Welcome to "The Hummingbird Effect," a podcast dedicated to uncovering the subtle yet powerful ways that small innovations can transform your business. Hosted by Wendy Coulter, CEO of Hummingbird Creative Group, this show delves into the stories and strategies behind successful brand building.
For over 25 years, Wendy has helped CEOs and business leaders redefine their brands through innovation and compelling narratives. In this podcast, she shares the insights and lessons learned from her extensive experience, exploring how a strong brand orientation can significantly increase the value of your business.
Each episode features engaging conversations with industry leaders, business advisors, and innovators who have harnessed the power of branding to make a substantial impact. Discover how focusing on core values, mission, and vision can drive your brand beyond mere marketing tactics, fostering a culture that resonates with your audience and enhances your business's reputation.
Inspired by the concept of the Hummingbird Effect—where small, adaptive changes lead to remarkable outcomes—this podcast aims to help you understand and implement the incremental innovations that can elevate your brand and business.
Join Wendy Coulter on "The Hummingbird Effect" and learn how to evolve your brand, attract more customers, and ultimately enhance the value of your business through strategic branding.
21 HBE - Worth Gregory
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[00:00:00]
Wendy: Good morning from my family spring break trip to sunny Charleston this morning. I'm Wendy Coulter, and I help CEOs unlock the hidden power of their brands. For years, business leaders have focused on marketing tactics, but what truly matters is building a strong brand. Have you experienced a hummingbird effect, like the co-evolution of the hummingbird and the flower?
This is when small innovations and branding can lead to surprisingly big results in other related areas of a business, like an increased valuation, a stronger culture, or an operational [00:01:00] breakthrough. I have hummingbirds marketing strategist Hannah Jernigan with me this morning. Good morning Hannah.
Hanna: Good morning, Wendy How are you doing today?
I'm doing pretty good. I'm not on spring break, but I'm still hanging in there.
Wendy: I know the birds are chirping. It's beautiful sunny weather, although we had a huge storm last night, and I'm assuming you did too, from everything we were seeing, so
Hanna: is, it was yellow here from all the pollen. So sorry. I turned around to see, see if it had changed anything. So I was thankful for
Wendy: I was really hoping I would, um, travel back and there not be any yellow left when I get
Hanna: tornado of it yesterday. I've never seen anything like it in all my years of living here. The wind blowing, it was like circling up
Wendy: Yes. Spring in North Carolina. Early spring in North Carolina. So today we're gonna dive deeper into the world of brand building, and I'm [00:02:00] thrilled to have Wirth Gregory, the Chief Marketing Officer at Tactics AI with us today. And we're going to talk to Wirth about AI and how seemingly small innovations in branding, marketing, or sales can lead to big wins.
Wirth, welcome to the show.
Worth Gregory: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Wendy: Hey Hannah. Fun fact about worth. Uh, did you know he was a football player and he coached at NC State Go Pack.
Hanna: Well, it feels creepy to say yes,
Wendy: Have you been stalking him?
Hanna: so you have to do what you have to do before a podcast.
Wendy: Well, I think given where we just landed with the basketball season, we're all ready for football next year. Right. I know you've been, um, looking at that tailgate schedule for next year, Hannah. Right.
Hanna: Oh, it's already on my calendar. Booked. Yep. We're starting to plan out meals.
Wendy: Whereas Hannah [00:03:00] is one of the biggest tailgaters I've ever met. How many people are at your tailgates?
Hanna: It's a lot. And now we're starting to have kids, so even more, there's a good chunk of us. Um, and another hummingbird team member is close to us as well, so we've expanded, so we're about 10, 15 parking spots.
Wendy: Yeah.
Hanna: Yeah.
Worth Gregory: the ECU.
Hanna: Yeah. It's, it's a lot of fun. The game inside, sometimes, not so much, but outside we're having fun.
Wendy: So Wirth, you also coached at Utah State University, um, and had this great transition into the tech industry. So tell us more about that and about tactics, ai. Um, and I saw you released a white paper about football. So tell us a little bit about your, your world and how you got to where you are and what you're doing today.
