About This Episode
In today’s episode of Tactical Business, host Wade Skalsky sits down with Toby Leary of Cape Gun Works. Toby shares the journey of building a firearms training and retail facility from the ground up. He discusses the challenges of location, financing, and industry competition while emphasizing customer service, community engagement, and persistence. Learn how their vision, faith, and business strategy helped them grow into a successful, well-respected destination. Watch now to hear firsthand insights on entrepreneurship, risk-taking, and overcoming obstacles in the firearms industry.
Insights In This Episode
- Involvement in local charities, PR efforts, and free classes helped strengthen community ties and earned media attention.
- Their training programs go beyond legal requirements, aiming to improve firearm safety and situational awareness for customers.
- Adjusting from high on-hand inventory to a more demand-driven approach improved profitability.
Today’s Guest
Toby Leary | Cape Gun Works
Cape Gun Works, located in Hyannis, Massachusetts, is a premier destination for firearms enthusiasts. Occupying a 20,000-square-foot facility, it features a fully stocked pro-shop, classroom, and indoor range. The store offers a wide selection of firearms, ammunition, and shooting accessories, complemented by comprehensive training and educational programs. Co-founded by Toby Leary and Brendon Bricklin, both certified instructors, Cape Gun Works is committed to safety and responsible firearm ownership.
Featured on the Show
About Tactical Business
Tactical Business is the weekly business show for the firearms industry. The podcast features in-depth interviews with the entrepreneurs, professionals and technologists who are enabling the next generation of firearms businesses to innovate and grow.
Episode Transcript
Wade: Welcome to the Tactical Business Show. I’m your host, Virginia Beach based firearms entrepreneur and copywriter Wade Skalsky. Each episode will be exploring what it takes to thrive as a business owner in the firearms industry. We’ll speak with successful firearms industry entrepreneurs about their experiences building their companies, leaders and legislators who are shaping the industry, and tech executives whose innovations will reshape the future of the firearms industry. Let’s get after it.
Wade: Welcome to the Tactical Business Podcast. I’m your host, Wade Skalsky, and today I’m speaking with Toby Leary from Cape Gun Works. Toby, how are you doing today, sir?
Toby: I’m doing great. Thanks for having me on, Wade.
Wade: Yeah. I’m excited. We either haven’t had someone on the show, or it’s been a long time since I’ve had someone from Massachusetts. That’s where you’re at?
Toby: Yeah. Behind enemy lines here in Massachusetts.
Wade: Well, I’ve gone farther north to Maine and Vermont, but each is so interesting. The different states and I live in Virginia, so we’re pretty gun friendly state, at least for the moment. But yeah, we’ll see how that goes. But I’d love to just dive right into it. And let’s chat a little bit about how did you get to where you are now and running Cape Gun Works.
Toby: Yeah, sure. So I was a lifelong enthusiast and hobbyist, if you will, of around the Second Amendment. I fell in love with shooting at 12 years old with the Boy Scouts. I grew up in what I would call an anti-gun home. My parents wouldn’t even let me have a BB gun, so I was left looking in through the cracks of the fence at all my friends who got to have the cool stuff and became friendly with a bunch of people that were like minded. And so when we all turned 18, and I had a couple friends that were older, that were when they turned 18, we all applied for licenses and got guns and started hunting and shooting. And then I realized that something was really wrong. When I applied for my license to carry at 18 was all the steps I needed to go through, and all the hoops I needed to jump through and the fees I needed to pay, and all the stuff I needed to do in order to exercise my right to keep and bear arms. And I said, geez, this doesn’t feel like a right. It’s a whole lot more like a privilege. So that kind of spurred a little bit of activism in me, and I became a little bit more nuanced when it came to the Second Amendment rights. I wouldn’t say I was a very active advocate, but I was still very supportive of organizations that were fighting the good fight and whatnot.
Toby: Fast forward, I had a long career in construction. I’m a builder by trade, and I had my own business since 2003, and what I ultimately did was I did a business trip with a friend who was one of the first ones I used to go shooting with. He was one that was older than me, and we did a two day handgun class out in Nevada, and then we really said, we need something like this out east, we need it in our area. And when I was 18, 19 years old, I was framing houses with a guy who was a kitchen table FFL dealer, but he really didn’t have any interest in expanding or making this business grow. I would be riding around from job site to job site and I’d say, look at that building over there. We could buy that place and and we could have a retail store, and we could probably have enough room to put a range in the back. And he’s like, you’re nuts. This is Massachusetts, dude. You can’t do that in Massachusetts. And I was like, why? That doesn’t make sense to me. I don’t like that answer. That’s not an answer. So that was working its way around in my head since I was 18 years old.
