Jason Young: Founder at Ballistic

^{Joe Fox (00:00.847)}
Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of retain growth thrive. I am very lucky to have a friend of mine on today, Jason Young from Ballistic. Jason is also a fellow man of God. He's someone I've known in business for a long time. We share the same passions and interests. He's an incredible businessman and incredible agency owner and founder, a very loving dad and family man as well and husband. So

Without further ado, I want to introduce Jason Young from Ballistic Agency. How you doing, Jason?

_{Jason @ Ballistic (00:31.576)}
Joe man, I'm good. I'm even better after that intro. So I sound like an accomplished person. Like I've actually done something. I appreciate that.

^{Joe Fox (00:35.696)}
You certainly have, you certainly have my friend. no, it's really good to have you on the show. I mean, selfishly, a lot of people may or may not know, but you know, firearms, the tactical space, that's very much where my interest lies. So you and I can chat all day about technology and SAS and digital, but then we can also talk all day about that side of things. So, I'd love for you to just give a little bit of a background of it.

Ballistic Jason, how you got into the agency space, how you really found your niche, because I think unlike a lot of, you know, other agencies who try and really go wide and try and work with everyone or the, all of those sorts of things. I feel like you've done an incredible job at Ballistic of really kind of niching down and working with a lot of cool brands. So can you give a little bit of background on that?

_{Jason @ Ballistic (01:27.97)}
Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate the opportunity. So 17 years ago, during the economic downturn of 2008, got let go, I got laid off and that hurt. But I looked at my wife and my two children at the time and I said, you know what, we can't be any more poor than I am now. And I've always wanted to start a business.

I'm a recovering IT guy. So I had worked in IT prior to that. Mostly I'm like server switches, routers, that kind of thing, internet technology, web hosting, that kind of deal. And I wanted to apply that to an industry that was just starting to boom. And that was an industry that I've been involved in and interested in since I was five years old when my dad took me shooting for the first time. And that is the gun industry, or as we call it professionally, the shooting, hunting and outdoor and tactical space, the shot industry.

^{Joe Fox (01:56.676)}
Yep. Yep.

_{Jason @ Ballistic (02:17.402)}
And so what I did 17 years ago was decide to help people in the industry sell direct to consumer online and specifically manufacturers, large dealers and distributors. And that has taken me exactly where I wanted to be, quite honestly. And it's because from day one, like you said, I chose a niche and went hard into it. When you choose a niche like that, you answer a lot of questions immediately. Who am I?

What do I stand for? Who do I serve? Who do I market to? What events do I go to? Lots of questions get answered when you decide on a niche like that early on. Did it limit our growth in the early days? Yes, absolutely. We could have taken money from anybody that wanted to sell online and do a better job, but we stuck to our guns and decided to just serve this industry. so that's kind of how we got started. Also,

Selfishly, I love attending the events and the people in this industry, but also go into shooting matches and training classes and that kind of thing. So those are legitimate events and, and, calendar items that I can attend and, and make a part of my business.

^{Joe Fox (03:28.087)}
Yeah, absolutely. And I think you touched on some really, really cool points there. So like, you know, I know, the, I know this space a little bit from, from my side of it, probably more of a consumer in this space more than other verticals and everything that I speak to. And I think the thing that I want to give you credit for and give you your flowers for is I think every site and every journey.

and customer journey that I've been on with one of your customers or one of the merchants that you work with. The experience is so much more elevated than a lot of the shot industry. is still a lot of, you know, unfortunately, and I'm sure they'll get around to working with you soon, but there's still a lot of brands that are quite well established in a traditional sense that haven't gotten the digital component right in that shot.

you know, kind of industry and area. And I think, you know, your passion for this space, your niche for this space is, you know, you pick the right niche, you love it and you've excelled in it. And I really love that. And I think one thing I want to, you know, kind of cave it to the user base here is the fact that, you know, a lot of people, when they think I'm going to niche, I'm going to limit myself, but you hit the nail on the head there, Jason, with the

You answer a lot of questions. You answer a lot of the unknown by saying, this is my target market. This is what I stand for. These are the events I go to. These are the people I need to, you know, surround myself with. And I think that's, that's so empowering and so awesome. And now you've built a business where I'm sure it doesn't feel like work. Would I be correct in saying that?