Worth Gregory: I [00:04:00] got done with playing football and then I got the opportunity to coach football out. Out in Utah, Utah State, we did really well, won a bunch of games, and when you do really well in, in coaching college football, everyone leaves, um, kind of like the business world. And then took a job at NC State and honestly just kind of, kind of got burned out from, from the coaching aspect working I.
4:00 AM to midnight, Monday to Sunday kind of just wore me down. Um, but loved football, loved the aspects of all of that. I just knew that, hey, if I just took this work ethic into honestly anything else that I think I would have success. Um, and then I came across a company called Game Plan that did student athlete education.
Um, and I started working there as helping out with marketing. I essentially, I. That's probably the, honestly, if anyone, whenever I have interns or kids starting out in marketing and they ask me for advice, I just tell 'em to the horse that you kind of hit your wagon to is the most important. Um, and I met this guy, VIN, who was [00:05:00] doing an awesome job with company game plan, and I was getting outta college coaching and I was, I told him, Hey, I'll, I'll work for free.
It doesn't matter. Like, just, just let me, I notice what you're doing and I like your vision and everything that you stand for. Um, and that relations relationship's kind of grown from there. Um, so we did really well at Game Plan, built that company up, sold it. Um, I went on to work at a, a different company as well as starting my own marketing firm.
And then just recently here in the last four months I'm back with Vin McCaffery, who I was with out the gate, um, on tactics AI here as we launch our whole AI platform platform into the football world
Wendy: So tell us a little bit more about that. Um, it sounds like you guys are using. Um, real time AI solutions. Uh, tell us what that's all about. Um, and you're back in the football world with this [00:06:00] evidently. Um, so.
Worth Gregory: The best way to describe it honestly, um, from the outside looking in is most college football coaches. Spend seven, eight hours every single day just breaking down film. Just when you watch a play, whether you're typing in like the down in distance, who made the tackle? Everything across the board, you're spending eight plus hours a day.
You know, like it takes hours and hours and hours to break down every single game. Um, our platform through AI and cd, AI can break down the game in less than three seconds. You know, so like the amount of time that it'll save coaches, um, on the front end, that's kind of like the beginning aspects of it. Um, but then the back end is we're picking up things that are hard to record as a coach.
You know, like we're catching speed, we're catching how quick the players are moving. Um, which at a college level is gonna be amazing for a lot of different ways. But if we implement this here in the coming months [00:07:00] and to the high school levels, this is gonna help kids that are unnoticed get noticed.
Um, we can catch up on speed, it'll break down the film. And in high school you just don't really have, um, the coaches and the number of people to help you out. Throughout everything and breaking down film. So usually you just don't do it. Um, but it's been really cool to see what AI can do and it's just kind of the beginnings of our platform as we launch our MVP.
This is, this is just, just now getting started. I.
Wendy: So, um, you've, have you launched that, um, that yet or are you pre-launch right now?
Worth Gregory: MVP comes in the next week, um, right now. Um, but it's one of those things where it's a little bit different model than other marketing worlds I've I've been in in the past. You know, usually it's a B2B or a B2C. This is almost. Um, I would view it as like intel inside, you know, like where the, where the chip inside of someone else's platform that gives [00:08:00] them the AI tools to help their platform perform better.
Wendy: Ah, okay. That makes sense. Very good, very good. Um, well, you've had a pretty diverse background in terms of you've. Done your own thing and you've worked within companies in marketing. Um, so I wanna transition into the idea, this idea of a hummingbird effect. Um, I know you've been thinking about it, so we would love for you to share a specific instance where a seemingly small change.
In your company's marketing or branding strategy led to a significant and positive outcome or results, um, for the business in another area.
Worth Gregory: I would say it's more so like a mindset shift that like, came to me more than anything. Um, when I was in my game plan days and we were doing all the content for athletes and marketing that LMS platform, I would say the quickest thing that I found is when we shifted all of our marketing efforts towards just educational [00:09:00] content.
Um, just free content and just. Bringing everyone together in that fashion. Um, I think that was one of the biggest shifts that I saw.
Wendy: Awesome. So how might that have led to, um, innovations for you?
Worth Gregory: It built, really built a community, you know, instead of, instead of like us having to spend a lot of time on our marketing to. Push sales and things like that. We just built a community so that it really helped our word of mouth as well as our branding across the, the community and like the watering holes that we were trying to sell our platform into.
