I was being interviewed for the Texas Renaissance Festival podcast a couple years ago; and the interviewer asked me

“What is the key to your continued success?”

Without hesitation, I said “I build great teams”.

He was referring to my restaurant business…

But the answer was true for all of the businesses I've owned within the Renfaire industry.

Contracting needs good builders and laborers, hair braiding, and henna both require a team of skilled artisans.

👉🏼When I was Building Coordinator during the development of the Georgia Renaissance Festival’s two year build out of their second Fairburn site; I made sure the office team on the new site was made up of people who knew the industry well.

🗄️This meant we had office managers and receptionists who worked the weeks and months they had available within their existing circuit schedules… assuring continuity of concepts when continuity of employees was impossible.

Consulting, and coaching is no different.

A great team is necessary.

When you reach out to the rhonni.com office it will be either Melinda or myself getting you what you need.
Between us we have over 55 years of Renfaire experience.

⭐️ Melinda brings over 25 years of invaluable industry experience to our team.

As a Road Manager for multiple artists and vendors up and down the East Coast, she’s handled everything from logistics to sales to vendor relations. She’s also an accomplished artist in her own right, successfully selling her work online and at conventions.

Our paths first crossed in 1996, and in 2018 she joined my team, starting as a counter manager at my bakery before working her way up to Executive Assistant. Her deep understanding of both the creative and business sides of festival life makes her an invaluable partner in helping our clients navigate their own Renfaire journeys.

👉🏼 In addition to our rhonni.com responsibilities, we are both members of the core management in our TRF food operations every fall. There we have another 130 people on the team for 3 months. The restaurant management team is bigger than the two of us…

Olivia does operations and HR while Cole is in charge of inventory and ordering for all nine of my restaurants there, and each individual restaurant has a team of managers.

Great teams are made up of great people and leading an exemplary team requires communicating your desires and allowing team members to act in your interests.

🗝️ Mission and Vision statements are key when scaling.

Scaling up to bigger teams for bigger projects means letting go of the reins.

So the key is… Having someone with you whom you trust with those reins; and especially someone you trust to take things off of your own plate if you’ve somehow forgotten that you don’t have to do everything yourself.

Sometimes this is still a work in progress for me.

In an industry where one is judged by their results, it can be easy to fall into micromanagement.

🤝 I trust Melinda to free me up to have the creative space to brainstorm new ideas, new answers, and outside the box concepts. Her extensive experience as a Road Manager means she intrinsically understands both the practical and creative challenges our clients face. If I were pushing every piece of paperwork myself, I would get a lot less done, and I would have less time to help pull good answers and ideas out of my clients.

I don’t want to understate the importance of having someone with deep knowledge of a niche with whom you can brainstorm options and ideas and answers.

I have curated this team carefully. 🌟

But now, you can put faces to some of the names I’ll reference. Whether costumed or not, we are getting shit done. 💪🏼