Tag: fast draw

The Ruthlessness of Smiling Faces: What people are really up to

First of all, even though I am talking about a recent fast draw competition with the Ohio Fast Draw guys in Ohio, I am not talking about that event, but many other things that are relevant in ways that aren’t always so obvious.  Human nature is what it is, and all things are applicable.  But this particular example is appropriate across the tapestry of competition.  And to that point, I am used to extreme ruthlessness in human nature.  I don’t see the smiles that people provide to disarm your sensibilities as being innocent.  I see the worst in people because that’s my experience based on years of opinion.  So, when I attended a recent Ohio Fast Draw competition in Cleveland, I went out in support for the group because the attendance was dropping, and I wanted to boost the membership with my presence.  But from my point of view, it was hard in the second half of the year to attend the events, starting with the one in August, which I missed.  It was a late night with many good GOP people, including Bernie Moreno, Warren Davidson, George Lang, and many others, and we stayed way too late listening with a VIP perspective to a Jason Aldean concert.  I didn’t get on the road in time to get to Cleveland, which broke my routine for the year.  Up until that point, I had attended all the Ohio Fast Draw competitions.  But August, September, and the rest of the year until Christmas are too busy for me.  My goal for the year was to get to all the Ohio Fast Draw competitions and show my support for them.  But once I missed the one in August, it bothered me to have that intention disrupted.

My gun minutes before a competition

I learned at the next event I did manage to get to that other shooters were not unhappy that I did not show up.  I had been winning many trophies, and people felt that because I wasn’t there, they’d get a better chance to win themselves.  I didn’t let it bother me because I like the people who are typically in Fast Draw.  I understand and respect the ruthlessness of human nature.  So, I put those thoughts into a category of their own to deal with as I saw fit.  Even so, I tried hard to make the next competition to support the organization.  I didn’t have time for it.  I didn’t need any more trophies for the year.  I just wanted to see attendance grow, not recede.  I think Fast Draw should be a sport that more people participate in; it’s better than golf, bowling, or other competitive events.  But a lot of young people these days don’t know much about gun fighting because it’s not part of their cultural experience, as more woke activities have become part of their lives.  So, I am interested in seeing organizations like Ohio Fast Draw survive well into the future, and I would like to see them grow in popularity.  But when I showed up to the most recent Cleveland event, I was already strung well too thin, and didn’t have the time to give.  I attended to support friends.  I was disappointed that I wasn’t very welcome and that many of them hoped I wouldn’t show up.  Now, things get murky because people often don’t say what they really mean.  And they usually hide malicious intent behind appearing helpful.  So people think that what they believe deep within themselves is hidden from the outside world and that nobody really knows what’s going on if they don’t admit to something.  Well, I know everything that goes on.  I understand every aspect of human nature, so nothing stays hidden from me.  I know what is going on with everyone at all times.  And it wasn’t hard for me to figure out what was happening when I arrived at the Cleveland competition. 

In Fast Draw, severe rules for activity on the firing line, safety, and other considerations are rigorous.  Some of the more competitive people in these events go crazy when they hear a cell phone and people whisper in the background while shooting.  They get mad at every little distraction.  So, given that context, I thought it was highly unusual that at my gun check at this event, there was so much concern over my gun having a sticky trigger.  I didn’t ask for any advice; it was the same gun I had used to win several competitions that year, and it worked well for me.  But many Fast Draw shooters perform a lot of work on their guns, hoping to give themselves a slight edge in speed.  So it mystifies them that I use a mostly stock gun and that it has a heavy hammer pull.  Now, given some of the people involved in volunteering to tear my gun apart looking for a problem that wasn’t there, I thought being friendly and respectful was more important than showing anger that I was missing the opportunity to practice before the competition started.  I think they were genuinely trying to be helpful.  But I also felt that something more malicious was going on, and the longer it went on, the more angry I got. 

