ESPN Emmy Award Winner Reveals Her SECRET to Career Motivation - Anne Marie Anderson

Host: Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. We have a tremendous conversation for you today with Anne-Marie Anderson, 35-year veteran of ESPN, on-air personality, now has a best-selling book, *Captivating Audacity*. What I love about Anne-Marie is her approach to breaking through the barriers that keep us from getting to where we want to go.

Host: So many people talk about the glass ceiling or outsourcing the reasons that we are not able to get where we want to go. Anne-Marie repositions it as the sticky floor—allowing ourselves to remain attached to the base nature of what we do. This is an incredible conversation. She has amazing stories, sports personality, just dynamic, been all over the world. You are going to love this conversation.

Host: I promise you, if you are struggling to break through to the success that you have on your brain, that you dream about, this is going to be a conversation that will give you the tools that you need to get there. Before we talk to Anne-Marie, I just want to say, as always, thank you for being here. It means so much to me that you spend your time. I know there are so many shows out there, so many things that could take your attention. The fact that you choose to be part of this community, listen to this show, means the world to me.

Host: I hope that you feel the energy, passion, and commitment to give it back to you and to continue to bring on amazing guests, as well as doing the individual solo shows that I drop once a week that dive into specific topics related to business and personal development that help you grow and make all your wildest dreams come true. Because if we're not going after all our wildest dreams, then what the hell are we doing, right?

Host: If you do enjoy this show, I would love for you to subscribe wherever you listen or watch. If you're on YouTube, like the show, tell a friend. If you have thoughts, comments, if you just want to give a fist pound to Anne-Marie for being on here and appreciate her time, YouTube is ultimately the place that I collect all your feedback. I reply to all the comments, and I use it as an indication of what topics we should be addressing and what future guests we should bring on to the show to put in front of you. I love you for being here. I know you're going to enjoy this conversation. Let's get on to Anne-Marie Anderson.

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Host: It's great to have you on the show. Thank you for taking the time to come on today.

Anne-Marie Anderson: No, I've been looking forward to this, Ryan.

Host: I love shows where I completely fumble the ball and we start as a complete mess because I feel like it adds a whole dynamic and energy to getting into it. I'm reading the book, *Cultivating Audacity*, and I look at the way that you approach topics and the filter that you're putting your thoughts through. I'm very interested in how coming into an organization like ESPN, being on camera and starting that career at such a young age—how much have you changed? How has your mindset matured from those early days when you first get in the door and it's probably bright lights and everything is so exciting?

Anne-Marie Anderson: I mean, ESPN is a very exciting organization. Having a 35-year career that's continuing at ESPN and coming through all that—what is that evolution for you? When you look back, what is one of the big things that you see different about you today versus when you first started out?

Anne-Marie Anderson: I mean, this fits right in. I'm far more audacious. I'm far more willing to take bold risks now than I was then. You mentioned I started at ESPN at 21 years old. I'm a former collegiate athlete, and a lot of people who work at ESPN are either athletes or were involved in athletics in some way. I think the thing that I remember the most from hitting the floor at 21 was how competitive everything was. Every day was competitive because it's hard to stand out at a company like ESPN. So forcing yourself to come up with story ideas and different angles.

Anne-Marie Anderson: I was shy by nature, Ryan. I wouldn't call myself shy now, but that's been a new revelation. I've been shy or introverted my entire life. So what I see now compared to then is a real comfort with competition and a completely different perspective on rejection and fear and all those emotions I felt at the beginning. Now for me, everything has settled into data. It's all data. Whether I get the outcome I want or I don't, it's just all information.

Host: How do you become comfortable with competition? Certainly being in athletics helps, I think.

Anne-Marie Anderson: A big part of audacity is understanding you're going to take the risk, and it's not about the outcome. It seems so silly, but the win in being audacious isn't in getting what you want. The win is in taking action. With competition, you'll see a lot of people that are afraid to take action. Your first level of competition is with yourself, saying, "I don't want to do this. This doesn't feel good. I'm pretty sure I'm going to get smacked in the face with rejection here. But I'm going to jump and I'm going to do it." I think just repeated practice of that.

