Dorm Dreams: Alumnus Leads Marketing Firm He Founded as CSUSM Freshman

Dorm Dreams: Alumnus Leads Marketing Firm He Founded as CSUSM Freshman

By Brian Hiro

Elijah Schneider is the founder of Modifly, a digital marketing agency that he started during his first year at Cal State San Marcos in 2016. Photo by Alicia Lores

It's a tale as old as higher education itself: a college student desperately seeking a job to defray the cost of attendance or just to pocket a little extra spending money.

That was the situation Elijah Schneider found himself in as a freshman at Cal State San Marcos when he attended a Thanksgiving celebration in the fall of 2015. One of the guests that day - Schneider remembers him being a neighbor or a distant family friend - was a business owner who was soliciting opinions about his company's Instagram channel.

Though firmly in its core demographic, Schneider was no big afficionado of Instagram - he estimates that he had posted fewer than 20 times in about a decade of having an account. He was (and is), however, very opinionated. So while fellow attendees declined the invitation to weigh in, Schneider didn't hold back.

He told the man that his company's feed looked ugly, that the images resembled generic stock photography and that he should replace whatever marketing agency handled his social media. A few days later, Schneider followed up with a phone call in which he proposed a rather bold suggestion for who should be the replacement.

As Schneider recalls it: "I was like, 'Hey, you're getting ripped off. You told me you're paying this agency 10 grand month or something. How about you pay me 1,500 bucks a month? I will learn, I will become obsessed with this. Give me three months. If it doesn't work, get rid of me.' "

To Schneider's surprise, the man agreed to the gambit. Schneider had promised that he would devote 10 hours a week to the enterprise, but he grew so fixated that he doubled it. After a few months, the company's Instagram following had swelled by a factor of eight, and the man was so pleased that he wanted more services.

"Do you know how to do paid ads?" he asked Schneider.

"No, but I'll figure it out," Schneider replied, with a degree of self-assurance that would become his trademark.

He did indeed, to the tune of quintupling a $1,000 investment in paid ads after taking a few courses on YouTube and LinkedIn. By the end of his freshman year, Schneider was managing tens of thousands of advertising dollars, being connected to a second client and hiring his first employee - all while living in The QUAD housing facility and taking classes toward his major in business administration.

As a teenager in his dorm room, Schneider founded a digital marketing agency that he first called Mercury Media before changing the name to Modifly in 2017. He continued to build the company during his five years at CSUSM - eventually moving into an office at Union Cowork across the street from campus in North City - before graduating in 2020.

Today, Modiflyoccupies a sleek, modern, 8,000-square-foot space in a high rise in downtown San Diego, a short walk from where Schneider lives with his wife, Sarah, an OR nurse at UC San Diego whom he met at CSUSM. Two years ago, Schneider sold a majority stake in his nascent business to a parent company called CourtAvenue, helping his team grow to 30 employees spread across four cities, including Mexico City. Modifly's current and former clients include such brands as Mercedes-Benz, Nordstrom and UGG boots.

Asked about his unorthodox path to becoming an entrepreneur, the now 27-year-old Schneider said: "Because I didn't have the baggage of working for other companies, I hadn't developed bad habits. I had to develop perspective, which allowed me to - with no experience - test things and see what's working and what's not. Not having a traditional background is fantastic in terms of the progression of the business because we do things differently. Every time somebody joins the company from another agency, they're like, 'It's not supposed to work like this.' And I'm like, 'I know, it's great.' "

How does Schneider do things differently? He conducts a performance evaluation called a 360 review in which every employee of the company evaluates everyone else, meaning that the CEO (Schneider) can get critiqued by a lower-level worker who was just hired.

"It's not about age or experience," Schneider said. "Everyone's perspective is critical."

How does he do things differently? Even as the young leader of a young business, he's not afraid to call established companies out on what he sees as flawed marketing strategies and to propose solutions that constitute much more than tinkering around the edges.

Take Poo-Pourri, which devises and sells fragrant sprays for toilets. The company approached Modifly after its previous marketing partner didn't work out. After a deep dive into customer feedback, Schneider proposed a complete overhaul of its approach, mostly notably removing the "Poo" and broadening to other types of sprays. Now rebranded as ~Pourri, the company peddles fragrances that reduce odors from not only the bathroom, but also pets, cars, shoes, baby diapers, even marijuana.

