Maintaining Growth and Navigating Regulation with Timothy Holt of Jerry’s Outdoor Sports

About This Episode

In today’s episode of Tactical Business, host Wade Skalsky sits down with Timothy Holt of Jerry’s Outdoor Sports. Tim and his team delve into the challenges and triumphs of running a family-owned firearms business in Colorado. From navigating strict gun laws and evolving their point-of-sale systems to expanding their online presence and fostering a community-centric environment, they share insights on adapting to industry changes and the importance of customer trust and team dedication. Tune in to discover how passion and resilience drive their success amidst regulatory hurdles.

Insights In This Episode

• Despite the challenges, Tim emphasizes the importance of adapting to changing regulations and maintaining a positive outlook.
• Upgrading their point-of-sale system and expanding online capabilities have been significant developments for the business, increasing their inventory reach and operational efficiency.
• The firearms industry in Colorado faces additional pressures from new laws, such as excise taxes and tracking legislation for gun and ammunition purchases.
• The transition to an effective online system has been a game-changer, allowing the store to offer a wider range of products and improve customer access.

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 am your host, Wade Skalsky, and today we are talking with a Brain Trust of Jerry’s Outdoor Sports.com. Gentlemen, are you guys doing today? Good, good. I have to say, you’re a good sports. We’re having some pretty serious technical difficulties on Gen X, which makes me a Luddite, right. And a former lawyer, which also makes me even more of a Luddite. So I was able to muddle through them. And now we can actually report and talk to each other. But why don’t you guys go ahead and give me a brief introduction of each other and of yourselves, frankly, and then we’ll get into some of the stuff that we talked about.

Timothy: So I’m Tim Holt, I’m the owner of Jerry’s Outdoor Sports. Jerry is my father in law. He was in business for 36 years locally, family owned business. I purchased the store from him in September 21st. It was born and raised in in Rifle in Colorado. Grew up hunting, fishing, shooting at the crawls, the falls if it flies or dies. Just love the sports and the outdoors. Was fortunate enough to have some experience in sales and consulting and led me through the doors. I’ve taken over the business and then I’ve got Chris here. He’s one of my right hand man, so I’ll let him introduce himself and and give you a little bit about him as well.

Chris: My name is Chris. I’ve actually worked with Jerry’s for the longest period of time. When I got out of the Army in 2007. Then I went back to school, got a couple of degrees, started working with the biggest scam in the world, health insurance. When I had decided that I contributed to killing enough people via health insurance, I actually started managing clinics and got done with that and got a fun job.

Jace: My name is Jace. I’m probably one of the youngest crew members here at Jerry’s Outdoor Sports. I’m a college student and a competition shooter. I come from manufacturing and aerospace and aeronautics. That’s actually how I know Tim. He was one of our tool reps for the longest time, and after I decided to leave that I came out this way. And I’ve been here for about three years, and I’ve really gotten big into shooting multiple disciplines in competition.

Wade: That’s amazing. Yeah, you guys have a very diverse background and I think as a team, so that’s always super important. Everyone can lend their own expertise. So let’s go a little bit into the business side of things. I know acquiring a new business. We’ve talked about that a few times where we’ve had some second and third generation businesses get acquired here. And from that perspective, it’s not like you’re buying a laundromat, right? So I know you have some unique challenges with the firearm side. What have you guys been experiencing right now? Getting the business going? I know you’re hitting the ground running, but you’ve had some challenges and walk us through your strategy to deal with sort of those differences in the buyer space from what you do. Business acquisition.

