Deirdre is the Queen of Sacramento News with an impressive 20 year run as the morning anchor and particular feature reporter focusing on all things health. I met her many years ago, and have been on the morning news many times to promote books and events with her.

Deirdre’s business is to create fabulously produced shows that tell a big story in a quick three minutes, five minutes, or even 15 second sound bites. So, I wanted her to change gears with me, sit down, unwind and get talking about her fantastic journey that landed her in Sacramento and what’s kept her here ever since. When you hear Deirdre’s story, it will call to mind “Luck is where preparation meets opportunity.” She is a real go-getter and a very inspirational force of nature.

The theme of the show? We couldn’t decide. I think we are both super-fast-moving types and hit many tangents and insights so you’ll have to listen and reflect and pick up on the themes that resonate with you. In a nutshell, we talk about modern media and how it’s changed with the influence of mobile technology and social media, the impact it has had on our careers and how we divulge information differently now. We also discuss how she continually finds herself in new and exciting opportunities by making sure to take advantage of propositions when they knock at her door. Sitting back, wishing and hoping for the good life isn’t what got Dierdre where she is. It’s been all about enthusiasm and pushing forward at any given turn.

Her career-transforming role as the Special Olympics correspondent for dozens of Hearst-owned TV stations across America, and the fact that she has been to ten different Olympics over her life is just one example of the chances she honored for herself that took her life in an upward swing. We also talk about identifying which of Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies you are and accepting that in your career choice and daily routine. You can absolutely work with tendencies and weaknesses that are unique to your character to create a stronger you.

Of course, we also talk about her new podcast called Dying to Ask. I dig this wild, fast-moving interview with Sacramento KCRA 3 News Queen @deirdreFitzpatrick1. She indeed asked some great questions, and we covered a lot of new ground relating to Speedgolf, the ketogenic diet, and cultivating a pure motivation for peak performance.

Deirdre manages to do the early morning news, train for great endurance feats, and be a super mom to two kids, and we talk about how she manages to keep up with it all. We go off on a tangent regarding parenting idealisms and strategies, and what it means to be a modern-day parent.

Did she get into a peak performance lifestyle through being born with a truly gritty and resilient nature, or did she develop these attributes through hard work and habit? How does this change the way you think of your day-to-day capabilities and what small changes can you make that could potentially have a huge effect?

Deirdre proves that action creates momentum and you are going to get a powerhouse conversation from a bundle of energy and enthusiasm from this one!

TIMESTAMPS:

Brad introduces the star of Sacramento news/sports scene. [03:26]

Deirdre describes her job as a TV news personality covering the Olympics as well as local news. [08:23]

What is the personal routine? [14:00]

University of Missouri owns an NBC affiliate. Deirdre took broadcast journalism there. [18:37]

She explains how she progressed in her career from Des Moines to Sacramento . [22:41]

It’s not an accident that you can do something well if you do it a lot. [28:58]

She developed a stutter when her position required five straight hours of broadcasting. [29:05]

Technology as evolved in the 20 years since she has done this. How has her job changed? [34:27]

We are going to learn that not having stricter control on our kids’ media use is going to create fallout. [37:24]

Trying to control a child’s life is a huge task.  They have to figure it out on their own. [38:59]

Four tendencies (Gretchen Rubin) are obliger, upholder, the questioner, and the rebel. [48:37]

Kids need boundaries. [54:54]

Deirdre details her athletic experiences and how she uses it for reducing stress.  She has the resiliency gene. [56:29]

Ask yourself: How do I want to do life? [01:03:41]

We don’t always get to the destination we set out for, but the journey can be what we make of it. [01:11:12]

Make an effort, then evaluate what went wrong, and see what you can do better. [01:12:13]

Deirdre’s favorite part of her job of covering the Olympics is doing the interviews with the athletes in the more obscure sports.  [01:14:52]

The podcast Dying to Ask looks at people about the backstory of their approach to their goals. [01:19:02]

LINKS:

• Dying to Ask
• Gretchen Rubin Podcast
• Ashley Merryman Podcast
• Japanese Soccer Team Podcast

QUOTES:  

• “Luck is where preparation meets opportunity.”

LISTEN:

Get Over Yourself Podcast

Brad: 00:00:00 Welcome to the get over yourself podcast. This is author, an athlete, Brad Kearns, discovering ways to be healthy, fit and happy in hectic, high-stress, modern life. So let’s slow down and take a deep breath. Take a cold plunge and expertly balanced that competitive intensity with an appreciation of the journey. That’s the theme of the show. Here we go.

Brad: 00:03:26 Hi listeners, get ready for the Dierdre Fitzpatrick show. This is one of the fastest moving free flowing heat seeking hot wired recordings you will ever listen to and when you’re finished you will be energized, motivated, and inspired. This lady is a bundle of energy. She’s the queen of the Sacramento news scene. She has had an amazing 20 year run as morning anchor and special feature reporter focusing on health and especially the correspondent for the Olympic Games. She has been, I think to 20 Olympic Games in a row, winter, summer, winter, summer. Oh my gosh. You know, I met her a long time ago. I’ve been on her show many times promoting my fitness and health endeavors in the Sacramento area. She is such a great lady. All the endurance athletes in town love her because she is a participatory journalist. She is in the mix, man. She runs the marathon in town every year.

Brad: 00:04:25 She’s done a couple iron man triathlons and Huh. I wanted to sit her down and get her a little bit unplugged from her usual intense morning routine of putting together these tight, fabulously produced segments that lasts for three minutes or five minutes or what have you. Even nailing those 15 second sound bites. That’s what her whole life is all about. So we went into the back room at KCRA, sat down, relaxed after a hard day of work. So we talk about all kinds of things. I think I met my match when it comes to rapid fire communication and tangent seeking opportunities. So we pulled together, we have some through lines going, but in the middle of the show we’re like, what’s the theme of the show? We couldn’t figure it out. But you know what, when you hear her amazing journey that landed her in Sacramento and people familiar with the media scene realize what an arduous task it is to land a spot and keep it in a major market like Sacramento.

Brad: 00:05:24 And I think you’re gonna hear the uh, maximum come to mind. That luck is where preparation meets opportunity. Uh, that’s what’s what she’s all about. She goes hard, real go getter, very inspirational. We talk about how modern media has changed, especially with the advent of social media, starting from her early career to today and how she put herself into these amazing opportunities and constantly took advantage. How she manages the whole thing. That early, early, early start to her morning, the high flying morning news. Then she gets off work at midday and goes and trains for crazy endurance events and then she’s super mom to two young boys for the rest of the day, coaching middle school running team. Oh my gosh. What else? We talk about, oh, the s the often discussed peak performance attributes of grit and resilience and whether these are born or whether they’re molded through hard work or perhaps even parental example.

Brad: 00:06:19 We talk about an assortment of parenting ideals and strategies. One of our tangents coming back and of course her amazing experience or opportunity to cover the Olympics as a special correspondent for dozens of Hearst owned TV stations across America. So lots of people probably recognize her from watching the Olympics. Oh, I hope you enjoy this wonderful show and she has just started recently in middle 2018 a wonderful podcast called dying to ask, check out the show wherever you subscribe to podcasts. She lands in assortment of very interesting, successful guests, authors, professional athletes, and ask them the questions that extract the peak performance attributes that make them who they are and what you can take from their example and apply it to your own life. Very tightly produced, wonderful insights coming out of these shows. And now for a change, we put Dierdre into the interview seat and listen to what she has to say.

Brad: 00:07:20 I know you’re gonna enjoy this show and go check out dying to ask podcast. Here goes Dierdre Fitzpatrick in downtown Sacramento, California. KCRA television studios, Dierdre Fitzpatrick, KCRA a long hard day of work here at 8:30 in the morning.

Dierdre: 00:07:43 Yes, I that’s true. That’s true. I get up at 2:25 so I’m, I’m a good six hours into this day. And then I came in here to set up for a podcast and we were going to have our fun. And then you said, hey, come onto the news. And so you just drag me into a different room. We sat on a yellow couch, I’m wearing my yellow Ali G sweatsuit that listeners are familiar with, website viewers,

Dierdre: 00:08:05 A lot of yellow.

Brad: 00:08:06 It was all about the yellow, yellow.

Dierdre: 00:08:08 But that’s kind of how I roll. I mean I just, I look for opportunities. And you were here, we have five hours and news to fill. I needed to talk about a podcast we had done and I thought, you’re here, you’ve got a great book. Let’s put you on and share some information.

Brad: 00:08:23 Incredible. It’s always how you roll every case. Everything’s last minute. There’s no advanced planning.

Dierdre: 00:08:28 No, no, no. There’s a lot of advanced planning. But then there’s also seeing the opportunities. So that’s, that’s probably the thing that I’m known for is seeing an opportunity and then turning it fast. Yeah, that’s what I actually, I actually do a lot of planning. I’m, I’m a total planner, but then I’m also kind of an opportunist in the best of ways. Right.

Brad: 00:08:46 Um, and this is especially important when you’re floating around at the Olympics, which is kind of your, your, your claim to fame here in a way that you’ve gone to10,

Dierdre: 00:08:56 10,

Brad: 00:08:57 10 separate games,

Dierdre: 00:08:59 10 separate games.

Brad: 00:09:00 So that’s every winter, summer, winter, summer. Yes.

Dierdre: 00:09:03 Since it’s 2000 the Sydney Games were my first Olympics and since that time, my partner Mike Domalaog and I have gone as a team to every Olympics for our company, Hearst television.

Brad: 00:09:14 And so are you covering it for more than just the Sacramento station?

Dierdre: 00:09:17 I covered for 30 stations. Really? Yeah. A lot of people don’t know that. So we’re based out of Sacramento, but when we go, we represent 30 Hearst television stations across the country. So everywhere from Boston to Kansas City to Orlando to Sacramento to Monterey, like all across the country. And so when we go, we gather information and stories about lots of different athletes that would be appealing to all of those stations. But then we also do live reports for those stations as well. So I will set up on what would they call a platform where they line up TV cameras from end to end and I sit there for six and a half hours doing live shots, every couple of minutes for a different station.

Dierdre: 00:10:01 So there’s a little dry erase board where they write down the names of the anchors, the station, the city, and then which story they want to talk about. And so that’s what I do. And you might go and do, I do anywhere from 50 to 60 live shots in a day over six and a half hours.

Brad: 00:10:20 Oh my God.

Dierdre: 00:10:20 Is that funny? I know. Each one has to sound like it’s the only one you’ve done that day. Cincinnati’s best friend. Hey, it’s Detroit at the Olympics and you get to know them because you over the course of a month, you’re talking to the same anchors each day. So you get to know, oh, this is, you know, John and Lucy and Cincinnatian yesterday they asked me about this. It’s kind of, it makes it really fun because you can play with them and you can have a lot of fun. And make it personal. And that’s where having that kind of inner competition comes from because you got to make it a game. Gotta look for the opportunity to make it fun.

