10:51
Chris
And so that trust was really important and something that I learned a lot out of that. Not learned, but I took away from that, like building that trust at scale. So yeah, I took about a year off after that, just to kind of, I took a little time for myself, but just to feel out what was going on. And I knew that I wanted to pursue continue the digital marketing path and wanted to explore some new
Strategic Marketing and Collaboration at Tricoshi
00:11:17
Chris
industries. You know, again, I was in the home service industry for a long time and I still love that industry. And I wanted to look at something else where it might be challenging, but it's, it's sought after, right? There's going to be lot of people who interested obviously higher ed is one of those. I was also looking at like,
00:11:37
Chris
banking or finance, that kind of stuff too.
00:11:39
Rustam Irani
Interesting.
00:11:40
Chris
Yeah.
00:11:41
Rustam Irani
Yeah.
00:11:42
Chris
But when Shikoshi came along, it was a perfect fit for me, particularly because of the culture and the entrepreneurial spirit that everyone has here.
00:11:52
Rustam Irani
Hmm.
00:11:54
Chris
And that's kind of what was brought to the table when I was interviewing was, you know, We all work together. It's not siloed. We all make decisions together. And so that was really enticing to me.
00:12:04
Chris
And so I'm really happy that I made that move. It's even taught me more about digital marketing and leadership. And as you know, I mean, I manage about six vendors right now.
00:12:17
Chris
So we have marketing vendors. We have a small internal marketing team of three, but most of our work comes from our vendors. And so We actually have six vendors.
00:12:26
Rustam Irani
Sure.
00:12:39
Chris
Some days I wish we had one vendor, you know, but we do have six and there's, it's,
00:12:47
Chris
it's really been experience bring everyone together and leverage them the same team to one goal.
00:12:53
Rustam Irani
Yeah. And one point you made there that I think in higher ed, so think you and I have both talked about, like, you know, I've had experience on the career college side, the trade school side. I've also had experience on the traditional higher ed side, working with universities like Michigan State University, Villanova, some of the other pretty well known traditional universities that are out there. And I'll tell you, when you mentioned that entrepreneurial spirit, I can imagine why, with your background, that was interest to you, right? With Tricoshi and kind of how they have that internally.
00:13:35
Rustam Irani
Do you think that's possible? I've seen it be possible in higher ed, but I think I also feel like with what I see out there and the number of conversations I've had over the years, I think the silos and the bureaucracy and some of those things are just so difficult to overcome. I remember I worked at one company where we had a role inside that it was a joke. It was like the cutter of red tape
00:14:05
Rustam Irani
So one of the executives at our company was like, hey, I'm a cutter of red tape because we worked with schools and universities at that time. And so I just thought that was like an interesting title that you need an external person to come in as the cutter of red tape, right? Because there were just so much, you know, so many silos and like, you didn't know, like marketing did its thing. But then once it got into the CRM, like what was happening with that data? Was it even, you know, Was it even going down the full funnel? What was happening with the automation? Were we getting emails out to these students, timely, relevant, all of those other things?
00:14:46
Rustam Irani
many, many different disconnects because of some of these silos. So I guess like from what you were saying, that really resonated with me that that's the type of kind of culture that you have there. So do you think that's uncommon in higher ed today?
00:15:01
Rustam Irani
Just curious on your time. I got my thoughts on that. But what are your thoughts?
00:15:06
Chris
Yeah, you know, I haven't been in the higher ed space like you have, but I've talked to a lot of people and I certainly can say that folks say the same thing. you know, to be honest, in like most corporate environments or settings, it is like that.
00:15:15
Rustam Irani
Yeah.
00:15:22
Chris
It's very siloed. And unfortunately, marketing has always been seen as a cost center and not a revenue generator, right? And so it's always like the most scrutinized, the most
00:15:33
Chris
red tape, the most cut, when if you do it right and you understand numbers and you understand the value, it is the thing that brings in the revenue.
00:15:40
Rustam Irani
It's an investment. Marketing should be an investment, right?
00:15:44
Chris
Yeah, yeah.
00:15:45
Rustam Irani
I mean, that's what marketing is there for.
00:15:47
Chris
That's right.
