Jill has never worried about working so closely with her husband day to day, she says. “This is our life and it’s all-consuming,” she says. “We’re responsible not only for our family, but also for our employees and their families too.”
“We both come from families that have their own businesses,” says John Renninger, who serves as principal of IMS. “You have to trust in each other and respect each other a great deal to make it work and to be successful at it. This is a tough business and in the early years, we relied on each other to get through it together,” he says.
Jill notes they each have individual strengths that have allowed them to find “a nice balance.” It helps that they “have 100 percent trust,” says John. “She’ll tell me when I’m right — and when I’m wrong,” he says.
In Exclusive Company
Success certainly is in the eye of the beholder, but having almost 20 years under their belts with Jill as president and John as principal is one sure way to measure that for IMS. So, too, is the fact the company has been one of the few systems integrators to land on the Inc. 5000 for each of the past two years.
“Obviously, it’s a benefit for us to be on that list, especially two years running,” says John. “Our focus isn’t necessarily getting on that that list, though. We try to focus on doing the right things with our growth that got us on that list in the first place.
“It all comes down to the people. We’ve focused on choosing people who are going to be excellent employees. We truly believe one excellent employee is worth five to 10 average employees,” he says.
So, what exactly is an “excellent employee” in the eyes of John and Jill Renninger? It’s not necessarily someone who graduated from college in three years and has made a name for themselves in the industry by climbing from company to company and job to job.
“We look for people who’ve achieved a high level of success in some status of their lives, someone who’s gone above and beyond, whether that’s as an Eagle Scout or Girl Scout, captain of a varsity sports team, any sort of leadership position like that,” says John. “We look for people who have a passion for what we do and we invest a great deal in them. I think we have something here that people want and we allow them to make a good living for themselves.”
Before John and Jill started Integrated Marketing Services (which was later shortened to IMS by customers and staff), John had worked in sales and marketing for a Fortune 500 company while Jill was raising the couple’s three children.
John’s experience and life on the road helped to plant a seed and look for a solution to a problem he encountered often.
“I had to conduct technology seminars and national account presentations,” says John. “The presentation equipment that I rented failed more often than it worked. IMS was started to fill a void in the market by renting high-quality projection technology to local hotels, meeting venues and professionals on a short-term basis.
Later, IMS evolved into a local event staging company (IMS Audio Visual) as the cost and size of projectors was reduced and clients started embracing BYOD in meeting venues. In the 2001 timeframe, a few of the company’s larger clients asked John and Jill to help them with various systems integration projects.
“We had the expertise in-house, saw the opportunity and developed a new business unit dedicated to systems integration,” says John. Today, IMS caters to Forbes 2000 clients and higher education institutions with international event staging services and national systems integration for clients in the Northeast corridor of the U.S.
