Nishan Campbell: How market research and launched the gunfighter.com firearms experience

About This Episode

In today’s episode of Tactical Business, host Wade Skalsky sits down with Nishan Campbell of Gunfighter Canyon. Explore how a unique business model in Page, Arizona, transformed a simple idea into a booming tourist attraction. Learn from Nishan as he shares his journey of creating a one-of-a-kind shooting experience aimed at tourists, especially Europeans. Discover the importance of knowing your target audience, adapting in times of crisis, and focusing on customer experiences to achieve success in niche markets. A must-watch for aspiring entrepreneurs and business enthusiasts!

Insights In This Episode

• How the first location focused on giving tourists, primarily Europeans, the experience of shooting guns.
• The business targeted self-driving tourists rather than those on tour buses, identifying their specific audience for a more focused marketing strategy.
• Reviews, especially detailed ones in different languages, became crucial for their business, helping attract international tourists.
• Nishan’s experience in advertising and sales informed their approach, focusing on removing physical, mental, and emotional barriers for customers.
• How they faced significant challenge during COVID-19, pivoting to firearm sales when tourism dried up, and successfully navigated this transition.

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’m speaking with Nishan Campbell from Gunfighter.com Nishan, how are you doing, man?

Nishan: Wade. Thanks for having me, man.

Wade: So two things that I have to get off my chest before we even start, because this podcast is about me. One is you have the coolest website ever. I don’t know, are you a hundred years old? And you were like, 11 and you got gunfighter.com and you bought it, or did you actually have to end up go purchase it for someone for $1 million? Because I don’t know how you got that. I don’t know how you got that web address. That’s amazing. Maybe we can talk about that. And then two, I wish I would have interviewed you two weeks ago because I’m from I went to high school and college in Arizona, and I was there for, oh, nine days. And I would have come up and shot some guns and asked you a lot of annoying questions. So that would’ve been good. We could have.

Nishan: Had the full auto experience and.

Wade: I would have. Yeah, it would have been great. And now. So now I only get to ask you annoying questions, so I only get one of those two things. But before we get into the website stuff, it is probably a boring story, but I just think that’s that’s the most memorable, easy, best website of anyone that I’ve interviewed. How did you get into this business? What was your path to where you are now?

Nishan: It was an accident and had no intentions. It’s maybe interesting to some folks, but I left the Marine Corps active duty side in 2012, and I went into medical device business. And so my first year and a half, almost two years, was traveling from hospital learning the medical device sales business. And so I landed on my feet in a little town called Flagstaff, Arizona, after this little executive leadership program that I was in and sold spine hardware for, for Medtronic, Spine and Biologics. And that’s where my business partner, Stuart And throughout that process, the Marine Corps kept calling and said, hey, we would we’d love to have you back with the W back. I wasn’t really in the right headspace for that yet. I was just starting my my second career essentially, and I was having a good time with my partner Stuart, and we had the opportunity to leave that company, Medtronic, and start our own distribution company. And it’s one of those things where you have to sit out a non-compete, and so you can’t do your job for a minimum of a year. And they’re strictly enforced. And we had a private investigator that follow us around for a little while. I can tell you some wild stories about just how much they enforced those things, or they used to. And so we couldn’t do our job. And I had jumped right back into the Marine Corps to take care of some of those basic things like health care.

Nishan: And we had the two things that you rarely have at the same time, which is time and a little bit of, uh, a little bit of money. And so our whole goal was the end state was to start a business. And so we drove up to page, Arizona, which is where our first location is at. We love the lake up there. Lake Powell and I both spent tons and tons of time on that. We both have boats, and we went up there thinking that we were going to build a boat storage location. Hey, we’re gonna get into kind of mini storage or boat storage and a friend of ours at the time walked, took us to all the places and met with the real estate folks, and it just sounded really boring. And I had finished up my MBA at the time. And so I was just on this whole, like, VC kick and startup stuff. And, you know, there’s nothing for people to do and page by the lake at night. You guys should really consider opening up a shooting range. And I thought it was ridiculous. I have a fairly extensive background in firearms, both as a hunter growing up and then obviously as a combat arms marine. And I just thought, well, that’s just got to be ridiculous.

Nishan: There’s no way I want to deal with that regulation. We already work in a heavily regulated business and in supplying hardware and screws and people’s spines and and biologics and stuff like that and selling that. So on the drive home, my partner looked at me. He goes, come on, man, we’re not that dumb like this. Rocket science. And so I drive home. You know what? I know a guy. It’s the guy I currently buy guns from. Let’s give him a call and see if he’s ever explored this idea. And sure enough, he had. Just like anyone I think, that owns a brick and mortar retail store does. They go, oh, I’m going to add a shooting range. It’s going to be make a million bucks. And so he got us off from starting point a little bit of liftoff and come to find out, if you don’t do it and you’ve never done it and you have a very limited knowledge base. And that was pretty apparent pretty quick on. But yeah, pretty, pretty short falling forward before inform the business. And we signed a lease and an old Sears building in page, Arizona, a massive space and about 11,000ft². And we thought, oh boy, we’ve got to make this work. And yeah, that’s the very short and undramatic story of how Gunfighter Canyon was founded.

