August 11, 2025 • 30 mins
Follow Gina: https://www.instagram.com/ginalosborn/
Follow Suzy: https://www.instagram.com/itssuzycrawford/
In this episode of Making Maverick Moves, Suzy Crawford shares how she walked away from an 8-year career at Google to launch Crawford Marketing, build a thriving coaching program, and teach entrepreneurs the real power of personal branding. From cleaning up your online image to gaining audience trust in the AI era, Suzy offers raw, actionable advice for anyone ready to make their own maverick move.
Timestamps:
00:00 – Meet Suzy Crawford: From Google to marketing agency founder
01:42 – Why your personal brand is your “digital currency” in 2025
03:03 – The dark side of branding: when past social posts come back to haunt you
04:17 – Audience-first content: posting what they want, not what you want
05:21 – Trust in the AI era: how real engagement builds loyalty
10:32 – The corporate shakeup that pushed Suzy to finally leave Google
12:14 – Landing a $100M case study from a cold email
13:17 – Inside Suzy's Freelancer to CEO program
15:12 – Thought leadership through originality and vulnerability
23:29 – Why marketers must embrace AI to stay ahead
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Making Maverick Moves,the podcast where we talk to trailblazers
who aren't afraid to break the rules,rewrite the script and lead with courage.
Today's guest is SusieCrawford, a marketing powerhouse
who left a successfuleight year career at Google
to launch her own company, CrawfordMarketing, her maverick move.
(00:24):
Trading corporate stabilityfor the uncertainty of entrepreneurship
and building a brandthat's as bold as her decision.
We're going to talk aboutthat leap of faith, the power of branding,
and how knowing your personal brandcan fuel your biggest,
bravest moves, especially as a leader.
(00:45):
My name is Gina Osborneand I'm an Army veteran.
I spent six years during the end of theCold War as a counterintelligence agent.
I was appointed as an FBI agent,and during my 22 year
career, worked everythingfrom Asian organized crime to terrorism.
I became the assistant special agentin charge of cyber and computer forensics.
(01:08):
And then I came out of retirementand spent two years
as the safety and security officerat la metro.
Now I'm here to helpyou make your maverick move.
Welcome to the show, Suzy.
Thank you. So excited to be here.
I'm excited to have you here.
You know, when we talk about marketingand we talk about brand,
(01:28):
I think it's so important to have
people understandthat everybody has a brand.
And, you know, they may think that, well,wait a minute.
I'm not a business.
I'm not a, influencer.
But if you lookat somebodies social media,
that's kind of what their brand is, right?
(01:49):
What they're putting out eachand every day is and what the brand is.
Yeah, 100%.
I mean, I think you really nailed itby saying I'm not an influencer.
I mean, if you were to go backlike ten years, we'd be like, oh,
building a personal brand on social, like,I am not an influencer.
I'm not going to be like dancing
to reels and TikToks,but that's not what it is anymore.
I mean, it's 20, 25, like,
(02:10):
you should have startedbuilding a personal brand by like in 2024.
And if you haven't,
then you start now because it'sliterally becoming your currency.
If you I honestly think of like,you know, when my kids
when they're going to be applying to stufflike I actually feel like
their personal presence,their personal brand like that
is their digital currency,that's what they're going to be known for.
(02:31):
So it's like way more criticalnow than before to have that. Yes.
And people do that for the plus side.
But when you look at the negative side,when you look at your brand,
because a lot of people say, okay,well where
okay, I'm going to look at my social media
and see anythingthat looks familiar, right?
But when people come to me and saythey want to be FBI agents, you know,
(02:53):
the first thing I do is like,I'm happy to mentor you.
And I look at their social media.
Is that the type of brandthat the FBI would be proud of?
Are they, you know, very, very studious
and smart or are they boozing it upwith their friends?
And I can't tell you how many timesa social media
(03:15):
past comes back and haunt peoplewhen they're trying to find their jobs?
Yeah, for sure.
I mean, there's definitely a dark side
to it, and that's why it's so importantto have like your own control
over what your image looks likeon the internet, right?
Because if your imageis literally like you doing,
you know, keg stands in college,then it's not a good personal brand.
It's not a good look for you.The FBI is not going to want you. Right.
(03:36):
So you having control over itand saying like,
this is who I am,this is what I represent.
This is what I stand for.
That's your personal brand, right?So what do people have to do?
What's the first step?
I mean,what do they have to be mindful of?
I mean, I think it depends, right?
Like for me, for example,
I personally have two social accountslike I have my like personal one.
That's my family, my kids.
And then I have my business one,my business one is like my largest one.
(04:00):
It has the biggest following.
And that's really my personalbrand online.
And when it comes to like what?
How do you start?
What do you what type of contentare you putting out there?
Honestly, it matters less whatyou want to put out there and more
what does your audience want.
So if it's a business, for example.
So mine is very marketing focused,very focused on like,
you know, women building businesses.
(04:21):
I'm putting content out therethat's inspirational to them.
So my personal brandis really built around like Susie X,
Googler built a marketing agency,and now she's helping women do the same
because that's the kind of contentthey want to see versus like,
what do I actually wantto put out there? Right.
And that's such a great point,because you see these campaigns,
these marketing campaigns that failbecause they're putting things out
(04:44):
that they want to put out versuswhat their audience wants, literally.
Like it doesnot matter what you want, right?
Like maybe I want to put
like avocado toast out there,but my audience does not care about that.
So they're not going to engagewith it. Right.
But how do people knowyou have to know your audience?
I mean, it dependsthe type of brand you're building.
But if you're building a businessand you want a personal brand around it
(05:04):
that you need to know your audiencelike better than they know themselves,
they need to be like your digitalbest friends.
You have to literally know, like howthey speak, what keeps them up at night,
what's stressing them out,what's like making them super happy?
Because that's what your contentis going to be about.
You have to be their best friend, right?
And how much how important is trustin that branding?
(05:24):
Huge.
Especially now.
And I think there's, you know, there's
a really significant negative correlationbetween just like time and trust.
Like the more time goes on, like the lesspeople are becoming trusting.
Especially now with AI, right?
Like you have these AI, personal brandsthat are coming out and months later
people are like, oh, that's I,I've been following this influencer
(05:45):
who I thought was a real human,and I was buying,
you know,the links that they were posting.
And that's actually an AI avatar.
So trust is really going down.
So the more that you can engage withyour audience, like interact with them
like actually talk to them, voicenote them, trust is going to go up.
That's interesting.So that's what you tell your clients.
You do really,
really engage with your audienceto get them to come back for more.
(06:08):
Yeah, I do and you know, most of myso I have two businesses, right.
Like my marketing agency.
And then I have my coaching business.Right.
Coach marketing agencies.
For that business like I'm telling them,don't build a brand on social.
That's just your agency.
Like build one around youbecause people want to buy from people.
They don't want to buy from brands.
