Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] Speaker A: Hi, and welcome to the confessions from the home Office podcast. My name is Wendy Hill, and I've owned a marketing consulting company in Greenville, South Carolina, and worked out of my house for the past 20 years. So this podcast is always about working from home, my marketing business, things related to being self employed, and all the things that go into it. And today I have a special guest. If you can't tell by looking at us, we're related.
I have my son, Austin Hill. He's here, and he's a college student, and he has been very valuable and just one of the reasons why market momentum has been able to grow. So by the end of the episode, you're going to hear about, you'll know what Austin does, kind of how things have changed over the past couple years with the business and what it's like for someone to work for their mother. So welcome, Austin.
[00:01:05] Speaker B: Hello. Good morning.
[00:01:09] Speaker A: Yeah, it is. It is morning. I can tell we're not all quite awake.
I want you to tell everybody a little bit about yourself. So, a lot of people through social media have seen you grow up, but there's a lot of people that watch the podcast that probably don't know anything about you. So tell us a little bit of.
[00:01:27] Speaker B: So right now, I'm a junior, almost senior, at USC Upstate, majoring in computer information systems.
I was a cybersecurity major, and then I decided to change my major because of what everyone was saying at career fairs, looking for a job down the road. So I had to make the switch.
[00:01:50] Speaker A: So what were they saying to you?
[00:01:54] Speaker B: Mainly, they're like, since both majors pretty much do the same thing, it's just got a different name on the degree.
But mainly in computer information systems, there's more of a focus on programming strictly rather than the security aspect of things. So that's what a lot of people are looking for right now, is mainly just people who can code and keep up with it.
[00:02:19] Speaker A: Okay, and what else are you doing besides school?
[00:02:22] Speaker B: Besides that, I'm working for market momentum, and I work in part time at Home Depot as a salesperson there. And I'm also in a fraternity at upstate Alpha Sigma Phi, and I'm the vice president of alumni and family relations, and I'm just this past weekend got sworn into student government here at USC Upstate.
[00:02:51] Speaker A: You're a busy guy. Yes, but I think it's been good. I think it's been good. So, thinking back to when, even when you were really, really young, you have always loved computers and technology and, like, looking things up and learning how to do things. So what. What do you think started all that? Like, why do you feel like you're what started your interest with technology and computers and. And that type of thing?
[00:03:19] Speaker B: Well, it's kind of interesting. I can remember, gosh, since I was probably about four years old, playing on my PlayStation two or my GameCube, and you taking me to the video store, written video games. I remember that. Always wanting to play right after school.
[00:03:39] Speaker A: Right.
[00:03:39] Speaker B: I always have those memories. But as I got older, I still was playing video games almost every single day. But then it got around the time when I started, I got my own laptop and was able to do schoolwork and stuff on there. And I always found it super interesting, especially, like, when I went to school and into the computer labs, just being on there, like, it just felt right, like it did. Never felt confused to me. So from a really young age, I just started getting interest into it, and I've never lost that interest.
[00:04:15] Speaker A: Well, and I think also you were always really good helping around the house. If we didn't know how to fix something, you, within five minutes, you would come down with the YouTube answer and say, okay, we gotta go to the store and get this and this, and we'll be able to fix this.
You were youtubing things before? I was. Which washington. Which was fantastic.
[00:04:34] Speaker B: Yes. I was always the fix it guy when it came to the it problems.
[00:04:38] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. Definitely. So we started working together during the COVID lockdown back in 2020. Before that, you were just doing school and some sports and playing video games and doing things on your computer. So tell everybody kind of what happened.
[00:04:57] Speaker B: During COVID Well, I was working part time at a restaurant, and when Covid hit, he, the guy who owned it just switched mainly to take out orders. And then we kind of just closed down for two months. So I was without a job. And your business was growing during COVID A lot of people, their businesses weren't, but it was really good that yours was. And it was an opportunity for me to work for you and help your business grow, but it was also a good opportunity for me to learn more and dabble into your field of marketing, especially on the technological side.
There was a lot I learned with that as well.
[00:05:50] Speaker A: Well, I feel like during COVID reached out looking for additional team members, and people were kind of afraid to work. They didn't want to meet or they were juggling dealing with their kids, being home, doing virtual school. And I'm like, I gotta have some more help. And, you know, luckily, because I wasn't traveling because of COVID and because I was not going out to meetings locally, I was just heads down doing new business online. And, you know, within just a couple of weeks, I had doubled and I was freaking out. So I remember the day you were in your room with, like, all the shutters closed and the lights were off and you were playing video games. You're supposed to be doing homework. And I was like, do you want to work for me? And you were like, money.
