Riparian Highlights - Fall 2009: Alumni Profile: Steve Scruton ’84: Driven to Succeed

As trite as the “work hard, play hard” mantra may sound, Steve Scruton ’84 undeniably embodies the principle in everything he does. He has run three successful marketing businesses, including, most recently, software company Direxxis, Inc, for which he serves as president and CEO. Before Direxxis, Scruton headed Marketing Information & Technology, Inc., which he transformed in the span of 36 months from a two-person office into a $30 million database-marketing leader with 160 employees. He has more than 15 years’ experience in direct marketing, advising some of the largest companies in the world, from WellsFargo and Charles Schwab to HomeDepot and the Veterinary Clinics of America.

And in his free time? The Needham native has been known to race motorcycles and cars on professional circuits all over the world – and that’s not counting his brief stint as a ski racer. “I guess you could say I have a competitive streak,” he says, reflecting on his intense occupational and recreational interests. “Both are about understanding a goal, putting your head down and doing it.”

Scruton exhibited an entrepreneurial bent from an early age. Growing up in Needham, he remembers going to golf courses and selling golf balls back to golfers. “I had kids working for me, going into the ponds at night,” he says with a laugh. He was eleven years old at the time.

Gravitating towards business in high school and then as a marketing/finance double-major at Northeastern University, Scruton got his first job working for TransUnion Insurance in Chicago. His focus on marketing came about more or less by happenstance: looking through the credit values that the company was receiving from customers, he “realized the opportunity of this great data resource for marketing.”

Since then, he’s found tremendous success with his three businesses, which have included Direxxis, MITI, and financial analytics company Sigma Analytics (which he sold in 2002). While he recognizes the greater freedom allowed by starting your own company, he also notes that there’s then more pressure to be profitable. “There’s a lot of legwork when it’s completely self-funded,” he says of Direxxis. “You don’t have money to fall back on. You’ve got to make it work.”

As busy as he has been with his marketing pursuits, he has until recently been able to find time to pursue racing on a professional level. For many years he raced Motocross, which involves riding dirt-bikes on off-road circuits, and eventually became good enough to receive sponsorship for free gear (not to mention “a few paychecks here and there.”) He also has raced karts in the Rotax Series division, speeding around tracks going over 110 mph at events all over the country. Since Direxxis has gotten up and running, however, he’s found it increasingly difficult to continue and has put his racing career on hold.

Such success in two vastly different yet undeniably high-stakes fields begs the (punny) question: what drives Steve Scruton?

“Competition,” he says, matter-of-factly. “I am addicted to competing in anything, and I’m never satisfied until I’ve seen it through.”

Rivers played no small part in teaching him the importance of hard work. “I developed a process of learning, where being a student really almost became a job,” he says, citing art teacher Jack Jarzavek and English teacher Harper Follansbee as strong influences. “Rivers was as demanding as many colleges, and taught me to always put in the effort.”

As for his professional advice on aspiring business people, he cautions pragmatism in a world of half-baked ideas. “There are people who have a lot of passion, but their ideas are not practical,” he says. “You’ve got to make sure it’s a viable business, and not just a great piece of technology. Is it really going to help consumers?”

Scruton says that his time on the racetrack has in many ways informed his approach to marketing. “It’s never easy and it’s not a sprint,” he says of his profession. “Every business is a marathon, and you have to get used to taking three steps back and one step forward.”