Adam Weatherby – Faith, Leadership, and the Responsibility of a Legacy Brand

Can you tell me a little bit about your personal rifle setup?

What is it and why did you make the selection you did?

Which one?

the biggest moments of growth or success came after a storm, came after the hardships.

And so just, guess the older I get, I realized don't run from the storm.

you realize that when you face the storm, on the backside of the storm is where the results come from.

I tend to usually pick the path uh of most resistance.

I pick the path of greatest challenges adventures that's why I love hunting in the outdoors in the backcountry I love that and I'm drawn to that and so I tend to be an

adventurer at heart

Hey there, and welcome to From the Ground Up Show, the show where we encourage and inspire the next generation of free-thinking leaders by telling the stories of those that have

been there, done that, and are still getting it done, building a life that they love with their hands, their heart, and their hustle.

I'm your host, Erick Loden.

If you guys are enjoying the show, please help us out.

Leave us a five-star review, like, share, follow, subscribe.

We're on all major podcast platforms and YouTube.

The

reviews and the comments really help move us up in the algorithm.

So if you guys can take the time to leave a review, that'd be a huge help.

Today, I am super, super excited.

I am joined in the studio by Adam Weatherby of Weatherby Firearms.

And wow, Adam.

We have a number of acquaintances in common.

uh I don't think we've formally met before today.

And I know you're a super humble guy, but I might be fangirling a little bit this morning.

I can't believe that I get to sit in a room and interview you and hear your story.

This is going to be really fun for me.

So Adam runs Weatherbee Firearms in Sheridan, Wyoming.

He is a former youth pastor, a husband, a father, and a follower of Jesus.

So Adam, thanks for joining me today.

Thanks Erick, I'm excited what you're doing with this podcast and I'm looking forward to our discussion today.

Not sure what's gonna go, but those are the best ones.

So yeah, love what you're doing, glad to be a part of it.

It'll be fun.

before we really dive in, I know everyone wants to know all the details.

Can you tell me a little bit about your personal rifle setup?

What is it and why did you make the selection you did?

Which one?

So here's, guess the answer to this is, I'm always testing new product.

This year, like for instance, this hunting season, I had seven.

So seven different rifles, scopes, packages, cartridges, et cetera.

That was actually between Brenda and I, my wife and I, that we used on our various hunts.

So for me, when I uh 90 something percent of the time, it is business related.

I know people will.

think this is a bad job, but my name's on the product and so therefore I'm an influencer for my own brand, right?

So I get out there, ah shoot stuff, do hunting films, YouTube stuff, uh website stuff, social media stuff, gathering content, usually with film and photo and stuff like that.

And so I'm usually using new product, product that uh we need content for, products that's not yet released.

So the answer is, ah yeah, it's kind of long, but I don't have one set up.

Okay.

It's a, it's kind of a lot and it always changes, which people are like, well, that'd be awesome.

But I never get like a lot of times I'm literally sighting in again the day before I go, I'm walking it out to, you know, distance and thousand yards and getting all dialed in.

And I may never hunt with that gun again.

Gotcha.

Yeah.

Well, are there any from this year that you were super excited about?

I'm sure if they're all new products and weather view doesn't break any junk.

80 % will come out in 26 probably.

Um,

Yeah, one's gonna come out, we're recording this in December, and one's gonna come out here in January uh in kind of the ultra lightweight scene, which we've kind of been a

leader at the last five years, and we're pushing the envelope yet again.

So there's a teaser.

Uh-huh.

Yes.

I will be looking forward to that.

I know, yeah, you guys have been really mixing it up in that space and have some stuff I'm really excited about.

Yeah.

my wallet starts to hurt every time I get on your website.

Yeah, so I didn't mean to avoid the questions.

It's just it's a hard one.

It's a hard one for me.

um I didn't use any classic or old stuff.

So yeah, yeah, more to come.

More to come on that, Erick.

We'll be looking forward to it.

So uh we actually postponed this recording.

We were supposed to record a couple of weeks ago, but you were out in the field helping one of your employees pack a bull out.

Can you?

Tell us a little bit about that story.

What did he get and what ended up happening?

Every year, Brendan and I always try to go, if there's a chance and we're in town and somebody shoots something up in the mountain, especially an elk and needs help packing out

that we'll get up there and put a quarter on our back and get it out.

so ah that morning I was actually doing kind of quiet time reading the Bible, having coffee.

It was barely daylight.

He had service where he's up.

He's in the Big Horn Mountains and he was up there and I texted him and, good luck this morning.

And five minutes later.

Got a picture of a sunrise shot he made on a bull and he's solo.

He went in, it was the last day of the rifle season up in that unit.

And he literally heard there was some bulls up in this area.

And so he like walked in that night at like 10, 11 PM with a little like spike camp on his back.

Cause he heard there were bulls up in there five miles in camp that night, got up in the morning, didn't hunt an hour and shot a bull.

So a lot of people that L couldn't know that's not always the way it goes.

so what it means is he didn't have a great plan for getting it out.

And so I knew that he didn't.

So a few of us, uh, said, Hey, let's, let's go up there and help them pack it out.

And, we ended up having so much help.

Uh, I must admit it was one of the lightest packouts I've done on an elk.

we dispersed it pretty good.

So I I might've just had a front quarter and I can't remember if I had anything else, but it wasn't much, but it's still five miles.

So went and did 10 miles in a, in a morning.

So it was good, but sorry about postponing.

that's fine.

That's a great story.

And I think that speaks a lot to, your leadership and your.

commitment to your employees.

It sounds like we were just talking about your Christmas party you had last night and you seem really involved in their lives and really seem to care about them.

Is that accurate?

Yeah, yeah.

mean, obviously, I mean, we're only as good as our team.

And that's what, you know, we're celebrating our 80th year in business.

And that's what we wouldn't be here today if it weren't for just God blessing us with an incredible team over the years.

And so whether it's the guy we helped pack out the elk or, yeah, the employees that were there last night and their kids.

I mean, that's what it's about.

being involved in their lives.

uh We did our purpose statement recently of like kind of the why we exist.

Sure we manufacture and sell and market firearms and ammo, but at the heart of it we exist to enrich people's lives as we glorify God, as we inspire the dreams of hunters and

shooters.

And so those are, it's kind of, it's about God, it's about people, and then ultimately that it's about something greater too, that we make these inspirational products that

people get to go use in the field, and so it's all of, all those kind of things.

That's awesome.

That's a great mission statement.

Yeah.

Or purpose statement.

Yeah.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, we'll, we'll dive into more the meat of the podcast where we always start.

we always start with your childhood.

Can you tell us a little bit about your childhood and what was it like growing up the grandson of Roy Weatherby?

Sure.

Yeah.

Um, yeah, you know, I grew up in California, you know, we moved out here to Wyoming seven years ago.

Um, you know, my grandpa moved the business to

well not moved, he started the business in Southern California in the 40s.

Obviously a different world than it is today, 80 years ago out there.

so, know, I grew up not in a huge hunting and outdoors area, but yet, uh like you said, know, um weather be just kind of always being in my blood and, you know, part of all those

kinds of things and shooting and hunting as a kid and whatnot.

But I don't know, kind of lived the normal, normal kid life if you would, uh you know, as a child and, uh you know, didn't ever know if I would.

going to the family business or not, or what direction God would take me.

You know, surrender my life to the Lord at a fairly young age and have always been involved in ministry and those sorts of things throughout it.

But yeah, so I grew up just kind of California kid.

In fact, I I love the outdoors and hunting and all those things, but also surfed and, you know, kayaked and fished in the ocean and did all those kinds of things too.

So kind of had this varied childhood growing up out there.

um Met my wife, we were in junior high.

were high school sweethearts, been together since we were 14.

So that's kind of a part of that past there too.

so we've been celebrating 30 years of marriage this next year.

Congratulations.

Yeah.

So yeah, so met her and went away to college for a few years, got married early, went into the family business for a handful of years, worked my way up in a bunch of different

departments.

and kind of left there to go into Christian full-time ministry, got a seminary degree and did all that.

And then God called me back to the family business.

So just kind of a weaving journey of trying to wake up every day and do what I'm passionate about and what God's called me to do.

Okay.

Yeah.

And so where you were at there in California, did you feel like you were growing up with a little bit of celebrity status, having the weather be name or was that not really?

I mean, it's always been in the, I mean, not as much as say if I'd have grown up in Buffalo, Wyoming, but it's always, yeah, you know, it's certainly, uh

You know, it's really in the first 15 to 20 years of the business, uh my grandpa, you know, helped develop the business where it was somewhat of a household name for anybody

that was outdoorsmen or shooters or hunters.

And so ah obviously, yeah, whatever, whatever you're doing, they hear your last name.

You mean like the gun, you know?

So yeah, definitely, you know, growing up as a kid, that was, yeah, always, yeah, always a part of who we were.