Timothy: Really what we’ve done is we’ve gone through war on our second point of sale system, while technically our third. When I came on board and took it over, the one we were using, there was no data. And I’m a sales consultant. I need the data. We tried another company that made a lot of promises and didn’t quite deliver. Now we made the switch and we really like what we’re seeing. It’s allowed us to get online legitimately and connected to our distributors. So our inventory basically went from, oh, about 2.7 million that we carry in the store to probably over 50 million, probably more than that with what our distributors carry. So our website connects directly with them. We’re working on the kinks of how our old inventory was done. So we can’t we don’t quite have what we have in the store online yet. We do have our used firearms that we have a pretty good following on that they can shop through on our used inventory. Eventually, once we get the details and the data corrected, then it’ll automatically sync into the system and you’ll be able to see I’m available for in-store pickup if we have it in the store or items that are available through direct ship. So that’s been a game changer for us. I knew coming in that would be the direction for growth, would have to be not waiting for the economy in western Colorado to be hot or cold and dealing with the inventory levels of that, your inventory heavy and your cash poor, your inventory light and cash heavy.

Timothy: The online would really bring some stability and a potential continued growth over time just to grow and grow. So that was a big focus in area that we basically wasted when we went with the wrong place, about 18 months behind where we wanted to be, but we’re up and running. Our website looks great. It’s functioning fantastic. Anytime you do a launch like that, you start learning a lot of what works and what doesn’t quite work. So got a lot of those kinks worked out and the crew here is fantastic. We all have a good buy in to what we’re doing. We have over 300 years worth of knowledge in the firearms and shooting industry. With the 12 employees that we have here that are part time, mainly split half and half, part time, full time. So the wealth of knowledge we have here is amazing and helps us in times like what just happened when a nonprofit comes in and they’re ready to buy their guns for the season, for their thing, and no plan and no notice. And it’s a big deal when they do that, because they do drop quite a bit of coin to do what they’re doing.

Timothy: So. But yeah, Chris and Jace are one of my go to guys. And Mike, he’s not here today. He’s off today. So it’s been a wild ride and it’s been fun. We’re all learning every day. And the industry’s been hit pretty hard in Colorado with some of the gun laws that are coming through and getting passed and stressing you out about what are we going to do if this happens or that happens? What does it mean now that it’s signed into law? An excise tax for guns and ammo of 9 to 11%, and then a merchant gun, tracking legislation that passed and was signed by the governor. So now our credit card processing company is going to have to create something to know if it was a firearm or ammunition purchase using credit cards. So American Express and Mastercard and and Lisa and all that, they’ll be able to track it. Um, I believe that’s been struck down in the courts already. But if we’re in Colorado, they don’t care about the Constitution. They just keep writing these bills that are settled law in the Supreme Court. So it’s just surfing whatever wave comes our way. We write it and try to keep our heads turned in the right direction and the board pointed forward. And sometimes we’re going to wreck in the rays waves. And mostly that just happens when the feds try to come in and poke their nose around and want to get you wherever they can, and you just got to get nervous and make sure that you trust and you’ve got the right processes, and you take this serious and everybody’s bought in really well that it’s a, it’s an industry that’s hard and it’s the oversight is hard.

Timothy: But the communities what makes it worth it? The customers are what makes it worth it. The team coming into work every day, even though it’s their job and not necessarily their career, although I wish would make this his career, it makes it so much easier when everybody wants to be here and customers want to be here. And that’s 36 years of Jerry and his influence in this industry and the western Colorado. He can’t win everybody. But you want to win as many as you can. You want to win the right ones too. So it’s been fantastic in this industry. I think it’s a I was in the coal industry for a while as well. It’s the same type of thing. It’s you’re in the coal industry, the miners, and if you’re in the shooting industry, the shooters and I get to be friends with other business owners that own retail firearm locations, and we bounce things off of each other and we want to better each other’s business. And it’s been fantastic.

Wade: There’s a lot to unpack there. First of all, I got to make a joke. Whereas you really like to go to industries that are under attack from the government, right? Going from coal and firearms. You played this game of board, dude over in coal. And one thing it’s really important that I think everyone always assumes that they had to start a fire business out of their garage. That’s a build mentality. But there are a lot of businesses an opportunity to to on the buy and grow side of things. And a lot of businesses, they may have the firearms knowledge, but they don’t have the outside business knowledge. Have you found that your previous experience in sales and some other verticals of how those operate have helped you to bring the business kind of more forward into to like a modern day business principles?

