When You’re Born To Build: Scott Clary’s Entrepreneurial Journey

His immense contribution towards the sales and marketing sphere has got him wide recognition.

You’re a product of your environment.

An apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

How many of us have heard that before?

Scott D. Clary flips the script, and although his childhood wasn’t difficult – it was a far cry from where he ended up.

Born in Toronto, Canada into the least entrepreneurial, most risk-averse family, one could ever find oneself in. The son of an ex police, turned intelligence (CSIS) officer, and university lab manager, at a young age Scott was exposed to a world of security, predictability & public service.

The least entrepreneurial person you could ever find.

However, there’s a story here.

Having a passion for technology, and being naturally charismatic led Scott down the path of sales, early on joining telecom giant, Bell Canada as one of his first, serious career choices. Starting in retail, moving from retail sales, to team leader, business, corporate and finally enterprise sales.

“I always felt as though I wanted to do more, than just ‘work’ for someone, but I wasn’t from an entrepreneurial family, I wasn’t a developer and I didn’t really have a close group of people who I felt I could speak to, so I just started doing what I did during my job, as a freelancer after hours and on weekends.”, says Scott.

Always having an entrepreneurial inclination, but having a highly successful career, Scott focused on building his own name and brand, working with early stage, high growth startups as a consultant, helping them with their sales, marketing and brand strategies.

Working with over 50 high growth start-ups, Scott worked with some of the most innovative organizations coming through Creative Destruction Labs (Startup Incubator). Building out his own profile and teaching and discussing the strategy he was implementing, he was published in Forbes, WSJ, Hackernoon and several other high profile publications.

Pivoting into full time fractional CXO work, he built out a playbook for growing businesses from the ground up through various cutting edge sales & marketing strategies. This offered him the opportunity to speak internationally on the subject, get published in over 100+ publications discussing various sales & marketing topics, co-publish an Amazon best selling book, judge international sales and marketing competitions (Stevies, CMA Awards) and act as an advisor to various high growth companies & organizations.

“Many people feel as though there has to be a point where you have to make the jump, where you have to decide that you’re not going to ‘work’ for someone anymore and you’re going to go all in on your own business, usually by burning through years of savings and putting massive amounts of stress on yourself, friends and family”, Scott warns. “However this is one of the most damaging myths of entrepreneurship – that it has to be all or nothing.”

Being an entrepreneur gives you a lot of freedom, but jumping in too early before you’re ready can be scary and at the worst, stressful and damaging. Building your credibility and skills while you still have an income is one of the best ways to grow yourself professionally and achieve entrepreneurial goals.

“The career paths we follow are exponentially different from what our parents and grandparents experienced.” Scott commented. “True success in a modern work environment means that someone must be comfortable with the uncomfortable. You must push limits and test boundaries in their personal and professional lives by means of trying things, learning things and doing things, we never expected we’d ever have the opportunity to do.”

Build something while you have downtime. Research your passions, build your product, and test your ideas. Leverage resources and mentors to fastrack and avoid costly mistakes. Learn and grow and when you’re ready – you can make the jump. Entrepreneurship doesn’t have to be all or nothing. The barriers to entry to “do” something are lower than ever, so start now. The way we build our careers in 2021 is much different than we did 50 years ago.

The access to technology and tools has made the barrier to learn and do, lower than ever. There is no excuse to build your thing, or learn something new and apply that to your job, or your own business. The only things that’s stopping you from leveling up.. is you.

Take Scotts story to heart. The apple can fall very far from the tree – and that’s a good thing. 

To know more, visit his official website http://www.scottdclary.com or follow him on Instagram: scottdclary