The Hum of Success w/ Wendy Coulter | Ep. 169

In this episode of the Biz/Dev Podcast, David and Gary sit down with Wendy Coulter, CEO of Hummingbird Creative Group, a 30-year branding and marketing veteran who knows the real value of your business. 

Wendy gives advice on:

✔️ How brand + company synergy creates real business impact
✔️ The biggest mistakes businesses make when defining their identity
✔️ And, most importantly… the best jeans for being snappy (yes, it’s a thing)

LINKS:

Wendy Coulter on LinkedIn

Hummingbird Creative Group on LinkedIn

Hummingbird Creative Group Website

Hummingbird Effect Podcast

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David Baxter - CEO of Big Pixel

Gary Voigt - Creative Director at Big Pixel

The Podcast

David Baxter has been designing, building, and advising startups and businesses for over ten years. His passion, knowledge, and brutal honesty have helped dozens of companies get their start.

In Biz/Dev, David and award-winning Creative Director Gary Voigt talk about current events and how they affect the world of startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] David: I don't know about you, but in '95 is when I was wearing Z Cavaricci 

[00:00:03] Wendy: Oh, Z

husband was wearing 

[00:00:05] Gary: In 95. That's four years past the prime of them. They were back 

[00:00:10] David: Shut up, man. That was the first time. TJ Maxx got Z Cavaricci's What are you saying? 

Hi everyone. Welcome to the Biz Dev Podcast, the podcast about developing your business. I'm David Baxter, your host, joined Per Usual by Gary Voit, who is an all khaki today. What's up? You're getting boring. More and more boring every time I see you,

[00:00:32] Gary: you are wearing the same color,

which is pretty 

[00:00:35] David: up, man. No. Look, I'm, I look, you're famous.

Okay. If you're on, if you're

[00:00:38] Gary: Oh yeah. Yeah.

[00:00:39] David: I'm wearing, okay, so this was a quote. It says, you can't spell fail without ai.

This was one of Gary's quote, and Christie, our marketing person, made us this a t-shirts for Christmas, and I was like, what? I haven't worn it yet. So I

worn 

[00:00:52] Gary: you were supposed to let me know we were supposed to coordinate and wear 'em both on the same 

[00:00:55] David: Oh, no. See, I can't wear 

[00:00:57] Gary: the same 

[00:00:57] David: you are.

It makes me feel bad. But anyway, so there you go. There's my quote of the day. It's actually Gary's quote, but you can't spell fail without ai. That's good stuff.

[00:01:05] Gary: Don't worry. You're us. You usually attribute quotes to you, attribute quotes to the wrong person all the time. 

[00:01:10] David: I usually just don't attribute anything. I just say words and say someone said it. That's 

[00:01:15] Gary: heard this somewhere.

[00:01:16] David: I am so bad at that. Let's talk about somebody more important. Joining us this week is Wendy Coulter, who is the CEO of the Hummingbird Creative Group. Hello. Welcome.

[00:01:27] Wendy: Hi Gary. Hi David. Nice to see you guys. Thank you so much for having me on the show today.

[00:01:33] David: I'm not sure

I like her. Gary, she's talked to you first. I'm

[00:01:36] Gary: Nice to meet you, Wendy. Yes, David

is pretty unimportant, especially 

[00:01:40] Wendy: And I'm pretty boring today 'cause I rarely wear just black 

[00:01:44] Gary: you have a hummingbird necklace, so you're

on 

[00:01:46] Wendy: do, 

[00:01:46] David: That's very nice. 

[00:01:47] Wendy: yes. Thank you. Thank you.

[00:01:50] Gary: Should we also mention that a hummingbird is reached a pretty big milestone, or should we let her

[00:01:56] Wendy: 30 years.

[00:01:57] David: 30 years. Yeah,

you gotta let a nice tee 

[00:01:59] Wendy: 2025. Yeah.

[00:02:01] Gary: 30 

[00:02:01] David: That is crazy. I'm gonna, I'm gonna have to dive into that, but first, let's. Tell me about Hummingbird. Just gimme the, gimme. The overall, what are we doing there?

