As a PR firm that works with political candidates, nonprofits, global corporations, and others, we often get asked what companies should be doing to improve their digital footprint. There’s an old journalism expression that says, “Today’s newspaper wraps tomorrow’s fish.” It means that whatever story appeared in the newspaper today would be forgotten tomorrow and simply used to wrap fish at the fish market.

Let’s be honest: there are a lot of entrepreneurs who don’t start out with the intention of becoming business owners. Life circumstances change; opportunity knocks, and people who went to college to study an industry so they can work in that industry suddenly find themselves launching a business.

Recently I’ve done a deep dive into what it means to be a learner in this day and age. The problem is most of what we learn is wasted. In general, we learn things to…

I read a book a day, but I hope you won’t hold that against me. My business, readitfor.me, takes best-selling business and personal development books and turns them into twelve-minute audio, video, and text files. So you can imagine that how people learn is very important to me. The story of how I got to where I am today has a few twists and turns.

Have you ever been to a store where it was clear the clerk didn’t like people? In our years working and consulting in the shooting sports industry, we have certainly met our fair share of retailers who don’t seem to like people or the work they do every day. We’ve also met our fair share of business owners who don’t have a business philosophy and have simply never thought about it, which usually means they don’t have a very good culture either.

When running a business or working in sales, it’s important to know who your audience is and what need you are filling for them. To illustrate that, allow me tell you a little bit about how we got into the shooting sports industry.

There’s only so much you can do alone in business. To take it to the next level, you need to form partnerships. I’ve multiplied my ability to serve my clients in The Launch Pad FT by partnering with other organizations with similar goals.

Business incubators have their roots in supporting the economy, and we’ve certainly seen that continue in the Launch Pad FT. Business incubation started back in 1958. A factory closed and put a thousand people out of work in New York. Someone bought that building, broke it up into spaces, and gave people who were out of work somewhere to start a business.

Do you remember learning to trust your boss? If you are the boss now, do you remember when your employees began trusting you? I do. My first day at the Better Business Bureau (BBB) was May 20, 2013. If you live in Oklahoma, you know that the month of May means tornado season.

I love being comfortable, don’t you? My favorite blanket, a job I love, friends and family close—we all strive for comfort. Our comfort zone is a neutral and natural state where stress is minimal.