His 'Why' is Improving Lives

How Early Insights Led to Success for SoundVision President Scott Sullivan

- Jeremy Glowacki

Scott Sullivan earned his degree in economics from UC Santa Cruz, but just barely. During college, the future president of SoundVision in Novato, CA, preferred the early morning adrenaline rush of surfing over attending classes. Fortunately for him, however, his first job out of school provided just about every insight he would need to get a good running start into his eventual career in custom integration.

As national sales manager for power management products manufacturer, Panamax, in the 1990s, he blanketed the country, meeting with the owners of some of the most successful CI companies in the industry. With the knowledge he gained from this collection of entrepreneurs, Sullivan learned so much about running a CI company that he almost felt sheepish about it.

“It was so much fun that I almost would have done it for free,” he recalled. “I mean, all of the people were so nice and generous with their time. I didn’t go in and pitch Panamax. That wasn’t my strategy. I would just ask them about their businesses, and these guys would open up and tell me everything. I would take note of their size both in revenue and headcount and what their organizational structures and facilities looked like and study how their proposals and design drawings were done and how their people presented themselves.”