Wendy: Nice. Um, were you able to measure results from that, from that, um, those activities in a, in a real way worth?
Worth Gregory: Some of it you're definitely able to measure whether it's impressions or um, whether it's organic or paid on either side. Um, but [00:10:00] at the end of the day, that's something that is more so a branding play than anything, um, in the marketing world, like every, every CEO hates when the head of marketing tells 'em like, Hey, I can't give you a direct correlation on this, but that has to be a, a significant part of your marketing strategy where you just know that it's a branding play that you're, you're just it, it helps with the goodwill and it helps with the organic reach more than anything.
Wendy: Do you feel like that had any kind of impact on the valuation of the business worth? Um, I'm assuming maybe you guys went for some rounds of funding or, um, kept your eye on ebitda. Yeah,
Worth Gregory: It definitely helps more than anything because the more that you can create a community, the more that when you're thinking of an evaluation. Or you're thinking of a company that would want to come in and scoop you up and buy you and add you to a larger subset of companies.
The bigger your community is, the more it [00:11:00] makes sense for them to add you in to the companies that they already have. Um, so we were, we were bought up by a company that is based outta California, that does like weightlifting education for, um, all strength coaches. So it was a direct correlation there to like how they could plug it in.
Um, so that, that's why it made sense of. Hey, we already have this community around, um, around people doing student athlete development and these athletic directors. It was a easy bring in, and I don't, I'm not sure, without our community and our people that we had, um, that it would've been that easy of a pool through mechanism.
Um, and at the end of the day, what's interesting is there's usually a big conference every year for student athlete development. Um, NATA out in Las Vegas, and. We implemented a dinner out there that was essentially all the ads that used our platform. Um, I think we got to the point where ads would pay to use our platform just so they like wouldn't miss out on the dinner.
[00:12:00] 'cause it was just like we, we had such a good community of people that that was, that was the most fun thing of the year. Like everyone, I, I think we had like four or five people that paid for our platform that just wanted to go to that dinner every year. So.
Wendy: So it, so it sounds like you had quite a brand advocacy, brand ambassador strategy going on. What other things do you feel like those ambassadors were able to accomplish for the brand, uh, that maybe you wouldn't have been able to do had you not had come out with that strategy from the beginning?
Worth Gregory: we didn't even view it as much as like, yes, it was like a brand ambassador type strategy. We didn't really even view it as that. When we just kinda shifted our mindset to like, let's give as much free value away as possible. Let's connect all of these people.
'cause at the end of the day, a lot of these, whether in our world, it's athletic directors, and in most worlds it's. CMOs, CEOs or like head of sales, if you can connect them to other people [00:13:00] in their arena that are similar, at some point they know they're gonna have to leave their job or they're gonna need connections and they want to network.
So being able to help 'em out in that fashion, I think is, was tremendously helpful because they never, you never know where you're gonna go next, and being able to connect them together, I think was. Was why it was so successful. We didn't even view it as like an ambassadors or anything like that. We just viewed it as let's connect good people.
We know to other people, good people we know, and if it helps us up, out financially, awesome.
Wendy: Obviously the, the external impact, uh, by connecting people was amazing. Um, can you talk about what that did for internal morale, company culture? Um, all of the internal effects of creating a external community like that?
Worth Gregory: I think it was super helpful because from a marketing standpoint, it's helping me build out. Marketing assets. It's helping [00:14:00] me have a lot more stuff for the website, social media, all of those things. But at the end of the day, all of those things are gonna help the sales team sell easier. Um, which at the end of the, like, that's really all that matters.
Like, that's your job as a marketer. Like my job is to, to make sure I have all the ammo to give our sales people like, it's not my job to fire the gun. You know, it's like. As much ammo as I can give them as possible, the easier my life is. Um, and then it also helps our customer success team, because then when you build out these case studies or these people talking about how they, they're leveraging our platform, then they can go to all of our user base, find people that aren't using it the way they should be and show them how other people are doing it in, in the same world.
Um, so it really helps out every aspect of our company. Um, and then obviously whenever anyone's talking very good about our platform, like our, our CEO is gonna be pretty happy.
