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Inside ROI University: Why This Show Exists
10 Plays20 days ago
In this episode, Rustam Irani shares his personal journey from engineering to marketing, and how pivotal moments shaped his passion for higher education marketing. Dan Sanchez interviews Rustam to uncover his origin story, exploring how early career experiences, family influences, and meaningful professional shifts led him to dedicate his work to transforming student lives through education marketing. Rustam reflects on the dual meaning of ROI—not just institutional returns, but the life-changing return on investment for individual students.
Resources Mentioned
- Simon Sinek on "Start with Why" — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4ZoJKF_VuA
Timestamps
- 00:01 – 02:23: Rustam’s early career in engineering and decision to pursue an MBA in marketing
- 02:30 – 04:03: Family influences and discovering a passion for marketing
- 04:19 – 06:25: Transition into education marketing and the blend of data-driven and creative work
- 07:49 – 09:40: Why Rustam stayed in higher education and the importance of purpose
- 09:51 – 11:20: Emotional moments at graduations and realizing the true impact of education
- 12:56 – 14:46: Memorable campaign using early Facebook lead ads and its ripple effect
- 14:48 – 17:54: Insights from working both agency and in-house marketing, and the importance of marketing-admissions alignment
- 18:00 – 20:42: Expanding ROI beyond metrics to include personal and team transformation
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to ROI University Podcast
00:00:01
Dan Sanchez
Welcome to the first episode of the ah ah ROI University. I'm here to actually interview the host, Rustam Arani, and I wanted to actually unpack your story because I find that it's always a good first episode to hear an origin story. We all love origin stories of how people get to where they are today.
00:00:20
Dan Sanchez
So today, I thought I'd unpack this because there's a lot of people that are going be hearing all the different episodes coming out in the future about how to address all the different issues happening in higher ed and how to unpack the student's journey, how to unpack even the things that are holding them back from...
00:00:37
Dan Sanchez
reaching the ah ROI that they want for their institutions and the ROI they want for students.
Rustam Arani's Career Transition
00:00:42
Dan Sanchez
So before we dive into all that goodness, I want to know, you are essentially a marketing consultant, but you weren't always that. You weren't always even into marketing.
00:00:52
Dan Sanchez
So where did this story start for you?
00:00:54
Rustam
Yeah, thanks. I appreciate the opportunity to share a little bit about that story, which actually does come from a little unique perspective. So actually, I started out with my undergrad in engineering. I tell people I'm a recovering engineer.
00:01:11
Rustam
So I did civil engineering for my undergrad. And real quickly after that, I was the first of my good friends in college to to graduate. I got a job. I got the job offer. I got a job.
00:01:22
Rustam
I could actually afford to fix my car now. So I was really excited about all those things. And here I am, i think it was like a ah ah month into my job.
Educational Influence on Career Path
00:01:31
Rustam
i had an office, I had a desk, I had a computer. you everything was great from that. Everything you dream of, as far as kind of what you want to do. And then I got I got a call from one of my roommates and was like 11 o'clock. He said, Hey, Ristam, what are you doing? I said, i'm working.
00:01:48
Rustam
Been here since 7 a.m. And he's like, Oh, you know, we just got up. Listen, out got to tell you this story. And I'm like, wait a minute. Why is he telling me this story at 11 a.m.? Right. When I'm sitting here and I've been working for four hours, I'm like, am I really ready for the real world?
00:02:05
Rustam
Yeah. So that's when I decided like, Hey, maybe I want to go back to school. Maybe I'm not ready to kind of, you know, just sit here and work, you know, all day
00:02:15
Rustam
And so what I did was I went back to get my MBA and I did a concentration in marketing. Actually, I've always enjoyed marketing.
00:02:22
Rustam
There was always something about it. My dad actually owns or owned a refrigeration and air conditioning business, and I would help him market his business. He really never marketed it. It was all word of mouth. I'd help him put some flyers out. I would do things like this. Right.
00:02:35
Rustam
And my mom owned an art and frame gallery and I would help her kind of promote her business. So I was always really into kind of promotion and advertising and all of that. And so when I did that MBA, it was really cool to jump learn all of the backend and and background of marketing.
