We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Frida Matute. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Frida below.
Hi Frida , great to have you with us today and excited to have you share your wisdom with our readers. Over the years, after speaking with countless do-ers, makers, builders, entrepreneurs, artists and more we’ve noticed that the ability to take risks is central to almost all stories of triumph and so we’re really interested in hearing about your journey with risk and how you developed your risk-taking ability.
Since as far back as I can remember, I heard stories about risk-taking. And not the kind of risk-taking that involves parachuting down a mountain or bungee-jumping, but the kind that happens because life leaves you with little room for another path. My mom and dad grew up in, I would say, much, much tougher times than I did and they served as my example of how to take risks and more importantly, what to take risks on.
My mom was one of 7 and as the second to last in the family, she was pretty much not allowed to do anything–at all. It wasn’t until she met my dad that she began to take risks in order to improve their life. For example, leaving her country at age 34 with two kids without speaking the language and without a job lined up. And my dad, he was forced to live outside of his original country because of political unrest and because my grandfather was the President’s secret service equivalent which put him and his family in danger. My dad had to grow up essentially apart from his family besides holidays. He was raised by a family friend and really was made to handle much of life on his own. While this would have caused degeneracy in some, in him it meant he got to study what he wanted, bike until dusk, fish in island seas for dinner and drink too much Coca-Cola. He got a sense of adventure and of freedom. Hearing his stories growing up and listening to the drive to do and try, to act with purpose and careful contemplation and to study, made me the way I am.
It’s not like you enter into a situation looking for risk. People don’t usually want to be risky, but when you decide to say yes to more, it comes with the territory. And you say yes because it’s exciting to say yes. You say yes because you’ve turned the feeling of your stomach sinking into your bowels into excitement and opportunity. You’ve done that because your dad used to fish with a spear gun, cook 10-feet fish for dinner and became one of the top banking executives in NYC at a major financial firm which carries bravado and courage. You’ve done that because your mom recreated her whole community in her mid-thirties, had jobs requiring various new skills to her, learned English and even took up teaching at the age of 70 to earn her degree in early education which shows commitment and purpose. You do it because now you want to prove yourself.
For me, risk isn’t about doing dangerous things. It’s about doing things I don’t know how to do yet and finding opportunity in them to see if I can and more so, to know that I can. That level of inner confidence brings a certain calm to your life that can ride tough times because you know you will figure it out. Taking risk means seeing something through to the end, even if it requires multiple tries and failed attempts because the moment that you turn around and see that you accomplished that task that you didn’t even know anything about previously, you feel more confident in yourself and you stand up taller.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I started my career as a Medical Speech-Language Pathologist at NYU Langone Medical Center’s Rusk Institute– one of the most revered rehabilitation centers in the world for stroke and brain injury. I loved my job and I loved my team. I was super well trained and it was an amazing environment to work with top therapists, doctors and nurses. I look back at that time very fondly. It was my early twenties, post grad school, and I was happy to be using my brain, making friends at work and living on my own post school. After a few years, I became interested in figuring out ways to make my patient’s lives a little better like modifying their hospital table trays or posting blogs about neurological impairments and the speech and language issues that could come from them. I’m not sure why I got interested in innovation, but I think there was a general wave of this in NYC at the time. The healthcare tech industry was booming and there was a lot of healthcare and innovation talk around. I realized I liked to think of these ideas, and I even signed up for an “Inventor’s Group” in NYC. It was incredibly nerdy, but I absolutely loved learning about how to file a patent, how to invent something and all the legal implications that came with these ideas. These ideas became thrilling for me to see through but they were time-intensive. I realized that owning my time was important for me and probably critical to my happiness. I wanted to see if I could make one of my ideas come to life and see if people would like it enough to buy it– whatever it was. So after my time at NYU, I worked in a couple of other hospital settings before I started my private practice as a pediatric speech-language pathologist to give myself a more flexible schedule and continue practicing. Now I could moonlight a new idea.
As I got more involved with my private speech practice, I learned about the controversy in teaching kids to read. I became super interested and passionate about the issues around the Science of Reading and wanted to be a part of the solution. So in 2019, about 5 years after starting my private practice, I began an after school class called Playful Literacy through my new business, The Indy Lab, in order to teach children early literacy skills while also educating parents about the different methodologies to teach reading. We were at International Preschools, 92nd ST Y and Saint David’s when COVID hit us. I was also about 7 months pregnant with my second when my water broke, three weeks after COVID began in NYC.
