We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kayla Hayles a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Kayla , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
Carmen Hayles, CEO of C&G Events and Rentals Services started the company through her love of banquet services. She worked at Hilton Hotel in McLean, Virginia in the banquet services for about 7-8 years. After growing a deep love for banquet services, she took a leap of faith and started C&G Events and Rental Services. Since migrating from El Salvador at 18, Carmen always knew she would strive in whatever she felt most passionate about and put her mind to. Starting her business, she focused more on the Indian and South Asian culture wedding. She quick realized that she wanted to expand to servicing to all cultures. She knew of many rental companies, full service caterers, and staffing companies. However, she knew what was missing was a rental and service company. This sets us on a different scale than your average rental and service companies. She knew then as well that partnering up with different caterers and restaurants would only expand the growth of the company and most importantly, our clientele.
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?
Carmen is extremely hard working and ultimately a perfectionist at her craft. Being that people invest all this money and years of planning the biggest days of their live, an extensive attention to detail is very important especially for weddings. We like to assure all our clients that their only job on the day of the special event is to be bride and groom; we take care of the rest. Most of our business has started through word of mouth and since COVID unfortunately took a toll on our business, we were able to come back on top by the grace of our reviews online. Pure testimonials from successful events and any constructive feedback as well has always helped us grow more. We at C&G strive for successful events that make memories last a lifetime. Due to the fact that we are a family business and women owned, we treat all clients as family as well. After all, it’s a blessing itself that they’ve selected us to be apart of their special day.
We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.
C&G actually stands for Carmen & Gricelda. Gricelda Hayles was once married to Carmen’s son, Derick Hayles. Both had very common dreams and goals when it comes to becoming business owners especially as minorities. Their only goal was to come on top, by any means necessary. Carmen dream was always to build an empire and create jobs for not only her family, but family friends as well. Gricelda, unfortunately is no longer with the company as she chose to pursue other dreams. Upon her departure, that is when Carmen’s son, Derick Hayles came in as Chief Operations manager, lead bartender, and part-time warehouse manager. She also brought along, Esau Rivera Campos, Carmen’s nephew. Esau also came to this country searching for a better life and better opportunities for him and his family. Esau comes from a very studious background which then gives him the title of C&G Head accountant, banquet captain, and full time warehouse manager. Carmen’s dream about expanding her business didn’t end there. Her daughter, Kayla Hayles, has a background is professional makeup artistry. Kayla worked at MAC Cosmetics as an Assistant Manager when realizing it was time for her to find another job that would give her a better work/life balance. Presenting the idea of joining the team, working as a full time Sales and Client Interaction Associate, Carmen then let Kayla know how her own business would go hand and hand by joining the C&G team. Now, Carmen is officially complete by having all family members, including her children, working in house and assisting in running a successful business.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
With wedding planning, on many occasions, situations of any type can happen. Especially with having multiple events a day, sometimes even weekends. With 2 events going on, we had a last minute delivery that needed to be made. Unfortunately, not all information including the most important, timing was relayed in time for the warehouse staff to load the truck with tables, chairs and a lot more rentals. Carmen’s great at problem solving and resilience. She then sent 2 people from her event to run to the warehouse, load the truck and make sure to take it to the venue within 2 hours prior to the event time. Knuckling down to the last minute, the client had no idea what was going on behind the scenes. Instead, was extremely thankful for allowing us to make everything happen in the knick of time.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.cngeventrentals.com
- Instagram: @cngeventrentals
Image Credits
Carmen Hayles of C&G Events and Rental Services