CCW Safe 13th Anniversary Podcast

Mike: All right, welcome to the CCW Safe Podcast. I’m Mike Darter. I’m here with Stan Campbell. Today, this is our 13th anniversary. We’re going to have a talk. I know Kent had come up with some questions that he wanted– Kent Brown’s our president. Some of you may know him, have dealt with him through email, so forth. He’s done an amazing job for us. Again, this is our 13th year. We’re going to start out with just some questions to get some of the background on the company and us and go forward. Kent, you want to go ahead and start?

Kent: Yes, I think it’d be good for everybody to know how you two guys met. [crosstalk]

Stan: Oh, wow. May I?
Mike: I’ll go first. Oh, no, you go first.
Stan: No, you go first. Always trying to be the leader. Go, go, go. Mike: 1990.
Stan: Yes.

Mike: 1990 or probably 1991, I’d applied in 1990 for the Oklahoma City Police Department. The process is pretty lengthy. It takes about six months to a year. At that time, there were probably, what, 1500 applicants for 50 positions?

Stan: That’s correct. Yes.

Mike: It was very competitive. I was in my senior year of college at OU, applied, and made it all the way through, surprisingly to myself, to the last interview with the chief and deputy chiefs. I walk into the office and I look and there’s this guy sitting here. He’s in a suit. I’m looking at him. The whole time it was so competitive, I didn’t think that I was going to get hired. I was like, “I’m going to have to come back and try again.” I was young and didn’t have any experience. I see this guy sitting in his stand and I’m like, “Man, this guy’s going to take my job.”

Stan: That’s right, now I tap in. I’m fresh out of New Jersey, moved to Oklahoma. I worked actually as EMT for two years in New Jersey. I got a little taste of servicing people and emergencies, and moved down to Oklahoma. Like Mike said, went through a, it really was a long process. I show up in some– I didn’t have a suit. I borrowed the recruiter’s suit jacket. At the time, I was 165 pounds, maybe, soaking wet. He was probably a 300-pound man. I had a big old suit jacket on.

I’m there and I sit down, and I know it’s getting pretty close to the cut. I look across and I see this perfect specimen of a man and I’m like, “Ah, he’s going to take my job.” We actually had the same thought. We both went in, and luckily, made it through. He made it through and we ended up in the same academy. That was actually the next time we saw each other. It was probably about three months later.

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Mike: It was about three months later.

Stan: We started like on June 14th, right?

Mike: Yes.

Stan: June 14th, 1991. We started the academy together. Then when I saw him, I was like, “Ah, that’s that guy.”

Mike: Same thing. Yes.

Stan: We started on our journey together. The process of going through an actual police academy was pretty difficult. A lot of information crammed in into your mind, and just a whole lot to go through. Then fast forward to when we made it onto the streets, he and I had somewhat of a parallel career ending up in some of the same units, because he worked at a street crime unit and so did I at different times in our lives, but we remained friends, and like best friends. Early on, we started our first business together back in ’93. We actually were doing– we did-

Mike: T-shirts.

Stan: We did t-shirts. We did, it’s called pigskin designs. That’s when we started our partnership. From there, we moved on, had great careers. Some things happened, a couple of challenges that really brought us closer together as well, which was the bombing, for me, in 1995, the Murrah building. Truck exploded and I was across the street in the federal courthouse. Mike worked it, with the team that followed up. Then a year later, Mike had his own challenge that I’ll let him talk about.

Mike: Yes. That was actually the beginning of this company, and that was years later. It was April 6th of ’96, right before the bombing memorial. I was on the street. It was a plainclothes street unit. I worked one part of town, Stan later worked another part of town in that same unit. We ran warrants. It was pretty much a narcotics team, in that when I had a raid that we ran, and ended up getting a shooting. In that warrant, we ended up killing two individuals. It was a good warrant.

I remember after, sitting there. It took so long to process that scene. I was at home waiting to hear. We got tons of drugs, guns, money out of that warrant, but two years later, got sued in federal court. They were going punitive against me and another officer. That was a very stressful time, but because I was a member of the FOP, the Fraternal Order of Police, they paid for everything. I didn’t have to worry about hiring an attorney.

