About This Episode
In today’s episode of Tactical Business, host Wade Skalsky sits down with Rich Bruno from RAB Firearms. Rich dives deep into the challenges of firearms training for law enforcement and civilians. He discusses the lack of hands-on training in agencies, the rise of private firearms coaching, and the dedication of civilians who train harder than some officers. Rich also shares insights on defensive tactics, home security, and his approach to coaching over instructing. Don’t miss this conversation on practical, real-world training!
Insights In This Episode
- Demand shifted from group training to private sessions, requiring a pivot in business structure. Flexibility in business offerings is crucial.
- Some of the most valuable work happens outside public calendars, showing the importance of B2B contracts and specialized services.
- Rich prefers in-person, hands-on coaching over digital training, emphasizing that some industries thrive on personal interaction rather than online courses.
- Establishing consistent training programs (e.g., female-only courses, law enforcement contracts) builds a steady income stream.
Today’s Guest
Rich Bruno : RAB Firearms
RAB Firearms Training and Consulting, LLC is dedicated to equipping law-abiding citizens, law enforcement, military, and private security with the skills and confidence to handle firearms safely and effectively. Committed to real-world, proven training, we offer professional instruction from highly experienced staff. Our mission is to ensure every student gains the knowledge and ability to defend themselves and their families, fostering responsible firearm ownership and tactical proficiency.
Featured on the Show
About Tactical Business
Tactical Business is the weekly business show for the firearms industry. The podcast features in-depth interviews with the entrepreneurs, professionals and technologists who are enabling the next generation of firearms businesses to innovate and grow.
Episode Transcript
Wade: Welcome to the Tactical Business show. I’m your host, Virginia Beach based firearms entrepreneur and copywriter Wade Skalsky. Each episode, we’ll 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 speaking with Rich Bruno from RAB Firearms Training and Consulting. Rich, how are you doing sir?
Rich: Good morning sir. How are you?
Wade: I’m good, I’m good. I’m excited to talk to you. You’re my first eyewitness from new Jersey about the things going on in the world. So that’s exciting for me. Are you guys getting some cold weather up there?
Rich: Yeah. It’s freezing. It’s about ten degrees today. You got some snow and some ice the past couple of days. So it’s been. It’s been fun.
Wade: I’m down here in Virginia Beach, so I might be getting your snow and some of you a little bit of your ice, which means down here, we panic. It’s not like up north where you guys are.
Rich: Yeah. Not here. You know what’s weird, though? In the past couple of years, we haven’t had much snow. Know. So the little bit that we get you know they do panic a little bit. School clothes and delayed openings for an inch of snow. But knock on wood today. We’re good.
Wade: It’ll make spring and summer that much better for sure. Well, good. Well, I’m excited to talk to you today. Why don’t you kind of tell me how you got to where you are right now? What was the long, winding path that led you to being in the space?
Rich: Well, I’ve been an active duty law enforcement officer for 16 years here in new Jersey. I’ve been a firearms instructor since 2015. So my interest in the firearms in the training world started probably back in my first year or two as an officer. I started to shoot more and train more. Then I started to get a knack for helping guys out. It just kind of came natural to me, whether that was guys at work or or off duty friends and things like that. So then I got the firearms instructor cert through work, and I started quote unquote instructing. And you’ll laugh while I say that because, excuse me in the law enforcement world, you go to a five day instructor course, and for me, I knew exactly what I knew on day one, as as at the end, there was no teaching on how to teach. So it became a self-exploration phase or a journey, call it that, to where I started to get out on my own, to do things, to become a better instructor. Well, it started with becoming a better shooter. Number one. Number two, a better instructor. I was on our regional Swat team for just shy of nine years. So I was getting a lot of training as it was through former military guys and things like that. So training was a big part of of my career for those nine years. So then around 2018, 2019 started to get the idea.
Rich: My captain at work at the time said, why don’t you start a business doing this? I had helped a few people and I kind of looked into it, and I talked to my wife about it and it just wasn’t the right time. We had just had our second son. Concern. So the biggest issue that I had with it was finding a range to use. I didn’t want to be the indoor range typical, you know, NRA instructor type of thing. I was looking more for training to help law enforcement. That’s how it started. The funny story is, right around that time frame, a friend of mine called me and said, hey, I want to buy a gun, but my wife won’t let me. What should I do? So I said, all right. Why doesn’t she want it? She was scared, blah blah blah. So I said, bring her over on Friday. Tell her we’re going to go out to dinner, the four of us. And when they showed up, I brought them down into the basement, and I did a firearms safety course for her. She had no idea what was coming, so I kind of ambushed her. Within 15 minutes, she was like, I see it completely different. And goes, I’d love to shoot. We got in the car and we went right to one of the public indoor ranges, and she shot a gun for her first time.
