In the summer of 2009, a friend invited me to dinner with a group of her work friends. Tara shared that one of her friends owned a business that was growing, and her company might be able to use my skills and talents. That friend was Audrey Taylor, CEO of netlogx. And as luck would have it, I was looking for a different part-time position that summer. Audrey and I met for lunch. I have to be honest I had to look up what Audrey’s industry terms and acronyms meant before our lunch. And out of that dinner and lunch, a job at netlogx was born.
When I started in August of 2009, my projects and tasks included business development and a variety of other duties. If my memory serves me correctly, netlogx had nine (9) team members at the time. The operations team consisted of me and another woman (both part-time). My first project was to review netlogx’, really Audrey’s, organizational memberships and how we could best leverage them for business development purposes. At this time, Audrey was an individual member and netlogx became a corporate member so I could attend events and share the netlogx story. My role continued to grow, and I helped anywhere I was needed. It even included taking notes for Audrey at a large State of Indiana meeting. I quickly realized I had no idea what language they were speaking. And it wasn’t just Audrey’s new accent that I was trying to decipher. I kept hearing acronyms and the one that stuck was WFMS. I came from a financial background in marketing and HR. I couldn’t figure out why they were talking about a radio station in this meeting.
As time marched on, I began to identify areas in which netlogx could become more robust. I truly enjoyed working for Audrey. And was impressed with the trusted advisors (payroll and benefits companies) she and Nick had engaged with to be a strong small business positioned to grow. One day I shared with Audrey that netlogx needed a Human Resources Employee manual. And from that time forward, human resources duties were in my job jar. With these new responsibilities and a mutual agreement between Audrey and me, I became a full-time team member. We grew from nine (9) team members to 45 in about three (3) years. I learned proper English words and phrases like bonnet, boot, and my phone is flat, what a swim lane chart was and, of course, WFMS meant workflow management system. At a team meeting, Nick coined me as the first follower. He shared this video and please know I was always professionally dressed. I enjoyed sharing the netlogx story when talking with people about joining the netlogx team or partnering with netlogx to do business.
And if you know me, I am all in at 110% when it comes to my career. However, in 2013, I did a personal assessment and realized I only had four (4) years left with my daughter at home. I took a sabbatical from netlogx. I kept in touch with Audrey as we gave each other the “gift” of time as birthday presents. In February of 2015, at my birthday dinner, I had decided I would like to explore returning to work. I had not factored in that my daughter would learn to drive and free up a great deal of my time. At my birthday dinner, Audrey mentioned the netlogx operations team had shared with her that she could benefit by having an assistant. Funny thing is, I was going to mention to Audrey the idea of helping netlogx with communications and marketing projects. Within a few months, I met with Audrey and Nick and created a job description for an Executive Assistant. And as they say, the rest is history.