00:15:49
Rustam Irani
And if you're not getting the, whatever you call it, ROI or ROAS or whatever term you want to use, you should be getting X multiple of your investment back.
00:15:56
Chris
Yep.
00:16:03
Rustam Irani
And if you're not, then A, you're not tracking it properly you're
00:16:03
Chris
That's right.
00:16:08
Rustam Irani
You're not marketing effectively.
00:16:11
Chris
Or both.
00:16:12
Chris
Yeah.
00:16:13
Rustam Irani
And we've probably both seen all of it, right?
00:16:15
Chris
Yeah.
00:16:15
Rustam Irani
And I think that's where you've got to change that. And I struggle with that, honestly, in my career at times where I had to continue to fight for marketing being an investment, even though we were generating an ROI from our investments.
00:16:30
Rustam Irani
Yeah. It's like, it was always a budget line item that was a cost, just like you said.
00:16:35
Rustam Irani
And I think that's such a good point on that. And yeah.
00:16:39
Chris
Yeah, it's really aligning. that's the other part in organizations. I mean, I think everyone has to align on what the goal is, you know, and work toward that goal. And that's one thing that we do with our vendors. I mean, it's very understood that we have a budget, which most people do, but we have lead goals per campus, per program.
00:17:00
Chris
We have enrollment goals that they have to help hit. So we understand what our lead enrollment looks like. We're not typical in regards to like, we don't have an application, know, and some of those other things that might most like higher ed might have. But we do have, you know, obviously the lead and then the enrollment and start. And so we have start rates. And so we really understand all of our numbers and what we need to hit each month. And we have data year over year, over year, over year. And we understand what seasonality looks like, what each channel should bring in. And so We align on our goals and all our vendors align on our goals. And so it's not any more about, well, here's how many
00:17:40
Chris
website or page views or impressions your social media post got. It's really about here's how many leads we got from what channel, from what campaign, what can we do to optimize those? What can we do to, you know, put more spend into the ones that are working on what channel, on what campaign, for what program, for which campus? I mean, it's always going, but we have the data to help drive us there. And so I think that's the problem is not everyone's aligned on the goal.
00:18:07
Chris
And so like even with our vendors, like I said, they're aligned on the goal. Our SEO vendor gets our SEO lead goals. They get our enrollment goals for the month for the campuses.
00:18:13
Rustam Irani
Thank you.
00:18:16
Chris
And we all work together to hit those goals, you know, and so that that's what helps drive the actual value of we are revenue generators because now we're actually saying, well, here's how many leads and how many enrollments we got.
00:18:31
Chris
Here's the LTE to that. Here's the lead to start on that. What is that cost per enrollment? Is it $1,000? Is it 500? It could be both of those depending what channel you're looking at, but now we can make really good decisions, very clear decisions and understand to your point, what's the ROI there?
00:18:47
Chris
If it costs us $500 to get new student, What's the ROI? Now we could make decisions on putting more money and justify the expense, if you will.
00:18:58
Rustam Irani
Sure, sure, absolutely. And, you know, I guess My one question to you, and like you said, I think Tricoshi is the only school you've worked at, right?
00:19:09
Chris
Yep.
00:19:10
Rustam Irani
But you've talked to others from many different schools and I think that's one of the biggest areas where I've seen the opportunity and the disconnect is the alignment across not only internal teams, but your external partners. And you speak to that a lot, right? You're a big believer in that. You've even kind of built frameworks around that, how to get the most out of your partnerships, your vendor or agency partnerships, and how to really get everybody on the same page. And I think that's huge. think you even said you guys have meetings that you do all collectively together.
00:19:49
Rustam Irani
We work with, and I think I mentioned this to you, we work with a school where they also do something similar. I think twice a year they bring all their partners as well as their entire team together, which to me is just amazing. That's where you really can work together on, like you said, the same goals and the same metrics and making sure everybody's pulling their way and there's full alignment.
00:20:14
Rustam Irani
I see it all the time where even not just internally, but even externally, there are silos, right? With your external partners and agencies. And you've spoken about that a lot, but do you see that? Have you heard of that in education from your conversations? And why do you think that happens, I guess?