Rich: Well, now she can’t get enough of it. She loves it. And he said to me, you have something here like you should market. This wife won’t let you buy a gun. Question mark. Well, bring it to me and I’ll convince her. It was a big joke. Well, then, right around probably October, November of 2020, I linked up with an outdoor range here and started to propose some ideas. And that was it. Once I had a place to be, call it a home. At the time, that was it. I formed my LLC and my business in January of 2021, and here I am. So when I started, it was really in my mind to start to help law enforcement train differently. And then it shifted to the general public. It started to shift that way. And then the Bruen decision came out at the New York with the Supreme Court, and it just blew up. So I started in 2021 thinking, hey, if I could help a couple cops here or there, or this guy wants to buy a gun and his wife won’t allow, how can I start to help in that way? The problem was I was doing it already for free when my wife and everybody else was like, why aren’t you making money doing this? So that’s how the whole business started in 2021, and that’s really what launched it.
Wade: Yeah, there’s a lot to unpack there from a personal perspective. I started my career as a prosecutor, so I’ve been trained by the police to shoot just a little bit, and I thought that was very valuable. And then many years later in LA, I had the range instructors from the police academy trained me. And that was invaluable. Invaluable for sure, because you’re more willing, I think, sometimes to listen to someone that is in that position of authority, that has that experience, even though we’re all the same. Right? You guys are exposed to firearms much more than we are as people who don’t have that job.
Rich: I’ll be honest with you, that’s not true. It’s completely false. It is a misconception. I get people that reach out to me all the time and say, hey, I want to come. I want to take a course with you. I vet everybody, right? Obviously, I want to make sure I’m training law abiding citizens, law enforcement officers, whomever. When a guy tells me or a woman tells me I’ve been shooting for years, my neighbor is neighbor’s a cop. He taught me how to shoot. All that tells me is that person probably has a ton of bad habits. Some safety hazards as well that I have to attend to in the beginning of of that session that we do in law enforcement, from my perspective. Some agencies are different. Some bigger cities are doing it different. But here from where I came up, you got a week or two of firearms in the academy, and I wouldn’t even call it firearms training, to be honest with you. After that you qualified twice a year, 100 rounds per qualification, 60 for day, 40 at night. So at the bare minimum, you shoot 200 rounds per year. I have people again. Bear with me. Civilians. Uh, my buddy Joe, he’s a plumber. He’s been my customer for a couple of years. He’s now become my friend. He shoots with me twice a month. He’s a 65 year old plumber who has a concealed carry permit.
Rich: He spends six hours a month with me on the range. I have officers that I work with who haven’t been on the range for six hours combined in 3 or 4 years. So there is some aspect of a shift in law enforcement to where law enforcement are understanding things slightly different. This is conversations I have with people all the time, where a guy like me targets the law enforcement instructors or the younger cops, the one year to seven year guys, that you can still kind of change the way that they think about things. The typical law enforcement firearms instructor and I get a ton of hate when I say these things, and I really don’t care, because if you can’t be accountable for yourself, then we have a problem. The typical law enforcement firearms instructor is good at doing one thing standing there, reading off the card what the course of fire is, and for them, they have to just shoot a piece of paper to get into the course. You just have to show a 95% on your marksmanship, which is very easy to do when there’s no stress. And there’s things like this. You take those normal instructors, and I’m allowed to say this because I was one of them. That’s why I say this so confidently, is those people have no idea what real shooting looks like.
Wade: Well, you’re not calling out anyone specific, right? So you’re just saying that as an institution across the country that this happens a lot because that’s just not where the focus is. Right? For policing. Right. It’s just like, okay, let’s get you qualified. Let’s get you out there, but let’s get you going. Is that why you wanted to go for an outdoor range versus an indoor range? You wanted a more dynamic training?
Rich: Yeah, for sure. There’s a lot you can do indoors, but there’s a ton you can’t do. I can’t set up steel targets at 70 yards like I can on my outdoor range. The issue is, you know, they have a liability. No rapid fire. Most people can’t use holsters for insurance purposes. I understand it when I’m doing one on one sessions or small groups. You know, it depends on the number. I’ll bring in other instructors to help. Yes. The only rules are be safe. So we go through the safety rules, of course. But you’re not worried about random people to the left or to the right or behind you. We can shoot at a pace that’s faster than real life. That’s my thing, is getting people to understand. And I’m very fortunate. I’ve never been in a officer involved shooting 16 years. I’m very, very fortunate and I’m very happy about that. That being said, I still prepare for it physically and mentally. So especially with law enforcement, I’ll use that as the example. The qualifications that we do are so forgiving. The time standards are ridiculous and it’s an 80% to pass. So if you just shoot 80%, you’re fine. And they just say, well, you’re qualified yet that’s a test. But the training part of it, like now for all the things I do behind the scenes, if there’s an officer involved shooting, you know, when it’s investigated, they want to know what the officer’s training looks like. Those qualification records are not training. Those are just what you have to do to do to carry a gun as a law enforcement officer.
