From the sales floor to Dead On Shooting Range owner: How Candi Feiro approaches growth and adversity

About This Episode

In today’s episode of Tactical Business, host Wade Skalsky sits down with Candace Feiro from Dead On Arms. Candace shares her journey of launching and managing a unique indoor shooting range in northern Minnesota. She discusses the extensive process of securing financing, the strategic pivot after losing a business partner, and the crucial support from the bank. Learn how Candace overcame challenges, tapped into a niche market, and developed a comprehensive service offering, including firearm classes and gunsmith services, making her business a one-stop shop for enthusiasts.

Insights In This Episode

• Owning a firearm business took over a year, involving multiple financing sources and overcoming significant challenges.
• The acquisition involved seven different financing sources, making it a complicated process.
• Dead on Arms is the only indoor shooting range in the region, drawing enthusiasts from far distances.
• The range offers specialized classes, including permit to carry, pistol and AR basics, and women’s self-defense, catering to a wide audience.

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. Welcome to the Tactical Business Podcast. I’m your host, Wade Skalsky, and today I am talking to Candy Feiro from Dead On. Shooting range from neck of the woods, where I kind of grew up a little bit to Minnesota adjacent. But Candy, how are you doing today?

Candace: Good. How are you?

Wade: I’m doing good. Did I get the last name correct?

Candace: Pharaoh.

Wade: Pharaoh. Close enough. Sorry, I apologize, I have a tough last name too. So people always massacre my name. So I do apologize for that. But I am excited to talk to you. We definitely have a lot of things to dive into that I’m excited to talk to you about. But the first thing is, how did you get into the firearms business? What was the journey that took you to where you are now?

Candace: It was totally random, really. Before I started working here, I was working in investments at a credit union, and there’s a lot of changes in the credit union. And I just was getting to the point where I wasn’t happy with where I was. So I started looking for another job, and this place was getting built at the time that I was looking for that job. And it’s built three miles from my house. So we’re we’re kind of out in the country. It’s just out in the middle of nowhere. And I thought, you know, it was worth it. A shot to apply here because I’m actually legally blind, so I can’t drive. So I was getting sick of always having to get a ride to work. And I thought being this close to home, I could ride my bike to work. So I came for an interview with no hope at all, because I had never even touched a gun in my life before I walked in here to to interview, but it was just a big change and I thought maybe it’s what I need. So I was surprised when I didn’t even make it all the way home. And the previous owners had called me back and said that they want to hire me. They liked the fact that I didn’t have firearm knowledge because I was trainable that way, and they could train me without having bad habits in my background, where I would be teaching people the wrong way to hold guns and and anything like that. So that was almost seven years ago at this point, right when they opened, I think they had been open maybe 2 or 3 months before I started here. And I’ve learned so, so much in my time here now and worked my way up from working behind the counter to assistant manager to manager. And then last year, they well, it was two years ago that they gave me the opportunity to actually buy the place. So last year is when that got finalized.

Wade: Yeah, that’s an amazing story. Like from going through every single position from the very entry level all the way up to now that you own it. Walk me through a little bit about how that has changed your perspective on the business model, because I’m sure that they did some things when you started that you were like, okay, I understand why they’re doing this. I might do this a little bit differently. So did that process change how you look at the business in general?

Candace: It did. Yeah. I had never been in a position of ownership before, so it didn’t change my work ethic. I’ve always had very good work ethic, but as far as when I would go to the.

Wade: Tactical Business podcast, I know I.

Candace: Think about it a little bit more. Whereas before I might have said, oh, we need five of this now I look at it and think, oh, we might only need two because I don’t really want to pay for three extra that I don’t know we’re going to sell, but yeah, it’s there are some things that that change about it, but so much of it is still the same for me because I managed it for so many years before taking over, that it it wasn’t too hard of a transition really.

Wade: Well, and you knew that it worked, right. So obviously you’re going to maybe make a little tweak here and there as to the standard operating procedures, but if it’s not broke, don’t try to fix it. Right. And. Absolutely. And how long have you owned the business now?

Candace: Uh, just over a year. I signed the papers at the end of April of last year.

Wade: And I don’t want to get too far into the weeds if you don’t want to. But, you know, we are a business podcast, so can you walk me through generally like how the financing work? Did you do an SBA loan? Did you have your own capital? Did you get investors like what did that look like? Generally, it.

