Show Notes

• A lifelong sport
• Maiden – an all-women team
• Training for adversity
• Women’s Sports Foundation
• The benefits of diversity
• Raising the caliber of sailing in the US
• Advice about breaking through barriers

Connect With Dawn Riley

✩ Website: https://dawnriley.com/
✩ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/driley2184
✩ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dawn.riley.3591
✩ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dawnriley/

Connect With Oakcliff Sailing

✩ Website: http://www.oakcliffsailing.org
✩ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oakcliffsail/
✩ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Oakcliffsail/
✩ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/oakcliff-sailing-center/

Summary

Dawn Riley is a legend in the world of sailing! She has raced in four America’s Cups and two Whitbread Round the World races, and was the first woman ever to manage an America’s Cup sailing team. She was also named one of Sports Illustrated’s Top 100 Greatest Female Athletes of the 20th Century. Dawn shares her sailing journey, and provides a roadmap for navigating challenges that will inspire sailors and non-sailors alike.

Full Transcript

Brian
Welcome to another episode of LifeExcellence with Brian Bartes. Join me as I talk with amazing athletes, entrepreneurs, authors, entertainers, and others who have achieved excellence in their chosen field so you can learn their tools, techniques and strategies for improving performance and achieving greater success.

Dawn Riley is an absolute legend in the world of sailing; she has raced in four America’s Cups and two Whitbread Round the World races and was the first woman ever to manage an America’s Cup sailing team. Dawn was also named one of Sports Illustrated’s Top 100 Greatest Female Athletes of the 20th Century. She has been inducted into the National Sailing Hall of Fame, the International America’s Cup Hall of Fame and the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame and is the only person to be inducted into all three. A past president of the Women’s Sports Foundation, Dawn is also a much sought after motivational speaker. She is currently Executive Director of the Oakcliff Sailing Center, a training and coaching organization in Oyster Bay in New York. Oakcliff offers unique programs from corporate team building to a residential program for athletes seeking a career in the marine industry. Through these programs, Oakcliff builds American leaders through sailing, and is helping the US to regain its leadership position in the sport. I’m super excited for our conversation and it’s an honor to have her on the show. Welcome, Dawn, and thanks for joining us on LifeExcellence.

Dawn
Thank you for having me.

Brian
Dawn, based on my very limited knowledge of sailing – and you’ll understand as we get into the conversation just how limited it is – it seems like the people I know who sailed grew up sailing; either their dad sailed or their parents were into sailing. And the other thing is that they continue to do it their entire lives. Do you find that too? How did you first get into sailing?

Dawn
Well, first of all, sailing is a great sport because it is a lifelong sport. I’m still very active and I’m just about to turn 60 so it is a lifetime sport. The longevity is wonderful. One thing that I’ve been working for since the mid 90s is to change the fact that before, you used to have to have a family that sailed – which I did; we didn’t race but we sailed. We didn’t belong to a yacht club but we sailed. We’re trying to change that as quickly as possible to introduce the sport to all different parts of America in particular, but also the world.

Brian
I think you were just 24 years old when you join the crew of Maiden, the first all women team to sail the Whitbread Round the World Race, which is now called the Ocean Race. How did it feel to be part of that team, especially given the barriers that were being shattered in the male dominated world of sailing? That was revolutionary to have an all women team wasn’t it?

Dawn
It was, but at the time when you’re making history, you’re not really aware of it. We were there to go sailing, we wanted to race around the world and we weren’t invited and welcomed on other boats unless we were the chef. Ironically, I’m a really good cook but I didn’t want to be the chef on a boat with a bunch of guys, I would have preferred to sail co-ed. And that’s what I’ve worked forward to so even when we were breaking the mold, we figured we’d do one all women’s team, the guys would go, oh, that’s right, those girls can sail, and then we’d be integrated. Of course, that didn’t happen right away.

Brian
Was that the first time that you had sailed around the world?

Dawn
Yes, 1980 and I was only 24. I mean, I had to go to college and do a few other things first.

