Create a 6 Figure Business From Home

Do you want to know the secrets to building a six-figure+ business without sacrificing your time, energy, and sanity? 

Well, you're in luck because on today's episode of the Unlocked Show with Tracy Wilson, we have a very special guest, Suzy Crawford, who has done just that!

Suzy is a mom of 3 and an ex-marketing executive with over a decade of experience in the industry, including 7 years at Google leading marketing and ad strategy for global businesses. She also managed to build her own side business to 6-figures in just 90 days while working a demanding job and raising a family.

Now, Suzy is a coach and consultant who helps female entrepreneurs launch and scale their businesses quickly, without feeling handcuffed to their business. She's known as the "anti guru" among the current sea of coaches and has helped many women achieve success on their own terms.

In this episode, Suzy will share the secrets to building a successful business without the hustle and grind, including the key factors that contributed to her success, common misconceptions people have about building a successful business quickly, and the marketing strategies that have worked to grow a 6 figure business from home.

In this episode, you will learn the following:

1. How to Build a Six-Figure Business Without Sacrificing Time, Energy, and Sanity
2. The Benefits of Niching Down to Attract and Repel the Right Audience
3. How to Create Systems and Processes to Create a Business That Fuels Your Life

Resources:
https://www.suzycrawford.com/

Key Points in this Episode
7:58       Marketing is Key to Success
7:58      Starting a Side Hustle
10:51  The Power of Marketing for Business
13:04   Misconceptions about Building a Successful Business
16:53   Prioritizing Your Audience
24:38   Systems and Processes for Life-Proof Business
29:21  Turning Passion into Profit
33:12   Finding Your Ideal Clients
33:53   Smart Use of Google Advertising
41:01   Targeting Your Audience with Ads
48:08    Growing Your Business through Instagram

SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS
Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/itsmesuzyc
Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/itssuzycrawford/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@suzycrawford8384

Connect with me:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tracy_m_wilson
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tracymwilsonunlocked
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/tracymwilson
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/tracymwilson
Website: www.tracymwilson.com

Chapters

• 7:58 Marketing is Key to Success
• 7:58 Starting a Side Hustle
• 10:51 The Power of Marketing for Busines
• 13:04 Misconceptions about Building a Successful Business
• 16:53 Prioritizing Your Audience
• 24:38 Systems and Processes for Life-Proof Business"
• 29:21 Turning Passion into Profit
• 33:12 Finding Your Ideal Clients
• 33:53 Smart Use of Google Advertising
• 41:01 Targeting Your Audience with Ads
• 48:08 Growing Your Business through Instagram

Transcript

Hey, good morning, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the unlocked show. I'm your host, Tracy Wilson. It's a pleasure to be here with you guys today in my brand new studio. So some of you might notice that the background is a little bit different today. I had a huge move over the weekend out of our apartment. Nobody wants to do that ever again into our new, I'm going to say temporary residence. So I'm going to be coming at you over the next few months from my brand new studio, which you're kind of going to see transform over the next few months, I might say, because right now, little secret, I'm surrounded by boxes which you would never, ever know that. So welcome to today's show. I want to ask you guys this before we kick in to the content for today, because today is going to be really exciting, particularly if you are somebody who is going to say a budding entrepreneur, somebody who wants to kind of kick your nine to five job. You want to start something new, but you want to know how to do it quickly and easily. And you want to know what the secrets are to building a six figure business without having to sacrifice a whole heap of your time, your energy, and I'm going to say your sanity in the process because lucky for you, I have found the amazing Suzy Crawford, who's here with me on the show today. And she is going to be sharing with you all the secrets that she has. Well, I'm going to be unlocking all of those and getting her to share all of those with us so that you can find out exactly what it was that susie did to be able to take what she knew and transition out of her nine to five job at the same time as creating her six figure business. And now she's able to do that from the comfort of her own home. She is a mum of three. And we will say that we might see the kids running around today because they are at home. And she's also been she's an ex marketing executive with over a decade's worth of experience, including working for google, and she was the leading lead marketing and strategy for that global business. So without further ado, I just want to say hey, a huge, big welcome to Susie. It's fantastic to have you here and I can't wait to unlock all of the secrets that you've got around how you actually created your own six figure business. So welcome to the show.

Suzy Crawford 00:03:07

Thank you. Thank you so much, Tracy. I'm super excited to be here.

Tracy Wilson 00:03:12

That's awesome. Well, like we said, this is a family friendly show. So if little ones happen to walk out and they are busy running around behind the scenes, then that's totally okay because guess what I mentioned to you before the show that my grandson will probably be turning up. And guess what? Just as we go live, they have turned up, and they are actually tapping in my window because I don't think the doors open. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to pop you up onto the big screen. And whilst I allow you to kind of tell everybody a little bit about your background and kind of how you came to be doing what you're doing now, I'm going to run away just because I can, and I'm going to go and open the door. So I'm going to roll, tell our audience how you came to be doing what we're doing today.