_{Jason @ Ballistic (05:15.062)}
I mean, yes, overall, there are days when I'm actually doing a lot of work and I'm like, wait, why am I doing this again? I should be going to more events and shooting more, but yeah, you're exactly right. I wake up thinking about this industry. I've been a part of it since I was a child. I've been shooting and hunting as long as I can remember. And that's part of just growing up in the South and with the dad that I have who was very awesome to see that and get me started in that and my brothers.

It is work, but it's enjoyable work. And one of the other benefits of working in a field that you have been involved in for so long, I walk in the door and I already know their product catalog. I already know their approach, their go-to-market strategy, who they're targeting, their price points, their products, know, that kind of thing. And so it just helps shorten the, it shortens the process quite a bit just by having that innate understanding of the products and the industry.

^{Joe Fox (06:14.103)}
Yeah, no, I absolutely love that. And from my understanding, you know, from our conversations and just my general understanding of the shot industry is that everyone's actually quite helpful, right? So it's like, I'm sure you have brands that you're currently working with that actually introduce you quite regularly and refer you to other brands and other brand owners that they know. Would I be correct in kind of assuming that?

_{Jason @ Ballistic (06:39.83)}
Yeah, that's exactly right. The people in this industry are very loyal. And when you do a good job for them, they'll do a good job for you. And that's referring you around or, you know, tooting your horn for you. So you don't have to that kind of thing. But then also we've run across some great tech partners like yourselves who are generous, which we try to live in this abundant, abundance mindset here at Ballistic that there's room at the table for everybody. So we have so many.

^{Joe Fox (06:44.64)}
Yeah.

_{Jason @ Ballistic (07:06.2)}
friendly competitor agencies that we work with or that we know or we help when we get stuck and vice versa. It's a great industry and it's a great ecosystem that we're a part of and the tech partners we work with are definitely part of that too.

^{Joe Fox (07:21.291)}
No, absolutely. I love that. And I think we really are blessed. Like I remember, you know, I've had some difficult periods throughout careers or things going on in life. And it's nice to know that you can, you know, connect with not only your close friends and family on things, but you can actually connect with your colleagues in this space. So I really think we're lucky to have an ecosystem of friends in this space. So I couldn't agree more, Jason. Okay. So I want to kind of dive into what's happening also.

What's happening at the moment? So I'm just going to pause here and I'll dig straight back in. had someone trying to call on Slack, my bad. So I just want to kind of dive in here, Jason. We've recently kind of, you know, everyone's experiencing tariffs. It's the talk of the world. It's the talk of the town, very much the talk of our ecosystem. There's quite a lot of things going on and it's definitely been something I've been talking to a lot of.

_{Jason @ Ballistic (07:57.997)}
Yeah, you're good.

^{Joe Fox (08:18.912)}
tech founders and, and, agency and tech partners about on the podcast. And I want to discuss this with you a little bit, because I think the really cool thing about Ballistic that's probably different to, you know, a lot of, the agencies that we speak to and agency founders that we speak to is that, you guys are incredibly fortunate enough to work with a lot of really, American made and manufactured companies. So.

I'd love to just kind of hear from, from your side of things, what that looks like working with, you know, American manufacturers who are not only a brand, but they're actually creating the product. They've got a very rich culture a lot of the time. And second to that, do you find that, when we speak about tariffs and those sorts of things, it's very topical at the moment. Do you find that that's actually helping your, your merchants and helping ballistic in this current state?

_{Jason @ Ballistic (09:18.904)}
Well, to answer that second part, yes, I think it does and it is, but we're still early on in that. the tariffs are just now starting to come into effect and they're at a certain level, which they may increase over time or that kind of thing. We may see more of that helping our industry and our American-made products and the manufacturers that are building here. part of...

Part of what makes our industry great is that it is constitutionally protected. And then it is also legislatively protected. Like there's a lot of, like if you want to build a product for the United States military or, you know, certain branches of the government that have three letters signifying their name, it needs to be American made. And American made is very stringent. That title American made, it's basically everything.

