Deirdre Fitzpatrick has been a morning news anchor for over 20 years at KCRA 3 NBC in Sacramento, California. She is an Emmy award winning journalist in reporting, anchoring, and writing, and she has covered the last 10 Olympic Games. Deirdre is married and a mother of two, which she says is far more tiring than any endurance race. At the time of recording, she’s run 21 marathons, seven 50k ultra runs, and two Ironmans.
In This Episode, You Will Learn:
- How she’s developed a high level of resilience.
- What Olympic athletes inspire her with their level of resilience.
- How Deirdre handles being in the public eye at least five days a week.
- How she cares for herself.
- About hosting the Dying to Ask podcast.
- Her current read – Where the Crawdads Sing (Delia Owens)
Create beautiful, engaging social media in 5 minutes a day – www.RiseUpCreatives.com
Connect with Deirdre Fitzpatrick:
- Dying to Ask Podcast – iTunes
- Dying to Ask Podcast – Stitcher
- Instagram – podcast
- Instagram – Deirdre
- Facebook – Deirdre
- Twitter – Deirdre
- KCRA 3
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INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
Deirdre thanks so much for joining us today.
David, I’m thrilled to. Thanks for having me on.
I love your bio. It starts out with just three short, simple sentences. I’ve never actually read a bio like it. It just says, “2:15 AM. I do it myself, which explains a lot. And coffee by the pot.” It even rhymes, that’s great.
It was unintentional, I promise.
What are the questions that go along with those three answers?
So, the questions are, “What time do you get up?” “Who does your hair and make-up?” And, “How do you work the weird hours that you work?” Those are the three. That’s the way that I’ve lived for the better part of 20 years, now.
I cannot believe 2:15 AM. I thought myself going to bed at maybe 8:30 or 9 o’clock because I want eight to nine hours sleep every night was tough. What time do you go to bed?
I go to bed anywhere from 8 to 9. I have two kids. I have a 13 year old and 9 year old. They have homework and this thing called common core that requires a lot of Googling on a parent’s part. It’s funny, over the years I thought the needs of my kids as they get older would get easier. What I’ve really found is that their needs just change and they really need you to be engaged and interact in a coherent manner. My kids only know our life like this because Mommy has always left in the middle of the night. That also lets me come home at lunch time to be there in the afternoon. So, they don’t know that some parents are around a lot more during those hours. They’re pretty good about it and they know not to come in and wake me. They tuck me in at this point and that’s kind of nice.
As one of the longest running morning news anchors in the nation, why do you keep doing this? It is a little like masochistic to get up at that early hour. Why has this kept you going?
I went to this shift kind of kicking and screaming. I ended up in Sacramento twenty-one years ago kind of by accident. I had no intention of ever staying here. I was going to come in for a year and a half and move on. I had other things I wanted to do. About two years in, the then vice president, a guy named Fred Young pulled me into a meeting and he said, “I hear that you have turned down the weekday morning anchor job three times,” and that was true. I said, “Yep, sure have.” I was so young and I was very matter of fact. I said, “Oh yeah, absolutely.” “Why? Why would you not want this job?” And I said, “Oh, I have no interest in that job.” I was just really honest with him, which has been the good thing and the bad thing about me as an employee over the years. I’m pretty honest with you. I don’t have the energy to try to keep up a charade.
So, I just said, “Fred, I don’t want to work those hours. Morning is not where the really good people go. They’re always on nights or they’re doing other things.” I said, “Mornings are where beginners go.” And then he said to me, “Morning is where our business is going because people aren’t going to stay up this late and our lifestyles are changing and if you trust me, it will be the best thing you ever did.” And I thought he was crazy. I truly had turned this job down three times. It was almost like turning someone down to go to the homecoming dance, they just want to date you that much more. I just looked at him and I thought, “Well, I don’t know. I don’t have anything better going today.” I said, “Okay, I’ll do it.” He walked out of that meeting and he looked at some of our managers here at KCRA where I work at NBC in Sacramento and he said, “Yup, she’s doing it.” And the funny thing is, he was 100% correct.
