Jenny Junkeer of Intent: Five Things You Need To Know If You Want To Build, Scale and Prepare Your Business For a Lucrative Exit

An Interview With Jason Hartman

Have a purpose and vision that will outlive your tenure — Imagine a car driving in one direction only and not stopping. Now imagine a vehicle changing direction, then changing again, then again. The first one will get to its destination efficiently. Who knows with the second one.

As a part of our series about “Five Things You Need To Know If You Want To Build, Scale and Prepare Your Business For a Lucrative Exit, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jenny Junkeer.

With scientifically crafted and intelligently curated business growth and optimisation protocols, Jenny Junkeer has emerged as the world’s scaling agent. Beyond offering solutions to business leaders’ most pressing pain points, she is a global public figure known for elevating companies to new lucrative heights made of winning processes and legacy.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

First, math was always my strong suit, so accounting was the logical career pathway.

If you look hard enough, numbers tell a story about people. My primary accounting role was helping clients finalise their historical accounting figures. Yet, repeatedly, these numbers revealed problems they previously had that I could have solved. This means that it was too late by the time I worked out what the story was. After six years of that, I got tired of being in a position where I couldn’t help people in the way they needed.

Time and time again, I saw unnecessary waste and dysfunction, even in companies making lots of money.

I became increasingly upset at the resulting opportunity cost of these dysfunctional businesses to society: stressed-out people, negative impacts on people’s lives, poor decisions, ineffective consultants, and missed opportunities. The list goes on.

I knew there had to be a better way to do business, which made me follow this specific career path.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

I needed to create a document to help source a technology supplier for a new client. The report was long and plain: a Word document with a standard white background and black text. I wanted to make more of an impression, so I added titles and section breaks and other embellishments in different colours. It was beautiful. My client all but laughed in my face. He was expecting a typical corporate document but instead got a Crayola box. The content was superb. They had nothing to say about that.

But, as I discovered, humans eat with their eyes. In my embarrassment, I learned the hard way that everything we do to present ourselves — our personality, attire, character, office, and, yes, documents — is critical to success. You can be sure I now pay special attention to the appropriate styling of documents.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” This Norman Vincent Peale quote perfectly describes how I’ve led my life. First of all, I come from humble beginnings, and our family didn’t have a lot, but we were comfortable.

We were okay, but I always felt there was more to life than that, as well as the typical nine-to-five career path we were all supposed to take. I wanted to see what was possible and how far I could go with it.

I distinctly remember Year nine, when (in my era) computers were new for schools. My parents couldn’t afford one, so I secured a part-time job to get one myself.

Of course, it was hard watching my friends spend their spare money on retail shopping or going out. However, even back then, I knew that I was shooting for the moon and that I needed all the help I could get. That computer was the first step!

Ever since then, it’s been full throttle and living life to the fullest.

Okay super. Thank you for all of that. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. Can you tell us a story about how you were able to build a business from scratch, scale and sell it to a bigger firm?

Around eight years ago, two ambitious young men approached me with an idea: sell a mattress in a box. They were super green. I supported many start-ups before, including my own, so I was happy to help them give it a go.

From scratch, I helped them create their business structure, systems, processes, and hiring and strategised their growth and scalability. Not long after, the business grew spectacularly and scaled enough to require an entire management team, complete corporate structure, and a Board of Directors.

What started as a flash in the pan is now worth $300M, though for now, they are choosing not to sell. I couldn’t be prouder of their journey from start-up to scale.

Based on your experience, can you share with our readers the “Five Things You Need To Know If You Want To Build, Scale and Prepare Your Business For a Lucrative Exit”. Please give a story or example for each.

1. Have a purpose and vision that will outlive your tenure

Imagine a car driving in one direction only and not stopping. Now imagine a vehicle changing direction, then changing again, then again. The first one will get to its destination efficiently. Who knows with the second one.

Likewise, though new CEOs have great intentions for a business, they often change direction, and when they do, the company’s progress towards the original destination disappears, and it’s anyone’s guess what happens next.