Candace: Was a huge process. It took over a year to get it completely finalized. I originally had a partner that I was going into the business with. He was a friend of mine from high school and he had worked here, so he was familiar with it, and that kind of fell through after going through the first portion of the process. So the bank came to me and said, you know what, I think you can do this yourself, which was really scary for me because like I said, I had never owned a business before and really didn’t know what I was doing, but they had confidence in my abilities, so they walked me through it. It was great. There was a gentleman from the bank that basically held my hand through the whole process. So there were actually seven different finance financing places that came into play. So to get the loan loans for this. So they all took a portion of it. And then I had to the I would say my biggest hurdle in the whole thing was getting life insurance. So I had to get a separate life insurance to cover the loan if something was to happen to me. And that was quite a process, getting someone to insure me for as much as I would need for the loans for this place. But yeah, I mean, it’s it was made as simple as possible by the folks at the bank, which was really nice.

Wade: And now there’s two things that I think would be great to talk about for people that may be thinking about buying buying a business. Now, was it a local bank in terms of in Minnesota, or was it like a bigger sort of just like a Chase or Wells Fargo or whatever?

Candace: It’s just a local bank. The SBA did finance a portion of it to. And then we’ve got the economic development Fund here in Duluth, Minnesota. So they did a portion of it, and there were a couple of local places really that that did it. The biggest one was the SBA, though.

Wade: Yeah. And I think that’s important for people that are looking in the firearms business, is that you cannot underestimate the value of local relationships and local connections for these types of things.

Candace: Yes. And that’s I mean, that’s something that I use in my business as well. I carry as many local products as possible and I’m always looking for more local businesses to to have their supplies in my store. So the fact that I was able to get finance through a lot of local places was really great.

Wade: So let’s talk a little bit about the store itself. So I know you’ve got so you’ve got a range at store, you have retail and it’s a relatively new structure because it’s about 7 or 8 years old and you’re, but you’re in a kind of a rural area. So how does that impact your clientele? Because the town that you’re in does not have a lot of people in it. Right? Like it.

Candace: Doesn’t. No. And we’re actually about eight miles outside of the closest town here. So it’s not super far out, but it’s far enough. But it doesn’t seem to hinder people from actually coming here because for one, it’s northern Minnesota. Eight months out of the year. It’s usually too cold or nasty outside to shoot outside. So we had a lot of people coming in during that time. But we are the only indoor shooting range in northern Minnesota. The closest one is maybe 2.5 hours away from here. So we have a niche market where if people want to shoot inside, they have to come here, which is great for us, but we also offer classes. So we do permit to carry classes. Pistol 101, AR 101, women’s Self-Defense. And we’ve got some other classes coming up now through the Usca. We also do we have a full time gunsmiths. So he’s an awesome gunsmith. He refinishes old firearms that have been in fires and floods and he builds firearms. Laser engraves duracoat Cerakote. So we have AA1 stop shop for everything firearm related here.

Wade: And that’s what’s great about that is that that that is I grew up in North Dakota, I came through it was a long time ago, but it was it’s a hunting culture. And. But then also too is like, now that you have the AR stuff coming in, you have more of like the cerakote. And so it’s you find that’s being embraced a lot in your business or is it more towards the hunting side. So break that down for me. Like in terms of like because to me it would seem geographically that you would do more hunting rifle, but is that true?

Candace: Yeah, you’d think so, but not so much here. So we do have a store just a few miles from here that like a fishing outdoor hunting store that they sell a lot of the hunting rifles. People come to us for the really cool stuff and the really expensive stuff. So we mostly.

Wade: The Gucci gear.

Candace: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, we’ve got the $7,000 gun sitting on the counter and the different AR’s and the really cool Cerakote and stuff, and they know that if they want something unique, they come to down arms.

Wade: Do you have a good relationship with the other store that’s close to you guys?

Candace: Yeah, we both send each other our customers. If somebody comes in here looking for something like a Benelli, I’ll send them over to them because I know that they can carry them and they’ve got the hunting and stuff where if they go to them looking for an AR, they’ll come, they’ll send them over here.

Wade: So by the business, you’ve been doing it for a year now. What is different from a year ago when you ran everything, you knew everything, and then you bond it like, what’s different now? What’s different in the last year?

Candace: Some of the products that we carry, because I see a change in the clientele that we have here. We have a lot of preppers that come in here. So I started carrying military surplus, and I started carrying freeze dryers and different emergency preparedness books and magazines and first aid kits, things that help with that kind of thing. So I see a lot of that kind of stuff now leaving the store, which we didn’t have that anything like that before. Not saying that the previous owners didn’t cater to their clientele, they just they had an idea of what they wanted and they kept it at that. Whereas since I’ve worked among the customers for those six years before I bought it, then I was able to see what people were actually looking for and change some of the inventory based on that.