Timothy: I do. It’s funny you mentioned that because it’s been really neat watching. I basically had held four careers. It’s all been in sales mainly, and general management and managing people and stuff like that, but everything went hand in hand. The first career got started. It was a $7.50 an hour job. It was a part time gig trying to find something to get in law enforcement. After basically two weeks, they put me on the phones inside sales. For years after that, they started talking about moving me as a general manager position to open up a location in Phoenix, which I did very successful. But then the bailouts happened with the government and the auto industry, and that kind of put the remanufactured stuff underwater so that was the first time the government affected a career of mine and then got into the coal industry. It takes a long time to get a reputation in the coal industry, and I had a great regional manager that gave me a wealth of knowledge, and I was able to get in and get a reputation in there fairly quickly. Became a Western regional sales manager after about four years, basically oversaw six different locations, all west of the Mississippi for coal, mainly underground. And then Obama decided I didn’t need that career in coal anymore with his stuff. And so it’s been the kind of this thing that there’s been four different areas. Well, this is my fourth and it’s all impacted by the government. And you can either get mad at it or you can just smile at it and go, well, at the end of the day, I’m going to be all right and we’re going to be okay. And I thought we’d be a little bit more protected as it’s the Second Amendment to the Bill of rights that we’re protected under. But man, we sure seem to be under more of attack because of that. That is surprising to me. Yeah.

Wade: I mean, and I think that’s very state specific too. So out in Virginia, we have a governor that would veto similar legislation that you guys are experiencing in Colorado. But, you know, in Virginia, for whatever reason. I mean, I know the reason, but it’s one of the few states where you can’t run consecutively as a governor, so you have to run and then you can’t run again. Right? So who knows what happened next. And your ability from the coal industry seems like really has helped you deal with some of that market risk because you’re like, all right, I am I’m not scared away from this opportunity because of this governmental market risk. So I’m going to go in there and I’m going to do my thing, and we’re going to surf the wave and do what we’re going to do. Are you what are you seeing on the ground in Colorado? Because some of the things that have been passed, I need to look at that and be like, how’s that constitutional? They’re just relying on people to not weather the storm and not be able to wait out before it gets overturned, I think. Right. So how are you guys approaching that? What is the mood of the community out there right now?

Timothy: So right now I would say the mood is wounded. They know there’s a problem, but they don’t really know how to fight the correct way, which is voting and legislation and and making sure your voice is heard when we try to put out there what who needs to be called and what they need. Be told, because there may be a Democrat or 4 or 5 that are on the fence, and there’s always going to be an election, and is this going to cost them their position or not? And if they receive 150,000 phone calls because they’re on the fence, that means something to them. This isn’t a left or right industry. There’s shooters on both sides and same thing in the coal industry, same thing in the automotive industry. It’s been interesting how intertwined all of that has become, but I think people don’t understand how it does matter when you show up to testify for us on the Western Slope, it’s a four hour drive over to Denver. It’s a commitment to one, possibly two overnight stays. They stretch the bills out different weeks, different times. If they so happen to get three bills together and I can go over there and sit in on three, they so far consistently canceled those for whatever reason or another.

Timothy: This year it was there was a pretty significant snowstorm that hit, but they still could have done their work, but they canceled it. And so then they table it. They don’t let you know. And then 7:00 at night, they let you know, oh, tomorrow this bill is going to be heard. And so being four hours away, that’s really put a stress on us to get over and testify. But the general public can sign up and they can be on the phone and they can call in, or they can show up at the state Capitol. And I encourage people to do that. Get outside your comfort zone and go watch. My eyes were open big time to how this all works. When I went down there and sat down there for 12 hours until I finally was able to testify. That was last year against the assault weapons ban. And it’s not an assault weapons ban, it’s a gun ban. They were talking about any semiautomatic firing firearm with a detachable magazine or a threaded barrel. That’s 70% of our hunting rifles are out there with the muzzle brakes on them and detachable magazines.

