Hello again, my name is Craig Marty and I dedicate my time and business to
- Help business owners spend less time each day in their business (whilst still feeding it to grow and grow), so they can spend more time with their kids or family. And;
- Continue to do the same thing for myself.
I’m a husband and father, they are the two most important parts of my life and that is why I have built the style of business I have.
It’s my business that supports my family orientated lifestyle, it’s not not me who works 65+ hours a week to keep my business afloat, although I have been there in the past and done that – I know what that’s like.
Hard work and long hours don’t not scare me or stress me out when there is a project that I’m working on to get something live or to launch something new but 60+ hour weeks every week, week after week for months and years is not healthy in my opinion.
So What Do I Stand For?
Friends and family that know me would agree that I don’t follow the norm and I don’t care what other people think.
When I think of the “average guy” now, I picture a clean cut 35+ year old guy wearing trendy clothes that match his perfect beard and hairstyle. Someone who is politically correct and overly concerned with how people view him.
And that just doesn’t describe me…
A Little About Me
I’m a 36 year old (as of June 2020) Australian male, but I feel no pressure to follow trends and never really have.
I’m from Sydney in Australia and I was the guy in high school who had long hair, who played the guitar and I was only 1 of 3 guys who could meet the description in my school, and the other 2 guys were in my band!
Now I own and run our Australian based marketing company whose parent name is Customore. We focus on getting our clients more customers for THEIR businesses! That’s the main thing we focus on every week.
Customore has other brands under it like ‘Customer Mountain’, my personal brand ‘Craig Marty’ and other smaller online side businesses tick over in the background.
Early Jobs
After leaving high school I worked every casual job I could and when I started my very entry level degree at university. I’ve never been afraid of hard work. My early jobs included:
- Lots of construction work (laboring, etc),
- Waiter.
- A short stint in a Subway restaurant (if you can call it that).
- Fruit and vegetable shop.
- Door to door sales.
- and several more.
My first career was in call centers.
I started on the phones as a casual thinking that is where it would end too (it didn’t). Every day was spent giving technical support to senior citizens who had just got their first DVD player, but still wanted their old VHS player to be connected to their TV too! It was 2004 at this time and they were some long phone calls.
After 3-4 months I was doing 40 hours a week as a casual and I got a taste for full time money and I liked it. When university started back the following year, I wasn’t there!
Full Time Money
I was earning full time equivalent money at the time which was great. I started to get focused and determined to work my way up the corporate ladder, and I did over this seven-eight year, short career.
Along this climb I heard about this ‘making money while you slept’ thing, I was young, slightly naive and therefore I was VERY interested in that.
I started learning more and trying out countless different ways to do exactly that – all after business hours and on weekends when my 9-5 corporate duties had finished.
Anyway, I climbed the corporate ladder, concentrated on making my bosses happy by meeting my targets, which really means meeting THEIR targets. I learned that very early and it was a good lesson, because it helps a young eager employee climb up the ladder.
I would not recommend a young employee now to focus on climbing the ladder, but to moreso work on learning the different functions within a big organisation. I was lucky to get exposure to lots of different aspects and only really because I kept putting my hand up to say “i’ll do it, I’ll do it”. Learning how the system works from Job Ads, recruitment, training, operations, management to having to fire people… these are all important things to learn, especially if you want to be in business.
What I would suggest of course alongside learning how the corporate machine works is to focus on your own business which is a topic for another day, but there’s lots to be gained from working for a big company so I’m never quick to say “quit your job, focus on your dreams… build a business”, etc, etc. All that can come along at the same time.
But for you, if you’ve found me and are starting to follow along you’re likely already running your own business or about to launch something soon.
Anyway, back to my corporate days…
When the company I worked for was opening a new hub in the Philippines to meet the demand of lower labor costs, the big boss asked me if I wanted to move from Sydney to Manila, Philippines and run the operation there…
I said “yes”.
Hundreds, if not thousands of Australian businesses have off-shored to the Philippines since, and whilst I wasn’t the first of course, it was mostly American companies and expats who had done it and who were living there. So explaining to taxi drivers (pre-UBER and pre-”GRAB” which is the Southeast Asian equivalent) where I was from had to include mentions of ‘Kangaroo’s’ because “Australia” wasn’t a common response they heard.
