Anthony Chanzemuth, founder of Simple Creative Marketing, survived brain surgery in 2015 and rebuilt his career around purpose. He argues marketing spans the entire customer journey, not just sales, and advises entrepreneurs to serve a specific niche and lean into their strength.
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Alright everyone, welcome back to the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner, and today we have a guest named Anthony Chanzemuth. He's the virtual CMO, founder of Simple Creative Marketing, virtual chief marketing officer, podcast host of Authentic Influence, and he helps— helping— and he's helping professional service businesses to grow online. And lastly, he He is a digital nomad. So welcome, man. I'm pumped to have you on.
Awesome to be here, Tyler. Let's rock.
Let's do it. So the first question I have for you is, what's the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
All right, so in December 2015, I ended up in hospital with a 5-hour surgery to remove a bacterial infection in my brain, then spent the next 2 months in hospital trying to wonder, like, work out what the eff happened. And I'd been working in corporate for a number of years, since leaving school and doing ridiculous hours working for something that I didn't really care about, making some money. But the key message here is that at that point in my life, I had to reassess everything, and I learned that there's more to life than just working for money.
And what's the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?
All right, so I work in digital marketing, so 2 things. Marketing is really just about sharing your passion and it applies to all functions of your business and customer journey. So not just before the sales, right? People think it's like advertising. So it's just before you get people, customers in the door. Marketing actually goes from even before they become customers to even after they become customers, even after they've left you, you're still marketing to them. Okay. So yeah. And the second thing I wanna, suggest here is that you want to get clear on how to prioritize what you're doing with your marketing, and we do have a marketing effectiveness quiz that we've built on our site which is free to use if anyone wants to check that out. That will help you focus on the right things.
Awesome, awesome. I definitely want to get that link then at the end of the interview. And next question is, what's your best piece of overall business advice? So not necessarily like industry-specific.
To me, okay, so it's really just focus on what actually matters. And that means to identify the people or the businesses that you can serve best, then go and serve them great. Focus on your point of difference, okay, and put all of your energy into highlighting that to everybody. I think if you just did that really well, you'd be kicking ass.
And if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would it be?
Find out who you really are. Learn, grow, ask, challenge, teach, love, make mistakes, and have a ton of fun along the way.
Mm, I love that answer. And in your opinion, what's the key to happiness?
I've got 3 keys to happiness. One is love. So love for yourself, love for your significant other if you're in a relationship, your family and your friends, for your community, and love for doing and being part of something greater than yourself. Then the second one I would add to that is quality. Choose quality over quantity. And we're talking relationships, experiences, sharings, right? Jobs, anything, right? Go for quality. And then the third one is just being the best person that you can be and pushing yourself to improve every single day.
And what's the best book you've read and what was the number one thing you learned from it?
Okay, there's a book out there called The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life by Rosamund Stone and Benjamin Zander. And the key lesson I got from that is the power of reframing circumstances. And there's something they say in the book, I think it's in the first chapter, which is, it's all made up. So your entire life and all the experience that you have is a creation from your mind, and therefore you can change it in any way you like once you understand that.
I love that. And what's your favorite quote and why?
Sort of similar wavelength. There's a quote from an author, a famous author by the name of Wayne Dyer in the spiritual world. He once said, when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.
And so, and why is that your favorite quote? I think, I mean, I feel like I kind of know, but if you were to explain, like, why is that your top one?
Yeah, so when I was going through my hospital journey. I was really questioning, you know, what was life all about? Why did— how did I get to this point where I'm doing 60 hours a week for something I didn't care about? And as you know, Tyler, I run my own business, so therefore I'm constantly on this emotional roller coaster. And now I'm taking my wife through that roller coaster as well, which is really hard to work through sometimes. And so that quote really just brings me back to grounding, centering, and looking at Okay, these problems that are presenting right now, how can I see them from a different angle? Because when we get stuck in the solution, stuck in the problem, we can't really get past it. But if we can view the problem from another angle or different perspectives, then that can help us shift and move forward.
Well, thank you so much for coming on, man. The last question I have for you is, where can people find you online the best? And then if you could also provide that link for the quiz.
Yep. So best place and the same place for the quiz is to go to simple, simple www.simplecreative marketing.com/quiz. And the website is simplecreative marketing.com.
Perfect, man. Thank you again for coming on. We appreciate it.
Love it. Thanks, Tyler. You're doing great work.
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