We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Katie Hinderer a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Katie, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you tell us about an important lesson you learned while working at a prior job?

I’ve had a lot of bad or not-so-great bosses over the years as I tried to find my lane. At the time they all felt really overwhelming and frustrating, but now I see them as a gift that has allowed me to become the kind of boss I would like for my employees.
At one point I was working 60+ hours a week for a start-up company. Everyone was working crazy hours and the place was intense. I was giving it my all, but the boss fired me for not working as much as the others were working. Mind you, my employment contract was for 40 hours a week. I was already working well beyond the hours that I was supposed to work, but compared to the others who were working late into the night and over their weekends, I was seen as the weakest link. Now, as a boss I am super vested in ensuring my employees have enough work to fill their time and yet not so much work that they are going beyond 40 hours a week. To ensure that’s the case, a couple of times a year I have all of my employees do an audit of the hours they spend working and then we discuss it together to see what changes need to take place.
Another time, I had a boss who told me she didn’t trust my opinion over the opinion of her friend (who didn’t work for the company, nor work in my field). That shocked me. I had been hired to be the marketing director and when I pointed out that something I was being asked to do was not legit, I was told to do it anyway because the friend had said it was the way to go. I left the company soon after that because my professional expertise clearly was not valued. Now, as a boss, I try to give all my employees the benefit of the doubt, letting them lead as much as possible. I want them to share their knowledge and expertise with me and am eager to learn when they have a suggestion that could help the company or better serve our clients.

Katie, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m a social media strategist and the founder of Rosebud Social, a social media marketing agency for mission-minded brands. I began the company as my pandemic project in 2020, and have just brought on my 4th full-time employee, with an additional 3 part-time employees on the payroll!
While this has been my life for the last 5 years, the path to get me here was anything but straight. I majored in Journalism at Marquette University and initially planned to be a foreign correspondent. After graduation, I moved to New York and started working there – first at the New York Times and then later at a couple of different commercial real estate publications. Eventually, I moved back to the Midwest while working as a freelance writer and starting a fashion blog. Over the next 10+ years, I worked in a number of different industries, trying my hand at retail, teaching, marketing, and personal styling while all the while growing my blog and eventually becoming a social media influencer.
After several years as a full-time influencer I stepped back and asked myself if I wanted to be doing this still in my 40s, 5os and 60s. When I realized the answer was no, I decided to take the social media and communication skills I had learned and start my own social media marketing agency.
2020 was a struggle as I tried to get the business going. I almost called it quits after a failed launch in November of 2020, but luckily a friend suggested I stick it out another couple of months and give it my all. In April of 2021 I finally signed my first big client, which gave me the impetus I needed to re-define my niche from female soloprenuers, to mission-minded business and Catholic brands. From that first client followed a second and then a third. By the start of 2022, I was overwhelmed with the amount of work on my plate, so I brought on my first full-time employee that summer. The following year we grew by two more, and then this year we have expanded yet again to 4 full-time employees and 3 part-time contractors!

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

When I get asked this question, in some ways I think I’ve been very luckily in how we have been able to grow our client roster, and yet at the same time I know it wasn’t luck at all!

For Rosebud Social, the most effective strategy we have for growing the social media marketing agency is through word of mouth. My very first client, who we still work with today, came thanks to the connection of a friend who put in a good word for me as I was sending my pitch email. The second, third, and fourth clients all came that way. In fact, if I did the math I think about 90% of our clients have come through word-of-mouth referrals.

Honestly, growing a client base this way, I think, is the easiest and most effective way. WHY? Because your current clients or people who know you well, are the best salespersons you can have on your team. They run into someone who needs your services, share the information about the company, and already more than half of the work is done for you.

But for that to happen, as a business owner you need to do a couple things. One: You need to over-deliver for your current clients. You want to make sure the people you serve have nothing but good things to say about the product/service you deliver. Two: You need to provide value to people who aren’t even your client. This might be done through social media, a newsletter, a podcast, a blog post, or even someone sliding into your DMs with a quick question. I give away a lot of little bits of information for free, so in turn people who have never hired me for their business have been able to convince friends to hire me.

Any advice for managing a team?

I try to live by a mantra I read in the book Extreme Ownership: No Bad Teams, Just Bad Leaders.

So, when an employee of mine seems off or doesn’t complete a task or didn’t deliver what I asked for – instead of becoming upset and quickly jumping down their throat to find out what happened and why they messed up, I take a step back and ask myself a few questions:
– Am I caring for my people in a way that allows them to do their job well?
– Was I super clear in what I asked them to do or was there room for misunderstanding?
– Am I leading by example?

Often when I pause to ask myself these questions I find that I messed up in one way or another. Maybe I was vague in my request. Maybe I was asking too much for what they currently had on their plate. Maybe I haven’t been setting an example of the kind of content and work ethic I expect from my team. If that’s the case, I address that first before talking with the team.

I also try to be very transparent with my team about my own shortcomings. For instance, I am super task oriented which means at times I will message them or speak in a way that comes across as mad or curt. I’m usually neither of those, I’m just trying to knock another thing off my to-do list as efficiently as possible. My team knows this about me and I remind them several times a year just so that no one is hurt if I forget to put a greeting on my morning email.

Lastly, one thing that has really helped our team is for all of us to have taken the enneagram test. Knowing my own strengths and weaknesses from that, but also knowing those of my employees has helped me be a better listener and communicator. I’m able to understand the different ways people show they are overwhelmed, stressed, etc.. and am able to address them before things get out of control. Each year on our company retreat, we discuss the enneagram and some aspect of our team dynamic as a way for all of us to understand one another better.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.rosebudsocial.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rosebudsocial/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katie-hinderer-a068873/

Image Credits

Maggie Eckburg, Everything is Grace Photography