#DreadingSundays Podcast S01e07 Ft. Crystal Wong

Crystal is a SEO consultant based in Melbourne, Australia. I’m excited to share her story due to a few reasons:

she is a woman of colour (WOC)
she is a single mum
her net profit for FY21 was $100,000
she is willing to lean into her vulnerability and share what it was like when life felt impossible
she has tried many roles (sales, marketing, pharmacy)
similar to myself, she has been in SEO for 3 and a bit years
every 6 months, she rents out an AirBnB to recalibrate and plan for her business.

Interesting things about Cyrstal.

prior to SEO she was a pharmacist
but pharmacy left her unfulfilled
this lead her to work in sales – pharmaceuticals and business development – and also in marketing
but none of these fulfilled her, until she landed on SEO
“trust yourself” is what she would tell her younger self

Crystal found SEO during one of the lowest points in her life.

“It was a pretty terrifying time in my life.”

“I had a baby to look after. I was basically unemployed because I had no clients. I had to move out of home – I was two steps away from being homeless.”

“And this was I started in SEO and I can happily say I feel like I’ve done the right thing.”

“I had spent a year learning about SEO. I just knew SEO was for me.”

“This year, I broke $100,000 in net profit and the me three and a half years ago would have though earning this amount would have been an impossible dream.”

What it felt like when everything seemed like she had made the wrong decisions in life.

Crystal opens up about the time when her personal relationship had fallen apart and she had to move into her mum’s place with her two-and-a-half year old daughter to avoid being homeless.

“I was really anxious. I was so anxious that for the first few months, I couldn’t work.”

“There were so many things to deal with – pay for lawyers and dealing with them was extremely stressful.”

“I felt like I had failed in life.”

“I started life in quite a privileged position. I’m a daughter of migrants from Malaysia and they invested a lot in my education. I went to a private girls school my entire life. I started my career off as a pharmacist. I was a health profession and I felt like all my decisions I had made from then on were the wrong ones.”

“How did I end up being a single mum? Unemployed. And next to homeless. What did I do with my life?”

“I had just squandered it. That’s what it felt like.”

Crystal describes having to crawl her way out of it and acknowledges she was not kind to herself during that period.

The shining light during that time was SEO.

She started offering SEO services at really low prices.

Like many of us at the beginning, Crystal needed to get more experience from paying clients.

So she started offering SEO services for really cheap and taking on anyone who would pay her – and I love her honesty in this because it reflects how most of us learn along the way and at some point, when we have acquired enough experience, we can start asking for more because we offer more value.

“As you get more experience you build a network of people and you get known for what you do. Like I have a number of web developers that I work with and copywriters and I’m part of a networking group – Kate Toon’s group. She was how I got started in SEO.

“I did her amazing course.” (link to Kate Toon’s ‘The Recipe for SEO Success’ course)

What’s incredible about Crystal’s journey is that it highlights how success and financial security doesn’t happen overnight.

That is, it wasn’t until 3 years after she completed Kate Toon’s course, took on a lot of work, for cheap, that she gained the confidence to charge more and to be picky about who she works with.

“I have the freedom to pick now – it’s hard at the start when you’re taking on everyone. But many are not a good fit and they’re a pain to work with. But it’s all experience at the end of the day and you have to go through that.”