Rich: They ask for your training records, and when there’s nothing there, it doesn’t look so good in law enforcement, unfortunately. We’re tasked with training for so many different things. And in today’s world, 98% of it’s on the computer. Sitting there watching videos and PowerPoints and these things. Not really any hands on training. It’s stuff that agencies are having a hard time because of staffing issues or overtime or ammo budgets. I faced that in the agency I worked for. So for a guy in my department to say I’m the supervising firearms instructor. So for a guy in my place to say, hey, I want to go to a course, can I get rounds? I have to anticipate what I bought for the year because I only get to buy ammo once a year. I want to be able to give this guy a case of ammo to go to a course, you know, so. But he’s paying for it on his own time. Rewind that to the civilian market is I have probably more non-law enforcement customers than I do law enforcement people who want to exercise their rights, their law abiding citizens. They want to carry a gun to protect their family. And there are people like my buddy Joe, who put in six hours a month of his own money, his own time to be prepared to carry a gun in public. He acts more like a professional than some police officers I know.
Wade: Yeah, well, I mean, that’s like my firearms instructor. When I take a class from him, we have to take a whole range because to do my concealed carry class. Right? Just me. It’s a one on one class I do with him. And because, like you said, like they won’t let you draw from the holster. We’re not able to move around. So he just takes the whole range. And just because they have like multiple ranges there and he just takes one of them for me and we can set things up for cover and all that. And it makes a huge difference. I mean, there’s no comparison between standing there and I mean, obviously you want to learn how to shoot to be accurate, but then once you start moving and you start drawing from concealment, there is no comparison. I agree with you on that. Well, let’s talk a talk a little bit about. So do you still sort of have the same curriculum that you did when you started? What was the process of developing the curriculum? And then where are you now versus when you started four years ago?
Rich: Basically trial by fire. So I would book a course or come up with an idea, do this, or see what worked and what didn’t work. So my initial plan was to do 1 or 2 days a month on a Saturday or Sunday, do an intro class, and then do the next one as an intermediate class. And what I found was a lot of people didn’t want to shoot with other groups of people that they didn’t know. So I would get two people here, three people here, two people here. Sometimes I’d get a big class, ten, 15 people. So then I don’t even know how it started. But I just started getting overwhelmed with private training. One on ones or small groups. Private groups. And that’s where it has turned to where I didn’t anticipate that was going to happen. So now it’s four days a week. I’m doing private training with people when I’m not working at the PD. So four days a week is private training. My schedule is booked out until, you know, March. At this point, I also do group courses too. So I have one of the things that I’ve started in the beginning was I do a female only law enforcement handgun class. My friend Allison is a police officer here in new Jersey, and she suggested it back in 2021. And at the time, I had a different opinion where I didn’t want to segregate women in law enforcement.
Rich: I figured we’re all equal. We should all have classes together. And then she kind of explained why it would be beneficial to some females to be in a course with just females. There’s things that they go through that we will never go through with their bodies and going through all these different things. So I did the first one and it was a success. So now I do two a year for female law enforcement officers. And it it’s a big hit. I’m also a I do the training for the for the new Jersey Women and Law Enforcement Association. I run a competition that they do every year to crown a top shot. So that’s been the probably the most consistent thing from the beginning. But I have a two day course I do for law enforcement only, depending on the ranges. If I’m using a law enforcement range, 99%, it’s law enforcement only. You know, their insurance doesn’t allow civilians non-law enforcement on the ranges. So I have two courses booked now for May and June, two day course and then the female course. I’m in conversations with some other PPVs. I’m trying to hit the north end of the state, the south end of the state, in the middle part of the state to kind of level it out. So I’m going to do the same kind of thing.
Rich: I basically do 4 to 6 courses a year. I try to make half of them open enrollment that anybody can attend. It just depends on the range that I use as well as private training with PDS. I have a bunch of different police departments department said, hire me. Rifle training. Handgun training, red dot training, transitions, whatever it is. So I have a bunch of that that you’ll never see publicly on my calendar, on my website, because it’s completely private to them. I also do active shooter response for law enforcement principles and tactics based kind of course, for them as well as in the private world. I do security assessments for people as well. People will bring me to their home and I’ll help give them recommendations on their security, what they have, or lack of how to make their home a little more secure. Tie in some firearms training with it if possible, as well as kind of helping people just make an emergency action plan for if there’s an emergency in their house, what they should do and how they should react to it. And it’s not always about an intruder or this what if there’s a fire? What’s the best? Things like that. So I kind of have a whole mix of things that I do and it keeps me busy. So it’s a great second full time job.
