Long Range Shooters Of Utah: How Bryce Bergen Turned His Passion For Precision Shooting Into A Thriving Business

About This Episode

In today’s episode of Tactical Business, host Wade Skalsky sits down with Bryce Bergen from Long Range Shooters Of Utah. Bryce dives deep into the essentials of precision shooting, from understanding the difference between accuracy and precision to the significance of consistency in long-range shooting. He shares insights on selecting the right gear, the importance of trigger control, and how even minor details can make a big difference. Plus, hear about his journey from starting a Facebook group to running sold-out classes. Don’t miss these expert tips and inspiring stories!

Insights In This Episode

• This mindset translates well to business, where identifying weak products or services and refining them is key to success.
• Bryce highlights the importance of location, as Utah’s open spaces were instrumental to his business. Similarly, businesses should consider how their location (physical or online) impacts their growth opportunities.
• He started with selling swag and hosting community events before expanding into training and selling firearms. Diversifying income streams can stabilize and grow a business over time.
• Long Range Shooters of Utah stands out by being approachable and fun, unlike competitors who may come across as intimidating. For businesses, creating a unique and welcoming brand persona can set them apart in competitive markets.ion.

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 Bryce Bergen of Long Range Shooters of Utah. Bryce, how are you doing today?

Bryce: It’s been great, man. It’s good to be on the show. Thanks for the invite. No, thanks for coming on.

Wade: And we talked a little bit on the pre-interview about how I was excited to be talking about some long range shooting, because we don’t have a ton of that on the show. We talk a lot of different things. So this will be more of some new questions that I get to ask today. So before we get into that though, how did you get into the business that you’re in right now? What was the path that led you there?

Bryce: So I grew up in Wyoming. If you notice, the state of Utah has a corner missing. I call that the corner of the Utah didn’t want. That’s where I grew up, right across the border in Wyoming. So you can’t really grow up in Wyoming without shooting guns a bunch. And so I did a lot of that growing up right out the back window of my house, in fact. But it really wasn’t until I graduated from college that I started getting into the precision rifle space. And I went to Brigham Young University on a high jumping scholarship. And when I graduated, my dad was like, well, we should get you a graduation gift. Why don’t we get you a rifle that you can pass down to your kids and whatnot? And I grew up shooting a Browning Bar, semi-automatic seven REM mag for elk hunting, and so that’s what I wanted. And he’s like, no, you should get a, you know, bolt action and really learn how to make one shot count. And at the time, I was working for him, remodeling pizza at restaurants all over the state of Wyoming, and I was in some crappy town with absolutely nothing to do between 5 and 10:00 at night.

Bryce: And so I sat on the internet and researched and just fell in love with long range shooting. Decided I wanted to buy a night force scope, so I wanted to get a bolt action Remington 700. Et cetera. Et Cetera decided I wanted to get into reloading, and the rest is kind of history. So I got the rifle saved up for a couple of years to get the scope. Ended up moving with my wife to California, to the San Diego area for a few years. Met some precision rifle guys down there and they helped me cut my teeth a little bit. Started making blogs, videos, Facebook posts, things like that. And then our oldest daughter was born with special needs. And so we made the decision to move back to Utah, to where our family was and spend more time around them. And as a result, I linked up with some YouTube guys that were big in the long range scene here in Utah, and they got me into competing and the rest is history. I started making made a Facebook group about it to coordinate competitions and things, kept making videos. They went viral. And then here we are today.

Wade: Now, you don’t need to brag, but you’ve had some pretty good success with regards to your long range shooting competitions and everything. It’s how. Walk me through that because I’m really familiar with Three Gun obviously, and your other types of shooting competitions, but I don’t really know anything about long range shooting. What is the process for that in terms of getting ready for it? Do you load your own, load your own ammo, like how does that work exactly? Get ready for something like that.

Bryce: Yeah. So the competitions that I were involved in were really local regional precision Rifle series type competitions. So it’s more of a they call it a practical tactical application of long range shooting. So you’re taking what you’d normally do from a bench or prone and doing it off of a ladder or a rooftop, a barricade or whatever, and shooting various sized targets, different distances. But it’s all on a timer. It’s all moving from position to position and really trying to build a sound, stable position out of an awkward situation under a time limit. So it’s extremely popular. A lot of fun. Where I really excelled, though, is moving that into rimfire. I got into the same kind of competition in the rimfire world and did quite well. I placed sixth and seventh in the nation in NRL 22, in like 2018, 2019. Really. I haven’t spent a lot of time in the competition space in the last several years because of the classes that I teach now, they’ve consumed all of my time. But as far as what goes into preparing for it, long range shooting, we don’t really call it that even. We call it Precision rifle because it’s all about creating consistency. Consistency in the shooter. Consistency in the ammunition.

