John: Alright, John McMillan here with another Vyral Marketing Employee Spotlight. Today we have Alec, and Alec you’ve been here for what, 3 months only or so?
Alec: Yeah, I little bit over I think at this point.
John: Cool. So you came in and started in the project management role and now you moved over to working on the advertising team.
Alec: Yep.
John: Great. So what attracted you to Vyral Marketing, you know, in the first place?
Alec: Really it was trying to find a workplace that was - I’m trying to think of the best way to put it - that kind of fit my style of how I worked and just, the location is great for me too, so once I got in here and I did our interview and I spoke with you it just immediately looked like somewhere I wanted to be.
John: Cool, OK. So let’s go to that. Let’s talk about that first impression, what did you kind of get from that?
Alec: Well, I walked in and saw a bit more of a relaxed office environment, and of course sitting down with you felt relaxed and that made me feel relaxed. And I saw, you know, a bunch of young people, I think when I walked in there was everybody sitting around a TV going over some Adobe Premier courses, so I also saw a place where I could learn new skills.
John: OK. So it hasn’t been that long, what has kept you coming back to work? Why are you still here?
Alec: I think it’s thsat every day can present somewhat of a different challenge or new things come up. It always seems like there’s something different for me to do, even if it’s just finding a new problem to work out or helping people with coding issues, things like that.
John: Cool. So, you’re an entrepreneur in your own right, was it you and your friend started a company in college?
Alec: Yeah, me and two of my friends.
John: Cool, so tell us about that. It’s kind of unique and interesting.
Alec: Yeah, so we make insect-based food products. The first thing we put on the market was a protein shake that uses crickets as its source, and then we also have a USDA grant coming in the next month for research into rice that’s been fortified with cricket protein that we want to use in aid relief and, also, because it just adds more protein if I want to cook something, like I make and eat chicken and rice most days, so it’s nice to throw in extra protein too.
John: Nice. That’s very cool. Go ahead and plug it. What’s the website?
Alec: Yeah, it’s bugeaterfoods.com
John: Nice, which also jives well being in Nebraska. So whether it’s here at Vyral or with Bugeater Foods, where do you think you’re headed with your career?
Alec: You know, it's changed a whole bunch, even in the last few years. I went to school for economics and now I work in advertising. I do design and web development on my own time, which are two things I really like doing. I think, because I’ve never had a super specific answer, the thing I like to do most is solve problems, so where I see myself is wherever I find interesting problems that I can solve or new things to try and figure out.
John: Cool, alright. So what have you learned since working here at Vyral?
Alec: I think I’ve learned a lot about - especially since I’ve been helping people with things like coding errors - is communicating things I know to other people. Sort of like teaching back things I had to get taught to me, and working more in like a close office environment, because for about the past year I was working at home alone, so it was good to redevelop some of those skills.
John: Cool. Have you had any breakthroughs in your mindset where you know, you’re an entrepreneur, but we’ve been at this for 7 years, got 60 employees, where you’re like, ‘Hey I think this is the way that I’d want to do things’ and then you’ve been here and you’re like ‘Actually, they’re doing things this way and I kind of like that’ or there’s one thing that you kind of thought about something about doing business and it’s kind of changed?
Alec: Yeah, especially on the bringing in employees, because it’s something that my company’s been planning to do, and looking at ways to do it that I had no idea how to manage, so seeing how this office works and sort of how things are set up for employees to do it has been super helpful for my own future planning.
John: Cool. You pretty much - when did you graduate college?
Alec: I didn’t, I actually dropped out to start running my own company.
John: Ok, cool. So when was that?
Alec: That was last summer, or at the end of spring semester last summer.
John: OK, so you might have had some different jobs, you know, odds and ends jobs in high school and college. What makes Vyral different from either those or you know, you’ve got buddies in the workforce or whatever, that when they talk about their jobs. What makes this different?
Alec: It’s really how relaxed I can feel coming into work where my other jobs always required some sort of uniform or were far more professional in dress where I didn’t always feel comfortable, where I was having to sit at a desk all day or moving around. That’s a really big thing that I think is sort of - I don’t see from my friends in a lot of their work environments. They either have to be in a suit and tie or whatnot or all have to be really business professional dress. But that’s probably a side effect of knowing mostly people that went to business school.
John: True. OK. What can we be doing better as a company?
Alec: I think the main thing is what I’m working on, which is management of all our computers, and that’s because I have experience doing it. So I think that’s the biggest thing I see. Anything else, you know, we’re updating blog and email templates and sort of modernizing things, that was basically the only thing I saw that I wanted to update when I did our initial interview and sort of looked over the product beforehand.
John: OK, so let’s talk about the people here at Vyral. You know, what do you like about working with the other guys and gals here?
Alec: They’re all incredibly nice and everybody is willing to help each other out. If I see someone send an email or a message in Slack like ‘Hey, so and so is out today, I need help’ like 4 or 5 people just jump on. So, it’s really a collaborative workspace and everybody seems to feel comfortable and likes each other.
John: Cool, that’s great. It’s only been 3 months, but do you have any memorable moments that really stick out to you so far?
Alec: I think probably the most memorable thing, it’s just maybe even a side thing on its own, was the first time the internet went down and we got to play Smash Brothers during the day. That helped calm me down because it was like my first week there, I was still unsure about a lot of things, so I got to do a little stress relief and go right back into work.
John: Nice. So a lot of people will watch this that are thinking about working here. I hear it all the time in interviews. What do you tell those people watching the video?
Alec: I think if you just come in with a mindset of wanting to make cool things and also wanting to work with other people, that you’ll find a great environment for that here.
John: OK, so what are maybe some personality traits of someone who shouldn’t be working at Vyral?
Alec: If you’re a solo person and you want to do everything yourself, I wouldn’t recommend it necessarily. If you’re not good at delegating tasks out, I wouldn’t recommend it either, but really those are the big things. I think a lot of people do have the mindset of wanting to work together and work with other people, so it’d be tough to find a bad fit, or so far in my observation.
John: Yeah for sure. Cool man, that’s it, thank you.
Alec: Awesome.
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