Host: I have two young kids, 11 and 9. They play sports. I'm a very competitive guy. I played sports in college as well. I pass everything through my coaching experience—I coach them both now—and I apply that to a lot of what I see in the business environment. It feels like for a very long time, competition was almost seen as a negative. It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game, all the trophy stuff. That's a cliche that has been overused so much, but there's also a reality to it. It wasn't about winning. It wasn't about applying yourself at 100%. It was like, "Well, you showed up and that's the win."

Host: I struggle with those types of platitudes because when I look at reality—what it actually means to be out in the business environment, having started my own businesses and had big wins and big fails—it's not whether you show up or not. There's no victory in showing up. Maybe psychologically there's a victory, but certainly not in the real world. You actually have to get in, like you said, be audacious, compete, try things, get numbers on the board.

Host: Do you agree that maybe in our society, to a certain extent, competition has been frowned upon? And do you think the idea of being competitive and trying to win in a healthy way—obviously we see the clips on social media of people who are maybe unhealthily in competition—is an important skill set and mentality to cultivate, especially for people in their early 20s starting out in their career?

Anne-Marie Anderson: Absolutely. Competition is throughout your life. I think one of the things I've observed, I also have a 12-year-old who I coach, is getting people comfortable with the idea of battle and competition. But I do think it starts with yourself. As far as the negative connotations, you're right. It has been there. And I don't care. The word audacity had negative connotations, and I've made an attempt here to change that because who's braver than somebody who will take bold risks not knowing what's going to happen? Same idea in competition.

Anne-Marie Anderson: Part of the mentality of being audacious and having this willingness to take bold risks is about competition. I use the example of if you're losing by 12 at the half, why do you come out to play the second half? Because maybe if you get your act together, you have some defense, you start to work your offense a little bit, you'll win. But even if you don't win that game, you'll have data and information to work for so you can compete again, hopefully better for the next time. Same thing happens in business. You're not going to win every contract. You're not going to win every opportunity, every promotion. So to your point about showing up, I think there is something to that because even when you've been knocked down, you get up and show up the second time and take another big swing.

Host: I think that's a really good point. It's probably like all things—there's a scale. There's showing up and just being there physically and not applying yourself, and I think that's the version of showing up that I like to dispel or fight against. But I completely agree with you. I've seen it in my own career. You just have to keep coming back. Try the next thing, try the next thing.

Host: It's funny—our basketball season just ended. We lost, we played very poorly and lost by a lot in our last game. It was a tough way to go out. My son after the game was very disappointed, frustrated. He said a couple of things to me, and I said, "Look, man, you're 11 years old. Do you know how much better you will be next year because you just got your ass kicked than if you were on the other side and just dominated the other team? Because you were dribbling in the parking lot while you were waiting for me to get all the gear. You're more motivated to come back and try again because you competed and had that loss and you learned from it."

Host: I think a lot of people look at the loss as the end when really it's just—as you said, I love that you put it this way because I think of it the same—it's a data point. It's one data point in a series of where you're trying to go. I want to jump to something that I didn't necessarily have on the docket, but you mentioned it when we were talking before we went live. I want you to dig into this concept. I think it's where we are in the conversation: this idea of a sticky floor. Can you break this down for us?

Anne-Marie Anderson: As women, we talk a lot about the glass ceiling. I don't believe the glass ceiling is a real issue. I think the sticky floor is a real issue for men and women. What I mean by the sticky floor is we are stuck waiting for the right moment when everything is aligned, when we have all the qualifications, when we have every bit of material, when we have time—as if time is somehow going to open up for us and welcome us into life. That right time never arrives.

Anne-Marie Anderson: Here's an example I give when I'm talking to groups. Let's say you and I both want the same job. You go in and apply with 50% of the credentials. I'm like, "Are you kidding me? They're going to hire Ryan? He got 50% of the credentials." You don't get the job. That's fine. You go back again, maybe at 65% of the credentials. I'm still working behind the scenes to add to my stuff. You don't get that job again. You still don't have everything you need. At 85% of the credentials, you and I both go in to apply. Maybe I've got 90% and you've got 80%, whatever it is. Who's going to get that job? You are. Because you have now gone three times. You know the decision makers. You know what they're looking for. Most importantly, they have watched you add skills. They have said, "Yeah, Ryan didn't have that much, but look what he's added. Look what he's added."

