[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome to Life, Liberty and Equip Podcast. I'm Greg Davis, founder of NeoMag and a firm believer that life is worth living boldly. Liberty should be used for good and we all have a calling to be equipped to pursue it. Every week we explore what it means to live with intention and carry the tools and mindset that prepares for whatever comes. We'll dive into topics around the freedoms we cherish, the gear we trust, and the skills that equip us. This is more than a podcast. It's a mission. Life, Liberty and equipped to pursue it.
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[email protected] also hosting with me today is Tyburious Giblin.
[00:01:06] Speaker B: Howdy.
[00:01:07] Speaker A: Nate Hills.
[00:01:08] Speaker C: What's going on everybody?
[00:01:10] Speaker A: Michael Billings.
[00:01:11] Speaker D: What's up everybody?
[00:01:12] Speaker A: And we're gonna intro our guest here as soon as Nate hits the Life Sounder.
[00:01:19] Speaker B: Life isn't just the big moments. It's the everyday joys worth protecting family, friends and community. Let's talk about what makes life rich.
[00:01:30] Speaker D: All right guys, so today we're excited to welcome Rick Crowley. Rick, welcome. Awesome to have you here. So Rick is the founder of Achilles Heel Tactical and lead instructor for Ohio Range Day. Rick is a U.S. marine Corps veteran, former law enforcement officer, and highly respected firearms instructor. After three deployments in support of Operation Enduring Freedom and a career in law enforcement, including roles as a SWAT team member, an OPATA certified firearms instructor, Rick founded AHT in 2017 with the mission to build a better, faster and more accountable shooters. His curriculum is process focused, data driven and trusted by thousands across the country. We're honored to have him on the show today to talk training freedom and what's coming up with Ohio Range Day.
[00:02:16] Speaker C: Welcome bud.
[00:02:18] Speaker D: That was a tongue twister.
[00:02:19] Speaker B: That's a lot.
[00:02:20] Speaker D: Great bio.
[00:02:22] Speaker A: Finally get to use these sounds and.
[00:02:23] Speaker C: Now he's got applause.
[00:02:24] Speaker D: Oh yeah, look at this go.
[00:02:26] Speaker B: That's awesome.
[00:02:30] Speaker A: There you go.
[00:02:31] Speaker D: So welcome.
[00:02:31] Speaker A: Welcome, Rick.
[00:02:32] Speaker B: Thank you, guys.
[00:02:33] Speaker D: Always happy to have you.
[00:02:34] Speaker B: No, I'm happy to be here.
[00:02:35] Speaker C: Yeah, man.
[00:02:37] Speaker A: Yeah. So we go way back about when you started. I only started a couple years before that, and I remember how we, how he first crossed paths.
[00:02:46] Speaker B: But do you remember I, I, it must have been the connection with Andrew and Rittman range.
[00:02:52] Speaker A: Yeah, it could have been. Yeah.
[00:02:53] Speaker B: Something like that I could ever recall. Yeah.
[00:02:57] Speaker A: And just a little bit of background. So we're going to be talking a little bit, like, just, just kind of getting to know you a little bit here for in our life segment and in liberty segment, we're really going to kind of maybe start getting into Ohio range day as well as Achilles and that sort of thing. So we have a bunch of questions for you today. Just to just kind of get, get to know you a little bit more here. Nate, you want to kick us off?
[00:03:23] Speaker B: All right.
[00:03:24] Speaker C: So what first inspired you to pursue a career in the Marines and then later following that up with law enforcement?
[00:03:31] Speaker B: Yeah. So growing up, I was always that kid in the woods.
Even my wife and I were talking about, you know, traditional public school and how that was for me and, you know, more or less thinking when I was sitting in public school, I was just so bored. And I was that kid that would ask to go to the bathroom 15 times a day, and half the time didn't even have to go to the bathroom. I would just come up with creative ways to, like, wash my hands. I'd walk through the hallways, be whistling. I'd be doing, like, things that boys at that age should be doing but aren't. So because I'm confined within this public school and this teacher's curriculum is extremely boring to me, I'm just more or less just absolutely so bored out of my mind, I wanted to get out. So I was always that outdoor kid playing with my brother in the woods and always coming up with creative things. We were always playing war and making sticks, guns, and we were always doing those kinds of things growing up. And these are stories I've actually never even told. So it's one of those things that goes all the way back to when I can remember first time watching Save a Private Ryan and how that impacted me as a young boy.
And just the freedoms that our forefathers and the sacrifices that they made, and I always admired that. And sitting in elementary school when 9, 11 happened, that was kind of the real change in my heart to where it was like, all right, instead of this, looking at this as History or a game now or something to play in the woods to occupy my time and attention. Now it's more or less this is something that I want to afford a passion to. And I was always growing up telling my dad, I'm always going to be better than him. I'm always going to be a white collar. I'm going to do something to.
I'm going to be the first Crawley to ever graduate college. I'm going to do something amazing. And decided after high school to go to college. That did not last at all. It was like it was times 10. Everything that I hated about school and I, yeah, high school, graduated with honors. I was fairly smart, but I just wasn't being applying my attention, my skills to something that I was very interested in. I thought for sure that I could get behind maybe something in a major. So I went for engineering and architectural design and decided at that moment that there was one.
Unless I was going to be frankly, right wasn't ever going to make an impact that was going to be meaningful enough for again the length of my attention span. So I decided that I was going to leave. I saw the first recruiter that walked into that college and it was a Marine in his dress blues. I saw that and I was like, yep, I'm going to go do that. And.
[00:06:12] Speaker C: And the blues are pretty. So it's not hard.
[00:06:14] Speaker B: So he, yeah, he caught my attention. We went to the recruiter's office, try to get the army tried to poach me the Coast Guard at the time because they were still the DOD and air for and I was just like, now guys like the Marines, I'm pretty sold on this. So that's where that all started. Cool.
[00:06:31] Speaker C: Very good. So then how did. So you were in the Marines. You went through.
Well, you were on the sniper teams.
[00:06:38] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:39] Speaker C: You want to talk about that a little bit?
[00:06:40] Speaker B: Yeah. So when I joined the Marine Corps, I went to Parris island, was, you know, on the yellow footsteps there and my life was completely, you know, uprooted and changed. What I knew, what I knew as a comfortable, cozy, free life turned into. I'm now the property of Uncle Sam. I'm going to now be told when to eat, sleep, and if you, if I want you to do X, you're going to go do it and you're going to do it. Go do that right now. And as fast as you can at the best you can accomplish that task. So from Parris island went to school of infantry. After school of infantry, went into my first unit in security forces which was a fast team. So Fleet Anti Terrorism Task Force unit. So I was with them and that was cool because I got to go to a lot of different schools that I typically wouldn't go to. If I went through O3 11, which I was in O3 11, but also had a secondary MOS and then from that, you know, moving forward, I got kind of schooled up on crew served weapons. So the 50 modus and then the mark 19, 240 Bravo at the time and the saw. So a lot of different 249, the different weapons that most infantry units wouldn't be as a 0311 get a kind of shooting packages with. We got that plus we got advanced urban combat training, CQB training, DM training, like a lot of different trainings, non lethal trainings. A lot of stuff came about that, that route which then set me up for success when I went into the fleet and went to my first unit or my second unit which was in 13 over in Hawaii.
So after I got there, I went into Bravo unit and was in second platoon there with one three. I did another deployment there, a little udp and we did a lot of different, you know, joint trainings and stuff. In the Pacific we did stuff with Koreans, obviously the Japanese, all different units, Australians and whatnot. So this was the second deployment. But this is over in now the Pacific instead of the Middle East. So after doing that, it was kind of a realization that this was just kind of the bare minimum. So I wanted to do something bigger.
I was still on the path of making this a career.
And yeah, I jumped on the first sniper and doc that came in into down my path as soon as we got back from that deployment, went to the sniper and doc got put on the teams and then from the teams just moved on forward with. I was a scout sniper team leader.
I was in charge of a small group of guys. We would do train ups and get them ready for schools, we would get them ready for deployments. And then after my third deployment, I was realizing that at this moment I have to make a prioritized decision which was, hey, you're now it's no longer just you. And now it's you're married, you have a daughter and your son's on the way. So at that moment in time that my last deployment, my daughter laid on my deployment bag literally crying and begging me not to leave. And as I'm dragging it out of the apartment, I was just like I told, I looked at my wife, I said I'm done. So as soon as I was heading back from that third deployment, I called my monitor, I said, hey, this is, you're in charge of my career. This is what I want to do. I need non deployable for three years if you're looking to retain me. And I said, sniper schoolhouse or we'll do CQB or something in that, that realm. And he said, well, we don't need you in those two places. We can send you to be a drill instructor or you can be a recruiter. And I said, nope, no.
[00:10:19] Speaker A: Thanks.
[00:10:19] Speaker B: That was the end of my career in the military.
[00:10:22] Speaker C: Gotcha.
[00:10:23] Speaker D: We're over here chatting in the background. If you'll shift back just a little bit this way.
[00:10:27] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:10:28] Speaker D: That'll give you more room. So it doesn't have the mic.
[00:10:30] Speaker A: People can't see your face.
[00:10:31] Speaker D: Everybody wants to hear this story, so see your face.
[00:10:35] Speaker A: So very, very impressive resume, Rick. I didn't know all of that about you.
[00:10:41] Speaker B: If you had to share some of.
[00:10:42] Speaker A: The lessons that you learned, your time in, you know, Scout sniper team leader and squad leader and stuff, what are some of the lessons, life lessons that you've learned?
[00:10:53] Speaker B: That's a good one. I was actually just talking with my son about this and it's only been, I guess, reinforced as now an entrepreneur with two businesses running all over the world doing, you know, training for, from three letter agencies, military service units, as well as for civilians. It's just the fact that, you know, life is full of challenge and it's always going to be hard. And that's a gift. To have something challenging you every day and be hard staring at you in front of your face. It's kind of like that is the gift. Because if life was just easy, it's like, you know, playing any video game growing up and putting in a cheat code and going God mode. And at that moment in time, it's like, well, this was.
What else is there? There is nothing else. So I think that, you know, not the whole cliche saying of like, I just enjoy the process because the process is grueling and hard and there's a lot of suffering within that process, but the fact that I'm suffering, the fact that it's hard, fact that it's challenging every single day, that is the gift and that is the reason we're, you know, on this earth is to constantly put, be put through these challenges and overcome them and become stronger when we come out of those things. So, yeah, that was the biggest thing, is you're always going to be challenged. In the military. They always said you know, your, your mental will outlast your physical.
And when you're with the sniper teams, like the common saying with the snipers was suffer, patient, patiently suffer. And this was something that. It never clicked, honestly, if I'm being real with you guys, like stalking in the stalking grounds, you know, being out on the range and looking at the Carlos Hathcock dream of, you know, skull dragging in the jungle and taking out an enemy sniper in the jungle after you were just out there for 14 straight days all on your own, like those, even those stories, I understood it, but now I'm like living it like that's a real thing. And I'm now completely embodying that statement, which was cool because that was kind of the mantra there.
[00:12:59] Speaker A: Yeah, very cool.
So what was the turning point where you knew it was time to start your own company, start Achilles, and then maybe even kind of go full time with that or whatever. What was that?
[00:13:13] Speaker B: Yeah. So when I got out of the military, I didn't really know what I was going to do. I just knew that I needed to provide for this family of three.
And so I just looked up, I went back to where I'm from, Kent State University, let's go to the police academy. And that was kind of the only thing that I could relate to at the time that would kind of. I could use the GI Bill, we could stay with my wife's grandparents, and they lived right by campus, so I could literally just walk there if I needed to.
And that was kind of the, hey, you're no longer Uncle Sam's peon. You're not a cog in the wheel anymore. Now you got to go figure it out on your own. And now you're in a later part of your life where it's. You got a lot of people relying on you and depending on you.