Toby: And when I was 40, if you will, or 38 or 39. I did that trip and on the flight back we started to whiteboard what it would look like to write a business plan to have a. We definitely wanted an indoor range. We wanted a nice retail establishment that was clean and modern and well lit, and welcome to all walks of life. And then the third part was to really put an emphasis on training and make sure that people learn the safe operation of their guns and become responsible gun owners. So we wrote a business plan. We started to look at property. We started to try to raise money, which turned out to be impossible. The banks were like laughing at us. Like, okay, you want to build a multi-million dollar facility with a range and retail and all this, and you’re a builder and you’re a software guy. Yeah, come back and tell us when you get some customers. So we broke the project off into two phases. Number one was just open a gun store, establish a customer base and customer relations, have sales behind us, and then re go to the bank and try to buy a piece of property that we could renovate and outfit with the range and the full implementation. And that’s how it went down. That’s what we were able to do.
Wade: Well, I think it was smart, especially since you had the gun experience, the firearms experience, but you may not have had obviously, the gun retail experience and there’s always a learning curve with regards to that. When you started phase one. Let’s talk about that. Did the business lessons that you had as a builder. Did those translate to doing a retail brick and mortar store?
Toby: The basics did. Obviously making payroll and accounting and staffing and hiring competent people. But it was a very different business. Neither one of us were in retail at all. So other than my customer service interaction with like one customer, one big project that could last six, eight, nine months. And then at the end of the day, I’m on to the next job again. One customer that could last 6 to 8 months, nine months. So retail is you’re interacting hopefully with hundreds of people a day. And so it has its differences. In other words, in some cases it’s a lot easier to make the customer happy when you’re talking a few hundred dollar transaction and good customer service versus a nine month project that has change orders and by the end of the long jobs like that, people don’t want to see me in their house anymore. Money to them. Um, that’s the way it is, just on long drawn out construction projects. But however, I found it very easy to make a retail customer happy because you just offer good customer service. You treat them with respect. So that part of the business did really fold well into the retail. And it wasn’t exactly rocket science to say, how do you know it’s a good retail facility? Well, do you want to go there and how do they treat you when you do go there? We knew there was a problem in the industry.
Toby: I’m not saying this to rain on any other businesses out there. I’m just saying in our area, especially if business wasn’t done the same way, like a restaurant or a good retail establishment was done. They knew there was a high barrier to entry and they treated you that way. So a lot of times customer service was very lacking and it was a take it or leave it attitude. So a lot of times you need a box of ammo. You go in, you hold your nose, you suffer through the transaction just to get what you need and get out. That was something I didn’t want to perpetuate. I wanted to be disruptive to that. I wanted to say that the gun industry, even though we have a high barrier to entry, does not have the luxury of running its business any different than any other retail establishment or restaurant or something that you’re trying to woo the public into your facility to have more than just a transactional experience, more like a relationship, like I the whole concept to me was I want people far and wide within my state to say, I’m thinking about buying a new gun, and I got to plan my day accordingly so that I have enough time to go to Cape Gun Works.
Toby: Because why would you ever buy a gun anywhere else? And I don’t say that because I don’t want people to shop at other places, but that’s the level of customer service that I wanted to achieve, to or aspire to in order ten years down the road. We’re still aspiring to that. I wouldn’t say we’re there yet, but we certainly try. But the point is, I want to be the best of the best in the industry, not to the detriment of others. I have this saying where local waters support local fishermen, right? No matter how many fishermen live in a community, they can go out and they can all harvest the catch and they can come back and they can feed their families and feed their communities. And I still believe that same thing goes for any industry, right? So I don’t think that if my business plan is to try to put that guy out of business, that’s a terrible concept in my opinion. I believe there’s enough business for all of us to go around. So let’s raise the level and raise the standard for everybody to be much better at what we do based on treating people how we would want to be treated. It’s the most basic. It’s like the golden rule of life. Why shouldn’t it apply to business?