Back then, we were in court weekly, if not several days a week. We were always having pre-trials and trials, but even then, I didn’t really know much about the civil side. I didn’t know any civil attorneys. I didn’t really know any attorneys other than the ones that we worked with directly at the DA’s office. They paid for all that. They paid for all the expert witnesses to come in, investigators, all that. That was the key founding part of this company.

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Years later in 2011 when I left the ATF, and you were getting close to retirement, that was when I really realized, “Wow, I don’t have any coverage anymore. I don’t have a Fraternal Order of Police behind me or any other organization.” That’s when I talked to Kyle Sweet, who was another lifelong friend, which later on, we became stepbrothers. I met with him and said, “Hey, I need some coverage because I’m worried about this. I’ve already been sued once.”

You establish a little bit of wealth and it’s not going to take much these days for people to find that, to see what house you live in through county tax websites, so forth. I had young kids and I was going to carry. I reached out to Kyle, and three days later, he called back and said, “Man, there’s nothing out there that’s going to give us the comfort level and protection level that we’re used to.” That was the founding of that. That was August of 2011 when we started. It took a while. It took us about six months to a year to really get the framework done and all that infrastructure.

Stan: Just to jump in real quick, and I’m going to go back to something that Mike was– because he lays out the story, because he told the story so much in the past 13 years. There are some key points about what he said. Although we were police officers, and Mike fast forward to the civil side of it, a stressor as well is being cleared as a justified shooting like you guys go through. That, too, when someone questions your actions when you know in your heart that it’s a self-defense incident, Mike too had to go through that initial stress of, will this be cleared, which they felt it was fine, but there was still some question about the second shooting with your partner.

Mike: Yes. At that time, it took about three months for them to clear us. That’s a good point. I really didn’t think about that.

Stan: I was on the SWAT team. Mike was on the application process for SWAT team. Somebody was trying to hold that up because of his shooting. He went through the self-defense program that I ran. We got him into that. There was still some stress with the spotlight being shined upon you, and knowing that it still is a homicide that has to be deemed justifiable.

Mike: Yes. That’s what it always comes down to, is a perception of someone else. It may be somebody of authority in power somewhere, or it may be just somebody that saw something a different way or they saw it after it happened and didn’t really understand. They didn’t see what led up to it or something like that. That’s what a lot of time we see in our cases when we have members get into something. Somebody may see something and perceive it some way. You have five people that view something and it’s always different. Yes, it took probably three months. It was all just because of one deputy chief’s, the way he looked at it, the way he took at it on paper. Even that was-

Stan: Someone that hasn’t been on the streets in forever.

Mike: Oh, yes, and even that, it took about three months. I remember getting letters File name: CCW Safe 13th Anniversary Podcast.mp4

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from Bob Macy, who was the district attorney for Oklahoma County. He was an amazing district attorney. He sent letters to the chief citing– Chief Rehnquist, “This is a decision from the Supreme Court saying, you’ve got to put these guys back to work.” It still took him three months to do that.

Stan: That’s right. Then the other thing that– Like I said, this is so comfortable for us talking about this. That’s the importance of experience. We, as officers, because in the street crime unit, I did about 700 or so drug raids, Mike probably did the equivalent or a little bit more with the gang unit as well, and so we spent a lot of time in court, like Mike said, in the witness stand, right?

Mike: Yes.

Stan: He too– and I brushed across mine, because my situation, I was in the federal court, but I was getting sued for use of force. It was my first time being in that situation where when the judge says, “Will the defendant please stand?” I’m looking at the other guy because I’m used to that. It’s like, “Whoa, I’m the defendant.” It’s like, “Ah, this is terrible.” It’s a horrible position to be in when you know that you did the right thing and someone’s questioning you and making you the bad guy. It’s a very volatile–

The criminal justice system, we’ve been on both sides of it. Now we defend good citizens, but being on both sides of that, and the beauty of CCW Safe, the model, a lot of things that had to come up as well is, and Mike didn’t mention it yet, but it’s the way that the police department and the union, everybody put their arms around you, that peer support is a very important element because it’s unnatural to take a human life. When you do it, even as a policeman, there’s things that happen.

There was some second guessing that went on with Mike and his partner. There were some memory gaps. There’s a lot of things that happened during that process that we build into the model of CCW Safe to protect you guys, right?

Mike: Yes, it’s just not one thing, it’s a whole house of services. Even from the FOP, you have everybody from the chaplain who comes out immediately and other officers, peer support, and then all the way through the investigation, past the investigation. It’s a whole bundle, and there’s a lot to go with that.