^{Joe Fox (10:05.077)}
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

_{Jason @ Ballistic (10:15.062)}
from raw components to the finished product has to be American made. And so we're a little bit protected from some of what's going on with tariffs. Now there are some great overseas firearms manufacturers, accessory manufacturers, and they're going to pay the price a little bit. But I feel like some of those brands that are serious about this market have already brought manufacturing over to America. You look at somebody like Glock, who was an Austrian company, they make a great product.

^{Joe Fox (10:42.601)}
Yes.

_{Jason @ Ballistic (10:44.054)}
at a great price, but they saw how serious we are about it here and they wanted to compete for more contract government contracts and that kind of thing. So they brought manufacturing to Smyrna, Georgia, you two hours from where I'm standing right now. And that has been a boon for that industry for that part of the that part of Georgia and other manufacturers are doing the same kind of thing. you know, where I really feel for companies are the ones that are that are just being, you know, just.

^{Joe Fox (10:54.504)}
Yes. Yep.

_{Jason @ Ballistic (11:12.524)}
destroyed by tariffs right now because some of them were exploiting cheap labor and they're paying the price. But some of them are actual companies doing a good job with a good product and man, really feel for those guys. So we're blessed in this industry to be a little bit, you know, firewall from some of the tariff talk.

^{Joe Fox (11:33.641)}
Yeah, yeah, no, that certainly makes a lot of sense. you know, I'm a, I'm a big proponent for homegrown manufacturing anyway. Like, so my stepfather used to be in the plastic injection molding space and owned a tooling room and everything in Australia and Australia, unfortunately, you know, went through when there was the economic crisis and everything like that. There was a lot of manufacturing.

that was shipped over to China and places like that. And I think when you see that firsthand, that impact of a lot of that manufacturing being pushed to overseas, I think this resurgence that we're having with this big focus and encouragement around American manufacturing is exciting. I truly do. I wish it was something that Australia kind of followed suit in, if I'm honest.

_{Jason @ Ballistic (12:22.227)}
I agree. Yeah.

_{Jason @ Ballistic (12:26.764)}
Yeah, Joe, I don't know how old you are, but I'm old enough to remember when all of the manufacturing left America in the 90s with NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and then whatever it was that came after that, they renamed it. But I mean, we saw every small town in America had some sort of mill or manufacturing plant or something. They were making towels or sheets or whatever it was. They shut down almost overnight. And some of these some of these communities collapsed during that.

^{Joe Fox (12:52.553)}
Mm, mm.

Yes.

_{Jason @ Ballistic (12:56.222)}
A lot of them did actually. And where I'm standing right now, there are two abandoned mills within a mile from here that made two different things. And that all happened in the 90s. And so it was great for profits and it was great for building, having cheap products on the market and more affordable things, but also it gutted manufacturing in America. I definitely have a soft spot in my heart for

^{Joe Fox (13:03.454)}
Wow. Yes. Yep.

_{Jason @ Ballistic (13:25.944)}
bringing more manufacturing back to America.

^{Joe Fox (13:28.667)}
Absolutely. Absolutely. I think in the long term, it's all going to head back towards that, which is incredibly exciting. And innovation is born from that, right? Like that's the other thing is there's new American innovation around creating products, better ways to create products, better ways to distribute products. It helps everything we do in the ecosystem. So I think it's a very beneficial thing and an exciting thing. And I think we're on the edge of something really cool on that front.

Jason, tell me a little bit more. I know that your platform agnostic. know that you do a lot of work with various platforms and, you know, huge partnerships with the likes of big commerce and all of those sorts of things over the years. Lots of recognition and awards for that. tell me a little bit more about, I know the Shopify space is opening up, slowly to the shot industry, and gradually, what, are you guys kind of doing in that positioning?

in the market at the moment.

_{Jason @ Ballistic (14:29.686)}
Yeah, you hit the nail on the head. So we've been doing e-commerce from basically day one and, big commerce. We're probably, I guess, the oldest big commerce agency out there. We were putting, we were putting people on big commerce in 2010. actually 2009 was the first one we built. And so that's, that's a long time, but, you know, other platforms come along and, you want to serve clients where they are and you want to tailor the, needs that they have.

^{Joe Fox (14:39.762)}
Wow.

