My Story
Updated April 9th, 2013
I’ve broken my story into 4 sections, this may be a little long of a read but if you truly want to understand the background of 360, what drove us to where we are and why we decided to take in this investment and our new partners, then you need to get the whole story.
Section 1 – Life Changing Moments
4 1/2 years ago we came up with this idea to create a platform to change the world of promotions and incentives, but more importantly to build a company that could change the lives of the people that worked there, a company that could build truly happy clients and if we got those two right a company that could make a difference in the world.
The two questions I am frequently asked most are:
What makes me think and act the way I do?
Why would you raise capital when the company is doing so well?
The answer is easy. Actually, it is not so easy – many people in their lives have a defining point; an event or something that triggers a switch or a focus change . . . I am no different.
I don’t share this story with everyone; it is not easy for me to share, but I feel compelled to “Be Real” in an effort to try to explain the WHY behind building this type of company, what this deal means and why we decided to go down the path of investment.
First let me start with my defining moment.
The stage was set for one of those ‘greatest days of my career’ moments: I was about to tour a future prospect through our facility at the previous company I was running. This was a multi-million dollar deal that we all strive to win and their CFO was visiting to make his decision.
As we were about start the tour my phone rang and the next thing I remember was waking up on the floor of my office.
The call was one you would never expect: it was my father in a very concerning voice which I had never heard before and have never heard since telling me that my brother and only sibling was killed in a car accident. I don’t remember anything else from the conversation, all I remembered is the reality that a tragedy just happened and I was 6 hours from home and had no family around me.
Lesson 1 – dealing with tragic situations is painful and without your family is unbearable.
I quickly jumped into my car and started driving – the drive was the most painful journey I’ve ever had to experience and one that I hope no one has to endure. With the speedometer never below 100 miles an hour I sped across I-90 trying to bring myself together calling everyone I knew to get answers – how was his family, where is my family, where are my parents, etc. I ended up speaking with the Simcoe police department trying to track down one of my brother’s best friends, Owen who was now a police officer.
Lesson 2 – it’s a small world
When the Sargent got on the phone I learned that Owen was the first officer on scene and he too passed out when noticed that it was my brother behind the wheel of the car. Owen called me back as I sped home and I could tell the pain I was feeling was also the pain he was feeling and my heart went out to him. It was at that point that I learned my brother’s entire family was in the car with him; the children were rushed to McMaster Children’s Hospital and his wife Susan was resuscitated multiple times at the scene and air lifted to the Hospital.
My brother, Jeremy Atkins
My brother was great all around; he cared about people, he tried to make a difference in the community and he spent a ton of time with his wife and his kids. I, on the other hand, cared tremendously about people but spent most of my time away from my family building companies and my focus was not right.
Lesson 3 – make it count whatever you do
I made it back in less than 4hrs and pushed my way through security at the hospital to see my wonderful wife in the hallway in tears and I knew at that point how serious this all was. I went back to work part-time for the next few months investing time with family but that could never make up for the time missed. I’m still not the best at family time – I have crazy drive – but what I did learn is
Lesson 4 – build your business close to home
Susan was pregnant at the time and my beautiful niece Natalie was born that December. Ethan and Connor have fully recovered as well and last summer 7 years after the accident Susan got remarried to an awesome man Kris, who is amazing on all accounts.
Lesson 5 – Happiness heals
I was passionate and determined to build a business that mattered in my heart – I care less of what people think other than what the people close to me know. Let the 360 journey begin.
Section 2 – The Building of 360
It all started with an 800 sq ft sublet office that I rented under my own name because the concept of the business wasn’t developed yet. I spent the first day with a desk and whiteboard and did what all entrepreneurs should do – DEFINE YOUR GOALS – to me there were three things:
- Leverage technology to change an industry (a really big industry)
- Build a platform so it can run 24/7/365
- Play in a space where you can make people happy
And from that came the concept the 360 core platform was born – A technology solution that would allow companies to execute and measure all of their promotions. The world was quickly becoming about engagement and the 360 platform would assist businesses to engage their entire channel.
Once the idea of the company was formed we quickly developed the operating principles or as we like to call it “Our Commitment” was developed. It’s really simple and we live these 3 commitments every day.
Lesson 6 – Do things in 3’s because its simple to remember
Our first commitment is to provide an unbelievable experience to our clients and to that extent we’ve never lost a client that’s launched our platform to date. Second was to provide an unbelievable workplace for our employees . . . you can ask any one of them if we have achieved it, but I can tell you only 2 people have left the company since inception. And lastly but very important to me is to make a difference in the world. This was so important to us that the first month we made any profit we built a well in Rwanda (read about it here).
Lesson 7 – Define your goals and principles – they’re non negotiable
In hindsight, one of the best moves we made was to first understand the industry, understand the reasons why a retail sales person would sell a certain product and what drove consumers to purchase certain products; prior to ever writing a single line of code. Strange concept: interview hundreds of retail sales associates, listen to them and discover what they want and how they can sell more products by making their lives easier. It was such a great exercise we were asked to write a white paper on it which I’m sure you can find on our site called “The 6 Reasons Front Line Sales People Sell”.
The next step in this revolutionary process was to talk to future prospects and learn what they would need and better yet . . . love! We learned finance needed complete visibility into where promotions were being spent, right down to seeing the actual invoice. Sales valued flexibility in their programs so that they could have a first mover advantage in the marketplace. They also desired quick and easy payments to incent front line sales people to move their product. Marketing was looking for engagement tools and analytics so they could make more informed decisions with their marketing dollars. An interesting discovery was that auditors were seeking a tool to help them with accuracy and proof of purchase. We invested several months, but this research gave us the insights that have helped us build what we believe is a game-changing technology.
