Sam Westfall, Archery N Motion

[00:00:56] Sanjay Parekh: Today's guest is Sam Westfall, the founder of Archery N Motion, an archery range and equipment supplier based out of Colorado Springs, Colorado. Sam has 35 years of experience in the field and started the company in 2023. Sam, welcome to the show. 

[00:01:11] Sam Westfall: Good morning, Sanjay. 

[00:01:13] Sanjay Parekh: So, I'm excited to have you on because I don't believe we've ever had anybody in the archery field on the show. So, this is going to be fascinating and new, and I think a learning experience for the rest of us. But before we get into that, give us a little bit about your background and what got you to where you are today. 

[00:01:31] Sam Westfall: Absolutely. So, we'll start off with, I got into the army as a tank mechanic, working on some heavy steel, doing some maintenance and welding.

I got out of the military after I was injured, spent the next 22 years working in IT. So I got, different technologies, different spaces across different industries. You combine that with 35 years as a hunter and competitive shooter. And it finally became time for me to start my own thing. And what I'm passionate about is shooting, competitions, and hunting.

And the best way to bring all that together was to make a moving target platform that reduced the number of wounded animals for all those hunters. So, let's smash that experience together. And here we are. 

[00:02:12] Sanjay Parekh: Okay. I’ve got to ask, because I have a fascination with the military. You worked on tanks, as a mechanic, what was that like? Those are big honking machines. 

[00:02:25] Sam Westfall: So, 72 tons of just pure unadulterated steel, the turbine on the M1 is 1500 horsepower, all kinds of power, 120-millimeter smooth bore cannon. They're just monsters. Everything on them is heavy. Everything on them hurts. So, you get a lot of good experience of lifting heavy stuff.

[00:02:46] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, so this was the M1 Abrams tank, I take it, that you were working on. 

[00:02:50] Sam Westfall: Correct. Yep. 

[00:02:51] Sanjay Parekh: Okay. Yeah. So, given that, I've actually spent a little bit of time working on locomotives during college. I worked for General Electric working on locomotives and to go out to the test track, you had to have steel toed shoes to protect your feet in case something fell on it. I imagine steel toed shoes are not going to protect you with a tank. 

[00:03:12] Sam Westfall: Not even a little bit.

[00:03:12] Sanjay Parekh: Was that required, were steel toed shoes required or no? They were like, no, you're just done. 

[00:03:17] Sam Westfall: Yeah. You don't stand a chance. All it's going to do is, if it rolls over the cup of that steel toe, it's just going to cut your toes off. So it's not even worth it. 

[00:03:28] Sanjay Parekh: So, it's better not to have the steel toed shoes at all. 

[00:03:31] Sam Westfall: Exactly. 

[00:03:33] Sanjay Parekh: Okay. So, then you spent, after coming out of the military, you spent, what did you say, 20 something years in IT.

[00:03:37] Sam Westfall: 22 years. Yep.

[00:03:37] Sanjay Parekh: Okay, doing what kind of technology stuff? 

[00:03:40] Sam Westfall: So, I predominantly most of that in management, but I spent time from desktop level all the way to infrastructure engineer manager. You know, built out a new headquarters building for a credit union here in Colorado Springs. It was my last major project. Kinda ran the gamut of networking physical servers, data centers, building out that server environment, virtual systems, ran the gamut.

[00:04:08] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. okay. So you've got these two experiences that are very different and now you're doing systems to help people shoot better. I get that right, right? So, what, pieces from both of these experiences are you combining to do this new thing? 

[00:04:27] Sam Westfall: Oh, so that's the best question. So, from the military, I brought that determination, that discipline, that hard drive and control, but also brought some of that welding experience from that aspect. From the IT side, if you're going to make a moving target that's wireless controlled and that has some type of electronics, that you're not just pulling a string to move a target back and forth, you want to make sure that it has a level of automation to it. And can really be, single person, single operator controlled, 120 yards out. You got to have that level of IT experience in order to bring that together.

[00:05:02] Sanjay Parekh: Okay. Yeah. So, what kind of technology, what kind of communication technologies are you using? I'm a tech nerd, so I'm going to dig into this. So, what kind of communication technologies are you using for these platforms? 

