Sports Broadcaster Anne Marie Anderson on Cultivating Audacity

0:00As a play-by-play announcer and producer, Anne-Marie Anderson has done college football, the Super Bowl, WNBA, and more sports than I can possibly list. She's interviewed Michael Phelps, been at the practice gym for Shaq and Kobe, and has just launched her new book, Cultivating Audacity, which provides a roadmap for dismantling doubt and living audaciously. Anne-Marie is truly an incredible storyteller. Make sure to listen to both the tragic story that inspired her to make bold choices in her 20s and for her experience calling a game with the one-of-a-kind Bill Walton. Thanks for listening.

0:43Hi, Ann Marie. How are you? Good to see you. I'm well, John. Thanks for talking today. I love this. Yeah, I'm pumped up. Congratulations on launch day. Your new book, Cultivating Audacity, is out. New Year's Day 2025. And I'm curious, since the title of the book, did you purposely choose New Year's Day as when to sort of starting fresh, thinking new is the day to release it? or was that a coincidence? No, no, no. It was very much intentional because, you know, lots of people start off in January with, you know, New Year's resolutions and stuff and, but no plan. And for cultivating audacity, I wanted people to have something in their hands at the start of the new year that says, okay, I want to do something different.

1:28And here's somebody who's going to hold my hand and help me figure out how and what's in my way. So yeah, it was intentional. Okay, that's awesome. And if you're listening and you're a sports fanatic, like I am, and I'm going to ask Anne-Marie about sports later, don't worry about that. There's a who's who of sports broadcasters that have read the book and endorsed it, Mike Tirico, who I love on Sunday Night Football, Robin Roberts, they endorsed your book. What was the inspiration to put pen to paper and discuss this topic with a wide audience? Well, it really came from people asking questions about like, how did you do that?

2:06How did you get there? You know, weren't you afraid? Yes, I was. And, you know, I felt like people just needed to understand that they weren't alone with their fears in wanting to do something different. They weren't alone with their barriers. And the more people asked, the more I began to speak about it because I'm a keynote speaker as well. And then eventually I decided people needed a follow-up, something more detailed in order to help them create a life they're excited to wake up to every day. I mean, it's really that simple. Yeah, and creating a map is so important to that. I want to talk about the intro to Cultivating Audacity because I think it's a great setup for you sort of looking at your life and your career a little bit differently.

2:50The setup is that you've taken a job at ESPN SportsCenter in its early days, and I'll kind of let you take it from there. ESPN, I started there when I was 21 years old. And the story you're referring to, which I'll tell, this is why I began to live audaciously. Writing the book became later. But what happened is, you know, I started ESPN at 21. Like many people in media and all professions, I interned when I was in college. And for me in television, I interned at a local station in Denver where I lived. And for the nicest man, his name was Peter Rogat. He was a sports anchor there. A few years after I started at ESPN, Peter got a job as a sports center anchor, like his dream job.

3:34And I was so happy. You know, good things do indeed happen to good people. And Peter had just gotten married, had moved to Bristol for ESPN, 37 years old, super fit, like life was just going great for him. And he walked in on his sixth day at ESPN. He hadn't even been on air yet. He was still training. And he collapsed behind his desk behind a partition. And I was in the newsroom and somebody said, does anybody know CPR? Does anybody know CPR? And so I did. I had been trained. I ran around the corner along with my roommate who had also been through training and expected to find anybody except a healthy, fit 37-year-old on the ground.

4:14My roommate Peggy and I did perform CPR on Peter. We did everything we could. But Peter passed away right there on the sports center floor. And it was such a devastating moment. I mean, I don't think anybody else really knew him yet since he was so new. But I remember thinking, if you could be 37 and newly married and starting your dream job and have it ripped away in an instant, I was never going to wait for anything ever again. And I think we've all heard that before. Like, life is short. But to have it just hit me in the face so much that this was what Peter had been working towards and now he's never going to experience it.

4:55I immediately said, I'm not waiting. And I started traveling wildly. I started asking for bigger assignments at work because I believed in taking those bold risks earlier than I probably would have without that experience. Wow. It's like I said, that's incredibly harrowing and tragic and tragic story. And it lit a lit a fire for you. And I want to talk through kind of the different stages that you set out in the book and the roadmap, if you will. But I kind of want to skip some stuff for a sec and talk about your career in broadcasting. And you've spoken in front of a live audience thousands of times, if not tens of thousands.