Wade: Yeah. One thing I think is that is invaluable as that market research, you cannot replace the top of the funnel at the counter talking to the customer, because if you keep hearing the same thing over and over again, that is an indicator of, hey, there’s some demand out there that maybe we can meet. And the nice thing about prepper goods and services is that they don’t expire by nature. Right? So. Right. Yeah. You don’t have to worry about the shelf life, the food you’re selling. So all right, so where like, do you have a plan? Are you going to stay with what you’re doing right now and see how that shakes out? Do you have a plan for expansion? Like what is the next few years look like in your mind?

Candace: I haven’t thought that far ahead yet. I’m working on just making it through the day, but I have 17 acres on this property here. I would love to make some sort of outdoor area where people can. I don’t know that I would so much do an outdoor range because there are horse farms butted up to this property, and I really don’t want to scare their horses. But we have people that are looking for like an airsoft range or a paintball range. So I’ve thought about doing stuff like that outside, but I am actually working on expanding as well. Not so much with dead on arms, but my boyfriend and I are actually in the very end stages of creating a military surplus store in one of the other buildings on this property here. So we are taking some of the military surplus that dead on is carrying, and now we’re just going to carry it over there. So that’s the expansion that we’re going for at this time. As far as dead on arms, I feel like if it’s not broke, don’t fix it. So I’m staying on the same path and making sure we have income coming in to to continue the business.

Wade: Well, and that’s the one thing, is that I think people once you find your core offering and you know that you’re selling it and people are buying it, you know, that gives you the opportunity to take some chances in other areas. But don’t mess with the core offer. Right? I think that’s wise. So what are for its military expansion business then? What is the thought process that you went through to decide, okay, we’re going to expand this because that’s pretty nichey, right? Like like military surplus is a very I would say that your customer for that is, is they have they search for that. Right. It’s not something that they just it’s not an impulse buy to buy military surplus. That is a very specific right customer. So what led you to do that?

Candace: It again, it’s the preppers that come in here really. I mean between that and the people that just are outdoorsy up here, I mean, this is northern Minnesota. We have a million hiking trails and there’s a ton of people that go camping and backpacking around here. So that’s what led me to start looking into that more, as people were looking for that kind of gear between the freeze dried food, like I said, or the surplus gear where they’ve got the big packs that they can carry everything. So just kind of started exploring that. And you talk to customers and ask what kind of stuff they’re looking for. So it’s nice to see when they walk in and they see the surplus gear in the store, and they get all excited because it’s something that they haven’t seen in this area in years.

Wade: Well, and what’s nice about that too, is then the dead on shooting range can be like a testing ground for those products. Right? So like you can say, all right, so we don’t have to buy a million of the stuff for the surplus store. We can test run it in the regular retail store. And then if it does well then okay, we can start to send it over there. Was that kind of the approach that you’re going to take. You think?

Candace: Yeah, that’s what it’s been. We’ve had the surplus gear for a few months now and it’s really gotten a good reception. So I thought, well, it’s worth putting our energy and time and money into actually opening a whole store of just that stuff.

Wade: Do you think that part of the sort of the survivalist prepper niche up there is because of the geography and it gets so cold, right. And so what I mean by that is like, so I live in Virginia Beach, and every once in a while, every few years we’ll get a hurricane or something and that’ll shut everything down. And then there won’t be electricity. You have to worry about water like so. There’s like this natural extension from, hey, I need to be more prepared. So it’s not necessarily we’re going to have mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, but I need to be prepared for a week, two weeks, a month. Do you find that is the type of that’s like a bridge to that, or is it really people are you’re getting more people who are like, no, I want to be off grid. I want to, you know, be prepared for it to be like this for a couple of years or a mix of all in between. Does that make sense?

Candace: I would say it’s a mixture of all of that, especially with the political climate being what it has been lately. I think that people are people that never thought of having their own garden and growing their own food and being able to sustain their own household are now discovering that this might be something we need in the future. So yeah, there it is, a mixture of both. It’s the cold weather that keeps us hunkered down for months out of the year, but it’s also the thought of what could happen in the future. What am I going to do if the power grid goes down, or if something crazy goes on with the government and I can’t get a hold of my money, I need to be able to eat and feed my family.

Wade: Yeah, it’s interesting because for me, as someone who lives in North Dakota, I always viewed Minnesota politically as similar to North Dakota. But I grew up there like the 80s, late 70s. And so that was a long time ago. But now I look at Minnesota and the state’s getting squirrely, right? So I mean, in terms of its politics. And so it’s much more it’s not a monolith of politics like it used to be. Right? It’s much more diverse now in terms of what’s going on. Are you finding that that is leading to some of the uncertainty in your customers? It’s just a sort of like what was happening in Minneapolis and and like all those issues.

