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.

Networking is much more than showing up, grabbing free snacks (which are great), and passing out business cards. Networking is about meeting like-minded people, learning about them, sharing who you are, and creating relationships. There are a few tricks to ensure you’re networking strategically to create lasting relationships.

I am not a naturally introverted person, but before starting T&S Online Marketing, I didn’t hang out with a lot of business people. That means I didn’t have a network of like-minded business owners and friends to learn from in the early stages of starting a business.

One question I get a lot is, “How did it happen?” In other words, how did we bring this world class venue for river sports to Oklahoma? How did we convince the taxpayers that this made sense, and it was worth investing in?