The very young me at that point, never would have guessed that was the direction to go. But it ended up being the best thing ever. Sometimes you have to go with your gut and you have to trust somebody who has your best interests at heart may see something in you. And he was right, because right around that time, especially on the West Coast, is when our lifestyles completely changed. Our commutes got longer. People got up earlier. People started discovering that you can be really productive in the morning if you get up. And you need to know something before you leave the house, so that’s why morning news became really important.
For me personally, I was rewarded for that with an opportunity to go represent our company at the Olympics. I went off on this Olympic assignment representing Hearst Television, my company, for thirty stations and that was 20 years ago at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. And I have now gone to a ton of Olympics. It’s actually carved out this unusual niche for me as a reporter that fulfilled some things just intellectually that I needed and maybe adrenaline-wise that I needed also. It allowed me to do really big things but still stay in a smaller place with a really sustainable life. In my industry, that’s a very tough thing to do. I think it’s a tough thing for a woman to do also because it’s that whole concept of having it all. “Yeah, you can have it all. Just not right now.” But it allowed me to do big things and still have a really nice life. So that’s how I ended up here and that’s why I stayed.
I think about this concept of resilience and if I was talking to a mom of two boys, we could easily talk about resilience. If I was interviewing news anchor, we could talk about resilience. But now, I’m trying to understand what would drive someone to run twenty-one marathons, seven 50K ultra runs and two Iron Man’s. You’ve done all three. That’s not the totality of your life, but those are three big things in your life. How have you developed a level of resilience in your own life?
I think part of it came while covering the Olympics. I found myself surrounded by people who do big things. I was telling the stories of people who had basically worked for a decade for one day. Because that’s what the Olympics is, it’s every four years and in most of the sports its one day, sometimes its 90 seconds. That’s the whole totality of everything you’ve worked for and it comes down to that one moment. So, when you’re around people like that, you start to think that you can be like that too.
I remember interviewing Michellie Jones, who was an Australian triathlete. She was represented bike-wise by a bike builder named Jim Phelps. I had gone and done this story with her and she was just this remarkable tri-athlete and incredibly positive person. I was single at the time and they invited me to thanksgiving and she happened to be staying with them. So, I went to thanksgiving and I sat there and had dinner and talked to her and found out what she did. The next thing I know, I’m thinking, “What if I could do that?” And it turned out I could.
Now, I can’t win it. But I can still do it. So, it’s the idea of, “Can I hang in there?” And, “Can I suffer long enough to be able to get to that goal?” And also forming a goal that’s reasonable for you. Now, for me, winning an Iron Man, winning a triathlon, winning a marathon is very unlikely. But for me, to get to the start line is a victory. To get some training in is a victory. To get to the finish line is a victory. To not get injured is a victory. To feel my head clear of stress and to feel that calm that I get through doing some of these endurance sports, is a huge victory. And it makes me a better wife, a better mom, a better employee, a better friend, just a better person in general.
I love the concept of putting yourself into what I call, “The voluntary suffer-fest.” When you put yourself into a suffer-fest and you pull it off, it’s awesome. And then when someone else puts you into a suffer-fest later or when life in general throws something at you, you can draw back to that time, dig deep and say, “Well, I know that in September of 2013, I did Iron Man Tahoe and it was 26 degrees at the start. My fingers froze and I finished with 56 minutes to spare.” You get to go back and it can help you take on other challenges later that aren’t as easy in a different kind of way. It lets you draw into that strength you’ve built. And obviously there is something a little wrong with me that I like these things. There is a little bit of an addiction there, but I think compared to the way I could be spending my time, it’s not so bad.
I assume you ran in high school or something before this, but did you start competing at this level in terms of marathons after you started covering the Olympics?
I ran in high school for part of a semester and as a freshman I was very fast. Because of that I got put onto a relay team with senior girls. And when you’re a freshman and you’re hanging out with senior girls, its super uncomfortable. They were kind of rough on me, or at least that’s the way my 14 year old brain looked at it. So, the week before the state championships, I quit. And because I lived 45 minutes away from my school, my parents were thrilled that they didn’t have to figure out a way to get me home from school anymore. So, they didn’t push me to stay in it. There was none of that in the Fitzpatrick house.