Timothy: So there’s a lot of knowledge that needs to be had there for people that are just going, oh, it’s the Second Amendment they go into. They will get a AR 15. It is coming to Colorado. If they were smart, they would just leave it at that and they could probably get a pass very easily if they did, which is scary, but they don’t. They throw all these other things in there, and that’s what really gets people riled up once they hear because they’re like, oh, it’s an assault weapons ban. I don’t really like those black guns anyways. Well, no, it’s there’s more to it. They put definitions in there that it’s like a sixth grader wrote it as a project for school. That’s very immature and irresponsible how they’ve written these bills. But people don’t realize what their voices carry, weight, and just the amount of phone calls or emails to the right people can cause them to go, well, I’m just not even going to vote for this, or I’m going to I’m going to vote no for now because I don’t want my name attached to this. So it’s been a unique experience trying to figure that part of the system out for sure.

Wade: Yeah, well, I think that’s kind of a high level of having everyone get involved is very important. And I think we’re not in a situation in the culture anymore where we can rely upon the momentum of the past to protect our rights. Right. Everyone has to take an active role currently, especially firearms industry, because it’s not going to stop with the firearms industry, right? It’s going to continue past the firearms industry. That’s just the first beachhead that group of people are looking to regulate. And I think that’s why it’s so important. We’re brick and mortar comes into play. Like what you guys do. Right. And the Atlantic shift more to kind of high level, more towards the local level because as a brick and mortar and doing community outreach, people who are new to guns, they can go to a place they’re not just limited to YouTube videos, not just limited to some of the big online retailers, but they can go somewhere where it’s a safe and friendly environment and be brought into the fold. I think that is that is one of the ways that we’ll be able to protect the Second Amendment. What kind of outreach are you guys doing? I know that we talked a little bit about with regards to some of the shooting sports. Maybe we can touch on that for a little bit.

Timothy: Okay. So recently, for example, a girl and a gun had a pretty major event out at Cameo Shooting Complex, which is about 15 minutes or so away from our store. It was eye opening. There were people from almost every state, I believe. Uh, our farthest that we.

Wade: Got from Girl and Gun was from Alaska. Yeah.

Timothy: So it’s a pretty major event. We partner with them. And not only that, we have our own chapter that’s here in the valley. A girl and a gun. And so when somebody comes in and they talk about, hey, I don’t know this, but I want to feel protected. We want to let them to know it’s the best equalizer that’s out there and to don’t be uncomfortable with it. Be willing to be uncomfortable with it. And there’s plenty of instructors out at the range. There’s plenty of instructors that advertise here that can take these people one on one. They can take them out there. They know they’re with a new student, they can train them the basics. And it’s been me. These guys have gotten to witness it. It’s really neat when you sell your first lady, Smith and Wesson easy because it doesn’t have the arm strength or hand strength yet to rack around in the chamber. So that’s what they buy. And next thing they’re coming in and they’re wanting to upgrade. And then they’re wanting this and then they’re wanting a canik. Or then they go into a Walther and they just really get involved in it, and it just progresses. And then you go out there, and this lady who didn’t know even how to touch a firearm is now all of a sudden now shooting me, you know, because I wish I could get out there and shoot more. It’s neat to see and to see them motivated and confident and going from complete non confident in in that.

