We built the thing we wish someone had handed us.

At 21, I’d already built one business from nothing. I’d grown a landscaping company, learned what it actually took to run something and make real money, and started an insurance agency thinking I knew what building a business required.

Then a local roofer invited me to a networking group. Nothing about the invite looked like a turning point. It was a room full of people I didn’t know, doing business I didn’t fully understand yet.

That room changed the trajectory of everything. The people I met there started introducing me to other people, bank leaders and investors, operators running businesses far bigger than mine, mentors and advisors who had no real reason to take a call from a 21-year-old, rooms full of CEOs and community leaders who’d already built what I was still figuring out. I didn’t get into those rooms on my resume. I got there because someone already inside decided I was worth bringing along.

That’s the whole belief Runway is built on. People will take you further than money ever can. I didn’t learn that from a book. I learned it from a roofer who thought to invite a kid he didn’t have to.