Mistake #1: Believing that PowerPoint or other multimedia is for technology nerds

Mistake #2: Believing that your students will retain

everything that you taught in class

Mistake #3: Believing that since this is a “right,”

you can just rubber stamp student certificates

Mistake #4: Making class about war stories or

politics, rather than the facts.

Mistake #5: Making your concealed carry class more

about shooting, and less about situational awareness, conflict avoidance or the law.

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PUBLISHED BY THE UNITED STATES CONCEALED CARRY ASSOCIATION.

Printed in the United States. Written by Michael Martin, USCCA Chief Instructor. Design by Dusty Reid.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means: electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without first obtaining written permission from the author.

Mistake #6: Focusing on marksmanship,

rather than defensive firearms shooting.

Mistake #7: Presenting an unprofessional image

Mistake #8: Taking a, “Do what I say, not what I do” approach.

Mistake #9: Teaching with an approach of,

“It’s better to be judged by 12 rather than carried by six” when it comes to the legal use of force.

Mistake #10: Believing that you can build a firearms

training business without understanding how to market it.

THE TOP TEN MISTAKES

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THAT FIREARMS INSTRUCTORS MAKE, AND HOW TO AVOID THEM

As a firearms instructor, I get the fact that starting or running a firearms training busi-ness isn’t easy. It’s one thing to work, train, and study to the point that you can be con-

sidered an expert in your field, but it’s quite another to also become a PowerPoint expert, an expert photog-rapher, an expert illustrator, a legal expert, and a sales and marketing expert. Unlike major corporations who have entire departments dedicated to developing those skills, most firearms training business are small busi-nesses, with most (or all) of those responsibilities falling on just one or two people. As small businesses, we also have no “senior management” to coach and mentor us, or to point out the minor or major mistakes we might be making. Unfortunately, the first indication that we might be making those mistakes will be a drop-off in student referrals, and fewer butts in the seats.

When I started teaching concealed carry and home defense classes over a decade ago, I began my career as most do, by becoming certified with one of the nation-al firearms organizations, and taking a few classes from other instructors to learn from them. Beyond that, I was on my own. There was no “classroom in a box” waiting for me with a full blow PowerPoint presentation; there was no up-to-date student text book or classroom vid-eos; there was no resource that I could turn to for pre-designed certificates that I could hand out to my stu-dents once they’d completed my course; I was even on my own when it came to figuring out what my instructor “uniform” was going to be. I also had no ongoing train-ing, mentoring, or support that I could count on to help me avoid the mistakes that thousands of instructors had made before me—in other words, I could easily have fallen into the trap of the old saying, “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Thankfully,

in addition to being a firearms expert, I’d also spent years as an entrepreneur, successfully developing small busi-nesses or small divisions of larger companies. You could also say that I was a professional presenter and trainer, having spent nearly every day of my twenty year career in front of audiences, presenting complex topics in a way that they could easily understand and retain. When I launched my first firearms training business, I wasn’t going to be satisfied with full classrooms a few times a month, and instead, I committed myself to creating the “classroom in a box” that was so sorely missing, and I also committed myself to helping other instructors avoid the mistakes that could spell the end of their own firearms training businesses.

A dozen years after teaching my first firearms class, I’m now the Chief Instructor for the United States Con-cealed Carry Association, and I’m the creator of the Firearms Instructor Toolkit, currently being used by hundreds of firearms instructors across the country. My book, Concealed Carry and Home Defense Fundamentals, the classroom PowerPoint and videos, and the other products in the Firearms Instructor Toolkit, are not only designed to help you to avoid the mistakes that I’ve described in this guide, they are also designed to help you to become the best instructor you can possibly be, and to outshine the competition. If you’re a brand new instructor, I believe that this guide and the Firearms In-structor Toolkit will help you to successfully launch and grow your business; but even if you’re an established in-structor, the Toolkit should be beyond anything you’ve ever seen, and, don’t feel bad if you recognize yourself in one of the “mistakes” that I’ll describe. The best sign of a great instructor is also being a great student. It’s never too late to improve your classroom material or your business strategy!

1MISTAKE

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When I jumped into the world of pro-fessional firearms instructors a dozen

years ago, I was pretty frustrated that there was no up-to-date text-book that I could use in my classes, and like most instructors, I wasn’t thrilled that I had to build an entire PowerPoint presentation from scratch. Nothing would have made me happier than if a senior firearms instructor had said, “Here” as he or she handed me a disc containing every lesson I’d ever want to teach in high resolution PowerPoint slides, full of beautiful im-ages, illustrations, and HD video; and a stack of full col-or textbooks. That dream was shattered pretty quickly when I realized that no such thing existed. So I set out to build a set of classroom materials unlike anything any-one had ever seen.