At the end of a lot of work, several shooters offered to loan me a gun to shoot with that day, which, on the surface, appeared helpful.  But they all know what distractions and changing anything on the firing line do to the process.  So, I found it disrespectful to see that they had made a point to look like helpful behavior to sabotage my approach to shooting in that competition.  I didn’t ask for help.  I didn’t want any help.  And I would have rather been left alone because there was more going on than trying to appear helpful.  The combined efforts were an attempt at sabotage because as the day progressed, it became pronounced that I was the center of many of their thoughts, and they had prepared for that event with an intention against me personally.  Here’s the deal: I won a lot at these competitions because of my shooting method, not because of the tricks of the gun or luck.  My times are consistently good because I shoot close to the hip in a fashion that looks slower to go fast.  And the frustration against me has been that I look like I’m not trying to go fast all the time and shoot in the .300s and even .200s.  I could, but in Ohio Fast Draw, missing the target would become more common, and you would get penalized for missing.  You are judged on speed and accuracy.  I ended up doing OK for the day.  The worries about my gun and the overall process of the day did have an impact, but I worked through it.  Part of the benefit of competitions like that is that learning to manage stress under tremendous pressure is the real takeaway.  So I thought it was a positive experience.  But I was very disappointed to see that so many of those other shooters were happy to see me having a bad day.  They wanted it, which was a good lesson that applies to most things.  It’s the way people are.  You hope that people will overcome that natural tendency.  But Fast Draw is meant to be ruthless, and people being friendly to each other is only a cosmetic ruse for their true intentions.  While I wanted to think more about people, it wasn’t enjoyable to see where their minds were.  The main rule in gun fighting competitions is that you don’t point out every little rule that might distract a shooter on the line, then break all those rules to gain personal advantage.  That behavior might help a person win a few times here and there.  However, it will destroy the initiative of any future shooters who want to take up the sport and grow in a positive direction.  This is precisely why attendance this year has been light and is only getting worse.  When it comes to human behavior, I don’t miss anything, and the moral to the story in this case is that a short-sighted win only hurts the future, which is becoming obvious to everyone.

I expect ruthlessness out of people.  And again, I’m talking about more than my experiences with the Ohio Fast Draw Association.  I would like to relax and spend time with people of common interest in shooting sports.  But often as it is in most things in life, you don’t get what you want.  You get what you get, and you either deal with it, or you are crushed by it.  So with that in mind, don’t try to hide ruthless behavior through a thin veil of helpfulness.  I see it all for what it is, at every level that it’s presented.  There is nothing about human nature, or action, that I do not see. And I see it in ways that most people even hide from themselves. There’s a reason I don’t say much to anybody, it’s because I am perpetually let down by other people all the time and I don’t expect much out of them.  And I don’t ask much of anybody because I don’t want them to have to lie to me when they have no intention to live up to my expectations. I have to manage my disappointment in people by limiting how much I interact with them.  But never think I’m not going to see the truth that is really there looming in the background.  Even if it’s just a shooting sport in recreation, or if it’s millions of dollars at stake.  It’s all the same game played by all the same kind of people for all the same reasons.  People in life want the least path to success with the least effort.  And they hate people who work hard and develop themselves skillfully.  As I have said many times, which is a big feature of my book, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, “Rules are made by the losers of the world to give them an advantage over the competent.”  And as much as I know that rule to be the fact of life, it does bother me each time it is confirmed true by reality. 

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call

Process Efficiency Through Fast Draw Shooting Sports: How to eliminate communism from any culture

There is a root cause of big government and communism in general, and it essentially all comes down to laziness.  The best hedge a country could have to protect itself from communism is an emphasis on hard work and personal improvement.  If you have an efficient society where personal conduct is rewarded, you will have a better society generally.  And they will not vote for communism and all the various follies of Marxism.  I have figured out that over time by participating in Cowboy Fast Draw, particularly a great group of people I have known for quite a while, many years before I started shooting with them, The Ohio Fast Draw Association.  I think of it as one of the best sports that the human race has come up with, but in making it an actual sport that has very rigid rules and regulations, as most shooting sports do that involve real guns and ammunition, the drive toward speed and accuracy has created a window into the purity of human intellect that I find endlessly fascinating.  And that’s what was on my mind as my wife and I had a wonderful meal at the Punderson Manor overlooking one of the deepest lakes formed by glaciation near downtown Cleveland, Ohio.  We were camping across the lake and preparing for one of the first Fast Draw competitions of the year just a few miles to the north, and economic systems and process efficiencies were most on my mind as I thought about current events over pork covered in honey and garlic sauce.  Out of all the educational institutions and means of human intellect, I think the best representation of efficiency matched with risk formed out of Cowboy Fast Draw and America’s fascination with Western arts and entertainment. 

It was something most obviously revealed during Covid, which we all know now was created in a Wuhan lab and released by China and a lot of other nefarious governments for a Great Reset by the World Economic Forum to spread communist-style government micromanaged by a massive, leftist, Administrative State.  And so many companies and governments were ready to jump on and sign us all up for it by a media poised to spread the news as fast as television broadcasts could put up death graphs on the side of their visuals.  This was the theme of my 2021 book, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, which I wrote and published during the first year of the Biden presidency, on the heels of the most ostentatious takeover by governments over private industry using Covid as their excuse.  But I wasn’t happy just pointing it out; I wanted to understand why human beings did this to themselves because that is where the real answers to life are.  That is why people were so quick to wear masks during the Covid crises, which were artificially created.  More specifically, when you look at a process for a big company, you will find that they have too many administrative employees and entirely too many rules.  Incompetent people use rules and large administrative practices to hide their incompetency from the eyes of a competitive world.  And you really don’t see that in people until you hang around people addicted to speed like there are in Cowboy Fast Draw events.  Human beings create a lot of rules and drag on any innovation system because they are timid and weak as personalities who look to shield themselves from risk through legislation.  And it is those kinds of people who make governments restrictive and crave communism and the security of a perpetual nanny state.