Timothy: But knowing that they they feel afraid and they they know they should do something. To all of a sudden, now they can run a gun and teach their husband how to clean it better. Then the husband knows how to clean it. So it’s nice to watch that progression in that industry from all over. You’ve got guys that have never fired a firearm either, and I want something to protect my family. And what do I do? I’ve been told I need an AR. Well, have you thought about a shotgun? And there’s things like that to talk about that people don’t really realize. Popping off an AR 15 in your house with an intruder and kids asleep in their beds may not be the best solution. You might want to think about a shotgun, something that you don’t have to worry about, aiming and pointing at the threat. And so there’s good discussions there. There’s a lot of growth there. Customers that want to get involved in shooting for self-defense or competition. We’re really starting to see a bump in that with this shooting complex we have out here. Chris and Jace could probably talk more about that. The facility is unbelievable and it’s very inexpensive and affordable. And the courses and the training and the shoots they have out there are fantastic. So if you want to get into a little bit about how we’re trying to integrate.

Chris: So it’s truly a world class facility, I’m actually working with some of the folks down there to facilitate a Taiwanese shooting team coming in and this will be pretty much their one and only opportunity to run a centerfire pistol just because of the legality in their home country. So that’s really cool that we’re part of something that is not just across state boundaries, but like truly international. They have everything at that facility from pistol shooting up to a 2200 yard range so there’s just so much going on there and going back to working with people to get them comfortable, like here in the American Southwest. We’ve got space where we can do these things there’s public land everywhere, everywhere. And I remember one of the biggest culture crises I had when I got sent to kentucky in the military was there’s no such thing as public land there were a lot of barriers to doing things there so it’s really awesome when we can have these conventions and these meets where people from across the country, around the world get to come out and utilize these systems without those really constrained barriers.

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Chris: I love hearing that story about the Taiwanese team coming out, and it is important to remember that even though the second amendment is under attack right now, there are countries where like Taiwan or England or whatever, where like you’re defending your house with a skillet like Rupunzel, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, like trying to whack people on the head.

Wade: And I think you really set off a I know you’re going to set off a debate for people listening, which is like the best home defense. It’s a shotgun or an AR. Right. Well, the thing is about that when I love, I truly believe that there is a gun for everyone. Right. And so it does mean no good just to say, well, I do this, so you should do this. And that’s what the great thing about firearms is that you get to discover what your gun is, right? Because if you’re going to run an AR in your house for home defense, well, you better know about Overpenetration you better have an expert on ammo.

Wade: You better become an expert on where everything is going, and you better know your neighbors houses are right. I mean, you need to have like, such a high level. Not saying that it can’t be done, but you need to have a high level of both proficiency with the weapon, but also like what else you’re going to run, right? Because people are going to just if you don’t throw a green tips on your yard and you’re blasting away in your house, it’s going to go through your house, neighbor’s house or the school next door. Right? But I love, though, that you’re open to that idea because that makes a big tent. If you just say no, everyone has to have it. And I have an AR, right? But if you say everyone has to have an R, and that’s the only platform that’s a small community. But if you are open and with your shooting competitions and with these classes, everyone gets to discover their gun. And then you get these ladies who can run a Walther or something like that and just just smoke you. And I love that because I think you guys are making the community that much stronger in doing that. And I think that’s one of my biggest reasons for promoting brick and mortar is to expand the number of people that come in. Are you seeing a change in the demographic from when you started? Even in the 18 months of people who are starting to come in versus who was coming in before, like, what are the trends that you guys are seeing right now in terms of that’s changing? Where are things going, though?

Chris: The big trends that I think I am seeing is that we’re moving from that kind of Boomer and Gen X. You walk into the store just paw at the clock, at the glass cases every day. To younger folks that are looking at the world we’re in, realizing that nobody is coming to help them at all that they now have to take responsibility, that they’ve never had to take in their lives and there’s equal amounts of excitement and trepidation around that. So one of the big things, too, is they’re so driven by social media, and there’s huge barriers by the technological oligarchy there that are trying to silence certain things, especially smaller places like us, just we’re dealing with right now. But they’re getting ideas from TikTok and reels, and it’s like maybe not the best choice for you so being able to reach out to those folks and address their individual concerns and problems that they’re solving. But it’s one of the awesome things, is that we are making connections with a group that I don’t think they would have considered it three, four years ago.