So that was kind of the thing is like, I'm just going to go be a police officer. And man, I was sitting in that academy and I'm looking at this training and I'm looking at the PowerPoint and I'm like, why am I here?
I hate this. I already hate it. So I knew that this career in law enforcement was going to be very short.
So while I'm sitting there, get my laptop out, I Google how to start a business in the state of Ohio. And while I'm sitting there, I knew I wanted to train. I did a lot of foreign and domestic training with adjacent units in conus, but also overseas with Japanese Defense Force, but also the Aussies, and did some Stuff with guys in the Middle East. And then we did a lot with the South Korean Rock Marines. So when I was doing stuff with them, I really found a passion and I thought it was extremely challenging. And it kept my attention span for having to convert material to the education or understanding level of my audience. I was just infatuated with it. So whether it was my guys who could speak English or it was the Rock Marines, where the battalion commander from the Korean Rock Marines wanted me to go over there to train their special forces and their snipers. It was a two man element. They paid for private flights for myself and my buddy Zach to go over there. And we went and trained them and we told them everything they needed, what they needed to go buy, because we were just with them weeks prior, prior, and they had really subpar equipment. But they were also just without kind of any kind of SOP of how to train with a precision rifle. So we went back over there. We were pleasantly surprised that they went and invested into some really nice platforms and then we taught them how to do it. But while Zach and I are building a curriculum to go back over to South Korea with, we're thinking, okay, we're in the imperial system, they're in the metric system. How do we convert this math?
So luckily I had a great interpreter over there. He graduated from somewhere, University of Michigan or whatever, and aerospace engineering. So I was like. And he spoke better English than I. So I was like, this guy's gotta know. So I hurried up, hit him up on WhatsApp chat. I'm like, hey, man, how do we convert this? He's like, give me a. He's like, you. When are you coming back? I said, a week. He's like, give me a week and I'll have it all converted for you. So he's my interpreter when we go back over there. He had it all converted when we were teaching it. I just taught it. Zach just taught it exactly how we teach it. He converted literally everything because we were basically only teaching him. He then taught the, you know, through translation, teaching the other guys. So it was really cool. It was extremely rewarding, like seeing these guys and how they were training before to what they were. How they were training then, their, their level of expertise in the space of what they were trying to build a skill set in then versus, you know, when we were over there. It was just night and day. So it was a very rewarding thing. I really appreciate it. I really loved. So I knew that while I'm sitting in the academy, so this is Where I wanted to go, where I went from there was I didn't know exactly what ranges were around me. I didn't know exactly, you know, how to start this. I just said the level of service that I think I can provide and the range that just opened up in North Canton by the football hall of Fame, that's where I'll start. Like what we did was I went to them, I said, hey, this is my background, this is what I really want to do for a living. And I'm currently going to the police academy. I don't want to be a cop, but this is the avenue that's going to take care of me and my family for, for now. And so we started this path of entrepreneurship and I started my llc. How to Google or next thing on Google was how to start a website, how to build your own website. Found and started plugging away, built my own website, started doing everything literally from the ground up. And the range that I talked to was like, yeah, well you know, if you want to do it before, hours before we open, we'll allow you to do that. And this is the range fee. And then I was like, okay, sweet. So I just printed out flyers and it was, I hope someone's going to show up to this. We had 10 spots available and I remember the flyers. I still have the flyer.
It was four called, it's called Achilles Tactics Open range days. Like it was just a simple roster with 10 empty slots where you would just put your name and put your phone number and it was 40 bucks for four hours and whoever showed up shut up. And it was crazy because I didn't know what the traffic was. With this new range that just opened in North Canton, I didn't have really any kind of following. I just knew the only way that I can tell people that I exist is to exist on social media. So I started social media pages and started meeting people through that, networking through that, building a really, really small community. It started with 10 guys and then that 10 guy community turned into what it is today.
But it all started with somebody giving me a chance, me with that chance. And that afforded opportunity to stand in front of 10 people, just one even see if I like doing what I was planning to do for a living.
I loved it, but I really didn't know how to teach anything or what I was teaching. I was just, this is what I learned in the military. Now we're teaching rifle and pistol stuff here in a flat range. And we only had 25 yards to work with. With seven lanes that we put, you know, crammed 10 dudes in into and from there we, you know, we ran the first one. I had, I had a friend from church that was doing some video stuff for his church and I said, hey Justin, would you like to come out and shoot some content for me? And basically whatever content you shoot, I'll just be happy with. So he started shooting content. I started advertising on social media. The range we would start printing. Instead of 10 man rosters, we would put something actually on the website and then we would put a link that people could go and sign up. The range would tell people, we would tell people and somehow every month we would have a full roster. And so it was cool because then the word of mouth started spreading. So then people were asking me when I'm coming out to California. I'm like, dude, I just started this, like, I'm going to California. Now I'm in Canton. I don't know.
It's crazy how it just from a snowball rolling down from the peak turned into this avalanche of business that I couldn't even keep up with on my own.
[00:20:14] Speaker C: That's awesome.
[00:20:15] Speaker D: So those are some pretty awesome stories. I'm sitting here just baffled. But as we continue to go forward with this, you've trained all over the world, so what's one? And this is probably going to be a hard question for you, but what's one memorable memorial? Memorable, memorable, memorable, memorable moment. Tongue twisters are hard today. Words are hard. Or a student success story that still sticks with you.
[00:20:44] Speaker B: Man, there's so many.
I mean there's recent ones where like the Nile SWAT team that I've been training for the last three years, their guys got into an ois, multiple OIS around a vehicle. And they had just taken the vehicle class. And I remember reading the email and it was with the letterhead and their signature at the bottom. It was from the department email, just saying, hey Rick, I just wanted to let you know three of the guys that were in that last training in your vehicle class, they ended up getting into an OIS around a vehicle where a suspect was trying to flee and trying to run them over. They didn't shoot into the vehicle because there was, it was a highly populated area. They didn't shoot because you had told them what's the consequences of deflection? And. And I was like, wow, so that's an attaboy. And then they said they continued pursuit until they got into a rural area. And that's when the suspect, as soon as he crashed out, exited the vehicle, started Shooting at them. Two officers had to port the windshields and then the other officer ended up escaping and then ultimately flanking the suspect and neutralizing the situation, which I was like, attaboy, that's insane. And I was like, that's another attaboy. And I don't. You know, in those vehicle classes, we do a real quick refresher fundamentals set where we can get into this curriculum, start opening some minds up about the things that work and don't work around vehicles. And you guys have taken the vehicle class.
It's literally just me building an atmosphere in which you can learn in that it's going to be safe and conducive. Well, in order for it to be safe, you have to have some fundamental establishment already, already ready to go. And we'll do a quick brush up. Then we get right on the vehicles and we're doing fundamentals around vehicles. We're learning what rounds per second capability utilizing a piece of COVID And you learn based off of these data segments where we will put targets on the opposite side, give you a threat perspective of size of target. And this is what you're now offering to your suspect, or this is now what you're offering to your threat perspective. And what is required of you to hit that target is also required of them to hit you. And how much information or size of target do you want to be donating to that opposition?
[00:22:56] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:22:56] Speaker B: And all of these things we go into and it's like, that was a really cool one. And on the law enforcement side, so that was probably one of the most rewarding is the fact that the things we're teaching are making a difference. Where cops are being better representations. We're getting the job done with a lot less collateral damage to the community that they serve.
[00:23:16] Speaker C: I mean, that sounds awesome. They didn't just take simple things that you taught in the class, they took multiple things away from the class and applied it across the board. Right?
[00:23:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:26] Speaker C: That's awesome.
[00:23:27] Speaker D: Yeah, they saved lives, they protect themselves, protected others and took care of the violence.
[00:23:32] Speaker B: Right. And for those guys, you know, great, great on them because I know for a fact in the two day class you're not gonna come out and just crush it in a vehicle engagement.
You're gonna have a lot of learning and then it's going to have to. You should have a good framework to then go train around vehicles with and then you should be able to educate the others at your agency and departments. But ultimately that the homework is all on you. Like you just learned a ton and you you messed up a ton. Now take all that learning and all that failure and now go build a successful model of how to train with those things so that, you know, when it's juice or when it's for all the marvels, we're not just hoping and praying for an end result or an outcome. We can run it, run it, run it multiple different scenarios. With technology now, with simmunitions and all the different things that some agencies have the freedoms to use, you know, it's great to see them actually training and taking it very serious.
[00:24:30] Speaker C: That's awesome. That's super cool.
[00:24:32] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's a local story, you know. Yeah. Even better if we've been in that area. Right. Those guys, you know, serve in that area, and I've become very close with those guys and on that team and the leadership there.
[00:24:44] Speaker C: That's really cool.
Now we know that obviously training and teaching is not your life. You've got a family, you've got kids, you've got friends. So when you're not on the range, you're not teaching, you're not running your company. What do you do to recharge and spend your free time outside of all of this stuff that we're talking about?
[00:25:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
So I, I'm a avid hunter and I really like to fish. I, I, when I was in the military in Hawaii, I would, I lived spearfishing, like free diving. Spearfishing was my thing. I loved it so much. I did it all over the world, in Japan and Korea, everywhere I could. I was bringing my wetsuit and mailing my fins and my spear gun to that base.
[00:25:24] Speaker C: Awesome.
[00:25:25] Speaker B: So it was one of those things. It was like, that was my passion. I absolutely loved it. Felt like being in an aquarium and like going back to where we started with this. Me in school and not having the attention span and getting bored easily. That was one place I could never get bored. And it was so cool because even when there wasn't a ton of fish to shoot at or you were now head hunting for trophies, I just go to the bottom of the ocean and see how long I could hold my breath and just literally look up, blowing bubbles. And just like, that was just insane freedom. And it just always reminds me of that now that I have children, taking my son and my daughter and we'll go fishing at the pond right outside of our house. But we'll go hunting. I love taking them hunting. It's just a nice reset to get in the woods when nothing is awake. And then you're sitting there and nidus is there, but it won't be there long because as soon as the, you know, birds start chirping or if I go with my son or my daughter, they're just constantly whispering or hear the, you know, cracking, oh, snacks and stuff like that. Like, we just. We have so much fun. So that, that honestly is my reset. You know, my wife, I owe her so much. And going to do things and making things special for her is. Is definitely a very important part of my free time and what I like to, what I read, I. What I really enjoy doing for that reset. Cool. But it is so super important. I was talking with, you know, Paul Kassa, but also Nick from Belloc's training group about that.
That need for us to have kind of a rest period. Because when I was in Amsterdam this year, I was there for an entire week. As soon as I come off of that, I go for another week in Canada and then I come back and I had three weeks off. And I told my wife, I said, I am so burnt out. Like, I just. I don't want to look at a gun. I don't want to touch a gun. I got a competition next week. I don't even know if I want to go. Like, all these different things that I was, you know, considering in my mind when I get off of that plane.
And it only took probably five days of just not doing anything on the range in front of people, having to perform for others or provide a service to others. It was just, you know, wake up, send the emails that I need to do, do some admin stuff, logistic planning, but really just enjoy the time off. Yeah, that mental reset. The next class I taught after this three weeks off, it was like a totally different person. I was just locked into the way I was teaching. The passion was back. Everything was there, and I.
That is such a key thing. So, like, for any other trainers out there that are kind of burning the candle at both ends and they just, you know, I'm doing this law enforcement gig, I'm doing this, you know, fire instructor gig. It's like, I did that as well at the age of 28, had a heart attack. I don't suggest overdoing it. Yeah. But even now, when it's just all. That's all you do, just there is definitely time in the schedule, and there should be required time in the schedule for. For you to just have that reset or do things that are going to reset you.
Because mentally I am. Yeah, I'm not the best version of me for family, but also for Students if I don't have it.
[00:28:28] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that's good stuff.
[00:28:30] Speaker C: I mean, I think that's across the board for any job or any passion. Right. Like, a passion becomes work when that's all you do.
