This conversation is with Jed Schneiderman, Executive Vice-President, Growth & Marketing at EQ Works. EQ Works provides a smarter way to target customers using Location Behaviour. Proprietary algorithms and data, combined with Artificial Intelligence, generate attribution models that connect consumer behaviour in the physical world to behaviour in the digital world, helping solve complex challenges for brands and agencies. As EVP of Growth and Marketing at EQ Works, Jed helps brands/marketers connect on-line and off-line with mobile marketing and location-based behaviour.
Jed has previously held director and senior roles at Microsoft, Bell Media, and Procter & Gamble and prior to his role at EQ Works, was the President and Co-Founder of Tapped Mobile. For over seven years, Tapped Mobile provided mobile data and marketing solutions to agencies and brands until it was acquired by EQ Works in 2018.
Tell us a bit about the company you founded, Tapped Mobile.
When Tapped Mobile first started out in 2011, we wanted to be the one-stop-shop for all things mobile. We were location-based marketing experts who connected online and offline. When we started out, we looked at three numbers—the number of mobile phones in Canada, the amount of time that people spent on mobile devices, and the percentage of total ad dollars that went to mobile-specific marketing. We saw that Canada was under-represented by a fair margin and realized there was a business opportunity there. I had left Microsoft earlier that year and I had this grand vision of starting a business and becoming an entrepreneur even though I had no previous experience doing that. I had conversations with two individuals who became my business partners. We assessed the risk against the perceived opportunity and we believed that we had a viable business.
What was the problem you were solving?
I think what we saw was perhaps more of an opportunity than a problem to be solved—the opportunity to bring best-in-class mobile technology to Canada. There were a number of companies in both the US and in Europe that were never going to open up offices in Toronto, but we thought they had great technology that could help Canadian brands. In 2011 mobile still wasn’t at the forefront of the digital landscape. Google, Facebook, and all those big tech companies had yet to fully optimize for mobile. While everyone knew mobile was really popular, it wasn’t the number one priority yet. We thought there was an opportunity to give advertisers more choice. There were a couple of companies out there that were doing quite well, but we saw some gaps from a product standpoint and sought to fill those gaps.
We sold location-based advertising services to media agencies. We enabled placements on mobile devices—usually using location as the first set of criteria—and evolved over time to work with a handful of digital properties that were mobile-first. For example, we sold all of Shazam’s advertising in Canada for three years and we were the white label mobile solution for a handful of location-based technologies. We also offered a few add-ons to round out the mobile offering such as mobile couponing and Short Code programming.
As many people can attest, one of the first things you learn about starting your own business is that your plans usually never play out as expected.
This was your first entrepreneurial venture, what was day one like?
Day one was really scary. It’s wonderful to be well-informed and have a very solid plan, but as many people can attest, one of the first things you learn about starting your own business is that your plans usually never play out as expected. When we started out, we knew we had a strong business case, we just weren’t really clear on the “how”. I come from a marketing background, so I had marketing and brand contacts, but we were selling into media agencies and I actually didn’t have a lot of media agency contacts. So truthfully, day one involved cold-calling media agencies trying to explain what we did. The beauty of not knowing anyone was that I didn’t realize how hard it was to sell into media agencies. We spent a lot of time on LinkedIn, we read a lot of marketing publications, and we asked for a lot of introductions. Though doors got slammed in our face and emails and phone calls didn’t get returned, we persisted until we started to grow a business.
Though doors got slammed in our face and emails and phone calls didn’t get returned, we persisted until we started to grow a business.
Tell us a bit about your partners and what your roles were.
We had one partner who was responsible for customer service and customer success. His job was to ensure that when something was sold, it was executed and fulfilled properly and that our clients were happy. He did a great job of that. We had another partner who was principally responsible for finding us technology partners, but he actually wasn’t operational in the business. In fact, he lived in the US. The advantage of that was the US was a little bit ahead of Canada so oftentimes he met people and that became a pipeline of new partners. My job was primarily sales and marketing—making sure the market knew who we were and what we did.
Just over a year ago, you sold Tapped Mobile to EQ Works. What led to the sale?