Jace: I don’t know how many countless times I’ve seen people come in my age group, or even in millennial age group that’s never touched a gun, and I talk to them about what I do. I cameo competition, all that stuff, how they either want to get into defend their home and everything, get them the gun that fits them to defend their family, defend their house. And then I see them come back a month later ready to get in competition and they’re coming to talk with me, with Chris or someone about what guns works for them. Where do I go to shoe? Where do we run? And I go out to the range and I see them running next to me and it’s really awesome to see that younger crowd start getting into it. I say younger crowd is a part of it,

Chris: But it’s like I’m part of that. I’m dyed in the wool millennial, you know, I’m on the cusp there, but i hate phone calls. If I have to talk to the person I’m ordering my food from, like anxiety and go from there but yeah, that’s one of those things where we’re just getting in with those generations. There’s so much more likely to go out and get analysis paralysis because they know how to do research, and it’s such a deep hole jump into, like we’re talking about what’s the best gun for home defense? Well, there’s two groups of people that you can start a bar fight with three words. The first one is taxonomists by saying that species belongs on this branch only your biologist friends will get that one, and the other ones are gun people about what is the best gun for home defense it’s frustrating, even on my side, to see people going out there and planting their flag on one idea with one really contrived straw man argument for how that works when you need to be considering a whole lot more. And it’s. Need to work with those people and really explain to them and watch it click with them as they start to like, think about critically rather than prescriptively.

Wade: Yeah, that’s really awesome. In my house, its location, right? So you’re going to get either an ah, my block or my Mossberg shotgun, depending upon the location of where I am at with something. And so but no, but and that’s I’m half joking. And I think it’s when you said something that’s really important about analysis by paralysis, because people don’t realize that how deep gun culture and gun knowledge can go at any part of it, on long guns, on precision shooting, on handguns. And that will always be there. I’m Gen X, I’m right in the middle Gen X, I’m like strong Gen X, so. But I’m not like a 1911 boomer, right? So I love making the 1911 guys mad. But now I want one. Now I’m like, well, now I want one. But I think that will always be there. But I think what has changed, and we were talking a little bit about this before is the barrier to entry to do competitions is the lowest it’s ever been. And I think that I think if you can get people to start to compete on something. Yeah, I’ll go to the range. I gotta go to the range. You got to shoot and I like it and it’s fun, but other things may get in the way. But if I’m driving towards a competition, I will go to the range and I will get better. Why do you guys think the barrier to entry to getting into competition has lowered or lowered so much?

Chris: Well, I think one of the things is the marketing that you saw around competition ten years ago. Was it just it fetishized the high end pistols is like the open class with a fixed frame, fixed red dot and now you’re seeing people winning these competitions with just stock pistols, things that are coming up off of that like it’s not a pay to win for a lot of those, like Idpa has a lot of different facets to it. USPA has a lot of different facets to it. And also just we live in this weird golden age of firearms development where you have so many choices while the government tries getting your way so many times and society at large so I think that’s one of the big things is availability of reliable, high quality equipment that you can really grow your knowledge and skill with before you outgrow it, and also making people more aware of it. I’ve been of the mind that competition tends to silo itself, where you have people in the competition world talking only to their competition buddies, and that’s where the conversation ends. But I’m seeing more and more of that go away.

Jace: I like to put myself in more of a personal example when it comes to competition. Shooting is I started here and I never heard of competition shooting at all. And then I started getting more around guns and I started doing my research. I started seeing like, Jerry Mitchell, like was a big influencer of mine to get into competition and originally, like the styling and the cost of entry is, it really sucked. When I was looking into those high end guns, especially being a college student with very low funds and a family, I’m trying to get going. But until I started doing more research, looking into it and found out that there’s many different guns out there that fit that realm, like for me, I’m a Canik fanboy. I run mechanics, concealed carry, a USPSA, IDPA everything, and their cost to entry versus what you get is so huge that it’s given me the ability to really perform out at the range in competition giving so little help into running into that. And it’s really nice to see more people getting involved because like live free archery has their Apollo 11 being such a cheaper 2011 series. I see more people getting into Kanniks live frees and other stuff wanting to learn more about the competition, which is why I love what we talk about it out here.