I mean, I know we all like guns. We all like all that stuff. Right. But there are times where it's like, I don't really want to touch this anymore. This is what I. We work with this stuff for a living.
[00:28:49] Speaker B: Right.
[00:28:50] Speaker C: And it's, you know, range days are fun. People like, oh, you get to go shoot flowing. Yeah, to a certain extent.
[00:28:55] Speaker B: Right.
[00:28:56] Speaker C: But there's also a point where it's like, yeah, I'm good. I don't really need to do that today. It's okay. Not a big deal. I did it last week or I did it, whatever. I can take a break from that today.
Just because you need a reset every once in a while, and then you can go back and find that passion again by taking a break from it and whatever that is, whether it's hunting, whether it's, you know, taking your kids and your wife, like you said, you just went to the outer banks, just taking a reset. Go do whatever and get fired back up for your passion. That way you can come back and do it better than you did before.
[00:29:25] Speaker A: Yeah, I think sometimes it's easy to. Well, how about easy? There are times where just I've been working so hard at something that I start to lose the passion for it, and then I start to second guess, should I be doing this?
You know?
[00:29:38] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:29:38] Speaker A: But usually all it takes is some time away, is just stepping back and getting away from it, getting some outside perspective.
And then that passion usually comes back of just, I need to. I'm ready to get back into it.
[00:29:52] Speaker B: Yeah, it's definitely there. You know, when guys ask me, how do you avoid burnout, you know, every chance I have to be at my son's ball game or in my daughter's horse lessons, like, that is how I avoid it. I have to make that time because. Yeah, I mean, I just saw you. You were taking your daughter to her horse lessons as soon as she was done. My daughter's there. I see you, and I'm just like, it's good to see that we are prioritizing that time off with the people who matter and not saying our customers don't matter or our audiences don't matter, because they do. This is why we're doing this. But with what we're going to leave this world with and who's going to be here remembering you know, the time that we spent with them probably isn't the students that I had in 2025. It's probably my son, my daughter, and my wife.
[00:30:39] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:30:40] Speaker B: And, yeah, there's always going to be those key moments and times where I made an effect in someone's life, and they'll thank me for it or remember me for it, but that's not why I do this.
[00:30:48] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:30:48] Speaker D: Yeah. It's like neomag and Achilles Heel. Both these companies have reached millions of people, but the reach that's most important is what's at home. And that is one thing I give credit to Greg and with Nate, with NeoMag is giving the time off. He's like, you need to take time off. You're going to burn yourself out. And that was the most refreshing reset for me, was just having that ability to take time off, go on vacation with my mom and enjoy our time and with my friend, with me, too. So having that ability was wonderful, to have a complete, utter reset, to come back and say, okay, I'm refueled, recharged, and I know the purpose and the reason why I'm doing something.
[00:31:24] Speaker A: Yeah, well, that's kind of what this whole life segment is about on this podcast is just obviously what we do is part of our life, but there's so much more that's even actually more important than the work we do. And so. So, yeah, it's cool to tell you. I've known you for a long time, and those are some new stories I got to hear, too.
[00:31:43] Speaker B: There's a lot of new stories on this one.
I'm pretty stoked that this is coming out because my wife and I were talking about making our personal lives a little bit more public so that people don't think things that maybe they've heard from others about myself and how much guys saying, man, you need to take some time off. It's like, well, I take.
I know how to balance this life. I think I've learned how to say no finally and more or less, like, prioritize the things that ultimately matter to me, but making things a bit more public, such as the amount of time that I do spend off a range and what I do when I'm off the range. You know, it's not sitting around drinking every night or having a scar every night or going out and partying and just going and living it up. It's like, yeah, we're. We go and we will absolutely live it up, but we're living it up, doing the things that matter. And that are priorities within our family's lives.
It's important for people to see that this isn't a brand that you can just throw stuff at and just not see the human beings behind it, the people that you are indirectly or directly trying to hurt.
There's a nine year old boy in that, in that mix behind that brand. There's a 11 year old on the 20th of this month, you know, little girl. And there's my wife and there is me, you know, and I do, I do hear all the things, whether I acknowledge those things or not. Like, there's a lot more pressing things to get to than trying to keep up with all the rumors and the drama that, you know, people want to start or, or try to, to get inflamed, which, whatever. It's just, it's words, it's people's opinions.
[00:33:37] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:33:38] Speaker C: Well, before we jump to the next segment, just so you know, there's a lot of people saying hi. Scott Whitner says hey. Dan Papadic from North Coast Tactical says hi. A lot of people saying hey to you. Just, you know, sick.
[00:33:49] Speaker A: Awesome.
[00:33:50] Speaker B: I appreciate them being on.
[00:33:51] Speaker A: I appreciate you live. Live guys being here.
Well, you guys ready to move into our Liberty segment?
[00:33:57] Speaker C: Let's go.
[00:34:00] Speaker B: Liberty isn't about what we can get away with. It's about how we use our freedom to serve.
[00:34:05] Speaker A: Let's explore what that looks like today.
Yeah, so I thought we could kind of take our Libya segment today and just maybe focus in a little bit more on Ohio Range Day and kind of how Ohio Range Day fits into, into this Liberty segment, which is how are we using opportunities like this, especially maybe us on the side of businesses that are being there, the business that's putting it on. We were one of the sponsors of how Ohio Range Day helps others.
And yeah, that's all the work it does. So Tibe, you want to kick it off? Yeah, sure. So I went to ORD two years ago for the first time and it was a fantastic event. It was well organized, it was unique, it was solid.
Rick, can you tell us when did it begin?
Who is for and what happens at ord? So when, who and what?
[00:35:02] Speaker B: Okay, so Ohio Range day started with 25 guys and a pizza back in 2019 with Greg from NeoMac.
[00:35:12] Speaker A: 19 or 17, it was 18. 18. 18.
[00:35:15] Speaker B: 2018.
[00:35:16] Speaker C: Yeah, it was a year at some point.
[00:35:18] Speaker A: It was a year. It was in the teens.
[00:35:19] Speaker B: All the years planned together now. All right, so 2018, it was just a mixture of students, but also guys that had met each other just via social media. And they kind of had this signal chat or whatever that's going on, or a DM group that they were working with. And they had collected the fact that they all wanted to meet up and they all wanted to do a range day. And so Jimmy Riddell reaches out to me, one of my students, but also became a really close friend and a good photographer. Now he's a law enforcement officer with his family.
Just hope for the best for that guy. He's.
He reaches out, he's like. He's like, hey, we kind of want to do this thing.
We don't have a range, and we don't really have any steel, and we don't really have any targets, and we don't really know what we would do if we get on a range together.
[00:36:10] Speaker C: I'm like, okay, so can you do this for me?
[00:36:13] Speaker B: Yeah. So I'm like, okay, well, let's. Let's do it at ribbon. I'll get. I'll book the range, and then, I don't know, tell everyone to bring 25 bucks and we'll order pizza.
And then I believe you reached out to me, or did I not know you were coming at all?
[00:36:26] Speaker A: And then I think you did, because me and Dusty, I think, got the invite somehow. Actually, I think I may have heard about it from Dusty, who maybe heard it from one of the guys that were coming.
[00:36:35] Speaker B: Right. So you end up being there, and.
[00:36:37] Speaker C: Dusty probably just slid into it, like Dusty did for everything.
[00:36:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:36:41] Speaker A: So very likely.
[00:36:43] Speaker B: So all these guys show up, and there's guys coming from Chicago, you know, two guys from Chicago, guys from Illinois, guys from Indiana, guys from Michigan. I was just all a collection of dudes.
It was really cool because there wasn't, like, just a bunch of crazy, awesome shooters there. It was just a bunch of good dudes. And something that my major peacock always said was, I, you know, every safety brief, just go and be good dudes. Like, and that was a big thing with him. He's just a surfer, bro. Mustang officer. So he was force recon this and then went the officer route. But he always said, just be good dudes. Like, that's the only thing that's important to me is just I have a bunch of good dudes underneath me.
So it was really cool to witness that. And from witnessing that, it reminded me of what I missed because I was now in law enforcement working for an agency. And then when I see these guys come together and they're just, like, exchanging stories, they're exchanging modalities or theories on shooting and all this Stuff, you know, Vinnie was there, Monsoon Tactical, and that was in his early ST stages of that company. It was so cool to get everyone together and then it was hard to get them to go home.
[00:37:58] Speaker C: All right, we're done now.
[00:38:00] Speaker B: It was like, guys, I booked this law enforcement range only from this time to this time, and now we kind of got to go home.
But it was just so fun because guys were just shooting, having a blast. And at the end of it, I remember the guys getting together and we did this celebratory mag dump and this celebratory Mag dump again, 25 dudes.
And we get online and it was just something that every military range I've ever been on, it was like, hey, none of this ammo can gotta. Can come home. And if it's loaded in a mag, it needs to go down range. Cool, done. And we just rip it. And so that was really fun for some of these guys, being civilians, to be alongside cops, alongside military members that we had there. Mike was there, so he's still in the military. And it was so cool for those guys to just experience that. But it didn't stop there. I remember going back on duty literally probably the next day and jumping on a phone call with Greg and he was like, dude, that was so much fun. We need to do this bigger. Like we need to do this every year, but bigger and bring more companies in. And I was like, you're right, we need to make this a big deal. And I already had a relationship over at Southington Hunt Club and was like, yeah, I think this is a perfect venue because we could expand, we can get big.
And I believe it started in. Next thing was in 2019.
We had so much interest and demand that I reached out to Donovan from Point One Tactics and said, hey Donovan, do you want to run the training? I'll run 30 dudes. You run 30 dudes. And we ran that in 2019, so 60 guys. And it was just one day. And it was a ton of fun. Like we had from machine gun companies showing up and neomag doing some insane competitions like they do every year, to just anyone that wanted to come out and support this community and grow it, they were coming out to do that. And then from two trainers turned into four, then four to six. Now we're at 12 different trainers. We're bringing trainers and people, attendees and sponsors and trainers from all over the world.
It's outgrown the 500 acre training facility at Southington to where now we've had to expand to a satellite location. 25 minutes from that location. Now we're looking at expanding even further into another range in Newberry.
And I've been talking to a few guys, we're looking next year to possibly go statewide with this so it can grow and be legitimately Ohio range day. So it started with 25 dudes in a pizza. It's absolutely wild to see its growth from one day to now a two day model to now a three day model. This three day model is now just probably the most solid model that it's ever been. Each and every year it gets bigger and bigger and I don't think it will ever see more than just three days. I think three days is great because there's a ton of training that goes into this.
[00:40:48] Speaker A: Yeah, it's.
And it's changed. It changed a little bit every year, I think. And to me that's one of the cool things about it is like you're willing to take input, take the bad, try to make it better, take the good and make it better.
I love that there's a sponsor day. How many sponsors are going to be this year?
[00:41:11] Speaker B: There's a ton.
[00:41:12] Speaker A: There's a ton of sponsors.
At least 20. Right.
[00:41:15] Speaker B: There's over 35.
[00:41:17] Speaker A: Over 35. Okay. And.
And most of those sponsors are doing live, you know, live fire competitions on the first day. And then a couple years ago you got a helicopter involved.
[00:41:28] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:41:29] Speaker A: So this is the only event that I know of where you can get on a helicopter and shoot from a helicopter.
