Mantis Mastermind

0:00Welcome season 10 episode 26 of the Farm Trainer Podcast published on March 10th, 2026. Been a long time coming over the last nine years get to the end of season 10, but next week we'll begin season 11. And for those, this episode we'll be talking with Kara Connery from Mantis about the mastermind course that she monitors every week and the fun stuff that's going on there. This episode was also brought to you by our friends at the FTA, the Farm Trainers Association. Visit the website at FTAprotect.com learn more about their instructor covers offer and their competitive pricing. Remember you can get 10% offering your policy by entering promo code FTP10 at checkout. Remember, register for the Guardian conference. We had Jacob Paulson on last week. I'm talking about that and if you haven't registered yet, you still have time to get the early bird pricing. Go out to guardianconference.com and check out to see who some of their instructors can be this year and the great content that they will have.

1:03If you're heading to the NRA annual meeting used in this year, look for us in radio row in booth 3353. I'll be there for sure on Friday and on Sunday and Saturday. I will be at the members meeting. So look for me and be great to catch up with any listeners that will be in the audience and have time to stop by. This episode is also brought to you by KSG Holsters. They're a professional and great Kidex handcrafted here in the United States of America. They're available for a large variety of firearms, their purpose built one by one for comfort and concealability. All KSG Holsters are enigma compatible. There are a lot of customization options so you can order the holster that fits your needs exactly. Remember, KSG Holsters. We bring this podcast, support the industry, the second amendment, and most importantly, every firearms instructor in America that dedicates time, energy, and theming gun owners more knowledgeable. Today, we're joined by Cara Country from Mantis. Welcome Cara and thank you for coming on the podcast.

2:06It's not a problem. Glad to be here. For those people who don't know who Cara is, can you give us a little bit about what you do with the two A space? Sure. Well, I initially started out as an instructor. I have my own training business in Northwest Arkansas and a couple of years ago, I was looking for employment and I was a regular user of Mantis products. And so on a whim, I kind of reached out and they have offered me an opportunity to come in and use my skills. I actually went school to be a teacher. I worked retail for 20 some years just because I worked at Walmart in college and just kind of stuck with it. And so I thought I would bring some of my customer service and technical knowledge into Mantis, but I was asked to help educate people, especially instructors on Mantis and the tools that we have and how those tools could be used, especially by instructors. And a part of that, you know, it took, it took us a while to really get our arms around to understand what that looks like. And so mastermind kind of grew out of that. But yeah, I got into the two A space just because I was teaching.

3:19I just decided in 2018. I was part of our women of America. I see they they had a gap and needed some help. So I decided to go get my RSO and jumped in and went got my NRA and I've done a bunch of training. I've got a lot of a lot of training hours and a lot of training certifications under me. And when Mantis saw that they they kind of jumped on that said you had a lot of connections and and, you know, I once you're in the instructor world, you know, this Rob, you know, you start seeing the same people in same places and so you start building that network. And so yeah, that's that's kind of how I ended up where I ended up and I feel like I still have to pinch myself that I get to do what I do. So it's it's really cool to to work in a in a space that you're very passionate about. Yeah, and that that definitely shows because I've been one of the attendees at your mastermind classes from time to time when it fits my schedule. And there's always a little bits and pieces because as we talked before the show and for the regular listeners know in the last year.

4:26You know, since the NRA and your meeting been talking about how much technology has come into the farm training industry as a whole. And if you're not using some kind of laser pistol, if you're not using some kind of device to give you feedback to go along and practice at home, practice off the range. You're behind the curve for it. And that's where I think the mastermind, you know, I'm always picking up bits and pieces for it. I've been using mantis pretty much from the beginning, you know, they're different products. And that's and that's been one of those things where, you know, I said, I gotta have care on because she's teaching me stuff even for us, you know, older people had been using it that I never knew that they put into the product and that's one of the what I'll call challenges when it comes to technology because you can update things and the technology with that. Without going along, having to buy something completely new, if I wanted to clock Gen 6, I got buy a new one. If I could just go along and download the upgrade to my Gen 4 and automatically make it a Gen 6, that would be equivalent to what how the technology is working, but I don't think clocks got that technology quite yet in their pistols.