5:38And so should I presume that you've conquered a fear of being on television? Or do you still have butterflies? Are you still afraid? Do you still get anxious? The butterflies have gone away. And the nervousness has gone away. Um, maybe on a really big assignment, I might feel a little bit of tension at the beginning, but yeah, I was terrified at first, absolutely terrified, but with enough practice because it has been, you know, 25 years on air, 35 years overall on television. Um, I don't get nervous anymore. One of the concepts that you talk about in, in your, in your book is when you're afraid of something you make, you make friends with fear.

6:21And I thought that was an interesting way of saying it. For me with experience with anxiety or people in my life who have dealt with anxiety, a lot of times you're told to face your fears. Yes. Which is a little bit different than being friends with fear. I kind of like to hear your philosophy of that, why you chose that expression. Russian. I love that, that you make that distinction, because it is really true. Look, fear is going to be with us all the time of different things. I still I don't have a fear when I go on air, but I have, you know, some trepidation about whether I'm going to do a great job or whatever, whatever the fear is.

7:05And what I say is you can't push it away. Some people want to push fear away, right? And as you said, for an anxiety, they'll say, you know, face your fear. For me, I say make friends with fear because you can use your fear to take you. Amelia Earhart said fear takes you to where your courage is stored. For me, fear gives me information. What am I fearful of? Failure, rejection, embarrassment, being exposed, whatever it is. Once you really dig into it, then making friends with fear and saying, OK, this may happen and I'll be OK if it does. And so, for example, my first time on air was in 78 million homes.

7:48It wasn't supposed to be that way. It was supposed to be like a little regional sports network. But somebody got sick and I got assigned instead of a regional arm of ESPN. I was on ESPN2 opening weekend of college football. Okay, I was going to say it has to be some kind of football thing. Yeah, and I was just absolutely mortified and terrified. And I was afraid of being bad, being exposed for being bad, being judged, being embarrassed. And what I tell people is once I went on air, which took a lot for me to go on air, all those things were true. I was bad. I was exposed. I was judged by people.

8:25I was embarrassed. And I survived. Right. And I survived. And I did it again the next week. And I always tell people the only thing was better about the second week was that it wasn't the first time. because I was still bad and embarrassed. But once I got more comfortable and knew that fear was going to be with me every time I went on air or did anything new and I made that relationship of like, okay, here's what I'm afraid of and here's the experience I know that I can survive it, then fear could come along with me, no problem. Just fear doesn't always say like it's a passenger, it doesn't get to drive.

9:03Fear doesn't get to make any decisions for me, but I understand it's going to be my passenger along the way. Facing your fear or making friends with your fear and then going and do it. And then, then, then it's in the moment, but what strategies do you have maybe to like not beat yourself up after the fact that, you know, you might be interviewing someone and, and say something the wrong way or, or, or say something that you need to apologize for or, or, or what, whatever, how do you deal with that? Well, so that's really your inner critic afterwards, which is one of the four major barriers that I consider gets between people and the thing that they want to do.

9:45And so the first thing I do for the inner critic is recommend that you separate it from yourself because you wouldn't tell your friend you were terrible. That was a stupid thing to say. Right. But we would say that to ourselves. So I proposed that's not your voice. The easiest way is I did this with my 12-year-old daughter. I picked her up from school one day and I said, you know, how was school? And she said, I'm dumb. I can't do math. And oh, by the way, I'm fat. And I was like, yo, like that was a lot to digest all in one sentence. And so we talked about it. And in the same way that a lot of people talk about it is, you know, would you say that to your friend?

10:23Why do you say it to yourself? but we took it a step further and said well if it's not you who says those kinds of things then let's name that so that you don't take it on as yourself saying it so she picked the name jerry for example we don't know a jerry she picked jerry for her inner critic and i said what would you want to say to jerry and she said i'd want to say like shut up jerry if he's whispering you're bad at math you're dumb whatever you know her inner critic was saying to her and so when i hear her or get frustrated going, oh, I can't do this. I'll be like, shut up, Jerry. You know, and she'll be like, ah, but it's a way to recognize.

