Joshua Snyder Leverages His Network to Pursue a Career in Tech
Joshua Snyder serves as the Vice President of Strategic Partnerships and Business Development at PowerDMS, a company that provides comprehensive, cloud-based compliance and content management solutions to help organizations reduce risk and liability. Growing up, Joshua Snyder never thought he would pursue a career in technology, but some surprising experiences while pursuing his MBA caused a change in plans. In this interview with J.B. Adams of Crummer Connections, he describes why relationships are important for growing a business, how working for his parents’ art studio prepared him for a career in business, and how his experiences at Crummer led to his role at PowerDMS.
Part 1: Joshua Snyder as V.P. of Strategic Partnerships and Business Development at PowerDMS
J.B. Adams: Let’s talk about PowerDMS. First of all, I want to know where the name came from. What does it mean?
Joshua Snyder: There’s some folklore around that. PowerDMS is a 20-year-old company now. In the early days, it was called Innovative Data Solutions. The concept was that it would be a company that produced many different types of applications, but the one that is our flagship product is the one that really took off. The brand of that product eventually became the name of the company. PowerDMS means “Document Management Simplified.” That’s what we do at our core.
J.B. Adams: I’d like to have you break down what PowerDMS does into layman’s terms.
Joshua Snyder: Our mission is to help our customers increase trust and efficiency by simplifying how they manage and share crucial information. We work with the public safety fields of law enforcement, and fire and emergency management services. We also work with healthcare, hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers, behavioral health facilities, and a variety of other high-risk, high-liability industries in the commercial sector.
These organizations want to have a system in place to make sure that they’re guiding their employees’ behavior in a way that leads to good outcomes. [PowerDMS provides] a system that allows them to manage all the policies of the organization, review them, have very tight version control, draw people’s attention to items when they change, collect attestations from their employees, and make sure their employees have access to these documents whenever and wherever they are.
J.B. Adams: Give us a little explanation of what you do in your role as V.P. of Strategic Partnerships and Business Development.
Joshua Snyder: I’m business development in the classic sense, where I focus on different channels and partnership vehicles that help us grow our company. PowerDMS is a content management system that produces not a single piece of content on our own. A lot of folks who come to us as prospects have a set of needs that includes content. They need consultants to advise them on their policies. They want sample policies to start building from as they’re redoing their policy manual. For the different accreditation partnerships we have, we put those standards and manuals into our product to allow people to map them to their policies. All of those are relationships that me and my team manage on a day to day basis.
J.B. Adams: Tell us what you love about it.
Joshua Snyder: What I love the most is that it’s not a role where every day is the same. I’m working on projects related to every facet of our business, whether it be pricing, new product offerings, new go-to-market strategies. That’s a really fun and dynamic environment.
Part 2: Joshua Snyder’s Early Business Influences
Joshua Snyder was born and raised near Orlando, Florida. His first and earliest role models were his parents, who own and operate an art studio sculpting pieces for clients such as the Walt Disney World Resort and the Cartoon Network series Robot Chicken. He began working for his parents while pursuing his undergraduate degree in Business.
J.B. Adams: Are your parents still in business?
Joshua Snyder: Absolutely. They’re not “business” people, but they were still role models for me in business because of one simple thing: they’re two of the hardest working people I’ve ever met. And as a result, they’ve got lifelong clients because regardless of whether they under-quoted a job or they’re having to stay up all night to get something done, they got it done every time. Now they’re in their late 50s or early 60s, and they still have that same level of work ethic. The ability to dig in your heels and get work done is something that I very much value in people I work with and I aspire to myself.
J.B. Adams: Working with your parents was one of your first jobs as a professional. What were some of the early lessons you had representing the company that your parents owned?
Joshua Snyder: I came into my parents’ organization at a time when they had underquoted quite a few jobs, were quite backed up with work, and did not really have time to get out there and prospect for new clients — possibly higher-paying clients or clients that would give them steadier streams of work. Reluctantly, my father let me go up to New York City to a trade show called Toy Fair, where people who make toys, figurines, and collectible items are presenting them to potential retailers. All these toymakers that could potentially hire my parents to make collectible items were there.
I thought, based on my boyish charm and my positive attitude, I was going to be able to walk up to those folks and know exactly what to say to earn their business. It was a lot of trial and error. I learned to overcome objections by doing ten or twelve of those booth stops. I ended up leaving there with our company’s highest-grossing client, and that was a very rewarding outcome. But I also ended up with a lot of egg on my face, and I even had to reconnect and repair some relationships, letting people know that my parents were, in fact, a very serious business that didn’t always send a messy-haired, 20-year-old kid to do their selling for them.
J.B. Adams: Aside from the fact that boyish charm is not enough to close the sale, what would you say is the takeaway from this lesson?
Joshua Snyder: If you’re going to embark on a new task professionally, you should find somebody who’s been there and done that and you should solicit feedback. I don’t care if you’re somebody who’s been an executive for thirty years. Coming into a situation and assuming that you’ve got all the skills and traits from past experiences to make those work in a new environment — it’s probably not a formula for success. And even if it is, I promise you, the people observing you on either side of the deal table are going to identify clear gaps that you could have overcome if you had solicited feedback before you went into that endeavor.
Part 3: Joshua Snyder’s Crummer Experience
Joshua Snyder describes his decision to pursue an MBA at the Crummer Graduate School of Business at Rollins College and how that influenced his career path in technology.