Absolutely.

Okay.

And you said you

started with the family business and then moved into full-time ministry and have come back.

Correct.

Can you tell us a little bit about the decision to leave, the decision to come back, and kind of what you did in between?

Yeah, that's long story.

I'll boil it down, but, um you know, essentially, before we had kids, I was working at the business and yet at the same time was doing just a whole lot of ministry on the side.

and you know a lot of youth ministry at the get-go and ah just really felt every minute that I wasn't at work I was just doing ministry and working with young people ah and just

felt that fulfillment and meaning and purpose and all those things that come with really doing what you know God's called you to do and so I'm the type of person I'm um driven by

what I feel by my calling, driven by purpose, driven by that fulfillment and those things that come.

More so than material things or all that other stuff.

Not that that, you know, sure certainly isn't a driver for everybody.

Um, so yeah, so I in my early 20s, even before I graduated college at the time left and went into into full-time ministry out there in California.

And so, and you know, when I did that, it wasn't, you know, people go, well, did you know you're going to come back or when that's not the way I work.

It's like, I got up every day and just went and did what I was supposed to do that day.

And that's just kind of the way.

that I've been wired, not that you don't forward think and do those things, uh but it ended up being 14 years ah of doing that.

And you know, maybe a dozen years in, know, 13 years in whatever, you my dad had come to me and, you know, so my dad ran it after my grandpa passed away in the eighties.

And so that second generation had been running it.

And it was one of those, uh you know, it was, it was just, I wasn't a professional.

in regards to manufacturing and all the things that would come with running a business.

I had some of the natural skill sets and giftings of leadership and communication, casting vision, forming teams, collaborating, things that really you do when you run a business.

And then hopefully you're just smart enough to hire for all your weaknesses and to hire professionals in manufacturing and accounting and marketing and engineering and all the

things that you have to have to run a business like ours.

so anyways.

uh

after that period of years doing ministry, just felt God's call back to the family business.

And there's a number of things that really went into that, but one of them was like, ah it's a unique, you you always have to look at like, what are the unique areas that God's

put me in?

uh The people that you know, for me, it was my last name, the family I was born into.

There was kind of one person that could have done this job, right?

And I'm like, look, somebody else can come in and be a pastor at this church or do this ministry is—

speak a message, do whatever.

And my real thing was, can I come back and really step back into Wetherby m and yet still be, quote, a minister of the gospel, right?

Still try to love people the way God wants me to love them, still use my gifts of speaking, still use my gifts of pastoring and do those things, but not have it be my place

of work.

And, uh you know, would I have enough bandwidth to be able to run a business?

and grow a business and put everything into it and yet also live out that passion on the side and like if you talk to Brenda my wife she'll always say you know

I tend to usually pick the path uh of most resistance.

I pick the path of greatest challenges adventures that's why I love hunting in the outdoors in the backcountry I love that and I'm drawn to that and so I tend to be an

adventurer at heart

and so when I started to see that I said man that sounds like a path

that's more unclear to me, and as a result, that's what I want to do.

Yeah.

Good for you.

I know it was a few years ago, there were some brothers that wrote a book called Do Hard Things.

And it was kind of the idea that when you're faced with a fork in the road, if you choose the harder path, usually turns out well.

And that's an opportunity to serve God through that, it sounds like.

That's kind of what you've done along the way.

Yeah.

So now, like, you know, I co-pastor church with a couple other guys, you know, in Sheridan.

I travel and speak and try to use opportunities like this to just do whatever I can to help other people as well.

So try to do that, but I might also be back this afternoon at the office in an in-depth meeting on manufacturing.

So I kind of wear all those hats.

Yeah.

So how did your parents feel about you moving away from the business and into ministry?

Were they supportive of that?

Very, very supportive.

My folks gave their life to the Lord in college and really kind of went on the path of serving him and everything.

so they were, yeah, some of my biggest fans.

It always have been along the way.

You know, my grandfather really who, you know, the onset of the company and kind of his entrepreneur story was really starting with nothing.

He was a poor farm kid in Kansas, born in 1910 and moved out to California.

And when he started this business in his garage, you know, he came from nothing.

And so...

So really for my dad, he grew up in the shadow of Roy Weatherby quite a bit and my dad knew what that was like.

And so, uh you know, that presents its own challenges when you have that real type A gen one entrepreneur.

And so my dad kind of just had maybe knowing what that was to like to grow up under that uh raised me in a different way.

And I'm not saying the way my grandpa is him was wrong is just different.

And so I my dad had seen that and given me more freedom and really celebrating the other differences that we might have.

Yeah, awesome.

Well, you articulate that well, but I'm sure those were hard decisions.

I For sure.

I faced a similar dilemma as I came out of school.

I had a family business.

It was an opportunity to take over and also felt kind of a calling to ministry and made a similar decision that you're...

your career, your occupation doesn't have to define your ministry.

There is a path where you can do both.

think so much of the time, like, where we drive our income from, you know, is like where we find our identity, and that just shouldn't be the case.

And so, it's like, I am who I am because of where I drive my income from, or am I I am because that's the way God made me and my unique differences and skill sets and calling,

right?

And so, I think to be able to do that, I think it's really important.

yeah, so it's good.

So, I mean, all we have a bunch of people from our business that...

go to our church.

And so this last Sunday I preached, and know, kind of on an Advent thing up till Christmas, and I see them Monday morning at work, and we talk about guns, and Sunday night

they're hearing about the light from John chapter 1, and it's like, you know, we should...

that's the way we should live, you know?

Yeah.

And I imagine both arenas uh provide opportunities to develop your skill set that are symbiotic.

You probably maximize your communication that you've learned in ministry, and your care for people that helps grow your business, and a little bit vice versa.

Is that true?

100%.

Yeah.

Yep.

That's great.

Yeah.

uh Well, you kind of touched on it a little bit, but yeah, being the grandson of Roy Weatherby, kind of a legend in the outdoor space, and then a son of Ed, who again, grew

the business and was kind of the face of the brand.

Those are some pretty big shoes to fill.

What was that transition like when you came back and started taking over?

Did you feel the pressure of their legacy?

I did, but it's just not how I work, I guess.

At the same time, I just kind of do...

I know.

I just kind of step in and do.

uh there was, there was certainly a, hey, here's a foundation, 70 years, uh don't go screw it up.

Typically, for a business to go three generations, now it's at 80 years, is very low single digit percentage odds.

uh so to be in there, it's like, that foundation's there.

ah But at the same time, I saw it as huge opportunities.

So that's more the way I see it.

rather than thinking of it as an intimidation part, it's more, it's more, what a foundation.

Like people wanna grow a brand and have people know about their brand and their industry.

I didn't have to do that.

The brand was well established um and everybody knew about it.

It's known as a prestigious premium brand and I had to do nothing in order to let people know about my brand.

Now, what I had to do was rebrand like you have to do in a...

uh

business that goes on for generations and decade after decade is you have to do that or else it's gonna die, right?

Kodak film or you you read those stories or automobile brands are trying to rebrand.

And so, you know, what I would often hear growing up is this from old timers or my dad or my grandpa had this gun.

And so then my dad had to come in and do the same thing.

In fact, he relocated the business in California about a four hour drive away up the coast and had to almost form a new team and rebrand and re identify weatherby that it's not.

necessarily your dad's or granddad's again anymore, but it's relevant for you.

And so the same was true really when I took over from my dad as well is like, you know, my dad was toward the end of his career.

He'd ran it for, you know, 30 some odd years and it was an opportunity to come in, take that foundation and build upon an incredible foundation.

So I didn't have to do that.

Um, and then I'm sure we'll get into it.

I think the move really played a part to that as well.

So, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

That's great.

Yeah.

Do you have any

advice that you would offer to a multi-generational business or somebody looking to make that generational handoff?

man, yeah, I mean there's a lot.

mean it's family business and multi-generational businesses can have a lot a lot of challenges.

Certainly I just did a podcast a couple weeks ago with a it's all about family business actually and kind of chatted about some of those things.

In fact Brenda was on there with me too, my wife who kind of helps me run the business as well and um

So yeah, there's a lot.

mean, it's so dependent upon, it's just about people and it's about relationships.

It's about communication.

It's about being intentional.

ah It's about at certain times, we always say knowing what hat you're wearing.

um Am I wearing a brother, son, father hat right now?

Am I wearing a boss hat, an employee hat, a shareholder hat, a board member hat?

What hat am I wearing as we're having this discussion?

and trying to separate that so it doesn't ruin Thanksgiving dinner.

So you know what I mean?

So there's those things because there's a time family members have to be bosses of other family members or you're handing down shares or you're doing things.

There's times where things get a little bit dicey.

And so it's understanding those different roles and trying to be able to separate and segregate those things.