Not only have I sat through hundreds of PowerPoint presentations, I’ve also given thousands, to audiences as small as one or as large as 6,000. I believe that I’ve at-tained a skill level with PowerPoint that allows the pre-sentation to compliment my knowledge and skill set, and allows me to illustrate topics visually that I would be un-able to illustrate by simply speaking, or by hand gestures alone (some instructors I’ve had over the years seem to think that the more wildly they gesture with their hands, the better our retention will be). Too often however, in-structors believe they’re giving their students a “break” by skipping PowerPoint or other multimedia options in class. In fact, far too often I’ve heard my own instructors say, “Instead of death by PowerPoint, I’m just going to ex-plain the topic.” Occasionally, there will be a weak cheer from class, but most often the reaction is a silent, “So you’re telling us that all we get to do for the rest of the day is sit and watch you talk and gesture?” It’s my belief that the “death by PowerPoint” comment is simply a reflection of the insecurities that the instructor has with present-ing a multi-media presentation, or their own inexperi-

ence and discomfort with the materials themselves. I will agree that simply watching an instructor read bullet points off of a PowerPoint slide (a sign that the instructor doesn’t know the material), is mind numbingly boring. But, when instructors know the material well, the PowerPoint amplifies and reinforces their knowledge and their ability to tell a story or explain a topic, especially when the PowerPoint slide contains an image or illustration explaining the topic visually, rather than just containing text bullet points.

Imagine trying to explain the topic of how a semi-au-tomatic works in front of your class. What’s more effec-tive—explaining the entire process in hundreds of words while gesturing with your hands (“Okay, now imagine that the expanding gasses from within the casing have pushed the bullet down the barrel. Further imagine that the barrel has spiral grooves cut into it...”), or, by using high resolution cutaway illustrations of the inside of a semi-automatic, to show exactly what happens when the trigger is pressed? I also buck the trend when it comes to the “traditional” use of PowerPoint, which suggests no more than a sentence or two per bullet point, and fewer

BELIEVING THAT POWERPOINT OR OTHER MULTIMEDIA IS FOR

TECHNOLOGY NERDS

A picture (or video) is worth a thousand words or more. When designing a presentation, you should first decide how you want to show a skill or topic, and then determine what you should say or write about it.

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than 3—4 bullet points per slide. That approach works for what I call the “big event” type of PowerPoint presen-tation. Picture what Steve Jobs did every time Apple had a big announcement. He’d advance to a slide that had a few big bullets on it, such as “Voice activated com-mands.” Then Jobs would spend ten minutes expound-ing on that topic in a very specific way. But, if Jobs handed that presentation off to ten (or 100) other Apple employees, and told the employee, “explain that bullet point with everything that needs to be said about it,” how consistent or thorough do you think the other pre-senters would be? Big bullets are good for presenting big ideas, but they’re not always best for detailed topics, such as “What is the purpose of a personal protection plan?” or, “What are the rules for the use of deadly force?” Over the years, I’ve also been witness to something in-teresting. I’ve found that when instructors use the “big bullet” approach, their students are more likely to stare blankly at the screen, reading those bullet points (or imagining what they’ll have for din-ner). But, when the instructor fills in the slide with more content (effec-tively making the slide their own cliff notes, with multiple points to reinforce), the student focuses on the instructor, and only refers to the slide when the instructor refers to it.

I also believe whole-heartedly in the “picture is worth a thou-sand words” philosophy. When it came to design of my PowerPoint slides or a section in my book, I’d first think about how I’d explain a topic visually. Whenever I’d add a new topic, I’d first think about how I would vi-sually explain that topic, and then I’d get the illustrations created, I’d have the photos taken, and then I’d create the words around it. As an exam-ple, when I wanted to explain various shooting stances, I had a professional photog-rapher get shots of me not only from the side, I also had shots taken from the front,

and even shots taken from above, which is something I’d never seen before. Whether I’m presenting those imag-es in class, or whether the student is reading about them before or after class, they suddenly get it. That light bulb goes off much more quickly and much more often.

Think about it this way. If you’re simply standing in front of your classroom talking to your students with nothing backing you up visually, you might as well turn the lights out and teach in the dark, or teach by confer-ence call. Students learn visually, and when they hear it and see it on the big screen in class; when they see it and read about it on posters on your classroom walls; and when they’ve read about it before or after class, their retention will be dramatically higher than it would be if they simply saw you standing in front of the class-room speaking, and gesturing wildly. More on student retention next.

Images on the screen, in a text book, and on classroom posters will reinforce what you demonstrate in class, and will

lead to higher retention when the student walks out of your classroom. Quality and creativity count—students can tell the difference between a picture snapped in your basement with a cheap digital camera, versus professional studio shots. In this

example, the student is able to see all angles of the Isosceles stance, including what it looks like from above.