Stan: There’s a lot to go with. It would be nice if you just could use a super lawyer, but you need more than just an attorney on retainer. You need all these different components in this, a team to work for you. Anyway, we can go on forever, but we’re going to let Kent go on with his question.

Kent: You guys are hitting on it already, but really, what was the mission you set out to start the company? Was it really that police model and level of care?

Stan: Can I jump in real quick on that?

Mike: Yes.
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Stan: We stuck to the police model, but what people don’t understand is that, when you’re involved in, and I was so lucky in my career that I came close, about 10 times, but never pulled the trigger, thank God, but I knew a lot of people, because as a supervisor, I had to work those cases, and I had a lot of friends that were involved in self-defense shootings. When you’re involved in that, as a policeman, no one ever realized that you do all this training and stuff and you get ready for this violent encounter.

we tease violent encounters all the time because we see them more often, but what happens in the real world is that policemen are treated like a victim of a violent encounter. Citizens are treated like a suspect. When Mike came up with this brilliant idea to start CCW Safe, although it was for us in retirement initially, and we were constantly retired officers, when he made the decision and we did collectively to start covering, nationally, citizens, it’s because they too get pulled into this bad situation where you had to defend your life and now you had to defend your freedom and your financial stability.

The mission there, I would say, was to actually bring forward the same response and resources and care and legal attention that we received as policemen and spill that over to citizens that actually deserve it as well when they get involved in a self- defense shooting. Would you agree?

Mike: Yes. There was one thing specifically, I remember going to Walmart with, I think I had two of my daughters, and they were young at the time. I can’t remember he worked there or, there was a guy at Walmart that I saw, he was a guy who was a gang member that I had arrested multiple times, put in prison, and that’s the thing that came, that was the one moment that I was like, “Wow,” and it hit me because I had my daughters there. We we had gotten to a point at that time where we had accumulated a little bit of wealth. I have my kids, and I was like, “Man, I don’t have an FOP anymore to be able to step in and do that,” because it is, it’s like, I’m a citizen now.

I think it was Bill Booth told a story one time, when he told a story about retiring, he said, “Here’s what it’s like to retire as a police officer. You go in, you get all your certificates and they give you a plaque and give you a party and eat your cake and you go outside and there’s a ticket on your car.

Stan: That’s right.
Mike: You’re now a citizen. Stan: That’s right.

Mike: You have to go pay that ticket.” It was like, realizing that you don’t have, and what all you could lose if I got into something not having that. That was the real thing, because it is exactly like you said, police officers are treated a different way than citizens. At the time of my shooting, at that time, they didn’t do the two-sleep cycles before you did a report. They went ahead and took a report right after, but File name: CCW Safe 13th Anniversary Podcast.mp4

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they allowed me a week later or several days later to come in and review that and make sure everything was right. A citizen’s not going to build it to do that.

Stan: Correct.

Mike: A citizen’s not going to be able to do that. A citizen’s not going to be, most of the time, awarded two-sleep cycles before a report’s made. Yes, there’s a lot of little things that– going back through our careers, like you said, you’ve worked tons of officer-involved shootings as a supervisor. There’s things that we see and that have seen in the years that a lot of people don’t really think about.

Stan: Yes, you’re right.
Kent: Fast forward, you get the company started. When did you realize you were on

something that was different?

Stan: Let me jump first. Well, I’ll say this. Initially, we really took our time, and Mike was right, we couldn’t find anything out there that served you in the way that we got served as policemen.

Mike: In a response.

Stan: In that response and in the resource and all of it. We took about a year, really, to do our research and decide on what would be the best model. There were a couple of models out there. There were reimbursement models that they only covered firearms and we got ourselves together and said, “You know what? Why not make it just like it is when we’re on the streets where any weapon that you can find to defend your life, we cover, down to, or you can say up to, physical force to defend your life.” Because sometimes policemen, they might have a flashlight or whatever, a weapon of opportunity, so we chose to cover that.