Wade: There are all these things that are connected to shooting that I think people don’t think about a lot. Like, I had my instructor come to my house and we did a threat assessment of my security of what to do for, you know, coming from the master bedroom to the kids bedrooms to the persons in this place in the house versus, you know, what’s your strong point? Where are we going to go? And I can’t tell you how much safer that made my family. Hopefully I’ll never have to do that. But the key is the time to think about those things is not when they’re happening.
Rich: I agree, and it’s something, you know, in teaching law enforcement officers. I’m a field training officer at work, as well as teaching the use of force portion for the civilian concealed carry. It’s one of the things I say is, you know, we’ll go over 100 scenarios in the class, but you need to sit and have an honest conversation with yourself, what you’re willing to get involved in, are you willing to accept the consequences physically? The law, the civil part of it. Are you willing to accept all those consequences if you are? Okay, fine. Pick and choose what you’ll get involved in and what you won’t get involved in. More importantly, what’s the point of carrying a gun in public is to protect yourself and your family. Your family is number one. Your last on that list. Hey, come up with what you think is appropriate. Everybody’s different and your home is the same thing, especially in law enforcement. I teach it all the time. You never want to have to think about what should I do right here, right now? You should have already thought about it. You should already have somewhat of a plan in your head. Hey, if this were to happen, this is what I would do. This is the priorities of what I would do here. This, this, this and this kind of. Have it in your head already. That way, under stress. You’re not thinking about it. People tell me. Well, I have a big, huge safe in my house. It’s got five rifles in it. Have you ever tried to open it in the dark under stress? When somebody is kicking, open your front door? You probably never have. So at least try to open it in the dark if you he can give it a whirl. Try it.
Wade: Yeah. I never understood the fight. Terror. You know the. The handgun is to fight to your rifle. There’s no anyone that’s ever studied the amount of time that things. How long things actually go on for and how short of a time period these things last. I haven’t really thought that through.
Rich: There’s a lot of people, though, that feel more secure with the weapons locked in that big, massive safe because of, I’m talking about newer people with guns. I get it all the time because I’ll tell people, hey, buy a lock box. That’s a big. Put it in your nightstand on top of your nightstand where it’s your fingerprint, it’s a keypad, whatever it is. And people will say, I don’t feel comfortable with it right there where my kids walk past it every minute of the day. And I say, okay, here’s why I would do this, this and this. This is how I do it. You choose to do what you want, but my recommendation is you have a handgun ready to go that has a flashlight attached to it that you can get within five seconds. You going to your rifle safe is not going to happen. Five minutes to prepare. I know what I’m going to get.
Wade: Well, yeah. And that’s my exact setup though, right. So like that’s I have a, I have a a light on there where it’s, it’s in my room and it’s biometric and you know, change the batteries twice a year January and July you know has a mechanical option if that fails. And then that’s what I got. That’s what I trained with. Right. And then the big gun safe is for oh there’s a riot at the Kroger down the street. Right. There’s some sort of rule of law problem where I’m like, okay, because if I’m taking that gun out, there’s a lot of, you know, we’re not in Kansas anymore if that’s happening.
Rich: Excuse me, I have two little kids. So if I heard that was happening, I’m getting all my stuff and I’m putting them in the car and I’m getting them the hell out of here, I’m not going to wait for it to come to my house then it’s not happening.
Wade: Well, and that’s the number one thing, right? Get everybody off the X. I don’t care about my house. Like, get out the window. Get out the s. Someone’s in my house. I’m not going to go engage that person unless I absolutely have to. But if you don’t think that through in advance, Then you might be the one that’s like blundering down your hallway with your flashlight on, going okay, corral in your house and you don’t know where the kids are. You don’t know where, you know. So that’s I think that’s why training is so important.
Rich: There’s also an ego aspect to it, too, of I’ve had this conversation with cops and and the friends of mine, and I made it very clear, like, hey, if somebody broke into my house in the middle of the night, you know, I was on the Swat team for all these years. I was one of our CQB guys and all these things. And what do you think I would do? And people are like, oh, you go down there and you get them. Or one guy said, he goes, you’re going to put a plate carrier on a belt night vision helmet. And I’m like, wow, okay. So actually it’s the complete opposite is I hide upstairs. I’m going to protect my family at all costs. If I go down the stairs and something happens to me, then this person goes upstairs and hurts my family. I can never live with myself. Why? Because I’m capable. If I were home by myself. Yeah, know, things might be a little bit different, but I’m not. I’m here to protect my two boys first, my wife second, and then myself. I’m not going to go down the stairs and look. I’m going to do what we talked about. I’m going to put myself in the most advantageous position possible to defend my family. That’s it. It’s not offensive. It’ll be defensive until I reasonably perceive my life or my family’s life was in danger. And then from there, it is what it is. I pray it never happens, but I’m not going to run out the front door and go stop him in the driveway.