Wade: Yeah, that’s the one constant that in dealing with different businesses that I’ve experienced in interviewing them is customer service is always the first pillar of their business. It doesn’t matter if it’s in a brick and mortar store. It doesn’t matter if it’s a range. It doesn’t matter if it’s online. Like customer service is a through line for that entire for every business that I talk to. The second thing that I’m always interested in is geography, right? You’re in Massachusetts. How did you select your your first. You have one location.
Toby: One location.
Wade: Okay. How did you select your first location? How does living in Massachusetts impact that? And then what are the downstream effects that you’ve experienced because of that choice that you made?
Toby: Yeah. So this is actually a pretty interesting story because we live on Cape Cod, which is the arm floating in the ocean, right? It’s the part of Massachusetts sticking out into the ocean. So technically we’re a peninsula, which is ultimately a dead end street, right? You can’t loop around. It’s not like we’re on a busy thoroughfare where 2 million cars go by a day. That doesn’t happen. We’re on a kind of an isolated community in Hyannis. And so when we were deciding to put down roots somewhere, we said it would make much more sense as a business decision to go about an hour and a half away from where we are. But it would take a severe toll on family and our both of us. Both my business partner and I had young families and raising kids and wives, and plus we’re involved in our local communities a lot. So three hours of travel time a day didn’t exactly make me excited. Plus, I still have my other business, so I need to pay attention to that as well. It would make a lot more sense to move my business to where there’s a 2.5 million people in a 1520 mile radius, as opposed to where we live, where there’s a 200,000 amount of people in the 1520 mile radius around us.
Toby: So it’s a percentage of 10% of what it could be as far as the demographic studies that we did. So we recognized we weren’t making the smartest business decision on location because of the dead end nature of us. So we said we need to become a destination. If we’re not a destination, we’re going to be able to have a decent business, but it’s not going to be what we are truly envisioning for our business to be. And so that’s what we’ve been doing over the past 8 to 10 years, is really trying to emerge as a leader in the industry, trying to be on the cutting edge of what’s available and technology and service and our class offerings and our training and whatnot. So and it’s working. A lot of people will come and support us from all over the state, really. So that has proven to be a heavy lift. But it was it freed us up to do other stuff that was more important at the time than just making the the business the main ingredient or the most important thing in our life.
Wade: By that decision, you added three hours a day of commute time into productive time for the business. So that is a positive trade off. From that perspective, what are three things that you feel like you guys did that made the the business a destination? If you could like, boil it down to 2 or 3 things that really made an impact to have people want to drive to the store.
Toby: Yeah, I believe it was a customer service like we already talked about. We have a wide range of product that may or may not be available in other stores that people want, like really put an ear to the ground and listen to what people want And you know what it is that’s trending and try to offer the most competitive price we could. A lot of times, especially in our early days, we were at a severe disadvantage to other gun shops that were bigger, more well established, had better pricing with manufacturers or distributors, or in some cases were members of buy groups. And so we were at a disadvantage to stay competitive with the prices that they offered, but try to win them over by customer service. And then thirdly, I would say it was our community engagement. We would really try to stay out in front of things. We get involved in a lot of local charities. We’re always on the radio or we’re always doing some PR type things. Right after parkland, we offered a free class for any teacher or school administrator or any employee of any school anywhere in the state. And we had a massive class that came in. It was like 75, 80 people was covered by the local newspaper front page coverage. So we get a lot of earned media attention through our community efforts. And so that has really, I think, endeared some people to us that are willing to say, you know what? These guys are really putting their neck out there. So I want to support them. So that’s helped.
Wade: Yeah, I think that outreach is a soft metric, right. You can’t put it on a spreadsheet. Sometimes you don’t see the direct impact on your business. But I think that is a very wise approach and strategy because there’s so many different ways you can do it, especially if you have a decent sized community. So you’re going through the process, you’ve got your store in, you’re doing this outreach, you’re doing customer service. I see that you do have a range now. What was that transition like? How did that happen? And then what made you feel comfortable? You’re like, okay, yeah, we can add the range now.