Brian
Yes, I understand. Dawn, describe what it feels like for you to be out in the middle of the ocean halfway around the world. I think it’s a feeling that most of us will probably never experience and probably can’t fully appreciate, especially if we’re not sailors.

Dawn
Well, when you’re out there, it’s beautiful, it’s quiet, it could be noisy, it could be scary, you’re isolated, but it’s extreme; you’re in the moment and you’re in the zone. I’ve always [found] the harder part is getting ready to go, the anticipation, being anxious because you want to get going and also a little afraid of what you might see in the unknown. And then the worst part is actually coming back to land and having all of the noise and all of the other stresses that you could just not have [at sea]. I mean, I just came back from the Newport to Bermuda race and it was an amazing experience to watch all these young people on…we had an OC-86, a maxi boat. We sailed with 24 and to see them interact and form a team…I knew that we were getting within cell phone range of Bermuda but I didn’t bring it up. It was almost sad; the first kid that turned on his phone went, oh, my god, and everybody’s heads went down in the phone again. There’s something pure and beautiful about being out there.

Brian
Is that what you enjoy most about being out on the water?

Dawn
The full focus…(Brian: The serenity.) Yes. I think serenity, I’ve probably not spoken properly about that; it’s the zone, the focus. It might be beautiful and quiet and the moon and the sun up at the same time or it can be just insane with wind and storms. But you have no distraction. You’re just trying to get the boat there safely as fast as possible.

Brian
You mentioned storms. I’m guessing you’ve obviously encountered storms and other challenges through the years. I actually had Laura Decker on the show a while back; I’m sure you know her but for those of you who don’t, Laura, at the age of 16, was the youngest person to solo circumnavigate the globe. One of the things that really surprised me was how she responded when I asked her if there was ever a time that she feared for her life when she was sailing, or maybe thought that she wasn’t going to get through a situation. And she told me that getting scared was not an option. What she said was being afraid would increase the possibility of making a mistake so she didn’t allow that to enter her thinking. So I wonder Dawn, how do sailors train for adversity so that they don’t panic in a storm? Either a literal storm or a figurative storm, some other kind of adversity? What can we all do to handle ourselves better under pressure?

Dawn
The first thing is you prepare, prepare, prepare. We always say that stress makes you stupid because it does; the adrenaline and the blood rushing through your ears and your brain and you’re locking down. So we always [say] the more you’re prepared, the least [sic] stressed you are in the moment. After a situation happens sometimes then you take a second breath, you’re like, holy crap that was close. We’re probably slightly overly confident in our ability, but you have to be. You have to think about it all the time. What could happen? What are the loads? What are the limits of the boat? Am I preserving the equipment or am I going fast? Because the difference – I know Laura, she’s great – she was doing it to get around the world, we’re always trying to get there as fast as we possibly can so we’re pushing those limits a little bit more, but we take safety very, very seriously. We’re always connected to the boat. I say you don’t need a life-jacket if you don’t get detached from the boat. So you are safe, you are methodical or systematic, you practice and you think through. There’s never a downtime; if you’re sitting on the rail just keeping the weight up and your boat flat, you’re looking around to see what could possibly go wrong. And if that goes wrong, you’re listening for sounds, you’re aware of everything on the boat.

Brian
How can we expand that strategy or apply it outside of sailing? Hopefully there are a lot of sailors listening to the show and watching it on YouTube but for those of us who aren’t sailors, I think we all go through storms, we all have adversity in life. How can we apply the description of navigating through adversity in sailing to what whatever storms come up in our lives?

Dawn
Well, there’s a difference between worrying about what might happen and planning for what could happen. So if you’re just sitting there circling the drain and knowing that everything’s going to be wrong, and just letting your blood pressure get up, it’s going to do you no good. In daily life, we have a schedule, we have a list and our list, our goals…we say that we have very high standards and goals and if they weren’t so high, but acknowledging that we’re not going to reach all of them because they are goals, if it’s not [that], it’s just a to do list and what’s the fun in that. Let’s push ourselves, plan for it, move forward. If you are focused on every single step, you’re prepared every bit of the way; you enjoy and do everything which is within your ability to do, as best as you possibly can. Then the results, the winning, is almost accidental. It seems easy when it all fits together.