Bottom line: too many shifts in strategic direction are the enemy of scale. The ideal outcome is long-term thinking executed in short strategic bursts to expedite scale.

You can hit the gas and pump the brakes, and everything in between, so long as you stay the course. A potential investor is more likely to purchase a business with a singular vision and confident focus.

2. Optimise your business so that delivery can run on autopilot

When scaling, most people think about sales, marketing, and branding. While these are important, they shouldn’t be your only focus. Can you deliver at scale? If not, those other things don’t matter.

Operating at scale requires strategy, automation, governance, and innovation. Optimisation requires simplicity, the right leader, and the right people using the correct information within an ideal culture.

A business that is not optimised for scale will crash and burn with high sales volumes. The small cracks ignored now become much larger cracks when sales grow. Do everything you can to prepare for that moment of scale. Fix the small cracks first, as investors pay more for an optimised, scalable business.

3. Place your customer at the centre of everything you do

If your customer is not at the centre of your business, it’s not ready to scale. If there’s a disconnect between your product and the customer right now, as you grow, the disconnection will also develop, and the problem gets trickier to solve.

Picture the famous business life-cycle bell curve, which inclines up and then down. The downward curve represents the disconnection that manifests as a business matures.

The root cause of this declining trend is the business losing touch with its customers. This upward curve needs to continually incline if you are trying to scale. How? Through customer centricity combined with innovation.

4. It pays to have lots and lots of business lovers if you want to scale

Lovers. Not friends. This is how close your network needs to be. That network requires partnerships, joint ventures, advocates, and excellent relationships with suppliers and customers. Make your relationships with people a key business strength.

Consider the great partnerships that exist between companies already at a massive scale, such as Spotify and Starbucks, Apple and Hermes, and Ford and Hearst. They leveraged networks first to get to scale and then to expand their network through collaborations.

5. Be on the lookout for things and people who can influence your business

To be sure, social media stars proved the power of influence. Yet insiders know influence has always been significant for scale. We know there are two dimensions of influence: people that influence (e.g., Advisory Board, Government), and things that influence (e.g., Covid, Great Depression, Disruption).

When scaling, it’s wise to watch out for both people and things. This is a huge blind spot for business. You need to be aware of what influences might negatively affect your business and opportunities to be aggressively seized.

Look no further than Blockbuster, Kodak, and Borders for cautionary tales. There were new influences on the horizon, and they did not respond. On the flipside, countless millionaires have been forged in challenging times (e.g. depressions, pandemics) because they chose to lean in and react to what was happening.

Board Members often scratch their heads about emerging technology and innovation. How positive or negative is their influence over the business? When and how is it measured? Take Apple, for instance, who were very aware of the power of influence and persuasion. They did the unthinkable and kicked out the founder, Steve Jobs, because of his negative effect on their business. The rest is history.

Make it a mission to search for and evaluate all influences that can impact your ability to scale and respond.

In your experience, is there a difference in approach for building a service-based business versus a product-based business when you have the intent to eventually sell the business. Can you explain?

Common practice is to treat product-based businesses and service-based businesses differently.

This is a huge mistake. Both provide a customer with something they need.

The product-based business physically addresses this need with objects. A service-based business addresses this with other humans.

When trying to sell their business, product-based businesses often try to boost sales, which is an error in my view. Showing higher volumes may appear attractive for a novice investor. However, a savvy investor knows when a company is ‘peacocking’. Instead, they look for product-to-market fit and evidence to demonstrate the likelihood of future sales.

Past performance is great, but it does not represent the future.

For a product-based business, focus on the customer. Ensure products always align to their needs (current and anticipated). One assumes that the company is very close to the customer with a service-based business. Unfortunately, because of the repetition of human-to-human interactions, these interactions devolve into impersonal transactions. Ironically, such companies drift away from the customers’ needs.

Same advice across the board: tighten up your relationship with your customers. Become irresistible to them before any exit you consider.