One Door Closes and Another Opens
Guess what happens when you offshore operations to the Philippines? After two and a half years of being the most expensive employee in the Philippines office, the question about your future starts getting asked back home in the head office at Sydney.
The answer for me unfortunately (or so I thought at the time) was “Redundancy” (laid off!).
There was no job back home, because I moved it to the Philippines and I was too expensive to employ in the Philippines.
When I landed back in Sydney, I slid back down the corporate ladder a few rungs making my way into another call center in a different company. This company I started working for soon bought out one of their competitors and the two call centers merged.
So, guess what happens when two call centers merge and there’s now two call center managers and one just joined the company, and the other one who had been employed there for a few years…?
- The new one, which was me….gets laid off!
- Yes, that’s two redundancies within 12 months.
- It wasn’t a sunny, fun time of my life.
I had a home loan, my wife and I had recently married, and then the second redundancy hit.
It was definitely a moment to reflect and to think about what I wanted and what my next move was going to be. I am sugar coating it of course and saving you from the stress and worry that I was feeling at the time.
But here’s the thing…
Remember I said I’d heard about the ‘make money while you sleep, online business and marketing’ thing?
Well, I never stopped diving into that and learning over the years. Even whilst in the Philippines.
Even in the last couple of years of my corporate career, even before my first redundancy.. I had already made my first dollar online and I literally mean 1 dollar, it was nothing to write home about (yet!).
I had got some websites up and running, I had other ideas and online strategies that I was working on.
After my second redundancy, it was time to choose: do I go back to my old career or was it a sign to roll the dice and have a gamble?
When I thought about going out on my own, I needed a plan. I needed a more solid business idea to launch, so I could have a somewhat better chance of earning some money. (I put it like that now, but back then I thought it was going to be A LOT easier!)
A part of the online and business industry I did know all about, was getting websites built, up and live.
I‘d also heard stories from friends and people I met who had been cheated and overcharged tens of thousands of dollars for websites, and I had also got quotes ranging from $800 to $15,000 for the same job when I got quotes to get a website built!
So I knew this was an area of the market that other business owners would have been struggling to navigate. It turns out they were.
That was it, my first business for myself was building websites for other businesses!
But I didn’t build the websites (because I couldn’t personally build you a website to save my life!), I just advertised the service, spoke to the business owners, heard what they wanted and then I had a web developer who I hired on a per project basis, build the website for me.
And that was it.
Soon came my first $1,000 working for myself. And then $10k and so on.
I hate bragging and I hate braggers. But if you’re still reading this then I know you’re serious. So I only want to share this with you, very quietly here that my company has broken the million dollar mark several years in a row (although, I don’t build websites for clients anymore – I help them get customers of their own).
I only tell you this to help you see that it is possible to have these kinds of returns with online marketing and the online side of your business. 98%+ of what we do is online!
From two back-to-back redundancies to going out on my own and making it work.
My business owner and marketing journey is now over 15 years old and the 16 year year milestone is closing in.
Like I’ve said before my journey and mission now is to continue doing what I’m doing which is to continue to grow my business the smart and only way that will actually grow it but importantly will not require me to work full time hours in it.
What About Spare Time?
My spare time is spent with my kid and soon to be kids, my wife and my family. If you’re a business owner and this is what you’re wanting to work towards too then I’m glad that we found each other because that’s me now.
If you don’t already have a copy of my marketing map that I use to grow my business and other businesses open a new browser and type in craigmarty.com . On that page you will be able to get a free copy of the marketing map so you can read it, learn it and see how it fits in your business.
After you get that I would love to hear your questions and thoughts so reach out, reply to the email you’ll get with the marketing map and ask a question.
I also host a weekly chat online to talk through this marketing map and answer questions so you will be able to get access to that too after getting the map, because there is no point joining the call if you haven’t got the marketing map already.
So open a new window now on your phone or on your computer and type in craigmarty.com, get a copy of my marketing map for free, and you can take it from there.
Go get a copy of the map now and come back soon to listen to the next episode of this podcast because I will go through and outline the main parts of this map again in a little more detail, but having the map beforehand will help you get more out of it.
I’ll speak with you soon.
Leave a Reply