[00:41:34] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. There's. The experiences are awesome. But I talk with my guys about it, my team, and I said I don't think people are signing up for the experiences. I don't even think they're signing up for the brands that are covering a ton of overhead and support of this community to get end user feedback. But I really think it's just the training and the trainers that we select to come out to this have from day one been top tier and then from that top tier. It's not that. It's not just everyone can go. So that's kind of in the root of it. And what I learned from the military, it's like if anyone can just go do it, then it's not really special, like Special Forces. There's always an indoc period or a selection period or something that you have to go through a grueling amount of work to then achieve an acceptance into a community. Right. So what is the acceptance for Ohio Range Day? You have to put in an application in a white and black English Words. Tell me. Because I don't speak anything or read anything other than English. Tell me. We get guys supplying from Italy and all over all different places and they're like, thank God everything goes into English. But yeah, some emails I get, I'm like, dude, English please something. Yeah. So yeah, it's really cool to see that these guys put in white and black application the references and who I can call to see if one, they're just a good dude, they can be safe, confident and competent with a firearm. But also tell me what you've been doing in putting in work to achieve this access. Because the access point to ord. We're not asking you to be grandmaster shooters, special forces, this or that. We're just making sure that we can have a safe event with a bunch of good dudes who are not gonna try and abuse the situation or ruin anything good we have going here. So, you know, from men, women, military, civilians, law enforcement, we get everyone together and then it's just kind of evolved on its own to just have a very high standard. Like I've been, I've been going through and selecting for 20, 26 already and just the standard of yeses versus the standard of nos has increased. But it's not just based off of or it's not, not an increase based off of like numbers that we can increase. It's based off of the applications I can't say no to. So it's really cool that I'm reading through these and each year they get better and better and better. And it's because, you know, if you say, oh, I was with SEAL team, blah blah blah, and I did all this back in the 90s, I won't select you if you haven't done anything relative to the last six months, a year, two years. You know, some guys put in a rap sheet of a huge resume and I'm like, you're not applying for a job here, buddy. Like, you are trying to show me that you are going to be safe, confident, competent. You're not going to hold my trainers back because they, as we already know, all of our open enrollment classes, we never know who's going to show up. So it'd be nice that once, one time a year, I go to one location that I really look forward to because the trainers there or the people that I'm going to be training there are going to be on par with the curriculum that I'm bringing and I don't have to put crutches on it and training wheels on it or I don't have to shift left or ask you to go over there while we with the class go this direction. It's just everyone's tuned up, everyone's ready to go. And the cool thing about, for the trainer thing, it's also a challenge for the trainers. They can't do a whole bunch of this and just a whole bunch of this. They have to do a lot of shooting and then prove their worth. So that within this, you know, eight hour period of exposure of your brand, your training and your curriculum that I get my agency involved with your training company then next or I reach out to you and I want to host you in some rural part of America or overseas. So that's the cool thing is this has made a lot of different trainers that have come apart really well known but also really heavily sought after within the communities because every attendee is going to go back to their own state, their own agencies, their own communities and tell everyone that they know, hey, this guy's worth, you know, he's worth it. He's super solid. And he was kind of forced to compress his curriculum and do more shooting because that's what we're here to do.
[00:45:43] Speaker A: Yeah, I think a lot of people come for the shooting and training, but everybody wants to come back because of the community. Yeah, that was the case for the first one. When we talked about all the conversation after the first one was the shooting was fun, but the people I got to meet and I got to shoot with and train with, I can't wait to see them again. And that's why I think that's a lot of the people who do want to come back.
Yeah, they want to shoot and train with all the top notch trainers that are there. But that community that's there is something that I look forward to most.
[00:46:19] Speaker B: Yeah. So it's awesome to see the same few faces every year. But you and I had talked, it was probably like 21 or 2 and you were like, you know, where, what are the numbers going to be at?
And then what's the ratio of returning? And there's so many guys that want to return. Right. We have, we have guys that have returned and been selected for six plus years with this, this event.
But there's also guys that don't return and it's not short of them not putting in an application. It's the fact that, hey, something wasn't right because, you know, I've, we've had different things play out in, in this space where guys will show up and then they'll leave early. It's like if you only came for Friday, but you're not going to hold out and train with the guy that you selected to train with and be there for that night vision class on Sunday that's going until 2 in the morning. Like if you dip out early, that instructor's telling me like, I don't know if you guys realize this, but these trainers are going to tell me and send me a roster of like who showed, who's. No showed. Yeah. And if you know, show. I don't typically select you back because you just took a slot. Somebody who could have come, wanted to be there and you were just there and then you got tired. Like this is an event that you are putting 16 hours plus days in or 16 hour days in and then the training side is just, it's going to ask a lot of you for sure.
[00:47:42] Speaker C: Well, that's one of those things where that comes back to just being a responsible adult. Like I can remember people coming in unfortunately haven't been able to come the last couple years and I won't be able to come this year. But guys come in like, oh yeah, we were up late last night drinking or doing whatever. It's like, now you're gonna train for 12 hours. Like that sucks.
Good luck with that one. Enjoy.
Probably should have avoided that. Just drink water and play the game, man.
This is, is, it's an awesome event. But it's. If you're there to train, be ready to train.
It's not just, it's a lot of work.
[00:48:21] Speaker A: Caffeine helps.
[00:48:23] Speaker C: First form.
[00:48:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:48:24] Speaker C: Black coffee.
[00:48:25] Speaker B: Let's go.
[00:48:26] Speaker A: No, those fresh form meat sticks.
Since 2018, there's been a lot of amazing things that have happened and a lot of growth. I also know there's been been, there's been losses too. Like there's been relationships that have been broken. There's also been at least one life I know of that that was lost in that, in that lifetime that we, you know, that we've, we've dedicated, that we dedicated a mag dump to and that sort of thing. So it, and, and anytime you do anything for a long period of time, you're going to have a lot of ups and downs.
[00:49:01] Speaker B: Right.
[00:49:02] Speaker A: But what's the thing that makes you want to keep doing this? Because it's a lot of work.
[00:49:06] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a ton of work. My wife and I put in a, A ton of work. And you know, the applications go, they start and they open up before a year out. And you know, guys are always like, well, I don't want to put my application in if I don't even know who's. Who the trainers are going to be or what the expansion is going to look like. And I'm like, well, then you're going to miss out. Yeah, just. Sorry, man. It just doesn't work like that. These trainers just to get 12 of the top trainers and got to get.
[00:49:32] Speaker C: Them on the schedule.
[00:49:34] Speaker B: I have to plan and work with their schedules. And then I have to also. So I have to build out a roster a year out.
And this.
We've already started planning for 26, and this was a couple months ago that we started this because it does take an entire year to try to get.
[00:49:52] Speaker A: Any one instructor booked.
[00:49:54] Speaker C: Yeah, Well, I mean that by itself.
Talking to instructors, I can remember we were down at Shooter Symposium last year. I think it was last year. You know, they had. It's not the same event, similar event from a perspective. A bunch of instructors all in one location. Right. And talking to these guys are like, yeah, the organizer of that event struggles to preemptively schedule things. And a lot of these guys are like, yeah, I come when they let me know that it's happening a year out, but they frequently don't. And if they've booked themselves, kind of tough cookies. Right. Like, so if you're trying to build out a roster and schedule instructors, you've got to do it a year out because these guys are dropping their schedules a year and a half before the classes are published.
[00:50:38] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:50:39] Speaker C: Or I mean, excuse me. Before they're actually happening. Right. Like, you've got to get it booked.
[00:50:45] Speaker B: Yeah. There's many challenges and from planning budgets and running this business model to figure out how much overhead is going to be there because it goes up every year. It's not just what we pay the range, it's also all the things we have. You know, even jet fuel, it's expensive. So trying to figure out how many.
[00:51:07] Speaker A: Range days need jet fuel.
[00:51:08] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, we've got a lot of. Lot of cool surprises for this year, this year's event. And you know, even we. This year we've got an integrated WI fi mesh system that's going up, which.
[00:51:18] Speaker A: Is like, thank God.
[00:51:19] Speaker B: Yeah, it's one of the attendees. One of the attendees I. I just met this year came to one of my classes. He's like. He's like, hey, Rick, do you think I'd be a good candidate? I shoot about 1500 rounds a week. I was like, are you asking if you'd be a good candidate for my class? A baseline Class, Yeah, sure, I would love to meet you. And then after I meet him, I was like, you need to put in an application already. And he owns Rock the House entertainment. They put on Lollapalooza. They put on. And he's now he's an ACTC member. So at my range, it's just, it's so cool. And Steve has been instrumental for figuring out. He's like, hey, you want a WI fi mesh grid? I was like, yes, yes, please. One of the biggest issues there is that guys are leaving because they want to go post something or they want to go and get service enough to. And it's like that they shouldn't have to leave to go and do any of that. We should just have that. I mean, outside of 911 services, it's really hard to get anything out social wise, including phone calls will drop sometimes. So it's good that we have that going in. But we also have like last year we expanded so big that Craig and me are up on the back of that cybertruck and we're just trying to get elevated. But then we gotta project our voices and as we're trying to project our voice, it's like, you seriously can't still hear me? Like, okay, I guess we gotta get to a speaker PA system. So we ended up getting, you know, he's hooked us up on that. He's like, what do you want your stage to look like? I'm like, stage. He sent me some AI generated like Ohio Range Day Rick Crawley stage. I was like, dude, we don't need any of that. Like, I need just a mobile position.
Got a microphone, it's got some speakers.
[00:52:51] Speaker C: Please tell me it was just like the Rick, like a full border whole.
[00:52:55] Speaker B: Like ord and photo. That'd be so cool, the whole thing. And yeah, well, you put on Lollapalooza, like think about what goes on massive event such as that. So I'm really excited that, you know, as a student turned into an ORD attendee, turned into an ACTC member. This relationship that I built with Steve, hopefully we just keep pushing this and I'm going to talk with him after he gets to experience it, bring him in and say, how can I make this bigger?
[00:53:20] Speaker A: I know about you, Steve, but thank you.
[00:53:21] Speaker B: Yeah, Steve Tarantha, you are, you are a saint. Because the man as like, well, what's this all going to cost? He's like, yeah, I'll call you for a favor. I'm like, oh boy, it's going to be a big favor because he's providing all the lights, all the generators, all the things. And I'm like geez man, like this is going to be huge. Huge. And so the future of Ord I could see getting insane and being something that's.
This year we even have a live stream that livestream is going to be dedicated to the Sentinel Foundation's mission because we partnered with the 501c 501c3 nonprofit Sentinel Foundations. Their primary mission is to combat and end child exploitation, human trafficking across the world. But they also do a ton of mission work here. Conus in the states. They were in North Carolina with the disasters that happened there with all the flooding and they were just in Texas for the same thing. And it's just like it's so good.
We have a stage, we have a platform, we have an opportunity to effect or raise money for a really good cause. And now we can finally go and do that.
None of this money is going to go in my pocket. Like this is all stuff that is going to help others. This is truly a benefit to them. He's like Andrew the CEO, he reached out, he's like what can I do for you? I said trust me, you're doing enough for me by just me doing this for you. Because this for me is saying that I'm making a difference with the audience and the attention that we have. We are doing something good with it instead of just self serving purpose to continue to grow an event.
[00:54:53] Speaker C: That's cool.
[00:54:54] Speaker B: So and why I do it, this is why I do it. Because every year is a new challenge, it's a new opportunity, it's a new experience and it's, it's new learning every year I'm trying to make this thing better and bigger every single year. And I think I've scaled it appropriately. We haven't gone way outside. Last year was a huge step going through three day model. But now we've got a rep in and no different than training. If we're getting reps at practical speeds that we've got to also learn at those practical speeds to be able to perform at them. So this is something that I've really enjoyed as an entrepreneur but also now trying to understand how events run massive scales. Like for me and my wife it's also a team like this is an extension that I rely and call on every attendee, every vendor to do their own part and to be safe because I can only look in one direction, speak in one direction at one time. These guys and everyone has to do their part for this to happen. I remember showing a media or a creative media guy the video. It was like last year's video or something. He's like, how does nobody die? I'm like, because we select safe, confident and competent people with firearms. I said, but there's, it's not short of things that could have went wrong. Like there's some serious issues. I remember in 2019, someone came up to me after the event and said, hey, Rick, I kind of wanted to wait until after everything, you know, all the dust settled. Did you know there was a fire on the rail range? I was like, what? He's like, yeah, the whole Rogers range. There was a fire over there. I was like, oh my gosh. Something that could tell me burn to the ground. Yeah. He's like, yeah. I saw an attendee flick a cigarette and then the whole thing just started catching on fire. I was like, oh my God.