Suzy Crawford 00:04:02

Okay? Sounds good. All right, so hi, everyone. My name is Suzy Crawford. I'm really excited to be here. So I always tell everyone I am a marketer through and through. I've been in marketing now for a decade and a half, so 15 years, and specifically in digital marketing. And if you really think of digital marketing and what it was 15 years ago, that was like in its baby stages, in its nascent stages, and I got exposure to the online advertising world really early, really early in my career, but also really early on, before online advertising became what it is now. And it intrigued me really from the beginning. It's incredible learning marketing at such an early stage in your career, because truly what I believe is that marketing is 99% of what makes the business. You really can't have a business without having strong marketing. So I started as an agency. I then left and got my MBA from UCLA, and from there I went and worked at google for about seven years. And while I was there, it's when I had my three kids, and I actually started my own business on the side while working full time, a very demanding job. When I was at google, I worked with some of the largest brands that you know of and likely use today and built their marketing strategies and advertising plans for 910 figures and really gained a lot of exposure into how a successful business markets. And what I learned early, early on, is if you can learn strategy and not tactics, you'll be successful. So the same strategy that big businesses use is really the same strategy that a small business should use. And not enough people are told that. A lot of people think that, well, because I'm a solopreneur, because I am a one person, a one woman show, it's going to be totally different. I have to do things differently. But that's not the case. And that's why I started my business. So I started an agency while I was working at google, and that's what I was able to grow to six figures very fast. The agency model is one that I really believe on, believe in to this day. And I'm a big, big believer that if you can successfully that anyone can successfully grow an agency business to six figures and not work as much as you think you'll have to work. So today, what do I do? I actually still run a really successful marketing agency, and I also own a coaching business where I teach women how to do the same. I teach them how to launch their business and scale to go from freelancer to CEO to CEO of a six figure, multiple six figure, and I even have seven figure clients running their own agencies.

Tracy Wilson 00:06:56

What a really interesting background story. And having started right from the grassroots and then being able to work for a company like Google and actually seeing from the inside what a massive company does to be able to market themselves and then working on strategy. And tactics inside a company like that and realizing that, hang on, even for a huge corporate company such as Google, the sorts of things that they are doing actually apply. Even if I were to go out and be a one woman, one man band on my own freelancing or starting my own agency, I can apply those same kind of strategies in my own business. And I agree with you. One of the things that a lot of people don't talk about is the strategy piece. Because that strategy piece is once we understand and we know what to do, you can apply that to anything. And then on top of that, you can layer on the tactics and do some fancy stuff from there. So let's talk a little bit about, like, at the time, you were working for Google, obviously having three children and trying to bring them up, juggle a really demanding job, and then oh, my God. Go get a little bit crazy and decide that. How about I just find some carve out some more time in my day to start this side hustle? Or this business on the side? How did you actually do that? Because I know there's a lot of listeners out there that are like, I want to do that, but where the heck am I going to find the time to do this without sacrificing time with my family or sleep?

Suzy Crawford 00:08:34

Yes.

Tracy Wilson 00:08:34

So what did you do?

Suzy Crawford 00:08:36

So, full transparency. When I did start it out, it was rough because I knew I always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I always wanted to start my own business. And I remember I was on maternity leave, and I'm very fortunate that I got great maternity leave working for a company like Google. So I was like, there's no other time to do it than now, so I'm going to do it. So I did it while I'm on maternity leave. And I did a lot of things wrong. And that's actually why I love teaching people now, because you can collapse time and do everything that I did right and just skip the things that I did wrong. But how did I carve out time? Well, once I figured out what I wanted to do and really go after the agency model and become a marketing consultant or a marketing agency for small businesses. It really clicked. And the beautiful part about an agency model is that you can hire out support. So you become the face, you become the brand, you become the strategy. And as long as you keep the guardrails in place and the output is still of your high quality, then everything's okay. So I was able to do it because I still worked until five. I was with my family until 08:00 P.m. And then from there I would work, but I put the systems in place that allowed me to not have to work that much and still allowed me to build a book of business, be the face, be the strategy, and then have an implementation team.

