The Company Next Door
In this show I have the opportunity to sit down with hundreds of small business owners and help tell their story. We spend less time talking about profits and revenue and more time about how the business came to be, what got them started, why do they do what they do, and what keeps them going. This show is focused on small businesses in Utah but I may one day branch out to other states.
The Company Next Door
Liz Robinson: Ted's Shooting Range (Queen Creek, AZ)
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Ete AhPing
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Season 3
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Episode 14
Meet Liz Robinson, co-owner of Ted’s Shooting Range, located in Queen Creek, AZ. Ted’s Shooting Range offers firearms educational classes, and includes a gun range, a retail firearms store, and a dive shop.
Some topics of discussion
- A multi-faceted business: classes, range, and retail (5:27)
- Shooting as a skill that offers a level playing field (8:19)
- A sales boom: “Liberal” first time gun buyers (12:17)
- A perspective on guns: “It's a tool of a sport that I love to use.” (13:44)
- For traumatized women, guns can help them “feel like they're getting control back of their life.” (15:36)
- 2020-2021: millions of new gun owners (17:24)
- A woman-owned company: earning a place in a predominantly male industry (36:18)
- Women gun owners: “we don't treat them like they're stupid” (37:40)
- Race and gender politics in business (throughout)
- Guns and the current political climate (throughout)
Business lessons and ideas
- A serious responsibility: when you have to say no to a customer (18:05)
- A partnership between two very different people is a good thing (20:12)
- “If you have an employee that just is not working out, don't don't hold on to them for too long.” (22:15)
- Personnel issues: “I listen to my employees a lot, not just the management, it’s the employees.” (22:13)
- “I won't tolerate racism.” “Won't tolerate it in my employees. I won't tolerate it in my customers.” (22:36)
- “Lead by example, how you treat them is hopefully how they're gonna treat the customer.” (28:37)
- Success is “how I feel inside.” (30:10)
- Franchising hesitancy (30:48)
- “Be flexible. Because you never know where a good thing is gonna come from.” (33:24)
- “If you're so rigid, it's going to just in some cases, I think it just destroys businesses” (34:15)
Miscellaneous interesting stuff
- Who the heck is Ted? (:34)
- “When I was eight, I was a janitor.” (2:48)
- A toy gun under her pillow (6:40)
- “My kids starting shooting at 3 and 4.” (7:06)