Read press coverage where Bizzy Bizzy, one of our staff or one of our projects was featured in the news and other media!
Madison ‘Fem-preneurs’ share their secrets to business success
By Natalie Yahr | Aug 25, 2023 | The Cap Times
Hosted at the High Noon Saloon, the panel featured Roe, manager of entrepreneurial opportunities at the Progress Center for Black Women Jazmynn Appleton, Bizzy Bizzy founder Candy Phelps, president of Summerland Education MJ Reiners and Novii CPA founder Victoria Thayer. Diana Pastrana, founder of conflict and culture consulting firm DEFYNE, moderated.
At the hour-long event entitled “Fem-preneurs: Bold Narratives and What It Takes to Make Your Break,” the six entrepreneurs discussed their paths to business ownership, the tips they’d give to others starting out and how they’ve learned to charge what they’re worth.
A Deep Dive Into Campaign Websites with Candy Phelps | Hello Merge Tag Ep 3
May 16, 2023 • By Josh Klemons – Reverbal Communications
Throughout our conversation, we covered a wide range of subjects on the topic of campaign websites. We explored essential elements like branding, budget considerations, and differentiating between essential features and optional enhancements.
We discussed key questions to ask before hiring an agency or developer to build your campaign website, as well as options available for building a site based on even the most limited of budgets.
In the Spotlight: Candy Phelps, Bizzy Bizzy
Aug. 17, 2021 • By Heather Wentler, The Doyenne Group
Q: So, Bizzy Bizzy works with different companies to establish themselves with branding, website development, and marketing strategies. What types of companies do you work with? How do you get a feel for the company’s “vibe” or “aesthetic” to where you feel comfortable creating content to fit their needs?
A: Our favorite clients are startups and small businesses who are doing big things, punching above their weight so to speak. We have a pretty deep discovery interview and several interactive exercises such as our Core Values app, Brand Archetype Quiz and Brand Voice exercise that help us get a better understanding so we can get the feel for their overall brand, customers and goals and visual aesthetic. Clients love these tools, and it really speeds up the discovery process.
A boozy branding brainstorm, and other highlights of Forward Fest 2021
Aug. 10, 2021 • Natalie Yahr | The Capital Times
In the 12 years since Candy Phelps founded Madison creative agency Bizzy Bizzy, she’s helped startups with just about every step in the branding process, including one of the very first ones: Coming up with a name for their venture.
Until they’ve got a name, founders can’t register their business or get business cards. “Everything is sort of pinned on this business name,” Phelps said. Some founders have had a name in mind for years or come up with ideas easily. But many companies, especially tech companies, don’t.
Benefits of Creating a 1 Day Service
Dec 1, 2020 • RetainFM Podcast with Pete Everitt
Candy started as a freelance writer and designer in 2009. As her business grew, she started outsourcing work to sub-contractors. Through this she started by under-charging and under-estimating the amount of work that needed to be done.
From her journalism background where editors, writers and designers start with nothing and produce an entire newspaper in a day, it didn’t seem strange to try and fit this mentality to the process of designing and building websites.
A New Way of Building Websites with Candy Phelps
March 1, 2020 • Agency Highway Podcast with James Rose
Candy Phelps from Bizzy Bizzy runs a unique kind of creative agency. They build great websites in a single day – including copy, design and development. They create such an amazing experience, some clients cry at the end of it (in a good way!)
This episode will get you thinking about some new ways of doing things that you’ve probably never considered.
How to Create a Buyer Experience with Candy Phelps
June 19, 2019 • Agency Trailblazer Podcast with Lee Jackson
Web build and design is not often thought of as glamorous or exciting. In the real world it can be a long process taking weeks, if not months. By the end of the project everyone is glad to get the site live and move on.
How can you change all this? How can you make the process exciting, fast, efficient and attractive?
Candy shares how she created a process for web design and development that has really helped her stand out from the crowd and allowed her to grow her agency offering a unique productised service with a flexible team structure.
Flipping the switch: How working “in-person” provides surprising new efficiencies for marketers
Dec 19, 2017 • By Greg Mischio of American Marketing Association Madison
Automation. Project management software. Email. All these tools are supposed to make creating marketing deliverables fast and easy right? Candy Phelps of Bizzy Bizzy shares with us why this isn’t always the case, and gives a sneak peak of her January 9 presentation for the AMA at Brix and Mortar.
Q: At the presentation, you’ll be speaking about getting your head “out of the cloud”: How human contact and tangible tools will make work more efficient and fun. Tell us a bit more about the presentation, and why did you decide to speak on this topic?
Candy Phelps: We decided this year to transition from working on branding and website projects with clients remotely to offering in-person services.
I’ll talk about the inherent problems we found over the years with traditional website development and branding project management and the surprising solutions we came up with to solve those problems, including working directly with clients in real time and using physical tools for some of our work.
We want to share our ideas because these pain points are universal. After talking to other marketers and creative companies, you will learn we are all suffering in the same ways. Likewise, talk to clients who have horror stories of web design or branding projects gone wrong and you will find patterns.
The solutions we have come up with won’t solve every problem or work for every company, but we think everyone will walk away with some new ways to think about how we are providing our services.