5:32Exactly. And, you know, what you alluded to is we have a lot of mantis users and the app is very rich and it's very deep with data and and settings and drills. And even when I for start working for mantis, I thought I knew everything about the app, but when I had to dig down deep to really go through all the settings, all the drills. I learned myself, I learned quite a bit myself and we've one of the pieces of feedback we got with mastermind students, one of things I hear over and over again is I really didn't realize I was not using my mantis to the breath and depth of what it could provide. And so I've had many, many mastermind graduates say that's been the biggest takeaway is they've really learned that there's so much more to it than just running a drill and swiping through screens. And it's really working on taking and understanding what that data is trying to tell you and and whether you're just a student trying to understand that data, but also as an instructor that that what that could tell you about somebody's shooting, you know, while you're watching them.

6:40You know, we can see step with them are with our eyeballs, but if you're working with a high level shooter, they're making movements you can't see and yet they still want to improve. So that's that's one of the things that mantis can do really well is, is that sensor is incredibly sensitive. It's going to pick up on every little movement and, you know, even somebody like Jerry Mitchell, you know, is there's a there's a YouTube video where he was using it and he even said he was doing stuff specifically in his draw. To see if the sensor would pick it up and it did so and it's a challenge, you know, we we are in a in a very interesting time where we have the younger generations very technologically savvy. But they want stuff in an instant and and if you've got a dig for things, it's not it's easy per say and then we also have, you know, my generation and older where technology be hard. That you want to know the information, but it's daunting when you look at it. And so we originally wrote mastermind to be for instructors we we I was brought in to help engage instructors in mantis and hopefully get more instructors to use mantis in their curriculum.

7:52But when it come down to the nuts and bolts, we realized that we couldn't provide a certification or or do that unless we really taught people how to use our material or our actual data. And so that's kind of what mastermind was born out of and and once we started going through it, we realized, you know what, this should not just be an instructor thing, you know, and and that's when it kind of opened up and we did this we initially coined it like a power user course. But you know, we wanted to cool name behind it. So so mastermind was come up with, but that's why that's why it was open to not just instructors, but to anybody who wants to take the course, but we do have special things for instructors. So as you alluded to Rob, we have the weekly calls to actually have two weekly calls. We have one weekly call that's open to any student and it's kind of an open mic. We answer questions about the app. But I've had people get on and say, I don't know what to do for drills here, you know, and it's a, it's a Q and a to where I put my instructor on had on and I go, what's your mission, what's your goal.

9:00And then I can help provide that person. Here's what I would run and why I would run it anybody on that call is learning those things. But we also have a call each week directly for instructors and we really try to take it's still a Q and a on the app. But a lot of the instructors I'm seeing are actually newer, which is great. I mean, I think it's fabulous. And so we have talked about word, where do we order business cards from? What kind of, you know, what should I have for a business name to, how do I work with students, you know, I had the couple weeks ago, we talked about, what do you do when you get the phone call that says, what pistol should I go buy? And so we talked through some of those things that that are really not meant to specific, but yes, we always tie it to it, but it's just a place for instructors to get together once a week for an hour. And we talk about just different things that's instructor related and sometimes we go in with the topic and we fill an hour and sometimes we don't go within it in with the topic and somehow we still fill an hour of good instructional information.

10:04So anybody who takes the mastermind course, we ask you to fill out a profile. And the reason why we do that is so we know, hey, if you're an instructor, we're going to make sure that you're invited to both calls. So if you own mastermind, you're an instructor and you go, hold on, I didn't know about those calls, go update your profile so that we can notify you of the instructor calls. Yeah. And as somebody who used the original, you know, Mantis X for if you're just using the X, you're not getting the full benefit of what the Mantis technology really has. Now, you know, I've talked to talked on the show before about the Blackbeard X, which is a great addition for your AR and such. It's fires fast enough that you, you cannot shoot faster than your second. You can't. I mean, it's, it's, it's crazy for it. And then you get to the X 10 and one of the things that, you know, we were talking about before the X 10 has gone from just be OK, here's my, I'm firing pistol and I'm milking the trigger a little bit or I'm jerking it to all of a sudden you've got the drawing analysis.