[00:05:13] Sam Westfall: So there's an RF wireless control that goes out to 120 yards, and that's probably the biggest component of that. There's a simple motor, there's a solar panel, there's a couple of small controller boards, but really it's fairly straightforward. 

[00:05:28] Sanjay Parekh: So, this is all off-the-shelf stuff that you're picking up and integrating. 

[00:05:33] Sam Westfall: Yup. 

[00:05:34] Sanjay Parekh: Okay, awesome. Let's step back a little bit. You've been doing this for about a year now.

Is this your first time doing a company starting up something new like this?

[00:05:45] Sam Westfall: It is. I worked for a IT startup years and years ago, but this is like you said earlier, this is a whole different monster. This is for me, it's stepping into being a entrepreneur. Being an owner of a business is a whole different world than just working a bit in a business.

[00:06:02] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. So had you done anything entrepreneurial when you were younger, like when you were a kid, any entrepreneurs in the family, anything like that? 

[00:06:10] Sam Westfall: My folks ran a trucking company for a number of years. And then, as they started to wind down in their life, they owned a hot dog stand that they worked outside of a VA facility in Phoenix, but that's really the extent of entrepreneurship that I've been around. 

[00:06:25] Sanjay Parekh: You never worked the hot dog stand or in the trucking business. I take it. Those are two very distinctly different businesses to run, I’ve got to say and I'm not sure how they made that transition from trucking to hot dogs, we'll leave it at that. 

So, in terms of you your first time doing a company, what made you make that leap and say, oh, I've got this nice IT job, but now, I'm just going to, even though I've never done it, I'm going to just start my own thing. And this is what I'm going to do. What was that switch that caused you to do that? 

[00:07:06] Sam Westfall: You worked in IT for a number of years, you, hit those levels of burnout over periods of time. And last April, I hit that next level of burnout, and I went, I need something different.

I need something to keep me focused, keep me moving. And knowing what I was doing with the previous company, I built that headquarters building. In IT you're never going to get that opportunity to stand up that green field like that ever again. I said, well, let's go do something that I want to do. Something that's going to keep me focused and keep me entertained for a while. 

[00:07:37] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Just like your folks, this is a weird leap to go from IT to archery targets that are moving. So how long had you been thinking about this as a thing that you wanted to do? 

[00:07:52] Sam Westfall: So, I'd actually been thinking about building the mover for about three years.

My buddies and I, we got done with an event a couple of years back. We went to the bar; we're sitting there BS-ing and I grabbed a napkin. I started drawing something out and they kind of, What are you doing? I said, Well, I'm thinking about making a moving target. They're like, Yeah. Okay. Whatever. Drink your beer.

And so, over a three-year period that. kind of evolved a little bit. I came up with a couple of different designs, a couple of different ideas. And as of April of last year, I said, okay, let's make it. So, I broke out the welder. I bought some steel, fabricated it all up, took it out to my buddy's house, and we started shooting it and the three guys that were sitting there shooting with me, they all looked at me and said, you need to make this a business because this is going to rock and roll. 

[00:08:35] Sanjay Parekh: So, this was before you actually quit your job, right? 

[00:08:39] Sam Westfall: Correct. 

[00:08:40] Sanjay Parekh: You were still working at this point. Okay. So how long after that was it that you were like, okay, I'm all in? 

[00:08:47] Sam Westfall: Probably within a month. As I started to build it and said, okay, what's this really going to take? How much time is this going to consume between building up marketing, building a brand strategy, building up a brand presence. and then getting into the manufacturing. In that same period of time, I also stepped into a couple different veteran entrepreneurs, startup incubators and accelerator programs.

And those were taking up a bunch of my time. And I said, If I'm going to jump this deep into this, I need to walk away from this one and really focus in what I want to focus on. And so, it was time to walk away. 

[00:09:20] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. In terms of walking away, how did you tell the people that you were working with?

Did you tell them what you were going to do and what was their reception to that? 

[00:09:32] Sam Westfall: A couple of the upper lines, direct manager, previous manager, VP, all looked at me and went, well, if anybody's going to make it successful, it's you. Good luck. Go do it.