Brad: 00:10:51 And where are you, what was I gonna ask? Sorry. Um,

Dierdre: 00:10:58 you’re still thinking about 30 TV stations are doing.

Brad: 00:11:01 Yeah. Wait a second. I was gonna ask, um, uh, so each time you’re on. Oh, um, and who are they? How are they introducing you? I mean, Cincinnati people who’ve never seen new except for on the Olympics.

Dierdre: 00:11:21 Exactly. So I appear for a month and then I kind of go away. Any kind of like special correspondent would, but you know, they’ll usually introduce it. Oh, it’s, you know, day for the Olympics and Deirdre Fitzpatrick is out there. So, you know, typically where I work in, in Sacramento, I’m KCRA’s Deirdre Fitzpatrick. Uh, but they will introduce me as theirs.

Brad: 00:11:46 You’re more than just KCRA’s Deirdre Fitzpatrick, everyone claims you,

Dierdre: 00:11:49 you know, it’s funny though. My kids, whenever they see one of my, they’ll say, oh, that’s KCRA’s. Nicki. I’m like, that’s not actually our name to that because they hear the branding all the time. It kind of is the branding.

Brad: 00:12:02 So how did that come about? Did you pitch this station in 2000 like, Hey, maybe we should send someone actually to Sydney or what?

Dierdre: 00:12:09 There was actually a plan in place, uh, to send a crew to Sydney and they sent three, they sent three people and I was asked, so I didn’t even know it was coming up, but they needed somebody who was really resourceful and what we in my business call a utility player, which means that you can make something out of nothing sometimes, which is what we do a lot at the time. And so they need somebody who could be very self-driven and creative and probably have some fun while you’re there because if you don’t, it’s a tough assignment to do. And so I was asked to do it and I went and it ended up being the kind of assignment that changes your career and takes you down a completely different path than what you had intended on.

Brad: 00:12:51 So you’re in, you’re a known utility player in the newscast

Dierdre: 00:12:55 utility player. Yeah, I would say that that’s probably a fair statement. I’m a worker. I think I’m probably known as a pretty productive person. You know, I am a, I’m somebody who has to have like a list of things to do and I enjoy crossing the things off and I, I love creating content. So for me that’s, that’s the fun in what I do is creating the content and telling the stories and meeting people and getting to do something different each day

Brad: 00:13:21 as opposed to is there another category of newsperson where they walk in and read the teleprompter, like William Heard on the broadcast leaders.

Dierdre: 00:13:30 Absolutely.

Brad: 00:13:30 with the, with the ear piece going in so they can, uh, tell them how to pronounce certain words.

Dierdre: 00:13:33 Well, I do have an earpiece and occasionally I’ll be reminded that I just mispronounced something. But yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, I think in any job, in any career, you have the people who come in and they do what’s needed to do it and that’s fine. And then you had the people who need to do the work because that’s just the way they’re wired. And I’m wired the latter.

Brad: 00:13:55 So how does that work on your day to day responsibilities here when you show up every morning for the news?

Dierdre: 00:14:00 So when I show up, um, my day starts at about 2:25. That’s when the first alarm goes off and I spend the first hour at home prepping. So my, my personal routine and I know you have a routine of what you do every day. Mine is, I get up, I have some coffee,

New Speaker: 00:14:16 There is no cold plunge going on. You have my permission to skip that.

Dierdre: 00:14:20 There is no cold plunge going on. Um, when.

Brad: 00:14:23 coffee at 2:25.

Dierdre: 00:14:25 but occasionally there is a 15 minute workout to wake up. Sometimes I do that. I started doing that a few years ago and I found that it kind of got my brain going, which was great just to get the blood flowing,

Brad: 00:14:34 physical movement,

Dierdre: 00:14:35 physical movement to wake up. Um, so I do that and then I, I spend the first hour at home. I read. So I read every newspaper you can think of online. I might watch the news from the night before. I catch up. I go through my emails to see what happened with our evening crews. I communicate with our, if I needed to, I can get into our rundowns from home just to see what’s going on. Um, so I come in, when I walk in the door, I am, I know what’s happened over night so I can sit down and I can start opening up the scripts. The producers that have been writing all night long and I can proofread. So I’m, I always say I’m kind of like a glorified English teacher at that point. My job is to go in and look for mistakes, look for typos, uh, as a veteran person to look for contextual things that maybe do or do not make sense and then to just suggest. So, but when, by that point, if I’m reading a story and I think, ah, that’s not the right number.

Dierdre: 00:15:24 I already know it’s not the right number. My, my short term memory is remarkable. Longterm, not so much, but like short term, if I read it an hour ago and I read all the things that happened overnight, I can go in there and fix something in a script, no problem.

Brad: 00:15:37 And then the script’s going to appear on the teleprompter. So it’s going to be tight. Right?

Dierdre: 00:15:42 Yeah. So my job is to really give that make to, to put my voice into the scripts, which usually means it’s tight, it’s fast, it’s super conversational, but also digestible. So if I don’t understand it, then it ha I have to rewrite it in a way that I’ll understand it. And if I’m not interested in it, then I usually tweak it a little bit to make it interesting to me. Like if you had a health study, um, oh, here’s an example. Like this morning we had a story about this new illness that’s been detected in kids and it’s very similar to polio. Okay. So super important, especially if you’re affected by it, but not maybe the most interesting to nine out of 10 people. So my job was to take that story and make it interesting. So no, I might rewrite it in a way that if you’re home and you’re running around getting ready at five 30 in the morning, my goal is to make you stop what you’re doing

Brad: 00:16:32 and just skews us all and then then get stuck in traffic because you got the story and then you got to watch the traffic report.

Dierdre: 00:16:38 You see it’s an evil.

Dierdre: 00:16:39 It’s all about KCRA.

Brad: 00:16:41 It’s all about KCRA. Started and ended with KCRA. Yeah, right. I got delayed by Dierdra’s fascinating story and then I got a new route because I watched the little traffic cam.

Dierdre: 00:16:49 Right.

Brad: 00:16:51 Is there anything like an insight that you have from reading in the middle of the night that you want to bring right to the right to the front table?

Dierdre: 00:16:59 Sometimes, you know, sometimes they’ll say, hey, did you guys see that thing about such and such and producing? No. Where’d you see that? Oh, I saw it on such and such. Let’s see if we can find it. Right.

Brad: 00:17:08 Brad Kearns texted me the previous night.

Dierdre: 00:17:10 Sometimes that happens too. You know, like I have a good friend who is a pilot lives in Lake Tahoe and anytime there’s any kind of air disaster anywhere in the world, he will text me what the pilots are saying on the pilot chat, which is always an interesting place to be. More information, hey, you guys should look at this or that’s just like the accident that we had in such and such. So yeah, sometimes there’s a lot of that too.

Brad: 00:17:32 So starting at 2:25 a little little physical movement. Then you’re just on all over it

Dierdre: 00:17:38 for the day. His friend ended. So it starts off fast.

Brad: 00:17:42 And then when do you go live on the, on the in the studio.

Dierdre: 00:17:45 I’m typically on by about 4:50 or 4:55 .

Brad: 00:17:51 Then you’re doing, are you doing repeats of the stories for the different news?

Dierdre: 00:17:54 Somewhat. The shows have a different feel. A lot of the content is the same. We’ll kind of massage it, rewrite it to give it a different feel. In case you happen to have watched four hours in news, which case I would say you should get outside and go take a walk as well. But yeah, you give it a different kind of a feel but, but the content is generally the same.

Brad: 00:18:15 So you’ve been at this here in Sacramento for a l.

Dierdre: 00:18:18 long time.

Brad: 00:18:19 20 years.

Dierdre: 00:18:20 20 years, yeah.

Brad: 00:18:21 20 Years. Was this your, this couldn’t have been your first gig it wasn’t a major market.

Dierdre: 00:18:26 No. You know, it’s funny. I’ve actually been doing what I’ve been doing, reading out loud, which is basically what I do. Um, since I was 19,

Brad: 00:18:32 Reading out loud. That’s what you tell people when I tell the airplane. What do you do? I read out loud.

Dierdre: 00:18:37 Yeah. Oh, do you work at the library? No, I wish I did. That’d be a cool job. But no, I started doing this when I was 19 years old. I was, I went to school at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri. And the interesting thing about the journalism school areas, it’s the only college in the country that owns an NBC affiliate.

Brad: 00:18:56 So the college or University owns the NBC affiliate.

Dierdre: 00:19:00 it’s called KRMU And so when you get into the journalism school in your junior year, part of your curriculum, if you’re in the broadcast journalism sequence is you go out and you do shifts at the TV station. And so you go out as a reporter. So at the age of 19 and 20 I was doing what I’m doing now. Now, I mean, hopefully I’m doing it better now, but that’s what I did back then, which is kind of crazy to think about. I mean, I couldn’t legally go out and buy myself a drink, but I was on television telling people what happened that day.

Brad: 00:19:31 And that was part of your education? It was, yeah, units or whatever. And that led to your first job somewhere else or what’d you do?

Dierdre: 00:19:39 So I had, while I was there, I worked at a news talk radio station and the station was sold one week after I got the job. And the station was sold to a man who then came in and fired everyone at the station with the exception of one person. And that one person was me. And the reason he kept me was because I knew the computer system and I think I was making like $4 50 cents an hour at that point. So you’re always the only one who was cutting on.

Brad: 00:20:12 You, there. What’s your name, computer girl.

Dierdre: 00:20:14 You’re staying now to be positive. Everybody else was hired back on. But, but it turned into this really interesting opportunity because I went from working at this one little very small rinky-dink station.

Brad: 00:20:24 radio only?

Dierdre: 00:20:25 It was to working for an owner that owned five stations, which meant that I was all of a sudden in a building with a lot of really experienced people, even though it was a small town. And so I did, I did news talk radio, I did the news. And then one day they were looking for a cohost for an afternoon radio drive afternoon drive show on the am station. And they said, I think you’d be really good at that. And I was 20 and I said, yeah, I’d be great at that. And so that was my first full time job was at the age of 20 while I was still going to college. I co-hosted an afternoon news talk radio program.

Brad: 00:21:01 every day,

Dierdre: 00:21:02 every day, Monday through Friday was fantastic.

Brad: 00:21:04 And did you have some preparation time before you went on the air?