Tracy Wilson 00:10:05

I'm glad that you've kept this real and have said in the early days, because I can totally relate to this. It's messy, right? It's like things don't always go to plan. You're trial and error in things and you're learning as you go and as you say and as you get better and better. If you can put yourself in a position where now you've kind of got this little black book, so to speak, of all the things that went really well, that when I did this, this actually happened. And you start compiling all of that and you create this fast path strategy that you can then share and teach with other people. It becomes an amazing blueprint for success, not only for yourself, but for everybody else that you come into contact with. I'm interested because I too, when I left my corporate career, I went down the consulting and agency pathway too. So I'm interested to know, for somebody that's come out of somewhere like Google, why did you choose the agency pathway? Why did you see that as your, I suppose as the ticket to creating some level of freedom in your life?

Suzy Crawford 00:11:13

So I knew I wanted to do something with marketing. Marketing is my passion. I can look at a business and I can tell you like, oh, this is immediately if somebody's like, my landing page isn't converting, this isn't working. I'll look and I'll be like, oh, well, it's this, this and this. I love taking things apart and adjusting the copy, adjusting the content, adjusting whatever it is and pointing out how it can work. Little small tweaks with marketing really make a huge difference. So I knew I had that gift and I knew I wanted to create a business around it. The beauty of the agency model is, one, it's a much easier sell. So it's a much easier sell than, let's say, coaching, for example, because with an agency you're actually doing work for a business. It's a done for you service and you're saying, I'm going to come in and I'm going to do your digital marketing, do your social media, whatever it is that you're selling, whereas something like coaching can be quite nebulous. So it kind of fell in my lap in the sense that I didn't exactly start my business and say, this is what I'm doing. It was more, I know I want to do marketing. I'm going to put myself out there and see what people are interested in. And immediately it was like, well, we would love for you to just build our strategy and run with it, our marketing strategy and run with it. That's kind of how the agency for me just came into play.

Tracy Wilson 00:12:41

That's interesting because I think a lot of people kind of fall into it in that sense, don't they? Because you got to get good at something and then somebody asks you, oh, how did you do that? And then before you know it, you're kind of helping a few people out, usually for free. You're honing in your craft, you're getting a little bit better, you're getting some results for them, and then all of a sudden, oh, heck, I could start charging for this. So I want to say if somebody's out there and they're listening to this conversation between Susie and I today and you're thinking, gosh, I've been asked that you are probably I'm going to say most likely sitting on an opportunity where you can either develop and grow an agency or you've got something else that you could turn into some kind of consulting or coaching type product that you could start creating a living out of. So what do you think are some of the when we're going down this path? Because obviously, even for you, things have progressed, right? You started out with the agency side of things and now you've got coaching and mentoring and other things that you're doing. Susie, so what would you say are some of the most common misconceptions that people have about building a successful business and trying to do it in a short period of time? What do you think are some of the biggest misconceptions about that?

Suzy Crawford 00:13:56

Yeah, I think there's a few. So one is this really big trend that's happening right now that I see people saying where they're I forget the word, like multi passionate and they're anti Niching down. I think this is one of the biggest, biggest problems that a lot of new entrepreneurs are facing. And it all has to do with the fact that people are teaching Niching down incorrectly. So a lot of people in starting their business, they feel like if they have a niche, if they have a target audience and then they're going to repel others and not and leave people out and it'll hurt their chances of getting clients. And it's a really big problem that I see a lot of new entrepreneurs facing. And Niching down, really all it is, is like understanding the pain points of your clients, understanding how you can help them. It doesn't have to be like, I only work with women that are 30 and live in Minnesota and have two kids. That's not niching down, that's being over specific. So that's the first thing. It's like people not wanting to niche down because they are too fearful and not understanding their audience. And when you don't understand your audience and you don't understand how to sell, and we don't understand how selling don't do business, so that's the first thing. And then the second thing is a lot of people don't focus on the systems and the streamlining and like the very unsexy stuff right in the beginning. And what happens here is you become the bottleneck in your business when you don't put things in place like SOPs and all the things that nobody likes to do, right? Nobody likes to do that, but it's what allows us to scale. When you don't do that, then there's a feeling to your business. You're one person, right? So if you, as one person, can only have so many hours in the day and you don't do this, then you can't scale. And I think there's two really big I call fads happening, especially honestly in the coaching space. And it's those, it's people being against strategy, against operations, because it doesn't allow you to be in your flow. But really it's the opposite of an effect.

Tracy Wilson 00:16:13

Well, it's the means to the ends, isn't it? I mean, if you don't create these things that you're talking about, you're forever going to be in like it might be fun to be in the creation mode, but you're always going to be there. And it's going to be very difficult for you to be able to onboard any new team members, outsource anything, create leverage and scale in your business, which is what you want to do if you want to continue. You talked about the clients that you've been working with that have got six multiple six figure businesses, seven figure businesses. All of them will have these systems, processes and firmly embedded into their businesses. I want to go back to this whole concept of Niching because it's really an interesting thing because like you were saying with Misconception is people don't want to do that because we think that you're leaving money on the table, that I'm going to rule out a whole lot of other people. It's not going to be good for me. But in fact, we're saying it's the actual complete opposite to that. So let's help everybody to understand. So particularly if you're a new entrepreneur and you're like, I've got something that I want to be able to deliver to an audience, what sort of things can somebody do to start really niching down and getting focused? So they understand intimately who their audience is and what they actually like, what the big problem is and how they've solved that problem for that audience. How do you recommend people do that?