(06:29):
They want to buy from humans.
So if you're engaging with your audienceor like talking to them in the DMs
voice, noting them, they're more likelyto want to buy from you. Wow.
So you must be really goodat your job because you were
happy at
Google and you were there for eight yearsand you were established there.
Yeah.
(06:49):
And yet you decided that you were goingto make a maverick move
and you were going to go out on your own.
So can you talk about the decisionthat came up, how you decided to do that?
Yeah. I mean, it was scary.
I'm not going to lie and be like,oh, it's the easiest thing in the world.
Like, it was scary. I had a great job.
But my entire life,I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur.
(07:11):
I've always wanted to own my own business.
And I was that kid that would like,you know, go to school
like elementary schooland just have, like, a bag of bracelets
and be like,who wants to buy this dollar bracelet?
So I was always trying to come upwith like, what's the next business?
And I remember
actually when I was applying to businessschool,
I was at the time, advising a startup,and they were
(07:36):
they asked me to be on, like,the executive team.
And I remember thinking, well,
if I don't get into a good businessschool, I'm just going to do this.
And I did.
I got into I got into UCLA and I was like,okay, I'm going to go to UCLA.
Actually, no.
I said to my husband, I was like,I don't know if I'm going to take it
because I really want to workwith a startup. What am I going to do?
And he's like, well,just give it a second.
You have to accept it right now.
(07:57):
And literally that night or the next day,
I got a letter in the mail that was like,you got a full ride to UCLA, Anderson.
And they don't give outjust like full rides, right?
I was like, why? I didn't apply for one.
So that was like my signthat I was going to go to business school.
And then when I was there,
the first month when I got my
internship at Google, I was like,all of these signs are happening.
(08:17):
So I'm going to take thisbecause originally
I was not going to golike the corporate path.
I really wanted to start my own business.
So it was always likekind of nudging at me.
So then I was there.I was there for eight years.
I started in gaming, marketing,and then media entertainment.
So working with like film studiosand TV studios
and while I was there, had three kids.
And it kind of just dawned on methat I was like, well, I've had my kids.
(08:41):
I used, you know, Google's amazingmaternity leave,
but am I ever going to actually, like,do what I want to do?
Am I ever going to live my dreamand it's a really hard decision
because I had a great salary.
I had amazing benefits.
And yeah, it was a great job.
Like it was a job that point
2% of people that apply even likeget to the second round.
(09:05):
So I, I really struggled with the decisionfor a long time.
But ultimately I was like,there's never going to be a right time
as a person, especially as a mom.
Like there's just never the right time.
And you're always kind of,
you know, telling yourself, well, I'mgoing to wait until the kids are older.
I'm going to wait until it's summer,or I'm gonna wait till it's after summer.
(09:28):
All these things there's alwaysand I'm going to wait moment.
But ultimately, like, really,there's just time.
And so it's your decisionto make a move now or make it later.
And there's always going to be an excusefor later I agree, I agree.
Well here we talkabout breakthrough success.
And that's when you come up to this walland you may be afraid, you
(09:48):
may be confused, you may be intimidated,and yet you go through anyway.
So tell me about that momentwhere you said, I'm going to do this.
Yeah.
I mean, so it was I had had my third,
my third child,and I was on my maternity leave and I,
I'm really about signs like, I don't knowwhy, like I was mentioning earlier.
(10:10):
And I was like,I'm really struggling with decision.
Like I want to start my own thing.
I had already been freelancing on the side
and I was like,I'm going to wait for a sign.
And like the next day or a week later,they had done a really
big reorg at the companyand they'd like, moved every everyone.
And they moved me to a departmentand they like positioned it
like it was a promotion.
But it was I was like,I don't want to do that.
(10:32):
I was like, this is my sign.
This is like, I'm going to just do it.
And so I did.
I said, I'm not coming back.
And yeah, and that was my moment whereI was like, I'm just going to go for it.
Did you ever feel afteryou made that decision?
Maybe I should go back.
Oh my gosh, yeah, yeah, 100%.
I mean, you're leaving security.
You're leaving an amazing salary.
(10:53):
You're leaving benefits.
But I had to trust in myself,and I knew I could do it.
I mean, I knew I could if I could do itwhile working a 9 to 5 on the side.
And just like freelancing,I could do it while doing it full time.
Yeah, that's what my mom says.
All you have to do is believe.
And it's amazing how all these doors openwhen you just believe 100%.
(11:14):
And it's like I always tell myselfand, you know, students
and stuff like,do you see other people doing this?
Yeah, of course you do.
So there's literally
nothing written in the sky that's like,Susie Crawford cannot do this.
She will not have a seven figure business.
She will not be successful.If they can do it. You can.
And that is your sign. Wow.
So tell us about your early successes.
(11:35):
Let's see.
So while I was working my 9 to 5,I was freelancing.
So I was just doing, you know, like a lotof consulting, marketing, consulting.
And my first actually, like,my first bigger client,
I, I reached out to just, like,cold email and,
I saw that they were looking to doa full time
hire for somebodyto help them with pitching.
(11:59):
Basically, they were a consulting firmthat helped startups raise money,
and so they needed a fractional CMOto come into their businesses
and help them raise funds.
And I was like, oh, I know I can do this.
I don't have experience,but I can do this.
And I think that was probablylike my my first, like breakthrough, where
it was a really big client. It paid well.
And I was able tokind of get a lot of case studies from it
(12:22):
and say, like, I've helped startupsraise over $100 million, I have done XYZ.
I did that early on and leveragedthat to get a lot more clients.
That's great.So that's essentially branding yourself.
Exactly. Yeah,that was branding myself at the time.
I will say I had zero social mediapresence because I had just quit.
I was very I honestly was terrifiedof what people would say.
(12:46):
I didn't tell my family that I left Googlefor like six months.
I know, isn't that crazy because I,
I mean, I am Colombian, my I'm a,you know, daughter of immigrants.
And I was just very afraid thatmy dad would be like, what are you doing?
You had like the American dreamand you've left it.
But they were supportive.
That's great. Yeah, it is great.
(13:07):
So you work a lot with womenand you have a program, right?
I do freelancer to CEO.
Yeah. Okay. What's that like?
So a CEO, it's a coaching program.
I work with freelancers, marketing agencyowners, and it's primarily women.
It's like there's,like a few men in there.
And we obviously take men,but it really is primarily women.
And it's basically I'm teaching themto do what I did
(13:31):
to go from freelancer to successful CEO,successful business owner.
And what I learned when I started
freelancing was a lot of the stuff
that I learned at Google,a lot of the connections I made,
you know, the marketing strategiesthat I had access to, most people don't.
And so becoming a really,really good marketer, it isn't very hard.
(13:54):
But I do think that there'sa lack of knowledge,
that a lot of people just don't have.