That was my only experience with running in high school. Then actually I got into running more distances beyond just trying to stay in shape when I was in my first job, which was in Des Moines, Iowa. I did a public affairs show and I had interviewed somebody from The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society about Team in Training, which was one of the first marathons training programs to raise fundraising money for a charity. It’s really how all those fundraising programs got started. So, at the end of the interview, the people I was interviewing dared me to come run a marathon with them. So of course, I took the dare. Not serious at all. The camera went off and they said, “Okay great, well we meet Saturday morning.” I’m thinking, “What are you talking about?”
“Oh, that was on camera.”
Yeah, I really didn’t think they meant it, but that ended up being the first marathon I ran. So, I actually did it. I remember the night before I ran, it was in Toronto and I was talking to my parents. My parents were not on board with it at all, they thought it was ridiculous. This is how encouragement was in my house, it’s very Irish too, so don’t take this the wrong way. But my father got on the phone and he said, “You know, people die doing these things.” I had just finished fundraising all this money for leukemia, so I said, “Well, some people may live because of the money I helped raise.” He said, “Okay, just call me when you’re done.” Ironically, many, many years later my father was diagnosed with leukemia and he did pass away from it. So, the irony was not lost. I went on to fundraise for leukemia and lymphoma for many years and they really do amazing work. It’s funny how you look at these things that happen in your life years ago and they always come back, don’t they? If you’re smart enough, you see the lesson that came out of it and I certainly did after that.
Wow, that’s beautiful. Would you say that resilience is something that you’ve set out to cultivate? Or is it just a bi-product of going through really challenging experiences?
I think it’s both and I think it depends on the person. I think for me, resilience is part of the way I was raised. I’m first generation American and my parents are both from Ireland. We moved around a lot when I was growing up. We moved back to Ireland at one point and back over to this country, so I changed schools a lot. When you have to start over at a new school, you learn to re-invent yourself and to change things about yourself that you didn’t like at your last school. You learn how to make friends and you learn that when it’s hard to make friends, to pretend that you don’t care. You learn to roll with the punches really well. And then I went into an industry that is at times very competitive and challenging. It’s certainly changed over that time also, but I think that you have to learn how to survive there as well. Especially as a woman.
I think a lot of resilience is learned on the job for me, but it’s also a choice as well. You have to decide, “Am I going to let this beat me down? Or am I going to figure out how to find an opportunity in the challenge?” You have to look at it in a positive way and find a way to get something out of the challenge. No matter what the problem is, I always try to look for the solution. I look for what I can control, rather than what can’t I control. I’m a great problem solver. It’s probably why I’ve done well in the Olympic assignments, because it’s nothing but problems when you’re covering the whole thing. You’re constantly getting denied an interview or an event ran late or you can’t get a cell signal somewhere. There’s always something going wrong and that’s the fun, figuring out how to pull it off. That’s where being resilient means getting things done. So, for me, that’s how I have always looked at that.
You said, as a woman in your industry it can sometimes be uniquely challenging. We have a ton of female listeners, what are some of those unique challenges that you have been through that have caused you to draw upon that resilience?
I love the journalism of what I do. I love the storytelling. I hate doing my hair and makeup, that’s why it’s the second line of my bio. I hate it. It’s my least favorite part of the day but the reality is, if I don’t do my make-up in a way that’s not distracting, people aren’t going to listen to me. They’re not going to listen to what I’m communicating. I would love to think that I could roll out of bed and I could roll onto a TV news set and for 4 hours. I would love to think that I could tell you all the stuff you need to know and you would just listen to me, but you wouldn’t and I probably wouldn’t either.
I think you need contract negotiation help. Why are you still doing this? You’ve been there 20 years and they can’t afford someone to come in every morning for a few hundred bucks and make it happen?
