Why Culture Marketing is Everything to Your Business
Interview with Ryan Naylor, CEO of VIVAHR
Tell us about your business. What do you do?
VIVAHR is a recruitment marketing platform with a complete beginning to end applicant tracking system (ATS). Designed for small and medium-sized businesses, VIVAHR is a top-rated ATS offering a unique method to promote your open positions by featuring a company’s culture and connecting with every candidate. VIVAHR’ s system allows a business to draw top-quality job seekers by building a one-of-a-kind culture page for each job posting to advertise their available positions. When applicants discover a company’s job postings, they are taken to their culture profile, where applicants can view all the company’s job postings and engage with its brand. Recruiting managers to report conversions are five times higher when hiring with culture marketing. To make any company’s hiring process easier, VIVAHR allows growing companies to track applicants by tags, provide advanced communication capabilities, and easily organize a streamlined hiring process through a custom pipeline.
What is your startup’s origin story?
I was working with a lot of small companies and helping them find candidates to grow their business. I saw an opportunity to further help small businesses compete better to hire and retain top-qualified job-seeking candidates against big corporations. I discovered methods that small businesses can utilize to attract the best candidates simply by hiring from culture marketing. Essentially, I wanted to create a hiring software that allows companies to hire the best talent by showcasing who they are and why candidates would want to work for them.
Had you been involved in the industry before this startup? What is your background?
I had been in HR technology for about 10 years. One of my first company’s that I founded was an online resource called LocalWork, that helps job seekers find local jobs in their area. LocalWork then grew quickly into an employment platform with the focus to help those in the community find local employment opportunities. Through my years of helping people find employment, I developed an interest in helping companies find the right people for their business. Helping connect people and businesses for employment and growth opportunities has been my true passion.
What’s unique about your company? What are the key differentiators between you and other players?
What is unique about VIVAHR is our purpose of helping business hiring better and discover amazing candidates by hiring with culture marketing. Today, the new generation of job seekers are looking to work for a company that they can create an emotional connection. We give companies the ability to hiring differently by engaging with potential applicants with their brand. VIVAR allows companies to attract applicants by presenting their company culture with a custom profile company page so job seekers can receive insight into what it is like to work for that certain company.
Take us through a day in your life. What does the typical day look like?
My day usually begins with me having breakfast with my four-year-old son, around 6 am. We sit at our kitchen table, and I listen to him tell me about his dream he had the night before. My son also enticing me with his future plans on being a professional soccer player and how he is going to win the world cup! My mornings with him and witnessing his confidence is so inspiring to me and an important part of beginning my day.
Another important part of my day that I am committed to doing is giving myself an hour every single morning dedicated to exercise. Regardless of what time I wake up, I have to exercise for an hour. The struggles of waking up early outweigh the struggles of health depreciation that I had once suffered because of too much stress of being an entrepreneur. I have realized that for me to have a healthy business, I must be in good health as the head of the company.
Once I begin focusing on my day for work, the day is full of meeting with customers and clients to continue the growth of VIVAHR. I also communicate with my team members and check-in to see how they are doing or what I can do to help them achieve their responsibilities. Another aspect of my day that I commit to is giving my self and least two hours of strategic planning in the afternoons. I am a big advocate for strategic planning and writing out my key “to-do’s” list for the next day before I end the day. This helps when I start the next morning, I am reviewing my list of the top priorities that I need to do, and it’s been thought out, and I am ready to go! No wasted time thinking about what I need to do for the day.
What has been the most challenging part of growing your company?
I have always struggled with the “who” as opposed to the “how.” I always had this confidence in myself to achieve my goals, but I have a hard time allowing others to help me get there. I reserve too much for my own plate, and ultimately my goal doesn’t get done well, or it doesn’t get completed at all. This is because I try to finish everything myself instead of letting myself delegate tasks and gain trust in others to do the job. Then I retain this netting of all these things that must get done that causes me stress. Overall, the most challenging part of growing my business has been my ability to focus on who needs to help me, and I have always overstated how.
What has been your best marketing channel? What are some channels you are looking to explore next?
The best marketing channel for VIVAHR has been search engine optimization. SEO has been my background and has led to the lowest customer acquisition cost through VIVAHR’s SEO approaches. The marketing channels that VIVAHR is looking to explore is YouTube ads as they have a lot of success in gaining new customers.
What apps do you use that you would recommend to others?
For VIVAHR, we use Slack and Asana for our communication purposes. A big part of our growth is over the top communication, and we, as a team, have found that these apps meet our needs. More importantly, as an entrepreneur, these apps have helped me become a better communicator with my team, and I am still learning to perfect that as a leader for VIVAHR.
Do you have a book, podcast, or Youtube channel you would recommend to other Entrepreneurs?
I would recommend the book called Mixergy by Andrew Warner. Mixergy is a great resource for entrepreneurs, as Andrew Warner provides great questions to consider and dives deep into being an entrepreneur’s emotional experience.
If you could go back in time to the day you founded your company, what advice would you give yourself?
If I could go back in time to when I started VIVAHR, I would have told myself to hire an administrative assistant as quickly as possible. My life with an administrative assistant is 10 times better.
What’s something you’ve learned from building your business that someone else can learn from?
There is no such thing as bad promotion. I had a bad experience on Shark Tank, but it has been the best thing for my company.
