We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Cam Petty. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Cam below.

Cam, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Being a business owner can be really hard sometimes. It’s rewarding, but most business owners we’ve spoken sometimes think about what it would have been like to have had a regular job instead. Have you ever wondered that yourself? Maybe you can talk to us about a time when you felt this way?

Freedom versus consistency. Flexible schedule versus expected schedule. Full benefits versus self found benefits. Full creative thinking versus SOP’s and same ole’ same ole’. Having a business and working for a business can sometimes be the total opposite. As humans, we naturally have the tendency to think if the grass would be greener on the other side. Sometimes it can be, and times it can be total opposite. As someone who worked a regular job for years but also has led my own business for years also, there comes times where I have thought it would be nice to have one or the other.

This is a common thought for many business leaders and founders and for people who work regular jobs. It’s by no means a wrong thought, but should help you gain clarity in your priorities and what is really important to you in the season of life you may be in.

Certainly, 2020 and 2021 gave opportunity for many to experience what could be in a different position. Lots of people had no choice but to find a regular job during the pandemic, even if against what they truly wanted. Lots were also given the opportunity to start a new path in a new business due to being furloughed and having to make ends meet. Both paths can be both challenging and exciting in the same light.

Happiness as a business owner shouldn’t be solely based on the profitability or numbers of your business, but should reflect the impact you are making as a business leader on your community both internally and externally. In 2020, I experienced loss like most in my business and my personal life on very extreme levels. Levels that a lot of people were forced to experience regardless of fairness. Even through the hurt, pain, frustration, anger, confusion, challenges, and heartbreak, there were many moments I was able to learn joy even when it was tough and learn true happiness rather than empty false happiness. If you are able to lay your head down at the end of the day and know that you made an impact through your words or actions in a positive way for one or more people, that is true happiness. If you are able to bring a smile to someone’s face even when it feels impossible, that is true happiness. If you are able to give yourself self care whether thats listening to a favorite song loud in your car with the windows down driving or buying yourself something you’ve been wanting, that is happiness.

The key to true happiness for you individually can be found by putting aside distractions and writing down the things that bring you true happiness. I call it my Joy List. I have written eight to ten free, cheap, and expensive things that bring me happiness and joy and I can pick something from that list daily to bring me happiness. Doing this creates joy and happiness in your role as a business leader.

Do I wonder what it would be like to have a regular job? Sure, who doesn’t, but regardless of you having a regular job or having a small business, you have to maintain your happiness and what that means to you regardless of your working hours.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Hi, I’m Cam! I have been in small business leadership for twelve years and have had multiple different business ventures. I started fresh out of high school with starting a wedding planning company in Phoenix, Arizona while also growing my expertise selling wedding dresses and talking to many brides about what they’re hopes and dreams for their weddings were!

Growing up, my dad told me I would either be a great lawyer or teacher someday. While I am neither of those in the sense of those careers, I do have the opportunity to practice and do similar things. To date, I have had a wedding planning company, event rental company, floral design company, and education for small businesses company. Of course I have ideas of more in my future as some would say I am a serial entrepreneur!

I have the opportunity to pour into my community both internally on my team and externally through our clients and students through my company, Render Collective. We serve event clients through event design with rentals and floral products and impeccable service at the events. We also serve hundreds of students world wide by teaching them how to do the same with their event businesses. Both are a joy to serve! My favorite part of my position is creating a brand and space to have people on my team and people who follow us closely who desire to be on our team.

At one point, I was not a great leader because I didn’t know better. Now, I know better and do better because of the education and training I’ve gone through. I absolutely love pouring into my team and creating a family environment with each person on my growing team. What sets my team and businesses apart from others is the core values we’ve set up and how we actually live each one out daily. We Work Hard and Live Well, We are Better Than Yesterday through always understanding the business and environment, We Choose Joy even when its tough to, We Are Servant Leaders in every way, every single one of us, We Are Community Oriented both internally and externally, and We Plan to Succeed through SOP’s and expectations. Our core values are not just something on our website, they are who we are! I am most proud of every single person on my team!

You can engage with Render Collective through our events brand attending one of our events or having us design your next event. You can also listen to our free podcast, The Render Podcast anywhere you find your podcasts or take one of our courses or templates for your business!

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I had to unlearn how to be a leader. Now that may sound contrary, but I learned leadership in a way that pushed away my team instead of keeping them close and raving fans of the company they worked for. I had taken a course and listened to that same teachers podcast and took their advice on how to lead a team and I applied those practices to how I showed up as a leader. From their words and experience and the longevity of one of their employees, I thought “Well, she clearly has the ability to lead and retain employees, I should do what she does.” After multiple of my own team quit within six months of applying those leadership skills, I knew something had to change. The change was really spurred along due to one of my own team members who is still on my team to this day, by grace and patience.

The leadership tactics that clearly did not work in my company was keeping transparency to a minimum and keeping team member conversation at an arms distance length. Little did I know that this pushed people away, and fast! I went into a meeting with someone on my team that felt like a tough situation, feeling confident it was the other person and not me as the problem. Soon into that conversation I was able to have an open heart and mind to the tough conversation we had. Leaving that meeting, I vowed to that person and my entire team I would do everything I could to become the leader they needed me to be and I needed to be for myself also.

Since then, it has been sweet and such a joy to see how engaged, intentional, and excited my team members are to do what we do and attract a group of raving fan people who someday will join our team as well!

My absolute favorite part of leading my team is in our weekly team meetings where I get to sit back and watch each member of my team recognize core value attributes in other team members and celebrate that by giving a core value to someone else on the team. True engagement is shown each week and throughout the days! I am incredibly proud of every single person on this team!

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

2020 word of the year — PIVOT (read: the way Ross says pivot on Friends!)

We had a pivot already planned for Render that started as an idea in 2019 and became a reality quite a bit quicker than we had originally planned. In 2019 we were fostering the idea of an online course and podcast for the rental and event design industry. We were planning on this launch in 2021 or even 2022, however, when March of 2020 hit, we found ourselves with nothing but time on our hands in a season where normally, we would be inundated with events, inquiries, and sales due to wedding and event season in DFW. It was early April when we started writing the course, recording podcast episodes, and hoping to give the event rental industry specifically hope and knowledge for their own businesses. Little did we know, there were tons of rental businesses in the US and other countries even that wanted to be in our community! We worked hard for months to produce Rental Biz Academy, our signature course teaching how to start and scale your rental business. We have now taught over 550 students around the world through our course and pour into over 400 listeners weekly on our podcast!

Contact Info:

• Website: therender.co
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/therender.co/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rendereventstx
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/beautifuleventrentals/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9xqBZ7DExfAH8itaLCGoGA

Image Credits
Perez Photography N Barrett Photography AR Photography Leisl Claire Photo