Of course, the sport of fast draw, especially The Ohio Fast Draw Association that I shoot with several times a year, is to shoot at a target when a light flashes on it and to draw a .45 caliber single action pistol with a wax bullet, as fast as you can from a holster at various distances.  What I like about the Ohio Fast Draw guys is that they have a variety of combat scenarios that are part of their competitions, and it forces you to find the fastest means to achieve the objective within some rigid rules that are always part of shooting sports.  The endeavor aims to manage risk and competence toward the stated goal.  Not to run and hide from it, as most organizations do where this problem of individual merit isn’t addressed.  In my real life, outside of shooting sports, which I consider a real vacation from the sluggish minds of bureaucracy and considerable government inefficiency, I would say that most people have some element of timidity in them that is open to government expansion over improved processing, I see how a lack of management over personal risk drags the world down in unhealthy ways.  People love their rules, their regulations, and their slow rate of completion in things because they are terrified of the actual responsibility of accomplishment.  At Cowboy Fast Draw events, all people generally agree that the goal is to shoot fast, hit the target, and find the most efficient process to perform the task.  That means drawing the gun from my holster in fractions of a second and shooting as soon as the barrel clears the leather.  There is no hiding the intent behind process rules disguised to protect the incompetent from the expectations of performance.  And I never get enough of it.  There are usually six or more events per year, and I always get a lot out of all of them, but what I get most is time away from the sluggish people of the world and their slow obsessions with administrative practices that hide their grotesque lives from competitive expectations. 

Since my last competitive event with these Ohio Fast Draw guys, I have been to Japan twice to deal with real-world issues of efficiency and competence necessity.  In Japan, they do not run from competitive expectations; they fully embrace them as a mass culture.  They are not in love with the process flow that protects themselves from competitive expectations, which is part of their samurai culture that is still alive and well there.  As my wife and I ate our meal and looked out over that lake, this was May of 2024, and my last competition was September of 2023. During that time, I had a chance to observe Japanese culture up close and personal, including how they eat.  Many lights came on for me as to the cause of human society leaning toward communist governments and why corporations of all kinds were so quick to do so.  Those elements of the fast draw and Japanese society painted across the current events of our times revealed a nasty sentiment holding back the human race for many years.  But the sport of fast draw had purged it out and away from its hiding places, and I have found myself obsessed with the results.  It was the root cause behind all the Lean work that had been developed in Japan with the Toyota efficiency standards, into why people behaved the way they did when work was presented to them, and responsibility for success fell on their shoulders.  It would take America’s gun culture to match up with the most successful economy in the world to evolve the sentiment, which I always cherish at competitive shooting events that tell more than just the story of American tradition.  But peel back the veil to the most wonderful elements of human intellect, the ability to use risk to produce efficiency and innovation that otherwise would never come to be.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

The Need for Speed in American Management: Fast Draw is the perfect sport to understand the benefits of capitalism

I had a good shooting season this year, as is usually the case.  Over the Labor Day weekend, there was one that I look forward to each year specifically.  I go all over the region to attend these gun-fighting competitions and meet many different people to satisfy my obsession with speed, which has been with me for a lifetime.  Cowboy Fast Draw is a unique sport that is very popular, and it should get a lot more news coverage.  But since it’s guns and a deliberate reverence toward a specifically American lifestyle, many woke media won’t touch it in even casual ways.  But not doing so is very disingenuous to American culture, which is the point of social rejection.  It would be like avoiding discussing knighthood in Europe or the samurai in Japan.  Gunfighting in America is one of those core elements that almost everyone can relate to, but the forces hostile to our country want desperately to remove it from people’s minds.  So we have these competitions all over the United States that are very well attended and increasing in popularity, yet many people don’t even know about them.  The shooting season occurs mainly during the warm months, from April to around October.  For me, the one over Labor Day in Darke County, Ohio, is usually the last, so it has a special meaning.  There are a few more in October and November, but I’m often too busy to get to them.  My reason for getting to as many as possible is that they are very positive experiences.  I think about many things that don’t make much sense in everyday life, but all the pieces come together nicely at Fast Draw events.  In the Labor Day of 2023 competition, I received a very hard-won award with significant meaning, and you can read the faces.  A lot is going on with these kinds of things. 

