Intro

Bulletn was founded as a resource in the training community in 2022 with a singular mission.

Be the best resource to connect students and trainers in the firearms, outdoor, and self-defense training communities

Now in its 3rd official year, Bulletn’s objective hasn’t changed. In that time we’ve grown to encompass a plethora of services and communications streams; The Bulletn Community ( a growing Facebook group where students and trainers can interact and share knowledge), The @Bulletn YouTube channel (which far exceeded our expectations when it passed 1,000 subscriptions in its first year), The @bulletn_net Instagram (which highlights students, trainers, classes, and gear from across the training community), and of course The Berm Limits Podcast (co-hosted by myself and Max Lizana). All of this was created to drive people to the ‘core’ offering of Bulletn.net.

This year, we are announcing the biggest addition to our services since our initial launch: The creation of the Bulletn Points blog and Bulletn Shop web store.

Where this all began

The spark that ignited Bulletn.net was something born from a specific problem. Every few months, I would open my personal calendar and identify that perfect and unclaimed weekend (You know, that one between the ballet recital weekend and the day trip across state lines to your brother-in-law’s house for the birthday party) and mark it as “busy” so my wife wouldn’t fill it with a planned trip to another distant relative. Then, I would hope and pray that I could find a training class that would fit my training goals, was within budget, was close enough that I could drive to without taking off more time from work, AND be something that my friends might want to take with me.

Next, I would fire up the ole’ internet browser, go to my bookmarks folder, and proceed to the folder named “Trainers”. In it are names like TMACs Inc, Tactical Response, Shivworks, Haley Strategic, DTI, Valor Ridge, Chris Costa, Modern Samurai, Tremis Dynamics, Brushbeater, Sony Puzikas, Thunder Ranch, etc.. All in all, a growing list of websites that at the time, had about 40 entries. I would open every single one of them and go to work.

Author’s Note: I cannot express how honored I am to have gone through that last paragraph to link several of those trainers to their profile page on Bulletn.net. The fact that people I admire see value and potential in the platform is, to put it simply, the best feeling in the world.

Then, I would just start down the list. I’d open the calendar for each trainer, and manually enter “placeholder” events on my calendar for each class that interested me. I would put in hours and hours worth of time every few months to aggregate data into a central list, to make the best decision possible on which classes to take as a student. It felt like an increasingly impossible task to be aware of what every trainer was offering, and that often led to hearing about amazing classes that were nearby, on a free weekend, AFTER it happened. It was rather frustrating, but it was what it was. There wasn’t another option.

The real lightbulb moment occurred when I found out that almost every single one of my closest friends in the training world was doing the EXACT SAME THING, multiple times a year, for years on end.

Meanwhile… Like many other students along the way, I found that my journey had led me down the path of sharing my knowledge with others. I started taking on the role of an AI (assistant instructor) and soon started identifying gaps in the training world where I felt I could contribute. I wrote some curriculum, started leading some classes, and immediately realized that the training industry is nothing like a baseball diamond randomly built in a cornfield… because when someone whispers in your ear, “If you build it… they will come”… they are 100% full of shit. The role of a firearms trainer takes a lot of work… and 99% of that work is required in the area of “marketing” yourself and recruiting students.

I thought to myself, “Somebody needs to create some sort of website that makes it easier for students to find training, and for trainers to find students”.

I owe the spirit and the drive of Bulletn to all my fellow students and trainers that have shown me the way. But most influential of that bunch has been, and will always be, James Yeager. Yeager created an environment at Tactical Response that is without a doubt the single biggest influence on who I am today as a man, a husband, a father, a brother, and a fighter. In that environment, I was exposed to a community of students and a cadre of instructors who embodied a mindset that I immediately gravitated toward. It is in that mindset I found the mantra of “If you look around, see a problem, and think someone should be doing something… that person is you.”

Thankfully, I had about 15 years of professional experience as a Digital Art Director in the advertising industry to fall back on to get things rolling. While there have been many, MANY moments over those years where I have felt so stupid for not going into some sort of trade with “hard skills”, it did feel awesome to find an opportunity to use my experience as a brand builder, designer, and digital expert to effect real and substantive change in an industry I truly care about. Instead of just serving some soul-less corporate entity that only exists to extract value from its customers, I was able to put some talent and expertise into helping like-minded people better themselves, improve their lives, and make their families safer. I had found my calling and the “job” that I hope to do for the rest of my career.