Wow. Yeah.

_{Jason @ Ballistic (14:57.08)}
to the, you know, and choose the right platform for the needs that they have. And so over time we have become more platform agnostic. So we typically work with three different platforms, BigCommerce, Shopware and Shopify. And Shopify is new for us. Last year I was contacted by Shopify. They've got some great folks working there. Obviously we probably know a lot of those people, but they said, hey, we wanted to talk to you guys. We see you as a leader in the space in the gun industry.

And we have rolled back our acceptable use policy to include more products from your industry, which was very exciting for us because Shopify is the de facto standard in e-commerce. And so we have just completed our Shopify Plus certification. We've gotten our devs, know, trained up on Shopify. So we're just now getting to where we're having some meaningful conversations on bringing people over to Shopify. Some in our industry weren't interested, you know, because they were excluded.

But a significant number, about 50%, said, yeah, we want to talk to Absolutely. So we're just now really getting rolling in the Shopify ecosystem, but it's exciting times and opens up the door for a lot of opportunity.

^{Joe Fox (16:12.155)}
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I know how talented your team is and I know how talented the devs are. So I'm sure it wasn't too much of a learning curve for them on getting skilled up and everything, but that's just so exciting to hear because you know, you really are the pioneers in this space. And I think it's going to be amazing to see how Shopify, you know, develops around that. think there's going to be a whole bunch of new app players in the space that cater specifically.

the shot industry to feed into that ecosystem. So it's just exciting and exciting for everyone. think that's really interesting. Cool. So I've touched on a couple of things. I always like to do this with guests because I know how much we all travel. We bump into each other at all sorts of events all over the place. so I always ask, and you travel a lot specifically for the shot industry, like shot show and everything. So

You're traveling a lot. so I'd love to get your input, Jason. I always ask guests this, what is one thing you can't say a person to, have to caveat that with everyone. Cause almost everyone has someone that they want to say, but what's something that you can't travel without or you can't live without. So whether you're on the road, whether you're at home, where, whether it can be an item, it can be a book, it can be anything that you like.

_{Jason @ Ballistic (17:34.402)}
Well, I would normally say just one thing, but I've got a new thing as well. So I'll show you two things. One, the Bible. I'm gonna travel with that no matter where I've got, no matter where I go. It's either on my Kindle or my phone or an actual physical copy like this. that is, I feel like self-care is an ethical issue and part of your spiritual growth is part of your self-care.

^{Joe Fox (17:39.928)}
Okay. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

_{Jason @ Ballistic (18:00.238)}
If you're not, and the reason I say self care is an ethical issue, if you're not working on yourself, if you're not showing up as your best self, you're shortchanging the people that you're working with or doing business with. And so I try to be the best person that I can be. And the Bible definitely is full of wisdom and redemption that I definitely need on a regular basis. The other thing would be little packs of little nicotine. When I need a little boost, it's, you know, I don't smoke or anything like that, but I have found that just a

^{Joe Fox (18:24.568)}
yeah!

Yes.

_{Jason @ Ballistic (18:29.664)}
A little boost really sharpens your mind for a bit and just helps me get a lot more done. So those are the two things that are on me pretty much all the time.

^{Joe Fox (18:41.049)}
love that. I love that. I do a little bit of arts and crafts for my own self care and I create a lot of like cordura covers and stuff for Bible. So I'll have to send you one of those. I've I do mini ones. I do medium ones. I do large ones. Yeah. So it's kind of like a thing like since you know, I've gotten back right back into the church over the last sort of 18 months, came back to God and sort of refound my faith and rekindle my faith as

_{Jason @ Ballistic (18:53.134)}
Bro, I didn't know that.

^{Joe Fox (19:10.458)}
you know, part of something I've done with my wife, which has been an incredible journey for me, really helped me with like a lot of, you know, personal changes that I felt I needed to make as well. and, know, particularly over, I'm over six months now without any, you know, alcohol or anything like that. And I think the law was really able to help me with that. But part of that process is I was talking to a lot of my veteran friends, you know, a lot of ex operators, all of that sort of thing.

_{Jason @ Ballistic (19:13.87)}
That's awesome.