2MISTAKE

6

When I get the chance to get caught up on one or more of the internet gun forums, I love to see questions from new concealed carry permit holders, but I’m dismayed if

the replies include, “Didn’t you learn that in class? Who was your instructor?” Not only are those responses not helpful, they also ignore the fact that knowledge will at-rophy unless it’s continuously relearned—in fact, it’s not unusual for students to retain just 10—20% or less of what they just heard in class. Muscle memory isn’t just about physical movements alone, it’s also about knowl-edge—to believe that your students will file away every-thing you just taught them into their long term memory for immediate recall, is hopelessly naive. That said, there are proven techniques to improve student retention, and there is a logical solution to helping your students to con-tinuously “relearn” the information you taught in class. To improve my student’s retention, I follow a multi-media approach, all sharing the same high resolution imagery.

My courses, and the Firearms Instructor Toolkit contains:• A full-blown PowerPoint presentation following seven

lessons, and containing more than 300 high resolution photos and custom illustrations. It’s a proven fact that in-formation has a higher probability of making it into long term memory if the student not only hears it, but if they also have a visual reference to file away (remember the ex-ample I gave of explaining how a semi-automatic works).

• High-resolution videos that help to break up the course material, and bring in outside expertise. The fact is, as a professional firearms instructor, you could say the exact same thing that I say about the “Reasonable Person Test” in Video #1 (contained in the Instructor’s Toolkit),

BELIEVING THAT YOUR STUDENTS WILL RETAIN EVERYTHING THAT

YOU TAUGHT IN CLASS

You may be an incredible teacher, full of knowledge and amazingly skilled at presenting material to your students. Even so, your students will be lucky to retain 20% of what you taught them when they walk out the door, and 10% a year later. A quality textbook full of the same high resolution graphics, illustrations and images that they saw in class, can lead to dramatically higher student retention, months after your student leaves the classroom.

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but by playing this video in your classroom, your class will be viewed with extra polish; it will be as though you invited me to your class as a visiting expert; and the fact that you’ve just broken up the class format by mixing in multi-media will elevate your student’s attention, and re-tention.

• Classroom posters that reinforce key topics taught in class, and in the book. Even on break, I want my students to continue to learn, so I’ve created half a dozen high res-olution posters, which keep the students talking, asking questions, and learning, even when on break.

• A seven chapter textbook paralleling the classroom presentation, with the exact same lessons, photos, illus-trations and advice that they heard in class. The text-

book, Concealed Carry and Home Defense Fundamentals not only reinforces what the student learned in class, it contains additional information to take the student to the next level. Student retention is driven to all new highs when they not only see it and hear it in class, but if they also read about it before or after class. It’s like get-ting two or three classes (or as many times as they read the book) for the price of one course.

As you might imagine, this multi-media approach not only dramatically improves student retention on these ultra-important topics, it also provides an incredibly high-quality experience for the student, ultimately lead-ing to more referrals, and more butts in the seats.

This poster of what exactly happens when the trigger is pressed, is included in the USCCA Instructor Toolkit, and is one of

six posters available from the USCCA.

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3MISTAKE

If you spend any time at all on Second Amendment web fo-rums, you’ve probably noticed that when the topic rolls around

to concealed carry classes, there is a vocal minority that believes that since self-defense is a natural born right, that the state, and by extension, in-structors, have no right to create arbi-trary hurdles that the concealed car-ry student should be forced to jump through. This minority believes that even if the state requires a con-cealed carry course, that instruc-tors should only provide “mini-malistic” courses which just meet the state’s requirements, and nothing more. While there may be a small per-centage of concealed carry applicants that are simply looking to have their class certificate rubber stamped so that they can send in their application, far more students are looking to be ed-ucated so that they can be responsibly armed Americans, rather than just armed Americans.

Let me add that I believe that the right to self-defense is as natural as a right to breath, a right to be free from slavery, and a right to worship however you choose. I do not view concealed carry laws as bestowing any “right” upon us, rather, I consider them to be meddling with what I view as that natural born right. For state legisla-tures that argue that classes should be a required part of the process since otherwise, permit holders are likely to do stupid, dangerous or illegal things, I’d simply point out that in states such as Arizona and Alaska which sport “constitutional carry” (where the right to carry is inherent for anyone who is not legally barred from owning a fire-arm), the incidence of permit holders breaking the law is

no higher than it is in states that require up to a ten-hour concealed carry course or more. That said, I do believe in education, and if a student comes to me paying good money for a concealed carry class, I am going to deliver to them the best education, the best advice, and the best techniques that I can provide. I will not simply “rubber stamp” any student certificate because I have ethical is-sues with the government requiring a permit for some-thing that I consider to be a right.

