EMPLOYEE SPOTLIGHT: Christina Henderson

John McMillan: Alright, John McMillan here with another employee spotlight video. Today we have Christina Henderson, who is a project manager here. How long have you been with Vyral, Christina?

Christina Henderson: About eight months. I started in October.

John McMillan: So, how come you chose to join us here at Vyral?

Christina Henderson: Well, I saw an ad on Careerlink and it said administrative assistants wanted or whatever, and I was still trying to figure out what I wanted to do. Administrative assistant kind of appealed to me so I just kind of went for it, and that’s how I came here.

John McMillan: Cool. So what was your first impression?

Christina Henderson: Well, I remember walking in and waiting to meet with you for my interview, and I remember looking into one of the offices and seeing some bare feet hanging over the edge of a couch, and John Ryan was walking around in a bro tank and soccer warm ups and barefoot, and he had this legal pad with him, and I just thought it was kind of interesting, because on the phone when you called me to set up the interview you said that it was pretty low-key, laid back, and that you were going to be in shorts and a t-shirt or whatever. I showed up in like skinny jeans and a nice shirt and I still felt overdressed after seeing JR. Yeah, that was kind of my first impression of Vyral.

John McMillan: You know, I think JR has a lot of first impressions with people. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. OK, so why are you still here at Vyral?

Christina Henderson: Well I really like the people that I work with; Chris, my client manager, and Kristin, and Serena. They’re all really cool, really easy to get along with, and I think we make a really great team, so the job’s not hard, so I might as well figure out what I can learn from this.

John McMillan: That’s great, so where would you like to head with your career, whether that’s at Vyral or beyond?

Christina Henderson: I’ve kind of always had this picture of like my dream job would be to work for someone who has a big picture dream, and I would come up behind them and beside them to work on the details so they can focus on the big picture. I’m not really sure specifically what that looks like, but I would like to continue growing in different skills that someone would need to help assist someone else and grow their dream and stuff.

John McMillan: OK, got it. So talking about different things that you’ve learned, what specifically have you learned while being here?

Christina Henderson: Well, communication is one of the biggest things that I’ve learned. A few months after I started I had to call clients, which is not specifically a project management duty, and it freaked me out, and I didn’t like doing it, and I would put it off to like the last possible second. But after I kind of got over my fear and figured out that they’re just people and there’s nothing to be afraid of, it just kind of became easier, and now it’s easier for me. Like if a client has a problem over email, it’s easier to just pick up the phone and call them and solve the problem that way.

John McMillan: That’s great. So that was kind of a big mindset breakthrough for you.

Christina Henderson: Yes, definitely.

John McMillan: Have you had any other breakthroughs in your mindset? I mean, in college you kind of picture the way that small businesses operate to be one thing, and you actually are doing it and it’s totally different. Anything like that?

Christina Henderson: I guess my idea of a corporate business was like you wear dresses every day, you get in suits, everything is super formal, everything has a whole bunch of rules you have to lay down, and you have to fit in this small cookie-cutter box, and here it’s not really like that. It’s kind of come as who you are, bring to the table what you offer, and I think just that mindset of a professional organization does not have to be a cookie-cutter place; it can be whatever you make it. Frank’s always talking about how entrepreneurs make business the way you want to make it, and he’s always about bringing in the rest of us to make decisions and stuff, and that was never ever imagined for me before I came here.

John McMillan: Got it, cool. So what were you doing before you came to Vyral?

Christina Henderson: I worked at a church. I was an intern for the youth director at the time, the youth pastor. I did a lot of graphic design work, a lot of organizing the attendance of the youth group, helping planning a lot of the events that we did, and then I also worked at a grocery store, so both very different things than what I’m doing now.

John McMillan: So I’m guessing working at Vyral is very different than a church or a grocery store. Anything specifically you want to share about that, like what makes Vyral different?