And so I initially createdit just to teach people
or to teach these women like,
I'm going to give you accessto all of the things that I learned
at Google, to these amazing strategies to
how how do you go from like 0 to 9 figuresand helping build a brand?
I'm going to teach you this.
(14:14):
And that was like the initialkind of pitch to bring people in.
And now it's everything from learnmarketing to learn how to sell,
learn how to get clientsand how to build a business.
And we have over here right nowwe have over 100 active members and over,
you know, the last two or so years,we've definitely, I think like maybe 300
have gone through as terrific. Yeah.
(14:35):
So what do you teach from a leadershipleadership perspective?
Because I think when you go on LinkedInor you, you know, look on social media,
everyone wants to bea thought leader of some sort.
So how do you market yourself in that way?
How do you market yourselfas a thought leader?
I mean, I really think that just goesback to personal branding. So
(14:59):
the mistake that a lot of
people make when wantingto build a personal brand or wanting to,
you know, become thought leaders isthey just sound like everyone else.
They're essentially a commodity, right?
Like if you're just putting content outthere, that sounds basic.
That's a copy and paste of somebody'sother piece of content,
then you're going to be forgotten.
You're going to be scrolled past,and no one's going to care.
(15:20):
So you're not really a thought leader,you're just a copy and paste.
So being different,even if it's the same message said
differently, is really powerful.
And I do think a lot of people think,well,
if I want to be a thought leader,I have to sound super professional.
I have to sound like thiswildly polished person.
But, you know, I it's not likeI have 10 million followers or anything,
(15:43):
but I think what Bill has built
trust for me amongst my audience is thatI don't sound like that.
I sound very real, I sound very raw,
and I'm just going to give it to youhow it is, you know?
And that's actually way more appreciatednow than I think people think.
Well, we've rebranded this podcast.
(16:06):
It used to be called Lead Like a Lady,
and then we changed itto making Maverick Moves.
It was a big undertaking because really
it made me reflect a lot on who I am,
what do I want to give,and how do I want to serve
my wonderful audiencewho come to me for certain things?
(16:27):
Yeah.
So where do you I mean, I know whatI had to do in order to to start that.
What recommendation do you havefor people who, who really need
to do that reflectionto find out what their brand is?
Because I can tell you, onceyou lock it in,
you know where you're going from there.
That's a great question.
So just to make sure I understandwhat's the best way to rebrand?
(16:50):
Well, what what's the best way to to
just for people to trust youand for when you're putting things out.
It's coming fromyou and it's not coming from ChatGPT.
Or if it's not coming from a quotethat somebody else said, yeah,
it's not sounding super polished.
I mean, I know that probably goesagainst the grain and goes against
(17:12):
what everybody is told to do,
but I really think that'swhat's working now
is just sounding like a humanand not a robot.
And yeah, like I people are smarter,everyone's using ChatGPT
and if you're not,then I mean, you got to get on it.
But like people know, if your post isstraight up just from ChatGPT,
(17:36):
they're like, well, there's ten rocketemojis like that to do it.
Like it's just it's so obviousnow, you know?
So I mean, you should use it 100%.
I use it every day,
but you should use it as a guideand not as like your end state.
And everything you put outthere needs to sound and feel like you.
(17:57):
Like it should actually feel like peopleare like, wow, I am connecting with her.
Like I can like really feel this ChatGPTis not going to do that, right?
Right.
And I think there has to besome form of vulnerability there.
Totally.
Because nobody is going to followsomebody who's showing no vulnerability
whatsoever, because you really needto have that connection.
(18:18):
And I think that's what drawsthe vulnerability.
And I can tell you in my careerwhere male dominated fields,
everything that I've done, you know,I never wanted to show that vulnerability.
But I think the older I getand the more experienced I get, the more
I want to share that with people,because that is me
showing who I am 100% and people connectwith vulnerability, right?
(18:41):
Like if you can sharesomething that has made you
sad, has been hard,has made you question everything
the moment people can be like,oh, I've been there.
Like, I get it, she gets me.That's when you're connecting.
Yeah. No, I agree 100%.
So, so tell me about a brand
and I'm going to put you on the hotseat here, okay.
(19:03):
That was going down the wrong road.
And then they restructured and then wentin a whole different direction.
And they found success.Do you have any ideas on that?
On a brand that I've worked withand a brand in general?
Yeah.
Anything that you've that you can shareI okay.
So this is I'm going to do twobecause this is not necessarily
your question,but I think it's really relevant.
(19:24):
So I did a post it on my socialand it's pinned.
So Party City obviously we no longer haveit went through a horrible
yeah bankruptcy.
But I did an entire postabout like how they should have rebranded
and you should look at it because I dothink, like, that's a really good
example of a brandthat had so much opportunity.
(19:48):
It had like,there's so much nostalgia to the name
and they just never shifted.
They never shifted to likewhat people actually care about nowadays.
They stayed looking like a warehouse,looking like Walmart,
where peoplenow like they look at Pinterest boards.
They have like TikToks that show likebeautiful party scapes and table themes.
(20:11):
And Party City has such an opportunityto rebrand and do that.
And so I feel like that's onethat could have done that.
They could have so easilylike made that shift. How?
Well, that's the post.
Maybe if you're the queen of Party Cityas this
marketing guru that you are,how would you have changed that?
I would have literally rebrandedthe entire inside of the of the store.
(20:33):
So instead of having becausethe way it was structured was you walk in
and it's like an aisle of balloonsand I love that idea.
But instead, if you walked in and you werelike, oh, this party's like jungle theme
and this or sorry, this aisle is likejungle theme party this.
I was like, I don't know, disco party.
Can you tellI don't go to a lot of parties?
Princess parties?
Yeah, those are big.
(20:53):
And so you go and you like, walk in,and then you have a QR code
and you can scan it, and it immediatelyputs everything, you know, it
notifies the front deskpeople to go get all that stuff for you.
Like actually letting people immerseinto an experience is really powerful.
And that's why what are those thingscalled like pop ups are so big, right?
Because people love experiences.
(21:15):
People love to feel something.
And so what better place to evoke emotionthan a party store?
Like, what if you could actuallyhave an aisle where it's like glitter
on the floor and like, blurry pictures,like, that evokes an emotion, you know,
and they didn't do that.
(21:36):
They never adopt it.
Yeah, and maybe not the DIY stuff 100%.
Right? Yeah, yeah.
You can show how you can put candyin these beautiful, you know, jars
and, you know, use the beautiful ribbonthat they're selling and all of that.
Yeah, exactly.
And I mean, like a home HomeDepot, actually, this is a great example.
Home depot, they,
(21:57):
we know Home Depot as a hardware store,right?
Like you go and it's like,I need a piece of wood.
I'm going to go to Home Depot.I don't know,
but they also, it was a few years ago.
I don't know how long ago, but they havethese things we were talking about.
They have these things where they,
the first Saturday or Sunday of the month.
You can bring your kids and your kids,
(22:17):
like, build,I don't know, a birdhouse or something.