00:02:53
Rustam
And so one of the most impactful and powerful moments in my career that kind of shifted me and call it the moment of impact.
Inspiration and Success in Marketing
00:03:00
Rustam
Right. We all have these moments of impact in our lives when, you know, one conversation or one one instance kind of shifts and all of a sudden we take a new path.
00:03:09
Rustam
And I had a meeting with the CEO of an engineering firm that I was working at. So I was also working full time while doing my MBA and I was working at an engineering company. He said, hey, Rustin, we don't have a website.
00:03:20
Rustam
We don't have a marketing plan. Can you build us one? You know, we know you're doing your MBA.
00:03:26
Rustam
And so I jumped in, i built a marketing plan. It was like 30 pages of SWOT analysis and competitive research and a website.
00:03:32
Dan Sanchez
Oh, yeah.
00:03:34
Rustam
And back 2000, very few engineering companies had that. But that's really awesome.
00:03:39
Dan Sanchez
Yeah. Flexing that NBA.
00:03:42
Rustam
Man, I'll tell you, was literally opening a book or I was reading in class and doing a SWOT analysis based on a textbook, right?
00:03:48
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:03:49
Rustam
Just such a powerful moment in my career. And that kind of catapulted me in the path of marketing. Fast forward to about 2008, I worked for a marketing agency and our number one client was in education.
00:04:05
Rustam
So that's where I got into the education back in 2008. And I was like, man, this is just really powerful.
Impact of Marketing in Education
00:04:11
Rustam
Like we are literally enrolling hundreds of students a month and giving them opportunities from our marketing efforts.
00:04:20
Rustam
That was really cool.
00:04:22
Dan Sanchez
Yeah. So I find that marketers rarely ever, like you were hardly ever do like high schoolers dream of becoming marketers.
00:04:22
Rustam
On my...
00:04:29
Dan Sanchez
You know what saying?
00:04:30
Rustam
Yeah.
00:04:30
Dan Sanchez
Like, I don't know a lot of undergrads that started marketing. There's plenty of them out there, but it's just not a normal path. Most marketers I meet that are love it they're in it usually came through a different path. They came in through sales.
00:04:40
Rustam
Yeah.
00:04:42
Dan Sanchez
Sometimes they come in through engineering. Sometimes they come in through their entrepreneurs and they got into marketing. You know, there's a bunch of different paths into marketing, but luckily marketing's, it's pretty accommodating. It can accommodate all kinds of different skill sets and personalities, but you came in through engineering.
00:04:59
Dan Sanchez
Did you find that engineering became a plus or a minus for your marketing career that came afterwards?
00:05:08
Rustam
Yeah, no, I think personally, I think it's a huge plus. like Like I mentioned back in 2008, when I joined that marketing agency, I was just, I was like absolutely dumbstruck by the fact that we had, we were measuring impressions and clicks. And not only that, we were calculating ah ah ROI and ROAS metrics. And I was like, there's so much math here, right?
00:05:31
Rustam
And to me, that was just so exciting. to dig into the numbers and the data behind it. And then we were looking at consumer profiles. And then the other side of that, which I didn't mention, there's a little bit of an artistic component, which I enjoy art.
00:05:45
Dan Sanchez
Oh, yeah.
00:05:47
Rustam
My mom is an artist. She owned an art and frame gallery. So what it really had for me was the best of both worlds. It's data-driven, but is also an artistic kind of creative component And for me, once I found that, that really kind of brought the two pieces together and it was like, never looked back.
00:06:07
Dan Sanchez
Now, I wasn't an engineer, but I ah don't
Engineering Influence on Marketing Strategies
00:06:09
Dan Sanchez
know. I took a bunch of personality tests and my Myers-Briggs said I should have been an engineer. And so I even considered going into electrical engineering, but I liked art too. So I was like, I don't know It turns out find having an engineering perspective is really helpful in marketing because marketers usually don't come with an engineering perspective. But there's something about engineering that leads you to what I call systems thinking.