Christina Henderson: I worked with high school students at the church; I’m not working with high school students at Vyral. I think the biggest difference is we are making a product for the client. At a grocery store, you’re providing something, but it’s more like I was a cashier, I was a front-end supervisor, I was catering to the customers, but I didn’t have to provide anything other than customer service. Here, we’re actually building something for them, for the clients, we’re offering value to them. At a high school internship you are pretty much just building something for kids to come hang out at, and at Vyral, we’re building emails, we’re building blogs, we’re making videos, we’re helping other people build their own businesses, and I have never done that before.

John McMillan: Alight, so what can we be doing better as an employer?

Christina Henderson: As much as I love the flexibility and the kind of come and go as you please type atmosphere, I think it would be beneficial for us to have more of an HR department of what’s expected as far as like how many hours we need to work or how much paid time off or just like what’s expected or what would happen if we were late by like an hour every single day. More guidelines and a little bit more structure as far as me as an employee, how should I hold myself accountable and stuff.

John McMillan: Good, got it. And just so everyone out there knows, we are working on that. So at the beginning you talk about how you really like the people. What about the people here makes them enjoyable to work with?

Christina Henderson: I think it’s really cool that everyone is unique, that no one’s afraid to be themselves, really. Like we have a bunch of gamers that hang out in the meeting room at 5 p.m. on Fridays, I don’t know, there’s just so many different people that you really can’t get bored here. If you’re done talking to one person you can go across the hall and you can talk to somebody else. I just love that everyone is so comfortable being themselves and it doesn’t have to be like this formal "Oh hey I’m Christina, let me introduce myself" and have it be all awkward. It’s just really chill and really relaxed.

John McMillan: Any specific memorable moments that you have while working here?

Christina Henderson: I remember Chris wanted to play a prank on Reece when our office was downstairs, so Chris put all of Reece’s office supplies - everything on his desk, in his desk, everywhere - in trash bags. Even his computer, he put his computer monitor and everything in a trash bag and put it in the hallway as like a “Hey take care of your trash,” and Reece’s retaliation was putting birdseed and honey all over Chris’ desk, so I’m pretty sure Chris was still cleaning up the honey a few weeks after that. I remember other people coming into my office saying they wanted to put live birds in our office to add to the birdseed fiasco but they didn’t because me and Serena were in there and they didn’t want to bother us. So that was actually really memorable, really funny. I remember you kind of banned pranks after that, so we don’t do that anymore.

John McMillan: Yeah, things were getting a little out of hand. Now, I know you’re not working directly with clients all the time, but you’ve been here eight months, can you remember a time you were able to turn something around quickly, or just like, they wanted something specific and the client was very pleased with the work that you had done, and kind of how that made you feel?

Christina Henderson: Yes, one of my clients’ assistants contacted me asking me if we could update his screenshot on his blog, and he had one of the first blogs that we’ve ever designed, so it was pretty old. It kind of just didn’t look very good. I was like “Yes, we can absolutely do that, I was actually hoping to revamp your entire blog,” so we redesigned his blog and they were really super pumped about it; they were really pleased. We got a new header designed for them and they were just really shocked and really thankful that I was able to do that, and I was really excited that they were coming to me even just about changing the headshot because I wanted to change his whole blog, but didn’t want to say “Hey you suck, so change it.” So it was really cool that they were so impressed with me and my suggestion to getting things redesigned for them.

John McMillan: That’s cool. OK, so people who are thinking about coming to work here are going to watch this, what do you say to them? What do you say to someone thinking about working at Vyral?

Christina Henderson: It’s a really awesome place to work, it’s really laid back. Your ideas are heard. I don’t know, it has a lot of opportunities and I like working here.

John McMillan: There you go, good enough. So what are kind of personality traits of someone who should not work at Vyral?

Christina Henderson: I would say, someone who’s not willing to try something new, someone who is a little bit more set in their ways. If you’re not willing to try something new or you’re not willing to grow or if you’re not willing to even do something that’s outside of even your job description, you probably shouldn’t work here, because we change things all the time, and even just to take care of the clients, you need to be able to do things that maybe aren’t in your specific job description. If you’re not willing to do that, you should probably find somewhere else to go.

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