In business or in body building, Jeff Pedowitz loves a challenge
By Allan Maurer
Jeff Pedowitz‘s first passion was to own a restaurant, a dream that came true when he and his father bought a Subway franchise in New Jersey decades ago. “I still credit most of my business experience to my early days in retail,” says Pedowitz, who now runs Alpharetta-based The Pedowitz Group, a tech-focused “demand generation agency” with partner Debbie Qaqish, Bruce Culbert and Cherie Pedowitz.
Jeff Pedowitz coaching soccer in Atlanta
Pedowitz, has just been nominated for the industry’s 50 Most Influential People in Sales Lead Management in 2010. His firm helps clients to create and execute demand generation strategies and tactics that get results. Services include strategy, program design, system selection, implementation, integration, creative services and outsourced demand generation.
Founded four years ago, the company already has more than 500 global clients. Pedowitz attributes much of its success to the lessons he learned early when running a Subway franchise.
Learning to do a lot with a little
“In a sandwich shop, you don’t have much money,” Pedowitz says. “You have to learn how to do a lot with very little. You have to make sure everyone does things consistently.” Doing that right results in viral marketing, the word-of-mouth that brings in customers, he says.
“It also taught me to think quickly on my feet to face many different situations,” he adds. Something worked. Pedowitz grew his business into a network of 35 owned and franchised Subway stores.
Pedowitz with his children
From there, Pedowitz joined Computer Associates, where he “Started at the bottom and was promoted three times in nine months”. He rose from developer to consultant to director of professional services. “Because of what I had done every day in the restaurant business, it came easily to me,” he says.
After his stint with Computer Associates, Pedowitz started a sales company based on Michael Bosworth’s Solution Sales, which took him to India to teach companies how to sell to the US market.
Hold yourself accountable
Just prior to starting The Pedowitz Group, he was vice president of professional services for Eloqua, which sells demand generation software. His company maintains a relationship with Eloqua, but Pedowitz says his days of working for someone else are over.
“I don’t see myself going back to work for anyone else,” other than his clients, that is, says Pedowitz.
Even before he started his first business with his father in New Jersey, his competitive nature showed. “Anyone who knows me knows I constantly push and try to be the best I can be. I’m not a sore loser, I just hold myself accountable and try to make myself better.”
Debbie Qaqish, principal partner and chief revenue officer at the Pedowitz Group, teaching MBA students at the College of William and Mary
After his parents bought a ping pong table when he was 12, he and his 8-year-old brother played every day in the basement and he still likes to wield that ping pong paddle to win. His sports interests include basketball and swimming. He played on the Penn State water polo team and plays chess.
Sports teach lessons
Sports, particularly team sports, he says, teach you how to work with others toward a common goal. “You learn how to respect people,” he notes. “We’re all driven and competitive and results oriented, we want to win, but we compete fairly and don’t feel any need to resort to trickery.”
But even though he was active and competitive in sports for years, business got in the road of staying in shape.
“Even though I played sports all those years I didn’t exercise all that much the last ten years,” he admits. By March this year he says, “I was in the worst shape of my life. I was overweight and exhausted.” He found himself drinking five or six cups of coffee every day to keep an edge on his Type A personality.
“I realized on a number of levels that I had an obligation to myself, my family, and my business and decided to put some of my intensity into taking care of myself.”
Qaqish, Pedowitz says, is as competitive as he is and also does cross-training workouts
Getting into shape
So, he says, “I went out and found the most difficult program I could, something just ridiculously difficult to challenge me.”
That was the P90x BeachBody workout program, the extreme home fitness workout you may have seen advertised on TV that uses “muscle confusion” via a variety of intense, hard exercises to produce results quickly.
“I worked out on my own the first three weeks and it was brutal. But now I’m completely into it. I worked out more in the last six months than I ever did in my life, but I’m in the best shape I’ve been in since I was 20.”
Pedowitz, now 42, says he’s down to a single cup of coffee a day, “Out of habit, I guess.”
His make it happen attitude carries over into his business philosophy.
“From a technical standpoint, we’ve had challenges,” says Pedowitz. “But the challenges have brought out the best in us. And we have always found a way to solve the problem.”
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