Toby: It was a lot of stepping out in faith, if you will. It was what happened was after a year and a half, like from day one, people who came into our shop, our little 2000 square foot shop. We had a set of plans hanging on the back wall with the vision, so we sold. The vision really is what it came down to. We said, guys, I don’t want to operate a little mom and pop gun store for the rest of my life. I want to do this. I want to be a retail training facility, a retail center, and a regional training facility. And I sold and everybody said, that’s great, we really need it. There’s no public ranges around our area. So I said, I want to have a public range. And people are like, man, we really need that. That’s great. Good for you. So after establishing that customer base and selling that vision, people would come to us and ask, how’s it going with the range? Good. We’re still trying to raise some money. We try to crowdsource funding thing that fell flat on its face. Not a single person donated. It was really funny. I put my heart and soul out there in front of a camera and everybody was like, raving about it. Like, this is amazing. This is awesome. But nobody opened up their pocketbook and sent us a buck or two.
Toby: It was really funny. It was painful at the time. Now I look back on it. It was funny. But what happened was once we were able to locate a building, we stepped out in faith and said, we’re going to buy this building and then we’re going to pre-sell memberships. And we did that. We were able to raise a good amount of capital by Pre-selling memberships. We were very transparent to people that we don’t have the money to do this. We are going to raise money through pre-sale of memberships, and then we’re going to have what we need to go to the bank, and the bank will fund it at that point, once we get this ratio of amount down and you never satisfy the bank, right? They make you jump through a million hoops. But so we got some people that were like, huh? Like you’re asking me for 300 bucks for a presale membership. And we said, yep, and we’ll cap that rate for you. It won’t go up other than some marginal depending on cost of living increases, but we were able to raise like a quarter of $1 million through that, through that raise of pre-sold memberships, which was really a liability to us because we got to deliver on it. Right. If we never deliver now, what do we do? But we were very honest with people.
Toby: People would come to us and say, and what if you never open? And we had a good line saying, then you’re out 300 bucks, but we’ve lost everything because Brendan and I had literally pledged our entire life savings. Our houses were up, we’re all tied to this transaction. Our kids are pledged under this, so we’ll lose our children if this thing goes south. But the truth of the matter is, once people realized how much skin in the game we had and that we were putting everything we had ever worked for to that point in our life on the line, people were like, yeah, I’ll give you 300 bucks because there were three types of people. The people that were like, it’s never going to happen. And they stood back with their arms crossed and wanted to watch the failure. Then there was the people that were like, I really want this to happen. So if I see it getting close, I might be willing to help. And then there were the third type of people that were like, we’re believers. You got the right vision. You got the right plan, you got the right amount of enthusiasm behind it. We see this happening. So we’re. Here’s 300 bucks and sign me up. So it wasn’t easy, but it got done.
Wade: Yeah. The key is those early adopters, right. Like, how do we attract these people so that they come in first? And then you have the people who are like the medium. People come in and then your late people are jump on the bandwagon. That’s the first time I’ve heard of that done. It’s a genius idea. Obviously it’s ballsy because you can’t build it, but you get to sell the dreams of your customers, right? And I’m sure the bank loves it too. And they’re like, okay, yeah, we see we have this interest and these people put their money where their mouth is. Were you discouraged at all, or did you ever consider quitting when you were crowdsourcing? Didn’t raise $1 because it’s interesting, because you would think that if you have that level of interest for people, that would pre-buy a this, it’s the same thing, right? Yeah. The crowd, you’re basically crowdsourcing it, but you’re just calling it membership in one. You’re just renaming it. It’s basically the same thing. Like walk me through that. Did that occur to you to quit or to rename it, or how did that in your mind? How did you deal with that?
Toby: No, I dealt with it that it was a the right thing to do, the wrong way to do it, because I didn’t have the platform. I didn’t have the way to get that in front of the masses, so to speak. I was hoping that a couple of the early adopters would get it, get into it, see it, see the vision, and then they would spread the word and it would start a wildfire, so to speak. But that didn’t happen. So we and two things. One is we were going to the world with that pitch. What’s some guy in San Francisco care if I have a range out in Massachusetts? He doesn’t. Right. So to get him to chip in five, ten bucks, he’d have to be a really die hard like Second Amendment guy who has a friend or a buddy or a family member that lives down the road from me in order to maybe donate. But on the other hand, the people in my community is really the marketplace that I had to go to, and they were the ones that had to become the plank owner and the early adopter to really start to say, hey, yeah, I can see this thing coming into focus, let’s help it along. But to answer the original question, did I get discouraged? Of course I was discouraged, but never thought of quitting because that’s just not in my nature.