Brian
Interesting and that’s very well said. Help us to understand – you mentioned Laura, for example, getting around the world rather than trying to do it quickly – in racing help us to to understand what that’s like. I don’t expect you to walk us all the way through a race, but what are some of the dynamics that you’re focusing on during a race that help you to finish faster than other teams, for example?

Dawn
Well, the first thing is…when I talk about preparation, I do a speech to different groups where I talk about how to prepare for a regatta in the summer. It’s an hour long speech and about minute 49, we actually get to the race area so it’s all about preparation and all the details that you start with. Then once you’re in the race, you’re looking for the most tiny increments, because if you are just a tenth of a knot faster than the other boat consistently, you’re going to win. I’ve won and lost races by inches. It’s an extremely active, slow motion, race from somebody from the outside but on the inside, it’s every nuance: every trim, adjustment, angle, body weight, feeling, using all your senses, feeling the wind, smelling what’s coming next – whether it’s a storm or if you’re sailing in Chicago, maybe a little bit of the taxi smoke coming off the shore – looking at the clouds. You’re using all of your senses when you’re in the race. The biggest thing though, is it’s full, intense racing. There are no opportunities to kind of just chat about what you did last night at the bar. That’s before and after.

Brian
Oh, interesting. I was going to ask you about that; whether you got just even a momentary break but there are so many things that go into it, I imagine, that you really have to be…

Dawn
To be fair, as you’re on day 32 of sailing the boat from Punta del Este to Australia and you’re starting to get close, your mind does start to wander in some stories from the past, shore side escapades do come out.

Brian
Getting back to Maiden for just a minute, what was the reaction in the sailing community after the success you had at Whitbread? You didn’t win the race but you fared pretty well and I think won a couple parts of the race?

Dawn
We won both of the hardest legs where people thought that we were going to cry and come home; we finished second. But it was the same thing for when I was 15 and working on boats in Lake St. Claire and the Great Lakes, with Maiden when I was the only female on the team in 1992, with the women’s team in the America’s Cup in ’95; it is a progression, everybody says you can’t do it. People that aren’t really paying attention are like, have a nice time, but it’s your immediate teammates that first understand your skill level and your contribution. Then it’s your competitors and then it becomes the race organizers and the media and everybody else, the public. So when you’re on the deck of a boat and you’re sailing with the guys, you’re the only woman; whatever it is – you’re all pulling in the spinnaker – they don’t care what your gender is, they just want to make sure the spinnaker comes down.

Brian
You mentioned that America’s Cup race in ’92, again, another example of breaking barriers but the last thing you said – the other folks on the crew didn’t care whether you’re a man or woman – beyond that, did you feel like you were starting to gain some respect as a sailor or were you still being looked at differently? Not necessarily by your crew, but by the sport in general, or people who followed the sport or the community? Or were you starting to make headway?

Dawn
Like I said, when I’m out at sea, I’m slightly overly confident. I am always an optimist, which is I am always so surprised when we don’t reach that goal – when we set an impossible goal and we don’t quite reach it, I’m like, but why not? So for me, when I was breaking barriers, I was just doing what I wanted to do and sailing with people that I knew and I was confident. The surprise would be when somebody would call me the “C” word or I would get kicked off a boat because they didn’t realize that my name was spelled D-a-w-n as opposed to D-o-n, or when I’d be talking business – remember this is before SafeSport, this is before sexual harassment really was talked about as a bad thing; it was just part of being one of the boys – I’d be talking to somebody – I thought – about a job interview, a boat captain spot, something professional for me, and they’d say yeah, let’s go talk about it in the hot tub. Now I have the confidence to say are you freaking kidding me? Get out of my face. Which is what I try to train young people to know; I say that the first line of defense is say “no.” I’m lucky enough to have the strength physically and the confidence to say get out. But those are the things that no matter how strong you are and how confident you are, you still kind of go, wow, that was super insulting.

