Mario Toneguzzi Talks to Jeff Adamson, Co-Founder of NEO Financial and Co-Founder of Skip the Dishes

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[00:37] SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Canada's Podcast, the number one podcast for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs.
[00:45] SPEAKER_03: Hello and welcome to Canada's Podcast Network.
[00:49] SPEAKER_03: I'm your host Mario Tonoguzzi and joining me today is Jeff Adamson,
[00:53] SPEAKER_03: who is co-founder of Neo Financial in Calgary.
[00:57] SPEAKER_03: He's also a former co-founder of Skip the Ditches.
[01:01] SPEAKER_03: Thanks for joining us today, Jeff.
[01:03] SPEAKER_03: Thanks for having me, Mario.
[01:04] SPEAKER_03: Okay, Jeff, let's start with a simple question.
[01:07] SPEAKER_03: What is Neo Financial?
[01:09] SPEAKER_02: Neo is a financial technology company that is really reimagining everyday banking for Canadians
[01:16] SPEAKER_02: right from the ground up and making everyday spending and saving
[01:21] SPEAKER_02: the most rewarding experience possible.
[01:23] SPEAKER_03: How maybe give me a little history of how you started and more so with the why of why you started this?
[01:31] SPEAKER_02: I think a lot of the formation and the idea behind Neo has come from our experience building and scaling Skip the Ditches.
[01:39] SPEAKER_02: We actually started up Skip just out of a basement in Saskatoon Saskatchewan.
[01:45] SPEAKER_02: As we grew the company, we kind of saw the experience that customers have come to expect.
[01:53] SPEAKER_02: We saw that people could start to hail a cab from the mobile phone.
[01:58] SPEAKER_02: They can order from tens of thousands of restaurants from the mobile device.
[02:03] SPEAKER_02: On the banking side, it really kind of lagged behind.
[02:07] SPEAKER_02: The majority of Canadians banked with the top five banks.
[02:11] SPEAKER_02: They have about 90% market share in Canada.
[02:14] SPEAKER_02: The experience should be one that is really rewarding to a consumer.
[02:19] SPEAKER_02: Most people actually stay with their banks for a really long time.
[02:23] SPEAKER_02: Also, if you look at other parts of the world, the banking industries in those parts of the world
[02:28] SPEAKER_02: have really, really evolved.
[02:29] SPEAKER_02: If you look at what's going on in China, they have super apps where you can book a hotel, order food, send money all from one app,
[02:39] SPEAKER_02: send money to the UK, but in Canada, it's kind of been fairly stagnant.
[02:44] SPEAKER_02: We thought there was an opportunity for us to reimagine what banking could be and really help Canadians make banking and spending and saving a lot more
[02:53] SPEAKER_02: rewarding than it is right now.
[02:55] SPEAKER_02: When did you actually start?
[02:57] SPEAKER_02: When you started up last year, we had one of the co-founders of Skip the Dishes, Andrew Chao, had actually been thinking about doing something in the consumer space.
[03:09] SPEAKER_02: In general, Canada hasn't had a lot of consumer brands that have been built over the last couple of decades.
[03:15] SPEAKER_02: If you think of the most popular consumer brands, it really hasn't been massive consumer brands in Canada.
[03:22] SPEAKER_02: Aside from Louis Lemmon, Blackberry, I'd like the throw skip the Dishes into the mix as well.
[03:27] SPEAKER_02: But the majority of those consumer brands are kind of legacy older ones like Canadian Tire, the Bay, Superstore.
[03:34] SPEAKER_02: So, Andrew had actually had the idea of building a consumer brand in banking and started up last year.
[03:41] SPEAKER_03: Can you talk a little bit about the digital world and you mentioned it, right?
[03:45] SPEAKER_03: The digital world that we find ourselves in today has been growing, obviously over the past few years, but kind of accelerated here in the last four months due to COVID environment.
[03:58] SPEAKER_03: How important is it for businesses in this day and age to hop aboard that digital train?
[04:05] SPEAKER_02: Honestly, Mario, I think it's critical and it couldn't be even more critical now more than ever because of the fact of consumers are shifting their purchases online.
[04:15] SPEAKER_02: But we've been seeing this for a long time.
[04:17] SPEAKER_02: This is not something that's new.
[04:19] SPEAKER_02: We've seen digital and econ has been growing rapidly.
[04:23] SPEAKER_02: And I think the imperative is so much stronger because of COVID.
[04:26] SPEAKER_02: And even if you think of just consumers in general, the average Canadians checks their phone every 12 minutes.