Toby: And also, I’ve never let money get in the way of anything that we put our mind to do. Money is just the tool, right? It’s the you figure out how you get it so that you can make whatever it is you’re doing, whether it’s building a house or whether it’s putting your kids in private. I put my kids through private school financially. I didn’t have the money to do that, but we did it. We just figured it out. We just worked harder. We just cinched the belt a little bit and we tried to make it happen, but on paper it doesn’t really math out real well. So and I tell my wife all the time, I said, money isn’t it’s an obstacle, but it’s something that you can overcome if you get creative, if you think it through, if you put it out there. And so we just had to pivot instead of scrap the idea. I knew we had a good idea. So it was just instead of throwing the whole thing away and going back to the drawing board, it was just pivot and figure out that doors firmly shut. Let’s find another one that’s open and lean on that one.
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Wade: So the location for the range, where is it in relation to the brick and mortar. And then the building itself was already built. Did you use the building and say, hey, here’s a building, we already have the building to sell those memberships. And then I’m assuming the build out of well, I guess you’re in construction. So how did you build it out yourself or walk me through that process?
Toby: In hindsight, I should have because I would have saved a tremendous amount of money. And I am a commercial builder, so I really should have. But I was running a construction company at the time and was like, I don’t have time to be making decisions on in the field on every little thing that’s happening on site. So I did hire a builder as a construction manager to to do it. In hindsight, it was a real big waste of money and I should have done it, especially since I had labor resources at my disposal, like project managers who work for me. I could have just parked them in that position and expensed it and still paid my company to do it, but it would have been and I would have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars. But so that’s one of the things you live and learn and an obstacle that you overcome. And I would have had an advantage that most operators wouldn’t have. But again, I just thought it was in our best interest to get someone who does this for a living in that space every day to come in and run it. But there was that. And by the way, the building that we bought is 40,000ft². It’s over 20,000. And the basement area has like a three loading docks so we can take shipping and receiving. And through there the range is under the same roof as the retail and the training classroom. So it’s all under one roof. We built 15 lanes that are 25 yards in two different bays. So we have a bay of eight lanes and a bay of seven lanes, and it’s all under one roof. So they’re not on two different locations. So yeah. So we wanted everything under the same roof. So that’s how that all played out.
Wade: So now you’ve got the memberships, you’ve built it out. What was the first year or two like for the range. Because from my perspective it’s cool because you have the continuity, right. You’ve got a subscription model. You’re getting a set number of people. How did you grow the range? What were some of the some of the growing pains? If you could have done something differently, what would you have done differently for the first year or two of the range?
Toby: Yeah, it was honestly it was tough and touch and go. For a while there we were stretched pretty thin. Couple of the things that happened at the last minute, like right before we bought the building, our bank pulled the rug out from under us and said, man, we don’t want to be a part of it anymore. And we were like, what? We had this bank all lined up and we were told their protégé and the vice president of the bank is so excited about this, he’s going to fly out and see the whole operation and blah, blah, blah. And at the end of the day, they got cold feet and we were scrambling to find a bank. We interviewed like three other ones, so we finally got one that understood the concept that had funded like 4 or 5 other ranges, and we got a loan with them, but it was not a very good loan for us long term, and it was very difficult to get out from under, but we really had ticking time bomb of our deposit. Money would expire and would lose it and all this stuff on the bank on the building purchase. So there was really a timing issue too. So we finally were like, we got to just bite the bullet and get this loan because we haven’t got another bank to come to the table, and we couldn’t find a local bank that would want to do business with us.
Toby: At the time, it was right during like Operation Choke Point. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with that, where under the Obama administration, there was a federal kind of unwritten mandate that they reclassified firearms manufacturers and retailers like the pornography industry and marijuana dispensaries. So they were unbankable, basically. So all the big banks like Boa and TD Bank and whatnot wouldn’t touch us with a ten foot pole. And then we had to find other banks that would, like, think about coming in. And most of the time they just forget and said, not interested. So we got a bank in Wisconsin to do it. We’re in the door, but we’re under a pretty heavy monthly Fully burdened and it was just the terms of the loan. So we were trying to refinance. No one would look at us. The numbers weren’t great. We’re breaking even, if you will. Then we hit the Trump slump. 2016. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the term or not, but it was a rough time for the firearms industry, so we really had to get creative. We had to try a whole new business model, which was more of like just volume selling, like get our pricing to the point where any retailer would laugh at the margins we were selling stuff at and they would say, you’re nuts.
