We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Judy Budd a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Judy, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What sort of legacy are you hoping to build. What do you think people will say about you after you are gone, what do you hope to be remembered for?
When I die, I hope I will be remembered in a number of different ways. First, I hope someone will remember me as the person who helped them out of a tough situation. That could be a work or personal situation and I helped walk them off the ledge or helped them overcome some obstacle. I try really hard to always have my eyes, ears and heart open to help counsel or talk with someone going through a tough situation. And, my hope is that I have helped someone.
Next, I want to be remembered as being fair, a straight shooter and having integrity. Being fair has always been an important trait for me. I have been a straight shooter and often tell it like it is which has come back to bite me a few times. But, most important is integrity. Your reputation is the only possession you can take to the grave with you.
I want to be remembered as being fun, having a sense of humor and being kind.
I strive to do and be all of the above and hope that when my time has ended, people will say I achieved all of these things.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I have worked my entire life. When I was young, my father insisted I become a secretary and work in the business community. He offered to pay for 2 years of college so I would learn to associate with college level people and be able to entertain my husband’s clients. Once I started working, I had a desire to do more than clerical work. I put myself through college to complete my degree in business, worked hard to get promoted while working in the airline industry and then left it to become an entrepreneur. During these early years, I did many things from selling medical scales and designer clothing to buying a printing franchise. After closing the franchise, I remained in the printing business but on my own and then sold 4 color process printing for a couple of different firms. Moving from the west coast to the east coast had me changing careers totally. I thought I might like to be a mortgage broker, but hated it–did it for 3 months and got out to sell insurance. After a few years, I was recruited to become sales manager for several publications I loved this job and helped the publisher grow his business substantially in the 13+ years I worked for him. Several years prior to my retirement, I was promoted to the Associate Publisher position. I still have strong alliances with this firm.
Two months after my retirement, I decided to fulfill a bucket list dream of creating a networking directory, Knowing it had to be digital, I reached out to an acquaintance who owned a digital agency. In sharing my idea, she loved it but suggested there needed to be more than just networking information on the website. Long story short, she and I became partners and we have just celebrated our 2 year anniversary of Connectcapefear.com. Our website has over 1,000 listing pages of anything you can join, attend, participate in or volunteer at. We sell advertising, podcasts, blogs and special offers to pay for it and also have a community calendar on the website and send out a monthly newsletter (with ads) that we started a year ago. We help our clients spread the word about their business in a positive, affordable way. Everything we do is promoted through social media. We have created a needed tool for newcomers to our area and a one stop place for people to find things to do on any given day. We have helped people get involved in their community and we all know the more involved you are, the happier you are.
We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.
I met my business partner, Jenna Curry Way, shortly after she graduated from college. She was working for a very high powered woman in our town who ran political campaigns and had a promotional products business. Jenna was the right arm in this business and handled all of the social media, computer programs, etc. She also started an organization for young professionals to get together. Jenna left this position to partner with someone to start their own marketing agency. Although this partnership didn’t work out, she was able to retain her customers and started her own marketing business. She maintained her young professionals organization as well. Because of her digital agency and her marketing knowledge, she was a logical choice for me to ask who I should have help me with the idea I had for a networking directory. We met after my retirement. She said she loved my idea but felt it should be expanded to include many other types of listings including women’s groups, veterans groups, civic organizations, nonprofit organizations, religious groups, clubs, associations, etc. She also did a mock up of what my website could look like. Of course, I asked her to become my partner that day. She did and we have had our website up and running for 2 years. Thankfully because we are a digital website, she is able to work from another state since she moved, got married and started a family. This helped define she does the back end and I do the selling and most of the networking.
Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?
My partner and I decided the best way for us to get more traffic to our website would be to start a newsletter that people would subscribe to so they could see more about what is going on in their community and more about our advertisers. We started this about one year ago. We make a point at every trade show we participate in to have a drawing for either a gift card or an advertising package, etc., depending upon the show. This has helped us get a strong foundation for our newsletter base. We then decided to do a contest with a client and boy was that a successful way to get traffic to our site and increase our subscriber base. We just recently did another contest and it turned out to be better than the first in getting new subscribers to our newsletter. It also helped us realize how many people are looking at our social media posts. The cost of spending money to post the contest and the amount of trade we did was definitely worth it when looking at the increased numbers of traffic that will only help with advertising sales. This has been a real win!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.connectcapefear.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/connectcapefear
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/connectcapefear
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/connect-community-involvement-directory-connect-cape-fear
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChuUltTQnz1nJglwl27yO_Q
- Other: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/connectcpefear