[04:32] SPEAKER_02: And spending five to eight hours of their waking day on their mobile devices.
[04:38] SPEAKER_02: And these are experiences like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, your browsers, your email, your chat.
[04:46] SPEAKER_02: That's what consumers are really using every single day, hours of their day.
[04:51] SPEAKER_02: And what they're doing is they're transferring those expectations over to their everyday experiences with other brands.
[04:59] SPEAKER_02: And so what we've seen and we saw this that skipped the dishes and we're seeing it today is this expectation gap where consumers are transferring their expectations of what they get with their digital experience seamless, instant gratification, gamification, frictionless.
[05:16] SPEAKER_02: And they're transferring that over to their offline experiences.
[05:20] SPEAKER_02: And I think that's where I think businesses are falling short today and really, really need some help.
[05:25] SPEAKER_03: Okay, so in terms of setting up Neo, what were some of the biggest, you know, you obviously set up at a very difficult time, right?
[05:35] SPEAKER_03: A difficult time in the economy, you know, in Calgary, like we've been feeling the devastation since late October or late 2014 with the collapse of oil prices.
[05:47] SPEAKER_03: You know, it's just a six year ongoing thing here, what the struggling economy, what were the challenges, I guess, of starting a new business in that environment and in Calgary right now?
[05:59] SPEAKER_02: I think in general, Mario, it's really challenging to start any business, you know, and there isn't at least from my experience, there's no good or bad time to start a business.
[06:09] SPEAKER_02: Ultimately, it's going to come down to the team that you have and the idea that you have, and I think you have to take into consideration all the different factors that are going into getting your company off the ground.
[06:18] SPEAKER_02: For me, for me, and the team that we've built here at Neo, the most important thing is the why behind what we're building.
[06:25] SPEAKER_02: And for us, when we were starting up skip the dishes, it was really about building a company that can really put the priorities on the map when it comes to technology.
[06:35] SPEAKER_02: And I grew up in Saskatchewan and we were big into government, large companies like Podash Corp, Camoco, and there wasn't really a lot of technology, there wasn't really a lot of tech startups.
[06:49] SPEAKER_02: I actually didn't even know what a tech startup was when I first started skip the dishes.
[06:55] SPEAKER_02: So for us, we really wanted to prove that it could be done in the purse and to show others that, you know, perhaps if they are thinking about doing a tech startup that they don't need to go to Silicon Valley to do it, they don't need to go to Europe in order to actually build a tech startup.
[07:11] SPEAKER_02: And I think when we think of Neo, it was really building on that theme of saying, well, let's look at Alberta, where is there a great need for companies to be doing something different.
[07:22] SPEAKER_02: You know, if you're an ambitious, bright, hardworking person who wants to contribute to the tech economy, who wants to kind of ride the wave of the information, how are you going to do that in Canada right now?
[07:35] SPEAKER_02: How are you going to do that in Alberta? You have to have companies that are starting up, that are giving these people the opportunity so they can pursue their dreams here at home.
[07:44] SPEAKER_02: And with that, Alberta Saskatchewan Manitoba, I think there's a really, really big need for it.
[07:50] SPEAKER_01: This podcast is sponsored by eBay Canada. eBay Canada is powering Canadian small businesses. Go to eBay.ca forward slash up and running Chopen Your New Global E-commerce Business.
[08:03] SPEAKER_03: Let's go back in time a little bit and look at at skip the dishes. Can you tell me just how that started and where that idea came from?
[08:11] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so I think when people ask about skip the, you know, there's a lot of people who think, well, what an incredible idea. You know, you can order from tens of thousands of restaurants from your mobile phone.
[08:22] SPEAKER_02: The idea behind doing that has been around for ages. I mean, food delivery is not a new concept. And I think that when we think of the idea behind it, we're really just applying new technology to an industry that had kind of fallen behind a little bit on it.
[08:36] SPEAKER_02: And it's not that there are companies in every single city that skip operates and that we're offering food delivery.
[08:43] SPEAKER_02: But there was had no one that had really taken mobile technology and had really pulled together multiple different things in order to make skip the dishes work.
[08:52] SPEAKER_02: We've seen in other countries that food delivery was much more popular. And we believe that the idea of introducing food delivery as a way of helping save people time.
[09:05] SPEAKER_02: And to give people more time back in their day. So they could spend another things that they love. Yeah, that was always that was always a central team at skip was really talking about, you know, hey, like let someone else take care of the cooking so that you can do the things that you love, whether that's calling your your grandma, you haven't talked to in a while, taking care of your kids playing with them.