Chris: And I think another thing to really mention is we’re getting more people thinking about how their sport should be accessible, like with Steel Challenge having a 22, that is huge because for people who you can think a lot of money into just ammo, right? But if you’re running a 22 at Steel Challenge or in ultimate Hunter rimfire, you can get a lot of training and a lot of experience for very cheap even contemporary ammo prices.

Wade: Yeah, we’re asking about the 22 is you can walk into a Walmart right now and buy a thousand rounds. That’s what it’s you. It’s just that’s the most accessible thing in someone’s mind. Like they don’t have to go to a scary down store. It’s scary to them in the beginning. Right. Or range can be scary for people. And I think you touched on it really well where you guys started really well with the the reliability, because you’re going to have to run a lot of rounds through your gun to get good at it. And there are so many guns now that are just. Production value and in terms of how these films are produced, they just last in there. And you don’t have to get the most expensive gun in the history of time to run it. Right. And so I think that’s an exciting development, and I think that the competition side of things is exciting for them to realize, hey, we got a market that’s different or we’re going to die, right? Like we’re going to we’re going to end up being like like bridge. Like no one plays bridge anymore. So there’s no more bridge. So it’s a card game for all of us. So us people, us Gen Xers that grew up in North Dakota, all we had to do in the winter was like ours. So I’m really excited about the work that you guys are doing. What’s your plan for the next 2 to 5 years? Like what’s the vision that you have for what you guys are going to be doing going forward in this space?

Chris: So I think the biggest thing we really want to do, because like I said, I remember standing in Jerry’s Outdoor Sports when I was 11 and then when I was 24 and out of the Army, Jerry gave me a job even though i was like growing my hair out. Looked like a hippie because I could for the first time in my life, we went from this really wonderful kind of bottled lightning, small town gun store where we have expanded so much of what we’re able to carry and provide. And now with us making that move to being online i would really love for us to go from being name known in the three surrounding counties to being something. When we go down to Phoenix you see our merch and stuff there, and also people are speaking kindly about our capabilities. So I’m going to name drop a classic firearms i absolutely love classic firearms model because they have great entertainment value, but they also have a huge selection and they’re a massive force over there on the East Coast. I think that’s a model that I wouldn’t mind looking at, but also making it uniquely southwestern, uniquely western Colorado too.

Timothy: What my goal is. I think Jerry did a fantastic job of building a reputation of having overwhelming inventory with Overperforming staff that knew what they were doing. My goal is to do that the best we can in an expanding world that we’re living in, more and more, we’re going to be able to reach out to people via the different social networks. Everybody uses this section if they’re this age or that age, and it’s going to be very much dialed in. What I’m hoping is we’ll be able to reach everybody, because we’ll be able to go through all those and just carry on with the same heart and passion that we have legendary staff, legendary selection, and people can go to our website and they can take a look and see the difference, and they can learn about our store and in the back stories and email us about questions that they have, because they might be scared to come in the doors. Well, send us an email. We’ll give you the best advice. I’m thinking about going and visiting my local gun store. This is what I’m feeling. Well, hopefully we can be that spot where people can see us and come across us and email us. And what do you recommend? That’s what I’m hoping we can get to in 2 to 5 years. What we have here in the store locally, that I feel we’ve done a good job to educate the local people, the 60 to 100,000 people in the county that we have here, 60,000 at city limits. They just know Jerry’s. Jerry’s is the place to go, and we want to do that the best we can while expanding into these other options and areas.