Bryce: Consistency in the rifle and the components. Consistency in the scope. Most guys look at long range shooters and they go, man, these guys spend a lot of money on stuff. And the reason we do is because we’re chasing that consistency. We’re chasing that tight group. And that makes a lot of sense when you consider if you’re trying to predict where a bullet is going to be at a particular time and space downrange, it has to go the same speed every time. It has to be pointed in the same direction every time you have to pull the trigger the same way every single time. So quite literally, the foundation of long range shooting is consistency. It’s precision. It’s creating that same thing every single time. And so the reason guys reload their own ammo is not usually economical. It’s about creating precision. It’s about doing a better job than they do at the factory, making mass produced ammo. We buy 3000 $4,000 scopes because when I dial one minute of angle, I want exactly one minute of angle. And I want that to happen every single time I dial that turret. And that goes for everything that we do. So it’s everything we do is all about creating precision.

Wade: And so I guess, is it fair to say that the you want to be able to have a repeatable process, right. So because you can’t control the wind, you can’t control the environment. But with the two things that you can control are yourself and the firearms. Yep.

Bryce: So in our course we have this diagram of a big wedge a big funnel. And at the top it lists out 150 different things that you have standing in the way of achieving precision and then accuracy. And then I ask the question, what do we have to do to achieve precision and accuracy? If all these things are standing in our way, you, your rifle, your ammunition, the wind, barometric pressure, whatever it might be, and the answer is you either have to eliminate it or account for it effectively. So I can’t eliminate the wind. But can I account for it correctly? I can tell you down to the inch what a ten mile per hour wind will do to a specific bullet at a specific speed, at a specific altitude. I can tell you exactly what the speed is of that bullet. Using a chronograph. I can tell you all kinds of things, but ultimately I have to eliminate all those variables in order to have the consistency we’re looking for. And if you do it effectively, the only thing really at the bottom that’s hard to read is the wind, because it changes all the time.

Wade: Yeah, everything else in that equation is static, right? But the wind obviously is always moving.

Bryce: I tell guys, if you show up to the class with a rifle that doesn’t shoot for crap and we figure that out, that’s great news. Because guess what? You can get rid of that rifle. You’re not married to it. You can get rid of it and get one that shoots. Great. And then you’re gonna have a better experience. Right. And so it’s a systematic process of finding out what’s not working and getting rid of it, and then also understanding what can help you achieve those better results. So why does this brass work better than that brass? Why is this projectile better than that projectile? Why is this stock or chassis or trigger or position or whatever going to help me achieve more consistency and then accuracy after that. And people get accuracy and precision mixed up horribly. It accuracy is actually my least favorite word in the dictionary.

Wade: What’s the difference in your mind between accuracy and precision? Is it? I can take a guess at it, but I’d like to hear it from you.

Bryce: And it’s not even. It’s not even an opinion. It’s a definition. You pull it up in the dictionary and look it up. So the thing that that drives me crazy about the word accuracy is when someone walks into a gun shop and you say, here’s a $5,000 rifle or pistol or shotgun or whatever, and here’s a $500 one, same caliber, same everything, but one is $5,000 and one is $500. And you ask the clerk, what is the difference between these two rifles. What am I really getting for that extra $4,500? What is he going to say?

Wade: Well, he’s probably gonna say what is more accurate than the other one. Right.

Bryce: Right. That one’s more accurate. What is he really trying to say, though? What is the real outcome that he’s going for?

Wade: Well, I would think that he would say that he’s that the guy is going for what the actual answer is.

Bryce: What’s the result? That expensive rifle is really going to give you that the cheap one supposedly won’t.

Wade: Well, that it’s like what you just said, the repeatable process, right? So that it’s the same time you fire it, you have the same expectation. And if you account for everything outside the gun, you’re going to get the same results.

Bryce: So if I go shoot that gun at 100 yards at a piece of paper, one gun is going to shoot a dime and one gun is going to shoot a half dollar, right. But the problem is, that’s not the definition of accuracy. The definition of accuracy is hitting the bullseye once one variable against the standard and how close they are. That is accuracy. Precision is the closeness of two or more variables to a defined standard. So it’s group size. It’s how tight and consistent it is. Do you think you can have an accurate long range rifle if you don’t have consistency.

Wade: Well no. You could at one time. Yeah. Yeah I guess that’s the difference between because I come from a normal person’s perspective, right? Because to me, and I think this is a really good conversation because from the gun, like the gun that I like, let’s say that I everyday carry is not a super expensive gun. Right. So I can I can get a decent sized grouping with that gun and all sorts of different exercises. But I’m not necessarily I don’t have the skill level to be able to like stick it on, stick it really tight. Right. And so there’s a difference between kind of being okay and then but precision right. And so it’s I think it’s I think it’s important to know what you’re going for basically.