[00:09:43] Sanjay Parekh: That's a great way, and a nice way to be able to leave previous jobs. Not everybody has that experience. and so, I'm glad that you did. 

So, in jumping in with both feet, was there anything that made you nervous about going all in like this?

[00:10:01] Sam Westfall: Every part of it, every part of it. I've never managed, I've never owned a business. I had no idea how to do taxes. I had no idea how to bring that real, that sales, that marketing aspect to life. So I've had to fumble around a little bit. 

Thankfully, those different groups that I was a part of, they've, been right there to back me. My wife is a hundred percent supportive the whole way through it. Ao, I've had a good momentum to it. Haven't made any sales yet. Revenue is still zero, but that's, building that process, right?

[00:10:38] Sanjay Parekh: Right, right. Okay. So, revenue zero. How have you funded the last year of efforts? 

[00:10:46] Sam Westfall: Bootstrapped, and that's a whole nine yards, right? 22 years in an IT career, I was making good money. I had stashed a bunch of money away in different aspects, different avenues. I had a good handle on savings. And so I've been able to rock and roll for a year. 

My wife still has her full time job. So that's controlling some of it. and we've tried to minimize as best we can, but still put a lot of effort towards the business. Haven't put a whole lot of money towards it, outside of some prototypes and demo units and that type of thing.

Everything from the online presence, I haven't paid for SEO. I haven't paid for marketing. I've done all of that myself. And as of last Thursday, according to Feedspot, I made it onto the number one, or into the number six spot for best archery blog. 

[00:11:35] Sanjay Parekh: Okay. That's nice. So, content creation to get your name out there, that's awesome.

So in starting it, so last year when you went all in, what was your plan? You thought, okay, I can do this for two years, no revenue or one year, no revenue. Like how long did you think you could go? And do you have a plan of okay, at some point do you pull the plug? 

[00:11:58] Sam Westfall: Yes. So we originally looked at probably a year and a half. So we're, getting towards that window. and I don't know if I want to pull the plug just yet. I want to see it start to come to fruition first. And in the last, let's call it six weeks, I've made a lot of good momentum. I've got three different major archery tournaments that are looking at having me a part of their event.

I've got a handful of different archery ranges themselves that have really started to pay attention to what I'm doing. I'm sure that those are going to pan out a little bit. I met a really awesome, tactical training group this past weekend and they've already said, yeah, we need to see it so that we can start shooting at it.

So I think the momentum is starting to build towards those sales and a push that I won't have to go back to a full time job that I can really keep focusing on this. 

[00:12:47] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, and this is one of the struggles with entrepreneurship is that it can be so long before something happens and then everything seems to happen in the last eight seconds of the thing and, you don't know when those last eight seconds are. Like, if you wait just another couple of minutes, maybe you'll hit that last eight seconds and then everything happens. So it's a struggle. 

So how do you deal with that for yourself? Of this question, right? Like you've gone a year now, no sales yet. I say yet because I'm sure it's coming, but we all have that self-doubt and everything else that happens. How do you deal with that for yourself?

[00:13:29] Sam Westfall: There's a lot of talking to myself and some of it's not in a good way. But one of those groups that I was a part of, we had a kind of a routine every week when we got together. It was, what's your personal best, what's your business best, what makes you nervous and how can we help each other?

And so having that, level of support system, it's not just the voice in my head, it's somebody else, standing there next to me, which has been huge. Going to 1 Million Cups every week, being part of a little networking event and seeing the recognition over the last six months there has been good as well.

And then I go to the range and I shoot. And some of that's for marketing videos, but some of that's also a PTSD relief and just a stress relief as I go let some arrows fly and get refocused and come right back to it and keep that determination going.

[00:14:19] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. So, that's great that the business itself is actually a good way for you to release stress.

[00:14:26] Sam Westfall: It's an outlet. 

[00:14:28] Sanjay Parekh: It's an outlet. but how do you manage stress otherwise? there's like in the middle of the day, like things are going bad. You can't be just like, ah, I'm going to take a couple hours off and go out to the range. Is there anything else that you do to help yourself manage stress?

