Latest / Unstuck Pod / Built for Essential Workers (Adam Greenberg and Jamie Schneiderman)

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Built for Essential Workers (Adam Greenberg and Jamie Schneiderman) · Unstuck Pod

• Jamie: Hi, welcome everyone to the Unstuck Pod. Excited today to have Adam Greenberg here from Makeshift. welcome. Nice to have you here. So Adam, can you start off ⁓ by everybody know about you, of your background, where you've come from, ⁓ how you where you are right now, and ⁓ then a bit about Makeshift as well. Adam Greenberg: Thanks, Jamie. Great to be here. Sure, boy, where to begin? know, because I've had a pretty unconventional background terms of how I got to where I am. So maybe I'll just start with the fact that something that I like to start off with was I didn't become the because I had a plan to become the CEO of MakeShift. I didn't have a plan. I didn't go university. I left high school with a dream of being involved in rescue operations. So I started doing my certifications in like high angle rescue, whitewater rescue. And I was starting on a path of like joining the military to do rescue operations. I was a young guy, long hair, ponytail, I loved the outdoors. I was working for an arborist, know, climbing trees and cutting branches so don't hit someone's fancy car in nice neighborhoods. I injured my back snowboarding. I'm a very outdoors, very active guy as well. ⁓ that led me down a road of ⁓ wanting to use my brain to make a living instead of my body. And ⁓ I took a job in the winter working for a friend's computer hardware company. Back ⁓ computers built ground up. There are these huge towers and you're inserting parts. And I answering phones for him as I was trying to figure out my future. And in doing ⁓ Jamie, I noticed ⁓ dentists kept calling, and medical doctors. I found this fascinating and I would talk to them like, why are you calling us? Like, how does your practice work? And I would just, I'm curious by nature. So I would just ask questions about them and about their practice and about what led them to talk to us. And I learned that dentists will just focus on dentists for the most part. They go through dental school, they get their degree. Then they're out there in the world to start a dental practice, which takes a ton of capital. So they borrow a bunch of money. They open up a practice. Well, they need computers and they need software. So they go to a dental practice management software and they buy the software to run their practice. And then they order computers from Dell. They get shipped there and they don't know what to do with them. And so we were a company that was known for building computers and connecting them and creating integrated networks. This was before wireless Wi-Fi. You know, things like that. that's what got me into business. discovered that Dentist Recalling, I mentioned to the owner of the company and he said write a business plan. So to go after dentists, to focus on a niche market. And I did that. I went down to the library. You know, the internet was still new back then. I guess I'm long on the tooth. and I put together a business plan and he gave me an opportunity. And I saw I want to underline that I was given an opportunity to help grow a business just based on information that was coming to me and based on what I thought was a good idea. And I was given that opportunity and we ran with it and we grew the company significantly. Eventually I exited, I joined Ceridian Canada, first in small business sales and I had some success and I was promoted to enterprise sales. moved out west, you know, this was in Toronto at the time, moved out west, now I'm in Vancouver with Ceridian. Then I was recruited to ⁓ SAP right as they acquired SuccessFactors. I again promoted to run for SAP. And ⁓ at SAP, I a fellow named Ted Hallard. Ted is a well-known businessman. He's an entrepreneur. ⁓ Probably best known in Calgary as one of the former owners of the Calgary Stampeters. So that's, in Calgary, his popular claim to fame. But as a businessman, he's best known for founding a company called Critical Mass, which was a digital marketing agency, and eventually selling that to Omnicon. He's also bought, yeah. Jamie: But by the way, I don't mean to interrupt you, Adam. just, and I want you to know for all of our American, everyone who's watching from the US, that's the Canadian Football League, right? So CF, CFO and Adam says that. people are like, what's that? I have no idea what that, anyway, sorry. I think the Critical Mass and ⁓ the other companies that you're mentioning, everybody will know those guys, right? Like, right, Omnicom and SAP and Seridia and all these other players, sure. Adam Greenberg: Yeah. Omikon. Yeah, and I could go on and I warned you I could go on forever. So I'll try to shrink it, but it matters because of how I got to where I am. mean, it's all part of a story of just working hard, being curious, asking questions, showing others that I was able to do the work and willing to do the work and capable of getting the work done, getting results. And that led from one opportunity to another. Ted, I met Ted when I was at SAP. Jamie: All good. All good. Adam Greenberg: when he was creating a new company called App Colony. App Colony is the owner of Makeshift. so