Exploring Life & Business with Karen Carr-Crawford

Today we’d like to introduce you to Karen Carr-Crawford.

Hi Karen, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
This has been a journey of love for entrepreneurship and creating paths to empowerment for those who are the business builders. I started my business career as a marketer working for both small businesses and agencies, doing client-side account management delivery for small specialized medical practices. I moved into freelancing a few years after that and then formally established a business 23 years ago.

That initial work involved much good learning that helped shape my skill set around business strategy, target marketing, and financial growth.

Since those early days, I have evolved my consulting focus from marketing solely to overall strategy and growth across operations for emerging and established businesses. I still enjoy the marketing work, but now from a strategy build out.

I have been fortunate to deliver consulting services as a Business Advisor through the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program in Los Angeles and also through the Goldman Sachs One Million Black Women: Black in Business – OMBW: BIB Initiative.

Oh, and I teach too! Although a true USC Trojan, I have had a wonderful experience through UCLA Extension teaching Entrepreneurship and New Venture Formation since 2017.

Life is good, and I truly love what I do!

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I wish I could say that the road was smooth – There are always challenges along this path!

The economy shifts –
COVID happens –
Someone else gets the gig –
Clients can’t pay –
Something abruptly ends –
An aging parent

And just life in general. My emotional balance is essential, so I practice yoga to maintain my sanity.

Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
My work involves creating actionable roadmaps for traction and growth. I begin the process with a detailed assessment to understand the state of the business.

I work with the Founders/CEOs and teams to understand the obstacles and desired goals. All of this to move into clear recommendations based on strategy for accountability, sales and marketing management, financial forecasting, and defining the respective key metrics to track growth.

I’ve designed plans for so many types of entrepreneurs and small businesses across the industry, but I work best with service-based organizations. Offerings are tailored to meet needs to support process improvement, KPIs, sales management, and forecasting.

Brand-wise, I am most proud of having the “hands-on” skills to move a business forward – that’s what I’m known for – I know how to do this work well.

Do you have recommendations for books, apps, blogs, etc?
Hubspot has great tools and resources to help businesses… AMA – American Marketing Association has good intel and data Daily Review of WSJ, Bloomberg, Forbes, and Entrepreneur Magazine (online) is always good Goldman Sachs Briefings (on-line)

Best Books I’ve read:

Anything from John C. Maxwell – Leadership guru
Traction – Gino Wickman
The Hard Thing About Hard Things – Ben Horowitz
We Should All Be Millionaires – Rachel Rodgers

On a holistic life level, I am a faith based person but I absorb the law of attraction work, especially work from Dr. Joe Dispenza, Justin Perry, Louise Hay, Dr. Wayne Dyer, and Delores Cannon.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.karencarrcrawford.com/
• Instagram: kccbizbuild, kccentrepreneurschool
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karencarrcrawford/