Today we’d like to introduce you to Diana Jaques and Mary Kuna.
Diana and Mary, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Mary: I was working at Compaq Computer Corporation and was in a Director-level marketing position at the time. Along with that title came the responsibility for hiring/firing within our department. We were having layoffs every April and October, it seemed, as we were outsourcing more and more of our work to suppliers and contractors. Ultimately, I made the decisions on who would be laid off which in my entire career has been the worst task I’ve ever had to undertake. In fact, I remember receiving a few anonymous messages about how I was, “messing with people’s lives,” and I’d better be careful. My husband and I even had a beefed-up security system put in our home.
In January of 2001, I shared with one of my direct reports that I “wasn’t having fun anymore” and I was thinking of leaving the company. Long story short, one of HIS direct reports was also thinking about leaving at that time. He told her that we should get together and talk about it, so we had a few lunches and decided to go into business together.
I decided to be very open with our Purchasing Department about our plans – that we understood the marketing services business extremely well, that we knew how to perform those services directly, that we knew what we were paying for those outsourced services and that we could provide a better value. Well, I guess that sounded good to our Purchasing representative because we walked away with a Service Agreement to perform those services as a supplier!
Diana: I had a great career at Compaq Computers as the Creative Services Manager. I loved my job and had a great team of creative professionals working for me, but growing up with serial entrepreneur parents it was no surprise that at some point the entrepreneurial bug would hit me. It happened in 2000 and by April of 2001, Mary and I opened Jump2 Group. It also was about the time our children were getting active in school, and I loved the idea of being able to leave to pick them up at school, or take them to an activity without feeling guilty.
We conducted business in my family room. Every day the doorbell rang, Mary would march upstairs, and with a limited and antiquated internet and phone service, we conducted business as if we had been open for years.
Mary: Right. And I told Diana that I was going to take some time to clean out my closets in my house first before starting the business, and she reminded me that we already had some packaging work to get out the door. 16 years later, I’m just getting around to those closets.
Diana: Meetings were held in my dining room, packages were picked up and delivered at the front door. In some strange way it all felt comfortable because we knew how to do this business. And this may sound obnoxious, but people liked working with us. We had a stellar reputation.
I remember we drove to Barnes & Noble and bought the handbook, How to Start a Business in Texas, and pretty much used it as our guide. We hired an attorney and a CPA to keep us honest. By July 2001, we moved into our office with the IKEA furniture we bought and stuffed into Mary’s Suburban. With the help of Mary’s husband, Jerry, who was our first Office Manager, we forced ourselves to learn the accounting software because I remember listening to an interview with Oprah Winfrey in which she said she signs every check for her company because she needs to know where her money was going. That’s a smart lady! To this day, Mary and I know how to handle the account payables, account receivables, how to produce and read our financial reports, and we participated in a Texas sales tax audit without the aid of a CPA. The auditor congratulated us for keeping excellent books.
We always wanted our customers to feel that they could call Mary or me directly to talk about anything. And that they didn’t need to go through an account executive. This is a core value that has served us well throughout the years, and has made us unique.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Mary: Ha-ha, is it ever smooth? No, it hasn’t always been a smooth ride! Diana and I decided to invest a good portion of the money from our personal savings to form Jump2 Group. We didn’t take any salary for a year.
This was the year that 9/11 and Enron happened, too, both of which took a large toll on us since one of our major customers at the time was an events planning company who was greatly affected by both catastrophes. Of course, being new to owning a business, we thought all of this was normal!
An out-of-the-country event scheduled for the week after 9/11 had to be cancelled as all the airports were shut down, and we had already created and delivered all of the creative graphic deliverables to the event venue in Mexico.
Then, this same company was called upon to produce the Enron Holiday Party at Enron Field. As you will recall, Enron went bankrupt on Dec. 2, 2001.
Meanwhile, we were also designing and printing a very large binder of materials for a major corporation in Houston, also a customer of the events company. And, when it came time to get paid for these projects, of course the money wasn’t there.
Luckily, through this entire experience, we learned an important lesson very early in our history, and that was to extend credit to our customers commensurate with the size of Jump2. Thus, the tens of thousands of dollars that we lost from these projects was way too much given our company’s size. We called each and every supplier we worked with on those projects and told them that somehow, we would pay them. It took a while, but we paid them all, and to this day we have strong relationships with each and every one of them. I think we have created a lot of loyalty because of our actions.
There is one other example of a really tough time we had. Another major client of ours was significantly reducing their supplier base, and to compete and win a spot on their final approved vendor list, we had to go through an interview process and pricing auction. During our interview, we were asked what our offshoring strategy was because, obviously, they wanted extremely cheap pricing which was more readily available outside of the U.S. We knew they really wanted us to go offshore, and so I remember taking a deep breath and saying, “We are an American company hiring American workers, and as long as we can be competitive, this will be our strategy.” Then we waited.
We heard later on that the review committee was not too pleased with us, but fortunately our service, the quality of our work, our overall work ethic and our team members were all in high regard. We made it on the approved vendor list!
In spite of all of this, we have been very fortunate to make both the Houston Business Journal Top 50 Fastest Growing Woman-Owned Businesses list and the INC Magazine 5000 Fastest Growing Private Companies list three times each.
Diana: I remember in those early days we made the decision not to take out any loans because we didn’t know what the future held, and we had learned from our parents, who grew up during the Depression, to hunker down, save money, and pay cash for everything. And that’s what we did. If we needed a new computer, or we needed to pay a supplier, Mary and I would not take a paycheck that week. Thank goodness, those days are over! And when I talk to people about what to expect when you start a business, I caution them to be prepared to do without a paycheck for the first year, and if you can’t stomach that then they probably need to keep their day job.
Running a business is not always easy. For example, when it comes to pricing, no one gave us a cheat sheet with pricing standards, instead we had to learn the hard way what the market would bear, the value for the product we produced, and the talent it took to produce that product. We’ve won many bids, but for those we lost, we ask the customer why. It’s fascinating to hear the responses, and humbling at the same time.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with Jump2 Group – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
Mary: Jump2 Group is a Houston-based marketing agency providing branding, content, creative, direct marketing, user experience and technical communications to the technology, energy and healthcare industries.
We bring a fresh slant to our customers’ marketing challenges; we like to call it thinking sideways. We come from both agency and client worlds, so we see things from the customers’ point of view. This unique perspective is driven by literally decades of global marketing and technical communications experience our team brings to the table.
Diana: We are most proud of our diversity, both in our service offering as well as our people. Our broad array of services spans both technical and creative, which is rather unique in the agency business! Also, we are 100% women-owned, and 50% of our employees are minority and/or women. 100% of our people in key creative and strategy roles are minority and/or women, giving us a broad view of the world to offer our clients marketing services for the real world today.
So, what’s next? Any big plans?
Diana: There has never been a more exciting time to be in marketing—EVER! With the rapidly evolving shift in consumer behavior and digital experiences, including virtual reality, the future at Jump2 Group is exhilarating! We are expanding our services even further into the digital realm, to support our clients and their end customers with the right communications in the most effective mediums. With our deep ties to the tech sector, we know just how exciting things can get!
Contact Info:
- Address: 17015 Seven Pines Dr., Bldg #1
Spring, Texas 77379-5350 - Website: www.jump2group.com
- Phone: 832-717-4331
- Email: [email protected]
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