Suzy Crawford 00:17:42

So the first thing that I always tell my clients is, your audience is way more important than you are in your business. You need to get to know your audience like they are your best friend, and some of them might become your best friends, right? You really need to get to know them. And what you need to do is understand emotions, and you need to understand what. So I call this like the hell in heaven. The hell is your audience before they work with you or before they consume your product, your course, or whatever it is that you're selling. And then the heaven is after. Heaven is after they've worked with you. You your offer is that bridge between the two, whatever you're selling. So what do they need to do? They really need to understand first the hell. They need to understand what are they experiencing? What is the audience experiencing before they buy from you? What are their pains? What are their fears when they wake up in the morning? What are they stressed out about? What keeps them up at night? What actually makes them sweat? What really affects them? And if I think of I'm trying to think of an example of a business, but a lot of people think, like, give me a business. Give me just any business.

Tracy Wilson 00:19:02

Let's talk about a hairdressing salon.

Suzy Crawford 00:19:04

Let's start with a hairdressing salon. So a lot of people, most hair salons are going to sell. We cut beautiful hair. We do Balliage, we do highlights. We do all these things. And if you come Wednesdays at noon, you'll get a discount. That's how most people market. But the problem with that is you are marketing tactics. You're literally marketing just things. That's not what people care about. What is the hell? The hell is well, I wake up and I am staring at myself in the mirror. I don't like how I look. I am trying to use this curling iron. I don't even know how to use it. My hair is frizzy. I don't know how to make the curls actually look good or my highlights look down in the middle of my hair, and I don't feel sexy. That's the help. It's not that, like, I just need a haircut. And then the heaven the heaven is like so much more than well, now you have a haircut and you got it for $50 off because you came in at the right time. It's how do they feel? How do they actually feel when you turn the salon chair and you look at the mirror and they blow dry their hair? Does the salon have champagne that they give them while they're it's all of those things that really evoke emotion. I love that you brought hair salon up, right? Because hair salon, it's not like it's a wedding. We're not marketing a wedding. It's something so simple that people do every single day. But yeah, it does. It evokes emotion. I'll give you another example, if it's.

Tracy Wilson 00:20:38

Okay, yeah, go for it.

Suzy Crawford 00:20:40

Think of, like, water bottles. I gave this recently in one of my just, like, coaching calls, because a great example is I saw a commercial, and I think it was Fiji, fiji Water. And they were showing the water bottle in this beautiful I think it was in Fiji. They were showing it or a place that looked like Fiji, like waterfalls and all this beautiful scene. What they could have done was just shown it like somebody drinking and being like, Fiji, it looks pretty. It's all this stuff. But they showed these people hiking and super thirsty and drinking this water. That commercial evoked emotion, and they didn't need to do it like that. But it's those things that really truly understanding marketing, psychology and what your audience, your ideal client is feeling before and after is how you niche down that's defining your niche. It's not really the traits.

