Today we’d like to introduce you to Brian Challis.
Hi Brian, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I have a passion to create. One of my earliest memories is of sitting on the milkbox on our front porch, carving a figure out of a piece of wood. (Why did my Mom let me have a knife?) I’ve had three careers. Each has been an outlet for that passion:
My first venture was building wooden circular stairways which I began a month after I was married in 1974. I had never built a stair, but I loved the architectural grace of grand curving stairways. I had a vision and enjoyed a challenge. Our landlord was remodeling and needed an L shaped stair to be built. I told him I would build him a circular stair for the same price as an L shaped one. He agreed, and I took my first step on a circuitous eighteen-year climb.
When I sold my stair business in 1992, I began doing sculpture. I had puttered at the art (think milkbox) throughout my life and decided to give it a try professionally. With the help of several mentors, I managed to mold a second career. My commissions have been mostly people, but when my hands follow my heart, the result is abstract or impressionistic. Sculpture lost its alure after I completed a two-and-a-half-year commission for the Utah Jazz. But I have continued in a limited way.
In 2011 my son-in-law asked me to make him a pair of wood grips for his handgun. That was the beginning of a new career in a small niche of the gun industry. (Interestingly, I’m not a “gun guy.”) I made grips of wood, mammoth molar, fossils and meteorite (literally out of this world) and established an international reputation for a degree of excellence that has elevated the industry. Along the way I invented and patented a family of parts and tools for one of today’s most popular semiautomatic handguns which was invented in 1898 by John Moses Browning from Morgan Utah. In 2014 I quit making grips and have since focused on my parts and tools which I sell retail, wholesale and to some of the country’s finest gunsmiths and manufacturers. It continues to be a blast.
Along the way I’ve acquired fourteen patents, many friends, and a lot of joy. But the heart of my story is family. My wife, June, and I have six children, twenty-three grandchildren and a great grandson. The kind of creation that brings ineffable joy.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The road is never smooth.
Life is a mountain. I love mountains. I live at the foot of Lone Peak which rises nearly a mile and a quarter above our home. I’ve climbed it dozens of times. It’s a metaphor that looms through my office window. The upward path is a challenge, as it should be. As I ascend, the views become clearer and grander, and strength and grit mature. The stuff of freedom. I’ve taken my family along; all but one child (with asthma) summited before they were ten. I wanted them to experience the pain and ecstasy of ascension, and of expansive views—to learn how to do hard things. Life is a mountain—climb it!
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I specialize in innovation and I pursue excellence. I’ve found that doing first-class work attracts first-class customers. I think I’m known for trying to do a good job at whatever I undertake. Money is a necessary element in business, but for me, it’s a substitute for the real thing, a satisfied customer. I want to exchange my work for their smile. If I don’t get that, I’m not really paid. Maybe rightly so.
Are there any books, apps, podcasts or blogs that help you do your best?
I love books. but I’m seventy-five years old; what are those other things? I like the classic writers: Tolstoy, Melville, Hugo… The ones who make me think. My favorite novel may be Moby Dick. Hmmm, maybe The Hunchback of Notre Dame, or Les Miserable. I’m torn. Maybe it’s Mary Webb’s Precious Bane. I also enjoy the non-fiction of Simon Winchester. And many others.
