Steven RinellaFounder & CEO

I’ve never really made big decisions in a dramatic way. Things just felt like what I obviously ought to do. You hit a fork in the road, and it’s not like some movie moment it just feels like the right thing, so you do it.

Not at all. I was a writer through and through. But nonfiction TV was on the rise, and I started getting invited to meetings. Eventually, it just made sense to develop something around hunting and food. I never stopped writing, though.

The main thing was: will this help me find readers? Because I always planned to return to writing full-time. Everything I’ve done needs to make sense from a writer’s perspective.

I always tell people: the well is way deeper than you think. Don’t get stuck on one idea. If you want to write, write. Don’t wait ten years trying to sell one concept. Keep planting seeds.

I don’t really think that way. There were cool moments like when Netflix started licensing our stuff but I’ve never looked at any one point as arrival. It’s all been gradual.

Mary Turner at Outside Magazine bought my first piece. Ian Frazier vouched for me too. That’s how things work you need someone to front your work. You don’t just cold-submit and hope it lands.

Trust that the story is enough. You don’t need to juice it. We’d film all week and come up empty on a hunt, and we’d still run the episode. Sometimes not getting the thing is the story.

I’ve been gone a lot, and I carry guilt about that. But when I’m home, I really try to be present. I don’t hang with friends, I don’t go out I make dinner, cook breakfast, wash dishes. I want my kids to see me do those things.

Not really structured. But we made a clear rule no public faces for our kids online. And I always try to come home on time or early from trips. We keep things tight. When we travel, we pile into small places fish shack, camper, one-room places. Togetherness matters.

We just let the story play out. We don’t fake anything. If we don’t get something, that’s still a story. Sometimes we’ll have a theme like doing a moose hunt focused on father-son relationships but even that’s grounded in what could happen naturally.

It was clear to me early on that I didn’t want to be some experimental avant-garde writer. I wanted to write outdoor magazine features. It was achievable, and there was a market for it. That clarity helped me stay in the biz.

A tech founder once told me, “You always throw out your first pancake, so get cooking.” That stuck with me. You learn more by doing than overthinking. Get your stuff out there.

I don’t ask them what they want to do all the time we just do stuff. We tell them: “We’re going camping this weekend.” And guess what? They always have fun. You’ve got to have the audacity to lead them into experiences where they’ll thrive.

It’s everything. Enthusiasm is contagious. If they see you excited about something fishing, skiing, whatever they feed off that. Show them what passion looks like. Later, return the favor when they find their own thing.

Yeah. I spent a whole summer living in a truck trying to write a book about the Great Lakes. I just lost the thread. I could have blown years, but I quit smart and moved on to something better.

Hunting’s the deep end of the pool. I’ll never talk someone into it. But when it comes to the outdoors in general, I lead. We tell our kids what we’re doing. They don’t always want to go, but they always love it afterward.

I still want to write. I’ll never stop. I might be 75 and still working on something. Writing was the first thing I ever wanted to do, and everything else I’ve done has to justify itself through that lens.