Toby: So we’re trying to make it up with volume. And I’ll be honest, it was really rough those first two or 3 or 4 years because our volume increased because of price. But the demand wasn’t really there per se, because no one was really worried the rights were going anywhere. So that whole four years under the Trump term from 16 to 20 was actually like some of the best for the economy, but it was terrible for the firearms industry and we ended up increasing our volume, which got us into a buy group. And then the buy group has helped a lot with increasing our margins because we’re purchasing better. We also learned a lot about inventory controls. Instead of having so much inventory on hand, we buy more on demand, which is a two edged sword when things get hard to find. But even still, it meant we were a little more profitable. So we were gaining profit here, there and everywhere we could, and really just rolling up our sleeves and white knuckling it and pulling it out. And sometimes someone, the low hanging fruit was to let a couple people go.
Toby: And I hate that, but that’s the way it is. Sometimes you have to do it. So all that being said, when 2020 came around into 2021 and 2022, when the good old days for the gun industry and the worst times for everybody else, that really helped us a lot, and we were able to become a very profitable business at that point. We’re like, man, if we could do this every day, we’d be a profitable business. Since then, we’ve really been well established and been able to turn a profit year over year. Even with our overhead, we were able to refinance our building, which was huge because that reduced our monthly mortgage payment by like $10,000 a month, which was huge. So it was little things. We just keep course correcting on the little things, taking care of the customers. Still number one, but internally we have to keep refining the processes and the SOPs and what we do and figuring out how we can continue to grow in the market share and also increasing profitability wherever we can, whether it be buying better or. And then sometimes it’s just volume based sales. We still take a little bit of that into the marketplace.
Wade: One thing that’s really interesting is you talked about, okay, we’re going to have to change tacks here. And you took action. Now the volume selling kind of strategy wasn’t super profitable, but it opened a different opportunity in terms of the buying group that maybe you didn’t think of before. And I think that’s always an important thing in business is to remember sometimes just taking action, even if it’s not the right action, is better than doing nothing, right? Yeah, because you can’t just roll over and die in that scenario. And I’m very cognizant, too, of the banking challenges because one of our sponsor is TacticalPay, which they offer merchant services to two way businesses because they keep getting banked all the time. You’re going through these challenges, you’re solidifying, you know, the range, you refinance. So now everything’s working. And then when you got the original brick and mortar store, was that your plan? You’re like, okay, let’s go here with the hopes of maybe one day buying the whole building. Was that kind of in the beginning? Did you think that or.
Toby: No, that was the plan in the beginning was to buy the whole building and do it right from the start. And like if we back way up to before I even opened the mom and pop little storefront, It was to do this exact business model of a range, retail and training, all under one roof, and we call it the three legs of the stool. But it took us a while to a find an appropriate building and b sell it to the bank. And we needed that customer base. So that’s why we broke it off into phase one and two.
Wade: Well that’s awesome because you don’t want that friction in my opinion. Is that any friction in business that you don’t have to have, you should get rid of because it sometimes the difference between winning and losing is like this much. Right. Well, let’s talk about the training aspect a little bit. So you’ve got the location now for the range. You’ve got the brick and mortar. How do you fold in the training aspect to cater to a specific type of customer? Do you have tiers like okay this is more tactical side. This is more safety side. Walk me through your philosophy on the training side.
Toby: Yeah I would say our number one customer is the first time gun owner. We’re still training a lot of people. When I say training, I use it in air quotes because there’s two types of training. One is the government required class in order to exercise your right to keep and bear arms. So you have to get a permission slip from government in order to exercise your right to keep and bear arms. In Massachusetts, you can’t buy a gun, possess a gun, own a gun without the license. So the first step is getting your license. So we teach a class our license to carry class. And it’s like a basic firearm safety class that takes place. So you buy the class, you take the class. It’s a four hour class. And we have live fire and non live fire. Some people move here from another state. They’ve already had guns. They just need to get the license. So they’ll take the non live fire. Then other people are like I’ve never shot a gun. I want to even in that scenario we say listen we really want you to understand this is how to get my license class. I don’t want you to leave here today after firing ten rounds out of a 22 on target that you’re good to go on your new gun purchase. You know when it finally comes. Three or 4 or 5 months down the road.