Bryce: Sure, sure. Absolutely. And I would think of long range shooting or precision shooting as being the PhD level within shooting sports because it’s extremely technical or can be extremely technical, it can be extremely easy as well. I tell my students, I could take you out in 20 minutes and have you hitting a thousand yards, or having you hit every 100 yards out to a thousand, no problem. But understanding how you got there and what it took to get there is really the difference. But at the end of the day, it all comes down to if you’re going to be predicting where a bullet is going to be despite all these conditions and all these variables, in order to do that, you have to have that consistency, but doing it every time and doing it on demand, that’s where it really gets tricky. And that’s what’s fun about this sport, is there’s we do things that just blow people’s minds. Like, I have a nine year old daughter that about a month ago hit a milk jug 6.5in by ten inches at 1760 yards a mile. And I had an 11 year old kid in my class two weeks ago. Also hit a milk jug at a mile. That’s a four second and flight time for the bullet to get there and all sorts of crazy wind. She did it on her fourth shot.

Wade: The thing about the movie The Patriot, right? Like, don’t go to Bryce’s house, man. You don’t want to go near his property. Everybody can drop a dime from 1000 yards. Yeah, it’s the difference between. It’s the difference between karate and jiu jitsu. Right. So karate is. And I don’t know if you’ve ever done either of them, but like, karate or martial arts or stand up is more like the handgun. And jiu jitsu is more like the precision where it’s very deep, like you can go extremely deep, um, now and when you’re going through the sort of the variables and you’re trying to control these factors, I would also think that it would be subjective to the person because they’re going to have each person is going to have a different gun, right. So like this type of grass might fire differently in this gun than it does in this firearm and this rifle. Right. Like or do they all fire the same or is it is that kind of the fun part of it where you find that rifle is really a good fit for you?

Bryce: There’s a fun component of it that personality wise, a lot of people are drawn to this sport simply because if you’re a tinkerer, if you’re a person that really likes to go down the rabbit hole and really get nerdy about stuff, this is the sport for you. If you’re more athletic and less nerdy, then handgun is great because handgun is a very perishable skill, right? Like if you’re not drying and dry firing every day, you’re going to lose that consistency. And that ability. Where I tell people in my class, I’m literally trying to get you to do as little as possible. I’m trying to get you to sit there as still as you possibly can, to squeeze that trigger as carefully and slowly as you possibly can to really not even be there. I want to see what the rifle can do. And once I have you eliminated, then I can look at the rifle, see how it’s doing, and if it’s not doing something quite right, we can tweak things and whatnot. So it’s understanding every single piece of the puzzle and then being able to test and iterate and come to a conclusion that that works great. That’s the fun part. It’s just Understanding it all and then being able to master it and really have the result and do something that most people can’t even wrap their head around. Well, it’s.

Wade: Like being it’s like being a car guy, right? Like, you can geek out on a car all day long and you just have a passion for it. And and if I’m hearing you correctly, it sounds like the goal is to let the rifle do the work, right? Yes. To get it to the point as to where, like, okay, make yourself as the smallest of the of the factor as you possibly can. And that’s why you have to. If you can be so precise with everything else, then that’s what gives you that, that long range precision that you’re all.

Bryce: About eliminating variables. And for example, trigger press messes people up so bad. Like one of the fundamentals of marksmanship is proper trigger control and follow through. That’s by far the thing that most people struggle with the most. And when we get in the class, we show them a high speed video. It’s 100,000 frames per second, and we show the full recoil of like a Barrett Mrad and it might recoil an inch like the barrel movement might be an inch, but about a quarter of that, or a third of that happens before the bullet even leaves the barrel. So even something as simple as falling through on the trigger instead of doing that makes a difference. And so when you’re living in that microscopic world, it’s fun because you can select all these little things and see how they play out on paper and see what makes a difference and what doesn’t, and really hone your skill. And once again, do something that most people can’t even wrap their head around.

Wade: Well, and I think what’s awesome about that too, is that you can discover small adjustments that have huge impacts, because the negatives of the shooting part of it is that any little deviations of long distances make a big deal, right? So if you’re off by any degree, you’re going to miss okay. But the converse side of that is that small adjustments can make you incredibly much more accurate. And I think that’s an exciting that’s it sounds like an exciting part of it. So what led you to the business side of it? Right. So I can understand that from a personal perspective. Obviously this is something that you enjoy. You enjoy the depth of it. You talk about it all day long. It’s a passion. But what was it that made you go, okay, I’m going to turn this passion into a business. What was that like for you?