Anne-Marie Anderson: By me waiting until I felt like I was ready, I lost. If you want to talk about competition, getting stuck there waiting? It doesn't make me any better to go in and be like, "Voila, I have everything you need." It's about the grit of coming back, getting the information and the data. The sticky floor is a killer because then there's this resentment that happens sometimes. "I can't believe they hired Ryan. I have more credentials than him." But no, sis, you lost because you weren't brave enough to take the swings early.

Host: You throw out these concepts and then you start thinking about your own career. I think about my own hiring process and what I look for when I'm hiring people for my companies. I used to say this: I want to work with people with a limp. I'm always looking for people with a limp. I want that person who's battered and bruised and scarred up, maybe a little rough around the edges, but I know that when shit gets hectic, they're the ones that are going to find the solution, that are going to work the extra hour, that aren't going to say, "Well, my day ends at 4:30, so I'm going home."

Host: I get that you want that perfectly polished image. I think in a lot of people's heads, there's this image. I just love the way this idea of sticky floor completely resonates. There are so many people that wait until they're this perfectly polished version of themselves. I think any company that you actually want to work for, that leader is looking at you going, "I know that's not who you really are because that's who no one is." I want to see the dirty, grimy version of you. That's going to come in on a Tuesday after you went home and had 15 things going on and you didn't get any sleep because you got a baby. You show up—what's that version going to give me? If I believe that version is going to push through and be good for us even despite you not being at 100%, I want you.

Anne-Marie Anderson: You want a teammate. You want a teammate who's not going to walk off the floor and be like, "We're losing, I'm out of here." That's what we want in business—somebody who's a teammate, somebody who's in the foxhole with you. That was something at ESPN that I really embraced because stuff goes wrong on live television all the time. I always wanted to be the teammate who was like, "Okay, you do that. I will distract them over here while we get this in on time so it can make air." That's what you want. You want somebody who's going to be like, "Let's figure this out. Let's even think outside the box."

Host: If someone is listening to this and they're doing a little self-awareness and they're like, "Man, how do you break free of the sticky floor?" If that's a problem that you have, how do you start to break free of that mentality?

Anne-Marie Anderson: Okay, you ready?

Host: Yes.

Anne-Marie Anderson: You go fail. You go fail as often as you can. I was so worried all the time about being rejected and failing that I had to seek out opportunities to fail. I literally sought them out, Ryan. There was a network that I wanted to do some work for freelance, and I knew that the person who hired was a bully. I'd heard it from everybody. He was just a bully and demeaned people. So I went in, interviewed with him. As expected, he was dismissive, whatever, didn't want me. Fine. That was the safest place for me to go back time and time and time again to get rejected.

Anne-Marie Anderson: I remember every time I saw him at a press conference or whatever, I would reach out like a crazy person and be like, "Hey, how are you? Anne-Marie Anderson. We talked before. Is today the day you're going to hire me?" And he was like, "No." Then I'd see him three months later. "Hey, Anne-Marie Anderson. Today the day? Today the day?" I kept doing that because every time he said, "No, I don't want to hire you," that rejection got less and less of a sting. Sure enough, a year and a half later, he came up to me and said, "Hey, today's the day I'm going to hire you."

Anne-Marie Anderson: I worked for him. He was dismissive and a bully and everything I thought. We were there, did the work. Then he came back later and said, "Hey, I want to use you again for something." And then I could pass and say, "No, it's not the environment I want to work in." But it's about setting yourself up time and time again to desensitize yourself to those fears and failures and rejections. It's practice. It's crazy, but it's practice. Go swing for the highest thing first. If you have a bunch of things you want to accomplish and then there's the big thing, do that one first so you can fail at that and then come back around.

Host: Do you think that it's insecurity, ego? What are the characteristics that we all deal with that maybe stop us from doing what you did? I think a lot of people listening are nodding, going, "What she said and what she did makes complete sense." Yet, I think less than 1% of the people listening would probably do what you did to get that opportunity. What are some of the things that could be holding us back? Is it "If I do that, people are going to judge me"? Is it "I don't want my ego to get hurt"? Is it that "I just doubt I'm good enough to get that job"? What are those limiting beliefs?

Anne-Marie Anderson: It's all of those things. But more than anything, the overriding factor is that you're putting somebody else's evaluation of you as law. They say no, and therefore I must not be good enough. I'm not going to buy that from somebody. I may not be ready right now, whatever. But who are you listening to? Is it your inner critic who says, "Now that's the third time you got rejected, so I'd give this up if I were you. Just go in the closet, sit down." You have to think about whose evaluation you're accepting. Yes, you're afraid. You're afraid of being exposed, of being judged, of being embarrassed. So go be exposed, judged, and embarrassed. That's the quickest way to desensitize yourself.