I am bringing you in. I think that would be really great. I think it’s a challenging career because as a single person, if you’re only worrying about yourself and working odd hours, it doesn’t matter when it’s just you. You can work your life around it. But when you start to introduce people into your life in adulthood, like a spouse and you try to nurture those relationships and then when you bring children into the mix, it becomes very complicated. And it’s similar to somebody who maybe works an emergency room shift, whether you’re a nurse or a doctor and you’re doing that kind of work.
There are some jobs where it’s just a little more challenging. The world doesn’t revolve on getting up at 2:15 and being off at noon. It just doesn’t. So, school meetings take place at 7 or 8 o’clock at night, that’s just one of those things. There is a very high burnout rate for a lot of people. That’s why it’s very unusual that I have stayed in this shift as long as I have. Truthfully, I fought to stay in this shift. Because for me as a parent, I’ve discovered that for me and my family, this is actually quite perfect. And most days, its pretty good. Nine out of ten days, things are awesome. That tenth day is a bear, but everybody has those days no matter what the job is.
You talked about some of the people that you’ve met covering the Olympics. I can’t even imagine that you’ve covered ten Olympics. That really is incredible.
What’s funny about that is, I’ve actually covered those Olympics with the same person. So, my partner is a guy named Mike, a photographer. We have actually gone to all ten of these Olympics together. And supposedly we are the longest running NBC Olympic photographer/reporter team. But that’s really the value of having a really good partner. We’ve had some amazing adventures all over the world.
What are some examples of incredible resilience in people that you can think of throughout those ten Olympics? We see the stories on TV, but you have a different perspective being right there watching them and interviewing them face to face. Who are some people that come to your mind as examples of resilience?
The obvious one that most people would say is Lindsey Vonn. Linsey Vonn is amazing. Lindsey Vonn is like the bionic woman. I don’t know if there are any real body parts in those knees at this point. She’s amazing, but here’s what I’d say about a big name like that; they have a lot people behind them. There is an army making sure that she gets to the mountain. And there is an army taking care of her and there is money, that makes it a lot easier. To me, the really resilient people are the ones who didn’t make any money. Because the idea that you would give that much of your life up training for one day or for 90 seconds is crazy.
Probably the most recent I example I can think of is the cross-country skiers from PyeongChang. The woman’s team that won gold; Jessie Diggins and Kikkan Randall. That team had not won a medal at the Olympics in 42 years. And in forty-two years, not only did they win, they won by 0.19 seconds. They won gold after 42 years. So, to me that’s not only resilience for those individuals who weren’t even alive when the winning drought started, but who gets into a sport where the chances of you winning are slim to none when you are going up against the best in the world? I find stories like that incredibly rewarding. At the end of the day, they’re not walking away from that as millionaires. They’re not making the big money that Lindsey Vonn gets just to show up at the hill. To me, that’s resilience because they have to figure out a way to support themselves while going to school and training to be the best that they can, without having all the advantages that so many other people get.
You said you have two kids, 13 and 10. How do you try to cultivate resilience in their life? My kids are 19 and 16, so I’ve lived those years, they’re really fun years and really challenging years.
Yeah, their fun until their not.
How are you as a parent seeking to cultivate resilience in them?
That’s such a hard question these days. There’s a little bit of a gap in-between my kids and your kids. But kids are very catered to these days. If you were fortunate enough to have two parents with good jobs and opportunity, it should make you work harder, but a lot of times it doesn’t. It is probably the way that I was raised, but my greatest goal with my boys is to make sure they know that no one owes them anything. No one. My expectation is that they will work harder than other people. That they will work harder than they think that they ever could. That they’ll have high expectations for themselves and within reason, I try to make sure that they know how to empower themselves. I’ll give you an example, you probably remember this but you get the call from school, “Hey mom, I forgot my backpack.” “I forgot this homework.” My kids know better than to call me at work, but they might call and say, “Mom, I forgot my assignment.” I’m like, “Mmhmm, yeah. That’s unfortunate.”
“Let me step out from in front of the camera and get that.”