Bryce: So it started when I started this Facebook group and called it Long Range Shooters of Utah is literally just if you’re in Utah and you shoot long range, come join the group and then you’ll know where competitions are, where ranges are, where we’re going to get to get together, whatever. And so I loved bringing people together and sharing my passion for the sport. Right. Being around people that had like minded and whatnot. And at one point it was like, well, why don’t we make some t shirts and some hoodies and some hats? And so we did that and we met up with a movie theater. He rented the whole movie theater and saw, like, the first shooter or some military movie, and just it was a community thing. And so I sold those for a while. We developed the Milk Jug Challenge and started selling milk jug targets. We had some milk jug events, and we’d charge people to come and and do the event, mostly because my wife was pissed that I was spending all this time doing these things and not making anything from it. But where it really turned into a significant business, where it was just mostly swag was when I got my FFL and that was once again more just to feed my hobby. But where it really changed is I had a local entrepreneur who I did not know. He called me one day and said, Bryce, I follow all your stuff. It’s incredible. I want you to teach me, do a class for me and my buddies. And I told him I didn’t do classes and I said, you can call so and so. I don’t really know of anybody local that does this, but there’s some places you can call.

Bryce: And he was extremely adamant. He kept calling me and calling me and messaging me and saying, when are you going to come teach a class for me and my buddies? So finally, after about a month of this, I just gave in and said, alright, fine. And so I sat down and had to put together all this stuff I’d learned over the years into a curriculum, and I discovered there were a lot of things that I didn’t necessarily know how to explain. And so I had to go out and research and find it. Once I did, that was a huge, enlightening experience. That was the first kind of enlightening experience, and it was really cool, is when I went and actually taught it. I loved teaching it. I thoroughly enjoyed teaching it. And then the third big aha was when we went to the range and they applied what I taught them. I had literally three guys at the end of it that I interviewed, and I said, what did you think about the class? They said, Bryce, this is the coolest thing that I’ve done in 10 or 15 years. Single coolest thing. And of course, that just made me blow, right? So good money, love doing it. People loved coming. It was a match made in heaven. And of course, what did they ask? When’s the next class? When can you teach me more? And so we started offering classes and now we open them up on Thanksgiving, and they’re sold out by Valentine’s Day for the whole year. Like, literally within an hour they’re gone.

Wade: So when you open the cart and then you have all the classes that are sold out within like an hour or two.

Bryce: So I open up the full year on Thanksgiving Day. I announced the classes on Thanksgiving Day, and then I opened two classes at a time. And once one fills up, I open up the next one. But usually those first two are gone, like in the first day or so. And then some of the hot months, the good months like May June when the weather’s nice, those go almost instantly, and sometimes a whole class will be sold out by one group of friends or whatever. So we generally have the entire season sold out while there’s still snow on the ground outside.

Wade: And I think there’s a lot of people say, okay, we’re gonna do the brick and mortar, we’re gonna do this, we’re gonna do that, right. But from a service perspective, building that anticipation, getting that continuity of the business where you can depend on it now. Right. You say like, okay, now I have demand that I know that I can fill I can plan a little bit more of what I’m going to do. Did that happen right away? Like, was that something that just blew up immediately, or is that something that kind of took some time to get those classes to fill up like that? And if so, how did you do? How did you do that?

Bryce: So I think I had an unfair advantage in that I already had 24 million views on YouTube, 75,000 subscribers, 17,000 members of my group on Facebook. Now there’s like 75,000. So I already had reach. I already had marketing, right? And they already had fallen in love with my brand, so to speak. And my enthusiasm. I think that’s one big difference between when you watch our content and you watch other long range type guys. A lot of long range guys either come from the competition space or most of them come from military, and it’s a very different feel and a very different approach. We’re having a ball like we’re laughing, we’re shouting like we lose our minds when people do things. And so I think for the the general public, we’re really appealing. We’re not intimidating like a lot of trainings are. And they see everything online and they go, I’ve got to go out there and see that place. I’ve got to go out there and hit that jug at a mile. Like that just looks like so much fun. And so the demand has always been there. And every time we post another video, it just grows and grows. And I think that’s probably the hardest thing about starting a business is should I invest my time and money when I have no idea whether this is going to fly or not? And we got the other way around. We had all the demand and it was just a matter of like, right now I’m like, I should quit my job and just do this full time. And I get told every day by people, you should quit your job and just do this, but I just haven’t done so yet.

Wade: It’s a big transition to do that. When I switched from being a lawyer to being a writer, it actually took. Even though I had replaced my income as a writer, it still took time to be like, am I really not a lawyer anymore? You know what I mean? Like like people don’t understand the psychological. Even if you’re doing something that you love, right? Even if you’re doing something that seems like it’s like the person you ten years ago would have been a dream. There’s still like this inertia and this momentum to what you did before, and it takes time to overcome that. I had a.

Bryce: Really sweet software job. I sell software to some of the biggest companies in the world. I don’t love it. I love part of what I do, but part of it, it’s just a really great job. So it’s hard to walk away from a good job. And this is all just fun on the side that I get to do. That makes me some great money. And so it’s I’m extremely blessed. I’ll be the first person to say it. And so it makes it tough to break those golden handcuffs of the other job and just do this full time, despite how much fun I want to do, I’m also a little worried that it’ll ruin it.