Pivoting Indy Lab into an online kids’ class while also offering in-person, small learning pods for school-aged kids was incredibly intense and difficult throughout COVID. It definitely put me into early labor. I was about 33 weeks into my pregnancy when I found myself hysterically crying in the lobby of a hospital. I remember bawling to the elevator attendant who calmly said to me, “it’s all going to be okay.” I love him for that and will not forget it. I was not in the hospital that I had selected to deliver in, I did not have a doctor there and my baby was coming early during a pandemic. I was not ready for any of it. I stayed in the hospital with my husband for 10 days just waiting to see if I could keep the baby growing for a bit longer each day so that he wouldn’t be so premature when we delivered him. My nurse felt so bad for us that she sewed us masks at home and brought them in for us because no one could source them during that time. She also helped us get a steady OB/GYN while there. I will never forget her. I cried in her arms when she told me one of their doctors would take me as their patient, which isn’t typically the case when you are so far into a pregnancy. All while this was happening, there was chaos outside because of COVID and my employees were relying on me to keep their jobs. I felt so much pressure to keep things going and not let them down, even with everything going on with me and my pregnancy. So I waited for baby as calmly as I could, which wasn’t always very calm at all, and worked in the hospital bed. My baby came prematurely, but did very well. We left after 10 days and never got COVID and I never had to let anyone go. By the end of COVID, I ended up with over 300 customers signing up for Playful Literacy online and running classes in our living rooms and homes each morning, sometimes more than once a day. Looking back, it was all insane, intense but also incredible.
Once my son was born safely, we began to look for our first home in Westchester. Luckily, my colleague who had been with me throughout this whole process also was moving to Westchester, and we decided to look for space to continue to host The Indy Lab programs. This is when we met our current business partners at The Play Place in Elmsford. They saw our vision for early education, took us in, and now we have a very successful preschool program that started with our original curriculum back in 2019 with Playful Literacy. Since then, we have iterated on the curriculum carefully, adding developmental goals by the U.S. Department of Health and projects that are child-led and inquiry-based.
The Indy Lab’s values comes from the story just told. We value courage, innovation, curiosity and community. We are evidence-based while also keenly following a child’s developmental needs and looking to behavior for meaning means we adjust, accommodate and adapt to their needs. We have attracted families and faculty that lean into these values and it has become such an amazingly special place for early education. Now, we are expanding to a second location in Scarsdale at Shake It Off and have plans to continue expanding from there!
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
1. Community
2. Resourcefulness
3. Action
One of the most important skills, regardless of industry, is your community. This includes your family and friend community, but also the community that you build in your profession. It’s important not to just network, but to build friendships in professional settings. People will do business with their friends, they will sponsor their friends, and they will mentor their friends. Go to professional events to meet friends, not to do business. Sponsorship, specifically, is a huge way to move up or make lateral changes (like changing your career) in your profession. Sponsorship is about having someone who has a higher position recommend and refer you in a way that lands you an important opportunity. It also means having a relationship where that sponsor can rely on you and that their brand and reputation improves because you are a part of it. You show up for them and they show up for you. It is more than mentorship and it is critical to success. Being authentic and present in your relationships builds professional friendships that become another type of community for you that will help you grow in your career.
From there, being resourceful and “figuring it out” is required in any industry and job. Don’t let someone explain to you how to do something before you give it a try. Try to figure it out on your own! That process will generate several questions that you can go to your higher-ups with and show them that you are critically thinking which will not only show them that you are capable and smart, but likely worthy of more opportunities.
Finally, set things into action. Do not wait and contemplate until paralysis. Just go! If you fail, you can decide not to continue or to try again. Trying means you are building skill sets and continuing to build your skills is very important in this landscape where more industries are overlapping and a bigger range of skills is required.
Who has been most helpful in helping you overcome challenges or build and develop the essential skills, qualities or knowledge you needed to be successful?
I have been so lucky to have many people in my life that I would consider mentors, and other sponsors. But for this question, I am actually going to talk about my husband. My husband gave me the support I needed as a woman to feel like I could do anything and keep going, even when society demands something else of you. As a working mom, as a competitive tennis player, as a social friend and as so much more, he has always encouraged me to go and keep going. He has sat with me for countless hours pouring over financial proformas, design and pitches for business programs and entrepreneurial competitions. For the last 10 years, I have harassed him endlessly for his help in important decisions like salaries, issues with employees, tuition changes and so much more. No matter how busy he is, he will always put in the time and his full attention. My husband has taught me how to do excel spreadsheets, offer letters, read and create simple legal agreements and understand taxation. That all sounds super uninteresting but it is critical to understanding jobs and small business. I am grateful for his mentorship and friendship.
I think if you find a friend, partner or family that encourages you unconditionally, it can give you the extra boost when things are very tough and you want to stop. Look for people that can teach you and that bring you up in the most challenging of times.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.theindylab.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theindylab/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheIndyLab/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fridamatute/
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