[00:56:29] Speaker C: Like nobody said anything.
[00:56:31] Speaker B: Dude, honestly, every, every year, every Sunday night after the event, when Monday's the cleanup, you know, my wife and I look at each other and we're like, what? Well, nobody died. Yeah, like, honestly, like we can all laugh about it now, but at the same time, like this is a lot of moving parts. Everyone has to do their part. Just like every other event that it doesn't matter if it's a concert or if it's, it's an amusement park. It's no matter what kind of event there is, everyone has to do their part for people not to die. Like it is a real thing, very, very dangerous event that we run here and you know, trying to find, you know, insurance companies that would even support it. I've been dropped by 2 because of YouTube alone. The YouTube videos that we push out, they, they're like, hold up. Yeah, this is what you're doing? And I said, yeah, you're flying out of helicopters and shooting targets. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:57:25] Speaker A: Huh.
[00:57:26] Speaker B: Huh?
No, like, dude, are you kidding me? Like this event's like coming up. So it's been a real struggle.
Yeah, well, they make on event an event premium that it's ridiculous how I can only imagine we have to pay for this. So it's, those are types of things.
[00:57:44] Speaker A: That, that, that, that when you see the cost of what it, what it is to do this event and stuff, just those are things that people don't think about. They think about all this is, you know, all this is going in your pocket or all the instructors pockets or something like that. A lot of us are paying a lot of money to, to be there because it costs a lot to do.
[00:58:01] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. I remember talking with the sponsors the first year when I was dividing and we've never raised our prices for vendors.
[00:58:08] Speaker A: No, it's been the same.
[00:58:08] Speaker B: It's been the same the entire time. But when I was coming out with a model like, okay, what's this event charging? Or what's that event charging? What's this shot show charge? And I'm like, well, we're not shot show because we can't provide and we don't want to be shot show because we don't want people that just want all the stuff off your table and not actually learn about what NeoMag is, what service they provide and what products they design.
We want people that are end users in NeoMag or could be end users in NeoMag to give that great end user feedback to NeoMag to develop products better for a community that's actually vetted. So the carefully curated roster is key, like key to any event that would be successful. Like Ohio Range Day.
[00:58:50] Speaker A: Yeah, well, and I'll say we, we've. So how many, how many attendees like shooters are, are there?
[00:58:58] Speaker B: We're at 250. 250. Is that.
[00:59:00] Speaker A: What about what was last year?
[00:59:01] Speaker B: Last year was 220.
[00:59:02] Speaker A: 220. So I will say you, you have at least 220 to 250 ROS out there. Like the one thing I'll say is, is everybody out there wants a safe event.
The handful of times I could probably count since 2018 on one or two hands, how many people I've had to just maybe say, hey, that was close.
They were close to shooting somebody, but that was close to maybe being a mistake.
And every single time that person has thanked me and apologized. So I never really had to deal with any big egos or issues like that.
[00:59:36] Speaker C: Egos have never been an issue at Ohio Range Day. Everyone one, everyone's there to have a good, safe time. But like a good time. Everyone's there to enjoy it.
Everyone's there to be teachable.
Everyone's. It's all good. I've been to events. Tiberius and I have been to a couple events where sketchy things go on. I don't mean like illegal, just you.
[00:59:56] Speaker A: Know what you're talking about.
[00:59:57] Speaker C: Things happen and you're like, it's usually cops.
Well, or rednecks. Or rednecks.
[01:00:04] Speaker D: Oh gosh.
[01:00:05] Speaker C: The one I'm thinking about is just a bunch of rednecks.
[01:00:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:00:09] Speaker C: In Georgia. We don't need to specify the event further than that.
But genuinely, you see things happen on the Line, you're like, someone's gonna get killed.
[01:00:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:00:18] Speaker C: And it's scary.
[01:00:19] Speaker B: You're not wrong.
Ohio range day has started a ton of state range days like from east to west coast. California had one. Georgia, the south has them like Arizona range day. There's tons of range days out there. Texas had a range day. They started.
All these range days that started have fizzled out for one reason or another. One, it's just really hard to continue to do and do year after year and improve it.
But two, it's also really, really dangerous. Like it's really hard to make this event, especially if you're just throwing it out to the world wide web and saying, please pay me so that you can be at this event. That's really dangerous. You don't know who's gonna show up. So it's just like our open enrollment classes. We post these classes but through our marketing and our education styles, we do not get first time gun owners.
[01:01:06] Speaker A: Owners.
[01:01:06] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:01:07] Speaker B: Like ever.
[01:01:08] Speaker C: Because they're intimidating or they're intimidated if they.
[01:01:10] Speaker B: Yeah. If they can do a simple Google search or they look at all of our Google reviews or they look at whatever. It's not catering to that specifically. Like guys will ask me, what do you do? Like ccw? And I was like, no. And it's because of this reason and this is where we focus. We just want, you know, our law enforcement to be more accountable for the communities they serve. Civilians to be a well educated and good representation for the second amendment and responsible gun owners. Like it's. So that is a duty and a responsibility that takes a lot of work. Work.
[01:01:38] Speaker C: Right.
[01:01:39] Speaker D: So it sounds like the training aspect is top notch, which it is. I've been there, I've taken already courses. I've been with you for many years now, traveling and getting to hang out with you, take some classes, do some photos along the way. So the training is paramount. The community, I think we can all agree is absolutely phenomenal. From the experience and the smiles, the friendship, the camaraderie is just like a brotherhood.
I have built friendships from when I lived in Florida, traveling all the way to Ohio to now living in Ohio to having these guys that I, I saw once a year that it was like we never separated, we were never apart to now I get to see these guys, even you guys, you have.
[01:02:16] Speaker C: A job because of Ohio Range day.
[01:02:18] Speaker D: I have a job because of Ohio. To say fair point crazy to that, to the community, to the training and to the people that are coming into this firearm world, whether it be for civil Unrest, whether it be for just the safety aspect of it. What would you say to these people about responsibly exercising that right to own and carry?
[01:02:42] Speaker B: I mean it's a duty, it's a responsibility that you should take very serious. It's not just one of those things. It's not like driving. Like you drive a lot, right? And we use the analogies in classes. It's like, you know why you never look at the cursor or the mouse anymore? It's because you have 30 years experience of understanding what it does, right?
Firearms is the same if you touch a firearm every single day for the next 30 years or if you train with a firearm for the next 30 years. That way it's just swiping and clicking. But there's a lot that goes with the firearm that unlike driving, you don't just get a license and then go drive.
You shouldn't just look at your CCW as a license to be carrying and think that that's going to certify you to now be a good shooter or that everybody, every target is now just going to be a bullseye target. If you've never shot at practical speeds in which you, through fear and just self preservation instinct is going to force you to go, you should. Because if you're not, this is how it's going to play out. And if you can't manage recoil for two rounds fast, imagine the whole magazine or for some of these people, imagine the whole clip. Okay?
And we all know who I'm talking about. So when we're talking about like the American populace, we have a, we have a right in this country that no other country has. Like there's no other country that has a constitution in the United States where the second, second thing on the establishing forefathers agenda was to defend that right, you know the first one, right? So it was the second one for a reason. That is a responsibility and a duty as an armed professional, as a law enforcement officer. I was seeing things that I just, I couldn't unsee the level of mediocrity that exists in law enforcement currently. And that through culture is starting to develop a lot of good change and how young these guys are.
You know, we had a whole entire squad at ACTC last weekend at our competition.
It was all law enforcement all over Cincinnati, Columbus, Dayton, all law enforcement. It's like, that is so cool to see, like these guys are squatting up. You see it every time you go to a match and it's just such a cool thing we're seeing Law enforcement take training serious and doing it at a competitive level that's going to force them to.
The way they're performing at matches is to win. The way they're going to perform in an officer involved shooting is exactly with the same mentality it is to win. So the rounds per second are going to matter and the accuracy is going to matter whether they're on the range or now in the community that they're serving. So, yeah, that's my answer to that question. It's a responsibility, it's a duty. That is if you are going to be in the capacity of a law enforcement officer or a responsible armed citizen, you have to uphold that responsibility. It's not like getting your license and going and driving a car. It is something that you're going to have to do over and over and over again. To you, it's second nature. You're applying fundamentals behind guns. You're not having to think about them, then go and try to apply them. All that stuff should have been worked out on a range with a good framework to train from. And that's what we supply as a training company is that framework that is going to get you from, from one stage of your life with a gun to the next. But if you don't even know where to start, then you go to that indoor range, you, you book your 30 minutes, you shoot at a pipe plate, and you shoot mediocre and slow, looking for an outcome of a pretty target. That's not training, that's just shooting. It's just.
[01:06:10] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a perfect segue. I would actually love to get more into some of the specifics of training with you in our, in our next segment. Hey, Greg.
[01:06:20] Speaker C: Yep.
[01:06:20] Speaker A: Hold on.
[01:06:21] Speaker C: Go ahead, go ahead.
[01:06:22] Speaker A: Jump in real quick. I gotta step away. Okay. I have a plumber showing up, but I will see you gentlemen next week, including you, Rick. And thanks for being on.
[01:06:31] Speaker B: No, absolutely. We'll see you too.
[01:06:33] Speaker A: Later, guys.
[01:06:35] Speaker C: All right, next segment.
[01:06:36] Speaker A: Let's go.
[01:06:38] Speaker B: The right tools, the right skills at the right time. This is where we get equipped to live boldly and be ready for what comes next.
[01:06:48] Speaker C: It's our Home Depot segment.
[01:06:51] Speaker B: It makes sense for the equipped section.
[01:06:54] Speaker A: So we do have our discount code. For our insiders. That code is fast draw 20.
[01:07:00] Speaker C: Fast draw 20 for 20% off.
[01:07:02] Speaker A: F A S T D R A W20.
And that code is good for the next approximately 36 hours. It'll expire tomorrow at midnight. So if you guys got something you want to get off our website, add a discount. Discount Now's a great time to do that. Well, not right now. Finish watching or listening to this and.
[01:07:20] Speaker C: Then, then do it and then do that.
[01:07:22] Speaker A: Yeah, so, yeah, so our equipment, our equip segment is where we can kind of talk about more the, the practical side of all this. And, and we have.
Yeah, we have a few questions for you here since we got the professional in the room.
[01:07:36] Speaker C: All right, so in your opinion, what is one skill every shooter should master first before worrying about gear? So we thought, you know, we're talking about equipped. Typically we talk about gear, but we're talking about shooting Skills are more important than the gear.
What's the skill they should master before they start worrying about that gear?
[01:07:54] Speaker B: Yeah, it's just an understanding of how the fundamentals play out at speed behind a gun. Like the relationship that you should have with a gun before you worry about buying another gun.
It's like you should have one tool, tool that you know very, very well and how to apply the fundamentals of stance, grip, sight, picture, sight alignment, trigger control, breathing and follow through behind. And you should be able to apply them when asked like the performance on demand. To be able to do this, that needs to be established. And a lot of guys just look at that and they're like, that's hard. And this is like where I go back to telling like my son, life is going to throw challenges and the hard is the gift that you're given every single day. So go and attack that hard and look at it as a gift versus and just reframe it that way versus look at it and just get defeated by it. Right. I think a lot of people all over the United States, the gun collectors, space, gun enthusiast space, they just look at the training side as hard.
I don't think it's any more expensive. Like, if you want my honest opinion, let me think. One gun, go train with these trainers.