00:20:35
Chris
For vendors or just internally?
00:20:37
Rustam Irani
Yeah, just vendors, the external kind of disconnect there.
00:20:41
Chris
Yeah, you know, there's a lot of things going on there. could speak to that from both sides because like obviously was an agency and now I'm internal and
00:20:48
Rustam Irani
Yeah.
00:20:49
Chris
I think it's really just how you position and frame it and drive it forward is what really is the key. And, you know, agencies aren't really built and understand how to work with other agencies.
00:21:04
Chris
As you know, and I know that it could be defensive sometimes because you might be working with another agency who does all the same things you do and now they're like, you might feel like they're stepping on your toes or encroaching on what you're supposed to be doing when in reality,
00:21:18
Rustam Irani
Thank you.
00:21:20
Chris
There's so much brain power and so much experience between all these different vendors that we all need to be working together. We all have different client experiences, different clients. We're seeing different things.
00:21:31
Chris
We're using different technology. What can we pull from all of that to leverage for this one client, which is Tricoshi, for this one client collectively? I bring ideas to the table. I bring ideas to the table.
00:21:42
Chris
Everyone's bringing ideas to the table and using them all together. So that's been the difference for us is opening up that communication. So like our vendors email each other, like we all talk, we all email.
00:21:54
Chris
We're, I mean, at this point we've celebrated together. We've mourned together. I mean, we've, you know, we've been through it all together and, and that's been big differentiator in regards to the silos and kind of like blocking off the, you know, like we don't ask people,
00:21:58
Rustam Irani
Yeah.
00:22:09
Chris
people for their secret sauce per se, but we do ask like share what you're seeing and help us understand what we could be doing better. And that's been huge. And so going into that, we have weekly calls with all of our vendors and it's really just individually to align with them.
00:22:28
Chris
Make sure we're on target, obviously, but then to align on strategy, what's going on next, what's happening, you know, the project management kind of stuff.
00:22:38
Chris
And then we do talk a lot about technology and AI and what's happening and what should we be looking at?
00:22:39
Rustam Irani
Thank you.
00:22:44
Chris
What should we be doing? What's next? So we're always testing. We've always got kind of these things on the next, on the radar that we're doing.
00:22:54
Chris
But then similarly, we have a biweekly meeting when all of our vendors come together. It's for an hour every other Thursday. And we all come into Zoom meeting and we do a quick share of our updates just so all the team kind of knows where we sit.
00:23:10
Chris
Most people already do just because we email and back and forth so much already.
00:23:15
Rustam Irani
It's beautiful.
00:23:16
Chris
So most people understand where we're at, but if there's anything, any fires to put out or anything, we do that. But for the most part, we really kind of come together and talk about strategy. Like what are people seeing?
00:23:26
Chris
Here's what's been working. What hasn't been working? Where's their opportunity? Hey, we have a campus that might be struggling. What can we do there help kind of boost it? And it's just really collectively this big, like, I don't know, this mastermind almost of just things happening.
00:23:42
Chris
And I would say we always come out of the meeting with some kind of action items, you know, and, and that's helped us really leverage, not just siloed approach, which each vendor just kind of bringing their own thing with, but they're all coming together and, and we're all collectively sharing what we've seen, what we haven't seen, what, you know, all the things. And so that's been huge for us.
00:24:04
Chris
I forgot to mention, we also have an annual summit where we bring all of our vendors to Chicago.
00:24:10
Rustam Irani
That's awesome.
00:24:11
Chris
And it's a day event. And we share our wins for the year. And then we each share the strategy for the next year. have a good time. We talk, you know, all that good stuff.
00:24:21
Rustam Irani
Just curious on that, and do the executives at the organization also get involved that, or is that more on the marketing side?
00:24:28
Chris
Yeah, we invite the executives. They come. We invite the admissions team. We love the admissions team.
00:24:34
Rustam Irani
That's awesome. love to hear that. Yeah.
00:24:37
Chris
Well, we love them to be involved in understanding. And it's hard. Sometimes it's hard when you're not in marketing to understand what marketing is doing, right? Because it's like, oh, we're having kind of a slow month in leads.