Tracy Wilson 00:21:46

And what's interesting, if I go back to the hair salon one, and I think about myself, you go to the hair salon, you spend a whole lot of money there. You do. You walk out of that salon, and you look a million bucks. You get home, you jump in the shower, maybe it's a day or two later, and you're actually washing your hair. And then all of a sudden, you're looking like a drowned rat again and wondering, now, how the heck do I get my hair to look as good as it did when it walked out of the salon? I think for a lot of women these days, it's like, how do I now do that over and over again and recreate what a professional has recreated what the professional created for me and the hairs on now, how can I do that at home? And so when we start thinking about what you're saying, we're thinking about the challenges, the frustrations, the pain points that our audience has, that hell that they're in on a day to day. How do we take them out of that, build that bridge that takes them to now they're in the heaven, land of heaven, where everything is just as they want it, as they envisioned it, as they aspire it to be. So when we're thinking about this and we're building that bridge, now we can start thinking about, well, what kind of bridge and what will that enriching down? What does that actually look like? And so it might be that you're creating a hair salon. You're going to be marketing to those busy women who want to step up, who want to be able to recreate their hair over and over and over again, just like you did the moment you walked out of my salon. If that's you, if you want to look like this every single day, then this is the salon you come to. And maybe, perhaps part of that salon's offering is actually an education piece that actually teaches them this is how you do your hair when you go home. Not just now, you look beautiful. Go home and try and figure this out for yourself. It's like I'm actually going to teach you. I'm just talking personally. For me, I would be like, that'd be so awesome if the hairdresser said to me, right, grab your brush, I'm going to show you how to do this. This is how you do it so that you can get these kind of curls when you walk out from home. And I have never in my 47 years ever had somebody in a hair salon do that. I don't know if there are a bunch of other women out there like me, perhaps that is a good business kind of angle that a hairdresser could go down. So we've talked a little bit about Niching and how important that is, because then you're speaking to a very specific audience. Aren't we using that messaging as a filtration system so that you now can filter out all of those that really are not the right type of clientele for you, not the right type of people for you to work in? So it does two things, it attracts and repels, which is an awesome thing to do. Now, the next part that I want to talk about, because you mentioned this, and this has been something that's been dear to my heart for a very long time, which is systems and processes. And it's not always a sexy thing to do, right? Not everyone wants to sit down and kind of write an SOP or a standard operating procedure for something. But it's a necessary it's one of those things that is going to key that enables you to be set free over time. So let's talk a little bit about systems and processes. Why to you are they so important? And what are some of the things that you would recommend people do to start building those systems and processes in their business? And where should they start 100%?

Suzy Crawford 00:25:21

So why are they so important? Because without them, you don't have a life proof business. What I mean by that is we start businesses. I hope that we start businesses because we want freedom. We want the ability to one control our schedule. We want the ability to not be capped by the corporate world. But without systems and processes, you are handcuffed to your business. The business cannot run without you. So if I give an example of the agency that I had, if I didn't have these systems in place, these SOPs created, I wouldn't be able to have brought people in and have them recreate my work and work as I work. They would just kind of be going ham and doing things on their own. But with systems, I can say these are the steps that you follow in order to be successful. And now by doing that, I'm able to step out and not be in the business 24/7. When you're in the business 24/7, your business is not life proof. Your life runs around your business. Your business runs I don't know what I'm trying but life proof is in. Like, you have a life. Honestly, it doesn't have to be as difficult as people make it out to be. Like, systems can literally be like recordings of how you do certain things. There's so many things these days that really simplify these. There's water AI, that transcript, that transcript software that records everything that you do. So when I was creating systems, I feel like seven years ago, it was not that stuff didn't there's so much now, like chat GPT, like all these things that really make it easier. So I can't even imagine what it's going to be like in a year. But it doesn't have to be this super fancy thing that you buy like $1,000 worth of software for. It can literally just be on a Google doc where you write out everything that you do so that if you were to get sick one day, go on vacation, go on just a random trip, there could be somebody to step in and help that's.

Tracy Wilson 00:27:41

Absolutely. And I'm so pleased that you've actually brought this up because Chat GCPT is one of those big topic that everybody's talking about right now. Right. However, I think in the history so you've been doing this for a decade or so. Me too. And in the early days when we started out, everything was kind of learn as you go manual. We had Word documents, you had your good old pen and paper and you would literally sit down and write out these things and put them into a Word document and then into some sort of system online that you could share with others. Nowadays there are so many tools and AI platforms out there that are actually there that can help us. Really. I'm going to say it's like taking a hand tool. And we now have power tools that we can use in our industry to really help us to supercharge, but also fast forward our success because the speed of us being able to create things now has just been increased tenfold. So I love the fact that you've actually brought that up. What I wanted to say to your point was we're trying to get to kind of the business. We want to create a business that actually fuels our life. We don't want to create a business that consumes our life. And with these systems and processes and having those in place, you start to build something that is sustainable and profitable over a long period of time and you're creating something that fuels your life instead of consumes it. So I like the fact that you've talked about those couple of things. Now, let's go here. So let's say somebody wants to start their own business, but they're a little bit afraid. Where would you tell. Them to start. Like at the moment they don't really have any clue what they're going to create. They've got no niche. They don't know who their target audience is. They just know that they've got some skills. Where should they actually start with this? So I'm working for Google for example, and I'm wanting to start something else. Or I'm working at a hairdressing salon and I want to create some other kind of lifestyle business, let's call it that. Where should they start?

Suzy Crawford 00:29:56

The first thing I would do is honestly first think of what do you want to do, what are you good at? What do people ask you for help with? What do people come to you for? It could be something as simple as relationship advice, dating advice. What do you love talking about that's going to help you narrow down because you shouldn't start a business doing something you hate, right? There's no point to that. You want to love what you're doing. We have one life. We're on this planet for one life. We need to love what we're doing. So think of what you like to do. It doesn't have to be this complex thing. It doesn't. But think of what you like to do and then think of would people pay for it and then just start and you don't have to quit your job. Actually, I feel like most people more I think in the tech startup world, they're like if you don't quit, you're not all in. I don't believe that at all. Some people have mortgages and three kids and we have bills to pay. So I never tell my clients to quit because then you're also in a very scarcity mindset. So you don't have to quit because you can do things on the side. You can test what you like, you can test what works and when you're ready you can go all in and you can even go all in as a side hustle. You really can.