I was like, money and work. And so we started doing some things. My office was upstairs at the time, and we were kind of back and forth. And I think we just started more with what, like research and a little bit of social media and things like that and just trying to pass some things off. So I wasn't working, you know, 20 hours a day.
[00:06:57] Speaker B: Yeah, at the beginning it was definitely, can you look this up for me or can you do some new business research? Just looking into these people, like new client, new possible clients or research an article for me on something or troubleshooting something. When it came to computer issues, that's mainly where it started out at.
[00:07:19] Speaker A: Right. Because I remember I was running the big desktop and sometimes two laptops and doing all the crazy stuff. That was a big help.
So how has it you've learned a lot of marketing on the job? I asked you if you wanted to major in marketing in school, and you said no. And can you tell us why you didn't major in marketing since you already had a background and how knowing some marketing and having that background has helped you in college?
[00:07:43] Speaker B: Well, about halfway through high school, mainly around, like, the time of COVID I originally wanted to go. I think it was Bitdev major in business administration with like, a concentration marketing. And after I started working with you for a little bit, I'm like, I don't even need a degree. I already got it all. So it really, it has helped me in college mainly with like, a couple classes I've taken past semester. I took a marketing class, and I knew it like the back of my hand.
But you bethe, it's also helped just in my everyday life now, even when it comes to, like, not work, other things like that. Just the knowledge on things people like with social media being such a big aspect in people's lives today, like just knowing the basic stuff or some of the more advanced things that most people don't know, it's been pretty helpful with that, and it's also helped me out a lot, just being more professional.
[00:08:47] Speaker A: Oh, well, that's good.
[00:08:50] Speaker B: So it's been, it's been very beneficial for me. It's helped me out way more than I could have ever imagined, and it's.
[00:08:57] Speaker A: Helped me more than I ever imagined.
So we've been working together since, gosh, it was probably April of 2020 when things really got started, because first few weeks, we're all kind of just stunned that we were stuck in the house.
How do you feel like marketing has changed even since then? I feel like marketing is constantly changing, and it changed a lot right around Covid, but now I feel like it's changed again.
[00:09:23] Speaker B: Oh, definitely, yeah. Like, it's constantly changing. That whole world is always changing. I feel like nowadays, everything is a lot more streamlined.
Like, when we first started out, it was, you know, social media, basic social media.
A lot around that time, people couldn't really get a lot of content because everything was shut down. But as things started opening back up, noticed.
Yes. Even before COVID people were getting content and making new content. But it seems like after Covid, it just kind of ramped up because everybody had been sitting inside, bored out of their minds, and they're always wanting something new. And then that's when, like, reels came in, like YouTube shorts. Tick tock, all that stuff was going on. And it's. It's also changed in how businesses run. It used to be, oh, this company has just a website and maybe, like, a Facebook, and now it's. It's streamlined more. It's like, okay, we, you know, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, website, website, and email are all set up, set up all in one together. For example, with your mark momentum and wendyhill.com stuff, it's all on equip 360 now. Email, website, everything is all on there now.
So that's. It's changed a lot of.
[00:10:54] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I feel like we always had so many logins. Like, I know in one of our programs, we had all these passwords of all these things to get everything done. And we moved to equip 360, what, about five, six months ago? And we're still doing some customizations on things, but that tool has helped. Like, all the marketing for both parts of the business are all in one login now. And so we can just go in there and look at everything.
And the customer support from them has been great as well. But I feel like the other thing, too, is used to, we were just kind of, like, churning, churning, churning content. And now we can take content and repurpose it, you know? And with the help of AI, we can run through, you know, drop in content, get other ideas or change headlines when we're short on time.
I know sometimes AI is not good to use because it sounds like AI, but I feel like it's good when you're, you know, kind of just fried on something. But we can take one piece of content now and use it for a blog, and we can take clips from podcasts and use them for promos. And I just feel like things are, like you said, I feel like we're streamlining things a lot better now.
[00:12:10] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. It feels like we first started out, it was like we had a million tabs open on our computers, and now it's kind of like, okay, we're down about like five or six. We just find things have narrowed down. It's not, you're jumping from one thing to the other, constantly having to switch. It's, everything's kind of come together.
