Deb Zahn: I want to welcome you to this week's episode of the Craft of Consulting Podcast. My guest today is Chudi Anyaeche, and he is going to talk about using online ads as part of your marketing mix, and specifically, if you're going to use them, how to do it with the right type of precision so it increases the likelihood that you're going to get the business results that you ultimately want. He packs so much good stuff in this episode. Let's get started. I want to welcome my guest today, Chudi Anyaeche. Chudi, welcome to the show.

Chudi Anyaeche: Thank you. Thank you. I've been very excited about this.

Deb Zahn: We're going to talk about something super cool. At least we think it's super cool.

Chudi Anyaeche: No one else thinks it's cool but me.

Deb Zahn: Well, except people keep asking me about it over and over again. We're going to talk about using online ads as part of your marketing mix. A lot of people have asked me recently, "Oh my gosh, should I do that? Oh my gosh, should I do that?" I don't want to give them ill-informed advice, so I'm like, let me bring on the guy who knows. And I know you know, so we're going to talk about that today. Let's start off with the why. For consultants who are listening to this, why should they consider ads as part of their marketing mix?

Chudi Anyaeche: I'll start off at the most basic level. The purpose of advertising, especially digitally, is to bring a product, a service, and anything in front of a specific audience. Just from the perspective of having awareness, just from the perspective of peeking from the right eyeballs, as people like to say, is really important to make sure that you're able to, one, understand your audience is, and then show up in front of that audience. Because the beauty of Google, the beauty of Facebook, the beauty of all these platforms is that there's a really large audience. We all use them. We all use Google. We all use YouTube, so on and so forth. Knowing that your audience is out there, if you're able to properly and very eloquently say, "Hey, I offer this service," you can then find those customers and then build your own client base.

Deb Zahn: You and I obviously work together, which is why I wanted you on. What I like very much about what you do is it's also very audience focused. It's not like a billboard and you hope your audience drives by it. It's much more targeted than that. But people sometimes get confused like, “Well, why do I have to do ads when I do social media posts? Isn't that the same thing?” Let's start off by saying what the difference is before we dive into the ads.

Chudi Anyaeche: Absolutely, absolutely. What I'm really happy and what I hope we're able to convey is we kind of pull the curtain back because there's a lot of things within advertising that can definitely help consultants, as well as just business owners that I feel like people don't really know around the idea of.

Well, I post on Facebook and on Instagram, so on and so forth, right? Let's say even if you have 10,000 or 100,000 followers, there's a thing called an algorithm. Whenever you post, I'm sure you've seen this before many times, whenever you post and let's say if my page has 100,000 followers on Facebook and I post seven things, I get maybe 70 likes. You're just wondering like, “Am I not post looking the right thing?” But the truth is, it has nothing to do with what you're posting. It has everything to do with all of your posts are purposely being held back from being seen by everyone. Of that 100,000 people that are on my pseudo Facebook page, maybe 5% are seeing it. When it comes to the idea of, “Well, we've amassed this large audience. And we want to engage with them,” even though they're following you, that doesn't necessarily mean that they're actually engaging with the content that you post.

To use advertising where you're actually engaging with the audience that you want to engage with, it makes it a lot more targeted and a lot more strategic because now you can say specifically what you want to say to that audience in the way that you want to. And you at least know that all of that 100,000 audience, they're actually going to see it as opposed to the 5%.

Deb Zahn: That is the best explanation I've heard of that. Because as you were describing it, I kept picturing Mark Zuckerberg with an evil laugh. Ha! And then he like winnows it down to 5%, if you're lucky. If you're lucky, 5%.

Chudi Anyaeche: Yeah, if you're lucky.

Deb Zahn: As opposed to ads because algorithms serve the business purpose of the platform. Marketing and ads serve your business purposes.

Chudi Anyaeche: Yeah. I guess the best way to look at it...I try not to say like, "Oh, someone is evil or not." But if my business is based on you purchasing ad space for me, what benefit do I get by allowing you to advertise for free? I think once upon a time it was maybe 40% or maybe 10%, right? It slowly gets scaled back year by year to then what I believe, and I could be wrong, to then purposely make people want to then rely a lot more heavily on advertising.

Deb Zahn: It's smart.

Chudi Anyaeche: That's a good way to explain it.

Deb Zahn: But that's why it makes sense to have them as part of your marketing. Are there times when it doesn't make sense, and you tell folks, "This doesn't seem like the right strategy?"