Wade: I love it, man. First of all, you’re not the first person on the podcast. It says it was an accident. I think that’s a better way to think of it, is that you recognize an opportunity and then you took it. Right. So it’s part of being an entrepreneur is just saying, okay, well, there’s a demand that’s not being met here. Let’s meet it. Can we meet it? Can we make money on it now? Are there any competitors in that area where you’re at because pages are remote area. So but but Arizona is like a done state. So is what’s the competition look like where you’re at. Sure.

Nishan: So pages was our first. Was our first location in the business model was very different than probably most folks that you’ve had on the podcast. The business model was not to sell guns and firearms. The business model was to shoot guns with tourists, and namely and mainly European tourists. To be honest with you, that’s the probably the preponderance of our demographic folks that come and visit that region. They come to see Slot Canyon, which is the Antelope Canyon. It’s the big one. Um, and they come to see Horseshoe Bend, and those folks come in droves. And we knew, because I had actually contracted the one of the coaches at the local high school, I said, hey, you paid these kids to go run some surveys for us. And we did it in like 20 different languages. And it was very simple. Hey, is it would you be interested in shooting a gun? Would you be interested in shooting a gun at night? If you ever shot a gun, are you shooting a gun during your trip to the United States? And we had about 300 surveys over the course of a week, folks that were going to walk through Horseshoe Bend. So we had a pretty good idea this was happening. This was all prior to us actually signing a lease and putting the big money down to to build the range.

Nishan: So at that point, my business partner and I, Steve, jumped in the truck and we drove to Las Vegas and we went to every single machine gun shooting experience Las Vegas has. We shot at every single one of them. We took copious notes. We came back and we said, okay, we think this is a viable business model. Clearly folks are doing it well in Vegas with a high concentration of folks in one area. But we’re going to we’re going to really target this audience that are self drivers, um, folks that don’t get on the tour bus. Um, and that’s who we’re going to market to. And, and that was probably the one thing we did right is, is we knew who our target audience was. And I think for any business on anyone that I give advice to, and I’ve been in business for myself for ten years now. This business has been in operation for eight is is you have to know who you’re talking to. You can’t talk to everyone, just like you can’t defend everywhere. And a defense in depth. In a combat situation, you have to know who you’re going after. And that is how all your focus needs to be. And so come full circle to say your question was what it did. Actually rephrase your question for me because no.

Wade: I was wondering if there was a competitive competitive other competitors like other ranges in age or in the area because it is if people are familiar with northern Arizona, it’s not super populated. It has a decent amount of people, but it’s not. It’s not like Phoenix. It’s not like even Tucson. So I don’t know if there’s any I’ve never shot up there. So I don’t know if there’s any ranges there. And so and I have a specific reason why I’m asking for business perspective. So one, I know that your niche is different. Like you’re not trying to compete with them on, hey, we’re going to go shoot at the ratings like from what you just said. Um, but are there even other reasons up there?

Nishan: Yeah. So there’s an outdoor range and then like, big answer that question. The big picture is no, there’s no competitor. Um, for the indoor shooting space in all of northern Arizona. So from Camp Verde North, at that time there was no shooting range. There was a shooting range way out on the West side in Kingman. But that’s not even yeah, Kingman would have been the next one. But at that time there was nothing north, So we knew, hey, we’re going to really stick to this niche in this market and we’re going to focus on that. In fact, we didn’t sell a firearm for probably six months, um, in that location. And we just focused on the tourist experience, but no competitors there. When we opened up our Williams location, there wasn’t a competitive indoor range. There was a couple of gun stores, and we opened up our gun store in Flagstaff. There’s probably 7 or 8 gun stores in Flagstaff. Yeah.

Wade: Well, and that’s great because I think one thing is there’s three concepts that are two lines for the podcast that I talk to business owners. One is geographic advantage, right? So if you’re going to have a brick and mortar store, you, one thing you can do to put yourself into a situation to succeed is capitalize on a geographic advantage from what people buy to the competition. To just like in your geographic advantage is a really unique one, because there’s a specific type of tourist that you’re targeting that comes to do the hiking or whatever. European people do whatever they want to wear fanny fanny packs for. They’re gonna go right. And and I think that’s really important for people who are thinking about starting businesses in the space, because you want to set the conditions to succeed before you even get to selling stuff. Right. And part of that is, is can be a geographic advantage. So you go out to Vegas and you do the market research that you’re shooting, which also is fun. You get to shoot all the machine guns, which was probably awesome. What did you like about that people were doing out there and what didn’t you like that then informed a decision about what you guys were going to do with your space.

