Rick Dennen answers his
own phone, types his own
letters and sets his own calendar — and he expects his
employees to do the same.
“Everybody in the company is
involved in the leadership,” says
the co-owner, founder, president
and CEO of Oak Street Funding.
“Everybody in this company
contributes to the bottom line of
this business.”
Declining to hire administrative
staff is one way that Dennen,
who founded the company in
2003, keeps overhead at a minimum at the commercial finance
company serving the insurance
industry. Today, the business
has 36 employees and posted
2007 revenue of $15 million.
Smart Business spoke with
Dennen about how he hires his
staff members and fosters their
leadership skills.
Q. What is the key to growing a successful company?
The key is hiring good, ethical,
talented people and giving them
all the resources that they need.
That includes technology and
proper training to accomplish
their job in the best way they can.
Q. How do you find the best
people?
Our most successful employees have come from referrals —
from other employees and from
colleagues. If they’re good, we’ll
find a place for them.
If you could find somebody
through your own referral network, they seem to have a higher
success rate. People can put a lot
of different things on resumes,
and it’s tough to validate that.
We try to have many people
interviewing candidates. I try to at least walk in and introduce
myself, if I know a candidate is
in, and be a part of all that.
Q. How does having other
employees interview candidates help you find the best
people?
It’s important so they get a different perspective. I don’t want
them hearing just my perspective on the culture. I might be a
little bit biased, being the
founder. I want other people’s
perspective and honest feedback on what the job
entails and what the dayto-day is like.
We undersell versus
oversell. I don’t candy-coat what their job is
going to be or how hard
it’s going to be. I take the
opposite approach; I tell
them that it’s going to be
more difficult so when
they come in, they’re
happy. If a company over-sells, they immediately
have a dissatisfied
employee.