[00:14:46] Sam Westfall: Yeah. It's take the dog for a walk. It's sit down and have a conversation with the wife. It’s reach out to those guys that I'm connected with to say, Hey, today's a rough day, help pick me up out of the ditch a little bit. And we're all there for each other.

That's the wonderful part about some of those other groups is that, the camaraderie of all being veteran entrepreneurs has really been helpful. 

[00:15:07] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Yeah. It's fantastic that you have such a group and then you have a common kind of background and bond. But even just in general, having entrepreneurs in your corner is a great thing because a lot of people that are not entrepreneurs, don't necessarily understand the trials and tribulations of us as founders and entrepreneurs. So, that's fantastic. 

[00:15:30] Adam Walker: Support for this podcast comes from Hiscox, committed to helping small businesses protect their dreams since 1901. Quotes and information on customized insurance for specific risks are available at Hiscox.com. Hiscox, business insurance experts.

[00:15:52] Sanjay Parekh: Okay, so you've been working on this for about a year now, and it's just you, right? Like you're the only person in the company right now. 

[00:16:00] Sam Westfall: Yeah. 

[00:16:01] Sanjay Parekh: So it's really easy — there's a lot to do, undoubtedly, right? So it's really easy for this to become a 24/7 job, and for it to eat up 110 percent of your time.

How do you maintain those boundaries between business and personal life and everything else that you've got to do? 

[00:16:21] Sam Westfall: Yep. So there's, my wife and I had that conversation when I first got started and we said, okay, here's, how that's going to play out. I need X number of hours in throughout the course of the day.

So we normally up and out of bed 5:00, 5:15. I do a quick workout. We get dressed, we get showered, we get breakfast together. She goes to her job. I go to my job. It's right here in the living room, or it's out in the garage, or it's out at the archery range. But I go to my job, right?

And then at dinner time, it's done. I have dinner, we'll sit down, we'll have another conversation, we'll relax for the rest of the evening. If I need to take a note so that I remember something for the next day, then I'll just write a quick note or throw it in my phone, whatever the case may be.

But I try to have that separation between work and home as best I can. 

[00:17:10] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Well, what about weekends for you? 

[00:17:13] Sam Westfall: Weekends, that's the one that we're still coming to terms with. A lot of the different archery events, a lot of different shooting events happen over weekends. And so my, week work days might have to shift to a couple of weekdays and then the weekend.

So we're still trying to see how that's going to play out. It's about to get real interesting though. 

[00:17:35] Sanjay Parekh: Is this the peak time for archery events now that we're starting to get into the spring soon? 

[00:17:40] Sam Westfall: Yeah. So spring, summer are a lot of the events, and they're scattered throughout the US. And like I said, three major events really want me at their, as part of their venue.

So I'm going to be doing a little bit of traveling, load up the truck, load up a trailer, haul the movers out. Take a couple of targets with me. So, there's some travel time involved. There's going to be the event itself and then travel time back and then put all the pieces back together for the next weekend.

[00:18:05] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. In terms of distance wise, where are we talking about geographically in the US? 

[00:18:11] Sam Westfall: So, this first, I bet this first six months is from Colorado Springs down to Raton, New Mexico, up to the north end of Wyoming, potentially into Wisconsin, over to Utah. So, we're not crossing the entire country, but we're definitely getting some distance.

[00:18:27] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, that's a good ways. And this is not a thing that you can fly to, because you've got to take targets and all these electronics and stuff. So you're road tripping. 

[00:18:38] Sam Westfall: The base plate is 56 pounds, so it's, you can't just throw that in the plane. 

[00:18:44] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Yeah. There’s going to be some, baggage fees if you throw that in a plane. So probably better to drive. 

Although that said, we are huge road trippers and we love driving around the country. You definitely get to see a lot of the country that you just miss when you're flying. Hopefully that'll be a great opportunity for you to see some stuff along the way.

[00:19:07] Sam Westfall: It also gives me an opportunity to stop at every archery range in between so that I can promote it a little bit more. 

[00:19:13] Sanjay Parekh: There you go. See, that's what I'm talking about. It's like multiplying your time and using your time wisely to do sales along the way. That's great. 

So I think you mentioned, you've got, it sounds like a set schedule, like every morning you're up at around 5:00, 5:15. So. are you like regimented in terms of sleep and wellness stuff? Like you're always going to make sure you get that in. 