App Colony is a tech incubator. And he, at this time, this goes back to 2012, 2013, mobile phones were becoming more more prevalent in society. And he saw an opportunity to capitalize on the use of mobile technology in our lives, personal lives, and professional lives. Him his son created a tech incubator to build mobile apps. One of those apps was called MakeShift. And we had a mutual friend, a good guy named Darryl Amato. was a VP at Ceridian. I was a director. And ⁓ said to me, is there an opportunity? I'm at SAP at this time. So Darryl came to me and said, is there an opportunity for me to introduce you to Ted? He's got this new workforce management app called MakeShift. That's how I met Ted a long time ago. He was the founder of AppColony. I was a VP of sales at SAP. We had a mutual connection and Ted wanted to introduce the tech into SAP. Fast forward, I ended up getting recruited to work for Ted. So ⁓ eventually recruits me to be the CEO of ⁓ And led me on to a journey where we now do business as makeshift. There's a lot to unpack there. could go on, but you asked a bit about me and a bit about Jamie: it was great! Adam Greenberg: makeshift and I wanted to give you the the background as best I could. Jamie: Yeah, no, no, no, it's great. So, let's no, no, that's terrific. So I think I appreciate it. And I appreciate, know, everybody's got their own way that they landed where they've landed. Um, and everybody thinks you, a lot of folks think it's a, it's a nice linear, simple thing. It's not your opportunities come up. ⁓ you become an entrepreneur, CEO, ⁓ you know, like founder, however you want to look at it in your own way. Like everybody lands there. So talk, let's get into makeshift a little bit more and, ⁓ and where you're at and, ⁓ kind of what you do. So who, who do you serve? ⁓ do you do? Let's there. Adam Greenberg: Sure. Sure. Well, let's start at when I joined makeshift, but it was, remember I joined app colony as the CEO of app colony back in 2021. And I was looking at the, at the business and what I noticed was that makeshift in my opinion, cause there was multiple apps. There was an app with hockey Canada. There was an app called one tap. Makeshift was being deployed as white labels. So other organizations were taking the product to market. only IP. We would host and service and support and develop the IP, but we weren't the brand behind it. wasn't really called makeshift. was called ADP schedules, for example, and Jonas, a constellation company is called shift manager. So, so as the CEO of app colony, I made a determination that we should do business as makeshift. So we started the process of, of transitioning away from white labels. So we owned the end customer. We started the process of spinning off the. Jamie: Nice. Adam Greenberg: development side of the business, the agency side of the business and the app side of the business. And then we began probably in 2023 to do business as makeshift. So today we are makeshift. That's all we do. We focus on makeshift. We still do some white labeling. We still do some branded reselling, but we by and large are makeshift. We got our start building a building makeshift for a hospital in Canada in Alberta called Alberta Health Services. And so that is our origin story is a ⁓ rules driven, ⁓ API mobile first, workforce management app for regulated industries for healthcare. That is still what we predominantly serve today is the healthcare market all across North America. Jamie: Okay. And When you say management, ⁓ like it means a million things. So let's talk about ⁓ specifically Makeshift, what's unique value proposition? Like do you fit in that? Adam Greenberg: It does, right. Yeah, thanks for asking that because you're right. Workforce management can be a number of things. We look at our differentiator and our value as a scheduling first application. So a lot of vendors in this space call themselves time and attendance companies, feels like punitive, like I'm back in school or working in a factory. Scheduling drives everything. If ⁓ you someone's schedule, you control their lives. 30 % the Canadian ⁓ workforce, probably in the United States or as larger, are shift workers. Many shift workers multiple jobs. Many shift workers are or minorities or immigrants. Many shift workers are young people. Jamie: Yes, exactly. ⁓ Adam Greenberg: COVID, we called shift workers essential workers. ⁓ are the people, the real backbone of our economy. And so ⁓ that's we focus on. We focus on solving a particular problem in scheduling. We also do time management and time tracking, but that's what we mean by managing a workforce is helping manage their schedules to be compliant, to be flexible, to give people control and to give people time back so they can focus on what really matters. Jamie: Okay, so let's go into, so you said health, it's in like your primary focus is in the health world. So me an example of how that plays out in ⁓ it primarily you say health, is that like a hospitalish environment? That was an example that you gave before. Adam Greenberg: Yeah, there's hospitals, we do hospitals. have several hospital clients, very large, very complex. We also have smaller clinics like long-term care homes. And back to my roots, dental clinics, medical clinics, do veterinarian clinics. We also do a