What’s your story?  

In 2008, Tom was working on a denim brand and an infrastructure management business in Edmonton, Canada. Juggling two very different types of businesses he quickly realized the value of having a strong brand. Beyond the aesthetics, once a company knows who they are and why they exist, then they can start to prioritize their actions to achieve their goals.

JaxonLabs started from a meeting with a local construction company whose owner purchased some jeans from Tom’s website and wanted help developing their brand. What started simply as one entrepreneur helping another quickly grew into more and more business owners looking to Tom for guidance as they navigated building a brand in the digital eco-system.

Today, we operate within Canada and the United States. Having worked with 70+ businesses and entrepreneurs over the past 7 years–from startups to businesses with 100+ million in annual revenue. Our projects have covered a wide scope of strategy and development–one thing is always consistent–the desire to help people/organizations unlock the best versions of themselves and bring value to their customers.

 

What do you enjoy most about being a member of the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce? 

Honestly, we feel it’s important to keep a finger on the pulse of the local economy to understand the environment our business and our clients are involved in. Being a member of the Chamber seems like the best place to establish that connection.

 

What is one thing people are surprised to learn about your business?

They are usually pretty surprised to learn how quickly they can start to see results. We operate with an agile philosophy—focusing on delivering as we go along. A lot of businesses often get stuck in paralysis analysis and often don’t see all the little things that can be done to support their bigger vision that is sitting right in front of them. We come in and help achieve results early on which validates our value and builds the trust that is required to take on larger more complex projects.

 

Who is your ideal client? 

Typically we work with scaling companies and medium-sized businesses that are looking to breakthrough in their industry and establish themselves as a leader. We’ve worked with companies across many industries (Technology, Industrial/Energy, Food Producers, Logistics Companies, Financial Services, Consumer Packaged Goods/Ecommerce, and many more). We also have an advisory program for startups and entrepreneurs.

 

What has been your biggest challenge in business, and how did you overcome it? 

Establishing a model that allows us to support businesses in different stages of growth has been a major challenge. We have always strived to be a done-for-you service, although we’ve realized we needed to move to a hybrid approach that allows us to offer three levels of service. DIY (Do It Yourself - which we are currently working on tools to enable) to a DWY (Done With You – which is more advisory-based), to our cornerstone that is doing everything for our clients DFY (Done For You – which is for clients who are scaling and/or established businesses)

 

What is your favourite thing to do in Edmonton? 

Play golf at many of the surrounding courses, explore the river valley, and network with all the different communities that support the growth of our economy.

 

If you could make one substantial improvement to Edmonton’s business environment, what would it be? 

I would focus on establishing business relationships outside of our community. We have a strong tech sector developing (which is fairly easy to export as far as trade is concerned). That and/or attract larger companies to invest money in developing a piece of their business in Edmonton. There are a ton of smart people, summers have a ton of daylight and as far as other major centers go, our cost of operating is relatively low. Not to mention we have a free trade zone around the airport.