11:01And it works for adults as well. If you're beating yourself up, then it is, you have to give grace. This is, this voice is trying to undermine you. What's it trying to do? It's really trying to keep you safe by not allowing you to grow. And that doesn't help anybody. So I just recommend remembering that with each perceived failure, for me, it's all data. At this point, you're growing. And that's how you say, well, next time I'll ask that question differently. Now I know. I love that. I was asking before about a subtle use of language, face with fears, friends with fear. And I also found it really interesting how you decided to phrase the subtitle.

11:46A lot of books that provide maps or a way to chart something positive, it's about winning. It's about taking what's yours, et cetera. Now, dismantling doubt or cultivating audacity, that's an action. But the result is letting yourself win. And I found let yourself to be a really, really interesting way of going about it. And I think it's about you're holding yourself back most of the time. And am I taking that right? You are. You are. There's a fear of success sometimes for people. What's so interesting, and I'm really glad you asked about it, the original subtitle was going to be how to dismantle doubt and take bold risks.

12:33What we found when we tested it was that people freaked out at the word risk. People were like, I don't want to take a risk. I don't want to risk just risky. That sends me up. So we renamed it actually, Let Yourself Win, because it is our own barriers, whether that is fear, time, money, or inner critic. Those are the four I identify holding us back. And none of those are imposed by anybody else. Those are literally all self-imposed, fear, time, money, inner critic. And so to work through those barriers, dismantle those doubts, you are then, to your point, letting yourself win and have success in your own life.

13:19As a bit of a side tangent, because I'm very interested in marketing, is there anything else in the process of marketing the book, whether it's the cover or anything else that sort of surprised you? I think this is your first book. Anything as you're going through it with your publisher that you're like, wow, this is really interesting how the book world works? So that's the only thing we tested. I really enjoyed the process because everybody's got their own skill set, right? Like I'm not artistic at all. I am straight words always. I'm a speaker, you know, broadcaster of a writer. So watching other people come up with the creative idea was interesting.

14:02The peacock that's on the cover, I did not come up with. That was the cover artist who came up with it. And I thought that was exactly the right, the right image because a peacock is showing their strength. They're what's special, what's unique about them and their plumage. And it isn't putting anybody else down. It isn't stepping on anybody else. It isn't being, you know, that word cocky in the traditional sense. A peacock is just saying, this is me. And I thought, that's exactly it. When you let yourself win by cultivating audacity, by cultivating a willingness to take risks, you are showing off the very best of yourself.

14:43I love that. We talked about the things that are holding you back, the money, money time, et cetera. And once you've broken down those barriers or dismantled doubt, you suggest making audacious moves. And you preface some of those earlier in our conversation about traveling, et cetera. But what's been one of your most audacious moves? Maybe one that you might look back at it and say, whoa, I really did that? There is one that comes to mind. And you had mentioned Robin Roberts, who wrote another book. I produced for Robin for a number of years at ESPN. And here's the thing. I was a producer at ESPN for 10 years.

15:23I absolutely loved the job. It was like being Forrest Gump. Wherever the biggest news story, sports story was, that was me. I got to go work at the Super Bowl, NBA Finals, six Olympic Games, heavyweight title fights, golf majors. It was really a tremendous job. And I loved it. but I lived in Bristol, Connecticut at ESPN's headquarters and I hated shoveling snow and I didn't enjoy, I was in my twenties, my early twenties. And I basically just went to work and then went home and stayed warm and went to work. And I wasn't really enjoying my life. I was enjoying my job. And that's one of the things I stressed people with audacity, because we are talking about your business world, but we're also talking about your life.

16:05What do you want your whole life to look like. And so I took a vacation to California to visit my brother and people playing beach volleyball in February. And I was like, what am I doing? This is, this is what I want. I was a college volleyball player. So I went back and said to my boss, I'd like to be LA Bureau producer. And he said, well, we already have an LA Bureau producer. And I said, I know that's what makes this conversation so awkward. You know, it was just like, what am I going to do at that point? and as we talked about he said i tell you what why don't you wait two more years and if in two years we haven't made you a la bureau producer then you can go what will you have really lost and i said two years in my 20s and so i gave my notice and it's one of those things to your point i look back now and i'm like really you quit espn i gave my notice you know i think you wanted three weeks and I drove cross country, uh, got into my car right after the sports industry and Robin Roberts actually came running out to the car with a check for$250 for me.