[00:02:09] Wendy: Yeah, so we are a branding company. We are focused on helping our clients build their business value through better branding. And what that means is when you have a really strong brand orientation in the marketplace, I. Your business is actually more valuable. You can get a higher valuation, you can have higher sales.

And so we come at marketing from a little bit different perspective in that way. We understand words like EBITDA and a lot of marketers don't know what that is. And so we are all the time trying to just help push our clients to understand, to continue to make sure that your brand is strong and that you're differentiating so that you can claim that.

That greater valuation?

[00:02:52] David: So does that mean, so you're a traditional. Marketing in terms of practicality, but your flavor is, it's all about brand.

[00:03:01] Wendy: Yes. So we lead with brand and we also, we lead with brand and we always wanna do very traditional branding activities first. But we are a full service marketing agency. So once we get that brand established, we can. Do anything that a client needs to in terms of their marketing plan.

[00:03:21] David: Man, Gary is just so excited to talk to you because he had been drilling a hole in my very large head about branding for so many years. I'm trying to think. This was even before he joined, really as a. As a full-time employee. But but once he did, he's 'cause I'm just throwing money down a hole.

That was what I was like, marketing is just a hole. I'm tired of throwing money down it.

[00:03:45] Gary: That's what David said, not Gary said. 

[00:03:47] David: that's fair.

I am the one saying that it's a hole. I'm just throwing money down this hole. I'm seeing nothing from it. And he says to me, Hey, if you don't. You're gonna be half the company you think you will be in five years. And I'm like, I hate you, but okay. And we started doing, and he's, I don't like to use the word right, but and we haven't, I'm not saying we've doubled or anything like that, but it, I can't deny the fact that when I go out into public every once in a while, people do know who we are, which is. Weird.

First off 'cause I've been doing this, it'll be 12 years this month. We were talking about that earlier. And for the most of that, no one has a clue who we are. And it's not like we're gonna ever be a household name, but in certain circles, some people have, oh, I've seen you on LinkedIn, which is very cool. And there are so many ways to, but he was, and even more so than that, he was more specific saying that it's all about branding at first. And I'm like, I don't even know what you're saying. I'm a nerd, I'm a developer that moonlights as a bad designer, but. When he's saying this stuff, I'm he's, I just have to trust him, which is so hard 'cause look at him.

But if you, I have to say that he was that's as close as you're gonna get to a compliment, Gary. 

[00:04:57] Gary: 100% right, but I

can't get the 

[00:04:59] Wendy: you go, Gary.

[00:05:00] Gary: I understand that. I

[00:05:01] Wendy: I agree with you. You're absolutely a hundred percent right, and I think when you focus on understanding what your differentiation is, then your culture grows, your confidence grows and your sales will follow, and that's what it's all about. 

[00:05:16] David: Now. Okay let me get real specific here. So you are working with a company and the owner. 'cause I'm assuming that when you're doing branding early on, you have to be working with the owner, right? That vision has to come from the owner

at least initially. And this 

[00:05:30] Wendy: a leadership team if it's a bigger company. But yes, it's gonna be the 

[00:05:35] David: I would hope if they're a bigger company.

They've already figured some of this out, but I guess that's not true.

[00:05:39] Wendy: It's amazing how few companies have figured it out. Yeah.

[00:05:43] David: Okay. Now you've make, you're making me go into a whole different realm of questions, but let me go to I'm put a pin in that if I can remember, but if you, you're working with a leadership team. Let's just assume for an effort it's a founder, and this founder has the charisma of a thumbtack

and doesn't care.

Maybe cares about brand enough, they brought you in, right? So you've got that going for you. But they have, they don't know anything about their own company, right? How do you draw that out of them? This is a non-creative, fuddy-duddy of a human being, which not uncommon in business ownership really. Usually they're execution kind of people. Very focused. How do you get a brand outta that person? How do you drag that out?

[00:06:25] Wendy: Say the wonderful thing is that we don't have to get it out of that person. We can get it out of their customers, we can get it out of their team and learn about what the brand really is. If it's an existing brand, it's there. For some reason there's some success. So what is that? Why is that?

What's that, that secret sauce or that differentiation that makes them able to go to market and. It's there, there's something there. You've just gotta find it. So we do a lot of insight. We do market research with existing clients. Sometimes we'll call up prospects or lost leads and find out why they didn't buy or why they haven't bought yet.