There are many reasons for selling a company. I think some people want to sell a business because it’s an opportunity to take money off the table. In other cases, it’s a marriage of two complementary businesses. EQ Works acquiring Tapped Mobile was the latter. What we started to see in year six and seven of our business was that the market had changed a lot. Most of our clients wanted data as opposed to data and media and a lot of businesses really wanted to be self-serve. We were a service business that sold other people’s technology products. The good news was that people knew who we were and they knew what we stood for. They trusted us and they knew we delivered great service. But there were a couple of gaps that we were never going to solve unless we did a hard pivot on the business. EQ Works solved those problems.
Three to four years before the sale, I had seen mid-sized companies being acquired by much larger companies, and I had seen the need for small companies to join forces with other small and mid-sized companies in order to succeed. I also saw the role that technology was playing and how service-based businesses or businesses that didn’t have a meaningfully differentiated product weren’t going to succeed.
On the EQ side, there was recognition that there was a consolidation of companies going on in Canada. We were both proudly Canadian companies that had good sales and customer relationships. The ability to combine what was a well-oiled sales machine and a well-known brand with a really good product meant that joining forces brought a lot of creative value to both organizations. We’ve been here for just over a year and that has played out quite well so far.
How did the process of integration go?
A week after we signed the contract, we moved offices. So that was pretty quick! That was probably the quickest part of the process. The good news was that what we did well—sell mobile solutions to clients—is what we still do today. The day-to-day work didn’t change much but we did have to learn a different product and we did have to integrate teams. We broke it down into three buckets—What are the things we do well that EQ could learn from? What are things EQ does really well that we could learn from? And what are the things that both parties need to do a lot better? That was effectively how we integrated the two companies. We’ve both been learning from each other since day one and we continue to learn from each other to this day.
As founders, we had a lot of knowledge and our biggest challenge was transferring that knowledge to other people so that they could be successful.
Going back to your own journey as an entrepreneur, what were some of the biggest issues you faced as a new business owner?
One of our biggest challenges was scaling the business. As an owner-operator, you bring certain skills to the table. I’m sure many of your readers have been in a situation where they think, “it’s easier if I just do it myself”. The challenge with that is there aren’t enough hours in the day to do everything on your own. When we knew what had to be done but didn’t have the people or the resources to do it, it was really frustrating. As founders, we had a lot of knowledge and our biggest challenge was transferring that knowledge to other people so that they could be successful.
Another big challenge was around execution. When we started selling, we encountered a great deal of resistance—people were wondering why they should buy mobile. There was the practical reality that everyone had a mobile phone, but most buyers wanted to know that buying mobile actually produced a favourable ROI. We identified a problem in the sales process, which was that people wanted proof. So we partnered with an organization to author the largest mobile study in Canada. That gave us a great deal of credibility and helped us drive more sales and raise our profile. That was an example of a good idea with great execution. On the flip side, we had ideas about pivoting to a technology company, but it never happened. We had ideas about working with certain companies and being successful in monetizing either their audiences or their technologies and oftentimes, we didn’t succeed. The ability to have a good idea and then ensure that that idea was executed well was a challenge because there were always more ideas than there were people to execute.
As an entrepreneur, you are the architect of your successes and failures.
What would you say were some of your biggest personal challenges in becoming an entrepreneur?
One of the biggest challenges of being an entrepreneur was to know when I was wasting my time. As an entrepreneur, you are the architect of your successes and failures. The beauty of that is, for those who like cause and effect, you can really see the fruits of your labour. The flip side is that when I first started out there were times when I didn’t really know if I was wasting my time. I didn’t have a lot of sales experience so I worked really hard – but there were times where I could have actually worked smarter instead. If we’d had a more disciplined sales machine in the beginning.
There’s always more work to do and being ruthless about prioritization means knowing where you are most effective.
Related to that, setting priorities was also really difficult. As an entrepreneur, you have to do everything—from working with your accountant to generating leads and dealing with invoicing. There’s always more work to do and being ruthless about prioritization means knowing where you are most effective. That was a struggle at the start.
If you could have removed one task from your day-to-day, what would that have been?