Wade: Yeah, no.
Rich: Well, again, I have kids here. My job is to protect them. I don’t care about the car.
Wade: You may have round discipline, right? But the the person that’s going against you doesn’t. You know where all your rounds are going, but chances are the person in your house doesn’t. And then the other thing too is jiu jitsu solves that problem for me. I lose all the time in jiu jitsu against smaller, less powerful people. I don’t have any ego about it, you know what I’m saying? It’s like you can be really good and still lose.
Rich: I have enrolled in a couple months, but by all means it’s the It’s the most humbling experience. Get your ass kicked almost every single night. And I learned more when I get beat up. If I found another white belt that I could lock a camera on. Like it doesn’t matter.
Wade: That’s the thing about violence, though, right? Like, training gets you closer to violence so that you can deal with violence when it happens.
Rich: For sure. For sure. It’s a superpower. We know it. I mean, my son’s been doing it for four years. I can’t wait to see what he is going to be an animal when he gets older.
Wade: Well, and it’s a mindset, right. So like, that mindset translates over to firearms, just like working out does. Just like being knowledgeable about medical, right? Like all these things, they all come together. And the one thing that I always say about firearms is there’s such a depth to it, it can go forever. 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 dropped 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. What do you do with someone who does have a lot of experience? Like what do you focus on in that situation. So you’re like, okay, I have a repeat customer, or I have someone who’s got a lot of training. What are the areas that you focus on to go deep on?
Rich: Well, it really depends on what their goal is. If I have somebody who’s looking to become a competitive shooter and I start with them from the ground up, there’s a certain point where I’m going to have to pass them off to somebody who’s more of an expert at that. Yes, I shoot some matches. I have a B class ranking in USPSA. I’ve only shot three matches, so it’s. I’m no expert to teach that. So if it was something like that I would push them towards Brian Vise or Sam Callahan. These guys that are GMs that do this, that’s their thing. If it’s a law enforcement officer who says, hey, I want to get better, well, we’re going to start from the ground up because typically when they show up, they’re, you know, hey, give me a bill drill at seven yards. Sometimes it’s like seven seconds and it takes three and a half or four seconds for the first shot to break. So right then and there we’re going to start working on we got to get the gun out of the holster faster presented to the target very consistently. Grip has to be there. So basically I teach grip sights and trigger.
Wade: That’s an outside the waistband hip holster too right.
Rich: It might be in the waistband holster. I’ll shoot both. It depends on the day what I’m trying to do. I do a lot of dry fire from concealment, but.
Wade: None of what I’m saying. When you have the cops come in and they’re like, you know, I want to get better. You know, they’re on duty. They’re carrying on an external hip ulcer, right? So I mean, for sure. Yeah, yeah. And they’re still slow, right? And there’s no shame. Look, listen, I’m not an expert. I suck, I’m slow. But I understand that people don’t get that. It takes a lot of reps to get good from drawing from a holster.
Rich: Oh, man. And then you have the the Instagram world, and then you have the YouTube world where people see these things and they’re seeing these subsecond draws. Yeah, it’s possible, but it’s going to take you so long to get to that spot. Like I watched a video of myself from 2016 shooting a 2.5 second build drill, and I remember at the time going, wow, that was great. Where now I’m trying to hit a 1.5 build drill. Now I’m trying to shave a second from my work holster, right? A a safariland ALS. So it depends on the person. Sometimes it’ll be civilian, like my buddy Joe, for example. He’s shooting from concealment. So his thing is getting the gun out into his line of sight on target, where he can start pressing the shots off as soon as possible because it’s a defensive mindset. If he has to take the gun out in defense of him or his wife, he wants to be able to do it. A lot of it looks like the first shot is is going to be a single hand shot, because he might be grabbing his wife to move her out of the way and engaging somebody. I’m also pushing principles on him that he doesn’t even know I’m doing. He does target transitions with a reload and more transitions and just thinks it’s fun, but I’m getting him.
Rich: I’m training his eyes to lock on to the targets, not follow his red dot around. Get your eyes there. The dot will appear where you look as long as your grip fundamentals are in place and your presentation. I keep telling them he thinks I’m a liar. He will outshoot 95% of the cops that I work with. Maybe more, maybe more. And in general, I’d put him up against a lot of people. So if I have cops, I know what I’m working on. Grip, sights and trigger as well as the holster draw for sure, because in the police academy, you know what they told me about how to draw from the holster, take the gun out of the holster and point it to the target. Nothing about. Hey, level two, level three holsters. This or this or this. Hand positioning here, like none of that stuff. So when a cop messages me and says, hey, I want to do a private session, I already know what’s showing up and I already know what the first three hours looks like. Surprised? It’s great. When I had somebody last week who showed up and I was like, wow, you’ve been training like, no, not really. And I’m like, well, what you’re doing is really, really great. Let’s work on this and this.
