Chase Jones is a Small Business Marketing Manager at PayPal with a flair for grammar and a yen for cooking. Most recently Chase oversaw the development and completion of the
PayPal Business Resource Center, an invaluable content hub that gives small business owners expert advice and tips for starting, running, and growing their businesses with PayPal.
Fresh off his sabbatical, where he spent a week cooking at a chateau in France’s Loire Valley, Chase shared with us why he loves what he does, the power of PayPal as a partner to small business, and what it means to be a grammar geek.
As the small business content lead for the U.S., what do you and your team do?
We work closely with our marketing and product colleagues to build the content our small businesses experience in our marketing channels. That can be on the website, in an email, in our social media channels, or any number of other touchpoints.
We also are responsible for content that supports education and thought leadership. This is the kind of material that’s really helpful to merchants who are just starting out in business or even new to PayPal. We answer questions like, “How do I accept payments online? How are the fees typically structured? Do I need a separate gateway and a merchant account?” And beyond payments-specific topics, we help merchants think through how they’re running and growing their business, whether it’s marketing to their customers, selling in other markets, or finding new sales channels.
Just as a point of clarity, how do you define a “small to medium-sized business” (SMB)?
Good question. We at PayPal define a small business as any merchant who has $650,000 or less in TPV (Total Payment Volume). Above that are what we consider the mid-market segment of merchants.
It seems that the Business Resource Center addresses many different pain points for the merchant. What does PayPal have to offer at the product level for an SMB?
We can be a one-stop shop, and not just for payments. We help merchants fund their business with working capital and loans, let them extend credit to their consumers, and help them market to their customers. For instance, our PayPal Marketing Solutions product, gives merchants data on how consumers are behaving on their site and also gives them banners they can use to market specific offers to their shoppers. We’re constantly innovating how we can help merchants sell with powerful tools they can’t find anywhere else.
You have such passion when you talk about helping your customers, what is it that draws you to this work?
It’s meaningful to see that the work we are doing has a tangible impact on our merchants. We’re in the wonderful, fortunate position to help people turn their passion projects into a business. It’s inspiring to hear their stories and to be there to support them on their journey.
Chase and his sister in cooking school in France & Chase’s new hobby, pottery
Speaking of journeys, you told us of your sabbatical in the Loire Valley of France, are there other extracurricular activities worth noting?
Ha. I recently picked up amateur pottery. I’m terrible at it, but pottery is less about the output and more about the meditative quality of throwing (shaping clay).
Lastly, I hear you’re a grammar geek, what does that mean?
After my undergraduate degree, I got a master’s degree in communication. Many marketers are good strategists but aren’t strong writers. Writing is one of my strengths so I wanted to make that my niche. I geek out on silly things that only other grammar nerds care about: like proper use of a semi colon; using the Oxford comma; using the active voice in our writing, not the passive voice. Stuff like that. In my personal life, it’s against my nature to send a grammatically incorrect sentence, even in a text message. I guess it’s an occupational hazard.