Wade: Yeah, it changes the calculus a little bit with regards to if that becomes your sole source of income. And I think this is an important business lesson that people need to understand, is that just if you have a passion for something and you monetize it, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it still will stay your passion forever because it is a different it’s a totally different experience to to be doing something only for them to pay your bills. And so, like, you got the kids in school you’re paying for and you’ve got, like, medical things and all that. And then it just attaches a whole different psychology to what you’re doing.

Bryce: So much, you’re not sure if you want to get married. Right, right.

Wade: This episode is brought to you by TacticalPay.com. Every few years, it seems large banks and national credit card processors suddenly decide that they no longer want to process payments for firearms and firearms related businesses, and so they drop these businesses with almost no notice, freezing tens of thousands of dollars in payments for months on end. If you want to ensure your partner with a payments provider that is dedicated to supporting the firearms industry, or you just want to find out if you could be paying less for your ACH, debit and credit card processing, visit TacticalPay.com. Again, that’s TacticalPay.com. It seems to be a huge economic factor for almost every business that I talked to in this industry is geographic location. It seems to me is that one of your biggest assets is where you live in Utah, and how beautiful it is, and that people it’s a destination location. Walk me through a little bit about that. Obviously that’s like luck. You didn’t you didn’t necessarily plan on that because you did the business once you got there. But talk me through the geographic advantages that you have.

Bryce: Absolutely. I don’t remember what the name of the book is, but it’s the there’s one about if you spend 10,000 hours doing something, what about Bill gates? Why did Bill gates become Bill gates? Because he happened to be. He grew up within an hour of one of the only supercomputers in the world. Right. And so he had the opportunity to go and play with it between midnight and two in the morning or whatever, and learn that stuff. If I were living in Hawaii, where guns are very restricted and there’s nowhere to shoot, or even back east where there’s hardly any ranges, I probably wouldn’t be doing this right. But I’m in Utah, where it’s wide open spaces. If you’re going to hunt here, you got to be used to taking longer shots because you’re shooting across canyons and desert. There’s not a lot of cover. I happen to have one of the finest shooting ranges in the entire world. 90 minutes from my house and tons of open space. I could literally just drive 45 minutes in any direction, set up some steel, and I can shoot out to a thousand or a mile. So it definitely plays a huge part in it. Utah is an amazing place, very conservative minded. It’s a great place to to do this business, but I also feel a little bit locked in. Like if I decide, hey, you know what, I’d like to move to Alaska and start a fishing business. Well, I’m long range shooters of Utah. I can’t really pack up and go anywhere. I have to be in Utah, which is a good thing, but still.

Wade: Well, you could franchise it, right? You could just train up some people, keep them in Utah, and then you go open up a long range shooters of Alaska.

Bryce: No. Much long range in Alaska either. It’s there’s too many trees and yeah going on. Right. So absolutely right. Geography makes a huge difference.

Wade: That is one advantage that I have. It’s about this gig that I get to do, is I get to talk to so many diverse people in the firearms community of all sorts of different types of businesses, and even on like your brick and mortar indoor ranges. We talk geography, and it just is shocking to me that I never thought about that. And I’ve learned a lot from that because as a writer, geography doesn’t really matter to me, obviously, because I could go clickety clack on the computer wherever I am. But I think one advantage that you have, though, is your social media following. Was there a point.

Bryce: That then location doesn’t matter so much? But if if on my website you went there and you were all excited about taking one of my classes because of the videos, and then you read on there that you’ve got to fly into Salt Lake and drive eight hours. The number of people that would want to do that would dramatically decline. But when it’s two hours. Okay. Sweet, right? That’s not too bad. But even the two hours, I bet that discourages a few people. Oh, I got to get a hotel somewhere else. I got to rent a car. Where? If we were five minutes from Salt Lake International Airport. That might actually help. So location is obviously extremely important.

Wade: But you know what though I would say so how long do people have to drive to get to you? From where. About two hours. Oh, two hours. Okay.

Bryce: If they play and if they drive, we do. We have people drive in from Vermont, from Michigan, like all the time. Every class will have somebody driving in from crazy far away.

Wade: I look at that as an advantage because anyone that shows up to your class wants it. The obstacle is like people will self-select out. So you probably have really good people because you’re not going to get. If you make your offer too easy, then you get the people that will only do easy offers. And those people are always pains in the neck. Right? And so the fact that you actually have to you have to have some skin in the game, I think you get like the best people. You’re not going to get the yahoos that are going to be a big problem. That makes it a joy to do, right? I don’t know, I don’t know if that’s. I’m guessing so.