I see Fast Draw as a lot like golf; you get together with friends and see how low your score can be over some time. Gunfights usually last all day, so it’s not a one-and-done endeavor. It requires long, sustained skill that is repeatable. But unlike golf, this is a timed sport. You are forced to react as quickly as possible to the target, making this kind of competition very unusual and American. I like many things, including golf, but there are many things extraordinary about Fast Draw that I find very beneficial personally. Particularly when it comes to metaphors for speed, in regular life, where people don’t show up for gunfights with their guns on their hips and all the special equipment you get to mess around with to play the sport, there are lots of excuses for why things don’t happen or can’t. I find the typical labor position that has come out of the Department of Labor in government particularly repulsive, and since COVID was introduced to liberals, and they have used the potential for sickness not to do any work, my frustrations with the world have only increased dramatically. I do not look for excuses for anything. I think production is beautiful, but most of the world is looking for reasons, and the more liberalism in a culture, the more excuses that culture has for things that they think cannot be done. The attitude is, “If you want to do something right, you should take your time,” assumes that the faster you go at something, the worse the quality of the endeavor. In that way, the labor market that has evolved with lots of Marxism has sought to do less work and do it slower, rather than the classic American approach, which is faster and more accurate.

The reason that gunfighters in classic American Westerns were so obsessed with being faster than the other fighter is the proper metaphor for American culture, where the expectations for everything was tight. Capitalism evolved in America under the premise of speed. And, of course, the speed wasn’t of much value if accuracy wasn’t a part of the story. Of all the sports out there, Fast Draw is the fastest sport. It has elements of many popular sports, mainly drag racing. But there is nothing faster than Fast Draw, where the main objective is drawing a gun and hitting a target with a wax bullet in under half a second. And what I learn from watching different shooters from different places around the country is fascinating. And very refreshing. In the business world, slowness has been embraced because of all the socialist, communist, and under-all philosophies of Marxism running in the background, dripping wet in the compliance culture. Those who make the rules that human resource departments must follow load assumptions against the speed that a company can operate, and too often, people unthinkingly follow without pushing back against the essential premise. And it can be very frustrating to deal with, especially if you think about it, which most people avoid. In golf, you can take your time with the game and are often rewarded for going slower, so many people in business assume that slower is better and that success means making that adjustment. But from the perspective of my favorite sport, Fast Draw faster is better, and the management of speed and accuracy measures success and failure.

There are a lot of essential lessons in Fast Draw that should be directly applied to the business world, which is why I wrote a book on the subject, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business.  You must remove as much nonsense from the process to get the speed you need in the sport.  The more motion, the more steps, and the more variables there are, the slower your time will be.  And under pressure, you still must be able to hit the target.  You don’t have time to be casual.  Most of the winning times in the sport are around a quarter of a second to a half a second.  So, the pressure to achieve speed will expose anything unnecessary.  And that’s how it should be in business, whether it’s a drive-through window at a fast-food restaurant or selling a new car to a customer.  You might have noticed that since COVID-19 and the Biden administration has been in the White House, things have slowed down significantly in America.  The business world expects to go slower and blame the supply chain upstream for failure.  This is a very un-American concept, one of the biggest problems of the modern age.  And it’s very different in 2023 than in 2019 before Covid came along.  Yet, without measuring things with speed and accuracy, people might not notice that the value system was slow and, ultimately, communism with low-performance expectations.  The more Fast Draw events I go to, the more hope I have for the world because I can see people who know how vital speed is to modern culture.  Not just dressing up in gunfighter garments and paying reverence to the Old West.  I appreciate the shooters I meet and their “need for speed,” which is specifically American.  And it certainly gives me hope for the future when I see how hungry people are to win at Fast Draw.  Because if they can figure out that balance in that sport, they may do well in real life in ways that capitalism best reflects. 

Rich Hoffman

The Morality of Speed: Bad guys are slow, good guys are fast

I talk about it every year, and it’s that time again for the Annie Oakley Festival in Darke County, Ohio, which is a yearly vacation for me. And I continue to get asked about it because it’s work for a lot of people but a paradise for me. I have participated in several annual events at the Annie Oakley Festival, some for over 20 years. And out of all the things I could do, I find this particular weekend, the last one of each July, as my refuge from the mundane effects of the Administrative State. I hate slow people in life. Even though most people are pretty slow, they frustrate me tremendously, and out of all the other days of the year when I have to deal with them, I always look forward to the Annie Oakley Festival because it is there where speed and accuracy are celebrated in the traditional American ways rather than this slow New World Order globalism garbage. I love speed and have always been obsessed with it because when it is experienced, there is a morality to it that is unique to American culture, and each year at that event, I get to experience it without restriction and be around other people who appreciate it with a kind of raw understanding of morality. The world under the misguidance of the Administrative State is designed for slow, stupid people, and I find it pathetic. My idea of a vacation is to be away from those kinds of people, even though I may be exhausted at the end of all the competitions, which last all weekend. It’s a good tired. Because it is refreshing to be away from slow people, lazy people, and people who hide behind the Administrative State to appear valuable when all they are, are mindless bureaucrats.