Whether you teach a two-hour, a five-hour, or a two-day concealed carry course, give your students the abso-lute best experience that you can provide. If you want to make a name for yourself, make a name by offering the most professional, most complete class in your area. Let the “other guys” teach the absolute minimums, because that’s the amount of knowledge that their students will walk away with.

BELIEVING THAT SINCE THIS IS A RIGHT, YOU CAN JUST RUBBER STAMP STUDENT CERTIFICATES

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4MISTAKE

Let’s face it, we all enjoy telling stories. And if we don’t have a good story to tell, we might be tempted to make one up that makes us sound a bit more interesting to our audience. While

personal “war stories” certainly add a bit of spice to any class, these stories have a habit of overwhelming the ac-tual content that we should be sharing with our students, and they can make the class appear to be more about the instructor, and less about the important material that the student needs to learn. In my experience, instructors will fall back on “war stories” for one of two reasons—one, they may fear that without the stories, their class will be too short since they’re short on actual, trainable mate-rials; or two, the instructor feels that the, “It happened to me” stories are necessary to justify them as an expert. We’ve solved the first prob-lem for firearms instructors with the USCCA Firearms In-structor Toolkit (in fact, there is enough material in our Toolkit to teach up to a ten-hour course); and if you feel that war stories are necessary to justify yourself as an “ex-pert,” stop worrying. Your students will draw the conclu-sion about your expertise based upon how you present yourself, what your classroom materials look like, how you present those materials, and how well you know the content. They aren’t going to measure your “expertise” by how many times you’ve had to draw your firearm on an attacker (in fact, if it was more than once, your stu-dents might wonder if you’re following your own “con-

flict avoidance” advice), and to be honest, your students aren’t going to care how many high-speed, low-drag, advanced defensive shooting courses you’ve personally attended. They will care about how well educated they feel after they leave your class.

War stories also run the risk of inadvertently giving an example of what not to do. For example, if you person-ally experienced a bit of road rage where another driv-er threatened to kill you, the story only has merit if you were completely innocent in the situation. If at any point

the story includes you laying on the horn or flipping your middle finger, you’ve not only failed to teach a lesson about what to do, you’ve also thrown a bit of tarnish on your own image as a trusted advisor.

My advice is that you limit your anecdotal stories to less than ten percent of your to-tal class content, and do not make them all about you, in

fact, I’d go as far as saying that none of them should be about you. Anecdotal stories have more merit if they are a story that you can analyze from all sides, with a criti-cal eye (e.g. “The mistake that I believe the permit holder made was...), and has a conclusion (“The permit holder was found not guilty of attempted murder, but had to plead guilty to second degree assault...).

MAKING CLASS ABOUT WAR STORIES OR POLITICS, RATHER THAN THE FACTS.

YOUR STUDENTS WILL DRAW THE CONCLUSION ABOUT YOUR

EXPERTISE BASED UPON HOW YOU PRESENT YOURSELF, WHAT YOUR CLASSROOM MATERIALS LOOK

LIKE, HOW YOU PRESENT THOSE MATERIALS, AND HOW WELL YOU

KNOW THE CONTENT.

5MISTAKE

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When I start my concealed carry classes, I’ll joke with the audience that if they thought they were going to attend a class that would teach them about how to shoot bad

guys, then they were going to be disappointed. Instead, I’ll let my students know that my class will focus much more on conflict avoidance, situational awareness, the legal and

practical aspects of concealed carry, and a number of oth-er techniques that can help them to avoid ever drawing their firearm in the first place. As they say, the only assured method of surviving a violent encounter is to avoid it in the first place, and as defensive firearms instructors, it’s our re-sponsibly to help our students, first and foremost, to avoid violent crime to the best of their ability.

MAKING YOUR CONCEALED CARRY CLASS MORE ABOUT SHOOTING, AND LESS ABOUT

SITUATIONAL AWARENESS, CONFLICT AVOIDANCE OR THE LAW.

If you pride yourself on being an incredible defensive shooting instructor, with the finest methods of teaching trigger press, sight alignment and stance, but you fail to teach your students about things like situational awareness and conflict avoidance, your students might find themselves in a situation like this, that could have been avoided.

While our classes should contain an introduction to the fundamentals of defensive shooting, my recommendation is that you follow a 70/30 rule on how much time you spend on conflict avoidance, the law, and other aspects dealing with the seriousness of concealed carry, versus the amount of time spent on shooting fundamentals and at the range.