Bryce: Two years ago, uh, Safari Club International reached out to us and they said, hey, we’re having a banquet in Salt Lake. We’d like to have you there as an exhibitor. And what would you think? That the guy that runs it had taken my class and had an absolute blast. In fact, I think he took it twice, but he said I would love to do a sub like subsidize a class to PSI members where if they sign up for PSI, they get a discount on your class. I’ll pay that difference and we’ll bring them to the to the class. So we had a dedicated class just for them and we went up and presented or went up, had a booth at the PSI thing. It was a stark contrast between our typical customer and these people that had no idea who I was, had never seen our content, had never seen what we’re capable of. They all came in, not really sure about you. And we talked to them about this is why this rifle is better than this one. Or we just give them coaching on stuff. No, I don’t know. I killed an elk last year at 500 yards with my whatever. And you’re telling me that’s no good? And they were very skeptical and they were great people. But it was a very different feeling. And it made me very much appreciate and love our general consumer because they show up and they’re just loving the fact that they’re there. They’ve been dreaming about this, thinking about it, watching it on YouTube for years, and now they’re standing there and they love it. So you hit the nail on the head. 100%.

Wade: Well, it’s the difference between fans and customers. It takes longer. And that’s the thing is where in terms of your marketing basically is content marketing, right? Where you’re like, okay, I’m going to put this content out there and you’re going to get to know me personally before you even think about buying something from me. And then by the time someone’s ready to buy, then they’re like, oh, I’m going to save up for this. It’s not an impulse already sold, maybe.

Bryce: Yeah, they they’re excited to be there. They’ve already seen it. They’ve committed to it. It’s what they want to do. It’s awesome.

Wade: And I just had another interview about this with regards to the idea of a culture versus transaction. If you approach your business as I’m going to look at this as a transaction and how do I get this person to do this economic transaction with me, that is a much different end product. End result customer experience than if you start with, okay, how do I build a culture? How do I help this person in terms of what I’m trying to teach them and make them the best that I can make them? And how do I put the person first and let the rest take care of itself? And most people are too afraid to do the latter and try to do the former. But this longevity and the success comes from the culture side and the people side.

Bryce: Yeah. In this business you’ve got to be a little bit of an extrovert. Obviously I’m in sales for a living and I do demonstrations for a living, and I’m in front of people for a living, so I’m right as rain in that position. In fact, I love it and I love it, particularly in this space, because I get to share the stuff that I would do it for free. If I’m at the range on a Saturday and I’m looking over my shoulder at some guy who’s struggling with something, I’ll drop what I’m doing and just go hang out with him and help him, because I just love doing it. And I think that genuineness just comes out in our videos and everything that we do. And so people feel totally comfortable. They feel like family, and we start our classes by saying, listen, we understand that you guys are coming from all different wavelengths. Some guys are complete beginners. Never shot a gun before. Some of you are experts. We’ll stay here till midnight to make sure that whatever trip you made to get here, that you got what you wanted and that you’re happy. And I’ll answer the phone when you call. And so the experience and the customer service that they get with our experience is just above and beyond. And not because we’re trying to because we genuinely just that’s just how we are. We like doing it. We love doing it. I’d take a phone call in the middle of a birthday party to talk about, you know, what gun you should buy. And I don’t even know who the guy is.

Wade: So I think, well, I think you have an interesting complement of skills, right. Because in in the precision shooting world, it is, like you said, it’s a nerdy, kind of a nerdy like thing, right? It’s like very like introverted, technical. Well, okay. Technical, nerdy. Like I’m a nerd, so I don’t have a problem with the term nerd, right? It’s like, but it is an introspective, focused thing and not a lot of those people are extroverts. So like my best friend is a PhD in mechanical engineering, but he’s an extreme extrovert. Right. But he’s like, he has this. So he has this weird combination of skills. And so it really helps him. Do you think that’s been another competitive advantage for you? Because most people in the precision world probably aren’t as extroverted as I think.

Bryce: Just people in general aren’t necessarily like, I don’t know if it was Seinfeld or somebody. A comedian once said that the one thing that people are more terrified than anything else is public speaking, and they’re more terrified than death. They’d rather be in the casket than be giving the eulogy. And so I think that’s a big part of it. And that’s why I’ve actually had the range master at the range say, hey, so-and-so, that’s here for the class. I think he’s trying to start his own school, and I think he’s just here to rip off your stuff. And I’m like, I’m not really worried about it because he’s not me. People don’t come because they want to learn the fundamentals of marksmanship. They can Google that. They come because they want to do it with me. They want to see this place, they want to have this experience. And so I really don’t worry about competitors. In fact, I’m all about synergy. I feel like the whole world is coming down against the Second Amendment community and the gun community, and we need to have synergy. We need to band together. We need to help each other out and promote each other. And the only guys that I won’t support and help are the ones that don’t subscribe to that thought that that are being a turd within the community that doesn’t need a turd in it. Basically, I.