The way that we did this was like we disrupted the industry and they thought we were crazy. The other thing to that, with policemen, and with the union and the city behind you, we don’t have to worry about resource money. The money doesn’t end. There’s not stoppage. The models that are out there before, we saw that there they capped off their criminal defense which, “Oh, you can’t do that.” We were like, “Oh my God. Okay, we going to go unlimited, no caps on civil and criminal defense,” and that was unheard of in the industry. They said, “Oh my God. This is too good to be true.” No, it’s good and it was true and we did it. It was important to build a model that was similar to what we had as policemen to make it strong.

Mike: Yes, it was. People thought we were crazy- Stan: They did.

Mike: -for doing it, but that’s the deal, I think we knew the risk better than people outside of law enforcement. I think it proved we knew the risk better than the insurance models that were out there.

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Stan: That’s right.

Mike: I think the one thing, when we finally realized that this thing was going to go, like I said, it took about a year. I built the website, all the e-commerce. That took a while. We started, we launched it.

Stan: We started testing the market. Remember we used to call it two tickets to the gun show [chuckles] because Mike and I would go down and get a little booth and it’d just be the two of us now. Kyle was doing his lawyer thing at the time. We were testing the market in 2011, and even 2012, and slowly building some followers, getting our name out there. Most of the Dallas shows and some of the other went to California.

Mike: Lot of Dallas shows. Yes.
Stan: It was just us in the beginning and then something happened. Mike: I think it was 2014.
Stan: 2013.
Mike: 2013.
Stan: 2013 George Zimmerman was going on. Remember?
Mike: That’s right.

Stan: We were sitting there watching Don West, who now works with us, but watching him go through the trial and we had the thought and said, “Hey, everyone is watching this.” The Zimmerman trial in that era had the same attention that the OJ trial had back in its time. It had national and international attention. Everyone was watching. Mike came up with the great idea to market right now. We put out our first XM radio.

Mike: We did XM radio. That was the moment, when we did that first ad. It was a big deal for us back then, because it was a lot of money for-

Stan: It was.

Mike: -I think we had to do two weeks. It was like, “Whoa, man, we’re going to have to put a lot into this. It’s a big leap of faith.” I remember signing off, and the first day it ran, the next day I woke up, our website was shut down.

Stan: Because of the traffic.

Mike: We had many members, we’ve been flooded with members. I remember I called Stan, I said, “Come pick me up.” He came to pick me up. We drove to Dallas. We’re driving to Dallas. We drove to Dallas and had a lunch, three-hour drive, drove back. By the time we got back, we had a call center set up. We had all of– At the File name: CCW Safe 13th Anniversary Podcast.mp4

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time, he picked me up, I was like, “What are we going to do? This is crazy.” By the end of that day, we had everything set up. The website was back up pretty quick. That was the first big moment when all of us were kind of like, “Wow, that’s–”

Stan: We knew we created a monster, and a beautiful monster it was.

Mike: We ran those for quite a while, and then we got to a point where we couldn’t run them. They weren’t allowing us to run because they considered us in the firearms industry, and that’s another big challenge we came to. I think it was in 2016 or ’17. Actually, I remember it was either January 1st or 2nd, 1st of the year. I came into work and all of our money had been frozen. It was our credit card–

Stan: Processing.

Mike: -company that– Credit card processing shut us down. That was during that Obama era, where they were really cracking down on firearms, ammunition, all the companies. They were using banking. That was a huge challenge too because 99% of our business was done online through with credit cards. We still have some people that send in checks every once in a while, but the majority of all of our members go online, they sign up. I remember when that happened, and they basically told us, “You pay us this amount of money-

Stan: They held us hostage.

Mike: -we’ll reinstate you or we’re going to cancel you.” I remember calling other credit card companies and the first conversation was like, “Oh yes, we can do that. We can get you–” Then you talk to them a little bit more and it’s like, “Okay, exactly what do you guys do?” When I tell them, “Oh yes, we can’t do that.” I think we’ve got turned down by two or three other companies-

Stan: Yes, we did.

Mike: -before we found EMS. EMS was great, because EMS was targeting the firearms industry. They really came through for us back then. That was probably the first big moment when we realized, “Oh wow, okay this is going. Then that other was the first big moment when it was like, “Okay, is this going to last? How do you do that-

Stan: How you do the challenge of it?

Mike: -if you can’t take online payments?”

Stan: That’s right.

Mike: It’s still a concern. We haven’t had any problems, but I can’t say that it’s not a concern for me, for us, or anybody else in the firearms industry.

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the next big thing that happened in the business?

