Founder Story

Hi, I’m Scotty.

Stride Tribe didn’t start from ambition. It started from a time when I felt like something inside me had changed in a way I couldn’t undo. I lost interest in everything I used to love, stopped caring about hobbies and friendships, and slowly withdrew from life until my days were mostly silence, sad music, and sleep. My mind felt unstable, like my own brain chemistry had shifted, and the anxiety wasn’t tied to events anymore, it was anxiety about being alive.

That anxiety would spiral into the feeling that I was losing control of myself, then into dissociation so intense it felt like I was watching my life from outside my own body. From there it could tip into panic, and once it started it was hard to stop. The worst part was realizing people could sense it. The way they looked at me changed, like I had become something fragile, like I had failed some invisible test of strength.

I was living in an environment filled with constant tension and dysfunction, surrounded by addiction, noise, arguments, and the slow unraveling of people I loved and once looked up to. I had just turned 18, and expectations were being placed on me right when I was at my lowest, so I felt pressure, judgment, and the sense that I was drifting into a life that wasn’t mine. I couldn’t escape it easily, and I couldn’t go back to what had already fallen apart. I felt trapped between collapse and compromise.

I remember the exact moment I decided to start running, because nothing about it felt inspiring. I didn’t feel motivated or have a clear reason. I just knew that if I didn’t take one deliberate step toward the real version of me buried under all of it, I would disappear into the drift. It felt meaningless at first, forced even, but I committed to it anyway. People around me didn’t understand it, and some judged it.

Running didn’t fix my anxiety overnight, but it created separation. The panic didn’t vanish, but it stopped leading. Every mile became proof that forward motion was still possible, even when my mind felt chaotic. I used to sit in that environment and imagine myself running in the mountains out west, and it would bring tears to my eyes because it felt like a different life entirely. I promised myself I’d get there one day, and over the next few years I slowly did, traveling west when I could, running and cycling, still fighting darkness on and off but refusing to drift as far as I once had.

Eventually I built a life that looked stable from the outside, a strong career, an apartment with my girlfriend, everything appearing solid, yet internally I felt that same tension rising again because I knew I wasn’t aligned. I walked away from a secure, well-paying job without a backup plan, convinced that staying would cost me more than leaving ever could. In the process of trying to create something new, I moved fast through different business ideas without the internal structure to sustain them, and I learned firsthand that discipline without integrity eventually collapses under its own weight.

That collapse forced a massive reckoning and triggered months of deep internal searching, where I had to completely tear down and rebuild my identity. Stride Tribe came out of that process as something rooted in authenticity, with apparel as the medium and the message carried through what it represents. The gear is a physical reminder of what it takes to stay ahead of the drift, and the brand is for people who know the internal race never fully ends, that anxiety can evolve into comfort, that panic can turn into procrastination, and that compromise can quietly replace conviction if you stop paying attention. Staying ahead requires intention.

I still pack every order myself because this brand was never meant to be detached from the life that created it. It came from smoke-filled rooms, panic spirals, van living, mountain daydreams, failed businesses, and hard conversations. It’s being built in real time by someone still in process, still learning, still choosing forward motion, especially when it would be easier not to.

If you’re here, you probably understand that tension between fear and action, between drift and discipline. You’ve felt your own shadow trailing you.

The goal isn’t to pretend it’s gone.

The goal is to stay ahead of it.

Outrace your shadows.