And what really makes that brand different and. Why they would refer their friends. A whole lot of questions around that. And then listening for language. So what words do they use when they describe this company? Because those are the words we wanna put back out to prospective clients.

We wanna vocabulary. Oftentimes it's much better if the leadership. Doesn't talk to us and lets us talk to the customers. 'cause we're gonna get a much better language to use than if it's all built in the boardroom. 

[00:07:41] David: Okay, so now for my next question. Let's say you go, this is a company, it's an existing company. They've been doing it, but they're not any good. And you go out to their company, they've been around a while, but it's your job to get a branding outta these guys and turn them around. But you go and talk to their customers and the only words I can come up with are crappy, irresponsible, don't enjoy that.

You know what I'm saying? That's gotta be a thing. Do you just this is too much, you guys, there's no brand to pull outta here,

or do you just craft. 

[00:08:09] Wendy: no, a couple of thoughts on that. First of all, very few companies get to the place of hiring us that are in that situation. Because they don't understand it, they're not interested, they're not gonna engage and spend that kind of money. But we have made calls where we did receive negative feedback and we look at that as an opportunity.

So we actually, I. Bring that back to the team and have a conversation about it, and then they get to decide how they are going to answer to that. And we've helped. We've helped companies save clients that we're about to walk because frankly, they got to vent to us as a third party. Then someone actually picked up the phone and called them and showed that they cared, and that's really all that was needed to turn that around.

Most of the time when a company cares enough to hire us, then when they make an effort to talk to the customer, they can. Answer to why something did happen the way that it happened, and repair, at least repair the reputation. If they don't get the client to stay or they don't get 'em back, they at least get a chance to defend themselves and maybe explain a little bit more.

And so I think it's always a positive thing, even if there's a negative response to our questions.

[00:09:30] David: As we said earlier, you guys have been on for 30 years this year, which

is huge and very cool. What has changed in the last 30 years?

Yeah, 

[00:09:40] Wendy: Yeah, everything has changed in the last 30 years. Technology is,

[00:09:44] David: of branding's the

same, right? As a whole it was the. Idea of everything we've set up to this point that you need branding, you need to do this, we need to talk. Has that changed? Was that something very different 30 years ago?

[00:09:55] Wendy: That has changed. Back then I would, here, I need a logo. I would hear, and I still hear that today from startups, but I would hear more about the tactical pieces. The word branding wasn't so on the scene in 1995, apple was Macintosh and things were, brands were not with AR today. You wanted to wear some Levi's jeans, but.

You weren't saying, oh, look at that branding. Like that just wasn't what we were 

[00:10:27] David: I don't know about you, but in '95 is when I was wearing Z Cavaricci 

[00:10:30] Wendy: Oh, Z

husband was wearing 

[00:10:32] Gary: In 95. That's four years past the prime of them. They were back 

[00:10:37] David: Shut up, man. That was the first time. TJ Maxx got Z Cavaricci's What are you saying?

[00:10:42] Wendy: I think I met James in 91 and I think he was wearing a pair of Z Cavariccis 

[00:10:48] David: Yes. No, 95. 95 probably is not the right year. It doesn't, it was around that time.

[00:10:53] Gary: Yeah. Mid nineties.

[00:10:54] David: they still my point is they had brands that people wanted, but they were, I agree with you, much smaller and not as

my son. A good example of that is cars.

And my son is a real, he loves hypercar and all those crazy cars.

And I remember as a kid. When it came to Supercars, there were like two, there was Lamborghini and there was Ferrari and that was it. Like maybe Porsche maybe. But now there's 300 of these things.

It's because we just had no idea. They were been around Bugatti and all of those were there, but we had no idea on this side that they were even companies.

[00:11:29] Wendy: Yeah, they weren't building brand awareness at that point. And I think, as media has changed and 

[00:11:35] Gary: Yeah, the internet for 

[00:11:36] Wendy: come into play, you see all of those competitors just fighting out when it comes to the brand game. And what they, how are they gonna differentiate because. Everyone can see them now.