Anne-Marie Anderson: Then you have to think about, "Am I saying this is an evaluation? My failure means I'm not worthy of something?" That's silly. You're trying to do something new.

Host: I tend to give these little monologues to my children when we're in the car. They love that, don't they? I had this parenting moment of bliss where my younger son said something about a game, negative about himself. My older son turned around and—bop, bop, bop—not in an accusatory way, but it was something I had said to him. He said, "You're better than that. Never let your coach tell you that you can't do whatever." Then he turned around. I sat there for a second and I was like, "Oh my God, they're listening. They actually are listening."

Anne-Marie Anderson: I know. Ryan, I had the craziest thing happen this summer as well. I have three kids—20, 17, and 12. I had a network this year, which is super bizarre this far in my career. The head of the network said, "No, I don't like your voice." I was like, "Okay, what do you want me to do? If you don't like my voice, there's nothing I can do." I was annoyed that this opportunity got taken away because one person didn't like my voice. I've never had that in my career. [Laughs] Now a bunch of people will be like, "Actually, I don't like your voice either."

Anne-Marie Anderson: I was having dinner with my 20-year-old that night. I got frustrated. I got teary. I was like, "This is ridiculous. Seriously, this far in? That's the thing?" My son listened. About a week later, he said, "Mom, can we go have lunch?" I'm like, "Sure." A teenager asks you to have lunch, you're like, "For sure, I'm going to have lunch." I had been telling him that it kind of shook my confidence. Like, is there something wrong?

Anne-Marie Anderson: Here's what's so wild. When the kids get older, we sat down at lunch and he goes, "Look, I wanted to have lunch with you because I needed to talk to you about something." I thought, "Did you just call a meeting with your mother? Are we having a meeting now?" He looks at me and goes, "I don't understand how you can let somebody you've never even met shake your confidence. Mom, I'm a confident guy. I haven't done anything yet. You're confident. You got awards and other things. Are you kidding me?" He goes, "Mom, you're a killer. Okay, you're a killer."

Anne-Marie Anderson: I'm thinking, "Am I being coached up by my own child right now?" Ryan, that's your future. It was the wildest thing because I'm listening to him and then I'm like, "Yeah, you're right. I am a killer. Rejection means nothing." But when they start flipping around, that's your satisfying moment.

Host: That's wild. That's a life moment. That's something you'll remember the rest of your life. What a tremendous moment.

Host: I grew up in a very poor environment. I had good parents, but they were just getting by. We just—I wasn't getting life lessons in the car. It was latchkey style. When I explain the way I was raised to my children, they look at me and they're like, "What?" I'm like, "Yeah, practice would end and I would just sit there until either grandpa or grandma came to pick me up. I had no idea when they were showing up." My kids, if you're not there five minutes early, they're having a fit.

Host: I didn't get these lessons, so I feel this obligation to give them some of these life lessons. One of the things I say to them all the time is, "Never let someone else dictate your future." It doesn't mean they can't or won't push you in certain directions, but it only applies if you stop. If because of that you stop, but if you keep going and keep pushing, eventually you're going to move past that person. That is such a hard lesson to get into people because it feels like everything is caught on camera today. If you see someone who maybe you respect have a bad moment, now that bad moment is plastered everywhere and it's all anyone's talking about. It feels like everything is on display.

Host: I said to them, "If you knew—because they really like Kobe Bryant, they love Kobe Bryant, which thank goodness—if they take on his work ethic and whatever it is they choose to do in their life, they're going to be fine. But if you actually dig into Kobe's life, there are a lot of moments in there that are not bright, shining moments. We see some of them on Instagram, but there's a lot of stuff that isn't good. The lesson from Kobe is not his jump shot or how he prepared. It was that the guy literally never stopped. He just didn't stop. There was no one until his body physically wouldn't allow him to play the game anymore. He did not stop moving forward, which is what made him so great."

Host: In this idea of audacity and removing ourselves from the sticky floor, if you're in front of a group or doing one of your workshops, how do you coach people to keep going through these moments and see past these no's so that they do try again? Are there any mantras or mindsets or advice that you have for them so that the next no doesn't stop them from continuing to pursue that thing?