Nishan: Great question. So we what we liked was we saw one. And again, every range up there is very different. And I’m friends with folks that on the ranges there now. So I’m not going to use specific names, but you’ve got one range in particular that’s very small. It’s boutique has glass from floor to ceiling. It’s very sexy when you walk in. It gives a very intimate, club like experience and feel probably not the busiest range in Vegas. I know it’s not, but we loved the feel of that range. But we’re like, okay, that’s cool. We can see a club vibe, get away from the gun store gun FUD. We definitely be in that realm. And then you go to another range where people are wearing military uniforms and you can get picked up in Humvees. And that was a very, um, and actually, I take my employees to Vegas to go shoot these ranges every year during shot show. So I have a long experience of doing this, both as someone looking into the business and someone that’s trying to constantly refine my business. So I take all of my new employees up there every January, and we pick 2 or 3 ranges to go shoot at, and I have them be customers. But that range in particular, we felt like that experience was very rushed, felt the experience was not exactly genuine.

Nishan: We bought a bunch of civilians or prior military folks were in uniform. That can be off putting for some people. It can also be an enhancing thing to certain folks. But I think for the large audience of demographic we are trying to reach, that’s not a look that we really wanted to go with. Then you had other ranges that worked in the middle. They did a little bit of both. Maybe they spent a little less time and less help with the families. It was more geared towards single folks or folks that are coming in bachelor parties and stuff like that. And so we were able to narrow down to like, we know that most of our customers are coming with more than one friend. Um, typically a family of four is very common, but then you will get large parties of 8 or 10 or whatever, but you need to be able to. We figured out that you needed to be able to tailor that experience and have the ability to tailor it at that moment, and a lot of these other Rangers weren’t doing that. And I think they are. They have obviously a consumer or volume. So you can’t do that. You do need to fit people into a very tight time window.

Nishan: At one point I went up and actually folks didn’t know it at the time, but I timed every shooting experience. I wanted to know how long it took from the moment that you walked inside the airlock, the moment you walked out, how many guns you shot, how long it took, and the first year in business, I did that religiously. I would have an hour or so go into customers, and I would time it. And I wanted to make sure that, number one, we weren’t wasting time on the range because that’s the most expensive part of your build. So if you can build and be efficient with less lanes and I can talk about that later, I can tell you why. I think a lot of ranges are for sale today. You’re going to maximize your ability to get through the rough part where you’re having to feed your business money because you’re not quite at that profitable point. But what we found was you needed to be able to make that determining factor with that customer at that moment. If a family of four that in and I have got dad on the hook, he’s definitely going to shoot, his son’s going to shoot. The daughter is somewhat interested and mom is terrified. How do I ensure that all four people are going to shoot? Because at the end of the day, and if you look at our reviews, I’m very proud of what we’ve done with thousands of five star reviews.

Nishan: But the end of the day, I want that family to have a picture of four of all them holding firearms and want to take that back to their country, take their targets back. And every day we get a photo of someone holding up their target from gunfire that they shot and it’s framed. We get framed pictures of it all the time, and it is just a lot of fun. But going back to where we started was we found some good, we found some bad, we found some okay. And every day now, not every day, but every year we try to refine that. And when I travel, whether it’s just pleasure or for the Marine Corps, I will always try to find a range. And whether they’re doing an experience, we call them experience shooting. If they’re doing experience shooting, I will go be a customer. And if they’re not and they’re strange, I will go in and shoot just like a normal customer and try to refine that. So what we thought then, yes, that was valid. Well, you have to validate that and revalidate that and refine that every year.

Wade: Yeah. And I and there’s a lot of business principles to unpack there. One of them is metrics right. So like it’s very easy to everyone knows okay. Like what profit is. Right. Like I’m going to sell a gun. I got to make a profit. I got to pay the bills. Here’s how much money I make. Right. But there’s that’s not a real metric, right? Like a metric in terms of like like what you’re talking about is okay is and I don’t know what you would call it, but like range time or experience time or whatever, that is an actual if you work on it, that actually translates to money. Right? And I think a lot of people who come into the firearms industry that come from non-business backgrounds, it’s a passion project or developed into that. They don’t understand the metric issue. So I think it’s really cool that you have that you right away were like, okay, this is a metric and doesn’t really matter if the metric is right or wrong. Just have one to have a baseline and then you can always abandon the metric later. But the act of making a metric is critical to any business. Are there any other metrics that are like non-traditional metrics that you guys have that you can talk about other than that range time one, right, or that you can think of. And if not, that’s cool. But I was just I just I love getting in the weeds on this. That’s a that’s a neat property. So we do.

Nishan: Google reviews and TripAdvisor reviews are the two most important things that I focus on with my team calls every week. And so the metric that I look at is, are folks leaving reviews with words and pictures, or are they just leaving five star reviews? You can reach location well over 1000 news, reviews, five star reviews. Not a single one star review, but I like to see where that trend line is to go. Like, do we make a big enough impact? That person felt like they needed to henpeck some things out, especially if they speak another language. And I love seeing those because they either write it in their their language and you will give you the translate, which I love. That’s probably my favorite one, because now they’re speaking directly to our customers that are there. Um, because some countries you can’t even pull up gunfighter. Com because it is a restricted the freedom of speech is not there. So we need that to continue to evolve. So I do look at not the five star reviews. If we get less than a five star review, which hasn’t happened in some time. Knock on wood, it has happened. And your competitors that do salacious things. But you. I want to see the level of impact that my staff has with the individual.