Everything is so much more transparent. And so that's one of the big things that has changed is it's so competitive online. And so you can't just go to market saying, I'm another accountant. You can't just go to market saying, I'm another restaurant. You've got to express. Why someone would choose you.

And that's why brand I think, has become a bigger buzzword and a bigger activity for leadership teams to pay attention to. The other thing I think that is different is the way that we deal with employee engagement. And culture. And so now you have a lot of brands that are focused on social causes because they want their team to feel engaged and embedded in what they do.

You didn't see near as much of that until recent years where people like really want their team to be a part of that bigger cause so that they'll stay longer, they'll be more engaged at work. And all those things that, we battle in business with trying to have longer term team members. So it's not quite as costly. 

[00:12:56] David: I wanna get really practical here. So one of the things that companies like mine, service-based businesses, they are shackled, if that's the right word for it, with the founder's charisma, right? The founder. Runs this thing, right? And without that founder, the businesses half if not worse without them, right? Lots of businesses do that, but brand is a way out of that to a point. Obviously the founder just needs to let go, but assuming that's what they're doing, how does brand help in that regard?

[00:13:32] Wendy: Brand absolutely helps in that regard. A great story I'll tell you about a woman here locally who owned a QuickBooks consulting company. And she basically, her company name was her name, and she was getting to a point where she was trying to figure out, okay, what do I do next? Do I just shut my doors?

Do I sell the company? Have I really built enough value to sell the company? I'm not sure have I created packages that. Someone else could take over in service, I'm not sure. And so she and I met at a local networking event and she just started talking to me about how long she had been in business and what she did.

And I always found it interesting and I'm just gonna say, Jane Doe, right? She would always say, I'm Jane Doe with Jane Doe. Consulting and she never explained what the company did. And so everyone was just like, they knew her by name, they knew who she was, but they had no idea what she could do for them or how she was different.

Like she might say, we can help you with your QuickBooks. but what I learned as I worked with her is that QuickBooks was not really what they were. The best at, they were the best at helping a company figure out the strategy of creating profit and the strategy of making sure that they were gonna be successful over time.

And all of her customers used QuickBooks. So QuickBooks was more like a target market than it was a, what we do. They actually went a lot deeper than that, and so we were able to use the branding process to talk to her clients and find this out. I would've never found it out from talking to her because she was.

Jane Doe with Jane Doe Consulting. And she used quick, she helped people with their QuickBooks. But when we started talking to her customers, we got to understand how deep they went, how much they cared about their clients, and really the true value they provided, which was much bigger. Than helping them with their QuickBooks. So I think that's a pretty easy, explanation of how that can go and how successful that can be for a B2B service company. 

[00:16:11] AD: BigPixel builds world class custom software and amazing apps. Our team of pros puts passion into every one of our projects. Our design infused development leans heavily on delivering a great experience for our clients and their clients. From startups to enterprises, we can help craft your ideas into real world products that help your business do better business. 

[00:16:39] David: If you are not creative or you can't draw, you're not a designer. It is almost when you come from it, from that angle, you're the secretary or you're even me. So when I'm not working, I'm building this video game and I'm using a IR 'cause I can't draw.

And on one hand I'm like, man, I, this has taken me 20 tries to get it the way I want it.

But the other side of it is I would never be able to do. Any of this

at all. And when you, it looks miraculous to someone who doesn't know what they're looking at. And this includes me. I'm when I, 'cause I can't draw, I don't know what it takes to draw. It's just not a talent I've ever had. And so when I say, make a guy who looks like this and do th doing that and it gets 90% there, that's just magic to me.

[00:17:26] Wendy: Oh, it's it.

[00:17:27] David: yeah, he might have

a weird finger. I mean you, and you might have to go figure that out. And I, my trick is if you're using AI for anything right now, the best thing you could do is just don't make it realistic. Make it a drawing. Make it something not photo. Everyone wants photorealistic. That is a whole nother level. 'cause humans are so well trained to see a human. It's in our DNA, we are very good at spotted

[00:17:50] Wendy: Mailman guy out of AI pretty easily for.

[00:17:54] Gary: Yeah. 