The expense right now is, is yes, you got travel logistics or you just stay with local trainers or there's tons of stuff online that you can go and work on a range. So you got a range fee, you've got ammo and the gun that you purchased. Right. Eyes, ears, obviously the PPE for that. But the return on your investment is way more than buying another gun. Yeah, right. As far as like you implementing the skill behind any one of your guns all over the world wall. Right. If you, if, if I'm looking at 30 guns on the wall and I say, what's my skill set with that one and that one and that one and that one it's like, well, if you don't have a skill set with one, you have a skill set with none of these. You just are hoping and praying that, you know, when doomsday happens magically will appear a fairy and you will now have a skill set with all of these guns or a guy with a skill set who now needs will come and take that from you. Yeah, right.
[01:09:56] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:09:56] Speaker B: Exp. Especially, you know, the evil that's out in the world.
[01:09:59] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I'm more afraid of the guy that's put the last five years in with his high point and putting range time in than the guy that has, you know, 30 handguns and all the best gear there is, but doesn't really shoot.
[01:10:16] Speaker C: I was gonna say, even you were talking about like taking. Instruct. Taking the time to take a class and do all the things.
I know people, people that are the kind of people that take a class every other weekend and do that kind of stuff. You don't even need to be that person. No, Take one or two classes, one class a year and take all the homework for the rest of the year and work on whatever that information is. Because there's no way even in a.
Greg and I took a Modern Samurai class, Modern Samurai project class in July last year, I think it was. I'm still working on stuff from his class from last year. It was a three day class, so it was a long class. We had plenty of time.
And I maybe retain 10% of that.
[01:10:59] Speaker A: Class and I've not mastered any one.
[01:11:01] Speaker C: Oh yeah, yeah. Not mastered any of it. But the point is, there is, I think, a point of diminishing returns on taking a class every other weekend for sure. So take one or two. Sorry, I'm not trying to diminish like a class schedule like yours or all the same thing. Yeah, take all of Rick's class. Every single one of Rick's classes. But no, take one or two classes and then work on it for the rest of the year. You don't have to take 15 classes throughout the year.
Do the homework then.
[01:11:29] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what Paul, Dave, myself, Shane, we're always telling the students.
It's the frequency and the microdose exposures that we can keep at a high frequency on the range because even after eight hours in one day, there's a point of diminished return. And then when you lay your head down that night and you wake up the next morning, about 30% is retained. And that's if you actually were paying attention, it really switched on and kind of tuned in for this education to impact you in the most efficient way. So when we're looking at training, you know when to take a training class. If you just bought a gun, now's the time, right? It's a fundamental establishment, you need it. Then you go and work on everything that you were given. This is why we have our in person classes and then we have a post production edit of that in person class in a virtual, you know, way. It's a video course of that same class that you just attended. It's like, okay, so now I've got Rick on the range with me. Every time I go or prior to going or while I'm doing my dry fire, I can do all these drills that he's referencing in these which I could not remember after I woke up the next morning. So like this it's, it's. If you don't know how to train, go take a class. Then you'll learn some kind of framework of how to train that is not getting tested as far as like it's not going to pressure test your training, your, your skill set behind a gun, yet shooting a match, Level one local matches, USPSA Steel Challenge, idpa, pcsl. Like all of these things exist and they're out there to make you better. And I, I was super like hesitant on this when I was in law enforcement to jump into this space. I was intimidated, like being just real and honest, it was really intimidating.
But then it wasn't. You just go. And then you realize all these guys are just there selfishly doing the same thing you're doing. They're just developing a skill behind a gun and nobody's looking at your pit piss poor performance and saying, well that's a 10 second stage. You ran it in 30 with no malfunctions. You just, that's your skill. And now it's out there in the public for everyone to see, scrutinize, et cetera. Some guys because of that won't do it. I don't care like the practice score, go look it up. It is what it is. Like there are things that happen in those matches and there's things that I'm working in those matches that will not reflect on what you see at practice score. If I am trying to, to literally just, I'm trying to see what happens when I try to keep up with that GM open gun and when I can't and when I am not able to keep the stage plan all exactly how I, you know, had it in order or the targets or shoot, I just went to slide Lock. That's not supposed to happen. But things will happen right at the rate of speed in which it's happening. You're problem solving, so you're learning at the same bit. So if you look at competition as, as your informal way to be training, I think it's the highest return on your investment of just time and money. Like think about the amount of money some of these guys have spent with my training company and the lifetime value of that customer. I'm like, dude, every time I see you, you are exactly the same.
It's because I told you this is not a once a day, once a month, once a year pill. That is, you're just going to take and now be accountable. With a gun, you have to put in a lot of work. Eight minutes of dry fire a day in the week. You have less than an hour. Okay.
[01:14:52] Speaker C: You don't have to spend hours.
[01:14:53] Speaker B: Everyone can find eight minutes of their day to do touch a gun. Like I said, the frequency. We have to have frequency of touching a gun. If you want to pick up your dot. As a law enforcement, I hate that dot because I can't ever find it. It's like, then you need to do it more.
[01:15:06] Speaker C: Should pick it up.
[01:15:07] Speaker B: How do you get good at anything else? You just do it more. So you have to fail and. But it's like the, the learning that can be.
I also see on the other side side of it a lot of guys shooting competition that are perpetual like C and D class shooters forever because they don't actually train, they just go and shoot matches. But. And they're trying to pick up here and there from the guys that are doing it at high levels or it's just a social community event.
Those guys I see and I'm like, you should really jump into a class because the way you're gripping that gun is not going to ever return the sights as fast as they left. Like, we need to work on some fundamental stuff here.
Um, one thing I do appreciate about competitions is at a like right now scale they are getting people to.
I thought it was going to be super Barney styled. I thought it was going to be really just not a good way to get. Because you see at Ord, like we don't run like USPSA rules where you unload show clear. Like Matt, you got to put a chamber flag. The whole nine dudes are walking around with loaded guns, life rifles, pistols. Everyone assumes you're hot because they are right. But there's also a berm. There's a, there's a range we don't have a safe bay. Like people go up to the Neomac booth, they check out your products, they want to shoot your competition, they go up, they're just patient. They wait in line and then when it's their turn, they look left, they look right, they see the downrange areas clear, they'll draw, they'll press check or load, make ready their gun. It's just. But that's a level that has been been sought after and carefully curated. But at USPSA Match, it's kind of like open enrollment classes. You never know who could attend. So because of that, I understand why they do it, but I thought it was going to make it real Barney style and not actually practical. I think it's great. It's teaching them how to load and make ready their gun and then how to properly clear their gun. Because as I've seen with a lot of law enforcement guys, they don't know how to clear their weapon or press check or properly load with a disciplined way of loading their weapon. And then they go out on duty without a mag in the gun and probably not nothing in the chamber or God forbid, just one in the chamber and no mag. So it's just like for them to get all those reps and it's every stage you're getting that rep, you're going to load, you're going to make ready and you're going to unload and you're going to show clear. Like every stage you're getting a rep in, I think it's. There's a training value to that.
[01:17:25] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:17:25] Speaker B: So it's good. That's awesome. But yeah, that's where I was going with that.
[01:17:29] Speaker A: So how do you explain the difference break the difference between process focused and outcome focused?
[01:17:36] Speaker B: This is a good one. So it was probably 2023 that I realized the majority of guys and I left law enforcement in 2021. But I realized that I was that guy up until I left law enforcement was. I was so obsessed with the outcome. Right.
I want this out of this drill. Right. Whether it's this cold start, it's that drill or this course of fire or this match, I want. This is my outcome. And it's really hard with the man card drill. It's per drill I came out with in 2019, where the man card, everyone wants the outcome, but you got to do a ton of work and focusing of the process to how to get that outcome so that you can almost guarantee it now. So outcome, focus, training. This is how I was trained in law enforcement. This is how I was trained in the military. Slow, aim, fire marksmanship. Look for invalidate the result. Well when you're looking and validating result while you're in the learning process, all you're doing is getting a false hope of what the outcome is going to play out. When you're now push come to shove, perform on demand with all the stress you've never experienced ex and exerting or been exposed to and it's just going to crash and burn. It's like driving the track 60 miles an hour in your Lambo and then you go to some racetrack and now everyone's doing 2:10. It's like, oh, how do I go 2:10, let's try it.
You don't know the behavior of the car. You don't know. You have no skill set. At that, at that speed, the processing speed you're going to have to have behind the car, the wheel, the gun is just going to overcome you. So instead of outcome based curriculum developed and how we're going to train, we focused on. All right, this is stance. What's going to define a good stance for you? Not me, not, not Weaver, whoever that is or isosceles, whatever that was we're looking at. All right, this is the way I was trained. This is why it doesn't work now. We need to go back to the drawing board because the way I was talk grip 6040 pressure dominant non dominant side hand to shoot of a piece pistol clearly did not work. And me not understanding the real reason or not even being able to apply those pressures and quantify the percentages that I'm putting into the guy.
I just subjectively gripped the out of it. Now I put all this irregular behavior into it. I need to understand why. Well then you got to absolve yourself within the process of understanding grip. So this is where we've developed a entire curriculum and not just me. It was Paul Costa been instrumental for helping me in my team develop a curriculum that we're all teaching. That is not, you know, if you go take a class with me and then the next day go take a class with Paul, they will be drastically different. Why? It's because of the things that are being done within the course of fire that you're going to do within that period of instructions the way and the teaching styles of the individual. But it's also, it's all rooted. All rooted. And the only thing that's about the same of it, it's all rooted around the fundamentals and the study of that process. So When I'm process focused, I am understanding. Okay, when I grip a pistol this way, it performs like this. Based off of the way I see it perform, I feel it perform in my hands.
What am I going to do about it? So we use a feel CDU framework and we look at. All right, based off the way this gun feels when I grip it like that. Dominant side hand tension. Let's see what it does. Bang. I don't like that. I didn't like the way it looked. I didn't like the way it felt on the recovery. Recovery. So once the recoil ensued, the sights lifted. They lifted way higher than the last time I gripped this pistol. So I clearly changed something about this gun. It gets people really aware of what they're doing on a gun, behind a gun. So this is why we're totally absolved in developing a curriculum that's process focused rather than outcome. Because if you can master your process. Every time I grip a gun now, I don't have to think about it. Every time I.
They need to return the sights as fast as they left. That's a good grip and that's something that's going to be a multi facet job. It's going to require my eyes to have an index and look small on a target in order to return somewhere on that target within a margin of error. Because every shot, every time I press the trigger, there's a margin of human error whether I get the desired outcome or I don't. Right.
So that's where that kind of separation came. And it was in 2023 that the curriculum really developed. And it was Paul, me putting our heads together and saying like, hey, this is, this has gotten us to this point. But if we're wanting to go even further, faster than anyone else, we have to do it as a team. We're going to do it as a team and we're going to build a curriculum that's always going to be focused on deep dives into the processes of shooting. And this is at basic levels in fundamental establishment and then higher levels where, you know, Paul's getting guys in his two day mastery class. Just, it's insane what he's able to turn those guys into within a very, very short amount of, you know, relative to life and how long these guys are training, how long they've been training versus just now after this huge disruption of the way I've trained. Now we get officers instead of shooting, looking over their sights to see the hole in paper, now they're shooting, shooting, shooting. And based off of what they see and can confirm in their sight in relation to the target and where they stare, where they want those rounds to be. They already know they're there because they're shot calling and they're able to process speeds and at micro levels, like tens of seconds versus full seconds. Right, sure. And those seconds matter, as you will see in matches or in an officer involved shooting. If a guy shoots, lowers his gun to look at and self validate. This was something that we really had kind of an awakening to when a Utah County SWAT operator told us when he got into his officer involved shooting, he shot at the guy, looked over his face and took five rounds to the chest to learn that that the way he's been training for the last 15 years has been messed up. It's not correct. And I said, yeah man, that's from the academy. You believe that to be correct. So for the next 15 years, you wasted training that way. So for the next, hopefully for the rest of my life, we get guys now changing. There's a ton of trainers out there that are phenomenal, teaching a process focused curriculum, telling the students, it's like, no, I don't care about that pretty target. I want to see you go faster. Because at faster speeds we'll explore new levels and, and new new potential. And then once you unlock that new potential, it's about being able to rein it in, harness it, and then get lot of micro doses of exposure to that, that speed. So then it doesn't look so fast anymore. And then you know, the accuracy. I, you can. Everyone's heard the phrase speed is fine, but accuracy is final. It's like, yeah, but if it takes you three seconds, if that target is seven yards and it takes me less than a second hit, it's like, that's why I love hit factor. Yeah, Hit factor has existed since 1970. Yet why am I hearing about it until after I get out of the military?