Wendy: Yeah. So Hannah, I love that he's talking about how this, um, [00:15:00] connecting helped lead to more content. Um, I think that's a great takeaway from this. What do you think? You're our, you're our content strategist over here at Hummingbird, and I love that idea.
Hanna: The content is exactly what I wanted to ask you about. I was taking so many notes when you were talking about it, 'cause you said that, um, it helped you from a marketing standpoint as far as content for the website, the case studies, all of those things.
But were you asking for them or were people just a part of this community and just giving it to you? And how did you know? To record it. And I know it seems simple, like looking backwards, like, oh, it's a case study. They were telling our the, telling us their experience, but sometimes you miss that they're telling you this.
So could you talk a little bit more about how you collected that content and more about what you got?
Worth Gregory: When we had that dinner, or we do all these different things to build a community, we're really, [00:16:00] we're just trying to grow our small percentage of people that are essentially like the most loyal customers in our, our, our user base up as much as possible.
When you look at a company, let's say you have a hundred clients. Usually there's like 10, it's like 10% or less. It's gonna be all about the platform, like always. Um, so really it's just trying to grow that number and then you sit down and then go, Hey, like let's build out a case study on every single aspect of the platform.
'cause I would say that's one of the best things you can do in marketing. Um, think about every single way that someone is using the platform from sales all the way through customer success, writing down all of them, and then building out a case study for each one. So that whenever, more than anything, yes it's gonna help out the CU customer success team, but at the end of the day, anytime someone's selling on the phone and we're trying to walk through someone like why they would buy the platform, all we have to do is find one of these key pain [00:17:00] points and then we already have a case study, someone who's already using it in that way.
And then not only can we leverage like a case study in action, but we can then reach out to that person that. We've already used in the case study to give them a call. Maybe they already know them, um, and kind of tell them how they're leveraging our platform already.
Hanna: Did you find anything or it was the platform being used in a way that you wouldn't expect it to be? Like did they, from being loyal and talking to you, did you learn like, oh, we're answering this other question that we didn't even know we were.
Worth Gregory: That was kind of like the, the biggest thing from my time at that company game plan, um, was we built out that company and it was built out to help student athletes get jobs. Um, and then inside of it we built out some courses around like educational content around like learning how to, like, tie a tie or do an interview or build a resume.
And then we learned that [00:18:00] that's all anyone was using the platform for. Um, so we shifted everything towards an LMS educational content. We built out mandatory education, which I would say more than anything when you think of marketing is it is very hard to work for a company when you have something that is a nice to have.
It is very easy to do marketing for a must have. Um, so. Yes, the, the resume and the educational content around getting a job was great, but finding the pain points of a university and going, Hey, they have to do mandatory sexual violence prevention. They have to do alcohol education, they have to do these things for the ncaa and they're doing them in person.
Why not build a course, make it easy for them, um, and fix one of their pain points that they have to do. Um,
Hanna: I think that's a really good point and it's, I'm sure you'll have more, but it's one of your hummingbird effects of just you [00:19:00] shifted. From your original plan, which is hard to do when you build something out and you know that that's what you want it to do. And then a free video on how to tie a tie is what's getting more traction.
But you guys really embraced that and made that change and created a solution. You also listened to your customers, which Wendy and I are really passionate about, is just the voice of the customer and answering exactly what they want to, rather than what you think that they might want. So this is awesome to hear that.
Just that small change made such a big impact.
Worth Gregory: it was a little bit easier for me as I, I mean, I think I was employee number five or six. Um, I didn't build it out from like, as much as like, yes, when I, I joined, I. Game plan. We, I think we grew 350% or something like that from the time I joined to we left, but it, I wasn't the CEO and I wasn't the founder.
And I'm sure from his perspective, a lot harder mindset shift to go from like this is, was the mission and the vision to [00:20:00] shift towards a, a different mission and vision. Still a great one. Kind of helping the journey of the athlete and amplifying the voice of the athlete. Um, but definitely a little bit different.
Um, so from my perspective, little bit easier, but as a, as I've dealt with from my marketing days of even like having my own firm and all of that, founders and CEOs, little bit different to like, get over that hurdle of like, Hey, this is why I built something out.
Hanna: Um, so can you tell us about what you learned there and how you've taken it into product now?