Brian
Yes. You’re a trailblazer for women in competitive sailing certainly, but you’ve also been an advocate for diversity in sports and also in business. You’re a past president of the Women’s Sports Foundation, as I mentioned in your intro, and that’s an organization founded by Billie Jean King to expand access and opportunities for girls and also for women in sports. What do women bring to sailing teams? Because I know you have a very strong opinion about that skill set. I actually share that in generally speaking and certainly in business. What did they bring to sailing teams first and how are businesses better with women on their leadership teams?

Dawn
All right, well, first of all, Billy, I think, is the eternal optimist as well. She expected the Women’s Sports Foundation to be in existence for about five years and then we would have cured all of the issues with women in sports, and we’d have equality; we’re still fighting that one on sailing team diversity and women being the first line of diversity on all male teams. But then you start to get to different backgrounds, different experiences. First of all, on the strength side, if you’re a female or male [and] you’re the same size and the same body weight, same body fat – you’re the same strength, there’s no difference. On a boat, it’s good to be light and strong. I am not light. Everybody assumes, when they first started encouraging more women to sail, they’re like, oh, are you 100 pounds? No, I’m 170 pounds, but I’m down to ten percent body fat when I’m competing, so I’m the equivalent of a male 170 pound person, sailor. So that’s one thing. Women, because they’ve had different experiences, have different ways of looking at problems…if you’re going to generalize, a female is better at multi-tasking and rolling with it either just because they are or because they’ve been raised that they have to because a male – I’m going to go off track here – a male in a marriage they get to ask, the woman has to say, oh, really, I accept the proposal. Think back to when our parents were there, that was the thing, I want to get out of the house. I have to find a man to get a credit card. There’s been this history that’s really slow in moving you out of it. You have a different way of looking at it but the bottom line is that in sailing, having a diverse team is better than a single gender and single experience team, because you’re only working from a very limited set of information. It’s what you’ve experienced in you growing up in a homogeneous situation. All of a sudden, something happens where the wind changes or something strange happens, you need to have that collective diverse experience base. It translates straight into the boardroom. We know statistically that if you have one female on a board, it doesn’t make much difference; you have two females on a board, it makes some difference and when you have three females on a typical board of nine to 13, that you end up increasing, statistically, the profits of those corporations. For the same reason – a different background, a different way of thinking of it – then once you get from one, where you’re seen as the token; two where, well, that’s just them; three, you become part of the organization.

Brian
First of all, I wholeheartedly agree with you and my context for application is more on the business side, not on the sailing side at all but I found that continually it’s women think differently. They bring a different set of skills to the table. I would say even one person on a team, if that person isn’t the token person – token woman to use your words – but if that person is truly given a voice and an opinion and is heard and is part of collaborative decision making, then that collective decision is better than the decision of just the men in the room. It’s being in this and being heard.

Dawn
Absolutely, and if we got to the point where there were all women boards, having men on it would do the same thing. It’s the different background. Then when we can start adding in the cultural diversity and international diversity, that’s also seen as a strength.

Brian
Sure, totally agree. I feel like we’re making decent progress with equality in sports and we certainly are in the C-suite. We can argue whether it’s enough or not enough but I think we’ve made progress certainly in the 35 years since you’ve crewed on Maiden. How would you assess the progress in sailing, and then more broadly in sports and business? I’m interested in your perspective on that.