Dierdre: 00:21:07 Not really because I was coming from like, you know, Calculus. So I really didn’t it. What I had was I had a, I had a really remarkable cohost who was about 20 years older than me and super patient and kind and a wonderful teacher and mentor. And the truth is most people didn’t know how young I was. I had for a woman, I had a very deep voice for the age that I was. So yes I did.

Brad: 00:21:31 Is that true today or has your voice,

Dierdre: 00:21:33 oh, it’s probably about the same. I don’t know. But you know, it’s, it’s funny. I hate people for the most part. Didn’t know how young I was until once in a while. I would say something that only a 20 year old would say.

Brad: 00:21:45 Oh my God, it’s so hot today in Missouri.

Dierdre: 00:21:50 Yeah. Yeah. So that was, that was kind of my first, my first broadcast paying gig and it was a really awesome, we’re still still to this day, one of the greatest times I’ve had in my job was working there.

Brad: 00:22:01 What’d did you do on the afternoon? Drive time. You’re mixing in with

Dierdre: 00:22:06 interviews. You did, you did a lot of interviews, which is where my, my early getting to ad Lib and ask people questions on the fly came from. So I remember interviewing a lot of like D list celebrities. So a lot of people who had been on the love boat would come through Columbia, Missouri for whatever reason, if you would guess hosted on the love boat, you probably came through there at some point and I probably had an opportunity to interview you, which is kinda cool. Um, but you did that and then you, you pitched to news and some of it was just, you know, taking calls from some of the listeners too.

Brad: 00:22:39 And then where, where did that lead?

Dierdre: 00:22:41 So that then led to graduating, uh, at Columbia, Missouri. And then I took a job in Des Moines, Iowa, and I lived in Des Moines, Iowa for three years and I had a fantastic job there and I was a weekend anchor there.

Brad: 00:22:52 So when you’re, when you’re graduated, you aspire to a career in television, you’re on this a wild goose chase to find an open spot at any size market. And then I guess the ambition generally speaking is people want to keep going up to a bigger market

Dierdre: 00:23:09 yeah. That’s kind of how most people start out I suppose. And my, my early ambitions where I thought, oh, it’d be really cool to work overseas or maybe to work on a magazine show or working at network. Um, so those were, I think everybody kind of had those big goals. And then somewhere along the line, sometimes your life changes and you see that what you have is actually pretty darn good. So that’s, you know, to bring it back full circle. That’s where the Olympic thing came in. So by the time I got sent to the Olympics, I was already, I had two feet out the door where I was. I was ready to move on and do other things.

Brad: 00:23:46 Where were you?

Dierdre: 00:23:46 I was here, but I never had, I never had any intention of staying here. This was going to be like a year and a half, two years.

Brad: 00:23:52 Sacramento as Ben Stiller said, a secondary market member on the, on the movie, what was it called? Brad’s dilemma or something? Their movie title? Yeah. He goes, I’m from Sacramento. It’s a secondary market.

Dierdre: 00:24:04 I know it’s a best kept secret audience boos in the Sacramento movie theater.

Brad: 00:24:09 It is the best kept secret and look, we’re here. What, an hour and a half from the bay area,? the beautiful city, San Francisco and all that great stuff and then we’re a couple hours from Tahoe. It’s incredible here.

Dierdre: 00:24:20 Great. I mean from a lifestyle perspective, it’s been a great place, but I never had any intention of staying here when the Olympic thing came up.

Brad: 00:24:27 Oh wait, you went from Des Moines to Sacramento, to Sacramento, and your career was a huge, hugely, Sacramento is a top 2025 market. So how’d you do that, Deirdre?

Dierdre: 00:24:38 I’n Des Moines they took, uh, so here’s, here’s how people used to get jobs in TV. So what happened was you would referred to chest VHS real, your resume real. And then you would take these VHS tapes and you would borrow another VHS machine from someone and you would make copies of these reportings, right? And then you would mail these tapes out to TV stations around the country, and then you would end up in a stack of tapes. Like there might be for one job at a TV station, there might be 200 of those VHS tapes lined up with just somebody’s name on the side. And then news directors sit there and they would pop those tapes in. And the average time that they kept those tapes in was anywhere from five to seven seconds seconds.

New Speaker: 00:25:23 Dierdra from Des Moine. Here we go.

Dierdre: 00:25:25 Yeah. So they would pop it in, pop it out. And that’s how, that’s how people originally used to get jobs, you know, 20 years ago. And so the way I ended up in Sacramento, I never applied for a job here. I had applied for a job in San Francisco through a friend of mine. Apparently that friend who didn’t have a job open sent my tape, my VHS tape to a news director in Sacramento. And at the same time a head hunter from a media consulting company called Maggie had brought my tape, same tape to the same news director. So the consultant shows the news director, he goes, Oh, let me show you this girl. She’s in Des Moines and I knew she was a little raw, but you know, she’s got some potential popped it in. And Ed Shibori, who was the name of the guy that, who eventually hired me.

Dierdre: 00:26:09 Um, so wait a minute, I remember, I’ve seen this girl, I remember I was in Des Moines.

Brad: 00:26:14 seven second clip.

Dierdre: 00:26:15 No, you know what? He remembered my big Red Eddie Bauer Polar Parka, which was the only thing that would keep you warm and Des Moines. And I only had one coat because I had no money working there. And so I wore it in every single time I was on camera. So he, he remembered it. And that’s actually how I ended up out here.

Brad: 00:26:30 So you came out for an interview, I guess you yeah, somehow made it from the,

Dierdre: 00:26:34 I just figured it out while I didn’t even know, I didn’t even know where Sacramento was when I got that phone call. But since I was job hunting at the time, I had my Rand McNally atlas by, because this is pre social media and pre, you know, really using a cell phone to do any of that stuff. So I took my atlas out and I pull out the California page as I’m on the phone with him and I saw Sacramento, I saw Lake Tahoe and I saw San Francisco. And literally I looked at him, I’m like, wow, well that’s worth the free trip out just to look at it if nothing else. And I came out here and then that’s how I ended up in Sacramento.

Brad: 00:27:05 So you get interviewed and what are they looking for? I mean, are they looking for a, your sharpness that comes out in a, in an interview setting just like it would for a different job?

Dierdre: 00:27:15 Yeah, I think so with my job, a lot of times if you’re going to be working on camera with someone else, you’ll go through an audition process. So they’ll actually put you into the studio and they’ll run through a mini newscast with the person that you might be partnered with. And then they have you read through a few things and they look to see how you guys get along. Because there are some people you hear a lot about like chemistry, which is, you know, in, in a lot of jobs that, you know, can you work well together and would you be watchable together? There are some people, you put them together and you’re like, oh, that’s just a weird combo. And then there’s some people who it just seems very natural and you just kind of click. So that’s one way people get jobs. The funny thing is I came out here and I never went through the audition process.

Dierdre: 00:27:57 And by the time I left, I already had the job offer, which was kind of a warning sign, truthfully sprint, why, why am I not going through that? And, um, and I never had gone through it. And, and the funny thing now I know in retrospect was the owners of the station at the time, were in the process of getting ready to sell this station. And so the job that I was coming in for was a weekend morning show, one anchor. And what I didn’t know was that the show was at that 5 hours long by yourself. And so had I actually gone through the audition process, I might have actually discovered that. So I’ve always joked and like I kinda got bamboozled coming in here, but it ended up being the greatest thing ever for me personally and professionally.

Brad: 00:28:43 oh, it sounds like the, uh, the Malcolm Gladwell talking about these amazing opportunities that you fall into and now you have to grind for five hours, which is going to build your skills so much more quickly than someone who’s picking and choosing their spots and getting three minutes of airtime a week.

Dierdre: 00:28:58 You’re absolutely right. And you know, as an endurance athlete, you know, it’s, it’s the time you put in, it’s going to be.

Brad: 00:29:03 five hour, five hour ride every day.

Dierdre: 00:29:05 Malcolm Gladwell will tell you it’s your 10,000 hours before you get decent at doing something. It’s not an accident that you get good at something because you do it a lot. And so for me, doing that five hours when I got here and all of a sudden I find myself on air going for five hours, um, I developed a stutter, which I had never had before. I know it’s the.

Brad: 00:29:25 Sacramento Stutter,

Dierdre: 00:29:25 super glamorous. But um, yeah, all of a sudden, because five hours it was in my head and you know, it was just a lot. And so I had to figure out how do I get through this for five hours. And so I would take the scripts home after a day of, you know, sometimes struggling through it and I would make myself read through them again till I could get through the whole thing and I could pace myself to be able to get through five hours of scripts by myself.

Brad: 00:29:50 You take the script home and read, read for five more hours,

Dierdre: 00:29:53 I would basically,

Brad: 00:29:54 she’s… Listen to this people. That’s how you, that’s how you really want to get into TV now.

Dierdre: 00:29:59 That’s how it’s going on.

Brad: 00:30:01 Why are they only going for five to seven seconds?

Dierdre: 00:30:06 I think because it has to do with likeability on TV. I think they have an idea of what they’re looking for. It’s a very, um, it’s kind of a harsh business. And in some ways there’s an entertainment aspect to it because there’s a likeability factor. There’s an entertainment factor. Um, they can kind of tell if somebody has it and they also know that that’s probably about the amount of time of viewers going to give you too.

Dierdre: 00:30:32 So it’s a good test. You know, if you’re flipping channels, how long do you stay on each of those channels before you flip to the next one? Probably five to seven seconds.

New Speaker: 00:30:41 It might be good for the candidate to note that that first five to second, seven seconds better be kickass.

New Speaker: 00:30:47 Better be start with your good stuff.

New Speaker: 00:30:50 Your first one’s a rustling of papers and you’re looking at your notes that.

New Speaker: 00:30:54 exactly, exactly.

Brad: 00:30:55 It’s funny, my friend covers scripts for Hollywood and so he gets a stack of scripts as his jobs is to read through those writing analysis and then submit it. If it’s good enough to pass his gate, he’ll submit it to the the evaluator to see if they want to do something with it. He says he reads for about three or four pages on average of 120 page movie. Isn’t that garbage can as a writer?

Dierdre: 00:31:17 Isn’t that just heartbreaking to think about?

Brad: 00:31:19 It’s, it’s shocking and it’s sort of like, uh, you know, it gives the, the aspiring writer hope that there’s that much crap that’s so bad that he knows already. And this is like one of the most powerful people in Hollywood at a minor job. He’s the gatekeeper to all the crap. And it’s like you can’t get past him. No one ever knows about your thing.

Dierdre: 00:31:40 Gatekeeper to the crap, the.

Brad: 00:31:41 One of the most powerful people in Hollywood by definition. Cause he filters out way more than, than the people who make decisions. I love it. Amazing. Yeah. Okay. So five to seven seconds.