Chudi Anyaeche: It's rare where I'll say to never do something. Because even if something is not going to really push the needle, there's still value. There's still benefit there. Though I spend the majority of my career within the paid advertising space, I still see value in organic social posting. I look at organic social as a way of solidifying your digital footprint. In the sense that if we had a conversation, you're curious to learn about me, you'll then do some research about me, right?

Sometimes people will go to...It's less about go to the Wikipedia. It's more about going to the social channels. You kind of want to see specifically about the business. In and of that, there's value there because you want to make sure that if anyone is following you or is interested in doing business with you, right? And if you're in a business that socially it works, it makes sense for you to then have a presence on social media even though you're not going to receive the most amount of traffic or engagement.

It's just good to know that you have something there, so that way you at least have some type of backing.

Deb Zahn: That's right because they are going to go look. I noticed when we ran ads for something else, my podcast listenership just shot up because suddenly people are like, "Wait, who's this lady? Let me kick those tires a little bit." What do they do? They went to my LinkedIn. My LinkedIn views went up, and then they went to my podcast, which was fabulous, by the way because I've retained that higher level.

Chudi Anyaeche: That's always good.

Deb Zahn: Yeah, which is fabulous. We could do an entire episode on just the common mistakes, but what are, like, the big two common mistakes you see people make with online ads?

Chudi Anyaeche: My number one is the misconception that impressions means results. Let's say I'll use your business specifically. If you are advertising, you know your audience, if you reach 10 million people and none of them are related to who you want to target, that's not a win in my book. But a lot of times I'll see instances where people are like, "Oh, we received five million impressions or seven million," and so forth, but were actually who you were interested in reaching?

Because it's one thing to show me an ad or something that I'm not interested in. It's another thing to show me an ad that I am interested in. I think the first misconception is thinking that impressions means results. It's a means to results, but it's not necessarily there.

Deb Zahn: Define impressions for the folks who don't know what that means.

Chudi Anyaeche: My apology. Impressions are anytime someone views an ad. If I view an ad 10 times, that's 10 impressions. If I view an ad 10 times and then you view the ad 10 more times, that's 20 impressions total.

Deb Zahn: Got you. OK, perfect. It's not just the eyeballs.

Chudi Anyaeche: Yep. No, it's not just the eyeballs.

Deb Zahn: It's the finger clicking and the wallet buying.

Chudi Anyaeche: Yeah. It's the actual action. It's a very important thing because one of the issues that I see a lot of companies run into is that they then have this very negative opinion of advertising because in their mind they've already done what they had to do. They've already done it the right way, but in reality, it's a lot more complicated than that.

Deb Zahn: What's the other big mistake you see?

Chudi Anyaeche: The other big mistake is just thinking that, "Let's advertise everywhere. Let's do this. Let's do that. Let's show up on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Reddit, Twitter, Snapchat, YouTube." Everywhere. The overall idea is that yes, there's an argument that your audience may appear in all these platforms, but it's all always really important to be very strategic about how you want to then reach that audience.

I have an account for all these things, right? But depending on what I'm looking for, I may not go to that platform for that. The idea of having an actual strategy and not just thinking to just spend everywhere or advertise everywhere is another thing that I see a lot of companies fall into.

Deb Zahn: Well, you stopped me from falling into it, which I appreciate tremendously. Because at that time, I was on Instagram. I'm not on Instagram anymore, but I liked Instagram because it was pretty pictures. That was fun. It served none of my business purposes at all.

Chudi Anyaeche: And that's OK sometimes, right? We know that Facebook and Instagram are owned by the same company, right? But it doesn't necessarily mean that the effectiveness of your advertising will be equal. More times than not, I see one doing a lot better than the other. Sometimes it's Facebook. Sometimes Instagram. It's very rare that I'll see roughly a 50-50 or a 60-40 split.

Deb Zahn: Right. You helped me think through where is my audience really, and where does it make sense for me to spend dollars to get ultimately the result that I want, which I was very grateful for. And it worked. So that was wonderful. Let's say somebody shows up on your Zoom and says, "I love this. I'm in. Chudi, I want to do ads, and I want to do them now." What are some of the questions or considerations you run them through so that at the end of it, you have a good starting strategy?