It's like, why is this a, why wasn't that a thing then? Because it's the unbiased measurement of a person's skill to put rounds per second accurately on a target or on another person. So it's like when rounds per second matter, they're coming at me, I'm putting them at them.
You should have already had all of this kind of for hopefully years or months, kind of established in at least hours, tens of thousands of hours of range time before hopefully, God forbid that day ever play out.
[01:24:47] Speaker C: I can remember, I think it was Teddy, Teddy said something years ago.
There's a video of him saying it somewhere. And it was something along the lines of, hey, once you've pressed that trigger, the bullet's already down range. Don't worry about it. Now press the trigger again and it goes back to that process. Focused. Right.
I'm not going to drop my gun and just make sure that there's still bullets going where they need to be going.
[01:25:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:25:13] Speaker C: Once it's left the barrel, it's left the barrel. If it hits you dead center or if you screwed up and it hit you down low, know where the bullet went. We're trying to call our shot. If you know that it didn't hit the right spot, send another one. Just keep going.
[01:25:25] Speaker B: And when you're outcome focused in like cqb, like close quarter engagements, you're just crippling your team.
[01:25:33] Speaker C: Sure.
[01:25:34] Speaker B: Being that slow, you know, long range, we can shoot based off the vapor trail, based off the spot, based off of whatever. Make an immediate correction, shoot again this. We're not at distance here. We're at very close proximity. So we can't look and wait for the outcome to make the adjustment. We have to know the adjustment as soon as we have now broken that sear, disengaged it, and now the round's cooking out of the muzzle. We know exactly, or we should know exactly what we did wrong to make the immediate correction. Then after.
[01:26:00] Speaker C: Yeah, here in Teddy's, that I was like, dang it, man.
[01:26:02] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks, Teddy. Teddy can. Teddy's a very wise man. He can comprise in very few words what I'm trying to say in a paragraph. So it's, it's. He's a pretty phenomenal human being.
[01:26:12] Speaker A: Yeah. I think, I think for those who, who have listened to this, this part here especially, I think if you've taken classes before with certain instructors or, or maybe you haven't taken class before. I think, um, this is the lens that I think you need to be thinking about who you take instruction with is, is your instructor giving you something to work to that you can take then to the range afterwards? Like, we're, like we're talking about take that one class a year and then go work on it. But if that class that you want to never really taught you how to work on the process, then you're really just going to keep going to the range trying to hit that bullseye, but not in the knowing how to hit the bullseye.
And that's just all the best instructors I've worked with have given me, have equipped me to be able to diagnose and work on What I'm doing and how I'm affecting the gun as it's going off.
Yeah.
So for somebody who has just 10 minutes today. So we talked about dry fire last week, actually on the podcast, we talked about dry fire.
And you mentioned a little bit here, like, what would you recommend somebody does in their dry fire time? Say like 10 minutes a day. Like, what would you recommend or instruct somebody to do in that time?
[01:27:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
So after you know what you're struggling with, that's where you need to be putting in the work and being associated with that gun. So there's a lot you can do in dry fire. Like, there was a guy, just a phenomenal shooter running AIWB limited optics, I think he was in, and I asked him, I was like, how much time are you getting to the range? He's like, well, with my current job, all I can do is dry fire. And then I shoot matches. And he shoots majors. He does. I'm like, that's phenomenal, dude. He's. It just goes to prove my point. You can do so much training in dry fire. The only thing that's absent is now recoil. So when force mass times acceleration is now introduced. Well, I've already built this information processing speed. My eyes can go and then I can index what's in my hands to everything my eyes are looking at. I can look small, pick small spots, land the dot there, and I can aggressively exit and enter targets. I can aggressively move. I can do this all in my garage or in my basement or in my house. Wherever you guys are conducting your dry fire in. The only thing that's absent is recoil. But if you went and worked that eight minutes a day, less than an hour a week in your dry fire with whatever you're struggling with, then now you get an opportunity to go put two hours in on the range. You got 200 rounds to use. You're not spending 50 to 100 of those rounds just trying to figure out how to pick up a dot. Again, it's like, no guys like this should. This should be a relationship with that object, that firearm, that is just secondary nature. I pick it up, I apply fundamentals behind it. And the only thing now on a live fire range that's introduced is recoil and gun behavior. And that's what we're now trying to tame and, and always have in a reliable way. You know, consistently every single time. Whether I break my hands off the gun, shooting one handed off handed, both handed, doesn't really matter what I'm doing. Like now is the time to really just associate all the skill that I built in my dry fire now on a live fire fire range with, with recoil.
[01:29:22] Speaker D: Yeah, I will say I have been, it's my basement, but I'm calling it my man cave. I've been down in my man cave working on the dry fire and it really does make a major impact when you go out on the range. Especially like you said, if money is one of those things that you're worried about the investment. Well, you buy a gun, you buy the PPE and then you have what you need to go out in the range and that's ammo. And now you're able to save money at home doing this at home. And then when you go to the range and say you're not spending a lot of money on ammo, 100 rounds, those hundred rounds count, every round counts then versus just one range day where you're mag dumping and blowing it out and then you're done, you're like, what did I take away from this? Did I actually take away anything from this range day? So leading into my next question for you is what common training mistake do you see that holds shooters back and how can they fix that?
[01:30:11] Speaker B: It's the whole reason we went to the drawing board again and said we have to focus in building a framework that is all process focused. Because the vast majority of students that are coming to every class that we're having is just old bad habits. From the way they've trained, which has been through the way the military trained, the way law enforcement taught them to train, the first impact that they had, military trainer or law enforcement trainer at the academy at, you know, from boot camp on in the military, they've affected you in some way which anything that left their mouth at a very adolescent level, it's no different than how kids learn. They don't know the words you're saying, they're just trying to mimic the sound you're trying you're making. And then all of a sudden it formulates a word and then you have to educate them on what those words mean. So defining terms is incredibly important. So because there's so many amorphous terms that have not been defined clearly, we get these guys going into thinking like slow is smooth, smooth is fast. We get these guys that are doing things and I'm like, dude, you do realize like I'm going to have a man to man conversation with you right now.
If a gun was drawn on you right now, how fast are you actually going to go for that gun?
[01:31:20] Speaker C: Sure.
[01:31:21] Speaker B: Have you ever Tried to go for the gun in your holster or from, you know, clearing your concealment garment and all that stuff at speed. Because if you haven't. Well, no, I just, you know, slow, methodical, and, you know, when I'm shooting, I like to make sure that my rounds are touching and it's like, cool, I will get them to touch, but in a fraction of the time that it's taking you to get them to touch. I will also get my gun useful in a fraction of the time that you're getting your gun from useless to useful. So it's like those are the real troublesome challenges that most trainers have. And I was talking with Hunter Freeland. We were in the Outer Banks just recently together, and we both said it. We have a very hard job as a trainer where doctors, they make you fill out forms, they make you fill out online doc, where they can get a loaded kind of assessment of what is wrong with you to where I don't know you from. Adam, outside the introduction, the safety brief and the cold start, which we use the dope drill as a good assessment of understanding what your capability of rounds per second ability is. At five different yard lines with five rounds like, then we look at it and we're like, cool. For teaching a pistol class, if we got all tens or eights and tens and sevens and up, bro, we are going to run with this curriculum. It's typically not what we're seeing. From law enforcement to special forces units, we are seeing seeing just five sixes and it's like. And then way below, even to the negatives, and it's like, oh, my God, these guys, the way they have trained, they think the response and the answer to their shitty hit factor is to slow down to get their hits. And slowing down to get your hits is a mediocre excuse for the lack of skill and understanding you have behind a gun. The only way I can build that and get you to be better behind the gun is to give you a session of very structured, process, focused curriculum that is now going to force you to apply these fundamentals at speeds. And you are going to be challenged. And through layering of complexity, you are going to be challenged to a point where you're going to break. You're going to break and you start missing the target. And then I'm going to tell you that is okay. Why is it okay? It's because there's nothing to lose here. But there's everything to lose out there. If we don't train this way and we don't start Getting associated with fast and those fundamentals playing out fast, those mechanics playing out fast, the gun's behavior playing out fast needs to happen.
[01:33:30] Speaker D: Yeah, I think that's a great thing with the dope drill. I've actually used it plenty of times in classes and had other instructors utilize that. And one of the things that I see and I've had with you from taking your classes in that point of failure, that's where we're always like, I don't want to miss a target, I want to get all out first. But absolutely having that point of failure, you come up and you say that's your new baseline.
[01:33:51] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:33:52] Speaker D: So instead of doing five yards a hundred times over, because I can tack five in the alpha, I was at 15 and failed. Right. So there's my baseline to now start. It's not saying that I can't go back and do five and 10, but it's saying where can I see and appreciate my fall off and understand me? So I think it's a great assessment for that. Absolutely.
[01:34:10] Speaker C: Well, and not to say that I'm a trainer, but there's a couple guys that I've spent some time just shooting with and it's amazing how much going back to the other kind of people that want to place rounds on top of each other where it's like, all right, we're just going to push speed. I'm not asking literally just say, I don't care where you hit on the target, we're just going to hit that shot timer and you're going to go as fast as you reasonably can. How quickly they realize, oh, I can go fast and they are not necessarily stacking rounds, but they're still well within a margin of error in an A zone. And you're like, yeah, dude, why haven't you been going this fast this whole time?
Like, yeah, they're not touching, but you're well within a A zone. Well within a man sized target.
You're fine. Go fast.
Like start speeding up, push yourself to a failure point. Once you start getting out of that A zone, now we know you've gone too fast. Like let's, let's push it. So you start opening that thing up, right?
[01:35:04] Speaker B: Yeah. And if I take two shooters on the range, one's been training for a year. Process focus, just studying of the fundamentals. Just deep dive into being self aware with a gun. And then I take an outcome focused shooter. One, the outcome focus shooter is going to always have an excuse. He's always going to have an excuse to where the process Focus guy is going to be like, I learned.
I learned, right? And it's like, sweet. So you failed, he failed. You gave an excuse. You say, I learned. So we just reframed the way we learn with guns, and we delete the ego that's behind it. Carrying a gun with an ego is dangerous. It's a pandemic in this country. Okay. It's unprecedented. I hate that word. But a real thing, for sure. Yeah.
[01:35:48] Speaker A: Well, that. That's great stuff.
Yeah, there's. There's a lot there to chew on. And for time's sake, I think we move on to our next. Next segment.
[01:35:58] Speaker B: Okay, ready?
Faith anchors us. Fuel drives us.
[01:36:03] Speaker A: Let's open God's word and find the.
[01:36:05] Speaker B: Wisdom we need to live it out every day.
[01:36:10] Speaker A: All right, so the scripture segment I picked out today is actually. I based one of my tattoos on this, on the story. I love the story of Nehemiah.
He was in the Old Testament. Nehemiah saw that the walls around his city, yeah, his city had been knocked down and were never rebuilt. And he got the calling from God to rebuild the walls. And. And part of that was to call his people back to the Word, back to God.
But his main thing first was to rebuild the wall. And so with that, there was a lot of opposition from their enemies. And so we're picking up in chapter four here where there is a lot of opposition, death threats.