Dierdre: 00:31:51 start, with your good stuff,

Brad: 00:31:52 you start with your good stuff,

Dierdre: 00:31:53 Be compelling and interesting, quick,

Brad: 00:31:56 you can even stage five to seven second thing like breaking news.

Dierdre: 00:31:59 And that’s, and that’s a good point because I think that that’s where you get into trouble sometimes as is now, especially these days. It’s very easy to craft and create yourself to appear a certain kind of way.

New Speaker: 00:32:10 Oh um, yes. Social Media

Dierdre: 00:32:12 Like social media, the idea, the, you know, your, what do they call it? A um, you’re curated itself. I’ve never heard that. So it’s the idea that I tell you everything that I want you to know or that I think I want you to know. But it’s not necessarily the reality of what your life is like.

Brad: 00:32:31 I see. That could happen in the dating scene. It could happen in the job market, the interview scene. Wow.

Brad: 00:32:38 That could happening right now. But I promise you it’s not, that’s, you know, we’re, we’re, we’re striving toward higher heights here at the get over yourself podcast that’s going to get down to the bottom of it. Oh my goodness. So you just took a flyer and came out, came out west. I imagine that’s a, a big promotion due to the size of the market. Right?

Dierdre: 00:32:55 It was. And I think moving to California for me was just a really great change. I had moved around a lot as a kid, but the one place that I had never lived with my family was this far out west. And I just, I loved everything about California.

Brad: 00:33:09 You came out here by yourself at that time? Y.

Dierdre: 00:33:11 Yeah. Yeah.

Brad: 00:33:11 Wow. Um, now you got some, uh, some, some baggage… Kids. What, how did those come into play?

Dierdre: 00:33:18 So I met my husband here and.

New Speaker: 00:33:21 on the set. Or was he, you knew?

New Speaker: 00:33:23 Oh, that’s a new, no, no, no. He, uh, had actually never, he lived in Sacramento as well.

Brad: 00:33:30 He had never seen the news when he met you.

Dierdre: 00:33:33 He had never seen our local news.

New Speaker: 00:33:35 Love it.

New Speaker: 00:33:36 He had never seen our local news.

Brad: 00:33:37 As soon as you learn that your eyes brightened and you’re like, okay, yeah,

Dierdre: 00:33:41 no, I was at a neighborhood party where I didn’t know anyone, but I happened to be there with a coworker from KCRA and um, my friend Jeffery Neary who is from Sacramento, you might remember who was a meteorologist and we are at the party and he said, you know, I’ve been looking around for you. And uh, I found what I like for you. And that was how I met my husband.

Brad: 00:33:59 Who did? Jeff said that?

Dierdre: 00:34:00 Yes.

Brad: 00:34:01 Oh, what a guy it’s going to go. It’s incredible. Yeah. And he just dragged you over there to some guy.

Dierdre: 00:34:05 Pretty much. Wow. And that’s how we met originally.

Brad: 00:34:09 And now you’ve got, how old are the kids?

Dierdre: 00:34:11 So now we have two boys. We have a 13 year old just turned 13 and a nine year old boy.

Brad: 00:34:16 He’s old enough to wake up at five and watch their mom on the news, don’t care sort of thing. Isn’t that, isn’t that the normal norm?

Dierdre: 00:34:24 Pretty much. Yeah. They’re very, very unimpressed with me.

Brad: 00:34:27 Yeah. Yeah. Love that. So you said earlier that you hope you’re better than at the start. You’re doing the same thing you did when you were 19 years old.

Dierdre: 00:34:37 Yeah.

New Speaker: 00:34:38 And how does that happen? What do you think you’re better at?

Dierdre: 00:34:42 So I think that what’s interesting in my business is how much it’s changed in 20 years. I mean, technology has completely changed how we do things. So, you know, think back 20 years we weren’t, we had cell phones, but we weren’t using them as communications tools and we weren’t using them to the ability that we do. So now my job is just really different. It used to be that I came in, I read out loud for a while, I went out, I did a story, and then the second I got into my car, the day was done. Good, bad or indifferent, the day was done, it didn’t matter. And then the next day you hit the reset and you started all over. And now because of the technology we have with social media and all the different media platforms like podcasting or um, any kind of like live streaming, you’re never really done and you’re constantly in communication.

Dierdre: 00:35:29 And so now we are much more um, gatherers and we have the ability to talk to people in a far more one on one kind of way, instant way than we ever did before. And I, there are a lot of things I really like about that. It’s made my job really interesting. Cause there was so much stuff that happened, like say at the Olympics that you never saw on TV because you only had a very limited amount of time. Well now I get to take you back behind the scenes and I can show you some really cool things and you get to see us in a different kind of a way. And so that part of it has been really fun,

Brad: 00:36:00 Right. And the viewer now has access to so much more information. So does that change the formatting of the

Dierdre: 00:36:09 the morning show a little bit because we know that they’re not just watching us, they’re watching us while reading something else. So we know. I know. So what we know is that if you,

Brad: 00:36:22 you mean, you mean there it’s more background now? Is that what you’re saying?

Dierdre: 00:36:26 There are a lot of different sounds going on. I don’t know. The one is more background than the other, but you’re con, but you have a lot going on. So what we know happens is the alarm goes off, people reach over, they flip on the TV, they pull out the phone or the iPad and they start scrolling on social media while they’re watching us or they’re looking at other things. So, um, you know, I’ll have Facebook or Instagram or Twitter open and viewers are messaging me or commenting on things like, why did you guys just say that? Or can you tell me more? And we’re responding during the commercial breaks, we’re having a conversation with them. So it’s, it’s a weird, but kind of cool thing that it’s much more of a dialogue. Does that make sense?

Brad: 00:37:06 Oh, for sure. Yeah. I think that’s, you know, the, the flattening of media seems to be, yeah, it’s exhausting and it’s really disturbing. I have a lot of concerns about it. Just the diversion of the attention span as opposed to sitting down and watching the news and being fully engaged.

Dierdre: 00:37:21 Brad, I totally agree. Yeah, totally agree.

Brad: 00:37:24 What are we going to do about, where are we headed? Especially with your, your kids coming of age now and their plunging into this world. So different than yours when you came up and had your afternoon show, when you sat in a room and read a script of completely undistracted and so forth.

Dierdre: 00:37:38 Oh, that, yeah. It’s not happening. Here’s my theory. My personal theory is, um, when I was a kid, my mom smoked and she smoked around us because at the time they didn’t really know how bad it really, really was. And I think that in 20 years, I think I can, I can hear the argument right now at a Thanksgiving table. My kids are gonna come to me and say, I can’t believe you gave me unlimited access to an iPad. Do you know what that did to my brain? Or do you know what having, you know, Wifi in the house, I think they’ll come back and say, you destroyed my ability to concentrate because you guys didn’t have very strict parameters about that. I think that later on we’re going to know, I think we’re already seeing that in the last couple of years they were going to know that not having some, um, stricter controls about our, how we all monitor our access to these devices into online platforms.

Dierdre: 00:38:27 I think we’re gonna know a lot more.

Brad: 00:38:29 We’re going to have the fallout.

Dierdre: 00:38:31 It’s going to be another way for our kids to blame us for something.

New Speaker: 00:38:34 Wow. That’s pretty heavy.

Dierdre: 00:38:36 It is heavy. Yeah.

Brad: 00:38:37 I completely agree too. But it’s may take a while to, to figure out the smoke clearing and the damage. Yeah.

Dierdre: 00:38:44 My, I always tell my boys, the greatest gift that I think I will give you is a, an attention span. So I am, I’m a little bit more hardcore about turning it all off and having, I have a lot stricter boundaries around that in my life these days.

Brad: 00:38:59 Yeah. I told my kids, of course, neither of our kids will be listening to this so we can speak freely about all matters. Nothing’s off the table. I said, oh man. I mean, uh, the, the, you know, I, I told them over and over, like my main battle grounds were going to be the screen time and the healthy food. And so I’d come, I’d constantly offer commentary. I knew I couldn’t control their eating habits, especially as they get older and older, but I wanted to make sure I was in their head knowing like the consequences of your decisions and go ahead, have fun, enjoy yourself. This sugar will go to your brain and affect you adversely in this manner, in that manner and same with the time. And, but you can’t, it’s like a, it’s like a force that you, you really can’t stop. I mean, some people can. I’ve heard, I remember one of the prominent authors in the Paleo scene was giving a talk at an event we organized. He’s like, well, my role is, it’s my house, my money and my food. And so, uh, our kids eat total strict Paleo. And I’m like, I went up to a rafter in a corner. I’m like, okay, come here for a second girl. I’ve got to talk to you. Are you freaking kidding me? She’s like, oh no. And I’m like, how do you do that? You’re my hero. I can’t do that. Then it’s like an avalanche over overwhelming the uh, you know, the, the, the high morals and values that we have as we coming into parenting.

Dierdre: 00:40:15 Yeah. And I think some of the stuff, you have to learn it on your own or you’re not going to learn it. You’re just, you’re not, um, giving an example because I’m so with you on the sugar thing and, and I am, I mean I’m not all into the Keto thing, but I am into eating real food and not processed food and eating in moderation. A little bit of everything. But I’ll give you like my kids, obviously they’re kids, they love sugar. So Halloween you can eat till you puke. In fact, I hope you do puke cause you’re going to remember that and let me tell you, you’re probably not gonna do that again. So I have let them on occasion knowing exactly what was about to happen. I’ve let him go on that sugar binge fast and they feel it and they’re like, are you okay? I don’t feel so good. Oh, why do you think that is? I think I might’ve had too much chocolate. Really? How much did you have? Oh, I had, you know, for much. So I think some of it like especially, maybe it’s especially with boys, I don’t know, maybe that’s stereotypical, but I have found that they got to figure that out on their own.

Brad: 00:41:12 Well, same with, uh, enforcing these strict boundaries and controlling mechanisms for the kids’ life. Like we all want our kid to be either Valedictorian and or Division One scholarship athlete and we try so hard to orchestrate it and it’s so ridiculous now. Now I can look back. My kids are 20 and 18. It’s like these best intentions and of course we want them to be happy and well adjusted and balanced. So you should be applying right now for that internship. Uh, all that kind of stuff. Looking back now, I realize how, how much less influence I really had than I think I did or hope that I did. And it sort of can give you some sort of sense of relaxation or, or you know, realizing that your kids are on their own path already, even at 13 and eight and setting the example and you know, walking your talk, that’s a thousand times more impactful than whatever rules and regulations and speeches you give them.

