We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Maddy Scholar a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Maddy, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?
Built on Christian values, the Red Letter Project got its name from the words Jesus spoke, which are typically written in red ink in traditional Bibles.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Owner and founder of The Red Letter Project and MaddyDawg Training, Maddy found her passion for shooting during her time in the US Coast Guard. During and after her time in service, she completed her Masters degree oversees in the United Kingdom and is a 4x published author in addition to her shooting career.
Maddy teaches full time and co-founded the Lady Sharpshooters group with her mother, Melissa. She is also an avid competitive shooter and looks to include more women in the sport. In addition, Maddy attributes much of her teaching abilities to her background in competitive cage fighting, skydiving, bullriding, and river diving. Specifically, her passion for combat sports has led her to spread awareness of the importance of understanding how to better defend.
The Red Letter Project was designed to be one of the first of its kind, a women’s retreat that encompasses much more than just shooting, to include medical, hand to hand, vehicle application, low light, survival, and more as each retreat has its own theme. With a host of instructors, the project welcomes more women to the shooting community who are like minded and seeking training to become more capable and proficient. We believe that God places a special emphasis on the value of human life throughout scripture, giving us reason to want to become protectors of ourselves and others.
We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.
The Red Letter Project is currently in the process of releasing its first product which will be a shooting journal. It is designed with serious shooters in mind, no matter their level of skill, in order to help them better plan their training sessions, analyze strengths and weaknesses, recognize patterns, and retain information in classes.
A major lesson learned when designing this product is the fact that there will be several phases of refining certain sections over and over again, getting second opinions, changing graphics, etc. This product has been a work in progress for over a year, and it is just now getting to its final phase.
Before discovering Amazon KDP, we had no idea how to go about publishing a journal. This is honestly what caused most of the process to be as long as it did. Credits to a good friend of mine for making me aware of KDP, which has made the process much easier.
What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?
My local clients are where I derive probably 75% of my business from. Before doing any teaching out of state, I made sure to establish a relationship my local community first. The regular’s in my home town have supported me and been consistent from the start, the business would not be functional with out them. Of course, as the business started to grow, clientele from other areas became possible, and also started to come from social media. However, this is less reliable since social media accounts can cease to exist at any moment. I am appreciative of those who travel to take my classes. Most of the women who attend the weekend retreats come from out of town, coming from as far as Hawaii and New York. It is incredible how the internet has connected us all and made it possible, but at the end of the day, it is very important to me to continue to serve my local community.
Contact Info:
Image Credits
David Garcia- DG Diverse Visuals LLC Rhett Bingham