People's saying that they're going to come and attack them and stop them from doing this. So I'm going to pick up chapter 4, verse 11.
This is. Nehemiah says, also our enemies said, before they know it or see us, we will be right there among them and we'll kill them and put an end to their word. Then the Jews who lived near them came and told us 10 times over, wherever you turn, they will attack us.
Therefore, I stationed some of the people behind the lowest points of the wall at the exposed places, posting them by families with their swords, spears, and bows.
After I looked things over, I stood up and said to the nobles, the officials, and the rest of the people, don't be afraid of them. Remember the Lord who is great and awesome and fight for your families, your sons and your daughters, your wives and your homes.
When our enemies heard that we were aware of their plot and that God had frustrated it, we all returned to the wall, each to our own work. From that day on, half of the men did the work, while the other half were equipped with spears, shields, bows.
The officers post themselves behind all the people of Judah who were building the wall. And those who carried materials did their work with one hand and held a weapon in the other. And each of the builders wore his sword at his side as he worked. But the man who sounded the trumpet stayed with me.
So we are getting this picture of that Nehemiah is leading his people.
He's calling them to the same calling that God has called him. So he's leading them in how to do this and to not be afraid of them. That's why I bolded in verse four that says don't be afraid of them. It says remember the Lord who is great and awesome.
It is God who has called them to this and not to be afraid because the path that they're on is doing what God called them to do. So we don't need to be afraid. God is going to.
He's going to help protect.
And then I love and there's a lot of things like sword and trowel is actually part of what's on my tattoo. Here's a sword and trowel.
There's a lot of things out there named after this Sword and trowel which comes out of this verse says those who carried materials did their work with one hand in one hand and held a weapon in the other. So it's just this picture of I'm going to keep doing what I need to do but I'm also going to be ready to defend what what I need to defend. So with that said, let's go open us up to you guys. What's your.
What comes to mind with this?
[01:39:42] Speaker B: For me it goes back to what my wife was telling me yesterday that God doesn't call on the equipped. He. He equips those who are called upon.
And I was like that hit me pretty hard. And now reading this I'm like it's very true, very true.
But anything you see in the word is that way. But it's really cool to see modern day versions or models of that and seeing people that have dedicated their entire lives to just bring people closer or just even make aware in this modern. Modern day society is wild like this scroll culture and trying to keep up with current events or politics or anything like with what just happened last week.
A man, Charlie Kirk, a father and father of two kids and a husband being assassinated.
There's not a single person on this earth that deserved in my opinion that to happen to just based off of what he believed in and him volunteering his time to make others aware of the truth that he believed and wanted to share with others. I do this all the time.
The curriculum that I have, I want to go and teach and share with others.
And it evolves over time. There may be time like three, four years ago where I don't teach it that way anymore. I don't believe in the way I was teaching it that way any longer because I learned something new.
And now I want to share that with you. And it's like 31 years he had on this earth. And it's definitely. It was a man that was called and definitely equipped because he made a massive, massive impact. And I'm not trying to bring Charlie Kirk up on this podcast just based off of this alone. It is a current event. It is something that has definitely brought a lot of people, people closer, but also has divided a lot of people as well, and just the way they feel about it. So I can't imagine my wife supporting me and knowing that those threats are imminent, in existent just because of what I believe and want to share with others and the way I make a living. And it's just.
That's the first thing that came to mind.
[01:42:15] Speaker C: One of the things you said, Rick, but I think this scripture 100% applies to. So there's an event I go to every fall called Man Camp. It's down in southern Ohio, put on by a church called Crossroads. It's a huge event.
2000 guys go and camp at a property that's owned by Crossroads. And weekend, you go out in the woods, leave your phone in the truck. You don't have your device. They worship under a big tent together. They do a couple sessions. It's a really neat event. But one of the things they've talked about the last couple years in particular goes back to what you said, which is God doesn't call you because you're equipped to something. He equips you for the calling he gives you. And they talk about it from a perspective of he's equipped you to take the hill, he's given you. From the perspective of everyone has a hill to take, everyone has a battle. They're fighting everyone. Everyone is moving forward in some kind of battle. We don't know what that is. Everyone's is different. It's spiritual battle moving forward. But God has equipped you in that calling he's given you, if you're moving forward in that calling, in that battle, he's equipping you in that if you're moving forward.
But you have to move forward.
You have to be moving forward in your faith. You have to be moving forward in his calling. You have to be in his word and making that effort. And this is no different than that. He called Nehemiah, said, you're going to rebuild my wall and there are obstacles in the way, but we're going to equip you in the process of doing that.
Figure it out. We're going to do it. We're going to do it together. And I'm calling you to do it.
And we're going to make this happen.
God will help.
But you gotta. You gotta make that step. You got to do it. Because if you just sit there, that's not doing anything. And I think that's the big part, is that listening for the call and chasing it and not being sitting there saying, well, I'm waiting for you to give me the tool.
I'm waiting for it. The tool's there. You just have to step forward and take it. It's there. But you sitting there, not stepping forward into the call, you're never going to take the tool because the tool is in front of you. You just have to actually make the first step.
[01:44:31] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:44:33] Speaker A: I think if we want to experience God, if we want to experience his blessings, we want to experience.
I think a lot of people like to say that they don't hear from God, that there's no proof there. Well, the proof comes from following and experiencing God through submitting to his plan is how we experience God. And that's how we hear from God. I think too often we try to just follow our own way.
And then we wonder why we can't hear God. Well, it's because we're not following his way and we're following our own.
And I think that's one of the biggest things I always take away from this and why it's important enough for me to tattoo it on my arm. To have that constant reminder of just being willing to go forward in what God's called me to do, but also be willing to lead others in that journey and be willing to protect.
Protect doesn't always mean picking up a gun or in this case, a sword, Right.
There are a lot of ways that we protect those that we love.
And being prepared to do that.
[01:45:52] Speaker B: Is.
[01:45:52] Speaker A: One part of this. And I think, you know, I think there's this.
Just as you're talking about Charlie and, like, let's talk about Jesus, right? He obviously was following God's plan for what he had for him on Earth, and it led to death.
There is also an end to what God calls us to do. And sometimes that's going to end differently than how we expect it to. It to end.
[01:46:19] Speaker B: Right.
[01:46:19] Speaker A: But I think being willing to follow God's calling and trust him that when this ends and however it ends is because that's how God wants it to end and how he's going to use it. And I think, you know, I'm actually planning on next week us getting a little bit more into what happened with Charlie, but also in the bus stabbings and school shootings. And just like I kind of want us to dig into these things since they're so hot right now. But I also wanted to give some time because I think it's foolish to jump too quickly into these. Absolutely into these things. So it will have been a couple weeks. So I'm looking forward to kind of digging into that a little more next week. But just one of the cool things I've seen just real quick out of the. Which I agree, I think when you guys said is like, we've seen what's happened actually unite of a lot, a lot of people as well.
God uses hard times to get to us because we're too dense to listen.
[01:47:22] Speaker C: To him two by four to the face.
[01:47:24] Speaker A: When times are good, we don't listen so well because we think that we have this all put together. It's when times are hard is when we lean on God more. And so, you know, it's hard in the moment to be thankful for those hard times, but it's necessary because that's how he's going to get to us.
[01:47:43] Speaker D: Yeah, I think hard times create strong men. And that's just an old saying, part of a quote, but I think that that's relevant in this case. And for me, you guys kind of hit the nail on the head. It's moving forward no matter what. No matter what trial, tribulation or hardship that you face, whatever burden that's in front of you or opposition that's standing against you, you. You have to take the step forward. And it doesn't mean, you know, the old saying again, goes as leap of faith. It doesn't have to be a leap. It just has to have faith and trusting that God's there. He's right there with you. And like he said, he doesn't pick the most perfect candidate. He picks probably the one that is chosen to be there for that calling. And having had personal experience of hardship and wanting, like Greg said, wanting to choose my own path, not necessarily what God had, I wanted to deviate and take my own following, to then turn and say, you know what, I'm going to turn my faith to You, I'm going to put it in your hands. You'll make me stronger from this because I asked for strength. I didn't ask to be weak. Right. And strength didn't mean that I wasn't going to be faced with adversity or evil in this world as we constantly face in this industry.
Nonetheless. So I think, I think it's that to sum it up, it's never quit, continue to move forward, carry the faith and carry the shield, whether it be the shield of faith or the shield of armor to carry that. And it doesn't always, like you said, Greg, it doesn't have to be a weapon that you have to pick up, but your weapon can be your words in the most respectful and proper way. As we saw, even with Charlie Kirk, in my opinion, to just believing that God's there for you, he's going to protect you and that you have a responsibility, ability to protect those around you because you may have been called or you may have that skill set and due diligence to do so.
[01:49:32] Speaker A: And if I can give everybody homework, it's to go read the Book of Nehemiah.
There is no more timely thing to read right now than the Book of Nehemiah. Just he worked politically to, to get approvals, to do what he wanted to do and to get backing behind his country and his people. And like, he didn't just go jump on the front lines and start swinging swords.
He didn't just go hop on the wall and start, start putting things together. He worked, he worked with a lot of people and most of all, he did it all prayerfully. So there's a whole lot that we can, we can learn from that. But this is just a little, little snippet of one of my favorite parts. But we're almost two hours here, so.
Which has been awesome. I do want to thank you, Rick, for being here today. Do you want to kind of give some shout outs of where people can find you, your classes or all, all the things you're doing, your range? Right. We didn't really get to talk about that.
[01:50:39] Speaker B: Sure. So you guys can find on all socials, Achilles heel tactical on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, literally LinkedIn, everything. You can find that as far as the range Arrow Concepts Training center as well on all socials, the website achilles heel tactical.com that's where you can find our training schedule that's starting to stack up. If you're looking to apply or just interested in supporting or being a vendor at Ord to 2026, that's going to be at a. You can go to a higher range state operation. You can search Ohio range day on Google or just go to achilles heeltactical.com and find all of that information.
[01:51:16] Speaker C: Awesome.
[01:51:17] Speaker B: And getting applying for that next year's event which we're already making selection for.
[01:51:21] Speaker C: Sweet.
[01:51:22] Speaker A: That's awesome.
[01:51:22] Speaker D: So go apply.
[01:51:23] Speaker A: Yeah, go do it. It's a great time.
Fingers crossed for good weather this year.
[01:51:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:51:29] Speaker A: Because we've had some very cold years, very high years.
Right now it's saying like 70s and a chance of rain, but that's like. But it's so far out that I don't.
[01:51:39] Speaker C: The rain is not necessarily a bad thing.
[01:51:41] Speaker D: Yeah.
[01:51:42] Speaker B: What's the old saying?
[01:51:42] Speaker A: Well, it depends on how what? Depends on what the temperature is and if we're going to camp because we're thinking about camping too.
[01:51:46] Speaker C: So the year that was October and rainy. That was, that was hard.
[01:51:50] Speaker A: That was.
[01:51:50] Speaker C: It was a good year. But it was tough.
[01:51:52] Speaker A: Yeah, it was rough.
Well, awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. Again, thank you, Rick. Thank you everybody who was here live with us. We appreciate you. And let's get the this wrapping up. Thanks for tuning in to life, Liberty and equipped. If today's conversation challenged you, encouraged you, or helped you get more equipped to pursue your mission, share with a friend, drop a comment and leave us a review.
[01:52:16] Speaker C: Don't forget, we go live on the NeoMag YouTube channel, so be sure to subscribe and turn on notifications so you can be part of the next live show.
[01:52:22] Speaker D: And if you're not already part of the NeoMag Insiders club, now's the time. Get early access to NeoMag gear, exclusive content and front row seats to everything we're building.
[01:52:31] Speaker C: Until next time, Live, boldly stand for liberty and stay equipped. We'll see you soon.
[01:52:37] Speaker B: Bye.
[01:52:38] Speaker D: See you later.