Tracy Wilson 00:31:27

That's interesting because you're right. A lot of people would say, now that you've made your decision, burn the boats and just go all in on this. And I would agree with you in the sense that that really can put a lot of pressure on people right from the get go. Because if they're thinking about the mortgage they've got to pay, the food they've got to put on the table, the kids that they've got to clothe, all of these things that they've now put themselves into stress mode over because now we have to grow this business. Rather than keep my nine to five job, do this on the side, create a bit of momentum, test and measure. Still keep the day job and the paycheck coming in so that you can pay the bills and take the pressure off yourself until such time as you've built this up and then you can let the day job go. Once you realize that you're actually in on something that you really really want to do, that you truly are passionate about. I think that's a great advice and it's advice that has been gone begging for a long time. People have said just go all in and burn the boats because then it forces you to have to do it. But if you're not the kind of person that can just go all in and is able to deal with the pressure that comes with an all in let's call it strategy, you'll get to the point where you will be all out. All out of money, all out of time, all out of energy. And you don't ever want to get to that point. So I think that's great advice to say kind of start something on the side. And I'm just thinking back to when I first started. Let's talk a little bit about for those that want to start something on the side, how should they go and get their first few clients? Because we're talking about kind of 90 days. We've got a three month period where we want to try and get us to a point where we've now got a six figure business. So we've got this in our head. Where do we get our clients from, how do we get them?

Suzy Crawford 00:33:32

So it's obviously going to be really dependent on industry. But what I always tell people is start with the lowest hanging fruit. So whenever you're in any stage in your business when you're looking for clients, you always want to try to find people that are problem aware. So people that are aware that they have a problem that you're going to sell them a solution for. But the lowest hanging fruit actually has another component, someone that's problem aware and someone that's solution seeking. So they're already out there looking for an answer and then you come in. So ways to do this. Let's say you are a marketing agency, social media manager and you are looking for your first clients. Look on job boards and you're not necessarily applying for the job. But if a company, let's say a restaurant or a local business, they're looking for somebody to handle their social media and they're already on indeed or any sort of job board, they're problem aware, they're aware that they need social media help and they're solution seeking. They're already in market. So it's not that you have to apply to the job to work for them, but you can actually reach out and say and leverage that job posting. I came across this and this is what I do. I'd love to open the conversation, blah, blah. Another way to do this is outside of job boards is networking. So if somebody is at a networking event, and let's say it's a marketing networking event where people can find marketers, they're solution seeking. If somebody's already advertising, that means that they're problem aware, they know that they need help. That's why they're advertising and they've already found a solution, but maybe it could be better. It's a great way to reach out and say like, I saw your ad and I thought it was great, but I wanted to let you know that blah, blah, blah, it could be better by this. I'd love to open the conversation. Those are the easiest first clients to land and it's actually how I landed my first clients when I had my agency.

Tracy Wilson 00:35:37

Awesome. And I'm thinking back now to when I first kind of started in the space too. And the other thing that worked particularly well for me was like partnerships and collaborations. So if I think back to the early days and when I left my banking career and started doing some consulting and I was writing business plans and strategy for companies and that's what I wanted to do. And what I realized was that at the time there were a lot of migrants coming into Australia who were wanting to start their own businesses so that they could get the visa status to be able to stay in the country. So what I realized was that they needed business plans written, right? So where did I go for that? I was like, well, who else has that audience? So when I thought about the audience that I wanted to serve, who else has that kind of audience? And so this is one of the strategies that I also share with a lot of my students is to think about where can you go and make a relationship with somebody who already has this audience congregated somewhere? And so if I thought about the sense that I was creating business plans, who has clients that required business plan writing? It was accountants, it was immigration lawyers, it was those kinds of people. And so what I started doing was reaching out to them and as I got one, they started then sharing my name with other accountants, with other lawyers, et cetera, et cetera. And before I knew it, I became the go to person to write business plans specifically for immigration purposes. And I got really good at that and ended up with an inundation of business plans that I had to write on a regular basis. And I didn't have to really do any marketing as such because the lawyer and the accountant was actually doing all the selling and their marketing for me. So that was a great way, another great way to be able to kind of start off and kick start your business and use other people's audiences as a referral source. And also by doing that, I'm going to say with an audience that like a lawyer or an accountant, people going there have already got money. They know if they're going to an accountant or to a lawyer, but they're usually going to have to spend a fair bit of money. So the mindset there is, I already have to spend a fair bit of money with the lawyer or with the accountant, and whatever they recommend to me is not going to be cheap. So now, all of a sudden, I was able to position my product at a much higher level than if I was just to go out and try and market to the masses. That was another way that I found was really useful in starting when I was in the early days, starting out, I was able to do that and I found that that worked particularly well and got me to six figures really quickly.

