Being an effective leader and giving your employees trust and freedom is essential when running a small to medium business. By doing so, you can create an environment that fosters growth, innovation, collaboration, and employee satisfaction, which can ultimately drive the success of your business. On today’s The Small Business Show, we’re joined by Thomas Serrano, Founder of Exclamation Group, to tell us more about his entrepreneurial and leadership skills.
After obtaining his business degree from a business school in France, he claimed he was always passionate about live events and enhancing existing corporation events. Once he moved to New York City in 2008, he launched his first business amidst the financial crisis, and then he founded Exclamation Group in January 2020, right before the world shut down. Exclamation Group designs and produces meaningful and memorable events primarily for large corporations and luxury brands.
Team Building
When launching any business, Serrano says, “Developing a team is imperative to share a common vision.” He also emphasizes that the level of engagement comes from producing the events because they’re highly time-consuming. Furthermore, presenting a clear roadmap of what you, as the owner, want to see your staff achieve and explaining why they’re doing that event is often how they’re so successful.
“A crucial component of the business is treating everyone equally.” In other words, whether you’re working with employees or freelancers, you should treat them equally. According to Serrano, “We normally take on events that mitigate a lot of stress for owners, so I must take care of my team so they can produce exceptional events, but that means I can’t micromanage them.”
On the other hand, when retraining quality people, it can be difficult. “They must trust your leadership,” says Serrano, “which means it’s not always about the money, but treating them fairly and giving them the responsibility to deliver their full potential.” Some of the people you meet when trying to hire will lack passion. Or in other words, currently, people are taking jobs and leaving them for higher-paying opportunities regardless of whether they like the business.
Ultimately, the level of life is continuously increasing. Therefore, you must do everything in your power to benefit your staff so they can perform more effectively. “We need pleasure,” adds Serrano. You could have someone on your team who might not be as innovative as the others, but they might have the best personality. In this case, you want to keep them on board and give them extra support since if they have a negative attitude, they won’t prosper.