[00:17:54] David: make the little guy with the big wrench, right? You can make him all day and he will look

amazing and and I, when I'm doing my little game, I purposefully am doing this like hand drawn

style and you zoom in, you can see some of the wheely, wavy lines,

weird stuff like just AI does. But if you're at a normal space, it looks amazing. And I think a lot of people just get stuck on I wanna make something look like a photograph that takes 10 times, if not longer. Go take a photo, just

you'll do a better job. Just go outside, take a photo. Because AI

just cannot do, everyone looks a little plasticky

and I don't think we're anywhere close to that.

'cause it's so hard. The uncanny valley's been around since computers are around. It's

just a thing.

[00:18:38] Gary: Well Wendy I wanted to ask you. Since you have many successful years of experience marketing, and I'm assuming you've done marketing and branding for both startups and bigger companies,

what would you say are your top three pieces of advice for a new business? Just getting started.

[00:18:55] Wendy: So for a new business, just getting started in the realm of marketing, I think number one is like we've been talking about with AI and all of the new. Things that you can do, you can really get caught up in tactics. You can get caught up in posting to social media all the time. You can get caught up in just trying to get tactics done and not take the time to understand really the strategy behind what you're trying to do.

And so just making sure to take that step back, look at your competitors, even if you don't think you have any 'cause you do understand your target market. It's all the strategic things. Get pushed aside. Let's put up a social media program and let's post every day. When we really look at ROI from a marketing standpoint, you are going to find that the amount of time that you might personally spend on social media may or may not have that ROI that you're looking for.

If you haven't really learned, where is your target market? What do they care about first? And so strategy and just making sure to think through those really basic things, really important. Secondly and this is a journey and a long game for especially B2B, long-term long-term strategy is you've got to figure out your differentiation.

And so you are gonna think that. You can just be an accountant or be an attorney or be an architect or whatever, and you're just gonna hang a shingle and off you go to the races. But in today's environment, there is a lot of competition and so really trying to understand what is going to make you different from the beginning.

Why are people going to want to do business with you from the very beginning? And then working on that on a regular basis. Things are gonna change in your market. Things are gonna change about who you're gonna go to market and then realize, That target customer might not care as much about what you do as another target customer does.

So things are changing around us all the time, and you're gonna continuously work on differentiation, but you need to do it from the get go. I think. Really understanding how the different areas of business work together. So a lot of people hang their hat on their marketing budget. Their marketing budget is, and strategy is what they think makes the company strong.

But I always say, remember your operations. Remember your finance. Remember your sales. Remember your marketing. And Really remember your hr, if any of those five things are not performing well, it doesn't matter how good the marketing is, you need to fix the other problems. And so just remember that business is holistic and you can't blame the sales team if the operations are not working well or if your people who answer the phone are not.

Representing your brand the way that they should be, or if the marketing, campaign isn't just quite right. There's a lot of tweaking in every area of business that has to happen to be successful. And you've got to be able to change and adapt and understand that. There's only so many of us and we all know.

Who come out of the gate and have an overnight success. It's that whole idea of I was an overnight success in 30 years. That's me. Yeah. I think we've just got to remember to be adaptable and ready to change at every turn to be successful for the long haul in business.

[00:22:56] Gary: Sound 

advice. 

[00:22:57] Wendy: thank you.

[00:22:58] Gary: If anyone wants to learn more about you or Hummingbird Creative Group, how can they reach out?

[00:23:02] Wendy: Sure. Pretty easy. So we're easily found on a Google search for Hummingbird Creative Group, and we're located in C North Carolina, but our URL is hummingbird creative.com. And I also have a podcast@hummingbirdeffect.com, And you can find me on LinkedIn.

[00:23:23] David: On that note, thank you so much for joining us, everybody.

We will be back next week.

[00:23:26] Gary: see you 

[00:23:27] Wendy: you so much. Bye-bye.

[00:23:29] Outro: That wraps up this episode of the Biz Dev Podcast, and this time you get me, Jen Baxter, co-owner of Big Pixel and David's Wife. Yep. I finally took the mic or rusted it away from David. Biz Dev is a production of Big Pixel, a US-based provider of UX design strategy and custom software. This podcast is edited by Audio Wiz Matt McCracken and Christie Pronto marketing guru for Big Pixel.

Want to connect, shoot us an email at hello at the big pixel net. Or find us on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, X and LinkedIn.