158. Fighter Pilot to Founder | Michelle "Mace" Curran

She's the second woman in history to fly lead solo for the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds and she still describes her early years in a fighter squadron as "classic imposter syndrome." Michelle "Mace" Curran spent years running from failure before she realized what was actually driving her forward, and in this conversation with Dwayne Kerrigan, she pulls back the curtain on the debrief culture that rebuilt her confidence — and the messy, control-freak transition from single-seat cockpit to solo entrepreneur.

In this episode:

How a moment in the bookstore at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum led, four years later, to Michelle's children's book What's Your Call Sign?Why Michelle calls her first Air Force assignment "classic imposter syndrome" — and how she learned to tell the difference between being pulled toward a goal and running from failureInside the Air Force flight debrief: how "root cause" and a single "lesson learned" sentence turn every flight — successful or not — into a team-wide teaching momentWhat changed when Michelle transferred to a reserve squadron in Texas right after it had debriefed a near-catastrophic mishapWhy leaving the military for entrepreneurship exposed her as, in her words, "a control freak," and what she's doing to build a real team instead of running her business like a one-person cockpitHow hitting the USA Today bestseller list with her book The Flip Side actually coincided with a dip in speaking bookings — and the lesson she took from it

Time Stamps:

00:00 Imposter Syndrome

00:24 Welcome

00:55 Meet Michelle “Mace” Curran

02:39 Why Kids Books

05:24 From Wisconsin To Jets

06:53 Advice For Parents

09:10 Pull Versus Push

14:48 Japan Pressure Cooker