Wade: So yeah, natural.
Rich: And it was a tiny, tiny female cop shooting a full sized Glock 21, 45 caliber. Mm. You would have thought she was shooting a nine millimeter. Some people just have it.
Wade: Yeah, well, if you find the right gun for you, that’ll take you a long way, you know. So what is your plan for, like, the next 2 to 5 years? Do you have plans on expansion? Maybe doing like some sort of digital courses? Like, what is your plan for the next 2 to 5 years, do you think?
Rich: I considered the digital thing and I’m going to stay away from it. I don’t think in this world unless it was a dry fire thing, only that I could explain. But I need to give you the best of me, which is in person. Small groups, one on one. I’m going to stick with the private training, because it’s really providing people with a platform that they couldn’t have, or they go to their instructors who give them 50 rounds and tell them, put the penny on top or the shell on top and press the trigger real easy. And if it doesn’t fall, you’re good. I think that’s the biggest crock of shit. Things like that. There’s so many different things we can do in a small two hour, three hour session. I’m going to stick with that. That plan, as well as my law enforcement courses, my group courses. If I can get a couple more PD’s on board to do some things, that’d be good. As for expansion, I have no plan to expand. I was working for Or the biggest police training company in the country for a while teaching firearms. Some politics happened in new Jersey and they are not doing any more in-person classes, but that provided me a nice platform. I was out in Massachusetts, Iowa. I made some other places around the country which were really interesting to go and teach law enforcement in other states.
Rich: So besides that, being away, the travel was was pretty demanding as well. So expansion wise, I’m a one man operation. I do have some assistants that help me at times. Uh, Jess and Tom are amazing. They help me with a lot of things. I have Joe here as well. So the guys and girls that help me with things. It’s hard too, because they live far from me, far from my range. So I can’t use them the way I want to use them. So they help me with my bigger classes. Expansions. Just too hard to do for a one man right now. And I’ll be honest with you, I just want to make sure whoever I bring on board. Here is the exact replica of me. Of my attitude, my demeanor. Everybody likes to train with me because I make it fun. They learn things. You know, I had somebody one time who goes on paper. He was such a type A asshole. I was even really debating on training with you because Swat team cop all these things, and then they meet you and they’re like, oh, you’re just a normal goofy dude. And I’m like, yeah, I just try to make jokes and have fun all the time while we learn.
Rich: I don’t even call myself an instructor. I feel like I’m more of a coach, a one on one coach to get people to try to connect with somebody. It’s hard all the time, but when you can connect with somebody, for instance, jiu jitsu, when you learn X move in jiu jitsu, you learn it as slow as possible. At some point you have to amp it up to see if it works. Shooting is the same exact thing. So I’m going to teach you a principle. Okay. Maybe like this. Now, with grip fundamentals and this, this and this, I’m going to have you shooting at the fastest pace you ever have and show you why it works. So for me, the coaching aspect is great. Finding connections with people. I’m really good at doing that. So it’s hard for me to hire somebody to try to do the same thing, to make a couple extra dollars. I feel like the people that are paying me, I give them a good enough service as it is now to give them the best of what I have. I wouldn’t want to ever skimp out on that. Do you understand what I’m saying? Yeah, and I have no plans to be some nationally known guy who travels all over the country. I could really care less about that.
Wade: It’s the human connection. That’s the secret sauce. And that’s why you’re being successful. And I think that’s an important business lesson to learn. Customer service is the one through line that everyone has through these successful businesses in the two way space, for sure, because it’s the one thing you can control. When you went around the country to different areas, to different police agencies, did you experience the same thing for the level of competence? Pretty much across the board, it was the same. You’re like, oh, I’m dealing with these agencies. I know what the first three hours is going to be like for the most part.
Rich: Yeah, for the most part. And then you have a sleeper. I went to Milford, Massachusetts, and I had, I don’t know, 15 cops in the class. I don’t know any of them. And then I meet a guy like my buddy Tyler, who’s a Boston cop. Boy could shoot his butt off his street crimes partner was with him in the course. Matt. He could shoot his butt off. Then you got this guy from over here who? And I was like, wow, there was four guys in that class that could shoot. Then there was a bunch of other guys who all had their Swat team shirts on who you thought would be the best shooters, and they weren’t. So he started to talk to everybody. You’re like, hey, Tyler, why are you such a good shooter? Oh, I’ve been shooting competitions. I’ve been training with competitive guys, practical shooters like, ah, like minded person. Now he has a company up there who’s blowing up. He’s doing great. All of these guys, the regular cop. I said it in the beginning. You get your week or two in the in the academy, you come out and you qualify twice a year. There are people that don’t take their gun out of their holster, but twice a year, and they’re okay with it. You know who they are right away. Now, there are some people who are the exception to the rule, right? My buddy Mike is a police captain.