Yeah, “You’re not going to bring it, are you?” I’m like, “No, I’m not. But I’m pretty sure you won’t forget it the next time. So, my suggestion to you is you go to your teacher and explain what happened. Be honest, explain what happened, offer a solution and then deal with whatever happens after that.” I really believe in helping cater a work ethic and making sure that they understand that they have a lot of opportunity but they also have to have a lot of expectation. It’s not just your parent’s expectation, you have to have expectations of yourself. Because if you don’t raise your own bar, then where are you going to go?
You’ve got to be constantly raising your own bar. And you have to be able to reward yourself or to acknowledge what you did for yourself. Be proud of yourself. If you are always working for affirmation and you need someone to tell you that you did a good job, did you really do a good job because you are just waiting for them to say it? Chances are they don’t even really mean it. So be proud of what you do, to me that’s what’s really important. I want my kids to be good people. I want them to be honest. I want them to work hard, to be appreciative. And to know that they should do for others as well.
It seems like that a quality of resilience is an internal motivation versus just the external motivation. If I’m just doing something for the affirmation of others and I’m only motivated externally, I’m going to be less resilient to pull myself back up when I fall. Versus if my motivation is coming from within, the bar that I’ve set for myself and the value of responsibility, the value of hard work, the value of my “Yes” is a yes, my “No” is a no, then that’s coming from within me. It seems like then resilience is flowing more than if I’m just trying to please a parent or a boss or somebody from the outside.
One hundred percent. I think that’s very complicated for today’s generation of younger people because of things like social media. It’s very hard for them to see what’s really real. Are you doing it and pulling it off because it’s a great Instagram post? Or are you doing it and pulling it off because it’s just the right thing to do? They have a different element of pressure than you and I did growing up. I feel for them but at the same time, I want them to do things for themselves.
I’m not always going to be around. Their dad is not going to always be around. They might not be surrounded by people who have their best interest. So, I want them to learn to find your own moral compass and know what they are comfortable with. At the end of every day, I ask myself, “Am I good with the way the day went? What could I have done better? Was I kind enough? Was I patient enough?” That’s probably my biggest challenge, being patient enough. “How could I have done something better?” And I look for little things because for me, that’s what motivates me.
For example, I work with a lot of younger producers and I notice a lot of them are looking for some kind of interaction. So, when I go and sit with them and ask, “What can I teach you? What do you want to know? What do you want to do? What’s your goal?” It’s really interesting to hear what it is that they want to do. I suppose I do it in a bit of a parent mode now, but there’s something really nice about saying, “I’m really good with the way I’m doing life right now. It’s making me happy. I feel fulfilled at the end of the day and I feel motivated to come back in the next day too,” no matter what you’re doing.
Obviously physical resilience is a huge part of sports, but so is mental and emotional resilience. It may even be more important in some ways. You mentioned that we grew up in a different era, but how has the rise of social media impacted the way that you do your job? Especially as somebody who’s in the public eye at least five days a week? How has social media impacted that? You’ve experienced the rise of it and now the proliferation of it.
With all the technology and all the changes in my industry, the social media component is the biggest game changer. The best thing about my job when I started out 20-something years ago, was that at the end of your work day, it was the end of the day. I’d written my story and it aired. I had anchored my show and I had walked out the door. There was nothing else to do until the next day. That was really freeing. You didn’t bring stuff home because it was done and either it worked or it didn’t work. Now its 24/7.
Social media has done some really great things in my business. It allows you to engage and have a conversation with your viewer in a different kind of way. Which is fantastic most of the time, but then there is the expectation that you’ll be available 24/7. The other interesting thing now is that social media is a ranked thing in my profession. For example, outside of my news director’s office, there’s a giant digital board and there are companies that rank television; they call them “Television Talent”, these television personalities and you are ranked by how high your engagement is. So, now there’s this magical formula that nobody understands that says, “These are the most popular people. And at this very minute, this person is ranked number one out of all the people within a certain city.” And there’s a value that’s now attached to that.