Candace: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And that’s when you bring up what happened in Minneapolis. That was unfortunately. But fortunately, it was one of our biggest selling times. I mean, we started carrying ballistic vests and those sold like crazy because people were going down to the cities to to help with the riots and everything. So yeah, it’s a little bit of all of that mixed in, I think.

Wade: I never just thought I would see riots in Minnesota like that, just because the people are, at least in my experience, they’re so chill. And it’s just now that that volatility there’s that volatility in Minnesota. What is the rest of the country experiencing. You know what I mean.

Candace: Yeah I think it’s more so down in the Twin Cities that you do get it up here in northern Minnesota. But it’s in the larger cities like that. You’re definitely going to find it because you have all walks of life of people down there.

Wade: Right. Well, and but if there’s and this is the one thing I think people don’t think about, if you’re in a city, you’re going to think about what you need, right? Cause that goes down. But then if you’re in the country, a lot of if something really goes down, all those people from the cities are going to go to the country, right? Yeah. And so then you’re going to have a whole nother you’re gonna have a whole nother set of problems too, you know. And I think that’s that being prepared now is it’s much more on people’s minds and much more of a possibility. Whereas before maybe it was like, oh, maybe there’s like a 10th of a percent that something’s going to happen that I need to be prepared. But I don’t know what the percentage is. But it’s not. It’s it’s higher than it used to be for sure.

Candace: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, you think about even five years ago, if somebody was to walk up to you and say that they’ve got a £50 bag of rice in their basement and they’ve got jars and cans of food, you’d look at them like they’re crazy and wonder what’s wrong with them nowadays. You look at them and think, that’s a good idea. What else do you have?

Wade: I want to talk a little bit about regard like a 30,000 foot view, and I want to come back down a little bit to the store and talking about the Gunsmithing program that you have there, because on your website you advertise it, right, like it’s a selling point. So it’s like my range. For example, they have a gunsmith on there, but I have no idea what they do. I don’t know what the services they sell. It’s just something that’s they have. And you have to go ask, right. So walk me through your Gunsmithing program. Walk me through how that came about, because I think that for brick and mortar stores, that is a that is an area that is very under publicized and under marketed. In fact, I don’t know if I’ve seen anyone on a brick and mortar recently that we’ve interviewed market that, so I’m really interested in that. So walk me through how that works. Your decision to do that and the program in general.

Candace: Well, for one, there’s really not a whole lot of gunsmiths around. But if you find one, they’re probably 60, 70 years old. They’ve been doing it since they were young, and they might not even be certified to to do it. They’re just they’re very good at fixing guns. That’s usually what you find, at least in this area. I don’t know what it’s like in the rest of the country, but having having a gunsmith who’s younger than 40 is is pretty rare around here. So we’ve had one since we pretty much since we opened. I think our first gunsmith had started right around the same time I did at the store, and we’ve since he’s left, but now we’ve got this great one that we’ve got. He’s been here for, I think, two and a half years at this point. And he’d gone to the Sonoran Desert Institute. So he got his licensing through there, and he’s just fiddled with guns his whole life. So he had that background of being very familiar with how to work firearms and how to fix them. And he’s just he’s one of those people that he’s great to have around because you can give him anything. And if he’s never even seen it before, he’ll take it apart and figure out how it works so he can. He does that with his guns, with the range. When things break down in the range, he can fix those things. I mean, he’s like the, the handyman of, of the store. So it’s really nice having someone like that can look at something for five minutes and tell you exactly what’s going on with it and what parts he needs to order to fix it.

Wade: This episode is brought to you by TacticalPay.com. Every few years, it seems large banks and national credit card processors suddenly decide that they no longer want to process payments for firearms and firearms related businesses, and so they drop these businesses with almost no notice, freezing tens of thousands of dollars in payments for months on end. If you want to ensure your partner with a payments provider that is dedicated to supporting the firearms industry, or you just want to find out if you could be paying less for your ACH, debit and credit card processing, visit TacticalPay.com. Again, that’s TacticalPay.com. It’s one thing about like expansion, right? Like let’s say if you were a gun ranger or you’re a brick and mortar store and you don’t have a gunsmith in there, it’s a natural expansion as an add on service, right? Because especially for if you’re you’re offering so like you, you have the more high end gear. So someone’s going to spend if someone’s going to get a Daniel defense, a AR or something, they’re like, yeah, I will pay to have it cleaned like sonic cleaning. I will pay to get laser engraved whatever I want, because that is just a natural. They’re going to spend $7,000 on a gun or 2000 or 4000. They’re not going to they’re not going to worry about that add on cost. It’s in alignment with the offer.