Otherwise, think relationships can be destroyed in the process.

Yeah.

So is that something that came relatively naturally to you guys?

No.

is that something you have to be intentional down and okay today I'm wearing the boss hat and this is the conversation.

Yeah.

You know, I know you have to be very intentional.

Yeah.

You have to do that.

And over time you kind of learn and you go, Ooh, this is getting a little bit messy.

And that's why we have to kind of, think, draw those delineating lines and separate it a little bit.

So there's definitely some intentionality.

And so I'd say even there's some, uh, you know, some good books out there, some podcasts.

Um, it's the, it was still like,

family podcast, they're out of South Dakota.

I did a podcast on there recently.

Anyways, there's different organizations, different books we read that really helped us because it just doesn't come naturally.

And so then you get a lot of dysfunction in a lot of family businesses because it's not that way.

There's preferential treatment, there's just all sorts of things that happen and you have to be, I think, very intentional about that.

ah For my dad and I, have and still have to this day a very good relationship.

And um we have a mutual respect and trust for each other.

We're different type of leaders, but we understand what that looks like.

I always say as I look back, like my grandfather was that type A driven entrepreneur ah and just an innovator at the same time.

My dad is very faithful, very loyal, values people, did so much for employees and took all that.

And so they're different.

I always say like, I want to blend the two of them, right?

I want to have that innovation and drive with that care and love for people and God and that my father has.

so to really kind of blend those.

it's kind of, yeah, I think it's, it's important to, I don't know.

Yeah.

You got to be intentional about the type of leader you are for sure.

Yeah.

You just hit the two things on a much smaller scale, but we handed off our family business generationally and it went very smoothly for us.

My dad and I have a great relationship and I always credit that to.

Mutual respect.

think the horror story you always hear is Dad knew how to do it.

He built the business.

Everything right was his way and Junior thinks dad's an idiot and has his own way to come in and be butt heads.

Absolutely.

You can come in with the mutual respect of respect for the the leader that has been in place and got it to where it was and also if that father that uh I guess parent, it

doesn't have to be father-son

has a respect for the child that they raised and the education they got, the experience they got, it goes a lot smoother.

How big of a role do you think that plays in the transition?

it's huge.

Yeah, it's huge.

And sometimes, yeah, you definitely have to.

it's hard when you've had something and it's your baby and somebody comes in and does it different.

That mutual respect is huge.

Absolutely.

I think there's always a drive, too, to...

if you're taking over, feel like you have to make a splash and make it your own and do your own thing and some restraint on the side of the younger generation to recognize that

there was some wisdom behind the ways that we did things.

so you don't want to just jump in and change everything all at once.

You're likely to screw it up.

Yes.

Yeah.

And that's where the respect for the past comes from.

You can definitely make too much change too quickly.

And I'm sure I'm guilty of that.

Well, that's great.

It sounds like, like you said, the percentage of businesses that make even one generation is slim.

And those that can do it, a third generation is incredibly slim.

And it looks like you guys have done nothing but grow through that.

So, congratulations.

and I think, thanks.

I think, you know,

like I said, it's interesting that my dad moved the facility about a year after my grandfather passed away.

And then, then, and then Brenda and I moved the facility out here to Wyoming, which...

I think that it is important and that's one of the things when you talk about multi-generational and then even my dad, he retired and moved out of state for a while

with my mom and they just kind of, there's that healthy kind of separation and allowing that next generation to really lead it and run it.

By coming out into Wyoming, we were able to breathe that new life and that next step and thing into it.

And so I think that's really important at the same time.

So for us, it just naturally happened to each kind of passing of the baton through the generations that.

there's also been just a relocation, think that's played part of it too, and able to kind of form your new identity as a leader.

that's interesting.

Instead of just going to dad's office and dad's business, with dad's employees, you guys get a chance to kind of make it your own and make it new.

Right, we felt like third generation entrepreneurs in a way.

I mean, we have about 140 employees, um moved probably to 18, and that's it.

um And so obviously we had a huge...

huge kind of hiring thing that had to happen.

We built a new facility, so we were able to design that facility.

So there was a whole lot of things that had to happen, but there was a point where Brendan and I were looking at each other and we don't know exactly who's all gonna come because at

the beginning there were probably 50 that were gonna move, but then when reality hits and family and property and kids and things, it's just a lot of people started dropping off

and not being able to move with us.

We just realized, so we felt like we had to take this well-established brand, but really.

restart it, you know, by doing that, which was scary, we actually, it's just awesome the way it worked and God's kind of providential timing and all the things that happened in

rebranding, but we were able to double the size of our business in three years after moving to the state of Wyoming.

And that's a 70 something year old, 75 year old business at the time.

Wow.

That's incredible.

So, you know, so it just shows you like, you gotta be able to, again, that hard thing, right?

That risk and to do that.

So, yeah.

And I would imagine, I mean, just the process of moving,

shutting down a facility, opening a new one, hiring all those people, retraining.

I imagine there is a pretty significant dip in production and probably in a lot of fronts because your attention gets split so many different directions.

How do you prepare for that and how did you manage through that?

Yeah, we figured it out the hard way, but I mean, it was just, I mean, it was a grueling couple of years really is what it was.

A lot of long days over a couple of years.

ah

ah You know, one of the things having Brenda be a partner with me in the business is she ah took on a lot of the, all the people and recruitment of people.

She's still to this day oversees people and culture.

ah So the people part was huge and then the facility part, right?

And so she actually oversaw ah internally the ah whole design and construction of the new facility because for me, we still needed the design guns, sell guns, market guns.

Like we had to be out there in the industry and the business and.

meeting with accounts and suppliers, like I had to keep all that going.

And so for me to talk about, you know, how to build an underground range underneath our thing and all the logistics of the airflow and a 300 yard tunnel and everything is like, I

didn't have the time to do that.

And so, you know, we had to do that.

then with key people that were moving, they were a big part of it too.

So we had to really kind of hand that off and really kind of divide up the responsibilities to keep things moving at the same time.

So.

Yeah.

Sounds like.

uh

Brenda plays a pretty significant role.

does.

When does she come on in the business?

a few years after I came back, then she ended up coming on.

She got her master's in organizational leadership and is real passionate about the leadership part and about the human part and all that kind of stuff.

She's already, she's also, have like many husbands and wives do complimentary gifts where I'm that visionary and that leader and that storyteller.

She's, mean, there's not a T that doesn't get crossed.

She's very, you know,

both rules and administration and things and just making sure details are buttoned up.

mean, she's a hard, hard working person and really is able to kind of do those things.

then, you know, oversees our human resource department and just the care and recruitment and retainment of our people and stuff.

So she came in really with some professional and educational outside experience and then was able to bring that in, which is cool.

A whole lot more than I do.

mean, I got to.

masters in theology, so I came in knowing the Bible pretty well.

She actually came in knowing business and leadership better than me.

That's great.

Yeah, I recently got to hear her speak at an event we were both at.

okay.

Oh, Talking about recruiting people into the trades and manufacturing.

Okay.

I was very impressed with the enthusiasm and just energy, passion that she brought to that.

I had not realized how involved she was in the business.

Yeah, yeah, Yep, yep.

Yep.

Yeah.

She was up at the same time, like for people yesterday at this Christmas party.

She personally bought the, you know, 45 gifts for the kids who are coming.

She was up yesterday morning at 4 a.m., made 15 homemade loaves of sourdough for last night's Christmas party.

So she puts her all into everything, you know, so it's cool.

Yeah.

Still a small family business.

I guess it's a bigger family business, but, you know, yeah.

And so how does that dynamic work uh between the office and the business and coming home?

sure you guys serve different leadership roles, take on different areas of responsibility both at work and at home.

uh Has the dynamic of working together in the business affected your marriage and your home life at all?

I'm sure it has.

I we've really figured it out though and kind of drawn those lines.

I this morning at home first thing when the Sun was coming up we we're talking about some business things and stuff that has to happen over the next couple days and

So, you know, probably the hardest part is more, we lead well together and we understand each other's lines and where we lead and we don't step on each other's toes.

We figured that out over the years.

It's the, the hardest challenge for us is when to turn it off and making sure we do.

That's the hardest part.

The biggest challenge still for us because we're both kind of so driven, uh you know, together that it's, you know, we need to find more times to turn work off and that becomes

hard.

So that's probably the biggest challenge.

Actually leading the business together, um not that we have it all figured out, but that's the less challenging part.

It's how to not lead the business together is the challenging part.

Gotcha.

Yeah.

Kind of like the parents that when the kids leave, don't have anything left to talk about.

Correct.

Yes.

We plenty to talk about.

We 140 kids to talk Plenty to talk about.

So what has been your most difficult step since you returned and have kind of started taking over?

Probably that move.

Yeah, I mean, just, you know, difficult.

mean, it was uh at a time where we were getting heavily constricted in California with all sorts of regulations and different things.