Worth Gregory: it's a little bit different in a lot of, in a lot of ways of the way that not only to market and sell it, um, because it's not a one-to-one kind of model. Um, we're solving an issue at scale for a lot of different companies. Instead of, Hey, we have to sell into every single. Like university or every single person.
Um, it all depends on who you're selling to. Our platform is built out so [00:21:00] that we solve an issue for multiple different streaming services where if we plug our, our platform in. Um, then it's gonna amplify your sales process, amplify it, and make your life a lot easier. Which coming from it's a lot different than, Hey, when you sell to B2B or B2C is, this is our revenue.
This is what we're able to do, this is our valuation. Someone come try to buy us. You know, like, this is the world of, hey, like, like. Even getting one or two massive customers gets our user base from zero to 500 a million kind of thing very quickly. Um, so showing our use cases, showing how you could leverage our platform, um, is a little bit more important.
[00:22:00]
Wendy: yeah. How did your experience though, and your approach, um. Change how you look at marketing today. Was there that kind of aha moment, especially around this idea of connection you feel like does play out today?
Worth Gregory: yeah. I would say it's more so. All the, all the companies that I see win in marketing that I think do the best or companies that I try to emulate are, it's almost like side by side marketing is what I view it as. Um, like instead of like pushing and selling, I. Like your product consistently. [00:23:00] It's, it's, it's like almost like your platform or your product is just so happening to be used by someone and leveraging it in that way.
Um, so it's just not as salesy, I think. I think we're in that world, especially from social media where there's LinkedIn, Instagram reels, whatever, um, where we're very sick of, of seeing ads. Um, so there's a lot different world of marketing where. It just so happens that they're using something in that way.
Um, and you, you would never even guess that it's an ad or it's pushed in that fashion.
Wendy: Yeah, I love the idea of side by side. That's pretty cool. Um, so in today's fast-paced environment worth, how do you believe companies can stay nimble and adaptable enough to capitalize on potential hummingbird effects like you have?
Worth Gregory: Yeah, I would say it's more important now than ever. Um, I think in the past it was very easy to fall into the same world of [00:24:00] marketing, whether it's. Commercial, a billboard or things like that. You know, it's, it's, it was kind of the same things and now it's, we're so used to seeing ads everywhere that you're fighting in a lot different space, even for the organic approach.
Um, because right now, if, if I even just go on my LinkedIn, you already see an ad every four swipes, which is Instagram is every three Now. Like if we also, if I'm following a company, what kind of content are they posting? If it's very ad centric and sales focused, then now on top of that, now I'm seeing an ad every other swipe.
You know, it's like, and people are gonna pull away. Um, it needs to be, you have to build out content and you have to build out the way that you. Interact with your user base and your followers in that it is almost like a 10% or less ask, you know, it's 90% good content, 90% educational free value, [00:25:00] 10%, like, hit 'em in the mouth with sales, um, or even less at this point.
Wendy: Yeah.
Worth Gregory: I dunno if
Hanna: for anyone that got it, that's 110%. So you really gotta. You really got.
Worth Gregory: It's like
less, it's, it's so easy to fall into this world of like the salespeople telling you like, oh, like where's our sales content? Of like, how are we pushing sales on this post? It's like, at this, we're in this world where it has to be dramatically less than than what it used to be.
Hanna: So how do you explain that to a sales team who is asking for something specific that's not necessarily in your marketing plan?
Worth Gregory: Well. If you can make the salespeople happy, then your life is gonna be 10 times easier. So building out their content and having all of their stuff ready is, has to be paramount. Um, because their, their job and their salaries usually and their commissions rely directly on, on exactly what they're selling.
And sometimes their marketing, it's [00:26:00] not that for you. Um, I don't know a lot of people in marketing that. Their salary is built off impressions, and if it is, then they're hired by the wrong company because that isn't always the case of what is driving sales. Um, because like that really is all that matters.
If that, if we're, if we're getting down to the nitty gritty of like, yes, you want to build a community and do all these different things in marketing, if you're not driving sales, then you need to shift your approach dramatically.
Hanna: So it's a good balance between, and maybe you can talk about this, of listening to your customers, following those companies that you believe are strong in marketing, but also meeting with your team and finding that balance of helping them succeed, but not selling too much. So have you had that conversation?
