Piloting Your Life: In-Flight Entertainment (It’s Never Too Late to Dance) (May 1, 2018)
Welcome Back My Fearless Passengers:
I started back tap dancing a few weeks ago and this week it was hard to go. I had a long day on calls and my brain was exhausted. Tap dancing for me is a bit of a mental challenge because I learn by listening to the sounds and then try to translate the sounds from my brain to my feet. Since it’s been a few years (nearly 10) since I last tapped and I jumped into an advanced class, every Monday night is a mental and physical workout. This week I almost didn’t go because I thought it was going to be too hard and that I was going to look terrible in front of the other people in the class (ranging in age from 17 to 55 or so). But I realized that being afraid of looking bad wasn’t a good excuse not to go.
My son Adam also picked back up after 11 years and is taking beginner classes and is absolutely loving it. We talked about ‘being terrible’ at it on the way home and he doesn’t care at all because he’s loving it so much. He’s determined to be able to do the Singing in the Rain bit one day and is taking tap classes and singing lessons to do so. It is incredibly inspiring to seem him so excited to start something new at 17 (well, he did take tap classes at the same place between the ages of 3 and 6 as evidenced by these adorable pictures but this is a lot more challenging).
And then there’s my daughter Rachel who opened up the Fearless Baker cookbook the over the weekend and baked the most beautiful and tasty pie (Adam said it was the best apple pie he’d ever had). Today she decided to make a blueberry pie using the crust recipe from one cookbook and the blueberry mixture from a recipe for blueberry cobbler from another cookbook and just went for it. She was fearless.
I am inspired by my kids’ fearlessness in trying things and am determined to set a good example by overcoming my fear as well. If all else fails, I can just resort to being the troublemaker!
In-Flight Entertainment: Tracy Warren
The term FemTech was coined by Ida Tin about two years ago and I am pretty sure I created the term PediaTech last year. Regardless of what they are called, digital health will be a game changer for women and children. This week’s guest, Tracy Warren, started out investing in the space long before either term came into being and we spent some time talking about the opportunities, the challenges and the need to get more investor dollars into the hands of the founders building FemTech and PediaTech startups. We are both challenging the VCs to get back to taking risks and invest in these startups. Call us troublemakers but then again, we need to overcome our fear to change the world!
