with Cam Petty

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In this episode, our team is celebrating our 100th podcast episode by sharing what we believe is the #1 reason our company has been so successful and why we have grown so much over the past 6 years. Now we want to share how our #1 thing can be your company’s #1 thing and lead you to more success!

Where we’ve been

We have covered so much in the last 99 episodes, providing tools to add to your business tool belt to grow and succeed. Starting with our core values, sharing budgeting and styling secrets, best marketing practices, and how to have a healthy work-life balance, it has been a joy to share with you all of you the things that have helped our business succeed. We are thankful that you can learn from our experiences are excited to see how much we still have to learn together.

Through our podcast, we have been able to connect with our followers and listeners even more. We have read and enjoyed every piece of feedback and praise you have provided in our direct messages.

We hope you see that in all things we do, especially this podcast, we are continually trying to render ourselves and our company.

rend.er / verb/ The art of bringing something from one place to another being higher in intentionality and efficiency.

therender.co

Our beginning

Our fearless leader, wonderful founder, and CEO, Cam Petty, started our company in 2010. She remained a solopreneur until 2017 when she hired her first employee. Although she hired her first employee then, it wasn’t necessarily because she was ready for her team to grow, but because she really needed the help. With so many event inquiries, it became challenging to ensure even basic housecleaning tasks were being done like responding to emails on time.

While Cam’s first hire helped her grow as a leader and start a small team, it was her third hire that truly helped her develop what you now know as Render and the entire company brand. Special shoutout to Kaley Goodall, our Chief Creative Officer!

The story of Kaley being hired by Cam and starting at Render is too funny in the episode to translate to text. Definitely recommend going and giving that a listen (try around 10 minutes in). Originally posted as the Social Media Manager, Kaley’s hiring process was messy! So messy, Cam wasn’t sure if she would stay past her first week. Thankfully for all of us here, and all of you, she did! Over time, Kaley wasn’t just a social media manager. Cam looked at her skill set and the needs of the business and formed the new position.

Hire For What You Need

When it comes to building a team, don’t just hire someone based on what you feel you should. For Example: if you feel like the natural first hire should be an accountant. Do you need an accountant? Is that where you need the most help? Look at your business from an outside view, look over your sales, see what people on your team are already doing and maybe consider whose plates are already full.

Once you have an idea of the type of position, outline the skills the person who fills the position will need in order to be successful. Try going deeper than necessary transferable skills (problem-solving, written communication, critical thinking, etc.). Instead think of more unique skills that every candidate might not have like negotiation, monitoring, social perceptiveness, etc. You can actually use this resource to search and find skills and software that are crucial to different positions.

Positing Your Job

Should you decide you want to grow your team, we are going to remind you of our hiring process! Please feel free to modify to your companies needs.

• Step 1: Create a general application.
  At Render, we have our applications on our website (see image above). Here we ask potential candidates to share obvious application details (name, contact, previous expereince) but what you don;t see in the screenshot is some of the other questions we ask to get to know them on a deeper level from the beginnig. For example: we ask our potential candidates to tell us their enneagram, sometimes their favorite brands and why, and how their goal align with our company and the opportunity available.
• Step 2: Request their cover letter and résumé.
  It is listed as a requet at the end of our website application for potential candidates to submit their cover letter and résumé via email once they submit the online application. Another reason we really like this prompt is becasue not everyone does it. Why is that beneficial? Well from the beginning, you get to figure out which potential candidates actuall pay attention to details.
• Step 3: Complete a vide interview.
  Our team uses MyInterview (see link below). The reason we like to use an online platform to manage the first round of interviews is becasue it allows you to see more of the candidates converation style and personality while saving you time. With the recorded responses, you can set up a time with your team (or by yourself!) to review their responses and see by first impressions who stands out to you the most. It also gives your a glimpse into understanding their confidence level and preparation for the assigned task.
• Step 4: Time to complete a project.
  Now this one may seem a lot but we would argue it is the most invaluable step to the interview process. We like to ask our candidates to complete a project that is very similar to the work they would be doing should they be offered the position. This is great for seeing what skills candidates already have or may need to grow realting to the role you have posted. As listed earlier in this blog, having an idea of waht skillset a candidate needs prior to posting the position is very helpful!
• Step 5: Complete in-person interviews.
  Consider inviting your candidate to your office (or meeting them for coffee or via video chat if you don’t have a space yet) and just get to know them. Truthfully, a candidates skillset can play a big role when deciding who is a good fit for the job. However, making sure that their personality is a good fit for your brand and team is equally ad important!

We have found that using these steps are helpful to finding longevity in employees and to finding the best possible person for the role! You should want it to be a mutual decision with mutual benefits when adding someone to your team.

Once you have filled the position, set your new hire up for success. Here at Render, we ensure everything they will need during their training is ready to go before their first day. This means we have updated all SOPs (standard operation procedures) relating to their position, given them access to any company accounts they will use and have created or shared any other material necessary. Doing so has saved us so much time and potential panic when having a new person join our team!

Leadership at Render

We are fortunate enough to have several different teams that assist our company in success. With our 8 full-time team members, we are broken into 4 different teams and they are the Sales team, Floral team, Creative team, and Operations team.

Each of these teams participates in a monthly meeting to discuss different successes and obstacles from projects they have completed. Holding these meetings creates an opportunity for employees on any level to express their concerns, thoughts, or ideas to the leader of their team. This is extremely important because we want each of our employees to know that they do have a voice in how our company operates and we are eager to hear from them.

In addition to the monthly team meetings, each employee completes 1:1 meetings and receives performance reviews with their team lead. This creates opportunities to build rapport and give more opportunities for the employee to feel seen and heard as part of the company.

As for our leaders who oversee each team, it is expected to meet on a quarterly basis. In those meetings, our leaders evaluate the business as a whole and ensure we are acting towards meeting our annual goals. There is space to highlight all concerns or ideas that are brought to leadership in team meetings or 1:1s. From there the leadership can add to adapt current goals based on their team discussions and the company can continue moving forward and growing.

Our leaders also fill out a SWOT analysis at each quarterly meeting. A SWOT analysis has you identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of your business. Staying on top of these will only be beneficial when it comes to the growth of your company and team.

Pour Into Your Team

Since growing as a leader doesn’t stop once you’re in a leadership role, our team continues to pursue knowledge and grow their skillset through reading! Consider generating a list of books you want your team leads to read together and discuss on a timeline that works best for your company. You can see what we are reading this year by looking at the list below!

Pouring into our leadership allows our business as a whole to continue growing and thriving on all levels. We cannot street this enough. We are so grateful to have committed leaders on our team that want to build our employees on all levels up and see Render succeed.

Other notes

Here is a sneak peek of what this episode consists of:

[4:00] We are Truly Honored to have YOU as a Listener

[6:59] The #1 Thing that Positively Impacted our Business

[9:13] What We Mean When We Say Team

[17:07] Hire What You Have A Need For

[18:09] Hiring at Render

[22:16] Setting-up Your Team for Success is Essential

Product or Affiliate Links

Render Hiring Process Podcast Episode

MyInterview.com 

Design Decks Podcast Episode

Entreleadership by Dave Ramsey

Dare to Lead by Brené Brown

Next week we will drop an episode about necessities for your rental contracts.

Joyfully,

TJ White | Content Manager