And so it's now like, it's not just, hey,I'm gonna buy a piece of wood.
There's like, arts and crafts, right?
And so there's that like shift ofhow do we bring families to a store
and expose them to buildingand like using tools at an early age.
That's a really good example. It'snot a major rebrand.
(22:38):
It's a slight one.
And it's like,but it's a great way of showing,
hey, I see what my audience is doing,and right now
we're just getting peoplethat, you know, are construction workers.
How do we bring families here?
And that's a perfect example.
They saw what these families wanted to do.
They saw that moms wanted to not havetheir kids on iPads at nine
(22:58):
in the morning on Saturday,and actually be doing things
with their handsand getting that experience.
And so they introduced that. Right.
So it's pretty much instead of sendingthe husbands or the boyfriends depot,
the whole family is going
to the whole family's going or,you know, maybe it's a great way
for the dad to have that one on one timewith the kids.
Yeah. Yeah.
(23:19):
No, I love that. I love that part.
So you talked a little bit about AI.
Do you think AI is going to be taking overmarketing someday.
I think it already has.
Yeah.
You know it's one of those thingswhere it's like
you can run from it or you can embrace it.
And I think the marketersthat run from it,
the ones that are like, it's taking overmy job, well, you're already behind,
like you're already lost because you'rein the wrong mindset, right?
(23:41):
But if instead you can say like, well,what can I do now
to leverage AI to make my job better,to be better, to get ahead?
Those are the ones that are going to win.
Okay, so I say I just started a business
and for example on Shark Shark Tank okay,I love it.
So so imagine Shark Tankbecause you have these great products
(24:02):
that people are just comingto, you know, market with.
So where do you startin order to start building that business
because you have this wonderful,amazing item that you want to sell.
Where do you even start fromthe marketing standpoint,
to get those viral momentslike the scrub Daddy
that everybody has, you know, a scrubdaddy because of Shark Tank.
(24:26):
So, I mean, I would imagine going onto Shark Tank is a great marketing idea,
but if you're just a businessstarting out,
you know, where do you startpicking up your following?
You know, the first thing is it
doesn't matter where you want to go,it matters where your audience is.
So if I were Scrub Daddy today,I wouldn't be going on Shark Tank.
(24:46):
I would literally be going on social mediaand doing
TikToks and shortsand creating viral content.
That's short form, because who's using it?
Parents, moms.
Like I would be all over that.
Yeah.
So just starting andjust putting out there and the importance
(25:06):
we know that when it comes to sellingis you just have to be consistent.
So you can't just put a couple of postsout there.
You need to be doing itall the time to get that momentum going,
to get the momentumto get the algorithm to like you,
but more importantly, to build trust.
If you are, you know,if you go to a piece of content
and you're like, oh, this is cool.
And then you go to their pageand they have two posts, you're like,
oh, this is a scam.
(25:28):
Yeah, that's not going to build trust.
So putting more content outthere is important for so many reasons.
But it's really important for trust.
Are there other ways to get people'sattention besides social media.
Yeah.
Well I think obviously you know,
your own social is importantbut user generated content.
So not influencers necessarily,but just other people using
your products is so powerfulthat builds a ton of trust.
(25:51):
It makes it feel very real.
It doesn't feel like it's a brand selling
to you,but it feels like it's your neighbor,
your friend,the person you're going to the book club
with, like they'rethe ones that are showing you the product.
And I honestly, I'm a really big
this isn't scalable, but I am a really bigbeliever in in-person things.
So look at where your audience ishanging out.
(26:11):
Is it Farmers market?
Does it like go to those things?
But then how do you leverage thesein-person moments and make them scalable?
It's social.
Right? Right.
So if you are going to I don't know why
I keep saying farmers markets, butit's top of mind like a farmer's market.
And you have your scrub daddy creatingcontent there and then posting
it is a really, reallyyeah, it's really powerful.
(26:33):
Got it.
So going back to the personal brandthat we talked to in the beginning,
so what happens
if you had those boozing momentsand those pictures are already out there?
Because once the pictures are outon the internet, they're there to stay.
How do you clean up your personal brand?
You know, once you decide that, okay,
maybe this wasn't the best phasefor me to put out there.
(26:54):
How do you clean that up? Do you now?
I don't know, but I would say, I mean, doeverything you can to just push it down.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, that's a tough one.
I think, you know, obviously, whatever youhave control over, you can hide, right?
If it's somebody else.
I know there's services that offer that.
I don't know, though.
But yeah, I think it's really important,especially if you're a parent,
(27:17):
you know, to talk to your kidsto make sure
that they're awareof what they're putting out.
Becausenot only could have put them in danger
if they're wearing their high schoolcolors and names and things like that,
people know where they go to high schooland all of that.
But again, you know, just being super,
you know, vigilant when it comes towhatever it is that you post.
(27:37):
Because I can tell you
that that was the first thing, you know,having the cyber team with the FBI,
whenever we would get the new batchof, of,
agents coming in from Quantico, you know,we would be able to have our pick
as to which ones that we wanted.
And the first thing that my team would dois look at that social media and say,
do we want this person on our team? Or,gosh, that's terrifying.
(27:58):
It really, I mean, but it's the truth.
If you want to go into law enforcementthere, really.
I mean, it's it's it's so truebecause I think, H.R.,
I think that is the line the,the chief people office is doing
is they want to make sure that anybodythat they have working for them,
they're not going to be a liability.
Yeah.
I mean, I'm just honestly really gladthat social media was not a thing,
which was nice.
(28:19):
For sure. For sure.
Because we
I mean we do make mistakesand I think you know people know
that sometimes we make mistakes butyou know moving forward we just have to be
really really really important tofor sure do that.
So let's talk about as we wrap this uplet's talk about marketing myths okay.
So if I'm a company,why am I going to invest
(28:39):
valuable dollars in a marketing program?
Because you want to make money.
Like there's literally no businessout there that doesn't need marketing.
Like every business says, I don't careif you are the taco cart on the street
corner or you're, you know, alike Apple TV, everybody needs marketing.
It's gonna be a different formof marketing, right?
(29:00):
Like the taco cart in StreetCorner is not going to invest
in like TV commercialsand a Super Bowl commercial.
But every business needs marketing
and the ones that thinkthat they don't are one.
They're either going to failor they are doing it.
They're just masking it as something else,and they're thinking it's something else
and it's just sales.
But actually it's marketing that well,when you talk about the Super Bowl,
(29:22):
I mean, think about the most memorableSuper Bowl commercials out there.
And what do they do?
They tug at our heartstrings.
I mean, think about Budweiser, the horses,
the dog, the story behind the whole thing.
You know, everybody is so investedin those commercials,
they can't wait for them to come out.
So where's the marketing genius of that,right.
(29:44):
Yeah, exactly.