Wade: Agree with you hundred percent. It’s one reason why I do this podcast. It’s one reason why I write in the firearms vertical is because what’s the best way that I can help grow the community well or protect? Contribute to two way right? The best way is to get more people under the tent, right? Because if you have because if, let’s say a guy comes in, he sees what you does, he sees what you’re doing for your class. He’s like, well, I’m going to do a class, but he’s going to do it in Nevada. That’s not really a competition for you in that sense, because like you said, they’re buying you, right. You’ve become a niche of one. Right? So if I’m sitting there, I’m not comparing to that. Do I want to travel to Nevada or do I want to travel to Utah? I’m looking. I want to go see Bryce Wright. And Bryce could move to Alaska and I would go, well, I guess I’m going to Alaska next year. And I think from a business perspective, people are afraid to do that because you really have to put yourself out there and be unabashedly yourself. Right. And were you nervous in the beginning when you were doing that? Because it is like, were you in the military before or anything like that, or you just were just like, you’re just I love it. No.

Bryce: And that’s actually a funny thing too, right? Like sometimes when I look at other providers of similar things, I feel a little sheepish because I don’t have some long list of credentials. Even at the beginning of the call when you said that your background is a competitive shooter and my background.

Wade: Is not a competitive shooter, I. Oh, yours. Oh, right.

Bryce: Oh, you got it. You know, so sometimes I look back at it and I feel bad, or I feel sheepish that I’m not out competing at a high level or that people don’t know me as that. But in the day, it doesn’t matter. Classes are filling up because whatever I’ve created, people like it and they love it. But me personally, sometimes I wish I had that military credential or I had the. I don’t think it necessarily matters to me. It doesn’t. But to some it does. And to me, internally I’m like, yeah, I wish I could take a season off and go win a national championship. To just add that to my resume, even though it really doesn’t matter, I don’t need it.

Wade: Well, two things on that. One is that I don’t think he would be as accessible if you were coming. Like real like coming from the military background, right? Because a lot like I’m a normal dude. I never was in the military. I never served or anything like that. And I just like firearms. And so if I can find someone that is sometimes and I’ve interviewed a lot of military guys, I live in Virginia Beach. You can’t spit and not hit a Special Forces dude here, right? Or some kind of training or high school. And that’s a blessing for me. But sometimes that can be intimidating to people that are just normal people who want to get into the sport. So the fact that you’re not presenting yourself that way makes it more accessible. And at the end of the day, it’s like, can you teach people to put rounds on the target, right? Like, can you teach them to do it properly? That’s all that matters. And the proof is in the pudding. And obviously, if you can have your nine year old hit a milk jug in a mile, you know what you’re doing. I think a lot.

Bryce: Of pride in making sure your research things to the nth degree that we’re pulling in all the different gospels, so to speak. Right. Like, there’s no one way to do everything. There’s commonalities and there’s okay. Most people believe this. This is what’s working for most people. And so trying to pull that in and be agnostic when it comes to what’s going to work best for everybody. I think we’re unique in that way. We’re not stuck on this idea that we’ve got the right answer and no one else does. We’re here to do whatever we need to do to make sure we’re giving you the best information possible. Those are the kinds of things that I stress about personally as an instructor is I want to make sure that whatever I’m teaching is absolutely rock solid. And if I ask the top ten guys in the field, they would all say, yeah, I agree you’re doing this, right. Yeah.

Wade: Well, there’s two ways to look at that, right? There’s like, look, this is a way to do it. It’s not the way, but we’ll be able to get you to where we’re going. And if you have that mentality, then the second thing is that you’ll take feedback. So what that means is if you discover something that that makes your craft better, it gets implemented immediately because you’re not your tag or your link to the result. You’re not linked to the process like the process is. The process only exists for the result. And that’s the whole concept behind precision shooting from what I’m starting to understand. So let’s say someone watches this podcast and they’re like, okay, I’m not there yet where I can necessarily I’ve never done precision shooting before. Maybe I’ve done shotgun shooting, maybe obviously I can concealed carry. So I’m comfortable with firearms, right? Maybe I’ve done a little hunting, but if I wanted to get into precision shooting, what would be an entry level gun that I would purchase? Like an example.

Bryce: I would recommend that they reach out and talk to myself or someone like myself that has exposure to a lot of different products, brands, things so many times within any space, within firearms or any sport, really, it’s very hard to decipher between people that are being paid to say something, people that are being genuine about it, people that actually know what they’re talking about. Right. And so I try to take a very unbiased approach and only speak to what I see, whether I like it or don’t like it. I speak to what I see in our courses because I have a very unique perspective of seeing 250 students a year come through with all manner of different things, and I see what works and what doesn’t. And there’s very seldom certitudes. In other words, one brand that I just absolutely cannot stand. It’s not terrible all the time, but it’s 70% of the time they don’t shoot great, right? And so that 25% still is great, but the other 70% isn’t right. So there’s so many components that go into this. It’s hard to just give an answer. But what I would say is this the less you have to spend, the more careful you have to be about where you spend it. And if someone were to call me and say, Bryce, I’ve got $3,000 to spend. This will surprise some people. I’ve got $3,000 to spend on a setup. Total. I would have them buy a $2,500 scope and a $500 rifle, because optics are so incredibly important. So the least expensive rifle that shoots really good is a Ruger American predator.