Cost of business was high, regulations were high.

ah So was, business was very poor.

Then having to financially get up and move, lose most your people, uh rehire people, double hire for a long time so you have the gap, have a downtime in production, ship

things over here.

all the costs associated with it.

We moved two teenagers that were in high school.

It's a very difficult time to move, so that was very challenging.

And we left our church body, you know, 25 plus years in California and left all of our family.

So that by far was the hardest.

Yeah.

Any one of those things you've just rattled off.

Right.

People are like, moving's hard.

I'm like, yeah, try moving a factory.

People and semi is full of equipment.

So it was, that was definitely by far the most challenging.

Yeah, it's something I never want to do again, but it was one is the may end up being the best choice of my third chapter of running this, you know, the third chapter of whether me

here running the business definitely was amazing for the business in so many ways.

But but it was a very challenging, you know, very challenging time to do it.

So for for that old of a business in its manufacturing, you just move in offices and computers, know, you got CNC machines and large pieces of equipment and, know, I mean,

it's em

lot of infrastructure in place to make sure it's all up and going.

yeah.

Yeah.

Can you remember a particular moment or time in that process when you were most afraid or maybe questioned things?

You know, it often comes back to the personal.

You know, it was probably with our kids in those things.

So, you know, there were weeks we were in church and hadn't found a church yet, and it's before we ended up planning to church, and so they're just—it was more on the personal

side.

than the business side, if that makes sense.

I don't think I ever really doubted on the business side, it's like, don't know, gotta let it sustain that long.

I won't say I wasn't worried about it.

I definitely spent some days worrying, but it's probably more on that personal side when it comes back to affect the family.

So, yeah.

Yeah, I know we talked a little bit about the celebrity maybe being different between California and here in Wyoming.

You guys came and visited our church at one point in time and I know there were a lot of guys in the congregation very disappointed that you decided to go somewhere else.

well the 35 mile drive on the highway, we wanted to be at a church in our own community, loved the church actually, really enjoyed it.

We were here a couple times, we just said we...

we believe church is about local community.

so to have that community and to be 35 mile away for us, it wasn't gonna work.

yeah.

No, it seems like it's a great decision.

for sure.

That was all the talk in my circle for a while, was the weather bees were here this weekend.

That's funny.

Yeah, and then my kids had to grow up with that.

So when they did move here to this community, different than California, it was definitely...

was hard for them to escape that and just be a normal kid when they moved here.

So that was like, think an added pressure and challenge for them as well.

So, oh yeah.

Well, um, okay.

You, you brought that in.

wasn't planning to ask this question, but, uh you know, you're the third generation.

Have you started discussions with your kids about what the fourth generation looks like is, or any of them, uh, interested in stepping into those?

Yeah, they've, they've worked on and off, you know, at the, at the place and the factory growing up, you know, they're off,

um,

know, doing kind of finishing up, my son's finishing up college, daughter just did, she's going in the medical field.

So yeah, you never know.

I just like me, I mean, I took the long way around.

And so, you know, just like my dad did with me, there's, no pressure there, but opportunities are there.

And I think that's a healthy way to have it.

So, and in my time, frankly, outside the business, for me, it was ministry, but even if it's other people in other, other businesses, I think is really important sometimes rather

than it being the only thing you know.

And ah so, you know, so my son's thinking about,

I think going away for a little bit and because to be in our family business means you're in Sheridan, Wyoming, because that's where our factory is.

You don't work remote when you build stuff.

You got to be, you know what I'm saying?

When you build stuff, you got to be where you're building stuff.

So he'll probably move away for a bit and get his feet wet out there and we'll see what happens.

So yeah.

Yeah.

That's great.

I appreciate that you have that same attitude.

Your dad did.

Yeah.

No pressure.

It was awesome for me.

And I want to provide that where the opportunity is there, but hopefully the pressure isn't there's enough pressure anyways.

I don't need to put any extra.

It sounds like our fathers would get along well.

Cool.

That's cool.

That's of the exact same environment I had.

cool.

That's neat.

ah So why Sheridan Wyoming?

How did you settle on Sheridan?

What was that process like?

Yeah, we looked at, uh we looked at probably a half a dozen Western states.

just always been a Western United States based company.

We knew we wanted to stay out West.

So was kind of the Rockies in West.

We talked to half a dozen.

States, we'd, yeah, we, I mean, there are a number of things that we needed, I think there, we kind of wanted to move somewhere where just the hunting and outdoors part were a

little bit more a part of the local culture than we had on the coast of California.

So we were looking for that, that really authentic outdoors experience.

We were looking obviously for a state that would, that would be more an advocate for the second amendment in a way that we agree with to be less regulatory, less tax invasive, all

those kinds of things.

without getting political, um that California had really become.

And so obviously uh most states fit that bill more than California.

So we had a lot of states to choose from.

ah Frankly, we rode off Wyoming for a while just thinking it's so remote.

we really hire a workforce, retain a workforce?

Is the infrastructure there even from a shipping standpoint?

I mean, we have both freight trucks, parcel trucks come in and out every day.

We're both domestic, internationally, airports, ports.

So just knew this is kind of the frozen tundra in the middle of nowhere, the least populated state.

So we'd kind of wrote it off for a while and talked to some other Western states that frankly had some more people in infrastructure.

yet it was the of 2016, Brenda and I, family actually with the kids were out hunting in Wyoming, which is kind of all I knew in Wyoming was there's good game.

I didn't know much else about the state.

so, you know, I'd hunted growing up off and on my whole life out here.

And so we were out here hunting and on the drive home,

Brenda was hot spotting over in the passenger seat with a laptop and just goes, what about Wyoming?

And we'd been involved with conversations with other economic development departments in other states.

And at the time we kind of had put the move maybe on pause for little bit because we were just running the business and that giant distraction.

And we got back, we got in touch with the Wyoming Business Council, which is under the governor's office in the state of Wyoming.

And probably a week later, I was on the phone with Governor Meade, formed a friendship with him and his team.

Kind of the rest was history.

They put the full core press and said, hey, we want you out here.

We have a lot of jobs that are really based on energy that have boom and bust.

And we want some more things that are stable, which apparently you firearms was, which, you know, it's funny too.

So relative.

so, um so we started to really look heavily at Wyoming.

And then it came down to, okay, well, um you know, where's a place that's, you know, going to be big enough from a people standpoint, infrastructure standpoint.

So we knew it needed to be by an interstate.

Well, that throws off, you know, a lot of Western.

Wyoming really, I Cody and Jackson and all those things, obviously Jackson's too expensive to have a factory in and other things.

But so we knew that it kind of narrowed things down.

So we need to be by an interstate.

We needed to have a large enough population base, which 90 % of the towns in Wyoming are not going to have either, you know, for the needs that we would have for our business and

our employees.

So it really came down to a handful or less of cities.

I think that were really going to work for us.

Sheridan's at, you know, 4,000 feet.

Some other cities here are 7,000 plus and we're moving from California and that was just scary to a lot of people, maybe including us, you know, at the beginning.

you know, so from a climate standpoint, the Big Horn Mountains, our local Sheridan College, our tool machine program, some of their trades and different things, good support

there.

So we got just a lot uh of local support in Sheridan too.

You know, obviously just great hunting.

You know a town that was wasn't afraid to grow it's not like we want to bring California here and a lot of people get real worried about it You know, we knew we'd bring some jobs

and things to the you know To to the area but they were supportive of that supportive of coming So really so much of it was about the people of Wyoming and then really the people

of this area that really just made it so welcoming and in the end Yeah, it was a pretty easy choice to be honest.

So yeah

I've not heard anything but positive about it.

know all of are excited to hear it.

No, it's great.

I love Buffalo down here though.

We love, you know, I mean, it's kind of the gateway to one of the main points up to the Big Horn.

So we come through Buffalo a lot and I love it.

mean, obviously just size-wise Sheridan's a little bit bigger and we just need a little bit more people to draw from.

But we actually always have some employees that commute up from Buffalo and stuff.

And a few times a winter the road gets closed and they can't get into work.

But we love Buffalo as well.

Yeah.

Yeah, you guys would have to hire almost everybody in town.

Right.

Yeah.

Well, you alluded to it a little bit earlier.

I have noticed just watching from the outside in, in the last few years, you really have kind of rebranded.

And you said your dad faced that same problem of, know, this is not your dad's gun.

It can be your gun.

It's relevant.

And you guys have don't in or dove into that full force.

Can you tell me a little bit about what that process looks like or maybe some of the decisions there?

Were there anything that was difficult letting go of maybe the tradition and moving into a new generation?

think a couple things about that.

think in regards to that, well, first and foremost, I think part of that rebranding was the team that we were going to have.

We brought some quality people with us.

We left, unfortunately, some quality people out in California.

We had two.