And that's exactlyright. And I think that,
you know, a lot of people are just like,
well, you just need a ton of moneyto, you know, to do marketing, right?
You have to be spending millions.
All these things you really don't.
You just have to findwhere your audience is
at and speak to them in a waythat's going to connect with them.
So it's just another tool in your toolboxto make your company successful.
(30:08):
But I would say it's like a top tool, likeit is the tool because you're the one.
The marketing people are the oneswho are getting the word out.
Exactly. Brand out. Getting the name out.Yeah.
Great.
Susie,thank you so much for coming on the show.
This has been super helpful.
Yeah. Thank you so much. Happy to be here.
Welcome to Making Maverick Moves,the podcast where we talk to trailblazers
who aren't afraid to break the rules,rewrite the script and lead with courage.
Today's guest is SusieCrawford, a marketing powerhouse
who left a successfuleight year career at Google
to launch her own company, CrawfordMarketing, her maverick move.
(00:24):
Trading corporate stabilityfor the uncertainty of entrepreneurship
and building a brandthat's as bold as her decision.
We're going to talk aboutthat leap of faith, the power of branding,
and how knowing your personal brandcan fuel your biggest,
bravest moves, especially as a leader.
(00:45):
My name is Gina Osborneand I'm an Army veteran.
I spent six years during the end of theCold War as a counterintelligence agent.
I was appointed as an FBI agent,and during my 22 year
career, worked everythingfrom Asian organized crime to terrorism.
I became the assistant special agentin charge of cyber and computer forensics.
(01:08):
And then I came out of retirementand spent two years
as the safety and security officerat la metro.
Now I'm here to helpyou make your maverick move.
Welcome to the show, Suzy.
Thank you. So excited to be here.
I'm excited to have you here.
You know, when we talk about marketingand we talk about brand,
(01:28):
I think it's so important to have
people understandthat everybody has a brand.
And, you know, they may think that, well,wait a minute.
I'm not a business.
I'm not a, influencer.
But if you lookat somebodies social media,
that's kind of what their brand is, right?
(01:49):
What they're putting out eachand every day is and what the brand is.
Yeah, 100%.
I mean, I think you really nailed itby saying I'm not an influencer.
I mean, if you were to go backlike ten years, we'd be like, oh,
building a personal brand on social, like,I am not an influencer.
I'm not going to be like dancing
to reels and TikToks,but that's not what it is anymore.
I mean, it's 20, 25, like,
(02:10):
you should have startedbuilding a personal brand by like in 2024.
And if you haven't,
then you start now because it'sliterally becoming your currency.
If you I honestly think of like,you know, when my kids
when they're going to be applying to stufflike I actually feel like
their personal presence,their personal brand like that
is their digital currency,that's what they're going to be known for.
(02:31):
So it's like way more criticalnow than before to have that. Yes.
And people do that for the plus side.
But when you look at the negative side,when you look at your brand,
because a lot of people say, okay,well where
okay, I'm going to look at my social media
and see anythingthat looks familiar, right?
But when people come to me and saythey want to be FBI agents, you know,
(02:53):
the first thing I do is like,I'm happy to mentor you.
And I look at their social media.
Is that the type of brandthat the FBI would be proud of?
Are they, you know, very, very studious
and smart or are they boozing it upwith their friends?
And I can't tell you how many timesa social media
(03:15):
past comes back and haunt peoplewhen they're trying to find their jobs?
Yeah, for sure.
I mean, there's definitely a dark side
to it, and that's why it's so importantto have like your own control
over what your image looks likeon the internet, right?
Because if your imageis literally like you doing,
you know, keg stands in college,then it's not a good personal brand.
It's not a good look for you.The FBI is not going to want you. Right.
(03:36):
So you having control over itand saying like,
this is who I am,this is what I represent.
This is what I stand for.
That's your personal brand, right?So what do people have to do?
What's the first step?
I mean,what do they have to be mindful of?
I mean, I think it depends, right?
Like for me, for example,
I personally have two social accountslike I have my like personal one.
That's my family, my kids.
And then I have my business one,my business one is like my largest one.
(04:00):
It has the biggest following.
And that's really my personalbrand online.
And when it comes to like what?
How do you start?
What do you what type of contentare you putting out there?
Honestly, it matters less whatyou want to put out there and more
what does your audience want.
So if it's a business, for example.
So mine is very marketing focused,very focused on like,
you know, women building businesses.
(04:21):
I'm putting content out therethat's inspirational to them.
So my personal brandis really built around like Susie X,
Googler built a marketing agency,and now she's helping women do the same
because that's the kind of contentthey want to see versus like,
what do I actually wantto put out there? Right.
And that's such a great point,because you see these campaigns,
these marketing campaigns that failbecause they're putting things out
(04:44):
that they want to put out versuswhat their audience wants, literally.
Like it doesnot matter what you want, right?
Like maybe I want to put
like avocado toast out there,but my audience does not care about that.
So they're not going to engagewith it. Right.
But how do people knowyou have to know your audience?
I mean, it dependsthe type of brand you're building.
But if you're building a businessand you want a personal brand around it
(05:04):
that you need to know your audiencelike better than they know themselves,
they need to be like your digitalbest friends.
You have to literally know, like howthey speak, what keeps them up at night,
what's stressing them out,what's like making them super happy?
Because that's what your contentis going to be about.
You have to be their best friend, right?
And how much how important is trustin that branding?
(05:24):
Huge.
Especially now.
And I think there's, you know, there's
a really significant negative correlationbetween just like time and trust.
Like the more time goes on, like the lesspeople are becoming trusting.
Especially now with AI, right?
Like you have these AI, personal brandsthat are coming out and months later
people are like, oh, that's I,I've been following this influencer
(05:45):
who I thought was a real human,and I was buying,
you know,the links that they were posting.
And that's actually an AI avatar.
So trust is really going down.
So the more that you can engage withyour audience, like interact with them
like actually talk to them, voicenote them, trust is going to go up.
That's interesting.So that's what you tell your clients.
You do really,
really engage with your audienceto get them to come back for more.
(06:08):
Yeah, I do and you know, most of myso I have two businesses, right.
Like my marketing agency.
And then I have my coaching business.Right.
Coach marketing agencies.
For that business like I'm telling them,don't build a brand on social.
That's just your agency.
Like build one around youbecause people want to buy from people.
They don't want to buy from brands.
(06:29):
They want to buy from humans.
So if you're engaging with your audienceor like talking to them in the DMs
voice, noting them, they're more likelyto want to buy from you. Wow.
So you must be really goodat your job because you were
happy at
Google and you were there for eight yearsand you were established there.
Yeah.
(06:49):
And yet you decided that you were goingto make a maverick move
and you were going to go out on your own.
So can you talk about the decisionthat came up, how you decided to do that?
Yeah. I mean, it was scary.
I'm not going to lie and be like,oh, it's the easiest thing in the world.
Like, it was scary. I had a great job.