Here’s the problem—the average student attending a concealed carry class will believe, rightly or wrongly, that they’re about to learn everything they need to know to carry a firearm responsibly. You’ll have their attention for four to ten hours (or 16 hours if you’re an Illinois instructor), depending upon the structure of your class. Even if you dedicated 100% of your class time to defensive shooting fundamentals, you couldn’t possibly hope to run through enough repetitions to build long term “muscle memory,” yet you would leave your students with the impression that they’re now done, that they’ve learned it all. Instead, I make my concealed carry classes more about conflict avoidance and understanding the legal and practical implications of carrying a firearm, and my “on the range” portion of class is simply to introduce the students to defensive shooting fundamentals (as opposed to “marksmanship” fundamen-tals), and to make the range time enjoyable enough so that the student is willing to seek out advanced training. While on the range, I’ll run my students through a set of drills to demonstrate how those drills can force a balance of speed versus accuracy, but rather than “scoring” my students on

how many rounds they place in the ten-ring, I’ll instead score them on their ability to follow the Universal Safety Rules and their understanding of the defensive shooting fundamentals. Bottom line, I want them to perceive the range time as entirely enjoyable so that they want to do it again, and again, and again.

Think about it this way—if you knew that after leaving class, every one of your students would be walking through an area known for its high crime rate, what would you want your student to remember? Would you focus on trying to ingrain defensive shooting fundamentals during the few hours that you had their attention captured, or would you teach them the techniques they could use to avoid a crime in the first place? Keep in mind that when I say “ingrained” I mean movement and action that has been repeated so many times that new pathways have been formed in the neural pathways of the student’s cerebellum. Those path-ways are typically only formed after thousands of repeti-tions across weeks or months. For my students, I’d rather have them remember, “I should always be in condition yel-low when in public, and I should trust my instincts if some-thing doesn’t feel right…” rather than, “Drawing from the holster takes five steps. Step number one is...” Use your time in class wisely, and you’ll have created a repeat stu-dent who will be ready for your advanced defensive shoot-ing course when the time is right.

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In my concealed carry and home defense classes, I follow a 70:30 rule. I spend 70 percent of my classroom time discussing the legal and practical aspects of concealed carry, with a heavy emphasis on conflict avoidance and situational awareness. I spend just 30 percent of my classroom time on defensive shooting fundamentals. Those numbers are reversed for my advanced defensive shooting classes, but I consider my concealed carry classes to be entry-level classes. You should assume that your students haven’t heard of things like cover, concealment, situational awareness, and the color codes of awareness. Spend your limited time with your students focused on helping them to avoid violent encounters in the first place, rather than placing too much emphasis on how to shoot bad guys.

6MISTAKE

FOCUSING ON MARKSMANSHIP, RATHER THAN DEFENSIVE FIREARMS SHOOTING.

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There is a significant different between a relaxed day at the range, when compared to what your body will undergoe during a dynamic critial incident. Don’t make the mistake of focusing on “marksmanship” skills, rather than defensive shooting skills. Those marksmanship skills may fail your student if they’re ever confronted with an attacker such as this.

Okay, I just got done saying that I believe it’s a mistake to make the major focus of your con-cealed carry class all about shooting, rather than things like conflict avoidance and the

law; but that doesn’t mean that I believe you should skip time at the range altogether. Even if your state doesn’t re-quire range time as part of the legal course requirements (or even if your state doesn’t have a training requirement at all), I believe that we’re doing our students a disservice if we don’t give them a healthy introduction to defensive shooting fundamentals, on and off the range. As import-ant, range time is also the only chance you’ll get to eval-

uate whether your students have absorbed the lessons that you taught on the proper and safe handling of their firearm.

So let’s talk about what the shooting portion of your class should be about. Many instructors who are new to teaching concealed carry courses can easily slip back into their comfort zone, which might include previous experience teaching firearms safety or basic marksman-ship courses. New shooters, especially new hunters, are often taught a set of marksmanship fundamentals that might work well during a relaxed round of shooting at the range when using a bench rest or sandbag support,

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but those skills simply don’t translate to defensive shoot-ing fundamentals. For example, back in Boy Scouts, I was taught that for accurate shooting (from the prone posi-tion, with sandbag support), I should focus on the front sight, and then breathe in, let it part way out, hold it, and then slowly squeeeeze the trigger in order to avoid antic-ipating the recoil. While that worked at Tomahawk Scout Reservation, it’s not going to work in the chaos of a vio-lent attack with adrenaline screaming through your body, and an attacker just seconds from reaching you, or al-ready upon you. In the time it would take you to “breathe in and let it part way out..,” the fight might be over, yet many training organizations continue to teach the same type of stance, trigger cycle or sight alignment for their defensive handgun courses as they do for their hunter safety courses, and that’s a mistake.