Rich: He shoots twice a year. When you watch him shoot, you would think he trains on a regular basis. He shoots very accurate and very fast. Surprisingly, for a guy that only shoots twice a year in qualifications. So, like, some people just have it. But when I know cops are coming to the range, I keep notes on all my students and my customers that do the one on ones. When I say, all right, I got Wade tomorrow. Last month we worked on this. Well, let’s see if if we did his homework. Because I give everybody ways to train yourself when you’re not with me. So if you’re not with me, do this, this, this and this. So when I see you 30 days from now, I’ll know you did your homework. And then Wade shows up and it’s like day one all over again. You didn’t do your dry fire, did you? No, I didn’t, I got busy. Okay, great. Now we’re back to the drawing board again. So cops show up. I don’t even have a curriculum like. Oh, you’re a cop. Okay, I’m going to fix your grip. The first thing that happens, and then this, this, this and this. And it’s 99% of the time I’m right. Well, and that’s business.
Wade: The things that aren’t sexy are almost always the right things to do. Dry firing, not sexy. Practicing your grip. Not sexy. Practicing drawing from concealment. Not sexy. Running around like a maniac with tactical gear and making noises and shooting things. Okay, yeah, that’s fun, but that’s not what’s gonna make you better.
Rich: Well, it’s fun for sure. And I don’t care. Have fun. It’s a free country, of course. Whatever you want for fun. But don’t think you’re prepared. Don’t think you’re the guy. I had somebody reach out to me recently and said, I saw a video you put up of. You were training a female cop and she was running, and she was doing all this, and I said, she’s been shooting with me once a week for a year. The first time she came with me. We stood at five yards and we never left five yards. Right. That probably happened for 3 or 4 weeks. If you can’t shoot, all the other stuff is fluff. It’s like the CQB conversation. Guys that want to take CQB classes. Great. It’s fun. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a blast going force on force. Most people treat it as like an expensive game of paintball or whatever you want to call it. But if you can’t shoot, there’s no sense in doing any of the other stuff, you know? Hey, I want to lay on my back and shoot. You can’t shoot standing on two feet accurately enough. Why are we going to do that? Yeah, well, what if it ever happens? Okay, learn to shoot first. Then the rest of that stuff becomes fluff. It’s easy. You can lay on your back or on your side and shoot. If you understand the principles of shooting grip sights and trigger. Right. Same thing.
Wade: Yeah, well, I agree with that. I mean, I didn’t even put an optic on my gun until I could shoot iron sights pretty decently. Right? So I was like, it’s not it’s not going to help me if I can’t shoot right. It doesn’t matter how fancy schmancy your optic is if you can’t shoot. So for sure.
Rich: If you can’t grip the gun properly, you’re presented to the target. Same conversation I’m having with a cop from an agency. They’re doing their red dot transitions, I think today, actually. And I already know. He already told me it’s going to be this, this, this and this. And I said if they don’t spend any time about presenting it properly, I do it in reverse. I start here, go to here to. If they don’t do any of that with you, well, I know they’re going to do they’re going to put the dots on the guns. They’re going to hand it to him and say, shoot a couple mags, and then they’re going to make them qualify and they’re going to the scores are going to go up because they’re going to see this nice red dot in the middle of the target. They’re going to shoot three rounds better than normal, whatever it is typically at distance. And then the the red shirt staff is going to go. All of our scores went up because of these dots, but they did nothing to help. Those same people are going to be slower now with that dot than they are with their ions, until they put the training time in from the holster, especially as a cop, because they’re going to take the gun out real fast and go like this and go, where is the dot? With ions, they don’t have to do it because they’ve had years of looking for that, all these things. But if the transition isn’t done properly or time isn’t put in, they should be dry firing for a month with the dot properly before they even go on the range, in my opinion. Of course.
Wade: When you do that, you discover things like I’m left eye dominant even though I’m right handed. So it took me a long time to to get that figured out. And the reason I figured it out was because my firearms instructor was, I think, your left eye dominant. So I had to retrain everything. But you don’t figure that out unless you’re doing all the basics that you talk about. Like those things have to be discovered, and the only way they’re discovered is by doing the stuff that’s not sexy.
Rich: What was the fix? What did you find that that made it easier for you with that?
Wade: Just the position of where I placed the gun when I presented, I just presented left. Instead of trying to shoot, instead of bringing it here, I would bring it just about to my left eye because I was tilting my head right. I would bring it up and then tilt my head. But you don’t even know you’re doing those things unless you have someone looking at you while you’re doing that. So now I just present to the same place every time my left eye picks it up right away. I still shoot right eye with rifle, but now I go left.
