It was that time of year again. Last week, we held our annual national sales meeting in beautiful Idaho Falls, Idaho. It's a noteworthy event because it's the only time each year we're able to get our entire sales team from all nine of our locations together with our corporate partners.

Folks fly in from all over the country to be here. We learn a lot and we play a lot—all for the purpose of "sharpening our saws" and building stronger relationships.

The theme this year was "Y'all Tough Enough", which gave us an entertaining western style to each of the individual events over the course of four days. It also reminded us that we have what it takes to help our large network of small businesses succeed.

Last week, we held our 2017 National Sales Meeting in beautiful Idaho Falls, Idaho. It's an annual event where we bring our entire sales team into one location to be trained by our management team and business partners, to boost our social strength and to enjoy some fun events. It gets everyone on the same page and re-energizes us for the coming year.

We thought we would give you a bird's eye view into the meeting to see the effort we put into building a top-notch sales team. It's a great way to help you get to know RS&I. After all, we're extremely focused on helping others become an authorized retailer and incorporating each opportunity we offer into their line of products and services.

You always hear about thinking outside the box to generate new ideas and efficiencies. But what if you took all of those ideas and put them back into an actual box?

That's exactly what Digital Electronic Supply (DES) has done with their boxes of cable and RS&I is proud to partner with such an innovative company. It provides our authorized retailers who install satellite TV and Internet with an excellent solution for their everyday installation needs.

DES manufactures a wide variety of cable types, including several variations of RG6. The key to their success, according to many technicians, is their convertible box that was engineered with the technician in mind to facilitate an efficient cable feed while protecting the box from potential damage at the same time. The "Reel-In-A-Box" packaging has a number of features that make their packaging truly tech-friendly.

RS&I is among the nation's leading fulfillment service providers with more than 45 years of highly successful experience meeting distribution, warehousing, delivery and installation needs. We make sure our current network of over 2,500 authorized retailers has every piece of equipment they need to get the job done in a timely manner.

We manage an integrated distribution network of nine strategically located sales and distribution centers serving the western U.S. Having nine different locations means product is always available at the nearest location when one of our retailers needs to place an order.

With the close proximity of our distribution centers, it also saves time and money for our retailers.

Entrepreneurs are awesome. You could say with a great deal of confidence that entrepreneurs are some of the most passionate and driven individuals in today's business world. And rightly so. There is a ton of opportunity still out there and many small businesses need to be started to create the economic competition of the American dream.

But how do these great entrepreneurs keep their businesses safe – from the very beginning?

It's a great question, because not every small business is set up from the get-go to make sure its business model will be protected from unscrupulous acts – both from inside and outside of the organization.

Not every business needs a physical fence built around it to keep the bad stuff out. However, what types of "virtual fences" need to be built? For example, what kinds of safeguards should be put in place around employees, partners, processes and every other aspect of business?

If you've previously thought about these questions or if you'd like to make sure you've already covered your bases, take a look at the four topics we've listed below. The goal is to help make sure every small business gets a "virtual fence" built, so they can focus on growing sales and profits.