But we were able to hire a great team.

And so first and foremost, it's the I think it's our people that saw the vision for the future and for the next chapter of Weatherby and fully embraced it.

And so I think that that reforming of that team was crucial.

Hats off to Brenda for a lot of that on that people's side.

um I may have been involved in a little bit as well, but but I think that that was really important.

But it is it is also continually important to respect and honor the past.

while moving forward.

Like even I'll say for California, as much as people trash it, I'll say California has a rich history for Wetherbee.

If it weren't for my grandfather's opportunities in Southern California, I he had John Wayne and Roy Rogers in his shop before anybody knew who he was.

so like California provided a great past and we honor that.

ah But the future was not California.

The future for us is in Wyoming.

And so the same is true with some of our products.

We just, this year, I think here's a great example.

So this year's our 80th.

I don't know if you saw online or

anything that 80th anniversary rifle we launched.

I drool over it all the time.

So what we did, it was a year and a half process of us and what I said from the get-go is I want a rifle, I don't care what it costs, which came out in the cost because it's very

expensive, we're going do a limited run and I want a rifle that honors the past but looks forward to the future.

And so we did, you know, get online, go to weatherby.com, check out our 80th anniversary rifle which sold out in a week, but even at the cost.

that it was a price that it is, we have the historic wood, really, really, really high grade exhibition wood, our traditional Mark V action, like a lot of traditional things in

300 Wetherbee, our oldest, most traditional, kind of one of our most oldest traditional calibers, and yet we have a carbon fiber barrel and titanium, and so we tried to blend

modern materials with past craftsmanship and tried to say this is a bit of who Wetherbee is where...

Because that's where we can differ in our competition.

There's a lot of folks that have sprung up in the last say 20, 25 years that are doing a lot of the new edgy stuff and using new materials,

but they don't have that same story that we do in the past.

And so it's, think it's really embracing both of those and never, never letting go of that history and remembering where you came from.

Yeah, that's awesome.

I love that rifle for those same reasons.

There's just something about a walnut stock that speaks to the heart a little more than the new carbon fiber.

Yeah, that's a beautiful rifle.

And now hearing the story behind it, yeah, I really wish I could have snagged one of those.

That's a beautiful rifle.

I'm not sure I could bring myself to actually shoot it though.

Yes.

That one's mostly fashion, less function, all fashion.

ah we had a custom gunsmith on a few weeks ago.

He was discussing maybe a trend that I've noticed in the industry.

uh

towards more custom rifles and getting into a lot of the newer cutting edge materials.

And it seems like you guys have really stepped into that space and competed kind of providing some of the custom rifles semi-custom.

Do you see that same trend as well and has that influenced some of the decisions you're making?

Oh, 100%.

Yeah, you know, I don't want to give everybody our secret sauce recipe here, but in a sense…

That's really, we're in a lot of price points, right?

I mean, you can get a Weatherby probably as cheap as five to 600 bucks and upwards of $10,000, right?

And everywhere in between.

Our sweet spot is doing a lot

with, because we're not as big as a Ruger or a Savage or these guys that just pump out thousands of guns a month, right?

We're also not the custom shop guys that are not even a thousand guns a year, right?

I mean, we're still shipping a lot of guns a year and we're in big boxers and we're all over, but our sweet spot.

is really putting a lot of custom features in maybe a middle to upper end production rifle.

And so to be honest, a lot of the folks out there that are doing five, $10,000 plus rifles is turning out to be very well for us because we offer a lot of those same features at

often half to a third of the price.

And so we'll have guys where they're like, man, I really want that gun.

They're drooling over it.

Well, it's $10,000.

They come in and find it from us for $2,900 with 90 % of the features on it.

And so that tends to be a real sweet spot for us.

And yet it's a brand that people know and trust and has been around for a long time too.

that, yeah, that's absolutely probably one of our sweet spots that we operate in.

We're never going to make a gun as inexpensive as Ruger can do.

We're just never going to be able to do that.

But we're also never going to be the guys that are, not a custom shop either.

And so we find kind of that niche in there a little bit.

So.

And it seems like that probably speaks a little bit to your history.

Like.

From my perspective, outside looking in, seems like that was kind of the niche of the last two generations as well.

It wasn't the low end cheap production rifle.

uh You guys offer kind of premium products in a production line and you're just bringing that into the newest technology.

Yes, absolutely.

Yeah, that's awesome.

It seems like, yeah, 20 years ago...

everybody in the field just had a low-end mass-produced production rifle and if you saw I mean a weather be or especially a custom was kind of a rare thing in the special thing and

Now it seems like those higher-end rifles are becoming more and more common and you guys are really taking advantage of that market Definitely.

Yeah, that's great Yeah, I think the same thing I have dove into the custom rifle market a little bit and I often hop on your website like man You got everything I was looking for

in a

package that's a third the price.

Yeah.

We had this funny story.

It came from a show.

were at a, I think it was a wild sheep show.

can't remember which one or Western haunt show or something.

And we were out there and the guy came in our booth and we were showing him one of our rifles and he fell in love with it.

And he goes, it's only, you know, it was a titanium.

It was like a $3,000 gun, right?

I mean, it's an upper end for our production, right?

And he's like, wow, it's only 3000.

And he goes, I'll be right back.

I'm like, I'm like, okay.

The guy left and he runs, comes back 20 minutes later.

And go, where'd you go?

And he's like, well, I just canceled my custom gun I bought over there for three times much money.

He says, it's exactly the same gun.

I come back here and I'm buying this one.

I'm it felt bad for the custom guy, but it felt pretty good at the same time.

Yeah, that's great.

Well, I know you talked a little bit about the move.

That's probably the simple answer here and also significantly increasing growing your sales in the last few years.

Was there anything that caused a delay?

ah in that growth that you would handle differently if you could do it again?

Yeah, I mean, there's all sorts of things.

It seems like most of them are external factors that you can't predict, you know, uh in things.

I mean, it's, it's especially in our industry, like many there's, there's highs and lows and there's spikes and, know, in the firearms industry, it's, you know, you get the boom

and bust and they maybe see the oil industry, but in firearms, you do as well.

It's often politically driven and it's things that don't really even have to do with our products specifically, but it's other people's.

so, you know, we had right after we moved, we hit some great tailwinds, you know,

21 and 22 were the best couple years for the whole industry and the history of firearms industry in the US.

So we had a lot of things.

Then when that happens and that goes away, there's an over inventory out there.

The um kind of the demand goes down.

So supply is up everywhere.

And it's just your basic economics that kind of happened.

uh a lot of it is, yeah, a lot of it is just external factors, right?

I mean, we make a lot of internal blunders as well, you know, I'm sure.

But a lot of it is just.

the uncertainty of external factors, which, you know, I mean, this year we had tariffs, right?

And, you know, kind of, you know, that was kind of insult to injury, I think, for lot of businesses.

We manufacture a ton of stuff in the U.S., a ton of stuff in Sheridan.

Our Mark V rifles, 307 rifles are all built here, but we do some importing as well.

Depending on the price point, we do some Italian shotguns as well.

So we, you know, we have different things and nobody knew that was going to come like it did in a hurry and the uncertainty of it and where it was going to stick.

And it was one percentage one day.

And so a lot of the challenges are just,

But those will always be there, the external things that are gonna come in.

So it's how are you dealing with those things?

And as a leader,

and there's probably been times where I freak out too much at the external things when they come, but they're always going to be there.

You can chart out a plan.

mean, right now we have a four year strategic plan.

It's not gonna happen like it is on paper.

It never does, ever.

You can never bat a thousand um to know what's going on.

And so I think so much of what I've learned is to,

uh...

you know you got a plan for those times that they're gonna come in you gotta know that they're there i tend to be probably one of my biggest mistakes so i tend to be uh...

what uh...

what sometimes have been called a forceful optimist is to be awesome is where we're going in you do that but at the same time you have to plan in that's not going to always go that

way on there's going to be things are stays that are messy on you're gonna have machines a breakdown on the shop for you know people resign that you never thought would quit you're

gonna have to risk a come out of the middle of nowhere

You're gonna have an industry that does something crazy weird.

You're just gonna have, you know, you're gonna have whatever, anti-gun world doing things and passing things that you don't know.

It's just, there's so many external forces and so you always have to know that those things are gonna be there.

Yeah, that's some good advice.

I see young business guys that they get into an industry on an upswing.

Yes.

they think that that's just gonna continue forever.

And then when that external factor drops, they're in trouble.

If we've learned anything over 80 years, it's...

You know, one day you're just, making a bunch of money and the next you're like, well, you know, how are you gonna make payroll in two weeks, you know?

And so it's everywhere in between and if you've had a business long enough, you know, you'll know that for sure.

So, yeah.

Is there something that you wish you would have learned earlier?

m

I mean, as a whole, it's interesting because I got my degree and had all this experience in ministry.