Candace: Yeah. And we actually sweeten the deal too. So if they buy their guns here, any firearm that they buy here, we give them for free sonic cleanings every year. So that’s been a really popular thing. And that it gets it out there more too, that people know what a sonic cleaning is. And they tell their friends and they bring their firearms in to get cleaned to.

Wade: You know, walk me through that. Like, what is that? Because I actually have never I mean, I can figure out what it is. Right. Like, but walk me through because that’s not something I think that is out there a lot. And I think if people are interested in that, it’s.

Candace: Basically like a giant jewelry bath. It’s just this big tank with liquid in it, and it emits these sonic waves, which kind of shakes the carbon free from your firearm. So once it’s done going through there, uh, the gunsmith will take it out and he scrubs it down. And sometimes he has to really work extra hard to get a lot of carbon out. So he’ll take a brush and scrub it up, and then he just oils it. And we always tell people your gun is going to come out looking newer than it did coming in for sure, because it comes out nice and shiny and clean.

Candace: And.

Candace: Working properly, which is, I would say, 70% of the firearms that come in here with people saying it’s not functioning. Can you do something? It’s just that it needs a really good cleaning.

Wade: Yeah. And how long does it take? So is this like, if I wanted to get a gun cleaned and I have a reason for asking this, like, do I bring in and drop it off or is it. I will do it. Will you wait or both?

Candace: Yeah. I mean technically, yeah, you could wait while it’s being done, but. But our gunsmith is at any point in time, he’s anywhere from 2 to 3 months behind. He’s got so much work in front of him. So we just have everyone drop it off. And then once a week, either the gunsmith or one of my other employees, that helps the gunsmith, he’ll just do all the sonic cleaning. So you’ll take everything that needs to be done, put it all in the tank, and then put it back together and and send them off.

Wade: Well, what’s great about that is that it brings the people back to the store, Right. So yeah. So if I’m going to if I’m going to bring my gun back to the store to have it cleaned, I’m physically in the store, I’m going to wander around the store, maybe buy something else or I’m going to, you know what I’m saying? Or if I have a billing issue with my range membership or whatever. So I think that’s a genius idea, actually. And so I’m going to write that down. Yeah.

Candace: Yeah. That’s one of the things that I learned from the previous owners. I would get nervous in the past when I would see too many people lining up in the lobby waiting to get helped, and they’d say, you know what? Let them wait for a little bit, because if they’re in the lobby waiting for 2 or 3, five minutes, they’re going to start looking around to keep themselves busy for a while. And that’s when they start thinking, oh, I might need this, or I might need that.

Wade: Yeah, or they’ve been thinking about something for a really long time. And now is the time, right? Yep. Yeah. Well I’m very I got get the gunsmith issues on top of my mind because my dad’s giving me one of his guns, and it’s like this, like, obscure to me. It’s like. It’s like a Finnish rifle. It’s a lever action. It’s like, really old. And so I need to get it. Like I need someone to look at it and see if it still works and clean it and all that. Sure. And that’d be awesome to be able to drop it off and be like, okay, just fix it. And then if a gunsmith at your store was to do that for me on something that was important, like a nostalgia item like that, or an heirloom item like that, it binds you to the store emotionally. It does.

Candace: Yeah. That’s something that we get a lot of here, too. We’ll have somebody bring in a rifle that was their grandfather’s, and the rifle itself might be worth 75 bucks at this point, but he puts in $300 worth of work because something was wrong with it, or it’s not working, or it doesn’t look right, or the stock is broken or any number of problems, and they just want it to look and function like normal. They don’t care what it costs because it’s that sentimental value. And yeah, those are the people that come back here because they, they say, oh, Sean fixed my gun and he made it look so great. I got to see what else he can do. Can you build me an AR or what can he help me find?

Wade: Yeah. The nostalgia heirloom aspect is something that I think is really important to understand because. So I also so my dad gave me and I have a twin brother and we both got ducks unlimited 20 gauge shotguns, single shot when we were 12. Right. And so like when I went back to visit my dad a couple of weeks ago and, and that’s the least. And so that’s my gun, right? So he had it for whatever reason. And so that is the least valuable gun of all the guns that he has. Right. It’s worth like $300 appraised like $300 or something like that. Right. But it’s the most valuable gun that he has in the whole collection for me. Right. And so if I’m gonna give that, if I’m going to give that gun to somebody because I want to give that to my son, and then I want them to, like, clean it and check it out and make sure it’s all good. The flip side of that is if they screw it up, obviously you’re not, you’re going to be mad. But if they do it right, it really does. Emotionally attached you to whoever whatever store did that. And I think that is it is a very powerful selling point.