17:09And I was like, what's this? And she's like, you're going to starve. You have no job. You have no, you know, and, uh, I didn't know what I was going to do when I got to Los Angeles. I just knew I wasn't going to shovel snow. And I knew that I would figure it out. This is what I would call a worth risk versus a reckless risk, which I differentiate. And when I got to Los Angeles, ESPN hired me back freelance to do some work here and there. And by the end of the year, I was working for them again, full time at double the salary. And that wasn't the plan. Like I didn't do it for money. I did it for my life, but the result was, you know, I was living where I wanted, still doing this incredible job as Forrest Gump of sports, right?

17:52And getting paid double what I had been paid before. And so I look back at that. And I think at 26 years old, like I had a lot of nerve, but it was only a few years after Peter had passed away. And so I was like, well, I'm not going to wait. And I'm glad I didn't. That's incredibly inspirational. And I wonder, you were talking about being part of the biggest story, whatever it is in your time at ESPN. What was the biggest story that you could think of? Was it OJ? Yeah, I was part of OJ. Yeah, and that was in LA too. Yes, I was out there when the murder happened. I was here though for the trial.

18:39That's when I moved here and that was craziness. Just absolute craziness. There's so many moments. And some of them didn't feel big at the time. And now I know how big they are. You know, the first time Kobe Bryant walked in the gym as LA Bureau producer, you know, and he walked in the gym as a teenager for his first practice with the Lakers. And that's a moment I remember because I feel like we all expected him to kind of, I don't know, kiss the ring, be humble, be a little unsure of himself. He's a teenager. And that was not the case at all. Kobe walked in like he belonged there, which he did.

19:15He's just the only one who knew at that time that he really belonged there. And that was cool to watch that all develop. It was really interesting to watch the conflict and friction with Shaquille O 'Neal and how Del Harris handled that. And then watching Phil Jackson come in and take that over the way he changed the dynamic of that team and that relationship. You know, there's a lot that I learned from coaches and owners in sports that I use when I speak to leaders in business and in corporations, because the way that they have been able to manage people and weave individuality into a powerful group culture is something that transcends all areas.

19:59You mentioned Kobe, and I wonder putting Kobe into the framework of your book, he's someone who doesn't ever seem to have doubt. His doubt was never mantled. He never had to dismantle it. Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe he had a big chip on his shoulder. He thought about doubt in a different way compared to Michael Jordan, compared to his parents, compared to whoever. Yeah, I don't know. It'd be interesting to ask him too bad that we can't. But yeah, it's something that I don't think most people are born with. Whatever Kobe had, let's say he didn't deal with doubt. I think that's incredibly rare. And for the rest of us, it's okay that we have doubt and fears.

20:41And it's a matter of acknowledging them, dismantling them, and working with them. You've called the WNBA for years for the Aces, the Sparks. And the sport today seems more popular than it ever has been and probably more exciting than it ever has been. It's an incredible product. Being in the arena, when something's at a fever pitch, what's the experience like as a broadcaster? And maybe you can tell a story, but also, as it pertains to doubt, being friends with fear, do you recognize that it's a really big moment when it's happening? And how does that, how does that whole ball of wax work? I love the big moments.

21:26I mean, there were lots of them, obviously, as a producer, too, when I was at the Super Bowl and NBA playoffs and like golf majors, I love the tension, you know, when you get to the 18th hole and the final day. In broadcasting a game, when I am play by play, not as a producer, but now, you know, play by play for the last 25 years, I am thinking about clearly communicating the excitement to the television audience. And to have that kind of excitement and energy in the arena, it's palpable, really adds to the emotion that I'm able to bring in the call. I have to be conscious of my voice, that I'm not screaming, even though I want to be screaming with delight over every play.

22:11but I don't think I'm thinking about the magnitude of the moment outside of the arena. I'm thinking about doing right by the audience and bringing them into the arena, if that makes sense. Yeah, it makes sense. And, you know, just out of curiosity, I'm sure you have the best headphones you possibly can as a play-by-play announcer, but does it ever get so loud that you have a hard time hearing yourself think? Oh, yes, sure. So what they do when you're calling a game, right, and you've got the headset on is they put your partner's voice in your ear, some mix of the crowd that you hear the gnat, and then the producer or director can talk to you as well.