Suzy Crawford 00:38:29

Yeah, that's a great strategy.

Tracy Wilson 00:38:31

Yeah. So we're just given like three big strategies of ways that if you're thinking about, I want to get out there and I want to start my own business, I mean, those are three great ways that are proven that are tried, true, tested and proven to work. And you could start that tomorrow. In fact, you could get off the show today and start doing that as a result of today's show. What are some of the other like nowadays? What are some of the other marketing strategies? And I want to ask particularly because I know people are going to go, you should have asked her about Google. So let me go here, because we talk from an advertising standpoint, a lot of people are thinking about TikTok and Facebook and Instagram ads, but I want to talk a little bit about Google advertising. Can you shed any light on that? And is that something that a small business owner should really be considering in their mix of advertising strategies and tactics?

Suzy Crawford 00:39:30

Yeah, absolutely. So there's two platforms, right? Because Google also owns YouTube, so when I think of Google advertising, it really comes into two. There's multiple outside of the two, there's way more, there's the Google Display Network, lots of other types of advertising, but I'll focus on the two. So Google Search, which most people obviously know what they are, google Search ads and then there's YouTube advertising. So both are massive and give you massive amounts of reach. I am a big proponent of digital advertising. I do it myself, I teach it, and I think every business should leverage it when it comes to which platform it is going to be so dependent on the industry. Because, again, what doesn't matter is what you want to do. It's where your audience is. So if your audience isn't on YouTube, if your audience isn't on TikTok, if they aren't on Pinterest, then you don't go to those platforms, but you go to where they live. The one thing is that everybody's on Google. So should a small business use it? Yes, but you need to use it smartly. Just like with every advertising, there are so many there are so many people teaching it incorrectly and there are so many wrong ways to do it. And you can lose a lot of money if you don't do it correctly. So you do have to be smart about it, you have to understand it. And it isn't something that you learn in ten minutes, unfortunately, but it is a very powerful way to grow a business, and I'm a very big believer in small businesses. Leveraging the power of Advertising so if.

Tracy Wilson 00:41:05

We were to give people, say, just three things that they could do, and I think that point that you made around, you have to understand where your audience is living. There's no point in doing Google Ads or TikTok ads if your audience is not there. If your audience is hanging out over on LinkedIn, you want to be leveraging that platform so that you can reach the audience where they're at. Right? So it's the same with anything that we do in life in terms of marketing. If you're teaching somebody something, you've got to meet people where they're at. So that would be the first thing that I want to echo with what you're saying, is just really understand where your people are. And those are the platforms that you would want to focus on. It's not a scattergun and I've got to be everywhere kind of approach because you will burn through a lot of money and get very disheartened if you take that approach. So if we were to just give people three things that they could do in terms of helping them to understand maybe the platforms that they should be on, what would be three first steps that they should take?

Suzy Crawford 00:42:17

For paid advertising or for anything?

Tracy Wilson 00:42:19

Yeah, for paid advertising, yeah, the three.

Suzy Crawford 00:42:23

Platforms you should be on. Okay, so I think Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. I think the power of video is huge, so I would go with those. Or if we're combining Facebook and Instagram, then I would say Facebook and Instagram.

Tracy Wilson 00:42:41

YouTube and Google and Google. Wow, okay. I'm really pleased that you said video, because as you can tell, I'm a huge advocate of video. I think that is the thing to do because of the fact that you're able to turn this one thing into so many other pieces of content, it's not even funny. It's probably the most powerful type of advertising that you can do is to create yourself some videos. Okay, so now we've said Facebook. Let's just say Facebook and Instagram being one. YouTube and also Google. Let's go to Google because we can because that's kind of been your background. What would you suggest people do on Google?

Suzy Crawford 00:43:26

The power that Google has, google advertising, like search ads, the power that it has is you're capturing someone that is actively seeking in the moment. And I preface this with when I'm running ads for clients, I run them across multiple platforms, not just Google. So I also very much believe in Facebook, obviously, and Instagram ads. That said, if someone is actually searching orthodontists in my area, they are clearly in market. It is a very bottom of funnel, lean forward search. So that is so powerful as opposed to and while this is also powerful, it's just a different part of the funnel. But seeing an ad on the Facebook feed that just happens to be of an orthodontist I may not be in market, I may not even ever need braces. So there's a lot of power to capturing someone really in the moment they're like in market for that. And that's what Google search has.