Dierdre: 00:42:11 Yeah. And I remember a lot of things for being that age now. Like I can look back and say, I remember when I was 13 when my parents did this. I remember when I was nine and my mom did that. So now I have that in my head. A lot of, oh, what hard. No, no, no. I just remember they’re going to remember this. This is the one they’re going to tell their wives that I used to do. So, you know, what is it you want to be like, what kind of parent do you want to be? Yeah.

Brad: 00:42:34 A lot of perspective. Yeah. Wow. And, uh, you know, if they’re going to go and, and, and steal cars when they’re 15, uh, regardless of your, you know, your, your best efforts, if that’s their path and that’s their destiny. I feel like there’s a Lotta, there’s a lot of self determinism there that we have no control over.

Dierdre: 00:42:53 Yeah. That’s scary.

Brad: 00:42:54 It’s scary. It is scary. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think your original point is like, people have to learn things their way, not necessarily the hard way. Some, some kids, you know, I can, I can talk to my son about this or that aspect and he’ll, he’ll learn it and, and, you know, embrace it and, and take it and run with it. Uh, the importance of getting good grades. If you, Oh, you wanna go to UCLA? Oh, do you know you have to get straight A’s. Oh, Shit. Really? And then he just took an around with it. Right? Yeah. Um, but it’s, it’s not all, it’s not all parent orchestrated.

Dierdre: 00:43:27 Did you talk to your kids as adults? You know, like, like they were adults.

Brad: 00:43:32 yeah. LIke adults?

Dierdre: 00:43:33 you’re not even treating them, but did you talk to them like were you really frank with them about these are the realities, this is what you’re gonna do? Or did you take a much more like a, not controlling but a little bit more of a helicopter view? Cause I think that that’s a big thing in our society as well.

Brad: 00:43:48 Ooh,

Dierdre: 00:43:48 that guiding your kid to be a certain kind of thing. Yeah. I mean, yeah. I mean

Brad: 00:43:52 I recall, um, having a lot of times where your, your morals and values are up against, uh, the reality and how to, how to deal with immediate immediate day and then having a little bit of a conflict there of, you know, um, I believe that academics should be completely self motivated and self-driven and they should pursue things for the joy of learning without any parent intervention whatsoever. And then it’s like, oh, okay, so that’s maybe not working so good in this exact example here. And maybe we do have to go sit with this teacher who, uh, you know, downgraded, uh, uh, the, the kid a whole grade because they’re, their friend got in trouble and they blame them too. You know, this kind of thing where, you know, should I intervene? This coach is, uh, you know, directing some misplaced competitive intensity at my kid. Do I need to do something about that or sit back like my values and beliefs think that it should all be, uh, you know, left to the best devices. So you’re, you’re kind of like checking yourself all the time. How should I handle this? How should I handle this?

Dierdre: 00:44:54 Yeah. No, I think that’s a good way to look at it.

Brad: 00:44:55 Yeah. Yeah. But I think, you know, we’re in the helicopter parenting age, it’s, it’s gross. It’s ridiculous. And so this is the 20 year, you know, the, the 20 year checkpoint, 20 years in that we’re going to be like, oh my gosh, these kids don’t even know how to change the oil in a car. I never did that either. But it’s a great example for you, old, older listeners,

Dierdre: 00:45:16 something you should know how to do, right?

Brad: 00:45:18 I just had Dave Kobine on the podcast. He’s a parent of two, uh, national caliber, uh, highly recruited volleyball players that both play for UCLA now. And he said, Oh, you know, I didn’t have to do anything. I handed my kid a ball when he was two years old and he started dunking on a plastic basket all day long. And his only regret was that he wished he’d made the kids read more because everything was all about sports. These kids were just consumed with sports and they were all American volleyball players and star basketball players all through high school. But it was interesting to hear him that he did nothing, right? He was a champion athlete himself and comes from an athletic family. But so many people wish for their kids what he got dealt in his hand of cards.

Dierdre: 00:46:00 Right.

Brad: 00:46:00 But he claims he had nothing to do with it. And it’s a pretty strong message to say if your kid’s destined to be a division one scholarship athlete or Valedictorian. My sister was Valedictorian, I was not, nor was my brother. Uh, she was destined to be that way. And my parents just, you know, had hands off and that was, those are the best kind of Valedictorians cause now, now there’s not just one, there’s like nine in school or 13 and they all give a two minute speech. So you got 26 minutes attendant, one kid waxing on as we gaze over our stadium full of people and our opportunities for the future. But now with the nine Valedictorians, you know, two or three of them are authentic, right? And then six or seven of them were orchestrated by parental massive inflammation, including writing papers and doing that. Crazy shit

Dierdre: 00:46:45 In the Olympics. That’s actually one of my favorite stories these days is following the Olympic parents. Like I usually get to do like Olympic Games.

Brad: 00:46:51 Do you find them in interview?

Dierdre: 00:46:52 And it’s always really fun to see it through their eyes and find out what they did. Because you have parents who are kind of like what you described, like I’m thinking of, um, Carl Westenberg and his daughter Kendall Westenberg was a skeleton slider, um, in the, ,Chung Chung Olympics and they’re a family out of Modesto. Great family. And their daughter was just like one of those great all around athletes and in college on a dare, she went to one of those scouts sessions for bobsled and skeleton and it, they happened to be watching TV. They saw an ad for it and her brother and sister dared her to go do it. And she did. And she turned out to be really great at it.

Dierdre: 00:47:31 So here’s a really well rounded person who just found out that they were kind of wired a little differently to go, you know, a hundred feet on your stomach face first. Yeah. And, and it created this whole Olympic career but I remember him saying that, you know, we just kinda supported our kids. We gave them opportunities, we supported them, but we didn’t do the work for them because you can’t, I think you can’t teach people to do the work you’re wired one way or the other. You’re either somebody who can apply yourself toward a goal and figure out how to get there. Or you’re somebody who has to be told exactly what to do and you’re probably going to do the bare minimum to get by.

Brad: 00:48:07 And that’s what you think. That’s, you think that’s unchangeable by parenting and uh, environmental influence?

Dierdre: 00:48:12 I think you can learn it early on. I think once you’re an adult, it’s a very difficult thing to change for people. And I think that’s why you see so many people who get hooked on fad diets and on weird exercise programs and who are constantly in this Yo-yo of life

Brad: 00:48:28 Right. They need some sort of outside force to get them focused or driven because there’s no drive that just innate.

Speaker 5: 00:48:37 Yeah. And when you have that outside force, you never tap into your inner force to be able to see it through to fruition. And I think that that’s the difference with people. Too deep.

Brad: 00:48:48 You know, that’s Gretchen Rubin, four tendencies, popular book, there’s the obliger, the upholder, the questioner, and the rebel. It was really fascinating to me to identify yourself as which one of those and.

Dierdre: 00:49:00 Say that one more time.

Brad: 00:49:01 Well, there’s the obliger.

Dierdre: 00:49:03 is that someone person who just kind of,

Brad: 00:49:06 Well it’s obliging society, so they respond to external expectations. So they get to the job on time. They’re there, they’re good team player that the family can count on them, they’ll help the, the, the aunt at the nursing home, they just respond to society’s expectations. The upholder is that type a with the note cards and the super organized life and they, they uphold to their own expectations. And then the questioner is someone who needs to know “why “all the time they would get kicked out of the military quickly. Right? But there are questioning, questioning, questioning, and then when they can get a resolution, they can go off and do it. And then the, uh, the rebel is the one who just answers to their own, uh, beat, uh, not off the beaten path. And doing things that, um, are not there. There’s no expectations of uh, internal nor external. They just, they just go with the flow kind of thing.

Dierdre: 00:49:58 Interesting. Can you be a combo of those?

Brad: 00:50:00 Yeah. You have a, you have a combi. I have a dominant one. Then you have kind of a, maybe a little influence of the other ones, but most people can take the test at her website and find out which one.

Dierdre: 00:50:10 Yeah. Oh, that’s fun.

Brad: 00:50:12 You’re describing your career attributes and you’re going to be the, um, the upholder. So you’re completely self directed and motivated and driven and then you’re having to be a marathon runner and all those things that are aligned with, you know, who’s there on the starting line running 26 miles. It’s a ridiculous, crazy thing to do. And so probably that whole group is type A one 90% or 99%.

Dierdre: 00:50:37 Yeah.

Brad: 00:50:37 And I got into this. We’re not, you know, I was racing and having the constant battle between overdoing it, um, having that misplaced competitive intensity where I was racing some dork on the bike path because my ego got in the way of my best laid plans. And so I was always having to check that and realizing that this type a drive and oh that’s so you’re so motivated. How do you ride your bike that far? How do you run that far? That stuff was uh, nothing that was like a throwaway obvious one for almost everyone out there. And then the nuanced attributes that were really, really important that was gonna be the difference between 10th and first place was to be able to regulate the gas pedal and have a little bit of this type B influence come in where I could really teach myself to relax and sit back on the porch and read a book and not feel guilty or anxious that I should be doing something or doing yet one more workout. So like bringing that other stuff in to take, take your natural strengths but then take it to the next level. And so it like the next level for me was getting over myself. Right? And just going out there because I loved it. I loved the challenge but not um, not getting too caught up in it.

Dierdre: 00:51:40 Right.

Brad: 00:51:41 Yeah. I mean how does that sound?.

Dierdre: 00:51:46 I, for me, I, I’m, I’m struggling cause cause I know you and I’ve had this conversation just personally over the years. I got into a lot of the endurance stuff because I met people like you living in this area and interviewing Olympic athletes. I would hear all these incredible things they did.

Brad: 00:52:05 Seriously. Yeah. You didn’t have this going when you were kid high school?

Dierdre: 00:52:09 No. Anything? No. My, my athletic sport when I was in high school was Irish dancing ten-ish.

Brad: 00:52:16 That’ll get you in shape.

Dierdre: 00:52:16 yeah,

Brad: 00:52:18 no I no jokes allowed or snickers. You want to go try it an hour? That.

Dierdre: 00:52:22 yeah.

Brad: 00:52:23 Did that in competition?

Brad: 00:52:24 A serious style?