Wade: Well, I think you guys have a great foundation to work from, and I think that ethos of that, I mean, I love Colorado, I used to live in water park and teach horseback riding there, and I’ve been all over the state. I love her as owner. And so that ethos of the West, the southwest, the Rocky Mountains, that’s a very powerful philosophy that you guys can use to extend throughout the country. And I think that’s something that’s really exciting to see where you guys are going to go. So I’d love to have you guys on the show again from time to time so we can see that growth. How do people find you? So let’s talk about Twitter first because I’m very pro Twitter I’m a love gun Twitter. So I’m I love riding my insulator. Now also people reach you.

Chris: Our Twitter is going to be a little bit different. It is Jerrys_outdoors. So you can just do @Jerrys_outdoors for Twitter. I’d love to give you our Facebook. But we seem to have displeased the Digital Crown. So that’s dead for a little bit. And then YouTube is probably our second biggest one. And you can just put Jerry’s Outdoor Sports, and you’re going to end up seeing my smiling face with all my dry humor there so those are our big socials right now. We’re working on getting rumble up and running, and we’re exploring some other options too.

Wade: So and if people want to reach you guys directly, is there an email or is there a contact form they should go to on the website, or how do they reach you directly? Yeah, absolutely.

Timothy: They can. If they go to our website and they hit the contact us, it’ll send it to sales at JerrysOutdoorSports.Com to reach out to us. That’s probably the easiest way to get in touch with us is putting something out there. We do have Jerry’s insiders, which is nice. You can go to our website. It’ll ask you to sign up for it. We don’t end and date you. We don’t sell the mailing list or anything. Just want people to know, hey, we’ve got large magnum rifle primers in stock right now. It’s a highly demanded product. Well, we send that out to our insiders first, so they get the first knowing of, hey, they have these in the store. Hopefully one day we’ll be able to get to a point where we can ship primers, but we just send out stuff that people want to know and are looking for. And also we do some giveaways as well. Uh, once a quarter we give away, like this month we’re giving away something.

Chris: This month’s giveaway is an ntpc’s copper or a sig mpx copper head with a hollow sun green dot optic on it, with a chest rig from Moonlight Industries and a brace from Strike Industries. So it’s super cool. Oh, and magazines to fill the chest rig too, so you can get on there. Sign up for that. You’ll get that as a free. Somebody will get that.

Timothy: Are you going to demo that before? Yeah, yeah. So we’re going to demo that. And that’s the winner is going to get that demo that they see in that demo.

Timothy: So there’s neat things that we’re doing like that to just try to get out there and let people know we’re here to help. We’re here to inspire the people that are wanting to. Mike and I really thought about opening my own place. Do it like take it’s risky, but take it. And no, don’t force people to anything. I love hearing about gun debates and we have a viral YouTube video. So I’ve dealt with a lot of some of the comments that are on there. But the debates are fun because people are just passionate. They love what they love. And we’ll tell you our side and we’ll hear your side. And that’s what I loved about the conversation about what guns the best for home defense. There’s no right or wrong answer. There’s what are you comfortable with? How is your house set up? There’s a lot of more details to it before I even make a recommendation. So it’s been great having these resources that we can go to while we’re dealing with the Facebook we had, our largest following was probably Facebook, and it just shut off. So don’t close primers on Facebook apparently when you’re legitimate brick and mortar location. But yeah, it’s been nice having these other platforms to go through and it’s slowly building slower than I’d like it to build. So things like this, I appreciate you inviting us on and asking some great questions, and we look forward to working with you too, in the future in any way possible. And we do expect to be a lot further along in 2 to 5 years.

Wade: Oh yeah. Yeah. Well, let’s not wait 2 to 5 years to talk again. I really enjoy talking to you guys. And like I said, I really believe that all the brick and mortar, there’s enough room for everybody in the brick and mortar stores. We do not need them going away. We need them thriving because they’re going to be the places where we convert people to a tent, and that’s what’s going to get the protections for everybody. So if there’s anything we can do to help you guys to let us know, and I really enjoy talking to you. Thank you guys so much. You as.

Timothy: Well. Thank you.

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.