Stan: I’m going to say, the piggyback of what Mike said when the politics of it all attacked banking and credit card processing, we had to find a solution for our members and that’s when we started visiting the thought of having a captive insurance company, and our own insurance company, because we knew, we saw that the other competitors that were out there, and it was still, at that time, maybe about four people in the space. They started doing picket lines and stuff, going after their third-party insurance partners.

I said, “Okay, let’s be smart about this.” I said, “Okay, we don’t want that to happen, for them to shut us down because these large companies that have this big book of business and this is their firearms insurance groups,” so they were vulnerable. We chose to go with captive insurance, which, again, there was another move in the industry to disrupt. To us, by thinking about it’s, “Okay, this is the most sound way to deal with customers, not making them part of a policy, making CCW Safe the policyholder, and allowing them to be the beneficiary or membership plans.:

That challenge there, and that step that we took, again, they thought we were crazy. A lot of people were looking at us and saying, “Okay, what’s that? That’s not going to work.” Then when it got challenged again because I think there was a– the large group that came into the space, they modeled themselves not like us. For that reason, everyone else started getting attacked and challenged by a lot of these states and we were able to stand strong with our captive.

Mike: I think it was ’16, ’17 Chubb shut down a lot of the other insurance programs that were going on, a lot of the other insurance companies. I had learned, personally, about captives, probably about 2015, and that’s when it was brought to me as a thing to look at for something else, and I was like, “Oh wow, wait, this seems like this would be perfect for CCW Safe.” Then Kyle got into it, put him on it, and then 2017 is when we actually-

Stan: Started covering members.

Mike: Yes, we finalized our captive, we started financing the captive. That one thing, I remember the ad we put out back then because it gave us freedom. It gave us freedom from all this stuff that was going on during that time. Under Obama, there was so much going on with the banking shutting down, they were really going after ammunition companies, firearms companies, and the insurances, it was murder insurance. They had quoted that-

Stan: They attacked it.

Mike: -murder insurance. Chubb, a lot of the other companies were shutting down or closing that off. It really gave us the freedom to do whatever we wanted to do because we had control of that. Looking back, that was the one thing we did that secured us our entire future.

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Stan: Our lifetime, that’s right.
Mike: Yes. It’s to the point now that that captive has grown so much. Yes, it’s for a

lifetime.
Stan: That’s right. We’re not going anywhere. Mike: We don’t have to worry about that.

Stan: I have to swing back, because we talked about the amazing work we did forming the captive and finding a model to protect you guys. I have to swing back to, really, our true next challenge, which was an amazing thing, eventually, but it was 2015 when we got our first shooting incident that a member was charged with murder, the Stephen Maddox case. That was the first one in the industry. That’s why it was significant.

Regardless that some of these organizations had us by 8 and 10 years that they’d been around with their reimbursement models, none of their members were ever charged with murder and had to go through a murder trial. We had the first. We were actually proving the industry with the Stephen Maddox case. Again, we looked at it and we were like, “You know what? We’re going all in.” We really pushed all of our resources. There’s never a need to hold a dollar, but you want to make sure, and we knew, give them the best defense that money could buy. That’s what we did.

Mike: It was a great case. There couldn’t have been a better incident. Somebody retreating twice in a stand your state and still getting charged with murder. It was an incredible case. Stephen Maddox, like all of our members, he was an incredible guy. It was the first case in the industry, and it was the first case that really showed the industry actually what happens.

Stan: Yes, and how to do it.

Mike: Like I said, we knew better than anybody else during that time because of our backgrounds, the risk of all this. We knew the price because of Kyle, Kyle dealing with catastrophic cases. We knew the cost of a trial of that. We knew the cost of experts. I had an expert. Chuck Higbie out of LAPD was an expert in my case. I knew the expert. We had an investigator. I knew the elements, and then between all of us, and then especially when Gary came on, being able to have all that in hand. Gary, I think had just come on during that time.

It really showed the industry– The industry was calling us crazy. The industry was like, “Yes, they can’t do that.” In fact, there were ads going off saying, “It’s so irresponsible for them to do this because they’re going to lose everything.” That was a case that showed the industry what the cost of a catastrophic case should be. It’s not a dollar, it’s not like going to be this dollar amount, but it’s going to be from this range to this range.

Stan: That’s correct.
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Mike: Another thing is that, any case, it’s going to be over two years.