Dierdre: 00:52:25 That was my thing. My parents are both from Ireland. Yeah, they are. Here we go. Um, my parents are both from Ireland. And so when they moved our family to Texas, they joined up with a little of, you know, Irish Cultural Association, which was like a euphemism for drinking club with people who came from the town you were from. And so all the kids got thrown into this, this Irish dancing class. And then we would travel around to competitions that our parents would get together and kind of party for the weekend. So that was what I did. Um, I did a little bit of track. I did track and field my freshman year in high school. I was a relay runner and I was really fast. I got put onto a team with a varsity onto a varsity team and I couldn’t take the pressure being with older girls. And so I quit. So I never did any sports really in high school except for golf, you know, that was, that was my competitive sport. So I don’t know. It’s funny, like I didn’t do any of that stuff growing up. I got into marathons on a dare in my twenties on a dare. Somebody dared me to do it. And I followed through and I did it and that was how I got started in it. So then when I moved to California, all of a sudden I was in the land of endurance and living in northern California, you’re surrounded by people who are doing interesting things and it just kind of became a fun way to kill the afternoon because keep in mind I’m getting off of work at one in the afternoon, everybody else is still at work. And so I would go out and I learned how to swim and I learned how to do triathlons and you know, I guess my type a personality, you start stepping it up and stepping it up. So you start with this short one and then you go to maybe like a half iron man and the next thing you know you’re training for an iron man. It just becomes kind of a way to kill time and it’s kind of fun. You meet interesting people and it’s pretty cause you’re outside all day.

Brad: 00:54:02 Okay. Question. If, if there was a way to kill time for me, if we had to trade places and I was up at 2:45 and cranking through the news and having that brain firing at the highest level, I think a nap would kill a lot of that afternoon time., a nap would do it for me.

Dierdre: 00:54:17 No nap.

Brad: 00:54:17 You’re not a napper?

Dierdre: 00:54:18 Not a napper.

Brad: 00:54:19 Okay. So back to your schedule. You’re up at, you’re up at 2:45 yeah. You’re reading, you’re getting, getting into the mode. Then you’re here. When do you go on the air for 4:50 ?

Dierdre: 00:54:31 yup. Right.

Brad: 00:54:31 And then you’re w you’re off the air at eight or nine now.

Dierdre: 00:54:36 I’m off the around We’re done by nine and then I move into other projects of, so like the podcast or special special special projects, you know. If it’s an Olympic year or you’re working on Olympic content, so yeah, variety of things.

Brad: 00:54:49 And then you’re out here at one or something?.

Dierdre: 00:54:50 Usually lunchtime.

Brad: 00:54:52 Yeah,

Dierdre: 00:54:52 around noon-ish and.

Brad: 00:54:53 no nap needed? You’re fine?

Dierdre: 00:54:54 Yeah. I don’t know. And then the kids come home from school and your mom for many hours?

Dierdre: 00:54:59 go into being told, I’m the worst mom in the world, which you know, means I’m doing introspective perspective.

Brad: 00:55:05 Yeah, that’s interesting, right? I remember reading something that kids, uh, they want to push up against boundaries. That’s part of their, their growth. They want an identity. You know, they want to discover who they are and form their own identity, but they’re looking and, and welcome the boundary deep down. Or they need the boundary. So the kids who are, you know, um, permissive, they can do whatever they want. They’re, they’re missing that thing and they’re looking for it by pushing the edge, pushing the edge, pushing the edge, looking for the edge. Oh, the parents are goofing around and uh, don’t, don’t have that ability. Then they’re right there. They just keep pushing the edge.

Dierdre: 00:55:43 I think that’s totally true. And I think we all think back to when you’re a kid, you probably can’t remember the friends you had in school whose parents let them do everything and you know they had no rules and you’re like, that’s the kind of parent I’m going to be. And then life happens and you realize you just said something that your mother once said and you go, oh well here we are. So I, yeah, I think, I think you’re right. I mean I think, I think most of us want some boundaries to know that we’re staying the course and we’re going the right way. I think kids probably thrive on it, you know, they thrive on the same things that we do. Eating well, sleeping well, getting good energy, having some positive feedback, trying things, failing, learning things sound so fun. t is pretty simple, allegedly.

Brad: 00:56:29 Okay, so you got into this endurance thing. How many marathons you’ve done, how many triathlons?

Dierdre: 00:56:35 20 marathons.

Brad: 00:56:37 Wow.

Dierdre: 00:56:38 Yeah. 21 this as of next month, it’ll be 21.

Brad: 00:56:42 Oh, does that mean you’re assuming you’re finishing next time?

Dierdre: 00:56:44 I am.

Brad: 00:56:44 Listen to this noise, this damn positive self talk. It has to have next month it’ll be 21.

New Speaker: 00:56:49 Yeah, no, of course I’m going to finish. Um, so yeah. Yeah.

New Speaker: 00:56:52 What is it? That’s the big race in Sacramento folks. Yeah. So I that many times you’ve done that?

New Speaker: 00:56:57 I think 14

Brad: 00:56:58 Oh my goodness. Yeah. Is there a, like a camera man running next to you on the scooter or something? It should be just an anonymous person in the past.

Dierdre: 00:57:05 Me.

Brad: 00:57:05 Just another, yeah. Sweaty. toward at mile 13. Nothing. You’re not going to mix business with suffering?

Brad: 00:57:13 No. Okay. Now just out for fun that day. But that’s your favorite run?

Dierdre: 00:57:16 I do. I like it. You know, I love the idea of running through your community. I love that. I know every inch of the course I love. I’m on the board that helps put it together. So I’m really proud of what we do with it. It’s a, we’re not properties. We generate a lot of money for youth fitness programs, which I’m very passionate about. I know you are too. Um, and for other like running and fitness related causes and the community. So yeah, I’ve done that. A bunch of half iron men and then I’m done. I’ve gone to three iron man competitions and I’ve finished two. I got kicked out of one of them, but that’s,

New Speaker: 00:57:49 Oh yeah. Um, for a profanity or?

New Speaker: 00:57:53 No, just for not.

New Speaker: 00:57:54 failing doping test?.

Dierdre: 00:57:54 not being good enough, I guess.

Brad: 00:57:58 finished two Iron Mans on a felt bicycle just pedaling away. Fantastic. Wow. And so does that give you some type of balance to the extreme intellectual challenge of your career?

Dierdre: 00:58:08 I guess? I mean, I think probably it’s a stress relief. I love the idea of being kind of comfortably uncomfortable. I like the sufferfest. I liked that feeling of pushing yourself and knowing that you still have something left to keep going. I think when other things in your life get hard, you can remember and think, oh, I remember how crappy I felt that day I got through it. So I’ll get through this. And so I think I get a lot of balance out of it. I think for me, probably the biggest thing is it’s a reset after a stressful day. If I come out of here and my, my brain is about to explode from being in a newsroom all day long, which is just like a high sensory overload. Most of the time I go out and I run and I sweat and it’s gone and to me it’s that mental boost. Re Reset, start the rest of the day, get into family life after that.

Brad: 00:58:57 But the battery power to me is a question. Like how can you do it all? Is there’s another component of pure stress relief where you sit in the garden for half an hour and knit or hit the sauna or something?

Dierdre: 00:59:13 I read, I’m a big reader.

Brad: 00:59:15 Of reading for non-work-related reasons, fiction?

Brad: 00:59:22 Oh Wow. So she has time to wake up at 2:45 crank out many news channels, crank out big mileage, read for pleasure, parents or kids. Then you crash out at 8:00 PM or one.

Dierdre: 00:59:34 crash out between eight and nine.

Brad: 00:59:35 Serious. So you’re down lights out and I fall asleep in five to 10 seconds. Yeah, she did a sleep story. Is.

Dierdre: 00:59:45 My husband insane because he’s not a great sleeper. And so literally like I, I put my head down, I’m out

Brad: 00:59:51 wow, that’s interesting. I mean it’s gotta be related to the amount of volume of work you did during the day of brain and body.

Dierdre: 01:00:01 I don’t know. I mean it or maybe I’m just wired that way at this point.

Brad: 01:00:04 Yeah.

Dierdre: 01:00:05 But it, but it’s probably the reason why I’ve been able to do this job, this shift for as long as I have, you know,

Brad: 01:00:11 Right. I don’t think an average person could take this.

Dierdre: 01:00:13 I don’t think an average person should. I mean, I don’t think, I’m not saying it’s a healthy way to live. I’m just saying it. For me it’s worked. I didn’t hear if you recently,

Brad: 01:00:19 It works for me though,

Dierdre: 01:00:21 I did an interview recently with a psychiatrist for a story and she was asking me a lot of questions about, about the time I get up and how much sleep do I get and what do I do? And after she had asked me about six questions I thought, is she diagnosing me? Like I felt like I was getting grilled. So finally I just said, I feel like you’re, you’re studying me or something. Um, are you trying to figure out like what’s wrong with me? And she goes, oh, I know exactly what it is, so well, what is it? She said, Oh, you have this trait we call resiliency. And she said that in certain professions they put people through these personality tests to figure out like, like for example, in medical school, everybody goes through the same basic courses, but to figure out what’s a good specialty for your, they do, they do some sort of a like a test and it figures out your ability to react to certain types of situations and like who’s going to survive and who’s going to thrive and who’s going to like fall flat on it. There’s nothing wrong with it. You’re just, you know, meant to do one thing over another.

Dierdre: 01:01:16 And so for people who want to work in like an emergency room, you need this resiliency factor because you’re the one who’s going to, man, here’s another case that just came in and I haven’t slept for 24 hours. You’re, you’re on it. Your adrenaline inspired, you’re your clear thinking, you’re ready to go, and, and somebody is going to be better suited for that than say they might be for like dermatology, where you’re going to have a much more, uh, just as challenging, but just different kind of schedule that would come along with it. So she said, she said, Oh yeah, you’ve got the resiliency thing. That’s exactly why you’ve been able to do it as long as you have. And the

Brad: 01:01:47 I’ve heard talk about it at the resiliency gene, which seems to make a lot of sense to me that this is just how you are.

Dierdre: 01:01:53 Yeah. I think it’s just how I am. Yeah.

Brad: 01:01:55 And I think your kids seeing this example, their whole lives will have a profound impact on them, but it may not. If it’s, if it’s not a lineup of genetics and environmental support, it might just be everyone’s different.

Dierdre: 01:02:09 They may want to go a completely different thing thinking I watched that for or be a different person just yeah, they are. I hope they are a different person. I don’t want them to be like me. Yeah. How would that be? Yeah.

Brad: 01:02:20 And also.

Dierdre: 01:02:20 two iof me would not be good. One of me is plenty.

Brad: 01:02:23 Well you know, on, on, on a serious note, like we already have a sufficient number of um, CEOs, uh, brain surgeons, uh, elected representatives, you know, the high performing successful. We have a ton of wealthy people that are living in the giant houses. None of them are vacant. So, you know, I think the kids should be free to, you know, not have to ascribe to some expectation of society and figure out what works best for them. And I, you know, I turned down a nice steady paved career path cause I wanted to be an athlete and it was much more of a struggle and it was difficult and there’s all kinds of repercussions and tradeoffs that you have. But I feel like I had no choice at the time. And it’s sorta like you have no choice to, you get off work and you need to clear your head,

Dierdre: 01:03:11 right.

