My Crazy Life Journey, Part 3

Now I’ll tell you a little bit about my plan and why I came up with it.

My husband and I are both hunters. We used to rifle hunt all the time, but there are so many people rifle hunting now that it’s pure crazy out there. The last rifle hunt we went on was like being in a war zone. It was really scary. We always had to watch out for other hunters, but it was getting worse out there. I couldn’t trust anyone, and there were so many people! We decided that we just weren’t into it anymore, and we didn’t feel safe at all, so we decided to try archery, and we instantly fell in love with it!

When we went to the archery shop to try bows out, there were all sorts of people there…men, women, children, and families. It was such a great environment! After shooting a few different bows, we decided that that’s what we wanted to do, and we’ve been totally addicted ever since!

We loved the fact that you had to get closer to the animals when you were hunting, and we also loved the fact that archery season is right when the bull elk are in the rut (looking for chicks), so they are kind of dumb and really horny. It makes hunting them a little easier because their mind is only on one thing…females!

We also felt safer. When we are out archery hunting we would rarely see people, whereas when we were rifle hunting we ALWAYS saw people, and lots of them! It was nice to not run into hunters all the time!

We also felt safer because of the fact that when you’re archery hunting, you have to get a lot closer to the animal, so there’s no chance of being shot at by another hunter from 500 yards. You want to usually get within 50 yards of the animal, so much less chance of getting shot at by another human! Plus, it was pretty amazing being that close to such magnificent creatures!

We found our passion!

There was only one problem. As with almost all sports, archery is very centered around men. There were some bows for females, but I really didn’t like any of them. They weren’t built the same as the bows for guys.

I also didn’t like the fact that every ad I saw for women had to be pink! I hate pink! Why do they think that ALL women love pink?? I didn’t want a pink bow and I didn’t want pink camouflage! No offense to people who love pink, but I really don’t want to hunt with it!

It was so hard to find things for women. In fact, most of the clothes I bought were for men or kids, because everything women-related is pink! I now own a bow that is NOT made specifically for women, and I love it! So, needless to say, I wasn’t happy about that part of archery.

I really wanted to create a movement, a revolution, if you will. All the archery magazines I read are also centered around men. All the articles, all the pictures, all the ads. There may be one little, tiny ad in the back of the magazine for women, but again, it’s usually pink! I needed to create change! The number of women getting into archery is growing by leaps and bounds, and I didn’t want women to go through the same things I did, so I had a plan.

My plan was to create a membership site for everyone, but I wanted it to be centered around women for a change. I wanted it to be like a one-stop-shopping experience. A place where women could go to find everything they needed and to learn everything they needed. I wanted to supply information, products, and all sorts of things that I couldn’t find when I was starting out. So I created Chrome X Archery…short for Chromosome X Archery.

I had all sorts of great ideas, but I had no idea where to start. And I felt so overwhelmed and stressed. I wanted to be able to give women everything they needed when they needed it, but how was I going to do all of this? It felt like an impossible task.

When I started out in archery, there was nothing like this for me, and I found it extremely frustrating.

Internally, while it was very important to me to have a place for women to go to find everything they needed for archery, it was also important to me that women received the same respect and authority that men had in the world of archery. As I mentioned before, all the archery magazines were drenched in articles and ads for men, and nothing for women. How was that fair? You might find an article here and there every once in a blue moon that had to do with a female archer, but it was rare, and that wasn’t fair to me, especially because I knew plenty of female archers who could outshoot the guys!

Guys got all the attention, and women got none. Why weren’t there articles about women or for women? I couldn’t understand it.

And because I’m an outdoorsy person and I love many of the activities that guys tend to do (dirt bikes, mountain bikes, shooting, archery, etc.), I actually deal with this a lot.

It’s the same with dirt biking. All the bikes, equipment, magazines, and shows are centered around men. I can ride a dirt bike better than most of the guys we go riding with, yet no one manufactures a bike for women like me. I have to have all my bikes modified, because I can’t ride a little bike on the trails I do, and the big bikes are just that, too big. I’m 5’ 3” and everything I get is way too tall, so everything I get has to be modified. More and more women are getting into dirt bikes, too, and it’s the same thing for them. All the good trail bikes are super tall, so unless you’re a really tall female, you either have to buy a little bike, which has much less power, or you have to modify your bike, which is really expensive. AND most dirt bike gear for females is pink! It’s ridiculous!

I felt like an afterthought in everything, and I was sick of feeling that way. I wanted women to be at the top of the same leaderboards as men. There was no reason they shouldn’t be.

I kept hitting walls when I started my Facebook page and website. I wasn’t sure where to start. I knew what I wanted to do, but I didn’t know how to accomplish it all. So I started talking to groups for women online. I figured I could get some ideas from them and go from there. But this turned out to be more difficult than I thought.

I looked for archery forums first. The first one I found I thought was a home run, but it ended up not being a home run at all. A guy was asking a question for his girlfriend. She was having issues shooting her bow because every time she shot, she would hit her boobs with the string.

I started reading the answers, and you know what I found? Not one answer came from a female! Not one! There were tons and tons of answers from guys, and I’m not saying they’re answers were wrong, because a lot of them made good points, but no one talked about what she could have done from a female’s perspective.

I couldn’t believe it! Perhaps none of them really knew. I mean, none of them had been in a situation like that, so how would they know? But my biggest burning question was, why weren’t any women answering this question? I suppose it was the same reason I didn’t answer it. I felt inferior.

I don’t want women to feel inferior anymore. I want them to have a voice in whatever it is they are passionate about, whether it’s archery, dirt biking, or anything that is mainly centered around men. But how could I make them feel like they had a voice and that their voice would be respected? That was the question I couldn’t quite answer.

Even though more and more women were getting into archery, I felt that we would always be second to men. How do you change that? I had no clue, but I really wanted to find out.

So I began researching and researching, learning and learning, doing everything I could to find a way to give women a voice. That’s when I decided to create a place for women. A place where they were number one. Of course, I wanted men to benefit from it, too, but I wanted women to be the main reason for it. That was my goal.

That’s when I found the One Funnel Away Challenge, a place where people to go to grow their business ideas. They warned us that it would be a challenge, and they weren’t kidding about that! I came across all sorts of barricades that slowed me down and made me second guess my choices. But I kept forging on, and I’ve met some amazing people in the process.

Watch for Part 4 on my journey and learn about some of the challenges I faced on the road to my discoveries! In the meantime, if you want to read a little bit about boobs and bows (sorry guys, no boob pictures for you!), you can visit my Facebook page and my website, Chrome X Archery. You’ll also find other helpful articles there! Enjoy!

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