An interview with our Account Director, Andy Hellmuth
Role: Account Director
Hometown: Springfield, OH
Family: Married to Caroline with two daughters, Rowan (age 4) and Sloane (age 2)
Favorite Team: I’m kind of the Makeway sports guy (even though I love to talk Dungeons and Dragons with our Digital Director, Kevin 🤓). So I like a lot of teams including Notre Dame (where I went to college), the Columbus Crew, Everton Football Club, Columbus Blue Jackets, and Cincinnati Bengals. But soccer is my main sport (fun fact: I was a member of my high school’s D3 Ohio state soccer championship team in 2002 – We got to play at Crew Stadium)!
Favorite Food: My mother-in-law’s tamales from Mexico
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What do you do at Makeway?
My role is all over the place. But, primarily, I focus on strategy, business development, and client relationships. So, I’m the guy who’s first in line to greet prospective clients and figure out what they’re looking for. Plus, I help figure out how we’re going to solve the problem they have—whether it be a website, touchscreen, or brand strategy.
When a project gets kicked off, I lead the charge when it comes to strategy and research. That entails getting a holistic understanding of the company and their competitors, mission, values, and vision, then running them through a series of workshops to help get the creative juices flowing. Ultimately, I gain insights to be able to pass along to the design and development teams. I also lead the charge when it comes to finding new business or new projects for current clients.
What do you like about your work?
The reason I like this work is that every day is a little different, and I could never work in a corporate structure. My wife is a graphic designer for Nationwide and she loves it because she’s structured and organized, but I really enjoy the chaos. Like, one day I’m talking about genomics and the next day I’m talking about an investment firm or safe digging.
At the end of the day, clients are all just trying to do the same thing, which is to get their information out into the world, and make it easy and engaging for their audience to interact with their brand. I’ve been in this line of work for over a decade, and being able to pull from that pool of experience and know there’s always something to learn from one project that can be applied to the next gives me a lot of confidence in knowing I can help our clients achieve their goals.
What do you like about working at Makeway?
More than anything, without a doubt, the team at Makeway is by far the chillest and coolest group of people I’ve ever worked with. It’s super easy to just hang out and work together, and they’re all so incredibly talented. And, I’m not just saying this, but Greg and Josh are by far the best bosses I’ve ever had. So it’s all a good fit.
What types of projects are your favorite?
I’d never been involved with a touchscreen before I worked with Makeway on the Electrolux project while I was at my previous job. Ever since then, I was like, whoa, this is so cool! Because this 80-inch touchscreen is more than just a website. I love that idea because it’s a digital piece in a physical space, and that’s a totally different way of thinking about it rather than just a website. That experience was so much fun, that ever since then I had always thought to myself “man, I wanna work with these guys all the time,” so eventually I did!
“The team at Makeway is by far the chillest and coolest group of people I’ve ever worked with.”
How do you feel about working fully remotely?
I love it. I grew up coming home from school and getting on AOL Instant Messenger to chat with my friends, and that’s basically what Slack is now, right? So, this is perfect for me. I think it’s so unique that we have a boss who lives in Norway, we have a developer who lives in Guatemala, we have people on the East Coast, people in the Midwest, and a colleague about to move to the West Coast. We’re going for global domination and it’s just so cool. I think it’s really cool to tell a client that we’re across the world and you will not notice a difference because we have the right people with the right mindset.
What do you do for fun outside of work?
First and foremost, I love spending time with my two girls and playing with them. Being a dad is the best (and sometimes hardest) job I have, but they’re at such a fun age where everyday they surprise me with the hilarious things they do or say, and I can’t get enough of being around them.
I love to travel and am always down to check out a new brewery with my wife and sip on a few beers while we play a board game or two.
Much like a lot of other people here at Makeway, I also am very much a nerd and love nerd stuff. Video games and Dungeons & Dragons particularly take up a lot of my free time. But I also love to sit down with a new lego set, dust off my guitar and play a while, or just doodle with my daughter Rowan and see what funny creatures we can come up with on the spot.
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If you’re interested in talking about D&D, real tamales, or the Everton Football Club, drop Andy a line to say hi! And if you’d like to learn about joining our team, visit the Makeway website to check out careers or email us at [email protected].