Anne-Marie Anderson: Absolutely. Can I tell you a little bit about Kobe first before I go there? My time with ESPN when I was full staff, I was Los Angeles Bureau producer. That means I was at the Forum for Kobe's first day coming in. A teenager drafted, 17 years old. My point in telling this is that Kobe's mentality was authentic and he just owned it. Being there and watching him walk in—we're all like, "I think you're thinking at 17, he's going to kiss the ring a little bit. He's going to hang back." Kobe didn't do that. Media ate it up, of course, but it rubbed some people wrong on the Lakers. Watching him and his belief that he belonged there at a very young age was really inspiring.

Anne-Marie Anderson: Then watching how hard he worked. When you've got somebody that talented to work so hard, to your point, with all those failures and all those messy moments. He cared that his teammates didn't like him. It wasn't like he didn't care. I think he just couldn't control what they felt about him. Phil Jackson came in, made some changes, and was able to really massage that effort. One of the things I admired about Kobe was, to your point, he was never done. Even when he retired from basketball, he was still not done. He was going to have the greatest sports academy. He was going to be the greatest coach for young women. He was going to champion. There's always that next way to be great and challenge yourself.

Anne-Marie Anderson: So when somebody is getting no's, how do you get them up to do that next no? You have to convince them that no means "not yet" or "next." It's a comma. It's just going to redirect you. There is no no that is final in my mind in any way. If you don't think I can do it, okay, well, you don't think I can do it. Maybe I still think I can do it until the data proves me wrong, in which case I'll go in a different direction.

Host: It's funny. When you talk to athletes, entrepreneurs, anyone who's had a successful career, when you dig in and have that casual off-the-cuff conversation, you never hear the stories where they won. Those are never the stories that they tell. It's, "I had this idea for a company and I raised this money and then I blew it here. This didn't work. The market changed. I made this mistake. This fell apart. But in my next company, I fixed that."

Host: So many people avoid loss, avoid loss, play it safe, sit back on the sticky floor. "I'm not ready yet." I'm blessed to be able to have this platform and bring on incredible people like yourself. They all only want to talk about the mistakes they made because they wear those as the badges of honor—not the accolades and the awards and the exits. They want to talk about the places where they messed up. Those are the badges of honor. If the most successful people in whatever it is you do wear their losses as their badges of honor, why is it that you avoid loss at all costs? It just doesn't line up.

Anne-Marie Anderson: No. People think that staying the same is safe. I always say I don't have FOMO, I have FOSS—the fear of staying the same. Because the only thing that staying the same ensures is that no growth is possible. If you're the same, you're definitely not going to grow.

Anne-Marie Anderson: It's interesting hearing you talk about that. The story that I always tell when people are like, "Oh, you've been on television and doing this for decades and decades." I'm like, "Yeah, my first time ever on live television, I was supposed to be on regional football sidelines in the Mountain West. Someone got sick. Things got changed around. My very first time on live television was on ESPN2, which was opening weekend of college football. At that time, ESPN2 was in 70 million homes. I was losing my mind outside the stadium, crying to my husband at the time—just what you want in your reporter, tears coming down."

Anne-Marie Anderson: He was like, "What's the worst that could happen?" I was like, "Oh my God, you want to know the worst? I could be so bad that not only will I never be allowed on air again, but I will lose my producing job. I could lose my entire career in television over this. If I lose my career, I'm going to be a miserable person. If I'm a miserable person, you'll have to leave me because I won't be able to be a good mother to our children who aren't even born yet. And I could die destitute and alone, Matt. That's what could happen." He was like, "Come on, really?"

Host: But when you catastrophize the whole thing, sometimes that will be enough to snap you out of it. Like, okay, I'm probably not gonna die. I'm just afraid that I'm gonna be bad, exposed, judged, and embarrassed. And then I went on, and I was bad, exposed, judged, and embarrassed. And I survived. And I got up the next week and did it again. And yeah, I had friends who were like, "Oh, that's... yeah, not good. Are you sure you want to do this?" And I was like, "Yeah, I do."

Anne-Marie Anderson: So I just did a TEDx talk two weeks ago.

Host: Congratulations.