But my entire life,I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur.
(07:11):
I've always wanted to own my own business.
And I was that kid that would like,you know, go to school
like elementary schooland just have, like, a bag of bracelets
and be like,who wants to buy this dollar bracelet?
So I was always trying to come upwith like, what's the next business?
And I remember
actually when I was applying to businessschool,
I was at the time, advising a startup,and they were
(07:36):
they asked me to be on, like,the executive team.
And I remember thinking, well,
if I don't get into a good businessschool, I'm just going to do this.
And I did.
I got into I got into UCLA and I was like,okay, I'm going to go to UCLA.
Actually, no.
I said to my husband, I was like,I don't know if I'm going to take it
because I really want to workwith a startup. What am I going to do?
And he's like, well,just give it a second.
You have to accept it right now.
(07:57):
And literally that night or the next day,
I got a letter in the mail that was like,you got a full ride to UCLA, Anderson.
And they don't give outjust like full rides, right?
I was like, why? I didn't apply for one.
So that was like my signthat I was going to go to business school.
And then when I was there,
the first month when I got my
internship at Google, I was like,all of these signs are happening.
(08:17):
So I'm going to take thisbecause originally
I was not going to golike the corporate path.
I really wanted to start my own business.
So it was always likekind of nudging at me.
So then I was there.I was there for eight years.
I started in gaming, marketing,and then media entertainment.
So working with like film studiosand TV studios
and while I was there, had three kids.
And it kind of just dawned on methat I was like, well, I've had my kids.
(08:41):
I used, you know, Google's amazingmaternity leave,
but am I ever going to actually, like,do what I want to do?
Am I ever going to live my dreamand it's a really hard decision
because I had a great salary.
I had amazing benefits.
And yeah, it was a great job.
Like it was a job that point
2% of people that apply even likeget to the second round.
(09:05):
So I, I really struggled with the decisionfor a long time.
But ultimately I was like,there's never going to be a right time
as a person, especially as a mom.
Like there's just never the right time.
And you're always kind of,
you know, telling yourself, well, I'mgoing to wait until the kids are older.
I'm going to wait until it's summer,or I'm gonna wait till it's after summer.
(09:28):
All these things there's alwaysand I'm going to wait moment.
But ultimately, like, really,there's just time.
And so it's your decisionto make a move now or make it later.
And there's always going to be an excusefor later I agree, I agree.
Well here we talkabout breakthrough success.
And that's when you come up to this walland you may be afraid, you
(09:48):
may be confused, you may be intimidated,and yet you go through anyway.
So tell me about that momentwhere you said, I'm going to do this.
Yeah.
I mean, so it was I had had my third,
my third child,and I was on my maternity leave and I,
I'm really about signs like, I don't knowwhy, like I was mentioning earlier.
(10:10):
And I was like,I'm really struggling with decision.
Like I want to start my own thing.
I had already been freelancing on the side
and I was like,I'm going to wait for a sign.
And like the next day or a week later,they had done a really
big reorg at the companyand they'd like, moved every everyone.
And they moved me to a departmentand they like positioned it
like it was a promotion.
But it was I was like,I don't want to do that.
(10:32):
I was like, this is my sign.
This is like, I'm going to just do it.
And so I did.
I said, I'm not coming back.
And yeah, and that was my moment whereI was like, I'm just going to go for it.
Did you ever feel afteryou made that decision?
Maybe I should go back.
Oh my gosh, yeah, yeah, 100%.
I mean, you're leaving security.
You're leaving an amazing salary.
(10:53):
You're leaving benefits.
But I had to trust in myself,and I knew I could do it.
I mean, I knew I could if I could do itwhile working a 9 to 5 on the side.
And just like freelancing,I could do it while doing it full time.
Yeah, that's what my mom says.
All you have to do is believe.
And it's amazing how all these doors openwhen you just believe 100%.
(11:14):
And it's like I always tell myselfand, you know, students
and stuff like,do you see other people doing this?
Yeah, of course you do.
So there's literally
nothing written in the sky that's like,Susie Crawford cannot do this.
She will not have a seven figure business.
She will not be successful.If they can do it. You can.
And that is your sign. Wow.
So tell us about your early successes.
(11:35):
Let's see.
So while I was working my 9 to 5,I was freelancing.
So I was just doing, you know, like a lotof consulting, marketing, consulting.
And my first actually, like,my first bigger client,
I, I reached out to just, like,cold email and,
I saw that they were looking to doa full time
hire for somebodyto help them with pitching.
(11:59):
Basically, they were a consulting firmthat helped startups raise money,
and so they needed a fractional CMOto come into their businesses
and help them raise funds.
And I was like, oh, I know I can do this.
I don't have experience,but I can do this.
And I think that was probablylike my my first, like breakthrough, where
it was a really big client. It paid well.
And I was able tokind of get a lot of case studies from it
(12:22):
and say, like, I've helped startupsraise over $100 million, I have done XYZ.
I did that early on and leveragedthat to get a lot more clients.
That's great.So that's essentially branding yourself.
Exactly. Yeah,that was branding myself at the time.
I will say I had zero social mediapresence because I had just quit.
I was very I honestly was terrifiedof what people would say.
(12:46):
I didn't tell my family that I left Googlefor like six months.
I know, isn't that crazy because I,
I mean, I am Colombian, my I'm a,you know, daughter of immigrants.
And I was just very afraid thatmy dad would be like, what are you doing?
You had like the American dreamand you've left it.
But they were supportive.
That's great. Yeah, it is great.
(13:07):
So you work a lot with womenand you have a program, right?
I do freelancer to CEO.
Yeah. Okay. What's that like?
So a CEO, it's a coaching program.
I work with freelancers, marketing agencyowners, and it's primarily women.
It's like there's,like a few men in there.
And we obviously take men,but it really is primarily women.
And it's basically I'm teaching themto do what I did
(13:31):
to go from freelancer to successful CEO,successful business owner.
And what I learned when I started
freelancing was a lot of the stuff
that I learned at Google,a lot of the connections I made,
you know, the marketing strategiesthat I had access to, most people don't.
And so becoming a really,really good marketer, it isn't very hard.
(13:54):
But I do think that there'sa lack of knowledge,
that a lot of people just don't have.
And so I initially createdit just to teach people
or to teach these women like,
I'm going to give you accessto all of the things that I learned
at Google, to these amazing strategies to
how how do you go from like 0 to 9 figuresand helping build a brand?
I'm going to teach you this.
(14:14):
And that was like the initialkind of pitch to bring people in.
And now it's everything from learnmarketing to learn how to sell,
learn how to get clientsand how to build a business.
And we have over here right nowwe have over 100 active members and over,
you know, the last two or so years,we've definitely, I think like maybe 300
have gone through as terrific. Yeah.
(14:35):
So what do you teach from a leadershipleadership perspective?
Because I think when you go on LinkedInor you, you know, look on social media,
everyone wants to bea thought leader of some sort.