Many of the old stunt performers, cowboys, gunslingers, and general roughnecks I hang around in some of these Western preservation groups all understand something that most people have forgotten, which will likely be returning shortly. In traditional American Westerns, which most of the world still enjoys, speed dominating evil is a consistent theme at the core of all values. When the good guy was faster to a dueler’s pistol, we cheered for the demise of the slower bad guy—the villain. (villains lost because they are slow) The value of speed was directly connected to the morality of capitalism, and society generally understood the metaphor. I spoke this year with many of these old fast-draw professionals who feel like they are a dying breed. I told them this year that I thought that young people might find themselves very attracted to the old fast-draw traits as globalism’s effects were failing worldwide, and people would be looking for a replacement. There are consistently good Westerns doing well on streaming services, like Hell on Wheels, and shows like Yellowstone. Some video games, like Red Dead Redemption, are very popular with young people, so it’s not like Westerns are dead or dying. It would only take a film studio like Angel Studios to start making traditional Westerns again, and people would flock to see them because they enjoy those kinds of stories. Hollywood may be a dying business model, but that doesn’t mean the Western will die with it. Hollywood used to be all about Westerns, and their demise started when they stopped committing themselves to Westerns. You can tell how people feel about Westerns at these shows I go to, especially the fast-draw events. There is always a crowd watching, and we are amazed that we shoot real guns that fast, competitively. Most of them have only witnessed that in movies and television shows.

Part of the suppression of Westerns, starting with those who finance movies, was the desire to build a global administrative state to mask production from performance expectations.  As globalism has proposed, the administrative state’s goal is to slow down the world to the communist intentions of centralized authority.  Those were the villains in the old Westerns, so it’s no wonder they don’t like Western values.  They want to slow the world down with bureaucracy so that centralized communism can rule.  But they are so slow and pathetic.  No wonder they want to legalize marijuana because they want people brain dead and too slow to think, to ask questions, and to meet reality head-on.  Most of my life is about dealing with slow-minded administrative state losers who seem only to want to slow things down.  So when I get to compete at Annie Oakley, speed becomes the priority, and it is just so refreshing.  I practice Fast Draw most every day in some form or another, so I’m always thinking fast about things.  But to express that speed in public, where people appreciate it, is very refreshing.  Usually, this Annie Oakley event charges me up for the rest of the year, just those few days.  I attend other fast draw events throughout the year, but what makes Annie Oakley stand out is that it’s done in a public forum with audience attendance.  Most competitions are held in private venues, so the general public cannot witness them.  At Annie Oakley, it feels like it would be like to have been in the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show.  And I love it!

Many Americans have been polite about the slow world of the administrative state and the ridiculous European concepts of the World Economic Forum.  They don’t have a culture in Europe or Asia where people can express themselves with guns, rapid draw in the classic Western way of dueling a bad guy as the Bible would define villainy, to establish individualized law and order.  Speed was the way to achieve justice, and the action was from a superior individual against the masses of slower bandits.  I’ve never learned to accept a lack of speed in life, no matter what it is, production, driving down the road, going to the grocery, everything.  I read fast.  I think fast.  I am happiest when things are fast.  I’m a guy who will drive a 51-foot RV rig at 85 miles per hour, happily zipping in and out of traffic, and I don’t care how much gas it burns.  Because I like to go fast.  But there isn’t much more satisfying in life than the fast draw events at Annie Oakley, whether with bullwhips or traditional six guns.  The participants and the audience appreciate speed; when you see it, you know all is right with the world.  And in the end, when the World Economic Forum types must face reality and deal with the speed of American culture outside of their Davos forums, where they talk to each other in a vacuum, they’re going to learn that they are the bad guy, and slowness is not going to be acceptable.  Americans like things fast, whether it’s a Chick-fil-A drive-thru, highway traffic, or a running back on a football team.  Americans want things quickly, and Cowboy Fast Draw represents American culture in so many satisfying ways that I am happiest when I compete with other fast gunslingers.  I’m more comfortable than anywhere on Earth under any condition.  And I never get tired of it.  Slow people are terrible.  But fast people, the world could use a lot more of those.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

My Vacation from Slow People: The need for speed is a very real thing, and is uniquely American

For purely selfish reasons, I have spent much more time shooting in Fast Draw competitions during the summer of 2022. I’ve always done competitions like this, but this year I went to all the Ohio Fast Draw events and traveled a lot more than usual to competitive events giving myself a much-needed vacation. The question that has come at me is why I was running myself ragged with all the events. There are a lot of easier things to do in life than competing with guns in stressful and very fast matches where things are measured in such small increments. Shooting and hitting a target in under half a second, or at nearly a quarter of a second as I typically do, isn’t what many people consider relaxing. But believe me, in my life, it is. That kind of speed and free flow of pure energy is a real benefit in ways that are hard to explain, which I’ve tried when people have asked, scratching their heads. But after a weekend shoot over Labor Day where I could shoot competitively with some really great shooters and the event was fast and very competent, I found myself grateful for the experience and the summation of all the other summer shoots. I was taking some of my own advice from my book The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, and I’m very glad I did. Fast Draw is the fastest sport in the world, and when you have to deal with many hundreds of people per week, sometimes thousands, the chance to stand in front of a target and just let everything rip forth is wonderful.

