Note: The video portion of the interview failed so this is an old-fashioned audio podcast. Scott is a great guy so I wanted to share this regardless.
What does success look like after 25 years in business?
On this episode of Keep Going, I talk with Scott Jordan, founder of SCOTTeVEST and self-described “Chief Pocket Scientist,” about building a clothing company around a simple idea: people carrying a growing pile of technology needed somewhere to put it. Long before the iPhone, Scott was making vests for people hauling around Palm Pilots, Discmen, phones, and other gadgets.
But the past 25 years haven’t been a straight line up. Scott talks about watching sales grind to a halt after September 11, betting heavily on publicity that failed to produce sales, losing millions during a bad stretch of television advertising, fighting legal battles, and facing moments when financing nearly disappeared. Through all of it, he kept returning to one basic rule: the company had to make money. Instead of chasing investors, he focused on profitability and built from there.
Today, SCOTTeVEST is a multimillion-dollar company that Scott says operates with zero traditional employees. He and his wife Laura have moved much of the company’s work to contractors and outside specialists, creating a very different business from the one he started 25 years ago.
We also talk about why starting a company may be harder today. Scott once built SCOTTeVEST through personal relationships, press coverage, word of mouth, and some wonderfully shameless PR. Now the company can spend around $2,500 a day on Facebook advertising just to generate roughly the same amount in immediate sales.
Most important, Scott talks about giving up the idea that every founder needs to build the next billion-dollar company. After years of thinking about patents, investors, exits, and massive growth, he came to value something simpler: build a profitable company, do the work well, treat customers well, and create a life you actually want to live.
As Scott puts it, sometimes success really is changing the world one pocket at a time.
