Inspiration

Inspiration is one of those things in life that is as wonderful to give as to receive.  It seems I've been surrounded by inspiration lately and would like to share some of these stories.

Our flying community is still a small one...you can show up anywhere there are pilots, announce that you are one of them and like magic you are instant friends.  This happens online too, and I now have flying friends around the world I haven't met in person (yet!).  One of these paragliding girls has been reading my blog and supporting my efforts to develop and grow my business.  She has impeccable timing, sending along a message that she "tweeted" about me or posted a link on Facebook just when I'm having a moment of self-doubt.  She recently wrote and said that through my blog postings I inspired her to follow her own big paragliding dream...to just go for it!  I can't even begin to tell you how amazing it felt to be the one inspiring someone, when I have so many people I look up to myself, including her.

I've also begun paragliding coaching, which is where I work with pilots who are newly signed off that would like some one-on-one lessons on developing their skills.  Unfortunately in our little flying community there tends to be animosity between the different instructors, and just like in high school people end up in little 'cliques' hanging out only with the school they learned with.  One reason I decided to coach signed off pilots is so I can help break that barrier and encourage everyone to fly together.  When I taught my first course on how competitions work, I was really happy to see pilots from different schools and surrounding cities too.  I had 3 pilots who learned from separate instructors approach me afterwards about coaching, and am working with one of them now.

This particular student's goals were to improve on a variety of skills and be able to fly confidently in the Canadian Nationals in August.  We've been working together for 4 or 5 sessions and last month he went to his first small competition...and finished second!  I was so excited when I heard about it, more excited than if I had won myself!  We had a session shortly after that and he met another of his goals (a small xc at our local site) and when I went to pick him up I was bursting with pride again.  I see why people get into instructing, and hope to keep doing it for a long time.

My list of people who inspire me grows daily, and through their support I feel I can accomplish anything!  I'm incredibly lucky that my boss at my part-time job totally supports me and calls me on rainy days if they need someone to cover a shift (she knows me so well already!).  I have mentors in my everyday life who have skills in sales, marketing and design who help me with the business side of things.

Each and every pilot has something they can teach others, no matter if it's their first flight or they have been flying for twenty years.  You all rock :)

Dream big!

It feels like forever since I've posted any flying pictures.  It also feels like I haven't flown in a very long time...although honestly it was just last week.  We've had so much rain and wind and general gloominess this spring that it still feels like the flying season hasn't really started.

But that means more time to work on my business (yay!).  Luckily I came in a "close second" when applying for the full-time position at my part-time retail job.  Looking at my finances I had decided a full-time job was necessary (especially with no tandem money coming in) so applied and was really hoping to get the position.  It went to a girl with more experience, and after getting over the ego deflation of coming in 2nd, things started looking brighter.  Especially when I flew 5 tandems the weekend after I found out.  Then I was flat-out *relieved* I didn't get the job.

Then my first order of t-shirts and varios came in!  I was so excited I took a bunch of pictures.  Here's everything sorted with invoices:

Excited how the t-shirts turned out:

I still have to take proper pictures of both sides of the shirts and also product shots of the Microvario in action for my website but like I said...it's been so yucky outside!

Even Bob misses paragliding

My mom lives about an hour away, so I drove in to see her and ended up visiting with 3 different friends who live in the area.  All of them were immensely supportive of what I'm doing and gave me great advice...so although I'm technically alone running my business there is such an amazing group of people surrounding me that I know I'll succeed.  It's hard sometimes to ask for help as I'm an only child who likes  doing things myself.  But you really can't do it alone!  I've met some fantastic new friends that I'm doing business with and it's wonderful being able to talk about our dreams of how we want our companies to grow.  Competition does exist in the paragliding world of course, just like anywhere else, but I'm lucky to have avoided that so far and just seen the other side, full of support and encouragement.  I think I'm going to like it here.