What that did was rather than just staying in the family business, I felt like I came in behind.

So when I came back about a dozen years ago, ah I had to make up for a lost time of just even general business knowledge and a lot of different things.

ah And so, but at the same time, I wouldn't go back and trade those years of ministry for anything, for anything, never trade that.

But.

there was a handicap that I felt just having come in doing those awesome amazing things for all those years and I wouldn't trade it for anything but there's times where I came in

that I said man I am super under qualified right now you know look at your degree in theology on the wall you see all your years of ministry experience and you think how in

the world am I running all these different departments not knowing what's going on so I think for me it was just that those years of not knowing business and then and then coming

in

Because when I came back, kind of didn't work my way back up.

just kind of came in, I was COO and took over my dad pretty quickly because he was kind of, he was running out of steam at end of his career, been doing it for decades, just

super faithful.

But it was kind of like come in and take that next step pretty quick.

So, you know, I'm sure there's a lot of mistakes I made just early on, you know, just being naive to a lot of things, just business.

Yeah.

Okay.

Is there something

a particular viewpoint or topic where you have changed your opinion significantly as a result of the experience you've had.

Hmm.

No, that's so general.

It's hard for me to think.

You know, there's...

I mean, the answer is yes.

I just can't think of an example that would be good to share necessarily.

But...

Give me just a second.

I mean, there's kind of things going through my mind.

It's how to boil them down to be able to communicate them, you know.

Yeah, I mean, one thing I've learned, something people told me early on is it's never as good as it looks from the outside and it's never as bad as it looks from the inside.

And you're always, look at your competition, you look at other businesses, other industries and you go, dude, they're crushing it.

their margin must be amazing.

They're not having these problems.

It's so much simpler.

They have less regulations or you look at these things.

And whenever you get on the inside, it's never as bad as it looks.

And so, um, I think the longer I'm in business, the more I realize being a business owner is just hard.

And so sometimes I think that we'll arrive.

We're not, we're not, we're never arriving.

It's always a work in progress.

Right.

And so I think maybe to answer your question, like early on, there'd be time when we get here, when we hit this milestone, we'll be able to be here.

It's just not the way it works, at least in my experience, right?

Now these guys that are starting these AI companies and they're worth billions of dollars five years later, I don't know.

They might have a different story.

For me, I mean, we're in, it's a tough industry.

It's highly competitive.

It's fairly low margins.

It's a lot of expense.

It's a lot of regulations.

It's a lot of risk.

There's a ton of compliance.

There's ATF.

There's you name it, right?

There's, I mean, the liability.

I mean, our insurance costs.

I mean, we're making things that shoot, like things to kill it.

Like this is,

So there's so many things and so it's just, but it's awesome.

It's never as good as it looks from the outside, it's never as as it on the inside.

So guess that's maybe how I'd answer your question a little bit.

Yeah, I really like that.

um I guess that would probably be something that's true for me is when you see a business from the inside, you see the liability, the stress, and uh yeah, you always hear people,

it must be nice.

I think Dave Ramsey, he probably snagged it from somebody else.

I can't remember the reference, but he always says.

You know after 20 years of hard work you become an overnight success.

Yes Nobody sees the sleepless nights.

Nobody sees the the fear of being able to make payroll Nobody sees the regulations that change that didn't alter your whole business.

All they see is the big win Yeah, and they assume that you just lucked into it.

Yes, there's a there's a lot of liability.

There's a lot of stress There's a lot of work that come behind those absolutely easy wins

Yep,

we always say it's that, you know, sausage making is messy.

You see it in the final packaging at the store.

You're like, man, that sausage looks good.

You go into a sausage factory, it probably doesn't look too good.

And sometimes we do that all, you know, call my key people.

be traveling.

like, Hey, how's the sausage making it?

Like, man is messy, you know, because it's just the way it is behind the scenes.

By the time it's all said and done, you do the QC checks, you get it out there and you got something good to present to your customers.

But sometimes sausage making is messy.

That's good.

Yeah.

That's good.

Have you made a major mistake that you wish you could have avoided?

Well, yeah, like every week, every week.

mean, sometimes you might launch a product too early, you know, and uh then,

you know, you're delayed in your shipments because you have a high level of, you know, quality that you're doing, but you're eager.

I tend to be impatient.

I would say most my mistakes are built off of impatience.

oh And I shoot first and ask questions later.

And so the older I get, ah I'm hoping I can learn that more and more.

Yeah.

There's some wisdom there as well.

Yeah.

Maybe the flip side to that question.

Have you ever made what I call a beneficial mistake?

A mistake that the lesson you learned ended up outweighing the consequences of the mistake.

Yeah, that happens all the time.

I mean, you stumble into something, right?

And yet sometimes it's our trials, our mistakes and the perseverance you learn in that where you learn the biggest things in business, right?

Even in life, it's the same way when things don't go according to plan, like that's when things work out better.

So yeah.

Mistakes or accidents too.

I mean you can you can have accidents stumble you into I think something um worthwhile that you that you learn from too.

So no, absolutely.

I think there's um there's plenty of mistakes or um You know that you make and even sometimes you make a hire and ends up not being the right person But you learn from that

who you need later and you know, yeah, so I think there's there's things from all of that um Yeah, and kind of in kind of learning.

So sometimes you it takes one mistake um

or in a product idea or whatever and you have a flop that's out there in a product but then you never do that mistake again.

And so you you have to have the one bad one to avoid the next 10.

Yeah.

If you could start over and go back to the beginning of your career as a minister, ah would you do something differently?

No.

No?

That I wouldn't.

Because I just look back on that time and go like...

ah

No, I think I can confidently say no on that.

That was just, I think, pure like, God calling me.

I mean, just following the call, but not knowing what the heck's going on and learning as I go, and learning ministry as I go, learning people, that process.

It was so unplanned.

So, anything else would be planning, and that's what was so great about it, is it was just trying to follow the Holy Spirit's call and just trying to be obedient.

And so, that's what was so awesome about it, was just learning along the way.

So, I think...

I think if you listen to God's voice and you follow His call, that's a life without regret, right?

And that's when you listen to your own voice or you ignore that higher calling, that's a life of regret.

And so that's why I think as I look back to that time, I don't have any regrets.

That's great.

Yeah, honestly.

Yeah.

In business, you have regrets and different decisions and you can hyperanalyze everything.

But in ministry, unless you're doing something out of selfish ambition, then if you're just getting up and your goal is to serve the Lord and to serve others,

regardless of who shows up or what the critics say,

it doesn't matter.

That's what's so, you know, there's a verse in the Bible, 1 Corinthians 15 58 that says, if you labor for the Lord, it's not in vain.

And that's what, so I'm like, if I labored for the Lord today, here's what's cool.

At the end of the day, whether it today, I'm like, okay, there's gonna be revenue numbers and sales.

I'm gonna have what I booked in sales today.

I'm gonna have what went out the door and invoiced.

I get a report at six o'clock every night if I don't get on my computer system during the day.

And at the end of the day, it's kinda how business is measured, right?

And it's what our costs are and there's things.

In a ministry world, if you labor for the Lord, it's not in vain.

So your ROI is like up to the Lord, and that's what's cool.

You just do the obedience.

You just step out.

And whether, you know, some of those people's lives that you ministered to end up turning around and walking the narrow road, well, great.

If they don't, that's not up to you.

The results are not up to you.

That's up to the Lord.

You're just called to go serve Him.

The results are up to Him.

So that's why I say there's no regrets in that.

I have more regrets in business.

because it's measured, business is measured off of those tangible financial results and spreadsheets.

So you tend to have that.

But the other, once you just hand that over, I mean, the same as a parent, raise a child, know, Proverbs says we should raise a child in the way they should go.

Well, you raise them, they go.

The rest is, I mean, I got kids in their twenties.

We raised them, they're going.

We're not micromanaging their decisions anymore.

That's, you know what I mean?

The decisions they make now.

That's on them, not on us anymore.

So I think it's that real kind of understanding and trusting God in those moments.

Yeah, that's good stuff.

Good stuff.

Sounds like the way you run your business, you have a lot of ministry in your business and ministering to your employees and your customers.

Do you feel similarly about, I know, you know, the business side of things can be measured on that report you get every night at six o'clock.

Do you get that same satisfaction of uh serving the Lord and having that work?

come to the fruition that it will in your current role as you did when you were serving in full-time ministry?

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

I mean, you can get caught up in the weeds a whole lot more probably in business, and there's just, you know, in the complexity of our business, there's just a lot of things

and unknowns, and there's so many departments and things that go into the business.

So I can get my focus tripped up, you know?

ah You know, at the end of my life, ah it's not about how many guns we shipped or...

what our customers thought of us online on Instagram comments, know, like that's not the judge of my life or my career as the CEO of Weatherby.