Dawn
In sailing, the final frontier is women in decision making. That means women boat owners and female technicians and skippers because they’re the ones that essentially make the hiring decisions. They’re the ones that say, of course we’re going to have Shirley as our house person. There was one time I was sailing on a super yacht – which is the Gucci side of sailing, it’s like the Perini Navi and St. Barts and Porto Cervo and all that – and I was in charge. I was lucky that I knew somebody that put me in charge and they loved me. I lost my homes person so I turned to my friend Sam Davies, I was like, hey, Sam, do you want to steer Perini Navi in New Zealand? She’s like, sure – actually, that was St. Barts – then all the sudden I’m on the boat and just accidentally I ended up with Sam Davies the homes person, I was the crew boss tactician, Susie Leach was the navigator, we had a woman in the front of the boat and we had Nicky Souter as the trimmer and then Sonia was my grinder, because on those boats – she’s the tiniest little thing – those boats, you have hydraulic winches – she would listen and the big guys would just pull shit and that doesn’t work. We ended up with more women than men on the boat and that was just a great team. We ended up, I think, third, and it was just accidental. So it can go both ways but we were mixed.

Brian
Let’s switch gears a little bit and talk about Oakcliff Sailing. Since 2010, you’ve been the executive director there. Tell us about the origin of Oakcliff – it’s a fascinating story – and about the great work that you’re doing there.

Dawn
I was sailing super yachts, I was going to run for office, I was working in politics, I was going to write my second book, I was doing motivational speaking; I had no intention of moving to Long Island, New York, as they say out here. But I was also a consultant, I worked with developers and different organizations, and I also did a fair amount of pro bono nonprofit work. I was recruited literally off of Facebook. They said, we’d like you to come out and meet with us. I helped them with a community sailing center. Then they said, we also have this other thought, we have too many boats, we have some money, what would you do to change the sport of sailing? So I was given that. I was hired for a year as a consultant and as – at least in my opinion – a failed consultant is when your answer is, oh, I’m the person to fix the job. The consultant is not supposed to get themselves hired, the consultant is supposed to help the organization be stronger. But they refused to do it without me. I argued for three months, and I finally said, okay just before Christmas. I moved out here January 1 of 2010, in my car, which is a little Ford Escape that fit everything that I needed to move to New York, and I was going to stay here three years. I’m here 14 years, but the mandate was to take these assets and change the sport. I had come from a unique position where I had been on – in the industry – I had been on the board of US Sailing, the national governing body. I had identified some different areas [where] we had some concerns. I did put together the business plan and the three year strategic plan. I accidentally came across it about three years and two months later and I looked at it, I was like, oh yeah, we did all that and we did more. We had the plan. I never opened it up again. We just moved forward. Now one of our first mandates was to fill Oyster Bay with sails; we’ve done that. And then we went from, in the Matri scene, which is a world circuit, we went from having just one person in the top 100 to dominate in that area. The Around the World Race, my graduates just won the Ocean Race – Mark and Charlie with 11th Hour Racing – and the Olympics is the one that we’re still working on because, nobody in America will be shocked, when you have a national governing body it’s like working with Congress and the president, all three wings of governance all in one room and trying to get things done; it’s not easy. On top of the fact that you’re trying to market the opportunities to 12, 15, 17 year olds who all think that they have invented the sport of sailing and you have to kind of corral them. So it’s the hardest one at both ends, the young and the old end.

Brian
Part of the charge when you started was to raise the caliber of sailing in the United States. What did that look like? Give us a sense of how that was in 2010, how we were faring vis-a-vis other countries and how much progress are we making to put America back on top of the sport?

Dawn
We’re making a significant amount of progress, specifically with Oakcliff. One of the things that we don’t really talk about in our marketing but is the key thing where we probably contributed the most is…it gets really complicated but there was a group that decided that professional sailors were bad and they cost the sport too much money. And so there was a restriction on professional sailors having to get paid to go sailing and then you weren’t allowed to sail. So it was a self-fulfilling prophecy of throwing our talented people down unless they were rich. Because what it really said was, if you have enough money that you don’t need – you can eat and live the life of a sailor without having to make money – then you can but if you’re somebody like me, who grew up middle class and had to work your butt off, you can’t get into the sport. So that is the thing that we’ve really done completely different than anywhere else in the world. New Zealand and Sweden and China, they come here and train with us because we train everybody, not only in the sailing side, but in the maintenance, the boat work, we give them technical skills, so they can become a sail maker, they can become a designer. We have serious graduates and serious places becoming leaders in the sport of sailing, and some who have taken their experience and gone out. And we’ll see. We’ll see when the first one’s elected to Congress. There we go. That’ll be a big test.

