Something you should go Something you should know is brought to you by genesisgoldira dot com. That's also something you should know. You can put your retirement plan. I'm the gold Standard. Learn more and get a free gold and Silver guide at Genesis gooldr dot com. Excited to visit with a pretty awesome lady right now. Michelle Mace Curran is the second woman in history to serve as a lead solo pilot for the US Air Force Thunderbirds, and
she's got a brand new book out. It's called The Flip Side, How to Invert your perspective and turn fear into your Superpower. This looks fantastic. How long does it take to write a book like this?
I have been working on it for almost exactly three years, from the time I started the books proposal to the time it released just a couple of weeks ago. So it is not a quick process.
And I think this book can help a lot of people as they're trying to navigate their way through life. Who would you say is the ideal person to read this book?
I love the question because I think people assume it's for other pilots. They assume it's for military enthusiasts, and I wanted to write it for your average person who is facing some sort of obstacles where things feel uncertain.
And so when I close my eyes and you know, my team is like, who's the customer avatar, I'm like, it's like the thirty five year old mom who's been out of the workforce raising her kids for a few years and is coming back as they go to school and feels all this self doubt and imposter syndrome because she's been out of the game for a while and it feels scary and she has that low level anxiety. Because that is really just a good example of the
kind of relatable stuff that's in the book. It's framed around these pretty insane stories from the cockpit, but the lessons that are pulled out of them are for situations exactly like that, those times when we let that fear stop us and we take it as a stop sign rather than just data that our brains is giving us
that's often misinformed. And so I wrote it for your average person who struggled with those feelings of self doubt, of fear, of you know, wanting to feel comfortable rather than going after this thing that's probably going to push them to grow.
I love that. And many times we have crossroads in our life. When you're graduating as one of those, but when you're getting married, maybe taking a new job, maybe move into a different community. When these things are happening, you want some help navigating your way. And I think this book, The Flip Side, might actually be able to help people make better choices when it is a crossroads in their life.
Yeah, exactly. I do a lot of keynote speaking, and I share very similar themes and stories during my speeches, and it's really been amazing and eye opening to me to have everyone from high school girls at a leadership conference that that was the target audience coming up to me afterwards, to very experienced male leaders in the corporate world coming up to me after a speech and being like, I feel like you wrote that for me. I've been feeling that so many points during my career, during my life.
You know, I'm about to graduate, it's scary, I'm about to retire, it's scary. I'm about to be a leader for the first time. It's scary. And so it is not for a specific age, a specific demographic, It's for really that human.
Experience I love that. I'm going to make it easy to find to copy this book. I'll throw a link to it. But if I don't talk to you about the Thunderbirds, I'm going to get run out of town. You were a pilot for the US Air Force Thunderbirds. What is it like being a pilot? You guys all work in symphony, You're all like working together. I've seen you at the air show here in Sioux Falls. It's amazing to watch. What is that experience like to be a part of that?
It is quite a unique honor to be on the team. And I actually slew the Suo Falls air show in twenty nineteen, so I've been there and done that show and great town. I'm from Wisconsin originally, so I always like to get back to the Midwest. But it is such an extreme example of trust and teamwork at the highest level. And people see us, the pilots, you know, kind of as the face of team out there doing
these maneuvers, and they look dectifying from the outside. It really comes down to just an insane amount of discipline and repetition we practice at the highest level. I would compare it to a professional sports team, you know, We're out there all year round doing rec after rep as the rep. Sometimes during training season when air shows aren't happening, we're flying ten times a week, and it is just doing it again and again and again until you can't
get it wrong. But then you have one hundred and thirty people that make up that team, and you know, ninety something of those are maintainers that make sure the jets aren't like the best working condition, and we literally trust those people with our lives, right, like, if something were to break on the jet and the type of flying that we're doing, it could have catastrophic results. And so it is the highest performing team I've ever had
the honor being a part of. And just the trust and the shared mission and the work ethic of being on the road almost two hundred and fifty days a year doing about seventy air shows per season is just something that a lot of people don't get to see behind the scenes, and it is absolutely incredible.
That's awesome. So I actually saw you fly because I was at that air show. And we don't have one every year, but we do have another one coming up this year twenty twenty six, So folks get ready for another amazing Sioux Falls Air Show play.
The Thunderbirds will be there.
I hope so too. I don't know if they've announced who's going to be here yet. It's always an amazing lineup and every time the Thunderbirds are here, it's always one of the most amazing pieces of the air shows.
It is quite the spectacle. If you've never seen it, it will make you feel very proud and patriotic and just like supportive of the military and the precision that we're able to deliver.
Michelle, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us. I really appreciate it.
Thanks for having me.
Our guest has been Michelle Mace Curran and she's got a new book called The Flip Side, How to Invert your perspective and turn fear into your superpower. It's available now and I've got a link to it at Facebook dot com slash Sunny Radio and Facebook dot com slash Suit Falls News. Something you Should Know. Something you Should Know is brought to you by Genesisgoldra dot com. Put your retirement plan on the gold Standard. Get a free Gold and Silver guide now at Genesisgoldra dot com.