11:16You know, how's it being drawn? So you can actually get, you know, proof that you are either drawing it straight up or you're counting it or doing whatever, whatever's going on, which is, which is a great piece of information to improve yourself, because each one of those just, you know, like Jerry Mitchell, I did, you know, cost you time. And when if you're doing something, whether it's in competition or in a self defense situation, you want to be as defensive as possible. But one thing I love about the X 10 to is you can go along, not only use it on your pistol. But it works on your shotguns, works on your rifles, you know, who doesn't want, you know, someone analysis back on their, on their AR or analysis back on their, you know, other 30 odd sex, you know, you know, it doesn't have to be one type of gun for or your track clays. There's nothing out there that will tell you how well do you track your clays, you know, to putting it on a bow and, and determining how stable you are during your setup pull back and release to wear that arrows. Even showing unknocking, it's, it's incredible what the data provides and, you know, holster draw. Yeah, you know, somebody could say, well, I've got a shot timer. So I know what my holster dry is.

12:26But how do you know what to improve on in your holster draw short of videoing yourself and working with people or have somebody look at you, whereas that X 10 will break down that holster draw into the five, you know, five steps of the holster drive. And though you don't want to be a robot and do it in five steps, but I'll give you an idea of where, where could I get better? I know when I look at my holster draw. I've got another 10th I can pull out of getting on the grip just from reacting either to the flash of the screen. A lot of people don't think about turning their sound off and just watching for the visual stimulus. Because out in real life, we're going to necessarily have an audible stimulus. And so, you know, just working through that stuff that gives you information for you to better critique yourself to understand what you can do better and then add the tight next to the mix where you can draw and now shoot multiple shots. So I can sit and run a build drill and I can analyze the build drill in multiple ways with the app.

13:31So because the X 10s built into it, I can do holster draw with multi shot and I understand my holster draw and shot one and I get shot scores on shots two through six, which I'll clue you in really hard to get good scores running a build drill really fast. But it tells you where you're at. But we also have that dynamic training. So you alluded to that with the black beard X and that's a lot of people go, well, that's, you know, I'm getting 100%. That's not shot score. All those dynamic drills are telling you how efficient do you move with the gun. So you can run a build drill and on the chart, you can actually see where did my shots go and the movement as you replay it. So the tight next is just taking that to a whole nother level with pistol and, you know, I know everybody's like, well, it's just a block. Well, we've got more models come in. I promise you, we've got in the works, we've got, you know, six, the 320 flavors of the 365. We've got a HKVP 9, we've got the MMP 2.0. I think we're doing some Walters. And if, if you want to vote for what you want to see in a tight next, go out to mantisx.com, pull up the Titan X web page.

14:42And there's a link in there. You can vote what you want for a model. So, you know, yes, it's blocked right now. We had to obviously look at what, what was the major ownership of guns. And so that's obviously got to go to a block first. But I think it's really changed the landscape of dry fire, especially with the tight next and being at, I was at the Great American Outdoor show this last week and just talking with people going through not just mastermind, but just talking with people who have a tight next and they go, I've never dry fired more because of the convenience factor. You have, you have a training tool that's completely inert. You don't have to unload anything. You don't have to even put an X 10 on it, turn it on, connect your phone. It's ready to go. And so people are like, if, you know, they're waiting for something, you know, print something printing, they pick up and they'd fire their, even if they don't connect the app, they're getting trigger presses. When they went to done that before, so I think it's, it's technology is really offered a lot more to be an instructor or a student or just someone in the craft to get better.

15:52Yeah, I've used laser pistols for, for a while, but like you're talking about, you're always trying to, you know, see what they're doing now with the tight next that I have, it gets, gives me feedback. And that's probably one of the things, you know, 17 years ago, when I started teaching, it takes a while for you to know and teach yourself how to shoot properly, but then even longer to go along, know what to look at other people when they're, they're shooting for it. How do you go along and, you know, understand how that's impacting, you know, from, from, you know, the, the hole in the paper is going to be there. It doesn't move. But when you go along, think about when they pull that trigger, that's a, you know, 10th of a second, maybe a quarter of a second at best, and you're trying to figure out the trigger squeeze there, where their grip is, what's going on with the muzzle, all those things simultaneously. That's a lot, especially for new instructors to understand and break down with the Mantis X or it goes a lot really gives you that I'll, everything broken down from okay, here's your score, which is very, very objective for to also going along and, you know, holster draw different things along those lines, it can really take you as an instructor from being a, okay, you know, what's in the book type of instructor, do all of a sudden you're taking people that are experienced shooters.