Chudi Anyaeche: Oh, yeah. First and foremost, and we did this ourselves, your target audience. Regardless of the business who is your target audience? Because I always use the analogy of, if this is your target audience that you can find on social or any platform, this is your actual audience. How do we find this subset of that target audience to ensure that we're serving impressions to the right people?

So then that way, when you're going through the advertising process and then we're optimizing, we're monitoring, we're actually seeing specifically like what's happening instead of saying, "Well, we tried and it didn't work," right? I'm a really big proponent of testing, as you already know. You have to test more than a few things. On top of understanding your target audience, really get an understanding of where you are in the market. I do a lot of research behind the scenes. You know how much research I did about you when we first started.

Getting a good understanding of what exactly is the offering, what exactly are we giving to the consumer. It's one thing to say like, "Oh, I have this really great product." But what exactly is that? And then what's the best way to then find that to the audience? Because even if we find the ideal audience, if we don't know how to communicate this beautiful service or this beautiful offering, it falls on deaf ears.

Deb Zahn: That's right.

Chudi Anyaeche: It's really important to make sure that the audience is correct, but then also knowing how to position the business, the product, the service is just as important. Those impressions that, we're going to receive a lot of impressions, but we should treat them as if they're few and far between.

Deb Zahn: That's right. You asked me really in-depth questions about my target audience. I couldn't just say “consultants” because you can't throw a rock and not hit a consultant. But they're not all the same, and they're not all who I'm trying to help. I think about it in terms of if I was doing ads...I'm a practicing healthcare consultant in the US. If I was doing ads, I wouldn't come to you, and you wouldn't let me say, "Hey, let's do healthcare in the US."

Chudi Anyaeche: I'll say, "Let's think about it a little bit better."

Deb Zahn: Yeah, yeah. You'd be gentle but firm and say, "Deb, that's a vast, vast thing." Most of the people you're going to put it in front of aren't going to be the right folks. They're not the buyers. They're not the buyers for the things that you do and the results that you can achieve. I loved that process because I knew that I was after that hyper-targeting to make the best use of the dollars that I was spending and to know that it was getting for the right folks.

And then you also asked me about language, like what resonates with my target audience, so that you'd have a better feel for the type of ad copy that would make sense.

Chudi Anyaeche: Absolutely. Language is really, really important because if I'm...I love watches, right? The reason why I would like a watch is for very specific reasons. If someone is able to then test different versions of saying, "Hey, here's this watch you may like," then it'll intrigue me. It's not just how it looks. It's not just the brand. It's things that are specific, right? If we're able to understand that consumers are not as one dimensional as we think, to know that it will take more than a few ways to really understand what's the best way to reach out to them, then we're actually setting ourselves up to succeed.

Because we sometimes think as a business and not as a person, right? Not as the consumer sometimes. That's problematic because we think like, "Oh, I get it. Here's the ad. You click here. And then you buy here. And then you do this," so on and so forth. But if you yourself are the consumer, if you wouldn't do that, then you know that it's a few more touchpoints that needs to be there. Being able to really eloquently describe the business or the service or the product in a few different ways, you really get to learn what's the best way to position the business.

One of the things that we spoke about during our monitoring services was here's the best way that your audience is being spoken to. Here's something that your audience likes to be discussed as. Here's something that your audience likes to be grouped as, right? There are 101 different ways to speak to like your audience or any audience, but just be cognizant of the fact that we need to find the best way to speak to the audience.

Because if we say just one way, chances are, there may be a subset of that audience that's OK with that, but everyone may not be OK with that. Sometimes people want to know about the problem. Other times the solution. Other times they want to know your expertise. Other times they want to know why you're really good, so social proof. And other times it's a combination of all that. It's just good to test all of that ahead of time. That way, you at least know enough about your audience to then have a plan forward.

Deb Zahn: Right. Well, it's no different. I think about if someone were to buy a car, you don't just want to know that it drives, and then that's all you need to know. You want to know the various benefits you're going to get out of that particular thing, and you're going to want to know more than one. It wasn't always what I thought, which is the other helpful thing, which is why testing is so important. I know that you're a big fan of testing because you say that word a lot.

You said it a lot to me, which I love. That's one of the reasons I came to you is I didn't say, "Here's a chunk of money, create an ad for me, and then make that work." We had a whole different process. Talk about what testing looks like and some of what that entails and why it's so important.