So how do you market yourself in that way?
How do you market yourselfas a thought leader?
I mean, I really think that just goesback to personal branding. So
(14:59):
the mistake that a lot of
people make when wantingto build a personal brand or wanting to,
you know, become thought leaders isthey just sound like everyone else.
They're essentially a commodity, right?
Like if you're just putting content outthere, that sounds basic.
That's a copy and paste of somebody'sother piece of content,
then you're going to be forgotten.
You're going to be scrolled past,and no one's going to care.
(15:20):
So you're not really a thought leader,you're just a copy and paste.
So being different,even if it's the same message said
differently, is really powerful.
And I do think a lot of people think,well,
if I want to be a thought leader,I have to sound super professional.
I have to sound like thiswildly polished person.
But, you know, I it's not likeI have 10 million followers or anything,
(15:43):
but I think what Bill has built
trust for me amongst my audience is thatI don't sound like that.
I sound very real, I sound very raw,
and I'm just going to give it to youhow it is, you know?
And that's actually way more appreciatednow than I think people think.
Well, we've rebranded this podcast.
(16:06):
It used to be called Lead Like a Lady,
and then we changed itto making Maverick Moves.
It was a big undertaking because really
it made me reflect a lot on who I am,
what do I want to give,and how do I want to serve
my wonderful audiencewho come to me for certain things?
(16:27):
Yeah.
So where do you I mean, I know whatI had to do in order to to start that.
What recommendation do you havefor people who, who really need
to do that reflectionto find out what their brand is?
Because I can tell you, onceyou lock it in,
you know where you're going from there.
That's a great question.
So just to make sure I understandwhat's the best way to rebrand?
(16:50):
Well, what what's the best way to to
just for people to trust youand for when you're putting things out.
It's coming fromyou and it's not coming from ChatGPT.
Or if it's not coming from a quotethat somebody else said, yeah,
it's not sounding super polished.
I mean, I know that probably goesagainst the grain and goes against
(17:12):
what everybody is told to do,
but I really think that'swhat's working now
is just sounding like a humanand not a robot.
And yeah, like I people are smarter,everyone's using ChatGPT
and if you're not,then I mean, you got to get on it.
But like people know, if your post isstraight up just from ChatGPT,
(17:36):
they're like, well, there's ten rocketemojis like that to do it.
Like it's just it's so obviousnow, you know?
So I mean, you should use it 100%.
I use it every day,
but you should use it as a guideand not as like your end state.
And everything you put outthere needs to sound and feel like you.
(17:57):
Like it should actually feel like peopleare like, wow, I am connecting with her.
Like I can like really feel this ChatGPTis not going to do that, right?
Right.
And I think there has to besome form of vulnerability there.
Totally.
Because nobody is going to followsomebody who's showing no vulnerability
whatsoever, because you really needto have that connection.
(18:18):
And I think that's what drawsthe vulnerability.
And I can tell you in my careerwhere male dominated fields,
everything that I've done, you know,I never wanted to show that vulnerability.
But I think the older I getand the more experienced I get, the more
I want to share that with people,because that is me
showing who I am 100% and people connectwith vulnerability, right?
(18:41):
Like if you can sharesomething that has made you
sad, has been hard,has made you question everything
the moment people can be like,oh, I've been there.
Like, I get it, she gets me.That's when you're connecting.
Yeah. No, I agree 100%.
So, so tell me about a brand
and I'm going to put you on the hotseat here, okay.
(19:03):
That was going down the wrong road.
And then they restructured and then wentin a whole different direction.
And they found success.Do you have any ideas on that?
On a brand that I've worked withand a brand in general?
Yeah.
Anything that you've that you can shareI okay.
So this is I'm going to do twobecause this is not necessarily
your question,but I think it's really relevant.
(19:24):
So I did a post it on my socialand it's pinned.
So Party City obviously we no longer haveit went through a horrible
yeah bankruptcy.
But I did an entire postabout like how they should have rebranded
and you should look at it because I dothink, like, that's a really good
example of a brandthat had so much opportunity.
(19:48):
It had like,there's so much nostalgia to the name
and they just never shifted.
They never shifted to likewhat people actually care about nowadays.
They stayed looking like a warehouse,looking like Walmart,
where peoplenow like they look at Pinterest boards.
They have like TikToks that show likebeautiful party scapes and table themes.
(20:11):
And Party City has such an opportunityto rebrand and do that.
And so I feel like that's onethat could have done that.
They could have so easilylike made that shift. How?
Well, that's the post.
Maybe if you're the queen of Party Cityas this
marketing guru that you are,how would you have changed that?
I would have literally rebrandedthe entire inside of the of the store.
(20:33):
So instead of having becausethe way it was structured was you walk in
and it's like an aisle of balloonsand I love that idea.
But instead, if you walked in and you werelike, oh, this party's like jungle theme
and this or sorry, this aisle is likejungle theme party this.
I was like, I don't know, disco party.
Can you tellI don't go to a lot of parties?
Princess parties?
Yeah, those are big.
(20:53):
And so you go and you like, walk in,and then you have a QR code
and you can scan it, and it immediatelyputs everything, you know, it
notifies the front deskpeople to go get all that stuff for you.
Like actually letting people immerseinto an experience is really powerful.
And that's why what are those thingscalled like pop ups are so big, right?
Because people love experiences.
(21:15):
People love to feel something.
And so what better place to evoke emotionthan a party store?
Like, what if you could actuallyhave an aisle where it's like glitter
on the floor and like, blurry pictures,like, that evokes an emotion, you know,
and they didn't do that.
(21:36):
They never adopt it.
Yeah, and maybe not the DIY stuff 100%.
Right? Yeah, yeah.
You can show how you can put candyin these beautiful, you know, jars
and, you know, use the beautiful ribbonthat they're selling and all of that.
Yeah, exactly.
And I mean, like a home HomeDepot, actually, this is a great example.
Home depot, they,
(21:57):
we know Home Depot as a hardware store,right?
Like you go and it's like,I need a piece of wood.
I'm going to go to Home Depot.I don't know,
but they also, it was a few years ago.
I don't know how long ago, but they havethese things we were talking about.
They have these things where they,
the first Saturday or Sunday of the month.
You can bring your kids and your kids,
(22:17):
like, build,I don't know, a birdhouse or something.
And so it's now like, it's not just, hey,I'm gonna buy a piece of wood.
There's like, arts and crafts, right?
And so there's that like shift ofhow do we bring families to a store
and expose them to buildingand like using tools at an early age.
That's a really good example. It'snot a major rebrand.
(22:38):
It's a slight one.
And it's like,but it's a great way of showing,
hey, I see what my audience is doing,and right now
we're just getting peoplethat, you know, are construction workers.
How do we bring families here?
And that's a perfect example.
They saw what these families wanted to do.