Nishan: Because if there’s something that we do spend a lot of time on, is that one on one sales training, it’s very direct and very prescriptive. And if we go off of that, I can tell because I’m starting to see reviews that maybe are just five stars, or maybe it was great, or the best review that we can get, in my opinion, is someone writing in their in their home language 3 or 4 sentences. They mention the range safety officer by name, and they say something to the effect of we will be back in a couple of years or next year, or whenever we’re going to be. Those are the things that I’m looking for in every single review. And so with that end state in mind, when we do our sales training every single spring, we point everything direct to that. So the customer and this is not a I’m selling you a bag of goods. This is the this experience needs to be that good that they go I remember Randy, he knew something about the World War two Thompson that I didn’t know and made this experience something amazing. And that’s why my target is now framed in my home forever.

Wade: Well, yeah, it’s amazing. And I think what’s really important there is like that can even get real granular with Randy. You said, hey, Randy, I need you to say your name three times, right? Like, I don’t care what you say your name, but I need you to say your name three times. I need you to say, hey, I’m Randy. Whatever. Then. And even something small like that can lead downstream to these reviews that become an asset in your business. Because the longer you’re in business, the more reviews you accumulate. That’s an asset. It’s an actual asset in your business that’s as important as the intellectual property for your name or the website or whatever. And I think if you can start your business with that in mind, you’re so far ahead of everyone else. That’s just like, I just need to make X number of dollars, right? And I think that’s I think that’s incredibly smart. And because it makes you it makes it so people aren’t going to want to come compete against you. Just start that. You know, you’re the category king of experience shooting in northern Arizona. And people are going to be very difficult for them to come in. I also like, too, that you’re doing God’s work now that you’re like, marry across the Europe. And it’s like America. These pictures of people, machine guns. I think it’s freaking awesome.

Nishan: Every RSO’s job is to spread the Second Amendment across the world and get behind that 100%.

Wade: Well, let me ask this question, and I think it’s an interesting point that I didn’t think about, which is that having them do the review in their own language. Is that something that, like you stumbled on where you’re like, oh, this is good, and you discovered it, or is that something where you’re like from the beginning? You’re like, we want them to do it in their own language. And you’ve thought it through in advance.

Nishan: Yeah. It’s one of those things. We stumbled upon it, but we started to have folks come in and say, I read a review that was in Chinese, that read a review that was in French. I read a review that was in Dutch or German. So we started to realize, oh, that’s important. Now can we get that and ask that of the customer? Not always that. That’s a tough line. We do have a specific part of the experience that’s very prescribed. Where we go over to a map, we ask them to put a pin in the map, and generally the conversation kind of revolves around travel, and that develops can continue to develop that personal relationship, even though the experience is generally pretty short half an hour at most, with a family of four from the time they walk through the door, the time they leave. But that we found folks coming in going, oh, I read this review, I read this review or this review, because when you travel with your family or by yourself, when you go to a restaurant, you go do eating activities or hotel. The first thing you do is look at Google reviews or some variation of it. So if they can sort by language, boy, now you got countrymen talking to countrymen. And one of the one of the most fun things to do is to walk into one of our ranges and have a family from the Netherlands filling out waivers to go in, and another family from the Netherlands walks in and well. And that instant connection. Just like when you’re an American, you travel overseas. You know, Americans are like, oh, ah, my countrymen’s here. And your friends, regardless of the fact that one voted blue, one voted red the day before.

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. The cool thing about that is that when they write in their own language, they’re going to use slang from their language that can’t be replicated. Right? So so it’s not like they know it’s a real review. It’s like the most real review of real reviews, right? Because it’s going to be contemporary with whatever the slang in their country is at that time. It’s going to it’s going to be able to communicate quickly, even if it’s just a couple sentences. And also to those they’ll know it’s authentic, whereas you’ll have people who try to pad the reviews in. And you can tell when a foreigner is writing in English and they don’t get it. So that’s I just I’ve never thought about that. So that’s one of my favorite things about doing the podcast is discovering things like that. And that’s the important business principle, I think, is that a lot of businesses just staying in business long enough to discover things like that, right. And so what else have you guys discovered from the on the experience side? Um, that has been like a pivot point for you because you sell guns now, right? So walk me through how that happened because in the beginning, like, we’re going to do this experience and then when we’re like, well, now we got to sell guns. Like was it a plan again or was it people just kept asking you, I want to buy a freaking gun. Like, how did that come about?