00:06:34
Dan Sanchez
especially in an MBA, you usually take some kind of manufacturing class, right? and you're like, oh yeah, assembly of systems, fixing and ah and and manufacturing lines becomes really important.
00:06:46
Dan Sanchez
But that doesn't usually carry over to marketing unless you came from that background, which is why I find that it's really helpful. And I find it fascinating whenever engineers get into marketing, they're like, oh yeah, they just start looking for problems and finding the bottlenecks and fixing them.
00:06:57
Rustam
Yeah.
00:06:59
Dan Sanchez
It's a really interesting perspective because it's not where all marketers start.
00:07:03
Rustam
That's a great point. Absolutely. That's kind of how my mind works. Like, all right, what's the process? What are the steps and where is it broken? Right. Where is it not optimized where can we, you know, improve things in this process, in this system, right.
00:07:19
Rustam
To make it better, to crank out more widgets, right. Or whatever that is that you're looking to do. So yeah, absolutely. It's really, really powerful.
00:07:29
Dan Sanchez
So you got into higher ed because that was your marketing agency is one of their first big clients.
00:07:33
Rustam
Yeah.
00:07:34
Dan Sanchez
And that's how you got introduced to the world of higher ed. But I have to ask, what made you stay in the world? Because you've been in it for a while now.
00:07:42
Rustam
Yeah, it's a great question. You know, again, it started right off the bat when I started working, you know, with that school we worked with.
00:07:52
Rustam
It was just really rewarding to kind of think about all the jobs. Like we had to think about the career aspirations of these individuals. How can we really, you know, impact and improve their lives? And, you know, that's what it kind of all boiled down to was like the why we were doing what we were doing.
00:08:11
Rustam
Right. And you hear about that, right? The c Simon Sinek, the why, not just kind of the how or the what, but it's the why. And there was never a moment in my career, at least that I felt like I had more important why.
00:08:24
Rustam
And throughout my career, I've always kind of stuck with that. I've tested little things. I've gone in different industries, ah ah you know, since, but I always have had a real deep passion for education. It's been really near and dear to our family as well.
00:08:41
Rustam
You know, first generation here, know, school was very important to us. It was very impactful for us. But look, I also know how important the trades are and just education in general, right?
00:08:53
Rustam
My dad was an electrician and air conditioning. He learned all that stuff. on his own. He took the exams, he took the tests, he passed it, he studied for it hard, right? And he had great business. So, you know, it's just really such an impactful kind of industry to be a part of. And I just never look back. It's just been so rewarding.
Meaningful Experiences in Education Marketing
00:09:14
Dan Sanchez
Was there a moment when you realized that higher ed was more than about just getting butts in seats and was about actually transforming people's lives?
00:09:25
Rustam
You know, there were a lot of moments, I would say, but there was one in particular that stood out to me, you know, and it was at a graduation. I was at one of the graduations and I had just heard one of the student speakers and A, i in like tears, like literally my eyes were watering because of how impactful her story was.
00:09:47
Rustam
Uh, but then B was just walking and one of the admissions, uh, team members, I met him. We just started chatting cause we both saw our names, badges, right. That were both in the same school.
00:09:58
Rustam
And he's like, you know what, Rustam, man, it is hard work, right? You listen to all these stories and you're, you're doing this every day. And my gas tank goes on right from full to E right. And on empty.
00:10:12
Rustam
every time I come to these graduations, it just fuels me back up to where I'm full and I'm ready to go. And I never more pumped than ever in my life. And I was like, and it's impactful across the across everybody. Every role is impacted. Everybody's impacted. Like, think about all the people in the stands. I mean, it's just such a rewarding, you know industry and career to be a part of. And so I think that that was probably early in my career in education, definitely in early 2010 or so, 2012. So yeah, I think those have just been some some the impact moments that I just remember.
00:10:52
Dan Sanchez
I feel like in marketing, you really feel like you're part of the whole thing, even though a lot of people don't really consider the transformation to start until, you know, they show up on campus for their first day.
