Hi, I am Catharine O’Leary aka The Quiz Queen. I didn’t dream of being The Quiz Queen. I grew up wanting to be the Wolf of Wall Street! I always wanted to be a big shot on Bay Street, the Canadian equivalent of Wall Street. That whole world of wealth, success, and power seemed exciting and adventurous.
So, I asked myself: “What do I need to study in university to set myself up for my Bay Street corner office?”
I figured my Bay Street ambition required finance and business expertise. I began university with a general business degree, then went on to complete my master’s in economics. After 5 years in school, I was prepared for the professional world.
So, I asked myself: “What job could I get to gain the needed career experience?”
My professor and mentor advised me to go into consulting and mentioned a position with a management consultancy firm. It was a role perfectly aligned to my dream Bay Street Corner office. I landed a job working in their economics practice. As far as learning and growing this opportunity checked the boxes. I was able to gain both domestic and international economics and development experience working on some of the global projects for the international agencies such as the World Bank and Canadian International Development Agency.
It was great for a couple of years but then the practice started to change and was rolled into the management consulting and strategic planning practice. The economics department was made redundant as was I.
So, I asked myself again: “What job could I get that would continue my career growth, and get me closer to my Bay Street Corner office?”
I consulted with my mentor/professor again for advice. As we chatted the conversation turned into an opportunity with the satellite office, he was opening for a boutique market research firm. A firm that used economics to analyze consumer behavior and help corporations understand the decision-making process of a product to optimize their products/services. This opportunity was like finding the best candy store in the world to an economist! Even better it was just down the road from Bay Street!
For the next ten years, I collaborated with a number of the top Fortune 100 businesses on questionnaires that helped them understand why, when, and how people buy items and services. These insights were then translated into product innovation, marketing campaigns, sales conversations, and so on.
I worked my way up from data analyst to lead consultant and every day was a new learning experience, a new skill, a new project, and amazing people. However, after ten years, thousands of surveys and tens of thousands of consumer conversations it was time to move on to a new adventure.
So, I asked myself again: “What job could I get that would get me to my next big career adventure?”
That’s when I connected with one of the top 5 national banks in Canada. They were looking for someone for their market research department. Guess what the address was. BAY STREET! I’d made it to Bay Street.
I spent 3 years at the bank on Bay Street. It was amazing how different the “client-side” of market research was from the “supplier side”. Very different timelines — months instead of weeks, committee decisions instead of one person, and lots and lots and lots of meetings! Truth be told it was exhausting.
At the end of the day, Bay Street ended up being not all it was cracked up to be in my original dreams. There were very few corner offices and the people in those offices did not look like they were having the kind of fun Leonardo had in the movie. I knew I certainly wasn’t. It was time for the next new adventure.
So, I asked myself again: “What job could I get that would move my career forward?”
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. It would take me three more job changes and another six years more to realize I was asking the same question over and over again and expecting a different result! If I wanted off the roller coaster ride, I needed to switch things up drastically.
So, I changed the question I asked myself to “What business can I create to replace my corporate career and income?”
It was time to look inward to my own resources and skills to create the success of my next career adventure. The whole corporate gig was just an elaborate shell game to me, and it was a game I was not winning.
I went from searching for someone else to having the answer of what the next step in my career would be to creating the answer for myself:
Game changer!
My initial assumption was that I would need to find something new to plug into since I didn’t know how to leverage my expertise. What was a Senior Director of Consumer Insights and Market Research to do in the self-employed entrepreneurial world? I didn’t know how to turn that into a business.
As I searched for something that I didn’t need to create from the ground up I found a great network marketing opportunity. A true business in a box. I wasn’t ready to create a business from scratch yet and stepping into a business ready to plug and play was ideal at the time.
I was selling personal development courses and events and I really enjoyed it. While the courses and events were fantastic the business side was challenging. In particular I was not doing a good job of attracting the right clients. I either had the freebies seekers or the tire kickers. Rarely did I find that one client who was ready for the solution I was offering. As such, the business was failing.
I realized I wasn’t meeting my target audience where they were, and I was wasting a ton of time with those who were unqualified. I started to dread getting out of bed to spend the day on calls that I knew would lead to nothing but frustration.
So, the question I asked myself was “How do I make this business work for me?”
There had to be a way to solve the issue of low-quality leads wasting time on sales calls. Others in the industry were doing well so I knew I could be successful. I just needed to find the right tools.
What I found was Quiz Funnels and I was hooked! This was the lead generation I needed to be sure to attract the best clients just by asking the best questions.
The more I learned about quiz funnels and how they translate consumer challenges into consumer insights and then into business revenues the more I realized that I’d found my expertise of questionnaire development, consumer behavior, and corporate strategy in entrepreneurial form.
Welcome Home!
I was truly home! What started the search for a lead generation solution to improve my network marketing business quickly turned into my own quiz creation and development business. The opportunity to work with entrepreneurs to help build quizzes that would attract high-quality leads faster and cheaper than other strategies was my dream come true. Now I have a chance to create my own business, serving fellow entrepreneurs to grow their businesses, doing something I am well trained in and love doing.
Now the question I ask myself daily is: Who can I serve best and how can I deliver world-class marketing strategy to my best clients?”
Changing the question, I asked myself from “what can someone do for me” to “what can I help do for others” changed the whole world for me.
I now have the privilege of working with speakers, authors, podcasters, broadcasters and entrepreneurs through coaching and consultation to help them develop The Best Quiz For Their Business. Quizzes that bring in high-quality leads that build know, like, and trust and invite the best clients to continue the conversation on how to work together. Thanks to this successful strategy where you are asking before selling, more businesses are seeing the value in using quizzes as a marketing strategy.
Whether you are launching a product/service, promoting your new book, speaking at an event, or promoting a podcast or broadcast a quiz can help you engage with your ideal client to build your audience and list to build your business. All on autopilot so your marketing is always working for you asking the best questions to attract the best clients.
It’s not Bay Street but it’s any and every street I can reach and that’s so much cooler than being stuck in a corner office!
So, ask yourself: “What’s the Best Quiz for Your Business?”
You can find the answer at www.QuizForMyBiz.com
Take your company to the next level and start quizzing today!
Catharine O’Leary
Catharine O’Leary Consulting
Catharine O’Leary helps entrepreneurs to connect the dots between their ideal customer and their offers through quizzes that convert. Build your audience list and strengthen long-term customer relationships with quizzes that convert.
As a market research and consumer insights expert with 25 years of experience working with Fortune 100 companies across the globe Catharine believes that knowing your customer requires asking them what they want in a way that allows them to share with you what they need.
Nothing is more valuable in a business than the voice of the customer. Listening to the customer leads to better communications, marketing messages that matter, new product development that solves needs, and development of long-term relationships with your audience. As creator of S.M.A.R.T. Quiz Solutions, Catharine believes that asking the right questions and starting a conversation with the ideal client bridges the invisible gap between the customer need and what you have to offer.
Taking her experience in questionnaire development Catharine has turned her sites to helping entrepreneurs’ grow subscriber lists and turn clients into raving fans through quizzes. Lead generation is HARD and attracting ideal customers is even harder! By helping entrepreneurs design quizzes that build the know, like and trust factors helps customers connect with the products and services and are more apt to take the next step with the business.
When you work with Catharine, she’s going to help you connect the dots to bridge the invisible gap between the ideal customer and your solution. Get more clients and keep them longer with tried-and-true questionnaire methodology delivered in quizzes that convert.