Toby: Because that had been the mentality, just like we were disruptive to the business model of the gun store in our area, we wanted to be disruptive to the mindset of, hey, yeah, I took a class when I got my license, so I’m all set. And what really made us think about this was I carried a gun for 15 years before I took my first defensive firearms class, and when I took that class, I was like, I’m an idiot. I can’t believe how stupid I am that I carry a gun in the real world. For 15 years and never having done this now, I was safe. I could take the gun out of the holster, drive it out on target, fire a few shots, put the safety back on, take it back to the holster, snap my thumb, brake back on. I was safe, I could hit the target, but that was like the easy part of carrying a gun in the real world, right? I didn’t know anything about all the situational awareness about the body’s internal and external natural reactions to stress, and I didn’t know what a dynamic critical incident was. I didn’t know what unsighted, clinically kinesthetically aligned, unsighted fire was like. All the things that are going to happen to your body physiologically under this extreme amount of stress. And yes, I could probably figure it out under stress, like a lot of people do, right? You can read The Armed Citizen and NRA magazine and see that people get the job done a lot.
Toby: But the truth of the matter is there’s a more efficient way. And that really resonated with me coming from the construction end of the world, which is I was there when we were hammering nail walls together and plywood onto studs, and then we went to nail guns and it was like, oh, wow, this is efficient. This is nice. I can really up production. We’re not using hand saws anymore. We’re using skill saws with plug in cords. Right. More efficient. And so the same is true for defensive firearms training. I can learn a more efficient way to be effective, defending myself or the life of somebody I love. And so really, it was trying to adapt and bring that to the firearms community, that as a whole, we should feel the pressure to recommend or take someone to a class or go to a class ourselves within the industry, because if we don’t, it’s going to become government mandated someday, like it is in Massachusetts. And that’s something I don’t think is constitutional. And I would like to say that the industry is doing a better job than the government mandate, because what happens with the government mandate, you end up watering it down to the lowest common denominator, and everybody gets the sticker right? Why not just let everybody get the sticker and say, you can buy a gun constitutionally, but do you know how to shoot it safely and effectively, like most of the customers in my place? After a quick conversation, they’re signing up for a class or a private lesson, or a group class, or a small group class, or an event where there’s an instructor led situation because they and especially the new gun owners.
Toby: That’s why I say we cater a lot to the new gun owners who have been just recently, in the last few years, introduced to this. They don’t have any problem admitting that they weren’t born with a gun in their hand. They’re like, we’re in for our first gun. We just got our license, so how do we shoot it? Oh, I’m glad you asked. Here’s a class. We have pistol handling one, two, three and four that by the time you’re done with that kind of series of classes, you’ll be drawing from the holster, taking evasive action. You’ll be learning about situational awareness, and you’ll be learning what is most likely to happen in a gunfight. Fight, statistically, all that kind of stuff. And if some people are like, yeah, but I don’t want to be embarrassed in class. Okay, then take a private lesson. We got some great instructors. They’ll take you out on the range privately and teach you the same stuff. So it works out well.
Wade: It’s shocking to me. And this happens sometimes to even with police officers in terms of how little they. Some of the some departments are awesome. They train their guys up, some they don’t train at all. And they just have to shoot it once a year. And I know I take firearms lessons, and I always tell my guy after every time I take a lesson from him, I’m like, you make my family safer. Thank you. Because I’m always better after doing lesson, I think. And I think the second thing I think is really smart too, is catering to the beginning gun owner. You create a customer for life because if they’ve never had, never had a gun and then they come in and then you help them get their license, you help them train up, they’re going to come to you. And that builds in that stickiness of the customer. Are you seeing that in the numbers in terms of like the lifetime value of your customer? Is that something that you’re seeing?
Toby: Oh yeah, definitely. Every once in a while, like all hobbies, you’re really into it at first. And your front load your training and you’re coming in. You’re spending a lot of money. You’re buying ammo. You’re taking classes, you’re getting holsters, getting a few guns, the whole nine yards. And then life gets in the way and some people drift away, but you see them a couple times a year. But I don’t think we’ve lost them as a customer as much as they’ve got busy doing other things. So I would like to say that we can hold them at that level of enthusiasm forever. But I know better. But I will say that a lot of the new shooters that came in 2020, 2021 came in for out of maybe fear, even like, oh, I see what’s going on in the world. They’re letting people out of jail, defunding the police, and they’re burning down cities up the road, and they need something to protect myself. So they came in under that auspice of needing to protect themselves. The truth is, they fell in love with the hobby, too. And it became a way of life. And now it’s almost a social outing to come in with.