The truth is that people are slow; they spend much of their lives looking for reasons not to do things, so when you find yourself dealing with many people, all who are doing their best to do very little, it can be very frustrating. And the world, after Covid, as a result of Klaus Schwab’s Great Reset and the intrusive actions of Bill Gates, making the governments of the world dance by the strings they control like wood-carved marionettes, has only become slower. Bureaucrats have one purpose in life: to make things go slower. Everyone in the world these days seems fully committed to going as slow as they can and to lobby for things to be slower and slower. You can see the difference in a typical drive-thru window; things have slowed down at McDonald’s and Wendy’s fast food restaurants due to a post-Covid world. The government has told employees they can take off all they want and still get paid. Doctors have become everyone’s parents and intercede when those mean old employers expect work performance for the pay they issue. It has become a real mess of incompetence that is the net result of the Biden administration’s attitude toward work, labor, and globalism, which has sucked the air out of the ambition of American effort in truly disgusting ways. And I have been getting angrier and angrier the more I deal with people causing me several times during the year of 2022 to consider just packing everything up, telling everyone to go to hell, and going to a mountaintop with all my books and saying, “peace out.” 

I live a very fast life; I always have. I love speed because the quicker you can do things, the more you get to do in life. So it is hard for me to slow down long enough to go to see medical people because time is always scheduled to their convenience, not yours. I hate going to the BMV for that very reason. It’s such a slow process. I have even been very frustrated with one of my favorite things, going to Kings Island on Friday nights after a busy professional week, because things have really slowed down there as well. My wife and I like to ride roller coasters to blow off steam. I get time to think about things while we wait in line, and of course, roller coasters are nice and fast. But the employees have been horrible this year, worse than at any other time in my life; they are slow, dim-witted, almost representatives of a zombie apocalypse. I don’t think that the people changed, but we lost IQ points during Covid, and the government has crippled young people into thinking in a lazy fashion that makes them barely functional. So even going to Kings Island to relax on roller coasters has not been as fulfilling as it normally is. I’ve never liked the European attitude toward work, which you can clearly see anytime you go to London, Paris, or the Netherlands; they don’t like the American expectation to have everything fast; they like to take their time and smell the roses as they say. But I find all that slowness disgusting. And with Covid and the Biden administration, those types of slow people have been empowered, and the more you deal with people, the more of that attitude you tend to interact with. And for me, it has been real torture. 

So that brings us back to Cowboy Fast Draw and competitive events. All the people in that sport get it. They understand the need for speed and the beauty of unleashing energy and flowing toward an objective as quickly as possible. And spending more time with those kinds of people has been truly wonderful. I can’t say that I will always be able to shoot in those competitive events as much as I did this year. What I did was probably excessive, but it benefited me wonderfully. But, I have been gone a lot. I am one who does not do well in traffic jams. I don’t like to get stuck under any conditions waiting for much of anything. When I get out of a traffic jam and back into the country where roads are wide open, I like to drive as fast as I can without people in my way to slow me down. And that’s how I am with most people. I like to pack a lifetime into a typical day, so when you end up dealing with people who would rather be asleep and multiply that by 100 or 200 people, it can be very frustrating. But I healed much of that this summer and accomplished many of my personal goals for shooting. I won a lot of events which made me happy. It was consistent even under great duress at times, so I learned a lot of good things in doing these events. But the ability to remove all the noise from my life and just let loose all the speed I can muster on something with intense focus has been wonderful. It has restored me some patience in dealing with a much slower world that needs motivation to go faster and be more competent. That is, after all, one of my core values to others, and when I get to the point where I don’t want to do it anymore, a lot of people end up suffering. So the Fast Draw events have been significant; I have been doing them almost every weekend and traveled to many places to participate in them with many like-minded people. And I can’t recommend Fast Draw as a sport enough, for all the reasons stated and more. Speed is great. Slowness is for the lazy. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Fast Draw at the Annie Oakley Event: What the world looks like out in God’s country

For me, the western arts is a religion of sorts, it’s something I think about every day, and I work with some aspect of it several times a day in just about everything I do. And for context, the white hat I wear so much came from my favorite hat shop in Jackson, Wyoming, on an extraordinary pilgrimage I made there with my entire family. I’ve traveled worldwide and seen many of the world’s best things up close and personal. And I’ve been to rodeos they have out West, specifically the one at Cody, Wyoming, which is fantastic and about as good as it gets. A rodeo experience out to Cody, Wyoming, is in itself worth a vacation just to do that. But I will say that the Annie Oakley Festival they have every year in Darke County, Ohio, in the town of Greenville, is one of the best displays of Americana on planet earth, and I never get tired of attending. I look forward to it every time they have it, and when they do, I usually am involved in some aspect or another in the shows they put on. This year I was in the bullwhip competitions, as I usually am. But additionally, I was able to be in the Ohio Fast Draw Association’s competition, a two-day event that I have always thought brought the Annie Oakley Festival into the realm of uniqueness that establishes it as a vacation destination all its own. For people looking to get in touch with America again, I would recommend everyone to mark the last weekend of July on their calendars and make the trip to the Annie Oakley Festival when it’s happening in Greenville and to put the noise of life aside for a few days and experience the festival in all its glory.