J.B. Adams: What was going on at the time you made the decision to attend the Crummer Graduate School of Business?
Joshua Snyder: I got my undergrad in 2008, and I did not intend to get my MBA right away. But it was 2008, we were right in the middle of the Great Recession, and work for a newly minted undergraduate Business Administration major was not easy to come by. None of the jobs that were available, I thought, would either be fulfilling or set me up for the path I wanted to go in my career.
I sort of lucked into a good decision, which was to get my MBA. I thought that period of time would be a great opportunity to continue to refine my business skills, to continue to learn and build on what I had taken from my undergrad and my professional experience to date, and to find a way to set myself apart. There was no telling when things were going to get better in the job market, but I knew with an MBA, I was going to have a lot more opportunities.
During the discussion, Joshua Snyder indicated that his favorite course at Crummer was Technology Management with Professor Allen Kupetz, which opened his eyes to the possibility of a career in technology.
Joshua Snyder: Technology and software were really starting to change the world at that time. People were profoundly confused and interested in the success of [social media] platforms like Facebook. I remember Professor Kupetz in that class making us create a Twitter account, and I still have it: “Joshua Underscore Snyder” (joshua_snyder). Good luck getting your first and last name on any social media platform! But that’s how new Twitter was at the time.
I knew that technology was interesting, but in no way did I think I was going to go become a technologist and work in technology as a career. But the things I learned in that course really gave me a broader sense of the world of technology, the business of technology, and laid the foundation for what would eventually become my career. Now I foresee myself working specifically in business-to-business software for the duration of my career.
Part 4: Joshua Snyder Leverages His Crummer Education
Joshua Snyder graduated with his MBA in 2010, still in midst of the Great Recession. He had continued to work with his parents while pursuing his degree, but he struggled to find new employment given the difficult job market. He describes how his experiences at the Crummer Graduate School of Business provided an opportunity to launch his career with PowerDMS.
Joshua Snyder: I was a grad assistant in the Entrepreneurship Center during my time at Crummer. I ran into Cari Coats, who was the Executive Director at the time and who I worked for there, and let her know about my beating my head against the wall to try to find my thing. She said, “Why don’t you work [at the Entrepreneurship Center] for four to six months? I’ll get you networked locally, introduce you to some folks, and we’ll help find your thing.” I said this is an amazing opportunity that I can’t possibly turn down, so I went over with the plan of staying for six months.
I ended up staying on for five years because I loved the job. I loved working with students, which I still try to do as often as I can through mentoring, guest lecturing, or other opportunities. I was also continuing to get great exposure locally. I’m an Orlando guy, Central Florida guy, and I’m going to be here for the long haul. Cari was a great networker and had a phenomenal network. She had held a lot of prominent roles in the community before she came to Rollins, so getting to meet the people she was connected to was wonderful.
J.B. Adams: How did you find your way to PowerDMS?
Joshua Snyder: We had four distinct programs we ran out of the Entrepreneurship Center for growth-stage companies. But occasionally someone would come to us with a need that our programs did not solve, or I would meet somebody in the community that had an interesting issue that they needed some help with, and I would do a little consulting work with them. PowerDMS was one of those companies. It’s the first company that I consulted with where I approached them and said, “Hey, I think I can help you guys.”
The reason I proactively pursued them is the seeds that were laid in that Technology Management class for having an affinity and a desire to explore technology companies. From looking at all these other businesses to the work I did in the Entrepreneurship Center, I realized I want to work for a technology company. Software, particularly subscription-based software as a service, can solve so many business problems so quickly. You can build these solutions and scale them up quickly with the right technology, people, and capital, and then they can be implemented in organizations to rapidly shift the way that business is done or a problem is solved. That whole dynamic was extremely fascinating to me.
That consulting gig at PowerDMS lasted about six months. I did another six-month consulting stint with them, looking at new industries and strategies. Then I got brought on as the Director of Business Development in October of 2016, completed my five years at Rollins, and transitioned right to PowerDMS.
J.B. Adams: How would you say your Crummer experience changed you?
Joshua Snyder: When you go to get your MBA, you’re learning how to be a leader. When you come out of that program, all the marketing, the management, the leadership, the accounting — all that kind of jumbles together in your brain because it came at you so hard and fast. But it embodies you with a set of skills that sets you up to be a leader, a functional leader in an area of a business, or the leader of a company. You’re ready with a complete understanding of how all those things work together to make good decisions. That’s what I felt like coming out of Crummer: I was ready to be a leader. I was ready to step into any business and provide value through the principles that I learned through my MBA.
J.B. Adams: What advice would you give to prospective students who are on the fence about getting an MBA?
Joshua Snyder: Ask yourself, “Why are you doing it?” If the answer is because you want to be a leader, then you’re making the right decision. Getting an MBA and putting that on your resume is making a statement to the world that you’re a leader. I think the best reason to get your MBA is that you want to be a leader. You want to be a leader in your field. You want to be a leader in your industry. You want to be a leader in your company. And if you want to be a leader and you’re thinking about getting your MBA, you should do it.
The Crummer Graduate School of Business at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida is consistently ranked as the number one MBA in the state of Florida. Crummer offers a variety of educational programs to prepare students to become global, innovative, responsible, business leaders.