When I was starting, people kind of had an idea of what they thought about you. But this was before the word authentic became a thing within marketing and media. There were a lot of people that I worked with that appeared a certain kind of way on TV and then you met them at the grocery store and you’d think, “Whoa, he’s a salty dude.” They would be a completely different kind of person. Social media has kind of stripped a lot of that away. Now everything is open for a lot of people.
Since I’ve had a foot in both worlds, I have a comfort level of what I choose to share and what I choose to keep private. If you were to go onto one of my social media pages, you’ll probably figure out that I love running, I love reading, I like my wine sometimes – by sometimes I mean on the weekend. I like to share that kind of thing, but I don’t share a lot of my kids.
And your dog.
And my dog. I have an old dog. I’ll show the dog. But I made a decision on what my comfort level was and what I was willing to share. For me, that’s worked. Other people share everything about themselves 24/7. I’ll tell you, on those ranking boards, that can work very well too. But that’s a really tough way to do your job and I think it adds a whole lot of other pressures for people too. Sometimes I think it makes them post things in a very quick way. And you might see something and think, “Hmm, I’m not sure that’s really what she meant to say.” Or, “Is that really what you want to get out there?” You have to have your own comfort level with what you’re willing to share and this is true of any profession. It’s weird to think about individuals being a brand, versus just the company that you work for or the product that you created. The concept of an individual as a brand is something that’s a much more recent phenomenon.
You said that you are expected on call 24/7, is that an expectation that you sense from your company, the viewers or yourself?
I think it’s probably all of the above. That said, I’m pretty respectful of my family time. And I find that I personally need a break from that stuff, so when I go on vacation, its completely off. I try to do the social media stuff within my workday and then I try to pull back at home. I think mentally, you need to have some space when you get home. It’s very difficult to be involved and engaged with your family if you are constantly talking to people on Instagram. It just is. So, I think you have to learn how to put parameters on your life in order to pay the right kind of attention to everything.
If I’m at work, I’m at work. And I work hard when I’m at work. I’ll give you every minute when I’m at work, and then some. The house always wins when it comes to work with me. When I’m home, I am really conscious of being home. Am I successful all the time? Absolutely not, but I am trying to be more conscious. Now that my kids are 13 and 10, I’m playing the numbers game. I’m playing the, “I have five more spring breaks with the older one.” “I have four more Christmases.” We’ve started paying attention to the numbers and I don’t want to miss that because I was doing something else that I’m not even going to remember in five years.
How else do you care for yourself? Because not only the time that you get up in the morning but the adrenaline rush of all that you do, the travel, what does caring for yourself look like?
Staying healthy is my big thing. I’m really conscious of trying to stay healthy, so I eat well and I exercise. I take care of myself. I take care of my brain. I read a lot. I work in television, I don’t watch a lot of television. Nothing against Real Housewives fans or anything else, but it’s not my thing right now. I find that I need twenty minutes of quiet to settle my brain, just escape a little bit to get everything right in my world. Maybe it’s not what you need, but that’s what I need. I don’t think I’m being selfish with that, I just know that that’s what it takes right now for me to be a good wife and good mom. I’ve learned that the hard way. I have hit the wall before.
A couple of years ago I was just like, “I don’t know if I can do this anymore.” There were a lot of factors and the biggest one for me was I had to figure out to protect my sleep better. I needed to figure out a better way to organize certain things in my life, so I reached out to mentors. I’ve had a couple of mentors in my career and what I’ve found is not only do I need work mentors, I need some mom mentors too. I need life mentors. I want to know how do people do things because chances are, I can learn from that. I don’t have to make the mistake to avoid making the mistake. So, I reached out to people to find out how they were doing things.
I found a couple of friends who were single moms and who were the best at trying to compartmentalize and organize and keep things going. I found out how they were doing things and I started do the very boring food prepping thing on Sunday nights. And what do you know? It works. You’ll eat better that way too. I started trying to get super, ultra-organized and that’s kind of how my family does things. They revolve around my schedule and I understand I respect that. They have to be quiet by 8 o’clock so Mommy can sleep. They know that Mommy’s not going to bring that homework if you forgot it. They know that stuff, so I try to make sure that they have everything that they need on the back end. And when we’re on vacation, we have a week off, I take all the rules away. We stay up late. We don’t plan things. We don’t do any of that food prepping. We just go crazy. We do a lot of what probably people would probably consider more normal. But we relax the rules and that’s how our family functions. And I think everyone has to figure that out for themselves. How do I do me in the best way possible? And what works for me is not necessarily going to work for you. But maybe something you’re doing is going to work for me and I want to know that.