Chudi Anyaeche: Absolutely. If we can go back, testing is one of the things that a lot of businesses really do not do. That's one of the things that really separates more successful businesses from what I've seen from the ones that are not as successful. If you put all of your eggs in one basket, it really sets you up for high risk, high reward type of thing. If it works, it works great. But even in the case that it works, you only know success from one way, and then that becomes a problem. If it doesn't work, then you think that, "Oh, advertising doesn't work."

The idea behind testing is that you want to make that you understand what's the best type of visuals to use, what's the best type of ad copy tone, what's the best types of headlines, the best type of call to actions. Because all of these individual factors works in ads, they all play a secret part. It's not the thing where someone looks at an ad like, "OK, here's the primary text. Here's the image. Here's the headline. Here's the call to action. I'm now going to do this." They kind of take a look at it, and then subconsciously they make specific decisions.

But what we want to always make sure that we're doing is not assuming what our audience will do.

Deb Zahn: That's right.

Chudi Anyaeche: Seeing a variety of different types of tests, a variety of different types of ad copy is really, really important, tone, so on and so forth, getting a little bit more technical. The way that ads are put out has a lot to do with bid strategies. From the perspective of the way that we're advertising the action, and I won't go too deep because that's a lot more technical, knowing the difference between if we run a campaign that is max conversions, as opposed to max clicks, as opposed to anything else. That's a little bit more technical.

I'll save everyone of any boredom about that. But the overall idea is that you do want to make sure that you have quite a few different variations. As the campaigns are running, you then can take time, "Well, this isn't working. Let's pick this off. Let's pick this off." And then from there, you kind of get this, see specifically what are some commonalities around the ones that are doing well versus the ones that are not doing as well? And that can then build the story of specifically, how should we engage or talk to this audience? Because I've seen cases where we think our audience is this.

Deb Zahn: We sure do.

Chudi Anyaeche: It's good to know your audience. I feel like the client always knows their audience. But when you go into the market, it's great to know that specifically, here's what we found to be your actual audience.

Deb Zahn: Right. And not walk in with assumptions that you are not willing to verify.

Chudi Anyaeche: Absolutely.

Deb Zahn: Because then you're inserting risk into the process. How many versions did we...I remember an Excel spreadsheet was in the mix. How many versions did we start off with that you started in your test process?

Chudi Anyaeche: I think at least...Total combinations, it was maybe 16. 16 plus.

Deb Zahn: Yeah. You're not like, "Oh, I'll just try out two, like A/B testing." And then over time, how does it work? You put the original 16 out there, and then what are you looking for that...And then choices that you were making to keep getting better at actually getting people to convert into clients.

Chudi Anyaeche: The overall goal is, after the first year or so of any ad platform, you're going to see some consistency. What exactly is normal for that platform? And then of that normal, what's contributing to that normal? Let's say for Google Ads, for example, more specifically search ads, we have the idea of what is normal, what's driving traffic. But what keywords specifically are actually driving said traffic, right? What search terms specifically are the ones that are leading that?

Because if we know that there are 10 keywords that we're targeting total and four of the 10 are actually driving traffic, but two of the 10 are actually driving the majority of traffic, then it seems like those two of the 10 is really the workhorse here. A specific theme within those two of the 10, then we can kind of extrapolate that out into its own campaign to then test to see how that works. I'm a really big proponent of testing primarily because we get to learn. We get to see what is the normal, what is the average, and then if there's a slight variations.

Because on a day-by-day basis we're dealing in search, or we're dealing in keyword searches, there's going to be some fluctuations. But being able to identify, "Well, this is out of the ordinary. This is not normal. This is not ideal." If seasonality has anything to do with it around this specific time we're doing well, then that kind of gives us an idea about things.

Just knowing that we're going to monitor not just for what's normal, but the outliers. And then of the outliers, what specifically do we need to either take out or to make sure that we include to ensure that the campaign is trending on a more positive manner?

Deb Zahn: That's right. The campaign we started with was not the campaign we ended with.

Chudi Anyaeche: It's rare. It's rare. It's rare that any of the campaigns that I start off with other ones that I end with because I look at them as a series of educated guesses. I feel like we start off with this, with this, with this, with this, with this. One of the things that I think have been helpful for me is that I don't have an "I know this is the answer" attitude.

Deb Zahn: That's right. And hopefully, your clients don't either because that's not helpful.