lot of work in municipalities that aren't healthcare, but they're regulated. ⁓ a lot of work in the nonprofit sector, which is something that's very close to my heart as well. And so, yeah, that's what we do. ⁓ Jamie: Yeah, OK. Adam Greenberg: And I think the reason that we appeal to those organizations is they have workers who work shifts. There's very rules ⁓ around you have to schedule somebody. If you take a hospital, for example, it starts procedures. It starts with patient census data. How many patients do I have in the hospital at any particular day? What are the procedures? Because that informs, what people, what staff do I need to perform those procedures and care for those people? So there's a skills So I've got people and I need registered nurses, I need surgeons, I need technicians, I need lab, I need. And then there's a compliance. I have to have this number of nurses on a floor with this many patients at any given time. So there's a compliance, there's a skill, there's a financial impact, budget, there's a billing impact insurance. And a number of factors that play into creating a schedule in a hospital. Jamie: Sorry, because I actually wanted to jump in as you're describing it, because what's interesting about the conversation is you say a scheduling app. I think, as soon as I hear, it's a scheduling app, I go, OK, hold on. Sounds simple. But then you start getting into all the complexities of what goes into making that schedule, which I imagine there's obviously quite a bit, which you describe. Adam Greenberg: Mm-hmm. Jamie: Let me take you into a place that I'd like to know, because I'd like to talk about it in the context of growth and getting into the places that you've gotten into and stuff. ⁓ I hear something, I hear a product that is essential, right? Critical, also very complex to kind of... Adam Greenberg: Sure. Jamie: explain and even to incorporate into a business, right? So talk through what that's like, because a lot of folks have complicated products and selling to these vast organizations. What's worked for you? What hasn't worked for you? Talk through that one a little bit. Adam Greenberg: Mm-hmm. I think specializing has worked for us and industry expertise and knowledge has worked really well for us. So that's really how we, again, we differentiate. We're built for healthcare ground up. So you start with a world-class API layer, which means you can integrate with other systems. think about those other systems I talked about. You've got an HR system, which has information like organizational structure, who reports to who, what are their positions. Jamie: Yeah. Adam Greenberg: And you've got like skills and certification systems. Those are actually usually often separate systems that manage people's skills, certifications that expire their time bound. They have to be renewed and updated. Then you have unions. So you've got super complex union agreements that are hundreds of pages long that talk about the different rules that apply to different attributes of seniority, of skill, of scheduling, of hours worked in a day, hours worked in a week, hours worked between shifts. Jamie: So. Adam Greenberg: You've got patient census information. So you've got all these multiple systems. And if you don't understand how that all works and you can't really provide a solution. Software, yes, we provide software. That's just one piece, but we provide expertise. We provide know-how and we understand how these systems operate. And that's what I think really differentiates us. That's what's worked well for us. Jamie: So do ⁓ put up their hands? ⁓ I'm not trying to have you break down every specific part of your sales. That's actually not where I'm trying to go. ⁓ the things that are working well for you. I'm trying to actually, it sounds ⁓ like selling into an organization like this very complex. So did they put their hands up and say, we need help with this? Are you guys going to them and saying, hey, we think you can do it better? Adam Greenberg: That's okay. Mm-hmm. Jamie: How do you think about growth from that perspective? Adam Greenberg: That's a great question. And because our foundation was incubator, was tacking IP, we don't have a marketing arm. We don't really have a sales arm in the company. So. These organizations put their hands up and they work with consulting firms to solve problems. And they work with other vendors, their partners, you know, like let's go back to SAP, for example. SAP is one of the world's largest enterprise ⁓ planning companies. We're a partner of theirs. So when they see a specific need for healthcare scheduling, they will come to us and ask for our help. ADP is another example, right? Third largest payroll company in the world. Payroll is an output from time. Time tracking. Time tracking is an output from time planning, scheduling. So again, if they see an opportunity or a need in healthcare with their clients, they'll come to us. That's how we generate opportunity. Jamie: Well, that's great. Very, very, very interesting. And I say unique approach because it's not that no one's ever done it, it's not as common. It's certainly not as common in terms of what I hear from all the folks that I talked to, or a little bit more either call it outbound in terms of their own sales teams or inbound, right? Or