Natasha Kogan

Hi! My name is Natasha Kogan and I am a Daring Female. (Now, say this sentence with your own name. Repeat at least once a day. And make sure to use your most convincing tone when you do.)

Two years ago one of my most precious, life-long, "I can't believe this is ever going to happen" dreams came true I wrote a book and got it published. I titled it The Daring Female's Guide to Ecstatic Living and filled it with 30 Dares that I believe can help us all live fuller, more exciting and rewarding lives. I hope that you will check it out and find at least one dare that you want to take on and zap your life with some necessary energy and passion.

You might be wondering what makes me an expert on being a Daring Female. Well, I would never call myself an expert on anything, but I have taken on more than a few dares in my own life and believe very strongly in the idea that doing so has allowed me to live it in a more exciting and fulfilling way.

Here's a small selection of some of my biggest dares:

1. Too Old to Lose My Accent

When I was fourteen my family emigrated from Russia to the United States. We came here with six suitcases and $600. This dare was monumentally more difficult for my parents than it was for me and I'll forever respect them for the gigantic effort they put into building our new life here. After the shock of the first few weeks wore off, I decided that the only thing that was going to allow me to come out of my room and live my life was learning to speak English like a real American.

Everyone we met told me that there was absolutely, positively no way that I could lose my accent completely - I was simply too old to do that. Well, it was all or nothing, so I decided to go for it anyway. After four years and endless embarrassment later, I did it. If you heard me today, I sound like a regular New Yorker! (Whether that's a good thing or not is another question.)

2. You're Giving Up THAT Job?

Fast forward ten years and I'm living in New York, working day and night at a big-name management consulting company. It's a great firm, I get tons of perks, a good paycheck, and interesting work. But I get the urge to work in a more creative environment, helping much smaller businesses grow, and maybe start my own some day.

So I decide to leave. My parents, my friends, and my colleagues decide that I've lost my mind and try to talk me out of making a terrible mistake. But I'm stubborn and I know that if I don't leave now, I won't leave later, and wake up 20 years from now with a bunch of "woulda/coulda/shoulda" thoughts in my head. I give my notice and I leave, spending the next few years working with small start-ups and being part of their devastating failures and great successes. No steady paycheck, no famous companies, no perks except for one: I'm doing something I've always wanted to do and I'm doing it on my terms. And damn, that feels good!

3. You Can't Start a Publishing Company Out of Your Apartment

Well, you can, actually. Which is what my husband I and did three years ago. I got this wacky idea to publish a series of books written by students and for students and told it to my husband. Since we are both book lovers and publishing industry junkies (we have a nice collection of rejection letters we received for many ideas we tried to turn into books) we researched what it would take to publish these books on our own and started a company to do it. Whoa! That was one of the toughest things I've ever attempted (until I gave birth to our daughter several years later and understood what tough was!) We plunked our life savings into the company and made tons of very costly and na've mistakes. We worked at our regular bill-paying jobs during the day and on our publishing business all night and during weekends. We were exhausted and often intimidated, but it was so exciting to see our books come to life.