We recently connected with Scot MacTaggart and have shared our conversation below.

Scot, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

Crusher Deluxe began, really, when I realized that creators are creators, no matter their discipline. I’ve spent my career — sales rep, marketer, manager, consultant, entrepreneur — building support for novel ideas. The early days are hard. That’s when you need supporters and followers to validate your project, your product, whatever. It’s what keeps you jumping out of bed to get to work instead of feeling like you’ve been wasting your time on something the world doesn’t want.

The early days are when it’s hardest for those people to find you, and vice versa. It’s not hard to be a Taylor Swift fan. Not to take anything away from her — she’s very talented, but she’s everywhere. It’s a lot harder to find your way to being a fan of Rave Ami, Greywalker, Century III or Josh Jams. And those are just music acts. I wish the whole world would support Theresa Baughman’s visual art, but imagine how much longer it would take to find it if a trusted source like Crusher Deluxe doesn’t call it out.

But we’re not even really a business. At least, not yet. The costs aren’t high, and we’re doing something good. Eventually, maybe we build it up more and turn up the volume, but for now it’s like the world’s best hobby for me. Some people golf, I try to protect and enable creators.

And that’s what’s really got me excited — creators are creators, early adopters are early adopters. Let’s get them matched up with each other, classifications and segregations be damned.

Scot, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m a GenX who understands why the Boomers organized things the way they did, and why the Millennials and Z’s are convinced that it’s time for something new. I would rather prototype a solution quickly, and put that boat in the water the same day. If it sinks then I didn’t waste a lot of time on it and I can try the next thing.

Professionally, it took me a long time to figure out how to define myself. In normal business, I’ve always been in and around what they call “systems integration” — which means making technology work with other technology so the business that hires you gets a custom tailored solution just for their own situation. That’s the business where I really got started in professional sales and marketing.

In about 2005, I got introduced into the startup scene by my friend Jason Putorti, whose data-driven UI/UX design expertise would end up being one of the main success drivers behind Mint.com, In startups, you have to learn customer discovery and product management to succeed. You learn to sell the thing first, then build it. I’ve spent years since then doing consulting and advisory work for startups, and doing volunteer work at colleges, incubators and accelerators to be a better help to the younger generations than we got when we were the young people.

Still, I’ve hopped back and forth over that line between startups and established business, and the diversity of experience has helped me in both places. I’ve gotten to meet a lot of great people, and dive really deeply into a lot of different things. I can tell you a lot of things about AWS cloud computing and Fortinet cybersecurity, or instead we can talk about Rachel Reid’s Subtl Beauty direct-to-consumer beauty brand and Mary Jayne McCullough’s Global Wordsmiths company, which helps people in schools and hospitals to get language translation access at times when they’re making life-changing decisions.

You mentioned that you want to know what I’m most proud of? I’m most proud of the decisions I’ve made about supporting people. I confess that I enjoy that one saying — “judge me by my enemies” — but really I think in my case, judge me by my friends is more accurate. Judge me by who I’ve promoted, endorsed, supported, whatever. That’s my best work.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

I have the dubious distinction of having been included in two separate telecom industry layoffs where the total number of people was 40,000. Seriously. It’s how I decided that big companies were not for me, really.

In 1995, I graduated high school and instead of going right to college, I went to work for AT&T. My dad worked there at the time, and there were all these great benefits to working there, including tuition assistance. It was the perfect crime. And they must have known it — because in 1996 they laid off 40,000 people in order to stop me from pulling it off.

A few years later, I’m out of college and working for MCI WorldCom. I’m all excited because I’m like the youngest “level 2” account executive they’ve ever had, but a year later, the CEO is being arrested and 40,000 of us are being laid off again.

This time is different though. Rebecca and I are now parents. I can’t just go to college this time. There are 40,000 people from MCI WorldCom now looking for jobs, tons of other telecoms imploded in the months before we did, and I have less experience than almost every person now interviewing for work.

I started consulting for the very first time, just writing copy for websites and doing basic design work, and while we weren’t living in the lap of luxury, we had a roof over our heads and food on the table. I would eventually crash that plane into the mountain by letting one big client suck up all my time, run up a bill, and then not pay it. Lesson learned.

Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?

So I get invited to this hospital who wants to see the product, and when I get there I realize they’ve invited my two biggest competitors at the exact time. We call this a “bake off” when this happens. Your competitors are in the room and watch you present to the client. You watch them too, of course. Then afterward, the customer meets with each group separately with questions and feedback.

I was MUCH younger than everyone else in that business, and those guys knew their way around hospitals and hospital procurement way better than me. All I had was my product and a personalized pitch deck based on all the things I’d learned about the hospital and their operations. I was excited though, because that deck made a really convincing mathematical argument for spending the money with me, I just had to make sure I let the numbers do the talking.

When I finished my pitch and demo, I knew I had lost. It was obvious that they weren’t going to buy from me. I went into the breakout room and waited for the client to come in. I had presented last, so I also went last for this part. Two members of the committee walked into the room, and my competitors followed closely behind. The door closed and left the other vendors in the hallway.

“We’re not going to buy your product,” the one man said, “but only because we can’t afford it. You did a great job in there, your numbers make sense, and you weren’t like other sales reps who just smile all the time. You were excited about your argument, and it was a good argument. The director of nursing even said we should work harder to find the money to buy your product. We’ve made our decision though. If it’s any consolation, both of the other companies are standing out there because they said that they’re going to try to hire you after you get out of this room.”

I learned a lot in that exchange, but at the top of the list was that my most valuable tool is my ability to get personally invested in solving the problem with the customer, and bring legit energy and enthusiasm in addition to product knowledge and sales skills.

If you’re like me and you’re lucky enough to have this ability, don’t let people convince you that it’s unprofessional or unsustainable. Jump in, go hard, make friends. Years later, I can still call pretty much anyone because I don’t hold back.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.crusherdeluxe.com
• Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/crusher.deluxe
• Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mactaggart

Image Credits
Buzzy Torek Eric McKenna Dena Taub Courtney Willison Olga Pogoda Eliada Griffin-EL