They saw that moms wanted to not havetheir kids on iPads at nine
(22:58):
in the morning on Saturday,and actually be doing things
with their handsand getting that experience.
And so they introduced that. Right.
So it's pretty much instead of sendingthe husbands or the boyfriends depot,
the whole family is going
to the whole family's going or,you know, maybe it's a great way
for the dad to have that one on one timewith the kids.
Yeah. Yeah.
(23:19):
No, I love that. I love that part.
So you talked a little bit about AI.
Do you think AI is going to be taking overmarketing someday.
I think it already has.
Yeah.
You know it's one of those thingswhere it's like
you can run from it or you can embrace it.
And I think the marketersthat run from it,
the ones that are like, it's taking overmy job, well, you're already behind,
like you're already lost because you'rein the wrong mindset, right?
(23:41):
But if instead you can say like, well,what can I do now
to leverage AI to make my job better,to be better, to get ahead?
Those are the ones that are going to win.
Okay, so I say I just started a business
and for example on Shark Shark Tank okay,I love it.
So so imagine Shark Tankbecause you have these great products
(24:02):
that people are just comingto, you know, market with.
So where do you startin order to start building that business
because you have this wonderful,amazing item that you want to sell.
Where do you even start fromthe marketing standpoint,
to get those viral momentslike the scrub Daddy
that everybody has, you know, a scrubdaddy because of Shark Tank.
(24:26):
So, I mean, I would imagine going onto Shark Tank is a great marketing idea,
but if you're just a businessstarting out,
you know, where do you startpicking up your following?
You know, the first thing is it
doesn't matter where you want to go,it matters where your audience is.
So if I were Scrub Daddy today,I wouldn't be going on Shark Tank.
(24:46):
I would literally be going on social mediaand doing
TikToks and shortsand creating viral content.
That's short form, because who's using it?
Parents, moms.
Like I would be all over that.
Yeah.
So just starting andjust putting out there and the importance
(25:06):
we know that when it comes to sellingis you just have to be consistent.
So you can't just put a couple of postsout there.
You need to be doing itall the time to get that momentum going,
to get the momentumto get the algorithm to like you,
but more importantly, to build trust.
If you are, you know,if you go to a piece of content
and you're like, oh, this is cool.
And then you go to their pageand they have two posts, you're like,
oh, this is a scam.
(25:28):
Yeah, that's not going to build trust.
So putting more content outthere is important for so many reasons.
But it's really important for trust.
Are there other ways to get people'sattention besides social media.
Yeah.
Well I think obviously you know,
your own social is importantbut user generated content.
So not influencers necessarily,but just other people using
your products is so powerfulthat builds a ton of trust.
(25:51):
It makes it feel very real.
It doesn't feel like it's a brand selling
to you,but it feels like it's your neighbor,
your friend,the person you're going to the book club
with, like they'rethe ones that are showing you the product.
And I honestly, I'm a really big
this isn't scalable, but I am a really bigbeliever in in-person things.
So look at where your audience ishanging out.
(26:11):
Is it Farmers market?
Does it like go to those things?
But then how do you leverage thesein-person moments and make them scalable?
It's social.
Right? Right.
So if you are going to I don't know why
I keep saying farmers markets, butit's top of mind like a farmer's market.
And you have your scrub daddy creatingcontent there and then posting
it is a really, reallyyeah, it's really powerful.
(26:33):
Got it.
So going back to the personal brandthat we talked to in the beginning,
so what happens
if you had those boozing momentsand those pictures are already out there?
Because once the pictures are outon the internet, they're there to stay.
How do you clean up your personal brand?
You know, once you decide that, okay,
maybe this wasn't the best phasefor me to put out there.
(26:54):
How do you clean that up? Do you now?
I don't know, but I would say, I mean, doeverything you can to just push it down.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, that's a tough one.
I think, you know, obviously, whatever youhave control over, you can hide, right?
If it's somebody else.
I know there's services that offer that.
I don't know, though.
But yeah, I think it's really important,especially if you're a parent,
(27:17):
you know, to talk to your kidsto make sure
that they're awareof what they're putting out.
Becausenot only could have put them in danger
if they're wearing their high schoolcolors and names and things like that,
people know where they go to high schooland all of that.
But again, you know, just being super,
you know, vigilant when it comes towhatever it is that you post.
(27:37):
Because I can tell you
that that was the first thing, you know,having the cyber team with the FBI,
whenever we would get the new batchof, of,
agents coming in from Quantico, you know,we would be able to have our pick
as to which ones that we wanted.
And the first thing that my team would dois look at that social media and say,
do we want this person on our team? Or,gosh, that's terrifying.
(27:58):
It really, I mean, but it's the truth.
If you want to go into law enforcementthere, really.
I mean, it's it's it's so truebecause I think, H.R.,
I think that is the line the,the chief people office is doing
is they want to make sure that anybodythat they have working for them,
they're not going to be a liability.
Yeah.
I mean, I'm just honestly really gladthat social media was not a thing,
which was nice.
(28:19):
For sure. For sure.
Because we
I mean we do make mistakesand I think you know people know
that sometimes we make mistakes butyou know moving forward we just have to be
really really really important tofor sure do that.
So let's talk about as we wrap this uplet's talk about marketing myths okay.
So if I'm a company,why am I going to invest
(28:39):
valuable dollars in a marketing program?
Because you want to make money.
Like there's literally no businessout there that doesn't need marketing.
Like every business says, I don't careif you are the taco cart on the street
corner or you're, you know, alike Apple TV, everybody needs marketing.
It's gonna be a different formof marketing, right?
(29:00):
Like the taco cart in StreetCorner is not going to invest
in like TV commercialsand a Super Bowl commercial.
But every business needs marketing
and the ones that thinkthat they don't are one.
They're either going to failor they are doing it.
They're just masking it as something else,and they're thinking it's something else
and it's just sales.
But actually it's marketing that well,when you talk about the Super Bowl,
(29:22):
I mean, think about the most memorableSuper Bowl commercials out there.
And what do they do?
They tug at our heartstrings.
I mean, think about Budweiser, the horses,
the dog, the story behind the whole thing.
You know, everybody is so investedin those commercials,
they can't wait for them to come out.
So where's the marketing genius of that,right.
(29:44):
Yeah, exactly.
And that's exactlyright. And I think that,
you know, a lot of people are just like,
well, you just need a ton of moneyto, you know, to do marketing, right?
You have to be spending millions.
All these things you really don't.
You just have to findwhere your audience is
at and speak to them in a waythat's going to connect with them.
So it's just another tool in your toolboxto make your company successful.
(30:08):
But I would say it's like a top tool, likeit is the tool because you're the one.
The marketing people are the oneswho are getting the word out.
Exactly. Brand out. Getting the name out.Yeah.
Great.
Susie,thank you so much for coming on the show.
This has been super helpful.
Yeah. Thank you so much. Happy to be here.
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