We Are
Digital Natives
DevOps
Insanely Creative
RevOps
Strategic
Fun
Automation Wizards
Marketing Strategiests
Passionate
Collaborative
Principled
Problem-Solvers
Digital marketing is about more than being comfortable with technology. It's about having such deep understanding of the marketing discipline that you can effectively communicate your message through any medium.
Founder & CEO Andrea Hill
Andrea Hill is a dynamic and successful business growth expert with more than 35 years’ experience at the helm of mid-sized enterprises in multiple industries. She launched Hill Management Group in 2007, and her technology-agnostic brands (StrategyWerx, Werx.Marketing, MentorWerx, ProsperWerx) each specialize in a targeted area of growth planning and execution, spanning RevOps, DevOps, strategy, marketing, and operations.
Andrea’s special expertise is in leveraging technology for growth. Her extensive experience in ERP, CRM, MRP, HRIS, web dev, and tech stack development makes her uniquely able to advise on the leanest, most effective applications of technology to support any type of business strategy.
Her forward-looking orientation and deep background in business and marketing technology and data helped her achieve serial success in leading companies through rapid and profitable growth and make her business perspective particularly useful during this time of significant technology, economic and business transformation.
Subscribe to Andrea's Blog
Where We're Located
Distance-working isn't new for us since the pandemic. In 2008, we made a conscious choice to abandon the office and start working virtually. We did this to increase quality-of-life for our employees and stimulate the kind of creativity that is possible when people are out exploring the world. It works for us.
Today, we employ at-home employees across the United States, Canada, and Northern Italy, working in the comfort of their own homes on the latest technology, communicating with one another and customers all day long via a suite of digital tools that keep us connected and collaborative.
Some team members work across all Werx brands, and others focus just on Werx.Marketing. Kieran Stuck, Elisabetta Marini, and John O'Hara are full-time WerxMarketing content managers, supported by a team of graphic designers and writers. Our Client Service and Project Management leads Kristin Kopaz and Sherri Burney coordinate the contract designers, developers, multi-media producers, and copy writers for every project. Jason Robinson focuses mainly on website management, and Annika Conte leads our DevOps group.
We use state-of-the-art technology to track all customer communications. You’ll find it’s easy to make your request then get back to the things you really need to do while we take care of your marketing and technology for you.
Our History
Taking the Plunge
Andrea Hill decides she is done with being a corporate hired gun. She wants to help others build their businesses, and wants to build her own business in the process. So she takes the plunge and strikes out on her own to launch her first-ever startup.
Chicago Location
Though Andrea and her family are still living in New Mexico, she and her wife plan to relocate back to the upper Midwest. She hires a few former employees and they take up shared office space downtown Chicago.
Hill Management Group
The corporate entity is named Hill Management Group, LLC. But Andrea structures it so she can form several different companies beneath it. Her goals for providing business growth services are expansive.
StrategyWerx Officially Launched
The first brand is strictly a consulting brand, focused on business strategy, planning, and infrastructure development. Clients from Andrea's past lives in publishing, direct marketing, entertainment, and the jewelry industry start showing up.
We Launch Our 2nd Brand
Our client list is growing quickly, but the strategies we are developing for them demand digital marketing capabilities they do not have. So we launch Werx.Marketing to support more of our customers’ needs.
Moving Across the Country
The New Mexico house is sold and it's time to move! Andrea and her family pull up stakes in New Mexico and relocate to Wisconsin to be close to their extensive family.
Work-from-Home Begins
Internet technology has improved dramatically and so have online collaborative tools. Andrea and her team reevaluate, and decide they could all do with less travel time to the office and more quality time on personal pursuits and with family. They give up the downtown Chicago office space and go virtual.
MentorWerx 1.0
The company is constantly approached by micro-business owners who want business advice. But StrategyWerx-level consulting is out of their budgets. So MentorWerx is launched initially as a way to package strategic advice in accessible formats for smaller business owners.
The Consulting Years
StrategyWerx draws in big contracts for Andrea to function as a rent-a-CEO for corporations, often in other countries. She does two long projects in Dubai, a few short projects in various countries, a project in Mexico, and another long project in Italy.
She keeps Hill Management Group alive with small projects in each brand, but she’s mostly on the road and living out of a suitcase.
Pandemic and Reassessment
Andrea makes it out of Italy just before the world gets shut down for the pandemic. After a few weeks she actually unpacks her suitcase and spends a lot of time wondering what everyone else is wondering ... what will happen next?
Being of Service
As small businesses are shaken to their foundations, the Werx Brands jump in and produce 45 free webinars in 32 weeks. Nearly all of these webinars draw hundreds of attendees. Andrea realizes that she wants to refocus her business on helping many businesses at a time grow, rather than focusing on one large project at a time. She also rediscovers the joys of staying home!
A New Strategy is Defined
With a year of disruption and hundreds of hours of listening to business owneres behind us, we develop a new overall strategy and a clearer focus for each brand.
New Branding
By March, all our brand websites have been updated with our new strategy and services, and we’re talking about our new offerings with clients.
First Software Partnership
One of our new strategic pillars is to form meaningful partnerships with software companies serving our markets. We start this process by partnering with Keap CRM.
Laying the Track Before the Train
Now come the months of building the infrastructure to support our planned growth. We begin operationalizing our processes and hiring to the new strategy. If we’re going to grow this company, we’ll need a strong team and highly evolved processes!
Building Our Knowledge Base
Andrea has grown and run medium-sized corporations many times, but she has never scaled a company from scratch. It’s time to build some new skills in preparation for our big plans. So she applies to the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Program and gets accepted for the program starting in July.
A New, Powerful Growth Network
Andrea graduates from the Goldman Sachs 10ksb program, and the Werx Brands have access to an entirely new (and extensive) network.
One condition of graduation is to develop a growth plan. The program gives Andrea some additional ideas for scaling that are not so service intensive. Andrea’s final project (a condition for graduation) is to introduce the concept of ProsperWerx.
One More Brand (and we're done!)
By April, the details of the ProsperWerx brand are worked out and a new website is created. But we’re not promoting yet … it will be many months before the playbooks and tool kits envisioned in the ProsperWerx brands have been developed.
We begin a process of extensive product development.
More Software Partnerships
To maintain true to our technology-agnostic philosophy, we evaluate and select several CRM, HR, martech and productivity software companies to partner with. We engage in an extensive period of training and certification to get our team up-to-speed.
MentorWerx 2.0
StrategyWerx is taking on so much organizational design consulting that it makes sense to redirect MentorWerx energy to that sector. With ProsperWerx in place as the resource for downloads, playbooks, and self-directed training, MentorWerx is repositioned to what it is today.
Rapid Progress on Software Partnership Front
We tier up not once, but twice in our first seven months as HubSpot partners — an unusually fast progress in the CRM space. We continue to add other software partners, train and certify.
- Taking the Plunge
- Chicago Location
- Hill Management Group
- StrategyWerx Officially Launched
- We Launch Our 2nd Brand
- Moving Across the Country
- Work-from-Home Begins
- MentorWerx 1.0
- The Consulting Years
- Pandemic and Reassessment
- Being of Service
- A New Strategy is Defined
- New Branding
- First Software Partnership
- Laying the Track Before the Train
- Building Our Knowledge Base
- A New, Powerful Growth Network
- One More Brand (and we're done!)
- More Software Partnerships
- MentorWerx 2.0
- Rapid Progress on Software Partnership Front