Candace: It is. Yeah. And you know, that’s one of the biggest praises I have for my gunsmith is he is extremely meticulous about everything he does. Had a guy bring in an AR or he brought in parts for an AR to have him build it. And then he had fought in Desert Storm, so he wanted to him to do the desert camel on there. So he airbrushed Desert Camel, and it took him a couple months to do it, because he didn’t like the way it turned out the first time. So he sandblasted it, redid it all over again. And on the customers side, I can see where it might get a little frustrating thinking I want this done. But on my gunsmiths side, he’s thinking, this is my work and I’m going to have you paying for this, and you want this heirloom, but you’re going to pass down to your children, then I want it to be done absolutely perfectly. So I have to praise him for that. I mean, he’s really good at what he does, and.

Wade: Usually I’m not into credentials, right? So I’m like, oh, credentials, whatever. But I will say for something like that, like if you get a certification from a keep on saying the Sonoran Desert Museum, because that’s in Tucson, but the Sonoran Institute, right. Or something like that, like to go through that process automatically for something that’s with your hands like that. Right. Like like that, that I think that is very that is a very big selling point because you want that that but nerd is a long word. Like you want that like super hyper hyper focused person on the mechanical. Yeah. Because me when I, when I take my ah apart and I put it back together and a spring flies out, I’m like, does it still work? Do I need that spring? Like whatever. Like you don’t want to be doing that with your guns. Like that’s why I take it to somebody else. I’m not super. Yeah, I love this model a lot. Which is the range, the continuity model. Right. Which is okay. You have like a monthly membership, right? Is it always been in this model in terms of the price points or does that fluctuate over time or like how do you figure out what to charge. Because the cool thing about continuity is that it gives you so much more stability with your business, because every month, you know, all right, we’re roughly going to bring in this much money. Like, so walk me through your philosophy on that program.

Candace: Well, you don’t have to have a membership to shoot in our range. So we we offer the membership because you get those perks that are listed on the website. But no, if you wanted to come in, we have specials every day of the week. So we have a ladies day and we have a student and teachers day, youth day, date nights. We have senior specials, so we have ways to make our range prices cheaper. But for people that come even more often than that where they would, it would behoove them to just come in on the special days. Then we have the memberships and yeah, as far as I can remember, I don’t think we’ve ever changed our membership prices. They’ve always pretty much been the same. We’ve had to change our rate, raise our range rates a little bit just because propane is so expensive and in the winter it takes a lot of propane to keep that range. But no, the memberships say I always look at them as that’s what keeps our lights on. That’s that monthly income that I know is coming in every 15th of the month. From those memberships. I can count on that being there for some of the monthly bills. So it’s nice having that too.

Wade: Yeah. And I think even if you don’t have a range, there are other ways to do continuity for for brick and mortar. Right. And so and that is something that I think is, you know, you can build an entire business around that continuity because. All right. Well, like you said, and that’s also a focus point to grow too. So you’re like, well, how do we teach our sales staff to offer to upsell for the range? How do we make it more attractive? You know, all those you know, all those situations. Now, are you ever looking at thinking about doing another range somewhere else and expanding the model in terms of a franchise somewhere else, or is it more of like, hey, look, it’s the geographic advantage that we have to be hard to gain that somewhere else.

Candace: If I was ten years younger, maybe, but no, I think at this point I just want to live out the life of my loans and make sure the business stays where going as well as it is. And if somebody else eventually wants to take over and open another one, then by all means. But that sounds like a lot of work to me.

Wade: Important about business. Right? So it’s know thyself is a business strategy. It’s not a platitude like what makes you happy, what you want to do. And I think where you are geographically, it’s funny, I was laughing because when you said it takes a lot of propane to heat the the range, your brain wrinkled about 85% of the, the audience. So like what? Like why would you need propane? You might just plug it in, like, why don’t you just have it electricity and heat it like, it’s just funny. It makes me laugh. So thanks to being up north. Well, and that’s the thing too is I think with to go back to the continuity for a little bit is that people don’t understand the geographic advantage you have of six months of winter. Like that’s not six months, but like you or what? Like once it snows October or November, no one leaves like you do not do anything outside. Most people don’t do anything outside.

