Meet Raychel Sanner | Storm Chaser & Activist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Raychel Sanner and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Raychel, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking
The best things in life are a risk. They’re a leap of faith. They’re walking into darkness completely uncertain about what’s ahead. Life is too short to not take a few big risks. Maybe it’s just saying hello to someone you find intriguing. Maybe it’s going back to school to change your career path. Maybe it is even starting your own business? Whatever it is, risk is the best and most essential piece to success in life. I have aways seen risk this way, and it drives innovation because with risk comes the chance of failure. I think that if you play things too safe, you lose a lot of chances to discover brilliant new solutions and ideas that could change the world.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
Honestly, at Tornado Titans there are so many things we have done over the years to set ourselves apart. I’m a big believer in consistency and quality being the keys to make any brand shine. If you aren’t consistently pushing out quality work, you are toast. Literally you have no chance. You can be in the least innovative business model on the planet, but if you produce incredible work on a consistent basis you have a chance.

With that in mind, a secret to our success has been consistently thinking ahead and relentlessly pursuing new types of content for people within our niche. What most people are doing now is already old news! We think about what the landscape is going to be like in 2 years, 5 years, or even 10 years and go after those solutions. We did a web series before that was really a thing. We were podcasting before most people knew what the hell a podcast was. We started toying with virtual reality content with the crappiest cameras imaginable because it was something new and interesting. If you are working in the ream of innovation a lot of stuff will fail but if you stick to serving your audience consistent and quality content the things that succeed are going to do so beyond your wildest expectations.

A lot of the success I’ve had over the years building not just the Tornado Titans brand, but several others is that I didn’t give up when things didn’t work out amazingly for the first six months. Any content venture is going to take 18-36 months AT A MINIMUM to really start rocking and rolling. If you start something now in 2022, you can expect to have something magical by 2024 or 2025 if you have the right content serving the right audience at the right time. Overnight successes are very rare and you absolutely have to have a plan to work through the lean years and to keep plugging away. It’s all a risk. There’s going to be failure. But if you keep trying and keep iterating and keep innovating, you’ll eventually get it. Then it’s time to roll.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I’m such a massive fan of the Four Corners area. So assuming it isn’t storm season, I think a long and leisurely road trip to check out the scenery with my camera would be the ultimate way to show people around the region. But let’s be honest! And I mean realllllly honest! I’d love to be out on the Plains with a building sky overhead, some incredibly unhealthy fast food (or if I was well prepared a healthy lunch from my lunchbox), and a tornado watch just out from the Storm Prediction Center. That’s where you get to know me a lot better but you also get to know the land you are on much better. This stuff has been happening for millennia. You are just a witness to a process that is really just so obnoxiously indifferent as to your existence. It is both humbling and terrifying because you realize how small you are in those moments.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
It all begins with my parents honestly. I know that’s not true for many people but I truly mean my parents saw my potential early on and did everything they could to encourage me to not settle for just ok. A big part of my drive in life is because my Mom never let me accept that being average was something that was allowed for me. But at the same time, she always had this way of helping me back up when I did make a big mistake or suffered a great setback. She always had my back. My biggest regret I will always have is that I lost so many years with her because she died so, so, so young. There were so many lessons I could’ve continued to be taught. In so many ways, and perhaps introspectively in so many unhealthy ways perhaps, trying to honor her efforts to make sure I didn’t settle for ok is a driving force behind everything I do.

And goodness, my gratitude runs far deeper than that. There have been so many people over the years from Steve and Matt at Operation Sports to the professors who also didn’t accept average work from me to friends who pushed me to do better. And of course, all the thanks in the world go out to my wife Sara, who is absolutely the person who motivates me to continue to improve myself so that I can be the best partner possible to her day in and day out.

Website: https://www.raychelsanner.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/raychelsnr

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/tornadotitans