A little girl can inspire her daddy to do a lot of things.
Especially when she’s as cute as Lucy Kennelly.
A picture of almost 5-year-old Lucy and her father, Chris, helped get him through tough negotiations to buy back the production company he started in 2003.
The photograph is of the smiling daughter-daddy duo wearing Kennetic Productions film crew badges while scouting a site for a shoot.
It reminded Kennelly the company is something the family of five could do together for years.
It also led him to give this simple advice to himself during negotiations: “Hey Chris, make it happen. Don’t screw this up. Don’t walk out over $5,000 or if your feelings are hurt.”
Lucy’s inspiration worked. Kennelly signed the deal Thursday afternoon to become Kennetic’s owner — again.
Kennelly started the company in the spare bedroom of his parents’ Palm Coast home when he was 22, then ran it out of his Jacksonville apartment for a while.
During the early years, when there wasn’t enough business to keep him working full time, he got certified online as a bartender and worked a second job at Vito’s Pizza for about a year.
“They gave me a chance and I was terrible,” Kennelly said, laughing.
By 2012, Kennetic’s annual revenue had risen to $100,000 with a low profit margin at an almost break-even level.
Wanting an injection of cash to help grow the company, Kennelly decided to sell it to a firm with whom Kennetic was working.
He continued to run Kennetic like he owned it. “But I wasn’t an entrepreneur anymore,” he said. “I was an executive.”
The new owners gave Kennelly full reign and let him take chances. Those chances paid off for the company, which rents space Downtown at CoWork Jax.
After a rocky first year, revenue has grown fourfold and profit by 15 times.
Around March, Kennelly began thinking about buying back the company.
Telling his wife, Attie, went something like this: “Hey sweetie, we’ve got a really good thing going right now. I want to screw it all up and take a big risk and try to make it all better.”
But, she was excited from the beginning, he said.
Kennelly then went to the owners and said, “I kind of want my company back.”
They were “fair and tough negotiators,” he said. And in the end, they all came out as friends.
He kept negotiations secret from his four employees until the deal was done for an undisclosed price. “I was about to explode,” he said.
Now, the 35-year-old Kennelly is an entrepreneur again. But, he’s not starting from scratch. He knows the company better than anyone.
He wants to grow in industries outside of Jacksonville in which he’s had success locally, such as visitor and tourism bureaus.
“They’re not focused on local vendors,” he said. “They want the best in the business.”
Kennelly calls the company his family’s “swing for the fences kind of move,” a way for them to work together.
The day he and Lucy went to scout at the Riverside Arts Market, she left with a multi-colored balloon flower.
As they were walking away, the creation started to pop piece-by-piece.
No tears from Lucy, though. Just a request to her daddy: “The next time you go to work, can you get me another balloon flower?”
Kennelly looks forward to them going to work together at the family business.
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