Candace: Most sane people don’t.

Wade: Right? Right. Until you know what? April, February? March like, I don’t know. I don’t know what it is like for you. I can’t remember, like it was a long time.

Candace: I would yeah. I mean, gosh, in recent years it’s been June and before we could really do a whole lot of anything outside, we’ve had so much snow. But yeah, it depends on the year. Like last year we had a Brown Christmas. We didn’t even have snow I think until January, which is extremely unusual. It’s usually October when it starts snowing around here and yeah, it’ll still be snowy into May typically. So we have a lot of long time that we have to be inside.

Wade: Well, they get the wind chill. Most people don’t even know what that is. No, it makes me laugh. Well, you’re a little bit further north than I was basically in North Dakota. But but the people do go hunting. People still go and ice fishing. Do you have any? This is an interesting question. Do you have any ice fishing gear in your store or is it or anything for that?

Candace: No, we don’t do anything with fishing.

Wade: It’s purely that’s the other store down the street.

Candace: The other store. Yep.

Wade: So let’s talk a little bit about your classes. We have good kind of runaway for us because you can have like a tactical vent to your store. Right. So for the classes, are they mostly top of funnel like what I mean by that. Is it like basically just kind of entry level classes to uni tactical classes. If so, why? If not, why? And what is your thought process for the philosophy behind the classes?

Candace: Yeah, other than permit to carry, we do have like I said, we have the pistol 101 and AR 101. We have a defensive shooting fundamentals class too that is put on by Uska instructor and that that’s more of your tactical shooting. It’s just it’s hard to have anything too tactical here, because my insurance would not be happy if they found out people were drawing from the holster and they were going from lane to lane shooting and everything. So we have to keep it a little bit boring, I guess, if you want to call it that. But no, we definitely have the opportunity to to teach some of those classes. We just have to watch what we do actually in the range.

Wade: Well, that makes sense too, because you talked about the life insurance issue earlier for a key man or key woman, insurance in case something happens to you, is those are the insurance part. And like the highly technical, those types of things can really trip people up because those are like hard core business concepts, right? Is there anything other than the insurance stuff that really is like very business technical that that you have to deal with that’s not firearms related? Does that make sense? Because yes, you have to do the FFL and all that and everyone knows that. But from just a business perspective, other than the insurances, is there anything else technical like that you have to deal with?

Candace: I’d say the biggest thing is keeping up on the laws, which is hard because they’re changing so much. We get so many questions. I, I’ve got our local ATF guy in my phone and he is very familiar with my number coming up, because we have so many laws that change all the time. I mean, we just had another one change now in Minnesota, where they finally deemed the it unconstitutional to to prohibit a kid between 18 and 20 from carrying a firearm. So now they can take our permit to carry class. They can’t purchase a gun, but they can carry a gun. So when that first came out, was it two weeks ago? I think we called him several times. Are you sure? Can we do this? This just doesn’t seem right when it’s. That’s the big thing is making sure I’m keeping up on the laws and making sure the employees are keeping up on the laws and passing the word along to each other. So we’re all on the same page.

Wade: So that’s a you talk about your ATF agent. Right. And so I’m a I was a lawyer in a past life. Right. So people get real hinky when it comes to especially in the firearms community. Bring up the word ATF and they get real squirrely. But I think it’s important if you can give a good relationship with your ATF guy, that’s the guy that comes to your range and checks everything. If you get a good one, you can actually have an okay relationship with the ATF people. And most of the guys that I’ve. They’re trying to do the right thing. That’s of course, you have people who are not great in every industry. But I do find there are ATF agents out there who are just trying to do the right thing. They’re not trying to jam everybody up.

Candace: Yeah. And I that’s what I would say about my local guy, too. I’m always comfortable calling him. And if he’s calling me, I don’t get nervous thinking, what did I do wrong? Because I know we’re doing there what we should. But he’s also very willing to to work with us. So if I have any kind of question, he will walk me through every step of it to make sure that I’m following the law and following the rules how they should be.

Wade: Yeah, because he didn’t make the ATF guy didn’t make the law. Right. And he’s not the he’s not the guy making the orders on the top level. He’s just a normal dude for the most part. And I know I’m going to ruffle a lot of feathers and I’ll probably get some hate mail with regards to that. But but from a business perspective, it is as different from being a gun owner, right? From a business perspective, it’s in everyone’s best interest to try to have a good relationship with the people who enforce this law. And it’s just like your bank, right? Like if you have a good relationship with your bank, it’s more likely you’re going to get a loan if you have a good relationship with your ATF guy or any other regulatory body, even the IRS, from a business perspective, you’re going to be more likely to get some waybill. Whereas if you’re giving everybody the middle finger all the time, you screw up because we’re all human. It’s not going to go as well.