The Core Offering

Very early in the planning for Bulletn, I made one very important promise. One that I intend to keep. Bulletn will always have a FREE “core” offering of 1) allowing trainers to post classes and 2) helping students to find those events. I could not in good conscience ask trainers, who are often dealing with razor-thin profit margins, to pay for the privilege of creating the very data we needed to create our service… class dates. And I couldn’t put all of those dates behind a “pay wall”, because students would never be able to experience any value in the brand if there wasn’t some sort of core functionality that proved we put our mission first. I knew the core offering needed to be a “freeware” open to all. You can see this free service at work by going to www.Bulletn.net and typing in your location.

Now, that isn’t to say that there aren’t plans in the works to offer services ‘beyond’ that core offering to generate revenue. We have many phases planned out in our pipeline to 1) Help trainers grow their business and 2) Offer students a simple and convenient experience of finding training.

The core offering has in effect become the beating heart of Bulletn. It has defined us as a brand, connected people who would have never done so without it, and it is the experience we hope to bring to every person looking to find training. However, we also realized that there are some key gaps in driving people to that experience. Those gaps are what led us to build out our most recent digital offerings. The Bulletn Points blog and The Bulletn Shop.

The Bulletn Points Blog

A central place to house articles has been a long time coming for Bulletn. In a way, this is the most natural extension of all of the other communications streams that we’ve been putting out to the world, and the perfect way for us to create an organized “homepage” for our community. We fully expect this resource to grow and morph over time to meet the needs of our audience, with varying informative and thought-provoking topics relevant to students and trainers alike. However, there is one particular topic that we plan to focus on as much as possible.

Sometimes you can get a good sense of how a training school operates through a solid Google review, stumble across a random Reddit thread, or get super lucky with a review video on YouTube… but in my opinion, there is absolutely no substitute for 1) Direct word of mouth from a trusted source and 2) a well written and objective AAR written by a thoughtful student.

When I first started training, writing an AAR was encouraged as an essential part of the learning process. I would spend hours upon hours reading the experiences of other students on GetOffTheX, just wishing I could take every single class I could get my hands on. And in turn, I would distill my thoughts and learnings and go through the discipline of writing those out for others to see. I owed it to my fellow students because they did it for me. We hope to encourage that discipline again because it truly benefits the learning process. We intend to publish articles written by thoughtful and objective students.

However, and this is the big one, posting AARs where other students can find them and providing business reviews on services like Google and Facebook are some of THE BEST ways to help a Trainer grow their business. We unfortunately live in a world where businesses are judged primarily on their ability to create ‘popular’ and entertaining social media content. Getting the word out about a training experience, whether good or bad, can point fellow students towards trainers with ‘substance’, and not just those that have a socially pleasing ‘style’.

The Bulletn Points Blog was built to to be THE place to find those AARs, along with a host of other content including gear reviews, training news, and articles written by trainers and authors throughout the community.

In fact, we’re launching with three articles from dedicated students within the training community right now.

Mindset, Tactics, Skill, and Gear… and learning them.

Rangemaster | Master Instructor Course AAR

Orion Training Group | Red Dot Pistol Performance Workshop AAR

 

The Bulletn Shop

OK… you got me. If you’ve come this far into the article, I’ll let you in on a little secret… My goal isn’t to just altruistically supply the world with a game-changing resource for the training community. Well, it kind of is… but it’s to do that while hopefully not going broke at the same time. That’s why we’ve opened up the Bulletn Shop.

We realize that you can go spend your money literally anywhere and that we’ll likely not be the best price. But, know that everything we intend to sell is stuff that we recommend or items that help promote training. We don’t intend to turn into some sort of giant digital commerce shop. Our goal is to help students cut through the clutter of terrible gimmicky products, and offer things that will enhance their training experiences.

We consider it a huge honor when people choose to wear an article of clothing with our logo or don our patch on their gear. Everything we do, we do in the hopes of earning that placement on your shoulder or on your chest. We promise to make sure that our brand represents a force that will always raise the training community up. Because the people in it deserve it, and because a rising tide raises all ships.

2025 and Beyond!

We have lots of plans for what comes next. Stay tuned in 2025, because our next big update will really start putting some amazing tools in the hands of our users. Our vision is to create an experience that would allow students to easily find, organize, register, pay, and share their experiences with others. We are well on our way to making that happen.

In the meantime…

Get Smart, Stay Ready, and Find Training
-Mike