At the OKC Boathouse Foundation, we believe that the Oklahoma River has the power to change lives. It can help Oklahoma City become a stronger, healthier community. But to continue to accomplish that goal, we have to get people further engaged.

My mantra is to leave them better than I found them, which means I want to have a positive effect on each person or situation I encounter. It would be dishonest if I do not reveal I fail often to fulfill this purpose, but it is what I strive to do.

How do you measure success in your business? Is it measured by sales? Customer satisfaction? Overall growth? Or, could your success be measured by your failure?

I got started in the roofing business when I was 17 working on a roofing crew. Then the summer after my freshman year of college, I started my own company. A friend’s dad was a builder who started replacing a lot of roofs after a major hailstorm. He replaced so many roofs that people thought he had quit building houses and focused solely on roofing, which wasn’t his plan.

On May 10, 2010, we were on a plane to China to adopt our second son when one of the biggest hailstorms in Oklahoma history hit the area. A second major hailstorm hit on May 16.

We all see and hear things through filters that typically only verify something we already believe. We develop our belief system from real-life experiences and the outcomes of those experiences. We try to fit new experiences into our belief system and assume that the outcomes will be the same.

There are two businesses in the same industry that are roughly the same size; they have about the same number of employees and the same amount of revenue.

Whether you are responding in writing to a grant opportunity or a request for proposal, how you write your response can make or break that opportunity…

At OIC (Opportunities Industrialization Center of Oklahoma County), we applied for and won a competitive grant of $250,000…

Historically, there have been significant barriers to being a technology innovation company. But companies who want to survive must embrace the importance of technology innovation and find ways around these traditional barriers.