But rather than just explaining to your student that cer-tain skills might be used for marksmanship (or hunting) while other skills must be used for defensive training, I like to explain the “why” around those differences. One of those major “whys” is that unlike relaxed exercises on the range with paper targets at 50 feet, dynamic critical

incidents are usually fast, they’re usually close (with nearly ninety percent falling between 9

and 15 feet), and when rounds are fire, multiple rounds are usually fired. In addition, I’ll explain that when we’re under the extreme stress of a

violent attack, our higher brain will very likely check out, and to one degree or another, auto-

mated responses will take over. Those automat-ed responses (part of our “fight or flight” defenses),

are initiated by a tiny, almond shaped structure in the brain called the amygdala. The amygdala contains most of the brain’s alarm

circuits designed to react to any imminent threat, which would include a violent attack. When its alarm circuits are tripped, the amygdala has a direct connection to the motor cortex (that is, it skips the reasoning and planning part of the brain) in order to take immediate action, such as: freezing our legs if we were about to step in front of a speeding bus; raising our hands to protect our head from a flying rock; or ducking into a crouch, orienting toward a threat, and pushing the arms out to full extension to de-fend against the threat. That last automated response has been recorded time and time again on dash cam videos during police shootings, and must be factored into our training regimens and training advice to our students. While it’s often said, “we’ll fight the way we’ve trained,” those dash cam videos suggest that we should, “train the way we’ll fight” which must include educating our stu-dents on a “natural and neutral” shooting stance (rather than the more choreographed Weaver stance), unsighted fire (which isn’t the same thing as un-aimed fire), and a rapid trigger cycle (which is far from the trigger squeeeeze taught to me in scouts). In your very next class, don’t make the mistake of presenting a single PowerPoint slide on the physiological reactions to violent attacks, and then advising your students at the range to, “focus on the front sight” while you help them to take up a perfect Weaver stance. Don’t forget that you are a defensive firearms in-structor, not a marksmanship firearms instructor.

The Amygdala and endocrhine system are responsible for initiating and sustaining

the body’s “fight or flight” defenses. Instructors must understand what these systems will do during a critial indident, and they should model

their shooting fundamentals portion of class, on what the body will do naturally.

7MISTAKE

PRESENTING AN UNPROFESSIONAL IMAGE

What do your students want to see when they see you standing in front of their class? Do they want to see a reflection of themselves? Do they want to see

someone that looks like you could be their best friend or relative? Or do they want to see an instructor with an aura of confidence, professionalism, and knowledge? Too often instructors believe that they can gain their audience’s trust by acting, talking, or dressing as an “everyday guy.” The reality is, that approach backfires. For example, if your audience is rural, do you gain their confidence as a subject matter expert by wearing your dirty camouflage jacket, greasy blaze orange hat, and sporting a five day growth of beard? Do you exude expertise when you say, “Let me show you this bad a-- f---ing gun.” Let me ask that a question another way. Let’s say you’re concerned about a spot on your chest, and you’re frighted that it might be skin cancer. Two doctors are available for you to meet with. The first dresses professionally, his clothes are new, clean and pressed, and he’s cleanly shaven with neat hair. The second looks like he hasn’t showered or shaved, he’s wearing the aforementioned camouflage jacket and blaze orange hat, and he says, “Let me take a look at that f---ing spot.” Don’t let it throw you that I’m talking about firearms instructors versus doctors. A professional is a professional, and students know when a non-professional is standing in front of them. Your students aren’t looking for someone to fish with, or another hunting buddy. They’re looking for a professional firearms instructor, and they want to believe that you have the answers they’re looking for. Look, and dress the part. If you don’t have a professional instructor golf shirt and hat, the good news is that we include a USCCA Firearms Instructor shirt and hat in the Firearms Instructor Toolkit. Not only will your presentation look great, you’ll look great too.

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While this look might work when you’re plinking on the family land, it isn’t going to work in front of your class. Your students aren’t looking for a “regular guy,” they’re looking for someone who looks like the professional instructor that they’ve paid good money to see. Even if your students wear blaze orange or camouflage to class, you should refrain from doing the same. Instead, wear a professional looking instructor golf shirt and pants, and keep any facial hair neatly trimmed. And, make sure you use a holster for your own handgun.

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Like your children, your students are going to pick-up more on what you do, then on what you say.

Ask the average firearms instructor what their number one goal during any range exercise

would be, and you’re very likely going to hear, “The safety of my students.” At least you should hear that. So when it comes to those ranges exercises, and your handling of your own personal firearm, are you making the mistake of, “Do what I say, not what I do”? When you pick up your firearm, are you absolutely ensuring that your finger remains out-side the triggerguard until you’re on target and have made the decision to fire? Are you exhibiting the best muzzle control of anyone on the firing line? Or are you falling into the trap of, “I’m the expert here, I can get away with things that my students shouldn’t do.” The reality is, students can buy that attitude, up to a point. We’ve all seen countless episodes of TV shows where the host implores the audience, “Do not try this at home!” and then they’ll go on to do something that we shouldn’t, well, try at home. But that’s TV folks.

