As I looked around the suite in the late hours of our Carbon Media Annual Shot Show party, I found myself filled with a powerful sense of pride. Like many true hunters, I’m often focused on the hunt that lies ahead, but this time, I relished the moment. With an arm around by good friend Bela Kogler, I embraced this healthy pride and absorbed it into my mind and heart: no tears, no cheesiness, just this moment, an incredible moment out of time and fully immersed in The Hunt. Hundreds of our friends in the outdoor industry were hanging out laughing, high-fiving, and enjoying a celebration of our right to hunt, fish, shoot and do how we do.
Nine years ago, a bunch of like-minded people set out to do something significant in the outdoors. We made it through the ‘08 recession where it got crazy scary, we morphed models, we innovated, we survived, and now we are thriving. Today, at 36 million unique visitors per month, Carbon Media is the undisputed leader of the digital outdoors. Our quality daily content on Outdoorhub.com, the #1 website in the outdoors, the advances we are making at Carbontv.com, the streaming video outdoor worldwide leader, and the hundreds of outdoor websites that are part of our family are the defining factors of our current success.
The love I feel for The Hunt is something only those closest to me can fully appreciate. Who’d have believed when we were working out of basically a closet at Farbman Group that we would create Carbon Media and what it has become? I did, and that is not a coincidence! It wasn’t easy, but a great hunt never is (that’s kind of what makes it great!).
One of the things we said from the beginning is that if we stay true to our core values, find employees who feel the same, look out for the people around us and do right by them; good things will happen. Of course, we had to build premium technology, put out high caliber content, partner with the right people, and believe, even when it got rocky, that we would accomplish our mission to be the best. Through it all, we stayed in The Hunt. We had our asses kicked along the way, at times it was downright terrifying and seemed hopeless, yet we stayed in the Hunt.
When you combine authenticity, focus, passion, belief, and some smart people, crazy good things can happen. If you are for real, if you give it everything you’ve got, and you have people around you that believe in the mission, anything is possible! Anything! But you have to stay in the hunt. It’s not easy building great things, whether it’s a car, a business, a family, a culture, but moments like that in our suite are what make it all worth it. It’s my hope that you feel inspired and get your ass back in the hunt, commit fully and get it done!
