Meet Ryan Lee | Marketing & Communications Specialist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Ryan Lee and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Ryan, is your business focused on helping the community? If so, how?
Harloff offers a great service to the community/world by offering some of the most soundly built medical carts and medical cabinets found within today’s healthcare industry. While Harloff has over 60 years of experience manufacturing various types of carts and cabinets, we have had a focus on medical carts and cabinets within the healthcare industry since 1987. Our products help doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners, emergency staff and a plethora of other medical professionals by giving them a reliable, secure location to store all their medical tools and supplies needed to offer efficient care to their patients. Lots of our products are used during surgeries and other medical procedures, including our emergency line of products which are designed for use in life-threatening situations so Harloff products really do help medical professionals to save lives!

While Harloff currently focuses most of our efforts on customers throughout North America, we are hoping to broaden our horizons and do more international business with more countries outside of North America in the coming years.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
Since graduating from the University of Kansas in 2014, I have held various marketing communication roles with three different companies since joining the workforce full-time. With each stop in my career, I have gained key new skills that have helped to prepare me for the next step in my professional journey.

One skill that has always stayed with me throughout my life and helped to separate me from others is my ability to write. I have always enjoyed writing – especially creative writing assignments – dating back to my earliest days in elementary school. I always seemed to have a natural talent for writing which was the main reason I decided to attend the School of Journalism at KU, although that decision was certainly helped in part by the low number of math credit hours required to obtain my Bachelor’s degree, as mathmatics and I haven’t quite seen eye-to-eye since the 4th grade. Damn long division!

The ability to write and properly express yourself in different ways to different target audiences is a key skill to have in the marketing world and this skill has served me well in every position I’ve held during my professional career up to this point. Whether it’s creating e-blasts, writing marketing copy for a website, creating Social Media posts, writing focused marketing copy for ads/promotions or coming up with slogans for a new product launch, the ability to write and effectively communicate with mass groups of people is always going to be an essential skill for any marketing professional.

Getting to where I am in my career today has certainly not been easy, but my ability to write or adapt my writing for different companies and target audiences has been my biggest benefactor within each position I’ve held up to this point. One of the biggest challenges of my career was leaving my hometown of Lawrence in search of better job opportunities in Colorado where the majority of my family is originally from and currently reside. While I had family in Colorado, essentially ALL of my professional contacts and friends were in Lawrence or the greater Kansas City area. Despite not knowing anyone and not having any promising job leads in Colorado when I left Lawrence, I said goodbye to my hometown in 2016 and moved with my dog out west to Colorado Springs. It took me about two and a half months to finally find a job in Colorado and although the job search process was extremely discouraging at times, it was extremely rewarding when I finally found a job with the company Westone Laboratories all by myself with no help from others to get the position. I accepted a “Marketing Assistant” position with Westone which ended up being the most rewarding job I’ve ever held in my life, and my employer at the time told me that I was chosen for that job over 20 other applicants because of my Journalism degree.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Although I’ve already been too many times and am kind of growing sick of the attraction, if visiting Colorado Springs you absolutely HAVE to go to the Garden of the Gods. It’s a state park with breathtaking views of beautiful rock formations and visitors can choose to either just drive through/around the park or park and hike through it’s various pathways on foot. After finishing a hike through the Garden of the Gods, we’d have to head over to a restaurant named Edelweiss for a good dinner of the most authentic German food (if you don’t get schnitzel you wasted your order) I’ve ever had in the US. Their imported selection of German beers ain’t too shabby either!

Depending on the visiting friends, I’d take them on a brief two or three night camping trip at one of the many nearby areas or state parks to the west of Colorado Springs. I come from a family of fishing enthusiasts, so we’d probably have to break out the fishing poles for at least one day of the trip, with a hike up the nearest mountain scheduled for one of the other days.

One of the nicest things about Colorado Springs is its proximity to Denver, as there’s much more of a night life in Denver than Colorado Springs and the beautiful capital city of CO is just about an hour’s drive north from the Springs. In Denver there’s a plethora of things to do, but seeing as how most of my friends are big sports fans, we’d probably have to go catch a Broncos, Rockies, Nuggets or Avalanche game depending on what season it was when they visited. If it was winter, we’d also have to head out to Keystone Colorado or another nearby skiing area to hit the slopes for some of the best skiing or snowboarding found in the US.

That’s a pretty busy schedule in and of itself, however if there was still time, we’d wrap up the visit by heading up to Golden Colorado which is about an 80 minute drive north of Colorado Springs and also is the home of the Coors factory so we could end the trip with a few nice mountain-cold brews before saying our farewells!

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
If I had to point out one specific group or organization of people who have helped to shape me and my career, I would definitely have to give a shoutout to the entire community of my hometown Lawrence, Kansas. Most people probably don’t have too many positive thoughts come to mind when hearing the word “Kansas”, but the city of Lawrence is truly one of my favorite places in the world and I can’t imagine growing up anywhere else.

Lawrence – the true Diamond of the Great Plains – is a hidden gem that not too many people in the US really know about. It’s a city that prides itself on being different from all of its surrounding areas and is certainly A LOT different than anywhere else in Kansas. While most would scoff at the idea of any delightful city being found in the great state of Kansas, Lawrence has a little bit of everything for everyone including Music, arts, sports, fine cuisine (such as Munchers Bakery which makes THE BEST donuts on the planet) and honestly just a little bit of everything can be found in this small college town on “The Hill”.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leecrunch/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-lee-b9740b82/