Brad: 01:03:11 You need to go put in a quick 12 on the bike trail instead of, uh, sit in the salon or take a nap. Well, and for some people that nap is exactly what they need, right? And that’s fine. In a, in a beer and Monday night football with all the commercials, it would kill me. I mean, I took my son to his last college football game. I go, dude, I’m out. Wait, we used to go every year on a road trip. It takes four hours in the stadium. I’m like, this is it. I can’t, I’m not wasting another day watching these guys smash into each other. No.

Dierdre: 01:03:41 Funny, though. I think that that’s like your evolution of, of yourself as a person, as you got to figure out like, wow, who am I? And that’s one of the nice things I think about getting older is you start to realize, oh, that’s who I am. I’m really not that person that I thought I wanted to be. And you have to figure out like, how do you wanna do your life? How do you want to do life? And for me, this is how I want to do life with a little bit of everything, not a ton of one thing over the other. And hopefully some balance. Um, and, and fun too. I mean, my, my husband and I talk a lot about that. Like, where do you want to be in five years? Where do you want to be in 10 years? I used to hate that conversation and now I’m like, where do you want to be in 5 years? What do you want to be doing?

Brad: 01:04:19 What else is good about getting older in the news game? And it seems like the, the, there’s a lot of news people that have extremely long stints and is it because the audience becomes familiar with you and so they don’t want you to get fired for fresh new blood or something?

Dierdre: 01:04:39 I don’t know. That’s a good question.

Brad: 01:04:40 Um, I mean Jim Hill, Fred Rogan, I gotta go down and visit my parents in LA. Jim Hill and Fred Rogan are doing the sports. They did it in high school.

Dierdre: 01:04:48 I know.

Brad: 01:04:48 And Jim Hill looks the same. Fred Rogan, it looks like his, he’s had many different hairstyles tried on and he’s one more tan or something. So

Dierdre: 01:04:56 They are remarkable people I’ve ever watched. Where can I tell you a funny story about him? When I was in Sydney, so it’s my first Olympics, my first huge big international, like a lot of pressure kind of job and I just had the best time ever and I was watching Fred Rogan doing reports for LA and he saw an athlete, he’s standing up on top of a building and he sees an athlete below who we’d been looking for. So he took a microphone cable and he connected a couple of cables and he lowered the microphone on live TV down to the sidewalk so that somebody could do the interview and then he yelled the question so that they could get the person on TV. And then he grabbed the cable and pulled it back up to the top and finish this report. And I thought that is brilliant. And I think I tell that story to our newer Ed people or interns. I said, there’s always a way, there’s always a way to figure out like how to fix a problem or how to get something done. So you have to think in a really creative way, whether you’re an athlete or you’re a journalist or you’re a doctor in the field and something just goes wrong. You got to figure out a way to problem solve it. And I think that’s, that’s like the fun part of what I do now. I’ve never forgotten Fred Rogan lowering a microphone down a building to do an interview.

Brad: 01:06:06 Right. Because 99% of people go, oh, it’s too far away. Too far away. I can’t get ’em he sent a text message to the Olympic Village. Yeah. See if we can get them tomorrow. Uh, I’ll try instead of just make it happen too.

Dierdre: 01:06:20 Yeah, I’ll do, we’ll try. Some people do.

Brad: 01:06:23 Yeah. So if you have a good inroads and a good start, is there an expectation that you can last for a long time in the market?

Dierdre: 01:06:30 I Dunno. I mean I think there’s, I don’t think there’s any like given, I mean I.

Brad: 01:06:35 so do people come and go? Meanwhile while we have some of our stalwarts, like I think,

Dierdre: 01:06:40 um, some, I think there is a, there are a variety of things. Um, I, I always joke, I’m kind of pleasantly surprised every day the key card works when I come in. Man, you know, which some people would like, that’s very pessimistic.

Brad: 01:06:53 Well, it’s a good attitude also. You don’t take it for granted, don’t mail it in, don’t.

Dierdre: 01:06:57 I don’t take any for granted.

Brad: 01:06:58 here at three something instead of, yeah, 4:47, like, you know, the average, a long timer.

Dierdre: 01:07:04 No, I don’t take it for granted. And I think, I think there are a couple of things that go into it. I think that the burnout factor with what I do is high and I think some people are wired to be able to go the distance and some people aren’t. A lot of people after 10 years, 15 years of just ready for something different and usually they’re ready for different lifestyle. They don’t want to get up before the sun knows before. Like roosters too. They don’t want to work those kind of hours. They don’t want to work holidays. I mean I work basically every holiday, but Christmas at this point. Um, they don’t want to necessarily be in that environment and it’s not an easy environment to be in for a lot of people. So I think that’s part of it. And then some of it is probably people, you find a niche in a community and it clicks for whatever reason it clicks.

Dierdre: 01:07:46 And so you have the opportunity to stay in a community for a long period of time, which is great. But then you have a lot of people who just want to see different parts of the country or they’re always chasing a different job or a bigger job. I just found the job that for me was the best job because it’s a job that I’ve gotten to do lots of things with. I’ve gotten to travel the world. I’ve gotten to interview incredible people. I’ve gotten to try all kinds of different technology. I’ve been to work with some really good people who become really, really good friends. And so my job always feel like a job. Like nine days out of 10, I don’t really feel like I’m going to working like air quotes working. I feel like I’m going to a fun place where I hang out with some people in the middle of the night. Yeah. We get to write and we get to play with cameras and it doesn’t really feel like work. And then you have that 10th day where you’re like, that was work. That was real work.

Brad: 01:08:36 Jeez, we should record that sound bite for the, uh, the college students. They’re trying to choose their career. Yeah. Right. Cause that 10th day that’s important to recognize. And I think we’re, I sometimes feel a little bit like we’re getting too much blather out there and you know, uh, create your intention and visualize your path and it will come to you and it will be a dream and you’ll be crushing it in no time. And that’s like,

Dierdre: 01:08:59 I don’t believe that. Yeah, I don’t believe that at all. I think you have to be very intentional about things and you have to set your own personal goals and you have to have your own standards for yourself. But if you don’t have high standards for yourself, why is anyone else going to see that ability in you and just hand it to you? I don’t believe in that at all. I really don’t. And I also think that you have to advocate for yourself and tell people what you want to do. But you also have to have done the work. So it’s not an exegesis make a case may make a case based based on, um, what do they call it, the theory of the case. Like make a case based on what you’ve done and what you’re working toward. And Fair enough. If you’re not ready for something, let somebody tell you no, but I need you to do this right. Then they’ll do the work. Right. But if you haven’t done the work, the expectation that something will be handed to you. That’s what I always had. I had a big problem with the secret. You remember when the secret came out? The secret was what you were just talking about. It was a really popular book, probably like 10, 10 15 years old spark, Sacramento, California. It was a little bit before that, but the secret was this idea that visualize put it out in the universe and it’s just going to show up for you.

Brad: 01:10:05 Oh, that’s right. Do you remember that? Yeah. It was all over Oprah call. Call in the one [inaudible] mate of your dreams.

Dierdre: 01:10:12 That didn’t make any sense to me. I mean, really, I’m just going to sit here. It’s all going to come to me. Didn’t work.

Brad: 01:10:19 Yeah. That’s not too funny right now when we have this, I’m not gonna make any rational judgments, but um, it seems like there’s some cultural forces and whatever, certain age groups coming up and thinking that the world owes him one.

Dierdre: 01:10:34 Yeah. I don’t believe anybody owes you anything and don’t, I mean, I’m a first generation American, so I always had, they were high expectations in my house that you would try and, and do try and do. And it didn’t ever occur to us that we wouldn’t, wow. Right.

Brad: 01:10:55 No other option there.

Dierdre: 01:10:57 No. Yeah. Never entertained the idea that, that we wouldn’t try and that we wouldn’t achieve things might achieve different things and we set out to, yeah, but you would go out and you would at least try a good effort.

Brad: 01:11:10 Is that going to, your kid’s going to have that takeaway as well?

Dierdre: 01:11:12 I hope so. Yeah. I hope so. Um, you know, I tried to emphasize things like I try to emphasize effort over the outcome, you know, and I coach kids now in middle school running, which was like, man, that was a, an education for me and how to motivate people. Some, some very difficult. Fascinating. Yeah. The school is like,

Brad: 01:11:35 good luck.

Dierdre: 01:11:36 I said, yeah, well I’m until a year or two with that. I’m starting to kind of figure some of it out. But, but emphasizing the, the effort over the outcome for me is a really great analogy for life because we don’t always get to the destination we set out for, but the journey can be what we make of it. And so that’s, that’s just kinda how I choose to look at it. I’m.

Brad: 01:12:00 Ashley Merryman, author, coauthor with Pope Bronson of top dog and nurture shock. They were really big on that exact statement. And she said, I have a little nuance to ask.

Dierdre: 01:12:10 another book. I can’t write. Um,

Brad: 01:12:13 But this, you know, this honor and the effort, there’s a Japanese saying doryoku (Door-e-oh-koo).I did a whole podcast about it where they, you know, the, there’s the honor and the effort, that’s the most important thing rather than, you know, judging yourself by the outcome.

Dierdre: 01:12:26 Um, and.

Brad: 01:12:27 Ashley Merryman added that we want to have that effort, but we want it to lead to improvement because now we’re having to, to look at just making the effort is not good enough. You might get your ass kicked, but you gotta make an effort, uh, evaluate what went wrong, what you can do better. Just like with making your case for the promotion. They say, no, sorry, because you’re really weak on these certain things. Go work on those. So you’re making an effort making the effort, but it has to be directed toward constant improvement.

Dierdre: 01:12:54 Yeah, yeah. We have a lot of interns in my business and I will help anyone who tries. If you come into me and you asked me for help, I’ll help you. And if you try, I will help you so much in a.

New Speaker: 01:13:07 Cool, I mean, listen, he, so many. people want to break in and ask for help, right?

Dierdre: 01:13:13 Don’t expect that it’s going to be handed to you, but ask for help and be listened to. Be Willing to listen to true criticism because criticism, true criticism is constructive. You know? So I.

Brad: 01:13:26 no true criticism,

Dierdre: 01:13:27 true truly good criticism,

Brad: 01:13:30 criticism that that actually is based in good judgment.

