From Teaching to Schmoozing

Zoe SHARE’07 decided she preferred social marketing to education. Now she’s a children’s author, too.

By Amy Verner Photo by Jeff Kirk

As 2019 was drawing to a close, Zoe Share posted her professional and personal expectations for the coming year on her company’s website, Schmooz Media. “My new word for 2020 is health,” she stated. Little could she have known that the world would suddenly be struck by a pandemic a short time later, with the health of humanity itself seemingly hanging in the balance.

Th is is not to frame Zoe as some kind of clairvoyant, even if her last name is uncannily suited to our society and its culture today. Rather, she adapted her intentions amid such unprecedented circumstances and thrived in a way that speaks to her determination, selfassurance and creative business savvy.

Th e CEO of a marketing agency in Toronto with a daughter nearing three years old, Zoe parlayed her capabilities into a project that gave purpose to life in lockdown: a children’s book co-written with Toronto branding expert Gabriella Rackoff titled ABC Stay Home with Me. Featuring contributions from 13 illustrators, the alphabet book addresses the pandemic with a certain instructional levity. What’s more, all proceeds are being directed towards Th e Home Front in support of healthcare workers (Zoe acts as the Ontario-based organization’s communications lead).

“We want to have a memento right now of what this time was,” she told CBC Radio’s Metro Morning upon the book’s release. “I want my daughter to remember that, in this time, her mummy was hopeful, her mummy was creative.”

When Zoe founded Schmooz Media six years ago, she was entering the marketing world as an educator. Which is to say, her previous employment occurred in classrooms, not boardrooms. “I was working with 21 four-year-olds— which was its own form of negotiation,” she quips. “Th eir language may not be far along, so you oft en have to change your tactics when they don’t understand things the same way you do.”

A career as a teacher seemed inevitable, she says, given how she would spend her lunch hours at Branksome crossing Mount Pleasant to volunteer in the Junior School. In her graduating year, she was the Junior School prefect. She furthered her volunteer experience with a trip to India and pursued other ways of working with kids. “In high school, you feel like there’s a path you should follow and, of anyone, mine was written in the stars,” she says. “To me, none of this signalled entrepreneurship.”

Yet, at 31, having completed two bachelor’s degrees and a master’s, Zoe has already discovered that life oft en presents alternatives to that path. “I think young women can change their minds about what they want to do and we get to defi ne success however we want.”

Th e idea to launch Schmooz, she explains, began when teaching stopped feeling like the best application of interests that were more business-oriented. She saw an opportunity to rethink the way marketing plays out on social media and began pitching to potential clients. Within six months, several projects were already underway and Zoe found herself assembling teams—a videographer, a graphic designer, a writer—in an exciting yet ad-hoc manner.

“Th e fi rst two or three years, I was going by the seat of my pants, not even taking myself seriously,” she admits. But becoming pregnant marked a shift in her strategy. “I realized I needed a business plan. I was making a decent salary but I asked myself, ‘What do I need to do to get this to a place where it can run properly?’”

To be sure, Zoe gives off charisma in spades and shows a natural disposition to engage people—whether in a live seminar via Instagram or with the approachable tone throughout her website. Even the choice of the company’s name—transcending its Yiddish roots, schmooze exudes breezy candour—refl ected Zoe’s social acumen. She credits her grandfather, a Holocaust survivor and entrepreneur who has since passed away, with the idea. “He said, ‘You should call it that because you’re so good at talking’,” she recalls of the discussion during a Friday night dinner. “It’s the small talk, the starting point. It is the opening of the conversation.”

And what diff erentiates her conversation—

“I think young women can change their minds about what they want to do and we get to defi ne success however we want.”

her proposition to clients, more specifi cally— is her commitment to “core values.” She uses words like “authenticity” and “meaningful growth,” and believes that marketing and “helping people” are not mutually exclusive. “We want to actually add value to the community, which entails defi ning what and who the community is, and defi ning value beyond a product or service,” she explains. “To me, that speaks to true social impact.”

Currently, the Schmooz client roster spans many sectors, including real estate, law, fi nancial planning, accounting and cannabis. If there is any commonality, most are “B-to-C”, meaning business-to-consumer. “I mostly work with companies that are traditional for-profi t businesses. I don’t have a problem with making money, but with making money comes the responsibility to give back,” she says.

And what about the future—is there a fi veyear plan? For now, Zoe eschews any fi xed trajectory in favour of exploring additional ways to engage directly with people, such as brand extensions involving speaking engagements and workshops, for example. Th e pandemic has also given her new appreciation for quiet time and the pleasure of writing. “I always wanted to be a children’s book author,” she says. To that extent, her storytelling has only just begun. R

Amy VERNER’98 is a freelance writer covering lifestyle and culture from Paris and Toronto.