As a professional instructor, if you’ve just finished telling your students that their muzzle “shouldn’t cover anything they’re not willing to destroy,” and then you go on to use your Glock with the integrated laser sight as a teaching aid to point out, “really interesting things” on your PowerPoint slide, what do you think your student will remember? Will they remember the “Universal Safety Rules” covered 15 slides ago, or will they remember the fact that their instruc-tor didn’t really think it was important? If you instruct your students to never step in front of the firing line on a hot range, and an hour later, you step across the line to pick

up your dropped mag-azine, what will they re-member? As with war stories, instructors can fall into the trap of mis-

understanding what makes them look like a professional to their students. Acting above the rules doesn’t make you look like a professional, it makes you look like an amateur. If you want to keep a professional aura around yourself, don’t just talk the talk, walk the walk.

TAKING A, “DO WHAT I SAY, NOT WHAT I DO” APPROACH.

Like it or not, when you’re on the range or in the classroom, your students are going to not only listen to what you say, they’re going to watch what you do. Are you doing what you’re saying? For example, you can preach the Universal Safety Rules in class, but do you follow them when you get to the range, including keeping your finger outside the triggerguard until you’re on target and have made the decision to shoot?

ACTING ABOVE THE RULES DOESN’T MAKE YOU LOOK LIKE A PROFESSIONAL, IT

MAKES YOU LOOK LIKE AN AMATEUR.

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9MISTAKE

TEACHING WITH AN APPROACH OF, “IT’S BETTER TO BE JUDGED BY 12 RATHER

THAN CARRIED BY SIX” WHEN IT COMES TO THE LEGAL USE OF FORCE.

As concealed carry and defensive shoot-ing instructors, it’s appropriate to teach a healthy dose of the law in our classes, in particular, the laws surrounding the legal

use of force. While I’ll often comment in my classes that the law isn’t a mathematical formula where a situation can be plugged in on one side of the equation and the answer of “Guilty or Not Guilty” spit out the other side; I do believe in properly educating my students on what the law says, how it’s been interpreted in the past, and how it may be interpreted in the future, perhaps in their very own case. However, too often I’ll hear the

legal conversations that should be taking place, dis-missed with the comment of, “I’d rather be judged by 12 than carried by six.” I understand the sentiment of that statement, that is, I get the fact that on the whole, we’d rather have the right to defend our life or the life of a loved one and deal with the fallout, then to not have that right, and most certainly be injured or killed if we’re subject to a violent attack. But the “I’d rather be judged” statement ignores the fact that the actual violent attack or home invasion is just the first of three “injuries” you might face—in other words, if you only concern yourself with protecting yourself from physical

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injury, but you don’t protect yourself from the financial and emotional aftermath, you may be making mistakes that ultimately devastate you financially or emotionally.

When I explain the purpose of a personal and home protection plan to my students, I not only discuss that it’s a plan to help keep them physically safe, I also describe it as a plan to keep them financially and morally safe as well. While it’s easy to understand protecting ourselves and our families physically, the “I’d rather be judged” ar-gument fails to recognize the financial and emotional aftermath that can occur after a use of force, in particu-lar, when the attacker has been injured or killed. While we’d like to think that any defensive use of force on our part would be viewed as a slam dunk in our favor where we’ll be hailed as the hero, but reality is far more compli-cated than that. There are too many stories of individuals who did ev-erything right when it came to a defensive use of force, but still found themselves charged with a crime and facing jail time, the loss of their firearms, and economic ruin. Each year, we hear heart wrenching stories of peo-ple just like us who lost their job or even their homes, because of the financial burdens that were associated with defending themselves in court, after defending themselves on the street or in their homes. The finan-cial burden for many proves to be too great as “the de-fendant” must weigh how much justice he or she can afford. Even in cases where the legally armed American did everything right, the individual might find them-selves accepting a plea bargain, rather than gambling it all, and running the risk of financial ruin.

To illustrate where the “I’d rather be judged” approach fails, let’s look at an example—let’s say that you’re asleep late at night, when you’re suddenly awoken by the sound of breaking glass. Rather than calling 911 and barricad-ing yourself in your bedroom, you decide to grab your home defense shotgun and investigate, because after all, your instructor told you that, “It’s better to be judged by 12 than carried by six.” You silently descend the staircase, a step at a time, all the while hearing sounds of an intrud-er in your basement. As you step off of the bottom step, you suddenly see the intruder silhouetted against the

basement window, and you shout a warning to “Freeze!” Instead, he turns toward you, and you see a flash of met-al in his hands. Reacting instinctively, you fire a blast in the intruder’s direction, and he drops to the floor. With a shaking hand, you turn on the basement lights, only to discover that you’ve just shot and killed your 16-year old neighbor, and the flash of “metal” in his hands, turned out to be a six-pack of beer that the young man had just sto-len from your basement refrigerator. Investigators later tell you that your neighbor’s friends had challenged him to steal the beer from your home, as you’re charged with manslaughter. If that scenario happened to you, how comforted would you be by the words of your instruc-tor, that “It’s better to be judged by 12 rather than car-ried by six”? Or, would you hope beyond hope, that you

could reverse the clock, and make a better deci-sion? Months later and hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, would you be satisfied knowing that you were alive and about to be judged by 12 strangers, half of whom were selected by the

prosecutor? Or would you dream about stepping back to the decisions that you made leading up to the event?