For the first couple of years, I was responsible for all of the sales. One of the challenges of running a business is that cash is king so revenue really drove most of the decisions that we made. As we grew, I felt that sales was the most important activity I could be doing so that meant that I didn’t have as much time in the office with the team as I would have liked. If I had to do it all over again, I probably would have had more time in the office. I was out of the office a lot. I would have preferred to spend more time with the actual people that built the company.
If I had to do it all over again, I probably would have had more time in the office… I would have preferred to spend more time with the actual people that built the company.
What were some of the operational pain points you experienced?
The hand-off between sales and operations was always a challenge. There are a lot of myths and stereotypes that salespeople will say whatever they have to get the sale, and then let ops worry about executing. We were a small company and we cared a lot about our brand and our name so that was never a concern. But there were times when we sold in a program and ops had to deliver and it was either unclear or it was a greater challenge than we had foreseen. One of the things we did was to create a checklist for salespeople that they had to fill out before we signed off on a contract and handed it off to ops. I’m a big template and formula guy and if I find something that works, I stick to it religiously. We also came up with a checklist for ops that they used with our clients. So we had signed contracts for the work but we also had checklists so as to ensure that the service delivery went really well.
The other thing that we struggled with was one-off sales. A lot of the work is campaign driven so we would sell something but then we wouldn’t sell the same thing again. One of the things we did was try to find more strategic sales opportunities. We started to do more account-based planning as opposed to just chasing individual opportunities and we got better at understanding the sales cycle. Ultimately, being acquired by EQ Works was the best solution for that problem because the products lend themselves to being used on an ongoing basis. Data has become a hot topic and the measurement that we do as a company is something that lines up well with business operations.
What’s the best part of being an entrepreneur?
One of the most surprising aspects of being an entrepreneur was the culture that we created at our company. When I look back on the last seven years, the thing that I’m most proud of and that I draw the most joy out of was the fact that we created jobs for new Canadians. For over half of our employees, we were their first employer in Canada. It wasn’t something we did consciously but there was something incredibly gratifying about finding the best person for the job and not being concerned about where they came from. The gratitude and the work ethic that was exemplified by those employees was wonderful. Some of them have subsequently gone on to other companies but they still credit that first job with Tapped Mobile as giving them the opportunity to build their career. For me, was the best part of being an entrepreneur.
When I look back on the last seven years, the thing that I’m most proud of and that I draw the most joy out of was the fact that we created jobs for new Canadians.
At Tapped Mobile, we realized that we were part of an ecosystem and we were on the growth part of that ecosystem. In the world in which we operated—marketing, advertising and media—digital companies were growing and we realized that a lot of people weren’t able to effectively manage the transition from more traditional media jobs to digital jobs. We saw people losing their jobs and companies going out of business. We felt that being good corporate citizens within our community was a really important thing to do so we were generous with our time. We had a lot of coffee meetings, we helped people find jobs, we hosted free training sessions. Oftentimes, we paid for training and made it available to unemployed people. We bought conference passes and conference tickets and gave those away to unemployed people. We extended invitations to unemployed people to all of our own internally run events. I think that became a little part of our brand. Again, that’s something that I’m really proud of. I don’t have a straightforward answer as to why we did it other than it was the right thing to do. Going back to the question, one of the best things about being an entrepreneur is you get the opportunity to do the right thing.
We felt that being good corporate citizens within our community was a really important thing to do so we were generous with our time.
One of the things that we did as a company was to codify our values. We had values, we had principles, and we were religious about sticking to them. Whenever we interviewed someone we would show them our values and principles. And we didn’t hide them. We were really clear about them and we said, “this is who we are”. We admit mistakes. We don’t criticize people publicly. We always strive for excellence. We hold ourselves accountable. Over the whole seven years that we ran the business, we never had to change our values.
Did you and your partners sit down and work out the values before you even kicked off the business or did they come later?
We did not start out with the values but luckily, my partners and I were all bred with the same values so they came about somewhat naturally. However, I would say to anyone reading this interview and thinking about starting a business—especially one with partners—start with your values first. If you’re not aligned on your values, it really doesn’t matter how good the business opportunity is. We never had a conflict over our values and I think that helped us a lot. There were times when the business was really hard, there was a lot of work and knowing that we were all aligned on values made it easy to focus on the business and not worry about other things.