^{Joe Fox (19:38.894)}
And a lot of them are kind of going through that journey as, part of their exits in, into, you know, the back into, you know, going from, mean, you and I could talk about this for hours, but coming from such areas of conflict and, and everything like that. and, know, unfortunately a lot of stuff around TBI and PTSD and everything like that, but meeting a lot of, you know, veterans through the church community and, and through the range and everything like that.

So I've kind of just started doing it as like a little small token gift that I can give to people. I do private training at the range I'm at secure America now. And the first one I gave to him was, that, and I created some for myself and I've been giving them to family. So I'll send you one as well. Cause I've got, I've got three different sizes, tons of different things. So just let me know what your favorite camo pattern is. I'm not sure if it's 81 or multicam or black multicam, but just let me know.

_{Jason @ Ballistic (20:25.578)}
I would love that.

_{Jason @ Ballistic (20:35.756)}
Okay, will do, that's awesome. I'm very appreciative of that and I'm very proud of you. I've seen the transformation over the last 18 months and I'm very impressed with the work that the Lord's doing in your life and the amount of effort that you put into that. So if I can do a quick shameless plug for something that's probably near and dear to both of our hearts, if you're familiar with the Warriors Heart Foundation, they do tremendous work helping, you know.

^{Joe Fox (20:35.769)}
And I'll get one too. Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (20:58.147)}
Yes.

_{Jason @ Ballistic (21:03.074)}
former military special operations guys especially supporting their family, but then also helping them with TBIs or substance abuse, that kind of thing. And they're in Texas, not too far from where you are, but they do a great job and we support them as an agency as well.

^{Joe Fox (21:12.527)}
Yes. Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (21:17.623)}
Amazing, amazing. I'll be sure to put the link in the show notes and everything for that, Jason. Absolutely. know, lastly, there is no shameless plugs on here. The reason we have our valid partners and friends on here is to be able to talk about what they do. think you've really articulated that incredibly well and, you know, certainly helps having a niche and being the best in that niche. So I was going to ask too, Jason, is there, if anyone is in the shot space who's watching this, which I'm sure

We have some customers in that space. We're going to be pushing this out quite aggressively. Is there anything that you want to say to them or offer to them so that they can connect with you?

_{Jason @ Ballistic (21:58.946)}
Yeah, absolutely. You can reach out to us at BallisticAgency.com and we're happy to take a look at your complete tech stack and then do a free audit as well and talk you through that. So happy to do that for anybody that sees this on this podcast. Whether it be conversion rate optimization, SEO, website analysis, email marketing analysis, whatever it might be. If we have expertise in that area, happy to take a look at it and do a free consult related to that.

^{Joe Fox (22:27.461)}
Amazing. Thank you so much, Jason. And it's LinkedIn, another good place people can connect with you and everything. Yeah.

_{Jason @ Ballistic (22:33.292)}
Yeah. Yeah. I don't do a whole lot of social media, but I do do LinkedIn and I post pretty regularly on there. So if you want to get a, get a feel for who I am as a person and the kind of things that I do and write about, yeah, LinkedIn is definitely where you can find me.

^{Joe Fox (22:47.14)}
Awesome. Well, Jason, I feel like you and I can chat forever. We always end up chatting forever when we do. But we try and keep these at 30 minutes. But I will make sure that every everything that you mentioned will be in the show notes. I'm really, really grateful for having you on. Like you're an amazing person that I look up to as a mentor, particularly, you know, it's nice to have, you know, other men of faith that I'm friends with and people that I respect in this industry.

So first of all, thank you very much for your friendship. Thank you for your partnership. Thank you for coming on today. And we'll definitely do a part two of this. And I really look forward to catching up in person soon, my friend.

_{Jason @ Ballistic (23:28.204)}
Yeah, same here. I appreciate the opportunity to come on here today and as well I appreciate the friendship.

^{Joe Fox (23:34.175)}
Awesome. Thank you so much everyone for tuning in to another episode of retain grow thrive. Joe Fox. I'm the president over at grow wave. Please, please, please check out the links below. Jason is fantastic as his, his entire team over at ballistic. if you're in the shot industry, you should be talking to these guys. A S A P thank you all for tuning in. I'll see you again soon.

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