Candace: Right, I.

Wade: Agree. I don’t have a gun store, so I can say stuff like that about the ATF, so I won’t put you on the spot about the ATF, but, um. Oh, let me ask you this. Do you guys sell suppressors? We do. Are you getting these ridiculously fast approval times up there?

Candace: Yes and no. We get that question multiple times a day, and right now I can’t keep suppressors on the shelf. It’s hard to even get them in stock right now, because so many of them are selling out from our distributors. Because people have heard about the super fast wait times, it’s definitely faster than it was maybe a year or two ago, but I was just on our ATF site the other day, and I was looking at what my my longest wait time is so far, and I’ve got one from January 16th that’s still waiting to be approved. So I have those, but then I also have ones that I want to say my fastest one came back and 4 or 5 days. So it’s totally random. It makes no sense why some are seven months long and some are five days long. Yeah, there.

Wade: Was a range that we talked to, and one of the part of their business model was, is that you could they let people shoot the suppressors at the range while they were waiting. Right. Yep.

Candace: Sure do to.

Wade: Yeah. So that’s smart. But then like because it takes so long and it brings again, it brings them back to the range. And then so I was always wondering how he was feeling. Now they’re having some of these super fast times because that actually was part of his business model Okay. I just that’s me just mumbling to myself. But no, but the suppressors are an interesting thing because that is in alignment with kind of what your business. Is there anything else like that? So like, are you in the nice stuff or the tactical knives or other than suppressors, is there other stuff that’s in alignment with kind of your guys’s store like that?

Candace: Yeah, we do have knives, machetes, all sorts of really cool knives. Again, we like to carry the ones that people are looking for, not just the the typical Leatherman, maybe that you keep in your pocket, but we’ve got a few large knives that our gunsmith has done some really cool laser engraving on, and those are always big sellers. I mean, once he’s done with those, some in the case and they’re gone in days.

Wade: There are these collateral benefits to some of these things. So like you had the gunsmith, you had the laser engraving. But then you can actually, like you said, like laser engrave the knives, which then make them sell faster. And then these things all start to work together. Right? Yeah. Do you have an overall philosophy in terms of try and make everything fit together in your mind, or is it something that you just discover and it’s, oh, we’re going to go there or you plan that? Are you like a planner or are you a discoverer or both?

Candace: I’m a little of both.

Candace: I’m definitely a planner in so many aspects of my life. But when it comes to this business, it’s more Like I said, listening to customers, what they’re looking for. If enough people say that they’re looking for a specific thing, I’ll throw out the store. And if it works? If not, then I know that I’ll move on to something else. But I’d like to think that it one kind of. I’ve got organized chaos up here, and I just follow where I think it should go that month.

Wade: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I’ve really enjoyed talking to you. I think it’s such a great start. What was the position that you started at in the store? Oh, just sales like for like on the floor. I mean, that is such a great story that you started at the bottom and it’s an American story, right? It’s like you just started at the bottom and then you now you own it. Right? And I think it’s so great. I just think it’s a great story. So I really enjoy talking to you today. Candy. So how do people find you on socials? Obviously the website is dead on shooting range.com, but how do people find you?

Candace: Yeah, so they can do that. They can call us at (218) 729-9689. They can find us on Facebook. It’s dead on arms on Facebook. But I’m constantly getting banned on there for posting pictures of what we sell. So I’m currently on a 30 day ban on there, so you won’t see anything on there for a while. But they’ve restricted my Facebook page to the point where you have to scroll all the way to the bottom of your feed to even find us when you search for it. So do some digging. You’ll find us. I put some cool stuff on there when I’m able to, and I’m learning how to use X, so I’m trying to get a little bit more of a presence on there, because I hear that they’re a little bit more easygoing with some of this stuff.

Wade: So on Twitter is where it’s at. So if you want I will stay on. Afterwards, I’ll give you some stuff about Twitter. But when I stop the recording. But I tell every single person on your view is that the Twitter is the safest place to be on social, and then you want to drive everyone to go to your own email list, because who knows what’s going to happen with Twitter five years from now or three years from now. But and then, is there a contact form on your, um, there is your website. All right. Great. So that was people because you may have people that want to reach out to you and other other people are interested in buying the business or getting some insight or connecting with you. So because you just have a great story. So. Well, Candy, thank you so much for coming on today. I really enjoyed talking to you.

Candace: Thanks for having me.

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.