Brian
Well, I’m glad you moved it outside of sailing, because that’s a segue into my next question…in researching for the show, the programming at Oakcliff Sailing is incredible. I was looking at your brochure and it states – and I’m quoting – that Oakcliff offers an innovative environment that infuses sailors with a culture and drive for success. So looking at it from the outside – and again, not [that] I understand everything you said about technically how you’re helping people, sailors, to race and preparing them for jobs within the marine industry – but it really seems like the lessons they get at Oakcliff transcend sailing. What is the skill set that students develop that helps them to not only become better sailors, but can be applied more broadly in their business and professional lives, even if – like you said – they end up in Congress or someplace else outside the marine industry?

Dawn
We’re pretty strict on “it’s hard work, it’s a privilege to be here”. We are a public nonprofit so we accept donations and those donations are to be used – every penny – as if it was your last penny. So we’re very fiscally responsible, we work hard, we talk about ethics and how to do things correctly, what’s right, what’s not. We still have a lot of fun. It’s lucky that we are in a situation where we can do what we love and go sailing and work and learn. Teamwork is a big, big part of it; there’s nothing you can do, literally, on a boat by yourself unless you’re only on the boat by yourself, and even then your team on shore is bigger than your team on the water. So it’s still a team. It’s a hard place to be…to be a trainee and to work here. People don’t always make it. I would say…every year we have 60 to 70 people that come through the program and there are probably two or three that really, really don’t like me at the end of the summer. Then eventually, most of them come back at some point and they’re like, you were really mean to me, thank you, and I just want to say, why did it have to be that hard? We shouldn’t have had to fight. But yeah, we attract people also that are passionate and strong willed and want something that’s not normal.

Brian
Well, I think sometimes you can impart wisdom, but students aren’t ready for the lesson. Maybe the folks who come back after the fact and say you’re really mean or you were hard on me or you did this or that, they appreciated you doing that but they just weren’t quite ready for it at the time.

Dawn
Yeah, the best part is when I see…the group that we have on site right now is so tight and so good. They all came to us during COVID. We had a little mini insurrection during COVID. We kept everybody safe. We let everybody sail, we came up with innovative ways, we helped the state of New York reintroduce boating to the public, we did groundbreaking stuff in the middle of a pandemic, which is exactly what we talked about on the boat. You have a problem, you think about all the factors and you come up with a solution. We made face coverings – buffs – that were athletic, so you could sail in them, they were sun protective. And because we’re sailors there’s usually some sort of social event, we put grommets in that you’d wear in the back so when it’s time for the regatta party, you could put a straw in and have a cocktail. It’s fun, it’s driven, it’s problem solving, we move forward. Most of the people that are here right now made it through that. Where some of the people thought that I was being mean, COVID was all my fault, because I was the one in charge telling them that they couldn’t go out and date on Tinder during the pandemic – shocker! – but to a 20 year old it could be really traumatic. Then this group, they’re so good with each other and so good at what they do and openly discussing what is going on, they’re strong enough to identify a problem without feeling like they’re tattle-tales. They will take care of it themselves. They’re really, really good, strong individuals.

Brian
How do students find Oakcliff? We’re in 2024, so COVID started a few years ago; what’s the typical duration, if there is, or just a range of how long students stay with you?