It should be off something better, but boy, there's times where you get tripped up on that,

you know, and you just get hung up and the small things become the big things and it's not how it should be.

ah You know, that's why like last night at that Christmas party, Brenda and I came home so encouraged, you know, and lot of these people have, you know, since we've moved here, been

a part of the team and.

lot of the people have come on and they've been raising families and a lot of little kids there last night when they started with us, those kids weren't there.

And so just seeing that, you have to remember it's about that and the people and everything.

But oh boy, I get sideways a lot of days because I get very driven and focused and results oriented in business and I'm competitive.

So the competitive part of me wants to win.

Well, the way you win in business is by shipping a good product to customers and having them love it.

When you're not shipping product, you're upset.

When there's quality problems, you're upset.

When there's customers that are upset, you're upset.

it is hard in business sometimes, but you got to...

And that's what Brenda and I help each other out on that.

It's rare that we both have a day where we get sideways.

It's usually other days and then we can kind of hold each other up and that's one of the benefits of it.

That's great.

Yeah, I think uh as I've talked to a lot of leaders, the best leaders care more about their people and loving their people than they do the success of their business.

Yeah, you just nailed it.

So when there's clear metrics over here and soft metrics over here, it's really easy to get tied up over here.

Do you have any advice for maybe a young leader to help reset that and keep the focus where it needs to be while maintaining that drive and that competitive edge?

I mean, for me, it just starts every day.

It's every morning.

I mean, you got to get up, put your head back on straight again if you got sideways the day before.

So for me, what that looks like is...

It's a cup of coffee.

It's looking at the Big Horn Mountains out my back window and it's my Bible open and it's praying with my wife.

That's what it is for me on weekdays.

I gotta start the day.

Now by 1030, I may be sideways already, but I gotta make sure I start every day fresh, every day new.

His mercies are new every morning.

Doesn't matter what happened the day before, it's new opportunities in front of you that day.

And it's taking advantage of those things, I think, a day at a time.

Yeah.

And to not, I don't look back very often.

ah

It's fault and a strength.

even like, you know, my wife says like, if somebody leaves or resigns, whether it be in like, I'm really bummed about it because they're a good team member.

Yeah.

About an hour after they resigned, I've moved on.

It's hard.

she's like, well, no, we got to care about people.

And I'm like, I'm moving.

Like I'm going, we got to fill that role.

We got to, and so I just tend to kind of move forward.

And so that next day, you can't look back.

You can't have those regrets.

think every day it's got to be about, um, about what matters.

So yeah.

Yeah, that's good advice.

oh What has been your biggest win as a leader?

What are you most proud of?

Hmm.

Like at Weatherby or?

Let's do both at Weatherby and just in general.

Sure.

Um.

Yeah, mean, at Weatherby, I think it's...

uh

I think this whole chapter of being in Wyoming and just rebranding the company, rebranding the product lineup and forming a new team and just having this next chapter, you just look

back on it you go, it was a ton of work.

And the things that were a ton of work over the hardest end up on the flip side, typically being those biggest wins later.

And so as hard as it was in those couple of years.

um To look back afterwards and see and there's other internal things I want to share in the podcast and you know ownership things so whatever you know a lot of behind-the-scenes

things, but Then I want the world to know in the internet, but there's just a lot of that.

There's a lot of things So when you come through those hardest times so as a business it's that Looking back seeing the perseverance through that and coming out on the other side

and just some of those big wins or when you Launch a new a new product.

We got some exciting launches coming up here in January.

We do a product launch often It's years in the making and so you just

You get those wins where you look back and you go, man, it was everything from the initial concept and it's engineering, it's production, it's marketing, it's all the departments.

And so I love seeing a team win, right?

And so when the whole business wins, when all the employees win, when the brand wins, when all those things, like it's just awesome, I think on that flip side, you know, to be able

to see and just look back and go, man, look at what together we were able to accomplish.

there's just, that's exciting, it's rewarding

when that happens.

uh

And so, you know, I think with that too, though, um I think um being able to like for this podcast, I've had countless opportunities to, be able, uh I mean, I probably, you know,

think last week I did two podcasts, was on another CEO podcast in our industry, another industry one, I'm on two tomorrow.

So it's also, and then I travel and speak a lot.

And so it's also to be able to, uh

to uniquely, as a communicator, as a pastor, as those things, to be able to blend that into the business that some of the biggest wins for me have been able to see that and to

hopefully be able to encourage others, which I think is what's great about this podcast.

So that's a big win, just on the business side, maybe just what I shared, but to be able to really blend those things together.

I know it's a unique thing to be in ministry for the first half and then some people do business and then kind of retire and maybe do some ministry.

So it's kind of a unique um experience, unique resume, if you would.

ah That obviously I was I would have never got the job if my last name wasn't weather be to come in and run this company So I know I cheated by being born into the family that I

did but it as a result It's been really fun sometimes to be able to use my name and business as a platform to speak to bigger and more important things life-changing things

So that's that to me is I think a big win.

Yeah, that's great It's been a pleasure for me to get to watch that m

as a Christian and a business owner to see you leverage your position to make a big impact is really cool.

So thank you.

And thank you for making the time to join us today.

You bet.

No, it's been fun.

um

What has been your best resource to grow as a leader?

A few, think it's finding other mentors.

Especially for me, I came back into business having an experience in ministry.

I needed to find people, other leaders, other CEOs in my case, or business owners, people in our industry that I sat down and spent some time with.

There was another guy in the industry that runs a big company most people would know.

he, I remember when I...

came back to business there was a time and was doing some restructuring and all sorts of things and I just flew out to where he's at and sat on his couch and spent a day on a

laptop and said help me.

And so I think one is just finding other people uh that do excellent work in whatever that is and really I think doing that.

So for me, sure I read books, you I got an education, I did those different things but for me I learned best from people.

oh

Do you have some advice to finding those quality people, those quality mentors?

What do you look for specifically in someone that you're going to give a voice into your life?

I go, could they run this company better than me?

And if the answer is yes, then I'll probably look to them for advice.

And I have lots of people I can.

Now they don't have my last name, there's things they're going to lack, but it's those kind of people, you know, that truly

I was talking to a guy this week, was CEO of a multi-billion dollar company out of our industry.

I was talking to him this week and he's on some boards now and he retired and I just was talking about board member position maybe someday and I just go, because like at the end

of the day, you made your career by getting just a college education and working hard.

I said, I didn't, I was just, I had the right last name.

So I need to surround myself with people like you, you know?

And so where he truly built a company, grew it by billions of dollars.

I'm like,

That guy actually knows what he's doing.

I probably, if I have an opportunity to talk to him, I will,

you know?

yeah.

That's good.

Yeah.

That's good.

You've talked about quite a few hard things that you've persevered through.

What is it that gives you motivation to keep pressing when things get hard?

It's weird.

Part of it's just the way I'm wired.

Like even like a...

Like I've done a ton of triathlons.

I'm doing a half Ironman this next year.

I'm turning 50 and you know, that's not things most people go, that's something I want to do.

Go spend a day running, biking and swimming without stopping.

and, um and so, um, I, I'm kind of just wired that way.

Number one, um, you know, and, and I think, you know, just for the perseverance, I think I know that when I look back, I have to see that.

the biggest moments of growth or success came after a storm, came after the hardships.

And so just, guess the older I get, I realized don't run from the storm.

In fact, I was speaking to a mutual friend of ours, Jim Ramos, I speaking out at a man camp he did this last year and the theme he came up with is into the storm.

And he had on it a bison on the logo and for the camp.

And I took my daughter bison hunting, she in college drew a bison tag and I took her out to, you know, by the Tetons out there and did the hunt out there and she got a bison.

It was awesome.

But those creatures, that's what they do.

They don't run.

They just stand and face the storm.

And ah as leaders, sometimes we're called to face the storm, not run into the storm.

And I think the older you live, the more people you lead, the more organizations you run, the more ministries you're a part of,

you realize that when you face the storm, on the backside of the storm is where the results come from.

Yeah, that's good.

That's something I wrestle with just as an individual and as a father is the times of my life when

my life was most rich and that I grew the most were right on the back end of the most difficult things.

And so like as a father, I want my kids to experience that richness, but yet I never want to hope difficulty on them and finding that balance of um yeah, facing into the storm when

it comes.

So you get that richness, that growth.

Yeah.

It's cool.

Man, lot of good questions, Erick.

Well, we're getting towards the end.

We got just a few more to get through.

This is my favorite question.

You've talked about it quite a little bit, but to dive in specifically, I know that you're a person of faith and specifically a Jesus follower.

How has that affected ah the way that you lead and the way that you run your business?

It does.

It's everything.

mean, um it's what

hopefully makes it not just being merely selfish ambition, but the way you lead towards these greater causes, You know, living out what He called us to live, to love God and love

others.

