January 30, 2017

Meet Brian Wilson of Atlanta Firearms Training in East Metro Area

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Brian Wilson.

Brian, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I was a small bore rifle competitor in high school and college. In my thirties, a friend and later original business partner got me into competitive defensive/ combat pistol shooting. We were expending about 300-500 rounds of ammunition a week for practice and it was expensive. We saw an opportunity to utilize our NRA Instructor certifications to open up a part time business with the goal of paying for our practice ammo. Our goal from the start was to utilize our training as certified flight instructors and airline instructor pilots to provide the best basic and advanced firearms training in North Georgia.

Our expectation was to work one weekend a month. After about a year in operation, word got around and demands for our services skyrocketed. We went to two a month classes and expanded into rifle training. Quickly (as I like to joke) we were faced with three choices: 1. Give up competitive shooting and grow the business. 2. Give up the business and focus on competitive shooting, or. 3 Give up our marriages. My original business partner wanted to pursue competition and I chose to stay in the business. I took on one of my original instructors, Tom Mulheron, as a new business partner and as they say the rest is history.

About the same time at work, I met a fellow instructor pilot – a former Marine Recon sniper with two combat tours, Chris Avery. We discovered our mutual interest in rifle sports and he taught me almost all I know about long range precision rifle shooting and tactical carbine skills. He later came on board as one of our instructors.

We started the first year with my original business partner Tom Lipscomb, myself, instructors Brandon Jefferies, and my future business partner Tom Mulheron offering only basic and advanced pistol training. Since then we have grown to a diverse cadre of 9 instructors, offering a wide variety of firearms relating training and consulting services.

Has it been a smooth road?
None of us had run a business before and it was a steep learning curve. Since we basically had only the funding of our credit card balances (yes its corny but we started this business with a credit card), we could not afford land for a range. Fortunately the gun club we where were members was willing to lease out some of their range for our business and we have become strong partners with South River Gun Club where we have held most of our classes since. With that business model, essentially a training consultant model, we faced a very unexpected problem with Dekalb County. The business license office nor the zoning commissioner could wrap their head around the concept of a home based firearms training business. After going round and round with them for three months, my business partner, living in the limits of Atlanta, went to the Atlanta business license office and walked out the same day with a business license. When my new business partner came on board, we moved the license to his location in Gwinnett County.

We never imagined a part-time business could take up so much of your time and that poses an ongoing challenge. Tom and I both have had to learn better time management skills and he is better at it than I am. We leverage his business discipline and my creativity and knowledge of curriculum building and instructional technique to create a successful business practice.

As we have grown, we started to run into issues with standardization within our instructor cadre – one instructor teaching one method and another teaching something different. We are addressing that by completely reviewing our courses using accepted Instructional System Design methodology, ensuring that what we teach is not only meeting the needs of the students, but is valid and accepted within the industry, and that how and what we teach and what we teach provides the highest levels of safety both for our students and within our students. This process also identifies required instructor training, standards, and develops instructor guidance in the form of standard methods of teaching. By doing this we will be able to show that we have done our due diligence and have produced and continue to evolve, the best firearms training for our targeted customer. It’s a time-consuming process but it is paying off in terms of higher confidence levels in the knowledge and skill base of our instructors and the quality of product we are offering our students.

Finding a venue to conduct our long range precision course was difficult as there are not a lot of long range facilities around in North Georgia and very few that would allow us to teach on their facility. After nearly a year of searching, visiting and talking with a few ranges, we came upon Gunsite Hills in Lexington Georgia, owned and operated the former Navy Chief Mike O’Neal. I don’t know if you have worked around Navy Chiefs much but we have and they are a unique breed. Fortunately, he took a liking to us and we were able to come to an agreement to use his facilities which are top notch. We are extremely grateful to Chief O’Neal for allowing us to use his facility and we encourage all long range shooters to visit his place which is open to the public.

We’d love to hear more about your business.
Our business model is a training consultant model. We hold classes around the metro area or will meet a student at their range of choice for instruction. We have no brick and mortar location as of right now. As mentioned we began by offering only basic and advanced defensive/ competitive pistol instruction. When Chris Avery came on board, we expanded into tactical/defensive/competitive AR-15 and long range precision rifle instruction. Chris moved to Vero Beach but we were very fortunate to have MSgt (ret) John Underwood, a Special Forces soldier with 28 years experience and eight combat tours to come on board about the same time. Our instructor cadre is otherwise diverse and professional including instructors from different genders and races.

We offer a two-day comprehensive Basic Pistol Course, a one-day Basic Shotgun Course, Advanced / Defensive Pistol Courses, Basic through Advanced AR-15 carbine courses, Basic through Advanced Long Range Precision Rifle Courses, a Georgia law course on the use of lethal force for self-defense, a Ballistics Course, and various consulting services from guidance on firearm selection, AR-15 building, through security consulting for home and business etc.

We offer one of the very few long range precision courses in Georgia but what really sets us apart from other vendors is the depth of our teaching and the quality of our instructors. Our expertise in instructional methodology and methodical approach to curriculum building is rarely found in a business of our size in this industry. Normally this is the province of private military contractors providing services for the US and foreign governments or the largest private firearms trainers in the country. We are also very student-centric, that is, we adapt and modify our training methodology to each student as we see how they progress during training. Each student has a particular learning style which responds best to a particular instructional approach and we are attentive to identify those channels and adapt our teaching as we see students progress.

We are very careful about instructor selection and prefer to hire from internal references or personal experience with former students who have subsequently acquired high levels of marksmanship skill. Nearly all of our instructors have formal backgrounds as instructors or corporate trainers in their full time jobs and that is a characteristic we look for most as it indicates an ability and an enjoyment of working with others. While we are all skilled marksmen we self-identify as professional instructors first and shooters second. If an instructor candidate doesn’t have the advanced skills we need we can get them to that level. But if an instructor doesn’t like working with others that is a personality characteristic we can never change, therefore we put more importance on the people skills possessed by our instructor candidates than their marksmanship skills as we can train them to the level of shooting skills we need. The quality of our instructor cadre is what we are most proud of – they are the secret to our success because it is they that produce a comfortable and enjoyable learning atmosphere for our students.

Is our city a good place to do what you do?
As mentioned most of our scheduled classes are conducted at South River Gun Club south of Conyers but we conduct firearms training with students at their range of choice around the metro area. Firearms training is a niche business as firearms owners comprise only half the population and only 10% of those owners will seek firearms training. The large metro area provides enough interest for our type of business to be a viable endeavor. There is an increased interest in the use of firearms for self-defense purposes with public opinion on the right to concealed carry shifting monumentally in recent years. We anticipate continued growth for this type of training.

Atlanta, in general, is a good place to do business with reasonable state and local taxes but as in our story, certain local governments make it a difficult navigation process to get through the red tape and the permitting process. We have found that outlying areas are much more interested in working with you to get you up and running. In general I think that local permitting processes result in a long, confusing, and expensive lead time for small businesses to get up and running. The cost in lost productivity in obtaining business licenses, permits, inspections etc. is significant to a small business entrepreneur with limited capital. Gwinnett County is one government entity which makes it relatively easy to navigate this space with clear instructions for the business owner.

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