a combination of the two. Okay. So, Let's talk about where you're at today. Let's talk about where you're headed. I want to get one of the things I'd like to know is, you know, sure, there's lots of things that are going well, but I also think I also imagine that there's always challenges, right? I believe me, run them, run businesses. I save them on time. ⁓ yeah. So, so what, what sort of, let's do this. What, what's Adam Greenberg: Thank ⁓ man, yeah, challenges go lower. Jamie: Where are you headed? I want, there's two questions. I don't want to connect the two. Where are you headed? And then what's keeping you up at night? Cause I really want to get at those two things. Adam Greenberg: Sure. Sure. where we're headed. So first, where we're headed is based on where we are, right? We run our own revenue. That's very important when you're running a business, as you know, to understand how to fund your activities. We run on our own revenue. We do not have a VC ⁓ partner, capital partner. We do not have a private equity partner. We're not a publicly traded company. We have a single majority owner. Jamie: Yep. Yeah. Adam Greenberg: That's Ted. And then we have shareholders that are employees, past and present. So I'm one of the largest shareholders as well. And that's so I have an invested interest in seeing us grow. But to eventually, you know, want to sell a company, that's what companies, that's what they're born to do. There, you build a business, you either sell it or you take it public or what have you, or you join and merge with a bigger entity to increase valuation for shareholders. Jamie: music. Adam Greenberg: like to do a lot of good in the world, but bottom line, that's what we're trying to do. So I digress. So that's where we are. Where we're trying to get to is to join probably something bigger, whether that's a public entity or a strategic organization so that we can bring our tech and our know-how to solve bigger problems in the world. How do we get there is by slow, responsible growth. We haven't entertained Jamie: Anyway. Hmm? Adam Greenberg: Well, we've entertained, but we haven't gone down the path taking money from a third party to help fund our growth. And that is what keeps me up at night, ⁓ because I can't experiment like a lot of the bigger companies and I can't compete. You know, you read the book, The Art of War, you've got flanking and you've got frontal attack. I can't go in a frontal environment and try to compete with the huge giants that play in this space because they've got hundreds of millions of dollars. in funding, they've got thousands of employees. We're a small but mighty team, we're entrepreneurial, we're scrappy, we're ambitious. We get it done, we have modern tech, we've got great people, been here a long time. But hard, it keeps me up at night, lot of hours in every single day that you put ⁓ towards great things happen. Jamie: Yep. Nope. sales ⁓ repeatable sales growth is always a, it's always, it's a challenge for everybody. That's what everybody's sort of looking at. Okay. Interesting. That's. Adam Greenberg: And I should mention too, Jamie, right? Like we're a SaaS company. So, sat the way SaaS works, as you know, as people subscribe and that subscription ends and then they have choices. They can leave and go somewhere else or they can keep going. We have to delight them every single day in every interaction in order to keep them. Otherwise they churn and we lose that revenue. And again, we run on our revenue. So without the revenue, we can't control, we can't control our growth. We can't control our outcomes. Jamie: Yep. Adam Greenberg: and expenses will interfere in our plans. Jamie: It's the tug of war between all of these pieces, right? Limited resources, like wanting to go more and all these other things. ⁓ ⁓ story as old as time, at least in terms of the business. Certainly not SaaS, but yeah, things exist and they're challenges. All right. if you could... Adam Greenberg: Yeah. Jamie: me try one thing. So ⁓ got a question about something you wish you had done differently. If you look back, even in the last year, year or two, there anything, just one, how long is list? But really, if you back, is there anything you like, I really wish we had, or I really wish I had, or how do you think about that? Adam Greenberg: ⁓ man. Yeah. Yeah, I do. I do. I wish that I was more curious, I asked ⁓ questions, that I poked ⁓ at the recommendations I was being given ⁓ for decisions I was trying to make. Because ⁓ you to an organization and you rely on people and their inputs inform your decisions. And early, know, I was a first time CEO five years ago. I've learned a lot in five years, but as a first time CEO, I relied too heavily on the inputs I was getting from other people and I did not take into account that maybe the information giving me was feeding their own plans, not my plans. So maybe they're saying do this and this because it means to do less work for them. I'm not saying that's the case, but maybe that was the case. ⁓ Jamie: is saying. Adam Greenberg: Maybe they were saying do this, this and that because I didn't believe in where I was trying to take them. They're trying to steer me away from me even though I know that what I was doing was the right thing. I'd done the research, I was certain. So