InBusiness Professional of the Week: Candy Phelps
March 2017 • InBusiness
IB’s Professional of the Week is the premier way to meet Dane County’s professionals. This week features Candy Phelps, founder, iCandy Graphics & Web Design (rebranded to Bizzy Bizzy in 2017).
1. What are the most challenging and rewarding aspects of your job and why?
The most rewarding thing about being an entrepreneur is being able to write the script of my own life and help others do the same. By crafting my business around my core values, I aim to have a positive impact on my team, my clients, and the community.
Happiness is our main objective and gratitude is a core part of my day. I feel very lucky that I get paid to have ideas, design, write, learn, and lead an awesome team in creative endeavors.
I love being able to work with other entrepreneurs to turn their ideas into a real business. When someone is giddy about their new logo or gets an important lead through their website, we feel like we’re helping them succeed.
As for the challenges, almost any business owner will tell you entrepreneurship comes with added pressure and long hours. Especially because I love what I do so much, it can be hard to stop working at the end of the day. Sometimes I have to remind myself to look up from my computer and go outside!
iCandy Graphics and Web Design Delivers Quality Work With A Positive Attitude
Nov. 14, 2016 • By Pamela Sosnowski
We’ve been taught that when life gives you lemons, to make lemonade out of them. In Candy Phelps’ case, she turned lemons into iCandy — iCandy Graphics to be exact, her own graphic design firm with a clever play on the phrase “eye candy.” (iCandy was rebranded to Bizzy Bizzy in 2017.) The positive attitude that turned her bad fortune around permeates the staff at her company and in the work they deliver for clients.
“I wanted to start a different kind of business that cared about more its people than the bottom line,” Phelps explains.
“Grow Your SEO” Kicks Off Traveling Book Club for Business Owners
July 15, 2015 •
“I love a good book. And when the book gives me a few tips for helping in my business, all the better. My friend, Candy Phelps of iCandy Graphics (rebranded to Bizzy Bizzy in 2017), recently passed along a copy of her new book, Grow Your SEO: Search Engine Optimization Concepts Even Your Grandma Could Understand. I was delighted to read through it for it’s easy-to-understand explanation of SEO techniques and tips for how to improve upon what we are already doing for search engine optimization.”
GrowMadison Brings Local Tech Experts Together to Teach Others Tricks of the Trade
April 23, 2015 8:30 am •
Madison IT consultant Matt Nelson sometimes chuckles at some of the questions that come his way.
“People will ask me stuff like ‘How can I change the date on our website?’ and that just kills me,” he said. “I’d rather just empower people to do it themselves.”
But like a lot of independent information technology consultants these days, Nelson is swamped with requests for help. He’s often scheduling out three weeks or longer.
Now, in an effort to reach more people and teach them the skills they need, Nelson has teamed with other local experts in a new venture called GrowMadison. The startup offers group trainings for a whole host of information technology challenges from website management to social media.
“Marketing Strategy: Why Logo and Web Design Matter”
By Jennifer Schiff | Posted July 27, 2010
Think that having an eye-catching logo and distinctive online brand don’t matter — or are unimportant if you have a distinctive product or service or low prices? Think again. Both elements play a crucial part of a successful small business marketing plan.
“I won’t go so far to say that having a good or bad logo will make or break the success of your business,” said Candy Phelps, the owner of iCandy Graphics and Printing (rebranded to Bizzy Bizzy in 2017), “but it will definitely increase your success if you have a great logo and branding identity. If you have a cheap-looking, generic website and a cheap-looking logo, you’re sending a message to your customers that you may be cheap about other areas of your business, like your products and services.”
iCandy Graphics receives “Business of the Year”
The Daily Herald
2011 Business of the Year Award
On Friday, June 17 at Stevens’ restaurant in Gurnee, the Village of Gurnee Chamber of Commerce held its annual event celebrating their second year as a chamber of commerce in Gurnee.
Recognized for outstanding service to the chamber, Candy Phelps of iCandy Graphics (rebranded to Bizzy Bizzy in 2017) was awarded “Business of the Year” by Brad Jenks, chairman of the chamber.
Upstart art: Several new groups want to strengthen Madison’s creative economy
by Jessica Steinhoff | August 1, 2013
From the Capitol to North 6th Street, East Washington Avenue is transforming. There’s a fresh crop of apartments, buzz about a new business incubator, and an onslaught of road construction. The most exciting addition, however, isn’t a fresh layer of pavement. An art movement seems to be brewing, yet it’s so far underground that many locals can’t see it. Meanwhile, Madison artists complain of bubbles. They may drift by others doing interesting work, but for the most part, they toil in isolation. The lucky ones sell work in other markets. The less lucky earn their keep at other types of jobs. Many leave for bigger cities.
But lately, things have been changing. Well, sort of. A number of recently formed groups have set out to burst the bubbles. Their approaches differ, but their goals are similar: to help Madison artists make a living and to make the local art scene vibrant, visible and centrally located.
“There’s something exciting brewing in Madison, something with national appeal,” she says. “I think we’re on the cusp of being one of those towns everyone wants to live in, now that everyone has lived in Brookyln and Portland. There is so much cool, interesting artist activity here.”
