In a single four-week stretch, Samantha Scott turned 21, graduated from Florida Gulf Coast University and started her own business. That was nearly 20 years ago. Today, her public relations and digital marketing firm Pushing the Envelope is one of the most successful PR agencies in Southwest Florida. But Scott admits that entrepreneurship didn’t come naturally at first.

“I’ve always been really driven,” she says. “I’m a planned person—that part came natural to me. But I have a low risk threshold, so being an entrepreneur was odd at first.”

Yet once she took the leap, there was no going back.

Scott began by offering her PR services to the clients in the direct mail business she owned with her husband. “But within six months, I was so busy doing my own work that I didn’t have time for the direct mail business,” she says.

The key to her success? Hard work, of course, but also her savvy connections within the industry. While she was at FGCU, Scott had worked at local PR firms, and after she graduated, she was deliberate about joining industry associations. She got her name out as someone who provided services that many of the established firms didn’t offer in-house; at first that was public relations then, in 2009, it was social media marketing. The larger firms would hire her to do those services, and then white-label the products under their own agency names. It was a system that worked well for everyone.

“I wasn’t a threat to them,” Scott explains. “And I made sure to look for these kinds of horizontal connections in my networks. I didn’t see the other companies as competition, but more as collaboration.”

For entrepreneurs, Scott said, networking is key. But she doesn’t suggest that people go to every cocktail mixer on the books. Instead, focus on creating strategic relationships. “Industry associations are really fantastic if people are willing to be vulnerable and connect,” she says. “It’s about creating a friendship and a rapport, not making small talk.”

Beyond the widget

“When you own a business, you’re in your business,” Scott says. “That means you’re busy producing widgets. But sometimes you have to pause and take the time to look outside of the day-to-day running of the company and work on the business itself.”

Once a month, for an entire day, Scott meets with her peer group from Vistage, an international coaching and peer-advisor organization that’s reserved exclusively for CEOs. The group discusses their industries, the economy and where their individual businesses are headed. “It’s a scary time investment,” Scott says, “but one that’s fantastically valuable.”

Advice for women entrepreneurs

“It shouldn’t be any different than being a male entrepreneur,” Scott says. “If someone is making you feel that it is, turn off that noise.”