17:13And make and educating on do you realize that right before your chop breaks your put your dipping the muzzle and they're like, no, I'm not look right here, I got the data right here that shows that you're on target and all of a sudden boom, you drop down about an eighth, and it's like, well, that might be. Maybe the reason why my first shot's always off like that, well, is try to adjust the grip that's try to go along and untrain that from it, because again, one of the biggest challenges and most farm instructors, in my opinion, have it's from the experience shooters that, you know, this is why I've always been shooting, you know, I still have people coming with cup and saucer kind of kind of grips on it and it's like, okay, let's try to get to more of a modern grip that will give you more control of the pistol and be able to have, you know, quicker follow ups in the world. I've always done it this way, it's like, let's say you have to, I'm just saying, let's try something a little bit different and most of the time they realize it, wow, I can actually shoot better now with a good two handed grip versus a cup cup and saucer kind of kind of approach.

18:13Right, and it's, you know, I know, I don't know about you, but when I get somebody who's a pretty experienced shooter shooter and they reach out and they go, hey, you know, I want to, I want a private lesson, because I want to figure out. You know, why I can, I'm great at 10 yards, but when I go to 15, you know, the wheels fall apart and you can watch somebody because now we know at 15 or 20 yards, it doesn't take much movement of that gun for you to be, you know, eight inches off target. And so for a new instructor, like you kind of mentioned that that can be even more daunting that, you know, the first thing I would tell a new instructor is get a mentor, you know, watch work with other people, B and I soak up stuff like a sponge. But it gives you data that you can look at, and especially if you've got an experienced shooter, they're going to understand if you explain what the mantis does and that that accelerometer and gyroscope are going to pick up every bit of motion and experience shooters going to go, oh, OK, now I can, I can understand what I'm doing and we see trends.

19:16And that, you know, it's not a, that the wheel, the, the, the correction wheel, you know, we've, we've tried to make it so it wasn't based on bulls, I shooting you know, because that that's the original, you know, correction wheel that's out there, and I'm not saying that what mantis has his perfect either. But I think for a beginner shooter, it's pretty close, it's pretty good. But for the advanced shooter, I think that's where you get them to look at it and, and most advanced shooters are going to realize how to correct themselves, they just need guidance on what to correct. And sometimes with an eyeball, we can't see it, especially if it's such a slight movement, it makes it really hard and that's where even the little tiny movement is going to be picked up by the system. And so, you know, it's not, it's not a crutch. I don't want people to think about it as a crutch. I think it's an educational tool to help us see what our eyeballs cannot see. You know, it's, it's, it's, you know, where the Olympics are going on right now and you have curling and they bring out this massive device when they can't clearly see if something's in the line or not.

20:24And it's that kind of technology that we need for, for a little tense of, you know, from the holster drop, you're trying to knock a 10th off. If you're a two-second drata for shot, it's going to be easier for you to find that 10th and knock it off. But if you're a one, one drata for shot, you need to understand more data to know where can I knock that 10th off and it's going to take more work. So that, you know, I think it for a product to have such a broad scope to, to, from a beginner shooter to get good, you know, information to an experienced shooter to get those, those fine details. I think it, it has a place. You know, and there's people out there that, well, dry fire, you know, you have read your sites. You don't need anything to read your sites. But how do you get to that point? You don't start out as a beginner shooter reading your sites because you have too many things going in your mind. You're still trying to think grip and, you know, press slowly and keep aiming and all this stuff, you know, this chaos going in your brain.

21:30It's a tool to help get people to where they can be that small percentage of people who can read their sites. I mean, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a pretty good shooter. But I will tell you, there's times where I have no clue where the shot went and I saw my sites, but it's, it's still it's a, it's a hard task to know and to be that present each and every time. I still get humbled by my mantis device sometimes and go, OK, that's what I did. I mean, yeah, a lot of times, I'll know, OK, I know that's going to be a low score. I know I went low left, you know, I felt it, I saw it. We got to think that we know people are not at our skill level necessarily and we have to really back up and give people the opportunity to get there. And I think that's where technology can come into play and, and honestly, I think it helps expedite that too. Meeting people in classes who have never got training before they showed up for a class who have used a mantis device.

22:35It's incredible. I don't think she might share this, but we have a person within mantis. She had never shot a gun before. Never, but she could score very good on the mantis. I mean, she works for mantis. So she scored very good on it. And I had the, I was so honored. You know, with the NRAM meeting, NRAM meeting was down in Dallas a couple of years ago, and I said, would you, would you like it if I brought the sheet, you know, it goes against shows. So she kind of knew what gun she wanted. And so she's like, can we go the rent, you know, can I take you to the range? I have that gun. I'll bring it with me. I have the video. It's incredible. She, she on a B8 at five yards, she was shooting very few shots out of the nine ring at five yards for the first time ever shooting live fire. Just from working with the mantis device itself and dry fire. So the learning curve really shrinks the more you incorporate dry fire into your regiment.