Toby: I call a lot of the roving bands of women that visit our shop, and I love to see it. They come in like two, three, four with all their range bags, and some of them have range bags on wheels. They’re wheeling them in and getting targets. They get their glasses and muffs and they make it a social event. They’re just out having a ball. They’re getting some good reps down range, but they’re also having fun. It’s like going to the spa, getting the nails done or going out to eat right. It’s the same social aspect, and that I think we’re very fortunate of is, and I do believe that is the fruit of digging fertile soil of good customer service, because if they never had the good experience in the first place of buying that gun and wanting to come back and shoot it and wanting to introduce other people to it, then we wouldn’t have that explosive growth of customers wanting to return and wanting to repeat. So that I believe is the real winner in all of it. Is taking good care of the customer, will ultimately expand the Second amendment for everybody and in and preserve it for future generations.
Wade: Yeah, I totally agree with that. The more people you bring into the fold, you know, the more advocates you have for the Second Amendment for sure. And it sounds like you have the top of funnel beginner entry level people, but then you create the conditions for those downstream effects and those more highly interconnected social gatherings at the end. So it sounds like you’ve got the training set up, you’ve got the range set up. Everything’s working together with the brick and mortar now, and you have this complete business as you envisioned it when you planned it. What is the next 3 to 5 years look like for you guys? Are you just making it better what you’re doing now? Are you looking at expansion? Are you looking at maybe more doing a web presence? What are the next steps for you guys?
Toby: Yeah, the next step is certainly web presence. We could certainly through some investment and a new website or expansion of our existing one probably captures some more market share via the web, which will be a lot more productive than a second location. Although our original business plan shows us having three locations, we do want to expand into 2 or 3 other locations, but we found that doing the web in between location number two and three is an important way to kind of back feed the location number two, because ultimately we’ll just be doing what we did ten years ago. We’ll have a lot more education and a lot more knowledge on how to do it. But nothing has got cheaper. And the markets we would go into the real estate is going to be more expensive. We all know the employment is more expensive and then the logistics of it all are going to be more taxing so we can do it. There’s no question about it. And we still want to do it in the next 3 to 5 years. I would definitely like to open location number two, but I really want to use a lot more web sales as our stepping stone to get there.
Wade: Yeah, I think that’s wise. You don’t have to go for the home run ball this time. You don’t want to jeopardize everything that you’ve built, but you do have the solid foundation to be able to start to make those steps. Well, look, I know we’re coming up on time. Where do people find you? Talk about your socials. If they want to contact you directly, how do they do that?
Toby: Yeah. Thanks again. Wade. It’s been a lot of fun and I’d be happy to come back on anytime you want. Just let me know and you can check out all of our socials. We’re at Cape Gunworks, and we also have another set of socials called at Rapid Fire Radio. We do a weekly podcast, and we do a radio show on Sundays so you can find all the stuff there. It’s also on the at Cape Gunworks socials as well. And yeah, we’re all over most of the social media sites out there trying to stay relevant in an ever changing world. Yeah. And, uh, and so, yeah, I appreciate everyone tuning in. And we’re right in Hyannis, Massachusetts. So if you ever come to beautiful Cape Cod, be sure to look us up and come on down and send some lead downrange.
Wade: And you guys are, uh, Cape Govworks.com. Correct? Yes. And if they want to reach out to you directly, is there an email they can send, or is there a form on the website that they could submit?
Toby: Yeah. Toby at Cape gunworks.com.
Wade: Amazing. Well, Toby again, it’s been great to have you on and I always learn from these and it’s really encouraging to see the advances that you guys have made. And I’m glad that everything’s working great for you guys.
Toby: Yeah, thanks a lot. And just let me know when you want me to come back 100%.
Wade: Great to talk to you today.
Wade: You’ve been listening to the Tactical Business Show by TacticalPay.com. Join us again next episode as we explore what it takes to be a business success in the firearms industry.