[00:12:29] Speaker A: So. No, I mean, that's, those are all good observations. I was thinking about it the other day, like how frazzled and how many more hours we were working back then, and now we're still doing really good work, probably a lot better work, and not having to spend as much time on it. You just spend more time on the thinking and the strategy and the execution is not quite as hard now. So, you know, we've met with other marketing firms. We've met with a lot of clients who've used other firms or use other firms for other things. How do you feel? Like we're different?
[00:13:04] Speaker B: I feel like we're different, obviously, because we're a mother son duo, the best at it.
But I think what really makes us different from the other firms is, one, our availability.
Most, some firms, it's, oh, oh, no, I'm having a big problem right now. I need help. And you got to wait a couple days, or it's the weekend, and you got to wait the whole weekend. Wait till Monday for them to get back to you. And with us, it's like, I feel like pretty much all of our clients would say the same. Like, we're pretty readily available. Whenever, if something goes south, we're there, we can help out, right. There's not a long turnover on needing something figured out.
And another thing that makes us different is we are a lot more advanced on the, on the technology side of things. I mean, I know everybody is going to have their own level of expertise when it comes to it and stuff like that, but with my major and me constantly programming on the computer, always on the computer, every single day, learning a lot more, and with the experience that I've had, from working with you. Like, I feel like we're a step ahead against all the others.
[00:14:28] Speaker A: Well, I hope so. And, I mean, and I don't think it's, like, really a competition, but I do feel like that we're able to help people more with a lot of their IT issues. Not saying we're their IT department at all, but, you know, there's a lot of time, a lot of times there's issues with DNS, records, domains, you know, when the whole email thing, all the updates with email. In February, we had to move everybody, change everybody's records and all that, and, and worked on that over the weekend so nobody would be down.
[00:15:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:15:02] Speaker A: And a lot of that's behind the scenes, and some of that's probably my fault for not telling clients all the stuff that we're doing behind the scenes. We just want it to work and then to not ever have to worry about it. So I definitely think that's. I think that's right.
So here's the question that I wrote the other day, and I'm a little nervous to ask it. What's it like working with your mom?
[00:15:25] Speaker B: In all honesty, it's actually a lot less stressful than most people would think.
It's actually kind of a relief because most people think, oh, I'm at work, I got a boss.
I gotta be.
I gotta be 100%. Sometimes I gotta look the best. Whatever, oh, I. Something's gone wrong. I need to meet with my boss. Well, I kind of have the upper hand there. Your phone call away, text message away. We always talk, and we meet a couple times during the month to just go touch base on things, go over stuff. But I've enjoyed it. It's been a good experience not only learning how to work in this field and just in the professional work, just professional work. But it's given me good experience. I made good connections, and I don't always have to worry about, oh, no, my hair looks like crap right now or whatever, because she seen me with bed head before, so I don't have to worry about that.
[00:16:35] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think sometimes we do, kind of we'll go running around. Sometimes I'll get frustrated because I'll need something done. And you may not tell me you got three tests coming up or whatever, but I feel like we've got a good system with how we. We check in, you know, always check in with everybody that's working on projects in the mornings. And then, you know, we do our meetings. Like, we had a meeting earlier this week just to talk about the business. And other times we'll meet and go through all the clients one by one and. And talk about any changes we feel like that need to be made or additional things we need to be doing or things that we found that we feel like we should present to them and see if they're interested in doing.
It's actually been good.
You've got a good demeanor, you're steady with things, and you catch on really quickly. So it's been good.
[00:17:25] Speaker B: Yeah. And also our morning calls, just going over the things, maybe like, top priority stuff instead of most regular jobs, like, oh, I got to meet with my boss on this day. We'll just touch base in there. It's not a huge weekly conference call or something with a bunch of employees. It's just touching base, which is a lot, lot easier to handle and a lot less stressful.
[00:17:55] Speaker A: Yeah. No, I think there's no need to be in this business and be completely stressed out. I've been doing this long enough, and, yeah, we always try to get everything done on time and do it right and make sure everybody's happy and.
But I think I've kind of reached that point in my career where I'm just not going to be stressed out about things, so that's good. Well, good. Well, I appreciate you being on here today. I know you've got a busy couple of days, couple weeks coming up with everything and with everything, just school and fraternity and all that. So I appreciate it. And that's it for this episode of Confessions in the home office, and I'll be back next week with another episode. And thank you for being on today.
[00:18:44] Speaker B: Thanks for having me.
[00:18:46] Speaker A: All right, well, have a good one.