[09:23] SPEAKER_02: And we had countless stories, probably one of the most rewarding things, Mario was the countless stories we would get of people saying like, you know what, I hadn't, you know, I was so exhausted from work and skip allowed me to actually just take a break and spend some time with my kids.
[09:38] SPEAKER_02: And those are the stories or even that when you listen to some of the independent restaurants we work with that say, hey Jeff, I've actually paid and put my kids through college with the additional revenue that skip has brought us.
[09:51] SPEAKER_02: Or I finally had enough revenue to renovate my restaurant for the first time in 20 years. So those are those are the things that really I think kept us going and allowed us to continue working harder building.
[10:03] SPEAKER_02: Are you surprised at how big skip the dish has got?
[10:07] SPEAKER_02: I think I would definitely be lying if I told you I predicted Justin Trudeau saying everyone should stay indoors and order food delivery.
[10:16] SPEAKER_02: That was a surprise, but I think, you know, we always believed strongly that there was a huge need for it in Canada, you know, and when we started out less than 8% of the restaurants in Canada offered delivery.
[10:30] SPEAKER_02: You know, and now it's, you know, there's tens and tens of thousands that offer them through whether that skip or other food delivery platforms.
[10:38] SPEAKER_02: But I think no, did I imagine that I would be standing up talking to thousands of employees at our company today? I didn't, no, I didn't predict that at all.
[10:48] SPEAKER_03: Okay. And just for clarification, Jeff, you no longer would skip the dishes, right?
[10:53] SPEAKER_02: Yes, I had left I left skip summer last year to start up NEO.
[10:59] SPEAKER_03: Okay, super. What lessons did you learn from being an entrepreneur through skip the dishes that are key in helping you establish NEO?
[11:10] SPEAKER_02: So Mary, I don't have an entrepreneurial bone in my body.
[11:12] SPEAKER_02: I do not come from an entrepreneurial family. My my mom was, you know, a part-time pharmacist. My dad was a firefighter.
[11:20] SPEAKER_02: You know, we grew up in a, I'd say, kind of pretty ordinary family and Saskatchewan.
[11:25] SPEAKER_02: And I think there was always this kind of mysticism around entrepreneurship that you kind of had to have it in your DNA.
[11:31] SPEAKER_02: And I think what I have learned is that, you know, it is something that anyone can do.
[11:37] SPEAKER_02: You know, you don't need to be this like gunslinging, swashbuckling entrepreneur that you kind of see and you don't need to be an Elon Musk.
[11:45] SPEAKER_02: But I think the thing that you do need is you need to have a great team.
[11:50] SPEAKER_02: And I think what I've learned is, is just the value of having a great team of people around you that, that really compliment your skills and learning how to work together with people.
[12:00] SPEAKER_02: That that's something that I think has, has been one of the most viable lessons to me from building, and it's something I'm still learning every day as we build NEO.
[12:10] SPEAKER_03: So where were you from in Saskatchewan?
[12:12] SPEAKER_02: I grew up in a small community just south of Saskatchewan called Grasswood.
[12:17] SPEAKER_03: Uh-huh.
[12:18] SPEAKER_02: It's famous for its SO.
[12:20] SPEAKER_02: There's an SO gas station.
[12:23] SPEAKER_02: I think they may have a subway now.
[12:26] SPEAKER_02: But I spend a lot of time in Saskatchewan though.
[12:29] SPEAKER_03: Okay, super that.
[12:30] SPEAKER_03: And I see by your LinkedIn profile now.
[12:33] SPEAKER_03: Did I get this right that you were a wrestler at one point?
[12:36] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, at one point.
[12:37] SPEAKER_02: And I'm still involved a little bit.
[12:40] SPEAKER_02: But yeah, my background is is that I was a wrestler for the majority of my adult life actually competing with team Canada.
[12:48] SPEAKER_03: Oh, okay.
[12:49] SPEAKER_03: And Pan American Games medalist, correct?
[12:52] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, in 2011, I was fortunate enough to go to the Pan Am Games in Mexico.
[12:58] SPEAKER_03: What did you learn from sports that helped you in your career as a business person?
[13:02] SPEAKER_02: You know, at Skip and at Neo Mario, we work with tons of athletes.
[13:09] SPEAKER_02: Like we look for athletes because people generally from my experience, if you've kind of dedicated yourself to something like sport, it really does teach you a lot about yourself.
[13:21] SPEAKER_02: It teaches you about how to really focus on a goal, how to achieve goals.
[13:27] SPEAKER_02: And then more importantly, it's like when you fall short of those goals and you have obstacles, how do you get back up again?