Nishan: Yeah. So in page, Arizona, at that location, there was one other FFL in town, and by FFL. Very loosely I think it was like a drive thru alcohol store that happened to have a license, and so they didn’t have a storefront. It was very much like you can transfer stuff in and out. So yeah, we were getting asked that constantly. And within the first year we were, I would say probably took a year before we sold a firearm and before we actually started stocking firearms was like a whole nother thing. But when we opened up our Williams location again, we were not selling firearms. It was like always a one off thing. A so and so wants to know if you can order or whatever. So we’d allow the store managers to do those kind of one on one basis when we were building. So we had we actually tried the Williams market before we committed to it financially. So we bought a conex box shooting range and I said, okay, we’re going to invest X amount of money in this context box range. We’re going to lease a little piece of property in downtown walkable area route 66. And we’re going to see if Williams can support a real range. And so it’s two lanes. It’s eight yards. You can go to Las Vegas. There’s several folks that sell these things now, not just Las Vegas. Now there’s a couple companies that do. And so we bought this very small little container range and it just was packed from we knew we had a winner.

Nishan: So that winner, we were going to go into the build of our actual facility that’s there now. And that winner happened to be when Covid 19 hit. And so we were hit with the reality of we might not have any foreign tourism’s for a long time. Mhm. We have built this whole company based off of mostly and I say mostly foreign tourism. If you look at, I actually have data on every one of my customers since day one. I know where you traveled from, I know your basic demographics, but I could. I know that a lot of my customers come from New York and from Los Angeles in addition. So it’s not just these certain countries. Obviously, that information is extremely value to me, valuable to me at all of my locations because it is slightly different. But when Covid happened, we realized if we don’t pivot, we’re going to be in big trouble because our main revenue source is about to dry up. And so we pivoted into probably the worst time you could pivot into the firearms business when there was very little amount of stock. So we were stocking firearms at that time, but we weren’t stocking a massive amount. And so that was making a friend picking up a phone with supplier X, supplier Y and suppliers and going, well, we’ll be your guy at the end of this. What inventory can you get us? And you meet friends and folks in the business that were strictly in retail.

Nishan: And I had a friend that owns owns several locations, southern Arizona, and he was very open to share inventory at the time. And so we became a real no kidding gun stores at both locations that that winter. A scary time, but we had to sell some assets to survive. We ended up selling that little baby range. We called it because we wanted to keep using that to test markets, but at the time I was like, we need this cash. We need to keep everyone employed. There was a lot of folks that were dealing, and we all know it, right? Because it’s come out that used a lot of the Covid money erroneously. And we didn’t do that. We applied for a program. We could we sold assets by the skin of our teeth. We made it through Covid, but that’s once we turn that revenue stream on, we’d would be foolish to turn it off unless it unless it did become such a burdensome headache to us when we need a really skilled gunsmith at the time that was making custom firearms. So like we were doing custom stuff and we were so the that’s why we are now full service at all our locations. The only location that’s not full service is Flagstaff, and it’s just a small retail store. But we are we are in the process. I can’t get into the details of what we will have an indoor shooting range in Flagstaff very soon, but that’s fun.

Wade: Yeah. And also too is what people don’t realize about selling guns is that the markup on guns is not very high. Right. So because you have all the regulation issues, you have all of the the stock issues, but the money from the gun business comes more in terms of the lifetime value of the customer, right? Where it’s like, okay, they’re going to buy the merch, they’re going to buy the guns, they’re going to whatever. And so when you’re starting from scratch, you don’t have any of that, right? There is no lifetime of the customer because they just starts right now. Right. And so may take a year or two years or five years. And so that’s pretty awesome that you guys were able to not only start that business, but keep it going during Covid and then then survive the early stages of that business model, because it does take time to make that profitable. So from a stock or an inventory perspective, what is the what do you got? What kind of guns do you sell in your retail locations. Right. So because you have machine guns, obviously don’t sell machine guns, but as a big do you sell machine guns like you do that?

Nishan: We don’t sell to the government. No.

Wade: Yeah. You know what I’m saying? Like, you don’t do the you can buy a machine gun, but the freaking the the regulation to do that is ridiculous. You know, facilitate those or anything like that. Right.

Nishan: We will facilitate and we have that market is so small.

Wade: So small. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. It is incredibly small. I don’t even know. There was I saw the number one. So the number of guns that qualify in that market I was like so so what influences what so are you more like you do hunting or you do tactical or you do good. Like what is your what is the vibe of the inventory that you have and the stores or does it vary by store it?

Nishan: We try to keep the stores pretty similar in inventory because, like you said, it takes a long time to build that up and you don’t have a big debt load on it. So we made a really conscious decision in the beginning when we were going to go full retail, we were not going to over buy, and so even today, you’re not going to find a firearm on the shelf and five behind it in the back back stock room. Most suppliers now are very, very good at getting new guns next day. So we were very cost conscious on making sure our inventory levels don’t become astronomical because we have seen and we could put you could have your podcast filled with hundreds and hundreds of folks that have done two things. There’s two things you can fail in this business. Number one, you can overbuild. Number two, you buy too much inventory. And so the vibe between the stores are all pretty similar because we want to keep things very, very streamlined. But you’re going to get a little bit of everything. There’s going to be some hunting stuff that those purchases are generally not as frequent, and people really know what they want in the hunting world.