Stan: Yes, we knew how to phase out the resources and know that we could
sustain, because he didn’t go for his trial until late 2017. That’s the reason why we skipped over it, because 2017 was the trial, but it proved we had the only response element and it proved in 2015 that that actually worked, and what we thought will work as we do it for police officers. The response is so important. Sending somebody out there to be boots on the ground, no one had that and no one has that to date.

Mike: The important thing to remember, too, is we did not have the captive at that time.

Stan: That’s right.
Mike: Stephen was not covered under the captive. Stan: No.

Mike: We were still able to finance it easily. We put everything we could into it. That’s the important thing to realize, now that we have the captive, it’s so much easier now with the captive to do what we did then. We could do multiple cases. It’s just that the history shows the likelihood of that happening-

Stan: That’s true.
Mike: -is such a low risk.

Stan: The last thing before we move on to the next question, also, it gave us true understanding that our process works. Even if the member made some mistakes, we can step in because we know, we have the experience of knowing where the holes are in the system, For instance, Stephen, he was given a no-bond. that means that you can’t get out of jail. That would have kept him in jail for two years. We knew that there was a window, within the first week or so, that you can put the case together, challenge it, and we sent Don West out there and working with the local attorney, which is also very important, working with local attorney and you push for a bond hearing.

He would have stayed in jail for two years. We got him out in one week. Doing those things– like he spoke to the police when he should not have. He gave a three-hour interview. He didn’t have– Mike understands. He had brain fog, did not give the proper information to the officers, which in the future makes it seem like you’re lying, but it’s all the information you have. We were able to help him out through that process, help out the attorneys and really push forward with the situation to get the acquittal. Anyway, next question, sir. Kent: Kent: Awesome. You spent time talking about the services and the coverage. When did you guys start working on the education and training element? Because most of the members, thankfully, don’t get into a serious incident.

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Mike: That was pretty early on, too. Stan: It was.

Mike: I think one of the first things we learned was that if we could provide good information to our members on our website, that we could get people to the site. By doing that, your conversion rates are so much higher than trying to just sell, sell, sell. The industry at that time was sell, sell, sell. It was all on sales, you get a free gun if you do this. We started out ours with articles. We did weekly articles, and over four weeks, we put a series of articles together. Then when we hired Don and then Sean West came on, that was-

Stan: Sean Vincent.

Mike: Sean Vincent, that was instrumental.

Stan: Next level.

Mike: We’ve always had either podcasts or articles. I think that’s one of the fundamental bases of foundations of CCW Safe– [crosstalk]

Stan: The importance of what Mike’s talking about is the fact that, there were plenty of organizations out there that gave target training, tactics and all that, but no one was in the space where we were experts, which is the aftermath of a shooting, and avoidance, de-escalation.

Before de-escalation became a word, we were pushing that out with our articles and case studies and really trying to keep our members understanding that you are your own worst enemy and you’re also your first line of defense. Everything you do prior to, during, and after an incident can have you digging yourself out of this legal hole that some might not be able to get out of, because there’s a lot of people that are innocent that are in prison, even those that have been involved in self-defense shootings.

It was important for us to have that and just know our space. it was like, we don’t need to come up with all this other stuff and be silly and you just try to push forward in a place that we’re not comfortable. We were comfortable in the true aftermath of the shooting because this is about homicides, this is about charges, this is about prison. That’s our comfort zone. We made sure that our members get the information they need to keep them out of trouble. It’s really most, as a unit, as a caring group, as an organization, a company, we push forward as the most responsible in our space to deliver information you need to stay out of prison.

Kent: Awesome. That gets us out of the teens, we get to the 2020, we have social unrest and riots. You guys know that was probably the next phase.

Stan: That was everyone’s challenge. It was such an unknown, number one is shut down. You would think there wouldn’t be any shootings at all, but there were some.

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We didn’t know what was going to happen. It was real political. It was hot topic, fiery. The pandemic was challenging. Then for us, we were like, “Wow,” everything started going up, there was still an uptick in membership, because people were scared. We had to let them know that we were still there for them. That’s right.

Mike: With the riots going on and all that. In California, they had two-block line around gun stores. There were so many sales, it was a– Yes, we skyrocketed during that time.

Stan: Yes, and that too, with pandemic, it brought on, like Mike’s saying, was it 3 to 5 million new gun owners?

