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Our guest on this week’s episode of Suds & Search is Tom Critchlow, Freelance Strategy Consultant and Founder of SEO MBA.

We’ve been aware of Tom for many years now, dating back to his time at Distilled. After launching the Distilled office in New York, Tom worked at Google for a couple of years. For the past eight years, he’s been an independent consultant working with some of the most iconic brands in the world.

Tom often blogs on his personal website tomcritchlow.com. We highly recommend you check it out. His writing is smart and a little bit silly, but more personally revealing and honest than the typical blog posts in our industry.

We’re going to start our conversation by asking him about a recent post he wrote titled, “8 years on the Road.” Roughly eight years before this broadcast, Tom set out on a journey as an indie consultant. Each year, he writes a reflection on the prior year – both personally and professionally.

The one thing that’s clear is that Tom is fond of life as an independent consultant. He enjoys the lifestyle and the freedom it provides. What’s really interesting is that after eight years, he genuinely still enjoys the work.

We’re also going to talk about SEO MBA, an online training course for ambitious SEOs. The two courses, Executive Presence and The Art of Client Management, help SEOs looking to get into the highest levels of client work or get a seat at the table with the c-suite.

Grab something cold to drink and join us for a conversation with Tom Critchlow. We’ll talk about how the majority of his work is now “P&L first,” we’ll spend a little time chatting about advice he’d give to people beginning an independent consulting career (hint: he’s written the blog post), and we’ll finish our conversation talking about a curated art collective he started called Fiercely Curious.

article by

Mark Bealin

Founder and Principal

Mark Bealin is the Founder and Principal at SearchLab, which was founded in March 2017. Under his leadership, Clutch and Manifest both named SearchLab one of the top agencies in Chicago in 2018 and 2019.

Mark has been helping small and medium-sized businesses with SEO and PPC since 2007. He is an in-demand speaker and contributor at events throughout the country, sought out for his expertise in SEO, Paid Search and Analytics.

He is a board member of EO Chicago and a guest lecturer at DePaul University. Mark lives in Chicago with his wife and three children. He's a former varsity high school football coach and remains active at St. Ignatius College Prep.

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