Chudi Anyaeche: No, no, not at all. Definitely not at all. I'm able to then say, "Of these educated guesses, let's see what's working, and then let's continue with the one that's working." I'm a really big proponent of learning while on the job. That sounds terrible, but like learning well on the job because you have to understand your audience, and your audience will vary across seasons, across years, across keywords, platforms, different things of that nature. We don't want to get in a place where we're playing catch, or we're not accepting of the data that's available to us.

Deb Zahn: Yeah. Because what they respond to during a, I don't know, pandemic might be really different. A little bit different than like seasonal changes. But yeah, I loved your approach to testing. And probably the smartest thing I did was to trust that you were looking for the right stuff and that my assumptions that I walked in with, I should not hold firm or sacred and just let the market essentially tell me what's working.

Chudi Anyaeche: Yes, yes. We should always trust the market. It's unfortunate because sometimes people have really bad experiences so they're like, "Well, I read this one article and we should do this way." But we're not benefiting ourselves by just saying, "We want to do this. We want to do it this specific way." It's a very a narrow-minded way of thinking. Because even if there is success, you only know success one way. There's no way to truly replicate that success without having everything in the exact same position, which then becomes the worst position.

Deb Zahn: Yeah, I love it. One other thing I wanted to hit on because it was meaningful to me, it was, again, one of the reasons I loved working with you, is we also talked about values because I wasn't comfortable having my ads on certain platforms. That's a value to me, so I didn't do it. But even in terms of some of the language that we used, I needed it to reflect my values personally and in my business. I love that we talked about that because that took some things off the table, but it also put some things on the table, which I thought was exciting.

Chudi Anyaeche: Absolutely. Every so often I'll run into clients like you that actually believe that, "I'm not comfortable with this specific platform, regardless of what the platform is. Let's find something else," and that's completely fine because this is your brand. This is business, right?

Deb Zahn: Yeah.

Chudi Anyaeche: It's like a reflection of you. There's never a situation where I want a client to be uncomfortable with where they're advertising. I want the clients to be very in the know. I want to make sure that you're OK with it and that comfort, right? That then allows you to, let's see where this goes. If we did advertise on whichever platform you weren't comfortable with, I feel like a part of you wouldn't be as warm or welcoming to the results because then you would feel a bit, a bit conflicted, right?

Deb Zahn: Yeah.

Chudi Anyaeche: Waiting for even more results, right? There are results, but it doesn't sit well with you. And I don't believe that there should ever be a case where a client or a consultant is working in a situation where they don't feel like they're comfortable.

Deb Zahn: That's right. Because if you build your business on a foundation of discomfort, then guess what? You have an uncomfortable business. Why do that?

Chudi Anyaeche: Exactly.

Deb Zahn: One thing I hope that folks have heard clearly without us actually saying it, and I'm going to say it, is don't try and duct tape and twine this yourself. By the way, I was thinking at the beginning, "Oh, well, I have someone who does graphics for me. And, oh, I write copy, meaning I know how to write words like in a computer." That's what I meant by writing copy. I'll just put an ad together. I was maybe going to be smart enough to do two, and I was going to try and just figure this out myself. I was wise enough to know that's not the right way to do it, and I needed to get help.

But I also know because I also experienced, that there's a lot of folks out there who are saying, they know how to do this, that doesn't do what you just described. If somebody were looking for, and it's OK if you describe yourself here, if someone were looking for the type of help, what should they be looking for to make sure that they're going to get somebody who actually is going to help them achieve their outcome?

Chudi Anyaeche: Hmm, so...

Deb Zahn: It's a tough one, right?

Chudi Anyaeche: It's a tough one because I've seen a lot of bad characters. I do a lot of audits. A lot of times either companies are entrenching from agencies or from consultants, and then they say, "Oh, this person said all these amazing things," and they're just like, "Oh, I don't know." One of the things that I always think is a huge red flag is when you're promising results. Anyone that promises results or promises specific numbers, I would say that's something to watch out for. Also, if you have a little bit of knowledge, allow the person to keep speaking, right?

Allow the person to continue to tell you what exactly is their plan. When we first started engaging, there was a strategy document that we went through together. I was able to very eloquently explain said thing. I'm a big fan of people, businesses, or consultants, working people that they know what they're talking about. They know what they're doing, right? It's the difference between being a know-all and know what you're talking about. As long as the person actually is able to give actual recommendations like I do all the time, do Facebook is not a recommendation.