23:36And if you've got the data to know what it's doing, we can dry fire all day long, dry fire, bad habits all day long. You're just milinating those bad habits. This will tell you, hey, you know, if you see your scores go up and you're shooting good scores constantly, that's going to reflect in life fire. It just is. Yeah, I think one thing it's really nice with the mantis is you can use it, you know, with a with your, you know, pistol that you own at home, you know, just doing some dry fire. You can use it with the Titan as laser pistol, but you can also take this exact same device to the range and fire live fire. So you can go along not only to the dry fire, which is free and expensive and you can do it all hours and night and day, which makes it really handy for. But you can also go to the range and get immediately feedback. Okay, am I still going along milk on the trigger? Am I still going along and doing this or did I improve my scores the same when I live fire versus what when I, you know, dry fire. And that's one of the things where yes, there are other training systems that will, you know, give you feedback when you are shooting at home.

24:42But then when you go to the range, it's like, okay, you know, why, why did I just throw that, you know, well, the sites are off well. I guarantee a more like the sites aren't off. It's something that you're doing and you didn't realize that you're doing it. And that's where mantis actually immediately go along and say, hey, you realize you went along and dipped the barrel before you even pulled the trigger. And that's where I like, yep, I had that problem at home and I got got to get that out of my mind. And I would challenge people. You brought up a very good point about the scores and in dry fire versus scores and live fire. We have ourselves even mantis this pulled out that generally you'll see a 10 point drop. But since I've come on, I've really tried to figure out why do we have that 10 point difference because really it should be a zero point difference. And I feel like that it's great to have an X 10. It's a great to dry fire. But, but you have to dry fire with the mindset that it's life firing. You have to grip the gun like the guns going to go bang in your hands.

25:45I also find that in dry fire that you typically don't have a magazine with weight in it. And so weight becomes a big thing. So I kind of went down that rabbit hole last year. And I did some, some just self analysis of myself of why when I go to the range or my scores lower and I started changing up my dry fire. I started using weighted dummy rounds in my magazine. So my magazine, my gun would weigh what it weighs in life fire. And I have found that that if I put my grip like it should be in life fire, I use the weighted magazine, not that my dry fire scores have dropped. They did initially, they did initially, but I was able to work him up to where I was before. But when I go to the range now, I'm getting those same scores. I think there's there's also a method of sloppy dry firing versus really dry firing in a method that is that is building that that that we call muscle memory, but it's not it's my lineation.

26:49You're milling that process in your nerves to do the same things in dry fire versus life fire. So I, you know, a challenge if you've got an X 10. Get to the life I range with it and see how different your scores are and try to try to bridge that gap and bring bring those life fire scores up by working better in dry fire, being present in dry fire. You know, making it it's that it's that it's something that you focus on. You don't have the TV running or listening to a podcast while you're dry firing. It's really something you should focus on just like you're not paying attention to 10 different things while you're at the range live firing. So I kind of that's I really kind of got on a soapbox with that last share what erota blog all about it. Just my my journey of what that was like. And I've seen, you know, I've stopped we discussed and mastermind multiple people kind of went through that journey with me and they said the same thing. They went out bought dummy rounds and are like I understand now why my life's fire scores were so different and they made their dry fire better.

27:51So how would you know that if you didn't have quantifiable data, what you do in dry fire versus life fire. You would just have a really bad target and life fire and you go, well, I know I shoot better in dry fire, even if you had a laser pistol where you saw where the laser hit. It didn't fully give you the whole story. So I think that's that's the benefit of adding the technology into it, you know, having a laser pistol or a laser on your in your chamber is one thing. But it's another thing to know the digital data behind it and understand the scoring and it makes it easy to do comparisons. Yeah, that's great great advice. And just like with doing a pistol, you can do the same type of thing when you go to the range with your shotgun or with your rifle. Because I see that as one of the underserved areas that, you know, yeah, we've all got ARs, but how many times have we really understood how we're shooting it? Are we jerking the trigger and causing it to go off off target because it's face it. If we're shooting a target 30 yards, probably not that big would deal.

