Meet Slade Johnston

 

We were lucky to catch up with Slade Johnston recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, so we’re so thrilled to have Slade with us today – welcome and maybe we can jump right into it with a question about one of your qualities that we most admire. How did you develop your work ethic? Where do you think you get it from?

I was very fortunate to be raised in a family that values hard work. There isn’t anybody in my immediate family that could be labeled lazy. I grew up watching my dad put in 80+ hour weeks on average and still make time to be a great dad and attend my events. Naturally, I have adopted that same work ethic and take pride in doing something right and at a high level. It started in sports growing up and quickly transitioned into business at young age.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

My passion is the outdoors. I’m an avid hunter and conservationist. I grew up on a family farm hunting and fishing every chance I could with my dad or granddads. It’s my place of piece and where I get even closer to God. That passion ultimately led to starting my first company and helping shape the person I am today.

Turkey hunting is my absolute favorite. I received this passion initially from my late grandfather, Gary Fortenberry. He was a local legend and one of the best in the state of Alabama. For most avid turkey hunters, there is an achievement called the Grand Slam. This really is just a neat challenge in place that requires you to travel across the country hunting the 4 subspecies of wild turkeys. Buying out of state licenses and supporting hunting in other states also aides in the conservation initiative. My grandfather and me had always planned to pursue the Grand Slam when I got to college. However, he passed away the first semester of my Freshman year and we never were able to do it.

In memory of him, my dad and I started looking for outfitters to pursue it. We quickly realized it was going to be more expensive than what we wanted to pay at the time. So, we got to thinking, why not just swap a hunt on our farm for a hunt on someone else’s and save some money.

I ended up finding a guy in Colorado on a social media app that was interested in swapping but said he wanted to bring his son wild boar hunting instead. (We are overpopulated with them at our farm in Alabama.) So, him and his son came and had a successful hunt at our farm in Alabama and then my dad and I went and had an incredible trip at theirs in Colorado.

At the time, I was going through business school at The University of Alabama and saw an opportunity. I did my due diligence and realized there wasn’t anything credible online for swapping outdoor related trips other than general forums. So, that’s when I created Trips4Trade.com. A premier membership community for likeminded individuals to swap trips in the categories of outdoors, adventure, vacation, and sports.

Flash forward and we have now built our community to have trips in all 50 states and over 10 countries with members actively swapping.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

I would say the three things that have helped me the most in my journey are passion, organization and networking.

First and foremost, starting a business is tough. You have to be passionate about what you are doing. I also believe you can find the best opportunities for business ideas within your passion because you are so familiar with all aspects of it. For me, that is hunting. So, all of my businesses now are tied to the hunting industry in some way. Next is organization.

We all are extremely busy nowadays and getting pulled in every direction. You have to be organized and disciplined to make sure you are moving forward in the right direction and not chasing the wrong goal or missing important opportunities. I recommend leveraging technology like google sheets, google calendar, google drive, etc. so that you can have everything synced up between your laptop and phone to stay very organized on the go.

Lastly, I think relationships are key to success. You have to be very intentional about networking and adding value to others and in return that’ll eventually lead to them adding value back to you.

Who is your ideal client or what sort of characteristics would make someone an ideal client for you?

Since starting Trips4Trade, I also got my real estate license and specialize in land sales. Primarily high end recreational farms. This pairs well with Trips4Trade because we work with landowners mostly. So, my ideal client would be a large landowner that has interest in hunting, fishing, or timber investments. I could help this client get more out of their asset through Trips4Trade and potentially help them with real estate needs as well. Another ideal client, would be a person looking to buy a large recreational farm.

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