Tracy Wilson 00:44:31

Yeah. And I suppose that comes back to your comments earlier around that niche and the fact that they are problem aware and they are solution seeking. So I've got a problem. What am I going to do? I'm going to go Google it. That's what people do. We go Google whatever it is that we're looking for. And I'm now seeking the solution to the problem that I have. And if you're utilizing those Google Ads to be able to bring them up at front and center so that people can actually see that, hey, Suzy Crawford is probably the person I need to go to if I want to learn about XYZ. So utilizing that, I think, is extremely important. Okay, well, before we wrap up today's show, I know that there's a number of things that you do, Susie, in terms of helping small business owners and in particular women. So there's a couple of places. I know you've got a few things going on, but do you want to tell everybody a little bit about where they can find more about you? So if they've enjoyed today's conversation, where's the best place to go to hang out with you and learn more about what you do? And then secondly, what would be the best thing that they could do or join as part of either a service or a service that you have that is going to help them to accelerate their success?

Suzy Crawford 00:45:57

Yeah. So the number one place that I hang out is my Instagram. So my handle is it's Suzy Crawford. Its Suzy Crawford. And honestly, that's where most people find me. That's where a lot of my agency clients find me. A lot of people that just want help with marketing, help building their brand, help with advertising will find me there and we start a conversation. I'm really all about human connection talking, getting to know you. I'm less about go to my site and fill out a form. You can do that too. But I just really like talking to people and knowing who I'm potentially going to work with. So that's the best place to get a hold of me. And I'm a very open book. And there's not like a robot behind in the DMs, it's me. So that's where they can get to know me. I also obviously have my site, Susiecrapper.com, and you can find out about my programs on there as well.

Tracy Wilson 00:46:55

Beautiful. Well, thanks so much Susie. So guys, a couple of those places head on over to Instagram, make sure that you connect with Susie there and you can also head on over to Susiecrawford.com and on that site she's got a whole bunch of things that you can opt into. If you would like extra support from Susie or like she said, just reach out to her, DM her, she will respond to you. She's a real person. No robots behind the Suzy Crawford brand. So go and have a chat with her and just see if there's something that she is able to do to help you either start or grow your business. If you're starting from scratch, how do you get to six figures really quickly? And if you're already there, well, how do you get to the next level? Multiple six figures and even to seven figures? Susie is the lady that you need to have a bit of a chat with. So I want to say a huge big thank you to you today, Susie, for being such an amazing guest and sharing your expertise and talents. Your children have been super well behaved. They haven't been running in the background. Yeah, you'll just say, good job, Hubby. He did a great job in keeping them nice and quiet. Not that it would have mattered, but yeah. I want to say thank you very much for being here. It's been a pleasure to have you on the show, sharing all of your expertise and knowledge. And I just want to recap a couple of things because I think these are super important. I think in today's day and age I'm thinking about particularly for those that are here in my home country now, which is I live here in Australia. Things are tough for a lot of people. The cost of living, et cetera, are rising. So people are always looking for different ways to be able to make some kind of income. There are a myriad of different ways that you can do that. Susie and I have talked through a few of those today consulting agency done for you style of work. And if you want to learn how to become a coach and a mentor where you can get hold of me and we can chat a little bit further about how we do that. But there's a lot of different ways that you can start some kind of, for want of a better word, a side hustle, but a hustle without the hustle, and grind just something on the side that brings you some extra income, that enables you to eventually transition out of your nine to five job, if that's something you want to do. If it's not and you want to keep the both of them, well, hey, that's great too. So I just wanted to let you guys know that there are options for you and that you can reach out to either Susie or I and we would be more than happy to help you in whatever that journey looks like for you. So other than that I want to say a huge big thank you to all of our listeners that join in. If you found today's show helpful for you, then share this with a friend. That is the best thing you can do is to make sure that the information that Susie and I are sharing and all of our other guests that are on the unlock show, that you actually share it with other people. Because I promise you, if you enjoyed it and you just found one little thing out of today's show, then sure enough, somebody else is going to find it just as valuable. So make sure that you share away. And if you prefer to listen to the podcast version of this, you can find the Unlocked show on all the major podcasting platforms. So go and find us on all of those and download and add us to your playlist and start listening every single week because we go live every Wednesday at 10:00 a.m. Brisbane time. So other than that, guys, I want to say go and live your life unlocked because there is just no other way. Thanks for tuning in and thanks very much, Susie. We'll see you again soon. Bye, guys.

Suzy Crawford 00:50:15

Thank you.