[00:19:36] Sam Westfall: For the most part. Yep. For the most part. Creature of habit is definitely the phrase, so try to be in bed 9:00, 9:30 at the latest. Usually get a decent five, six hours of sleep, wake up at some point, take a couple notes, try to go back to sleep. Alarm goes off at five. We're off to the races. 

[00:19:53] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Is this, I feel like this is like a standard thing with folks that have been in the military. Is this something that started for you in the military and is now just carried forward? 

[00:20:03] Sam Westfall: Well, it got deeper ingrained in the military. I grew up on a farm, when I was young and so waking up early and going out and doing chores and that type of thing, it was a thing. So yeah, military just deeper ingrained it. 

[00:20:18] Sanjay Parekh: So, see, you left out that whole bit about growing up on a farm because that is a very entrepreneurial experience there too. The family had a farm growing up and, I'm assuming you worked on the farm.

[00:20:32] Sam Westfall: Absolutely. 

[00:20:35] Sanjay Parekh: I think that's a standard thing.

[00:20:36] That's the reason why you have kids and you have a farm is to have them work on the farm, right?

[00:20:41] Sam Westfall: That's right. 

[00:20:43] Sanjay Parekh: That's great. That's great. okay. So you've been doing it for about a year now. There's probably been a lot of lessons. You're talking about doing SEO and marketing and all of these things yourself.

Already, thinking back, is there something that, knowing what you know now, would you go back and be like, man, I should have done this differently. And this is how I would have done it? 

[00:21:08] Sam Westfall: Yeah, there's a few things that I could, definitely see where I’d change the order of precedence a little bit. Went through a couple of different vendors for certain things, right? Web hosting, business creation, those type of things. I probably wouldn't have done that again or do that the same way the second time. 

I realized after the fact, Hey, I paid $400 for this to be done and I could have filed it for free if I would have just taken the time and learned that. In that, there was one point where, as I was working through the provisional patent and going down that path, I was looking at using a lawyer to file that provisional patent.  Well, it turns out, veterans can actually file for the patent for free, using the patent office. So that was one of those cool things that I found along the way. It's just, it's finding that level of exposure and who the right resource is to utilize it.

[00:22:04] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Yeah. Patents are an interesting thing. And just so our listeners know, actually everybody can file for very inexpensive. So if it's a provisional patent, it's only $100 to file with the patent office, and I think there might actually even be less expensive levels now, if you're a very small company as well. Don't quote me on that, but, they have it all on the U.S Patent and Trademark Office website.

So, I actually have 13 patents myself. and I think you learn a lot once you go through the process. After I did my first one, I'll tell you, my first one was a tough one. Because like you, you just want to get to building the thing, and writing a paper about how you build a thing is just so boring, quite honestly.

[00:22:56] Sam Westfall: It is. 

[00:22:57] Sanjay Parekh: And the amount of excruciating detail that you have to put in that to make it a valid, strong patent is just so painful, as somebody who wants to just tinker.

It's useful, I highly recommend it if any of our listeners are doing something that is protectable, you should consult somebody and talk to somebody and figure out how to do it. I now have gotten to the point where I can do it myself and I can write them and I know how detailed to make it and all that stuff, but it's totally an experience thing. 

So you've got one provisional, is it just one provisional or multiple? 

[00:23:30] Sam Westfall: Two. 

[00:23:31] Sanjay Parekh: You've got two provisionals so you've presumably filed them some point in this last year.

You've got to file the full patent at some point. And then wait for it to get prosecuted and hopefully issued. So you haven't filed your full, patents yet, I take it.

[00:23:42] Sam Westfall: Not the full patent, just provisionals for now. 

[00:23:45] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, and hopefully you've got a lawyer that's helping you with that because that is definitely a lawyer aspect. The provisional you can do it yourself, but the full thing, man, that's right. It is definitely a thing. And, even to the graphics that they require in those patents, you have to do them a certain way and it's not normal for regular humans like you and me. You've got to have somebody with superpowers, the patent lawyer superpowers to do that. 

Anything else that now looking back, you'd be like, man, knowing what I know now, I’d do that differently too? 

