Our Story – Built by Operators Who’ve Had to Make Payroll
How We Discovered a Better Blueprint for Growing Technical Companies
Industrious Growth was not built by career marketers. It was built by operators.
People who have had to make payroll.
People who have had to sign the front of a paycheck.
People who have had to look at a bank account and decide what gets funded — and what doesn’t.
That changes how you think about “marketing.”
Where This Blueprint Actually Started
Scott didn’t start in marketing. He started as an electrical engineer in a Folgers coffee plant.
The lessons came quickly:
- Technical truth is often ignored inside organizations.
- Bureaucracy quietly kills potential.
- Most people cling to the familiar — even when the familiar is failing.
Watching solvable problems go unsolved left a mark on him.
What he didn’t realize at the time was that those early experiences were shaping a blueprint — one grounded not in marketing theory, but in engineering discipline, systems thinking, and accountability.
When you’ve seen what poor decisions cost, you stop tolerating fluff.
A Startup, Explosive Growth: Following the Data, Not the Narrative
After moving to Boulder, Scott joined a tiny data-storage company called Spectra Logic.
12 people. About $2M in revenue.
Over time, the company grew to more than 360 employees and over $60M in revenue.
As Chief Operating Officer, he was often assigned to whatever wasn’t working. The task wasn’t to defend a department. It was to observe the system and fix what was broken.
One assignment changed everything.
The company was spending serious money on:
- Trade shows
- Outbound lead lists
- PR campaigns
But the sales impact was weak. At the same time, the company was growing. That didn’t make sense.
So he went looking for data. Here’s what was discovered:
High-intent buyers were already finding the company online — at the exact moment they had urgency and internal motivation to champion a purchase order.
Those buyers:
- Converted faster
- Closed at higher rates
- Required less persuasion
- Cost far less to acquire
This wasn’t brilliance. It was observation.
Engineering teaches pattern recognition. And the pattern was clear:
– When technical buyers have an urgent problem, they search on the internet.
– If you show up clearly in that moment, revenue follows.
That insight became the first pillar of what would later become Industrious Growth.
A Basement Startup: Creativity, Failure, and a Hard Margin Lesson
After Spectra Logic, we started a basement company called Dragonfly Innovation.
We created fun art kits designed to teach creative problem solving to kids. We were also deeply involved in Destination Imagination, and we believed — still believe — that innovation can be taught.
We experimented with early Google Ads.
We built landing pages before most people knew what a landing page was.
We tested messaging nobody else was trying.
Traffic came in. Sales followed.
We proved the web could sell niche products.
But we learned something even more important:
– Efficient marketing cannot fix a broken business model.
Spending $30 on Google ads to generate $15 in profit doesn’t work — no matter how clever the campaign is.
Dragonfly didn’t survive commercially.
But it gave us two gifts:
-
A disciplined, experimental approach to digital marketing.
-
A permanent respect for margins and cash flow.
That lesson has never left us.
Fixing a Company on the Brink
Later, Scott joined Phase IV Engineering — a contract engineering firm focused on RFID and wireless sensing.
The company was in serious trouble:
- Projects over budget
- Unhappy customers
- Almost no inbound leads
- A stagnant website
- Leadership assumptions that no longer matched reality
We started by fixing engineering execution.
Then, we treated the website like an engineering project: Hypothesis, Test, Measure, Adjust.
We deployed Google Ads carefully. Tracked data rigorously. Optimized messaging around real buyer search behavior.
And something remarkable happened. Within days, new customers started calling.
Not because they were sold to. Because they were searching for help.
Unlike art kits, spending $30 on Google Ads to sell a $3,000 technical solutions worked extremely well.
Phase IV moved from near failure to a thriving engineering business. Scott eventually became CEO and purchased the company. Susan led marketing.
That was not luck. It was engineering discipline applied to growing a technical business.
From Services to Products — and a Scaled Exit
Conventional wisdom said a contract engineering firm couldn’t become a product company.
We didn’t accept that.
Using profits from services work, we bootstrapped an industrial IoT sensor platform: Leap Sensors®.
We built the product carefully.
We built the web presence carefully.
We listened to how buyers searched and how they justified purchases internally.
The market responded.
Growth came quickly — faster than our cash reserves.
Then acquisition offers followed.
Leap Sensors was acquired by WIKA, a global industrial instrumentation company.
The lesson wasn’t “we’re great.”
The lesson was this:
When strong engineering execution meets clear web visibility at the moment of buyer urgency, technical companies grow.
That combination is difficult, but do-able.
When it’s aligned, it’s powerful.
Why Industrious Growth Exists
After the acquisition, Susan founded Industrious Growth.
Scott serves as Senior Advisor.
We built this firm to help technical and industrial companies do what we did:
- Generate high-intent, high-value inbound sales leads
- Capture PO-ready buyers at the moment urgency exists
- Replace marketing theater with measurable systems
But here’s the important part. We are selective. Not because we’re exclusive. Because we want to share success with our clients.
When Scott mentors young engineers, he explains to them: “I’ll invest lots of time helping you providing you act on what we decide to do.”
We approach clients the same way.
If you want someone to run campaigns while you protect broken assumptions or inaction, we’re not a fit.
If your leadership team is not willing to change messaging, structure, or execution based on data, we’re not a fit.
But—
If the problem has become intolerable…
If revenue inconsistency is starting to threaten your future…
If you know something needs to change and you’re ready to act…
We will invest deeply in helping you fix it.
We work best with technical companies that:
- Offer genuinely valuable engineering products or services
- Respect technical truth over internal politics
- Want measurable growth — not marketing noise
- Are ready to do the hard but doable work of improvement
If that sounds like you, you may be in the right place.
And if you’re ready to move — not just talk — we’re ready to help with your industrious growth.
How this applied to you:
Contact Us
Send us a message by clicking here.
Give us a call: 303-879-8791
Send us an email: sales@IndustriousGrowth.com
Book a web meeting with us by clicking on this link.
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Our ultimate goal is not just to market your products, but to be a key part of your Industrious Growth.