It has to be a specific use for this platform. If they're able to speak in such terms, then chances are they probably know what they're talking about.

Deb Zahn: Yeah. And if you say, "So do you test ads?" And their answer is yes, from experience, they don't know how to test.

Chudi Anyaeche: Probably not. Yeah. I think one of the things that most clients that I work with, they see at the end of our engagement is that it's a lot more complicated than people think it is. It's not as simple as like, "Oh, you press this button for this audience. You press this, and you press that, and it goes out into the world." Right? It's, it's a little bit more than that. I feel like a lot of times sometimes people get taken advantage of because they don't have that understanding. "Well, anybody can do this," but it's a little bit more into it.

Deb Zahn: Yeah. No, I would agree. You were good at not promising results because I put pressure on you. If you recall what I said is that if this works, I get to spend more time with my mom. “Mom's counting on you.” I went there. I went all the way there and you said, "I'll do my best," which was perfect.

Chudi Anyaeche: I like to say, "I'll do my best." The fun thing about you, even though you were like you want to spend more time with your mom, I want you to spend more time with your mom too. You at least were in the space where you'd know, “OK, you can't promise me results. However, you at least had a plan to get me there.” One of the things that I always say is if we do great, I'll tell you exactly why. If we don't do great, I'll tell you exactly why.

Deb Zahn: That's right.

Chudi Anyaeche: There are still going to be insights. There are situations where I've ran into clients that were just really heavy on projections. They're not a real thing.

Deb Zahn: One other thing you said to me, which resonated a lot, is it also depends on what you're selling. It's not just I'm going to sell whatever, and then, Chudi, make that work. You have to have something that actually converts. Say a little bit about what you hope to see in terms of something that can actually get the results if you get it in front of the right people or increases the likelihood of getting the results.

Chudi Anyaeche: Yeah, yeah. I think there's two parts to that. The first part is the overall business. If you are a brand new business with very little proof of concept, then you're really going into the market blind, for lack of a better term. Right? If you're an established business with a history of success, like your own, you at least know that there's success there. When it comes to will it work, a business like yours, it's already worked, right? It's not a question of, oh, is it going to work? Is it not going to work? Let's find the right people just to make sure that it works even better.

One of the things about advertising is that if you have a business that's let's say not as valuable, you can bring that in front of the right audience. But if you're not providing value to them, there's really nothing that the audience is really getting out of that. It's important to make sure that there is value. You know the value that you give your audience and that audience can then quantify that, right?

If you're able to save me time, if you're able to teach me something, if you're able to help me learn something, if I'm able to buy something, feel better about myself, so on and so forth, right? These are the things that are valuable. It has very little to do with price points, has very little to do with the name that's attached to it because we're in an era or a time right now that absolutely anyone can make a product to either save someone time or to help someone do something and be extremely successful. It's not just the big names or thing or anything of that nature.

It's what exactly can you provide? What is the actual value proposition, and how quickly, or how eloquently, or how efficiently can you bring that to your target audience? As long as you have those things in order, if you have a well-enough crafted advertising plan or a marketing plan, then you'll be in a really good place.

Deb Zahn: Yeah. I've always thought of marketing as the promise, and then the thing that you're selling has to be the fulfillment of that promise, and then some. I usually like make sure that I exceed whatever expectations that I set, but that's the only way that you're ultimately going to get conversions. Or if you get conversions and somebody buys your thing, so it could be a product, it could be a course, it could be a class, whatever, then you're also looking at the lifetime value of that relationship because you're building a relationship. If I help them and I help them with that, I also want to help them with other things because I'm invested in their success. In which case, I better help them with that first thing. That actually better be helpful.

Chudi Anyaeche: Exactly. I think one of the more important things that you just said was that you're invested. You as a company must come off invested. It doesn't have to be that you want to follow them their entire lives doing something, right? If you offer one specific thing, be very invested in ensuring that the value of that is great. Because if you start your campaign, let's say you sell 100 of whatever. If it's a really bad product, it will get out very fast. What you want to do is think about the long-term versus short-term.

It's funny that I'm in the advertising space, but I hate the idea of going viral. Because when you go viral, it goes up very fast and it comes back down. I'm a fan of being consistent and growth, like slow with steady growth. That way you're not just going to feel like this is a moment that you're going to miss because you're testing because you have the strategy because you know what you're doing. You're not going to feel like oh, we're going to come back down here. No.