Nishan: And so stocking 15 or 20 long rifles in different calibers and length of pull and all that stuff really doesn’t make sense for me long term. Some folks may, but you’ve got your tactical stuff. We do. We are auto dealer. We are a type A dealer. We have all the highest ends of products. Do we stock a ton of them? No. But again, we rely on this to make sure we’re replenished. It’s we, I would say if there was one area we focus on, it’s to conceal carry aspect. Most folks are coming in to buy a purchase, a first time firearm. They want to conceal weapons course, they want to feel safe and we want to get them to that level. And there’s obviously business. There’s business tie ins to each of those things too. If you sell a concealed weapon, you’re going to probably sell a concealed weapon holster. You’re probably going to sell some training, you’re probably going to sell some follow on training. And the community continues to grow.

Wade: Yeah. And that’s one that’s a great thing about the training aspect is people like to focus on, um, people like to focus on, well, the cost per hour and his opinions and his crew. But there’s a psychological aspect to it, because if you get your concealed carry from a specific place, it psychologically binds you to that place. Like, I don’t care what anybody says, you’re 100%, you know what I mean? And you’re psychologically like to your instructor too. So like the guy that I know. So in Virginia, the guy that I got, I took private lessons from my guy. He’s my guy. And that’s the only guy I take stuff from. But I go to that range and it’s the most expensive range in town. They sell the most expensive guns like it is the worst buys. Everything is always overpriced. And I still go there because I just have a psychological connection to that range. And I have a gunsmith and and I just I think that anything that you do as you add on these services to increase the lifetime value of the customer, but it’s not just the numbers game. It’s a psychological game, too. I mean, because you’re an experience based business, like, do you do you see the links between those two things? And if you do, what do you do to strengthen those?

Nishan: Yeah. So we took the training model that we do for our experience, and we have modified it for our retail side. And granted both of our range locations, the employees do everything. There’s not like I’m an I’m a sales associate. No, no. When you come into gunfighter, you will you will do it all and you’ll do it all well. And most guys, they love that because they don’t want to be stuck doing one thing or the other. But we apply that same prescriptive, personal, intimate relationship that we do with a firearms experience, which is insanely intimate and personal. You just talked about the fact that you go to the same guy and shoot with him. You’ve developed this over time, but you can imagine that experience, that emotional, heightened emotional experience you have if you’ve never even seen a firearm before and you shoot it for the first time. So we take that aspect and we apply it to each of our retail locations, and it’s the same thing. We’re going to build a relationship and find that nice, heightened emotional point. We’re going to try to address those emotional needs, and then we’re going to back everything up with data. And because that’s how our brain works, we buy emotionally. We back up the data by emotionally back up the data. And so we do that with each of our customers. And I’ve got a phenomenal store manager at my flagship store, and he’s the guy that’s getting those text messages.

Nishan: Hey, I thought about this. Think about that. And it could not be firearms related at all. But we try to develop that, that intimate relationship. And I didn’t create it. It’s not like I just didn’t also didn’t just stumble upon it. I was I have a friend that owns some ranges in Brazil, and I was down there last, last winter and the gun culture in Brazil. I noticed that we have like a gun FUD culture in the US. Like you go to most gun stores, there’s going to be a dude. It’s probably overweight. He’s got a beard down to here. He maybe did four years in the Marine Corps and he knows what he knows. And in Brazil it’s different. Yes. It’s not like a hangout place. And there’s clearly not that bro, that vibe, but it’s more of a it’s more of a hangout like, hey, this is our this is the center of our community. And I found that out. All of his locations is it was the same folks showing up. Oh, yeah. Hey, I was just coming over for a cup of coffee and the transactions happened was completely irrelevant. That was their center. That was their hub, because they created those emotional connections and those lines that drill down in our brain. And so we focus to answer a question wrong would answer. We focus on that personal, intimate, one on one connection and everything we do.

Wade: Yeah, well jiu jitsu is like that. So I do jiu jitsu and the same thing, it’s the Brazilian jiu jitsu gym becomes the hub of everyone’s that does it their life. Right? And that’s how the discoveries are made. Because people get together, people collaborate, they talk, and then they’re like, oh, they stumble on something and now we’re doing it this way. But I like my bearded slightly. I like my bearded, slightly overweight 1911 bearing foods. I’ll take those guys all day long with me. If something goes down. They don’t want to run. They can’t run. So they’ll just stay and they’ll just shoot.

Nishan: They’re going to shoot. They’re going to shoot really well.

Wade: Yeah. Really? Yeah.

Nishan: You got a couple guys that that fit that bill in the company. But for the most part we generally want to keep we want that can be restrictive. I think especially to first time buyers. We try to remove barriers. And that’s slide one of our sales training is remove barriers physical mental emotional. That means I have to get around the counter get rid of the physical barrier. Generally it’s going to have a better interaction. So. Well.