How does one go about the process of finding a buyer?

Finding an investor is easy. There’s no shortage of them on the prowl looking to buy a good business. Getting the price you want is a different story. Here’s what I would do:

a) Seek out private equity and venture capital firms with a history of buying strong stock to groom it for an exit. These firms can be found through your private networks, word of mouth, or even by googling. The price is always negotiable. If your business doesn’t stack up, they’ll scoot to the next deal.

b) Build yourself up to an IPO and dispose of some (or all) of your shares to the public. But think of this process as an endurance sport, with seemingly endless paperwork and legal fees. The payoff, though, is achieving the most accurate price.

c) A strategic play: approach your competitor or a company that would benefit from having you under their group. Plant the seed and have private negotiations. Maybe your business addresses a part of the customer journey their business cannot? This exit could take the form of an acquisition of your stock or a merger where you dispose of part of your interest in the company. Because this strategy requires knowing the right people, these deals are somewhat harder to come by.

There are other ways to find buyers, though there are too many to list here. In all cases, though, optimising business scalability is always essential for maximising the sale price.

Nobody wants to buy a business that needs babysitting. As prospective buyers wish to have ownership without effort, a mature company will always sell for more.

How can one decide if it is better to build a business in order to exit, or if it is better to stick around for the long term and let the company bring in residual income, or if it is better to go public?

Business owners and founders take on many risks. In addition to the entrepreneurial risks, there’s the sacrifice of sleepless nights, mortgaging their home, isolation, stress, and missing critical personal moments.

It’s not something anyone should do for a small paycheck. The sacrifices have to mean something indeed. So, you should always build yourself a business worthy of a high exit price, even if you have no intention of exiting. Otherwise, all you are making is a 24/7 job that pays okay.

Choices increase based on how well you’ve built the business.

If you’ve optimised it for scale, you probably aren’t in there every day working. That means it’s making money for you while you are enjoying whatever it is you enjoy doing.

That’s the sweet spot where you start paying yourself handsome dividends.

The residual income is fantastic on its own. But it also gives you the freedom to sell to investors who value good dividend streams. You could even support an IPO by management. Sticking around for the long term is a personal choice based on a solid investment strategy. Selling prematurely is something you should only do out of necessity or if you want to move on.

Can you share a few ways that are used to determine a good selling price for the business?

One easy method is Multiple of EBITDA or Revenue. To do this, multiply your average earnings/turnover by the industry-specific multiple most commonly used.

A second method is to add up the net value of your business assets, which looks at the overall health of the balance sheet to obtain a fair selling price. A third is to calculate the net present value of future income streams, such as dividends.

No matter which method is used, we know that buying and selling anything at market value is ultimately determined by what a buyer is willing to pay and what a vendor is ready to sell it for. So, this means a “good” price is subjective and always in the eye of the beholder in private negotiations.

In my view, attracting a reasonable selling price means ensuring your business runs so effectively that your business always stacks up no matter which valuation method the buyer attempts to use.

It becomes less about the price calculation and more about the risk, sacrifice, and effort you put into the business to make how amazing it is today and how it’ll undoubtedly be in the future.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

I’d encourage people to change the world through business. In addition to my day job, I’m involved in a social enterprise trying to do precisely that.

Through better business practices, I firmly believe that everyday business people can make small shifts in the world.

For example, I stand for better business practices. They can help eliminate wastage, inefficiencies, redundancies, and poor management, freeing up additional profit that can be distributed back into their people or their community.

They help small business owners live a more balanced life and see more of their family and friends. Instead of being mired in constant battles for power or funds, they help Governments and Non-Profits actualise their missions and purposes. They help innovation by giving start-ups a chance of surviving long enough to solve a critical need or problem in the world.

With imagination and consistency, these small shifts start to compound in exciting and profound ways that benefit us all.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

I welcome new connections and nourish my network on LinkedIn with intel and content specifically around business optimization and scaling.

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.