00:24:49
Chris
I mean, those things happen.
00:24:50
Rustam Irani
Yeah.
00:24:51
Chris
We're still working. We're working hard. You know, like for to understand the nuts and the bolts of what's really happening behind the scenes is really important for them, in my opinion.
00:24:54
Rustam Irani
Yeah.
00:25:01
Chris
It also helps just a handoff too, right? I mean, like if you're doing marketing and they can kind of understand a little bit of what's happening, the handoff is usually easier with the lead into admissions and those types of things.
00:25:12
Chris
So they kind of understand where that's coming from or what channel that might have come from and like what, you know, what provoked that lead to become a lead from that channel.
00:25:22
Chris
And so they're big part of that.
00:25:23
Rustam Irani
Yeah.
00:25:25
Rustam Irani
Yeah, no, absolutely. I think, you know, one thing used to do, at least when I was on the school side, is any new marketing team member, we would have them go to admissions, sit at admissions for a day and listen to phone calls.
00:25:40
Chris
Yep.
00:25:41
Rustam Irani
sit with the admissions team ever. And that was just so critical. And then we would also do like a lunch and learns and the road shows and stuff like that, where we would say, okay, here's what's happening in marketing.
00:25:52
Rustam Irani
Here's what we're doing. Here's how this works. You know, so not all, not all PPL leads are bad. Here's why, you know, we're have to I've explained to them lot of the stuff we were doing.
00:26:00
Chris
Yep.
00:26:05
Rustam Irani
And this is probably exciting for you to hear, but we build out lead scoring models and we talk to them about like, hey, this is how we're trying to optimize. And I mean, it's just a lot.
00:26:16
Rustam Irani
And I love those conversations because they knew like, they at least had a little bit of an understanding like, hey, marketing's got their back.
00:26:24
Chris
That's right.
00:26:25
Rustam Irani
Like they're doing everything they can to find those right type of students for that school.
00:26:26
Chris
Yep.
00:26:30
Chris
Right.
00:26:31
Rustam Irani
So that was always huge.
00:26:32
Chris
Yep.
Innovating with AI in Marketing
00:26:33
Rustam Irani
But speaking of kind of dashboards and, you know, I think a real thing that you and I have been talking about a little bit more lately is kind of, I know you actually just created on your own, which I love your hustle because, know,
00:26:49
Rustam Irani
You're taking the time in the evenings and the weekends or whatever to teach yourself a lot of what's happening in AI. And you built a dashboard yourself. There's a lot of other things that you're doing with AI. We've gotten pretty deep on our side with, you know, honestly, I use all of them. But Claude, Co-Work and Code, definitely spent a lot more time there watching a lot more videos on that.
00:27:16
Rustam Irani
to the point where I literally think last night was sitting on the couch and I falling asleep watching a video. So, you know, I just I think I've made a comment on a LinkedIn post today about that, like, it can be overwhelming to the point where you just need to close your laptop.
00:27:28
Chris
Yep.
00:27:30
Chris
Yep. Yeah. You could, you could, a few hours can go by you just don't realize it.
00:27:43
Chris
Yep. Yep.
00:27:46
Rustam Irani
And yeah, just maybe give a little bit more of kind of where you see AI contributing to higher education, marketing and what you're doing right now.
00:27:55
Chris
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's exciting thing for me, as you could probably understand. I'm a builder, you know, so I love to build. I built the dashboard recently, and it's kind of more than a dashboard. You know, we historically have worked out of Excel spreadsheets, which are great, and they do what they need to do. I really wanted to see live data. You know, I wanted to visualize it. I also wanted to integrate AI into it. So it can help me, know,
00:28:20
Chris
Look at forecasting. It can help me present modeling. It could actually spit out emails to me based upon whatever I want it to. So for instance, give me a summary of last week's paid social marketing, digital marketing, and it could do that for me.
00:28:37
Chris
I also was able to tie in like all of the different channels. So Google ads and Facebook meta ads into it.
00:28:43
Rustam Irani
Thank
00:28:58
Chris
And so I wanted to track what that lead to enrollment looked like, what that unique visitor to lead looked like, what that unique visitor to start looked like. And probably even later on, I'll start building in what does that lead to graduation look like and all those different KPIs built into it so I can have this data that's week over week.
