"The decision to take the risk, rather than sit tight and ride the wave, really provided us with a catalyst for growth."
Meet Jake Munday – an experienced, commercially astute, and vision-driven professional, showcasing 10+years of sales and business development and entrepreneurial growth in renowned and reputed retail businesses. His proven track record in taking ideas and turning them into successful multi-million-dollar global businesses, demonstrates his natural aptitude in pinpointing and cultivating key business development opportunities.
With famous and well-known clients such as Paris Hilton, Elon Musk, The Australian Open, The Grammys, to name but a few, he is widely regarded for his propensity in spearheading effective business development strategies, as well as finance, operations and logistics and has paved a history of influence and impact.
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Table of Contents
Thank you for joining us, please introduce yourself to our readers.
Jake Munday: My name is Jake Munday, co-founder of Custom Neon. an Australian-based retailer, manufacturer and designer of custom LED neon signage. Having been in business since 2018, Custom Neon has gone from strength to strength in a few short years, with our global operations now spanning multiple continents and our workforce nearing 50 people.
Unlike more traditional entrepreneurs, I haven’t come from an MBA background. Instead, the entrepreneurial drive inside of me was born from watching and being inspired by my father and uncle – both accomplished business owners in their own right. My first venture, inspired by my love for dogs, was started when I was 24 years old. I took a small dog-focused Facebook group, Dog Lover International, and grew it to over 4 million likes in under 2 years, earning around $40,000 a month through affiliate sales of dog products and advertising revenue.
In 2014, I was approached by US investors to sell the page, something which enabled me to expand my business portfolio and explore other niches. These subsequent ventures included; Swing Boss, a golf training aid, Social Fuel & Social Fuel USA, a social media training business, Magic Hand Car Wash, Marquee Group Golf Buggies, the Bronx Pressed Juice Bar, and Pearly Whites, a company that sells in-home teeth whitening kits. The success of these businesses and my standing in the local business community earned me a Young Entrepreneur award at the Geelong Business Awards. I eventually settled on Custom Neon as my main focus, as the rapid growth of the business began to take up the vast majority of my time.
What is the most interesting thing that has happened to you at your company since you started working there?
Jake Munday: Having entered the market in 2018, we were quickly met with upheaval when the COVID-19 pandemic hit just 18 months later. In the early stages of the pandemic, signage for weddings and events were making up the majority of our sales, something which government lockdowns changed virtually overnight. Refusing to let this put our business and employees in jeopardy, we switched focus. Closed down the hire arm of the business, redistributed staff and heavily leaned into a B2B approach, refocusing our marketing and website, ramping up advertising spend, hosting giveaways for struggling business, and heavily discounting signage in our local community. This approach helped us quickly grow our number of business clients and really showcased our product on a larger scale, whilst also strengthening our local roots. We were quickly able to leverage ourselves as quality business signage suppliers, something which really provided a catalyst for growth.
Now, we’ve secured big name customers like Elon Musk and Paris Hilton, whilst also making signs for monumental events like the 2022 Australian Open, the Olympics and the Grammys.
No one can achieve success without some help. Who helped you become successful? Can you share a story about that person?
Jake Munday: I would have to say my dad and uncle, who always instilled self belief in me. Both men are very entrepreneurial and ran their own successful businesses, providing me with a solid blueprint for success and showing me the hard work that was required to start a solid business endeavour. I didn’t flourish at school, but rather than let these failings define my future, my family provided the catalyst for me to succeed. I knew that my brain was wired differently and, although I wasn’t book smart, I had a natural aptitude for business. I became a sponge as soon as I could enter the working world, taking in all the information that I possibly could whilst also identifying areas to streamline processes. I quickly realised I wanted to follow in the footsteps of the influential men in my life and become my own boss!
I’m also heavily indebted to my wife, Jess, who co-founder Custom Neon alongside me. From the very first idea, to the excited conversations that followed and the long nights building it all from the ground up, Jess has been alongside me for every step of the way. I have started and ran several successful businesses, but working alongside Jess has made this journey by far the most fulfilling. We have opposite skill sets and, at times, very differing ideas on how things should be done. Whilst I am typically focused on logistics, streamlining procedures and capitalising on sales opportunities, Jess is more of a harmonious integrator that binds the team together to cultivate trust, cohesion, pride, and enthusiasm within our team.
Can you tell our readers how your company is different in your industry? Give us examples to illustrate those differences.
Jake Munday: The main thing that sets us apart from others in our industry is the quality of our products, innovative custom-design tool, and world-class customer service team. When we first entered the market, a lot of neon sign providers were offering the same designs, something that we knew we would have to avoid if we wanted to stand out in the space.
A lot of time and hard work went into the creation of our custom design tool, a browser based offering that allows users to select the text, font, size, and colour of their neon sign. We also offer a free design service that allows businesses and retail consumers to upload their own image to receive a free neon mockup. Our teams in Geelong, Los Angeles and London personally review these uploads and translate them into neon, with correct sizing and accurate pricing.
Adapt or die is a necessity when navigating challenging times. Tell us how your industry is changing since the pandemic started.
Jake Munday: When the pandemic initially hit, our industry was heavily geared towards providing signage for weddings, birthdays, and other events. Custom Neon, originally Neon Collective, had started off predominantly hiring out wedding signs, so it was only natural that we gravitated heavily towards that industry. After the onset of COVID-19, we immediately lost more than 30% of our business. Weddings and events were cancelled indefinitely, so we had to be proactive in our approach in order to mitigate further losses. Whilst many businesses axed their marketing spend, we ramped ours up. We massively increased our ad spend and refocused our SEO endeavours, optimising our site with well-researched keywords, so that we could generate rankings for business and corporate signage. We also expanded our team which gave us more feet on the ground to reach out to local businesses, offering discount signage so we could grow our portfolio and stop ourselves from being pigeonholed as the business that purely provided signage for events. This was all a massive risk, a risk that paid off when we saw a 50% increase in profits from 2020 to 2021.