because of that, we went down a few wrong paths and that costs time and that costs money. And if I had that time and money back, we'd be in different place. If I knew then what I know now. Jamie: Sure. Yeah. Adam Greenberg: We'd be in a different place, but that's business is iterative. You learn, you make mistakes, you learn from them and you keep going. Jamie: Yeah, okay. so, so yeah, I use the term and I have used the term since I started my first business, which was fail fast. It's the, it's the, it's not, you're going to, you're going to make mistakes. I want to happen. You're going to get it wrong. It's okay. You have learn from it. ⁓ It's your of it being iterative. It's like, you have to spend as little time and energy failing on something so that you move to the next thing you learn from it and move to the next thing as fast as possible. Adam Greenberg: that. You're good. You're going to. Yeah. Here's the thing, one of the great equalizers that I'm seeing when it comes to that reliance is artificial intelligence. AI to me is the great equalizer because I don't need to now rely only on what I'm being told. I can get that information like that. I can feed the recommendation into AI, which is an expert on all things. I can feed Jamie: ⁓ So, yeah. Yeah. Yep. Sure. Yeah. Yo. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Adam Greenberg: what I'm trying to accomplish and use the agent, use the agent to guide me. It's not always right. Sometimes it makes stuff up. But boy, I get a lot of inputs that I was not getting five years ago, that is for sure. Jamie: No. I, so I'm with you. I think it's cutting what's do what's great. There is, mean, listen, There's still a garbage in garbage out in so many cases Um, but I agree with you. Like I, again, the, I hadn't thought about that or, it's, or like there's different things that it's, you can, you can torture test parts of piece bits and pieces along the way. I agree very rapidly. Um, and I think there's a happy place around how do you like, how do you use. Adam Greenberg: Yeah. Jamie: your brain, your thinking, your hard work and that to kind of go fast. Also like, listen, there's rapid prototyping of product and other stuff that you can do that you couldn't do before. And anyway, we could go on and on, but, but, ⁓ okay. So, so let me, let me, let me, ⁓ let me ask this, or let me throw this to you, which is if you were going to give your, your, here you are, your, they said first time CEO, you're running a SaaS business. You know, you've been doing it for a while, some things that have worked and some things that haven't. If you were going to give advice to somebody else, ⁓ who are listening, ⁓ advice would you pass on to them? Adam Greenberg: Two things well if I could name three because they're all they're all related. one is One is like really trust your instincts. Like ⁓ really trust your instincts. Don't question yourself so much believe in yourself that's number one. Number two is the people that you have surrounding you are so important. Jamie: Yeah. Adam Greenberg: They're so important, they're everything. people are quirky, people are funny, and it's hard to get the right people to support you and to trust them. That's number two. Number three, I don't wanna sound like, it's almost like hoard cash. Like be super careful with what you spend money on. Every dinner, flight, every hotel, every glass of wine, every event, every Jamie: Thanks. Adam Greenberg: bonus, increase, benefit, everything adds up fast and doesn't drive the outcomes you think that it will drive by making those investments. So look at every dollar and be ⁓ stingy. Jamie: I love it. I think it's fantastic. This is, it's great. And I think, you know, the those points aren't said enough. And the last one, while everybody knows cash is king, and ⁓ it's easy to forget. And it's so you know, all of a sudden, you look up one day, it's like, I wish I had more because cash is time and it gives you flexibility, everything you've mentioned already. So so that was all right. Adam Greenberg: Bye. Yeah, you spend a bunch of money on an event, you send people to it early in the year, nothing comes of it. You knew it, you kind of knew it. And you kind of knew the person telling you wasn't ⁓ it, and they really did it, but you didn't. And now something's come up that you know is gonna pay dividends, and you want to invest and you can't. That's just one example of many. That's what I mean, I don't mean to be a... know, stick in the mud. ⁓ don't mean don't invest in people. I don't mean don't ⁓ people financial ⁓ but just be super careful. And that's one thing that if I could give advice to the next me, it would be that. Jamie: No, I love it. think, don't think it would be taken. Certainly I don't take it that way. think it's prudent advice. It's very, it's valuable prudent advice and probably more people need to hear it. So hopefully they're listening and they did. So, all right, listen, ⁓ Adam, been great. This is fantastic. So thank you so much for your time. This is fantastic. to everybody who's watching, listening. Adam Greenberg: Yes. Yeah. My pleasure. Jamie: ⁓ Thank you and until the next time, see you soon. Adam Greenberg: All right, thanks for the opportunity. Great to connect with you Jamie and your listeners. Take care.