Book: Out of the Pocket-There's a Pocket for That: The Trip of My Life
Prologue: An Acquired Taste
I've never written a book before in my life... not even this one! That's right - you are reading the words of a ghost-writer, but with me pulling some of the strings behind the scenes. Ask yourself this: what kind of person starts off a book about himself, written by himself, with an admission that he's not even writing it... in the very first sentence? Simple. Someone who values transparency and honesty, doesn't take himself too seriously, is willing and able to break silly rules, and asks on an all-too-regular basis, "Why the hell not?" It's nice to meet you - I'm Scott Jordan, CEO & Founder of SCOTTEVEST, and if you keep reading I will guarantee that you will not be bored and you may even learn a thing or twelve about how I've been able to make my clothing business successful despite lawyers, liars, terrorists, idiots, shitty technology, dumb rules, focus groups, compromisers, investors, the press and even my own worst enemy... myself. You may learn, but I'm not here to teach; what worked for me may not work for you. Oh, and did I mention that I've never been happier in my life than I am right now? This is how I did it....
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I hate cliches, particularly business-related ones. "The daily grind," "the rat race," "9 to 5," "24/7," and especially "outside the box" (there's a special corner in hell for the person who came up with that). They all remind me that there was a point in my life when "those things" mattered to me more than my happiness, more than my sanity, more than my creativity, passion or even fulfilling my potential.
My life used to be a cliche, and it sucked. Dead-end job in a profession that I hated (working as a real estate lawyer in a mega sized firm), either filing forms all day in a cubicle or commuting halfway across the country, depending on which slice of my timeline you look at. Boring. Mind-suckingly boring. Forming Scottevest was, and remains, my "escape from the law"... my way out of the cliche. I fight for that because it's worth fighting for. Could there be any better reason?
The story of my company, Scottevest, is the story of my birth. In basic terms, Scottevest is a company that develops and sells clothing with lots of pockets for people to carry their stuff in, particularly gadgets. I love gadgets and one of my favorite "a ha!" moments (I hate that cliche too) was when I realized that under Scottevest I could write off all of my gadgets as business expenses. Even the Pope can't do that. Ten years later, Scottevest is a thriving clothing company expanding in a down-economy. Whether this period in our economic times will be remembered as a rough patch or The Great Depression Part Deux is up to historians, but we've successfully
weathered the storm. Which reminds me again that I hate cliches.
So I formed Scottevest out of some combination of the misery of my job as a lawyer, my excitement about gadgets, my embarrassment about needing a man-purse to carry all my tech shit in, and the deep-seated belief that if I had a problem there were probably a lot of other people out there with the same problem. (That's what a numbnuts consultant might call "Your Market," and bill you $250 for the hour.)
The first issue I had to contend with - hating everything about my work life - was the source of lots of personal pain. The second issue - looking like a dork while trying to carry around my stuff - was a fun puzzle with much smaller stakes. I occupied myself sticking my finger in the dyke of gadget geekery while the crushing floodwaters of professional angst rose all around me. It's how I coped. Instead of tackling the life-altering issue of being unhappy with my career, I decided to solve the other "big" problem in my life: gadget guys like to carry their toys but have no good way to do it. I had no idea that the solution to both problems was right there in front of me, much less wrapped in the same package.
Ignore the fact that I'm not a fashion designer or an inventor at this point. I've never been a chef either, but I haven't starved to death yet. How hard could it be? Well, as it turns out... pretty freaking hard, but the alternative was unthinkable. As my poorly-designed pockets were being filled with the coolest gadgets that Y2K had to offer, it felt like the rest of me was being emptied out. My job was killing me, and pretty fast at that. It was dramatic, and needed an equally dramatic solution. To paraphrase the great philosopher Jagger, "You can't always get what you want, but you get what you need." I knew that I needed something
more, and the cliche that was my life still sucked.
-The Machine-I was in a dark, bad place in my job. The legal profession is surely not a "profession;" it is a machine, and not a shiny modern one controlled by a slick Japanese-built robot. The legal profession is an early Industrial Revolution machine, the kind that was operated by children because their hands were small enough to fit in next to the whirring belts and sharp, spinning gears.