28:59You're still going to hit the target, but if you were trying to shoot out 100 200 yards, knowing that you're jerking the trigger and be able to see that you're having a nice crisp follow up to that to that shot is extremely important for accuracy and get past 200 yards and becomes even that much more critical for it because those world champion shooters. You know, they they go through and they've got all the basics, you know, mastered to a to extremely high degree and we're seeing that, you know, in the Olympics right now, you know, anybody can compete in the Olympics, but nobody's going to win if they haven't practiced. Right. And we've got competitors, you know, who use that stuff. They use mantis and and and we have modes that people just aren't aware of that that you can go turn on and see a lot more time than what we show. So it shows how stable they were, you know, a long time before they took the shot and that that was put in there specifically for those Olympic shooters to be able to capture that data. And you're right, you know, people, I think they that's underutilized when they they don't put it on their rifle or they don't do shotgun. We have a separate apps for shotgun that really shows you how well do you track your clays.

30:10So that that gives you information on how well you can get better at getting on your target quicker once once that clay is thrown and I said, I don't know a lot about shotgun, but I know it's it's there are people that use that competitively because it works. And then the archery is the same thing. So it's there's so much there. And one thing I think we forget about is you've got an X 10 in your life fire. Be it a pistol or a rifle. There's a recoil meter drill and if you really want to understand what happens during recoil that drill alone will it only looks at recoil and gives you four metrics of what's happening during during the recoil so that you can understand better. You know, do you do you need to improve your grip so that your muzzle rise isn't as high or as your recovery time slower than you want it to be. So there's just so much information out there. And again, people tend to just hover around one drill and dry fire and there's so much more that it can do. Definitely. And I know we can geek out all day long with what mantis does and different things like that. But for the listeners who haven't listened to we had Austin on with mantis.

31:20He gives a very technical breakdown for about the cellarometers and different things like that that we won't go into today. But if you're interested in technology, he dives into a little bit more, but it's definitely technology that in my opinion is here to stay because a mantis you buy it. You don't have any ongoing costs. So it saves, saves people money. You don't have to go to the range all the time, not to mention, especially as, you know, new instructors. You've got your challenge to go along your paying attention to the students, your paying attention to what's going on the range and you're trying to prove them at the same time and you got to look at, you know, 20 different things between between their feet to their hand positions with what they're focused on different things like that. Mantis helps you go get that covered where you can actually go along and a very positive way show them the hey, you know, this is what happened when you when you pulled the trigger when you when you drew out and it makes it extremely worthwhile because they're not spending 25 cents every time they're pulling the trigger. They're going along using a product that they bought once and they can use it for years and years.

32:25Absolutely, absolutely, and we're constantly, you know, you're right. We don't we don't do a subscription once you buy the hardware you're in. And we're constantly providing updates to people, one of the biggest things that people have been asking for for years, including myself, is to see some laser academy integration with the mantis X and we we rolled that out in January. So that exists. So if you have not opened your app lately, you have the ability within the mantis app to put up laser academy targets and get your laser hits along with your session as well as going to laser academy turn on your mantis X and you'll get all of the movement data within laser academy. So we're constantly tuning and making it better and rolling out new courses, new targets for laser academy, new new drills. So we just released new drills with with tight next, but some of those drills went out for black beard X as well. So we're constantly pushing that needle forward to to for our customers so that it's not a stagnant product.

33:29Yeah, I know would also go along for those instructors listeners that are thinking about why I didn't know it could do all this stuff or how do I make all this stuff work again sign up for mastermind. Even somebody who's used it as long as I have I've get I've picked up different pieces every single time I've joined in and yes, I have bill make every one of them, but you go along and you pick up the bits and pieces and it's a as care talked about it's a Q&A. So somebody's talking about how do I how do I attach this to my clock 42 and somebody else is asking how do I go along get paired with with the new iPhone or different things like that and you're walking them through it as well as how do I interpret this data that's coming back when when I'm you know when I'm life iron compared to when I'm dry fire all those different things. It's extremely worthwhile. Yeah, and and there's over eight hours so masterminds kind of got two parts you have the videos that you watch at your own pace. The 10 to 15 minute summer last there's a couple that are more than 15 minutes, but we try and chunk it out walk you through the entire application once you complete those videos you're going to get access to an in app course, which just verifies you learned how to navigate the application.

