We’re continuing to share a different story every few weeks of how a past student has been able to significantly grow their freelance business by applying the concepts they learned from Double Your Freelancing (check out the last one we did with Noel Mannion).

If you feel your story would be a good fit, email us at brennan@doubleyourfreelancing.com

Susie Hays is an outsourced CMO and founder of Q2Mark.

Hi Susie! Tell us about yourself – who are you and what do you for fun?

I’m an outsourced CMO working as an integrated leadership member to help all clients, from start-ups to fortune 500 companies, accelerate growth, launch their businesses and provide solutions to the toughest business challenges.
Gosh, over the past 10 years (how time flies!!) I’ve spent most of my free time on a softball field not just at home, but all over the country, cheering on my daughter and helping her achieve her dreams of one-day playing college softball.
In 2016, all of those dreams came true, she graduated from high school in Southern California, with honors (proud mom moment!), we packed her up and drove her up to Oregon to fulfill all of her goals both on and off the field. These days, I hope and plan to be spending more time with family, friends, and on the canvas – I was a fine arts major in college and have been longing to pick up that paint brush again!

What got you into freelancing? Was it what you expected?

I started freelancing as a side hustle to my corporate/executive positions as a way to bring in extra money for my family but ultimately because I just LOVE to create.
In 2014, I was encouraged by one of my favorite and most respected clients to take my side hustle full-time. She believed in my work ethic, business practices and saw first hand how successfully I was at helping other businesses. And from there, it’s history.

Tell us about your hardest moment as an entrepreneur to date.

That would definitely have to be the day I realized one of my clients was experiencing onset dementia. Whether client, family or friend, ailing health is never easy to deal with. I believe you have to always address problems head on, you can’t ignore them, when you start to recognize signs of an issue, dig in, find the source of the challenge, and help solve it.
In this case, I saw the problems, listened to the sales team and realized my client was having memory problems. I felt responsible to address them and find solutions to work around them so we could continue to help the client grow. But to this day, having the conversation with my client and his partner was one of the hardest moments yet.

On the flip side, what’s been your biggest success so far?

I love keeping up with the industry and always learning something new, so I’ve been spending a lot of time and resources researching effective tools and training. My biggest success so far was investing and following Double Your Freelancer’s Mastering Project Roadmaps. My first time using Brennan Dunn and Ben Lee’s Roadmapping Session resulted in a $60,000 account. And every time I’ve followed their program, I’ve continued to increase my revenue.

What were you struggling the most with when you ran into Brennan’s course?

Education overload! I was in this cycle of serial e-course learning and not actually implementing what I was learning into my own business.

What are some specific strategies, tactics or pieces of advice that helped you grow?

A few that come to mind are:

• Learning to charge what you’re worth.
• Niche down and market accordingly.
• Build and automated sales funnel ASAP.
• Concentrate equally on ROI and providing a great experience to your clients or customers.

I’m sure I could go on but those are a few important ones floating around my brain. And, through using Brennan’s systems and products, I can honestly say I’ve changed the way I handle my business – for the better.

What are you most excited about for your business?

Oh gosh there are so many things but I have to say, continual growth, increasing my client base, boosting my income, working with and for great people and most importantly growing more businesses.

Susie Hays is an outsourced CMO with more than 25 years of executive marketing leadership in both business strategy and operations geared at helping clients identify goals and develop plans to over come obstacles to achieve measureable profitability and success. With a focus on Health & Wellness industry, she is a strong advocate of customer centricity leveraging competitive intelligence techniques to secure brand awareness through powerful marketing campaigns. You will also see her working to conceptualize and drive corporate branding through a full spectrum of integrated marketing efforts, not to mention, creating and executing innovative outreach campaigns, and stewarding B2B marketing strategies to ensure strong connections with customers, principals and industry leaders.