What are you reading recently that you would recommend?
I just read the best book. It’s called Where the Crawdads Sing, it’s by this woman named Delia Owens. Have you read this?
I have not.
It is so good. It’s number one on the New York Times Bestsellers list and it’s about this girl who grew up in the marshes of North Carolina. She grows up basically on her own. So, the concept is about that isolation and how people grow up. It’s actually about resilience, the whole thing we are talking about today. And Delia Owens she’s a great story. She’s 69 years old. She is a scientist and she’s written about this topic in non-fiction for years. She had this idea of this fiction character in her brain for years. She took ten years to write this book and then it comes out and it is this wild bestseller. It’s being turned into a movie. She’s kind of this unlikely success story, which makes her that much more intriguing. It’s wonderful. It’s the most lyrically written book I’ve read in years. Just beautiful.
As if you don’t have enough going on, you also are the host of your own podcast called Dying to Ask. I love the image too; your camera man is chasing after you with a microphone. When we listen, not if we listen, but when we listen to your podcast, what are some of the types of people that we’ll meet?
First of all, I did the podcast because I wanted to try something new. Sometimes people struggle being in the same job for a long time. It’s very unusual to do it. For me, I’ve constantly needed is a new challenge and I have really embraced technology since it changed my industry. It’s allowed me to do all kinds of other things. Whether it’s for social media or through podcasting, it’s allowed me to do something a little different, but it’s still sort of familiar. I was intrigued
by this idea of how do people pull things off.
I have a million ideas in a day and when reporters and photographers go out to do a story together, they spend 8 hours together and that’s all you do, you come up with ideas. You never do any of them, but you come up with all kinds of ideas of things you can invent or you can do. What I really wanted was to learn how people go from A to B and actually pull it off. What’s the story of how do you did something? So that was kind of the premise behind the show. We’ve looked for people that have done interesting things.
Some of our recent guests have included Rachel Hollis, the big motivational speaker right now. She’s an amazing story. She uses social media and the very raw moments of social media to launch what’s turned into a media empire. She’s very deliberate in the way she talks to women and motivates them. This week we have a guy named JC Tenor, he’s a member of the Texas Tenors and he was on America’s Got Talent. He tells the story of how on a whim he applied to the America’s Got Talent with a couple of guys he met on a construction site 10 years ago. In one night, they went from two guys doing construction, singing on the side, to being this huge group that’s now had remarkable success over 10 years. So those are the types of people.
We kind of limit it to entrepreneurs, authors, influencers, public figures; people who maybe you’ve heard of but you don’t really know a whole lot about them. And for me the beauty is that you actually get to chat for a while. Most of my life revolves around a story that’s probably no longer than a minute and a half or even closer to a minute and fifteen seconds. With the podcast I get to have a conversation for 30 minutes, which is awesome. That’s when you really get to relax and talk to someone and really find out what they’re all about. And then if you’re somebody like me, you get to pick their brains so you can learn their little life hacks and maybe put it into your life too.
It’s called Dying to Ask and we’ll make sure that we links to all the podcast apps where its available. I’m sure iTunes is one of the most popular, so we’ll make sure people listen. Deirdre, thank you so much for sharing your life lessons. I feel like you’re such a generous person. That’s just the feeling that I get by meeting you. You are generous by sharing your life and your wisdom and your thoughts on resilience. I really appreciate your generosity.
I appreciate hearing that. I have a little wooden sign on my desk and it says, “Work Hard, Be Kind”, those are my four words these days. So, if that came across to you, that absolutely thrills me. Thank you very much. I’ve enjoyed chatting with you.
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