34:45And you can earn a patch that's that's one thing is is we give incentive if you work at things we're going to give you we send you patches for free if you're in the United States that the 48 main states. We send that to you for free is put your address and once you want to complete the course but you know that two facets is you have the videos where you learn. The the step and then again once you you're in the mastermind stuff you're part of those Q and A's every week so there's kind of a twofold is you know initially we wanted to go out and teach this but realistically who has eight hours is sitting in a classroom to learn it especially instructors you just don't have time to do that so that's why we we ended up kind of pivoting and going to this e learning course with the added on calls because one thing Austin didn't want to lose was that face to face he wanted that. Personalization to still be there so you know anybody who's in mastermind and yes there is a cost for it it's it's 20 bucks and and we hemhard about what do we charge for this because if you go to an eight hour course instructor level course what are you going to pay per day I mean 200 to 50 and and we said you know what it's worth it to us for people to take the course and learn how to use the product versus making money.

36:01And if you give some way for free a lot of people won't do it so we wanted to charge a token amount that hopefully you felt enough invested to get through the videos and engage but not you know it's it's what you can't even you can't even go do dinner in a movie for 20 bucks anymore so. We don't just more than that now exactly we had a you know up front we had a student who he even put in his review under masterminds like I was grumpy I was the grumpy one that I didn't want to pay 20 bucks to do this but he is on the call every week and he said it was the best 20 bucks he had ever spent it so. So yeah we don't have to be involved in the Q&A calls or just the videos that you can go watch they get updated quarterly so whenever we roll something new out so again that that integration I talked about there's videos about how that works in there and those were rolled out within a couple of weeks of that happening so it's right now it's a living course so anytime we make major app updates you're going to see stuff in there so that you can stay informed and every drill is in there it's got a video for every drill.

37:06It's got videos for every setting so it it can go pretty deep but take take what you want from that but if we've had a lot of people go a lot deeper and they thought they would and and have said they've trained better because of it so I think it's it's a you know I'm not saying that selfishly that I think it's a good thing to go through but if you own the product and it's been collecting dust because you've just been you know that that doing the app and use like I'm not technologically savvy. We break it down pretty easy and you don't have to go super deep into the app you're going to get what you want out of it and learn how to how to use those screens. Oh, that's good. Well, Karen, I appreciate you coming on the podcast and such but before we let you go we've got our season 10 questions we've been asking everybody tell us what is your one unknown talent nobody knows until now. Very few people know and I haven't done it a while but I my dad grew up a boulder so my whole family bold and I when I moved to Arkansas out of college I got involved and started bowling and actually it was pretty good boulder I'm not like pva level but you know I held my own for 15 years locally I was in the top five or six women in our local town.

38:27So I don't know if that's a hidden talent but I haven't bold and when you start doing gun stuff you have to give something up I gave up bowling because I I would much rather be teaching and and and being in the shooting world and shooting sports then throwing a ball down the alley plus you know more age that gets harder to you. Now here's my my confession or I my family bold for quite a while my brother is actually pretty decent boulder for but my wife and I won the low score in my company bowling tournament about 20 years 30 years ago now for. Yeah that's yeah that's how well I bowl my wife bold that's why I probably gave up bowling and shoot because I can shoot a lot better than I can bowl but still have the trophy low score and I think I think for two of us we were just a little under 150 points.

39:28I never had never had a perfect game but I did I did have one game where I I had just two frames that and one was a split and I picked it up but my highest I I still can't believe to this day I bowl the 267 in a game so. Wow that's good yeah so but yeah that's that's past life now we're we're you know in a different phase of life so. We're gun people yeah exactly well care working people find more information about you the mastermind and mantis so you got to mantis X dot com you're going to find everything about our products out there if you type in the search or go to the store you will find mantis X mastermind out there to purchase once you purchase it you'll get an email you have sign up for a password because we use a core software so you can find us there. We're obviously out on the social channels we have Facebook page and Instagram and all of the social media stuff so yeah that's that's where you can find us and if if people have questions yet you know about it you're welcome to email me at Kara at mantis X dot com i'm willing to talk to people if you just have questions about the program we're for signing up for it if you're instructor you want to get more involved let me know i'll I'll do what I can and if you're.