I’ve been participating in the Annie Oakley Festival for a few decades. During that entire time, I worked with my friend Gery Deer at the Western Showcase to put on Saturday bullwhip competitions that are always crowd pleasers. I started working with whips on my grandparents’ farms when I was very young, so they have always been a part of my life. When I learned that my great grandfather could crack a fly off the wall with a bullwhip, I decided that was something I was going to do, and over the years, it has become my own version of a martial art. In my recent book, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, I take many of the concepts I have been thinking about over the years from the Annie Oakley Festival and apply them to the ways of the world that have influences from everywhere. I have thought of the Annie Oakley Festival as a kind of unique American philosophy that shows what all people, no matter where they come from, gravitate to when they have the freedom to be away from government and go to God’s country without a lot of United Nations influence. And from the showman side, I have watched the audiences and come to some very definitive understandings that are unique to the Annie Oakley Festival. The Buffalo Bill Wild West show has always been a definitive presentation of what America uniquely is. Without Annie Oakley, it would never have become the global phenomenon it was. And I find that Greenville festival every year to be the embodiment of that definition, more so than in places like Cody, Wyoming, which is the authentic real deal cowboy life, right in the middle of a desert in the traditional way people think; of the “West.” But it’s the swagger that came from the Buffalo Bill show that Annie Oakley specifically brought to the whole exhibition that I have always loved so much. It’s why that event is a yearly reset period for me, where I clear my thoughts and push the noise aside for a few days and just soak up the American flags and the smell of gunsmoke.

After the bullwhip competitions, I always used to go over and watch the fast draw guys. But I couldn’t make fast draw part of my life for a long time. Getting the equipment to participate was a bit expensive, but more than anything was the time. Many of the shoots last entire weekends and are all over the place. You can’t just show up at Annie Oakley once a year to commit to the sport and compete. It has only been over the last few years that I finally have had the time to commit to it, so it’s something pretty new for me. But it was always their shoot at the Annie Oakley Festival that I looked forward to watching. So, it was really enjoyable to be able to attend as a competitor, and I made the most of it. This was the first year I did both events, the Ohio Fast Draw Association shoot and the Western Arts Showcase, so it was a very busy weekend for me. So busy that I didn’t even have time to look at my phone and answer the many text messages that were adding up due to the news of the world. I was able to get caught up after the festival, but the time off was well worth it. I have provided several pictures and videos of the event to capture a bit of the atmosphere, which I never get tired of.

That’s what makes my Gunfighter’s Guide to Business such a unique book on business and life in America in general. The Annie Oakley Festival has always given me a unique opportunity to see America for what it is and get to know people as spectators wanting to get a piece of that old Buffalo Bill Wild West show that so clearly defined our young country to a world perplexed by it. That challenge is still very true and even hostile at times. But when you are there, you can clearly see what people want and how much of that noisy world they are willing to take. Practicing the combat arts, the fast draw, the bullwhips, and the cowboy-mounted shooting are all exhibitions of the kind of skills that make America, America. And there is no need for apologies regarding the Second Amendment there. No hint to it. People generally agree on how the world is, understand right and wrong, and treat each other well and respectfully. The world does not look so screwed up when you escape the coastal media influences of Los Angeles, New York, and Washington D.C. It’s always good to see people for what they are. Many from the liberal coasts would be horrified by the stoic tenacity of the people from the flyover states, especially those who attend by the thousands the Annie Oakley Festival. But what’s clear when you attend something like that festival in Greenville, Ohio, is that there are a lot more of those people than there are from liberal politics. You just don’t hear from them on the nightly news. They are out working in the fields, and living life as the coastal types fly over, high above in comfortable jets going from one big city to another, maintaining their bubbles that allow liberalism to grow as a concept. That is until they stop by some place like Cody, Wyoming, and see what people really think of them. Or, they drive into the heart of Ohio, way out in God’s country, and see the many yard signs dedicated to Trump, and get a sense that Annie Oakley never really died, and neither did the Buffalo Bill Wild West show. It lives on in Darke County, Ohio, and recharges me yearly. I spend my days between Annie Oakley events thinking about it. It’s never far from my mind. And given the way the world is now, they would do well to learn their own lessons from the Annie Oakley Festival. It’s a vacation destination all its own and well worth the time to do so. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Why You Must Always Be Ready: The biggest secret in the world

In the video above, I answer a question that I get asked a lot, “what’s in the backpack?” Well, I carry that backpack with me everywhere. When I’m not at my house, it’s always nearby. And of course, watching the video, you will quickly see what’s in it, my .500 magnum, which is one of my conceal carry guns. And additionally, that backpack is heavily armored. If someone shoots at me from behind, or even from another direction, I can have a way to absorb the bullet harmlessly and take away the danger. It’s a big pack for that reason; it covers a lot more body area. Then hearing that the next question is, “why do you feel you have to be so well-armed and to defend yourself so heavily?”