00:11:02
Dan Sanchez
But I'm like, I think all good marketers know you're like, no, no. um The transformation starts as soon as they become aware of the problem.
00:11:06
Rustam
Yeah.
00:11:11
Dan Sanchez
It becomes aware of the university and walks through the buying process. There's so many things that got to happen inside them in order for them to actually get to the point where they even begin where other people are calling the start of the journey, right?
00:11:27
Rustam
Yep. 100%. And here's the other side of it. It's like, it's such a ripple effect, right? You don't realize the impact to not just that individual, but the family.
00:11:38
Rustam
I mean, I've seen from my marketing efforts, I've seen daughters and sons of students that have come through, graduated and gone to get careers, right?
00:11:48
Rustam
I mean, that is really impactful. was really cool stuff. And then the other side of it is you see, you know, the kind of exit interviews sometimes when when schools do those and you look back and you trace that student back to their originating source, you're like Google ad.
Successful Marketing Campaign Case Study
00:12:05
Rustam
You're like, oh my gosh, this person came through one of our ads for this program and here they are. They're they're an ah ah alumni. They're an an ambassador for our programs, right? Just so powerful.
00:12:17
Rustam
so I think that's that kind of ripple effect that's just, you know, kind of, it's pretty powerful.
00:12:24
Dan Sanchez
mentioned Google ads, but I had up on my next question. It's funny that I wondered if there was ever like a campaign or a specific project you worked on that kind of changed the trajectory of maybe an institution, maybe just for a department or even just for one student that you noticed that like it just made the difference in it. Like you you remember this campaign favorably.
00:12:46
Rustam
Yeah. I would say one of the campaigns that we, and this goes back you know, when Facebook was just kind of getting going, right.
00:12:57
Rustam
had, i think it was 2015 or 16, they had launched lead ads, right. Where you were able to kind of collect the information on the form.
00:13:02
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:13:05
Rustam
There was a ton of pushback, um know, across the industry on, you know, whether it would work and, you know, and so on and our teams like wanted to kind of push forward with, with the idea, push forward with the innovation, push forward with the new tactics.
00:13:22
Rustam
And so we were there ready from day one and we launched it as soon as it launched. We, we launched it. It didn't work right off the bat. It took some time.
00:13:32
Rustam
We re looked at creatives. We looked at audiences and so on, but we did eventually kind of get it to work. And the the cool thing there was, I remember one of the students that actually had come through that campaign, uh, turned into one of our alumni ambassadors, had many, many, uh, you know, impact on many, many individuals from there.
00:13:55
Rustam
That campaign in itself actually turned out to be a very successful campaign for us. But that in itself, if we decided not to do that, like we may not have ever had that student come through and had that impact not only to themselves, but to the school, right?
00:14:10
Rustam
And to others.
00:14:12
Dan Sanchez
You're one of the lucky lucky marketers that have had the opportunity to work both agency side and in-house. In fact, you spend a significant amount of time working all the way up from like director of digital marketing all the way up to like VP of marketing at the Ultimate Medical
Insights on In-House Marketing
00:14:28
Dan Sanchez
Academy. And you spend a good chunk of your career there in-house.
00:14:33
Dan Sanchez
What was it like? What were some of the insights you gleaned actually going from agency to being in-house for such a significant season that you're like, the agencies, they had this right, but this is what I picked up after being in-house for a significant amount of time.
00:14:47
Rustam
Yeah, you know, it's incredible. I have worked with agencies and seen agencies that have the most incredible offices that have won every single award in the world.
00:14:59
Rustam
And, but nobody, unless you've really been in that shoe, nobody will really understand your student base, your brand, your differentiation and your why.
00:15:12
Rustam
probably better than you will. Right. And so that's something in being in that role that I really took to heart and really tried to understand as best as I could what that meant for our institution.
00:15:26
Rustam
Right. And on the outside, from an agency perspective, I try to kind of keep that in mind. I don't ever claim to know brand better than the institution.
00:15:37
Rustam
but I will do most amount I can do to learn as much as I can about that student, about the the the school, the institution, and what makes them truly unique and different.
