Scott Clemente - Alumni Profiles - People - Batten Institute

Scott Clemente (MBA ‘09) started his career in finance, working with Goldman Sachs in Chicago and London in their Private Client Services division. After moving to Denver in 2001 and a stint in the real estate startup world, he made the decision to go back to business school with the goal of refocusing his career on something more entrepreneurial – this led him to Darden in 2007.

Following his graduation, Clemente moved to Minneapolis and worked with a dry cleaning startup – Mulberrys Garment Care – managing the day to day operations of the business. After three years, he decided he was ready to make the leap to business ownership and started looking for a small business to acquire.  After an eight month search, he came upon Servpro and closed on the business in March of 2014 and has been running that business ever since.

Which Darden courses and/or activities have had the biggest impact on your career post-MBA? 

It might be cliché, but all of the HR and Human Capital Management courses have been instrumental.

What advice would you have for prospective and current Darden students who are interested in pursuing a career in Franchising and/or Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition?

When you are buying a business you are in effect designing your life.

Start with what kind of life you want first. How long do you want your commute to be? How do you like spending your time? What kind of people do you like spending your time with? How much travel do you want to do? It was important to me to be able to have breakfast with my kids every morning, and I did not want more than a 20-minute commute. It sounds silly but that eliminated a lot of opportunities that I think would have made me unhappy. Be reflective about how you want your life to look and use that to narrow in on opportunities.  

What characteristics are most important to be a successful acquisition entrepreneur?

You need to be a jack of all trades and willing to get your hands dirty. Being an expert in finance and modeling is great during the acquisition phase, but won’t do you much good when you get a job in at 10pm on Friday and two of your technicians have quit earlier that day. You also have to be willing to act quickly and be able to live with the uncertainty of not having perfect information. Acting early and adjusting on the fly has been one of our keys to success.  

What has been a challenge in your Franchising/ETA journey, and how do you manage this?

People! I’ve come to realize that an organization is a living, breathing thing, ever-changing thing because it is composed of individual people who are all living, breathing, always-changing beings. Culture changes by the hour if you don’t stay on top of it. You never “arrive” and hit a point where you can take your foot off the gas.

Describe how you’ve persevered through adversity and how this has impacted your Franchising/ETA experience.

I think it is a commitment to never stop. When people ask me about owning a business I tell them to read “Shoe Dog” by Phil Knight and “Grinding it Out” by Rac Kroc. Success for both of those individuals came not because there were geniuses, but because they simply refused to stop. Success in business ownership comes from two simple things: 1) Deciding to begin and 2) Committing not to stopping.