Mike: Yes.

Stan: It was huge. No one expected that explosion. Then it also brought another challenge, which made us really positioned to do some good for the people. That is new gun owners. Those who don’t know, because everybody located to the tactical guys, and the SWAT guys, and the police, but when it comes down to catering to the new gun owners, we were in a great position to do that because we had a different path.

Mike: Yes. The training you talked about earlier, that was our lane, we stayed in that lane. Everything that we were talking was outside of the tactical, it was more practical.

Stan: That’s right.

Mike: Yes. We had talked about that. Before 2020, we talked about, how do we reach the people who are on the fence? Because there’s a lot of people on the fence at that time. 2020, they came off the fence.

Stan: That’s right.

Mike: I think, looking back at that, where we look and find ourselves right now today, I think we’re right back in that same position, where we have a lot more people on the fence, and we have a lot of people who are seeing things differently in our society, politically, but also in dealing with our rights, the right to own a firearm. I have a feeling that ’24 and ’25 are going to be another year where we see a lot more people come off that fence. I hope so.

The big thing I would want to do is be able to just continue doing what we’re doing, is staying in that lane, because those people who are coming in, the new gun owners, it’s uncomfortable to carry a firearm. I can say that, I carried a firearm for 20 years. When I left, I didn’t carry as much. When I started carrying again, it took me a while, even with my experience and being involved in a shooting and running entries, it took a while for me to get back into that comfort zone.

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having one and knowing what could happen. That’s what I would like to see, is, if we do have that number come off the fence in the next year, just be able to continue to provide what we’ve been providing for them, and maybe even more, really focus on new gun owners, if that happens.

Kent: How do you help these first-time gun owners and new carriers, concealed carriers navigate all the choices in the industry?

Stan: Let me jump first.

Mike: Yes, go ahead.

Stan: Again, we watched this since the beginning, and we’ve had some smaller players come into the space that dissolve out. We had a huge one come in and model itself wrong, bring attention to the industry, and then dissolve out because it too was not operating properly. It was never important to us the number of members, because we coming from law enforcement knew that if you deliver service and care properly, they will come. That’s what we did.

That’s the reason why we never got into the space of giving away pickup trucks and magazine subscriptions and guns every week. We never got into that area, because we want to be those responsible for really being there for you and giving you what you truly deserve, which is peace of mind, that you have a sharp team behind you, that’s going to be with you, not only after the smoke clears, but beyond and build a relation with, because we saw it as family.

When you join us, it’s a family, like we are when we’re policemen involved in shootings, we come in and we put our arms around you. Some of us stand in front of you, some stand behind you, and some stand beside you. We cover you with all of our resources and our smarts and experience, and we push through this volatile process in the criminal justice system and we help you succeed.

For us, looking at the new players coming in, they’re making a lot of noise, there’s a lot of infighting that we don’t get involved in, we’d rather be the adults in the room. It’s because we’re going to sustain what we have because we are the most professional group out there. We let the rest of them fight, we let them do their thing, and what’s ridiculous to us when we look at it, it’s like, “Okay, we’re all on the same team, actually,” and that’s why it was important when Kent stated it’s not competitors, we are all service providers, everyone just does things a little bit different.

Now, we’re proud that our model has sustained a lot, ups and downs, and we have a strong model. We are truly leaders in this space knowing the importance of response with the critical response team, not having any caps. The importance more so than anything is staying out of prison, and that’s the reason why we team up with other affiliates, like Andrew Branca, who is aligned with us in reference to the information that he gives you to stay out of prison, that what we do with Don and Sean Vincent, all of those things, learning from the mistakes of others is so important. We’re not worried about these other groups that are coming for us saying that, “All you need is File name: CCW Safe 13th Anniversary Podcast.mp4

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this, all you need is that,” you need the entire package, and that’s what we have.

Mike: Yes, one thing you said, too, is we’re not interested in numbers. Honestly, I can tell you this, there’s, what now, 30 million concealed carriers in the US?

Kent: Twenty-five.
Mike: Twenty-five? We do not want everyone.

Kent: Permitted is about below 20s, but total now with a constitutional carrier in 28 states, you could have 30 to 40 million.

