We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Dan Fisher. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Dan below.

Alright, Dan thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Your ability to build a team is often a key determinant of your success as a business owner and so we’d love to get a conversation going with successful entrepreneurs like yourself around what your recruiting process was like -especially early on. How did you build your team?

I was let go from my position in Corporate America. In the time between starting American Axes, I applied for many jobs back in the corporate world. What I found to be incredibly frustrating was the lack of communication or effort from the potential employer. I wanted to make sure that we would be different. We have been very forward in our communication with potential employees and when we hire for positions, there are many people who don’t get the job. For those people, we invite them to come to our business and experience axe throwing for free. This has surfaced several people who we identified as future potential employees that we wouldn’t have met otherwise because their resume may not have seemed like a fit or they had a bad phone interview. This is a practice that we are proud of and has helped us identify people who genuinely want to be around us.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am a career marketer with a focus in professional sports both with teams or agencies. I decided to start American Axes in 2019 after being let go from my job in corporate America. I visited a different axe throwing venue and thought it was a great time and our goal was to build the best experience in axe throwing. We’re perfect for date nights, group outings and corporate teambuilding events and position ourselves near breweries and restaurants.

We opened our doors in January 2020 and within 3 months, we were closed as a result of COVID. We managed to survive this by being flexible with the ever changing protocols set forth by government. It was also at this time that we decided to build a mobile axe throwing unit where we were able to take our experience to you. This pivot was unexpected, but it has become a significant piece of our business.

Being able to build the business and survive through a pandemic is without a doubt the greatest accomplishment of my career and we’re very excited to grow to multiple stores and outside of Georgia in 2022.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

It’s been quite a run of ups and downs since 2019 for my family. American Axes would never have come into existence had I not been let go from my job in corporate america. I had made a comfortable career in sports marketing and all of a sudden, I was let go in a corporate downsizing in February 2019. After some soul searching, I decided to pursue entrepreneurship and my wife supported me for a year while we wrote a business plan and finalized funding from within our family. With an open date of January 10, 2020, you know what is going to happen next – the pandemic shut us down exactly 9-weeks after we opened. During the next two years, we adapted with every change in regulation and played by the rules, but reality was that we were at limited capacity and our opportunity to be the only show in town ended with many more axe throwing venues opening up during this period of time. We pivoted and added mobile axe throwing as a line of business as a result of the pandemic – we could now take the expereince to you and that decision helped save us through two difficult years. Then in 2022, my wife became very ill following the birth of our son and was hospitalized for weeks, fighting for her life. I had to step away from work to be a husband and her health advocate for this period of time while relying on our people to take over and run everything. I think through these challenges over the last few years, I have learned to appreciate success that much more because it is very hard and I feel fortunate to have been able to face some of the biggest challenges of my life and come out on the other side stronger and a better leader.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

There are two things that I do that I think all managers should constantly work at. The first is to practice listening – I do my best to always be available to talk to my employees and even ask the question, “is everything alright?” Being invested in your people and willing to ask questions to identify problems is something that I will always do and hopefully continue to improve on myself. The second is to make sure to dedicate time to your team outside of work. It’s during those trips off-site that you really get to know your people and stay off work topics. We try to do quarterly retreats outside of our stores so that our staff get to know each other better. We also try to do smaller events in-house where I will grill out food and stock the cooler a couple times a year with our full team.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://american-axes.com/
• Instagram: americanaxes
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AmericanAxes/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/76980959/
• Twitter: americanaxes
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4KNRETWeAsfKT8NbjrimZQ
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/american-axes-atlanta-atlanta