I've Been Building Since Before I Knew the Word.
I grew up inside my family's business, Makeeff Photography. Both of my parents are award-winning photographers. Everything I know about building started in their studio.
We Didn't Have Investors. We Had Grit.
When I was in grade school, busy season meant sleeping bags at the studio.
My parents worked until two in the morning. Then they scooped us up, carried us home, and tucked us into bed. A few hours later we were up for school. The next night, we did it all again.
No investors. No safety net. Just two people who wouldn't quit.
It took me years to understand the other lesson in that studio. The work was among the best in the business. My dad didn't charge what it was worth. Without that margin, the business could never pay for the people and systems it needed to run without him.
That was my first lesson in business. A company can't grow past its owner if the price doesn't pay for it.
Every Room I've Worked Had No Room for Error.
Presidential advance has one rule. The day goes right, in front of the world, no matter what.
Every advance person knows the saying. You're only as good as your last trip.
I've done lead, trip, and press advance, communications, and operations on White House, DHS, and HHS engagements across four administrations, for both parties.
You walk every room before anyone arrives. You plan for every way it can go wrong. You build backups for the backups.
I built the "Let's Get to Work" jobs tour and handed it off as a template others ran without me. That's still how I build. I helped produce a Diane Sawyer interview that opened the evening news. And I've been in the room on the days disaster hit, when the calls were being made in the air.
Complex Is Easy. Simple Is the Job.
I first worked with a global media and internet company through a partner firm. Our team handled their global launch in Argentina, a one-night-only event at Buenos Aires' Teatro Colón. That launch started the conversation about joining them. They asked for a while before I said yes.
Inside, I was the liaison between the company's president and the presidents of its 12 divisions. My job was to take complex technology and make it simple for everyone else.
I still do that today, with AI.
Inside a Fortune 500 financial institution, I helped grow a $40 million division on the real estate side. I've launched and built businesses across the U.S., Central and South America, Africa, and Europe.
Then I Built My Own. And Tested It Harder Than I Ever Planned To.
I started a service company with about $3,000 in paid ads. Then I made my dad's mistake.
To win, I priced low. It worked until it didn't. I was working sixteen-hour days, exhausted, stuck in a cycle that couldn't scale at those rates. Watch any founder on Shark Tank get grilled on margins. That was me.
I took my business coaching calls in the car, driving to clients' homes. I didn't have time to sit down. On one of those drives, my coach asked me: "Who and what do you want this business to be? Define it. Then we'll reverse engineer it and make it possible."
I cried. Then I called my core clients and told them I was raising my rates, and why. Every one of them stayed.
I never looked back.
Next, I made the service worth the new price. I defined every piece of an above-and-beyond customer experience. What it looked like, what it felt like, and what a client should never have to ask for. Our goal was to become the Four Seasons of our industry.
A membership model made the revenue predictable. Regular clients got member rates. Short-term clients paid premium rates. That predictability stabilized the team, paid for company vehicles, and let us rotate holiday time off.
Referrals did the rest. More than half of each month's new business came from referrals and repeat clients, and we rewarded both.
Then the press came. Washingtonian wrote about us and named us among the best, more than once. Martha Stewart Living featured the company. We never paid for a single story. Earned media did what ads never could.
We built giving back in from the start. Ten percent of everything we did went to pets in need right in our own community, working hand in hand with local rescues like the Humane Rescue Alliance in Washington, D.C. Our team and our clients could see the difference. People want to be part of something like that, and they bring their friends.
Companies that give back grow faster. Ours did. We grew past 20 people and seven-plus figures in revenue.
Then the pandemic hit. Pet businesses around us closed. Ours came back stronger, with a bigger client base, more members, and tighter routes. The systems were built before we needed them.
I was on the ground for the build and the scale. In the final two years, my health took me more than a thousand miles away, and I ran it from there. It had to run without me. It did.
Because it ran without me, I had a choice. I chose my health.
A company that runs without its founder is a company someone else can buy. I sold mine. The core team is still there.
What I Build Now.
I work inside service businesses. The skilled trades, law and professional services, medical practices, real estate, pet care, and any company that sells service. I also work with executives whose departments and teams still route through them.
I'm dyslexic. I didn't find out until college, and by then I'd already learned to work differently. I see where a business needs to end up first. Then I work backward to every step it takes to get there.
That's how I'll look at your business.
I build the hiring pipelines, memberships, referral engines, giving-back programs, and AI systems that let a company run, grow, and hold its value without its founder. Judgment first. Technology second. A person in charge of every decision that matters.
For an HVAC company in South Florida, giving back can mean air conditioning for elderly neighbors on fixed incomes who can't go a summer without it. Right in the neighborhoods the trucks already drive.
I write The Jenn Files, on business, money, resilience, and grit. My base is South Florida. My work goes wherever the business is.
Same Lesson. Someone Else's Business.
A firm whose clients felt nickel-and-dimed.
We moved the firm to monthly billing that felt like a relationship, not a meter. The attorneys learned to tell clients exactly when they'd hear from them next. AI came in only where it fit.
The result
The firm raised its rates and grew its client base at the same time. Better service didn't just keep clients. It commanded a premium and brought more in.
Jennifer is the real deal. I can't believe how much our business has transformed. She drilled down to exactly what was broken, and our business is running smoother than it ever has. I can actually breathe now.
Let's Find What's Capping Your Growth.
A direct conversation about where your business is stuck, and whether I'm the right person to help you build past it. No pitch deck. No pressure.