00:29:37
Rustam Irani
Thank you.
00:29:39
Chris
And so I'm really working on leveraging AI to do more for me, not necessarily replace me, but just to do more. So for instance, I can sit here on a podcast and it could sit over here and start analyzing data or even As you know, Claude could be in your Excel work spreadsheet doing things for you if you wanted it to. And it could create formulas and whole array of things. And so I found that fascinating that we can actually leverage that and utilize it to our advantage, especially in marketing, where obviously lot of things are going and marketing is towards AI. So I started the prompt a couple of few weeks ago, and I've had this idea for a while, but
00:30:20
Chris
I didn't really launch it until a couple of weeks ago. And it was really just based on, I wish there was a source for higher ed just for AI news. Like what happened last week in the AI world? And what does it mean for you?
00:30:32
Chris
Not every, not everything in the AI world is going to be like this huge drastic change for higher ed, but there's things that are happening, you know, and things that you should understand and know about because,
00:30:40
Rustam Irani
Yeah.
00:30:43
Chris
even though they might not impact you right now, it's going to start impacting you later. And you're seeing that right now, even with search results. I'm sure everyone here that is doing organic SEO has probably seen a decline or maybe understanding what LLM and AI search looks like.
00:31:02
Chris
You probably are starting to see that pop up in your GA4 now. And so, yeah, I just want it to be something that I wanted to have on a weekly basis just to kind of keep me in tune with what's happening in AI and what that means for higher ed.
00:31:20
Rustam Irani
Got it. Yeah. You know, just today, I saw and there was a link that one of my contacts had shared on LinkedIn, where basically you can sign up for text messaging of this daily AI update.
00:31:38
Rustam Irani
So it's an AI agent that gives you a one and a half or two minute briefing on anything related to AI that's new.
00:31:45
Chris
That's cool. Yeah.
00:31:47
Rustam Irani
I'll share that with you.
00:31:48
Chris
Oh, yeah.
00:31:48
Rustam Irani
But it seemed pretty neat because I played it and literally within a minute or two, I got kind an update on where things are at, what's up, what's moving, what's not.
00:31:59
Rustam Irani
That is pretty valuable. But I think like, obviously, that's pretty general. And, you know, of course, But still, it's powerful, right? And I think with what you're doing with the prompt, I think there's... I know there's a huge amount of value there because, again, it is overwhelming. I think there's a lot of hype, you know, and I had episode where I spoke with somebody who they focus on AI marketing. And we talked about that, like with OpenClaw and all these other ones.
00:32:33
Rustam Irani
I'm seriously still thinking, Chris, about getting a Mac Mini and just letting it go to town and seeing what I can learn with it versus giving it access to anything on my computer.
00:32:44
Chris
Yeah, right.
00:32:45
Chris
Yep.
00:32:45
Rustam Irani
I just think it's constantly changing.
00:32:47
Rustam Irani
I think it's evolving so fast. you know, my, uh, what's interesting is I go into my chat GPT and my daughter uses my chat GPT for her school.
00:32:58
Rustam Irani
And like, literally I go in there, was like five or six searches from her like overnight. And I'm like, man, it's pretty amazing, but, it's being used like incredible, like, uh, the, the amount of people that are using it and for what,
00:33:04
Chris
Yeah.
00:33:14
Chris
Yeah.
00:33:15
Rustam Irani
So, you know, I think this big thing here, Chris, on my end is think, you I appreciate the fact that you are at the forefront of kind of like constantly pushing yourself, constantly growing, not surprising, right? You're a builder. So that's just kind of part of your DNA.
00:33:35
Rustam Irani
You built, grew an agency. You're now, you know, working on really entrepreneurial, part of an entrepreneurial organization, which you fit right in. And because of that, in higher ed, bringing together partners and agencies and vendors, which is, I think, hugely
Advice for Marketers and Closing Remarks
00:33:53
Rustam Irani
powerful. I guess, in closing to wrap this up, for marketers out there today, part of this also, try to give as much insights into some of the pitfalls that I've seen over the years in my marketing journey and so on.