[13:34] SPEAKER_02: And how do you work together to achieve kind of a common goal?
[13:37] SPEAKER_02: And for me, it's been one of the most important things has been transferring all the lessons I've learned from, you know, my pursuit of high performance sport into into business.
[13:52] SPEAKER_02: And even at Neo, we have multiple time Olympians, guys like Jesse Lomston, Barrett Martin, you know, these are like high, high, high performance athletes that are now taking that drive and determination that they have and focusing it on something like Neo, which is, you know, aiming to help millions of Canadians.
[14:13] SPEAKER_02: And so I think for a lot of them, they're in and myself included, it's about saying, hey, like everyone here has achieved something great in the past, but no one here has their best days behind them.
[14:24] SPEAKER_02: They're here dedicated focused on building something that's going to impact millions of Canadians.
[14:30] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's interesting you say that because I don't know if you know, but my background, I came to Calgary in 1980 and from 1980 right through the Olympics in 88, my background as a journalist was in sport.
[14:43] SPEAKER_03: And so I, that's what I did, I covered sports, all kinds of sports, including the since the Olympics and also like international and high performance sports.
[14:55] SPEAKER_03: And I moved on from that obviously, but what I found interesting over the years, especially with that, I have had a strong business background in terms of reporting.
[15:05] SPEAKER_03: What I found is how many of those athletes that I dealt with in the 80s have become successful business people in Calgary.
[15:14] SPEAKER_03: Really, it's incredible. It's absolutely incredible. Yeah.
[15:18] SPEAKER_03: So there's obviously something that foundational in the sports background to help in terms of achievement in business.
[15:26] SPEAKER_02: Maybe this is a conversation for over over a coffee or a beer, but it, you know, they, I think there is a massive opportunity in Canada because we have so many great athletes to really help transition them into high performance business.
[15:42] SPEAKER_02: And right now, I think it is happening through our search some organizations like Game Plan that are really doing a great job of transitioning athletes into kind of life after sport.
[15:53] SPEAKER_02: But I think it's, there's such a high ceiling on it, Mario, and I think that we could be doing a lot better job for sure.
[16:00] SPEAKER_02: Is there anything you'd like to add, Jeff, before you leave us today?
[16:04] SPEAKER_02: I mean, just in general, I think there's a, we're really, really excited at you to really start figuring out how do we help the small businesses across Canada.
[16:14] SPEAKER_02: And I think that as we've seen with Shopify, just, you know, crushing their earnings, having revenue, double year over year, I think the next wave is really not just helping local businesses leverage online and e-commerce and get and make it easier for people to sell online.
[16:32] SPEAKER_02: We've got to be helping out businesses, leverage data in their business.
[16:37] SPEAKER_02: And I think that the challenges that it's, well, it's great to have people making it easier for people to sell online.
[16:43] SPEAKER_02: I think we've really got to be figuring out for these small businesses where the majority of their sales are happening offline.
[16:50] SPEAKER_02: How do they leverage data to grow their business?
[16:54] SPEAKER_02: How do they connect with customers in a way that isn't costly?
[16:58] SPEAKER_02: And right now, what I'm concerned about is that all of the ways for a business to connect with with their customers are prohibitively expensive, whether that's billboards or radio.
[17:10] SPEAKER_02: And the data that they need to connect with their customers is often kind of siloed and unavailable to them.
[17:16] SPEAKER_02: And so I think that one of our missions here at Neo is really to democratize that data, to make it easier for these businesses to access this data so they can personalize their interactions with customers.
[17:25] SPEAKER_02: And we're really excited to see that kind of go to market in Western Canada this year.
[17:31] SPEAKER_03: Okay, great. Thanks for joining us today, Jeff.
[17:34] SPEAKER_03: Okay, thanks, Mario.
[17:35] SPEAKER_03: That was Jeff Adamson, who is co founder of Neo Financial in Calgary.
[17:41] SPEAKER_03: And he also was the co founder of Skip the Dishes.
[17:44] SPEAKER_03: This has been Calgary's podcast on your host Mario Tonoguzzi.
[17:48] SPEAKER_03: You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram or YouTube.
[17:55] SPEAKER_01: This podcast is sponsored by eBay Canada.
[17:58] SPEAKER_01: eBay Canada is here to help.
[18:00] SPEAKER_01: They've been supporting Canadian small business retailers for 25 years and their up and running program is getting Canadian businesses online today.
[18:09] SPEAKER_01: Visit ebay.ca forward slash up and running.
[18:13] SPEAKER_01: Stay local and sell global with eBay.