"The biggest lesson I've learned is that when people tell you who they are, believe them."
Amanda Huddy Tweet
Meet Amanda Huddy, a marketing expert with over 20 years of experience in the B2B space. After leaving her corporate career in 2020, Amanda co-founded Hudson Davis Communications, a marketing company that helps mid-enterprise organizations enhance their brand presence and improve their marketing and public relations strategies.
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Table of Contents
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company.
Amanda Huddy: Where should I start?!? I’m a multi-passionate marketing expert with two decades of experience marketing specifically in the B2B space. In 2020, I met my now husband who encouraged me to leave my corporate career and open a marketing company.
I started Hudson Davis Communications in May 2021, and the rest is history! Since then, we’ve opened a second agency, Hudson Davis Creative Agency, and have partnered with companies all over the world to enhance their brand presence and improve their marketing and public relations strategies. The company itself focuses on mid-enterprise organizations globally, but personally, I’m passionate about working with startup founders to help them take their companies from inception to market.
In the past year, what is the greatest business achievement you’d like to celebrate with your team? Please share the details of that success.
Amanda Huddy: In general, the growth from a one person consultancy to a 25-person team is the biggest achievement we had in the past year. It meant that we had enough business to account for that staff, and I could not be more proud of the team’s ability to maintain the client work while also mentoring and growing other team members.
I think celebrating a significant award win by my husband and co-founder is amazing as well. We’re consistently being recognized for our work as a team, and that feels like such an achievement. Achievement itself is my love language, so it really made a difference for me. Seeing other people join in around this company that we built, and watching them work hard alongside me for my dream is an experience I couldn’t have dreamed I would have.
Quiet quitting, The Great Resignation, are an ongoing trend causing many businesses to struggle keeping talent engaged and motivated. Most are leaving because of their boss or their company culture. 82% of people feel unheard, undervalued and misunderstood in the workplace. In your experience, what keeps employees happy? And how are adapting to the current shift we see?
Amanda Huddy: To be frank, its why I started my own company. In the corporate world, when I was in it, I wasn’t engaged, motivated, or valued. The culture of the company wasn’t aligned with my personal values, and I was miserable. I needed freedom to run my own schedule, and company policy dictated firm desk hours that didn’t work for me.
Especially in marketing, I can often need to be creative, and in order to do that well, flexibility is needed. The right environment will foster the ability for you to do your best work. I think only since The Great Resignation have people started to prioritize themselves over the company they work for. We’re all learning – in real time – that a job isn’t worth losing your life over, no matter how big or small the job is.
In my experience, what keeps people happy is simply different for everyone. What an organization can do is foster a culture of support and flexibility that allows people to so their best work, period. That should be the bottom line. In my team, I want them to do their best work. Everything outside of that isn’t really mine to dictate.
Online business keeps on surging higher than ever, B2B, B2C, online shopping, virtual meetings, remote work, Zoom medical consultations, what are your expectations for the year to come and how are you capitalizing on the tidal wave?
Amanda Huddy: This next year is really going to see brands engage with their audience. Customer insights are more valuable than ever. With budgets being slashed, customer insights can provide answers that would normally take more time and budget to get. The companies that are able to connect with their customers on a deeper level, including with their content, will continue to see growth while those who don’t will suffer.
I see the Community as a Service (CaaS) trend coming in hard, and I would predict that engaged communities will be monetized and sold. I’ve been working closely with clients on building their own community and encouraging engagement over numbers within the community. An engaged audience is one that can be marketed to, so those will be as valuable as a web page.
Finally, sustainability and impact are continuing to be essential topics across MANY industries. More organizations will start measuring and reporting against the United Nations Global Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) and the standards set by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). Hudson Davis Communications is an active member of the UN Global Compact, publicly aligning ourselves in support of women in business.
Business is all about overcoming obstacles and creating opportunities for growth. What do you see as THE real challenge right now?
Amanda Huddy: Expect the unexpected. The biggest challenge right now is literally how we’re all fighting to stay alive despite a recession, millions of deaths globally, and significant supply chain shortages. The challenge we face to perform in truly unexpected conditions is a major obstacle and I think we’ll all be seeing repercussions for years to come.
2020, 2021, 2022 threw a lot of curve balls into businesses on a global scale. Based on the experience gleaned in the past years, how can businesses thrive in 2023? What lessons have you learned and what advice would you share?
Amanda Huddy: The biggest lesson I’ve learned is that when people tell you who they are, believe them. I learned to lean on my intuition and not to ignore it. I found myself in some sticky situations I could have avoided if I had just trusted myself to begin with. The number of things that come at CEOs and senior leaders is incredibly intense, so I’ve learned to divide my days into days that I take calls and days where I do focused work.
I also personally took all notifications off my phone and keep DND on all the time. It keeps me from getting distracted and I find I’m much less anxious about notifications and distractions. My focus has drastically improved.
I also really recommend doing something for yourself for 30 mins to an hour every day. I personally like to go for long walks and listen to podcasts or sit in a comfy chair and read a book.
Last but not least, how businesses can thrive in 2023:
- Know thy customer
- Know thy self
On a lighter note, if you had the ability to pick any business superpower, what would it be and how would you put it into practice?
Amanda Huddy: I actually have one already! My superpower is creating powerpoint presentations. It’s random but I can turn anything into a killer presentation. It just comes to me without any effort. I use it all the time and I work on presentations at least once per day. I have no idea why or how this is my superpower but it is. Whatever your super power is, lean into it.
Jed Morley, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Amanda Huddy for taking the time to do this interview and share her knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Amanda Huddy or her company, you can do it through her – Linkedin Page
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