Lu Ann Cahn: Challenge Yourself Every Day, It’s Good Business
Lu Ann Cahn (right) speaking to guests at the League for Entrepreneurial Women.
Complacency. Comfort. Routine. They can get you in a rut and prove to be a recipe for disaster.
That sure was the case for Lu Ann Cahn, the longtime NBC10 reporter who suddenly quit her lucrative career as a broadcast journalist in 2014. It all started back in 2009 when she felt stuck — and her daughter suggested that she challenge herself to do something new each day. She did a polar bear swim in the frigid ocean on New Year’s Day. She ate a scorpion. She learned how to knit.
Her story became a successful blog and then a book: I Dare Me: How I Rebooted and Recharged My Life by Doing Something New Every Day. It’s sold so well, that it’s even been published in Chinese.
“As I took risks large and small everyday, I started tackling the big things — I went back to school, I started teaching school then one door after another started opening up,” Cahn said at the at the League for Entrepreneurial Women’s Conference at Temple University on Tuesday. The program also included talks from Brigitte Daniel, executive vice president of Wilco Electronic Systems; Linda Lightman, CEO of Linda’s Stuff; HipCityVeg owner Nicole Marquis, and Emily Bittenbender, managing partner of Bittenbender Construction.
“It makes us feel good to have some comfort in stressful days, but when we need to be fearless, we need to stretch outside comfort zone,” Cahn told the crowd.
Cahn is clearly happy these days. Even when talking about losing a breast and part of a kidney to two different bouts with cancer, she cracks a joke and a smile: “It’s amazing how many body parts you can live without.”
“What does this have with starting a business or anything else?” Cahn continued. “Why face your fears? When you do, you get to transfer that courage to other parts of your life. Study after study shows that when you face fears, [the energy transfers] to the other big goals in your life.”