Anne-Marie Anderson: Thank you. It was a really cool experience. But I've probably done north of 350 keynotes in my life. I've been doing it for 15 years. Rarely do I get that energy that you get when you're going to be in front of an audience, but I don't get the anxiety anymore. Right? But for this talk, all of a sudden it was like the first time all over again. My muscles are tense. I can't remember sections. I just became... I went all the way back to that first time. And I'm pacing in the lobby outside, reading my notes as if reading them again for the thousandth time is going to get them into my brain. And I'm doing exactly what you just said. Here I am, this deep into my career, and I'm all the way back to, "I'm gonna skip this section, and then I'm not going to hit this point, and then I'm going to mess up this experience that I've been working on for a year." Blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm going through this whole thing. And finally, I sat down. And thank God I had a very good friend who came to the event and was just sitting in the audience. And he looked at me and he's like, "Dude, you're going to do great." And I had this moment of, the only reason I feel this way is because, just like you said, I have catastrophized this experience and created this entire scenario that has not happened in the future of all these things. And as soon as I stopped that, and thank God that he was there and he said what he said, because it was just like this awakening. And all of a sudden I just go, "Well, whatever's gonna happen is gonna happen. Here we go." And then I went out. And actually, there was a slide snafu. Two slides in, whoever was running it—because TEDx events are very produced, so someone's running the slides—after my second slide, someone back on the panel must've hit a button and it went off of my slides to the backdrop that sits in between speakers. So now I'm in the little red dot, and my confidence monitor is now showing something that's not supposed to be there. And I just kind of took a pause as if I meant to. It was probably five seconds at most, maybe three seconds. It felt like a lifetime. And then it went back to my slide, and I came back in and finished. And it ended up being... I was very happy with what I did. But it's so like, literally the catastrophe happened. But if I was still in that—I love this term you use, "catastrophizing." You should trademark that if that's not already true—if I was still in that catastrophizing mindset, then I completely fall apart in that moment. Because I'm, "Oh, this is what I expected to happen, and it happened, blah, blah, blah." And instead, I just took a long pause, like I would if I were doing a normal keynote, as if I was gathering myself or going to deliver some powerful line.

Host: The big moment.

Anne-Marie Anderson: Yeah, right back to it. So it literally was the difference between what you said. Instead of projecting out all these terrible things—which I think comes back to why people are so afraid of "no"—they take that one "no" and then create this entire timeline of horrible things that are going to happen from it. And it's just like, what if you did the same exercise except everything that happens after that "no" is amazing? How much less do you care, right? It's such a wonderful thought. It's hard, though. I will say for people listening, they're like, "Yeah, this all sounds really easy." It's hard to get that momentum. But there is a certain pride that you feel in yourself once you have put yourself out there that really isn't attached to the outcome. You're like, "God, I did it. Whatever. I bungee jumped off that bridge. I stood in front of a crowd and delivered a speech." There's this pride of, "Yeah, I did that."

Host: Yeah.

Anne-Marie Anderson: And oftentimes those around us, they respect the effort as much as they respect the win. The win comes with more accolades, but from a respect of peers and people around you, they may say, "Oh, I wouldn't want to fail like that on TV or whatever." But at the same time, in the back of their head, they're like, "But she did it. She put herself out there. I wouldn't have done that. That's pretty impressive." So it's almost like there's going to be positives that come out of it even if you can't imagine them. And there's going to be someone—again, to the voice point—if people don't like your voice, they've been miserable listening to my podcast because my voice is like... what do you want? But there's always going to be someone who watches that and goes, "Yeah, she kind of messed that up. But geez, I really like the way she did this one thing at the end. I could see that in my program. I really like her to maybe come to..." So there's that. But no one would see that if you didn't do it. And I just love that.

Host: Right. And how much do you value that? I had a friend of mine who would always criticize people on TV. We'd be watching something, she'd be like, "Oh, that was terrible, and this and that." But did she ever do it? No. And I actually let that hold me back from trying because I thought she's going to judge me. And sure enough, after my first time on air, she didn't call. She was a good friend, she didn't call or talk to me or anything. And the deal is this: 35 years later, she still criticizes people on TV. She doesn't have her own career. And I'm like one of those people on TV who gets criticized and doesn't care. So now I realize, oh right, sometimes people just want to observe because they're letting their own fears get in the way of really admiring what's going on.