Dawn
If I knew how we found them all then I would be better at finding more. Basically, the more people that are here, we just keep adding programs. We haven’t reached critical…actually, for the Bermuda race we had 89 people go to Bermuda. That was the most we could fit with all the training and everything. But typically we started at 15. It’s [age]15 and above. We have younger 15 year olds and then older that are like midlife crises that want to take a four week training. Those are the shorter programs we call Acorns. But a typical high schooler will come for one program, which is two to four weeks in the summer and then they’ll come back the next summer and then will be a Sapling, which is the whole summer. Then if they’re getting out of school or they’re taking a gap year, and they’re one of the better ones, we will hire them and they will become a staff member for two to three years. Typical would be a short program and all summer, maybe go back to finish high school or finish college or take a gap year and then become a staff member. Then we also place them on into career paths. So we have people, like I said, all through the marine industry and outside of the marine industry being successful humans. Now, I’ve never had children, I never wanted children. When they drive me crazy my mom laughs at me. But now all of a sudden, we’re starting to have babies, like we have baby Acorns. And it’s so cool when they post on Facebook like, we’re having a baby Acorn, and they’ll be at Oakcliff in 2040 or whatever it is.

Brian
I’m sure, even though you don’t have kids of your own, you are doing a fair amount of mothering if you have 15 year olds and even older kids.

Dawn
It’s entertaining. The best advice I’ve ever gotten was…long story…the 20 year olds decided that when they were allowed to take the leftovers home that it included the keg of beer so then we didn’t have any for the adult barbecue that was happening that week. I lost my mind and I was ready just to throw in the towel. I called a friend who runs King’s Point, the US Maritime Academy, and he’s German and he said, “this is what you do, you tell them – he has a German accent – they’re assholes but inside you must laugh a little bit.” And that has gotten me through so many different situations.

Brian
That’s great advice. You’ve shared the best advice you’ve received, what advice do you give to students, to your audiences? I know you do a lot of speaking to your audiences and to others about breaking through barriers to achieve personal and professional success.

Dawn
I always try to listen to the people and try to hear what they’re actually asking, first of all, and then when you are transitioning through into a new challenge, it’s the same thing: prepare, make sure that you have a plan, make sure you have an exit plan and only reveal your cards so far in advance. But the most important thing, especially for women, is fake it just a little bit.

Brian
Well, I think that’s good advice for all of us. During times when we feel like we’re not quite up to par, or we feel maybe we have…I think a lot of people have impostor syndrome, and they feel like they’re not really ready for being where they are, or just any of those feelings, that just stepping into it and fake it till you make it. There’s obviously belief around that, trying to change that mindset and if you do feel that way maybe set that aside or just push through anyway. Like, fear of public speaking – as a speaker, you understand this – you might have jitters going on to the stage but about two minutes into the talk the fear subsides and then you can focus on whatever you’re focusing on. I think that’s true in speaking and in lots of other ways.

Dawn
Absolutely, and you have to go back to the laughing too. So just say that you’re focused on something that you absolutely know that you have to have and it doesn’t happen. Like if you’re sailing and you capsize, what’s the worst thing that happens? You get wet, it’s going to be okay, you’re going to get up and live another day, it’s not the end all, be all. It’s not life and death; 98% of what we do is not life and death. You might really want it, but you can always dust yourself off and get back up and try it again and that’s what sport teaches you. That’s what competition teaches you. That’s what pushing yourself teaches you. You’re going to be okay.

Brian
That’s good. A good perspective and good advice. Dawn, our show is called LifeExcellence. I’m curious, what does excellence mean to you?

Dawn
Cool, that’s a good question. I think I talked about it earlier, it is doing every single thing that you possibly can, as best as you possibly can, in the moment. And a significant portion of that is mental. One thing we haven’t talked about is being physically fit and that, I think, allows you to be strong mentally, so get out there and move.

Brian
That’s important. Dawn, thank you so much. It’s been great to meet and get to know you and I’m very grateful for you coming on the show today.

Dawn
Thanks for having me. Come visit us at Oakcliff.

Brian
I would love to do that. Thanks for tuning into LifeExcellence. Please support the show by subscribing, sharing it with others, posting about today’s show with sailing legend Dawn Riley on social media, and leaving a rating and review. You can also learn more about me at BrianBartes.com. Until next time, dream big dreams and make each day your masterpiece.