"Digital media and digital marketing are constantly changing - every hour, it feels like," Schneider said. "It's a giant puzzle, and if you have to navigate that as a brand, it can become really confusing. I love this business because it pushes me to think outside the box to solve problems."

For most of his time at CSUSM, Elijah Schneider (left) lived with Brandon Biancalani, who was hired as the second employee at the company that became Modifly. Photo courtesy Elijah Schneider

Schneider's righthand man almost since the outset of his entrepreneurial journey has been Brandon Biancalani. They met at orientation before their first year at CSUSM - Schneider an incoming freshman from San Diego, Biancalani from San Clemente. They soon learned that they would be living a couple rooms down from each other on the same floor of The QUAD (Schneider's future wife lived a few rooms down in the other direction).

Biancalani initially was struck by Schneider's outspokenness - a sharp contrast to his introversion - but while other residents of the dorm were distracted by partying or other teenage concerns, he and Schneider bonded over long, late-night conversations about life goals. Having entered CSUSM as a kinesiology student, Biancalani quickly realized it wasn't for him, and when Schneider dangled an opportunity in the summer of 2016 to be Employee No. 2 for Modifly (then Mercury Media), Biancalani jumped at it.

They moved into an apartment south of campus and lived together for the next 3½ years before graduating in the same class. Biancalani, who's also married to a fellow CSUSM alumna, is now the head of paid media for Modifly.

"We had this feeling early on that we could be really successful with this," Biancalani said. "Even when we didn't have an office, we'd meet at a coffee shop, just a couple kids figuring stuff out. And then it started turning into something big really fast."

Biancalani says their business partnership works so well because he's a detail-oriented, data-crunching specialist while Schneider is a big-picture visionary.

"Elijah has done so many personality quizzes that land him in that 'thought leader' category," he said. "If something new pops up, he's probably three steps ahead and already is best buddies with the person who owns the company. His superpower is that he can predict things and be on the cutting edge and be fearless in voicing that early. And he's right 99% of the time."

After Schneider sold his majority stake in Modifly in 2022, he turned over day-to-day operations to a new president, Nico Coetzee, who's been in the marketing business since Schneider was an infant. Now that he has built a stable company, Schneider is relentlessly focused on its growth. He travels frequently to meet potential clients, speak at conferences and generally proselytize on behalf of Modifly.

Given that he stumbled upon his career in the most accidental way imaginable - giving offhand advice to someone at a family gathering - even Schneider is often amazed by the passion he feels for it.

"I pour myself into this job because I can and because I want to," he said. "It doesn't feel like work; it's my favorite thing. There are definitely days where I'm like, 'I just want to go home, I'm done.' But 99 out of 100 days, I love what I do."

Elijah Schneider

Major at CSUSM: Business administration

Graduation year: 2020

Company: Modifly

Website: wemodifly.com

Founded: 2016

Number of employees: 30

Talking Business With Elijah Schneider

What's the best advice you received about starting a business?

Surround yourself with the right people. You are a product of your environment, and if you have morally good people around you, then every piece of advice you're receiving is typically to your benefit. People over everything - that's the biggest thing.

What advice would you give budding entrepreneurs?

If you have an idea for a business, just do it. Don't overthink it. Just put it in the market. Also, make sure you give yourself permission to take a step back and look at the bigger picture.

What's the greatest challenge in starting your own business?

For me, it was age and experience. I didn't really have a good mentor system around me. The people I could turn to for advice, I kind of had to build that as we went.

Knowing what you know now, is there anything you would have done differently?

I would have evaluated myself more. I am good at some things, I am great at others and I am horrendous at others. I wish I had been able to take a step back and evaluate myself in a way where I could place levers of accountability to fill the holes.

What are the qualities of a good entrepreneur?

First and foremost is awareness. You have to be aware of yourself, your environment, your strengths and weaknesses. Number two is vision. As an entrepreneur, if you cannot bring people together to accomplish something, whether it's a task or solving a specific problem, you're not going to do well.

"I love this business because it pushes me to think outside the box to solve problems.," Elijah Schneider says of his work at Modifly. Photo by Alicia Lores

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Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist

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