Anne-Marie Anderson: Well, you don't have the three Emmy awards that are sitting off your shoulder if you're not willing to be out in front of people and get criticized. You can't have the one without the other. There's a reason you didn't win those awards because every moment from moment one to the moment that you're getting the award was perfect. That doesn't happen. There's just absolutely no way. There's no way to learn the lessons that you need to learn if you do not have the failure. So it's almost like we need to reframe our mindset from accumulating victories to accumulating failures. Because to your point, one of the first things you said, we have to detach from the outcome. The outcome literally can't matter.

Host: It's really wild when you make friends with fear. And I really do mean that. Because we've been told what, Ryan? Push away, conquer your fears, overcome your fears. None of that's going to happen. None of that. Fear is always going to be with us. It's a natural part of the process. So when you make friends with it, when you bring it in and you get curious about it, you can have a conversation with it saying, "I hear you, I get it, but you're not going to get to make decisions for me. You can be in the passenger seat, but you do not get to drive." And it changes everything when you acknowledge the fear instead of trying to shove it down. "No, no, no, I'll be great. I'll be great." You know what? Maybe I may not be great, but let's give it a go. Changes everything. Recalibrating that relationship with rejection.

Anne-Marie Anderson: I had John Azaroff on the podcast a few weeks ago, brilliant neuroscience guy. And he was talking about a slightly different topic, but he brought up this idea that fear and excitement light up the same neural pathways in our brain. So he's like, if that's the case, then literally all you have to tell your brain is it's excitement, not fear. Now, again, easier said than done, but he's like, your brain is acting the exact same way as if you were completely excited and energized with zero fear as it would as if you have the fear. The same pathways are lighting up. So just reframe that fear as excitement, and it will help take down your anxiety and your stress because now you're energized to do the thing, not feeling anxious to do the thing. And sometimes I think these mind hacks—stack enough of them on top of each other and eventually you find one that works.

Host: Yeah, I like that. Again, it's about when I feel that now, that nervousness or anxiety, I do get fired up. And that sounds crazy just knowing how shy I was and everything. But I'm like, "Oh boy, here it comes. Do you feel that?" I literally would talk to myself. "Do you feel that? Okay, here we go." Fear is an invitation to grow. And that took a lot of convincing of myself. And that's something I try to go through in the book and explain to people. Here are your four barriers that stand between you and the thing you want to do. It's usually fear, time, money, or your inner critic. So dig into each one. And I don't just tell people you should do the thing. I show you how to dig in step by step, and then how to reevaluate going forward so that you keep yourself on that level of anxiety, energy, excitement, fear.

Anne-Marie Anderson: Yeah. And I think a little bit of fear is a good thing. It keeps you leveled. If you were taking on a big task—like if I had approached that TEDx talk or you had approached your first time on live TV with zero fear—well, now you might approach it cavalier. You might miss something. There's a reason fear's in our body, and it's not always a negative. It heightens our senses. It makes us more aware. It dials us in and focuses us. When you're truly scared, you're as focused as focus gets. So these are all really positive things, especially when you're engaging in a really strong moment. To believe that you should be void of fear, I think, is completely misunderstanding the way your body works and the way your brain works.

Host: Absolutely. And I think, too, people get so worried about what others will think. And what I tell people when they're trying to figure it out is to swing for the fence. I say, look, we all remember the guy at the bar who would ask one woman after another woman after another woman out until somebody said yes. He didn't dwell on any of those rejections. He just went on to the next and on to the next until somebody said yes. I'm like, sorry, you got to be the guy at the bar sometimes and be like, "This is a no." I always show my oldest son because he only sees the victories. "Mom, you're killing it. You got that and you got this and you got a number one new release." So I'll show him the rejections. And I will also send him, "Hey, it's Monday morning and I got 50 emails I composed that are going out to various conferences. I might get three responses and one booking out of it."

Anne-Marie Anderson: It definitely is. The people who achieve things, they have this mindset that you have addressed in your book, this idea of audacity. There are so many stories of some of the most widely read, most award-winning books, and there'll be like 17 rejections, 59 rejections, 37 rejections. And people don't ever think that. They just think, "Well, he must have had publishers banging down his door. She must have had the first publisher she sent it to pick it up." And it's like, one, that's almost never the case. And two, there's also something to it. Tell me how you feel about this. Sometimes that gatekeeper to the thing that you want to do, part of their process is to see if you'll come back. They may even think you're a good fit but tell you no to see if you'll try again. Because it's that resilience and commitment that goes, "Okay, she's a prime time player. I told her no even though she knows she probably was qualified for this. She came back again despite the no. I got a winner." It's a gatekeeping tactic for some people to see if you're willing to do it. And if you give in, well, now you've just played right into what they were trying to filter out, even if you were the perfect fit for that job.

