Social Media Success Story
I say it all the time: my job is awesome. And it’s awesome for lots of reasons, but I think the most awesome part of the awesome is that I get, every day, the chance to meet and talk to awesome and fascinating people.
Suzanne Roy is one of those people.
The manager of Social Media & Industry Outreach at realtor.com, Suzanne is, in no uncertain terms, a FIRECRACKER. That much was clear in the first 30 seconds of our conversation.
She’s a Floridian by way of England and Canada (this makes for a curious sense of humor, to say the least). She’s an absolute workhorse. She’s a dynamo of energy and positivity. She is, as they say in Boston (that’s “BAH-STIN” for those of you playing along at home) wicked smaaaaaaaaht.
Oh, and she’s also a total smartass, which is a language that I speak fluently, so she and I were off to a great start.
She’s good people. I like her.
Real Social Results
Like so many folks who have made careers out of social media, Suzanne sort of stumbled into it. She got her start in marketing by helping the wife of a friend, who had a short time before gotten her real estate license, get her online presence established. She was working for a payphone company.
For those of you who were born in the ‘90s, we used to have these things called payphones. They were for public use and you’d drop coins in, dial a number and then talk. To a person. You couldn’t check your email, you couldn’t check Facebook (because there was no Facebook, but I’m pretty sure your minds are already too blown by the coin-to-phone information that you can’t possibly process that). Baby steps. But I digress.
So, yes. Suzanne was working for a payphone company and answered her friend’s pleas for help in establishing a web presence, marketing campaigns, and an overall strategy for promoting her business. Right then and there, VAWork was born.
From those humble beginnings, Suzanne grew VAWork–a virtual assistant enterprise that helped countless real estate & other sales professionals–to an 8-person operation called Real Social Results. From there, it was helping Chris Smith & Steve Pacinelli turn TechSavvy Agent into a cottage industry, lending her relentlessly positive voice to Inman Next, and now? She’s started a new chapter. She’s working for “The Man” and loving every second of it. She’s manning the social helm at realtor.com and helping Audie Chamberlain help the thousands of REALTORS in this country develop their social strategies and do better business.
Striking A Balance
Coming from a long history of entrepreneurship, the change from working for herself to reentering a life working for a large corporation wasn’t one that was taken lightly. There’s a huge trade-off. On one hand, running your own business comes along with working long, LONG hours (I can attest that this is true). On the other, it’s YOURS. You have the control and you have the freedom to make or break yourself. Going back to work for realtor.com, for Suzanne, meant giving up that independence, but it also represented balance.
When she’s working, Suzanne is 100% focused, 100% driven to accomplish the tasks at hand. But when it’s time to stop working? She’s 100% disconnected. That means she focuses on her husband and on her family and on the things that matter to her personal life. Her husband, her family, and having as much fun as is humanly possible.
And about this “FUN” thing. What does that entail?
One thing is for certain: making people laugh is high on the list. During our conversation, broad smiles were worn the whole time and it’s possible an off-color joke or two was shared (but I would never share such a thing in this forum because we’re VERY above-board here at Happy Grasshopper).
I can’t wait to see what this tiny powerhouse of positivity has up her sleeve next.