00:15:48
Rustam
Like how many institutions are testing their forms to see the experience, to see what opt-out rates are in their emails, like those sorts of things, right?
00:15:57
Rustam
That really kind of give you indicators of you whether you understand the truly understand what the students are or not. So that i would say
Marketing and Admissions Relationship
00:16:05
Rustam
is huge. You've gotta have had some experience and those shoes. And I think the other side is the importance of the partnership between marketing and admissions.
00:16:19
Rustam
That's something that I picked up that is invaluable. In my career, it's been absolutely critical. It's gotta be a fantastic relationship.
00:16:29
Rustam
Otherwise it's gonna be ah ah big, big struggle and challenge. As it is, you have enough challenges out there, but If you don't have that alignment, it's even more difficult.
00:16:39
Dan Sanchez
Yeah. I mean, even in the world of B2B, marketing and sales alignment really tough. But I think in the college world, marketing and admissions alignment is whole other level. It's a complicated, hard, long sale.
00:16:53
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:16:54
Rustam
Absolutely. And if you're just pointing fingers at each other, then it's just not going work. you know, it's not a good long-term play, but when you can realize that and you are open and transparent about what's happening, what's working, what's not working, what's coming up.
00:17:12
Rustam
it's just, uh, it's such a huge, huge difference.
Exploring ROI in Education Marketing
00:17:17
Dan Sanchez
So we talked about the fact this whole podcast is focused on ROI, hence r ROI University. But there's a dual meaning for it, right? Because you believe that institutions shouldn't just have a positive ah ah for for the institution, but also even more so for the individual.
00:17:39
Dan Sanchez
Why that idea something you're passionate about?
00:17:44
Rustam
Yeah, I think, you know, you can track numbers day long and I can kind of pull together ROAS calculations and, you know, you you you can kind of look at your AdWords and just focus on that. But I think, you know, when you really step back and look a little bit deeper, there's a lot internally that also needs to kind of happen internally, like we talked about within your teams, internally within your team members, and really understanding like,
00:18:14
Rustam
what are those key skill sets needed to kind of really, know, create impactful opportunities and campaigns
Importance of Internal Growth
00:18:23
Rustam
and so on. and I like to kind of talk about it in the like, the B plus the do equals the have, like, yeah, we all we want to have more enrollments. Well,
00:18:32
Rustam
What is it gonna take to get there? Well, you gotta be a certain type of person, right? You gotta understand the core know to your programs. You gotta understand your student population. gotta understand what messaging works, what doesn't and why, right?
00:18:48
Rustam
And then what do you have to do, right? In order to kind of have what you're looking to which is enrollments. And basically what do you need to do? How are you going set up those campaigns?
00:18:58
Rustam
What types of platforms are you to be using? Like all of those things, right? So there's a lot more than just what you see on the outside. There's a lot internally You know, one thing that I used to do is we would give ourselves like I think I gave every team member like 10 percent of your time a week, like test things, do R&D.
00:19:17
Rustam
Like Google is really well known for that. And when I was running a team, I was giving the team opportunity to test things, break things, know, see and learn.
00:19:28
Rustam
go out, do research, take a course. you was big into that too. But those are the things I think that really go beyond just what you see in the numbers and the campaigns and so on. It's really more internal as far as like who you need to become, things you need to learn, and just constant kind of opportunities to kind of be better.
Conclusion and Future Episodes
00:19:50
Dan Sanchez
I'm looking forward to seeing this show evolve as you dive into not just what is happening in marketing and tactics, but the kind of people we need to become in order to actually execute those kinds of campaigns.
00:20:02
Dan Sanchez
Because I think we've all seen the tactics. We've all seen the strategies. and Now we can just go to AI and be like, write me a strategy. But oftentimes it's not enough. And that's what I'm really excited about for this show is talking about layer behind the layer of what needs to happen, but why it needs to happen and what needs to happen inside of us.
00:20:20
Dan Sanchez
So I'm so excited to be launching the show with you. And I'm looking forward to the next episode where we're going to unpack the mission behind what you're doing with your company and the rest of the show.