Host: Yep. I mean, when I applied to ESPN when I was 21, I was rejected. I went in, had the interview with them. They asked me to analyze the Mariners bullpen. This is before Randy Johnson was in the bullpen. And I froze. I didn't know how to do that, how to overcome it. 21. They were very polite. "Sorry, you're not what we're looking for." And I was like, "Okay." And I drove back to New York and I was steaming mad at myself, not at them, because I choked. And I was like, "How do you choke?" And so I wrote a letter back to them. And it was a pretty audacious letter in hindsight, where I said, "I don't think I did a very good job showing what I could add. You have a million guys who could do stats, spit out stats and numbers. Here's what I can add." And I had already worked in television. And they ended up hiring me for a six-month temporary job, working six at night to three in the morning, six days a week, Mondays off, for $15,000 a year. And I thought, wait a second, what if I had never gone back? What if I had accepted that first no? I've got my entire life, my entire career has been in sports television, most of it with ESPN. So what if I had accepted that first no? What would my life look like? Something that I've pulled from our conversation today is a general sense of self-awareness. You seem to evaluate yourself, your performance, in both the moment and maybe who you are. Where do you think that comes from? Is it a learned trait? Is it innate to you that you're self-aware? Or is this something you have developed, this ability to say—because I don't think a lot of people would drive back and be mad at themselves. Maybe a little, but I think a lot of people would then spin into, "Well, they just didn't see what I could do, and I got all this potential, blah, blah, blah." Like, I was a college athlete. Of course. I think instead you're driving back mad at yourself and willing to write them a letter and say, "This wasn't my best performance. I know I can do better. And here's the take that given another opportunity, I could give you this." There's an incredible amount of self-awareness that goes into that. So is it learned? Is it not? And if it is learned, how does someone who maybe struggles with self-awareness today—if they struggle with self-awareness, maybe they don't know that they struggle with self-awareness—but if they did, let's say, how could someone possibly work being more self-aware into their lives?

Anne-Marie Anderson: What I always thought was they can't fire me because they haven't hired me yet. So whenever I'm in that situation throughout the last 35 years, it's like, "Let's go." I get excited when somebody hasn't hired me. Then I'm full swing. I get more tentative when I'm already working for them and I'm thinking, "Oh, is this a good idea?" So for me, I did teach myself to get excited at the word "no." "No" meaning "not yet" or "next." I had to tell myself, "Here's an opportunity." I like being the underdog anyway. And so, being a woman in sports television back in the late 80s and early 90s, yeah, you're definitely an underdog. But I think it's about looking at what's the worst that could happen. I do believe in catastrophizing it and teaching yourself that there's opportunity. And all these no's and all these rejections, I did teach myself that. And part of it is the ability to compete. People who shy away from competition really have a hard time in business and in life and in getting hired. I want to hire somebody who's willing to take a risk, fail, take direction. That's a big one. Not that you just know everything and move forward. That's what excites me.

Host: Anne-Marie Anderson, the book is *Cultivating Audacity*. This has been a tremendous conversation. I've absolutely adored it. And I think this book is a playbook for what we've talked about today, for stepping outside of yourself, for moving forward, for making those big moves. Well, absolutely. Guys, have a link to the book in the show notes or YouTube description, wherever you're watching or listening. But where else can people get more of you and get deeper into your world? Do you have a newsletter or whatever? Where can people connect with you and go deeper?

Anne-Marie Anderson: Yes, thanks. My website's the best place to start. annemarieanderson.com. There's an "E" on the end of "Ann." You can get the first chapter of *Cultivating Audacity* there for free so that you can kind of see how it works a little bit. And I'm not just telling you to go for it, but I'm going to help you show you how. And then you'll find me on Instagram. Certainly there's a newsletter you can sign up for, *Unapologetically Audacious*. You can find that on the website as well.

Host: I love it. Thank you so much. We appreciate your time and wish you nothing but the best going forward.

Anne-Marie Anderson: Thank you for having me, Ryan. Great conversation.

[The episode ends.]