Finally, someone to prove it works – We launched 2 beta clients in 2009 to ensure everything was 100% with our platform and that we could deliver that unbelievable experience for our clients. During our first few months of the beta one of my favorite sayings was born, “The world of incentives is the world of fraud”, there are so many mistakes, some intentional and some unintentional but these mistakes average nearly 9% of all claims for a clients launching our system within the first 90 days - imagine saving 9% of your spend? This was such an amazing discovery that we felt compelled to write about so we created an e-book called “Fraud: The Most Overlooked Opportunity” – we recently created a checklist for auditors and conducted training for them as well.
We learned during the beta that gathering knowledge is important but sharing is just as important.
Similar to Todd’s (VP of Client Happiness) personal goal “To help people achieve more than they thought possible” we try to do that with our quarterly book club. This is one of the most exciting things our team does: we believe in the “givers gain” mindset – Every quarter we give a free book to our ecosystem. We have gifted books like Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh of Zappos, Get off your “But” by Sean Stephenson, The Leader Who Had No Title by Robin Sharma and we’re currently sending out a great book by Tim Ferriss called The 4-Hour Chef.
We do this to help people grow both personally and professionally and really help change people’s lives.
So, what does all this mean, what are the results? Well, as I look back on 2012 here are a few statistics that I’m super proud of:
- We Grew over 450% in the last 2 years alone
- We created an office environment in Whitby where our culture flourishes and we welcome visitors anytime
- We’ve opened an office in the US and are in the process of opening Europe
- We’ve grown from 12 people to 77 in 2 years
- We were named to Deloitte’s Fast 50 Companies to Watch list
- We were named the 2nd Best Workplace in Canada 2013 by the GPW Institute
Those are all awesome statistics, but one of the things that I’m most proud of is our team developed and gave me a personally signed (by each team member) a “2012 360 Culture book” for Christmas. Because I believe culture is so important and our team did such a fabulous job, I wanted to share it with the world! We are offering a copy of this amazing culture book for people who would like to understand our culture and what we think building a great company is all about. You can get it right HERE.
In January 2012, our leadership team (at the time just Todd Skinner and myself) had made a conscious decision to include the building of a great company culture as part of our business strategy. It has been fun, sometimes tough, but always rewarding work. People often challenge me by asking “but what’s the ROI of culture?” To them, I say that the ROI is that we have never lost a customer.
To share a bit more about how we did it, how we’re moving forward and, yes, to help quantify the ROI of culture, we released a 40-page e-book, full of tactics and data that will be useful and informative to anyone interested in building a great company culture.
You’ll learn about: 
- Our journey to an award-winning company culture
- Actual tactics of how we did it
- Measurable ROI of a great culture
- Deep reading list for further learning
We are really proud of this paper and hope that it helps a lot
of other people build great company cultures and thereby great
companies. Download it here.
But WHY? Read how our culture is essential for us to change the world of incentives HERE!
Lesson 8 – People are a company’s greatest asset
So with these amazing accomplishments at 360 it poses the next question – why the deal?
Section 3 – Why the deal?
Life is short, I’ve learned that in a tragic way, so you need to leverage every moment you have. Whatever it is you want to do, do it now. Accomplish everything possible.
We were at a pivotal point in the company: we were making money and living all 3 of our commitments. We have amazing clients, over 75 global brands use our platform today and we our team is full of amazing people. So this brought us to the question of how do we exponentially accelerate what we’re doing today to achieve our vision faster. We came to the conclusion that raising capital was something we should look at. Many people have been calling us for the past few years, so we thought let’s investigate and understand what it means.
Now the most important thing I learned in raising capital is treat it like a relationship – don’t jump in bed overnight: you need to date, you need to spend time understanding each other and not just one person but the firm. Spend time aligning on expectations early and figuring out where each other wants to go. Build a true relationship with the entire firm just like you should do with your girlfriend’s family before proposing (I’ll tell you that my relationship with my wife’s family is unbelievable and that didn’t happen overnight it happened over years of spending a ton of time together, but I promise you they would do anything for me).
I feel the same about our new partners, that not only do they bring capital and awesome experience but they would go to bat for us. That’s super important because, similar to a marriage, there will be ups and downs but it all about how you deal with things (or in my lucky case how well my wife forgives me for my crazy work ethic).
Lesson 9 – Get your business to the point where you are raising funds is like getting married – take the proper time
Section 4 – Closing
I’ve saved the most important lesson in my mind that I’ve learned to the end and it’s probably the simplest.
Lesson 10 –Failure is not an option – Remove any fallback plan
People may call me crazy, but I never built a fallback plan to creating 360 – we either succeeded or we would lose everything we have personally. This drove me to what many people would call a ridiculous work ethic: I’m so passionate about what we do that when our competitors are sleeping I’m working, when they’re eating I’m working and when they’re working – I’m still working. Remember what Confucius says: “He who says he can and He who says he can’t are both right”
It’s really simple there is no other option; remove the fallback and you have to succeed.
Before today only a few people knew my whole story and I’ve now shared it with the world. I’ve always felt that the best classroom in the world is at the feet of someone who has been there before, so hopefully my lessons may help you either grow your own business and live your dream or to understand why we will succeed and why we’re extremely excited about the investment and our partners in the investment.
I ask you please Live every day to its fullest, holdback nothing and remember you can’t change the past only the future.
Jason
< Official Press Release of the $7.65M investment >