We've learned so much down here that we're just going to keep going, keep testing, keep going, keep going, and then you'll be in a place where you don't have to catch certain moments. You don't have to feel like, oh we've missed our chance. You don't have to feel like, oh, our audience is gone. No. You've learned so much over the past six...

Deb Zahn: That's right

Chudi Anyaeche: That you're not just waiting for a lightning to strike twice. You already have a plan. You already have an equation. You already know where to go. You know where you can find your conversions. You know what's cost effective. You know how to build out now. You're in a place where, let's expand. Let's do testing. Not to learn our audience, to find a new audience. And that's the most ideal thing to do.

Deb Zahn: I love that, and I love the not relying on viral because I've heard that. Viral should just be like kitten videos, right? I want one of my kitten videos to go viral. I'm not going to lie, I do. But I'm not building a business off of the hope that something like that occurs for my business and suddenly something about consulting goes viral? Yeah, OK. Which would be sad almost.

Chudi, If someone's listening to this and they appreciate the fabulousness with which you talk about these things, where can they find you?

Chudi Anyaeche: You can find me in a number of places. I like to differentiate myself from just general businesses. I want you to reach out to me, connect to me. Feel free to reach out via LinkedIn. I welcome additional connections, and I also welcome having real conversations. One of the things that I think someone told me was that like they were surprised I wasn't trying to sell them when I first spoke to them. I'm like, "No, I don't have to sell you." My ultimate goal is for you to know what you need, right?

And if that's me, that's cool. If that's not me, that's OK too. I want to make sure that you, as a business are able to then say, "OK, I have a better idea of what would I need to then make my business prosper."

Deb Zahn: I love that. You are a consultant and that is your approach to sales. I love that approach. I do the same thing when I'm selling my consulting services. It works because people recognize it's about a real relationship and real care and concern. I love that.

All right. You know what's coming next. I got to ask you a question about how it is you have perfectly balanced your life and always. No, but how you have balance in your life, however it is you define that. How does that show up for you? What kind of stuff do you do?

Chudi Anyaeche: The things that I do is I very often, especially now with the pandemic, we have a lot more time to really think about our lives, I sit back and I think that if I do this for the remainder of my life, whatever this is, will I feel like I've wasted my time? If I feel like what I'm doing is valuable, that I get intrinsic value from what I'm doing, it's fun, albeit it's work, but it's still fun, if I still enjoy what I'm doing, then I know that my time isn't wasted.

But one of the harder things that I had to learn very recently was that even though it's fun, even though you love what you're doing, it's still a little bit of work, right? Being able to then kind of separate myself from the work to then relax, watch a movie, watch Squid Games. Do different things like that, right?

Deb Zahn: Something relax like watching Squid Games.

Chudi Anyaeche: Doing different things like that and to know that this is your life. I don't believe people were put on this earth to work, but I do feel like the work that you do can help you. Knowing that balance and striking that balance is probably the big thing. I feel like I've been doing it thus far.

Deb Zahn: I love it.

Chudi Anyaeche: Let's hope that I continue to do that.

Deb Zahn: I love that. That's such a wonderful answer, and we will have links to where folks can find you in the show notes. But Chudi, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your wisdom because this is... I didn't know anything about this. You taught me what I know. I know I only know the two up the iceberg, so I appreciate you coming on and willing to share all this.

Chudi Anyaeche: Absolutely. Absolutely. My ultimate goal is to remove this very romanticized version of advertising because I feel like there's a lot of really good business owners that are ending up with the short end of the straw because they just don't know these things, right? Personally, I don't think that it's a thing that we should keep in the back. I think it should be brought to the front.

Deb Zahn: Love it. Perfect way to end. Thank you, Chudi.

Chudi Anyaeche: No problem.

Deb Zahn: Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Craft of Consulting Podcast. I want to ask you to do actually three things. If you enjoyed this episode or if you've enjoyed any of my other ones, hit subscribe. I got a lot of other great guests that are coming up and a lot of other great content and I don't want you to miss anything. But the other two things that I'm going to ask you to do is, one is, if you have any comments, so if you have any suggestions or any kind of feedback that will help make this podcast more helpful to more listeners, please include those.

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So as always, you can go and get more wonderful information and tools at craftofconsulting.com. Thanks so much. I will talk to you on the next episode. Bye-bye.