I don't know if I believe in a soul, but working in the law beat the shit out of mine on a daily basis. My wife Laura likes to tell the story that I sat bolt upright in bed one night, screaming "Miserable, miserable, no end in sight," then rolled over and went back to sleep. Honestly, I don't recall the event at all, but I took that as a sign that if I didn't do something to take care of myself, my soul, my guts, then there was going to be no way back. I was in a race against unhappiness? death? old age? a raise that would make me rethink whether it was really that bad? No - it was a race against mediocrity, and the fact that if you accept mediocrity in any form for long enough, you become mediocre. Period. I had to save myself - everyone has to save himself. No one throws you a lifeline, but that is not to say that people won't provide an opportunity, it's just your responsibility to take that opportunity. And I did.
[may need more meat here and to put the "lifeline" stuff at the end of whatever paragraph ends this section]
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Wax On, Wax Off-But my situation wasn't entirely bad, I had just focused on the bad parts.
1 I still had a job when I first started to develop Scottevest; yes, it was a shitty job that I hated, but it was a job.
2 The money was good, which later allowed me to self-fund Scottevest.
3 I was able to flex my creative muscles, which felt more like fun than work, so I had something to daydream about and develop a vision around.
4 Laura was more supportive than any human could be, except for perhaps a saint-in-training.... but they only edge her out because there aren't any Jewish saints.
5 <switching hats> Ok, I'm switching hats for a second here, and switching fonts to denote it (no one ever does that in a book - why not? It keeps the typesetters on their toes.) There are some things to think about in this paragraph, since it ties together a lot of the realizations that helped me to start my business. If you're reading this for business tips, well, this is the first and last Mr. Miyagi lesson that I will give to you... you're on your own for the rest of the book. In any case, this is important stuff to understand how I think, and because footnotes are hard to read and pretentious, here are "the lessons" from above in full size text: 1: Focus on the bad parts, or more specifically, focus on things that need improving; in yourself, in your business, in your e-mail program, your coffee maker, the traffic pattern of your commute to work, the ads on TV. Be hyper-critical, it sharpens your sense of what works and what doesn't and makes you more efficient for when you are losing money for each minute of inefficiency.
2: The job thing. Working for someone else sucks, but it's better than not eating. Use sparingly.
3: Self-funding - if at all possible, do it. The more people you have to answer to - especially about how "their" money is being spent - the less time you will have to make YOUR money.
4: Vision - without a clear vision, you're screwed. You have to be the captain of the ship and the navigator. If you don't know how to sail, learn. If you don't know how to row, learn. The captain "goes down with the ship" not because he's brave but because everyone else will have jumped off by then. You need to be able to do every job in your business, or at least know enough about it to explain what you need and know if you're being bullshitted. Bullshat? Whatever.
5: There are no Jewish saints, we just have mensches. Wait, that's not the lesson. You need people to support you or you'll go nuts, but people do so in two distinct ways. #1 - they support you mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, psychically, inside-outedly. #2 - they support you by telling you that you're nuts, that you are a screw-up, that you'll never amount to anything, that you're idea is the stupidest thing they've ever heard and you'll be groveling back here in six months. Have no doubt that you need both equally. True supporters help get you past the roadblocks and are great to celebrate victories with, but it's hard to throw away the cliches in your life and venture out into the unknown without being pissed off first. Doubters do that even better than Mothers-in-law. My wife Laura was my strongest supporter, even when I had doubts. Maybe she just didn't know any better at the time, maybe she doesn't know any better yet, or maybe there really is something to this crazy idea of mine after all, nine years later.
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RAW AND NOTES ONLY BELOW THIS POINT
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-Leverage and the Monkey Wrench- Remember when I said "the alternative (aka staying in my job as a lawyer) was unthinkable?" Well, this book isn't about the dark stages in my life. It's true that you need to find yourself in the belly of the beast before you appreciate how much you need to fight your way out of it, but that was a long time ago. I'm more interested in creating history than in reliving it any more than necessary.
THEMES* Self-empowerment is a sacrifice and a commitment
* If you're busy, you're probably doing something right. Busy and struggling are not the same thing.
* "The ironic thing is that I want nothing more than for "Out of the Pocket" to become a cliche."
Posted via email from SeV / SCOTTEVEST the best travel clothes and clothing in the world