40:50And if you're in northwest Arkansas you can find me at spirit firearms training dot com very nice and before we get off one of the things we wanted to go along and inform everybody because this is one of those things where like it the word out there is a special program that's coming up grant program so everybody. Open years because this could be it could be beneficial for you or other groups you work with. So in September September 2026 we have designated me at mantis we've been trying to figure out how do we really put the spotlight on training and getting people to train whether that's dry fire whether it's going to the range whether it's going to classes so. We've been we've been mulling on this for a year and we've decided September 2026 were were designated as train the world or global training month. And to incentivize people going out and making shots whether that's through our mantis x app using your black beer tighten x 10 whatever to laser academy we're going to provide you a way to manually input training but we're we're looking at it hopefully hitting at 10 I think it's 10 million only it's 10 billion I think it's 10 million shot goal.

42:09And through some grants we want to donate money to some worthy organizations and make it a little competitive so that we can get the word out and so. If you go to train the world dot org you're going to find some basics on the programs not a lot out there yet but what you are doing is we are accepting grant applications. We are telling anybody if you're in the shooting space and that could be archery that could be shotgun that could be pistols or rifles if you're in that space and and you've got a program that you think's worthy of a grant donation. Go and thought a grant application now it can be for profit or nonprofit we are going to probably lean towards giving grants to nonprofits we would love to see shooting organizations women anything that focuses on women or children or veterans but that doesn't mean it's limited to those things so train the world dot org and the upper right you're going to see a place where you can thought a grant application were accepting those applications starting now through the end of May.

43:15The end of May and then what we'll do is is we will vote within the company of what of who we think I would be best for these grants and those will be announced I believe in August and then not dollar amounts but who who's in the running for them. So that September based on the number of shots will determine how much money will be given to these organizations so hopefully the organizations will get people around them excited and go out train so that we can hit that that shot count amount and give away a bunch of money to some deserving organizations. That's really good because care told me right before the show about this this is the first I've heard about it so the listeners to this show will be some of the first and hopefully you'll get out there with your. Your summer camps your scouts your four age your FFA your shotgun clubs your rifle gun your hunting clubs all those and get them to apply because all not all those kind of groups I know from personal experience are always looking for.

44:21Money and grants help them put their program on and this is a great way to go along not only get some money for them but also go along and get people thinking about training and training equates to safer and more more confident shooters and it may not even be money if you're looking for mantis equipment or looking for volunteers or equipment from other places in the industry we have you know there's synergy within the industry so you could request. Other merchandise from other places and we're going to maybe work with those other people there's other companies and say hey we think this is a worthy cause you want to jump in and help you know so it's it's it's donation of money supplies and and I'm volunteer so. You know we're going to try and connect do some connected dots out there and see if we can help us as much as possible not everybody's going to going to win a grant but we'd love to see I mean we'd love to see a lot of people apply so.

45:21That sounds good will care again thank you for your time today thank you for sharing what mantis has been doing and listeners take take a look at the madness products as well as the previous mantis episodes that we've got on the podcast to see where they've come from with their X one all the way to the. X one all the way to their X tenant and their Titan that they have now so thank you care you're welcome the pleasure that's right for this episode and I hope you found the conversation care informative and you'll. Check out one of her mastermind courses and the mantis products overall you know I've been a big fan of those for a long time and it's really great to see where they've gone from just the X one to begin with all the way up to what they've got in the mantis. Academy as well as in their block beard and the other products are there and it's next evolutionary step of care helping people get most out of it because there is a lot that their products do for you. Think about sharing this with somebody else who could use the information on mantis other instructor a friend anybody get the word out there as a.

46:28To a community we need to make sure each of us has information we need to be the best protector possible for ourselves and our family for searching for other content go out to our website farm trainer podcast calm use the search button the upper right hand corner for for other updates on mantis other updates on training or whatever you are looking for have questions or suggestions for me. Email me at ftp at concealed carry dot com and remember visit our sponsors especially farm traders association at FTA protect dot com learn more about their coverage certified instructors qualify for coverage. And listeners podcast get 10% off by using promo code ftp 10 at checkout bring this podcast support the industry the second amendment and most importantly every fire instructor America dedicates time energy. And to make gun owners more knowledgeable stay safe out there everyone.

47:28Can still carry in can still carry dot com strives to share helpful information and education about gun related topics training tips and other things that may potentially have legal implications for listeners the information contained in this podcast is intended in good faith but it is important to understand the laws vary from place to place. And we encourage listeners to seek local legal advice to understand laws that apply to them nothing in this podcast should be misconstrued is legal advice or counsel.