Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Are you getting started or restarted with marketing? For your business, visit my site, wendyhill.com and download the Market Momentum Kickstart guide. Inside, you'll discover a step by step roadmap to launch your marketing that delivers results. Don't leave your marketing to chance. Firing off bottle rockets is not great for your budget or for your results. Grab your free market momentum Kickstart now and launch your next campaign with confidence. Visit wendyhill.com to learn more. That's Wendy with an eye.
[00:00:34] Speaker B: Hi, welcome to the confessions from the Home Office podcast. My name is Wendy Hill and I've owned Market Momentum, a marketing consulting company in Greenville, South Carolina, since 2005. I've been raising my two kids. They're both in college now, or both will be in college within a week. And I've spent a lot of time rescuing and taking care of some dogs that need at home.
So this podcast is going to give you insight on what it's like working from home. Things have changed a lot over the last 20 years, but there will also be some good marketing tips and tools and things that can help with your business. So be sure to subscribe and follow so you'll never miss an episode. Today's episode is a little different. I'm going to go over ten maybe surprising tools that I use to keep my sanity while I'm working from home. So some of these you may think, yeah, I've heard of that before, I use it too, but some of them are a little off the wall, but they help me get through the day. So after listening to this episode, you're going to have insight on some non traditional items that are helpful when running a business. And maybe some of these will help you, too.
These have helped me run my business as smoothly as possible. I don't know if smoothly and owning a business should ever go in the same sentence, but I try. So. And maybe you'll have a few laughs as well. So here we go. Number one. And of course, I don't have them in here with me this morning of, since I'm talking about them, are sunglasses, so sounds a little odd, but my office is on the front of the house. I get full morning sun from the time the sun's up until, gosh, I don't know, mid to late morning. I have plantation shutters in my office. I have those where I want them for the whole day. And I'm not the type of person, person who gets up and adjusts and changes everything. So if it's too bright in the morning, I'm just known to pop on a pair of sunglasses and keep working or get on the phone. I try not to wear sunglasses on video calls because I don't want people to think I'm hungover or something, but it's because of sunlight. So for years, my kids have walked past the door when they're leaving and they're like, she's got her sunglasses on again.
My husband has seen me do it a little bit and he just shakes his head, so I think they expect that. But anyway. So my plan is always to keep going. Don't let things slow me down. So a pair of sunglasses can definitely keep my mornings going when it's needed. So number two is tape and lint rollers. So I mention this just about on every episode about how we have dogs. I have two golden retrievers that stay in the office with me. They think it's their job to stay in the office with me every day. Cash and Lola, they're brother sister from the same litter. They're almost five. They are terrible. They do not behave well at all. And I get up every day and get dressed and get ready. I'm not someone who stays in pajamas all day, but if I'm gonna have a meeting or go somewhere, I don't put on, like, those dress pants or the dress until I'm ready to walk out the door, because they are terrible at coming by and, like, wiping their face on me or rubbing on me or want me to pet them at the last minute.
I always change right before I leave.
But tape and lint rollers are my friends just to make sure that I don't show up at a meeting, just, like, kind of covered in dog hair, because that's not very professional.
So I feel like that cash and Lola always want to be with me, so they make sure that they are with me when I leave. So I always try to keep a lint roller and stay looking professional. Sometimes I think I should wear a shirt that says, I am most likely covered in dog hair, because that would be a true statement. But that's just me trying to make sure that I don't look a disaster when I go somewhere. So number three is a large whiteboard with wheels. A lot of people have whiteboards mounted on their walls or leaning up against the wall in their office. I've got a huge one on wheels. It's about 3ft tall by 4ft wide. And I drag that thing around. My family's like, here she comes with the whiteboard. Sometimes it stays in the office, sometimes it goes in the den.
I use a project management tool called Trello for all client work and day to day and for planning. But the whiteboard is stuff for the house, planning for the business, the growth of the business, and planning for projects for farmland that we're working on right now. So that's. So it stays in front of me like Trello's all the day to day, and the whiteboard are the big ideas and some of the tasks that have to be done. And, you know, sometimes, though, the whiteboard, like, it'll go into the dental election night this year, and we'll kind of do a Tim Russert style commentary and adding things up. We do that around here. Kind of crazy about that type of stuff. But anyway, so the whiteboard is something that travels around, mainly stays in my office, and that's kind of the dreaming and the planning and the big things and a lot of really fun things that I'm working on and working on with my family.
So now, number four, this one's a little odd.
This tool is my bedroom closet. I know it sounds really crazy, but with family and dogs and deliveries in and out of the house all day, sometimes there's just a noise I can't avoid. We are the first house in our neighborhood, so we have a lot of traffic, we have landscape crews, we have people cutting down trees.
Just, there's always something. So if I need a quiet place for a call, I wouldn't do a video call in my bedroom closet, but a call, I go in there. It's a closet right off my bathroom. There's, like, three doors I can shut before I get there. I keep a little chair in there. That's my desk. Sit on the floor. I have closed more deals sitting in that closet than anywhere else, talking on the phone. So, you know, no interruptions, no doorbell. It's pretty much soundproof, and it's a great place to kind of figure things out without having to leave or go upstairs and find a spot. And sometimes the noise is just unavoidable. So that. That was number four. Number five are a dollar journals. So I'm a person who likes to write things down. I do type in meetings sometimes, but I I like to write. I like to think. I like to draw. I like to plan.