Rich: It’s amazing just how you have somebody pointed out incorrect. One little thing and it changed everything for you.
Wade: Well, I didn’t have to present that much more to the left. It just was like a tiny bit. Yeah. If I didn’t, then I was moving my head the whole time.
Rich: I, I tell people to videotape themselves.
Wade: Yeah. And that’s the key to training is no one size fits all. So I can’t fix the fact that I’m left eye dominant. That’s just what I am. So how do people find you? Are you on social? And then what are three things that people can do to make themselves a better shooter with a handgun? Just like three simple things to give them to try.
Rich: I highly recommend hiring a coach. The right coach. You’re not going to hire me as your jiu jitsu coach? I’m a one stripe white belt, but I do jiu jitsu. So hire the right coach. Hire somebody that does this on a regular basis for a living. There are plenty of people out there in the online world that you can find to coach. So for handgun shooting, grip to me is as equal as vision. But grip is the thing. If you had a really good grip on the gun and you were still front side focused on your irons, you’ll get away with a lot. Once you fix that part and actually start to truly, truly be target focused, you’ll see a world of difference in your shooting. So for me, it’s learn the fundamentals and the principles of grip, sight and trigger for me. And that could be something where, hey, there are so many people out there that you can message on Instagram or email That if somebody messaged me and asked me, hey, what should I do? Dry fire on grip. I would give you everything I have. It’s not like you have to pay me. You have to come to a class. I’ll give you whatever I have. So for somebody to want to shoot a handgun better first. If you already have a gun, make sure it’s a gun that fits your hand properly. If your hand is tiny, don’t have a hand cannon. Have something that fits your hand. People ask me, what gun should I carry? I don’t know. I don’t know your hand. I don’t know that. Go try out a bunch of guns.
Rich: Find the one that feels the best for you. Once you find that, let’s build a foundation of grip. Let’s build it. Here’s the principles of it. Here’s why I do this. Here’s what you’re looking for in the reactions of the sights while you’re shooting all these different things. Find a coach that does that. And I’m going to say this, and this is going to piss off a lot of people, but I really don’t care. Don’t hire a typical NRA instructor for a one on one pistol course. They’re still teaching the NRA A curriculum. People know what I mean by that. You know what I mean by that? I have plenty of friends that are NRA instructors and all these, and they all laugh about it and say they’re still teaching from the 50s. Find somebody that’s a practical shooter. Find somebody that shoots competitions. Find somebody that’s in that world who’s shooting at a different way. Not somebody that’s going to tell you to put the penny on top of the barrel and pull the trigger. And if it doesn’t fall, that’s good. That’s bullshit. So find somebody. Find a coach that can give you tips and tricks. Those tips and tricks took me years to find. Well, I just gave it to you in two minutes. Find somebody like that if you truly want to get better. Invest in yourself. If you want to become better at jiu jitsu, you don’t watch YouTube videos and go, I’m a jiu jitsu guy. You pay for a membership and you go and get your ass kicked. That’s the only way you get better at jiu jitsu.
Rich: If you want to be a bodybuilder, you can probably watch videos, I’m sure. However, you hire somebody like my buddy Rob, who’s a bodybuilder and a fitness coach who will give you the diet, the this, the that you got. That’s what you want to do. If you want to be really good or you want to be. I don’t want to say the best, but you want to be somebody who is respectable in this field. That being said, it’s also our right to carry, but we should be training if we are going to carry guns in public to protect our family. More importantly, what happens if we’re shooting at somebody and we miss and we hit a kid down the block? We’re accountable. Even civilians that are carrying guns, you are accountable for the rounds you fire. So we want to make sure we can put the rounds where we want. Yep. So you’re asking me that part? Anybody that wants to ask me any questions or pick my brain on these things. And hey, if you live in Virginia, I know people. Maybe not necessarily Virginia Beach area. There’s plenty of people in Virginia Beach, North Carolina, Florida, Arizona. We got people all over the country. So if I can’t help you, I’ll push you to the right person. Social media. I’m on Facebook. It’s RAB firearms training and consulting. Instagram is rab_firearms_SCT. I’m pretty shadowbanned there, so you have to search that completely. If you just Google RAB firearms training and consulting, I believe it comes up as well.
Wade: And the website is Rabfirearms.org. I really enjoyed talking to you. I’d love to touch base with you. And, you know, 3 to 6 months to see what’s going on in your life, because I think there’s going to be a lot of changes politically going forward. I think the firearms landscape is going to change in the next six months. So I’d love to have you on and get your thought about us, man. So I really loved having you on today. Thank you so much for coming on.
Rich: 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.