Many businesses decided to tighten the purse strings (especially marketing budgets) during this time of crisis, something which provided us with the opportunity to capitalise, pivot the business, and establish ourselves as market leaders in business and corporate signage. The decision to take the risk, rather than sit tight and ride the wave, really provided us with a catalyst for growth. A lot of competitors have entered the space in the time that we’ve been in business, something which has really lit a competitive fire in the industry and ultimately served to improve consumer conditions across the board.
Many readers wonder what are the biggest challenges you had to overcome in 2021 to remain successful?
Jake Munday: The biggest challenge in 2021 was managing the disruptions caused by the pandemic, particularly in relation to the overall synergy of our global operations. Juggling hybrid working schedules and constantly changing mandates made it very difficult to ensure there was no breakdown on customer service, product integrity or order fulfilment. The continued uncertainty of the pandemic also challenged our internal communications, necessitating new processes to make sure that messages weren’t getting mixed between colleagues.
How did you overcome these obstacles? What helped you the most during these difficult times?
Jake Munday: As more team members were forced to adopt remote working, we identified key pain points which we quickly addressed. It was abundantly clear that there were too many long and drawn out lines of communication, something which was ultimately leading to a lack of cohesion. We worked hard to simplify processes to let employees effectively work simultaneously and asynchronously, allowing them to communicate better across various branches of the business whilst also working in the way they best saw fit without losing track of their role in the wider scale of operations. This involved adopting project management tools such as Basecamp, as well as a renewed focus on data sharing platforms like Dropbox, Google Docs and Canva.
We also found that it wasn’t enough to simply provide the tools for employees to successfully interact in a hybrid setting, we also needed to provide ample opportunities to keep teams connected. This need was met through the integration of fun virtual team building activities, such as online painting tutorials, create your own neon sign sessions, virtual bingo nights, musical quizzes, coffee catch ups, and Friday Happy Hour drinks. We strived to create encounters that promoted networking, positive mental health and overall camaraderie. This human-centred approach provided the social cohesiveness that’s critical for success in hybrid or remote working environments and our productivity markedly increased as a result.
Share some lessons you learned while adapting your business practices during the past couple of years.
Jake Munday: One of the lessons learned was that challenges create change and that change is often the necessary catalyst for growth.
Without the pandemic, I think it’s realistic to say that we could potentially still be focusing a large portion of our attention on weddings and events, with many of the most lucrative business sector opportunities falling by the wayside. The adoption of performance tracking and project management tools really highlighted inefficiencies in our procedures and processes. Just because something is working well, doesn’t mean it couldn’t be working better. The pandemic really taught us the value of revisiting, reviewing and revitalising in order to retain that upward trajectory.
What advice did you wish you had received before the pandemic that you’d like to share now with aspiring entrepreneurs?
Jake Munday: Go with your gut. Only you know the true intricacies of your business. Believing in your judgement and pushing hard towards growth will ensure that your product is given the best chance of success in the long-term. There will always be people along the way that make you question your decisions and cause a few sleepless nights, dealing with these roadblocks by throwing caution to the wind and backing yourself is something that I would highly recommend.
All great companies are spearheaded by great leaders, but tell us how your team supported your decisions? Is there a particular example that stands out the most?
Jake Munday: The support that we received from our team when we decided to dramatically pivot the business after the pandemic hit will stay with us forever. It was all hands on deck from the very start, as our team worked tirelessly to brainstorm potential strategies and explore new opportunities. Some team members literally took on new roles overnight, shifting their position within the company to better suit the new needs of the business. Everyone was accountable to one another and took ownership of the situation to ensure the survival, and ultimate growth, of the business moving forward.
I’ve always been a massive believer in including the team in major decisions, something which I’ve seen pay dividends on multiple occasions. Surveying the opinions of all staff, regardless of their role or tenure, will ensure that you’re giving yourself the widest possible range of perspectives on a key issue before making a final decision. As the famous saying goes, it takes a village to raise a child and our neon child has definitely benefited from the thoughts and opinions of everyone in our workforce!
What do you plan on tackling during 2022? Share your goals and battles you expect to face.
Jake Munday: We are really looking to expand our sales operations. We have been very fortunate to build a great product offering and strong brand identity, two things which we’ve combined with rock-solid SEO practices enabled us to dominate search engine rankings, yielding high traffic and sales. We’d like to broaden our reach in 2022 and will be expanding our global sales and business development team to facilitate that growth. Our plan is to double organic sales by the end of 2022, something that we truly believe can be achieved as the world continues to distance itself from the worst of the pandemic and our business operations further optimise towards peak efficiency.
Despite these lofty goals, we’re also aware of the potential challenges associated with future COVID-19 variants, poor economic conditions, and the growing pains that often come with rapid business expansion.
Thank you so much for your time but before we finish things off, I do have one more question for you. When was the last time you did something for the first time and what was it?
Jake Munday: I pride myself in growing in all aspects of my life and never being afraid to give something a try. I’ve always said that if you aren’t making moves, you’re standing still! As Custom Neon’s People and Culture Manager, my wife Jess is always looking for ways to promote positive mental health in the workplace. She recently organised a team Sound Bath to provide relaxation, stress reduction, and improved sleeping behaviours. It was the first time I had tried it and, as someone that typically finds it difficult to switch off at the best of times, I really struggled to reach the required meditative state. I think it’s something that might be worth a little perseverance!
Jed Morley, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Jake Munday for taking the time to do this interview and share his knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Jake Munday or his company, you can do it through his – Linkedin Page
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