Most people would be happy with some little Glock tucked in their pants. But not me. I want to be ready for a small war, and there is a good reason for it. I put those thoughts into my Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, which has become highly relevant in the early years of 2020. When I was writing that book, I knew that it would stir up trouble, and it has. To my mind, it’s the good kind. But one thing is for sure; you don’t have to go out into the world looking for trouble. Trouble will come to find you, and for all kinds of reasons. The main reason is that the world’s bureaucracies were all built to conceal a dark truth about human nature. They were built to conceal laziness and the unambitious, which is in the majority. Everyone wants a trophy for success, but not everyone wants to do the work to become the best at something. And when people discover they can’t loot off you for their own efforts to make them their own, then they seek to get rid of you in any way possible to erase your memory from their minds. And that is why it’s important to be well-armed and always ready for trouble when it comes looking for you.

While I was writing The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business a few years ago, I had a confrontation with a consultant from a very expensive and powerful firm that teaches Lean Techniques worldwide to the biggest corporations that there are. When he found out that I had my own theories on process improvement and that I took exception to his constant beratement of “shooting from the hip,” as if it was a reckless assertion toward productivity, he became irate when he discovered I was writing that book. “what are you going to say that hasn’t been already said, the field is crowded with opinions on process improvement. Pick your poison and get with the program.” My response was, “well, I want to create a system that doesn’t involve poison, something that is more reflective of what is really going on in the world.” That’s when he lost it and pretty much swore himself to be my enemy, which didn’t work out very well for him. There was no provocation to try to make the guy mad. He went there on his own. It was the realization that a kind of scam was being exposed that he secretly feared was the real issue. And ultimately, this secret is a big problem out there in the world. I knew it was, but watching some of the violent reactions that played out, knowing that the secret would be put into a book I was writing, was just too much for him, and many, many others. 

The truth of the matter is what I said in the video when people find out they can’t steal from your efforts to hide their own lazy and unproductive natures; they actively seek to eliminate you from the discussion, whether it’s cancel culture, outright violence, social ostracization—whatever means they can come up with. And we are seeing that play out on a mass scale these days in business, politics, media, and even neighborhood soccer games. It’s everywhere. But what’s worse for them is when you don’t care, and you don’t need what they offer, which is kinship in a team environment. At that point, everything they have ever been taught turns out to be a lie, and they can’t handle that knowledge. There is a great yearning in the world for nobility and individualized respect. While traveling all over the world, I have found that when people see those elements in you, they often pay reverence instantly. People crave the kind of individualization that evolved in American culture and, ultimately, American business. But there have been many who have shaped this European collectivist mindset into global affairs and have evolved a kind of socialism during international trade that has found its way into every aspect of business. And the big secret was to hide the incompetency of the many from the eyes of the few. So when people often criticized me for “shooting from the hip,” they meant that I should always sit down and consult with others to figure out the best next step. Even if my idea ended up being the way to go, the bureaucrats wanted to believe that they had some hand in the process and wanted to share credit for the endeavor. But to a person like me, that all takes too long, so I cut them out and take my shots without them, which denies them of the theft, which makes people angry, very angry, for being exposed. That’s why I carry the backpack, and it has come in handy often. 

After dealing with that guy, and many others like him over the years, I felt it would be good to address the process improvement problems that all businesses have, especially these days with all the woke problems that are entering our places of employment. There are many great techniques for process improvement out there, but most of them never address the real elephant in the room. What makes people corrupt, and why do they intentionally sabotage process flow in a business? I often point to the time clock, even the salary people, and say, “look how quickly they leave for the day.” Their minds were never on their work; they just collect their paychecks and associated with other people waiting for someone else to do something. They are too lazy to do things independently and often leave all the heavy work for the few with a mind to do it. And there is no fancy consultant class that can address that issue. To deal with that, we must deal with the real problem that sits at the heart of all process improvement needs, the lack of human capital and raw individualized leadership. That is why I wrote The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, to empower the types of people who really do all the work and to prevent those who get in the way from doing so. And also to explain that consensus building and teamwork are only distractions away from productivity. In the world we have today, it is the few who make everything happen and the many who try to hide behind those exploits and take credit for them as their own. If you let them take that credit, they will love you. But if you don’t, they will do everything in their power to get rid of you, even if it means killing you any way they can. Sometimes they become so jealous that their minds lose all reason, and their thoughts become a Shakespeare play. And the only way to have real peace is to carry a backpack like the one I do and make sure that their intentions do not become your reality.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business