When I go to meetings, I try to write instead of just being hunched over the laptop talking to people. But I do feel weird about buying nice journals that are $15 and writing in them and eventually throwing them away. So I found a lady locally who buys overruns from a printer, and she sells me these awesome journals for a dollar apiece. So I go see her a couple times a year, buy bags of them, and go through them. I don't know if you can see this.
I'm like, here's one right here. This is fantastic. Almost feels like leather. My office is full of them. So then I don't feel so guilty about spending $1215 on a notebook where I'm just gonna write and eventually trash it at some point. So if you're in the upstate of South Carolina, send me a message, and I'll hook you up. I'll let you know where she is and what when she's there. And you can get some good deals, too.
So, number six is my car. My car is my mobile office, or sometimes I call it my locker because there's stuff there.
I do some events for clients. I keep some of my stuff for them in there. I traded in my bougie suv a couple years ago and got a Honda passport. And so I have a mobile hotspot in there. So I'm always connected if I need to be. I have all wheel drive, so I can drive around at the and don't have to worry about getting stuck.
It has a great stereo, listen to music, and also if I need to be on a Zoom or call in for something, it just works really well. And it's also a great place to eat lunch if I need to hide from some people in this house for just a little bit. And it's also a great place to take a quick after lunch nap for, you know, 1015 minutes if I need to. And it's comfortable. And we'll see if anybody from my family is listening to this and if they say anything. So, yeah, I do hide in my car once in a while. Like, a lot of moms hide in their car in the driveway or in a parking lot close by. So, number seven, moving on to that is a timer.
I don't know if you can see this. I have this timer. I use it a lot. I use the Pomodoro technique.
I learned about that when my children were being tutored in math growing up. And it's 25 minutes. Set the timer for 25 minutes. I try to kind of put tasks together that are. That are similar and knock out some things. Or if I need to do some brainstorming, I'll set a timer. It just keeps me from scrolling. It keeps me from going down a rabbit hole researching something. 25 minutes on, five minute break. Get back at it. I don't do that all day. That's nuts. That would be like being a robot.
But I definitely use it off and on during the week when I need to get some things done. Like, we've been out of town. Tomorrow is gonna be a huge catch up day, so I will be using the timer for that.
Number eight is my bike with a desk. I have a desk bike in my office. It's nothing crazy fancy. I don't get on the bike and work. I've tried that. I'm clumsy.
I'm not somebody who needs to be typing, riding, and riding a bike at the same time. I probably end up in a cast.
So I try to use the desk part and stand part of the morning and use it as a standing desk. I've learned over the years I don't need to sit all day. I think faster when I'm standing.
I feel like I'm more efficient when I'm standing. I try to do that at least half the morning after the sunglasses. And so then I use the dust part. Like, if I haven't been getting enough steps, haven't been moving around or stressed, or there's something on the news or something I want to watch, just pull the bike around, jump on for 15 or 20 minutes. It clears my head. It's amazing.
So I love it. And I found out about it because I saw an influencer who kept talking about her dust bike. And of course, she was like, this has zero and perfect.
And I was like, there's no way. And so I finally went to Herlink, bought the bike, and it has been a great investment. So it's nothing fancy. It's not a peloton. I think it was $299, and it has been fantastic.
So let's move on to number nine. Number nine is my beauty station in my office. Don't laugh.
It's a long way to get to my bathroom in this house. And if I do that, somebody's going to interrupt me. Dog's going to want to play. Something's going to be going on. I'm going to get distracted. So during the day, I'm like, this hair starts looking like the end of a Q tip. Makeup starts sliding off my face, and somebody will say, can you get on a zoom? Can you get on a teams call, or can you come by our office? We've got an issue with something.
And so I have my station with my mirror and my makeup brush, hairspray, curling iron all over here so I can touch up and be ready to go. So I started that about two years ago, and it's been a huge time saver, and it's just worked for me. So you just never know when you're going to have to do some maintenance, repair and overhaul. My aviation clients and friends will understand that. So that's why I keep it right here. It's been great.
And last is number ten, the Kajabi app. So that's for all my training and courses.
I have people say all the time, why do you take, why are you taking courses? Why do you train if you're a consultant? Don't you already know everything? Have you seen how fast everything's moving? And all the technology? There's a new social media app that's out. Not going to talk about it on this episode, episode that I've got to learn this week. So Kajabi is a place where people host courses, memberships, websites, do their email marketing. It's kind of all in one.
When I start researching if I'm going to buy a course from someone, I ask them if they host through kajabi, and that usually puts me over the edge if I'm going to buy that way. All the courses that I've purchased or in the Kajabi app, I can have that on my phone, I can listen and watch while I'm working, or if I'm in the car, I need to listen to something.
Or if I'm waiting for a doctor's appointment or run an errand and have some time, I can get caught up.
Most people, not all that, buy courses, who buy courses, they start and they never finish because they're watching it on their laptop and they get busy, or it's the weekend, or they go on vacation and they kind of forget about it. So I'm gonna get my money's worth. So I make sure that I'm running things, as many as possible through kajabi so I can access everything. And when updates come in, they come in right on that app. So that's it for today. Those are my ten maybe surprising tools that I use to help run the business and kind of help keep my sanity. And I appreciate that you listened and that you were here for this episode of the podcast. The next episode will be here, and I hope you'll tune in then. I hope you have a great day.