And I mean, so it redefines your purpose, your success, all those things, right?

So if you're focused on those things first and foremost, then it makes the days where you failed as a business or as a leader to go, yeah, but I'm not a failure as a person because

you have a different identity, right?

So my identity is found in who I am in Christ.

ah not in the success of a product launch.

You know, and so at end of the day, like, ah it changes your whole perspective on everything.

I think it's the people that get so consumed in the, if that business that you've started or that you've inherited, that you're growing becomes everything to you, then you're

missing out on what's most important.

Your identity can be wrapped around in it.

And if your identity is wrapped around in it, then your life passes or fails based on the success of...

if you sold enough widgets or your services were good enough or whatever it is.

So,

yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Well, a lot of the audience that we have here on the show are uh tradesmen, blue collar guys, you guys employ 140 people, most of which are what I would consider kind of a blue

collar industry is uh a future or a career in manufacturing.

Is there still opportunity there?

There's plenty of opportunity.

We got jobs posted daily.

ah There certainly is.

It's not something you, you know, you don't hear from people.

What do want to do when you grow up?

I want to build stuff.

You know, I want to, I want to work in a factory.

I want to, it's just not, there are more and more people wanting to do different things.

Work from home, more services, software, et cetera.

But I mean, U S manufacturing.

I was just talking to an employee last night, works in our stock carbon fiber stock department.

I was talking to him at the, at the Christmas party.

goes, man, it's so cool.

because like I'll go into a gun store, I'll be at a Shields or your local store as sportsman.

And I see like a carbon fiber stock and I see that paint job and I go, I might have hand painted that stock.

so like, you know, to be able to like, you know, a lot of it's gone away, but to be able to be involved in U S manufacturing and build stuff.

And then he goes, and I remember when my supervisor first day I worked, he goes, just remember we're building guns.

And there's a lot of things you could build that aren't as cool as that.

You know, so, so I think, you know, there is still, um, still something to be had there.

there's a lot of challenges and a lot of obstacles and it's not going to be easy.

So you gotta be, you know, um, at the end of the day, no matter what you're building, you're still building stuff and it's hard.

Um, so whether we're making, you know, cool firearms that people want, or we're building some widget that's, I don't know, going on something else that's not as exciting, like

you're still, it's, it's hard work and people gotta be cut out for it.

Yeah.

And there's, mean, there's.

Typically in making stuff there's capital needed too, you upfront.

you gotta, it takes money to make money.

So it's just a hard reality.

Do you see, or I guess what trends do you see?

the labor force becoming more plentiful or less for manufacturing jobs?

Far less, far less.

I was out at another major US gun manufacturer, much larger than us this year, and they have factories in multiple states.

And they said, it doesn't matter the state we're in, it's getting harder and harder and harder to find people.

um And so it's hard people, uh you know,

and frankly, there's some, depending on the level that you're in, there's some people, depending on your skill set, if you move up, if you're a manager, what kind of equipment

you're running, there's some where you can make a great living, but frankly, in order to make products and have them competitive, if it's a lower skilled job, meaning we can train

you in a couple of weeks on your job, then, you know, then people are gonna sometimes what happens, they wanna jump out of that.

So they do this and they wanna move up.

So, um you know, there's...

uh

You know, in a factory though, you need people on the assembly line.

Frankly, you do.

And those people aren't gonna be making six figures.

And so that's just the reality of it, right?

And so it's hard.

so yeah, when I talk to folks, even in other industries, um it's hard.

The labor force is hard right now and it's getting harder.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Do you see a trend towards more opportunity in those positions?

Are some of those wages?

Maybe balancing with some of the other options those people would have?

Yeah, they're definitely I mean, you know, yeah I mean our entry-level price, know entry-level wage versus what when we moved here seven years ago is significantly higher

You know, so you have to be kind of competitive, you know to what's out there for sure So, you know, there's more I think there's more more opportunities and depending on the person

how motivated they are to there's opportunities to work up within an organization as well and so You know if you can work in a management or operating more

you know, more complicated equipment or whatever those things are, then I think there's opportunity there.

And then I think for those that want to go down more the quote professional route, I mean, sure, well, if we're going to hire an engineer, they're probably going have an engineering

degree and probably experience in engineering.

So if they're going to come in and be in our IT department or they're going to be whatever, know, they, you know, then there's plenty in the professional world or

marketing, you know, accounting, not going to hire somebody in accounting that doesn't, hadn't worked with numbers before or money.

So, you there's going to be those, then there's also areas just to work up, you know, learning.

have our director of manufacturing that runs our whole factory floor came in to work for us back in California when he was 18.

And he was, uh I think, I don't know, putting boxes on the shelves for not a lot of dollars per hour when he was 18.

And now he's running the whole factory floor.

So there's opportunities, but you know, people go, well, how did he do that?

Well, I'll tell you what he did.

He worked extremely hard.

He was.

Extremely passionate he behaved according to our values.

I can just walk you through our values, but I mean he behaved according to our values He had a phenomenal attitude.

He was willing willing to learn new skills, right?

ah So there's a number of things ah and so because of that he was able to work his way up So but there has to be patience in that folks come in and you know, 90 days later upset

They haven't been promoted.

It's like well, you just got here.

This other guy got promoted has been here four and half years So, you know it takes time.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's something that gets missed in that conversation so much is like you said there's

somebody's gotta run the machines and if it's a low end task, it has a lower end wage and somebody's gotta work the fast food, somebody's gotta do all of these things.

But those jobs were never intended to be the lifelong career.

Oftentimes those jobs are the starting point to move into where you wanna be if you're to put in the time and work to get there.

But also the world manufacturing has to go around, just frankly, with people that are okay with that.

that don't have a desire, they don't want leaders.

There's people that are great individual contributors and they're like, I don't ever want to manage a person.

You kidding me?

That sounds messy.

And I'm okay.

I'm okay living at this wage, getting some decent bumps, different things.

We love those kind of people because sometimes you just need those people rather than they start and they want to move on to something else real quick.

You need some consistency there.

So there's also people like that that are wired that way.

And we need that in the manufacturing world.

Yeah.

Yeah, there's a place for the kids that don't want to go to school, and want to get a job, work hard, and work on something cool like firearms.

And we sometimes get people for two to three years, and then they say,

I'm going to go be a firefighter now, goodbye.

Or I'm going to go, you know.

And so we get them along the way for two to three years in their career journey.

But then they go, eh, you know, I'm going to want to go do something else.

You know, got lost in the sheriff department.

Or I'm going to go commute out to the mines out here.

And there's just folks that want a career change, you know, too.

So it's understandable.

OK.

Yeah.

Was there...

Anything you could give us a little heads up on that might be coming out or releasing from weather be hmm.

Yeah January we got a couple big launches so the first week or two of January I always get we got a lot of them because we have a lot of shows that we end up at trade shows and so

at those shows they'll be You know be those products that you can take a look at where there's wild sheep show in Reno Western Hunt show and in Salt Lake Safari Club in

Nashville all those kind of places you can

you can head to and see some of them.

So they'll be out for our show season.

So we got a couple things in the rifle line and the ammo line coming out first of the year.

So yeah.

I will be watching your social media.

Yes.

Catch that.

uh Is there anybody that you would like to see on this show?

Somebody that has a cool story, a cool background, or maybe works in a really unique industry that would be fun to learn more about?

That's local.

Because we're out in the middle of nowhere, you know, we are We do remote so we can call them in from anywhere.

Yeah.

I don't know I have to give that some thought I'll follow up with you on that for sure.

I don't want to name drop them on here Maybe they don't want I don't know.

Maybe they'll tell you no And our last question we ask every guest either fuel or settle the debate I know this isn't maybe what you do every day But if you had a job to do with a

cordless tool, which brand do you prefer?

Milwaukee

Milwaukee.

DeWalt and Milwaukee are kind of running neck and neck.

You're either yellow or red, right?

It's not cause it's better.

It's just what you grow up on.

It's what you end up with and you learn to trust it.

You know?

Uh, so yeah.

Yeah.

Milwaukee.

Yeah, there it is.

Thank you so much.

I really appreciate you joining us and making the time.

This has been awesome.

Um, I've been looking forward to this for a long time.

Good.

Thank you.

Awesome.

Thanks Erick.

Appreciate it, Yeah.

And thank you guys for joining us here on from the ground up show.

Again, if you enjoy the content, leave us a five star review, share, like, subscribe, all the things.

It really means a lot to us.

If you guys click that auto download button, that's a big deal on the podcast platforms.

And if you're not checking us out on YouTube, we're on YouTube as well.

If you want to be part of the show, either as an expert guest, or if you have a question for one of our expert guests, you can find us on our website, fromthegroundupshow.com.

or on all social media platforms at From the Ground Up Show.

And until next time, keep grinding.