22:55and I now after all these years I have them take the gnat out completely the natural sound I don't want to have the crowd in my head because they're loud enough anyway that I still hear them so once I did that it was very helpful I started out as a college football sideline reporter as I said and you have in your ear like a little it's called an IFB in your ear to ear I would wear two of them to try to be able to hear myself. College football was, you know, completely different. I mean, 100 ,000 people in a stadium at, you know, Ohio State or whoever. So I would have that in just so I could hear myself and hear the producer.

23:36That's really interesting. You, you've done a ton of play by play for the Pac-10, I guess, Pac-12, you know, rest in peace, And, you know, I noticed you've done some basketball work with Bill Walton. I was a young kid during the 80s Celtics, a huge Bill Walton fan. He passed recently. Do you have a story you can share about Bill Walton? Sure. I loved Bill Walton. I only did one game with him. It was for the Pac-12 network, which is no longer in existence. And when they assigned me to work with Bill, I believe, I believe I was his only female partner ever on air. I don't, I'm not aware of anybody else who called a game with him as his play-by-play.

24:20So I think I'm the only one. And the first thing I did was call the people that he normally called games with and ask them about what it's like to work with Bill and how he works best. Just wanting to make sure that he's comfortable and I adapt to him. And they all told me the same thing. They said, Bill will not speak to you before you go on air. Just so you know, it isn't you. He likes to save it all for the air. He will not say a word to you beforehand. And I was like, okay. But then my phone rang and it was Bill Walton. And he said, Amory, this is Bill with two L's, Walton. And I said, hello, Bill.

24:58And he said, I am calling to tell you that I'm looking forward to working with you, but I am not going to talk to you until we go on the air. And I said, I've heard that about you. And he says, I'd like to save it for the air. And I said, I have heard that. And he goes, goodbye. That was it. Wow. That was it. And we did not, even though we were in the same gym at practice and everything, you know, I knew his system and we did not speak until we went on the air. And there was one moment on the air. I mean, to prepare for that game, John, I did. I did so much extra work. like Grateful Dead songs.

25:34Because I knew it was going to be all over the place. And I was like, I'm not a deadhead. I better study this so I know what he's referencing. But at one point on the air, Bill has a ton of notes and everything was handwritten. And he said to me as he was riffing about something, and he said, do you have any grandchildren? And I said, the producer in my ear was like, oh no. And I said to Bill, Bill, how is it you have 27 pages of handwritten notes and nowhere in there does it tell you I have a first grader? And he's like, oh my goodness, my bad, my bad. I'm like, who won't just ask me if I had a grandchild?

26:07So that was a fun moment. When you think about the color commentators that you most jive with, do you like spontaneous? Do you prefer having some material that you go into and you've pre-discussed? What's sort of your game plan for the perfect broadcast situation? Sure. I'd love to have a real expert in the sport, which we do get for the most part now. I mainly work for ESPN again now. I mean, I was always working for them, but I do a lot more for them right now. And as long as they're an expert in the sport, I'm good because I can ask anything. And then it depends upon the sport. If it's volleyball, which I played at a high level, I know a lot about the sport in terms of what I want to ask.

26:52If it's like softball, for example, which I didn't play or soccer, I consider myself to be the viewer a little bit. And I will ask them things that the viewer would want to know. Why is that happening? How is that happening? How is that opening up that way? The best way to do it, and I teach aspiring broadcasters. Sometimes I'll run a seminar for them, a workshop when I have time. But what I tell them is you need to know the same stories as your partner so you can set them up. So it's not my story to tell, but we will speak to the coaches together. And then the coach says something in particular, I know how to lead my analyst to telling that story.

27:36So there's nothing scripted, certainly, but I like to know kind of generally that we both receive the same information so I can just keep setting them up just like you're pitching to them. having a broadcast or, or produced so many different kinds of sports, what's the most exciting, exciting sport to see up close that, that the viewer might be surprised to hear or that maybe that you, you weren't expecting to be as exciting as it was. Yeah. Gosh, I fall in love with every sport that I do for a million different reasons. I have never called swimming but i love i can interview michael phelps and all that for the six olympics that we were part of um and i i love the excitement about swimming the tension in there because the margin to win by is so small so i feel like that's incredible i'm always awed by i did a lot of golf and a lot of golf majors, I'm always awed by the composure of the crowd to remain still and silent.