00:34:08
Rustam Irani
What's some advice you would give to marketers who are looking at growing in their careers and where they're at and hopefully becoming a CMO one day? Who knows what that role will even look like?
00:34:19
Rustam Irani
Any bit of advice there?
00:34:22
Chris
Yeah, there's a lot of bits of advice, but I would say that, you know, something that, I mean, aside from the obvious of like just getting up and showing up every day, right?
00:34:35
Chris
And like one foot in front the other, don't wait for perfect, all that stuff. I think just dive in and get in and learn as much as you can, especially now, because I think there's no better time.
00:34:39
Rustam Irani
Okay.
00:34:46
Chris
uh, then now to be involved in this because there's just so much going on and so much to learn and so much to leverage, you know? And so that's, uh, always been interesting and fascinating to me. And I think what's kept me in this a lot is because it's always changing. Uh, and so if you like change, if you like fast paced, this is definitely for you. but know your numbers. I mean, is a very data backed world.
00:35:11
Rustam Irani
Mm-hmm.
00:35:12
Chris
and, you just can't manage what you don't know, you know? And so if you're just out there flying blind, it's not going to be Uh, it's not going to be, you might get lucky, but it's not going to be fun. It's not going to be scalable. It's not going to be predictable. And, you are looking to go into,
00:35:31
Chris
you know, like higher up into like a VP, director VP or executive role, you're going to want to know your numbers for sure, because that's, what's going to help strategize and guide your teams. So that's another one.
00:35:41
Chris
And then something I think a lot of people look over that is interesting to me as well as like, know your customer, your avatars, you know, who you actually marketing to what's so specific and special about them?
00:35:45
Rustam Irani
you
00:35:53
Chris
Where are they at? Where they, where are they searching? You're going to see this even more now, especially with Gen Z. You know, they're on TikTok. They're, like you said, they're asking ChatGPT.
00:36:07
Chris
They're doing all these different channels and searching in a different way and gathering information and comparing and all the things that they can do now at a click of a button or a prompt, if you will. So I would say really understand who you're marketing to. I think a lot of people gloss over that from time to time. And they just kind of like start marketing without knowing who the actual customer is. And that's something that I've learned along the way in every kind of industry or every business that I've been in.
00:36:38
Chris
I've really taken a lot of time to understand that. And I think that'll just help you grow as a marketer, too, because it'll really just help you understand psychology and all the buying personas and different things that you can help you make help you make strategy, grow strategy.
00:36:54
Rustam Irani
Sure. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. Great advice, Chris. Again, I'm really thankful that we were connected and have continued to build you know, our working relationship together. And I just love our conversations and look forward to continuing to do that.
00:37:14
Rustam Irani
So where can people find you or subscribe to the prompt, follow your work? What's the best place to find? Okay.
00:37:21
Chris
Yeah. I mean, I'm at, I'm on LinkedIn and my handle is C shepherd 11 C S H E P P A R D 11. And, uh, just like follow me or request a, uh, a friend.
00:37:34
Chris
Is that what it's called? Request network.
00:37:37
Rustam Irani
Yeah, connect on LinkedIn.
00:37:37
Chris
I don't know what it's called on there.
00:37:39
Rustam Irani
Yeah.
00:37:39
Chris
Yeah. Connect on LinkedIn. And so connect with me there and you can obviously see my newsletter there. You subscribe to that. it's something I put out, uh, weekly, But yeah, if you're really nerdy, I'm on GitHub.
00:37:52
Chris
And so I've got some code and stuff on there. If you're looking at building any kind of calculators or vCards or email signatures, I've got some dashboard work that I've been doing.
00:38:05
Chris
And so yeah, if anyone's geeky enough.
00:38:05
Rustam Irani
Nice. We'll add some of these links in the show notes for you, Chris, for anybody listening.
00:38:09
Chris
Yeah. Yep.
00:38:23
Chris
Yep.
00:38:24
Rustam Irani
We're grateful to have you here.
00:38:25
Rustam Irani
And that's all for ROI University, where the biggest ROI is personal. Thanks so much, Chris.
00:38:32
Chris
Thank you.