Start with your values first. If you’re not aligned on your values, it really doesn’t matter how good the business opportunity is.
What are some of the tools you use to make your life easier?
It was a year or two before we licensed a really cheap and cheerful customer relationship management (CRM) tool. Up until then, we were managing stuff on Word and Excel and it simply wasn’t efficient. What I would say to other owner-operators is, depending on your business, find a way to get organized as early as possible. In our case, it was getting a CRM tool. It could be HubSpot, OnePageCRM or Salesforce—whatever you can afford.
We were a sales-oriented business, we made a lot of phone calls, sent a lot of emails and we were always trying to get people to buy something from us. So a CRM was important because, 1) it allowed us to establish a customer list, something that email is not great at doing. 2) It helped us track the contact we had with our customers. Rather than managing everything over email and calendar, CRM tools allow you to build a profile on each customer—when was my last phone call? What did my last email say? What was my last meeting about? If you’re religious about updating your tool, it helps you manage your sales cycle and your time a lot better. Another benefit of a CRM is it allows you to contact multiple people at once. If you want to get into the world of drip marketing—i.e. if you want to send out a series of emails with the objective of getting someone closer to a sale—CRM is really good at doing that. Lastly, with staff coming and going, having a CRM in place ensures that your customer lists actually stay within the company. We always trusted our employees so having a salesperson leave with all their contacts wasn’t really a concern, but having the CRM in place meant we didn’t have to extract contacts from someone’s phone or computer in order to then hand them off to someone else.
Another little thing that brought a great deal of joy was digital expense management. We had a tool where anytime we generated an expense, we took a photo and it instantly got plugged into our accounting software. No one likes doing expenses, so if you can find tools to get rid of paper and manual work then get them. Those are my two little gems on the technology side.
Are there any podcasts or books you would recommend?
I love Reid Hoffman’s “Masters of Scale” podcast. It skews towards Silicon Valley and digital businesses but it is a wonderful podcast that really thinks big about scaling a business. Another podcast that I particularly enjoy is “How I Built This”. The expression that I use is the life of an entrepreneur is that you die 1000 deaths every day, and what you realize is there really is no such thing as an overnight success. I believe strongly in the concept of manufactured luck, which is you have to work really hard in order to get lucky. What “How I Built This” is good at is showing the ups and downs of businesses. It gets into the key inflection points where decisions were made and the times when things happen that are out of the founder’s control. I think you can learn both from successes and failures and I think both these podcasts do a good job of talking about both.
I’d say the most important book that I read when I was running my own business—and I read a ton of books—was The Challenger Sale by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson. It was a really, really valuable sales book, so much so that after we read the book, we completely rebuilt our sales deck. The book is about having what today would be called “strategic sales conversations”—essentially having conversations with your customers, really identifying what their problems are, and ensuring that your product or service solves their problems.
The thing that provided the most support was having a close network of people that I could call and share both my successes and my failures with. That made a huge difference.
Is there anything else you think a prospective entrepreneur should know?
Firstly, I think it’s really critical for those who choose to be entrepreneurs to have the support of the closest people in their life, whatever that looks like. In my particular case, I couldn’t have started the business without the support and belief of my spouse. Secondly, there’s a wonderful expression I heard, “there are people who come with batteries included, and there are people who come with batteries not included”. What that means is that there are some people that give energy and there are some people that suck energy from you. Some really important advice I would give is to surround yourself with people that give you energy—people who believe in you and believe in your idea. Surround yourself with people that are supportive and will help you, whatever that looks like. It could be moral support, an introduction, a template or a tool, or training on something that fills a skills gap.
When we started our business, I surrounded myself with a handful of really good friends, many of whom were entrepreneurs themselves. They gave me the perspective in order to figure out what was working and on the days when it felt like nothing was going right they reminded me that I was actually making progress. I joined a number of professional/executive business forums and those were helpful up to a point, but the thing that provided the most support was having a close network of people that I could call and share both my successes and my failures with. That made a huge difference.
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Connect with Jed on LinkedIn and for more information on EQ Works check out their website: https://www.eqworks.com/
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