Bryce: Any Ruger American, like six five Creedmoor, roughly 500 bucks. They’re clunky as hell. There’s not a lot of aftermarket support for them. The triggers aren’t great, but they shoot really good. Tikas I’ve never had a bad tikka in my life. I’ve never had one that just blew my mind. Amazing. But I’ve never had a single ticket out of hundreds and hundreds that I’ve set up for people that hasn’t shot submitted of angle good ruger’s tend to shoot, great savages tend to shoot pretty good. So there’s some brands at least. But when it comes down to like if you’re really going to get serious about this sport, if you’ve got the means getting into a custom setup. What that’s going to give you is it’s going to eliminate more variables, because even though Ruger tends to put out really great rifles or puts out really great rifles, you still might get a Monday rifle or you might get a Friday rifle, meaning you might do it in the factory that just loves his job, works hard, makes sure his machine is dialed in perfect. Or you might get the dude that’s on his last leg, right? And just hates everything about it and does a terrible job. And those two rifles come out of the factory the same day with serial numbers right next to each other. One shoots crap, one shoots. Great. That’s always the risk with factory mass produced anything. That’s why guys in my space will spend the money and drill into custom rifles, high end optics. It’s all about eliminating variables and creating confidence.

Wade: Yes, well, it’s like if you think of like a car, right? There’s some cars where the year is just I have a Honda that I think I got the best Honda in that year because I’ve had it for a million years. It drives perfectly, and nothing’s ever gone wrong with it. But you can get the same Honda that comes off exactly like you said, comes off the assembly line, and that person has problems with it. So it’s like you get lucky with the car.

Bryce: But Honda’s percentage of crappy cars versus great cars is one of the best out there. Right? Right. Same thing where you go a Yugo and you got about an 80% chance. It’s going to be a total piece of crap, right? I had a Ford.

Wade: F-150, and the only thing that I never should have gotten rid of, that Ford. I had a 2006 Ford F-150. I never should have gotten rid of that truck. It was like the miracle truck of all American trucks. Anyways, that’s a good story. Well, I can sit here and talk with you all day about this, actually. And because precision shooting is something that I know nothing about, so everything about it is new to me and it makes me excited just learning about it. So I’m really thankful to be able to talk to you today. Your website is Long Range Shooters of Utah. Com what are your socials? So you’re on YouTube. You’re on Facebook. Where can people find you there.

Bryce: They’re all the same. It’s all long range shooters of Utah. So websites long range shooter user utah.com. Instagram. Long range shooters of Utah. I’ve got a couple other pages that are fun. I don’t know if you saw the Cold War thing of the United States where it said why you shouldn’t invade the US. You know, like hillbillies here. Utah was the long range Mormons. So I have a long range Mormons page and we have like patches and stickers. Obviously, the predominant religion in Utah is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the Mormons, and there’s a lot of long range shooters here. So it’s become a thing too. But generally speaking, long range shooters of Utah.

Wade: Awesome. Well, I have a quick question for you after we end, but if people want to reach out to you personally, they can do that on the website.

Bryce: Yep. Info at Long-Range shooters Utah.com. If you want to come out to a class, they fill up really fast. We open them up on Thanksgiving Day for the year. There’s sign up sheets where you can get on waiting lists and be notified. But if you watch our social media, it’s a lot of fun. Lots of great stuff on our YouTube channel. Also some instructional videos and just reviews. That’s one thing that I think we’ve done a good job of is after a class, we always ask for feedback. We always ask for people if they want to film a review. And so we’ve got just hundreds of review videos from people that have come out to the class of every experience level, and I find the folks that come with the least amount of experience, oftentimes are the ones that perform the absolute best. Yeah, we’ve got bad.

Wade: Habits to unlearn, basically. So we’ve got rental.

Bryce: Packages the whole bit. So no matter what your experience level is, you can come out and have an absolutely great time and hit some stuff really far away.

Wade: Right. That’s amazing. Like I said, I’ve had such a fun time talking to you and hope to have you on the show again, maybe six months to see how things are going after you start getting your classes going again.

Bryce: Gets you out for a class. It’ll be a fun time.

Wade: This is a possibility for sure. This is what happens. I told you when I interview people on this on the podcast, I just end up doing everything. So I appreciate you. 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.