Meet Scott.

Scott was born in Ithaca, NY but moved to Provo when he was 2 and has been here ever since. He loves movies. He loves taking his kids to pretty much every new kids movie. He’s a traveler.  He plays the guitar and has been in several bands. He loves experimenting with stop motion animation and time lapse, especially now that the tools available with the iPhone and other digital technology have made it so easy and convenient. He has had 4 different VW camper vans over the past 17 years and has traveled in them many miles to see a variety of rock and roll bands like the Dead, Phish, Mother Hips etc. Scott is incredibly well rounded, he’s exceptionally kind, and he’s my boss! I’m so glad I get to introduce you to him, and if you’re ever in the market for some quality blank apparel, visit his website JonesTshirts.com. (If you’re on Facebook, Like them and you might win a free tee shirt (a new winner is chosen every Friday!))

How has being a father changed your perspective on the purpose of life?
As a father of 4, I feel like my kids are what I live for. Even though they can be wild and crazy and super hard to deal with sometimes, I am always wanting to spend time with them and teach them things. I love taking them on adventures. With my wife being home with them while I work, I will often come home and offer her a break from the madness and pile the kids in the car and go off to places like the pool, the movies, the planetarium, places to eat or just a random drive with no specific destination in mind. There are many days that I will decide at the last minute to leave work an hour or 2 early just to go home and be with them. Play legos with them, make fun little movies with them. Play games etc.

I find myself a little too obsessed with trying to give them a lot of the same experiences that I had when I was growing up. I know this is a common thing but I might take it to the extreme at times.

You’ve traveled a lot, where has been your favorite destination & why?
Without hesitation, my favorite place is Vienna, Austria. Vienna is so full of rich history and culture and it is such a vibrant lively place. Everywhere you go in the city any time of any day, there are people out everywhere just enjoying life. Getting around on the public transit is incredibly easy and convenient and makes it fun to go explore the city and surrounding areas. At the age of 5, 9 and 13, I was lucky enough to spend time there while my dad ran a BYU study abroad. It was usually about 6 months at a time. Even though I was young, the experiences stayed with my and were life changing. I reflect on my time there often and earlier this summer, I took my 8 yr old twins on a 2 1/2 week trip back there. We mainly stayed in Vienna but also made some side trips to other destinations in Austria and Germany. We had the time of our life. We are hoping to go again with the whole family in the next few years and stay anywhere from 1 to 3 months.

How do you find joy (in the journey of life?)
Spending time with my family, watching movies, traveling and working on growing my business.

Where did the idea for Jones Tshirts come from?
It all started more than 20 years ago. I was 15 and my older brother taught me how to make tie-dye shirts. from 1992 until 1995 we would go take our shirts to Grateful Dead concerts in Las Vegas and California and sell them in the parking lots. We would always sell out and it was a great way to fund the trip as we were also big fans of the music.

Fast forward to 2003 when I started working at StoresOnline, an eCommerce solution software company. As an employee we were given access to the tools needed to build a fully functional online store if we wanted to. It had been a while since I last made tie-dyes but that was the first idea I had for what to sell online. So my first site was JonesTieDyes.com. It was a great learning experience and it did pretty decent. The problem was that the more business it brought in, the more time I had to spend in my basement cranking out tie-dyes. This was back when we didn’t have kids. When we found out we were expecting twins, I knew I wouldn’t be able to continue doing the day job plus tie-dyes every night. I took a few months off of the website while the babies were little.

Then I decided to ditch the tie-dyes and start reselling a few items that my shirt supplier offered on their site. They would ship the items straight to my customers so I didn’t need to worry about warehousing anything. JonesTshirts.com went live in January of 2006. I was still working full time at StoresOnline and of course it took time for it to start getting some traction but it grew at a pretty sturdy pace, month over month and year over year. By the middle of 2010 I knew that it had potential to be a full time gig and I took the leap of faith of quitting my day job. A month later I hired my first employee and found a little office space in downtown Provo. 3 years later we moved into a bigger space just around the corner from the house I grew up in and we now have 7 employees and it continues to grow.

It’s very exciting having something that I built from scratch and seeing it grow into something that has sustained my family for more than 4 years without relying on a “normal” job

What advice would you give others who hope to start their own company?
If possible, start something on the side while continuing to work a day job and see where it goes. Also, hang in there and be super patient. It’s very rare to start something that will have overnight success. It took me 4 1/2 years of building my business while working full time before quitting the day job and taking it on full time but it was worth the wait. During that time, I put in a lot of late nights at home working on building the site and getting it ranked in search engines. Now I have a lot of freedom and flexibility with my work schedule as a result of that extra work early on.

I know that the time it takes for businesses to succeed will vary greatly depending on a lot of factors but the bottom line is to be patient if you really believe in it. Just know that it takes time, especially with an online business!