Can you. Talk on that at all.
Worth Gregory: Yeah, a hundred percent. It's, but that's why almost, I, I view usually the, the person that's the head of marketing is they almost need to be like a chief of [00:27:00] staff. Um, because I speak to more people in the company on a daily basis than probably anyone else. Um, even the CEO in some, in some aspects, because.
I have to talk to all the salespeople, all the customer success people, like I'm built, like whether it's I'm building the website and I'm working with the graphics people, I'm like, there's, you're touching every single aspect of the company. Um, so you should be able to not only be the most knowledgeable on the product, but no, hey, like, yes, the sales team meets this.
This will drive sales. It'll also help the customer success team and try to find as many, as many things and spend as much time on things that. Have a lot of congruency almost to fit every single aspect of the, of the business.
Wendy: So what role do you believe innovation and experimentation play? You know, you're in this world of innovation, work with ai, um, but in marketing, how important do you believe that [00:28:00] innovation and experimentation are in creating unexpected breakthroughs?
Worth Gregory: I think it's everything. Um. I'll probably touch on like the world I kind of came from before. The role that I'm in now where I helped, I helped company companies kind of run ads at scale the last last couple years. Um, I think I spent around $5 million on TikTok ads the last two years. Um. Posting, dealing with over 500 influencers doing thousands of videos.
Um, there was one of my clients where I ran a thousand TikTok ads for them in one year videos, and I think we put five, like, I think we spent $5 on 95% of ads. Um, and then we put 1 million on two of them. So like, it was one of those things where you just constantly have to test out different things. Um, whether it's the ad space or just the organic content space in social media, or content in general, um, that's very important to constantly [00:29:00] be testing out different things because no matter how good you are at marketing or how smart you think you are, um, when you switch jobs and you start to market something else, nothing is marketed the exact same way.
Um, even if you think it's the same. Like Coca-Cola is not the same thing as Pepsi. It is dramatically different marketing strategy, focus and implementation. Um, so you have to, you have to shift and test out different things because it's not gonna work the same as it worked at the previous place. I.
Hanna: Can you kind of talk about the time on those ads? I know that you said it was in a year but you spent $5 on most, 1 million on another. Did they all have good results? Were some of the $5 ones getting better results than the 1 million? And how do you. Answer to that company or the CEO about why you need to just keep this if you know it's the right thing to do.
Worth Gregory: It's more so like you always wanna put [00:30:00] at least in, so in the ad world is a lot different than kind of anything else. Um, but the ad world is, I think, probably the strongest world of marketing because it's the only place where someone can give you $10 and you can give 'em back a hundred. Um, and if you figure out the right piece of content, then you can win without anything else.
Um, but no, the, I would say the majority of the $5 spends are just to test out, to see if an organic piece of content will work as an ad. Um, we at least need to throw like five to $10 behind each piece of organic content just to see what is our click through rate. How is this viewed? What is, how long are, what is the average person viewing this, this video for?
Um, and at the end of the day, what's really interesting is out of the thousand plus videos that we leveraged and tested out for ads, almost every video that worked best as an ad was a storytelling concept that wasn't salesy at all. Um, that was really just, Hey, like. [00:31:00] Like if I, if we're selling a product around like football stuff or like a, even it could be shoulder pads, like the dude telling us his life story about how he just played football is probably gonna sell better than some dude saying, these are my favorite shoulder pads in the world.
Um, it's, it's never one-to-one the same and every product, but all I've seen that storytelling is, is what wins.
Wendy: Storytelling is what wins. I love it. So we've talked about the side by side and connecting organizations to each other and connecting people, uh, through the dinners. And then that storytelling is what wins. So a couple of great, uh, winning solutions there. Were, thank you so much for the insight today. Um, do you have anything else you'd like to share?
And if not, can you tell our viewers how to find you?
Worth Gregory: Absolutely. I don't [00:32:00] think I have anything else to share. I would say the best place to find me is, is just worth Gregory on LinkedIn. You know, I'm not really on any of these other platforms nowadays, but LinkedIn is the, is our, is my main one. I.
Wendy: Awesome. Well thank you so much and um, listeners, thank you so much as well for your time today. We know it's limited and we hope this will inspire you to go out and find your hummingbird effect.