Dierdre: 01:13:36 I don’t mean criticism, we’ll call mean criticizing just to take somebody down, but to say that judge, that doesn’t work because that subject does not go with that verb. That’s a fact. So take it that way and learn from it and move on. But I, anytime anybody comes to me and they really want to learn, it’s me. That is so much fun to help somebody figure those things out and to help them grow. And so that, that is one of those things within my business now that I truly enjoy. So you use, talk about, you know, having longevity in the career and what do you enjoy? I love that. I love the teaching part of it. I love teaching the context of what we do and why, why it’s important and why it’s important to know that you’ve gone to gone all in and to do everything right and to do it to the best of your ability that day

Brad: 01:14:24 uh, well I liked that when you said the 10th day’s really rough, but those nine days, I think we also want to put proper focus on that. That it should be, it should feel like fun. It shouldn’t feel like work or a grind to feel like a good fit and you’re feeling, uh, rewarded and, uh, just having a great time along the way, but also knowing that that part of it’s not going to be fun, but it’s, you know, in a big picture perspective.

Dierdre: 01:14:48 Yeah. It’s unrealistic to expect it to be fun all the time.

Brad: 01:14:51 Right.

Dierdre: 01:14:51 It’s not live.

Brad: 01:14:52 Right, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I want to finish with this Olympic thing.

Dierdre: 01:14:58 Yeah.

Brad: 01:14:58 And what, you know, being around those athletes and the whole pageantry and what impact that’s had on your life and the, I’m sure it’s motivating and inspiring and all that, but you started in Sydney and you haven’t missed a single one. You’ve been summer, winter pattern. Yeah.

Dierdre: 01:15:14 So it’s, it’s just,

Brad: 01:15:15 it’s a huge part of your life because you’re building up, winding down and then there’s another Olympics coming up. What’s next? I can’t even keep track.

Dierdre: 01:15:22 Yeah. You know, it’s, it’s Tokyo Summer Olympics in Tokyo. I don’t know. I, I love, I love everything about the Olympics and yet there are certain things I hate about it too. You know, there, there’s the [inaudible] Yeah. You know, I know. And I know you probably hate it too, having come from an athletic background, that part of it, I don’t, that part of it I don’t like, but I do love the idea that people pursue these goals in sports that don’t get a lot of attention. Like forget the big name sports, like your gymnast, your swimmers.

Brad: 01:15:52 Oh, you’re not worried about an Olympic golf is a big Oh,

Dierdre: 01:15:55 think they’ll be fine.

Brad: 01:15:56 Won The gold medal. Yeah.

Dierdre: 01:15:58 I love these. I love the people who pursue things like the Bobsled. You’re not making money in the bobsled. You’re doing it purely because you love it and purely because you want to represent your country. I’m purely because you love the feel of going down a bobsled track and they don’t make a lot of money. They have a lot of sacrifice. They put their adult lives on hold for sometimes a decade to pursue the goal. They get attention in our country for like two weeks.

Brad: 01:16:26 All your segments are four to seven minutes.

Dierdre: 01:16:29 Then they go back to, you know, kind of a life in obscurity and I don’t know, there’s something about that that I just love. I love following the stories. I love knowing how they do it. I love knowing the people around them who support them to be able to do it. I love how everybody gets into it for awhile. I love the stories.

Brad: 01:16:46 So the nature of your stories are trying to dig to get some personal insights from the athletes. What does it look like?

Speaker 5: 01:16:52 Trying to explain what the sports are to people who aren’t familiar? I mean, you probably, I’m guessing I might be stereotyping. You don’t sit around and watch curling all the time.

Brad: 01:17:01 I am a huge fan of curling thanks to the Sidney brothers in Tahoe, so some of the world’s finest curling enthusiasts. And I’ve done one, uh, open, uh, training curling session for all comers in Lake Tahoe. You can come every Sunday afternoon in South Lake Tahoe. J.

Dierdre: 01:17:18 I just lost that. That right there.

Brad: 01:17:20 Fascinating sport. Yeah.

Dierdre: 01:17:21 But I love it, but I love that that’s what they do. I love that they go out and they do that. I think that’s just awesome. So I’d love to, I dunno, I love the backstories. I love following them. I love, um, kind of handicapping them to see like who’s going to go the distance and actually make it. And then when some of them are lucky enough and good enough, um, to have it all come together on that one day and they win a medal. I love seeing them afterward and seeing how it just kinda changes something in them. It’s just a really cool thing to see up close. Well keep it out.

Brad: 01:17:54 Deirdre. We love what you’re doing here in Sacramento and I, I didn’t realize you were getting out to 30 other cities. That’s so funny, isn’t it? Yeah. It’s like the, the rappers when they do their little plug for yeah. You’re listening to hip hop, Cincinnati three 72. This is, you know, this is Tupac or whatever. They hit him. Someone got him in a room and he recorded probably a hundred of those done that.

Dierdre: 01:18:16 I’ve done that. Yeah.

Brad: 01:18:18 Thank you for, thank you for, uh, for getting it done. I don’t even know what the theme of this podcast was. It was all kinds of life lessons and reflections, I guess. Yeah.

Dierdre: 01:18:27 Yeah. Well let me know if you come up with a common theme cause I couldn’t give it to you right now.

Brad: 01:18:32 I’ll work on it.

Dierdre: 01:18:32 And I’m kind of the queen of the queen of the copy edit and I’m not sure I could edit this.

Brad: 01:18:35 I know I wanted to get you out of the, the high production realm that you’re in and just relax and talk. That was my goal. So, and our podcast was great cause I remember going off on a lot of tangents and then listening to it, it sounded like we were keeping to these themes and you’re like, well tell me about the writing again. Oh yeah, I know we’re trying to focus on speed golf. Okay. Thanks for listening to everybody at KCRA where the news comes

Dierdre: 01:19:00 comes first.

Brad: 01:19:01 first.

Dierdre: 01:19:02 Unless of course you’re listening to the podcast, which is Dying to Ask.

Brad: 01:19:05 Oh, that’s right.

Dierdre: 01:19:06 Yeah,

Brad: 01:19:07 the thing is so sharp. I love it. I listened to Andretti and uh, the, the author lady and you got some t tell us about the, uh, the theme of it is such a cool theme to

Dierdre: 01:19:17 Theme is I’m, and maybe this falls into what you’re just asking me about with the Olympics. I love the art of the execution. Like everybody’s got ideas. I have ideas all day long. I have so many ideas I have zero follow through because I’m doing all that other stuff. You were talking about our, our theme with Dying to Ask is why are some people able to actually pull off the goal? So they come up with the idea they make, they see it through to reality. How did they do it and how can I learn from the way they approached that goal?

Brad: 01:19:46 Right. And you get these people trapped in this room right here. I try and go, you go at them. I mean you have these questions that are leading to the insights so that that goal was always in the background of trying to pull what out, what makes them special. Yeah.

Dierdre: 01:19:58 Yeah. What makes somebody different and like why were they able to do it when so many other people just kind of talk about it? [inaudible]

Brad: 01:20:05 so now you’re in for what dozen shows?

Dierdre: 01:20:07 Yeah, we’re about a dozen it. Yeah.

Brad: 01:20:08 What do you, what’s coming out for you? The of these disparate peak performers too. There’s no category. They’re not like health people or whatever.

Dierdre: 01:20:16 They all tend to be people who have kind of a platform of some sort, you know, so we have authors, influencers, athletes, just, you know, different types of people. But I found that like everybody who has pulled off something has got a really great backstory behind it. Everybody’s got a really awesome stories. So like we have an upcoming episode with a woman named Alexis del Cro. She has a website called what the fertility WFM WTF. Really Clever, right? And it’s, it was all about her, um, struggling through infertility and then being surprised with an adoption, how the adoption came about. And then a week later she found out she was pregnant after being told to go baby. So it’s things like that. A little bit of everything.

Brad: 01:20:59 How do you find these people? Um, they’re, they’re not necessarily Sacramento.

Dierdre: 01:21:03 No, no. A lot of times I will read about them or see the email.

Brad: 01:21:09 You get up at three 30 in the morning and start reading.

Dierdre: 01:21:11 I know.

Brad: 01:21:12 Great things happen.

Dierdre: 01:21:13 Great things happen when you read books. Um, I will, I email them and most of the time they email back and they say yes. So a lot of times it’s just reaching out to them people and it kind of gets back to what I was just saying. Like, people will help you if you ask people want to, people usually want to say yes more than they want to say no.

Brad: 01:21:31 These kinds of people that are doing something great. I find the same thing. And I remember reading a, there’s a, Oh, it was like Ferris or one of the prominent podcast hosts said he has a better success rate with A list celebrities than random people when he’s inviting him onto the show. Like they’ll like, sure. Ariana Huffington. Sure. Tony Robbins. Sure. But then, you know, people that don’t have their act to go, I’m too busy. Sorry, I don’t want to pay. I’m going to pass on that. Thanks.

Dierdre: 01:21:55 Anyway, that’s so true.

Brad: 01:21:57 Yeah. Yeah.

Dierdre: 01:21:58 And they, and then they’re really, they’re generous with their time.

New Speaker: 01:22:01 Right.

New Speaker: 01:22:01 And I think it’s because, especially with podcasts, podcasts are such an interesting, like anybody who’s listened this far into this podcast wants to learn something and I hope you’ve learned something. I don’t know if you have or not for now.

Brad: 01:22:12 I have.

Dierdre: 01:22:12 You have? Okay. Yeah.

Brad: 01:22:14 It’s all a matter of [inaudible].

Brad: 01:22:16 There’s listeners out there, but you guys do what you want into it.

Dierdre: 01:22:19 I think that like podcast listeners are so different than even my TV viewers or your book readers because they come because they want to get information and they want you. They want to end that podcast. Having come away with something that they can then apply to their life or not apply to their life based on what you’ve told them you’ve experienced. So I think that’s why people, when they, they, they agree like those A-listers agree to do your podcast. They love getting that message out and they love the people really want to hear the backstory of it and not just the really short soundbite.

Brad: 01:22:53 Dying to Ask You find it anywhere. Podcasts are for.

Dierdre: 01:22:57 your usual podcasts. He plays stuff with.

Brad: 01:23:00 Deirdre and your partner Geoff Mayfield,

Dierdre: 01:23:02 producer Geoff we call him.

Brad: 01:23:03 So He’s, he’s a producer guy, but he’s like also in the, in the, uh, in the dialogue.

Dierdre: 01:23:08 Sometimes he didn’t plan on that, but I just kind of made that.

Brad: 01:23:11 you look for opportunities, you find person. I saw an opportunity to really play a Sacramento Dierdre Fitzpatrick, check out her podcast.

Brad: 01:23:19 Thanks people. Thank you for listening to the show. We would love your feedback at getoveryourselfpodcast@gmail.com and we would also love if you could leave a rating and a review on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts. I know it’s a hassle. You have to go to desktop iTunes, click on the tab that says ratings and reviews, and then click to rate the show anywhere from five to five stars. And it really helps spread the word so more people can find the show and get over themselves because they need to. Thanks for doing it.

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