We were lucky to catch up with Mario Lepore II recently and have shared our conversation below.

Mario, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about the early days of establishing your own firm. What can you share?

My interest in teaching firearm safety began when my kids became interested. I carried a gun everyday and have very regimented safety and storage practices but they got to an age where they visited friends homes where the safety a storage routines may not be the same. I wanted my kids to understand what a gun is and the magnitude of what it does. When I started teaching them a process originally given to me by a friend who is an ex-Marine, others noticed and asked questions. I decided to start a website and added material little by little which grew into my getting certified to teach the State of Michigan Concealed Pistol course and I started teaching the class in 2019. I’ve added a couple other services since then but the Michigan CPL class remains the most popular class.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’ve always taken a basic approach to firearm safety and a common sense approach to self-protection. I believe that you win 100% of the fights that you avoid and that being aware of your surroundings and the people in those surroundings are the first step to avoiding problems. Should those problems be unavoidable, however, I also believe that being prepared and capable is the best solution.

Firearm safety starts with the basics: treat every firearm as if it were loaded, never point a firearm at anything that you are not willing to destroy, keep your finger off the trigger until you are prepared to fire and, last but not least, know your target and what’s beyond.

We start talking about live fire drills while we are still in the classroom. We discuss range safety long before we move to the range and everyone is closely monitored on the firing line. We begin with grip and stance before talking about aim and sites. It’s a slow process but for good reason.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

The most effective strategy that I have found for growing my market in the local firearm space has been word of mouth. I have had a couple local firearm dealers that refer customers to First Response Firearm and past students typically tell others they know are interested in getting a CPL to call us. We’ve had great success with word of mouth marketing so far and that may be a testament to the quality of the class and the material presented.

Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?

We spent some time running self-defense seminars for real estate brokers. Many real estate agents are woman who may be showing homes or properties in rural areas alone and we wanted to teach them to feel and be safe. A number of those agents turned into CPL students along the way.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://firstresponsefirearm.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/firstresponsefirearm/
• Facebook: facebook.com/firstresponsefirearmMI