The bottom line is that as a defensive firearms instruc-tor, don’t forget that “defensive” is in your title. If your primary (or only) focus with your students is to teach them defensive shooting fundamentals and you dismiss legal or conflict avoidance topics with the “I’d rather be judged” statement, then you are doing your students a disservice, and your advice (or lack of advice) may ulti-mately get your student killed or jailed, rather than the reverse. In my classes, I’ll often tell my students that if they leave my class with only a single piece of knowl-edge that they’ll use for the rest of their lives, it would be for them to operate their lives in a state of “condition yellow.” I have the confidence that if my students did nothing more than that, their probability of becoming the victim of a violent crime would drop dramatically, as would their probability of being called “the defendant.” If your students remembered one thing and one thing only, what would you want it to be?

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WE’D LIKE TO THINK THAT ANY DEFENSIVE USE OF FORCE ON OUR PART

WOULD BE VIEWED AS A SLAM DUNK IN OUR FAVOR WHERE WE’LL BE HAILED AS THE HERO, BUT REALITY IS FAR MORE

COMPLICATED THAN THAT.

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The world is full of industry experts, whether that expertise is technology, automobiles, firearms, etc. What the world has far fewer of, are industry experts who have successful-

ly launched their own business. In fact, the landscape is littered with experts who tried, and failed, to launch their own business. The rea-sons for those failures are varied, but in most cases, it boils down to the enormous gap between their industry expertise, and everything else that is required to run a suc-cessful business, including an understanding of how to successfully market that busi-ness and sell their “product,” which in the case of a firearms instructor, is the service and knowledge that they provide. In this connected world, there are a variety of ways to advertise your firearms train-ing business beyond placing an ad in your local paper, such as paying for advertising through Google, Bing, or Facebook to name a few. The problem is, those ads can empty your bank account faster than your classes can fill it up unless you understand how internet advertis-ing works. If you take the next big step with us and be-come a USCCA Certified Instructor by taking one of our certification courses, you’d receive education on exactly how to become an internet marketing expert, but until then, we can still help to get your name out there. Here’s how—when you purchase a USCCA Firearms Instructor Toolkit, not only do you get all of the classroom mate-

rials that I’ve already discussed, you’ll also get a spot on our instructor search page. In other words, when students in your local area are ready for a class, they’ll simply come to our instructor page and search on their state. Your name, business, and contact information will be immediately accessible to them, and the fact

that you’re listed as a USCCA Affiliate Instructor will give the student the confidence that your class uses the trust-ed materials contained within the Firearms Instructor Tool-kit. In addition to providing a listing on our website, as a USCCA Affiliate Instructor, you’ll also have access to our twice per month webinars (providing a variety of edu-cation on things as diverse as how to edit PowerPoint slides, to public speaking

techniques); you’ll get an early invitation to our instruc-tor certification courses being held all across the United States; and you’ll have direct access to our staff of USC-CA instructors who can answer any question about the program or materials. Speaking of our materials, you’ll also get frequent updates to the PowerPoint, and you’ll have immediate access to additional classroom videos, student quizzes, and more.

As you can probably tell, the USCCA Instructor Program and the Firearms Instructor Toolkit both allow you to fo-cus on being the firearms and training professional that you’ve worked so hard to become, and it leaves the heavy lifting for course development and marketing to us.

BELIEVING THAT YOU CAN BUILD A FIREARMS TRAINING BUSINESS WITHOUT

UNDERSTANDING HOW TO MARKET IT.

I hope this guide has helped to identify potential mistakes that you might have made if you’re considering launching a firearms training business; and if you already have an existing business, I hope that I didn’t hurt your feelings by pointing out mistakes that you might already be making. The advice in this guide, the contents of our Instructor Toolkit, and the ongoing training, support, and mentoring offered by our cadre of certified instructors are all designed to not just avoid mistakes, they’re designed to help your training business succeed beyond your wildest dreams.

Imagine being considered the best prepared, most professional instructor in your area. We can take you there!

To learn more or to order your Instructor Toolkit, visit: www.USCCAInstructors.com/GetEquipped

Thanks and stay safe,

Michael Martin, Chief InstructorUnited States Concealed Carry Association