Wade: That’s a I don’t want to interrupt you. I apologize, but that is a small thing because I have this theory on the firearms business that you have to get your customer into orbit, and then once they’re in orbit, they’ll take care of themselves, right? They’ll do their own research, they’ll do their own thing. But you have to have this education bridge from the time that you get them to the time that they even after they buy sometimes, then they become they’re in the cycle. Right. And the firearms are there’s so much fear for most people, and there are so many new people coming into firearms that just the act of coming around the counter right and standing next to someone is a big it is a big deal in the psychological buying process. Like, is that something that you saw somewhere that you’re like, yeah, that’s cool. Or is that something that you planned out, even something like that? Like, how does that impact your training? Where did you come up with that? Because that’s a I’ve never heard someone say it like that in interviewing people.

Nishan: So before I was a marine officer, I worked in advertising, I worked for CBS Broadcasting in Phoenix, and so I’ve spent a lot of time studying and implementing very large companies, very specific marketing protocols. And from that, I was fortunate enough to go to a bunch of really cool sales seminars and spent most of my professional life in either a negotiation role or a sales role. So this is just basic psychology. But no, it is. It was 100% intentional. It’s just just this is we remove physical barriers, we move motion mirrors, we remove mental barriers, and we do it in that order. Because you can’t get to that emotional point until you get past the physical part. So I actually hate sales candles. If there wasn’t like a practical reason to have it, none of my stores would have them. In fact. Yeah, that’s like a big no is to stand behind the sales counter with some on the desk because that physical barrier, and especially for first time gun gun owners, again, not being disparaging against my brothers that are gun fights, but that just having a beard and being a dude sometimes is enough to be a barrier between a petite female that comes in and it’s their first time. They’ve never they’re scared. They they’re emotionally like. So we got to break those barriers down before we’re going to get anywhere. Well.

Wade: And for on the experience side, you’re shooting machine guns. If you’ve never heard a machine gun be shot before and you walk into a rage of machine guns going on, it’s. And you’re not a gun person. It can be alarming, you know what I mean? Like in some people. And so you have a it’s funny because for because of your experience side of the business, you actually have a larger hurdle than most gun stores that come over so that you guys can pull it off. I think it’s a lesson for anyone that can pull it off, number one. But number two, and I always try to stress this on the podcast, is that so many people come into the firearms businesses as a passion project. Like, I love AK 47, I’m going to build an AK 47, right? And that’s great, but you’re going to get schooled by people who do business too. And so you can’t you can’t like the sales side of it. Like you don’t have to get in the weeds and, you know, become the matrix in the business. But on the sales side, but those concepts, you have to learn some of them or you’re going to get you’re not going to make it. And that’s why I love talking to people like you who have boats. Right. Like you have the military experience. You’ve got the gun experience. Where did you grow up? You said you were hunting. When you grow up, where did you grow up?

Nishan: I grew up in the Phoenix area. The west. The west side of Phoenix. Dad, dad! Grandpa, everyone I’ve hunted, you know, since I could hold a shotgun. And I was shooting dove. So. Yeah.

Wade: My favorite thing about Phoenix when we moved. I grew up in North Dakota, and we moved to Tucson for high school, and my favorite thing was I walked in there and there was a lady in a Coco’s open carrying two six shooters, and she was like 75 years old. I was like, okay, I’m okay. I can be in this place. How did you I want to make sure I get this question in before I hit up against the time. How did you get in? You’re just. I’m going to cause myself self harm. If you say you went on GoDaddy and you just got gunfighter.com, how did you get that? How did you get the website? Did no one have it? Did you buy it or did you get it in like 1997 or something?

Nishan: I wish I had the foresight to get it then. No. So yeah, our original only domain that we could buy at the time was gunfighter AZ gunfighter Arizona. So we bought Gunfighter Canyon, whatever extension the gunfighter com was supposedly being, it was being used for something else. And when I contacted the guy in 2017, he never contacted me back. I contacted him again in 2018 and there’s very limited amount of information you can get from domains, and I think I actually ended up sending an email to one of the like, like info accounts on that website acting as a customer. And I got a reply, like, I got a live person and I was like, hey, this is who I am, this is my business. Would you ever be interested in selling the business of your domain? He of course had some wild number, but he was interested, so I was like, okay, so we actually negotiated it for about two years. And then I think there was a point where he needed some cash, and we were at a place where it felt comfortable, and we took that big leap where the DNS has to wait for the thing to do, the population of the geek thing. And then we sent them the money and then it happened. And so, yeah, we own gunfighter.

Wade: Com well, there’s two again. There’s two business lessons out there. So number one is you’re like, Ethan, I’m just getting lost. Right. And I’m going to keep asking, okay? But then number two is you didn’t pay the big number. So most people, they get all excitable. You’re like, I’m just gonna wait this guy out because I don’t need it and I’m going to wait them out. And I know what kind of business you’re doing because I can see it. And I know he’s not. At some point he’s like you said, he’s going to you’re going to create the conditions for success. So that’s a better story than you just saying, oh, I just paid $1.5 million for him or something. I would not pay.