[00:24:22] Sam Westfall: Finding the right keywords to focus towards. Archery is a small niche all in its own right. And when you say archery down to moving targets, that's a very,very minute niche.

So finding the right keywords ahead of time, building up kind of what that looks like and making sure you're utilizing those same keyword structure, keyword format across all social media or across all platforms is really the key piece. I wasn't following that to start with and I learned my lesson the hard way.

[00:24:54] Sanjay Parekh: So, the marketing side of it is definitely hard. And that's probably one of the key pieces for anybody that's starting a business now. Thirty years ago, that was not a thing. you just started and tried to get articles or put ads and magazines and things like that. But now, it's all about SEO and marketing.

I'm interested in you starting this by yourself as well. A lot of times we have single founders, we have. folks that are founders with others. What is your kind of feeling? Like, why did you decide to go this alone and not have a co-founder with you? 

[00:25:30] Sam Westfall: So, co founders are fun. I've got a buddy of mine that I shoot with. He's very much right there next to me, right? He is a partner, but he's not a true founder. He hasn't invested any money into it. He's just invested time with me. It's a unique enough, small enough thing that I didn't want to chase a whole bunch of other partners, founders, and even to some extent investors, right?

I've had a couple of conversations with investors. And one of them said, Sam, I don't know your space well enough to where I could even say we could offer you money because it is such a small thing. And I understand that. So, finding the right founder, finding that right partner has been, in some cases, on me because I didn't want one, but in the other cases, very difficult to even find the right match.

[00:26:21] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Yeah, I, can understand that. And from the investor side too, it's really important to have somebody, there's a term called dumb money where it's somebody that's just giving you money that provides no other value. And a lot of founders feel like, oh, I just need money. And in reality, it's more than money that you need, right?

The money is just the thing that's helping the transaction. It's actually the access to introductions and, for somebody like you, access to manufacturing partners would be a fantastic thing that would help you along the way, because very likely you've been just trying to figure it out as you go.

And somebody out there probably already knows, like there's this one manufacturer that could exactly do everything that you need. It's going to be tough for you to find them. 

[00:27:08] Sam Westfall: It is. Now I've did find a workforce center here locally, and one of the folks that I was talking with there, she said, as you need to get deeper into the manufacturing side, she goes, not full scale, for interim, she goes, we could introduce you to a local welding school and that you can use those welding students to help build up that, your base on what that looks like.

So I've got opportunities there. It's just as I need them, then I'm going to jump into them. 

[00:27:38] Sanjay Parekh: Wow. And, what a great idea to use students for that because for you, you get two things. You probably get cheap labor. They get skills, which is good for their resume. But then you also get to almost try out potential employees for the future without having to put money in. That is actually a really smart move, and I think more founders should think about potential students that they could use to do things like this. 

[00:28:06] Sam Westfall: Like I said, the different groups that I've gone through and some of the connections that I've made out of those have really been helpful because it offered me a different avenue than what, really out of the box thinking, more so than what I was looking at.

[00:28:19] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Yeah, that's great. Okay, last question for you. If you were talking to somebody else that was thinking about taking the leap like you did and either starting a side hustle, or going all in like you did into a small business, what would your advice be for them? 

[00:28:36] Sam Westfall: Do your research first, make your connections, build your network, and then take the dive because it's worthwhile. It's not easy. It's stressful, but it's very worthwhile. 

[00:28:48] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, I love it. I love it. Sam, where can our listeners find and connect with you online? 

[00:28:54] Sam Westfall: So, all the social media handles are @ArcheryNMotion, the website is the same ArcheryNMotion.com. I'm happy to connect up with whoever. 

[00:29:06] Sanjay Parekh: Awesome. Thanks so much for being on the show today.

[00:29:09] Sam Westfall: Sanjay, thank you very much. 

[00:29:11] Sanjay Parekh: Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the side hustle to small business podcast powered by Hiscox. To learn more about how Hiscox can help protect your small business through intelligent insurance solutions, visit Hiscox.com. And if you have a story you want to hear on this podcast, please visit Hiscox.com/ShareYourStory. I'm your host, Sanjay Parekh. You can find out more about me at my website, SanjayParekh.com.