Mike: Yes, with the constitutional carrier, that 30 million, we don’t want all those members. We’ve said this, there is enough for the whole industry to go around. We want the people who are going to be a good fit for us. We know what we’re a good fit for.

Stan: That’s right.

Mike: We want the people who are going to be a good fit for us. That’s actually come up in conversations before, of how do we get that? How do we market that? That’s a good point. We’re not interested in being the number one company because we have this many members. We’re interested in just staying in our lane and being the number one company at what we do.

Stan: That’s right. Bravo to Kent Brown. He came up with a campaign this year about CCW Safe, our members are smarter. We’re not playing around with you. This is a real thing. Our members are smarter because they do their research. They don’t fall for the okay-doke. They don’t fall for the bells and whistles and the glitter and, the distractions from what you truly need. Our members are smarter because they take their time and they understand that it’s almost like choosing a spouse. You can’t just jump in bed with the first person that you meet.

You have to take your time, really know that you are aligned with this group, that who’s going to be the best person for you, and that’s what we are. Those who sit back and watch the ones that market the most and chase you around on emails and do all these things, all this trickery, don’t fall for that. If you do, go with them, because you’re also the guy that says, I’d rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6 or, I’m going to put them in the backyard and shoot and pull them inside the house. Those guys, y’all have a space. It’s not with us. We want to be honest that we really want true responsible gun owners because we’re not playing around when we say that we’re going to take care of you, but you have to take care of you.

Kent: After 13 years and still have thousands of members back from those first few years, do you have a message for the members today?

Mike: I do. I would like to say, first of all, and you just brought it up, we have thousands of members from those first few years. For those people who took that

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leap of faith with us, because we were new in the industry, people were calling us crazy, people were saying it can’t be done, and for the people who actually went with us, I just want to say a huge thank you, because you guys are the ones that really built this company. It was a leap of faith at that time because everyone was saying we didn’t know what we’re doing and we’re crazy. We can’t do what we’re doing. I just wanted to say thank you to all of our members, but especially those ones who took that leap early on.

Stan: Yes, because, like mike says, thousands that are still– some have been with us since 2011, and we’re proud of that. We still get calls. God, Mr. White from up in Tulsa, that Milford White, he just calls us to say he’s so happy, every year. He’s been with us since 2011. We love to get those calls. We really do see you guys as family. It’s a heartfelt thank you because we’re all in this together.

Like all other families, everybody doesn’t always see the same. Sometimes we try to guard you guys against pulling your firearm out too much on road raids and stuff like that, because that gets you in trouble. It’ll cost you some time, but we still stand behind you even when you make mistakes. We’ve had a lot of deadly force incidents in the past 13 years, a lot of shooting incidents that didn’t come to death, many activations of the critical response team.

We get out there and everyone, they say the same thing, they did not expect to have this type of service. We’re just proud to be there for you. Like Mike said about leap of faith on us, we have a leap of faith geared back toward you. You come here, you call our number and talk to Don West, we move. We don’t sit around and try to wait on some insurance company and make a decision whether or not you’re going to be covered. We got your back.

Somebody else stole that from us early on, but we got your back. It’s okay. We can all share it. The bottom line is, we’re the guys that are going to be there for you. Our team is serious and we care for you and we thank you guys for 13 years of support, and we look forward to the future with you because, like I said, we’re not going anywhere. We’re going to be here for a long time for you, taking care of you. I’m so proud of Mike and Kyle and Kent and our entire group, Don and Gary and all the guys, Chris, our new response person.

We’re just so happy that you’re here for us, and take care of yourselves out there. Think about what we say. Hopefully we don’t meet in person, because if we do, you’re in trouble, but understand that we’re going to be there for you in your time of need when you have your most traumatic time in your life.

Mike: One thing that people don’t see is the relationship we have with the people who we defend. We get Christmas cards every year from Stephen Maddox. Keep up with him, John Wash. All these members that we’ve defended, we talk to them all the time. They come into Oklahoma City sometimes. They’ve come on to do workshops and videos and stuff. It’s not a thing where if you do find yourself unfortunate to have to use our service, it’s just going to be that we’re servicing and that it’s over. That

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relationship goes on [crosstalk] as long as we’re here.

Stan: Guys, we appreciate your time. I love sitting down with Mike. We haven’t done this in a long time. It’s great to tell the story from beginning to end. Be safe out there.

[00:53:36] [END OF AUDIO]

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