Nishan: 1.5 million.

Wade: Years. And I don’t want to know what you paid for it. Right. So I don’t want you to out yourself. But then again, that’s that is a part of the experience. And for an experience based bit for, for like I write for the firearms industry and the website does not matter for the majority. The name does not matter for for a majority like I write for a holster company, they’ve changed their website name their name like five times. It doesn’t matter, right? Like, but for an experience based business, that is an aspect of the business because a person in Europe is like gunfighter. Com like that’s that’s legit, right? That’s part of the experience. And so that’s a that’s a big boy move right there. Not saying that you need to hear that. But I’m like I dig it I dig it. We’re coming up against time. But I got another question I want to ask you. And it’s this is that because you came from a really highly regulated industry in the medical field, and then you came into firearms and especially machine guns, right? One did that help you be comfortable with the regulations? And two, were you surprised at either a that it was, oh, this is actually more regulation than I thought or this isn’t as bad as I thought it was.

Nishan: I don’t think having the previous experience helped in any way that I think that was probably detrimental, because dealing with the FDA on the level that I dealt with it, which is very minuscule most of the time. Your big companies, they have all the regulations and you have issues. You go through them. Everything’s predicated on something. But having that that like mental baggage in your back going, oh, this is regulated like the FDA, the NFA and ATF is a regulated agency. But I would say the longer I’ve been a business and even in the beginning, yes, it’s regulated, but it’s not crazy. It’s in the grand scheme of things. There’s only so much that the NFA and ATF can regulate, and those are very specific. And once you have those 3 or 4 items down, that’s really all we’re talking about. There’s going to be some slight variations and changes that happen every year. And that’s okay if you don’t like them, write your congressman I do. The regulation portion to me is actually probably a pretty minor part. And granted, I’ve been through audits and you do get that. Oh, I’m gonna make sure we did it right. But again, I think the good auditors, I would say the ATF ratf partners that we’ve worked with have all been fantastic. All true professionals. They all love America. They’re all very patriotic folks. They believe in the Second Amendment. I don’t think there’s a lot of hate for the ATF for a lot of good reasons, but I believe that’s all the political and administration level. The folks that I deal with, and I call them our partners, both in Flagstaff, our auditors out of Phoenix, and then the local agents that are actually doing the Lord’s work, as we say, that they’re tracking our bad guys and doing great work. Those are all very human beings, and I think that they truly still believe in the general principles of our Second Amendment. That be the regulation portion to me is really you got to do it. You got to do it right. Well, you got to balance your checkbook, right? So different like you do the work.

Wade: Yeah. And I don’t want people like. And I would encourage people, if you’re thinking about starting a firearms businesses, don’t let the fact that the regulation stop you from doing it because it can be learned by anyone, and getting an FFL is actually not difficult at all. The FFL part. And then the other thing too is you make a good point. It’s like if you need to create relationships with the line, people that you work with that are going to be auditing you, that are coming by the store. If you want to be able to reach out to them for questions. Because the line my experience is and I was a prosecutor and like, it’s the same with police, right? Like my experience is that most police on the line side, you know, the first line of police are awesome. They’re just trying to do their thing, man. They’re just trying to do what they think is right. It’s when you start to go up levels. And I’m sure the Marine Corps was like that. Like just as you go up the food chain, it gets worse, not better, right. And but for the most of the part, when you deal with your regular people, they’re just like you. They go home to their families, they’re trying to do the right thing, and that’s part of the business. Don’t get into the business if you can’t handle human beings.

Nishan: All human experiment. Yeah.

Wade: Yeah, exactly. Well, look, we’re bumping up against the time. I know you’re busy. Two things. One, are you going to show this year?

Nishan: Yes. I’ve not missed a shot show in nine years now. Yeah, I will be there.

Wade: This year and I will come say hi, uh, to, uh. How do people find you?

Nishan: You can, uh, find us on obviously gunfire.com. If you’re interested in.

Wade: Socials.

Nishan: Any of the, uh, any of the socials at Gunfighter Canyon. Instagram, you can send us a message if you want to hit me directly. I am gunfighter underscore six, and that’s a tip of the hat to military call signs. The commanding officer of units always designated as six. So all of our folks in our organization have different designators, too. So, yeah, you can find me there or. Yeah, stop by one of the stores and ranges. I try to shoot. Every time I’m in one of those locations, I force myself. I will go shoot 50 rounds of something, so hopefully we can just find you on the range. That’s the best place.

Wade: Are you on X Twitter?

Nishan: I am not a Twitter slash X adopter.

Wade: Oh dude, I’m telling you. Well, I’ll talk to you about it. Hold on after I turn off the recording. But listen, it was really great to talk to you. I’d love to have you on the show again at 3 to 6 months and see what you guys are doing, because it seems like you always got something percolating. And I think your story and your approach to business can really help some people. And also get some people to come shoot some guns up in northern Arizona. So really thankful for the time today, Wade.

Nishan: Great conversation. 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.