I like to show my work. Maybe it’s a carryover from trying to be a good student when I struggled in math classes, but I want to illustrate to you how I think. That way, you aren’t left having to take my answer on faith and you have the opportunity to learn what goes into a hot take. Besides showing you every step I take so that you can decide if the sum of my findings logically results in my final conclusions, I also want to give you a way to evaluate my process. As I’ve talked about before here at On Her Own, it’s one of the ways you can decide for yourself if I’m able to back up my words with true, measurable experience and knowledge, and it’s one of the ways I can answer your questions even if you can’t ask me directly. In other words, it’s a way I can demonstrate my path and expertise whether you agree with my results or not, and give you reasons to believe what I have to say.
For the Flashbang Bra Holster, that included giving you an insight into my thoughts as I went through the process of evaluating the carry method, not just what I thought after the fact. It means you might have spotted some of my doubts and sidetracks, but it also means you might see that I did in fact think about ideas you’re wondering about yourself, and see how I resolved them to get to my end result. My transparency is also intended to help you if you want to go on your own journey with this or another product. What kinds of things should you be thinking about? What should your evaluation look like? You have my starting points and the tests that I used, so that you can try for yourself. You can also use it as a comparison against claims others might make, and decide for yourself if they, too, have done the work to come to a different conclusion and if you want to believe them more (and it’s okay if you do!).
One of the things we weren’t able to include in the InRangeTV video, though, is this conversation I had with Craig Douglas shortly after the Extreme Close Quarter Concepts (ECQC) that I took the Flashbang to. I’ve mentioned before that one of the ways we can tell if a claimed expert’s work is legitimate is to look at who they build their work on, so this is a peek into what that can look like. In this video, Craig and I talked about our expectations for the holster going in, the way in which it was integrated into the class (and why we did it the way we did), more details about how it all went, and Craig’s thoughts about it after we were all done. I’m providing it in full here, so that you can get more of an insight into “how the pros do it” and the nuances that must be considered as we work towards those summary yes/no answers.
